The Bar at the End of the World
THE BAR AT THE END OF THE WORLD
©2020 TOM ABRAHAMS
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Also by Tom Abrahams
THE WATCHERS
BAR AT THE END OF THE WORLD
BAR AT THE EDGE OF THE SEA
BAR IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE (FORTHCOMING)
THE SCOURGE
UNPREPARED
ADRIFT
GROUNDED
THE TRAVELER
HOME
CANYON
WALL
RISING
BATTLE
LEGACY
HERO
HARBOR
A DARK WORLD: THE COMPLETE SPACEMAN CHRONICLES
SPACEMAN
DESCENT
RETROGRADE
THE ALT APOCALYPSE SERIES
ASH
LIT
TORRENT
AFFLICTION
POLITICAL CONSPIRACIES
SEDITION
INTENTION
JACKSON QUICK ADVENTURES
ALLEGIANCE
ALLEGIANCE BURNED
HIDDEN ALLEGIANCE
STAND-ALONE WORKS
PILGRIMAGE: A POST-APOCALYPTIC ADVENTURE
EXTINCTION RED LINE (WITH NICHOLAS SANSBURY SMITH)
Contents
ALSO IN SERIES
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Epilogue
FROM THE PUBLISHER
ALSO IN SERIES
Acknowledgments
About the Author
ALSO IN SERIES
You’re reading: The Bar at the End of the World
Up Next: The Bar at the Edge of the Sea
Then: The Bar in the Middle of Nowhere
“Hell is empty and all the devils are here.”
—William Shakespeare
Chapter One
Zeke Watson punched the accelerator. The motor of his 1970 Plymouth Superbird roared in response. The steel chassis vibrated around him as it was pushed to its limit, rattling his clenched teeth.
With one hand, Zeke held the Superbird in its lane. With the other, he clutched the sucking wound beneath his rib cage. His stomach felt turned inside out. It might have been. For all he knew, his hand was holding his guts in place.
The highway ahead was a black zipper joining two parts of a sunlight-bathed wasteland. But Zeke was absorbed by the fierce group of men behind him. They wore helmets and bandanas that covered their faces and heads. Some of them drove motorcycles; others rode in the backs and atop the cabs of large pickup trucks.
They’re gaining.
Zeke stood on the pedal, lifting himself from the split driver’s seat. He’d been meaning to get the upholstery fixed, but things kept getting in the way.
The vast wasteland zoomed past on either side. The only sign he was even moving was the disappearing dashes of the center line under his Plymouth and the occasional boulder dotting the barren landscape. He assumed he was in the Badlands. It was the nebulous region that surrounded the city. Maybe these were Badlanders giving chase, the outsiders who ruled the uncivilized Badlands.
Or are they part of the underworld? Government agents? Bounty hunters?
It didn’t matter. What mattered was that they were right behind him.
A bolt of pain flared in his gut. Sweat stung his eyes as he squeezed them to fight it. His back, his neck, and his face were all coated in a blossoming sheen of perspiration.
He tightened his grasp on the wheel and urged his machine forward. The mob was closer. Closer. Closer.
One of the hunters had broken from the mob and drew near on a motorbike. It was a low-slung hog, the kind Zeke recognized from an old Peter Fonda movie or he’d seen parked outside a sports bar cleverly named with some double entendre celebrating women’s anatomy.
The biker wore a black bandana wrapped across the lower half of his face and large reflective sunglasses. He was bald and clean-shaven on his dome. Despite the size of the bike, the man dwarfed it. It wasn’t his size, though, that held Zeke’s attention between brief glances at the blacktop ahead. It was the enormous .45 revolver he held in one hand. The weapon’s steel barrel gleamed with sunlight.
Zeke thought he was the target. Then he realized, with his foot pressed to the floor, the beast was targeting his rear tire. Zeke made a split-second judgment.
He studied the rearview mirror, spotting the Horde only yards back. He tapped the brake hard enough to drop his speed, and at the same time he jerked the wheel to the left.
The Plymouth’s tires smoked; the car shuddered. Zeke’s body resisted the sudden inertia. Its tires gripped the scalding highway, and he kept his hand on the wheel.
It was enough to clip the front wheel of the bike, knocking it off its path and the revolver from the behemoth’s hand.
