Fall of Man | Book 4 | The Tide Read online

  The Tide

  Copyright © 2021 by Sam Sisavath

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Road to Babylon Media LLC

  www.roadtobabylon.com

  Edited by Jennifer Jensen and Wendy Chan

  Cover Art by Deranged Doctor Designs

  Contents

  The Fall of Man Series

  Also by Sam Sisavath

  About The Tide

  Prelude

  Emily

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Cole

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  The Fall of Man Series

  The Break

  Homefront

  Firebase

  The Tide

  Also by Sam Sisavath

  The Purge of Babylon Post-Apocalyptic Series

  The Purge of Babylon: A Novel of Survival

  The Gates of Byzantium

  The Stones of Angkor

  The Walls of Lemuria Collection (Keo Prequel)

  The Fires of Atlantis

  The Ashes of Pompeii

  The Isles of Elysium

  The Spears of Laconia

  The Horns of Avalon

  The Bones of Valhalla

  Mason’s War (A Purge of Babylon Story)

  The Road to Babylon Post-Apocalyptic Series

  Glory Box

  Bombtrack

  Rooster

  Devil’s Haircut

  Black

  The Distance

  Hollow

  Daybreak

  The Ranch

  100 Deep

  Nice Shot

  The After The Purge: Vendetta Trilogy

  Requiem

  Tokens

  Remains

  The After The Purge: AKA John Smith Series

  Mist City

  Run or Fight

  Shoot Last

  The Allie Krycek Vigilante Series

  Hunter/Prey

  Saint/Sinner

  Finders/Keepers

  Savior/Corruptor

  The Red Sky Conspiracy Series

  Most Wanted

  The Devil You Know

  About The Tide

  THE LINE BETWEEN FRIENDS AND FOES IS A BLURRED ONE.

  They thought they’d found safe refuge, but Cole and Emily were wrong. Dead wrong. After fighting against all odds to reunite, they are, once again, forcibly separated. Surrounded by strange faces with possibly hidden motivations, husband and wife must figure out a way to get back to one another.

  For Emily, it’s a mystery wrapped in a concrete box. It begins to dawn on her that someone, somewhere has planned all of this, and they’ve just made her a part of it. To save herself and her unborn child, Emily will have to journey to the limits of her humanity, and possibly beyond.

  Cole, meanwhile, has managed to escape the jaws of death once again. If just barely. Wounded, bloodied, and left for dead, he rises stronger and more determined to find Emily and make their family whole again.

  But the world, it seems, has other plans for Cole and Emily…

  Prelude

  Blood.

  There was so much blood.

  It was everywhere.

  The blood.

  So much of it.

  Blood.

  Blood.

  Because it was all about the blood.

  The blood that pumped through their veins. The ones that dripped from the eyes of the crazies.

  Humans and animals.

  Blood.

  So much blood.

  God, how could there be so much blood?

  Once upon a time, she’d found Cole bleeding to death and there’d been a lot of blood then, too. She was the one that had saved him. It was, even now, the best decision she’d ever made. He became the love of her life. She hadn’t expected that. Neither had he, to hear him talk about it. Which they rarely did. But when the subject did come up, she knew she’d picked the right man.

  Cole.

  He was bleeding.

  A lot.

  Dying.

  He was dying.

  Again.

  Oh God, he was dying.

  He was dying…

  Emily

  Chapter One

  Waking up to the hammering was the worst part.

  Wait. Again? Why again?

  The earsplitting noise of power tools cutting and tearing apart Cole’s study to turn it into the baby’s room was a close second. She was already groggy and annoyed, and that was even before she got a look at herself in the mirror. She didn’t have much of a baby bump yet, but it was on its way. Most of her neighbors didn’t even know she was “preggers,” as Cole put it, though Don Taylor next door might have suspected something was up. Being the nice guy he was, Don hadn’t put his suspicions into words.

  Be careful of Don.

  She paused. Don? Why did she have to be careful of Don? The thought had just popped into her head, but she couldn’t fathom why. Don was nice. Heck, most of her neighbors were nice people. The neighborhood was a far cry from the world she used to inhabit, where “niceness” just meant they wanted something from you.

  …Or were about to stab you in the back.

  Or, sometimes (Most of the times?), both.

  Not that she thought anyone would be trying to stab her in the back these days. That was another life. Another world.

  Emily picked up the phone from the nightstand, but didn’t move right away. Instead, she stared down at it. For a second, she expected it to ring and Cole’s face to pop up on the caller ID.

  Except it didn’t, and he didn’t.

