Wind and Chaos: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller Read online

  WIND AND CHAOS

  A POST-APOCALYPTIC SURVIVAL THRILLER

  HARLEY TATE

  Copyright © 2022 by Harley Tate. Cover and internal design © by Harley Tate. Cover image copyright © Deposit Photos 2022.

  All rights reserved.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  The use of stock photo images in this e-book in no way imply that the models depicted personally endorse, condone, or engage in the fictional conduct depicted herein, expressly or by implication. The person(s) depicted are models and are used for illustrative purposes only.

  CONTENTS

  Wind and Chaos

  Prologue

  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

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Epilogue

  Also by Harley Tate

  Acknowledgments

  About Harley Tate

  WIND AND CHAOS

  FALLING SKIES BOOK THREE

  Dangerous storms and monster tornados. A gamble that might ruin everything. A family caught in the middle.

  Welcome to Falling Skies. Do you have what it takes to survive?

  Six weeks after an asteroid turned America upside down, Caleb Machert is barely hanging on. With a bullet wound to the thigh and a shoulder that might never work again, he’s more liability than hero. If he can’t protect his family, they may not last much longer.

  Elizabeth doesn’t know if she’s cut out for this new world. Her daughter is more stone cold killer than teenage girl, her husband is a walking cripple, and she’s never been good at taking charge. But when her daughter is threatened, Elizabeth finds out just how strong she really is.

  Lana knows she’s got to be strong; her father is seriously wounded and her mother is, well, soft. When she miscalculates her ability, she puts all their lives at risk. The entire family must come together to escape not only a group of zealous survivors, but the latest round of mother nature’s chaos.

  It’s a race against the clock for the Macherts to escape before a super tornado tears them apart.

  Wind and Chaos is book three in Falling Skies, a post-apocalyptic thriller series following ordinary people struggling to survive when a meteor strike plunges the United States into chaos.

  Subscribe to Harley’s newsletter to receive updates about new releases, free content, and more.

  www.harleytate.com/subscribe

  PROLOGUE

  Cheyenne Mountain Complex

  Colorado Springs, CO

  Friday July 9th, 10:00 am MST

  “As far as we can tell, the facility is barely operational.” Acting FBI Director Charles Wolverton’s gaze lingered on the door to the president’s office.

  Pete Camby knew better than anyone that the president needed to be in this meeting, not his Chief of Staff. But Daniels wasn’t taking visitors. Again. He leaned forward. “Meaning?”

  Wolverton reluctantly turned his head. “Not sure.”

  “What contact have you made?”

  Wolverton glanced at his notes. “A Private Willis Washington is apparently in charge. According to him, General Thomas went off the rails. Some civilian, former Marine, apparently, put him down.”

  Pete frowned. Were they at this point already? Rogue generals and civilian heroes? He ran his finger across an eyebrow to ease the tension building behind his skull. “Next steps?”

  “Communication is out thanks to the windstorm that hit our radio array outside Kansas City. I’ve got two small teams heading to North Carolina to get eyes on the base. Figure out what’s salvageable.”

  It could be worse. Pete checked the item off his agenda. “Let me know as soon as there’s an update. Any other rogue military we’ve identified?”

  Wolverton grimaced. “There are some rumors of a militia just west of Dallas, Texas, and a few more in the northwest. Ones run by active military personnel, that is. We haven’t identified any names yet, but there are plenty of officers unaccounted for and at this point the count of missing enlisted… Well, frankly, we stopped counting. There are more pressing concerns.”

  Pete’s eyes slipped closed. For the past three days, he’d taken every meeting on President Daniels’s behalf. Add in all the wasted hours summarizing said meetings into digests for the president, and Pete was running on fumes. General Thomas surprised him. He’d been a reliable Director of Operations, if not a bit overzealous.

  He’d expected the man to demand martial law and insist on rolling patrols of national guard units all over the country, not to turn into a misguided warlord out to remake America. The New United States? Pete couldn’t believe it. Why did a disaster bring out the worst in people?

  Wolverton cleared his throat and Pete opened his eyes. “Just working it all out in my head.” He motioned to the stack of papers on the desk. “I’m sure you’ve got a million other things to deal with. I’ll brief the president and forward any feedback.”

  Wolverton pinned him with a cool stare. “I’m sure you will.”

  Pete clenched his jaw, but he said nothing as Wolverton gathered the papers and left without further comment. How long could he keep everyone at bay? Another week? A few days? If President Daniels didn’t snap out of whatever state he’d fallen into, Pete didn’t know what to do.

  He yanked the top desk drawer open and fished out a bottle of caffeine pills. He shook two into his palm and washed them down with the few swallows of water left in his morning water ration canteen. How is it only ten in the morning?

