The Day After Never - Purgatory Road (Post-Apocalyptic Dystopian Thriller - Book 2) (9 page)

Lucas looked again for the rider and swallowed hard when he couldn’t find him. The man had been in a stretch with groves of spindly trees and fairly dense underbrush when Lucas had looked away and taken the measure of the environment; and now he was gone.

“Come on. Where are you?” he whispered under his breath. “You can’t have just vanished. Follow the trail. You can do it.”

Lucas continued sweeping the area with the scope, but he didn’t make out any movement. Perhaps the gunman had stopped to check the tracks? Lucas had done his best to stick to soft dirt that would memorialize his passing, but perhaps he’d overestimated his pursuer’s skills.

A flash of sunlight on glass stopped him cold, and his breath caught in his throat.

It had come from the brush.

He zeroed in on the spot and found himself staring at the bodyguard who had confiscated his weapons, squinting through a scope of his own – attached to a rifle pointed at the building.

Something had tipped him off. Too late for any surprise now; Lucas was obviously blown.

He did a hasty reckoning of likely trajectory – the man was maybe seven hundred yards away. Not an impossible shot for Lucas, but he’d have to be quick about dialing in the scope, whose default setting he always kept at five hundred. He rolled away from the lip so he wouldn’t be in the open and quickly clicked the range dial to the appropriate setting. After checking it to ensure he’d gotten it right, he moved to a different spot and inched to the edge of the roof for another look.

It took him a moment to locate the shooter again, and this time when he peered through the lens, he could see that the man was using a bipod for the futuristic-looking rifle. Whether or not he’d spotted Lucas on the roof would be a moot point if Lucas had calculated his range correctly. Lucas slowed his breathing and exhaled softly as he squeezed the trigger with a delicate squeeze.

The recoil was significant enough to jar the scope from the target, and when Lucas steadied it again, he scanned the brush for any sign of the man. A chunk of the roof blew off two feet from Lucas’s head and he rolled to the side, cursing. The report of the big-caliber rifle reached him a split second later, telling him what he already knew: his first shot had failed to find home, and the shooter had acquired him and was firing back.

Lucas clicked the scope adjustment one more setting and stopped again. He ejected the spent cartridge and chambered another, and quickly brought the rifle to bear on the gunman, a sense of quiet dread in his heart. He had four more bullets in the gun’s internal magazine, but he’d already thrown one away, and judging by the shooter’s equipment, he knew how to shoot – so Lucas had to make his rounds count.

The next shot Lucas was better prepared for the recoil, and he was able to keep the scope on the target. A spray of dust four feet short of the man told him he was still off, and he rolled away again and made the appropriate adjustment before loading another bullet.

An answering shot sent a piece of drain gutter flying no more than a foot from Lucas – far too close for comfort, the gunman now zeroing in on him with deadly accuracy. The next shot would be lethal if Lucas didn’t perform this time, he understood, but in spite of the pressure his hands were steady as he leveled the rifle again and took his time. He saw the man working the bolt and put the crosshairs on his throat.

The gun bucked and Lucas was rewarded with a fountain of red from the Raider. This time Lucas worked the bolt while keeping the scope on the target, but there was no movement from the man. Lucas didn’t hesitate, but emptied the gun at the shooter, wanting to ensure that he wasn’t met by any nasty surprises later in the day.

He lay still, ears ringing from the gunshots, watching the area for signs of life, but saw nothing. Five minutes later he lowered himself from the roof and made his way back to Tango, his job done. Lucas knew what he’d seen: at worst he had wounded the man, and at best, flipped his switch. Lucas didn’t care which – in neither case would the gunman be in any shape to continue following him, which was all he cared about.

Lucas reloaded the Remington and slid it back into its scabbard with a silent prayer of gratitude. The man’s shots had warned Lucas that he wasn’t invulnerable. His hand went to the bandage on his grazed arm and he reminded himself to change it again later – it would be bitterly ironic if he survived numerous gun battles but succumbed to infection from a flesh wound.

He checked the time and ran a quick calculation. At a moderate pace, Tango would be able to reach the root cellar within an hour or two of nightfall – close enough. There he could graze and drink his fill, and Lucas could get the rest he’d more than earned by achieving the impossible.

