The Day After Never - Covenant (Post-Apocalyptic Dystopian Thriller - Book 3) Read online

  “You want to take first watch?” Duke asked, his tone making it obvious that it wasn’t a request.

  Aaron nodded. “Four and four?”

  “Same as ever.” Duke handed Aaron the goggles and then unrolled his sleeping bag. The ground was hard, but no worse than the concrete floor of the bunker. “Wake me if you hear anything.”

  “Sure thing, boss.” Aaron sat with his back against a tree and adjusted the goggles before scanning the surroundings.

  Duke yawned again and, with his assault rifle by his side like a lover, closed his eyes and was asleep within thirty seconds, his soft snores rumbling in his chest as Aaron cocked his head to better hear over the river, the goggles lending him the appearance of an extraterrestrial.

  “Hell of a way to end the run,” he whispered to himself, and shifted into a less comfortable position so he wouldn’t nod off.

  Chapter 2

  Lucas’s side burned from the wound he’d acquired at the lake, but he ignored the pain as Tango followed Colt’s horse through the darkness. They’d crossed the freeway intersection forty minutes earlier, and Colt had signaled for them to remain quiet until he gave the word that it was safe to talk. Once out of town, the landscape had transitioned from the blackened husks of warehouses and wrecking yards into a flat desert dotted with sparse groves of trees. The rain abated to a light drizzle, the trees of lightning that had illuminated the terrain blown east as the storm worked its way toward the great plains.

  Colt held up a hand, barely visible in the gloom, and Lucas coaxed Tango abreast.

  “We’ll stop here for the night,” Colt said. “Maybe get a few hours of sleep. Tomorrow’s going to be a hard slog, so you’ll need every bit of rest you can snatch.”

  “Think we’re far enough from Roswell?” Lucas asked as Sierra, Ruby, and Eve materialized out of the rain.

  “About four miles. That should do the trick. The locals avoid this area. Apache country starts at the five-mile point, but nobody wants to misjudge and stumble into their territory.”

  “Then it’s safe?” Ruby asked.

  Colt shrugged. “Safe as anywhere.”

  Lucas swung down from the saddle. “Come on. I’ll help you with your tents.”

  Sierra nodded, helped Eve down, and lowered herself from Nugget. “This just keeps getting better, doesn’t it?”

  Lucas managed a tight smile. “We’re alive. Everything else is gravy.”

  “Do you think they’ll be able to follow us?”

  Lucas wiped the water from his face. “They’ll damn sure try. But they’re going to have their work cut out for them. Rain’s washed away our tracks.”

  Once the camp was made, they gathered under the trees and ate their rations. Ruby finished first and turned to Colt.

  “So what can you tell us about Shangri-La? You’ve been there, right?”

  Colt nodded slowly. “Yes. Not a lot to tell. It’s a naturally protected enclave with power and water. The people are God-fearing and decent.”

  “Who started it?”

  “The doctor who’s working on the cure, a physician named Barnes, Elliot Barnes. Everyone calls him the Doc.”

  “He runs things?” Lucas asked.

  “More or less. Everyone defers to him. Although there’s always some disagreement on how to best accomplish things – that’s true anytime you have a good number of people.”

  “How many?” Sierra asked.

  “Probably pushing three hundred.”

  Lucas’s eyebrows rose. “That many?”

  “Yeah. We aren’t recruiting. It’s sustainable at that size. Bunch more and we’d run into resource problems.”

  “You trade with outsiders?”

  “They have a confederate they work through in one of the nearby towns, but nobody knows that he’s trading on behalf of Shangri-La.”

  “You say it’s naturally protected. How’s it set for weapons?” Lucas pressed.

  “They have everything they need.” Colt’s tone wasn’t inviting more questions.

  “Are you one of the original members?” Sierra asked.

  “That’s right. I consider myself lucky.”

  “But you were living in Roswell,” Ruby observed.

