No Sanctuary Box Set: The No Sanctuary Omnibus - Books 1-6

by Mike Kraus

  “You have a human-compatible variant?” One of the men wearing a suit asks the man in white robes.

  The man in robes points across the room. The group walks across to look through the transparent barrier into the area where the scientists’ families were held. An older man and woman are strapped down in two of the beds in the room with manacles on their limbs and chains across their bodies. Their eyes are glazed over from the sedatives they were given, but they still attempt to turn their heads to watch the approaching men.

  “Yes.” The man in the white robes finally responds to the earlier question with a flat, emotionless voice as he watches the pair struggle against their chains. “I have a human-compatible variant.”

  The man in white robes presses a small button installed on the side of the transparent barrier and another aerosol can releases its invisible gas. The man and woman begin struggling against their bonds, but the chains and sedatives are too much to overcome. Within half an hour a trickle of blood begins to run from their eyes and ears. Half a day later both are too sick to struggle against their chains. A day later and the woman is dead while the man waits at death’s doorstep.

  Chapter 5

  Every bone and piece of flesh in Liam Peters’ body felt broken and bruised. He opened his eyes only to screw them shut again in pain as the morning sun came piercing through the broken windshield of the truck like a knife. The son of Thomas Peters, Liam was a tall, wiry man barely out of his teens. The son of a long-gone relationship between Thomas and a woman whose name he could no longer remember, Liam had taken to his father’s work and way of life with gusto.

  While Thomas acted as the overall head of the methamphetamine production facilities located in Binghamton, Liam was involved in the payment collection and protection side of the business. If someone owed them money, was threatening their operation or simply happened to glance at Liam the wrong way, he enacted swift, brutal and permanent revenge upon them.

  “What in the fuck…” Liam opened an eye and moved his head to look away from the sunlight, feeling a fresh lance of pain shoot through his neck and back. He moved slowly, cautiously, exploring the pain as he tried to determine what was broken and what still worked. He could still feel his legs and move his toes and his arms worked, but two of his fingers were bent and twisted and there was a sharp pain in his chest every time he took in a breath.

  Liam set his jaw as he grabbed the two fingers and popped them back into their sockets. A fresh surge of adrenaline flowed through his body and he kicked at the window in front of him, removing the last remnants of the windshield with a few blows. As Liam crawled out of the overturned truck, he suddenly felt overwhelmed with exhaustion and dropped to the ground for a few moments. His breaths were ragged and shallow and he touched his chest, probing for any signs that something had penetrated through. “Fucking ribs.” Even whispering brought on pain and he closed his eyes and mouth for a few moments more before struggling up to his knees, using the truck as a support.

  All around him were the mangled remains of the pickup truck, the car and the bodies of those that had been driving and riding in them. It took Liam a solid minute of staring at the bodies and twisted metal wrecks to realize what had happened, and when the memories finally came back in a flash his eyes widened and he grunted out his father’s name. “Thomas.”

  Never one to call his father “dad” or any of the other standard names a child calls a father, Liam had always been on a strict first-name basis with Thomas. There were never many overt displays of affection or love shown between the pair, and they treated each other as colleagues and equals more than anything else. Deep inside, though, past the pain, the poor upbringing, the drugs and the myriad of emotional and mental issues, Liam cared for his father in some twisted way. When he spotted Thomas’ body lying on the grass a few dozen feet away, he pushed himself to his feet and staggered towards it, repeating the name over and over through the pain he felt in his chest.

  “Thomas?” Liam prodded his father’s arm a few times before noticing that Thomas’ neck was at an impossible angle and he wasn’t breathing. Liam sat next to his father’s body, concentrating on breathing, as he tried to figure out what to do next. The sun was nearly overhead in the sky when a noise behind Liam made him slowly turn to locate the source. Two of Thomas’ men who had survived the wreck were slowly walking toward Liam, holding onto each other for support. Dried blood covered their heads, faces and various limbs, and they looked like they were in just as bad shape as Liam was.

  “Where’s the boss?” Josh, one of the two men, coughed as he asked the question. Liam raised an unsteady hand and pointed at his father’s body lying next to him.

  “Dead?” The second man, Reggie, asked.

  Liam nodded slowly before standing to his feet. “As a doornail.” There was no respect for his dead father in his voice, and in his mind all trace of the brief feeling of caring he had for his father was gone as well. All that was left was rage, though it wasn’t over the loss of Thomas. “Are you two all that’s left?”

  The two men nodded in response.

  “Those bastards killed him.” Liam pointed down the road in the direction that Frank and Linda had fled. “We lost a lot of good men to those two. Plus our vehicles. And with Thomas gone our whole operation’s on hold till we find more recruits and get more of ‘em trained.” Liam shook his head, then winced at the pain.

  “What do you want to do?” Reggie asked.

  “Let’s get back to the station. We’ll round up a few of the regulars and persuade them to help us. Long as the transmitter in the car’s working we can find ‘em if they’re within a few hundred miles. No way they’ll get that far before we get on their tails.”

