Julia squeezed the trigger and fired.
The man doubled over, choking out a cry. His eyes went wide with horror and surprise, hands jumping up to grip to the blood now bleeding into his orange suit. Then, he fell to the ground face-first.
Julia scrambled to her feet away from the man on the ground. He was groaning and whimpering, cursing and spitting vitriol. Julia aimed the gun at him, hating the sounds of his pathetic whining. A part of her wanted to leave him here to bleed out… but she wasn’t cruel.
Julia aimed for his head and pulled the trigger.
Another explosive gunshot and silence shortly followed.
Julia whirled around, eyes searching for other convicts in the forest. When the coast was clear, Julia didn’t hesitate and rushed towards Susan.
“Susan,” said Julia, shaking her body gently. “Susan, wake up. Come on.”
“What happened?” said Susan after some time. She hissed as she sat up and touched her bruised head. Julia sagged with relief.
Susan’s eyes got wide when she saw the dead body of the man who’d attacked her and the other body of the convict who nearly killed Julia.
“Are you OK?” said Julia, not answering her question.
“My head… hurts… But, I’m fine. How about you? Did you just kill those two men?”
Julia nodded slowly, feeling her body begin to crash after the adrenaline began to fade.
“Come on we’ve got to get you back to the truck.”
Julia helped hoist Susan to her feet. Before long though, it was more Susan who was helping her to the truck. When they passed by the other body, Susan bent down and picked up Julia’s gun and tugged it into her pants.
“You really surprised me, kid,” Susan said when they approached the truck. “I didn’t expect you to take on one convict let alone two.”
“Oh well, you know,” Julia said. “You gotta do what you gotta do.”
Susan smiled at her, opening her mouth to say something when a sharp whistle took their attention. They both looked up and spotted a group of people appear from another pickup truck parked a few yards away.
“Susan?” A man from the head of the group shouted. “Susan Bryers is that you?”
“Brig?” Susan said, almost incredulous. “Brig Davies? You son-of-a-bitch, what are you doing out here?”
“I could ask you the same question.”
Julia glanced between the two, curious as to Susan’s relieved expression. Her energy kept falling though. Julia suddenly sagged in Susan’s hold.
“Whoa there,” Susan said. “Brig, you wanna help me out?”
Julia felt hands grab around her, hoisting her gently and helping move her into Susan’s pick up.
“Who’s the kid, Sue?”
“The kid saved my life.”
Julia groaned when someone jostled her belly too roughly. The convict’s punch might’ve broken something.
“She took down two convicts on her own.”
“No shit.”
“She’s a good kid, Brig. I wanna bring her with us.”
Julia heard footsteps just as she was beginning to fade. Someone blocked out the sunlight from over her eyes and when she opened them, she saw a man staring down at her with a warm grin.
“I hear you saved my best friend’s life, miss. That’s more than enough to have you join our good graces.”
“Join?” Julia asked, feeling herself begin to fall asleep.
“You bet. We’re the Brigadiers’ Squad. We’re a group of preppers and we’re on our way to find out what the hell happened to this area. Sound good to you?”
Preppers? Julia thought of her parents there and smiled. The worst was over.
“Yeah… sounds great to me.”
An Additional Gift From the Author
I hope you are enjoying Crash. The complete book will be released very soon. In the meantime, why not check out my other series Blood Memory. As a special gift I’m giving you an exclusive behind-the-scenes peek of its opening. Details of how to grab the next book are available after the excerpt.
Blood Memory
Book One
1.
Anne recognized the sound. She’d heard it dozens of times over the past week. She peered over the boat’s edge. The fog was so thick she couldn’t see more than a few feet beyond the prow.
At thirty-two, with a thin wiry body and dirty blonde hair that barely reached the nape of her neck, climbing over the thirty-eight foot Viking yacht was easy for Anne, though her legs and arms still bore the scratches and bruises from the first few turbulent days on board. She held onto the railing that wrapped around the cabin’s roof and edged along the narrow rim to the stern.
