Rising: A Post Apocalyptic/Dystopian Adventure (The Traveler Book 4) Page 19
Lou worked with speed and precision to stop the bleeding, clean the entry and exit wounds, and sew them shut. It wasn’t the first time she’d tried stitching up torn flesh, but it was her first attempt on someone else. It was harder on another person, she found, especially since Marcus occasionally thrashed about and mumbled incoherently about things she’d never heard him mention before.
Pico. Rufus. Skinner.
After she’d stitched the injuries closed, she cleaned the skin again and then covered them with bandages. She used a rag to wipe his forehead free of the beads of sweat that dripped down his temples and into the corners of his eyes. His fever broke. His breathing slowed and regulated.
Lou had saved his life again.
When Marcus finally came to, the sun was rising again. He blinked his eyes open and tried moving to one side. He winced and reached for the wound at his side. Lou gently took his hand in hers and rested it on his chest.
Marcus focused and looked Lou in the eyes before laying his head back. He closed his eyes and winced again, air leaking from between his teeth.
“So what now?” Lou asked. She was sitting directly in front of him in a wooden chair. Fifty was at her side and she was rubbing his head.
Marcus opened his eyes again and adjusted his weight onto one side. He was in the oversized club chair. He looked around the room. Lou had dragged the bodies into the far corner. All five of the men were dead. There were flies buzzing around the open window. He licked his cracked, dry lips.
Lou handed him the canteen. “Here,” she said. “This is what’s left of it.”
Marcus took the water and gulped it from the canteen. Then he held the opening above his mouth and shook the remaining droplets from it. He set the canteen in his lap and noticed he was shirtless. There was a large blood-soaked bandage on his side.
Lou glanced at the wound. “I did my best. You can only learn so much from a book. I don’t think the stitches are very good, at least not on the front. On your back I did a decent job.”
Marcus didn’t recognize his own voice when he spoke. It was raspy and hoarse. “Thank you. I guess this makes you the Wizard.”
Lou smiled and shook her head. “No,” she said. “The Wizard was a poseur. I’m the real deal.”
Marcus chuckled and then winced from the sudden sting of pain at his side. “That you are.”
“Who’s Pico?” she asked. “Or Rufus? Or Skinner?”
Marcus swallowed hard. “How do you know about them?”
Lou shrugged. “You talked about them when you were unconscious. I couldn’t understand much other than their names and a few other words.”
“They’re—” Marcus paused as he considered the best way to describe them “—all dead.”
“I figured that much,” Lou said. “Everyone you know is dead. I mean, except me and Rudy.”
“That’s true,” said Marcus. “I have that effect on people. Spend enough time with me and you end up dead.”
“Were they friends?”
Marcus shook his head. “No.”
“Oh.” Lou said. She stood, walked over to the window, and leaned against the sill.
The light from outside framed her thin silhouette. Her T-shirt hung on her body; her pants were cinched at her waist and gathered in a puddle at her shoes. Standing there for several minutes, she looked every bit the young girl she was. She spun the hat around on her head and crossed the room back to Marcus.
“So you didn’t answer me,” Lou said.
“I did,” said Marcus. “I told you they weren’t friends.”
Lou shook her head. “No, I mean the other question. The one I asked first.”
Marcus raised an eyebrow and leaned his head forward, silently asking for clarification.
“What now?” she asked again. “You got your revenge. All three of the men you wanted to kill, plus about a million others who got in your way, are dead. Are you going home?”
Home.
The word stung. It was if that four-letter word carried with it the disease that offed two-thirds of the world’s population. Home left him alone for half a decade before it drew him into the wilderness, only to leave him abandoned again. Home was the thing he’d done so much to protect. Home was the thing that revealed so many of his failings.
Home.
It was a mythical place for imaginary people.
Marcus sank into the chair, gripping the threadbare arms. “I don’t have a home,” he said, his voice cracking.
Lou’s eyes welled with tears and Marcus averted his, staring at the pile of bodies in the corner. The sight of those bodies was more familiar, almost more comforting to Marcus than anything else in his Godforsaken world.
