Scorched Earth: Book 2 in the Thrilling Post-Apocalyptic Survival Series: (Zero Hour - Book 2) Read online

  SCORCHED

  EARTH

  The Zero Hour 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

  Chapter 10

  Author’s Notes

  Stay updated on Mike’s books by signing up for the Mike Kraus Reading List.

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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!

  Zero Hour Book 3

  Now Available!

  Chapter 1

  The city was on fire, but it wasn’t even the flames that frightened Luis Gomez. In fact, the raging inferno that used to be Boston was about the least frightening thing going through his head right now. From morning until night, the news covered the disasters. Plane crashes, buildings collapsing downtown, a train derailment, even a reported helicopter crash.

  He’d seen that coverage. It had looked like a Blackhawk to him, even though the picture was some kind of grainy cellphone footage that someone managed to punch through the spotty networks that were barely allowing text messages.

  He’d seen Blackhawks before. He’d done his four years with the Army, joining up right out of high school, telling himself he was going to use the G.I. Bill to go to college. But when he finished his first tour, he couldn’t even fathom going to school. He needed to decompress, he needed some space and he needed anything but more structure. Instead, he found the opposite of structure.

  Now, his freedom was paralyzing.

  Gomez curved left down the alley, walking briskly through the night, the normal darkness pressed aside by the sporadic ripples of fresh flames.

  Luis liked his freedom. Going from friend to friend or sleeping at his mom’s place, not being shackled to a rent or mortgage gave him the lack of structure he so craved after living from one order to the next throughout four years.

  He didn’t need his own place; he had plenty of options.

  Until he didn’t.

  Until his mom started coughing her lungs out, and his friends stopped answering their phones.

  Now he had nowhere to go, and everywhere he turned there was sickness and death. All of those talking heads on the TV were focused on the flashy explosions, the spiraling airplanes, collapsing buildings, all of the sparkly collateral damage, the kind of stuff that drives ratings. Nobody was looking at the fact that underneath the crushed metal, ruptured fuel tanks, and clouds of black smoke, an entire city was sick and dying.

  He’d never seen so many dead bodies, even when he was in Afghanistan. It was better now, the farther from the city center he got, but throughout downtown they were everywhere. At one point he counted eight bodies in a single pile, a bunch of lifeless sacks of bone and muscle stacked on each other like cord wood.

  Where was he even going? The alleys were little more than a laboratory maze, and he was a mouse, a hapless rodent searching for cheese that wasn’t there. He’d get a sniff of it and turn right, get to a branch, then twist left, half walking/half jogging between building after building. Luis had lived in Boston his whole life, but every street was blurring together and he was no longer certain where one began and another ended. The night shifted to blurs of grays and browns, brick and concrete streaking on each side of his wild vision, a tunnel of urban sprawl. He didn’t know where to go, but he knew he had to get there quickly, before whatever illness this was became too big to escape.

  Up ahead he could see the flickering glow of yet more fires, the endless fires, even as the night wore on and the air grew cold, the fires persisted, angry, hot demons, determined to make their presence known.

  Halting his progress for a moment, he pressed his back against the hard, unforgiving brick wall, glancing back the way he came to make sure there was nobody coming. Of course there was nobody coming. It wasn’t like the victims were chasing him; they were clutching at their throats, they were coughing, they were gagging, and they were dying. Nothing fancy. Just a few spasms of desperation, then the fight was over.

  His fight was not over. Over the rippling pavement he could feel the heat of the fire, something big and combustive was burning very close by, a blackened husk curtained by orange fire. Every once in a while a loud pop barked into the air, flinging sparks into twisting dances against the dark sky. His eyes stung with the heat of it, and his skin felt the warmth, almost as if he were standing right next to it. Leaning out away from the wall, he narrowed his eyes toward the source of the flame and saw the huddled shadow of prone figures. Just more dead bodies, more rumpled, lifeless forms.

  He flashed back to his mother, seeing her thrashing on the living room floor, her back arching as her strained fingers clawed narrow trenches of flesh at her throat. Luis had never been especially close to either of his parents, and had mostly joined the Army to get away from their old-school culture that drove him so crazy, but that last image of his mother in his mind, that’s not how he had wanted to remember her.

  Like it or not, that was how he would.

  Looking closer, he noticed that these particular bodies were different. In the low, warbling light of the crackling blaze behind them, he could make out several scattered corpses, arms splayed, but he couldn’t see any facial details. The bodies that were lying face up were wearing masks of some kind, and nearly all of them were clad in strange yellow uniforms.

