The Traveler 01-03 Home, Canyon, Wall Read online

  Pico hurried over to the horse. He grabbed the saddle horn, set his foot in the stirrup iron, and heaved himself up into position. Another grunt untied the horse and Pico worked the reins to move Aces toward the highway. The horse trotted about ten feet when Queho raised his weapon to his shoulder, drew his eye to the sight, and pulled the trigger.

  Crack!

  The single shot exploded square into Pico’s back, forcing him forward from the horse. The Appaloosa bucked as Pico fell, turned, and galloped west toward the center of town.

  Pico was face down in the dirt.

  “Let’s go get the other horses,” Queho said to the grunts. “We’ve got a woman to get and a house to burn.”

  ***

  OCTOBER 14, 2037, 8:23 AM

  SCOURGE + 5 YEARS

  TEXAS HIGHWAY 36

  CROSS PLAINS, TEXAS

  Battle heard the loud crack of a Browning shotgun to the east. A moment later, racing toward him down the center of Highway 36 was an Appaloosa. He could hear the rhythmic metallic clink of the shoes as Aces galloped toward him. Without considering how or why the horse was free, and what it meant about Pico or his plan to attack Abilene, he acted to gain control of it.

  “Whoa!” he called out to the horse as it neared him. He started jogging and waved his arms. “Whoa! Easy, boy! Easy, boy!”

  He knew he was giving up his position by calling out to the horse, but he’d already given up the paint. He couldn’t afford to lose Aces too.

  The horse turned south as it got close to him, slowing enough that Battle was able to run up to it and jog alongside it into the grass.

  “Whoa!” he called again when the horse tried turning in front of him. It shook its head and snorted repeatedly, slowing to a stop. Battle grabbed the reins with his free hand and came around the front of the horse to face it. “Shhh! It’s okay.”

  The horse whinnied and nickered. It was breathing heavily through its nose, gradually calming.

  Battle looked back east, toward the direction from which Aces had run. He didn’t see anything. The highway was empty. He pulled himself into the saddle with a swift move upward and clicked his heels into Aces’s sides. He clucked his tongue against his teeth. The horse resisted at first but acquiesced and started its trot back toward the cluster of bald cypress.

  Battle kept his reins in one hand, the rifle leveled in the other. He rode high in the saddle, his head whipping back and forth across the highway, his eyes scanning for trouble.

  The sun was directly in front of him as he rode. It was bright and blinding. He took his reins hand and lowered the brim of the brown cowboy hat he wore. It helped a little bit, though not much. A few more gallops, and he saw the driveway to the left. The bald cypress towered high above it, their green a stark contrast to the overwhelmingly sepia-toned post-Scourge Central Texas.

  Battle slowed the horse to a stop and dismounted. He wrapped the reins around his wrist, keeping enough slack so that he could effectively use the Browning if needed.

  He inched off the highway into the shade of the trees and saw it immediately. Pico was face down in the dirt to the left of the concrete.

  Battle looked to the right and saw the tangle of bungees near the tree where he’d left Pico. Someone had cut him free only to shoot him.

  He inched forward toward Pico and immediately noticed the lack of blood. He smiled to himself.

  “Salomon Pico,” he said and kicked his leg. “Pico. It’s me, Battle.”

  Pico grunted and turned his head to the side. “It hurts. It feels like my back is broken.”

  “You’re fine. Bruised maybe. But fine. Roll over and take off your shirt.”

  Pico rolled onto his side and unbuttoned the tattered shirt. He sat up, groaning as he did, and pulled off the sleeves. Underneath the shirt was a black Kevlar vest, the back of it splattered with shotshell.

  “I told you it would work, if it came down to it,” Battle said.

  “I still don’t get why I was wearing it.” Pico got to his knees and then stood. He unstrapped the vest on its side and pulled it over his head, groaning when he raised his arms.

  “I needed you alive, until I didn’t,” Battle said. “I couldn’t risk you getting hit in a shoot-out. You’re my insurance policy.”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “Why? What happened? Who shot you?”

