Sole Chaos Read online

  Sole Chaos

  William Oday

  Contents

  Extinction Crisis series

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Preview of The Last Day

  1

  2

  3

  4

  Want Books for FREE?

  Other Works

  Questions or Comments?

  The Goal

  My Life Thus Far

  Extinction Crisis series

  (Recommended Reading Order)

  SOLE CONNECTION, a Short Story

  SOLE PREY, a Prequel Novella

  SOLE SURVIVOR, Book 1

  SOLE CHAOS, Book 2

  SOLE REFUGE, Book 3

  Coming Soon!

  (Any Order Works)

  THE TANK MAN, a Short Story

  THE PLUNGE, a Short Story

  Never, never, never give up.

  — Winston Churchill

  1

  BANG!

  The forty-five caliber bullet exited the muzzle at a speed of over a thousand feet per second.

  Less than a second later, it punched through the gnarled bark of a Sitka Spruce tree , sending out a shower of splinter shrapnel.

  The splinters buried into the ear and cheek of the enormous red-haired man whose head was inches to the right of the point of impact.

  To his credit, he didn’t flinch.

  But Charlie knew that every beast could be broken. Could be trained to obey.

  He holstered the forty-five he’d taken from the hunter he’d killed the day before and spat on the glowing embers in the campfire. It hit with a sizzle and a puff of white smoke. The wind gusting over the top of the mountain peak hit the fire and the embers flared brighter.

  Charlie sucked in a deep breath of clean, cold morning air. His lungs prickled in a pleasant way. The bright scent of evergreen lingered as he let the air seep out of his nose and mouth.

  Even after what must’ve been the war to end all wars, a body could still get a breath of fresh mountain air. Only on a slice of heaven like Kodiak, Alaska.

  The rising sun burned orange behind the distant brown gauze curtain hiding the heavens. Been like that since the nuke went off five days ago.

  Musta been more than one. The days of dropping one nuke and that being the end of it were long gone.

  World War III had happened.

  Nothing else made sense. Not from what he’d seen going on in the town at the foot of the mountain.

  No matter. Destruction held the seeds of new beginnings. Just like a fire burning through a forest.

  He turned back to the man tied to the tree. “I get it. You’re the strong, silent type. I like that.”

  Charlie had found him half-dead and gibbering like a lunatic. Course he hadn’t found him tied to a tree. That was his doing on account of having to break him. But whereas the man couldn’t stop yapping before, now he wouldn’t say a word.

  He’d gone quieter than a nun at a nudie bar.

  Charlie strolled over to his captive with a friendly smirk hanging lop-sided on his face. “Thing is, I don’t need you to be the talkin’ type. What I need is for you to be the obeyin’ type.”

  The large man’s gray eyes flashed defiance and Charlie knew the job wasn’t done yet. Not by a long shot.

  That was fine.

  More than most, Charlie enjoyed doing things the hard way. Even when the hard way wasn’t the only way, he sometimes chose it.

  Charlie leaned in, inches from his face and looking up at an angle that would’ve put a crick in his neck if he’d slept like that. He was a big un, no doubt. “I’m gonna ask you again. What’s your name?”

  Repetition was part of the training.

  The large man’s auburn beard twitched like an overgrown bush with a raccoon running through it.

  But still no reply.

  Charlie shrugged, a silent acknowledgement that he understood the deal.

  The hard way, then.

  He lowered his right hand to the Bowie knife sheathed at his hip and unsnapped the button. In a single, fluid motion, he drew out the twelve inch blade and held it in the air between them.

  Not a flicker of fear passed through the other man’s eyes.

  Charlie would’ve hollered with approval if it wouldn’t have interfered with the training. Like dealing with the BlueTick Coonhounds he’d bred and trained since the age of eight, you had to make it clear that there was a time for play and a time for training.

  And the better a dog was trained, the more time there was for play.

  This dog had yet to be brought to heel.

  Yet being the operative word.

  Charlie passed the blade through the narrow space between their faces.

  The man’s bare chest bulged as he went for the weapon. He had no chance of actually getting it.

  Charlie had been tying knots since the age of three and he knew twice as many as any mortal man. He knew the best ones for building spring traps. He knew the best ones for stretching hides. And he knew the best ones for keeping an impressively strong man tied to a tree.

