Homefront
Fall of Man, Book 2
Sam Sisavath
Homefront
Copyright © 2020 by Sam Sisavath
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Road to Babylon Media LLC
www.roadtobabylon.com
Edited by Jennifer Jensen, Wendy Chan & Grace Kastens
Cover Art by Creative Paramita
Contents
The Fall of Man Series
Also by Sam Sisavath
About Homefront
Day 1
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Day 2
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Day 3
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
The Fall Continues…
The Fall of Man Series
The Break
Homefront
Firebase (Late 2020)
Also by Sam Sisavath
The Purge of Babylon Post-Apocalyptic Series
The Purge of Babylon: A Novel of Survival
The Gates of Byzantium
The Stones of Angkor
The Walls of Lemuria Collection (Keo Prequel)
The Fires of Atlantis
The Ashes of Pompeii
The Isles of Elysium
The Spears of Laconia
The Horns of Avalon
The Bones of Valhalla
Mason’s War (A Purge of Babylon Story)
The Road to Babylon Post-Apocalyptic Series
Glory Box
Bombtrack
Rooster
Devil’s Haircut
Black
The Distance
Hollow
Daybreak
The Ranch
100 Deep
The After The Purge: Vendetta Trilogy
Requiem
Tokens
Remains
The After The Purge: AKA John Smith Series
Mist City
Run or Fight
Shoot Last
The Allie Krycek Vigilante Series
Hunter/Prey
Saint/Sinner
Finders/Keepers
Savior/Corruptor
The Red Sky Conspiracy Series
Most Wanted
The Devil You Know
About Homefront
THE END OF THE WORLD COMES HOME.
Emily Ristler is six weeks pregnant when the beginning of the end blows up her utopian dream. Moving out to a peaceful subdivision beyond the city limits should have put her beyond the reaches of life’s insanity; a waterfront paradise to start a family.
But with Cole caught in the heart of the city during a mysterious phenomenon that has devolved man into a primal predator with a single urge—Kill!—Emily must hold the home front until he returns.
She’s not alone, but there’s no one she can really count on except herself. It’s a good thing, then, that Emily is no ordinary suburban housewife.
The world is spinning out of control, and Man has turned against one other.
Then things start getting really bad.
It’s kill or be killed, and Emily has everything to live for.
Day 1
Chapter 1
Waking up to the hammering was the worst part. The ear-splitting noise of power tools cutting and tearing apart Cole’s study to turn it into the baby’s room was a close second. She was already groggy and annoyed, and that was even before she got a look at herself in the mirror.
She didn’t have much of a baby bump yet, but it was on its way. Most of her neighbors didn’t even know she was “preggers,” as Cole put it, though Don Taylor next door might have suspected something was up. Being the nice guy he was, Don hadn’t put his suspicions into words.
Nice guy, that Don.
Heck, most of her neighbors were nice people. The neighborhood was a far cry from the world she used to inhabit, where “niceness” just meant they wanted something from you.
…Or were about to shoot you in the back.
“I woke up, and you were gone this morning,” she said into the phone. “Did you get any sleep yesterday?”
“A few hours,” he said through the iPhone’s speaker.
A lie. It was in his tone, in the slight hesitation between A to few to hours. Most people would never have picked up on it—most people couldn’t, and didn’t have the skills to—but she could. It was what she used to do for a living, after all.
“What did we say about not lying to each other?” she asked.
“Too big of a day,” he said. “But it’s over now, and I’ll be home soon.”
“Any regrets?”
Emily picked up the phone from the nightstand and left the master bedroom. She walked past Greg and Barnes, the two workers in the process of demolishing Cole’s office next door, and thought about taking a moment to enjoy the Bear Lake view from the balcony of the other bedroom at the back of the house. She decided she needed to get away from the noise and jogged down the stairs to the first floor instead.
“Just that you’re not here with me to enjoy it,” Cole was saying through the phone.
She smiled, knowing what a big deal this was even if he was trying to downplay it for her benefit. Cole had built the company from nothing, turned it into something people were willing to pay a lot of money for, and to give it all away now…
No, it hadn’t been an easy decision for him. But that was her Cole. When he set his mind on something, nothing could stand in his way. Business, war, or love. There was a time when she didn’t think she could love someone like him. Boy, was she wrong. She wondered if he ever thought the same about her; not that either one of them ever broached the subject. It wasn’t that it was raw, but, well, sensitive, especially given their respective histories.
