Canyon: A Post Apocalyptic/Dystopian Adventure (The Traveler Book 2) (7 page)

Sawyer blinked. He swallowed hard. He pulled his knees tighter against his chest. The bad days were always close to the surface. It was the good ones that took time to render.

“I’m guessing you got a bad day all conjured up?” the shorter one sneered. “Now double it and add the boogie monster.”

“The boogie monster!” hollered the tall one, his words bouncing off the walls of the cell. “The damn boogie monster. I love it!”

Sawyer had no idea what they meant. He’d never heard of the boogie monster. He concluded it wasn’t good. He bit the inside of his cheek, working hard to keep the tears at bay. The harder he bit, the more his eyes welled. He shuddered and the tears spilled down his cheeks.

“You got a few more hours here,” said the shorter one once he’d stopped laughing. “You can cry like a baby till then. After that, you’re on the move.”

“Yeah,” the taller one chimed. “You’re on the move to the Jones.”

Both of them slammed their fists against the bars and followed each other away from the cell and down a narrow hallway. They turned a corner and disappeared. There was a loud buzzing sound, a click, and the sound of a door opening and closing. The echo of the door dissipated and left Sawyer sitting alone again in silence.

He buried his head in between his chest and his knees. He gripped his hands tightly, squeezing his fingers too hard, and he sobbed. Whatever or whoever the Jones was, he was afraid of it.

Sawyer’s mother had always told him to be positive. She’d told him that there was always hope. And with hope there was the possibility that tomorrow would be better than today. She was gone now. She was dead. She was with his father. At thirteen years old, Sawyer sat on a metal bench in a central Texas jail cell, certain he would die a death worse than the Scourge.

There was no hope.

CHAPTER 10

OCTOBER 15, 2037, 7:15 AM

SCOURGE + 5 YEARS

ABILENE, TEXAS

Skinner stood amongst a cadre of bosses and grunts in the middle of Walnut Street, an unlit cigarette dangling from his dry lips as he spoke. “I think it’s safe to assume Rudabaugh and Queho are dead. Their men are gone too. This here”—he pointed to the smoking shell of the HQ and pushed his white hat back on his head—“this is Mad Max. And he’s got help.”

“Who’s helping him?” asked a boss named Pony Diehl. “The redheaded woman?”

“Maybe.” Skinner took a deep breath through his nose, inhaling the acrid, metallic odor hanging in the air. “Somebody had to be driving that Humvee.”

“Where’d they get it?” asked Diehl.

“I’m gonna make another assumption,” Skinner said, the cigarette dancing on his lower lip. “He stole it from the convention center. Looks exactly like one we got stored over there.”

“Want me to go check it out?” asked Diehl. “I can take a couple of men and take a look.”

Skinner nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “You do that. Get back here quick, though. I gotta feeling I’m gonna need you ’fore it’s all said and done.”

Diehl pointed to two grunts. The trio hopped on their horses and rode south and east toward the convention center.

Skinner lit the cigarette, relishing the hiss and crackle of it burning as the embers grew. He sucked on it and closed his eyes until the sound of a galloping horse to the west caught his attention. It was Tom Horn. His hat was missing. His blond hair was matted with so much sweat it stuck flat against his head even as he bounced in the horse’s saddle.

Skinner flicked the ashes from his cigarette. His face turned red. He gnashed his teeth. “Where are your men?”

Horn swung his leg over the saddle and tugged on the reins to stop his horse. He dropped to the ground, his AK in one hand, and bent over at his waist. “I don’t know. I mean, I know three of them are dead. The other two are hurt. Or dead. I can’t be sure.”

Skinner stepped to Horn, his boots scraping the asphalt. “What do you mean you can’t be sure?”

“We got close to him.” Horn looked up at Skinner. “Real close. He picked off a couple of the guys. One shot. Like an expert or something. One of ’em fell and took out the other.”

“You had five men with you, right?”

Horn swallowed hard and nodded. “Yeah. Then Mad Max, I guess it was him, he dropped a grenade or something. It exploded and spooked the horses. One of ’em fell and crushed a grunt. Then there was smoke and gunfire. I don’t know what happened. I bolted and came here.”

“So you got two men unaccounted for? Three men dead?”

“Yeah.”

Skinner dropped the cigarette to the asphalt and put it out with the toe of his boot. “And Mad Max got away?”

