Broken Chain

by Lisa von Biela

  BROKEN CHAIN

  By Lisa von Biela

  A Macabre Ink Production

  Macabre Ink is an imprint of Crossroad Press

  Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press

  Digital Edition Copyright © 2017 Lisa von Biela

  Original publication by DarkFuse – August, 2015

  Partial cover image courtesy of Swapnil Kale

  Used per the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license

  LICENSE NOTES

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook 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 person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the vendor of your choice and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Meet the Author

  Lisa von Biela worked in Information Technology for 25 years, then dropped out to attend the University of Minnesota Law School, graduating magna cum laude in 2009. She now practices law in Seattle, Washington.

  Lisa began writing short, dark fiction just after the turn of the century. Her first publication appeared in The Edge in 2002. She went on to publish a number of short works in various small-press venues, including Gothic.net, Twilight Times, Dark Animus, AfterburnSF, and more. She is the author of the novels The Genesis Code, The Janus Legacy, Blockbuster, Broken Chain, and Down the Brink, as well as the novellas Ash and Bone, Skinshift, and Moon Over Ruin.

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  BROKEN CHAIN

  Table of 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

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  CHAPTER 54

  CHAPTER 55

  CHAPTER 56

  CHAPTER 57

  CHAPTER 58

  CHAPTER 59

  CHAPTER 60

  CHAPTER 61

  CHAPTER 62

  CHAPTER 63

  CHAPTER 64

  CHAPTER 65

  CHAPTER 66

  CHAPTER 67

  CHAPTER 68

  CHAPTER 69

  CHAPTER 70

  CHAPTER 71

  CHAPTER 72

  CHAPTER 73

  CHAPTER 74

  CHAPTER 75

  CHAPTER 76

  CHAPTER 77

  Other books

  CHAPTER 1

  Dustin Lyons was not where he was supposed to be at six o’clock that morning.

  Carrie Lyons pounded her fist on the open barn door, rattling its tired, rusty hinges. “Dustin! Where the hell are you? Your breakfast is getting cold and you know I need to go open up the café.” She slapped the overhead light switch and froze in her tracks when she saw what lurked inside.

  Snarling, Dustin crouched by the hay bales like a crazed animal. With his wild eyes and matted hair, he looked just like one of those meth-heads on the billboards out by the highway. But Dustin didn’t take meth, or any other illegal drugs. In all of their twenty years of marriage, the worst he’d done is have a little too much whiskey on a Saturday night. He never got like this. Never.

  “What is the matter with you?” Carrie took a few uncertain steps forward to get a better look.

  He stared right at her with those savage eyes, then grabbed a hay hook and started swinging it—hard—from side to side. Carrie gasped and took a step back. Dustin leaped up from his crouch, slashing this way and that with the sharp, treacherous hook. He bared his clenched teeth and let out a growl as he started toward her.

  “Dustin—” Heart pounding, Carrie held out her hands and took another step back, unable to accept the sight of her own husband looking like a madman. There had to be an explanation, had to be a solution—something that would get him to snap back to his normal self. But she was damned if she could think of it right now.

  Dustin clutched the gleaming metal hook in both hands, raised it high, and lunged. Carrie screamed and turned to make a run for the door, but her work boot slipped. She slammed flat down on her stomach, knocking the wind out of her lungs and stunning herself for just a tick too long.

  The hay hook got her just under her back rib cage, sliding in with remarkable ease, smooth as butter. She marveled at this in the heartbeat moment before the pain came. Then the hook forged a searing line of agony from her skin all the way inside to whatever organs it ruined.

  Dustin flipped her onto her side with the hook as easily as he would have shifted a bale of hay. Then he ripped the bloody blade back out and stared down at her with hateful eyes. She couldn’t tell if he even knew who she was.

  Then he brought down his weapon, over and over again, until the darkness came and delivered her from the pain of the hook—and from the pain of seeing her Dustin transformed into some kind of killing monster.

  CHAPTER 2

  “Ow!”

  Gretchen Sommers sucked on her finger to quell the sting from the hot oil spatter that had just nailed her, then yanked open the kitchen drawer next to the stove. They’d moved into the cramped little apartment in such a low-budget rush that she couldn’t remember where half their stuff was. She rummaged through the drawer’s contents, utensils clattering, until she found the nylon spatula she wanted. She huffed, then stirred the
ground beef as it sizzled and browned in the pan. When the macaroni was done, she’d throw it together with the beef and a jar of spaghetti sauce and serve up her family’s favorite comfort food. Maybe that would help them all feel a little more settled in their new surroundings.