The man lost control of his bike, wobbled, and toppled into a pair of other bikers on the left edge of the Horde. The chain reaction took out a half dozen of them, two or three disappearing under the oversized tires of a jacked-up rig. Red spray punctuated the collisions, and Zeke turned his attention back to the road.
That was when he saw it.
Off to the left, maybe a mile or more ahead, its shape undulating like a mirage beyond the waves of heat lifting from the sour earth, was a
lone building. Wisps of smoke rose from the form and dissipated into the cloudless sky above.
Zeke checked his speedometer. He was cruising at one hundred and five, the needle vibrating at the top end of the muscle car’s push. That was good. Fuel wasn’t, though.
E? How long have I been at E?
He flicked the gauge with his finger. It didn’t move. Zeke slammed an open palm against the wheel. As he did, he caught a glimpse of the warbling image of the building again. Now he was close enough to see the muddy shapes of vehicles parked outside. There were people there.
A loud pop caught Zeke’s attention, and he eyed his rearview mirror. A man standing atop one of the trucks’ cabs pointed a rifle at him, smoke drifting from the muzzle. Another shot flashed and his rear window exploded. Glass flapped from the frame.
Zeke hunched forward, keeping his focus on the building ahead. If he could just get to it, maybe someone would help.
With the back window gone, the growl of the open road echoed through the cabin of his Plymouth. The wind whipped. The devilishly dry heat and the odor of burned rubber mixed with exhaust was instantly suffocating.
He was still a few hundred yards away. The wasteland distorted distance and time.
Another pop, this one louder and more percussive than the last, reverberated in his torso above the jar of the Superbird. A sharp, burning sensation in his shoulder followed. His right arm went numb and dropped to his side.
Zeke’s heart rate sped up. The sweat bloomed. His pulse thumped in his temples and his neck. With each successive throb, the burn in his shoulder swelled.
He winced in agony, held his breath, and steered the Plymouth with his left hand, his fingers white-knuckling the wheel. His muscle car straddled the center line. The boulders on the sides of the highway grew bigger and then disappeared behind him. Zeke’s vision blurred for an instant, and he bit the inside of his cheek to focus himself.
I’m losing blood. I won’t make it.
A large truck bumped him from behind. Then again, harder than before, and Zeke braced himself with his one good arm.
He looked ahead. The building was only fifty yards away, its parking lot closer than that. Zeke checked the shoulder ahead and saw no obstacles. No rocks, no cacti or decaying plant life, no animals. A straight shot.
The truck bumped him one last time, and Zeke swung the wheel to the right. The Plymouth squealed from the blacktop and onto the desert floor. The suspension resisted and gave in to the uneven terrain. It wasn’t as flat as it appeared, but the parking lot and the building were straight ahead now.
Zeke bounced in his seat, the worn springs not much of a match for his movement and weight. His right arm hummed with electricity, the sensation returning. He glanced down and saw blood drenching the right side of his shirt. His vision blurred again. He felt woozy. He stared forward, resisting the urge to focus on his wounds.
The engine roared. The tires spit rocks that clanked and dinged against the undercarriage. Maybe he’d make it.
Zeke tasted the heat and the dust in his mouth. His head buzzed with wooziness. Then the Plymouth died.
Its engine faltered and coughed. The gauges flared and pinged to the left edge of the circular displays. The speedometer reflected the rapidly declining speed.
Zeke cursed again. This time the expletives flowed from his mouth like the blood spilling from the bullet wound on the back of his shoulder.
What little distance he’d gained on the Horde instantly evaporated. The Plymouth coasted, decelerating, not able to hold its edge. And when the front tires of the Plymouth bounded over the chipped concrete curb that separated the cracked asphalt parking lot from the desert wasteland that surrounded the property, Zeke shouldered open the door and rolled out of the car.
The Plymouth only stopped when it slammed into the back of an ’85 Ford Bronco. Zeke didn’t see the collision as he struggled to reach his feet, but the sound of two heavy vehicles colliding was unmistakable.
Without looking back, Zeke ran. He was out of breath, his legs jelly underneath him, and his right arm hung at his side. His stomach felt as if it was tearing more widely open with each dragging step toward the building.
Almost there.
Through the haze of onset-delirium that came with shock, Zeke saw the two-story structure was wood and limestone, a large covered porch wrapping three sides. A blue flag hung from a post at the front steps, flapping in the hot wind. At the flag’s center was a six-pointed star, with wings on the tips, and from the top spike rose what looked like flames.
