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  Lola was standing a couple of feet back, watching Battle work.

  “We need to go get the weapons,” he said. “We can’t leave them out there. That’ll give this guy a chance to wake up a little bit. When we get back, he starts talking.”

  The intruder grumbled something unintelligible and shook his hanging head. A viscous mix of snot and blood was nesting in his mustache. One eye was swollen shut and his upper lip was busted. He was caked with mud and tied to a chair. It didn’t matter what he was mumbling.

  He would eventually talk.

  CHAPTER 14

  NOVEMBER 11, 2032, 2:18 PM

  SCOURGE +40 DAYS

  EAST OF RISING STAR, TEXAS

  “It’s my fault.” Sylvia was pacing back and forth in the kitchen. She was inconsolable. “I killed our son,” she said.

  Marcus tried reasoning with her. “You can’t say—”

  “Yes, I can!” she yelled, pressing her arms downward. Her hands were balled into fists. “I shouldn’t have opened the door. She would have gone away. Wesson would still be here. He would be here!”

  Marcus stepped around the island toward his wife. She backed away, holding up her hands. She shook her head.

  “I don’t want your consolation, soldier,” she said. “The idea of you holding me only makes me angrier at myself. You smell like him.”

  Marcus shrank back a step and stuffed his hands into his pockets. Their son had been dead less than twenty-four hours.

  Marcus had buried him in the backyard like a pet they’d had to put down. It wasn’t worthy of Wesson, but it was all they could do.

  Sylvia wouldn’t come outside. She couldn’t, she told him. But while he’d dug the hole, he’d seen her peering through a window. Her nose had been pressed to the glass like a child. He’d pretended not to notice her.

  He’d had no idea whether she’d watched any of the short burial service or not. Marcus had wrapped his son’s body in a large plastic blue tarp he’d found in the garage and helped him into the ground.

  With a shovel, he’d filled the hole and patted it as flat as he could. Then, alone, he’d prayed for his son’s soul.

  On his knees, he whispered, “In a favorable time I listened to you, and in a day of salvation I have helped you. Behold, now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.”

  Now he stood in the kitchen, feeling a disconcerting combination of guilt and anger. Sylvia was right. It was her fault. She knew better than to let anyone in the house. He’d warned her; she didn’t listen. She didn’t even wear the surgical masks he’d given her and Wes to wear if they inadvertently came in contact with someone.

  He’d never said, “I told you so,” after handling Roseann. He didn’t have to. He knew Sylvia could see it in his eyes. And when Wesson coughed for the first time, he’d seen the apology in her eyes.

  He was angry at her. Still, he also loved her. He regretted not having done a better job protecting them. Ultimately, Marcus believed it was exclusively his job to keep them healthy and safe.

  He’d spent his entire post-army life prepping for the end of the world. Now it was upon them and his son hadn’t lived more than six weeks. It was his fault more than it was hers. But that unspoken chemical, emotional mixture of conflicting feelings was like a wall between them.

  “So if I can’t console you,” he said, “what can I do?”

  “Nothing.” She cleared her throat. “Nothing. It’s too late.”

  “Too late?” he questioned. “That implies I could have done something earlier. But not now.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” she snapped. “This isn’t about you anyway. Not everything is about you, Marcus.” Sylvia cleared her throat again.

  Marcus bit his lip before he spoke. He already regretted the tone of their conversation. He glared at her. “Really?”

  “Yes, really.” She crossed her arms across her chest and leaned in. “All of this is about you. You moved us here. You isolated us. You convinced me to live in a Winnebago for two years.”

  “Convinced you?”

  “I did all of it, Marcus”—her eyes narrowed—“because you promised me it would work. You told me that if we did this, if we gave up normal lives, we’d survive whatever catastrophe came our way.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “You were wrong, Major Battle.” The sarcasm oozed more thickly with each successive word. “It didn’t work. Wesson is dead. None of your stupid planning saved him. None of it.”

