by Bobby Adair
-Bobby and T.W.
Final Words
Thank you for coming along on the journey through six books. It’s been a journey for TW and I, as well. Hopefully you were surprised by some of the events that played out.
Piperbrook and I have had a great time writing this series, and we hope you’ve enjoyed it. We can’t thank you enough for giving our stories a chance, when there are so many good books out there competing for your reading time.
Feel free to connect with us through our newsletters or Facebook! Talk to you soon,
-Bobby Adair & TW Piperbrook
P.S. Many of you have asked the question, what’s next? For those who want more THE LAST SURVIVORS, THE RUINS (A sequel series to THE LAST SURVIVORS), out now, takes place directly after the events of this book, following Bray, Kirby, and William as they head into the wild.
For a sample of THE RUINS, turn the page! Thanks again for reading!
PREVIEW OF THE RUINS BOOK 1
(AVAILABLE NOW!)
Chapter 1: Bray
“Don’t worry, I survived another night,” Bray said, removing the bandage to check on the gunshot wound on his shoulder. “In case you were worried.”
He grinned at Kirby, who was just stirring underneath her blankets, rubbing her eyes. She made a face at him, but didn’t answer. William was lying next to her, still sleeping. Bray could see the thin outline of the boy’s body, rising and falling as he breathed.
After escaping the battle at Brighton unharmed—except for Bray—they’d spent most of each day on horseback, working their way east over the mountains and hitting deeper snow, then heading north and following the coast toward the settlement where Kirby’s people had all breathed their last breaths, leaving her alone in an unfamiliar land.
On the plains again, with the ocean east and the mountains west, they’d found places where the snow only thinly covered the ground and the horses were able to graze.
Bray, unfamiliar with the landmarks, and knowing he was in a part of the world he’d never traveled before, hoped they were getting close to the settlement.
Normally, Bray would’ve avoided traveling in the winter, preferring a warm bath and warmer women to keep him company, but he’d made the decision to leave Brighton, and he meant to stick by it.
Now, with the morning sun peeking through the forest, spearing the snow-covered ground and fighting back the cold that seemed to have deepened overnight, Bray watched William sleeping. He was still concerned about him. They’d had a few conversations about his mother, Ella, but most of them had ended with William looking away, seemingly lost in a swirl of thoughts that had plagued them all since leaving Brighton.
Bray couldn’t blame the kid.
They were all dealing with things.
Kirby stood from her blankets. Bray glanced at the gun holstered at her side. Her rifle was on the ground, close to her. She’d refused to let him shoot either weapon, telling him that it would be a waste to spend the ammunition on anything other than killing demons.
“We should be at the settlement today, right?” he asked Kirby.
“Yes,” Kirby said, looking around the forest. “It’s a few miles away.”
“Your Tech Magic hurts like hell,” Bray said, as he continued cleaning the bullet wound in his shoulder with some water from his flask. “I can’t wait to get one of those guns for myself and try it out on something other than me.”
Kirby chuckled quietly. “Tech Magic. You people from Brighton really are backward.”
Bray frowned as he pointed toward the horses, which were drinking from the brook next to where they slept. “Backward? You were the one who had never seen a horse.”
“The people in my settlement never had them,” Kirby explained, not for the first time. “Just like your people never had guns. Horses were the things of legend. The knowledge of the old world—the Ancients, as you call them—is spread differently, depending on where we come from. I think that’s something we’re both figuring out, as we travel farther from our homes.”
“You’re right about that,” Bray agreed. He’d seen enough recently to question what he thought he knew about the wild, though he wouldn’t freely admit it.
After he’d finished cleaning and tying off his wound, Bray stoked the remains of the dying fire they’d built the night before so he could cook breakfast. Kirby collected her things, falling into the dark mood that seemed characteristic of her since they’d been nearing her settlement.
Bray noticed she’d been eating less, staring between the trees while she rode, and even missing some opportunities to make a joke at his expense.
He wondered if she was looking for ghosts.
Kirby had told him several times that the people of her settlement were dead. She’d been very clear she didn’t want to be there any longer than needed.
“Don’t worry, you’ll have food in your stomach soon,” he said as he pulled a rabbit from his bag and started skinning it.
