Fair Play: Unlikely Survivors, #3

By Amanda Blackwood

When a traitor is discovered among the tight knit group and one of the group is fatally injured, everyone turns to Missy for guidance. In the wake of tragedy and loss, she doesn't know what to do and sends the survivors of the Mountain Home masacre on a different path. Armed with a handgun, and a few close friends, the last remaining unlikely survivors strike out again, this time searching for revenge. When the truth is revealed, nobody is prepared for it, especially Missy.

 

Don't miss this thrilling conclusion to the epic trilogy of Unlikely Survivors.

 

• Book one: The Unlikely
• Book two: New Hope
• Book three: Fair Play

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mandolin Books
• Release date: Sep 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201644338

Book preview

Chapter 1

Starting Over

Idon’t know how long I had been squashed between Alex and Ben by the time we finally stopped for rest. It had been grueling, stopping just long enough for bio-breaks and refueling. We had barely gotten out of the mountains, but I knew instinctively that we couldn’t stay still for long. We still had many people on horses, and horses required rest and water just as much as people did when trekking through the desert, regardless of the season.

The sun blazed overhead, making the end of winter feel far more like the scorching heat of an Arizona summer. Waving heat vapor lines created optical illusions on the road ahead, fooling us into thinking we could see water. Things looked so desolate and lonely out there aside from the beginnings of a town up ahead that indicated a large population of 3,260 in Morongo Valley. We needed to keep moving for so many reasons.

We can’t stay here for long, Alex mirrored my own thoughts. It’s hot, and it’s still early. We’ll need some shelter for all of us. I came out here once when I was a kid, this far in the middle of nowhere. I remember there’s an old movie prop town not far away, something the studios built for filming a western. If we could find that - it’s not ideal, but it’s better than nothing.

He pointed out his window toward a small dirt road winding off through the rolling desert hills to the north. For a moment, I wondered if anyone would ever find our bodies were we to die in the sands. But who was I kidding, would anyone even care?

I looked once more to the road before us. He was right. It was better than nothing. Aside from the cars, I felt like we had been thrown back in time to the days of old westerns. We’d just had a shootout, buried the dead, abandoned a town, and escaped with our lives. The bullet wound in my leg was killing me, though I was grateful it had only been a nasty flesh wound. Still, as any wound of its sort would, it throbbed and ached. Unfortunately, it was something I was growing accustomed to. I spent most of my life feeling some kind of pain, but now it seemed as though it was all physical pain as the emotional pains began to heal, thanks to those around me.

Holly and David snoozed in the back seat, with Becca watching out the window at the never changing landscape of the California desert. We stuck to old dirt roads in order to skirt around any populated areas we could manage to avoid. More than once, we saw someone run out from a cabin hiding in the woods or around a sharp turn. They were caught unprepared, of course, and weren’t able to do much of anything except wave to us.

We pulled off the man-made roads and wound our way through a dry creek bed for a while. On through fields of nothing, stopping long enough to clear a path when necessary, we finally found our way to a main road again. The path of dust behind us gave our position away, and we needed to clear the air, so to speak. Too many dirt roads lead to too many dead ends in the canyons. Finally, we made the universal decision to just hit it hard on the main road and get through the town as fast as possible. Just as quickly as we had managed to get out of Morongo Valley, we hit a place called Yucca Valley, and our hearts sank.

The roads weren’t as littered with cars as they had been in the city, so traversing between them was considerably easier. We could have gone about fifty miles per hour without swerving that much if there weren’t so many people riding double on horses and riding on the roof of the cars to get through town. More and more people came out of local homes to watch us drive past, some crying out for help, others begging for food, and all of them looking desperate. It had been months without electricity or food. These people had to be surviving on scraps. But we had all we could carry.

Alex spotted a sign for Water Canyon and turned off the road heading north once more. The houses were far more sparse on Water Canyon road, with a small compound on a hillside to our right, followed by a lone house on the same side and a dry creek bed on the left. Dirt roads with mailboxes at the edge dotted the road, but the homes were far enough off the road they couldn’t see us, nor us them. Eventually, we started heading west again, past another compound of some established value on the right before the road turned northward again. Going was slow with that many people piled up, but we did our best. Finally, as we burst through the canyon walls a small town opened before us.

