Max Ryker- The End Begins

by David Wayne

  Max Ryker:

  The End Begins

  Book 1

  By

  David Wayne

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

  Copyright © 2019 by David Looney

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by FreeMedia Concepts, LLC, St. Petersburg, Florida.

  ISBN: 978-1-7330981-1-3

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-7330981-0-6

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 1

  It seems ironic to say, but I kill people for a living, and I got fired. Officially, I got the boot for conduct unbecoming. This was followed by an angry directive to fall off the face of the earth. That meant some very powerful people wanted me to disappear, and it wasn’t a request. That’s how a New Jersey boy ended up in a sleepy little suburb of Birmingham, Alabama. Sleepy is the polite Southern way of saying boring. Before that, I murdered for the United States government. That’s the impolite Jersey way of saying I worked covert operations—black ops—for the feds. The agency sent me off with a small pension and full medical bennies. Like all undercover operatives, I have plenty of bucks stashed, the spoils of war and all that. Not that there’s any place to spend it in Nowhere-ville, Alabama.

  My name’s Max Ryker, but people call me Ryker, even my mother. I have no idea why. The biggest part of my day is breakfast at the local diner. That’s where I learned grits were for real; I’d always thought they were merely a punch line in a joke. Now, I’m not sure how I ever lived without them. The waitress is a friendly belle type, calls me Maxie, pours coffee hot and black and, when she’s in a good mood, leans over the table and flashes me a boob shot.

  I jog every morning, lift weights Tuesdays and Thursdays, and meet a buddy on Fridays for pool and beers. Saturday nights are reserved for my on-again, off-again girlfriend. I read a little, watch the occasional porno on the internet, never miss a TV football game, and tend to a small stock portfolio. If I were writing a book about my life in suburban Alabama, here’s where I’d type “The End.” Except the Event happened and killed everyone.

  That changed my sleepy little life.

  Our little suburb’s called Heartsville, named for a local surgeon who performed the first open heart surgery procedure—and killed the guy. We have one grocery store, a smattering of convenience marts, and the requisite fast-food joints. Past that, mom-and-pop restaurants and hardware stores still dominate. If you want to plug in to city life, Birmingham’s only thirty miles south—not that folks around here cared much for that indulgence.

  The Event occurred in the middle of the night, but unlike its name, it was uneventful. I simply awoke one morning and the world’s off switch had been flipped. There was no electrical power, no running water, no cell service, and no explanations. The radio was playing static noise instead of music.

  Oh, yeah, and most everyone was dead.

  After several days, folks started gathering at St. Paul’s Catholic Church, and a campsite was set up out back, and I joined their ranks. Over the course of a week, about fifty survivors had assembled. For our little suburb, that math says ninety-five percent of our populace had perished. A staggering figure—if you do math.

  Our little tent city quickly became rumor city regarding what caused the Event. Opinions ranged from nuclear war to Armageddon. Our campsite conspiracy theorist claimed the government used our little ’burb as a guinea pig to test biological weapons. It was a twelfth-grade science teacher who provided the most likely scenario. His best guess was some type of atmospheric disturbance occurred, opening up parts of the ozone layer. That allowed massive amounts of radiation to pour in while simultaneously sucking out our oxygen. This was based on two simple observations. Human corpses were either fried and crispy from radiation burns or purple-faced from suffocation. That made sense to me. How did he know only parts of the atmosphere opened up, rather than the whole thing? His answer was equally simple—because some people were still alive. That made sense to me as well.

  The biggest shock for most people was how quickly essentials ran out. Unlike dystopian movies, where food and bottled water supplies last for months, reality is much different. Anything requiring refrigeration spoils in two days, and without power, there’s no ice. Grocery stores appear to have tons of food, but when you remove the refrigerated sections, the aisles containing paper towels and feminine products, the actual amount of nonperishable food is surprising small, and we were feeding fifty people three squares a day from one store. By the end of the first week, food supplies were starting to run low, and we’d still not received any communications regarding disaster relief. That changed camp gossip from what caused the Event to what are we going to do now? To answer that question, we formed the Leaders Group to organize and formulate a plan. It seemed natural to appoint Father McGeegen as chairman since it was his church. He tried to draft me, but I don’t lead groups. I run solo.

  First on the agenda was forming scouting teams to gather food, bottled water, and other necessities. I led a small group into Birmingham proper, hoping to find some form of organized city government effort there—but what we found was utter chaos. Buildings were on fire, and looting, muggings, and general lawlessness were rampant. We decided to return home and wait for law and order to be restored. Like dumb asses, we still assumed government aid was imminent.

