Bunker (A Post-Apocalyptic Techno Thriller Book 2)

by Jay J. Falconer

  * * *

  Emily’s spine tingled again, deep down at the base, but the tingle was stronger than before. She knew it was coming, and she wasn’t going to be able to stop it this time. The gunshots must have started the countdown. Guns always sent her mind into a blur and her heart racing, charging her body with a rush of uncontrolled emotions that seemed to act as the trigger for the blue light. Gunfire and gangs were two things that she had fought hard to avoid during her time on the streets.

  The jump was coming, but she couldn’t leave Junie to fend for herself. She needed to think of something. She usually had seventeen minutes from the first tingle until the blue light consumed her and she’d vanish. The pre-jump process used to proceed like clockwork, but lately it had been different. The lead time was now ten minutes, tops, from the first indicator to the last moment. Barely enough time to find seclusion before it happened. She didn’t understand why the timer suddenly decided to change, it just had.

  Now that she had a friend in tow, she couldn’t slip away into the shadows and let it take her. Not with Junie depending on her. This is why you never break the rules, she scolded herself, as she reviewed the list in her head. Her mind highlighted rule number seven in bold—never get involved; nothing good ever comes from it.

  Junie was babbling on and on, trying to explain what she was doing on the playground next to the shelter in the middle of the night, and why she’d stolen a backpack from a bunch of West Side Locos.

  “I was sitting in my secret place under that little arbor thing, ya know, in the corner by the bathrooms. I was waiting for some drunk to finish his dump and leave so I could wash up. I heard the Locos coming up the walkway through the trees by the picnic tables so I hid. I knew the bag was important because they were arguing about it. Then they all turned their backs and kept yelling at each other. English mostly, but some Spanish sprinkled in. They just left it sitting there on the picnic table. I thought I could sneak up and grab it and get away, then sell whatever was in it. I hate living in that shelter, Em. Too much touching. I don’t like all those hugs, and people wanting to give me a bath all the time. They think they have to help me just because Mom leaves me alone for an hour to go out and get high. Plus it smells like vomit all the time.”

  The tingle in Emily’s spine crept up to her shoulder blades, confirming what she already knew—the countdown had started.

  “Shhhhh,” she said, covering Junie’s mouth with her hand. “I hear voices outside.”

  “Are they coming in?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t sense them. The walls must be blocking.”

  They listened. There were muffled voices just outside the door, at the top of the stairs where the dumpster had hid their escape route. Emily’s pulse started to pound even more, thumping in her eardrums. The tingly feeling shot up to her neck. She took a deep breath, trying to focus her thoughts away from the ticking bomb inside of her. She had to do something with Junie, and fast. She only had minutes.

  “We have to get out of here,” she whispered. “We can sneak out through the upstairs—it’s a restaurant, and they close early. I doubt anyone is there this late, but we’ll probably set off the alarm when we leave.”

  “Alarm?”

  “Do you remember my friend Parker that I told you about? The busboy?”

  She nodded.

  “He disabled the sensors on the back door so I can sleep here whenever it’s raining, or when he leaves food out for me. Nobody ever comes down here except him when he takes the trash out, so he leaves food for me whenever his boss leaves early. I never go beyond this basement. That’s our deal. But we don’t have a choice this time. Just stick close and we’ll be fine. If I run, you run. Got it?”

  Junie’s eyes widened. She looked scared, but she nodded.

  They got up and made their way across the room as shouting rang out from the alley above. They froze. Emily heard a police siren chirp twice, then an amplified voice that sounded like it was coming over a loudspeaker. Shit. Cops. Definitely cops.

  Thump! Thump! Thump!

  “The Locos are trying to kick the door in!” Junie said.

  Thump! Thump! Crack! The door at the top of the stairs to the alley slammed open, and one of the West Siders came tumbling down head over heels. He fell through the door at the bottom and landed on his side in a heap, just inside the entrance of the storeroom. His eyes were closed and his head was bloody. He started to moan.

  Junie screamed.

  Emily covered her mouth.

  “Flaco?” a Latino voice called out from the top of the stairs. “Flaco? You okay?

  Emily held a finger to her mouth, reminding Junie to be quiet.

  The same voice spoke again. “Send Derek down to check.” A few moments later, footsteps pounded the wooden steps, getting louder with each beat.

  “Run!” Emily whispered in Junie’s ear, shoving Junie across the room toward the door that led to the kitchen upstairs. Junie opened the door and ran up the steps. Emily was about to follow her friend, but stopped when she heard another person breathing heavily behind her. Something told her to turn and look at him. It felt like curiosity, but it was more than that.

  He was young—too young. Maybe a little younger than she. The red glow of the exit sign made it difficult to be sure, but his spiked hair looked to be jet-black, with triangle sections cut down to the scalp above his ears. His eyes were either blue or green. She hoped blue. Tattoos covered both of his forearms like a sleeve, and a single gold earring hung down below his left ear. She didn’t recognize its unique shape—maybe it was a symbol, or something that he’d made. He was two inches taller than she, with high cheekbones that perfectly offset his narrow, aquiline nose and full lips.

