NEAREST NIGHT
Plague Wars Book 5
by
David VanDyke and Ryan King
NEAREST NIGHT
Plague Wars Book 5
Published by REAPER PRESS at Smashwords
Copyright 2016 David VanDyke and Ryan King
All Rights Reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-62626-199-0
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No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form, or by any means whatsoever (electronic, mechanical or otherwise) without prior written permission and consent from the author.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, businesses and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Table of Contents
Books by David VanDyke
Books by Ryan King
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
Epilogue
Books by David VanDyke
Plague Wars: Decade One
The Eden Plague
Reaper’s Run
Skull’s Shadows
Eden’s Exodus
Apocalypse Austin
Nearest Night
Plague Wars: Alien Invasion
The Demon Plagues
The Reaper Plague
The Orion Plague
Comes The Destroyer
Forge and Steel
Plague Wars: Stellar Conquest
First Conquest
Desolator
Tactics of Conquest
Conquest of Earth
Books by D.D. VanDyke
D. D. VanDyke is the Mysteries pen name for fiction author David VanDyke.
California Corwin P.I. Mystery Series
Loose Ends - Book 1
(Includes Off The Leash short story)
In a Bind - Book 2
Slipknot - Book 3
The Girl In The Morgue - Book 4
For more information visit http://www.davidvandykeauthor.com/
Books by Ryan King
Land of Tomorrow Series:
Glimmer of Hope
Children of Wrath
Paths of Righteousness
For more info about Ryan King’s books visit Three Kings Publishing on Facebook
Cover by Jun Ares
Chapter 1
Skull had mixed feelings about operating in fluid environments.
On one hand, they were places where his experience and natural skills could be showcased and put to maximum use. If the situation was predictable, you could write a set of instructions and any gun-for-hire could do the job. You wouldn’t need someone like Skull.
On the other, he liked to plan a mission to the last detail, and some extremes of fluidity made even Skull uncomfortable. Places that simmered to the point of boiling over with thick and deadly murderous hate. Genocidal, organized extinction, employing the weapons of the industrial age, but using nothing but machetes and bayonets if necessary.
Skull had seen it firsthand in places such as Sudan, Rwanda, and Bosnia. Not where anyone wanted to be, even when you weren’t the intended target of a blind killing frenzy fueled by hatred and fear.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo, the DRC, had never been a model of stable government. Set in the heart of Africa, it had gained independence from Belgium in 1960 and almost immediately devolved into spasms of chaos and violence that remained the only constant for the next sixty years. In such an environment, skill and experience meant less than in other places; you could be killed from a block away by child soldiers with hand-me-down AK-47s, lost boys devoid of judgment and moral compasses.
Skull had looked into the vacant eyes of these immature zombies and found their souls composed of nothing but wounds stitched together by loyalty to some warlord father figure. Sympathy for their plight didn’t fool him into thinking them any less dangerous…or more human.
Even more importantly, he prided himself on blending into any environment, but that was impossible in the DRC. Though many African countries were filled with people of dark skin, other types – Caucasians, Asians, Semitics – abounded.
Not so in the DRC. Skull was the only non-black person he’d seen in the forty-eight hours since his arrival, and he drew stares wherever he went. With those stares came attention, demands for bribes, and approaches to sell him anything from food, to rides, to even themselves, for an hour or a night.
This was no place for a professional like Skull to linger. One too many variables could kill him.
He knew the spread of the Eden Plague through the sprawling country had at first signaled a positive change. This giant forested river basin that was home to countless tropical plants and animals was also the birthplace of Ebola, AIDS, and human monkey-pox. Other diseases that originated elsewhere found a friendly home here. Malaria, dengue fever, yellow fever, rabies and a host of others ran wild in this giant tropical land.
The Eden Plague improved everything nearly overnight, but the unintended consequences of Daniel Markis’ decision took only nine months to manifest. In a country where infant mortality ran close to fifty percent in some regions and average life expectancy hovered under the age of fifty, near-perfect health and youth brought with it a population explosion. Food supplies, already inadequate, became even more scarce.
Even so, “virtue effect” of the virus engendered a newfound spirit of cooperation, and people pulled together to do the best they could. With crime reduced, the economy improved. People shared more, wasted less. Aid shipments made it through more often instead of being seized by competing warlords.
The populace soon realized their corrupt, non-Eden government officials were the principal source of their problems. For the first time in its history, Congolese citizens united in opposition to their government.
