A Congress of Angels (The Collective)

by Fore, Jon

  A Congress of Angels

  Book 2 of The Collective

  Praise for Vega Rising, Book 1 of ‘The Collective’

  “The book has a fast-paced plot, engaging characters, and well-timed and engrossing action that will take you on an epic journey that will leave you wanting so much more by the end.”

  Steven B.

  “It was once said that Zane Grey could paint a picture with words, well I believe Jon Fore can do the same.”

  David F.

  “…a great story line with a great cast of characters and sub-plots. Love it.”

  Wayne H.

  Vega Rising is a wonderful introduction to what should be an exciting series. Jon Fore creates a setting like a chess master, taking you along for the ride while quietly putting his pieces into place. By the end of the book I found myself caught in his web, suddenly aware of my surroundings. The story adds a twist on old myths and stories that left me surprised and curious as to how everything else will unfold. I'm eagerly awaiting the next book in the series to see where everything leads and recommend you join me on this journey.

  David A.

  “A living spectra of good characters invites sympathy for the protagonists through trials in their lives. Then out of the blue comes one of the harshest turnarounds I have seen in a long time.”

  Leif J.

  A Congress of Angels

  Copyright © 2013 by Jon Fore

  Published by Obscura Publishing

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  This book may not be reproduced in whole, or in part, by any means, without the written consent of Obscura Publishing.

  Publisher’s Note: This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination, or are fictitiously used. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Any trademarks referred to within this publication are the property of their respective trademark holders.

  Published in the United States by Obscura Publishing

  Editor: Lloyd David Fore, Sr.

  Cover Art: Lisa D. Fore

  ISBN-13: 978-1493517879

  ISBN-10: 1493517872

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

  For Lisa, another return on your life long investment.

  For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,

  And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed:

  And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,

  And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!

  ~ Lord Byron, The Destruction of Sennacherib

  What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god.

  ~ William Shakespeare

  Chapter 1

  When the mail stopped coming, he knew it was bad. The news said so, but he had trouble placing trust in the news. He always had. That's why when the news went off the air; it really didn't make a difference to Gabriel. Not a lick a difference as far as he was concerned. With his rigged satellite dish he could find channels in most countries, and could see that the things happening around these parts were happening in England and Germany and even in Australia. Then, these signals began to go away. Well, not signals, he got the signal from the satellite just fine. The channels just started falling off, one by one. The only ones left were Japanese stations, which didn't do him any good. Japanese was not a language he was familiar with at all. That and it didn't seem like the Japanese were affected like everyone else was.

  When the whole thing started, it began with an onscreen, live, and unscripted evisceration of a news caster in Salem, New Hampshire. Gabriel didn't see it live when it happened, but it made other primary news sources within a few hours, not for the bloody death of a newsman, but the horrible looking bug like creatures just barely captured on film before the cameraman tried to turn tail and run, which worked out for him as well as it did the on-air talent.

  Then other videos began pouring in from other parts of the world. It didn't take Gabriel long to realize that they were being invaded. Not New Hampshire, not America, but the world. The entire world. Well, except for Japan.

  But he wasn't part of that anymore.

  They asked him to please put that gun down, and hey, thanks for everything, but now you have to be a civilian. Not a dishonorable discharge--no way--but a medically based eviction from the life Gabriel loved; the life of a United States Marine.

  Thanks for all the killing you did in Iraq and Afghanistan, but you're just about too nuts for us.

  Not long after there was nothing left to watch except for the Japanese and their hair-brained game shows, the power went out. More precisely, he ran out of light gas for the whole-house generator buried in the yard. The gas trucks stopped coming a week ago, had stopped respecting the contract, and so the gas ran out.

  That wasn't much of a big deal either. Gabriel didn't spend his life tethered to a power outlet or the internet. Also, he was a Marine Recon Sniper, or was, and used to life without power, at least for the last few years before they kicked him out. That's why he still thought of himself as a Marine. He didn't quit, they kicked him out, cause, well, there were some shadows in his head the psychologist couldn't get rid of. But the shadows were problems the Marines gave him, ordered him to deal with each time he heard 'send it' from his spotter. The lives he took, all of them, stayed in his head, and they didn't seem to want to leave.

  The whole affair put Gabriel on the far side of cranky, and on a small non-working ranch with a pension they couldn't take away. The government knew they put the nuts in his head, so they wouldn't take away his pension. Shouldn't take away his pension. Hell, how hard is it to find work when you've been discharged for having a screw or two lose? Impossible, that's how hard. In-fucking-possible.

  Both state and federal governments had 'Programs' for people who served and for one reason or another weren't capable of making a living. But that was for the damaged, and those folks had burns on their faces or metal plates in their heads or both, some missing one or more of their limbs. Those were the kinds of combat wounded that needed jobs. No matter how bad it got, how tight the budgets, Gabriel could not bring himself to take a job away from a wounded vet when he had never actually been hit. No Purple Heart for him. Taking the assistance from another who really needed it, that just wasn't right. It was how his Pa taught him to be.