Horn nodded and glanced past Skinner at the men gathered behind him. As he caught their eyes, they looked away from him.

“Where is he, you think?”

“I dunno,” said Horn. “He might still be around. Or he could be gone. He was heading west. Or north. I can’t remember exactly. It was chaotic.”

“Chaotic?”

Horn nodded.

“Chaotic,” Skinner repeated. “That’s a big word for you, Tommy. A mighty big word. I’m so sorry you were put in the middle of a chaotic situation. I’m sorry the chaos was too much for you and your men.”

Horn ran his hands through his matted hair and wiped the sweat on his jeans. His forehead was drenched, despite the brisk October morning.

“Give me your rifle,” Skinner said.

Horn’s eyes popped wide. “What?”

“Give it to me,” Skinner repeated and motioned with his hand.

Horn looked down at the AK in his hand and slowly extended his arm. Skinner took the rifle from him.

“You know, this rifle is what they’d call an engineering marvel.” Skinner gripped the Russian semiautomatic Kalashnikov in his hands, testing its weight. “It’s been around since after World War II. It’s cheap, and it’s reliable even in rough conditions. Did you know that, Tommy?”

Horn shook his head.

Skinner laughed and pulled the weapon to his shoulder. He checked the sights. “I even jump-started a car with one once,” he said. “I connected the cleaning rod and the metal parts of the AK to the battery terminals. I didn’t have jumper cables.” Skinner lowered the weapon and snapped his fingers in Horn’s face. “Worked like a charm.”

Horn took a step back toward his horse. He looked over his shoulder at the empty street. There was no help.

“Of course—” Skinner laughed “—this is a killing machine most of all. It can kill a man from three hundred yards.” Skinner shook the rifle with one hand, the business end pointed at Tom Horn. “How many rounds you got in this magazine, Tommy?”

Horn shrugged. “Thirty?”

“You ain’t fired a shot, then?”

“No.”

Skinner turned around to the men behind him and laughed. “You believe that? Two men. Maybe four men. He don’t know how many. He lost all those men and he ain’t fired a single shot at Mad Max?”

None of the men responded and Skinner turned back around. “Start running, Tommy.”

“What?”

“Start running,” Skinner repeated. “Remember I told you I was about to boil? I’m bubbling over right now. I can’t have a boss who fails to fire off a single shot and lets who knows how many of his men die or get hurt or whatever. So start running.”

Horn took a couple of steps, walking backwards, until he stumbled. He turned on his boot heel and started running. Every step or two he’d look over his shoulder, his eyes wide.

“We’re gonna test the accuracy of this here AK,” Skinner said over his shoulder, leveling the AK and raising the sight to his eye. “Three hundred, maybe four hundred yards. That’s what they say.”

Skinner found Horn’s back in the sights and pulled the trigger, holding it as the AK rattled a barrage of 7.62×39mm M67 bullets. A half dozen of them penciled through Horn’s lower back. The farther he ran, the more the butts yawed, lodging deep within Horn’s muscles, lungs, and kidneys.

The volley dropped Horn immediately and he slammed face-first into the street, some hundred yards from Skinner. He twitched, his legs and arms swimming against the asphalt with decreasingly intense spasms until he stopped.

Skinner turned and looked at his men. Without exception they lowered their eyes.

“That”—Skinner pointed back at the dead boss and the spooked horse galloping west—“is a lesson to all of you. I ain’t gonna let this Mad Max beat us. I ain’t gonna tolerate any more incompetence.”

“He’s one man!” Skinner yelled at the top of his lungs. “One man!” He tossed the AK-47 to the ground. He stepped closer to his men, drawing their attention to him, making eye contact with them as he walked amongst them. “I want him,” he said, grabbing one of the grunts by the shoulder. “I want him alive. You bring him to me alive.”

CHAPTER 11

JANUARY 3, 2020, 5:15 PM

SCOURGE -12 YEARS, 9 MONTHS

ALEPPO, SYRIA

Buck wasn’t much help. The drugs had taken hold, adding to his inability to effectively move or communicate.

Battle managed through sheer will to drag Buck’s injured body underneath the flatcar and pull him along the railroad ties until they’d reached the last of the five flatcars.

Aside from scattered pops of gunfire echoing in the distance, and the rolling, rusty whine of a train on the last set of tracks, it was quiet.

