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THE DEADLIEST EARTHLING
Book 1 in
Gibson Morales
Text copyright © 2015 by Gibson Morales
Cover copyright © 2015 by Alexander Garkusha
All rights reserved.
This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. The author greatly appreciates you taking the time to read his work. Please consider leaving a review wherever you bought the book, or telling your friends about it, to help spread the word.
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ISBN 978-1-943575-03-9 (e-book)
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Epigraph
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
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Epilogue
Sarah: Survivor to Slave
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
About the Author
“If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans.”
—Stephen Hawking
Chapter 1
“One minute until detonation,” the bomb-maker hollered, pulling his black hood over his greying curly hair as he pounded out of the chamber. His inside-out back pocket dangled with him. Johnny blinked at the red digits on the bomb’s timer and swallowed dryly. Fifty-nine. Fifty-eight. Fifty-seven. He was screwed.
This really wasn’t his week. First, he’d misplaced his dog tag ID. Now this.
“Hey, anyone out there?” he yelled. No one could hear, aside from Back Pocket Man. Because a few bunker doors and stairwells cut off the sound.
Running was not an option. Sure, Johnny could probably escape to ground level before the timer hit zero. But judging by the dozens of explosive satchels packed inside the array of wires and thick black tape, Back Pocket Man built this to take out a lot more people than just Johnny. He was important, but not enough to justify building a bomb this huge.
Directly above this bunker sat New Bagram’s school auditorium. Because of the rain, a thousand of his fellow classmates and cadets, plus their instructors, were spending their gym class inside it. An explosion of this magnitude would collapse the support beams from right underneath the gym floor, and they’d fall into a pit of rubble. Not to mention the intense impact, shrapnel, and fire from the blast. If he ran, they would perish. Guaranteed.
Johnny’s insides churned.
Navigating out of the bunker, looping around the street to the auditorium entrance, and bursting inside screaming a warning at the top of his lungs, would consume a couple minutes. So he crossed off that option.
The naked light bulb on the ceiling flickered. Johnny bit his lip. Wires dangled from every nook and cranny of the cinder block walls that comprised the room around him. Too many wires to count. All embedded into cavities in the walls and linked to grenades. He could almost feel the cinder block walls and the shelves of plastic containers closing in on him.
As he stepped back, his boot gave a squishing sound. It was a miracle he hadn’t triggered anything chasing Back Pocket Man down here. A web of the red, blue, green, and copper wires were strung along the grimy cement floor. Meaning, there was no way to move the bomb to a safer spot. Let alone enough time. Johnny’s eyes flicked to the timer. Thirty seconds. Twenty-nine seconds.
He leaned over the bomb, knowing that this was the absolute worst position for him to stand physically—bombs exploded in an upward cone—and studied it. Ribbons of duct tape fused too many of the wires, along with a pack of three batteries. If he could remove the batteries, the timer would conk out. But to extract the batteries, he needed to remove the bundled tape. And that meant clearing the wires from the duct tape. Otherwise, he might snag one wire and set off a grenade in the wall. Triggering one meant triggering them all. Twenty-five seconds was not nearly enough to sever the mess of wires safely.
The New Bagram city council and military instructors used this chamber for storage, making it the perfect location to build a bomb over the course of days without detection.
He shook his head, chiding himself. How did he fail to notice this during any of his patrols?
Because it was only a stupid storage room.
Scrambling to the closest shelf, he ripped off the lids of the containers. Wrenches, screw drivers, nuts, and bolts spilled to the floor. A vein beat hard on his temple. Cracking off the lid of another container revealed a bunch of metal faucet pipes and handles.
He didn’t want to check the timer, but the red digits reflected on the sheen of a plastic container. Sixteen seconds. Fifteen. Almost like it was counting back the years of his life.
Then a sliver of hope revealed itself. Inside a wooden cabinet on the right side of the shelf rested a fire extinguisher. Padlocked. No one would’ve been so stupid to do that. Back Pocket Man must’ve been to blame. Without hesitation, Johnny snatched a wrench with a trembling hand and smashed it against the cabinet glass. Yeah, it’s an emergency, he thought in reference to the sign beneath the cabinet.
The wrench clanged to the floor, and he scooped up the fire extinguisher. A single stride, and he stood ov
er the bomb.
Sucking in a breath, he aimed the extinguisher’s hose and ejected the cold foam inside. Surrounded by the freezing material, the timer dimmed. Simple battery freezing. Johnny sighed. Thank God he hadn’t ditched that day of science class.
