Don't Call Me Ishmael

by Chris Kennedy

  Don’t Call Me Ishmael

  Book Two of The Fallen World

  By

  Chris Kennedy

  PUBLISHED BY: Blood Moon Press

  Copyright © 2019 Chris Kennedy

  All Rights Reserved

  Get the free Four Horseman prelude story “Shattered Crucible”

  and discover other Blood Moon Press titles at:

  http://chriskennedypublishing.com/

  * * * * *

  License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only and may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This book is a work of fiction, and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

  * * * * *

  Cover Design by Elartwyne Estole

  * * * * *

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  About Chris Kennedy

  Titles by Chris Kennedy

  Connect with Chris Kennedy Online

  Excerpt from Book One of The Devil’s Gunman

  Excerpt from Book One of The Shadow Lands

  Excerpt from Book One of the Turning Point

  * * * * *

  Chapter One

  I awoke to blackness. Not the dark of the night, but the complete absence of light. I stretched and hit the wall about six inches above me, then to the one about three inches to my left, and then the one four inches to the right. In fact, as I shuffled around, I realized I was completely trapped on all sides by a metallic box of some sort—there were also walls at my feet and beyond my head.

  A coffin. I was trapped in a coffin.

  I clamped down on the panic that threatened to overcome me and took a deep breath. The air was a little stale, but not as bad as if there weren’t any airflow at all. I had no idea how long I’d been in the box, but it seemed like I’d been there a while. If I could still breathe after that time, there must be a way for air to get in.

  That also meant I wasn’t buried—my second worry—as there wouldn’t have been any air underground to flow. And I hadn’t been cremated. Nor had I gone to hell, yet…unless this was some evil god’s version of hell. It wasn’t a good one, though, as I could fall back asleep—I can sleep anywhere—and pass the time napping. I wasn’t in hell.

  So I was in a box. Somewhere. I had no idea where I was, and I also realized I had no idea how I got here. In fact, I couldn’t remember much of anything.

  Having contained the initial panic that I was going to suffocate, I checked my surroundings more closely. The box wasn’t square; the lid above me was rounded, like a…it took me a moment to find the word for it…like a tanning bed.

  I didn’t remember being in a tanning bed. In fact, as I thought about it, the absence of my past history was nearly complete. I didn’t even remember who I was or what I was doing here. Perhaps I’d hit my head? I wiggled to get a hand up to my head—it was just possible—and checked myself out, but didn’t find any bumps, bruises, or other indications of a brain injury.

  Which didn’t help my situation at all.

  “Help!” I called out several times, in the hope that someone was nearby. If they were, they didn’t come to my aid.

  Leaving me trapped. And amnesic. Of course, if I couldn’t get out of the tanning bed, or whatever it was, it really didn’t matter if I knew who I was, did it?

  With that cheery thought, I set myself to examining my surroundings as best I could. I found a small area of mesh on the wall past my head, which must be how I was getting air. It was no bigger than my fist, though, so I wasn’t getting out that way.

  I had nearly given up when my hand hit something that dangled from the lid of the box, up near the end past my head. My adrenaline surged, and I had to take several deep breaths to calm myself. Although I was getting air—I thought—I didn’t want to burn it up too quickly if I really wasn’t.

  I wiggled up until my head reached the end of the box, then searched above my face and found it—a little piece of plastic tied to a piece of string that led through a tiny hole in the lid. I closed my fist around the plastic—it seemed designed to fit my grasp—and tentatively pulled.

  It didn’t budge.

  I pulled a little harder. Still, nothing.

  “Fuck!” I yelled, yanking as hard as I was able. The string pulled, and I heard a click! from my left. I reached to my side and found the lid had been released. I pushed on the lid above my face, and it rotated up and away. I was free!

  I struggled to sit up and found my muscles were much weaker than seemed appropriate. Once I was able to dangle my feet off the side, I was able to rotate to a sitting position. It left me breathing hard, but with a view of a dim line of light, like from under a door, across whatever room I was in. It wasn’t much brighter than its surroundings, but my eyes were adjusted to a complete lack of light, and I saw it immediately as a beacon of hope.

  I called out again, my voice weak in the larger space, even to my ears. No one came. Again.

  None of it made any sense. If I’d had an accident that caused my memory loss, I’d be in a hospital, which would have staff and a number of instruments hooked up to me to monitor my vital signs, not locked in some sort of tanning bed.

