Rising: A Post Apocalyptic/Dystopian Adventure (The Traveler Book 4) Read online

  “Who are you?” asked Lou. “What’s your name? And why are you so inhospitable? It’s like you’ve got something to hide.”

  The man’s eyes twitched. “Drop your weapons.”

  “Or what?” asked Marcus. “You gonna kill both of us for trespassing?”

  A sudden breeze pushed at Marcus’s back, lifting the top layer of dirt from the road and blowing it toward the armed man.

  The man motioned past Marcus with his big dimpled chin. “If I don’t,” he said, “they will.”

  Marcus shuffled his feet to one side and looked behind him. There were three men standing in the middle of the wide dirt street about twenty feet from them. Two of them were armed with double-barreled shotguns, one with a semiautomatic rifle.

  Marcus turned back to the man and then glanced at Lou. “All right,” he said with his hands still held high. “My arms are getting tired anyhow. I’m gonna slowly lower myself to the ground here and put my rifle on the ground. That work?”

  “Just do it,” said one of the men behind them.

  Marcus looked again at Lou and lowered his arms. He kept the rifle extended from his body so as not to appear threatening. “I’m gonna count down from three, okay?”

  “Don’t make any funny moves,” said the dimpled-chin man. His steady aimed wavered, and beads of sweat formed at his brow.

  Marcus bent a knee. “Three,” he said.

  “Put it down,” called one of the men.

  Marcus eyed Lou and Fifty again. “Two.”

  Lou smirked and tightened her grip on the knives.

  “Sheesh,” said the man with the rifle. “Just put down—”

  “One.”

  Lou whistled loudly, a trill of a song that sent Fifty leaping from his seat and toward the men behind them at the same time she expertly flung a knife at the rifleman. It struck him in the arm and he dropped the weapon as a second blade found the dead-center chest of the shotgunner to his left.

  By then Fifty had reached the second shotgunner, his weight tackling the man to the ground before the bewildered man could fire a shot.

  Simultaneously, in one fluid motion, Marcus rolled over his knee, onto his back, and then popped up with the rifle at his shoulder. With screams of pain and pleas for mercy behind him, he unloaded a round into the chin-man’s gut and then his knee.

  Lou followed her knife strikes with a sprint to a dropped shotgun and put two load of double aught shot into the rifleman as he struggled with the deep-seated blade in his arm. Fifty growled and chomped, his feet on the still chest of his victim until Lou commanded him to stop.

  He licked his chops and leapt to Lou’s side. His tail wagged and he graciously accepted a pat on the head. Dark red blood dripped in thick droplets to the dirt beneath his chin.

  The chin man was on his back, grunting and moaning. He writhed in pain with one leg bent at an impossible angle, his hand at the wound in his gut. A red stain drenched his thin long-sleeved shirt to the left of his navel. His knee was shattered. His patella had taken a direct hit.

  Marcus walked deliberately toward the lone survivor. He worked the bolt and readied another round in the chamber. He stood over the man, his rifle aimed at the dying man’s head. He looked back at Lou. “You okay?”

  She had her foot on the rifleman’s arm, trying to free her knife. She nodded and went back to her grisly work. Marcus sniffed and drew a wad of dust-laden snot into his throat. He sucked it into his mouth and spat it onto the ground next to the chin man’s head.

  “Where are the others?” Marcus said, scanning his surroundings as he asked.

  “No.”

  “Where are they?”

  “We’re it,” the man wheezed. “The rest of them left.”

  “What is it you do here?”

  The groaning man’s eyes were squeezed shut, his teeth pressed together, and he was drooling from the side of his open mouth. Marcus focused on the impossibly deep dimple in the man’s chin then poked him with the Springfield.

  “I asked you a question.”

  The man opened his eyes, tears streaming across his temples. “What?” he asked through clenched teeth.

  “What do you do here?” Marcus raised his head. He swept the rifle from one side of the street to the other and back. “What is this place?”

  “Storage.”

  “For what?”

  The man groaned and coughed. Blood replaced the drool. It was dark, not a promising sign for the man’s survival prospects.

