Molterpocalypse (The Molting Book 3)

by C A Gleason

  Doreen turned her gaze from the weapon to the window once again. Aside from an ever-present threat of potentially skulking Molters, there had been strange people around recently and with bad intentions. They had been dealt with, and she would do the same thing again if it came to that, but living that way was far from ideal and from who they were as people. There must be a safer place, she thought. Doreen had traveled all over Europe throughout her life, but because all communications were down—hopefully only for a while longer—she had no idea where a safer place might possibly be.

  Even though she had confidence in Jonah’s ability to figure something out, she doubted he would know where to go next right away. Since their arrival at the cabin, they had been essentially hiding. She didn’t want their next path to be risky, to spend all their time and energy on a move only for the next place to somehow be more dangerous. For some reason, and not just because of her discussions with Jonah, the kind that were worst-case scenario, she thought she was going to have to make a major decision about that soon, except without Jonah’s guidance.

  It was a terrible feeling, one she never thought would actually come to fruition, but if Jonah didn’t return, she would indeed have to do what she had always dreaded: move on but without him. As of right now, she wasn’t sure what she would do; however, she did feel that when there was uncertainty, it was often best to do nothing.

  So that’s what she was doing presently and why she treated the night almost as if it were like any other, for Heike. Except she had only slept a few hours and planned on staying awake—Heike had already fallen asleep—and would stay vigilant, as was typically Jonah’s role. If it came down to trouble, she had quite the arsenal to choose from, especially in the cellar. Jonah had seen to that. His vigilance wasn’t an end-of-the-world hoarder’s paranoia either. Jonah had actually thought the cabin might be under attack one day, so he ensured they would be ready. For anything.

  Still, she suspected having all those guns brought out the warrior in Jonah, too, the part of him who wasn’t the man she knew well, but the well-hidden fragment that made it possible for him to do what had to be done sometimes, to kill anything or anyone without hesitation. If Jonah could return to them, if it were in his power, she knew he would. Nothing could prevent him from rejoining them unless . . .

  No, she thought. Not possible. Not her Jonah. He was meant to live, to remain her man, continue to be her soon-to-be husband, to be Heike’s stepfather, and also a father to the children they would one day have together. But Doreen also knew Jonah was meant to be a weapon against the Molters, one of those people you hear about doing incredible things during a war and are glad that they were alive during the time that they lived for the side they were fighting on. Doreen had no doubt Jonah was currently fighting in one way or another. When she stood, she woke Heike.

  “What’s the matter?” Heike said.

  “Nothing,” Doreen said.

  “Where are you going?”

  In the most reassuring tone Doreen could muster, she said, “Everything’s fine.”

  “Don’t leave me alone.”

  “This is nothing new, Heike. I occasionally go out during nighttime just to make sure everything’s all right and safe.”

  “Not usually. Only recently.”

  “I know, but . . . I don’t want anything to happen.”

  “And I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

  “Nothing will. I won’t be long.”

  “But it’s night.”

  “I’ll be armed.”

  “But Jonah isn’t here—”

  “I was a soldier too. Remember?”

  “Not really.”

  “Well, you remember me telling you about it, right?”

  “Some things.”

  “OK. I’m just going to go out for a few minutes to make sure everything is safe, and then I’ll return.”

  “What if it isn’t safe?”

  “Then I’ll shoot until it is. Stay in bed.”

  Doreen took the rifle, eyed the rocket launcher Jonah kept near the coat rack as she rounded the corner, and carefully opened the door. She stepped out onto the porch to look out at the night and pulled the door shut behind her, making sure there were no threats about.

  Squinting, she directed herself at where the sounds were coming from. She couldn’t see anything. She could only hear thumps and could barely feel the explosions reverberate through the ground. For some reason, she had been more sensitive to the noises while in bed. Maybe that was because she was lying down and closer to the ground?

  There were other booming sounds in the distance too. Duller, quieter, no doubt smaller weapon systems than the ones she could hear well. Not well enough to imagine what they were. The heavy artillery hadn’t been fired during previous nights, not continuously used, but they definitely were being fired tonight.

  When Doreen brought the scope of the rifle up, she noticed very dim flashes very far in the distance, behind the mountains to the northeast. If she were to guess, the battle was within fifty klicks, give or take. She realized that no matter what was going on out there, it was out of her control.

  It made her feel helpless, but she couldn’t do anything about it, so it was best to do nothing at all except keep weapons nearby and ready to use and take care of Heike and herself as normally as possible. The best way to do that was to do her best to get some sleep for she could not foresee the dangers of tomorrow, but she wouldn’t sleep long because she needed to be ready for them, whatever they may be.

  CHAPTER 16

  There were more cells down the firing line. They all looked portable, like the type used to transport prisoners in the olden days before the Molting. The movement of the occupants within gave away whether they were still human. Both an incapacitated person and a Molter attracted endless creatures. Gunmen, some of them snipers from atop the towers—and mostly out of Jonah’s view—killed as quickly as they could pull triggers. Although the Draw had worked in its own barbaric sort of way, it seemed Jonah was witnessing its end.

