The Borrowed World Series | Book 8 | Blood & Banjos Read online

  Copyright © 2020 by Franklin Horton

  Cover by Deranged Doctor Design

  Editing by Felicia Sullivan

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Also by Franklin Horton

  The Borrowed World Series

  The Borrowed World

  Ashes of the Unspeakable

  Legion of Despair

  No Time For Mourning

  Valley of Vengeance

  Switched On

  The Ungovernable

  The Locker Nine Series

  Locker Nine

  Grace Under Fire

  Compound Fracture

  Blood Bought

  The Mad Mick Series

  The Mad Mick

  Masters of Mayhem

  Brutal Business

  Northern Sun

  The Ty Stone Series

  Hard Trauma

  The Way of Dan Series

  Burning Down Boise

  Stand-Alone Novels

  Random Acts

  About the Author

  Franklin Horton lives and writes in the mountains of Southwestern Virginia. He is the author of several bestselling post-apocalyptic and thriller series. You can follow him on his website at franklinhorton.com.

  While you’re there please sign up for his mailing list for updates, event schedule, book recommendations, and discounts.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Prologue

  A Refresher

  The story of The Borrowed World begins with Jim Powell and his group of coworkers attending a meeting in Richmond, Virginia, when a terror attack rocks the nation. The wide scope of the attacks, primarily directed at infrastructure targets, leads to a cascading systems failure that soon affects utilities and communications. Attacks against oil refineries impact available stockpiles and refining capacity, forcing the U.S. to grind to a halt.

  Among this group, there are mixed feelings about the best course of action, but they arrive at the decision to begin their journey home before things get any worse. They don’t get far into their journey before they lose a coworker to violence when tensions boil over at a truck stop due to fuel restrictions. Unable to find any place to refill their vehicle, they are soon reduced to walking down the interstate highway. They’re not alone. Rest areas, truck stops, and highway exits are filled with stranded, desperate travelers.

  They eventually split up, with two of their party choosing to trust the government’s FEMA system to get them home. The remainder of the group, led by Jim Powell, decides to set off on foot. Jim had been a prepper for many years and had long been worried that he might one day have to walk home from Richmond. He’d developed a plan for that possibility, packing gear and planning a route he could travel on foot if that was his only option.

  His friend and coworker Gary was also a prepper and carried his own bugout bag. Another of their party, Randi, was not a prepper, but a feisty grandmother with grit and determination. She wasn’t interested in waiting around for the government to save her either. Like Jim and Gary, she wanted control of her own destiny.

  Back at home, in the absence of their stranded loved ones, their families struggled. Each faced difficulty as the majority of the nation lost power, cell service, and law enforcement. Communication became sporadic, then failed entirely. Thieves and predators operated with impunity. Jails were turned out, the criminals now aware that there would be no legal recourse for their actions.

  Jim’s family struggled with desperate neighbors willing to steal to survive. They also struggled to remember how to run the home in Jim’s absence, since he was the one responsible for so many of the emergency preparations. If not for a detailed emergency manual he’d built for them over the years, they wouldn’t have been able to find or operate many of the emergency measures he’d put in place.

  By the time Jim made it home, his parents had moved in with his family. Almost immediately upon his arrival, he was forced to kill a man threatening his family and it would not be the last life he took. It was one of many. As his remaining coworkers reached their own homes, only violence and trouble awaited them. One by one, each took Jim up on his offer to come reside in the valley where his family made their home. Over the course of their struggles together, they became a clan. They helped each other and worked together to improve their odds of survival.

  In the midst of a cold winter there was a flicker of hope. There were signs that electrical power might soon be restored to parts of the country. People were ecstatic until they realized there were strings attached. Power would initially only be restored to large “comfort camps” in each community, which locals could enter if they turned in their guns.

  It was a divisive issue, turning families against each other and splitting communities, but the price for power was too steep for Jim. Angered that power generated locally, with local coal, was primarily being routed to the Northern Virginia and Washington, DC area, Jim struck back. He chose to flood the power plant by damming a nearby river. While he succeeded in seriously damaging the plant, his actions had repercussions beyond any he could imagine.

