In a flash Billy pounced on him, punching him repeatedly, until the last uppercut sent him staggering back. The only thing that stopped him from going over the edge of the ship was the railing. Then he threw one more punch, a huge uppercut the cracked Mr. Magnus’s jaw on contact. This time, however, Mr. Magnus went flying over the railing, tumbling through the air until he hit the water.
During the fight Rick had managed to get to his feet and jump over the ship’s railing. Underwater, using the chains to guide him down, he swam as fast as he could until he reached Chris’s cage, which was rapidly descending. The saltwater burned his skin as he swam, but fortunately not to the point that debilitating as the salt was much weaker than pure salt. Reaching out, Rick grasped the edge of the cage and pulled himself toward the door. As soon as he opened it, he reached in and grabbed Chris by the arm, pulling her free from the cage.
With his right hand on the chain above the cage, and his left arm wrapped around Chris, he headed for the surface. As he swam as hard and fast as he could with his weak body, Mr. Magnus suddenly grabbed his ankle from below, preventing him from ascending to the surface.
With the cold of the water against his skin, and his body weakened from the beating he’d just taken, he knew that as long as Mr. Magnus had him in his clutches, he’d never reach the surface. So Rick did something he’d never done before. For the first time in his life, he stopped kicking and fighting; he stopped struggling; and in that moment, for the first time, he was at total peace with himself.
As Rick clenched the chain tightly with his outstretched right hand and held Chris securely in his left arm, he placed his mouth on hers and breathed into her the life-giving air she desperately needed. Chris opened her eyes and looked directly into Rick’s black eyes for only a moment; in the vast silence of the ocean, she knew this was their final good-bye.
After Rick ensured Chris’s hand was on the chain, he let go of her, allowing her to climb to the surface, which seemed a world away to him. With one hand grasping the chain and the other reaching out to her love, she watched as Rick disappeared into the darkness below.
In Rick’s final moments, as water filled his lungs and he descended into the endless void of the ocean, he fought his last battle. With his left foot, he kicked Mr. Magnus’s face as hard as he could—three kicks total—after which Mr. Magnus released his grasp on Rick’s ankle. It was all Rick needed in order to push Mr. Magnus into Chris’s cage, which was descending to the ocean floor.
It took every bit of strength he had left, but he forced Mr. Magnus through the open door. With the click of the steel latch, he was trapped inside the very prison in which he had placed so many others—a prison that would keep his soul in purgatory as his body decayed at the bottom of the great Atlantic.
Just as Chris reached the surface, L.J. dove from the refuel vessel into the water. After grabbing her, he swam back toward the vessel, where their friends waited. Billy, Chris, L.J., Robbie, and Mike were the only ones who had made it off the cruise ship alive. Everyone else had been killed by the remaining M.M. soldiers while trying to get off the ship.
Billy hit the throttle, and the refuel vessel moved away from the cruise ship just as the sun started to rise in a magnificent array of blues, yellows, and reds.
When the sun came up over the horizon, casting its first rays of light over the surface of the water, the remaining vampires sat at the conference room, silently awaiting their fate. As The Gem of the Seas slammed into the oil rig, all were seated at the table, except Mr. Black who still stood at the enormous window with his hand on the glass. The moment it made contact, Billy pushed the red switch on the mechanism he held in his hand.
The explosion was massive; smoke and fire shot into the sky as each deck of the cruise ship burst into flames, one after another, as it struck the oil rig. All that was left was a twisted mass of steel that slowly sank into the ocean below.
The remaining people aboard the refuel vessel were headed toward shore. Chris and Robbie sat in the lower deck in the darkness, avoiding the sun.
“I…I need the truth about something,” she told Robbie. “I know you won’t lie to me. When I was underwater, Rick—well, he saved my life, but when I looked at him, I’m not sure…but his eyes…I think they were black. I need to know the truth. Was Rick a vampire?”
Robbie laughed. “A vampire? Really? You know he’d be the last person to be a vampire.”
“Well, if Rick was human, then he’s dead now, and I’ll have to live with that. But if he was a vampire, then he’s not dead—he’s just trapped—and if that’s the case, maybe we can find a way to help him. I need to know, Robbie, if he was still human.”
“Chris, it was cold, and I’m sure it was dark underwater. If anyone was human, it was Rick.”
“OK,” Chris said, knowing she’d lost the one person who’d been with her since the beginning, the one person who’d rescued her from herself. Despite their differences Rick always had been a man of integrity, strength, and kindness.
Although Robbie didn’t want to lie to Chris, it was the only way Chris would be able to cope and eventually move on. If Rick were alive, Robbie knew there was no way they’d be able to find him, but if Chris thought he was alive, she’d never stop trying to reach him.
