The Traveler (Book 2): Canyon

by Tom Abrahams

  “Battle!” Pico snapped. “They’re already here.”

  Battle looked over his shoulder. A platoon of men was racing toward them on horses from the east. He cursed and leapt into the back of the Humvee. “Get in,” he instructed and tore open his pack. He yanked out a flash-bang smoke grenade and clipped it to his belt. He pulled out a new scope and a thirty-round magazine for Inspector. He affixed the scope to a mount on the top of the semiautomatic rifle and then replaced the ammunition with the fresh cartridge.

  He banged on the top of the Humvee and Pico threw it into drive, peeling away from the curb to move west. Battle pulled the rifle sling over his head and adjusted it with his thumb. He dropped to his knee for balance and turned to face the back of the bed.

  Battle counted at least six horses. They were gaining.

  “You should have found the boy already,” a voice in Battle’s head said, shaking his focus. “Lola was right,” Sylvia counseled. “You’re distracted from the purpose and you’re going to get everyone killed.”

  Battle shook his head, disagreeing, trying to free his mind of his wife’s criticism. “I’m not getting anyone killed.” He crawled on all fours to the back of the Humvee’s bed. He braced himself with one hand and then set himself between a supply bag and a pair of large ten-gallon gasoline canisters.

  “You’re plotting this as a direct action instead of a simple hostage rescue,” Sylvia’s voice argued. “And you’re sanitizing it. This isn’t some high-value extraction, Marcus. You’re trying to return a son to his mother.”

  Battle clenched his jaw and swung Inspector into position. He looked through the scope, adjusting the focal length to get a good look at the pursuing horsemen. They were armed with Brownings and revolvers. One of them, on the left of the formation, was carrying an AR assault rifle. That one was wearing a brown hat. He was a posse boss.

  Battle lost his focus when Pico swung the Humvee north and took the turn too quickly. The rear wheels drifted and Battle slammed into the left side of the bed. He held onto the rifle and squared himself.

  “I know what I’m doing,” he told the voice.

  The horsemen cut the corner and shortened the distance between their detachment and the Humvee.

  “If you have to tell me that—” she laughed “—then you don’t. You haven’t been active duty in more than a decade, Marcus. You need to think of this like a father, not like the soldier you aren’t anymore.”

  “I’m not a father anymore either,” he snapped and immediately regretted it as he reset his position at the back of the bed. The voice didn’t respond. Sylvia was gone.

  Battle swallowed the lump in his throat and drew the rifle to his shoulder. He picked the lead horseman, exhaled, and tapped the trigger.

  Thump!

  He lifted his eye from the scope in time to see the horseman jerk and slump forward on the horse. His hands, still wrapped around the reins, yanked the animal’s head down and to the right, guiding it straight into the path of another horse. The two collided and tumbled over each other. The second horse threw its rider forward over its head and landed on him.

  Battle exhaled and dropped his eye to the scope. He picked the boss, aimed at his head, and tapped the trigger again.

  Thump!

  Battle kept his eye at the scope this time. The bullet missed its mark, drilling into the brown hat atop the boss’s head and knocking it off. The boss reached for it and missed.

  Battle took aim again. He pulled the trigger, holding it a beat longer, and Pico took another hard turn to the right, this time heading west away from town. Battle lost his balance as he fired.

  Thump! Thump!

  Both shots went wide and missed everything until they sank into the vinyl siding of a long-closed cafe. Battle grabbed the side of the Humvee and regained his balance. He looked back to see the four horsemen of the post-apocalypse cut another corner. Somehow, they were keeping up with the Humvee.

  Battle checked his hip and tugged at the flash-bang smoke grenade. He held the long black cylinder tight in his hand as the Humvee passed a faded yellow clapboard house. Battle kept his eyes on the house and counted out loud until the horses passed the same house.

  “Four seconds,” he said. “That’ll work.”

  He pulled the pin on the grenade, held his hand over the Humvee’s tailgate for one second, and dropped it into the middle of the road. He ducked down into the bed, covering his ears.

