Cowboy Strong (Cowboy Up Book 5)

by Allison Merritt

  He hit pavement without incident, drove past Harvey Gap Reservoir and didn’t see a soul out fishing or stand-up paddle boarding. His insides tightened. Though he preferred being alone, he guessed he at least liked to know people were around. Somewhere. But where?

  His radio had quit picking up stations Thursday. He’d found something when he’d adjusted the dial looking for a station, but what he’d gotten was on AM radio and it didn’t sound like a DJ. It had sounded like that alien invasion spoof back in the old days—was it called The War of the Worlds?—where people took it as real and went off the deep end. This announcer he’d heard had been rambling on about Russians and biological warfare. Something wild about the mail and a gas released through balloons in heavily populated areas. When he’d gone so far as to say “zombies”, Dallas had gotten disgusted and turned off the radio. What the actual hell? Did anybody listen to that crap? Was the guy being paid? Because he sure as hell didn’t have a radio voice.

  Ha. That broadcast had done a number on him, though, since here he was dealing with some weird traffic pattern and his poor bored brain wanted to connect the two.

  He shook his head as he rolled the stop sign and took a right toward Rifle. The literal radio silence since that day—and he knew it had remained silent because each day since, he’d grabbed his bag of Spitz Dill Pickle sunflower seeds and sat in the driver’s seat of the white ’85 Dodge while he tried to find a baseball game on the radio—had to be somehow connected to this absence of people.

  Buzzards circled the field to his right, so he slowed, stopped, got out to see what they had. It looked big, and if he remembered right there were usually horses in that field. Sure enough, he could see hair and bones to identify the roan gelding he remembered. Whoa. What the hell had killed it? Bear and mountain lion were usually up in the high country this time of year, and didn’t move down until the herd animals did… Curling a lip at the stink wafting over to him, he got back in his truck. A left turn at Miller Lane, named for his great-grandpa, and he was almost home. What was that on the side of the road there? He slowed, but this time the heebie-jeebies told him to stay in the truck. Not much left of whatever it was, except some denim and a boot.

  Christ on a crutch. A person had died there and nobody picked up their body? Left them to be eaten by birds? Or…something. Fighting his gag reflex, he accelerated. When he got home, he’d call it in to the sheriff.

  Only a little farther, and he’d find out from his folks what the exact hell had gone on.

  He crossed the highway, the train tracks then their cattleguard, and right away felt at home. But also…alone. Nobody had driven on their road since a heavy rain had washed water from the fields on the right above the clogged culvert. Things were bone dry right now, so it had been several days. His folks should’ve been home from Kansas by Friday at latest, and they’d said they’d bring him up supplies by Sunday. Yesterday. When he hadn’t seen or heard from them, he’d figured what the hell. After two weeks on the hill, he could do with a hot shower and a little TV time. Maybe he’d talk Mom into finding a fireworks display someplace they could go watch together. He’d missed the fireworks on the 4th of July when they were moving the cattle up to summer camp.

  In front of the house, he killed the engine. The stock trailer Dad had bought from Kansas wasn’t there, which meant his folks hadn’t made it home yet.

  Mom’s garden looked pretty wilted, so the kid down the road hadn’t been there in several days to water, either. Shit. Jason might be a bit of a punk, but he showed up every day to water and bring in the mail. Did Mom and Dad know he hadn’t been coming? Where the hell were they, anyway? Maybe they’d stopped in Denver for a night, treated the grandkids to a Rockies game. That would be like Dad, but it wasn’t like them to not call and let him know they’d changed plans. Not like them at all. It felt all wrong in his gut.

  His cell phone on the seat beside him showed zero bars. Weird. As he slid off the seat and out the door, he turned the phone off and on. Maybe that’d wake it up and it’d start getting signal again.

  He had to use the hide-a-key to open the front door. Inside was dark and stuffy. And it stayed dark, even when he flipped the light switch. Great. Power was off, too. In the kitchen, a puddle on the floor grew by steady, stinky drips below the freezer side of the fridge. Something had melted in there, which meant the power’d been off for a while. Yuck. No power meant no well, and no shower, not even a cool one. At least until he fired up the generator and got the batteries charging on the backup. Once that was running, he could draw from the gas-fired water heater safely.