  Everything made her feel closed in right now. Their dinky kitchen in their equally dinky apartment. Their shoestring budget. Their sketchy neighborhood. The crappy air conditioning that was no match for the nasty, sticky heat of Washington, D.C., in July. She absently rubbed her belly. About the only thing letting up for the moment was her morning sickness as she entered her second trimester.

  At least food had started appealing to her again. She scooped up a mouthful of the partially cooked ground beef with her spatula, blew on it briefly, and then popped it into her mouth. She loved the taste of the meat itself without the distractions of the sauce and pasta. She inhaled, savoring the smell of the cooking beef, and stirred the macaroni once again to keep it from sticking.

  Gretchen leaned back against the counter, swiped a trickle of sweat from her forehead, and sighed. Things were tough now, uprooting themselves as they had, but it would be worth it in the end. Kyle had done well in his clinical training at the University of Minnesota Med School. He’d found himself particularly drawn to epidemiology, so he was elated to be accepted into the CDC’s two-year Epidemic Intelligence Service program, or EIS for short. As a “disease detective,” he’d be sent out on assignments to track down the sources of various epidemics. And when he completed the elite program, he’d have a great career ahead of him in epidemiology.

  That was the story—on paper, anyway. Gretchen wondered what their life would actually be like over the next two years. Kyle would surely be completely consumed with his work, as he had been during his medical training so far. She’d be busy caring for little Lara, now three and extremely active and precocious, as well as little No-Name, currently incubating inside her. That much she did know. But what would his assignments be like? Would he be away for long periods at a time?

  She shrugged and stirred the beef. She’d just have to roll with it, hard as it was for her. She already missed her job managing the emergency food shelf and shelter programs at HopeShare. But she loved Kyle, and knew he’d make a terrific doctor, so she’d do whatever it took to let him focus on his training. Once he started practicing medicine, she’d find another job like she had at HopeShare, and everything would fall into place.

  Lara trotted into the kitchen with her curly blonde hair framing her face like a halo and her tiny bare feet slapping on the linoleum. She clutched her favorite toy, her omnipresent stuffed sheep, Baa-Baa. “When’s dinner, Mommy? I’m hungry and so is Daddy!”

  Gretchen smiled. Even the stress and disruption of the move couldn’t shake her love for that little girl. So perfect and so precious. And to think they’d nearly lost her. Born prematurely, she’d spent the first two months of her life in the hospital, fighting to survive. The doctors couldn’t explain why it happened, so no matter how hard she tried not to think about it, every single day she worried it could happen again with this pregnancy.

  She bent, picked Lara up and hoisted her and Baa-Baa onto her hip. “Dinner’s coming soon, honey. See?” She pointed toward the range top.

  Lara smiled and giggled. “Woot, Mommy! Dinner!”

  Kyle pushed aside his plate on the Formica kitchen table, leaned back in the thinly padded vinyl chair, and smiled. “Thanks for making that tonight. Reminds me of home, back in Minnesota.”

  He glanced around their apartment and marveled at how little your money bought out in this neck of the woods. The place was small, worn, and in the sort of neighborhood that wasn’t safe for long walks—even before the wave of violence that had been spreading across the country like an epidemic. But it was what they could afford and it wasn’t that far from his office. Plus it was right on the Metro line, so he could skip the nasty D.C. traffic.

  “You know, I already miss Minnesota. D.C. isn’t my kind of place. If it weren’t for the EIS position …”

  Gretchen reached over and put her hand on his forearm. “I miss it, too. But it’s the only way for you to get this training, so we’ll just have to manage for a couple of years. Then we can go pretty much wherever we want, right?”

  “That’s the plan. Once I graduate, we can settle down someplace nice to raise the kids. Bet we could go back to Minnesota if we wanted.” He turned to Lara, who’d managed to spread a good portion of her dinner across her face. Amazing the kid actually got any nutrition. “Where do you want to live when I’m done?”

  Lara considered the question for a moment, her deep blue eyes trained on the ceiling as she appeared to sort through a range of possibilities in her head. Then she clapped her hands together and proclaimed, “Disneyland!”

  Kyle ruffled her curly hair. “Why doesn’t that surprise me?” He glanced at the clock on the range hood. “Hey, what do you say we watch a little news, then make it an early night? I want to be well rested for my first day tomorrow.”

