At Any Cost Box Set [Books 1-3]

by Fawkes, K. M.

  “Party?” he asked, surprised. “What do we have to celebrate?

  She shrugged. “Making it to Halloween. Making it a lot longer than most other people have, seeing another holiday, that sort of thing. Figured we’d put that wine we liberated from the vineyard to good use. Course we’re not really sure it’s Halloween, but we know it’s October, so we’re calling that close enough.”

  Garrett snorted. “Honestly I’m not really in the mood. I’d probably just bring everyone else down.”

  After a long look, she nodded slowly. “And yet you say you’re not able to fall asleep. What’s wrong, Garrett?”

  He paused, wondering if he should keep this particular pain to himself, but then decided that she’d been his best friend in this situation so far, and might have valuable advice to give. A quick few lines—delivered without emotion, only giving the facts—and he’d related what he’d seen in that house, and the message from Evie. His fears about what would happen to the little girl if he didn’t go back. His fears that she was even now waiting for him.

  At the mention of a young person in need, Alice’s entire demeanor changed, going from strong to something soft and vulnerable. A shadow crossed her face and it didn’t take a genius to guess that she was thinking of her own son, Jesse, dead from the virus and left behind. But then she straightened her shoulders and seemed to rally.

  She even put a hand on his shoulder.

  “Garrett, you can’t beat yourself up over that. You don’t know how old that message might be. You don’t know whether she’s even still alive. What if she wrote that message and her parents came back the very next day? What if it was just a false alarm? She could be long gone by now. Is it really worth risking your own team to go find out?”

  Garrett sighed, but he knew she was right. There really wasn’t any way to tell how old that message was—or whether the girl was even still alive. True, he’d rather think that her parents had come to find her and they’d somehow made it out of that town before anything went wrong. In the end, he tried to force himself to believe that, to make it fact.

  At least that way he could leave the situation behind. Put his mind to things that needed his attention more. Like finding supplies for the people he knew for a fact were still alive.

  “So tomorrow,” he finally said, changing the subject.

  “Tomorrow we go to the town just on the other side of Las Ramblas,” Alice said, going along with him. “And we raid it for supplies. Your idea about going to Mexico is still good. But we need to have enough with us to make the trip safely. And we’re not there yet. Not by a long shot.”

  Chapter 11

  Garrett stared at the market in front of him, heart sinking. Nothing. They were going to find nothing. He could already tell, just from the way the checkout stands looked. The candy bar racks had been completely cleaned out, and that was always the last thing people went for, because candy bars provided almost no nutrition.

  If those were gone, it meant someone else had already gone through the aisles and aisles of food the market might have had at one time.

  Still he strode forward, adjusting the bag on his chest and opening the flap. It didn’t matter if someone else had been here; they might have left something. And if they’d left anything at all, it would be more than Garrett and his crew had had in their larder before. True they’d used up an entire tank of gas on this trip, but Riley was outside siphoning gas as quickly as she could from any vehicle she could find—with Shane and a rifle guarding her—and the fuel would be a wash, at worst.

  That made any food and water a win. He and Alice just had to find something.

  They started from opposite ends of the store, working toward each other as they walked the aisles. There wasn’t much. But there were still some goods. And based on the smell of this place, the only thing rotting was the meat and eggs. No bodies here, thank goodness. Although this was a smaller town and therefore less likely to have much, it also didn’t hold the spooky feel that Las Ramblas had given him.

  This trip had immediately felt safer than the last one.

  When he and Alice met up in the cereal aisle, he could see that her bag was nearly as full as his. Not a good haul, but not a bad one either.

  “Someone else has already been here, but they did a sloppy job,” Alice noted. “Didn’t take everything. And didn’t come back for what they left.”

  “Must have been moving through the area rather than staying here,” Garrett agreed, coming back to their classification of other raiders: those who stayed and those who passed through. The ones who stayed weren’t a problem. They were the ones trying to hunker down and survive until things got better, like the Trinity Ranch community.

