by Shows, Greg
Crisis Event: Black Feast
by
Greg Shows and Zachary Womack
Crisis Event: Black Feast is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 by Greg Shows and Zachary Womack
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof
may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever
without the express written permission of the publisher
except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Published in the United States.
Cover art by Anna Fritzel and Zach Womack
Cover model: Tiara Antomarchi
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the following people for their assistance, encouragement, advice, technical input, proofreading, and all around awesomeness: George Proctor, Ophelia Abraham, Alyssa Bond, Tiara Antomarchi, and Anna Fritzel.
Contact Sadie at:
website: www.sadiehalloman.com
email: [email protected]
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SadieHalloman
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100008419547703
A Note from the Authors:
We hope you enjoy the second episode of the Crisis Event series. If you have questions about the upcoming release of new episodes, feel free to email us. If you enjoyed the book and would like to join our mailing list, feel free to click the link below and send us a message. We would be honored to hear from you.
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Chapter 1
He would have killed her if he hadn’t stepped on the branch—the one she dropped on her way to her tent to build the fire. But as soon as his boot crunched down on the dried wood, Sadie spun around.
She had only a second to react.
It almost wasn’t enough.
He was coming full speed, already swinging the cop club at her head, his face a scowling mask of malevolence.
Sadie shoved her armload of firewood at him and threw herself sideways, twisting away from the blow.
Dust geysered up when her knees hit the ground, and fire raced through her back as the club slammed into her left kidney.
The only thing that saved her was her head was almost three feet lower than where he’d expected her head to be.
That didn’t mean it didn’t hurt.
“Owww!” Sadie yelped as she went face first into the ground.
Dust coated her respirator shield, fouling her vision. For a few seconds her left leg was numb, and she wondered if she was paralyzed. But then she rolled over, wiping at the respirator with one hand and scrabbling to grab a piece of firewood to defend herself with.
“Come back here!” the man said as he turned to come at her.
“Wait!” Sadie shrieked through the respirator. In a brief flash of awareness, she saw the torn and dirty cop uniform, a dull badge still pinned to his chest.
His name patch said “J. Franklin,” and the big red patch on his shoulder said Shanksborough Police. There was a pistol in the holster on his right hip, and a yellow Taser on his left.
Sadie’s shriek froze the cop just long enough for her to get to her knees, wrap her fingers around a gnarled little log, and swing it at the cop’s legs. There was a wet, satisfying “crunch!” when the log smashed into his left knee, and an exhilarating wave of pleasure raced through Sadie’s chest and belly.
Strange thing to enjoy, she thought as the cop hopped on one leg.
“Faaaaack!” he yelled, and the cop club, which he’d drawn back again, wavered.
But not for long.
He swung the club down and around so that it was travelling a horizontal path toward Sadie’s head.
Sadie saw him twist his hips, and time slowed down in this fight-or-flight moment. She knew instantly that this blow could kill her if it landed.
Sadie ducked right and swung the little log upward. There was a baseball bat “crack” and the log snapped in half. The impact rattled Sadie’s hand so badly her hand went numb. The club kept going, and it smashed into her left shoulder blade with enough force to send a pain tsunami rippling across her back.
Her arm went numb, and she felt a fiery buzz in her fingertips.
“Ahhhhh!” she wailed as her forward momentum carried her into her tent and knocked her pack over. Respirator cartridges, shotgun shells, 9mm bullets, clean clothes, and various tools lay scattered out before her on the thermal blanket.
The shotgun she’d found the day before was right there, a foot away from her hand, right next to the little box with the Radex Geiger counter inside it.
“Now you’re gonna get it!” the man yelled, and he reached down to grab her ankle.
Sadie snatched the shotgun as the man yanked her out of the tent. She rolled to her left, bringing the gun up and pointing it at him.
“Hold it!” she yelled.
The man in the cop suit didn’t hold it.
Instead he stepped astride her, reaching down to grasp the short barrel, his injured knee apparently forgotten. He smiled and Sadie noted with disgust that he’d filed his canines to sharp points.
“You got to cock that thing, you want to use it, Missy” the man said, and gave the barrel a jerk.
Sadie let go and the cop, who’d expected resistance, stumbled backward.
While he was regaining his balance Sadie reached behind her into the tent.
Her numb arm wouldn’t support her weight so she toppled over and had to roll to her right to get at what she wanted: the bottle she’d filled with the water from the car battery the day before. It was right where she’d noticed it a few seconds earlier, tucked into the side pocket of her pack, and she got her hand around it.
“Well I usually don't like to fill my new girls with lead before I fill ‘em with spunk,” the cop said. He flipped the shotgun around and pointed it at Sadie.
Sadie stopped and stared at him, her lips forming a frown of disgust.