  “That’s not—”

  “I put up with your eccentricity, your need to be some kind of hermit, because I thought it was therapeutic. I thought it would help with what I knew was PTSD. You came back a different man, Marcus. You’re not the man I fell in love with. You haven’t been since you deployed to Syria.”

  Marcus flinched at the jab. He could feel a thick lump building in his throat. “What does that—”

  “Shut up and let me talk!” A thick vein in her forehead looked as though it might burst.

  Marcus took a deep breath and held it. He put up his hands in surrender.

  “For all of your—your—crap—I thought there was a pot of gold at the end of it.” She waved her hands wildly. “I thought, ‘Okay, so my shell-shocked husband is a freak now. What do I do with that? I guess I go along with it. Because, eventually, if anything bad ever happens, we’ll be safe. Our family will be safe.’

  “That’s not what happened. That’s…” She hitched and tears rolled from her eyes. She started sobbing. She leaned onto the island, dropped her head, and started coughing.

  Marcus fought the instinct to move toward her and then succumbed to it. He slowly approached Sylvia and gently put his hand on her back before turning her toward him. She didn’t resist.

  He put his hand on the back of her head and stroked her hair. He didn’t know what else to do. The pressure of the lump in his throat was painful. So he released it.

  For the first time since returning from Syria, he cried. While he didn’t moan or wail, he knew Sylvia could feel the shudder of his chest. Marcus wasn’t sure why he was openly emotional. It might have been because he’d just buried his only child. It might have been because he could feel the congestion rattling in his wife’s lungs as he held her back. He could hear it in her crying. She was sick too.

  CHAPTER 15

  OCTOBER 14, 2037, 1:27 AM

  SCOURGE + 5 YEARS

  ABILENE, TEXAS

  Queho rolled over and fumbled around on the bedside table until he felt the tin case in which he kept hand-rolled cigarettes. “Want one?”

  “No,” said his girlfriend. “And I thought you quit.” She got up from the bed and crossed the room naked.

  Queho watched her slink toward the bathroom in the low, flickering glow of a pair of pedestal candles. His girlfriend had fashioned them from wax. She was good at two things. One was making and selling homemade candles. The other they’d just enjoyed together.

  Queho regularly joked she could probably make more money at that skill. She never laughed, though she often countered by telling him she got more enjoyment out of making candles.

  He dragged a lighter from the table and lit the cigarette. He puffed a couple of times and then tossed the case and lighter back onto the table. “I did quit.”

  “Doesn’t look like it,” she called from the bathroom. She was the only one, other than Skinner maybe, who could talk to Queho truthfully. She never genuflected or begged forgiveness for an indiscretion.

  They lived together in a house on the corner of 9th and Butternut. It was a part of Abilene called Original Town South. Across the street were what used to be a liquor store and a library. The store was out of liquor; the library was empty of books.

  The elderly man who’d lived in the home for sixty years before the Scourge was buried out back. Queho had tossed his stiff, bloated body into a hole after finding him dead in a recliner in the front room.

  He took possession of the house. It wasn’t much, but it w
as close to the HQ. He also knew he’d get the respect of his men by not choosing one of the fancier places in town. Respect was important to Queho. So was power.

  “I’m stressed,” he called back after a long drag. “It helps me cope.”

  She laughed. “I thought I just relieved your stress.”

  Queho chuckled to himself. He got up from the bed and walked to the dresser on the far side of the room. Atop the dresser, along with his holster and revolver, was his hat, his wallet, a large key ring, and an ashtray. He tapped the cigarette into the ashtray and carried it back to bed with him, his club foot thumping along the wood floor.

  “What are you doing?” She emerged from the bathroom, wearing an open terry cloth robe, the tattoos that ran across her breasts and around her navel visible as she floated back to bed.

  “Getting an ashtray.”

  “So”—she slithered under the sheets and ran her hand along Queho’s leg—“what’s got you stressed? I could tell you were…preoccupied.”

