LAW Box Set: Books 1-3 (Life After War Book 0) Page 9

  You owe me!

  Marc winced at the accusation, the reminder, and stopped denying, understanding that the time he had feared (and longed for!) was here. Angie was finally calling in his marker, and that debt could never be repaid.

  Not letting his practical (male) side get in the way, Marc closed his eyes and concentrated as she had taught him so long ago. He was unable to keep from wondering if the water had gotten him, and this was the afterlife with an angel’s voice leading him to hell.

  You can’t go yet. Not until you help me. Help us.

  The voice in his mind (Angie’s voice! It’s Angie!) was clear, as if they were on a phone. He found it helped to pretend they were as his headache increased, throbbing at his temples. Was he injured? It would explain this.

  Marcus…

  “What do you need?”

  My life back.

  Marc jerked as if slapped, thrown into the past, and the note of desperation in her voice pulled at a place in his heart that he was unable to resist.

  I need you. Will you come?

  “As quickly as I can.” This would be the fastest swoop he’d ever made. In addition, this fast journey over a short amount of time would be done alone, without the support of his team. “Tell me where.”

  Ohio. Cincinnati.

  Marc’s heart pounded faster. He had been there once before. “Two weeks, Angie, maybe less.”

  A relieved blast of energy exploded from her end.

  Marc swayed on his feet as her light sank into him, stopping the aching. It had been fifteen years since he’d felt it.

  You have to hurry…

  “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

  There was no answer, just a dead line, and though he tried repeatedly, there was only silence.

  Marc rubbed the wolf’s tense ears, not missing the eagerness in the animal’s golden orbs. Clearly, Dog had felt her pull too, and Marc struggled to control the heart that suddenly felt alive again. Angie had called for him!

  He had a reason to go on living.

  Chapter Six

  The Enemy and the Traitor

  January 29th

  Outside Trinidad, Colorado

  1

  “Not again.” Rick moved toward the center of the large, reeking camp as he fought against the sharp Colorado wind. “I won’t do it.”

  He knew why he’d been called to the boss’s tent. Trinidad, Colorado was big, and the survivors there had the town barricaded with machine guns that were constantly manned. The evil troll wanted him to be the wolf in sheep’s clothing. Again.

  Walking steadily, the white man kept to himself, pretending not to understand the lazy Spanish insults from those he passed. The faint noise of crying and begging was nearly overshadowed by the lustful shouts of men and the excited yapping of dogs. Mexican R & R, Rick thought.

  His pale skin was out of place, his life constantly in danger in the slaver camp, and Rick liked it. The white women here didn’t feel the same. The few being allowed to sit in the open air were chained to their masters, and they observed Rick go by with open contempt on their battered faces. These were the favorite girls, the ones whose bodies would be left on the side of the highway in a week or a month, instead of tonight or tomorrow.

  Rick stopped in front of a crooked tent and tapped on the flap before shoving his cold hands into the pockets of his dirty jeans. Most of Cesar’s men were drunk and in a good mood–the church they’d desecrated in Santa Fe four days ago had been full of women and kids who’d gone there for sanctuary–but it wasn’t a friendly mood. The tremors in Rick’s stomach doubled as the first flakes of black snow began to fall. What did these brutal invaders know that he didn’t?

  Gunshots echoed loudly from the other end of the carelessly sprawled out camp, followed by a young scream. The wind gusted smoke from neglected campfires as men hit, women bled, and the snow clouds rolled over the dark landscape. South was where they’d been. North was where they were going. The firelight of Trinidad was a tempting dim glow through the distant trees.

  “Wait.” The Mexican leader’s cold tone carried to his men, and Rick saw the widening grins of the two dozen or so watching men.

  They dressed like Spanish bandits with their crisscrossed belts and wide-brimmed sombrero’s. They also acted like them, enjoying any chance to make him squirm. They wanted him to know that only Cesar’s orders kept him from the fate of all the other white males they’d found.

