The End Time Saga Box Set [Books 1-3]

by Greene, Daniel

  Tess ignored his words. She looked at him and back at the road a few times before she continued. “Let me explain more.”

  Please God no. What have I done to deserve this?

  “I’m always down for a good time, but you know, more of a long-haired rocker in a band type. Never thought I’d shack up with a goofy, smiling all the time Force Recon Marine. Never saw the man not smile, even when we were facing a horde of infected. It’s like he’s always laughing on the inside. Ya know. Like nothing could get him down. I guess he was just made for this.”

  “The Marines have a twisted sense of humor, but you definitely want them on your side.”

  “You aren’t one of them, are you?” She glanced over at him. “But you’ve seen some shit. I see it on your face.”

  “I’ve seen enough to know better. I don’t enjoy it. I’d rather be somewhere else, but most of the time, I don’t have a choice.”

  She draped a single hand over the steering wheel. “You in the business of playing hero?”

  Steele half-laughed and ran a hand down his beard. “No. I’m in the business of keeping my folks alive.”

  “So? Like going out of your way to help a Marine you’ve only met in passing.”

  “He did the same for me.” Trees passed by, waving dying leaves like parade flags.

  “He did. But I have a feeling you would be out here either way. Some people, that’s all they know.”

  Steele sat silent for a moment contemplating his reasons for his actions.

  “I would.” It’s the right thing to do. Pagan could be an ally. It could gain your group’s trust. It may lead to a clue to finding my mother. The reasons went far beyond being helpful.

  “Those are the markings of a leader.”

  He shook his head, still scanning the trees and the two-lane road.

  “I wouldn’t call leading a group of four a leader. You have a band of a couple hundred people. You’re the leader.”

  She snorted. “Nobody there follows me. They’re there because it’s safer together. No one else volunteered to help me search for Pagan. I make decisions, but I don’t lead. A man like you inspires.”

  “I only do what I have to do to keep my folks alive. Not leading some rebellion.”

  She gave him a half-smile. “A warrior with a heart of gold. I assume that’s how you got that nasty scar?”

  He tenderly ran a hand over his scar as if he still didn’t believe it had happened. “The results of an ambush in West Virginia. Good people died because of decisions I made,” he said. He finished with a look at her to see if she understood his survivor guilt. He gave a painful smile under his bushy beard as if thinking about the wound somehow reopened it. “I was hoping my hair would cover that up.”

  “You’re going to have to grow a hell of a lot more than that to cover that puppy.”

  “I suppose I should be thankful to still have a head.” Darkness from his peripherals made him look ahead quick. “Tess, look.” He pointed out. A thick-trunked tree lay across the road, blocking their path forward. He pushed his carbine up to his shoulder and scanned the fallen tree. Clear chainsaw cuts and grooves cut through the bark revealing the white of the inner trunk. Shiny bits of metal lay in the brush on the side of the road.

  “Looks like a motorcycle,” Tess pointed.

  “Someone has set this up. I don’t like it. We should get the Red Stripes and come back,” Steele said.

  A determined look fell upon Tess, and Steele knew he was going to regret whatever happened next. “If he’s here, I’m not leaving him.” Jesus, they’re all trying to get me killed. Either by infected, bullets, or a heart attack.

  A shaved-head infected stood up near the tree and hobbled through the ditch then up onto the roadway. White creamy bone had been forced through its riding leathers. Red Stripes motorcycle club colors covered his torso. Pus oozed from large wounds covering his legs where the skin had been worn off by sliding on the pavement uncovered by leather. Lower layers of epidermis were exposed and reddish pink.

  “Damn. Looks like Joker and he’s all fucked up.”

  Steele peered hard at the trees looking for anything and anybody that could pose a threat. Their exposure in the middle of the road gnawed at the back of his mind. “I don’t like this.” He spun in his seat, looking out behind them and trying to get a three hundred and sixty-degree grasp on everything around them. “I’ll go put him down. But then we go.”

  “No,” she asserted. Her eyes were the darkest of brown. “We put him down, and we search for the others. I will not abandon Pagan when we finally have a clue to as to what’s going on.” She stared at him, mind made up but waiting on him to respond. Are these people worth the danger?

