by Eli Constant
SecDef Allen Chambers left the president. It was short work to find Press Secretary Cliff Thomas, who was his friend and had been for some time. He was standing with Harvey; his face pleading. Allen caught the tail end of the discussion.
“—but my wife, my child, Allen’s son. They’re out there together and if I know my wife, she’ll head to Albuquerque. She’ll remember what I said in the past about it being somewhere AF1 can land.”
“I’m sympathetic, Cliff, I am, but we have a duty to the entire nation, not just to one woman and a child. Not to a young man, just because his daddy’s important in government. That’s not how this works.” Harvey’s voice was calm, determined to make Cliff understand. It wasn’t kind or unkind. It just was. Harvey walked away from Cliff then, without waiting for him to say anything else.
“Cliff, the president wants you.” Allen approached his friend and found that he was shaking, a vibration so mild that it could only be seen in close proximity.
“Damn that man!” Cliff’s words rushed out laced with heat and anger.
“I know, Cliff. Believe me, I know. But he’s right. Our duty is to this country first.”
“It’s your son, Allen. Do you really hold your job higher than your own son?” Cliff looked at his friend in disbelief, like he was seeing him for the first time or with new, clear eyes.
“Yes, he’s my son. I’d give my life for him if I could. but it’s also a whole damn nation on the verge of collapse. Even if I knew where they were I wouldn’t ask anyone to divert assets to them.”
“I’ve thought you to be a heartless man, Allen.”
“I’m not, Cliff. I’m just choosing to ignore my heart for the good of the entire fucking world.” Allen took a deep breath. “The president wants you, Cliff. Go do your job.”
Cliff walked into the room where the meeting had just been conducted, he greeted the president with professionalism and poise, but inside he was dying. He wanted his wife. He wanted Bethany. He wanted to hold his daughter again. And he feared that would never happen.
So you know what to expect in the future from
The Z Children Series!
ZC1: Awakening (the groups begin to form through origin stories) http://amzn.to/2qmbbVZ
ZC2: The Surge (focuses on JW's group) http://amzn.to/2tvk8wG
ZC3: The Rising (focuses on Juan's group) http://amzn.to/2t5U0cx
ZC4: D.C. Burning (the fall of D.C., focusing on character Bethany Thomas, introduced in ZC3)
ZC5: TBT (Focuses on JW's group, intersecting with Susan Fields & family)
ZC6: TBT (Focuses on Juan's group)
ZC7: TBT (Focuses on JW's group, new characters introduced)
ZC8: TBT (The origin of new characters from ZC7)
ZC9: TBT (Focuses on Juan’s group)
ZC10: TBT (Focuses on JW’s group)
The books are going back and forth between groups and we know that can be frustrating- especially when a particular book ends on a cliffhanger and you aren't getting the satisfaction of the next book carrying it forward immediately! Eventually, readers will be able to choose if they want to consume a group's entire story straight through (when we end ZC and head into ZC: Mutation) instead of following the original publication order, but a consumer just might miss some of the common threads and things that are building up between sequential books.
Read on for a short & [unedited!] sneak peek of Z Children 4: D.C. Burning.
Z CHILDREN
D.C. Burning
BOOK FOUR
ELI CONSTANT
B.V. BARR
Part I
Hank McCoy
‘The Beast’
It was the Secretary of Transportation that saved my life.
And, dammit, I couldn’t even remember his name, not right now- with my pulse so thick I could taste blood. He’d taken the full blow of the freakish kid. It had been aiming for me… for me. But then the Secretary had walked into the hall- a timely (or untimely for him) entrance and that was it. I was alive; he was dead. I’d left him there, screaming and writhing on the ground with a small girl wearing a blood-spattered daffodil-hued dress straddling his body and ripping into his throat with her teeth. She’d worried at it hungrily, not coming up for air. As I’d pushed through the hallway, doing my job, getting the President to safety, the Secretary’s yells of agony had followed me like elevator music I couldn’t escape. No, I just went down and down, further into hell, with the symphony of screaming a constant companion.
Other people might have evaluated why they’d been saved, spared a brutal fucking death, but I didn’t have time for that. I had to keep going forward, putting round after round into the monsters we passed. It felt like we’d been sucked into some sort of violent video game. These things couldn’t be real… they couldn’t have once been children. Finally, as we rounded a hall, a gun sounded behind us and the Secretary fell quiet. I hoped the miniature bitch that had killed him was dead too. The FN P90 barked harshly in my hands and two heads exploded into a cloud or crimson mush. Quickly and efficiently I dropped three more of the rabid kids as they bounded down the long hallway toward the group I was attempting to protect. Everyone could die, everyone was expendable. My job focused on one man, and one man alone. The sharp reports of the plain-clothes Secret service pistols were like bang pops, the kind of firecrackers you toss on the ground to make a satisfying snap and fizzle. Sort of like that candy I’d used to eat as a kid. Pop rocks. I’d been scared as hell to mix pop rocks and soda after this movie I’d seen while I was still in Junior high.
