Castroville: Countdown to Armageddon: Book 7 (13 page)

     If Shiloh had been a stronger man, meaning of more moral character, he might have stepped up and tried to put a stop to Payton’s bloody mayhem.

     But that would have solved nothing. Even suggesting to Payton that he should have mercy would be risking a death sentence for himself. If not by Payton’s own hand then by Wimberly’s. For Wimberly tried to impress upon Payton constantly that he could be just as ruthless, just as heartless, just as cruel as his boss.

     Wimberly was not unlike a little boy constantly vying for his father’s attention and affection. And he knew that impressing a man like Payton, with an ego his size, meant mimicking Payton’s every move.

     Even when it meant beating men half to death, then finishing the job with bullets to their heads.

     And even then… even if Shiloh could somehow convince Payton and Wimberly that violence wasn’t the way… even if he could make them stop, then what?

     Several of the men had, on occasion, discussed the feasibility of overthrowing Payton and Wimberly and taking over the ranch themselves. They’d always decided against it.

     Some were just plain afraid of the pair.

     “If either of them manages to survive, they’ll not stop until they wipe out every one of us.”

     Some were so afraid they didn’t even want to hear of the scheme.

     “Leave me the hell out of it. I want no part of it,” they’d say before quickly leaving the room.

     Others had gotten comfortable at the ranch, and had grown more pragmatic.

     “Right now we have the reputation of being the meanest and most fortified place in ten counties. Nobody messes with us. Because of Mr. Payton we get pretty much everything we want. We’re well fed and get broads, booze, and drugs for them that wants ‘em. Why the hell do we want to go messin’ with that?”

     It was a logical argument that tended to calm down the rebels, at least for a time.

     For as mean as Payton was… as mean as Wimberly tried to be to impress Payton, the bulk of their wrath wasn’t directed at their own men. The bulk of their wrath was directed at outsiders who’d dared invade their world.

     Or to those who Payton and Wimberly decided had turned against them or done them wrong.

     No, Shiloh wasn’t a bad man by nature. But he wasn’t strong enough to go against the tide and fix the problem that was the Lazy R Ranch. He’d continue to go with the flow and live a fairly comfortable life, while those on the outside struggled to survive from one day to the next.

     He continued to whistle, unaware that in the hayloft above him a shadowy figure was using his whistling to cover her movements. When he stopped whistling for a few moments to catch his breath or wet his lips, Sara stopped. When he picked up again, she continued.

     Sara hadn’t been in the business of sneaking around, gun in hand, on a rescue mission before. But she was quite adept at it, learning new tricks as she went.

     Randy waited patiently beneath the window for her to return.

     And it didn’t take long. After ten minutes or so she’d returned to the hayloft door and laid upon her stomach, her head and shoulders stretched out into the cool night air.

     “Can you hear me okay?”

     “Yes. What did you find out?”

     “I can see most of the barn from up here. Not all, but most of it.”

     “How many guards?”

     “Only one that I saw. He looks like he’s sleeping, but his whistling gives him away. He’s not asleep, just has his hat over his face to cover his eyes.”

     “Good job. Did you see Tom?”

     “I think so. There’s a man sleeping on the floor. At least I hope he’s sleeping. He’s about Tom’s build, I think, but it’s hard to tell because of the angle and because he’s in the shadows. He’s curled up in a ball and his face is covered. But I think it’s him.”

     “Does he appear to be tied up?”

     “He’s chained to the floor.”

     “That must be him then. Okay, go back to where you can see the barn floor and provide cover for me if something goes wrong. Just remember, if there are any shots fired we’re going to have to shoot our way out against as many as a dozen men. So let’s avoid that if at all possible, okay?”

     “Okay.”

     “Hey, Sara… are you ready for this? I mean really ready?”

     “Don’t worry about me, Ranger. I’m as ready as you are. Let’s go get our friend.”

     Randy returned to the front of the barn with the intent of sneaking in, sneaking up on the man lying on the haystacks, and trying to take him hostage at gunpoint before he had a chance to cry out.

     But it wasn’t going to work out that way.

-26-

     Robbie threw the rope ladder over the north wall of the old zoo, then made sure the end was tied securely to a sturdy tree trunk.

     The twelve foot wall had been constructed by the City of San Antonio several years before, after vandals scaled the walls one night and spray painted profane graffiti all over the sidewalks. The wall was one of the best features of the deserted zoo, and as such one of Robbie’s best friends.

     Really the only friend he had left.

     The wall once stood sentinel over a bustling zoo, and now stood guard over Robbie’s private sanctuary.

     The rope ladder was of Robbie’s own creation. It defeated the walls, and made it easy for him to come and go. For only on the north side of the zoo was the brush thick enough to hide him as he climbed up and over the wall to the outside world.

     Once over the wall and on the outside, he tied a long piece of black parachute cord to the end of the ladder and tossed it back over the wall. The parachute cord was virtually invisible at night, and almost so in the daytime, thanks to the thick shadows of the trees. He tied the end of the parachute cord to a tree branch, and would pull it when he returned to retrieve the rope ladder.