  The nights were always long now, and the days sometimes included bald patches with no memory, what his doctor called 'episodes'. At the end of these episodes, he would find himself behind his sniper rifle--really a modified hunting rifle--tracking cars driving down the interstate some eight miles from his ranch, or calculating mil dot off-sets for pedestrians in the small town almost sixteen miles away. This scared the ever-loving shit out of him, so he got a dog. Not to protect him, but to bark or something when he started doing weird shit like scoping civilians.

  Just a mutt, a mongrel pup he adopted from the ASPCA. New Hampshire was a hunting state, a wild life as a sport state, and there were always unwanted dogs, hounds that wouldn't hunt no more, and puppies of unfixed dogs that would. They were being left with the ASPCA all the time, so there were plenty to choose from. Gabriel pretty much picked the ugliest one he could find, the one least likely to be adopted by some little girl looking for a family pet. He named him Fuggly, Fug for short. Now it was just Fuggy-boy or Fugnut, Fugster or Fugaroni, and sometimes even Fuggy Brewster. None of the names did anything to make him prettier, and that suited Gabriel just fine.

  Fuggly made the budget even tighter, but a l
ittle farming, a bit of sustenance hunting--which New Hampshire allowed without a hunting license or tags, especially on his 20 acre lot--and well, his ends met most of the time. Sometimes it was in a vaporous kind of way, but his Fuggly never went hungry. Still, the pension paid the mortgage and for the groceries he could not grow himself, with just a spit ball left over for the funner things in life, like bullets and his Playboy Magazine subscription.

  He also kept two horses, which was also hard. One was a gift from his Pa. The other, Big Guy belonged to his father.

  Big Guy and Pa's old fashioned modified Navy Colts were the only things he really had left when his father's heart attacked him in the middle of the night. Gabriel was too far away to do anything about it except let the state handle it and wish he was there. They sold his father's house, before Gabriel made it back to the states, to cover a tax lien Gabriel didn't even know about, and with it went all of his father's worldly possessions. Most of Gabriel's also. Things like his Captain America comic book collection, which he was proud to say was only missing eight editions since 2001. At least back then. Now he was missing all of them.

  That was how the state treated you, even while you were serving, even after serving. Fuck them all. Fuck it all. All of it.

  Now, that didn't matter much anymore. The world was coming to a violent end. All Hell broke loose, literally, and there was a new competitor on the evolutionary stage. A black beetle shaped shell, full of a shit-load of legs and crab like claws. No eyes anyone could see, just a rounded shiny shell segmented across the back once, and these claws that came out from beneath like gut tearing sneak attacks.

  They came from the less populated areas and headed to the more populated. No one knew where they came from, although Gabriel had a theory with no evidence. Just a guess, really, but he knew of a medicine circle up near Salem in New Hampshire. Just a simple somewhat artfully depicted circle of rocks, a place they called the American Stonehenge. He also knew about the real Stonehenge, and other Neolithic rock circles throughout the world. Like the one in the Black Forest in Germany, the ones accredited to the Aborigines of Australia, those in South America, some he was sure were still entombed in the thick jungle. But it seemed to Gabriel that these things were coming from places that had these stone circles, medicine circles or henges--whatever the hell a henge was. Not the bush hedge, the stone henge. He hoped he wasn't the only one who realized this.

  Because the bugs were heading to populated areas, Gabriel hadn't abandoned his ranch. There were too many other places to pull the bugs, like Augusta and Boston, Hartford and others. He was well west and south of Concord and miles away from the small town of three hundred, which was some fifty miles from the next small town. So he stayed, with Fug and Big-Guy and Lance, to wait and see how this would all play out. Even after he could tell that it was getting bad out there, after he could tell he was behind what would have to be called by now 'enemy lines', he stayed. Welcome to No Man's Land, population: 1.

  But now his fuel was getting low and his hay stores were gone and his food was getting low and well, just about everything was near gone. He was able to hole-up with what he had for fifteen days, maybe could go another three weeks if he stretched it out, but the animals would begin to suffer sooner than he. Something had to be done. There was no more avoiding the decision.

  This night, like many nights before, he slept in the easy chair in the living room, the room that could only be called the 'heart of the house', with Fug at one side, his lever action rifle at the other, and one of the Navy Colts in his lap.

  Only he didn't sleep.

  That was becoming harder to come by. But, that was something else the Marines taught him to go with or without, as needed. He could take comfort in the feel of the Colt's grip in his hand, the grip his Pa made him familiar with as he grew up. Familiar enough to enter quick-draw competitions if he wanted to, but never did. Not anymore. Not after the wars. Not after Pa up and died.

  But none of this helped him find sleep.

  He was going to have to do something soon. Not much dog food left, the horses were already set to pasture--to find what they could from the drying grasses and weeds out there--and if he didn't find new grazing areas, he would lose Big Guy. That horse was just too old to go without a steady diet, and if he was in the wild, he probably would've starved before now.

