The Quest: Countdown to Armageddon: Book 6 (24 page)

     With Payton, there was no such thing as payment over time.

     With Payton, there was an overpowering need to grab whatever was available, to grab it fast, and to grab it all.

     What worked with other men didn’t work with Payton.

     Tom knew that now.

     He just hoped it wasn’t too late to regroup and go to Plan B.

     His limbs all seemed to work.

     That was a good sign.

     When he moved his right leg, though, a heavy chain rattled.

     That was a very bad sign.

     Whatever building he was in, he was apparently alone.

     And chained to the floor.

     Tom had no way of knowing, but he was locked in the huge hay barn in the middle of the Lazy R Ranch.

     He also had no way of knowing that his new friend Randy was a mere twenty feet away from him, on the other side of the north wall of the barn.

     Randy was making his way through the ranch, trying to find a building with open shades and lights on, so he could peer inside and look for Tom.

     But there were no lights in the hay barn.

     And no windows, for that matter.

     As Tom passed out again, Randy stole past the side of the barn and made his way toward the main house.

 
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     The San Antonio Zoo had once been a bustling place, full of little kids’ laughter and the overpowering odor of elephant dung.

     These days the animals were all gone.

     So were most of the smells.

     And the laughter died when most of the children did.

     The animals had been taken by poachers, or set free by zoo workers on the off-chance they could survive on their own.

     The smells slowly faded as the dung became washed away a little at a time by rainstorms.

     And the children… some were taken by desperate family members who’d decided a quick death was preferable to starvation.

     The plague took many more tiny souls to heaven.

     The ten percent or so of the city’s children who’d lived through the waves of murder/suicide as well as the plague were still struggling to survive.

     They had much more important things to do than to go to a zoo that was no longer open, to see animals that were no longer there.

     So Robbie Benton had the place all to himself.

     Robbie had grown up in the neighborhood, just on the other side of Brackenridge Park. The zoo, on the outskirts of the park, had been his favorite hangout since he was a young boy.

     In his childhood, the zoo was a place for Robbie to escape a very abusive and very unhappy home life. Each year, in the spring, Robbie would start stealing money from his parents.

     Stealing it was easy enough. It was just a matter of waiting until they were both passed out drunk.

     And that happened several times a week.

     But he had to be careful not to take too much.

     For if either of them noticed that any money was missing, he’d receive another in a long string of vicious beatings.

     Or perhaps he’d be punished in other ways.

     Like eating crackers and water three times a day for a week.

     Even now, at age thirty three, Robbie still cringed at the mere thought of eating saltine crackers.

     Stealing money from his parents was a great risk. He knew that, even back then.

     But it was a risk he had to take.

     Because he needed a place to escape.

     So young Robbie, a mere lad of seven back then, had started by lifting a single dollar from his father’s wallet while his father lay passed out on the couch.

     A couple of days later he took seventy five cents from his mother’s purse. She’d been passed out sitting in a chair at the dining room table.

     Her head had rested on the table, a long line of saliva from her open mouth making a puddle on the table’s surface.

     That first year, it had taken Robbie a full two weeks to get the seven dollars he needed for a season pass to the San Antonio zoo. And from that moment on he had a safe place to run to on the days when his parents got that look in their eyes and he knew a beating was coming.

     For the rest of his childhood his life followed more or less the same pattern. Each spring, before his pass was up, he’d steal money for another one. Eventually he came to realize it was safer to steal from his friends than from his parents. It cost him some friends, but at least he didn’t risk a beating.

     He was fifteen when Bexar County finally took him out of the home.

     He’d hoped to be adopted and to finally have real parents and a real home life, like his friends had.

     But he soon learned the sad reality that people just don’t adopt fifteen year old boys with bad attitudes and troubled pasts.

     When he graduated from the Boy’s Town High School and turned eighteen a month later, he was set free.

     And he put most of the parts of his miserable life behind him, now that he was able to go to work and make his own money.

     But he still got that annual pass. He still spent most of his free time at the zoo.

     He was still closer to the zoo’s animals than he was to any human being.

     That was, perhaps, because he considered himself little more than an animal too.

     After a couple of years working dead-end jobs he joined the Army, and was trained as a military policeman. He spent his entire enlistment at Fort Sam Houston, in San Antonio. Most of his weekends were spent alone, at the zoo, with his true friends.

     Once out of the Army it was an easy transition from the military police to the San Antonio Police Department.

     And once again, he spent most of his free time with those who would listen to him without judging him. Those who wouldn’t scold him for being socially inept, or call him a freak or other hurtful things.

     When the zoo closed on his days off, he went to his apartment, where he felt truly alone.

     After the blackout, when the animals at the zoo began being slaughtered, he tried his best to save them. On his days off he stayed at the zoo, patrolling its grounds and chasing off anyone who tried to enter. He even slept there, on one of the park benches, or lying in the soft green grass of the play park.

