The Price of Freedom

by Chris Kennedy

  He went for his knife, and I charged forward, hitting his desk with all I had. The desk was a beast—easily a couple hundred pounds—but I drove it toward the wall. He saw it coming as he whipped out his knife, tensed, and jumped onto the desk. The desk slammed into the wall, and I pulled up and hit him in the knees with everything I had before he could catch his balance. His legs went out the window behind him.

  Chamberlain looked shocked as he tried to catch himself but couldn’t. He leaned forward to stab me as his legs went out from under him. I twitched, trying to dodge, but I was committed to the maneuver and took the knife in the right clavicle. My shoulder detonated in a ball of fire. The only thing I had going for me was that he was off balance and couldn’t put all of his power into the strike.

  He released the knife to try to catch himself and got hold of the edge of the desk with one hand. I flipped it off with my left hand, and gravity pulled him out the window as his fingers scrambled for purchase. He smiled as he was pulled out the window—probably realizing he could survive the fall or catch himself on the way down, and he stopped trying to grab the desk and let his hands slide across it.

  Not wanting to let him get away, I grabbed the back of his wrists as his hands slid down the desk. My shoulder exploded in pain with the effort of holding his weight. He struggled to get away, but I had a good grip on him, and he couldn’t use his fingers to get at me. His legs hit the wall below him, and he tried to get purchase to push himself away and pull me out with him, but I bent at the waist and used the desk to keep me in the office. Slowly, with my arm feeling like it was going to rip out of the socket, I moved his wrists over to two pieces of glass which were still in the frame and used his weight to drag his wrists across them, slashing them. I pulled back with all my might—burning all the boost I had in the effort—to bring him back in slightly, so I could run the glass lengthwise down his arm as I slashed it.

  He struggled harder against me as he realized what I was doing, but it was too late. I had him, and I was not letting go. The first artery severed in a spray of bright red, and I let him drop a little, allowing it to slit open the artery lengthwise as well. The second opened a fraction of a second later, coating my face and the desk.

  The spray of blood made it harder to hold onto his wrists, but I knew this was my one chance. Boosted, the seconds passed with glacial slowness, but I closed my eyes, thinking of the Farmer girl. After a small eternity, he stopped struggling. I held on a little longer, until I couldn’t anymore, then I let him fall. He bounced off the side of the building once, his arms and legs splayed outward uncontrolled, then he hit the ground.

  I staggered over to one of my pistols, reloaded it one-handed, then leaned out the window and fired the entire magazine into him. At least two were headshots, so I didn’t think he’d be getting back up again. The two guards from the north doors came running as the gunshots sounded, but a shot in their direction caused them to scamper away.

  Using my legs and one arm, I pulled the desk away from the wall, retrieved the chair, and took a seat. Removing the knife hurt more than any wound I’d ever had, but I ripped it out like you’d pull off a bandage. After stopping the blood coming out of my shoulder by applying pressure while the nanobots sealed the wound, I got up and unlocked the office door.

  “Come in!” I yelled.

  The door opened a crack, then two men and the receptionist entered the room and found me behind the desk with my feet up on it. They looked at me, eyes and mouths wide.

  I nodded at them with a smile. “Welcome,” I said. “As you may have noticed, there’s a new sheriff in town.”

  The man who had been at the receptionist’s desk when I went past was the first to recover. “What can we do to assist you, sir?” he asked.

  It was good to be king in this Fallen World.

  * * * * *

  Chapter Fifty-One

  “So, what are you going to do, Boss?” Jonny, my new right-hand man, asked. He had been the leader of the Blues before Chamberlain displaced him, but was as happy to be my Number Two as he was to be Chamberlain’s. Probably more so.

  I blew a cloud of cigar smoke and smiled, enjoying the feeling of being in charge. Although there weren’t many cigars remaining, I knew people who had access to Cuba, and I figured I could talk them into opening up trade there. That, or I would capture a ship and do it myself. Cutting out the middlemen, literally, had been one of the operational strategies that had facilitated Teledyne’s rise to prominence.

  “Ultimately, I’m going to kill all of the Clowns in Philadelphia,” I said after a moment of thought, “and then I’m going to kill the people who decided that making them was a good idea.” You could say a lot of things about me—and people had, all my life—but I wasn’t a quitter. I had completed every single mission I’d ever been sent on, except for this one, and I was going to complete it, too. I had given my word to the Chairman. Even though he no longer existed, I had sworn I would kill them all, and I intended to do so. It would get the geas out of my head and allow me to pursue my other plans. Since taking over for Chamberlain, I had begun to think bigger. Not only about how to kill the Clowns, but also about what I wanted to do once that mission was complete.

  As far as killing the Clowns went, when I was growing up, they used to say that it took a village to raise a child. It would also take a village—and perhaps a small town—to kill all those Clowns. In fact, I knew I needed an army to do so. Which meant I needed to grow the army, train it, feed it, and get it to Philadelphia. All of those were tall tasks…but I had been trained in nation building during one of my early insurrection missions. I had led the guerilla forces that had ultimately taken the capital of a small, third-world country, then I’d turned them into a legitimate army which could put down the next guerilla force that wanted to displace mine.

