Windfall

By Samantha McLain

The Wind swept through, shattering universes and leaving their shards to fall where they may. Timelines have no meaning. Parallel universes have bled into those closest to them. The people remaining in the here and now are left to pick up whatever pieces they can find.

Hackers can’t work in a world without computers so they have to find other ways to apply those skills. Things were going well until Kate is kidnapped and her brother Komae is forced to enlist the help of a soldier from the only branch of military that he has learned to fear.

Military black operators have little to do since the world has shattered. Mars is focusing all his energies on keeping the few remaining people that have meaning to him safe, but he can’t find the resources he needs. The places where those items were cached aren't just empty, they are gone. Gone as if they never existed, just like the majority of humanity.

Survival by any means is the only thing this group of people have in common.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Samantha McLain
• Release date: Apr 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301612970

Samantha McLain

A love of apocalyptic fiction has been with me since the 3rd grade.I love reviews. =)When I don't have time to write I get cranky.Cats have a fondness for sitting on keyboards.Coffee is my friend, but I wish it wasn't.Currently listening to a mix of Little Boots and Deadmau5.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Komae struggled as their captors pulled his sister away from him. He snarled and got another crack to the head for his trouble. Blinking back the pain he just hoped he could get his hands untied sometime soon. The metal of the wires they had wrapped around his wrists was cutting off circulation and his hands were going numb. He wasn’t sure how many times they had looped the stuff around his wrists; he had stopped counting at about twenty. They hadn’t tied Kate like that, there were so many of them that she didn’t stand a chance of breaking their hold anyway. That just wasn’t what her specialties were, that was supposed to be what his were.

The two of them had been dragged into what had been a bar at one point. The place had been cleared of most of its tables. The electric neon lights that couldn’t shine anymore from a near universal lack of electricity, were also missing, or smashed and pushed into corners. The bare walls showed lighter patches where the signs had once hung. The floor was filthy in part by some of the broken signs that had been ground into the corners. He could tell the floor was made out of wood, but the black that filled in the cracks and lines between boards made the whole thing look like one solid sheet of filth. Trash littered it, wedged anywhere a direct path hadn’t been plowed through. This place was more a den than anything else, better suited to animals than to men. The only light came from a few smoky kerosene lanterns they had sitting in corners and the gaps in the slats that they had boarded the windows over with. The light from outside would fade shortly as winter was not prone to long days. The place smelled of the liquor that it once housed and old cigarette smoke that had been banned years prior to when the Wind had hit. Well the stuff had been banned in Komae’s time, who knew when these men were from.

They hauled Komae across the floor and towards another door that looked like it hadn’t always been in the bar. It was built much sturdier then the rest of the place, made out of metal and not just old wood. The solidity of the door made it imposing in a very threatening and final way and so he dug his heels in and fought harder the closer they got to it.

Komae hooked a foot around the ankle of one of the men holding him. The man tripped and hit the floor with a painful crack to his knees that caused him to cry out. Komae snapped a booted foot out and struck the man in the face while he was still down. The man dropped face first, onto the floor. Komae spun around as the two others reached out to grab his arms again. He head butted one that got too close and was about to break the last in the trios leg when he heard the safety of a gun click off.

One of the men holding Kate had it pressed against the meat of her upper thigh. They wanted her alive, but apparently didn’t need her in one piece. Komae grimaced and Kate just met his gaze apologetically, stalemate.

"Don’t get yourself killed for me Komae." She sent him on their private link, something that they had shared since the start of their mutual career, the career that had been so drastically modified since the Wind had hit. Now they did some scavenging for people that paid in either food or a safe place to stay for a while. The pay wasn’t as good as the pilfering of info and software had been in their time, but in this time that just wasn’t an option to be found and Kate liked helping people that were hard on their luck. He knew that they reminded her of herself at a much younger age; broke, hungry and looking for someplace safe. Now they were passing that help on. Well they had been a couple of hours ago, before this hell had started.

The man that Komae had kicked did not get back up and the black floor looked even darker with the new red coating it was getting from the body he had left behind. The boot to the head had apparently done the damage that Komae had been hoping for. Komae grinned. The other two men grabbed him and forcibly walked him away from the body and through the door he had been trying to avoid. He didn’t struggle this time so the pushing they did just sped him along. The one he had head butted now had a bloody nose to show for it. Komae smirked over at him as they turned and walked out of the room he had just been left in. The man glared murder and reparation back at him. Komae wasn’t sure how many were in the building, but at least he knew they were now down by one.

