Fall of Man | Book 4 | The Tide Read online

  Emily wasn’t a pro or even a decent amateur golfer. She didn’t know how to play the sport and didn’t care to learn. Neither did Cole, but he’d indulged because it was part of doing business. A week with Roger at the country club five miles from their house, and Cole had become a serviceable golfer. That was her Cole. He could adapt. He was always so good at that.

  Crack! as the metal head shattered the bones in Don’s forearm, exactly where she’d aimed.

  She expected a cry of pain or at least some kind of acknowledging scream, but Don just jerked his hand back out the window. She prepared to strike again, but Don didn’t give her the chance.

  Her neighbor took a step away from the window and glared at her. If she didn’t know better, she would think the man was accusing her of something.

  “Don, what the fuck are you doing?” Emily asked.

  He didn’t answer. He didn’t even seem capable of responding.

  “Are you insane? Where’s Nancy?” she asked. Then, again, louder this time, “Where’s Nancy?”

  Strips of fleshy things clung to various parts of Don’s front shirt. The mailman…and maybe pieces of someone else. Mrs. Landry, perhaps. Maybe even Nancy, whom Emily couldn’t see anywhere out there.

  “Don, what—”

  He turned and fled before she could finish. He ran across her front yard, jumping over the remains of the mailman (Jesus, there wasn’t very much left), and into the street. She wondered where he was going.

  Mrs. Landry. He was going for Mrs. Landry.

  Or was he?

  The large housewife was already back on her feet and hobbling away. Her right leg looked fine, but there was nothing “fine” about the left one. It was broken and twisted, and she was dragging it up the street like the useless appendage it had become.

  No, Emily was wrong. Mrs. Landry wasn’t fleeing Don. And likewise, Don wasn’t going after her. So what—

  Something growled.

  Behind her.

  She whirled, choking up on the golf club, ready to swing.

  A dog stood in a patch of shadows cast by the afternoon sunlight. She couldn’t see most of it, but she could tell it was big, and its fur was as dark as the night and drool dripped from its teeth as it growled at her. There was something very odd about the sound it made. As if the noise was coming from deep, deep inside its soul.

  The animal stepped out of the shadows.

  It was a big dog. A Labrador with bristling black fur and massive canines that dripped saliva to the tiled floor. Its fur was matted with red specks, some of which flicked free as it moved. But it was its eyes that Emily couldn’t look away from.

  They were red. Bloodshot. Just as Don’s eyes had been earlier.

  But there was only one dog, thank God. She could deal with one dog. She had a weapon. Sure, it wasn’t much of one, but it was something. Later, once she dealt with this thing—whatever the hell it was; whatever had turned its eyes bloodshot like Don’s—she would figure out how the animal had gotten inside the house in the first place. Had she left a door open? Had the contractors?

  Emily tightened her grip on the golf club and prepared to swing.

  Then the dog stopped.

  And it didn’t move for the longest time.

  It growled.

  No, not the dog. Not the one in front of her. The new sounds came from behind and slightly to the right of her.

  She looked over in that direction with one eye, keeping the other one on the dog in front of her.

  It was another animal. Just as big as the first, but gray instead of black.

  It was a wolf.

  A wolf? Why is there a wolf here?

  The animal’s gray fur seemed to move in waves, the hairs wet with blood.

  How did it get inside?

  The door behind it was still closed. How had it found its way in? How had the dog, for that matter?

  The wolf growled louder.

  Then the dog joined it.

  Emily took a step back—then another one—until she bumped into the wall.

  Cornered, with nowhere to turn.

  No, that wasn’t true. She could jump out the window. First, she’d have to open it. But that wasn’t impossible. She just had to turn and do just that, and as long as the animals fought each other instead of making a run for her—

  She looked from the dog to the wolf, then back again.

  They were staring at her. And just her. As if the other didn’t even exist. As if they were working together.

  This can’t be possible.

