by Ric Beard
SAMPSON'S LEGACY
Earth’s Ashes Series Book 2
RIC BEARD
CONTENTS
Sampson’s Legacy
1. Luck of the Draw
2. Think You Could Wrap It Up?
3. You're Late
4. Quite the Scam
5. Don't Shoot the Dog
6. Industrious
7. Are You Sick?
8. The Shit
9. They're Scavengers
10. Anybody Dead?
11. A Hell of a Greeting
12. No Can Do
13. They're All Dead
14. Feisty
15. Don't Panic
16. All My Nagging Questions
17. Real Keen on Her
18. Good Girl?
19. My Father Called Me That
20. Testy
21. Why I'm Using It
22. A Second Coat of Paint
23. Your Gratitude
24. From the Shadows
25. Symbolic
26. Above Your Station
27. Shit!
28. Hope You Know How To Swim
29. What's with the Fancy Glasses?
30. Hands Off Me, Swine
31. Lexi Shaw, For the Win
32. Like A Grape
33. Maw?
34. Like An Old Cowboy Movie
35. Steak
36. Push Up The Timeline
37. You Need A Nap
38. Socially-challenged
39. Would've Set the House on Fire
40. Oops
41. I Hate the World
42. I Hope It Hurt
43. Iterate and Optimize
44. Should've Stayed in The City
45. Let Mama Know
46. What Would Lexi Do?
47. Killing Puppies
48. Utter Dumbfuck
49. Self Defense
50. Not So Tough
51. Went South
52. Mind Our Own Business
53. So Much for That Idea
54. Time to Make Some Holes
55. Where Are My Fucking Friends?
56. Which Way Did I Flip It?
57. Crazy Old Coot
58. Sonza-bitches
59. A Pulse Gatling
60. He’s My Brother
61. Into A Shit Show
62. Don’t Worry About The Lady
63. Days Of Chivalry
64. Looks Like a Mine
65. Carson Got His Man
66. He’ll Be Your Eyes
67. Sounds Like It
68. One Down
69. A Lot We Could Learn
70. Neutralized
71. Made to Ram
72. Coming at Us from Both Sides
73. Floor It
74. Women Are the Craziest
75. Get in The Damn Truck
76. Yo!
77. Doers
78. All Twerked Out
79. Hedging Your Bets?
80. Once A Whore…
81. What About Ruby?
82. She Won’t Stop
Epilogue
Join The Tribe and Get A Free Book
Afterword
Acknowledgments
SAMPSON’S LEGACY
Ric Beard
Copyright © 2017 Ric Beard
All rights reserved.
For Emily
Chapter One
LUCK OF THE DRAW
1
The figure in black peered around the corner at the edge of the alley that emptied into the main thoroughfare of the small, MidEastern town. Halfway up the street, Lawkeeper Simms loitered on the planks outside the pub as a line of patrons filed out into the frigid night. Leaning against the exterior wall, the lawman reached into his shirt pocket and pinched out a small box. A white spark appeared in his hand as he struck a flint, and an orange glow illuminated his long facial features as he puffed on his hand-rolled cigarette.
“G’night, Lawkeeper,” one of the patrons slurred as he stumbled off the walk and into the dusty street.
“Y’all be careful, now,” Simms said. Pushing off the wall with his foot, he peeked through the door, turning his head left and right, probably sweeping the room for any stragglers.
Governor Sampson’s lawman ran a tight ship. Unlike many communities throughout the region who’d inherited the lawkeepers he’d dropped in their towns, Simms was popular among his people. He always left his weapon holstered, kept a low tone of voice, and ensured the pub emptied quietly at the end of each night, without fail.
From the alley across the street, the figure in black regarded the owner poised behind the bar through the dingy windows. When Simms raised his hand, the owner greeted him in kind and nodded. It was the same routine the figure had witnessed last he reconnoitered the lawman, the last act of his daily grind in a MidEast shit hole that was proving slower-to-acclimate to the new era than the others throughout the region. The lawman’s patience with his lazy folks naturally made him popular.
A new lumber mill cranked out wood in a town to the north. A textile factory, though still largely a manual production for now, was cranking out everything from garments to window dressings. Before long, biofuel production would ramp up in another principality only fifty miles from here. This town, however, wasn’t producing much of anything, and this lawkeeper had the poor fortune of having been the governor’s selection to provide law and order, here.
