The Day After Never - Nemesis (Post-Apocalyptic Dystopian Thriller - Book 9) Read online

  The Day After Never

  Nemesis

  Russell Blake

  Copyright © 2019 by Russell Blake. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used, reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law, or in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, contact:

  [email protected]

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  Contents

  Books by Russell Blake

  About the Author

  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

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Excerpt from BLACK

  Books by Russell Blake

  Co-authored with Clive Cussler

  THE EYE OF HEAVEN

  THE SOLOMON CURSE

  Thrillers

  FATAL EXCHANGE

  FATAL DECEPTION

  THE GERONIMO BREACH

  ZERO SUM

  THE DELPHI CHRONICLE TRILOGY

  THE VOYNICH CYPHER

  SILVER JUSTICE

  UPON A PALE HORSE

  DEADLY CALM

  RAMSEY’S GOLD

  EMERALD BUDDHA

  THE GODDESS LEGACY

  A GIRL APART

  A GIRL BETRAYED

  QUANTUM SYNAPSE

  The Assassin Series

  KING OF SWORDS

  NIGHT OF THE ASSASSIN

  RETURN OF THE ASSASSIN

  REVENGE OF THE ASSASSIN

  BLOOD OF THE ASSASSIN

  REQUIEM FOR THE ASSASSIN

  RAGE OF THE ASSASSIN

  The Day After Never Series

  THE DAY AFTER NEVER – BLOOD HONOR

  THE DAY AFTER NEVER – PURGATORY ROAD

  THE DAY AFTER NEVER – COVENANT

  THE DAY AFTER NEVER – RETRIBUTION

  THE DAY AFTER NEVER – INSURRECTION

  THE DAY AFTER NEVER – PERDITION

  THE DAY AFTER NEVER – HAVOC

  THE DAY AFTER NEVER – LEGION

  THE DAY AFTER NEVER – NEMESIS

  The JET Series

  JET

  JET II – BETRAYAL

  JET III – VENGEANCE

  JET IV – RECKONING

  JET V – LEGACY

  JET VI – JUSTICE

  JET VII – SANCTUARY

  JET VIII – SURVIVAL

  JET IX – ESCAPE

  JET X – INCARCERATION

  JET XI – FORSAKEN

  JET XII – ROGUE STATE

  JET XIII – RENEGADE

  JET XIV – DARK WEB

  JET XV – SAHARA

  JET – OPS FILES (prequel)

  JET – OPS FILES; TERROR ALERT

  The BLACK Series

  BLACK

  BLACK IS BACK

  BLACK IS THE NEW BLACK

  BLACK TO REALITY

  BLACK IN THE BOX

  Non Fiction

  AN ANGEL WITH FUR

  HOW TO SELL A GAZILLION EBOOKS

  (while drunk, high or incarcerated)

  About the Author

  Featured in The Wall Street Journal, The Times, and The Chicago Tribune, Russell Blake is The NY Times and USA Today bestselling author of over fifty novels, including Fatal Exchange, Fatal Deception, The Geronimo Breach, Zero Sum, The Assassin series, The Delphi Chronicle trilogy, The Voynich Cypher, Silver Justice, the JET series, Upon a Pale Horse, the BLACK series, Deadly Calm, Ramsey’s Gold, Emerald Buddha, The Day After Never series, The Goddess Legacy, A Girl Apart, A Girl Betrayed, and Quantum Synapse.

  Non-fiction includes the international bestseller An Angel With Fur (animal biography) and How To Sell A Gazillion eBooks In No Time (even if drunk, high or incarcerated), a parody of all things writing-related.

  Blake is co-author of The Eye of Heaven and The Solomon Curse, with legendary author Clive Cussler. Blake’s novel King of Swords has been translated into German, The Voynich Cypher into Bulgarian, and his JET novels into Spanish, German, and Czech.

  Blake writes under the moniker R.E. Blake in the NA/YA/Contemporary Romance genres. Novels include Less Than Nothing, More Than Anything, and Best Of Everything.

  Having resided in Mexico for a dozen years, Blake enjoys his dogs, fishing, boating, tequila and writing, while battling world domination by clowns. His thoughts, such as they are, can be found at his blog:

  RussellBlake.com

  To get your free copy,

  just join my readers’ group here:

  http://bit.ly/rb-kos

  Chapter 1

  Laredo, Texas

  A thin ribbon of tangerine glowed along the eastern horizon as the four guards manning the sandbagged roadblock on the highway that led into town dozed. Their long night shift was almost over, and the smell of home-distilled mescal was strong in the air. One of them burped and loudly farted, and his companion edged away, his dusky features creased with a disgusted frown.

  “Cabron!” he growled, his eyes slits.

  “What? Not like you’re a bouquet of roses,” the first guard said in Spanish.

  “You smell like death.”

  “That’s not what your mother said.”

