The Wild West Read online

  The Wild West

  Graham’s Resolution, Book 6

  A. R. Shaw

  Apocalyptic Ventures

  Copyright © 2020 by A. R. Shaw

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Dedicated to my father,

  * * *

  Amos Rochelle Barber

  1942-2020

  RIP

  * * *

  You are truly missed, Dad.

  Courage is being scared to death…and saddling up anyway.

  John Wayne

  Contents

  Foreword

  1. Paige

  2. Clarisse

  3. Graham

  4. Paige

  5. Rick

  6. Clarisse

  7. Graham

  8. Paige

  9. Graham

  10. Rick

  11. Graham

  12. Clarisse

  13. Rick

  14. Graham

  15. Paige

  16. Graham

  17. Graham

  18. Bang

  19. Clarisse

  20. Bang

  21. Clarisse

  22. Bang

  23. Bang

  24. Macy

  25. Clarisse

  26. Bang

  27. Graham

  28. Clarisse

  29. Bang

  30. Graham

  31. Clarisse

  32. Bang

  33. Graham

  34. Clarisse

  35. Bang

  36. Graham

  37. Clarisse

  38. Bang

  39. Graham

  40. Clarisse

  41. Bang

  42. Graham

  43. Clarisse

  44. Bang

  45. Graham

  46. Clarisse

  47. Graham

  48. Rick

  49. Graham

  50. Bang

  51. Graham

  52. Rick

  53. Bang

  54. Graham

  55. Clarisse

  56. Bang

  57. Graham

  58. Rick

  59. Graham

  60. Graham

  61. Graham

  62. Rick

  63. Bang

  64. Tehya

  65. Graham

  66. Bang

  67. Graham

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by A. R. Shaw

  Foreword

  A gray sweater still hung on a thick bent wire in the closet they once shared. In the past, he’d often mused that hanger was probably older than the cabin itself. They didn’t make them like that anymore. Actually, they didn’t make any of them anymore, hangers or anything else. And to further the point, there weren’t too many theys around either.

  As for the sweater, Graham Morgan couldn’t remember where it originally came from. He knew Tala didn’t come with the garment; it hung there in the cabin long before she’d arrived. He’d given it to her one night because she was cold, well before he gave her his heart. He thought the sweater was possibly once his father’s. He’d even created an image in his mind of his old man wearing the thing…all stretched out over one shoulder and not the other…his cigar and lighter weighing down one front pocket. That was before the burial in the back yard of the house he grew up in. Before having to cover his father’s face with the sweet earth. He preferred the image he knew existed in reality, of Tala pulling the edges closer, nearly twice around her middle. She’d even rolled up the sleeves into puffy cuffs. He remembered her in that sweater once, standing on the porch steps as snowflakes drifted down, landing on her ebony hair and the slope of her small nose, and when he stepped up, he’d slipped his hands beneath the folds, feeling her warmth. She’d smiled then, with her eyes, if that was possible. Those sparkling depths—he’d leaned into them, submitting himself heart and soul. He smelled that soft area just behind her right ear, but he could feel her smiling against his shoulder, her mouth forming a crescent moon pressed against him. His heart had swelled then, just enough to let her slip in the dark crevice. Just enough to ruin him forever with her sudden loss.

  1

  Paige

  Though her voice was as raw as her hands, she’d used it to say, “My name is Paige Asher...please help me.”

  Life was a precarious thing. Snuff out one breath too long and your days were ruined forevermore. Her goal was to keep breathing.

  Get up!

  Paige knew this. Had seen that breath held too long. With her own eyes, she’d witnessed the silent pause happen too often. You went all stiff after that.

  They’re coming!

  Her mother was the first, but she’d left her before the collapse. That’s when her brother, Lincoln had taken her over. Or at least he’d tried to. She fought him every step of the way, though he gave it his best effort. And every single thought of him over the years broke her heart all over again, so she tried not to think about him. Not only did she miss him like hell…she hated him too, for leaving her all alone in this mess, just like all the others. Not that it was his fault. She knew he didn’t want to go. He’d had nothing to do with the cause of the pandemic. His job was to preserve and protect, after all. Her last glimpse of her brother Lincoln, she remembered picking up the abandoned child and walking away from him as he lay in the police cruiser dying of the virus. She’d set her lips thin and tight and with a cut of her eyes, she’d walked away with the orphan into the darkness with resentment in her heart.

  He’d made her leave and he’d even sent Enzo with her, though she’d turned Enzo back to him at the last moment. She didn’t want to leave Lincoln all alone. She knew too clearly how that felt. Her lasting regret was the dark edge in her eye. That was something she could never take back and now, after all she’d gone through, she was alone again.