  “I was sent there to wait for Eve. I infiltrated the town six months before we broke her out, and built the bar as a cover.” He hesitated. “We have others outside of Shangri-La who gather info for us and keep us abreast of any news. But none of them know where it’s located – they’re all free agents.”

  “Just you,” Lucas stated flatly.

  Colt nodded. “That’s right. Security. You can’t tell anyone what you don’t know.”

  “Makes sense,” Lucas agreed.

  “How far are we from it?” Sierra asked.

  Colt smiled. “A ways.”

  Lucas grunted. “You mentioned Apache country. How are we supposed to cross it without a guide? You know the way?”

  “Sort of. I managed it once. We’ll be fine.”

  “Even without…Frank?” Ruby asked.

  “That could get sticky, but we can level with the tribe if they stop us. They may not. It’s a big area, and it’s not like they have unlimited manpower.”

  “You don’t sound confident,” Lucas fired back.

  “I’m not, but we’ll play it by ear. They’ve been paid already, so we should be fine. It’s not our fault if their man couldn’t make it.”

  “Well, it sort of is, since it was one of our gang that gunned him down,” Ruby said.

  “We’ll leave that part of the story out.” Colt finished the last bites of his meal and rose. “If necessary, let me do the talking. Now get some rest. We’ll leave at first light.”

  Lucas nodded and joined him at the horses. “You figure two days to cross their territory?”

  “Maybe three. Not a lot of water for long stretches. No point in wearing out our rides for nothing.”

  “Makes sense. Anything else we need to know?”

  “Next stop’s Albuquerque. It’s kind of the Wild West there, but we’ll need to resupply and get the week’s password.”

  “Password?”

  “Guards will shoot on sight if you don’t know it. They change it every week.”

  “How does whoever you’re going to meet get it?”

  “Radio. Got a guy in town whose job is nothing but keeping us posted on significant developments in the outside world. Albuquerque’s a major trading hub, so he hears a lot of scuttlebutt.”

  “Who controls the town?”

  “The local militia. Couple of criminal gangs tried to take it over, but they got overthrown by the survivors – pretty mean bunch, apparently, although I’ve never had any problems with ’em. Town’s open to anyone that wants to trade, and the local posse keeps a tight rein on things. There are bars, whorehouses, the works, but they come down on you like a ton of bricks if you start trouble.”

  “Regular Tombstone, huh?”

  “No new ideas.”

  Colt retired to his tent and Lucas rejoined the women, who were finishing up. Eve scooted over to him and looked up in the darkness. “Aunt Sierra and I want to say thank you for everything.”

  “No need, Eve. But I appreciate the sentiment.”

  Eve’s eyes moved to his boots, and she shifted from foot to foot. “She likes you.”

  Lucas’s stomach tightened and he glanced at Sierra, who was talking in hushed tones with Ruby.

  “I like her too. And I like you. Now get ready to sleep. It’ll be daybreak before you know it.”

  “My butt hurts.”

  “Everyone’s does. You get used to it. Imagine how the horses feel.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Why do their butts hurt?”

  Lucas’s mouth twitched. “I meant they’re probably pretty tired. Now go to sleep, Eve. Sweet dreams.”

  He watched as the little girl tromped back to where the women were sitting. Sierra stood and took Eve’s hand. Even in the gloom, the smile she threw to Lucas was unmi
stakable, and he nodded to her before moving to his own tent, upon which the patter of rain beat a steady tattoo.

  Lucas slid into the three-man tent and zipped the entry flap closed, his mind on the young woman only a few yards away. His body signaled his interest with a stirring he hadn’t felt for years.

  “Eyes on the prize,” Lucas whispered, pushing thoughts of Sierra out of his mind before they kept him awake the rest of the night. He would need to deal with the situation at some point, but this wasn’t the time or place, and he closed his eyes and resolved to save the drama for another day.

  Chapter 3

  The lights of Houston’s Crew-occupied downtown illuminated the night horizon. Huge refinery tanks behind a chain-link fence topped with coils of gleaming razor wire towered like monoliths against the backlit metro area. Once an oil traffic hub, the area was now all but abandoned, with only a few guards manning the outpost that protected the last of the viable diesel fuel in the Crew’s possession.