  Both men laughed hoarsely. The sentry duty was as boring as any they’d done; it was ludicrous to think anyone would be stupid enough to attempt to attack the Jalisco Nuevo Generación Cartel now that they’d taken over the border town and had the townspeople thoroughly cowed. Their only enemy was the Zetas Cartel that had moved into Houston and much of eastern Texas, but Laredo was too far for them to ride to dislodge their rivals from Jalisco, even if they hated each other with a passion.

  The second man yawned and glanced over at the other two guards, both asleep, their rifles by their sides, their faces dark with stubble and their clothes filthy from the pervasive dust that seemed to coat even their tongues when the wind picked up. He shook his head and stretched, and then cocked his head in puzzlement before looking to the first gunman.

  “You hear that?”

  “Qué?”

  “Listen.”

  “All I hear is your boyfriends snoring.”

  “Seriously.”

  “I’m being serious.” He frowned. “That loco juice fin
ally gotten to you?”

  The second guard moved to the .50-caliber machine gun on a tripod that was pointed at the sky at the highway side of the enclosure. “Shut up and listen. I’m not imagining things.”

  The first man grinned, displaying a mouthful of crooked teeth, some of them steel capped.

  “Maybe it’s a chupacabra coming for–” He stopped mid-sentence and joined his partner in straining to hear.

  The pair exchanged a glance and the first guard kicked the two sleeping men’s worn boots. They stirred to life and blinked bloodshot eyes as they fumbled for their assault rifles.

  “Wha–” the nearest grumbled, but the glare from the first guard stopped his breath in his throat.

  “Something’s coming,” the first guard whispered.

  The men scrambled to the highway side of the barrier and brought their rifles to bear. They squinted at the dark ribbon that stretched across the flatlands, the sun’s faint glow in their eyes now increasing with every passing second.

  The second guard swung the heavy machine gun down and aimed at the highway, furrowing his brow as he fought to make out what was approaching. The faint rumble that had alerted them grew into a roar, and the pavement beneath them began vibrating as a string of large trucks and armored vehicles that belched black exhaust emerged in the distance, their lumbering shapes unmistakable.

  “Madre de Dios…” the first gunman whispered, and crossed himself reflexively, his eyes wide at the impossible vision of an armored column nearing at a steady clip.

  “Impossible,” another of the men exclaimed, and grabbed for a handheld radio in the dust by his side. He powered it on with a screech of static, depressed the transmit button, and spat a warning in terse sentences. An extended silence greeted his advisement before the incredulous voice of the watch commander replied.

  “What the hell are you talking about? There’s been no fuel for years.”

  “They’ve obviously found some. There’s got to be twenty trucks. You should be able to hear them soon in town.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Assume the worst. What do you want us to do? No way can we make a dent in them.”

  “Hold them off as long as you can with the Browning. I’ll alert the men.”

  The guard dropped the radio disgustedly and eyed the approaching procession of vehicles, their big diesel motors growling at low rev. “You heard him.”

  The first guard shook his head. “Suicide. If they’ve got trucks, they’ll have an arsenal.”

  “Everyone dies eventually. You want to get shot by Carlos for abandoning our post, or take our chances with them?” the other man said, inclining his head in the direction of the highway.

  The first gunman’s face paled at the mention of the Laredo boss, who’d clawed his way to the upper ranks of the Nuevo Generación Cartel by being more ruthless and cutthroat than his peers, who were all psychopaths and murderers in their own right. He nodded slowly and cocked the bolt on the Browning. “Better to hit them when they’re out of rifle range, then. That’s about the only advantage we have.”

  “Got that right.”

  When the column was a thousand meters away, the big machine gun barked down the highway. Rounds sparked as they struck the heavy steel plates that had been welded across the front of the lead truck to protect the engine; its windshield consisted of thin slits in the metal, and the front bumper had been replaced with a modified cowcatcher. The rest of the guards held their fire, there being no point in lobbing rounds so far out of accurate range.

  A vehicle cut out from behind the lead truck, and the machine gunner paused as he made out the familiar shape of a tank.

  “Jesus…” he managed, and then a puff of smoke drifted in the air from the turret gun, and a loud boom reached them just before an area twenty yards behind them exploded in a fountain of asphalt and dirt.

  “They’ve got artillery. Screw this,” the first gunman cried, ducking instinctively as another round screamed overhead before detonating closer than the last.

  A figure popped from the turret and brought the tank’s machine gun to bear, and .50-caliber rounds thumped into the sandbags by the hundreds as the guards scurried away in retreat, leaving the lone machine gunner to continue his fruitless defense. Moments later four rounds cut across his torso, blowing most of his heart and lungs through his back and silencing the Browning’s staccato bark.

  The tank gunner directed his fire at the figures running from the outpost and cut them to pieces with ease, even at the extreme range, the effect of dozens of rounds sprayed in their direction as effective as hot water through ice. When the guards were all down, the tank gunner ceased shooting and the convoy continued forward, this time with the tank flanking the lead truck on the shoulder of the highway.

