Ravaged: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller (Taken World Book 1) Read online

  Ravaged

  Taken World - Book One

  Flint Maxwell

  Copyright © 2018 by Flint Maxwell

  Cover Design © 2018 by Carmen DeVeau

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permissions email: [email protected]

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

  The author greatly appreciates you taking the time to read his work.

  To you, the reader.

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  The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  1

  The Arrival

  The Ravaging, as the end of the world would come to be known, began on a night like any other, and on this night, three men sat outside, laughing. It would be the last time they laughed—truly laughed—for as long as they lived.

  An old deck of cards lay on a rickety table before them. These men were Logan Harper, Derek Fritz, and Mike Ryan. Each of them wore white button-up shirts and purple vests. Each of them wore name tags over their hearts. They were employees of the tall building at their backs, the Monolith—a small arthouse movie theater in Stone Park, thirty miles south of Cleveland, Ohio.

  The time was two in the morning.

  The wind blew a cool breeze on this otherwise hot night, whipping Logan’s dark hair away from his brow.

  “How much longer you think we got?” Mike Ryan asked the table.

  Logan dealt the cards. Seven for each player. The game was Rummy 500, not poker like Mike had suggested. Neither Derek nor Logan knew how to play poker, but had Logan known, he would’ve been quite good. Not many people went through life with a permanent pokerface like he did. Besides, Rummy was a relaxing game, even Mike would’ve attested to this, and they needed a relaxing game after the shift they’d just completed.

  June at the Monolith meant Halloween in the Summer, a yearly event the theater ran for three months. Every Friday night, they showed a classic horror movie and offered half-priced concessions. Horror movies were always a big draw, and the half-priced concessions were just the icing on top of the cake.

  Halloween in the Summer had been Logan’s idea. He’d pitched it to his Uncle Tommy two years ago, when the theater looked all but dead. A new Cinemark had opened up in Northington, real nice. It had the largest screens and loudest speakers Logan had ever seen and heard. They even served ice cream, and not the cheap, plastic-wrapped kind, but the rich, creamy stuff from tubs. All types of flavors. And on Tuesday nights, a ticket was only five bucks.

  Uncle Tommy about had a heart attack when he drove by the chain one Tuesday evening. He’d said he’d never seen so many cars in one place. Logan believed him. But a thing the big chains didn’t do very often was show the classics and smaller budget films, which happened to be the Monolith’s specialty. A person could only see so many superhero movies before they were sick to their stomachs. That had been Logan’s argument, one he didn’t wholly believe, but one Tommy had eaten up.

  Tonight, they showed John Carpenter’s 1982 masterpiece The Thing.

  One of Logan’s favorites, and one of the few movies that had truly frightened him when he was younger. He’d left the concession stand a few times during the course of the showing and watched from the aisle with his lighted wand in hand. Whenever he was on wand duty, the audience would stare at him in contempt, upset because he was disturbing their experience or maybe because they thought the theater staff didn’t trust them enough to be on their own for two hours—at least that was the vibe Logan got.

  Not tonight. They were completely enamored by the film.

  Usually, his sneaking away from the concession stand would’ve irked Mike, but no one was buying snacks. No one wanted to miss a single second of Antarctic alien paranoia.

  Ah, the classics.

  Since Logan’s suggestion, business had been much better. Not great, but good. How much longer did the Monolith have before going under? He didn’t know how to answer Mike’s question, but he tried his best.

  “Couple summers, I think,” he said. That was his honest answer, his honest and optimistic answer. The reality of the situation was that they just couldn’t compete with the Cinemark.

  “But if you wanna leave so bad, Mike,” Derek Fritz said, “then go on and turn your vest in. I could use the hours. Maybe Tommy’ll make me assistant manager after Logan takes your spot.” He winked, drew a card, then laid one down.

  Mike rolled his eyes in a way that made Logan think he was trying to peek at their hands. “No, no. I couldn’t do that. I’d miss you fellas too much.” He grinned. “And that wouldn’t be too good of a birthday present for Logan here, would it? Makin’ him work a double tomorrow night.”

  “That would be the best present,” Logan replied. “Seeing you gone, Mikey.”

  Derek chuckled and nodded. It was all in good jest. Had you never met Logan before, you would think he was being entirely serious just by the deep tone of his voice, but he wasn’t.

  He picked up a six of spades from the middle pile and made a triple-six spread. Fifteen points. Way to go. He discarded a four of clubs.

  “In all seriousness,” Mike said, “I guess I’m gonna go down with the ship. A captain should do that, shouldn’t he?”

  Derek drew from the deck. He stared intently at the eight cards in his hand, then ran his fingers across the wispy beard he’d been growing for the past six months. Logan thought it looked the same as it always had, but Derek constantly pointed out places that were no longer patchy and had grown in fuller. Having just turned eighteen a few months back, Derek didn’t have much else going for him besides his beard. Sadly, that was the way it was in Stone Park.

