The Day After Never (Book 1): Blood Honor Read online

  The Day After Never

  Blood Honor

  Russell Blake

  Copyright © 2016 by Russell Blake. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used, reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law, or in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, contact:

  [email protected]

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  Table of Contents

  Books by Russell Blake

  About the Author

  Author’s Note

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Sample from The Day After Never – Purgatory Road

  Books by Russell Blake

  Co-authored with Clive Cussler

  THE EYE OF HEAVEN

  THE SOLOMON CURSE

  Thrillers

  FATAL EXCHANGE

  FATAL DECEPTION

  THE GERONIMO BREACH

  ZERO SUM

  THE DELPHI CHRONICLE TRILOGY

  THE VOYNICH CYPHER

  SILVER JUSTICE

  UPON A PALE HORSE

  DEADLY CALM

  RAMSEY’S GOLD

  EMERALD BUDDHA

  THE DAY AFTER NEVER – BLOOD HONOR

  The Assassin Series

  KING OF SWORDS

  NIGHT OF THE ASSASSIN

  RETURN OF THE ASSASSIN

  REVENGE OF THE ASSASSIN

  BLOOD OF THE ASSASSIN

  REQUIEM FOR THE ASSASSIN

  RAGE OF THE ASSASSIN

  The JET Series

  JET

  JET II – BETRAYAL

  JET III – VENGEANCE

  JET IV – RECKONING

  JET V – LEGACY

  JET VI – JUSTICE

  JET VII – SANCTUARY

  JET VIII – SURVIVAL

  JET IX – ESCAPE

  JET X – INCARCERATION

  JET – OPS FILES (prequel)

  JET – OPS FILES; TERROR ALERT

  The BLACK Series

  BLACK

  BLACK IS BACK

  BLACK IS THE NEW BLACK

  BLACK TO REALITY

  BLACK IN THE BOX

  Non Fiction

  AN ANGEL WITH FUR

  HOW TO SELL A GAZILLION EBOOKS

  (while drunk, high or incarcerated)

  About the Author

  Featured in The Wall Street Journal, The Times, and The Chicago Tribune, Russell Blake is The NY Times and USA Today bestselling author of over forty novels, including Fatal Exchange, Fatal Deception, The Geronimo Breach, Zero Sum, King of Swords, Night of the Assassin, Revenge of the Assassin, Return of the Assassin, Blood of the Assassin, Requiem for the Assassin, Rage of the Assassin The Delphi Chronicle trilogy, The Voynich Cypher, Silver Justice, JET, JET – Ops Files, JET – Ops Files: Terror Alert, JET II – Betrayal, JET III – Vengeance, JET IV – Reckoning, JET V – Legacy, JET VI – Justice, JET VII – Sanctuary, JET VIII – Survival, JET IX – Escape, JET X – Incarceration, Upon a Pale Horse, BLACK, BLACK is Back, BLACK is The New Black, BLACK to Reality, BLACK in the Box, Deadly Calm, Ramsey’s Gold, Emerald Buddha, and The Day After Never – Blood Honor.

  Non-fiction includes the international bestseller An Angel With Fur (animal biography) and How To Sell A Gazillion eBooks In No Time (even if drunk, high or incarcerated), a parody of all things writing-related.

  Blake is co-author of The Eye of Heaven and The Solomon Curse, with legendary author Clive Cussler. Blake’s novel King of Swords has been translated into German, The Voynich Cypher into Bulgarian, and his JET novels into Spanish, German, and Czech.

  Blake writes under the moniker R.E. Blake in the NA/YA/Contemporary Romance genres. Novels include Less Than Nothing, More Than Anything, and Best Of Everything.

  Having resided in Mexico for a dozen years, Blake enjoys his dogs, fishing, boating, tequila and writing, while battling world domination by clowns. His thoughts, such as they are, can be found at his blog:

  RussellBlake.com

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  http://bit.ly/rb-jet

  Author’s Note

  The Day After Never series portrays a future where civilization has broken down after a confluence of remarkable events – a deadly global pandemic and the resultant collapse of the monetary system. While it would be reassuring to say neither could happen, reality is that pandemics occur with some regularity every five to six generations, and the global monetary system is interconnected to a degree where the demise of one lynchpin player could cause a systemic collapse – one where faith is lost in paper money and the world suddenly finds itself without a mechanism to trade. Fiat currencies historically fail with some regularity, and it’s interesting to note that reserve currencies typically last thirty to forty years before a new standard supplants them. This was true when the dollar replaced the British pound in 1944, it was true when the gold-backed dollar collapsed following Nixon’s closure of the gold window in 1971–1973 (replaced by the petrodollar), and it nearly happened again in 2008 – but for global money printing by all the world’s central banks at historically unseen levels.

  The world envisioned in this scenario isn’t pretty, and The Day After Never series mines the dark side of human nature that surfaces when order collapses. My experience, having lived through a massive hurricane that shut down power, water, roads, hospitals, and the rule of law for two weeks in Mexico, is that when systems catastrophically fail, those entrusted with providing emergency services stay home to protect their own, while predators, sensing opportunity and weakness, become emboldened and come out in force. The frightening part is that it only takes a small number of lawless miscreants to dominate the majority in those circumstances. What that says about us as a species isn’t pretty. But it’s been the case throughout history, and it’s only recently that a notion took hold that the world is a benign place and our better natures will prevail.

