Sarah had found her voice.
And the three men sprinted across the yard toward the kitchen door.
Chapter 53
Martel was a mountain of a man. And he was fiercely protective of things he considered his, or things that belonged to another and which he wanted for himself.
He considered Sarah one of those possessions. Nothing more, nothing less.
It never dawned on him, not even once, that she was a living breathing human being, worthy of the same considerations and freedoms that he had.
Compassion and empathy were two things Martel was just incapable of feeling.
Bryan was losing the battle. He’d never taken Karate, or Judo, or any of those other cool things kids take when they’re young. He’d been busy playing little league and Pop Warner football to learn how to defend himself against a much larger aggressor.
But Bryan had one thing going for him. In the battle of right or wrong, he had justice on his side.
And in the America where Bryan grew up, justice always prevailed.
Always. Without exception.
No matter how much bigger and badder the evil guy was.
Bryan had succeeded in kicking the knife out of the big man’s hand. In doing so, he sliced open his ankle. And his blood was flying everywhere as the two tussled on the ground.
But Bryan wasn’t the only one losing blood. The big man was bleeding profusely from a nose that was probably broken.
At least Bryan hoped it was. He’d certainly hit him hard enough to break it.
The two continued to exchange blows. Bryan knew to stay close to the man, and to take his swings only when he could score a clean hit. If he’d backed away and let the man take a good swing, the strength of the punch might have knocked him out cold.
If he took a sloppy punch and missed, the man would have an opening to retaliate.
Bryan stole a glance at Sarah, still bruised and bloodied and cowering in the corner.
And he grew enraged.
He remembered from the school yard fights he had as a boy that the best way to defeat a larger opponent was to hit him hard and often. And not to give him time to recover.
The rage fed him as he swung again and again, landed punch after punch, so fast that the big man staggered back.
A good right hook to the chin sent him reeling and his knees started to buckle.
A kick to the side of the head sent him to the floor.
But Bryan didn’t stop there. He was suddenly filled with an overpowering need for vengeance.
For what he’d done to Sarah.
Bryan straddled the man and continued to pound the man’s face and head, long after he was unconscious.
Again and again and again he punched, until his own knuckles were bloody and raw.
Finally he stopped and turned to see Sarah running through the room toward him.
At last, she was free.
But something was terribly wrong.
There was fire in her eyes.
She started pummeling Bryan with her tiny fists, one right after another against his chest.
He didn’t understand. Not at all.
He succeeded in catching her hands and held them both tightly by the wrists.
“Sarah, honey, what are you doing?”
She screamed like a banshee.
“Why? Why are you doing this?”
“Doing what? Sarah, what’s the matter?”
“Who are you and why did you kill my husband?”
Bryan said, “What are you talking about? Honey, you and I were married seven years ago.”
The other men burst into the room as Bryan released his wife’s wrists.
She went running to Martel’s side, sobbing hysterically every step of the way.
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Thank you for reading
FINAL DAWN Book 7: The Search
Please enjoy this preview of
FINAL DAWN Book 8: A Long Road Back
Debbie stepped into the hallway and closed the door behind her.
The crowd had grown since she’d gone in. There were now almost a dozen people gathered around to hear the diagnosis.
Many of them were in tears.
They were looking to Debbie for answers. But she had precious few to give them.
“I gave her a sedative, so she’ll sleep comfortably for several hours. Bryan hasn’t slept well in days, so I expect they’ll sleep peacefully together.
“After she wakes up, it’ll begin again. She’ll likely be combative, even violent. Right now she doesn’t much like Bryan very much. She doesn’t know him, and considers him the bad guy. Not the animal who brainwashed her.”
Sami asked, “What made her that way? What made her forget all of us? What made her forget who she was? What could possibly do that?”
“I examined the back of her head. She said she fell down the stairs at the farmhouse, but the wound looks to be at least a week old. I think in all likelihood he attacked her in the forest, then carried her through the woods to where his truck was parked or his horse was tied.
“It’s impossible to say for sure whether she suffered a concussion without x-rays or a cat-scan, but I’d bet my life that she did. Probably a bad one. One that can leave blood clots behind. I gave her a blood thinner, just in case, as well as an antibiotic because the back of her head is still swollen. A week after impact the swelling should have gone down but it hasn’t, which probably means an infection.
“Since the swelling on the outside of her skull hasn’t gone down yet, it’s a safe bet her brain is still swollen as well. And that’s what we need to worry about the most. I talked to the surgeons at Wilford Hall to see if they’d be willing to remove part of her skull to relieve whatever pressure is there.
“They said that after this many days that may cause more harm. They’re sending a team tonight to examine her and make that decision.”
Karen seemed especially distressed by the news. She considered Sarah the daughter she never had.
“Oh, my… please tell us… she’ll be okay and her memory will return at some point.”