  “A woman.” Queho sucked on the cigarette and waited for her reaction.

  “Oh really?” She ran her fingers up his chest. “What woman?” she purred. It wasn’t the reaction he expected.

  “Some worker.” He shrugged. “She owed us. She escaped. A few men got killed trying to find her.”

  Her hand moved down his chest and traced the scripted tattoo on his abdomen. “She killed them?”

  Queho screwed the cigarette into the tray. “No. She found some ranch we didn’t know about. Some guy was living there. He killed the men.”

  “And the woman?”

  “Don’t know. But the man is tough. That’s what Pico says.”

  She laughed. “Pico? You trust what that little weasel says? He’s scared of his own shadow.”

  Queho set aside the ashtray and slid his hand onto her thigh. “Yeah, he is. But I believe him. I think the guy’s gotta be tough. He killed three men, one of them with his bare hands. At least that’s what Pico said.”

  “Okay,” she said. “So a woman goes missing. She gets away. Big deal.”

  Queho pulled his hand from her thigh and her hand from his stomach. He sat up straight and turned to look his woman in the eye.

  “Are you kidding me?” he spat. “Big deal? Our power, our way of life, relies on fear. If people ain’t afraid of us, we lose. One woman gets away and we do nothing about it? Word gets around. People start thinking they can do it. Next thing you know, we’re getting hanged in the street by the common folk.”

  “I get that,” she said meekly. “I just don’t understand why it stresses you out.”

  Queho slapped the bed with his hands. His eyes widened. “Because we got this guy out there too. We’re calling him Mad Max. He’s a problem.”

  “Then take care of him. I don’t get why this is such a big deal. You’ve taken care of plenty of people. What makes this one different?”

  “I can’t tell you that,” Queho admitted. “I got a feeling about it, that’s all. I don’t think it’s as easy as ‘taking care of him’. He’s probably been on that land since the Scourge. You could argue we ain’t found him until now, but I don’t buy that. We’ve had too many posses out looking for occupied ranches. We didn’t miss him. I got a gut feeling we had more than one posse stumble on his place and he took care of them.”

  “So what are you doing about it?”

  “We got a scout party out there tonight,” he said, easing a pillow up the headboard behind him. “They’re looking around, getting a better feel for the place. Then we’ll go back with twenty to twenty-five men and end it.”

  “Okay.” She shrugged. “Then that’s your answer. No reason for the stress. No need for the cigarettes. No need to be…preoccupied.” She slipped her hand under the sheet.

  “Maybe,” he said. “I don’t know. I’m itching for the scout team to come back. Once I hear from them, I’ll feel better. What time is it?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Does it matter?”

  “Yeah.” He threw the sheet from his body, leaving his girlfriend alone in the bed. “It’s late. They should be getting back soon.” Queho thumped across the room to a pile of clothes on the floor. He reached down to get himself dressed.

  “You aren’t gonna wash up at least?”

  “No,” he said. “I gotta go talk to Skin. Don’t wait up for me.”

  CHAPTER 16

  OCTOBER 14, 2037, 2:00 AM

  SCOURGE + 5 YEARS

  TEXAS HIGHWAY 36

  EAST OF RISING STAR, TEXAS

  Battle twirled a brown cowboy hat with his hand. He was sitting opposite a man calling himself Salomon Pico. Lola was wrapped in a sleeping bag in the bed of the pickup truck. She was snoring.

  “I appreciate the information you’ve given me so far, Salomon,” said Battle. “But I’m gonna need a little more.”

  Pico asked for water. He licked his lips. His head hung such that his chin touched his chest.

  “We’ve been at this for a couple of hours now, Salomon.” Battle stopped twirling the hat and set it on his lap. “I’ll give you water when we finish. You’ve given me your name. You’ve told me you’re with the Cartel. You admitted you came here to kill me and take Lola. But you haven’t told me where she can find her son. You haven’t told me who sent you here or where you came from.”

  Pico shook his head back and forth without raising it. “I don’t know where he is.”

