Resistance: Pandora, Book 3
Page 1
Praise for Eric L. Harry and Pandora: Outbreak
“Like Crichton and H.G. Wells, Harry writes stories that entertain roundly while they explore questions of scientific and social import.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Harry’s vision of an apocalyptic plague is as chilling as it is plausible. This masterful thriller will leave you terrified, enthralled, and desperate for the next entry in the series.”
—Kira Peikoff, author of No Time to Die and Mother Knows Best
“After a devastating epidemic that changes the very nature of humans, two sisters, an epidemiologist and a neurobiologist, hold the key to humanity’s survival.”
—Library Journal
Also by Eric L. Harry
PANDORA: OUTBREAK
PANDORA: RESISTANCE
ARC LIGHT
SOCIETY OF THE MIND
PROTECT AND DEFEND
INVASION
Pandora: Resistance
Eric L. Harry
REBEL BASE BOOKS
Kensington Publishing Corp.
www.kensingtonbooks.com
Contents
Praise for Eric L. Harry and Pandora: Outbreak
Also by Eric L. Harry
Pandora: Resistance
Contents
Copyright
Author’s Note
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
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Pandora: Outbreak
Chapter 1
Pandora: Contagion
Copyright
To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
REBEL BASE BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp. 119 West 40th Street New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2020 by Eric L. Harry
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
All Kensington titles, imprints, and distributed lines are available at special quantity discounts for bulk purchases for sales promotion, premiums, fundraising, and educational or institutional use.
Special book excerpts or customized printings can also be created to fit specific needs. For details, write or phone the office of the Kensington Special Sales Manager: Kensington Publishing Corp., 119 West 40th Street, New York, NY 10018. Attn. Special Sales Department. Phone: 1-800-221-2647.
Rebel Base and the RB logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.
First Electronic Edition: January 2020
ISBN-13: 978-1-63573-016-6 (ebook)
ISBN-10: 1-63573-016-3 (ebook)
First Print Edition: January 2020
ISBN-13: 978-1-63573-019-7
ISBN-10: 1-63573-019-8
Printed in the United States of America
Author’s Note
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, scientists confidently foretold the impending collapse of civilization due to the human population explosion. Their predictions of famine, pollution, soaring commodity prices, and desperate poverty were proved completely wrong in every detail. Food production skyrocketed. Air and water quality improved dramatically. Commodities grew ever cheaper. Wealth accumulated at prodigious rates. The human race produced not only more people; it produced a network of ever more brilliant, ambitious, innovative, and driven geniuses, who pushed science and technology to previously unimagined heights. But what happens if the population collapses? Would the effects of a demographic implosion be worse than its opposite, undoing the benefits of specialization, trade, and productivity? Would humanity ultimately return to stone tools and the cave? This book explores the beginnings of a world in which peak person has come and gone.
Chapter 1
THE SHENANDOAH VALLEY
Infection Date 61, 2030 GMT (4:30 p.m. Local)
“Dad, do I shoot?” Noah’s fifteen-year-old daughter Chloe whispered from the door on the opposite side of the barn.
A thirtyish man held a revolver to the head of a taller fiftyish woman in hospital scrubs and wearing a surgical mask. Noah and Chloe were unseen and only thirty yards from where the pair stood at the fence, but that was too far for Noah to see their eyes. The supposed female hostage’s hands were bound behind her, but…something wasn’t right.
“Dad?” Chloe said quietly while squinting into her assault rifle’s scope. “I think I got the shot.” Her mouth was open and her breathing steady, like their private instructors had taught. Her blond hair, cut short for the apocalypse, was pulled back from her face in a tiny ponytail by a blue band so that it didn’t spoil her aim.
Noah looked up at the turreted tower—a last minute addition while prepping for just this sort of confrontation—atop the main house forty yards from the barn. His wife Natalie had joined their thirteen-year-old son Jacob behind their two rifles.
“Dad?” Chloe asked. “Make a freakin’ call. Should we just give ’em some food? Or do I shoot? Jake and Mom are twice as far, and Mom…Your call.” Noah’s heart was pounding. His stomach threatened to cramp. He had to force his breathing past the bands of tension strapped around his chest.
“You’re runnin’ outta time!” the man with the pistol shouted toward Jake and Natalie. It sounded scripted; unemotional. That also described the man’s calm hostage, who scanned the house and, now, the barn. “She’s gonna git shot if you don’t hand over fifty pounds of food and/or ammunition.”
There it was. The passive voice. Not, “I’ll shoot her.” He’d lost his “I.”
