These Times of Sedition: A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Survivor Thriller (The Abandon Series Book 4)

by Ryan Schow

  The man started to cry.

  Rowan grabbed what hair this maggot had left and yanked his head up. He looked into those dark, Satanic eyes—those sick, diabolical spheres he’d seen entirely too much of—and he watched them tremble with fear. That thing that took over him, the McDaniel beast that left its mark on all the McDaniels, now flexed its soul and seethed.

  “You seditious communist puke,” he growled, “say my name.”

  “Rowan McDaniel,” the politician said.

  Rowan used the butt of the gun to bash in the rest of his teeth. He didn’t do this for himself, for his own gratification. Psychos do that sort of thing. No, Rowan did this on the country’s behalf. He did it for all the times the American people had tried to be polite, tried to handle matters through the courts, tried to believe that violence was never the right solution. He did it for the world that would suffer and die as a result of the loss of the global trade of American agriculture. For this reason and so many others, Rowan’s anger was bigger than ever, but so was the punishment he was meting out.

  “Why?” the man said, blood bubbling in his mouth, his body overcome by tremors.

  “This is for all the Americans who are going to starve to death, to be beaten to death, to be driven to suicide on account of your betrayal of this nation.”

  “It wathn’t all me,” he said, his speech impaired by his ruined mouth.

  “You will suffer for all your cronies’ misdeeds. And when I find them, I’ll make them suffer for yours as well.”

  The guy was mewling now, the sound of his agony a cruelty he’d leave with Rowan now and forever. Coughing, bleeding, the man had a mouthful of bits of broken teeth.

  “Say my name,” Rowan said.

  “Wowan McDanwel,” he sputtered, blood and broken teeth spraying out of his mouth.

  Rowan hit him again, splitting his upper lip halfway to his nose. “You sold us out for a buck, you traitor. You siphoned off foreign aid, funneled it back to you and your buddies here in America, then pretended to be virtuous and patriotic. Do you know how much that pisses me off?!”

  He started beating on the man’s forehead until his eyes rolled back in his head. The man blacked out for a moment, but then Rowan shook his face, bringing him back around.

  “I’ll give you one option at life,” Rowan finally said, breathing heavy. “It’s your only option if you want to live. Do you want to live?”

  The man slowly nodded. Blood bubbles were expanding and popping in one of the man’s nostrils; the other nostril flowed heavily, leaking into his mouth where it stained his gums, the stumps of his teeth, and his tongue.

  Pulling his attention back, Rowan looked at him for the first time. He really looked at him, halfway horrified at what he’d done. In his mania, he’d reduced the man to two eyes in a sea of red. It didn’t matter. When he looked at this man, his soul wept for the betrayal of the nation, for this slow march to communism, and then for the death blow that was just dealt to them.

  “Apologize, you jackal,” Rowan snarled. “I want to hear you say you’re sorry for what you did to America, for the treachery you heaped upon our people, for your theft of our money, and for the theft of the monies the US taxpayers gave to other countries.”

  “I’m tho thowwy for betwaying Ameriwica, for betwaying the thitithins, and for Ukwaine.”

  “You lied, Congressman. You lied to your constituents, to America, to the world. I lied, too. I lied just now when I said I’d spare your life.”

  He put the gun to the man’s head and pulled the trigger. It clicked empty. He pulled the trigger again, then turned and looked up at Aldrich. “Are you kidding me?!”

  “We couldn’t be sure you wouldn’t use it on us,” he said.

  “Give me a round, dammit!”

  Instead of giving him a round, Aldrich handed Rowan a knife. “I’m not wasting a round on that turd.”

  Rowan took the blade, then drove it into the Congressman’s throat, twisting it back and forth. When he was done, he ripped it out sideways then drove the knife into the floor and looked into the dying man’s eyes.

