by M. R. Forbes
There was also garbage piled in the corner of the space, a lot of garbage, suggesting the Scrappers had been here for some time. He smelled cooked flesh and recognized the bones of both trife and humans among the debris, bits of meat still clinging to them. Four Scrappers were standing at a table nearby, staring at something on top of it.
“It’s about time for Pig to check in, isn’t it?” one of them said.
“Shut your mouth,” another one said. “Do you want it to hear us?”
The first man didn’t respond.
There were dozens of Scrappers up here, but Hayden noticed they were all still and mostly silent, having stopped whatever they were doing while the earth rumbled around them. They looked over when the lift stopped with a clang, the cage rattling open to allow him out. He made eye contact with one of the men at the table.
He expected the man might shout or raise an alarm. He didn’t. He stared at Hayden, a measure of disbelief gaining his face. He tapped the man next to him on the shoulder. He looked up and saw Hayden, too.
And then the lift doors were open. Hayden kicked the sides of the horse, and it continued its run, slowing slightly when the earth shook again, hard enough that it almost slipped.
He started through the space. The other Scrappers saw him, and they pulled their weapons but didn’t fire. They looked concerned. Afraid.
“Hayden!”
The voice shocked him. He turned his head to the right, just in time to see a hand close over Natalia’s mouth. They were standing next to one of the vehicles, and the door was open.
He kicked the horse on one side, hoping it would go the way he wanted. His heart was racing faster. She wasn’t long gone. She was still here. She was still alive!
The horse kept going straight, heading for an open door at the end of the large building, where a light was filtering in along with dust from the shaking.
“I need to go that way,” Hayden said, trying to decide how to grab the reins without dropping his gun. He kicked the horse harder on the right side, over and over again.
It finally decided to turn, slowing almost to a stop as it did. He was facing the vehicle. Facing the man holding Natalia. He was tall and lanky, dressed in a long white coat and a wide-brimmed white hat that cast a deep shadow across his face.
Hayden raised the laser pistol, aiming it at the man. He had Natalia in front of him. She was trying to escape his grasp, squirming in his strong grip. Hayden couldn’t get a clear shot. He couldn’t risk hitting her.
The man pulled her back and into the vehicle without a word, both of them vanishing inside. There was nothing Hayden could do to stop the abduction.
The vehicle powered on with a soft hum, and then it shot forward, heading toward the opening.
The Scrappers were closing in on him; guns exchanged for spears. They still didn’t say a word, remaining silent as they approached. Even the craft Natalia was being taken in was almost silent.
He aimed the pistol at the closest Scrapper. He didn’t go for the kill, instead shooting the man in the leg.
The man started to scream in pain. The noise echoed in the large room and seemed to panic the other Scrappers. One of them stabbed him in the chest with the spear to shut him up.
Hayden fired the laser pistol into the Scrappers, not even trying to aim. The invisible bolts lashed into them, finding flesh and burning it, causing them to cry out.
The ground shook harder.
A loud crack of thunder echoed in the building as the first of the Scrappers gave up on silence in an effort to stop him. The bullet must have come to close to the horse, because it screamed and turned, bolting toward the door. If Hayden hadn’t been holding its flanks to hard with his legs, it would have thrown him off. As it was, he was jerked back hard, and he dropped his pistol, grabbing the horn with his hand and holding on as they galloped toward the exit, following the vehicle that had stolen Natalia away.
“No guns, damn it,” someone shouted behind him.
He looked back in time to see the top corner of the building peel away, the Scrappers all turning toward it in fear.
What the hell was going on?
Then the horse cleared the building. He was outside, truly outside, for the first time in his life. He immediately felt the heat of the sun and the dry air that surrounded him. They were surrounded by ridges and hills, rocky cliffs and crags. Everything was painted in brown and gold. A worn path spread out ahead of him, the dirt still unsettled where the vehicle had rolled over it. It went so far it vanished over the horizon.
He heard a deep groaning sound at his back. He craned his neck, careful to stay balanced on the horse as he risked a look behind them.
He nearly fell out of the saddle.
He had emerged from a building set against the base of a mountain. It was a rusted brown color that blended well with its surroundings, the exposed part was only a few hundred meters long, but he knew it extended further beneath the rock.
Standing beside it, directly over the collapsed portion of the hangar where the Pilgrim rested, was a creature that defied explanation or logic.
