Kharon

by Wayne Marinovich

  Kharon

  The Journey of Kyle Gibbs

  Book 3

  By Wayne Marinovich

  First published 2014 in Great Britain by Umduzu Publishing

  Copyright © Wayne Marinovich 2014

  This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.

  Edition 1

  The right of Wayne Marinovich to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages

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  Edited by Bubblecow

  Proofread by Julia Gibbs

  Cover design by Stuart Polson

  Ebook formatting by Ebook Launch

  Action thriller, Eco-thriller, Climate fiction, Cli-Fi, Climate Change, action adventure, secret organisations, dystopian thriller, Kyle Gibbs series, race for resources, contagion, virus, New York, sea-level rise, SAS

  For Anneli

  My wife, soul mate, best friend, creative muse and fellow traveller

  Why not also get a FREE copy of Gibbs: The Early Years? Look back at the events which moulded and shaped Gibbs’s character, and made him into the man he is. CLICK HERE to claim your short story.

  Contents

  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

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Other Books by Wayne Marinovich

  Notes from the Author

  Acknowledgements

  Author Bio

  Chapter 1

  Greenock Quay, Glasgow area, Scotland - 2033

  Woolf Egger wiped his wet face with his left hand and looked up at the towering black hull of the ship. He was dressed in his favourite long coat which helped against the curtains of rain that gusted across the wide, glistening concrete quayside.

  The converted container ship that had berthed earlier that afternoon had stood in ghostly silence up until then. A metallic clank echoed across to him as a heavy door opened in the hull, light streaming outwards. Woolf walked over to the long silver gangplank that protruded from midway up the Queen of Sheba. Reaching the bottom of the stairs, he took a long draw on the cigarette he had been shielding in his right palm. The smoky warmth filled his lungs before he flicked the cigarette butt against the side of the hull, watching the red embers fall into the water and fizzle out. It was only five o'clock on a winter's afternoon, and it was pitch dark.

  Unbuttoning the front of his long beige raincoat from the bottom up, he swept the left coat flap to one side and reached around to retrieve the object attached to the back of his leather belt. It came loose with a pop, and he rubbed the straps between his fingers. Buttoning up his raincoat again, he looked up the gangplank to the open doorway in the hull. Looking down at him was the figure of a person in a bright red hazmat suit.

  The person raised his hand and gave him a thumbs up. Woolf replied with a slow wave to come down. Waddling down the slippery rubber-covered ramp, the figure in the red suit glistened in the quayside lighting, with his bright yellow boots squeaking as they rubbed on the walkway.

  Woolf lifted his rubber S10 respirator and looked at the weird skull-like features looking back at him. His jaws clenched as he stretched the double straps of the respirator mask over the back of his head, grimacing as it tugged at his short blond hair. Slipping his finger inside the face seal, he slid it around the entire mask, making sure the fit was snug. Reaching around to the back of his head, he pulled the two flailing rubber straps, and the mask sucked onto his face. He took a deep breath and rubbed both his arms roughly, subconsciously trying to remove any contagion.

  Slipping his hand into a coat pocket, he brought out a waterproof flashlight and turned away from the ship towards the Styx Enterprises company trucks that were parked between two of the deserted warehouses that flanked the quay. Three quick flicks of the rubber power button sent eerie beams of light through the silvery rain. The lead truck flashed once, and after a belch of white steam from two vertical exhaust pipes behind the cab, started to trundle towards him.

  The convoy of new nuclear fusion-powered trucks approached the ship, silent and menacing, crawling closer until the first one parked in front of the two men. The driver, his respirator already in place, gave them the thumbs up.

  Woolf turned to the man next to him. 'Are they all ready to go?' he said with a thick German accent.

  'Yes, sir, they are all lined up,' the American said, his voice muted behind the large Perspex square of the hazmat suit's mask.

  'Make sure we have no bloody problems this time?' Woolf said, and unbuttoned the front of his coat. He removed a 9mm Beretta from a holster on his left side and chambered a round. 'Load them up,' he shouted as he holstered the pistol, and stepped away from the trucks.

  The vibration of the satellite phone in his pocket distracted him, and he looked down at the name on the caller ID. 'Arrgh…!' he shouted into the mask. ‘Let me just do my job.’

  'Move it along, people!’ he shouted again. 'He will kill anyone who messes this up.' With a tightening in his neck muscles, Woolf walked away from the hazardous environment and pulled the respirator up over his face, leaving it perched on the top of his head. Grabbing a crumpled box of cigarettes and Zippo lighter out of his inside pocket, he flicked the tip of a filter-less cigarette up and out of the box, then placed it to his lips. He loved the soothing metallic click of the Zippo as the top opened, and he rolled his left thumb across the flint wheel. His head arched back as he drew on the warmth and blew the smoke out with a sigh. The rattle of the metal gangplank disrupted his peace, and he looked across to see two men in red hazmat suits, leading a line of people out of the bowels of the ship.

