End Days Super Boxset

by Hayden, Roger

  “I don't think so,” she said.

  “Let me go! My friends are out there!”

  Christina yanked her closer. “I want you to think of your family and everyone else in your life. What good are you going to do them running out there?”

  Suddenly the door opened, and a petrified Sally rushed in. “We’re under attack!” she cried, running into Jacklyn's arms.

  “Where's Shane and Danny?” Jacklyn asked, clutching Sally.

  “They're outside fighting,” Sally said. She stumbled backwards slightly and it looked as if she was going to pass out.

  “They're what?”

  James watched from the window as Russell left the battlefield and defiantly stormed off toward his cabin. For a moment, he thought Russell was headed for their cabin and sighed with relief as he passed by. Gunfire from outside continued in rapid succession. Russell's men shouted to each other as they moved toward the front gate. They took shots at the masked aggressors climbing over the wall, hitting most of them indiscriminately.

  James walked away from the window. His leisured steps creaked along the hardwood floor. He brought his hand to his chin in deep thought. His rifle still hung from his shoulder. All eyes were on him as he suddenly pivoted around to address his group. “I've got a plan. I know what those people want, and we’re going to give it to them.”

  “You really think this is all over those three boys?” Mark asked.

  James nodded. “I want everyone to stay here. Lay low and take cover. I'll be back in a flash.”

  Mark rose from the floor. “You're gonna need some backup.”

  James shook his head. “No, I want everyone to stay here. Please.”

  Mark saw no point in arguing. He knelt back down next to Janice and drew his rifle. “Be careful.”

  James hunkered down and stormed out the back as everyone prepared for battle.

  In the chaos, there were no longer any guards posted at Cabin C. James ran to the back door while taking care not to get distracted by all the gunfire. Bodies dropped from the walls as soon as the enemy made it over the top. There looked to be more than twenty of them. By the dead alone, the number was twice that. James pushed open the door with his rifle carefully at the ready. The cabin was dark and dusty, with only chairs and boxes littered about. James didn't see anyone, but he remained alert while moving cautiously.

  “I'm only here to help,” he announced. His eyes took notice of a large dried bloodstain on the wood floor. Suddenly, he noticed some shadows behind a stack of boxes. “I'm not going to hurt you. I'm not like the others.”

  The shadows moved. He could hear the panic in their rapid breathing. They were too frozen with fear to run. James moved behind the boxes and saw the boys sitting on the floor, trembling. “Like I said, I'm here to help you. We're getting out of here.”

  If the boys didn't know any better, they could have sworn that James was one of the men who helped kidnap them from their home. Nonetheless, they had little choice but to listen. James could sense their distrust. “I was there, OK. I was there, and I watched your uncle get shot. But I had no idea it was going down like that. You have to listen to me.”

  Daren nodded. James noticed the large bruise on his face. Then another thought came to him. “Where's your brother?”

  Both Daren and Dustin looked at the ground, unresponsive. It looked as if their very souls had been drained from them.

  “Did they do something with him?” James asked.

  “They killed him,” Dustin answered.

  James had no idea what to say. It was unconscionable. “Those people outside, the ones attacking the camp, are they here for you?” he asked.

  Dustin looked up and shrugged. “Could be.”

  “My group and I, we’re just trying to get out of here. All of this has nothing to do with us,” James said.

  “You’d probably say anything to save yourself right now,” Daren said.

  James looked at both of them with narrowed eyes. “You come with me, or stay here and die. The choice is all yours.”

  Russell stormed into his cabin, grabbed the nearest chair and threw it against the wall. It crashed into a nearby window and shattered the glass. He then took his table and flipped it over as paper flew everywhere. He kicked the wall, and then proceeded to throw whatever he could get his hands on across the room. A mysterious strength seemed to come to him out of nowhere as he tossed his bed over in a rage, exposing a large green metallic case he had hidden there months before. It was time.

