The New World (Book 7): Those Who Remain

by G. Michael Hopf

  The wave of sentiment forced him to do something he hadn’t intended. He took his phone out and dialed her.

  After several clicks, the phone began to ring.

  On the fifth ring, she answered, “Hello.”

  “Hi, baby girl,” Gordon said.

  “Dad, where are you?”

  “Never mind that. How are you doing?”

  “Where are you? Why did you just up and leave like that?”

  “I don’t have much time, so let’s not waste it with questions I’ll never answer.”

  Haley didn’t reply, she just listened.

  “I still remember clearly the day you were born. You came out with a head full of hair. Your poor mother, you made her work for you, but oh, the joy when you finally made your arrival. I held you and stared deep into those big beautiful eyes. You were the sweetest thing with your big chubby cheeks.”

  Haley began to cry.

  “Don’t cry. Just know that every time I left to go do what I had to do I do so for you. Having you safe was so important to me and I thought that without taking charge I couldn’t assure that. But can you forgive me, I wanted to always be there, but I just had to make sure you would have a world where you could have a future.”

  “There’s nothing to forgive,” she sobbed.

  Heavy footfalls sounded in the hall just outside the door.

  Tears welled up in Gordon’s eyes. Still holding the picture, he pressed it against his chest. “I miss your mom and Hunter so much.”

  “Dad, tell me where you are. I’ll come to you.”

  “I have to go now. I just needed to hear your voice one more time.”

  “Daddy, no, please don’t go.”

  “Goodbye, my baby girl, I love you,” Gordon said, disconnecting and dropping the phone. He took the pistol in his hand and looked at it. The biblical quote from the Gospel of Matthew came to mind: Those who live by the sword shall die by the sword. Never a truer statement was uttered, and he laughed.

  The door exploded open. Police raced in with their guns drawn on him.

  Gordon raised the pistol and pointed it at the first policeman he saw. He pressed his eyes closed and said, “I’m coming home.”

  THE END

  READ AN EXCERPT FROM

  HOPE: A GOING HOME NOVEL

  BY A. AMERICAN & G. MICHAEL HOPF

  ____________________________________

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Hope is the word which God has written on the brow of every man.” – Victor Hugo

  Descanso, CA

  Charlotte wasn’t sure if it was the throaty rumble of the truck engine pulling into their driveway or her father’s voice ordering her and her little sister to go hide that she heard first. Not questioning him, she took Hope firmly by the hand and raced upstairs.

  “What’s happening, Charlotte?” her sister asked, her voice trembling.

  “Somebody’s coming and Daddy wants us to hide, like before,” Charlotte replied, walking hand in hand into the master bedroom’s walk-in closet. “Now just wait here; I’ll be right back.”

  “No,” Hope pleaded.

  “I’m just going to get my diary, I need it.”

  Hope gripped Charlotte’s hand tighter. Her eyes widened as she again begged for Charlotte to stay. “I’m scared. Don’t go.”

  “Hope, I’m just running into my room. I’ll be right back.”

  “No,” Hope replied as her little fingers squeezed hard.

  “Hope, you’re six; you’re a big girl now. I’ll just be a sec,” Charlotte said and pulled away. She closed the closet door and ran to her bedroom just down the hall.

  Charlotte could hear voices outside her window. Curious, she peered out to see an old pickup truck, and circling it were five men. Her father, not a small man, towered over them all. He was engaged in a heated conversation with a man she recognized seeing once before.

  “I told you I don’t know where it is,” Charlotte’s father hollered.

  “Yeah, you do. You’re the only one who would,” the man replied.

  “I told you already, I don’t know. Plus why would I ever cross you?”

  “It’s very easy, just tell me where it is and I’ll let you and your little family live.”

  Charlotte watched the man spit out a large wad of tobacco juice. He grinned and said, “I’ll give you one more chance, and if you don’t, I’ll go in there, rip out your two pretty little girls and have my boys here do unimaginable things to them.”

  “I told you I didn’t take it.”

  Charlotte’s heart pumped heavily and her hand trembled with fear.

  A commotion broke out as Charlotte’s father produced a gun and waved it in front of the man. “Go away now, or I’ll shoot you!”

  Calmly the man stepped to the side and pulled out his own pistol and immediately shot Charlotte’s father in the chest.

  Charlotte gasped and stumbled backwards at the sight of her father falling to the ground. She tripped over the edge of the bed and hit the floor hard.

  The creak of the front door hit her ears.

  The man hollered, “Tear the place apart, boys. I want what is mine!”

  Charlotte scrambled to her feet and sprinted from her bedroom towards the master bedroom, with her pink diary in her hand.

  Back in the closet, she found Hope whimpering behind a row of clothes.

  She closed the door and tucked up next to her.

  A small box lay next to her; inside was a flashlight. She took it out and turned it on.

  The bright light lit the dark space.

  With a crackling voice, Hope asked, “What was that sound?”

  Charlotte didn’t reply; she opened her diary and began to write.