  “A boss named Queho,” Pico said. “He was with some other grunts. They found me here. I told them your plan. I told them you knew about the HQ in Abilene. They weren’t happy.”

  “So they shot you and headed back to Abilene?”

  “Not exactly.” Pico pulled on the tattered shirt.

  “What, then?”

  “They’re headed to your place,” he said. “They’re going to get the woman.”

  Battle’s eyes widened. Nausea grew from his gut and settled in his throat. “Are they on horses?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We gotta go. Now. Get on the horse.”

  Pico reached for the saddle horn. “You ain’t gonna tie me up?”

  “No need,” Battle said. “They want you dead more than I do. I’m your best chance of survival now, Salomon Pico. You won’t do anything I don’t like. Scoot up.”

  Pico slid forward in the saddle and Battle hopped on behind him. “One more thing, Battle.”

  “What’s that?” He took the reins and dug his heels deep into Aces’s sides, steering the Appaloosa east, parallel to the highway.

  “They said they’re gonna burn down your house too.”

  CHAPTER 19

  NOVEMBER 12, 2032, 1:17 PM

  SCOURGE +44 DAYS

  EAST OF RISING STAR, TEXAS

  Battle shook the throbbing ache from his hand. Chiseling stone was not something he did frequently, if ever. His carvings were crude and not entirely legible without explanation.

  He pounded the hammer onto the top of the chisel for the last time and then tossed both of them to the freshly dug earth beside him. He blew away the limestone dust and wiped the surface clean with a wet rag.

  A breeze whistled through the branches in the oaks nearby. He looked up at the cloudless sky, noticing for the first time the absence of airplanes. He hadn’t seen or heard one for weeks, come to think of it. The sun was to his left, casting his shadow across the stones that bore the names of his wife and son. He closed his eyes and inhaled the cold air, breathing it deep into his lungs before exhaling.

  He ran his fingers along his wife’s stone, feeling the rough etching under his fingers. A familiar lump grew thick in his throat.

  “I failed you,” he said. “I didn’t protect you. I didn’t protect Wes. In the end, all of the preparation, all of the sacrifice was worthless. You were right.”

  He’d buried her earlier in the day, speaking to her as he dug. He’d apologized, reminisced, laughed. Battle didn’t know what else to do. The silence was too much.

  Now, with the headstones in place and inscribed, it was time for the formal goodbye. He needed to repent. It was a Sunday, after all. The Lord’s day.

  “I was selfish,” he said as much to God as to Sylvia. “I was so consumed by a fictional future that I neglected to live in the present. You were a selfless, giving woman I’ll always love. You gave me our son. You gave me your life.”

  The wind swirled around him and shifted direction. It was growing colder.

  “For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command,” he said, quoting the Bible, “with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.”

  Battle picked up the hammer and chisel and stood over the graves. He swallowed against the lump, suppressing it, turned from the graves, and walked slowly back to the house. He passed by the garden, looking at the still unripe vegetables his wife had planted.

&
nbsp; He marched toward the sliding door at the rear porch and stepped into the kitchen. His laptop computer was sitting open on the counter. He set down the hammer and chisel and refreshed the browser:

  Chaos Ravages Major Cities, Pandemic Reaches Critical Mass

  The headline stared back at him, reaffirming what he already knew to be true. The world was devolving into a mosh pit, infrastructure was beyond its breaking point, and governments were collapsing. The inmates were running the asylum.

  He’d seen it before on a smaller scale. Without a central government, without fear of reprisal, criminal elements would take hold. Violence would replace civility. Neighborhoods would become territories. Good would struggle against evil. There was no avoiding it now.

  The only question for Marcus Battle was how long the chaos would rule. A year? Five? A generation?

  Against his better judgment, he thumbed the mousepad, opening the doomsday article. He grew more nauseous with each sentence.