“I think I’m going back to Abilene,” he said. “They need help there. Maybe I could help.”
Lou puffed her cheeks and exhaled. “Well, I know what’s next for me.”
Marcus’s eyes narrowed underneath a knitted brow.
“I’ve got to return Fifty,” she said. “He’s only on loan, remember? Rudy’s expecting him back.”
“You’re headed to Baird, then?”
“Baird.”
“Baird isn’t that far from Abilene,” said Marcus.
Lou shrugged. “Practically the same town.”
“We could head that way together.”
“Like Dorothy and the Scarecrow,” said Lou.
“Not the Tin Man?”
“I have a heart.”
“Not the Lion?”
“I think I’ve proven I have courage.”
“So you’re saying you don’t have a brain,” Marcus said, changing his position in the chair to take the pressure off his lower back.
“No,” Lou said, her face lighting up, “you’re the Scarecrow, Marcus. You were always the Scarecrow.”
Marcus scratched his beard against the growing irritation on his neck. He really needed a shave. “I thought I was Dorothy.”
“Dorothy’s the hero, Marcus, so that rules you out.”
Lou stood from her seat and gently slid into the oversized chair next to Marcus. She laid her head on his shoulder. Marcus leaned his cheek on the top of her head, feeling the fabric of her Astros cap against his skin.
“I bet you were a good dad,” said Lou.
“I know you were a good daughter,” said Marcus.
“I’m glad I didn’t kill you.”
Marcus closed his eyes. “I’m glad you didn’t kill me too, Dorothy. To be honest, I hope we’re done killing for a while.”
Lou yawned. “Me too, Marcus, but we both know that’s not likely. We got a long road to Baird. We’re bound to run into some obstacles along the way. Besides, sometimes people just need killin’.”
Marcus sat there while the little philosopher named Lou fell asleep next to him. There was blood on her fingers, painting her cuticles and nails. It was his blood. Or maybe it wasn’t. She was as much a killer as he.
She was right. They lived in a world where violence was law and evil ruled. A black bird fluttered its wings outside the window and perched on the sill. It pecked its head toward the bodies and then at Marcus, its black eyes staring through him.
Marcus stared back at the bird. It cocked its head and rocked on its small feet before flapping its wings and darting from the sill to the outside. A minute later it was back with a second bird. A third appeared at the sill. They were apparently biding their time.
Marcus watched the birds pace back and forth until one of them had the gumption to hop to the floor and skitter to the bodies. A second joined. So did the third.
While Lou snored loudly against Marcus’s shoulder, the trio grew bolder and pecked at their would-be meal. The pecking quickly became more aggressive and Marcus wondered if perhaps all of the killing had purpose. In that purpose he believed he could find his own.
In the end, in some small way, he could be more than a soldier, a failed protector, a crazed killer, or a revenge-seeking vigilante.
He could be the he
ro.
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COMING IN LATE 2017
BATTLE: THE TRAVELER SERIES PART FIVE
Read an excerpt from BATTLE
“I’m getting too old for this,” Marcus Battle muttered under his breath.
He wiggled his fingers above the grip of his Glock at his hip. His feet were shoulder width apart on the cracked, hole-riddled asphalt and he straddled what was left of the faded double yellow line that ran through town. Despite the dry chill of a late West Texas winter, Marcus was in short sleeves. Sweat coated the back of his neck and under his arms.
His muscled tensed and his focus sharpened on the target standing thirty yards from him in the street. He drew slow, even breaths.
“You’re the one they used to call Mad Max,” sneered the target. “I heard tell of you all over the territory south of the wall.”
Marcus didn’t respond. He leaned forward at his hips, positioning his shoulders over his toes. It was the best position from which to fire his weapon.
“They say you ended the Cartel single-handedly,” said the target, “turned your back on the Dwellers, got north of the wall, and came back to kill most of the Llano River Clan.”
The target had the story mostly right. There was a defiance in the man’s voice. There was also fear. Marcus could hear it as the man recounted the dime store tales of Marcus Battle’s violent adventures. He was the most recent in a long succession of would-be sharks who’d circled Baird before diving into its waters in hopes of besting its legendary Sheriff.
