by Nathan Combs
Table Of Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Project Terminus: Destiny
Copyright © 2021 by Nathan Combs
All rights reserved.
First Edition: 2021
Cover and Formatting: Streetlight Graphics
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.
Prologue
The worldwide nuclear war that decimated mankind had laid waste to large portions of the Earth. Few sections of the globe went unscathed. Radioactive rain still fell on vast swaths of land and sea that lay within the ever-shifting ribbons of wind. Nothing was alive in those areas, and nothing would live there for centuries.
The Millennial Bug followed the bombs and inflicted further devastation on those who had managed to survive. Anarchy, starvation, disease, natural attrition, even madness, eliminated most of those who had escaped the bug.
In America, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and other large cities were demolished. China’s great cities, including Beijing and Shanghai, were obliterated. Within nine months, China’s massive population was slashed from 1.4 billion people to fewer than 2 million. At the end of the first year, fewer than 100,000 remained. The rest of Asia fared worse than the People’s Republic of China. Three years after hostilities began, not a single human being was alive in Japan, Indonesia, Korea, or the Philippines. The Middle East was a radioactive wasteland. In India, people packed like sardines in a small can died en masse. Ultimately, the subcontinent and the Land Down Under followed the other nations into oblivion.
As she has done since time began, Mother Nature stepped in and prepared to clean up the mess. Great storms ravaged the land and blew across the seas. At a pace that would have rendered geologists speechless, magnificent glaciers moved south, cooling the planet and squeezing the remnants of humanity into tropical and subtropical areas that were favorable breeding grounds for pathogens. Like mushrooms, inactive volcanos sprang to life, and earthquakes, large and small, persisted with increased frequency.
The third rock from the sun had become an inhospitable home for the species Homo sapiens.
Chapter One
Revelations
Noah woke drenched in sweat and gasping for breath, eyes wide. Momentarily unable to remember where he was, he lay unmoving while his mind replayed segments from the hideous nightmare.
Nina Lutrova, wearing blood-soaked black leather, hovered above a sacrificial altar. Bolts of blue-white lightning radiated from the sword she pointed toward the heavens. Ear-shattering thunder boomed. Vampire-teethed ghouls swirled around her as she exulted over a field of human corpses stretching to infinity, her snow-white face a stark contrast to the black garden of death at her feet.
Another. The cannibal queen, wearing a hideous grin, eyes hemorrhaging blood, black sludge oozing from her putrid mouth as she holds forth a kicking baby.
The dream had been intense. Graphic. As the last fragment drifted into the darkness, he shuddered and exhaled mightily. Refilling his lungs with the cold morning air, he wiped the sweat from his forehead with the bedsheet. The warmth of Anna’s body pressing against his chest finalized his journey to reality, and he rose on one elbow and peered down on her. She was sleeping peacefully, the baby snuggled at her breast. He lay back, momentarily remembering that Fort Hope had been abandoned three days ago, the occupants on their way to Florida. He looked at his watch. O530.
The bedroom was glacial, and he dressed quickly and quietly, then briefly turned on his flashlight for a better look at his wife and child. Satisfied, he hustled to the kitchen stove, added a log to the smoldering embers, and set a kettle of water to boil.
Within minutes, the heat began eating the cold. He moved closer and allowed the warmth from the burning wood to cauterize the remnants of the nightmare. When the teakettle whistled it was ready, he pulled a chair closer to the stove, poured water over the mug of coffee crystals, stirred, and sat.
Should I let Anna sleep?
He decided she needed an extra hour and took a sip of the brew, savored it, then took another. He breathed deeply, exhaled slowly.
Out of the blue, memories of his last hours at Fort Hope battered his brain in a tsunami of jumbled images. The blizzard. Anna’s face after she gave birth. Kissing her and the baby. Going to the command center. Discovering the nuclear reactor was shut down and the colony ready to evacuate to Florida. The fearful look on Maggie’s face when she came to get him. Hustling back to medical. Sara telling him that Anna had transformed into Nina and gone through a window with his newborn daughter.
He shook his head, remembering that he’d refused to believe—couldn’t believe—that Anna and Nina were the same woman. But the footprints in the snow and the stolen horse were proof that his wife was alone in a monster snowstorm with their child. And the only logical place she could go was here—to their old house in the mountains east of Delano, Tennessee.
Horst Nagel sat on a rickety wooden dock at Florida’s Lake Okeechobee, thinking about everything and nothing. He considered what he knew of the remnants of humanity, convinced most were worthless.
The fact that he was cynical didn’t bother him, but the knowledge that his blond hair had turned snow-white and his blue eyes had faded to the color of old denim did. He looked closer to seventy than fifty.
He was aware he had health issues, but the only medical person he could consult was a veterinarian. And, since access to diagnostic equipment was limited, Horst’s knowledge of what was wrong was vague.
