Project Brimstone Read online

  PROJECT

  BRIMSTONE

  Asura Press books by Paul B. Spence

  The Awakening

  The Remnant

  The Fallen

  The Madness Engine

  The Endless Realms

  Project Brimstone

  PROJECT

  BRIMSTONE

  Paul B. Spence

  Asura Press

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

  PROJECT BRIMSTONE

  An Asura Press Book

  Kindle Edition / 2017

  Copyright © 2017 by Paul B. Spence

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.

  ISBN: 978-1-929928-31-6

  www.paulbspence.com

  [email protected]

  For those who didn't make it.

  Chapter One

  Michael Harrison dreamed of death.

  How long he'd lain there, he couldn't remember. In fact, for hours he wasn't even sure where he was. He floated between the waking world and that of dreaming, between the world of the living and the abyss of the dead. His memories merged with the present, and it was only the overwhelming smell of sickness and decay crawling into his nose and mind that forced him fully awake, retching. He felt terrible. His body ached, and he was damp from fever sweat. He groped for the water bottle he knew would be next to the bed, but it bounded away from him, bouncing across the floor with a hollow thud and clatter.

  Dull grey light, storm-light, filtered in through the curtains over the bedroom window. He could see the dim shapes of other people in the room with him. Forcing himself up on one elbow, he surveyed the room, willing his stomach to settle, his head to stop spinning.

  There were at least six bodies in the room, swollen, grotesque parodies of people he had known as friends, their features twisted in paroxysms of suffering. It was warm in the house – he could hear the furnace – and the bodies were beginning dissolution, which suggested they had been dead for a couple of days.

  He remembered feeling ill and coming into the room to lie down; that had been Christmas Eve. At the time, he'd attributed it to jetlag and too much spiked eggnog with dinner. Obviously it had been something else. He must have lain in the bed, feverish and unconscious, while the others succumbed to the same illness that had struck him down. Why he had survived when the others died, he didn't know. Considering the symptoms, and looking at the bodies, he couldn't think of what illness could do this. It was unlike anything he'd ever heard of.

  Part of him wondered how he could be so clinical about it all, but he knew this was just his military training taking over while the rest of his mind gibbered in a corner. It was always that way, in the end. It took only a single bullet to turn a friend into steaming meat, and this wasn't the first time he'd survived when others had died around him. The loss of friends would build until he couldn't take it anymore, and he'd eat that special bullet, but not yet. First, he needed to discover if anyone else was still alive.

  Harrison fumbled on the bedside table for his phone. The bright light of the display hurt his eyes. The phone still had power, but no signal.

  "Figures," he muttered through cracked lips.

  Suddenly the dimness of the room, the foul air, and the rotting corpses were too much for him. He found his boots and left the room as quickly as he could manage, careful not to step in the islands of putrefaction that had formed around each of the bodies. He closed the door behind him to cut off the sight and smell.

  He'd mourn later.

  The curtains in the living room were open. Snow was falling outside. The thick, grey clouds told him little about the time, and the clocks in the house were lying. They were all blinking the same message to him. The power had to have been out at some point. His watch and phone told him it was 6:57 p.m., three hours' difference from the clocks. What that meant, he didn't know.

  He checked the other rooms, but everyone in the house was dead.

  There had been twelve people at the party, including him. There were eleven bodies in the house, so no one had left the party alive. Harrison picked up the receiver on the house phone, but the line was dead, hissing with a menace he couldn't quite convince himself wasn't real.

  He suddenly wondered if everyone in the whole town was dead. It seemed too quiet for early evening on the Sunday after Christmas. There should have been people making their farewells in neighbors' driveways. There should have been cars in the streets.

  But all was quiet.

  Must have been a flu. A damned nasty one.

  Too nasty, another part of his mind prompted. A flu that kills everyone in a town that rapidly has to be engineered. Well, not everyone in town. I'm still alive, he thought, quickly followed by, You're losing it, man, talking to yourself like this.

  He drank a bottle of water and thought about his options.

  His coat was by the door, keys in his pocket.

  I can't leave. I might be a carrier.

  He couldn't leave the town, but he had to notify somebody: his commanding officer, the Center for Disease Control, somebody. He shrugged into his coat and left the house. His rented Jeep Wrangler hardtop was still parked in the driveway, covered with snow. He rushed through the cold and damp to the Jeep, climbed in, and checked again for cell reception.

  "Negative," he muttered.

  He started the Jeep and turned on the wipers.

  The cell tower was missing.

  He remembered seeing it as he had pulled into the drive on Christmas Eve. It stood half a klick to the west of Richards' house, visible over the rooftops. It wasn't there now. He wasn't mistaken; a big, ugly tower like that one wasn't something you forgot. It wasn't something that blew down in a storm, either. Those towers were made to stand up to tornadoes.

