Apocalypse: Texas style!

Apocalypse: Texas style!

By Jason L. Tarlton

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2012 Jason L. Tarlton

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Ebook formatting by www.ebooklaunch.com

To my beautiful wife, Judi, for convincing me to dust this off and see what happens.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 1

The man looked nervously over his shoulder as he made his way toward the airport baggage claim. He was being shadowed by two agents. He had prepared for this moment for months, planning and acting out various scenarios until he was instilled with an instant reaction to any situation he might find himself in. Clutching his side, where a small case was nestled, he sped up his pace until he was passing other travelers, weaving around them in what he hoped was calm, businesslike manner.

He was of Middle Eastern descent, but was nondescript enough to blend in with the multitude of Hispanics and other swarthy featured races that abounded in an international airport. He dressed in business attire, and other than a slight sheen of perspiration on his brow, seemed little different from his fellow travelers. No one would guess that the fate of millions was in the box he had tucked in the waist band of his pants.

He saw the agents, their image reflected on the glass covering a tourist advertisement, speeding up to match his quick, business like stride, and he sped up a bit more. Pulling the black, rectangular box from his waist band, he opened it as he walked, revealing a row of glass vials, each filled with an amber liquid. He removed one, pulled the stopper out, and began dribbling it on the hand rail of the conveyor belt walkway to his right as he went.

The baggage claim was just a little farther, and as he made the turn to head that way, he heard a shout from one of the two men following him. He broke into a sprint and threw another vial into the open, tiled doorway of the women’s restroom as he passed by. The thin glass shattered against the doorway. Stop or I will shoot! he heard one of the agents shout. He pulled another vial and burst into the baggage claim area, throwing it against the red lettered sign that gave the flight arrivals and departure times. A shot rang out and people screamed in panic. The man smiled and sprinted for the doors to the passenger pick up. Another shot, and he felt a tug at the sleeve of his shirt as he burst through the open, sliding glass door. He threw another vial that burst against the passenger door of a yellow taxi cab that was pulling away from the curb. Suddenly he felt a tremendous blow to his lower back, sending him careening out into the street, falling to his knees on the hot, black asphalt. He couldn’t draw a breath, and the copper taste of blood filled his mouth. As he fell forward, he watched the remaining tubes of amber liquid skittering across the pavement, breaking and spilling their deadly payload under the tires of the cars that sped away from the sudden rush of panicked people. He smiled as his eyes began to glaze over, assured that he had done his job well. His family would be taken care of, and he would be well rewarded in heaven.

The two men in dark suits rushed up the curb and panted for breath as they quickly took in the scene; the black, rectangular box, the crushed vials. One agent looked over at his partner with abject fear in his face.

Oh my Lord, Gary... Gary reached into his pocket and pulled his cell phone out, hitting a preset speed dial with practiced ease.

We have a situation, Sir... He paused as he listened to the voice on the other end of the line. No Sir, we have him, but he has delivered his cargo, in the airport while he ran, Sir... and if our intelligence was right, it is too late now. He picked up the black case, and pulled the last, unbroken vial from its slot. I have a sample, Sir, and if we can get a cleanup crew here, I will have it in your hands ASAP. Yes Sir, God save us. He cut the connection to his superior and glanced over at his partner. Jim, if you are a praying man, I would get to it, because I think we may need all the help we can get on this one...

A special group of agents arrived shortly, with air packs and vinyl suits to protect them from what might be floating around the dead man. The area had been shut down, and a cover story was fabricated and fed to the media. They cleaned up the mess in a professional manner and left. It was too late to do much more. The virus was already on its way around the country, headed to various places. Going to other nations, on luggage, clothes, hands and feet of those who had come in contact with it. They were already feeling a tickle in their throats, not knowing they were carrying death with them.

Chapter 2

The city was starting to stink. Of course this could be said of any city these days, what with the unburied dead lying around everywhere. Ever since the plague had started spreading like wild fire, folks had put a lot more thought into getting away from it than burying a fallen friend or family. The minute someone started coughing or wheezing, they became a pariah, like... well, like they had the plague. The more dead people, the less people available to tend the sick, bury the fallen. The more dead people, the less sanitary the towns became, until finally, folks were packing up and trying to put as much distance between themselves and the cities as possible, leaving the ailing survivors to fend for themselves for as long as they had left to breathe.

