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

  Rudy huffed. “Gee, thanks.”

  Marcus picked up the six-shooter and then took the shotgun from the scabbard at the side of the thoroughbred. He tucked the pistol into his waistband, slung the shotgun over his shoulder, and walked toward Rudy.

  “I’m a lot less concerned about your feelings than I am about my survival,” Marcus said.

  Rudy squinted, his nose crinkled as if he’d smelled something sour. “Who are you?”

  Marcus squatted, resting his butt on his heels. “Marcus. And this is Lou.”

  “Father and daughter?” Rudy asked.

  “No!” Lou said emphatically. “I barely know him.”

  “Did you take her weapons when you met her?” Rudy asked.

  Lou giggled. Marcus stood up, offered Rudy a hand, and pulled him to his feet. Rudy was average height and build with broad shoulders. His hands were calloused at the base of his fingers. He set his hands on his hips. There was a tattoo on his right forearm that read Norma. He eyed Marcus, then Lou.

  “Are you okay?” he asked her, motioning toward Marcus with his head.

  Lou furrowed her brow, seeming to consider the question before her eyes popped wide with understanding. She shook her head. “It’s nothing like that,” she said. “I’m fine.”

  Marcus stepped back from Rudy. “We’re traveling partners, that’s it. Not family, not…anything else.”

  Rudy scratched his chin. “Where are you going? Can I ask that?”

  Marcus stepped backward toward his horse, keeping watch on Rudy. He shrugged off his pack one shoulder at a time and set it next to the Appaloosa, unzipped it, and withdrew the two filtering bottles.

  “Where are you headed?” he asked, walking back to the water’s edge. He took a wide berth around the dog and dipped a bottle in the water.

  “San Angelo,” Rudy replied.

  “That’s where we’re headed,” said Lou.

  Marcus turned to glower at Lou. She winked at him.

  Rudy’s eyebrows arched with surprise. “Really? Why?”

  “Marcus has some killing to do,” Lou blurted.

  Rudy’s brow relaxed and he swallowed hard. “Oh.”

  Marcus pulled the bottle from the lake and stood. “It’s not what you think.”

  Lou swung a leg over her saddle and dismounted, landing on the dirt with both feet, and ran her hand along the horse’s mane.

  “You don’t know what he’s thinking, Marcus,” she said.

  Rudy shook his head. “No, he probably does.”

  Marcus smirked. “You wanna get some sticks from over there?” he asked Lou. “We need to start a fire, get this water boiled.”

  Lou rolled her eyes and huffed but marched along the edge of the lake to gather kindling. Marcus set the shotgun on the ground next to his horse, grabbed the pot from his pack, and approached Rudy.

  “Her dad died,” he said. “We ran into each other. I took her knives but couldn’t leave her defenseless, so she tagged along.”

  “Knives?”

  “She likes knives.”

  “Sheesh,” said Rudy. “You are a pair made in heaven.”

  Marcus shook the empty plastic bottle to loosen the activated carbon and started transferring the water into the folding camping pot. He processed Rudy’s sentiment and smiled.

  “Not sure about the heaven part,” said Marcus. “You hungry?”

  Rudy licked his lips. “Sure.”

  Marcus left the water bottles and walked back to his pack. He pulled out a trio of Twinkies and tossed one of them to Rudy. “These things last forever.”

  Rudy tore into the plastic and took a healthy bite. “Twinkies?” he asked while chewing. “I haven’t seen one of these in years.”

  “Lou found them at our last stop,” said Marcus. “We were in Abilene.”

  Rudy shoveled all but a small bite of the treat into his mouth. “Killing people there too, were you?”

  “Yeah.”

  Rudy stared at Marcus.

  Lou approached with an armful of sticks and dropped them at Marcus’s feet. “Eating my snacks?”

  Marcus handed her one. “Our treats.”

  Rudy made kissing noises at his dog and offered the last bite to the mutt, who gently tongued the morsel from Rudy’s palm.

  Marcus arranged the sticks and within a few minutes had a small fire blazing. He set the pot on top of the fire and started filling the empty bottle with more water.

  Rudy confronted the elephant in the field. “Who is it you’re killing?”

