Copyright © 2013 Wilson Keith Books
All rights exclusively reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or translated into any language or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Wilson Keith Books
Indio, California
Wilson, J. K. (Keith)
The 6th of Six - The Legend of Kimraig Llu—Volume I
www.wilsonkeith.com
ebook, first edition
ISBN
978-0-9899564-0-6 (ebook)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2013919648
Editors: Pattie W., Marcia G., Traci & John H., Melisa W. and John Carrigan
Cover/interior design: Mark E. Anderson, www.aquazebra.com
Printed in the United States of America
Table of Contents
Introduction
The Survivors of Manhattan
Survivors Zone
Prologue. Leave no record
Chapter 1. Cut off his name
Chapter 2. Kill—Love
Chapter 3. Betrayed
Chapter 4. Graduation Day
Chapter 5. Stealing Babies
Chapter 6. Uneasy Truce
Chapter 7. Dead Is Dead
Chapter 8. Silent Vote
Chapter 9. Just Breen
Chapter 10. The Street Boils
Chapter 11. Tall Tales
Chapter 12. Bug Juice
Chapter 13. Killing Machine
Chapter 14. Sweet Spot
Chapter 15. About Those Doors
Chapter 16. Hurt things
Chapter 17. Enough Mourning
Epilogue. Hall ball
First Look. Proctor’s War—The Legend of Kimraig Llu Volume II
Introduction
“It is late spring, a short fifty years in the future.”
The remnants of a long gone society dare to survive in a shattered section of Manhattan. Their population is rapidly fading away as their gene pool refuses to produce males. Yet their people have chosen war—war to protect power. Split into five uneven camps, each group covets the property and space held by their neighbors.
The Builders are the largest and strongest group. In their society, males have no rights. They are objects only, for a female’s pleasure. If they give no pleasure, they discarded them. One position of honor exists, the Hunter—an elite fighter. Hunters exist only to protect their Queen who is commander of a single battle group. The remaining positions are menial at best.
Life is cheap. Injured and sick are of no use, female or male, their destination is the compost heap, the Builders garbage disposal.
Kimraig Llu, one lone male, defies them. Once an elite Hunter, he escapes the compost heap to challenge the Wicca, his all-female government. He has made himself indispensable as their construction superintendent. Under the cover of this assignment, he secretly assembles an Army to threaten their rule.
One group, the Others, have infiltrated into the highest positions of government in three of the remaining groups, no human can exist in the fourth group: Ergots. When the Others are strong enough, they will control this island.
Everyone has his or her own agenda. Kimraig Llu can trust only one. A person behind the scenes that keeps him from feeling truly isolated. Will help come from there?
Before Kimraig is ready to make his move, his former lover, Leader Breen, holds him captive and uses his plans to pursue her own goals; the essence of power hovering just out of reach. She will forge her own empire with Kimraig as the hammer.
Glossary
The Survivors of Manhattan
BUILDERS are the survivors of professionals caught in high-rise buildings when disaster struck New York. Females out number males ten to one: each female controls her own future. Males are slaves fit only for breeding.
A Queen’s life is good; a Leader is better; promotion to Superior, the ultimate. Even a basic female Trooper reigns.
Superiors: One female elected by the Governing Council to head each of the five buildings. The Superiors hold the title of Mistress. The 1st of One, controls Number 1 Building.
Queens: The title of Queen is a warrior’s honor, gained only on the battlefield. The number after a Queen’s name is the building where each individual’s mother conceived.
Hunters: The title is a warrior’s honor, gained only on the battlefield in service to his Queen.
Troopers: These are female soldiers, earning their rank in battle. Individuals may exempt themselves from the battle groups by committing to an alternate way of life before the Mating Ritual.
CROSSERS are descendants of former police and service people who survive under constant attack from Builders. In their smaller buildings Across the Street they have done their best to protect the working parts of their previous government. The number of Crossers is one-third the size of the Builders; their population is in rapid decline. Females outnumber males two to one, the difference growing with each child’s delivery. Birth rate continues to fall. They steal children, preferably male children. Protecting life is the first priority of each citizen.
OUTSIDERS are the street’s discarded people. They live a nomadic lifestyle, nowhere and everywhere, just as their ancestors had amid the rubble of a decaying city. They raid Crossers and Builders for young girls—plenty of those around. More times than not, the girls—and a few males—are gifts as children, discarded in the Builder’s decaying basements or unguarded compost heap.
Their current despot leader rules his losers by rationing the alcohol they need to feed their addiction. The more they obey, the more they get.
OTHERS tally as fifty percent of all three populations. They are males with their domestic partners: females with theirs; and Hermaphrodites, the Alternate Genders.
ERGOTS defy description. They appear as blobs, or bubbles with little substance, seen irregularly, while traveling the basements and tunnels of the city.
BUILDINGS OF NOTE
The Builders
Number 1 Building is the spot where the Builder nation began.