  This isn’t possible.

  Isn’t it?

  Heavy breathing filled her ears half a heartbeat before warm breath struck the back of her neck.

  She whirled around—and stared into Don Taylor’s bloodshot eyes. Red and dancing with wild flames, as if birthed from the pits of Hell itself.

  Her neighbor let out a loud scream just before he lunged, headfirst, into the window, smashing it into pieces and sending shards of glass flying everywhere.

  From somewhere behind her, the dog let out a vicious bark that was joined by the wolf’s as they converged on her from both sides.

  Man, dog, and wolf.

  Blood filled their eyes.

  And soon, it filled hers, too, until all she could see was blood.

  An ocean of it.

  Everywhere…

  Chapter Two

  Cole, bleeding.

  The sun above them, blinding.

  The wolves below them, growling.

  The rooftop metal, radiating heat.

  Then voices.

  Not hers.

  Or Cole’s.

  Others.

  Other people’s voices.

  “Jesus!” they said.

  “Holy shit!” someone else said.

  “Get outta the way! Get outta the way!” another one screamed.

  Three voices. Three people. All excited.

  Or confused.

  Or afraid.

  Or all three.

  She was too busy moving, moving, moving to pay very close attention to who was saying what. There was no time. There was no time. She was in instinct mode. It was the same reflexes that had helped her survive all those years in the field. The same reaction speed that saved her life when Don Taylor tried to kill her.

  …when Don Taylor tried to kill her…

  Images of bloodshot eyes flashed across her mind as she scrambled on top of the squirming body and struck it in the face.

  Once, twice, three times.

  Bone broke and blood flitted, some of it clinging to her knuckles. The much-bigger body underneath her continued to squirm, the face turning slightly so that blood poured out of his nostrils and onto the hard concrete floor.

  She would have kept hitting the man if something hadn’t grabbed her cocked right arm and held it in place. She tried to pull it free, but it wouldn’t budge.

  “Relax!” The voice came from behind her. It wasn’t one of the three she’d heard earlier. Or maybe it was. Her senses were frayed, every part of her locked into fight-or-flight mode, and it’d always been the first and never the latter.

  And why had they told her to relax? This was no time to relax. This was a time to fight. To survive.

  …to survive…

  “Goddammit, lady, relax!” The same voice. Male. Growling louder now. Agitated. Like a dog.

  No, not like a dog.

  Like a man.

  A human man.

  And not in the way Don Taylor had growled at her. As far as she could remember, Don had never said a word as he murdered his way through their neighborhood until, finally, he ended up at her house.

  “Grab her other arm! Grab her other arm!”

  Someone did just that, tingling, cold fingers wrapping around her left arm.

  “Pull her off ’im! Pull her off ’im!”

  The person giving all the commands was the same one that had told her to relax. He was apparently in charge. For a brief second, she thought it might ha
ve been Cole, but it wasn’t. She would know Cole’s voice anywhere, and this wasn’t her husband. And if it wasn’t Cole, then it could only be an enemy.

  She rose from the larger body she’d knocked to the ground. It wasn’t because she couldn’t resist the pulling arms—not that she could, really, but she could have given them a run for their money. No. She was letting them pull her up, giving the appearance of surrendering so they would allow, no matter how momentarily, their grips on her arms to slacken…

  There!

  Emily spun, kicking a tall, lanky kid between the legs. That freed her left arm.

  A brunette in her early thirties with a bob haircut stumbled away from Emily. The woman’s face was covered in sweat, large eyes widening even further. If Emily didn’t know better, she’d think the woman was scared of her.

  Oh, who was she kidding? That was exactly it.

  “Hey!” The same voice that had been giving orders earlier. Still in command. Which meant she had to take him down to take over. There could only be one alpha in the pack, and she was going to be it.

  Emily whirled around to confront the speaker. The man had continued to hold onto her right arm through the whole ordeal, but Emily had expected that. She struck out with her now-free left hand, fingers forming a fist, and nailed the supposed alpha in the solar plexus.

