The Unmaker: Tower of Ayia Read online

  Tower of Ayia

  The Unmaker Series

  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

  Other Books By Casey Herzog

  The Unmaker Series

  The Lucid Dreamer (Book 1)

  Johnny Spaceway Series

  Johnny Spaceway and the Hooded Assassin (Book 1)

  PROLOGUE

  A Rare Moonlit Sky

  Callum Thorpe’s heart was beating like a carnival drum, his eyes darting from side to side as he peeked out from behind his hiding place. The streets of Ayia had always been dangerous at night, but the recent ‘bleaching’ had pulled all sorts of threats and dangers from the hovels.

  His wounded arm was heavy and limp, the bandage wrapped around it doing little to stop the flow of blood. He hadn’t expected to come all this way for nothing, much less to die a painful death at the hands of the gangs that lived out here in the city ruins.

  Medicine had always been an issue for humanity, ever since the start of civilization. The battle against death was never an easy one. His people needed the famous healer the stories had talked about, but it seemed the gangs and warlords had arrived first.

  This can’t be happening, Callum thought. Not now, surely.

  The new world had turned him from a teacher to a soldier, a medic, a caregiver, and finally, it had turned him into a leader. He remembered those sick children back home who depended on him. Callum had wanted it to be easier. He’d raided medical stores, pharmacies, and other even darker places that had made him less proud — it had ended in failure.

  The tales, though….

  They said the healer could cure anything from a broken bone to cancer. In an irradiated world like Earth was now, this was promising news.

  However, he was a cough away from detection. And with detection came death.

  “The kid is here somewhere, don’t stop searching!” a cruel voice snarled. “Ah, and if you come across that guy from earlier, put a bullet in his head and be done with it!”

  Kid…guy…Callum knew he was the person from before, but the healer being a kid was something he hadn’t known beforehand.

  “That house looks suspicious, take a look.” Callum’s heart beat harder in his chest and he edged away from the slit in the doorway where he was crouching. This was it. This was how he would die. Four armed men of assorted size and physical enhancements walked over to the shack he’d chosen as his improvised hideout. They lifted their rifles and the one in front stopped to kick in the front door—

  “Hey! Never mind! I’ve found him.” The nasal voice was high-pitched, squeaking with happiness, and Callum thanked his unlikely savior for the distraction. As he lowered his gun — an old pistol that was the only reason he was still alive — he peeked out again and saw the men laughing as they pulled a young little boy out from behind a stack of wooden boxes. He lunged out at them with a knife, but the leader backhanded him and tore the weapon from his grip with ease.

  “See, that’s the easy way to come with us. Unarmed and well-behaved.” He patted the kid on the head before another man came and smashed the butt of his rifle into his gut. “Okay, that’s enough. Let’s go.” The leader slung the child’s body over his shoulder and began to walk towards the vehicles parked outside the square.

  Callum rubbed his temples with his fingers. He needed the healer. It wasn’t a matter of losing Plan B if the bandits kidnapped him; it was the reality of dozens dying within the next month or two.

  “Screw this,” he growled, throwing the door open and lifting his gun. “Stop right there and put the kid down!”

  The bandits turned, their guns lifted and pointed at him within a single breath. Moonlight shone from behind the clouds, a rare sight. Almost like an omen.

  Callum stared into the leader’s eyes — one enhanced, one natural — and gave him the fiercest look he could.

  In return, the man smiled, the expression ending where half of his face turned into metal and exposed circuits…

  …and then everything happened at once.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Life Is Precious

  One year later

  The children laughed, their eyes shining with joy, their healthy faces a pleasant change from what the world now was accustomed to. Callum watched them from a threadbare chair and smiled, emotion bringing tears to his eyes.

  The boy was there playing alongside the others, a lad like any other, save his abilities and the way his mind worked. The man couldn’t help but stare at little Dante as he play-acted a battle with his fellow orphans and the other homeless children. The healer had aged since Callum had saved him that fateful, bloody night, but he still carried the same innocent look that he’d had since they met.

  He played innocently, the make-believe gun in his hand firing shots off at the bandits hiding behind an old, battered desk, and forcing them to return shots haphazardly. It wasn’t a game that their caregiver loved to see them play, but today was a special day. It marked the anniversary of the Battle of the Atlantic, the day that humanity had driven the invaders to their small pockets. The Outsiders, Thorpe thought as he stared at Dante’s eerily beautiful features. Sometimes he wondered if they had any involvement in his birth. He was clearly human in all physical aspects, but he possessed features very few humans had. The sea-green eyes could shift to blue and — as Callum swore to himself he had seen — to lilac as well. The ashy, straight blond hair shone even in the dark. The teeth were flawless and resembled perfectly cast pearl shards. The caregiver stifled a laugh. One day, that kid is going to be neck-deep in women, as worrying as that may be.

