The Remnant: Into the Collision

By P.A. Douglas

“P.A. Douglas gives us real heart.” – Jonathan Maberry, New York Times bestselling author of FLESH & BONE and DEAD OF NIGHT

"A thrilling romp through a post apocalyptic wonderland of gore and violence that should not be missed. Highly recommended." - Timothy W. Long, author of the Among the Living series

“A powerfully surprising contributor to the genre.” – Mid West Books

The end does not come with a whisper, but with a big bang.

It has been months coming and it is finally here. Astrologers have predicted that the meteors aren't going to hit. But that fact doesn’t help much for the fear filled panic that floods the streets worldwide in the weeks leading to the catastrophic boom.

Forced out of his home by the chaos and rioting, Byron Russo finds himself on the run. All of the survival horror novels that he has read tell him to stock up and lay low. In the process of raiding supplies at a local grocery store Byron bands together with an unlikely cast of characters.

But surviving the panic is the least of their worries. After hunkering down at the Templeton Factory where Byron works, the worst has only begun.

The meteor shower strikes the moon, shifting it off its natural axes. The moon is larger. The floods have started. Plant life is dying. And the oxygen levels are changing.

No one can breathe.

With the use of the factory supplies will Byron and his new friends survive the new world, or will they fall to a much darker element that lurks in their own backyard?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Permuted
• Release date: Feb 20, 2014
• ISBN: 9781618682277

Book preview

A PERMUTED PRESS book

Published at Smashwords

ISBN (Trade Paperback): 978-1-61868-2-260

ISBN (eBook): 978-1-61868-2-277

The Remnant copyright © 2013

by P.A. Douglas

All Rights Reserved.

Cover art by Dean Samed, Conzpiracy Digital Arts

This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidental.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

About the Author

This book is dedicated to Richard and Cynthia Kain.

Acknowledgements

For this first edition of, The Remnant, my thanks go out to everyone at Permuted Press, Dane Hatchell, Patrick D’Orazio, Eric S. Brown, Brian Keene, my wife, and to the universe for making all of this a potential reality.

Author’s Note

None of the characters in this book are real. This is a work of fiction. Although Little Rock, Arkansas is a real place, I have taken certain geographical liberties with it. So don’t look for your favorite bar or a safe haven within these pages. They will not be found. They have been overrun with panic and the chaos of mankind’s worst enemy: fear.

Chapter One

HNL Evening News anchor Kevin Blently pulled a revolver from his jacket and shot himself in the face at the start of the show. Bits of brain and droplets of blood splashed across his desk and the HNL backdrop. The anchor fell from view, but the camera kept rolling.

Byron Russo stared in shock from his living room couch in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Then his living room window exploded inward sending shards of glass and splinters of wood to the floor. Sunlight flooded through the opening. When Byron Russo jumped in his seat and looked up, the last thing he expected to see was a bearded man picking himself off the floor and charging at him.

He shouldn’t have been so naive.

The day had started out as normal as any Monday could, considering. It was, after all, the end of the world. At least that was how it seemed at the time.

But not now.

On any other Monday he would have been up by five in the morning. Two cups of coffee and an episode of The Fairly OddParents on Nickelodeon. Then off to work for a twelve-hour grind at the factory.

No one was going to work these days. No one was doing much of anything. What could anyone do but watch the news, wait, and pray? It had been like that for the last week. It all started about a year ago when some hotshot astronomer with some crazy last name Byron couldn’t pronounce predicted the coming meteor shower. Right along with just about everybody else, Byron thought the guy was a lunatic. There was no way that many rocks were going to crash into Earth and totally obliterate everything. The planet was supposedly more than four billion years old. It hadn’t happened yet. No reason to think it was going to happen now. A few months after that more scientists refuted the first set of the astronomer’s predictions. The new claims suggested a large cluster of meteors were in fact headed toward Earth. However, the speed at which they traveled would have them past Earth’s orbit before the planet arrived in the path, avoiding any potential impact. The highest likelihood of danger, stated by the scientists, had been trailing space debris entering the atmosphere at high speeds. Further claims suggested the debris would just burn out, becoming smaller than grains of sand after entering the atmosphere. And that was what everyone accepted—until the meteors got closer.

