Rise From The Ashes: The Rebirth of San Antonio (Countdown to Armageddon Book 3) (2 page)

     Scott developed a close friendship with a
San Antonio police officer named John Castro. A war hero, John fought hard to join the SAPD despite leaving half a leg in the burning sands of Fallujah. And he was fighting equally hard to save the city he loved.

     Scott and John talked frequently by ham radio. Scott learned that
San Antonio was decimated. Less than five percent of the city would survive the waves of starvation and suicides. Bodies were stacked in the streets and burned until they were merely piles of ashes and bones.

     But that wasn’t all. The decomposing bodies had created a pneumonia-like plague that was sweeping through the cities. It was treatable
only with massive doses of penicillin, and was ravaging what was left of the population.

     John was sure to be infected eventually. He was out among the masses every day, trying to restore order and to bring his city back from the brink. But he was desperate to get his wife and two girls away from the city.

     Scott’s group was aware that the citizens of San Antonio were in dire straights. And they wanted to help. So they planted an extra out-of-cycle wheat crop, and harvested it seventy seven days later.

     Tom Haskins went to work on a Walmart truck abandoned by the side of the road since the blackout. He was able to get it running, and seventy two boxes of unprocessed wheat were added to the load
of food.

     Tom and Scott took a harrowing trip back to the city and dropped the load. In exchange for the food, they brought back something even better: John’s wife and daughters.

     Then John came down with the plague. He went into a coma because he was allergic to penicillin and couldn’t be treated using the normal protocol. San Antonio was out of an alternative antibiotic. But Tom was able to find some in nearby Junction.

     The story ended when Scott made a second run to
San Antonio, to drop off the medication that would save his friend’s life.

     Now all he had t
o do was get back safely.

And now, Book 3 of the series,

RISE FROM THE ASHES

THE REBIRTH OF
SAN ANTONIO

-1-

     Scott had dropped the
amoxicillin at the fence line. He could see a shadowy figure fifty feet away, and knew it was John’s friend Robbie. Robbie was also a San Antonio cop, and had been John’s partner for almost three years.

     “Don’t ge
t too close, Scott,” Robbie called from the darkness. “I could be a carrier. Just drop the backpack there and I’ll come and get it after you back away. And God bless you, Scott, for doing this. Hopefully this medicine will bring John out of his coma and save his life.”

     Scott had felt a sense of dread as he walked back to where he parked his Gator. He’d always
been a little bit paranoid. Now his mind was working overtime, coming up with all kinds of nightmare scenarios.

     Like maybe someone had hotwired his Gator and stolen it.

     Or even worse, maybe they were waiting to ambush him and just take the key by force.

     He knew that the world had become an ugly and very violent place since the blackout. And he knew that in a world where few vehicles were operable, powered
transportation was more valuable than gold.

     But his Gator was still there. And there was no one else around.

     Now the only question was, would it start? He’d driven it hard for ninety miles. It was a utility vehicle, comfortable around an industrial environment, carrying cargo for short distances. But hauling ass for three straight hours was something else. The engine had smelled hot when he finally turned it off half an hour before. Was he too hard on it? Would it refuse to start again?

     He looked to the sky and said, “Please, Lord, I don’t ask for much. But I’m asking for this.”

     Then he held his breath and turned the key. It fired right up.

     He felt the weight of the world being lifted from his shoulders. And as he turned the wheeler north again, following a string of high tension power lines out of the city and back to his compound near Junction, he laughed at himself for being so paranoid.

     His plan was to take it easier and slower going back up the mountain. The Gator was by nature a relatively stealthy machine. Made by the John Deere Company, it was painted dark green. He’d opted for the black seats instead of the bright yellow, so that the machine was damn near invisible on a moonless night.

     Even with the partial moon in the sky above his head, it wasn’t easy to see without night vision goggles.

     And Scott was betting that there weren’t a lot of people out there with night vision goggles.

     The Gator was also almost silent when allowed to creep at its own pace. It was slow, sure. But with no foot on the accelerator, the only noise was the low hum of the engine and the twigs crunching under the balloon tires.

     It wasn’t until the driver pressed the accelerator that the engine started to roar.

     On the way down the mountain, Scott had traded stealth for speed. He had to get the medicine to the hospital to save his friend’s life. He had to take the risk.

     Going back, though, his plan was to keep his foot off the accelerator and let the wheeler creep until it was clear of the city. Then he’d pick up his pace a bit.

     It
had taken him three hours to get down the mountain. He had five hours left until daybreak.

    
With any luck, he’d make it back just before the sun came up.

     It was a good plan.

     In theory.

     The problem with good plans is that sometimes others who do not share one’s goals and expectations have plans of their own.

     Scott was only two miles from his old house in the northern suburbs of San Antonio where he’d made the medicine drop.