  And that was besides knowing just how much pressure to use in securing his arms stretched backward around the trunk so as to produce exquisite agony in the joints while doing no real harm.

  Pain focused the attention like little else.

  The art of it was finding the right amount of pain applied at the right moment in time.

  Now was one of those moments. It was an opportunity to demonstrate dominance. To reinforce the pack order.

  In a flash that caught the larger man by surprise, Charlie’s left hand snatched through the thicket of red hair and yanked at the man’s right ear. At the same time, the blade sliced through the air precisely where he intended.

  Right on the bridge of tissue connecting the ear to the head.

  And the razor sharp edge sliced through it like a red-hot brand through fresh snow.

  His left hand came away with the severed ear as a tiny fountain of blood spurted through the air.

  The man roared and, again to his credit, it came out thick with fury rather than fear.

  Charlie let himself grin this time. Nothing wrong with letting the man know he was enjoying himself.

  Because he was.

  Blood flowed do
wn the bearded man’s neck, shoulder, and into the thicket of hair carpeting his exposed chest. What must’ve been his shirt hung in tatters from the hardest-working belt Charlie had ever seen.

  And growing up in the Iron Mountains of eastern Tennessee where some folks thought drinking was more a lifestyle than a pastime, he’d seen more than a few.

  The only thing bigger than the one-eared man’s barrel chest was his round belly. That bulk would be a lot harder to support in this new world.

  Calories weren’t gonna be spilling off the grocery store shelves anymore.

  And that was just fine by Charlie.

  People had gone soft.

  Too much comfort and convenience.

  Well, not anymore.

  Charlie sauntered over to the fire and turned in profile so the man could see. He placed the severed ear on the flat of his knife blade and lowered it onto the coals.

  He waited patiently for the meat to cook.

  There wasn’t much meat in an ear, so it didn’t take but a few minutes on each side to finish the job.

  The rich scent of roasting flesh filled the air.

  Charlie’s stomach grumbled and pinched. He was hungry, but he was no savage. No sick and twisted cannibal type that neighbors always said was a nice young man after the truth came out.

  No, he was just a man that understood how to deal with an animal. He’d been doing it all his life and he’d never failed. Well, every once in a while you ended up with a dog that wouldn’t take to training. Those were shot.

  This one would be too if breaking him didn’t bring him around.

  Charlie hoped it didn’t have to go that way. He had a feeling the man could prove to be wonderfully useful. He was a local. And he clearly wasn’t used to being on the wrong end of abuse. So that meant others knew and submitted to him.

  There was currently an opening for second-in-command and Charlie had a hunch this behemoth would fit the bill.

  Charlie plucked the medium-rare meat off the blade and blew on it to cool it down. He glanced over and caught the man’s wide eyes. “Good. I see that I finally have your attention.”

  He kept blowing.

  When the meat had cooled enough to not scald his tongue, he tore it in half and popped a half into his mouth.

  Damn thing was rubbery as all get out.

  But he wasn’t eating for pleasure so he kept at it until he finished it.

  The man’s beard parted where his mouth hung open.

  That was a good sign.

  But the real note of progress showed in his eyes.

  The fear.

  The submission.

  “I’ll ask you again, what’s your name?”

  “Alexei. Volkov,” the man replied with a wincing eye on the side with the missing ear.

  Charlie nodded like he knew it all along and had just been waiting for the man to admit it. “Well Alexei, it’s like this. I like the looks of that town at the bottom of the hill. And I expect with all that’s going on that there’s no reason I can’t have it.”

  Alexei stared at him in silence.

  That was good. That was an appropriate time to be silent. The beast was learning.

  “I got screwed out of a million dollars. I was going to win it. None of the others stood a chance. Losing it made me very angry until I realized I’d been thinking too small. Money comes. Money goes. But power? The power of life and death over thousands? That’s the power of a king. Kings don’t need money because they already own everything.”

  He pushed the remaining meat at Alexei’s closed mouth.

  “Open.”

  Alexei hesitated.

  “Now.”

  His mouth opened.

  Charlie shoved the portion of cooked ear inside.

  “Eat.”

  Alexei closed his mouth and chewed.

  “Chew your food, now. Thirty times for every bite. Just like my Grandma Ida always said.”

  Charlie waited while he chewed.

  “Swallow.”

  Alexei swallowed and his face contorted into a grimace of disgust. He finished swallowing and spat to the side. “Who are you?”

