Downfall: The Deadlander Series (Book 1) Read online

  DOWNFALL

  The Deadlander Series: Book 1

  Colin Sims

  DOWNFALL

  The Deadlander Series: Book 1

  By Colin Sims

  Copyright 2017

  ***

  Edited by Monique Happy Editorial Services

  www.moniquehappy.com

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please go and buy your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. This is a work of fiction. Any similarities to real persons, events, or places are purely coincidental; any references to actual places, people, or brands are fictitious. All rights reserved.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  There was something about waking up before dawn that was both fun and horrible. Fun—because it felt like I was going on a secret mission. Horrible—because I had to do it every day.

  None of the other kids at school had to wake up this early. Not one. In my mind’s eye, I could see them all snoozing like rabbits, secure in the knowledge that they didn’t have to go for a six-mile run while watching their breath puff in front of them the entire way. As far as I knew, none of them would have to do any running until Boot, many, many hours later. None of them would have to practice tying knots for an hour, and none of them would have to field-strip a weapon before they were allowed to eat breakfast.

  None of them had to do these things because none of them had Alec Tripp as their older brother.

  Ever since he turned eighteen, which was five years ago, Mom and Dad gave him carte blanche to become my own personal drill sergeant. At the time, I had no idea why they would do that, especially since that year was the worst any of us had ever gone through, particularly me. It was the year my twin sister, Elizabeth, died.

  The clock on my bed stand read 4:56. It was an old clock, with hands, not numbers, and a spring instead of a battery. Somewhere along the line I’d formed the habit of waking up just before my alarm sounded. That handful of minutes was my favorite time of day. I knew I was about to head into the cold. But not yet.

  When the alarm went off, I practically punched it. The ringer was beyond loud, and the dial to turn it down was long since broken. My dad could have easily scrounged up a part to fix it, but he always refused, saying it was good for me.

  I groaned as I pressed my face into the pillow, though my lips twisted in a tired grin. I knew what was coming next. In exactly one minute, like clockwork, Mrs. McTavish would open my door to make sure I was awake, and as soon as she did, Henry IV would come bounding into my room.

  Henry IV was famous throughout Boise as the First Dog. He was a middle-aged French Briard, and quite possibly the ugliest canine to ever walk the Earth. He existed somewhere inside a long, tangled mop of brown fur and was all nose. And tongue.

  I swung my legs around the side of the bed. The floor was cold on my feet, seeing as it was nothing but bare concrete. The carpet had been stripped away decades ago, in a time I was glad I wasn’t alive to witness. My parents had, though. Maybe it was even them who had caught a little warmth one night, burning the carpet in a fire barrel.

  I pointed at the door beside me as the second hand hit twelve and it was 5:01. There was a quick rap on the sheet metal, followed by a twist of the latch. Then, an explosion.

  All Henry IV needed was the absence of that latch; he could always do the rest. The door crashed open as he burst into the room and jumped on me.

  “Christ,” I mumbled, doing my best to fight him off. It was no use. For some reason, I was his favorite.

  “Time to get up, lad,” Mrs. McTavish whispered, eyeing me quickly to make sure I was a hundred percent awake.

  I mumbled something unintelligible before I saw her shadow whisking away down the hall. The rest of the house was still hushed in sleep. It was only Mrs. McTavish and I who were consistently awake at this hour. But she didn’t count. As far as I could tell, she never slept anyway; a constant ball of sixty-year-old enthusiasm who ran the Capitol House like a ship at sea. There were twelve other household staff and she was the boss. No one dared refuse her, unless they wanted a verbal whipping. Even my mom took orders from Mrs. McTavish. And my mom was the President.

  I padded down the hall to quickly throw some water on my face. I only had five minutes until I needed to be outside and underway. Alec had an extraordinary network of spies, including Navid—my Presidential Guard—who would tell him if I was late. I’m sure Alec would have gladly kept an eye on me himself, but he lived at the barracks up the road. At twenty-three, he was already a captain. If he lived to be thirty, I expected they’d have to invent a new rank above General.

  Back in my room, I threw on some shorts and a T-shirt, which of course made the run freezing at first, but tolerable later on. I ran down the stairwell, Henry IV in tow, and headed for the main foyer. I glanced up at the scarred rotunda as I jogged toward the main entrance. Even after all the building had been through, the grandeur of what used to be the Idaho State Capitol Building was still a sight to behold.

  There was a guard, half asleep, minding the large double doors. They were both solid steel, a remnant of a more violent history. In fact, much of the building still had the appearance of a makeshift fortress from the days when Boise was founded. According to my History classes, those were bloody days. Like all the other students, I learned about the carnage following the War, and how the survivors fought to the bone for every scrap of food or water they could find. And we definitely learned about Frederick Shaw, my mom’s predecessor. He founded Boise twenty-four years ago atop the rubble of the old Boise, a small city that was part of the former United States.

  Unlike most of the other students, I knew Shaw personally. He’d been a part of my life since I was a kid. My parents were among his closest friends when he founded the city, and it was my dad who harvested the technology to build the Security Wall.