  The President’s door remained closed. On the other side of it, Thomas Daniels was either sleeping—something he did about as rarely as Pete—or he was reading his bible. Again.

  At first it had been a few requests here and there. “Mind taking this briefing for me, Pete?” or “Draft me up a statement and I’ll look it over. I trust your judgment.”

  A few days later, Pete took most of the meetings. Three days ago, he started taking all of them. Briefings were whittled down to an hour, then half an hour, then ten minutes—and then nothing. The last few times he’d knocked on the door, he’d gotten no answer.

  The day before, Pete lost it. He’d shoved away from the desk, stomped over to the door, and thrown it open without an invitation. He’d half expected to find Daniels dead at his desk or sprawled out on the floor.

  Instead, the man had looked up from his bible, eyes almost blank with exhaustion and simply asked, “Can it wait?”

  Pete had tried to shake some sense into the man, but it had been no good. He waved Pete away like he was a gnat buzzing about his face. Food and water rations had been brought, and waste taken away. But President Daniels hadn’t spoken a word to any of the service members tasked with it. And he’d said nothing to Pete except to quote a verse now and again or thank him for “…taking care of things for a minute.”

  He let out a deep sigh.

  “Long morning?”

  Pete jerked
at the question, turning to find Representative Margaret Welcher standing in the doorway. No, he reminded himself, Speaker Margaret Welcher, now. It was official on Monday.

  Like him, she was a bit wan and drawn, bags under her eyes barely hidden by the little make up she’d managed to apply. Despite that, her red and gray hair was drawn into a tight, utilitarian bun and her suit looked freshly laundered and pressed. Maggie would die of starvation looking like she was on her way to an important meeting.

  Pete collected himself and stood as if he’d meant to meet her. “Speaker Welcher.” He came around the desk and offered her a hand. “What can I do for you?”

  Maggie gave his hand a brisk shake before folding her arms over her chest and glancing meaningfully at the president’s door. “Is the leader of the free world taking any visitors yet?”

  Pete caught himself before giving a full-faced grimace, schooling his expression to something diplomatic. But Maggie’s lips thinned anyway, face full of disapproval or concern. He tried to head off her complaint. “It was a late night, and President Daniels is getting some rest. Let me get you in to see him in an hour? I can make sure he’s caffeinated.”

  “You can’t believe I’m going to believe that at this point. I’ve been trying to speak to the president for three days.” She searched Pete’s face. “This is more than just an inconvenient bout of depression. This is a problem.”

  Pete exhaled slowly. If anyone was going to call him on the president’s absence, it would be Maggie. He propped his lips up in a smile and waved at the door. “Just let me give him some warning. I’ll make sure he meets with you, I promise.”

  She cocked her head to the side as her eyes narrowed. She wasn’t buying it and Pete didn’t blame her. He wasn’t an actor. Never had been. “Knock on the president’s door,” she told him. “If he answers, I’ll come back in an hour.”

  The underlying threat hung in the air between them, unspoken. Maggie had campaigned to become the new Speaker of the House—if you could call it campaigning at this point, given only a small fraction of representatives were in Cheyenne Mountain—on a platform of getting the wheels of government spinning again. Removing the ‘wrenches’ in the gears.

  Wrenches like President Daniels.

  Pete marched to the door. His knuckles hovered over the gray-green metal for the space of a breath before he knocked loud enough to wake Daniels if he was asleep. No answer came.

  He resisted the urge to glance over his shoulder, and knocked again, then waited a bit longer. Leaning toward the door, he listened as inconspicuously as he could for any hint that the president was moving around, maybe shuffling to get his hair in order or… something. But there was nothing. He inhaled slowly and raised his hand to knock again.

  “Don’t bother,” Maggie said.

  Pete’s knuckles halted an inch from the door. He closed his eyes and spread his fingers to brace his hand against the door as his head bowed. Weeks of worry, frustration, exhaustion and outright terror crashed down upon him with those two words. Don’t bother.

  It felt like giving up. Like failure, on his part, to keep the president going. And he knew what came next.

  “We’re going to vote in three days,” Maggie said softly to his back. “It’s for the best, Pete. I’d like you to stick around as my chief of staff afterward.”

  Pete wasn’t a man composed of blind loyalty, but the certainty in her voice and the offer of letting him keep his job, if it even was a proper ‘job’ anymore, rankled him. He stood up straight, pulled his shoulders back, and turned to face her. “I’ll have him in front of Congress by then. He’s still fit for the job, Maggie. He’s just…”

  The words evaporated under a pained look of sympathy. Or, no—it was pity in Maggie’s eyes. “Pete.” His name came out soft and sympathetic. It rankled.

  “No one blames you. You didn’t drop the ball. No one even really blames Tom. This has been too much for him. It’s a one-in-a-billion situation that no president has faced before, and if he’d told me on day one of his campaign that he’d probably collapse under a cosmic apocalypse, I would have still endorsed him and voted for him.”