  Russell knelt in front of the case and flipped up the latches. He opened the case to reveal a Vietnam-era M9A1-7 flamethrower. It looked like something that belonged in a museum, but he hadn’t brought it out to admire history.

  He picked up the heavy relic and placed the tank pack over his back while clutching the handgrip of the long hose. The tanks were full of pressurized nitrogen gas. Russell had only used it once before and was hopeful that it still worked.

  The firefight continued at the front of the camp, where the front gate had taken considerable damage. Billy and Quinn continued to fire on them from above but were quickly running out of ammo. Armed with his flamethrower, Russell left his cabin and walked to the front gate, staring straight ahead. His men, hunkered down behind embankments, looked at him as if he had lost his mind.

  “Open the gate!” Russell commanded with a wave of his arm.

  Kyle stood up but didn’t move.

  “I said open the fucking gate!” he repeated.

  Kyle signaled to two of their men, and they ran to the gate apprehensively.

  As Russell got closer, he opened the handgrip valve and readied the trigger.

  “What are you doing?” Kyle asked.

  Russell kept moving without saying a word. His men stood by the gate as the battering continued from outside. The door had nearly cracked open. He held the hose up and pointed to the men with his free hand. “Now!”

  They turned the locking mechanism and swung both sides open, taking the breaching team completely by surprise. The four masked men holding the log nearly fell over as they stumbled forward. They looked up at Russell in disbelief.

  “Welcome to Camp Liberty,” Russell said. He aimed the hose, pulled the trigger, and incinerated them in a startling blaze that rushed from the flamethrower. A huge ball of fire consumed everything in its path. The remaining outsiders immediately ran, stumbling and crying, not knowing what to think or do.

  Russell stormed after them, running past the charred bodies of those in his wake. Kyle and the other men inside the camp watched in disbelief. Screams of anguish tore through the calm of the forest outside the gates, but Russell wasn't giving in. One of the outsiders attempted to take a shot at him from behind a tree, but missed. Russell reduced the man to incinerated flesh in a heartbeat.

  Flames then choked from the thrower as its tank became low. Russell knew he was nearing the end of the nitrogen left. He had scorched everything in his way without hesitation, and by the time Kyle and the others could react, it looked as if everyone outside had been killed.

  James exited the cabin with Daren and Dillon behind him. He looked up in surprise to see the gates open and a fire blazing outside the camp. The gunfire had stopped, and it became patently clear to James who was on the losing side. Their hopes for escape vanished in seconds.

  Russell walked around, proudly surveying the scene strewn with blackened bodies still burning. His head bounced up and down in satisfaction as he bit his lower lip. Kyle and the others hung back, still not knowing what to say. Russell then yelled into the sky at the top of his lungs in celebration. He turned around to face all the men whose eyes were trained on him.

  “Now that's how you win a war!”

  John Doe

  Sunday October 5, 2020: McDonough, GA

  Having recovered somewhat at the hospital, the patient known as “John Doe” wandered the city streets of McDonough—part of the Atlanta metropolitan area—in an attempt to find some answers. He needed a
vehicle; that much he knew. More importantly, he needed a vehicle that ran. Such wasn't the case in the congested intersections and crosswalks before him.

  There were plenty of cars to choose from, but none that ran. In haste, he jumped atop a sleek red Honda Gold Wing motorcycle parked on the curb and tried to start it, to no avail. He quickly jumped off the bike and continued to walk down the street past abandoned shops, smashed windows, and blankets of vandalism that had consumed the city.

  It had only been a few days since he was walking a rural freeway along I-75 and was hit by a large van, miraculously surviving. Now he had to pick up the pieces again and proceed with his ambitious plan to prevent the U.S. from suffering an even worse disaster than the EMP strikes. Few people would think that things could get any worse. John Doe, however, knew that it could.

