Battle Page 4

  “So you’re not leaving,” said Rudy, “which is good. But what exactly is it you’re doing? What do you mean by an uneasy peace?”

  Marcus sighed. “I mean I don’t want to be sheriff anymore. Somebody else needs to take the reins, somebody who’s as skilled as I am and has a connection to this place and its people.”

  Marcus looked around the room as he spoke, but his stare landed on Rudy. He didn’t have to say what he was thinking. Everybody knew.

  “No,” said Norma. “Not going to happen, Marcus. I’m not letting Rudy take that risk. It’s too much.”

  Marcus picked up his fork, slid the room-temperature meat into his mouth, and chewed. It actually tasted like chicken, at least what he recalled chicken tasted like. It had been years since he’d had any.

  “You want me to be sheriff?” asked Rudy. “Me? Why me?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Norma. “You’re not putting a target on your back for every ne’er-do-well who rides into Baird.”

  Marcus swallowed and stabbed at another bite on the plate. “I’m not asking him to put a target on his back. The target is me, not the job.”

  Norma shook her head. “That makes no sense, Marcus Battle,” she chided in a voice louder than Marcus had ever heard her employ. “If you’re the target, then how is you giving up the job going to make a difference? All you’d be doing is putting my husband in the crosshairs along with you. Is that what you want? You want someone else to take some of the heat?”

  “Now hold on, Norma,” Marcus said. “I’m not saying—”

  “What are you saying?” Norma pressed, tears welling in her eyes.

  Rudy puffed his chest and raised his chin. “He’s saying I should take the lead,” said Rudy. “He’s saying I could make a difference for our friends and neighbors.”

  Norma cocked her head to one side, her hair falling across her face. “Are you serious?” she hissed. “You’d consider this?”

  Rudy shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m not saying yes or no.”

  Norma ran her hands through her hair. Her eyes were slits, her mouth set firmly. In a measured, but clearly volcanic tone, she said, “After what we’ve been through, you’d think about it? You’d think about having whatever hell-sent group of bandits, or posse, or whatever be the end of you?”

  “We don’t know that would happen again,” said Rudy. “The Cartel is gone. The Dwellers dissolved into oblivion; the Llano River Clan scattered. For more than a year, no organized gang has attacked us. It’s been one-offs, loners, and vigilantes. That’s it.”

  “That’s it,” Norma scoffed. “You’re an idiot, Rudy Gallardo. I love you, but you’re naive if you think no gang is coming for this place someday. Someone will fill the vacuum. It will happen. I don’t want you in their sights when it does.”

  Rudy sucked in a deep breath of air. He sank back in his chair, apparently considering his wife’s concerns. He scratched his neck and then rubbed his hand along the back of his neck.

  “I could so use my knives to cut the tension in this room.” Lou snickered. “This is the best Saturday dinner in a long—”

  “Not funny,” said Marcus.

  “Not funny at all,” said Norma. She pushed herself back from the table. With tears streaming down her cheeks, she stormed from the kitchen. Her footsteps echoed through the hallway. The screen door slammed open against the exterior of the house and then banged shut.

  “Rudy, I’m sorry,” said Marcus. “I didn’t mean for it to go that way. I don’t want you and Norma fighting on account of my issues.”

  “If they were at odds because of your issues,” Lou chirped, “they’d have gotten divorced or shot each other by now.”

  Marcus glowered. “You’re not funny at all.”

  “I’m hilarious,” Lou countered.

  “It’s fine,” said Rudy, ignoring Lou. “I get where you’re coming from. I do. I should have had her back, at least here at the table. We could have talked about it later, just the two of us.”

  “Still,” Marcus said, “I ruined dinner. I’m going to go apologize.”

  “No,” Rudy said, “that will only make things worse. I’ll deal with it later. You can help with the cleanup though. I’d appreciate that.”

  “No problem.”

  “I do appreciate it though,” said Rudy.

  Marcus took another bite of snake. “What?”