  Josh and Reggie both nodded and hobbled along after Liam as he headed back towards town. The journey took the entire afternoon, and by evening they finally arrived at the gas station. Their legs were tired, their bodies were somehow even more sore than they had been after the wreck and they were parched and hungry beyond belief.

  With most of their vehicles either destroyed or left behind at the abandoned house, Liam didn’t have a lot of options left. While Reggie and Josh limped back inside the station, Liam circled around the back to a small garage and opened the door. The rusted frame of a green 1986 convertible Corvette stared back at him. The tan top was torn in several places that had been temporarily patched with a variety of tape and glue more times than he could recall. The brakes were shot and the clutch was nearly burned out, but the engine was sound, if a little rough. Dents, scrapes and scratches covered the entire exterior of the vehicle, making it look like it had just rolled in from a Mad Max movie.

  The interior of the car was barren, the result of multiple upgrade projects that had been derailed and never completed. Aside from bare metal seats, a sagging roof liner and windows that had been jury-rigged to allow for partial opening when the need arose, the dashboard of the Corvette was completely gone. The radio, vents, air conditioning and heater controls were gone along with the dashboard dials and gauges, making it impossible to know exactly how fast you were going.

  Despite its flaws, the Corvette was Liam’s favorite car, and he felt a certain sense of nostalgia and poetic justice knowing that he would be taking the first car his father bought for him out to kill those that were responsible for his death. The fact that Thomas had ambushed and attacked Frank and Linda first meant nothing to Liam, and the thought didn’t even enter his mind. He was consumed with the idea of revenge, and nothing else would satisfy him.

  “Liam?” The woman working the register came outside and grimaced as she saw him. “Are you okay?”

  “The tracker.” He didn’t bother looking at the woman as he ignored her question. “Do you have it?”

  “I can go get it. Shouldn’t you come inside and sit down?”

  “No. Bring me the tracker and tell Josh and Reggie to get out here. Make sure they’re armed. We’re leaving right now.”

  “But—”


  “Get going!” Liam screamed, then clutched at his chest as pain exploded outward. The woman turned and ran back into the gas station, returning a moment later with a small black box in her hand. Liam was still hunched over, leaning against the car with one hand as he wheezed.

  “Please, Liam…” The woman placed the box on the hood of the car next to Liam before taking a few steps back. “Please just come inside for a while? You need someone to look you over!”

  Liam slowly lifted his head to glare at the woman. Fire danced in his eyes and—had he not been in severe pain—he would have inflicted physical harm upon her. “Get Josh and Reggie out here now. We leave in five minutes.”

  As the woman ran back into the gas station, Liam took the small black device in his hand and flipped a few switches on the side. A series of lights on the face of the device lit up in series, then all but the bottom one vanished. Liam held the device in the air and moved it slowly around in a circle until the other lights began to turn on as well. An evil grin spread across his face and he turned the device back off and slipped it back into his pocket.

  “We’re coming, you two. We’re coming…”

  Chapter 6

  Though the weather is unusually chilly so early in the season, the Pittsburgh Zoo and PPG Aquarium is bustling with activity. Visitors swarm the labyrinth of tunnels in the recently upgraded aquarium and zoo complex, allowing them never-before-seen access to the animals inhabiting both land and water. The majority of the visitors are children, either with their parents or on school field trips. There are several such field trips going on at once and the grounds of the zoo and aquarium are packed.

  In a white panel van in a parking lot near the zoo, a trio of men sit in the back, huddled together as they whisper to one another. Each man wears a different set of clothing. One wears the uniform of the local police department, another wears an EMT’s uniform and the third wears a firefighter’s jacket and pants. The nametags on the clothing are fake, though each man calls the others by their fake names as a joke to help distract themselves from their nervousness.

  Each man carries six small aerosol containers in their clothing. Even though the containers are secured and virtually unbreakable, all three men treat the containers with care, knowing that their deaths are assured if one of the containers is deployed prematurely.

  “How long?” The man in the police uniform whispers.

  “Two more hours.” The doctor leans back in his seat in the back of the van. “It’s time for us to go.”

  “Remember your destinations, brothers.” The firefighter looks the other two in the eyes and they nod solemnly. “Do not let anyone stop you. Stay well hidden in plain sight.”

  The three nod at each other and pile out of the van, quickly separating and going in different directions. Once they are away from each other they slow down and walk naturally, heading for different areas of the city where they can do the most damage.

  Two hours later, the doctor is on the third floor of the UPMC Presbyterian hospital, a few miles south of the zoo. The officer is making small talk with real officers outside a local station while the firefighter uses his disguise to gain access to businesses under the pretense of performing fire extinguisher checks. All three men blend in with their surroundings, offering up no reason for anyone to suspect them of anything.

  Two hours after leaving their van, the city of Pittsburgh—and the nation at large—is rocked by explosions. Three bombs placed on school buses outside the zoo turn the yellow vehicles into twisted piles of metal. Dump trucks carrying debris from a construction site on the north side of the city explode, sending rocks high into the air before they begin raining down on nearby cars and pedestrians. A series of explosives set along the tracks at the train station cause an incoming passenger line to derail, killing dozens and injuring scores more.