“Work and home should always be separated, sweetheart,” Emily said. “Besides, I’ll be here to enjoy it with you. Was there a party?”
Emily turned into the back hallway on the first floor. The LED lights along the walls flicked on automatically as she passed them. The steel pneumatic door at the very end opened for her with a whisper-soft click, the motion sensors above it blinking temporarily red as she approached.
The door closed behind her—just as whisper-soft as when it’d opened—and took away the hammering and pounding and everything else Greg and Barnes were doing above her. She had no idea two men could produce so much noise pollution until they showed up two days ago and began terrorizing her from morning to evening.
“There was,” Cole was saying on the phone.
“A good party?”
“It went…well.”
“Just well, or pretty well?”
“Pretty well.”<
br />
She smiled. “I know it wasn’t easy…”
“It was.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
He didn’t hesitate, and answered, “No, it wasn’t.”
More bright lights flicked on around her as she walked through the spacious backroom. Thick walls meant that instead of the loud pounding of Greg and Barnes at work she could only hear slight thudding noises, but even that was almost blunted by the soft tap-tap of her bare feet across the plush carpeting. The room wasn’t soundproof by any means, but it was a nice refuge, a world apart from the rest of the house. The child growing inside her belly might not be fully formed at six weeks, but she swore even he (or she) was equally annoyed.
“Thank you, sweetheart,” she said into the phone. “I know it wasn’t easy. You built that company from nothing, and to give it up now, just for me…”
She walked past shelves with boxes, the rarely-used pool table, and plastic crates filled with things Cole kept back here but that she had never bothered to look at. Her own things were all still bundled up in another storage closet.
“I’m not giving up anything,” Cole said. “I’m gaining more than I could ever have imagined.”
She plopped down on a loveseat in front of an old plasma TV hanging off brackets along the wall, then leaned back against the pillows with sham covers covered in floral embroidery. The TV was Cole’s, but the shams were hers. A reluctant compromise on his part—he thought sham pillows were “too girly” for his little man cave, and he was probably right.
“Be careful, mister. Talking like that will get you into my pants,” she said into the phone.
“Isn’t that how we got into trouble in the first place?”
Emily laughed. “Sounds about right. Where are you now?”
“Traffic. I’ll be home in a few hours.”
“Hurry home anyway. Even if you have to fly, get back here. I think this baby’s about to come out at any moment.”
“Listen to you, as if you were in your third trimester and not just six weeks preggers.”
“Yeah, well, tell this little monster that’s really cramping my style that. If he wasn’t the bundle of joy everyone keeps telling me he is, I would take it out on you for putting him inside me in the first place.”
“I seem to remember you had a say in that.”
“Meh. I was drunk on Pinot.”
“Excuses.”
“It’s a good excuse. That was one yummy Pinot.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know, you’re a Chianti man.” She paused for a moment. “How did Roger take it?”
“Fine.”
“Fine?”
“Fine.”
Another lie. One of those white lies that she knew he couldn’t help himself because he thought it would make her feel better.
“I don’t believe you,” she said.
He might have sighed. “He took it fine, babe.”
“Still don’t believe you.”
“He doesn’t have any choice.” Then, without missing a beat, “You’ll be a wonderful mother.”
“You’re changing the subject,” she said, smiling.
“Am I?”
“Yes. But I’ll let it slide this time.”
She reached down and rubbed her belly. There wasn’t much there, yet, but that wouldn’t last. She’d probably need a whole new wardrobe soon. Emily wasn’t exactly looking forward to that. Her style, such as it was, had always been casual. This little “bundle of joy” was going to change everything, all right.
“Now, get home already,” she said into the phone. “I need you here with me, mister.”
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“Nothing. I just need you here with me. Home. Where you belong.”
“ASAP.”
“You’re damn right, ASAP. Love you.”
“Love you more,” he said, and she pictured him trying not to make eye contact with his driver Donnie as he said those words. Donnie, who called everyone sir or ma’am, including her, whenever he picked Cole up in the mornings and dropped him off in the evenings.
