The Last Infidels: A Post Apocalyptic Terrorism Thriller (Graham's Resolution Book 3) Read online

  Graham’s Resolution

  Book 3

  The Last Infidels

  By A. R. Shaw

  Liberty Lake, Washington

  Copyright © 2015 by A. R. Shaw

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator.”

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  Cover Design by Keri Knutson of Alchemybookcovers.com

  Dedicated to my beautiful daughter,

  my Sarah-Melanie

  finding you . . . completed me.

  Table of Contents

  Foreword

  Chapter 1 Dutch’s Caravan

  Chapter 2 Required Reading

  Chapter 3 To Fix Them

  Chapter 4 Triple-Loaded

  Chapter 5 Shots Fired

  Chapter 6 Speak Easy

  Chapter 7 By the Campfire

  Chapter 8 A Story of Fire

  Chapter 9 The Injustice

  Chapter 10 A Greeting

  Chapter 11 The Stalker

  Chapter 12 Fleeing Dreams

  Chapter 13 The Messenger

  Chapter 14 The Girl

  Chapter 15 Private Time

  Chapter 16 An Old Enemy

  Chapter 17 Caught and Lost

  Chapter 18 The Nightmare

  Chapter 19 Sheriff’s Vacation

  Chapter 20 The Invitation

  Chapter 21 Saying Good-Bye

  Chapter 22 The Debriefing

  Chapter 23 The Trip

  Chapter 24 In the Garden

  Chapter 25 Anticipation

  Chapter 26 The Attack

  Chapter 27 Pressure

  Chapter 28 The Burial

  Chapter 29 Regret

  Chapter 30 Fixing Dalton

  Chapter 31 Riding High

  Chapter 32 A Predicament

  Chapter 33 Shooting the Breeze

  Chapter 34 Young Love

  Chapter 35 Come to Me

  Chapter 36 Tent City

  Chapter 37 Man Traps

  Chapter 38 A Trick

  Chapter 39 The Meeting

  Chapter 40 A Dinner Mood

  Chapter 41 Malefic Nation

  Chapter 42 Eyes Aglow

  Chapter 43 Let’s Roll

  Chapter 44 The Escape

  Chapter 45 Americans

  Chapter 46 The Cache

  Chapter 47 Going Back

  Chapter 48 Waiting

  Chapter 49 All Is Lost

  Chapter 50 Graham’s Resolution

  Chapter 51 The Immigrants

  Chapter 52 Reunion

  Books by A. R. Shaw

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  Foreword

  Welcome to the world of Graham’s Resolution. As a writer, I try to limit the parts that readers tend to skip. Therefore, within these pages I do not often recount what you’ve already read. However, here I will attempt to inform you of what’s already taken place in case my readers have forgotten between releases.

  As the series begins, 80 percent of the world has died from infection with the H5N1 virus, commonly called the China Pandemic. Graham is about to bury his father, his last surviving family member, when Hyun-Ok, Bang’s mother, approaches him. She dies while transferring her son to Graham and warns him of the dangers to come.

  Graham and Bang then trek to the family cabin, north along the Skagit River, in the fictional town of Cascade (inspired by the town of Rockport, Washington). Along the way, they encounter a madman named Campos. Graham must kill Campos in order to keep the man from killing twin girls Macy and Marcy, who are on their way to their Dad’s apartment. Sheriff, a stray police dog, also appears with the twins; he is one of the few dogs who has not yet gone to the wild side out of hunger, and he quickly becomes a loyal companion to the girls. (Sheriff has become a beloved character in the series; nearly every week I receive fan mail asking me to keep him alive.)

  Together, Graham, Bang, the twins, and Sheriff make their way to Cascade, where Graham finds a grouchy old man, Ennis, and an ailing Native American woman, Tala, already occupying his cabin. The group learns to coexist until they run across a group of people dressed in hazmat suits who dump a boy named Mark into their possession.

  The members of Graham’s group are carriers of the virus, and the people in suits are actually members of a clever prepper organization that has anticipated all the calamities to come their way. The preppers, however, are still susceptible to the virus that Graham’s group carries.

  The two groups tentatively learn to live near each other, but with very specific quarantine rules. This works until one day a marauding group kidnaps Tala. The preppers aid Graham in her rescue, but one of their members, Sam, is exposed to the virus and, instead of dying, he becomes a rare carrier as well. Sadly, his seven-year-old daughter is now orphaned and has to stay with the preppers while Sam goes to live at Graham’s camp. This is how book 1, The China Pandemic, ends—with Sam only able to visit with his young daughter at a safe distance across the Skagit River.

  The winter season begins book 2, The Cascade Preppers. We start by learning how Sam has adjusted to the group; Graham and Tala are now in a relationship. Anything that can go wrong does in book 2: Sam takes Mark and Marcy on a hunting trip and encounters a snowstorm and disaster; Ennis becomes ill; Graham goes into town and is badly injured in a wild dog attack, but is saved by newcomer McCann, who has traveled to Cascade on horseback. There is a devastating fire at the prepper camp that causes Sam to break all quarantine rules to ensure the safety of his daughter, Addy, an effort that nearly gets him killed. The fire kills Dalton’s wife Kim and several others.

