INCURSION: Knightmare (Knight's Bane Trilogy Book 1)
Page 31
"First, you will never be allowed to talk about what really happened at camp. You will have to forget that Section 28 even exists. This condition is absolutely required. What we do is a secret, and it has to stay that way. Other than a few crazy conspiracy theorists who might have seen our name somewhere, we don't really exist. We cannot officially exist.
"Second. If you ever do actually speak about what happened there, or who we are, there will be some unimaginable consequences. You'll be crucified in the media. We will sow the seeds of disbelief in your story. In the end, only the crackpot conspiracy theorists will believe you. Outside of them, you'll be a laughing stock." Smith saw that he had Hannah's attention.
"Not only will your reputation and presence be thoroughly trashed, but we'll go after your folks, too. Financially, we'll bankrupt them. Socially, we'll have them outcast. When they continue to believe you after your statements, they will grow to resent the effect you had on their life. Do not think that we won't do this. I crashed a multi-million dollar jet filled with jet fuel to cover for one of my teams. Crashing someone's financial future would be child's play."
Team Knightmare's supervising agent let the potential dire consequences sink in. "Of course, there is always the other option," he continued. "For this one, you stay here and eventually work for Section 28. I have a plan in place to form a new team, and I believe you would fit in very well. To stay here, you will officially die at Blue Mountain Ranch. We will provide you with a new identity and everything you need to live.
"Your marks in school were exceptional. You were also a track star and a rather formidable IDPA and three-gun competitor. We will continue your schooling at a local school that we can trust for the next two years. We'll also train you in hand-to-hand combat and monster fighting. When you graduate, you will be ready to fulfill our mission."
Hannah brightened a little. She asked a question, "So, I'd kinda be like that chick vampire slayer. Muffy? Betty? What was her name?"
Smith smiled a little knowing smile, "Ah... I think the name you are looking for is 'Buffy.'. And while you would attend school and train like the so-called 'slayer,' I am not British and you will likely not be killing vampires at your own school."
He paused and caught her eye, making sure that she understood the implications. "What do you want to do? Once you make a decision, there are no do-overs."
Hannah thought for a moment. She realized that she could eventually become like the woman who rescued her, Boomer. She thought about how great it would be to learn how to kill monsters, but she also thought about her family. She would be dead to them. Forever. She would, could, never see her friends again. Her life would be gone, and her parents would be devastated.
The sixteen-year-old girl took a huge breath, looked Smith right in the eye, and told him her decision.
EPILOGUE
It was 5:32am. The cool of the night was beginning to wane as the day prepared to spring forth. As was his routine, Garrett Malley pulled his gray BMW into the parking spot closest to the track. Climbing out of the car, he slipped his wallet and spare car key into his waist pouch, along with his cell phone. The rest of his keys, as well as the clothes that he would change into, went into the trunk of the luxury vehicle.
The man stretched through his normal routine. Jogging in place for a few minutes, he limbered up, his mind drifting as he began his routine. He stepped onto the running track that circled the baseball fields at the Williamsburg Recreational Center, in Kingstree, South Carolina. Setting off at his normal pace, his long strides began to eat up the distance. Garrett wanted to run a marathon in the fall, and he was training diligently.
As he rounded the final bend on his first, of many, laps, he noticed a form lying in the children's play area that was next to the track. Garrett slowed, and he looked closer at the form. It looked to be a man, and it seemed to be lying face down in the sand. His pace faltered, and he slowed to a walk, moving off the track and toward the body at the playground.
Hoping that the guy was decent when awakened, Garrett reach into his pouch and grabbed his cellphone. With his phone in hand, the jogger leaned down and gently poked then pushed the person as he tried to wake him.
Pushes turned into shoves, and eventually, the jogger gently rolled over the person. Wide, open eyes stared out into the early morning air. The man's face was frozen in his last terror. Looking up and down the body, the jogger noticed that the front of the shirt was soaked with blood. Startled, Garrett quickly stood up, and called 911 to report the body.