He carefully peeled off pieces of the duct tape and sliced the wires with the tactical blade he carried in his back pocket. Soon this bomb would be out of batteries and only the grenades in the wall would remain a threat.
As his muscles stopped quivering and his breathing relaxed, he realized something important. Once he secured the bunker, the next step would be to report this incident and alert everyone about the danger. Then, his superiors would ask how someone managed to construct an entire bomb down here under his nose. Johnny would be in a lot of trouble.
Chapter 2
“Damnit, Aldrin,” Johnny’s drill sergeant Ibdan said, standing behind his desk. His angular jaw and beady eyes seemed a size small compared to his bald head and stocky build. “How could you screw up this badly? You’re the Keeper.”
The Keeper. An honorary title. Still, it was Johnny’s job to protect a powerful alien artifact, known as the Conifer. In turn, many New Bagramites saw him as something of a celebrity.
“I apologize, Drill Sergeant,” Johnny said quietly in his seat. “I thought reducing security would entice the suspect to make his move. And he did. It just…”
His drill sergeant had tasked him with discovering the identity of a New Bagram resident who’d been breaking into supposedly secure buildings and stealing explosive materials. As an enclosed city, isolated from outside contact, only New Bagram residents could be suspects. That was the easy part and the hard part. Because any of the ten thousand plus people of New Bagram could be planning something terrible. The puzzler was who had any reason to hurt one of their own.
To step up security, Ibdan and other combat instructors tasked squads of older cadets with guarding different streets in New Bagram. Johnny’s street included a number of high-value targets, but he’d ordered his squad to stand down from patrols, thinking this would lure in Back Pocket Man. The less security the bomb-maker perceived, the more likely he would be to try something.
“It was foolish,” Ibdan said, laying his hands flat on the table. “Worse, you allowed the suspect to slip through your fingers!”
“At least I got a look at him,” Johnny said. His drill sergeant usually kept his cool, but this didn’t qualify as a usual situation. The Feast of Endeavors was tomorrow. The feast when all the graduating recruits, including Johnny, would deploy into combat. And there were the ominous whispers about Mars spoken by resistance spies….
Ibdan picked up his incident report and eyed it like it was a piece of spoiled meat. “Yes. We’re searching for a grey-haired man in a dark hoodie, jeans, and military boots. And he wears his back pocket hanging out. That narrows it down.”
Ibdan sighed and sat level with him, interlocking his fingers. “I’m going to have to apply disciplinary action.”
Johnny tried not to meet his eyes.
Ibdan’s face softened, his face splitting with a grin. “Latrine duties. You will report to Building Thirty-Five A in half an hour.”
He broke into an outright laugh. Johnny tried not to smile. Latrine duties sucked, but he’d expected far worse.
“Yes, Drill Sergeant,” he said.
“Good. Dismissed.”
A hectic knock rapped the door. Ibdan glided over and opened it.
A red-faced cadet stood there, shifting his weight from foot to foot. He was a year or two younger than Johnny. A field of soldiers waited on the muddy road outside.
“What is it?” Ibdan grunted.
“Sir, we found the suspect. The guy with his back pocket hanging out.”
Ibdan’s jaw fell. “You did?”
The cadet swallowed. “He’s dead. He…shot himself.”
Ibdan blinked. “My God.”
“That’s not all.” The cadet fished a handgun out of his hip holster and leveled it directly at Johnny. “Johnny Aldrin, you are under arrest for conspiracy to commit treason.”
Chapter 3
Total darkness surrounded Johnny, his mind spiraling into a haze of boredom, anxiety, and frustration. He could see nothing but pitch-black, smell nothing but his own odor, and hear nothing except his own faint breathing. Cold cement chilled the skin from his feet to his boxers. The Hole had driven many crazy by way of complete sensory isolation. He wondered how long he could stay here without succumbing to the madness.
Johnny had almost considered using his Conifer to flee when the cadet aimed the gun at him. A shiny red gem the size of his fist, the Conifer granted him power of the light spectrum. It was the ultimate tool of deception. And his inheritance. Normally, he wore it from a ball chain around his neck. Because of this, he’d relegated his dog tag to his school locker for years. So he’d never bothered reporting that it had gone missing days ago. Which only made the appearance of it in the house of Durmet, AKA Back Pocket Man, incredibly suspicious.
Now both were gone. Because, first thing, the soldiers confiscated his Conifer. They’d had the same thoughts he did of using it to cloak himself and run. But innocent people didn’t run. At least, he knew that’s what the soldiers would be thinking. So he surrendered himself.
