by B. C. Tweedt
The adventure only gets more epic.
Get Rubicon now, before you forget! CLICK HERE!
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Book 1: Camp Legend
Book 2: Fair Game
Book 3: Deadfall (this book)
Book 4: Rubicon
If you're ready for DEADFALL, proceed with caution daring.
Copyright © 2014 B.C.Tweedt
All rights reserved.
ISBN-10: 1503093603
ISBN-13: 978-1503093607
ISBN: 9781483542782
DEDICATION
This novel is dedicated to those who have devoted their lives, in part or in whole, to the wellbeing of children. It is true that children are the future, and that as they go, so will our world go. Those who see children as the foundation and expend so much effort to build them up often don’t see immediate fruits of their labor, but they labor still, working for little money or acclaim. I give a special thank you to the teachers, parents, pastors, mentors, and others who lend compassionate hands to the hurting, words of wisdom to the curious, dollars to the impoverished, discipline to the rebellious, and guidance for lost children.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book, like the others before it, has grown to maturity only because of the many people who have given it water or pruned its unruly branches. My mother has used her editing skills like a master gardener, but in fact, there have been a dozen others who have nurtured the book through its various stages. Thank you to the beta-readers, who, as young as twelve years old, have pointed out typos, given wise suggestions, and otherwise planted many seeds which sprouted in the final version. Finally, I truly appreciate the grass-root efforts of each reader who chooses to tell a friend about the series or writes a review online. Each one contributes to Greyson’s story blooming for the world to see. Thank you!
A WORD FROM GREYSON
It’s funny how you have something for so long, and you like it and enjoy it and all, but when you lose it, somehow it becomes the most important thing in your life – so important that you’d do anything to get it back, even if it costs everything else. I’d do anything to see my dad again – and I might have to give up everything else to do so. I’ve already given up a lot. I betrayed a friend. I lost another friend. I let them bomb Des Moines.
It makes me feel horrible – guilty – and I know I am, but there’s nothing I can do about it. I can try to make up for it, and I will try – trust me – but in the back of my mind I know I’ll never repay that debt. So the only thing left is making sure that everything I’ve given up is worth it. I have to find him, or everything was for nothing.
- GG
Prologue
The abandoned cruise ship lurched to the side. The ship was reeling on the rolling waves, cracking under pressure, weakened by the fires that burned at its core.
Gripping Sydney’s hand tighter, Greyson pulled her up the tilting flight of stairs as the staircase churned beneath them. Suddenly their next stair snapped apart. Tripping on the gap, Greyson stumbled to his knees, pulling Sydney down with him.
Nick and Jarryd were right there, bleeding from their wounds and yanking them onward. “Get up or we die!” Nick scolded.
Suddenly splinters blasted over their bodies as a giant chasm ripped a path across the wall mural of an underwater castle. They covered their faces but didn’t stop their frantic staggering up the shifting stairs. The plumes of dust and debris seemed to cave in around them, but amidst the chaos, the tiny, yellow emergency lights flickered, revealing the only path to safety.
“Keep going!” Greyson commanded.
Greyson led the group, coughing at the smoke and stumbling with the floor tilting at nearly impossible angles. Navigating with only the fuzzy yellow rectangles glowing at his feet, his head swam, numb from pain and dizzy from blows to his head. Reaching another landing, Greyson glanced at the sign dangling from a screw somehow keeping a grip in the plaster.
The Empress Deck.
“Two more!” Sydney rasped, red welts vivid on her neck.
No reply was needed. They saved their energy for the last two flights, ignoring the wave of heat and the crackling of fire coming from the landing. Greyson gritted his teeth, feeling the spasms of pain coming from his ribs, face, and legs. He wanted to shed his soggy shoes, but there was no time to stop. Looking back, he saw the lobby of the Empress Deck crack in two, devoured by the level below with a plume of flame and smoke rising from beneath.
Suddenly another lurch sent them sprawling into a wall.
“Come on!”
Greyson tugged on their arms until they were back on their way.
“Through here!” Sydney pushed the door against the storm that raged with lashing wind and stinging rain; but it was friendlier than what was behind. They stepped into it, onto the sloping main deck, trailing single file as the wind whipped at their clothes.
As the kids stumbled against the railing, they were suddenly very aware of the fact that the sinking was almost complete. The waves, once twelve floors down, were now splashing over balconies of the rooms beneath, only a few floors down.
Greyson searched for an escape route, but the lifeboats were already gone.
“Watch out!”
A deck chair came sliding toward them, but Greyson grabbed it just in time, pushing it away.
More chairs came careening toward them with a rush of water overflowing from the deck’s pool.
“Hold on!”
They grasped the railing, rocking with the waves as if standing up on a roller coaster. Nick and Greyson battled with the deck chairs, but the others saw something. Their eyes went wide, their fists clenched white to the railing. They shared a look as another blast of lightning bathed the storm clouds with a blanket of light. But there was something else illuminated. Massive. Powerful.
“Greyson!”
The ship tipped back the other direction, sending the chairs back toward the pool. Greyson managed to stagger over one last chair to join the others at the railing.