  Strange. She thought it was going to ring even before she reached for it.

  But it hadn’t, and didn’t.

  What’s wrong with me today?

  Emily put the phone away and left the master bedroom. She walked past Greg and Barnes, the two workers in the process of demolishing Cole’s office next door, and thought about taking a moment to enjoy the Bear Lake view from the balcony of the other bedroom at the back of the house. She decided she needed to get away from the noise and jogged down the stairs to the first floor instead.

  She got halfway when she glimpsed dark spots along the banister. Emily stopped and leaned in closer to get a better look.

  Was that blood? It looked like blood. Bright red, sticking to the oak.

  She glanced back toward the second floor, wondering if one of the contractors had cut himself and brushed against the wood while they were working. There wasn’t a lot of blood, so maybe they wouldn’t have even noticed as they hurried back and forth to finish the job.

  She sniffed the air.

  Yup. That was blood, all right. There was blood in the air. Not just the small drop on the banister, either, but farther downstairs, on the first floor.

/>   Why was there blood in her house?

  She hurried down and looked right toward the back hallway. Empty. She turned right, just as something cracked loudly outside her home.

  She froze in place.

  Emily would know that sound anywhere, even if she had difficulty reconciling her knowledge of it with its presence.

  Because it didn’t belong. Not here. Not now.

  Gunshot.

  That was a gun—

  Crack-crack-crack!

  Gunshots.

  She should have turned around and went back up the stairs. Better yet, spun right and ran toward Cole’s backroom. It was, at the moment, the safest option.

  But she didn’t.

  She wasn’t sure why, but she didn’t.

  Instead, Emily moved toward the front door. It was closed, but unlocked. Because there had been no need to lock it. Even if she weren’t alone—which she wasn’t, with the two contractors upstairs—she wouldn’t have locked it anyway.

  Not here. Not now.

  Not now.

  She locked the door and was pushing the deadbolt into place (Just in case) when a flicker of movement out the corner of her eye drew her attention. It came from somewhere beyond the window to her right.

  Emily ran over and looked out and saw something she didn’t think she’d ever see in her life. (Not now. And not here. Not now and not here.)

  Don Taylor was in the street, raining blows on the mailman’s head with a gardening hoe. Don was her unemployed neighbor, so the man spent most of his time gardening. She and Cole joked that Don always found time to busy himself in his yards, tending to flowers and weeding, because it was a great excuse to get away from Nancy, his wife.

  The weapon that kept flashing in the sunlight was no ordinary tool. It was nearly 14 inches of stainless steel that ended in a sharp 4.5-inch blade and curved to one side like the point of a sword. It was a combination hoe and weeder and appeared ridiculously dangerous, especially in the hands of her forty-something unemployed neighbor.

  “That’s more of a kusarigama than a gardening hoe,” Cole once said when he saw Don toiling away in his garden.

  “A what?” she had said.

  “Kusarigama. It’s something a ninja would use. But theirs has a sickle and chain for longer attacks. This one doesn’t.”

  “Maybe he forgot the chain and lost the sickle,” Emily had said, and they’d both had a good chuckle over it.

  She wasn’t laughing now as she watched Don obliterate the mailman’s head with the gardening tool/weapon. There were no signs of Nancy, and maybe that was for the best because she didn’t have to witness her husband striking his victim until there was nothing left but a puddle of broken bones and torn flesh and flowing blood—

  Another figure blinked in the corner of her eye.

  She turned right and picked up Mrs. Landry, all 250 pounds of her, lumbering across the empty streets. She was covered in blood, and so was the steak knife in her right hand. There was no doubt where she was headed: Right for Don, who was oblivious to her approach.

  Emily opened her mouth to scream out Don’s name, but it was too late. Mrs. Landry had reached her target and was plunging her knife into Don’s back. The former CPA let out a scream that didn’t sound like it had come from a human being. He jumped up from the remains of the mailman and whirled around, even as Mrs. Landry pulled the knife out of him.

  Blood, a lot of it, arced through the air, the sunlight glinting brilliantly against the amazing redness. There was something surreal about the color. Maybe even unnatural. Was blood supposed to be that bright red and so…mesmerizing?

  Emily was the only one pondering that question, because her two neighbors were too busy trying to kill one another. Before Mrs. Landry could strike a second time, Don flung himself into her and the two of them collapsed into the pavement.

  Wait. This isn’t right.

  This was all wrong. Not that her neighbors were trying to murder each other, or that she was hearing gunshots, but this wasn’t how it was supposed to happen.

  This? What is this?

