The Search (26 page)
Authors: Darrell Maloney
If he took a sloppy punch and missed, the man would have an opening to retaliate.
Bryan stole a glance at Sarah, still bruised and bloodied and cowering in the corner.
And he grew enraged.
He remembered from the school yard fights he had as a boy that the best way to defeat a larger opponent was to hit him hard and often. And not to give him time to recover.
The rage fed him as he swung again and again, landed punch after punch, so fast that the big man staggered back.
A good right hook to the chin sent him reeling and his knees started to buckle.
A kick to the side of the head sent him to the floor.
But Bryan didn’t stop there. He was suddenly filled with an overpowering need for vengeance.
For what he’d done to Sarah.
Bryan straddled the man and continued to pound the man’s face and head, long after he was unconscious.
Again and again and again he punched, until his own knuckles were bloody and raw.
Finally he stopped and turned to see Sarah running through the room toward him.
At last, she was free.
But something was terribly wrong.
There was fire in her eyes.
She started pummeling Bryan with her tiny fists, one right after another against his chest.
He didn’t understand. Not at all.
He succeeded in catching her hands and held them both tightly by the wrists.
“Sarah, honey, what are you doing?”
She screamed like a banshee.
“Why? Why are you doing this?”
“Doing what? Sarah, what’s the matter?”
“Who are you and why did you kill my husband?”
Bryan said, “What are you talking about? Honey, you and I were married seven years ago.”
The other men burst into the room as Bryan released his wife’s wrists.
She went running to Martel’s side, sobbing hysterically every step of the way.
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Thank you for reading
FINAL DAWN Book 7: The Search
Please enjoy this preview of
FINAL DAWN Book 8: A Long Road Back
Debbie stepped into the hallway and closed the door behind her.
The crowd had grown since she’d gone in. There were now almost a dozen people gathered around to hear the diagnosis.
Many of them were in tears.
They were looking to Debbie for answers. But she had precious few to give them.
“I gave her a sedative, so she’ll sleep comfortably for several hours. Bryan hasn’t slept well in days, so I expect they’ll sleep peacefully together.
“After she wakes up, it’ll begin again. She’ll likely be combative, even violent. Right now she doesn’t much like Bryan very much. She doesn’t know him, and considers
him
the bad guy. Not the animal who brainwashed her.”
Sami asked, “What made her that way? What made her forget all of us? What made her forget who she was? What could possibly do that?”
“I examined the back of her head. She said she fell down the stairs at the farmhouse, but the wound looks to be at least a week old. I think in all likelihood he attacked her in the forest, then carried her through the woods to where his truck was parked or his horse was tied.
“It’s impossible to say for sure whether she suffered a concussion without x-rays or a cat-scan, but I’d bet my life that she did. Probably a bad one. One that can leave blood clots behind. I gave her a blood thinner, just in case, as well as an antibiotic because the back of her head is still swollen. A week after impact the swelling should have gone down but it hasn’t, which probably means an infection.
“Since the swelling on the outside of her skull hasn’t gone down yet, it’s a safe bet her brain is still swollen as well. And that’s what we need to worry about the most. I talked to the surgeons at Wilford Hall to see if they’d be willing to remove part of her skull to relieve whatever pressure is there.
“They said that after this many days that may cause more harm. They’re sending a team tonight to examine her and make that decision.”
Karen seemed especially distressed by the news. She considered Sarah the daughter she never had.
“Oh, my… please tell us… she’ll be okay and her memory will return at some point.”
“I wish I could tell you that, Karen. But at this point we can’t even say for sure she’ll survive. Her brain had to have suffered a lot of damage. She’s still subject to hemorrhage or stroke, or a blood clot despite the medication. Let’s just pray she survives, and anything more will be gravy. Even if she has to relearn everything she ever knew all over again, we should settle for that and be happy we still have her.”
“How’s Bryan taking the news?”
“I haven’t told him the worst of it yet. He’s in a mild state of shock himself. He said he’d been trying to prepare himself for the possibility she’d be found dead. And he was praying constantly that she’d be found alive and well. He said he never considered there might be a third possibility… that she’d be alive but wounded, and would reject him completely.”
Three doors down the hallway Brad and Bryan Too were furious.
And they were covertly making plans.
“When do you want to head out?”
“Why waste time? The sooner we get it done the better. How about first light?”
