Light of Dawn

by Vannetta Chapman

  “Better not risk it,” Lanh said.

  So they flashed the mirror back toward Gabe one more time. Next they flashed it toward where his mom and Max and Bianca were waiting.

  And then things got real interesting.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Shelby gnawed on her thumbnail and stared out across the camp. “You think the keys are in the vehicles?”

  “Why wouldn’t they be?” Max flicked his eyes toward her, but he kept his entire body pointed toward Hugo and crew, ready to launch himself across the camp.

  “Because someone might steal them…someone like us.”

  “Relax, Shelby. Hugo thinks he’s king of the mountain. No one would dare steal from him.”

  “We’re up,” Bianca said, though she didn’t give her opinion on where the keys might be. Could be Max was right. Could be they were about to make a terrible mistake.

  Two short whistles from Gabe, and then they were running, and Shelby was praying that the keys were in the vehicles. She slid into the Hummer, cranked the keys to the right and rammed it into reverse. She could already hear Bianca peeling away in the Mustang, and Max was gunning the engine of the Dodge.

  She wanted to shout in relief as the Hummer shot down the dirt road.

  But then she looked in her rearview mirror and saw the doors of the trailers thrown open.

  Three men came out with their rifles raised. They were already too far away, but that didn’t stop the idiots from shooting.

  Shelby rounded a corner, threw the transmission into park, turned off the engine, pocketed the keys, and jumped out of the Hummer. Bianca and Max had done the same and were already on the ground, running back the way they had come.

  Which was the crazy part.

  Instead of taking what was theirs and hightailing it to Kansas, they were going back to ensure that Hugo’s reign of terror ended once and for all.

  “But why?” she had argued. “Why can’t we take our vehicles and skedaddle?”

  It was Patrick who convinced her they had to finish this. “As long as Hugo is alive, he’ll come after us.”

  So they ran back toward the hunters’ camp. She spied Carter and Lanh in position behind the trailers, waiting in case anyone tried to escape that direction.

  The morning’s beauty was destroyed by the sound of multiple shots, though what they could be shooting at she wasn’t sure. You couldn’t even see the vehicles from where they stood. Shelby and Max and Bianca joined the boys at the back of the trailers and then peeled off three to the left and two to the right. As they moved toward the side of the trailers, she caught a glimpse of Patrick climbing on top of the roof, as agile as an alley cat.

  Gabe had positioned himself behind the tree nearest to the front of the trailers. Up to this point, Hugo and his two remaining goons had been focused on the fleeing vehicles, but when Gabe started shouting at them, they fired indiscriminately at the tree, using up all of their ammo. The first goon turned to go back inside, but Patrick was already standing there and hit him with the end of his rifle.

  He dropped to the ground without so much as a sound.

  The second goon turned toward Shelby and Max and Lanh but stopped, confused to find three pistols pointed directly at him. Hugo didn’t realize Bianca and Carter were behind him until he felt the cold muzzle of Bianca’s gun pressed against his neck.

  The entire battle had lasted less than four minutes.

  As Gabe had said, guys like Hugo weren’t usually the smartest.

  Gabe, Bianca, and Patrick held the three men at gunpoint while the rest of their group went through the trailers—making sure no one else was in there and looking for any items that might have been taken out of their vehicles. They didn’t find much. In each trailer, trash was a foot deep throughout. The only furniture consisted of a couple of old mattresses, and the entire place was filthy.

  “Nice supply of food,” Carter said.

  “Should we take it?” Shelby asked.

  “Couldn’t hurt.” Max squatted in front of a towering stack of MREs. “We don’t need it, but we might come across someone we could share it with.”

  “What do we do with the horses?” Lanh asked.

  Shelby remembered then how close Lanh had become to Jerry Lambert. How he’d enjoyed working with all of the animals, but especially the horses.

  “What do you think we should do?” she asked.

  “Can’t leave them here with no one to look after them. That would be cruel.”