  The procession roared past the roadblock. The first truck’s steel plates made short work of the edge of the sandbagged structure, and it barely slowed as it continued toward the city a quarter mile away. The flatbed trucks were packed with gunmen, who stood in silence as they swayed with each bump, rifles in hand, sixty to each vehicle. When the convoy reached the first of the buildings, the column slowed to a halt with a squeal of brakes, and the fighters piled from the beds while the pair of tanks shuddering by the side of the road waited to lead the way.

  Automatic rifle fire echoed from the periphery of the town. Several of the fighters stumbled and collapsed when they were hit, while the rest scattered and took cover behind the tanks and trucks. Hundreds of men returned fire at the defenders who’d taken up station in a two-story home three hundred yards away, and then they were running forward in waves as their leaders yelled commands. The tanks peppered the home’s façade with blistering fire, and then the threat was neutralized and the fighters were past and running down the dawn-lit highway as the armored vehicles clanked along behind them.

  Resistance was sparse until the invasion force neared the airport, and then the battle began in earnest. Shoulder-fired rockets streaked toward the tanks, and dozens of snipers opened up on the running men. The trucks ground to a halt, using any nearby buildings to shield themselves from the withering fire, and the fighters dug in for a long shoot-out as the Juárez Cartel defended its turf.

  Two hours later, after brutal onslaughts from both sides, the newcomers had defeated the resistance at the airport. They continued into the city, fighting block by block against gunmen who were just as determined as they were. The skirmishes continued throughout the day and well into the night, and only by morning had the city changed hands, with over six hundred Juárez Cartel soldiers dead or wounded. What was left of the cartel beat a hurried retreat back across the Rio Grande into Mexico as dawn colored the sky a muddy salmon. The smoke from countless fires on the American side was noxious and thick; much of the residential area that had served as the site of the cartel’s last stand had burned.

  A ground mist blanketed the river that served as the border as the victors deployed through the town and blocked the bridges across which any counterattack would be attempted. The fighters occupied the government buildings the Jalisco Cartel had been using as its headquarters. For the population, the only thing that had changed was the name of the occupiers. The most able-bodied of the locals were organized into a slave labor pool to deal with the cremation of the dead, and by the evening a heaping pile of corpses lay in a funeral pyre on the airport’s tarmac, ready to be incinerated.

  The blaze burned well into the night, and the sickly-sweet stench of roasting human flesh drifted across the river to Mexico, serving as a warning to the Jalisco Cartel as well as Laredo’s inhabitants, the nauseating odor a blight on the arid breeze.

  Chapter 2

  Near Green River, Utah

  A cool wind dented the treetops as a file of seven horses negotiated the trail that paralleled the road, their riders hunched forward after days of hard riding. Both animals and humans were obviously exhausted. The lead horse picked its way carefully while its rider surveyed the path ahead with
his hat pulled low over his brow, his long trail coat caked in a film of dust.

  He reined the animal to a halt, turned to the others, and spoke in a low voice. “It’ll be nightfall soon. Jake, you and your boys ride up ahead and find a good place to make camp. If it’s by a creek, even better.”

  Jake nodded and motioned to two of the other men. “Will do, Benjamin.”

  Elijah spurred his horse forward. “I’ll go with them.”

  Benjamin sighed, barely managing to hide his exasperation. Since Elijah had narrowly escaped the disastrous battle at Provo that had taken thousands of his followers’ lives, he’d been even more aggressive in asserting his authority at every turn, having learned nothing from the slaughter of his men. Benjamin had counseled against making camp in full view of the town, preferring to keep the majority of the force concealed until it was time to do battle, but Elijah had overridden his wishes in the interest of making a display that he’d believed would terrify the townspeople into giving up the new arrivals from Shangri-La.

  That had been an extreme miscalculation that had cost them everything. When Elijah had seen that defeat was assured, he’d ordered Benjamin to rally his most loyal men to serve as a guard detail, and they’d set off under cover of darkness and put twenty miles between themselves and the enemy force before stopping to rest, sleeping the majority of the day before riding all night again.

  Benjamin had been sickened by how easily the enemy had decimated his ragtag army, but not surprised. Elijah’s men had been mostly green, few with any military training, and they’d reacted with panic and incoherence when the attack had begun, failing to follow Benjamin’s orders as he’d tried in vain to mount a defense. To make matters worse, the preacher had contradicted many of Benjamin’s instructions, which had further reduced their odds of survival. It had only been at the last minute that Elijah had relinquished command to Benjamin and allowed the military man to spirit him away before he too fell to the unstoppable onslaught that had claimed his men.

  Benjamin looked away from the trail and studied the preacher’s face. If he was troubled by the death of thousands due to his willful incompetence, he gave no indication, his countenance smooth as a teen’s. Benjamin worked to contain the frown that threatened to show his disdain, and grunted once.