Beneath: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller (Taken World Book 4)

by Flint Maxwell

  To May, he thought. I have to get to May.

  But when he turned, he met the bloody, grinning face of Kurt Walton. In his closed fist, he held a pistol, aimed right at Tyler.

  27

  Another Standoff

  Tyler looked into the barrel of the pistol. It was a small gun, sleek and black. Its muzzle was just smaller than a nickel, but Tyler knew the bullet that flew from it would end him in a heartbeat.

  Behind the gun, bloody and clutching the side of his stomach that had been caved in by the fleabag’s hit, stood Kurt Walton.

  “Come out here,” he said. “Slowly.”

  Tyler didn’t put his hands up. He would give the old racist no satisfaction. He remained stoic.

  When he didn’t move, Kurt pressed the gun into Tyler’s forehead, driving him back.

  He’s dying, Tyler thought. He could tell just by looking into the man’s eyes. A dying man is a dangerous man. He’s got nothing to lose.

  He stepped backward, eased the kiosk’s door open, and sidestepped to the right. Kurt followed him with the gun. The kiosk door banged closed. He dropped his gun.

  “Ah, man, oh man,” Kurt said. “I’m going to enjoy this. I really am.” He leaned to his good side and coughed. A glob of blood spattered the floor. “ ‘Scuse me. I’m really not in the best of health. And I’m really not too happy.”

  Once he got control of himself again, he reached out and patted Tyler’s pockets for another weapon. He snatched the pocketknife and tossed it with an arm that looked beyond broken.

  Whatever the case may have been Tyler was now totally unarmed.

  Tyler said nothing in reply. He didn’t give two shits about Kurt’s health or happiness. He only stared at the muzzle of the pistol.

  “Ask me why I ain’t too happy,” Kurt taunted.

  Tyler shook his head.

  There was perhaps a split second when he had a chance to strike out and grab the gun from Kurt, but the risk was too great with it against his skull. It was the definition of playing with fire; the definition of insanity. Kurt was already desperate and in pain. All it would take for Tyler to get another hole in his head was a slight twitch of Kurt’s finger.

  “Go ahead! Ask me!”

  “Why?”

  “I was going to dethrone that Reaper dude. I was gonna kill him and become the leader.”

  “You couldn’t lead shit to the sewers,” Tyler said.

  Kurt grinned, but still, that wild fire burned in his eyes. “I can lead you to death. Would you like that?”

  No answer.

  “Didn’t think you’d speak up for that one. Now get on your knees, darky.”

  Tyler didn’t obey.

  Kurt, with more strength than should’ve been humanly possible, given his condition, backhanded him across the mouth with the pistol.

  The pain was immediate and explosive, reigniting the fire of the wound from when Kurt had elbowed him during the basketball game. Tyler fell to the floor, looking down. Blood dribbled from his mouth, splashed in front of him in widening drops.

  “Now, my friend, you are going to stay right there,” Kurt said, “and then you are going to die. Really, I should’ve killed you a long time ago, soon as I saw that black skin.”

  Tyler looked up.

  “You know, I think it was probably you darkies that brought these monsters to our world. I don’t know how, I don’t know why, but I’ve always thought you coons would be the end of civilization.”

  “You’re crazy,” Tyler said. It was not easy to talk. His lips were going numb, while a few of his teeth, freshly loosened from their sockets, ached with near-unbearable pain.

  Kurt shrugged. “Maybe I am. Whatever. I can be crazy, but at least I ain’t dead. You, my black friend, are.”

  Focusing on Kurt’s trigger finger, Tyler watched it bend, watched it give slightly.

  That was when he heard the boom… The boom! that meant his death.

  28

  Savior

  Kurt’s shoulder exploded in a mess of gore and chips of bone. The gun he held dropped to the floor in front of Tyler.

  Tyler wasted no time in picking it up. When he did, he was finally able to focus on the figure standing with one foot atop the fleabag’s corpse. He squinted his eyes, trying to make out who it was. He took in the slim figure, the long hair, the pale face, and his heart fluttered.

  “May?” he said breathlessly.

  The figure lowered the pistol she held. From Tyler’s vantage point, he could tell the weapon was something out of a Western movie, something a cowboy would wear on his hip.

  Kurt writhed on the floor, screaming. His screams registered in Tyler’s head, bringing him back to the now. He looked down at the man. His right shoulder was mostly gone, blown away to smithereens. Where the sharp, ninety-degree angle of his bone should’ve been was just a jagged outline, as if one of the monsters with razor teeth had taken a bite out of him.