  “Agreed.” Max rubbed a muscle at the back of his neck. “What will happen if we let them go?”

  “They’ll probably hang around for a little while, a few days at the most. Then they’ll go in search of water and food.”

  “To a nearby farm.”

  “Probably.”

  “All right. We can’t take them with us, and we don’t have time to find them a new home. Open the gate and try to spook them out. Maybe that will send them looking for greener pastures.”

  While Lanh and Carter went to free the horses, the rest of the group stacked the cases of food into the payload area of the Hummer, where their backpacks had originally been. The backpacks stayed on them. Shelby was to the point that she was happy to sleep in hers. Until they were back at High Fields, she was thinking of it as her outer shield.

  Once everything was loaded, they returned to Patrick and Bianca and Gabe. Hugo and his two sidekicks were handcuffed.

  “Other guys still in the woods?” Shelby asked.

  “They are.” Gabe squatted down in front of Hugo and pulled the duct tape off his mouth. “You should have been more careful, Hugo. You got arrogant.”

  “Leave now.” Hugo grinned, revealing a mouth full of crooked teeth. Almost like he had double the amount a person needed.

  Anyone else would have had braces, had a bunch of teeth removed, but Shelby guessed Hugo’s childhood hadn’t included such things as dental care. Not that parental neglect was an excuse for his actions. He’d stolen and plundered and killed. Now he was about to pay for those deeds.

  “Leave the cars, and I won’t kill you.”

  “You’re negotiating?”

  “You have no idea who you’re messing with.”

  Gabe reached out with the end of his handgun and traced the circle surrounding the X on his forehead. “We’ve seen your mark, Hugo. Seen your handiwork.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. Burned-out buildings, shot-up vehicles, even a family of three murdered in a gas station southeast of Graham.”

  “They were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Not my fault, man.”

  Gabe’s face darkened, and Shelby thought he would kill the man right there. Just pull the trigger and be done with it. Instead, he stood and walked over to their group.

  “We can’t take them all,” he said. “I’m not even sure we should take them all.”

  “Hugo and these two seem to be the worst of the lot, and they all have the—” Patrick reached up and touched his forehead. Shrugging, he leaned back to run his gaze over the three men who sat in the dirt, hands cuffed behind their back. Bianca remained in front of them with her pistol raised and ready.

  “So what do we do with them?” Shelby asked. “What do we do with the guys in the woods?”

  It was Max who said what she was thinking. “We can’t take care of every bad guy in the new world, and the ones in the woods—they’re kids. I’m not suggesting they’re innocent, but like Gus and Hauk told us, they were more than likely coerced.”

  “So we let them go?” Gabe asked.

  “I think so.” Max holstered his weapon. “But not Hugo. He needs to be off the street. Maybe even those two imbeciles sitting with him. I say we loosen the ropes that Lanh and Carter used to secure the other three. By the time they work their way free, we’ll be long gone.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Once Hugo figured out what was happening, he started to holler, sliding from threats to negotiation to begging almost within the same breath. Max was sur
prised Gabe didn’t slap the duct tape back on the guy’s mouth, but then it occurred to him that Gabe wanted the other two to hear how panicked their leader was. He wanted Hugo to have the chance to mouth off.

  As Patrick hauled him to his feet, Hugo made a last attempt. “I have stuff, man. It’s yours. Take it all.”

  “We already did.”

  “But there’s more…I’ll show you.”

  “Big-hearted all of a sudden.” Patrick looked across at Max, who shrugged. He didn’t much care what Hugo had hidden. He cared about getting to Kansas. Plus, Hugo’s stash felt a little like tainted goods. Who had he killed to get the stuff? Food was one thing. The MREs could go a long way toward helping families, but anything else he had Max wasn’t interested in. No, he didn’t think they’d be taking Hugo up on his suddenly generous offer.

  One of Hugo’s sidekicks was loaded into the front of the Mustang, with Carter driving and Bianca riding in the back, gun on the thug.

