Birth of Heavy Metal Boxed Set
Page 28
Sal smirked at the thought, turned the water off after what must have been at least thirty minutes, and stepped out. The bathroom was filled with steam, and he took a moment to shave. He’d been too tired to do it the night before, and although he’d tried, he couldn’t grow a real beard.
He finished and heard someone knock insistently at the door. As distracted as he’d been, he couldn’t be sure how long they’d been knocking. He dried his face quickly and headed through the living area.
“Okay, chill out. I’m coming.” Sal yanked the door open and raised his eyebrows. Kennedy stood there with a bemused smile on her face and bit her bottom lip as she ran her eyes shamelessly over his half-naked body. She had a duffle bag slung over her shoulder
“Well, let’s hope you’re not coming too soon,” she purred and stepped inside.
“Kennedy?” he asked, shutting the door quickly behind her. “What are you doing here?”
“Well, I’m here to spend the night. I don’t want to have to rush out in the middle of it like last time,” she explained nonchalantly and looked around the living room. “Huh. This place looks smaller in the daytime.”
Sal raised an eyebrow. It was the first time she’d actually acknowledged that night almost three months ago. He still wasn’t sure what she meant by spending the night. Well, he had an inkling, and she had been fairly forward about what she wanted the last time.
“I…. You… Well, we… I don’t think…” Kennedy stopped him when she stepped close enough for him to feel her fingertips running lightly over the hem of his towel. He realized how close to naked he was.
“Stuttering isn’t a good look on you, Sal,” she whispered and stood on her tiptoes to press her lips lightly to his. He was distracted enough by it that when she pushed the towel down, he didn’t react in time. In all honesty, he wasn’t sure he wanted to either.
“Agreed,” he mumbled and let her guide him to the couch. He sat and watched as she yanked her white tank top over her head and tossed it aside. He didn’t see where it landed, distracted as he was by Madigan’s lack of a bra.
“I’m here to get my panties, Sal,” she whispered, ran her hands up his thighs, and dropped to her knees between them. “And I’m willing to work very…very hard to get them back.” She punctuated her words by wrapping her fingers around his cock and stroked it a few times. It drew an immediate response from his slowly growing member.
“Oh…fuck,” was all Sal could say as he leaned back. Her lips took the head in as her tongue ran over it slowly. They were business partners, but if this was how she wanted to spend their off time, it was an arrangement he could come to terms with.
She smiled. Sal closed his eyes as a moan escaped his lips.
Author Notes - Michael Anderle
November 29, 2018
THANK YOU for not only reading this story but these Author Notes as well .
(I think I’ve been good with always opening with “thank you.” If not, I need to edit the other Author Notes!)
RANDOM (sometimes) THOUGHTS?
Right now, I am probably at my desk, looking over the top, fingers clenched on the edge to see if we have anyone liking this book.
Why? It is a bit of a divergence from anything I’ve done in the past. For one, there is an honest to
I did put the sex scene into this book on purpose. It ends up driving a bit of the relationship exchanges in books 02 and 03 (I can’t tell you that much about 04 – I’m just writing the beats for that book now.)
‘Hold on!’ you say. “Books 03 and 04? Where is book 02?”
As of today, Book 02 is in editing, already completed and Book 03 is almost words complete. Book 04 will be started (the writing part) the first part of December.
However, the actual books won’t come out except about 4 or 5 weeks apart. I have ‘other’ series to add before we come back to Salinger.
Specifically, the series Apocalypse Paused and Soldiers of Fame and Fortune. Both of these series are different.
One reason is ‘time’ and the other is size.
Time-wise in the story, Apocalypse Paused occurred very soon after Wall 0 (The Bio-domes) are destroyed and the ZOO explodes. The Soldiers of Fame and Fortune stories are set when we are but a few years from Wall 03 being completed, but the actual ‘stories’ inside the stories are from (usually) between Wall 02 finished and wall 03 being built.
WHY ALL OF THESE SERIES?
When I created the concept for The ZOO, I didn’t have many people working on the series with me. Over a short amount of time, I engaged with Jeff Morris, Jude Beers, Lee Barbant, and Eric Quigley and asked them to help build a small portion of the ZOO (whether it was art, or advice on the reality of my alien blue-goop missile.)
They were more excited on this concept than I figured they would be.
Then, I had lunch with Heath Felps (Go NAVY!) and two of his friends here in Vegas at Jessie Rae’s at THEY loved the concept as readers.
So, I went bigger with the concept. I started building more infrastructure with the stories, and needed to create cannon for the stories.
Why? Because I decided to ask some collaborative friends if they would come play in the ZOO sandbox. I asked Lee Barbant, Ell Leigh Clarke, Jonathan Brazee, and a couple I can’t say yet if they would help create more series.
I have three ‘yesses’ with them. The Apocalypse Paused series is with the help of Lee Barbant, and we have ‘Death League’ series coming with Ell Leigh Clarke.
