Cascade Collection
Page 1
Contents
Title page
Copyright
Disclaimer
Book One Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Book Two Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Book Three Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Book Four Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Thank you
CASCADE
Books 1 - 4
by
Phil Maxey
Copyright © 2019 by Philip Maxey
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
First Printing, 2019.
https://www.philmaxeyauthor.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales, is purely coincidental.
BOOK ONE
CHAPTER ONE
Abbey’s cell door opened once per week at 5 pm, when the guards would take her to a slightly larger area to stretch her legs. Abbey’s cell door was open and it was not 5 pm.
“Changing the time you take your pet for a walk, eh?” she questioned into the space beyond the door. “Hurry up I haven’t got all day!” she shouted.
But of course I have.
Abbey stood, walked to the door, and looked out. The cell door to her left was also slightly ajar. From that direction came a noise, it sounded almost like a child crying.
No animals allowed in here. She walked into the hallway. Beyond the next cell, twenty feet away was the main door to the control hub, that door was also open. A loud crunching noise echoed out from the next cell. Abbey flinched and took a slight step back, then started moving towards the source of the sound.
Maybe somebody’s hurt and the guards have gone to get medical assistance.
The light in the next cell was flickering although Abbey couldn’t ascertain why. It was strictly disallowed to talk to other inmates and this would be the first time in three years she would get the chance. A strange sense of excitement started to fill her then quickly faded when she saw what was in the far corner of the cell.
A trail of milky liquid formed a path from where she was standing near the door, to a mass of limbs that inhibited the corner. Arms and legs at wrong angles like a Picasso painting come to life. Abbey stood mouth agape then burst out laughing.
“Seriously? You have nothing better to do than play jokes on us?” she said, addressing the guards no doubt laughing their asses off in the control room. The mass in the corner quivered, the arms and legs started to unravel and its form started to grow in size. Abbey started to back up.
“I must admit I’m impressed…” she spoke more to herself than in any direction. Her mind started to fight her widening eyes and her mouth started to contort as just a car-length away something impossible started to rise up. Multiple limbs attached to what seemed a human shaped torso moved uneasily towards her as if just been born. Hands on the end of spindly arms felt the walls on both sides of the cell leaving a stain then slowly swung around in her direction. Abbey backed up so quickly th
at her legs tangled and she fell on her rear, all the time transfixed by this thing in front of her which was now just a few feet away.
In a panic she kicked the door closed and scrambled away from it pushing her back up against the opposite wall.
Feeling sick she feared if she stood up she would faint. From where she was she could just see the ceiling light flickering, with multiple shadows dancing around it. She waited for that thing to appear, like a cheap thrill in a horror movie. Nothing appeared. More seconds passed. She pushed herself upwards with the help of the wall behind her, each inch higher seeing more of the cell. Just as she was fully erect the light flickered one last time and went black. Now only the one above her penetrated the gloom of the cell. I need to go. It was the obvious thing to do, but she had to know. It was the same mentality that had made her a great hacker. Am I losing my mind? I’ve been here too long… no it had to be a military experiment gone wrong, had to be. Her mind was already making excuses for what she had seen.
She edged closer. Realizing that some of the milky liquid was on the bottom of her shoe, she looked down in disgust then back up.
The black eyes were staring at her, black watery pits set inside a pinky smooth skin. The thing’s face was pressed up against the cell door glass, one-foot away from her own. Abbey screamed and ran.
CHAPTER TWO
Zachariah watched the moisture gather on the glass. There was no sun down here, only perpetual florescence, it reminded him of the times he would bust up a pot factory and there were these rows of lamps to simulate daylight. The twelve by twelve solitary cell was barren but he liked it that way, it provided more space to do the daily routine of sit-ups, push-ups, and anything else he could push his body to do. He may never get out but he will be damned if he’s going to wither away.
The military prison was not known to many in the outside world. This was the place the mistakes ended up. Men and women who liked killing a little bit too much.
Zachariah or Zach to the few he was close too, had been military police. It was his job to put people in places like this. That used to make him laugh but now none of it mattered. He had been found kneeling, expression frozen in the front yard of his army home, covered in blood, his wife’s and children’s. Most of their body parts were inside, but not all. Eight consecutive life sentences, in the harshest regime allowed under any human rights convention. This was his life. And everyday he woke up knowing he deserved it.
At a particular time during the day or night, he knew not which, moisture would start to creep down the glass on the inside of his cell door. This was an event. It meant the universe was still working.
The blanket of sleep was drawing down on him when something else happened. Something that should not happen. His cell door opened.
For a few seconds, he lay watching the space between door and cell, the space that was the difference between guilty and innocent, freedom and solitude, gray mush and a Friday night hotdog.
He sat up waiting for a sound. The light in the hallway flickered slightly, as if being attacked by an insect but Zach knew that wasn’t the case, there was no innocent life down here. Minutes passed. Zach waited for a guard to appear, or an alarm, either would be satisfactory so he could go back to watching the inside of the cell door, then to sleep.
“It appears the guards have gone.” An elderly voice bounced a few times off the smooth gray-blue walls outside his cell and Zach stood up.
What’s this gig Nothing about this event made sense. The door shouldn’t be open, instead he should be hearing Earl, the guard, not some old guy.
“Maybe the world has ended. Wouldn’t that be a ride.”
The old guy again. Zach looked back at his bed to make sure he wasn’t dreaming. It was empty. Taking a few steps forward he peered into the gap and pushed the cell door slowly open. The cell next to his was also open.
“I saw them bring you in six years back, name’s Ray if you’re wondering.”
