RED THE FIRST
C. D. Verhoff
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Copyright © 2013 by C. D. Verhoff
All rights reserved. Red the First ©, a GALATIA novel ©, and the Galatia Series © are trademarks of the author. Smashwords Edition. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
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Red the First/by C. Deanna Verhoff
The main category of the book —Fantasy. Another subject category—Science Fiction. 3. More categories — Religion, Post-Apocalyptic, Adventure, Plague, War, Survivalist.
Second Edition
Formerly published under the title Wakeland’s War.
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Special thanks to Ginny Eltzroth,
Josephine Henke and Chris Ward.
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Dedicated to my little seedlings,
Lee Lee and A.J.
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Table of Contents
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
Epilogue
Related Books
Author Info
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Chapter 1
Redmond Wakeland knew the end of civilization was nigh when the mechanical wheel of fruit over Schlotz’s Grocery stopped tumbling out of the giant cornucopia. Ten months ago, this store had been a popular landmark in town, but now the shelves were nearly empty. The putrid scent of rotten meat and sour milk lingered within its walls. Except for the places where he aimed his flashlight, the aisles were dark and full of rats. He lugged a shopping cart along behind him, full of canned food, taken from the shelves, and paper products which he had gotten from the stock room. Then he shouldered his way through a set of sliding doors, unwieldy without electricity to trigger their opening, to step outside.
The morning sun cast pale light on a parking lot dotted with abandoned vehicles. His sharp gray eyes scanned the quiet storefronts, many with broken windows, stretching out to the horizon. Litter blew down the street like tumbleweeds. It was hard to believe this used to be upscale suburbia. Weeds were invading every crack in the cement. Tangled bird nests burst from every manmade nook and cranny.
Nature was rapidly overtaking the city, just like the spreading flecks of gray in his sideburns. He used to dye his hair, fuss over the clothes he wore, but petty things like that no longer mattered.
“Zena!” he called out. She didn’t appear, but no worries. The girl liked to explore and knew how to handle herself in a crisis. He envied her ability to live in the present, never looking backward or forward, just accepting life whatever way it came along. Red, on the other hand, still struggled with the decay of everything around him. The deterioration had come on quicker than he had thought possible. The worst part was the overwhelming stillness.
He jumped at the sudden clang of metal on metal. He hefted a big can of Pork N’ Beans over his right shoulder and snuck up to the corner of the building.
“Zena?”
A bushy-tailed brown rodent scampered from around the corner. Whew, just a squirrel. Slowly, he lowered the can.
What’s taking her so long? He left the shopping cart where it was while he went around the corner to see if his companion was investigating the rubbish pile, but he got sidetracked by the garden center.
He was sure this was planting season, but the last time he’d tried his hand at gardening was thirty years ago in the third grade. Everyone in his class had been sent home with a tiny crab apple tree. His had looked exactly like a stick. His father shredded it with the lawn mower by accident. After that dismal start to his gardening career, the prospect of having to live off the land for the rest of his life filled him with trepidation, but the manufactured canned goods wouldn’t last forever.
Maybe the logical place to start would be to get a hoe, some seeds, and then go from there. Lost in his thoughts as he strolled toward the store’s garden center, the last thing he expected to do was bump into a stranger.
They both froze at the sight of the other.
The stranger recovered first. In a flash, she pinned him against the store’s brick wall with a waxy green hand. The stranger’s nose was a bump with two slits for nostrils. Intelligent pink eyes with oval pupils and spidery black lashes stared back at him unblinking. Wispy hair like a dandelion gone to seed poked off her skull in every direction. His mind seized with confusion. Such a thing couldn’t exist. This whole situation was absurd. But how could he just stand there getting his ass whooped, pretending everything was okay?
When he pushed her away it was like trying to move a parked car. She backed up only because she wanted to get a better look at him. His breath caught in his throat and his heart almost failed, as they studied one another.
Red was taller than average, but this strange creature towered over him by at least a foot. Its delicate facial features made him think it was a female, but he couldn’t be sure about anything. It wore a form-fitting, seamless, gray garment, and was barefoot. Bare-rooted. Whatever. Long toes ended in woody talons, but what concerned him most was the utility belt around her waist, from which dangled sleek gadgets born of a technology he’d never seen before. One looked like a futuristic gun from a sci-fi flick. Orange lightning roiled around in its chamber, making him think it was a real weapon.
Heart racing, breath coming in shallow spasms, he struggled to call out for his missing companion. “Zena!”
No response.
He scanned the ground, looking for a brick, a piece of pipe, a shard of glass—anything he might use as a weapon.
The creature held her forearm up to her mouth and spoke into an elliptical device attached to her wrist. Her voice went into one end of the device as high-pitched squeaks and came out the other side in monotone English. He could see in its mouth bristly thin teeth like the claws on the inside rim of a Venus flytrap.
