Nightwalker Read online

  Nightwalker

  Nightwalker™ Book One

  Frank Roderus

  Craig Martelle

  Nightwalker (this book) is a work of fiction.

  All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.

  Nightwalker (and what happens within / characters / situations / worlds) are Copyright (c) 2015 by Frank Roderus (as revised)

  Cover by Ryan Schwarz - thecoverdesigner.com

  Cover copyright © LMBPN Publishing

  Nightwalker is published by LMBPN Publishing

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of LMBPN Publishing. Published under license from the Roderus Estate.

  First US edition, April 2019

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  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

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  About the Author

  Notes - Craig Martelle

  Books by Frank Roderus

  Books by Craig MartelleBooks by Craig Martelle

  Other books from LMBPN Publishing

  Chapter One

  It was time to leave the sanctuary. He had been trying to think back, trying to judge just how long he had been underground. He didn’t know. A dozen months? More? Perhaps a good many months. That long since he breathed fresh air, that long since he saw the sun, that long since the war. The war. He thought of it that way, as a war although all he saw were the intense bursts of light and the ugly, pulsing, many colored mushroom clouds grey and yellow and purple, huge cancerous tumors, he shuddered remembering, as an extravagant light display. They might even have been pretty if it were not the end of civilization as he knew it. With that in mind they were not so attractive.

  Spokane, Seattle, San Francisco, he was pretty sure those were gone. Certainly there were fireballs in the direction of each. He himself was far enough away, driving an isolated state highway, far enough that he was in no immediate danger. He had time to park the truck, time to climb to the cave opening he remembered seeing on half a dozen runs up this valley in years past, even time enough to open the trailer and drag out several pallets of freeze-dried foods and protein bars. He supposed that was a godsend. He had been hauling a load of Lamb Pins premium quality foods for delivery to an outdoors and health food store in Boise.

  Those foods and a trickle of water from the back of the mine kept him alive for all this time. He carried as many cases of the stuff to the tunnel mouth as he could take. They weren’t heavy, just bulky. He built a makeshift travois to make the movement quicker to carry more. He unloaded half the trailer before he could carry no more. Along with a few things he had with him in the cab, he then moved everything into the farthest reaches of the mine and stayed there, cold but safe from the airborne radiation that would inevitably have followed the nukes.

  He thought he remembered reading that you were supposed to get undercover and stay there if you hoped to avoid radiation. Some accounts had it that you should stay underground for several years. By that time it would be safe to come out again or it never would be.

  James Wolfe had no way to tell if it was safe now, if he was underground long enough. What he did know for certain was that he was out of food and could not remain where he was very much longer. He had to come out now whether he wanted to or not.

  He stood, picked up the nylon gym bag that held his worldly possessions and began feeling his way along the wall. When he first came into the tunnel it held the big six volt flashlight that he always carried in the toolbox of his rig. He had done his best to conserve the power but the battery died in the first week. Since then—a year, two years or longer, he was not sure—he was in a deep and complete darkness so black that it was literally true he could not see his hand in front of his face. He tried it several times but there was just no light for the eyes to gather.

  At first the intense darkness was frightening but that was a long time ago now. It no longer bothered him. He had adjusted to it. Now darkness seemed normal. Wolfe smiled. Darkness might be normal now but that did not keep him from looking forward to sunlight and moving air. The smell of pine sap, a mountain meadow, salt air coming off the ocean. He remembered those. A pang of anxiety made his chest tighten. What he truly wanted to smell was the salt air coming in off the Gulf of Mexico.

  His home if he still had one was far, far away. The job had taken him on the road to Boise but home was Bradenton on the gulf coast of Florida. Home and family. He believed they were still there. Believed they were still alive. He had to believe that or else there would be no point in walking out of this mine and trying to go on. He simply had to believe that.

  Wolfe steeled himself and continued making his way along the cold stone walls of the mine as the amount of light showing ahead increased, very bright, very far away. Wolfe hadn’t realized just how deep the tunnel ran into the mountain but for all this time he hadn’t seen so much as a hint of sunlight nor any other kind of light since the flashlight battery died. It pleased and excited him to see it now and he increased his pace toward the mine entrance. His excitement ended quickly and he stumbled to a halt. The light was too bright, painfully bright, so bright it felt like daggers being driven into his eyes. He blinked, tears rolling down his cheeks, and tried to shield his eyes in the crook of his arm. It did no good. The pain was too intense, the sunlight too strong.

  Wolfe leaned against the cold rock and slumped to sit on the floor. He would just have to wait for his eyes to adjust. After all, it had been months, perhaps years since he last saw any sort of light. His eyes must’ve dilated beyond all reason. He could wait a little longer. Except his eyes did not readjust. The sunlight remained painfully strong.

