Copyright © 2015 David Robbins
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DISCLAIMER: This is a fictional work. 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.
Published by Mad Hornet Pub.
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN: 978-0-9977390-1-5
Dedicated to Judy, Joshua and Shane
PART ONE
INTO THE
RABBIT HOLE
CHAPTER 1
It was known as the Valley of Shadow. Noxious clouds hung as thick as thunderheads, roiling like a dark sea in a tempest. Streaks of light flared and crackled, as if the clouds were electrically charged. Thunder rumbled but no rain fell.
Desolation stretched in endless panorama; blistered ruins, stark columns of charred stone and brick, collapsed buildings, all that remained of towns and villages. Here and there skeletal farmhouses and barns and crumpled silos bore testimony to the fact that once the poisoned earth had been rich in nutrients for the plants that no longer grew.
Figures shambled, dim shapes in the perpetual murk that shrouded the ravaged landscape.
An eerie silence prevailed, broken now and then by hideous shrieks and ghastly groans. Once, something gibbered and tittered.
Then a new sound broke the quiet, the revving of an engine. Bright headlights and spotlights pierced the gloom like the blazing eyes of some nocturnal beast. Into the Valley of the Shadow came a vehicle particularly suited to navigate the nightmare terrain.
The SEAL, it was called, an acronym for Solar Energized Amphibious or Land vehicle. Dark green, it rode on giant tires and was fitted with solar panels on top.
The man at the wheel barely fit in the high-backed seat. Over seven feet tall, his broad frame rippled with muscle. A shock of reddish-brown hair hung low over piercing gray eyes. Strapped around his waist were a matched pair of Bowies. Which was fitting, given that the name he’d chosen on his sixteenth birthday at his Naming ceremony was Blade.
In the front passenger seat sat a blond man in buckskins with the eyes the color of a mountain lake—back in the days before the world went to hell. Pearl-handled Colt Pythons were in holsters on either hip. Leaning forward, he peered into the gloom. “This place raises my hackles, pard.”
“Yours and mine both, Hickok,” Blade said.
“Remember Thanatos and all he put us through?”
“I’m not likely to forget that madman as long as I live,” Blade replied.
“It’s why we’re here, after all.”
Hickok grunted. “I just hope this harebrained notion works.”
One of the three men in the wide middle seat chuckled. He had black hair and brown eyes and a Native American cast to his features. Fatigues clothed his stocky form, and a tomahawk was wedged under his belt. “When it comes to harebrains, no one would know better than you.”
“Thanks heaps, Geronimo,” Hickok said, grinning as he did.
Blade was thinking about Thanatos, the demented genius who once claimed the Valley of Shadow as his personal domain. Known as the Dark Lord, Thanatos had been as vicious as he was brilliant, as diabolical as he was powerful. His ambition had been to rule what was left of North America a century after Armageddon, and thanks to his arcane science, he’d almost succeeded.
But now Thanatos was dead, his legacy this blighted landscape. As well as the hideous monsters he’d spawned in his vats and test tubes and let loose on the already devastated world for no other reason than to savor the new chaos they caused.
Blade flicked a toggle. The spotlights fastened to the frame above the windshield swiveled in the direction he desired, revealing their destination. “It’s still there,” he said, as much out of awe as anything.
“Did you reckon it wouldn’t be?” Hickok said.
Ahead reared a spire that rose to the roiling clouds, a great Tower the like of which had not been seen since the days of Babylon. From it bowels radiated an eerie green glow that permeated its very walls. Once, the Tower served as fortress and laboratory for the madman. Now it stood abandoned yet was no less imposing.
The men on either side of Geronimo leaned forward for a better view. On his right was a middle-aged broomstick with a wild tangle of shoulder-length brown hair that he never combed or brushed. His face was bony and angular, his eyes sparkling points of intense scrutiny. “I can’t believe our luck.” His clothes were rumpled and patched in several places. He, too, had a belt around his thin waist, only his was a wide yellow utility belt fitted with custom pouches and pockets.
“Is it that or something more, Tesla?” the last man in the vehicle said. Older by decades than any of them, he idly swiped at his grey bangs and added in his usual quiet way, “John Milton once wrote that luck is the residue of design.”
“Who?” Hickok said.
“Didn’t you pay attention in class during your schooling years?” the older man asked. “I’m sure your teacher would have covered Milton. He was one of the greats of literature.”
“Oh,” Hickok said. “That Milton.”
Geronimo laughed. “Don’t let him fool you, Socrates. He has no clue who Milton was.”
Blade was about to suggest they settle down and focus on the matter at hand when the ground in front of the SEAL erupted in a tremendous geyser of dirt and rocks and something enormous heaved up out of the earth with its maw agape.
CHAPTER 2
A Crawler. One of the