Byron didn’t believe it at first. Like most, he tried to go about his daily routine, which consisted of days spent at work and lonely nights watching Netflix and cartoons. But it was hard. Fear had started to set in. Not just for him but for everyone. He wasn’t sure what was scarier—a large cluster of meteors headed toward Earth, or watching his coworkers and friends become numb to it. Everyone existed in a coma-like trance. As if drowning in a sea of regrets, society slowed to a halt. People stopped going to work. No one went to theaters anymore. Movies waiting for release remained on the shelves. Jets remained parked at airports instead of soaring through the air. Highway traffic cut back to a trickle. At first, the only people who seemed to be going to their jobs were news anchors. But for the last week HNL was the only channel still broadcasting. The only topic was the impending doom to come.

The streets were empty. Byron sometimes wondered how others spent their last days. But deep down he knew. He knew that they were doing the exact same thing he was—sitting on the couch, contemplating the destructive rocks as they neared, and hoping against all hope the scientists were right. Byron imagined everyone else had loved ones to cling too. He was alone, except for his stupid cat. And the only time that damn thing ever came in the house was when it wanted to eat. It had been days since he last saw her.

The world became more dangerous overnight.

For the most part, HNL anchor Kevin Blently had reported dry facts of past meteor showers and their effect on the planet. Byron could only guess the anchorman was doing it to give people a thread of hope. Instill some sense of potential for the future. It didn’t seem to be working. Byron knew this because with each passing day his palms grew sweatier. His appetite was gone. He just sat there watching the news over and over again. Occasionally, and more frequently over the last few days, Kevin would air various national and international footage of rioting and violence. The more people became afraid the more they lashed out. A resort to carnal instinct. Byron thought fear might have had others reacting differently. Since the end was coming he thought people would reflect back on the good times of life. Make peace with their god. Just relax and hold one another until the bitter end. But fear had brought out the worst in man. The other day Kevin Blently showed some shaky footage of ten men raping a pregnant woman in the middle of the street in broad daylight. Byron was horrified but found himself drawn to it like he had no other choice but to watch. What blew his mind was the world was coming to an end and yet people felt the need to document it. There wasn’t really any point to all of that. It was just violence and stupidity. People do stupid things when they think there are no other options. And maybe there weren’t any. Byron didn’t know. No one did.

Maybe that was why HNL news anchor Kevin Blently shot himself when he did. It would be two days before the meteors breached the atmosphere. The whole world was in chaos. If the mammoth rocks really were going to collide with Earth no one was safe from the cataclysmic collision.

Perhaps it was fear that had just driven this bearded man through Byron’s window. Perhaps that same fear was what kept Byron locked away in his living room glued to the television. What if there was no tomorrow?

When the gun went off and Kevin’s brains splashed across the HNL backdrop it was almost like the director’s cue in a movie for the stunt man to come crashing through his living room window.

The bearded man leaped forward with a metal bat in hand and a deranged look in his eye, shouting with rage.

Byron screamed and leaped from his perch on the couch. In his stained undershirt, SpongeBob pajama pants, and one sock, he threw both hands up to catch the bat as it came at him. The bat slapped in his sweaty palms as he caught it in mid swing. The cold metal stung his palms as jolting pain surged through his wrists, up his elbows, and into his chest. The force was so great it sent him back down onto the couch.

The man yanked the bat from Byron’s grip, and shouted, You’re gonna die, mother fucker!

The bearded man’s eyes grew wider as he pulled the bat back to swing again.

Before the attacker could take another swing, Byron forced all of his strength into his legs and lunged off of the couch into the man. The man staggered backward and lost balance as Byron charged forward forcing the lunatic into the coffee table. The Star Wars collector’s cup filled with tea that had been resting on the table’s edge collided with the carpet, its contents soaking into the dense fabric. As the man fell to his back on the floor he let go of the bat and grabbed Byron by the shirt. They both fell. And as Byron’s knees landed in the trespasser’s ribs he could hear the metallic bat clink as it settled to the floor.

The man groaned as Byron’s knees went into his midsection.

With the advantage, Byron punched the man, not once, but repeatedly. His muscles groaned and the boney flesh of his knuckles met facial cartilage and skin. After the fifth, or was it the eight punch? Byron didn’t know. He just kept swinging. After a number of blows he heard something crack in the bearded man’s nose. That was when the blood began to flow. The man just kept taking it, one punch after another. With each swing Byron’s muscles burned. His blood began to boil. Adrenaline surged through his body like motor oil surging through a high powered engine. He suddenly felt alive. It was as if he had been in some sort of trance-like sleep for the last week and a half. Now his eyes were open. This intruder had somehow forced him to snap out of his stupor. He used his legs to straddle the man’s waist, rendering him defenseless against each blow.