Which reminded him. He climbed into the saddle and rode away, feeling in his pocket for the note. Tango, in no mood to run anymore, settled into a fast walk as Lucas unfolded the paper and studied the neat script handwritten in ballpoint.

As Sierra had said, it was complete gibberish, a series of meaningless letters and numbers in no apparent order, six lines long, with little repetition that he could see.

“Great. Just great. Risked my neck for nothing,” Lucas muttered and folded the note back up, brow wrinkled in thought. The jumble of code was a daunting problem – and one he couldn’t shoot his way out of. His only hope was that Ruby might have some idea of how to go about decrypting the message, because at this point it might as well have been written in Swahili, so barring a miracle, they were dead in the water.

Chapter 13

Sierra craned her neck to see why Ruby had opened the root cellar door. It was pitch black inside, twilight having come and gone an hour before, and they had settled down for the night. Eve was snuffling nearby on her bedroll, and Sierra frowned in the darkness from the sleeping area at Ruby’s silhouette framed in the doorway by faint moonlight.

“Do you hear that?” Ruby whispered.

“I’m trying to sleep.”

“Listen.”

Sierra sighed and forced herself to her feet. She joined the older woman at the threshold and cocked her head. After listening for several moments, she shrugged and made to return to her bedroll.

“Wolves,” Sierra said.

Ruby shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

“I heard them before, when we were on the trail from Dallas. They howl like that at night.”

Ruby turned and felt in her things for the night vision monocle, and then whispered to Sierra, “Stay here.”

“Where are you going?” Sierra asked, her voice now concerned.

“Take a look around.” She paused. “You might want to wake Eve up and get her ready to move.”

“Wake her? Why?”

“Because I said so,” Ruby snapped, shorter with the younger woman than she’d intended to be.

Ruby pushed up the steps and out into the field. Jax and Nugget were standing by the trees, and they raised their heads as she approached. She approached the animals and murmured reassurance to them, and then her ears perked up at the sound of another faint lowing from the north.

Ruby hurried through the field of tall grass to a rise of hill. She stood beside an outcropping of rock and scanned the area with the monocle. The landscape was basked in a green glow, and then her breath caught in her chest when she saw men in the distance, one of them with dogs straining at their leashes.

Bloodhounds.

Moving toward the root cellar from the bunker.

Following their scent.

The party was still at least three-quarters of a mile away and moving slowly, but Ruby didn’t hesitate. She ran as fast as her legs would carry her back to the cellar and whispered through the doorway.

“The cartel is back. With dogs. We have to go. Grab your saddle and kit,” she ordered, and then stopped at the sight of Sierra standing just inside the door. “Where’s Eve? Did you wake her?”

Sierra shook her head. “I will now.”

Ruby’s mouth was a thin line. “You better get with the program, or you’re going to get yourself killed. If I tell you to do something, you do it.”

Sierra spun and moved to the sleeping quarters while Ruby gathered her bug-out bag and saddle. She carried them outside and then headed back for her nylon saddlebags. Sierra was leading a sleepy Eve from the back, who looked up at Ruby through puffy eyes.

“We have to go?” Eve asked.

“Yes, sweetheart. And we need to be very, very quiet,” Ruby cautioned.

“Okay.”

“You need help with your saddle?” Ruby asked Sierra, aware that her wounds were still healing.

“If you could. How far away are they?”

“Pretty damn close.”

Ruby carried Sierra’s saddle up the steps as the younger woman hoisted her bags, and within minutes they had Nugget and the mule ready to ride. Ruby helped Eve up onto Sierra’s saddle and then climbed onto Jax, ears straining for any sound of pursuit. She could tell by the sound that the dogs were definitely nearer, and Ruby drove the mule forward while using the monocle to see. Nugget followed at a quick walk, and when they reached the limits of the property, Ruby paused to take a bearing with her compass.

“We head that way,” she said, pointing southwest toward the mountains.

“I told you they’d never give up.”

“They can’t move very fast. They have to stay on foot for the dogs to follow the trail, so if we pick up the pace, we should be able to stay way ahead of them.”

“But they’ll find us eventually. They always do.”

