The Day After Never - Covenant (Post-Apocalyptic Dystopian Thriller - Book 3)

by Russell Blake

  “Another ten minutes and we’ll head back.”

  Eve looked unhappy to leave the river – she liked the cool water on her bare feet – and Lucas was framing a reassurance when Ruby’s scream from their camp upstream pierced the silence. Sierra leapt to her feet, but Lucas was faster.

  “Stay here with Eve. Don’t follow me. I’ll come back for you,” he whispered, shrugging the M4’s shoulder sling off.

  “What do you think it is?” she asked. “Another snake?”

  “I’ll be back,” Lucas said, and took off toward a game trail that ran along the water, the firing selector of his rifle already switched to three-round burst.

  His boots pounded on the dirt as he pushed himself to run faster, and his lungs burned from the lack of oxygen at the higher altitude. The trail branched off and he took the left fork, slowing as he neared the campsite so his footfalls wouldn’t alert whatever had caused Ruby’s alarm.

  A shot rang out from the camp and he winced – that would draw anyone within five miles. He crept the final twenty yards to the clearing with the tents and stopped when he saw Colt propped against his saddlebags, holding a pistol; two strangers lay on the ground near Ruby, both clearly dead.

  “What happened?” Lucas demanded.

  Ruby looked to him with frightened eyes. “I was at the river, getting some water, and heard something in the brush. They must have followed me up.”

  Colt took over the narrative, his voice low. “I was dozing, and this pair showed up with guns.”

  Ruby pointed at one of the men. “They had Colt and me covered, so we couldn’t draw our weapons, but Tarak was in the bushes.”

  “Nature called,” Tarak interjected.

  “They were getting ready to shoot us when Tarak’s knife came flying and took that one down,” Colt said, gesturing at one of the corpses.

  Lucas walked to the man and turned him over. A hunting knife, its bone handle smeared with crimson, was lodged to the hilt in the base of his throat.

  “That bought me a chance to get my pistol out, and you can see the rest,” Colt said.

  “Any idea who they were?” Ruby asked.

  Lucas examined the men’s weapons, both battered AK-47s that looked like they hadn’t been cleaned in a lifetime, and removed revolvers from their hip holsters – .38-caliber service pistols that were sixty years old if a day.

  “Scavengers, by the looks of them. They look half-starved, and their gear’s crap.”

  “You think there are more?” Colt asked.

  “If there are, they’re on their way here. We need to get moving again.”

  Tarak reached to his knife jutting from the dead man’s throat and pulled it free. He inspected the handle with a look of distaste and shook his head. “I’ll be back. Need to rinse this clean.”

  Lucas turned his back on the dead men and addressed Ruby. “Break down the tents while I get Sierra and Eve. Colt, keep an eye peeled for company.”

  He didn’t wait for a response, but spun on his heel and jogged back along the trail, his muscles protesting the exertion after twelve hours in the saddle. When he arrived at the river, Sierra was hugging Eve, smoothing her hair and whispering to her. She looked up at Lucas’s approach.

  “What was it?” she asked.

  “Couple of dirtbags. We need to clear out. That shot will bring more cockroaches out of the woodwork.”

  “Was anyone hurt?”

  “Just them. Come on. Time’s a-wasting.”

  Sierra struggled to her feet, a look of resignation on her face. Lucas moved to the water’s edge and gathered his fishing gear. He slid it into a pouch that he slipped into his flak jacket.

  Sierra shook her head. “It never ends, does it?”

  Lucas didn’t answer.

  “I’m so sick of riding…”

  “I know the feeling. But we need to put some miles between us and the camp, or we’re asking for it.”

  She sighed. “I know. I’m just whining.”

  “We’re all at the end of our ropes. You’ve earned the right. But whine while we ride.”

  Chapter 21

  Cano watched as the tracker they’d hired in Albuquerque squinted at the trail while Quincy stood by his side. They’d been contacted by a fisherman the prior morning who had told them he had been on the river the night before and seen a group headed north. The man had nothing more to add, other than his approximate position when he’d spotted them, but that had been enough. Cano had him lead them to the spot, and the tracker had quickly found evidence of the group’s passing and led them north.

  They had spent the day following the tracks and made camp when it had grown too dark to distinguish them any longer. Up at dawn the following day, they’d continued along the river’s course until mid-afternoon, when the tracker had begun having problems.

  “Too rocky,” he’d said, the going painful as he roamed ahead and then retraced his path in case he’d missed something. Hours of that had led them to this point, and Cano waited for the man’s verdict with a sinking stomach.

  The tracker straightened and consulted with Quincy in a low voice. After a minute, Cano interrupted their discussion with an impatient tone. “Well?”

  Quincy looked around and then shrugged. “We lost the trail. Ground’s too hard.”

  “What about broken branches or something?” Cano asked. “Isn’t that how trackers are supposed to follow people?”

  “They’re being careful. Sticking to the bank or trails. They aren’t breaking anything; not that there’s much around here to break anyway. But it’s amateurs that do that sort of thing. These people know what they’re doing.” The tracker shook his head. “Cain’t follow a trail where there ain’t none.”

