Escape Velocity

By Ryan S. Fortney

Picking up where PaxCorpus left us, Escape Velocity shoves you face-first into the abyss, grabs hold and never lets go.

Follow Dante, Meryl and a ragtag squad of survivalists, who call themselves, Belligerent Underpaid Tactical Team, from the depths of the devastated state of New Jersey to the bowels of post-apocalyptic Manhattan.

With less than a day's worth of supplies and their underground shelter lying in ruins, thanks to the terrorist cell, ZeroFactor, there is only one course-of-action--fight tooth and nail, bullet-by-bullet, to the enemy stronghold and Rift of Manhattan--or die trying.

The insanity doesn't stop there.

Cybernetically modified, former Harrisburg, Pennsylvanian cop, Dante Marcellus, has a new problem. An implant inside of his head, where a bullet had once been, acts as a telepathic network between him and the thought-to-be-dead, Nuhm De’Ara.

Leaving a trail of bodies all the way to New York City, survival is less-than-certain, as their enemy clamps down with violent determination.

And when there isn't even a glimmer of hope left for who remains, a man once known as Jack Marcellus returns--with vengeance and anger fueled hatred for the only person who could possibly save him from himself.

This time, there will only be one man left standing.

There are things much worse than the bite of a deader and the undead plague.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ryan S. Fortney
• Release date: Apr 11, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301835430

Ryan S. Fortney

RYAN S. FORTNEY is an electronic musician, author and a designer, who has been writing since 2008. It all started with a haphazard idea, and a great big push from a dear friend named Ed. Over the course of a number of years, PaxCorpus was eventually self published, and then, subsequently, two more sequels.Later, and through many trials and tribulations, the journey continued.Ryan was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and has lived here most of his life. With a never-ending passion for fiction and the universe, it has always been his number one goal in life: To weave worlds, to tell stories, and to entertain. To explore the vast ocean of space through imagination, and imagination alone.

Book preview

ESCAPE VELOCITY

Ryan S. Fortney

Cover Art by: Leah Moore

Edited by: Yours Truly

SMASHWORDS EDITION

*****

PUBLISHED BY:

Ryan S. Fortney on Smashwords

Escape Velocity, PaxCorpus, The Pax Series

Copyright © 2013

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 recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

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More work by Leah More

*****

Picking up where PaxCorpus left us, Escape Velocity shoves you face-first into the abyss, grabs hold and never lets go.

Follow Dante, Meryl and a ragtag squad of survivalists, who call themselves, Belligerent Underpaid Tactical Team, from the depths of the devastated state of New Jersey, to the bowels of post-apocalyptic Manhattan.

With less than a day’s worth of supplies and their underground shelter lying in ruins, thanks to the terrorist cell, ZeroFactor, there is only one course-of-action—fight tooth and nail, bullet-by-bullet, to the enemy stronghold and Rift of Manhattan—or die trying.

The insanity doesn’t stop there.

Cybernetically modified, former Harrisburg, Pennsylvanian cop, Dante Marcellus, has a new problem. An implant inside of his head, where a bullet had once been, acts as a telepathic network between him and the thought-to-be-dead, Nuhm De’ Ara.

Leaving a trail of bodies all the way to New York City, survival is less than certain, as their enemy clamps down with violent determination.

And when there isn’t even a glimmer of hope left for who remains, a man once known as Jack Marcellus returns—with vengeance and anger fueled hatred for the only person who could possibly save him from himself.

This time there will only be one man left standing.

The rules have change and there is no turning back.

*****

"A few millennia from now some species will look back and see that, although humanity was intelligent, we weren’t quite smart enough to avoid extinction."

*****

Chapter 0

Run Like Hell

One Year Ago

Meryl screams visceral, a single word erupting from her mouth, RUN! Voice slicing through the slobbering moans of the dead—we’re scrambling around on our feet and with our weapons and the incoming deaders rush by the wooded area around the motel—a force at fever pitch.

The street leading outward from Allentown might as well be uphill and one hundred damned miles long.

I just woke up.

Just got out of bed.

Aiming a few rounds to my six, "Where the hell are we going?!"

AWAY! Rob pats my shoulder with the stock of his weapon and it taps against the bone, a deafening ring piercing through my ears as he fires.

Elbow jabbing back at him, FUCK!