  Unfortunately, Shaw stepped down as President three years ago, allowing my mom to be elected in his place. He still serves as a special advisor, but at seventy-three, his health is fading fast. And ever since my mom took his office, the bags under her eyes have only continued to get bigger.

  The air was cold and brisk as I stepped outside. The very first shreds of light were beginning to color the sky, and as I headed down the steps, two silhouettes greeted me in the darkness, not one.

  Crap, I thought miserably.

  I recognized them both instantly. One was Navid, complete with his M4 and military gear. The other was Alec.

  He did this sometimes, like a pop quiz. He’d join us for the morning run to check on my progress and explain how I was doing everything wrong.

  As I trotted up to the pair of them, Alec turned to Navid and asked him, “Like this? Always?”

  “I’m not late,” I answered before Navid got a chance.

  Alec checked his watch. “Actually, you are,” he said and shoved a weighted backpack in my hands. It was a forty-pounder this time. “If you’re late in Basic,” he added, “you know what happens?”

  “Something horrendous, I expect.”

>   He shook his head and informed me I was going to find out. “Your log says you ran the southern route in forty-seven minutes yesterday,” he said. “Today we’re doing it in forty.”

  “But we’ve got the packs,” I said.

  Alec glanced at me. “You’re right. Thirty-nine sounds better.”

  With that, he took off at a strong pace.

  I sprinted for a second to catch up and fall into step behind him. Navid, toting his rifle, followed a few yards behind.

  We headed down Capitol Boulevard toward the river. A couple blocks south, we passed the tallest building in Boise. Somehow, despite all the fighting of my parents’ generation, it remained intact. I’d read somewhere it used to be an office building for a large bank, but now it was one of the many hydroponic towers supplying Boise’s food. In fact, it was the first hydro-tower ever constructed. Or at least, converted, from its previous state. These days it only grew corn for bio-fuel, while most of the food towers were located closer to the water along the Greenbelt. In the darkness, I caught Alec salute a handful of Boise Defense Force soldiers who were on guard duty. The hydro-towers were the most heavily protected buildings in the city, even more than the Capitol House.

  I glanced to my left to see Henry IV trotting beside me. He looked happy as a clam. For the past couple years, I always took him on my runs. He was a source of inspiration. I figured if that pile of matted dog hair with a tongue hanging out could run six miles without breaking a sweat, then so could I.

  A quarter mile later, we were running through the market along the water’s edge. It was mostly an impromptu smattering of thin metal shacks and stalls, selling everything from fresh produce to bits of tech salvaged from the Deadlands. The variety of fresh fruits and vegetables was usually decent, but the availability of good tech was always slim. Mostly, the selection fell into one of two categories: pre-modern and modern. The pre-modern stuff was ancient, and it consisted of things like my wind-up alarm clock or a lamp rigged for bio-fuel. The modern tech was more impressive. It was the stuff that was made in the years right before the War, such as wearable smart devices and THPs, which technically stood for “tactile holograph projectors.”

  As we veered left through the market, heading toward the river trail, we passed through Baker’s Alley. The warm aroma of grains and baking bread filled the air. This was always my favorite part of the run, even if it only lasted a few seconds. It made me feel better to see I wasn’t the only one awake at such a ridiculous hour. The bakers must have been up at 4:00 a.m.

  Soon enough, we were leaving the market behind, heading east along the trail that ran parallel to the river. In the Old World, the Greenbelt was a public park where people rode their bikes and had picnics. Now, it served as the main roadway for the hundreds of farmers working the hydro-towers. There were dozens of the tall, fragile-looking buildings; mostly made from whatever materials the engineers could get their hands on. In fact, the same was true for most of the post-War buildings in Boise, giving the entire city the appearance of a patchwork quilt.

  Looking to my right, I could see the river in the dim light as it flowed along with us. I imagined in the past its banks would have been lined with trees and bushes, but those were long since burned. Instead, there were large turbines every few dozen yards, spinning with the current and generating electricity. Most of the juice went to the hydro-towers, but a bit was directed back to the city.

  Minutes rolled by as we continued to huff our way toward the eastern perimeter. Eventually we would get within sight of the Security Wall, but we wouldn’t go all the way to it. We’d turn north about a half-mile out before curving west and heading back home. According to Alec, the run was exactly 6.1 miles.

  Alec.

  I looked at him running a few feet ahead. In a lot of ways, we were complete opposites. He’d always been the star athlete, standing easily at 6’4’’ with lean muscle and broad shoulders. By comparison, I was short at 5’9” and fairly scrawny. Plus, he’d always been the type of guy that everyone looked up to, with a square jaw and a straightforward manner. I, on the other hand, was a bit of a nerd. I was that guy who secretly liked studying for tests, especially anything to do with history. I was obsessed with it. In school, I knew more about the Old World than most of my teachers, which was striking since most of them were alive during the Old World. I’d often spend hours consuming any books I could find, and when I was nine, my parents let me buy a solar panel to run a beaten up laptop. It had a small library of old movies, and I watched them all a dozen times. The trouble was, the solar panel could only store enough power for about fifteen minutes, so watching a movie took roughly a week.