  The phone on the kitchen wall had no dial tone. Figured. And his cell still searched for signal. Somehow he bet it wouldn’t find one.

  What the hell had happened to civilization while he’d been in the mountains avoiding it?

  * * * *

  Two hours later, he smelled better thanks to a shower, and Mom’s garden was getting a nice drink of water courtesy of the irrigation pump. Good thing for Dad’s stash of full gas cans in the old bunkhouse. He shouldn’t have to worry about generator fuel for a while. Once the batteries got a full charge, he’d try running an extension cord to the fridge and decide whether he could afford to keep it going or not.

  If this thing lasted.

  Which it wouldn’t.

  Which he was about to confirm by driving to town and seeing what he could see. Maybe he’d find somebody at the cop shop and have them call the sheriff about that…well, that…whatever he’d seen on the side of the road.

  Behind the wheel of his own truck, he went for the radio control and then remembered the stations were all out. Or were they? He hated doing it, but he switched over to AM and adjusted to where he’d heard the Crazy Wild Tale on Thursday. Buzzing, static, and a voice crackled as he put the window down, grabbed for the bag of seeds he kept stashed in the console.

  “…Kansas, off I70 about a mile south at the Razorback Boulevard exit. Come by and see me if you’re out this way, uninfected, and friendly.”

  So it was the same guy as last week, who’d said he was broadcasting from Kansas.

  “In case you’re not friendly, the door downstairs is locked and I’ve got a loaded .44 on my desk.” The DJ laughed at his joke, coughed. Dallas pegged it for a smoker’s cough. “I’m fully stocked on fuel for the genny, got a pile of beef jerky and cases of Red Bull, and all the apocalyptic info I can lay my hands on. If you’ve got something new, call me on a CB radio, channel nineteen.”

  CB radio. Talk about a blast from the past. Dad used to have one to communicate with cow camp, but since cell phones were so much easier now, they hadn’t put a unit in the “new” camp truck, the one he’d just driven down in.

  “What we’ve got so far, in case you’re just tuning in, is this: Mail delivered to pretty much every household in America last Monday was tainted with some sort of virus—or bacteria—designed by Russia’s maddest scientists. Between that, and strategic ‘balloon bombing’ in metro areas, at least ninety-nine percent of Americans were infected. According to video the CDC broadcast prior to loss of transmission capability, the virus has around a fifty percent mortality rate.”

  Shit. Fifty percent? Dallas forced his grip on the wheel to loosen as he neared the Rifle city limits.

  “…remaining infected suffer very…ahem…grotesque symptoms. The frontal and temporal lobes of the brain are subdued, causing loss of speech capability—although most can still make human sounds—loss of conscience in decision making, and curiously enough, control of eye muscles. Muscles in and around the eyes relax to a fully dilated state and in some patients the eyes do not work in unison, which would send confusing signals along the optic nerve to the brain. The CDC didn’t understand how the section of the brain that controls vision, which is in the back of the head, could be affected, but this seems to be the most troubling symptom for humans. Experts were also still confused at last transmission with why conscience is affected but emotion is not. Human victims exhibit
a variety of unforgivable behaviors, including acting on an exaggerated sex drive at any opportunity, unprovoked violence, and even cannibalism.”

  Dallas stopped in the street at a dead light. His stomach heaved with the flashed image of the denim on the side of the road. This had to be some made-up BS. It had to. Were his parents holed up in some roadside hotel room, waiting for this thing to end?

  “…canines as well. Please proceed with caution when out in the open. Though human victims tend to only come out between sunset and sunrise because of the sensitivity to light, infected canines have been seen in broad daylight. And they’re aggressive, folks. Not only are you fighting off a dog that wants to eat your leg for lunch, but one bite, and you’ll end up just like him in twenty-four to thirty-six hours.”

  What kind of messed-up virus was that? Dogs had it too? Maybe some neighborhood dogs had taken down the horse he’d seen in that field.