  I slid off the side of the bed and collapsed to the floor when my legs didn’t hold me. Turning around, I pulled myself partially up onto the bed and began exercising my legs to get some blood flowing through them. They were stiff and weak at first, but life eventually began to course through them, with a pins and needles feeling that both hurt and burned. A lot.

  With a little more mobility in my legs, I forced myself to a standing position and stood there wobbling. The effort had cost me a lot of energy, and I waited a second to catch my breath while the dizziness passed.

  With my heart rate somewhat under control again, I pushed off the bed and shambled unsteadily across the floor to the line of light. I probably look like a zombie, a voice in my head said, but then realized I had no idea where the voice came from.

  Grea
t! I thought. Now I’m amnesic and schizophrenic.

  I listened at the door for a few moments while I caught my breath, then, deciding the day couldn’t get any worse, I pulled it open.

  An emergency light on its last legs illuminated an office space that had seen better days. The drawers had been pulled from the desk and dumped unceremoniously where they fell, and all the books had been pulled from the bookcases. The chairs were upended and scattered about, and paperwork from the desk nearly covered the entirety of the floor.

  If a mini-tornado had hit the space, it couldn’t have done a more thorough job.

  Among the detritus on the floor, I saw a candy bar—still in the wrapper—and realized I was hungry. In fact, I was pretty sure I’d never been so hungry before, and I collapsed around it, taking a book in the side for my efforts. I greedily tore the package open with my teeth as my fingers didn’t seem to have enough strength and wolfed it down.

  It then took all of my willpower to keep it down. Apparently, my stomach had been without food for so long it wasn’t sure what to do with the sudden massive sugar input, and had decided to reject it entirely. An open bottle of water laying on its side provided a few mouthfuls of the precious fluid. I tried to drink them slowly and was able to keep everything down.

  I rolled onto my back to let everything settle…

  * * *

  I may have fallen asleep for a while, because the emergency light seemed dimmer when I next opened my eyes. I realized I needed to get up and out of…wherever I was…because if the rest of the building was as screwed up as the room I was in, I was liable to break a leg trying to get out of it in the dark.

  I pulled myself up on the desk and looked at the doorway through which I’d come. The door didn’t have a handle on this side, and it was almost shut, allowing me to see that the pattern on the door blended well with the wall surrounding it. Was that why the room had been tossed? Looking for the entrance to a secret room?

  I had no idea, but the thought of a secret room drew me back inside to see what might be in there. I staggered to the doorway and pushed it open. The ten-foot-square room wasn’t much to behold; there was only the tanning bed—my mind refused to believe it was a tanning bed, though, now that I could see it from the outside—as well as a number of instruments and a computer attached to it by a number of wires.

  There was also a second door on the left wall, and, not seeing anything of use in the dim light, I staggered over to it.

  The door was unlocked, and I opened it to find some sort of combination storeroom and armory. My eyes were drawn to the food and drink section, and I shambled over to help myself, slowly eating and drinking as much as my wizened stomach would hold, and then, satisfied, I passed out again.

  * * * * *

  Chapter Two

  The next several days passed in a haze, with me working to recover my strength and inventory the storeroom. I also began to explore the building in which I currently resided. I found some flashlights in the storeroom, along with a shelf of batteries, so I was able to see where I was going. There were two offices adjoining the room with the desk; both were in the same state of disrepair as the one I had originally found.

  When I opened the door that led out of the office, though, I found a hallway with a number of bullet holes and what looked suspiciously like blood stains. I retreated back to the storeroom, closing the secret door behind me, and I decided to stay there until I was better able to deal with whatever had happened beyond my safe space.

  Several days passed, and I got most of my strength back; however I was no closer to figuring out who I was. If that information existed, it wasn’t in the office. I went through most of the paperwork on the floor one day. It appeared the office was engaged in some sort of import/export business, although the back two rooms showed this was some sort of cover for whatever business they were really engaged in. Somehow, I didn’t think there was a lot of money to be made running an illicit tanning bed operation, unless we were located somewhere really far north or south.

  And it still didn’t look like a tanning bed, not with all the wires attached to it. Something in the back of my mind recognized it, but it was like an itch I couldn’t scratch—I just couldn’t quite come up with the answer, even though I was sure the tanning bed was the answer to all my problems.

  * * *

  I awoke to strange noises coming from outside the secret door—there were people in the outer office. Their voices were muffled, and I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but based on the state of the office on the other side of the door, something bad had happened, and I doubted their intentions were pure.