  He rummaged in his gym bag and pulled out a spare shirt and draped that over his head to put a halt to the discomfort. He waited until the sun had set outside before he was able to venture out into the world once again but even so it did not seem dark. There was no moon but the starlight was enough to make everything look as bright as day to him. The only difference was that the shadows were a little deeper, a little darker than he remembered they had been on a sunny day.

  The air felt and smelled as magnificent as he hoped to find but apart from that nothing was quite as he expected it to be. The slope of the mountainside was the same as he remembered but where there had been forest now there was only devastation. He was standing in the middle of the world’s biggest blowdown; trees tumbled like pick-up sticks, all of them falling toward the southeast.

  While he was deep in the tunnel they must have hit Boise too so perhaps this explosion represented a target later on the list. Certainly this one had been closer than the others. He had been fairly far out from Boise when he took refuge in the mine. He tried to remember how far but could not. Still, Bois
e was virtually due west from the last point of reference he could recall and these trees were felled by a fierce wind from the northwest; however far, the blast and the windstorm that followed were terrible in its disruptive power. And if the wind was that bad how bad must the radiation have been, perhaps still was.

  Wolfe shuddered. Not that there was anything he could do about it. He had to come outside. He had to find a way to go home. He had little expectation that his home still existed, but hoped that his family had made it. They had to even if his home had not.

  After all it was only a few miles across open water from MacDill Air Force Base where the US military’s Central Command was headquartered. Surely there would’ve been a few nukes consigned to MacDill, probably several. His hope was that if they, whoever they were—he had no idea who it was who bombed them—if they missed Boise then please God perhaps they missed MacDill too. Perhaps Bradenton, perhaps his home and his loved ones were unharmed.

  He made his way carefully through the fallen trees which was made at least a little easier by the fact that all had fallen in one direction. He was able to zigzag down the mountain side to the valley floor and the highway. It was hard for him to see what became of his tractor. The truck had been sent rolling off the hill. It struck hard on the side of the hood and buckled the right front wheel, snapped the axle and crushed the cab.

  Wolfe shook his head and managed a small bitter smile. He still owed more than $18,000 on the rugged old Kenworth. He wondered what the finance company intended to do about that now. He walked around to the back of the trailer. He did not know what prompted him to close it before he went up to the mine that last time. The doors were standing open now and there was no sign of the crates of dehydrated foods that had remained there after he exhausted himself carrying much of the load up the hillside. That was all right. Someone had been able to benefit from them. Wolfe could not begrudge them that. He hoped the meals helped them and whoever it was who had come fleeing down this road. He hoped they were able to survive the winds and the radiation.

  He made his way past some debris to the front of the rig. He left his sunglasses in the cab when he ran and he was going to need those until his eyes adjusted to the light again.

  The driver side of the tractor was not damaged. It rested at an odd angle but there was no reason the door should not open. Probably the sunglasses were still there and the insulated mug that he liked for his coffee. After all this time the thought of coffee hot and steaming was enough to make his mouth water. More than chicken fried steak or a juicy hamburger right now it was coffee that made his empty stomach rumble.

  Wolfe approached the step and reached for the grab bar then drew back, his brows knitting in puzzled concern. He could feel a sort of tingling sensation coming off the metal, almost like the steel was humming but very faintly. He reached for the bar again but stopped short of touching it. There was something not right about the feeling he was getting. It felt dangerous, somehow wrong as if his flesh was giving him a warning. He took a step back toward the trailer and reached out as if to place his palm on the frame. Again his hand tingled except it was not exactly a tingle that he felt, more like a buzzing noise that he could not hear. Hearing was not the right word for it. It was a sensation he never had before, much like he was hearing something through his skin not his ears. The feeling was strange and he did not like it. He pulled his hand back. Radiation perhaps, he thought. You could not see, hear or taste radiation, but that seemed the logical conclusion. Radiation affected metal more than anything else and his rig had been sitting out here exposed to the effects of the Boise explosion and perhaps that of other bombs as well. It could well have been exposed enough that it was radioactive now.

  Wolfe shuddered. Contact with contaminated metal could kill you. He was certain he had heard that or read it somewhere. Funny but he no longer had any interest in climbing up into the cabin to retrieve his sunglasses or the mug. He turned away wondering what had become of other people who looted his cargo in the aftermath of the bombs. Come to think of it, he wondered what had become of everyone who passed this way while he was safe inside the mine tunnel. Had the truck’s supplies saved their lives, or only prolonged their misery? A frightening thought occurred to him. Surely he could not be the last living human. He shuddered again. That of course would be too much. He would find others and he would find his way back home to Lurleen and Jojo laughing, shrieking and running through the house.