Pioneer Town was filled with a million Joshua trees and snakes, a few houses and rocks, but from what we can see from the main road, not much else. Everything we could see was dirt roads other than the one main road through town. Alex pointed to a little ranch-looking place on the other side of what appeared to have been a grand mansion at one time, long since abandoned to the elements. Nobody had lived there for many years. Just beyond that, the small ranch he was pointing at seemed just as empty and abandoned. It did, however, have a barn.

We carefully coasted down the road toward the little ranch, exposed in broad daylight. We were grateful no occupied homes were close enough to observe or hear us.

We pulled up to the front entrance and noticed the sign advertised the Haley Ranch Historical Movie Town, and Holly’s eyes lit up. She’d seen every old western she could get her hands on as a kid and immediately recognized what we saw as a movie used in several famous movies from as far back as the silent era and early talking films. Excitedly she explained to David how she could easily picture her favorite movie star cowboys riding into town on the same road we were taking.

It was like driving onto a movie set at first, but it quickly felt like we were traveling backward in time instead. While a ton of movies had been filmed on the property, it wasn’t the shell of a town I’d somehow expected, with false exteriors and hollow shells inside. The town appeared to be a functioning old west town. The town had everything from a barn to a homestead, a general store, and a Sheriff’s office. We headed straight for the barn.

By the time we all stopped, we were exhausted. We’d been traveling all night, and it was past noon. The people on horses were either not used to being on horses or hadn’t been on one in a long time. Nolan, surprisingly, had some experience but not much. For a city boy, he seemed to have some hidden talents. Stephanie did just fine on horses., The one she rode was one she’d personally owned since the horse was a young filly. The other five residents riding horses were pretty well accustomed.

Nolan had volunteered to ride because, in his own words, he wanted to, he was younger than most others and in good shape. He also wanted to keep more people in cars where it would be cool. He’d prefer Becky not risk her own safety by getting on a horse after suffering a great personal loss. He was referring to the death of Miranda but also understood the death of her abuser would also have a psychological impact. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know how he was familiar with that impact. But personally, I had enough experience with it to know if Nolan felt like talking about it, he would eventually.

The horses were led to the stables and inside. The building wasn’t complete. There was no roof, but the minimal shade offered by the walls of the building and the ability to keep the animals corralled was our primary focus as we stretched our legs and looked for places to avoid the sun. A large western Saloon was on the corner intersection in the middle of town. I doubted we would find an innkeeper or bartender within the walls but figured we would at least find places to sit or lay down a while to rest. I wasn’t disappointed.

The bottles of alcohol on the walls were filled to the brim but not with water. Each one had been carefully filled with colored water and sealed tight to prevent evaporation. They were only props, but they were the most useful props I’d ever seen in my life. Each person who could manage it was belly up to the bar within minutes of getting everyone inside, each waiting for their whisky shot glass filled with dark brown unappetizing water. The nine wounded Mountain Home residents in total, were either brought in to sit at one of the old west round wooden poker tables or assisted to rest in the innkeeper’s quarters through the door at the far end of the bar. Each was given their own whisky or tequila bottle to quench their thirst. Alex grinned at me from behind the bar.

This has to be one of the coolest things I’ve ever done, he laughed. I always loved the old westerns, but I never figured I’d be in one.

Let’s just make sure we get the hell out of Dodge before high noon, huh? I grinned back. We’ve had enough of that lately. We both chuckled but sobered quickly, realizing most people didn’t have our morbid sense of humor.

Several people volunteered to carry bottles of liquor-water out to the horses to refresh them, while others assisted in finding rooms for the injured and their caretakers. Just as they were on the road, the medical care duties were split up between Ben, Becca, Mary the Dentist, and Juan, our resident firefighter with medical training. With nine injured, other than myself, we were stacking the rooms with more people than beds. We had just come from homemade blankets and mattresses on the floor, so sleeping on recreated antique rope beds and straw mattresses was luxurious.

Chapter 2

Folks Adapt

As soon as I laid down , Ben began fussing over my leg again. He’d already rebandaged it a couple of times on the road, but I guess he wasn’t happy with his work quite yet. Now that he had plenty of water and even a first aid kit abandoned on the homestead set at the far end of town, he knew he could do a much better job with me and with the others.