  Tense but not scared, Rick watched them right back, daring. He might be an outside member, but Rick was also Cesar’s personal property and the short, stocky leader would kill anyone who touched what was his. It kept Rick from the horrible death they often threatened, but it didn’t stop him from being beaten.

  The freed inmate wasn’t exactly sure what it was that kept him here. There had been plenty of chances to escape, but Rick hadn’t even tried. Maybe it was the lack of rules or how he felt more alive than ever before (like a real man should feel!) as he stayed among these violent killers, keeping his life where no other white men had so far.

  Rick sighed, turning from an icy blast of wind. Maybe he had a death wish. He was sure that eventually he would be eliminated, but for now, he was surviving where no one else could, and he straightened his shoulders. They could only kill him once.

  He swept lumps in the darkness, seeing jackrabbits, bats, larks, and people. Hell, a quick bullet to the temple or knife to the throat might be easier than what the rest of the world was suffering.

  “Come in, Reechard.”

  Rick’s attention snapped back to why he had been called, and there was a battle in his mind as he entered, debating his decision. Vaguely glad to be out of sight of the unshaven, dirty slavers who were camped directly on the dark concrete lanes of US 25 as if they owned it, he saw that the tent was the same. Only the bait was different.

  The first time Cesar had called him here, Rick had been so relieved to be spared that he’d agreed without thinking. Salem.

  Time slowed as he remembered…

  Rick tightened his grip on the struggling, naked female beneath him, smelling Cesar’s cigar as he leaned in and pinched the girl’s nose shut.

  “You wish to live, yes?”

  Rick couldn’t stop and he jerked forward, wincing at the scream as he buried his hard flesh in the struggling body under him.

  “I know, Americano, and you will.”

  The slaver’s blade went against his throat, sharp knife pricking the skin with each stroke, and Rick moaned, scared and on fire.

  “If you do what I want.”

  Rick nodded carefully, struggling not to slit his own throat as he raped the naked woman Cesar had thrown into his arms. His hand slid around her neck to keep her from screaming again and to get a better grip.

  “Wh…whatever you want!” he gasped, hips flashing.

  “Squeeze harder,” the slaver ordered. “She breathes too easy.”

  That had been in the heat of lust and fear. Now, it would be a morally conscious decision, and Rick wasn’t sure which way he would fall, only that he would.

  Cesar was on the bed, rolling a thick line of white powder into a blunt paper, something that Rick had never seen anyone do before. He waited just inside the awful-smelling mess, shifty green eyes going over the man in the dirty gray robe who claimed to be the bastard son of Fidel Castro.

  Trying not to stare at the naked slave kneeling at her master’s booted feet, his gaze swept filthy clothes, a blanket, and scraps of food. Her dog collar and chain purposely prevented the shivering girl from reaching any of the items.

  Rick had time to think he liked the look of the heavy metal, and then reality crashed in on him.

  “Reechard. It ees time to pay for the second month of life I have decided to give you.” The Mexican accent was thick, but understandable.

  Rick’s stomach dropped the rest of the way. He rubbed his damp palms down dirty jeans, trying to cover his nervousness. “What do you want me to do?”

  Sl
ightly distracted, as he was meant to be, Rick tried hard to ignore the naked teenager and failed at it. He could see tears falling, but not the face covered by shiny brown curls.

  “Trinidad, Colorado,” Cesar sneered, making it ugly. “We will be there in a few days. You go with la salida del sol.”

  Although Rick said nothing, knowing not to tell the ruthless slaver he wouldn’t leave at sunrise, Cesar peered at him in a warning.

  The Mexican’s left hand clenched into half a fist; two fingers on that side missing. “Sí?”

  Rick dropped his eyes. “I can’t do that.”

  The former janitor’s voice was low and apologetic, making his five foot eleven, one hundred ninety pound frame appear much smaller as he stood in the flickering shadows. “I’m sorry. Not again. You’ll have to kill me, I guess.”

