The Fall Read online

  THE FALL

  The God’s End Trilogy:

  Book One

  Michael McBride

  The Fall: Book One of The God’s End Trilogy copyright © 2007, 2015 by Michael McBride

  All Rights Reserved.

  First Hardcover Edition Delirium Books 2007

  Paperback Snowbooks 2008

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from Michael McBride.

  For more information about the author, please visit his website: www.michaelmcbride.net

  Also by Michael McBride

  NOVELS

  Ancient Enemy

  Bloodletting

  Burial Ground

  Fearful Symmetry

  Innocents Lost

  Predatory Instinct

  Sunblind

  The Coyote

  Vector Borne

  NOVELLAS

  F9

  Remains

  Snowblind

  The Event

  COLLECTIONS

  Category V

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  FOREWORD FROM THE AUTHOR

  THE FALL

  The God’s End Trilogy:

  Book One

  FOREWORD

  To my faithful readers:

  It’s important that I say the following up front. I am nothing without my loyal friends and readers, for whom I am eternally grateful. My goal for every title is for it to be better than the last. You deserve no less. It is with this in mind that I write the statement below.

  Statistics show that the average American changes careers five times in his or her lifetime. This trilogy represents a change in mine. I divide my writing years into two distinct segments: pre- and post-Bloodletting. Prior to 2008, I fancied myself a horror author. I wanted to be the next Stephen King, to write stories that would terrify people and make them question the very nature of existence. When the first book in the God’s End Trilogy was released in 2007, things went crazy in a way I never expected. Delirium Books bought the hardcover rights, Snowbooks picked up the UK rights, and Random House purchased the German translation rights. Suddenly, after a few specialty press releases, I was staring down the barrel of a successful writing career and honest-to-God deadlines for the remaining two books in the series. I knocked out Blizzard of Souls and Trail of Blood during the next six months and felt as though I’d written the series I had set out to write. There was only one problem…

  I no longer wanted to be the next Stephen King. I wanted to be Michael McBride. I wanted a distinctive style and a means of telling stories that was uniquely my own.

  So I did what any author hell-bent on derailing his success would do…I took a six-month break from writing to determine what exactly that meant. I discovered that horror was a largely linear form of storytelling—in my opinion, anyway—and I was a big fan of twists and turns. I still loved the darker aspects of the world and human nature, and had an affinity for the crueler aspects of science and nature, so I decided to combine the two with a mode of storytelling in the suspense/thriller vein. The result was 2008’s Bloodletting, and the books that followed. Innocents Lost, Remains, Burial Ground, Vector Borne, Predatory Instinct, Snowblind, The Coyote, Ancient Enemy, Fearful Symmetry, Sunblind, Condemned…

  Please allow me to be direct…this book, and the other two in the trilogy, are works of fantasy and horror. They represent an early phase in my development as a writer and are being re-released for a faction of my readership that clamors for a return to this particular world. If you’re looking for something along the lines of Burial Ground or Snowblind, then this probably isn’t for you. I won’t take your decision personally and certainly won’t hold it against you. But if you’re interested in being swept away into a post-apocalyptic world where the forces of darkness wage war against the light, then continue on, cherished reader, and take a journey with my younger self beyond the end of days…

  Respectfully yours,

  Michael McBride

  December 2014

  Avalanche Territory

  THE FALL

  The God’s End Trilogy:

  Book One

  Michael McBride

  For Kyler, Madison, Trenton, Blake, and Brennan…

  My hope for the future.

  Special thanks to Paul Goblirsch, Leigh Haig, John Foley, and Kyle Lybeck, the incredible team at Thunderstorm Books; Shane Staley and the team at Delirium Books; Anna and Emma at Snowbooks; Urban at Blanvalet; Jeff Strand; Donna Watson; my amazing family; and all of my friends and loyal readers, without whom this book would not exist.

  “Cursed is the one who trusts in man,

  who depends on flesh for his strength

  and whose heart turns away from the Lord.

  He will be like a bush in the wastelands;

  he will not see prosperity when it comes.

  He will dwell in the parched places of the desert,

  in a salt land where no one lives.”

  “But blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord,

  whose confidence is in him.

  He will be like a tree planted by the water

  that sends out its roots by the stream.

  It does not fear when heat comes;

  its leaves are always green.

  It has no worries in a year of drought

  and never fails to bear fruit.”

  —Jeremiah 17: 5-8

  Chapter 1

  I

  56 miles north of Hamadan, Iran

  “BRING HER TO ME,” THE MAN RASPED INTO HIS EAR. HIS FEBRILE BREATH reeked of the septic infection festering in his abdomen. “I can ease her pain.”