Just as they would have done in the old west while in a similar situation, Ben used a long horse hair to stitch up my leg. It had broken through the flimsy stitches he’d formed with what was left over from his Los Angeles stash. It was healing nicely, it seemed. Alex stood by and watched, unphased by something that would make most people a bit squeamish.

You must have seen a lot out there on the job, I nodded. I heard cars start in the distance as some of the others made it their job to hide the transportation behind the buildings so it would be less obvious the ranch had unwelcome guests.

I’ve seen plenty, he nodded, leaning over to peek through the curtains at the moving cars. Sunlight streaked across his face to mock the wooden shutters on the windows.

I guess folks adapt, Ben added. Look at you, he grinned. I don’t even have to tell you some dumb hitchhiking story to distract you while you get a needle stitching you up anymore. He smiled, and I laughed. He finished his last stitch and mopped up the blood with a cloth in a small bowl of water.

Hitchhiking? Alex asked. I laughed again.

I’ll tell you the story sometime, Ben agreed to Alex, nodding to me. Just hopefully not for the same reason.

His demeanor and appearance had changed probably as much as my own had. Still, it was hard to judge since I hadn’t actually seen myself in a mirror since we’d left Mountain Home that fateful day in the winter. I knew my hair had grown out quite a bit since then, and judging from the way certain things fit, I’d lost a significant amount of weight, but Ben was like night and day.

The lines in Ben’s face seemed deeper, more full of worry, but also compassion. His three-day growth I’d noticed the day we met had changed many times since then, first getting shaved off completely, then growing into a full beard before being cut off again. Now, as though he’d seen something in David that he liked and appreciated, Ben had decided to try growing a goatee. His short hair had grown long and just as unruly as ever when not groomed, but after brushing it out, it shone like a fresh blanket of snow and reminded me of Santa. Had he kept the beard, he could have passed as the man himself. Except Ben had also lost a considerable amount of weight like me.

His originally heavy set frame was gone. He seemed more gaunt and drawn, with sunken cheekbones and hollowed eyes. He didn’t look like a homeless man anymore, though the rest of us had moved more in that direction. He’d found some overalls on a trip to Big Bear during one of the sparse supply runs and wore them with pride, the first pair he’d had since he was a kid, he claimed. With those thrown over an old t-shirt and a pair of well-worn shoes, he looked almost like he’d walked out of an old west movie himself. He was almost as much a prop as the fake whisky. He smiled more, laughed often, and seemed to genuinely be enjoying his life amid the wild ride we were on. Yes, I thought to myself again, pretty much everything about Ben had changed.

Alex had changed a lot too. Like us, he’d lost weight, but was always thin and fit, so it wasn’t as noticeable. His hair grew longer around his ears, which drove him crazy, so he had begun getting haircuts from Holly whenever she had time. When he found out that one of the injured people had been a barber, he got a little too excited for his own good. He still walked everywhere he went with that assigned sense of purpose most police officers have. But it was also a bit more relaxed as though he knew he didn’t need to be anywhere in as much of a hurry anymore. He’d let go of his sense of control, knowing nothing anymore could be predicted outside of some human reaction to certain situations. The darkness I’d seen in his eyes had lifted, and it was like he was finally starting to heal from the deaths of Julia and Auralia. He found joy in life again.

Oliver and Cooper had lost a little weight when we first arrived at the cabin but gained it back quickly as the girls learned feeding them table scraps of meat was the greatest way to earn their affection and loyalty. They bulked out again quickly, Cooper actually gaining perhaps a bit too much weight. I never knew a toothless cat could scarf down so much spare venison. They had also finally gotten used to being outside but staying close to me. I knew they could be easily found with nothing more than a whistle or a snap of my fingers.

Holly had changed since we’d left the city too. I noticed as she came in with her typical gentle greeting and a plate of snacks for the three of us. a I hadn’t known her all that well for the first few weeks we’d spent together, but time brought us into one another’s paths more throughout the winter, and I’d come to regard her as one of my closest friends. I adored her. She made it her personal mission to care for others, sometimes to the detriment of her self-care. It was one of the many things I adored about her. She was also an eternal optimist. If anyone said they couldn’t do something, she’d come up with a million reasons why they not only could but should. More than once, she was the driving force, pushing me ever onward in my quest to forgive myself for the many mistakes I’d made in my past to have a more fulfilling relationship with Alex.

Her red hair had grown several