Chapter 33
Black Eagles Camp, Outzone (7 miles south of Two Jacks)
He awoke to the sound of a motorcycle engine, its harsh roar passing no more than a few feet away. Opening his eyes, Brogan was surprised to find himself on the floor of a tent, zipped up inside a sleeping bag, his nose inches away from one of the tent’s nylon sides. How he had gotten there, he had no idea. The last memory he had was of putting a bullet into the side of a giant’s head. After that, he remembered nothing, and realized he must have collapsed shortly afterward. Outside, it was daylight and he knew he had been asleep for several hours.
Lifting his left hand out of the sleeping bag, he saw that the stump of his little finger had been wrapped tightly in white gauze, held in place with surgical tape. The sight stirred a vague memory, of someone tending to him during the night while he thrashed around in a delirious state.
He pulled out his other hand and raised it to his face, touching the skin cautiously. It felt tender and swollen, but he was relieved to discover that, other than several cuts and some heavy grazing, nothing appeared to have been ripped up so bad it wouldn’t eventually heal.
He did feel a terrible fatigue. A bad headache was coming on, and focusing his eyes for any length of time was impossible. Against his will, his eyes started to droop and soon he was asleep again.
He next woke to the sound of the front flap of the tent unzipping and a gust of cool air swept over his face. The flap pulled back and a figure stepped inside. Looking up, he saw it was a young woman. A pretty one, small and lithe, with long black hair that ran halfway down her back.
“You’re awake,” the woman said, kneeling by his side. “I was getting worried. Thought you might never wake up.”
Brogan forced his eyes to focus on the girl. She looked familiar, and he realized she was the one from the other day: the girl Stalking Bear had dispatched to talk to him during their first encounter. The crazy one who had pulled the wheelie on him.
“I know you. I met you the other day on the plains. Roja, is that right?”
The girl nodded. “That’s right. You know, when I said you should come visit me, I don’t remember saying anything about you sharing my tent, nor about having to look after you, neither.” She gazed down at his swollen face and smiled. “And you’re a lot uglier than I remember.”
Brogan tried to smile back, the effort causing his bruised cheeks to ache. “I’m in your tent? So, uh, where did you sleep last night?”
“Right beside you.” Roja indicated a rolled-up sleeping bag stuffed in a corner of the tent. “Even gave you my pillow.”
“Oh, now that wasn’t gentlemanly of me. You’re making me feel guilty.”
“No need to. I’m taking it back as soon as you’re better. Hey, where you going?”
Brogan had unzipped the side of the sleeping bag and was struggling to get out. “To find the chief,” he said. “I need to know what the news is on Ritter.”
Roja put a hand on his chest and pushed him down again. “You’re not going anywhere,” she said firmly. “Relax. I know everything that’s happened. I’ll fill you in.”
“Okay,” he said. “Shoot.”
“Wait, I need to check your condition first. Your eyes don’t look so good. Are you having trouble focusing them?”
“Maybe a little,” Brogan admitted. He had a splitting headache now, too. “You got any aspirin here?”
“I’ll fetch you some in a moment. First, I need you to sit up.”
Roja helped him into an upright position. It was difficult inside the tent without any wall for him to lean against, and he had to use his hands for support. Bending over him, the girl peered into both ears, then inspected his nose.
“No bleeding or fluids,” she said. “That’s good.”
Sitting in front of him and placing his arms by his sides, she flexed both his elbows to a ninety degree angle, then held out a finger in front of him.
“Touch my finger, then touch your nose as fast as you can,” she ordered him.
Brogan stretched out his hand, touched his finger against hers, then completely missed his nose, prodding himself in the side of the cheek. He knew the answer to her simple test before she even spoke.
“You’ve got a concussion,” she said, a look of concern on her face. “You’re going to need to take it real slow for a few days.”
Brogan was surprised by her tone. Roja appeared far more tender than the tough girl he had encountered that first day they’d met.
“Sure, I’ll take it slow. Now let’s get back to last night. Last thing I remember is killing a man. How about you take it from there?”