  “Your having confidence in me.”

  Lou giggled and shook her head. She took a swig of water from her glass and smacked her lips when she slapped it back on the table.

  “Passive-aggressive?” asked Marcus.

  “No,” said Lou. “It’s that you’re the funny one now.”

  “I’m going to talk to my wife,” said Rudy. He feigned a smile and excused himself, disappearing through the open arch that led into the hallway.

  Marcus looked at the two women across from him. He blinked with effect. They took the hint and cleared their plates, then left the kitchen to do whatever it was the two of them did.

  Marcus put his hand on Lou’s shoulder. She shrugged him off. “What’s going on?” he asked.

  Lou squeezed her eyes shut and dropped her shoulders. When she opened them again, they were glossy with tears. She swallowed hard. When she spoke, her voice cracked. “You didn’t ask me,” she said, pain etched in her voice.

  “I didn’t ask you what?” Marcus asked, dumfounded. “If I should quit?”

  “No, Dorothy.” She shook her head and pointed at herself with a balled fist. “You didn’t ask me to be the sheriff.”

  Marcus sat there for a moment considering her outrage. Lou? He scratched his head. “I didn’t even think about it.”

  Lou rolled her eyes and threw back her head in a way that only teenagers can effectively do. She clamped a hand over the Astros baseball cap on the top of her head to keep it from flying off. “I didn’t even think about it,” she repeated in a baritone voice, mocking Marcus. “I didn’t even think. Why would I think? I’m Marcus Battle. I act all introspective; I quote old movies. I name my guns, I don’t read books, I think Al Pacino was in The Godfather. Maybe he was in War and Peace too.”

  “C’mon,” he said, “give me a break. I didn’t think about it because never, in a million years, would I think you’d want that responsibility.”

  “Why?” she asked. “Because you think I couldn’t handle it?”

  “No,” said Marcus, frustration welling in his voice, “because I don’t want you living the same kind of nasty existence I have.”

  “My existence has been pretty nasty, Marcus. You and I both know that. I’m perfectly capable of living with my demons. More than you, apparently.”

  Marcus never wanted to be the sheriff, or whatever he was, in and around Baird. He took the job because Rudy had asked it of him, and because the townsfolk were desperate for someone who could fend off the scavengers who’d come to peck at and steal what they’d worked too hard to have. There were other reasons too.

  He couldn’t go back to his own ranch. He’d seen to that himself, having burned it after Lola, Sawyer, and Penny had died there. There was no point in staying in that haunted place anymore.

  He’d grown fond of Lou. She was a good kid who needed an adult in her life to equip her with some sort of parental guidance. He was more a friend than father, but that was a sliding scale depending on the circumstance. She’d decided to stay in Baird and live in an outbuilding on Rudy’s property. It gave her a roof over her head and provided easy joint custody of Fifty with the Gallardos.

  He didn’t want to be alone again. He was acutely self-aware of what it had done to his psyche in the five years after the Scourge. Another long bout of solitude would surely have driven him over the edge.

  A couple of the townsfolk were former low-level Cartel suppliers who knew of Marcus as Mad Max. They recalled his larger-than-life persona and his reputation as an unstoppable solo force and lone vigilante, and had put Marcus on a pedestal. They played to
his ego.

  Rather than become a never-ending drifter in a western wasteland, Marcus took those plusses and subtracted the only minus, which was being the top law enforcer in a lawless land. The math was simple; he took the job. The town gave him a place southeast of town. It was next to what was once known as T P Lake. It was more of a pond now, but it did provide Marcus and his horse with a water source. There were a cluster of shotgun houses and travel trailers on the edges of the pond. Though Marcus lived by himself, he wasn’t alone.

  Sitting here listening to Lou, he wondered if he was wrong to take the job in the first place. If it was always going to end badly, which it was bound to according to the post-Scourge order of things, he might have been better off wandering, slipping into oblivion.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I should have asked if it was something that might interest you. I should have. I didn’t. Given Norma’s reaction to Rudy taking the job, I’m sure it’s yours if you want it.”