  Marcus crouched by the man’s head and tapped between his eyes with his finger. “What do you store here?”

  “Fuel,” he said. “Propane. Diesel. Some gasoline. Not much.”

  “What else?”

  The man arched his back. The color was leaching from his face, his breathing shallow and rapid.

  Marcus licked his teeth. “All right,” he said, indifferent to the man’s pain. “I’ll make this easier for you. I’ll ask yes or no questions. All you have to do is say yes or no.”

  The man squirmed on his back. He nodded vacantly.

  “This place is a way station for women too, isn’t it?”

  The man nodded.

  “Women you steal from their families.”

  He nodded again.

  “Is Cego here?”

  The man’s breathing slowed.

  “Is Cego here?” Marcus asked again.

  The man shook his head.

  “Was he here with the men who left?”

  The man nodded.

  “Did he have women with him?”

  The man nodded.

  “He’s on his way to Del Rio?”

  A nod.

  “You’re in pain?”

  The man grunted, gurgled, and coughed. Blood bubbled from his mouth.

  “You want me to put you out of your misery?”

  The man closed his eyes and nodded.

  Marcus leaned in and whispered, “Too bad.”

  He stood up, taking the man’s handgun with him, and slung his rifle strap across his chest. He adjusted his jacket and turned his back, walking the short distance to Fifty and Lou, who was tucking her knives into her waistband.

  “We need these weapons?” she asked.

  “Shotguns don’t have the distance or accuracy we need,” said Marcus. “You can take the rifle if you want, but we don’t have time to search for ammunition. We have another job we need to do before we head south.”

  “What’s that?”

  “This is a refueling place,” Marcus said. “Somehow they’ve got supplies of propane, diesel, and gasoline here. Not sure how they came by it.”

  Lou reached into Marcus’s backpack and pulled out a Twinkie. She pulled apart the wrapper and split the dessert into two pieces. She shoved half of it into her mouth and offered the other half to Fifty. He sniffed it and then gobbled it whole, almost taking Lou’s hand with it.

  “Good boy,” she said, rubbed his head between his ears, and climbed onto her paint. She settled into the saddle and licked her fingers clean of the white sugar snack filling. She left the rifle on the ground, apparently content to stick with her Remington.

  Marcus checked the dead men for anything of value. He found a mostly full flask on one and some sunglasses in the pocket of another. It had been a long time since he’d worn sunglasses. They were Ray-Bans. Aviators. He folded them and stuck them inside his denim jacket’s interior breast pocket. Then he grabbed the rifle Lou didn’t want. He checked the magazine. It was mostly full. There was plenty of ammunition for what he had planned.

  “Are we going to blow up stuff?” asked Lou. “That the plan?”

  “Sort of. Not exactly,” said Marcus. He pulled the pot from his pack and poured some water into it. He offered a drink to both horses and Fifty. The dog lapped up the last of it and Marcus climbed aboard his Appaloosa. His leg was throbbing. He rubbed the back of his neck and twisted his head to ease the tension.

  “You okay, Dorothy?” asked Lou. “Or you need to trade in
those ruby slippers for some orthopedic soft shoes?”

  “What do you know about orthopedic shoes?”

  “The library has a medical section,” she said. “Have you ever read a book?”

  Marcus chuckled. “A few.”

  The two started moving toward the sound of the generators. The sun sat large and low in the sky and cast an orange glow across the dirt road.

  “If you could read one book now, what would it be?” asked Lou. “I’d love to have a copy of Robinson Crusoe.”

  Marcus scratched the scruff on his chin. “The only one I would read would be a biography about my life,” he said. “I’d love to see how some talented writer chooses to describe me. Does he make me a hero, an antihero, a sympathetic martyr? I’m thinking by this part of the story the writer draws me as a saint for putting up with you.”

  Lou shrugged. “Or maybe the writer makes you out to be a homicidal lunatic with no moral compass. By this part of the story you’re myopically hell-bent on revenge, so much so that you can’t see the forest for the trees. You value life so little you’d risk yours and that of everyone around you to accomplish an ultimately pointless mission.”

  Marcus glared at Lou. “So you think I’m myopic?”