“Sounds good to me. I’ll meet you at the gate at sunrise.”
FINAL DAWN, Book 8: A Long Road Back will be available worldwide in February, 2016
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If you enjoyed
FINAL DAWN, Book 7: The Search,
You might also enjoy
RED: The Adventure Begins
RED: The Adventure Begins
is available through Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble Booksellers, darrellmaloney.com, and other fine book stores.
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Here’s a preview...
Red had a worried look on her face.
And Red never worried about anything.
“Dad, I don’t like this. This isn’t just a typical blackout. This is something worse. Much worse.”
“Now, honey, don’t jump to conclusions. It’s only been a little more than a day. We’ve had blackouts that lasted longer than this before.
“Look at it like an unearned vacation. We didn’t ask for it, but it’s here. Let’s take a day off and go fishing. Heck, we can’t do anything here anyway.”
But Red was adamant.
“No, Dad. You aren’t listening. Haven’t you noticed we haven’t had any traffic since the power went out? I mean,
none.
In a day and a half we haven’t had a single car roll into town. You know why? Because the cars are all dead, that’s why.
“Bonnie and I rode up to the highway this morning. I wanted to see if I could find which transformer blew, and whether they had a crew out there replacing it.
“What I found instead were abandoned cars, as far as the eye could see, in either direction. Many of them had their hoods up, like their owners had been trying to get them running again.
“There are people up on the highway just wandering around, not knowing what to do. People sleeping in their cars. People in shock.
“Dad, what in the world could possibly cause all the cars to stop working at precisely the same time all the power went out?”
Her father’s face suddenly turned ashen.
He stumbled over his words.
“A nuclear blast at high altitude could have caused it. But only a few countries have the capability of doing that. And they have no reason to. It would harm them as much as us.
“There’s only one other thing I know of that could cause such chaos.”
He didn’t want to go on.
But she needed to know.
“One of the things pilots study is the affect the other planets and sun can have on our own planet. How their gravitational pulls can affect our compasses and such.
There’s a phenomenon that can occur during a massive solar storm. If the storm is large enough, it can send electromagnetic pulses toward the earth. Those pulses can short out anything that runs on electrical power.”
“Dad, please tell me it’s just temporary. That things will start working again once the solar storm has passed.”
“No, honey. I’m sorry. If that’s what’s caused this, then it’s permanent.”
He held her close before finishing.
“And we’re all doomed.”
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Please enjoy this preview of
ALONE
ALONE is available through Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble Booksellers, darrellmaloney.com, and other fine book stores.
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Dave and Sarah Anna Speer had been preparing for Armageddon for years. They thought they’d covered all the bases, and had planned for everything.
It never occurred to them that the single thing they had no control over was the timing.
Sarah was on an airplane with her young daughters when solar storms bombarded the earth with electromagnetic pulses. Everything powered by electricity or batteries was instantly shorted out and would never work again.
Dave was suddenly alone.
He was also unsure whether his family was dead or alive. He assumed that the airplane stopped working and plunged from the sky. But it was scheduled to land in Kansas City at almost the exact time everything stopped working.
Had they landed in time? Was it possible they survived?
This is the story of a man facing Armageddon alone. It chronicles the things he does to survive in a newly vicious world.
It also includes Dave’s desperate and poignant diary entries to his wife. Just in case she did survive, and somehow makes it back to him to find he didn’t make it himself.
From the author of last year’s best sellers “Final Dawn” and “Countdown to Armageddon” comes a new tale of one man’s journey through hell… alone.
Chapter 1:
Dave couldn’t get the tune out of his head. He’d heard it all morning long, off and on, playing quietly in the back of his skull. And it was driving him crazy.
Oh, it wasn’t unpleasant. It was a happy little ditty. At least it sounded that way. It sounded more like sunshine and smiles, rather than rainclouds and foreboding.
Finally, he’d had enough.
“Okay, let’s play a game,” he announced while looking in the rearview mirror at Lindsey and Beth.
“I’ll hum you a tune, and the first one to guess the tune gets a candy bar when we get to the airport.”
Sarah looked at him from the passenger seat. With
that
look.
“Excuse me, mister? You’re going to get the girls all hyped up on sugar just before I take them on a four hour plane ride?”
“Not both of them, honey. Just the one who guesses the name of the song.”