“But if you don’t hold still,” the cop said, “I’m gonna have to reverse my usual order of things. I haven’t tried it with a dead girl before, but I’m what you’d call an experimental kinda guy.”
Sadie moved then, rolling up to her feet as the cop dropped his club and levered both triggers back with his other hand. He pointed the gun directly Sadie’s belly. “Well now, you can’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Sadie glared at him as she popped up the nipple top and pointed the bottle at his face. Her fear was gone and she felt a terrible rage coming on.
“Whatchew think this is, Missy?” the cop laughed. “A water gun fight?”
Then he pulled both triggers.
There was a loud “click-click” as both hammers fell on the empty barrels, and the cop’s eyes went wide.
Sadie wondered what evolutionary advantage eye-widening might have provided to humans at some time in the distant past. It certainly wasn’t going to provide one for the cop right now.
“Jackass,” she said, and tracked his right hand as it dropped the shotgun and reached for his pistol. Just as his fingers curled around the grip she squeezed.
Murky liquid sprayed out of the bottle and splattered over the bridge of the cop’s nose. The stream rose to his eyes as Sadie adjusted her aim.
The cop screamed. Then he wailed. Then he let go of his pistol and tried to wipe his eyes on the dusty sleeve of his uniform.
When that didn’t work he shoved both ha
nds to his face.
“You bitch!” he shrieked. “Aahhhh...fucking Jesus! I’m blind!”
Sadie scrambled backward into her tent. This time she dug around among her belongings, shoving aside bullets and shells and clothing until she found the 9mm. She pulled it out from beneath the bike where it had fallen.
She emerged from the tent, climbing to her feet while wincing at the pain in her shoulder blade and kidney. Now that her fear was subsiding and her fight was nearly over, her body was shifting its priorities. She backed away from the man, moving carefully so as not to aggravate her injuries as she circled to her right.
She lifted her respirator to speak.
“That’s sulfuric acid,” Sadie said, her voice trembling.
“Eeeeeeeeeeeee!” the man in the cop suit screamed. “I’ll cut your cunt out and feed it to you!”
“That’s unlikely,” Sadie said, the tremble in her voice gone. “You being blind and all, I doubt you’ll do much of anything ever again.”
“Why’d you do it?” the cop whined, his voice petulant. He turned toward her and charged, the backs of both hands pressed into his eyes. “I didn’t do nothing to you!”
Now the anger turned to savage rage, filling her chest with a satisfying weight and sense of power. She saw herself torturing this guy. Spraying the rest of the sulfuric acid over him. Or setting him on fire and watching him burn. Or breaking all his bones with his own club and leaving him to suffer as he died of starvation or exposure or at the teeth and claws of scavengers.
She kept circling him, watching him as the temptation to harm him further subsided. He couldn’t hurt her now. Not if she kept her distance.
Sadie’s left arm was still numb, in contrast with her shoulder blade, which was throbbing.
“You know how to neutralize an acid, don’t you?” Sadie asked, and reversed directions, shifting to her left. She kept the pistol up, her arm straight out in front of her.
The man wailed and rubbed his hands over his face.
The flesh of his cheeks was beginning to tear away from the muscle beneath it in sizzling curly strips of bloody pink meat.
His hands were burning now too, turning dark red as the skin burned.
Holes were appearing in the man’s cop shirt as the acid ate through it and went into his skin.
Sadie shifted back toward the tent.
“The dust’ll neutralize the acid,” Sadie said, amazed as always at how little people knew about the physical world around them. “You might want to put some on your face.”
“Fuck you!” the man screamed, but he dropped to the ground and made a shovel of his hands.
He scooped up a mound of ash and dust and smeared it over his burning flesh. His chest heaved in and out as his hands moved over the burns, and he sucked in a lungful of dust that started him coughing.
Blood sprayed across the ground in front of him, and the dust he’d stirred up began to settle over it.
“Big Jim and Bryce’ll r-r-roast...your heart...on a spit—” he yelled.
Then he went for his pistol, drawing it in one surprisingly smooth motion and snapping off a shot from the hip.
Sadie dove for the ground, rolling right when she hit, her injuries forgotten, her fear back with her like a loyal friend.
The cop fired again, sending a bullet whizzing over Sadie’s head.
Sadie rolled to her left and crawled on her belly, slithering over dust and ash.
“I’ll get you, bitch!” the cop yelled.
He fired three more shots in quick succession, then swiveled to his right and fired again. again.
Sadie found one of the sticks she’d intended to use in her fire and picked it up and tossed it to her right. When it hit the ground the blind cop turned and fired his last two shots, then kept pulling the trigger, wincing each time the hammer came down on spent shells.
“Idiot!” Sadie said, She snarled and got up, slapping at her pants and parka, knocking the dust out of her clothes and letting her thoughts turn murderous.
“You’ve killed me!” the cop said with a wail.
