Stadium: A Short Story (2 page)

Never had she wanted to hear the coyotes so badly. The psychotic animal warbling and occasional yips of pain would tell her what the strangers were running down, running over, and shooting to death. At least she would know.

Breathing in a controlled rhythm that felt less and less false, she walked to the outer gate and checked the lock. There was no reason to allow the
Lord of the Flies
children inside her stronghold. They were beyond saving. She didn't want them. She wanted solitude until the end time.

Benji, her two-hundred-pound Mastiff leaned against her hip and she dug her fingers into the thick brindle neck. The dog followed her to the inner gate. She scraped him off her hip and closed the chain-link behind her.

Benji didn't argue. Benji didn't whine. Sadness coated the animal's big brown eyes. K. K. expected to see fear but didn't.

"Don't let me down, big guy," she said.

Benji stared back with a complete lack of understanding.

Something moved in the night.

K. K. backed away from the gate and went into her tent to sleep with her shotgun.

The next morning, Benji was AWOL. K. K. whistled, then moved along the inside of the inner fence. Her world was growing smaller. She whistled again, walked again, and slapped herself for being stupid. If the Dobermans couldn't stop this thing, what could Benji do? Make the ghost killer feel guilty?

K. K. walked, searching with all her senses for evidence of her last friend on Earth. She moved faster. She ran. When she stopped, it was with the certainty she had missed something. There was nowhere to hide between the inner fence and the outer fence. She'd made sure of that by removing evidence of past camp-grounds, raking away dying weeds, and filling fire pits with sod cut from the end zone. She stopped. A minute later, she eased forward under the sky as big as the universe, whistled, and called for the big love-that-mutt Benji. She walked and ran the inner perimeter again and again like the moon and the sun chasing each other through the hazy sky.

The long hiss of static marked the end of the sound system. By the time she noticed the silence, there wasn't even static to prove the PA horns had ever worked. She never found the Mastiff, although there was an empty dog grave she had not dug.

A man laughed at a volume she barely heard. When she ran the perimeter in the opposite direction, she saw nothing but blowing dirt and heard nothing but the rhythmic clinking of her fences.

"A mother watches over her children," the man said.

Quickly, recklessly, she narrowed her search. Standing with her fingers woven in the chain-link, her face pressed to the fence, she stared toward a corner full of tumbleweeds. What she thought was accumulated red and gold dust seemed to breathe.

And watch her.

She shaded her eyes against the rising sun.

He moved! I saw it!

Frustrated, she pulled a can of beer from her belt bag and drank it as she stared at the only possible hiding place in no man's land.

"Can you come out already?”

The pile of dust and tumbleweeds twitched. Her heart stopped, then raced with a flood of adrenaline.

A man, or most of a man, stood. Knives, hatchets, handguns, and a sniper rifle rode comfortably on his gear, the burlap-covered stock of the rifle peeking over his shoulder. Prosthetic legs below the knee resisted the grace of his movements. An eye patch covered the left side of his face.

"The hardest part," he said, "is not coughing." Then he hacked black phlegm on the red and brown dirt.

"You're sick," K. K. said as she studied his emaciated form. Scars interrupted his beard and his skin — probably as fair as hers — peeled from exposure to the sun. He had sewn native scrub brush into his clothing. Chalky tan dust, rare in these parts of red minerals and sand, lightened the area around his eyes. Other parts of his face were darkened with dirt or grease or dried blood.

"I am a master of camouflage," he said. "I could teach you to do it." He lifted the sniper rifle as she considered him and ordered her thoughts.

"You killed my dogs and now you're going to kill me," she said.

He faced the outer gate but spoke to K. K. "I could have cut a hole in your fence and let them in. Thank me for that."

"Why didn't you?"

He ignored her.

She moved closer to the inner fence and watched him set up for a long shot toward the surrounding wasteland. Without military experience, there was no way to evaluate his skill until he killed, but he seemed professional. Lying prone, he spread his prosthetic legs wide and flattened them to create a stable shooting platform. His body sucked down to the dirt and he stopped breathing.

