Castroville: Countdown to Armageddon: Book 7 (2 page)

     On the surface of the sun, great masses of hydrogen, helium and a few other assorted gasses broiled.

     Never quite stable, the monstrous star’s molten plasma was especially turbulent in the months and years just following its massive explosion some three years before.

     In the same way a massive earthquake can cause a fault line to be unstable and therefore more susceptible to aftershocks, a similar effect was happening on the earth’s sun.

     The sun was growing stormy again. And it threatened to wreak even more havoc on earth than the first solar storm had.

     Before the first EMPs bombarded the earth, there was a small subgroup of society who called themselves “preppers.”

     As their name implied, they were preparing themselves for life after a worldwide disaster.

     When the EMPs bombarded the earth and the world went black the preppers survived.

     But not even the preppers expected the sun to give them a one-two punch.

     Sara and Tom made it to San Antonio, only to find that her mother had moved to the nearby city of Castroville. They had a hot lead, and pounced on it. They felt they were within days of being reunited, when they received some disheartening news.

     The city of Castroville had gone bad. The town was overrun by outlaws who ran the sheriff out of town and now ran it by their own rules.

     Suddenly Tom and Sara’s search for her mom turned into a rescue mission.

     They teamed up with a lone Texas Ranger by the name of Randy, who was on a mission of his own to try to clean up the town.

     In San Antonio, Robbie Benton went on the run, and hid out at the abandoned San Antonio zoo. The manhunt was slowly closing in on him.

     And on the surface of the sun, the storms got more and more violent.

And Now, Book 7

of the

Countdown to Armageddon series

CASTROVILLE

-1-

     Sheriff Tom Haskins was in a world of hurt. He came to groggily thinking he’d dozed off, but that wasn’t quite true. He’d actually passed out from the pain. And he wasn’t quite sure what woke him back up again.

     It might have been the brilliant sun, just risen in the east and warming anything and everything on the Lazy R Ranch outside of Castroville, Texas.

     And streaming through a knothole in his prison wall to shine directly in his swollen face.

     Or maybe it was the ugly brown rat picking dried blood off that same face and eating it while eyeing Tom and wondering what other part of him he’d eat next.

     He’d seen the rat through his good eye when he cracked it open a couple of minutes before. It was one of the few parts of his body he could move without pain. And as he’d eased it open, there was the rat, a few inches away, his ugly whiskers bobbing up and down as he chewed.

     He had a cocky look on his face, as though he’d won the sweepstakes and the world’s biggest prize, and nothing or nobody was going to take it away from him.

     Tom eased the eyelid closed again. The creature in front of him wasn’t large by rat standards. He was rather diminutive. Barely larger than a mouse, really.

     Still, Tom hoped he didn’t come after his good eye after he tired of dried blood. For one thing, it was the only one Tom had left. And least the only one he was sure of. The other eye was swollen shut and caked with something. Maybe blood, maybe something else. Maybe the types of fluids that ooze from a shattered eyeball. Maybe a combination of both. He wasn’t sure.

     And the other thing, the other reason Tom hoped the rat passed his good eye by… was because as small as the creature was, Tom wasn’t quite sure he’d be able to fight him off.

     They’d beaten him brutally, with baseball bats and kicks to every part of his body he couldn’t cover. His face was swollen to the approximate size and shape of a basketball, and was as black as the devil’s soul.

     His lips were so swollen he had to keep his mouth completely open just to keep a small hole open between them. Just big enough to force air in and out. For breathing through his nose was impossible.

     His nose was broken. Crushed, really. He knew that much for sure because he remembered hearing the sickening crunching sound as a heavy leather boot connected with the bridge of his nose during the beating. It had bled profusely for awhile, then finally stopped. Both nostrils were now completely clogged with dried blood and breathing through his swollen lips was really the only option he had left.

     Even the breathing hurt. He was sure he had at least a couple of fractured ribs, because his lungs were badly bruised. But he didn’t feel the sharp stabbing pain when he inhaled. That was the kind of pain that would have told him a bone shard from a broken rib was trying to pierce the lung. And he was able to inflate both lungs, as painful as that was to do. Those were good signs and meant the lungs hadn’t collapsed. And that the ribs, though surely fractured, weren’t completely shattered.

     So there was that.

     He could wiggle his fingers and toes, although with much agony.

     His left forearm was useless, but that wasn’t his shooting arm.

     In a moment of folly he reached down to see whether his gun was still in his holster. When he found it wasn’t, he was disappointed for a moment. Then he realized how ludicrous the thought and almost laughed at himself for his stupidity.

     Almost. Luckily he didn’t, for even laughing would have hurt.

     He moved his arm toward his face and the cocky rat decided he had somewhere else he had to be. He stopped chewing and scurried off into the darkness.

     Tom closed his good eye and started to drift off again.

     Perhaps to die. Perhaps to awaken later with a little less pain, a little more movement.

     The state he was in at this particular moment in time, he didn’t much care one way or the other.

