Anarchy

by Peter Meredith

  “Come on, Mad…” Bryce put his hand out for Maddy, only she wasn’t behind him. She was in the crowd that had suddenly appeared and was throwing around men as large as herself, left and right. And now the engines began to spool up; above their heads, the rotors spun, going faster and faster, and all the while the familiar darkness was churning a storm through Bryce’s subconscious. “Shit!” he cried before darting from the side of the Black Hawk and charging into the crowd, knocking people over as he bored in on Maddy.

  She had just reached Billy and Tomika and was trying to force her way back to the copter. But so was everyone else and the fight swirling around her was pure mayhem.

  Bryce’s arrival was like an explosion and half a dozen people were thrown off their feet as he blasted into them. Tomika had kept hold of his pipe and with a quick, “Thanks,” he snatched it from her. He felt better with it in his hands, stronger as well. Strong as he was, he could not overcome the frenzy of the crowd, at least not in time. The helicopter was thirty seconds from lift off. He could feel it.

  “There’s another helicopter behind the trailer!” he shouted, his voice booming loud enough to reach those between him and the copter. Just like that, the crowd loosened, and half the people tore away at top speed. For an instant, Maddy and Bryce locked eyes. Indeed, there were other helicopters—they both knew these would never be airborne in time. Guilt flooded Bryce though only momentarily. The loud Crack! Crack! Crack! of pistol fire drove it away.

  Surrounding the Black Hawk were a dozen Secret Service Agents; one had fired into the crowd, which seemed to wither before the sound. The dying fell, while around them people ducked or threw themselves on the ground. Bryce strode forward larger than life, unafraid of the little gun pointed at his chest.

  “Let us on board!” he ordered in a voice like that of a god. He could be heard over the sound of the rotors which were now a whipping blur. The agent with the smoking gun looked uncertain and Bryce added, “We’re with the President.” The gun wavered and Bryce marched past the man with Maddy, Billy and Tomika hurrying to get on the copter before it took off. Maddy heaved Billy onto the lap of Secretary Mapes and shoved her back into the over-crowded helicopter. She then climbed in on top of both.

  To Maddy’s left, Bryce slammed his body into a huddled group, hoping to make enough room for both him and Tomika. People tumbled like dominoes just as the helicopter lifted from the ground. Like a bird learning to fly, it was a tentative little flutter that brought them all of a foot from the trampled grass.

  Bryce had made only enough room for himself. She can sit on my damn lap, he thought as he spun and reached for Tomika’s hand, only right then she seemed to fly backwards into the darkness, the one pitiful hand stretched out to him beseechingly. For a split second, he thought that the helicopter had lifted off completely; however, Tomika had been yanked away as if she were made of yarn by Cecil, the strange, warped, lisping man-like creature. Using its big leg, it launched itself at Bryce just as the helicopter took off in earnest.

  Surrounded as Bryce was, dodging the man was impossible and he received Cecil’s full weight in the chest. “Get off!” Bryce roared. “Tomika! Get on!” She was scrambling in the downwash, the wind appearing to push her down. Letting out a bellow that was half fury and half fear for Tomika, Bryce tried to get past the deformed man, but there was no room, and only then did Bryce realize that Cecil seemed to be hell-bent on killing him. One enormous hand pinned Bryce to the vibrating floor of the copter. Bryce tried to push back; however, there was more strength in the man’s one arm than there was in Bryce’s entire body. Thankfully, Cecil’s other arm was relatively feeble and when it punched Bryce on the side of the head, it was little more than a nuisance.

  The big hand crushing down was far more worrisome. After his one bellow, Bryce couldn’t draw in a breath and with no room to move or fight, he was practically helpless, and could only claw with growing weakness at the hideous arm.

  Maddy was far from helpless. Like a tigress, she surged to her feet, took her ice axe in both hands and with a thundering cry, she struck Cecil on the side of the head, felling him with one blow. She stood over her enemy, her chest heaving, her dark hair flowing and rippling in the strange spinning wind, doing a mad dance inside the helicopter as it chugged sluggishly into the air.