  Things were beginning to come back to him. There was a reason he had been in the most rural of areas outside of Atlanta. He’d had a car. That much he knew. His car had broken down in mid-drive and rolled to the shoulder of a road he no longer remembered. The bizarre occurrence was like nothing he had experienced before in a moving vehicle. But it also wasn't entirely unexpected. He had pre-existing knowledge of the EMP strikes, they had just happened sooner than expected.

  Before his car died, he was trying to recover something hidden. At the moment, he couldn't recall where. He knew it was something small for a computer, but little else. The van collision had really messed him up. He was lucky, he supposed, to be alive. That's what the doctors told him.

  After trudging through town wearing some baggy clothes donated by the hospital, his purpose was beginning to grow clear. It was something important, something related to the EMP strikes. He had been on the run, and there were people after him. His name suddenly came back to him: Mason Turner. He was thirty-six years old, a data analyst working for the NSA. He had top-secret clearance. He knew things—things that had become scrambled in his mind after the accident.

  Exhausted, he leaned against a red brick building and looked up into the blurry night sky. He realized that he wore glasses but had no idea what had happened to them. The air was hot and there was danger all around him. Military trucks roared in the distance. Gunshots sounded. Small fires flared throughout town. If it wasn't the apocalypse, Mason thought, they were pretty damn close. The faint fumes of tear gas stung his eyes and gripped his lungs. There was likely a disturbance somewhere close, and he wondered to what extent law enforcement had control of things.

  As thoughts of his own safety began to race through his mind, Mason noticed a group of men walking closely together toward him. Their silhouettes were hard to make out, but their quick movement toward the red building where he stood was unmistakable. They were coming for him. Suddenly, it dawned on Mason that he was being followed. Not only then, but on the night he had been hit by the van. He believed they had found him again, and he had no idea what they wanted.

  Mason tried not to look at them directly. He turned his head to the side and saw them approaching at a faster pace now—three men in sport jackets, walking with their hands in their pockets. He looked for a possible escape route or somewhere he could evade the approaching men but thought it wise to keep moving. He continued walking, faster now, as the sound of footsteps became louder and closer behind him. He did his best to fight the urge to look back. He knew the men were gaining on him.

  From what he saw, they weren't dressed like agents or government spooks. They wore street clothes, much like him. Perhaps they were undercover. Maybe they had been following him for a while and were just looking for the opportune moment to strike. Mason kept moving down the street, past another crosswalk and onto the next block.

  He looked for a police officer or anyone who could help him but noticed even fewer people around. It seemed he was entering a worse part of town, a place one would have to be foolish to enter at night. The abundance of graffiti sprayed across every building and vehicle confirmed it. It was at that moment that Mason realized he had no idea where he was going.

  The footsteps kept coming, and it was only a matter of time before they caught up with him. Mason was in no condition to run or fend off three men. As his heart raced, he tried to come up with a plan. He looked around, careful not to make eye contact with his pursuers.

  There was an alleyway up ahead on his left. Maybe he could dart inside unseen and move as quickly as possible to evade them. But then Mason remembered that alleyways meant the potential of being boxed in and having to defend himself. He passed a high-rise apartment complex and briefly glanced at the entrance, up a few small steps, only to find it bolted shut. It was time to make a big move, so Mason casually crossed the street and continued walking down the sidewalk on the other side. All the while, he remained aware of the men following closely behind him.

  The faster he moved, the faster the footsteps behind him moved. The street ahead looked even more dark and shady. The moment finally came to act. Mason took a quick turn left, down the next street, into further darkness. He looked frantically for a place to hide from the men that raced toward him like a locomotive off the rails.

  Mason tried to run, lost his footing, and tripped on the pavement, face first onto the ground. The pain was excruciating. The men were on him in a flash. They grabbed his arms, pulled them behind his back, and yanked Mason up on his feet.

  He felt disoriented and frightened. One of the men told him to walk as another held his arms back tightly. He could feel warm blood running down his face and blinked to keep it from getting into his eyes.

  “Just keep moving, and pick up the pace!” the man holding his arms ordered.