  As sickened and disgusted as he had become by his behavior of late, culminating with this one horrendous murder, he reminded himself that this monster killed not only the country—the freest country in the world—but he stamped out whatever light was left in the bright and shining example to the world. America was the great experiment, the only true example of what freedom was like in the land of opportunity. Looking at the man, he thought, this is what happened. Greed happened. Power happened. And now corruption at the highest levels happened.

  “What do you do to a man who killed hundreds of millions of people?” one of Aldrich’s guys asked, breaking the silence.

  “You do what Rowan just did,” Aldrich said. “You McDaniel him.”

  This man was a traitor to the nation, and a traitor’s punishment was death. “My name is Rowan McDaniel and I’m the last person you’ll ever see,” he said as he watched the last light blink out in the politician’s eyes.

  Rowan leaned in, whispered into his ear, just in case he hadn’t crossed over yet. “Where you’re going is dark, hot, and hellish, and it’s going to torment you for the rest of time and eternity.”

  The man finally faded out, but Rowan didn’t look away, not until he was truly gone. His murderous trance suddenly broke and he sat up, almost embarrassed.

  “What the hell,” Hwa-Young said, startled. The guys were nodding, like they knew this beast was in him all along.

  “He’s the real deal,” one of the guys said with reverence.

  “In your publication, I felt it the way you wrote your words,” another of the guys said to Rowan. “But to see you in action, to watch you put that rat down…we’re one of you, man. We’re one of you.”

  Hwa-Young walked outside, almost like she didn’t know what to make of Rowan. Rowan watched her leave, but VP Aldrich said, “Let her go. She’ll be fine.”

  Rowan stood, shook the blood off his hands, and said, “Next time you say there’s a round in the chamber, there’d better be a round in the chamber.”

  He walked outside to where Hwa-Young stood. She looked up and said, “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?” Rowan asked.

  “I didn’t see that coming,” she replied. “I mean I did, but I guess I read you wrong.”

  “How so?” he asked, the adrenaline still surging hard. “Because all my friends are dead, I left my fiancée and our unborn child out there somewhere to come on this crap mission, which I’ve been regretting since mile one—”

  He stopped short, suddenly feeling very emotional, like he was going to tear up. Not because he was sad, but because this thing inside of him, this rage that had taken on a life of its own, had finally taken root inside of him. Was that thing gone now that it had its pound of flesh? Or was it something that would forever plague him?

  “I left just now because I thought…I thought…I just assumed you killed that man for the sake of hatred, or murder,” she said. “But that’s not it, is it?”

  He shook his head, slowly.

  “You did that because you love your country so much that to see someone ruin it for something as paltry as money…that was the worst of insults, something only a traitor would do.”

  He slowly nodded. “What this man and his ilk did was destroy this nation. Every road leads somewhere and the roads they took us down will lead to the fall of civilization. Did you know that during the lockdowns last year and the year before it, the World Health Organization estimated that two-hundred-and-thirty-million people in third world countries would starve to death?”

  “I believe it.”

  “They underestimated that number. Well over three-hundred-million people starved to death in 2021. Even more are starving now because we broke the supply lines. It’s cause and effect, Hwa-Young. It was bad dealing with the pandemic, and worse for the world, but the country is now dead and men like that congressman killed it because he and his
buddies used COVID as cover for their corruption. Over three-hundred-million people. It’s going to be billions now because of greed, or hatred, or population control. Call it what you want, these people are flat out evil.”

  Tears filled his eyes and now he was truly embarrassed.

  “I knew I was sent to you for a reason,” Hwa-Young said quietly.

  “Savannah?” he asked, his voice changing with his emotions.

  She nodded, then said, “Brayden, too. Whatever they knew, it was right that we’re together.”

  The tears building in his eyes dripped down his cheeks and his body began to shake. Hwa-Young leaned into him, put her arm around him, and said, “We’re kindred spirits, Rowan McDaniel.”

  “Do you think God will forgive me for what I’ve done?” he asked, wiping his eyes with blood-streaked hands.