  Late into the second week, one of the scouting teams found a ham radio in the basement of a volunteer firefighter’s house. He wouldn’t be needing it, because his family slept permanently in the upstairs bedrooms. It took us another day to piece together batteries and get the dusty contraption working. The good news was, we found a looped, twenty-s
econd recorded message from the federal government. The bad news? They weren’t sending in the cavalry. Most of the campers sat and listened to the robotic, emotionless message at least ten times.

  To all citizens. Be advised that a catastrophic atmospheric event has occurred. This disaster has caused massive human casualties. No governmental support or aid will be forthcoming, now or in the foreseeable future. Residents residing in the southeastern states are directed to migrate immediately to Atlanta, Georgia, where a Safe Zone is being established for survivors. God bless you and these United States. This message will now repeat.

  So, almost two weeks into this clusterfuck of a nightmare, we got the hard news. No government rescue or help was coming. We were on our own. That was it, all we had to go on. No help is coming, so walk to the Big Peach and head to the Safe Zone, whatever the hell that meant.

  The news spread throughout the campsite like a bad case of the flu. The message sent a shockwave of stunned awe throughout the camp. Within a few hours, shock became fear, which turned into desperation, as folks realized what no government aid really meant—no replenishment of resources was coming. The meager food provisions we had were all we were going to have, and those were dwindling fast.

  By nightfall, the St. Paul campsite was an entirely different world. Two families had their tents robbed while bathing at the creek. Tempers were flaring, and skirmishes broke out. The food cellar inside the parish was put under lock and key—and an armed guard was posted. Within twelve hours of hearing the message, there was an every-man-for-himself atmosphere, pitting neighbor against neighbor. In comparison, yesterday’s big event was a sprained ankle.

  The Leaders Group decided it was time to make another trip into Birmingham. We needed hard information, and we realized how stupid we’d been not collecting it during our first trip. I agreed to lead another team into the city first thing in the morning. But that’s not what I did.

  Chapter 2

  I zipped down Old Birmingham Highway on a Suzuki 125, the small motorcycle chugging along hard under my weight. It seemed to complain about my big size by humming out an irritating, high buzzing noise—zzzzzzzzzz. I’d chosen the small dirt bike in case I needed to evade trouble—it would allow me to shoot off through backyards or wooded trails. If the Event flipped the off switch on the world, the government message flipped the on switch in my head. I had made a grave error in judgment. The moment I’d heard the recorded message, my training had kicked in, and I’d fought the urge to leave the camp right then. But I couldn’t just abandon those innocent people, so I decided to stay another day and help them prepare for what my instincts knew lay just around the corner. Now that we were on our own.

  Six of us were supposed to leave at seven a.m. Instead, I left alone an hour before dawn. If what I suspected was true, I didn’t want to be bogged down performing recon with a bunch of civilians. It was a slow ride; the highways were clogged with stalled cars, so I couldn’t exceed fifteen miles an hour. That made the thirty-mile trek a two-hour trip. As I got closer to the city, the number of stalled vehicles increased, and along with that came an awful stench of decaying bodies lying dead inside them.

  Within ten miles of leaving Heartsville, the landscape became dominated with brand-name stores, and the mom-and-pops disappeared. After passing the Birmingham city limit sign, I pulled off at the first exit. It was still dark out, but the sun was peeking over the horizon. I killed the bike and coasted up to a corner store. All the glass windows had been broken, and the inside was picked clean. Not much different than the stores in Heartsville.

  Two exits farther up, I saw a mirror image of those same conditions, except all the stores and shops looked like a battle zone. As far as the eye could see, buildings were on fire, storefronts were smashed, and cars were riddled with bullet holes, yet everything was dead silent—there were no people milling about anywhere. It was eerie.

  The next exit had a Piggly Wiggly, so I skirted the exit, drove down a culvert, and parked behind some bushes. I checked out the grocery store with my field glasses, and there was an encampment of what looked like twenty people—none of them the friendly type. Armed guards were posted in the four corners of the camp. I decided to push onward.

  Two exits before entering downtown, I found another grocery store. It stunk badly of rotted meat and spoiled milk but hadn’t been looted—it had been systematically cleaned out. There wasn’t even a can of pork and beans on the floor. As I left the parking lot, the sun had brought on the day, and it wasn’t a welcome change. About a mile up, I encountered two bad-looking hombres in a jeep, who pursued me the second I got on their radar. When I heard a shotgun blast, I veered off down a steep embankment, crashed through a wood fence, and sped across two backyards—ending up at a secondary road. I bumped into a guy wearing a blue uniform and badge—siphoning gas from a truck. He immediately pulled his weapon, and I did likewise.