  The figure at the end of the corridor stepped forward, into the faint glow of the emergency lights. Tyler’s jaw practically dropped.

  It wasn’t May; it was a ghost.

  Skylar.

  Tyler lowered the gun, because the woman coming toward him looked crazy. Weathered, wind-burned, disheveled. She was liable to shoot him, too.

  But as she walked forward, her eyes never left the bloody figure on the floor.

  The bloody figure of her husband.

  Kurt rolled over. When his eyes found Skylar’s, he stopped his screaming.

  “S-Skylar? Am I-I dead?”

  “Not dead,” she replied. “Not yet.”

  “Skylar! You’re still alive! Oh, my God! I thought you were a goner. The Reaper took me and forced me to come here or else he was going to kill me.” Kurt’s eyes drifted toward the pistol she held in her dirty hands. “Did—did you shoot me?”

  “Yep,” said Skylar, not missing a beat.

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re a liar, Kurt Walton, but most of all, because you’re a horrible man who has tortured me for the last twenty years of my life.”

  Kurt’s confused face turned red. He screwed up his features until he was a bloody, wrinkled mess. “Tortured you? You don’t know what you’re talking about, bitch. I saved you. Without me, you would’ve been dead a long, long time ago.”

  Skylar didn’t reply, she only stared at her husband—a title, Tyler figured, that he wouldn’t hold much longer.

  “Sure, I beat you a few times,” Kurt continued railing. “Sure, I drank and smoked and popped pills. But you needed to be put in your place, babe. And I needed an outlet. What would you’ve done without me? Gone back to being Roger and Kristen’s bitch? Pushed drugs with your whore friends? Slept around, got used and abused? Huh? Huh!?”

  Skylar raised the gun. Her bottom lip trembled, and her eyes were filling with tears.

  Tyler put up his hand, opened his mouth to say that she didn’t have to do this, that killing Kurt would make her as bad as he was and him letting her do it would make Tyler just the same, but then the revolver went off.

  And Kurt’s face exploded a microsecond afterward.

  29

  Skylar

  Neither spoke for a long moment. Kurt lay dead before them, almost unrecognizable. The pool of blood coming from his wounds finally stopped flowing.

  It was then that Tyler asked Skylar how she was feeling.

  Her face had been blank since she’d pulled the trigger for the last time. Now she smiled; it was a genuine smile.

  “I feel…relieved.”

  She then fell to her knees and began sobbing. Tears of anguish, tears of shock, but mostly, tears of joy.

  The two of them walked toward the men’s clothing shop. When they got closer, Tyler started to run.

  In front of the store, bleeding and twitching, was another monster. It looked like a dog from Hell.

  “May!” he called out.

  She was all he could think about. When she didn’t answer, he called again. Ag
ain, there was no answer.

  “Avery? Florence?” he tried.

  Nothing.

  He slid to a stop against the glass windows displaying the hottest fashion of the summer the world ended, leaving a red handprint where he’d braced himself. He had nearly slipped in the creature’s blood.

  “May!” he called again.

  The shutter in front of the store was riddled with holes. The smell of gun smoke still hung in the air, and some of the edges of the plastic where the bullets had gone through were curled and sizzling.

  He peered into one of them, shouted, “May!” again and shook the shutter.

  A long moment passed, and in this moment, Tyler feared the worst. Did she flee? Did the monsters get to her? Maybe the shadow man was bluffing and he already killed her and Avery and Florence. That’s how he had known May’s name.

  These were all scenarios he didn’t want to think about but couldn’t help doing so. He began to blame himself. I should’ve never left, never crawled into that stupid vent, never tried to be a hero. If I had stayed—

  But a voice interrupted his thoughts, a voice sweeter than any other. Her voice. May’s.

  “Tyler?”

  “May? Are you okay?”

  “Me? What about you? It sounded like Armageddon out there!” she shouted, and then she was up against the shutter, on the opposite side, inside the store. Tyler could barely make out her features. She was blurry, but he could still tell she was smiling wide. “I heard other people. And I think I heard Kurt… Was I just being crazy?”

  “You weren’t. But I survived. I’m okay. I had some help, too.” He turned and waved Skylar toward the shutter.

  She took a step forward. “That was me. I helped,” she said, smiling.

  “Skylar?” A different voice, Florence’s.