  A crooked smile spread across his face and Lou laughed. Fifty barked and wagged his tail, trying to keep pace with the horses as they moved to within sight of the generators.

  “Your vocabulary surprises me sometimes,” said Marcus. “One minute you sound like you couldn’t string two verbs together, the next you’re getting philosophical.”

  “I’m nothing if not full of surprises,” said Lou, motioning toward the collection of generators ahead of them at the end of the dirt road. “Same as this place.”

  There were five of them. Some were connected to large fuel containers, which appeared to feed the generators. There were additional elevated containers attached to tall gravity pumps. Two more generators were set atop wooden wheel carts, apparently set for transport.

  “So,” said Lou, “not only do they have solar power running this place, but they’ve also got fuel to spare?”

  “I’m guessing they use it to power generators at their various installations,” he said. “Everywhere we’ve gone, they’ve had them. That bar in Abilene, the golf club, the hotel in San Angelo.”

  “And whatever other places they use for business.”

  Marcus hopped from the horse with the new rifle in one hand. He took the reins in the other and walked his Appaloosa to Lou. He handed them to her and pulled the camping pot from his pack.

  “You might want to back up,” he said. “And take the dog with you.”

  Lou did as Marcus suggested and moved back along the path a good twenty yards behind him. She whistled for Fifty. The dog trotted happily to her side and sat next to the horse, scratched behind one of his ears, and yawned. Fifty appeared as unfazed by the violence he’d perpetrated as Lou did.

  Marcus shouldered the rifle and aimed it one of the elevated fuel tanks. He exhaled and pulled the trigger several times, unleashing a barrage of rounds into the tank. He did the same with each of the five containers.

  All of them, with a series of holes in their sides, began leaking. Streams of various fuels puddled on the ground underneath and around the tanks. The odor of petrochemicals filled the air.

  Marcus tossed the weapon to the side, picked up the pot, and walked to one of the leaking containers. He held the pot underneath one of the holes as if it were an open spigot. When the pot was full, he walked away from the tank, tipping the pot to leave a thin trail of fuel.

  He repeated the process until he’d put a safe distance between the tanks and himself, bent over, and pressed the flint spark torch igniter to the puddle of fuel at his feet. He pinched the igniter until the sparks ignited the gasoline. Slowly, and much less impressively than Marcus had remembered seeing in movies, the trail caught fire. The flames licked at the ground until they reached the collection tanks.

  There was no explosion, but rather the rapid expansion of the flames. The tanks had leaked enough to give them a good mix of oxygen to fuel the fires inside. Within minutes, the conflagration was large enough that its radiant heat felt like the August sun beating on Marcus’s face.

  He watched the flames, mesmerized by their angry dance. Burning what had to be hundreds of gallons of different fuels was spiteful. Marcus knew he gained nothing from it other than the satisfaction of making the LRC’s business a bit more difficult to run.

  However, in those moot flames, he could see Cego’s portly face and the eye patch hat defined it. He could hear his deep voice taunting and mocking him. The words echoed in Marcus’s ears as if Cego were standing next to him.

  “It’s not turning out to be the kind of day you expected, now is it?” the bandit had said to him as he lay injured in his barn, his family freshly murdered.

  Marcus closed his eyes and let the waves of heat wash over him. He balled his hands into fists at his sides, squeezing his fingers into his palms. The tension in his neck tightened and sent a jolt of pain from the base of his skull to a spot between his shoulder blades. He slowly inhaled the heated air and held it in his lungs, listening to the crack and pop of the flames licking skyward.

  He exhaled and opened his eyes. Lou was right. He was myopic. He was living for the deaths of others, the men who’d stolen his peace. At that moment, he reconciled that he had no other purpose on Earth. There was nothing else to live for other than to end those who’d wronged him.

  Emilio Rasgado had gotten his. Barbas too. Now it was Cego’s turn. He would die one way or another.

  Marcus turned from the flames, the heat radiating against his neck as he walked back to Lou. She was on the ground, rubbing Fifty’s belly. The dog was on his back, his eyes closed. His leg intermittently kicked when Lou hit the right spot. She looked up from the massage when Marcus got close.