“I wish I could tell you that, Karen. But at this point we can’t even say for sure she’ll survive. Her brain had to have suffered a lot of damage. She’s still subject to hemorrhage or stroke, or a blood clot despite the medication. Let’s just pray she survives, and anything more will be gravy. Even if she has to relearn everything she ever knew all over again, we should settle for that and be happy we still have her.”
“How’s Bryan taking the news?”
“I haven’t told him the worst of it yet. He’s in a mild state of shock himself. He said he’d been trying to prepare himself for the possibility she’d be found dead. And he was praying constantly that she’d be found alive and well. He said he never considered there might be a third possibility… that she’d be alive but wounded, and would reject him completely.”
Three doors down the hallway Brad and Bryan Too were furious.
And they were covertly making plans.
“When do you want to head out?”
“Why waste time? The sooner we get it done the better. How about first light?”
“Sounds good to me. I’ll meet you at the gate at sunrise.”
FINAL DAWN, Book 8: A Long Road Back will be available worldwide in February, 2016
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If you enjoyed
FINAL DAWN, Book 7: The Search,
You might also enjoy
RED: The Adventure Begins
RED: The Adventure Begins
is available through Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble Booksellers, darrellmaloney.com, and other fine book stores.
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Here’s a preview...
Red had a worried look on her face.
And Red never worried about anything.
“Dad, I don’t like this. This isn’t just a typical blackout. This is som
ething worse. Much worse.”
“Now, honey, don’t jump to conclusions. It’s only been a little more than a day. We’ve had blackouts that lasted longer than this before.
“Look at it like an unearned vacation. We didn’t ask for it, but it’s here. Let’s take a day off and go fishing. Heck, we can’t do anything here anyway.”
But Red was adamant.
“No, Dad. You aren’t listening. Haven’t you noticed we haven’t had any traffic since the power went out? I mean, none. In a day and a half we haven’t had a single car roll into town. You know why? Because the cars are all dead, that’s why.
“Bonnie and I rode up to the highway this morning. I wanted to see if I could find which transformer blew, and whether they had a crew out there replacing it.
“What I found instead were abandoned cars, as far as the eye could see, in either direction. Many of them had their hoods up, like their owners had been trying to get them running again.
“There are people up on the highway just wandering around, not knowing what to do. People sleeping in their cars. People in shock.
“Dad, what in the world could possibly cause all the cars to stop working at precisely the same time all the power went out?”
Her father’s face suddenly turned ashen.
He stumbled over his words.
“A nuclear blast at high altitude could have caused it. But only a few countries have the capability of doing that. And they have no reason to. It would harm them as much as us.
“There’s only one other thing I know of that could cause such chaos.”
He didn’t want to go on.
But she needed to know.
“One of the things pilots study is the affect the other planets and sun can have on our own planet. How their gravitational pulls can affect our compasses and such.
There’s a phenomenon that can occur during a massive solar storm. If the storm is large enough, it can send electromagnetic pulses toward the earth. Those pulses can short out anything that runs on electrical power.”
“Dad, please tell me it’s just temporary. That things will start working again once the solar storm has passed.”
“No, honey. I’m sorry. If that’s what’s caused this, then it’s permanent.”
He held her close before finishing.
“And we’re all doomed.”
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Please enjoy this preview of
ALONE
ALONE is available through Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble Booksellers, darrellmaloney.com, and other fine book stores.
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Dave and Sarah Anna Speer had been preparing for Armageddon for years. They thought they’d covered all the bases, and had planned for everything.
It never occurred to them that the single thing they had no control over was the timing.
Sarah was on an airplane with her young daughters when solar storms bombarded the earth with electromagnetic pulses. Everything powered by electricity or batteries was instantly shorted out and would never work again.
Dave was suddenly alone.
He was also unsure whether his family was dead or alive. He assumed that the airplane stopped working and plunged from the sky. But it was scheduled to land in Kansas City at almost the exact time everything stopped working.
Had they landed in time? Was it possible they survived?
This is the story of a man facing Armageddon alone. It chronicles the things he does to survive in a newly vicious world.
It also includes Dave’s desperate and poignant diary entries to his wife. Just in case she did survive, and somehow makes it back to him to find he didn’t make it himself.
From the author of last year’s best sellers “Final Dawn” and “Countdown to Armageddon” comes a new tale of one man’s journey through hell… alone.
Chapter 1:
Dave couldn’t get the tune out of his head. He’d heard it all morning long, off and on, playing quietly in the back of his skull. And it was driving him crazy.
Oh, it wasn’t unpleasant. It was a happy little ditty. At least it sounded that way. It sounded more like sunshine and smiles, rather than rainclouds and foreboding.
Finally, he’d had enough.
