Fight For Everything

  At Any Cost Book 2

  K. M. Fawkes

  Contents

  Prologue

  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

  K. M. Fawkes Mailing List

  Also by K. M. Fawkes

  Copyright 2019 by K. M. Fawkes

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part by any means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the explicit written permission of the author.

  All characters depicted in this fictional work are consenting adults, of at least eighteen years of age. Any resemblance to persons living or deceased, particular businesses, events, or exact locations are entirely coincidental.

  Prologue

  Garrett stood outside the small building, his eyes sharp on the horizon around him. The dust was blowing in from the west, like it always did at that time of day, and for a moment he narrowed his eyes in that direction, his heart hammering, his breath utterly still.

  It wouldn’t be the first time he’d seen someone else out there. Someone else in a vehicle of some sort, coming straight at them at the worst possible time. At this point, he’d grown used to it—but that didn’t mean it was welcome. It certainly didn’t mean he wanted to encounter whoever might be in that vehicle.

  His left hand dropped to the Glock he held in his right and gripped the gun tightly while his right thumb reached up and flicked off the safety. He had a rifle strapped to his back, and if he needed something longer-range, he’d have to use that. He’d made sure it was within easy reach for just this sort of opportunity.

  For right now, the handgun would have to do. It was safer. Easier to sight down. More manageable in a tight space.

  He brought the gun up in front of him in one smooth, practiced movement, and pointed it directly at the cloud of dust in the distance, his gaze running down the barrel of the gun as he tried desperately to part that cloud with his mind. Tried to see what might be in the middle of it. Was it a vehicle? One of the motorcycles he’d seen on the horizon in the past? And if it was, did that motorcycle hold someone who might end up being a friend… or someone who was after the same thing he and his crew were after—and who might take offense to the fact that Garrett’s group had gotten there first?

  He blew out quietly, trying to steady his heart. There was no guarantee that it was anything. Could just be the wind. Could be one of the animals they’d seen around. Could be a random twister that had just sprung up out of the desert. The problem was, he wouldn’t be able to relax until he knew for sure.

  He took one step forward, then two. He wasn’t supposed to leave his post outside the building—and had, in fact, promised the people inside that he would be right there if they needed him. But he needed to know for sure what was going on in the desert, and whether they needed to get out of there in a hurry.

  Then, just as he was about to take a third step—maybe even start walking more quickly toward what might have been dangerous interlopers—the dust suddenly dropped back down to the desert floor, leaving… absolutely nothing in its wake.

  He huffed out a laugh that was half self-ridicule and half relief. “Starting to see things, boy,” he murmured to himself. “Starting to out-and-out imagine things, is the problem. Your paranoia is getting the better of you.”

  He spent another two minutes staring out at the horizon, taking in the groups of barrel cacti, surrounded by little more than sand and rocks. This area of New Mexico didn’t even have the scrub pine he’d grown used to in his old life, or the century plants about which he’d once made up stories. Very little vegetation. Very little wildlife. Absolutely no water. Just lots of beige out there, all against the backdrop of the chocolate-colored mountains in the distance.

  Not where he would have chosen to hole up. But it had been their best—and only—option.

  At the sound of the door behind him opening, he twirled around and strode quickly back to the building. Alice was just appearing through the doorway, her arms completely full of what looked like wine bottles.

  “Wine?” he asked sharply, searching for the sense of humor he’d once found so easy, and now seemed to be missing entirely. “Are we planning on having a party?”

  “Liquid,” she told him shortly.

  No-nonsense, that had always been Alice—and he loved her for it. Really. She’d kept him on the straight and true when he would have gone spinning off into the darkness. It was just that sometimes, he wished she would be a little more… optimistic.

  “Besides, wine is just as good when it comes to quenching thirst as a lot of the other stuff we’ve been hauling in,” she added. Then her mouth quirked in the half-smile he’d come to recognize as the biggest concession she was willing to give to hope. “And you never know when we might have something to celebrate.”

  He laughed at that, then moved toward the door to help with whatever the others had found inside. They’d hoped for a good haul at this vineyard, but they hadn’t been sure. After all, it wasn’t the sort of place where anyone had been living. Sure, they might have fuel and even the stock of wine, but their hopes for anything else had been tightly controlled. Still, if Alice was carrying so much, the others might be too, and now that they were nearly finished he could put his hands—and eyes—to use at something other than keeping watch on the world around them.

  “See anything out there?” Alice asked before he could get through the door. Her own eyes were now on the horizon, sharp and worried.

  “Dust storm,” he returned. “Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing that looked like another human being.”