  It was the wanderers who caused problems. The ones who wouldn’t be around to answer for their behavior later. Men—and women—like the ones he and Bart had run into yesterday.

  So the idea that it would have been wanderers coming through this town and raiding it immediately made his hair stand on end. Those were people they couldn’t trust. Granted, they were probably long gone, but if they were still nearby…

  “We’d best get moving,” Alice said, having watched the thoughts as they played out across his face. “Don’t want to get caught here by anyone who means trouble. And based on what you and Bart saw yesterday, I’m thinking there are definitely people around here who want to make trouble.”

  Garrett didn’t even need to answer. He gave her a quick nod, then turned on his heel and made for the front of the store, knowing she would follow. Knowing that she always had his back.

  They were ten minutes out of town, the mood in the truck somber and frustrated at the size of the raid, when they heard the first gunshots.

  Garrett brought the truck skidding to a stop and killed the engine so they could hear better.

  “Those sounded like they came from the road ahead,” Shane said quietly, moving up so he could insert his head into the space between Garrett and Alice in the front seat. “Those didn’t come from town.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” Garrett said quietly, his ears attuned to the world around him. “Those also weren’t shots from a handgun. Those were rifle shots.”

  “Snipers, do you think?” Alice breathed.

  “Snipers from where?” Riley asked. “There’s no place for them to hide.”

  “They wouldn’t have to hide if they were far enough away, kid,” Garrett answered. “They’d just have to catch someone by surprise and be out of reach.”

  That was when they saw the smoke, billowing up from a slight incline ahead of them.

  “Right,” Garrett breathed out. “Well, there’s only one road back home. Whatever’s happening there, we’re going to have to pass right by it. Everyone get down. Shane, Alice, get your guns ready. If someone starts shooting at us, I’m going to need you two to take care of them.”

  He turned the truck back on and gunned the engine, the tires squealing under him in reaction to his jumpy foot on the gas. Next to him, Alice was already getting two of the rifles prepped. Shane had handguns on him, and Garrett could hear him making sure they were loaded and ready.

  Garrett focused on the road, and the smoke ahead of them.

  Within moments he saw what was causing it. Two military-grade vehicles had pulled over to the side of the road, and one of them was roaring with flames, a number of dead bodies laid out on the ground beside it. He could see from here that those men, whoever they had been, were killed while they were in action. Their limbs were spread in ways that indicated that they’d been running or crouching at the time, and they weren’t lined up or close together. They hadn’t been shot execution-style.

  “There’s been a shoot-out,” he murmured, thinking out loud. “Those people weren’t caught unprepared. There was some sort of battle up there.”

  “Think they might have anything for us?” Alice asked, always practical. “Fuel? Their guns, at least.”

  “Pull over and take the risk of their shooters still being
out there—are you crazy?” Shane asked.

  Garrett turned his eyes to the horizon, looking for whoever might have done this and wondering if they had stuck around, but he didn’t see anything. And there was certainly no place for anyone to be hiding. This was wide open, flat land. Few cacti, even fewer sand dunes.

  If there had been anyone out there, he would have been able to see them.

  He pulled off the road behind the burning truck, stopped a safe distance away, and parked.

  “Everyone else stays in the truck,” he said sharply. “I’m going up to see if anyone survived, and if they have anything we can use. Alice, Shane, cover me.”

  He jumped out of the truck without waiting for an answer and ran, crouched, toward the bodies on the ground, covering his face with his shirt to protect it from the heat coming off the truck.

  There were eight bodies, he saw, and a quick check told him that none of them had survived. This had definitely been some sort of shoot-out; they were pockmarked with bullets, and some of them had died slowly. He started grabbing the guns from the bodies, making sure the safeties were on and then stacking them in his arms. Then he went for their belts, feeling around for any extra ammunition. Maybe in the trucks, he thought.