IN THE KINGSTREE, South Carolina, police department, Detective Melissa Chambers finished typing the report into the computer. This was the second body dumped in the last three weeks. Each body had a single puncture wound. The coroner's report showed a wide, triangular blade to the chest that was forced through to the heart. Each time, the body was at least a mile from where he or she was last seen.
The police department withheld one fact from the reporters: each body had strange markings drawn on the skin of their foreheads and chests. The detective shuddered. Although it seemed illogical, these bodies looked like they had been some part of a ritual sacrifice.
In a department with only fourteen full-time officers, Detective Chambers didn't think she had the right resources to handle this case. She looked up at the clock. It was too late now, but she'd call her friend over at the county sheriff's office to see if he could help her. This was going to take more than her small department had to offer.
IN THE LAW ENFORCEMENT INFORMATION NETWORK (LEIN), a tiny data worm was scrounging through all the materials being fed into the system, a country's worth of information and statistics. The data worm picked up on several characteristics of the case from Kingstree, South Carolina, and filed it in memory. It then snooped through the data for that city and the surrounding county. Finding another report with the same characteristics, it began to compile its findings. When it had enough information to trigger a response, the small program quietly transmitted the compiled report to its master.
The data worm bounced its findings to a server in Houston, Texas. From there, the report travelled to Los Angeles, New York, Detroit, and finally back to a small building outside Langley, Virginia. Once the program sent out its report, it then resumed mining for more documentation.
AT A DESK LOCATED in Section 28 headquarters, Agent Timothy Wilson of the Department of Homeland Security received a small report from his worm in LEIN. Sifting through the compiled report and the raw data, Timothy made the same connections that the worm did.
Timothy keyed a very specific sequence on his computer. This, in turn, signaled Agent Smith's planning and analysis team and transmitted a copy of the report file as well as the raw data. This signal also informed each member that there was a potential incursion and that they needed to perform a quick analysis and assemble in the conference room within one hour.
Timothy then placed a call to his boss, Agent Smith.
The agent answered the phone immediately.
"Sir, we have a potential incursion event," Timothy informed his superior. "The planning team is assembling in the conference room as we speak."
Supervising Agent James Smith concluded the phone call with his assistant, and then he wrote the last few sentences of the report he was working on regarding the newest young field agent. Smith smiled and saved the paperwork. He grabbed his SSP and began the short walk to the conference room.
IT HAD BEEN TWO WEEKS, and Boomer was confused. According to the data from Dr. Kaine, the gestation period from exposure is about five days. Neither Boomer nor Heavy had turned to vampires because of the scratches they sustained while battling that new type of vampire. Earlier this evening at dinner, she couldn't tolerate much of the food. She normally had a healthy appetite, but her stomach was aching, and she was doubled over in pain. When Boomer looked at her reflection in the mirror in her bathroom, she was able to see how gaunt and hollow her cheeks had become.
Suddenly her fingers started to ache. The ex
plosives expert began cursing as her knuckles and fingertips were suddenly on fire. She was in agony. Her bones felt fragile. Boomer looked down and watched as claws extruded from her left hand. She stared in horror at the newly-formed claws.
Boomer felt tremendous pain and pressure behind her eyes. It was almost as if she was having the most intense migraine of her life. She opened her eyes. Each eye turned a solid black, both the pupils and the whites. Suddenly, details became sharper and her vision shifted from color to black and white. Boomer noticed details on things that she had never been able to see before. She squeezed her eyes shut. Slowly, she blinked her eyes open, and the explosives expert found that she could concentrate and filter out some of the more garish sights.
While she was looking her new eyes, she felt a new, terrible pain in her jaw. She opened her mouth and examined her teeth and gums. She was watching when they first elongated and then sharpened. Through the mouthful of sudden fangs, she muttered a candidate for the Understatement of the Year, "Damn."
GRAND RAPIDS, Michigan. Saturday, 4/18/2015.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you so much for reading INCURSION: Knightmare, the first book in the Knight's Bane Trilogy, and my first venture into writing fiction. I appreciate your time, and I hope you enjoyed the story.
This book is the first in a trilogy chronicling the adventures of Team Knightmare as they fight monsters and try to protect the world. The trilogy is part of the larger series exploring the Hidden Worlds, called Incursion Legends. More information about the Incursion Legends series and the Hidden Worlds can be found online and on Facebook.