  The other guy was loaded into the Dodge, with Shelby driving and Lanh keeping a weapon pointed on him.

  Those two didn’t appear to be much of a threat. They’d stayed pretty quiet, even when Gabe had pulled off their duct tape. Maybe they understood the end was near, or maybe they were waiting for a chance to run, which wasn’t going to happen. Either way, they were quiet, cuffed, and guarded. And they only had a half hour drive ahead of them.

  But Hugo was another matter.

  He bucked when they put him in the Hummer.

  He attempted to head butt Patrick, which earned him a crack across the skull with Patrick’s pistol. He begged and threatened. The guy was not going quietly “into that good night.” The line from Dylan Thomas’s poem jumped unbidden into Max’s mind. Strange how something he learned thirty years earlier could catapult to the front of his thoughts.

  Gabe would drive the Hummer, with no one beside him in the front seat. Max and Patrick sat on either side of Hugo in the second seat. Both had their weapons drawn and trained on the guy, though he was still handcuffed. Seemed a bit of overkill, but all Max had to do was remember the family at the gas station, and he decided that erring on the side of caution was probably a good thing.

  Hugo tried one last time. “You gonna sell me to somebody? If you were going to kill me, you’d do it here, so I know you’re planning something. Whatever they’re going to give you, I’ll give double. I’m not bluffing. I’ve got it—gold, silver, and even batteries and generators.”

  “Put the duct tape back on him.” Gabe started the Hummer and pulled out in the last spot. Carter led in the Mustang, and Shelby took the middle slot in the Dodge.

  “This was just getting interesting.” Patrick was sitting with his back against the door, facing Hugo, loosely and confidently holding his 9mm.

  “Yea, he’s got gold,” Max said. “Never mind who he killed to get it.”

  “You think you’re better than me?” Hugo’s voice rose as he realized that he was leaving his camp forever. “What’s the difference between your killing me and what I did to those people? They didn’t have the sense to protect themselves. That’s not my fault.”

  Spittle flew from his mouth, and his face turned a dark shade of red. Max sincerely hoped that the guy didn’t seize, because then they’d have to make the choice whether to save his sorry life. Max couldn’t dredge up even a speck of sympathy for the despicable person sitting beside him. It made him sad to think of the destruction Hugo had left in his wake, but he had no illusions about being able to rehabilitate someone who had no remorse for what he’d done. Given the circumstances of their society, he wasn’t sure that such rehabilitation would exist for quite some time.

  “You can’t just kill me.”

  “We’re not planning on it.” Gabe’s voice was calm, cool.

  He’d entered that zone that Max had heard Patrick talk about. Max knew that what they were doing wasn’t about getting the vehicles back. They could have “requisitioned” other rides. Gabe was on special assignment from the governor.

  No, the vehicles were only the catalyst.

  This was about the murdered family in the gas station, the shot-out cars on the road, the businesses and homes that had been marked by Hugo. This was about finding some semblance of justice, regardless of the condition the world was in.

  Gabe glanced up and met Max’s gaze in the rearview mirror.

  Patrick kept his eyes locked on Hugo.

  “Then where are we going?” Hugo sounded young then. He sounded almost hopeful. He sounded more like the very ignorant man he was.

  “Wichita Falls,” Max said.

  Hugo’s head swiveled right, forward, and left—looking at each of them to confirm what he’d heard. His eyes widened, and his ears turned pink. His mouth gaped open.

  It was Gabe who explained it to him. “We’re turning you over to the authorities, Hugo. Maybe you can explain your innocence to them.”

  All color left Hugo’s face. Seething with anger only a few minutes ago, he now looked deathly pale.

  “I never said I was innocent.” The words were mumbled. No doubt he realized that anything he said at this point would not matter at all.