  The little girl wailed in her mother’s arms on the cot at the back of the tent. Writhing against the torment of even her mother’s gentle caress, the charred, blistering skin on her arms sloughed off in cooked chunks with the smallest shift in position. Their morphine supplies were already exhausted and it was all he could do to try to manage her exposed nerve endings with the remainder of the Lidocaine and topical Novocain, which served to deaden the pain for a few precious moments at a time, affording her the transitory respite of the sleep she so badly required. She couldn’t have been more than seven years old, immediately reminding Adam Newman of his niece back home. Long, flaccid ebony hair, reflecting the lamplight like a stream of tar. Wide brown eyes that occasionally peered out from her closed lids, issuing tears down her reddened cheeks. Light brown skin like a perfectly toasted marshmallow.

  The entire tent was stuffed full of cots, brimming with men and women uncomfortably slumbering in the wan light. It was only a matter of hours before they awoke needing food and painkillers.

  The wind arose with a howl, battering the tent with sand like buckshot. The western wall bowed in, one of the stakes tearing loose from its mooring, the tether slapping the canvas.

  The little girl’s mother had carried her, flailing and screaming, for seventy-two straight hours on foot through the rugged Zagross Mountains to the west, following the winding course of the Gave Rud River out of Baghdad and to the northeast into the Kabudrahang Province of Iran. Twelve other refugees had arrived with them two days ago. Four had since moved on, two labored on the windbreak to the west of camp to try to keep the ferocious gale from tearing the group of khaki tents from the hard, sandy ground, and the other six were in the makeshift cemetery half a mile downwind where they were buried beneath mounded stacks of rocks. Over the last three weeks they had treated more than two hundred r
efugees fleeing what had become of Iraq after the Syrian occupation, most of whom had only needed a meal and a place to sleep for the night, before rejoining the mass exodus to the east. Lately, the injuries were becoming increasingly severe, like the little girl whose arms had been sprayed by a policeman’s flamethrower while trying to flee the melee surrounding a car bomb that exploded in the middle of a market, and the man on the cot before him now, who looked like he had taken a heavy dose of shrapnel to the midsection.

  The girl reared back and screamed, her right forearm splitting like a hot dog to weep a pasty sludge of pus and exudates.

  “We can’t risk passing your infection to her. She should really be in reverse isolation in a burn unit, not some dirty tent in the middle of the desert,” Adam said, drawing his weary gaze from the girl long enough to look the man in the eyes. He hadn’t slept more than two hours in succession in the last week. There were only five of them manning the encampment that had been designed to service no more than a couple dozen refugees each week, not the constant deluge that flooded across the border. Nearly all of their medical supplies were gone, and even the ibuprofen was being rationed a single tablet at a time, so Adam was letting his headache bore though his skull to the point that it felt like his eyes were going to explode in their sockets before finally succumbing to the temptation. They were down to potatoes and carrots, stewed with whatever feral mongrel bayed at the moon long enough for its location to be triangulated in the sights of an automatic rifle, ending its melancholy song.

  The man’s face was heavily tattooed. Black designs fanned from his nose to his temples in such a way that when he closed his eyes they looked like large bird footprints with the heels touching at the bridge of his nose. Arabic words covered his forehead like dancing black flames, his long hair drawn tightly into a frayed braid on the pillow. Wavering lines like thin tiger stripes covered his cheeks from his ears. His lips were tattooed black. Various designs crept up his neck like ivy from beneath the formerly white sheet, stained with expanding amoebas of blood seeping from his wounds. There was barely enough space between markings to see the pallor creeping into his sun-leathered skin.

  “Her wounds can be healed,” the man whispered.

  The girl’s mother looked up from the corner of the tent, drawn by the sound of their conversation, but unable to comprehend their words.

  “We’re doing everything we can!” Adam snapped, pressing his fingers to his temples at the surge of pain.

  “I can heal her wounds,” the man said, producing a trembling hand from beneath the sheet. He held it up to Adam, then formed a clawed fist, leaving only his index finger free to summon him closer. “Lean forward.”

  Cautiously, never taking his eyes from the other man’s wide brown irises, Adam scooted the chair forward until his knees were against the side of the cot, and eased his face closer and closer—

  The man’s hand moved with a speed and grace Adam never expected, grabbing him across the forehead, thumb on one temple, middle finger pressing into the other. His hand reeked as though he had been digging into his own wounds beneath the sheet.

  “Let go!” Adam railed, swiping at the man’s arm, but those fingers held tight. “Let me go right the f—!”

  The words died on his tongue.

  The man released his grip on Adam’s forehead, then brought his hand back beneath the sheet.

  “How did you—?” Adam started, brow furrowing. “The headache…it’s…”

  “Gone,” the man whispered. His black lips drew wide, shimmering with the lantern light like an adder’s scales.

  Adam stared at him, shaking his head.

  “Bring me the girl,” the man rasped, his face pinching into a fist of pain.

  Adam watched him a moment longer before finally rising to his feet and walking to the back of the tent.

  “Please,” he said, holding both arms out to the girl’s mother.