  “…an unprecedented hunger for meat. Only time will tell if that appetite changes as their options for fresh kills diminish.”

  Wait. Was the DJ still talking about dogs? Were the sick humans all meat eaters now too? Even the vegans?

  “I’ve had reports of the infected working in groups to bring down large prey, so they seem to be communicating somehow. Best advice: get inside someplace secure before sunset. Figure out a way to protect your food and yourself, and don’t expose yourself to anything the infected have touched or air where they’ve recently been. No one knows how long the virus remains contagious. If you can get to a CB and figure out how to work it, give me a ring. Again, use channel nineteen. My handle is Survivorman. I’m taking an informal census of those who are listening. So far we’re up to ninety-three.”

  Ninety-three. That was all? How far did this guy’s AM station broadcast?

  Damn, the streets were quiet. Creeped him out. And he hadn’t heard a train since he’d been home. Even the interstate was dead silent.

  Dead. Ugh. Well, he sure as hell wasn’t dead. Tomorrow he’d have to figure out how to stay not-dead, by stocking up on whatever he needed to survive.

  For now, he’d cruise around town quick to see if anybody else was left, then he’d better get home. Normally he’d have plenty of time ‘til dark, but the sky was all but black with an incoming thunderstorm.

  He’d heard all he could stomach for now, so he turned the radio off.

  Glass glinted in the street ahead of him, and farther up the road on the other side…and farther still again on his side. The street lights. Even though they’d all be dark with the power out, looked like most of the ones on this street wouldn’t be shining again—somebody had shot them. Rude. Didn’t seem like the work of somebody whose eyes didn’t work together.

  So he had company. Somewhere.

  He drove the length of Railroad Avenue, found a few shop windows shot out, one hell of a mess of garbage and food strewn around the parking lot of the grocery store. Some windows missing at the liquor store and a bunch of empties in the parking lot. Probably the guy with the gun had opened that barrel of monkeys, and the infected had gone in to play.

  The street became highway again at the end of town. Not a moving vehicle anywhere, though. Looked like a Sunday at the Ford dealership—everything quiet and still. Oh, except the spot for the featured fancy vehicle sat empty, and a glass front door had been shattered. The work of the streetlight-shooter? Or had somebody else decided to hell with the law, too?

  Nothing more to see out here, so he’d flip a “U” and head back home.

  What…

  He stopped hard. Stared.

  Coming down the highway…looked like a blonde leading a horse. Long, loping strides on that girl, reminded him of—

  Nah. No. Nope. He was having visions, like those guys in the desert who thought they saw an oasis with all sorts of good shit—trees, water, women carrying baskets of fruit on their heads. He had to be a little fruity in his own head. Maybe he’d imagined this whole thing: his folks blowing off bringing him supplies, that nutty guy on the radio, the apocalypse or whatever, and most certainly the sight of her sauntering down Highway 13 ahead of a loaded-down Palomino. He knuckled his eyes, wishing he had an On/Off switch or a Restore button so he could start over fresh and return to a point where life operated without this sort of freeze-up.

  No damn way. He must be napping at cow camp, and that stupid radio broadcast he’d heard had sent him into a crazy dream. And since he’d spent the whole summer alone, he was overly horny, which explained Jinx Petersen’s appearance in the Year’s Looniest Dream.

  Yeah, that was it. He’d dreamed this whole wild day. Well, he’d show his souped-up imagination who was boss.

  He hit the gas, cranked the wheel hard, and made that U-turn. Let that awful, lovely figment of his imagination shrink in the distance of his rearview mirror.

  “See what you get, brain? For fantasizing about being the last guy on Earth, and she’s the last woman? Hell, no. Just forget that. Matter of fact, forget this whole scenario, ’kay?” He slapped the steering wheel for emphasis. Soon, he’d wake up in the camp bed and this empty highway would be a memory. If he looked in the rearview again, she’d be gone.

  When he looked back, she’d stopped walking and had thrown both hands in the air. “Are you kidding me?” or something like it must be coming from those moving lips.

  * * * *

  Jinx stopped waving her hands, bent to retrieve the reins she’d dropped, and gave the retreating red Ford the one-finger salute with her empty right hand.