  But as the day grew lighter, Gabriel thought he'd best get moving, head south, find out what's left if anything. Dawn had broken, in a fashion, but it wasn't going to get much brighter. That made it hard to tell time, but his atomic watch still set itself every morning with N.I.S.T. out in Colorado, which told him at least that particular atomic clock and radio signal were still working. 6:12 AM.

  The night had been nearly silent, if not for Fug and his rabbit chasing dreams, it would have been. Funny how Fug was supposed to be watching out for Gabriel and it was Gabriel who was watching out for Fug. The Fug-nut. The silence was starting to get to Gabriel. It wasn't natural. The night should be filled with bug song and lurking predators, crickets and croaking frogs. It should not be so ear-ringingly silent, so completely breathless. To Gabriel, it felt like the earth was dying, not just man and his civilization.

  The small weather radio, the one he used to track snow fall in the middle of winter, also had ham radio bands, and he searched those every day. He occasionally picked up some chatter from Texas or Arizona and sometimes even Pensacola. It was never for long, and often times it was just some nut-job ranting instead of giving any news, but he heard enough to know that there was a battle line drawn somewhere south of him. Probably someplace in northern North Carolina or southern Virginia, but either way, south of here.

  "Time to get a move on.” Gabriel said to himself and collapsed the leg rest on the reclining chair, careful not to catch Fug in the receding step. He stood and dropped the colt into the holster on his right.

  Fug stood wagging a somewhat bushy tail, lolling a tongue out one side of his mouth and staring ugly at Gabriel. All Gabriel could think was how awesome this dog was. He could not imagine being a hermit, not entirely. Good ole` Fuggly was so much more than a pet. "I've been thinking, Fug," Gabriel began, "we should head on down south, get us on the human side of things. What'd ya say?"

  Fug responded by tilting his head to the other side and letting his tongue flop to that side of his face. Even this dog's tongue was speckled with black, and as ugly a tongue as Gabriel had ever seen. God, I love this dog.

  "I hope you don't mind walking, Fugster, because it's a long way." He drew out long as though the dog would pick up on it, then realized he was emoting to a dog.

  Ah who cared? He was nuts, right?

  He spent an awful lot of time talking to the dog in the first place. "Let's pack it in, boy, and find us a new hide. This place ain't going to cut it no more."

  Fug swished his tail at him, and inched a bit closer.

  Gabriel knelt down, wrapped an arm around the dog's shoulders, and rubbed his chest, right where Fug liked to be rubbed. The dog leaned into him as if to say 'Hey, thanks guy.'

  Gabriel collected some things from his bedroom, stuffing them into a collection of packs; saddle bags for both horses, and a five day ruck sack he kept when he left the military. It was desert camouflage, but that didn't matter. For all he knew there were no bugs anywhere near here, and if there were, they might have infrared vision or something. Maybe they couldn't see color.

  He collected survival things first, then comfort things, as much as he could fit. He still had a large pillow like pack he would put on Big Guy instead of a saddle. In that he stored food stuff, the kind of food stuff that would travel well, and three can openers.

  As the packs became full, he stowed them near the door. Then the photo of his father caught his eye, and he paused. Pa was dressed like an old time cowboy, complete with holsters and bandolier, wide brimmed ornate hat and vest. He was squatting a little, and in his hand was one of the old colts held just above the holster, along his hip. The gun was
spewing a rush of flame and smoke, sending a slug toward some target out of frame. Behind his father, in the bleachers of about fifty people was Gabriel, maybe age eight or nine, wearing the exact same hat as his father, wide brimmed and trimmed in red stitching. That hat was the only way he could tell where he was because the faces in the bleachers were well out of focus. Still it was him, and his father, and his father doing what he loved, and he missed the man something terrible.

  Pa was a moral man, a proud and honorable man, but above all, he was a man. Not like the tight jeans wearing club hoppers with their spray on tans, lotion softened hands and glue-drenched, dyed hair. Pa was a man that had seen more than his share of weather, of the sun, of Vietnam, and he wore this fact like a badge in the wrinkles of his browned face. He bore scars of both work and combat, hunting and building. What he was was a man that got it done, no matter the cost or sacrifice, and usually got it right. Gabriel wanted to be just like him, even at the ripe ole` age of twenty eight. Only his Pa didn't have brain troubles like Gabriel.

  The fact that his father's possessions were gone now, lost to that auction to pay the tax lien, he still had this one photo. Old and leeching its colors to yellow, it was Gabriel's favorite picture. He lifted it from the layer of dust on the mantel, folded the kick stand, and then stuffed it deep in the clothing of his backpack.

  He looked around the room again, searching for anything else, but found nothing except the old furniture, bought used and used hard, and dime store paintings he found in the storage shed when he bought the place. Still, it was his home, had been for a bit over a year now, and he was leaving it for good. At least he wouldn't need to pay a mortgage for a while, if ever. If ever he came back here. If ever humanity survived. If he survived.

  Within the hour, Gabriel had saddled and packed the horses. Riding Lance and leading Big Guy, Fug walking along side, he looked back at his little ranch, the little piece of peace he managed to hold on to, and then turned away, to the south and west to catch the highway.