The Day After Never - Blood Honor (Post-Apocalyptic Dystopian Thriller) Read Online Free

that framed the main approach any intruder would likely take, and then repeated the process on the rear passage between two boulders, tying the wire to a pair of stout saplings to produce the same result.
    He padded back to where the woman lay on the sling, opened one of the water containers, and after sniffing it, held it up to Tango, who was contentedly munching at the long grass a few yards away.
    “Want some water, buddy?” he whispered, and Tango moved toward him as though understanding. The horse drank the entire thing, and Lucas reminded himself that Tango needed at least ten gallons a day, preferably more when he was exerting himself.
    Lucas unfurled his bedroll, draped it over the woman, and sat beside her. He listened to her breathing, interrupted only by the occasional hoot from an owl and the rumble of thunder. Lucas brushed a lock of light brown hair off her forehead and studied her face in the faint moonlight streaming through scattered clouds.
    “What are you doing out here, huh?” he muttered, the question more to himself than anything. “Good way to get yourself killed.”
    He decided to risk a small fire – given the clearing’s isolation and placement within a rocky area, it should be safe, and he’d done so before when he’d camped there in the past; in fact, his old fire pit was only footsteps away. After gathering some dried kindling and moving the small rocks of the fire pit closer, he doused the wood with his grandfather’s secret recipe and lit it with a disposable butane lighter – one of three he owned, and a highly prized trading item.
    The fire blazed to life, and he watched the flames dance as the wood crackled. He chewed slowly on some of the jerky he and his grandfather made at the ranch, lost in thought, mesmerized by the orange tongues licking at the night air.
    Lucas blinked away his fatigue and glanced over at Tango, who had returned to his grazing, unconcerned by his master’s one-sided discussion. Lucas shrugged in silent apology and sat back against the hard rock, his M4A1 in his lap with its Exelis NE-PVS-14 night vision scope in place and Kimber holstered at his hip, his lids heavy after the adrenaline from the day had burned off. He allowed himself the small luxury of a few seconds of shut-eye, just to relieve the burning itch. A vision of his late wife, Kerry, drifted into his mind, and he gave a sigh of quiet misery. Lucas held the image of her face as long as he could, and then it evaporated, fading like morning mist, her smiling eyes the last to go.
    Was that why he was taking the risk of trying to rescue the woman? Guilt over having failed to save his wife, the love of his life? At having chosen his job over her?
    “That’s not true,” he whispered, but the words sounded hollow.
    He’d been in the field in those early days of the collapse, trying to maintain order in an increasingly difficult environment. As the flu had spread, many law enforcement officials hadn’t reported to work. The National Guard was supposed to be deployed, although Lucas had serious doubts that many of them would report for duty either. Kerry had promised to stay at home with the doors locked and the shades drawn, but something – what, he’d never know – had compelled her to leave the safety of the house.
    When they’d found the body, it had taken all of Lucas’s resolve not to eat his Kimber and join her in the afterlife. He’d never discovered who had abused her in unspeakable ways before snuffing out her life, and in the degrading spiral of the following days he’d been forced to give up and concentrate on survival.
    “You couldn’t have done anything,” he whispered, rubbing a tired hand across his face. “Nobody could.”
    Which was true, yet felt like a lie. He should have been home, protecting her from evil instead of out on the job. He should have done…something.
    Of course, that would have required Lucas to have been a different man than the one he was – a man who