Breathless - Swarm Book 2: (An Epic Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller), page 1
BREATHLESS
The Swarm Series
Book 2
By
J.T. Sloane
Mike Kraus
© 2022 Muonic Press Inc
www.muonic.com
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No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, without the permission in writing from the author.
Table of Contents
BOOK ONE, SUMMARY
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
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Thank you for checking out Swarm! This series was written as a collaboration between Mike Kraus and several individual authors listed below, the collection of which appears on the cover as J.T. Sloane, and is the result of many months of hard work. We hope you enjoy it!
Aidan Pilkington-Burrows
J. Mannix
E. L. McCabe
Michael Raymond
S. E. Gilchrist
B.K. Boes
Liam Pickford
Jack Caspian
Kate Pickford
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Special Thanks
Special thanks to my awesome beta team, without whom this book wouldn’t be nearly as great.
Thank you!
Swarm Book 3
Available Here
And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth: and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power. – Revelations, 9:3.
BOOK ONE, SUMMARY
A swarm of mutant cicadas emerges in America’s Corn Belt, killing everything it touches and leaving a trail of deadly venom in its wake. While out in California, wildfires rage. It’s not just the fire that kills, it’s the smoke.
In rural Iowa, Dr. Diana Stewart, Senior Crop Scientist for Matreus Inc., a firm with deep roots in agri-business, witnesses one of the first cicada-induced deaths which leaves an orphaned boy, Jesse, in her care.
When her bosses demand her silence, Diana fears they’re hiding something—if not illegal, at least very suspect—so she sets off ahead of the cicadas to find answers. The brood multiplies, emerging faster and in greater numbers than anticipated, while her bosses hunt her down. Diana and Jesse escape several attacks, but finally make it to her colleague Sam Leary’s lab at the University of California, Berkeley.
Sam and Diana dissect her cicada samples, noting how their morphology differs from the standard cicada carcasses but their research is interrupted by Diana’s ex-husband-turned-cop, Garrick. On Matreus Inc.’s orders, Diana is kidnapped, leaving Jesse in mortal danger.
After witnessing a raging fire start in a Teff field and overtake the farmworkers, including her father, California journalist Anayeli Alfaro rescues Cricket (the dog), collects the rest of her family, and rushes them to safety at her apartment so she can file her story about the fires with her newspaper editor, Sid.
When she finds Sid dead in the newspaper offices, Anayeli abandons her story in favor of finding basic supplies, rushing to Sid’s house where his much-loved dog, Roxy, greets her enthusiastically. Sid’s upscale neighbor is less enamored of Anayeli, threatening to call the authorities, but the young reporter tussles with the woman and then makes a run for it, leaving the pushy women bleeding on the street.
The gas stations are swamped and Anayeli is forced into a gritty neighborhood store where she encounters her sullen neighbor who’s already showing signs of sickness. When she makes it home, the neighbor’s young daughter, Bailey Rae, begs Anayeli to come and help her father, but it’s too late. He dies in a pool of his own blood after extracting a promise that Anayeli will protect his daughter.
When the rampaging fires threaten the city, Anayeli and her family—complete with the neighbor’s girl and the two dogs Anayeli has inadvertently adopted—are forced to flee again, this time taking refuge on a raft, on the American River. When a bully challenges her for the use of the raft, pushing her asthmatic brother, Ernesto, into the churning waters, Anayeli takes aim and fires, killing the challenger and taking the raft for her own family. But the current is strong and her family is exhausted. They lose her youngest sister, sweet Luz, to the churning foam.
When the tattered band finally make landfall, the line to gain admission to the Evacuation Center stretches down the street. Anayeli begs the officials to admit her ailing brother and when they refuse, deliberately goads her mother into a fight in order to make Ernesto’s asthma worse. The gambit works, but at a price. Anayeli and Ernesto are escorted into the camp, while her mother, the two girls, and both dogs are left outside the gates to fend for themselves.
Further south, at U.C. Berkeley, boy genius Sam Leary gets a call from his friend Dr. Diana Stewart about the killer cicadas that have exploded out of the ground, leveling crops and humans alike. Diana offers to bring him samples, hoping he can figure out what’s going on with this new species.
As Sam waits for her to show up, his colleague and academic rival, Frank Dorset, goes on the rampage, insistent that he be allowed to take possession of Sam’s flannel moth research which, Sam discovers, is tied up in government contracts. Stuck between self-preservation and keeping his promise to wait for his friend, Sam must devise a way to keep himself and his research away from Frank while remaining at his post.
Hostilities escalate and Frank brings fire and then water to Sam’s lab in an effort to flush him out. Sam hunkers down with his most loyal and trusted friend, Henry (the dog), but also reaches out to his science-geek-internet buddies, leaning heavily on the brainiac known only by his handle, “Cockroach.”
