Ride On

by Gwen Cole

  Also by Gwen Cole

  Cold Summer

  Copyright © 2018 by Gwen Cole

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Sky Pony Press, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.

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  Sky Pony® is a registered trademark of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.®, a Delaware corporation.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

  Cover design by Kate Gartner

  Cover illustration by Darren Hopes

  Print ISBN: 978-1-51072-993-3

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-51072-995-7

  Printed in the United States of America

  To Mom, because you gave me the love of horses.

  0.

  Seph

  I haven’t broken any laws. But I haven’t followed any either. Never have. My father always said the only laws we need to follow are the ones our hearts say are right.

  Some call me an outlaw, but others call me a cowboy. I don’t rightly know what a cowboy is, but I like the sound of it better. Because every time I think of an outlaw, I think of the man who killed my father, and that is not who I am.

  Cowboy.

  Cade nudges my back with his warm nose, bored with me standing here like an idiot. I go back to thinking about states and repeating their names in my head. About the names people call me. It keeps me focused.

  We cross over the invisible Texas state line, and I’m surprised about the lack of trouble I’m having. It makes me nervous, it being this easy. The feel of the breeze and the silence raises the hair along my arms.

  Asphalt and wind. Bound and free. Life and death.

  Two sides of the road for everything.

  And this is one of them.

  Like most of the roads, the highway is cleared of old metal. The vehicles now sit in the ditches, hollowed bones rusted into the ground like artificial trees. My father told me trees used to have green leaves that grew from their branches.

  My father—

  I used to call him Dad back before he died years ago. When I think of him I just think, my father. My father did that, my father told me this …

  Dad.

  Dad used to tell me everything.

  I like calling him that. Even if it is only in my head. It makes me feel like he’s still with me.

  The wind picks up, blowing dust from the west. I pull the bandana from my neck up over my nose and mouth. I do the same with Cade, tucking the cloth into his bridle to protect his lungs from prolonged exposure. My goggles still hang around my neck, so I pull them up and over my eyes, blinking the dust from my lashes.

  In the north, the ground is frozen, but here it’s dust.

  We continue south. Cade keeps his head low and presses into my back to keep the dust from his eyes. There’s an old sign up ahead with the list of cities that’s been spray painted over with the names we use now. The next city is five miles south. And then the big city, Kev, is twenty. That city has its own stories and rumors, ones I hope aren’t true.

  I have no choice but to stop. We both need food.

  There’s a bridge up ahead, crossing over the highway. This is the first sign of cover that I’ve come across since the border, someplace where a gang of outlaws would love to hide behind. Cade lifts his head and I keep my eyes sharp.

  I stop before the shadow of the bridge covers me. The flaps of my coat tug in the wind, sending dust spiraling around my feet. With the slightest movement, I brush my hand across my right thigh, feeling my holster up to the handle of my revolver, worn and familiar. I let the fear pump adrenaline through my veins, making my hands steady and sure.

  They finally show themselves, and there are only four of them—a small crew for the rumors around here to be true. I wait for more to appear, but they never do. Maybe this isn’t the same gang. Two men on the bridge, and two men under it.

  “Good day, cowboy.” The two men under the bridge step out of the shadows.

  I smile to myself at the name.

  None of them have bandanas over their mouths—some people don’t care about their health when the world has already gone to hell.

  “What brings you to Texas?” The younger man talking has tanned skin and wild hair, his words slow and drawn out, probably from somewhere east of here. He points a rifle to the ground that looks more cared for than himself.

  I pull my goggles and bandana down around my neck. “Business of my own.”

  “How long you been on the road for?” He spits on the dirt between us while his eyes stare at me, uncaring.

  “Nine years.”

  He laughs, a low chuckle that comes out slow. “Nobody can survive on the road for nine years, but you being a liar is the least of my worries.”

  The other men smile in response, like they picked up on an inside joke and can’t wait to tell me.

  I ignore them and answer, “Then we’re in agreement to let me pass.”

  “Sorry, cowboy. You know that’s not the way things work.” He flicks a finger toward me. “Hand over your stuff and we’ll let you pass. Best to keep that horse here, too. Haven’t seen one that good in ages.”

  “Maybe you should take better care of your animals.” I move my coat aside, revealing my gun. They all stand a little straighter. “And it’ll be better for everyone if you let me by. I have the right to my things, and I won’t give them away to people who kill and steal from the less fortunate.”

  “There,” he says, smiling, “you’re wrong. We don’t steal from the less fortunate. We steal from everyone.” I catch sight of something behind him when he tilts his head to the side. Two bodies lie under the bridge—an adult and a small child. Both motionless with pools of blood around their heads.

  My heart pounds for me to do something about it. But I can’t. I didn’t come soon enough. And if I’m not careful, I’ll be next.

