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

by Greene, Daniel

  The wind came off the water, whipping his coat that dangled around his shoulders. Steele didn’t wear a suit or a tie as was customary before the outbreak. Simple and more functional clothing was appropriate. His sling-propped arm wouldn’t allow him to easily wear a coat, so he wore it around his shoulders.

  Loose-fitting ACU pants covered his yellow and purple leg that itched like hell. He decided it was a good time to ditch the crutch, having leaned heavily on it for a week. He wasn’t sure if a few of those nasty metal pellets were still stuck in his leg or if his wounds were just that deep, but the small wounds ached and itched incessantly. He was only thankful he hadn’t taken a slug to the thigh instead. You would have bled out in a minute.

  Gwen was there with him. The wind attacked her hair, pulling pieces and strands all over her head despite the fact she wore it in a ponytail. Having her nearby comforted him. It gave him some sort of solace in a time that was filled with so much loss. She held his free hand.

  She stared downward at the two piles of freshly dug dirt in the ground. Kevin stood next to her, his hands clasped in front of him. Ahmed stood next to him, a shovel in one hand, a black M4 slung on his back. He had insisted on digging in Steele’s place. Steele had begrudgingly obliged and watched the burly man go to work on the sandy soil.

  There wasn’t much to bury, but Ahmed dug full-sized graves anyway. Releasing Gwen’s hand, Steele bent down on one leg, ignoring the screaming of his other. He picked up a handful of gray ash and sprinkled it in the hole. Much of it lifted off, the wind carrying it away. Gwen did the same. The only sound was the crashing waves of Lake Michigan. Steele nodded to Kevin and then Ahmed and they followed suit.

  Steele looked down at the almost empty grave. The words to say hid from him. What do you say to the ones who’ve already passed that you should have already said? All those missed phone calls. The times when he thought he would just catch-up later. Other things had filled her place.

  Work dragged him from corner to corner of the earth as he paid the price of being a counterterrorism agent day in and day out. It was a never-ending battle between good and evil fought in the gray. His mother paid her own price for his dedication to his country. Gwen paid that price. The price of lost time. Time was one thing he could never get back. It made him question whether or not he had made the right decisions even if they were for his country’s sake.

  His mother suffered in silence, alone, with his father gone, waiting on her only son to return from his modern-day quest. A mother who waited patiently day-by-day, praying that her son stay out of harm’s way long enough to make the final journey home. Then tomorrow came and his mother was gone, and he was too late. I should have been here. I never should have left. Who would I be if I had stayed?

  He bent down again, digging into a handful of smoky ash. “You’re going to be a grandma,” he said, tears filling his eyes. He bit his lip and wiped his eyes. She had loved to talk about how excited she was for him to be married and have kids. Now she would have a grandchild she would never see. Cheeks she would never pinch. Little feet she would never tickle. A forehead she would never kiss goodnight. Newborn baby smells she would never enjoy. All of these precious things taken from her. Experiences that he would never get to share with her. All taken by the pastor and his men. He suppressed his deep rage for the man.

  His fingers closed and he made a fist. The granules crumbled into dust as they were compressed by his palm, and he tossed the remainders into the hole. “I wish it was different,” he whispered.

  He took a deep breath trying to collect himself. “We put you here because we knew this is where you’d want to be,” he said, taking a deep breath. The hugeness of Lake Michigan stretched far and wide as he could see. “You got a great view. Sunset every day. The lake will be here and some trees. We’ll bring the baby back so you can meet,” he said to her ghost.

  He bowed his head in silence, lost in his thoughts. For minutes, the group stood quiet, contemplating all those they never had the chance to say goodbye to. They contemplated all the missed opportunities and missed phone calls to their loved ones, each person and minute, now gone. The wind picked up and a sound came flirting with it.

  A slight humming pricked his eardrums. The others heard it too. Gwen looked over her shoulder. Her hair continued to get tossed in the wind. Ahmed eyed the road. Steele turned, shifting his feet around in search of the source. Soon all their attention was in the direction of the street.