The rumors about the plague ran as varied and as rampant as the sickness itself. Perhaps it was a new strain of flu too sturdy for vaccines? A government bio-war project escaped from its compound, or maybe God’s punishment for a decadent society? I don’t know how it began, and now that it has run its course I don’t much care. It passed me by and I count myself much luckier than the scores upon scores of unfortunate souls that succumbed to the sickness, about ninety five percent of the population if my hometown was a good enough gauge, all of them coughing, cursing or praying for relief on their way out.

The town looks pretty much the same during the day, but at night, when the dog packs start running, scavenging through the streets for whatever they can find, it becomes a different world; medieval. No lights except for the few places smart enough to have a generator and well-armed enough to keep it. Man has forgotten just how dark it can be at night, with no electric lights anywhere, and just a fire holding back the blackness. Too quiet and too ugly a place to want to stay for long without a good reason, and with the death of my parents the previous week, all the reasons for me were gone. And so it is with a determined outlook that I find myself loading up to who knows where, as long as it is better than here. A place to start over, with more to offer than this west Texas oil town, that never had anything better to offer than the on again off again work related to bringing crude oil up out of the ground. I had to find somewhere where the water didn’t have to be pumped out of the ground to keep the grass from turning brown.

My name is Angus William Radcliff, which is a heck of a label to put on a boy prone to being, as they say in polite company, big boned. I don’t look it but I am a book-a-holic and I read everything I get my hands on. Not much to look at, but big and strong. Not ripped up with muscles, but able to move anything I put my shoulder to, and faster than I look, both physically and mentally. Six foot two inches in my socks and two hundred fifty pounds, more or less, depending on how much supper was available. Top that off with an unruly shock of reddish hair and that’s me. I will be twenty years old in December, though I look a bit older, and as my daddy used to say, I have got a long lonely row to hoe ahead of me.

I load up the truck with as much as it can hold in the way of canned goods and non-perishables, trailer up two horses, a bay mare I’ve had forever and a zebra dun stud colt that was my dad’s pride and joy. Up until a couple of weeks ago that is. At that point in time, horses were about the last thing on anybody’s mind. I throw in a couple of bags of sweet feed, a bale of alfalfa, strap on my dad’s .357 Taurus revolver and head to town. I have a pretty good set of tools, nothing fancy, but enough to keep me going till I can stop somewhere a little better suited to post-apocalyptic survival. I am sure I will forget something crucial, but for the life of me, when I was forming my plan of exodus, I couldn’t think beyond what I had already put on my list.

Mostly I want to find others like me, alone, scared to death about the future. wanting desperately to have a friend to lean on or just talk to when night time rolls around and every creak and bump in the night reminds you just how alone you really are. I don’t know how long it is going to take to rebuild society into some semblance of civilization, but I do know I don’t want to face that wait alone. So I plan to take it slow, find people I can trust, guard against those I don’t, and do my best to build up some sort of a stronghold to wait out the reconstruction of mankind, while doing my part to help it along.

I am headed for town to see what is left that the first wave of refugees didn’t take when they ran. I am going to need as much ammo as I can carry for the .357, as well as my .270 deer rifle. The surplus store should yield some military MRE’s, (meals ready to eat) which should supplement my diet and cut down on food prep time while on the road, or off the road for that matter. I had tried some of these on a camping trip I went on with a couple of friends a few years ago, and while I wasn’t very impressed with the flavor, they had some cool things in them.

Being as I don’t know whether the towns and roads ahead are safe. I watch the news, when there were TV’s to watch, I mean, and it seems tragedy and disaster sometimes brings out the best, but more often the worst in people. After earthquakes and hurricanes, you see looting, murder and unspeakable things you wouldn’t think man was capable of, if you didn’t know better. But you do know better, because some news reporter kept it hyped up and in your face till something uglier and higher profile took its place. Inquiring minds used to want to know. But not now, everyone left alive now wishes we could look out the window and see some version of happy, middle class utopia.