As the boat moved through the calm waters, Chris and Robbie sat in the darkness, reminiscing about the times they’d shared with Rick. They both laughed and cried that morning, remembering the joy he had brought to their lives.
“Remember that stamp collection and how much crap Rick gave Billy for it? Or the time we all fought over a lighter?” Robbie asked.
“Yeah, and what about his stupid obsession with Elvis?”
“Hey, now, that’s the one thing Rick did have right,” Billy yelled from the cabin above them. “There’s nothing wrong with Elvis. But who would’ve thought that a man obsessed with Elvis as much as he was would have gone on to lead an army?”
“You’re right,” Chris said. “He always managed to surprise me.”
EPILOGUE
In the following years, Chris returned to her beach home with Billy. When she arrived she wasn’t surprised to find that Mick wasn’t there.
She had hoped Mick would be waiting there with Jessica and Egan, and they could move on with their lives. She had thought perhaps Mick would apologize for abandoning her; just maybe he would tell her he had been wrong to take the children from her.
Reality is seldom what people play out in their minds, and Chris knew it the moment she and Billy arrived and found the beach house empty.
For years Chris stayed in that beach house with her father. Billy had the daughter he always wanted, and Chris had the father she needed. As the years passed, whenever they had visitors, they spoke about life before the global collapse as well as how four friends had saved the world from nine evil vampires. Their guests, however, always believed the stories to be tall tales.
On a number of occasions, Chris went in search of her children but always returned home more disappointed. Finally, when her children would have been in their midsixties, Chris stopped looking for them and accepted the fact that sometimes bad things happen to good people, and sometimes good things happen to bad people. That’s just how life is.
Robbie and L.J. helped establish the new Free States Union, a people’s government that functioned as the founding founders of the United States had envisioned. They stayed on for years, working tirelessly, until their successors were appointed. Once the new leaders were able to function without oversight, Robbie and L.J. stepped back for a time to ensure stability, and then they were gone. At the time no one was sure where they went or whether they planned to return. After a decade it was clear they were gone for good, so a statue was erected in their honor. Its inscription read, GOOD MEN OF HONOR WHO RISKED THEIR LIVES FOR THE GREATER GOOD OF MANKIND. YOU BOTH WILL FOREVER BE REMEMBERED AS HEROES OF THE LAST AGE.
For a time the country was better; new officials were appointed, and new laws were
established. But as history has shown so many times, nothing can last forever. The years turned into decades, and eventually what Chris had warned Rick about came to pass.
In the process of gaining freedom for humanity by destroying the M.M. and the Nine, Rick had made a mistake that inevitably would lead to the destruction of the human race. He had given the order to free all the slaves on the M.M. bases, unaware that what he thought to be human slaves were vampires. The Nine were dead and had been the only means to control the vampire population. After being released from their cages, the vampires grew in number faster than anyone could imagine.
Within forty years they outnumbered the human population by three to one. They multiplied by feeding on humans and changing them just because they could. They were lawless and reckless, and with no balance, human civilization disappeared from the face of the earth as the vampire population rose from its ashes.
Eventually the vampires starved themselves out of existence. With the demise of humans and vampires, great cities, buildings, dams, and all other structures slowly crumbled, as nearly all intelligent life had disappeared. Vegetation swallowed up any hint that life on earth ever had existed. Soon not even memories were left, only the remnants of a civilization long extinct.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Andrew Alexander is a first time author who has served on active duty in the United States Army for fifteen years, and has deployed in service of our great nation three times. Andrew grew up in Alaska and attended the University of Alaska Fairbanks before enlisting in the army in 1999 as a Military Police Soldier.
Writing and becoming a published author has always been a dream and passion that Andrew wanted to pursue. With the end of a twenty-year career in the military quickly approaching, he has done just about everything he could possible want to do, from serving as a Drill Sergeant to deploying. Finally after a decade and a half Andrew buckled down and took the necessary steps to accomplishing his one remaining goal.
A Town Called America was initially wrote while Andrew was deployed in Afghanistan in 2012. Writing between missions on scrap paper, and when time allowed, eventually what started out as a short story to pass time turned into a grand adventure that not only allowed Andrew an escape reality of the war, if only in his own mind, it set him on a journey that would lead him on a completely new path in life.
Andrew is currently stationed in Alabama. He lives with his wife Lisa, three children, two dogs, fish and a frog.
Table of Contents
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
PART ONE
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
CHAPTER THIRY ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY THREE
PART TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY ONE
CHAPTER FORTY TWO
CHAPTER FORTY THREE
CHAPTER FORTY FOUR
CHAPTER FORTY FIVE
CHAPTER FORTY SIX
CHAPTER FORTY SEVEN
CHAPTER FORTY EIGHT
EPILOGUE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A Town Called America Page 27
