Chapter 1 #2
Instead of aiming for the weapon itself, as he had done with the first man, Vin needed a more direct solution to this problem. He fired off another round, this one burying itself in the man’s shoulder.
He screamed in terror as he fell back and away, dropping his rifle and clutching at the wound as though it were life-threatening. It wasn’t, but Vin wasn’t about to start reassuring him.
“Shit!” the heavy-set man cried out, clutching at the bloody stump where half of his finger had once been. He turned and ran, heading for the ATVs, completely content to leave his associate bleeding into the dirt.
Vin shook his head and holstered his gun, adding a little twirl around his finger as he did so. He grabbed the lasso on his belt and unfurled it, realizing by the portly man’s lack of speed that he had plenty of time.
Vin spun the lasso over her head and let it fly with expert precision. The loop encircled the fleeing man’s torso, and Vin tugged back on it hard. The poacher was taken off his feet, slamming hard on his back on the desert floor.
He instantly started squirming and flopping around like a fish experiencing dry land for the first time. Vin kept a strong grip on the rope, pulling it and gathering up the excess as he advanced on the man.
“Stop it,” the poacher cried out, trying and failing to free himself from the thick binding. “You don’t gotta do this.”
“I know,” Vin replied. “I’m doing it because I get paid to do it.
” Vin pressed one of his cowboy boots down into the man’s knee, not hard enough to break it or do any damage, but enough to cause pain and stop him from moving.
Vin leaned down to look at the pathetic struggling figure. “I also really wanna do it.”
Vin could hear the other man behind him, crawling around on the dirt. He was more resilient than Vin had given him credit for. Keeping one foot firmly planted on the heavy man’s knee, Vin drew his revolver again and turned around, pointing it at the long-haired poacher. The man froze in place.
“Partner, you move another inch and the next bullet goes into your kneecap,” he said. “And trust me, that’s not a pain you wanna feel.”
The man stopped moving, and Vin took a second to revel in the satisfaction of the moment.
It felt good to be doing good work out here.
Save for his time on the ranch, he had done so little good work in his life.
Even his service in the Middle East had been marred by horrible memories and morally questionable actions.
As Vin was about to turn his attention back to the man on the ground beneath him, a foreign sound filled the air—one that definitely did not belong out here in the desert.
It sounded like an explosion, but it lacked the strength and booming power of one.
It was certainly an eruption of some sort, but it carried a tinny resonance to it, like something electrical.
The sound was accompanied by a shockwave that blew across the barren landscape, kicking up dust and debris that momentarily filled Vin’s view.
Most people would not have recognized this noise. Vin Jackson was not most people.
Thinking quickly, he holstered his gun and pulled the GPS device from his belt. He thumbed the power button but was dismayed when he saw that it didn’t respond.
Dismayed, but not surprised.
He remembered that sound well. It brought back horrible memories of a mission in the Afghani desert some eighteen years ago. He remembered watching as all electrical devices died, as cars stopped in the street. People panicked, and society quickly started to turn on itself.
And here it was, happening again. But this time, he was standing on American soil.
Vin removed his boot from the heavy-set man and walked back to where his rifle still lay in the dirt.
Vin grabbed it up. He then stalked toward the downed man with the shoulder wound, who scurried back on his rear at Vin’s approach.
He picked up the long-haired poacher’s weapon, slinging both of the high-powered rifles over his shoulder.
“What are you doing?” the man with the shoulder wound asked as Vin whistled loudly into the open air.
The sound of hoofs slamming into the desert rock could be heard clip-clopping toward him. Evaline arrived and stopped beside him, as she had been trained to do since the earliest days of her colt years.
“The hell?” the heavyset man exclaimed, working to free himself from the lasso.
Vin had other ropes back at home and was willing to let this one go. Everything had just changed, and suddenly, collecting this bounty held little meaning for him. The concept of money itself had no meaning, either, or at least it wouldn’t very soon if his suspicions were correct.
“You’re gonna wanna get out of here,” he said down to the two wounded men. “But it ain’t gonna be easy.”
“What are you talking about?” the heavy man replied, fully freeing himself from the rope and jumping to his feet, gaping open-mouthed up at Vin, who sat atop his horse, silhouetted against the sun. “You ain’t taking us in?”
“Things have changed,” Vin growled.
The heavy man didn’t look this gift horse in the mouth.
He ran toward his four-wheeler, completely ignoring his compatriot, who called for him on the ground, begging for help.
His screams echoed through the empty space.
The larger man climbed on top of his vehicle and hit the ignition; however, nothing happened.
Vin nodded to himself, unhappy in this case that he was correct.
“No,” the man said, trying unsuccessfully again and again to hit the gas. “No, no, no.” He jumped off the vehicle and ran to the other one, trying to bring it to life. However, it too simply sputtered and died quickly. “What the hell?”
Vin shook his head, his mind spinning. He had known this day was likely to come, but he had hoped it wouldn’t be until long after he was in the ground.
“What’s going on here?” the heavy man asked, the edge of panic rising in his voice. He was starting to realize that he was stranded in the desert with no vehicle.
“An EMP just went off,” Vin said, simply, as if this were a normal thing to say to a person.
“A what?” the poacher shoulder back.
Vin sighed. “An electro-magnetic pulse,” he said slowly. “Knocks out all the power, completely decimates the grid. Kills off anything with a battery. Fries it until it’s useless.”
“Wait, so you’re saying these things are busted?” he cried in a blind panic.
“I’m sayin’ they’re dead,” Vin replied, turning Evaline around as he started to trot away.
“Wait,” the heavy-set man cried out while his partner continued to scream for help on the ground. “You can’t just leave us here.”
Vin ignored the man and kept moving away slowly, his mind running a million miles per hour. A loud wolf’s howl could be heard in the wind, and the two poachers froze in place.
“Good luck with that,” Vin couldn’t resist calling back over his shoulder as the hunters began to realize they were about to be hunted.
“Wait, leave us our guns!” the heavy man yelled. “Please!”
But Vin ignored them, kicking Evaline into motion and taking off across the desert while the two stranded poachers screamed after him.
The world had just changed, and everything was different now.