WHISKEY BENT and HELLBOUND- the Ranger and the Runaway Tales- Book Two

Chapter 2

COLD

OUTSIDE CHURCH'S CHICKEN

NORTH OF HOUSTON, TEXAS

April 2, 1985

Stacy Jo Cassias rushed back to the truck and gently placed the sleeping baby back in her car seat—covered her with the thick blanket and climbed into the passenger seat and waited.

The Ranger had been in the bathroom a long time and she was sure it wasn't because he was caught up in some cheesy Harlequin paperback. No, something told her he was in the bathroom getting drinking... again. It wasn't like he needed to hide it. She'd watched him drink steadily since they met back at the redneck BBQ joint. It bothered her none then, but things changed after Houston.

Sure, the man was surly as a newly neutered grizzly bear on a two-week bender when she first met him, but once all the horrific insanity happened to his wife and his daughter, Stacy Jo saw an immediate change in the Ranger, and it was not for the better.

She watched the entrance to the dark restaurant through the rain painting the windshield with a yellow-tainted prism that washed white every few seconds as bright lightning flashed across the sky. Any other time, she would have enjoyed mother nature's fireworks, but that was before those damn terrorists set off their stupid bombs, sending the virus into the air and caused the world to go crazy. It seemed that the Ranger wasn't the only thing falling apart now.

She waited in the darkness of the parking lot that extended to the bleak world beyond. All around her the dead people wandered and seem to be slowly gathering closer to the truck and diner.

A bright, long lightning bolt flashed through the sky, illuminated the vast array of crashed or stalled cars, littered with the dead, or undead that walked, staggered in the blackness, like sleeping children looking for a glass of water in the middle of the night. Their god-awful, gravely groans and calls cut through the driving rain and pounding thunder. While she couldn't make out every word, what was clear—Children of Light... die. Over and over again, like a chilling, never-ending, skipping record.

She and the Ranger had talked about the dead's eerie words and what the hell they were and if they were really zombies? Zombies in the Hollywood, Romero sense. He wasn't much of talker after he torched his house, not that he was Loose Lips Larry, prior, but still. It seemed the only conversation he was willing to have, was with the whiskey bottle. She fully understood that too. The urge to smoke weed taunted her since she ran out back in Houston. It seemed that booze was much easier to get in this new, frightening world. She tried to make jokes about it and sometimes it made her smile, most times, though, she fought not to break down into a sobbing mess. But, she had to stay strong if they were going to survive. She sat there waited, pissed off at the drunken Ranger, freezing her ass off inside the cold truck, and now a babysitter again became her job- she was okay with it all. Oh sure the shamblers were out there waiting in the shadows to chow down on her, and apparently they wanted these dumb-ass, kids of the light thing, still, at the end of it all, this uncertain life was way better than the predestined baby-factory fate she faced back in Arcadia Falls. Yeah, she was embracing the life of an apocalypse survivor—at least this way; she could live and die any damn way she chose to.

Baby Bellia snored lightly in her car seat and Stacy Jo gently touched her cheek and watching the innocent little girl was again put the world in brutal perspective for the teenager. She wished the pickled Ranger would get his head out of his ass and straighten up because while she did not understand what was waiting for them out in the bitter rain-soaked Texas night; she was damn sure they would have to be ready to fight. And fighting was hard to do when you're six-sheets to the wind and have a baby-on-board was like a living dinner bell. When she was pounding on the restaurant door, Stacy Jo thought she heard the Ranger sobbing and talking to someone inside the fast food joint. No way in hell was she asking, she told him to get a move on and left it at that.

As the long moments passed, her nervous gaze never left the door to Church's Chicken. A grieving, drunk Texas Ranger only with a hair-trigger temper and a loaded pistol was a volatile combination Stacy Jo didn't want to even crunch the numbers on those dark odds. So when he walked out into the sideways, driving rain, his battered Stetson cocked on his head, she counted this as a good day.

The next mile, the next day was another frayed story altogether.

The Ranger got into the truck without a word, slammed the door, started the engine and searched the truck. She knew what he was looking for and sat silent for now.

He mumbled angrily when he came up empty, dropped the truck into gear and tore off into the night.

After a mile, he broke the chilly silence. "We need to make a stop. I need whiskey."

"Okay, if you think it's a good idea." She said with an edge of sarcasm. In her mind, she thought, the devil is truly in the darkness.