Shadow Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  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

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Shadow

  Holly S. Roberts

  Shadow

  Holly S. Roberts

  Copyright © Holly S. Roberts 2019

  Edited by Michelle Kowalski

  Cover by Fantasia Frog Designs

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be multiplied, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by whatever means. Electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without express written permission of the writer. This eBook is licensed for your use only.

  This is a work of fiction. ALL characters are derived from the author’s imagination.

  No person, brand, or corporation mentioned in this Book should be taken to have endorsed this Book nor should the events surrounding them be considered in any way factual.

  Chapter One

  Marinah

  THE PLANE’S ENGINE rumbles beneath my feet and the white plastic walls shake like a 9.0 earthquake. All I can do is hold my stomach and fight the urge to vomit. Why me? I ask myself as I swallow back the sour taste of bile and inhale through my nose and exhale through my mouth. Somewhere, years ago, I read this relieves queasiness. Ha. Just another reason I don’t miss the internet.

  The cabin of the plane is a stripped-down passenger jet that’s seen better days. Scratch that, this plane has lived through a world of hurt and somehow came out the other side. Its ability to stay in the air is questionable, yet somehow the pilot got it off the ground. The original rows of seats were pulled out and now there are only two rows facing each other from opposite sides of the center aisle. The old cracked vinyl of my seat pokes my bare skin below the stupid black skirt I’m wearing, making a miserable experience worse. The powers that be assured me the older aircraft offered the best chance of surviving the nearly three-hour flight from DC to Havana. The president’s assistant told me that placing an aircraft at my disposal for this trip was an honor. He said it with a straight face too, the jerk.

  Bursts of electromagnetic energy have increased during the past few months, signaling the return of our enemy. In my eyes, the electromagnetic activity also makes flying extremely dangerous. Seven years of war against creatures thought to be from hell all but decimated humans and left roughly ten percent alive to face the horrors of food shortages, disease, and general chaos.

  While one paranormal door of terror opened, it led to another breed of monsters that came to our aid a few years into the war when we thought all was lost. The humans who survived have the latter monsters to thank.

  I’m fortunate to be among the living only because of who my father was. Or am I? Why am I here? I’m a useless non-essential person in a world that needs soldiers, doctors, and mechanics. Oh, and politicians. We can’t forget them. Not even a new world order could smite government windbags from our planet. Those blowhards are the ones who put us in our current situation and thrust a novice like me in the middle. Bottom line: The devil’s monsters are regrouping and we have a thin to zero chance of surviving another war even with the help I’m on a mission to secure. It’s been twenty-three months since the last major attack from hell’s monsters and we’ve gained little ground in re-establishing anything but our government.

  Millions died in the first year, billions in the following six. Communication with other countries outside North America and Canada stopped two years before the end of the war and analytically speaking, we’re it. The last hope for the human race.

  After another deep inhale, I glance over my shoulder and look out the window. The miles of blue water below offer no comfort. I picture sliding into the shark-infested ocean to become a mid-day snack. My vivid imagination holds the image of limbs torn from my body and muscles shredding between ginormous teeth as sharks devour me in painful, ripping bites. If we go down, there’s no way I’m pulling the cord of my ridiculously clunky parachute that I got less than five minutes of instruction on how to use. I read somewhere years ago that falling from great heights into water was similar to hitting cement. With clenched teeth and an aching jaw, I’m banking on it.

  My fingers are blue where they grip the armrests and I’m doing everything I can to hold back a full-on panic attack. It doesn’t help that the parachute is uncomfortable to lean back against and my neck and shoulders are killing me.

  All of this skitters through my head until I’ve had enough. With a deep inhale, I pry my fingers from the armrest, stretching them to regain circulation. After the pinpricks subside, I unbuckle the chest and waist straps, divesting myself of the moldy smelling canvas parachute. My loud sigh fills the cabin. I’ve taken back what little power I possess. The sharks will still get a snack if we crash, but I won’t be alive to care.

  I lean my head back and enjoy that I can finally slouch into the crunchy seat. Closing my eyes, I count slowly by threes. The first few hundred come easily. Then, like always, I slide back into the thoughts that set off panic bombs in my brain. What it comes down to is this: I’m not adaptable to the new world. I’d give anything to return to life before hell’s doors opened and the monsters destroyed humans. I want to return to that innocent time. Go back to working at restaurants where my worst day included a customer complaining about their food being cold. I do not want to stay in present times when a bad day consists of rotting corpses, fear of attack, and good monsters verses bad.

  Maybe they’re all bad. Many people think so. I’m not one of them due to my father and that’s possibly why I was chosen to go to the island where different scary monsters reside.

