The Day After Never - Purgatory Road (Post-Apocalyptic Dystopian Thriller - Book 2) by Russell Blake

calculation. At a moderate pace, Tango would be able to reach the root cellar within an hour or two of nightfall – close enough. There he could graze and drink his fill, and Lucas could get the rest he’d more than earned by achieving the impossible.
    Which reminded him. He climbed into the saddle and rode away, feeling in his pocket for the note. Tango, in no mood to run anymore, settled into a fast walk as Lucas unfolded the paper and studied the neat script handwritten in ballpoint.
    As Sierra had said, it was complete gibberish, a series of meaningless letters and numbers in no apparent order, six lines long, with little repetition that he could see.
    “Great. Just great. Risked my neck for nothing,” Lucas muttered and folded the note back up, brow wrinkled in thought. The jumble of code was a daunting problem – and one he couldn’t shoot his way out of. His only hope was that Ruby might have some idea of how to go about decrypting the message, because at this point it might as well have been written in Swahili, so barring a miracle, they were dead in the water.
     

Chapter 13
    Sierra craned her neck to see why Ruby had opened the root cellar door. It was pitch black inside, twilight having come and gone an hour before, and they had settled down for the night. Eve was snuffling nearby on her bedroll, and Sierra frowned in the darkness from the sleeping area at Ruby’s silhouette framed in the doorway by faint moonlight.
    “Do you hear that?” Ruby whispered.
    “I’m trying to sleep.”
    “Listen.”
    Sierra sighed and forced herself to her feet. She joined the older woman at the threshold and cocked her head. After listening for several moments, she shrugged and made to return to her bedroll.
    “Wolves,” Sierra said.
    Ruby shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
    “I heard them before, when we were on the trail from Dallas. They howl like that at night.”
    Ruby turned and felt in her things for the night vision monocle, and then whispered to Sierra, “Stay here.”
    “Where are you going?” Sierra asked, her voice now concerned.
    “Take a look around.” She paused. “You might want to wake Eve up and get her ready to move.”
    “Wake her? Why?”
    “Because I said so,” Ruby snapped, shorter with the younger woman than she’d intended to be.
    Ruby pushed up the steps and out into the field. Jax and Nugget were standing by the trees, and they raised their heads as she approached. She approached the animals and murmured reassurance to them, and then her ears perked up at the sound of another faint lowing from the north.
    Ruby hurried through the field of tall grass to a rise of hill. She stood beside an outcropping of rock and scanned the area with the monocle. The landscape was basked in a green glow, and then her breath caught in her chest when she saw men in the distance, one of them with dogs straining at their leashes.
    Bloodhounds.
    Moving toward the root cellar from the bunker.
    Following their scent.
    The party was still at least three-quarters of a mile away and moving slowly, but Ruby didn’t hesitate. She ran as fast as her legs would carry her back to the cellar and whispered through the doorway.
    “The cartel is back. With dogs. We have to go. Grab your saddle and kit,” she ordered, and then stopped at the sight of Sierra standing just inside the door. “Where’s Eve? Did you wake her?”
    Sierra shook her head. “I will now.”
    Ruby’s mouth was a thin line. “You better get with the program, or you’re going to get yourself killed. If I tell you to do something, you do it.”
    Sierra spun and moved to the sleeping quarters while Ruby gathered her bug-out bag and saddle. She carried them outside and then headed back for her nylon saddlebags. Sierra was leading a sleepy Eve from the back, who looked up at Ruby through puffy eyes.
    “We have to go?” Eve asked.
    “Yes, sweetheart. And we need to be very, very quiet,” Ruby cautioned.
    “Okay.”
    “You need help