Fallen Steel: Book 2 in the Thrilling Post-Apocalyptic Survival Series: (Heaven's Fist - Book 2) Read online

  FALLEN

  STEEL

  The Heaven’s Fist Series

  Book 2

  By

  Justin Bell

  Mike Kraus

  © 2018 Muonic Press Inc

  www.muonic.com

  www.JustinBellAuthor.com

  www.facebook.com/WolfsHeadPublishing

  www.MikeKrausBooks.com

  [email protected]

  www.facebook.com/MikeKrausBooks

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, without the permission in writing from the author.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Author’s Notes

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  Special Thanks

  Special thanks to my awesome beta team, without whom this book wouldn’t be nearly as great. Thank you to Al, Ashley, Caroline, Claudia, Glenda, James, Jonathan, Julie, Karen, Kelly, Laurel, Mark, Marlys, Mayer, Robin, Sarah, Scarlett and Shari!

  Heaven’s Fist Book 3

  Now Available!

  Chapter 1

  Now.

  Saturday, June 27th.

  Deserts of Arizona, United States of America.

  It was far too easy for her to forget what was going on in the world, especially when she couldn’t focus beyond the tight radius of twenty feet around her. At this point, her entire life was within arm’s reach. Anything and everything she’d cared about after three and a half decades were right there in front of her.

  Well, everything but one.

  The tsunami had loomed above her home for a fraction of a moment, a period of time less than infinitesimal in the grand scheme of things, then had slapped down its watery palm and smashed her entire life’s work. Her home leveled. Not just leveled, but pummeled, smashed, torn apart, and scattered throughout whatever remained of Camp Pendleton. Narrowly rescued by the strategic movements of the V-24 Osprey, she and her children were snagged from death’s door, then thrown right back toward it as the Osprey barreled downward, heading for the floor of the Arizona desert.

  She’d survived. Her kids had survived. They had their lives, the clothes on their backs and nothing else. But their lives would have to be enough, at least for now.

  Marilyn wished she could remain as positive about her husband’s life, about the father of her children, but his fate was currently unknown. At this point she had to keep the idea of his existence metaphysical; it was something that existed, though she wasn’t sure when or where. That was the only way she could cope.

  The desert was hot as could be expected, even hotter as she cradled her three-year-old daughter in the crook of one arm, walking step by anxious step. They’d landed in a particularly barren slab of desert in the southwest United States, and even if the Osprey hadn’t been destroyed by the impact with the ground, all communications systems were down and out thanks to the ongoing crisis. They were isolated and alone out here, with no way of knowing just how far the next town might be. Scott drifted to her left, her eldest child and first son, walking to match her pace, standing tall, acting as if he wasn’t stressed, shocked, and exhausted. Keeler was her younger son and he flanked to her right, mimicking the posture and emotion of his older brother. Vera, her daughter, pressed her cheek tight to her chest, breathing even, but ragged.

  At least they weren’t completely alone. A handful of United States Marines escorted them, the few who survived the Osprey crash. Three men and two women wearing camouflage BDUs, at least from the waist down, though they’d each taken off their vests and shirts and were carrying them in backpacks, leaving them in t-shirts or tank tops to avoid getting overheated in the desert. They’d all managed to salvage their weapons, and in spite of the dramatic loss of communications infrastructure, one of them carried some communications gear in the vain hope that perhaps something would turn this all around.

  Marilyn had little confidence in that happening.

  Using the back of her hand, she wiped moist sweat from her forehead and looked up into the sky which was shifting from blue to a gray-hued purple as the sun beat its hasty retreat down toward the horizon. Even against the canvas of the pale sky above, she could still see the faint remnants of vapor trails and other strange streaks and smears going from one end of the sky to the other, bracketed, parallel tracks of spent fuel and light, chasing whatever mysterious objects were currently screaming through orbit.

  Not for the first time she thought back to that sight outside the Osprey, when she’d been sent tumbling across the compartment, the sight of smashed and battered satellite screaming through the sky, missing them by only meters, slamming down into some hapless civilization below. How many of those were out there? Were their orbits also degrading? Would more objects be screaming through the air shortly? Perhaps while they were asleep, oblivious to what was happening above?

  She tried not to think about it. She begged herself not to think about it, not so much for herself, but for her children. The slightest thought of her precious three-year-old daughter going to bed, then never waking up again brought a cold dagger of intense fear to her heart. Marilyn squeezed harder, pulling her little one’s head tighter to her chest and shoulder. Vera sighed and whimpered softly.

  “You want me to take her, Mom?” Scott asked, looking over.

  Marilyn smiled wanly at him, but shook her head. “I’ve got her, buddy,” she said. Truth was, Marilyn wanted her hands on Vera at all times, even if she was getting heavy.

