Twin Cities Run Read online

  Annotation

  On their way to recover vital medication, the Alpha Triad warriors must battle through warring factions of a long-dead city populated by deformed creatures that hunger for human flesh.

  * * *

  David RobbinsFOREWORD

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chaptert Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  * * *

  David Robbins

  TWIN CITIES RUN

  FOREWORD

  OUR STORY SO FAR…

  It’s one hundred years after World War III.

  There are survivors.

  Before the inevitable came to pass, a wealthy filmmaker named Kurt Carpenter established a survivalist retreat in northwestern Minnesota, near Lake Bronson State Park. Carpenter planned wisely, providing ample provisions for the Home, as he dubbed the site, and detailed instructions for his followers, the ones he called his beloved Family. One of those instructions: to protect themselves, the members of the Family should not attempt to contact the outside world until it became absolutely necessary.

  It’s necessary.

  A form of premature senility is affecting Family members. The current Leader, wise Plato, decides to send one of the Warrior Triads out on a dangerous mission. Using the SEAL, a prototype vehicle Carpenter spent millions developing before the war, the Warriors must travel to the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul and attempt to find certain scientific and medical equipment and supplies.

  Life after World War III has done a radioactive flip-flop, and between the radiation and the chemical weapons unleashed on the environment, those still alive never know what to expect next. Menace is everywhere.

  There are the clouds, mysterious green vaporous substances, appearing out of nowhere, devouring all flesh in their path. Hordes of mutates roam the land, deformed former mammals, reptiles, or amphibians, endowed with ravenous appetites, attacking every living thing. Inexplicably, bizarre strains of giantism have developed in select species. New threats arise daily.

  Before the Warriors can leave for the Twin Cities, the Home is assaulted by the vicious, plundering Trolls. The conflict between the Family and the Trolls is chronicled in The Endworld Series #1: The Fox Run.

  A month after the battle with the Trolls, three Warriors and another Family member set out in the SEAL for the Twin Cities. They manage to reach Thief River Falls, where their trip is abruptly curtailed by their confrontation with the enigmatic Watchers and the deadly Brutes. This adventure is related in The Endworld Series #2: The Thief River Falls Run. The Family Warriors, and a woman they rescue, a resident of the Twin Cities, are injured in their fight with the Watchers, and they elect to return to the Home to recuperate before attempting to reach the Twin Cities.

  Which brings us to: The Endworld Series #3: The Twin Cities Run

  Chapter One

  “Did you guys just hear something?”

  The four men stopped their activities and listened for a moment.

  “I didn’t hear a thing,” the lean gunman in buckskins replied. His blue eyes twinkled as he grinned at the beautiful, muscular woman standing next to their vehicle. “You must be getting jumpy in your young age!” He placed his hands on the pearl grips to his Colt Pythons, one revolver in a leather holster on each hip, and chuckled. “I knew you’d get antsy,” he stated, “the closer we got to Home.”

  “I ain’t jumpy, White Meat!” the woman responded indignantly. “I thought I heard something move in the woods.”

  “Did you hear anything, Geronimo?” the blond Warrior asked one of his friends.

  Geronimo, a superb hunter and tracker, and the only member of the Family with any vestige of Indian blood in his veins, shook his head.

  “Nope. Sure didn’t. But I was talking to Blade.” His dark hair swayed as he turned his head, his brown eyes probing the surrounding forest.

  Blade, the head of the Warrior unit known as Alpha Triad, rose from his kneeling position by the fire he was preparing for their midday meal.

  His massive muscles rippled in the sunlight, his brawny hands hovering near his prized Bowie knives, as he faced the woman. “Are you positive you heard something, Bertha?” he demanded.

  The dusky woman nodded, her curly hair bobbing. “I’m a soldier with the Nomads, remember? I know my business,” she affirmed with conviction.

  Blade ran his left hand through his wavy dark hair, his gray eyes scanning the nearby trees. It was possible Bertha was mistaken. After all, she had spent her entire life in the Twin Cities, and she was not accustomed to the outdoors and the normal sounds associated with the creatures inhabiting the tall timber.

  “I wish we were back at our Home,” the fifth and final constituent of their party said, a tall man with flowing brown hair and a beard and moustache.

  “We’ll be there by tonight. Josh,” vowed the gunman. He raised his right hand and felt the stubble on his chin and the corners of his blond handlebar moustache. “Good thing too. I can use a bath and a shave.”

  “You sure can, Hickok,” Geronimo said.

  Blade was still trying to detect movement in the nearest undergrowth.

  Nothing. Bertha must be wrong. He could feel the burning sunlight warming his naked chest, soothing his wounds. The run-in with the Watchers and the Brutes had been costly. He still experienced sharp pain every time he moved, both in the gaping tear in his right shoulder and the bullet crease in his right side.

  “You’re not exactly a rose either, pard,” Hickok commented to Geronimo.

  Blade smiled, wondering how Hickok was holding up, knowing the Family’s supreme gunfighter was in even worse shape, with a nasty gash over his right eye, and four relatively minor bullet wounds: a nick on his neck, a scrape on his left heel, a furrow along his left side, and a hole in the fleshy part of his left shoulder, almost in the same spot where he had sustained another gunshot during their struggle with the Trolls. If his injuries were bothering him, Hickok was doing a superb job of disguising the fact.

