They had come to him two weeks earlier with their proposal, arriving as the last of the days light fled to the safety of the west. Three men dressed in an a way he’d never seen before.
They all wore heavy denim jeans that appeared hand made, and leather vests over plain cotton shirts. The vests were covered with odd symbols that had been hand worked into the aged leather. Two of them struck him as manager types used to giving orders, and being obeyed.
It was the third man who elicited a tiny spark of fear in him, a sensation he hadn’t felt in years. He stood behind the other two, his arms crossed over his chest, his eyes every watchful from beneath the shadowy brim of his hat. On his hip he carried a massive pistol whose sandalwood grips dwarfed his own hand.
Looking into his eyes he knew this man could kill him in an instant.
What they asked for had at first seemed odd. One did not normally approach a mercenary of his reputation with a request to keep the target alive. At the ripe old age of Eighteen he had earned a standing as one of the most brutal guns for hire out there. He had only been fifteen when the dead rose up and the living fled as the society they all knew crumbled.
Overnight the world he’d known had ceased to exist. Cell phones quit working, the internet followed shortly thereafter, and it wasn’t long before the first long night came as the electric grid failed. All of the conveniences of modern life had fallen by the wayside as roving bands of heavily armed men and women took what they wanted, killing any who dared deny them. Not to mention the wandering groups of undead who sought sustenance from the living. It was like they had jumped from the frying pan into the fire, a phrase his father had always used.
He’d witnessed his mother and father’s death at the hands of one of these groups. On that night his alter ego had been born, and he stopped being Todd Franklin, who had a secret crush on his neighbors daughter who happened to be three years older than him, and hardly knew he was alive.
That night he became the Angel of Death.
For six months he tracked the group that had killed his parents with a single mindedness that bordered on obsession. Carving away at their numbers as opportunities presented themselves, until he cornered the last few members in a small town West of the capitol of a nation that lay in a smoldering ruins. That final confrontation had been brutal and bloody, with the flames of the fires he’d set consuming the entire town in which they had hidden.
He had walked away satisfied in a way he’d never known before. Over time he earned a reputation as someone not to be trifled with. Someone in fact that it would be best to avoid at all costs. Someone willing to trade any life for the right price. But even he had his limits. No kids, and especially no pregnant women. They were off limits to him. He’d kill anyone you asked for unless they were a part of those two groups.
Now he was being asked not to kill, but to protect another person from the brutality of a world that had been turned upon its ear. When he’d asked why, the only thing they would tell him was the child she bore would take part in saving untold worlds that had been thrown into turmoil. The idea had appealed to the fourteen year old kid still trapped within him, an innocent side that had once marveled at the worlds created in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.
But what sealed the deal for him was their offer to let him escape this desolate place if he was successful. Yeah, they might be lying, but they struck him as not being from this world so he took their word for what they offered. Besides, if he hadn’t accepted, what if he was wrong?
There was always that chance.
They told him she would be by this way within the next few days, and he’d been keeping a cold camp for a week now as he waited for her. Several times roaming bands of Zombies had wandered by, and each time he had gone to ground until they passed, his weapons always at the ready in the event they wandered too close to him.
He had just laid down for a short nap when a shout from the roadway he had been watching drew him back to the edge of the forest. A group of people appeared from around the bend in the road. A number of them were heavily armed and a few appeared to be wounded. He’d heard some distant shooting earlier that day but hadn’t gone to check on it, preferring to stay where he was so he wouldn’t miss his target, and his only chance to escape this dying place.
There were four girls tied together in the middle of the group and as he watched one of the men, really nothing more than a boy, walked over and cut the ropes binding one of them. The boy called over another, younger boy, and handed him his pistol, pointing towards the field that was between Todd and the group. She was pregnant, he noticed as he realized he was looking at the girl he was supposed to protect.
They were going to shoot her.
The thought shot through him and he moved from cover to get into a better position from which to save her. Crawling forward behind the rusted remnants of a tractor he heard the girl sobbing as the young boy led her by the rope tied around her neck. He felt his anger rising at the thought that another innocent was about to die.
“Quit your damned crying and get on your knees, bitch.” The boy said as Todd came around the side of the car in a crouch. The girl looked up and screamed as he came into view.
To be continued!
Follow Billie-Bobs adventures as he explores a post apocalyptic world with his three friends.
Click on the cover for more info or to order!
Available exclusively at Amazon
Read for free with Kindle Unlimited
Click on the cover for more info or to order!
Available exclusively at Amazon
Read for free with Kindle Unlimited
Don't forget to sign up to be updated and notified of my new releases when they become available.
I
promise not to share your email address with anyone else, and will only
send you an email for important updates and new releases as they become
available. I'll even throw in a free copy of my book White Walker just for signing up.
When she was ten she made a promise to that which inhabits the winter storm.
Now she's twenty six and pregnant, and the White Walker has come to claim his due.
When she was ten she made a promise to that which inhabits the winter storm.
Now she's twenty six and pregnant, and the White Walker has come to claim his due.
