The Lucid Dreamer (Dystopian Child Prodigy SciFi) (The Unmaker Series Book 1) Read online

  The Lucid Dreamer

  Other Books in this Series

  Magic Eyes

  Magic Alive

  The Lucid Dreamer

  The Unmaker Series (Book 1)

  Casey Herzog

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  Copyright © 2017 by Casey Herzog.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the author’s permission.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously, and are not to be constructed as real. Any resemblance to persons living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Published in the United States of America

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  PROLOGUE

  ~A King with No Castle~

  The wind blew over the dusty plains, and the sound of the howling of dogs echoed in the distance. Once, the sound of man’s best friend might have been a welcoming noise to a traveler’s ears meaning shelter or good company, now it meant peril — the mongrels that had been kept out in the wild for too long had evolved into something much more sinister and deadly.

  The sky was dark, but it wasn’t only because of the hour; the atmosphere of the new world was little more than a collection of thick clouds and pollution, war having all but killed the planet a decade ago. Life was now a gift, a reward that very few got to enjoy.

  Scavengers rummaged around the wreckage of a tank, the armored vehicle sporting a gaping hole the size of a human head on its side.

  “I wonder what killed this thing so savagely,” Schaer remarked as he watched Gavin rev up his disc cutter. The large man had some sort of sick fetish for cutting things up with his military-grade carbon fiber tool. The group had watched him pass off handguns, assault rifles, flamethrowers and other weapons for months, but his eyes had grown as wide as eggs when they’d spotted the disc cutter inside the remains of an abandoned military hangar. Schaer wasn’t entirely sure, but he could have sworn the man had sighed softly in pleasure when the blade began to eat into the metal. Fucking weirdo, he thought.

  Shane was crouching beside the tank’s deformed barrel, his eyes scanning the horizon from side to side, front to back. A long rifle sat beside him under a tattered cloak, patiently waiting to be used. Patient was the best way to describe him, a virtue that made him an even better sniper than he already was. Schaer remembered how the soldier had waited for days until the slave-merchant bastards from Ayia had emerged from the city on their motorcycles and then put a bullet in one of their heads before packing his things and coming back to their camp.

  “Why are you looking at me like that? He was the one who hit Gonz in the leg!” the man had cried in outrage.

  The final member of the small party was Gonz himself, a small man who had never quite recovered from the bullet wound to his ankle. Despite getting a bionic enhancement to replace his wounded joint, Gonz walked with a limp and winced when he ran. Even so, he prided himself on being able to get into any nook or cranny known to man.

  “You’re dancing so much on that spot of land, I could swear you’d never been shot, Gonz,” Schaer said with a chuckle. He was the oldest of them all, a sort of leader to the band of misfits. When Gavin finally reached the bottom of the armor with his cutter and the metal slipped open slightly, the leader stepped forward and pulled on the plate, sticking his flashlight inside and illuminating the insides of the tank.

  “Bingo…” His instinct hadn’t failed, it never had. Apart from the burned skeletons of long-dead soldiers, there were several intact weapons and power supplies on the inside of the vehicle. “Let’s finish the job and get to pulling this thing open, boys!”

  “There’s someone out there.”

  Schaer and Gonz turned as one towards the sniper on the back of the tank. Gavin was either too entertained or not interested enough in distractions to care.

  “How many?” the leader asked. He pulled his rifle around him into his hands and hopped up onto a nearby rock. It wasn’t as tall as the tank, but it served. There. He saw the figure approaching from far away, a limping shadow that could barely register on the dark background of the sky. In fact, he wondered if he’d have been able to see the man at all if it wasn’t for Shane’s warning.

  “What do you see?” Gonz was already slipping his way between the armor plates of the tank, his clothes not even snagging on the bent, broken and sharp edges of the metal. He landed inside the tank, its ample space more than enough for him to stand inside. “There’s so much shit inside this thing! Woah, what ate through it like this?”

  Gavin finally stepped aside and noticed what was going on.

  “What are you looking at?” he asked in his deep voice. “Someone coming?” He smiled and edged his finger closer to his cutter’s activation cord, but Schaer shook his head. “Don’t.”

  “Wait, no, no, no…This can’t be what I’m seeing.” Shane was looking through the scope of his rifle and he looked pale. He messed around and calibrated the device in an attempt to ensure he was actually aiming his rifle at…“It’s him.”

  The man walking towards them was no simple straggler; it was Russell of Ayia, the Lord of Lawlessness.