Emily put the phone down on the chipped table. The furniture was another relic from their past, before the move to Bear Lake made everything official and very much real. Of course, the baby already made it real, but leaving a salary was, for her at least, the true confirmation that her life had moved onto a new phase.
She was a housewife now.
God, she was a housewife.
How did that happen? There were times she didn’t think days like this would ever happen. But they had. Not just for her, but Cole, too. They’d both made sacrifices to make it a reality. So many sacrifices…
I’m a housewife.
God help me, I’m officially a housewife now.
Emily settled into the loveseat. It was comfortable and cool with the air conditioning on. The HVAC ran pretty much nonstop because there were no windows back here. There was a very good reason Cole had locked himself in this backroom for the last week as he made preparations to sell the company. The blessed silence, while not total, was nonetheless a blessing.
She was spending more time back here, seeking solace from the construction out there. These days, she was tired a lot. She couldn’t imagine how much worse things were going to get as the weeks became months, and Cole’s offspring tried to kick his (or her) way out of her vagina.
Emily smiled.
Cole’s baby.
Two words she didn’t think she’d ever utter. When they’d first met guns and fists and blood had been involved. That was so long ago now, it seemed like another lifetime.
And maybe it was.
And maybe that was where it should stay.
Forever and ever, amen.
She had never fallen asleep in the middle of the afternoon before, but she was doing that a lot these days. She wanted to blame it on the baby, but it was probably the lack of activity. She just wasn’t as active as she used to be.
Emily woke up from the nap and yawned. It took her a few minutes to hunt down the remote—it was inside one of the table’s drawers. She turned on the TV, and as it powered up, went to the small fridge in the corner and fished out a bottle of protein drink. Red Bull crowded the shelves, and boxes of 5-Hour Energy took up space on top.
She absently channel surfed until she found one of the local news stations.
A man in his sixties with a shock of white hair, who had probably been reading headlines before she was born, was in mid-chat with his much younger female co-anchor. Something about an upcoming Renaissance festival. She had the sound muted but knew what they were talking about without the need for closed-captioning. She might have been retired, but Emily could still read lips as easily as most people breathed.
She stretched out on the sofa and sipped her bottle of protein milk while clicking through the channels. How many did they have? A hundred? Two hundred? Definitely in the three digits. Not that she was ever going to watch them all in this lifetime.
She kept the sound muted. It made everything more interesting anyway. The local channels were already midway through their afternoon broadcasts. Soon, the evening newscasts would begin. She flicked through sports channels, reality TV reruns, and the occasional original programming.
Something about a family of duck hunters, something else about what appeared to be swamp people, and there was an old woman who lived in a disgusting house all by herself. Hoarding-something. She spent twenty minutes watching the old lady hoarder, fascinated and disturbed at the same time.
Somehow, she ended back at the original channel. So maybe she didn’t have channels in the three digits after all. The distinguished anchorman was back, except this time there was something wrong with him.
No, not just him, but his much younger female co-anchor, too. They were staring at the camera. Just staring at the camera. Their faces were placid, emotionless.
Emily sat up straighter on the couch.
At first she though
t the TV had frozen, but that wasn’t the case because the news ticker at the bottom was still moving—a car accident on one of the highways, oil prices were going up again, and a home fire in the northwest side of town—and there was a pen on the desk, and it was wobbling slightly.
Emily thumbed the volume button, but there was no sound. Or, at least, nothing to indicate people talking on-camera.
She clicked to another channel.
A rerun of Family Ties.
Click.
A home shopping network, the woman on the screen holding a cheap-looking necklace. She was frozen in place and staring at the camera the way the newscasters had been on the other channel. Her mouth was slightly open, as if she was caught in mid-sentence. A ticker ran underneath the screen, boasting about an amazing sale, though you had to call in within the next five minutes to get it.
Click.
Sports channel. Two men in suits stared at nothing as scores ran underneath them. Someone was moving in the background, and Emily glimpsed figures trying to get the two men’s attention. Voices. Urgent whispers. The anchors were oblivious.
Click.
A woman wearing too much makeup stood awkwardly in front of a green screen showing the weather, looking off the screen at someone in the background. She looked worried and seemed like she wanted to run off but couldn’t. Emily had seen terrified faces before, and this was one of them. More voices in the background. Multiple people talking at once.
Fall of Man | Book 2 | Homefront Page 1