  “Thank God for that,” she breathed. Then she was gone, hurrying toward the truck they’d brought with them and leaving him to grab whatever he could get and join her.

  He didn’t waste time looking after her. They might be safe for the moment, but that didn’t mean they’d be safe indefinitely. And they needed these supplies too badly to put them at risk by taking too long in this location, where there was very little protection and every opportunity for someone else to find them.

  Chapter 1

  October 2026

  Garrett leaned against one of the posts on the porch of the house he’d adopted in Trinity Ranch, his eyes on the street in front of him. It had been three months since they’d escaped the general and his band of merry men, along with his plan for the future of the human race, and Garrett had rarely thought about it since that night. Well, sort of rarely. He still had the nightmares about that prison. The room full of individual cells, the bars, the cold concrete under his cheek…

  The fact that General Green had executed some of his friends without bothering to think twice about it.

  He shook his head and tried to send that thought away, using the sight of the desert on the horizon to replace the dank, dark memories. Out there, it was wide open spaces, fresh air, and the wind in his hair. Things he’d never thought he’d appreciate as much as he did now.

  He turned his eyes to the dusty street in front of him—dirt, just like so much of the rest of the landscape—and smiled at the sight of a boy riding a rusty bike down the street. Three months here now, and they’d collected a ragtag army of their own, building a family out of the people they’d found along the way and the few who had managed to wander into town on their own.

  Trinity Ranch was miles from anything else, set in a section of New Mexico that boasted nothing, really, except for military base after military base where they conducted weapons training—or what they hid under the heading of “weapons training.” And he had to admit, the military bases had made him tense at first. Incredibly tense. General Green had set his operation up in an old military base, and Garrett didn’t think he was ever going to be able to pull up to the gates of a camp like that again without thinking about the way Green had twisted the entire operation.

  But when they’d been running for their lives that night after they escaped and Alice had said she knew of a small town where no one would ask their names, and where they might find not only shelter but also food and water—and maybe allies—he’d agreed to it immediately.

  He’d never thought to ask how she knew of the town, or what her history was here. He knew enough of her past to know that it was scattered with ghosts, and that she wouldn’t want to bring most of them back up. Besides, it wasn’t like he’d had any better plans at the time. A vague idea that Mexico might be a good idea, but no real method for getting there. Certainly no access to a vehicle.

  Now, courtesy of Alice’s plans, they were within one hundred miles of the border. And they’d been hearing from travelers who passed their way that there was a place in Mexico they might aim for. Some town where refugees were welcome. A town where, he thought, they hadn’t been struck down by the virus. A town where they might be safe.

  For the moment, this place would do.

  So far, Trinity Ranch had treated them fairly. When they arrived, tired, frightened, and thirsty, they’d found the place nearly deserted, with only a few people still sticking it out in their homes.

  Most of the people in this area of the country hadn’t faired so well, but Trinity Ranch seemed to have had its fair share of doomsdayers. People who had been hoarding food and water for months, maybe even years, before disaster actually struck. They’d been able to save at least some of the town’s inhabitants, though certainly not all of them.

  Garrett let out a sigh of laughter. Doomsdayers. In another life, in another world, he’d worked for that sort of person. Wealthy ones, to be exact. People who’d had enough money to not only collect supplies, but actually build their own forts in case something like this happened. People who’d wanted every comfort while they were in hiding from the zombies or nuclear winter or whatever else might have come their way.

  Little good it did them. The man he’d been working for when disaster arrived hadn’t even made it to the home Garrett had designed and then built out for him. He’d died in the city of the nanovirus, just like nearly everyone else in the U.S.

  Those who hadn’t died had been taken out in the riots and anarchy that reigned in those final weeks, before the government utilized EMP weapons to try to kill the minuscule robots who they’d thought would reverse aging, and which had ended up becoming a manmade pandemic.

  The EMPs might have taken care of the virus—he still didn’t know for sure, since there was no way of finding that out without any newscasts—but they’d also doomed what people were left, sending them back into pre-electric times without any preparation. People had starved to death or died of thirst or medical issues without important things like electricity, transportation, and the lines that brought them food and water.

  The government might have killed the nanovirus. It also killed most of the country’s people. And even those with enough wealth to have built and fully equipped fallout shelters hadn’t been able to escape the situation.

  Even more frightening was the fact that it had happened so quickly. Mere months between when the nanobots were introduced and the first wave of deaths to a previously unheard of disease. Another few months, and they’d been facing the destruction of all American civilization.