  She smiled and Pete forced down a wave of nausea. “You can’t measure someone by impossible hypotheticals. What he needs now is to rest. But everyone else? We still have to keep this place going. You don’t have to stay on if you’re worn out, too. I would understand."

  “Is there anyone else here with experience?” he wondered.

  Maggie shrugged one narrow shoulder. “I really don’t know, but I can interview some possible candidates. I’d really like it to be you, though. It’ll save me transition time, and I don’t want to spend weeks finding my footing.”

  As if it were already a given. Margaret Welcher all but assumed that in three days, she would be President. Of what, exactly?

  Pete’s instinct was to argue, to shove her away and tell her Daniels would be fine. But what was he defending? An ineffective leader who really had, seemingly, broken under the strain. The country needed something more. Someone more, whether Pete liked it or not.

  He gave an understanding nod as resignation caught up with him. “I’ll… be happy to stick around.” Saying the words felt awful; like he was stabbing his President, and his friend, in the back and slowly twisting the knife. Except, Daniels didn’t even know he was being stabbed. “But I’m still going to get him to Congress. He deserves the chance to at least explain himself.”

  “Of course.” Judging by Maggie’s frown, she didn’t expect him to make good. “We’d all like to hear from him.” She took a step back, gave him that terrible, pitying smile again, and then turned to leave. “I’ll see you soon either way, Pete.”

  And then she was gone, and the room was quiet again. Deafeningly silent, as if the president’s office were the viewing room at a funeral home, empty except for a coffin with a corpse in it. But Thomas Daniels wasn’t dead. He just wasn’t a leader anymore. He’d given up. It was impossible to ignore that any longer.

  Pete sagged against the wall. Worse than the sense of impending betrayal, worse even than the disappointment in a man he’d respected more than almost anyone else, was the ominous warning the president’s collapse represented. Chaos was imminent, sure. People were desperate, scared, starving, dying of exposure all across the country and possibly the world.

  This, though…

  It felt like a promise. They would all break, eventually. It was just a matter of time. Pete worried he was already starting to splinter.

  CHAPTER ONE

  CALEB

  Appalachian Trailhead, Tennessee

  Monday, July 10th, 6:50 am EST

  In the biting chill of a sunless morning, Caleb Machert gritted his teeth in preparation. He raised his right arm slowly, bracing for the expected twinge of pain. It came too soon, before his elbow even passed his ribs; a sudden seizure of complaint as the muscles clamped down. Not nearly far enough.

  He swore and pushed a bit more. Pain shot across his shoulder to his neck, lancing down deep into his chest. A gasp slipped past his tight lips. It had been a little more than a week since they’d left on foot from the Horse Creek base, and the injury was worsening, not improving.

  Not good. Caleb stared out at the gray sky as it blended with the mud and ash coated trees and road spanning out below him. He lowered his arm and leaned back against the scraggly, half-burnt tree behind him. As he shifted his weight, the wound in his left thigh throbbed with a dull ache.

  The bullet he’d taken during the assault on General Thomas’s facility had sliced through layers of muscle, impairing his movement. He unclenched his jaw and consciously relaxed his body as he closed his eyes. A sinking feeling lodged in his gut.

  The injury to his leg had cost them time. After some rest, he could push himself for a while, but the most he’d managed in a single day was a five-mile trek across mostly flat ground. By the evening, his whole body shook in exhaustion, and he’d crumpled to the ground. Lana had to rush in a
nd drag the pack off his bad shoulder before he ruined it for good.

  He glanced back at the trailer behind him where Elizabeth, Lana, and Derek slept. He’d slowed them down too much and they’d chewed through too many supplies. Every day spent in the wilderness, was a day of food and water spent. He’d tried hunting, but the wild animals were either dead and buried under layers of ash and sludge or headed west with a multi-day head start.

  If it were only his thigh wound, he’d push on through. Wrap duct tape around his thigh and ignore the discomfort. But his shoulder wound gave him pause. He could still finagle a rifle into position if he had time. With a bit of bracing, he could take a steady shot. But drawing a weapon quickly was out of the question. If they were surprised, if they entered some confrontation that escalated suddenly, he wouldn’t be able to protect his family.

  The weight of that knowledge weighed heavy. He’d managed until now, ignoring the hard facts and hoping for a miracle. The woods were empty, devoid of all life. No one hiked the Appalachian trail now. But as he stared down at the outskirts of Wilbur, Tennessee, he knew their isolation had come to an end.

  We need a vehicle. The thought came unbidden and fast, and Caleb instantly knew it was right. If he could just get off the leg and take the time to properly rest his shoulder, they might begin to heal properly. He might get to a point where he could protect his family the way they needed.