by M. Barnette
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Phaze
www.phaze.com
Copyright ©2005 by M. Barnette
First published in 2005, 2005
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NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.
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Apocalypse Dance
An erotic romance novel by
M. Barnette
Phaze
6470A Glenway Avenue, #109
Cincinnati, OH 45211-5222
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
eBook ISBN 1-59426-505-4
Apocalypse Dance © 2005 by M. Barnette
All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted 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.
Cover art © 2005 by Stacey L. King
Phaze is an imprint of Mundania Press, LLC.
www.Phaze.com
Dedication
Miki S, the best romance beta reader anyone could have, and WizRat who's been with me since the start.
Your help is appreciated more than you can ever know and I thank you both.
And to Ummeiko aka Emily Hamilton for help with the Japanese translations, domo arigatou Ummy-chan!
Prologue
The heavy motorcycle sped down the cracked highway, weaving between cars that were either abandoned or had passengers he didn't want to study too closely.
No point. They were all dead anyway.
And he'd seen enough dead people to last a lifetime.
Several dozen lifetimes in fact.
He slowed the bike. He was coming to an exit and he was getting tired. Hours of endless driving, looking for survivors and finding no one had made for a seriously depressing day. But then, most days were like that.
So many dead, and he carried a gun on his hip in case a few more wanted to join the majority of humanity in the silence of the grave.
Welcome to the Apocalypse, six billion served, no waiting.
The unknown disease had spread so fast, killing so many people that there weren't enough living left to bury the dead.
It had been worst in the cities. People getting sick so fast and not enough hospital beds. Not enough doctors or nurses, and they'd died like everyone else, making the situation even more critical.
Death had walked the streets, arms spread wide, welcoming humanity in their millions.
There really weren't enough people to even keep civilization, the old World As We Knew It, from crumbling to ash.
Now the cities were full of nothing but ghosts.
Lost hopes, lost dreams.
Lost lives.
And he was tired. Tired of being alone. Tired of waking up. Tired of being alive.
And that was the real bitch, because he couldn't die.
He rode the bike down the ramp and came to a stop at the traffic light. It was dead, like everything else. Strip malls stretched out to either side. Windows smashed, shops looted.
The man wondered how many people had taken TVs from the Hal's TV and Video store he could see in the nearest shopping center. Lot of good that would have done. There wasn't even a working power grid. But if you had a generator you could watch DVDs. Movies. TV shows.
The good old days.
Gone like a puff of smoke on the wind.
"God...” the man whispered to himself, his voice like audible velvet, smooth, deep toned. It was a bedroom voice, but there wasn't anyone alive to hear it.
Not here.
Not anymore.
A super strain of SARS had seen to that.
Pulling his helmet off caused a Medusa's tangle of cornsilk pale braids to fall from inside. The bells at their ends ringing softly, grey feathers fluttering in the light breeze, glass beads catching the light, cobalt glass, their color blue as the man's eyes as he scanned the empty main street of yet another dead town. Two days worth of beard stubble glinted gold on his jaw, but there was grey showing in places, just as there was some grey streaking his hair.
Old. He was getting old in a world now as dead and empty as his own soul.
He turned his head and the silver bells in his hair rang.
It was the way he remembered his name. Bells. It was the only name he'd had in so long; most days he couldn't even recall his real name. It had been Jason once, a very long time ago. Jason Whittier. His nickname ... Well his friends had called him ‘Billy-badass,’ and he remembered that name more often that he remembered Jason.
He'd forgotten the names of his friends. Forgotten their faces.
Forgotten too damned much, and not enough.
"Well Billy-badass, what now?” he asked himself. Bad habit, talking to himself. But there wasn't anyone else to talk to other than himself. Not that talking to himself was good company. But it was either that, or talk to the bike, and it never answered anyway.
He dropped the kickstand and got off the bike to stretch aching thighs.
Not a tall man really, under six feet in height, he moved with the grace of someone able to handle himself in a fight. Someone used to guns and violence.
Using a bungee cord, he fastened the helmet to the back of the bike over the small duffel bag of his gear, folded himself in half, the palms of his hands touching the pavement to work the kinks out of his back before he mounted up on the bike, slammed the kickstand up, and took a left down main street. The sign said that way led to a back county road, which could be a good thing.
There was more chance of meeting people away from the towns, and he was at the point where he was ready to go and look for someone, just to hear another voice. Even if it was just a shout before they started shooting at him.
He drove down the street, his bike making the only sound other than the soft sighing of the wind through the scattered trees.
Most of the birds were even dead. So were the dogs and cats, or he'd have gotten one for company.
He gunned the engine and the bike flew down the street; the man was weaving between any and all obstructions, mostly more cars with their dead passengers. He reached the outskirts of the town and took the bike faster, wanting away from the reminders of what had been, what he'd lost.
