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  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.

  On the second day of darkness, the temperature fell to twenty six degrees.

  That was the day Martel butchered the first of the cows.

  Her name was Betsy. She was a four year old Jersey with a sweet disposition. So sweet, in fact, that Jason Huckabee sometimes put three year old Amanda on her back.

  Back in the days before he and Amanda were brutally killed.

  It was Betsy’s turn to die too.

  Martel had been a hunter for most of his life. He knew how to butcher an animal. He’d never had to do so in freezing temperatures, but the frigid cold would work to his advantage.

  He knew he had to be quick, though, because the meat would freeze quickly and be difficult to cut.

  He laid out three sheets of plywood end to end on the barn’s floor, found two large meat knives and a sharp machete, and a large hunting knife.

  Then he led Betsy into the barn.

  Betsy looked at him with her big brown eyes and didn’t suspect a thing. She was just happy to be getting out of the bitter wind, and thought this strange man was putting her in for the night.

  Betsy never heard the shot, and hit the ground with a sickening thud.

  Martel went to work immediately, skinning the carcass and tossing the head, hooves, hide and entrails to one side.

  He had no need for any of that.

  No, his concern was for the three hundred pounds of bright red meat, still warm enough to put off steam into the frigid air.

  He had to hurry, before the carcass started to freeze. And he didn’t have to be neat. A steak chopped off with a machete tasted exactly the same as one very carefully carved away.

  And he wasn’t out to impress anyone with his butchery skills.

  A piece at a time, Martel hacked and sliced, taking each piece and laying it out to freeze on the plywood.

  Two hours later he was drenched in sweat despite the cold. The three sheets of plywood were covered with chunks of beef, each one roughly a pound or so. Ice particles had replaced the steam, and the chunks were very quickly freezing hard as a rock.

  Left with a pile of meat covered bones, Martel looked around the barn. In the corner was an axe, which he used to chop the bones into pieces.

  Each piece of bone was small enough to fit into a stewpot, and would provide an additional source of protein once his main supply of meat was gone.

  Chapter 4

  The following day Martel returned to the barn to find all of his chunks of meat frozen solid as rocks.

  There was no need to wrap them. He’d seen the news reports all over the television in his prison cell. The scientists weren’t sure exactly how long the freeze would last. Some said five years, some said seven.

  Either way it would be a very long time.

  No animals could get into the barn, and Martel suspected that they wouldn’t try to eat frozen meat even if they could.

  He picked up the pieces one or two at a time and stacked them together like stones in a huge pile.

  He’d come out to the barn every couple of days for the next five to seven years, or however long it took. And each time he went out he’d select a piece or two to take inside the house with him, where he’d cook the meat in a stewpot or in the fireplace over burning logs.

  He knew that most of the world was starving or freezing to death.

  Or both.

  But Martel didn’t care.

  He had a safe place to ride out the storm.

  He had enough provisions to get him to better times.

&n
bsp; And he found enough guns and ammunition in the farmhouse basement to defend his castle against any aggressors.

  Life was good.

  Relatively, anyway.

  But he still had a lot to do.

  The back half of the barn was stocked with four hundred fifty pound bags of corn.

  It was feed corn. Normally not fit for human consumption.

  But then again, these weren’t normal times.

  Even feed corn, boiled in water, would soften and provide a little bit of nutrition for humans.

  Martel knew that the Huckabees had planned to use the feed to keep their livestock alive when Armageddon struck.

  But that was their plan, not Martel’s.

  And he was puzzled. Four hundred bags of corn wouldn’t feed the number of cattle and hogs they had for five years. Not even close. And certainly not seven.

  “Stupid fools,” he muttered to himself. “They’d have let their stock starve to death.”

  He didn’t know that the Huckabees had been preppers long before the news of Saris 7 became public. They’d put a lot of thought into their survival plans.

  And they knew how to adjust those plans as changing situations dictated.

  When they found out they couldn’t get any additional livestock or feed to keep them going for the long freeze, they went to Plan B.

  Which was, to kill all the livestock as soon as the freeze hit.

  All of it, that is, except for their most fertile cow and their most amorous bull. And a breeding hog and sow as well.

  The corn stock wouldn’t be enough to keep all their livestock alive for five to seven years.

  But it would be more than enough to keep four animals healthy. And any new calves or piglets would be slaughtered for food along the way.

  As the four animals grew too old to breed, they would be slaughtered and replaced with some of their offspring. And once the thaw came, they could breed animals to barter for other things they might need.

  At least that was the Huckabees’ modified plan.

  Martel had plans of his own. He didn’t see any sense in keeping any of the livestock alive.

  Alive, they’d eat up the corn, and he’d be left without a backup food source.

  Dead, they wouldn’t do anything except freeze into tidy little chunks and sit frozen in a barn until he got around to eating them.

  He went out to the pig sty, where the hogs were huddled in the corner of the pen, against a wind break, trying their best to share one another’s warmth.

  He tried to herd a two hundred pound hog, who’d been called “Wilbur” by the Huckabees’ young children, into the barn.

  But Wilbur didn’t cooperate.

  Perhaps Wilbur sensed somehow that his life was in danger.

  Perhaps he knew somehow that this man before him was evil.

  Or, more likely he just didn’t want to leave the relative warmth of the other pigs.

  Whatever his reason for rebelling, Wilbur would have nothing to do with the barn. Each time Martel herded him close to the open barn door, Wilbur would bolt to one side or the other and run off, squealing every step of the way.

  Martel, perhaps in a benevolent mood, let Wilbur get away with it three times.

  After the fourth time he stopped running, walked slowly toward the beast, and drew his handgun.