  We had run about two miles at that point, and the heavy pack was starting to bite into my shoulders. I could feel the weights inside it banging into my spine with every step. I hated running with a pack. I didn’t see the point. Even after I graduated high school this year and started my mandatory service in the BDF, ordinary soldiers never went beyond the Security Wall. Only the Special Missions guys like Alec did that, and I certainly wasn’t going to be one of them. So why did I have to sweat my ass off for miles and miles with a backpack loaded with weights? It didn’t have any relevance to my life right now, and it wouldn’t be necessary later on.

  I sped up to jog next to Alec. He was setting an inhuman pace, and I knew within a mile or two I’d likely collapse.

  “So why today?” I huffed, breaking the silence. I was curious if he had a system for when he decided to come torment me.

  He glanced in my direction. “You need to get faster.”

  “I keep up with everyone in Boot,” I said.

  In the dim light, I caught a smirk on Alec’s face. “Keeping up with a bunch of softies at Boise Prep isn’t an accomplishment, Michael.”

  There it was. Boise Prep. There were only two schools in Boise, grades K-12, and Boise Prep was mine. The other was Boise Academy. The common misconception was that Boise Prep was for the spoiled “rich kids,” while Boise Academy was for the tough “poor kids.” As far as I could tell, this was largely untrue, but the stigma stuck like a nail to both schools.

  Alec had gone to Boise Academy. His reason was that it had a better football team, something I also believed was untrue.

  “Alec, you graduated five years ago. You’re still miffed at Prep?”

  “I’m miffed at you. You could be pushing yourself harder and you’re not.”

  If I weren’t so out of breath, I would’ve sighed. “Alec, it’s 5:00 a.m.,” I panted. “What more do you want?”

  “You could carry a pack every morning, you could beat your previous times. But you choose not to.”

  “You want me to carry a pack every morning?”

  “No. I want you to want to.”

  “Well, I don’t want to.”

  “Hence why I’m here.”

  Alec suddenly picked up the pace and pulled several yards ahead of me. It pissed me off. I put as much muscle as I could into my step to catch up, but it wasn’t easy. I had to run flat out for at least a minute before I was beside him again. By the time I did, each breath felt like acid in my throat. Alec, however, barely looked to be breathing at all.

  “Getting tired?” he asked easily.

  I swore I could hear a trace of laughter in his voice.

  “You know,” I gasped. “I read something about reverse psychology once.”

  He looked at me. “And?”

  “It isn’t helping.”

  Alec chuckled—a very unusual occurrence—and responded, “I’m glad to hear that. But we’re taking a detour.”

  Before I had time to react, Alec cut across the trail and headed toward the buildings on our left. They were mostly apartments, but the ones with guards outside were clearly warehouses.

  I scrambled to stay with him as he headed into an alley. Glancing behind me, I saw Navid was still with us. He’d slung his rifle onto his back, getting ready for what was coming. Alec liked to call it “real running,” under the r
ational that if we were truly in a firefight, we wouldn’t be jogging along an open trail. Instead, we’d be sprinting between buildings, climbing fences and hopping off rooftops.

  Alec’s first obstacle was just ahead: a six-foot chain link fence. Even with his pack, he practically cleared the thing like it was a shoebox. All it took was a jump, a light push with his hands, and he swung his legs over the top, landing squarely on the other side.

  A couple seconds later, I jumped and grabbed the fence as well, though my performance wasn’t quite as graceful. My body collided with the chain links, knocking the wind out of me, before I could do a quick pull up and amble over the top. By the time my feet were on the ground, Alec was already climbing a rusty fire escape onto a roof.

  Good God, I thought, wheezing with every step.

  Back on the trail, I was already exhausted. Now, my heart was pounding straight out of my chest.

  I jumped to grab hold of the ladder and pull myself up. The climb wasn’t easy with the pack, but I managed to grab the second rung and keep going. By the time I was on the roof, my arms were jelly. I checked to make sure Navid was still behind me. He was jumping to grab the first rung.

  Alec, meanwhile, was already sprinting toward the edge of the roof and didn’t appear to be slowing. I hated this part. Without breaking stride, he leaped off the edge and onto the next rooftop. Once he landed, he stopped to face me. It was clear he expected me to follow.

  I felt a burst of adrenaline as I broke into a sprint. I’d made the jump a few times before, but the last time I did it, I came within an inch of falling. And considering that the drop would’ve probably killed me, it left me a little rattled.

  The edge was coming up fast and my mind was reeling. In that last second before jumping, I could see the width of the gap and the depth of the fall. I remembered almost slipping the last time and … I hesitated.

  The sudden jerk in motion caused me to lose my footing. I stumbled to the edge and pushed off with everything I had. But the angle was wrong. Even in that split second, I knew I wasn’t going to make it. It happened so fast; it was hard to compute. All I knew was that I was falling and I was screwed.