  She didn’t know. She just knew that this wasn’t right. Everything about it was wrong. But how did she know that? How—

  The roar of a car engine pierced her ears and broke her out of her thoughts a split second before the source appeared in the edge of her peripheral vision. The car was moving too fast for Emily to get a good look at the driver, but whoever it was didn’t seem to be in control of the vehicle as it plowed into Don and Mrs. Landry as they stood in the street, slicing into each other’s flesh with their blades.

  Now that’s something you don’t see every day, Emily thought as her neighbors launched into the air, somehow going in different directions—Don flew back toward her front yard while Mrs. Landry went the other way, landing in a mound of her own flesh on the sidewalk. Emily thought she could hear the old lady’s head cracking like a watermelon as what seemed like a bucket’s worth of blood splashed the concrete around her.

  The SUV kept going, blasting past Emily’s house and the landing body of Don Taylor. The driver was a woman with wild blonde hair; she was clutching the steering wheel with both hands, mascara running down her face. Emily could see all of that because the driver-side window was down.

  It was Carol Miller. She was a housewife whom Emily had met a few times, including at a community picnic about two weeks ago. She was a nice enough woman. Down to earth.

  Or she was, anyway, because there was nothing down to earth about the woman in the SUV as it sped off. Emily thought the other woman might have been screaming, or shouting, or crying as she drove, her vehicle swerving dangerously around in the two-lane street.

  Bam! as Carol Miller sideswiped a Bentley parked two houses down.

  Not that that stopped the housewife. She kept going, when something—someone—raced across the well-manicured yard of one of the houses farther up the street. Emily was too far away to see who the man was, but there was no missing the all-denim outfit he was wearing. As she watched, the man threw himself at the speeding vehicle without any regard whatsoever for his own safety.

  The figure somehow managed to hit the windshield—only to bounce off it like a human cannonball.

  Well, that didn’t work.

  The attempt didn’t stop the SUV, but the impact must have done enough to surprise Carol, because it made her jerk on the steering wheel and the vehicle swayed left and right even more erratically than before. Carol didn’t regain control fast enough, and the runaway car slammed headfirst into the side of a red Honda parked along the curb.

  The SUV’s horns blared as the car idled, its front hood crumpled while smoke began shooting out from underneath. Emily couldn’t tell if Carol was badly hurt or not, but something had pressed the horn, and kept it pressed.

  Emily started moving toward the door, the need to get out there and rescue Carol racing through her mind.

  But she only made it halfway before she stopped.

  What was she doing? It wasn’t her job to go out there. She was a housewife, too. Just like Carol Miller and dozens of other women in the gated community. Like Mrs. Landry. Even like Don Taylor, who may or may not have been dead. It wasn’t her job to risk her life. Not anymore. Not anymore.

  She took a step back, away from the door, and her hand went down to her stomach.

  The baby. She had to protect the baby.

  Whatever happened, she had to protect—

  Crash! as one of the windows behind her shattered.

  She turned in time to see an arm reaching through the gaping hole in one of the glass panes and groping for the lock.

  Was that Don? How was he even still alive?

  She backed up—and stumbled into one of Cole’s golf clubs. It clattered on the floor and hadn’t settled yet before she snatched it up. It wasn’t much of a weapon, but it was heavy and steel and would do plenty of damage if used correctly. And she knew how to use it correctly, if not for its intended purpose.

  She
walked back to the window even as the invading hand found what it was searching for and unsnapped the lock.

  Emily stepped in front of the window and looked out.

  It was, as she had expected, Don. Blood dripped from his forehead and a gaping hole in his right cheek. More blood poured from his back, where Mrs. Landry had done a number on him. Even more flooded down the front of his shirt where their mutual neighbor had slashed him repeatedly.

  It was Don, but it wasn’t Don.

  Not really.

  Not anymore.

  He stared back at her from the other side of the broken window. His nostrils flared, the veins along the sides of his neck pulsating like worms squirming underneath skin. The bloodied hoe was clutched in his left hand, but all Emily could focus on were the tendrils of blood dripping from his eyes.

  They were bloodshot. No, more than that. The scleras were completely red, as if an ocean of fire had drowned out his irises, leaving no room. It wasn’t natural. She’d never seen anything like that because it wasn’t natural.

  Up close, her neighbor’s chest heaved as his heart pumped out of control, too much blood being forced through his system. She saw the results: adrenaline charging through his body, powering the forty-something into some kind of…

  What?

  Rage?

  Craze?

  What was she seeing? What—

  Don reached for her, and she swung the golf club.