by Kyla Stone
He located the correct apartment. It was a nice high-rise built of gray brick and surrounded by a wrought-iron fence. He strode up the walkway. His boot scraped on ice covering the bottom stair leading to the entrance.
He slipped. His arms flailed, his feet slid out from beneath him, and he landed hard on his back. Pain spiked up his spine. For a second he lay there, the wind knocked out of him, wet cold leaking into his legs through his jeans.
The baby started crying, a high, stricken wail that pierced the eerie silence.
“Sorry,” he muttered.
He clambered gracelessly to his feet. A bit of snow had gotten beneath the neck of his coat. He shivered and turned up the collar.
The infant whimpered. Liam patted his head awkwardly and shushed him. Miraculously, it seemed to work. The child quieted.
He took the steps more carefully and knocked on the entrance door. No one answered.
For a desperate moment, Liam entertained the anxiety-filled possibility that he would be responsible for keeping this child alive—a responsibility that he would surely fail.
He knew nothing about children. Even less about babies.
He longed to return to the isolation of his homestead and sit out on the porch with his telescope, a rifle across his knees, studying the stars and tuning out all the chaos and misery and cruelty of a world he wanted nothing to do with.
He was meant to be alone. He survived alone. One day with other people, and he’d lost everything that had ever mattered.
Now there was just this final task before him, the task he owed the brother he should’ve died for and the woman he’d loved but could never have.
No one came to the door. He checked the knob. It was unlocked. Someone had left it that way or the electronic security system had malfunctioned. No bellman or security guard greeted him as he entered the lobby.
The overhead lights were off, but dim emergency lighting lined the floors. Whoever managed this building was smart. They were already conserving their power usage.
He bypassed the elevators and took the stairs. He exited on the fourth floor and found the correct number—412. He banged on the door with his gloved fist.
Be here. Please be here.
Movement behind the door. A muted shuffling sound, and the door opened a crack. Someone gasped in recognition. The door opened wider.
15
An attractive black woman in her early sixties stood in the doorway, dressed in sleek navy slacks and a lavender cashmere sweater. Her graying hair was stylishly bobbed at her chin, her makeup chic and tasteful.
She took him in, her eyes widening with surprise—and relief. “Lincoln! Oh, I’m so glad you’re here. We’ve been worried sick. We’ve—”
Liam shook his head, his heart clenched like a fist in his chest. “Not Lincoln. His brother. I’m Liam.”
Her brow knit in confusion, then cleared as she understood. Her gaze flitted beyond him, searching for the people she really wanted to see: her son-in-law and her daughter.
Her husband came up behind her. He was slim, his short hair and beard mostly gray, his eyes kind and lined with faint wrinkles as he smiled. “Welcome, Liam. It’s wonderful to see you again. Are Jessa and Lincoln okay?”
“They’re not coming.” He inhaled sharply, forced down the pain. “They’re both dead.”
Mrs. Brooks took a step back. Her hands fluttered to her throat. “What? No. That can’t be true. I talked to her on the phone this morning, before the phones stopped working. We were going to dinner…for Christmas Eve…”
“A plane crashed near Sears Tower. More than one. It—it took them both.”
Mrs. Brooks’ hands lowered to her chest, like she didn’t know what to do with them, like they didn’t belong to her anymore. They curled into fists over her heart.
She stared at Liam, shaking her head back and forth, faster and faster. “No. No. NO!”
“I’m sorry—”
“Tell him it’s not true!” She looked up at her husband, beseeching him, begging him for an alternate reality that hadn’t just been ripped apart, where she hadn’t just lost her only child.
His eyes met Liam’s over his wife’s head—questioning, disbelieving, full of dread and fear. The man saw it in Liam’s face—he recognized the truth. His features contorted as the impact of it struck him like a blow.
“I’m sorry, honey. I’m so sorry,” he murmured, like he was somehow to blame, like he could’ve single-handedly prevented this disaster if only he’d tried hard enough.
Mrs. Brooks curled in on herself like a bird with broken wings, her expression stricken. She collapsed slowly, her legs giving out on her as she fell back into her husband. Mr. Brooks wrapped his arms around his wife. “No,” she said again, a whisper this time, a desperate plea.
It was too much for Liam to take. He couldn’t handle his own grief, let alone theirs. Everything in him wanted to turn tail and flee. He didn’t. He couldn’t.
Mr. Brooks looked at him, his eyes hollowed, shoulders hunched and defeated. He looked like he’d aged thirty years in an instant.
“My daughter…where…” He swallowed. “Where is her body? We want to get her. I need to bring her home.”
Liam wasn’t a liar. But he lied now. If Jessa’s father was anything like him, it’d tear him to pieces to leave her behind, to not honor her body the way she deserved. The man’s loyalties and attention would be divided between the living and the dead—and he needed to focus on the living now.
Jessa’s parents didn’t yet understand what had just happened to the country that they thought they knew. They were still thinking in terms of funerals, coffins, flowers and hymns and mourners dressed in black. They weren’t thinking about the mayhem about to descend on their city, the desperation and lawlessness.