  Laughter bubbles up and spills into the empty cabin. The pilot, if he hears me over the sound of the chugging engines, doesn’t turn around. That’s a good thing because he would think me crazy. He’d be right. My father, the defense secretary up until his death two and a half years ago, would agree. The last thing he’d want is his daughter going on this insane mission. Of course, he would never have imagined that I’d walk in his shoes. Me, the sweet girl with ambitions of becoming an actress. I look back and think how stupid that sounds now, but acting, even in school plays, took me outside myself so I could be someone else and not the shy, scared girl I really was. My school days ended abruptly when hell attacked. One day I was studying theater and performing arts as a freshman at UC Berkley and the next I was staring at the television in my dorm, watching the beginning of the destruction of the world.

  It wasn’t monsters that took us down at first. Many countries thought the early electromagnetic pulses were the detonation of nuclear weapons. Of course it was easy to see why. We lived in a world where it was only a matter of time before a terrorist group got its hands on a nuclear cache. When the electromagnetic pulses began, several countries jumped in and took out the majority of the Middle East.

  The domino effect continued. All the monsters had to do was provide a few large bursts of electromagnetic power to begin the end. Before the radioactive dust settled, hell hit us with their ungodly hounds. Having no idea what the hounds actually are—they’re ugly dog-like creatures with razor-sharp teeth and five-inch claws that carry a fatal poison—I’ve adopted the military vernacular of “hellhounds” like everyone else. We also have no idea if they really come from hell. The religious fanatics used biblical translations and agreed with the military’s name for them. Or maybe it was the other way around and the fanatics named them first. It doesn’t matter. Hellhounds killed in waves, leaving hundreds of thousands of dead after each attack, and humans had no idea how to fight back because the darn things were almost impossible to kill.

  I, unlike most humans who survived, never learned the physical art of war. The government put my brain to work instead. Though I was enmeshed in artistic studies in college, I minored in analytics because it came easy to me. The U.S. Federation required me to make charts to show our chances for survival and create optional scenarios to assess human casualties along with analyzing every scrap of data they could provide on human survivors around the world. I have no idea what they do with all this data and my job is not to ask those questions so I don’t. I also have no illusions about why I received the analyst job. My father was the man in charge of managing our military forces and he worked best knowing his only child was safe. I was one of the lucky ones due to my father’s position and I’ll never forget that.

  My father died three months before the end of the war. I was one of a handful of people trained in foretelling the probability and location of the next hellhound attack and surprisingly kept my job even after his funeral. For more than two years I’ve wondered when my safety gig would be up and I would be wearing a red stripe on my uniform signaling I was little more than fodder if we we
re attacked again.

  You could have slapped me upside the head with a calculator when the new president, as smarmy as most politicians, asked me to take over my father’s position. The president started as a synthetic biologist and agricultural scientist of all things and I’m not sure if his “smarmy” was in place before his presidential bid or if he put on the political mask when he ran for office. The country needs food, so a man with advanced agriculture knowledge won the election.

  The president approached me twenty-four hours ago about this mission. Wearing a gray three-piece suit, shiny shoes that have no place in the new world, and a Rolex watch hanging on his thin wrist, the president swore me in this morning as defense secretary—a twenty-four-year-old woman with no experience in war outside of analytic figures. Add in my lack of diplomatic skills and the fact that I barely like people and my analysis of this situation’s chances for success is two point three on a scale of one hundred. I’m the third defense secretary since my father’s death. Having his title doesn’t bode well. My personal chance for survival is slightly higher than the mission’s chance of success at two point eight out of a hundred. That comforts me. Not!

  The Shadow Warriors I’m heading to meet terrify me to the point of unreasonable behavior. Think jumping into a pit of crocodiles, whipping out an umbrella, and whistling “My Humps’ by the Black Eyed Peas while flailing to the beat of snapping jaws. Crazy, right? And now that darn song will be stuck in my head again. I start humming it under my breath while my brain does memory acrobatics.

  Shadow Warriors are elite fighters—larger and stronger than humans. They’re the polar opposite of hell’s spawn because they think and strategize, making them a more formidable enemy. Because of fear, bigotry, and thinking the Shadow Warriors might overthrow the new government, the Federation almost started another war when the threat of the hellhounds receded. Thanks to the government’s screw up, I have this nice advancement in office and I’m on a mad dash to repair relations with the good monsters. It’s basically a suicide mission.

  King, the reigning leader of the Shadow Warriors, requested a female liaison. That’s King as in Cher or Prince. He provided no other name, so I’ll work with it. The question is: Will King work with me?

  After the president swore me into office, he said roping in King is my number one priority. I’m not personally responsible for the mistakes made at the end of Hell’s War, but my orders are to apologize—a.k.a. beg, plead, or do anything else to get them back on our side.

  “Defense Secretary Church, we’ll be landing shortly,” a voice blasts over the intercom, and I jump half out of my seat almost hitting the dirty, white console above my head.