  Marcus and Lou exchanged glances. “Bad people,” said Lou. “He wants revenge.”

  “Revenge? For what?”

  “Long story,” said Marcus. “Suffice it to say, three men have it coming to them. One’s already got it.”

  Rudy nodded. “In Abilene?”

  “In Abilene,” Marcus confirmed.

  “I’m looking for revenge too,” said Rudy. “Though I only have one name on my list.”

  Marcus’s eyes widened with surprise. To this point, Rudy hadn’t looked like the revenge type.

  Lou was picking at her Twinkie, relishing every nibble. She licked some of the white cream from her thumb. “Who?”

  Rudy stared into the growing flames, his gaze becoming distant. “I don’t know his name. I know what he looks like and I know he’s in San Angelo.”

  “What’s he look like?” asked Lou.

  “And how do you know he’s in San Angelo?” asked Marcus.

  Rudy spoke as if in a trance, as if some memory had control of him and the words were automated. “He has a fiery red beard and dollar tattoos on the backs of his hands. His voice sounds like a chainsaw.”

  A chill ran along Marcus’s spine, the hairs on the back of his neck tingling. His pulse quickened. “Barbas.”

  Rudy tilted his head to one side. “What?”

  “His name is Barbas,” said Marcus. “We’re looking for the same man.”

  Lou shoveled the remaining Twinkie into her mouth. “Well, isn’t that a coincidence?”

  “Wait, what?” asked Rudy. “Your guy has a red beard and tattoos and—”

  “It’s the same man,” said Marcus. “Did he kill your woman?”

  Rudy’s eyes drifted to his feet. He rubbed his forehead with his hands. When he looked up again, his reddened eyes were glistening. His words weren’t much more than squeaks. “No,” he said. “He took her.”

  “Then how do you know it’s him?” asked Marcus.

  “What happened?” asked Lou.

  Rudy swallowed hard and knuckled the tears from the corners of his eyes. He took a deep, ragged breath and exhaled. “I live in Baird. I mean, I did. I had a small place. Me, my wife, my two cousins Sal and Al, and Al’s wife, Trina. There were five of us. Somehow we all survived the Scourge. We supplied hay to the Cartel, so they left us alone for the most part. Then the Dwellers let us be. In the last year or so we’ve been getting hassled on and off by whoever. I told everyone we should move, find somewhere farther off the highway. There are plenty of empty ranches everywhere. You can throw a rock and find one. They didn’t listen. They were happy where we were. They thought we could hold our own.”

  Rudy’s face was drawn with pain. As much as the sun had done to etch his face, sorrow had done more. Frown lines stretched from the corners of his mouth to the edges of his trembling chin.

  “I wasn’t there when it happened,” Rudy said sadly. “I was fishing. Me and Fifty were maybe a half mile from our land. I’d stocked a pond with channel catfish a year before the Scourge. It’s been feeding us pretty regular since then. Had some bass and some bluegill in there when I started it, but they pretty much went by the wayside. Only the cats kept propagating.”

  There was a twinkle of happiness in Rudy’s eyes when he talked about the fish and the care he gave the pond. It was, if nothing else, a respite from the drudgery and relative misery of a post-Scourge existence. For Marcus, the garden had provided that momentary escape. He empathized with Rudy�
��s need to tend the pond.

  The twinkle disappeared as Rudy talked about returning to the ranch and sensing something was off. The dog had been whimpering, he said. The hair at the base of Fifty’s neck was on end.

  “I pulled my shotgun,” he said, mimicking the act of holding the weapon waist high, “and I crept up slow to the house. The front door was off the hinges. One of the windows was broken. There was glass on the porch. So was one of my cousins. Sal was dead. There was blood pooled all around him.”

  Marcus pictured the unfolding horror in his mind. He put himself in Rudy’s shoes, approaching the carnage with a mix of disbelief, angst, and bubbling rage. Lou was mesmerized, her large eyes fixed on Rudy as he told the story with his hands and facial expressions.

  “I walked through the broken door into the house,” Rudy said. “There’s a long hallway there leading straight back to the kitchen. To the right there are stairs. I could see fresh dirty boot prints on the wood steps, and there were scratches in the wood and on the wall, like someone had dragged their fingernails. I started upstairs, but I heard moaning from the kitchen. It didn’t sound human. Not really. But I knew it was. I knew it was my other cousin.”