  “We put him down. Take a quick look around and then come back later from a different way.”

  “Deal,” she said with a smile, slipping out of the pickup’s driver side. Steele hopped out and put his carbine to his shoulder in the high ready. He eyed the trees. Soft-needled white pines grew between jagged-leafed bigtooth aspens; a few thick-trunked oaks grew amongst their smaller brethren.

  Ambushers could be waiting behind every tree and rock to put bullets in him again. He steadied his breathing with some tactical breaths, drawing up alongside the slender woman. He let himself ramp up into a heightened state of readiness.

  “I’ll do the honors. Payback’s a bitch,” he breathed.

  “But,” she got out. He ignored her and charged the former biker. Letting his carbine swing to his hip, he drew out his tomahawk, and with a heavy downward strike, he sunk the rounded axe blade through the front of Joker’s ugly hairless skull. Joker stopped mid-step, his body almost suspended in the air. Steele let the man fall back. Joker’s jaw clicked open then closed one last time and he went limp. Steele wrapped his other hand around the shaft and ripped it free with a spray of brain matter.

  He put the tomahawk back and his carbine whipped back up to his shoulder.

  “Look here.” He pointed with his gun to a red streak running along the pavement toward the tree. Small chunks of flesh made it look like he had hit an animal, turning it into roadkill, but in reality, those were pieces of Joker.

  “What do you think happened?” Tess asked.

  “It looks like Joker laid his bike down back there going pretty quick. You see?” Pieces of metal, engine fluid, and Joker lay scattered along the cracked branches of the fallen tree.

  Steele circled the downed tree, stepping around branches. He frequently checked his flanks expecting the shit to hit the fan at any moment.

  “I got nothing over here,” he called over at Tess. The trees rustled in the wind and the drying fall leaves crackled together like ten thousand pieces of crinkle paper. He bent down, putting a finger on a deep gouge in the flesh of the tree.

  “Somebody definitely did this on purpose,” he muttered.

  “Come quick,” Tess called. Gripping the giant tree trunk with one hand, he hopped over the log, landing near Tess.

  “Jesus, Rambo.” She gave him an intense stare. “Check this out. Tracks.” The leaves were pushed out of the way. Sand and dirt had been scraped to the sides. Something had been dragged through the ditch into the woods.

  “They went this way,” she said, holding her 1911 pointed toward the ground.

  Steele bent down trying to read the tracks like an ancient message written in the sand. He could make out a dozen distinct footprints. “At least a dozen people.” He gave her a glance. He already knew what she would say.

  She didn’t hesitate. “I’ll grab our packs.”

  KINNICK

  Golden Triangle, CO

  Kinnick watched Hunter as he slurped up chicken soup by upending his bowl. Yellow liquid dribbled down his wild brown beard, running along the whiskers as if they were canyons. He gave Kinnick a wolfish grin as he chewed up the meat and noodles in the broth.

  Men and women moved in and out of the cafeteria while the din of plates and silverware clanked in the background. They w
ere allowed full kit in the cafeteria. Kinnick supposed if they weren’t allowed, no one would tell them otherwise.

  Kinnick’s men consumed as much of the non-MRE food as they could get their hands on. It was the only taste of civility he had experienced in what felt like forever. He picked at his food, sick to his stomach about what was going to happen to the West Coast.

  “What’s got your goat, Colonel? Can’t be too mad about the food. It’s hot. It’s free, and there’s plenty of it,” Hunter said.

  Kinnick pushed his bowl in front of the master sergeant.

  “Be my guest,” he said with a dismissive wave.

  “You sure?” Hunter questioned him with raised eyebrows.

  “Take it.” Hunter grabbed the bowl and started to shovel its contents into his mouth.

  “A lot more food to go around since Lewis left us,” Hunter said, between bites.

  “I’d rather have his SAW pointed downrange than the extra food,” Turmelle said.