It was easily a hundred meters tall and humanoid in shape. It was naked and sexless, its flesh like a human’s, only covered in what appeared to be millions of small barbs, mottled and weathered in grays and browns and reds, pressed tight against its muscles and bone, which were long and lean. Its head was oversized and twisted, the eyes positioned asymmetrically, the ears tiny and flat, its nose the same. Its mouth was open, revealing multiple rows of teeth that reminded him of a xenotrife, and as he watched it lifted its hand to it, a giant, barbed hand that had impaled three of the Scrappers on it. It shook the hand, sending them into its mouth while its other hand worked to pull off another part of the roof.
A second one was arriving through the haze in the distance, almost as large and just as terrifying. The ground trembled with every step it took.
The creature hadn’t noticed the vehicle carrying Natalia, and it didn’t notice him. Or if it did, it didn’t think they were worth the effort when it had the Scrappers right in front of it. Hayden continued watching as it tore into the building, pulling frightened humans out and throwing them into its mouth. They tried shooting at it, but their weapons were worthless, the bullets barely able to dig into its flesh.
As he turned his head back to the road in front of them, he found he could barely breathe. The PASS had never mentioned anything like this. Neither had Jennifer. Did she know?
The nightmare of the alien invasion hadn’t faded over time.
Somehow, it had gotten worse.
51
The horse continued galloping for nearly thirty minutes before finally starting to slow. The monsters had faded out of sight by then, as had the building and the Pilgrim’s burial place. The vehicle carrying Natalia had fallen away into the horizon, the horse nowhere near able to match its speed.
Hayden slumped in the saddle. His face was wet with tears. His body screamed with every step. He was vaguely aware of the landscape changing around him, the dryness of the mountains slowly filling in with light vegetation.
His mind was everywhere and nowhere, focused and dispersed. Every time he tried to stay with one thought, it bounced to another, cycling through rounds of fear and desperation, pain and hope and sadness.
This was a world he didn’t know. A world he didn’t understand. Now that he was in it, he envied the citizens of Metro. He envied the life he had known. They were safe in their world, locked and hidden from the dangers that lurked outside. More than that, they were ignorant to the truth, blissfully unaware that the Pilgrim had never moved from the place where it had been built. They could hold onto the hope that one day they would arrive at their new world, to start a new life of peace and prosperity among the stars.
At least until the power went out. Since the ship’s thrusters had never been fired, that could be quite a long time.
He shifted his tongue in his mouth, finding the identification chip still lodged i
nside. He lifted his hand, spitting the small device out. It was covered in blood. He held it up, staring at it for a long moment before casually flicking it away.
Some things were better off forgotten.
As for him, it was too late to forget. Too real to ignore. He had no idea if he was going to survive the coming night, but if he did?
He was going to find her.
Nothing was going to stop him.
FORSAKEN IS COMING SOON!
Will Hayden and Natalia be reunited? Will Hayden even survive the night? Who is the man in white? And what the hell are those giant monsters? Get notified when it’s released.
Thank you for reading Forgotten!
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Cheers,
Michael.
Other Books By M.R Forbes
M.R. Forbes on Amazon
mrforbes.com/books
Starship Eternal (War Eternal)
mrforbes.com/starshipeternal
A lost starship...
A dire warning from futures past...
A desperate search for salvation…
Captain Mitchell “Ares” Williams is a Space Marine and the hero of the Battle for Liberty, whose Shot Heard ‘Round the Universe saved the planet from a nearly unstoppable war machine. He’s handsome, charismatic, and the perfect poster boy to help the military drive enlistment. Pulled from the war and thrown into the spotlight, he’s as efficient at charming the media and bedding beautiful celebrities as he was at shooting down enemy starfighters.
After an assassination attempt leaves Mitchell critically wounded, he begins to suffer from strange hallucinations that carry a chilling and oddly familiar warning:
They are coming. Find the Goliath or humankind will be destroyed.
Convinced that the visions are a side-effect of his injuries, he tries to ignore them, only to learn that he may not be as crazy as he thinks. The enemy is real and closer than he imagined, and they’ll do whatever it takes to prevent him from rediscovering the centuries lost starship.
Narrowly escaping capture, out of time and out of air, Mitchell lands at the mercy of the Riggers - a ragtag crew of former commandos who patrol the lawless outer reaches of the galaxy. Guided by a captain with a reputation for cold-blooded murder, they’re dangerous, immoral, and possibly insane.
They may also be humanity’s last hope for survival in a war that has raged beyond eternity.
(War Eternal is also available in a box set of the first three books here: mrforbes.com/wareternalbox)
Hell’s Rejects (Chaos of the Covenant)
mrforbes.com/hellsrejects
The most powerful starships ever constructed are gone. Thousands are dead. A fleet is in ruins. The attackers are unknown. The orders are clear: Recover the ships. Bury the bastards who stole them.
Lieutenant Abigail Cage never expected to find herself in Hell. As a Highly Specialized Operational Combatant, she was one of the most respected soldiers in the military. Now she's doing hard labor on the most miserable planet in the universe.
Not for long.
The Earth Republic is looking for the most dangerous individuals it can control. The best of the worst, and Abbey happens to be one of them. The deal is simple: Bring back the starships, earn your freedom. Try to run, you die. It's a suicide mission, but she has nothing to lose.
The only problem? There's a new threat in the galaxy. One with a power unlike anything anyone has ever seen. One that's been waiting for this moment for a very, very, long time. And they want Abbey, too.
Be careful what you wish for.
They say Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. They have no idea.
Man of War (Rebellion)
mrforbes.com/manofwar
In the year 2280, an alien fleet attacked the Earth.
Their weapons were unstoppable, their defenses unbreakable.
Our technology was inferior, our militaries overwhelmed.
Only one starship escaped before civilization fell.
Earth was lost.
It was never forgotten.
Fifty-two years have passed.
A message from home has been received.
The time to fight for what is ours has come.
Welcome to the rebellion.
Or maybe something completely different?
Dead of Night (Ghosts & Magic)
mrforbes.com/deadofnight
For Conor Night, the world’s only surviving necromancer, staying alive is an expensive proposition. So when the promise of a big payout for a small bit of thievery presents itself, Conor is all in. But nothing comes easy in the world of ghosts and magic, and it isn’t long before Conor is caught up in the machinations of the most powerful wizards on Earth and left with only two ways out:
Finish the job, or be finished himself.
Balance (The Divine)
mrforbes.com/balance
My name is Landon Hamilton. Once upon a time I was a twenty-three year old security guard, trying to regain my life after spending a year in prison for stealing people’s credit card numbers.
Now, I’m dead.
Okay, I was supposed to be dead. I got killed after all; but a funny thing happened after I had turned the mortal coil...
I met Dante Alighieri - yeah, that Dante. He told me I was special, a diuscrucis. That’s what they call a perfect balance of human, demon, and angel. Apparently, I’m the only one of my kind.
I also learned that there was a war raging on Earth between Heaven and Hell, and that I was the only one who could save the human race from annihilation. He asked me to help, and I was naive enough to agree.
Sounds crazy, I know, but he wished me luck and sent me back to the mortal world. Oh yeah, he also gave me instructions on how to use my Divine "magic” to bend the universe to my will. The problem is, a sexy vampire crushed them while I was crushing on her.
Now I have to somehow find my own way to stay alive in a world of angels, vampires, werewolves, and an assortment of other enemies that all want to kill me before I can mess up their plans for humanity’s future. If that isn’t enough, I also have to find the queen of all demons and recover the Holy Grail.
It’s not like it’s the end of the world if I fail.
Wait. It is.
Tears of Blood (Books 1-3)
mrforbes.com/tearsofblood
One thousand years ago, the world was broken and reborn beneath the boot of a nameless, ageless tyrant. He erased all history of the time before, enslaving the people and hunting those with the power to unseat him.
The power of magic.
Eryn is such a girl. Born with the Curse, she fights to control and conceal it to protect those she loves. But when the truth is revealed, and his soldiers come, she is forced away from her home and into the company of Silas, a deadly fugitive tormented by a fractured past.
Silas knows only that he is a murderer who once hunted the Cursed, and that he and his brothers butchered armies and innocents alike to keep the deep, dark secrets of the time before from ever coming to light.
Secrets which could save the world.
Or destroy it completely.
About the Author
M.R. Forbes is the creator of a growing catalog of science fiction and fantasy titles. He lives in the pacific northwest with his family, including a cat who thinks she's a dog, and a dog who thinks she's a cat. He eats too many donuts, and he's always happy to hear from readers.
To learn more about M.R. Forbes or just say hello:
Visit my website:
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