  “Where did you come from?”

  “I told you.” Pico’s voice was raspy. “I came from local headquarters.”

  “Which is where?”

  “Near here.”

  “Wrong answer, Salomon.”

  He lifted his head. His lips were crusted white at the corners. “I can’t tell you,” he said. “They’ll kill me.”

  “I’ll kill you if you don’t, Salomon,” Battle answered. “But let’s do this. I ask a question. You answer. I like your answer and I give you water or maybe something to eat. Sound good?”

  Pico dropped his head again.

  “If you don’t give me an answer that I like, I’m gonna hurt you. I’ve been really patient. But I’m tired of being patient.”

  “Abilene.”

  Battle played coy and leaned forward in his seat. “What’s Abilene?”

  “That’s where we have our HQ,” Pico mumbled as if he didn’t want Battle to hear him. “We came here from Abilene.”

  “Is the boy in Abilene?”

  “I don’t know. Can I have water?”

  Battle reached down and picked up a canteen. He grabbed Pico’s sweaty mop of hair and pulled back his head. “Open up.” He held the canteen above Pico’s mouth and poured in enough water to wet his whistle.

  Pico slurped down the water like a baby bird in its nest. “Thank you.”

  “Where in Abilene are the headquarters?”

  Pico shrugged.

  Battle held up the canteen. “C’mon, Salomon, help me out here. Where are the headquarters?”

  Pico pressed his eyes closed and cursed. “An old hardware store. Bible Hardware. That’s where the bosses are set up.’

  Battle nodded, working not to betray his disappointment at the fate of the old store. “How many?”

  “How many what?”

  “How many men are there? How many people in the Cartel?”

  Pico hung his head and laughed before coughing. He shifted uncomfortably against the binds pinning him to the chair. “You really don’t know?”

  Battle put the canteen on the ground, sat back in the chair, and gripped the hat in his hands. He set his jaw and glared at the intruder.

  Pico picked up his head and lost the smile on his face. He licked his mustache with his tongue. “Everyone is Cartel. Everyone. Even your woman over there. Lola? She’s Cartel.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The Cartel controls everything,” Pico explained. “If you’re not in the Cartel, you pay the Cartel. If you pay the Cartel, you ain’t gonna oppose them
. So everybody’s a part of it. There’s no escaping it. You might be the only one in this part of the world who doesn’t know that.”

  Battle leaned forward again. “So how many?”

  Pico’s eyebrows arched as if he didn’t understand the question. He licked the thick white spittle from the corners of his mouth. “You can’t kill all of them.”

  Battle didn’t move. His gaze held Pico’s.

  “Ten thousand.”

  “Men?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And that’s Cartel regular, right?”

  Pico blinked. “Yeah.”

  “And the people who aren’t in the Cartel, but who support them?”

  “A couple thousand.”

  Battle sat back in the chair, his eyes wide. “Abilene had a hundred twenty thousand people living there.”

  Pico shrugged.

  “You’re telling me nine out of ten people are gone?”

  Pico shrugged.

  “All right then,” Battle said. He slapped his knees and stood from the chair. “You and me are heading there. I’m gonna thin out the herd a little bit and find that boy.”

  Pico shook his head. “Not a good idea. Not a good plan. You’re gonna get us both killed.”

  “You’re already a dead man, Salomon,” Battle said, sliding the brown hat onto his head. “And I’m a boss now,” he said, affecting Pico’s Southwestern twang. “Ain’t nobody gonna kill me.”

  ***

  OCTOBER 14, 2037, 3:04 AM

  SCOURGE + 5 YEARS

  ABILENE, TEXAS

  Cyrus Skinner pinched the bridge of his nose and rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. The machine-gun knock on his door jolted him from his sleep, but didn’t really wake him up.

  He was sitting in the living room of his three-bedroom house. He called it the parlor. Not many visitors saw more of the house than that room. As an area captain, Skinner liked his privacy.