  Guns were great, but were also pretty useless without ammunition.

  Once he’d collected all the guns he returned to the truck and threw open the back gate.

  “Eight bodies,” he shouted to the others as he stacked the guns in the back with the supplies they’d managed to steal from town. “All dead. Definitely a shoot-out. Doesn’t look like there’s anyone else here. Alice, Shane, can I get your help searching the other truck?”

  The two exited the vehicle without answering, and the three of them raced for the truck that wasn’t burning. Garrett wondered if they’d be able to take it—increase their gains from this raid—but when he arrived, he saw that something had happened to that truck’s engine during the fight. Fluid was running from under the truck, and given the color of it he suspected it was radiator fluid. They wouldn’t be going anywhere in that vehicle, not without a functional radiator.

  “Scratch the truck!” he shouted. “Check the trailer it’s towing, see what’s in there!”

  The truck had a small trailer behind it—something he’d never seen before—and if there was anything of value, they could just take the whole thing.

  “Cap, we’ve got a huge tank of fuel back here!” Shane shouted from his spot behind the trailer, having thrown open the doors first.

  Garrett went racing around the trailer to see for himself, and saw what he estimated to be a hundred-gallon container. If it truly contained fuel, that would be enough to see them to Mexico and back several times. It could be just the thing they’d been waiting for.

  He threw the keys to the truck and Shane. “Go get the truck. Alice and I will get this thing unhitched and push it around so we can attach it to our truck. And tell Riley to keep her head down. If there are enemies watching, I don’t want her making herself a target.”

  “We should be enough for them, eh?” Shane asked, giving Garrett a grin.

  Garrett just waved him off, anxious to get the trailer unhitched and attached to their truck. He didn’t think there was anyone here, but he couldn’t guarantee it, and he wouldn’t feel safe until they were back in their truck and on the road.

  He and Alice quickly moved to undo the hitch on the trailer, Garrett using one of the screwdrivers he now always kept on his person to detach the screw securing the trailer hitch. He found the plug for the brake lights—seemed strange to be handling a plug again—and yanked it out. Then he and Alice got on opposite sides of the trailer and grabbed the supporting rails.

  “You ready?” he asked.

  At her nod, he counted to three and they lifted, groaning, then started staggering around, moving the trailer just enough so that Shane would be able to get the truck into position ahead of it. They set it down again and sighed, their bodies cracking with the tension of the move. Then Alice froze.

  “Garret,” she murmured, motioning into the distance with her head.

  He turned slowly and let his eyes travel across the distance, searching. Sure enough, there were three men there, straddling what looked like vintage motorcycles. There was no mistaking them for what they were: predators.

  “Suppose this was theirs?” Alice asked.

  “Either that or they expected to take it themselves,” Garrett answered. He pulled his gun from his waistband, pointed it in the air, and pulled the trigger.

  No harm in letting those men know that he was armed—and that he wasn’t afraid to use his firepower.

  The bikers paused for a moment, then turned and fled the scene, leaving nothing but a dust cloud behind them.

  Moments later, Shane was there with the truck and they were hooking the trailer up to their own trailer hitch. Garrett finished with the trailer and jumped into the driver’s seat, pulling back out onto the road and quickly increasing his pace.

  He kept one eye on the road ahead of him and one eye on his mirror all the way home, watching for the bikers. Their need for escape just got a whole lot more urgent. Because those bikers weren’t going to let this go lightly. He was sure of it.

  Chapter 12

  “What do you mean you just took it?” Steve, practically foaming at the mouth, shouted.

  Garrett stared at the man, wondering if he was actually serious. “What do you mean, what do I mean?” he asked. “The men from the trucks were dead. There was no one else there, and there was an enormous tank of gasoline just sitting in the trailer. Do you think I should have, I don’t know, just left it there for the desert to claim for its own?”

