Dispocalypse

  Dispocalypse

  M.A. ROTHMAN

  Copyright © 2019 Michael A. Rothman

  Cover Art by M.S. Corley

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

  All rights reserved.

  Technothrillers:

  •Primordial Threat

  •Darwin's Cipher

  •New Arcadia (coming in 2020)

  Levi Yoder Thrillers:

  •Perimeter

  •The Inside Man

  •Never Again

  Epic Fantasy / Dystopian:

  •Dispocalypse

  •Seer of Prophecy (Coming mid-2020)

  •Heirs of Prophecy (Coming mid-2020)

  •Tools of Prophecy (Coming mid-2020)

  •Lords of Prophecy (Coming mid-2020)

  500 Years after the Great War

  “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”

  — Albert Einstein

  Contents

  Prologue

  Dream Walking

  Here, There, and Back Again

  A Different Me

  A New Time and Place

  The Academy

  A New Workout

  The Referral

  The New Student

  Tristan

  A Surprising Outcome

  New Memphis

  Horses, Taekwondo and Some Advice

  An Irate Customer

  A Soldier’s Trial

  A Spring Break Like No Other

  A Fevered Dream

  Betrayal

  Raz

  The Longbeards

  Ramai

  A History Lesson

  A Thousand Miles Away

  An Unexpected Reunion

  Crossing The Barrier

  Park Family Reunion

  A New Start

  A Rescue

  A Prophecy Realized

  Dreamwalking

  Author’s Note

  Addendum

  About the Author

  Prologue

  Ramai smiled at the class of two dozen younglings, none of whom had yet grown their first whisker. “Okay, children, who can tell me how long our people have been in Eer Ha’ehven?”

  They all raised their hands, and he pointed to a young girl with black hair and bushy eyebrows.

  “Gneiss, go ahead and give the answer.”

  Gneiss stood and cleared her throat. “The Great War was five hundred and nine years ago, and we have been in the underworld ever since. It took the first people almost one hundred years to clear the stone and fight off the creatures guarding their lairs. We finished building the city of stone, now known as Eer Ha’ehven, and lit the first forges exactly four hundred years ago.”

  Ramai clapped politely. “Exactly right.”

  Just as he was about to go into a lesson on the aboveworld, someone burst into the classroom, panting.

  “Elder Ramai!” The elder student looked like he was about to pass out from lack of breath.

  “Calm down. Breathe deeply. What is it?”

  With one arm braced against the wall, the student bent almost completely over, his beard scraping the floor as he gulped air like a fish out of water.

  “Well?” Ramai grumbled impatiently. The children all looked curiously back and forth between the newcomer and their teacher.

  “The Asherah… it’s come to life.”

  Ramai’s eyes widened, and he snapped his fingers at the elder student. “Finish teaching this class.”

  With a mere thought, Ramai fled to the distant chamber of the Asherah.

  Chill fingers of excitement crawled up Ramai’s back as he stared at the gnarled sliver of acacia root in his hand. It had long been foretold that the lifeless wood was a fragment of the last Asherah, a tree of life, but he’d always had his doubts. Nonetheless, Ramai had kept the root for countless centuries as he waited… hoping the prophecies would come to fruition.

  The time had come.

  No longer was the wood bereft of life. It pulsed with a warm glow, and Ramai instantly knew. It was as if he’d heard the thread of prophecy snapping into place.

  He closed his eyes and sent his thoughts across the underworld, silently calling for another to join him in his quarters.

  Ramai had been known as many things throughout his long life. He’d been a master of the Luminatum, a secret society that had practically been destroyed during the Great War. He had been the leader of the travelers. And now he was the Elder of a hidden society of refugees. Refugees who’d survived in their underground world for over five centuries.

  He waited patiently, raking his fingers through his white beard. The smell of sweet incense burning somewhere nearby and the warm pulse of the acacia in his hand reminded him of the day, centuries ago, when the first prophecy of the tree had been dictated to him.

  “On the day the acacia once again glows, know that a seed imbued with the Creator’s power has been unearthed, and all the Prophecies of the Tree may soon be fulfilled.”

  Ramai sensed Liam’s presence on the other side of his door. Liam was a shadow walker, one of the few among the underworld’s inhabitants who was immune to the poisons aboveground. Liam and his sister would be able to safely get Ramai what he needed.

  The shadow walker seeped through the crack under Ramai’s door, then materialized a few feet away from where Ramai sat.

  “Master Ramai, you summoned?” Liam’s brown eyes flashed above his mahogany beard.

  “Liam, it’s time. I’ll need you and your sister to scout aboveground and tell me what you see in the dead city.” He held up the glowing root, and Liam’s face paled. “The dream walker is now among the children of Adam. She’s somewhere up there.”

  Liam stood agape for a moment. Ramai’s long-time student was well-versed in the prophecies. He knew what the coming of the dream walker meant.

