Castroville: Countdown to Armageddon: Book 7 Read online

  But she liked it and didn’t care much.

  Randy had gone looking for Tom the previous night. He’d come back empty handed.

  “Okay. You’ve got way more experience in this than I ever want to have. In your best estimation, what do you think happened to Tom?”

  “I don’t know. If it was daylight, I would have looked for his horse. That would at least tell us whether he made it that far.

  “Of course, if it was daylight, I wouldn’t have made it that far.

  “He might have been shot. He could have been taken hostage, but I doubt it. There wouldn’t have been any reason to.

  “I think the only other possibility is that Payton made him stay the night as a guest. He’s not the kind of man who’ll take no for an answer, and Tom wouldn’t have any way of telling us he was staying over.”

  “Do you really think that’s what happened?”

  “I don’t know. But I hope so. It beats the heck out of the other theory.”

  “So what do we do now?”

  “We wait. If Tom stayed the night as Payton’s guest, he’ll find a reason to leave not long after breakfast, and will be back here by noon.”

  “And if he’s not here by noon, then what?”

  “Then we’ll have to try my backup plan.”

  “Which is?”

  “I’ll tell you. But you won’t like it.”

  “Oh hell, Randy. I don’t like any of this. Not a damn bit. I’m not doing this because I like it. I’m doing it because my mom may be on that ranch and I want to get her out and bring her home. And now Tom is there too, maybe dead. And now we have to worry about him too.

  “If I was looking for something to like, I’d be back at home, lying in bed with my husband, holding him next to me and waiting for my young son to walk in and crawl into bed with us and tell us to get our lazy butts up and make him breakfast. That’s what I’d like. But that’s not reality.

  “So how about we stop worrying about what I’d like and just tell me what your plan is, okay?”

  He just looked at her for a moment. Then he smiled and said, “Drink your coffee. You’re rather testy in the mornings, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. And there ain’t a damn thing you can do about it. But here’s a tip for you. I’m not one to interrupt people when they’re talking, so if you start talking yourself you’ll shut me up for awhile…”

  He turned to look at her as she finished.

  “…Just sayin’.”

  “If Tom’s not back by noon, we’ll assume something went wrong. That’s a pity, because I thought it was a fairly good plan. But I have one of my own.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “I thought you didn’t interrupt people.”

  “Sorry.”

  “My plan is to leave you here while I ride up to the Lazy R Ranch. I know that’s going to make you feel inferior, being left behind again. But as Tom told you before he left, not every deputy gets selected for every mission. It’s the same thing with the Rangers. Nobody goes on every assignment…”

  “You have a way of turning a fifty cent explanation into a fifty dollar speech, you know that?”

  “And you’re interrupting again.”

  “Sorry. Go on.”

  “I leave you here. I ride up to the Lazy R, but I don’t go onto the property. So therefore I don’t disappear the way Tom did.

  “The other night when I was playing poker in Castroville I learned a lot about Jack Payton. The men at the table say he’s the greediest son of a gun they’ve ever laid eyes on. The most brutal too. They say he needs money like others need whisky or food. And he don’t care who he hurts or what he has to do to get it.

  “They also told me that when he came back from a trip a few weeks back he had a teenaged girl in tow. They haven’t seen her since. Lately he’s hooked up with the blonde woman we suspect to be your mother. But because he had a teenage girl with him when he hit town, I suspect he’s also the man I’ve been looking for.”

  “Can I speak now?”

  “Yes.”

  “What are you going to accomplish riding up the gate that Tom couldn’t have?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe nothing. But I’ve got something that Tom didn’t have?”

  “What?”

  “Bait.”

  “Come again?”

  “Bait. As in something that will appear valuable to Payton and might make him want to deal with me. And might make it in his best interest to keep Tom alive. If he’s not dead already, that is.”

  Sarah winced at Randy’s last few words but held her tongue.

  Randy continued.

  “I’ll wear my badge and ride up to the gate of the Lazy R. I’ll tell the sentries I’m looking for a man suspected of killing a group of people in San Antonio. I’ll describe Tom in great detail. I’ll even describe his horse. I’ll tell them there’s a big reward on his head. But I’ll tell them the federal marshal says he wants him alive. That the reward is only being offered if he’s able to stand trial. I’ll tell them to ask around, to see if anybody knows anything. And that I’ll pass through again tomorrow about the same time.

  “They’ll report the conversation to Payton. Hopefully he’ll be greedy enough to keep Tom alive until tomorrow, so he can turn him over to me and claim the reward.”

  “And if he doesn’t?”

  “Then we’ll go to my other plan.”

  “Which is?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll let you know when I think of it.”

  -3-

  Noon came and went. So did one o’clock, and then two o’clock.

  By two thirty it was obvious that Tom wasn’t coming back. Randy was mounted up and getting ready to ride off. Sara didn’t like his plan any more than she’d liked Tom’s. But she had to admit that she had no better ideas of her own.

  She was still fuming about having no part of it.

