The Search (2 page)

     But unlike many of the others, he had no intention of staying.

     He had a mission to accomplish.

     The years he spent in prison prior to the meteorite’s collision fomented a seething hatred for the American legal system in general, and for Judge Daniel Stone in particular.

     He stayed in Eden just long enough to ask around, and to find out that Judge Stone had retired from the bench and now lived in Kerrville, some ninety miles away.

     He owed the judge a social call.

     So as the rest of the world was collapsing around him, and a panicked populace had no clue what to do or where to go to survive the coming impact, Martel had a plan.

     And a destination.

     He stole a handgun from a wimp of a man who withered merely by Martel’s gaze.

     Then he handed Martel the keys to his truck.

     After Martel drove off in a cloud of dust, the man looked at his wife and said, “I’m lucky to still be alive.”

     His wife just walked away, got into her own car, and left him standing there.

     Martel drove to Kerrville and found the judge’s stately residence at the end of a long and lonely street.

     He sat in the truck and napped until sundown, waiting for the lights to come on inside the house.

    When Judge Stone was on the bench he was a cautious man. In his profession he made a lot of enemies, and he lived his life away from the courthouse accordingly.

     But in the years following his retirement, he got sloppy.

     He didn’t always remember to close the blinds when he hit the light switches, and he sometimes forgot to lock his back door.

     Martel was able to sneak up to the windows and peer inside without being noticed.

     And once he was sure that only the judge and his wife were inside the house, he was able to open the back door and slip inside.

     He surprised the old couple as they were watching their favorite weekly talent show on television.

     “Hello, you son-of-a-bitch. Do you remember me?”

     The judge was shocked at Martel’s sudden appearance and said nothing. But the look on his face told Martel that he did, indeed, remember him.

     “You said I had no soul. But I didn’t need one. I had something even better. I had vengeance in my heart to keep me warm at night. And I’ve thought about meeting you again since the first time they slammed those cell doors behind me. I told you I’d be back.”

     Judge Stone knew there was no need in arguing or begging for his life. He knew he was going to die. His concern shifted solely to his wife.

     “Please. Kill me if you have to. But spare my wife. She’s done nothing to you.”

     “I have no plans to harm your wife.”

     Then he smirked.

     Judge Stone was wondering what the smirk meant, and whether or not he could believe that Martel would keep his word.

     It was the judge’s last conscious thought before a bullet tore through his forehead and shattered the back of his skull.

     Martel could have stopped there. The judge was dead before he hit the floor.

     Martel’s mission was done.

     But men like Martel aren’t satisfied until they wreak as much damage as they possibly can.

     So he stood over the judge’s body and as the widow watched in horror pumped round after round into the judge’s face.

     Seven more shots, for a total of eight.

     He saved the last two rounds.

     Millie Stone had been happily married to the judge for thirty seven years. And he was gone in an instant.

     It was way too much for Millie to handle and she stood like a statue, just staring at the crumpled heap on the floor in front of her.

     Martel was not a man of his word, as the judge had hoped he’d be.

     And it was not enough that he kill his prey. He had to make sure that the dead man’s loved ones suffered as well.

     With the gun still clutched tightly in his right hand, he reached out with his left and grabbed a fistful of Millie’s gray hair.

     “Come with me, bitch,” he growled as he fairly dragged the poor woman to the bedroom.

     “I’m gonna give you something that worthless old man probably hasn’t given you in years.”

     Twenty minutes later Millie lay, ravaged and beaten, in a fetal position in the middle of her bed.

     Her eyes were closed and her tears flowed freely beneath her hands which covered her face.

     She didn’t see Martel raise his weapon once again. Didn’t see him pull the trigger, not once but twice.

     And mercifully, she didn’t hear the shots or feel the pain.

Chapter 2

  
 
By the end of the next day Martel would kill again and again.

     Five more times, as a matter of fact.

     This time using Judge Stone’s handgun and a box of ammunition he found in a kitchen cabinet, Martel drove his stolen truck to a country road not far from Eden.

     He knew the road well because just prior to his arrest some years before, he fancied the woman who lived in the farmhouse at the end of the road.

     Fancied her so much, in fact, that he stalked her.

     He would have eventually raped and killed her, but he’d been pulled over for speeding by a State Trooper, who ran his name through the system and found that Martel had a warrant for the prostitute murders.

     That had been news to Martel, who was unaware that his DNA had come back as a match to bodily fluids he’d left at the crime scenes.

     Had he known there was a warrant out for him, he wouldn’t have pulled over. He’d have tried to outrun the cops to the Mexican border.