He turned around and began looking for a way out before they had even slammed the heavy door closed. It clanged shut with a resounding finality that let Komae know that the door would not be the way to get out. The vaulted ceiling in this room reached up into the second story of the bar. There was no sign of why they had a ceiling like that in what looked to him like a large closet, complete with an unused mop and other cleaning supplies. There were windows near the top, nothing more than 27 cm tall, but nearly 62 cm wide. That was a possibility, but he would need his hands untied first.

He started to contort himself enough that he could slip both legs through his arms. Once his arms were in front of him it would be possible to use his teeth to unravel the wire. One leg at a time sliding over and through his arms until he was finally standing there looking at the wire around his now nearly purple hands. He gripped the end of the wire with his teeth and began unraveling. Five loops gone and he could feel the blood starting to trickle back into his hands. It tingled and hurt like a bitch, but it was better than losing part of a limb. There was no chance of a decent replacement these days, whenever exactly these days were.

He heard Kate yelp and he found himself suddenly staring at the door in horror.

Oh, please no. He whispered to himself, knowing what they were planning on doing to her and not ever wanting his sister to go through that again.

Chapter 2

Kate also struggled to get free. She was not as strong as Komae and with three men dragging her across the floor, and two tailing them, she didn’t have the strength to put up much of a resistance. It wasn’t that she didn’t bother fighting them, it was just that no matter how much she did, their strength outmatched hers and she was dragged along regardless. Her arms would show the marks of their fingers by morning. Squirming too much had only gotten her hit, repeatedly.

She watched the struggle that Komae put up and wished for the thousandth time that he had been able to finish his bodyguard training before this whole travesty had happened, or that their twice damned vehicle hadn’t broken down a few miles back. The men tossed him into the room and she realized that they were not dragging her in there as well. They seemed to be dragging her behind the bar, separating them.

Oh frack.

Let me go. She demanded again, trying to yank her wrists free of their grip. The near twin leering grins that the men holding her wrists gave her only confirmed what she had suspected. When he used his other hand to grab her ass and squeeze she snarled at him. He just grinned wider and dragged her along. The lot of them chuckled and she felt the random groping that they all were doing. Pinching and poking, brushing a hand down her back or across her chest, she would twist away, but that would just cause them to break out laughing and do it again.

Behind the bar was the kitchen that she hoped they didn’t cook food in. If the rest of the place was filthy then this place was foul. Dishes were everywhere, dirty pans on the stove, half eaten food that was moldy and rotting, just sitting around. She was certain that she had seen a mouse take cover behind some food boxes and she could smell the roaches that were still hiding in the dark. One of the men made a truly disgusting choking sound before finally spitting a wad of something gooey onto the floor as they passed through the kitchen.

They traveled through the kitchen to the back of the bar and then to what had once been an office of some kind. She kept trying to record details in her mind. The more she had, the more she would be able to use later. A few of the men wore leather holsters strapped to their hips, no snaps or bands to lock the guns in place. If she could get her hands free she would be able to snag a gun out of one of those, easy! She had always had a knack with her hands for that kind of larceny. More than one pocket had been lightened before she had ever started hacking. Necessity had been an amazing teacher.

The office was bare of decorations. A dog with white paws scampered out of the room as the men dragged her into it. Anything that could be of any possible use later was recorded no matter how trivial it might seem now.

They flung her inside with enough force that she was air born for a few seconds. She landed hard on a thin, grey striped mattress and bounced twice before they were on top of her. If she had had any air in her system she would have screamed, but the landing had knocked it out of her and she was a bit stunned. They pinned her down before she could get enough air in her system to start fighting back or even to try moving off the mattress that was somehow dirtier than even the kitchen and it smell of dog. She hoped that none of the mice from the kitchen had inhabited the mattress.

Five guys surrounded her and none of them looked to have washed since before the Wind. They all reeked of old beer, cigarettes and piss. They held her down with more pressure then they needed to. The bones in her wrists felt like they were grating against each other and she worried that the men would break something. She wished that she had gotten the strength augmentation that her brother had gotten, not that it looked like it was doing him much good when they had dragged him off, but maybe it would have made this more difficult for the men.