“I think they’re both bad,” Chloe said in a voice warped by her press on her AR-15’s stock. “Something’s not right.”
“I got the shot,” Noah said quietly, which drew his daughter away from her sight. “Get ready.” His crosshairs danced across the man’
s face, straying onto the torso and head of his captive. If the bullet clipped the metal fencing that diagonally crisscrossed his round, magnified view, it could deflect into the face of the woman. Or it could miss both and, if they’re legitimate, get her shot in the head by her supposed captor. Noah’s throbbing heart kept him from filling his lungs. His right hand took its orders from his right eye. The crosshairs traversed the man’s nose repeatedly. Each time his trigger finger added a feather’s weight. Now. Now. Now—
Bam!
The infected man’s head was flung backwards and he dropped straight to the ground past lifeless knees. Crosshairs don’t lie, his instructor had said.
The female hostage swung a pistol around and fired straight at Noah.
A bullet slapped the wall above him and clattered through the barn as Noah dove onto the chickenshit covered floor.
Noah heard three shots. He crawled back into the doorway with his rifle. The woman lay draped over the man. Neither moved.
Bam! The top of the woman’s head exploded. It was Chloe. “Just making sure.”
“Clear!” came Jake’s call in a voice breaking with puberty, or anxiety, or both. “Clear!” came Natalie’s call from beside him in the tower.
“Clear!” came Chloe’s high-pitched shout.
Noah saw no movement by the gate or in the downward sloping woods beyond the fence where the two bodies lay. “Clear!” He led his daughter on a stooped run back to the front door of the main house.
Natalie came down the spiral staircase to meet them—a mid-thirties version of their teenage daughter. “I missed her with my first shot.” She sounded pissed. “Fucking animals. They would never have left us alone. And trying to trick us. Use our emotions to…to kill and….” Natalie wrapped her arms around Chloe, hugging, kissing, and stroking her head. “I’m just so glad,” kiss, “that you’re both safe.” Kiss. Tears welled in her eyes, and she sniffed. “But I hit that bitch with my second shot. Motherfuckers.”
Noah nodded toward Chloe. “Natalie,” he said as softly as he could manage.
“What?” His wife was on an emotional rampage. “It’s kill or be killed, Noah. Don’t you forget that. Don’t you go…go wobbly on us.” Two people had just tried to kill her children. She turned to Chloe, but shouted up the staircase, “Jake! Listen up! There’s us. This family. And there are targets—everyone else—who you’ve gotta be ready to kill to protect us. This family. From now, till this is all over, if it’s ever over. Keep your weapons close and yourself ready. Always figure out how you’re gonna hit every single target around you, and be ready because situations can change in a split second.” She grew angrier by the word. “And there are people like those two vermin who need to be killed. Hold your head up, and get ready. Because this family is gonna survive. We can do this.”
She took off back up the spiral staircase. “Jake! Anything moving?”
“No.”
“Then keep your head down.”
“Then how do I know if anything’s moving?”
Noah turned to Chloe, who arched her eyebrows at her mother’s comments then sank onto the arm of the sofa. “What next?” she said, shaking her head. “I thought Infecteds were supposed to be, like, brain damaged or whatever. They tried to trick us. I didn’t think they were that smart.”
“Obviously they’re not smart enough,” her mother yelled downstairs. “Noah, what tipped you off?”
He thought for a moment. “The woman wasn’t terrified.”
The window in the living room exploded into shards. Noah and Chloe dropped to the floor. Both Jake and Natalie fired several shots. “You okay down there?” Natalie asked.
“Yeah. How many?”
“Can’t tell!”
More glass shattered. Noah crawled to the open door. Natalie called out to him to be careful as bullets peppered the front of the house.
“There are a coupla people!” Jake shouted. “Behind some bushes to the right of the barn! Their cover is bad! Say the word!”
“Wait for me!” Noah rose despite the sporadic fire and dashed past a crouching Chloe for the spiral staircase. He climbed the stairs to the Tower’s opening and crawled over to Jake and Natalie.
“They’re right there.” Jake enlarged the photo he’d taken on his iPhone and pointed toward a thick clump of foliage. His finger was shaking.
“Alright. On the count of three, we all get in a slit and start firing back at those bushes.” The shots were coming their way every few seconds, but seemed random. “Don’t hold back. Even if you miss it’ll force their heads down. Let it loose. Okay?”
Jake and Natalie nodded. Noah counted down. On the beat after he said, “One,” they all rolled into firing positions and began a steady stream of shots—one per second per person—until a man in a jacket holding a rifle began hopping downhill on one leg. Jake hit him squarely in the side, and he fell into the weeds.