“I’m not.” Zach’s words came out more aggressively than he planned. He hadn’t heard his voice outside his head for some time. Zach walked out into the hallway and stood, waiting to be jumped. No attack came. Ray’s head appeared from behind the other cell door.
“Hell, maybe it is the end of the world,” said Ray, looking up and down the hallway. Zach judged Ray to be in his sixties, maybe older, it was hard to tell as there were only flickers of hair to get a fix on. Ray was roughly the same height as himself, but slimmer.
“After all this time alone I would have thought you would be more of a conversationalist,” remarked Ray walking into the hallway.
Zach looked at Ray then turned away, looking towards the hub door, which was also open. This has got to be some kind of military game or test. Who knows what they are trying.
”I’m not playing!” shouted Zach while looking around, his words echoing through the hallway and fading into the distance.
“Hey, can’t we enjoy our freedom a bit longer?” replied Ray. Zach frowned, and walked towards the hub. It was time to see what was going on.
Zach had only glimpsed the facility he had been thrown into, but he knew from previous experience that it was likely to be designed like a wheel, with each level having its own spoke, housing a few prisoners, and a control hub at the center, this would then be repeated downwards however number of floors they had the federal budget to dig. The worst of the worst were at the bottom. Zach had no idea which floor he was on as there were no signs or numbers on the walls, just a few symbols.
They stood a few feet from the hub’s entrance. Beyond the light was dim. This was also wrong. The only times Zach had been through this section was blindfolded and he could still see the lights. There was also no sound. Zach wasn’t sure which was worse. The open door in front of them was impossibly thick.
“With a door like that you’d think we were worth something,” said Ray half smiling.
“We’re not worth anything,” replied Zach, and leaned on the door to push it wide open.
They looked onto a large space housing a smaller octagonal control room. Papers littered the floor. A small lamp shone a beam at a wrong angle onto the wall inside the control room, like a searchlight that had forgotten its purpose. No guards.
He walked forward and peered through the glass of the control room. More papers, a knocked-over chair and a smashed mug, which had contained coffee but now was just fragments and a brown stain. The computer screens looked operational. Gently pushing open the control room door, Zach walked in and looked at the screens. A plan view map of this floor, with the words, “Emergency: Doors open” flashing in red above it, was on one of them. Zach also noticed, “Floor 7/12.” Ray appeared behind him.
“Maybe it really is the end of the world, I knew they would do it eventually,” said Ray, looking resigned.
“We don’t know what’s going on, but I’m not staying here,” replied Zach. They both walked outside and into the hallway that led to the stairwell. Zach started to expect the doors to be open and the door to the stairwell was no different in that regard, the only difference was the severed arm that lay just beyond the door.
A loud crashing sound made Zach and Ray ducked instinctively.
“What the hell was that?” Ray whispered. Zach noticed Ray’s hands were slightly shaking.
This is wrong, very wrong.
The sound came from the stairwell a few floors above them, there was also the sound of someone running, jumping down steps, someone in a panic.
CHAPTER THREE
Abbey stood in the gloom of the stairwell breathing heavily, the hallway hub door closed behind her. I’m in a friggin’ horror movie. She promptly let out a small laugh at the absurdity of her situation. Abbey loved horror movies, something her parents tried in vain to drive out of her. She had watched all the classic slasher movies by her sixteenth birthday and often watched stuff which made her boyfriends squirm on the sofa next to her.
Abbey’s mother gave her that name because it meant intelli
gent and beautiful, and she was both, a math wizard from an early age and with a level of attractiveness that meant she could have made a career from her looks alone. The former was what interested her, although she hated the jibes that the school kids would give her about being Jewish and being good with numbers, hated it so much that instead of going into the family business at the age of sixteen, she shaved all her hair off and started to learn the ways of a hacker.
At the age of eighteen and a half she hacked the Pentagon, niftily circumventing their firewalls and accessing national security secrets. So impressed were the military with what she achieved that they intervened in her trial and asked for her sentence to be a military academy. The idea horrified her at first, but after a year she grew to like her newfound freedom to infiltrate enemy government’s computer systems. This lasted until the second time she rebelled, but this time she did a lot more than just cut her hair off.
Her horror viewing mostly fell by the wayside while she was at the academy, but late night she still managed to squeeze in a film or two while doing her patriotic duty. She also knew the rules of horror movies and decided that next time she heard a strange noise she’d definitely not investigate. Luckily right now there were no strange noises, just frozen silence.
She looked up the stairs into a wall of broken chairs, computer terminals and filing cabinets all stacked precariously to form a makeshift barricade. Beyond that was only darkness. Was there some kind of riot? She knew the kinds of inmates that were housed here and much preferred the idea of bumping into a guard than one of them. Going upwards was her instinct but it would take too long to clear that junk, so down it was.
She slowly descended the stairs and as she did way off in the distance above her came a strange sound. She paused. The sound was hardly noticeable but sounded like bacon frying, a low crackling so compacted it almost became white noise.
In a different place at a different time it might have been the sound to send you to sleep but right now not something she wanted to hear. It was still quite far away, so she continued to descend, quickly arriving at the entrance to the floor below. Slowly walking down the first hallway, the door was open to the hub and revealed a scene of devastation. Abbey counted five guards, or what was left of them scattered around and inside the control room. The door to the cells is closed. She was relieved at that. Moving into the control room she could see the computer screens were all smashed. Damn. Amongst the bodies was a mixture of name badges with, “3/12” and, “4/12” on. Abbey placed a few of these around her neck. There were also stun batons but a quick tap on their triggers produced no electric charge, just an empty click. Whatever did this to these guards nine-million volts wasn’t enough to save them, but it was still a weapon, so she grabbed two batons placing one down the front of her orange jumpsuit and her left hand through the strap of the other.