The figure shrugged at the thought.
Luck of the draw, my friend.
No, it wasn’t Simms’s fault. The late general Horace had picked this town clean of its male population to build his ill-conceived army bent on the rule of the MidEast and the conquering of Triangle City. There was only so much to be done about it, though, and the figure’s plan required Simms to play this part.
Having done his duty for the evening, Simms stepped off the walk, into the road, and sauntered east. Under the light of the moon, small plumes of white dust kicked up from beneath the lawkeeper’s boots. Eyeing the windows and then the way the street was almost aglow in the light, the figure backed into the shadows and took a breath, leaning against the wall to gather focus.
Reversing and running back down the alley, the figure in black turned east at the next block, into another alley between the backs of two rows of buildings.
He wouldn’t get that far, tonight.
The alley was narrow, and even in the cold of winter, people slept with their windows cracked to allow in the cool breeze to counteract the wood stoves that caused them to sweat beneath their blankets. It was like this throughout the MidEast. If Governor Sampson had his way, it would all be electric one day.
But those kinds of things would be dealt with in time. For now, the figure in black had work to do. The alley created a wind tunnel as black boots stepped quietly through the alley; every footfall dropped with intent.
When the end of the alley came up, the black-shrouded figure leaned to peer around the corner. Simms paced in this direction, the orange glow illuminating his face a final time before he flipped the butt onto the road in front of him and stepped on it without breaking his pace.
If he stayed true to his habitual course, Simms would turn right up the alley just across from the figure in black and enter his back door halfway up the next block. The figure pushed aside the long black coat and thumbed the dial on the pulse pistol holstered there as the lawkeeper entered the alley for his final push home.
It would be the final right turn of his lifetime.
; After a quick glance in both directions, the figure scurried across the rocky road and slid into the alley behind Simms. Scanning the footing with each step, lifting booted feet intentionally over any debris and lowering them slowly into the gravel, matching the lawkeeper’s steps so as to go undetected, the figure’s long strides carried him closer.
Heart pounding in the figure’s chest, its gloved hand reached out and gripped the back of the lawkeeper’s collar. The butt of the pulse pistol slammed into the back of the lawman’s skull.
Simms’s body went limp and he slammed onto the powdery alleyway. The figure stepped over him and peered down. Verifying the pistol’s output setting was to full capacity, the figure flipped a final switch to silence the weapon and aimed it at the lawkeeper’s face.
Simms’s eyes fluttered open and the figure smiled down at him, raising one shoulder in a half-shrug.
“Luck of the draw, lawkeeper. Sorry.”
A blue flash erupted from the barrel, and Simms’s eyes exploded into milky liquid in their sockets.
The figure in black turned east up the alley, looked both ways at the corner, and stepped into the center of the street. Whistling a soft tune into the night, the figure spun the pistol on an index finger. Light bloomed from the blackness in a second story window, and the figure’s chin ticked upward. Thanks to the wide brim of the hat, the smile crossing the figure’s face wouldn’t be seen by anyone gazing out the window.
The figure reached the end of the street and strolled across the final cross road, moving toward the grassy hill that marked the border of the town.
Chapter Two
THINK YOU COULD WRAP IT UP?
2
Wednesday
January 19th, 2139
Lexi Shaw turned crystal blue eyes into the night sky and sighed, sending steam bellowing from her lips and into the cool night air.
“I told you we should have killed that weasel.”
It was just like her, too. She wouldn’t be Lexi without pointing out others’ mistakes. Sometimes she was just the same as she was 120 years before. Snotty. Superior.
Sean Stone guessed when you got to the root of people, they never really changed. They might adapt to the company they keep, but they didn’t change.
Oh sure, she was a highly trained hand-to-hand combat expert and technological whiz, but those were the kinds of things one should master with 100-or-so years’ practice. Being a snippy little pain in the ass who highlighted others’ flaws? Well, in Lexi’s case, that was as natural as a fart.