  “Sir,” a little girl said from beside the young man. There were other children around her, looking curiously at Callum as they gathered. “Can you tell us more about the Battle of the Atlantic?”

  He smiled, remembering it as if it all happened yesterday. He felt like an old man telling a war story, despite the fact he was only thirty-one years old. After all, he had fought in the war himself, a conflict that threatened to tear the planet apart.

  “Well, it all started when our satellites suddenly died all at once; the broadcasts went black all over the globe. Back then, we thought it had something to do with solar flares…”

  A nearby group of children ran around, re-enacting the famous battle that had happened long before they were born. Most of them wanted to be the good guys — humanity — but those who had chosen to act as the Outsiders were doing a very good job of it. There were casualties on both sides, the pretend-medics even going as far as wrapping old bandages around their friend’s limbs.

  One of them turned and licked his lips nervously as he heard Callum begin his story. His green eyes observed the look on their caregiver’s face, and he knew that this would be one of the more interesting tales the man told. Dante realized he
was going to miss out on an important part of history if he didn’t join the circle around Callum soon. None of his companions seemed to care; they were about to lead a mass attack on the enemy; it was all that mattered. Finally, the boy decided there would be other chances to play so he lifted his hands and announced that he was out.

  “Callum is telling a tale, let’s listen. It’s about the war,” he said. The children shrugged and continued their game, clearly not interested in hearing old stories. He frowned and walked away from them, approaching the small circle of children that had formed around the man.

  The teacher looked up and smiled at Dante as he continued. It wasn’t a child-friendly story, but it was something every human of the new world needed to know, lest history repeat itself in the future.

  “We only learned the true nature of the enemy when they were closer to our planet than the moon itself. Ah, I remember watching their broadcast on our screens, a simple robotic voice message telling us to lay our weapons down and surrender.” Callum sighed. “Of course we didn’t — we killed each other day after day, why would we surrender to a race of outsiders? Ultimately, that’s what we called them: the Outsiders. They hit us hard, smashing our defenses to pieces and frying most of our electronics with their electromagnetic pulse weapons. We—”

  A girl lifted her small hand.

  “Electro…what, sir?”

  “Oh, they’re powerful bursts of energy that can fry circuits if they’re potent enough. They had us in the palm of their hand for months, their forces subduing ours, and their ships keeping hold on our nations. They even began to experiment on our people.” His expression brightened. “However, they never thought of their own weakness. For all their technology, all of their firepower…they didn’t have the numbers.”

  “How many were there?” Dante asked, his fascination with math and numbers another of his unique characteristics. He was only nine, yet he could solve equations and perform calculus problems that would have frustrated an academy student, back when academies still existed of course.

  “Oh, a few hundred thousand. Not even close to a million. Not enough to keep our billions busy for long, even if they thinned out our numbers to what we have today. We rebelled, small scale activity at first, but then we formed armies and armed entire populations. It turned ugly for the Outsiders then. Their ships were brought down, their personnel dragged out into the street and…well, we did quite a decent job of ending their reign of terror.”

  “But sir, don’t they still live out there?”

  Callum nodded. “Some places, yes. The final battle still awaits: the encounter where we will end them for good. Until then, they’re still a threat. Even a single one of them alive represents a danger for us. Despite their admission in the final hours of their dominance that they were a dying race that had escaped a star system a few centuries before its death, we never discovered if they were truly the last of their race or just another scouting force.” He lowered his voice for added tension. “Maybe they were the only ones…or maybe there are millions more of them hiding just outside of view of the galaxy, waiting for the right moment to strike…” The children trembled and a girl began to cry. Callum laughed out loud. “I’m sorry kids, I was teasing you cruelly.”

  Dante frowned.

  “Whether there are five or five hundred of them left, it doesn’t matter,” he said with certainty. “We are the real danger on Earth now.”

  All of the children went silent. Even Callum was taken aback by this mature honesty.

  “You’re right, lad. You’re absolutely right.”

