Wait Like a Stone: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller (The SHTF Series Book 4) Read online

  Wait Like a Stone

  The SHTF Series Book Four

  L.L. Akers

  Scorched Earth Publishing, LLC

  Contents

  Prologue

  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

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Also by L.L. Akers

  About the Author

  Join Us

  Soundtrack

  "Fools," said I, "You do not know…

  Silence, like a cancer, grows

  Hear my words that I might teach you

  Take my arms that I might reach you,

  But my words, like silent raindrops fell

  And echoed in the wells, of silence…”

  ~ Simon & Garfunkel

  Wait Like a Stone

  Get ready for an explosive disaster shocker…

  The attack that took down the grid was just the beginning…

  The United States hasn’t even begun to recover from the first wave of pandemonium when a new terror is unleashed upon the nation.

  Could you play God to decide who lives and dies?

  While the horrors of nuclear destruction fall around him, one man must make a choice... and the decision will haunt him for the rest of his days.

  The fallout is only the start...

  With food and water already in short supply, this newest disaster introduces a whole new level of madness, bedlam and havoc.

  * * *

  Wait Like a Stone is book four in The SHTF Series, a post-apocalyptic thriller series following ordinary people struggling to survive an apocalyptic event—that plunged the United States into chaos—immediately followed by another attack that might finally be the death of them all.

  The SHTF Series:

  Book 1: Fight Like a Man

  Book 2: Shoot Like a Girl

  Book 3: Run Like the Wind

  Book 4: Wait Like a Stone

  Sign up to the Shit (hit the fan) List here: http://eepurl.com/bMDLT1 to be notified via email when the next SHTF book comes out.

  Prologue

  Grayson narrowed his eyes at his brother-in-law. “Don’t you blink, Jake. Don’t you even fucking blink…”

  1

  Dani

  A storm brewed in the afternoon sky as Dani perched at the edge of the roofline on a short but thick concrete wall surrounding the roof. Her long blonde hair whipped around her head, and she tightly gripped her binoculars, lest the wind try to take them from her. She savored the breeze giving her a small respite from the constant humidity.

  As she did each day, she’d stolen a few minutes to sneak away from her family and look over their new world from twenty stories up. Dark clouds hanging low over the city mirrored the desperation that hung over each day now.

  For the millionth time, she marveled at the power of electricity—or more like the loss of it. She admonished herself for not realizing sooner that electricity was the beginning and the end of everything in her world; their lives revolved around it.

  No one had realized that without it, in the world they lived in now, millions would die. There was no medical care, no medicine, no transportation, no emergency services, and no protection from the thugs and lowlifes that hunted down every good citizen and took what little they had—sometimes even their lives.

  Well, no one but those crazy preppers. They’d been right after all. Her husband’s friend, Grayson, was a prepper. He’d invited them out to his farm several times, but they’d never gone. They were city people, and Grayson lived in the country. Rural. They never found the time to make it out there.

  Besides, both she and her husband, Dante, thought Grayson was a bit unhinged.

  Now she knew they’d been wrong. The man was just prepared—what she’d give now for just one bucket of their long-term food to feed her own family…

  She scanned the city below her, hoping once more to see help coming, but it was barren, devoid of human life. Charlotte, North Carolina was usually bustling at all hours of the day, but now, it was a hollowed-out husk of its prior self in the daylight.

  People only moved at night behind the folds of dark, hiding from the danger that moved freely in broad daylight. She scanned the bleak city streets and sidewalks that were once sterile and pristine but now covered in trash and stubborn waist-high weeds bursting up through the hot cracked concrete.

  She scanned the outer roads, clogged with abandoned vehicles. She panned back to the buildings…the storefronts broken and charred, left with nothing but filthy rubble from looters destroying and setting fires to the city.

  The lonely city was a harsh wasteland, in less than two months.

  To walk at night had always been dangerous in the city, but now, to walk under the sun, without the protection of shadows was a death sentence, especially if you had anything worth taking—and everything was worth taking now, in a world where production of all food and every man-made material had screeched to a stop.

  Dani couldn’t even fathom how all this could be fixed, even if the lights came back on. Humanity had shown its true nature—dark, and not to be trifled with.

  Movement caught her eye. She focused in on a small group of people running…chasing something.

  She squinted and nearly fell from her perch, the binos pressed tight against her eyes, in punishment for what they were showing her: a crowd of over a dozen people were chasing a dog.

  Again.

  Not just any dog.

  It was her dog.

  Dixie.

  She bit her lip to hold in a scream, as tears sprung from her eyes.

  This was the second time she’d watched this scene unfold. Yesterday, Dixie had escaped the bloodthirsty mob, with Dani silently cheering her on from the rooftop. Dani had hoped that would be the last she’d ever see of her dog.