A bullet slapped the stone six inches from Noah’s head, sending a spray of rock chips onto his face and a fine mist of dust into his eyes.
“There are more on the right!” Jake cried out.
Before Noah could object, Jake slithered over and began firing toward the small gate leading up to the hunting cabin. Noah and Natalie joined him, ignoring the questions from his daughter below asking what was happening. When Noah slipped his rifle through another slit, he saw a man grab the small gate and immediately jerk his hand back as he fell to the ground. The electric charge in the fence had done its thing.
As the man scrambled to his feet—Bam!—Noah’s 5.56mm round struck his center mass and he never rose again. Jake was plinking away at a woman who was literally hopping and weaving her way away from the gate as if dodging his shots. She fell and curled into a writhing ball. Uninfecteds, Noah thought. She felt pain. He fired at the targets—anyone not this family, just as Natalie had instructed—no matter their Pandoravirus status.
When a woman and a boy rose to flee, both fell. The woods were still, but for their writhing and moans of pain. Noah and Jake ceased fire. Natalie fired two shots. The first at the boy, and—as Noah and Jake watched in horror—the second at the uninfected woman, his mother, who crawled back for him. “Got ’em,” was all she said. She turned to Noah. “We need to talk about this. Downstairs. Jake, keep your head down. Use your phone.”
Sitting on the stairs leading down to the basement where the kids slept, Chloe demanded and got a recount of what had just happened. Everyone was hyper and cotton mouthed. Then Natalie said, “Chloe, your father and I need to talk.”
“About what’s going on? I wanta be here for that.”
“Chloe,” Noah began to explain, “there are some things your mother and I—”
“No,” his wife interrupted. “Let her stay.” They all sat on stairs just below ground level. “Jake?” Natalie shouted, looking up in his direction. “Everything quiet?”
“All clear,” he replied. “Just me and a bunch of dead people.”
“You’re gonna have to go clean that up,” Natalie told Noah. “Before…”
“What?” Chloe asked in the silence. “Before they start to smell or something?”
“It’s not just the smell,” Noah said. “Bodies carry diseases, not just Pandoravirus.”
“But it’s dangerous to go out there,” Chloe noted correctly.
“It’s even more dangerous not to,” Noah replied. “Patrolling, remember? We can’t let them settle in just outside the fence and take shots at us when we least expect them.”
“We can’t even move around the property anymore,” Natalie said. “I can’t get to the grow labs. Chloe can’t get to the barn. We’re trapped. And they know we have stuff. Food and ammunition, that’s what those first two wanted. How long, Noah?”
He had no idea what she meant. “How long till what?”
“How long can we hold out here? How long can we s
tay lucky?”
“Well…you gotta consider the alternatives, which are piss poor.”
“What are they? Our options?”
Chloe’s head went back and forth between her parents like at a tennis match.
“We could stick it out here, no matter how bad it gets. Or we could try to make ourselves useful to Emma’s new community and hope to avoid her deciding to eradicate all Uninfecteds. Or we can make a run for it.”
“Make a run for it?” Chloe asked. “Where?” But before anyone could answer, she said, “I’m down for that. Getting the hell outta here.”
Natalie and Noah were clearly undecided. And unlike their kids, they were exhausted from the responsibility. At least Noah was.
“It’s gonna be dark soon,” Natalie said. “Better clean up those bodies. Be careful.”
Chloe chortled. “Be careful. Just go outside the fence, bury a bunch of Pandoravirus-infected bodies, and fight off any attacks. But be careful.”
“You’re coming with me. Your mother and Jake will cover us.”
There were so many bodies that Noah had to use the little Bobcat to dig a trench. When the hole was getting deep enough, more shots rang out, but it was over almost as soon as he’d found good cover. “Two more!” Natalie called out from the Tower. Noah turned off the electric fence and had Chloe take cover beside the handle in the barn so that she could reelectrify it quickly. He then donned gloves and a mask and began dragging bodies through the gate to the mass grave. He tried not to look at them. But when he used the Bobcat to dump the first load of dirt into the trench, he saw—staring back up at him—the lifeless eyes of a woman wearing makeup and earrings. He quickly dug another trench to be filled with people to be killed later.
Chloe electrified the fence, trotted back across the yard to the main house, and joined Noah and Natalie on the floor in the foyer beneath the level of the windows. Broken glass covered the sofa and chairs.
“I vote we make a run for it,” Chloe repeated. “They’re gonna keep coming.”
“But out there,” her mother replied, “it’s just us versus them. No walls, no towers, no fence.”