  “I’m not some little girl who needs to be protected at all costs,” she told Randy. “I was in a fierce gun battle with outlaws who tried to take our compound up near Junction. I held my own. I can do it again.”

  “There’s no doubt in my mind, Sara. And you still might be called upon to do that, if this doesn’t work. But because you’re young and beautiful and have something I don’t have, you’re a liability at this point. Next time you might have to fight, and I’m sure you’ll be as fierce as a wildcat. But for now that’s a secret weapon we don’t have to display. Let’s just keep it in our pocket until the time is right. Let’s try this first, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “You stay here in camp. Keep an eye out for drifters and stay on your toes. I’ll be back in a couple of hours, maybe three. Do you remember our duress code from last time?”

  “Yes. You’ll whistle the call of the whippoorwill. The first time I hear it will be to alert me you’re out there. The second time I hear it, I’ll call out to you if everything is okay. If I don’t call out, you’ll know something is wrong.”

  “Good. I’ll see you soon.”

  “Randy, wait.”

  “Yes?”

  “Be careful. I don’t want to lose you too.”

  He smiled and rode out of the small clearing and into the heavy woods.

  This time he was in no great need to hide himself, or to sneak into town. He’d placed his badge where it belonged, on the left side of his chest, for all the world to see.

  Randy was supremely proud of being a Ranger. His father was a Ranger, as was his grandfather and great grandfather. His great grandfather had been on the force in the days when automobiles were few and far between.

  His name was Wilford P. Maloney. He’d come over from Ireland as a baby and moved to Texas with his family just before the siege of the Alamo. He’d ridden after some of the meanest outlaws the west ever saw, and he caught his share of them. He’d been shot five times and stabbed once by a Comanche brave. Yet he persevered and was retired from the Rangers after ten short years.

  That had been the Rang
ers’ policy back then. They figured that any man who survived ten years was living on borrowed time. And he should get out while the getting was good. Wilford P. walked with a severe limp, but still stood taller than any other man in Texas. At least according to family lore.

  When Randy rode from city to city in search of outlaws, he channeled his great grandfather. He somehow sensed that Wilford P. was up there in the great beyond watching over him. Rooting for him to do the right thing. That is to say, do the same things that Wilford P. himself would have done. The same way he’d have done them.

  Randy was constantly mindful that he had someone watching his every move, every day and every night.

  It didn’t bother him. Not at all.

  For he didn’t look upon it as an intrusion.

  He looked upon it as a benefit. An insurance policy, of sorts, that would make him think things through before he went off half-cocked on a poorly thought-out plan.

  What he was doing, the line of work he was in, was dangerous. There was no doubt. But as long as he had to impress old Wilford P., he’d take the extra time and precautions he needed to do the job right.

  And he’d pray. Because in his line of work being right wasn’t always enough. Neither was a well thought out plan.

  Some men called it luck. Randy thought luck was all well and good. But he believed there was more at play than just dumb blind luck.

  Randy believed there was a higher power at work. That God had His hand on the shoulder of those who pursued justice and sought to protect those who couldn’t help themselves.

  -4-

  While Ranger Randy galloped down Highway 90 toward Castroville, a small and pathetic creature sat huddled in the back of the giraffe enclosure at the San Antonio zoo sixty miles away.

  Robbie Benton had once been a pursuer of justice too. He, like Randy, wore a badge and swore to protect and serve.

  Then his mind went south. The stress got to him and he switched sides. He began to believe that his love for another man’s wife was so powerful it gave him license to eschew everything he’d been brought up to believe.

  He was the villain the entire San Antonio Police Department was looking for. He was the one who’d shot their hero. Their golden boy.

  And now he was in hiding, living at the once proud but now abandoned zoo where he used to go as a kid to escape the brutalities of life. Now only one animal remained. But he was as dangerous as any lion or bear. Perhaps even more so. For few other mammals will kill another of their kind, simply out of jealousy or to steal the other’s mate.

  But Robbie would.

  And almost did.

  In Robbie’s twisted mind, he was justified in shooting John Castro. The world had changed drastically since the power grids went out and everything stopped working. Most of the world’s population was dead now. Those who survived lived under a different set of rules. New standards. Standards that made it okay to take what one needed without concern for others.

  Survival of the fittest.

  As a San Antonio cop, Robbie had been told by his superiors not to arrest those caught stealing from the back of trucks or abandoned supermarkets.

  “They’re just trying to survive, like the rest of us,” he was told.

  Sometimes people put two and two together and come up with seven. And that was especially true for people with warped minds, and altered senses of right and wrong.

  Robbie began to believe that if it was okay to steal a case of bottled water to survive, then maybe it was okay to steal weapons as well. If it was okay to take a box of food from a supermarket, then it was okay to take that same box of food from someone else.

  That if it was okay to defend oneself from aggressors and thieves, then maybe it was okay to be that aggressor or thief yourself.

  And from that point, it wasn’t much of a stretch to believe it was okay to just reach out and take whatever you wanted, regardless of who might be hurt by it.