  What’s left of the United Nations Security Council held an online meeting this morning with surviving leaders at both the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control.

  The discussion, which participants accessed remotely via computers, revealed the dire circumstances developing in many of the world’s largest metropolitan areas. Though reporters from the Associated Press and Reuters were invited to view the teleconference, they were not allowed to ask questions.

  “The central governments in Berlin, London, Moscow, Paris, and Prague are unable to function or provide basic services,” said UN Secretary General Lucius DeKaamp. “Much of Western Europe is under a facsimile of military rule. In Northern Africa and the Middle East there is essentially no military left. The Chinese,” he said, “won’t discuss the full impact of the Scourge on their people.”

  DeKaamp further said UN Security Forces were incapable of responding effectively to the scope of the unrest. He said much of the force had deserted.

  The French representative, Ambassador Jacque Roget, confirmed first responders throughout his country had also deserted their posts. “We cannot effectively police our cities or villages. We cannot put out fires. We cannot transport people to the hospitals. There are no policemen. There are no firefighters. There are few doctors.”

  Russian Ambassador Vitaly Publichenko said Eastern Europe was a wasteland, overrun by disease, famine, and thuggery. He relayed anecdotal reports of a black market for uninfected children.

  “It is most disturbing,” he said from behind a surgical mask. “We have heard stories that criminal gangs are stealing healthy children from their homes. The parents are either too sick or too weak to fight back. If they do fight, they are slaughtered.”

  Representatives from the World Health Organization presented their latest casualty estimates, which are growing hourly. They predict two in three people will succumb to the bacterial pneumonia before only the immune are alive.

  Economies have collapsed on every continent. The dollar, euro, pound, yen, and ruble are worthless, said Secretary General DeKaamp.

  The council offered no solutions, advice, or comfort for survivors. They will meet again, via teleconference, tomorrow afternoon.

  Battle slammed shut the laptop and slid open the sliding door with force. He stomped around the side of the house to the junction box on the exterior wall. He swung open its thick plastic cover and gripped a handful of conduit, ripping it from its delicate connection to the box. He grabbed another handful of wires and yanked them too. In an instant, he’d irreparably damaged his satellite connection to the Internet and television. He was cut off.

  It was an impulsive, anger-driven choice Battle made. Without his family, he didn’t want any part of the future. He didn’t need the outside world. He wanted to disconnect from everything and everyone.

  In his mind, it was a self-flagellating necessity. Without anyone to live for, he’d live alone for as long as he had left. He hoped he’d been contaminated. He prayed he wasn’t among the immune. That would make everything so much easier.

  For two weeks, he checked his temperature hourly, anticipating an imperceptible rise. He constantly cleared his throat, hoping it might show signs of an oncoming infection. With each passing hour of health, he further reconciled he was among the “lucky” ones, the one in three who survived the Scourge.

  Battle couldn’t kill himself, even though the thought crossed his mind. If he committed suicide, he wouldn’t see his wife or child in Heaven. If he left his land with the intention of dying at someone else’s hand, God would know his true intention.

  So he would live in isolation for as long as his supply of food and water would allow. He would visit his wife’s and child’s graves every day. He would talk to them. He would seek forgiveness.

  Only if someone came to him seeking help would he interact with others. That was his plan. Until it wasn’t.

  ***

  MAY 15, 2034, 3:21 PM

  SCOURGE +228 Days

  EAST OF RISING STAR, TEXAS

  Battle didn’t see a soul for one hundred and eighty-four days. Each of those days began with a short prayer before a sunrise visit to his wife and child. He spoke with them as if they would respond. After three months and ninety-three conversations, they did.

  Wesson made suggestions about keeping up the property’s defenses, cleaning the guns, taking target practice, and hunting for fresh meat.

  Sylvia talked fruits and vegetables. She joked with him about his awful haircut and made fun of the old T-shirts with which he refused to part. She gave him advice about how best to use the rations they’d saved.

