Mountain Man (Book 2): Homeland Read online

  Homeland

  Book Two of the

  Mountain Man series.

  by

  Nathan Jones

  Copyright © 2018 Nathan Jones

  All rights reserved.

  This book or any portion thereof

  may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

  without the express written permission of the author

  except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  The events depicted in this novel are fictional. The characters in this story are also fictional, and any resemblance to anyone living or dead is entirely unintentional.

  Acknowledgments

  This book is dedicated to my brother Seth, who's helped me with a lot of the technical aspects of publishing I'm not as savvy with. Which is an embarrassingly long list. I couldn't have done this without him.

  I'm also deeply grateful to all the readers who've offered so much support and encouragement with Badlands. Although I'd originally intended it to be a standalone and had no immediate plans to add to it, there was plenty of potential for more to be told of what happens to Tom and Kristy. No book is truly a standalone when there's more there to explore.

  The many requests to continue the story provided me with inspiration to do just that, so Badlands has now become Book One of the Mountain Man series, with Homeland following it up and more coming soon.

  I can honestly say the series wouldn't exist without you.

  by Nathan Jones

  POST-APOCALYPTIC

  BEST LAID PLANS

  Fuel

  Shortage

  Invasion

  Reclamation

  Determination

  NUCLEAR WINTER

  First Winter

  First Spring

  Chain Breakers

  Going Home

  Fallen City

  MOUNTAIN MAN

  Badlands

  Homeland

  Mountain War (upcoming)

  SCIENCE FICTION

  STELLAR MERGER

  Boralene

  Ensom (upcoming)

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Epilogue

  Author's Note

  Links to books by Nathan Jones

  Prologue

  Occupied

  Grand Junction was crawling with soldiers. That wasn't a good thing; it wasn't so much that the men below were wearing the wrong uniform as the fact that they were wearing uniforms at all.

  The city's militia had been a somewhat ragtag group, volunteers who brought their own weapons and equipment to the fight to defend their homes and family, and they'd had no uniform so to speak of. But they'd fought with bravery and skill, using their knowledge of the land around Grand Junction to set up ambushes, block roads, and patrol against enemy spies and scouts.

  And in spite of the fact that they'd been outnumbered, outgunned, and more poorly supplied and trained than their enemies, they'd still somehow managed to hold back the invaders from the south for almost four years. Which was why the sight of Sangue patrolling the streets of the newly occupied city hit Tom like a punch in the gut.

  When had it happened? How?

  The last time he'd been through here on a trade run, little more than six months ago, the city had still been going strong. Suffering from lack of trade and besieged by Sangue in all directions but north and west, their last two options for trade, but still full of piss and vinegar and ready to defend their homes.

  Now Tom watched with a sick feeling as vehicles and groups of armed men crawled through the newly occupied town. His response wasn't just out of sympathy for the awful fate the citizens of Grand Junction now faced, although he genuinely grieved for them; he hadn't forgotten the generosity with which the city had welcomed the return of Simon Randall's failed convoy from Newpost, the food, and shelter and other amenities the citizens had offered a traumatized group of freed slaves.

  The thought that their kindness would now be repaid with facing that horror themselves filled him with helpless rage.

  But as always, pragmatic considerations came first. It had been almost four years since the convoy's survivors had returned from their ill-fated journey to Newpost. Four years with Sangue and the army they served as a vanguard for creeping through the lower United States, relentless and implacable but above all slow.

  The invasion had been going on for so long that some in Emery seemed to have gotten the idea that the enemy would never get to them in their little flyspeck town in Central Utah. Most had even been confident that Grand Junction, with its population of over twenty thousand people and its prosperity from trade, would stand fast against the invaders from the south until Sangue gave up and left it alone.

  Well, here Grand Junction was, in enemy hands and its poor people suffering abuses Tom had already seen more of than he'd prefer to witness in ten lifetimes. And suddenly Emery didn't seem so far from enemy patrolled areas.

  Considering the fate of those captured by the invaders, that was a worry to give a man nightmares.

  Sangue was what the bandit vanguard of the army invading the US from the south called itself, Portuguese for “blood”. And over the years they'd lived up to that name. At first, they'd seemed content to take most of the prisoners they captured as slaves, a grim and brutal life for those poor people but at least they lived. But over time Sangue had begun killing more and more people, taking only the young and healthy adults as prisoners.

  Either they'd already captured as many slaves as they needed, or their bloodlust was growing by the year. Whichever it was, the once orderly raids on convoys and settlements that had taken place at the beginning of their invasion, which had left only the wounded executed, had become horrifying mass killings. Massacres that were more often than not preceded by sickening cruelty in the form of gang rape, torture, and mutilation.

  The rumors that trickled up from south of the border suggested that the slave camps were nearly as bad, the poor people there spared death but consigned to short, harsh lives of murderously backbreaking labor, degradation, violation, and cruel torment.