Roja spent the next ten minutes bringing Brogan up to speed. She began by telling him that moments after killing Brick, he had slumped in his chair and fallen to the floor. Stalking Bear had picked him up and slung him over his shoulder, then took him down the stairs and out of the bar, where he had been placed between the chief and another brave on the back of the chief’s Harley and ridden out of the town.
When they arrived at the camp Roja, who had waited up, ordered that he be brought to her tent where she’d cleaned him up and bandaged his finger. The entire time, Brogan had remained unconscious until now, noon the following day.
Brogan had been listening to Roja as carefully as his groggy head allowed. “And Ritter?” he asked. “The chief manage to track him down?”
Roja shook her head. “No news yet. We’ve had braves looking for him all night. Maybe the last group that got sent out this morning have something. They’re due back soon.”
“Okay,” Brogan said, disappointed.
A serious expression came over Roja’s face. “Everyone here knows what these men did to your family,” she said. “There’s not a brave in the camp who doesn’t want to find this man.”
“Thank you,” Brogan said quietly. There was still one more thing he needed to know. He stared at Roja and frowned. “So how on earth did Bear end up in the Paradise Lounge last night?” he asked, calling the chief by the name both Roja and the Black Eagle warriors the previous night had used. “He said something about one of the braves being my friend, the one wearing the cowboy hat. Can you enlighten me on that?”
A look of distaste came over Roja’s face. It bordered on unpleasant. “That was no brave,” she said. “That was a stranger. The kind we might normally kill around here.”
Brogan stared at her in confusion. With his concussion, he wondered whether he’d heard her right.
“He’s an agent. Sent from the State by an old friend of yours.”
A light switched on in Brogan’s head. What had seemed like an impossible chain of events now all started to make sense. Through the lens of a drone night-vision camera, John Cole must have seen him being assaulted outside the Paradise Lounge, and despite what his friend had told him back in Metro, had intervened to help him after all.
“This man…he came here last night and told Bear what happened to me?”
“Yeah, he rode into camp, telling us he was a friend of yours. That he’d seen you get beat up and dragged into the Paradise.”
“I see.” Brogan had no idea what type of story the agent had spun. Whatever it had been, he had taken a hell of a risk. It suddenly occurred to him that the man he’d caught a glimpse of in the shadows on the way to the Paradise with Marlee might have been the agent, not a hobo or drunk.
“He said you’d told him you were a friend of the Black Eagles, and that he came to us, not knowing what else to do.” Roja flashed Brogan a stern look. “Not sure how that works, seeing as you two never even met before.”
Brogan said nothing. He gazed at her uncomfortably, and shrugged.
“Anyhow, Bear figured it all out in the end,” Roja went on, saving him from looking anymore awkward. “He got everything out of him.”
“Smart man.”
Roja shot him another of her looks. “It didn’t take a genius once you told him you’d been in New Haven’s SRF until two weeks ago.”
“Don’t worry, he’ll come by later today. Bear gave him permission.”
“That’s good. You know, I thought I was a goner,” Brogan said, talking to himself as much as Roja as the realization of just how lucky he’d been seeped in. “Man, I can’t believe how stupid I was. I behaved like an amateur. If I ever did something like that in my old job, they’d have fired my ass the same day.”
“You chose the wrong girl to trust in,” Roja said. “Bad move.”
“I’d drawn a blank looking for Ritter and the brothers. Just got desperate trying to find them,” Brogan explained, embarrassed now by his incredible stupidity.
“You need to learn who to trust. Especially when it comes to women,” Roja said, rising to her feet. “You looked tired. Get some more sleep. I’ll be back later with food.”
***
Mid-afternoon, Brogan awoke to the sound of the tent flap opening again. He presumed it was Roja returning with food. Instead he raised his head to see a man crouched on his heels by the entrance, clutching a black leather hat in one hand. Brogan ushered him inside.
“Sorry for barging in like this,” the man said in a friendly tone. “There’s no way of knocking on a tent door, though. Leastways none that I know of.”