He dropped to his knees, out of fight. His shoulders sagged and he looked ready to topple over as his anger disappeared and shock set in.
Sadie winced, her own anger suddenly all gone. She didn’t want to see or hear any more of this. The man was dying, but his suffering would go on a long time if she didn’t do something.
“You should lie down,” she told the man, her voice quavering. Her hands were shaking—a delayed fear reaction—and a symptom of terrible sorrow.
Already she regretted what she’d done, despite knowing that what he would have done to her would’ve been unspeakably worse.
She wanted to pack up and go. To leave the man to his death. But then she heard her grandfather's words: “Desperation brings out the worst and best in the best and worst.”
“I know,” she said out loud, and the man turned toward her again, shuffling his knees around in the dust. Then he moaned, and his bloody hands scooped more dust and ash to rub against his face.
Maybe this guy had been a good man once. An honest cop who’d never taken a bribe or beaten an innocent citizen. Maybe he’d kept the peace.
She couldn’t control who he was before the Crisis, or who he was now. All she could control was who she was. And today she wasn’t the kind of person who’d let someone suffer for days when death was certain anyway.
Before she could talk herself out if it, she circled around the cop again, this time stepping up quietly to put the gun against his back.
“Sorry” she whispered.
“Uh!” he said, trying to turn to face her but unable to.
She was already crying when she pulled the trigger.
Chapter 2
Half an hour later Sadie was still beside the dead man, kneeling and crying. She kept seeing the way the man had gone down like a sledgehammer had hit him, his arms jerking in spasms beneath his chest, his hands still trying to wipe at his cheek as he lay on the ground dying.
The gunshot had been swallowed up by the dusty gray landscape and the silence had returned quickly—except for the low fizz of the unrelenting acid and the distant rumble of thunder.
She’d be seeing him die in her dreams—common for all the non-psychopaths out there who’d been unfortunate enough to kill other humans.
If you’ve got any kind of a heart at all, killing people leaves a pretty big mark.
And boy was she marked up now.
She could hardly believe that in less than a twenty-four hour period she’d been forced to let a murderer go so he could look after his kids, and to kill twenty or more feral dogs with a chlorine bomb, and to execute a crazy man to keep him from suffering a terrible death.
None of it felt real.
Yet it was.
As real as the wind that pushed at her hair, fluffing and swirling the thick brown strands so that they tickled the back of her neck.
When she looked out at the horizon to the west, she saw why it was blowing. A wall of black clouds and dust and ash was coming her way, along with dozens of flickering forks of lightning, still tiny in the distance, but getting unmistakably closer.
It was time to think.
And act.
She stared down at the man.
How could he have ever been a cop?
When she looked closely at the uniform, she saw it fit him. The seams lined up at the shoulders, and the pants were the right length.
The man hadn’t lost a whole lot of weight in the last nine months either, since his job in the Shanksborough Police Department had likely ended.
Sadie didn’t want to think about why that might be, but she had to.
He’d been eating well.
That meant he’d either been a prepper who’d stocked up on emergency food, or he’d been willing to do whatever was necessary to survive—stealing food from others, eating rats, dogs, cats, birds, and horses in the early days.
Eating humans when the other food source
s ran out.
The fact that he’d sharpened his teeth told her all she needed to know.
“Soylent Green is people,” she heard her grandfather say. He’d forced her to watch the old movie one time.
She’d fallen asleep halfway through, but her grandfather hadn’t seemed to mind. When she’d awakened at the end in time to see Charlton Heston get it, her grandfather had been asleep too, though later he’d said “I was just resting my eyes.”
Sadie hurt. The cop club had really worked her over, and now that she was out of the battle, she could no longer ignore the damage. She’d be lucky to make it a mile down the road today, let alone the hundred miles she’d expected to make when she went to sleep the night before.
“Peeing blood by breakfast,” she said, her voice dying almost immediately.
She’d begun to shiver because the day was as overcast as everyday was, and the temperature wasn’t likely to climb.
The gloom wasn’t helped much by the lightning strikes dancing closer, and the dark, sludgy rain she could see falling on the horizon like an old-school widow’s veil.
She had three hours at most before the leading edge of the storm arrived. She had to get herself warm. To get ready to ride ahead and find somewhere to dig in—even if it meant spending the day inside another car. Otherwise she could get caught out in the storm. So she went about doing what she’d planned to do before she was attacked: building a fire.
She built a good-sized tripod out of branches, then expanded it by piling up sticks and logs in a semi-circle, leaving a narrow wedge open for tinder.
She used her multi-tool to cut the dead man’s pants off at the thighs. They were a cotton and polyester blend, so when she stuffed them under the tripod and held the little red Five Flags torch lighter to them, they caught right away.
Soon flames were consuming the wood and she had a good-sized fire blazing. It may not have been very good bush craft, but it was easier than working herself to death with a bow drill.
