by Tom Abrahams
“So that means we don’t take another break,” said Grat. “We do our jobs and get the kid to Lubbock. Then we find ourselves a couple women, some pills, a cheap place to sleep. It’s all good then.”
A toothy grin spread across Emmett’s face. “At least a couple women.” He laughed, fidgeting with anticipation in his saddle. “At least a couple.”
“And the pills,” said Grat. “They got good ones in Lubbock. Lots to choose from.”
“Lots of women to choose from,” said Emmett. He licked his upper lip and then flicked his tongue like a lizard. “Ooh wee.”
Grat felt a tug on the rope and he looked over at Sawyer.
The boy’s eyebrows were knitted, his mouth turned down. He suddenly looked his age. “Who’s General Roof?”
Emmett cackled. “Boy wants to know who Roof is.”
“He’s one of the generals,” offered Grat. “One of the men who helped put the Cartel together. He’s a legend.”
Emmett nodded. “A legend.”
“What do the generals do?” asked Sawyer. “I know you grunts do all of the hard work, and the posse bosses are in charge of you. And I know there are captains, right?”
Grat turned away from the boy. He was riding between Sawyer and his brother. Emmett shrugged, apparently unsure of how Grat should answer the question. He drew a full canteen of water from his saddlebag and took a sip of the cool liquid. Cold water was a luxury he didn’t often enjoy. He took a longer swig and sucked it between the gaps in his rotting teeth, swirling it around in his mouth with his tongue.
Sawyer tugged on the rope again. “What do they do?”
Grat tugged back on the rope, almost jerking Sawyer from the saddle as they trotted north. The boy regained his balance and set his feet back into the stirrup irons.
“They run things,” said Grat. “Everything the Cartel does. All over the territory. They’re at the top of the pyramid. That’s all you need to know.”
“Who are they?” Sawyer asked. “How’d they get to the top of the pyramid?”
“First off,” said Grat. “They built the pyramid. Second off, they’re the generals. That’s who they are.”
The kid was persistent. “I mean who were they? You know, before the Scourge.”
Grat laughed from his belly. “Who knows, boy?” he said. “Ain’t none of us what we was before the Scourge.”
“Yeah,” echoed Emmett. “That’s a stupid question. None of us is who we was.”
They rode for another few minutes in silence, accompanied by the quick tap of the horses’ shoes as they pushed forward. Grat watched Sawyer as they rode. He was intrigued with the kid.
Despite his untenable situation—handcuffed, strapped to a horse, on his way to certain death—he was inquisitive. He was defiant. He was tough. An occasional wind swirled past them, ruffling the collars of the brothers’ matching fourth-hand barn jackets. The elbows and cuffs were threadbare.
They were far warmer than Sawyer, whose teeth chattered reflexively with each northerly gust. The wind, when it picked up, came straight at them, dropping the ambient temperature a good twenty degrees. It was cold enough without that wind. The sun was almost straight overhead on what had become a clear day. The sky was ice blue.
Grat noticed the boy shivering. “You cold?”
Sawyer flexed against the metal cuffs on his wrists. He hunched his shoulders forward and drew his arms close to his side. His chin was tucked to his chest. He glanced over at Grat but didn’t reply.
Grat forgot about his discomfort in the saddle. He didn’t like kids. He never had, even when he was one. They’d picked on him and made him feel small. “Grat the Gnat” they’d called him. He was tall and skinny with narrow shoulders and a bird chest like the boy riding alongside him.
His brother had tried, with a shocking level of futility, to help him when he could. Emmett was small and a half-wit. He wasn’t much help with defending Grat physically or verbally. Sometimes he’d made things worse.
Eventually, as they got older and Grat got stronger, the teasing stopped. Grat turned the tables and became the aggressor. His brother tagged along. When Grat hooked up with a biker gang in Montgomery County, Texas, a year before the Scourge, Emmett was allowed to join too.
They fit in. They had friends. They were respected, for the most part, for their proclivities and their willingness to do whatever needed to be done.
