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

by Greene, Daniel

  “Gwen Reynolds,” she said. She munched a nut, savoring the salty flavor. “What kind of doctor are you?”

  “I was a political science professor at Mason College. Small liberal arts university near Midland.”

  “I’m not familiar with the colleges in this area.”

  He looked disappointed. “Ah, of course not. Are you in the military? Or should I say, were you in the military?”

  “No. These are on loan, but I don’t think they’re going to ask for them back.”

  “I suppose not.” He looked even more disappointed. “The last I heard about them was the National Guard was protecting the capital building in Lansing. That seems like forever ago. Now, I’m living in a trailer with a bunch of people I only know in passing. And of course, Gordon here. Gordon!” he called out. A fox-colored Pomeranian shot out from beneath his camper. It skipped about at his feet, begging for food.

  “Get away, you little devil. Not in front of our guest. Shoo.” The small dog continued to scamper about his feet. It danced back and forth, excited at the prospect of being fed. “Fine. Take this,” he said, tossing the dog a cashew, which it caught in the air with practiced promptness. The dog did victory circles, chasing its own tail.

  “Gordon. Don’t be so rude. Here, take this,” he said, handing her the cashews. “He loves them.” Her lips rose into a genuine smile for the first time in forever.

  “It sure looks like it,” she said. She held one out, tantalizing the small animal.

  “Well, go on. Give him one. Don’t be cruel.” She threw a nut high in the air and it plopped into the dog’s waiting mouth. He crunched the nut once and swallowed, not caring to savor his treat.

  “Haha,” she half-laughed. She tossed him another and he caught that one too.

  Dr. Thatcher looked on like a proud pet father. “Gordon can do more than that.”

  “Oh can he?” she said amused, her head tilting to the side.

  “Sure can. Watch this. Gordon, stand up.” The dog stood up on his hind legs. Taking short little steps, the dog did circles for its well-deserved treats.

  “Wow, look at him go,” she said to the proud owner.

  “He’s lucky to be here. Before the food truck came, people wanted to eat him. I can’t say I wasn’t tempted.” He patted the dog on the head. Dr. Thatcher stopped, looking up at her. “Where did you come from? I’ve seen your group. Rough, mean-spirited looking people.” He picked Gordon up and held him in his arms.

  “Washington, D.C. It went under quick. Nothing anyone did could prevent it. So many people died. Even the emergency bunkers failed.”

  Dr. Thatcher stroked Gordon’s head. “Did you work there?”

  “I worked at the National Red Cross Headquarters in D.C.” The word worked gave her a weird feeling. I technically never quit, but it’s all gone now.

  “Ahh. I see. A bleeding heart.”

  She didn’t answer him. Am I?

  “Or a heart of stone,” he said quietly, petting the head of Gordon. Dr. Thatcher’s eyes held a sadness in them. “Don’t forget where you came from. The past isn’t dead.”

  High-pitched crying distracted her from the professor. A child stood in the middle of the tents, tears streaming out of her eyes.

  “Will you excuse me, professor?”

  “Of course,” he said with an understanding smile.

  Gwen walked over to the crying child. Not more than six years old, the young girl’s cheeks were red from sobbing. Gwen crouched down to her level.

  “Hi there, young lady. Are you okay?” she said, exaggerating her words in an effort to be comforting.

  Unable to get enough air into her lungs, the little girl said with trembling lips, “Dey’, day’, all lef’ me here.”

  “Who left you here? Your friends?” The small child’s head bobbed up and down in agreement.

  “My name’s Gwen. What’s your name?”

  “Lacy.” The girl sniffled.

  “Well, Lacy, I’m going to help you find your friends.” She wiped a tear from the girl’s cheek, feeling her insides melt. Gwen stood upright. “Do you want me to help you?”

  The small girl nodded her head again, and Gwen offered her hand to the little girl. The girl glanced up, unsure about her new friend. Gwen smiled back. After a moment, Lacy decided Gwen was safe enough and grasped Gwen’s pinky finger.

  With the steps of a child, they circled the inner ring around the lighthouse. Children darted in and out of tents and wheels on the far end of the encampment. They hid beneath trash, scraps, and scattered debris. Their hearts are still young. Their world will be one filled with only loss and misery, but they don’t know it. It brought her great sadness knowing that they would suffer so much no matter what path their lives took.