  “You done?” she asked. “You feel better?”

  Marcus rubbed his jaw and cranked his neck to one side. It cracked, relieving some of the pressure. He didn’t answer Lou. He grabbed the canteen, guzzled half of it, and then offered it to the girl.

  “I’m good,” she said, “but you seem…off.”

  Marcus capped the canteen and hooked it onto his pack. He raised an eyebrow. “Off?”

  “More than usual,” snarked Lou with a roll of her eyes. “It’s like your mood changed.”

  Marcus climbed onto his horse. “I’m fine. You might want to get the dog onto the saddle. We’ve got another day’s worth of riding.”

  Lou pouted. “It’s late to be on the road, isn’t it? Shouldn’t we just stay here?”

  “No, we’re not staying here. We’ve got another hundred miles or more. We’ll ride until midnight; then we’ll stop somewhere off the highway. Maybe Sonora. It’s another twenty miles from here, close to Interstate 10.”

  Lou huffed but picked up the dog and helped him onto the horse. He balanced himself on the leather until Lou climbed aboard, found a comfortable spot, and squeezed himself against her lap. She maneuvered the horse toward the south and held it next to Marcus and the Appaloosa.

  “You know we’re killing ourselves for nothing, right?” she said. “Rushing down to Del Rio isn’t going to make a difference.”

  Marcus slid his boots into the stirrups and urged his horse forward. The farther he rode, the cooler the air became. He was too far from the growing fire to feel it anymore. He looked over his shoulder and noticed the flames had spread to an adjacent cabin. Maybe the whole place would burn. That wouldn’t be for nothing.

  “Seriously, Marcus,” she said. “I’m tired, you’re tired, and you’ve proven your point. You’ve gotten your revenge. We killed I don’t know how many people, we rescued Rudy’s wife, we’ve totally disrupted their business. Why do we have to go to Del Rio?”

  Marcus clenched his jaw. “We don’t have to go, Lou. You can stay. You can ride back to Abilene or San Angelo or cross the wall for all I care. You�
�re the one who said you didn’t need anybody.”

  Lou hurried the pace of the paint to keep up with Marcus. “I’m not saying I don’t want to go with you, I’m asking you why you have to go? Why do you have to get revenge?”

  Marcus shook his head. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  Lou bit her lip before speaking. “Wouldn’t I? You’re not the only one whose family is gone. My dad was murdered. Remember?”

  Marcus’s eyes softened. “I’m sorry. I didn’t—”

  “I know about revenge,” said Lou. “And I know it is a dish best served cold.”

  Marcus’s brow furrowed with confusion. “How…how do you know?”

  Lou’s eyes burned with anger and welled with tears, her passion and her pain palpable. “Because I killed every single one of those men who took my dad from me. I waited until they were asleep. I slit their throats. I stabbed them. I…”

  Lou’s chin trembled and she drew her hands to her mouth. Her back heaved as she wept. Fifty whimpered and then raised his head enough to nuzzle her arms and lick them.

  Marcus felt small. Of course she knew how he felt. Of course she’d sought revenge. How could he have not thought she understood, maybe better than anyone, his suffering?

  He’d spent less than a month letting his anger consume him. She’d lived with hers for years and valued every sunrise more than the one before it. She’d moved past her anguish, survived on her own, and was now freely helping him pursue his own warped vision quest.

  They rode in the purple dark of the new night, not speaking for several miles. When Marcus finally felt comfortable enough to say something, she’d stopped crying and the dog had closed his eyes.

  “You dream about it,” he said.

  Lou wiped her chin. “About what?”

  “Your father’s death. Or the revenge you took. Maybe both.”

  “It’s the revenge,” she said. “It doesn’t digest well. It sits there in my gut all the time. Maybe that’s why killing people for you doesn’t matter to me. I’ve already got my cross to bear.”

  Marcus nodded and chewed on the inside of his cheek. She was an enigma, at once folksy and feral, then thoughtful and wise. He knew she didn’t need a traveling companion, but he was becoming increasingly convinced he did.