“We have to…” he trailed off, catching a glimpse of the massive battleship, its guns gleaming with rainwater, its steel hull piercing the hurricane’s waves like they were nothing. The orange lifeboats had gathered near it, bobbing in the storm swells.
Greyson’s mouth hung open and fear stole his breath. The realization cut at him, slicing an icy blade along his spine.
It can’t be. All of it. All of it for this.
Greyson gulped, letting the rainwater wash over his trembling lips as the words formed and reformed.
“It’s…it’s a deadfall.”
PART 1
Chapter 1
Seventeen days ago. Iowa.
Everything about the cemetery reminded Greyson of the haunting pictures he’d seen of the bomb’s aftermath. The clouds hung low over the cemetery’s trees, like the mushroom cloud that had hung over Des Moines for hours. The cemetery’s grass was covered with dew, like the layer of ash and dust that had settled on roofs and yards and cars for days after the blast – and lingered even now. The stiff breeze, like the wind that flowed through house-less, tree-less Ground Zero, forced the families attending the funeral to stiffen and shiver. But the graves were much neater here, memorialized by rounded gravestones and covered with mowed grass and flowers. The graves in Des Moines had been the rubble of homes, a charred car thrown into the air, or a blood-soaked cot in a tent-hospital for radiation victims.
After the bomb, there had been fre
quent funerals at this cemetery. Though the attack was four weeks old, bodies were still being recovered from around Ground Zero, and many other cemeteries had been closed due to concern over radiation. While there was often more than one funeral at a time, there was only one this early in the morning – a handful of people surrounding the hole in the ground, backed into a corner by the trees.
As the breeze blew at the brown hair sticking out from the sides of his red hat with a white ‘G’ on the front, Greyson glared at the coffin like it had wounded him. And it had. It had taken his mother from him. Swallowed her, hid her from him. And it would never let her go. It wouldn’t let her hug him, comfort him, kiss him. It would keep her trapped, below the earth, even if he needed her. Even if he wanted to say he loved her. Even if he could tell her that he had found out where Dad was. There was nothing he could do – and that made him angry.
He knew he was supposed to be sad – others told him so by saying he could cry, telling him that tears were okay, like he needed their permission. They meant the best, but they didn’t understand. He wasn’t sad. He was furious.
He felt the urge to punch someone or something, but he knew the FBI would step in and whisk him away. They had agents all over the cemetery. Four he could see – but he knew there were more. They hadn’t wanted to let their key witnesses out of their sight, not even for a private funeral for his mother. They feared that those who had committed the worst terrorist attack in history would seek to tie up loose ends. And the loose ends had names – Greyson, Jarryd, Nick, Sydney, and Sammy. There would be another funeral tomorrow – for Liam – but that would not be private; and the loose ends would not be able to attend it for security reasons.
Greyson’s friends stood in the last row, and their parents in front of them, all of them stoically watching the unknown balding pastor ramble on, delaying the inevitable lowering of the casket into the ground to “rest in peace.”
Greyson sighed and sighed again, trying to fight the tremble of his lips. And then he smelled something and blew out even more air, not wanting to breathe it in. It couldn’t be the smell from the casket, could it?
Standing in the back of the small crowd and wearing a suit and tie too small for him, longhaired Jarryd leaned in toward his twin brother and whispered. “That was me.”
Nick rolled his eyes toward his neatly gelled blonde hair and new red-framed glasses. While Jarryd and Nick had once only been distinguished by Jarryd’s big front teeth, Nick’s hair cut, weight loss, and new glasses now made them appear to be mere brothers rather than twins.
“What?” Jarryd complained in a gruff whisper, grimacing at the smell himself. “What was I supposed to do? Hold it in?”
Nick nodded and eyed him as if saying, “Duh.”
Jarryd sneered. “Nah man, if I held it in, it would come out my tear ducts.”
Nick leaned in and whispered. “Well, at least something would be coming out of your tear ducts.”
Jarryd paused, squinting at the coffin and then at Greyson, whose lips wavered and eyes glistened as he did his best to hold the tears at bay. Sydney had tears streaking down her cheeks. Even their parents were crying in front of them. Maybe he should be crying.
“Gosh,” Jarryd elbowed his brother, still whispering. “Should I cry?”
Nick gritted his teeth. “Shh!” They were at a funeral. His brother didn’t have an ounce of sentimentality in his bones.
“Should I fake it?”
“Shh!” Nick sighed and glanced nervously at the back of the other mourners’ heads.
Jarryd leaned close. “Pull my armpit hair.”
“What? No.”
“Do it. It’ll work. They’re right in the middle. Six of them.”
“Shut…up.”
“Do it.”
“No.”
“Fine. I’ll do it myself.” A moment passed. “Ow!”
Nick rolled his eyes and shifted uncomfortably in his chafing dress shoes. When he looked over at Jarryd, tears were welling in his eyes and dropping toward his lips. Jarryd added in a few sniffs with a huff or two for good measure.
Hearing his sniffs, Sydney leaned in to him, pressing her blonde hair against his cheek and cuddling his arm with hers. “It’s alright.” The compassion in her voice made his pain go away and together they listened to the pastor conclude his message. And then Jarryd turned to his brother – and winked.