  Rudy’s hands were shaking, his eyes focused on some distant point. “He was still alive,” he said. “Barely. He told me what happened.”

  Lou’s hands were covering her mouth. “What happened?” she mumbled through them.

  Rudy swallowed hard and absently ran his fingers along the sides of his face. “Al said a red-bearded man took our wives. He was with three or four other men. They had dollar-sign tattoos. He was shot in the stomach. It was bad. I tried to help him.”

  Rudy stared blankly into the distance. Lou and Marcus sat quietly. A breeze rippled across the lake and the nearby blackbirds squawked, flapping their wings.

  Tears flooded Rudy’s eyes and streaked down his face, running into the furrows along the sides of his mouth. “Al overheard them talking about San Angelo. There’s a place there where they take the women. That’s where I’m going. To get Norma and Trina.”

  “By yourself?” asked Marcus.

  Rudy’s eyes flashed with anger. “You’re by yourself.”

  Lou cleared her throat.

  “Sorry,” Rudy apologized. “Still, it’s just the two of you.”

  Marcus exchanged glances with Lou. He knew what she was thinking. As much as he didn’t like the idea, it was a good one.

  “You could join us,” Marcus said. “We could get Barbas, and your wife and Trina. Together.”

  Rudy’s eyes slid from Marcus to Lou and back to Marcus. He sniffed and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “Do I get my guns back?”

  “Once we’re on the road,” said Marcus.

  Rudy grunted his agreement. “Fine.”

  Marcus took off his denim jacket, wrapped it around his hand, and pulled the boiling water from the fire. He drained the pot into the canteen, refilled it with a second bottle, and placed it back onto the fire. He looked at his two traveling companions and then the dog. Fifty was pushed against Rudy’s body, wagging his tail.

  “This is beginning to feel like The Wizard of Oz,” said Marcus. “Before long we’ll have flying monkeys chasing after us.”

  “I guess that makes you Dorothy?” Lou quipped.

  Rudy eked a smile. “You’re kinda young to know about that movie, aren’t you?”

  “I never saw the movie,” said Lou. “My dad read me the book when we were holed up in a library. He read me a lot of things.”

  Marcus pulled an unburned stick from the edge of the fire. “Yeah? Like what?”

  “Biographies,” she said, “cookbooks, and some things he called classics.”

  Marcus took a roll of fishing line from his first aid kit and knotted a hook into the end. Then he tied it to the end of the stick and held it out to Rudy.

  “Wanna fish?”

  “We need to get going,” said Rudy. “Every minute Norma and Trina are with that man is another minute they’re in danger.”

  “It’s already getting dark,” said Marcus. “We’re not going anywhere tonight. First thing in the morning we’ll head out for San Angelo. We’ll be there by nightfall tomorrow.”

  Rudy folded his arms across his chest. “I haven’t fished since…”

  Marcus jabbed the makeshift fishing pole in Rudy’s direction. “Now’s as good a time as any.”

  Rudy took the pole. “I don’t have any bait.”

  “Use a Twinkie,” Lou suggested. “Maybe you draw a small fish you can cut up and use as bait for a bigger one.”

  “Read that in a book?” asked Marcus.

  Lou grinned. “You’d be surprised by what I learned from books.”

  Marcus chuckled. “I’m sure I would.”

  Two hours later Lou was using one of her knives to fillet a trio of crappie. She told Marcus she didn’t need any help.

  “I can do it,” she said, the first one in her bare hand, and split the fish from the top to behind its gills. She then took the knife and made a horizontal cut toward the back at the top and bottom of the fish, which helped her expose the fleshy meat of the fish. She peeled back the fillet and, starting at the tail, she slid the knife between the skin and meat to separate the two.

  “You can leave the skin on mine,” said Rudy. “It’ll get crispy and make better eating. Plus, Fifty likes it that way.”

  “Ew,” said Lou. “I don’t like the skin. But fine, however you want it.”

  She used the knife’s sharp front edge to trace around the rib cage and made the appropriate cut to remove the bones.