  Luis looked behind himself again, then drew in a breath and stepped forward toward the mouth of the alley, toward the open vacant lot bracketed by several buildings, the entire area illuminated by the strange broken shape that was alight.

  More corpses were scattered on the far side of the lot, these bodies strangely interspersed with what looked like motorcycles that were tipped over, many of them with puckered holes and twisted metal wounds. Now that he was looking more closely, he saw bullet holes everywhere, the brick buildings and dirt ground pock-marked with them. As he approached, he could see the weapons that most likely made the holes as well, military style M4 carbines, weapons he was intimately familiar with. Walking among the yellow bodies, he drew down into a low crouch and lifted one of the bodies slightly, the strange fabric material of the uniform moving with his motion more like a rain poncho than fatigue cloth. He saw no patches or insignias, no squad markings of any kind, yet the team was so obviously mi
litary. From this distance, he could tell that the burning shape was a shattered helicopter, the shape of the body looked like the Blackhawk he’d heard flying about. Between that transport, the M4’s, and the gear, this was certainly a military unit.

  So why were they unmarked?

  And why were they in containment suits?

  The reality settled upon him slowly, but specifically, a picture forming in his mind. Even in his short four-year stint in Afghanistan, Luis had run across enough spooks and special forces to know that when a true black operations team was in action, they typically wore non-descript uniforms and rarely had patches identifying their squad. Heck, they rarely even wore the American flag. Doing so would compromise the ability of their superiors to claim plausible deniability.

  Is that what these guys were? Black ops? And if so, what kind of operation were they running on American soil, here in Boston?

  A black ops team wearing hazardous materials gear in the middle of a city filled with people sick and dying? The coincidences seemed too large to be coincidences.

  He heard a shuffle from the opposite side of the lot. A brief shift in movement, dirt scuffing, metal scraping on hard rock.

  “Who’s there?” he asked, whirling on his feet. He had no flashlight, though he didn’t need it, the lot was so well lit by fire. He saw nothing. No one. Just tipped motorcycles and lifeless bodies.

  “Is someone over there?” he asked again.

  There was no response other than the crackling of the flame.

  Walking slowly, Luis leaned partially forward, looking toward where the sound came from, and he saw what looked like a Honda Gold Wing motorcycle on its side, pushed away, a path of shorn dirt and rocks dug free. Had someone been under there?

  “Hello?” Luis asked, drawing closer to the fallen Gold Wing. “Do you need help?”

  “Oh, no, young man,” a voice hissed from the shadows of the building to his right. Luis spun. “I’m afraid you’re the one that will need some help.”

  Luis’s mouth parted, about to form a scream, but Javitz was fast, much faster than the man expected, and he swarmed over him, wrapping his thick, muscular arm around Luis’s neck. Javitz torqued at the waist, pulling Luis off his feet, rolling him over his hip and slamming him down onto the ground. He twisted and clenched his firm, bulging bicep around Luis’ neck, the struggling Adam’s apple digging into the hard flesh. It took a few moments for Luis to stop struggling, but his straining neck soon relaxed, his chest ceased its heaving, and the man let him drop, his head smacking into the dirt and remaining there.

  Javitz stood, brushing the dirt from his clothes with two palms, walking back over to his Honda motorcycle, his face a firm, sculpted rock of anger.

  “Killed my friends,” he sneered. “Some of my friends. But I have more. Lots more.” He bent over the Honda and lifted, pulling it upright on its wheels. He winced as he lifted the bike, then looked at his shoulder, noticing for the first time that a bullet had torn a divot of flesh and muscle from the rigid curve of it. It struck no bone, he could see that right off, but the pain was intense, and the act of picking up the bike brought fresh blood coursing from the jagged tear of flesh.

  He shook it off and swung a massive leg over the curved shape of the motorcycle seat, lowered himself down upon it and stomped with one hard boot, cranking his hands back. The Gold Wing growled to life, a two-wheeled beast, roaring its anger. He gunned the engine twice and fired the motorcycle off into the darkness, the thick tires screaming just next to Luis Gomez, lying lifeless on the hard ground.

  ***

  Knees bent and using his outstretched palm as a makeshift machete, Javier Soltado pushed his way through the thick brush, moving purposefully off the dirt path into the trees. The air was noticeably cooler the farther they got away from the city, no persistent heat baking from the scorched concrete or active fires to leave that constant, permanent, rippling in the air. Javier decided he liked it out here, out near the wilderness, especially after living in Boston his entire life.

  Some people put up walls against nature, preferring the urban comfort of being penned in by surrounding buildings, but the more time he spent outside of the throng of steel and glass, the more comfortable he was. Trees gave way, he could move through them and around them. He could step on grass or over it, slide through even the tightest bunches of flowers. They weren’t walls holding him inside, they were doors, presenting an entrance from one place to another.