  His fingers twitch in the slightest, but I’m faster than those on the bridge. With a flick of my wrist and two bullets, the men on the bridge disappear with painful cries. By the time the remaining two have the chance to even start, my gun is already on them. Steady and straight. The moans of the wounded men drift down to meet us in the wind. I don’t like shooting men, but sometimes I don’t have a choice.

  “They’ll survive if you tend to them fast enough,” I tell him, hoping they will.

  The younger man has his rifle half-raised, and his partner’s hand is paused over the pistol at his hip—it’s rusted but probably shoots straight.

  Texas. Texas with its rusted weapons.

  “What are you going to do?” the leader asks, a little smirk on his lips. “Shoot us, too? You’ll only get one of us by the time you get a shot off.”

  “Trust me, I want nothing more than to kill you both.” I keep my voice calm and my anger in check. “People like you are the ones destroying our world. Not the skies or the floods. Just you.”

  My gun is heavy and familiar in my hand. The thing that has kept me alive. It keeps me focused in my time of need.

  I can tell he isn’t all there in his head. I can tell because he isn�
�t afraid of me and he should be. He glances over his shoulder at the bodies behind him. Then he shrugs. “At least I know how to stay alive,” he says. “Only the strong survive in a world of death.”

  “And the strong don’t need to kill people to do it.”

  “It seems to me that you swallow your own words. You can’t tell me you haven’t killed.”

  The dust blows around my feet and the bandana brushes against my neck. The only thing not moving is my gun. Despite the adrenaline in my veins, I’m still able to stay calm. I used to repeat the state capitals to help me steady my hands, but after years of encounters like this, I no longer have to.

  “I killed for the first time when I was eleven,” I agree. “Again when I was twelve. Another when I was thirteen when a thief tried to gut me in my sleep. And last week I killed two men for a reason I don’t want to think about again. But in no way am I like you. I only kill to save my life or for others who need me to do it for them.”

  “So does that mean you’re gonna kill us?” The side of his mouth lifts, his eyes still daring.

  “I don’t make a habit of killing people in cold blood,” I tell him. “If or when I kill you, you’ll be conscious and you’ll be armed. But right now, I need you to drop your guns, step off the road, and help your injured men.”

  “And then?”

  “It’s up to you if you want to keep living your life this way. But if I see you again, killing people who have done nothing wrong, I will end you.”

  His laugh is dry. “Are you usually this generous to people you keep at gunpoint?”

  “No. So count yourself lucky.”

  After they drop their guns and move off the road, I slip my pistol back into its holster. They’re silent as I start under the bridge with Cade keeping pace next to me. I watch his ears, waiting for them to turn back and warn me of the danger behind us.

  They never do.

  I can’t look at the bodies as I pass them. If I do, I’ll do something I will later regret.

  When I’m almost out of earshot, I hear the drawn-out voice carried in the wind: “You’re gonna wish you’d killed me.”

  I wish for a lot of things, but none of them come true.

  1.

  Seph

  In a place with no sun, it’s easy to remember things that would rather be forgotten.

  And this is the worst of them.

  The day was cold and gray, like any other. Dad always said the earth was so sick of us humans, it decided to start over. Too many natural disasters to count, and eventually sickness set in, plaguing every country who thought themselves lucky. It only left those strong enough to survive and start new. But we’re still waiting for that chance, waiting for the sun to reappear.

  We celebrated my ninth birthday with a box of stale cookies. One for each year. Dad let me have every last one of them, even when I offered half. When you’re nine and starved, you can’t deny food, no matter how hard you try.

  We were on a road heading west, toward the rumors of warm weather and the promised glimpse of the sun, when it happened. People rushed out from the cover of rusted cars, brandishing weapons and running toward us, giving us nowhere to escape.

  They surrounded us within seconds and pulled our only belongings off our backs, throwing us to the ground in movements too fast to fight. While they went through our things, others searched us. A man patted me down, touching me in places that made me flinch and kicking me in the ribs once he was done.

  Not once did I cry.

  Dad had taught me to be strong, but he never told me not to be scared. He said everyone should feel fear—it’s how we survive and how we grow stronger.

  “Without fear we are not people,” he’d said to me. “Don’t let yourself be without it. Use it to survive, but don’t let it control you.”

  I did feel fear that day. More than I’d ever felt.

  They pulled my dad to his feet and a man pointed a gun at his head. The man was bald with a scar making a line down the left side of his head and had a roughly shaven jawline.

  He questioned Dad about unimportant things. Where we had gotten our food. Our water. I wished knowing those things weren’t the price for someone’s life. He wouldn’t tell them—not wanting the people who gave us aid to also be killed. He was saving them. The people who would never know his name and how he died.

  How he died for them.