A body floated in the water. Only the torso was visible, the legs lost to the fog. The man’s head patted the boat with a hollow thud, the cause of the sound she’d heard. The man would have been handsome if it wasn’t for the puckered purple cut across his left cheek, his pallid skin, and nose bent at a broken angle.
“Joel?” Anne’s words were muffled by the fog. “Come up here!”
She listened but there was no reply. She stomped her foot on the deck like a buck calling a female.
“What?” a voice called out.
“Come up here a minute.”
Joel grumbled as he ascended the stairs. He was a thirty-year-old walnut-haired broad-chested Australian more accustomed to the Outback than the ocean. Upon seeing the body he said, “Bloody hell, not another floater. Can’t we just toss it back?”
“You know we can’t.”
Joel cupped his hands around his mouth and called down the stairs. “Yo! Stan! Come up here!”
Pigeon-chested Stan McIntyre was two inches shy of Joel’s six feet two, but he had a bearing his past life as a school teacher had imbued him with that made him seem taller.
“Where are the girls?” Anne asked.
“Inside with Mary,” Stan said.
“Do we have to do this one?” Joel whined. “Can’t we just let him be? Respect the dead, and all that.”
“Not when he might have something in his pocket that could aid us,” Stan said.
Joel blew out an exasperated puff of air. “All right then. Let’s get this over with.”
Joel and Stan took an arm each and pulled the body on board. Water splashed and pooled over the deck.
“Whose turn is it to turn out pockets?” Stan asked.
“I did it last night,” Joel said.
“And I did it this morning.”
“Me too,” Anne said.
Joel rolled his eyes. “Great.” He rooted through the man’s pockets. He screwed up his face. “Nothing. I knew there wouldn’t be. Let’s toss him back.” Joel hooked his hands into the crook of the body’s arms and lifted him up until he was almost standing. He was about to push it over the side when the body wheezed a gasping breath. Joel’s eyes went wide and he dropped the body.
“Jesus Christ! The bugger’s still alive!”
“Is he one of them, do you reckon?” Stan said, picking up a length of iron kept for such occasions.
Anne reached over slowly, keeping a close eye on the man, and put her fingers to his wrist. “He has a pulse. It’s faint, but it’s there.”
“He can’t be alive, can he?” Joel said, hand on his chest like he was going to suffer a heart attack. “He must be one of them. None of the others were alive.”
“That doesn’t mean this one can’t be.”
“He can’t be alive. He’s been floating around for a week.”
“We don’t know that. He might have only fallen in a few hours ago.”
“His beard,” Stan said, gesturing to the man’s five o’clock shadow. “If he’d been at sea a long time it’d be longer than it is now.”
“There’s only one way of knowing for sure,” Anne said. “We have to check him for bite marks.”
Joel shook his head. “No. No way I’m going near him. You know how fast those things can move.”
Anne reach
ed into her pocket, extricating a switchblade. “I’ll do it.” She kneeled down at the foot of the body and began cutting off a saturated sock.
“Fine,” Joel said, getting down on his knees and cutting at the other sock with his own knife. “But if anything happens I blame you. Stan, you stand over him with your pole ready. I swear, if his eyelids so much as flutter, give it to him.”
Stan took position over the body, pole poised.
Joel shook his head. “I can’t believe I’m doing this.”
They cut away the man’s pants. His dark wire-like hair lay plastered to his pale legs. They cut away the man’s light blue shirt with fancy cufflinks.
The man mumbled under his breath.
Everyone froze. Stan tensed, pole held over his shoulder like a batter stepping up to the plate. The man quietened down and they continued. They pulled off the man’s shirt, exposing his arms. They were not large and muscular, but toned and hard. They tore through the man’s undershirt. Anne gasped. Crisscrossing his body were a series of pale white scars and strange flower-like burns, long-since healed. One nipple had been shorn off entirely. Around the remaining nipple were a series of small circles Anne suspected were cigarette burns.
