LONE WOLF
America Falls: Occupied Territory
Book 1
Scott Medbury
Also by Scott Medbury:
The America Falls Series:
Hell Week
On the Run
Cold Comfort
Rude Shock
Luke’s Trek
Civil War
The Messenger (A novella)
Copyright © 2019 Scott Medbury
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.
All characters and events depicted in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.
While actual geographic locations and buildings are described within, some liberties have been taken in when describing them and their surroundings to advance this story.
Contents
Prologue
Part One – In Sheep’s Clothing
Part Two – Out of the Frying Pan…
Part Three – School’s Out
Prologue
Endings and Beginnings
January 2, 11:08am
Tom Dallard, the normally well-groomed Channel 7 news anchor, sits at his news desk and stares at the camera with haunted eyes. His face is gaunt, and he sports a scraggy beard. Papers and food wrappers have been pushed to the side for his final broadcast. His hands are clasped in front of him.
“As you know if you’ve been watching, I’ve been alone in the studio for four days now. Everyone else is dead. My own wife-” his voice cracks “-died the day after Christmas...” In the background, there is the sound of breaking glass and a small explosion. He takes a deep breath and sits up straighter.
“Why this godforsaken disease spared me, I don’t know. Maybe it’s so I can give you this final message. If you’re only just tuning in, before the government collapsed, it was all confirmed. The Chinese used North Korea as a testing ground for their genetic warfare; the real target, all along, was us.” He is interrupted by another muted explosion somewhere in the studio. It's closer. Dallard looks resigned but determined to finish.
“The virus appears to target only adults and certain races, with the CDC confirming ethnic Chinese, no matter their age, are immune to its effects. I guess in hindsight, the reason for that is obvious.
“Time is running out for me, but know this, America is still the home of the brave and it can again be the land of the free. Children of America, survivors, wherever you are, band together, find places to hide from the invaders and live to fight another day...”
Close by there is a loud crash and dust falls from the ceiling.
“This is Tom Dallard, signing…”
Two Chinese soldiers tackle Dallard from his chair before he can complete his sign off. One hits him viciously on the temple with his rifle butt, and they immediately drag the slumped figure of America’s last newsman out of view.
A single gunshot rings out. Not long after, the screen goes black.
January 12, 12:23am
Jimmy Ortega and Hector Garcia arrived at the fire station a little after midnight. They crouched in the shadows of Fresno’s baseball stadium and signaled to the three men at the end of the block to come forward. ‘Men’ was perhaps a stretch. They were all kids. Jimmy was in fact the oldest at 16 and was also the freshly crowned leader of their gang, the Sureños.
It was by default really. Jimmy’s older brother Yago had been leader. He and all the older gang members were dead of the Flu now - along with everyone else in the city older than sixteen or seventeen. The gang used to be forty strong and controlled the whole downtown Fresno area. Now there were only six of them left. They’d had the run of the streets since Christmas, and tonight was the first they’d heard of the Chinese invaders being in the city.
They’d watched the news in the clubhouse right up until the power went out. When they weren’t watching the news or caring for the dying, they were burying the dead in the turf of Chukchansi Park.
It had been over a week since Yago, stubborn to the last, had died but not before anointing Jimmy his successor.
“… and when they come here, make those fuckers pay.”
They had been watching for the Chinese occupying forces ever since, expecting a rolling march through the city, not one vehicle.
The others joined Jimmy and Hector and they huddled together.
“Okay, we’re going in. Selma said the Chinese Hummer is between two fire department SUV’s. She saw four of them in there and thinks they’re sleeping.”
“Are we gonna blow ‘em away Jimmy?” asked Hector.
Jimmy shook his head. He was unsure why one Chinese vehicle would come into Fresno without any back up, so he wanted to find out more.
“We surround them and see if we can get some answers first, hear? We need to know if there are more coming. We’ll blow ‘em away once we have what we want.”
The others nodded. All of them looked scared. Jimmy was scared, but no way in hell was he going to show it. He fist bumped them one by one.
“Let’s go.”
The others followed him across the street and to the gate of the parking lot where they stopped as Jimmy surveyed the vehicles. He pointed at the SUV with the fire chief sign on it.
“It’s behind that one. You two go that way with Hector and you come with me, Donny,” he said to the scrawniest kid, Donny.
With their guns drawn, Hector led his two guys, Santiago and Seb, towards the front of the vehicles. Jimmy nodded encouragingly at Donny and drew his gun. Donny pulled his out of his pocket and cocked it, smiling at Jimmy. They headed off, Jimmy in front crouched low as he ran towards the target vehicles. At the rear corner of the chief’s Toyota SUV, he paused and looked at the army vehicle. It was painted in camo and had some Chinese writing on it. He looked over his shoulder at the wide-eyed Donny and with his hands indicated he should stay put.
