The Day After Never
Legion
Russell Blake
Copyright © 2018 by Russell Blake. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used, reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law, or in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, contact:
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Contents
Books by Russell Blake
About the Author
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
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Excerpt from A Girl Apart
Books by Russell Blake
Co-authored with Clive Cussler
THE EYE OF HEAVEN
THE SOLOMON CURSE
Thrillers
FATAL EXCHANGE
FATAL DECEPTION
THE GERONIMO BREACH
ZERO SUM
THE DELPHI CHRONICLE TRILOGY
THE VOYNICH CYPHER
SILVER JUSTICE
UPON A PALE HORSE
DEADLY CALM
RAMSEY’S GOLD
EMERALD BUDDHA
THE GODDESS LEGACY
A GIRL APART
A GIRL BETRAYED
QUANTUM SYNAPSE
The Assassin Series
KING OF SWORDS
NIGHT OF THE ASSASSIN
RETURN OF THE ASSASSIN
REVENGE OF THE ASSASSIN
BLOOD OF THE ASSASSIN
REQUIEM FOR THE ASSASSIN
RAGE OF THE ASSASSIN
The Day After Never Series
THE DAY AFTER NEVER – BLOOD HONOR
THE DAY AFTER NEVER – PURGATORY ROAD
THE DAY AFTER NEVER – COVENANT
THE DAY AFTER NEVER – RETRIBUTION
THE DAY AFTER NEVER – INSURRECTION
THE DAY AFTER NEVER – PERDITION
THE DAY AFTER NEVER – HAVOC
THE DAY AFTER NEVER – LEGION
The JET Series
JET
JET II – BETRAYAL
JET III – VENGEANCE
JET IV – RECKONING
JET V – LEGACY
JET VI – JUSTICE
JET VII – SANCTUARY
JET VIII – SURVIVAL
JET IX – ESCAPE
JET X – INCARCERATION
JET XI – FORSAKEN
JET XII – ROGUE STATE
JET XIII – RENEGADE
JET XIV – DARK WEB
JET – OPS FILES (prequel)
JET – OPS FILES; TERROR ALERT
The BLACK Series
BLACK
BLACK IS BACK
BLACK IS THE NEW BLACK
BLACK TO REALITY
BLACK IN THE BOX
Non Fiction
AN ANGEL WITH FUR
HOW TO SELL A GAZILLION EBOOKS
(while drunk, high or incarcerated)
About the Author
Featured in The Wall Street Journal, The Times, and The Chicago Tribune, Russell Blake is The NY Times and USA Today bestselling author of over fifty novels, including Fatal Exchange, Fatal Deception, The Geronimo Breach, Zero Sum, The Assassin series, The Delphi Chronicle trilogy, The Voynich Cypher, Silver Justice, the JET series, Upon a Pale Horse, the BLACK series, Deadly Calm, Ramsey’s Gold, Emerald Buddha, The Day After Never series, The Goddess Legacy, A Girl Apart, A Girl Betrayed, and Quantum Synapse.
Non-fiction includes the international bestseller An Angel With Fur (animal biography) and How To Sell A Gazillion eBooks In No Time (even if drunk, high or incarcerated), a parody of all things writing-related.
Blake is co-author of The Eye of Heaven and The Solomon Curse, with legendary author Clive Cussler. Blake’s novel King of Swords has been translated into German, The Voynich Cypher into Bulgarian, and his JET novels into Spanish, German, and Czech.
Blake writes under the moniker R.E. Blake in the NA/YA/Contemporary Romance genres. Novels include Less Than Nothing, More Than Anything, and Best Of Everything.
Having resided in Mexico for a dozen years, Blake enjoys his dogs, fishing, boating, tequila and writing, while battling world domination by clowns. His thoughts, such as they are, can be found at his blog:
RussellBlake.com
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Chapter 1
Near Amber Hot Springs, Colorado
Four riders, their jackets beige with trail dust, hunched low in the saddle as their steeds picked their way along a rocky trail that traced the mountainside. To their left was a straight drop to the silver thread of a creek hundreds of feet below. Their sunburned faces squinted beneath their hat brims against the late afternoon sun, and their shoulders slumped from fatigue, AR-15 assault rifles resting against their saddle horns or dangling from shoulder slings.
The lead rider, a rail-thin man with a black handlebar moustache and ebony eyes, held up a gloved hand and reined in his horse. The others stopped behind him, and he swung down from the saddle and handed his reins to the nearest rider, his eyes locked on a fork in the trail ahead.
His boots crunched against loose gravel as he picked his way forward. When he reached the fork, he stopped, rifle in one hand, and stared at the ground with focused intensity. His eyes narrowed and he crouched to study the loose shale. Then slowly he swiveled and straightened before walking back to the men.