“That’s okay,” Brogan said, sitting up. “I was hoping you’d come by. I got plenty of questions to ask you. More than anything, though, I want to thank you for saving my life.”
“John Cole is the man you need to thank,” the man said, sitting down on the floor beside Brogan. “I was only following orders.”
The man introduced himself as NIA Special Agent Darell Holmes. Of medium build, Holmes spoke with a rural East Texas twang and had an easy, relaxed manner about him.
Holmes told Brogan he was NIA’s one and only agent in Two Jacks. So far from the State border, there wasn’t much need for intelligence gathering around these parts.
“The town might be full of gamblers and degenerates, but that just makes ‘em way too busy to become revolutionaries,” the agent said with a grin. “Most of the time I sit around playing cards and drinking whiskey.”
“Nice cover. All in the line of duty too. Tell me, how do you stay in contact with Metro from here? I guess you got a radio?” Brogan asked him.
Holmes nodded. “Yeah, I got a short wave radio that sends encrypted transmissions.”
“Isn’t that kind of dangerous—owning something like that around here?”
“We’ve got a good protocol, and seeing as there’s no safe houses in Two Jacks, it’s not like anyone is actively trying to hunt me down,” Holmes explained. “But yeah, if anyone ever found out I was a little more than just another drunk gambler with a hard-on, things might get a little ugly.”
Holmes went on to recount the sequence of events that had transpired over the past couple of days. Once the perps arrived in the city, delayed for several days after one of their motorbikes had broken down, Cole put a twenty-four hour watch on the three men and Brogan.
“Since Ritter and his men got here, I’ve spent most of my time either on call or watching you,” Holmes told him. “Last night, when Cole told me you’d left the hotel, I followed you and the girl down to the Paradise. I think you might have spotted me at one point, right?”
Brogan nodded.
“At that time, we had no idea of the girl’s involvement, otherwise I’m sure John would have ordered me to intervene. It was only later, when he ran back through the tapes, he saw she’d been down at the Paradise Lounge the previous day. He was kicking himself he hadn’t spotted it.”
“John’s too hard on himself. He can’t track each and every person who walks in and out of a bar,” Brogan said.
“Yeah, that’s what I told him too. Anyway, as soon as I saw what happened outside the Paradise, I legged it home and got straight on the radio to John. Broke the protocol too,” Holmes added with a grin.
“That’s when he told you to come here? To the Black Eagles camp?”
The agent nodded. “That’s right. He’d watched your roadside encounter with the chief the other day. We couldn’t think what else to do. It wasn’t like I was going to go storm the Paradise by myself or anything.”
Brogan shook his head. “You took a hell of a risk, Darrell.”
“Got to admit, I was sweating it pretty bad when the chief gave me a grilling last night after you told him you were ex-SRF. I had to tell him everything in the end. Good thing the warrior chapters have their own code when it comes to stuff like respect and honor. They don’t give a crap what anybody else thinks, either. I’m glad it all worked out. You’re a lucky man, Frank. I think you know that.”
“Without a lot of people’s help, I’d be dead right now. I think I managed to do just about everything wrong,” Brogan said, embarrassed once more by his reckless behavior. “So where is Ritter now? Is John still tracking him?”
Holmes shook his head. “I’m afraid we’ve lost him for now. After he jumped out the back window, he got picked him up right away on infrared and tracked all the way back to the Vegas Drag. He ducked into a building and hasn’t been seen since. I showed the chief where to look, but by then he’d long gone. Don’t worry, we’ll pick up his trail again.”
“Sure. He can’t hide forever.”
Brogan felt bitterly disappointed. Ritter wasn’t stupid. He wouldn’t figure out everything, but he’d piece enough together to be far more careful with his movements going forward.
“So what now?” Brogan asked Holmes. “No matter what the chief says about keeping quiet about what went down, it’s too dangerous for you here. Things have a habit of getting out.”
“I’m riding back to Winter’s Edge in a couple of hours,” replied the agent. “My time here is done. That’s the deal we made.”