  He dropped Wilbur in one shot.

  Then he dragged the hog forty yards through a biting wind to the sanctuary of the barn, and proceeded to butcher him in the same manner he’d done Betsy.

  All in all it took Nathan Martel a full two weeks to butcher all the livestock and carefully stack the meat. When he was finished his meat pile was almost as high as he was, and covered three full sheets of plywood.

  It was an awful lot of meat.

  Combined with the dry goods and canned food in the Huckabees’ root cellar, Martel would be living royally.

  At least compared to the rest of the world.

  Each night, he started up the generator outside and locked himself inside the master bedroom. Two small heaters would keep him warm and toasty while he slept.

  And the next day he’d be free to roam the countryside, robbing and pillaging.

  Or, he could just stay in his new castle, prop his feet up, and while the world away.

  The one thing he was lacking… the one thing that would have made his existence much more palatable, was a woman to share his bed.

  Chapter 5

  It was more than seven years since Nathan Martel shot the Huckabees and claimed their farm as his own. Actually, he’d lost track of time long before, and he didn’t have a clue how long it was.

  All he knew was that it had been a hell of a long time.

  It had been at least three years since he stopped venturing out.

  All the farms and ranches within walking distance were either well-guarded or had been picked clean by him or other looters.

  One of the pickups blocking the long lonely road had a flat front tire.

  And neither would start, their batteries having gone dead long before.

  Martel had aged much more than seven years, of course. Although he survived, and actually had an easier time than most other survivors, it was still a very harsh life.

  Once he stopped venturing out, he’d accepted the life of a hermit. In his experience, most human beings were just scum-sucking pigs anyway. Few were worth the time talking to. And every friend he’d ever had betrayed him in one way or another.

  He didn’t miss other humans.

  Well, not much.

  He still longed for the warmth of a woman’s body next to his when he bedded down at night. Still missed the things a willing woman could do for him, and do to him.

  Still missed the thrill of forcing an unwilling woman to fulfill his needs.

  All in all though, he was content to just spend the rest of his years in solitude, keeping to himself on the Huckabee farm. Even if it meant being without a woman.

  But then he ran out of meat.

  The huge pile of beef and pork chunks that had once been as high as his head were finally gone.

  But it was just as well.

  By this time temperatures were starting to rise. He’d developed a habit of checking the old fashioned dial thermometer on the barn’s north wall each time he went for meat.

  The summer before the meat ran out it had climbed as high as thirty one degrees.

  He knew that the following summer the meat would have thawed and spoiled. So he was lucky in that he was able to finish it all without wasting any.

  He still had the stockpile of dried beans and vegetables.

  And he’d gotten used to eating feed corn. It actually wasn’t that bad when seasoned with Tabasco sauce or chili powder and a heavy dose of salt.

  It beat the hell out of prison slop, anyway.

  Then he ran out of jerky too.

  And Nathan Martel wasn’t cut out to be a vegetarian.

  But he was a good hunter before his evil side took over and helped him make a shambles of his life.

  Jason Huckabee had a great collection of weapons. Martel fancied a Remington rifle, still brand new and in the box. It was so new it still had the scent of factory-applied gun oil, and had never even been sighted in.

  But he could take care of that.

  After the thaw finally came, Martel walked six miles to another farmhouse with another family of survivors.

  He shot them at a distance. All three of them.

  The youngest son was still kicking and rolling around in agony when Martel climbed into the family’s pickup.

  He wasn’t even decent enough to put the boy out of his misery.

  He just laughed as he drove by.

  He used the truck to travel to and from the woods north and east of Junction. The deer there had survived in limited numbers, and no other hunters seemed to have discovered that fact yet.

  On the day John and Hannah got aboard Colonel Travis Montgomery’s helicopter and flew to San Antonio t
o take a tour, Martel happened to be hunting for a deer to feed him for a couple of months.

  He was at one of his favorite hunting spots, where he’d taken a couple of small bucks the year before.

  Just east and a mile north of Mark and Hannah’s compound.

  It was where Sarah occasionally went to pick flowers.

  Chapter 6

  Sarah had never seen Nathan Martel. Had no clue there was anyone else in the forest.

  She never heard him either.

  For he had spotted her from a distance when he was tracking a small buck.

  At first he couldn’t believe his good fortune.

  As hungry as he was for fresh meat, the buck would have to wait. It would live to see another day. And he’d be back to get it soon enough.

  Now he had a different prey.

  Now his mind went back to all those times in recent years he’d wanted a woman. Not just to satisfy his lust, but also to cook and clean for him.

  And there she was, two hundred yards in front of him, carrying a handful of flowers through a clearing.

  She was pretty, too. And young. Couldn’t be more than thirty or so.

  Just the way he liked them.

  For an hour he tracked her. Moving only when she did, so his noise didn’t spook her.

  Waiting for the perfect opportunity to attack.

  For Martel was getting up there. He was well into his forties now, and had a bad knee.

  He knew that if he gave himself away, she’d bolt.

  And there was a fair chance she’d outrun him through the thick forest.

  Each time she moved, he followed suit. And with each step they took, he gained a bit more ground. For he was a big man, over six and a half feet.

  Sarah was a petite woman, just over five feet herself.

  So with each stride he took, Martel gained a few more inches.

  Finally, Sarah stopped to rest in another clearing.

  She sat upon a fallen log, her back to the woods, and sipped from her water bottle.

  Martel very slowly worked his way around the clearing, staying just inside the tree line. He was trying to sneak up behind her.

  When he was twenty feet away, he chuckled. Actually, he laughed out loud.