  Looking past Scott she saw the two female Marines chatting with each other, each one wearing gray tank tops, the hair on one of their heads bunched into a loose-fitting curly bun, the other slicked back to a narrow, tight ponytail. They talked without emotion, without gesturing, words simply coming like muscle memory without any knowledge of what they were supposed to say. On her other side, three men repeated the motion, each one of them carrying their M4 automatic rifles by their stocks, holding them lazily, not at the ready, perceiving the threat to be skyward, not walking the desert sands around them.

  Marilyn hoped they were right. Her instincts told her that while the bulk of the threat was in orbit, it wouldn’t take long for the world’s citizens to shift their perspectives, and once the world begins its steady slide down the back slope of its life, the men and women on that world start losing their sanity, and not bit by bit, but in bites. In car-sized chunks. If things didn’t turn around fast, life would only deteriorate more down on the surface, of that she was certain.

  For the past several years it had been steering that way already. Planetside resources were growing more expensive and sparse, the convergence of climate, overpopulation and resource acquisition troubles was becoming more pronounced and harder for the governments of the world to look past. Most of the world’s citizens could see the slow and steady downturn of not just the place they called home, but
of their own lives, too.

  Tempers had flared. Political unions had flourished, but only as a defensive measure against perceived threats. The world had become a metaphorical tinderbox.

  Marilyn felt certain whatever was going on up above them would be turning that tinderbox alight, into a roaring global sphere of raging flame.

  “Sun’s gonna set soon,” Sergeant Percy said in a low voice from her right side.

  Marilyn looked over toward him. “What’s the plan? Are we just going to camp out here in the dirt?”

  Percy narrowed his eyes toward the horizon. They could see the faint silhouette of rocks climbing up from the desert beyond, but not much in the way of buildings or civilization.

  “I’m not sure what other options we have,” Percy replied, his voice a little clipped and on the verge of irritance.

  Marilyn tried not to take it personally. As quickly as these men and women had acted to rescue her, they’d probably been in and around Camp Pendleton as well. Chances were they’d lost just as much as she had.

  Maybe more.

  “Do we have tents or sleeping bags or anything?” she asked as they walked, Sergeant Percy drifting closer. Perhaps sensing the frustration, one of the females from the other side, a lieutenant, Marilyn had noticed, started drifting over.

  “Everything okay?” she asked.

  “We’re good, L.T.,” Percy replied.

  “Lieutenant… ?” Marilyn said.

  “Drake. Sorry, ma’am, I’m Lieutenant Drake.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Marilyn said, nodding. “We were just discussing where we might be camping for the night.”

  Drake’s eyes darted to Vera, then back to her mother.

  “We’ll have to figure something out, yes,” Drake said. “We’re all pretty exhausted and night will be on us before we know it. We don’t have any tents or anything, we’ll be using jackets and whatever else we can dig up to stay warm. The desert gets chilly at night.”

  “What about… coyotes? Other animals?” Scott asked, and Drake turned toward him.

  “We’ll have rotating shifts. There are five Marines here, we can each take a sixty to ninety-minute rotation. One thing we have plenty of is guns and ammunition.”

  “I can pitch in,” Scott replied. “Go on watch, I mean. If you need an extra body.”

  Drake’s mouth shifted to a slight smile. “I appreciate that, young man.”

  The second female made her way over.

  “Private Juarez?” Drake asked. “Any thoughts?”

  Juarez gestured toward the rocks ahead. “Can we get there in a couple of hours? Might be some shelter there. You know, just in case?”

  “In case what?” Keeler asked from the other side of his mother.

  Juarez’s eyes shifted uneasily.

  “In case anything else falls from the sky,” Scott said in flat, plain English.

  Keeler’s eyes widened slightly as they walked, and he started to mouth a reply, but then pulled his lips closed and bent his head, progressing forward.

  “Honestly, that might be a stretch for a couple of hours,” Sergeant Percy said, looking out toward the ridge of mountains. “Maybe if we double-timed it, but…” he glanced back at Marilyn, who still held the child in her arms.

  “Am I slowing you down, Sergeant?” she asked.

  “Sure as heck slowing me down,” Private Juarez said in a quiet, joking voice. “But it’s all good. Nothing wrong with taking things a little slow.”

  “I think that stuff in orbit is moving fast enough for all of us,” Private Jenkins said, coming over himself. “I’m okay with going slow and easy.”

  “I think we all are,” Sergeant Percy said, “but we’ve got injured back at the Osprey who probably aren’t so okay with it, you know what I’m saying? We gotta think of some of these other people, too.”

  “Feel free to double time it without us,” Marilyn hissed. “If my three-year-old is truly that much of an inconvenience.”

  “Ma’am,” Sergeant Percy started.

  “Sergeant, just drop it,” Drake said, lifting her hand. “We’re all on the same side here. We all want what’s best for the people at the Osprey. We just need to do the best we can. I understand the situation causes some undue stress, but we need to look past that.”