The ugliest of the bunch crawled between her legs and grinned lecherously down at her. He was missing both an eye and a front tooth. She didn’t want that mouth any closer to her than it already was and from the stink of his breath she didn’t want him even this close. Breaking out a few more of his teeth would really make her feel better.

Don’t fight. He said like he was reading her mind. If you fight we’ll just hurt him more.

She felt limbs that she hadn’t even realized were straining go suddenly limp. Komae, her little brother, she couldn’t let them hurt him. She knew better then to believe that they wouldn’t hurt him if she cooperated, but her options were limited. Whatever they been ambushed for wasn’t going to be good, but they needed the time to find a way out of there. This was looking to be the worst possible way to buy time, but it also didn’t look like she was going to get much of a choice in the matter.

The cold from outside was enough to permeate the room and it ate at her. When the blade sliced through the belt she wore she shivered with both cold and dread at what was to come. She tried squirming away, bucking her hips and struggling, but it was pointless. The man holding her arms above her head just pressed down harder causing her own bones to press against each other painfully. The two holding her legs spread them further apart so that she couldn’t get any purchase to kick or buck.

The man with the knife undid her pants slowly, making eye contact the entire time. She knew he was trying to intimidate her and it was working. He spread the now open pants and rested the serrated hunting knife low on her belly, just above her panty line. The teeth of the knife scratched at her tender skin and she shivered again. He was resting his arms on her thighs and his chin grazed her flesh just below where he had the knife resting. She didn’t want his face anywhere near where it was.

The last one didn’t fight so much and she still lost a few pounds of flesh. If you keep this up I’ll let you choose what goes first, fingers or nose. He wasn’t grinning. He glared up at her from just above her crotch and tapped the cold knife against her belly to make his point clear. They sell just as well ugly as they do whole. Just means the ugly ones usually go to the cannies.

She didn’t know what a cannie was for sure, but she was pretty sure that it was bad. It was information though, meant to be tucked away for another time. Cannie? Cannibal? Food was scarce at times, but really? These people had let it get that bad?

You’re lucky I like them with a bit of fight in them. Now Jon over there doesn’t, so when it’s his turn you’re going to want to lie real still, ok? Don’t worry though; it won’t be his turn till after the other guys go. That should work most of the fight out of you anyway.

He starred for a long while into her eyes before she finally looked away, unable to look at him knowing what he was about to do. He unhooked the coat that she wore, each buckle he opened letting him see more of what was underneath. He pushed it to the side and glared down at the multiple shirts that she wore under the coat. It was cold outside so she had layered to keep warm. Apparently he didn’t like that. The knife traveled up her torso and he began cutting the shirts off of her, spreading them open as he split them, his weight resting heavily on her as the knife grazed her throat to finish the cut. He smiled at her each time it did, watching her squirm uncomfortably with obvious pleasure. When he found her braless he bit into one breast hard enough that the soft flesh bled. She screamed out and he bit harder before finally releasing her. She could feel his repulsive arousal pressed against her lower leg.

Three additional men walked through the door and stood staring down at her. They hadn’t been with the earlier group, nor had they been with the batch that had ambushed them. Apparently this place held more people then she had originally suspected. Each of the men stood staring at her bare and now bruised chest. She was so pale, even on sunny days, that she looked stark against the filth of the mattress.

One of them bent down to grab her breast, toying with the nipple, twisting until she yelped before finally releasing it. From the other room she heard a body smash itself against a metal door, Komae. Her pants were roughly ripped down her legs. The sudden cold made her shiver violently as the rough hands started exploring her. A finger went under her panties to rub against her before it yanked them down. She had never been shy before, but now she would have gladly crawled under the mattress as all eyes roamed over her naked flesh.

The guy with the knife climbed between her legs, the other two holding them open while she tried to pull them closed. She closed her eyes, it was bad enough she would have to feel this. She felt the warmth of his legs against her thighs and it almost felt better then the cold, but that made her feel sick. She felt his cock smack against her sex and then he yanked her hips up and jammed a pillow under her ass. She knew that now was the time to shut down her consciousness before they really started hurting her.

He slammed into her, tearing the softer parts of her that were in no way ready or eager for his penetration, right as she let the wetware in her head send her to a happy place, at the same time that it sent Komae the frequency address to find a man named Mars. The world went soft and black for her. Her mind was recording what was happening, but her consciousness was elsewhere. She had shut herself down. Her mind would reboot once the trauma was no longer going on.

