Children Of Fiends Read online

  CONTENTS

  Title & Copyright

  Prologue

  Part One - Winter Is Passing

  Chapter One - The Boy and The Kid

  Chapter Two - Stewart Dean

  Chapter Three - The Ultimatum

  Chapter Four - Plum Island

  Chapter Five - Meet Hansel & Gretel

  Chapter Six - Sea Trial

  Chapter Seven - Sea Battle

  Chapter Eight - Second Guesses

  Part Two - A Nation By Another Name

  Chapter Nine - Delmarva

  Chapter Ten - Up River

  Chapter Eleven - Not Alone

  Chapter Twelve - Damning Evidence

  Chapter Thirteen - Tracks

  Chapter Fourteen - Borderlands

  Chapter Fifteen - A Change of Command

  Part Three - Wastelands

  Chapter Sixteen - Hydrogen Cyanide

  Chapter Seventeen - Connections

  Chapter Eighteen - Benson AZ

  Chapter Nineteen - Desert

  Chapter Twenty - Watched

  Chapter Twenty-One - Standoff

  Chapter Twenty-Two - By Sea

  Chapter Twenty-Three - Land

  Part Four - The Dark Heart

  Chapter Twenty-Four - Mines

  Chapter Twenty-Five - Slavery

  Chapter Twenty-Six - Interogation

  Chapter Twenty-Seven - Rescue

  Chapter Twenty-Eight - Captive

  Chapter Twenty-Nine - Crosses

  Chapter Thirty - Gallagher

  Chapter Thirty-One - Infinity

  Chapter Thirty-Two - Bluefields

  - Epilogue

  - An Excerpt From Hostile Intent

  CHILDREN OF FIENDS

  Other Books By C. Chase Harwood

  OF SUDDEN ORIGIN

  OF SUDDEN ORIGIN - DOUBLE BOX SET

  THE OUROBOROS

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  Copyright © 2014 Christopher Harwood / Fate & Fortune Press

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  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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

  PROLOGUE

  Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child. -Robert A. Heinlein, science-fiction author (1907-1988)

  It seemed impossible. The combined forces of North America were running out of ordinance. They had used so much to take back everything east of the Hudson River, to kill literally millions of infected people that the few munitions manufacturers left in infection-free America and Canada couldn’t keep up. They were quite simply bereft of raw materials. When the last Fiend in New England was gunned down while running out of a parking structure located under the Boston Common, the U.S. had a chunk of its nation back. Now the race was on to fortify what was ultimately called the Champlain Line. In effect, it ran from the terminus of the Hudson River at Lower Manhattan, up to Lake George, to Lake Champlain, to the Saint Lawrence, then on to the Ottawa River and its source: Lake Timmiskaming where there was a gap. The Great Gap lay in the central province of Ottawa and was open for sixty miles until the water barrier picked up again at the Little Abitibi River, where it ultimately flowed to the massive Hudson Bay. Through mountain, swamp and grassland, a massive engineering project to join the gap between the Abitibi and the Ottawa was nearly complete. Fiends, most of them anyway, couldn’t swim. The learned skill was lost with nearly every other higher function when the infection took hold.

  The ironically named Lac Fortune lay in a lovely but not terribly notable portion of Trans Canadian Route 117. It was there that the final canal was underway.

  On a warm Indian summer day, the engineers and soldiers who had been working 24/7 for two months, stopped what they were doing and watched in awe as a great herd approached in the distance. Caribou, hundreds of thousands, blackened the gap that was the hilly border between Ontario and Quebec. A Canadian Air Force pilot flying a circling spotting plane called it into the command headquarters and was patched through to the Canadian lieutenant general who was overseeing this last bit of the line. The astonished pilot reported on the million or so Fiends who were behind the heard. It seemed that the collective population of infected Western Canada was coming down the road. The general who watched the approaching herd from his command post knew he was out of time. Without question, he needed three more days minimum to complete his task.

  Later, in the square of a park overlooking the Saint Lawrence, a statue would be erected to honor his sacrifice, along with the thousands of men and women under his command. On that day, the man, who had, more than anyone else, helped to subdue the Taliban-led Wazir tribes of Waziristan, now faced his final impossible challenge. There would be no negotiation. One couldn’t negotiate with what were in effect, zombies, much less the children of these infected people. The general had heard rumors about the children over the past month or so; babies being born with some kind of fantastic mutation.

  As the caribou herd stampeded through the Lac Fortune gap, the men and women who had bonded, forged relationships, been filled with pride over their accomplishment, could only watch in awe as the panicked animals ran past in their desperation not to be swallowed up by the monstrosity that chased after them.

  Back in Ottawa, the powers-that-be of course knew about this coming threat; they could still operate their satellites. They had plenty of planes. What they didn’t have was ammunition. To little effect, they had dumped the last of their air-based weapons on the gathering masses days earlier with the hope of slowing the infected down, giving the engineers the time they needed to complete their digging. Time was up. As the horde converged from many scattered groups into one mindless sea of approaching death, the sole munition left in the stockpile was unfortunately the one that no one wanted to contemplate. Everyone who had volunteered and/or been commissioned to build the canal was fully aware that they were ripe for nuclear annihilation – it didn’t mean they actually expected to die that way. They were North Americans: by their very nature, they were optimists – they expected to finish the canal.

