by T. K. Malone
Teah lay there, looking up at the stars, wondering how she was alive. Could the bear follow that? She began to laugh, like a mad woman. Could they throw anymore at her? What else could they do? Teah stared up at the stars, pleading with them, beseeching them, to give her their worst. Slapping the tarmac, she sat up, wincing as her back spasmed. Feeling around, she pushed in with her thumb, bruised, that was all. Looking around, she glimpsed the last part of the slope she’d just cascaded down, her trail like silver slime in the moonlight.
Pushing herself up, she shook out her fatigues. Taking inventory, she pulled her smokes out and lit one, patted the taser in her trouser pocket. She stiffened, her hand shooting to her tunic’s other pocket; the bottle and syringe were gone. Looking behind her once more, she knew it was futile, and so she trudged away, cursing everything she could think of.
The fall had carried her a good way down the slope. Teah decided to stick to the road for a while. By early morning, she’d made the river that carved through the valley. Now much higher, it was narrow, fast, angry. The rocks that hemmed it in glistened with its spray; grays, orange and speckled silver sparkling about, making the river look like a seam of precious ore running through the lush green forest.
Teah sat by the water, the sun rising directly behind her, its rays flowing through the split in the redwoods. Clouds, though, were gathering in front of her, over the faraway ocean, and she knew storms would be her traveling companions for another day. She also knew she was in deep, deep trouble. She’d lost her guns, her tent, and her medicine. She had no food, nor means of carrying any water.
“Truly buggered,” she said. “Truly, truly buggered,” and she had no way out. The army camp was halfway down the valley, the prepper’s camp, over the opposite ridge. One, at least, had a possible future; the other would see her returned to The Black City, though she’d likely make neither.
“Smokes ‘n a taser,” she scoffed at her words.
Kneeling over the rocks, she cupped the icy water, drinking her fill, and then she skipped from rock to rock until she found a place to cross the river. The rain started to fall an hour later.
There was no road on this side of the valley, and if a trail led up to the ridge, she hadn’t found it yet. The only way she knew she was even climbing in the right direction was the trees; it was like they flowed down from it, a mere break between sheer, gray cliffs. She stumbled across a stream after a few hours, and chose that as her guide. A few hours later, the rain was lashing down, her path treacherous, and her progress painfully slow, and yet she pressed on, out of options.
Come the afternoon, she began to feel dizzy, her mouth feeling strange, dry but yet she’d drank when she wanted. She began to miss her handholds, her feet slipping more often than not. Still, she climbed. Teah began to shiver uncontrollably; her fingers had a mind of their own. In brief moments of clarity, she understood she was suffering some form of withdrawal from the drugs. She’d seen carnies on the shine. She knew the signs. Night fell, and it was soon futile carrying on. Crawling away from the stream, she nestled into the crook of a redwood’s roots and laid there, staring at nothing, shivering, muttering the words “Sticks don’t break”, over and over. Come morning, she started to crawl upward again.
Thirst, an insatiable thirst ran through her body, the stream water seemingly unable to quench it. Rocks drew in and out of focus as if they were pulsing. At some stage, the rain stopped, but the sun never broke through the cloud. Her shivering now constant, her sweat mingling with the cold damp of her fatigues, and then her hands made to grab a jagged rock, but found a smooth rounded step, and she pulled herself closer, and she saw a path. She laid on it and stared at the bustling clouds. Teah shut her eyes, convinced this was as good as it was going to get.
Whether she’d fallen asleep or not, Teah didn’t know, but fat blobs of rain soon roused her from her respite. Without the sun, she had no idea if it was morning or dusk. Rolling onto her stomach, she saw that the path she was on cut up the mountain like a tossed rope.
“Sticks don’t…” but she never finished, just pushed herself up and began staggering along it.
It was no more than a few feet wide, an endless fall on one side, rocks and scree and twisted roots on the other. A stumble, a trip, and she knew it was her end.