“I don’t feel much like eating,” Kirby said.
“You’re not sick, are you?” Bray asked.
“No, nothing like that,” she answered vaguely as she walked over to check on William, a habit she’d developed over the last couple of days. Bray suspected her sympathy for William—and the fact that she and him were both infected—was one of the things keeping her here.
Confirming William was still asleep, Kirby joined Bray by the fire. “Did you hear the demons howling last night?” she asked.
“Yes, but they never got close,” Bray confirmed.
“With so many killed near Brighton, it’s hard to believe there are any demons left,” Kirby said.
“We’ll be getting further away from Brighton. Who knows how many are out in other parts of the wild?” Bray shrugged. “All I know is, I’d feel a lot safer with an armful of guns.” He grinned.
Kirby smiled back as Bray hung the skinned rabbit over the fire on a stick. Movement from William’s blanket distracted them. William was finally waking up. He rubbed his eyes, cast aside his blanket, and pulled his shirt higher over his neck. It seemed like he was still hiding his warts, even though he was in no danger from Bray or Kirby.
Maybe he was ashamed.
“Did you sleep well?” Bray called over to William.
Confusion crossed William’s face for a brief moment before he remembered where he was. “Yes,” he said. “It was cold, though. I heard demons in the night.” William stood from his blanket. “Did I, or was I dreaming?”
“It was demons,” Kirby confirmed. “But we’re okay. You don’t have to worry.”
William nodded, but he no longer seemed fearful of the twisted men.
And why would he be? William could talk to the vile, stinking things. Bray wouldn’t have believed it, had he not witnessed it several times in the Ancient City.
A few times while they were traveling, Bray had seen William staring between the trees as the demons screeched far away in the forest. Bray had promised to keep William away from the twisted men. But with so many temptations in the wild, that promise was a continuing challenge.
Who knew taking care of Ella’s boy would be so difficult?
“Thank the gods the demons didn’t come near here,” Bray said as he turned the rabbit in the fire, hoping to change the subject. “They stink like a corpse rotting in the sun. Nobody needs that stench ruining breakfast.”
“We already have your stench doing that.” Kirby laughed at Bray.
Ignoring her, Bray said, “As soon as we’re done eating, we’ll get moving.”
**
After stamping out the fire, they rode the horses through several miles of dusted snow. Kirby led, while Bray and William rode behind, single file when the trees were too thick and clustered, or next to each other when there was room, following terrain that grew steeper, wi
th more and more cliffs standing over the surf. Bray looked for signs of demons or men, but saw nothing except the small footprints of an occasional squirrel.
“There’s been a lot less snow along the coast,” William observed, looking at the ground.
“My settlement is on the water, north of the place you call the Ancient City,” Kirby explained.
“I still can’t believe you’ve never seen the Ancient City,” Bray mused as he looked over at her.
“My people were so busy fighting off demons that we didn’t have time to explore.” Kirby shrugged. “We planned to, of course. But most days, we were lucky enough to just eat.”
“I remember you said your settlement was built with wood.”
“Yes,” Kirby said. “We built it in a bowl-shaped valley surrounding a bay, protected by a wooden wall. Almost immediately after we landed our ships, the demons started attacking.”
“Ships,” Bray said, the word as much of a marvel as the concept behind it. “We haven’t talked much about where you settlers came from.”
Kirby looked away. “Across the ocean,” she said. “I’ve told you most of what you need to know. The place I came from wasn’t much better than here.”
Kirby didn’t elaborate, and Bray knew better than to push, especially with the mood she’d been in.
They continued riding until there was no more snow. The weather had warmed, but every so often, a frigid breeze blew, giving Bray a chill that made it worse than where they’d come from. Bray figured it was from the ocean. He’d felt similarly cold in the Ancient City.
Kirby was taking them up a hill, and the horses were working harder, bobbing their heads and keeping a steady pace. When they reached the crest of the hill, Kirby halted, putting up a hand so that Bray and William stopped, too.
Kirby pointed down the hill. “This is—was—my home.”
Below them was a large, bowl-shaped valley by a bay, just as she’d described. The majority of the valley was blackened by fire. Within it were thousands of trees that had been cut to stumps, and the remains of what must be a thousand bodies, now skeletons.