“She’s gone,” he said, forcing out the words. “Her body is gone. There’s nothing left to go back for.”
Something collapsed in the man’s face—a grief too huge to quantify. Mr. Brooks had raised his daughter, his only child—changed her diapers, taught her to drive, loved and adored her. In an instant, it was all gone. She was gone, and his entire life with it.
The agonizing pain in his eyes reflected Liam’s own breaking heart. He could hardly bear it.
He’d faced war. He’d faced death and destruction, faced the loss of the two people he’d loved most torn from him like his own beating heart. He would face this, too, with his head held high—even if it killed him. “There’s more.”
Before he could change his mind, Liam unzipped his coat and tugged down the thermal blanket. The small dark-haired head appeared. A fragile cry echoed in the dim corridor.
Mrs. Brooks gasped. She twisted around in her husband’s arms to face Liam, her blood-shot eyes widening in disbelief—and impossible hope. “The baby. He’s—he’s alive?”
He didn’t want to tell them how everything had all gone to hell. They had enough to deal with. Images of the plummeting plane, the careening wreckage, the dead bodies everywhere flashed through his head. Jessa on the bed, blood everywhere, her eyes going dim, everything fading.
He blinked the awful memories away. They would haunt him for the rest of his life. Her parents didn’t need to carry such a burden. “Your daughter—she made sure that he would be okay. She made sure of it.”
Mrs. Brooks nodded tremulously. Tears streamed down her cheeks. She didn’t take her eyes off the infant. To her credit, she didn’t reach for him or try to pry him from Liam, though she clearly wanted nothing more in this world than to hold this child in her arms.
Liam unwound the makeshift baby carrier, carefully supported the baby’s back and neck, and held out the newborn. Forcing his arms to move was the hardest thing he’d ever done. This was his nephew. His brother’s child. He already loved this child with every beat of his heart.
Jessa’s mother took the baby with gentle, trembling hands. She cradled him to her chest, touched the tiny balled fists, ran her fingers through the thick dark
hair.
Liam’s hands fell to his sides, empty.
She wept openly. So did her husband. They both cried tears of grief mingled with joy. Their lives had been shattered and remade again in the space of heartbeats. They had a purpose now, a piece of their daughter still alive through the gift of their grandson.
“Thank you, Liam,” Mr. Brooks said gruffly. “I can’t tell you—you’ll never know how much this means to us.”
He did know. He knew how hard it was to hand Jessa’s child over, how an immense pressure crushed his chest until he could hardly breathe, how he was left utterly bereft.
“You—you brought our heart back to us,” Mrs. Brooks said. She looked so much like her daughter. He saw it in the regal structure of her features, her proud chin, the warmth of her eyes, the full, wide mouth that trembled now, but would light up a room when she smiled.
“He needs food and diapers,” Liam said, because if he didn’t focus on what needed to be done, if he didn’t concentrate on what happened next, he would fall apart right here on their doorstep.
“We—we have formula. And bottles. And diapers. I was going to watch him when Jessa went back to work. I was so excited, I bought everything we’d need early…” Her face contorted again as she fought back another wave of grief.
Grief warred with hope. Hope won. He saw it in her face, in the determined line of her shoulders as she mentally prepared herself for the challenges ahead. Her arms tightened protectively around the baby.
Something released inside his chest, a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. His nephew would be cared for here, with them. He would be loved and cherished. A child couldn’t ask for more than that.
In the end, that was the only thing that mattered.
“Come inside.” Mr. Brooks gestured to Liam. “Please. Stay with us until the power comes back on. It’s vicious out here. You’ve—you lost them, too. Stay with us.”
He couldn’t stay. He was an outsider here. He didn’t belong. He cleared his throat, swallowing hard. “I have other plans. I’m getting out of the city. So should you.”
He repeated everything he’d said to Prisha.
They nodded, faces grave. They believed him.
“We have cash set aside,” Mrs. Brooks said. “And we have somewhere to go. My aunt lives in Tuscola, a tiny Amish town in Douglas County. She’s got a huge rambling farmhouse. She’ll take us in.”
“What about a vehicle?”
“I have a 1970 Ford Mustang Boss 302 stored in the parking garage around the corner. I went to check it when my BMW wouldn’t start. It still works, and it has a full tank.”
There would be a lot of stalled cars on the road between here and there. But they would make it. He believed they would make it. “Good. Pack everything up and leave.”
“Liam,” Jessa’s mother said as he turned to leave. “What is his name?”
“Jessa, she—she never had a chance to tell me. I guess that’s up to you now.”
Mrs. Brooks nodded to herself, her jaw set.
He started to walk away.
“I know what you did, what you must have had to do to save him...” she said from behind him. “I know this child is in our arms because of you.”
He went still.
She took a sharp, unsteady breath. “Liam. His name is Liam.”
16
Liam didn’t turn around. He couldn’t.