  January 21

  Dear Mommy,

  The bad men came back. Daddy said they wouldn’t and they did. Me and Hope are hiding in your closet.

  “Charlotte, where’s Daddy?”

  “Ssh, not so loud,” Charlotte ordered.

  “I want Dada.” Hope began to sob. “I’m scared.”

  Charlotte looked up to see tears streaming down Hope’s plump rosy cheeks. Knowing she had to comfort her but still determined to jot down what she could, she set the flashlight down in her lap and put her arm around Hope.

  Hope melted into Charlotte’s chest and cried.

  Mommy, I miss you. Where are you? How come you never came home? Daddy says it’s because you were far away when the power went out. Are you mad at me? Did I do something to make you mad?

  Voices boomed from what sounded like the hallway.

  Hope quivered.

  Charlotte looked up at the door. She feared that at any moment it would open and they’d die like her father.

  Looking back down at the eggshell-white paper, she began to write again.

  If I made you mad, I’m sorry. Please come home. We need you.

  The voices grew louder.

  Hope’s tears continued to flow and her body shook with fear.

  Charlotte paused her writing. She asked if there was more to write. Had she written enough? Her father had told her to begin the diary soon after everything stopped working so she could have a connection with her mother and as a way for her to express the emotions she was feeling. She had taken to it almost instantly and found solace in the words she wrote daily. Charlotte looked at it as a form of communication, a series of letters and notes to her mother, who had never returned from a trip back to the Midwest she had taken a day before the world came to a grinding halt.

  “Where’s Dada? I want Dada,” Hope moaned.

  Not wanting to tell Hope what she’d seen, she lied, “I don’t know where Dada is.” This lie to her sister prompted her to reveal the truth to her mother.

  Daddy died today. The bad men killed him. They shot him out in front of the house for no reason. Hope is crying. She’s scared.

  Oh no, the bad men are now in your room. I’m scared. I think we’re going to die. I don’t want to die, Mommy, I don’t want t
o die.

  The sound of heavy footfalls stopped just outside the closet door.

  Charlotte questioned whether she had locked the door. To be sure, she reached up to verify and found the door unlocked. Her gut clenched and sweat formed on her brow. Delicately she pushed the pin that locked the handle and just in time.

  The knob jiggled.

  Charlotte slid back further into the closet until her back was against the wall.

  Hope clung to her waist and whimpered.

  Softly, Charlotte said, “Ssh.”

  The knob jiggled harder and the pressure of someone outside the door weighed against it.

  Remembering the small revolver her father had left in the box just for this type of emergency, Charlotte reached in and grabbed it. The steel felt cold against the hot skin of her palm and the weight was heavy. She wrapped both her small hands around the grip and pointed it at the door.

  “Hey, the door is locked!” a man barked from the other side of the door.

  Hope and Charlotte drew closer, if that was even possible.

  Charlotte’s hand shook, making the loose cylinder of the revolver rattle.

  “Kick it open!” another man’s voice boomed. This was the voice of the man who’d shot Charlotte’s father.

  Charlotte tensed her body, waiting for the door to come crashing in at any moment, but nothing happened.

  Voices called from further in the house.

  The shadow underneath the door disappeared, gone as fast as it had appeared.

  Charlotte gulped hard. A steady sweat poured down her face.

  Hollers now echoed from the opposite side of the house.

  “Are the bad men gone?” Hope whispered.

  “I don’t know,” Charlotte said, lowering the revolver, her arms aching.

  “I’m scared.”

  “Me too.”

  “Where’s Dada?” Hope asked, lifting her head from Charlotte’s lap.

  “I don’t know,” Charlotte said, again not able to tell Hope the truth.

  “Is Dada dead?”

  Charlotte opened her mouth to reply but froze.

  “Charlotte, is Dada dead?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I heard something. Was it a gun?”

  Heavy footfalls came again and stopped just outside the door. “Open it up the old-fashioned way!”

  “Will do!” a man replied.

  Charlotte shook, her arms outstretched with the revolver.

  The door exploded open.

  Both girls screamed in terror.

  The man froze when he saw the muzzle of the revolver pointed at him. “Now, take it easy there, little one,” he said, his hand held out and motioning for her to put it down.

  Charlotte’s eyes were as wide as saucers. She placed her index finger on the trigger and began to apply pressure.

  “Put the gun down, okay, sweetheart. Don’t do nothin’ stupid.”

  A second man appeared and chuckled when he saw the two girls. He turned to the first man and said with a pat on his back, “The boss will be happy.”

  The first man held him back and warned, “Dude, she has a gun.”

  “I know, I ain’t blind, but I don’t think that pretty little thing will do anything to me,” he said with a toothy grin.

  Charlotte’s arms began to shake vigorously from a combination of fear and fatigue.

  “I don’t know, man, she has a look in her eye,” the first man said, taking a step back and out of the aim of Charlotte.

  “She’s just a little girl,” the second man said and took another step inside the closet.

  “Leave us alone!” Charlotte screamed.

  “What’s your name?” the second man asked as he knelt a few feet from her.

  “Leave!”

