Sanctuary: A Post Apocalyptic Dystopian Thriller (Surrender the Sun Book 2) Read online

  Surrender the Sun

  Sanctuary

  Book Two

  A. R. Shaw

  Copyright © 2017 A. R. Shaw

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 978-1542977050

  ISBN 13: 1542977053

  Library of Congress Control Number: Pending

  LCCN Imprint Name: Coeur d’Alene, Idaho

  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 Designs by The Book Designers

  Edited by Create Space

  Dedicated to my nephew, Garrett Yeager and his lovely bride, Cassie.

  Books by A. R. Shaw

  The Graham’s Resolution series

  A Prequel (Coming Soon)

  The China Pandemic

  The Cascade Preppers

  The Last Infidels

  The Malefic Nation

  ~ ~ ~

  The French Wardrobe

  ~ ~ ~

  Surrender the Sun

  Book 1

  Book 2

  Book 3 (Coming Soon!)

  ~ ~ ~

  Perseid Collapse Kindle Worlds

  Deception on Durham Road

  Departure from Durham Road

  Wayward Pines Kindle Worlds

  Kate’s Redemption

  Bite-Sized Offerings

  An Anthology Addition

  Zombie Mom

  Contents

  Books by A. R. Shaw

  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

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Author’s Note

  Sample

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Svalbard, Norway

  2018

  The hum of the private jet lulled Roman into a deep sleep. At some point the flight attendant laid a soft navy fleece blanket over him. He’d leaned back into the comfortable leather seat, while somewhere over the Atlantic, his long legs splayed out before him, crossed at the ankle. Not knowing the exact time didn’t matter. They were flying blind to the northern most real town before the North Pole in a January snowstorm. Roman hated the cold. He hated the painful numbing sensation brought to his hands when exposed for too long during the worst winter seasons of northern Idaho.

  Once he finished with Geller, he intended to retire to some tropical nation near the equator. That was his plan anyway; in the meantime he was on another mysterious mission for his boss. He’d already made this trip once, and now he had returned for another load, though he didn’t see why they couldn’t just mail these damn totes through a courier. Geller insisted he make these trips in person. Said it was of the highest importance though it made little sense to Roman—silly even. Sometimes the old man’s interests were fairly odd. But he wasn’t one to judge as long as his paychecks kept coming in, as substantial as they were.

  “We’re about to land,” the stewardess said as she nudged his shoulder. She was blond, slim, and too young for him, but that hadn’t stopped him the last time. As he remembered she liked spending time with him at the Svalbard Inn. Actually, she liked it a lot, as he recalled—or so she seemed the last time. There wasn’t much else to do in that dreary little town and even less now that the sun didn’t rise at all in January during the polar night. The last time he’d made the trip in May, during the midnight sun, which was quite the opposite, the sun never completely went away. It was a confusing and dreary place most of the time, but even Roman had to admit that when looking out at the landscape and feeling the thin air of this remote archipelago island in which the most formidable place men had carved out a sustainable life, he had to admire the strength of a man tenacious enough to thrive there—a hard life, nonetheless, but sustainable. There was beauty there in stark contrast of light and dark. It was like living on another planet at times, though he wouldn’t have the benefit of sightseeing much this time.

  Jeannette pulled down the navy fleece blanket and reached down to each side of his hips. He let her hands roam over his sides as she hiked up the two metal ends of his seat belt and clicked the metal clasp in place, pulling the woven belt tight. Though he didn’t notice, his eyes lingered down the creamy crevice of her exposed cleavage until she lifted her eyes to his with a mischievous smirk upon her face.

  His long tan fingers encircled one of her wrists as he pulled her hand to his chest.

  “Nice…maybe we’ll play later?” he whispered, his voice husky.

  “May…be…” She drew out the word and then disappeared somewhere down the aisle.

  His eyes landed on the back of her tight skirt and calves, imagining his hands grasping her slim ankles…until she rounded the corner. Sighing, he diverted his attention out the window. A few lights sped by as the small jet lowered and touched down. Stretching his back, Roman took a deep breath. Back to work, he thought as he pulled on a puffy black parka, the hood lined with fur. He hated the coat, but it was the only thing that kept him halfway warm in the last town north of only two thousand or so of residents hiding from their lives, or so he thought that might be why they’d decided to reside there. Only those who had no life otherwise might live in such a place…those fighting demons within their souls or hiding from demons on the outside.

  The next morning, Roman flipped on the nightstand light. He smiled when the pretty blonde pulled the covers over her head to shield the light.

  “Already?”

  “Yeah, it’s that time. Apparently that’s what my watch says, anyway.”

  He showered and met his driver out front in the dark of the morning.

  On their way to the desti
nation, the Russian driver said, “You know, we had a polar-bear attack last night.”