  Get up, now!

  Well, she wasn’t totally alone. There were always her captors. They were nothing but resilient that way. And they were coming for her now. She could hear them. Their tires screeching, their pounding footsteps slamming against the pavement. Fuckers. She didn’t have to open her eyes…she knew. They were always chasing her, no matter how many times she’d escaped.

  She did her damnedest to keep that fate from Cheryl, but she’d failed there as well and here she was now, lying in the middle of a smoke-filled forest road, with raging fires coming from either side. And those jackasses are still on my ass? It was a rhetorical question she couldn’t help but ask herself. She was so tired of running.

  Paige rolled to her side then and realized the palms of her hands were not only raw, but skinned and scorched, her knees bloodied, damaged just like the rest of her, and she was pretty sure her arm was broken again, but that was nothing new. She’d sustained multiple fractures, lacerations and other injuries over the past couple years. Mostly at the hands of guys wearing dresses.

  But there was something about the cold sear of burns that was the worst kind of pain. That stinging came from within. It was the one kind of pain she couldn’t help but scream out from mid-center of her chest no matter how hard she tried to remain silent.

  Fire…made her scream. She didn’t know that about herself before. She’d learned. It made her arms tremble like now. She opened her eyelids because those inner warnings were not going to stop and although she heard someone approaching, she couldn’t help but see the involuntary flutter of her hands before her. She marveled at how, without intent, her open palms vibrated like butterfly wings in front of her face…only a large part of the skin of one pal
m hung down low from her wrist. She wasn’t sure where the skin from her other hand got off to.

  They’re here.

  Her line of sight traveled past that horrid wonder because there was something curious about the man standing over her—something she hadn’t seen in a long time.

  He was wearing pants.

  2

  Clarisse

  “Honestly, I didn’t think we’d find more,” Dalton said.

  “More what?”

  “Loners. You know…people needing our help. If you haven’t survived to this point…what’s to keep you going?” he said.

  “Dalton, can you just watch where you’re going and slow down for a second? I’m trying to put an IV into this newfound person.” Clarisse continued, “We were fine for a while, dammit. Thriving even.” She leaned over the back of the middle seat with a new needle port in her hand. The woman named Paige had slipped into unconsciousness again and Clarisse wanted to get the needle into a vein before she woke. As it was, the spidery network within her arms kept collapsing. Dehydration didn’t play well with needles.

  In a lowered tone, Dalton said, “If you hadn’t noticed, sweetheart, we’re fleeing a fire and who knows what else.”

  “Let’s not scare the children, please,” Clarisse said in a singsong voice.

  “That’s why I said it…oh, never mind,” Dalton replied.

  Clarisse stole a quick glance in the rear seat of the SUV, where her two children were watching them play by play over the three sleeping infants in car seats between them. It was a tight fit, but they were managing. Addy sat at the far end of the seat on guard next to Paige’s unconscious form, keeping watch out the windows, checking in with the rest of the convoy with her radio, her hand always on the rifle by her side. Addy smiled at the exchange briefly and then went back to her job. Clarisse admired the girl’s dedication. She was good at it and Clarisse could not be prouder of her. Addy would forever be one of her own. Nothing would ever change that.

  “How are the babies doing back there?” Clarisse asked her son, Logan.

  He gave her a thumbs-up. Always a man of few words.

  The new generation were all learning so fast, but she couldn’t help but shield them from the worst of this world even though they’d never known the world before.

  “Hold on!” Dalton said.

  “Hey, be…careful!” Clarisse said as momentum pushed her backward, needle in hand. “What’s going on?”

  “Log…on fire, Mom.” Logan pointed to a cylinder flame rolling downhill toward them through the thickening smoke. As it slammed into an embankment of trees, sparks flew, igniting the surrounding dry underbrush, spreading fire with fury in an instant. Despite the fact that they were driving through it, everyone shielded themselves automatically. And then Addy raised her rifle scope to her eye, just in case, scanning uphill.

  Coughing, Clarisse looked back at the children. “Logan, help your sister and the babies. Get down and cover your noses and mouths as best you can. Keep the blanket over yourselves and the babies. Dalton…get us out of here, please,” Clarisse said, more worried.

  Addy had that look in her eyes. She was getting nervous too. Never a good sign.

  “On it,” he said.

  Still, he was grinning, she was sure of it. Despite the danger, he loved driving fast.

  Then Clarisse finally hit the vein she sought, and the woman named Paige’s eyes flashed open again.

  “Don’t struggle.”

  “Cheryl?” Paige said and by the looks of her she was ready to claw her way out of there.

  “We’ve got you now. You’re safe,” Clarisse said.