     It was the middle of the night, about three a.m.

     He chose this time to leave because the darkness would give him the cover he needed to get himself into position. Once the sun came up, if all went well, he’d be outside John and Hannah Castro’s house.

     If he made it that far without being spotted, it would mean that luck was with him on this particular day.

     And if Lady Luck was with him, he reasoned, then perhaps she would present to him the targets he so craved.

     He wanted John Castro to die. For real this time. Not in his dreams.

     Robbie wanted Hannah to be there too. For after John was dead, he wanted to reason with her. To make her see the light. To make her make a choice.

     “John’s dead now,” he’d tell her. “You may hate me now, but if you look at the situation logically, you’ll understand that you need to be with me now. Most of your friends never raped you because they were afraid of John. That’s the only reason. But I wasn’t afraid of him at all. I stood up to John. I showed him I was the better man. I defeated him. I was the only one who was capable of doing that.

     “Now, honey, you have a choice to make. You can be mine, and let me protect you from the others like John always did. Let me be your one and only.

     “Or, you can shun me and take your chances. Take the chance that others, who do not love you and will not be kind to you, will use you and abuse you and pass you around from one to another like a common bottle of whisky. Don’t kid yourself and think it won’t happen. You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known. You’re smart enough to know that. You’re also smart enough to know that all the men who’ve hung around you and John over the years had more on their minds than just being your friend.

     “The reality of it is, sweetheart, that they’ve all wanted you just as much as I did. It’s just that none of them were man enough to stand up to John and take away his trophy.

     “But I was. I was the only one of the bunch who had the guts to do what had to be done. I have taken John down and taken his prize.

     “Now then, you’ve got a choice, and only five minutes to make it. You can get the girls and climb into John’s squad car, and let me take you far away from San Antonio. Or, you can join him in the fiery pits of hell. Because with God as my witness, no other man will ever touch you again. If I can’t take you away from the city and make you mine, then I’ll take you from this earth and make you nobody’s.

     “The clock is ticking, sweetheart. You have four minutes to decide.”

     Robbie had practiced the speech so many times he knew it by rote. He recited it in his sleep. He talked to himself on his worst days, cuddled up like a child in the corner of the elephant house, muttering the speech over and over again.

     The words never varied. Nor, in his mind, did the outcome.

     In his twisted mind, Hannah always saw the light. She reached out for him and welcomed him into her arms. She swore her undying love to him, and fairly ran to get her girls to place them in the car.

     She always said, “I love you, Robbie. I’ve always loved you. John was just a distraction. I knew that somehow, sometime, we would be together. Now I belong to you. Let’s get out of here and never look back.”

    Robbie had once been a decent human being. He once had his sanity. He’d had troubles with his family life as a boy, but then again, many others had problems and had overcome them.

     Perhaps it wasn’t true, the old adage that said whatever didn’t kill someone made them stronger. Perhaps the abuse Robbie suffered as a child weakened him instead. Perhaps it made him more susceptible to the horrors of everyday life after the blackout. Perhaps while other officers were able to gather rotting corpses day in and day out without problems, maybe Robbie was predisposed to suffer greater mental anguish.

     Maybe it was that additional anguish which finally drove Robbie mad.

     Or maybe he was mad from the beginning and just hid it well.

     What was certain was that Robbie now lived in a world where his reality was the unreal. Where he lived out his fantasies in real time. In his mind, he was the good guy. He was the hero and Hannah Castro was his reward.

     And if she didn’t cotton to being his reward? Well, she’d just die like the rest.

-27-

     Robbie was pissed. It was his own fault, but he’d never admit that to himself. In Robbie’s world he did everything right, even when he so obviously didn’t.  In Robbie’s world, anytime something went wrong it was somebody else’s fault. They were incompetent, or just plain stupid.

     Or they had a vendetta against him.

     He’d been to the Castro house twice before since he went on the run and found it empty. He knew that John had taken his sweet Hannah and taken her to stay with friends. It was to protect her from Robbie, but Robbie couldn’t see that. In Robbie’s twisted and paranoid mind, Castro took her away just to torment him. Nothing else made sense. John was a bastard and messed with Robbie’s head whenever he had the chance. That’s why John would be the first to die.

     He cowered in the bushes in front of 5043 Green Valley Drive. It was the time of morning when John’s cruiser would be parked in the driveway, waiting for him to come out and climb in. For another day of John Castro brown-nosing the chief and pretending to be everybody’s hero, taking all the credit for things others did.

     This was the time of day when lights would be lit inside the middle-class Tudor home, as Hannah readied the children, so she could take them to the community school a few blocks away. The school had only been operating for a few months, and was still in search of qualified teachers. The scourges that had followed the blackout seemed to take out a disproportionate number of teachers, and thus far they were only able to teach the basics. Reading, writing and simple math.

     Still, the parents in the neighborhood had been happy for the school’s presence. Most areas in the city still had no formal school at all, and basic schools were much better than nothing.