“Baby,” she muttered, and she grabbed a root to steady herself.
Wind buffeted her, rain lashed her, but she staggered on, and by the end of the day, she ran out of path, just a flat ridge in front of her, sharp rocks either side, like her own private alleyway. Teah slumped to the stony ground, pulling out her smokes, wondering when they’d become sodden and throwing them away. Her shivering was uncontrollable now, but the rocks gave her some measure of shelter from the rain, the wind though, whistling through them like they were old men’s teeth.
She woke in the dark, but didn’t dare move, and hankered for the morning. Though she shivered, it was mostly because of the biting wind. Pulling her knees close, she hugged her shins and tucked her chin into them and waited for the sun to come.
Chapter Twelve
Every bone, every muscle and every sinew ached. Hunger crawled through her like a rampant fungus. Thirst was her companion once more. But she managed the faintest of smiles as she looked down at the new valley; her valley, her new home.
It was broader that the one behind her, and bathed in the sun’s orange glow. To the west, she could see smoke rising up, a sure sign that folk lived up here. And the river, it looked magical as it flowed on its way, golden now, but not for long. The slopes were clad in deep green, dapples of lighter grassland dotted about. Teah gasped when she saw a road, a clearly traveled route, following the river, but vanishing some way down, only to reappear farther up. She reached out to steady herself, drunk through starvation, drunk through hope.
Teah took a breath, and began to walk down. Her legs were unsteady, her progress slow. The trail soon cut across the slope, taking her into another cleft in the rock. The path became steep, her boots slipping on the loose scree, her hands stretched out on either side to maintain her balance. She staggered, she stumbled, her dizziness returned, and her paranoia, and she clung to a rock for dear life, a dread feeling that she was going to fall, passing through her.
It took every ounce of her remaining courage to unpeel her arms from the rock. Vertigo had taken root in her, and just the sight of the valley below sent waves of nausea through her. She fell to her fours and crawled down. She stayed that way until she made the tree line, and the redwoods took her into their embrace.
Teah prayed for running water, and her prayers were answered when the rain came again. She punched the ground in frustration, pushed herself up and started her descent again. Wide-eyed, looking around, seeing things that just weren’t there, she visited the edge of madness, until she saw the deer.
At first, she just rubbed her eyes. It was around fifty yards away from her, head bent, chewing on something. The deer looked around at her, stared straight into her eyes, then back at whatever had consumed its interest before. She stood still at first, reaching into her pocket for her taser, thinking only of her empty belly.
She crept forward. The deer looked at her again. She edged forward a little more. The deer shook its head, snorting. Teah crouched and began stalking it. She made to move away, but only to follow the path, to close in on her prey. The deer shook its head again, and galloped a few more yards away, as though it was comfortable with their earlier distance. Teah closed the gap, jumping behind a trunk. She was breathing heavy, ready for the kill.
The dear bolted, crashing through the undergrowth. Teah followed, bounding down the slope, desperate to keep up. She slipped and slid, but the slope was much gentler here. Every now and then, she caught a glimpse of it, enough to spur her on. And then it vanished, as though it had never existed, and Teah was left in a small clearing, on the mountainside, her hands on her knees, gasping for air. She sat and started laughing again, looking up at the clouds, drinking in their
rain. She sat there waiting to die.
The clouds darkened, the rain coming down in angular sheets. Teah stared at the clearing’s edge, and sat bolt upright when she thought she spied the deer again. Jumping up, she loped toward it, but saw it turn and bolt once more. Without care, she broke into a run, the pursuit of her prey the only thing that mattered now. She crashed over rocks, bounced from one trunk to the next, taser in hand.
She closed, the deer now stationary, seeming to hesitate, as though it were stuck between two evils. She closed, pressed the taser, saw it burst toward the animal. A shot rang out, the deer’s head snapping toward her, blood pluming crimson, and it fell.
