Authors: David VanDyke
Tags: #thriller, #action, #military, #science fiction, #war, #plague, #alien, #veteran, #apocalyptic, #disease, #virus, #submarine, #nuclear, #combat
The Demon Plagues
Plague Wars Series - Book 2
by
David VanDyke
Plague Wars Series - Book 2
Smashwords Edition
Published by David VanDyke
Copyright 2012 David VanDyke
All Rights Reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-62626-013-9
This ebook is licensed for your personal
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No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form, or by any means
whatsoever (electronic, mechanical or otherwise) without prior
written permission and consent from the author.
This book is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, places, businesses and incidents are either products of
the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely
coincidental.
Online Excerpt – Eden Plague History For Dummies
by B.B. Larsen
Thanks to my friends and fellow authors
Vaughn Heppner and B.V. Larson, for their encouragement, for
persevering and showing me the way. Check out their awesome
books.
Thanks to my readers – my lovely wife Beth,
my father Chet, my friend and fellow author Ryan King, and the
members of our little writing group - Jordan Millner, R. Brian
Roser, and Duane Lee, talented authors all - for their excellent
critiques; their feedback has made me a better writer and this book
a better novel.
Thanks to my friend and Master Armorer Aaron
Dearborn for his discussions and advice on gun terminology.
Thanks to my Baghdad buddy and bubblehead
(submariner), CAPT Eric Jabs, USN, for his reality check on
attack-submarine warfare. There’s nothing like being under fire in
a foreign land to turn two very different men into friends.
Thanks to CL Smith who put together the cover design.
You can find him at:
www.GoOnWrite.com
The Demon Plagues
is Book Two of the Plague
Wars series. It is not a stand-alone story; the reader may find it
hard slogging without reading the first book:
The Eden
Plague.
Plague Wars Series
The Eden Plague - Book 1
The Demon Plagues - Book 2
The Reaper Plague - Book 3
The Orion Plague - Book 4
First Conquest
- Novella, coming April
2013
Comes The Destroyer - Book 5
, coming
Spring 2013
Other Works
Unfettered
Low Justice
For more information visit
http://www.davidvandykeauthor.com/
Infection Year Ten
.
Alan "Skull" Denham put his eye to the sight
of his venerable Barrett sniper rifle. Mexico City was smoggy as
ever; he could just barely see his target area. The fascist United
Governments of North America hadn’t done any better than the old
Mexican regime had in cleaning the place up. Annexation of Mexico
and Canada by the former US had proven to be the proverbial
anaconda swallowing the buffalo; the process seemed inevitable, but
very, very slow.
Skull was indigestion.
The cold logic of insurgency dictated that he
kill as many northerners as possible and spare the locals, sowing
distrust between Latinos and gringos. When he did, government
cracked down, locals protested and rioted and bombed.
He loved it.
This target was special: a Security Service
Psycho officer, one of the tiny percentage of infected humanity
that the Plague turned evil…or at least narcissistic. Most people
considered the two the same.
Like many low-level Psychos in the
Unionist-Party-dominated UG, this one led an SS death squad,
searching out the UGNA’s enemies, criminal or political, real or
imagined.
Crosshairs drifted downward to rest on the
norteamericano
. Skull inhaled, then let his breath out most
of the way and paused naturally. His finger gently squeezed the
trigger, surprising him with the sharp report. All well-aimed shots
were unanticipated; that was a secret of the sniper, especially for
shots like this at over eight hundred meters.
He didn’t have to see the Psycho fall, didn’t
have to observe his head explode like a ripe melon. Zenlike, as
soon as the bullet left the barrel he had felt the shot was good.
Skull was already moving from his position before the first sirens
wailed and the SS airmobile reaction team spun into the air.
He slid the weapon into the beat-up guitar
case, barely large enough to contain the gun. A sombrero settled
onto his head, completing his mariachi costume. With his dark eyes
and deeply-tanned face wrinkled from a lifetime of outdoor
exposure, he became just another local musician heading to a
concert. His Apache grandfather had bequeathed him the ability to
tan darker than any ordinary white man, and he blended in among the
South and Central Americans with ease. Down the stairs, off the
roof of the building and into the slums, in two minutes he had
disappeared among the bars and cantinas and squalid apartments.