  With bowed heads to shield their faces from the rain, the row of people trudged down towards the waiting trucks. More and more kept stepping out of the small door, all dressed in tattered and mismatched clothing. Masked soldiers in green army fatigues jumped down from the back of the first truck and fanned out to create a human funnel for the approaching mass of people.

  A girl in her early teens, long hair pasted across her face, reached the bottom of the gangplank and tripped as she stepped off, falling forward onto her hands and knees. A guard grabbed her under one of her arms, and roughly dragged the sobbing teen to her feet, yelling a
t her as he pushed her towards the back of the truck. She stumbled again and fell forward into a puddle. A bulky man with a shaven head who had been standing behind her stepped forward off the gangplank and shoved the young soldier in the back.

  'Why don't you pick a fight with someone your own size, asshole?'

  The soldier pushed back at the chest of the tall American, who towered over him with fists clenched. A second stocky man, in a tattered black raincoat, appeared on the shoulder of the American. Murmurs of support filtered through those behind them. Cold, huddled bodies pressed forward.

  'Get in the truck, scavengers,' the young soldier shouted.

  ‘No! We won’t take any more of this shit. We‘re tired of being treated like animals,’ the tall American said.

  A rubber truncheon swung across the tall man’s legs, and the young soldier raised it again, aiming it at the man’s neck. A guttural scream pierced the air as the American launched a tackle, picking the young soldier up off the floor and ramming him into the metal side of the truck. 'Run everyone, save yourselves,' he screamed as he dropped the soldier on his back and started swinging punches at him.

  The second man in the black coat punched the nearest guard in the face before wrestling him to the ground. Soldiers stepped forward and piled into the drenched man with batons and rifle butts. Screams echoed up against the hull of the ship with terrified people trying to back up the gangplank. Three young men vaulted over the sides and landed on the quay, then started sprinting off along the wet concrete.

  Woolf slipped the mask down over his face with one hand as he felt for the rubber grip of his Beretta in his other. If they made it off the lit-up docks and into the darkness beyond, he would never find them again. Three rapid shots blasted out into the rain. The first runner went down, his face thudding into the ground as the second slowed to avoid his fellow fugitive. A shudder rippled through him as the bullet passed through his back before the man following him clattered into him, spinning around with the force of the third bullet.

  A hush swept across the quayside, as the fighting men stopped and froze. The scavengers slowly raised their hands into the air. The squawk of fleeing gulls finally broke the silence. Out the corner of his eye, Woolf detected movement. One of the young men had started limping across the quay again. A thrilling rush of adrenaline flooded through him. A smile crept across his masked face, and he raised his Beretta. The youngster's body arched backwards as the bullet smashed into his spine. He slowed for a second, but the momentum took him forward as he fell to the ground, screaming in pain.

  Woolf turned to a nearby young soldier, whose eyes were wide with shock behind the respirator. 'Go and finish him off.'

  The man turned back to Woolf, anguish etched on his face. He shook his head.

  Woolf punched the man in the chest with a massive fist. 'Go and end his suffering! Do you understand me?'

  Trudging off, carrying his SA80 across his chest, the young soldier walked off glancing back to his colleagues.

  Woolf looked at one of the men in the red hazmat suits who stood at the bottom of the gangplank. 'We cannot allow any of them to get into the general public. Not until he tells us to.'

  The man nodded. Woolf walked over to the two kneeling Americans. Raising the Beretta, he shot them both through the head. Both slumped forward onto the wet concrete as screams from the row of people behind him resonated outwards. He walked over to the sergeant who was staring down at the bodies. ‘Don’t let me have to do your job again. Keep loading them into the trucks. If they resist, shoot them.'

  Woolf pulled the slide of the Beretta backwards and removed the chambered round and then tossed it into the darkness. The bullet following a kill had to be thrown away. It was a stupid superstition but one that had kept him alive. The partially full magazine was slipped out of the pistol and placed into the right-hand leg pocket of his black commando trousers. A well-practised hand reached for a fresh one from his left-hand pocket. He flicked the slide back as he holstered the pistol. Splashing sounds made him look across to a white van that was racing towards him through the large puddles on the concrete apron.

  Readjusting his respirator, he walked towards the driver's door of the silent fusion-powered van. A thin man in his twenties jumped out. 'That bloody loading is taking forever, mate,' the man said in a Scottish accent. 'He has been calling me for updates every five minutes. You had better return his calls or he will go postal.'

  Woolf nodded. 'What are you doing here?'

  'I have a special delivery for you. A few scavengers who will be joining you on your return trip to the US.'

  'He didn’t mention anything about this to me.'

  ‘Well, if you bothered to answer your phone, you might be better informed.'

  Woolf took a step towards the young man, towering over him. 'Have you tried to talk on a phone with a mask on?'