  At the end of book 2, the injured members of Graham’s camp have recovered, but Ennis dies. Scientist Clarisse, the preppers’ best asset, creates a vaccine to inoculate those who are still susceptible to the virus. These events, and the fact that Tala is now pregnant, end The Cascade Preppers on a note of both hope and uncertainty.

  With that out of the way, I now present to you The Last Infidels.

  Chapter 1 Dutch’s Caravan

  Dutch felt eyes upon them and could almost smell the mares’ fear; the wild dogs had tracked them through the night. After the long march across the state to silently escape from the invaders, to be exposed now by dogs seemed cruel, even for fate.

  He raised his hand slowly to signal the driver of the truck behind him to stop, then clenched his fist to have her cut the engine. While he held the reins a whisper’s breath away from the hide of the mares pulling the wagon, Dutch slid his Remington 870 shotgun across his lap with slow stealth. In anticipation of the wild beasts, he had loaded it earlier with a combo load of two number 1 buckshot, followed by two double-ought and then two slugs, for a total of six shots. Practice taught him that loading his weapon in this way allowed extra insurance in case something just kept coming at him. If that did not work, he had other options
at his disposal and within reach.

  Intent on hearing even the faintest of danger signs, he leaned forward on the bench seat of the wagon and tilted his head to the best angle. Shutting his eyes in concentration furthered the conscious effort. He had ridden without care before the dark descended; the wild dogs’ howling had already warned him of their carnivorous intentions come nightfall. Their glowing eyes shone through the darkening forest at regular intervals as the day lengthened into dusk.

  The time to start a fire and make camp had passed, and the steady cadence of the five-ton US Army truck and trailer, loaded down with provisions, rang out as it trailed the little convoy to the outskirts of Cascade. The provisions were intended for a new homestead, Dutch’s mission now. He led in a wagon burdened much like the truck. Two lineback horses who were acutely aware of the present danger pulled the wagon.

  The young woman driving the truck behind him had come in handy, but if it had not been for the need to drive both vehicles, Dutch would have kicked her out near the Coulee Dam on State Route 20. He was not only afraid of being tracked by the invaders but also grew worried that he was beginning to feel responsible for the safety of the woman who was a mere child in age compared to him. In his mind, the liability she posed could mean the death of both of them, and he wanted no charges now or ever again.

  He planned to send her away at his earliest convenience. She’ll have to take care of herself, Dutch kept telling the nagging voice deep within his mind. At almost fifty years of age, she appeared to be in her early twenties and needed no protector, especially not someone like him who was nearly fifty. Babysitting a whiny twenty-something—particularly in a survival situation—held not a shred of appeal to him.

  Not that she was whiny, really; on the contrary, she irritated him because she did not talk. Hell, from the moment they’d met around Saint Maries, south of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, four days earlier, she’d nearly driven him mad with her silence. Unfortunately, he had little choice but to let her tag along, since he had not run across another living soul all the way here. She was a good worker, he’d give her that. He would allow her to stick around for a few more days until she got her bearings, and he hoped that the current residents of Cascade would take her in after he warned them of the coming danger. He intended to fill a backpack for her, give her one of the mares tied to the back of the wagon for payment, and send her on her way.

  The real reason he had dared take her along at all was that he knew the reality if he’d left her behind: she would have succumbed to the invaders. Since they had already entered the country, he suspected they would, by now, be hunting along Interstate 90 and taking inventory of their newly conquered land.

  The invaders had simple rules, really—either join their ranks or die. They didn’t bother wasting ammunition; they did the deed with brutal sincerity, using their bare hands or the blade of hatchet, knife, or sword. To kill this way was their animalistic preference. It was the same way they handled things in their own countries. Ammo they saved for hunting; slaughtering by blade was their choice for infidels and nonbelievers. They were the boots on the ground . . . only this time, it was American soil they tread upon.

  China was merely the provider of the weapon, and double-crossing China wasn’t difficult for them. The Chinese had the weaponized version of the virus under coolant in their labs already, so it was merely a matter of money and information to complete the exchange. What China didn’t take into consideration was the need to deflect blame. Purposely exposing the Chinese for developing the virus was only fitting; it ensured that the world saw them as the only possible culprit in the death of hundreds of thousands.

  Invasion was phase 3 in an elaborate five-step world domination plan for jihad. First they implemented the H5N1 virus by weaponizing it via several self-sacrificing subjects; once virulent with the deadly strain, they boarded airplanes with circulating air systems, thus making each passenger also contagious. The unsuspecting couriers then returned to their colonies to die and, in doing so, achieved genocide by spreading the virus exponentially.