“Jesus,” Joel said.
They rolled the man over. His back sported long diagonal slash marks that crisscrossed his spine.
“No bite marks at least,” Stan said, lowering the iron rod.
Anne fingered the scars. “By the look of it, some other monster must have gotten to him.”
The man’s bloodshot eyes flickered open. He grabbed Anne by the arm in a vice-like grip.
“Rachel!” he shouted in her face. “Rachel! No! Rachel!”
Stan moved to swing.
“No! Don’t!” shouted Anne, holding up her free arm to stop the blow.
The man’s grip weakened slightly. His hazel eyes looked deep into Anne’s chestnut brown. He reached towards Anne’s face with his fingertips. Joel and Stan took a protective step forward. The man gently stroked Anne’s face, following the smooth contours of her nose and chin. His hand let go of hers, his eyes rolled back into his head, he fell back, shivering.
Stan put a hand to the man’s forehead. “He’s burning up.”
Joel removed his own pants and covered the man up. “We’d best get him inside.”
Anne spotted something that glittered in the man’s manubrium – the gap where the collarbones met. He wore a ball chain necklace with two metal circles attached.
“Dog tags,” Stan said. “What do they say?”
Anne rubbed her finger over the embossed engravings. “Jordan Grant,” she read. “Service number 293097.” She looked at the unconscious figure. “Hello Jordan Grant. Welcome to Haven, the safest place on Earth.”
A stiff breeze blew a gap in the thick fog revealing a harbor city. Broken hulls and overturned yachts lay scattered in the dock. Dirty smoke rose from a dozen places, licking the sky. A sign proudly boasting beach accolades lay half-buried in the sand. Hundreds of human figures jostled for position at the water’s edge, watching the floating meal with hungry eyes. Their cacophonous low groans a single wail of death.
2.
Mary poured the soup into a chipped ceramic bowl. Though they usually ate out of empty tin cans, Mary, incapable of letting go of the Old World entirely, insisted the guest use the fine china. She placed it on the tray beside a cracked glass of water and a heel of hard bread.
“When do you suppose he’ll wake up?” Mary asked. She had a full head of black hair and jingling jewelry. Her eyes were emerald green with flecks of gold that seemed to catch every nuance of movement. She was short – the only member of the crew who could look Anne in the eye.
“I don’t know,” Anne said. “He’s been through a lot. All we can do now is take care of him and hope for the best.”
“I saw his fortune,” Mary said.
Anne glanced at the battered pack of Tarot cards that lay on the table. “What did you see?”
“Death. But not his. He is a man surrounded by it, I fear. Be careful.”
“Speaking of being careful, how are we doing for food?”
Mary gave her a look that said, “Don’t ask.”
“How long do you think we can last?”
“I’ve already used the cabbage three times to make soup. We’ll soon be better off drinking water – which is another problem we have. It hasn’t rained in weeks. Our supplies are running low.”
“We could boil our socks.”
Mary screwed up her face. “If we do, you can have Stan’s. I swear sometimes he keeps a hidden stash of cheese in there.”
Anne picked up the tray and crossed the small living area. She almost dropped it as Stacey flew past, chasing Jessie. “Careful!” Anne said, but they were too busy playing to listen.
They had come across the pair hanging on for dear life to a buoy. Despite their different appearances – Stacey had red auburn hair with dark eyes, Jessie had blonde with light eyes – they had taken them for sisters. Jessie was thirteen going on fifty, a mother figure to five-year-old Stacey. They never talked about where they came from, which led them to suppose it couldn’t have been anywhere good.
Anne came to a short corridor that split into four rooms, three cabins and an engine bay. On rainy days she leaked, and the slightest breeze could make her list like she was a fairground ride. Rust scaled the walls, creating large patches of brown flakes that Stacey used to draw pictures in with her finger. In many places the wall panels were held in place by a single rivet. She was falling to pieces, but she was their home.