Marcus wasn’t really the Sheriff. There wasn’t such a thing south of the wall in the territory once known as Texas. But he’d found people to lead in the town of Baird. They’d wanted his help and he’d given it freely.
For six months it had been easy. Word hadn’t gotten out. Then it did. Things changed. Now, almost weekly, some young gun or guns came calling. They called out Marcus by name or reputation and demanded the chance to seek out glory.
This was one tall and thin. His arms were almost comically long and his sleeves stopped short of his wrists. His baggy pants ended at his calves. “I also heard you ain’t got no family,” said the target, smiling as he spoke. “And you’re here ‘cause your home is gone. They say you got nowhere to go and nobody to go to, so you’re here. That’s pathetic, if you ask me.”
At first Marcus had tried to talk them out of their mission, to offer them refuge from the violence and unease that plagued the lawless, wild south. None of them accepted. They insisted. One by one they’d failed in their quest and Marcus had buried them himself a mile outside of town. Marcus fingers had blistered then thickened with callouses from the frequency of the work.
The target widened his stance. His hand still hovered above the holster at his side. “I used to believe what they say,” he shouted. “I used to believe the stories. I thought you were a giant full of muscles.”
Here stood another one. Another body to put in the ground, Marcus thought. He rubbed the side of his thumb against his twitchy trigger finger.
“You don’t look so tough,” said the target. “You look old. I ain’t impressed one b—“
The nine millimeter bullet drilled through the center of the challenger’s forehead and exploded out the back of his head before he could finish his sentence. Marcus already had the Glock back in his holster and snapped shut by the time the silenced target went limp and collapsed the ground face first. His mouth was still open in the shape of a “B” when his brain stopped working and his heart stopped. He hadn’t drawn his weapon.
“That was anti-climactic,” said Lou. She was leaning against the brick facade of a building to Marcus’s right. “You didn’t let him complete his thought.”
Marcus sighed and scratched his beard. It was time to shave again. “I’d heard enough,” he said and closed the distance to Lou. “I half expected you to put a blade in him before I had a chance to fire.”
Lou curled her lips into a pout and shrugged. She put a hand on one of the knives in her waistband. “I considered it,” she thought. “He was a talkative one.”
Marcus stepped up the curb onto the wide cement sidewalk that separated the street from the long rows of buildings that lined both sides of the main boulevard that ran through the center of Baird. From the look of the place it could have been 1894 as easily as it was 2044.
Marcus leaned against the building next to Lou. “Just once,” he said, “I’d like for these punks to take me up on my offer of sanctuary, forgiven transgressions, et cetera. They’re too stubborn, too confident in their own abilities.”
“Yeah,” Lou said, folding her arms across her chest, “but they only have to be better than you once You have to be better than them every time.”
Marcus rubbed his aching neck, digging his thumb into a knot below the back of his head. Lou was right. It only took one hot shot with a quicker draw, or one who decided to snipe him without warning.
He nudged Lou with his shoulder. “Let’s hope that’s later rather than sooner,” he said. “You gonna help me with the body?”
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Acknowledgments
Immeasurable gratitude always begins with Courtney, Sam, and Luke. You're my everything.
A big thanks to Felicia A. Sullivan, who edited my work from the beginning. She's one in a million.
Thanks also to Pauline Nolet and Patricia Wilson for their proofing talent. They catch everything. And to Stef McDaid for giving the book a terrifically professional look.
Cover artist Hristo Kovatliev is a master at his craft and is so patient when I ask for tweaks and changes.
To Kevin Pierce, who provides the voice for this series in the audiobook format, I am grateful we connected and have together to create this world. You are Marcus Battle.
Steve Kremer provided excellent help with the early manuscript. Thank you.
And I thank my parents, Sanders and Jeanne, my siblings, Penny and Steven, and my mother-in-law, Linda Eaker, for undying support and encouragement.
Lastly, thanks to all of you readers who demanded a return of Marcus Battle. He lives because of you.
Table of Contents
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
Read an excerpt from BATTLE
Acknowledgments