Jimmy got up. He would sneak along the Hummer until he got to the rear door, then when Hector was in place on the other side, they would spring the doors and take the prisoners out at gunpoint.
He’d barely finished his second step when the rear door opened and a tall Chinese soldier, with his back to Jimmy stepped out and put his arms into the air, taking a long stretch. Jimmy with his heart trying to punch its way out of his chest knew he had to move now before the man turned and saw him. He ran forward, an alley cat stalking a rat, and put his gun hard against the back of the soldier’s head.
The big man froze with his hands still in the air.
“Oh, you in trouble now boy,” Jimmy whispered, smiling at his own cleverness.
A flash of bright light and the cacophony of automatic gunfire from the driver’s window at the front of the vehicle wiped it away in an instant.
Part One – In Sheep’s Clothing
1
Sometimes, if you wait long enough, the universe delivers. Even at the most unexpected times… like the end of the fucking world, for instance.
Larry Dawson took a long draft of his beer and looked at his dead wife. She’d stopped breathing ten minutes before. He didn’t need to check her pulse to know for sure. Frankly, he was surprised she’d lasted as long as she had.
Never what you would call a fit woman, Sheila had come down with the Pyongyang flu on Christmas Eve. She’d lasted three whole days. Larry had nursed her, as any dutiful husband would, while he waited, hour by hour, for his own symptoms to appear.
They never did.
Not even a runny nose. Not even as he watched the channels, with their stories of the pandemic, go off the air one by one, their hosts with the same rattling breathing and snotty faces as his wife.
He wasn’t willing to believe he was in the clear yet but given that Sheila had been coughing and spluttering her germs all over the place for three whole days and he was still healthy, maybe it was time to start making some plans. Larry bared his teeth in a smile that would have chilled anyone who had been there to witness it.
He walked across to the front window, carefully pulled aside the curtain and peered across the road at the Monaghan’s place. The normally well-manicured lawn was looking dry and was dusted with leaves but his focus, as it had been since the Monaghan’s had moved in the summer before, was on the front window of the second story. That was Katie’s room.
Before the pandemic, he’d spent a lot of his evenings at the darkened window of his upstairs study, just waiting for a glimpse of the beautiful cheerleader… when he wasn’t stalking her on Instagram, that is.
As he strained to see any sign of movement in her window, he thought back wistfully to the images he’d screen captured from her Instagram and saved in an encrypted file on his desktop computer over the last few months. They were gone now. The internet had gone down two days before, and the power had followed it yesterday.
Now his only window into her life was… well, her window. For now, anyway. That would soon change. He had a plan, and as soon as her kid brother was out of the way, it was all systems go.
They were probably still busy mourning the death of their parents. He’d gone over the morning before and asked if they needed anything. It had been Jack who answered the door. His eyes were red-rimmed, and Larry had heard Katie wailing in the background.
The athletic teenager had been polite, but he’d held the door shut most of the way, preventing Larry from seeing in. He confirmed the obvious about his parents and thanked Larry for coming over, saying that they were okay for now.
The kid was too ‘together’ for a 15-year-old who had just lost his parents and now faced the end of the world, and, if he wondered how Larry had dodged the Pyongyang Flu bullet, he didn’t voice it.
Larry felt his dislike grow.
“Okay, son, but if you need anything you just holler.”
“Sure,” the kid said before closing the door.
You’ll keep, Larry had thought as he returned to his side of the street.
At the window, satisfied that he wasn’t going to miss anything in the next little while, he let the curtain drop and turned back to look at his dead wife.
A 99.5 percent fatality rate for adults over the age of seventeen. That’s what they’d said. God only knew why he hadn’t bought the farm. He shrugged then crushed his beer can with his beefy hand before throwing it into the corner of the living room. He felt a thrill of rebellion at the gesture. Sheila, who he’d let keep him under the thumb for the sake of peace, would have ripped him a new one at such a blatant disregard for her home.
“Most relaxed I’ve seen you in ages!” he said, patting her still warm cheek. “Come on Old Girl, time for a long rest.”
He grabbed the back of her Ezy chair and started to wheel her out of the living room. He was a barrel chested 40-year-old, strong without being overly muscled, but it was no easy task. Sheila, who was ten years his senior, weighed in at around 230 pounds and the stressed casters didn’t like the shag pile one bit. By the time he eventually got her onto the linoleum floor of the kitchen he had a light sheen of perspiration on his high forehead.
He paused at the door to the basement. His initial thought was to store her down there, but that’s where he would keep Katie. It wouldn’t do to have Sheila stinking up the place. That wouldn’t be romantic at all.
“Sorry my dear, it’s into the shed you go.”