  “A car?” Ahmed asked. He shrugged his M4 carbine off his shoulders and into his hands.

  Steele eyed the road expectantly. The Red Stripes? The rumbling grew louder.

  “Bigger,” Steele said, limping for the charred remains of his family’s house. Gwen put an arm around him and helped him to the ground with a grunt. Seconds later, the first truck wheeled by. All tan. Thick wheel treads. The truck looked like it was made from rectangles. A man’s head poked out the top of a turret. A camouflaged helmet sat atop his skull. He rested easily on his M2 .50 caliber machine gun, the barrel pointed lazily upward. The Humvee disappeared behind trees and another house.

  “Military? Here?” Gwen whispered.

  “I dunno,” Steele breathed. He kept only his eyes above the charred wood, watching.

  A minute passed and another Humvee rolled by, followed by another and another. All bore the same mark: a dark red anvil painted on the side of each driver’s door.

  “Jesus, look at all of them,” Kevin whispered. Humvee after Humvee drove along the lakeside road. Troop carriers filled with soldiers crammed in like a box of bullets were spaced intermittently throughout the convoy.

  “Who are they?” Gwen asked.

  She was silenced as an airport mobile lounge followed along, its steel-plated windows raised up. Arms and heads stuck out, draped on the sides of the tall moon-rover like vehicle. Lunchbox.

  Steele swallowed hard, all the moisture in his throat disappearing. His heart pounded his chest. He knew, and it scared him to his core.

  “Colonel Jackson.”

  KINNICK

  Peterson Air Force Base, CO

  The dark black liquid was too hot. Little waves of heat quivered up as they struggled to free themselves from his cup. He sipped it anyway, feeling it burn his tongue a bit on the way down. Can’t waste the good stuff.

  He gestured his cup at his master sergeant. “Coffee?” he asked.

  “I’d love some,” Hunter said. Hunter still wore white bandages around his head. They covered his eye along with a black eye patch. Kinnick poured him some coffee and handed it to the man. Hunter took it carefully with two hands.

  “Any word from Wyman’s platoon at South Fork pass?” Kinnick asked.

  “No. But I can’t imagine Turmelle going down without a hell of a fight,” Hunter said, running his coffee cup into his lip. He noticed Kinnick staring at him and shrugged his shoulders. “Still getting used to it. What the hell you need two for anyway?”

  “I’m glad it wasn’t worse,” Kinnick said to him. Airmen sat at cubicles, facing a giant radar on the wall.

  “How’s Hawkins doing?” Kinnick said. He had been in nothing but meetings since he had returned.

  “Hawk? If we hadn’t sent someone to pick him up, he would have waged guerrilla warfare until they were all dead. Again.”

  “You got one hell of an operational detachment.”

  “Sins and skins.” Hunter put out a hand with a smile. Kinnick locked hands with the man. A cool circular piece of metal pressed flat into Kinnick’s palm. Hunter released his hand and a half-dollar sized coin sat in the palm of Kinnick’s hand. Across the top, it read “SKINS” in red writing. Beneath that, a skull wore a wolf headdress and red arrows lined the back with a single number “51” at the bottom.

  “I talked with Hawk. Well, talked at Hawk. And we decided that we wanted to get you inducted as an honorary member of our unit before…”

  “Before it’s too late,” Kinnick said and returned the smile.

 
; “We never know when our time comes, but when it does, meet it with bullets and a smile,” Hunter said.

  “Sins and skins, Master Sergeant.”

  “Sins and skins, Colonel. And I’ll let you in on a little secret.” Hunter nudged Kinnick. His single eye looked around the room before he leaned in. “You’re the first, and probably only, chair force member to be inducted into our ODA.”

  “It’s an honor that I will hold dear,” Kinnick said, staring at the coin.

  “And I’ll see if we can dig up a patch for you somewhere. Your uniform is a bit sparse.”

  Kinnick laughed. “Much appreciated.” Kinnick turned away, looking at the giant projection of the surrounding airspace.