A surge of joy burst through her, but it vanished in an instant. Over the corpse, a man was lowering his rifle, staring at her. He had one of those cowboy hats on, from Connor’s movies. She suddenly remembered Connor’s face. The man started to stride toward the carcass, her carcass. His face in the shadow of his hat, as dark as midnight. She hurdled the fallen deer and blocked his way, but he just kept coming.
Her instincts took over, the fight inevitable. She lunged forward, butting him in the chest, but he just rolled her around and tossed her on. Teah crashed to the ground, head over heels, but sprung up, ready. This time the man lurched. She could see the white of his grin. Teah struck him fair and square, right to the jaw, and followed it with another, straight under his ribs.
Surprise registered in his eyes, but only for an instant. He swung his rifle, butt first, and swept her legs away. Teah thudded to the ground, then rolled again. She felt gravel under her, smelled diesel, and knew she was on the road. Planting her arm, she threw a kick at him just as he made the roadside, thrusting her boots firmly in his stomach. He staggered backward, allowing her to stand.
They faced off for a moment, circling each other. Teah saw his cart, saw another man dragging her deer out of the forest. She looked back at the man in the hat. He was sizing her up, a new respect showing through his cautious steps. Neither spoke, the time for words hadn’t come. He twirled his rifle around. Neat trick, she thought.
He lunged while she watched, but she ducked out of the way. The back of his legs came open, so she dropped to her hands and swept her boots around. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the gun rise in the air, and then fall, crashing down on her outstretched arm, snapping it clean in two. Teah collapsed on the ground, her scream dying in her throat. She grabbed her shattered arm, pulling it tight. She’d felt worse; she knew that.
She sat up, but he kicked her back down, his boot planted firmly on her face, grinding her cheek into the bones of the road. The man twirled the gun once more, then took aim, looking down, the rain spilling in washes from his hat’s upturned brim.
Teah grinned, against all odds; she’d almost made it.
“Sticks don’t break,” she whispered.
The End
Teah’s story continues in Free World Apocalypse - Fugitive is out October 1st Pre-order Fugitive or swipe on to read the first chapter.
Thank you for reading
I hope you enjoyed Prequel. Yes, it is a lead-in book. I wrote it on a whim to understand how Teah works and, to be honest, put her through the mill a bit, and yes, I know it ends in a cliffhanger, and I know that’s not cool, but hey, this is a series, and it does have an end. Still, I’ll risk it. If you fancy leaving a review, that’d be great. Here’s the link.
Okay, if you need to find out what happens, there’s a bonus chapter, just skip to it… It’ll be there all the while Fugitive is on pre-order.
Fugitive is the officially the first book in the series, it leads into the apocalypse and tells (mostly) Teah’s story after her fight on the trail. Grab it, read it, and let me know what you think.
After that is Free World Apocalypse - Citizen which leans slightly more on Zac for the story. When you’re done with Citizen, you have Captive (weighted toward Connor) and then we’re back full circle to Teah kicking butt in Genesis, the last book in this story arc.
Well, I’m off to start a whole new series. If you want to keep up to speed with what’s going on…
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Join the struggle,
T.K.
Fugitive - First Chapter
Strike time: minus 10 years
Location: Morton Valley, near the prepper’s compound
He wore a cattleman hat, the rain spilling in washes from its upturned rim as he tilted his head this way and that. The hat had probably been white once, long ago, but then the man might likely have smiled once, long ago when he’d been young. He wore a long brown trench coat, the type that had once been in fashion in the grid cities, but he didn’t look the type to have been born in one of those, more the kind who’d lived the hard life outside—the old life. The only other thing of note was one of his boots. It was worn, dirty, probably once brown too but now looking as black as the shadows around him, and painful, mightily painful. But then, it was grinding her cheek into the mud of the old trail. So far, he’d not said a word, just stared at her, as though her very presence up here in the mountains, surrounded by the magnificence of the sequoia trees, somehow confused him.
