No Kinda Life

By Ryan King

When the world as we know it falls, the New Texas Republic rises to face the harsh realities of holding civilization together one town at a time. Such is the task before Austin Reynolds, Texas Ranger, as he rides into the community of New Hope where a shifty-eyed mayor, his alluring and beautiful assistant, and a blind prophesying preacher complicate an inevitable battle against wild northern raiders.

No Kinda Life is a post-apocalyptic adventure and traditional western rolled together into a riveting short novel.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Three Kings Publishing
• Release date: Jan 27, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386872689

Ryan King

Ryan King is a career army officer with multiple combat tours who continues to serve in the military. He has lived, worked, and traveled throughout Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. King is married to fellow author Kristin King and they have four young and energetic boys who keep them constantly busy. Ryan King writes post-apocalyptic, dystopian, thriller, horror, and action short stories, short novels, and novels. He has also published the first book in his post-apocalyptic Land of Tomorrow series called Glimmer of Hope. Ryan King also writes under the pen name of Charles R. King for historical non-fiction. He has published 22 works, primarily covering the Punic Wars and late Roman Republican Era which was the focus of his graduate degree. Five of these works are currently on seven different bestseller lists. King is also writing a historical fiction series about Hannibal and the Second Punic War. The first book in that series debuts 2013.

Book preview

Being a lawman’s no kinda life, his father had told him in that deep gravelly voice. The man hadn’t seen the inconsistency in the fact that he was a lawman himself. The law’s a bitch of a mistress to serve...even worse one to actually have feelings for, the tough old man had added on his deathbed, but by that point, he knew it was no use. By then, Austin was already a ranger.

Austin often thought his father had been right. Looking down the long dusty road made him uncharacteristically introspective. It was like any other byway in the northern part of the New Texas Republic...dry, hot, and deadly. He could have made a good living as a blacksmith, or a farmer, or a scavenger like many did, but he found out early that his choices were either to serve the law or get served up on it. Without the benefit of a badge, his fierce temper and highly emotional nature would have seen him hanged for sure. Beating fools, shooting bandits, and hanging criminals just seemed to come easy to him.

Ginger pawed restlessly beneath him, eager to move on. Austin patted her tan flank and spoke soothing words. He sat on a hill and gazed out to his right over the ruins of what had once been a large city. Gigantic buildings stood like metal and concrete corpses against a backdrop of dust and haze. The old stories said that in this city more cattle than could be counted went through the stockyards and slaughterhouses and out to feed a huge nation of people. Austin didn’t put much faith in the old stories; Amarillo looked like dozens of other wasted wrecks that were good now for nothing more than scavenging and ghost stories. He’d done some scavenging himself, but didn’t care for it. It wasn’t the fear of dead Old Ones that bothered him, it was the idea that the Death Plague might still await them there somewhere, buried and ready to ravage the land again. Let others dig through old tombs for bits of metal and rock, thought Austin.

A circling buzzard to the north caught the tall man’s attention, and he decided it was time to move on. He clicked his heels lightly to Ginger, and she gladly started off at a canter. He skirted wide around the hollow mounds, which were always filled with rusty steel and glass. These circled for miles round every old dead city and were inexplicably laid out in neat lines most of the time. Other long abandoned structures occasionally caused him to alter his course, all of them rotten and dead as old trees. He rode carefully for several hours around the ruins, watching for signs of sinkholes, which were always a danger this close to the old cities. He finally came to the north side of the ruins and turned again towards his destination, the town of New Hope. Austin thought the name was likely ironical and expected it to be like hundreds of other towns he’d seen, desperately clinging to life and full of pragmatic people who wanted a ranger in their midst as much as they would a rabid badger.

Like all the towns before, they’d cried for help, not comprehending what they were asking for, and the governor had sent one of his fabled Texas Rangers. Austin didn’t need to know the specifics of the problem; it would be the same as always...someone stronger was taking from someone weaker. The solution was also always the same...make them fight. Kicking and screaming against their will in most cases. The simple folks who cried out for deliverance all believed the same thing, that a ranger would come with knowledge, and skills, and, Lord help us, guns! They were all shocked when they realized they would have to fight themselves and, worse, that a ranger brought with him the law.

Most citizens of the New Texas Republic were spread out in small settlements away from the capital of Cooper. They lived in relative isolation and liked it that way. They paid their allotted taxes once a year, and sent their delegates to the required annual meeting, but otherwise they might as well have been in Kuba. They had their own traditions, rules...and laws. A ranger frequently ran into trouble with bigamy, prostitution, and animal sacrifice. Sometimes they even encountered settlements offering human sacrifices to appease the sun, or bring rain, or simply because their parents had done the same. None of these practices could be tolerated in a land struggling to maintain its population against the masses from the various Mexican Baronies to the south and the wild plainsmen to the north.

Austin saw smoke rising in the distance and figured he was close to New Hope. It was likely from a forge. A town this close to one of the old cities probably did well scavenging and trading metal. He pulled out an old weathered pair of binoculars and scanned the surrounding area. Through the haze, Austin could see cattle, sheep, and goats tended in scattered herds by young boys and girls. They carried metal rods to fight off wolves or boar, and Austin knew they all were certainly deadly shots with their slings. Shepherds were good, he thought to himself. They knew how to fight off animals and protect their own. Fighting off men wasn’t that big a difference.

He rode forward slowly along the main north road. Nearly a mile ahead, Austin saw two figures separate from the herds and begin approaching him with easy rangy lopes. After several long minutes, they came into closer view. Both were teenage boys, tall and thin, burned nearly brown by the fierce sun and wind. They wore a minimal amount of animals’ skins and were barefoot despite the rough blazing ground. Austin saw with approval that one of the two stopped about thirty yards away and loaded his sling while the other came closer.

Austin pulled up his horse and waited patiently as the boy eased forward with the metal rod held ready. It would have been comical if not for the fact that Austin was sure the boy watching could likely take his head off