The Alt Apocalypse {Book 3): Torrent Read online

  TORRENT

  The Alt Apocalypse Survival Series

  Tom Abrahams

  A PITON PRESS BOOK

  TORRENT

  The Alt Apocalypse Survival Series

  © Tom Abrahams 2018. All Rights Reserved

  Cover Design by Hristo Kovatliev

  Edited by Felicia A. Sullivan

  Proofread by Pauline Nolet and Patricia Wilson

  Formatted by Stef McDaid at WriteIntoPrint.com

  This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events is purely coincidental. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

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  WORKS BY TOM ABRAHAMS

  THE ALT APOCALYPSE SURVIVAL SERIES

  ASH

  LIT

  TORRENT

  AFFLICTION (NOVEMBER 2018)

  THE TRAVELER POST-APOCALYPTIC/DYSTOPIAN SERIES

  HOME

  CANYON

  WALL

  RISING

  BATTLE

  LEGACY

  THE SPACEMAN CHRONICLES POST-APOCALYPTIC THRILLERS

  SPACEMAN

  DESCENT

  RETROGRADE

  PILGRIMAGE: A POST-APOCALYPTIC SURVIVAL STORY

  MATTI HARROLD POLITICAL CONSPIRACIES

  SEDITION

  INTENTION

  JACKSON QUICK ADVENTURES

  ALLEGIANCE

  ALLEGIANCE BURNED

  HIDDEN ALLEGIANCE

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  Acknowledgements

  For Courtney, Sam, & Luke

  You’ve helped me weather every storm

  “Water is the driving force of all nature.”

  —Leonardo da Vinci

  Author’s Note

  I once told my editor, “People love reading about the apocalypse.”

  She corrected me. “People love reading about surviving the apocalypse.”

  She was right.

  This series of books, THE ALT APOCALYPSE, is about that premise. It explores survival under the most extreme circumstances. It is, however, a new twist on the post-apocalyptic/dystopian/survival genres.

  This series, which can be read in any order, features the same core characters in each complete story. But every book dunks them into a new, alternate apocalypse: a nuclear holocaust, an earthquake, a flood, a wildfire, a hurricane, a plague, and even zombies. Different heroes will emerge in each novel. Different characters will survive and perish. Your favorite character dies in one book? He or she will be back in the next.

  The idea is to explore how people with different skills survive, or not, in alternate disasters. I hope you enjoy the fiction that treads close to reality (except the zombies) and choose to ride shotgun with me for what promises to be an exceptional set of adventures.

  CHAPTER 1

  April 5, 2026

  New Orleans, Louisiana

  Keri Monk didn’t want to drown in her childhood bedroom. But as she pushed herself from the popcorn ceiling using her fingertips, and dove underneath the cold, briny, putrid water that rose inconceivably fast, she understood it was a real possibility.

  It was inky black beneath the roiling surface as she held her breath in her cheeks and searched for the door that led into the hallway. She was disoriented despite having grown up in this room, a haven from the outside world replete with plush bears and dolls, trophies, posters of teen idols, and certificates of achievement tacked to a handmade fabric bulletin board.

  Her lungs burned as she pushed through the water, bumping into floating furniture and other things she couldn’t identify. She found the doorway, gripped its molding with one hand, and propelled herself out into the hallway. She kicked toward the ceiling and found a few inches of air, which she gulped down while frantically pedaling her legs in a modified scissors kick to keep herself afloat.

  She was alone as far as she knew. Her parents were staying at her older sister’s house on the southern, central edge of the city, near the Mississippi River, so she and her friends could avoid the cost of a hotel during their weekend visit from the West Coast. The house was technically located in an area called City Center, part of the garden district, but it wasn’t as nice as most of the homes around it. The owner had let it go a bit and rented it out instead of pouring in the kind of cash that so many of the neighbors had done.

  Her boyfriend had gone to a nearby convenience store to pick up their friend earlier in the evening. He’d gotten trapped by floodwaters and had called to tell her he was backtracking, trying to find a way home.

  While waiting for him, she’d fallen asleep. She’d woken up when the flood forced her brass-framed bed from the floor and she’d rolled into the water. It was rising so fast, as if the Gulf or Lake Pontchartrain were emptying into her house. Her phone was gone, the power was out. And now, as she struggled to survive, the water was pushing her away from the front of the house, where she’d planned on swimming. The strength of the moving water, its incredible force, was too much.

  Rather than fight it and exhaust her energy, she let it carry her back, past her door then toward the rear of the house. The current slammed her against the end of the hallway, her back hitting the corner of a gilded frame that held a family portrait taken years earlier. It featured her father, mother, two sisters, and herself in matching blue denim jeans and white pocket T-shirts. They stood barefoot on the beach, the sun in their faces, the glow of summer on their skin. All of them were much younger in the photograph, but they’d never taken another professional family portrait since. It had hung there until the flood and a collision with Keri knocked it free, sending it spinning into the rising water.