  Gabe shrugged and returned his attention to the road. “Then I wouldn’t pin my hopes on receiving any sort of mercy.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Carter was kind of glad that they’d left the three younger thugs in the woods. He didn’t care if the authorities hung Hugo from a noose on the town square. Hugo was a lunatic with no remorse. God might have mercy on his soul, but the people in Wichita Falls wouldn’t. The top two guys in his organization or gang or whatever it was were no better. They all deserved whatever justice the good people of Wichita Falls decided to hand out.

  But the other three guys—they’d had tears running down their faces as Gabe had explained what was happening. That he was loosening the ropes so that they could work their way free. That Hugo wouldn’t be a problem for them anymore. That they had one more chance.

  There had been more. Gabe and Patrick had promised to come back and personally hunt them down if they heard even a whisper of future misdeeds.

  But it was Bianca who had the final word. “Go home. Be farmers. Learn to live in the new world. Take care of your familia. Cuidado con la ira de Dios.”

  Carter didn’t understand the last part, but Lanh had leaned closer and explained, “Something about watching out for the wrath of God.”

  And then they had all walked away and loaded into the vehicles, which still had all of their stuff in them.

  Now he was driving the Mustang, which should have made him ridiculously happy. Only this wasn’t the way he’d imagined it. There wasn’t a cool chick sitting beside him riding shotgun. His mind flashed back on Kaitlyn, but he pushed that memory away. He still thought of her, still missed her, but he’d accepted that she had died on the streets of Abney. Her life, his life with her, was over.

  He’d never imagined this, though.

  A thug riding beside him, handcuffed, bound, soon to pay for his deeds.

  Bianca riding in the back, holding a pistol on their prisoner.

  And the guy hadn’t said a word. Hadn’t even tried to talk them into letting him go. He sat there, staring out the window, as though he knew it was probably the last ride he’d ever take.

  “You’re doing well, Carter. We’ll be in Wichita Falls in twenty minutes, and we can be done with these people.”

  “They’ll kill us, you know.” The man didn’t bother to look at Carter or Bianca.

  “What’s your name?” Bianca asked.

  “Stoney.”

  “No, what’s your real name? What name did your mother give you?”

  “Stephen. My name is Stephen.”

  “Well, Stephen. You made the choice to hook up with Hugo. You made the choice to kill and plunder and rob—”

  “You don’t understand what it’s like.”

  “Oh, I don’t? Because I’ve lived in a bubble the last nine months. I didn’t hold my
papá’s hand as he died or sit beside my mamá as she breathed her last. I haven’t been cold or hungry or afraid.”

  Carter had never heard Bianca talk with so much passion and anger. He glanced in the rearview mirror. Her gaze met his, but she continued addressing Stephen or Stoney or whoever this guy was.

  “How many people have you killed?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Sure you do. You pull the trigger. You remember.”

  “It wasn’t like that.”

  “How many?” Bianca’s voice had dropped to a hush, but it had the force and power of an army of angels.

  “Fourteen.” Stephen was sobbing now. Snot and tears were running down his face. “I killed fourteen, but this won’t bring them back.”

  The last was a plea, a final effort.

  “You’re right, Stephen. We can’t bring them back, but we can make sure you won’t kill any more.”

  And then no one spoke.

  Carter glanced in the rearview mirror at his mom, who was driving the Dodge.

  Behind her, he could see Gabe driving the Hummer.

  They’d made the highway, and the signs ticked off the miles to Wichita Falls—ten, then eight, then five. Two miles out, the bodies began to appear.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Max had seen many terrible, truly tragic things since the flare, and he’d imagined even worse. He’d struggled through nights when he couldn’t sleep and been paralyzed by moments when the sheer helplessness of their situation had overwhelmed him. Days when his love and concern for those in his family, which included Shelby and Carter, had driven him to his knees.

  But he hadn’t imagined what he was seeing now.

  The first body they passed was hanging from a traffic signal. Justice will prevail.

  The second had been strung up on a telephone pole. An eye for an eye.

  The third was tied to a tree with a bullet hole in the middle of his forehead. Beware.