  This being a work of fiction, I’ve taken some liberties with accuracy, particularly with a small town in New Mexico and with pretty much everything about Pecos, Texas, which I’m sure is a lovely place to visit and live – only not so much in this apocalyptic future. Likewise, I’ve imagined a reality that may seem farfetched, but only to those who haven’t lived through a Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans or an Odile in Baja, Mexico. Anyone who has might find this reality far more plausible than they’d like, which for
me, at least, makes it an interesting read.

  Thanks for giving The Day After Never series a shot, and I hope you enjoy this first installment, Blood Honor.

  Russell Blake

  2016

  Chapter 1

  Lucas squinted through a pair of binoculars at a horizon distorted by the heat of a broiling West Texas sun and scanned the barren landscape. Greenish-brown scrub blemished the hillsides like tumors. A big bay stallion shifted beneath him with a shake of its head, and he leaned slowly forward and patted its neck for reassurance.

  “Easy, Tango. I know it’s been a long one,” he murmured.

  The horse stilled and Lucas returned to his task, his mouth a thin line in a face dusted with two days’ growth. The straight brim of a brown beaver felt cowboy hat shaded steel gray eyes and skin bronzed from a life outdoors.

  A hot wind blew from the mountains to his left, carrying with it the scent of rain. A band of plum-colored clouds pulsed with flashes of lightning where the peaks met the sky – still a ways off, he calculated, at least four or five hours, which increased the chances that the storm might spend itself before reaching him.

  Not that he’d mind a night in the rain. He had his tent and his bedroll, and his saddlebags were loaded with sufficient gear to stand him for weeks. He couldn’t predict how long it might take to track the herd of feral horses he was pursuing, and on expeditions like this, he traveled well-prepared for anything nature or man could throw at him.

  Lucas’s attention fixed on a distant spire of brown dust. He lowered the spyglasses and glanced at the heavens. It would be dark in a few more hours. He eyed the old mechanical pilot’s watch on his wrist, not because he had much use for time anymore, but to help with reckoning. The dust was maybe five miles off, and he didn’t want to blow out his horse on the trek – Lucas would need the animal’s speed to lasso his targets, and that was the priority.

  He nodded to himself. At a moderate pace, he could make it to the dust by twilight.

  Lucas adjusted the M4A1 assault rifle strapped across his back and felt automatically for the stock of his Remington 700 Police DM .308-caliber rifle in its scabbard by his right knee.

  Not that he would need them.

  Assuming the dust was the herd.

  There wasn’t much to forage in the arid gulches, all the homes having long ago been abandoned and stripped of anything of value, but that didn’t stop looting parties from Mexico from making their way north. The situation south of what had once been the border was as bad or worse than it was here, and based on what he’d seen firsthand, life was cheap to the border scavengers. They lived hardscrabble from anything they could steal, and would kill a man just as soon as look at him – gringo or Mexican, didn’t much matter.

  That was one of the reasons Lucas avoided the deserted highways that spanned the area. Other than the pavement being hard on Tango’s hooves, there were the depressing hulks of rusting vehicles dotting the road, left where they’d run dry. Even now, five years after the day everyone had said would never come, the highway was a threat, and there were still scum who lay in wait to ambush travelers – often desperate families trundling carts loaded with their possessions, heading toward somewhere they’d heard might hold better prospects for a life. Fuel had long ago degraded and was unusable, even diesel, leaving survivors to cobble together whatever they could for transportation – bicycles, animals, it didn’t matter as long as it enabled them to keep moving.

  “Fool’s errand,” he spat, and stopped at the dry sound of his voice. Talking to his horse was one thing; holding conversations with himself was a warning sign – one of many he was alert to. The fear that he might be cracking up was constant since things had come unraveled.

  Lucas made a clicking sound from the corner of his mouth and Tango plodded onward, the horse’s footing unsure on the loose shale. The soft sough of the wind was the only sound besides Tango’s clomping and an occasional snort. Lucas’s senses told him he was alone, but he remained alert. His clothes blended with the backdrop, and he hoped his worn jeans, tan shirt, and plate carrier in desert camouflage made him a difficult target. Unlike in the movies, it was harder than hell to tag a moving figure from any distance, especially with a brisk wind.

  He grunted as they moved over a particularly difficult section, and he urged Tango forward, Lucas’s lower back protesting the jolting ride. What he wouldn’t have given for an ATV, or even a dirt bike, much less a four-wheel drive vehicle like his old truck. He’d loved that big Chevy; the truck, like his M4, had been a perk of his service as one of the youngest Texas Rangers in the history of the force, operating with the E Division out of El Paso. But the vehicle, like the organization, hadn’t lasted, and it had been a sad day when he’d left it for dead in the high desert.