  It would take time, but it was possible. I had some ideas on ways I could shorten the process, but even if they didn’t come to fruition, it would still be possible to kill the Clowns. And all of them needed to die—if they didn’t, our world would be right back where it was before the Fall, only with psychopaths at the controls. Reflecting on some of the missions I’d been sent on and some of the things Obsidian and JalCom had done, I guess I really meant, “worse psychopaths.”

  And after that was done? King of New Orleans? President? No, not president; that sounded too much like something you had to run for, and I wasn’t doing any running; I was going to install myself as the ruler. On second thought, maybe not New Orleans. The city had been nuked, and the suburbs weren’t self-supporting. And the whole area was a shitpot. Bayou La Batre, though…or Clanton, Alabama…both of those appeared to have everything needed to start a thriving civilization with me in charge. While I still had the army, we could roll right into one or the other of them and install me as the ruler. There might be a period of…adjustment, but I had no doubt they’d come to see it my way. I wasn’t afraid to rule through fear—look how well it had been working for the Clowns. In a world that was short of law, fear and power were the tools that moved society. I wasn’t afraid to use either of them.

  Maybe “Emperor” was best, as I fully intended to bring the country together again. It had been a long time since the United States had existed as a country; it was time to get back to that. Maybe the United States of Joe Rinardi? I kind of liked that. Sure, that was a long way in the future, but if you couldn’t dream big, you couldn’t live big, and I intended to live as big as I could. There weren’t many other Agents and Specialists in the world, and there would be fewer still when I was done. Like maybe a total of one—me.

  There were many things that needed to be done to get there, of course, but everything was possible. Start small, build an army, wipe out the Clowns, then rule benevolently. After the adjustment period, of course.

  I was also going to end up with the imprinter that housed the Clown imprint after we wiped them out, just to keep it safe. And besides, you never knew when you’d need someone trained as
an assassin in this Fallen World.

  * * * * *

  Epilogue

  The men shifted the last piece of wallboard, revealing a section of wall that had come apart. It had taken years to find the building, then excavate this portion of it by hand, but—as I had hoped—when the building had burned, an outer section had been the first to go, and when it collapsed, it had fallen to the side, largely protecting this room and preventing the fire from reaching it. Say what you want about Obsidian; they knew how to build protected facilities.

  “What’s that?” asked the group’s foreman. “How did that happen? Did the wall break?”

  I shook my head. “False wall.”

  He looked at me, his eyebrows knitting.

  “It was a secret door.” It had taken me a while to figure it out, but I finally found someone who had been there for the emergence of “Joshua Collins,” or whatever his name really was—there was no telling what was real with an Agent. Finally, though, I’d found a member of the Blues who remembered a man who had killed of a whole squad of the Blues, including Jonny’s brother. Obsidian used to like to infiltrate other companies’ zones of interest. Once they got someone planted, they would build a secret facility and use it as a base of operations in the other company’s zone. I moved forward and pulled on the secret door. When it didn’t want to open, I used all my strength and ripped it open. I heard an intake of breath from the foreman; I impressed myself a little bit, too.

  The ceiling had partially collapsed in the room beyond, and I got down to look through the doorway. The room on the other side was empty, except for a structure that looked like a coffin or, maybe, a tanning bed. A lot of dust and debris had fallen on it, crushing some of the equipment it was attached to, but the assembly seemed largely undamaged. I smiled. Although I’d never seen one before, I’d seen the intel reports.

  “That’s what this is all about?” the man asked, getting down on his knees next to me.

  “Yes,” I said in a voice full of anticipation. “It is. Carefully get the rest of the stuff off it so we can move it. If it gets damaged, you will personally answer to me.”

  The man flinched away from me at the tone of my voice. He may not have known me, but he did know about Specialists. “Yes sir,” he said in a meek tone I’m sure none of his people had ever heard from him before. “Can I ask what that is?”

  “Sure you can,” I replied. “It’s what’s going to help me make an army, so I can take on the Clowns in Philadelphia and complete my final mission. After that, I will finally be free to live my life however I want. That device? It’s an Obsidian imprinter.”

  # # # # #

  About Chris Kennedy

  A Webster Award winner and Dragon Award finalist, Chris Kennedy is a Science Fiction/Fantasy/Young Adult author, speaker, and small-press publisher who has written over 20 books and published more than 50 others. Chris’ stories include the “Occupied Seattle” military fiction duology, “The Theogony” and “Codex Regius” science fiction trilogies, stories in the “Four Horsemen” and “In Revolution Born” universes and the “War for Dominance” fantasy trilogy. Get his free book, “Shattered Crucible,” at his website, https://chriskennedypublishing.com.