Who the hell do you think you are, breaking into my house? Byron screamed, blood flying across the room as he swung again and again.

The sound of wet slapping meat echoed in his brain as each clenched first pounded into the interloper’s face.

The man’s face and beard became a combination of red blood and white saliva.

Byron began to breathe heavily. When his muscles burned to the point he could swing no more, he stopped and stared down at what he had just done.

The man opened his lips to speak. Blood pooled in his mouth as he gurgled. He turned his head and spat three teeth on the carpet. Then, with eyes swollen, he craned his neck back up and locked gazes with Byron.

I just needed… The man choked on crimson. My chil… children.

Byron paused and stared back. That was when the reality of what had just happened flooded the surface of his consciousness.

Oh, my God, he gasped, looking down at his bloody knuckles and the man’s mangled features.

Byron didn’t believe in God. Not anymore. He had lost his faith a long time ago when God decided to take his wife and kids away. They weren’t dead. He didn’t have that luxury. He didn’t get to keep a perfect image of who they were before death and what they could have accomplished in life. He wasn’t that lucky. Nearly thirty-two years old now, he and his wife of five years had been divorced for nearly nine years. Married young due to having an early bun in the oven, they were four months pregnant when she walked down the aisle. They were both only eighteen then. He had the opportunity to watch their daughter grow into a brilliant little girl. But that was all that God had afforded him. Now, from the distance of more than three states away, he got to watch his daughter grow up in the arms of another man she called Daddy. He hated God for the things that had happened. It wasn’t his fault his wife wasn’t happy. It wasn’t his fault he didn’t make six figures a year. He worked his ass off. And what he got in return was the surprise of an empty home one day when he came in from work. No explanation. No goodbyes. Just outright abandonment. All because that other prick could offer them a better life. Unless God intended to do some explaining, Byron had nothing more to do with Him.

Then Byron noticed something.

The man had stopped breathing. The bearded man’s stare was locked in on a blank space on the wall between the Incredible Hulk poster and the framed picture of his daughter, Megan. The photo was her eighth grade class picture. She was smiling wide with bright pearly whites and a generic American flag image in the background. The man’s eyes were vacant and soulless.

Byron sat there for a moment longer, not sure what to do.

He felt cold and sick to his stomach. His insides churned and his gut tightened.

The room felt dizzy, and he watched the walls begin to spin out of control. Like a sudden shock of unexpected pain, Byron’s nerves began to break. He felt faint.

The last thing Byron saw before passing out was the metallic baseball bat on the floor in front of the television.

* * *

Gun blasts woke Byron from his nightmare.

Only, it hadn’t been a dream at all. Instead, it had been a mere flashback of the facts while he laid there unconscious. A man really was dead on his living room floor, the window busted out. And the news anchor really did shoot himself.

It took him a moment to collect his thoughts. He sat up, still partly straddling the dead man on his floor. When he looked to the window he saw it was still daylight outside. Light leaked through the opening where the intruder had so rudely come in. Among the beating rays of light Byron could see the dust as the sunshine reflected off the tiny particles floating in the air. This meant he couldn’t have been passed out for long. He straightened up and pulled his legs off the corpse.

The picture on the television showed the news anchor’s empty chair and desk. The blood and chunks of pink, meaty flesh splashed across the desk and backdrop were faint reminders of how the anchor had decided to end it all. Just like that—the pull of a single trigger. Over and done with. Thinking of this Byron felt himself feeling faint once more. Dizziness caved in as he tried to fight it off. He took a deep breath waiting for the vertigo to pass. With his mind in a haze his gaze stayed locked on the television. There was just no way any of this could really be happening, could it?

A loud report jarred his attention from the TV to the window. It came again. Gunfire and screaming filled his ears as he focused on the window. It came from somewhere close outside.

When he looked back at the television there was movement. A man staggered into the camera’s view and took wide steps behind the anchor desk. The way he was walking it was as if he were trying to avoid stepping on something. And Byron knew exactly what that was. The man on the TV ducked for just a moment behind the desk and came back up clutching the revolver the anchor had used to kill himself. The man walked off screen and that was it.

What the hell is happening? Byron breathed.