  Emily couldn’t help herself. She stared into the eyes of the pretty boy. A thought came unbidden into her mind: he’s way too cute to be part of this.

  “Damn girl, you’re smokin’,” he said, with a voice much lower than she had expected. His eyes moved down across her figure, then back up.

  She smiled when he made eye contact with her again, sensing that he wasn’t going to shoot. He was calm and quiet on the inside. There was no malice in his thoughts, just a growing feeling of desire that excited her.

  He lowered his gun.

  She relaxed.

  Then a voice came flooding down the stairs, as did more footsteps, breaking the calm. “Derek?”

  Derek bolted across the room at her. Emily came to her senses and lashed out with her right foot, just like Master Liu had taught her. The lightning-fast front kick struck him in the groin and he fell back to the doorway and landed on top of Flaco, temporarily blocking access for the rest of their crew.

  Emily ran upstairs and shut the door behind her, jamming a metal garbage can under the doorknob to slow the gang down.

  Junie stepped out of the shadows in the dimly lit kitchen. She was holding a stainless steel skillet cocked by her ear, ready to brain whoever came up the steps.

  “It’s me!” Emily hissed, taking the weapon from her friend. She put it on the counter next to the prep station. “Hurry, out the front. This way.”

  She ran past Junie through the double swing doors where the dining room of the elegant restaurant was waiting. Lights from the street cast shadows across the empty chairs, wooden tables, and the bubbling lobster tank. The tables were covered with white tablecloths and folded linen napkins, wineglasses, and elegant cutlery. The floor was spotless and shiny, and there was a fresh scent of pine in the air.

  Emily felt a tremor rise up through her body. What had begun as a tingle in her spine was now an overwhelming, full-body sensation. She felt electrified and alive, like she always did right before a jump, meaning that her senses had now been supercharged, allowing her to have visions of the immediate future. Normally, she would use this ability to know where to hide until the jump came and she could disappear. But this time, she couldn’t just use her abilities to protect herself. She had to make sure Junie would be okay before
she vanished.

  She knew that another thug was about to start kicking at the door to the kitchen behind her, and then bolt through it and find his way into the dining area, where he’d start shooting his machine gun. She could sense his plans, and felt the anger boiling inside his chest. It wasn’t the pretty boy that she’d kicked in the basement. This one was itching to kill.

  She waited a few seconds for what she knew would come next. It did—the extra strength that hard-charged her muscles, allowing her to become stronger and faster, but only for a short time. It would fade from her body the moment time began to slow down, which was the last step in the process right before the jump.

  She scooped Junie in her arms like a rag doll, ran across the dining room in a flash, and dove over a low wall that separated the foyer from the dining room. Junie sat in a ball, clutching the backpack to her chest, holding onto it for dear life.

  “You know they don’t serve peanut butter in a place like this,” Junie mumbled.

  “What?”

  “My mom used to be a hostess, so I know. Your friend must have brought it from home. I think he likes you.”

  She took Junie’s head in her hands and looked her in the eyes. “Listen to me. We don’t have much time. As soon as I’m gone, wait for the glass to break on the front window. Then go through it and run outside. Hide the backpack somewhere safe and go find the cops.”

  “Cops? We don’t like cops!”

  “This time we do. They’ll protect you. They’re holding back now, but they’ll be here in a few minutes.”

  “When do I run, again?”

  “After I’m gone, you’ll hear gunfire, but don’t be afraid. The bullets won’t be coming at you. A man will scream, and then glass will break. That’s when you run. After the glass breaks. Got it?”

  Junie gulped as tears began to flow, but she seemed to pull it together. She sniffed and nodded. “Thank you, Em.”

  “You should use a tablecloth so you don’t get cut,” she said, helping Junie put her backpack on.

  “When will I see you again?”

  “It might take me a while, but I’ll find you. Now cover your ears, and don’t scream when you hear gunshots. He won’t be aiming at you. Just wait for the glass.”

  Emily heard the double doors swing open and smash against the walls on either side of them.

  Emily took a breath and steadied herself for what she was about to do. The closer she got to a jump, the more it happened: time got slow and she got fast, but only for about fifteen seconds of her time immediately preceding a jump.

  She felt the blue energy rise up through her body, telling her that it was time to act.

  She sprang over the wall and ran at the gunman in a cloud of blue. She could see three bullets just leaving his gun, hanging in midair, with smoke trails behind them. She touched the bottom of each bullet with her finger as she zipped past them, then grabbed the wrist on the man’s gun hand and added a twisting force to it.

  She turned her attention to the second villain who had been frozen in time, stepping through the double swing doors. There was another man in the kitchen behind him, but she didn’t see the pretty boy, Derek, anywhere. She grabbed the second man’s shoulders and spun him around so that his gun was facing the third man, who was not far behind. She gently touched the trigger finger of the second gunman, then moved to the third Loco and did the same with his trigger finger.

  She dashed out of the kitchen and into the dining room, where she applied pressure to the underside of a table built to seat eight people, calculating the trajectory of its flight in her head.

  She knelt on the ground, then curled herself into the fetal position and waited for the last second of the countdown to tick by. It did.