  Roman never liked making small talk. He didn’t think Russians were ever very adept at the art, either. “Doesn’t that kind of thing happen around here all the time? Isn’t that why you have to be armed by law here?”

  “Da,” he said with a nod of his head.

  “Well, why was this person attacked then?”

  The driver became frustrated all of a sudden. He threw up his hand and said, “The bear was hungry!”

  Roman didn’t understand. “Didn’t this person carry the required firearm?”

  “Da, shot de bear four times. He kept coming to him.”

  “Four times?”

  “Da!”

  Now he understood why the Russian was frustrated with him. Yes, the man was lawfully armed, and, yes, he was mauled to death by the polar bear after shooting the carnivore not once but four times. “The bear was hungry. I see…” Again, a formidable place to live and one he disliked visiting.

  It was a nine-minute drive from Svalbard’s Inn to the Global Seed Vault. In fact, they’d passed the turnoff on their small, narrow drive from the airport last night, though it didn’t matter. The Seed Vault wasn’t manned twenty-four seven. He had no doubt there were cameras monitoring the place, but there wasn’t a staff who stayed all hours to babysit precious seeds. There was, however, staff there now, and they were expecting him.

  As they pulled up, barely illuminated in the midmorning hours, the portal to the globe’s largest seed vault stuck out of the landscape like some coal-mining-shaft entrance. If it weren’t for the reflective artwork mounted on the top, one would expect coal stored in a place like this, not the precious seeds deposited there for safe keeping for countries and private companies around the world from any catastrophes that might otherwise wipe out that country’s natural habitat. The global storage facility was a way of ensuring the survival of a unique species, and it worked.

  “Wait here,” Roman told the driver. With only one other vehicle parked nearby, with a few snowmobiles alongside, he didn’t expect there to be more than one or two people inside the underground building.

  The driver opened his palms. “Where I go?”

  Great. A sarcastic Russian driver with an attitude.

  Roman smirked and shook his head as he got out of the warm vehicle. The snowy gravel parking lot crunched under his boots. He started to cross the little metal bridge to the front entrance when one of the doors opened up, and there stood a blond, middle-aged woman, who appeared to be more like a mother than a grandmother.

  “Hello. Good to see you again, Mr. Roman.”

  He towered over her by a foot at least. Her accent was a Norwegian lilt to near-perfect English. “I see you were expecting my arrival.”

  She smiled at him. “It’s a small island. Word travels fast.” With a purposeful gander, her eyes stretched the length of him. “Dark, tall, and handsome…they were right.”

  “Who’s they?” He smiled.

  “No one comes to Svalbard without a prior introduction. By the time you leave, we’ll know even your blood type.” Waving to him to follow her down the hallway, she continued, “Of course, I knew you were coming. Your boss has kept me informed.”

  They passed another set of white double doors and headed through a concrete tunnel leading on a downward slope into the earth. Growing colder with each step, he noticed there were ice formations alongside the walls and doors as if walking into a deep freezer. She smiled at him as he shivered and pulled his thermal coat closer to his body.

  “Not much farther.”

  They came to another room, where she headed to another set of doors with more frozen ice formations surrounding the doorframe. Opening the metal door, which creaked from the disturbance of the seal, she led him inside.

  He’d been in this room once before with the same experience. He couldn’t help but feel claustrophobic in there.

  “You know, we could easily mail these to you in America. We do this all the time. There’s no need to come here personally for these parcels.”

  Oh, how he agreed. “That’s very kind of you to suggest. However, my employer prefers to safeguard this cargo personally.”

  Giving him a knowing look, she led him inside to a set of shelves. Boxes of all sorts of materials—plastic, wood, cardboard, etc.—lined the black metal shelves. They had one thing in common, though: they were all exactly the same size. She led him down past a sign that read Canada, which held black plastic totes. Then right next to those were red wooden boxes in the same dimensions with a white sign allocating these to North Korea. Roman raised his eyebrow, thinking. Then his guide stopped. Next to the red boxes was a sign in black ink: Geller Enterprises.

  Roman was even more intrigued, and his guide must have picked up on his curiosity.

  With a wry smile, she said, “We have no wars below the permafrost, Mr. Roman.”

  “I suppose not.”

  She pulled out the totes labeled in his boss’s name. They were lightweight and easy to carry. Stacking two of them in his arms, she brought the other two herself.

  The last time he’d made the pickup, he wasn’t invited to come into the stock room to retrieve them himself. Perhaps that was how the people of Svalbard were. Maybe the citizens were that distrustful; they needed to check him out first before they allowed him into the vault itself.

  “Bjork is not feeling well today. He is usually the one to help with the deposits and withdrawals.”