  “At last…”

  Niamh sat cross-legged on the moving platform, clinging to the handles welded to its floor. The platform was traveling at breakneck speed, and the wind raced through her hair.

  The engineer stopped pumping on the lever that kept the railcar moving and instead pulled on the brake. The vehicle slowed, the end of the tunnel looming ahead. When it came to a full stop, the engineer hopped off, pulled out a heavy metal key, and stood by the barely detectable outline of a door set into the rock wall.

  He turned to Niamh and her brother. “You know that once you go through this door, I will bar you from reentry? I’m not allowed to—”

  Liam waved dismissively, walked past the engineer, and phased out of existence.

  The engineer blanched. “T-that’s not possible…”

  Master Ramai had given a mission to Niamh and her brother, and there was no time to be subtle.

  Niamh touched the power that had blossomed within her as a child. Her form lost substance, the world wavered, and she, too, phased into shadow.

  Only with Niamh’s force of will did she manage to keep herself from drifting aimlessly. She pushed herself toward the door, found the tiniest cracks around the edges, and shoved her way through.

  She was immediately struck by the odor of rotting vegetation, a familiar metal tang, and above all, she sensed the sickness that reigned in the aboveworld. But she didn’t fear it. As shadow walkers, she and Liam were immune to the poisons of the aboveworld. So long as they remained out of phase, nothing could touch them.

  Liam smiled as her incorporeal image approached, but Niamh could tell he was nervous.

 
“Let’s get this over with,” she said. “I’m not fond of being up here either.”

  They stood in a forest, just outside the hidden door that connected the underworld to the aboveground. Niamh was thankful for the thick canopy overhead; she’d never quite understood how those living aboveground didn’t get dizzy without a ceiling over their heads.

  She and Liam began jogging to the east, toward the ruins of an ancient city, two wraith-like figures flitting through the trees. Niamh kept an eye out for the teeming creatures that would attack her or her brother if they could, but all she saw were small groups of stooped wildlings hunting for game.

  Ramai taught that the wildlings had once been human, but it was hard to imagine that when looking upon them. The toxic miasma of the aboveworld had turned them into pitiable creatures with scarred, hairless, and green-tinged skin. They acted more like beasts than humans, and they were known to eat their own injured and sick.

  A bellow echoed through the forest, and the nearest wildlings scattered. The sound of breaking branches announced something was directly ahead. Something big.

  Liam hissed a warning, and he and Niamh veered to the northeast. The thud of heavy footsteps followed them, along with a strange clicking sound.

  Niamh glanced over her shoulder to see what followed them.

  It was a wildling, but it was the largest one she’d ever seen. Most wildlings were about four feet tall, her height, and the tallest were around six feet. This once was a good eight feet tall, and heavily muscled. But it wasn’t the beast’s size that sent shivers through Niamh—it was that, where the wildling’s eyes were supposed to be, there was instead a pulsing layer of skin over empty eye sockets.

  Yet somehow, the eyeless beast chased after them.

  How?

  While they were in their shadow state, the other wildlings had been completely unaware of their presence. Yet this blind hulk was tracking their every move.

  Something zipped past and splashed against a tree trunk just ahead of Niamh. She skirted the mucous-like secretion and raced ahead as fast as her legs could carry her.

  Luckily, she and her brother had the greater speed. Soon the sounds of the strange beast faded, and she and Liam slowed to a stop. Fire burned in her chest, and Liam’s breathing sounded labored.

  Still, Niamh kept her ears attuned to the sounds of that beast. Nothing had ever been able to touch them, but that giant wildling… she wasn’t so certain. It had scared her, and that was something she wasn’t used to.

  “What the hell was that?” Liam gasped, trying to catch his breath.

  Niamh shook her head and shrugged. She motioned toward the east, and they resumed their jog.

  After another fifteen minutes, the woods thinned. Ahead of them, sprawling across the gray landscape, were the overgrown ruins of the dead city. Mounds of concrete and brick marked where buildings had stood, and broken spires and metal girders were all that was left of skyscrapers that Niamh had been taught were originally over a thousand feet tall. A breeze carried the smell of something burning.

  “I wonder what this place was like before the Great War,” Niamh said.

  Liam shrugged. “Ramai said that this was a place of beauty once. A place of inspiration.”

  Niamh’s gaze settled on the giant face of a woman, a statue lying half-buried in rubble. It left her with a feeling of dread. “That was then.”

  Her brother motioned toward the north, where mile-high glaciers encroached on the horizon. “What do you see?”

  Putting her hand to her brow, Niamh scanned the plains. Even at this distance, she could see them: a column of perhaps a hundred wildlings marching northward. A separate column of nearly equal size was heading south, sunlight glinting off their armor.

  “The wildlings,” she said. “They’re becoming more organized.”

  Liam furrowed his brow and nodded. “The patrols, they’re practicing…” He winced and said with an ominous tone, “They’re building an army.”