  Some scattered laughter echoed through the schoolhouse, where they were all gathered for a town meeting, and Garrett felt his shoulders relax a bit. For the most part, the reaction had been one of excitement. They might not have returned from the raid with much food and water, but his original thought had been correct: they’d come back with enough fuel to see them through to their trip to Mexico, and beyond.

  It was a form of salvation.

  Which was why Steve’s anger over the acquisition was so confusing.

  “And you didn’t think to come here and get everyone’s consensus first?” Steve continued to rave. “Didn’t think we should get a say in the matter? Oh, I know, you don’t think our opinions are worth a thing, that must be it. Don’t think we have enough brains among us to help you make a decision! Got here and knew immediately that you were smarter than us, that you should be the only one deciding anything, is that it?”

  Garrett opened his mouth to answer, but closed it again when he realized he didn’t know what exactly he was supposed to say. Steve sounded as if he’d gone completely insane. His accusations weren’t even making any sense anymore. Had he gotten into the wine while they were gone?

  “Coming back and asking has never been part of our raid protocol,” Alice snapped. “Never before have we gone into a market somewhere, seen a bunch of food, and come all the way back here to ask everyone else whether we should take the food. Are you high? Been eating something you found growing in the desert or something? We weren’t going to just leave the fuel there and risk going back for it. Risk someone else taking it. That makes no sense at all.”

  “And if anyone else had a claim on the tanker, you might have put our entire community at risk!” Steve shot back. “Did you ever think of that?”

  “In case you haven’t noticed, our entire community is already at risk,” Garrett said coldly, putting a stop to the other man’s yammering. “We’ve been robbed, we’re dangerously low on supplies, and we’re running out of other towns to raid. We’re running very short on options, and though we know what our ultimate move is, we need fuel and supplies to get there. The fuel aspect is now taken care of. And that’s the end of it. You would have done the same damn thing if you’d been in our place, and you know it.”

  He stared at Steve, daring the man to s
ay anything else, and nodded when Steve fell back several steps. Garrett didn’t know what Steve’s play here was, but he did know that the man was going to become a problem sooner rather than later. They couldn’t get to Mexico soon enough. The quicker he was rid of that man—the quicker they were all rid of him—the better.

  Any further conversation was halted when John and Greyson came running in, supporting a very pale Bart. They’d gone out to a nearby ranch to double-check for anything they might have missed on an earlier raid, and hadn’t been in town when Garrett, Alice, Shane and Riley had returned. Garrett hadn’t been worried, though; Bart was with the best of the best. John and Greyson both knew exactly what they were doing.

  Now, he started to rethink that option. Bart looked as if he was about to faint.

  Garrett jumped from the platform at the front of the room and rushed toward the group. Greyson was busy laying Bart on the ground, and when he came back up, he was shouting.

  “Medical supplies!” he said. “I need bandages, any gauze we have, anything that has antibacterial properties. And a needle and thread if we have it.”

  Alice was the first to react. “Riley, the penicillin, antibacterial spray, and bandages Garrett brought in yesterday,” she snapped, throwing the key to the storeroom at the girl. “I’ve got needle and thread in my house, I’ll be back as quickly as possible.”

  She was through the door and running down the street before Garrett had a chance to add anything, so he focused on getting to Bart and figuring out what was wrong. He skidded on his knees and came to a stop next to the boy, his breath hard and fast.

  “Bart, what happened?” he asked, his hand on the boy’s cheek. “Are you okay? What’s wrong?”

  It wasn’t Bart who answered, but John. “Got to the ranch, got into the house, started going through the cupboards and closets, looking for anything we might have missed,” he said. “Figured we’d do our best to help supply the group for the trip. Didn’t find much. Found a little, decided to come home. We walked out into an ambush. They got the kid separated from us and we heard him screaming. Sent him back missing one of his fingers. Told us to tell you that we’re being watched. That they know what we did, and our days are numbered.”