  “I don’t understand you old guys, man,” Derek said. He settled on laying down a two of hearts.

  Logan needed it.

  “If I was here as long as you, Mike,” Derek continued, “I’d just about shoot myself.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Mike said, picking up the two.

  Dammit.

  “The world is your oyster. You can do anything. Right? That’s the kind of bullshit they’re shoveling in your ears at the high school, ain’t it? You know how I know?” Mike asked.

  Derek shrugged, but Logan knew the answer before Mike opened his mouth. He could’ve mouthed it word for word, but he didn’t.

  “It’s because it’s the same shit they shoveled at me when I was at that place,” Mike continued. He laid a spread of three twos in front of him. Fifteen points.

  Double dammit.

  “Whoa, I didn’t think the school was that old,” Derek said.

  Logan drew, got a shit card, and immediately laid it on the pile.

  “Har-har,” Mike said back to Derek. “Now take your turn, boy.”

  Derek wasn’t exactly a boy. He’d been held back one year, so he had turned eighteen early, near the end of his junior year, but compared to Mike’s fifty-plus years, Logan guessed he was a boy—to Mike, at least.

  Logan knew that De
rek had an older brother, closer to Logan’s age—twenty-seven, soon to be twenty-eight—because they’d gone to school together about a decade ago. His name was Maurice, but everyone called him Moe. He was doing a stint up in Mansfield for armed robbery.

  Probably for the best.

  Logan thought that if Moe Fritz had still been around to give his little brother advice, Derek would’ve dropped out when he got held back. Moe probably would’ve then roped his little bro up in some illegal scheme that landed them both in prison; yeah, it was probably for the best that Moe wasn’t around.

  Mike didn’t think there was much hope for anyone in adulthood, but Logan knew better. Derek still had a chance, and Logan would like to see him take that chance and get out of town, away from his deadbeat drunk of a dad, away from his older brother whenever he got out.

  Derek took his turn.

  Stone Park wasn’t a bad place, though. It was where Logan had met his wife, Jane.

  “I’m getting out of here as soon as I graduate,” Derek said. “One more year.”

  Good, Logan thought.

  “If you don’t get held back again, boy,” Mike said, snickering.

  “Better watch it, old man,” Derek said with a grin. He looked up at Logan. “What about you, Logan? You ever getting out of here?” The question caught him off guard. Derek must’ve seen the look on Logan’s face because he quickly added a “Never mind.”

  At six-six and over two-hundred-thirty pounds, Logan was not a guy you wanted as an enemy, but the simple truth was this: Logan never made enemies. People treated him with respect, and he returned the favor. Even the occasional asshole that strolled in through the Monolith’s front doors, drunk or stoned or upset about ticket prices, wasn’t worth it to him. He’d take their berating with that same stoic face as always. Of course, if any of these people ever threw a punch…well, that would be a different story. But so far they hadn’t, and Logan believed they were both better off for that.

  The night suddenly became quiet. For the first time since they came out, the bugs had silenced, the wind had stilled, the leaves no longer rustled. Derek shifted uncomfortably in his chair. Though the guys didn’t realize it at the time, the silence was the cause of their increasing anxiety; not Derek’s question.

  “No, it’s okay,” Logan said after a moment.

  He had gotten married last year to his high school sweetheart. They’d bought a house about two miles from the Monolith; nothing big, nothing fancy, but enough for the two of them, and for a baby, which had always been a part of their plan—hopefully in the near future. Jane wanted to wait until she was done with nursing school and established, and Logan respected that. But some mornings, he woke up with pain in his back and no energy, and he’d think, I’m getting old. The thought of not being able to play catch with his son or dolls with his daughter nearly broke his big heart.

  The answer to Derek’s question: He didn’t expect to go anywhere anytime soon, but there was once a time when he’d wanted to. Oh yes. Growing up on a steady diet of horror movies and comic books, a million different careers had rolled through Logan’s mind. These he kept secret. Stone Park was not a place one could wear their dreams out in the open, especially when they were as fantastic as Logan’s once had been.

  In Stone Park, you worked a blue collar job, you got off around six, and then you went to the Lounge and drank silently. That was the way of the world here. Had Logan’s uncle not owned the Monolith, he’d be driving a forklift nearly sixty hours a week and pissing his paycheck away on Budweiser down at the Lounge, instead of scraping gum off of the bottom of movie theater seats. So he counted himself lucky…for now.

  If he was being totally honest, tonight’s showing of The Thing had brought some of those old dreams back to the surface, gnawing and poking and prodding to get out.

  During one of his ‘breaks’ when he’d managed to slip away from the concession stand and into the packed theater, Logan made sure he timed his escape just right so he could stumble upon the defibrillator scene. This scene had been seminal in developing Logan’s love of horror. The good Dr. Copper tries to save a presumably dead Norris using a defibrillator. As soon as he thrusts the pads down, Norris’s chest opens, showing sharp teeth that clamp onto the doctor’s arms. With the armless doctor now out of the way, the open torso is able to spout its viscera and goop and all things unholy upward on the ceiling. But the best part, in Logan’s eyes, is when the detached head of Norris sprouts spidery legs and crawls away into the shadows, all while Kurt Russell watches in utter shock and horror.