  It all painted the inarguable picture that Sangue were animals who needed to be put down. And after witnessing the aftermath of their depredations with his own eyes, way back near the beginning before they truly became monsters, Tom had no mercy in his heart for the invading soldiers.

  But even so, he had at least some inkling of their motivation, evil and unjust as it was.

  All signs pointed to the invaders being survivors from Brazil, a former BRICKS nation. BRICKS had been the competitors of the US and other NATO nations before and during the shortages fifteen years ago, and then had become enemies just in time for the Ultimatum to turn most of the developed world into an irradiated wasteland.

  Whatever side was to blame for the Ultimatum, Sangue's soldiers would've endured the same fate in their own country as Tom and the others in the US had faced. Forced to watch as loved ones were killed in nuclear blasts or doomed to slow death by radiation poison, reduced to scrabbling among the ruins of their society for scraps to survive.

  The
sort of raw, festering hatred that would grow from such horror was easy to understand. Ever since the Ultimatum, Tom had heard people express their bitter feelings for the BRICKS nations that had forced nuclear war and led to all this suffering. That anger had exploded into fierce hatred when Sangue, and later the rest of their army, swarmed across the border and began enslaving and killing people.

  Tom would've thought that with the horrors of the Ultimatum in all their pasts, people would learn a lesson from the death and suffering and just focus on building some kind of future for themselves. But he supposed that was just idealism, which tended to get shattered pretty quickly in the harsh world after global nuclear war.

  Unfortunately, Sangue had more than just a deep and vicious hatred fueling their war. They also had literal fuel. And vehicles. And guns. He'd even heard rumors they might have real military hardware like tanks and fighter aircraft, although so far they hadn't seemed to need any of that for their invasion.

  Unless of course, they'd trotted it out to take Grand Junction.

  Either way, it all made a nasty combination, men out for blood and with the means to spill it. Since their invasion had begun they'd spilled an ocean of it over most of the southernmost states of the former US, their territory growing by the year and the savagery of their acts keeping pace.

  And now they had Grand Junction, too.

  Tom lowered his trusty old binoculars, preparing to leave. He'd seen what he needed, more than he'd wanted to, really, and he didn't have time to sit around watching the trading city get torn apart by the enemy anyway. He was here scouting, while not far behind him a vulnerable convoy that had no idea what they were walking into was hard on his heels.

  So he slithered backward from his observation position at the top of the rise he'd scaled, an out of the way spot almost a mile to the west of Grand Junction that afforded him a good view of the city. As soon as it was safe he rose to a crouch and ghosted down the slope, picking his way over the rough ground towards the steep range of hills where he'd left the convoy.

  Skyler had groused about him taking the precaution of leading them along this miserable, circuitous route to Grand Junction, saying he was paranoid to the point of ridiculousness and was wasting all their time. Tom wasn't interested in saying “I told you so”, but although he'd picked this route in case Sangue bandits were lurking along the more common routes around the trading city, it had probably saved their lives from the enemy soldiers now swarming the area.

  Which was no reason why they shouldn't hightail it out of there, before some patrol strayed by and caught sight of a juicy target like a trading convoy with a dozen animals, half of them heavily loaded pack animals, and only six men to protect them.

  A half hour later he crested a steep broken slope to see the convoy winding along a trail down below. Relieved that they were still safe and undiscovered, Tom waved to get their attention and motioned for them to get out of sight.

  They looked more confused than alarmed by the signal, but obediently made for a nearby stand of trees. All aside from two figures, who dismounted and handed off the reins of their horses before scrambling up the slope towards him.

  The first was his friend Bob Hendrickson, a man he'd met over four years back while leading Simon's convoy of settlers southeast to Texas. The Hendricksons were practically a second family to Tom's wife Kristy, who he'd also met on that convoy, and now lived in a cabin a stone's throw from his family's winter lodge, on their shared ranch up in the mountains above Emery.

  And of course with Bob, completely ignoring his orders and doing his own thing as usual, was Tom's adopted son Skyler Graham, Kristy's boy. Although at fourteen years old not so much a boy anymore.

  “Well, Trapper?” Bob called in a low voice when they got close enough. “More paranoia? Bad enough you had to scout ahead when we're less than an hour's walk from Grand Junction, without making us hide out in the middle of nowhere.”

  “Seriously,” Skyler agreed. “You know I've been scouting around the convoy while you've been gone and haven't seen a thing.”

  Tom met their eyes in turn and shook his head grimly. “We're lucky we got this far, and no point going another step.”

  Bob was slow to catch his meaning, but Skyler immediately flinched, face paling. “No way. Grand Junction was a fortress swarming with Sheriff Gray's militia. Sangue barely even tried to touch it.”