  Only despair would meet them in the future. A future filled with stomach pains and gut cramps when they had nothing to eat. A future gobbled up in fear of being ripped apart by the undead or being murdered by bandits. A guarantee of psychological damage as they watched their friends, family, and loved ones die around them, victims of violence at the hands of the dead or the guns of the living. Gulping the ball of emotion down her throat, Gwen looked down on little Lacy.

  The girl stared up at Gwen, dirt outlining her cherubic small face like apocalyptic cosmetics.

  “Are you okay?” Lacy’s voice squeaked.

  Gwen bent down next to the little girl, wiping a tear from her own face. Damn hormones. “Yes, Lacy, everything’s fine.”

  “You don’a look so fine.”

  Laughing a bit, Gwen wiped her other eye. “Lacy, you go and play with your friends. I see them over there.”

  “But I don’t know where they are.”

  Gwen stood, peering around the parked vehicles. She spied a child’s white shoes sticking out from behind a wheel. She pointed to the feet. “See there? Go get him.”

  Lacy gushed, looking up at her. “Thanks, lady,” she cried out and tagged the other child beneath the rubber tire. They scampered off as the children chased each other. Let them be young while they can.

  Standing straight, she covered her own stomach as she watched them play. A few years down the road and one of these kids playing could be mine. The children brought a sad smile to her lips, making her soul ache just a little less than it had before. For several minutes, she watched them until she noticed a boy, about the age of five, standing away from the rest. His hair was the color of the sun. His eyes were blue but bordered on gray like a smoky ocean wave. His red zip-up sweatshirt hung open shifted to one side as if someone had yanked him around. Beneath the sweater, he wore a blue shirt with a red star emblazoned on the front. She gave him a half wave. Unblinking, he stared back at her as if he expected her to do something.

  Uncomfortable, Gwen turned back to the kids now playing tag around a fire pit. Guilt washed over her and she looked back up at the child. He had disappeared. Her maternal instincts went into overdrive.

  Rushing, she quickstepped to where the boy had once stood. Using the bumper of a trailer as a brace, she looked underneath. Dune grass lay crushed and limp.

  “Hello?” she yelled out. “Boy?” Only the wind and the water answered her. “Come back,” she hollered. Dropping to her hands and knees, she crawled to the other side of the trailer. She stood up on the unsecured side of the ring of cars and brushed sand off her clothes. Beach met her feet. Small tracks led away from the vehicular palisade, a little mop of blond hair bouncing over the sand.

  “Stop,” she called after him. The boy turned toward her, considering her with a half-smile. He let out a high-pitched giggle. She ran after him. The sand ate her feet up, ensuring she made slow progress. The boy topped a sand dune and disappeared. Goddamn kid, he’s going to get himself killed. Along with me.

  After a few moments, she crested the same sand ridge, and the boy stood below playing near the waves. He held a stick in his hand, battling the waves with it. Every time a wave would roll onto the shore, the boy would run inland, laughin
g at the wild water, swinging his stick wildly at it. He bent his small legs, picked up a rock, and threw it back at the offending waves.

  “Come here,” she scolded. Her finger pointed to the ground at her side.

  The boy turned in her direction, a smile on his lips. The splashing of distress forced her eyes away from him. Her mind instinctually thought of a shark or of somebody drowning, but a man’s head and upper torso emerged from the waves.

  The infected man’s skin sagged low and gray off his face as if it weighed too much for his body, almost as if he were a bloodhound in human form. Wading through the waves, the man was followed by another. And another. They wore hardly recognizable shirts and pants seemingly melted to their waterlogged skin. She drew her knife in a second.

  “What are you doing?” a voice shouted behind her. She spun around toward the voice. Ahmed bounded down the dune at her. He held a bat in his hand.

  “The boy,” she shouted at him. “Help me get him.” Ahmed looked over her shoulder, worried.

  “Where is he?”

  “He’s right here,” Gwen said, turning back toward the big lake. The boy was gone, only the dead walked in his place.

  “He was just here. Help me. Boy! Boy!” she called out.

  “I only see infected.” Ahmed gripped his bat nervously with both hands.

