by Jim Heskett
“Bearskin rug,” Sutter said.
Isabelle frowned. “What?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Dave said. “What do we do next?”
“Someone told me there are at least fifteen people here,” Isabelle said. “I think I killed eight.”
“We got that many, or more,” Dave said.
Sutter grunted again, and Isabelle held up a hand to make everyone stop speaking. She trained her ears on the room around her and realized she heard nothing. Total silence in the house.
“Did you come upon a guy with a shotgun, wearing glasses? Frumpy guy.”
“I don’t think so,” Dave said.
“I left my shotgun back near the computer room,” Sutter said as blood dribbled into his mouth from the wound on his head.
“Then there’s at least one of them left, and I think he might be the leader. He’s hiding in a room somewhere.”
She checked the ammo in the guns she’d lifted from the soldiers, then jerked her head to get Dave and Sutter to follow. Sutter seemed to be able to stand on his own two feet, but he wouldn’t be much use in a fight. “You hang back,” she said to him, and he didn’t argue with her.
She led them out through a series of hallways and little rooms, listening at every turn for any sounds. But the house was as quiet as a church.
They found themselves back in the main foyer, and she started up the stairs onto the second floor. She could hear the swish of her shoes sinking into the carpeted steps.
A stone gargoyle, just like the ones out front, sat at the top of the stairs and split the hallway in two. Doors, spaced out very few feet, marked both sides.
She chose left, and her two companions followed her. Foot over foot, she painstakingly listened at each door for noise, but it seemed perfectly empty.
Just then, she heard the sound of a door opening. She spun in time to see Sutter walking into a room, then flying back out as a shotgun blast tore his midsection apart.
17
As Isabelle watched the bloodied body of Sutter twist in the hallway, for a second, she lost track of time and space. His stomach had turned into a mess of meat. Since the world had died, she’d seen plenty of horrific things, had seen people murdered right in front of her. She’d killed people, sometimes up close with a knife, sometimes at a distance with her sniper rifle. She’d stolen from people who didn’t deserve it because she needed something more than they did.
But nothing compared to the feeling of losing someone you knew and watching them take a bullet or lose a limb to a homemade bomb explosion.
Dave shouted and this brought Isabelle back to reality. Sutter stumbled near the entrance to the room, his body a mess of blood. His stomach had opened and his innards were slipping onto the floor. Sutter locked eyes with her for a second, then his knees went wobbly and he collapsed into a heap on the thick hallway carpet.
She plunged a hand into her pocket and came out with the smoke grenade. She pulled the pin, crept to the doorframe, and launched the grenade into the room Sutter had walked into.
In a moment, the grenade hissed. She waited a few more seconds, then leaned in and emptied her clip into a cloud of red smoke. She heard a scream, and then a grunt, and when she was done firing, she readied the other gun. Dave came around the other side of the door, and they both paused, waiting for the smoke to clear.
Ten seconds later, they could see through the haze, into the room. The shotgun-wielding man Norman was on his back, dead.
Another man was in the room, this one in a wheelchair. His head was down and his hands were clasped over his stomach, but he was alive because his chest was heaving. Blood seeped from between his fingers.
He looked up at them as red smoke misted around his body, then dissipated. He was pale, with a bald head and sunken eyes.
Isabelle looked around the wheelchair. No weapons. Dave entered the room, his gun raised.
The man in the wheelchair looked down at Norman’s body, sprawled on the floor. “I’m sorry, friend.”
“Who are you?” Isabelle said.
The man sneered and then winced as he clasped the wound in his stomach tighter. “Victor.”
“Victor, how many other—”
“No,” Victor said. “Now you will answer one of my questions. How did you find this house?”
“We knew someone who’d been here,” Dave said. “We came up from Virginia to find it.”
“Virginia,” Victor said, his words starting to become labored with heavy breaths. “Probably not Richmond, though. I would guess you came from Fort Lee. Are you here for revenge?”
Isabelle paused long enough that Victor smiled back at her.
“We burned that stronghold to the ground a couple days ago.”
Dave and Isabelle shared a look. “Bullshit,” Isabelle said.
“I am told your leader there, a man named Alias, put up no kind of fight. He let my tiny group march right inside and seemed surprised when we put every person there to the torch. Fool.”
So it was true. A rumble went through Isabelle’s gut. “How many more of the cult members are in this house?”
“Cult? You have quite a narrow view of my people.”
She trained her gun on his face. “Your people? So you are in charge here.” He nodded, and she took a step toward him. “How many more?”