  The stainless steel of a single ten-thousand-gallon tanker truck gleamed beside one of the storage containers, dwarfed by the four-story tank. Around it a hodgepodge of empty crates and fifty-gallon drums littered the parking lot where they’d been emptied long ago during the looting that accompanied the collapse. Much of the chaos had been desperation, the wanton and haphazard destruction of a population as it starved and died. Between disease and pervasive violence, over ninety-five percent of the metropolis had perished before Magnus and the Crew had established order – of a kind.

  Roving gangs of armed thugs had been assimilated into the Crew or executed without mercy. Some tried to escape conscription into the gang, but were hunted down; Magnus was savvy enough to be wary of their reappearance at a later date. His message had been clear and unequivocal – his was now the only law of the land, and you played by his rules…or died.

  The surviving residents had been given the option of paying for protection or leaving to never return. Most stayed, there being no place better to go; the stories of the outlying areas were as grim as the piles of the dead that clogged the streets.

  It was in this vision of hell that Magnus had set up court, doling out favors to his inner circle and arbitrarily punishing transgressions in mass executions that had taken on a grim pageantry, attended by the masses with the enthusiasm of gladiator matches in ancient Rome, ultimately cheered as the bloodthirsty spectacles became routine entertainment.

  But as Magnus’s grip on the territory tightened, resistance had organized. Determined men and women saw his reign as that of the anti-Christ – not much of a leap, as every form of atrocity, degradation, and perversion was pursued by the former inmates who’d been handpicked to be his lieutenants. Pedophilia, bestiality, slavery, torture, dark rituals with Satanic overtones and occult symbolism – nothing was off-limits in Magnus’s vision of a brave new world, and the population lived in constant terror of their doors being kicked down and their sons and daughters dragged screaming into the streets, never to be seen again.

  The resistance had grown organically, in cells with no connection to each other except through anonymous cutouts, but even with the secrecy many had perished when discovered. But that hadn’t deterred the committed, and tonight, one of the oldest cells was planning a sabotage mission that had been developed over months of clandestine surveillance.

  The fuel truck was Magnus’s treasure – the last of the usable diesel in his possession. His technical staff had been working to bring a refinery back on line but so far had failed, with both the parts required to maintain the equipment and the technical know-how lacking. Fuel was his Achilles’ heel, and if the cell could destroy it, the blow to the Crew could be severe enough to cause it to fragment as its members realized they weren’t impervious to harm. Regardless, the Crew would lose its most precious commodity, which would hamper its dominance. It was widely known that Magnus had a substantial cache of fuel in reserve in case of an uprising and could transport hundreds of men to the farthest corners of his territory in a matter of days. That served as an effective deterrent, but if word spread that he was out of gas…resistance in other areas might be emboldened.

  Five black-clad figures ran toward the fence, one with bolt cutters clutched to his chest. The moonless night had been chosen by their leader from an almanac, and they were practically invisible in the darkness. When they reached the barrier, they spread out, weapons raised, while the cutter went to work. Three minutes later, a gap large enough to slip through opened, and they eased through.

  Once inside the refinery yard, they jogged toward the truck, using the discarded barrels and crates for cover. The guard post was distant enough that they wouldn’t be seen, but they were taking no chances. They moved in fits and starts, pausing at strategic spots as they crossed the open asphalt.

  They had nearly reached the truck when spotlights mounted to the roof of a darkened vehicle blinked to life, blinding them in the glare. A voice called out over a megaphone, “Freeze or we’ll gun you down. No second warning. Drop your weapons, or you’re history.”

  The team leader made a hand signal and threw himself to the side, trying to reach one of the crates for cover. A heavy machine gun opened up from the vehicle, peppering the pavement around the assault force. The cell gunmen fired in return using their assault rifles, but it was no contest, and the big .50-caliber machine gun shredded through their cover like tissue.