  “It’s me.”

  “It’d be a hell of a lot easier to talk if we got rid of that shutter,” Avery said.

  Then the shutter came up, and Tyler and May hugged. He kissed her cheek and tousled her hair. Florence and Skylar embraced.

  And everyone was smiling.

  Later that night, they managed a hasty job of sealing off the holes where the monsters had come in. They shared a meal in the food court, the place with the least amount of blood on the floor and walls. It was so cold they lit a fire.

  Tyler told his story, and Skylar told hers. Then May told her own.

  While Tyler had been fighting the three men and Kurt Walton, the dog from Hell had attacked the suit store. Florence was the first to notice it over the sounds of war outside. The hellhound scratched its claws against the shutter and sniffed. Flo took Avery’s gun and shot at the bulbous shadow. May, startled by the shot, joined the party, and together, the women put the thing down.

  “You two saved my life,” Avery said. He kissed Florence on top of the head. “So did you guys.” He pointed at Tyler and Skylar. Skylar grinned. She felt good about herself, she felt at peace.

  “What do we do now?” May asked.

  Avery shrugged.

  “Well, come on, leader,” May replied. “Lead!”

  Rolling his eyes and putting his arm around Florence, he said, “I think the next thing we should do is give Ray a proper funeral.”

  “I agree,” Florence said.

  “After that…I don’t know.”

  But Tyler knew. This place had good bones, and he was tired of travel, tired of running for his life.

  He stood up and pushed his chair in. Then he spoke.

  “We turn this place into a survivor’s camp. We rebuild, we refortify, and we help all those who need helped.”

  The others nodded their agreement. It would not be easy, because peace and hope were now sacred, elusive commodities, but peace and hope was all they had—besides each other.

  Epilogue

  A few months later and nearly three hundred and fifty miles from D.C., where Tyler, May, and the others found their once elusive happiness, Logan Harper sat peacefully next to his wife Jane. His right hand rested on her swelling belly.

  She was pregnant. He hoped it was a boy, but he would be ecstatic no matter the gender.

  Outside, the night’s dark hung heavily in the sky, but in two hours, for the first time in a long time, the sun would rise brightly from the dark clouds; and the voids, these doorways to other dimensions, would disappear as quickly and as mysteriously as they had come. The monsters, their numbers depleted since the nuclear bombs fell on the world, would wither and die without the support of the black diamonds.

  And slowly, Logan and Jane Harper, Brad Long, Grease, Irving, and many others would help make civilization and humanity better than it once had been.

  Logan drifted off to sleep now.

  He awoke to a much different world than the one he’d known for the last year, and he stared unbelievingly out the window of his fifth floor suite, smiling.

  Things were different. Things were changing for the better.

  Then Logan Harper thought: A truly happy ending is damn near impossible, but this…this is pretty close.

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  Afterword

  This will be the last book in the Taken World series. I thought maybe I would write a fifth book concerning the fates of those in the Falls, but decided that would just be me milking the story and the world for quantity over quality.

  Logan, Jane, Brad, Tyler, and May have found a happy ending—as good of an ending as one in their element can find.

  For now, their stories are done. I hope you enjoyed the ride.

  Flint Maxwell

  December 23, 2018

  About the Author

  Flint Maxwell lives in Ohio, where the skies are always gray and the sports teams are consistently disappointing (not so much lately). He loves Star Wars, basketball, Stephen King novels, and almost anything horror. You can probably find him hanging out with one (or all) of his five household pets when he’s not writing, reading, or watching Netflix.

  Get in touch with Flint on Facebook

  Also by Flint Maxwell

  Jack Zombie Series

  Dead Haven (Book 1)

  Dead Hope (Book 2)

  Dead Nation (Book 3)

  Dead Coast (Book 4)

  Dead End (Book 5)

  Dead Lost (Book 6)

  Dead Judgment (Book 7)

  Fright Squad Series

  Fright Squad: A Comedic-Horror Adventure

  Fright Squad 2: The Monster Games

  Fright Squad 3: Night of the Slasher

  Taken World Series

  Ravaged (Book #1)

  Darkness (Book #2)

  Decimated (Book #3)

  Beneath (Book #4)

  The Midwest Magic Chronicles

  The Midwest Witch (Book #1)

  The Midwest Wanderer (Book #2)

  The Midwest Whisperer (Book #3)

  The Midwest War (Book #4)

  Something Dark: Horror Stories

  Let Us Out