  Her target was much bigger and stronger and taller than her, but she’d put down bigger and stronger and taller opponents. And this one was no exception.

  The man let go of her arm and staggered back, pain flashing across his tanned face. He wore faded denim jeans and a long-sleeve blue work shirt. The only thing missing on the big man was a tool belt and safety helmet, though he did have the name Klein stenciled across a name tag. The front of his shirt was partially covered in black and red stains.

  No, not all stains. The black liquids were, but the red was something else.

  Blood. That was blood.

  So much blood…

  The squeaking of shoes behind her.

  She spun to confront it.

  Another woman, this one in her early twenties, jumped back, throwing her hands up toward Emily. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Relax, lady. Just relax.”

  Emily didn’t relax—her hands were still clenched into fists at her sides—but she didn’t attack the other woman, either. Instead, she did what she always did when confronted with a dangerous situation.

  There were six of them in the room with her. Four were men, and the two still-standing ones were helping the skinny kid she’d kicked in the crotch and the one she’d knocked to the ground back up to their feet. It was easier to get the kid up because he couldn’t have weighed more than 110 soaking wet. The man Emily had struck in the face, and whose blood still dripped from her right fist, was more of a challenge for the duo. One of the two still-standing men was in his fifties and didn’t look to be in exceptionally good shape. The other one was the same one Emily had struck in the chest. The supposed alpha. He had managed to stay on his feet.

  “Okay? Okay?” the woman with her hands raised in front of Emily said.

  Emily stared at her but didn’t say anything. She continued to gather data. Step two, because step one was pretty damn obvious: Survive. Survive at all costs.

  The man in the work shirt and the woman with the bob cut had maneuvered behind her, leaving the others scattered around her. Two in front. Two in the back. And two more to her right.

  Six people in all, inside a room with her.

  …inside a room with her…

  “Relax, relax,” the same woman was still saying. “We’re not the enemy. We’re not the enemy here. Okay? Okay?”

  Emily wanted to tell her that no, it wasn’t okay, that this was far, far from being okay, but instead of wasting her breath, she glanced around and got a quick look at her surroundings for the very first time.

  Step two: Gather intel.

  She was in a room. Not small, but also not big. Fifteen-by-fifteen feet on all sides, give or take, with shiny metal plates for walls stitched together with bolts. The floor was made of rough concrete that looked as if it hadn’t been properly cured before being put to use. A row of bright halogen lights on the ceiling provided plenty of illumination. Too much. All the lights were practically blinding.

  Her “roommates” looked just as confused as she was to be here. The ones that weren’t grimacing through pain that she’d inflicted on them, anyway. The big man, the apparent alpha, had steadied himself against a wall, while the one she’d pummeled to the floor was still on one knee, trying to catch his breath. The younger of the two women was kneeling next to him, stanching his broken nose with a rag. The kid appeared groggy from her kick, but otherwise fine. Or as fine as you could get after getting kicked in the nuts.

  Emily resisted the urge to touch her belly, to make sure everything was fine. It had to be. She didn’t feel any different than when she was last conscious.

  She hoped so, anyway.

  “Okay?” the young blonde woman said to the man with the broken nose.

  The man shook his head. “Hell no.” Then he glanced past her and at Emily. “What the fuck, lady?”

  “It’s okay, you’re okay,” the woman said to him.

  “Hell no, I’m not okay! She nearly killed me!”

  “She was scared. We all are.” She looked up at Emily. “Right?”

  Emily didn’t bother with an answer. It was clear now that these people were not the threat she’d assumed they were upon waking up. They were civilians, without a single capable fighter among them. Even the men, as big as they were, could be taken down with a precise strike or two (or three).

  Content she wasn’t in any danger, she walked away from them and toward the only door in the place instead.