Cockroach urges Sam to leave Berkeley, but Sam has given Diana his word that he’ll stay put until she arrives, so he toughs it out, Frank hounding him at every turn. When it looks like all is lost, Sam begs Cockroach to come to his aid.
Frank intercepts Cockroach, threatening to kill Sam’s friend; it’s only then that Sam discovers Cockroach is a girl.
Incensed by Frank’s cruelty, Sam devises a plot to trap him beneath the ribs of the T-Rex that graces the departmental lobby but the trap malfunctions, crushing Frank beneath the T-Rex’s humungous skull. Sam and Cockroach hide Frank’s body just as Diana and orphaned Jesse show up with the cicadas.
Sam and Diana have barely begun their work when Diana’s ex kidnaps her, trapping Sam and Jesse in Sam’s lab, with the doors and windows sealed and a fire hose pumping water into the confined space.
Meanwhile, way over The Pond, Ron Frobisher, fixer to the rich, is summoned to the ancestral home of his patron, Ann Pilkington, and tasked with escorting unidentified, live cargo from England to the west coast of Africa. Ann gives Ron a small box, suggesting that the contents are deadly.
Ron runs the box through and MRI machine, only to discover that he’s in possession of some kind of beetle. He digs into his patron’s web of companies in an attempt to uncover what, exactly, he’s transporting, but the clues are scant and he’s left wondering whether Ann’s latest venture, Bio Better, has put him in charge of ‘a new protein source’ and/or ‘a miracle cure for cancer.’
Ron supervises the loading of Bio Better’s crates, only to discover three crates have gone missing. A sojourn to the seedy side of Southampton’s underbelly leads to a brutal, bloody, coke-fueled confrontation, and—to Ron’s horror—the release of an entire crate of mutant cicadas onto the streets of Great Britain.
Chapter 1
KIM WALKER. BRANXTON, AUSTRALIA
The gale force wind slammed against the building, causing the windows fronting the main road to rattle in their frames. In the middle of serving the truck driver by the counter, Kim Walker cast an anxious glance at the glass, hoping it would hold. This shop, the first of the four Emmalee Brews and Buns franchises she owned in small towns throughout the Hunter Valley, was her favorite; proof that the years of saving even the smallest amount of money, living in a tiny caravan, and working non-stop had paid off. Her gaze rested on a recent school photo of Emma tacked to the corkboard and she smiled as she finished the coffee off with a butterfly outline in the brown and white froth. She held the expression as she handed the trucker his take-out coffee. As the man struggled to push the door open against the wind, Kim fought the squirm of disquiet in the pit of her belly. It was getting darker out there.
Joyce, a middle-aged waitress who’d worked at the diner forever, paused near the pastry cabinet and fiddled with a stray strand of graying-brown hair. “The café’s a bit slow this morning. Guess that fire’s got everyone worried.”
Instead of the usual cheerful atmosphere, an unusual tension vibrated inside the café. The breakfast crowd stared at the television bolted to the side wall with the fascination of rabbits transfixed by a swaying snake. The ferocious wind had caused several burn-off fires to break containment lines. With the country in the grip of a seven-year drought, the fires had spread rapidly. There’d be a lot of finger pointing, once control had been established.
“You may be right, Joyce.” Kim wiped down the counter. “Let’s plan on closing early.”
“Sounds good to me. George likes me close by when the weather turns bad.” Joyce bustled off to the toaster oven.
The glass door banged open with a resounding crash. An elderly man staggered inside, coughing hard and bringing with him an acrid puff of smoke. The bright yellow of his Rural Fire Brigade uniform was all but obliterated with the dirt and soot that covered him from his dusty boots to the top of his stringy gray hair. His gaze was wild as he searched the room before fixing on Kim.
The hair lifted on the back of her neck and she dropped the wash rag. “Barry, gosh, you look like you’ve been working all night. Grab a seat and I’ll be with you shortly.”
With sweat dripping down his red-flushed face Barry staggered a few more paces. His mouth worked, but no words emerged, only a terrible wheezing noise interspersed with great, hacking coughs that erupted from deep inside his chest. Reeling in his heavy fire boots, Barry’s swollen, red-rimmed eyes bulged as his hands grabbed his throat and he lurched forward.
“Hold on, Barry! I’m coming.” Snatching up a water bottle, Kim hurried around the counter but froze when he collapsed at her feet. Someone screamed, but Kim paid them no heed. Her attention was focused on Barry, writhing and contorting like he was having a seizure.
To her shame, she couldn’t move. She wanted so badly to help him, but blood was everywhere, flowing from his nostrils and mouth, even seeping from his eyes and ears, spattering over her new two-hundred-dollar heels. His face turned into a horrifying Picasso sketch of gore and distorted features, as blood soaked into the uniform he wore so proudly. It was as if his entire life force was pouring out of him. His back arched in a bone cracking snap as his heels drummed on the tiles and all the while he labored to breathe, his mouth gaping wide, each drawn out inhale a harsh rattle of sound.