  They turned him back the way they had come, pushing him along. Mason figured they wanted information, but his memory was a fragmented mess—a wasteland of disjointed thoughts. He tried to get a good look at them but couldn't. The one holding his arms pushed him to move even faster, and Mason felt a searing pain in his left hip and knee. He shouted and nearly stumbled to the ground, angering the man further.

  “Vamos,” the one man said.

  “I can't go any faster. I was in an accident!” Mason shouted.

  “Accident or not, you better put a little pep in your step,” the man said.

  Mason tried his best to get up and walk normally. Every step he took sent crippling pain throughout his body. They reached a dirt path on the outskirts of the city and continued down it until they reached a dilapidated flophouse covered in graffiti with all its windows boarded up.

  “We good?” one of the other men asked. He had a Spanish accent.

  The man holding Mason nodded. They led him inside where it was pitch black. Before he could even speak, someone pushed him onto the floor, knocking him out completely.

  Mason woke up, not knowing how long he had been out. He was seated in a chair in a dark, murky room. His entire body ached all over. Some of his hair had crusted onto his face as the blood dried. Looking ahead, he saw nothing but darkness.

  “How did you find me?” he asked hoarsely. No one answered. “I know you're there,” Mason continued. “Show yourselves and quit fucking around.”

  Suddenly, a match was drawn, revealing one of the men. He held a kerosene lamp in one hand and lit it with the other. The flame of the lamp revealed his tan, wrinkled face. He had a black goatee, graying hair, and brown, bloodshot eyes. A pack of Marlboros protruded from the pocket of his tattered green jacket.

  “You sure got a mouth on you, hombre,” the man said.

  “Answer my question,” Mason said.

  “We're not answering shit,” another man said, stepping forward. His face was covered in deep stubble, and his head was balding at the top. He had small, circular framed glasses and spoke with a slight Hispanic accent.

  “You dumb Mexican bastards better let me go, if you know what's good for you,” Mason said, trying to antagonize them further.

  “Not going to happen,” the third man said, coming into the light. He was the tallest of the group, with a thick mustach
e and black slicked-back hair, wearing several golden necklaces over his black shirt. “And we're not Mexican, pinche pendejo.”

  “What did you call me?” Mason asked.

  “Maybe we can show this guy a map, Comandante,” the goatee man said. “You think he knows the difference between Mexico and Colombia?”

  “Same shithole, different name,” Mason said.

  The tall man, referred to as “Comandante,” signaled to his partner with the glasses. The balding, stocky man walked over to Mason and swiftly punched him in the face.

  Mason's head jolted back and he winced in agony as the searing pain spread through his nose and into his brain. He covered his face in an attempt to stifle the pain. The punch had knocked the sass out of Mason's vernacular. His eyes watered uncontrollably and he looked ahead, breathing heavily.

  “OK. I get it. You're from Colombia. What the hell do you want from me?” he asked.

  “Not so fast,” the comandante said. “We ask the questions here.”

  “I don't know what low-level agency put you thugs up to this, but you're wasting your time. I don't know anything,” Mason said.

  The Comandante signaled his enforcer, the balding man, as goatee man set the lantern on the ground near Mason. Balding man opened a nearby toolbox and pulled out a box cutter. Mason caught on quickly. His adversaries must have outsourced the interrogation to the Colombian mercenaries. It all made sense to him. It was at that moment that he knew the three mysterious men meant business.

  “I told you,” Mason repeated in a desperate tone, “I can't remember anything. Whatever information you're trying to get, it's gone. I was hit by a van.”

  Goatee man sauntered casually toward Mason with blade in hand, not saying a word. The floorboards under his sneakers creaked with each step. Mason prattled on. “Listen to me! Whatever I did know is gone. Tell your bosses that I’ve forgotten everything!”

  The man walked behind Mason and held the box cutter to his neck. Mason could feel the small blade digging in. “Talk to me!” he shouted. “I don't know anything. I swear!” He was sweating profusely and had turned white with fear.