Raven's Hell (Savage World, 2)

by Jenika Snow

  Raven’s Hell

  Savage World, 2

  Jenika Snow

  RAVEN’S HELL (SAVAGE WORLD, 2)

  By Jenika Snow

  www.JenikaSnow.com

  Jenika_Snow@Yahoo.com

  Copyright © July 2020 by Jenika Snow

  First E-book Publication: 2015

  Cover Designer: Mayhem Cover Creations

  Editor: Kayla Robichaux

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: The unauthorized reproduction, transmission, or distribution of any part of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.

  This literary work is fiction. Any name, places, characters and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or establishments is solely coincidental. Please respect the author and do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials that would violate the author’s rights.

  Contents

  Synopsis

  Preface

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Epilogue One

  Epilogue Two

  About the Author

  Collin Suthers was a kingpin of the underground before the world ended. But the destruction of civilization, the degradation and brutality, weren’t so different than the life he was used to.

  He was never considered a good man, and dealing in things that were illegal on every scope, he felt no remorse in the acts he committed. But that world was now gone, and in its place was a vicious hell.

  Being savage was the only way to survive, and what he was after, the only thing that could alleviate the solitude and isolation, the bone-deep loneliness of being utterly alone… was a woman.

  Rebecca Shaw had always been a survivor, so when the life she once knew ended, she was no stranger to having to fight tooth and nail to stay above water.

  When three men ambush her, she knew she couldn’t take them all on, telling herself this was the end. She’d fight to the death.

  And then Collin arrived, a beast of a man, a savage who took out her threat with little effort. She couldn’t help but wonder if the possessive side Collin showed toward her was more dangerous than the savage world itself.

  Collin wouldn’t leave Rebecca. He couldn’t. Now that he found her, his obsession for the fiery female grew daily.

  When it came to something he wanted—Rebecca—he wouldn’t ever give it up.

  She was his now.

  Reader note: This story was previously published under the same title. It has since been re-edited, parts revised, and new content has been added.

  Preface

  A flu vaccine was what collapsed civilization.

  Something as simple as an immunization was found to stop the spread of cancer. It had been hailed worldwide as a magnificent accomplishment, one in which the scientists thought they had come across something monumental.

  They had, but what they brought to humans was a hell on earth. The ones who had gotten the vaccine started exhibiting signs of cannibalism and necrosis.

  They became far sicker than anyone could have imagined. Everyone thought they were safe if they stayed away, waited out the sickness. They refused to take responsibility for what they had done, what they had created. They thought they were helping people, curing something as devastating as cancer.

  They had been wrong.

  Whatever was in the flu shots infected people, changing something inside them and making them crazed, thirsty for blood, and something that wasn’t considered human any longer. It slowly killed them from the inside out, made their flesh rot, every orifice bleed, and all logical reasoning vanish.

  And this was the world they lived in now, trying to survive each and every day with obstacles thrown against them.

  Starvation, death, rape, and being hunted by walking corpses was the world now, and the ones standing needed to be the strongest, having no remorse in trying to survive.

  1

  New York City: Five years ago

  The music was loud, the room filled with smoke, and naked flesh gyrated in front of him. Collin Suthers leaned back, brought the cigar to his mouth, and inhaled deeply. The smoke billowed out around him when he exhaled, and the sight before him had his dick hardening. There were two naked women sitting in front of him, their hands on each other, their mouths fused together, and the thought of them getting it on for his viewing pleasure was a guarantee in the very near future.

  The club he was currently in was one of many he owned in New York. This was his empire, his world, and he controlled it any way he saw fit. He wasn’t a good man, didn’t care about anything but what allowed him to grow as a king in every way. He fucked any female he wanted, because they were there for the taking. He killed without remorse when the time called for it, and he never looked back. Never. He did things to ensure he stayed on top, and because of that, he survived. He always survived, and always would.

  Marco, one of the men working for him, stepped up to Collin, leaned down, and whispered in his ear, “Mr. Suthers, the shipment is here for your inspection.”

  Collin stood, smoothed his hands down his three-piece suit, and made his way to the backroom. The room was lit with harsh florescent lighting, but this space was used to store the club supplies and conduct Collin’s less than legal business deals. He moved away from the shelving and stopped at the stainless-steel wall that held bottles of stocked liquor. He gestured for Marco to proceed. He crouched and pushed one of the boxes of bottled beer aside. Marco pressed the hidden lever that had the wall opening up and revealing a small office. Collin heard the side door open and saw two men coming forward with black briefcases in their hands. His men patted them down for weapons once more, because although they had been frisked before they were allowed in his club, he didn’t trust anyone.

