Read Human Extinction Level Loss (Book 1): Nicole's Odyssey Online
Authors: Philip A. McClimon
Tags: #zombies
Human Extinction Level Loss (Book 1): Nicole's Odyssey
How To Load Your Free Gift onto a Kindle
A Sample Chapter From H.E.L.L. Substation: The Last Stand Of Gary Sykes
Text Copyright ©
2013
Philip A. McClimon
All Rights Reserved
To Peanut
Acknowledgments
Several people have helped me prepare this book for “final” publication, chief among them are my friends and “Beta Readers”.
Mallory Haun, her comments can be incredibly insightful, and her input helped shape the tone of the motel scene at Friendly’s.
James Harris, ever the “Big Lebowski” compatriot, his suggestions can be timely and have resulted in a clever exchange or two between characters.
Chris Stoesen, a college buddy whose knowledge of guns and ammo borders on the encyclopedic. His advice allowed Nicole and Steven Bennett’s thoughts on Zombie weapons of choice to ring more authentic than was possible if left to my own devices.
Chris Sapp, my sometime writing partner. With a passion for writing, structure, the “set piece”, pressing the limits, and all things hero and heroine, he remains a true sounding board, idea man, and the only other one I have met that can match me hour for hour in tirelessly talking “story” and the limitless worlds yet to be explored.
Much thanks goes to Rebecca at Sister Sinister Speaks,
http://sistersinisterspeaks.blogspot.com/
. She provides a forum for Indie Authors to get a word out about their work. She also does book reviews and has been very kind to me. Thanks, Rebecca!
When I finally stopped being stubborn and beating my head against the wall, I went out and found a professional book cover designer. I don’t know why I waited so long. Debbie over at The Cover Collection,
http://www.thecovercollection.com/
does the most amazing and thoughtful work. Her creations are a thing of beauty. The cover for this book is hers and I could not be happier with it. Thank you, Debbie!
I would be remiss of course if I did not thank my wife, Sherry, who does more than anybody else could, which is put up with me for more hours than anybody should. She often finds things others miss and helps me make any manuscript better.
Two kinds of trouble in this world
Living… Dying…
--Lindsey Buckingham
Prologue
When Francis Delroney turned seventeen years old, he took his pellet gun and shot out all the windows in the next-door neighbor's house. The damage was extensive and costly. In an effort to teach Francis some responsibility, and that actions have consequences, his mother took away his money, money that his uncle had given Francis on the occasion of his turning seventeen. The money was not nearly enough to pay for all the windows, but it was everything Francis had.
Three days later, while she was sleeping, Francis stole checks from his mother’s purse and cashed them for a larger amount than his mother had taken from him. He absconded with the ill-gotten gain and rode the train into the city. Casting about for ways to spend the money and “pay his mother back”, he happened to meet an unscrupulous and most certainly “connected” low-level thug. Within moments, Francis Delroney found himself in the back room of a pizzeria that never seemed to do any real business. With thoughts of turning his small stack of bills into a large stack of bills, Francis joined their “friendly” game of poker. He walked out of the pizzeria indebted in the sum of fifteen thousand dollars, the mere mentioning that his mother owned her own restaurant proving sufficient collateral to play with money that he did not have.
When an ultimatum was given to Mrs. Delroney by emissaries of the self same low-level thug, that essentially stated she could keep her restaurant or her son, she resigned herself to a mother’s choice. Some part of Francis knew he had hurt his mother. Moreover, while he certainly wanted to convey his lament and did on occasion actually put that lament into words, some other part of him did not let the pain he had caused bother him all that much. It was not necessarily any kind of dissociative disorder or sociopathic tendency that if allowed to run its course would turn him into a serial killer. What plagued Francis Delroney was just plain old-fashioned selfishness, a selfishness that always allowed him to justify in his mind everything he did.
They say hope springs eternal, and so it did in Mrs. Delroney. She pressed charges against her son for the stolen checks, in the hopes that the threat of state sanctioned punitive action would finally jar him into right thinking. She had good reason to see those hopes fulfilled when Francis chose the judge’s option of joining the military in lieu of jail time. Francis was stationed far away in Colorado. He did not write or call his mother, who was out of his sight and therefore out of his mind. She died five years later. A heart attack took her and she went down, washing dishes for minimum wage in the restaurant she used to own. She never stopped hoping that her son would become a man and learn some responsibility.