  “Lord Russell…” Schaer breathed, as he lifted his own scope to his eye. It wasn’t as precise as Shane’s, but the identity of the stranger was unmistakable — nobody else had the level of enhancements as the man approaching them did. “The smoke we saw a few days ago…It wasn’t just any old thing burning. It was coming from Ayia.”

  “Ayia. Fuck them all,” Gavin said with a chuckle. “Not so big now that their city’s turned into dust. Let me take his hands.”

  Shane turned and looked at Schaer.

  “What do we do? He deserves to die.”

  The leader smoothed his salt-and-pepper hair and scratched his beard.

  “We find out what’s happening; then we kill him.”

  Everybody knew what to do.

  Bang.

  The approaching man jumped, tripping over his own feet and landing on his hands painfully.

  Shane laughed and pointed his rifle at the man’s head. Schaer knew that he wouldn’t miss.

  The self-proclaimed lord stood and stumbled forward, his arms outstretched forward in a sign of peace. A glimmer of light caught one of his arms and half of his face, and the three men felt uneasy in unison. His enhancements were still potent weapons, even like this. The most dangerous kind of beast was a wounded one — a lion like Russell would not go down easily.

  He continued to approach, jogging forward now as fast as he could. There was a look of anguish on his face, and the group began to see the extent of his injuries. A bloodied leg, cuts on his face…his throat. It had been sliced right open. Somehow, his enhancements were keeping him alive, Schaer noted.

  “That’s far enough!”
Shane yelled when the man was only one hundred feet away. “Halt!”

  Schaer lifted his rifle and aimed for the man’s head. Should we even be taking these chances?

  Gavin was furious.

  “Kill him, Shane, for crying out loud. Kill the fucker!”

  “Stop right there!”

  Bang. Another shot. The man kept going. Suddenly, he picked up an incredible pace. Shane’s eyes widened. It was as if he hadn’t been injured at all.

  “Oh, fuck!” Schaer pulled the trigger at full-auto, but it was too late. Russell ran around the tank, putting it between them and using it to give him cover. The leader of the group cursed as he lost sight of the man, and Shane aimed and fired. The bullet hit Russell in the chest, knocking him off his feet. Shane sighed in relief.

  Relief turned to horror as the enemy sat up and lifted a gun.

  The bullet flew through the scope and out of Shane’s skull, covering Gavin in blood where he stood beside the dead vehicle.

  “No! You motherfucker!” The giant threw himself out of cover and charged at Russell, pulling the cutter’s cord and crossing the ground between them in seconds, despite the enemy’s bullets piercing into him. “Die!”

  The blade slammed into his heart just as he raised the tool above his head to cut Russell in half. Gavin’s eyes went wide and he gasped, unaware of how it had punctured through his armor so easily. He looked down and saw the weapon. That technology…It’s…

  Russell looked up over his enemy’s body and saw the final scavenger attempting to aim at him from where he stood.

  He smiled and began to push the giant’s corpse forward as a shield.

  “You’re next!”

  Schaer fell to the ground. His face was a mess, Russell’s metal fist having cracked his jaw and cheekbone. His rifle was lying broken to one side; he had no strength to use his knife. As the man stood above him, he shot a glance behind at the tank. A pair of fearful eyes was watching from the inside.

  There was something shining in the shadow’s grip.

  Russell spun in an instant. The blade was in his hands one moment, then resting between Gonz’s eyes the next. Schaer cried out and dragged himself backwards, knowing he was next.

  “You don’t have to,” he pleaded, “I can help you out here…”

  Russell pushed his metal hand to his sliced throat and shook his head.

  “No,” he breathed with honesty, his blade approaching the other man’s skull, “You can’t…”

  His eyes shone with malice as he looked inside the tank and saw its contents. Two particular items caught his attention and he smiled.

  This will come in handy. The thought of a man and a boy came to his mind, the bastards who had taken everything away from him.

  It’s time to begin the hunt…I’m coming for you…

  PART I - Shockwaves

  CHAPTER ONE

  ~Our New Hell~

  The truck rolled over broken and wreckage-ridden roads, its driver swerving the vehicle around the bigger and deadlier faults that could damage a wheel or puncture a tire. Callum Thorpe was taking no risks out here in the borders of Nicrodia. The small city was a necessary checkpoint that he and the boy would have to traverse if they wanted to go north, but just being in the subhuman-infested place made him uneasy.

  The man at the wheel sighed and shot a sideways look at the lad as he rested on the edge of the window. He’d begged the boy to keep it closed, but there were few things that Dante stopped doing because he was asked to. For all his intelligence, he’s a damn stubborn child, Callum thought.

  Dante could feel his teacher and friend’s eyes staring at him accusingly, but he couldn’t help but stick his head out of the truck for air to avoid breaking into tears. The memories kept coming back, the grief threatening to overwhelm him. He needed a distraction to keep himself from falling into the abyss.

  He had watched Frank die, Alex’s father…but it was Johanna’s death that had hurt him the most. ‘My wonderboy’, she’d always called him, the mother that he’d never had, always finding a way to make him smile when he felt down.

  A tear ran down his cheek as he made a realization: the kids back home were probably still waiting for the adults to return, hope surely filling their hearts every night as they waited at the door in their underground hideout for Adam’s familiar whistle or Paola’s hearty singing; sounds that would never be heard again, nor would the people who made them. Not even he or Callum would be back soon, necessity taking them further away from the community than they’d ever been. Who’s to say we don’t perish out here as well, leaving the children alone with not a single adult left to care for or teach them about the world like Callum did, until we set off on this mission?

  A hiss made him turn, and he saw the first of them peek out of a small house with broken windows. Mismatched eyes and a snout-like mouth were visible.

  “Subhuman,” he said softly. Callum turned and groaned.

  “We were never getting through this forsaken city without alerting them. Please, Dante. Close the window, I beg you.”

  The young boy breathed deeply and finally did what he’d been told. He reserved a special sort of fear towards their mutant kin, a feeling that had begun to manifest as a result of a traumatic event in his early childhood.

  “I know you’re taking care of me, Callum…but you’re forgetting what happened just a few days ago. Whether I close a window or keep it open, it doesn’t matter anymore. Everything worth going back to is either dead or lost to me.”

  Callum shivered at the child’s words. These were not the kind of words a nine-year-old should be saying, but the boy was something else, almost like an old spirit inside a young body. It wasn’t the first time he questioned if Dante was completely human.

  “It does matter, lad. That’s why we’re going north. That’s why I’m risking my own life to take you there, to that place the stories talk about: a university of sorts that could be the key to finding out who you are and what you can do. Don’t say it doesn’t matter; there are still people waiting for us back home.” He outstretched his arm and squeezed the young man’s shoulder reassuringly. Innocent, sea-green eyes looked back at him, and a small smile warmed the soldier’s heart at least momentarily.

  Dante Castello was no normal boy. He was sweet, caring and brave, but that was not all that he was. He had been born with a gift.

  “What do you think I am?” he asked Callum, taking the opportunity to question something he’d never bothered to investigate before.

  “I…” Thorpe stammered. “I…well. I wish you hadn’t asked that.” He shook his head angrily. The boy deserved the truth. “How far back can you remember? What age? Don’t look at me like that, I promise I’ll answer your question,” he added, after seeing the angry glance that Dante shot him.

  “Three years old. On a truck in a convoy we spent a lot of time on. A woman took care of me. Margaret was her name.”

  “Most of our memories before that age typically fade, I had hoped that…Well, it doesn’t matter. Dante, I personally believe that whoever your parents were, technology tampered with them somehow.” Callum bit his lip nervously. “Technology that was not of the human kind. It would explain your abilities.”

  Dante looked down and turned his head back to the road outside. Thorpe heard the boy sigh deeply.

  “So you think I’m some kind of alien…okay.”

  Callum shook his head to himself and kept driving. I didn’t want to answer that question yet, you little fool, he thought in silence. The boy was always so curious and mature, not yet ready to know certain things, but asking them all the same.

  The boy’s gift had been simpler before Ayia; he possessed the ability to heal wounds and sicknesses and repair tears or fractures of practically any material known to man. It was an ability that didn’t even require him to be touching the surface, simply standing close by was enough.

  Dante’s gift had turned the community’s fortunes around when they needed it the most. C
allum had gone out to find the boy during a time when several of the children were ill and condemned to a slow death if no cure was found to their conditions — Dante became that cure. It took a fight against the worst odds Callum had ever faced, but he got the boy back.

  But things evolved once more in that final battle at Ayia.

  “I just don’t understand,” Callum began, but suddenly he braked hard. The wheels screeched, and the entire truck skidded on the road. Dante was almost thrown against the windshield, his face halting inches away from the glass after he managed to grab onto the dashboard.

  “What happened?!”

  “Look ahead,” Callum breathed.

  Their conversation had been entertaining enough for them to stay distracted until it was too late. There was a roadblock right in front of them: a collection of rubble and wreckage mounted together to form an impenetrable wall of ruins. Metal bars and poles had been rammed into the wall, pointing outwards to stop anybody or anything that tried to smash through it.