“Your weapons, please,” the woman said, “and slowly please; my fingers are cold and they tend to shiver. We don’t want that shivering turning into a shooting, do we?”
Stryker and Nathan carefully handed their guns over. The woman relaxed a little. The ski-masked man didn’t.
“We know you,” the woman said to Stryker. “You’re one of those who live in the Masonic Temple.”
“Yeah? What of it?” Stryker replied, his voice holding remarkably strong under the circumstances.
“I just want you to know that we know where you live.”
“So?”
“So that we can find you and kill you, if you don’t do exactly what we say.”
The words hung frozen in the air like icicles. “What deal do you want to make?” Nathan asked.
The woman lowered her pistol, but her friend with the shotgun leveled his up. “A sensible man. I like sensible men. What’s in the crate?”
“None of your business,” Stryker spat.
Nathan turned to Stryker and made a face. “Let’s at least hear them out.”
The ski-masked woman nodded. “What he said, Stry.”
“Don’t make the situation worse. While we’re talking, we’re breathing,” Nathan added.
Stryker’s skin was reddening and the fingers of his gloved hands spasmed. He seemed far from convinced that this was an acceptable trade-off. “I know exactly what you people are. I’ve been in this city long enough to recognize vermin when I see them!”
“Rude,” the woman commented, her voice dripping with sarcasm, but Nathan thought he could detect a smile in the stretched fabric of the ski mask.
Stryker’s eyes burned into Nathan. “They’re parasites, Nate, pure and simple. If we give into them now, then they’ll keep coming back for more.”
“Give in? What are you taking about?”
The woman raised her hand. “If I might contribute?”
Stryker near boiled over, but Nathan nodded even as he realized how stupid he looked, giving her permission to speak while his hands were raised and there was a shotgun pointing at his chest.
“You can put your hands down.”
Nathan and Stryker complied.
“That’s better,” the woman said. “Now, shall we all go inside? There’s no fire, but it is out of the wind.”
The man covered them and the woman led the way towards the tenement, up the steps, through warped green wooden doors, and into a grimly damp entrance hall. The building had been built in the early 20th century, and in that time it might have looked opulent and stately, with checkerboard tiled floor, well-carved moldings, and an intricate plaster rose surrounding the central, dead light in the ceiling.
The place now stank of damp, though, and the tiles were cracked, the paint peeling, with indecipherable graffiti covering the walls. If the tenement hadn’t been abandoned, Nathan was sure the resident it would have held now wouldn’t have been from the same social group as those it had been built for. It had the feel now of a sunken luxury liner which lay broken at the bottom of the Atlantic.
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Available November 8 2018
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BLURB
Three months after life as she knows it was decimated, Megan Wolford has only one goal: protect her daughter, Caitlin, at any cost. When a mysterious illness strikes Caitlin down, Megan is forced to forage for medical supplies at a remote lodge. The last thing she wants is help from her fellow survivors when so many in her life have let her down—but soon she'll find herself with no other option.
Ex-Navy SEAL Wyatt Morris is doing everything he can to hold his family together after the tragic death of his prepper Dad, so when Megan enters their lands, he is mistrustful at first despite feeling drawn to her. He won't turn away an ill child though—no matter how deadly the world has become. The arrival of another stranger named Kyle soon gives them all a new reason to be suspicious. Wyatt knows he’ll have to forge alliances in order to keep his family safe, but trusting the wrong person could be a deadly mistake.
When Megan and Wyatt discover her daughter’s illness may be linked to Kyle’s arrival, it sets off a race to discover the truth before it’s too late to save Caitlin—and the rest of the Morris clan. Can they work together for survival . . . and something more?
Grab your copy of Dark Retreat (EMP Lodge Book One) from www.GraceHamiltonBooks.com
EXCERPT
Chapter One
Megan Wolford stumbled over a rock and nearly dropped her daughter before she quickly regained her footing. The sight of a log cabin through the trees had given her a boost of adrenaline and she found she was practically running through the damp forest despite her heavy burden.
She’d fallen several times, bruising her knees and twisting her ankle. Her arms had deep cuts from tree branches that showed no mercy. There wasn’t exactly a trail to follow, which meant she was cutting through the heart of the forest and its unforgiving terrain. She was making her own way, as usual, which always seemed to be far harder than it had to be.
“Caitlin, hold on, baby. Hold on,” she whispered to the lifeless seven-year-old in her arms.
Megan was doing her best not to panic, but Caitlin had collapsed a couple miles back and she’d been carrying the sleeping child ever since. Carrying her where she didn’t know, but now that she saw what appeared to be a hunting lodge of some sort in front of her, she had a destination in mind. She had a goal.
