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

  The lone living LRC raised his hands above his head. “I’m empty!” he cried out, spittle flying. “I’m empty. Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”

  “You gonna shoot him?” came a voice from behind Marcus. It was Lou. “Or you gonna let him go?”

  Marcus, his weapon still trained on the man, didn’t respond. His finger was on the trigger. The Springfield’s butt was pressed tight against his shoulder.

  Lou brushed past Marcus, sidestepping the blood, and walked over to Stetson’s body. She pressed her hand against his face and used the leverage to pry the blade from his neck. She wiped the blade on his shirt as if she were frosting a cake before she tucked it away. She stepped closer to the man with the empty gun and crinkled her nose.

  “I’m thinking you might want to tell him what he wants to know,” she said to the man. “You already pissed your pants. No need to stay quiet on account of your dignity.”

  The man, whose hands trembled as he tried to keep them above his head, nodded. “What do you want?” he asked Marcus. “I’ll tell you anything, including where you can find Barbas.”

  Marcus looked to his left. Nobody else in the bar was moving. He didn’t figure any of them as threats. Still, he kept his rifle aimed at the man. Lou made her way to another dead man and used her boot for leverage to remove her knife.

  “So where is he?”

  “Oh,” said the man. “He’s not here. He’s not in Abilene. He was, but he’s not. He left a couple of days ago. Had a couple of women with him.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “San Angelo, I think,” said the man. “We got a place down there where we…”

  “Where you what?”

  The man looked at the floor and swallowed hard. “It’s just business,” he mumbled.

  Marcus lowered his weapon and took two confident steps toward the cowering gang member. He stabbed his finger in the man’s face and spoke through his gritted teeth.

  “I’m gonna let you live,” said Marcus. “That way you can go tell people who I am and what I want.”

  The man blinked, his body trembling. “You’re Marcus Battle.”

  “I’m Marcus Battle,” he said. “I’m looking for Barbas, a man named Cego, and another with a scar on his face. He’s called Rasgado. You tell anyone you see I’m coming for them. I’m going to find them all. And when I do, they’re going to wish they’d killed me east of Rising Star. You got that?”

  The man nodded.

  Marcus turned to the rest of the bar. “Everybody hear that?”

  The room rumbled with the tacit understanding of those hiding under tables and pressed against the walls. None of them reached for their weapons or said anything untoward.

  Marcus picked up the Remington and led Lou from the carnage. He crossed the asphalt. The two bouncers were dead on the dirt, on their backs, with gaping wounds at their necks. He rubbed his chin and turned to Lou.

  “How’d you manage that?”

  “A girl’s got her ways,” she said, “and you gave them my knives. I couldn’t believe it. I rode up here on the horse and see those two buffoons fumbling around with my knives. I was sure you were dead.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because I figured there was no way you’d give up my knives without dying.”

  Marcus found his Glock on the ground, checked the magazine, and holstered it, changing his weight onto his good leg.

  “I think Highway 277 is that way,” he said, pointing ahead. “That’ll lead us to San Angelo. Let’s get the horse and head out.”

  “I think we have our pick of them,” said Lou. She motioned past the bar to where she’d tied up their Appaloosa. There were four other horses nearby. Two of them looked healthy; the others were bony and looked diseased. Marcus limped toward one of the two healthier ones. It was a tobiano paint and nickered as Marcus approached.

  “You take this one,” he said to Lou. “He’s a calm one. I’ll take the Appaloosa.”

  “Why’d you tell all those people who you were and where you were going?” she asked. “You’re giving the bad guys a chance to get ready.”

  Marcus nodded. “Maybe they’ll be ready. But now I know they’ll be scared. They’ll be looking over their shoulders. They’ll be wondering every second of every day when I’m coming. That trumps them being ready.”

  He helped Lou into the saddle. He untied the horse and she took the reins, guiding the horse back to the road. Marcus slid the Remington into the scabbard and mounted the Appaloosa. He took the reins and met Lou where she circled her horse in the street.

