7th Son: 7 Days (A Prequel to the 7th Son Trilogy)

By J.C. Hutchins

7th Son: 7 Days is a prequel anthology to J.C. Hutchins’ award-winning thriller trilogy 7th Son.

Set two weeks before the trilogy’s extraordinary events, these seven short stories reveal the lives of seven seemingly unrelated men. But the challenges they face — and the threads that connect them — are more complex than they'll ever suspect.

Each story stars a unique "John Michael Smith." Witness criminal profiler Dr. Mike's quest to hunt an unstoppable serial killer. Watch blue-collar musician John realize a lifelong dream. Ride shotgun with USMC captain Michael on a dangerous black ops mission in the Middle East. Behold the worldwide influence and wrath of deranged computer hacker Kilroy2.0 ... and more.

7 Days is a perfect introduction to the 7th Son universe. Meet the Beta clones — before they knew they were clones.

• Language: English
• Publisher: J.C. Hutchins
• Release date: Dec 15, 2012
• ISBN: 9780988772007

Book preview

7th Son: 7 Days

A Prequel Anthology to the 7th Son Trilogy

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this anthology are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Lyrics to songs Winter Love and Rockefeller Center copyright © Matthew Wayne Selznick / J.C. Hutchins

All rights reserved.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Copyright © 2012 by J.C. Hutchins

www.jchutchins.net

Ebook Design by DarkFire Productions

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Published by Canonical

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First Ebook Edition: November 2012

Table of Contents

Monday: Jack

Tuesday: John

Wednesday: Kilroy2.0

Thursday: Dr. Mike

Friday: Michael

Saturday: Jay

Sunday: Father Thomas

A preview of 7th Son: Descent

Also by J.C. Hutchins:

7th Son: Descent

7th Son: Deceit

7th Son: Destruction

7th Son: Obsidian (edited by)

Personal Effects: Sword of Blood

Personal Effects: Dark Art (with Jordan Weisman)

Monday: Jack

When the world went to hell, Jack Smith went to the park.

He did this back in 2001, when mass murderers crashed airliners into the World Trade Center towers. He did it again weeks later when a bioterrorist mailed anthrax spores to politicians and media-types. He wasn’t persuaded by the government’s public motives for invading Iraq in 2003, so he visited the park regularly then too, sitting at picnic tables, puzzling over the state of our little blue marble, how things had gotten so damned wrong so damned fast, and how powerless he felt amidst it all. In those early years here in Tucson, Linnell Park was a haven, a space away, a locale where he could twist, turn and examine his anxiety like a Rubik’s Cube—questing for meaning, rationality, and consistency in a world that had soured on such things.

This connection between park and peace was a primal one; when the Challenger space shuttle blew apart in 1986, Jack, then nine, had screamed, gobsmacked, as the tentacles of flame, debris and smoke snaked across the classroom television screen. After school, his father Hugh had taken him to a park in their hometown of Indianapolis, and there they’d talked, and Jack had tried to understand, and hadn’t. But parks were now and forever refuges for the man.

The visits to Linnell Park had been troublingly frequent lately—even before today. October had been a bad month. Kalajian.

November was supposed to be better. The universe had other plans.

Jack sipped bitter-but-hot convenient store coffee, munched mindlessly on his second KitKat (he was a nervous eater, an incorrigible sweet tooth, a bad habit he’d picked up in college; behold the ever-growing belly and Charlie-Brown-round bearded mug as evidence, Your Honor) and watched his girls dash across the landscape of park grass. For now, they were more interested in chasing each other and singing than swinging. He happily obliged them.

The twins were giggle-chanting lyrics from a James Brown song; Jack recently introduced the Godfather of Soul to the four-year-olds, and had been delighted by their delight. I got ants in my pants and I need to dance!, they were squealing now as they ran, their brown hair burning amber in the late evening sun.

Jack smiled. His heart ached for them, awed by their bliss.

A boy their age, Jack thought. A boy their age.

Yes. The world had gone to hell, again. The only explanation for today’s news was its cornerstone inexplicability, its impossibility. It was a transmission from a graveyard place, a universe where things like this happened all the time. But not here.

Not here, he whispered. He sipped his coffee, grimaced, pressed his slipping wire-rims back to the bridge of his nose.

This morning, U.S. President Hank Gator Griffin had made a stumping appearance at a Kentucky college, and a child—a child—had slit open the man’s throat with a switchblade. Griffin died within minutes. The kid and his parents were locked up, Vice President Hale got a promotion, the TV networks and the Internet were ablaze with up-to-the picosecond coverage of the fallout. Jack had seen today’s assassination footage more times in the past eight hours than he’d seen the Zapruder/Kennedy film in his entire life: Griffin lifting the child, kissing the boy on the cheek, and then moving from the camera to pass the kid back to his mother, his lean-shouldered back to the video camera, and then, the child’s hand held high—by all appearances a triumph in the making—a sunlight glint of silver, the world unhinging, the boy’s grinning face now spattered raspberry red.

Impossible. It was at fundamental odds with the joy unfolding before Jack here, and the goodness he knew coursed throughout the world. Why just yesterday on NPR, some priest got the Weekend Edition royal treatment for getting druggies off the streets of his economically depressed town. It wasn’t about religion for that dude, or selling God to the addicts. It was about—

Daddy! Swinging now! Carrie cried.

Jack looked up, saw her waving a finger at the park’s swing set. The girls were identical twins, but most of their similarities stopped at the skin. Carrie was the more impulsive of the pair, eager to move on to new things more quickly than her sibling. He glanced to Kristina. Ah. Case in point: She’d found a stone in the grass, had lifted it up, and was gazing at the critters squirming beneath. The 60-degree weather hadn’t sent these guys deeper underground. Kristina was the patient one, already intensely intent, probably destined for science like her dad. The bugs had quickly bored Carrie. She worked from her gut, took after her mom.

He stood, coaxed Kristina over the to the set—she cleverly bargained for time on the nearby monkey bars in exchange for swinging, which Jack quietly marveled at—and gave them gentle pushes when they asked, relishing in the peace here, far from the news and noise and punditry and rewind-play-rewind-play horror of Griffin’s murder.

For a few minutes, the world made sense again. He loved his daughters even more for this gift. They righted him.

His cell phone rang. He stepped from the swings, checked the caller ID and flipped it open.

Hey babe, he said. How’s the fort? Nice and quiet? Hope you turned off the TV.

"Jack, Lisa said. Her voice was nearly a whisper, but it was raw and desperate. Jack, he called."

Who?

"Him."

His grip tightened on the phone.

When?

Just now.

Jack took another step away from his daughters. Kristina looked over her shoulder, perplexed—she knows something’s wrong, ever-perceptive little one—and he forced a smile, flashed a thumb’s up. Kristina watched for another moment, then went back to swinging. Beside her, Carrie kicked her legs forward, heading higher.

Higher! she declared, as if on cue.

Christ, you’re kidding, Jack whispered back. He scratched his beard with his free hand, nervous; pressed the phone closer to his ear with the other. He turned around, eager to keep the girls from this. The setting sun glared at him, from the horizon. A silhouette of a water tower shimmered, picturesque. The gloaming would soon come.

Jack, Lisa said. Jesus,