  A helicopter stood by to whisk the general and his staff away, but to a man (and woman) they chose to stay. They drove out to the front to stand firm with everyone else, stoically watching the approaching horror. Many had already dealt face to face with the so named Fiends: your friends and neighbors, now victims of a simple greed driven biological mistake. Through an illegal combination of antibiotics abuse and genetic manipulation, a small time chicken farm in Southern Florida, in an effort to make less thirsty and plumper foul of all things, had inadvertently released a catastrophe that would balloon into a North American pandemic, driving two nations to ruin and then sending the world into an economic tailspin. None of the onlookers had personally seen o
ne of the Fiend’s, or infected person’s children. Morbid curiosity caused the general to hold a pair of binoculars to his eyes. He scanned the mad mob that was now no more than half a mile away and spotted one in the firm clutches of its rabid mother. The child’s overly large orbs seemed to focus on him like a lover’s eyes, boring in, seemingly inches away.

  A lone B-2 bomber followed the line that was Route 117 below. The pilots sat rigidly erect as they approached the drop zone. They had to restrain themselves from gawking as they watched the earth turn black with caribou, then the horde in the distance. They checked one last time to confirm that they were weapons free; the determined voice of the U.S. president himself having confirmed the go-ahead. With resolve built on endless training, the pilot touched the button that would, in one fiery hellish minute, turn 20 square miles into a no go zone for decades to come.

  The general, with his eyes still locked to that of the child thing in the distance, sensed his mind buzzing with sensations that were outside his body, yet also inside. He felt desperate hunger, fear. Not only his fear, but the child’s fear, its mother’s fear and devilish ravings. He found it impossible to lower the binoculars, to break the extraordinarily intimate connection that held his gaze. He could smell its mother; hear the howls of the Fiends nearby. More than anything, he felt utterly compelled to offer himself up – to be the nutrition that the child deeply needed. Then he saw the flash. He was instantly blinded and the connection was broken. He never felt the heat.

  A month later, the Champlain line was finally finished, and, like shutting a door against a room full of soul-crushing grimness, the thousand mile long wall, buttressed by massive fencing, thirty foot tall concrete slabs and a twenty foot deep mine field, was complete. Twenty miles to its east and along its entire length, another fence was built to keep healthy citizen wanderers from ever approaching the line of demarcation. The space between was labeled ‘The Terminus Zone’ and was strictly off limits to all. Period. No exceptions.

  Finally able to breathe, the healthy population of North America celebrated for a day and a night, and then rested for another before taking on the huge task of picking up the pieces. Further infection within the healthy zone had been eradicated. The primary conduit – fouled water and bird migration – was under strict supervision and no longer a factor.

  It was thought that the outbreak had been contained on the North American continent. Unfortunately for the rest of the world that wasn’t true. A few hundred kilometers north of Lac Fortune, the seeds for pandemic continued along the same path from which it started: a plague spread by birds. The Arctic Tern is one of the most remarkable birds on Earth. As it follows the seasons from its southern summer nesting grounds in the Antarctic north to the summer months in the Arctic, its typical 22,000-mile migration pattern lets it experience temperate (for the bird) weather all year long. It spends the majority of its life in the air, rarely landing but to eat and breed. Its habitat ranges across the tops of the northern continents: from Denmark to Northern Russia, Alaska and across Northern Canada and even the Northern Continental U.S. In the Southern Hemisphere it can be found in nations such as South Africa, Australia and Argentina. It is an ocean bird, but is also found in inland waterways. Fiercely defensive of its nesting grounds and willing to attack even large predators, other birds do well to build their own nests near Arctic Terns that act as body guards for their feathered brethren.

  During the summer that North America fought to save itself from oblivion, infected Tree Swallows (the original carriers of the plague) mingled with the Terns that nested in Northern Canada and Alaska. The protection that the sea birds offered, mixed with their discarded feathers that the swallows used for nesting, made for the inevitable exchange of bodily fluids between the two species. The great migratory birds took on the germ and then flew off to other points on the globe, infecting domesticated and wild birds alike. In short order these infected animals passed the contagion onto a planet overpopulated with humans. Within a year, the rest of the world knew firsthand the agony of the North Americans.

  The end of the world, as it was known, had no specific date. The event, referred to as Omega, took place over five or six seasons. The waves of destruction would ripple out for a decade or more.