  Lou pushed herself from the table and picked up her plate. “Thanks, Marcus. I appreciate the apology. But wow. As good as you are with a gun, you are equally as feeble with people.”

  She dropped her plate into the sink, took a sponge from a bucket of water on the counter, and squeezed it over her plate. Then she rubbed the sponge on a brick of homemade lye and oil soap and scrubbed her plate. She washed the others in the sink too. When she was nearly finished, Marcus stood and carried his own plate to the sink.

  He reached out to put an arm on Lou’s shoulder, but she wiped her wet hands on his shirt. “You need to think about what you said here tonight. Probably need to consider why you said it too. Get over yourself, Marcus,” she said. “We’ve all lost. We’ve all killed. We’ve all had trouble sleeping because of the things we’ve done to stay alive. You don’t hold a patent on pain.”

  Marcus took a step back and stuffed his hands into his pockets. He nodded without saying anything.

  Lou patted him on the chest and walked out of the kitchen. She whistled for the dog and he gave chase, his long nails clacking on the wooden floor.

  “I’m going back to my place,” she said without facing him. “I have some knitting to do. Maybe I’ll play with makeup.”

  CHAPTER 6

  FEBRUARY 6, 2044, 9:40 PM

  SCOURGE + 11 YEARS, 4 MONTHS

  SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS

  The San Antonio River Walk was a meandering cesspool of trash and muck. The water that ran through what had once been the city’s tourism jewel was poisoned by the carelessness of the Cartel, the Dwellers, and anyone else who tried to wield power in the Mission City.

  Junior slid a sweat-soiled bandana over his nose and mouth as he and Grissom rode along the water toward the city’s most famous mission. The dank odor of the bandana was far easier to breathe than the fetid air that hung low over and around the River Walk. The two traveled east on Crockett Street and crossed Losoya Street. They were close to their destination after an arduous ride that had taken longer than either of them had expected.

  “It’s up here,” said Junior.

  “You think we’ll find what we’re looking for here?” asked Grissom.

  Junior adjusted the bandana on the bridge of his nose and shifted his weight in the saddle. He winced as his chafed skin rubbed against his jeans. He didn’t answer Grissom. He’d already told his compadre countless times over the past day and a half that this would be the place they’d find who and what they needed. Good people didn’t go to the Alamo.

  The sun had set three hours earlier and the moon was a week away from being at its fullest light. They clomped along in the relative dark, guided by a decades-old laminated map Junior kept inside a box that had belonged to his father.

  Their horses had walked a half block when Junior spotted their destination. Its exterior was lit with oil-burning wicks that flickered wildly and gave the limestone façade the glow of a medieval castle.

  “The Alamo,” said Junior. “This is it.”

  He eased his horse to an unoccupied hitching post in front of the wide plaza that led to the mission’s entrance. There were a dozen other horses standing watch already.

  Men stumbled around the plaza. One stood against the trunk of a large two-hundred-year-old pecan tree. His arm was outstretched, giving balance against the tree while the man relieved himself onto the dirt at its roots.

  From inside the building there was laughter and music. Junior hitched up his pants and touched the grips on both Colt revolvers at his hips. He looked over his shoulder at Grissom, who was slower to ready himself.

  Junior spat onto the stone plaza. “You coming?” he asked Grissom. “Or you staying here?”

  Grissom finished tying off his horse and hurried to Junior’s side. Junior moved purposefully to the Alamo’s entrance.

  They reached the entrance to the mission on its southern side, where the prison once sat. Junior moseyed through the sally port and into the large open space on the west side of the small complex. He ignored the dozens of eyes that followed his advance as he and Grissom weaved their way through the maze of tables occupied by men and women, as they made their way to the large bar at the far end of the space. At the bar, Junior planted his elbows on the polished oak and surveyed the room.