Meryl’s up ahead checking all of the vehicles that scatter the roads as we move.

Negative.

Nothing.

Nope.

Keys! Get over here! She busts the end of her shotgun through the window.

Seconds later we’re piling into a jet black Charger—Meryl’s at the wheel, I’m shotgun, Ed and Rob squeeze together and we’re squealing away.

But as we careen across the highway, the blacktop catacombs and all the brown country trees off the shoulder, something new emerges in the rearview—an eighteen wheeler that roars like a hellhound and towers over us the way a mountain would—mounted light machine guns, steel shutter windows and a big fucking ‘Z’ across the grill.

I slam the glove box with a curled fist, COME ON! Give us a goddamn break!

Bullets shower around our vehicle in a torrential hail.

She grips the wheel tight and swerves around abandoned hunks of metal—more gunfire than a little sardine can is able to handle—but there’s just too much shit in the middle of this obstacle course of a sun-torched and cracked road that we’re capable of successfully avoiding.

Everything flashes before me like multiple cracks of lightning across a hazy sky of vermillion in dabs of grey.

Jack, Manhattan, my fist cracking against his jaw, the betrayal and his complete disappearance.

Julianna, Harrisburg, the carefully orchestrated masquerade and the bullet that stopped her.

And suddenly we’re just barely missing the backend of a flattened Pinto, going side-over-side, defying gravity and only one, just one thing buzzes around inside of my head.

If I lose her today, right now, it would be the absolute fucking end of everything.

Hands and arms against the top of our tumbling tomb-on-wheels, holding on, desperate to keep my balance, she glances in my direction and as all four tires come pounding to the pavement with a violent and rocking lash, she’s concentrating again, unflinchingly, on the road to New Jersey.

Maybe about fifty feet behind, the truck jack-knifes over a larger group of wreckage and creates a nice and thick barrier between us and the deaders.

Everyone alright? She looks back in a quick turn of the neck.

Intermission

It all began with the virus of twenty-thirteen, which spread like wild-fire within everything that people normally come in contact with. You know, drinking water, food, shopping cart handles, McDonald’s French fries…

It was all put together by this corporation who call themselves ‘ZeroFactor.’

Like average people, we went about our daily lives, completely unaware of the changes that were happening right beneath our noses.

Before long, it wasn’t just America being ravaged by this thing. Once it crossed the Pacific and the Atlantic, shit, it succeeded in infiltrating the entire world.

When we reached ‘stage two,’ it was like the whole world had gone into lock-down status.

Here in the U.S. of A., the Center for Disease Control was thought to be the answer to the problem—the fly in the ointment—but our first hope for salvation was dismantled from the inside-out, way before they even had a chance at responding.

All happening because of the leader of this former mega-corporation turned terrorist cell, a name we’ve all come to know with time: Nuhm De’Ara, or in my case, Julianna.

It was martial law when all the riots broke out.

They were running out of options.

The strangest fact I still can’t wrap my head around, is why no one ever nuked anyone.

Although our military attempted to retain order and peace, they lacked the knowledge, technology and medical advancements to fend off both the swarms of deaders and the virus itself.

Which leads to the fall of the American government, the point where we knew it was way too fucking late to panic.

After the first day, what seemed to be humanity’s last stand and mass evacuations; myself and a selected team of Manhattan’s Emergency Response Unit returned to the city, stupidly, in order to secure survivors from the damage.

Fighting our way through the deaders and the onslaught of homicidal bastards, this is where I made one of my first mistakes.

That wormhole? The ‘Rift of Manhattan?’

Yeah, all my fault.

To add insult to injury, the ‘rift’ constantly spews these monstrous alien THINGS and it is yet to be argued where the hell they’re even coming from. Maybe some uncharted place at the furthest reaches of the Universe?

Regardless, it didn’t make shit any easier on us or anyone else who just wanna survive.

Six years later, in this little city of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, I lost thousands of people I had sworn to protect—with my life—thanks to this aforementioned leader-bitch, Nuhm De’Ara.

And even though I regained the memories I had lost of the first couple of days—you know, bullet to the head does that sorta thing—I still owe probably the greatest debt to humanity and my team.

Since then—just over a year later—she’s been presumed dead, along with any fighting chance ZeroFactor may have had.

Until now.

Chapter 1

Resurgence

A Few Months Ago

Don’t forget you’re here for a reason.