  Later, as the children went to sleep, Callum walked over to his desk and pored over some maps. The other adults had still not returned. He hated it when he stayed behind like this, but none of the others got along with the kids like he did. At the same time, however, he felt that his companions just weren’t safe without him. It wasn’t arrogance; it was being realistic. He’d always had a knack for survival, a strange sort of luck that kept him going, kept him alive. There were many dangers out in the wild, the kind of dangers that either killed a man or scarred him for life.

  And not all scars are visible, Thorpe thought with a grimace.

  Less than four years ago

  It had just been a few of them at first: Adam, Johanna, Paola (and her niece, Maria) and himself. Their first encounter took place in a small camp outside the city of Destara, a place the first three adults and the teenager had believed safe until the scavenger convoy came. Callum was simply passing by, his attention caught by the sound of a gunshot as the thugs paraded into the city as if they owned it. He had watched from a lonely tower as they sacked and plundered, still unaware of the small group which cowered in their tents just a few kilometers away.

  He cursed under his breath and realized that the group wasn’t going to escape, probably believing in their delusion that the intruders were going to just miss them in their search. The tents stayed closed and Callum knew that they were probably hiding inside with a gun or two, unaware that the scum who traveled from city to city would more than likely fill it with a magazine of bullets before approaching to see who or what was inside.

  “Hero time,” he whispered in annoyance as he descended from the tower with a rifle in hand. The fifteen men who moved from building to building were careless, keeping their eyes peeled for the enemy within but not for the enemy without. He slashed their vehicles’ tires before they realized it; he was soon chasing the first two men up a flight of stairs to a quieter place where they could be taken care of.

  His bloody blade was as quick as he was; he ran back down and out to the next building where another man searched. He cost the group of thugs three more lives before they noticed he was there. Nine scavengers fired up at the second floor window where he stood above a dying man, but he was too quick and slippery to stick around and die. He threw himself out of the window and landed badly, twisting his ankle, but he soon found a new vantage point to fire from.

  Only then did the tents open, and the combined fire from the newly-arrived group (who had actually been carrying an assault rifle each, to Callum’s surprise) and his own were enough to send six surviving criminals back home — on foot, once they found out what had happened to their vehicle.

  The group from the tents approached him a few minutes later, their weapons pointing at the ground and their free hands up in the air.

  “Why did you fight them?” Adam — the handsome man with the look of a leader of sorts — asked with a strange smile. “You had nothing to earn from pushing them back. I counted more than a dozen of them, tell me why?”

  “For you fools,” Callum replied rashly. “Hiding in a tent like you were, fifteen armed men outside. You were either all going to be killed or you were going to be killed and your women taken so that horrible things could be done to them. I stopped them because you didn’t look like bad people. I hope you’ve learned a lesson today.” He turned to go, but a woman stepped forwards.

  “Wait.” Callum stopped at her voice, and she continued. “We have a project for this world, a way to bring it back to life.”

  “How would you do that?” Callum asked over his shoulder. He had given up on Earth already, the planet barely hanging on to life, let alone being worth bringing back to how it was before the invasion.

  The woman cleared her throat and seemed to get excited he’d paid attention to her at all.

  “We save the generation that can make a difference — we save the children.”

  Callum sighed. He thought of the kids he had seen out there, some he had helped with a bite to eat, others who he had guided to safer areas than where they were hiding…if he could change their lives with something more than just a moment of goodness, it would make him happy. He thought of the place he himself was designing as a haven, for now a one-man hideout, but with capacity for at least twenty people in comfortable conditions.

  A long silence followed, but finally he closed his eyes and nodded.

  “Let’
s talk.”

  Callum checked one of the maps and ended up looking at a familiar place. It was the area where he had found the boy. He hadn’t returned since, the sound of gunfire and screams of pain echoing in his memory. Everything had changed since Dante’s addition to his group. The sickly and hurt had been cured, and now it was a matter of expansion. Not every group living in these wastelands could be evil. Callum and the rest were trying to make a community that thrived off cooperation, trade and learning, not raids and theft.

  This world is like one from the books I used to read. ‘Post-apocalyptic garbage’ Dad would say. Well, Dad, it wasn’t as unlikely an outcome as you thought it was. The man smiled as he remembered his father. He had been a tough man who showed little in terms of love and affection, but he sure had taught Callum the lessons of life. I’ll never regret going camping with you or learning how to shoot a rifle. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t be here today.

  “Mr. Thorpe?” Dante was awake, as usual. Just another of the strange traits he possessed.