Free Castroville: Countdown to Armageddon: Book 7 by Darrell Maloney

Payton kept around just for that purpose.
         Oh, they weren’t always prostitutes. Before the blackout they’d been store clerks, secretaries, nurses or school teachers.
         But desperation causes people to do desperate things in order to survive.
         And when these women found themselves without husbands to help protect them from predators, they went to the biggest predator of all: Jack Payton.
         They’d heard that Payton would use them. Make them share their bodies with his men.
         But he would also give them a warm place to sleep at night. Food for their bellies. Clothes for their backs. And while his men might use the women to satisfy their own selfish needs, Payton would make sure the woman wouldn’t be beaten or killed afterwards.
         The same couldn’t be said for solitary women on the outside.
         Life on the ranch was regal by the new standards of the post-apocalyptic world.
         At least it was for Jack Payton.
         It was almost as comfortable for his right hand man, a man named Wimberly.
         Wimberly was the man who’d first pulled the gun on Tom when Tom was wheeling and dealing with Payton. The man Tom had looked at puzzled as he realized he’d been double crossed.
         The man who ordered Tom’s beating.
         Wimberly was Payton’s yes man. The man who knew more than anyone else what Payton wanted and who made sure he got it.
         As for everyone else in the compound not named Tom Haskins, life wasn’t regal but was relatively comfortable. Even the prostitutes were content in the knowledge that life on the outside could be much worse for them. The other women, held captive in a world where they were little more than slaves, tried to look at the bright side.
         At least when they laid their heads down to sleep at night, they could be reasonably certain they’d wake up again the next morning. And at least they had food to eat, and someone to protect them. More or less.
         Wimberly walked into the den and interrupted Payton’s movie, just as Clint Eastwood was sneering into the camera. If anyone else had done so, he’d have been berated by Payton and given additional duties or reduced rations as punishment.
         Wimberly got away with it because he was Payton’s trusted lieutenant.
         And because he was returning from a mission Payton had sent him on.
         Payton picked up the remote and paused the movie.
         “Well?”
         “No sign of the Ranger. He told Smitty he’d come back through today to see if we’d seen the guy, but he still hasn’t shown.”
         Payton looked out the window at the setting sun.
         “He’s not likely to, either. At least not today. Rangers are smart. They’re tested before they’re brought in, and the less intelligent ones are weeded out. Once they’re in, they’re trained to be even smarter. No Ranger is going to ride into an unfamiliar place after dark if there’s a chance of trouble. He’ll wait until tomorrow or the next day.”
         “What if he’s just given up? Gone elsewhere to look for somebody else?”
         “Nope. A Ranger will never abandon his mission. He’ll search for his man until he finds him, or is satisfied that he’s dead. How’s he doing, anyway? Has he said where he’s stashed his gold? I sure would love to get the gold, plus the reward for handing him over.”
         “He hasn’t said a word. Want me to have him beaten some more?”
         “No. We’ll give him until morning to stew. Then we’ll give him one more chance to open up. We’ll tell him if he doesn’t, we’ll beat him almost to death and then turn him over to the law. After half his bones are broken. If that don’t get him to talk, nothing will.”
         Outside, three hundred yards away, Sara and Randy waited patiently just inside the woods on the south side of the ranch.
         They had plans of their