  “Me too,” Hunter said. “But, I ain’t gonna turn down the extra rations.” Hawkins sat next to Turmelle, quietly eating his food. The man was meticulous even in his eating. His mechanical, robot-like chewing irritated Kinnick.

  “What’s the problem, Colonel? You got the egghead and that Jody into the secret mountain base. Humanity’s got a chance. My mission don’t change, but surely your life’s a bit better now,” Turmelle said.

  Kinnick met the man’s hard blue eyes. “My life didn’t get better by coming here. My family’s dead. My men have died, and I have to figure out a way to prevent the vice president from nuking the West Coast.”

  Hunter choked on his food and went into a coughing fit. He wiped his nose and stared at Kinnick.

  “With all due respect sir, you don’t mean nuke, nuke, do you?”

  Kinnick gave him a flat look. “That’s exactly what I mean, Master Sergeant. He’s going to pound every city center along the coast with 400-kiloton warheads to eliminate the infection with a heavy dose of fire and brimstone.”

  Hunter’s eyes narrowed. “He can’t do that. This is America.”

  “He can’t?” Kinnick ground his teeth. “He will. He has promised me that.”

  “That’s like using a shotgun to shoot a fly off your foot,” Turmelle said.

  “You can begin to understand my reservations,” Kinnick said.

  “We can’t let him do that,” Turmelle said, growing excited. His short black curls trembled. “I have family out there.”

  The men looked at one another and back at Kinnick as if they expected an answer to their problems.

  “I have twenty-four hours to come up with a plan to protect our western flank or the VP is going to do it.”

  Kinnick stared at the remnants of the “Skins” Operational Detachment Alpha 51. Each man wore a patch on their sleeves of a skull wearing a wolf headdress, two red arrows behind it. They were on loan to him from General Travis, brought up from Eglin Air Force base. General Travis was dead. They had started this war with twelve men. Now, they were down to three. Kinnick considered them lucky for that. To die was a release from their nation’s never-ending demand of duties.

  “Strategic planning is not part of our responsibilities. My job is to teach indigenous folks how to tag ’em and bag ’em and maybe sneak a few kills in when the boss ain’t looking,” Hunter said. Soup continued to run down the long hairs of his beard, flowing down the indents and ridges made by his thick bristly brown hair.

  “God has given you a fine set of skills, Master Sergeant, but I need you to think outside your box. We have to figure out a plan to stop roughly sixty million infected from crossing the mountains in our rear and presenting the other one hundred and fifty million from the east coast an anvil to smash us on.”

  “What about the other hundred million people in the United States?” Hawkins asked.

  “Well, I’m assuming they’re dead, but I’m sure they will find their way up here somehow,” Kinnick said, irritated by the sight of Hunter’s soup-filled beard. “Wipe your beard, Master Sergeant.”

  He stared at Hunter’s beard. Little droplets sped down the long hairs, following the curves and outlines made by the coarse hair. Hunter took a napkin, running it along his beard as if he tried to straighten it.

  “Did I get it all?” Hunter asked with an unrepentant smirk.

  “No. You didn’t, but you just gave me an idea.” Kinnick pulled out a rolled-up map he had taken to study and stretched it across the table, pushing bowls and cups out of the way.

  Hunter ran a sleeve across his face and shrugged his shoulders, leaning in.

  “Hear me out. The infected are like a river, much like the soup flowing down your beard. It travels down the easiest path. If you block one way, it will flow through the path of least resistance. So find me pinch points. Passes. Anywhere we can hold an enormous force of infected without deploying too many resources.”

  “Can they even get through the mountains? They don’t seem too agile,” Turmelle said.

  “I’m not sure. Some will make it through, no doubt, but we will assume most will struggle, trapping themselves in the mountains. The parts we have to worry about are established routes through those mountains that they can easily traverse. Highways, tunnels, and passes through the Rockies.”

  “So we’re going to dam ’em up?” Hunter said.

  “More like push them along until the snow takes care of them for us. Once those passes are covered in snow and no one plows them, the dead will be trapped on the other side,” Kinnick said.

  “What about next spring?” Turmelle said.