“You remind me of me,” said Grat. “You’re a tough young’un. I respect that. Don’t mean I like you. Means I see where you’re coming from.”
Emmett cackled. “You serious, Grat? You’re joking, right? That’s a joke.”
Grat watched the boy’s non-reaction to his admission. Sawyer didn’t blink. He turned away and buried his head, trying to avoid the buffeting wind as much as he could.
“I ain’t jokin’,” Grat said, his eyes still on the boy. Then he turned to Emmett. “What he’s probably been through, what he’s gonna have to go through at the Jones? I’d be pissin’ in my drawers if I was him.”
Emmett’s face curled into a pout. “That’s a joke. Kid’s a kid. His momma’s dead. He’s gonna be dead. Here you are with your pleasantries and whatnot. I don’t get you sometimes, Grat.”
Grat turned to look at his brother. He sniffed the cold snot dripping at the end of his long, thin nose and then spat a thick wad of it onto the road. “I don’t care what you get, Emmett.”
CHAPTER 19
OCTOBER 15, 2037, 12:02 PM
SCOURGE +5 YEARS
ABILENE, TEXAS
Cyrus Skinner licked the blood from the tip of his middle finger. He’d sliced it on a shard of wood as he picked his way back through the HQ and into his office.
He checked it for a splinter, spreading open the paper-thin gash until another bloom of blood filled the space. Finding none, he sucked it clean again and found his way to the corner of the unrecognizable room.
He took off his white hat and set it carefully on the floor next to him and lowered himself to his knees. He ran his hands along the wood planks on the floor, occasionally tapping on them with his knuckles. He worked one board and then the next, brushing away debris and dust, until a tap produced a hollow sound.
Skinner looked over his shoulder, assuring none of the hundred men gathering outside the HQ on Walnut Street had slipped inside. Confident nobody was in the room with him, he fished a pocketknife from his pants and slid the two-inch blade into the joint between a pair of hollow planks. He leveraged the blade until one of the planks popped up and he could fit his fingers underneath the gap.
Skinner pulled on the board until the three-foot length of it broke free, cracking into two pieces. He folded the knife, returned it to his pants, and used both hands to free the adjacent boards.
He tossed the boards aside, sucked the sting from his finger, and leaned over to peer into the subfloor compartment. The light filtering in through the window was enough for him to see the treasure buried there.
Skinner reached into the hole and pressed his hand flat against an electronic panel. Nothing happened. He tried again. Nothing. Either the blood on his finger or a dead internal battery rendered the fingerprint recognition useless.
Skinner cursed under his breath and searched his memory.
“Yes,” he hissed when the numbers raced back to his consciousness. He grasped the cylinder, spun it to the left three times, and found the right number. He spun it to the right and again to the left then cranked an adjacent lever to open the Cartel’s emergency safe.
Skinner pulled on the heavy iron door and it opened outward. The safe was sitting on its back, its contents placed there neatly. Skinner pulled them out one by one and set them next to his hat.
He looked toward the window and smiled at the dusty sunlight beaming through. Skinner needed sunlight today. He reached one more time into the safe and removed a small black bag. He opened the bag and filled it with the treasure, slung it over his shoulder, and trudged across the debris back to Walnu
t Street.
A cacophony of gritty, drawling voices met him as he stepped from the wide sidewalk onto the street. He drew his lower lip up toward his nose and nodded. Skinner figured there had to be as many as a hundred fifty, maybe two hundred men crowding the street. Some of them were gathered around a box truck. Others were checking the oil on a rusting black SUV. There was a landscaping trailer draped with a large blue tarp attached to the back of the SUV.
There were countless horses and a couple of motorcycles. Men not preoccupied with prepping their transportation were talking, smoking, checking their weapons. None of them paid Skinner any mind. The grunts and bosses were focused.
This was good. No more child’s play. No more special forces scout teams. They needed overkill to handle Mad Max. Skinner tried to remind himself he knew the infidel’s real name now. It was Battle. Battle. He whispered the name to himself again and again as he walked south on Walnut, away from his army. Battle. He cursed the name. He cursed the man. He cursed his predicament.