  She grabbed reflexively at the spot on her back where the frame had jabbed her, wincing and stretching her neck to suck down another gulp of humid air. Her nose scraped the ceiling.

  She tried getting her wits about her, understanding where exactly she was and where she had to go. She took one sip of air and dunked herself under the water again, this time swimming into the room at the end of the hall. It was her parents’ room, the only other bedroom in the house.

  On the far side of the room, on the wall opposite their accordion-door closet, there was a pair of windows that framed the back left corner of the house. If she could swim diagonally across the room and get to those windows, she might have a chance.

  Keri extended her arms in front of her, her hands cupped, scooping the water to propel herself forward. She moved quickly in the black water, despite the weight of her light hoodie and stylishly torn denim jeans. She narrowly avoided a large antique dresser that had floated from the floor. The current that had pushed her back toward the end of the hallway was as strong here and headed in the same direction. She managed to fight it enough to reach the windows in the corner.

  Feeling the glass with her fingers, she fumbled for a latch. Her chest burned now, her vision blurred as the last remnants of air stored in her lungs
leaked out in bubbles through her nose. The water didn’t feel as cold anymore.

  Shaking her head while trying to fight off the intensifying sensation that she was about to black out, she struggled to thumb a latch and slide the window open so she could swim free of the house.

  She found one latch and flipped it open, but before she could reach the second, something hit her on the back of the head, dizzying her. Without air in her lungs, she was sinking toward the floor, closer to blacking out. She let herself drop, but when she reached the floor, she found her footing and launched herself upward toward the ceiling. There, she found maybe two inches of air. She floated at the ceiling, her head pounding now, and sucked at the air as if through a straw, trying to avoid drinking as much of the oily, salty water as possible.

  Keri took one last breath and pushed herself below the surface again. She could sense the cold tightening her muscles. Her joints stiffened. But she managed, somehow, to find the other latch on the corner window and flip it. She reached down and yanked on the bottom of the frame, gliding the window up on its hinges enough for her body to slip through.

  Reaching through the opening, Keri grabbed both sides of the window frame on the outside of the house. Holding tightly with what little strength she had left, she pulled, launching herself through the gap and out into her flooded backyard. Her pants leg caught on the window ledge and tugged her backward as she lunged against the current toward the surface. She couldn’t reach it. It was so close. Somehow, despite the power outage in the house, the dim yellow light of a streetlamp danced above her and undulated above her flooding home. She reached back, the current catching her weakened, oxygen-starved body, trying to work at the stuck fabric.

  Unable to loosen the denim, she struggled to find the looped button at her navel. She squeezed her eyes closed and unbuttoned her pants, unzipped them, and tried to kick free; however, the wet cotton was too heavy and she couldn’t free herself. The buzz in her head grew loud, and she could sense she was losing consciousness. There was no air left in her lungs as she worked to keep her mouth closed, to resist the urge to breathe.

  From nowhere, a dark figure appeared next to her and pulled her pants free. Then strong hands grabbed her under her arms, propelling her up toward the surface. Together they broke into the night air, pulled by the current away from the house as they moved toward a large wooden fence struggling to maintain its hold in the ground. Only parts of the fence stood tall, at the posts cemented deep into the loamy Louisiana soil.

  Keri gulped her first breath of air, catching a mouthful of rank-tasting brackish water that forced her to spit and cough. The man holding her was behind her now, having wrapped his forearm across her chest. He held her on his hip, helping her stay above the raging flood.

  She couldn’t see him, yet as she blew the last of the water from her mouth and caught her breath, she recognized the firm grip that held her afloat.

  “Dub?” she gasped, her voice breathless. “Dub? Is that you?”

  “Yeah,” came a blurb muted by the water. “It’s me.”

  She could tell by the bob of their bodies that he was diving his head underwater, digging with his free hand to move them somewhere safe. She heard him sputter as their bodies lifted. She kicked her legs as much as she could, trying to help propel them in whatever direction he was taking them.

  The dim yellow streetlight glowed from above the water’s surface. As she stared at it, she wondered how the light could still have power despite the ubiquitous water. She wondered too how Dub had found her. How had he seen her and plucked her from the depths?

  Dub swung her around to his side when they reached a section of fence flapping to one side like a stuck rudder. He helped her grab the top of the post, a pointed finial of smooth pine replete with countless layers of chipping paint and stain.

  She grabbed it with both hands while holding herself there, her legs pressed against the handful of board connected to it. Dub had one hand on her as he moved to the other side of the finial. His grip now on her bicep, he treaded water in the relative calm of the waters dammed behind the section of secured fencing and her body.

