At Any Cost Box Set [Books 1-3]

by Fawkes, K. M.

  It made sense that the weakest would succumb most quickly, and he’d never questioned that, but Garrett had always wondered why the youngest would fall in the face of such adversity. They had younger bodies, and were more resilient; surely they should be able to live through more than adults who had spent years beating their bodies up already?

  Now he was seeing it play out firsthand, though, and he was realizing that it was true. They’d already lost one young child to sickness, though they had, of course, been mystified about what that sickness was. A lack of medical care made diagnoses like that impossible. And now there was Fawn, dying of her mystery fever.

  Decreased supplies would only hasten that.

  The thought cut him right to the bone, given how close he’d started to feel to everyone in the town. Fawn’s mother, Elisa, had become one of his closest allies, and the thought of a little girl dying under his care ripped him to shreds. His mind tried to shy away from it, but it was a stark and unbending truth—and one that they’d have to deal with sooner rather than later.

  He pulled up in front of the house he’d adopted, death on his mind, and took a deep breath. It was fitting that he was thinking about death, because he was here to visit the dead. He needed someone’s advice, and in his entire life, there had only been one person who was there for him with advice whenever he needed it.

  Kady.

  Instead of going up the steps into his house, he walked around the side and opened the gate into the backyard. It had been a nice yard, once, with a wide, open space that may have sported grass or some other landscaping, surrounded by row after row of barrel cacti, forming a virtual forest in the outer reaches of the yard. The landscaping was long gone, dead for lack of water, but the cacti were still there, and he’d used them as a backdrop for one of the first things he did when he got here.

  A memorial for his sister, brother-in-law, and nephew. Something by which to remember them. Something to remind him of what family felt like.

  Kady, Jon and Zach weren’t actually buried there, of course. He had no idea where they actually were, or if they’d even had proper burials. Didn’t know if there had been enough people left to care. He’d decided on a simple memorial, and it had been enough for him. A small demonstration that they had been here, and that they’d mattered.

  He halted in front of the rough cross he’d made by himself and laid a handful of wildflowers at the base of it. The flowers were a rare addition, given the lack of water, but now that the fall had arrived they’d actually been getting some moisture at night, and a few weeds had sprung up in the cracks of the earth. These tiny yellow blooms weren’t much, but they were the best he could do, and he thought that wherever Kady was, she was probably thankful for them.

  Either that or laughing at how emotional he’d become. Because he didn’t kid himself about that; the first thing she would have said to him was some joke about how sentimental he was these days.

  “You have no idea how much I wish you were here, Kady,” he said softly. “I need you now more than I think I ever have. I miss you so badly it feels like my soul has been ripped out of my body. And the worst of it is that I don’t know what to do with it. Don’t know how to fill that hole back up. Don’t know how to…”

  His voice finally broke and he gave himself a second before he finished. “Don’t know how to put myself back together.”

  She’d been his rock. And though he’d spent most of their childhood trying to take care of her, and actually forcing her to allow him to do just that, he’d realized since she was gone that he’d been wrong the entire time. She was the strong one. She’d been the one taking care of him. He’d just been too stubborn and hardheaded to see it at the time.

  “I need you to tell me what to do,” he said, laughing a little. “Remember how much I always fought that when we were kids? How much I always tried to tell you how to live your life? Never thought I’d be asking you how to live mine. Though I don’t suppose you’d be surprised about that. You always knew things a long time before I did.”

  A memory of her lecturing him about how he was treating a girl at school flitted across his mind, and he chuckled. Garrett had been an absolute idiot about girls, but Kady had never hesitated to give him her advice on the matter. And she’d always been right. Always known exactly what she was talking about.

  “What do I do, Kady?” he asked. “I see the next step, but I’m not sure how to take it. I’m not sure whether they’ll follow me, or insist on staying here, where there’s no future. We’ve had half our supplies stolen, and that puts us in danger. I’m afraid we’re going to slide back toward what we were, when we’ve made so much progress and become something bigger. The people are actually starting to smile again. Starting to laugh. Things are beginning to feel normal.

  “But we can’t rest on that. If we stay here, we’ll be finished. We have to keep moving forward. I want to take care of these people, but I’ve never been trained for anything like this. Nothing in my life has ever prepared me for making decisions for other people like this.” He knew he was rambling now and stopped himself.

  His sister wasn’t going to break in and give him the next step. She wasn’t going to put the thing he was trying to grasp into words. He had to do that for himself. But if he listened very closely, he wondered…

  Garrett closed his eyes, sending his consciousness up into the sky, and waited. If he was patient, if he listened closely enough, maybe she would be able to speak to him again. Maybe.

  Then he had it. Suddenly and as clearly as if she had said it.

  They would have to leave, yes. He had heard rumors about a place in Mexico where they might find sanctuary. He would set a target date for leaving. And in the meantime, they would have to expand their range in the search for more supplies. Get into some of the larger towns. Places where they could perhaps get some news about the rest of the country. If it still existed. Use that information to build a plan, build a timeline.