  They walked into the backroom, and the wall shut behind them, sealing them in. Collin had Marco and Peter standing guard, their guns visible if these two junkie fuckers thought to try anything. If they were smart and knew Collin’s reputation, they would not, of course, but they were drug addicts, so anything was possible.

  “Collin, we have some primo shit here—”

  “Just shut up and put the fucking cases on the table.” Collin didn’t have time for conversation. He didn’t give a shit what these assholes thought. “If the product isn’t up to standards, then the solution for bringing me less than quality drugs is simple.” He stared at the two men, and although he didn’t usually do business with junkies, their product was known to be top-shelf shit. He’d find out for himself.

  The men set the cases on the desk, opened them, and the product that was presented could have given Collin a hard-on. “Sample it.” He pulled out his switchblade, sliced the package of cocaine with the blade, and held it up to one of the men. The junkie was eager to try, and he moved forward and sniffed the white power off the stainless steel. After a few seconds of Collin waiting to see if the fucker would drop dead, he had one of his men try the coke. Marco took a hit for himself, inhaled roughly, and then nodded.

  “The product is primo, boss. The drip hits real good in the back of the throat.”

  “You have contacts in South America who hook you up with this product?” Collin
asked and shut the cases of drugs. When they didn’t answer right away but just looked at each other, Collin’s patience faded. “Answer the fucking question. I have other business to attend to, and you’re wasting my time.”

  “No disrespect, Mr. Suthers. Um,” one of the men began. “We know a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy in the Cartel. He can send us small amounts at a time. This load took a month to get to us because of the mules having to cross the border.”

  Collin would need to look into getting into contact with their wholesale distributor, because the meth and weed he sold wasn’t enough. He had inventory to stock, people to get high, and his empire was expanding. He nodded to Peter, who grabbed the duffle from off the floor and tossed it to the junkies’ feet.

  “That’s the amount we discussed.” Collin stared at the two men, and when they didn’t move right away, his patience snapped. “Get the fuck out of here.”

  They grabbed the money and took off once the wall was opened again. Collin sat on the edge of the desk, blew out a breath, and stared at Marco and Peter, his two most loyal men who worked for him. “Let’s get laid and fucked up.” And then the three of them headed back out to the club to get their dicks wet and enjoy the rest of the evening with a little cocaine and some booze.

  2

  After the fall of civilization

  Collin walked across the rooftop, his last cigarette in his mouth and the sun beating down on him. In just six short months, the city of New York crumbled.

  Parts of buildings were missing from the bombs that had been dropped. The government had tried to eradicate the threat of the infection spreading by killing off the sick, as well as anyone still healthy and on the ground.

  Sections of the city were nothing more than crumbled wastelands, burned to the ground, blackened and ash-filled. He stayed though, became the last man standing in his crew and watched everyone around him flee, become infected, or waste away and die.

  He sat on the edge of the roof, his feet hanging off the side, the drop thirty stories. The wind picked up, and the stench of the decay below, of the filth that built up in the city and covered it like a sickening blanket, filled his nose. He took another hit off the cigarette, pulled the smoke back, and looked at it.

  He had a few cartons at his place before all this shit happened, and during it he acquired a few more cartons, along with other supplies in exchange for helping some people. Because he ran things before the infection, a lot of people in his area looked to him for help. But Collin couldn’t have done anything but wait it out just like everyone else.

  “So long,” he said to the smoke, took the final hit, and then flicked it over the ledge. Even from a distance, he could see the infected below, stumbling around, their groans muffled by the expanse. Collin stood and walked back to the rooftop entrance of the apartment building he lived in.

  He had the penthouse, and although he lived here comfortably for the last six months, staying was not an option he wanted to exercise anymore. His resources in the city had run out, and if he stayed, he’d die like the rest of this place.

  The country seemed like a good place to start his life over, away from this fucking death, the life he once had, and now was the time to leave.

  He headed down the stairs and into his place. The sound of moaning came up from the lower levels, and he knew getting through this building and past the fucking infected was going to be a bitch. But he had been preparing for this, plotting out his way to leave the city with as little hassle as possible.

  After shutting the door behind him, he leaned against his door and stared at his penthouse apartment.

  The entire upper level was his, with an open floor plan he worked for from the floor up. He had everything packed: a backpack with enough supplies—the rest of what he had—a few weapons, and a pair of clothes. Those were the items he’d have to survive on until he found other supplies.

  He was smart enough to know that the measures he’d have to take to survive out in the world, to get more supplies, could very well mean he’d have to kill and maim for them.

