Last Stand: Book 3 in the Thrilling Post-Apocalyptic Survival Series: (The Last City - Book 3)

by Kevin Partner

  He looked out of the dark barn at the mountain range. The peaks weren't as high or as sharply defined as they were when they reached Ezra to the south, but they didn't exactly look inviting, either. He didn't like the idea of trying to pick a way through with the Land Rover, much less having to guide a herd of cattle along behind it. But he couldn't see that they had a choice.

  "Let's go, then," he said.

  She smiled, freckles stretching and framing dazzling white teeth, and skipped off to pack her stuff into the back of the Land Rover. Hick watched her, envying the energy of youth. Cassie had a naive quality that he found beguiling and inexplicable. She'd been trapped in her home for days while Hemmerich's militia had occupied it, and she'd seen her brother die alongside Hick when they liberated the family. Just the previous day, she'd shot a man.

  The girl had so much to be bitter about, and yet there was nothing but joy in the way she went about things. If it was a mask, then she was a master of disguise.

  "I wonder how Libby's doin'?" she asked as she tidied the hay in the trunk of the Land Rover.

  That brought Hick out of his reverie. "What? Oh, well, if there's one thing I've learned about her, it's that she can look after herself." What sort of a man was he that he'd given barely a thought to a woman he'd come to believe he cared about? It seemed that Cassie wasn't the only one who was keeping her feelings bottled up. Or maybe he didn't have feelings at all? Was he some kind of robot or psychopath?

  And then he saw Sam's face in his mind's eye, and he knew he needed to get back to Hope as soon as he could. What kind of a father, after yearning to have his daughter home again and safe, asks her to get close to the most dangerous man in Hope? But he needed to have someone keep an eye on McAndrew while he was away, even though he'd manipulated Bekmann to be out of town at the same time. He didn't think the pastor would have the guts to strike without his Dutch ally, but he couldn't take the chance. And Sam had been eager enough to help.

  None of this helped convince him that he'd done the right thing by her. "Come on, then. We'd best be gettin' back to Hope."

  Hick sat in the front of the Land Rover, keeping his gaze fixed on the mountains ahead. He was driving across a pitted land of dry white soil and bushy green plants. Every now and again, they would hit a patch of tussocky grass and they'd let the cattle graze while they took a break. Cassie had insisted on walking behind the herd and keeping them together. She obviously enjoyed the bright air and the breeze skimming off the hills ahead, but he also suspected she was allowing him to rest his old bones. If anyone was going to step into a hidden gopher burrow, it was going to be her. And he was grateful to her.

  "Stop starin'," he muttered. He couldn't resist any longer and turned his head to look into a pair of beady eyes above a sharp beak and coxcomb. "You'll be better off in Hope. All the seed you can eat and more hens than you can shake a stick at."

  Roger the cockerel—Cassie had named him—continued staring impassively at Hick as if he was not yet convinced. And, in truth, Roger's ultimate fate would be to find himself between two slices of home-baked bread or swirling in a stew, but in the meantime he'd have the time of his life.

  He stood on top of a crate containing his harem. Cassie, who'd given him his name, had decided it wasn't a good idea to cram them all in together for the journey since it was likely to either end with Roger having a heart attack or being henpecked to death for being a nuisance. And so he watched Hick bounce up and down in the driver's seat. If he was trying to communicate telepathically, it wasn't working.

  They stopped after a couple of hours and sat in the car's shadow feasting on cold scrambled eggs. Roger was watching accusingly from the driver's window, but Hick was too hungry to feel guilty.

  He looked over at the mountains. They were a whole lot bigger now, though he reckoned they'd only covered a few miles as the crow flies.

  "We're not gonna make it before sundown," he said.

  Cassie shook her head. "No. We can probably get on the other side of the mountains, but we'll have to find somewhere to keep the cattle penned or they'll wander off."

  "Cross that bridge when we come to it," Hick said as he finished his eggs. "How are the animals doing?"

  She looked back at where the cattle were gathered around a couple of handfuls of alfalfa. "Most of 'em are doin' okay. Gertrude's calf is strugglin' a bit, though. I guess she's only a week old."