Number 2 Building is the baby factory (hospital) where all births “should” take place.
Number 3 Building is the Compost Heap—garbage disposal, cemetery and punishment.
Number 4 Building is the Training area for all Battle Groups. Top floor is under construction.
Number 5 Building is the seat of Government.
Number 6 Building is One Nine, the final battleground.
The Crossers
Their main building towers 16 stories, next to the wrecked Subway Station. The Subway’s elevator and its tunnels are the Crosser’s main ingress and egress to the city.
Survivors Zone
Prologue. Leave no record
Damn woman was in his face, standing right here beside him, first thing this morning. It was all he could do to keep his temper, much less respond with good humor. He managed one limited smile, then sent his Superior—made that title up she did—on her way with a promise to call as soon as he finished.
Now here she is interrupting his lunch with a C-link call, asking, “You done yet.”
I was the Head Librarian around here for fifty years, and way before these people took control after the wars. Best she remembers that. She did not need to know he had finished his assignment. Destroy every scrap of research relating to birth defects.
In fact, he finished it yesterday. Wiping computer drives did not take very long. What did take a few minutes extra was filling one up as he had done with several stacked in the salvage bins. All the rese
arch into births here in the five buildings was archived—hidden—here on these drives. Someone would find them someday.
He made the promised call. Now he had to wait while she came up to check his work. Well if she was going to treat him like a little kid, he would act like one. He kicked back to read the last piece of the puzzle. Put his feet up on the desk, she hated him doing that.
This is exciting. Read the first line and what do we have? A sniff of another puzzle, request one of two. Where could number two be hiding?
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Digital Scan Copy Request: 1of 2
Return to: Library pickup requested. ID #213
Date: Month 05 Day 06 Year 013 A.B.
Number 5 Building Library Archives.
Restricted Entry
Original handwritten journal document, dated 012 A. B. *** Unfinished Journal found in backpack near skeletal remains. Credentials for R. B. Styles, Freelance Writer, attached. Gnaw marks on bones from unknown species.
Location: Basement level-two, Number 1 Building, dated 015, A. B. ***
Note to yourself R.B., is this going to be Chapter 1, the book cover teaser, or prologue? Whatever works, but remember to decide later.
They were all wrong. Yes them: those fools who called themselves experts.
Of course, if you listen to those who remain, they say they were right on with their dooms-day predictions. So a few minor details were short of the truth, no one cares. Cover it up. Who knew updated information would come in after publication. Damn those deadlines. After all, they protected tenure, grants and enhanced reputations.
NUCLEAR WINTER——SUPER VOLCANO ERUPTION
Now those were headlines—your guarantee to 15 minutes of instant fame.
Digital enhancements failed to repair damage to notebook. Computer interpretation follows:
The experts predicted an Army General in India would smuggle nuclear bombs to terrorists in lead-lined containers. One had shipped to America. At least five more turned up missing and apparently broken down into suitcase bombs by Islamic extremists.
One large puncture damaged the remaining notebook pages. Cause, a possible projectile appears responsible for this jagged hole, which passes through all remaining pages. Entire area contaminated with organic matter—human blood (positive match.)
End Computer interpretation.
Oh, it happened all right, violently prophetic. Information from the area was sketchy at best, so those experts hemmed and hawed, but human chromosomes let them know immediately.
You cannot write headlines about X’s and Y’s in humans. There is nothing exciting about these letters unless you describe the sexual act. A couple mixing male semen with some slick-um from the girlfriend then add a roaring good time and you got maybe a 50/50 chance of a boy.
Normal. No, not here in this place. If, I repeat, if there is a birth, then you get a girl baby. In Vitro Fertilization...a fool’s game...did not work. Artificial insemination got more girls then stopped working at all. The only method for making babies is that old semen stew. Not every couple makes stew with strong swimmers.
Consider this! The XX chromosome is female, and the XY is male. So, in the XY, what if the Y has one arm bent, or if part of a leg on the X got mashed? Could boy babies stop? We should study the Right Eye Flounder and the nuclear contamination in its DNA. We cannot; this species died years ago, before A. B. *** their fishy egg packs developed females only. Then, no more fishy egg packs.
Now to muck this up some more, there are only two genders, male and female. There are people who do not fit neatly into those two genders. Yes, I am talking about the “Others.” Are they a third, fourth or fifth gender? Maybe they are the “Alternate Genders,” which is more politically correct. Those experts could not make that decision either.
There had been a nuclear power plant on the north side of Manhattan. Did it play a part?
Computer addendum from outside source:
*** A. B. (after the bombs,) originally A. V. B. (after the volcano and the bombs) altered by formally removing the “V” first month of year 001 to give credibility to the ensuing nuclear retaliation against the known world.