He took in his surroundings once more and shook his head. He knew exactly what was happening. It was just that it was hard to wrap his mind around it all. Chaos had taken over. Fear had won. The world was falling apart. This meteor shower had everybody going ape shit. But it just didn’t make any sense. The predictions had been the meteors were just going to fly by the Earth. Not destroy it. What the hell had everybody so freaked out? Meteors passed by Earth all the freaking time. Hell, there were even some that passed by constantly. It didn’t matter to Byron if they were called comets or not. A flying rock is a flying rock. They were all meteors. And besides, if the end really was coming, it wasn’t like anyone could do anything about it. If it was going to happen it was going to happen faster than anyone could expect. So why stress over it? The rock hits Earth. Everyone dies instantly. The end. It’s not like there would be any suffering or anything.

The screams and gunfire came again. This time it was closer.

A loud shattering cacophony of noise erupted in Byron’s ears. Glass and splinters of wood from a window on the other side of the living room caved in, falling to bits. What followed was a loud muffled thump that rolled for a second and landed just a few feet from him on the floor. It was a red brick. Someone had just thrown a brick through his window.

What the fuck? he said.

No longer overwhelmed with sensory overload, his stomach felt better. He glared down at the brick, picked it up, and climbed to his feet. With three long strides he was over to the window clutching the brick that had just been tossed through.

He didn’t even have time to look around outside.

Eat lead, bitches! a teenage boy wearing aviator sunglasses screamed.

The teen lifted a rifle and aimed.

The moment Byron looked down that barrel his heart leaped into his throat. And that was exactly how he reacted. The rifle’s loud report echoed down the street and rang in Byron’s ear as he dived away from the window. He fell to his chest with the brick in both hands held tight in his arms as if it were a football and he had just bounded for the touchdown. He laid there for a second listening, but couldn’t tell if the gunman was still in the street with his rifle aimed at the house. He couldn’t tell much of anything. The street seemed to grow silent again. The shooting and screams were fading off as if it were a parade passing slowly down the road. Instead of passing out beads, smiles, and laughter, they were trading gunfire and screams of chaos and panic.

Byron had no clue how long he laid there on his chest cradling that football-brick in silence. All he knew was that it seemed like forever. He thought about his ex-wife and his daughter. He thought they could be in the same situation. He didn’t like that feeling one bit. He needed to get to them. Take care of them. Be there for his daughter like he had failed to do for so many previous years. He thought about his coworkers at the factory and that cute woman at the grocery store he had never had the courage to talk to. He thought about his neighbors, Mr. and Ms. Brooks. They were in their late 60s and on vacation somewhere south. Having been some high level executive for one of those offshore drilling companies, Mr. Brooks and his wife were hardly ever home. Byron didn’t blame them one bit. Little Rock sucked. If he had their kind of money he would do some traveling, too. First place he would visit would be his ex-wife’s house in South Carolina, pick up his daughter, and never look back. But that was never going to happen. Not unless Mr. Brooks was going to just up and start divvying out some of that hard earned dough. He couldn’t remember where they were vacationing this time exactly, but for some reason Panama City, Florida came to mind. He wondered how they were doing. He wondered if the rest of the world was turning out to have this much disorder. He wondered a lot of things. But most of all he listened, waiting for the sure sign the turmoil in the streets had moved on.

A long while passed without his hearing anything outside.

Even still, he laid there forcing himself to wait it out even longer.

When he finally climbed to his feet, his body felt stiff. His joints ached in protested as he stretched out his arms and legs and looked around.

His living room now seemed like a foreign place.

The Incredible Hulk poster. The massive wristwatch clock hanging on the wall beside the television. The bookshelf along the wall beside the busted window filled to high heaven with books he had read. C.S. Lewis, H.P. Lovecraft, Z.A. Recht, and many more. The coffee table and the spilled collector’s cup. All of it just a fleeting glimpse into a past that seemed so long ago. Only it hadn’t been long ago. No, it was happening right now. And right now, standing still was getting him nowhere. He needed to do something. He needed to protect himself if any more of those crazy people decided to show back up and break in.

Like a canon of fireworks, Byron’s brain started firing off ideas he had seen on TV or had read about in his books.