  Three seconds later the flash-bang detonated just as the group of horses reached it. The loud explosion and bright flash of light stunned the animals and their riders. Battle peeked over the back of the Humvee in time to see the panic. The horses were running in different directions. One of them was on its side in the street, having fallen. Another was on its hind legs, roaring and snorting. The resulting cloud of thick white smoke plumed quickly and enveloped them.

  Pico kept the Humvee speeding west for another couple of minutes, and Battle climbed to the front of the bed to bang on the cab. The Humvee slowed to a stop and Battle hopped out. He looked at the sun-bleached green street signs. They were at the intersection of Victoria and Ninth Streets. There was a church on the southwest corner. The sun was peeking above the horizon to the east. The sepia tone of early morning was giving way to orange and red.

  Pico opened his door, remaining in his seat. “Why are we stopping?”

  “We lost them,” Battle said. “For now.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “We need to head back. Not in this. There’s a big carport over there next to that church. Go park it there. We’ll get what we need and head back into town.”

  Battle shut the door and directed Pico to the carport. He trailed behind and then met Pico and Lola as they were exiting the vehicle.

  “If I remember correctly, we walk east about a mile and then turn south,” said Battle. “We’ll find them at the HQ. That’s where they’ll be.”

  “You think?” Lola asked.

  “Yeah.” Battle nodded. “It’s a natural gathering place for them. And it’s across the street from the post office.” He looked down at Lola’s ankle still wrapped in an Ace bandage. She’d injured it the night they met. “How’s your ankle?”

  “Better,” she said. “The swelling is going down. I can put my weight on it. I’m good to walk, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “Good to hear. You can make it to the post office?”

  Lola nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “Then what?”

  “We’ll talk about it on the way,” Battle said, slugging a large pack onto his back. “And, Lola?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m sorry.” Battle looked at Lola’s feet. “If it were my son, I’d have handled it differently. I made a mistake.”

  “Thank you,” Lola said softly and hooked her pack at her waist. She looked at Battle, trying to draw his eyes to hers. “We better find him. He better be okay.”

  CHAPTER 9

  OCTOBER 15, 2037, 7:15 AM

  SCOURGE + 5 YEARS

  SNYDER, TEXAS

  Sawyer gripped the bars of his cell, rubbing his palms on the roughness of the rusted iron. He had no concept of time or place. All he knew was that he was alone and in trouble.

  His mop of red hair hung over his eyes, and he leaned his forehead against the cold bars. He was tall for thirteen, and bone thin like his mother. His stomach groaned from hunger, interrupting him from any semblance of good sleep.

  Sawyer couldn’t remember the last time he’d really slept. It certainly hadn’t been since the Scourge. His eyes were always encircled with darkness, his legs always tingled on the verge of weakness. He suffered a headache so consistently he didn’t even notice it anymore except when it drew blurriness and light sensitivity in his right eye.

  He squeezed the bars, tried rattling them, and let go. He sulked back to a lone metal bed that hung from the concrete wall by a pair of metal chain links and rubbed his hands free of the rust. Sawyer plopped down and leaned against the wal
l. He closed his eyes and was drifting into an uneasy twilight until a loud metallic bang caught his attention. He opened his eyes to see a pair of grunts standing at his cell.

  “You know your momma’s dead,” the shorter of the two said. “Ain’t no way you’re gonna see her again.” He laughed and backhanded the chest of the larger grunt, who answered the thump with his own chuckle.

  “You shoulda never ran off,” said the taller grunt. “You found yourself a world of hurt now. It ain’t gonna end good fer ya.”

  Sawyer pulled his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around his legs. His eyes danced between the grunts. He didn’t say anything. He knew better.

  “You hear me?” asked the shorter grunt. “Things are about to get real bad and your momma ain’t gonna be around to kiss it and make it better.” He offered a greasy smile and laughed. “Real bad.”

  “I think he asked you a question.” The taller grunt banged his fists against the bars.

  Sawyer shook from the noise and trembled. “I heard him,” he said.

  “You heard what?”