The sun set, stars came out, and still the bike sped over the rolling highway. Like its rider, it wasn't exactly what it appeared to be.
He looked like a man.
He wasn't.
It looked like any other motorcycle.
It wasn't.
Looks could be quite deceiving.
So was the fabric of time.
The bike hit 100mph and the world dissolved in a rippling maelstrom of screaming light and echoing darkness, a nimbus of cobalt and aqua light swirling around him, taking on the shape of a dragon with cobalt eyes and gold scales.
He had time for a shouted, “FUCK!” before torn reality healed and he found himself flying across a field full of tall grass, a tree looming up out of the fading ripples of the time shift.
Chapter One
Bells came awake hours later, head aching, vision blurred, unable to stand, barely able to move. Too lost in the pain to realize the sticky wetness drying on
his face was blood, too deep in the post-shift confusion to realize he had a fractured skull. He fought the pain, flashes of another wreck, another time flitting across his shattered memory.
He tried opening his eyes, but the noon brilliance of the sunlight burned like lasers in his retinas, and then he did wretch, stomach heaving but bringing nothing up.
When was the last time he'd eaten anything?
Unable to remember even who he was, being able to remember his last meal was a secondary consideration.
He lay there, breathing raggedly, a metallic taste in his mouth, a badly wounded man dropped down to the same level of awareness as a dying animal.
The sun slipped lower in the sky, the leafy cover of the tree he was so near blocking the harsh sunlight, making the pain in his skull almost bearable now that his eyes no longer felt like they were being assaulted by an arc welder.
How long had he been laying there now?
Help. He needed help.
And he could only think of one person able to help him.
"Kimi...” he groaned, searching for a face, for warm brown eyes and milk and honey skin. But he couldn't see. Couldn't move. “Kimiko ... doko desu ka...” he murmured in Japanese. Kimi ... where are you? his mind echoed in English. “Kimiko ... doko ... desu ka ... ?"
The disorientation he was experiencing seemed familiar somehow, but he couldn't have said why, nor could he remember where he was, or what he'd been doing. He still couldn't remember who he was either. But he remembered her. When he was hurting he always wanted Kimiko. His Kimiko. She could make the pain go away. Soothe his hurts with hands that glowed with soft golden light. The touch of her soul merging with his, wiping away the agony, making everything better.
His heart ached with wanting her, his soul cried out for her touch.
"Kimi?"
He groaned. The agony behind his eyes was like a red-hot band of steel compressing his brain, thumping with each beat of his heart. Any attempt to move caused such intense nausea he had to clamp his jaw closed and swallow incessantly to keep from going into another bout of the dry heaves.
But he had to move. Had to find Kimi. She was there somewhere nearby. It was just a matter of making himself crawl to where she was. He'd done it before. He could damned well manage it this time, too.
He rolled to his hands and knees, but his right arm wouldn't support him, and even through his blurred eyes he could see his hand was covered in blood. Regardless of his dazed state, he could tell the shape of his arm under the heavy jacket appeared odd. He blinked, making an effort to clear his doubled vision, trying to understand what he was looking at. Dully he saw blood dripping to the grass from somewhere, and realized it was running off his chin, falling from the ends of the braids framing his face. It was important, that blood. Why, he couldn't remember. There was just something nagging at his conscious off in the fog that was his mind, a warning that told him everything wasn't right with his world.
"Kimi ... boku no sakura no ... kanoujo ... doko ... desu ka.... ?” Kimi ... my cherry blossom girl ... where are you ... ? his damaged brain echoed.
Somewhere under the blinding headache and the sickness he realized he was badly hurt. But whatever might be broken or damaged took a back seat to the other problems.
Like not knowing where his pregnant wife was.
"Kimiko ... doko desu ka?"
But he was calling for a woman who had been dead and gone almost four centuries and ten realities in his past.
Giving up, he sank back into the deep grass and lay there. Helpless in the aftermath of the dimensional shift that had caught him and dropped him through the fabric of reality to slam head-on into a tree, he lost what little grip he had on consciousness. He was in an empty field about ten yards from a shattered asphalt road, bike laying on its side, little worse for having hit a tree. The tree on the other hand couldn't say the same thing. Having a five-hundred-pound armored motorcycle hit it doing almost 110mph hadn't done much for it and the trunk was as cracked as the blond's skull.
Unlike the blond, the tree was going to die from its injuries.
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The engine of the truck was making the same cough-sputter noise it had been making the last time it died. Nikki, seated on a pile of pillows in the back, frowned, fervently wishing the stupid truck would just get them to town. It was only another sixty-two miles. Turning back certainly wasn't an option. Sugarsprings was almost one hundred and twenty unsafe miles through the no man's land that lay in their wake. Either way, without the truck it was going to be a long walk to Horton. There was no reason for them to try going back to Sugarsprings. Not with the men there so intent on either buying or stealing her and Anya from their friends.