  “Help me.” She ran into the water. “Boy! Boy!” she screamed. The ugly faces of the infected struggled for her. She swept the water with her hands. “He was just here,” she cried.

  Ahmed’s bat cracked off the side of an infected head, and it splashed facedown into the water. The torso followed the head, arms spread wide. The body floated on the surface of the waves, tossed around by their force.

  Frantic, Gwen spun around in a circle. Where is he? Where is he?

  “We should go back,” Ahmed grunted, as he bashed another skull. Pieces of white cranium splintered and were launched free as pink brains exploded outward.

  “He was here,” she yelled, wading through the water. Angry sediments floated to the surface of the brown water as she stirred up the lakebed. An arm wrapped around her waist, lifting her up from the shallows.

  “Come on,” Ahmed’s voice reverberated in her ear. As she thrashed in the water, he half-carried, half-dragged her to the beach. “Gwen, please,” he muttered, not fighting, but blocking her from going back. More forms came out of the shallows.

  “The boy,” she breathed, exasperated. Ahmed scowled at the infected in the water.

  “I see no boy. If he’s smart, he’s already back at camp. Come on.” They ran back to camp as fast as the sand would allow them. Ahmed snatched up his M4 from their campsite.

  “You can’t,” she breathed. I’m so tired. “Go by yourself.”

  “If only you listened to your own words.” He flashed a quick smile at her. “We need to put them down before they reach the perimeter.” He raced up a ladder on the backside of a nearby camper.

  The slamming of car doors drew their attention. Her bearded agent, deep scar running across his scalp, stepped out of a red Ford Ranger. Mark. Thank God he is back, and there is that hussy.

  Tess threw a pack on her shoulder, joining Mark as they entered the camp. Her tight black pants revealed her narrow hips, small ass, and petite all-around frame like that of a cat burglar. She turned, saying something to Mark, and he smiled and barked a laugh into the air. There’s no way he finds her funny, that, that pothead.

  Mark made eye contact with Tess as they marched toward her and Tess met his eyes, giving him a soft cradling smile. It may as well have been an invitation back to her camper. When he turned back to Gwen, his eyes quickly darkened as though the sun had eclipsed above them in the sky. Have I lost you? Moans rolled up the dunes, and he dropped his pack and ran for them.

  JOSEPH

  Cheyenne Mountain Complex, CO

  The lights from above revealed everything. They shone down unrelentingly from the ceiling, displaying all of the doctors’ dirty deeds below. The heart rate monitor beeped. Byrnes and Dr. Nguyen cut away at Patient Zero like he was a thick steak. His body rocked beneath the restraints, still living under their dissecting blades.

  Joseph stood in the back watching them take piece after piece off the man. After each piece was taken, whether it was a lobe of lung or a piece of the brain’s frontal lobe, they would sew him back up as if they had just completed a successful surgery. Dr. Hollis had been allowed to leave after an hour to assist Dr. Desai in running a gambit of tests, leaving Joseph with the two butchers in blue HAZMAT suits.

  Byrnes looked over his shoulder. “Dr. Jackowksi, will you assist Dr. Nguyen with acquiring a biopsy of his heart? That shouldn’t be outside your comfort zone.” Joseph circled the table. His feet obeyed, his will already overcome by his peers. Dr. Nguyen looked up at Joseph as he stepped up beside him.

  Patient Zero’s eyes had been taped closed, and his mouth gagged, but beneath the partially open lids, his eyes darted back and forth. Whimpers of pain exited his mouth as if he was exhausted from crying.

  “I’m thinking we will make our incision here.” Dr. Nguyen’s blue-suited finger jabbed Patient Zero in the lower part of his armpit. “Below the swollen lymph node. The node was almost black beneath his pale almost translucent skin like a lump of coal underneath the snow.

  “You don’t think the groin or stomach?” Joseph asked, referring to other areas to enter into with a catheter in order to reach the heart.

  “We had a few difficulties with his gastrointestinal areas.” An x of freshly opened and then sewn up again scars crossed Patient Zero’s belly.

  “I see that,” Joseph spat. Richard would probably never be able to relieve himself on his own. Portions of his intestines, stomach, and colon had been snipped away like he was a hairless cat in a middle school science lab.