  “I heard he said it’s about to get hard.” Sawyer wiped the back of his nose with his arm. “And my mom’s not gonna be around to help me.”

  “You ever heard of the Jones?”

  Sawyer shook his head. Sawyer hadn’t heard of a lot of things.

  He was eight when the Scourge had taken hold. He and his parents had been living in a small riverfront house in Jacksonville, Florida. Both of them had worked. Sawyer would go to a day care after school. They would eat a lot of fast food and takeout for dinner. They’d spend weekends together on the beach or fishing on the river.

  He didn’t remember much of his life pre-Scourge. He’d blocked it out or forgotten it. There were occasional flashes, snapshots of what life had been. He couldn’t put them in context or be certain whether they were real memories or images from dreams.

  It didn’t really matter. Neither existed in the post-Scourge world in which Sawyer had lived nearly half his life. It was a life spent on the run, in hiding, full of fear.

  His mother, he knew, had done everything she could to keep him safe and provide food and shelter. She’d done unthinkable, selfless things for his sake. All of her sacrifices, he thought, were worthless. She was dead. He would be soon. Sawyer was thirteen and he’d already lived the lives of five men. That was penance lost on Sawyer; those who survived the Scourge were damned to live their remaining years in a painful slow motion.

  “What’s the Jones?” Sawyer bit. He could sense from the grunts they weren’t going to make anything easy for him.

  The taller grunt answered Sawyer’s question with another question. “You like games?”

  Sawyer shrugged. “I guess.”

  “It’s like a game, then.” The grunt chuckled.

  “You could call it a game,” said the shorter grunt. He pressed his face against the bars and stuck out his tongue to wiggle it. “It’s no dominos or nothing.”

  Both men laughed. “It’s no dominos,” they echoed one another.

  Sawyer shifted his back against the cinder-block wall. “What is it, then?”

  The taller grunt stopped laughing and cleared his throat. “I want you to imagine the worst day of your life. Can you do that?”

  Sawyer blinked. He swallowed hard. He pulled his knees tighter against his chest. The bad days were always close to the surface. It was the good ones that took time to render.

  “I’m guessing you got a bad day all conjured up?” the shorter one sneered. “Now double it and add the boogie monster.”

  “The boogie monster!” hollered the tall one, his words bouncing off the walls of the cell. “The damn boogie monster. I love it!”

  Sawyer had no idea what they meant. He’d never heard of the boogie monster. He concluded it wasn’t good. He bit the inside of his cheek, working hard to keep the tears at bay. The harder he bit, the more his eyes welled. He shuddered and the tears spilled down his cheeks.

  “You got a few more hours here,” said the shorter one once he’d stopped laughing. “You can cry like a baby till then. After that, you’re on the move.”

  “Yeah,” the taller one chimed. “You’re on the move to the Jones.”

  Both of them slammed their fists against the bars and followed each other away from the cell and down a narrow hallway. They turned a corner and disappeared. There was a loud buzzing sound, a click, and the sound of a door opening and closing. The echo of the door dissipated and left Sawyer sitting alone again in silence.

  He buried his head in between his chest and his knees. He gripped his hands tightly, squeezing his fingers too hard, and he sobbed. Whatever or whoever the Jones was, he was afraid of it.

  Sawyer’s mother had always told him to be positive. She’d told him that there was always hope. And with hope there was the possibility that tomorrow would be better than today. She was gone now. She was dead. She was with his father. At thirteen years old, Sawyer sat on a metal bench in a central Texas jail cell, certain he would die a death worse than the Scourge.

  There was no hope.

  CHAPTER 10

  OCTOBER 15, 2037, 7:15 AM

  SCOURGE + 5 YEARS

  ABILENE, TEXAS

  Skinner stood amongst a cadre of bosses and grunts in the middle of Walnut Street, an unlit cigarette dangling from his dry lips as he spoke. “I think it’s safe to assume Rudabaugh and Queho are dead. Their men are gone too. This here”—he pointed to the smoking shell of the HQ and pushed his white hat back on his head—“this is Mad Max. And he’s got help.”