  To one side, and running the length of the rectangular space, were a series of rooms. During the famous thirteen-day siege two hundred and eight years earlier, almost to the day, those rooms had served as officers’ quarters. Now they were the post-Scourge version of VIP rooms, where men paid extra to spend private time with the women employed at the bar.

  A meat hook of a hand gripped his shoulder from behind the bar. An equally animalistic voice pulled him around to face the broad-shouldered, thick-necked barkeep. “If you stand here,” he said gruffly, “you gotta buy something. No freeloading.”

  Junior pulled a hundred-dollar bill from his pocket and slapped it on the bar. “Whatever you got for me and my friend.”

  “That’ll get you two shots of mash,” said the bear of a bartender.

  Junior scowled. “Two shots? I could get a whole tank of gasoline for three hundred.”

  The bartender shrugged, his neck disappearing into his shoulders. “Go drink a tank of gasoline, then.”

  “What’ll fifty get me?” asked Junior.

  “One shot, genius.”

  Junior motioned toward Grissom “One shot, then,” he said. “For my friend.”

  Grissom bellied up to the bar. “Gee,” he said with a gap-toothed smile. “Thanks, Junior.”

  Junior waved him off. “I’ve got a job,” he said to the bartender. “I need some men for it. I heard this was a good place to find men.”

  The bartender stepped back from Junior, his eyes darting around the room. He grunted something Junior couldn’t decipher and walked away, disappearing through an opening at one end of the bar that led into another room.

  Junior stood there for a moment. Then he tightened his hands into fists and pounded them onto the bar. He cursed and spun around to face the party behind him.

  Grissom downed his shot and coughed. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and mimicked Junior’s position at the bar. “What just happened?”

  “We got the brush-off,” said Junior. “Now I’ve got to work the room on my own.”

  Opposite the VIP rooms sat a woman playing guitar. She alternately sang and hummed as she played, her long fingers dancing across the strings and plucking at them with ridiculous skill. The melody distracted Junior from the task at hand, but he refocused and moved from the bar to search for the right people.

  “I’ll be back,” he told Grissom as he drifted into the crowd. “Stay here.”

  At the center of the room, a few couples swayed to the rhythm. He ignored them and worked past them toward a group of tables at which several armed men sat with their drinks. He approached several of them and was ignored or told to go away. Nobody was interested in what he had to offer.

  He started to wave at Grissom, ready
to give up on the place and move on when a table he hadn’t tried caught his attention. It wasn’t the table, but one man in particular, who had a certain look about him. There was an unmistakable aura around that man. A glow almost, that emanated from him. He was a leader of men, a person who could get things done. Junior was sure of it.

  The man sat between two others. While they talked across him, laughing and arguing and drinking, he sat quietly. His stubbled head and thick, wiry beard were a sharp contrast to the mess of slovenly survivors around him.

  Junior walked straight up to him. He looked at the floor, scanning their feet, and then looked at each one of them in the eyes and settled on his target. The others who’d been carrying on stopped and stared. One of them slammed his palm onto the table.

  “Do we know you?” he asked.

  Junior shook his head. “Not yet.”

  “What do you want?”

  Junior looked at the man’s hands and then at the bearded man in the middle. “I’ve got a job. I need men. The pay is horrible, but the reward is great.”

  “Not interested,” said the man.

  Junior’s eyes stayed focused on his target. “I didn’t ask you. I asked him.” He nodded at the bald man with the wiry, unkempt beard.

  As the others laughed, oohed and ahhed, the rude man cursed at Junior and threatened to come around the table. The bearded man stopped him. The table grew quiet. Guitar music strummed and glasses clinked in the background, as if providing a soundtrack.

  “What’s the job?” asked the bearded man.

  “Revenge.”

  The bearded man rubbed his head with his palm. “That’s vague,” he said with a thick Southern drawl. “Revenge comes in a lot of different colors.”

  “This is the blackest kind of revenge,” said Junior. “I want to kill the man who killed my father.”