  His friend Thomas Richards had gotten married that fall, much to everyone's amusement. They'd been sure old Thomas was going to hang on to bachelorhood longer than anyone. But he hadn't; he'd gotten married, bought a nice house, and settled down in his small hometown in Indiana. Thomas invited his few friends and relatives over for the holidays, friends who didn't have any other family, like Harrison. Richards' wife Judy was – had been, he corrected himself – pregnant, and they were celebrating the new-life-to-be.

  Harrison got leave at the last minute and flew into Indianapolis. He rented the Jeep for the short drive south to Brownsville. Richards was ecstatic that Harrison was able to make it. It had been years since they had spent any time together. The other members of the old team, Gottlieb and Collins, had arrived the day before. That meant only Delling was missing; he was a Deputy US Marshall, working some case up in Seattle that he couldn't get away from. Delling never had been fond of Christmas anyway.

  Richards and Harrison went back further than any of the others. They'd served together in the first Gulf War, 101st Airborne, and then in the 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment. They'd had a party when, against the odds, they had both made it through the selection process. Together they hopped all around the globe, dodging bullets. Richards retired, and Harrison moved on to training counter-terrorist units, but the team kept in touch.

  Now Richards and the others were dead.

  Someone was going to pay for that.

  Someone was going to die for that.

  Chapter Two

  Harrison fought down his rage and summed up the facts, wishing the pain in his head would ease. The cell tower was down, the landlines were dead, and a super flu had taken out the entire town. These things could
not be mere coincidence. The trouble was, he couldn't think of anyone who could pull it off. The Islamic State? The North Koreans? And why Brownsville, Indiana?

  That stopped him. Why Brownsville?

  Harrison couldn't think of any reason for the town to have been attacked, other than that it was an oil and gas reserve for the Midwest. Still, it wasn't that important. He turned off the Jeep's engine, slid down in his seat, and unlocked the center console. His Sig P220 .45 caliber pistol was where he'd left it, along with the extra loaded magazine. It was cold as hell but would work just fine. He chambered a round, disengaged the hammer, and holstered the pistol. The Jeep was too conspicuous; he needed to be more careful. Whoever was responsible for all of this could still be around.

  Movement in his side mirror caught his attention, and then headlights. An olive-drab-and-black camouflage M1025 Humvee pulled up to the curb at the end of the street. A four-man Marine fire team in standard gear piled out; one stayed in the Humvee. Their uniforms were in the old digital camouflage pattern that Harrison loathed. They shouldn't have been wearing that pattern, though; it had been discontinued. There was something else wrong with the way they looked, but he couldn't put his finger on it.

  Harrison didn't signal his presence right away. The wrongness of the Marines' appearance made him think they were imposters. Harrison was in jeans, a soiled green henley, and a black leather jacket, about as good for hiding in the snow as the soldiers' obnoxious green camouflage. He disabled the interior light, slipped out of the Jeep, and rolled under it into the cold, wet embrace of the snow.

  The sky was turning dark, and the air grew colder as the sun set. He wouldn't be able to lay under the Jeep for long, not in his current condition. He crawled through the snow to the neighbor's hedge and worked his way between it and the wall. The Marines were talking amongst themselves. It was English, but Harrison couldn't make out what they were saying.

  One of them stayed to guard the Humvee and driver while the other three prepared to enter the house, carrying an odd canister. Harrison couldn't imagine what they could be looking for. If they were searching for survivors, why the guns at the ready? Why no ambulance?

  It wasn't just their odd behavior, though. Something else was wrong. The dated equipment could be due to them being reservists, he thought, or something... else. They didn't look scared, and they should have been. He crawled as close as he dared, and then he realized they weren't wearing biological-warfare protection. Could they be unaware of the contagion?

  He started to shout a warning, but then he saw the flag patches on the shoulders of their uniforms. It wasn't a US flag. This flag bore a single, large star-shape with smaller stars in a circle around it. He didn't recognize the symbol. They weren't Marines; they were imposters. Militia? Domestic terrorists?

  Harrison began to shake.

  What the hell is going on? he thought. Am I really still so sick that I'm hallucinating? No, everything was all too clear. So it was real. Who the hell would impersonate Marines, and why? And why call attention to it by messing up a flag any school kid could call them on? They obviously weren't worried that anyone could see them. Harrison wasn't feverish anymore. His head hurt, and he was cold as hell, but he was clear-headed enough to know imposters when he saw them.

  The three men entered the house, weapons ready, carrying the odd canister. A few minutes later, he heard them shout something about a live one. Harrison's hopes began to rise. He wasn't the only survivor. Then he heard the distinctive brrttt of an M4 carbine firing.

  Whoever these guys were, they definitely weren't Marines. Not real ones, anyway. And the bastards had just killed someone who had survived the virus. That made things easier for him: if he waited in the snow, they'd find him, so he had to make a move.

  Right. It's now or never.

  He waited for the guard at the Humvee to look away, and surged up out of the hedge. Harrison shot the imposter twice in the head as he ran toward the Humvee. Blood, shards of bone, and grey, spongy brains spattered the side of the vehicle.

