The Day After Never - Blood Honor (Post-Apocalyptic Dystopian Thriller) Read Free Page B

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    Guilt ate at him as he looked around in the darkness at the dead. If he’d had more time and there had been no wounded woman, he would have covered the corpses with rocks or excavated shallow graves with his collapsible camp shovel. But with the storm on its way and the woman in dire straits, the best he could manage was a few words of prayer while standing over each body.
    “May God have mercy on your souls,” he finished, wondering at the fickleness of the universe that these men, Raiders and travelers alike, had been spared death through the greatest catastrophe to have befallen mankind since biblical times only to die in a rutted gulley with no name. He supposed that it had ever been so, but at times like these his faith was tested by the seeming randomness of it all.
    The wind moaned like an old woman, jarring him from the moment, and he led Tango to where the woman rested in narcotic slumber. He debated giving her some canteen water, but decided against it, not knowing whether it would hasten any congestion or, worse, choke her. Instead, he found the dead horse with the travois and detached the pair of long poles from its back, relieved that neither had broken when the poor beast had dropped. The crude sled, a sling suspended between two poles used by Native Americans, had been adopted by enterprising survivors who traveled by horse, mule, or cow, which enabled them to carry far more than they could on their animal’s back, even across rough terrain that would have proved impossible for a cart.
    Lucas lashed the contrivance in front of the saddle horn, and the crossed poles spread wide behind Tango. He hadn’t thought to check the sling on his first pass, but was gratified to find plastic jugs of water and several baskets of half-rotten apples and oranges. He debated how much of the cargo to haul and settled for two jugs of water, one basket of fruit, and the remainder of the weapons he couldn’t fit in his bags, reasoning that if he had to ask Tango to haul the woman’s weight, a few more pounds of hardware wouldn’t hurt.
    When he was done, he inspected his work. It would easily support the woman, and if he took it slow, wouldn’t pose too much of a challenge for the big stallion. He scooped her up, surprised by how light she was. It had been so long since he’d had a woman in his arms, he’d almost forgotten…
    He shook off the thought and placed her in the cradle, securing her with a length of rope so she wouldn’t fall out. He didn’t plan to go far at night – traveling after dark was asking to be ambushed, and he typically avoided it.
    Lucas swung up into the saddle in a fluid motion and snicked at Tango. The stallion pulled forward, and Lucas was relieved to see that the horse wasn’t visibly straining at the extra load.
    They followed the ravine until a dip in the terrain enabled Lucas to guide Tango back onto the ridge. He took a break at the top and swept the horizon with his binoculars. Other than the line of roiling clouds to the west, there was nothing to see. He reckoned by the sound of the thunder that the storm was hovering over the mountains, where it would hopefully stay, blowing itself out and sparing him a muddy slog the next morning.
    After another stretch he found a spot where he’d made camp before, with good lines of fire and only two ways into the clearing at the base of a jutting rock outcropping. He unharnessed Tango and removed the saddle, taking care to pat the horse appreciatively before setting him loose to graze. Four and a half years old, Tango had been raised by Lucas, and the horse was as attached to him as it was possible for an animal to be. Lucas had no fear that Tango would wander far, preferring to stay close in the clearing, where there was plentiful grass this time of year.
    Lucas checked on the woman and then set out his trip lines fifty yards from his position. He painstakingly strung plastic-coated wire eighteen inches off the ground between two trees