  "Gertrude? You've given them names?"

  She turned back to him, her ringlets brushing his face. "Of course. How else d'you think I can remember which is which?"

  Well, there was no arguing with that.

  "Hey, Mr. Hickman. I don't want to worry you but …"

  "But you're going to?"

  She nodded. "Coyote tracks. I've seen plenty of them. More and more the closer we get to the mountains."

  "They don't attack people, do they?"

  "Not generally, but these ain't exactly normal circumstances and they're partial to the occasional calf in any case."

  Hick pulled himself up and then stretched out a hand as Cassie scrambled nimbly to her feet. "Maybe we should skirt the mountains to the south and hit the road to Hope that way."

  "That's miles in the wrong direction," Cassie said, glancing at the end of the range. "And, in any case, the further south we go, the more likely we'll run across them Sons."

  He sighed. "Yeah. We'll have to take our chances. I guess neither of us will get any sleep tonight."

  They crawled across the landscape and it felt to Hick as though they drove two miles for every one as they were forced to divert around the many gullies that ran across their path as they neared the foot of the mountains.

  After a couple more hours, he insisted on letting her drive for a while, partly because she had to be exhausted by now, partly to stretch his legs and partly to escape Roger's tyranny.

  He was following his own lengthening shadow as the land finally began to climb again when disaster struck. As he was tapping Gertrude—or was it Ermintrude?—on the rump to drive her forward, he heard a metallic thump and looked up to see no sign of the Land Rover. It was as if the rocks had opened up and swallowed them.

  "Cassie!" he called, abandoning the cow and running as fast as he could over the stony ground until he reached the lip of a rift in the ground. A new rent ran along to his right until it disappeared beneath a covering of soil and rock. He kneeled at the edge and peered down. There, maybe twenty feet down, lay the Land Rover, nose down, doors wide open and no sign of Cassie. His eyes flicked to a movement, until he saw that it was only Roger who was looking quizzically up at him from the rear bumper.

  "Cassie!" he called again. There was no answer save for the echoing of his own voice in the cavern below. He guessed it was an old copper mine that had hidden beneath the crust of this remote patch of the Nevada landscape until the car's wheels had broken through.

  "Hick?"

  Thank God. "Are you hurt?"

  "Yeah. My legs." Her voice had none of its usual energy, as if every syllable was painful. "Please. Help me."

  Hick cursed as he looked around for inspiration. The cattle were milling, some of them coming dangerously close to the fissure and lured, no doubt, by the smell of the hay drifting up through the hole. He got to his feet. First things first. Cassie was his priority, but her situation wouldn't be improved by fifteen hundred pounds of beef falling on her.

  He swore again as he shooed them away. He had two choices: either try to get Cassie out or go for help, and he wouldn't be able to do that and herd cattle across the mountain. He just didn't have time. The sun touched the top of the mountain and he imagined he could hear the distant howling of coyotes. At least he hoped it was his imagination.

  There was nothing else for it. He would have to climb down into the hole. He had a self-preservation instinct that was a mile wide, but, even putting basic human decency aside (he'd done that before now), he couldn't just walk away from her. Her father would come looking and Hickman didn't think
there would be a safe distance from Elwood Miller if he abandoned the farmer's daughter.

  "Paul?" Her voice echoed up from the darkness again as he peered down, squinting in the rapidly departing light.

  "I'm coming," he said, hoping he was right.

  It was an almost vertical drop, but he decided that if he swung against the wall, he might be able to slow his descent enough to make it to her without breaking his legs. That would help nobody.

  He reversed himself and pushed until he could feel air beneath his feet. Then he folded his legs down and folded at the waist. It felt as though the ground was swallowing him up and he took a final look at the cattle grazing unconcernedly before easing himself back, kicking his legs in the hope of finding the edge of the cliff.

  And then the ground collapsed.

  Hick cried out, hands flailing at thin air, as he plunged, hit rock halfway down and twisted before the wind was knocked out of him on impact. He yelled again and spat blood out, rolling over and doing an inventory of his limbs.

