Ravaged: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller (Taken World Book 1)

by Flint Maxwell

He woke around noon to the sound of his mother dragging a suitcase down the hall runner outside of his room, grunting.

  “Ma?”

  “They’re kicking us out,” she said. “We have to go to downtown Akron. Dreadful place.” She shuddered.

  “We don’t have to.”

  “Where else could we go?” she asked.

  He didn’t have an answer for her.

  Like many of his problems, Brad wished he could sleep it away. He would just close his eyes, drift off into unconsciousness, and poof, his problems would be gone…at least for a little while. He supposed he could do that with project deadlines, grades, teacher conferences, frayed relationships… but not this. This was their life, and the notion that those voids were dangerous was still fresh in his mind.

  “Right,” his mother said, when his silence proved her point. “We have to go. They’re saying it shouldn’t be longer than three days.”

  “Yeah…right,” Brad said.

  At seven p.m., a truck full of soldiers went down their street. One of them shouted from a bullhorn: “Three hours until the deadline. For your safety, please evacuate your homes.”

  At eight p.m., the truck came again. This time they said: “Last warning. Please evacuate your homes.”

  At half past eight, Brad and his mother were getting ready to leave. Their suitcases were piled into the Kia, and they already had one foot out the door.

  But it was too late. If they had left fifteen minutes earlier, they might’ve made it out of Woodhaven.

  Brad was standing in the front doorway when it happened.

  First, there was a surge in the air, almost like an electrical current running through the very atmosphere. The hair on his arms and the back of his neck stood up. His skin broke out in bumps.

  The television turned on in the living room, sending some newscaster’s voice blasting from the speakers. He heard his mother scream—barely—then came the breaking of glass.

  Brad would’ve whipped around or run back inside if he could.

  From the north, in the direction of Stone Park, in the direction of the void, a great red light pulsed against the darkening sky. The world seemed to be dipped in shades of black, as if a great thunderstorm was coming, one for the record books.

  Then—

  A vibration shook the ground. Brad lost his balance and fell forward onto the handrail. If he hadn’t snagged the chipped wood, he would’ve fallen down the steps and had a busted head to worry about instead of a few splinters.

  For what seemed like a long time, his world was in complete chaos.

  As he tried to stand upright, he saw the road open up. A jagged lightning bolt of black zigged and zagged through the asphalt, coming to an end at the Kappers’ house, and splitting their porch steps, causing one half of their awning to droop and eventually crash to the ground. Cars parked on the street were swallowed up by the crack. Brad heard their alarms chirping, the sound fading as they were lost in the chasm.

  Trees cracked and split and fell. Glass windows shattered as if blasted by a shotgun. Somewhere far away, a mad dog was barking. The barking eventually turned to a strangled yelp, and then went silent.

  There were not many screams, though; this was something Brad noticed above all else. Most of the people on his mother’s street had the good sense to bug out when the army had told them to.

  Brad still couldn’t find his footing. He almost slipped down the steps as he pivoted and tried heading into the house for his mother. The whole time, he was thinking, You dumbass, you should’ve grabbed her and gone right when that army woman came this morning! You could be halfway to fucking Mexico by now—

  Then it stopped.

  The ground no longer shook. His skin no longer prickled with that electrical sensation. The world was quiet again, save for the braying of car alarms and the confused chatter from a few people up the street or the next one over.

  “Mom?” Brad called.

  “In here,” she answered.

  She was in the dining room, under the table. The cabinet containing all of her good plates, the kind that weren’t specifically fine china but were reserved for special occasions such as holidays and birthdays, had tipped sideways. The doors hung open, and most of the plates had smashed against the table and the hardwood floor, shattering to shards and powder around her.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “What—what happened?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, “some earthquake, worse than the usual tremors.” He offered her a hand, which she took, and guided her out from under the table. Her fingers trembled in his.

  “Oh Lord,” she said, scanning the room. “This is going to take forever to clean up.”

  He put his arm around her shoulders. “Worry about it later. Let’s get out of here.”

