Rising: A Post Apocalyptic/Dystopian Adventure (The Traveler Book 4) Read online

  RISING

  A Post-Apocalyptic/Dystopian Adventure

  The Traveler Series Book Four

  Tom Abrahams

  A PITON PRESS BOOK

  RISING

  The Traveler Series Book Four

  © Tom Abrahams 2017. All Rights Reserved

  Cover Design by Hristo Kovatliev

  Edited by Felicia A. Sullivan

  Proofread by Pauline Nolet and Patricia Wilson

  Formatted by Stef McDaid at WriteIntoPrint.com

  This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events is purely coincidental. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

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  WORKS BY TOM ABRAHAMS

  THE TRAVELER POST APOCALYPTIC/DYSTOPIAN SERIES

  HOME

  CANYON

  WALL

  RISING

  BATTLE (LATE 2017)

  THE SPACEMAN CHRONICLES POST-APOCALYPTIC THRILLERS

  SPACEMAN

  DESCENT

  RETROGRADE

  PERSEID COLLAPSE: PILGRIMAGE SERIES NOVELLAS

  CROSSING

  REFUGE

  ADVENT

  RED LINE: AN EXTINCTION CYCLE NOVEL

  MATTI HARROLD POLITICAL CONSPIRACIES

  SEDITION

  INTENTION

  JACKSON QUICK ADVENTURES

  ALLEGIANCE

  ALLEGIANCE BURNED

  HIDDEN ALLEGIANCE

  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

  Read an excerpt from BATTLE

  Acknowledgments

  For Courtney, Sam, Luke, and the nation of Finland

  “Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.”

  —Sun Tzu

  CHAPTER 1

  SEPTEMBER 30, 2042, 9:07 AM

  SCOURGE +10 YEARS

  EAST OF RISING STAR, TEXAS

  He heard the scream first. Then the unmistakable pop of rifle shots crackled through the still West Texas air.

  Lola!

  Marcus Battle sprang to his feet and sprinted from the garden, drawing his Glock from his hip holster on the run.

  Another bloodcurdling scream pierced his ears and traveled down his spine as he rounded the side of the barn and a body flopped from the treehouse to the ground.

  His finger was on the trigger, his head up, his eyes scanning the overgrown, waist-high grass. To the right, beyond the treehouse, was a man on a horse. Marcus crouched low, sprinting straight at the man, rushing through the grass, the long blades slapping against his body and his face as he moved with purpose to the stranger.

  Behind him there was a trio of muffled shots, but Marcus ignored them. One threat at a time. He resisted the urge to call for Lola, Sawyer, or little Penny. That wouldn’t help them and it would give away his position to whoever else was with the man on the horse.

  He reached the treehouse and used the thick, aging trunk as cover from the man on horseback. With his back pressed against the tree, he slid his butt to his heels and curled from one side to the other, searching the ground for the body that fell from the house above.

  He’d circled nearly three-quarters of the trunk when he saw Sawyer’s twisted body. Battle grit his teeth and closed his eyes, resisting the urge to scream. He lowered himself onto his stomach and used a military crawl to inch closer to his adopted son. Sawyer’s face was turned away from Marcus, his worn denim jacket shrugged high on his back. There was a compound fracture torn through his pants. Marcus reached his trembling hand to the boy and touched his back, then slid his hand to Sawyer’s neck. He pulled his hand away and balled it into a fist.

  Marcus rolled away from Sawyer and inched himself up against the bark. Once on his feet, he maneuvered under cover toward the man on horseback. He got to within twenty yards. The man on the horse was more a boy, a fresh-faced and wide-eyed lookout. His rifle rested across the front of his saddle.

  Marcus inched closer and then stood above the grass, the Glock leveled at the boy. “Don’t do it,” he said when the boy struggled with his weapon. “Raise your hands and start talking.”

  The boy’s mouth dropped open, but he said nothing. He raised his trembling hands above his head. The rifle teetered and slid to the ground.

  “How many?” Marcus said.

  The boy shook his head.

  Marcus squeezed the trigger and winged the boy’s shoulder. “How many?”

  The horse backed up but didn’t spook. The boy grabbed his shoulder, tears welling in his eyes, and stuttered, “F-five.”

  Marcus looked past the boy toward the highway. At the edge of the road he could see a team of horses near his fence. He stepped closer, tightened his grip on the Glock, and pulled the trigger again. The bullet struck the boy in the other arm, rendering him useless. Marcus bridged the distance to the horse and picked up the boy’s rifle, an FDE brown AR-10.

  With one hand, he clumsily aimed the rifle at the boy’s chest. “You keep quiet,” he said. “Not a sound. You understand?”

  The boy nodded, his teeth digging into his bottom lip and tears streaking down his face. Marcus holstered his Glock and bolted back toward the house.

  Marcus tried remembering where the rest of his family was. Lola was in the garage when he’d gone out to tend the garden. Penny was asleep in the barn.

  As he moved back toward the house, cutting across the yard, he caught a flash of movement to his right. He spun. A pair of men were leaving the garage. Marcus pressed the rifle against his shoulder, drew his eye to the scope, aimed, and squeezed the trigger twice.