  But Dixie was back.

  Probably looking for her family.

  A week ago, her husband had snuck out at night and walked Dixie miles away from them, zigzagging into an area bordering on the woods, farther than Dixie had ever been from home on foot. He’d given her the ‘stay’ command, knowing the loyal and obedient dog would sit there for hours in the dark waiting to be released, then he’d guiltily slinked away in shame from their dog’s haunted and confused eyes.

  She and her husband had thought they were doing their five-year old Chocolate Labrador a mercy by setting her free, hoping she would be hungry enough to revert back to her base instincts and learn to hunt, or at least use her nose to forage for enough trash to survive.

  They couldn’t feed Dixie anymore; they could barely feed themselves. When the lights went out, so did the food. There were no more trucks bringing food to stock grocery shelves. No more restaurants or fast food joints serving up their meals, no government welfare services to give a hand up, and no more gardens to steal from.

  Trying to feed four people and their seventy-pound family pet wasn’t easy before, but it had proven to be too much in the apocalypse. They were all slowly starving, and ev
ery day they fed Dixie was one less day they could feed their two children.

  They’d tried the option of just not feeding Dixie much instead of abandoning her, but seeing those big sad brown eyes quietly watch them eat, knowing she was so hungry, was too much. The fact that Dixie didn’t beg, but instead suffered stoically and silently without so much as a whimper, made it worse.

  Either option broke her heart, but her husband thought setting the dog free was Dixie’s only chance at survival. He said it would be easier on her, and everyone, not to watch their dog slowly starve to death before their eyes.

  That painful decision had nearly torn her and her husband apart, but in the end, she had agreed to setting Dixie free to pursue her own fate with a hope and a prayer.

  Now she could see that it wasn’t the right decision. Now, she knew watching the slow death would be better than this, because not in Dani’s darkest nightmares had she imagined Dixie’s fate would be a dangerous mob of hungry humans hunting her instead.

  Somehow, Dixie had found her way home yesterday, returning to the entrance of their building with a loud soulful bark, as though calling out for her family to come down and let her in, breaking Dani’s heart and bringing the horde of hungry people slithering out of their hiding places, armed with sticks, pikes, knives and one even dragging a sword as they tried to corner Dixie while the dog panicked and ran to and fro, looking for a friendly face—probably Dani’s—before darting another direction, and finally fleeing for her life.

  It was too much to hope that Dixie would stay gone or learn to fend for herself. They should have known better. Dixie was domesticated. She was a sweet soul without a mean bone in her body, who’d been with them since before their children were born.

  She was loyal.

  In Dixie’s mind, they were a pack; and she their protector.

  She had nowhere to go but home. Home was where her pack was.

  So Dixie had returned, again.

  We made a mistake.

  As Dani watched in fear and anticipation, Dixie wore the crowd out. So far no one had gotten within a few feet of her before the dog’s quick wits and fast feet turned her another direction. This new loner-version of Dixie was leaner, but she was sinewy too, having lost all her fat. And she was agile.

  Dani’s hopes soared.

  Dixie still had a chance.

  Dani silently prayed for her to escape once more and swore to herself if Dixie got away this time, she’d brave the night to look for her and bring her dog home, the minute the sun bedded down and the moon took guard.

  “Run, Dixie…run,” Dani whispered, her throat thick at the thought of her furbaby being beaten to death and eaten, maybe even torn apart while she was still alive, confused and terrified out of her mind with pain.

  People had turned into monsters.

  Nowhere was safe.

  Not for dogs or humans…

  How long would it be before these monsters began hunting and eating each other?

  “—Mommy?” a small voice called out, interrupting her from her dark and dangerous thoughts.

  Dani whipped around, finding her two young children, standing beside the door that led back down into the building they were squatting in after being run out of their own neighborhood by the roving gangs of looters.

  “Where’s your father?” Dani hissed, hurrying toward the thin, dirty children, while wiping her face. The roof they were on capped a twenty-story building, one of the few that hadn’t been taken over by the gangs, but the children still shouldn’t be alone.

  Forty families lived quietly in the once-sterile office building, each staying on their own now-dirty assigned floor with their doors barricaded, two families to a floor. They were on Floor 13—which had proven to be bad luck when Dani thought back on it—and shared the floor with a family of six. Neither family spoke to the other. No one trusted anyone else in their new world. They respected an unspoken boundary and kept to themselves, both families probably hoping the other wouldn’t ask for help, at the same time hoping the other would offer. They’d been lucky to find an opening in this building to squat. It was old, but solid. Mostly concrete, which proved cooler in the summer, and harder to set fire to or break into.