  The conversations began at their gravesites. Slowly, they migrated from the plots to the garden, to the barn, to the house. Battle might spend half of his day talking to himself, to the ghosts of his family. It was an insanity that kept him sane, voices to break the never-ending silence of loneliness.

  The silence ended, at least temporarily, some seven and a half months after Wesson and Sylvia died. He was sitting in the living room, his feet on the coffee table, a computer on his lap. He was watching Raising Arizona from the wireless hard drive he kept in the kitchen.

  “That night I had a dream. I dreamt I was light as the ether, a floating spirit visiting things to come…” Nicolas Cage’s character H.I. McDunnough was narrating the final scenes of the movie. Battle was unconsciously mouthing them from memory. He couldn’t have counted the number of times he watched the film if he’d tried.

  Movies were a daily escape for Battle, a reminder of his life before the Scourge. He had a couple dozen stored on the drive. He’d cycle through them every few days and start over.

  The credits began to roll and Battle shut the laptop. He pulled his feet from the table and stood. He stretched his arms and his back. He needed to check his inventory and clean Inspector, so he trudged to the front door and swung it open. He stepped outside to see a woman standing on the stoop. He jumped back and pulled the door tight behind him.

  He checked his waistband. The Sig Sauer was tucked into it. Battle never went outside unarmed. “Can I help you?”

  “Yeah,” said the woman through dry, cracked lips. Her hair was mouse brown and wild. She looked as if she’d stuck her finger in a working socket. Her face was painted with dirt. Her remaining teeth were more yellow than white. The river of wrinkles on her forehead smacked of long-lived desperation. “I need some help.”

  “What kind of help?” Battle looked past the woman onto his property. His eyes scanned the tree-dotted landscape. He didn’t see anything unusual.

  “I haven’t eaten in a week,” she said. “I haven’t had water in two days.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” Battle studied her clothing. It was tattered and stained at the various creases in her body. Her shoes weren’t hers. The toes were cut away, revealing her toes hanging out the edge. Her long fingernails were thick with dirt.

  “Can I come in?” she asked, her voice wavering. “For some water? It looks like you�
�re doing okay.”

  “I can’t let you inside,” he said, paying close attention to her eye movements.

  “Please, mister?” she begged. “Let me inside for a second? A sip of water?”

  Battle was an instant from relenting, his defensive posture already relaxed infinitesimally, when he noticed her wrists. As she held her clasped hands to her chin in prayer, Battle noticed a bright red rash circling both wrists. The rashes looked like fresh rope burn or the raw blistering from handcuffs.

  Either way, he knew she wasn’t alone. He advanced, planted his feet shoulder width, and drew the handgun. “Where are they?” he demanded calmly with the Sig aimed at the woman’s forehead.

  She raised her hands and stepped back from the stoop, her eyes flittering. “Who?”

  “The people who broug—”

  Something collapsed on him from above, knocking him to the ground. The Sig Sauer went flying. He felt repeated, jarring thumps to the back of his head.

  Somebody had jumped him from the roof!

  Battle couldn’t see him, but he heard the animalistic grunt emitted with every shot to his head. He was dizzy, but had enough sense to blindly jab his elbow straight up.

  His elbow caught the attacker in his eye, forcing a girlish wail from him as he fell to the side, grabbing his eye. Battle turned to see blood pouring through the man’s fingers.

  Battle’s head was throbbing and his equilibrium was compromised, but he managed a swift soccer kick to the man’s nose. It knocked him unconscious, and the wailing stopped. His hand dropped to his side, revealing the swollen, bleeding hole where his eyeball used to be.

  “Help!” screamed the woman. “Help!”

  Battle couldn’t tell to whom she was calling. He stumbled forward and tried to stand upright. His head pounded, blurring his vision. He reached for the back of his head and felt a pair of huge knots.

  He tried to focus and find the Sig Sauer. However, as he blinked through the pain, a second figure emerged and stood beside the woman. They were ten feet from him, standing in the semicircular driveway.