Fireside by Brian Parker Read Free Book Online Page A

playing the guitar hit every chord, but the drummer wasn’t very good. Regardless, it sounded great to Aeric, who’d rarely heard any type of music since the war and reminded him of the people of Eureka Springs that he met on his journey back to Missouri. Not many of the band members from San Angelo State had survived the first few weeks when Mayor Delgado was on the road going after his daughter in Austin.
    The ambushers must have relied solely on their outlooks on the edges of town because no one was guarding the building. Aeric took advantage of their overconfidence and emptied the container he’d kept all over the building’s wooden front porch.
    Once his man was off the roof, he lit the Molotov cocktails that he’d created in the glass bottles and hurled them high up onto the roof. The old tar paper on the roof caught quickly and he lit the gas he’d poured on the porch. Shouts of alarm spread from inside and Tyler’s men, whom he’d placed across the street, shot several people as they burst through the front door. They fell dead onto the flames blocking the doorway.
    Aeric threw the remaining Molotov through the open front door, spreading flames quickly across the inside as the old, dried wood caught fire. The heat from the roof combined with the blaze inside to create a raging inferno. Then the building blew up. Chunks of burning wood and superheated shards of glass flew in every direction. Whatever they’d stored inside with them had exploded once the ceiling collapsed.
    Tyler’s squad fired a few rounds towards the east as the sentry from that side of town came running up to see about the commotion. Aeric assumed that the threat was taken care of since they didn’t continue after their initial volley and hoped that no one else would come out of the woodwork to shoot at them as they left town.
    Aeric watched as the flames engulfed the building. He braved the heat to peer through the partially collapsed rock wall into the old store. Nothing moved inside, they were all dead. He wanted to feel remorse for what he’d done. He was only twenty years old, I should feel terrible for their deaths , he told himself, but he didn’t feel anything except relief that his people were safe. The townsfolk had done this to themselves by choosing to attack his convoy. There would be no mourning from him. He’d grown exponentially during his experiences over the past year. Age wasn’t a factor in the new world; you were either the hunter or the hunted. After his time with the Vultures, he would never allow himself to be hunted again.
    He stepped back and continued to observe the fire while his team scanned the area for any threats. Finally, after ten minutes, Traxx was satisfied that no one would sneak up on them and whistled to bring everyone over to the parking lot next to the burning building. Once his team had gathered around, he took a breath to steady himself and said, “Okay, that isn’t what we were expecting. I didn’t want to kill everybody. I figured that we’d extract a little revenge for what they did to Russ and they’d never try to ambush innocent people again.”
    “You didn’t know that they had explosives stored in there,” Tyler answered for the group.
    “I know,” he mumbled, still wondering to himself why he didn’t really care that every one of his enemies had died.
    “What if there were women or kids in there, just enjoying a concert?” one of the Shooters asked.
    “Stop,” Tyler ordered. “We can’t second-guess what happened. Traxx made the decision to attack and this is what happened. End of story. Beating ourselves up over what we could have done differently won’t change a damn thing. They’re all dead, end of story.”
    Aeric took heart from his friend’s words. The big man could always be counted on to reinforce his decisions, regardless of how horrible their outcome was. He nodded his head, “You’re right, buddy. Let’s leave town and go back to the trucks before all