Nomad

by JL Bryan

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Acknowledgments

  Other books by J.L. Bryan

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  From the author

  Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper Chapter One

  Nomad

  by

  J.L. Bryan

  Nomad by J.L. Bryan

  Copyright 2013 Jeffrey L. Bryan. All rights reserved.

  The following is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons or events is coincidental.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Nomad is the first book I've written in more than two years that hasn't been part of my Jenny Pox or Songs of Magic series. It's a story I've wanted to write for many years. I hope that you'll enjoy this new one!

  As ever, I couldn't do this alone. I have to thank my wife Christina for doing the initial read of the book, and then re-reading it again (and again). Authors L.K. Rigel and Daniel Arenson gave me some excellent notes on improving the story. I want to thank my beta readers, too, including Heather Self and Amanda Hocking. Claudia from Phatpuppy Art once again did a lovely cover, which I hope catches the excitement and the dark tone of the story. Ashley from Bookish Brunette set up an amazingly large cover reveal and also helped with the typesetting on the cover.

  A huge thanks to all the book bloggers who've supported me over the years, and especially to those who agreed to do advance reviews of this work, or have otherwise helped me get the word out. This is, happily, a long list, in no particular order: Rachel from Parajunkee, Heather, Heather and Danny from Bewitched Bookworms; Jenny from Supernatural Snark, Kelly at Reading the Paranormal, Ashley from Bookish Brunette and Loretta from Between the Pages, Giselle from Xpresso Reads, Ash from Smash Attack Reads!, Katie and Krisha at Inkk Reviews, Jennifer and Julie from Tale of Many Reviews, Heather from Buried in Books, Isalys at Book Soulmates, MoonStar from MoonStar's Fantasy World, Jessi from Reading in the Corner, Chandra from Unabridged Bookshelf, Shirley from Creative Deeds, Jennifer from Feminist Fairy Tale Reviews, Kristina from Ladybug Storytime, Kristin from Blood, Sweat & Books, Kat from the Aussie Zombie, AimeeKay from Reviews from My First Reads Shelf, Melissa from Books and Things, Liliana at Lili Lost in a Book, Lauren from Lose Time Reading, Kelsey from Kelsey's Cluttered Bookshelf, Kristilyn from Reading in Winter, Heidi from Rainy Day Ramblings, Andra from Unabridged Andralyn, Jenni from Alluring Reads, Jackie from 2Jackies, Mandy from I Read Indie, Michelle from In Libris Veritas, Jessica from J. Bronder Reviews, Amy from Simple Love of Reading, Michelle from Much Loved Books, Amy from Book Loving Mom, Lindsay from the Violet Hour, Aeicha from Word Spelunking, Anjana from Kindle and Me, Rebecca from Bending the Spine, Aliraluna from Velvet Red, Lori from Contagious Reads, Ashley from Bibliophile

  Also by J.L. Bryan:

  The Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper series

  Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper

  (more coming soon!)

  Urban Fantasy/Horror

  Inferno Park

  The Unseen

  The Jenny Pox series (supernatural/horror)

  Jenny Pox

  Tommy Nightmare

  Alexander Death

  Jenny Plague-Bringer

  Science Fiction Novels

  Nomad

  Helix

  For my parents

  Thanks for everything

  Chapter One

  Her hands were red with blood, but the cold rain washed it away. Whose blood? She couldn't remember.

  She became aware of pain throughout her body. Freezing water and tiny hailstones lashed her face as she stumbled through a storm. Dying thunder echoed in her ears, and crackles of lightning faded in the night around her.

  A pair of lights rushed toward her through the darkness, but her brain couldn't interpret what her eyes saw. A long screech ripped through her ears, followed by shrill bleats.

  Car horns, she realized as the lights loomed closer. Through her thick, fuzzy brain, it dawned on her that she was staggering along a multi-lane road, seconds away from getting splattered across the oncoming grill of an eighteen-wheeled truck.