Helicopters pummeled the air overhead, too
late. The crowds on the dirty streets hid him, one among many, as
he made his way to his dwelling.
In his tiny rented room he searched his own
face, dark eyes like pits in the cracked mirror. Almost fifty now,
he was resigned to the aging as long as he could keep the hate
alive. He nursed it like a beloved child; the killing gave his life
meaning. Perhaps someday the fear of age and infirmity would tempt
him to accept the emasculating Eden Plague virus that had upended
his world.
But not today. Today he had filled his cup of
death. Today he was whole.
Water on his face, on his hands. In the
fading light coming through the cheap curtains it turned to blood,
but he ignored the sight by long practice. He reached for a bottle
of mescal. “
Arriba, abajo, al centro y pá dentro
,” he
murmured, and then drank a slug from the neck. The traditional
toast of ‘up, down, center and in’ seemed to make the smoky liquor
taste better.
Opening the guitar case, he gently removed
his exquisite rifle. Before he stripped it down and cleaned it, he
took out a knife and made a thin hash mark at the end of the row on
the stock.
His fingertips touched the four hundred and
fifty-five tiny indentations, one for each kill with the weapon.
The first ninety-six had been the enemies of his country, back when
he had a country, back when the United States was something to
believe in. He’d killed in Somalia, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan and
countless other places.
The rest of the marks…those were personal.
Payback for his old commander Zeke, payback for hacker Vinny,
payback for the innocents in the death camps and for the other
millions murdered by the chickenshit jackbooted thugs of the
Unionist Party and the United Governments, those that had corrupted
his flag, stole his Constitution, and murdered all he held
sacred.
Who needs sex
, he thought,
when
killing is so much more satisfying
.
Closing the knife, he began to lovingly
service his weapon.
Dummies by B.B. Larsen
Infection Day
. Daniel Markis looses
the Eden Plague in over one thousand cities around the world. US
employs nuclear weapons against its own citizens in an effort to
control the Plague; President declares martial law. Propaganda
claims the infected become mentally ill; Homeland Security begins
immediate arrest of Eden Plague 'Sickos', quarantining them in
camps.
Infection Year 1
. Wars and chaos break
out across the globe. More than fifty nuclear weapons used in
various conflicts. World economy teeters on the edge of collapse.
The North American Unionist Party, formed from extremist groups in
the US, explodes in a grass-roots fascist movement driven by fear.
The Unionists sweep Congressional and State elections. Internment
camps for Plague carriers grow and multiply in the US, Russia and
China. Nations with Eden Plague-infected leadership become havens
for refugees and declare themselves Free Communities under Chairman
Daniel Markis. Russia reconstitutes the Soviet Union, re-annexing
the Ukraine, Belarus, and the Central Asian republics. China
annexes Mongolia, conquers Taiwan.
Infection Years 2-3
. Unionists seize
the USA in a coup. The Unionist-controlled US annexes Canada and
Mexico to form the United Governments of North America. The Big
Three – the UGNA, the New Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of
China – declare the Free Communities ‘Enemies of Mankind’ and
‘Bioterrorists.’ Eden Plague concentration camps, slave labor and
extermination expand in the Big Three as carriers lose all civil
rights and are declared ‘enemies of the state’. The Big Three
continue to use atomic weapons to punish or pressure FC nations
into compliance with their anti-Eden policies. Many mid-level
powers – India, Japan, Saudi Arabia, the European nations – declare
neutrality and independence from either side, but secretly oppose
the superpowers and cooperate with the Free Communities.
Infection Years 4-10
. The New Cold War
settles in as major conflicts burn out. The Neutral States Union
forms in Geneva, Switzerland, based on the bones of the old UN and
NATO. Neutral States tolerate Plague carriers but their leaders and
military remain largely uninfected. The NSU coordinates political,
military and economic pressure to oppose Big Three interventions,
and extends its nuclear deterrent to cover the Free Communities.
Big Three impose extreme border security measures and expand their
security apparatus, becoming repressive police states.
Colonel Tran Pham "Spooky" Nguyen, Free
Communities Armed Forces, checked the action on his well-worn P90,
ensuring for the tenth time that it was ready to function: ready to
pepper his opponents with Needleshock rounds, the apex of FCAF
nonlethal-weapons technology.