  “I see,” Roman said as they made the return trip, dashing his thoughts that maybe he’d been trusted by the citizens of Svalbard. When they entered the last room before the doorway, she had him sign several papers. The driver helped him put the totes into the van, and then they were off to the airport, just down the road not five minutes away. It was a long travel for what Roman felt little benefit. He wasn’t sure why he was made to come all the way from Idaho to this frozen island nearly within shouting range of the North Pole, but he did it at least once a year. He also did not understand where the totes were deposited from. He only made the withdrawals. Some things Geller kept to himself, but Roman really didn’t need to know, though at times he wondered about the man’s soul for whom he worked. If there were nefarious dealings, he’d never know about them. Roman was committed to working for the man no matter the contents of his soul. Yes, he did wonder from time to time whether he worked for the devil himself or merely for a man for whom ethics were an elastic concept. He himself didn’t mind either way unless his dealings got him killed, which would matter, then. That would matter a lot.

  Chapter Two

  An eerie, distant howl of a wolf was met by another, causing the moose to abandon the sparse stalks of grass poking through the mounds of packed snow and raise his muzzle. Despite having his ears on rotation for the danger, he never sensed the closer enemy.

  The breath that Bishop held hung in the frozen morning air before him, ears ringing in the moment after the rifle shot, the jolt, and an instant aroma of gunpowder. Mark Bishop rose from his icy stoop and peered around the pine tree from which he’d hidden for the last hour and was finally able to wipe the crusty snot from his nose. The moose he’d shot cleanly through the heart had attempted to flee after realizing his peril too late, though Bishop took him with clean accuracy from only twenty yards away. It paid to be a patient man. He’d waited for nearly an hour in a cramped position upwind from where he’d tracked the animal the day before.

  Wildlife had grown increasingly thinner in the recent weeks, since anyone with a gun and enough ammunition hunted the woods whenever they felt brave or hungry enough to deal with the subzero temperatures, even when the biting wind ate through their synthetic clothing. Bishop had long adopted one of Jax’s habits of wearing a deer fur over his coat. The addition of fur kept out the wind and moisture, while the under layers were nearly useless once wet. This dawned on him as an oxymoron, in a way. Man was supposed to be sophisticated, yet here he was…ea
gerly thrust into the dark ages, resorting to furs for warmth, because the latest fiber technology wasn’t worth a damn in this kind of cold even to keep a man warm and dry.

  Eerily quiet, his boots sounded like a hundred-ton giant as he crunched his way over to the moose that met his demise moments before. The sun was so dim that the blood looked like chocolate syrup instead of crimson in the snow. Steam rose off the increasing trail of brownish liquid. Dropping to his haunches, Bishop crouched before the creature. With reluctance, he had to take the kill, knowing that the forest creatures were overhunted and would soon be limited in number, since their food supplies dwindled.

  Unlike in the old days, this was for real. People in town were already beginning to show signs of starvation. The weak and anemic appearance of those in town weighed on him. This condition also made them more susceptible to the increasing cold and disease.

  Brushing his gloved hand over the fur, Bishop sensed the fleeting warmth through the leather. “Sorry, buddy,” he murmured. Then, taking the tactical knife from its sheath on the side of his backpack, Bishop plunged the sharp blade into the beast’s gut and slid the knife laterally up to the sternum. Steam escaped as the massive innards fell out onto the ground in front of his knees, and then, suddenly, Bishop felt a sharp sting on the back of his right shoulder. When he turned quickly, with knife in hand, another arrow flew past, narrowly missing his head. Swiveling up on one knee, Bishop automatically flipped the bloody knife in his hand backward as a figure lunged forward. All Bishop had time to do was get onto his feet and into a fighting stance, crouched low and ready.

  The figure before him, dressed in camouflage, let out something like a battle yell, and Bishop recognized the fleeting desperation. It occurred to him instantly that the other man wanted his kill. But he wasn’t going to get it. Not if Bishop could help it. The bigger man lunged for him with his own knife, arms wide and away from his body. The action told Bishop that he wasn’t an experienced fighter, and he easily slashed at the man’s exposed wrist, though he only ripped through the padding of his coat’s cuff. The attacker looked stunned by the quick move, and Bishop sensed his sudden fear. If anything, Bishop knew how to fight, a skill he’d learned well in China. Again, the man took another thrusting stab at Bishop as he easily darted away. “Leave now and I won’t kill you,” Bishop warned the attacker. But the man again stepped forward, catching the fur Bishop had over his jacket before he could dodge, and this time Bishop spun around, grabbing the attacker’s armed forearm and kicked him in the side of the knee to buckle him to the ground. With one swift movement, Bishop flipped his own tactical knife around, and with a deep sudden jerk, he sliced through flesh and deeply slit the man’s throat.