Skinner looked up at the sky, took the bag from his shoulder, and dropped to a knee in the middle of the street. He opened up the satchel and pulled out a two-pound, eleven-inch, black-fabric-covered square. He carefully unfolded the square, revealing three panels. The panels were coated with solar cells. Skinner laid the portable charger on its back and plugged a long, kinked cord into a port along its bottom edge. A red light illuminated and began flashing.
Skinner adjusted the panels, ensuring they were getting as much light as possible, ran his fingers along the cord, and connected it to a satellite phone. He pushed the power button on the phone, and after a few seconds, the screen on the front of the phone flickered to life.
He looked at the charge indicator on the phone. Three percent. A tiny lightning bolt indicated the solar charger was doing its job.
Skinner pressed a combination to unlock the phone and then pressed a satellite location key. The phone alerted him the search mechanism was working.
He reached back into the bag and pulled out the most important pieces of the treasure: a pack of Marlboro cigarettes and a lighter.
He tore open the box and hungrily slipped a cigarette between his lips. He lit the rarefied treat and inhaled slowly, relishing the taste of a cigarette he’d not enjoyed in years. The crap he regularly smoked might as well have been filled with dirt and sawdust compared to the Marlboro.
The phone trilled with a tone, indicating it had located a satellite and was connected to the network. Skinner took another short drag and cradled the phone in his hands. He carefully dialed the prescribed series of numbers and hit send.
He lifted the phone to his ear and listened to a series of clicks, followed by a warbling ring, then someone answered.
“The emergency phone?” asked General Roof. His voice was raspy and hollow. He sounded like someone who’d spent a week in the desert without water.
Skinner pushed the phone against his ear. “No choice.”
“This Mad Max fellow is more of a problem than you led me to believe,” said the general.
“He’s a slippery one,” said Skinner. “But we’re not taking any chances. We’ve got a couple hundred men about to track him to Lubbock. We’ll get him.”
“A couple hundred men?” asked the general. “To stop one man? Is that necessary? That’s a lot of rations, wear on horses, and it puts our resources out of position.”
“We’ve tried smaller groups,” said Skinner. “It ain’t worked. He’s too good. I hate to say it, but he is. We are taking horses. We’re also taking part of the motor pool. He’s in a Humvee.”
“He’s trying to retrieve the boy. That’s why he’s going to Lubbock?”
“Yes.”
“I won’t ask how you know this. And I won’t ask how he has a Humvee. I don’t want to know.”
Skinner sucked on the cigarette and then blew out the smoke through his nose. He didn’t answer.
The general sighed. “You think you’ll get to him before he gets to Lubbock?”
“If we leave now. I got a handful of posses taking different roads. We’re bound to find him no matter what path he takes. I’m pretty certain of that.”
“Good,” said the general. “I’m going to send out a garrison we keep at the southern edge of Lubbock. I want them to squeeze Mad Max as he approaches. It’ll leave that edge of town unguarded, but it’s tactically smart. You agree?”
“Sure. We’ll get to him. One of the posses left twenty minutes ago. They’re headed full speed straight up 84.”
“Either way,” said Roof, “we’ll get him. And if you’re the one to do it, Cyrus, bring him with you to Lubbock.”
Skinner pulled the phone from his ear and looked at the connection indicator. It was solid. “Repeat that,” he said. “I don’t think I heard you.”
“Bring Mad Max to Lubbock.”
Skinner was incredulous, and his tone didn’t hide it. “You want him alive?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t get it.” Skinner looked at the three-quarters of a Marlboro between his fingers and dropped it to the ground. He stomped it out with his boot. It wasn’t appetizing anymore. “This man has killed I don’t know how many of our men. He’s blown up our HQ in Abilene. He set fire to my house with some blowtorch gun. He’s got it coming to him. I got plans, Roof.”
There was a pause. “Roof?”
Skinner swallowed. “Sorry. General, I meant to say. I got plans, General.”
“Those plans will need to wait until I meet our hero,” said the general. “I have plans for him too. You get him, and you bring him to Lubbock. Alive.”