  Rumors spread in the community that he was behind the attack. Jim tried to curtail the gossip, afraid it would endanger his family, but it was impossible to contain. Many people had been willing to turn in their guns for comfort. They were angry that Jim had made this bold decision without them. Some said he condemned the weak and elderly to death.

  As a result, flyers were spread over the region offering a reward for Jim. He was labeled a terrorist, an insurgent, and an enemy combatant. People came for him, attacking his v
alley and his home in a desire to collect the reward of food and ammunition. Attacks came with increasing frequency and ferocity. Even folks within his isolated valley began turning on him. Seeing no route to safety, Jim and his group launched a desperate campaign to fake his arrest. The scenario turned into a violent fiasco that brought even more death and destruction to his hometown. When it was done, Jim was left hiding on his property like a trapped animal, questioning the decisions he’d made.

  Had he saved his friends and family or doomed them?

  1

  August

  The Valley

  Jim was walking the dusty, debris-strewn road through his valley when he met the group of strangers. He was on his way to Lloyd’s house, a musician friend who’d joined them in the valley not long after Jim got home from Richmond. Jim didn’t hear the strangers coming and he wasn’t used to meeting people on the road. He simply came around a corner and there they were, maybe two hundred feet ahead of him and walking in his direction.

  He mumbled a few curses but couldn’t think of a single countermeasure that wouldn’t appear suspicious. He couldn’t leap into the bushes and hide. He couldn’t turn and run. He couldn’t haul his rifle off his back and threaten them.

  He’d changed his appearance as best he could, trying not to look like the photo of him that had widely been circulated on the flyers that branded him an insurgent. Most of the town should believe he was dead but he couldn’t be sure of that. He didn’t want to take any chances.

  He’d grown his short beard out into a longer version that put him in touch with his inner hillbilly. His hair had always been short but after that whole fiasco in town he’d shorn it down nearly to his scalp, using some manual clippers he’d borrowed from Lloyd. The musician had been a barber before the collapse, though Jim never trusted him to cut his hair. He’d known him too long.

  Lloyd had laughed his ass off at Jim when he first saw him like that. “You should have let me do it. You look like some hipster trying to get a job as a barista at Starbucks.”

  Jim had snarled at him. “The difference between me and that hipster is that they’d try to use their words to hurt you. I’ll deliver a words-and-whoop-ass combo meal. If that’s what you’re hungry for, keep running your mouth.”

  Along with the changes to his hair and beard, Jim wore dark glasses and a floppy straw hat that shaded his face. Pete thought he resembled Billy Gibbons, the guitarist from ZZ Top. Jim took that as a compliment.

  Since he couldn’t dodge the folks headed toward him on the road, he’d just have to keep his head down and hope for the best. If they spoke, he’d nod and keep going. The longer he stood there talking, the more opportunity they’d have to figure out who he was. He couldn’t let that happen. Jim Powell was supposed to be dead and he wanted to keep it that way.

  Without making a big deal of it, Jim moved his hand to the pistol grip of the M4 hanging across his body. Before he was close enough for them to hear, he flicked the safety off. It was best to err on the side of caution.

  They were seventy feet apart now. The strangers were two men with what Jim guessed to be their teenage sons. They weren’t from the valley and Jim didn’t recognize them. The men carried hunting shotguns and their sons carried .22 rifles. Jim wondered if the men had come back here to hunt or were they here on other business? They could have been visiting one of the other families in the valley. Even if this was a social call, they’d carry weapons. Everyone traveled with weapons these days. It was the only way to stay safe and even that was no guarantee.

  These strangers could also be looking for him, wanting to confirm the rumor that Jim Powell, the man who’d brought so much grief and destruction to his community, was really dead. Did the townspeople still think there was a price on his head?

  Surely after all that happened in town on the 4th of July people would understand there was no reward to collect. Those who’d seen what transpired that day would have seen him shoved into a helicopter and hauled off. That didn’t mean people didn’t harbor resentment against him because he’d deprived them of electricity and comfort camps. Some hated him for that.

  If people came for him, it was as likely to be out of that hatred as anything else. This county had a public enemy now and Jim Powell was that man. He was the vessel for their hate. Everyone wanted someone to blame for all the grief and hardship that had befallen them. Jim was all they had.