He shook his head. “I do not know. But there are thousands of my children out there, and none of them fear death. They aren’t swayed by the false hope of your world, so there’s nothing you can do to stop them.”
“Maybe so,” Dave said, “but you won’t have a say in that anymore.”
“Yes,” Victor said, “you can kill me. It won’t change anything. But, please, do make sure you take care of my cargo. It’s quite precious, and it will spoil if left unattended.”
“Cargo?” Isabelle said.
Victor nodded, then he sputtered as blood leaked from his mouth. His body seized as his eyes rolled back in his head, then he went rigid and silence filled the room. The last of the smoke cleared as rays of light from a window behind Victor pierced the room.
“Is he dead?” Dave said.
Isabelle crept toward him, ready to shoot him again if he made any kind of movement. But he didn’t. She poked him in the shoulder with the butt of her gun to be sure.
Dave dropped his gun on the floor as he stared at his hands, then his eyes crawled up his shirt sleeve, which was dotted with blood. He started to shake, like a little vibration, then he leaned forward and puked on his shoes. In a few seconds, he stood up again.
“Babe. Look at me,” Isabelle said.
Dave’s eyes were wide and full of panic as he heaved deep breaths.
“Keep looking at me,” she said as she walked to him and cradled his face in her hands.
“I’m okay,” he said, blinking rapidly.
“It’s over now,” she said.
“What did he mean about the cargo?” Dave said as he wiped his mouth on his shirt.
“I have no idea.”
Dave picked his gun up off the floor, then cleared his throat. “Do you think this house has a basement?”
***
Isabelle and Dave spent the next half hour exploring the house, guns out and fingers tensed around their triggers every time they opened another door. The mansion seemed to go on forever.
In a hallway near the kitchen, Isabelle opened a door and found exactly what they were looking for: a set of stairs that went down. A buzz, like an air conditioner, wafted up from the darkness at the bottom.
She took a step onto the stairs, but Dave put a hand on her shoulder.
“Wait,” he said.
“What is it?”
He took an unsteady breath. “I love you.”
She smiled at him. “I love you too. I know how much you hate this, but I’m proud of you.”
“It’s just… with Zach, and Sutter… I don’t think I can do this anymore. I’m tired, babe, and nothing ever seems like it’s going to get bet
ter.”
“I know,” she said. “I don’t want to do it anymore either.”
“Maybe we forget about that deal with Mrs. Rappaport and go north, or maybe south. Get out of the country.”
“We don’t know that it’s any better in Canada or Mexico,” she said.
“But what if it is? We would never know unless we tried. Fort Lee is gone, if what that wheelchair man said is true. There’s nowhere to go home to.”
Dave’s eyes radiated weariness. Escape seemed like a pleasant fantasy, as if they could walk across the border into Canada and find working electricity, a functioning government, and friendly neighbors around every turn.
But that’s all it was: a fantasy.
She pulled him close and kissed his cheek. “You may be right. Let’s check out this cargo, then find a hot meal, and then we’ll discuss what we’re going to do next.”
He agreed, so she lifted her gun and proceeded down the steps. The light from the hallway lasted until a turn in the stairs, then she descended into darkness. She heard some slight shifting, and then maybe the faint sound of moaning. A sporadic twinkle of lights like LEDs blinked around the room, but the rest of the room was cloaked in darkness.
The buzzing sound became louder, and she recognized it. A generator. She stepped into the darkness and felt out to the wall for a switch. After fumbling for a few seconds, she found a notch in the wall, then flipped the switch.
Lights twinked on throughout the room, illuminating a massive basement area. Two dozen hospital beds placed about the room. On each of those beds was a person, strapped down and gagged, many of them with IV drips running into their wrists. A few of them turned their faces toward her, but most looked either unconscious or maybe dead. A generator at the far end of the basement ran power cables to each of the beds.
“Cargo,” Dave said.
EPILOGUE
Dave helped the elderly lady up the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Isabelle stood off to the side, next to the butch bodyguard who—no matter what Isabelle said or did—treated her no better than some enemy combatant she was forced to work with.
The elderly lady cleared her throat and nodded to a man in a suit, who held up a conical bullhorn in front of her face.
“My name is Helen Rappaport,” said the elderly lady into the bullhorn, which amplified her voice out to the approximately three hundred people seated between the Memorial and the reflecting pool. “Thank you for gathering here today. We’ve come a long way, but we still have a long way to go.”
A round of applause started in the front row of people, then spread throughout the entire group, until the sound of clapping and cheering bounced off the memorial. Isabelle studied the crowd and realized she could count the unarmed ones easier than the number who either wore rifles slung over their shoulders or guns on their hips. Many of them were wearing uniforms, some old and tattered. Cops, military, secret service.