  “Sure, go ahead with Lara. I’ll be there soon as I clear the dishes.”

  “Thanks.” He grabbed a couple of paper napkins. “Let’s get you cleaned up first so your dinner doesn’t end up all over the furniture.” He daubed at Lara’s sauce-laden face while she squirmed in mock protest and giggled.

  “All clean now, Daddy?”

  “Yep, looking good.”

  He helped her down from her chair and she ran into the adjoining room, Baa-Baa tucked tightly under her arm. He joined her on the coach and turned on the TV.

  Lara rubbed her eyes. “What’s that?”

  “The news. Just for a few minutes, then we’ll all go to bed.”

  “Boring,” she announced with a yawn. Apparently uninterested in the day’s events, she curled up with Baa-Baa and closed her eyes.

  Kyle lowered the volume so she could fall asleep.

  Not again, he thought as the lead story came on.

  “The unprecedented number of seemingly random acts of violence continues to mount. As we’ve reported in the past several months, these incidents are not limited to densely populated areas with traditionally higher crime rates. They’re also occurring in locales with normally low rates of violence—and they’re increasing in overall frequency.

  “One incident reported today occurred in a small town in southcentral Minnesota: St. Joseph, in Sibley County. Dustin Lyons, a longtime resident and farmer with no prior history of violence or any brushes with the law brutally attacked and killed his wife of twenty years, Carrie Lyons, with a hay hook, and then apparently took his own life with the same hook. A neighbor happened to stop in shortly after the incident and found the bodies.”

  Kyle grabbed the remote and clicked off the TV. St. Joe wasn’t that far from where he’d grown up. It was a peaceful little farming community where everyone knew each other pretty well, and would always band together to help out if someone was struggling. That guy must have snapped without any warning or someone would have intervened before it got to the point where he would do something like that.

  The epidemic of violence worried him more each day. And now they’d moved to a densely populated place with a high crime rate that looked like it would only get worse. He glanced down at Lara’s peaceful, sleeping face and hoped he hadn’t endangered his family by accepting the EIS position.

  CHAPTER 3

  Marty Janssen grabbed the wooden fence post and gave it a good, strong tug. Solid. He stepped back, took off his baseball cap, wiped sweat from his brow with the back of his wrist, and put the cap back on. He stood in the heat of the midday sun, hands on hips, and gazed out at his farm. The pasture grass had that deep green typical of a Minnesota midsummer. The winters locked you up like a bitch in these parts, but the spring and summer still held a beauty that never grew old for him.

  His herd of Black Angus dotted the lush green of the pasture, creating a scene like something from a picture postcard. To the casual observer, it
undoubtedly looked like a peaceful existence. But after working the farm alone for most of his adult life, Marty knew nothing could be further from the truth.

  The weather could betray you at any time. Too wet. Too dry. Too violent with the periodic hail storm, or, God forbid, the occasional tornado passing through. Prices could screw you, too—oversupply could kill commodity prices, making the difference some years between a modest profit and a devastating loss. Huge corporate farms made the problem worse with their mass-production methods that kept commodity prices artificially low.

  And then the animals themselves, for livestock producers like him. Despite all the available vaccinations and antibiotics, a bug could run right through a herd. Even if it didn’t kill individual animals, it could retard their growth, make ’em light when they went to market. Fewer pounds, fewer dollars.

  Marty squinted against the sun and stared at his herd. He’d lost a few lately. He didn’t know why, and that bothered him. Never saw anything like it before, and didn’t quite know how to describe the problem to the vet. The animals that died hadn’t seemed sick, not really. They’d just died. That’s it. No symptoms typical of any disease, and he’d seen plenty over the years. It was like they’d just finished living before their time, and that was that.

  He slapped a mosquito on his neck and was about to go inside for some lunch when his cell rang. He took it out of his pocket and looked at the screen. Paul Gorsham from the farm next to his. He answered the call.

  “Hey, Paul, what’s up?”

  “Hi, Marty. Just finished some repairs on my irrigation pipes. Never ends, you know?”

  “True enough. Just finished fixing a couple of loose fence posts myself. Wouldn’t be quite so bad if we didn’t have to get all the year’s repairs done in the few months with decent weather.”

  “Yeah, that and having to do it all myself. Haven’t been able to afford to hire any help the last few years. Don’t know what I’m going to do when my arthritis gets bad enough that I can’t do it myself anymore.”