by T. K. Malone
Free World Apocalypse
Book 1 Fugitive
Book 2 Citizen
Book 3 Captive
Book 4 Genesis
Extras - Book Zero - Prequel
Free World Apocalypse - Citizen
T.K. Malone
Copyright © 2017 by T.K. Malone
All rights reserved.
All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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Contents
Join the struggle
1. Teah’s Story
2. Teah’s Story
3. Teah’s Story
4. Teah’s Story
5. Teah’s Story
6. Connor’s Story
7. Connor’s Story
8. Connor’s Story
9. Connor’s Story
10. Zac’s Story
11. Zac’s Story
12. Zac’s Story
13. Zac’s Story
14. Zac’s Story
15. Zac’s Story
16. Zac’s Story
17. Zac’s Story
18. Zac’s Story
19. Teah’s Story
20. Teah’s Story
Thank you for reading
Free World Apocalypse - Captive
Join the struggle
Facebook group: Black City Riders
Email list : Black City Riders
Note: Emails will be occasional with more regular updates on the Facebook page. However, just incase you miss an update, it’s a good fall back.
Don’t get left behind…
1
Teah’s Story
Strike time: plus 3 days
Location: Morton Valley
Teah’s mind raced. In front of her, the moonlit promontory dropped sharply to the land surrounding the ruins of Black City, and behind her stood the madman who’d torched her cabin, threatened to kill her, and now had a rifle trained on her back. She couldn’t expect any help from Trip or Ned; she’d left them sleeping the night away in their tents at the camp by the waterfall. No, like the deer Lester and Teah had fought over all those years ago, she’d fallen prey to a hunter, and her time was probably up.
Slowly, she held her hands up and edged back from the promontory’s edge.
“Oh, you can stay there for a moment,” Jake said. “Mind you don’t fall off the edge, though. That would be an unfortunate end to such a burst of light in an otherwise dull universe.”
Teah searched for options but could find none, not even a decent-sized stone she could throw. “You gonna kill me?”
Jake scoffed and it sounded like he’d settled back on a rock, his boots raking the gravelly path. “What I’m doing now, Teah, is assessing the situation. It’s something you need to learn how to do. Note my emphasis on the word ‘need’.”
“So, you’re not gonna kill me?”
“Did you get my note?”
“Yeah.”
“Then why do you think I would kill you? I know everything about you, Teah, everything. Has that stiff’s-trained brain of yours stopped working? Don’t you understand the implications of those five words?”
“So you know who I am, so what? Most everybody does. They all know I was a gridder.”
There was a pause, then Jake said, “You can spin around, but not too close, now.”
Teah shuffled around. The drop behind her had become somehow more threatening, now her back faced it. Jake was resting against a rock about ten yards away, his rifle still in his hands but pointed at the ground. A chill grin shone out through a mess of stubble. He looked as though he’d been sleeping rough for an age.
“So, what do you want?” she said, dredging a hint of challenge up from deep within her.
“It’s time you and me had a civilized chat, and no one can have one of those with a gun pointing at them. Tell me, Teah, you going to behave?”
Teah nodded, though unsure whether to try and rush him or listen to him. Seeing as it was probably a surefire certainty one of them, if not both, would end up over the edge, she decided to listen. “This edge is a bit unnerving—can I?” She shuffled forward a few inches. He inclined his head in what appeared to be amusement.
“How many of Saggers’ smokes have you got?” he asked.
“Couple.”
“Well, light one up and toss it over here, and let me get one thing straight before I start. I admire you, always have, love the trail of destruction you leave in your wake. Liked it right from the start.”
Teah shoved herself a bit farther forward, leaned against a decent-sized rock and scraped herself around. She sparked up a smoke and tossed it to Jake. He was unique—was Jake—she thought, and he set a standard for ugly which would rarely be beaten in this new, less populated world. But one thing he did look was relaxed, like a man who held all the cards. In one fluid motion, he plucked the smoke out of the air and took a drag.
“Saggers,” he finally said, “makes a fine smoke. I, on the other hand, can rifle his secret fields and pinch the odd plant here or there, and hang it and dry it, and do all the things you’re supposed to do, and it still tastes like a dead leaf. What is his secret?”
“Dunno. I’ll ask my boy when I rescue him. Saggers’ been training him up.”
“Your boy? Clay? He’s safe enough, with the army over the other side of the valley. Least he was a few hours back.”
Teah’s jaw dropped. “How could you possibly—”
“Know? You aren’t the only ones with a base and a radio, you know. So, back to my question: what was the implication of those five words? Any idea yet?”
“You know I’m a gridder, that I burned down Lester’s hut—which I did for you, by the way.”
Jake laughed at that. “Chaos, that’s why I came to speak to you tonight. It’s been a blast watching you go around the valley causing chaos, but it has to end. That day, you didn’t save me, you burned down my bloody hut.”