“Like I was supposed to know,” Sean said, frowning at his sister’s upturned nose. “I mean, what are the chances? We ride hundreds of miles across the badlands, dress like badlanders, walk into this…this town—if you can call it that—and out of all the freaking people whose paths we cross, the one guy we showed a little mercy turns up and bites us in the ass. No…Really…Tell me. What are the chances?”
Lexi gazed at the starless sky, her focus untouched by lightning flashes illuminating the puffy clouds to the southwest or the distant thunder rolling closer. She was a specimen of focus, an expert at living inside her own head.
Anyone else would be scowling right now, but Lexi’s facial muscles were slack, relaxed. He’d often wondered if maybe she didn’t scowl or furrow her eyebrows because she’d practiced in the mirror enough to know it affected her face poorly.
But no. Lexi Shaw was anything but shallow. She kept her expression even because she knew it was intimidating in a world where men had regressed to the point where they expected their women to smile through all sorts of atrocities.
“You two shut up or I’m gonna hang you now,” the man pacing on the roof across the dirt road from them said. “You yammer like siblings.”
This was the local lawkeeper, one of many such men left in each town by the self-proclaimed governor of the MidEast, Sampson De Le Court.
The low tone of Lexi’s response was casual, bordering on disinterested.
Lexi spat. “We are siblings, cretin.”
Sean didn’t care about the guy on the roof, and he didn’t so much as flick his eyes in that direction. The ones standing at the corners of the building at street level could blow him, too. If he was going to hang, this piece of business needed to be sorted, first.
“Seriously,” Sean said. “How was I supposed to know?”
Lexi snapped her head toward him. Even though a spotlight behind her shrouded her face in shadow, her piercing blue eyes practically glowed in the dark.
“It’s not about knowing. It’s about listening. I told you we should kill the guy. I told you that we shouldn’t let him go. I was ready to put him out of his misery and you stopped me. Now you ask me, how could you know? Well, maybe you couldn’t know. But if you’d listened, Sean, we wouldn’t be tied to these poles and my tingling hands wouldn’t be bound in these filthy ropes. We sure as hell wouldn’t be waiting for a thunderstorm to come and drench us in a podunk town in the middle of nowhere, just so we could be good and wet when our necks snap in their nooses!”
Sean huffed and spat.
“Shit.”
“Yeah,” Lexi replied.
“Shit, shit, shit.”
“Right.”
“Fine. We should have killed him.”
“No kidding.”
“We should have set his head on the back of that missile launcher and decapitated him. ‘Should’ve carved out his Adam’s apple and played handball. We should’ve— “
“Don’t be such a drama queen.” Her eyes rolled along with her entire head as she turned away from him.
“Drama queen? You guys, your precious Foundation, are the ones who are always talking about how you want to save civilization, make it better than it was before the fall. How do we work toward that if we kill everybody?”
“Everybody?” Closing her eyes, she shook her head at the ground. “He was one guy. He was about to shoot a missile at Triangle City. Population, like 300,000. Think big picture, William.” He hated when she used his old-world name, and she knew it. “You saw the smoke jetting from the back of that missile, right?”
“Even so, the people around here don’t seem to have any love for their former badlander general, Horace. This new guy, Sampson, seems to have turned things. So, why would they care if we wiped out half his army?”
“You haven’t been paying attention. Horace conscripted half his army.”
“So?” If his hands hadn’t been bound. Sean would’ve thrown them out in derision. Unfortunately, it wasn’t an option.
“So? Do you know what the word means? It means he forced them to serve!”
“Are you coming to the point?”
“My god, you are dense when you set your mind to arguing.” Lexi huffed. “The men he conscripted were these people’s brothers. Their sons. The guy from the missile launcher couldn’t have convinced these people to tie us to anything. They tied us to these poles because we killed their families.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah.”
“I guess we’re bad people for saving a city full of people,” Sean muttered.
One of the men standing in the shadows of the building stepped into the waning moonlight peeking between the coming storm clouds.
“My brother was one of those folks didn’t make it back, asshole. I’m gonna enjoy watching you swing.” He leveled a finger on Sean. “You know what I would enjoy even more?”
Sean cocked his head upward in response.
“If you two would shut your traps.”
The lawkeeper standing on the rood chimed in. “Screw it, Jimmy. Cut his tongue out. If she says anything, take hers, too.”