Castroville: Countdown to Armageddon: Book 7 (4 page)

     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.

     And they put no effort or money into a security system to protect it.

     Killing his latest victims was easy. He’d merely snuck up behind the husband when he went outside to gather firewood. Grabbed his face with his left hand and placed a hand over the man’s mouth. Then, in a swift and fluid motion, slashed his neck with a Bowie knife.

     He went down like a shot.

     The wife was even easier, for by the time she’d very stupidly come outside looking for her husband it had become pitch dark.

     Robbie just stood there, watching her approach him, his eyes adjusted to the darkness and hers not.

     By the time she finally saw him, she was right upon him. It was nothing for him to swing the two by four and make it connect with the side of her head.

     For a minute he knelt beside her, debating whether to rape her or just put her out of her misery.

     She was of above average looks. Pretty, but not beautiful. Certainly not the same caliber as Robbie’s sweet Hannah.

     He missed Hannah. He needed to see her again. He knew that was almost certainly no longer possible. He wanted to try, but John most likely had taken precautions to protect her from him. He probably spirited her away to God-only-knew where. Probably to stay with friends, until Robbie was caught and either killed or locked away.

     He laughed.
Locked away.
His new world was a world of cages. Animal cages of various sizes and types, sure. But many would hold a man and limit his movements.

     The difference was, this was his new home. This was where he chose to stay. If he were ever caught, and faced the threat of being locked away in another type of cage, he’d surely rebel. Surely not be taken alive if he could help it.

     And if he couldn’t help it, if they managed to capture him alive, he’d just do himself and the rest of the world a favor.

     He’d merely end his life the first chance he got.

     So it was likely he’d never see Hannah again. Never feel the touch he so desperately craved. Never feel her lips against his, her body against his, her breath on his cheek.

     So the unconscious woman on the ground before him would have to do.

     He rolled her over and raped her as she lay unaware of his actions. That was okay with Robbie. Her active participation wasn’t necessary, and in fact would have made the act more difficult.

     After he was finished he’d stood over her and used the two by four to smash her skull. Once, twice, a dozen times. It was overkill, he knew. But it felt good to Robbie, for it was another kind of release. Different from the kind he’d felt a couple of minutes before, but equally satisfying.

     Once confident she’d drawn her last breath, he’d retreated into the house and searched it.

     The boy was the easiest of the three. He slept peacefully in an upstairs bed. Was never aware of Robbie’s presence.

     He opened his eyes as Robbie thrust the eight inch blade of the Bowie into his heart, but only for a brief moment.

     It was the only movement his small body made, and it wasn’t resistance. Not even defiance. Just the body’s natural reflex, Robbie supposed.

     The house was bordered on its north side by an acre of undeveloped land that was heavily wooded. It was the route Robbie had chosen to sneak up on the family.

     The woods would also make a convenient place to place the bodies. And there they’d gone, one by one, placed atop one another like a macabre human pyramid.

     The husband on the bottom.

     What was left of the wife was placed atop the bloody husband. The boy was placed on top of her.

     Robbie stood back and admired his demented artwork.

     And he smiled.

-6-

     He never even knew their names.

     Nor did he care to know them.

     All he really cared about was that the house in which they’d lived and died was chock full of food. Canned goods, jarred meats and vegetables, dried fruits and vegetables, trail mix, a hundred pounds of dried beans.

     Enough to keep a single man going for a year or more.

     Now Robbie’s main concern were other looters. He’d punched holes in the interior walls and had hidden as much of the food as he could within the walls. Then he covered the holes with paintings and posters to hide his secret stashes from prying eyes.

     That same night he’d made three trips from the home to the zoo, each time carrying a backpack loaded down with provisions.

     At the rate he was going, he figured it would take him a dozen nights to get all the food from the house to the zoo.

     Of course, if he weren’t running from the law, he could have just moved into the house and consumed the food at his leisure.

     But that was not an option for Robbie Benton. He was the subject of the largest manhunt the SAPD had undertaken since the blackout occurred. Cops were going door to door across the whole of San Antonio and Bexar County, showing his photo to residents. Unoccupied houses were being searched thoroughly for any signs he’d been there.

     The city had succeeded by now in disposing of the hundreds of thousands of corpses that had piled up since the blackout began. Most were gun deaths, either suicides or victims of robbers. Few were ever investigated, because the homicide division of the decimated police department hadn’t existed until just recently. And because beat cops had neither the training nor the time to look into such deaths.

     Now, though, San Antonio was becoming normalized once again. Chief Mike Martinez succeeded in finding a couple of retired homicide detectives and lured them back to work. The SAPD now officially had a two man homicide division. They were still way overworked, but they tried to do what they could.

     Eventually the bodies Robbie hid would be found. Probably by a hunter looking for rabbits or squirrels.