  "Paul! You okay?"

  Now her voice was coming from the same level he was on. He shook his head, then winced as a spear of pain shot up his spine. "Yeah, just give me a minute, would ya?"

  He took it slowly, giving time for his eyes to adjust and purposefully not looking up to the patch of sky he'd fallen through. His shoulder and left hip ached and he couldn't turn his head independently of his shoulders, but nothing was broken.

  Hick got slowly and painfully to his feet and stumbled toward where the car had come to rest, black against the shadows in this pit. He half felt his way along the driver's side, then jerked his hand away as something stabbed at it.

  "Goddammit, you idiot chicken!" he yelled, sweeping the bird away in a flurry of feathers.

  He inched along before finally getting down on his haunches until he could dimly make out where she was lying. The car was facing down into its impact crater and he could see her hair was cast over the steering wheel. "Thank God you wore your seatbelt," he said as he felt along the strap. "Can you undo it?"

  "I'm afraid to. My leg's hurt real bad. I think it's broken and I can't move my arm."

  He moved back and tried to force his panicking brain to see how he could release her without hurting her more than she already was. He sneezed in the dusty air as he pulled his way back up the Land Rover until he reached the back end before standing on tiptoes to reach the handle and opening the rear door. He found his pack and pulled it out. Good, the flashlight was there, though he wasn't sure how much more life there was in the battery. Switching it on, he was able to find his hunting knife and, as his fingers rummaged, his mind settled on a plan. He'd considered going around the other side and releasing the seat belt from there, but then she'd fall onto the steering wheel and he winced even thinking about that. Hick searched around in the trunk until he found what he was looking for: her sleeping bag. He pulled it out, then folded it over and gently wedged it between her chest and the steering wheel.

  "Now, I'm gonna cut the seatbelt and lower you as gentle as I can. But it's gonna hurt, Cassie, and there ain't nothin' I can do about that. You ready?"

  She nodded and he began sawing at the belt above her shoulder. When he felt it going, he warned her and then fed it out inch by inch as she gritted her teeth.

  She only shrieked twice. Once when her left leg came free, and again when she twisted around to sidle off the seat and into his arms. He held her tight as she cried, patting her on the back and trying to comfort her as he guided her inch by inch to where he'd laid his sleeping bag against a rock to form a crude chair.

  He eased her back as she yelped in pain again. "There, there, my darlin'," he said as she finally let him go and he stood up again, rubbing his sore neck.

  "Have we got a first aid kit?" she asked between gasps.

  Hick rummaged in his pack. "Yeah, but it ain't gonna be much good. We got some bandages and antiseptic. Hold on a minute…" He stood up as a thought struck him like a bullet between the eyes. "I wonder." Hick shone the flashlight into the trunk. "Yeah!" The light bounced off a white box with a green cross on it. He had to reach so far forward his feet were off the ground when he grabbed it and the Land Rover made an ominous creaking noise before he jumped back.

  He opened the box. "Thank the Lord, we got morphine."

  "What's it do? Take the pain away?"

  "Well, if we ain't careful, it'll do more than that."

  She put her hand on his arm. "Hick, I can't stand the pain. You gotta clean up my leg and set it. Will you do it?"

  Hick scanned the instruction leaflet and gave her two pills. Then he looked around and, for the first time, his thinking mind gave his claustrophobia permission to come out and play. He was stuck in a pit in the middle of the Nevada desert with a sick girl who might be bleeding to death and no idea how he was going to get out.

  Above him, a distant howl echoed through the darkening air.

  Chapter 12: Mine

  Hick rummaged around in the back of the Land Rover looking for something he could use to make a splint. Everything he knew about it came from the movies, but having seen the mess Cassie's leg was in, it was obvious that he had to do something to stabilize it.

