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resulted in a shootout of some kind, it had been months since anyone flat-out tried to ambush the group. He wanted revenge.
    “Nicole, I want you to stay here with the injured and patch them up,” Aeric ordered. “Darren and Sam, you stay here to guard the trucks and help Nicole. The rest of you, drop your gear, except ammo and water. We’re gonna wipe that town off the map.”
    Tyler stepped over and whispered, “Are you sure? Our mission is to get the supplies from Garden City, not end up in a firefight in some piss-ant little town along the way.”
    Aeric thought about it for a moment, then answered, “Yeah, I’m sure, buddy. We can’t leave these fuckers behind. They killed Russ with some lucky shots as we sped through town going forty-five. What’s gonna happen when we’re all riding our bikes through here on the way back? It’s so quiet now that the sound of our trucks carries for miles. We caught them by surprise this time. You know we’ve got to put an end to them before they figure out another strategy for when we come back through.”
    Tyler nodded his head slowly. “You’re right. You usually are in these situations. You make the hard, but necessary call. Alright, let’s go.”
    The group rode their bicycles back down the highway until they were about a mile from town and then hid them off the side of the road. Since they didn’t really know the layout of the town, except for what they’d seen when they drove through, Aeric sent half his remaining force, just nine men, to the south of the main strip with Tyler and the other half stayed with him on the north side, where the ambush had originated.
    They moved into town rapidly, passing a sign announcing that the pre-apocalypse population had been eight hundred and fifty-three souls. Aeric wondered how many of those people were left alive. Probably not many since they’d been shot at by around twenty or so from the alley.
    He led his group around the first building and stumbled into a man sitting in a lawn chair under the shade of an awning. He started to bring his rifle up and stayed his hand. He smiled and slowly raised his hand away from the weapon. One of Aeric’s Gatherers slammed a spear through the watcher’s throat. He didn’t stand up and fire the gun like Aeric thought he would. Instead, he crumpled backwards into the chair and slid off, hitting the porch with a dull thud.
    Everyone fanned out quickly, expecting an attack. When it didn’t come, Aeric looked back to the man they’d killed. He wore multiple layers of clothing against the chill. Likely he was some kind of sentry on this end of town. He had some dirty brown water in a jug and a book sitting beside his post. The most interesting thing about his position was a rope that ran off towards the direction of the alley where they’d been ambushed.
    Aeric pointed at it and asked, “What do you make of that?”
    Charles, the man who’d speared the sentry, said, “I bet it leads to a bell or an alert system of some kind where the attackers are gathered.”
    Traxx nodded and grunted an affirmative. It made sense. They could post a sentry on either end of town, equip them with a means to communicate and warn the others of danger, then hide in the building. They likely didn’t have enough people to build solid fortifications and any effort would have been a waste, so this was their answer to keeping the place as secure as they could.
    “Hmm, wonder what that means?” Charles asked as he poked the body with the spear.
    “Huh?” Aeric sidestepped towards Charles so he could see what the man was pointing at. He wore a tattered Texas flag bandana around his left biceps.
    Aeric’s mind was thrust six months into the past when he, Tyler and Katie had fled from Austin. They’d all been physically and emotionally battered, nearly starving and barely hanging on, when they came across the remnants of a massive firefight. Bodies littered the highway, about half of them wearing a Texas