Reckoning: Ravaged Dawn Book 2: (A Thrilling Post-Apocalyptic Series) by Marcus Richardson & Mike Kraus

Author:Marcus Richardson & Mike Kraus [Richardson, Marcus & Kraus, Mike]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Muonic Press Inc
Published: 2023-12-14T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Double R Ranch

Valley County, Wyoming

Miles shifted position behind a small rise and glanced at Joel, laying on the ground next to him. The cowboy nodded his head and mimed pulling a trigger with a wink.

Miles glanced over the traitorous ranch hand's head at Fraser and gave him the go-ahead signal. The biggest man on his crew raised his rifle—he'd borrowed ammo the bikers had scrounged—to his cheek, took careful aim, and pulled the trigger.

As the bison stampeded away from the sound of the rifle shot, the ground trembled and for a split second, Miles worried the great hairy brutes would run right over him. But as the seconds ticked by and the sound of the bison in flight receded into the distance—even the echo of the rifle shot eventually was swallowed up by the night—silence returned to their patch of the Double R Ranch. Miles and Fraser peeked over the top of the rise and peered into the moonlit gloom. Amid a dark landscape, the even darker silhouette of the bison lay not 60 feet from their position.

"One shot, one kill, brother," Fraser said triumphantly.

"Well done," the disturbingly quiet voice of Sean Plockton, the bikers' leader, said just to the left of Miles.

"Man," he snapped, shaking off the heebie-jeebies. "I forgot you were there—where'd you learn to stay so quiet? I can hear your other guys a mile away." As if on cue, one of the bikers broke wind loudly, which caused the others to snicker.

"I did a tour with the Marines," Plockton replied in his low, quiet voice. "Learned all kinds of things."

Miles swallowed hard and tried to resist the urge to move away from the dangerous biker. "I bet you did."

"Come on ladies," Joel said as he got to his feet. "Any ranch hands out there that might've heard that shot are gonna be on high alert now."

"If we don't make much more noise," Plockton advised. "They'll never know what direction it came from. Who's got the garbage bag?"

"I do," Oriol piped in, hidden in the darkness somewhere to Joel's right.

"Come on then," the cowboy said as he loped toward the dead buffalo. "Stay up here with me. We need to do this quick and dirty and get out of here."

"What's the rush?" Miles asked in a hoarse whisper as he trotted up behind Joel and Oriol.

"For starters, I ain't slaughtered one of these things in a long time, so I'm bound to be a little rusty—that's gonna take more time. For another thing," Joel explained. "All it takes is one cowboy to spot us, maybe the glint of moonlight off a gun—or somebody's flashlight," he added as one of the bikers clicked on a bright beam and glanced around.

"Turn that off, man!" Plockton snapped, and the light winked out instantly.

"Sorry," the deep voice of Leroy Jenkins replied.

"Man, that thing stinks," said the other biker, a disembodied voice somewhere in the distance.

"We should've gone with Eno," Jenkins added.

"What, and miss all this excitement?" Miles chimed in as

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