Couldn’t let them see the wetness gathering at the corners of his eyes or the anguish twisting his features. Couldn’t let them see the already-broken shards of his heart shattering into a million tiny pieces.
He put one step in front of the other and strode down the dim hallway on numb legs.
It was for the best. This was a good thing. The right thing.
Lincoln and Jessa’s child was in good hands. They could care for him in a way Liam never could. They would love him like a child needed to be loved. If they made it out of the city, they could make it. He told himself they would make it.
He still felt like a giant hand had reached in and torn a wide-open hole where his heart resided. He was nothing but broken and jagged pieces, nothing but empty spaces.
It was all he could do to keep moving. It was the only thing he had left, the only direction he could go was forward or he might just collapse right there and never rise again.
He entered the stairwell, took the stairs to the lobby, and left the way he’d come, making sure the entrance door locked behind him. The wind picked up and blew snow like shards of ice into his face. He shuffled down the ice-crusted front steps, careful not to trip again.
A smudge of color amid the sea of white at the edge of the sidewalk drew his attention. He bent and picked up the tiny knit hat. His chest wrenched painfully, his breath caught in his throat.
For a moment, he considered whether to take it back up into the quiet building to Jessa’s parents’ front door. It was little Liam’s, not his.
Instead, he brushed off the snow and slipped it gently into his pocket. He would keep it. More than that, he needed to keep it.
It was all he had left of his family.
Liam shrugged off his pack, took out a water bottle, a granola bar, and his paper map of Michigan, and rezipped it. Studying the map, he fixed his plan in his mind’s eye.
Get out of downtown, then the suburbs. Skirt the lake and journey into Michigan, hugging the coast and heading north through dozens of small towns, avoiding Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, and all the cities that would devolve into chaos, mayhem, and death within days.
With the pack on his shoulders and his beanie shoved low over his forehead, he set a determined, steady stride and headed south.
Three hundred hard miles stood between him and his destination.
He couldn’t call his small, solitary house “home.” He hadn’t known anything like home for a long, long time. But there was nowhere else to go, nothing else he cared for in the whole doomed world.
Except for his nephew he’d left in the arms of strangers. But he didn’t belong there, didn’t belong anywhere.
He was unmoored, untethered. Haunted. A lone man in a hostile landscape where everything—even nature, maybe even his own bitter soul—wanted him dead.
It would be a long journey back.
The End
I hope you enjoyed Chaos Rising! This story is the prequel to the new Edge of Collapse EMP survival series, featuring Liam Coleman as a main character.
Please keep reading after the ‘About the Author’ section for an exclusive seven- chapter preview of the new series. You can preorder Edge of Collapse, Book #1 on Amazon HERE to have it delivered to your ebook the minute it goes live.
In the middle of the deepest winter on record, a super EMP destroys the nation's power grid.
No electricity. No cars or phones. Worst of all: No heat. The country is plunged into instant chaos.
But for twenty-six-year-old Hannah Sheridan, it's the best day of her life. For the last five years, she's been held captive by a sadistic psychopath—until the EMP releases the lock of her prison.
Hannah emerges from her underground cell into a hostile winter landscape, armed with nothing but the clothes on her back and her own determination to survive.
Liam Coleman, cynical loner and former soldier, is headed nowhere fast. He believed he was prepared for any disaster—until the EMP took everything he'd ever cared about.
One hundred frozen, perilous miles stand between them and their destination in rural Michigan.
But Hannah's captor isn't about to let her go. He will hunt her to the ends of the earth and beyond, destroying anything and anyone who gets in his way…
Keep reading for your exclusive preview!
Also by Kyla Stone
The Edge of Collapse Post-Apocalyptic Series (EMP):
Chaos Rising: The Prequel
Edge of Collapse
Edge of Mayhem
Edge of Darkness
Edge of Anarchy
The Nucle
ar Dawn Post-Apocalyptic Series (Nuclear Terrorism):
Point of Impact
Fear the Fallout
From the Ashes
Into the Fire
Darkest Night
Nuclear Dawn: The Complete Series Box Set
The Last Sanctuary Post-Apocalyptic Series (Pandemic):
Rising Storm
Falling Stars
Burning Skies
Breaking World
Raging Light
Last Sanctuary: The Complete Series Box Set
No Safe Haven (A post-apocalyptic stand-alone novel):
No Safe Haven
Historical Fantasy:
Labyrinth of Shadows
Contemporary YA:
Beneath the Skin
Before You Break
Non-fiction:
Real Solutions for Adult Acne
Acknowledgments
Thank you as always to my awesome beta readers. Your thoughtful critiques and enthusiasm are invaluable. This book especially was difficult to write, but your support and encouragement meant everything to me
Thank you so much to Fred Oelrich, Dave Farris, Carol Butz, Melva Metivier, Wmh Cheryl, Becca Cross, and to George Hall for his keen eye and military expertise.
Huge appreciation to Dr. Prouty for his medical expertise. Liam’s harrowing emergency C-section wouldn’t have been nearly as intense or realistic without his help.
To Michelle Browne for her skills as a great line editor.