  From that position, he could face her. His face was drawn tight, his eyes wide with fear-fueled adrenaline, yet somehow sagged with exhaustion. His blond hair was dark and matted against his head. He had a cut along one of his cheeks. It was superficial, as well as the scratches Keri could now see on his neck and his forehead. Blood mixed with floodwater trickled from the corner of his mouth. The sides of his face and neck were red and swollen.

  “You’re hurt,” she said, her voice airy. Her pulse felt thick against her neck and chest. “Are you okay?”

  “Let’s talk about this when we get out of the water.” He motioned over his shoulder. “The house right behind me is two stories. As fast as the water is rising, I think we can navigate our way there; then we won’t have to climb much, not much more than a push from a second-story windowsill. Or something.”

  She looked past him, beyond the reach of the light, and saw the gray outline of her neighbor’s two-story colonial. While the water was up to the roof that extended over the front porch, it hadn’t yet reached the quintet of second-story, shutter-framed windows that ran the length of facade.

  “You think—” she exhaled “—we can make it?”

  Dub nodded. The water was above the finial now. Their hands were underwater.

  “Okay,” she said at the moment the remaining fence gave way to the rushing water. She lost her grip on the finial, and Dub struggled to hold her arm tight. He squeezed hard. She winced but didn’t complain. They floated for a moment, stunned by the sudden snap of the fence.

  Keri kicked her legs and tried paddling to pull herself into Dub’s body. She managed to find his shirt and grab handfuls of it as the gnarled branches of an ancient live oak raked across them, tangling them in a swirling water threatening to pull them under. They navigated it, letting the current carry them closer to the colonial.

  The rain, which had stopped briefly, was beginning again. Cold, heavy drops pelted them and slapped the angry surface of the rising water. Their legs brushed against metal under the surface, what Keri thought might be the top vertical bar of a neighbor’s cheap swing set.

  Dub yelled something to her and tightened his grip, though between the rush of water and the din of the rain, Keri couldn’t make out what he was saying. His words vibrated against her, but they weren’t much more than that. She decided that as long as she held onto him or went where his arms guided her, she’d be okay.

  The closer they got to the house, the darker it became. The dense curtain of rain and the barely visible sliver of the new moon that dipped in and out of the fast-moving black clouds high above made it harder for Keri to see where exactly they were.

  She swallowed a gulp of the foul water and coughed again. Then she gagged and retched, suppressing the urge to vomit. She dipped beneath the surface, a rush of water rolling over her head, and held her breath. Water seeped into her nose and stung her sinuses. She shook her head like a wet dog as she resurfaced, disoriented and not at all sure where they were. Keri grappled for a better hold on Dub’s shirt, loosening and then reaffirming her grip. A wave of exhaustion washed across her body, and the backs of her legs cramped. Then the arches in her feet tightened as her toes curled painfully. She cried out in pain, a gargled shriek that drew Dub’s attention. He said something she could feel against her body, but she didn’t understand him. She did know, however, the intensity of his hold on her had tightened. His body betrayed his own fear. His movements weren’t smooth and controlled anymore. They were random and desperate.

  The speed and power of the current was too powerful. She could sense that Dub wasn’t able to navigate it, and they were going to miss the house. They would slip into the wider, open water she imagined had swelled behind her neighborhood beyond the levy.

  The cold beats of rain on her head and face were painful now, as if the device of some sadistic torturer fixa
ted on her agony. The countless pellets stung when they struck her, each colder than the one before it.

  It was the dark, though, that was the most terrifying. Unable to see now where they moved involuntarily, she was certain that some unseen obstacle under the water would catch them, that a tree would ensnare them, that a power line might entangle them, or that the water itself would swallow them whole. That, combined with the white noise of rain and rapids, made for sensory overload.

  At the very moment her knotted, shivering body was about to give up, there was something solid under her feet. It was rough, and as Dub struggled to keep her relatively in place, it scratched across the tops of her feet and roughly across her bare knees. Then her shoulder slammed into something solid. The water pushed her against it, trapping her there. It was the house.

  They were on the roof of the colonial’s porch. Somehow—she neither knew nor cared how—but somehow Dub had gotten them there. He was next to her now, his body pushed against the siding and held there by the racing, rising water.

  He took her hands with one of his and pulled them from his shirt, guiding them to a gutter downspout between them; then he led her to grab hold there, which she did.

  Her vision hadn’t adjusted to the darkness, but here on the roof and under the protective soffit of an overhanging eave, the blur of rain was diminished. The dark figure of Dub’s body rose from the water and stood. He wavered against the rush at his calves but managed to pull himself up onto a window ledge and then climb onto the roof above, some three or four feet above the water.

  He reached down, extending his arm to her. His fingers were wide and he called to her. She couldn’t move. She tightened her hold on the downspout, threatening to pull it free of its anchors. There was no way she could let go and risk being sucked into the abyss. No. Freaking. Way.

  “Keri!” Dub called with more force, more urgency. “Keri!” He shook his open hand, imploring her to take hold.