Eden Plague - Latest Edition

 This second edition expands the relationship between the hero and heroine and adds about five percent more story in critical places. It's also rewritten into third person ("he/she") instead of first person ("I") point of view.

The complete text of the original Eden Plague is at the end of this book – just as a free bonus – if you are interested in that version. Either version leads to the second book, The Demon Plagues, and on into the Plague Wars series.

If you are reading this in a Sample, and have previously purchased the original Eden Plague, just update your original Eden Plague ebook in your reader, as the new version now includes this edition as well.

Long, long ago.

The woman stared at the shining metal serpent as it wound itself around the tree. Good or evil? Desire for knowledge beckoned her closer.

It shone with beryl and gold. Many tiny legs glittered as it moved over the branches, its fangs delicately penetrating fruit after fruit, leaving holes glistening with sweet slime.

Aroma overwhelmed the woman, tempting her to pluck a succulent growing orb and eat it all. Finished but unsatisfied, she seized more fruit to bring to her garden, to offer it to her man.

The robotic snake slithered off to find more trees for its deadly gift.

“Just do what I tell you, Elise,” she heard Jenkins say as she stared at the weird weapon. She’d fired handguns and shotguns and rifles before, growing up on her father’s ranch, but this thing…he said it was an automatic shotgun, but it looked more like a blaster from one of those Star Wars movies.

“Hold it tight in to your shoulder. It’s going to kick like a mule but
you
shouldn’t have any problem with that.” His unsettling eyes locked with hers, and she asked herself again why she didn’t point it at him and use it once he gave her the ammo.

Because I can’t
, she told herself half-bitterly.
Even if I ever was a killer, that option is closed to me now.

She had made her peace with that feeling, even if it did mean she was under Jervis Jenkins’ thumb. Not exactly her boss, not exactly a colleague, she loathed him to the limits of her ability. She considered biting him and seeing how he’d like to deal with the consequences. But then others would come and lock up both of them, stash them away in some much deeper hole and throw away the key.

At least now she was a pampered pet. At least they needed her. For a while.

“Come on, Elise. Focus. Show me how you like to hold it.” Jenkins played with the ziploc bag of special shotgun shells, relishing his cheesy sexual double-entendre.

She ignored him and his innuendo, snugging the weapon in tight like any other shotgun, dry-firing it, then cocking it again. “Nothing to it,” she intoned. Bravado kept Jenkins happy. Sometimes. She had to play his games, and the Doctor’s games, and even though they never took advantage of her
that way,
she was still emotionally dead to them, slave that she was. She used to think she was an atheist –
I’m a scientist, after all, dammit!
– but she was at the end of her rope and had recently begun praying the same prayer, over and over.

Dear God, if you’re out there, send someone to save me.

Jenkins snapped his fingers, master to bitch. “Okay come on, step in there, and let’s go over the plan again.”

***

Daniel Markis thought back to that first meeting as they winged their way southward.
It's a bad day when you shoot your future wife.
He laughed to himself, then remembered…

Something was out of place when he came home from work that afternoon. The side door to his house stood open. He turned into his driveway in the suburbs and pulled his beat-up old van to a stop. He turned it off right away, listening. Dale City was quiet, just the
thwock - thwock
of tennis balls in the court across the street.

He stared at the open door. Something was wrong, because he lived alone. Ever since Becky left so long ago, he lived alone.

Echoes in his head:
Crazy brain-damaged loner.

He reached under his seat to pull out his car gun. The stock full-sized Springfield Arms XD rested in his hand, and two extra mags slid into a clip-on holder. His carry piece, an XD compact, became his backup, nestled on his right rear hip.
God bless Dixie, the Commonwealth of Virginia and the Second Amendment.

He lived on a corner –
generally a bad idea, far too much traffic
– he’d usually lived on military bases before –
getting off track
.
Keep it together, DJ
. They’d said it was the organic damage, so that he couldn’t focus like he should. Explosion, concussion, brain injury, three-two-one-boom.

Focus, Daniel
. He forced his mind back to the now.

Debating calling the cops for about three seconds, he realized his phone was dead.
Forgot to recharge it last night in the house, stupid car charger’s broke, gotta get a new one. Hell with it.
The serpent in the back of his head had woken up.

