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bed.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter 5
     
         It was more than seven years since Nathan Martel shot the Huckabees and claimed their farm as his own. Actually, he’d lost track of time long before, and he didn’t have a clue how long it was.
         All he knew was that it had been a hell of a long time.
         It had been at least three years since he stopped venturing out.
         All the farms and ranches within walking distance were either well-guarded or had been picked clean by him or other looters.
         One of the pickups blocking the long lonely road had a flat front tire.
         And neither would start, their batteries having gone dead long before.
         Martel had aged much more than seven years, of course. Although he survived, and actually had an easier time than most other survivors, it was still a very harsh life.
         Once he stopped venturing out, he’d accepted the life of a hermit. In his experience, most human beings were just scum-sucking pigs anyway. Few were worth the time talking to. And every friend he’d ever had betrayed him in one way or another.
         He didn’t miss other humans.
         Well, not much.
         He still longed for the warmth of a woman’s body next to his when he bedded down at night. Still missed the things a willing woman could do for him, and do to him.
         Still missed the thrill of forcing an unwilling woman to fulfill his needs.
         All in all though, he was content to just spend the rest of his years in solitude, keeping to himself on the Huckabee farm. Even if it meant being without a woman.
         But then he ran out of meat.
         The huge pile of beef and pork chunks that had once been as high as his head were finally gone.
         But it was just as well.
         By this time temperatures were starting to rise. He’d developed a habit of checking the old fashioned dial thermometer on the barn’s north wall each time he went for meat.
         The summer before the meat ran out it had climbed as high as thirty one degrees.
         He knew that the following summer the meat would have thawed and spoiled. So he was lucky in that he was able to finish it all without wasting any.
         He still had the stockpile of dried beans and vegetables.
         And he’d gotten used to eating feed corn. It actually wasn’t that bad when seasoned with Tabasco sauce or chili powder and a heavy dose of salt.
         It beat the hell out of prison slop, anyway.
         Then he ran out of jerky too.
         And Nathan Martel wasn’t cut out to be a vegetarian.
         But he was a good hunter before his evil side took over and helped him make a shambles of his life.
         Jason Huckabee had a great collection of weapons. Martel fancied a Remington rifle, still brand new and in the box. It was so new it still had the scent of factory-applied gun oil, and had never even been sighted in.
         But he could take care of that.
         After the thaw finally came, Martel walked six miles to another farmhouse with another family of survivors.
         He shot them at a distance. All three of them.
         The youngest son was still kicking and rolling around in agony when Martel climbed into the family’s pickup.
         He wasn’t even decent enough to put the boy out of his misery.
         He just laughed as he drove by.
         He used the truck to travel to and from the woods north and east of Junction. The deer there had survived in limited numbers, and no other hunters seemed to have discovered that fact yet.
         On the day John and Hannah got aboard Colonel Travis Montgomery’s helicopter and flew to San Antonio to take a tour, Martel happened to be hunting for a deer to feed him for a couple of months.
         He was at one of his favorite hunting spots, where he’d taken a couple of small bucks the