  He coughed and brought himself back into the present, turning his eyes to the street before him. Bart, one of the teenagers they’d found here, was still riding his bike along the road, making for the supply warehouse where he did double duty as both a user of the stores and a daytime guard. Across the street, another couple strode along together, making small talk. Though Garrett expected it was something slightly more complicated than “small talk” would have been a year ago. No one had much time these days for anything that didn’t directly contribute to their survival.

  Three months here, which made it October, as far as he and Alice could guess, and they’d settled in and made a relatively safe and secure home for themselves. Garrett, Alice, Manny, Julia, and the rest of the ragtag crew that had managed to escape Green’s alternate universe had chosen houses for themselves—an easy process, since there had been so many open—and set out the day after their arrival to figure out what their next steps were.

  They’d gathered the people who were still left in the town—a mere handful—found out what supplies they had, and started planning missions to go out into the countryside for more supplies. The most surprising part had been that some of the townspeople had seemed to know Alice already, which had made Garrett suspect that this was a town she’d been secretly prepping for her own future, before Green had found and arrested her. A small town that she’d known of, indeed. This had been her insurance against the disaster she could see coming. Her own fallout shelter.

  Again, though, he hadn’t asked. He wasn’t the sort to look a gift horse in the mouth. He just sent up a silent prayer of thanks for her vision and started making lists of the things they needed.

  At that first meeting, his group of former prisoners and the townspeople had taken a vote and elected Garrett leader, much to his shock. They’d used solid reasoning, though—he’d done time in a military environment and had run his own business. Those who had broken out of the prison had also brought up the fact that he’d organized the entire effort, and though he’d been surprised, Garrett hadn’t been able to argue with them in that regard. Besides, there were things he knew they needed to do. And he didn’t feel certain that anyone else was going to make sure they were done.

  Before Garrett and his team had arrived, the people of Trinity Ranch had been surviving on supplies they found in empty houses in town, but they had failed to come up with a plan to replenish their dwindling food, water, gas, and other necessities. Months later, and though the attempts the townspeople had made at farming in the harsh climate had been largely unsuccessful, Garrett had organized searches to other towns to gather the supplies they needed.

  These days, the place was running pretty well.

  Every time a wanderer arrived in their little town, the current residents did interviews and then either invited the newcomers to stay or sent them on their way. The population of Trinity Ranch was now up to a whopping twenty-eight people, which even included some kids.

  Garrett had to admit that he took pride in what they’d built here. Pride in the fact that they were even managing to survive, against incredibly stacked odds. No electricity. No water. No real contact with the outside world, and no way of telling whether the nanovirus was still out there or not. No way of knowing whether the outside world even still existed.

  Or if it would welcome them if they showed back up on the radar.

  Because he knew that at some point they were going to have to do that. Trinity Ranch was a great stopping point, but that was all it could ever really be. They would eventually run out of other towns to raid, and once that happened, they would be out of supplies. Out of water. No, they were going to have to move on. As leader, it was his job to figure out how they were going to do that—and when.

  Soon, he thought. It was going to have to be soon. He’d seen strangers in the distance too often lately, and there was no way of knowing whether they were friend or foe. Ally or enemy. The town was fairly well fortified, and he had several men here who could handle a gun. The problem was, they were also a town that had a stockpile of supplies. Supplies that other people would want. And that made them a target.

  Garrett had developed a system of guards, and conducted defense drills with those guards. They had watch posts and a system of fire signals in case things went south. But they were only twenty-eight people, and some of them were children. Even the guards… Well, it had occurred to him that there was a good chance those guards might become too lax at some point, as domesticated life took over. Even guards can get sloppy when they think they’re safe.

  And that didn’t even take into account the number of military bases lying around in this part of the state. Given what happened before, with General Green, he didn’t trust them. Any time they made their way onto a base he did it with his heart in his throat, his finger on the trigger of his gun. Military bases seemed to attract nutjobs, and he wasn’t in a hurry to run into another man who thought he was going to rule the world now that the U.S. government seemed to have fallen.

  “Hey Bart, wait up!” he called out suddenly to the boy on the bike.

  The kid skidded to a stop and turned, his face breaking into a grin when he saw Garrett. “What’s up, Cap?” he asked, using the nickname he’d given Garrett on Day 1—and which Garrett had never gotten used to. He knew what it was—a nod to Captain America of comic book fame. But there was no way he could live up to it.

  No way he’d ever even try.

  Still, it had been important to a kid who had lost his entire family to starvation. Garret hadn’t had the heart to disappoint him by making fun of the nickname.

  “You going to the old schoolhouse?” he asked.

 

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