  At forty feet, the men were looking at him, trying to make eye contact. They were within hailing distance. Politeness and rural custom should have them smiling and greeting each other by this point. Jim did none of those things. He kept his head tipped to where he could see their movements, their guns, below the brim of his hat. His aloofness probably put them on edge, but he was fine with that. These weren’t regular times. Everyone was on guard these days. People weren’t the same relaxed, casual country folk they’d been a little more than a year ago. They were hardened survivors now, less trustful of their fellow man.

  “Howdy,” one of the men said, slowing.

  Jim didn’t speak, just nodding as he’d planned. He walked right by the group, within feet of them, but didn’t make eye contact. The next part of the interaction bothered him even more. He had his back to them now. He could feel the armed strangers watching him, wondering about him. He heard them whisper among themselves.

  He was certain they were calling him a rude asshole, but that label had lost its ability to bother him long ago. He’d been an asshole before the world had fallen apart. Since then, he’d only gotten better at it. His actions toward these strangers, his asshole-ness, surely wouldn’t be enough for them to identify him. He couldn’t be the only asshole in these parts.

  He forced himself to put another hundred feet between them before he glanced over his shoulder. When he did, he found the group had gone on about their business, seemingly unconcerned with him. In the retelling of their excursion, he would be nothing more than a rude and abrupt footnote.

  Shortly, Jim climbed a fence to the right of the road and cut across the field to Lloyd’s place. It was actually Buddy’s old house and their entire clan ached from the loss of the kind old man. Jim couldn’t help but think Buddy would have steered him in a better direction had he still been alive. He might have kept Jim from acting in such a rash manner—making decisions and taking steps from which there was no backing up. For the short time they’d had him there, Buddy had been the one man who could talk Jim off the ledge when he was ready to slit throats and sling lead. Without him, Jim was unrestricted. He was more prone to asking forgiveness than permission, even when having acted with such finality that there was no forgiving.

  Jim had to traverse this field to approach Lloyd’s place from the back. The Wimmer family lived within sight of Lloyd’s place, though thick summer foliage helped to break up the direct sightlines. It was still risky. The Wimmers were a large family and they owned much of the land around Lloyd’s place. They were always outside farming or hunting. They’d gotten along with Jim’s people at one time but there was a lot of resentment now. His clan had killed one of them for abducting a child. Even though the killing was justified, blood was thicker than reason.

  The house the sheriff had been living in was also within sight of Lloyd’s place, but Lloyd said he’d moved out, as he’d promised. When Jim had told the sheriff what he was going to do in town, that he intended to fake his death, the sheriff wanted no part of it. He also said he’d be leaving the valley as soon as he was able to. He reminded Jim that he’d come there to help keep the peace and instead found himself immersed in a violent world he wanted no part of. Jim wished him the best but knew he’d find no more peace anywhere else. The sheriff longed for a world that no longer existed. He wanted law and order, wanted people to have respect for their fellow men. All of those things were in short supply.

  Jim hoped Lloyd was home. A couple of months ago he’d have called him on the radio before making the hike but he couldn’t do that anymore. His voice might be ove
rheard by people who wanted him dead. He was disgusted by the state he found himself in. He was in the valley he’d called home for much of his adult life but didn’t dare show his face or talk on the radio. For a man already pissed off at the world, this only further stirred the pot.

  “Lloyd!” Jim called, stomping up the porch to announce himself.

  With no air conditioning, all the windows were open on the hot summer day. Jim didn’t hear an instrument being played so he assumed Lloyd was either asleep or not home. He banged on the metal screen door, the noise loud enough to wake the napping or the dead. “Lloyd!”

  “Simmer down,” Lloyd growled, his voice coming from an unexpected direction.

  Jim spun. He walked to the edge of the porch and saw Lloyd ambling down from the outhouse, hitching his suspenders up onto his shoulders.

  “What are you up to?” Jim asked.

  Lloyd frowned and gestured back toward the outhouse. “I’d think the answer would be obvious, even to someone with your obvious mental deficits.”