  Kazix scanned the horizon to the south as some of the northerners went on patrol. He’d just returned from a collection run, leading some of Lord Tan’s troops to the southern barrier. It was a privilege few could claim among Lord Tan’s followers.

  A southern child whimpered, and Kazix sent it scrambling toward a dead end, one of many within the web of icy crevasses known as Metzada, Lord Tan’s fortress, hidden within the mile-thick cover of ice.

  “Shut up, or I’ll give you something to whimper about.” Kazix shivered in the cold and spit at the icy ground with disgust.

  He pulled a ragged sheaf of parchment from his tunic—contraband taken from one of the prisoners he’d sent to the feeding pits. The words on the paper weren’t written in the craggy handwriting of the southerners, but in the way of the old world. It was said the ancients used magic machines to write.

  Using the lessons of his youth, Kazix sounded out the words.

  The war is over, and everyone lost. It has been twenty years since the last of the bombs dropped, and the climate has changed drastically. The snows in the north glow with an eerie incandescence that some claim is proof of radiation. We have no Geiger counters, so there’s no way to know.

  This manual typewriter is the only thing I’ve found from before the war that still works. I’m shocked that the ink still runs, especially with how cold things have become.

  There are reports of mutations in the northlands. New York is now reported to be a wasteland of monsters. I hope these rumors are unfounded, but I don’t dare go north to find out. The newest governor—I don’t remember his name, they change so often—has even put out a call for all the remaining building supplies. Supposedly they’re trying to build a barrier to wall us off from the northern states.

  To me, it seems like a waste of time and resources. We have enough trouble just finding food to eat. We’re starving, civilization has collapsed, and we may not last another generation.

  And to think, I was a senator before the war, representing millions. I doubt there are even a million people left on this ruined planet now. Though there’s no way to know. We live in a medieval world now.

  It’s time to adapt or die.

  Kazix frowned. What was this war this senator person mentioned? He sounded crazy. This must be a fake story. Why would a southerner have such a parchment other than to maybe discredit Lord Tan?

  With a surge of anger, he shredded the parchment and scattered it into the wind.

  The child was still huddling near the wall. Kazix kicked him, sending him sprawling onto the permafrost floor. “Move it, or I’ll feed you to the trainees.”

  The southern child was no more than three years old—not old enough for training, but perhaps still young enough to survive being turned into one of Lord Tan’s stalkers. The child’s face was blistered and his skin raw—he was still suffering from the transformation that occurred whenever one of the weak southerners entered the lands of the north. His new form would have more stamina, strength, and purpose. He would become a northerner.

  As the runt scrambled ahead, Kazix muttered, “Bastard doesn’t know what he’s in for.”

  Kazix tasted the coppery stink of blood in the air as he approached the door at the end of the hall. The toddler had stopped in the open doorway, so Kazix gave him another swift kick, sending him flying into the stalker nursery.

  A burly attendant grabbed the child and tied him to the altar, complaining all the while. “This one’s old. His skull isn’t so soft anymore. The Lord will be angry if we waste his powers on one who’ll not survive the transformation.”

  Kazix watched with morbid fascination. The stalkers were a recent invention of Lord Tan’s, and Kazix had never actually witnessed one being created before.

  The attendant then started up the bellows, blowing air into a brazier holding a long metal rod. Sparks flew up from the coals like lightning bugs.

  A second attendant, his hands coated in a waxy substance, flipped open the metal latch to a large wooden chest. From insid
e, the throbbing glow of two gems cast the nursery in an eerie red light.

  “Is it ready?” A third attendant stood at the altar, holding the child’s head still while he squirmed against his bonds. “The boy’s old. The scoop must be very hot, or he won’t survive the implantation.”

  The attendant manning the brazier withdrew the curved white-hot metal on the end of a long pole. It resembled a spoon with razor-sharp edges. Lord Tan had designed it himself. It was the perfect instrument to take out the eyes and break through the soft bones in the back of the eye sockets.

  Kazix watched the macabre scene with fascination.

  The second attendant—this must be the Gem Keeper, Kazix realized—retrieved the gems from the chest. His wax-coated hands hissed, bubbled, and popped as the glowing gems pulsed with a life of their own. Leaning across the altar, he held the gems just above the child’s face.

  The child grew still, as if mesmerized.

  Just as the attendant with the metal scoop approached the child, a tickle on the back of Kazix’s neck alerted him that Lord Tan was searching for him.

  Though he would have liked to stay and watch, he didn’t hesitate to turn from the nursery and jog to Lord Tan’s throne room. The gurgling screams of the child echoed in the hallway behind him.

  The throne room was nearly a hundred feet long and twenty feet wide. Sconces all along the ice-covered walls held shimmering crystals of orange fire that shone only when in the presence of Lord Tan. Currently the hall was bathed in a warm orange glow.