“Not necessarily. We can skirt the river and make our way to Blue Springs. Maybe the water will wash away the scent,” Ruby said. “Or at least make it harder to follow.”

“Is there someplace shallow we can cross, to switch it up?”

“We can keep an eye out,” Ruby said, her tone doubtful.

“You think that will work?”

“I don’t know that much about tracking dogs, but I’ve heard they’re persistent.”

Sierra’s voice increased in pitch somewhat with anxiety. “Then what do we do?”

“We try everything we can, and pray.”

“That doesn’t sound very hopeful. Maybe we should ambush them or something?”

“There are more than a dozen men, and that’s only the ones in the immediate vicinity. We wouldn’t stand a chance.”

“We can’t run forever.”

Ruby nodded. “True, but we can run for a long time. Remember that they have to go slow. We don’t.”

“How far to Blue Springs?”

Ruby looked at her oddly. “Ten miles. Didn’t you hear Lucas and me discussing it?”

“Oh. That’s right.” Sierra paused. “Look, Ruby, I’m sorry about not waking Eve up. I didn’t want to disrupt her sleep. She’s been through so much…”

“I wouldn’t ask you to do something if it wasn’t important.”

“I know. I…I’m not operating at a hundred percent. The meds, the wounds, the stress…I guess I’m just trying to say, maybe you should cut me some slack.”

Ruby bit back her impatience and drew a deep breath. “Maybe you’re right. But I wonder how much slack the Crew’s going to cut you?” she said, and immediately regretted it. Her tone softened. “I know this has been rough. Let’s concentrate on doing the best we can. That’s over now. Let’s keep moving forward.”

“Sounds good to me.”

Ruby dug her heels into Jax’s ribs and the mule lumbered ahead, Ruby directing him with the reins in her left hand and monocle in her right. She hoped that the young woman wouldn’t be a liability, but Sierra’s stubbornness wasn’t a virtue in a survival setting, and the next time she did what she felt best rather than following instructions, it could cost them dearly.

Ruby debated saying so, but decided not to antagonize the younger woman further, opting instead to concentrate her energy forging a path through the brush and finding their way to the river. She tried to remember what she’d read about dogs following a scent, but the specifics eluded her, beyond it being almost impossible to evade them once they were on your tail. She’d tried to sound optimistic about using the river to mask their passage, but at best it would slow the animals, not lose them.

Ruby eyed a slope and directed Jax along the faint outline of a game trail. After ten more minutes, she could make out the sound of rushing water and the air felt more humid, telling her that they weren’t far from the river. Once they were at the water, the animals could drink, and she could test the depth to see whether they could get across. Her instinct told her that even if the dogs picked up their scent again on the far side, crossing back and forth would further stall their progress, and every hour they were searching for a thread to follow was another for Lucas to make it to the rendezvous and help them escape. If they were lucky, it could take days for the cartel to eventually make it to Blue Springs – that was the hope, at any rate.

She didn’t want to consider what might happen if Lucas didn’t return. Fifteen against two were impossible odds, even if everything went in their favor; and so far, nothing had. And with only a shotgun and Sierra’s AR-15, their chances weren’t good in a firefight.

Ruby banished the negative thoughts. It was fruitless to dwell on the situation. For now, they were ahead of the game, and for everyone’s sake, Ruby had to see to it that they remained that way as long as possible.

She shifted in the saddle and urged Jax to greater speed, aware that even under the best of circumstances the mule was reluctant to move at more than a snail’s pace. “Come on, boy. Just this once, please?” she whispered, and patted his neck.

The mule continued plodding forward with sedulous determination, unswayed by the urgency in his mistress’s voice, picking his way along as though they had all the time in the world.

Chapter 14

Cano watched the trackers guide the dogs around the bunker ruins, trying to acclimate them so they could pick up a scent. They’d been there since dusk, but so far they’d had no success, and he was growing impatient.

The dogs had occurred to him because of another manhunt he’d led in Houston, when a group of scavengers had absconded east with one of Magnus’s drug shipments they’d waylaid. Three days later they’d been skinned alive and crucified by the side of the road as a warning to any like-minded lowlifes, trailed by dogs when all else had failed.