  Bertha, the woman they’d saved from the Watchers, had also been hurt.

  Her left arm was heavily bandaged, the legacy of a Brute’s attempt to consume her, to literally eat her alive. Bertha was wearing a baggy flannel shirt, covering the bandage, and jeans confiscated from one of the dead Watchers.

  Geronimo, still attired in a green shirt and loose-fitting pants sewn together from the remnants of an old tent, had received several bumps and bruises, but nothing serious.

  Of all of them, only the Empath, Joshua, was uninjured. He was standing calmly at the rear of the transport, his hands folded in front of his waist, serenely gazing at some white clouds on the far horizon. Even his clothes, faded brown pants and a light blue shirt made from a discarded sheet, were the least torn and worn. Joshua wore a large Latin cross around his neck.

  Blade lazily stretched, relishing the peace and quiet. He had taken a pair of green fatigue pants from one of the larger Watchers, to replace his ragged jeans. Like Hickok, Geronimo, and Joshua, he wore moccasins.<
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  Bertha had placed new black boots, again from one of the vanquished Watchers, on her scarred feet, toughened from years of going without shoes. She had giggled when she placed the boots on, delighted at the luxury.

  “While you’re getting the fire started,” Hickok said, addressing Blade, “I reckon I’m going to go water a tree.”

  “Water a tree?” Bertha repeated, puzzled.

  “It’s his quaint, if dumb, way of saying he’s going to take a piss,” Geronimo explained.

  “I still can’t get used to the way he talks sometimes,” Bertha mentioned as Hickok strolled off.

  “He thinks he’s talking like the real Wild Bill Hickok would,” Geronimo said, grinning. “Let’s keep it as our little secret that he sounds like a jerk.”

  He winked at Bertha and she laughed.

  Hickok had reached the line of trees and he glanced over his shoulder.

  The SEAL, resembling for all the world the picture of a vehicle called a van he had seen in an automotive book in the enormous Family library, was parked in the center of Highway 59, or what was left of the roadway after a century of neglect and pounding by the elements. If all went as planned, after a quick repast, they would continue north until they hit Highway 11, head east, and be at the Home by dark.

  The vegetation at the side of the road was dense. Hickok pushed his way through, searching for a suitable tree. While still a youngster, he had developed a penchant for urinating on the biggest, tallest tree he could find. The habit had become almost a ritual, his way of telling life to get screwed for the bum steer he’d been handed. Why couldn’t he have been born before the Big Blast, before everything bit the dust?

  Several chickadees were chirping nearby, and two flies buzzed around his head as he approached his intended target.

  Why, he wondered, was he suddenly peeing so frequently? Did it have something to do with the constant bouncing around in the SEAL? Maybe he should have the Healers check him over after they returned to Home.

  Hickok reached the towering Northern Red oak he’d selected and stared up into the branches high above his head. Had this particular tree been standing before World War III? Would it still be here a hundred years after he passed on to the higher worlds, as Plato referred to them?

  What would it…

  The chickadees abruptly ceased their singing, and the entire forest went quiet.

  Danger.

  Something made a snorting sound, and before the gunman could react, before he could even think about concealing himself, the terror of the woods, the scourge of the land since the Big Blast, ambled around the expansive trunk of the Northern Red oak and stopped four feet away.

  Hickok froze.

  The creature was a mutate.

  No one, not even the wise Family Elders, not even Plato, knew what caused the dreaded mutates. There was speculation the mutates were the result of the combined impact on the environment of the radiation and the chemical weapons unleashed during World War III. But no one really knew, for sure. It was common knowledge the mutates were once reptiles, mammals, or amphibians, transformed into deformed, rampaging killers possessing insatiable appetites. While the animals retained their former size and shape, their entire bodies were covered with large sores, oozing pus everywhere, their skin turning brownish and dehydrated, cracked and peeling. Their ears were mucus-covered stumps, and they breathed in great wheezing gasps. Mutates attacked and consumed any living thing they could catch, and they were utterly fearless. A mutated frog once hopped out of the moat within the Family Home and immediately pounced on the first Family member it saw.

  Hickok vividly recalled that incident, and others, and mentally ordered his body to remain immobile. His hands were holding the rawhide tie string to his buckskin pants, and he debated whether he could draw and kill the mutate before it reached him. He enjoyed unquestioned confidence in his speed and ability with his Pythons, but if the mutate didn’t die instantly and managed to bite him before it expired, he was as good as dead. Over the years, several Family members had been charged by mutates and survived. Or so they thought. Because if any of the mutate pus managed to enter the human bloodstream, that person died a slow, agonizing death. The pus seemed to cover the area near the mutate’s mouths, so any mutate bite was invariably fatal.

  What the blazes do I do? Hickok asked himself. Go for his guns and hope he blew the critter away before it sank its gleaming teeth into him?

  Or wait and see if the mutate noticed him?