(For those that know about Ellie, I finally got her to agree the killy killy has to occur… no Killy killy? No ZOO.)
WHAT ELSE IS PLANNED?
We are working on a book series: Everything You wanted to know about the ZOO, but were to afraid to ask (assuming I can use that title.) This series is to help future authors, and those who haven’t read everything to piece the ZOO together.
I just wrote the beats for a SOFF book (No4) about William P(aula) Hickock. The last female in the line of Wild Bill Hickock, a black ops operative who is a ghost, a rumor in the ZOO. If the fans like her character, I have someone that would love to write her stories. She isn’t always at the ZOO, but rather works around the world as a super spy and occasionally must go into the ZOO to finish her jobs.
I have another collaborator is can pull some of the MASTERS of action and adventure for decades who we might get to write in the ZOO.
Imagine, if you will, someone who wrote books like The Destroyer, the Executioner or Doc Savage?
Perhaps some of these authors have passed away, but not every one of them. And I know a guy who knows them. I hope to get some of them to write in the ZOO.
I want a Renaissance of authors, both old and new, with one focus.
Having a fun time writing stories that have action, adventure, humor, perhaps romance, all wrapped up with characters where there is a solid chance you will want to read about them again.
Oh… and taking over the world.***
HOW TO MARKET FOR BOOKS YOU LOVE
We are able to support our efforts with you reading our books, and we appreciate you doing this!
If you enjoyed this or ANY book by any author, especially Indie-published, we always appreciate if you make the time to review a book, since it lets other readers who might be on the fence to take a chance on it as well.
AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS
One of the interesting (at least to me) aspects of my life is the ability to work from anywhere and at any time. In the future, I hope to re-read my own Author Notes and remember my life as a diary entry.
I’m writing this just three days from release of this book, sitting at my desk in Las Vegas. I’m about 2 minutes from talking with Ell Leigh Clarke and Lee Barbant on Death League…
Oh shit… BRB….I have two minutes!
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Ad Aeternitatem,
Michael Anderle
*** Really not really.
She is His Witness
Birth of Heavy Metals Book 2
Chapter One
The ground shook and the air reverberated with the enraged sounds of hostile creatures and gunfire. The odd shout here and there from the humans punctuated the cacophony. Sal gripped his weapon tighter. He raised his free hand to wipe sweat from his face and blinked when his hand tapped against his facemask.
Funny how you forgot basic shit in the middle of a firefight.
“Jacobs, if you can spare the time?” Kennedy shouted from the ground below him. “I know getting your head stuck in your ass is a full-time job, but if you could unstick it, I’d really appreciate the help down here.”
Right. He nodded and maintained his higher vantage point for a few seconds longer. While he’d determined the lay of the land, Kennedy had dropped down the smaller cliff to hopefully thin the ranks of the animals which massed relentlessly below. Her plan had been to try to keep a path clear in the event that he saw a way out of the massive bowl that they’d found themselves in, but so far, she’d only managed to ensure that the beasts didn’t scale the cliff to where he was.
Which was a good thing, since he couldn’t see jack shit through the thick tree cover, much less an escape route.
Okay, he was done having his head up his ass.
Sal glanced at the scene below and narrowed his eyes. Kennedy dealt with the locusts for the most part, but more than a few of the panthers and a fair number of other reptiles that he’d never seen before circled like they used the locusts as meat shields.
That was the thing about the Zoo, he thought with a smile. There would always be something out there to surprise you. He took a few steps to the right, and his armor seemed to move before he even formed the thought. Without hesitation, he jumped, cleared the cliff face with room to spare, and dropped the fifteen or so meters down to where Kennedy fought. As he executed a perfect three-point landing a few paces to the right of her, his armored fist struck one of the circling panthers.
“Superhero landing,” he said with a grin and raised his gun in the other hand to shoot at a couple of the locusts that had started to flank her. “Hell yeah.”
Sal didn’t have to see her to know that she had rolled her eyes. He’d come to terms with the fact that she either didn’t get his pop culture references or simply didn’t care enough about them to comment while they were in the middle of a firefight. That was okay. Nobody was perfect.
“Did you find us a way out of here?” she asked over the comms.
“Nope.” He kept his voice even. “The whole place is an overgrown jungle, so I honestly wouldn’t have been able to see anything anyway.”
“Is that what all these trees are?” Kennedy growled, her sarcastic side momentarily revealed as she dropped her empty magazine and let the mechanism slip another into her assault rifle. “Hot damn, I knew we should have come with something that can see through the fucking trees.”
Sal gritted his teeth to hold back his instinctive retort. Sure, a satellite feed would have been fantastic but was sadly out of their reach. She was merely annoyed that he had done better than she had, and he didn’t need to say anything to make it worse.
“Hypocrite,” he said and covered with a fake sneeze.
“What was that?” she asked and raised an eyebrow.
“Nothing,” he replied innocently and ran a quick check of his equipment before he moved forward again. “Just…allergies. From all the pollen. We are surrounded by a menagerie of alien plants, you know.”