“No way of tellin’ which trail they took. Both been used since the last rain,” he said, and spat a brown stream of chewing-tobacco-colored saliva by his boots.
The rider who was holding his horse’s reins frowned. “Damn, Leo. No part a this is gonna be easy, is it?”
The rider held out his hand, and Leo took the reins from him.
“That’s why they pay us the big bucks, Doug. If anyone could do it, they’d a sent anyone.”
Leo hoisted himself back onto the buckskin stallion and twisted toward his men. “We’ll try the one on the right. See where it goes. If it comes up empty, we’ll double back.”
Doug glanced up at the sky. “Gonna be dark in a few hours.”
Leo shrugged. “True. Nothin’ we can do about that. We’ll make camp where we can when it comes time. For now, we ride.”
The men
grumbled but fell in line behind Leo. It had been a long week in the rough, but they were resigned to the job they’d been tasked with – it would take as long as it took. They had no idea exactly where the enemy’s encampment was, but based on Ellen’s description, they were confident they were somewhere in the vicinity.
These trackers were the best Elijah had, and his instructions had been clear: trace the route of the escapees who’d murdered his father, pinpoint their home base, and report back. Elijah would raze the earth once he knew exactly where to direct his wrath, and he’d delivered a powerful sermon to a packed crowd that cited Old Testament-style destruction as the only possible punishment for taking one of the Lord’s angels from the earth before his time.
The prophet’s death had come as a shock to the community, but Elijah had stepped into the vacuum and taken charge, directing the able-bodied men in the congregation to prepare for a battle between good and evil to avenge the murder of their beloved leader. Almost immediately he’d called Leo and his scouts to the church and directed them to do whatever it took to find the killers – and not to return to Denver unsuccessful. Leo had accepted the challenge and saddled up within the hour, and had been riding hard ever since.
A figure on the mountainside above lowered his binoculars and crept over to where a man and woman with assault rifles were following the progress of the riders through their scopes. When he reached them, he whispered, his voice barely audible, “Everyone ready? You know what to do.”
The pair drew themselves up. “Where?”
“The bend. Hundred yards up the trail. Good cover, and we’ll be in place before they make it.”
The two followed the lead gunman along a trail to where their horses were standing by a grove of trees. Their green camo jackets and pants made them nearly invisible in the brush, and they’d blacked out their faces to avert any glare from the moon. They moved in silence, their expressions grim, rifles clutched at the ready as they made their way past their animals and continued to higher ground. They’d been dispatched to watch the trail in case any of Elijah’s fighters had managed to follow the tracks from the highway – an unlikely possibility, but one they had to guard against while Elliot decided how to proceed. Their vigilance had paid off, and with any luck, the men on the trail below were the walking dead.
Leo’s horse stiffened beneath him an instant before the first shots rang out from the trees. The stallion’s instinct saved Leo, and rounds snapped past his head as he threw himself from the saddle and rolled to an outcropping of rocks at the edge of the ravine. The other riders weren’t so lucky, and two screamed as bullets tore through them, their flak vests no match for the onslaught of fully jacketed rounds.
Doug squeezed off a three-round burst one-handed as his other clutched at where the ceramic plate that protected his chest had shattered from the sniper fire, but the shots went wide, the shooters ghosts in the shadows of the tall pines. More shots exploded from the tree line, and he tumbled from the saddle and hit the ground like a sack of cement, dead before he finished bouncing. His rifle skittered harmlessly down the trail.
The tracker behind him swung to the ground, unfazed by the blood streaming from where a bullet had struck his unprotected shoulder, and emptied his magazine at the trees as he ran for cover. Dirt fountained in the air around him from incoming fire, but he made it to a fallen log and ejected his spent mag and slapped a fresh one in place.
The last rider’s horse had frozen in place at the gunshots, but then threw him from the saddle and raced back down the trail, away from the battle, its eyes panicked and its breathing harsh as it galloped as fast as it could. The rider lay stunned for a few moments and then scrambled for the ravine as bits of gravel showered him from ricochets.
Sniper fire peppered the riders’ positions as they returned volley after volley. The man who’d been hit in the shoulder was squeezing off methodical shots from behind the log, concentrating his fire on the likeliest sniper positions, when a round blew through his temple, killing him instantly.
“Leo!” the surviving rider called from the gorge, his feet barely maintaining a hold on the treacherous surface. “You hit?”
“Shut up, moron,” Leo hissed from down the ravine, out of sight of the other rider due to the shape of the sheer face.
“They’ve got us pinned down,” the rider tried again. “And I’ve only got one mag left.”
Leo didn’t respond.
