This Is the End: The Post-Apocalyptic Box Set (7 Book Collection)

by Craig DiLouie

  I stopped walking.

  "Do you see them?"

  "Yes." It was Rudy who answered.

  "Keep moving. Slowly. Quietly."

  The voice in my head.

  "Through the door. Go through the door. This will all be over soon."

  I focused. Tried to fight back the fear, the tiredness, and walked slowly forward, every moment telling myself over and over in my head that there was nothing there, nothing below us, only the door, just go through the door.

  One step at a time the door got closer. One step at a time I breathed, slowly, deeply.

  I stepped off the platform and onto the rocky ground. It was a small outcrop, as the professor had said, and the wall was merely a free standing block of bricks, maybe ten feet high and ten feet wide.

  The edge of the door glowed faintly as I stepped nearer. I reached out to touch it, and just that slight touch was enough to open it.

  I stepped through and stumbled into daylight.

  I staggered, moving forward a few steps, struggling to grasp my new surroundings. The skeletal remains of massive, derelict buildings rose on either side of me. The ground was broken. It had probably been a road, once. Now grass and weeds broke the tarmac.

  It was day, but it was still dark. Above me, the sun shone only through small gaps in the grey clouds that drifted overhead at a speed that was astonishing. A cold blast of wind gusted down the open street, and I had to brace against it to stop myself from falling over.

  Rubble, broken windows and burnt out vehicles littered the street, and not just this street. I was standing in a dead end, with a solid wall behind me, except for the hole through which Rudy and Adler now stepped. The street stretched on and on, and beyond that were more ruined streets, more ruined buildings and vehicle wrecks. From the seat of the car next to me stared the weathered, cold, bleach-boned face of someone who had been dead for a long time.

  An entire city lying derelict, ruined and dead.

  A noise behind me startled me, and I turned to see the Maw begin to flood through the hole, pacing down the street, spreading out, not stopping, so that the rest of their kind could escape through the door that we had opened. After a few minutes, they stopped coming through.

  DogThing was by my side.

  "It's time to close it now," said the voice in my head.

  I looked down at DogThing.

  "Before he escapes too. Before they come."

  Then I knew.

  The voice in my head was DogThing, and he had been speaking to me all this time.

  He looked back towards the door and started to growl. Other Maw nearby spun round and crouched down low, baring their teeth, ready to spring at whatever was coming from the other side, whatever was about to escape with us.

  "He comes," said DogThing.

  I could hear the thud of heavy feet on the wooden platform, approaching fast. But he never got there in time.

  I reached for the door. There was no handle to pull, so I grabbed the edge and pushed, quickly taking my hand away. The last thing I saw through the opening was CutterJack, a few feet away, reaching out with both hands, his one eye wide with anger or fear, running towards us. Behind him were his lizard pets, many of them, tearing along the wooden boards as fast as they could go, each of them with the look of death in their eyes, and beyond that a wave of moaning and screaming.

  The cries of countless tortured souls.

  I swore that I heard CutterJack scream just as the door closed and vanished, leaving a solid brick wall in front of me. I staggered back, expecting the wall to collapse in front of me, and CutterJack to come bursting through with his lizardcats and an army of zombies, but there was nothing.

  It was over.

  I turned, seeking the others, Adler and Rudy. They were a few feet away, staring up at the towering ruins that stretched on as far as I could see.

  "Something terrible must have happened to this place," said Adler.

  "I don't remember," I replied.

  I turned back to DogThing and knelt down. This time he came forward and nuzzled his head in my lap. I ruffled his fur.

  "You've been talking to me all along, haven't you?"

  "Yes, but I don't think you always heard me."

  "Why did you help me? Why did you help us?"

  "Because I'm your friend."

  "My friend? I don't remember."

  "I know. It was after you fell, after we found Nua'lath's device. I didn't understand why you weren't breaking it. That was why we went there. That was what we came here for."

  "Nua'lath?"

  "CutterJack. He goes by many names. That's what you always said."

  "So I've known you all along, right from the beginning? That's why you came to me in the junkyard?"

  "Yes. I came here with you, to destroy the device. I'm your guard, your companion. But you became something different, something I couldn't understand. After you looked into the device, you changed. You weren't you. There was someone else there. I was frightened."

  "You've always been with me haven't you? I just can't remember why?"

  "Yes. You raised me from when I was a puppy."

  "I raised you? I wish I could remember."

  "Ever since I can remember, I've followed you."

  "But the other Maw, where are they from?"

  "I'd never seen another one of my kind. They were trapped in there, in Nua'lath's prison. I found them. They didn't like me at the start, but they became my friends, and I told them that if they helped me, if they helped you, you would help them escape that place for ever."

  "Do you have a name, other than DogThing?"

  "No. That's what you always called me."

  I stood up and looked around at the world we had returned to. Somehow I knew that although we had escaped back to where we had started, this place was no more my home than the prison we had left behind. It should be familiar, but my memories still haven't returned.

  We found a building not far down the street to camp up in for the night that still had windows, and a door that could be shut.