“Right, and I’m sure you forgot to add a filter to your new state of the art suit of heavy armor,” Kennedy retorted and moved in behind him. As they inched forward, the animals seemed to back away. They probably merely regrouped for another attack since they didn’t seem the types to give up on fresh meat made crunchy by new suits of armor.
“Come on, don’t be jealous that I got the newer, shinier, and better suit of armor, Kennedy,” Sal said with a teasing grin and turned to face her.
“The fact that it’s bullshit that a specialist geek like you gets to try out the new gunner combat armor is irrelevant,” Kennedy returned with a growl.
“Hey, you made a good run for the test, but you failed,” Sal said and turned away once more. “No harm, no foul. You’ll do better once they restructure the Interface to the average gunner’s stats.”
“The test was bullshit,” she grumbled under her breath.
Sal heard it and gasped. “You take that back. Don’t blame the tests.”
“You designed the test for people like you to be the only ones who can pass,” she said belligerently as they continued their slow progress through the jungle.
“Well, since I was the one who designed it, of course it leans toward my style of operating,” he said defensively. “Your style is a lot more reliant on reflex and reaction and less on control. Power armor requires far more control. Of course, they take these tests to the lab and adapt the suit with some sort of movement AI and then it doesn’t matter.” Sal paused to push a series of vines aside to allow Kennedy to pass. She did but flipped him the armored middle finger of her suit as she pushed through.
“I need to be able to react quickly,” she growled. “Control won’t help me when something jumps at me and I only have a blink of an eye to aim and shoot it. You’re saying that years of training and experience are a bad thing here.”
Sal shook his head. “I’m not. I’m saying that when using power armor, if you move too quickly or you force the armor to move faster than your body is able to, you’ll break bones and tear muscles until you adjust to it. Control is necessary. At least until they push the AI that would prevent that from happening past the development stage.”
Again, he didn’t need to see her to know that she rolled her eyes. She knew he was right. That was the reason why he’d been called in to help with the general development. It wasn’t because they didn’t want gunners to use these armor UIs, but rather because they needed a benchmark to work from. As long as they paid his hourly rate, he was more than happy to oblige.
Kennedy knew that, and he knew she understood. Despite her blustery exterior, she was smarter than most of the gunners brought to the Zoo, and honestly, a much better fighter than most of them. The fact that all that came with attitude and sass to spare made it the deal of the century, even though he had still barely begun the learning curve on how to handle it. The more he got to know her, the more he discovered vast pools of sass waiting to be discovered along with…other things.
Sal was suddenly very happy that she couldn’t read his thoughts through the comm system. Not that mind reading AIs would ever be a thing.
Hopefully.
He came to a halt when she stopped abruptly and raised her hand with her fist closed. His body tensed instinctively as he glanced around and his armor reacted instantaneously. He’d added a design that enabled it to use the sensors to detect if the user was in danger of attack or prepared for combat. A few of the combat programs started up and with the armor bunched, although it made for less efficient movement, it protected the vital areas far better.
They’d probably scrap it in the end product, but it had been a good idea anyway.
“What?” Sal asked when he saw nothing to suggest a problem. The entire Zoo had gone suspiciously quiet, but other than that, there didn’t seem to be any obvious imminent danger for them to deal with.
“Motion sensors,” Kennedy said tersely.
He nudged the relevant button with his chin and switched his HUD’s view to motion sensor. Carefully, he scanned their surroundings. Immediately beyond the view of the naked eye, he saw the jungle awash with movement from the animals a
ll around them. He turned around slowly and made sure to keep his gun raised and ready.
Yup, they were completely surrounded.
“I’ve started to feel really iffy about our decision to abandon the cliff face as a defensible position,” Kennedy said, and all the sarcasm and amusement had dropped from her voice. She was all business now. Sal had seen her slip from casual to combat in seconds, and it never failed to send a tingle up his spine. He’d never been sure if it was a good or a bad feeling, but it was incredibly real, there was no denying that.
“You have any more of those…smoke grenades?” He asked, his voice edged with a steely note. They were in some serious shit. He’d been in enough engagements like this to know that. It was chilling how easily these different species managed to work together and how they used reciprocal tactics despite not being even remotely similar in type. The goop in their bodies seemed to resonate and rise above the basic animal instincts to create a shared purpose and unity.
Sometimes, anyway. He’d also watched them hunt each other down, as you’d expect from a thriving ecosystem. Carnivorous predators always hunted omnivorous or herbivorous prey, even when it came to alien animals.
“I have the one that you gave me,” Kennedy confirmed in response and retrieved the grenade from her suit. He’d given it to her when they’d split up the first time and hadn’t even noticed that she’d used one while he was on the top of the cliff. That annoyed him more than anything she could have said. He held himself to higher standards than anybody else could these days. Gone was the slacker doctoral candidate who had faced the prospect of running into the Zoo for the first time with shaking knees.