Four years and seventeen days after what would have been his mother’s fifty-first birthday, if she had been alive and he had remembered it, Francis Delroney boarded a plane to leave Colorado in a hurry. Something had happened in the secure military facility where he was stationed, something that scared the living hell out of him. The same something that put that facility, located deep within an innocuous mountain in the Rockies, on lockdown. He squirmed into seat 32-B and watched the flight attendant demonstrate how to use the oxygen mask in the event of cabin depressurization. He was not thinking of the protocols he was breaking by being on the plane. He was also not thinking of his mother, who had she been alive, would perhaps have finally understood that her son never did learn the lessons of responsibility she so desired to teach him.
Six months later…
One
Sam Jennings could not remember if he dreamed last night. It was this thought that occupied his mind as he shuffled to the front sliding doors of the Fair Valley Home Improvement Super-center. More troubling to him than that, he could not remember dreaming the night before last either. As he dis-armed the security system and unlocked the doors, the store’s lights flickered on. The fluorescents lit the clean floors and orderly shelves. Sam prided himself on creating an environment that enabled the customer to have a pleasant shopping experience. He took the job at the super-center the summer before his junior year in highschool. By the time he graduated, he had worked his way up to manager of the lawn and garden department. After graduation, his parents had kept asking him what he wanted to do with his life, but a year later he still did not have a good answer. Friends of his parents, whose kids had all gotten into college or at least out of the house, would call and invariably ask about their son. One question that always got asked was, “
Did Sam still work at the home improvement center?
” The answer his parents always gave was, “
Yeah, he’s still there.
” Something else that was still there was Sam’s pizza face and gangly pubescence. It was like his body refused to move on until Sam did, a test of wills, only his body wasn’t blinking.
Sam paused, staring out at the vacant parking lot. “When was the last time I actually had a dream?” he asked.
He searched his mind for several seconds before giving up. Other, more pressing matters demanded his attention.
Where was Bob?
He was the assistant manager. It was really his job to open the store. As a department manager, Sam did not make as much as an assistant manager, so he did not think it was fair to have to take on an assistant manager’s responsibilities. Sam turned and stood staring at the ceiling.
“Did Bob call in?” he said. He stood thinking about it for several seconds.
If Bob hadn't called, then that was a “no call /no show.” You only got three of those, then they could terminate you
.
Not quite being able to remember, Sam shook his head and shuffled on. Other, more pressing matters demanded his attention.
Mowers and grills.
Sam leaned against a John Deere Zero Turn Radius lawn tractor and pushed. To prevent their theft, the mowers and grills had to be brought in every night. He had pushed them in the night before. He did remember that. Sam reminded himself that having to close then open was not supposed to happen. An employee was supposed to have at least eight hours off between shifts. He planned to talk to Bob about it when he came in.
The mowers and grills secured outside, Sam went to the Outdoor Power Equipment desk and logged onto the computer. He figured he better check the sales numbers from the previous day. Sales had been a little flat lately and he wanted to have some kind of answer ready for the morning meeting. He stared at the screen. The sad news was there staring back at him.
Yesterday's sales were zero.
His eyes scanned further down the screen.
Sales week to date: zero.
He stared up at the ceiling. “A week? No, that can't be right, I sold a mower to a...”
His voice trailed off. His mind faltered as he tried to recall the transaction. “What week is this?” he asked himself. At the front of the store, the sliding doors opened then closed. Sam stared at the screen a moment longer. He gave up trying to make sense of what was clearly an I.T glitch with the sales reports. Besides, other, more pressing matters demanded his attention.
Bugs.
Sam did not know why, but lately bugs were getting into the store. He tried to get rid of them whenever he saw them. The last thing he needed was an infestation. Those kinds of things did not make for a pleasant shopping experience. Sam went back to the shipping and receiving department and got his hickory ax handle. He had billed it out for store use from the Lawn and Garden department and carried it on his bug patrols. Stepping on these things was just not an option. They were the biggest bugs Sam Jennings had ever seen.
Sam was three quarters around the “racetrack”, the four main aisles that formed the perimeter of the sales floor. He rounded the corner into the lumber department. There, half way down the aisle, was a bug. With its arms, it heaved itself forward as it crawled along the floor. Something had been at it, because its body ended at its torso. Behind it, a wet reddish-black trail marked its progress. Sam stared at it. His face twitched as, for the briefest of seconds, the bug appeared to Sam as no bug at all. Horrific images filled his vision: