Letters from the Apocalypse (Book 1) by Pitcher Blake

Author:Pitcher, Blake [Pitcher, Blake]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Science Fiction | Post-Apocalyptic
Publisher: Unknown
Published: 2014-12-12T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16: Riverwalk

The White Texan sits silent on his horse as the Enlisted look on, wavering in their previously steadfast faith in the manifest destiny of their cause, sharing whispers of disease and ghostly cars. Dyne flushes red, blood rushing with nowhere to go but boil in frustration.

“I’ll kill her. The whore. Scum!” Dyne seethes and writhes in his saddle. “All three of them. We’ll hunt them down and string them up by their own insides.”

“No,” says Maddox. “We will not.”

“Is this part of your prophecy? To have three Penitents escape for fear of putting a scratch on the little half-breed?”

The shot that knocks Dyne off his horse and puts a hole in his head reverberates. Maddox holsters his gun, indifferent to the now dead toady whose brains mix with the roadside sand. He looks down at the groggy Roger.

“You, the Yank.”

“Yes?”

“You will find your conspirators and bring back Zulé, unharmed.”

Roger squints up at Maddox, head pounding and seeing double from the kick to the head. “I will?”

“You will.” Maddox motions to Dyne’s crumpled body. “Take his side-arm, but not his rifle. When you return with Zulé, you will be forgiven of all your transgressions and accepted as one of the Enlisted.”

“What if I fail? What if I don’t return?”

“You will not fail, and you will return.”

Roger staggers to his feet, and feels himself sway. Don’t collapse now. This is your golden ticket out of this mess. He lifts Dyne’s spindly arm from his chest and removes the pistol from its side holster. Dyne’s cruel face is frozen in an expression of permanent surprise. You got what you deserved.

Roger thinks about shooting the White Texan off his horse, but the promise of freedom is too great to risk for such a momentary pleasure. I’d never hit him anyway, he thinks. One thing’s for sure, I’m not coming back.

Roger looks down at the faded red cross on his chest, and sticks the gun in the waistband of his jeans. Still dizzy, he turns and stumbles off in the direction of the three escapees. He is tense against the trick, the shot that will knock him down from behind. Will it feel like a hot, searing flash? Liquid metal tearing through his spine and out his belly, left to writhe toward the one, true certainty like so many others on the trail from Brownsville?

But the shot doesn’t come, and Roger clambers and jogs, over bodies and through bushes, putting the White Texan and his army of Enlisted out of sight.

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