  The man in the driver's seat was still fumbling for his sidearm when Harrison shot him in the face and neck.

  Now you've done it.

  He clambered into the Humvee and flipped open the top hatch. The impostor Marines were just exiting the house when Harrison brought the M2 .50 caliber machine gun to bear on them.

  Chapter Three

  Harrison climbed out of the Humvee to examine the bodies of the imposters. He ignored the rising steam and the butcher-shop smell. The imposters each had a full set of regulation gear that looked authentic. The central star on the flag patch wasn't a star; it was an eagle.

  He didn't know what that meant. Maybe a militia group? He hadn't thought the anti-government groups in the US were so bold that they would attack a town. What could they possibly hope to gain from an attack on this scale? It had to be a large-scale insurrection, but where had they gotten their hands on an enhanced bioweapon?

  Harrison grabbed the sat-com satchel from the back of the Humvee, and a M4 carbine, the odd canister, and a radio from one of the dead men outside. None of the men had wallet or ID, which he found odd. They didn't even have dog tags – not that he'd expected any, not really. There was something about all of this that just didn't add up. Where did domestic terrorists get hold of so much military hardware? How had they managed to attack an entire town and not have the military come down on them like a ton of bricks?

  He didn't have time to search every pocket, though; he was sure somebody would have heard the machine gun. He knew they would be coming in force. He hoped they didn't have access to anything heavier than the .50 caliber machine gun. If this was the first wave of some kind of insurrection, they'd have aerial support.

  And that would really suck.

  He trotted across the yard to the adjacent street and entered a house that had all the signs of having already been visited by one of the death squads. That way, he wouldn't leave tracks leading to the door, which he eased shut and locked behind him.

  The smell of death was stronger in the house. The sole occupant had fallen asleep under a heating blanket and never woke up. The extra heat had sped the purification. It was a miracle the house hadn't burned down. Harrison unplugged the blanket, then closed the bedroom door and stuffed towels under the edge. A can of air freshener he found in the hall closet helped clear the air and settle his stomach. The phone in the house was dead, as well, but he'd expected that.

  The refrigerator held unspoiled food, beer, and bottled water. Harrison was tempted by the beer, but knew he was already too dehydrated from his fever for that. He wolfed down a couple of cold ham sandwiches and drank three bottles of the water. He also downed a fistful of ibuprofen from the medicine cabinet. His head wouldn't stop pounding.

  The radio traffic was normal-sounding military chatter. Harrison didn't find it very enlightening. The enemy had found their dead team. A search for the attacker was on. They were assuming whoever had done it was trying to make their way out of town.

  That would have been just plain stupid, Harrison thought. Where would I go?

  The odd canister held vials of fresh blood. What that meant, he had no idea, but he sealed it back up and set it with the rest of his confiscated gear. If the terrorists wanted that blood, he'd keep it from them. Maybe his people would be able to analyze it. If this plague was nationwide, they were in trouble.

  Harrison expected the sat-com to be a standard model, but it wasn't... quite. It refused to handshake with any of the satellites he remembered. Either the enemy didn't have the right codes, or the satellite was some foreign knockoff. Either way, it wasn't going to work. It did remind him a bit of coms he'd used a couple of decades before. It was outdated, but it should have worked. It was the first sign he'd seen of the enemy using military surplus.

  He searched the house next door and found a portable shortwave; the occupant of the house had been a ham radio operator. It took him a few minutes to adjust the unfamiliar dials, and in t
he end, he had to move the antenna to face out a window, but he managed to connect to a tower outside of town and use the repeater to get an auto-patch through to his base at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. It was awfully public communication, but he needed support.

  A junior officer answered the call. "This is Lieutenant Dutch. How can I help you?"

  "This is Major J.M. Harrison. I need to talk to Colonel Jackson. This is an open channel over shortwave. The matter is urgent."

  "What? I'm sorry, sir, but the colonel is currently unavailable."

  "Son, I don't care if he's taking a shit or in bed with the president's wife. You get him on the phone now!"

  "I'm sorry, sir, but he left implicit orders..."

  "Look, lieutenant, I know you're just trying to do your job, so I'm not going to take this personally. You do know who the colonel commands, right?"

  "Yes, sir. I am familiar with colonel's duties," was the lieutenant's stiff reply.

  "Then you know that when one of his men says they need to speak to him, it's important, right?"

  "I suppose so, sir, but..."

  "I'll make it easy for you, son. You get the colonel right now, tell him Major Harrison is on the line. The worst he'll do is fire you. If you don't do as I tell you, I'll do a hell of a lot worse. If I could give you the codes, I would, but this is an open channel. Have I made myself clear?"

  "Sir!" came the frightened squeak.

  The lieutenant must have heard stories about him. It wasn't that Harrison made a habit of intimidating people, he really didn't, but he didn't suffer fools. The young lieutenant was acting like a fool. How the hell did he get that post, anyway?