  “Hey, where you going?” the man with the broken nose said. “We’re talking to you.” Then, when she didn’t respond, “Hey!”

  “It’s okay, let her go,” the young woman said. “She’s just doing what we all did.”

  Emily stopped in front of the door. There was no doorknob or lever or anything that looked like it could be used to open the slab of metal. But there was absolutely no doubt this was a door. And right now it was the only way in or out.

  “Can’t open it,” the woman with the bob cut said. She had kept her distance, as if afraid Emily might come after her. Not that Emily blamed her, after her “introduction” to the group. The woman still had one hand on Klein (if that was his real name) to steady him. “We tried. It won’t open. We don’t even know how to open it.”

  “Who is we?” Emily asked.

  “Us,” she said, nodding at the others.

  Emily turned around to look at them.

  They stared back at her.

  Six to one.

  It wasn’t great odds, but she’d gone up against worse numbers. And that was before the end of the world.

  …the end of the world…

  “Where am I?” she asked them.

  “We don’t know,” the blonde woman said as she helped the big man up from the floor. “We woke up in this place just like you did.”

  “Except we didn’t start kicking people in the balls,” the kid said. He cringed as he said it, as if reliving that moment.

  “She was just defending herself, Jeff,” the young woman said.

  “If you say so,” the kid, Jeff, said. He didn’t appear to be in a forgiving mood.

  Not that Emily gave a damn. She’d acted out of instinct and didn’t regret any of it.

  “I’m Stacy,” the young woman said. She nodded at the one next to her, holding her cloth against his broken nose. “This is Fisher.”

  Fisher grunted. “We’ve met.”

  “Belinda,” the woman with the bob cut said. “This is Klein.”

  The oldest man in the room raised a tentative hand. He was slightly balding, wearing a sweater vest and the kind of pants that had gone out of style decades ago. He was pushing thin reading glasses up his nose as he spoke. “Paul. You can call me
Paul.”

  “What’s your name?” the woman, Stacy, asked her.

  “Emily,” she said.

  “Do you, uh, know where we are, Emily?”

  She shook her head.

  “Well, that was a big waste of time,” Jeff said. He walked over to one of the walls and sat down. The teenager slipped both hands around his bent knees and closed his eyes. “Someone wake me up when we find out who put us in here, and why. And oh, ask them when we’re gonna get lunch. I’m starving.”

  “I guess it was too much to hope she might know something,” the oldest of the four men said.

  “Told you we shouldn’t have woken her up, Pops,” the kid said. He reached down and rubbed his crotch, not caring if anyone was watching, which they were. “Would have saved me a world of hurt, I know that.”

  “Relax, kid. The fact they’re working means you’re okay.”

  “Easy for you to say.”

  Emily turned back to the door.

  The construction was just as ugly as the rest of the room—a single slab of steel bolted into place. If she didn’t know any better, she’d think this whole place was put together at the very last second.

  Except that didn’t make any sense.

  Not that any of this made any sense whatsoever.

  She once again resisted the temptation to reach down and touch her belly. Her pregnancy wouldn’t show for a few more weeks even if, in her mind, it was prominent. But that was just in her mind. For now.

  “Do you know how you got here?” Stacy, the blonde, asked as she walked over to stand beside her.

  Emily shook her head. “No.”

  “Neither does anyone else. What was the last thing you remember?”

  I was on the rooftop of Anton’s warehouse, trying to keep my husband from bleeding to death.

  Emily said out loud, “I was home.”

  “What were you doing?”

  “Why?”

  “Just trying to piece together everything we know. Maybe we can figure out how we got here. Or even where here is.”

  Emily looked over at the other woman.

  Up close, Stacy was pretty and there was a softness to her. Not just her face, but everything from head to toe. She radiated caring, which was…odd. Stacy stood just close enough to Emily, but not so close as to alarm her. Her hands were at her sides, a sign of openness. Belinda and the others weren’t quite so open.