  Unpredictable flashes peppered the darkness in the distance right before blasts were audible. Mines had obviously been set. Based on all the enemies, Jonah would bet they’d been buried recently. At first the flash-blasts were sporadic, but then the mines exploded in the distance like a mile-long string of firecrackers.

  The artillery impacts, however, were so close to the proximity of the firing line that not only could the explosions be heard, but their impacts could also be felt through the ground. Though danger close, the devastating munitions fired by the howitzers were keeping most of the creatures away long enough so that the battle could continue without declaring a clear victor. There was still some time on this planet for human beings to fight back.

  The steady small weapons fire was mini-detonations, like tiny condensed lightning strikes dispersing erratically, and each round fired downrange echoed, making the firing line a continuous belch of war. There was something about a weapon being fired at night that made it seem more powerful, regardless of the caliber. One reason was because they were all shooting in the same direction.

  Jonah’s position allowed such a point of view. He could see fire exploding out of the barrels like a lightning-quick punch but only for a fraction of a second. The automatic rifles were particularly impressive, as their tongues of flame licked out unbroken until the firer released the trigger to reload or allowed the barrel to cool. It wasn’t as if Jonah were safely behind the firing line; he was beyond it, on display, as bait. Thankfully there were some shooters with skill pulling triggers. Any creature that got remotely near him was put down.

  The enemies were a relentless undulating mass that almost looked human upon first glance, but their hunched posture, desperate movements, and frighteningly quick rush gave hint of the predators they actually were. What was especially scary was that the Molters moved together, as if they were one mind, like a mob, except this one had claws and teeth and a mind that was practically alien and drive
n only to drain prey of blood. Or simply kill. People were a food source for Molters, a possible vessel for them to make more of their kind, but also were their enemy. None of that bode well for the human race.

  With the powerful weapon systems being fired so surgically, Jonah was now positive some of the men and women responsible were prior service, but from which country he could not know. Any of them would at least hear Jonah out for a few minutes if they understood his background. If they spoke English. Jonah bet if he were somehow able to walk the firing line and talk to everyone, he would meet people from all over the world. It was an example of individuals banding together for the sake of their own species.

  Except maybe that consideration was only something that would have happened before the Molting. Almost everyone on the planet had no choice but to evolve as fast as the Molters had. Nothing was the same now. It would be wise for Jonah to bury his faith in humanity somewhere deep inside himself and save it for those he was sure about. There were only two people on the entire planet he could trust and also knew were still alive: Doreen and Heike.

  Except judgment was something he needed to implement in the future. That was a choice for when he was remotely in a position of power, when there was meaning to his own life, and a frame of mind in which he gave up and settled in wasn’t going to help him at the moment. He had to fight however he possibly could to get back to his people.

  “Hey!” Jonah yelled at the top of his lungs to no one in particular, impossibly doing his best to do so over the war happening all around him. “I can handle any weapon!”

  It was probably pointless to shout and obvious why the armed men and women were preoccupied. It looked as though they were keeping as many Molters at bay as had been in his nightmares. They covered the hills completely, and there was movement by them even farther in the distance, noticeable with each explosive flash, for what looked like miles. Even though the continuance of gunfire and explosions eclipsed the desperation in his voice, Jonah wasn’t about to give up.

  Jonah didn’t want to admit it, and also didn’t want Perry to be right about what he’d said to him, about how the Draw had kept the cabin safer, but if it weren’t for Frox—Archard before him—and his community and what they were doing, Jonah realized that the cabin might have been overrun a long time ago. If there was a battle even remotely close to one this epic happening, then it was a certainty.

  It didn’t mean Jonah and his people would have been killed. Jonah would have insisted they relocate long before being overwhelmed, but the sanctity of their life over the last few years would have required some major—and frantically decided—updates. That would have put them on the road a lot sooner and where he had no control until a destination was discovered and decided on. Then he would have gone about fortifying that place as he’d done at the cabin.

  If another Molter was put inside the cell with him, he was sure it wouldn’t be wearing a straitjacket, and if one got in on its own, it would easily end his life. It didn’t matter if he was in a cell; those things could dig. Jonah wouldn’t be able to fight back if one got in with him, not without a weapon or two. Molters were as strong as apes. Maybe even stronger. If Jonah went hand to hand with one that was active and hunting and ready to feed and within attacking range, then he was dead.

  Bare fists against claws and teeth and without weapons. Jonah was as vulnerable as anybody else. Infectors could be scurrying anywhere but were so far unseen. That was why he kept an eye on anything that moved. He might not have any weapons, but he could crush an Infector under his booted heel. At least they’d allowed him to keep his clothes on.

  The trenches beyond had been meant as an initial volley of fired bullets but the strategy concocted was already being wasted. Mostly because no one had set foot in them. Probably because Frox had realized how many Molters were on the move. The man-made channels were crowded with creatures, as teeming as the forever of death bringers beyond, a rushing torrent of moving predators. More and more Molters just kept appearing.

  “Give me a mission!” Jonah yelled again.

