Scorched Earth: Book 2 in the Thrilling Post-Apocalyptic Survival Series: (Zero Hour - Book 2)

by Justin Bell

  “Bigger fish than our little experiment in South Boston? A little experiment that has apparently caused an apocalyptic crisis? Bigger fish than that?”

  “Don’t get hysterical,” Agent Bryce interjected, following Wakefield to the console. He swept a remote off a nearby conference table and thumbed a button, activating the screens on the wall, which snapped to life, though all of them were filled with a gray and black mish-mash of static.

  “Okay, I keep on waiting for you guys to tell me what’s going on here, but so far, all I’ve heard is you guys using various different language to tell me how important you are. I’m about sick of it.”

  “Sit down, Sergeant Davis,” Wakefield hissed. “Please understand the scope and magnitude of what we’re dealing with here. The operation in South Boston was a gnat on a needle compared to what’s happening in this country. We are under a direct and targeted biological assault, and you sit there and bicker with us.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Look what’s happening in this nation. Look and learn. Weep. Resolve to do better.” Wakefield pointed at the bank of screens which scrambled briefly then illuminated with satellite imagery from an unknown orbital device. The screens on the left shifted and separated, showing a birds’ eye view of the city of Boston in the varying green shades of night vision. On the right, screens shifted and blinked to show Hartford, Connecticut. Even though dawn approached in the east as they watched, the view screens showed the inverted colors of digital enhancement, just for a clearer view.

  The existing devastation was breathtaking and Davis had to press his palms to the table he was sitting on to steady himself. Both cities were utterly consumed by raging fire, the flickering fingers of flame appearing as white blobs in the night vision, spreading throughout the cities, crawling over the various streets, baking thick pillars of darkened smoke up into the sky, reaching toward the satellites which were currently tracking them.

  “Boston and Hartford,” Davis said weakly. “Believe me, I saw firsthand what was going on.”

  “You think you saw,” Wakefield hissed.

  As Davis watched, a group of familiar shapes flew in from the southwest of Boston, streaking slow and straight, at least eight or ten of them. Davis’s eyes grew wide as he recognized their distinctive shapes and flight patterns.

  “Are those—?” he started to ask, but then on the screen the shapes banked right and screamed away, heading northeast, out toward the ocean where they’d likely be angling back around for a return trip. As he watched the screen, a scattering of thick, bright impacts shattered into the city, bursting and splashing among the tall buildings, coating the entire screen in clouds of white and smoky haze.

  “Did we just bomb Boston?”

  Nobody answered. On the right side, another squad of bombers screamed in from the south, then banked away in a similar flight pattern, the familiar outline of Hartford obliterated in a furious scatter of explosions and flashes.

  Davis’s mouth sat agape as he watched, his fingers curled around the edge of the table where he sat, as still as a statue.

  “I had to make that call tonight, Sergeant,” Agent Wakefield said quietly. “I had to call Washington, DC and recommend that we drop bombs on two American cities. The danger was too great, and the wounds had to be cauterized.”

  “This isn’t happening,” Davis said quietly, more to himself. “This isn’t happening.”

  “You’re right,” Wakefield replied. “It isn’t happening, it’s already happened and we need to stop the bleeding. That is our only purpose from here until the end of time.”

  “And stopping the bleeding means dropping bombs? In what world is that okay?”

  “In this one,” Bryce replied. “This world. The one we’re living in, like it or not.”

  Davis peeled his curled fingers from the table and crossed his arms over his chest, glaring at the screens ahead. The white lights had begun to fade and started to reveal the shattered and broken buildings, the debris, the smoldering remains of New England’s two largest cities. A massive, jagged, near fatal scar on the soul of their once great nation.

  “We can fix this,” Wakefield said softly. “This doesn’t have to happen. But we need your help.”

  Davis nodded softly.

  “Those samples you brought us are still going through analysis. Colonel Reeves is in the main command center now, talking to his R & D team, which is already stretched pretty thin. I know you’re more military than geneticist, but we need your help, but I also need your assurance that you’re prepared to do whatever is necessary for the greater good.”

  The sergeant locked eyes with him.

  “Some hard decisions will have to be made over the next few weeks. Over the next months. We’ll have to take a stand, and it won’t always be pretty. You’re uniquely qualified, Sergeant Davis, and we trust you. Can we count on you?”

  It took all of his willpower, but Sergeant Davis peeled his eyes away from the horrors on the screen and he narrowed his glare at Wakefield and Bryce, his mouth clamped shut.

  “Just tell me what to do,” he said quietly, wondering whether his own soul would suffer the same scarred fate as Boston and Hartford.

  Or if it already had.

  ***

  Darkly blurred shapes cut through the horizon, a clutch of them, over a dozen, screaming down the four-lane highway. Among the roaring scream of the motorcycle engines, they couldn’t even hear the bombers tearing overhead, cruising beneath the clouds, humming toward the burning and fallen city, a city that was their home, but would be no one’s home any more.

  Although they didn’t hear the planes, they did hear the bombs as they detonated, several miles behind them and they screamed their bikes to a swinging halt, right in the middle of the road, coming around into a tight sideways skid, heads snapping as flames, light and smoke catapulted wildly from the tall buildings of downtown Boston.

  “Madre de Dios,” one of the men hissed.