  Twin bursts sliced through the air and a spray of crimson burst from one man’s head. Marcus inched to the left and pressed the trigger again. Another two pops caught the second man in his neck and chest. Both dropped beneath the tall grass.

  Battle kept the scope to his eye and scanned to the left. No targets. He lowered the AR-10 and raced to the garage. He almost tripped over the men he’d felled. One had a knife at his side. The other was armed with a pistol tucked into the front of his rope-cinched waistband.

  He sidestepped them and reached the garage door, shouldering his way into the open space. He’d constructed a kitchenette in the garage, running the workable plumbing and gas lines from the no-longer-standing main house. He’d scavenged the appliances from neighboring abandoned properties over the past five years.

  The lights were off and only the dim cracks of morning light seeped through the frayed wall joints of the aluminum building. The hair on Marcus’s neck stood on end. He sensed something sinister awaited him.

  He thumbed the holster open and silently withdrew the Glock, moving cautiously through the gray-lit space. The kitchen was on the opposite end, closest to where the house had stood.

  His eyes adjusted to the darkness and he could make out the
shapes of the small refrigerator and gas cooktop built atop cinder blocks. He didn’t see Lola until he was feet from her.

  She was facedown, a pool of blood collecting around her upper torso. Her T-shirt was torn from her bare back and one leg was twisted at an odd angle.

  Swallowing a thick knot bulging in his throat, Marcus knelt beside her and gently touched the back of her head. He pulled his hand away bloodied.

  “Lola?” he croaked.

  He placed his red-soaked hand on her back and closed his eyes. She wasn’t breathing. Marcus pulled the AR-10 from his shoulder and set it on the concrete beside him.

  He reached over and, using her shoulders, rolled her onto her side. He winced and looked away. His eyes were closed, but he could still see the afterimage of her dead eyes staring back at him.

  Marcus clenched his jaw. His throat burned. He laid her facedown in the position he’d found her, picked up the rifle, holding it by the hand guard and the pistol grip, and marched heavily toward the garage exit. His boots slapped against the concrete in rhythm until he burst through the open doorway. The sunlight blinded him for an instant and he squatted beneath the blades of grass and clumps of bull thistle.

  His eyes adjusted and he worked his way to his right, back to the barn. If the boy on the horse wasn’t lying, there were three men left to kill. He had to find them before they hurt Penny.

  Marcus bounded through the grass, which he’d let grow uncontrolled to make it more difficult for anyone to find them. He wanted his property to look abandoned. For five years it had worked. Somehow these monsters had found them.

  Marcus looked to his left as he ran. The boy on the horse was gone. Marcus immediately regretted not killing him. He’d shown mercy to a child. Unless infection got to him, it was a mistake. He could feel it in his gut.

  He reached the edge of the barn and used its corner as cover. He checked the rifle and pulled it to his shoulder, pressing its stock tightly against his shoulder. He moved stealthily toward the entrance, his ears pricked for anything that might give away the intruders’ positions, but heard nothing.

  The door was cracked. Marcus backed away from it and in one motion leapt forward, kicked it open, and threw his body into the barn, his finger on the trigger.

  The lights were on in the building they used as their home. Directly across from Marcus, stretching across the wall opposite the entrance, were large storage racks. They were only a quarter full, but an intruder was helping himself. As he targeted the red-bearded man stuffing bags and cans into a burlap sack, a loud pop echoed from his left near the deep freezer. Before Marcus reacted, a slug slammed into his body. Despite the searing heat of the shot, he still tightened his finger on the trigger and pulled, leveling a trio of shots at the red-bearded man. He missed and instead hit a large package of toilet paper, which exploded in a cloud of white paper shrapnel.

  Another pop echoed from the right where Marcus stored what was left of his arsenal. Instantly, he bent against the heavy punch of another shot. The shock of the hit knocked him off-balance and he dropped the rifle, the sling catching on his forearm before the weapon rattled harmlessly to the floor.

  Marcus reached for his holster, struggling to find the Glock’s grip, as another shot pierced his flesh, bringing with it a searing heat that forced a guttural moan from his aching throat.

  Marcus dropped to his knees and worked hard to focus on the trio of men converging on him. Straight ahead, the sneering red-bearded man approached. He was armed with a pair of handguns and two-fisted them like he was a slinger from the Old West. On the backs of his hands were identical black ink tattoos of dollar signs.

  Sucking in each breath with more difficulty, Marcus braced himself with his hands. He reached for his hip and the Glock, but couldn’t manage the strength to free it. From the left he heard a deep, resonant chuckle. He looked up to see a short, squatty man with a patch over his right eye, a rifle over his shoulder. His teeth were yellow and his lips curled around them like a pair of mating slugs. The man reached over and took the handgun, tossing it across the garage floor toward the shelving on the opposite wall.

  “It’s not turning out to be the kind of day you expected, now is it?” the man with the patch asked.

  “His last day,” came a thickly accented voice from the right. “And he won’t even make it to lunch.” The Southern drawl was unmistakably Texas.