  What a jerk. She was ninety-nine percent sure it had been Dallas, and even though she normally avoided him at all costs, today was not a normal day. She’d have welcomed any conversation, even with him.

  The truck slowed, its driver apparently having received her hand signal.

  Great. He was backing up, right down the middle of the highway. That might be worse than having him drive away.

  Faking calm, she resumed her determined stroll toward town. No point in looking as confused and afraid as she felt, right?

  Just a few feet ahead of her, he stopped, killed the truck engine, and got out. She kept walking, and as she passed the front of his truck, he stood with his arms crossed, his legs braced apart.

  She ought to ignore him, keep walking with her head held high.

  “What the hell, Dallas?” She stopped so fast, Korbel bumped into her back.

  “Shit.” Dallas shook his head, smacked the hood. “She’s real. Nothing fantasy-like there.”

  “What?” Her hands had gone to her hips. Dammit. Whatever he was mumbling about didn’t matter. The big lug had seen her out here, probably the only other person for miles around, and instead of stopping to talk at all, he’d tried to run. Figured. “What the hell is going on?” No cell service, not another soul in sight, except apparently the last person she wanted to see. One garbled message had come in on her phone from her Dad, sent last Wednesday, and she didn’t want to try to make sense of what he’d been saying.

  “Nothin’ good.” Those deep, dark eyes of his looked almost as worried as she felt. “Where have you been, to avoid it?” His eyes narrowed, probably because he remembered why she wasn’t out rodeoing.

  She let out a long breath. At least he hadn’t asked about that. “Dad dropped me off last Monday and I’ve been camping up around Coulter Lake.”

  “Alone?” He actually looked over her shoulder, like he might see some other cowboy riding up behind her. Good grief.

  “I’m a big girl, Dallas.” She ignored his don’t-I-know-it smirk and the way he looked her up and down. “Where’s everybody at?” And why was he the one she had to ask?

  “So far as I can tell, we’re everybody.” What an obnoxious thing to say. She wouldn’t even reply—he had to explain himself. “I’ve been at cow camp for two weeks, finally came down today looking for some food and a shower.” God, she could do with a shower herself, and to think she had to be all stinky and dirty in front of him. He looked around the horizo
n. “Sounds like the end of the world happened while we were in the hills. Some sort of biological attack, killed off half the people and mutated the rest.”

  “Mutated?” He must be screwing with her. Figured he’d take advantage of a bad situation and try to scare her worse.

  “Look, if you’re headed home, you better get on your horse and hightail it there. I’ll come around tomorrow and explain, but consider other people zombies at this point. You don’t wanta be out after dark—that’s when they come out because their eyes are all screwed up.”

  “Zombies!” She tugged Korbel’s reins. “Thanks for nothing.” God, the one time he really could’ve been helpful—well, aside from back in the day when he had been— “See you around, I guess.”

  “No, Jinx, I’m serious.”

  “Sure you are. Screw off.” Her boots stomped along and Korbel’s shoes clip-clopped for quite awhile before she heard the truck engine start behind them. When he drove past, she looked away.

  She’d find out on her own what was going on. Who needed Dallas, anyway?

  But she pulled her phone from her pocket and stared again at the text version of Dad’s voice mail, which had appeared today after she’d gotten past the golf course.

  Buddy’s sick, sweetie. If I don’t make it up there Saturday it’s because I didn’t… Hope you don’t catch it. I love you.

  Buddy’s sick…maybe he’d meant “body’s sick,” as in “everybody’s sick”.

  She hadn’t seen a single car the whole way down, past the rock-climbing areas in the canyon, the falls, Rifle Gap reservoir, the golf course—all places that should’ve been packed on Labor Day.

  She felt a little queasy. What if part of what Dallas had said was true? Could she even make it home before dark? Korbel had been going for over twenty miles already, and with all the gear she had strapped on him, she didn’t feel right about riding him more. Still…they’d make better time if she rode. She’d hurry through town and on the other side of the river, she’d ride. And hopefully if they had reason to run, he’d still have it in him.