    He may or may not take the time to flag down a passing patrol car.

     But odds were he wouldn’t. These days, there was a great sense of “mind your own business” among the city’s few survivors. And there were very few cops. No phones to contact them. It might be hours or even a couple of days before a cruiser happened down the street on the other side of the woods where the bodies lay.

     It was more likely the cops would find the bodies themselves, driving down the road in a few days after the bodies started to rot. The officers were required now to drive with their windows down except in the worst of weather to make it easier to hear citizens flagging them down. The stench of decaying flesh would be enough to grab their attention as they drove by.

     Once the bodies were discovered, homicide would be notified over the police radio and they’d come to the scene.

     They’d find the drag marks and follow them back to the couple’s house, but Robbie wouldn’t be there. By that time Robbie would have removed enough food and bottled water to last him for several months. If he lived that long.

     They’d find one of the murder weapons, the two by four. But not even a latent print expert could lift prints off a heavily weathered piece of wood. And the two cops that made up the new homicide division were far from fingerprint experts.

     The other murder weapon, the Bowie knife, was in a sheathe on Robbie’s belt.

     They wouldn’t have murder weapons, prints, video evidence or eye witnesses. With no one living on the property where the murders took place, they’d never tie it to Robbie.

     And even if they could, so what? They were looking for him anyway. Were probably going to kill him on sight. That’s what they did to someone who tried to kill one of their own. Especially a rogue cop who’d had the audacity to tarnish the image they’d been working so desperately to maintain.

     As he made trip after trip from the zoo to the house on the nights following the murders, Robbie wondered whether this was all worth it.

     Whether having Hannah as his very own would have been all he imagined it would be.

     Yes, she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever known. And there seemed no limit to the number of ways he’d enjoy her body and put her sexual talents to the test.

     But Robbie had always grown weary of the women he’d had in the past.

     The sex had been great in the beginning. His appetite had always been insatiable in the first weeks and months. But it had always waned when the sex became routine, then hum drum.

     Maybe the same would have been true with his Hannah. Maybe after some months the proverbial honeymoon would be over. Maybe after that they’d just have sex occasionally, like most married couples.

     Maybe Robbie would be stuck, two years from now, with a beautiful but very distant wife, who accepted his advances whenever he demanded it, but who otherwise ignored him.

     And despite the fun being gone from the relationship, he’d still be stuck with the job of helping raise her little brats. Still have to provide for them. Still have to protect them from others, like Robbie, who might covet Hannah. And who might want her for their very own.

     Maybe it was a vicious cycle, and Robbie was merely the latest bit player. The latest victor in a child’s game of King of the Mountain. The guy who was currently at the top of the mountain but who would eventually, inevitably, be knocked off.

     Robbie tossed his backpack over the north wall of the old zoo and wondered if he should’ve just left well enough alone and admired Hannah from a distance.

-7-

       Randy rode up to a gate where two armed sentries sat together smoking stale cigarettes and talking of better times.

     The passageway to the ranch was nothing more than a set of rutted tire tracks, now well grown over with Johnson grass.

     No cars or pickup trucks had driven through the gate in many months, and the grass took that as permission to do its thing. The vehicle tracks were now barely visible, beneath a wrought-iron arbor that said “Lazy R Ranch, Est. 1878”

     The “R” on the sign listed sixty degrees to the left, thereby justifying its moniker.

     The men stood up as Randy approached and readied their rifles in case they were needed.

     “Hold up, stranger,” the taller of them commanded. “State your business.”

     Randy took the demand in stride. He adopted a friendly tone.

     “Well, now, that’s no way to greet a visitor. The right way, the
Texas way
, is to say, ‘Howdy, stranger and welcome. How can we help you this fine day?’”

     The tall man wasn’t impressed. He stood in stone silence, waiting for an answer to his question.

     He was wary of all lawmen anyway, and this Ranger with a smart mouth wasn’t scoring any points with him.

     The shorter man, sensing that Randy was no immediate threat, was a bit warmer.

     “What can we do for you, Ranger?”

     “I’m hunting a man. A pretty bad man, robbed and killed a family in San Antonio. I heard he headed this way. Wanted to find out if you’ve seen him.”

     The tall man growled, “We ain’t seen nobody like that.”

     “Well heck, mister. I haven’t even described him yet. And there’s a good sized reward for him. Five thousand dollars in gold coin. Put up by the surviving family members.”

     That gave the tall man pause and whetted the appetite of his partner.

     “What’s this man look like, Ranger?”

     “Tall, white, gray hair and lots of it. Big bushy mustache. Goes by the name of Tom. He rides a big Morgan with a black saddle. Horse has a brown spot on his left flank in the shape of Oklahoma. Why anyone would own a horse with God-forsaken Oklahoma on its side is beyond me.”