End Digital Scan
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////
The old librarian chuckled. If that reporter knew, it would not be long before everyone in the Builders five buildings would know. Yes, the bombs we dropped on everyone else in the world caused the birth defects we live with now. He understood why she wanted it gone.
Here already? That was quick. His Superior knocking on the door, had hardly left him time to read before she is banging, banging, banging. He hit send to and selected archive, toggled the keys to wipe any record on this hard drive, and prepared for another argument with her.
His old creaky legs hurt when he dropped them back to the floor. He hobbled to the salvage bin, stacked the computer drive with the rest of them, and walked to the doorway to let her in.
Soon as he pulled the door open the spears got him, one high one low. He knew he was dead before he hit the floor.
Chapter 1. Cut off his name
Two lines of young trainees snaked their way through the rubble, marching at double time. Chunks of buildings, the old asphalt roadway, and fatigue threatened to crush them. Surf boiled faintly far below the cliffs on their right side.
Half-empty water canteens taunted them from bouncing hips.
Wind punished them with salt crystals blown into open pores oozing sweat. Lungs labored to process breathable air. Harsh midday sun hacked their tattered gray uniforms, threatening to finish them. Feathered predators hovered against the wind current. Food was waiting.
“Newday, keep that column straight,” their old training instructor shouted yet again. “Llu, if I have to tell him again, the two of you will be doing push-ups till dawn.”
“Jake, just a little further I think,” Kimraig Llu said as he reached to pull the older boy along. “That old bat will yell enough to spit ten buckets and pull out all her gray hair if we do not set a perfect pace.”
The humor helped and Jake Newday managed. Just a few steps more before their acting Queen, at the rear, croaked her order. “Prepare to halt, on my mark...” and then stumbled, fell and could not finish.
“Halt!” The order echoed to the front of their lines from their three female training instructors. They had finished for her. “All right, all right, take a break. Fill those water canteens before anything else.”
The instructors shook their heads as if they could not believe the pathetic creatures they were training. They yelled again as their charges sought any handy bump to sit or lay on.
“They are not making these ten-year old kids like in the old days,” the three of them groused almost in unison, like a lament from the old songs they sang after an evening with forbidden alcohol.
“Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em,” followed like a second lament. If tobacco plant seeds would grow on the rooftops or window boxes in the Lower and Middle levels of their high-rise buildings, all would have smoked. The seeds refused to sprout. That old taunt, directed to the trainees as a group, let each show their relief in their own way. To female and male alike, the thought of sucking fire smoke into their lungs horrified all of them.
Without thought, they had stayed grouped together in their three training units of twelve. Ten females, future Troopers, and two males, future Hunters—the dry cement, sand, and gravel—for three Battle Groups. In days, a trained Queen would join each group, providing the moisture to form the concrete of smooth fighting units. She would lead while they fought.
With a Queen, they would number 13, their ruling Wicca’s ritual number.
Their Leaders relied heavily on symbolism.
After only a few minutes rest, one future Trooper rose. “Come on Jake,” young Macy said. “I want to explore and you have to help me get down the cliffs.” She did not need help with anything. Macy was needling Jake for the weakne
ss he had shown. She knew all too well that just the sight of her slim boyish figure in her tattered uniform would yank Jake Newday along by his nose.
Adventure tugged them all down the ragged cuts in the cliff’s face toward the spit of sand below. The long, heavy descent was made doubly tough by constant dead ends and switchbacks that continually forced them lower. The view of the ocean disappearing to infinity, did not register as the roiling surf line appeared and disappeared like a dream. Half way down the odor of decaying sea kelp came and went with the dream.
In time measured by youth, perhaps a heartbeat or two, they finally reached the beach. Waves smashed packed sand sending warnings from legs to chest. Childish exuberance pushed the warning aside. Still, they stayed well clear, only splashing in the trickle and foam of the receding tide.
Tiring of the squealing girls, the six males moved up against the cliffs and began throwing their spears at clumps of the green-black weed slithering along the shoreline. Being boys, they picked the furthest target to test their new skills. No one hit the clump with his first throw.
Smoothing his copper curls back from his deep russet brow, the biggest boy threw his spear and scored a direct hit on his second throw of the day. He whooped down the sand in triumph and stopped dead when he reached to pull the spear from the target.
Three sharp whistles coming from the top of the cliffs could only mean danger.
Kimraig Llu jumped to attention. May the Wicca spare me, he thought. It would take the intervention of the entire government to stop what their training instructor was threatening as she thundered down to join her brood.
He gulped as she slid to a stop and her livid mouth spattered droplets into his eyes from far above. Even her gray hair is turning purple. Kimraig fought hard not to flinch away. “You dense or something baby boy?” Boomer shouted. Like any good training instructor, she ignored his given name, Kimraig, in favor of his family name. “Listen up Llu. Tell me why you chose not to put your morning lesson to use in the field?”
The 6th of Six (The Legend of Kimraig Llu) Page 1