     But the State Trooper knew his stuff. He knew there was a good chance this felon would run, so he called for backup and then apologized profusely to Martel for the delay.

     “I’m sorry, sir. I’m going to let you off with a warning, but first I have to wait for confirmation that your insurance is valid. Our computer system is moving painfully slow today, and it’s taking longer than normal.

     “We’ll have you on your way in just a few minutes. Nice weather we’re having, isn’t it?”

     Suddenly, a second cruiser appeared out of nowhere. By the time Martel realized he’d been had it was too late. The second cruiser boxed him in, and the first trooper had his weapon drawn and was holding it just behind Martel’s left ear.

     So the young farmer’s wife at the end of the long dirt road had gotten a reprieve that day.

     But Martel had thought of her often during his days in prison.

     And he had a long list of things he wanted to do to her, if and when he ever managed to escape the criminal justice system.

     The day after he murdered Judge Stone and his wife, he went back to that farmhouse with the intent of killing the husband and the children and making the wife his sex slave.

     Until he tired of her. Then he’d kill her too.

     He wasn’t counting on her putting up a vicious fight.

     Watching her husband and three children gunned down in cold blood, she didn’t go into shock and freeze as Millie Stone had the night before.

     No, the farmer’s wife turned into a tiger, lunging at Martel and beating him unmercifully.

     Martel normally liked feisty women who resisted his advances a bit. It made the prize that much sweeter when he beat them down and was able to savor his spoils.

     But this woman, this… alley cat, went too far when she scratched his face.

     Martel had always considered himself a pretty boy, although his good looks were mostly in his own mind.

     He didn’t cotton to any woman leaving marks on his handsome face, no matter the circumstances.

     Enraged, he turned the tables on her, beating her until she was unconscious.

     Then, unable to stop himself, he kept on beating her. Over and over again he pummeled her, long after the point where she’d stopped breathing.

     He finally quit when his knuckles started bleeding.

     And he blamed her for that too, kicking her limp body with his boot several times.

     Lastly, to add insult to injury, he raped her dead body.

     He figured he’d wanted her too many years to just pass up the opportunity.

     Judge Stone had been right at the sentencing hearing.

     Nathan Martel had no soul.

Chapter 3

      After Martel dragged the five bodies outside and dumped them unceremoniously in the trash pit, he looked around.

     The farm had a good supply of grain stored. A root cellar held hundreds of jars of vegetables and meats. In the back of the barn were boxes and boxes of dried beans and jerky and rice. He counted twenty cases of dried spaghetti noodles.

     Martel had unwittingly stumbled across a family of preppers who’d stocked provisions in anticipation of an apocalyptic event.

     Like, for example, a meteorite striking the earth.

     There was no one left alive to hear him, but Martel laughed out loud.

     He couldn’t believe his luck.

     People around the world were in full panic mode, trying to figure out how they would survive the long freeze with absolutely no provisions.

     In every city around the globe, people were committing suicide in mass numbers. Far too many for the cities to bury, or even burn.

     They were taking the easy way out.

     But Martel wouldn’t.

     Martel had been locked up for too many years. Now that he finally had his freedom, he was ready to start living again.

     Not to start dying.

     He’d taken the stolen pickup and a second one that belonged to the farmer and his family. And he used them to block the lonely dirt road a quarter mile from the farmhouse.

     He took a can of black spray paint and a sheet of plywood, and made himself a sign.

     He took the sign and leaned it up against the side of one of the trucks, as a warning for others to stay away.

     Then he stood back to admire his handiwork.

     It said:

WARNING:

PRIVATE LAND

PATROLLED BY

TWELVE HEAVILY ARMED MEN.

TURN AROUND NOW OR DIE.

   
 
By the time Saris 7 crashed in western China the world was already decimated. More than a third of the earth’s population had committed suicide.

     Most of the rest would freeze or starve to death in the months and years that followed.

     But not Nathan Martel.

     As the sky grew dark and the temperature started to drop, Martel found the couple’s fuel dump. Twenty eight fifty-five gallon drums of diesel fuel, to run a 2,000 watt generator.

     That wouldn’t be enough to warm the farmhouse twenty four hours a day for the five to seven years they said the freeze would last.

     But if he only ran the generator and heaters while he slept, it would be enough to keep him from freezing to death until the thaw finally came.

     The only thing the Huckabee’s farm was lacking was fresh meat. They only had twelve head of beef and an equal number of hogs.

     That puzzled Martel, and he grew angry with the murdered couple for being so short-sighted.

     He didn’t know that they’d been trying desperately to expand their herds since word of Saris 7 leaked out. But everyone else in the area was buying up livestock as well, and there simply wasn’t any more available.