Damn it, she passed out! The man in the process of raping her said as he continued to slam into her, grunting occasionally as he took his pleasure from her now prone form.

Won’t really matter, she’ll still feel good. Another offered as he took his place in line behind the still busy one. They would all get a turn before the night was through.

Chapter 3

Komae had both hands free and was just working the feeling back into them when he got the message from his sister, followed by her suddenly shutting off. If it had been the more permanent shut off that would indicate death he would have known. The connection wouldn’t tell what or how she had died, but it would have told him that she had. Instead it was the kind that was just a system wide shut down. That wasn’t good since he was pretty sure that he knew what they were doing to her right now, but it also meant that she was still alive. That was good. Good and bad.

The message she had sent him was simple. Find Mars, ask for help. The message came with a frequency code that Komae assumed was Mars’. Komae had always tried to protect his sister and this failure sickened him

He glared back up at the window like it how somehow verbally challenged him. He snatched up the mop and reached with it to smash out the window. The glass breaking hadn’t seemed to alert anyone, more proof that what he thought was going on really was. He circled the handle of the mop through the hole of the window until the majority of the glass was gone. Lacerations would only further slow him down. It took seconds, but they felt like eternity and he finally threw the mop down.

He was going through that window, now.

. Komae walked back to the door. He got the longest run he could in the small amount of space that he had to work with, ran and leapt. He slammed against the wall, but hooked a glove covered hand through the window. The glove was leather over the palm and inner fingers. He had put them on for warmth, but now they were protection as well. He felt glass crush under the pressure, but nothing broke through the leather.

It was no great feat for him to haul himself up and pull himself out of the window. His amplified strength made it simple for him to do. More glass crunched as he went through, but he was dressed in layers and that kept the cutting shards away from him. He didn’t have the agility that Kate did, so he mostly tumbled out of the window. The drifting snow broke his fall and kept him from breaking anything.

Then he ran.

Chapter 4

Mars sat at the desk he had cleared off two days ago when he had first found this lab. The lab had been on his maps, but it had ended up being smaller than labeled. It was as though his maps had shown the building with extra wings on it, wings that had somehow never been built. It didn’t really surprise him though since most maps he found had discrepancies with the world around him and even more in the books that remained. The Wind had really scrambled things and so in one place he could find a map that was hand drawn with no exact scales while in another place he would find an atlas drawn with towns that had yet to be built in it.

He stored all the data in his memory banks, separating time periods as best he could and occasionally making sub files for those when things didn’t quite fit together the way it should have anyway. For example Kennedy had been shot in one timeline, but had survived another. Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492, or Leif Erickson had colonized the original Americas and his descendants had waged war with Columbus when the Italian got to the ‘new country.’ His favorite to date being that computers were banned in 2053 and nothing greater than a type press was allowed. He would be a walking felony if computers had been banned in his timeline.

One thing that made him aware of how lucky he was to still be alive was that some of the structures seemed to have been merged with others. He had found a row of houses that looked like someone had taken toy houses and sat them right on top of the original, then melted them together. Thing was that they had just kind of merged, like their molecules had been joined. It had made the houses all but impassable since a door might lead to a wall and a hallway might be blocked by an outside wall of the secondary house. If he had been in one of those when things had shifted, or if he had landed on another person like that; it could have been ugly and lethal.

The desk in front of him was scattered with many of the maps that he was studying. He had always found it calming to have the hard copies in front of him. His computer could merge them to show the closest thing to a complete map that he could get, but having the hard copies just let him come to conclusions that at times were totally random yet exactly what was needed. Right now he was trying to find a place that might have been used as a Hunters base pre Wind.

His main base was well stocked, but it was nothing like what he had back before the Wind had stolen him away. There were more low-lifers out in the world now than decent people, and it made him even more paranoid than he knew people usually saw him as. He was wired to protect and there was so much to protect his small group from now. It felt like a constant uphill battle anymore and there was never enough to do the job with. Safety came not in empty hands, but in potentially lethal ones and he needed more.

So far he hadn’t found any of the Hunter bases that he had wanted to raid for weapons. He was aware of where they should be, he was part of that faction after all, but they just weren’t there. The one he knew best was completely missing. In its place was an open field with an airplane hangar on it. The history he knew of that base was that there had been an old air force base there at some point, but that the Hunters had taken it over more than a century after that type of plane was no longer in use. So far he only had the weapons that he had built or dug up and a handful of civilians to use them. He needed backup.

