Fireside by Brian Parker Read Free Book Online Page B

this smoke attracts attention from out in the wastes.”
    They turned westward and began walking towards the edge of town where they’d stashed their bikes. When they reached the building where Charles killed the sentry, Aeric was shocked to see a blanket resting on top of the man with the edges tucked in like a shroud.
    He immediately dispersed his team to check the surrounding buildings. They didn’t find anything so they continued warily back to their bikes. Everyone had the feeling that they were being watched as they made their way out of town towards their bikes. No one said anything as they pedaled hard to put distance between themselves and the strange little town in the middle of the Texas wasteland.

 
    THREE
     
    Tyler watched his friend help the wounded back into the truck as they loaded up to continue on to Garden City. Traxx made the decision to keep Russ’s body in the back of his truck instead of leaving it out in the middle of nowhere. It was the right thing to do and while the dead body in the cargo area may have made some of the Gatherers uneasy, they all knew that his family back in San Angelo would appreciate being able to bury him in the city’s cemetery.
    They were back on the road in under an hour. The rest of the trip to their destination was uneventful, except for a small pack of dogs that ran across the road in front of them. Tyler watched in amazement as some type of small furry animal chased the entire group. It took him a minute to work out that it was a badger chasing the dogs. He wondered what that was about. Badgers were known to be vicious, but weren’t wild dogs supposed to be worse? Packs of the damn things had attacked their checkpoints before, how the hell was a single badger scaring the entire group?
    He continued to stare after the strange procession while they drove past. Then they disappeared behind the trucks out into the wastes. A sign said that they were six miles from their destination so he put the odd animal behavior out of his mind and yelled to the men and women in the back of his truck to get ready to go.
    They rolled down the highway until they passed a sign proclaiming Garden City’s pre-war population was only three hundred and twelve. Almost immediately, Tyler saw a large, one story building on the left side of the road with a sign out front that said it was the Garden City Community Center, which is where they were told the food warehouse was hidden. It looked like a typical, abandoned building like they’d seen hundreds of times in their journey. They’d done an excellent job disguising the place.
    Aeric’s lead truck rolled past the building and they made a few turns down the narrow, dusty town streets to check out the town. It looked uninhabited. Their informants had told them that only a few people were left alive when they’d come through, maybe the residents had actually abandoned it. There wasn’t much around in the way of infrastructure either. Even before the war, the residents had obviously been poor. The only highlight that he could see was the football stadium. The town was tiny, but they still had that famous Texas football culture and built a nice stadium. Maybe that weirdo Justin had been correct about the old society’s priorities being misplaced. These people couldn’t have afforded the stadium. Regardless, they still built it in the hopes that their team would do well enough to win an obscure six-man football championship.
    As the trucks continued through the town, no one in Aeric’s party saw anyone, so they returned to the community center. A few trips around the building didn’t turn up any residents, or anything out of the ordinary, so Traxx decided to move in. They dropped a small squad of Gatherers behind the building to secure the back side and then parked the trucks across the street. He wanted to keep their primary means of escape out of the way of stray gunfire if it came to a firefight.
    “Alright, buddy. You ready?” Aeric