“Answer my questions and you will not be harmed. Are you alone?” The pitch of the translator made Red think the creature was female. She extended her arm so that her wrist and the strange device on it were only a few inches from his mouth.
“Wh-wh-what are you?” His words went into the translator as English, but were converted into alien squeaks.
Yellowish spittle flew as she spoke in agitated squeaks, but her translated words were devoid of inflection. “I ask the questions. You answer. How is it that you survived the cleansing? Are there others like you? What are their coordinates? What is a Zena?”
The creature’s body looked sinewy and tough, but having spent four years in the Marines, Red wasn’t the kind of guy to shy away from a fight. He lowered his head and barreled straight into her stomach. The impact felt like running headfirst into a tree trunk. They rolled head over heels, struggling, in the parking lot.
She
reached for the gun in her belt, but Red held her wrist with both hands. Slowly, he lost the battle of strength. She disentangled herself from his limbs and rose, standing over him, legs apart, futuristic-looking gun pointed at his head. He covered his face with his arms, waiting to be zapped.
“Tell me,” he heard her say as she turned the translator in his direction. “If men and women truly believe they possess immortal souls, why do they fear death?”
Red cautiously lowered his arms. “I am not afraid to die,” he said. “It’s all the stuff that comes just before dying that sucks.”
“What is sucks?” She cocked her head to one side as if confused. “The translator cannot define the word.”
“Who are you?” was all he wanted to know.
She squeaked into the translator. “I am the commander in charge of settling this sector. Humans no longer have a place here.”
Red didn’t know if this creature had any sex organs, but he brought up his foot hard into its groin area. When she crumpled to her knees, he slammed his into her back. She collapsed to the pavement, flat on her face. He darted across the parking lot toward his four wheeler ATV.
Streaks of orange light whizzed past him. One hit a dilapidated truck. For a millisecond, a net of light covered the vehicle. The metal exterior fell to the ground, shattered into thousands of pieces. The alien had recovered from the assault and was quickly bridging the distance between them. Red zigzagged. Light beamed past him, looking like equally spaced dashes painted on the highway, only they glowed orange hot. At this rate, his luck wouldn’t last much longer. He yelped and ran faster.
Suddenly, a deep growl sounded from around the corner. Ear-piercing screams came from the alien as a huge dog with mottled black and tan fur sprang at the alien, knocking her down. The dog locked onto the alien’s neck, shaking vigorously. Yellow liquid dripped from the dog’s muzzle.
The alien creature struggled to her knees, punching the animal aside with a closed fist. She found the space to aim her gun at the dog’s head.
“Fass!” Red yelled in German, which loosely meant to take hold or bite.
The one-hundred-ten pound mongrel clamped her jaws down on the alien’s wrist until there was a gruesome crunching sound, shaking the weapon out of her hands. Red ran toward the fight and scooped up the gun. He leaned over the groaning alien as close to the translator as he dared.
“Commander,” he said smugly, patting the dog’s head, “THIS…is a Zena.” He hurried away, encouraging Zena to follow.
“Aus!” he ordered, instructing the dog to let go.
Zena released the alien. Red slapped his hand on his knee, urging her to hurry.
“Come on, girl!”
The time he’d spent teaching her Schutzhund commands had really paid off.
Man and dog ran back to the four wheeler. Red hopped aboard, and scooted to the edge of the seat, leaving room for Zena to jump in beside him. Wrapping one arm around his furry companion, he revved the engine, and then squealed out of sight.
Chapter 2
Two weeks later, Red Wakeland sat alone on a plush sofa with a pistol in his lap. The sun burned brightly through smudged Palladian windows. He felt lost in the two-story great room—like a shipwrecked man on a deserted island with no chance of rescue.
The incident at Schlotz’s Grocery invaded his dreams at night, and looped in his mind during the day, making him wonder if he was standing knee-deep in the muck pool of insanity. If only the gun he’d taken from the alien hadn’t turned to ash before he’d gotten it home—then he’d have proof.
The gun in his lap, however, was quite solid. He stared numbly down its barrel, contemplating the single bullet in the chamber. The concentrated explosion behind the small missile had the force to protect life or to take it, but could it end his pain? Or would it possibly send him to a place of suffering without end? Some days, the idea of hell was the only deterrent to suicide. And then there was the dream.
The dream always centered on a man with thick black hair and gray eyes. A quarter-sized birthmark, shaped like a star, radiated from the corner of his left eye. The man stood alone in a barren wasteland that rolled on without end. Poison green fog swirled in various places, but the man in his dream seemed unaffected. He. The man with the star turned in a circle then stretched his hands toward the sky; the gesture was like a stone thrown into a pond, creating ripples in stagnant water, pushing away tainted green mist and sickly yellow clouds, making way for a new earth. When he was done, the land had changed from burnt brown to lush green. A rainbow arced in a turquoise sky. The man with the star called out in a voice like thunder, “In the name of the father goes the son!”