  Everyone except for the President stared at her. Wearing an oddly bulbous headset, the President was hunched over a laptop, yelling, “Get control of them, damn it! What? Don’t give me that. Do what you have to, just get those missiles pointed somewhere else.” Just then he glanced up at Maddy with a look of deep suspicion. Abruptly, the look washed away as did all the color in his face. Quieter, he said, “Then fucking abort them. Abort them all.” A pause then a quiet, “Oh,” and he shut the laptop.

  Maddy understood. The missiles were coming, and no one in the world could stop them. No one except Daniel Magnus and there was no way he would. After all, this was his grand design. Now that Magnus had his target fixed, he was using the President’s own weapons against him.

  “We need to go faster,” the President said, sounding bewildered. With aching slowness, the weighed down Black Hawk struggled to claw its way into the air. The President, using the nearest Secret Service Agent as a ladder fought to his feet and shoved himself bodily into the cockpit. “We need to go faster!” he screeched. Spinning around, he eyed Maddy. “How much time do we have?”

  “Not enough.” The reply was as cold as it was honest. The Black Hawk was struggling to gain speed and had only just topped fifty miles an hour. She gazed back the way they had come and saw a pair of helicopters lift off. They were only little black smudges against the dark forest.

  They’re here, her mind warned. She closed her eyes just as the sun seemed to erupt all around her. Even through her eyelids, the light was near blinding. It flashed over them just as she had seen in her visions. In the next second, everything was curiously dark, but that did not last. A great storm of fire roared down from the heavens directly over the forest from which they had just fled.

  The scene was horrible and unquestionably awesome. Maddy could not pull her eyes away from the sight, and squinting into the holocaust, she watched as the flames ate first one helicopter, then the other, blotting them out as if they had never existed. Then the great flaming beast expanded and swelled, filling the world, screaming across the forest and turning it to ash. The very air burned and the fire filled the sky from one pole to the other.

  Suddenly, the Black Hawk dropped like a fifteen-ton stone as the pilot traded altitude for speed. But there was no escaping Magnus’ fiery beast. Maddy dropped down and grabbed Billy in her arms. “Don’t look,” she told him. “It’ll be okay.” Then the fire took the machine in its jaws like a little bird and swallowed it whole.

  The End

  Author's Note:

  THE SERIES IS NOT OVER!!!!

  Thank you so much for reading Anarchy. I certainly hoped that you enjoyed it. If so, you’ll be happy to know that a third book in the series is already in the works. While you’re waiting, may I suggest another book of mine: Dead-Eye Hunt. It’s a story set 150 years after the apocalypse where zombies hide in the midst of the over-crowded slum-states of New York and Boston. Their existence is denied by the corrupt governments, who are afraid of what will happen if the word gets out. Dead Eye Hunters, gritty men with few moral qualms about anything at all, track them down for the bounties paid. Yes, it’s a lot of fun!

  Like I mentioned, I’ve just started writing the third book in the series. There is a way for you to read it chapter by chapter, before anyone else! All you have to do is go to my Patreon page (Here) and support my writing. The tier levels are exceedingly generous with freebies running from autographed books, video podcasts, free Audible books, signed T-shirts, and swag of all sorts. At a high enough tier, you will even get to meet me in person as I take you and three friends out to dinner.

  Patreon is a great way to help support me so I don’t have to go ba
ck into the coal mines…back into the dark.

  Another way to help is to write a review of this book on Amazon and/or on your own Facebook page. The review is the most practical and inexpensive form of advertisement an independent author has available to get his work known. I would greatly appreciate it.

  PS If you are interested in autographed copies of my books, souvenir posters of the covers, Apocalypse T-shirts and other awesome Swag, please visit my website at https://www.petemeredith1.com

  PPS: I need to thank a number of people for their help in bringing you this book. My beta readers Joanna Niederer, Monica Turner, Shamus McGuigan, Stefanie Foller, Victoria Haugan and Christine Beckman, Bruce Hamilton, Mindy Grindstaff, Dave Cox, Shannon Coblentz, Dena Riggleman, Jon Meredith, Amy Weber, John Corely—Thanks so much!

  PPPS: I will attach the first few chapters of Dead Eye Hunt below to wet your whistle.

