Reggie

“Reggie”

  By James J. Stubbs

  For Jess

  And Andy Mitchell

  Reggie” ©

  James J. Stubbs.

  Copyright James J. Stubbs 2014

  This is a work of fiction. Any similarities to characters, events or organizations are purely coincidental.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Chapter One, Prologue

  Winter gripped the city of New York firmly. It was cold and the snow just wouldn't stop falling. It had piled up as high as the shop windows inside of a day. With nobody clearing it, it just built and froze up in icy layers. All of the streets were impassable and choked with abandoned cars and bikes. At least most of them had been abandoned. There was the odd one trapped inside still. Some still twitching under the caves of ice. Some still clawing and scratching at the frozen snow trying to get out. The harbor had started to freeze from the outside in and the statue of liberty had changed from a healthy green to a frost bitten white. The city was all but dead.

  Logan gripped the very bottom of the fire escape on the nearest apartment building that he could find. The snow was piled so high that it wasn't difficult to reach. The metal ladder glistened with frozen raindrops in the dull ambient light. His thermal gloves stuck instantly to the frost and it took some effort to detach them once he had pulled himself onto the first level of the escape.

  It was so bitterly cold that he needed to get inside. He panted for breath and coughed as he tried to breathe in. The cold in the air sapped his strength and took his breath away. The sound of his cough echoed through the empty city. There was no doubt that they would have heard it. He arched his shoulders back and the leather bound jacket he wore creaked and groaned in the silence.

  He balled up his fist and swung for the nearest window. It broke easily and he climbed inside over the large splinters of glass. That would have drawn them closer. They had an uncanny way of pinpointing any noise in the vast empty trail of destruction they had left in their wake.

  It wasn't much warmer or better inside the apartment but at least he was out of the billowing snow. He breathed hard, trying to overcome the need to cough and sneeze, and slowly made his way across the bland bathroom to the door at the other side. He took off his gloves and vigorously rubbed his hands together hoping that it would warm him up. It didn’t, or at least not much.

  He stuffed his heavy gloves into the ample pockets of his big and heavy brown leather jacket. He unzipped the top and reached inside his jacket to check on his pair of Desert Eagle hand guns that were neatly holstered to his side. It has been a long time since he had held or carried a gun. But it felt right. Natural. Retirement hadn’t slowed him down one bit.

  He checked on his equipment before moving on. Just like always. It was funny how fast training came back once it had been so completely ingrained on someone. He had two flares stuffed in his back pocket, a grenade fastened to his belt, and two packs of medical supplies tied to his right leg. It really wasn’t a lot. Not given the mamoth task he was facing.

  He zipped his jacket back to the top, buried his neck in the fur lined collar, and reached for the door handle. He was too smart to not be cautious. There was the training kicking in yet again. But this wasn’t the world he had left behind.

  He took his right hand from the warmth of his trouser pocket and gripped the door handle. It was cold, but not frosted over yet like the metal frame he had climbed outside. He flexed the palm of his left hand and carefully placed it on the wooden door frame. The door was cold too. That probably meant there were no survivors nestled on the other side burning whatever they could find and whatever wasn’t precious in order to stay alive.

  He was relaxed a little by that so pushed down on the handle and eased the door open. The smell hit him right away. Rotting flesh and the pests that were attracted to it. He didn’t gag. Nor was he repulsed by it. It was a familiar smell he had long ago gotten used to. The room was dark and the source of the smell was not yet obvious. The power was one of the first things that went down when everything kicked off. He unzipped his jacket and took out one of his 50 caliber Desert Eagle handguns.

  It was finished in gold at the hilt. An expensive and personal item that he had received as a retirement gift from his old team. It had a torch mounted on the top of it that he switched on with his thumb while holding the gun to the floor. The last thing he wanted was for the sudden light to startle anything or anyone in the rooms beyond. There was no sound as the pool of light hit his heavy duty, combat grade leather boots and black colored warm trousers. Nothing reacted to the light and it would be safe to bring his weapon higher so that he could see.

  As he traced the gentle contours of the various items in the room with his eyes and the light from the gun, shapes danced into view, colours too. First the red stained sheet on the bed. Then the flies that started fluttering around. Then the figure beneath the sheets. Wrapped, mummified lovingly in the flowery pink bed covers. Logan let out a grumbled sigh but said nothing.

  The kid must have only been 10. Maybe younger judging by the size of the mummified shape. He stepped closer for a better look. Shot right through the head. The blood was copious but had long since frozen in the bitter cold. There was a note on the child‘s chest. Possibly a love note from the killer. He took it, held it to the light, and read it.

  Now Hell has risen, And death is a given, Though I shall remain un-forgiven, This world you must never face, So I send you to His warm embrace, Leave this world without a trace, In death we will make our case, And I will meet you in heaven, Where all of this is forgotten.

  He carefully placed it back in the exact same place he had gotten it from. The whole world had gone to Hell and some people, as they always had and always would, looked for the easy way out. Not that doing that to a child could have been easy. There was no time to dwell on it or on why it happened. Logan wasn’t there to investigate the human factor. He was there to figure it out. He had been dropped right into the epicenter, by helicopter, to try to find the answer. To try to find the key to saving what was left of the world.

