Castroville: Countdown to Armageddon: Book 7 (19 page)

     As a group, preppers took a lot of grief from non-believers who thought them crazy and made no bones about telling them so.

     In the end, the preppers’ predictions came true. They had the last laugh, although few of them took any great glee in pointing that out. For in order for them to be right, they had to face the prospects of a vastly different world in which many of their friends and loved ones would perish.

     But at least the preppers, and those they cared about, would survive.

     However…

     Ask any scientist about earthquakes and they’ll say that the aftershocks frequently cause more damage than the quakes themselves.

     That’s because the initial quake attacks fortified and undamaged structures.

     The aftershocks are frequently almost as long and almost as intense as the initial quakes.

     But the structures they attack have been weakened, sometimes severely, by the initial quake and earlier aftershocks.

     One can pardon the Mayans for not warning of follow-up EMPs, the sun’s version of an earthquake’s aftershocks. After all, the Mayans did their good deed by warning future humans about solar storms and such. Their job was done.

     One could even pardon the preppers for not being proactive and wondering if there might be such things as secondary EMPs. After all, they were new at this whole EMP thing, and were happy as could be just to have survived the first ones.

     Meanwhile, the storm on the surface of the sun boiled on.

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     On North Hein Road in San Antonio, Robbie looked up and down the street puzzled.

     After the grenade had scattered bits and pieces of Chief Mike Martinez and his wife Eva all over their front lawn, he’d expected all hell to break loose. He expected neighbors to come rushing out of their houses. Little old ladies to be screaming. Men running down the street to fight off whatever hoodlums had disrupted the calm of their neighborhood.

     He half expected to hear police cars’ sirens immediately sounding. His hope was for a patrol car to be close enough to the chief’s house to hear the blast and to report it over the police radio.

     His hopes for a bloody gun battle were dashed, though.

     No officers came hauling ass into the neighborhood to investigate the blast. No little old ladies came pouring into their yards. No gun-toting men came out to defend the chief a few minutes too late.

     The scene was anti-climactic, almost surreal. It was as though Robbie Benton threw a macabre death party and nobody came. 

     The only sound Robbie heard, after his ears stopped ringing from the grenade blast, was a single door closing across the street and two doors down.

     A single neighbor heard the blast and opened her door to see what it was. Seeing absolutely nothing out of place, she retreated back into the safety of her home.

     Robbie had no way of knowing that she was the only surviving resident on the block, other than Mike and Eva Martinez. And she didn’t know it, but they were gone too now.

     Robbie shuffled dejectedly from the Martinez house and headed back to the zoo.

     Maybe it was better this way. The chief’s body wouldn’t be discovered until somebody at police headquarters missed him. And that could take hours. Nobody at headquarters would want to appear to be a worry wart or a Nervous Nellie in the chief’s eyes. Nobody would want to imply to him that he needed to be checked up on. The mayor of San Antonio was always on the chief to take a day or two off. Maybe he’d finally done it.

     The only other way the chief would be found was if a squad car on routine patrol happened by.

     And that might take hours.

     Actually, it might take much longer than that. With only twenty seven patrol officers on each shift, and a city of three hundred square miles to cover, neighborhoods sometimes went for days without seeing a policeman.

     So maybe it was better this way. Robbie had come prepared for a bloodbath and indeed hoping for one. But the fact that it didn’t happen didn’t change much. He’d still taken out his primary target. And killing the chief’s wife was a bonus.

     The bloodbath would come later, he was convinced. And since he had more time to plan it, more time to stake out a prime location for it, more time to soften his targets, he could probably make it better.

     In the back of his mind, he was still a bit upset that he hadn’t been able to take out John Castro. But now, since the chief was dead and Robbie had survived, fate was giving him another chance.

     The walk back to the zoo was long and tedious. He walked in the open, half hoping a squad car would happen along and recognize him.

     He worked out in his mind what he’d do if it did.

     He’d get the drop on the policeman, of course. Because in the mind of an insane man he is always the victor in any conflict.

     After he got the drop on the policeman he would blow him away, without a moment of hesitation. His brothers in blue were now the enemy, who deserved no quarter or mercy.

     He’d drag the dead cop out of his car and onto the street, and immediately drive back to the chief’s street, where he’d park it in front of the chief’s house.

     He’d get on the police radio, pretend to be a concerned citizen, and scream at the dispatcher, “Help! A policeman’s been killed. I think it’s the Chief of Police, Chief Martinez!”

     That would be all it took.

     The dispatcher, of course, would desperately try to gain more information from the frantic citizen.

     “Sir, who are you? Where are you? What has happened specifically?”

     None of the dispatcher’s questions would be answered. As far as the dispatcher knew, the citizen had dropped the microphone to assist the chief… whatever may have happened to him.

     In his mind, Robbie could plainly see the scenario play out at the dispatcher’s desk. The dispatch supervisor would take his position of importance over the shoulder of the dispatcher and bark orders.