  Wolfe wiped impatiently at his eyes. He must have gotten some dust in them. He stood and took a long breath. Home was that way. He started walking.

  Chapter Two

  He slowed then came to a complete stop, head lifted, nostrils flaring. It took a moment to identify the scent. There was smoke somewhere not far ahead. There was fire and fire almost surely meant the presence of people for he had seen no indication of recent storms. Wolfe was anxious to see people again, to talk, to find out just what it was that happened. He did not even know who the enemy was or who had won the nuclear war.

  Wolfe cleared his throat. It had been all those months, however many he still did not know since he had not spoken to anyone. For a moment he was afraid he would not be able to speak. Experimentally and feeling self-conscious about it he muttered a few soft hellos into the night. His throat was raw and his voice gravelly but at least he could form the words and get them out. His fears were silly. He knew that but felt them anyway. He wondered what he would look like, coming at them out of the night like this. He was what his grandfather used to call middling tall, about 5 foot 11 and lean enough after all this time on short rations. But then he had always been in good shape. It was nothing he worked at, just genetics he supposed.

  He had dark hair, long now after all this time without being cut. He wore jeans, a plaid shirt and hiking boots, comfortable things he had worn when he was pushing his rig. They were rumpled but he had tried to keep them clean, scrubbing them as best he could in the little stream that collected at the back of the mine and ran through to the outside. He hoped he could put up a presentable appearance for these people whoever they were.

  Wolfe’s pace quickened and then he hurried down the cluttered highway, dodging tree trunks and the occasional abandoned vehicle toward the source of smoke there on his left and partway up a hillside.

  He could see a faint glow of dying coals. He had been walking for several hours and hadn’t started until well after nightfall so by now it was sometime in the middle of the night. He hoped the people who built the fire were still there. Hoped, too, that they would not mind being awakened by a stranger at this hour. That was a chance he had to take although he should be conscious about how he approached these people. He thought he should look the camp over before he walked in and announced himself. Just in case.

  Wolfe hiked up the hillside, avoiding the tangle of fallen trees and loose rock. It still amazed him that he could see so clearly. Even now with no moon at all he could see as easily as if it were day.

  The glowing fire ring was situated beside a small spring that seeped out of the hillside thirty feet or so short of the camp. Wolfe stood behind some slender saplings while he looked the camp over.

  Two people were stretched out on the ground wrapped snug in sleeping bags. A third, a woman, sat leaning up against the trunk of what must’ve been a fairly good-sized tree, although now all that was left of it was a 6-inch-thick stub that extended for five feet off the ground. Everything above that was gone. Wolfe could not imagine the destructive power that swept through here but seeing that effect this far away from the center of the blast made him ache for those who would have been caught by it. Yet there were some who had survived. He himself was proof enough of that and now these three.

  He was about to speak when the woman beside the tree trunk shifted. She moved her shoulders and tried to find a more comfortable position. It was only then that he saw she was not leaning against the tree by choice; she was tied in place there, her arms drawn behind her and her wrists secured on the oth
er side of the trunk.

  There was pain in her expression and cold, sorrowful hopelessness. Wolfe frowned. He supposed there might be a perfectly good reason why the two who were sleeping held the woman captive but instead of speaking out and waking the two he slipped silently forward.

  The woman was staring in his direction but did not seem to see him. That puzzled him for a moment until he remembered that it was dark. He could see perfectly well but she could not.

  Wolfe moved stealthily forward until he was standing beside the nearer of the pair of sleepers. It was a man wearing a full, very dark beard. A shotgun lay on the ground beside him. Wolfe reached for the gun, not wanting it but not wanting the man to come awake shooting either. He intended only to set it aside where the man could not reach it when he woke up. Wolfe stopped short of touching the weapon though he felt the same buzzy tingle coming off the shotgun that he first felt back at his rig. He was reasonably certain the tingle was caused by radiation. The gun was dangerously hot.

  He could not understand why in the world this man would choose to carry the gun when it could sicken and even kill him. Wolfe quickly redirected his motion and took hold of the shotgun by the wooden stock to pick it up and very quickly got rid of it, pitching it down the far side of a couple of juniper. Even though he knew it was irrational he felt like washing his hands after touching the contaminated gun. Only the metal parts would actually be dangerous but still Wolfe stepped around the bearded man and approached the other, He heard a gasp of alarm from the woman. She must have seen him now but she said nothing,