  This mutate hadn’t. Yet. It appeared to have been a fox, probably a red fox, before the mysterious transformation. With its ears covered by the reeking pus, its hearing was diminished, leaving its nose as its primary organ for detection and identification. The mutate’s eyesight was unimpaired but, like many animals, it relied on motion to pinpoint other creatures.

  I may be in luck here, Hickok speculated. The air was deathly still and would not carry his scent to the mutate. The former fox was not looking at him, but was warily eyeing a leafy bush in the opposite direction. If he didn’t move, the mutate might actually walk away.

  Instead, the bestial demon turned and looked directly at him.

  Hickok involuntarily tensed. He could see the beady brown eyes studying him, the tiny nostrils quivering, as the mutate strove to register this new presence. Maybe the thing would decide he was another tree and leave. He watched the mutate’s eyes, anticipating a reaction.

  He got it.

  The mutate’s eyes suddenly widened, the fox snarled, and it came at him, leaping.

  His hands a blur, Hickok drew the Colts, using his thumbs to pull back the hammers as he leveled the Pythons, his fingers pulling their respective triggers as the mutate reached the apex of its jump. The blast of the .357

  Magnums shattered the forest, the slugs catching the mutate in the face and causing it to tumble to the ground at Hickok’s feet.

  The demented beast snapped at his moccasins.

  Hickok stepped back, already cocking the Pythons again.

  The mutate thrashed and rose to its feet, wobbly, growling and hissing.

  It prepared for another spring.

  The Colts bucked as Hickok fired each gun twice more, the bullets slamming the mutate to the turf.

  The fox twitched briefly, wheezed, and expired.

  Close, brother! Too close! Hickok leaned against the tree and sighed, relieved.

  “Over here!” someone shouted. Sounded like Joshua.

  “No!” another person yelled, and this time Hickok definitely identified Geronimo’s voice. “It came from over here!”

  There was a crashing in the underbrush, and Blade, Geronimo, Joshua, and Bertha broke from cover and abruptly stopped at the sight of Hickok and the dead mutate.

  “Lordy!” Bertha exclaimed, grimacing. “An Ugly!” The residents of the Twin Cities referred to the mutates as Uglies. Her vocabulary was peppered with street slang and what Joshua called “cute colloquialism.”

  She was carrying a Smith and Wesson Model 3000 Pump shotgun taken from a Watcher Geronimo had killed.

  “Thank the Spirit you’re not injured!” Joshua stated, his right hand holding a Ruger Redhawk .44 Magnum.

  Blade was frowning at the body of the mutate, cradling his Commando Arms Carbine in his arms. He hated the mutates; one of them had been responsible for slaying his father. In addition to the Commando and his Bowie knives. Blade carried two Solingen throwing knives in a leather sheath fastened to his belt, secured in the small of his broad back. Never satisfied with just a few blades, he also had a folding Buck knife in his right front pocket as well as a dagger strapped to his right calf and another to his left wrist. Fortunately, he had been able to retrieve most of his weapons after the battle in Thief River Falls.

  “What happened?” Geronimo asked Hickok. “Did you take a leak on it?” He was armed with a Browning B-80 Automatic Shotgun, an Arminius .357 in a shoulder holster under his right arm, and two genuine Apache tomahawks tucked under his belt.
<
br />   Hickok grinned. “Not quite, pard,” he replied. “We argued over which of us was going to use the tree first, and he lost.”

  “Did it bite you?” Blade inquired, concerned.

  “Nope,” Hickok answered.

  “Are you positive?” Blade pressed him.

  “Don’t you think I’d know if it did?” Hickok retorted.

  “I don’t see why we’re worried,” Geronimo noted.

  “What do you mean?” Joshua asked.

  “If the mutate bit Hickok,” Geronimo cracked, “the poor mutate would be the one to kick the bucket.”

  “Very funny,” Hickok rejoined.

  “Where’s your Henry?” Blade wanted to know, alluding to Hickok’s rifle, a Navy Arms Henry.

  “Left it in the SEAL,” Hickok admitted sheepishly.

  “Next time,” Blade advised him, “don’t go into the woods without it.”

  Hickok twirled the Pythons and slid the Colts into their holsters. “These babies took care of it. I didn’t need the Henry.”

  “What if it had been something larger?” Blade demanded.

  “I can handle myself, pard.” Hickok smiled. “You know that.”

  “I know.” Blade nodded. “I also know you’re overconfident, and one day that character flaw will get you into trouble.”

  “Why don’t you head back to the SEAL?” Hickok said, changing the subject.

  “Aren’t you coming?” Bertha asked.

  “I’ve got something to do,” Hickok told her.

  “Like what?” she questioned.

  Hickok grabbed the tie string. “Three guesses.”

  “Oh.” Bertha turned away.

  “What about you guys?” Hickok glanced at Geronimo, Joshua, and Blade. “You planning to stay and watch?”

  “No. thanks,” Geronimo declined. “We left our magnifying glass at the Home.”

  Blade and Bertha laughed, and all four of them strolled off, heading for the transport.

  Hickok rolled his blue eyes skyward. “Comedians!” he muttered. “The world is full of comedians!”