  A wailing alarm drowned out the few voices outside. It was distant, but it was coming from the north, Brad had no doubt. From Stone Park.

  His skin prickled again.

  It’s too late.

  13

  Something in the Voids

  Hours before the final earthquake that would destroy Brooke Long’s fine china, Tyler Stapleton had been asleep. He’d just wanted a nap. That was all. Then someone frantically knocked on his door and woke him up. The banging almost made him scream. He was having another one of his nightmares, one about unfathomable horrors he couldn’t even picture in his mind. He was startled from the noise, but happy to be back in reality.

  He wandered to the door stifling a yawn, slits for eyes. He still wore his white, buttoned shirt, a tie loosely dangling around his neck, and a pair of black pants. Yesterday had been a tough workday, going over the numbers and preparing his report. When he’d finally gotten “home” to his trailer, he’d just crashed on the pullout couch.

  “Yes?” he called through the door—if one could even call it a door. It was nothing more than half an inch of sheet metal, a silvery color that mismatched the rest of the trailer.

  “Doctor Stapleton?”

  “Yes?” He cracked the door. There stood a soldier, one Tyler did not recognize.

  “There’s been…activity.”

  “Activity?” That certainly woke him up. All remnants of the fleeting dream was gone. “What do you mean?”

  The soldier shrugged. “Major Hammond wants you.”

  First experiments that we aren’t ready for, and now making me work overtime, Tyler thought begrudgingly. But really, unusual shifts were nothing new. The other scientists on the job would run their tests, find the same results as usual, and then pass them on to Tyler, who would declare them useless. It was an endless cycle of bullshit.

  The soldier looked at him. “He wants you. Now.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  No time for a shower or brushing his teeth. Tyler opted for a shot of mouthwash, which he gargled while walking the path to Base Tent. The entirety of the walk, he could just…feel that something was off. He wasn’t exactly sure what it was yet, but he was sure he’d find out.

  He stopped and stared at the anomaly, craning his head at the towering black shape like it was a New York City skyscraper, and the sudden urge to drop everything and run back to D.C., to his mom and to his grandma, was so great that it was almost paralyzing. He wouldn’t leave, though. Couldn’t. He knew this.

  The tents were set up about a hundred and fifty yards from the anomaly, but Tyler wished they were farther.

  His team waited for him; so did Hammond, the great big bastard. The major was the first to speak.

  “About time, doc.”

  Tyler met his eyes, but didn’t say any words. Hammond was not worth wasting breath on, in his honest opinion. He instead asked Naomi Hu what the deal was.

  “Increased seismic activity around the base, sir,” she answered.

  “Don’t have to call me ‘sir,’ Naomi,” he replied as he went into the tent. “How much of a difference are we looking at?”

  Naomi shook her head as she followe
d him inside and pointed to the computer screen. Slowly, Tyler’s head turned. He scanned the numbers. They were off the fucking charts. Literally. Yet, he had felt no tremors, but according to the seismograph, the area around the anomaly was at about an eight on the Richter scale. That class of earthquake would tear apart the whole damn town. It didn’t make sense. Something was off. The anomaly must’ve been…absorbing the quake?

  Staring at these numbers, he felt his mouth go dry. I must be dreaming still, he told himself. Back in the trailer, curled up on the couch. That’s all.

  But he wasn’t; deep down, he knew this. Something was happening, something they had no explanation for.

  “Hammond seen this?” he asked quietly.

  “Of course.”

  “What does he want?”

  “An explanation,” Naomi said simply.

  “Can we give him one?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Doc!” Hammond called from outside. His voice made Tyler jump.

  “Better go,” Naomi said.

  He did.

  When Tyler stepped out of the tent, he was taken aback, and almost fell.

  Standing in front of him was a 1950s sci-fi spaceman, the kind you’d see in an old Buck Rogers serial. The figure wore a fishbowl helmet over his head, face hidden behind a tinted visor. The suit looked to be a mix between hazmat and something NASA would wear, made out of a material that looked like it’d rip at the slightest touch, but was almost guaranteed not to.