Online: Incursion Legends Website
Facebook: Incursion Legends Facebook
If you enjoyed this book, please take the time to add a review on the website of the retailer where you purchased this book.
Also, feel free to contact me on the website or on Facebook. I love talking to my readers.
Bryan
October 16, 2015.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bryan Donihue is the author of INCURSION: Knightmare and primary creator of a collection of novels and stories called the World of Incursion, Bryan has been a science fiction, fantasy, and paranormal fan for his whole life. Bryan is also an artist and graphic designer who enjoys working in digital art. After starting and stopping many creative projects since his early teens, he was finally inspired to write a book about church safety called What They Don't Tell You About Church Safety. That book was the first he published, but not on his last.
Bryan is a study in contrasts. He has been a youth pastor, a police officer, a retail sales manager, and a security officer. He has worked on computers for small and large companies, worked in fast food, and been a vault manager for an armored car service. Bryan currently owns, or co-owns, four businesses, and is a volunteer ministry team leader in his local church. As an author, Bryan has published both fiction and non-fiction.
As the son of a minister, Bryan spent his youth moving between Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, terrorizing small and big churches as only the pastors' kids can. Throughout childhood and into adulthood, Bryan's pursuits were always creative. Whether the visual arts or his creative writing, Bryan's passion was always to find a public expression. Bryan followed that passion to Anderson University. There he worked through majors in Graphic Design, Marketing, and Christian Ministry, although he always found an excuse not to finish the degree.
Bryan is one of the founding partners of Business Success Enterprises, a firm dedicated to sales training and marketing and business consulting for small businesses. Partnering with his wife, Christina, he founded Donihue Designs, a small graphic design firm that also offers crafting items as an outlet for his wife's creativity.
He also founded Sheepdog Development, a consulting firm dedicated to working with churches and families for security and safety consulting and training. Bryan has several certifications, including being an instructor for the Red Cross. He was also inspired to write a book about church safety and security ministries called What They Don't Tell You About Church Safety. That book was the first he published, but not on his last.
His latest venture is Section 28 Publishing, a company dedicated to publishing his own fiction and game materials, as well as consulting with other independent authors and helping them through the quagmire that is independent publishing. Bryan has helped other authors with advice and graphic design and layout.
As a long-time gamer, Bryan has been playing traditional roleplaying games since Advanced Dungeons & Dragons from TSR. For almost twenty years, Bryan worked with two friends to build a new roleplaying game. Unfortunately, Lore Gaming Company was dissolved in at the end of 2014, without fulfilling the dream of printing their own game.
From the ashes of Lore Gaming, Bryan decided to "home-brew" some of the ruleset of the old game. Creating a game campaign set in modern America, the dark, paranormal world of Incursion was born. During the large campaign, Bryan began writing a book telling the tale of the characters and world of the campaign setting. From this beginning, the World of Incursion expanded, with the final goal of publishing a roleplaying game about that world.
The World of Incursion encompasses the Incursion Legends series of novellas, of which this novel, Six Feet Under, is the first to be released. Also set in the World of Incursion, the Knight's Bane Trilogy recounts the tales of the special action team Knightmare. The first book of that series is INCURSION: Knightmare, and is currently available. The second book of the series, INCURSION: Darkfall, is scheduled for Fall 2016 release.
Bryan is married to his wife Christina. Together, they have six or seven kids, depending on the day.
For More Information:
bryan.donihue
www.incursionlegends.com
bryan@incursionlegends.com
Table of Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Indiegogo Supporters
Prologue
Origin
1. Smith
2. Six
3. Spooky
4. God
5. Boomer
6. Doc
7. Waiting
8. Geas
9. Knightmare
10. Logistics
11. Ghost
12. Heavy
Mission
13. Pieces
14. Trinidad
15. Contact
16. Cover-Up
17. Hunting
18. Daylight
19. Giggles
20. Underground
21. Do-Right
22. Familiars
Incursion
23. Planning
24. Breach
25. Kaine
26. Silo
27. Monsters
28. Hunting
29. Camp
30. Showdown
31. Aftermath
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author