  'Easy, big fella. I am just the delivery man,' said the young man, and walked to the back door of the van with a swagger. 'Everyone out! And stop all that bloody crying, would you. Cover yourself up too. I don’t want to see your ugly faces.'

  Woolf leant up against the side of the van. Three human forms exited from the back doors and were led towards the gangplank. One adult and two children. What was his employer up to now?

  Chapter 2

  Arctic Sea Ice, South of Biddy Island, Nunavut - 2033

  The black parka hood flicked across the young man's face, and the thick grey fur trim showered more ice particles onto his ski goggles. With a half-turn of his head, the chasing sledge appeared to have gained on him. A knot formed in his stomach as he looked back down the length of his slim wooden sledge, the corner of a large plastic container packed with lichen and plants was visible beneath the brown caribou skin. He reached forward and pulled the skin over the valuable cargo then gazed at the winter sky of blue and purple hues. He could feel the presence of the sledge behind him.

  It was gaining on him with every second he spent out on the ice. Excited yelps floated back to him on the wind from his dog team, the excitement brought on by the fast pace that he was letting them run at. The animals lived to run at that pace. The grating noise of the sledge's wooden runners resonated outwards across the flat expanse of brittle sea ice and into the dead silence.

  Twenty-year-old Daniel Shewchuk shifted his weight onto his other leg as he stood on the runners at the back of the sledge. Snow and ice particles that his dog team flicked up as they fanned out ahead of him stung his already frozen face. He looked ahead to Leyla, his favourite, as she yelped and snapped at a nearby dog, her white fur blending in with the endless environment.

  'Haw!' Daniel screamed out to her.

  Leyla yelped again and then started to veer left, pushing against the black-and-white dog on her left. The bigger male yielded and changed to match her direction.

  Once again, Daniel flicked an anxious glance behind him to the small brooding figure who was driving the catching sledge. The rushing wind dampened the sound of his uncle's dogs as they started to move up on his right-hand side. The sixty-year-old Inuit usually sat on the side of his sledge and called to his dogs from there, but now he was standing at the back looking impassively at his nephew. With a simple hand gesture, he signalled to Daniel to keep an eye on his dogs that were now selecting a new path across a section of melting ice, riddled with small azure blue puddles.

  A small grey dog pulling on the far right of the ten-dog team yelped as the ice gave way beneath him, his hind legs falling through a patch of broken ice. Daniel gasped and thrust his foot down on the paddle-like footbrake that was suspended from the back of the sledge and positioned between the two runners. It had a metal bar with downward facing spikes bolted onto a large rectangular piece of rubber. Jumping on it with both feet, he slowed the sledge as he reached down to grab the metal anchor. With a well-practised, backwards throw he tossed the metal claw out behind the moving sledge and prayed for it to grab.

  'Come haw!' he screamed at the lead dog as the sle
dge careered around towards the sinking dog. More ice cracked and a second animal slipped into the freezing water. The screech of wood on the ice as the sledge slid towards the hole made Daniel gasp. His eyes widened.

  Snapping a look behind him, he caught a sight of the anchor that had grabbed a piece of jagged sea ice. The limp snaking rope had not snapped taut so it wouldn’t stop them sinking.

  'Come haw, Leyla,' he shouted again. The command for a one-hundred-and-eighty degree turn to the left was quickly obeyed, as Leyla and the large black-and-white furred Brutus pulled hard to the left, swivelling the sledge with their combined weight. A loud crack beneath the runner of the sledge made him grab the handle and lean over to the side opposite to the dogs, then he stepped off the brake. The yelping grew louder as the dogs all strained against the dead weight of the sledge.

  The stricken dogs paddled at the breaking ice around them but failed to get a foothold, giving up the struggle just as the strain on their tuglines and harnesses snapped taut, and they were dragged from the dark blue water by the other dogs. The sledge swivelled around even more and then started to be dragged off again under the strain.

  'Whoa Leyla, whoa!'

  The white dog stopped pulling and turned back to look at Daniel. She watched his every move as he flicked the long claw anchor line a few times then pulled it in. Winding it around his hand and elbow, he threw it down onto the fur that covered the sledge.

  The bedraggled dogs shook themselves, sending a spray of freezing water over the other yelping dogs. With a few wag of their tails, they started barking, and then the crescendo of yelping resumed once again.

  'Hike!' he shouted to Leyla, looking across ahead to his uncle who had brought his sledge to a halt a few hundred meters ahead of him.

  The dogs strained at the tuglines, jumping up and down as they pulled forward to get the sledge going. Daniel eased his foot off the brake and jumped back behind the heavy sledge, pushing it as it started to creak forward, his fur boots slipping on the ice as his legs pumped. Five seconds later he climbed back on the sledge runners and scanned around for his uncle whose sledge was already on its way along the coastline. Daniel glanced backwards to the icy hole. The thought of his drowning father filtered through his mind. Anyone out on the ice could die that way. Tapping the sledge handle three times for luck, Daniel smiled.