  Dead Eye Hunt:

  Chapter 1

  Manhattan

  June 3rd, 2161

  The girl was trying to pass herself off as a vamp. The flesh of her throat and the high mounds of her partially exposed breasts were so white that he could see the blue veins pulsing beneath. She had midnight-black hair that sat piled on her head in braided coils. They wound in ever-tightening circles, a foot in height and made her seem taller than she was. Her teeth were unnaturally white. They were the sort of white that only money could buy.

  Her clothes were expensive as well: the boots that went up to mid-thigh were real leather, and the bone corset was trimmed with ivory and silver. The long, elbow-length gloves: one snowy white, the other rich burgundy, were silk.

  She even had the half-lidded, haughty, slightly bored-with-life gaze of a vamp.

  But now that she was only inches away, Mack-D wasn’t fooled. Beneath the smell of 5th Avenue gin wafting from her breath was the sharp odor of syn-mint, which was normal enough at street level, but down below where the sun’s light could never reach, no self-respecting vampire would touch synthetic anything.

  With difficulty, Mack-D kept his disappointment in check. Sucking the blood from a vamp was a Dead-eye’s wet dream.

  “Welcome to the outside world,” he said, calmer now that he knew she wasn’t real. A minute before, his heart had been pounding at the sight of her and his stomach was roaring louder than the music vibrating through the walls. Still, vamp or not, he had to fight the urge to latch onto her right there and drain her dry. He was hungry after all.

  It was a mortal hunger, and endless pain that he would take to his grave.

  “The outshide?” she replied, slurring in a gin-mumble. “Oh right. I was slummin’ it. But now, I gotta go home. Where’s the shtreet?” She had taken the wrong door out of the club and now she found herself in a piss-smelling alley, eyeing a slag. And a big slag at that. She had to pitch her head well back to look into his tattooed face. As she did, the first touch of fear began to burn its way through the gin.

  Mack-D could smell fear rising off her. He sucked it in deep, his nostrils flaring, his brilliant blue eyes almost closing as his lust and excitement mounted again. The blood was richer when they were afraid, and the flesh sweeter. The animal in him could barely be contained by what was left of the thinking man he had been. He held back. His filthy nails dug into the flesh of his palm, but he held back.

  “I can take you home,” he blurted out. Her fear spiked at the unexpected and unwanted offer. Her fear smelled like shaved brass and, as he breathed it in, saliva flooded his mouth. No! He couldn’t give in to temptation. If he killed her now, draining her, eating his way into her heart, he wouldn’t be able to stop. He’d be seen and the damned taxmen would be called. He didn’t care about the police, they were lazy and could be bribed to look away from anything. But if they called in a hunter, his only chance would be to flee over the wall. Hunters never stopped. Never.

  “It’s okay,” he said to her, holding up his large, filthy hands palms out so that she wouldn’t see the black blood beneath his nails. “You don’t have to be afraid. I’m a thumper here. You know, a bouncer. We provide security.”

  “I ammm shecure. Just get outta my way, ’n I’ll be fine.”

  She tried to push past, and he took her by the arm. Now he smelled the cheap lye soap beneath her expensive perfume.

  “Hold on a moment. Taking you home is part of the package. You know, the service we provide for our exclusive clients. You are exclusive, aren’t you?” He was guessing that exclusive was the right word. Or should he have said premium? It had taken him hours to come up with this idea and to memorize his lines. Now, he waited, not sure what she would do, but fully prepared to crack her on the back of the head.

  “Yeah. Yeah I’m ‘sclusive. You got a limo or sumtin?”

  Limo, limo, limo, he ran the word through his slowly disintegrating vocabulary and came up blank. “Uh, yeah. We have all sorts of limos. The best limos. My limo is exclusive.”

  “Really? But you’re a slag.”

  Sudden fury swept Mack-D. I ain’t no slag! he seethed inside, wishing he could chew her curled lip right off her face. It was true that he looked like the spitting image of a slag. His face was scrawled with tattoos in a desperate attempt to hide the pockmarks that were deep as small craters, and the scars that ran like ravines, and the strange snake-like scales that kept peeling from his throat. It was getting progressively worse, but he was no slag. Radiation poisoning wasn’t his problem. In fact, other than his endless hunger, Mack-D would say he had no problems.