Fill the bathtub with water. Pack light. Stay on the move. Find fortified shelter. Stay in a group. This plus a lot of other useless information rattled around in his head while he stood there staring at the contents of his living room. Then there was the concern of the dead man on the floor. Surely the cops wouldn’t be needing to investigate this. Not now when they had their hands full with what was happening in the streets. He wouldn’t go to jail for this. It was self defense. Filled with panic, he glared at the dead body. He had never killed anyone before. His hands started to shake and his nerves began to get the best of him. Before they got too bad and he found himself passing out again, Byron walked away. He just couldn’t stand being in the same room with a corpse. A corpse that he was responsible for nonetheless.

In the kitchen he felt himself calming back down again.

That’s when his body switched to autopilot. As if he were outside of himself he watched with panicked eyes while he jogged into his bedroom. He began changing from his pajama pants and white undershirt into a pair of jeans and a button up long sleeve flannel. When he was done he put his work boots on next. Satisfied, he opened the closet door and dug out an old dusty backpack from between the pile of old porn magazines, and VHS tapes of when he was still married. Both of which never got looked at these days. He yanked hard on the zipper, opening the backpack. He wasn’t even sure what he was getting or what he would need. He just watched as two clean pairs of socks and underwear got tossed in. Then he turned around as if ready to head back into the kitchen. He paused for a second and glanced down at his wallet sitting on top of his dresser. He thought to grab it thinking of the cash and the credit card. For some reason he didn’t think he would ever be using either again. He knew it was a silly thought and almost chuckled. When he heard the laughter start to slide across his lips, he stopped himself. The thought of laughter made him nervous. Rather than debate it he grabbed the wallet, stuffed it in the side pocket of his backpack, and stepped into the hallway.

Just before entering the kitchen he saw himself in the long mirror hanging on the bathroom door. He looked like hell. His short, dark hair disheveled. The blue and black flannel shirt only accented his chubby midsection and it had been over a week since he last shaved. In another week he would have a beard. Right now it just looked like overgrown animal mange, blotchy and unkempt. He stopped in the bathroom and snagged his toothbrush, a bar of toothpaste, and a five pack of disposable razors.

In the kitchen he opened the refrigerator and filled the backpack the rest of the way up with what he had: three bottles of Diet Dr. Pepper, two Jell-O Pudding Packs, and one can of pineapple juice. The pineapple juice made him think of the vodka sitting on top of the refrigerator. He grabbed that, too. The big glass bottle was almost too big. He shoved hard and heard something pop followed by a gushing sound inside the backpack—one of the puddings, or even the toothpaste. He gritted his teeth with aggravation and just zipped it up anyway.

He tossed the backpack over one shoulder and paused.

What else… what else… He looked around, frantic.

Adrenaline rushed through his veins. He felt jittery and for a brief moment thought of Tim Chilcott at work. Tim was a process operator at the factory, mid-forties in age. The two of them talked a lot during break about different movies they had seen the previous week or about what female coworkers they’d like to drill. But there was one thing odd about Tim. He was constantly drinking Red Bull. And if it wasn’t that it was 5-hour Energy. The guy drank those things like they were water. Byron found the entire situation mostly amusing. The way Tim always had the jitters. When they were together talking the man just seemed to never quit shaking. Byron had almost suggested to Tim he quit drinking that stuff, but decided against it because he figured the guy’s heart might just up and quit working without it. Byron wondered if how he felt right now was how Tim felt all the time. He felt amped up—ready to go. But go where?

He thought about that for a second.

An underground bunker, maybe.

But he didn’t know of anything like that. Then the other ideas came back to him. Somewhere fortified.

The factory, he proclaimed.

The sound of his own voice made him jump. In the silence it had sounded like a shout. The last thing he needed was to announce his location within the house. There could still be a bunch of nuts outside waiting to ambush him or something.

Now you’re just getting paranoid, he thought.

But he was right about one thing: Work did seem like a smart place to go. It wasn’t very far away. And for sure super fortified. The factory sat on about twenty acres of land and every bit of it was fenced in like a prison. He had always guessed if the company you work for makes valuable stuff, they have every right to keep that material safe. But he had always felt like the fences, the cameras, and the check in point were a little on the overkill side. Another good thing was that the entire building was brick—built to last.

With no other ideas in mind, Byron stepped into the living room with the backpack over one shoulder. Just before he reached the door his heart sank. He didn’t know why, but he suddenly found himself trekking back into the bedroom. He opened the closet door and yanked one of the VHS tapes from the box. Without looking