  She shook her head violently from side to side, pulling the girl tighter to her chest, causing her to scream shrilly.

  “I’m not going to hurt her,” Adam said. His tan camouflaged shirt was black with blood. The matching pants streaked with it all the way down to his military-issued boots. “I’m just going to…”

  Going to what? Give her to this psychotic-looking, tattooed man in hopes that his touch alone might alleviate her pain?

  Never in his life would he have pictured this scenario when he enlisted in the Army Reserves to let the government pay for medical school.

  “Please,” he whispered again.

  The girl’s mother looked across the room to the tattooed man, her stare searching his soft brown eyes.

  She closed her eyes and nodded, reluctantly loosening her hold on the child and allowing Adam to slip his hands beneath her armpits. He carefully brought her to his chest, watching in horror as more blackened chunks dropped from her arms. Amber pus seethed from the wound like tree sap.

  The child screamed and stretched her arms out for her mother, frantically wailing the same Arabic phrase over and over.

  “It’s all right,” Adam said, carrying her across the room to the man’s bedside.

  “Bring her lower so I can reach her.”

  Adam knelt beside the cot, propping the squirming girl on his knee.

  “Relax, child,” the man said, his eyes glazing over. “You must only endure a moment longer.”

  His right hand emerged from beneath the sheet and wrapped all the way around the girl’s arm. Thin tendrils of smoke wafted from beneath his touch, the smell like roasting an overdone slab of meat on a spit.

  The girl’s screaming ceased, and she stared intently at the man’s hand.

  The charred flesh began to flake like ash. He drew in a deep, wet inhalation, then blew his acrid breath across her forearm, chasing all of the charcoaled remains away as though they had merely been dust piled on her now smooth skin.

  The child’s mother moaned and hurried to the cot, throwing herself to her knees and kissing the back of the man’s hand.

  He quickly jerked it away.

  The woman turned to him as though she had been struck, but he placated her with a weak attempt at a smile.

  “I must still heal the other arm,” he said.

  A rivulet of blood trickled from the corner of his mouth, the beading droplet swelling and shivering on his painted jawline.

  He offered his hand, palm up, to the child, who didn’t even hesitate to rest her arm on his hand. His fingers closed slowly around her burnt flesh like a Venus flytrap over its winged meal.

  Again, smoke arose from their union, summoning an intoxicating scent that triggered Adam’s mouth to begin salivating.

  Releasing her arm, the man drew another deep breath and blew across her skin, scattering the ashes of what moments prior had been a wound Adam was sure would soon take the child’s life. Droplets of blood pocked her pristine skin, their origin trailing down the man’s chin.

  Adam stared at the man’s hand until it was safely stowed again beneath the sheet.

  “Thank you,” he whispered, matching stares with the man. Though the tattoos made him look menacing, he had the wondrously warm eyes of a child, like gently stirred vats of rich chocolate.

  Adam reached out tentatively, preparing to touch the sheet covering the man’s dwindling body, then paused. He didn’t want his tactile senses to spoil the illusion if the man weren’t actually real.

  “Newman!” a voice shouted from outside.

  Adam looked up in time to see Peter Keller burst through the tent flaps. He had a rough-hewn jaw that appeared to be chiseled from granite and black eyes like chunks of coal framing a nose broken a few too many times. His face was sheet-white in contrast to his deep black crew cut. Though he looked like the stereotypical grunt, he was their information specialist, running the gamut of duties from communications to recon with the hopes of entering the FBI Academy when his tour ended.

  The large veins to either side of his neck bulged and pulsed.
r />   “You’ve got to see this!”

  * * *

  The command tent was half the size of the others so as to make it appear less significant to any insurgent factions or aerial reconnaissance. There were only three chairs set in the middle, so Adam and Keller sat on the floor in front of the others, focusing their attention on the open laptop set on their reserve drum of water.

  Behind, the radio communications crackled with static, having come alive with activity shortly after midnight. It was a secure channel, and even then, orders were coded. A sudden surge in relays always indicated that something big was about to happen.

  Topographical maps detailed from satellite images lined the walls.

  “Oh my God,” Thanh Vu gasped. She was sitting behind Adam with both hands clasped over her mouth, repeating those three words like a mantra. Stateside she had been a surgical intern and a reservist. At five foot three and a hundred pounds after a big meal, she wasn’t a typical military gal, but she could wield a scalpel like no one Adam had ever seen.

  Lieutenant Roy Kimball sat next to her, his fatigues thick with dust from heading the construction of the windbreak. His entire face was thick with dirt, save for an oblong stretch around his eyes like a raccoon’s, where the goggles dangling around his neck had shielded them. He still wore his camouflaged helmet, sand sifting from the edges to fall onto his shoulders with each slight movement. Customarily boisterous and commanding, lest someone forget who was in charge, he hadn’t said a word since Adam had entered the tent.