  She discerned a dark space off to her left and moved into it, stepping from hard pavement into squishy wet earth. The truck that had nearly killed her squealed past as the driver braked, dousing her with a wave of cold mud. Horns blew at the stopped truck blocking up the left lane.

  She rubbed her eyes and tried to grasp her surroundings--a grass median dividing an interstate highway, up to her ankles in frigid mud.

  She couldn't remember where she was, or how she'd come to be there. After a moment's reflection, she realized she wasn't entirely sure who she was, either.

  Raven, she remembered. She clung to that word like a lifeline. My name is Raven. It is now, anyway. She'd once had a different name, but that original, scribbled-on-the-birth-certificate name no longer mattered.

  She wore black boots and a long black jacket. A backpack weighed down her shoulders, but she didn't know what it contained. She trudged on weak, trembling legs toward an overpass bridge ahead. Once she was out of the downpour, she could gather her brains and figure things out. She didn't seem to be bleeding, so the blood on her hands must not have been her own.

  "Hey! Hey there, girl! You all right?" shouted the truck driver who had almost flattened her. More cars honked and swerved to avoid crashing into the back of his trailer, which was decorated with puffy pink sheep.

  Raven squinted up at him. The man was in his forties, severely overweight, with a handlebar mustache and scratchy, graying beard stubble. His blue and white cap read: MoonPie: The Original Marshmallow Sandwich!

  "I'm fine!" she shouted through the downpour. "Keep going!"

  "You got a car?" he asked.

  "No," she told him. "I don't think so."

  "Where you headed?"

  "I don't know."

  "The troopers gonna lock you up if they see you! You drunk or what?"

  "I don't think so." She raised a hand to her mouth to check her breath. Not drunk.

  The trucker eyed her up and down, a soaking wet girl stumbling along the interstate alone at night, and then he swung open the passenger door.

  "Best climb on up in here with me," he said. "Gonna freeze your pants off out there."

  Raven looked at the gruff, obese man and the warm, sheltered transport he was offering, and then at the overpass bridge in the distance. Her legs were rubbery. She might not make it to the overpass before she collapsed.

  "Lady, I got to get moving," he said. "You want a ride to the exit or what?"

  "Yeah," Raven said. She had no reason to trust him, but he seemed soft-bodied and slow. If he tried to get rough, she would break his wrists. Even in her current state, she knew she could take him if he pushed her to it.

  Raven stumbled around to the passenger side and struggled to climb with her weakened limbs until he took
her arms and pulled her up.

  "Thanks," she whispered, still shivering. She was almost too weak to pull the door closed.

  "Just glad you ain't tore in half." He settled back into the driver's seat, and it groaned under his weight. "You musta been one, two, three, four inches from me. Or less. Just popped up outta nowhere when that lightning hit." He drove cautiously through the storm. "Didn't seem like no normal lightning, you ask me. What was you doing out there? That big flash hit the road, then you come stumbling out....Did the lightning get you?"

  "I don't know," she said. The interior of the cab smelled like cigarette smoke and old hamburgers. A collage of small objects was glued to the dashboard--action figures, an old watch face, postcards, salt and pepper shakers. Hail clattered on the cab's roof.

  "You don't know?" he asked.

  "Sorry." Raven shrugged off her backpack and set it on the floor between her wet boots. She wanted to see what was inside it, but not while he was watching.

  "It's Jebbie, by the way." He offered his calloused hand, and she hesitated a moment before taking it. "Jebbie Walters. From Yazoo City, Mississippi. You got a name, darling?"

  "Angela. That's my name," Raven said. She knew not to trust a stranger with data about herself. He might be the enemy, and she felt informants and spies were everywhere, looking to report those who resisted.

  "Huh. Where you from, Angela?"

  She tried to remember, but finally shrugged.

  "You ain't gotta tell me," he said. "You going north? Cause that's where I'm going, way up north of here. You might want to hop out quick if that ain't your plan."

