He’d been in the field in those early days of the collapse, trying to maintain order in an increasingly difficult environment. As the flu had spread, many law enforcement officials hadn’t reported to work. The National Guard was supposed to be deployed, although Lucas had serious doubts that many of them would report for duty either. Kerry had promised to stay at home with the doors locked and the shades drawn, but something – what, he’d never know – had compelled her to leave the safety of the house.
When they’d found the body, it had taken all of Lucas’s resolve not to eat his Kimber and join her in the afterlife. He’d never discovered who had abused her in unspeakable ways before snuffing out her life, and in the degrading spiral of the following days he’d been forced to give up and concentrate on survival.
“You couldn’t have done anything,” he whispered, rubbing a tired hand across his face. “Nobody could.”
Which was true, yet felt like a lie. He should have been home, protecting her from evil instead of out on the job. He should have done…something.
Of course, that would have required Lucas to have been a different man than the one he was – a man who would abandon his duty at the first sign of trouble, who would refuse to protect those he was chartered with guarding, who’d reject his sworn duty just in case his willful wife might have thought he’d overstated the growing danger.
That was never an option.
But she’d paid the price.
His mind wandered, replaying in agonizing slow motion the inexorable grind into chaos as civilization had broken down. The population had been woefully unprepared for the reality of a food chain with only three days of supply, dependent as they were on the state for protection, for gas, for clean water, and electricity. Their faith proved misplaced as the bodies piled up and food riots swept the nation, followed by total anarchy. He still remembered that last time he’d seen a television program – an anxious newscaster, beads of sweat on his face, assured viewers that all would be well and urged them not to panic, to remain inside as martial law was imposed, his promise that it would never come to the apocalyptic scenario spreading via social media a transparent lie.
The word never was burned into Lucas’s mind, its certitude so false, so patently wrong.
That had been only hours before the Web had shut down; whether by the government or vandals, it made no difference. He woke the following day to his empty home, his wife dead less than a week, the television dark, the power gone, gunfire reverberating in the near distance, his comfortable routine of job and mission and duty forever over now that the day after never had arrived.
Lucas sighed again, wondering why he was torturing himself with toxic memories. It had been an eternity since those days. Now he was just another survivor trying to make the best of a living hell. How or why it had unfolded was ultimately unimportant. That it had was all that mattered.
He opened his eyes and stared at the glow from the tangerine moon on the tall grass and then back at the fire, which had diminished by half. His eyes drifted back to the woman, his mind racing, wondering what her story was, where she had come from, where she was going, and why she had been in the middle of nowhere with four heavily armed militiamen, traversing a region well known to be as dangerous as a striped snake in even the best of circumstances.
Chapter 3
Lucas started awake with a whispered curse. He swept the area and his eyes settled on the nearby ring of stones – the fire was nothing but smoldering remnants, the fuel exhausted, coils of smoke twisting from the charred ash all that remained of the blaze.
He’d drifted off, tormented by his past, but something had broken through the haze of sleep. Tango snorted again from nearby, as clear a warning as Lucas needed, and he was already forcing himself to his feet when he heard an oath and the twang of the trip line he’d strung across the main approach.
He didn’t wait to see who the speaker was. Operating on automatic pilot, he moved quickly but quietly through the gap at the rear of the clearing, avoiding the trip wire there, and made his way toward the rock outcropping, where he’d have a decent view of the area from the cover of the stones.
Moments later he was at the top, staring down at three figures creeping through the grass toward Tango. The woman lay comatose on the sling blanket a few yards from the horse. Lucas considered his options – he could probably take all three, but if he missed one, they’d be firing toward Tango and the woman, and there was no way of guaranteeing kill shots in the gloom.
No, he’d have to try to circle around and flank them while they were making for the outcropping. He watched their movements for several seconds; they were goons, he concluded, no training to their approach, just slow steps into what could have been a trap.
That made them idiots.
No less dangerous, but a potential advantage for him.
He edged away from the gap and retraced his steps down the outcropping, and then hurried around the periphery of the boulders that encircled the clearing. He saw the silhouettes of three horses near a grove of trees a hundred yards downhill and reassessed his earlier impression – the bandits couldn’t have been that dumb if they’d spotted his camp and taken the precaution of leaving their mounts behind.