  As deaths and injuries continue to pile up the three men continue to blend in with the activity as they assist with treating the injured and rescuing those who are trapped. As they move about, though, each man plants an aerosol can in a strategic location. One goes into a storage closet at the hospital. Another goes into the locker room at the police station. Yet another is placed near a temporary shelter being erected to help treat victims.

  The aerosol cans are placed in locations where the men expect large numbers of people to pass through in the next several days. The cans themselves are nondescript and easy to overlook, but each consists not only of a can but of a timing device that counts down the seconds to when it automatically deploys. Each canister is set on a timer to randomly deploy. Some of them deploy hours after the initial explosions. Most deploy a day or two later, when the citizens of the city are in a full-blown panic and people are desperately searching everywhere for food and medicine.

  One of the later canisters to deploy is at a school building near the zoo that was undamaged by the detonation of several buses outside. The school has undergone a radical transformation in the last few days and is now an emergency shelter, filled with residents who desperately need food, water and medical attention. The man dressed as a police officer placed the canister under a teacher’s desk in one of the classrooms when he was helping organize the relief efforts at the school. He is long gone now, having slipped away under the cover of night to reunite with his two co-conspirators.

  The classroom containing the canister, like most of the other classrooms, now serves as a sleeping area for families staying in the shelter. Personal effects are pushed under cots and sheets are hung from the ceiling in an effort to muffle the sounds of snoring and whispering as well as to afford a shred of privacy.

  It is three o’clock in the morning when the canister deploys with no more noise than someone gently sniffing. Ten seconds after the noise starts, though, it stops and the contents of the canister are fully expended into the room. Across the city—and nation—more canisters deploy. A few of them are nowhere near any people, as their placement was misjudged. Most, however, deploy around dozens or more people at once. The results are catastrophic.

  Chapter 7

  “It hurts, dammit! That’s what it feels like! It feels like somebody poured a bunch of booze all over an open wound then left it to sit all night!”

  Frank stifled a chuckle as he ripped off another strip of tape from Linda’s leg. “Hey, it’s a valid question! Does it feel infected?”

  “Will you—give me that already!” Linda grabbed at the final strips of tape and yanked them off of her leg with a sudden motion. “I thought this crap was supposed to come off easily!”

  “Seems pretty easy to me.” Frank couldn’t stifle his next chuckle and was rewarded with a ball of tape and a bloody lump of gauze being thrown at his face.

  “If I had some kind of disease I’d be praying for you to get it right now. Asshole.”

  As Linda gently probed the skin around the wound on her leg, Frank collected the tape and gauze and stood up. He stretched his back, neck, arms and legs as he walked along, trying to get the circulation going through them. The barn had been colder than he had expected, though Linda had recovered substantially through the night and was mostly back to herself by morning.

  After a quick peek outside the barn to make sure no one had come up during the night, Frank and Linda ate a brief breakfast of bits of packaged food from the bottom of their backpacks that they had thankfully stuffed into them. While Frank still had his backpack and all of the gear that went along with it, Linda had suffered substantially. She still had her backpack and a bag with ammunition and a few stray pieces of food, but the other bags that they had transferred from her wrecked truck into the white and red one days earlier had been burned by Thomas and his associates.

  Thankfully Linda had a spare change of clothing in her backpack and after she and Frank ate, she stripped off her pants without warning and propped up her leg for Frank to change the bandage. He had taken the unexpected moment of vulnerability in stride and did his best to ignore it and act professionally while helping
her dress the wound and then affix a bandage that would survive light to moderate movement.

  “What’s the matter, Frank?” Linda grinned. “Do I look that bad?” Frank rolled his eyes and sighed.

  “You know what? I really don’t get you.” Frank turned around and started to repack his backpack while Linda put on a fresh—and bullet-hole-less—pair of jeans.

  “What’s not to get?” Linda stood up slowly and finished buttoning her pants, then took a few slow steps to test how her leg felt.

  “You go from joking to serious in a heartbeat. You go from trying to wait out a guy who’s threatening to kill us to slicing and dicing everyone in your path.” Frank turned around and shook his head as he put his pack on. He could hear his voice getting louder as he spoke, but he didn’t bother trying to be quiet. “I’ve been trying to keep my mouth shut about it all for the most part but I can’t do that anymore. What the hell’s your deal?”

  Linda stood for a moment with her weight awkwardly on her good leg before hobbling over to a hay bale and powering herself onto it. “When I started this whole thing, I wasn’t exactly planning on taking on any passengers. I’ve tried not to be standoffish but trying to trust someone when you’re in my position is a little bit difficult.”

  “What position is that, eh?” Frank threw his arms in the air. “Can you name one thing I’ve done to give you reason to distrust me? I’ve tried to help you in every possible way since we met. I understand that it hasn’t been all that long, but come on already! What’s your deal with me?”

  Linda looked down at the floor of the barn and squeezed her lips together, shutting her eyes as she submerged herself in memories of the past. “You’ve heard of Operation Iranian Liberation, right? I think I told you I was part of the invasion, with the Marines.”