"Come on, baby,” Hawk muttered to the truck from where he was standing behind the thin armor of the vehicle's side panels. His dark eyes were scanning the area, watching for trouble.
"It ain't gonna quit on us is it, Hawk?” Chet asked, his pale hazel eyes looking up at the taller man, worry twisting his face.
"We're screwed if it does,” Anya remarked sourly. Nikki saw her glowering at something out of the passenger's side window of the truck. The other woman had been in a crappy mood since they'd left Sugarsprings three days ago and it was getting on everyone's nerves.
"It's got to get us there,” Dal said from the driver's seat.
Their wishes fell on deaf cylinders and the machine gave a last rasping cough and died, the vehicle continuing to roll forward for a few feet until the last bit of momentum was gone.
Nikki sighed. This problem with the truck was going to be their death yet. Every break down left them without transport, and with no way to run. And fighting it out with the people chasing them, because of Anya and her, was not something she wanted to see occur. The Rangers would kill the men without a hint of mercy. They'd probably crucify Hawk for the role he'd played in her escape, or come up with even worse ways to punish him. She and Anya would wind up chained to some man's bed like last time.
Not a fate she intended to suffer again. Not ever. She'd kill herself before she accepted that kind of subjugation.
"Now what?” Dal asked as he shoved at the door of the driver's side, hitting it with his shoulder. On the second try the latch finally let go, almost tumbling him out onto the cracked, weed spangled pavement.
Anya shook her head in aggravation, deep auburn curls bouncing limply in the humid air as she pushed open her own door. “If it can't be fixed, my guess would be we walk."
"Shitcrackers,” Chet groused.
Nikki got out of the back, Hawk and Chet following her. The two men headed for the front of the vehicle, Hawk carrying the toolbox. Nikki stood there watching them, and considering whether she wanted to try and help them or scout out the immediate area.
The trio of men were all big, strong, and very capable of using the guns they carried. If they hadn't been they'd have been dead better than a year ago, right after the Pandemic swept the world, killing people in their billions with a mutated form of Ebola that had spread like wildfire, the lethal virus carried by two passengers on an airliner who'd been the biggest plague carriers since Typhoid Mary.
With too few people left, things had fallen apart worldwide, leaving a confused and disorganized populace to pick up whatever pieces they could and go on.
Unfortunately the pieces that had been picked up the quickest had been things used to subdue and kill others.
Warlords of various power now ruled the vast areas of what had been the North American Continent from the wilds of Alaska to the center of Mexico. Warlords were men, and even a few women, who had carved out a little piece of empire all their own with the wealth of military and civilian weaponry left after the governments—particularly that of the United States—had collapsed for lack of people alive to run things.
But not everyone wanted to be part of the new armies battling it out for supremacy across the silent desolation of the North American continent.
Nikki and her friends cert
ainly weren't interested. They liked their freedom.
And the women liked the ability to choose whom they had sex with, rather than being forced into it simply because they were healthy and female. It was a freedom that the three men respected and defended, even if Chet did make inept passes at them from time to time.
The fact that both women could also draw their guns faster than Chet also had a bit to do with his respect. Since Hawk was the one who'd rescued her and Anya, Nikki knew the respect the man held them in. After all, he'd been head of the Rangers when he'd helped them—and about fifty other women—get free from the Lone Star Empire.
While the men cursed at the truck, Anya hauled out some canned goods and their cooking gear. “Might as well eat,” she remarked to Nikki as the younger woman went for a bit of privacy for a much-needed pee.
"Might as well,” Nikki agreed.
Spotting a likely looking place by a tree not too far off the road, she stepped into the tall grass and started walking, watching for snakes and hidden barbed wire. They'd already had to cut Chet out of some barbed wire a few weeks ago, and she wasn't about to make the same stupid mistake he'd made by not taking care where she walked.
What she found instead of barbed wire was a battered midnight blue motorcycle laying in the grass against a tree that was very apparently damaged from the impact of the bike. There were pieces of bark and some of the inner cambium scattered through the grass. Oddly, the bike didn't look damaged by the tree.
There was a spatter of rusty looking matter on the tree that her mind instantly identified as blood. Not far past the bike, well hidden by the grass, lay a man dressed in black leather and blood. Lots and lots of drying blood.
"Oh, crap. Anya! There's a guy over here, and he's hurt. Bring the first aid kit!” she called and hurried to see if he was even alive.
She hadn't taken three steps in his direction when he sat up, turning a gore-streaked face to her, a pair of eyes the brilliance of a summer sky locked on her along with a single eye of gunmetal grey. The barrel of the revolver clasped in his left fist was staring cold death at her, but the gun wasn't steady. The man's hand dropping and rising as if the weight of the revolver was too much for him to lift. Even from this distance she could see his pupils were unevenly dilated. With so much blood painting his face he had to be badly concussed, if not sporting a serious skull fracture.