  Regardless of the abrupt blare, I’m unused to the title directed my way and an interminable ache spikes in my chest at the remembrance of people addressing my father in the same manner. He died fighting. It didn’t matter that he was an old man who should have been enjoying a fluffy dog at his feet while reading his favorite westerns, his responsibility was to the men and women fighting an impossible war. Dad didn’t live long enough to know we won and he was gone before he could stop the heads of state from screwing up the relations with our allies. I know in my heart Dad would have found a way around the diplomatic catastrophe that happened. The Shadow Warriors respected him and he returned their respect. As his daughter, I’m following his lead even though the men I’m about to meet petrify me. They’re big, bad, and scary. I kid you not, their animal form is Bigfoot on steroids. Goose bumps run across my skin and I go back to humming “My Humps.”

  I peer out the small window again and think about the scenery when the plane first took off. Knowing our cities are destroyed and actually seeing an aerial view of the devastation are quite different. Tall buildings are nothing more than scraps of concrete and metal. We live mostly below ground now, and as much as I’ve hated it, I’m relieved I don’t have the day-to-day reminder of all we’ve lost. Even knowing sharks lurk in the blue water below, the image is preferable to the ruin left behind by the catastrophic war.

  I pull my gaze from the ocean, unbuckle my seatbelt, and head to the lavatory to check my appearance. I’ve grown accustomed to military fatigues provided to government workers. The dark blue suit jacket, skirt, and clunky heels I’m wearing are incredibly uncomfortable. I tug on the short skirt as I walk and almost trip. They put me in this getup to garner male attention. I’m not happy about it. I’m nothing but a piece of meat to the U.S. Federation. Believe me, meeting a group of monsters who grow six-inch fangs is not a time to feel like food.

  I close the lavatory door and glance in the mirror. My cheeks are flushed red from the slipshod training yesterday. The small outdoor space had high walls and no shade unless you hugged the perimeter. My skin, unaccustomed to sunlight, took the brunt of the exposure. I’m too tall and uncoordinated to learn fighting skills that take years to master. Would they listen to me?

  No.

  At least they gave up after a few hours. I’m hopeless, and training with kids in their early teens who are more capable than I am didn’t help my self-confidence. Seeing these kids wear their red stripes on their shoulders with pride wasn’t exactly helpful either. They will be the first to die when the hounds attack again.

  I adjust the clip holding my thick kinky brown hair, making the wayward strands half-conform once more. I’ve thought about cutting it a thousand times. A thousand times I resist. It’s my one vanity. Running a brush through my hair at night grounds me. It’s such a simple task even though keeping it clean and lice free isn’t easy. I shiver at the thought of the small creepers that make so many shave their bodies. The new world sucks.

  After my first full shower in months—with hot water no less—I’m actually clean. It could be my only perk as defense secretary before I die. I stare at my reflection in the mirror. I’m far from beautiful or sexy regardless of what clothes they put me in. My high cheekbones and pointed chin give my face a thin, haunted appearance even with my current sunned, cherry cheeks. Truthfully, I didn’t like sunshine before the war and preferred a dark corner to hide away and work. The war took away the option of sunlight, but against my personal code of dark and quiet, I now long for it. At least until the heat outside yesterday realigned my thinking.

  Glancing forward, I can’t see more than my face in the small mirror, which is a good thing. I’ve always been awkwardly tall, coming in at more than six feet, and extremely thin with no coordination. Sit me in a spot, hand me a pen and paper, and I’m safe to be around. Put any kind of obstacle in my path and I’m as likely to fall as a newborn colt. If no obstacle is around, I’ll trip over my own feet. No, acting wasn’t the best choice of professions for me, but I loved it.

  If you wanted to survive the war, you toughened up and I’m the antithesis of tough in a world where only the strong survive. I have no idea what others see in me, so I continue staring deeply into the mirror. Almond-shaped eyes more black than brown with a high forehead that stands out when my hair is pulled back or my curls stand on end. Dark eyebrows accent my eyes and need a lot of upkeep to stay away from a unibrow. Unlike my long body, my face is pixy with high angular cheekbones and a button nose that runs in my family. My lips, possibly my best feature, are fuller than my face should allow and perfectly shaped for kissing. That’s a joke. My last kiss was more a sloppy meeting of mouths in a closet during a break at work. One questing kiss from that guy and I decided he could keep his spit to himself. It didn’t help that he was too young for me. Not younger really, because he was around my age. I have a thing for older men for some odd reason. Daddy issues most would say, but my father was the bomb and if anything, I want a good man like him and not some guy learning to kiss with me as his slobber receptacle guinea pig. In my opinion the mirror shows nothing special and I only see the introverted failure I’ve observed a thousand times before.

  I shrug my shoulders and move my thoughts along.

  Many humans similar to me, as in not the fighting type, took their lives because they couldn’t handle the harsh realities of our cruel new world. Some, due to ridiculous bigotry, refused to stand beside Shadow Warriors and died in their unprotected militias or homes. My guilt over the protection my father provided me from inside the internal workings of the government gnaws at my soul. I should have been one of the unfortunate and by only a chance of birth, I’m alive. For now.