  He’d eased to her side when a pair of men exited the bar. They waved their hands over their heads and called out to them, asking them to stop. Marcus kept his horse walking.

  “Hey,” said one of them, a middle-aged man with a thick beard that ran up his cheeks like a vine. “I heard you talk about Rasgado. Emilio Rasgado.”

  Marcus pulled on the reins and eased the horse to a stop. “Yeah?”

  “He’s not Llano River.”

  “Neither is Cego,” said the other, a skeleton of a man with rosy cheeks and buck teeth. His mouth didn’t quite close all the way.

  “They got their own gangs,” he said. “They only run with Llano River sometimes.”

  “Rasgado deals dope,” said the first man. “He’ll kill a man who shorts him without blinking. He’s the meanest son of a—”

  “Where is he?” asked Marcus.

  “I think he’s still in town,” said the man, his mouth barely visible behind his beard. “He’s got a place he keeps near the old country club on the south side of town. Go a block and take 83 Business south. There’s still a couple of signs that’ll point you in the right direction.”

  “And Cego?”

  “I don’t know,” said the bucktoothed man. “I just know he’s not from here. We hear he’s a coyote.”

  “A coyote?” asked Lou. “What’s that?”

  “A smuggler. He moves people back and forth across the wall.”

  Marcus huffed. “The wall, huh?”

  “That’s what I heard.”

  “Thanks,” said Marcus. “We’ll find him.”

  He loosened his grip on the Appaloosa’s reins and clicked his teeth, kicking his heels into the horse’s sides. The animal responded and resumed its walk.

  “Hey,” said the man with the beard. “If you don’t die, come back and help us.”

  “We need somebody like you around here,” echoed the bucktoothed man. “There’s good people in this world who need help.”

  Marcus nodded. “We’ll see how it goes,” he said and urged the horse forward. Lou followed and they took the road to the intersection with 83 Business. There was a sign pointing south.

  “So we’re going to a drug dealer’s compound?” asked Lou, pulling the paint even with the Appaloosa. “That the plan now?”

  “That’s where it starts for us,” said Marcus, “and ends for Emilio Rasgado.”

  CHAPTER 7

  OCTOBER 22, 2042, 6:06 PM

  SCOURGE +10 YEARS

  SOUTH ABILENE, TEXAS

  The sun hung low, threatening to drop beneath the uneven horizon. Marcus felt its warmth on his face as he and Lou led their horses past the building for the Knights of Columbus Council 2163. It was a single-story ranch with drooping power lines overhead and a railroad track beside it. The gravel parking lot appeared as though somebody had carpet-bombed it. Marcus weaved around the gaping holes, careful not to catch his horse’s hooves.

  Once they passed the building, he took them off-road and through the high grass of what was once the golf course on the north side of the Abilene Country Club. The horses seemed to appreciate the softer ground, nickering and sighing as they walked south toward the cluster of buildings ahead.

  “Did you ever play golf?” asked Lou.

  “Every once in a while,” Marcus said, his eyes straight ahead. “I was just good enough to enjoy it and just bad enough not to care how I played.”

>   Lou narrowed her eyes. “You don’t look like a golfer.”

  Marcus chuckled. “What do I look like?”

  Lou shrugged. “I don’t know. You just look…sad.”

  The smile disappeared from Marcus’s face. He tightened his grip on the reins, rubbing his thumbs against the leather straps. They clopped silently for twenty yards before Lou inched her paint closer to the Appaloosa.

  “What do I look like?” she asked.

  “That’s a loaded question,” Marcus said. “Let me think about it.”

  Lou rolled her eyes. “Cop-out.”

  Marcus smirked. “Maybe.”

  They moved farther south until they reached a steep upward slope to the left of a weed-ridden cart path. Marcus stopped his horse and signaled for Lou to do the same. The slope gave them enough cover to leave the horses and approach on foot. They were fewer than a hundred yards from a large parking lot framing the eastern edge of the compound.

  Marcus tied both horses to a barren oak whose roots had worked their way through the cart path. He pulled the Remington from the scabbard and offered it to Lou.