     He was moving along slowly at four miles an hour and virtually silent. And he was closely watching the landscape ahead of him.

     But Scott wasn’t a warrior by nature, and was a rookie when it came to urban warfare or guerilla tactics. He made a dreadful error. He wasn’t watching behind him.

     He’d seen the two cars, sitting side by side alongside the roadway. They’d been there for awhile, with flat tires and broken windshields and graffiti spray painted on the sides.

     When he and Tom had driven the Walmart truck down the mountain a few weeks before, the cars had been there then. They caused some concern, but once they passed them by they ceased to be of interest.

     When Scott came down the mountain at full speed several hours before, he paid them less attention. He remembered them from the first trip and no longer considered them a potential threat.

     And now, on his way back up the mountain, they were little more than a landmark.

    
But they were more than just a landmark to the four men hiding behind them.

     The four men
had seen Scott come speeding by an hour and a half before, but who were caught off guard and couldn’t stop him until Scott was long gone.

     The same four men
had correctly reasoned that whatever goes up must come down. And that whoever drives past going in one direction is likely to return in the opposite direction.

     So they hid behind the abandoned cars and waited.

     And sure enough, Scott came creeping toward them, staring more or less straight ahead.

     The group of men could have stood up and fired upon him then.

     But they didn’t. They were cowards and back shooters. So as Scott slowly approached their position from the south, they crawled to the east side of the abandoned cars, then around the cars to come out behind him.

     It was only then that one of them leveled an AK-47 in Scott’s direction and pulled the trigger.

     The bullet entered Scott’s upper back, halfway between his spine and shoulder socket. It made a small hole in his back, passed completely through his shoulder blade, and exited through a larger hole in his upper left chest.

     Had the shot not caught him completely off guard, he would have likely floored the accelerator and tried to outrun his
attackers.

     But getting shot from behind was the last thing that Scott had expected. He’d made a potentially fatal mistake by failing to consider all possible scenarios.

     He’d let his guard down, and it had cost him.

     He’d been too relaxed when the bullet struck. Too limber. And the sheer force of the bullet forced his body
off balance. Only his left hand had been on the steering wheel, and it was immediately knocked free. He twisted off the side of the Gator and tumbled to the ground.

     Before he
even hit the ground he knew he’d made a terrible mistake.

     But now it was too late.

     Scott lay on the pavement, holding his shoulder with his right hand and writhing in pain.

     His assailants, on the other hand, whooped and hollered for joy. The wheeler continued to creep forward at four miles an hour, not knowing or caring that its operator had bee
n quite literally shot off of it.

     One of the men ran the machine down and jumped aboard, then turned it around and drove it back. The others were busy back slapping and high fiving each other.

     Scott reached for his handgun and was kicked soundly in the face with a hard leather boot. He instantly felt his front teeth loosen and tasted the leaden taste of his own blood.

     “Try that again, you son of a bitch, and I’ll shoot you through the head this time.”

-2
-

     Scott had always considered himself a very lucky man. And now he was cursing himself. Because of his own stupidity, his luck had finally run out.

     The pain was almost unbearable, and he fought hard to keep from passing out.

     “So, where’d you get this fancy little machine here, Buddy?”

     Scott didn’t answer.

     “What’s the matter, mister? Cat got your tongue, does it?”

     One of the other men laughed.

     “No, I think my size twelve got some of his teeth, that’s what I think happened.”

     “You don’t mind if we take your machine for a little spin, now do you? We promise we’ll bring it right back. You just wait right here and we’ll be back in five minutes. You have my word on that.”

     “Get up, you son of a bitch.”

     Scott felt himself being pulled up by his shirt collar. Someone took off the web belt he had around his waist, and ripped the night vision goggles from his face.

     Then they shoved him into the dirt by the side of the road.

    
They struck Scott as rednecks, from their language and demeanor. Scott had nothing against rednecks. He’d considered several of them his friends, back in the old days. As a group, they weren’t a bad lot.

     The problem was, once a redneck made up his mind about something, he seldom changed it. And that worried Scott.

     “What do you think we should do with him, Joe?”

     “I say let’s just shoot the son of a bitch and be done with it.”

     “I don’t know. I’m down to my last few bullets. Don’t want to waste another one on this scumbag. He’ll bleed to death soon enough from his first wound. You’re getting careless in your old age, Davey. Used to, you’d have blown him away instead of just wounding him.”

     “Please,” Scott pleaded.
“You’ve got my vehicle. Killing me won’t get you anything else, or help you any more. Just leave me to die in peace.”

     “Maybe we should just beat him to death. How about it, Joe?”

     “Nah. He’s right. It makes no sense to waste any more effort on a man who’s just gonna die anyway. Let’s get the hell out of here before that gunshot attracts anybody else.”