  “I think He will know the voice of your heart and judge that long before he judges the deeds of your hands.”

  Wiping his eyes again, he said, “I hope so. Then again, there’s so much vengeance in my heart right now. They killed us, all of us, Hwa-Young. Now I want to kill them back.”

  “Wherever it is we end up, we will be there together, because you and I are alike. Both of our dreams died with this EMP.”

  He finally, legitimately, hugged her back and said, “Thank you for finding me.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Constanza Navarro

  Constanza sat in a chair with Rose in the ever-cooling building, both of them alone as the sun settled deep into the western sky. The new smells the cold revealed were earthy and raw, so wrought with neglect that it left Constanza feeling way outside her comfort zone, so far in fact, she wondered if all of it was even real.

  Looking down at the baby, who was currently defying the statistics of a moderately pre-term child, she was grateful little Rose was eating. The child’s head was slightly larger than she thought it should be, and her features were not as round or as plump as she’d hoped, which meant she had low fat stores from an early birth. She rubbed Rose’s head and cried, not just because she was scared for herself, or for Rose, but because she couldn’t stop thinking about her last conversation with Rowan.

  He told her a car bomb went off nearby—which wasn’t that unusual considering the Hayseed Rebellion’s rioting that had spanned the better part of two years—but that a nearby building had caught fire, too. She’d had so much confidence in Rowan’s ability to survive that she all but dismissed the danger he was in.

  As she sat there rocking Rose, nursing her, she tried to recall the exact tone of her fiancée’s voice. Sadly, she couldn’t. Maybe because she was acting like a self-centered child more fixated on her youthful independence and her own ridiculous problems at the OB-GYN’s office than Rowan’s well-being.

  God, what an ass I’ve been, she thought with so much remorse in her heart.

  Looking down, she covered the child more. Rose had been cold since Constanza got her back from the psycho homeless nightmare. Barb. The midwife.

  The horror of that ordeal shot through her mind, a memory that wouldn’t stop wreaking havoc on her ability to cope with a world full of even more horrors. She noticed her tears were dripping on Rose’s head. The baby had thin black hair, not thick like hers was in her baby pictures. Thirty-two weeks.

  She knew what thirty-two weeks meant. It meant underdeveloped organs, specifically the lungs—which explained why sometimes it looked like Rose had a hard time breathing—possible eye problems later in life, lack of reflexes like grabbing and sucking. But the child had taken to the nipple just fine, she reminded herself. It took a bit of work at first, but now she was eating on her own. That was a good sign.

  “You’re a fighter,” Constanza told the child. “It’s not my blood that’s responsible for that. That’s your daddy’s will, sweet child. It’s his genetic contribution.”

  Keep fighting…

  If Rose inherited any of her mother’s DNA, it would probably be to Constanza’s detriment in Rose’s teenage years. Hopefully she’d be more like her father.

  As the light faded from the sky and time ticked on, fear both formed and bloomed inside of her. She finished feeding Rose, then she put her over her shoulder and burped her. After that, she talked with the child, telling her she was strong, that even though she had an early start in life, it meant she’d have to fight harder for what she got in life, and that meant she’d be stronger than everyone else.

  In the darkness, she felt Rose reach out to touch Constanza’s face. She leaned in to her daughter’s touch; Rose made those little bubbling sounds with her tongue and lips, the sound of her breaking Constanza’s heart.

  She started to cry. “Oh what have I done to you, poor child, bringing you into this vile world?”

  Outside, she heard the faraway sounds of voices. They grew closer and closer, prompting Constanza to fall into fits of fear and eventually a desperate prayer. When she saw them gathering in the parking lot below—a bunch of people with torches and big bags of things—she started to worry. A few cars pulled up just then and parked, like a circling of the wagons.

  That’s when she saw some of them heading for the door below. She fell completely still. Outside the door, down the staircase on the first floor, she heard voices.

  They were in the building.