  Paige slowly shook her head from one side to the other, eyes wild, as she swallowed, searching for words still too dry to utter, and warned, “No one’s safe! They’re after us; they’ll find us. You don’t understand.”

  Clarisse exchange a concerned glance with Addy. Even though the girl’s hearing was still impaired she could make out most things with the recent device she’d made for her.

  Clarisse sat back, looked at her children in the backseat and back at the young woman’s tattered body. “You’re wrong about that.”

  Paige saw the rifle in Addy’s hands and her eyes rolled back.

  Clarisse knew then why she’d survived this long. Despite herself, she wasn’t naïve, and she was a fighter.

  In a louder voice, Paige said, “I have to find my daughter. They took us and slaughtered all the men in our camp. It’s been months. You don’t understand.”

  Clarisse glanced first at her little girl, Finley, long dark hair like her own and only six years old, peeking through the blanket and listening to her conversation with the stranger.

  More quietly Clarisse leaned down and said, “I assure you, we’ve played this game before. Tell me…what did they look like?”

  With a morbid chuckle Paige said, “Pfft, you don’t know what you’re dealing with here. They wore black robes…they weren’t from around here.” Then she lost the fight to stay conscious.

  “Paige...” Clarisse tried to nudge her back awake. She wanted to say something to comfort her. Put her at ease. She wanted to tell her the girl Cheryl was safe, but it was too late.

  3

  Graham

  Leaving the thick smoke behind, Graham stopped seeing the white caps of his knuckles on the steering wheel when they’d finally crossed the Columbia Gorge. At least here, they could see an enemy coming from miles away. The land was mostly barren of trees. Only massive broken windmills scattered or sprouted from the earth like some prehistoric woolly mammoth burial ground.

  From the west, behind every tree or old building there was potential danger and he might lose someone else he held dear. Truthfully, his heart couldn’t take another loss. Even now, he continuously scanned the rearview mirror, keeping an eye on his loved ones even though he trusted Bang’s neat tricks as he called them. That fact that he sensed danger, or so it seemed, was a testament to his uncanny instincts. Graham gave that credit to his birth mother, Hyun-Ok.

  Tehya caught his eye in the mirror and said, “Can’t we stop? This is taking forever and there’re no trees here.”

  “Can you stop wiggling around? Dad, make her stop. I can’t see,” Bang said.

  Graham laughed a little, finally finding peace now.

  “What’s so funny, Dad?” Tehya said.

  “Some things never change. Stay in your seat, bug. I don’t want to get pulled over,” Graham said.

  “Is that a joke? Uncle Sam would pull you over?” Tehya said.

  Graham pulled a hand down his face. It was a new realization. The adults talked about it sometimes. Where the older kids remembered what it was like before…this new generation…they didn’t know anything. It was like spinning webs for them of long-lost legends or fables.

  When he didn’t answer right away, Bang gave it a shot. “There were police that kept people in line, back in the day. If they saw you standing up in the seat like you’re doing now, they’d pull Dad over in a heartbeat and give him a ticket,” he explained.

  “Are you serious? How did they do that? Did they crash into you?”

  “No…” He shook his head a little. “They turned on lights and sirens. And that was a signal for you to pull over and stop your car.”

  “Well, I’d just keep going.”

  Graham chuckled. “Then you’d get an even bigger ticket and might even go to jail.”

  Now Tehya shook her head. “That’s silly.”

  “Yeah, so sit down. And besides that, you’re making yourself a target,” Bang said.

  But she didn’t sit down.

  Graham knew Bang had not yet relaxed his guard once they were at a safe distance across the state. That was a good thing. Graham lifted a hand to stifle what would come next. He knew Bang would begin yelling at his little sister and Graham decided to head him off. “Seatbelt, Tehya, now,” he said. “Let me know how Cheryl’s doing back there.”

  She plopped down in the sea
t, which made Sheriff jerk up with a jingle of his collar.

  “Watch it, Tehya,” Bang said with a hard edge, his voice having changed in what Clarisse called the man shift. It still freaked him out hearing a deep voice come from his boy, but he’d gotten used to it over the past few years.

  She ignored him but said, “She’s still asleep. She’s snoring. And there’s drool all over. Sheriff’s too. Sticky back here,” she said, crinkling her nose.

  Graham checked the mirror and saw Tehya’s face. Then he had to stifle another laugh. “Deal with it, kiddo.”

  “Where are we going to stay when we get to Uncle Rick’s?”

  “I’ll tell you when you buckle up,” Graham said. “Both of you settle down. We’ll be there soon.”

  The irony of the situation was something he realized he couldn’t share even with Bang. They were too young to understand the generational annoyance of Are we there yet?