“Okay, let’s play a game,” he announced while looking in the rearview mirror at Lindsey and Beth.
“I’ll hum you a tune, and the first one to guess the tune gets a candy bar when we get to the airport.”
Sarah looked at him from the passenger seat. With that look.
“Excuse me, mister? You’re going to get the girls all hyped up on sugar just before I take them on a four hour plane ride?”
“Not both of them, honey. Just the one who guesses the name of the song.”
“Uh… no. If that song is still bugging you, just hum it. If any one of us guesses it, you can buy each of us a cinnabon.”
The girls laughed. Beth gave Lindsey a high five. Lindsey said, “All right! Go, Mom!”
Dave coughed. At first he had no words.
Then he found some, and stated the obvious.
“Why is it okay to get all three of you hyped up on sugar but not okay to do it to just one of you?”
“Because you know I have a thing for cinnabons. And I’m the mom. So that makes me the boss.”
Lindsey broke out in uncontrollable laughter from the back seat, and Beth said, “Ooooohhh, Dad, you just got owned.”
“I don’t know if it’s worth it. I mean, those things aren’t cheap, you know.”
“Oh, we know, don’t we girls?”
Two heads nodded up and down behind her.
“But, Dave, they are soooo worth the price. And I’ll give you a bite. And think how sweet I’ll taste when you kiss me goodbye.”
Beth made a gagging sound.
“Besides, if you want us to help you with that song, you have to pay the piper. It’s only fair. And if you don’t, it’ll continue to drive you crazy for days. Maybe even the whole week we’re gone. And we’d feel so bad for you if that happened.”
“Yeah, you’re just oozing with sympathy for my plight.”
Sarah smiled and blew him a kiss. She was even more gorgeous now than the day they’d met thirteen years before. It suddenly dawned on him that he was an incredibly lucky man, to have such a beautiful wife and family. And that the price of three cinnabons wasn’t that great, in the grand scheme of things.
In other words, he played right into Sarah’s hands. She knew he would, as soon as she let the kiss fly.
“Okay, here goes.”
Dave started humming the tune that had played in his mind a thousand times since the previous evening.
It took the three of them no more than ten notes. They’d have been “Name That Tune” champions in another era.
All three of them blurted out, almost simultaneously, “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.”
Then Dave felt incredibly stupid.
“Of course. How could I have not known that? The old Mr. Rogers theme song. Sheesh! Now I really feel dumb.”
Sarah said, “Did you know that Fred Rogers was a Green Beret in Vietnam, and wore his red sweater to hide all of his tattoos?”
Dave scoffed.
“Where did you hear that?”
“On the internet. Why?”
“That story’s been going around for years. It was debunked a long time ago. Mr. Rogers was a fine man, but he was never a Green Beret.”
“Oh, yeah? Where did you hear that?”
“On the internet.”
It was too much for Lindsey.
“Gee whiz, would you two stop believing what you read on the internet? Nearly all of it is garbage.”
She turned to her little sister.
“Do we have to teach these old people everything?”
Beth said nothing but nodded her head decisively. She was in firm agreement.
Dave was a man of his word, and after the family checked in at the ticket kiosk and
Sarah and the girls got their boarding passes, they made a beeline to Cinnabon.
“Daddy, are you going to walk us to the gate?”
“No, honey, I can’t go through security without a boarding pass, so I’ll walk you as far as I can and then you can give me a great big hug and a kiss.”
“I wish you could come with us.”
“I know, sugar. I wish I could too. But with two of the guys being sick at work, they just can’t let me take vacation right now. Uncle Tommy will understand, and we can go fishing another time. And you’ll be so busy helping Aunt Susan get everything ready for the wedding, you won’t even have time to miss me.”
“Bet I will!”
Sarah looked at him longingly. They were going to be apart for their twelfth anniversary. It would be the first one they’d missed.
It was as if he could read her mind.
“We’ll do something special when you get back, I promise. We’ll get a sitter and go spend the weekend at the lake. Just the two of us.”
“I’d like that.”
He walked the three special ladies in his life to the TSA checkpoint and got his hugs and kisses.
He held Sarah close and told her he loved her.
Little Beth rolled her eyes and said, “No mush, you two.”
Dave paid her no mind. He looked Sarah in the eyes and said, “It’ll seem like forever before I see you again.”
Neither of them had a clue how true those words would be.
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Please enjoy this preview of
COUNTDOWN TO ARMAGEDDON
COUNTDOWN TO ARMAGEDDON
is available through Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble Booksellers, darrellmaloney.com, and other fine book stores.
*************************
Scott Harter wasn’t special by anybody’s standards. He wasn’t a handsome guy at all. He wasn’t dumb, but he’d never win a Nobel Prize either. He had no hidden talents, although he fancied himself a fairly good karaoke singer.
The Search Page 18