  Called “fantastic” and “a great speaker,” he has coached hundreds of beginning authors and budding novelists on how to self-publish their stories at a variety of conferences, conventions and writing guild presentations. He is the author of the award-winning #1 bestseller, “Self-Publishing for Profit: How to Get Your Book Out of Your Head and Into the Stores,” as well as the leadership training book, “Leadership from the Darkside.”

  Chris lives in Virginia Beach, Virginia, with his wife, and is the holder of a doctorate in educational leadership and master’s degrees in both business and public administration. Follow Chris on Facebook at https://facebook.com/chriskennedypublishing.biz.

  * * * * *

  Connect with Chris Kennedy

  Website: http://chriskennedypublishing.com/

  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chriskennedypublishing.biz

  Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/Chris-Kennedy/e/B00E4MIJA8/

  Instagram: chris.kennedy12

  * * * * *

  The following is an

  Excerpt from Book One of The Fallen World:

  This Fallen World

  ___________________

  Christopher Woods

  Available Now from Blood Moon Press

  eBook, Paperback, and Audio

  Excerpt from “This Fallen World:”

  He placed a coin in front of me. I looked at it in surprise. It was a solid gold coin from the Old World. Probably worth ten thousand scripts now.

  “This is a down payment,” Hale said. “You find her, you get another. Return her to me unharmed, you get three.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Thank you, Agent,” he said softly.

  I nodded.

  He passed me a folder, and I opened it to see a picture of a pretty young red-haired woman. She appeared to be late teens or early twenties and that could be bad. This fallen world is hard on young beautiful people.

  Warlords could swoop in with their troops and steal people at will. They were Warlords because the held the weapons or tech that gave them control over those around them.

  There had been incidents for years. I had a great disdain for the term, Warlord. They were the ones who had found some advantage and abused it, for the most part.

  There were a few good men, such as Wilderman, who held the reigns of fourteen city blocks. He provided protection to those who lived in his domain. He taxed his people but he also provided true protection.

  Miles to the East, there was Joanna Kathrop. She held sixteen blocks and ruled with an iron fist. She had found a cache of weapons and provisions in her area several decades back. Her cadre of loyal soldiers backed her and she established her rule of that area.

  There were others, both good and bad. The majority of them were bad. They ran single and double blocks. The Warlord that controlled the area where the Strike Zone was located wasn’t the worst, but he was far from the best.

  I turned the page and found the sector that Hale and his daughter had lived.

  “You were under Yamato?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said, “he took down the Bishop a decade ago.”

  “Yamato’s always been fair,” I said. “Did you take this to him?”

  “He couldn’t help me,” he said. “She was traveling across the city.”

  “What the hell was she doin’ travelin’?” I asked. “Was she in a caravan?”

  The Caravans were the only semi-safe way to travel the city. You paid for your ticket, and the Caravans paid their tax to run through the Zones.

  “She was going to the new College, set up by Kathrop, in a small Caravan run by a man named Drekk. He claims she never showed up for the last leg of the trip.”

  “Drekk,” I spat the word out. “I’ve heard of Drekk. If you want to travel anywhere, you have to use the Accredited Caravans. You can’t use people like Drekk.”

  His face fell. “We didn’t know about this until it was too late. We aren’t rich people, Mister Kade.”

  I looked down at the coin still in my hand, and looked back to him with one eyebrow raised.

  “The life savings of both my family and the family of Seran Yoto, her fiancée.”

  “Poor would not be what I would call this, Hale,” I said. “There are people right in this room who won’t see this much wealth in ten lifetimes. You dwell inside the Scraper. You have running water and electricity. Don’t ever try to pass yourself off as the poor. It’s insulting.”

  He nodded.

  “Who set up the Caravan?”

  “I set it up through a man in the Scraper. His name is Denton. He owns a supply store on the bottom floor.”

  “Ok,” I said. “That’s where I’ll need to start. I’ll be there first thing in the morning.”

  “B
ut the Caravans don’t run at night.”

  “Some people, it’s safer to leave alone, Hale. When you get back to the Scraper, tomorrow, I’ll have some answers for you.”

  “How will you cross three zones tonight?”

  “I’ll walk, Hale,” I said. “Corporate Agents can take care of themselves.”

  “You haven’t been an Agent for twenty years.”

  “You’re right, there.” I said, “I’m something else, now. I’ll see you tomorrow night at your Scraper.”

  I stood and walked away from the booth. Jared was beside the bar, talking to several suits.

  “Yo, Jared,” I said. “I’m on a job for a few days. Ya can fill the table if ya need to.”

  “Be careful, Matt,” he said. “Last time Jenny took a week to get you patched up.”

  “I’ll try, buddy.”

  I had a feeling about this one. Things looked bad for Maddy Hale. Drekk wasn’t known to be trustworthy.

  Life can be dangerous in this Fallen World.

  * * * * *

  Get “This Fallen World” now at: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07KHLG54J.

  Find out more about Christopher Woods and “This Fallen World” at:

  https://chriskennedypublishing.com/imprints-authors/christopher-woods/.

  * * * * *

  The following is an

  Excerpt from Book One of The Devil’s Gunman: