The Remaining: Allegiance

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The Remaining: Allegiance Page 44

by D. J. Molles


  His hammering heart and hard breathing were making his stomach fall into rioting. He gagged, burped, and tasted Salisbury steak and gravy, churned through with his own stomach acid. It burned in the back of his throat.

  What are you gonna do?

  I’m going to puke. And I’m going to pass out. And I’m going to hope to God that someone is watching…

  Abe sank to the ground. He could see just under the door. A tiny crack and on the other side he could see the bottoms of boots and the shadows cast by a pair of men. Probably Norseman and his smaller partner, if Abe were to take a wild guess. Maybe they were paying attention, or maybe they weren’t. Maybe they had cameras in the room. In any case, there wasn’t a whole lot that Abe had going for him. He was improvising with nothing.

  He began to rock back and forth on his knees. Just the thought of it was already making saliva coat the sides of his mouth. He took a few short breaths, eyes locked on the underside of the door. He scooted a little closer. He made a strangled cry, and then said, “Help me… please…”

  Then he shoved two fingers down his throat. His throat seized around them. Then he could feel everything opening up as Salisbury steak and gravy came rushing back up. He retched once with nothing, and then it all came out at once, a light brown, chunky mess that spewed out onto the door and the floors. He retched two more times, and then collapsed in a puddle of his own vomit.

  His eyes rolled back. His eyelids fluttered while his body shook violently. His face and lips were smeared with his own vomit. The pool of the mess he had just created began to seep under the narrow crack at the bottom of the door.

  It took a moment, but then there was a cry of alarm from the other side of the door. Shuffling of feet, rubber boot soles squeaking on linoleum tiles. He heard a few loud curses. Then the door was flung open. The air outside was noticeably cooler, and it chilled Abe’s vomit-covered face. His eyes were still looking up into his own head, and he could not see who it was that was standing in the doorway.

  “Holy fuck…”

  “Hey! Get the fuck up!”

  “Dude, he might be for real.”

  “Goddammit… call the doc.”

  Abe coughed and spluttered and took shaky breaths. He blinked rapidly. It was Norseman standing over him, straddling the puddle of vomit, leaning down with his hands on his knees and inspecting Abe with a suspicious eye. His leaner partner was just outside the door, nose wrinkled in disgust, but eyes softened with pity.

  The leaner one pointed. “Roll him on his side so he don’t choke on his vomit.”

  Norseman avoided the puddle and stepped over Abe’s legs, reaching for his right shoulder to pull him onto his side.

  Abe did the only thing he could—he kicked with everything he had, and landed a hard blow into Norseman’s groin. The air came out of the man’s lungs in a whoomph, and he made a sound like groaning steel as he toppled forward onto Abe. The man was a righty, and his pistol was on Abe’s left. As Norseman landed on him, Abe’s left hand snagged the pistol from its holster on his belt—a simple quick-draw design with no safety retention in place. And then Abe was almost smothered by the man’s two-hundred-fifty-pound frame.

  ALSO BY D. J. MOLLES

  The Remaining

  The Remaining

  The Remaining: Aftermath

  The Remaining: Refugees

  The Remaining: Fractured

  The Remaining: Allegiance

  The Remaining: Extinction—Coming 2015

  The Remaining Short Fiction

  “The Remaining: Trust”

  “The Remaining: Faith”

  Thank you for buying this ebook, published by Orbit.

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  Contents

  COVER

  TITLE PAGE

  WELCOME

  DEDICATION

  CHAPTER ONE: LINES

  CHAPTER TWO: KILLER

  CHAPTER THREE: EDEN

  CHAPTER FOUR: THE SHAPE OF THINGS

  CHAPTER FIVE: HEAD GAMES

  CHAPTER SIX: THE DEACON

  CHAPTER SEVEN: P IS FOR PLENTY

  CHAPTER EIGHT: FAULT

  CHAPTER NINE: SHADOWS

  CHAPTER TEN: NOTES

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: RISK AND REWARD

  CHAPTER TWELVE: PROOF

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN: BAD DECISIONS

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN: THE GIRL

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN: OVERRUN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN: BROKEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: INSIGHT

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: TALKS

  CHAPTER NINETEEN: TENSIONS

  CHAPTER TWENTY: EDGES

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: LATE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: TECHNIQUES

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: NEWCOMERS

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: INTROSPECTION

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: CAT’S OUT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: WELCOME

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: HALF-TRUTHS

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: STOPGAP

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: FRICTION

  CHAPTER THIRTY: GATHERING

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: WHOLE TRUTHS

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO: THE WATCH

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE: WEAK POINTS

  EXTRAS

  MEET THE AUTHOR

  A PREVIEW OF THE REMAINING: EXTINCTION

  ALSO BY D. J. MOLLES

  ORBIT NEWSLETTER

  COPYRIGHT

  Copyright

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Copyright © 2015 by D. J. Molles

  Excerpt from The Remaining: Extinction copyright © 2015 by D. J. Molles

  Cover design by Lauren Panepinto

  Cover photos by Arcangel-Images

  Cover © 2015 Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

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  First ebook edition: February 2015

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  ISBN 978-0-316-40427-3

  E3

 

 

 


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