  “You can say that again,” Javitz said. He leaned back on his bike, the stolen Honda, which had since been reinforced with heavy, angled armor plating, sheet metal that they had stripped from cars in a dealership and welded into place on their street bikes. Each one of them was outfitted a little differently, slanted metal in gentle curves along their handle bars, layered covering over the body, shielding their legs. Ornate, cut fenders. They looked all at once intimidating and ridiculous, like the cast of a Mad Max movie dropped into the real world.

  Only this wasn’t the real world. It couldn’t be. Skyscrapers in Boston were breaking apart and falling before their eyes, toppling sideways and plummeting down toward the ground amidst a shower of broken stone and glass. Smaller detonations were following the larger ones, miniature echoing popping noises as smaller fuel tanks, vehicles, and other explosive items went off on ground level, ignited by the cascading flames of the massive dropped bombs.

  Scarface smiled, his lipless mouth splitting the ruined darkness of his alligator scale skin, the narrow eyes focusing on the shapes banking away in the darkness. He recognized the B-2 Spirits as they headed out to sea, starting to come around and fly back where they came from.

  “They bombed their own city,” he said quietly, speaking English for not the first time. His heavily accented words were perfectly understandable to the men around him and much preferred to his native Russian, and he was trying to appease these men. They had skills. They had courage. They had more heart than brains, and he thought for sure that they would serve him well in the coming wars.

  Vasily “Scarface” Roserov didn’t know exactly what wars were coming, but he’d lived in the middle of them his entire life, and there was a unique energy. An energy that now consumed every square mile that he’d traveled here in the United States upon his ill-fated landing. The people here wanted it. They were aching for it. This strange outbreak had just given them all the opportunity.

  He’d come to this country on extradition, ripped from his native l
and by these capitalist monsters so he could stand trial in their farce of a justice system. Now, he was the justice system, and he would see that justice was served.

  Zero Hour Book 3

  Now Available!

  Author’s Notes

  July 30, 2018

  Dear Readers,

  So, the Zero Hour contagion is officially in the wild. Full transparency - this series has been pretty difficult to write. Trying to balance the real-world science with just the right twist of science-fiction has been tricky, but also very rewarding, especially when things start coming together.

  In this second book I feel as if the characters are starting to gel a bit better, and we're welcoming someone new to the fold. Jackson continues to lead folks towards Aldrich, his small-town home, without knowing what might be waiting there for him, and when (and if) they arrive, things will likely not go as planned.

  I find myself really enjoying the scale of this series, in many ways a tighter focus than Darkness Rising, while still feeling pretty broad and nationwide. There is quite a bit more military element here, but the focus remains on the everyday heroes, folks like Jackson, Clark, and their crew who must find real solutions to very difficult problems that face them at an even more difficult time.

  I’m still learning and still really enjoying writing in these worlds, and based on the reception folks are enjoying reading them as well, which makes me immeasurably happy.

  Strap in, the ride is just getting started.

  Justin

  Other Post-Apocalyptic Books from Mike Kraus

  Final Dawn: The Complete Original Series Box Set

  Clocking in at nearly 300,000 words with over 250,000 copies sold, this is the complete collection of the original bestselling post-apocalyptic Final Dawn series. If you enjoy gripping, thrilling post-apocalyptic action with compelling and well-written characters you’ll love Final Dawn.

  Final Dawn: Arkhangelsk: The Complete Trilogy Box Set

  The Arkhangelsk Trilogy is the first follow-up series set in the bestselling Final Dawn universe and delivers more thrills, fun and just a few scares. The crew of the Russian Typhoon submarine Arkhangelsk travel to a foreign shore in search of survivors, but what the find threatens their fragile rebuilding efforts in the post-apocalyptic world.

  No Sanctuary

  A nationwide terrorist attack has left the country in shambles and the country's transportation capabilities are crippled beyond repair. Frank Richards barely escapes with his life when he watches his truck explode in front of his eyes. As chaos descends across the country, Frank's home-grown survival and preparedness training and the help of a mysterious stranger he meets are the only things he can rely on to see him safely across the thousand miles separating him and his loved ones.

  Surviving the Fall

  Surviving the Fall is an episodic post-apocalyptic series that follows Rick and Dianne Waters as they struggle to survive after a devastating and mysterious worldwide attack. Trapped on the opposite side of the country from his family, Rick must fight to get home while his wife and children struggle to survive as danger lurks around every corner.

  Prip’Yat: The Beast of Chernobyl

  Two teens and two Spetsnaz officers travel to the town of Prip’Yat set just outside the remains of the Chernobyl power plant. The teens are there for a night of exploration. The special forces are there to pursue a creature that shouldn’t exist. This short thriller set around the site of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster will keep your heart racing right through to the very end.

  Other Fantasy Books from Mike Kraus

  The Makeshift Wizard: Death Magic

  The Makeshift Wizard series is a new action-packed urban fantasy series from bestselling post-apocalyptic author Mike Kraus writing as MJ Kraus.

  My job was supposed to be easy. Investigate a bleed farm, find the a-hole vamps who've been kidnapping Normals and bring down some street justice. Now I've got a relic in my hands that was created with the blood and death magic of an elder Vampire and a whole lot more questions than answers.

  SCORCHED

  EARTH

  The Zero Hour Series

  Book 2

  By

  Justin Bell

  Mike Kraus

  © 2018 Muonic Press Inc

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  www.JustinBellAuthor.com

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