“Get the President into the damn elevator,” I yelled. It was a waste of breath, I knew that. We were already pushing hard and fast, shoving the boss along with the other VIPs surrounding him in a sort of protective circle. We were nearing the elevator as fast as we could. Nearing protection. So I didn’t need to yell. I didn’t need to let everyone around me know the urgency of our situation. Yet, I also did need to. I needed to make sure everyone was focused. Or maybe I needed to make sure I was fucking focused. A seed of doubt began to grow in my stomach. Part of me didn’t want to go near that elevator.
As if it really would descend me into hell.
We were passing a hallway to our right, a weak point, an entry point. I flipped the selector switch to full auto just before we passed the opening. Sure enough, a bunch of the monsters were barreling our direction. I dumped the mag into the large group of the creatures, children, whatever they fucking were. It was the first time I thought I should have put the ‘can’ on it; the burst of 5.7mm broke the sound barrier and filled the hall with high decibel noise. We were still moving, still pushing the ‘important’ men and women towards the elevator. I turned to cover our flank. I fired and fired. Bullet after bullet.
A head shot.
A chest shot.
A groin shot.
Blood fanning out in wet arcs, rainbows in the air composed of a singular color.
Anywhere I could aim and do damage. I was lost, for a time, in the gunfire and the killing. My mind went red and dark in a murderous version of tunnel vision.
It took a hard slap on my back to bring me back to reality. Everyone was in the elevator; it was time to get in myself. Too late though.
Too late.
Already the next wave of what had been a White House tour- comprised of six classes of young, gifted children from a local Science and Engineering magnet- was coming my way at full speed.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
B.V. BARR
B.V. Barr has been teaching Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) continually since 1981 when he joined the USAF as a “Survival Instructor”. In that Thirty+ year period, he has taught all aspects of SERE, trained at both domestic and international schools, written SERE doctrine and instruction, researched and developed cutting edge programs for dealing with both the psychological and physical challenges of survival, tested new equipment, written numerous papers on equipment and SERE-related disorders, and taught thousands of clas
ses. B.V.’s research and program development is the basis for many of the national and international survival schools in operation today. He is a USAF Master SERE Instructor.
Members of the Rangers, Green Berets, Para-rescue, Combat Control, Navy SEALs, Air Force Crew Members and MARSOC have all been his students. Outside the military, he has taught people from the DEA, Local Law Enforcement, Department of Natural Resources, the FBI, and other Federal Agencies. With over 12 years in the disaster mitigation and security fields, his advice on the development of advanced survival systems is irreplaceable and his knowledge of the physical and psychological aspects of both manmade and natural disasters is unparalleled in the survival world.
Z Children: Awakening, written with Eli Constant, is B.V.’s first official foray into fictional writing. His technical expertise has proven a valuable asset in the development of plausible situations, appropriate survival responses, and how the world would really operate at the ‘awakening’ of an apocalypse.
Check out B.V. Barr’s survival company: www.usiusa.com
Find him on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Author.B.V.Barr
ELI CONSTANT
Eli attended USC-L, Columbia College, Texas A&M, & George Mason University. She studied everything from Mariculture to Differential Equations. Settling on Biology, Eli participated in research fellowships in Texas and at NIH, worked a few random jobs, and finally settled into a Virginia lab where she focused on mastering diagnosis procedures and implementations of histology and pathology. Choosing to be a dedicated homemaker after the birth of her first child, Eli rediscovered her passion for writing. She's never regretted the decision; not only are her kids the most amazing creatures, but writing fulfills her soul in a way science never did.
Eli calls herself an author of speculative, mind-bending fiction. She adores all things quirky and nerdy and she once thought she’d marry Martin Short… until she discovered Alan Rickman. #Always. She also writes as Eli Grace & Eliza Grace. She is the author of The Dead Trees Series, The Shadow Forest Series, DRAG.N, The Tears of Chios, The Water is Sweeter and more. Her books are available in eBook, paperback, & audio formats.
Stalk Eli on social media:
Official Website: www.authoreliconstant.com
Twitter: @Author_EliC
Books on Amazon: http://amzn.to/1leEDEo
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6901568.Eli_Constant
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