  Cesar smiled, revealing a single gold front tooth that flashed in the dim lantern light of the drafty tent. “All in good time, Reechard.”

  Cesar waved a ringed finger, and his slave quickly climbed onto the large pile of blankets behind the ruthless man. She was clearly terrified, tender flesh shaking.

  Rick felt a small measure of pity, but it was mostly drowned out by the envy that Cesar Castro Diaz was getting her all to himself when Rick hadn’t had a woman since they’d left the prison and taken the first town. Salem, where he’d helped to kill them all.

  There was a brief moment in time, a few seconds where Rick’s attention was captured by the outside noises, and he thought of how bad and wrong it was here and had been in Arizona and New Mexico–he heard gunshots, a scream, a louder scream, a bigger gunshot…a fading scream. Then everything settled down to the dim quiet of the bait-girl’s shallow, fearful breathing and the howling of the storm now starting to beat against the tent around them.

  “Reechard.” It was an ugly tone, hinting at the slight insanity most of Cesar’s men suspected, respected.

  “I can’t. They’re my own people.”

  The Mexican’s eyes narrowed and a blue vein began to stand out on his forehead. He pointed with his deformed hand. “Me salvó la vida! I spared your life! You will give me what I want!”

  Rick kept his mouth shut and waited for the offer, sure there would be one. Why else had he been allowed to live, except to serve? He was a slave, like the women, only in a harder way.

  Against his will, his gaze crawled over the freshly washed teenager again, though he knew it might get him in more trouble. He had never had one that young!

  Cesar, whose Mexican nickname was Hijo de la Muerte (Son of Death), waved a hand at the scared girl, “Arrodillarse.”

  She immediately rolled over and pushed herself up, trembling as her breasts hung low.

  Rick felt his mouth go dry, body twitching in response.

  “You want her, sí?”

  He nodded once, carefully. This female and all the leader’s young harem was off limits to everyone, with no exceptions.

  “You will have her for doing what I want.”

  Rick fell.

  2

  Cesar Diaz was a flesh peddler and wanted guerilla captain before the war. When all hell broke loose, he was already on his way to southern Arizona to rescue family being held in American detention centers. Raised at the knee of a dictator, Cesar has always hated America. He often dreamed of filling the United States with as many of his bastards as he could, hoping to leave it an occupied land. With the war, the border patrols vanished, and America was invaded.

  Cesar does not have camp laws, doctors, or plans for organization, and he has no intentions of forming or finding these basics of society. He rules with brute force, and in his world, the strongest live and the weakest die, as they were meant to. When the war gave him the opportunity, he chose to spend his life conquering America. He has the full support of his men, most of whom he released from prisons and detention centers. That’s also where he found Rick, cowering in a broom closet after opening the front gates to let them in. The thirty-five-year-old ward of the state had been a janitor doing community service for attempted sexual assault on a teenager at the movie theater where he worked.

  Cesar wanted to kill Rick, but his cousin José, one of those he’d come to release, told him of Rick giving extra supplies to the prisoners and reporting abuse by guards. Cesar decided to spare him, feeling a debt, and he repaid it cruelly–by turning Rick into a traitor to his country.

  Cesar’s men aren’t loyal, trusting, or trustworthy, but as a leader, Cesar is smart. To keep them in line, he makes sure his men have everything they want: freedom and adventure, whiskey and guns, and females–some of them not even old enough to have hair anywhere but their heads. It is all he has promised them and more.

  This large group of hardened criminals is slowly traveling north, clearing towns along Interstate 25. They are emptying stores, burning businesses and homes, and, when they feel like it, entire neighborhoods of scared, defenseless survivors. Word is spreading from fleeing refugees, and communities are fleeing their homes together.

  Most of the small groups in the slavers’ path are doomed to fall easily, but some of those ill-fated survivors have barricaded their cities to make a stand. They will lose and pay the ultimate price, but like so many in this country’s violent history, they will die fighting–as American heroes.