  Day 39

  I slept well for the first time in weeks, and woke up to a sound that in my memory, I'd never even heard before. I looked through the dirt-crusted window and saw that outside, Rudy and Adler were listening, smiling, so I opened the door and joined them.

  A grin crossed my face as I felt the warmth of the sun. High up on the top of the building across the street was a single nest of birds. I didn't know what sort of bird they were. One of them was perched on a ledge, just below the nest, singing.

  This is the last page in this journal. I've run out of space to write for now, until I find another book. I'm sure I will soon.

  So much still to discover and so many questions still unanswered, all locked away in my own mind.

  There is a whole new place here for me to explore. Even as I look round, there are things that are somehow familiar, yet my own mind has locked it all away. I should be afraid, like I was when I first came round in the dark, in The Corridor. But I'm not alone this time. I've got Rudy and Adler, and I've got DogThing. It's amazing how much fear is lessened when you have friends to look out for you.

  * * * * *

  Enjoy this book? Share the love, support independent writers, and make me your best friend forever by posting a quick review on Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk

  Want to be alerted when my next book is released? Just drop an e-mail to dod@glynnjames.co.uk and I'll keep you updated. Alternatively you can visit my website and sign up to my newsletter there.

  Cheers!

  Glynn

  Official Author's website

  http://www.glynnjames.co.uk

  * * * * *

  The Journal of James Halldon continues...

  Diary of the Displaced Book 2

  "The Broken Lands"

  After escaping from The Corridor with DogThing, Rudy and Adler, James discovers that the world awaiting him outside is just as harsh as the one he had left behind.

&n
bsp; The horrors that he had escaped from, that lurked in the darkness, would continue to haunt him in the bright sunlight of The Broken Lands.

  Will he find a way to recover his memories?

  Who was the creature that hunted him in The Corridor?

  Book 2 is available on Amazon.

  (Amazon.com Amazon.co.uk)

  Books by Glynn James

  Diary of the Displaced Series

  There is a place where nightmares are real. It is a dark and terrifying place, hidden from the world we know by borders that only the most unfortunate of souls will ever cross.

  James Halldon woke up in the dark, alone, without any food or water, without a clue where he was, and with no memory of where he came from.

  It only got stranger.

  Diary of the Displaced - Book 1

  "The Journal of James Halldon"

  (Amazon.com Amazon.co.uk)

  Diary of the Displaced - Book 2

  "The Broken Lands"

  (Amazon.com Amazon.co.uk)

  Diary of the Displaced - Book 3

  "The Ways"

  (Amazon.com Amazon.co.uk)

  Other Displaced Books

  The Memoirs of Reginald Weldon

  (Amazon.com Amazon.co.uk)

  There is an old man sitting in a bed on Angel ward, telling stories.

  He says he has to tell someone, because he is dying.

  He says he doesn't care if you believe the tales are true or not, because he is not sure that half of them ever happened at all.

  Reg Weldon claims that he has seen things that would make your skin crawl.

  He claims a lot of things...

  The Last to Fall

  (Amazon.com Amazon.co.uk)

  In 1926 Joseph Dean was just getting ready to hang himself when the man named Joshua stepped into his cafe and changed his life.

  He made Joe an offer - one that would mean travelling through the door to another world to find something that had been lost for nearly two hundred years.

  Joe would discover a lot more than that in the years that followed.

  The Last to Fall is a short novel, and the first in a series following Joseph Dean's travels.

  Whispers (Short Stories)

  (Amazon.com Amazon.co.uk)

  A companion book to Diary of the Displaced - a collection of Dark Fantasy and Horror Short stories.

  Arisen Series

  A world fallen - under a plague of seven billion walking dead.

  A tiny island nation - the last refuge of the living.

  One team - of the world's most elite special operators.

  The dead, these heroes, humanity's last hope, all have...

  Arisen, Book One - Fortress Britain

  (Amazon.com Amazon.co.uk)

  Arisen, Book Two - Mogadishu of the Dead

  (Amazon.com Amazon.co.uk)

  Arisen, Book Three – Three Parts Dead

  (Amazon.com Amazon.co.uk)

  License Notes

  First published 2011 by Glynn James

  Copyright © Glynn James

  The right of Glynn James to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any other means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the authors. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  EARTHFALL

  Stephen Knight

  Copyright © 2013 by Stephen Knight

  Kindle Edition

  For Russ Knight, The Weird Beard

  “The Savior of Dallas Radio”

  May 3, 1932 – October 12, 2012

  I miss you, Dad.

  The woman’s face is still mostly smooth. The only signs of her true age are an array of laugh lines that crinkle whenever she smiles, which she does quite a bit, finding something humorous in almost every situation. Her hair is a tawny blond, its rich color diminished somewhat by the encroaching grays, the ones she’s just not vain enough to try to hide behind the quick fixes of bottled hair products. The woman—and more importantly, the man who adores her—knows that youth and vitality are more about what’s on the inside than what’s on the outside. The interior is what’s important, and only a precious few intimates get to see that. The exterior? Hell, everyone else on the planet can see that, free of charge.