Perched on a stool in the corridor, Joel read a water damaged copy of Harry Potter. It looked like a children’s flip book in his massive hands. “Feeding time again?” he said, not looking up.
“The body needs to eat if it’s going to heal.”
“Do you want me to come in with you today? He might like to see a fresh face.”
“He hasn’t even seen mine yet. Besides, it’s better if he sees one face when he wakes up.”
“All right. Let me know if you need any help.”
“I will. Enjoy the book. By the way, Professor Quirrel’s the bad guy.”
Joel’s eyes and mouth made wide disbelieving circles as Anne pushed the door open with her backside and stepped into the tiny room.
A single bed took up half the space, where Jordan lay asleep. Anne and Mary had cleaned him and taken care of his wounds, stitching closed his cuts, cracking his broken nose back into place, and applying the meager medicines and salves they had found on board. His fever was gone and his heart beat stronger, but he hadn’t woken up yet. Beside the bed sat a rickety old chair on which Anne had placed clean folded clothes. The T-shirt lay half hanging off the pile as if it had been knocked off in haste. She eyed it with curiosity, and then turned to Jordan.
“You can quit the act,” Anne said. “I know you’re awake.”
The man didn’t move.
“How long have you been conscious?”
He still didn’t answer.
“I suppose you don’t want this soup and bread then? I’ll come back later when you’re ready to talk.” She turned to the door.
“Wait.”
Jordan’s head sat up at a sharp angle, his bloodshot eyes half-open under heavy lids. “What gave me away?”
“Your clothes are messed up. I folded them for you and no one else comes into the room. It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes.”
He smiled. It crinkled the corner of his eyes and mouth. “Rookie mistake. I woke up and tried to get dressed when I heard voices outside the door.”
She put the folded clothing on the side table and sat on the chair with the tray on her knees. “Are you hungry? I brought some soup.”
“Starving.” He levered himself up into a sitting position on shaky arms. “How long have I been here?”
“Three days.”
“You’ve been taking care of me?”
“It’s no trouble.”
> “Thank you.” He looked around the room. “Is it just me or is the room swaying?”
“You’re on a boat called Haven. We’ve been at sea now for twelve days. We found you floating at sea.”
“Floating around? I never was much of a swimmer.”
“Here,” Anne said, filling a spoon with soup and raising it to his mouth.
“That’s okay. I can do it.”
“Are you sure?”
“I think so.”
She sat the tray on his lap. He picked up the spoon. It shook in his fingers with the effort, and dropped, clattering on the tray, scattering soup droplets over the bedspread.
“Sorry,” he said. “I’ll clean it up.”
“The same way you fed yourself?” Anne said with a smile. “No thanks.”
“I must be weaker than I thought.”
Anne picked up the spoon, dipped it into the bowl, brushed it against the lip so it wouldn’t drip, and brought it to his mouth.
“You’ve had a lot of practice at this,” he said, swallowing it with visible effort.
“Three days’ worth.”
“How far are we from port?”
“Not far. Why?”
“I need to get back to my barracks.”
“Barracks? You were in the army? Stan will be happy.”
“Who’s Stan?”
“One of the guys who lives on the boat. We’ve had a pool going, about which armed services you came from, navy, army or air. Stan gets an extra helping of soup tonight.”
“At least someone has benefitted from me being here.” He saw something on Anne’s wrist. “What’s that?”
“It’s nothing,” Anne said, hastily pulling her sleeve down.
“Let me see.”
Anne looked away.
“Please.”
After a pause she pulled up her sleeve revealing purple and yellow discolorations. Jordan laid his hand gently on her forearm, his fingers lining up with the bruises.
“I did this?” He sounded horrified.
“By accident.”
“I’m sorry.”
Crash Page 4