This was something those in power could not tolerate. They fought back, using the usual oppressive tools: the military, the police, and the criminal organizations on their payroll.
Therefore, as in so many places in the world, Congo’s Edens were demonized and dehumanized in order to divert the others from the ruling class’s misdeeds. Society blamed them for every wrong, their “affliction” painted in the worst possible light, as demon possession. They were denied civil rights and forced to place symbols on th
eir clothing and homes declaring their “unclean” status.
So very much had changed in the last few years...but it was still the same old predictable show. Skull expected the play’s final act would end no differently.
He stepped out of a taxi that smelled of old onions and unwashed feet, and looked up at the Free Communities compound in Kinshasa. Never intended as a fortress, the large work and housing area was secured by hastily erected walls, with makeshift barriers set up at key locations.
Vulgar anti-Eden graffiti had been written on those walls, and teenage gunmen from the local militia stood watching the FC compound, weapons and cigarettes dangling contemptuously. They eyed Skull across a swarm of boys playing soccer in the street, too young to be given guns.
He eyed them back, ready to move if they did.
Walking up to the large sliding metal door, he pounded on its surface. A few seconds later a small opening appeared and a pale face peered suspiciously out at him, and then around and beyond.
“Candygram,” Skull said with false cheer.
The slot slammed shut.
Skull sighed. No one had a sense of humor anymore. He beat louder on the metal surface. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the militia becoming more interested.
“What do you want?” the face asked when the slot was opened again.
Biting off a sarcastic response, Skull forced out. “I’m here to see Shawna Nightingale. I’m a friend. Let me in, or I may have to kill someone.” He jerked his head in the direction of the armed men.
“Name?”
Two gunmen started to stroll his direction. One of the two opened and closed his fists, as if working up to violence.
Skull was sure he could deal with the two, but it would draw unwanted attention to the compound, perhaps providing an excuse to raid it. He turned back to the man in the window. “Listen, if it’s all the same to you, perhaps we should move this inside. Then you can do whatever the hell checks you want.”
“Name!” the man said even louder, looking at a clipboard.
Gritting his teeth, Skull said as softly as possible. “Alan Denham.” He wasn’t there under that name, of course, and in the wrong circles its use could get him detained for a long time and in unsavory circumstances.
Even enlightened governments tend to get a case of the ass about people running around with false identities, he thought. This place looks to be much worse.
“Alan Denham,” the man said loudly. “Here it is. Identification?”
Skull winced, leaned as close to the hole as he could and glared in at the man. “Listen. If you don’t open that door right now, I’m walking away. That might be good for you in the short term as you get to avoid doing your job, but there are some very important people inside who want to see me. Then you might not have a job at all.”
The guard glared at him for a long moment, and then the hole closed. He heard metal locks turning with protesting squeals. The door swung open.
Skull heard one of the gunmen behind him call out, but ignored the sound. He pushed his way through the door and slammed it shut, shoving the metal locking bars into place. The noise of yelling and beating on the door came through clearly.
“Put your hands on the wall and spread your legs for a search,” Skull heard the guard say behind him.
He turned slowly, and then suddenly kicked the man as hard as he could in the crotch, catching a pump shotgun in his hands as the guard dropped to the ground. A second guard had barely changed his expression from boredom to surprise when he found himself looking down the weapon’s barrel.
The man on the ground moaned as he tried to roll up into a ball the size of a cantaloupe. He kept trying to suck in oxygen while simultaneously retching.
“You earned that, you dumb shit,” Skull said to him, not taking his eyes off the one in front of him. “You almost blew my cover and got me grabbed out there.”
The one on his feet held his hands up and his eyes roamed, looking for help. Skull tracked where the man’s gaze traveled, to a door with a camera pointed in their direction. The door constituted the only inside access to the small, enclosed area, a safety measure no doubt.
With a buzz, the door popped open.
Chapter 2
Larry Nightingale hailed a taxi at Rotterdam-The-Hague airport, both for convenience and because his conspicuousness aboard public transportation irritated him after a while. The stares, the whispers…sometimes the come-ons. A black man might not be too novel a sight, but one pushing six foot six – two meters – in height was. “Do you play basketball?” was perhaps the commonest question people asked him, out of the blue.