  The girls look like both of them, a mix of her fair skin and honey-colored hair, but with his eyes and nose. He thinks the nose looks much better on them than on him. It confers an impression of quiet, regal strength that makes him wonder how they’ll fare in the coming years when boys begin to circle around them. Would they take the males on head-to-head as he would, or would they instead use the mother’s good nature and occasional guile? He finds he almost can’t wait to find out, but he knows these things will happen sooner than he’ll want. It’s not going to be easy watching them winnow away the list of suitors until they find the right ones. And when that happens, they won’t be his little girls any longer.

  He pulls open the screen door on the small house they leased on the plains of Kansas, where the land is flat and seems to go on forever, broken only occasionally by trees or telephone poles that stand a silent vigil in the heat of the midday sun. From somewhere in the humid, sticky distance, a crow caws, and he feels a momentary portent of dread flutter across his heart. But why? The day is perfect, the weather calm, and his family waits for him only a few steps away in the small kitchen. He enters the room, and the girls shriek with delight as they leap toward him with no hesitation, even though he’s been gone for so many years of their lives that he sometimes feels he barely knows them. His wife’s smile is broad and welcoming, and her dark eyes twinkle as she turns from the kitchen counter, forgetting about the lunch she had been about to serve.

  “Well, it’s about time, stranger!” she says, laughing, her voice bright and clear.

  Behind him, the crow caws again.

  He awoke to the total darkness that could be found only beneath the surface of the earth. He lay in his rack and listened to the sounds of the base: the gentle whisper of climate-controlled air moving through the ductwork, the muted sounds of equipment operating, the occasional footfalls in the corridor outside his quarters as someone walked past. The clock on the nightstand read 0246. He wasn’t officially on duty for over five hours, but he knew he wouldn’t be sleeping much more.

  The dream. Always the dream.

  Sometimes when he awoke, he was filled with an overwhelming despair that made him contemplate suicide. So easy, so amazingly easy, to end it. The varieties of method to his self-inflicted demise were endless. Gunshot. Overdose. Hanging. Slashing his wrists and bleeding out in the shower. Or simply accessing one of the emergency exits, where he could climb up to the surface and let God do His work as he walked back to the house.

  Other times, he awoke clear-headed and mostly free of the numbing despair. But the sad loneliness was always there, followed by the shame that he had failed to execute the one mission that mattered most. That failure left him an empty shell most days, making him into little more than a ghost that haunted the base. The vitality, the zest for life, the need to serve and carry out his sworn duties … all fell by the wayside, washed out of him like the rays of the sun could diminish the colors of an old photograph.

  Why, he always asked himself as he lay alone in the darkness in small, cramped quarters. Why them? Why not me?

  The base had no answer.

  1

  The wasteland was as dry and
barren as the surface of the moon. Over the course of decades, the topsoil had been bleached by the sun’s searing rays, the soil converted to chalky dust. No vegetation remained, for no life could exist in a land where the earth and air had been poisoned by nuclear weapons. Sandy ridges and wind-carved rock stood mute sentinel to the passage of time. Despite the fact the land was completely lifeless, the casual observer—had there been one—might still have considered the wasteland austerely beautiful.

  Hidden beneath a pulsating brown-black mass, a vast cloud stalked across the forbidding wasteland like some hungry beast stirring after a long hibernation, the horizon but a memory. Tens of miles across, the ferocious sandstorm grew larger by the second, illuminated by sporadic flashes of lightning. Riding the stiff breeze, the storm’s top rose almost seventy thousand feet into the dry air, which no longer enjoyed the benefit of an ozone layer to strip away harmful radioactive particles emitted by the distant sun. The storm surged forward at more than sixty miles per hour, devouring the land before it, ravaging the wasteland even further with cyclonic winds full of debris that could strip a man’s flesh from his bones in minutes.

  Despite the hostile environment, the powerful storm, and the radiation—both man-made and heaven-sent—there was life.

  A gigantic, eight-wheeled, all-terrain vehicle bolted across the gently rolling landscape, trailing a rooster-tail of dust. While the vehicle raced away from the storm, it became briefly airborne as it crested a small ridge before it slammed back to the parched earth, rocking on its heavy-duty suspension. The rig’s turbine engines roared as they propelled Self-Contained Exploration Vehicle 4 along at almost sixty miles an hour. It wasn’t fast enough. The monstrous storm continued to close, and the gap between its amorphous leading edge and the dirty vehicle slowly narrowed.

  Strapped into the driver’s seat, Captain Mike Andrews kept his eyes rooted on the desert landscape outside the thick viewports. His left hand kept the rig’s control column pushed fully forward, and the system’s drive-by-wire technology translated the action into full power to the rig’s large, knobbed tires. The ride was far from comfortable, of course. Even though the SCEV had been designed to withstand harsh punishment in the field for months at a time, there was a limit to what suspension technology could dampen. Hurtling along at old highway speeds across broken terrain was one of the things it couldn’t handle.