“I stopped you going into the mine, stopped you looting it. I burned your bloody hut down so you wouldn’t stay, so you couldn’t loot the mine. I torched the hut so it wouldn’t kill you, like it did Lester.”
Shuffling the gun into the crook of his arm, he started to clap, ever so slowly. “Well…done…you. Except the mine isn’t dangerous, and now any casual explorer can wander into it.”
“But Lester…Jenny?”
He wagged his finger. “I’m not saying it wasn’t dangerous once, but it isn’t now. Maybe Lester and Jenny sorted that out? Eh? Did you think about that? But back to you: do you ever wonder why things just keep getting more complicated for you?” He blew out a funnel of blue smoke in the moonlight. “Let me tell you, because I know you can’t focus on the smaller stuff—always rooting for the bigger picture. Me? I like details. So let me force you back to them. ‘I know everything about you.’ Let’s look at the meaning of those words.” He perked up and stretched, as if the whole conversation bored him. “I know now how I can flip it around so that the gist of what I’m saying might permeate that confused maelstrom of a brain of yours. Here’s the question, so listen carefully: do you know everything about yourself? There, try answering that.”
Only one answer was plain in her mind. No, she didn’t. What was Jake saying? That he could fill in the missing pieces? Impossible, surely, she thought.
“I have certain bits, certain portions of my life that are cloudy…no, foggy, that are out of reach.”
“And lately? Come on, you should know this
stuff. It’s your brain, after all.”
Jake seemed to be reading her mind. He appeared to know she was experiencing some kind of memory gain, but one that merely threw up more patches of darkness which she wasn’t aware she’d had before. How did he know?
“I’ve been remembering.”
“And,” his voice boomed, “been creating mayhem. Who was Tony Morrow?”
“A bounty hunter?”
“Wrong,” he shouted. “Tony Morrow was the second-in-command to a man named Spike Briscoe. Now, Spike Briscoe is head of the preppers, and a mean SOB to boot. Once he finds out his favorite son is dead, a man he fought wars with, although somewhat off the book, how pissed off do you think he’s going to be? Still, it could be worse…”
“Morrow wasn’t a bounty hunter?”
“Bounty hunter? There was never a bounty hunter. Do you really think I’d have put a snitch on you? Heck, I’ve been kinda looking out for you. Set the fire that drove you into the village. Did that as I couldn’t trust the wind to blow right when the nukes went up. Out there,” and he pointed around in a semicircle. “There’s no basement out there. Wow, that would have been some painful dying you and little Clay would’ve gone through. No, the snitch was all the townsfolks' own whispers. I had gas because I have endless credits, endless cash. So you see, you needed taming, and so I’m here.”
“I killed two innocent men?”
Jake laughed at that. “I’ve heard Morrow called lots of things, but innocent? Never that. Man was a prince of bastards, prince only to the true king.”
“Spike?”
“Indeed. So, now you understand that you know nothing, that you and your friends can’t be allowed to just run riot in this valley. Let me answer you the real question that’s playing on your mind. ‘Why is my memory coming back?’. And the answer to that is…because the city is no more. The beacons have stopped transmitting and so the suppressors fitted into your mind have stopped working. All part of the design, and all part of his plan.”
“Suppressors? Design?”
“Hell, I could ramble on all night and scramble that pretty little brain of yours, but you’ve got a busy day ahead of you tomorrow.” His big, bobble eyes stared at her. “Busy, busy day. What is it you’re doing?” He tapped his finger on his chin. “Ah yes, you’re going over the ridge, going to sneak over without Spike’s folk spying you.” His rasping laugh then rang out. “Ha, let me know how that works out for you. Bet you don’t even know how hard that ridge is? Or do you? Do you remember that?”
Teah gawked at him. Was he just plain mad, or did he know everything about her as he proclaimed. Sure, he could have overheard their plans, but the ridge?”
“I’ve never been up there,” she muttered, but had a feeling about what was coming next.
He laughed again, that same rasping laugh, not like Jenny’s, not like Lester’s, but a crazed laugh. “Oh, but you have; you fought Lester up there, and you met me up there. What did you fight over? A deer? You thought you were tracking a deer.”
“But I was…”
Jake shook his head. “No, Teah, you weren’t—it was already dead. You were hallucinating.”
Teah grabbed her hair and pulled her head down, hunching her knees up, folding herself into a protective ball. She wanted to scream, to wail, to cry. She wanted to shout “No” to the world, just once, as loud as any explosion, to deny fate her compliance. Most of all, she wanted to forget, to go back five days, maybe more, not to remember but to be just her and Clay together. And then she started crying, then sobbing. Her shoulders heaved in sorrow, in desperate, desolate despair.
Jake fell silent and his boot scraped on the scree at the foot of the rock. “There are things you won’t remember, but in time, you might even guess them, but then, that is the nature of the game. For now, the fact you’re still in play is a remarkable feat in itself, if you think about it. You’ve survived where others would have died; the sewers, escaping the city, life in the mountains, even an apocalypse. When you stack them up, doesn’t it make you wonder why you’re crying?”