  “Folks call me Charlie Bog.”

  Alexei’s eyes widened in horror. He muttered something through his beard. The same thing over and over, but not loud enough for Charlie to hear.

  “What are you mumbling there?”

  Alexei’s mouth snapped shut and he shook his head.

  “Speak.”

  “Chernobog.”

  “Chernobog?”

  Alexei nodded.

  “Who’s that?”

  Alexei looked away. “You. You are the dark god of my ancestors. I know it.”

  Charlie shrugged. “Maybe.”

  Hell, who was he to get in the way of a little useful superstition?

  “Even so, that name’s a little old world for me. We’re gonna be friends and my friends call me CB.”

  Alexei muttered something, and while Charlie didn’t know much about other languages, the accent definitely had a Russian ring to it.

  “You’re gonna help me, Alexei.”

  “How?”

  “You’re gonna help me get every low life and dirtbag in town in line. I need an army of men willing to do the dirty work. And it starts with you.”

  Charlie slipped a glove on while making his way back to the fire and then pulled his knife off the coals. He returned to Alexei and offered a comforting look. “This is gonna hurt.”

  He raised the knife and pressed the flat of the blade onto the bleeding wound that used to be Alexei’s ear. Flesh sizzled and popped and the stink of burning hair filled the air.

  Alexei screamed in anguish and his head slumped forward.

  In a flash, Charlie whipped the knife at the ground. Exactly one rotation later, the point stuck into the moist ground with the blade buried halfway up.

  Charlie left the unconscious man and walked over to the nearby ridge.

  Far below was the town of Kodiak.

  Just waiting for him to take it.

  2

  FLORENCE BICKLE tapped her foot on the floor, doing her best not to notice all the glares aimed in her direction. The hum of nervous conversation echoed around the room. The cloying heat of too many bodies packed into too small a space had her arm pits sweating. The scent leaking out of her winter jacket should’ve been enough to drive people away, except they all smelled the same or worse.

  Where the hell were Earl and Jim?

  She’d promised to arrive early at the town meeting and hold two open chairs up front for them. But that was before the two old geezers decided to take their sweet ever-lovin’ time in arriving to claim the two conspicuously open spots.

  “Are these taken?” said a woman with a baby on her hip and a child clinging to the other hand.

  Flo would’ve cursed the two old men if she could’ve. But she’d never been to voodoo school or anything beyond high school. Between marrying and having a baby right out of school, opportunities and her hadn’t been on speaking terms.

  Not that she was complaining.

  Her son, Rome, was the sun in her sky.

  Sure, he had his problems. What teenager didn’t?

  But he was a good boy with a good heart.

  And she prayed to God every night that the world falling apart wouldn’t change that.

  Despite hating it, he was at home right now taking care of Bob. That alone was a testament to his character. He’d wanted to leave Bob at the hospital. And before that, to leave him bleeding out in his motel room at The Weary Traveler. And either would’ve been the smart thing to do.

  A person who’d just stolen from you and left you vulnerable in a dangerous situation didn’t deserve a second thought. Certainly not a kind thought.

  But Flo wasn’t the type to ignore someone in need.

  Most folks might’ve thought that was being a good person. With her, it was a character flaw.

  She was drawn to the wounded bird.

  T
o helping where help was needed most.

  “Excuse me,” the mother said. “Are these taken?”

  Flo couldn’t deny her. The woman’s bloodshot eyes, dirty clothes and frizzed hair made it plain as day that she wasn’t coping well with the aftermath of…

  Of what exactly none of them were sure.

  Flo yanked her scarf and purse off the two seats and was about to offer them when the woman got pushed aside.

  “Out of the way,” Earl growled.

  Jim shuffled up behind him. “Thinking of stealing the seats that was rightfully ours, huh?” The fuzzy white caterpillars he had for eyebrows twitched at the woman.

  Flo helped them both sit down while apologizing to the woman.

  The mother cast a furious look at all three of them before stomping away.

  “Thanks for taking so long,” she said. “Half the people in here want to lynch me for holding on to empty front row seats.”

  The deep crevices in Earl’s etched face shifted, like tectonic plates grinding together. “We’re old. What do you expect?”

  The caterpillars above Jim’s deep set eyes wriggled. “That’s right. We’re old and we could die any second! You young uns wouldn’t understand.”