  The winter rains were coming, and they needed to move before those arrived. He’d give them another month in this town, max. Then they’d be on their way.

  And with that question answered, he turned and headed back toward his house. Kady always had had the answers. Now he just needed to present them to the rest of the group.

  Chapter 5

  By the time he got back to the schoolhouse, the meeting was already in session—or at least getting there. Alice was at the front of the room making some announcements about upcoming raids and the like, and when he entered, her gaze flew to his. She gave him a quick nod and then wrapped up, and he knew immediately what she’d done.

  She’d prepped the townspeople with everything else they had to announce, and she’d left the breaking of bad news to him.

  A part of him grimaced. A larger part of him acknowledged what she’d done and almost thanked her for it. She’d backed him into a corner, yes—but she’d also done him the favor of not giving him any way out. An announcement had to be made, and now he had no choice but to do it.

  He reached the front of the room and held up his hands for quiet, then turned his gaze on the people around him. People he was starting to think of as family, and most certainly friends. Bart, standing with his female counterpart, Riley. Elisa, there by herself, having no doubt left Fawn at home in bed. Kristy and Shane, the young couple who were expecting a baby soon. (He would have to take that into account when he made his final plans for leaving—they had to get to wherever they were going before Kristy went into labor, he thought suddenly.) Greyson. Cora and John. Julia. Manny. Alan. Scott. Steve. A number of others, each of them equally important.

  All of them staring back at him, their faces intense. Rumors would have spread, and he had no doubt that they all knew already what he was about to say. This was his chance, though, to set the story straight, and give them his plans for what they were going to do about it.

  “Hey guys,” he started out. “I know you all know why we’re here, and I know you all know that we�
�re not here for updates on when the next raid is going to be.”

  Some scattered laughter at that, as he’d hoped. Best to keep them relaxed. He didn’t need them freaking out about what he was going to say.

  He cleared his throat before going on. “But as long as we’re talking about raids, it looks like we’re going to have to move up the next appointment, so to speak. Last night, at an undetermined time, someone broke into our storeroom. It looks like it was someone from outside of town, though we don’t have any further details. A good amount of our stock was taken, and I hate to say it, but we’re running short on quite a few items.”

  This statement was met with a buzz of sound from the audience. That buzz quickly grew to a roar, peppered with shouted questions and accusations.

  “What do you mean, someone broke in?” Cora shouted. “I thought we had guards to keep that from happening!”

  Garrett nodded. “It is why we have guards. But even guards are human.”

  His eyes met Steve’s, and he paused for a moment, wondering if he should say who had actually been on guard that night. But he shook his head at himself and kept that part back. No good would come of releasing that sort of information.

  “What are you talking about? Their only job is to guard!” Greyson, a one-time cop, responded loudly. “Who was it? What happened, exactly? How do we know that whoever was on guard wasn’t working with the thieves? Maybe they let them in!”

  “He wasn’t, I’m sure of it,” Garrett answered calmly. “It looks to me like someone came in with a weapon big enough to not only knock the guard out but also break the deadbolt on the storeroom. There wouldn’t have been any need for that if the guard was working with them.”

  “Like hell there wouldn’t!” Greyson shot back. “It’s called covering his ass! He would have wanted to make it look like he wasn’t involved, so we would let him stick around!”

  A number of voices rose up to either agree with Greyson or argue with him, and Garrett watched, unsure of how to respond to this. Greyson had a good point, and he hadn’t even thought about it. Not really. His gut had told him that Steve wasn’t involved, and he’d just gone with it. Now he realized he should have done a bit more research—if only so he had answers for the people who were now questioning him.

  Before he could think of how to respond, though, another voice rang out through the crowd.

  “I didn’t do it!” Steve shouted, furious and defensive.

  Silence fell over the rest of the room, and everyone turned to look at him.

  “Steve?” Greyson asked. “It was you?”

  “I didn’t do it,” Steve repeated. “Assholes came up behind me and knocked me out. By the time I woke up they were long gone. Damage was done. If I was a part of it, don’t you think I would have gone with them? Gone with the supplies? Why would I stay here when there’s going to be a shortage? Don’t make no sense!”

  “So why didn’t you tell anyone? You didn’t think you should maybe wake Garrett up and let him know?” John shot back. He turned his thin, lanky frame toward Steve. “It didn’t occur to you that if you’d let everyone else know, we might have been able to catch them? Maybe do something to get our stuff back?”

  Steve scowled at him. “I’d say the more important question is what we’re going to do about it now,” he snapped. He turned his gaze to Garrett, his eyes sharp. “So how about it, oh fearless leader? How are we going to get our stuff back? What are you going to do to make sure the people in this town have enough to eat tomorrow, and the day after?”

  And just like that, attention was back on Garrett, Steve’s actions forgotten—at least for the moment.

  Garrett scoffed at Steve’s sidestepping of responsibility, and took a second to collect his thoughts, focusing on the need for peace. He quickly decided right then and there that it was time to announce his new plans for what they were going to do. He couldn’t have the people fighting among themselves, no matter how much he disliked Steve. He needed them to be united—and focused on a common goal.