Teah pulled her head up by her hair, and through glassy, defiant eyes she stared at him. “You think I should be happy? Happy?”
It was only when he grinned that she realized how far out of kilter his face was, somehow twisted, but his eyes held her own—his odd, mad eyes—and he was enjoying the whole exchange, that she knew. She thumped the rocky ground in frustration.
“What do you want me to do?” she bellowed.
He shushed her, all the while his twisted grin continuing, morphing into different misshapen versions of itself. “Keep quiet for a start. If you disturb your companions, our conversation ends and you continue to wander around these mountains clueless as to your actual purpose.”
“What do you want me to do?” she eventually said again, this time almost in a whisper.
“Do?” He scratched his chin and looked up to the stars. “Start fixing things instead of breaking them, though that’s easier said than done.”
“How?”
“For a start, you’ve gotta begin thinking straight, thinking logically. Not going off on a whim.”
“You think rescuing my son is a whim?”
“That’s a folly, not a whim.”
“How so?”
“Because by now the army will know who he is. Saggers may have blabbed, or that beat-up woman, Hannah? Or any one of them. Any one of them would have given away your son for a meal, for bedding, or to avoid the muzzle of a gun. Which one? Does it matter?”
“What am I to the army?”
“A couple; you said you had a couple of smokes. I imagine you’ve got a whole load more back at your makeshift camp, so I’ll do you a deal. I get a smoke, you get some more clues.”
“Clues?” she questioned, lighting him another smoke and tossing it over.
He again caught it easily, then said, “See this face,” as he outlined himself with his finger. “It’s underestimated. People always make the mistake of simplifying a deformity into stupidity.” He shrugged. “Useful tool in a complicated world that just a few days ago became even more complex.” Taking a deep drag on his smoke, he rolled his eyes. “Handy, and like me, you must use everything you have to your advantage in order to succeed. To the army you’re a useful bargaining chip. Why? Well, for now, please take my word for it, and accept that your son is beyond your reach. You have an army of two: a general and a foot soldier. I will try to get word to Saggers and let him know that matters are in hand, but I can’t promise anything.”
“Why?” she couldn’t help but ask.
He wagged his finger. “I’ll let that go. Here’s what must happen: firstly, you must persuade the others that you want to abandon your quest to rescue your son, and do it without raising suspicion.”
“Why?”
“Because you’d fail. Did I not make myself clear?”
“No, I mean why not just tell them the truth?”
“Tell them that the army holds you in great stead? Tell them that they only emptied the village to try and find you? One of them killed the old couple. One of them can’t be trusted, but which one? Which one would betray you?”
Teah’s jaw dropped, just for an instant. Had he just said either Trip or Ned had killed Helen and Jez? Ned quite possibly, but Trip? There was no chance. She thought and thought, as fast as she could, memories of the last few days cascading through her mind. Then it came to her: Trip had had a chance, he could have killed the old couple. He’d been following her to Saggers’ place, and then he wasn’t there. She’d found him back at the bar—gone after the mouse, or so he’d said—but had he had time to kill Helen and Jez? Ned had had days, but Trip had had just one short opportunity.
“Are you thinking like a stiff again, Teah?” Jake asked. “Are you remembering the process? Everybody lies. Everybody has secrets. And everybody has an agenda.” He stubbed out the smoke and pushed himself off the rock, then walked over to the edge of the promontory and looked out.
“A mere nuclear explosion wiping out what? about nine million folk or so, just here alone. You think that would change anything? No,” he pointed at his temple, “you must use your brain, Teah, your wit, and then we just might get through this.”
For the briefest of moments, she thought about pushing him over the edge, but it was almost as though he was giving her the chance. She stood, and still he didn’t turn. She approached him, and he remained steadfast, trusting. Drawing beside him, she looked out over the black stain which had been the city.
“So, you divide my group and expect me to believe everything you’ve told me.”
“Not sure I care one way or the other what you believe at the moment. Your memory will come back to you in time, then you can make up your own mind. You can trust or distrust, but I think I’ve let you in on enough to gain a small measure of faith.”
“You’re not a mountain man, are you, Jake?”
“Nope.”
“A gridder?”
“Not one of them, either.”
“So, like Jenny?”
“See, you’re learning. Kill, kill who you wish. Fight, fight who you wish, but always think, Teah; always think. That first battle with Lester, hell, you had your psycho back on then. Fought for a good few minutes with your arm snapped clean in half. Valuable lessons Old Lester taught you—valuable lessons. But there’s fighting, and there’s thinking. Lester knew you could think, so he taught you to fight, to trap and to survive. That old man gave you a chance out here. He did some great things in his life, but he always said you’d be the greatest challenge.”