Nightwalker 2 Read online

  Nightwalker 2

  A Post-Apocalyptic Western Adventure

  Frank Roderus

  Craig Martelle

  This book is a work of fiction.

  All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.

  Nightwalker (and what happens within / characters / situations / worlds) are Copyright (c) 2015 by Frank Roderus (as revised)

  Cover by Ryan Schwarz - thecoverdesigner.com

  Cover copyright © LMBPN Publishing

  Nightwalker is published by LMBPN Publishing

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of LMBPN Publishing. Published under license from the Roderus Estate.

  First US edition, April 2019

  ISBN: 978-1-64202-195-0

  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 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  About the Author

  Notes - Craig Martelle

  Books by Frank Roderus

  Books by Craig Martelle

  Other books from LMBPN Publishing

  Chapter One

  There were two of them, armed with… they were too far away for him to be sure what weapons they carried—rifles, he thought—although they might have been shotguns. They had been following him all afternoon and now that it was dusk, they were creeping closer, obviously thinking to jump him once night fell and their prey settled down to sleep. Wolfe grunted. These two obviously didn’t know him.

  At night, he could see perfectly, even in a moonless pitch black. Very much like someone with normal vision saw on a slightly overcast day.

  Wolfe went through the motions of setting up a campsite, even though his intention when he stopped here was only to have something to eat and then put miles behind him during the comfortable night hours. His habit, now that he was travelling alone, was to sleep through the morning and early afternoon, then begin walking again.

  These two caught up with him this afternoon, not long after he woke and started hiking. There was something about the stalkers. He shook his head. Surely, he couldn’t know them. The only person he knew in this part of the country was Reba Crane, and he had already returned her to the clear area where her family was.

  Wolfe smiled a little when he thought about Reba. She had been a captive when he found her, and it pleased him to think that she was free again, and, by now, should be reunited with her husband and family. He had hoped that he, too, was free. Free to go home and be reunited with his family, if they were alive. Please, God, they were still alive. But he knew better. Deep down. It wouldn't stop him from doing what he had to do. Go home and find out for sure. No matter how long it took.

  Realistically, he had little hope they had lived to see today. Their home on the Gulf Coast of Florida was only a few dozen miles from MacDill Air Force Base where Central Command was located, or used to be located. He supposed that was more accurate. Surely, there would have been nukes targeting MacDill. Wolfe’s prayer was that, somehow, Lurleen and little Jojo survived that first assault and, somehow—please, God, somehow—they were safe. And, if they were alive, no matter where they were, he would find them. He had to. They were all he had left to live for. And those men back there, whoever they were and whatever it was they wanted, he would not allow them to interfere with his quest to return to his family.

  Wolfe sat hunkered down beside the remains of the fire, where he had roasted a small cottontail, waiting for nightfall. The way he saw things, he had two choices: he could stay and beat those two men at their own game, turning the tables on them and stalking them in the night when he could see and they could not; or he could simply slip away once it became dark and they would believe him to be sleeping and unaware.

  Killing them would be the easier and surer way, he supposed. But killing gave him no joy, no matter the intentions of his enemy.

  “Tell me,” he said softly, “do you think you can keep your mouth shut while I try and get us out of here nice and quiet?”

  The dog that lay close beside him lifted its head, ears pointed and mouth open in what surely looked like a smile. Wolfe knew good and well that animals didn’t smile. Some dogs certainly look like they did, though, and this oversized mongrel had that ability.

  “You want these bones?” he asked. Then he shook his head and smiled a little before answering his own question, “That’s a silly thing to ask, isn’t it? I haven’t known you to refuse a meal yet.”

  He had already shared the rabbit with the dog, and now he gave it the bones leftover from his half, too. The dog wagged its tail and began happily crunching away.

  As he pondered the two men who were closing on him, he wondered if maybe he shouldn’t have taken Reba up on her offer to stay with her in the clear area. He smiled again thinking about her, thinking about parting from her yesterday afternoon.

  “Are you sure you won’t come into the clear area with me, Jim?” she had asked. “My family would love to meet you, I know. And God knows I owe you everything for bringing me home.”

  Wolfe shook his head. “I know you mean that, Reba, and I’d like to meet them, too, but I have a family of my own I’m worried about and I want to find them.”

  Reba Crane gave him a pitying look. He knew why, of course. The odds that Wolfe’s home and family were gone after the months of nuclear warfare and two years that followed were very strong. Finding them was short odds, but, short or long, he had to try.