  “If we make it that far, we will deal with it then. Specialist?” Kinnick waved to a broad soldier, a green and tan ivy patch on one sleeve, walking by with a food tray in his hands. His name tag read Rogers. He stopped at their table. “Specialist Rogers. You based out of Carson?”

  “Yes, sir. I am.”

  “Good. You go skiing around here?”

  Specialist Rogers looked a bit uncomfortable. “Yes, sir. Not recently.”

  “No need to worry, soldier. When does the season start? When does it usually begin to snow in the mountains?”

  “Ah, well, it depends on the year, but I would say by mid-November we usually get enough snow to really hit the slopes.”

  “Perfect. Carry on, soldier.”

  Specialist Rogers nodded and left.

  Kinnick pointed at the map. “We only need to hold the choke points until mid-November and then the snow will do all the work for us. Who knows maybe the snow will kill ’em.”

  Hawkins studied the map silently then spoke. “That’s a lot of ground to cover. Exactly how many resources are we thinking?”

  “There’s me, you, the master sergeant and ah, Turmelle, maybe a couple of the boys from the squads,” Kinnick said with a weak smile.

  The master sergeant laughed. “I love those odds.”

  “Sign me up,” Turmelle said, leaning over the map.

  Kinnick jammed his index finger on the paper. “Look here. You see this tunnel? The Eisenhower Tunnel. We’ll have to shut that down.” He dragged his finger to Highway 70. “That’s the fastest way through Colorado from the West.”

  Hawkins pointed, touching his finger south of the Eisenhower tunnel.

  “Independence Pass. And here, Mosquito Pass. And there, South Fork.” His finger touched each pass of a major roadway through the Rocky Mountains.

  “And here.” Kinnick jabbed his finger downward, feeling the pain in its tip. “When we block the Eisenhower Tunnel, they will funnel through this way,” Kinnick said. His finger dragged along the map all the way to a single spot. He tapped it with his finger. “What does that say?”

  Hunter got his face close to the map. “Dunluce Pass.”

  Kinnick’s three men looked back at him. Expectant. Inspire us, they seemed to say. No, they don’t need inspiring. They were used to this. They had gone into the field of battle countless times, always expecting to return.

&
nbsp; Kinnick took a deep breath. “That’s the spot.”

  Hunter grinned. “You really know how to sweet talk the girls, Colonel.”

  “Luckily, it’s only you three stooges I have to worry about.”

  “If we can get some token forces in place at the smaller passes, hold them there, and plug Dunluce, we can stop the West Coast infected from breaking through.”

  Turmelle jumped out of his seat, twirling his kukri in his fingers like a hibachi-trained chef and then slammed it blade first through the map into the table. Soldiers from a nearby table looked up, considering the operator’s outburst. Their eyes quickly went back to their meals.

  Turmelle gave them a wicked grin. “When do we start?”

  JOSEPH

  Cheyenne Mountain Complex, CO

  Dr. Weinroth’s auburn hair lay sprawled across her white pillow like sugar-plum rivers on a field of freshly fallen snow. Joseph brushed a strand of hair behind her ear. White surgical mask straps wrapped around the back of her head pinning her hair down. Thick white bandages covered the bite wound on her cheek. The rest of her was curled in a ball as if she were a little girl nestling into her mother for warmth.

  Joseph sat next to the bed, his hands clasped in front of his body. Filled with fear and regret, he had watched her sleep for hours, and his heart hung low in his stomach. You should have saved her. She was afraid and you continued on with the experiments anyway.

  She rolled over, her sheets rustling around her. Her eyes opened and creased along the edges. A hand rose to her face and she pushed on the bandages. She let her hand drop onto the covers, and a small voice came out. “I thought maybe it was only a nightmare, but it’s real.”

  Joseph didn’t know what to say to console her. “I’m sorry.”

  Her eyes held tears but no answers. “Can you hand me my glasses?”

  Joseph jumped up for them. His heart raced as he tried to help her.

  “They are on the table behind you.”

  He quickly walked over, snatched them up, and handed them to her. She took the glasses and placed them on her thin face. Their frames were slightly bent, resting crooked on her face.