“Stay here,” he whispered to Buck and checked his HK to make sure it was loaded. “I’ll be right back.”

Buck groaned, either acknowledging or protesting.

Battle used the protection on the rolling train to emerge from underneath the flatcar and open the end door of the first freight wagon. He cranked it wide enough to squeeze inside the wagon. The slatted sides allowed the orange glow of the train yard to leak inside. Ribbons of light revealed an empty wagon.

He stepped purposefully to the opposite end of the empty car, groped for the handle, and pushed it open to move to the next wagon. It too was empty.

Battle repeated the inspection through eight identical wagons. At the ninth, he found pallets of what looked like Ukrainian military rations.

Battle couldn’t read the language and thought they were Russian. He did recognize the word
Ukraine
.

He pulled a utility knife from his breast pocket and ripped open the Visqueen packaging surrounding the pallet. He picked up one of the containers and moved closer to the light at the edge of the wagon.

Battle tried to recall the last time he’d eaten and couldn’t. It might have been that morning. Maybe it was an energy bar a few minutes before the IED detonated. He wasn’t sure. He’d not even thought about food or recognized the pangs of hunger in his gut until he opened the K rations.

The cans of meat and fish were labeled, but he didn’t know which was which. Along with the cans there were a half dozen plastic bags filled with dry goods, plastic spoons, napkins, disinfectant wipes, powdered bouillon, and some vitamins.

He carried the open package back to the pallet and spread out the bounty. Battle looked at the variety of offerings and cursed himself for having left his pack behind. He’d decided against slinging it with him in favor of carrying Buck. Now, as he looked at the amount of food he couldn’t carry with him, he recognized his mistake.

He ripped open a package of millet-flour biscuits and stuffed a couple deep into his mouth, chewing them quickly so as to pack his mouth full with another one.

They were awful, and they were also the best thing Battle’d ever tasted in his life. He licked the remnants from his gums and the roof of his mouth. He then took the vitamins, tore open the packet with his teeth, and swallowed all three of them dry.

He took a couple of plastic spoons, the antiseptic wipes, and the bouillon. He stuffed them into one of his shirt pockets and knifed open another ration.

He took duplicates of the wipes and powder for Buck. He also plucked another bag of biscuits and the package of vitamins.

If nothing else, the rations provided two things: nourishment and a much-needed burst of caloric energy, and confirmation that the Ukrainians were involved in the Syrian conflict.

They’d long denied it, despite evidence that hundreds of pro-Russian Ukrainians were training with Russian forces in the long-occupied eastern part of the country. The Syrian conflict, and the war in Iran, had essentially become a world war.

Alliances shifted and changed as rapidly as the Middle Eastern deserts. Oil, nuclear weapons, a Muslim caliphate, and the fight between the east and west to control the metaphorical bridge between Asia, Africa, and Europe combined to make the globe as unstable as it had been since the early 1940s.

The Russians, Chinese, and North Koreans had one idea about how the world should look, the Western world offered a different vision. And though none were publicly enemies in the global fight against Muslim extremism, neither side chose to make the enemy of their enemy their friend.

The Ukrainians, along with the Egyptians, Czechs, and Polish, claimed they were neutral. Ukraine’s fragile government claimed it was too busy balancing their own sovereignty with repeated Russian incursions. They were on the verge of collapse. They wouldn’t help the United States, despite the Americans’ decades-long secret funnel of cash and weapons to keep the Russians at bay. The US asked for troops and tactical support. The Ukrainians said no. Again and again. They’d also refused to accept any Syrian or Iranian refugees, further adding to the overcrowding at the burgeoning camps popping up from Dusseldorf to Donetsk.

Battle had been in mission briefings in which superiors offered intel about Ukrainian detachments working with Russian troops to ingratiate themselves with some of the less moderate factions in Aleppo. Most of the information, however, was anecdotal and not actionable or verifiable.

But here they were, clearly involved. And though it wasn’t good for long-term US strategic control, the dry biscuits and vitamins were potentially lifesaving battlefield provisions in the short term.

Battle put the politics of the newly gained intelligence out of his head. None of it mattered if he died in the train yard.

Finished pilfering what he needed from the pallet, he stepped through the door at the front end of the wagon. Standing between the ninth and tenth cars, he looked east. He was beyond the orange glow of the yard. And there was no steep incline opposite him. Instead there was a long slope leading into the darkness. Battle nodded and pumped his fist.