He needed some chemical concentration now.
Pharmaceutical brainpower.
He pulled a ziploc bag full of jelly beans out from under his seat. The purple ones were gel-caps. Good way to hide his stash from the cops, and he couldn’t afford to get busted. He chewed two of them, along with some of the candy to kill the taste. The stimulant-painkiller combo flooded into his bloodstream. He really wished he had a cortisone syringe handy for his knee.

He took a deep breath, forced it out.

Exiting his van and onto the concrete, he kept the XD in front of him and low in a tactical crouch. His left knee was stiff, courtesy of that Taliban IED, but the pain was dulling now. He gritted his teeth, concentrated on the job in front of him and powered through it.

Probably some kids doing a daylight break-in, though they were stupid to have left the side door open to be seen.
They hadn't broken the glass storm door. He opened that with his left hand and looked at the inner door, ajar. Nothing looked damaged. He let his eyes adjust for a moment, and then eased in, listening.

Quiet.

He took a quick look at the door hardware. Didn’t look broken. Deadbolt was intact.
Did I forget to lock it this morning before work? What if I hadn't come home early? Maybe they’re already gone. Yeah, that’s it. Odds are they already ripped me off and they’re long gone. Still, Dan Markis goes by the book. Always do the right thing.
He was having less difficulty focusing now. Better living through chemistry: dexedrine, hydrocodone and a little epinephrine. His heart hammered.

He cleared his house room by room, looking for anything out of place. Ground floor, his widescreen and his desktop computer still there. Then upstairs to the bedrooms and bathrooms.
No one. Nothing missing or disturbed.

He left the basement for last. If there was anyone in there they should have heard him moving around. At least he hoped so. The house was forty years old, and it creaked. He hoped they had bolted out the basement walkout into the back yard, over his useless waist-high Housing-Association-approved rail fence and across the neighbors' yards to escape. He didn't want to shoot some stupid kid or pathetic junkie.

He’d shot much better men for much better reasons and it wasn't something he looked for anymore.

He crept down the basement stairs. He knew this was a bad move if he wanted to catch someone unawares. Obviously he should have gone back outside, and tried to come in the sliding glass door of the basement walkout. But he wanted whoever it was, if there was anyone, to leave out that door.
Never corner a rat, unless you mean to exterminate him. Always leave him a way out.

At the bottom of the stairs he turned sharply left, back along a short hallway which opened out into the main finished part of the basement. He didn't hear anyone, but he smelled him. It was easier for Daniel than some people, because everything he used was fragrance-free. Artificial scents bothered him; they made his eyes water and his nose clog up. This smell was faint but unmistakable, man-cologne. Something expensive. He rubbed the bottom of his nose with his offhand finger to keep from sneezing.

From being fairly relaxed, comfortable on the chems in a combat-mode sort of way, everything inside him shifted sharply into overdrive. This wasn’t some kid. The world crystallized in that way it did when he was close to death. He’d been there before. The serpent in his head knew someone wanted Daniel J. Markis dead, erased, blotted out. It charged out of its cave and sank its fangs into his hindbrain like a terrier on a rat. Everything took on a cut-glass clarity, with slightly rainbow edges.

He surveyed the part of the basement he could see from the end of the hallway, an open room. There was a door into the unfinished part to his left, another door to the three-quarter bath to his left front, the walkout glass doors right front, and the door to the basement bedroom to his right.

The XD swung left automatically. A faint sound marked someone in the bathroom. Daniel crouched behind the end of his battered sofa, set the weapon comfortably on the armrest, and called out, “Come on out of there, you.”
Not eloquent, but it got the message across.

A moment’s pause, then the door exploded from the inside.
12-gauge shotgun
, a part of him said,
the shooter was hoping to catch me napping
. Some kind of automatic, since he fired four rounds quick, bang-bang-bang-bang, and Daniel didn’t hear the distinct
chack-chack
of a pump.

The shooter swept the room from his left to right, firing blind through the thin hollow-core door, spraying clouds of splinters with each shot. The sound was deafening. The last blast struck the top of the sofa about a foot in front of Daniel, sending pieces of cushion flying. He was already fading back and moving left, to avoid the next one that never came, low in a duck walk.