  He walked over, grabbed his coat and backpack, and shoved the jacket inside it. This was it. He was leaving all this shit behind, going to set roots down away from where the stench of death and decay covered the streets, filtered up to the rooftops, and saturated him in vileness.

  He didn’t have a shirt on, and his reflection in the wall mirror across from him showed the many scars he had gotten leading a bad life, a few bullet holes in his shoulder, and the raven tattoo that covered his back.

  He grabbed his shirt off the couch, and once it was on, he went over to his things. Slinging his bag over his shoulder, taking one more look at the life he once lived, a life that was no more, he set out to start over.

  Collin left his apartment, started making his way down the stairwell, and stepped over a few rotting corpses. They wore employee outfits, their bodies partially eaten from the few straggling infected who made their way back here months ago. The smell was intense, but Collin was used to it, used to the death that was part of his world now.

  His descent was far, since he had been on the top floor, and when he finally reached the bottom, he stopped, hearing the low groans and shuffling coming from behind one of the two doors.

  One exit led out to the back alley, which he knew was thick with infected, and the other went into the employee kitchen. The groaning was coming from the staff entrance, and although he could have taken a big chance and risked going out through the back, he was playing it smart.

  He had a better chance of going through the main part of the apartment building and dealing with what leftover corpses were walking around than braving the small, narrow alley that wouldn’t allow him to move very well.

  He walked over to the staff entrance, listened to see if he could hear how many infected were behind it, and when he only heard the one, he held onto the lead pipe he had in one hand and gripped the door handle with the other. He had a few weapons on him, one being the pipe, a couple of knives, even a thick bike chain.

  He had no more ammo for his guns, so the damn things were useless unless he wanted to chuck them at a motherfucker’s head.

  When Collin pulled the door open, he held the pipe up high, saw the infected slowly turn around to face him because of the noise, and watched a spark of energy come to life in the asshole. The guy was badly decomposed but not nearly enough for him to be one of the original people who had gotten that damn vaccine that started all this shit.

  No, this poor bastard had been infected by a bite, and that was confirmed when he lifted his arm toward Collin and the grisly looking bite mark was prominent on his inner bicep. His head was cocked unnaturally to the side, and when he opened his mouth, Collin saw the way his tongue hung over his bottom lip, no longer fully attached.

  Collin moved forward, bashed the pipe on the side of the man’s head, and heard the sickening crunch of his skull caving in. The corpse fell to the ground, and black blood pooled beneath his body, covering the red-tiled floor beneath. He stared at the kitchen, the large stainless-steel appliances, the few dead bodies on the ground, and the fact that it was scavenged clean.

  He had come down, as had many of the people still toughing it out in the building, and taken what supplies he could.

  There had been riots and looting, killing, and overall chaos. The apartment building he lived in catered to the wealthy, included room service even, and because he had been on top of the world, owning his own empire, albeit an underground one, Collin had ruled like a king. But that was in the past. He was alone now, and it was kill or be killed.

  The building had been closed up, and with no windows in the kitchen, the only light came through the open doorway from the stairwell, the one that led into the main foyer of the complex. The place stank to high hell and looked like a dark wasteland.

  He moved around the dead bodies, pressed himself up against the wall, and listened to hear if there was any movement in the main lobby. When he heard silence
, he leaned over the side, stared out the doorway, and saw that it was clear.

  Collin moved through the lobby, stepped on broken glass, walked over the body of the security officer that had been named Robert, and went to the front doors. The glass on the front part of the building was reinforced and had withstood the destruction of the city. He peered through the foggy, filthy glass, saw a few infected across the street, more down the way moving slowly away from him, and he knew he would need to just make a run for it.

  Because the infected were already dead, the infection that killed them rotting their bodies from the inside out, they were slow, had no conscious thought, and were only intent on feeding. Collin could handle one or two head-on, but if he got stuck, cornered by a horde of them, he’d be outnumbered and done for.

  Even a scratch from one of these motherfuckers would infect him, and he wasn’t going to die that way.

  If his life in this world ended, it would be because he fought to survive, not because a nasty corpse got to him. He opened the door, and the damn thing creaked. Pausing, he hoped those bastards didn’t hear the sound, and he waited to make sure everything was clear to go.

  When they didn’t turn and notice him, he slipped out the door and started moving toward the city limits. The road ahead of him would be pretty damn long, but he had nothing but time anymore.

  He made his way quickly down the street, stayed close to the side of the buildings, and kept his attention all around. There was a decomposing woman lying on the sidewalk, her face unrecognizable, her scraggly, long dark hair lightly blowing in the breeze. She held a small bundle wrapped in a pink blanket, and the sight was heartbreaking.