  PART ONE

  Winter Is Passing

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Boy and The Kid

  The boy had found the map in the attic among the boxes that his father had never sent for. His old man had been a collector of souvenirs during his time in the Navy, and the boy had spent hours and hours over the years sifting through the collection, imagining adventures and playacting battles. There were trinkets and bits of clothing, and all manner of small artifacts stuffed in with the uniforms, letters, and photos. His father had been to places in the world that, as far as the boy’s teachers knew, no longer existed – at least as far as human populations were concerned. There were photos of his dad wearing a turban; standing among dangerous looking turban-wearing bearded men. There were also photos of Dad with men on ships and assault boats – rugged looking men in black fatigues or scuba gear, a surplus of weapons, their eyes a mixture of mirth and deadly intent. The insignia on an old uniform indicated that the father soldier had been a Navy Seal Captain. There were many medals, and the boy’s imagination would fill with wonder as he gazed upon the three Purple Hearts. Omega had happened when he was two and he had no memories of his father who had never come home. He knew he was still alive. After all, way back, Dad had sent for some things, or so his mother had said. They had never spoken.

  His mother had lived with Roy until the bad day. Roy had been okay, but he wasn’t a dad. Never considered himself one. He made feeble attempts to discipline the boy, but it was more about keeping the boy out of his hair. The boy was his mother’s responsibility. Roy provided shelter and food. Roy was more like a brother – a mean one – like when he’d make fun of the boy’s slight lisp – copycatting him when the boy back-talked in protest. Mom had never come to the boy’s defense, saying instead, “Roy’s your Daddy now. You best listen to him”. No, Roy had been no daddy. Roy had been good for one thing; he’d taught the boy how to camp. He hadn’t exactly been a survivalist type, but he knew his way around a campfire, could set up a tent. The boy and Roy had gone several times into the deep woods that abutted their home. Once, they even camped at the edge of the Terminus Zone and the fifteen-foot high double fence that insured that they could walk no further.

  As the boy grew older and his lisp faded away, he would stare for hours across the great icy expanse that began on the other side. As far as he knew, he was the only kid in his town that had ever seen it. The other kids weren’t interested – most had been brought up to believe scary stories of the boogeyman out beyond. Besides, who would want to walk in the great dead frozen forest when there where so many lush virtual worlds to explore? Multigenerational shock over a lost planet made life as an avatar the choice for so many of the survivors.

  His best buddy was the one other kid who had seen the fence, and that was only because the boy had taken him out there one day. The kid had been scared half out of his wits until he saw that it was just a stopping place marked by a huge sign, repeated every forty feet or so and bearing a single bold word – FORBIDDEN. As preschoolers they had been told that the fence went on forever. The boy knew of course that that was impossible, but he and the kid had walked along it for a long way. As far as they could tell, it went farther than their own town of Pawling and probably past Webatuck and South Dover as well.

  For the last two of his twelve years, the boy had been studying his dad’s Seal Team Field Manual and any other book on survival that he could get his hands on. He loved adventure tales; downloading them as fast as he could read them…until his mother found out, saw the credit card that he had taken out in her name, and the bill for online purchases. Roy had whipped him good for that one. Then the bad day happened. A typical Friday; they’d left the boy with a meager dinner to tie one o
n at the local tavern. As they had stumbled home in a stupor, one of the unpredictable blizzards that made the very long winters so very hard took them. Roy was found a hundred yards closer to the house, clearly leaving the boy’s mom behind to fend for herself. Or, that’s how the boy figured it.

  The boy lived with the kid now, the kid’s daddy having died during Omega, his single mom working two jobs, leaving the boys pretty much to themselves. The boy still had access to his now abandoned house and they’d begun stashing their gear there. It was their hideout, their sanctuary. They’d been plotting their trip for six months, soon after the boy had found the map. They had slowly built up their supplies while occasionally doing test camps in the woods right near the house. Tomorrow would be the first day of August: D-Day for the boy and the kid.

  They had set an alarm for 4am, but neither of them could really sleep. At ten ‘til they got up and snuck quietly down the bedroom hall of the single story house, listening to the kid’s mom snoring away, making sure she didn’t stir. When they got to the kitchen they grabbed the apple juice and the last bag of cereal. The kid’s mom would be angry (apple juice was really expensive) but they would need the energy. They went over to the boy’s house and got their packs. Knowing that they would be heading out in the dark and not wanting to forget anything, they had double-checked it all the day before. Their wind-up flashlights, which they had cranked to the max before dinnertime, were cranked again. Then they quietly marched into the backyard, ducking into the woods.

  The kid had been nervous the day before. He didn’t want to worry his mother, but then the boy reminded him that his mother never worried about him. She came home to sleep and was out the next morning. The most the exhausted woman would do is make them meals in advance while bitching about her life; how hard the two preteens made things for her. That memory set the kid’s mind at ease and he was able to enjoy the hike. Heck, the way the boy figured it, they’d be giving his mom a break. They walked quietly, saving their voices for a distance beyond earshot of other homes and passed the apple juice back and forth and stuffing their hands into the bag of cereal. The sky behind them began to slightly brighten and within an hour they could see well enough to douse the flashlights. Half an hour further brought them to the fence. They had found the gate on their last trip out – the location clearly marked on Dad’s map. The boy’s daddy had been the commanding officer overseeing this part of the Terminus Zone - Captain Stewart Dean it said in bold print in the upper left corner. They assumed correctly that the gate was for maintenance and inspection; a way to get to the second fence.