This applause lasted for several seconds, growing louder and louder as the whooping seemed to overtake the crowd.
Helen Rappaport turned to her bodyguard and smiled, then shrugged as the din of the crowd prevented her from speaking.
Isabelle watched Dave as he too clapped, his eyes lighting up with the excitement of the moment.
Then she caught his eye, and he smiled at her. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen hope on his face, not since before the bombing of the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, long before running gasoline for Boss Chalmers, long before killing human beings became a basic part of survival.
His grin persisted, and he stopped clapping to point at his cheek.
She blushed and blew him a kiss.
<<<<>>>>
A NOTE TO READERS
Thank you for reading my book. Seriously, thank you. I hope you loved it and it helped you escape for a little while.
Next, please consider leaving a review on Amazon and Goodreads. I know it’s a pain, but you have no idea how much it will help the success of this book and my ability to write future books.
Reviews:
Provide Social Proof to prospective readers
Push books up Amazon’s rankings.
That, blogging about it, and telling other people to read it. My son refuses to stop growing, and baby clothes ain’t cheap.
I have a website where you can learn more about me and my other projects. Check me out at www.jimheskett.com and sign up for my mailing list so you can stay informed on the latest news. You’ll even get some freebies for signing up. You like free stuff, right?
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Books by Jim Heskett
See the full list of all my books at www.RoyalArchBooks.com
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jim Heskett was born in the wilds of Oklahoma, raised by a pack of wolves with a station wagon and a membership card to the local public swimming pool. Just like the man in the John Denver song, he moved to Colorado in the summer of his 27th year, and never looked back. Aside from an extended break traveling the world, he hasn't let the Flatirons mountains out of his sight.
He fell in love with writing at the age of fourteen with a copy of Stephen King's The Shining. Poetry became his first outlet for teen angst, then later some terrible screenplays, and eventually short and long fiction. In between, he worked a few careers that never quite tickled his creative toes successfully, and hasn't ever forgotten about Stephen King. You can find him currently huddled over a laptop in an undisclosed location in Colorado, dreaming up ways to kill beloved characters.
He blogs at his own site and hosts the Indie Author Answers podcast. You can also scour the internet to find the occasional guest post for various writing websites such as Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers, Quips and Tips for Writers, the Blood-Red Pencil, and a few others scattered here and there. He believes the huckleberry is the king of berries and refuses to be persuaded in any other direction.
Details at www.jimheskett.com
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For Keller, because I hope the world you inherit is nothing like the one described within these pages.
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AFTERWORD
The idea for the Five Suns Saga came to me while I was eating steak and rice at a little Japanese restaurant in Boulder, Colorado. A thought popped into my head:
What if everyone thought the world was going to end, but then it didn’t?
I envisioned a group of friends living in a world in which a meteor hurtles toward earth, threatening to destroy humanity. But as the whole of society riots and descends into lawlessness, at the last moment, the meteor changes course. Then the friends are left to do… something… after the world doesn’t end. I hadn’t worked that part out yet.
From that, I changed the idea to: what if everyone thought the world was going to end, but it turned out to be a hoax? And that’s when the Five Suns began to form in earnest. I envisioned a sprawling, seven-volume epic about a group of heroes traveling the world to uncover the roots of the meteor conspiracy. The problem was, I had no idea how to write a sprawling, multi-book saga.
So I decided that the story needed to be told in manageable chunks, so we could see how the collapse of society affected not just a small group of heroes, but many people. That had never been done before, as far as I knew.
And I wanted to have several voices tell the stories, for the sake of variety, so I created a literary journal, created a website, and went live. I wrote a couple of stories myself and published a 5,000 word back story and set of rules for the world, then sat back and waited.
The problem was, I couldn’t get anyone interested. The rules of the world were too specific: no sci-fi technology, no radiated mutants or zombies, this has to happen after that, etc. People don’t want to write in someone else’s world, particularly for a brand-new literary journal that isn’t paying them anything.
So I abandoned the literary journal. But, since I’
d already written a couple short stories on my own, I thought the overall tale needed to stay in that format. I would have some recurring characters and some threaded plot lines and subtle links between the stories. And by using that format, I could fill the world with lots of different characters while leaving a fair amount to the reader’s imagination.
And now that I’ve fallen in love with the world and some of the characters, I may yet expand on that sprawling epic series. My wife says it’s called Five Suns so there need to be five books (duh), so we’ll see…