  “You’re being paid a lot, old man. Too much for failure,” Cano warned.

  “I done what you asked. But this is as far as I go.” The man spread his hands before him in a reasoning gesture. “Sorry.”

  “So do you only get part of the fee?”

  “That ain’t how it works.”

  Cano snorted dismissively. “I don’t pay for best efforts. You told us you could track them, what was it, ‘to the end of the earth’?” Cano looked around. “I don’t see any end here, do you?”

  “I done my job. Earned my money fair and square.”

  “You didn’t finish the job.”

  The man turned away and made for his horse. “This is bullshit. You’re a cheat. Find your own way back. I’m out of here.”

  Cano’s pupils shrank to pinpoints and his hand flew to his pistol. He whipped it out and fired three times in rapid succession. The tracker screamed and pitched forward, all three shots grouped in the center of his back, and hit the ground hard, where he convulsed and stilled.

  Cano dropped from the saddle and walked to where the man lay facedown. He looked around at his men, whose faces were blank, and kicked the tracker in the head with a sickening thwack.

  “You’re going to call me a cheat and walk away? How did that work for you, you dumb prick? You roasting in hell now? Save a spot for me.”

  The men looked away as Cano unzipped his jeans and urinated on the dead man, a grin revealing yellowing incisors. When he finished, he seized his horse’s bridle and faced his men.

  “Anyone else want to call it quits? I still have plenty of rounds for your severance pay,” Cano said.

  None of the men spoke. Cano nodded. “That’s what I thought. Now get that garbage out of my sight. We’ll make camp here. I have a good feeling about this place,” he said.

  Luis waited until Cano had calmed down before approaching him. “Maybe we should head back to town and get some dogs or something,” he suggested.

  “No, we’ll stay put.”

  Luis considered pressing the point, but a glance at Cano’s face made him think better of it. “Okay, then. Anything you want me to do?”

  “Keep the new guys in line.”

  “If you don’t mind my asking, what are we waiting for here? I mean, I�
��m fine with it, but what should I tell them?”

  Cano’s voice dropped to a raspy growl. “Tell them that they’re to follow orders and not pester me with stupid questions, or they’ll join the tracker in a ditch.”

  Luis nodded at the nonanswer. “Sure.”

  Cano fixed Luis with a hard stare. “You’re getting on my nerves with your questions and your attitude. You got a problem? Because I have bigger fish to fry than whether you approve of my decisions or not.”

  “It’s not that. I just want to make sure–”

  “Luis, you’re not here to think or second-guess. You want to be in the Crew, you play by our rules – and that means you do as ordered, with no backtalk or attitude. This is your last warning. I’m not going to say it again.”

  Luis bit back his response and managed a tight nod. He crossed over to where the men were assembling their tents and set to driving tent pegs into the hard ground, using the back of his camp hatchet, his temples pounding. In his mind’s eye, he flung the hatchet with deadly accuracy and it cleaved Cano’s forehead in two.

  Len looked at him strangely. “What’s the joke?”

  Luis realized that he’d allowed himself a smile, and he grew serious as he finished his work. “Nothing. Just remembering a time when I hacked a guy to pieces with this thing.”

  That chilled any further appetite for conversation, and Luis stood and made his way to his horse to get his bedroll, reminding himself that he couldn’t let down his guard. It was obvious to him that Cano had it in for him, but he wasn’t going to give him any excuses to take him on.

  Luis glanced at the hatchet on the ground beside his tent and forced himself not to smile again.

  Chapter 22

  “How’s the leg?” Lucas asked as Colt drove his horse up the steep incline toward the deserted remnants of Los Alamos.

  “Pills are doing their job.”

  It was late morning the second day after the attack by the river, and Colt had announced that they were close – they would arrive at Shangri-La before nightfall. The mood had been excited as the women broke camp, in anticipation of their brutal trek drawing to a close. Earlier that morning they’d negotiated a trail across Diablo Canyon and ridden to the highway bridge that crossed the Rio Grande, and were now entering the town that had been built around the lab that birthed the atomic bomb.

  Around them the ruins of Los Alamos stood like cemetery headstones, the remains of the hamlet a mausoleum for a past that would never return. Fire had ravaged the area, burning many of the wood structures to the foundations, and the only buildings left standing were the old steel-sided government apartments left over from World War II days and the sturdier of the adobe buildings in the center of town. In the distance stood the Los Alamos National Laboratory grounds, and Lucas called out to Colt as he led them toward the facility.

  “Government didn’t try to put up a last-ditch effort to keep the Lab guarded?”

  “Sure, but eventually the food ran out, and the flu got most that starvation didn’t,” Colt explained. “That was the problem the military had – they couldn’t convince soldiers to stay on duty when their families were being slaughtered back home, particularly when the money they were being paid wasn’t worth anything. When the supply lines failed, there was no way to hold the ranks. Some stayed out of a sense of patriotic duty, but they died when they discovered ideology didn’t fill your stomach.”

  “Weird that a top secret security area like this is abandoned.”

  “Not that odd. How would they find people to man it, and how would they feed and pay them? And who’s they? Remember that the idea of a government is a group that provides the population services, which it bills for via taxes. But if everyone’s dead or destitute and the currency is worth nothing, how do you collect anything, or even find anyone to collect it for you?”