“We now commit her body to the ground,” the pastor prayed. “Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, until the sure hope of the resurrection of the dead. Amen.”
Resurrection of the dead? “Dude, she’ll be a zombie?” Jarryd mumbled.
Sydney squeezed his bicep until she heard him whimper.
“Greyson.” The pastor looked at him. “You may now place the first dirt on the coffin.”
The comment struck Greyson from his daydream and he stood, confused. The others began to murmur and look at him, but he couldn’t believe he had to do what the pastor had said. They’d make him bury her? After all he’d been through?
Sydney’s mother took a step forward and whispered in his ear. “It’s…it’s a symbol, Hun. I’ll go with you.”
She ushered him to where a small garden spade was stuck in the pile of dirt that was to bury his mother. Sydney’s mother pointed at it, nodding at him. “Say your goodbye.” She then averted her eyes, crying, like everyone else.
He looked back at his friends. Even Jarryd was crying.
And then he caught eyes with Liam’s parents. They had come to pay their respects. But why should they pay anything? It was he who owed them. A rush of emotion made him shake. He wanted to run to them – to hug them and cry out that he was sorry. I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I let him go! It was me! But something stopped him. And now they were staring at him – not knowing that he had signed off on their son’s death, just as he was now signing off on his own mother’s.
But he had to. The pastor was getting impatient – fidgeting; this pastor was nothing like Pastor Whitfield, who he had met just after the fair attack, and who was also most likely dead. This pastor looked and sounded as if he were ready to go home – a victim of the dozens of funerals he had been compelled to lead since the bomb. And now all the adults were nodding at him, as if he were a small boy afraid to get on Santa’s lap at the mall. But he was no longer a boy. A boy would not pull the trigger with a shotgun pointed at a man’s chest. A boy would not put a ball-bearing into a man’s skull, or do half the things he had done.
And a boy should not have to bury his own mother.
But he had to.
Fighting the lump in his throat, Greyson stabbed the spade into the dirt and walked the spadesful of dirt to the coffin. For a moment he hesitated, letting the spade hover above. He thought the words in his head – hundreds of them – but let the emotion speak for itself. If she were really dead, she wouldn’t hear him anyway.
But then again. If there were an afterlife, maybe she was watching him now. Right now. From somewhere above. Right next to him, even.
Suddenly the world around him seemed to blur. He retreated into himself and fought the pain that clinched his lungs, hindering his speech. Choking it down, he spoke to her as if she were lying in front of him. They were alone.
“It’s just me now, Mom. Just me.”
He clenched his chin and sucked in a breath, the tears fighting to win.
“But I promise you. I’ll do what I can.” His eyes focused past the casket to where he could imagine her face. “No matter what. They’ll try to stop me. They can try to kill me – they killed you. They killed Kip and Liam.” He clenched his fist around the spade. “But I promise. The next time I see you – I’ll be dead, or I’ll be here with Dad.” He closed his eyes and took in a few more breaths. “I’ll find him for you, Mom. I’ll find him.”
He held out the spade and turned it over, letting the dirt crumble over the top of the coffin and into the hole. Then he threw the spade to the pile of dirt and held out his hand with his pin
ky stretched toward the coffin. “I promise.”
He took in a deep, shuddering breath and shook it with the air.
---------------
American flags were everywhere. They lined the streets from the highway to the square downtown; they topped light poles leading to the stage at the steps of the capitol building; they were even in handheld form for the masses to hold and wave. As the crowning achievement, the largest one flew high above the capitol building’s golden dome. Though the residents of Iowa City knew the building as the “Old Capitol,” it was once again the state’s capitol. Des Moines had lost more than thousands of its citizens; it had also lost its status as Iowa’s capital city.
Standing before a throng of supporters who stood before a legion of television cameras, the Governor – and presidential candidate – stood at a patriotic podium, solemnly staring over the crowd, drawing out a dramatic hush before beginning the last part of his speech.
“There are no words that can give to those who we have lost, the measure of devotion and respect they deserve. There are no words, but we must continue trying. Some have criticized me for making speeches during the crisis. They say I’m taking advantage of the situation – of the victims.” He fought back the anger clenching his fists. “I say, how dare they! They seem to have forgotten that we are at war. And I was in the war zone, a target of the enemy’s cruelty. My son was kidnapped…tortured…by the enemy.” He drew in a sharp breath and took another pause to contain himself. Crying on stage may win him more voters, but he still had his dignity.
Inside the Old Capitol, Sam, Governor Reckhemmer’s son, sat on a step of a beautiful spiraling staircase, listening to the muffled speech through the set of massive double doors that would be his entrance to the stage. Impatient, he fidgeted with a small, black thumb drive and scratched at the edge of an itch on his back. But he knew better than to scratch the itch fully. The scars were still forming. The doctors said the best thing to aid the healing was to keep applying the ointment day and night. And he had done so, watching himself in the mirror, too proud to let someone else do it for him. He’d look right at the jagged letters, hatred biting at him – fresh and painful. He hated Emory for cutting a message into his back. And he hated the terrorists – even more than his dad did.