He staggered forward, his chest heaving, his legs weakening.
Behind him, the rumble of the trucks grew deafeningly loud. The fuzzy shapes of twin motorcycles zoomed toward him.
He was so close now. Only steps from the stoop.
Semiautomatic fire crackled behind him. A pair of shots zipped past him to his left. Two more didn’t. He felt them, thick punches of searing heat drilled into his side, one at his armpit and the other above his hip. Zeke’s body twisted and he stumbled forward. He wailed in agony and lost his balance.
Spinning in a macabre pirouette, Zeke landed on the bottom step of the porch. His head knocked against the thick pine with a thud, and the world fell silent.
The desert wind quietly rustled the flag above him. Was he dead? Was this the afterlife? A windswept wasteland replete with Hordes and a scalding sun beating down from on high?
Then he focused on the sound of someone panting. No. Something panting. An animal. Its breath was on his face, hot and dank. It sniffed him, snorting. A warm, thick tongue slathered his cheek with viscous slobber.
A dog.
A strong hand touched his good shoulder. The fingers gripped him and lifted him from the bottom steps to his knees and then to his feet. An arm wrapped around his failing body and pulled him onto the porch, and then a pair of them hoisted him onto a shoulder.
Only vaguely aware of his surroundings, and only able to see shadows and light beyond the porch and into the parking lot, Zeke heard and felt the booming voice that belonged to the man holding him.
The man carried him across the threshold, his bootheels thunking against the wooden planks of the porch. A pair of louvered doors swung back and forth, groaning on their hinges as Zeke’s guardian dragged him inside.
There were other people inside. Zeke sensed them. He heard them. Their voices mixed with the sounds of glass clinking and music straining in the hot, still air. Dusty. Old. Worn. Yet, somehow, welcoming.
Zeke felt the inertia of his body swinging. His shoes slapped against the swinging doors creaking on their hinges. The man spoke to the gathered Horde outside. His baritone voice vibrated through his chest and into Zeke’s. It was comforting, paternal, yet somewhere within its gravel was a stern, didactic tone dripping with unspoken threats.
“That’ll be all, gentlemen,” the man said. “You know the rules. Go back to whatever hellhole you crawled from and leave us be. My friend here has had enough.”
Chapter Two
He’s risen,” said a voice that stirred Zeke from that ethereal place between sleep and consciousness. “It took long enough.”
Zeke blinked away the blur of a dim yellow incandescent bulb. It came into focus, and he saw it hung above him at the center of a slow-rotating fan that rocked in its housing.
When he tried to move, pulsing jabs of pain lanced his gut, his right shoulder, and his left side. Then he remembered being shot. An overwhelming urgency, panic almost, replaced the pain. He needed to be somewhere. Someone was in danger.
“Take it easy,” said the bearded, steely-eyed man standing over him. “Your body doesn’t know what to do with itself.”
Zeke sank back onto the thin feather pillow that wrapped the back of his head. He stared at the ceiling fan for a moment, catching the individual blades as they rotated around the single bulb.
“We’ve fixed you up for now,” said the man. “Give yourself a minute or three and you can join us downstairs. You’v
e all the time you need.”
He patted Zeke on the thigh as a father would his son and turned to leave. Zeke reached out and grazed the man’s arm with his fingers.
“Hang on,” Zeke said, not recognizing his own raspy voice. It sounded like sandpaper on balsa.
The man stuck his hands into his pockets. He wore a brown leather vest the color of a worn saddle. His white linen shirt was rolled up to the elbows and tucked into a pair of loose-fitting, dark, denim jeans at his trim waist. A large brass buckle adorned his belt.
The man was fit but aged. His strong hands bore the discoloration of age spots. His ice-blue eyes were framed with the deep crow’s feet of a man who’d spent eons in the sun. His thick dark hair and wiry beard were streaked with white and shades of yellow. His tanned skin was leathered like his vest, giving him the appearance of someone who’d lived the life of a workingman. Who’d toiled and earned every cent through guile and grit.
“Thank you,” said Zeke.
“Sure thing,” said the man. The corners of his mouth twitched. “Anything else?”
“I’m Zeke,” he said.
The man revealed pearly teeth, which shone especially white against his olive skin.
“I know,” he said. “I’m Pedro.”