by Jim Heskett
None of those questions mattered if they caught him before he got that chance.
He pressed along through the lobby, dragging his ankle behind him. Pain throbbed up and down his entire body.
He reached a set of double doors at the front and opened the first one. On the other side stood George, blond hair and all. George was carrying a rolled-up paper bag under his arm. His mouth dropped open.
Kellen swung the bat, cracking George against his temple. He collapsed to the ground. Kellen rammed the butt of the bat into George’s nose and blood gushed down his face.
“Where’s Anders?” Kellen screamed as he smacked George again. “Where’s LaVey? What the fuck did you people do?” He swung down, smashing George’s head. Blood streamed through his bleached hair.
Kellen lifted the bat, but George held out his hands. “Please,” he said.
“Where are LaVey and Anders?”
“I don’t know,” George said. “Nobody knows. Probably dead. That’s what everybody says.”
Kellen didn’t know if he believed him. “How about Beth?”
George blinked as blood ran into his eyes. “We think east coast, but we’re not sure. She’s not with us anymore and we’ve been trying to find her. Most of this is her fault.”
That’s what all the tracking was about. Beth had gone rogue.
Kellen lifted the bat as George started to cry. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” George said. “It was supposed to fix everything, but Beth and her people sabotaged us.”
“You think you’re patriots, but you’re just monsters.”
Kellen gripped the bat, then George’s hand shot to his chest. He convulsed, then slumped on his side as his eyes darted back and forth. His breathing sped up, then slowed. After about a minute, it stopped. Eyes went glassy.
George was dead.
“What the hell?” came a voice from behind.
Kellen spun to see burly Mr. White standing there, walkie-talkie in hand. Kellen gripped the bat, but he knew it would do no good. He had no strength left, no power. He had nothing to give.
He let the bat fall to the floor, almost relieved. “Okay, you win. Take me back. Wasn’t Anders, but close enough. I did what I wanted to do.”
White was still staring at the heap of flesh that used to be George Grant. “Is he dead?”
“I think so.”
White knelt by the body and put two fingers against his neck. “Son of a bitch, he really is dead.”
Kellen puzzled over White’s reaction. “You don’t seem too upset about your boss’ death.”
White looked up at Kellen, a smile on his face. “Boss? Are you kidding me? I’m free now. I’m finally free.”
White stood up, picked up the bat, and slid it through his belt loop like a sword into a scabbard. “I think we’re done here.”
Kellen blinked. “Are you serious?”
“Don’t think I’ve forgotten that you cracked my tooth. I’m not going to come after you, but we can’t be best friends, either. I’m going to walk out that door, and I don’t want to run into you again. Got it?”
“Yeah, I totally got it.”
White extended his hand. “Connor.”
Kellen shook it.
“Did you really write that soothsayer blog post?”
“Yeah, that was me.”
Connor/White chewed on his lower lip for a few seconds. “I was in prison with a journalist. A guy who wrote about the meteor before the truth got out, and they locked him up for it. What y’all did… calling it brave is probably an understatement. I couldn’t have done that. He died of pneumonia last year, right before these people recruited me.”
“I’m sorry to hear that your friend passed,” Kellen said.
Connor sighed. “I heard that last bit, by the way. If you’re looking for LaVey and Anders, they’re in Denver.”
Kellen pointed at George. “He just said no one knows where they are.”
“You should already know that you can’t believe a word they say. I know for a fact there’s a whole group of them out in Denver. They’re planning something, and it’s something big.”
Connor dipped his head in some kind of mini-nod, then walked out the door.
Kellen stood stunned for several seconds before he found the agency to do anything. When he finally regained his wits, he leaned over and picked up the paper bag George had been clutching. Inside were two pairs of black slacks, two dress shirts, a charcoal blazer, and a muted blue silk tie.
He was free. Plus, he had a sharp suit to go with his new life.
A NOTE TO READERS
Ready to get the sequel and find out how the story ends? Click here for Five Suns Saga II.
Thank you for reading my book. Seriously, thank you. I hope you loved it and it helped you escape for a little while.
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Books by Jim Heskett
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jim Heskett was born in the wilds of Oklahoma, raised by a pack of wolves with a station wagon and a membership card to the local public swimming pool. Just like the man in the John Denver song, he moved to Colorado in the summer of his 27th year, and never looked back. Aside from an extended break traveling the world, he hasn't let the Flatirons mountains out of his sight.
He fell in love with writing at the age of fourteen with a copy of Stephen King's The Shining. Poetry became his first outlet for teen angst, then later some terrible screenplays, and eventually short and long fiction. In between, he worked a few careers that never quite tickled his creative toes successfully, and hasn't ever forgotten about Stephen King. You can find him currently huddled over a laptop in an undisclosed location in Colorado, dreaming up ways to kill beloved characters.
He blogs at his own site and hosts the Indie Author Answers podcast. You can also scour the internet to find the occasional guest post for various writing websites such as Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers, Quips and Tips for Writers, the Blood-Red Pencil, and a few others scattered here and there. He believes the huckleberry is the king of berries and refuses to be persuaded in any other direction.
Details at www.jimheskett.com
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For Keller, because I hope the world you inherit is nothing like the one described within these pages.
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AFTERWORD
The idea for the Five Suns Saga came to me while I was eating steak and rice at a little Japanese restaurant in Boulder, Colorado. A thought popped into my head:
What if everyone thought the world was going to end, but then it didn’t?
I envisioned a group of friends living in a world in which a meteor hurtles toward earth, threatening to destroy humanity. But as the whole of society riots and descends into lawlessness, at the last moment, the meteor changes course. Then the friends are left to do… something… after the world doesn’t end. I hadn’t worked that part out yet.
From that, I changed the idea to: what if everyone thought the world was going to end, but it turned out to be a hoax? And that’s when the Five Suns began to form in earnest. I envisioned a sprawling, seven-volume epic about a group of heroes
traveling the world to uncover the roots of the meteor conspiracy. The problem was, I had no idea how to write a sprawling, multi-book saga.
So I decided that the story needed to be told in manageable chunks, so we could see how the collapse of society affected not just a small group of heroes, but many people. That had never been done before, as far as I knew.
And I wanted to have several voices tell the stories, for the sake of variety, so I created a literary journal, created a website, and went live. I wrote a couple of stories myself and published a 5,000 word back story and set of rules for the world, then sat back and waited.
The problem was, I couldn’t get anyone interested. The rules of the world were too specific: no sci-fi technology, no radiated mutants or zombies, this has to happen after that, etc. People don’t want to write in someone else’s world, particularly for a brand-new literary journal that isn’t paying them anything.
So I abandoned the literary journal. But, since I’d already written a couple short stories on my own, I thought the overall tale needed to stay in that format. I would have some recurring characters and some threaded plot lines and subtle links between the stories. And by using that format, I could fill the world with lots of different characters while leaving a fair amount to the reader’s imagination.
And now that I’ve fallen in love with the world and some of the characters, I may yet expand on that sprawling epic series. My wife says it’s called Five Suns so there need to be five books (duh), so we’ll see…