He wondered if they’d notified his guardian, Orun. At least he was supposed to act as Johnny’s guardian ever since he’d lost his parents ten years ago. That was when they deployed on a mission to attack the Anunnaki’s main city across the planet.
As the soldiers dragged him over to the Hole, they were nice enough to fill in the blanks for him. Their search for the bomb-maker had been leading nowhere. Then a bunch of people heard a gunshot from someone’s house. The man’s name was Durmet and he’d shot himself. He fit Johnny’s description of the suspect and possessed a number of fuses and explosive materials.
Johnny couldn’t quite wrap his head around why this Durmet guy would end his life so suddenly. And why had he stolen Johnny’s dog tag in the first place? Did he want to frame him? In a couple hours, the city council would sort this out and release him. Obviously, he had nothing to do with the bomb.
He was fairly certain there was another person, a puppet-master, still out there. So what did imprisoning him achieve? It occurred to him that the standard operation procedure for prison time included confiscating all items on a person and placing them in the New Bagram police station’s evidence room. More than likely, his Conifer was there now. His heart skipped a beat.
Maybe the objective wasn’t to bomb the school, nor land him in prison, but rather for the Conifer to end up in a predictable location. But why?
He thought back to his patrol earlier that day. In the thick of the rain, he’d watched Durmet prying the bunker’s entry door free with a crowbar, glancing back and forth nervously under his hood. He’d dropped the crowbar a few times in the mud, cursing accordingly. Johnny doubted Durmet had the finesse to steal the Conifer off him. The task would’ve been next to impossible.
Really, during the day, Johnny would see any attack coming. At night, he slept inside an old, defunct commercial jetliner, his friends well within earshot. No one was robbing him of his Conifer then.
This all suggested that if someone wanted to steal it, isolating it would be their best option. Still, he couldn’t prove this was all part of a plan to steal his Conifer. Not yet. But a slice of trepidation cut through him as he contemplated the possibility. He needed to warn someone. A scream wouldn’t sound any louder than a mouse’s squeak to anyone outside, though. Breaking through eleven inches of steel wasn’t feasible either. Nor was climbing up twenty feet of corroding metal.
A meal would arrive in a few hours, but by then his Conifer might have already fallen into sinister hands.
He pounded on the wall. Yelled out for freedom as loud as he could. Shouted until his ears rang so hard they might split. Right on cue, the floor shifted beneath him. Maybe the Hole didn’t cut sound off as
well as he thought.
Creaking, the platform delivered him up the twenty feet, where a blast of sunlight left him blinking as his eyes adjusted.
He stumbled forward, his legs sinking in the mud, and hoped the figures before him brought a shirt or pants. Instead, a fist cracked against his jaw.
“I’m going to kill you, Aldrin.”
Chapter 4
Johnny staggered backward so suddenly, he almost fell right back into the Hole. As he gathered his footing and senses, he massaged his jaw. Mitchell slicked back his short, blond hair, and his deep-set eyes regarded Johnny with utter revulsion. Two heavy-bodied classmates framed him. One had been guarding the Hole.
“They say you tried to blow us up,” Mitchell sneered. “I guess it’s always the ones you least expect.”
Of course he’d break him out of solitary confinement. It was the one time Johnny wouldn’t have his Conifer. For a moment, he’d almost hoped Mitchell was the real bomb-maker.
“They say a lot of things,” Johnny replied, barely containing the urge to charge at him. “You got your shot in. So I’ll be on my way.”
“Giving up so easily? Like your parents.”
Johnny’s face burned. Mitchell was asking for it this time. He could take him down. Even without his Conifer.
Balling his fists, he marched forward and struck him across the cheek without hesitation. Mitchell’s face spun to the side, and he swayed back for a second before steadying himself. Somehow, he found the bravado to smile at Johnny. “Not bad. But—”
Johnny dove in and slugged him in the chin. With a thunk, Mitchell plopped in the mud. Then his feet wrapped around Johnny’s right ankle. The next thing he knew, the mud rose up at him from the side.
“Boys, you might want to settle down,” a girl whispered.
All heads turned to Sarah. She had a milky complexion and light brown hair in a bun. Her finger pointed down the road. Sure enough, a pair of instructors were cruising along the mud, caught up in a heated debate over whether or not to call the Anunnaki by their scientific name, Naga Extraterrestrialis. Johnny exchanged a look with Mitchell. Time to call a truce.