  That was the best part about being a Dead-eye. Before he had been infected, he had been nothing more than balding Michael McDonald, a complete nobody. The day he was infected was the day he stopped worrying about bills, and work, and the missus complaining about the apartment, or what the neighbors thought of his drinking. He didn’t care if his kids had their indentured licenses sold to one of the horrible Mandarin sweat shops that worked them until their fingers bled or until the toxins built up in their systems so much that they slagged out and became no better than trogs.

  He didn’t even care about the fallout that filled the air or the industrial toxins in the water. None of that mattered because it couldn’t hurt him now. Very little could hurt him anymore and when he did get hurt, he healed in hours. They left scars but they were no consequence to Mack-D.

  But he couldn’t exactly say that to the girl, could he? “It ain’t my limo. It’s the company’s.” He held his breath, hoping she wouldn’t ask: which company? The company he worked for melted down trash and strained out the good parts. As far as he knew, there were no limos at the plant. There was only a horrible stench that made the real slags go green beneath their tattoos.

  “Oh, ho-kay,” she said, falling into him. It was another sign that she was a fake. Even drunk, a high-box vamp wouldn’t touch a slag. “Where’s the limo?”

  “It’s close,” he said, pointing.

  She didn’t like what she saw of the alley: the trash, the long oily puddle that ran straight down the middle, the over-flowing dumpsters, the dingy, grey panel van. At least beyond the van was the street. The real street. Behind her the alley was shadow-black as it wormed into the warren of a mid-center block. There was no telling what was back there. Even in Manhattan, a mid-center block was dangerous for an unarmed girl who didn’t belong.

  Mack-D led her up the alley, his hand on her tightening as he neared the van; she would try to run. Drunk or not, she was not going to go quietly. God, how he wished he could let her go, so she could scream and run for her life. He never felt more alive than when they screamed. It was always so primal. It was at that moment that they truly became prey and he became the hunter. Everything before that, the tears as they lay trussed up in the van, the begging, the same insipid questions—What are you going to do to me? It was all just foreplay.

  She edged away from the van as they came close, not wanting to get her clothes dirty. He stopped her. “Hold on.” He wanted to add more, maybe a reason why she should wait calmly wh
ile he opened the side door, but no reason came to him, as he fumbled with the latch. It was such a simple thing: lift and pull, and yet his left hand was missing two fingers and had become less reliable as he gradually lost dexterity.

  “Hey, what’re you doing?” she whispered, fear beginning to cut through the gin. “This isn’t a…” Mack-D finally got the door open. The back of the van was windowless and dark as sin. She surprised him by not screaming. “No,” she whispered, sobering quickly. His grip on her arm was like steel. He was hulking and outrageously strong. She was thin and shaking.

  “Yeah. Get in.”

  Before she knew it, she was pushed inside, barking her shin against something hard and unforgiving. Everything inside the van was like that. She was twisted about and pushed down onto an uneven layer of rigid metal. “Please, wait,” she whispered. “I-I’m rich. My f-father will pay good money for me. Just don’t hurt me, please.”

  He was already hurting her. Mack-D had bent her arms behind her back at a severe angle and held her pinned face-down on the metal as he struggled to get the length of nylon rope from his pocket. “Why would I want money? Can’t very well take a trip, can I?” He pictured himself on a white sand beach, sipping some sort of fruity cocktail and turning grey in the sun.

  “Then what are you going to do with me?” She sucked in a sharp breath as he began trussing her up, looping and knotting the rope. It seemed to go on forever. In her mind he was creating the most elaborate knot ever tied. In reality, he couldn’t manage more than a series of granny-knots, though he made up for their simplicity by tying the knots as tight as he could.

  “What I want to do is eat you. I’m going to hang you upside down and slit you wide open and drink straight from your throat.” He was bent over her, drooling down her neck. His hot breath smelled like an open sewer. She screamed, and it was all he could do not to tear into her beautiful flesh. “But not yet,” he said, balling a fist as he fought for control. The screams had to stop and the fist was a convenient tool. One shot to the back of the head and she went face-first into the scraps of rusting iron.