  "I'm not sure."

  "You ain't sure about much of nothing, are you?"

  "Not right now," Raven said.

  "I guess I ought to drop you up at the exit."

  "You can." Raven shrugged. "I think I'm lost."

  He looked her over again. "Tell you what. About three, four, five miles from here's a good spot, the Big Porcupine Travel Plaza. Got showers, motel rooms, an all-night-you-can-eat place. We could stop there, get you a place to sleep. Maybe in the morning you'll start to remembering things. I figure you just need to sleep it off. You're on drugs or something, ain't you?"

  "Maybe," Raven said.

  He laughed. "It's okay by me. I don't do drugs, myself. Just pills and booze. Well, you think about what you want to do."

  He turned up the radio, where a woman sang a slow, gentle song that Raven gradually recognized. Someone--her mother?--had once played it on the piano. It was an old song called "The Rose."

  "Uh, sorry." Jebbie blushed pink and spun the radio knob. "I, uh, usually find a good honky-tonk or country gold station. Don't know how my radio ended up on that soft-rock junk, or whatever that was. Yeah, here we go." He found a song with a steel guitar and a man singing about his wife leaving him for his boss.

  Raven looked at herself in the rain-streaked side mirror. She was about twenty years old, maybe nineteen. That felt right. Her black hair was pulled into a short ponytail with a rubber band. She wore all black: boots, fatigues, blouse, backpack, jacket. The knee-length jacket was made of a stretchy artificial material with a texture like a crocodile's back. She felt a web of metallic fibers between the layers of leathery fabric. That's armor, she realized, and she wondered why she might need armor. Her only jewelry was on her left wrist, a thin silver bracelet with a large moonstone.

  She tried to reach back in time with her mind. She'd been stumbling along the highway. The moment before that: what? It was a solid blank slate, as though a giant magnet had wiped her brain clean. Perhaps the trucker was right, and she'd been struck by lightning.

  Raven, she reminded herself. I know my name.

  She didn't know much beyond that. She closed her eyes and concentrated, and she managed to summon a few confused shadows--screaming, gunfire, a million stars exploding inside her brain, the feeling of being turned inside out. It didn't make any sense, and then it was gone.

  "So." Jebbie cleared his throat. "That place is coming up, if you want a room for the night. How'd you like that idea? I could use some rest, myself. Been driving since asscrack of dawn o' clock."

  Raven thought it over, wondering what the man's intentions were.

  "I mean, uh, we'd get two rooms, of course," he said. "If we can. You got any money?"

  "I'm not sure." Raven unzipped her backpack just enough to peek inside.

  The first thing she saw gave her a quick jolt of fear that kicked up her pulse, but she tried not to show any reaction. She ignored it for now.

  In a mesh pocket on the inside of the pack, she found a roll of green paper as big as her fist, all of them hundred-dollar bills. She didn't know how much a motel room might cost, but she estimated several hundred dollars for one night at a cheap place. She lifted out the spool of crisp, bank-fresh cash. "Do you think this is enough?"

  "God damn, girl!" Jebbie choked. "Don't go whipping that out in front of people, or someone's gonna rob you. Hell, I'm half-tempted to do it myself." He smiled with nicotine-stained teeth. "Hey, I'm just yanking your paws, huh? But really, put one of them in your pocket, put the rest back for now. That's what I'd do."

  Raven took his advice, pocketing just one bill, though that didn't seem like much money.

  "You really are into drugs, ain't you? Wandering the highway at night, don't know where you're going, got a big barrel of cash." He cast a suspicious look at her backpack. "You ain't got no drugs in there now, do you? I can't afford to get arrested again."

  Raven checked again. The backpack held a few odd objects and some tightly rolled clothing, but nothing like drugs, no powders or crystals.

  "No drugs, just clothes." She zipped it up.

  "Did you steal that money? Is somebody chasing after you?"

  "No," Raven said. "I don't think so."