Her first thought had been an asthma attack. Then a seizure. But no way was this an epileptic episode. She’d never heard of anyone losing blood because of a seizure.
No one made a move toward him. It was if they couldn’t believe what was being played out in front of their eyes. “Joyce! Call for an ambulance. Quickly.” She pushed aside her horror and forced herself to crouch beside Barry.
His eyes fixed on the ceiling, Barry lay ominously still. Kim stiffened, her heart missing a beat. Barry’s mouth stretched open as if, even now, he searched for that one last desperate gasp of air. The blood eased to a trickle. Kim leaned over to listen for a breath but heard nothing. Swiping a pair of disposable gloves from under the counter, she linked her hands together and began CPR. After a few minutes, she sank back on her heels and wiped tears and blood from her face with the edge of her shirt.
Joyce’s black lace-up shoes clattered into view. “I can’t get through. The line is still busy. Oh no…is he...?”
Pushing to her feet, Kim met her waitress’ worried gaze and kept her voice low. “I couldn’t get a heartbeat. I think he’s gone. I’m going to lock up shop.” She drew a deep breath to steady her jangled nerves and raised her voice over the rising tide of anxious chatter. “Please, I’d like everyone to leave and go home.”
As the shocked customers slowly gathered their belongings and rose from their chairs, Joyce shuffled closer. “Do you think he had a seizure?”
“I have no idea. We need that ambulance, Joyce.”
“Right you are.” Joyce picked up the phone again.
Stripping off her gloves, Kim shucked them into a nearby bin. Heart heavy, she stepped away from him carefully avoiding the pools of slowly congealing blood. She picked up a neatly folded tablecloth and draped it over the body.
Whispering to each other and giving the area where Barry lay on the ground a wide berth, the customers filed toward the door.
Maybe Barry had died from an asthma attack brought on by smoke inhalation. But to the best of her knowledge bleeding and asthma didn’t go hand in hand either. And Barry had been a firefighter for years. She shepherded the last of her customers from the shop and shot another glance at the television.
The flames behind the news reporter swarmed the trees and scrub at an alarming rate, fiery pillars of yellow and red fire stark against the swirling dark gray smoke. Several firemen raced around three firetrucks and hauled out hoses before running toward the inferno. Kim pressed a hand to her mouth to smother her cry as a small kangaroo hopped past, its tail burning. One of the firefighters with hose in hand ran after the injured marsupial and disappeared from view.
The news reporter, wearing a full-face respirator and goggles, reappeared on the screen. Ash coated her blonde hair and she spoke in a rapid tone that held a distinct quaver. “This fire front is enormous and spreading eastwards, already encroaching on the western slopes of the Blue Mountains. There have been reports of several people suffering a severe reaction to the smoke, however information is sketchy at this stage. The New South Wales Rural Fire Brigade Commissioner advises that there are another three massive fires burning in the state. The Bathurst region, the Wollombi National Park, and also the Riverina areas are under threat. Residents are advised to be prepared to leave and to not stay and fight. The controlled burn-off of agricultural fields that began four days ago could well end up being a potential state-wide disaster. I repeat, the advice is to leave now if you’re in the fire’s path.”
The image switched to an Area Command office where the commissioner stood with a group of people, one of whom was the state premier, their attention fixed on a large-scale map of New South Wales. Kim squinted at the screen, frowning at the man standing to the commissioner’s right. Did the logo on his navy-blue shirt read ‘Matreus, Inc.?’ The reporter reappeared on camera.
An insect buzzed past the reporter’s face. She squealed and flinched away. The wind blew her hair across her face as she yelled about the ferocity of the fire before casting a wild glance at the blackening, orange-tinged sky. “The weather bureau predicts this unprecedented weather pattern is pushing the smoke toward Sydney. The air pollution in the city could reach an all-time high by mid-afternoon. All Sydneysiders are urged to stay inside and close all windows and doors, especially the old, the vulnerable, and those who suffer from respiratory problems. Construction sites have been ordered to shut and already the roads are congested.”
The screen shifted to an image of the Sydney Harbor Bridge where traffic crawled along all lanes, and a thin layer of smoke nestled over the city’s skyline.
Kim’s thoughts flashed to Emma, the daughter she’d given up for adoption when she was five years old. It was her go-to thought whenever she was stressed to her limit. At the time, she’d told herself the adoption was in Emma’s best interest. But deep in her heart, she’d often wondered if she’d been selfish and taken the easy way out. Kim pushed down her surging unease. Emma’s adoptive parents would have everything in hand. Kim had made certain they were good people, rich, important, and successful. Besides, Emma must be thirteen by now. Hardly a baby. Kim recalled herself at thirteen, practically an adult doing all the housework and cooking for her alcoholic father. The tone of the few emails they’d exchanged since Emma had reached out when she turned eleven, told Kim the kid had her act together. She’d be fine. This was a bush fire and Australia had fires all the time. Kim switched off the television.