  Reba’s eyes said what her lips did not. She did not believe there was any chance he would ever see Lurleen and Jojo again, but she was kind enough not to say so. She only rose on tiptoe so she could kiss him lightly on the cheek and squeeze his hand.

  “Goodbye, Jim. Thank you.”

  Since the war began, the country had been turned upside down. Civil rights had been suspended, and martial law imposed. Much of the United States had been declared off-limits due to radiation contamination. Those areas, known as red zones, were inhabited now by scavengers who entered them in order to find valuables no longer available in the clear areas, feeding a black market for things like liquor, cigarettes, firearms, and bicycles, items no longer available to the civilian population in the clear areas.

  Worse than the scavengers, most of whom wanted only to smuggle their loot into the clear areas, were the men—women, too—who were known as wilders. They were the lawless ones who refused to accept the strict controls imposed on the citizenry by the Federal Command, which now ruled the country. Most of the wilders were criminals who took advantage of the breakdown of law and order, so they could pillage, rape, and steal.

  Wolfe had rescued Reba from wilders who held her captive as their slave and plaything. He turned her over when she was within
sight of the border crossing point that would take her back under FEDCOM control, where her family lived.

  She had given Wolfe a long look. He knew what she was seeing; a man of medium height, but extraordinary strength, with snow-white hair streaming down onto his shoulders. Wolfe had been a truck driver. Nowadays, the only trucks were operated by the FEDCOM, and the only drivers were armed government troopers.

  When the first fireballs and mushroom clouds appeared on the horizon so long ago, Wolfe had taken shelter inside a mine tunnel, holed up with crates of dehydrated meals and Lamb Pins protein bars from his cargo and a trickle of water that seeped out of the rock. He had entered the mine with dark hair, ordinary strength, and normal eyesight. Emerging two years later, his hair was completely white, he had enormous strength, and was so sensitive to light that he had to wear welding goggles to see during daylight hours. On the other hand, he could see perfectly at night. He could also feel a buzzing tingle emitted by objects contaminated by radioactivity. Wolfe had no idea how or why he was so changed, nor even exactly when it had happened, and he was still learning to live with it.

  Reba gave him a small smile and pressed the end of a length of rope into his hand.

  “He’s yours, Reba,” he said, looking down at the big dog that Reba had been dragging along with them for more than a week.

  The animal was probably a cross between a German Shepherd and one of the sled dog breeds. It had been badly abused by the wilders who had held Reba, and she had not wanted to leave the dog with the two men who had survived Wolfe’s assault to free her.

  She shook her head. “He should stay with you. With us, he’d be just another mouth to feed. My husband is the most wonderful man in the world, but he’d resent the dog. Take him with you,” she smiled. “Besides, you need some sort of company.”

  “You like him,” Wolfe protested.

  “I like you, too, Jim, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to keep you. Take him? Please?”

  Wolfe looked at the timid dog. Maybe Reba was right. Perhaps he would be good company. He nodded in agreement.

  “Good.”

  Reba gave him a final hug and turned resolutely away, marching off to the checkpoint and the tall fence separating the red zone from the clear area, close to what used to be the border between Idaho and Wyoming.

  Wolfe watched her go until he was sure she would be safe then he turned away. Reba Crane was as good as home already, but Jim Wolfe had 3,000 miles to go.

  “Come on, dog. Let’s go home.”

  And now, this evening, those two men wanted to keep him from making that journey.

  “I don’t think so,” he said aloud.

  The dog smiled up at him and lay close at his side as the last of the daylight faded slowly away. Jim slid his welding goggles off and blinked at the unfettered light. He smiled and squinted in the direction of the two men following him.

  Chapter Two

  “Alright, boy, but be quiet, you hear me? We’ll slide out and leave this pair behind.”

  Sixty or seventy yards away, Wolfe could see the stalkers—wilders, he guessed them to be—sitting on a rock thinking that the night made them invisible. What he could see was that they were beginning to get fidgety now that it was dark. They would probably be coming soon.

  Wolfe bent low and collected a few things he had set out then backed away from the ash-shrouded coals of his campfire. He left behind the bed of pine boughs that he had put together for the benefit on the would-be robbers. They were welcome to that and the remains of his fire. Those were the only things he was leaving behind.

  “Psst! Come!”

  The dog got up and padded close behind him when Wolfe collected the light aluminum bicycle cart that held his belongings. He carried a compound bow in one hand and pulled his cart with the other. He moved silently to the roadside, but kept in the grassy ditch beside it, rather than stepping out onto the blacktop where he might be spotted by the wilders.