  Thirty seconds later, all lay dead or wounded, their plate carriers having proved useless against the large-caliber rounds. The machine gun fell silent, and a tall, gaunt man stepped from the vehicle. Gothic script tattooed on his shaved head proclaimed his moniker to be “Snake.” Below the name was the eye of Providence tattoo that paid homage to Magnus’s fascination with the Illuminati, along with a pentagram. Six Crew fighters followed him from the big truck to the bodies.

  Snake paused at the first corpse and kicked the man’s chest with a steel-toed boot. The gunman beside him chuckled.

  “Deader than my ex on Saturday night,” Snake said with a grin.

  Snake was one of Magnus’s top men, in charge of security for the greater Houston area and one of his anointed successors in the event of his death. Snake took his job as seriously as though he were already running the Crew and took a personal interest in the attack on the fuel depot he’d gotten wind of from an informant.

  One of the injured cell gunmen groaned, and Snake pointed his Desert Eagle at him and snapped an order to his group. “If he’s not fatally wounded, patch him up so I can interrogate him. Same for the others.”

  In the end, three of the attackers had been killed and two wounded, both seriously, but not so badly they would die within the hour. It didn’t matter to Snake – he only needed them breathing long enough to confirm what he knew about the cell so he could follow the chain of command to the person directing the attacks. He suspected an insider – someone within Magnus’s organization with privileged knowledge – but he hadn’t made his suspicions known yet, wanting to gather more information before he said anything.

  But the attack on the truck had been too close for comfort. Its whereabouts were closely guarded, and this was its fourth home in five years. Nobody was allowed within a mile of the site, and it was shielded from view from the city.

  Magnus had a leak. Of that Snake was certain.

  And perhaps tonight he would learn something to point him in the direction of the traitor.

  Chapter 4

  Cano stared at the bloated corpses on the truck stop floor in stony silence. He moved to the front door and looked outside, where the outlines of Roswell’s buildings glowed in the near distance as the sun’s first rays reflected off their glass.

  Luis approached, his boots crunching on the debris underfoot, and joined the Crew boss at the doorway. Pools of water from the rain that had only stopped an hour earlier quivered in the light breeze, and the air smelled heavy and damp.

  “What’s the plan?” Luis asked, his voice low.

  C
ano turned his head slightly. “We see if we can find someone who can identify these two. And we locate a radio and call for reinforcements.”

  “From where?”

  “Pecos, obviously.”

  Luis’s expression hardened. “We have barely enough men to secure the town.”

  “That’s not my problem. I don’t care whether the natives get restless in our absence or not. I’ll deal with any insurrection when we return.”

  “What about Lubbock? Isn’t it about the same distance from here?”

  Cano stepped outside, ignoring Luis, who followed him out. The two remaining Crew gunmen carried their saddles from the depths of the building. Luis rubbed his eyes with a tired hand and tried again. “How are we going to get the locals to cooperate?”

  Cano scowled at him as though every question was annoying him further. “Let me worry about that.”

  “They have a reputation…”

  Cano sneered, revealing several gold teeth. “So do I.”

  The men strapped their gear on their horses and set off toward town at a slow walk, the humidity stifling as dawn broke over the valley. Twenty minutes later, they arrived at a guard post manned by three civilians in camouflage fatigues and armed with AKs, the highway blocked by a cart loaded with bails of wet hay.

  “That’s far enough,” one of the guards warned, weapon trained on Cano and his men.

  “We’re no threat. We need to do some bartering,” Cano said.

  “You don’t look like traders,” the lead guard said, his gun unwavering on the heavily muscled and tattooed Crew boss.

  “Didn’t say we were. Who runs this place? I want to talk to him.”

  “Who are you?” the guard demanded.

  “My name’s Cano. I represent the Crew.”

  The guard’s face changed, and a tic twitched his left eye twice. Cano held his stare.

  “What do you mean you represent the Crew?” another guard asked.

  “It means you either take me to whoever runs this dump, or you’ll wish you’d never been born.”