  She eyed him with apparent suspicion. “What about the empty one you gave me?”

  Marcus jabbed it in her direction. “Take it. Your knives aren’t going to be enough.”

  Lou took the Remington. “I told you I’m not good with these.”

  “You’ll be good enough,” Marcus said. “You have to be.”

  He took off his pack and laid it on the path next to the horses, walked back to the rise, and lowered himself onto his belly. He rested on his elbows and pulled his Springfield to his shoulder, looking through the scope and scanning the compound up ahead.

  There was still enough daylight that he got a pretty good idea of the layout and where the trouble spots might be.

  Directly ahead was a shell of an aluminum-framed building. The exterior walls were rusted and peeling away from the frame; the roof had large gaps in it, like a quilt missing patches in the middle.

  Beyond the building was a wide parking lot. On its left edge was a cluster of smaller buildings and a pool area. To the right edge of the lot, set farther back, were a pair of twin single-story buildings and some tennis courts. Between the courts and the pool area, centered at the back of the lot, was what appeared to be the main building.

  Although the compound wasn’t as heavily guarded as Marcus had expected it to be, there were three men patrolling the parking lot. Marcus watched them repeat their pattern for close to thirty minutes before he pulled his eye from the scope. Lou was lying on her back next to him, her eyes closed. She was snoring.

  It wasn’t a loud snore, more like an aggressive purr. And it was spiced with an angry mumbling that Marcus couldn’t understand. Then she cried out, screaming from the midst of whatever nightmare haunted her sleep. Marcus nudged her shoulder and shook her until she woke.

  She snorted and her eyes popped open. Her hand instinctively slid to her waist and drew a knife. Before Marcus blinked, it was an inch from his right eye. Her eyes blinked into focus and she relaxed, lowering the blade. She didn’t apologize. Marcus didn’t ask her to.

  He lowered his eye to the scope. The safety and magazine cutoff were in the correct positions. He drew the first of the three guards into his sight and waited for the man to stop near the twin buildings in front of the tennis courts. When he did, Marcus slid his finger from the guard to the trigger and squeezed.

  The shot exploded from the weapon, slamming the butt into his shoulder and blasting through the quiet air. It echoed across the shallow valley of the golf course and hit the guard center mass. He crumpled into a heap.

  Quickly, Marcus worked the bolt and found the second guard. He was in front of the main building and had his weapon drawn. He searched for the source of the shot. Marcus exhaled and pulled the trigger a second time. The shot was true, slamming into the guard’s chest beneath the weapon and between his arms. He stumbled back and fell to the ground.

  Marcus shifted to his left, looking for the third guard. That man was supposed to be near the entrance to the pool. He wasn’t there. Marcus picked his head up, looking for the man with his naked eye. It was too far. He lowered his head and looked again through the scope, scanning the length of the compound from right to left and back until a strobing flash and the accompanying rifle cracks of semiautomatic gunfire caught his attention.

  He tightened the Springfield’s butt against his shoulder and exhaled, slid his finger to the trigger, and pulled. The first shot hit the man in his shoulder, jerking him to one side. Marcus cranked the bolt, ejecting the spent cartridge, and then reversed the action to load the next round. As the target struggled with his wound, Marcus put another bullet in him. And then a third.

  “That wasn’t subtle,” said Lou. “It’s like you kicked the anthill.”

  She was right. The brief exchange was loud. Marcus had emptied his rifle and one of the men had unleashed an AR-15. More men would be coming.

  “Over there.” He pointed to the dilapidated metal building ahead of them. “Let’s go.”

  Marcus pushed himself to his feet, grabbed his pack, and led Lou toward the building. By the time they’d reached an opening and had slid into the dank space, Marcus heard angry shouts echoing from the compound.

  Marcus navigated his way through the empty building, hurrying to the exterior wall closest to the parking lot. Once he reached the wall, he dropped to a knee and fished a handful of cartridges from his pack. He opened the Springfield’s bolt and loaded five rounds into the chamber.

  “You want this one?” Lou asked, offering him the Remington.