  He had gone perhaps half a mile when, behind him, he heard a flurry of gunshots. The dog cringed and pressed tight against his leg. The dog looked like a wolf, but had the heart of a marshmallow.

  “Wuss,” Wolfe accused in a gentle voice. After all, he had no idea what the animal had been through before Reba rescued it. He did not really mind the animal’s timidity.

  He paused for a minute to listen, but there was only that one brief burst of gunfire behind him.

  “Ah, that’s it,” he said after a moment.

  His guess was the wilders snuck up on what they thought was his camp, fired from a distance, shooting into the pine boughs lying on the ground there. From a distance and in the dark, the makeshift mattress must have looked like a sleeping person. They had tried to kill him while he slept. Nice guys, Wolfe thought, disgusted by the sort of people who were so careless of human life that they would murder a total stranger in his sleep just on the off-chance that he might have something they could use.

  “Let’s move it along, boy. I don’t think we want to see any more of those two.”

  He did not stop to question whether the murderous wilders might have any particular interest in him, though.

  Chapter Three

  Wolfe was not a happy camper. Last night, he had taken a south-leading road in haste as he pushed through the night to get away from those idiots who’d attempted to murder a sleeping stranger. He was glad now that he had left the wilders behind, but he was considerably less pleased to discover the two-lane blacktop he was following took a swing toward the east.

  Just short of dawn, he came to a halt, staring toward what looked like a government checkpoint. There was a small sign on the right shoulder of the road, reading “Welcome to Wonderful Wyoming!”

  Wolfe was not sure that sentiment still held true because of the gate stretched across the road. Fence wings extended for several hundred yards to either side, although he was pretty sure that was as far as they went. A boxy guard post was beside the gate. Wolfe could not see anyone on-duty at the moment, but guessed there would be someone awake inside the hut to check on anyone trying to enter FEDCOM-controlled territory.

  Reba had told him that it was legal for a US citizen to leave the clear areas, but it was far more difficult and restrictive for someone to enter from a red zone. If he remembered correctly, she had said that nearly all possessions, particularly metallic objects, were confiscated at the border before permission might be granted to enter. Quite apart from his belief that an American should be allowed to go wherever he darn well pleased inside his own country. Wolfe did not want to relinquish any of his few possessions.

  The aluminum cart was necessary in order to keep him as unencumbered as possible. Wilders, predators, and edible prey might all be encountered without advance warning, and if he were burdened with packs or bags, he would find it difficult to reach the weapons he needed to defend or feed himself. And he needed his weapons.

  When he left the mine a few short weeks earlier, he had been unarmed, like a babe in the woods of this new world. He had never killed a man before either. But he was racking up kills like a gunfighter of old. That thought sat better in his gut than he would have expected. He was in the red zone now and the code was different out here. If he had to carve a path through it by his force of will alone, he would do that.

  Because he had weapons and an advantage that the others did not have.

  The compound bow had proven a godsend, even if he had only eight of the deadly arrows left. The FEDCOM border guards, very likely, would confiscate the bow. It was made more of fiberglass than steel, but the pulley wheels and some of the fittings were metal. Probably the core of the bowstring was steel cable, as well. In any case, it was very likely the guards would impound it to make sure it held no radioactivity. Probably they would take his Bowie knife, as well, and if they found it, the folding lock blade knife that he carried in his pants pocket. The cart held half a dozen other knives, as well, that would be useful as light and easily transported trading material. The guards w
ould likely relieve him of those, too.

  There was little more that he owned at this point: some gallon-sized plastic milk jugs that he used now to carry water so he didn’t have to depend on a water source when he found a good spot to camp for the day, a pair of sleeping bags, a sports duffel with spare clothing he had had with him in the cab of the truck when the bombs began falling, a small Bible he had discovered in an abandoned house where he and Mrs. Crane slept one night. The clothing, sleeping bags, and Bible would probably be allowed into the clear area, but he would still need his weapons on his long journey home, and he didn’t want to risk losing them. Not that he seemed to have terribly many choices here.

  If he decided to backtrack to the next road going west deeper into the red zone, he would add at least twenty-odd miles of travel going north, then an unknown distance west, and, finally, retracing that twenty-something mile distance to get this far south again. Besides, that would take him right straight back to where those wilders were last night.

  What he wanted was to continue on this road, even if it meant going into the clear area. Wolfe looked again at the fence that extended north and south from the FEDCOM border gate. If he jogged north again for just a few miles, he thought, he could probably find a place where he could haul the cart cross-country and bypass the gate that way, then go east for a while and turn south again once he was well clear of the crossing point to re-intersect the blacktop.