  “Here’s your guinea pig, doc,” Hammond said.

  The spaceman raised a gloved hand, and that sinking feeling in Tyler’s gut came back, as did the flashes of his previous nightmare.

  Monsters. It is full of monsters, a voice in his mind said, but he didn’t know what that meant. Not really. Nor did he want to know. Monsters weren’t real. There was no warty thing with golden eyes and razor-sharp claws hiding in your closet or under your bed. No boogeyman. No Frankenstein’s monsters or Draculas or Wolfmen; all that stuff was bullshit, make-believe.

  There’s no such thing as giant black diamonds appearing out of nowhere, either, is there, Tyler? a voice inside his mind asked.

  That sinking feeling got worse.

  The other members of his team: Laurie Franklin, Michael King, Naomi Hu, and Dylan Perez, all looked at him for direction, but they were also looking at him with a strange sense of bewilderment, too, weren’t they?

  Tyler sighed.

  Yes, he thought, Yes, they are, as if to say this can’t possibly work.

  Hammond tapped his wristwatch. “Time’s a-wasting.”

  They had already hooked up the instruments. The spaceman—or guinea pig—was tethered with a chain to an iron ring attached to a stake buried deep in the ground. The guinea pig’s name: Jacob Floyd.

  Floyd took his helmet off upon shaking Tyler’s hand; Tyler wished he wouldn’t have done that, because he saw how young the man was, barely into his twenties.

  “You don’t have to do this,” he whispered as they shook hands.

  Jacob stepped back and, in a loud voice, said: “I am proud to serve my country, Doctor Stapleton.” He then pivoted and headed toward the anomaly.

  Hammond smirked. It seemed he was always smirking.

  Tyler and his team now stood in the central headquarters. The atmosphere around the base seemed to change, weighing heavily on all of them.

  This was serious now. More serious than before.

  “Video feed is ready,” Laurie Franklin said.

  “Ditto on audio,” Perez said.

  “How are we on comms?” Tyler asked.

  It was all happening so fast. Too fast.

  “Doing real good on comms,” Jacob Floyd replied over the radio.

  Naomi Hu held a thumb up, and Tyler offered her a smile, but it was the furthest thing from a happy smile.

  Hammond entered Base Tent now, strutting around like he owned the place. He stood in front of the screen on the wall that transmitted what Floyd saw. The picture showed black because he was too close at this point to truly get any perspective on the anomaly. Back here at the base, they could almost see the entirety of the thing, standing tall among the trees, a black stain in the blue-purple sky.

  “Let’s do this,” Hammond said. “No more waiting around with our thumbs up our asses.”

  Tyler closed his eyes, said a silent prayer, then clicked the button and said, “Floyd, we’re ready.”

  “Yes, sir,” Floyd’s voice cracked back over the radio. “En route to the anomaly.”

  But the screen didn’t change; the blackness held. To an outsider, it would seem as if they’d lost their video connection, but over the audio, they heard Floyd’s ragged breathing, the type of raspy, echoing breaths one took in a Halloween mask.

  “Five feet from the target,” Floyd said.

  “How do you feel?” Tyler asked.

  He didn’t get an answer, and he fought the urge to shout out for Floyd to turn around and come back. He never got the chance.

  Hammond crowded him, hitting the comms button. “Godspeed, soldier.”

  A sharper crackle than before. No reply from Floyd.

  Then—

  A terrible whine of feedback.

  Tyler took a step back. Naomi clutched her head, covered her ears. Then just as fast as the feedback came, it disappeared, the echo hanging heavily in the air.

  “Floyd?” Hammond said. “Floyd? Come in, soldier.”

  But there was no reply. Not yet.

  Michael King worked the controls on the main console, flipping switches, pressing buttons. Nothing seemed to be working.

  “Private Floyd, come in. Come in, dammit!” Hammond shouted. He brought a fist down on the desk, and the keyboard jumped off and hung by its cord, clattering against a cabinet. Naomi was quick to pick it up.