  She took one last look below, assessing her situation. The mob of what looked like hippies and hooligans were settled in for the night. Instead of burning things, beating people up, or chanting hateful garbage at the tops of their lungs, these people made camp, created a fire pit, then started a fire and began to sing.

  Where in Jesus’s name are Colt and Faith? she wondered.

  The voices downstairs left, but after an hour or so, she heard them in the building again. As she sat there in the corner rocking Rose, telling her everything would be okay, she continued to wonder with a dark desperation what had happened to Colt and Faith.

  Downstairs, she heard someone kicking in one of the office doors. She stood and went to the window, glanced down into the parking lot one last time before she went into hiding. People were mingling, a few of them getting up and getting ready for the night. The guys in the building, though…what was that about? Were they foraging for supplies? Were they going to find her?

  The kicking on the door downstairs was a solid thump, and then it sounded like they broke a glass partition.

  She didn’t want to move far with Rose, because she had finally fallen asleep and was breathing rhythmically, but it was time.

  She ducked into the nearest closet, hid them both as best as she could without really having anywhere to hide, then listened to the sounds of the guys as they headed up the stairs.

  Within moments, they were in the office.

  Constanza held her breath while she rocked Rose lightly, nervously. The newborn moved a bit, causing Constanza to freeze. She felt Rose wiggling around, then making the tiniest of noises.

  No, no, no baby girl, she thought. Please.

  One of the guys kicked something over and said, “If anyone was in here, they ain’t in here now, but that’s late breaking news, not an old thing.”

  The noises rattled them both, but it was Rose who made a fuss about it. Constanza tried to rock her, and she almost shushed her, but any noise she made would likely give them away.

  One of the guys said, “Shhh,” to the other.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Dammit, Gerald, seriously…shut it.”

  Constanza put her hand to her mouth because the fear had officially gotten to her.

  “Thought I heard something,” he said.

  “Those are the voices in your head, bro,” his friend said.

  That was when Rose started to cry.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Rowan McDaniel

  After killing the congressman, managing to swallow a bite of food or two, then getting a decent night’s sleep, Rowan was ready for the day.

  “I’m not riding in the trunk again,
” Hwa-Young said.

  “Me neither,” Rowan replied.

  Instead of being forced to lay down inside the trunk, however, Rowan and Hwa-Young were given a car of their own to drive. At first, Rowan was thrilled, but then he looked inside and frowned.

  “There’s blood all over the seats.”

  “Yep,” Aldrich said. “A reminder that you don’t want to get shot.”

  “One of your guys died in here?” Hwa-Young asked.

  Aldrich nodded, solemn. “The driver managed to get us here, but the guy on the seat next to him, that was Clark, he bled out pretty quickly.”

  Most of the blood was dry and flaky, but it had been so thick in the middle it hadn’t fully hardened overnight.

  The VP said, “It’s either this or you can go back in the trunk.”

  Rowan was standing outside the car, door open, looking at Hwa-Young; she was on the other side of the car, her door open as well. If they wanted to take the car, they’d have to wipe down the seats and deal with what was left. Rowan was about to ask for a towel when Hwa-Young just cupped her hand and swiped the puddled-blood off the seat. Most of it splashed all over the side of the door, but some of it got on her pants. Everyone stood back in abject horror.

  Rowan laughed out loud, even though it was totally inappropriate.

  When she was done, Hwa-Young plopped down on the still-bloody seat, shut her door, then wiped her hands on her pants. Looking at Rowan, she said, “Ready when you are.”

  “That broad is crazy,” Rowan heard one of them say, “but I kinda like it.”

  Rowan stared at his own seat, not wanting to do what Hwa-Young did. “Hurry up,” Hwa-Young said.

  She looked at him and saw how clean he was in his new “borrowed” clothes and how he didn’t want to take a seat in the gore. Behind them, someone honked the horn. He looked back, saw two guys with their big baby masks on waving at him to get moving.