  Marcus dropped his head and glanced to his right in time to see a man with a long scar running the length of his angular face squat in front of him. The man kicked away the rifle, reached out with a gloved hand, and touched the side of Marcus’s face. Marcus pulled away.

  “Your woman gave us more of a fight than you,” he said. “Ain’t that right, Cego?”

  The man with the patch chuckled again, the depth of his tone grating like nails on a chalkboard. “As much as she could fight,” he snarled. “She screamed a lot. The young ’uns too.”

  Marcus gritted his teeth. He tightened his hands into fists, scraping his knuckles raw on the concrete, but said nothing to the men as they taunted him, poked at him, pleaded for him to accept the cold embrace of impending death. Instead he focused on their faces, memorizing every crease, every pore, every imperfection. He imprinted the sounds of their voices, inhaled their musty odors.

  The red-bearded man raked at his chin with his fingers. “He’s a goner,” he said in a scratchy voice that barely sounded human. “Should we finish him?”

  “Nah,” said Cego. “I wanna watch him die slowly. Ain’t often we get to watch.”

  “We don’t have the time,” said the Southerner with the scar. “I’ve got business elsewhere. We need to get what we can and hit the road. It’s a long ride.”

  Cego sulked. “You’re no fun, Rasgado.”

  Rasgado pressed his gloved hands against his knees and pushed himself to his feet. He stepped back from Marcus and walked toward the large wall-mounted cabinet that held the few weapons Marcus had kept since beating back the Cartel and escaping the reach of the Dwellers.

  “I’ll finish with the supplies,” he said. “You two fill up your sacks and head back to the horses.”

  Marcus sank onto his heels. He could hear the men talking as they scavenged through his belongings, but couldn’t discern what they were saying. The room was spinning like a clock whose second hand kept hitching as it moved around the face. He fell back and caught himself on the wall of the barn next to the door. His body shivered, his vision narrowed, his breathing was shallow and ragged.

  Marcus closed his eyes, focusing on the stinging wounds that ravaged his body. He bit down on the inside of his cheek until the warm, coppery taste of his own blood filled his mouth.

  After what seemed like hours, but likely was only minutes, the malodorous breeze of men brushing past him forced Marcus’s eyes open. The red-bearded man stopped, the burlap sack dragging behind him, and smiled at him.

  Marcus swallowed hard, motioning with his head for the man to come closer. The stranger obliged.

  “What?” he asked in his scratchy voice. “You got a last word or something?”

  Marcus whispered, “Name.”

  The intruder arched one of his thick bushy eyebrows. “My name?” he asked. “You want to know the name of the man who killed you?”

  Marcus didn’t answer. He widened his eyes as much as he could and stared at the man, tears leaking down his cheeks.

  The man raked his beard. “Barbas.”

  Marcus weakly lifted his left hand and pointed at him, wagging his finger. “Kill,” he muttered, “Barbas.”

  A yellow-stained smile snaked across the man’s face. He patted Marcus on the top of his head with thick, calloused fingers. “Cute,” he said. “You think you got life left in you.”

  The red-bearded Barbas planted his palm on the side of Marcus’s face and shoved, pushing Marcus onto the floor. Then he kicked him in the back at the base of his spine and left through the open door.

  Marcus coughed and groaned. He t
ried to keep his eyes open. He tried to breathe. In and out. In and out. But he was losing the fight.

  Images of Lola, Sawyer, and Penny flashed in his mind. Wesson and Sylvia were there too. All of them stood together, beckoning him to join them. They were calling him by name. And for a moment, he was ready to join them. For a moment. Then it passed. Instead of warmth and light and joy, Marcus’s wounded, bullet-riddled soul was filled with something else: the intensifying, primal need for revenge.

  CHAPTER 2

  OCTOBER 20, 2042, 5:32 PM

  SCOURGE +10 YEARS

  EAST OF RISING STAR, TEXAS

  Marcus sat in the treehouse, absently running his hand along the smoothly hewn window ledge he’d hand sanded more than a decade earlier. He looked out across his land toward the highway.

  The sun was low, passing in and out of thick puffy clouds that loped across a clear blue West Texas sky. A constant breeze ran its fingers across the tops of the tall grass between the road and the treehouse. The grass, undulating in waves, was losing its deep green in favor of something less vibrant.

  Marcus took as deep a breath as he’d been able to suck down in three weeks and sighed. Something in the back of his mind had always warned him that his happiness was temporary, that the blessings of Lola, Sawyer, and Penny were bait, meant to lure him toward the surface before yanking him back into the depths of loneliness in which he’d lived for half of his life post-Scourge.

  The apocalypse, as it were, wasn’t about two-thirds of the world’s population succumbing to an incurable pneumonia. It wasn’t about the depraved Cartel with its insatiable thirst for violence and power, or the Dwellers who sought to supplant the Cartel with a hopefully less dystopian Texas. For Marcus, it was about pain. The pain of failing his family, of forgetting his training and allowing lesser men to best him, of aging ungracefully in a world that little valued what he might have had to offer it.