  Logan had stayed for the entire scene, and Mike didn’t even notice.

  Maybe it had been a mistake, because it brought up a longing he hadn’t felt since his ambitious teen years, his face buried in special effects magazines, his eyes red and bleary from staring at the small television Tommy had gotten for him one Christmas. There was nothing quite like movie magic. It was what Logan wanted to be a part of: that magic. He didn’t care for acting—though he certainly had the looks for it—and he didn’t know lickety-split about writing or telling a story (at least not on a conscious level), and though he possessed more leadership skills than he’d give himself credit for, he’d never think about directing, either. What he wanted was to be part of the talented group of men and women who created Things and dinosaurs and werewolves and vampires and all else that went bump-in-the-night. But the fact that he wanted to get his hands dirty with fake blood and slime instead of grease and oil was close to sacrilege in Stone Park, Ohio.

  “I think I’ll stick around town for a while yet,” Logan finally answered. “Go down with the ship, too, I guess.”

  “Attaboy,” Mike said, clapping Logan on the back. “Your uncle would be proud.”

  “Thanks,” he said.

  Logan took another card. It was an ace, his third one. He laid them down. Forty-five points. He had all but won this round. Couple more like that, and he’d have the game wrapped up with a pretty bow on top. Mike would be eating crow, and Derek would be shaking his head and whispering about how Logan must hide the aces up his sleeve. Like always.

  “Is the bet still on?” Logan asked. “If I win, you two have bathroom cleaning duties for the next three weeks?”

  Mike and Derek looked at each other and then looked at the three aces in front of Logan.

  “Deal’s a deal,” Logan said. “We shook.”

  “We’ll just make Derek do it,” Mike said. “Sound good?”

  “No, I did bathroom duty last weekend,” Derek protested.

  “Well, I’m shift leader, and you gotta listen to what I say, boy,” Mike argued.

  Logan grinned as this little argument went on. It seemed that their card nights often turned out this way. There was no stopping it, so Logan figured it was best to sit back and watch it. Entertainment, right?

  He was leaning in his chair, the plastic creaking under his bulk, when he saw the trees beyond the back lot shimmer with a violent red light.

  “What?” he whispered.

  “I’ll race you for bathroom duties,” Derek was saying. “Footrace, like in the olden days. Wasn’t that how you guys settled things?”

  Mike curled his hands into fists. “No, boy, this was how we settled things. What do you say?”

  “I say I don’t wanna get tagged for elder abuse. Got enough on my plate as it is. With Moe in the system, they won’t just slap me on the wrist, you know.”

  “How sweet of you,” Mike sneered.

  The leaves shimmered again. Logan stared intently at the red afterimage the movement left behind. Am I imagining this? Am I just tired? Or am I going crazy? He brought his hands up to his face and knuckled his eyes hard enough for little blue pinpricks to float into his field of vision.

  That was when the ground started rumbling. The card table shook, its metal legs banging hard against the concrete. Logan’s three aces slid off the surface, floated to the concrete. He reached for them desperately, but a sudden rush of warm wind blew them aw
ay. Logan stood up, and the wind blew his chair out from under him, too.

  As the sky cracked and the trees parted and a terrible buzzing filled his head, the fallen aces were the furthest thing from his mind.

  2

  Running

  The forest parted. Trees cracked and split. Sounds like warfare shattered the night’s quiet. Logan would’ve covered his ears had he not been so enraptured by the large shadow hanging over all of Stone Park.

  In the woods beyond the Monolith, the sky had been replaced with something darker. It was diamond-shaped and big. Very big. Logan didn’t go into the city much, since he wasn’t a fan of all the traffic and loud noises, but he had seen a skyscraper on more than one occasion—who hadn’t?—and this diamond-thing looked like it could fit at least three skyscrapers within it, no problem.

  “Are you seeing this?” Mike asked. His voice was low, almost a whisper.

  Logan’s head was craned upward. So was Derek’s.

  “What in the good God?” Mike breathed again. He turned toward Derek. “Did you spike our drinks or something, boy?”

  Derek didn’t answer. At that moment, he couldn’t speak.

  “Did ya?” Mike continued.

  “No,” Logan answered for him, speaking with a finality that only Logan Harper could. “I got the drinks, Mike.”

  “Then explain that.” Mike pointed to the diamond shape, the shimmering blackness.

  “I can’t,” he said.

  As it turned out, no one could.

  “D-do you feel that?” Derek asked. He had taken a few steps backward, to the Monolith’s ‘Employees Only’ door.

  Logan could feel it. The ground was thrumming, as if deep below them, a large engine was revving to life. “The vibration?”