  She'd gripped his arm and yelled as he'd pulled her blood-soaked pants off, his less than noble thoughts of her from the morning banished by his terror. Her right calf was bent at the wrong angle, and he'd hurled his scrambled eggs across the floor when he'd spotted a jagged point of bone bursting through her skin. She'd shrieked when he'd lifted her foot out of her pants leg and then, mercifully, she'd fainted. For a moment, he thought she'd stopped breathing, and he'd sat in the gloom straining for any sign of her breathing. In the end, he'd been forced to put his hand on her chest, pressing down between her breasts and finally detecting the gentle rising and falling of her ribs.

  Hick lifted the trap door in the floor of the trunk and his hand closed around something cold and hard. It was the wheel wrench, and it would have to do.

  He opened up the first aid kit and used an antiseptic wipe to clean the wound. Bright spots swam across his vision and he felt himself falling sideways. He caught himself and sat back for a few moments. It wouldn't help Cassie for him to pass out now. He got back to work, working by touch as far as he could, choking down bile as his finger brushed across the jagged bone.

  When he was done, he gave the area a spray. Then he wound a strip of bandage below her knee and tucked the top of the wrench under it. He did the same at the ankle. Cassie didn't make a sound as he did this and he checked again that she was still breathing.

  Now for the worst of it. He passed another strip of bandage behind the wrench and around the wound then, holding his breath and gripping his teeth, he gently pulled it tight. He wasn't fool enough to imagine that the bone was now perfectly aligned, but it was stable and that would have to do for now. He took a final bandage and covered the whole leg, praying that this would stop the bleeding. But he knew she wouldn't survive long down here. It was cold and damp and the wound would get infected unless he got her out soon.

  Hick took the flashlight from where it had been balanced on a rock and used it to examine the hole they'd landed in. He could see now that it was indeed a mine. The ground and sides were far too uniform to have been carved by nature and he could see pick marks in the wall that followed a faint green smudge. Copper.

  He followed the wall until it ended in a rockslide that he had no chance of clearing, so he turned around and walked back past the stricken car. Instinct told him that this direction led to the entrance and his light passed over ancient timbers that had been put there to keep the roof up, but which now looked as though he could purse his lips and blow them away. He tiptoed along, afraid of bringing a million tons of rock down on him and equally terrified of being stopped by another impenetrable barrier.

  Twice, it looked as though he could go no farther, but each time he was able to scramble over the fallen rocks through to the other side. He'd half expec
ted to see rail tracks, but perhaps this had been a one-man operation and, though the shaft became more regular and the timbers looked in better shape as he went, he saw no sign of mine equipment or of the prospector who'd found no fortune in these mountains.

  He cursed as his flashlight illuminated a wall of fallen rocks blocking the passageway. Despair overwhelmed him and he fell back against the wall and groaned. He was just turning to go back to where Cassie waited, when a chilling howl seeped through the rocks and into the chamber. A primal terror gripped him as he sought for the source. But it wasn't coming from within the tunnel. He swept the flashlight up at the rockfall again. Yes, it was penetrating from outside. He moved quickly across to it and climbed as high as he dared, before squinting along the roofline. His light bounced off of something—it was outside! The barrier was only a couple of feet thick. He gave an experimental push and a rock fell away, leaving a black hole at the top of the blockage through which the howling was amplified. Hick sucked in the fresh night air and rested there, perched just beneath the roof of the cave. They had a way out. But the coyotes were waiting for them.

  Cassie was awake when he returned. He heard her voice echoing along the tunnel, pitifully imploring him to come back, obviously terrified that he'd abandoned her.

  "I'm sorry," he said as he kneeled beside her. "I had to go exploring. There's a way out."

  She smiled. "I heard coyotes."

  "Yeah, me too."

  As if on cue, the chamber echoed with a ghostly howling. Hick looked up to see a dark shape silhouetted against the hole in the roof. "I reckon they're gonna try to get in," he said. "Idiots, they'll get trapped down here."

  "Coyotes ain't the smartest, but that ain't gonna help us if they only discover they're stuck after they'd eaten us."

  "Look, it's gonna hurt a lot, but I reckon we'd best get you nearer the entrance. There's rockfalls along the way that'll be tough for you to get over, but I reckon I can block them up behind us."