“Those are the bodies of the mutants we fought over the years,” Kirby explained.
Past the bodies and the stumps, to the right from their view overlooking the valley and the bay, were the remnants of the stockade—tall, wooden logs, many of which had been knocked over or burned, and a dozen or so tall, wooden towers that extended high into the air. On the shore, hanging half in and half out of the water, more incredible than anything else Bray had seen, were enormous, metal objects, the backs of them rocking with the swells of the ocean.
“Those are your ships,” he said with amazement.
“Yes,” Kirby said sadly. “All that is left of them, anyway.”
“They carried you here?”
“Yes, but they’re too rusted and destroyed to use. Most are tipped, as you see.”
“What happened to them?” William asked.
“They were washed up by a hurricane we had years ago,” she answered.
“A hurricane?” William asked, not understanding the term.
“A bad storm.” Kirby fell silent as she looked across the valley.
After a moment of reflection, she trotted her horse down the slope and toward the valley. “Be careful,” she warned, pulling her gun from her holster. “The mutants made homes of my settlement. I killed most of them before I left last time, but there might be more lurking within the buildings.”
Bray and William drew their swords.
They led their horses down the hill, following behind Kirby until they reached the valley, riding through a maze of stumps and bodies, unable to pry their eyes away from the destruction. Everywhere Bray looked was a skeleton lying at some ugly angle, or scattered bones no longer in the shape of a person. William stared from one to the next, as if he was recalling something. God knew he’d seen enough.
“Most of these skeletons are from demons we fought over the years, as I said. The bodies you will see inside the settlement belong to my people. And there are fresher demon corpses there, as well.”
“You’re certain no one survived?” Bray asked.
“During the days after the fire, and after the demons attacked, I looked for some of my people,” Kirby said quietly, as she rode. “Some of them ran into the forest. As I mentioned, some went crazy from the spore. But I thought the ones that were lucid would eventually come back to get more weapons, or to search for other survivors. None did. I’m pretty certain they’re dead.”
They kept riding between the stumps until they reached one of the gaps in the stockade. Bray peered through the broken, burnt timbers around it, getting a better view of the handful of tall, wooden buildings spaced out all over the settlement and creeping several stories into the sky. The structures had large, square bases, but narrowed as they got higher, leading up to what looked like observation platforms at the top. Between them were numerous smaller, wooden buildings. Some of those buildings were built in rows to form makeshift streets. A hundred yards past the last street were the ships and the water. The remains of a lone, destroyed cabin stood on the beach. Bray didn’t have a view of everything, but he saw no signs of demons anywhere.
“Maybe the demons left,” he said. “That will make it easy to get the guns and leave.”
Kirby nodded as they rode quietly. “The guns are in one of the ships,” she said. “We’ll go right there, and then we’ll leave.”
They rode through the gap in the wall and past a few of the buildings.
William tensed on his horse. He pointed. “What was that?”
Bray and Kirby followed his gaze. Deep in the distance, down by the water, two men with bows crept across the ruined settlement. It looked like they were heading for the ships. Like Kirby, they wore strange, green and brown clothing, but their hair was long and unkempt, so much that it looked to be in a few, solid tangles. Bray could just make out some strange markings on their faces.
“It looks like some of your people survived,” Bray said, looking over at Kirby as they watched the men in the distance. “I recognize the jackets.”
Kirby glanced sideways at Bray with a look of fear that he’d never seen her wear. “Those aren’t my people.”
Get THE RUINS BOOK 1 HERE!
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Typos
We do our best to make sure all our books are edited and proofread, but occasionally something slips through.
If you find a typo in THE LAST CONQUEST, let us know at: http://www.bobbyadair.com/typos
Other Things To Read
If you’d like to read something else by T.W. Piperbrook, the CONTAMINATION series might be your thing. It’s a fast-paced, action-oriented zombie series with a twist. Check out the Boxed Set HERE.
If you’d like to read something else by Bobby Adair, EBOLA K might be a good choice. It follows the collapse of the society through the story of several people struggling through an ebola epidemic. GET IT HERE.
Text copyright © 2019, Bobby Adair & T.W. Piperbrook
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any inf
ormation storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author/ publisher.
This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, places, or events is purely coincidental.