If luck runs my way, I should be well prepared for my journey, and eventually the start of a new home and future. Guess while reading all my books, and daydreaming of grand adventures, I shouldn’t have wished so hard for one more frontier, because from the looks of things, I have a big one ahead of me, and darned if I didn’t want the old, dull life back.

Chapter 3

Jonathan Pritchard drove down the side roads, looking for other survivors. He had gathered a few lost souls already, but needed more. Before the plague had knocked the country into a terminal tailspin, he had been a tent revival evangelist, traveling from town to town, and reaping his living from the old, the sick and infirm, most of them hoping for more time, praying for their salvation, begging for a healing. Pritchard told them what they wanted to hear and took their money, all he could get. If studied by a therapist, the words sociopath and narcissism would be used a lot in his diagnosis. He pulled a gooseneck camper behind his truck, stopping wherever he chose to for the night, staying like a biblical plague of locusts, till he had picked the suckers clean. His ability to talk, the gift of the gab, had stood him well his whole life, manipulating those around him to his needs.

The three men he had found in Austin were at their wits end, having lost everything. He told them what they wanted to hear, and then convinced them that the plague was a second flood, sent by God Almighty to cleanse the earth of all its wickedness. The reason he gave that they were still alive, was that God had a purpose for them and he had been sent to lead them in organizing a new world. They had a special purpose. He praised them and coddled them, making them think they were indispensable to his plan.

San Antonio should yield more men, but he didn’t want to leave out the many smaller towns in between. Small town folks either saw right through you or stayed away. But if they bought into the game it was usually with everything they had. Those were the kind of people he wanted. Then he would work his way up toward the panhandle and eventually head north. He planned to have his piece of the pie, and it was going to be the biggest one he could put his fork into.

He saw a flash of movement beside a house and slowed down. There was a man, hiding there, crouched down by some bushes with a shotgun clutched nervously in his hands. Pritchard rolled down his window. Come here my friend. You have no need to fear us, for we have been sent by God to gather the righteous together. We have been sent to bring you home! The man stood uncertainly, and walked toward the truck. Pritchard opened the door of the truck and held his hands wide to show he was unarmed and worked his magic. Tell me, son, have you been saved? In the space of a few moments, he had the man sniveling and thanking God that the Reverend Pritchard had found him, lost and wandering alone. The other three clambered out of the truck and welcomed him as a brother.

From these and others like them, he would build the core of his organization, promising them wealth and women. Righteous wealth and Godly women, of course, and servants, for didn’t all the great men of the bible have wealth and concubines and servants? He kept at them, preaching, praising and building a group that would take his words as if they were from the mouth of God. He would need to find a stopping place soon, to build and plan, to build the men’s trust in him into a single minded fanaticism before moving on. It would have to be soon. After San Antonio perhaps he would find a place to stop awhile and start coming through on some of his promises to them, just enough to keep them following his lead.

Pritchard smiled to himself. He had kept his true agenda hidden under a blanket of righteousness that few could see through. Soon he would have the power to get everything and anything he had ever wanted. What did it matter if he fulfilled a few of the hopes and dreams of his followers, so long as he got the biggest and best for himself? And he didn’t care who or how many he had to kill or step on to get it.

Chapter 4

The parking lot of the army surplus was abandoned. I could see by the broken glass of the big display window that someone had beaten me to the punch getting here. Hopefully there was some stuff I needed left. I unholstered the .357 and make my way through the door, trying not to crunch too loud on the broken bits of glass at my feet. After a careful look around, I figure I am alone, which suits me fine. The aisles look for the most part intact but the cash register has been broken open and is laying on the floor. Idiots. Whoever robbed the store was under the mistaken impression that money was worth a darn now. They would have been better off stealing a carton of cigarettes, which wasn’t a bad idea, because though I don’t smoke, someone out there would, and it might be a good idea to have a carton or two to barter.

Holstering the pistol, I made my way toward the back and picked up a green army duffle bag, picking up small items I might or might not need as I went; snake bite kit, a little fire starter kit, a couple of camo cargo pants in my size. Towards the back of the store I found a treasure trove. Several cases of MRE’s in assorted flavors were stacked on the back shelves. I started hauling them to the truck, along with my other