  The whole city was scared and starving.

  To stay in the building, they’d had to agree to take a turn on a security rotation twice a week. Their next turn wasn’t until tomorrow, and she’d left the children with their father in what seemed only minutes ago for her daily sneak peek from the roof.

  “Daddy’s sleeping,” her little boy answered.

  Dani looked over her shoulder, hesitant to leave without seeing if Dixie got away. She had to know. If she didn’t see it through, she’d worry herself sick, probably go out tonight to look for her, and never stop searching.

  She squinted at the small group of people surrounding the dark brown dot—Dixie. If she couldn’t make out that it was their dog from this far away, then the kids couldn’t either, without the binoculars.

  She hurried them over and seated them near her perch. She dug a piece of chalk out of her pocket. “Sit down right here…do not move from this spot. Draw me a picture on the floor,” she said, handing the chalk to her daughter. “Take turns with your big brother.”

  Climbing back up the short wall, lightning flashed. Dani spared the sky another glance, hoping the rain would hold off until she saw Dixie free of her hunters. She lifted the binos to her eyes and gasped. The crowd was closing in on the dog. Foam dripped from Dixie’s jaws; she was getting tired, and furiously barking in terror.

  The wind picked up, curling around Dani, nearly blowing her off the short wall, but Dani stood defiantly, forgetting everything else but her dog fighting for her life. “Run, Dixie!” she blurted out.

  She cringed at her mistake.

  “Dixie? Dixie’s down there?” her daughter asked, scrambling to her feet, followed by her brother.

  In unison, the two called out for the family dog, and Dani realized another error. Their young eyes were much sharper than her own. The children could clearly see their dog being cornered by bad people, maybe the same that had run them from their own home. She had lied to the kids, telling them their father had taken Dixie to live with a friend that had more food, and Dixie would be safe there until things were better.

  The kids had cried all that night, begging to go with their beloved Dixie, where they too could safely play and go to sleep with a full belly. One lie had led to another…

  Now her lies were slapping her in the face.

  “Dixie! Dixie!” they happily called, not realizing yet that their dog was in danger, as Dani pushed them behind her, away from the ledge.

  The two children cupped their hands to their mouth and leaned around their mother, trying once again to call their dog home.

  Dani dared to lift the binos once more. Two lone men broke from the crowd and were slowly approaching Dixie, circling her. One man stalked her with a knife and the other with a long thick pointy stick.

  A third man, empty-handed but hungry for the kill himself, bent over and hefted a heavy man-hole cover and struggled to carry it to the fight, intent on just crushing Dixie apparently.

  It was three against one and while Dani couldn’t see the men’s eyes, she could almost feel the tension between the three as they stole sidelong glances at each other, each hoping to be bringing Dixie back to their own table.

  Dixie was baring her teeth, saliva dripping dangerously from her muzzle. Dani almost didn’t recognize her sweet girl; she’d never seen her act like that.

  The men coiled back to prepare for killing strikes as raindrops began to bounce off Dani’s shoulders.

  The crowd closed in around them. Dixie crouched in fear, cowering with nowhere left to run. She was surrounded now. She howled out a barrage of wild, defensive snarls.

  Her children screamed in fright for their dog, and Dani covered her mouth with one hand, the other still holding the binos up to her wide, wet eyes.

 
The man’s pointy stick swung wide and swift, landing across Dixie’s jaw, ending in a pitiful, high yelp that traveled to the rooftop.

  The dog fell and blood blossomed on the ground around her face. Her jaw hung loose.

  The crowd cheered, but Dani and her children flinched and gasped as one.

  Dixie struggled to her feet, teetering left and right.

  Dani could feel her dog’s pain as though it were one of her own children.

  She wept for her, feeling weak in the knees.

  Dani’s daughter nearly leapt over the edge to try to get to their dying dog, and her mother struggled to hold her back, nearly pulling her white-blonde hair. Her son stood quaking, his posture stiffening. He reached up and pulled his red ball cap lower over his eyes to hide his tears.

  Disbelief and guilt consumed her.

  I did this.

  Poor Dixie.

  Dixie twisted violently in a circle, trying to cover both her flanks and her front from the next vicious attack coming at her from what she’d always seen as her protectors—humans.

  Dani’s heart ached as she imagined Dixie’s confusion. Reality set in. She couldn’t stop this horrible thing from happening, but she needed to stop her children from seeing it.

  2

  Grayson & Jake

  Jenny reared her head and brayed at the lightning that lit up the sky. She stomped her foot in fear at the thunder that rolled outside the camp where Grayson and the others had just saved Puck from Cutter’s revenge, and freed Graysie from her would-be iron-barred wet grave.