  And if that was true of a case of water or a box of food, then maybe it was also okay for a woman. A woman who he’d coveted and admired from a distance for a very long time.

  It didn’t matter that Hannah belonged to a good friend. A man who’d risked his life to save Robbie’s on not one, but two occasions. A man who’d opened his home to Robbie when Hannah and her girls had gone away to avoid the plague.

  In Robbie’s twisted mind, John Castro had given him refuge not to be a friend, but to torture Robbie. For in John’s home Robbie was able to walk the same steps his beautiful Hannah had once walked. To sit in the chairs where she’d once sat.

  John noticed that some of Hannah’s things were disappearing. The nightgowns she’d worn but hadn’t yet washed before the power went out. Her panties. Her favorite perfume. But he didn’t put the clues together until it was too late.

  Until after Robbie had fired two .556 shells into John’s body from a sniper’s nest ninety yards away.

  Robbie had brought all his trophies here, to the zoo. It was his sanctuary, his safe house. The only place left where he felt he could hide and escape justice.

  Because nobody ever went to a boarded up zoo that no longer contained animals.

  There was no reason to. Nothing to see here, folks. Move along now. People who’d survived the one-two punch of the blackout and the plague… well, they were just too busy trying to survive from day to day. They didn’t have time to go explore some stinkin’ place which once held animals but now held nothing.

  Except Robbie. And he too had essentially turned into nothing of consequence.

  Robbie huddled in his sleeping bag, one of Hannah’s nightgowns pressed tightly against his face.

  It still smelled like her, although the scent had faded considerably in the four months he’d had it.

  With the soft red silk against his face he could close his eyes and easily imagine she was there with him. It comforted him a bit.

  But Robbie Benton could only draw so much comfort, for he was still a very angry man.

  The criminally insane seldom see their madness for what it is. In their minds, they are the righteous and the just. Others are lined up against them, out of jealousy or spite. Others are the wrongdoers and they are the oppressed. Merely innocent victims wondering why the rest of the world is picking on them.

  Robbie was no different. In his mind, he was justified in pursuing Hannah, even if it meant murdering one of his best friends. Hannah was a trophy worth fighting for, and in this new violent world in which they all lived, the end justified the means.

  The means, in his case, was merely clearing a path for Hannah to be Robbie’s trophy. And that meant shoving John Castro out of the way.

  The SAPD should never have investigated him. Yes, they would have lost a good officer if Robbie’s shots had been truer. But so what? They’d already lost eighty percent of their force due to gun violence after the blackout. Or to desertion. Or to suicide. Or to the plague. So what was one more cop, in the grand scheme of things?

  In Robbie’s mind the SAPD would have come out ahead if they’d just left well enough alone. In Robbie’s mind he was a much better cop than John Castro ever was. If they’d just let him kill John, Robbie would have taken his place as the department’s golden boy. The hero everyone looked up to. But no… they’d decided to go after Robbie instead. To put him behind bars with those miscreants and evildoers he’d arrested over the previous months.

  To a cop that was a fate worse than death. And one which Robbie would not tolerate.

  So he’d exact his revenge, against police chief Mike Martinez. And John Castro. And all the others who’d chosen to go after him and persecute him. And if he had to, he’d die in his battle of good over evil. Sometimes the good had to die in the pursuit of justice.

  But by God, he’d take a lot of them with him.

  -5-

  Robbie crawled from his sleeping bag and restarted the tiny campfire he’d killed just before last light the night before.

  He’d wanted to burn it through the
night, to help him stay warm. But it was too risky.

  The little bit of smoke it put off during the day dissipated quickly, before it could be seen and identified as such. But at night, even a fire as small as this one could be seen from some distance.

  A cop looking out of a window in one of the high-rise apartment buildings surrounding the zoo might catch a glimpse of light between the trees.

  Might wonder why someone was living in the abandoned zoo.

  Might be curious enough to investigate.

  Robbie cooked a can of spaghetti for his breakfast.

  It was almost a year out of date, but he wasn’t concerned. He’d eaten old canned goods before, and the only time he’d had a problem was the one time he’d felt a slight tinge of indigestion at the pit of his stomach. But it went as quickly as it came and he was fine.

  The worst part of eating out of date canned spaghetti was that it tasted like the can. But it still gave him a sense of the past, and can taste or not he savored every bite.

  He was getting antsy. He’d have to go on a resupply mission soon. Probably tonight if there wasn’t a full moon.

  Three nights before he’d killed three preppers. A man, his wife, and their young son.

  Killing came easy to Robbie now, and by his own count he’d racked up nine bodies. It should have been ten, but that bastard John Castro cheated Lady Luck and survived Robbie’s assault.

  The preppers and their boy weren’t so lucky.

  They’d made a common prepper mistake. They’d wanted to prepare for Armageddon, because they’d seen all those shows on the cable channels about stocking up on food and water. But their resources were limited, as they were for a lot of preppers on the low end of middle class.

  So they blundered, as many others had.

  They put all their effort, all their extra money, into canning and collecting and drying out food to feed their bellies for years to come.