Refugees from the Righteous Horde (Toxic World Book 2) (3 page)

Everyone looked at it with awe. It was the most advanced firearm in New City or the Burbs. She glanced at Clyde. The Head of the Watch was staring at it like most men stare at a naked woman.

“When Jackson and I were out in the wildlands I took out three cultists with it. Jackson can back me up on that.”

“It’s true,” he said. “She got one who was so far away I could only see him as a little dot.”

Annette let out a quiet sigh of relief that he didn’t tell the whole story. She’d also killed a civilian, and Jackson was the only one who knew that. Well, except for maybe Radio Hope. Jackson’s knowledge was another reason she had named him deputy. She wanted to keep him close.

“Part of my job as sheriff is to hunt down fugitives, and the cult leader who killed so many of our people and enslaved half the wildlands is a fugitive. Once I get a few things squared away here in the Burbs I’m going to set out with a posse and hunt that motherfucker down!”

The roar that came from the crowd rang in her ears. Men and women, some still swathed in bandages from the recent battle, pumped their fists in the air and chanted her name. “Ann-ette! Ann-ette! Ann-ette!”

Once the noise died down a bit, Clyde called over to her.

“When it comes to that you got our full support. Equipment, weapons, whatever you need. Just ask. I know you can do it, Annette. One shot one kill!”

The crowd roared again. Annette bit her lip.

It will have to be one shot one kill
,
she thought
.
I only have one bullet left for this thing.

CHAPTER THREE

Jeb Buckley had weighed his options and decided his best chance for survival was to join a group of starving machete men as they fled the vengeance of New City. There were patrols out there, strong patrols of men and women with assault rifles and Kevlar, hunting down groups like his. Not that New City really needed to bother. The remnants of the Righteous Horde’s rank and file were all going to starve to death sooner or later. The group he was with hadn’t had any food for three days, and had been badly fed for months before that.

All except for him, of course. He had been one of the Elect, a favored follower of The Pure One, proud bearer of a rifle and a full stomach, with captive women to warm his bed at night.

No more. He had eaten the last of his food just before joining these losers, had hidden his rifle away under a rock after killing a lone machete man to grab his gear so he could play the part. Jeb had shaved his beard so they wouldn’t recognize him.

Not that there was much danger of that. Nobody looked the Elect in the face.

He knew this group wasn’t going to stay together. When he had joined them three days ago they’d numbered more than thirty. Infighting and pitched battles with other starving groups had whittled that number down to fifteen. So far they’d managed to dodge the patrols, but that wouldn’t last either.

Still, it was the best option.

What had his options been? He had made a list in his head.

Option 1: Stay with the Elect and follow The Pure One on his mad crusade to wherever it took them next. Bad idea. Simmering resentments between the Elect and The Pure One’s bodyguard were bound to flare up sooner or later, and he didn’t want to be in that firefight. It would be worse than the assault on New City’s walls. Besides, even the Elect were running out of food and the only good source of it was the city that had just beaten them.

Option 2: Become a turncoat and give New City some valuable information in exchange for his life. Tempting, except he had no idea what The Pure One’s plans were.

Option 3: Surrender and throw himself on the mercy of the city they had just tried to pillage. Yeah, right.

Option 4: Set off alone for the mountains and try to blend in with the scavengers. Hell no, not with so many hungry people roving through the countryside. It was only a matter of time before they started eating each other, and they’d kill him for his boots and coat long before that.

He’d done the same with that lone machete man he’d come across. The guy didn’t have any food, but he did have clothes two sizes too big for Jeb. Those made Jeb look like he’d lost weight.

So he’d joined this bunch of weaklings, a crowd of scrawny “warriors” who only managed to keep walking out of sheer terror of what would happen to them if they stopped.

They’d accepted him with suspicion but no comment. His simple disguise didn’t do much to hide the fact that he was bigger than most of them and far healthier, but he was used to getting his way, one way or another. No one dared challenge him.

Now they walked along a dry riverbed to keep out of sight of the open plains all around. They’d heard firing the night before. A New City patrol was close.

Jeb stopped. He was walking in front and spotted the footprints of half a dozen people. The trail lead down from the side of the riverbed and went off in the direction in which they were headed.

“Look,” he said, stopping and pointing.

The others stared. It took them a moment to see what he saw. Hunger had made them careless.

“We better turn around,” one said.

“No, look,” Jeb said, crouching down. “Two of them are barefoot. They’re not New City. They’re Righteous Horde.”

Everyone’s eyes lit up.

“Maybe porters!” one said.

“Hope so,” Jeb said. He was beginning to feel a bit dizzy from lack of food.

They headed down the streambed, machetes and spears ready.

They found them a mile further on, six ragged machete men resting in the sun. They leapt up when Jeb’s group came into view, fevered eyes startled, machetes raised. They had a large bag with them.

The bag decided it. His companions charged forward, Jeb hanging back a little but not so much as to look like he wasn’t trying to help. Machetes swung down, spears thrust at thin faces and sunken bellies. The sickening sound of steel parting flesh filled the dry riverbed. Just as the last of the other group were falling Jeb lunged forward and cut down an already wounded man.

He stopped, looked around as the blood dripped from his blade. His own group had lost only two, so that made thirteen surviving besides him. Two more had slight wounds. The loss of blood combined with their hunger would probably make them keel over soon enough.

In the meantime, they had fourteen people to divide up whatever was in the backpack.

They tore it open, desperate for whatever was inside.