  Rather than taking them along the road that led up past the Lab into the forested hills, Colt veered off down a steep path that Lucas hadn’t even noticed from the road. When the rocky way turned a corner and broadened so they could ride two abreast again, Colt continued his sermon.

  “Governments are faceless bureaucrats who took jobs where they got paid more than they were worth for working as little as possible. The faith that people had that they would do something ignored how badly they performed in the regional disasters. Remember that big hurricane in Louisiana? That was a train wreck. Why anyone believed the same morons would manage anything better in a real national emergency beats the hell out of me.”

  Lucas recalled how torn he’d been when he’d abandoned his job in El Paso, but he understood Colt’s sentiment. When the chain of command had broken down, it had become clear that it was every man for himself. In that scenario, staying out of loyalty merely got you killed, because there was nobody watching your back or making sure you were fed or had ammo. He’d felt terrible when he’d packed up his truck and headed for his grandfather’s ranch, but with civilization collapsing around him, there had been no choice but the stark one of life or death.

  “You’ve heard the rumors of underground bases back east and on the west coast?”

  “I’ve heard a million rumors. But nobody’s actually seen one. It’s always the same: they know someone who told them they had, or who knew someone who knew someone.” Colt paused. “I think the biggest shock to the survivors was how much of a con job the semblance of order actually was. The government pretended it had the people’s interests in mind, but it really was all about protecting its cronies while they fleeced the population. That’s why nothing worked the way it should have – not that it would have made much difference.”

  “What do you mean?” Lucas asked.

  “Nobody was actually concerned with doing anything remotely about saving people – it was all about how to suppress rioting and rebellion. They declared martial law, which just made things worse, but they didn’t declare it because it was the right thing to do. They did it because they wanted to protect themselves while they got out of Dodge and to protect their interests. And because everyone was pretending to do their job instead of actually designing responses that would work, none of them actually did work when put to the test.”

  Lucas remembered well the truth of Colt’s observation. It had been almost comedic how disorganized and ineffectual the government had been when the country fell into crisis, how the central management attempts had been horribly conceived and done more harm than good. When faith in the currency disintegrated after the country had been plunged back into the Dark Ages by the flu, the government’s authority had collapsed with it. Most measures had been designed to protect the banks and the elites, and that had become increasingly obvious as forces were deployed to keep mobs from overrunning financial institutions or to cordon off privileged enclaves in D.C. and New York while people died by the millions around them.

  But the flu hadn’t played favorites, bringing down the mighty with the same relentlessness that it felled the poor. Even with the best care, there had been no way to reverse the immunological response that turned a victim’s immune system against the host, and even the richest victims died the same agonizing death.

  “Yeah,” Lucas said. “I’ve always thought the ‘survivor cities’ were BS.”

  “It’s human nature to want to believe somewhere, order was maintained and the trains run on time.”

  “Which is why I’m skeptical about your Shangri-La.”

  “Oh, it’s got its problems. Just like everywhere. Anytime you get a large group together, there are going to be differences of opinion on how to do things. But we’ve been able to get along and build a better world, at least better than other places. It’s not unicorns and marshmallow clouds, but there’s power and water and food, the place is clean and safe, and it’s well supplied.”

  “How is it supplied at all?”

  “Most of it’s self-sufficient. A lot of the equipment came from Los Alamos, so we can make limited quantities of simple drugs like antibiotics. We have gar
dens and indoor growing areas for the winter months. Because we’ve got power, we can pump water for irrigation and sanitation.” Colt paused. “You’ll see.”

  “How much further?”

  “A ways.”

  “Cat’s sort of out of the bag now that it’s in the mountains near here, or we won’t be able to get there today,” Sierra said from behind Lucas.

  “Then why ask?” Colt fired back.

  Sierra frowned at Colt’s testiness, but held off on any further questions. After all, the man had been through hell with the snakebite and probably was feeling lousy; his leg was still visibly swollen, albeit less discolored now.

  They entered the canyon, its sides towering on either side, and the rocky terrain steepened as the temperature dropped. Aspen trees climbed the sides of the visible slopes above the canyon top, rising into a sky so blue it seemed painted.

  They continued for an hour and then turned into an even deeper canyon, and stopped to rest at a small lake with shimmering azure water, the air crisp and cool. Ruby helped Lucas with the pressure bandage and inspected Colt’s wound, which was now no longer seeping pus, and they concluded that the infection had diminished to something manageable.

  “They named it Shangri-La partly because of the location,” Colt offered as they patched him up. “The approach from the east is a series of canyons that are easily defendable and that connect together in a sort of natural labyrinth. It would be almost impossible to stumble across it by accident – there are no roads that lead to it, and in the winter it’s completely buried in snow.”

  “What do people do then?” Ruby asked.

  “Stay inside, for the most part. There are some buildings they built out of cinder block, and there’s an underground area and a bunch of caves. The scientist who founded it thought it through pretty well – it can support three hundred people, which is about what we have.”

  “You mentioned power? From solar?” Lucas asked.

  “That and a dam.”