  They sat in silence for a moment watching the green planes scoot inch by inch across the radar. Almost all of them floated from north to south.

  “No need to go west,” Kinnick said. He grimaced, feeling guilt for failing his nation. Large red rings sat around the major cities of the West Coast, projecting the spread of nuclear fallout contamination and other affected areas.

  “Colonel Kinnick?” A major said, peering into the cubicles. Kinnick stood up.

  “I’m here.”

  The major nodded. “Please come into the War Room,” he said from across the operations center. Kinnick managed his way through the cubicles into the vice president’s War Room.

  A host of officers sat around the table. General Daugherty was there to the right of Vice President Brady. His mouth was set to an irritated twist and a general air of displeasure to see Kinnick alive. Kinnick took a seat at the far end of the table. Brady’s tie was gone today. He wore a simple white collared shirt underneath a navy blue suit.

  “We’re glad to have you back Colonel Kinnick,” Brady said. Kinnick kept his face flat. He was unamused with the man who had ordered nuclear strikes within his own nation.

  Daugherty cocked his head to the side like Kinnick was an odd creature. “It’s true. I admire your bravery even if it was an ill-advised mission. We clearly need men of your leadership quality within our ranks.”

  Kinnick gave him a terse nod. If we only had men of better quality leading us from above, he thought.

  The general cleared his throat and adjusted his glasses. “But the fact remains that the passes in Colorado were not holdable, and we were forced to launch a full-scale nuclear strike against the West Coast.”

  Papers shifted. Some of the officers stared down at their reports. There was clearly dissent among them, or at the very least, shame.

  “As the briefing in front of you states, the strikes were a great success. We are estimating an eight-five percent kill rate within the metropolitan areas.”

  “One hundred percent kill rate for anyone still alive there,” Kinnick said flatly. Heads turned toward Kinnick. Eyes quickly averted. Other stared brazenly, knowing what they had supported.

  “May I continue, Colonel?” Daugherty said with an emphasis to make Kinnick’s rank seem small and insignificant. He was making sure everyone knew that he was in charge and nothing Kinnick could do would change that.

  “It’s impossible for us to know the number of American deaths in relation to the bombings, but we consider the losses to be negligible.”

  Kinnick masked his disgust by taking a sip of his coffee.

  “Gentlemen, this was the only way. Kinnick, we are aware of the sacrifices that your men made to hold the passes. We gave your plan a chance, and it failed, so we moved forward with a sure thing,” Daugherty said.

  “You gave me a hundred men when you and me both know I needed hundreds of troops and full air support. It was a suicide mission.”

  “If it were up to me, I would have given you no one,” Daugherty said. His eyes grew angry behind his glasses as he spoke. “You took our men on a suicide mission that you wanted to lead. What about those soldiers we will never get back? Those men who died for nothing. Men that could have been ready to fight the bigger battle on the even more important front.”

  “Enough, General,” Brady said. He faced Kinnick. “Colonel. We aren’t going to fight you on it. What’s done is done. The bombs have been dropped on us, by us.” He gestured a thumb at himself. “That’s on me.”

  Kinnick shut his mouth. The vice president was right. Kinnick couldn’t change what had happened.

  “Do you want to be a part of this military?” Daugherty asked.

  What do I have left? He had thrown his hat in with the military since he had found himself trapped within the Pentagon instead of taking care of his family in Northern Virginia. What about my men out there? What about the Skins? You still have a place here even if the leaders are jacking it all up.

  “I am committed to this country.”

  Daugherty eyed him suspiciously. Brady patted the general’s arm.

  “See there, General. Colonel Kinnick is only a bit frustrated. We lost some good men out there. But we must continue. Perhaps the colonel will be a bit more sympathetic with more intelligence.”

  “Very well,” Daugherty said. He clicked his remote control instead of taking a swing at Kinnick.

  A rounded aerial view of tan farmland lit up the screen.