The vision always ended there, with Red waking up, crying out with a resounding, “Amen!”
Red savored the joy and hope found within this dreamscape, which waking life denied him. He set the gun onto the coffee table and traded it for a plastic toy record player—a 1970s antique his wife had picked up at a garage sale. He wound the crank, listening as the toy tinkled out a cheerful children’s song. When the music stopped, the silence was like an exclamation point in his ear, emphasizing the smothering emptiness. He flipped the record over, bottom lip trembling as he sang the only part of the lyrics he knew, “…God bless my homeland forever.”
Holding his temples in his hands, he rocked back and forth. “It’s gone. Everything is gone.”
In a fit of fury, he smashed the record player against the wall. Bitter thoughts simmered into sulking, gradually morphing into gentle memories of better times. He retrieved the record player to give it a shake. Pieces rattled inside the box, making him grimace. The knob now turned only loosely. Panicked at the thought that the only music in his life was gone forever, he shook a fist toward the ceiling and implored the indifferent universe for assistance.
The toy couldn’t be pried open without cracking the plastic case, so Red created a mental picture of its interior. He envisioned the broken pieces inside, imagining them floating to their rightful places. Intuitively sensing that a gear inside the player had broken a tooth, he fused it back in place with the force of his own will. The stunt was sheer stupidity, but he pleaded with the unknown powers above.
“Let it be.”
He shook the player one more time for good measure. No rattling! Dare he wind it? Yes, and to his delight, the record turntable moved more smoothly than before.
Red scratched his head in bewilderment. First the alien, now telekinesis—his grip on reality had slipped a little more. What had happened to confident Red Wakeland, the sensible businessman, and weekend warrior? Where was Kay, his wonderful wife who had once been prom queen, and still turned every guy’s head twenty years later? Where were their three little angels? Once he had lived the American Dream: perfect family, big house, bright future…
Bah—who was he kidding? Life had never been idyllic. The truth of the matter was that Kay was not so wonderful—nor was he. She had maxed out their credit cards to pay him back for his one-night stand. His little angels had broken haloes. Once upon a time, his teenage daughter slept around. His son, the middle child, burnt the neighbor’s shed to the ground. But Piper, his youngest daughter, had remained an angel to the very end. Given a few more birthdays, she probably would have sprouted horns like the rest of them, but all of his memories of her were happy ones. How he missed her sparkling blue eyes, her soft pink kisses, and bubbly laughter. Holding her rag doll to his nose, he took a deep whiff. Her pure clean scent still lingered, even so many months after she’d last been able to hold her dolly, Miss Buttercup. He’d give up the days he had left just to hold her one more time.
Hell, he’d trade the whole damn house to hear his oldest daughter slam her bedroom door again, or to be on the receiving end of his son’s sarcasm, or to hear his wife rant about how he left the toilet seat up again. God, how he missed them.
He clutched Miss Buttercup, glancing at the items filling his world. Computers, iPods, video games—what good were they without
electricity? Expensive rugs and artwork—who were they going to impress? He had spent his life accumulating these things, which were now without purpose.
A blanket of despair smothered the light out of his soul. The pandemic hadn’t swept across the globe—no—it had dropped on the world like a bomb. Simultaneous outbreaks started in opposite corners of the world. Clearly, it was an orchestrated attack. Nations pointed fingers, Red guessed terrorists from the Middle East, but the culprits had not left a single fingerprint. Within three months, eighty percent of the population had perished. By the time the illness had played out, Red estimated only two percent had survived.
He cursed the mysterious quirk that had spared him while taking away those he loved. It was only after their eyes closed, their voices silenced, and their breaths came no more that he realized how precious they truly were. He had wasted his todays building an automobile dealership, figuring there would always be more tomorrows to spend with his family.
After his wife and children died, he had welcomed the first signs of the illness in his own body. The plague began with a raging headache, followed by an unquenchable thirst. Within hours of the first symptoms, every breath became a burning agony. The worst suffering came later, after he recovered, and his subsequent discovery of the deepest meaning of alone.
He cursed his squandered yesterdays, aching for a second chance that would never come.
The dog came in from the kitchen to lie at his feet. Good old Zena. She was a three-year-old mix of German Shepherd, Great Dane, and something shaggy. The kids had found her as a half-starved tick-riddled puppy romping around the back yard. They begged to keep her, and Kay caved. Zena made her mark on the family, and the house, chewing up rugs, the banister, numerous shoes, and taking whizzes wherever she pleased. Red had resented her deeply and threatened to take her to the pound on numerous occasions, but Kay had fought for Zena’s right to stay. The wife always won.
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