You can shove your Aryan superiority, Adolf. Horst’s chin dropped toward his chest, and he closed his eyes. I’m on a collision course with the boneyard.
The sound of distant thunder captured his attention, and he looked toward the Gulf of Mexico. Mountains of cottony cumulonimbus clouds clustered on the western horizon and fought for position on Mother Nature’s canvas. Like living things, ribbons of crimson pursued streaks of green, yellow, pink, and orange within the ominous blackness of the cloud base. Lightning exploded. Thunder boomed and rumbled into nothingness.
That’s a big storm for February.
As he contemplated the massive cloudbank, the sun sliced briefly through and then just as quickly vanished below the horizon. Bare feet dangling in the water, Horst shrugged, leaned back, rested on his elbows, and thought about life since the United States had gone belly-up ten years ago. Sad, grim memories of the global nuclear war, the plague, and the senseless deaths of his wife and son wandered through the cor
ridors of his mind. The recollection of the idiot wannabe king, Roger Jackson, made an appearance. Knowing Wade Coltrane had rearranged Jackson’s gray matter wasn’t worthy of a rerun, but the recall of his own banishment from Oak Ridge National Laboratory courtesy of Coltrane was, and his jaws locked.
The sound of his teeth gnashing annoyed him, and he stopped, shook his head side-to-side, and swallowed hard. Without warning, an image of Nina, the cannibal queen of The Light, detonated in his head, and he gasped like he had been gut-punched.
Sitting up, he snarled. Jesus. No.
The last person he wanted to think about was Nina Lutrova. He couldn’t—wouldn’t. But the memory-train was in high gear and racing down the rails unchecked. His body sagged as he revisited the day Nina had captured him and forced him to eat human meat. The recall triggered a gag reflex, the bitter taste of bile filled his mouth, and his abs tightened. Beads of sweat oozed from his forehead, and he gagged several times before he was able to conquer the urge to vomit.
Fuck.
A vivid mental snapshot appeared of Nina’s sword flashing in the sunlight as she beheaded a victim. The next image of her blood-spattered body convulsing in orgasmic ecstasy caused him to grimace. Frantic, he mashed the delete button in his head repeatedly in the hope of erasing all traces of her from his memory bank. He closed his eyes and shuddered violently. Without warning, his brain flooded with flickering images, like an old celluloid movie, of limitless sex with Nina and her girlfriend, Heather. His frown morphed into a feeble grin.
A moment later, it dawned on him that he was holding his breath, and he released it in a loud whoosh. When his lungs were filled with a fresh supply of O2, he hit the brakes and brought the train to the station. He stared at nothing for thirty seconds, then raised his hand and reluctantly touched the jagged red initials, TL, that Bill Scarlett had carved on his forehead.
The grin became a sneer. The Light, my ass!
Horst hated Wade Coltrane with an intensity bordering on obsession. But he acknowledged that he feared him and was nearly as terrified of Scarlett as he was of Nina. He harbored continuous fantasies of capturing Wade “the Bastard” Coltrane, as Nina had called him, and torturing him. An image of both Coltrane and Scarlett on their knees, crying like little girls, begging for their lives, slithered into his mind and he smiled. The fantasy made him feel good.
Coltrane, you wasted asshole. Eat this—pow! This is for you, Scarlett, you fat prick. Kaboom!
As always, the vision ended with broken and bloodied SEALs lying at his feet, and his grin widened. He took pleasure in the mental portrait for a few seconds, then reluctantly put on his socks and boots and stood.
In the distance, the tuba-like bellow of a bull gator seeking a mate echoed across the water. Without the influence of humans, the reptiles had multiplied rapidly. Many exceeded fifteen feet in length, and as his people had learned when near water, if you weren’t careful, you ran the risk of becoming lunch for a hungry gator.
Even though he had asked himself the same question a hundred times and knew what the answer was, he asked again. Which are worse, gators or pythons? He thought for several seconds and then confirmed that the pythons were light-years scarier than the gators.
He turned to go and took two steps, then stopped. Turning back, he peered across the twilight-encrusted expanse of the lake, took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and released it slowly.
He knew he should leave. He wanted to leave. He needed to leave. But his mind kept wandering, arriving in Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia. His eyes closed as the trip down memory lane progressed to cutting the throat of the commander of the survival settlement, Nirvana. He made a face and his forehead furrowed as he tried to recall the man’s first name.
Jeff? John? Horace? Whatever. Something Simmons.
On the other hand, he had no problem picturing the image of the obese child molester’s bloated carcass sitting at his desk, clutching his throat with both hands in an effort to stop his lifeblood from going AWOL.
As a consequence, the 500 citizen-soldiers he’d hijacked from Simmons turned out to be a good move. Relocating them to Savannah and then to Pahokee was brilliant.
A self-congratulatory nod followed. Horst was the undisputed master of Florida.