     But he couldn’t be awake all the time. And he couldn’t be at the zoo all of the time.

     Eventually the animals were all gone.

     Well, not all of them.

     An animal named Robbie still came.

     He’d claimed the zoo as his very own. He boarded up the ticket window and the wrought iron gates. He put a high security padlock on the entrance gates, and he had the only key.

     Curious passersby always assumed that zoo officials placed the lock there when they finally closed the place for good. But that wasn’t the case.

     The last man standing at the zoo, a lion keeper named Sal, had tried to convince Robbie that he couldn’t come to the zoo anymore.

     The zoo was city property, he’d said.

     It had to be locked up and secured, and perhaps someday it could open again.

     But in the meantime, no one could live there.

     Not even a cop.

     Sal was buried in the giraffe enclosure, and had been for several months.

     Robbie waited for weeks for someone from the city to come looking for Sal.

     “Sal said he was leaving,” he’d have told them. “He said now that the animals are gone, there’s nothing left for him to do.”

     But nobody ever came looking for Sal.

     It seemed no one missed him at all.

     With Sal out of the way, there was nothing or no one to keep Robbie from coming and going at will.

     The abandoned zoo became his sanctuary. His home away from home.

     His go-to place to get away from it all.

     Even when Hannah took the girls to the compound in Junction to avoid the plague, Robbie came here. His Hannah gone, he was heartbroken and miserable. And the only place he felt even mild comfort was the zoo.

     He’d accepted John’s invitation to move into the Castro house until Hannah returned.

     But he didn’t do it because he considered John a friend, necessarily.

     He did it to feel closer to his sweet Hannah.

     And when no one else was around, he would rifle through Hannah’s clothing, even stealing some of her lingerie. Late at night, when he’d find sanctuary in the elephant house, he’d hold the lingerie against his face. Soaking in Hannah’s scent. And dreaming of her.

     And now, now that they were onto him… now that they considered him a suspect, he’d come back to the zoo.

     He’d stocked plenty of food and water there over previous months.

     And now, despite everything, despite his world crashing down all around him, he still found solace at this lonely place.

     He sat, in the northwest corner of the elephant house, with his arms wrapped around his legs, slowly rocking back and forth.

     And plotting his revenge.

 
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     Randy neared the camp about an hour before first light.

      He progressed slowly and cautiously. He suspected Sara was a bit nervous.

     And he didn’t want to get shot.

     “Now remember,” he’d told her before leaving her three hours before. “You won’t be able to see me coming until I’m right up on you. And I won’t call out to you in case you’re under duress. So I’ll whistle the whippoorwill call three times every fifteen or twenty seconds as I approach.

     “When you first hear the whippoorwill, listen closely. If you hear it a second time, and you’re not under duress, then call out my name. Only then will I answer you and tell you I’m coming in.”

     She’d asked what a whippoorwill sounded like and he’d demonstrated.

     “Oh, that sounds rather pretty,” she’d said.

     “Did you have any other questions before I leave?”

     “Yes. You said something about a dress. What did you mean?”

     He laughed openly at her.

     “Not dress, silly. Duress. Like, for example, somebody is holding you hostage and is using you as bait to lure me closer so they can ambush me. If that were to happen, all you have to do is to ignore the whippoorwill call. You’ll know I’m out there close, so you can get ready to duck or hide or lash out when the time is ready.

     “But because you’re under duress, you won’t call out to me. That’ll tell me you’re under duress, and not to come into camp. I’ll back slowly away and find a vantage point where I can see your captors and try to take them out.”

     “Cool. Got it.”

     Randy liked Sara. She was a sweet girl. Just a bit naïve, but that was part of her charm.

     It was because he liked her that he dreaded returning to camp empty handed. He was hoping to bring Tom back, unharmed.

     Failing that, he at least wanted to bring back the news that Tom was still alive and well.

     But he couldn’t do that either.

     He whistled the whippoorwill’s call.

     There was no response.

     Good. Sara had paid attention. She wouldn’t call out to him until she heard a second call.

     He moved forward a few feet, then stopped again.

     He scanned the darkness in front of him for any sign of movement and saw none.

     He moved forward a few more feet.

     When he was fifty feet away, he whistled again.

     “Randy, it’s safe. Come on in.”

     Randy rose and walked into camp.

     Even in the darkness where he couldn’t clearly make out her face, he could somehow sense her disappointment when she saw only one shadowy figure approaching her.

     “Is he… okay?”

     “I don’t know, Sara. I certainly hope so. I scoured the whole ranch. There were only a couple of sentries out. That was a good thing. They weren’t on their war footing, which means if they encountered him they didn’t figure him to be a lawman. If they had, they’d be expecting reinforcements and have a lot more men out there.”