  Someone pulled me to my feet too fast for me to hold my balance, holding my small arms behind my back like I was made from twigs. I saw tears well in my dad’s eyes when he looked at me, for what he knew was to come. The bald man shifted his anger, pointing his gun at me from two feet away, black against the sky.

  “Please,” Dad said, dropping to his knees. “I’ll tell you. Just don’t kill him … please.”

  The man smiled, keeping the gun pointed at my head. “Then tell me, and pray I don’t shoot him anyway.”

  Dad rambled out what he knew, giving them exact directions and an estimate of how long it would take for them to get there. While he did so, the bald man stared at me instead of him for any flicker of confusion or doubt, waiting for me to give Dad away and reveal his lies—which they were.

  I stared back, expressionless—that dead stare so many have acquired. Maybe staring into the eyes of a scared child in the past would expose their lying parent. But he should’ve known that growing up with gray skies, and watching people die before I could walk, made me who I’d become.

  Even at nine years old, I’d learned not to show my fear.

  Use it, but not show it.

  The man finally turned away from me and returned his focus to my dad, allowing me to breathe once more while the hands of a stranger held me in place. That’s when it happened.

  No warning and no time to react.

  The gun exploded into the cold air.

  Echoing death across the barren land.

  The bald man stepped over his dying body, looking down at him like something to be squashed.

  “Maybe watching you die will give your son the strength he needs to survive this world,” he said, turning, a wicked grin across his face. “You’ll thank me one day,” he told me. “We aren’t those whacked cannibals you only see from a distance or hear stories about.” He came closer, putting his mouth to my ear, his breath as rancid as his voice.

  “They aren’t stories, little one. If you survive this, you’ll thank me. That,” he said, straightening, “I can promise you.”

  He turned without another word. They packed into a beaten truck with everything we owned and left me with nothing but a dying father.

  With shaking legs and weakening courage, I knelt next to him as he bled out onto the road. The man had made sure I could watch him die by shooting him in the stomach—the slowest death he could give. I moved to put my hands over his wound, but he stopped me before I felt his blood, instead bringing them to his chest and covering them with his own. His skin was too cold.

  “No boy should feel their father’s blood,” he said.

  Thunder growled on the horizon, warning me of a coming storm. One that I was only beginning to feel within me.

  With his life finally giving way, Dad spoke through cracked lips, his voice weak. “You did well, Seph. Just remember the things I taught you and trust only yourself. Do you hear?”

  I nodded, everything inside me growing numb. “Please don’t leave me here,” I whispered. It was my last attempt to make things right. Something I should have known I couldn’t do. Nobody was around for miles.

  I had never known the world without my father, and I wasn’t sure if I could survive without him. That’s all I could think about while watching him become more still.

  “Ride on,” he said, squeezing my hand with the last of his strength. “Ride on.”

  The wind cut through me as he took his last breath.

  “Dad?”

  His eyes stayed half closed and I pulled my hands from his before they became stiff.

  I didn’t stay there fo
r long. I knew he wouldn’t have wanted me to, so I forced myself to move, not thinking, and repeating his lessons in my head. The outlaws would come back once they figured out he’d lied to them, and I needed to be far away from there when they did. I took his jacket and his boots, telling myself the whole time that it was the right thing to do. I could trade them for food and supplies, or whatever I could get. I untied the red cloth around his wrist and tied it around my own, promising him I would do things right. The way he had taught me. And the way the world had taught him.

  Leaving him there was the hardest thing I ever had to do.

  They left me with nothing. Just memories of their faces.

  Vengeance isn’t something to live for, but that man’s face is one I’ll remember forever. Maybe I’ll see him again and maybe I won’t.

  I try not to think of it much.

  It makes my heart feel wrong when I do.

  It was nine years ago now. Every year growing harder than the last. That day tore something from my heart. Something I don’t think can ever be replaced. Like a chunk of me is missing that I keep trying to find.

  I’m not seeking revenge, but if I ever see that man again, I wouldn’t feel bad about killing him.

  2.

  Avery

  Someone just died. Or, if by some miracle, they haven’t taken their last breath, they will soon. It’s only a matter time. There’s no air down in the mines when the tunnels collapse, trapping a human inside its belly to claim forever. The mine is greedy like that. It likes to take lives while we drain its soul away.

  Life for a life. That’s what Dad always said. “The mine is a living thing. If you don’t treat it well, you’ll find yourself in it forever.”

  I wonder if he still thought that after he found himself in its clutches.

  The siren wails through town, screaming for us to come help unbury the living. I watch people run down the road toward the mountainside, feeling oddly relieved that I don’t have to wonder if someone I love is trapped below. I know the feeling too well and will never miss it.

  “Twice in one week,” I say, my breath fogging the glass.