  “We got eyes on the anomaly?” Tyler asked, all business now; no time for being scared, not anymore.

  “Yes, but comms are down all over the base.” Perez handed him a pair of binoculars. “Better see for yourself.”

  The ground shook again.

  They exited the tent. Tyler held the binoculars up to his eyes and peered at the anomaly. Has the buzzing grown louder? he wondered. He thought it had, thought the ground had begun to shake worse than earlier, too—first, just tremors, lately, small earthquakes. Now it felt like something worse than an earthquake; it felt like the end of the world.

  He almost asked Perez, but a commotion back in central HQ had Perez running back up the path.

  Through the binoculars, Tyler saw the chain taut and parallel with the ground. He did not see Jacob Floyd; Floyd had disappeared into the anomaly. But that was good, he figured, because as long as he was still attached to the chain, and the chain was taut, that meant that he was somehow—

  The earth shook hard enough for Tyler to lose his balance and drop the binoculars. He heard them shatter when they hit the ground. Then soldiers rushed out of the barracks with their weapons drawn. There was a lot of shouting. Thunderous footsteps. But there was something else, too…that droning, buzzing noise. It vibrated Tyler’s sternum, made him feel sick, as if he was suffering from some terminal disease.

  Base Tent’s door banged open, and out came Hammond. He was looking on with what might’ve been fear, though Tyler never thought he would see the day that Major Hammond was fearful of anything… but he had never thought he would see a giant black diamond appear out of nowhere, either, defying the very laws of physics he had dedicated his life to.

  “I told you!” Tyler yelled over the buzzing. Hammond didn’t seem to notice him. “I told you! This isn’t natural. We shouldn’t have messed with—”

  Then it was all over. No longer did the buzzing drone on. No longer did the ground shake with what seemed like Hell’s wrath and fury.

  It was now another peaceful and quiet day in Stone Park, Ohio.

  For thirty seconds, at least.

  After the thirty seconds passed, a terrible scream filled the sile
nce.

  Tyler snapped his head in the direction of the outcry.

  The spaceman. Jacob Floyd. But his suit was tattered and ragged, stained with blood. His helmet was gone. He was missing half of his face, and the torn half shone with blood and gore. Tyler saw a bone poking through; he saw teeth. He felt like he was going to throw up, but he hadn’t eaten anything in who knew how long.

  Floyd was saying something, screaming it at the top of his lungs. Blood sprayed from his mouth. Tyler saw he was missing a hand. And he looked…he looked somehow older. Much older. His once dark hair was now spotted with gray and longer than before, his buzzcut gone. His hair hung to his shoulders. The good side of his face, the part of his face that was still there, was now wrinkled with deep rivulets and channels of age. Floyd looked like he had lived many, many years.

  What? What in the hell is happening? Tyler thought.

  Somehow, he managed to crawl closer. He wanted to grab the soldier, tell him to run, that it wasn’t too late. But wasn’t it?

  It was.

  The words screamed by Floyd registered in Tyler’s head.

  “They’re coming! They’re coming!”

  Who? Who’s coming?

  Then Floyd dropped down on his knees and began vomiting up what looked like vital organs, lungs, kidney, heart. A sea of blood splashed the dirt in a waterfall.

  The score of armed soldiers stopped short. One of them turned her head away, and Tyler wanted to shout, ‘What the fuck are you doing? Help him!’ but he couldn’t. His voice had deserted him.

  The anomaly thrummed and twanged, a score of broken guitar strings, a busted bass drum. Tyler shrank back. The noise was enough to knock him flat.

  God, he’d give anything to be somewhere else, anywhere else but here. His hands slapped at his pockets. There, inside, was his cell phone. The urge to call his mother and grandmother—who shared a house he had bought them in D.C., only a block away from his own place—was great. He pictured their home destroyed, ruined. He wanted to warn them. He just wanted to hear their voices once more, the women that raised him, the women who had taught him how to be a man.