It was on the tail end of that last thought that he caught the static of a message coming in on a frequency that he had only given to one woman since the Wind had hit. He sent his scouts closer to the source to try to get a better signal. The person sending the signal had short range capabilities at best so he doubted that it was her. His little scouts, or spiders as he called them, would be able to act as remote transponders and bounce the message the extra distance so that he could hear it clearly. He expected there to be one hell of a good reason for her to have given that information out when he had specifically told her not to. It was meant for her and her alone to get in touch with him again, preferably for another dinner and a bit less larceny of his goods. He could still feel her eyes following the curve of his lips and he certainly wouldn’t mind her lips following the same path.

The target that was sending the signal had to be moving closer to him as well or it would have taken the spiders a bit more time to reorganize. Their wings allowed them to fly at something near 40kph so they didn’t quite look like spiders, but it was useful to have them more mobile than their original counterparts and they could move as silently as spiders when the need came. So they all ended up looking like a cross between a spider and a wasp. Regardless, he still referred to them as his ‘spiders.’ He was perhaps a bit nostalgic about the original version that he had created years ago.

…emergen…requ…lp..plea…Ka..Kom..please. The message was clearing up the closer his spiders got to the source. Mars it’s an emergency, we are requesting help. Kate sent me, Komae, her brother, please contact me as soon as you can, please. And it repeated over and over. This ‘Komae’ must have at least rudimentary wetwear to be able to have it set on auto send. Not too surprising for Kate’s brother to have survived, if this was who he claimed he was. Mars himself had a brother who had survived the Wind. It wasn’t too uncommon for one brother to survive if the other one did. It was rarer for a female to survive and he had never seen one with a surviving sister; this would be the first with a brother. His brother Michael and he had debated on this inconsistency for hours at a time without coming close to a conclusion.

Kate, had never mentioned a brother during their brief interaction. She had managed casual chit chat without giving very much actual information away. It made him think that she was well practiced in doing that kind of evasion and that led him to believe that she was more than just a thief.

Mars ignored the maps and focused his attention on the sender. The spiders were triangulating the sender’s location. From there Mars would be able to pinpoint where Komae was and monitor him from there. If he proved to be any kind of threat, he would be nullified immediately, but Mars had to be honest with himself, he was kind of curious about what might be going on with Kate. Mars had been getting bored lately and bored was bad for a Hunter.

Komae was almost 80 kilometers away. That would explain the signal breaking up if he had a limited range on his device. Mars didn’t have that problem. Between the high range communications wetware, the spiders, and the various nodes that he had a habit of planting around any place he stayed, he would be able to communicate at much longer ranges with no issues. As well as keep an eye on those places that he had left the nodes with their attached spider ‘colonies.’.

Komae, if that is who you are, what do you want? He snarled in response to the signal that he was receiving. His voice would be transmitted the same way Komae’s had been, via the waves that all such messages rode on. Some message could be sent silently, but this style was more the mood that Mars was in. He was curious, distrustful and ready for some kind of action.

Mars? Komae asked hesitantly.

Well who else would it be on a private frequency that you shouldn’t have? Mars waited through the long pause, the spiders were close enough that he was even getting a picture of the guy now. Mars watched the twinge of guilt and worry cross his face. Komae was lanky, like he had yet to grow into the body that he had been given, barely more than a kid really. A dark thatch of hair on top of a face of pale skin was a quick reminder to Mars of what Kate had looked like, at least in the very basics.

Kate told me to contact you. We would not have bothered you if it wasn’t an emergency.

Mars merely grunted at that. She was told not to share that information with anyone. Mars pointed out. Information handed out under strict expectations and in complete trust should not be passed onto others. That Kate had chosen to share it even after promising not to pissed him off immensely, regardless of how much it eased his boredom. Then the kid went and said something that changed that.

They are raping her and I can’t do anything about it! The kid almost screamed, the desperation written clearly across his face. She asked me to find you because she thought you might be willing to help. Mars could hear the doubt in Komae’s voice.

Mars bit back a snarl. The people that had Kate were exactly the type that he had been hunting down and stamping out this past year. Why the hell did it seem like more miscreants had survived the Wind than any other group? They had gone quiet for a while, which was part of the reason that he had been getting bored studying maps. Apparently Kate had found a nest of them.

Stay where you are. I’ll meet you in about an hour. Start telling me who ‘they’ are.