"What are you doing?" Her voice went a little too high and wide.

He fired the first shot before she heard the motorcycles and ATVs approaching from a distance. The strangers drove the children ahead of them as always. The difference was she could see the murder games. A bullet took the lead rider off his vehicle as though a wrecking ball had struck his chest. A new rider moved to the front, engine revving like a demon in the distance.

She opened the inner gate and crossed no man's land. Energy tingled up her spine as she came as close to a human as she had in months. He didn't move. Perhaps that was why she risked contact. The nearer she came, the older she thought he was. The Armageddon Cloud spared the young and the old, but there were exceptions. K. K. didn't consider herself old, but here she was. Several times on the way to the man's side, she hesitated.

"No closer. I need to concentrate," he said.

K. K. nodded, then shook her head at her foolishness.

"What do you know about this motor gang?" he asked.

"Nothing," she said. "They kill coyotes at night."

The man chuckled. "Look at them,” he said. Then he moved his left hand without changing the attitude of his body or his rifle at all. He patted a pair of binoculars.

K. K. didn't need his help, not now. She saw what he meant. Boys and girls rode the four-wheelers, motorcycles, and dune buggies. Some of them couldn't be older than eleven or twelve. A few were teenagers.

"They are the same as the Mother's Brood," she said.

The man tilted his head a fraction of an inch, as though he was almost turning to look back at her. "Is that what you call her?"

She didn't answer.

"Interesting." He focused on the motor gang, then squeezed the trigger.

K. K. assumed he pulled the trigger, because the big rifle recoiled into his shoulder. Red dust exploded under the end of the rifle barrel.

She looked to see if he hit but couldn't tell. If a rider was down, they had left him or her behind.

He fired again and again and again, then stopped. "They will be at your fence soon. It is time for you to decide."

K. K. retreated to her inner sanctum and locked the gate. She felt awkward and foolish. The man had been a soldier. A chain-link fence would never stop him.

"Thanks for killing my dogs, you fucking asshole."

He got up and looked back then. His face was sad, sun-burned, and painted with self-made camouflage. "They were good dogs."

"Are you going to kill me too?" she asked.

"Are you a good dog?"

His words hurt. She ran to her tent and cried for her dogs, crumpling inward like she hadn't when the end times began. Watching a town of people die outside of her various strongholds, losing valuable stockpiles to earthquakes and animals, setting her own broken leg — none of it had made her cry like this. She wondered what happened to her son and daughter on the East Coast or her mother and stepfather wherever they had been at the end, but had never cried for them. That was like admitting they were dead.

The soldier ignored her emotional Armageddon. She knew because he was shooting with his big rifle, killing one tribe of kids before they murdered their pedestrian rivals.

Time passed.

The shooting stopped.

A single motorcycle vanished into the sunset.

The Mother and her children pushed on the outer gate until the soldier man walked with his prosthetic legs to open it.

The Mother's voice cut through K. K.'s anguish over the death of Titan, Balrog, and Benji — the last of her dogs. Titan had been gentle until pushed into a corner. Balrog, the mongrel Wolfhound, had snarled as the stranger in black moved in for the kill. Benji went silently in the night, probably licking the sniper's face even after the boot knife plunged into his throat.

K. K. pumped a shotgun shell into the Mossberg, aimed, squeezed the trigger, then released the pressure as the Mother spoke again.

"He is my guard dog," she said, moving between K. K. and the man. "He's the last man on Earth, or this continent, I bet. Let us in. You don't want to be alone."

Despite all that had happened K. K. knew what she wanted. "Take your children and go. Leave your guard dog. I have a grave to fill."

"What kind of person are you?" the Mother asked. "We are the last people for a thousand miles!"

The man looked over the Mother's shoulder. He didn't move. He held her gaze.

