Euphoria-Z

Euphoria-Z

LUKE AHEARN

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. To obtain permission to excerpt portions of the text, please contact the author at [email protected].

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher/author Luke Ahearn.

Disclaimer: The material in this book is for mature audiences only and contains strong content.

Copyright © 2014 Luke Ahearn

All rights reserved.

ISBN-13: 978-1497497382

ISBN-10: 1497497388

DEDICATION

Julie, Ellen, and Cooper.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

These four individuals have done an outstanding job.

My words may be few but my gratitude and praise are immeasurable.

Reader, D. M. Wolfenden, author of
Behind Blue Eyes

Reader, Lin White of Coinlea Services

Editor, Kira Rubenthaler, Bookfly Design LLC

Cover Art/Design, Steven J Catizone

One year ago…

“We are coming for you, you bastard!” The shout echoed through the forest. They’d been stalking him and now they were very close, but only because he’d allowed it.

Cooper had decided when and where to make his stand. He remained calm, waiting patiently for them to come to him. He slowed his breathing and remained perfectly still.

They were hunting him in one big group, all eight of them, trying to scare him and flush him out. But he knew they were scared of him. He could hear it in their voices—the tense whispers, the angry orders.

Do they really think I’m dumb enough to face all of them at once?
He was going to do this Rambo-style and pick them off one by one.

“We know where you are, man!” A different voice, closer to him.

Know where I am? So ridiculous,
he thought. One of his hunters fired a few shots.

“Save your fucking ammo!” the leader screamed.

Cooper hugged his gun close to his chest, vertically so his body hid it from view, and pressed his back against the giant tree. He was deep in a primordial forest. The waterfalls, colossal fir trees, large ferns, and moss-covered rocks were beautiful but also made for excellent concealment.

Sweat trickled down his back and legs. Something tickled his neck, but he ignored it, hoping it wasn’t a biting insect. The coarse bark clung to his gear. A movement to his right caught his eye, but he remained as still as death hidden between two large ferns.

His heart raced. Eight to one odds were insane, but he was determined to walk away from this alive. He let one enemy pass him by, then another, and then two more.

The attack stunned them. He dropped three of them before they could even figure out where he was. The fourth made an attempt to return fire but took one square to the chest for his valor.

Cooper halved their group in seconds and was sheltered from the other half by the giant tree. He smiled as the remaining four panicked.

“Get back here, damn it! He’s right there!”

Cooper heard at least two of them running away and chuckled.
If he’s yelling at them, he’s not looking for me,
he thought. He leaned out and took a quick shot. He hit the faceplate of the leader’s helmet. He was actually aiming for the center of mass, but a headshot made him look way cooler.

“Fuck!” The teenager pulled his helmet off so he could watch the rest of the battle. He was amazed and a little frustrated. Cooper always won at paintball, but this was ridiculous. Eight to one. Unbelievable. He would have accused him of cheating if there had been even a remote possibility that Cooper could’ve cheated.

“Come on, he’s right behind that tree.”

“You are dead, Harlan,” Cooper said calmly.

“I’m a zombie.”

“Zombies can’t talk.” Cooper smiled. He could hear the other two trying to circle around and flank him. There was one more behind him and to his right, unless Norman had learned to fly. Norman was incapable of walking silently.

“Rush him, Fatty!” Harlan yelled.

“He’s going to shoot me,” Norman whined.

“Not if you shoot him first.”

Cooper hated that everyone called Norman Fatty. It was just mean. Everyone got along, but kids could still be immature and cruel.

“Norman, is your gun pointed at me?” Cooper spoke to the trees, making his voice sound as if it came from everywhere.

“Um, no.”

“It should be. Aim it right at the tree. If I come out from either side, you can easily shoot me.”

“You won’t be mad?”

Jeez, Norman,
he thought. “I’ll be dead! You’re a great shot. Just because you can’t walk ten feet without resting doesn’t mean you can’t win this.” Cooper smiled. He liked to dig at Norman sometimes, but both of them knew it wasn’t ever to be cruel.

“Ha, ha.” Norman raised his gun and zeroed in on the tree. He knew Cooper would help him, but he wouldn’t hand him the victory. Cooper would do his best to win, and he probably would. Norman actually felt scared.

“Don’t forget…wait.” Cooper fired and hit one of the stalkers that had gotten too close. The other stalker hung back, far back, and took a few blind shots at him.

A paintball zoomed over Norman’s head. “Hey, friendly fire! Watch it!”

A faint “sorry” came from the distant undergrowth.

“Norman, don’t forget to take cover,” Cooper coached him.

Norman stepped a few feet over and behind a thin young pine.

The dead leader guffawed, “You need a tree a shitload bigger than that, Norm.”

“Shut up,” Norman said, but even he saw the humor in it—he was easily four times wider than the tree.

“You look like an elephant hiding behind a stop sign.” Harlan was his own biggest fan and laughed the hardest at his own jokes.

“At least my nose doesn’t look like a penis,” Norman chuckled. He’d been waiting days to use that one. He knew Harlan was sensitive about his nose. That shut him up.