  "You ain't telling me much."

  "I just don't know. My memory is messed up, honestly. Because of that lightning, probably."

  "Oh, yeah, that was a strange piece of lightning, landing right in the road like that."

  Raven wanted very much to change the subject away from herself. She looked over the odd objects glued to Jebbie's dashboard, the watch face, the bobble-headed kangaroo, the black and white photograph of a woman in a 1920's bathing dress and cap. Another picture, very faded, showed a stern-looking old man on the porch of a general store, by a Coca-Cola sign.

  "Are these your family?" Raven asked.

  "Naw, just stuff I liked." He waved at the collection of junk. "Come from flea markets, mostly. Each one cost a quarter or less, just somebody else's memory that got throwed out. I ain't got much kin left, myself. Did get married once, but that didn't turn out."

  "I'm sorry."

  "Don't think I was made for it. I'm a man of the road." He nodded, as if confirming this to himself. "She was more into staying home and sleeping with the loser next door. Don't matter. You got folks?"

  "I'm not sure. That part of my memory's gone. I remember a girl, we must have been close..." Raven saw flashes of a girl at her side, with freckles and unevenly cut red hair. Raven and the girl were both about twelve years old, racing through a dark alley with dozens of other people, panic on everyone's faces. Behind them, a row of armored bulldozers lit up the night with a barrage of white-hot fire as they razed a crowded slum in one city or another, maybe Seattle, maybe Detroit, indifferent to the screaming residents.

  Later, Raven and the other girl sparred against each other. They were fifteen or sixteen and lived in an old factory loft that had been overrun with teenage squatters. Life was fighting, so everyone had to practice if they wanted to survive.

  Even later, she and the girl wore gas masks and black-scaled armored jackets. They were part of a team raiding a heavily guarded concrete facility in the desert. The girl unleashed a hail of plastique cartridges from a rapid-fire rifle, decimating the front of the building. Raven shivered.

  "Hey, you still there?" Jebbie asked.

  "Sorry. I remembe
r growing up in rough places, the big slum-sprawls outside the cities. We were always in danger."

  "What cities?"

  "I think Detroit was one, for a while."

  "Oh, yeah, Detroit, that's pretty bad." He nodded as though he understood her better now. "That where you're headed?"

  "It might be," she said, doubting it was true.

  "Welp, looks to me like you got more than enough cash for a night at the Big Porcupine Inn. Dinner, too. You hungry?"

  "Yes," Raven said. It was a lie--her stomach was full of her own twitching nerves. Eating might be good for her, though, and make her feel a little more sane.

  They pulled off at an exit ramp. From signs, she had determined they were traveling north on Interstate 65 toward Louisville, Kentucky.

  Jebbie drove into a brightly lit clump of concrete buildings, identified by a tall sign as Big Porcupine Travel Plaza, where he parked alongside a row of other rigs. Another parking area hosted RV's under its glowing sodium lights.

  "They got everything here," Jebbie said. "Food, fuel, place you can send mail, everything. There's the motel." He nodded at a dingy, two-story cinderblock structure all the way across the parking lot, ringed by scrubby weeds. "You feel like eating? Or more like sleeping?"

  "Both," Raven said, and she relaxed, knowing she would have a safe place to sort things out.

  Outside, she passed a small vending machine that sold preprinted daily newspapers, which somehow struck her as quaint. From a glance at the newspaper inside, the Courier-Journal, she learned it was October 2013. That didn't feel right at all. She wondered how much time she'd lost, and how long she'd been suffering this amnesia.

  Jebbie led her into the Porcupine Cafe, which featured a greasy buffet table surrounded by grimy booths. Though it was approaching midnight, several truckers occupied booths, most of them eating alone.

  The food was a sensory overload--chicken floating in blobs of lard, fried steak in gravy, collards, turnips, cut fruit, puffy rolls of bread. Her first instinct was to eat as much as she could cram into her stomach, then take all she could carry for later.