  “Understood,” Percy said, nodding curtly and walking a slight distance away. He glared back at them, narrowing his eyes in a way that showed he didn’t understand nearly as much as he claimed he did.

  “Sorry about that, L.T.,” Private Jenkins said. “He lost his home back at Pendleton. He’s pretty sure he lost his two dogs, too. Percy’s in a bad place.”

  “I understand,” Drake replied. She glanced up at the sky, squinting against the setting sun and the light smears of color traveling over their heads, mixing in and out of cloud cover.

  “Private, we’re all in a bad place. Every single one of us.”

  ***

  Now.

  Monday, June 29th.

  In the desert outside Tehran.

  It was early in the morning at K-North, the Forward Operating Base for the Highlanders, a special subset of the 1st Light Armored Reconnaissance Division and Master Sergeant Marcus Gregory was anxious and uneasy. He suspected that anxious and uneasy would likely be his default state for the next little while, at least until he made it back to the states and verified that his family was okay.

  He’d tried for several hours the previous day to reach them through the global communications access he had, and nothing had worked. It seemed as if whatever was falling from the sky, whatever was the cause of the mysterious streaks in the sky, had managed to knock out all communications, local and long distance.

  Not good.

  Tehran’s persistent darkness had not been good either, the normal ambient light of the big city just a continuous flat patch of black throughout the previous early morning and late night hours. Finally, just a few hours ago, he’d buckled under the pressure of the intelligence agents on site and had sent an advanced recon team out into the desert to see if they could get eyes on the largest city in Iran. As he stood out in front of K-North, pacing uneasily, he realized the risks of sending Marines out into the depths of darkness without a radio or way to get in touch with him. True, they’d brought a few flare guns, which might be all they needed in the wide, barren desert, but that didn’t make him feel any better.

  “You going to stand out here until they get back?” Agent Ashland approached from his left, looking out in the same direction.

  “I never should have listened to you,” Marcus replied, his voice chilled with sharp ice.

  “What else were we going to do, just sit here in the dark and wait for something to happen?”

  “Weiling and Francesco volunteered, but those other kids… we had two dozen Marines here that weren’t even part of the Highlanders, they’re not really qualified for advanced recon. I’m sending them into hostile territory with no way to communicate back to base. Some might call that a suicide mission.”

  Agent Ashland looked up to the sky. “Based on what’s going on up there, I think standing out in the open could be qualified as a suicide mission.”

  Marcus followed his gaze. Against the brightening canvas of the early morning sky, the endless streaks cutting slices through the flat colors remained. A constant, persistent bracket of hurtling debris. How long had it been? Even twenty-four hours yet?

  “Relations in the Middle East are bad enough,” Marcus replied finally. “The constant battle for religious superiority mixed with conflict over depleted resources has turned this entire region into a leaking propane tank. One single spark and it lights up.”

  “And you think those things up there,” Ashland said, jerking his head toward the sky, “those are a match?”

  Marcus shook his head. “They’re a blasted flamethrower,” he said. “Mix conflict over religion with a bonafide end of the world scenario… not a good combination. And I just threw ten kids into the wind without an
y hope of calling for backup. In reality we should all be just backing out of here slowly and quietly, not trying to stir more stuff up.”

  “Back out to where?” Ashland asked. “You felt that last night. Something hit to the south of us, something big. Comms went down right afterwards, so we don’t know what it was, but I’m betting whatever might be making those streaks in the sky is also crashing down to Earth. It could be raining death down here any moment.”

  “You’re a shining star of positive outlook,” Marcus replied.

  Ashland shrugged. “What can I say? Reality sucks.”

  The two men stood there in silence for a few moments, looking out into the lifting light.

  “Want more good news?” Marcus asked.

  “Why not?”

  “We were due for a fuel resupply today. That’s probably not happening.”

  “Which means what? We’re outta gas?”

  Marcus shook his head. “Nah, not yet. But we will be. And if we decide to kick off the generators that will only speed up that process.”

  Agent Ashland looked back behind him, narrowing his eyes at the various lights stationed around the K-North base. “Power’s out?” he asked.

  “At the moment,” Marcus replied. “K-North does have some solar converters, which buys us a little bit of extra sun power, but they need regular maintenance from skilled technicians, and we know nothing about them. We have a little reserve power, though if we run on solar all of the time, we’ll be down and out in a couple of days. Enough fuel in the generators for maybe another day on top of that. In less than a week, we’ll be stuck out here in the arid desert with no food, no fuel, and no chance.”

  “News just keeps getting better.”

  “How are Reckard and Xavier handling it?”

  “They’ll be fine. We may be intel punks, but we’ve spent our share of time in the untamed wilds of the Middle East. We’re resources for you, Sergeant, not obstacles.”