  Second, they waited and let the hand of death take its toll. While manipulating their own statistics to reflect a higher mortality rate than they suffered was the easiest of deceptions, the sacrifice of thousands of their own for jihad prevailed as imperative. However they committed the deed, it was essential that they use hate in any form to wipe out most of humankind—no offense was too vile, no taboo ruled out, nothing considered sacred.

  Since the infiltration took place early on, Europe fell easily and was destroyed from within. Now, all that remained of the United States would soon be dominated as well. Jihad was a long-term plan. With the first steps implemented, they were gleeful with the results so far—America, as it had been, was no more.

  Dutch had been on his second tour in Iraq when an improvised explosive device took out his lower left leg, right below the knee. That was it for him. Throughout his recovery and remarkable transition to prosthetic use, he had tried to convince his supervisor that he was in even better shape than before. Rules were rules, however, and section 313 of the army regulations had clearly put him in the discharge column. After a long recovery, he’d packed up his gear and headed back to the States.

  After making his way to his father’s abandoned ranch south of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, he threw himself into farming and ranching with every shred of intensity he had used in war. He had no other real options. He’d never married, and his parents had passed only one year before his injury. He was happy it had happened this way; he wasn’t sure if his mother could have taken it. His father, on the other hand, would have expected him to stand until the end.

  His brother Clive lived in California. He’d called Dutch twice when the pandemic hit hard. The first call was to say that his wife had the virus, and the next call brought the news that their daughter had passed right after her. Dutch was not surprised to hear him say he was going to take his own life right after he hung up the phone, and he did not try to stop Clive. He couldn’t blame him. What was there left to live for? He said only, “I love you, brother,” before the call ended.

  Dutch had heard this same sad story all over the country, and he waited to catch the inevitable virus. He welcomed its presence; he even went out to a couple of local bars—after nearly killing himself working on the ranch—in anticipation of contracting the damned thing, but it just never took hold in him. He woke up with the sniffles once and thought, Okay, here it comes, but in a few days they cleared up. In time he found himself, well . . . disappointed.

  Dutch helped his neighbors and took care of their livestock when he could. Then they began to die off, one by one, until one day he realized he was the only one driving through town. He went around to the deceased farmers’ spreads and let loose their livestock: cattle, horses, donkeys, pigs, sheep, goats, and chickens. He just opened the gates and watched them roam away, tentative at first but free to graze along with the mule deer and roaming elk herds. No one else was coming to care for them, so he figured it was his duty to let them go rather than to let them starve in their stables; at least they stood a chance at adapting to the wild side of life, rather than die outright of starvation.

  Then he started listening in on radio transmissions for any traffic coming or going. He hadn’t heard much until a few months ago. The first intelligent noise he heard was a Morse code transmission on the high-frequency band coming from the northeastern area of Washington state. At first he thought it was an automatic repeater beacon someone had never taken the time to turn off. Dutch was a bit rusty on translation, and it took him a while, but when he finally figured out the dits and dahs, it came as a shock to find there were more survivors out there.

  He wanted to make contact, but didn’t trust anyone out there just yet. He waited, leaving the option open for later. Then Dutch began overhearing transmissions of a different kind, and that set his mind reeling. He wasn’t as thrilled about this new discovery. It was a voice transmission in a language he’d
only run into in faraway war-torn lands where bombs lay hidden and even women and children were suspect because they, too, might kill you.

  After a few days of increased activity Dutch’s mind began connecting the dots. Could this whole thing have been a planned attack? There were no other inferences to make. The conspiracy theorists had been right all along. At first it had been only a suspicion that the virus was weaponized; now he was sure those suspicions were founded on truth.

  Dutch rarely spoke aloud in his lone residence unless it was to his two dogs. When the reality sunk in about what the overheard transmissions meant, he said to the empty room, “You couldn’t fight us man to man . . . you goddamn cowards.”

  After monitoring the Morse-encrypted transmissions for a few more weeks, Dutch realized that the worst of his fears had come true: an invasion of the United States was in progress. They had already sent several teams ahead to secure major cities. Hell, they were already here during the virus phase, just lying in wait and hiding in the shadows. Dutch knew they must have had some kind of vaccine available to them, or they wouldn’t take the risk.

  Then, after a few more weeks, the enemy moved north of him by dark of night. They were traveling the interstate highways in long, raucous convoys and clearing communities of survivors. He mounted a reconnaissance strategy to scope them out on horseback before making plans to bypass them and warn the northerners. He couldn’t risk them intercepting a radio transmission from him that would expose his own location. Traveling by horseback wouldn’t be too daunting; he only had to go from Saint Maries to Coeur d’Alene.

  During a reconnaissance outing on a dark, cold, spring night, Dutch had heard the ramping up of hostile chatter and then witnessed the death blow as a survivor—another one who couldn’t live with the intruders’ ways—begged for his life; eventually the man put down his weapon and submitted to his own demise by a brutal beating not fit for even the worst of criminals.