Twenty minutes later, with Sheila ensconced in a wheelbarrow with a tarp over her, he wheeled the Ezy chair back into the kitchen and out to the living room. On his way back through the kitchen he ignored the faint rotting smell from the fridge as he grabbed another can of Coors before heading down to the basement to finish his preparations.
He had started the work yesterday when it was clear Sheila wouldn’t be moving from her chair again. In the afternoon he had cleared the floor of the basement, making room for his ‘workspace’. That evening after he had fed his wife her last supper, lukewarm chicken broth, he had gone back down and spent four hours constructing two small walls from cinderblocks. The walls were set facing each other, six feet apart. Each was two blocks wide and four high.
Larry’s breath plumed in the cold basement as he checked to see if the mortar was dry and satisfy himself that the two mini walls were sturdy. He then headed to the back corner and retrieved the solid timber door that was leaning against the wall. A few minutes later he had laid it out and secured the door on top of his mini walls like a table top.
He tested it by climbing on it and laying lengthwise, then rolling this way and that. The ‘bed’ didn’t creak or rock. Satisfied, he climbed off and went to his workbench. He picked out three items and set them to the side before fastidiously rearranging the remaining tools so that they lined up neatly.
When he was finished, he picked up one of the items he’d set to the side.
It was a large, freshly sharpened carving knife. He held it up in front of his eyes and pressed the pad of his index finger to the blade. He smiled and tucked it under his arm, then picked up the length of rope and a roll of masking tape and headed for the stairs.
He hummed Enter the Sandman, his favorite Metallica tune as he went. Phase two of ‘Operation Katie’ would begin the next day.
✽✽✽
The dirt covered figure stood in the kitchen staring across the living room and out into the backyard as the afternoon light faded.
Jack Monaghan sipped warm Gatorade. The only clean skin on his face was in the tracks left by his earlier tears. He had finally broken when the first shovel full of dirt fell on his mother’s shrouded body. His parents had been dead when he had woken up the previous morning. For him that whole day was lost, washed away by waves of emotion. Anger, sadness, rage.
This morning had been different. He hadn’t cried, not even as he wrapped them in bed sheets and carried them one at a time down into the backyard. He’d spent the day carefully marking out the graves and digging them deep enough to be sure they wouldn’t be disturbed by animals before carefully laying them in their final resting place. He had thought he was cried out, but the finality of the dirt falling on the woman who had borne him, had broken him again.
Looking out at the graves, anger chased exhaustion from his face and he threw the bottle across the room at the big window. The liquid exploded from the open lid and painted the glass in a vivid orange bloom, slowly melting its way to the bottom of the pane like the tears of a dragon.
The grief and physical exhaustion of digging two graves caused his broad shoulders to slump as he leaned over the counter.
Jack was tall and well-built for a 16-year-old. A natural athlete, his grandma used to say before she’d passed away. He was quarterback on his school football team and there were already murmurs of a scholarship. He was also the captain of the school trap shooting team, something his mom wasn’t super cool with but tolerated as long as her ‘no guns in the home’ rule was obeyed.
The freshly turned mounds were marked by two simple white crosses he had fashioned from pickets he’d ripped off their front fence. Angry with her at first, now that it was done, he was glad he hadn’t been able to persuade Katie to come out for the burial. Never comfortable displaying or dealing with emotion, he thought he might have lost it completely if she’d co
me out.
One of them needed to stay strong.
His sister had taken the deaths of her parents hard. Her grief had been traumatic, so bad he didn’t want to think about it. When he’d finally managed to pry her off her parent’s bodies she had retreated to her room and in the thirty or so hours since, had only come out to use the bathroom. She refused to eat.
Jack knew she would be okay. Or would she? They were alone now. There was nothing on the TV or radio, no cellphone reception or internet, and their neighborhood was like a ghost town – except for Mr. Dawson across the road. He hadn’t appeared sick at all when he’d come over the day before.
Was it all over? Maybe neither of them would come out of it? Who knew what would happen next. When his parents had fallen ill, he’d caught snatches of news and there was speculation it was an attack. The phones had been working until two days before and he’d discussed the whole thing with his best buddy Danny Cooper. Danny had even heard a report confirming that China was behind the attack, the source of the virus.
“It’s World War Three Jack, I’m telling you – they got us with germ warfare.”
That conversation, their last, had been interrupted when his father had fallen over in the kitchen. The phones had gone out not long after. They hadn’t spoken since.
Jack straightened. Danny would be his next task. They’d talked briefly of banding together if… when the inevitable happened. Now that it had and he’d taken care of what needed to be done, he wanted to make that connection as soon as possible. Three of them together would definitely stand more of a chance than he and his sister alone.
First though, Katie needed to eat something. He padded upstairs and put his ear to the door and listened. Silence. He knocked gently.
Lone Wolf: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller (America Falls - Occupied Territory Book 1) Page 1