  “No. It’s got a four-round capacity. This is five. And if I need it, I’ve got the Glock.”

  Lou inched closer to the wall and leaned into a gap between sheets of metal to peek through the thin opening. Still on one knee, Marcus made an adjustment to his scope and carefully slipped the barrel of his Springfield through an adjacent wall gap. Again he drew the weapon to his shoulder.

  “I see four,” said Lou. “They’re looking for us.”

  Marcus nodded. “I see them.”

  “As soon as you fire, they’ll know where we are.”

  “You’ve said that before.”

  “Yeah,” said Lou, “and there weren’t as many guys then. You can’t take out all of them before they unload on us.”

  Marcus looked over at Lou. “Then you need to help. Drop to a knee and mimic what I’m doing.”

  Lou swallowed hard and nodded. “Fine.” She pulled the weapon tight to her shoulder and adjusted her grip, then slid the barrel through the wall gap in front of her.

  The voices were getting louder. The men were in the parking lot, moving toward them.

  “Don’t put your finger on the trigger until you’re ready to fire,” Marcus instructed. “Then pull. Crank the bolt and then repeat.”

  “Just tell me when you’re ready,” she said. “I’ve got the two on the right. They’re closer.”

  Marcus took aim. “Okay,” he said softly, “I’ll count from three. When I get to one, pull the trigger.”

  Lou grunted her understanding and pressed the rifle against her shoulder.

  Marcus found the first of his two targets. He was a big man with a wide frame, an easy hit at less than a hundred yards. “Three. Two. One.”

  He pulled the trigger and a shot blasted toward the man, striking him in the gut. No sooner had Marcus fired that shot when the world around him exploded in flashes of light and deafening cracks of gunfire. Ignoring the cacophony as best he could, he fired another shot at the big man, striking him in the jaw and dropping him.

  Marcus found his second target as a burning sensation radiated in his side. He ignored it and took out the approaching threat. He aimed to the right. There was a man within thirty yards of their position. He was squatted low as he moved, spraying everything in front of him with a swath of rapid gunfire. As Marcus took aim, the man spun awkwardly and dropped to the ground. His body
convulsed a couple of times before falling still. The world was silent again except for the ringing in Marcus’s ears.

  He looked over at Lou. “I thought you said you weren’t good with guns.”

  “I’m not,” she said. “It took me four bullets. It would have only taken two knives.”

  “So you’re a hustler.”

  “What’s that mean?” asked Lou. She reached into Marcus’s pack and reloaded the Remington without help.

  “It means you make someone believe you’re not good at something when you’re really good.”

  She stood and slung the rifle over her shoulder. “So that’s what I’m like,” she said. “Hustler. Interesting.”

  Marcus smirked. He looked back through the wall gap. Nobody else was coming for them yet. He pulled the rifle back and tried to stand, but a pain in his side kept him on his knee.

  He reached down and touched his damp shirt. A sharp bolt of pain exploded beneath his rib cage. He grunted and exhaled loudly.

  Lou stepped toward him. “You okay?”

  Cold sweat beaded on his forehead and his stomach lurched. “I think I got hit.”

  Lou’s eyes blinked with worry. She grabbed Marcus’s shoulder. “Lie down. Put your feet on your pack. I think you’re going into shock.”

  Marcus leaned back on his elbows and then flat on his back. Lou slid the pack under his feet and pulled his shirt up above the wound.

  “Ooh,” she said. “That’s gross.”

  “What?” asked Marcus, squeezing tears from his eyes as he pressed them closed. “What?”

  “It’s not a bullet,” she said. “You’ve got a piece of the metal wall sticking out of your side. It’s jagged and bleeding pretty bad.”

  “That’s good,” Marcus said. “Can you pull it out?”

  “Can I?” Lou asked. “Yes. Should I? I don’t know, I’m not a doctor.”

  “Open my pack,” Marcus said through a clenched jaw. “Get the first aid kit. You’re gonna need to do a little surgery. And you’re going to have to be fast. I’m sure more men are coming.”