  Even out here in rural Massachusetts, there was still the smell. He couldn’t feel the heat as badly way out here, but that nagging burnt hair smell was still in the air, a part of the air, mixing in with the oxygen. Javier stepped through another pair of trees as quietly as he could and wondered if he’d be smelling that smell for the rest of his life. Since their departure from the Blue Hills Reservation, things had been quiet and peaceful, following the winding trail through the trees, but as the group stopped to see what food they could dig up, Broderick had asked him to scout ahead. Take a walk and make sure there were no surprises in store.

  Cell service was still at a loss out in the hills, and they hadn’t had the opportunity to check the news to see just how widespread these issues were. Their first priority was getting to some kind of vehicle, grabbing a car so they could drive to Connecticut. From there, Broderick was hoping to head for Maryland.

  Javier wasn’t convinced either plan would work. He’d seen Boston from street level—a first-hand account of just what was going on in people’s minds, and he’d seen friends he’d known for years simply snap in two. Gray, a man he’d known well. A man whose wife had cooked him dinner, let him spend the night when he’d had too much to drink. A man who had lent him fifty dollars when he was running late on rent.

  A man he, at one point, might have called more a brother than a friend.

  Just like the flip of a switch, he was someone else. He was smashing glass and stealing weapons, running through the streets of Boston like a crazed madman with blood in his eyes. Lifting a rifle.

  Firing it.

  Shooting that woman in the head. Broderick’s teammate. Javier had been watching it all happen, watching as if it were an out of body experience, something like a waking dream, certainly not an event that was actually occurring. Gray wasn’t capable of that kind of thing.

  Until he was.

  If that happened to Gray, it could happen to anyone, and as he stepped over another long thrust of green grass, his eyes scanned the trees ahead, looking for movement. People were a danger in these situations. A threat. As much a virus as the virus itself.

  He halted for a moment in mid-stride, freezing within the trees, waiting to make sure he didn’t hear anyone approaching.

  Virus. He’d called it a virus. That’s not what it was, at least according to Broderick, and that man seemed like he’d know. That man was caught in the middle of it all, wearing a containment suit and an air filter. He was part of the team that Gray had attacked, second in command to the major who his friend had put a bullet into. It occurred to Javier then that he didn’t think anyone had ever really gotten the straight story out of Broderick. Who was he? Who was that team? Why were they in the middle of Boston in hazmat gear when the whole city was sick and dying of some mystery disease?

  Javier realized just how little he knew about not just Broderick, but the rest of this little group he was now a part of. He’d saved their lives, and Broderick had saved his as well, but beyond that common tie, they were a collection of strangers just trying to avoid death.

  Were they good people? Javier wasn’t sure, but he didn’t trust his judgment at this point either. The last person he thought was good shot an army major in the head simply because a black helicopter flew by. Moving through the trees, he considered his options. Maybe once they reached Connecticut he’d go his separate way and try to make his own luck for a change. Pausing for a moment, he looked right, then left, but only found more trees ahead. They were close to some kind of town, Clark said he knew t
hat, but wherever the town was, it wasn’t in immediate view. As he looked, he couldn’t help but picture his parents in his mind, his mother especially. She’d always said she wanted to move out of the city, to go somewhere more peaceful, where she actually had some land or a garden, or anything to see outside her window other than more buildings.

  He looked inside himself, trying to find any trace of sadness or regret for his mother and father, but he couldn’t. Javier often thought every last ounce of grief he had within himself had been used up when his sister died, and now, he was simply out of emotional fuel. It had been a struggle for him to find anyone or anything to care about since she’d been killed, and even the razor edge of hatred he’d felt for her murderer had faded into a persistent fog. The murderer existed, he was ever-present, a constant, looming spirit, hovering close to the surface, even from his jail cell, but he existed now as an afterthought. There was no hatred there. Not anymore.

  Javier shook his head softly, desperate to clear these images from his mind. This wasn’t the time or place to be drawn into the past, not when the future itself was in so much doubt.

  “What are you looking for?”

  Javier whirled around, his throat clamping shut. He had to reach out and grab a tree to avoid from spinning so fast he fell over.

  Melinda Silva wove through the trees, turning sideways to squeeze her way through and get close to where he was.

  “Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you,” Melinda said quietly, her eyes drifting toward the ground.

  “It’s okay,” Javier replied. “Really. It’s fine.”

  Mel looked back up at him. She held her stuffed hippopotamus in her left hand, which would have looked almost comical with a ten-year-old, until you thought about what her life was like today compared to three days ago.