“No, American football,” he occasionally replied, when he felt like chatting. After all, that was true. He had played football in high school before joining the Army. Mostly, though, he simply smiled and acted as if he didn’t understand. Sometimes the simpleton routine put them off and they left him alone.
He told the taxi driver to take him to the Kurhaus Hotel in The Hague, where he’d been briefed to go. It turned out to be a nineteenth-century seaside monstrosity that looked to him more like a palace than a place of lodging, something that should be depicted in an impressionist painting of more than a century ago, where mustachioed gentlemen in knee-to-elbow swimsuits strutted before parasol-bearing ladies with fancy hats and frilly dresses.
Once he settled into his room, admiring the picturesque view across a winter-cold, nearly empty North Sea beach, he texted a number he’d been given and waited. He’d already checked in with the South African U.N. representative staff to report his arrival, all routine, under the cover name Alex Crester. His real mission would begin when he received a reply to the text.
His phone beeped and he found displayed on it the name and address of a restaurant. A moment’s research showed it to be less than half a kilometer away, southwest along the strandweg, the beach-walk.
A short stroll took him past the Sea Life aquarium and a dozen restaurants with evocative names such as Blue Lagoon, Bora Bora and Cocomo. The festive decorations and signs contrasted with the brisk, wet, and some might say biting ocean breeze. He found it invigorating after the heat of the Congo.
At least the locals knew how to make the most of their restaurant locations. Enormous windows allowed diners to sit inside and still enjoy the beach view, and many eateries enclosed their patios with thick, clear plastic to block the wind, removable for the few high-summer days when the heat made them unnecessary. Aromas of cooking food wafted inland, and gulls eyed him speculatively from their perches atop benches, pilings and signs.
Larry decided he liked this place, despite its temperature. And, since he had the benefit of an expense account, he might as well enjoy the local cuisine. Maybe a steak…or pork cutlet? He knew the Germans loved their schweinefleisch, but what was a typical Dutch dish? Something with their famous cheese, maybe? He should have done more research.
When he arrived at the restaurant, he asked for a table for three as instructed. Moments later, a man and a woman arrived and greeted him, shaking hands and speaking to him like old friends. Both stood nearly as tall as he. He’d noticed many of the people in the Netherlands seemed tall and healthy, though most were not Edens. He wondered why. Clean living and clear consciences, his grandfather would have said.
The natives ordered beer for all. When the drinks arrived, the man raised his glass. “To success.”
Larry drank to the toast. “You’re not afraid to eat with an Eden?”
“We’re also Edens.”
Larry looked closely, realizing he could see the subtle signs of rejuvenation. “What’s good here?”
“You look like a hearty eater,” the man replied in a silken voice, his English barely accented. “We are too. I suggest snert and mussels.”
“Snert?”
“Pea soup. A local favorite.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
They passed the time with innocent chit-chat. When the waiter brought the soup,
Larry found it thick, almost a stew, with savory chunks of pork and sausage. Heavy rye bread and rich butter accompanied it.
As the main course arrived – large pots of mussels boiled in fragrant garlic and wine, accompanied by a mustard sauce – the woman leaned in close and placed her hand on Larry’s arm, as if flirting. “After dinner we’ll go talk elsewhere. We just wanted to be certain you were free of surveillance.”
“Uh, sure,” Larry said, unfamiliar with this cloak-and-dagger routine.
“You seem nervous. Please try to relax. We have everything under control.”
“Pardon me, but if that’s so, why are we meeting like this? I’m no diplomat. No spy, either. Just a messenger, really.”
“Because, Mister Crester, we had to know your Chairman Markis was serious about supporting our efforts. Only by sending someone close to him could we be sure. You weren’t the one we expected, but you’ll have to do.” She caressed his arm with the hand that had never left it, a bit too intimately for his taste.
He fought not to pull away sharply. Only Shawna touched him like that. The Belgian-influenced Congolese hugged and kissed with familiarity, but this seemed quite different. Did the Dutch touch each other all the time, like the French? Was this woman playing a part, or making a play for him?
Larry caught the man looking on in amusement, and suddenly he became angry, realizing these people were patronizing him, condescending. Why? Was it because of his color, or his evident inability to fit in? Some kind of Jungle Fever fascination with the sexualized stereotype of the big black man?
Abruptly, he stood, shaking off her touch. “Thanks for the food. I think I’ll be going now.”
Their amusement turned to consternation. “I do not understand,” said the man. “We have business to discuss.”
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