-2-

     At their camp a couple of miles away, Sara was perplexed. And almost nauseous with worry.

     She poured a cup of campfire coffee and handed it to “Ranger Randy,” as she’d started calling her new friend. She filled her own Hello Kitty cup with the same coffee. The bright pink kiddie cup looked ridiculous being used by a grown woman at a rustic campsite.

     But she liked it and didn’t care much.

     Randy had gone looking for Tom the previous night. He’d come back empty handed.

     “Okay. You’ve got way more experience in this than I ever want to have. In your best estimation, what do you think happened to Tom?”

     “I don’t know. If it was daylight, I would have looked for his horse. That would at least tell us whether he made it that far.

     “Of course, if it was daylight,
I
wouldn’t have made it that far.

     “He might have been shot. He could have been taken hostage, but I doubt it. There wouldn’t have been any reason to.

     “I think the only other possibility is that Payton made him stay the night as a guest. He’s not the kind of man who’ll take no for an answer, and Tom wouldn’t have any way of telling us he was staying over.”

     “Do you really think that’s what happened?”

     “I don’t know. But I hope so. It beats the heck out of the other theory.”

     “So what do we do now?”

     “We wait. If Tom stayed the night as Payton’s guest, he’ll find a reason to leave not long after breakfast, and will be back here by noon.”

     “And if he’s not here by noon, then what?”

     “Then we’ll have to try my backup plan.”

     “Which is?”

     “I’ll tell you. But you won’t like it.”

     “Oh hell, Randy. I don’t like any of this. Not a damn bit. I’m not doing this because I like it. I’m doing it because my mom may be on that ranch and I want to get her out and bring her home. And now Tom is there too, maybe dead. And now we have to worry about him too.

     “If I was looking for something to like, I’d be back at home, lying in bed with my husband, holding him next to me and waiting for my young son to walk in and crawl into bed with us and tell us to get our lazy butts up and make him breakfast. That’s what I’d like. But that’s not reality.

     “So how about we stop worrying about what I’d like and just tell me what your plan is, okay?”

     He just looked at her for a moment. Then he smiled and said, “Drink your coffee. You’re rather testy in the mornings, aren’t you?”

     “Yes. And there ain’t a damn thing you can do about it. But here’s a tip for you. I’m not one to interrupt people when they’re talking, so if you start talking yourself you’ll shut me up for awhile…”

     He turned to look at her as she finished.

     “…Just sayin’.”

     “If Tom’s not back by noon, we’ll assume something went wrong. That’s a pity, because I thought it was a fairly good plan. But I have one of my own.”

     “I’m listening.”

     “I thought you didn’t interrupt people.”

     “Sorry.”

     “My plan is to leave you here while I ride up to the Lazy R Ranch. I know that’s going to make you feel inferior, being left behind again. But as Tom told you before he left, not every deputy gets selected for every mission. It’s the same thing with the Rangers. Nobody goes on every assignment…”

     “You have a way of turning a fifty cent explanation into a fifty dollar speech, you know that?”

     “And you’re interrupting again.”

     “Sorry. Go on.”

     “I leave you here. I ride up to the Lazy R, but I don’t go onto the property. So therefore I don’t disappear the way Tom did.

     “The other night when I was playing poker in Castroville I learned a lot about Jack Payton. The men at the table say he’s the greediest son of a gun they’ve ever laid eyes on. The most brutal too. They say he needs money like others need whisky or food. And he don’t care who he hurts or what he has to do to get it.

     “They also told me that when he came back from a trip a few weeks back he had a teenaged girl in tow. They haven’t seen her since. Lately he’s hooked up with the blonde woman we suspect to be your mother. But because he had a teenage girl with him when he hit town, I suspect he’s also the man I’ve been looking for.”

     “Can I speak now?”

     “Yes.”

     “What are you going to accomplish riding up the gate that Tom couldn’t have?”

     “I don’t know. Maybe nothing. But I’ve got something that Tom didn’t have?”

     “What?”

     “Bait.”

     “Come again?”

     “Bait. As in something that will appear valuable to Payton and might make him want to deal with me. And might make it in his best interest to keep Tom alive. If he’s not dead already, that is.”

     Sarah winced at Randy’s last few words but held her tongue.

     Randy continued.

     “I’ll wear my badge and ride up to the gate of the Lazy R. I’ll tell the sentries I’m looking for a man suspected of killing a group of people in San Antonio. I’ll describe Tom in great detail. I’ll even describe his horse. I’ll tell them there’s a big reward on his head. But I’ll tell them the federal marshal says he wants him alive. That the reward is only being offered if he’s able to stand trial. I’ll tell them to ask around, to see if anybody knows anything. And that I’ll pass through again tomorrow about the same time.

     “They’ll report the conversation to Payton. Hopefully he’ll be greedy enough to keep Tom alive until tomorrow, so he can turn him over to me and claim the reward.”

     “And if he doesn’t?”

     “Then we’ll go to my other plan.”

     “Which is?”

     “I don’t know. I’ll let you know when I think of it.”