  “I could split this into two,” she suggested. “Or we could just make them thick.”

  “Cut them into two,” said Rudy. “It’ll be easier to cook, and we get two pieces each.”

  The three of them and Fifty soon ate their pieces of fish as if the meal were their last on Earth. Lou ate her pieces faster than the dog. Marcus praised her for her work and Rudy for his before he put out the fire for the night.

  Without the ambient heat of the flames, it was markedly colder. Even as they moved the horses to the cover of the trees, the chill stayed with them. Marcus drew his collar up around his neck and buttoned up his jacket.

  “Remind me why we didn’t sleep inside last night when we had the chance?” asked Lou.

  “Escapability,” he said. “Didn’t want to get stuck inside a closed space if things went sideways while we slept. Better to have three hundred and sixty degrees of movement available.”

  “I wish it were three hundred and sixty degrees,” she said. “Then I might be able to sleep.”

  “Use leaves,” said Marcus, lying on his back with one leg crossed over the other and his hands tucked under his pits. “Pile them up like a blanket. They’ll insulate you.”

  “Don’t do that,” said Rudy. “It’ll make a mess. Just use Fifty.”

  Rudy whistled at the dog and then snapped his fingers toward Lou. “Acotarse,” he said. “Lie down.”

  The dog lapped at Rudy’s face before padding the short distance to Lou. He sat next to her and sniffed her head. He licked the sweaty brim of the Astros cap and then lay down next to her, his body against hers.

  “You can put your arm around him,” said Rudy. “He won’t bite. He’s only mean when I want him to be.”

  Lou draped her arm over the dog and rubbed the soft fur at his chest. “Thanks,” she said. “You’re a nice man, Rudy. Good night.”

  “Good night, Lou,” said Rudy. “Marcus, I want to be on the road before sunup.”

  “No problem, Rudy. Goodnight, Lou,” said Marcus.

  Lou rolled onto her back. “Goodnight, Dorothy.”

  CHAPTER 10

  OCTOBER 24, 2042, NOON

  SCOURGE +10 YEARS

  BRONTE, TEXAS

  Marcus wiped the sweat from the back of his neck and took another swig of water from the canteen. A green mileage marker on the side of the highway announced they were twenty-five m
iles from San Angelo.

  “Is it me,” asked Rudy, “or is it a lot warmer today?”

  “It’s definitely warmer,” Lou replied. Fifty was riding in front of her on the large saddle. The paint had been wary at first, but acquiesced. “I guess you gotta be careful what you wish for.”

  They were in Bronte, Texas, a town somewhere between nowhere and nothing. Before the Scourge, the town had a population of nine hundred and seventy-four people. If there were nine hundred and seventy-four mosquitoes in the place now, Marcus would have been surprised.

  A thick layer of grayish-yellow dust covered the road and most of the buildings that still stood. Most of them glass and brick, with hints of stucco here and there. A broken plastic sign swung from its perch in front of Long Branch BBQ. It was a ghost town. The trio worked their way south on Highway 277, which ran north and south straight through the center of Bronte. They were smack-dab in the middle of the town at State and Main, Bronte Hometown Hardware to their right, when Fifty’s ears perked. The dog lifted its head and barked.

  “What’s wrong?” Lou asked.

  “He’s sees something,” said Rudy. “Stop your horse so he can hop down.”

  Lou pulled on the reins, and the moment the paint stopped walking, the pit bull mix was on the cracked asphalt, the hair on his back sticking up.

  Marcus tossed Rudy his shotgun. Rudy nodded his appreciation and quickly loaded the pump-action twelve gauge. Marcus pulled his Glock from his holster and held it in front of him in the saddle. Lou drew her knives.

  The dog took a couple of steps forward. His ears pricked again and he growled. He was focused on a building ahead of them and to the right on the southwestern corner of the intersection, the first of a row of narrow buildings butted next to each other.

  Rudy whispered something to his horse and hopped off. He walked over to Fifty. “What’s going on, boy?” he asked, running one hand along the top of the animal’s head. He held the shotgun in the other.

  Fifty whimpered, his attention glued to the first building on the corner, his muscles tensed as if ready to pounce.

  Lou balanced a knife in her right hand, her left gripping the reins.