His memory beamed back to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, which Coltrane had pretentiously renamed Fort Hope. The facility did have nuclear power, but Horst was willing to bet Scarlett and Coltrane were freezing their asses off right now.
And Nina? He was positive Coltrane had killed her. He was safe.
He plucked a bottle of aspirin from his vest pocket and shook two of the bitter white tabs into his palm, knowing they would do little to thwart the arthritic misery that was his constant companion.
He shrugged. They were better than nothing.
He made a Schwarzenegger with his left bicep, wrapped his right hand around it, and nodded to himself. He was still physically fit, but these days he kept his people in line by being a six foot four-inch, 185-pound bully instead of a 240-pound mountain of intimidating muscle.
A last look at the western sky told him it would be dark soon, and it wouldn’t be safe outside. The giant pythons would be hunting, and he was irrationally afraid of them. He shuddered, turned, and headed to the safety of the Pahokee High School 200 yards away.
Before the apocalypse, Moore Haven, Florida, was a sleepy little town of 1,700 people. When the looming ice age had forced the exodus from Tennessee four months earlier, Moore Haven was reborn as New Fort Terminus. It consisted of the 985-bed Moore Haven Correctional Facility and the adjacent Glades County sheriff’s department and health department complex.
The sheriff’s department housed the operational offices and the armory. The health facility contained the medical and dental sections. The original chain-link fence surrounding the prison had been topped with razor wire and expanded to include the entire fortification, as well as the recently installed hybrid wind and solar system. Watchtowers on the corners provided commanding views in all directions.
After modification, 1,527 people called the complex home and an additional 5,273 souls lived in or near the town. In an emergency, the stronghold could house all 6,800 residents. Near the center of the city, a school was in session, three churches were operational, and at last count, thirty-seven enterprises actively bartered their wares and services.
New Fort Terminus was thriving.
In the backyard of his home, a short walk from the New Fort Terminus Command Center, Wade Coltrane lay in a lime green Nicaraguan hammock in the meager shade of two cocoa palms. A battered straw hat covered his weathered face and partially shielded him from hordes of buzzing insects. He was wide awake, staring at the world from inside the panama.
Three feet away, in a comparable hammock, his best friend, Bill Scarlett, struck a similar pose.
“Hey, shithead, you awake?” When there was no response, Bill asked louder. “Hey, Wade, you awake?”
A disinterested reply seeped from under the hat. “I am now. What?”
“I just returned from Hell. It’s not that hot.”
Wade didn’t respond.
“For Maggie’s sake, I hope your hearing’s the only thing that went south.”
“I heard you. Hell was cool.”
“Really? That’s what you heard me say? I said it wasn’t that hot.”
“And now I’m supposed to ask what you were doing in Hell.”
“Wade, your sense of humor vanished with the collapse. Lighten up. I dropped in to have a chat with your old buddy, Lucifer.”
“Jesus, Bill.”
Bill sat up, put his feet on the ground, and smirked. “Not Jesus. Lucifer. You’ve made more than your share of mistakes the past few years, but I couldn’t remember them all. Thought maybe he’d be able to.”
“The mistakes I— Really?”
“Yeah. You’re the head honcho, so when the shit hits the fan, you own the results.”
“And when it doesn’t?”
Bill laughed. “I get a gold star.”
Wade sat up, swung his feet to the ground, and in the same motion, swatted the tattered, stained Stetson off Bill’s head. It sailed through the air like a Frisbee, coming to rest on top of a saw palmetto.
Bill grinned.
Wade grinned back. “You’re getting weird, but I’ll play. Glad you had a chance to visit your final duty station. Did you gain insight into your character flaws?”
Bill’s grin widened. “I don’t have character flaws. I’m not a philosopher, and I don’t do soul searching either.”
Wade guffawed. “The understatements of all time.”
“Don’t be a jerk, Wade. Nobody gives a rat’s red ass about philosophy and irrelevant, outdated morals. We made a lot of mistakes. Well, you did. And if humanity’s gonna survive, we better learn from ’em.”
“You don’t think we learned?”
“I did. I’m not sure about you. That’s why I wanna go over things.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, really. The fact is, you’re gettin’ senile, and since the plague wiped everyone out, there ain’t no home to put your old ass in. If there was, you would have been sittin’ on a bed droolin’ and babblin’ a long time ago.”
Wade smirked and stood. “You’ll be joining the geriatric brigade before I do.”
The grin on Bill’s face was replaced by a somber look. “I wanna talk about it. Humor me.”
Wade looked at his watch and grunted. “Okay, but make it quick. It’s almost time for the staff meeting.”
Bill stood and faced Wade. “Right. So, all BS aside, it seems like a lifetime ago that we were SEALs. Almost that long since we decided the USA was gonna collapse and we built Fort Terminus in North Carolina. Remember?”
“Is that a question or a statement?”
“It’s a question, dammit. I wanna make sure you don’t have Reagan’s disease.”