Cooper was smiling too. Harlan could be such an idiot.

The second stalker suddenly charged, firing blindly. Cooper watched calmly as paintballs hit everywhere but near him. The stalker ran out of ammo about thirty feet from Cooper.

“Oh shit.” He threw himself to the ground dramatically. Then, “Ow.”

Everyone chuckled at that.

Cooper walked quietly toward the stalker, keeping the tree between him and Norman. The stalker was frantically trying to pour more paintballs into the hopper of his gun when Cooper appeared before him. The failed reloader slumped in resignation.

Cooper squatted, placed the barrel of his gun a foot from the stalker’s chest, and whispered, “I will make this quick and painless.”

“OK.”

“Any last words?” he asked.

“Come on, just do it.”

“Would you like to leave a message for your loved ones?”

“C’mon, dick, shoot me.”

Cooper fired and skulked back to the tree.

“It’s just you and me now, Norman. Are you ready?”

“Yeah, bring it on.” He tried to sound confident, but his voice cracked.

“Are you sure? What side of the tree will I come from? Am I still behind the tree? Maybe I’m behind you.”

Norman wanted to turn his head to look, but he knew Cooper was just trying to mess with his mind. He kept his eyes locked on the tree about three feet above the ground. He saw movement to one side and ducked as a paintball whizzed past him.

“Good eye, Norm!” Harlan yelled.

Norman looked back where he’d just seen Cooper. He scanned the area, no sign of him. He was startled as a loud
thwack
made his chest plate jump. A green splat appeared right over his heart. He was amazed to see that Cooper had managed to move several yards away from where he had been, completely undetected.

“Aw, man.” Norman acted disappointed, but he was actually elated. He’d never come this close to winning at paintball, which was a huge deal when Cooper was stalking you.

“Well, well, well.” Cooper strutted up to Harlan as the rest of the group joined them. “I think someone owes me a pizza.”

They pulled off their helmets and removed various pieces of plastic armor as they headed toward the long road that took them deep into the national forest. They laughed and joked, having a typical carefree day, as they tossed their gear in the vehicles. Later that evening they would meet at the beach and build a fire.

In a few weeks, Cooper would start his senior year, but he was already looking forward to college. He would miss these times, but he also couldn’t wait to get away from the small town and out into the world.

But he would never make it to college. Almost one year from the day he would face real killers using real guns, and he would again be alone.

Nine months ago…

“All I’m saying is I don’t want to walk in there with my dick in my hand,” General Mason Schaumberg growled. He towered over a small brown woman in a lab coat by at least a foot. He stood well within her personal space.

“At least you wouldn’t have much to carry.” Dr. Sarin smiled and held her ground. Dr. Aimee Sarin was of Indian descent but was a third-generation American. She held a PhD in astrophysics and wasn’t fazed by the macho asshole act—it was actually cute when he tried it.

The general smiled. “So that’s a yes? You are sure these calculations are correct?”

The doctor just rolled her eyes. “What do you think?”

The general and the doctor, that’s what they called each other, even outside of work. They’d worked together for the last two years and had started dating just over a year ago. Dr. Sarin was in charge of Seeker, a telescope on the dark side of the moon that fewer than fifty people knew existed. General Schaumberg was in charge of Dr. Sarin—at least on the job, and even that was iffy.

Seeker was far more powerful than any telescope ever built, and she was in charge of it, which put her in the position of being the first person in the world to know a potentially devastating asteroid was heading toward Earth—even before the US Congress knew who funded the project.

“And you’re not coming in with me?” the general asked, knowing the answer.

She hated these briefings and today had a legitimate reason not to attend. “I am sure you can handle speaking to a room full of men that could destroy your career with a phone call.” She smiled at her dig.

“You always have a way of making me feel better, thanks.” He saluted her with a smirk as he walked toward the briefing room.

Normally, she would be at a briefing of this importance, but she had more work to do on the calculations. It was too early to be 100 percent certain the asteroid would hit, but there was a strong chance it was going to. She hoped she was wrong.

She had been excited when she was selected to lead the team that operated the secret telescope. She was blown away by how powerful it was. But once she saw the actual number of objects in space that posed a significant threat to the earth, she started drinking after work so she could sleep. Within months she was very close to destroying her career. The general had helped her get back on track, and a relationship developed.

It still bothered her that the public was told they were safe from asteroid impacts, but it would be too upsetting for most people to deal with the truth. In this case, ignorance was bliss. But worst of all was that even she with the powerful telescope didn’t know of every object hurdling through space with Earth’s name on it.

She watched the general enter the briefing chamber, confident as always, and felt a twinge of guilt that she was so happy it was him and not her.
I’ll make it up to him with dinner. I might even watch that moronic show about the motorcycle gang and pretend to like it,
she thought.

Three months ago…

The general and the doctor were in the back of the pressroom doing something they never did at work: they held hands. When he squeezed, her fingers mashed against the engagement ring, and she shook her hand so he would ease up.

A hush fell over the room as the president of the United States stepped up to the podium, holding a single sheet of paper.