  “But I agree, Dr. Nguyen. Let’s try a spot that hasn’t been hacked to pieces already.” The Asian doctor’s eyes narrowed only as far as they could go while still staying open.

  “I’ll let you guide me then, Doctor.” Dr. Nguyen bent close to Patient Zero. His scalpel slid neatly below the blackening lymph node. Dark brown blood seeped from the open wound, and he wiped it away with gauze.

  “I am searching for the axillary artery that runs through the upper torso to the heart.” A single finger explored the slit he had created. “Ah, there.”

  “Catheter, please.” Joseph picked up a clear tube and handed it to him. The tube was a rigid sheath that would keep the puncture site open for insertion of the flexible thin tube with a camera on one end. Dr. Nguyen threaded the thin tube through the sheath into the artery.

  Joseph flipped a switch on a monitor. “Camera’s on,” Joseph said. A tunnel image came up on the monitor. A round image of the white walls of the artery lined the tunnel. Dr. Nguyen glanced at the screen. “You may begin to feed.”

  The camera-headed tube drove through the artery, grazing its walls. Dr. Nguyen barely tried to be gentle while feeding the catheter. Joseph glanced at Patient Zero’s face. His eyes were only white, rolled up inside his head.

  Beep. Beep-beep. Patient Zero’s heartbeat slowed. Joseph watched the heart rate monitor closely. “Dr. Nguyen, his blood pressure is dropping. One hundred over fifty. Should we continue?”

  “Of course. It’s a normal biopsy,” Byrnes said from across the table. The man looked angry that they might stop their collection.

  Dr. Nguyen nodded and continued to feed the tube. “I’ve reached the aortic arch. Entering the left ventricle now.” The walls of the tunnel on the screen pumped in time with the beating of Patient Zero’s heart. The pressure inside the artery slowed, the pushing of blood becoming a drip-drip instead of a thud-thud.

  “Dr. Nguyen, get a good sample from there.” The colonel pointed on the screen. “Why is that black? I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “Is part of his heart dying? Literally, the tissue appears to be deteriorating,” Joseph said. They stared at the screen, ignori
ng the beeps that crept lower and lower. Until he flatlined. Beeeeeeeep, the heart monitor screamed attention to his predicament.

  “He’s in cardiac arrest!” Joseph shouted. He placed his hands two inches above the end of the sternum. He let his arms stay straight and began pumping Richard’s chest to the beat of a song. After thirty seconds of pounding Richard’s chest, he looked at the other doctors. They stood watching.

  “Somebody help me,” Joseph demanded. Byrnes had the nerve to step back. He held his bloodied hands upright in the air, the backs of his hands to Joseph and Patient Zero. “What are you doing?” Joseph’s voice came out in a screech. “He’s flatlining.”

  “We don’t really feel the need to resuscitate the patient. In fact, much of this work would be easier if he was already dead.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Joseph screamed between pumps of his chest. “You are a doctor for Christ’s sake. Dr. Nguyen. Help me.”

  “I’m curious to see the virus after the body expires. It would be interesting to see if he reanimates like the others.”

  “Get me an AED,” Joseph commanded. “I didn’t scour this country to find this asshole so I could bring him here and have you hacks kill him.” No one moved.

  “We only have a paddle defibrillator. We’re a research facility, not a surgical center,” said Dr. Nguyen. Joseph shoved past Dr. Nguyen, pushing him into a tray that toppled over onto the ground. Joseph ignored his complaints.

  Joseph gripped the edges of a metal cart holding the paddle defibrillator. He pulled it toward the flatlining Patient Zero. Byrnes let himself be shouldered to the side. The heart monitor echoed its shrill, dead victory cry over the living.

  “Why are you wasting your breath on this creature?” Byrnes hissed. He leaned toward Joseph. Joseph turned away from him. “After what he did to Rebecca?” he whispered.

  Joseph flipped a switch on the paddle defibrillator. It warmed up with a high-pitched whine. “Because he’s a person. His name is Richard. Now, step aside, asshole.” Byrne’s eyebrows narrowed, but he took a step back. Joseph rubbed gel on the handled paddles, wires still attaching them to the machine. He swirled them together as the machine warmed up.