Lucas arrived at the trip wire and stepped over it. The men were thirty yards in front of him, motioning at each other with hand signals, unaware of his presence behind them. He knelt down and steadied the M4 against a tree trunk and felt for the fire selector switch to confirm that it was in three-round burst mode.
The breeze shifted, denting the tops of the tall grass near him and carrying the stench of sour perspiration and decay from the gunmen in front of him. Typical for the scavengers who roamed the badlands, whose interest in bathing and personal hygiene was minimal. Lucas grimaced at the odor and sighted on the first figure through the night vision scope, the greenish image bright as day thanks to its rechargeable CR123A battery. The gunman was carrying what looked like a double-barreled shotgun, confirming Lucas’s impression that these were border rats who’d probably seen his fire and been drawn by the glowing invitation – opportunists looking for an easy takedown.
Which, if he had anything to say about it, would be the last mistake they’d ever make.
His finger tightened on the trigger and the rifle barked a three-round burst that slammed into the shotgun-carrying man, spinning him around before he dropped into the grass.
Lucas was already sighting on the second man, who twisted and fired in his direction, missing by a wide margin. Lucas cut him down with another well-directed burst, and the man’s weapon flew from his grip as he tumbled forward.
Lucas peered through the scope, searching for the third man, and swore to himself.
Nothing.
He’d disappeared into the grass and was apparently savvy enough not to fire blindly.
Which left Lucas with a difficult choice: wait for the man to show himself and hope that he was faster, or take evasive action and move to higher ground, where because of the perspective from above, the grass would provide less shelter for the gunman.
It didn’t take him long to decide. Lucas backed away from the tree and crept into the shadows, retracing his steps to the rear of the clearing and the jutting outcropping of rocks.
When he arrived, a part of him hoped that the scavenger had cut and run after seeing that his companions were finished. The man couldn’t have any idea how many were defending the camp, and now alone, with the element of surprise gone, he had no advantage.
Lucas removed his hat and set it beside him, and then peeked over the rocks, through the gap. As he’d expected, the grass offered no cover from above, and he could clearly make out the dead assailants.
But not the third man.
A whinny from down the hill confirmed Lucas’s suspicion. The third man had retreated, unsure of where the shooting had come from, and had made for the horses.
Lucas waited for several minutes and, when he saw no further movement, jogged in
a low crouch down the trail to the trees.
The horses were gone.
He nodded to himself. Dead men wouldn’t need rides, and everything they owned was probably in their saddlebags, so the third man had just gotten significantly more prosperous by virtue of his companions’ possessions and the trade value of the horses.
Lucas made for Tango, still on alert. He paused at each of the corpses, holding his breath, and shook his head at the poor condition of their weapons and the filthy rags they wore. That humanity had been reduced to this level saddened him, but he didn’t feel any remorse. It was a kill-or-be-killed situation, as were most these days, and he couldn’t afford to hesitate or second-guess himself. The ugly new world had little use for mercy, and a part of him wondered whether he’d made the wrong decision in allowing the scavenger to escape.
Tango was waiting for Lucas, visibly shaken by the gunfire but standing his ground. The woman was still unconscious, oblivious to the drama playing out around her. Lucas wasted no time in retrieving his precious trip wires, refastening the travois, and saddling Tango, and in minutes was riding away from the clearing, the surrounding hills luminescent in the starlight.
The last of the storm, its forward motion and energy exhausted by the terrain, flashed trees of lightning over the mountains. Lucas truly hated traveling at night, but didn’t want to chance the scavenger returning with friends. The campsite was blown, useless now for his purposes, and from this point on he’d skirt it whenever he was down this way. The buzzards would take care of the downed men, and within a day at most nothing would remain but bones picked clean by scavengers – coyotes, vultures, and finally, insects. Nothing went to waste in this no-man’s land, even human excrement like those who hunted other men rather than putting in an honest day’s work.
“Got a long way to go,” Lucas whispered to Tango, patting his neck, his fatigue banished by the effort to stay alive.
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Table of Contents
Books by Russell Blake
About the Author
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Excerpt from The Day After Never – Blood Honor
JET - Forsaken Page 28