  The sun was a red ember sinking into the line of clouds when the reports of rifles reached him from the distance. The distinctive chatter of automatic weapons rattled in bursts across the landscape, barely louder than muffled firecrackers, but unmistakable. Tango drew up short, and Lucas’s eyes narrowed as he soothed the horse.

  “Looks like the dust wasn’t the herd,” he whispered.

  The shooting stopped after several minutes. He guessed that he was still at least a mile away. Lucas scanned the horizon again with the binoculars but saw nothing. Whatever had occurred had taken place out of sight, over a far crest.

  His instinct was to investigate – if there was a band of gunmen in the area, he needed to know sooner than later and would cut short his search for wild horses until they cleared out. He intended to use the animals for barter – the ranch was running low on stock items he could trade at a nearby outpost – but he had to be alive to do so, and he wouldn’t be able to cover his tracks adequately while droving unruly mustangs.

  “Come on, Tango. Time to earn your feedbag.” Lucas guided the horse to his left, opting for a circuitous path to avoid detection.

  Purple and salmon streaked the sky as he dismounted near the crest and tied Tango to a scraggly mesquite tree. He withdrew the Remington 700 rifle and patted the four spare thirty-round magazines of 5.56mm full-metal-jacketed rounds for the M4 in his ATS Aegis V2 plate carrier vest, reassured by the weight of his pride and joy, a Kimber 1911 Tactical Custom II .45 semiautomatic pistol on his hip. Lucas checked the safety and the flash suppressor on the M4, and then his gaze rose to the ebony forms of buzzards wheeling overhead.

  Lucas removed his hat as he crept toward the rise and froze behind a cover of dense brush. Bodies lay strewn around the base of a dry gulch. Lucas could tell at a glance that the group near the center had been ambushed from above – it was obvious from their position that the defenders had died staving off the attack.

  He regarded the area through his binoculars for several minutes, taking his time to study the bodies: four men wearing army-surplus camouflage shirts and pants, two with plate carriers over their shirts, clutching the distinctive shapes of their AR-15s or M16s. Two of their horses had been gunned down and were already bloating nearby, with a crude travois fashioned from a pair of crossed poles collapsed behind one of them. Nearby, thick crimson globules trailed up the arroyo, probably from horses that had been wounded, but not so badly they couldn’t put distance between themselves and the battleground.

  Five assailants ringed the area, their blood streaked against the hard rocks where they’d fallen as they’d closed in. In his mind’s eye Lucas could visualize the battle, which he knew from the shooting had been short and fierce. Judging by the tracks, the smaller group had been traveling northwest along the gulch toward a small lake, where they’d probably planned to spend the night. The attackers had chosen an advantageous spot and, with the sun to their backs, opened fire. But they’d been overconfident and moved in too quickly, suffering heavy casualties in their haste.

  Lucas squinted at the steep rock face of the opposite wall of the ravine, dotted with cave openings, wary of any possibility of ambush. Movement from near one of the fallen men in camo dr
ew his attention, and he watched as a vulture withdrew its bloody beak from where it had been feasting. The big bird cocked its head in his direction and sized him up, and then flapped its ebony wings and returned to its meal, having decided Lucas posed no immediate threat from the crest.

  It was unlikely that any of the attackers remained, or the buzzards would have been more cautious. Besides, there was no reason for anyone to stick around – assuming there had been any survivors. He didn’t see any horses, so theirs had likely run off as well. More for Lucas to capture, he reasoned pragmatically. Better domesticated animals than wild ones. Easier to sell.

  Lucas had seen plenty of death since the collapse. Unmoved, he returned to Tango and remounted. The days of reckoning, of law and order, of consequences, were over, leaving in their wake a brutal alternative of predator and prey. When he’d been a Ranger, he would have made it his life’s mission to hunt down any surviving attackers and drag them to justice, but now no such concept existed, other than that issuing from the barrel of a gun.

  He slid his boots into the stirrups, gave Tango a soft slap against his neck with the reins, the M4 clutched in his right hand, and the horse began making his way down the slope toward the grisly scene. Lucas continued to survey the surroundings, sweeping the scene with his rifle barrel.

  The vulture hopped away and lifted into the air to join its companions in their overhead vigil as Lucas approached. Satisfied he was unobserved, he dismounted and whispered in Tango’s ear. “Stay.”

  Tango blinked at him with mahogany eyes and stood, waiting.

  Lucas took in the scene, sickened by the senseless loss of life, and moved to the first of the defenders’ corpses and rolled it over. Three wounds stitched across the man’s chest, the final one having torn away half his shoulder. His sightless eyes stared into eternity with a look of surprise that Lucas knew well, and he laid the man back down and moved to the next, repeating the process of verifying they were dead. It didn’t take long, the pools of blood beneath them all the evidence he needed. All had the rawboned look of men whose diets had dramatically changed when society ended, their consumption of processed crap replaced by whatever they could hunt or grow. He noted that they had reasonably cropped hair and decent gear, which he gathered quickly and placed in a pile, concentrating on the weapons and ammunition, finding little else of barter value he could easily ride with.