  “This is from a drone from over western Ohio,” he said. Fields flew by as the drone passed overhead of yellow corn husks and brown burnt leaves. The fields quivered ever so slightly.

  “Sorry, it’s hard for me to see. Is that water?” the major that collected Kinnick asked.

  The general zoomed it in. “That, Major, is what’s coming west as we speak.”

  Forms swarmed the fields. None of them stopped as they stumbled forward. Like a river, they only went around obstacles. Thousands. Tens of thousands. Hundreds of thousands.

  “There are so many,” the major uttered. The words came out soft.

  Kinnick closed his eyes.

  Daugherty zoomed out. Millions of sand-sized infected walked across the screen. “As you can see, this is the threat we now face. They are gathering, sweeping across the Midwest. This is a mere fraction of their numbers, and they are coming this way.”

  “How many?” Brady asked.

  “Millions. Our best estimates, depending on infection rates, are over a hundred million.”

  Brady shook his head. He sat back in his leather chair, eyes wide. He held his hands in front of his body, fingers spread out. “Nukes are off the table for this one?” he asked.

  “I’m afraid they are if we want to survive fallout. We could get away with it in the west because of the Rockies, to the east we will be contaminated. The land, the people, everything will be poisoned. Those in our bunkers will survive, but for how long with limited supplies, I don’t know.”

  Kinnick gripped his brow, a headache setting in. The situation was worse than he could ever imagine.

  “Air assets?” Kinnick said, looking up. He ran a hand along his jawline. He hadn’t realized he had grown a grizzled beard.

  “Very limited. I believe you saw the extent of our air power in the passes. Our drones are becoming very difficult to control. I don’t expect they will be reliable in the near future.”

  I wonder what they did with the pilots, Raven and Battle-axe.

  “Ground?” Kinnick asked, his headache swelling.

  “Limited. Don’t you see, Kinnick? This is the battle we all fear. The west was only the anvil; this is the hammer.” The general looked over his glasses at Kinnick.

  “Somebody get me a goddamn drink,” Brady said, throwing his hands up. “I thought the nukes were going to set us straight.” An officer stood up, pouring the vice president a glass of scotch.

  Brady watched him with disdain. “More, Major,” he said. The major filled the glass to the brim and brought it back to the vice president, handing it to him gently.

  Kinnick zoned out. The officers argued with one another around the table. Their conversations turned to faint chattering in the background of his mind. All he could see were the infected on the screen. Swarms of the soulless marching. Do the
y even know why they march?

  They all marched in one direction, toward them. All with a single purpose. The murder of all things living. Daugherty’s words echoed in his head. This is the battle we fear. We are on the brink of annihilation.

  The Gun

  The End Time Saga

  Origin Short Story

  For all the old-timers. Thanks for showing us the way.

  THE DETECTIVE

  Grand Rapids, Michigan

  Bill DeYoung was anything but. He sat in the department’s bullpen with men and women half his age. The room was a cluster of desks and no assigned seats, only open computers and occupied computers, landline phones, and chairs. Sure he had one he sat in every day, but it wasn’t his; it was communal.

  The edge of his newspaper started to inch over in an attempt to collapse on itself. He whipped the paper, stiffening the errant page.

  A phone rang on a nearby desk, but since it wasn’t his, he let it go on ringing. His phone lay dormant, requiring zero action on his part.

  Things he had learned from being on the force for so long were to stay in your lane and don’t step into other people’s messes. He had developed an old-timer’s power of ignoring outside distraction, a survival skill acquired from two failed marriages.

  The phone continued to ring. He continued to read like he had severe tinnitus in both ears and absolutely no cares in the world. The top of his paper dipped with the finger of a fellow detective.

  “Who still reads the paper?” His young blond partner poked at him.

  Bill put his selective listening to use and ignored him, continuing to read about the riots in Washington, D.C. and Chicago. Some super flu was making everyone sick, so much so the chief had the public relations department put on a training course on how to wear a surgical mask, one of those light blue ones he’d seen more than one Asian wear on occasion.