Blankets. Nothing but blankets. Everyone took one but that wouldn’t make any difference. Cold won’t kill you if you’re in a group. You can always huddle up at night and keep warm with the body heat of the people around you. But no amount of warmth would ease the ache in your belly.

Jeb took the bag, now practically weightless for lack of anything in it. A canvas bag from the Old Times was worth trading for, and while none of these starving fools thought they’d ever make a trade again, Jeb was going to survive. He was going to make it to a hundred, and to survive in this world for seventy more years he was going to have to be resourceful.

“Now what?” someone asked. He seemed to be asking Jeb.

Jeb sighed, looked around. “This is the third fight we’ve been in with other groups and we haven’t found shit to eat. We need a new plan.”

“What?” the man asked. His eyes were pleading, almost like a child’s. They seemed to say
,
Tell me what to do, I’m scared and I need to be told what to do.

Weakling
,
Jeb thought.

“It’s been almost two weeks since the attack. I bet New City’s farmers have gone out to their land by now,” Jeb said. “You got to maintain a farm.”

“You suggesting we raid one?” Leonard asked. Leonard was the biggest of the group, nearly a head taller than Jeb with a broad chest, massive arms and a spray of brilliant red beard barely dimmed by a crust of dirt. He was the only one besides him with a bit of spirit left, and the only one who might cause Jeb some trouble.

“I don’t think we have a choice,” Jeb replied.

“They have guns, blockhouses!” another of the machete men whined.

One of the men they had cut down moaned and rolled onto his side. Leonard pulled a clasp knife from his pocket and went over to him.

“Yeah, it’s dangerous. We’ll have to take them by surprise,” Jeb said.

“They’ll be on the watch. There will be patrols,” another complained.

Leonard looked up from his work, his pants wet with fresh blood. “If we can dodge the patrols we can get in to one of the farms closer to New City. I bet everyone else has been running away from that area, so they won’t be expecting us.”

The machete men looked doubtful. Jeb looked at Leonard.

“I’m up for it if you are,” Jeb said. “Too risky to do alone.”

“I’m in,” the big man said.

“Let’s go then,” Jeb said. “Anyone want to go a different way, feel free.”

Everyone followed him as he headed back down the dry riverbed in the direction from which they had come.

Jeb had been a scavenger most of his life. When times got bad he’d stay in a settlement or hire out to one farmer or another, but he preferred his freedom and mostly lived out in the wildlands. His sense of direction was flawless. While all the meanderings and nighttime rushes away from patrols and larger groups of machete men had left the rest of his group hopelessly disoriented, he knew exactly where New City stood.

The mountains to the east made a perfect guide. Judging from that jagged spire to the left of the broad triangular peak, they had about a day’s march due south to get in line with the furthest farms away from New City. Then they’d have to walk another half day toward the sea. Of course the outlying farms would probably still be vacant. Call it two days march in total, assuming these idiots could keep up. A couple of them were already lagging behind.

They walked a steady pace without talking for an hour until one of the wounded men stopped and sat down on a stone. He placed his machete point-down in the soil and rested his hands and forehead on the hilt. Two others took the opportunity to sit down as well. The rest stopped and looked back at them. Jeb and Leonard exchanged glances. They walked back to the wounded man. He had a decent pair of boots. He saw them coming and scrambled to his feet.

“I’m OK, let’s go!” he said in a weak voice.

Leonard looked disappointed. Jeb could tell he was the kind who killed for the fun of it. While Jeb himself had done more than his share of killing, he only did it to get something he needed. Thrill killing only marked you out as a psycho, and people got rid of psychos, just like he’d probably have to get rid of Leonard sooner or later.

Jeb studied him a moment longer before turning back toward New City.

It was going to be a long, hard, dangerous slog, but Jeb’s heart lightened a bit to be heading back to that place. When they had taken over the town outside New City’s walls, he had gotten a good look at it. As they tore apart buildings to make ladders to scale the walls and rafts to get around them, he had seen that the residents lived far more comfortably than any other place he’d ever been. There were frame houses that looked like pictures from the Old Times, and even the poorest shacks looked cozy compared to the cold ground and campfire that had been his home for most of his life.

When he was a kid he had lived in a frame house full of furniture too, and standing in one again had pulled at something deep inside him. But that life was long, long ago. He had done too much in the long years since then for him think of that playful child as being the same person.

There had been more to amaze him. While all food and important possessions had been stored within New City’s walls, enough things had been left behind to show that these people had something more than what it takes to survive. Cutlery. Furniture. Hell, some houses even had curtains on the windows.

Electricity too. It was shut off, of course. The technicians in the Righteous Horde pulled up the power lines and found they led to New City. Scouts who went around the cove and studied New City with binoculars said they had solar panels and a tidal generator.

Civilization
,
Jeb thought
.
A fucking civilization. If we’d won we’d have been sitting pretty all winter and The Pure One would have had the beginnings of an empire. Who knows how much we could have conquered? I could have really been somebody. Risen to bodyguard, hell, general!

But they had lost, mowed down by a pair of machine guns and scores of rifles. Burnt by firebombs. Then the machete men rioted, refusing to charge into that killing field again.

One nearly cut my head off before I capped him. And now I’m out here.

Despite where that left him, he felt a bit glad that New City had won. They’d built so much they deserved to keep it.

Jeb dismissed that thought as unworthy of him.

Don’t get soft
,
he told himself
.
Get soft and you’ll get dead. If Leonard doesn’t kill you, those New City fucks will.