"You don't feel guilty for wanting to be alone?" he asked.

K. K. glared, then relaxed. Breathing seemed easier. "No."

Several moments passed.

"Come on, Mother. There are more defensible places between here and Wichita."

"I'm not your mother," the Mother said.

"That's what I call you," he said, guiding her toward the restless mob of hungry children.

"Since when?" the Mother asked.

K. K. held a warm, unopened beer in her left hand as she watched them move away. Her right hand hung on the strap that held the shotgun over her shoulder.

A shooting star slashed open the sky that night. A pair of coyotes howled. There had been hundreds of the things out there. That night and the next day and the night after that, there was no music on the PA, no dogs begging for scraps.

There was, however, the sound of engines at the edge of hearing and something that might have been a rifle shot.

Earth Fleet never forgave Kin Roland’s failure at Hellsbreach. Changed by captivity and torture, hunted by the Reapers of Hellsbreach and wanted by the Fleet, Kin hides on a lost planet near an unstable wormhole.

When a distant space battle propels a ravaged Earth Fleet Armada through the same wormhole, a Reaper follows, hunting for the man who burned his home world. Kin fights to save a mysterious native of Crashdown from the Reaper and learns there are worse things in the galaxy than those hunting him. The end is coming and he is about to pay for a sin that will change the galaxy forever.

Kin Roland survived the Battle of Crater Town. He managed to keep his friends alive, although most remained at his side on Crashdown when the safe course would have been to evacuate with Earth Fleet. Kin even found the girl of his dreams.

Surviving Earth Fleet justice and a Reaper vendetta was only the beginning. Now Kin has real trouble.
 

With the Grand Army of the Mazz Empire descending on the planet to destroy ancient enemies and Reapers sweeping across the landscape leaving terror and death in their wake, Kin learns the truth of his supposedly invincible enemies. The largest military expedition in history isn't that of a conquering force. The Mazz are on the run—fleeing extinction and Kin knows desperate enemies are dangerous.

Kin will find himself in a position no one expected. He'll define humanity with his next choice, or doom them eternally.

With the fate of humanity at stake, there is only one way for the Traitor of Hellsbreach to make things right.

After a battle that erased people from existence, Kin Roland faces betrayal, intrigue, and the ultimate decision. Reapers, Slomn, and all the deadly monsters of Crashdown have not prepared him for his return to Hellsbreach. He swore to never again set foot on the red wasteland. The truth awaiting him in Blood Meridian Canyon will force him to a desperate alliance. A creature that even the King of the Reapers fears will drive Kin across the Red Plains of Sorrow with the fate of humanity in the balance. There has only ever been one decision for Kin Roland… the right decision.

Weapons of Earth is the final book in the Chronicles of Kin Roland trilogy, a military science fiction adventure that fans of the movies Aliens and Predator will love. This series is the for anyone who has dreamed of suiting up in a Starship Troopers
dropship
and assaulting a planet with a band of brothers ready to snatch victory from impossible odds. If you enjoy books by Robert A. Heinlein, Frank Herbert, John Steakley, John Ringo, and David Weber then you’ll love this book they inspired.

Buy the climactic conclusion to the Chronicles of Kin Roland trilogy today!

(And please don’t forget to leave a review. Your recommendations not only help readers find great books, but help authors write better stories!)

The longest journey begins with a single step, or a high-altitude insertion from the extreme upper atmosphere. What could possibly go wrong? Aefel 70391, a proud member of the First Armored-infantry Lightning Division, must find the Emperor’s assassin on a forgotten planet populated by blood thirsty Vikings.

Once, long ago when wealthy adventure tourists finally admitted they could not travel back in time, the Grendel Corporation purchased planet 0473829 for cheap and populated it with historical reenactment volunteers. Expenses soared. Bankruptcy followed. Technology went dark. The Earth System Commonwealth Military slowly withdrew protection from the economically and strategically insignificant project.