Collapse Fiction: RACE WARS: SEASON SIX: Episodes 31-36: A Time For Choosing
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“Good job – and thank you.”
Lu helped Silas onto his feet and then both men looked out upon the street. The rancher began to walk toward Sadie’s body and Lu followed. Silas confirmed Sadie was dead and then untied her wrists from the rope used to drag her behind the truck. He bent down and gently picked her up and made his way slowly to the General Store she had called home since both she and the world were both much younger. He remembered seeing a shovel leaning against the back wall.
They would need that shovel.
They had graves to dig.
Silas located Fred’s body a half mile east of Fortuna where it had been left in a ditch alongside the road. It too was absent any clothing. Silas noted the knuckles of Fred’s hands were covered in abrasions, indicating he had put up a fight to the very end.
Fred and Sadie Martel were laid side by side in a grave just behind the business that had also been their home. While digging, Silas re-opened his shoulder wound, but ignored it, deciding to tend to it later after he returned to his ranch. Lu stood silently and watched the rancher slowly cover the graves back up, sensing within Silas the great pain and rage that still simmered just beneath the surface.
After the first grave was completed, Silas turned his attention to the three men he had killed. He threw them into the back of the pickup truck, silently admitting to himself how he enjoyed hearing the sound of the dull, heavy thump of their bodies hitting against the nearly rusted out truck bed.
Then he drove the pickup truck several hundred yards into the shrub and rock-strewn open fields that surrounded Fortuna, quickly dug three shallow graves, and covered the bodies. By the time he finished, the sun had moved further west, indicating it was late afternoon.
He cleared his throat, winced at the worsening pain that throbbed in his shoulder, and then nodded to Lu.
“Ok, let’s get going.”
They left the truck by the three graves and made the walk back to Fortuna where Silas’s jeep awaited them. The drive back to the ranch was considerably slower than the journey from it. A silence permeated the immediate space around Silas as he drove with his eyes fixated upon the road just ahead though his mind travelled a far greater distance. He was thinking of Grace and what she might have thought of his violent and deadly reaction that had left three men dead.
Would she approve or see me as a monster no better than those who killed Fred and Sadie?
It had been several days since he last dreamt of Grace. He missed her presence within his subconscious and hoped she would soon return to him.
“You’re a good man, Mr. Toms. If I could, I would have done the same as you did today.”
Silas knew Lu sensed his unease with what he had done and was trying to alleviate any residual guilt. It was a kind gesture however limited in its success.
“These are days that demand each of us to decide how we are to live while we also face the possibility of how we might die. That then requires us to do things we otherwise would have thought ourselves incapable of doing. I very much feel this to be a time of choosing, Mr. Toms…and I choose to fight with you.”
Silas Toms glanced to his right and gave Lu an appreciative nod before his eyes returned to the road ahead and his thoughts to where that road might ultimately lead them.
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End Of Season Six…
SEASON SEVEN AVAILABLE: HERE
“MOLON LABE”
The Machiavellian Dr. Fenwick Sage continues to pursue his goal of absolute domination over the lives of every man, woman, and child who calls America home while small groups of Race Wars survivors begin to unite against ongoing threats both great and small.
The nation's cities are militarized zones while the lands beyond those cities are places of blood-drenched chaos where the unprepared are quickly snuffed out by the increasingly aggressive and violent hordes whose sole purpose is to eliminate the weak.
SEASON SEVEN AVAILABLE: HERE
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