The whites of his eyes were wide against his dark skin, the press of his lips lost in the black and grey patchy stubble of a chin that rested on the stock of a double-barrelled shotgun, one that was aimed fair and square straight at her stomach. He held the gun steady as he appeared to consider his next move, after what she considered had been a fairly even fight.
“Not the belly,” she muttered.
“What, girl?”
“Not the belly.”
Inclining his head, a swill of water fell from his hat’s rim, drenching her face and washing away the mud as it splashed into her eyes and open mouth. She coughed the disgusting taste out; it had the twang of oil and diesel. It briefly got her to wondering who could have driven a truck this far up the trail, but she was soon back concentrating on the man.
He looked her up and down as she lay there, no sign of hurry about him. Dusk was still an hour away, yet it was already dark. Clouds were rolling in, jostling across the heavy grey, black and mauve sky, colours that matched her captor as he stared down at her, appearing to weigh in his mind whether she should live or die.
“Why?” he eventually growled, his accent hidden at first by the clip of the word. She didn’t answer, couldn’t catch her breath. It had been a fast fight, not the sort she’d trained for. It had been a battle with no rules, one that had erupted before words had finished being spoken. One that had ended before the scream of her pain had died in her throat. It had been her first fight out here, her first loss, and so maybe her last.
“Why not the belly?” he again growled.
The rain stung her eyes, but she couldn’t stop looking, fascinated by the face of the one who would finally kill her. What type of man was he? It had to be a man, of course; she couldn’t read them, found their emotions too strange to judge. She scrabbled her boots in the mud, a feeble attempt to wriggle away, like a landed fish seeking the safety of water. Her arms were useless: one trapped under her, the other already snapped in half by the butt of his gun. And she was going into shock; probably an easier way out.
“Quit struggling,” he said, his voice a slurred lilt where the words ran together, but the meaning remained plain. “Struggle and you die right now” was what he was saying, although being more economical with his words. Economical like the way he’d fought, his eyes in tune with his hands; a viper just waiting for that one opening, the one that would count.
It had taken only those small movements of her legs to remind her about her arm, fear being a masterful anaesthetic. But it was the gun to her belly that occupied her mind.
He grinned, revealing a mouthful of yellowing teeth. “Are you pregnant?” and he emphasised his question by pressing his boot harder against her face, her cheek sinking further into the mud, hard against the rocks beneath t
he trail’s surface.
“Yes,” she mumbled, taking a mouthful of mire for her trouble.
“Not the belly, then,” he said, and cocked his gun.
“Thank you,” and she closed her eyes.
“Are you gonna kill her or not?” another voice cried out, a whinier one this time but with the same drawl.
Her captor said nothing, just twisted his boot around against her face a bit more, the way a child persecutes a bug when it’s getting bored with it.
“No, I don’t suppose I will. Not this afternoon, anyways,” he finally said, and she felt the pressure lift from her face, but then she screamed as he pulled her up by her busted arm. “Nor tonight. Tonight ain’t no killing night, neither.”
“So we have to keep her?”
“No, Jake, we’ll fix her up and toss her out, ‘cause that’s what we do with thieves. She’s a gridder. They’ll come looking. ‘Course we’re gonna kill her. I just haven’t the mind to do it right now.”
He pushed her ahead of him, along the trail that shimmered silver in the rain, between the dark silhouettes of the powerful sequoias that hemmed them in, sharp against the sky. Jake was the shorter of the two men, not that that was saying a lot. Even the man who’d bettered her in their fight didn’t look much like a monster now, his anger having waned. He was wary, though, keeping his distance, waving his gun at her like a shepherd does his crook at a wayward sheep. She’d put up as good a fight as her protectiveness of her stomach had allowed, but that concern for the child she carried had been her undoing, had made her too slow. Her broken arm had been her forfeit, and she’d had to yield. But why hadn’t he killed her?
Further down the trail stood a mule and an open-backed cart. Jake jumped up onto its driver’s bench and the other man motioned her to climb on the back. Even in the gloom she could see a red tinge to the rain that spilled from it.