  The jump pain hit as her body began to sizzle with blue lines of energy, like tiny lightning bolts crisscrossing her skin. A searing bolt of agony shot from the back of her skull to the center of her forehead, just as she was consumed by the blue fire and vanished.

  * * *

  Junie heard things happen just as Emily had described: first there were three shots of gunfire that tore through the ceiling panels above her, then a man screaming in pain, then more gunshots, then more screaming, then glass breaking, and a second after that, the alarm system began to wail.

  She took a deep breath and ran to the front window, seeing a man on his knees holding his wrist, and two bodies a little further back lying on the floor, bleeding from their chests. She snatched a tablecloth, stepped on the wooden chair closest to the broken window, spread the tablecloth over the bottom of the frame, and climbed out. She heard sirens coming from the right, but she decided to go left instead, running as fast as her feet could take her.

  TO BE CONTINUED in Chapter 2 of SHADOW GAMES

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  By Jay J. Falconer

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  ISBN-13: 978-0-9840011-8-7

  ISBN-10: 0-9840011-8-2

  Friday, December 21

  Tucson, Arizona

  “Reckless. Undisciplined. Arrogant,” were the words Dr. Green posted to describe Lucas Ramsay’s thesis in the online science magazine called Astrophysics Today.

  Lucas couldn’t help but stare at those twenty-nine letters filling the screen space on his aging laptop. The display was covered in lingering dust, with scratches spreading across its surface. Every time he opened the unit, it seemed like they were multiplying in the dark.

  The screen looked like he felt—tired and worn out from years of abuse. But regardless, the marred surface didn’t obscure the words making his stomach ache and churn. He wanted to close the laptop and forget he ever saw the article, but he couldn’t. His career was now circling the black hole of ruin and he knew there’d be no escape.

  He sat on the edge of his bed in the apartment he shared with his foster brother Drew, wondering if life could get any worse. He ran his bare feet across the tile floor, letting the coldness penetrate the skin. The drab green Army surplus blanket scratched at his thighs, so he tossed it aside, making a clear path for the chilly Tucson air to surround him. The burn of his senses was welcomed; he figured it would help etch this moment in his mind for all of eternity.

  Life was about to take a wicked turn south now that his public disgrace was official. He needed to remember how he got here and why—the exact moment when history changed and swallowed him alive.

  He looked down at the laptop, seeing Dr. Green’s summary staring back at him with vicious intent. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, hoping the words would magically disappear when he brought his attention back to the screen.

  Lucas counted to ten, then opened his eyes.

  They were still there—bold and harsh, not like any words he’d read before. Sure, he’d enjoyed plenty of scathing reviews of scientific papers before, but never one aimed squarely at him.

  Dr. Green had a knack for tearing theories apart with a few choice phrases. The man’s reputation as a self-righteous prima donna was legendary. So was his literary temper. The retired eighty-year-old physicist was revered as a god in the realm of theoretical physics. His words alone could spark endless research grants and guarantee immortality in the annals of science. Or they could be used to kill a career.

  Like mine, Lucas thought, knowing his humiliation had gone global, coursing through cyberspace like a malevolent force hell-bent on global annihilation.

  Until a minute ago, Lucas had been proud of his thesis titled “The Laws of Physics Are Merely a Suggestion.” He thought it was a brilliant take on inter-dimensional connectivity theory. True, his paper on quantum linkage stretched the envelope a bit, challenging mainstream science at every turn, but the work was sound and he could prove it. All he want
ed was a chance to be part of the conversation.

  Of course, now that the senior editor had shit all over it, no respected scientist on the planet would consider it, not without reaping the whirlwind that was Dr. Green.

  Lucas’ heart sank. The glimmer of respect he’d worked painstakingly to build during his first two years as a physicist was now being swallowed by an ever-expanding digital black hole. A gnawing sensation was building in the pit of his stomach, somewhere between nausea and hunger.

  There was simply no way to recover from a debacle of this magnitude. Not after the world’s most famous physicist called your theories “pure speculation founded on nothing more than adolescent fantasy,” and then blasted it across the Internet for all to see.

  He closed his eyes again for another ten count, trying to untangle the knot swelling in his gut. It was useless. The knot grew unchecked. The only way to change things would be to travel back in time and stop himself from pressing that damned SEND button on the keyboard. All it took was one snap decision made in the wee hours of a brisk December morning to ruin everything. What the hell had he been thinking? He wasn’t ready. Neither were his theories. He should’ve known this would happen.

  He groaned, chastising himself for being impulsive and undisciplined. His foolish arrogance would now harm not only him, but his family, too.

  He let out a slow exhale, then shut the laptop quietly, trying not to wake his foster brother sleeping in the bed across from him. It seemed to work. There was no sign of movement from under the pile of covers. Just the usual rumble of disjointed snoring.

  Drew was a noisy sleeper but Lucas had gotten used to it over the years. Others might complain or walk away, but he didn’t. He had no choice, really—you never give up on family. Or maybe it was that he didn’t want to have a choice, since Drew was one of the few good things in his life. Lucas would never walk away from the one person he trusted above all others. The one person who always had his back, no matter what came gunning for them.