  Chapter Seven

  The Hero

  Safe Haven Refugee Camp

  Utah

  1

  The end of the world has given us a harsh, merciless existence, where nature tries hard to push humankind to the very brink of extinction. Everything is against us, between us...untold miles of lawless, apocalyptic roads wait for our feet, and the future, cold and dark, offers little comfort. Without CHANGE, there will be no peace…only Survivors. And I am determined to be one of them.

  1/1/2013

  It’s been almost two weeks since the war, and I still can’t believe my luck. Joe, a senior Greenpeace member, showed up late and heard me trying to dig my way out. There were no other survivors of the secret meeting. Why was I spared? I deserve to be under that house. My dreams always start with me in that basement, not sure if I’ll live. Maybe I’ll find answers there.

  We’re holed up in a barn with a tin roof, waiting out the storms, and I wonder if my companion hears any of what I dream about. It doesn’t matter. Not much does now except making it to Little Rock. My grief for America is almost unbearable.

  Adrian sighed, taking a swig from his canteen. The first depressing weeks had been strange, full of hard days of backbreaking labor and eerie nights of broken dreams where he was in charge of a small group of survivors, fighting with everything he had to keep them alive and free. Instead of fading as his concussion and ribs healed, the images had gotten stronger, clearer.

  There were glimpses of a bright future and horrible Ground Zeroes, and he had found himself thinking about it almost constantly when he was awake. He’d quickly understood how to do it, how to set up the foundation for a new democracy–sensing even then that the people he’d gather would have nothing but their lives–and the guilt of it, of knowing he might have prevented it all, would hold him after the twenty-hour days began to wear him down.

  I was right, Adrian thought. He was well into one of those days now, the third this week.

  1/4/2013

  We hit Nellis today, and there’s nothing left.

  More worrisome, I think maybe I’m sick. I’m seeing things Joe doesn’t, hearing voices. I find odd colors in new places; stare at people who glow like neon bulbs from dark and empty windows. There are words in the trees and movies in the gritty clouds, puddles with reflections… I may be having a breakdown.

  It’s barely a scratch on what I deserve.

  1/5/2013

  It’s getting worse. The people we’re discovering, the awful, pain-filled refugees still trying to find each other, haunt me.

  They fall to their knees at my feet, beg me with tears and outstretched hands to help, to save them, and then I blink, and real
ize they never even looked at us! What the hell is happening to me? A side effect of one of the experiments? Am I in a coma somewhere and this is all one of my horrid nightmares? How I wish that were true. I’d gladly trade my life for America’s.

  I share the blame for all the pain and death. I should have revealed who I was when there might have been a chance to stop it all. The need to atone is consuming, overwhelming, and I can’t make enough progress each day to be satisfied. The worry is endless.

  1/7/2013

  The dreams are slowly convincing me I’m not crazy, demanding I take action. I remember each scene in such vivid detail when I wake! Even in the clear light of day, they feel right to me.

  I owe the whole world a debt, but to my country, I owe everything that I am…even the one waiting for me in Arkansas. My mother was right all along. I have to try to save America.

  I’ve decided to start in the morning, when we reach Las Vegas. That infamous skyline is dark now, but in the city that never sleeps, there are people. I know. I can feel them.

  Adrian crushed out his smoke, thinking he’d been right and wrong on that one. He’d found refugees who were grateful for his help, but he had also found Tonya, who killed Joe.

  Adrian flipped the page. Too bad he couldn’t prove it. The topless dancer had immediately pounced on who she thought was in charge, while Adrian was just starting to realize the job belonged to him. By the time Tonya had understood the goodhearted alcoholic firefighter was only interested in drinking, screwing, and forgetting, she was openly sleeping in his bed and fetching his bottles.

  Adrian had wanted to kick her out for helping Joe become a drunk, but even one life lost on his watch was more than he could allow. So he had thrown himself into caring for his small, shell-shocked herd, hoping Joe would eventually recognize her for the scheming bitch that she was.