Brogan raised an eyebrow. “The deal? What deal?”
“John promised me he’d bring me back to Metro if I did this for him. By the way, brass don’t know anything about this, we had to come up with a story for them without involving you.” Holmes smiled at Brogan. “John’s good at handling stuff like that.”
The agent’s comment made Brogan feel even worse. Both Holmes and Cole had taken big risks with their professional careers to help him, Holmes with his life.
“Okay,” he said quietly. “I’m glad to hear you’ve got your side of things covered.”
A serious look came over Holmes. “John told me what happened to your family back in the State. It’s part of the reason I agreed to do this.”
“I appreciate that, Darrell. I owe you big time.”
“Don’t sweat it, buddy. I’m glad it all worked out. And all considered, taking out two of the perps is a good result.”
“I guess.” A hard look entered Brogan’s eyes. “Next is Ritter. I’m going to find that weasel, no matter where he’s crawled off to. Then we’re going to spend some quality time together. Just me and him.”
The two talked a little longer. Brogan’s headache started coming on strong again, and it became a struggle to keep his eyes focused. Holmes could see it too and after a few more minutes, he bid his leave.
After shaking hands, Holmes said, “Oh, nearly forgot.” With a grin, he tossed his hat onto Brogan’s lap. “Take this. Orders from above. I won’t be needing it anymore.”
Brogan stared at him, a puzzled look on his face.
“John says you need to wear it when you go out. Told me he nearly had a heart attack trying to keep track of you last night along the drag. This’ll make it a little easier for him to track you from now on.”
Brogan picked up the hat and placed it on his head. “How’s that?”
“Dude, now you look like a proper hombre.”
“Right now I feel like I’m all hat and no horse,” Brogan replied. “Got a motorcycle back in town though. Gue
ss that will do.”
Chapter 34
On the third morning of his stay at the Black Eagles camp, Brogan awoke early to discover his headaches had completely disappeared. So long as he didn’t knock or touch the knuckle of his severed finger, the pain had reached the point where he was no longer constantly aware of it.
Examining his face in Roja’s hand mirror, he was relieved to see that his eyes looked clear and focused, and though his bruises had turned a nasty yellowish-brown, the swelling on his face had subsided considerably and he no longer looked like an extra out of a zombie movie.
He put down the mirror and poked his head out the tent flap to see a beautiful pink-tinged dawn breaking over the eastern skies of the Arrow Valley. Over the past couple of days it had been cold and blustery, and he had barely left the tent.
Looking around, he saw no sign of Roja and guessed she had gone to the bore well where she went each morning to fetch water. The well was located at the far side of the farm, about five hundred yards away from the camp.
With his energy returning and the improvement in the weather, Brogan decided it was time to be a little more adventurous. He put on his boots, grabbed his jacket, and was about to step out of the tent when he remembered one last item. Turning around, he leaned down and scooped up his newly-acquired hat from the foot of the bed.
Outside, the air was cool and crisp, and it felt good to walk the stiffness out of his legs as he strolled through the camp. Other than a few curious stares, no one paid much attention to him as people went about their early morning chores to the yelling of children and the barking of dogs. A rough count told Brogan there were about twenty-five tents pitched at the camp. It fitted in with what Roja had told him—that there were nearly forty warriors in the tribe, not including children.
Holtzer’s Place was a farm of around ten acres to which, each year between mid-October and the first week of November, the Black Eagles would pack up their belongings in the North Mountains and make the three-day trek south. Brogan had been curious what the Holtzer family got out of the deal. Roja explained that the tribe had some excellent mechanics, carpenters, and other skilled tradesmen. In exchange for the plot of land for their winter camp, the tribe helped with the repairs and maintenance of the farm vehicles and buildings. She told him they were in the process of constructing a new barn at the moment, and come spring the tribe would help the family with the preparations for the new planting season before packing up and leaving for their summer grounds in the North Mountains again.
Winter's Edge: A Post Apocalyptic/Dystopian Adventure (Outzone Drifter Series Book 1) Page 24