  “We won’t hurt you, I promise.”

  Tears flowed down Charlotte’s face. “Leave.”

  Hope was crying uncontrollably.

  With his hand extended, the man repeated, “We won’t hurt you, I promise.”

  “You killed…”

  “Your father didn’t cooperate; he was a stupid man. Don’t be like your daddy, girl.”

  “Dada!” Hope wailed.

  “Leave or I’ll shoot!” Charlotte barked.

  “It would be irresponsible for us to leave you here alone. There’s a lot of bad people out there.”

  “Leave!”

  The man shifted quickly to the right, but with his left hand he snatched the revolver and twisted it out of Charlotte’s hand.

  Charlotte and Hope both curled up tight and recoiled as far as they could, their backs planted firmly against the cold wall.

  The man stood, looked at the other man, and said, “If we don’t find the other shit, at least the day wasn’t a total loss.”

  READ THE REST OF

  HOPE: A GOING HOME NOVEL

  HERE

  READ AN EXCERPT FROM

  THE DEATH: QUARANTINE

  JOHN W. VANCE

  ___________________________

  Prologue

  Day 1

  October 2, 2020

  Cassidy’s mind raced with everything she had seen and done over the past week and a half, but the turbulence kept bringing her back to the present. When she wasn’t gripping the armrest of seat 23A with white-knuckled fear, she found herself rubbing the engagement ring she had just been given not three weeks earlier by her fiancé, Devin. She couldn’t wait to tell him everything, but first she needed to survive the three-hour flight from Omaha to New York. The turbulent flight was agony for her, but fortunately, she had a window seat to help pass the time and ease her anxiety. With each bump and drop, she gripped the armrest tighter and tighter, her fingers grasping to the point she feared she might break it. Below her, the tapestry of green, brown and blues rolled out slowly. The past week and a half had represented a turning point in her life and career. Out of many in her field, she had been chosen to join a private team of American scientists sent to examine the impact crater of 2019RD or Asteroid Pandora as it had become known.

  Pandora had been an unknown and unrecorded object until it appeared out of nowhere three weeks ago. Quickly astronomers plotted the asteroid’s course, and to the fear of all, Pandora was on a course to collide with Earth. That collision occurred at 12:33PM Central Time on September 21 in the open western plains of Nebraska. Pandora was small as asteroids go, no bigger than a football field, but when it impacted the soft soil of the Nebraska plains at 60,000 miles per hour, the effects were felt across the state and beyond. Its impact wasn’t the stuff of movies; there wasn’t any long flaming trail that streaked across the sky in a dazzling display for all to witness for minutes. If one was standing at the spot of impact, they wouldn’t have had a warning. One second it was calm, and within a millisecond, an intense blast shook the ground as it dug out a crater over a mile wide and over two thousand feet deep and hurled the debris miles into the air. Pandora wasn’t large enough to cause worldwide calamity. In fact, if one were a few hundred miles away, they wouldn’t have even known anything had happened. But Pandora’s impact did cause something that wasn’t foreseen by any scientist, astronomer or astrophysicist. Like her Greek namesake, this Pandora too had a box, albeit a metaphorical one, and the day Cassidy arrived with her team, it had been opened.

  The plane again rocked. With nervous energy, she tightened the seat belt across her lap. She knew it was foolish, because if the plane were to crash, her little seat belt wouldn’t save her. Regardless of this well-known knowledge, the tighter belt gave her a slight feeling of security.

  To help forget her choppy flight, she decided to put her mind at ease by reading some of the data she had collected. Picking up her leather binder, she began to comb through the copious pages of information. She had wanted more, but after only a few short days on location near the impact zone, they were told to evacuate as the United States military moved in and quarantined the area. Even after resistance, her team of scientists was removed, and a team o
f government-led scientists were put in their place. However, they weren’t allowed to just leave; they first had to undergo a decontamination protocol, which included receiving a battery of shots. Some understood the strict guidelines put in place, but many complained. Those complaints fell on deaf ears as the government and military lockdown was complete and total. Within a day of their appearance, she counted thousands of troops, the air space was closed to all flights, and the impact site was now covered by massive white tent like enclosures. Her team had been separated shortly after the government takeover, and each placed in their own quarantined confinement. She protested, but after a couple lonely days of long interviews by people wearing full-body biological gear, she complied with their demands and was given the shots to fulfill her quarantine protocol.

  The plane shuddered from the headwinds, causing her to again grip the armrest. Beads of sweat formed on her forehead, and a flush of warmth ran through her body. She pressed her eyes closed and counted to ten to calm her anxiety. Upon opening them, she reached up and opened the vent. The cool air hitting her face felt good. She relaxed a bit into her chair and again closed her eyes. Her death grips and panicked response to every movement of the plane caught the attention of the man sitting in her row.

  “Here, use this one too,” said the man who was sitting in the aisle seat of her row.

  She opened her eyes and saw him reaching up to the air vent above the vacant center seat. He turned it on and turned it towards her.

  “Oh, thank you. It’s hot in here, right?” she commented.