“I still—”
“Do you understand, Cyrus?”
Skinner rolled his eyes and clenched his jaw. “Yes.”
“Say it.”
“Say what?”
“Say you understand that you are to bring him to Lubbock alive.”
Skinner turned around to see a posse of a couple dozen grunts mount their horses. A pair of bosses were leading them north on Walnut. They were on their way. Skinner had told the posse bosses to leave as soon as possible. He knew they’d need more time.
The horses, even at a full gallop, could only hit twenty-five to thirty miles an hour. They’d be driving twice that fast in the trucks.
Skinner turned back and looked at the crushed Marlboro on the ground. He regretted snuffing it. “I understand I gotta bring Mad Max…uh…Battle to Lubbock, and he’s gotta be alive when we get there.”
General Roof’s voice pitched. “What did you say?”
“I said I’d keep him alive.”
“No,” Roof said. “You said Battle. What’s Battle?”
Skinner watched another large posse head north. “Battle is his name, I guess. We’ve been calling him Mad Max ’cause he won’t die. One of my grunts got his name and told me. It’s Battle.”
“Odd name.”
Skinner said, “Fits him, though.”
“Perhaps.”
“I gotta go,” said Skinner. “We’re losing time. I don’t want him getting to Lubbock before I get a chance to look at him eye to eye.”
“Use this line to let me know when you’ve retrieved him,” said General Roof. “I’ll let you know then exactly where I want you to deliver him.”
“Got it.” Skinner disconnected the call and stuffed the treasure into the bag. He marched back to the remaining men. Two more posses were gone. He approached a fat grunt leaning against the black SUV. The grunt pulled up his pants and stood at attention when the white hat headed toward him.
Skinner pointed at the grunt, his finger a few inches from the man’s pudgy face. “You the driver?”
The grunt’s cheeks and lips flapped as he nodded nervously. “Yes, sir. I’m supposed to drive you. I’ve got the truck ready to go.”
Skinner took a good look at the grunt. His waist was hidden behind the girth pouring over his belt. His pants were too short and were frayed at the bottom. His leather boots were stained
and scarred with deep scratches. His ill-fitted chambray shirt revealed the need for push-ups. His face looked as though it were squeezed between a closing door and its jamb.
“How in the world does a man get fat after the world goes to hell?” Skinner asked with all seriousness.
The man’s eyes dropped to his feet, had he been able to see them, and his shoulders drew inward. He stammered out an apology and Skinner thumped him in the shoulder with a fist.
“I’m messing with you, Porky,” he said. “More power to you. Just know that if we get stranded without food, I’m eating you first. Let’s go.”
Porky opened the rear driver’s side door. Skinner slid into the SUV and onto the cracked black leather seat. They were cold to the touch. He dropped the bag on the seat next to him. Another grunt jumped into the front passenger seat. A third hopped into the back, next to Skinner’s bag. His eyes widened. He was sitting next to the captain.
“The weapons loaded into the back?” Skinner asked, pulling his revolver from his hip and setting it on top of the bag.
Porky looked into the rearview mirror and adjusted it. “Yes, sir. There’s a whole stack of shotguns. I got plenty of shells too.”
“Let’s roll out, then,” Skinner said. “Time’s a-wastin’.”
CHAPTER 20
OCTOBER 15, 2037, 12:31 PM
SCOURGE + 5 YEARS
NEAR DERMOTT, TEXAS
Lola stood on the shoulder of the highway, her hands on her forehead. “How is that possible?”
They were stuck. The Humvee had stalled, or worse, about a half mile south of the town of Dermott along Highway 84.
“Are you sure it’s not the gas?” she asked Battle.
Battle pulled off the brown Stetson and wiped the cold sweat from his forehead with the back of his fleece sleeve. “It’s not the gas,” he said. “I emptied that ten-gallon can we had. Even if the tank were bone dry, ten gallons would get us into town. The engine would start.”
“I don’t know what it is,” said Pico. “Oil maybe? I don’t know.”