     “Get him back on the line. Find out his exact location. Find out what happened. Is there an active shooter? Was it a car accident? Get us more information.”

     The frustrated dispatcher would be saying, “Sir, we’ve lost him. He’s no longer on the radio.”

     The supervisor would grow just as frustrated and would take over the microphone, as though the dispatcher was incompetent.

     “Citizen, this is Sergeant So-and-so from the San Antonio Police Department. Please give us your exact location.”

     He’d have no better luck at getting a response than did the dispatcher, which would frustrate him even more and give the dispatcher a sense of “I told you so” satisfaction.

     Finally, the supervisor would do what he should have done in the first place: dispatch all available units to the home of Chief Martinez to check on his well-being.

     All of this would take some time, of course. Robbie figured it would take at least ten minutes for the first unit to arrive. Plenty of time for Robbie to climb to the top of a house half a block away and set up a sniper’s nest.

     And then all hell would break loose. The first unit would report that Chief Martinez and his wife were dead of an apparent explosion. And that there was an abandoned patrol car in front of the house, its door wide open and its officer nowhere in sight.

     Every squad car in the city would be on its way.

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     One thing Jack Payton did well when he ran the Lazy R Ranch was plan for the future. Of course, he had the easy part. He was merely the traffic cop in the process, pointing his fingers to certain areas and demanding that certain things be done.

     He used to tell Wimberly that he worked too hard and had too much time invested in the ranch to let it run out of the things he loved. That was why he always made sure to have a fresh supply of women to take care of his personal needs, and the best brands of booze to swill for him and his men.

     It was also why he worked the women and older children like dogs. Not only to cook and clean and do laundry, but also to grow food, can vegetables and dry out jerky.

     Two of men were designated hunters. Part of their job was to bring back a deer from the mountains that surrounded Castroville occasionally. Their quota was one such deer per month, and they usually met their goal. Whether they did or didn’t, they augmented their kill with rabbits and an occasional head of cattle they stole from another of the area’s ranches.

     Rustling was still very much illegal in Texas, as it had always been. But few of the other ranchers thought it wise to tangle with Payton and his hired guns, and accepted the occasional loss of a steer as just the price of living close to the meanest man in that part of Texas.

     Some of those same ranchers heard through the grapevine that Payton and Wimberly had been brought down not by a posse of lawmen, but by a little bitty woman.

     They shook their heads and regretted not bringing down the “tough guy” themselves long before.

     Since the women on the ranch were made to grow crops in the spring and summer to put away for the winter months, the cupboards and root cellar were chock full.

     Annie insisted that Tom and Sara take enough food to sustain them for a good portion of their journey.

     But it wouldn’t do to burden Sara’s horse Nellie or Tom’s horse Silver with eighty pounds of additional weight. Especially since Sara had confided in Nellie and told her of their plan to pick up an additional rider in San Antonio.

     And so it was that just before midnight a convoy of five horses rode out the main gate of the Lazy R Ranch headed toward nearby Highway 90. Tom took the lead, followed by Sara and Stacey. Stacey’s horse trailed a charcoal-black stallion that once belonged to Jack Payton, and which now carried provisions.

     Sara’s horse trailed an Appaloosa colt named Shadow, which Wimberly had stolen from a drifter a couple of months before. Once he had possession of the colt, Wimberly had shot the man without cause. Partly out of meanness and partly so he didn’t have the audacity to try to take back his own property.

     Tom trailed no horse behind him. As point man, it was his job to watch for trouble. Part of that chore was the chance he’d have to take off at a fast gallop to confront it. A trailing horse would hinder that.

     And that was fine by Tom. And even finer by Silver. Silver was getting up in years, almost twenty now. He was still a fine horse, but getting set in his ways. And he didn’t like the feel of a trail horse holding him back.

     They didn’t ride hard. There was no reason to. The night vision goggles showed them what was ahead, and who might be waiting for them. But the goggles did nothing to highlight the hazards that could have made a horse lame. A rabbit or gopher hole. A piece of discarded wire. A rattlesnake.

     And they weren’t in any hurry. They’d found what they’d come for and accomplished their mission. Stacey was safe, and was on her way to a new home. A safe home. A home where no men like Glen McAllister or Jack Payton existed. Where she could live out the rest of her life without being abused or mistreated or threatened.

     Hopefully.

     They walked their horses at a leisurely pace, in the wide grassy median between the westbound and eastbound lanes of the highway. At best they’d do ten miles a night. It would take them three nights to make it to San Antonio and another ten to make it to Junction.

     But that was okay. They were wisely choosing the safe way over the fast one.

-42-

     Sometimes the luckiest people are the ones who least deserve it.

     Robbie Benton had always been lucky when it counted. Well, as long as one didn’t count the game of love. He royally sucked in that regard.