  “Maybe they were just holding off and planning until they were sure they could take it,” Tom replied. “I know what I saw.”

  “Hold up, Tom,” Bob snapped. “You can't just talk all vague like that and get the boy fearing the worst. Why don't you tell us outright what's happened?”

  So Tom did. Once they'd heard it all his friend and adopted son insisted on seeing the occupied city for themselves. So he headed down to share the news with the convoy, left the pack animals in the care of one of the Emery folk, and led everyone else to his previous safe lookout spot.

  Bob looked the most shaken by the view of the soldiers swarming the captured buildings. And even more so by the newly built prison camp on the southeast end of the city, where the remaining Grand Junction survivors awaited a life of miserable slavery. But then, the sight would affect him deepest; he was the only one among those here who'd been captured by Sangue, along with his wife Vicky and daughter Lisa.

  The poor man had been beaten unconscious trying to protect his wife, then was forced to helplessly watch the unspeakable things done to her and the other women of Simon's convoy for three hellish weeks. He knew better than anyone the nightmare looming ahead of the poor citizens of Grand Junction.

  “What're we going to do now?” Skyler asked in a barely audible voice, staring down at the occupied city in horror. “Emery needs our convoy to succeed. We need it to succeed.”

  A few of the men muttered at the teenager worrying about their own fate at a time like this, but Tom couldn't fault him; these last four years he'd raised his adopted son to be pragmatic. And Skyler was right, they'd been saving for half a year to scrape together trade goods for this run to Grand Junction, and counting on getting things in the trade city they couldn't make themselves. Nothing truly life and death, but things that would've vastly improved their quality of life.

  Not to mention the fact that with two weeks here and the same distance to get back home, they'd had to invest a lot of food to feed six men, to say nothing of time. And many of the trade goods they carried weren't things they personally needed, so if they couldn't be traded they'd be completely useless.

  Instead of profiting from the convoy they stood to lose heavily instead.

  “We can turn north, make for Wyoming,” Bob suggested. “Sangue can't have made it that far.”

  “Sangue wasn't supposed to have made it this far!” Skyler shot back. “They haven't been in a hurry with their raids at all, taking the states like a slow rot and leaving the towns and cities for last. Besides, if we use up supplies going to Wyoming this trip won't even be profitable anymore.”

  “So what, we just go home?” Bob demanded. “Then it goes from being unprofitable to being a total loss! Our families are counting on us to bring back the things we need.”

  Tom cut into the argument, voice cold and rational. “We have to go home. Grand Junction was the main thing standing between us and Sangue raiders heading right down I-70 to our doorstep. We've got to get back and warn people in Utah that they'll be next.”

  It took a few moments for realization to sink in among his companions. Emery was roughly 170 miles away, so on the surface, this claim seemed ludicrous. Especially since the bandits from the former BRICKS nation had been seen along the Interstate every now and then, having come up through Moab or circled the Vegas fallout zone.

  But with Grand Junction taken, the enemy would almost certainly begin using I-70 to move troops, in preparation for taking more territory to the west. Once that happened Emery wouldn't be directly in their path since the town was several miles off the Interstate on smaller Highwa
y 10, but they'd definitely be far too close for comfort.

  Close enough that, if their friends and loved ones in the little town didn't prepare to evacuate, they'd find themselves in the same grim situation as the people in the city below.

  “They won't be coming around there anytime soon, will they?” Teddy Knudsen asked worriedly; he had a wife and three children waiting back home, as well as two sets of elderly parents to look after. “They move slow, as the boy said.”

  Skyler scowled at being called a boy, but nobody paid him any mind. All eyes were on Tom, waiting for an answer. As if he had any to offer them. He could only shake his head. “If they're encountering resistance they move slow and cautious. Otherwise, I don't see why they wouldn't move just as fast as they liked.”

  Teddy looked around grimly. “Then my vote's on getting home yesterday.”

  Nobody could argue that; they all had loved ones back home, and the thought of getting back to them to find Sangue had already come was enough to fuel nightmares. Tom already had enough of those after leaving his family behind to lead this convoy, especially with Molly so young and the baby coming in a few months.

  They wasted no time getting back to the convoy and turning it around. And now Tom, Skyler, Bob, and Teddy all roamed in every direction with their ears pricked for the sound of engines.

  Needless to say, they pushed on into the night, slept poorly, and broke camp early to hurry on home.

  Chapter One

  Warning

  Even though the convoy reached Emery a couple hours before dark, they were all weary as they dismounted. In spite of that, it was a relief to see the town still there, peaceful as ever.

  Teddy and his oldest son Ted Jr. led Tom's, Skyler's, and Bob's mounts and packhorses away to care for overnight for a small fee, since in spite of the relatively early hour they had no hope of reaching their home up in the mountain valley today.