Nemesis (Crimson Rage)
Page 3
“Who’s ‘they’?” asked Scott.
“No fucking clue. I had my own middle man. Whoever ‘they’ are, they were at the end of a chain so far from the source, nothing can be traced back to them, complete deniability.”
“So... you’re prepared to just let me kill you. Not put up any fight?”
“I put my whole life into my work. As such, my life means nothing to anybody. Nobody’s going to miss me when I’m gone. I’ve had nothing else outside of this job except wait for my time to run out.” Gideon finished the can and threw it onto the floor. “Well, come on then. Get it over with.”
Scott hesitated. He had imagined this moment playing out in so many different ways over the years, but never like this. He had expected a fight, or at least some resistance. He had wanted to see Gideon fight, hopefully beg, wanting to instill in the man the same sense of loss he had experienced day-in, day-out for ten years. But the fact that Gideon was willing to surrender his life so easily... it would take any sense of satisfaction out of the act.
Outside the sky had changed, now taking the color of a bloodshot red. Gideon twisted round on his sofa to get a better look. “Whatcha looking at?”
Scott didn’t answer, unsure what to make of it. A storm? An eclipse? A hallucination? Each possibility seemed more ridiculous than the last.
He moved towards the window to get a better look outside, trying to get a sense of how the people outside were reacting to the spectacle.
That’s when he heard the tiniest crack.
Scott looked around, trying to pinpoint the source. And that’s when he saw it, spreading across the window so fast, he barely had enough time to duck...
...as the window shattered, letting in a swarm of flying particles. He managed to duck in time, avoiding them. But Gideon, who had stood up, received a face full of grains, which drowned out the screams that followed. The grain storm continued its assault, colliding with the box of explosives lying open with such force that it knocked the top box to the ground. The sight of the explosives tumbling onto the floor was all the excuse Scott needed to throw himself to the other side of the room.
The explosion ripped through the apartment and Scott's ears rang with a thousand loud bells and with the sensory overload, Scott passed out.
WHEN SCOTT CAME TO, he had no idea how much time had passed. Seconds. Hours. There were gaps in his memory, providing him with a brief moment of peace before the traumatic event came flooding back.
There were no signs of grain particles swarming through the air, but there was a faint cloud of dust hanging in the centre of the room.
The explosion had blown a hole in the floor and as Scott looked down, he could see the apartment beneath Gideon’s.
Gideon was lying on his back on the floor. It was clear that he was dead. At least he hoped he was dead. The flesh all over Gideon’s face and torso was punctured and burned.
A small part of Scott found himself feeling thankful that even though he hadn’t been able to do the deed himself, Gideon had gone slowly and painfully.
That thought instantly turned to ash in his mind as he realized that everyone in Los Angeles could be experiencing the same phenomenon.
...including Andrea and Milo...
Needing to know what was happening outside, Scott quickly, but carefully made his way around the hole, he picked up one of the rifles, checked that it was loaded and made his way out of the apartment.
The building seemed a lot less stable since the onslaught of sand. And as Scott gingerly made his way down the steps, he constantly felt he was on the verge of having a step collapse underneath him.
Thankfully, that didn’t happen, and he was able to make it to the ground floor in one piece. Gripping the rifle, Scott ventured out into the dune-like wilderness.
CHAPTER 7
Los Angeles had been completely transformed.
Scott couldn’t say for certain whether it had been a storm, but in lieu of any other logical explanation, the term storm would have to do.
The entire city now resembled some hellish beach. Mountains of reddish sand piled high in the streets. As Scott moved cautiously down the road, he could see human limbs and heads sticking out from the gargantuan piles.
In reality he wasn’t exactly sure what protection the rife could offer him, especially in a storm. But he felt like he needed some kind of weapon.
He found himself pointing the weapon at the sandpiles until a more appropriate target presented itself.
As Scott slowly walked down the street, he was terrified by the thought of what could have happened to Andrea and Milo. Had they been caught up in the storm? Suffered the same fate as Gideon? Or maybe there was a chance they had gotten to safety. Not knowing was killing him. Andrea’s final words at her one and only prison visit suddenly came back to him. This may have been the last conversation he had ever had with the love of his life and he may never get a chance to change that.
Given that Andrea’s house was on the other side of the city, Scott had a long walk ahead of him.
As he walked, something clasped around his ankle. A hand emerging from one of the sandpiles.
All of a sudden, the moving sand pile felt like an infection he was petrified of catching. He yanked himself free and headed to what had been a glass door before the glass had been smashed to pieces. Stepping over the shards, he cautiously made his way through a convenience store, taking note that most of the food items had been taken. Clearly there had been a mass panic for people to loot. Scott made a mental note to search the area for food and water, wondering how much he should stock up on.