  Quickly, I grabbed one of the loaded pistols—a Sig Sauer P220, if the writing on the barrel could be believed—and went to stand by the secret door. I couldn’t remember if I had ever fired a pistol before, but it felt good in my hand.

  “—see that?” a man’s voice asked from the other room. “There was a flash of light under that wall there.”

  Shit. They must have been standing in the dark, and they’d seen my flashlight. I switched it off and put it in a cargo pocket.

  “Got it,” a second voice, also male, answered. “It just went off.” A light went on in the office, and I could see a little bit with the illumination from under the door.

  “Yeah, but it was moving,” the first voice said. “There’s someone behind that wall. There must be a secret door there, somewhere.” Even through the wall, the men had a strange accent; both men deleted the final consonant of most words and made the vowels nasally. I tried to place it. It was almost French…then I had it—Cajun. But there was really only one area that spoke with a Cajun accent—was I in Louisiana? For the life of me, I couldn’t remember ever having been to Louisiana. Maybe I’d gone to Mardi Gras and been trampled?

  While I remembered seeing Mardi Gras on TV—and it had looked fun—I couldn’t remember actually going to it. It seemed like I would remember it if I’d been there. Or here, if the men’s accents were really Cajun.

  My thoughts were interrupted as someone began beating on the wall. “Hey, you in there!” the second man said. “Let us in.”

  That wasn’t going to happen. While they thought I might be in the room, there was no sense confirming it for them, so I remained silent. They neither sounded like a rescue party nor the police…and that made them Bad Men in my book.

  “Yeah,” the second man said as the pounding ceased. “This section of the wall’s funny. I think this is some sort of hidden door. There’s no handle, so there must be a hidden catch somewhere.”

  “What do you think?” the first man asked. “Can I knock it down?”

  “Probably.” The second man said after a pause. His voice got louder as he continued. “Hey, you in there! If you let us in, we’ll let you go. You can even keep some of whatever you’re hoarding, except for any weapons; those are ours. If you make us knock in the door, though, I’m going to be pissed off and have to kill you. Last chance!”

  I nodded to myself; they weren’t with the local authorities, which made them looters…or worse. All I could see was a dim outline of the pistol in my hand, and I tried to remember if I had any experience with the weapon. Did it have a safety? I couldn’t tell. If I’d ever been familiar with its operation, I’d lost that knowledge.

  With a crash, the secret door burst open, and a burly man fell forward into the tanning bed room. Without conscious thought, the pistol came up in a two-handed grip, and my finger squeezed the trigger as the sights came into alignment, holding it tightly for the first double-action shot. The gun fired, and the bullet hit the man lower than intended, going through his side, just above the hip. Already cocked, the second shot required less pressure on the trigger, and the next round hit him in the chest as he spun around after getting hit the first time.

  “Hey—” The second man’s shout was cut off as my third round caught him in the chest. He went down, hard, and his flashlight flew through the air, randomly illuminating the room with i
ts twirling light.

  I stalked toward where the second man lay twitching, barely conscious of what I was doing, and looked into the office when I heard a noise—a third person running out the door. The flashlight he carried was going everywhere in his haste, and the strobing of it made him a difficult target. My pistol snapped up, and I fired, but he was out the door. I fired four more times through the wall, trying to judge where he would be, then the pistol ran dry.

  I ejected the magazine, slapped in a new one, and allowed the slide to slam forward as I ran out the door after him. The man was just going around the far corner at the end of the hallway. Although he staggered around the corner as if he’d been hit, he was still on his feet and running. I had no idea where he was going, or if he might have other people waiting there, so I pulled out my flashlight and looked at the hallway wall. There was fresh blood, but not a lot of it. Judging by the way he was running, it wasn’t a fatal hit.

  I went back into the secret room. As I approached, the second man I’d shot tried to bring up his pistol. My right hand snapped up, and I fired a round through his head without any conscious thought, then stared down at my hand in horror. I’d just killed two men, with no more thought than stepping on ants. Was I some sort of psychopathic killer? Was the secret room a treatment facility—somewhere where they could do electroshock therapy on me to cure me? Was that why the tanning bed had all the wires?

  I had no idea, but the one thing that went through my mind was Flee! I had to get out of there. If there was only one thing I was certain of, it was that the third man was going for reinforcements. I didn’t know how long it would take for them to get here, but I knew the clock was ticking. Psychopathic killer or not, I still didn’t want to have my own life ended, so I hurried into the storeroom.