It gave her something to focus on other than the agony that was tearing through her entire body. Another tree branch slapped her in the face, making her wince in pain. Her physical discomfort was nothing compared to the emotional anguish she felt at the thought of losing her daughter. Caitlin was the only thing she’d left in this world. She couldn’t lose her.
Her arms were burning and her lungs felt like they would collapse, but nothing would stop her from getting her daughter to what she hoped would be medicine. Without it, Megan knew her only child would die.
She didn’t have a clue what had made her so sick, but Caitlin was gravely ill. In the past twenty-four hours, her daughter went from bubbly and energetic to lethargic and weak. Megan had left their most recent camp in the hopes of finding something to help her. They’d walked through one small town yesterday and found nothing. Every single place she checked had been emptied already forcing them to travel for miles.
She was afraid to walk through the city streets overrun with looters. Megan knew it wasn’t safe for her and definitely not for Caitlin. It wasn’t as if she could leave her daughter alone while she went on a scavenging mission. She had to do it with Caitlin or not all. Common sense told her she didn’t have the strength to fight off the hundreds and thousands of other people vying for the same basic supplies. Instead, she’d decided to head out of town in the hopes of finding clinics, stores, and homes in more rural areas that weren’t as likely to be quite so dangerous.
Megan took long strides, slightly shifting her daughter, as she kept moving forward. Her sweaty hands were making it difficult for her to hold on to Caitlin. Gripping her hands together under her daughter’s backside, Megan pressed on.
She tried to protect her daughter’s head as best she could from the branches and sharp twigs that seemed to be jumping out and stabbing the intruders in the forest. Another branch hooked her sleeve, scratching painfully at the skin beneath and she could feel blood trickling down her arm, towards her fingers. She wanted to scream at the trees and order them to stop their assault.
Her back was killing her with the awkward posture of leaning back to keep her daughter secured against her chest. The weight of her pack helped pull her backwards, but also put more strain on her hips. She was grateful to have had an old hiking pack in the closet. The internal frame made it easier for Megan to carry it and allowed her to carry a lot more without much additional strain. She didn’t know if she would have been able to carry her daughter and her supplies without it. Right now,
she was grateful the pushy salesman had persuaded her to spend the extra money on the pack.
Regardless, everything hurt. She could feel dried blood on her bare arms pulling the fine hairs whenever Caitlin’s body rubbed against the cuts, further adding to the misery. Each twist tore open the dried wounds, causing them to start bleeding again.
She’d fallen several times, catching herself with one arm and holding her daughter with the other. She could tell her left knee was swollen. It was stiff and difficult to bend. It didn’t matter. Her daughter’s life was all that mattered.
“A few more steps,” Megan chanted more for her own benefit than her unconscious daughter.
She was thankful the weather had been mild. It was early spring in the northwest, but there were still little piles of snow in the shady areas. Climbing steadily uphill, her overused muscles screamed at her to take a break but she knew if she did, she wouldn’t be able to get back up again. The cabin ahead was growing steadily larger as her strides ate up the distance. Because of the harsh winter storms, mountain residents were prepared to outlast storms for weeks at a time, which meant they would have supplies, including medicine.
If it’d been more than the mild seventy degrees that it currently was, Megan wasn’t sure she could’ve walked as far as she did. As it was, she was sweating and the growing fatigue was partly dehydration. Her daughter’s feverish body was like carrying a giant lava rock. In addition to finding shelter and medicine, they needed water. The little water she had wouldn’t last long; especially if Caitlin woke and needed it.
She’d eaten the last of the food she’d managed to scrounge up at an abandoned home earlier that morning. Megan was now running on empty and knew her collapse would mean her daughter’s life. Push, Megan. Push.
When she got within three hundred feet of the cabin, she stopped to survey the property, staying partially hidden in the surrounding trees. If someone was here, it could go either way. Unfortunately, the new world was not kind. You didn’t simply knock on a stranger’s door to beg for food and water.
Not now.
Not after the EMP had plunged the world into the biggest blackout, humankind had ever experienced.
At least those who’d grown up with electricity. Pioneers would do okay in this world, but for those who’d never learned how to work with their hands or hunt for food, this was a form of population control that no one wanted to face. Those who didn’t know how to perform some of the most basic skills were suffering.
Megan had seen more dead in the past few weeks than the living. After the first dozen or so, she thought she’d grow immune to the horror of death and could simply move quickly past but the smell reminded her of what it meant to be alive as her gag reflex kicked in.
This new world meant that only the fittest, strongest and most prepared would survive.
Grab your copy of Dark Retreat (EMP Lodge Book One) from www.GraceHamiltonBooks.com
Freezing Point (After the Shift Book 1) Page 26