Scott made his way to the rooftop of the building. Despite his fear of heights, he felt much safer on the roof than he did on the ground. He set the rifle up and looked down.
To his surprise, there were three people on the ground, three survivors. A spark of gratitude bloomed in him that somebody else had made it through this hell. He squinted, trying to get a better look at the people on the ground, hoping against hope that Andrea and Milo might be among them.
There were two women and a man. The man and one of the women didn’t look familiar.
But the other woman...
Scott tried to get a better look at her. Her hand was covering part of her face. But there was something about her...
...it couldn’t be...
...but it was. He’d had ten years to embed the memory of his arrest in his brain, more specifically the face of the officer who had shot him in the stomach and taken him into custody.
A hot surge of hatred rose up within him, all the resentment that had been building for ten years threatening to come to the surface. Still seething from his missed opportunity to exact payback on Gideon, Scott was being given a second chance. One he was NOT going to pass up.
He fired.
But in his blinding fury, he had forgotten that he had no firearms training. It was very evident sharpshooting was a skill he was severely lacking in as the bullets cracked against the building next to the survivors. The next round of bullets penetrated the sandpiles, another, one of the corpses on the ground.
Scott tried to force himself to focus on the target. Block out the blinding rage.
This worked as his next shot hit the officer in her shoulder, causing her to double over in pain.
He prepared to fire again, this time going in for the kill...
...but there was only a click from the empty chamber.
Scott watched impotently as the trio disappeared out of range and eventually, out of view.
“FUCK!” Scott screamed to himself. Every time he was going to get even with the world, he missed his opening. He sat on the rooftop for five minutes, dwelling on his missed opportunities.
But once saner thoughts re-emerged, Scott considered that opening fire on the cop probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do. But he still felt the need to let off steam. Just the sight of the uniform was enough to make his blood boil. He waited on the rooftop for another five minutes, looking for
any further signs of life attracted by the shots and then he made his way back to the apartment.
He hadn’t made up his mind yet where he would go or what he would do.
One thing was already clear; he would be keeping a very close eye on the three outside.
He had been curious as to what would happen when he shot the corpse. And now, he noticed something peculiar happening with one of the bodies he had hit and watched with a mix of apprehension and fascination.
It was starting to crumble into itself, the chest cavity fully exposed. Where there should have been bone, blood and organs... there was only sand.
BY THE TIME HE ARRIVED back at the apartment, Gideon’s body had already begun the process of decomposing, sand seeping from where there should have been blood. Disgust, overpowering Scott’s fascination, he kicked the body through the hole in the floor where it landed in the room below, sand splattering all over the tiles.
He was careful not to touch the sand still lying on the ground, worrying about the effect it might have on him.
Part of Scott hoped that this was a nightmare from which he would wake up. Or perhaps he had already died, and this was hell. He had no idea what to believe anymore. No way of knowing how to make sense of the world around him.
But he would have to face it again. As much as he would like to stay here where it was safe, leaving was the only chance he had of seeing Andrea and Milo again.
He would have to be careful about how he went about it. The last time he tried navigating an unfamiliar world, he had lost everything. He would not make the same mistake twice. Trust was a burnt-out concept. Everyone around him was a potential enemy waiting to be put down.
Scott glanced over at the cache of weapons that had survived the blast. He would find a way to adapt to the storm, perhaps put his skills as an engineer to use for the first time in ten years.
Finally, he looked down at the pile of sand that had once been the man who had turned his whole life upside down. Gideon may not have been his real name, but it was the name that had stayed with Scott every day of his incarceration and had driven him to exact retribution.
It would now be the name that anyone who got in the way of finding his family would come to fear.
THE END
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Other books by Sam Fires
MAYHEM & MADNESS
Bad Boys Make Broken Men (The Prequel) - free story
Book 1 Burning Rains
Book 2 Holy Hell
Book 3 Girl in the Sewer
Book 4 We, The President
SCAVENGERS
Book 1 Dog Meat
Book 2 Shark Tactics
Book 3 Sharks’ Fury
About the author
Sam Fires is a poet, writer and best-selling author of his debut novel ‘Dog Meat’, the first gripping book in the trilogy series ‘Scavengers’.
When he isn’t exercising his imagination for ingenious ideas for his next book, Sam can usually be found in his local coffee shop, sipping his oat milk cortado and voraciously reading books, usually in the post-apocalyptic/dystopian genre but also psychological thrillers.
Being a published author was always Sam’s dream, and finally with his three-part series ‘Scavengers’, this has become a reality.
When he doesn’t have his head buried in a book, Sam loves cooking Indian food and enjoys driving his beautiful, bashed-up classic Citroen and of course spending too much time on his computer.
If you want to contact Sam please do so, he would love to hear from you! hello@samjfires.com
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