  “Drop the gun, or I’ll put one between your eyeballs,” he said.

  “Ditto,” I said.

  His eyes were hesitant, and I knew mine were the opposite. Slowly, he lowered his firearm, and I did the same. The patch above his left pocket said Captain Sipos. But just because he was wearing a cop’s uniform didn’t mean I was buying the story. I broke the silence.

  “What’s going on in Birmingham, Captain? I’m out scouting for a group of survivors in Heartsville.” I walked over and shook his hand.

  He gave me a once-over and then seemed to relax. “You don’t want to go there, not now,” he said, shaking his head while screwing the lid on the plastic gas container. “It’s completely controlled by Hogwogs—”

  “By what?” I said.

  “Hogwogs. Roaming gangs of very nasty people?” he said, giving me a stare that said where the hell have you been? I couldn’t help but think, sitting naively out in the sticks like an idiot. Instead, I threw up my hands, so he continued. “Birmingham’s controlled by three large groups of ’Wogs. They’ve raided all the grocery stores and warehouses, stockpiling food and water. They’re holed up in warehouses, hoarding supplies and growing their stash. Their compounds are heavily guarded, and those bastards are ruthless. They’ve got no problem shooting you on sight. During the day, they send out raiding parties, collecting gas, guns, batteries, and such.”

  “How big are the gangs?” I said.

  “A week ago, the largest was around twenty. That’s tripled now, and they’re growing like weeds. The biggest gang goes by the Birmingham Militia, or BM. But unlike what its name implies, it’s run by a local organized crime boss. This is not a bunch of small-time hoodlums, this is an organized gang, with brain power and planning behind it.”

  “There’s a food distribution plant about five miles up. I was going to check that out and—”

  “You’re a week late for that. You’d be shot or captured before you even made it there. The ’Wogs have started enslaving people for forced labor. Moving warehouses full of food and supplies across town is quite a job.”

  He strapped the gas can onto a small cart attached to his motorcycle. “I’m surprised you made it this far into the city. You won’t make it back to Heartsville in the daylight. I’d wait until dark, and even then, stay off the highway and main roads.”

  “But we’re still out in the residential neighborhoods,” I said.

  “They send out scouting parties, searching for supplies. My guess is they’ll be up your way within the week, and that dirt bike you got there,” he said, nodding at the Suzuki, “is a premium vehicle. The roads are so clogged only motorcycles can log any miles, and they ride far on a small amount of gas. Truthfully, even the good guys will probably shoot you for it. It’s gotten that bad,” he said, straddling his bike.

  “Give me just a second, Captain?” I said, grasping his arm but removing my hand quickly when he frowned.

  “Look, I messed up being out this late. I should have returned home before dawn. I’ll answer a few more questions. That’s it.”

  “What do you know
about the Event? What caused it?” I said.

  He shrugged. “Some kind of atmospheric disturbance that suffocated people or burned them with radiation. Cause unknown. Certain areas were unaffected, and a minor number of people survived.”

  “What’s your plan? How big is your group?”

  He hesitated, scratching his chin. “We’re leaving in the morning for the Safe Zone in Atlanta, which we should have done a week ago. My family and a neighbor, there’s eight of us altogether. We’re traveling on dirt bikes and staying off the main roads,” he said, turning his key and flipping the kick crank out.

  “What kind of communications are available in Birmingham? Is there any way to contact the government?”

  He gave me another where the hell have you been look. “Friend, there are no communications and no government, only the Safe Zone. Did Heartsville not get the recorded message?”

  I ignored the question. “What do you know about the Safe Zone?”

  “Not much, and what I do know is secondhand from the chief, who got it from the mayor. The government has protocols set up in case of a catastrophic disaster. It calls for survivors to band together in large cities that have good infrastructure and distribution centers. I’d expect some type of interim government body, and maybe a small army, or at least an organized and armed militia. The plan apparently predicated the violence and anarchy we’re seeing; I know we didn’t anticipate it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Within two days of the Event, news of the government’s message had spread citywide, and the looting and rioting started immediately. We set up an operations center at city hall, and another one at police headquarters. Both posts were well guarded, of course, but our defenses were designed to protect against civil unrest. We never considered an organized, armed assault in the middle of the night. The Hogwogs stormed in and shot everybody. They took no prisoners and showed no mercy, taking control of the entire city in one fell swoop. They had us checkmated before we even knew there was a game. I was off duty, or I’d be dead,” he said, kick-starting the bike. “Half the city's on fire. Birmingham is burning—I’d get the hell out of here fast if I were you,” he said, zipping off between some stalled cars without saying good-bye.