  Luckily, he already knew what that goal was, and how to accomplish it.

  He held his hands up in a gesture for quiet, indicating that he actually did have an answer for them, and after a couple more shouted, intense questions, silence descended over the crowd.

  “So?” Greyson asked, his voice hopeful. “You have a plan, right Garrett? You always have a plan.”

  “Wow, I love the faith, but that’s kind of a lot of pressure,” Garrett responded to some scattered laughter. “But you’re right. I do have a plan. The first part—the longer-term part—is that we’re going to have to think about what this means for our future. We can’t stay in Trinity Ranch. I think we all know that. We’ve got to start thinking about what we’re going to do in the long run.”

  “What are you talking about?” Shane sputtered. “Where would you have us go, exactly?”

  “Look, this is a short-term sort of situation we’re in right now,” Garrett said reasonably. “Think about it. We’ve been here for what, three months as far as I’m concerned, but longer for those of you who actually lived here before the virus. For at least three months, we’ve been raiding everything we can reach around here. And we’re running out of options. We can only raid every town until it’s out of supplies, and then what?”

  “It’s not like they’re being restocked,” Shane said in agreement. “You’re right.”

  “And we’re running out of places to look,” Julia added. “Eventually…”

  “Eventually we’ll have run out of places, period,” Garrett finished. “And then what? We can’t support any farming enterprises. We’ve tried that, and without electricity or any access to running water, we’re out of luck there. We’ll have water in the winter, but not the temperatures for growing things. And that also eliminates the option of supporting any livestock.”

  “You’re right,” Greyson said, nodding. “This isn’t sustainable, and I don’t think any of us has ever thought it was. I don’t know about everyone else, but it’s been a thought I’ve been avoiding, if I can. So what do you suggest?”

  “That town in Mexico, the one we heard about from the traveler who came through here last month,” Garrett said quickly, thankful that they were open to what he had to say. “He told us they were taking refugees, and that they were still fully functioning as a society, even without power. We’re only one hundred miles from the border, and from what he said, something like fifty miles more from that town. I suggest we make it our goal.” He paused, took a deep breath, and then added the clincher. “And I say we plan to go in a month.”

  The uproar broke out again, just as he’d thought it would, and Garrett waited and listened as people argued back and forth about the pros and cons, the possibles and impossibles, the cries of “let’s do it” and those of “absolutely not.”

  Finally, people started looking back to him, questions in their eyes, and Garrett gave them his reasons. They knew they couldn’t stay here. They had to get back to some sort of civilization, or they were going to die. The robbery just made that even more likely. No matter how many times they restocked their larder, there was a chance that the thieves would come back—and a finite number of resources out there in the other towns.

  They needed to find a way to make a future for themselves. And this town wasn’t it.

  After a long, heavy silence, Greyson finally spoke up again.

  “So when do we leave?” he asked.

  Garrett could have hugged him. Though he was the nominated leader, Greyson was the one who spoke for the group in these meetings. Often, the town meetings turned into Greyson and Garrett having a conversation while everyone else watched. Yes, it held Garrett at something of a distance from the rest of the people. But it also meant that they got more done. And he was fine with that.

  “A month,” he said. “It’s the best possible timing. We’ll have the vehicles, so we should have an easy trip. It will get us on the road and hopefully to shelter before the r
ain starts. And it will get us to safety before anyone goes into labor, if my math is right.” He cast a glance at Kristy and was rewarded with a quick grin, and he nodded at her in acknowledgment. “Plus it gives us a month to get ready,” he finished.

  “Get ready?” Shane asked. “Why not just get out of here right now, if we’re going?”

  “Because we have to have enough supplies to get us there,” Garrett answered. “We have to have enough gas to make sure we’re going to get there. We can’t count on hitting any towns on the way down there where we can conveniently pick up supplies. If we find towns, great, but what if we don’t—or what if we find them and they don’t have anything for us to take? If we get stuck, we want to have enough food and water with us to take care of ourselves until we do find something else. You never went on a road trip to Albuquerque without adequate beef jerky and Gatorade, did you?”

  He quirked an eyebrow and Shane laughed and shook his head.

  Garrett nodded. “And that means we have to build up our stores. We have a month to prepare and I want to have twice as much as we had before the robbery. So where do we start?”

  “Las Cruces,” Greyson said, staring at the map pinned to the table in front of them. “It’s the biggest city in the area and has the best chance of good supplies. If we’re lucky, it hasn’t been raided too heavily yet. We might even find people there—people who know more than we do about what’s been going on.”

  Garrett didn’t answer, but nodded. They could definitely use the news, as well as the additional supplies, but the city was considerably farther away than any place they’d raided thus far.

  “Are you crazy?” Steve spat out. “Las Cruces is over a hundred miles from here! We’ve got barely any gas, and someone just attacked us. We’d be fools to try to go that far. Setting ourselves up for failure. And what if we get there and find enemies within the city, huh? What happens then?”