  No one even considered his demand. They were far too concerned with saving their compatriots or their own necks. But the gunfire that fulfilled the purpose of the Draw, that was inadvertently protecting him and others, was starting to break apart. Bullets weren’t as continuous. It was as if those put in charge of carrying out their particular sector of fire were less and less concerned with Molters advancing on Jonah’s cell, or they were already dead, drained by singles who had snuck up on them.

  The vastness of the bloodthirsty creatures jutted closer as quickly as an out-of-control wildfire. It slowly dawned on Jonah that another dawn revealing a sunrise was something he would never see again. This was it. There was no way out. No possible way he could escape. No way he could think of, and he’d plotted endlessly.

  It was as if Jonah no longer existed. He was only background now. Just someone else doing their best to stay alive as long as possible, however long that might be. Breathing, but only for the moment. Because he was inside a cell, Jonah meant nothing.

  But not to Doreen and Heike, the only two people he cared about on this entire planet. “Let me fight!”

  And he would, even if it meant he had to end up back in here. Anything but just waiting to die without being able to partake in the battle before him.

  They were almost on him. This wasn’t how his life was supposed to end, but Jonah was going to die on this field in this cell in the worst way he could imagine, and no one in the vicinity gave a damn. Doreen would have no idea what happened to him, and in the deepest part of his mind, he feared the same would happen to them while they waited for him to return. They would die, too, and no one would know except the man or men or creatures who took their lives.

  As death approached, one thought that soothed him was that at least he had been able to take out hundreds of the enemy, maybe even thousands, but unfortunately his death would be by one of the very creatures he had killed so many of.

  Though he would never get the M-K tattoo on his skin, his inner self—who he’d sent out on so many missions that he wouldn’t be able to recall all that he’d done accurately enough to count—was sleeved with it. Just at the moment he understood his fate—not only understood but had accepted it—something peculiar happened.

  Jonah heard a familiar sound, almost as if what was before him transformed into some ancient battlefield, and the leader was spurring his men to fight while riding on horseback. Although it was similar to the most primitive battles that had ever taken place—man against beast—the leader’s chariot was not a horse but a vehicle. And what was particularly interesting was that the weapon attached at the gunner’s hatch wasn’t firing at the onslaught of creatures. It was shooting in the opposite direction of all the others, directly at the gunmen on the firing line.

  Frox’s armed men and women were in an uproar—for good reason—and then Jonah glimpsed the silhouette of Frox himself pointing and shouting with the unmistakable large frame of Perry alongside him. Frox, Perry, and others quickly filled a cab and truck bed, and that truck raced across the terrain toward the newcomer.

  From the attacking—and surely traitorous—vehicle, someone jumped out of one of the four doors and went for one of the cells. He hurriedly set loose a tall man inside. The tall man and his accomplice both climbed into awaiting open doors and then sped off again.

  Well, that’s promising, Jonah thought.

  Whoever was driving the rebel, speeding, up-armored UV was flooring it on their own or being ordered to do so. Its make was very familiar, being the very kind that Jonah had driven during the war and what he drove to initially escape from Oberstein years later.

  As the familiar vehicle sped closer, Jonah noticed that the tall man—the one freed from the cell in the distance—climbed up and replaced whoever had been standing in the gunner’s hatch. He aimed a squad automatic rifle, an SAR, the devastating weapon system Jonah had learned to use while in the military and had u
sed to kill the Behemoth at Oberstein. He held the weapon with menace.

  As the vehicle quickly made a stop near Jonah’s cell—for a second, he thought it was going to ram it—he hopped to the side. Peering up at the man in the gunner’s hatch, Jonah thought he looked like someone who’d been in a fistfight but lost.

  Then Jonah realized he knew him. “Henry!”

  CHAPTER 17

  Behind them, the report of sporadic gunfire was occasionally eclipsed by artillery launching from howitzers and mortar bombs exploding in the distance. Seemed most of it was now being used to protect beyond Frox’s whereabouts, which in turn protected the group of men involved in the pending gunfight. The onslaught from the firing line deterred Molters from heading toward them, like damming a river. The creatures may not have been as smart as whoever they were made from, but they were smart enough to evade fiery explosions.

  Hopefully this will only be an argument, Jonah thought.

  Reducing the creatures to blood and gory bits, the munitions also lit up the night with each explosion, giving brief glimpses of the thousands that spilled toward them like an ocean filled with claws and teeth instead of water. Wave after endless wave of them stretched as far as the land itself as if every person left on earth had molted, become one of those bloodthirsty creatures, and was advancing.

  Even with everything that was going on around him—the armed men and the mass of creatures that would soon be at his back—Henry had looked as if he was going to be ill when he realized it was Jonah in the cell.

  When the pickup truck stopped, and Frox, Perry, and others got out armed, Henry turned his attention toward them. “This is over!” he thundered, the anger in his voice nearly eclipsing the nearby booms.

  Frox’s underlings aimed their guns at Henry, who pointed an angry finger at the cell where Jonah was. The silence between the opposing sides was interrupted by the weapons at the firing line and the steady roar of snarls and howls from the army of creatures. Jonah had so many questions for Henry. He was so relieved to see him. Henry was still alive even when Jonah’s gut had told him differently.