Alright ladies and gentlemen… A specially made Kevlar radiation suit dangles loose from my body as I twist around to gather my unit’s attention, This is the last time we’re ever gonna come back to Harrisburg.

Make absolutely sure you’ve got proof she’s dead.

All I see through the window is orange skies and bleached pavement, We’re running low on reserves, so we’ve gotta find whatever’s left of the non-irradiated supplies.

The eight person APV trembles over the debris of Interstate Eighty Three—built like a juggernaut.

This thing’s Ed’s dream vehicle, ever since we ditched that shit cash-courier-truck back on the outskirts of Allentown, PA.

You’re each equipped with an M4A1. With the flick of your wrist, My fingers snap over a latch, You go from semi-automatic to fully fucking badass.

Expecting a firefight in the middle of an irradiated wasteland?

I don’t really expect we’ll encounter any of the z-forces out here, but the deaders and those things that still teem from the Rift of Manhattan could be anywhere. I sling my weapon over my shoulder and slide both hands around to a double-holster, switching off the safeties on both Colt Nineteen Elevens.

"Dante? Ed’s haggard voice buzzes over the speaker attached to the ceiling, We’re approaching drop-point-zero."

Remember.

Nuhm De’Ara’s body, I got it.

I always talk to this voice inside of my head, you know, ‘cause it isn’t mine, but that isn’t even the strangest part about it…

It claims to ‘come’ from the future.

Okay! Suit up! Commanding all around as I slide a helmet down over my head and fasten each clasp and zipper that gives protection from the deadly waste.

Sir! Jacobson, a random of the unit, turns to me and asks, How much time we got?

Ah yeah, right, Holding a hand in the air, Listen up! We’ve got exactly thirty minutes. No more, no less. Be here or be left behind!

I wouldn’t really do that though. I don’t think I need any more trust issues floating around base than there already are.

Our ride comes to an unnoticeable halt and the back hatch opens outward to reveal my nostalgia, just one more time.

A gust of putrid-warm air bursts in and we pour out onto the pavement. Buildings stand half erect and still spitting crumbles of drywall and concrete. The sky is orange and vomit green and that of which I can smell, is like year old meat under the sun. I nearly have to stop myself, walking forward, before I make a mess all over my face and get myself into some deep shit trying to clean the inside of a helmet.

The capitol building, where we used to stage everything that we did—supply runs, medical checkups of the sorts, meetings, etcetera—it’s just a pale shadow of what it used to be.

Much like everything else in this bad-dream-come-true.

I turn around with my eye down the scope and there it is, Harrisburg goddamn Hospital, where it all came to a bittersweet end.

I’m heading out. Speaking softly into my headset.

Kicking by a rusted soda can and some dirt, I leave the rest of the team behind and make off for the drop-spot.

Chapter 2

Remembrance

Present Day – 3:00 a.m.

Trails of rain slip down the triple pane glass of a window and the rest just patters slowly against the ground.

It’s early mornings like these that make me think when I’d really rather be sleeping.

Death.

There are only two kinds.

Quick and painless, or slow and miserably agonizing.

I remember back when I was just a cop.

An absolutely green Harrisburg nobody.

This is way, way back before it all ended.

You know, I was just a cop. That’s it.

Down on Eighty Three, we’d get calls for little accidents pretty much every single day. After a while you don’t really think much of it, aside from the paperwork that follows.

But the day I’m thinking about is different.

Different because it was my first time.

My hands shuffle around on the rotten desk where I’ve been resting my arms and I find my old leather wallet. It opens to a yellowed driver’s license card; that young and ignorant face.

There’s a folded receipt from a gas station for an energy drink and some beef jerky, right where money should have been and then there’s some super-corroded pennies, all green and everything.

It was hot that day. Not just hot-hot, but fucking hot. You would sweat just getting out of your car.

But anyway, both lanes were shut down before I even got there.

This means it was really bad.

Right before that bridge that goes over the Susquehanna, this big-rig had collided with a much smaller car and, of course, caused a hell of a pile up.

And I’ll tell you now, what was waiting for me on the other side, there was nothing that could prepare me for it.

I had seen bodies in a morgue, but there was something distinctively different here.

Over the wheel of my cruiser, it was first a swarm of traffic, then a bunch of flashing lights and the sirens of a dozen ambulances and, I don’t