More shooting from the trees pocked the area in front of the rider, and he cringed behind the ravine edge, weighing his options. The shooting abated, and he swung his rifle over the ridge and fired at the trees, and when his magazine ran dry, he replaced it with his last one, hauled himself onto the trail, and took off at a run, spraying the forest with three-round bursts as he sprinted for safety.
Six slugs slammed into his back and thighs, and he tumbled forward, his legs suddenly useless. He struggled to roll over so he could continue shooting at his attackers, but his arms refused to obey his commands as he gasped for breath. The pressure on his chest felt like a piano had landed on it. Another shot echoed across the trail, and the back of his head shattered in a spray of bloody emulsion.
“Hold your fire,” the lead lookout called.
The trail fell silent, and the three sentries surveyed the carnage. The horses had all bolted, leaving the dead man in the middle of the track, and the rest out of sight in the ravine. The lead lookout edged to his companions, his eyes never leaving the trail.
“That all of them?” he asked.
“I think so, Bill,” the woman replied. “But we can’t be sure. Someone could be playing possum until we show ourselves.”
Bill nodded. “Could be.”
“So?”
“We wait.”
A half hour went by with no sound, and eventually Bill sighed and looked to the others. “Cover me. I’m going to work my way over there and then come down the trail. You see or hear anything, let them have it.”
He took off at a jog, hunched over as he moved through the brush. When he was out of sight of the killing zone, he cut over and emerged onto the trail, peering down the barrel of his rifle. He took cautious steps until the dead man was in sight, and trained his gun on the crumpled form of the rider by the log as he approached.
Bill could see that the man was dead as he neared, so he pivoted and headed to the ravine to peer over, leading with his weapon. At the edge, he swept the drop with his gun and spotted a third body ten yards down the mountain face, twisted unnaturally between two boulders. Seeing no danger from the corpse, he moved to the rock outcropping where the lead rider had taken cover, his finger hovering over the trigger, his breath hissing through clenched teeth.
Spent brass littered the rocks, glittering in the late afternoon sun, but there was no body. He peered over the outcropping and scanned the ravine below, but didn’t spy anything. Frowning, he called over his shoulder.
“Come on over here and see if you can spot the last guy.”
The man and woman joined him and, after five minutes of searching, stood together uneasily at the trail’s edge.
“He must have worked his way down the side of the gully,” the woman said.
“But the question is, which way?”
“Back the way he came, don’t you think?”
Bill’s frown deepened. “Maybe.”
The other sentry took a final look down the ravine. “How do you want to play it?”
Bill indicated the trail leading down the mountain. “You two take that direction; I’ll take this one. He can’t have gotten that far.”
They split up and searched the ridge, working their way along and studying any irregularities in the terrain with their scopes. The sun had begun to fade in the cobalt sky by the time they reunited where they’d left their horses, and Bill’s expression was dark as he debated his next step.
“I’m going to ride to town and tell Elliot what happened. Take the horses and keep looking for him farther down the trail.”
The pair departed and Bill mounted up, his thoughts racing. He rode flat out and was at the springs in less than half an hour.
Elliot was already waiting for him outside his cabin. “Heard the shooting.”
Bill nodded and gave him a short report. When he finished, Elliot’s scowl wrinkled his face.
“He’s on foot,” Elliot said. “That’s at least one piece of luck. If your men don’t find him by nightfall, we’ll organize a search party at first light. We have to intercept him before he can give away our location.”
“It’s a long walk back to Denver. A lot can happen to a man on foot out there,” Bill observed.
“We can’t depend on luck. If we don’t find him, our fate is sealed.”
Bill hesitated. “I’m sorry we let you down.”
Elliot looked away. “You couldn’t have foreseen this. Sounds to me like you did everything you could.”
“But not enough. Obviously.”
“Don’t worry. You were right. It’s a long walk back to Denver,” Elliot said, but when he turned back toward the cabin, his lips were a thin line and his eyes were hard as flint.
Chapter 2
Somewhere south of Denver, Colorado
Leo hunched forward in the saddle as night fell. His horse sedulously plodded north toward home. He’d caught a break after traversing the ravine’s face and climbing onto the trail beyond where his men lay dead – the stallion had come at his whistle, obviously frightened but conditioned to obedience. He’d ridden the poor animal as hard as he’d dared through the darkness until finally stopping for a few hours of rest as dawn’s salmon glow colored the eastern sky.
From there he figured that he’d worked up a sufficient lead to where he didn’t need to run the horse into the ground. Still, he’d stuck to the trails along either side of the highway to Denver, just in case Shangri-La had somehow managed to communicate with any conspirators along the way. He gave the few outposts along the road a wide berth, preferring caution over convenience, and rode mostly at night, secure that he was the most dangerous thing on the highway, given his skills.
The Day After Never - Legion (Post-Apocalyptic Dystopian Thriller - Book 8) Page 1