  “Who’s helping him?” asked a boss named Pony Diehl. “The redheaded woman?”

  “Maybe.” Skinner took a deep breath through his nose, inhaling the acrid, metallic odor hanging in the air. “Somebody had to be driving that Humvee.”

  “Where’d they get it?” asked Diehl.

  “I’m gonna make another assumption,” Skinner said, the cigarette dancing on his lower lip. “He stole it from the convention center. Looks exactly like one we got stored over there.”

  “Want me to go check it out?” asked Diehl. “I can take a couple of men and take a look.”

  Skinner nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “You do that. Get back here quick, though. I gotta feeling I’m gonna need you ’fore it’s all said and done.”

  Diehl pointed to two grunts. The trio hopped on their horses and rode south and east toward the convention center.

  Skinner lit the cigarette, relishing the hiss and crackle of it burning as the embers grew. He sucked on it and closed his eyes until the sound of a galloping horse to the west caught his attention. It was Tom Horn. His hat was missing. His blond hair was matted with so much sweat it stuck flat against his head even as he bounced in the horse’s saddle.

  Skinner flicked the ashes from his cigarette. His face turned red. He gnashed his teeth. “Where are your men?”

  Horn swung his leg over the saddle and tugged on the reins to stop his horse. He dropped to the ground, his AK in one hand, and bent over at his waist. “I don’t know. I mean, I know three of them are dead. The other two are hurt. Or dead. I can’t be sure.”

  Skinner stepped to Horn, his boots scraping the asphalt. “What do you mean you can’t be sure?”

  “We got close to him.” Horn looked up at Skinner. “Real close. He picked off a couple of the guys. One shot. Like an expert or something. One of ’em fell and took out the other.”

  “You had five men with you, right?”

  Horn swallowed hard and nodded. “Yeah. Then Mad Max, I guess it was him, he dropped a grenade or something. It exploded and spooked the horses. One of ’em fell and crushed a grunt. Then there was smoke and gunfire. I don’t know what happened. I bolted and came here.”

  “So you got two men unaccounted for? Three men dead?”

  “Yeah.”

  Skinner dropped the cigarette to the asphalt and put it out with the toe of his boot. “And Mad Max got away?”

  Horn nod
ded and glanced past Skinner at the men gathered behind him. As he caught their eyes, they looked away from him.

  “Where is he, you think?”

  “I dunno,” said Horn. “He might still be around. Or he could be gone. He was heading west. Or north. I can’t remember exactly. It was chaotic.”

  “Chaotic?”

  Horn nodded.

  “Chaotic,” Skinner repeated. “That’s a big word for you, Tommy. A mighty big word. I’m so sorry you were put in the middle of a chaotic situation. I’m sorry the chaos was too much for you and your men.”

  Horn ran his hands through his matted hair and wiped the sweat on his jeans. His forehead was drenched, despite the brisk October morning.

  “Give me your rifle,” Skinner said.

  Horn’s eyes popped wide. “What?”

  “Give it to me,” Skinner repeated and motioned with his hand.

  Horn looked down at the AK in his hand and slowly extended his arm. Skinner took the rifle from him.

  “You know, this rifle is what they’d call an engineering marvel.” Skinner gripped the Russian semiautomatic Kalashnikov in his hands, testing its weight. “It’s been around since after World War II. It’s cheap, and it’s reliable even in rough conditions. Did you know that, Tommy?”

  Horn shook his head.

  Skinner laughed and pulled the weapon to his shoulder. He checked the sights. “I even jump-started a car with one once,” he said. “I connected the cleaning rod and the metal parts of the AK to the battery terminals. I didn’t have jumper cables.” Skinner lowered the weapon and snapped his fingers in Horn’s face. “Worked like a charm.”

  Horn took a step back toward his horse. He looked over his shoulder at the empty street. There was no help.

  “Of course—” Skinner laughed “—this is a killing machine most of all. It can kill a man from three hundred yards.” Skinner shook the rifle with one hand, the business end pointed at Tom Horn. “How many rounds you got in this magazine, Tommy?”