  There was hardly any need to look through the adjoining doors. There was no prize for guessing what he would find behind them. The flat was fairly big. Easily big enough for a family. There were three bedrooms and all of the doors were closed. There was probably another dead child behind one of them. Then the guilty and distressed parent, come murderer, behind the last. Choked with sadness and probably hung.

  He strode in a straight line across the tidy flat and to the door at the other end of the living space. Nothing had been broken and oddly nothing looted. The picture frames were still hung neatly to the decorated walls. Nothing had been overturned and none of the ornaments on any of the shelves had been broken.

  That went against his experience and against his expectations. The situation had unfolded fast, that much he knew, but he was beginning to think he might have massively underestimated it. The outbreak was far too quick for anyone to brave looting.

  The television was on the floor and the wood that used to be the cabinet on which it stood had been used to barricade the door. It was sloppy at best. The nails were bent so he concluded silently that they had been hastily hammered right through into the plasterboard walls behind it. The odd screw had been drilled in too. These people had been no handymen.

  He holstered his weapon and reached with both hands a
round the bulk of the messily placed and weak wood. With the right leverage in the right place he pulled the barricade as one solid mass right off the wall. He placed it on the carpet without a sound and unbolted the door as quietly as he could manage. Peering through the peep hole he could see only a thin corridor lit eerily by flickering lights on the other side. But nothing more. The building must have had some kind of backup generator.

  The door, now free of the latch and bar, pushed open with ease. He closed it behind him. Hopefully by closing the door he could keep this poor families’ mausoleum safe for a while longer. He didn’t take his gun back out of the holster. He could see just fine with the odd interruption as the lights flickered.

  The generator must have been slowly failing too. The hall was bland. Just a simple old apartment building and nothing more. The residents were far from rich. The blandness of the pale grey walls was interrupted only with the odd notice or poster and a few kids’ drawings on the skirting board at the bottom of the communal hall.

  An irregular banging noise interrupted the silence. It was coming from above and getting louder with each aggressive and hollow thud. Maybe someone was in trouble.

  Logan started to jog down the long hall but made sure to go slowly enough to check every doorway and every flat. Some were open but no life was obvious from inside of any of them. He was in good shape for his age and didn’t even break a sweat as he made for the stairwell at the other side of the building.

  He opened the next door in the same cautious way and strode inside the dark stairwell. He took his gun again and flicked the light back on. He held it low and leapt up the stairs three at a time. The banging got louder and louder with each three step leap, and as he drew closer to the next floor he could just about make out a lady screaming and panting hard for breath. He must have been getting closer.

  He reached for the door that led to the apartments on the next floor and silently pulled it open. He stepped gently into the hall and listened hard for any clues as to where he should go from there. He could hear the woman louder now. It was a scream of panic if ever he heard one. She sounded young too. He slowed his pace to a powerful walk and kept his weapon drawn. He could hear a man too. They could only have been around the next corner or closed inside a flat out of view.

  With a few more gentle paces he rounded a corner to an open door. There was a young lady on the floor, terrorized by a bulky looking man with her trousers around her ankles and her vest top torn at the shoulder. She just about caught Logan’s eye with an enhanced look of horror on her face. She must have thought Logan was another one. Or one of her attacker’s friends.

  The attacker had his back to Logan and hadn’t seen him. He had a thick green camouflage jacket on over his ample and muscular frame. He was naked from the waist down and his intentions were obvious. Logan holstered his gun and walked slowly, stealthily, over to the scene of what was about to be a rape.

  The woman said nothing and tried to crawl away backwards. Her elbows fell awkwardly on the bare wooden floor with some agonizing crunches. She couldn’t get away fast enough. The man was nursing his sore balls by the looks of it and swearing as loud as he could at the woman on the floor. She must have gotten a lucky and heavy swing at him. That had slowed him down for sure. And slowed down his ability to rape too.

  Logan reached around the man’s shoulder, grabbed his wrist and twisted. The man howled and dropped to his knees, turning at last to see Logan. To see his chiseled jaw, his rugged and ravaged complexion and the short black and white stubble around his chin. He stared at him with piercing dark eyes and continued twisting until the sound of a snap confirmed that he had broken something. He howled again and again then swore some more and punched the floor with his free hand.

  The woman had used the distraction to finally scramble away and pull all of her clothes back to their correct places. She put a coat on too and slowly stood. Logan reached down around his victim’s elbow and pulled the man to his feet. His hand hung at an odd angle pointing off to the side somewhere. He had tears in his eyes.

  He was young, super strong by the looks of him, and at least a foot taller than Logan. Logan slammed the man off the nearest wall and quickly over to the next with two dull thuds. He grabbed at the half naked man’s other arm and propelled him back into the hall behind him. He shuffled to his feet and tried to run with some pathetic mumblings. But Logan was back on top of him quickly. No way could he let him go. This guy might have been with a pack, or might have had a few dangerous friends that would make this fight much longer and harder than it needed to be.

  He lifted his right leg and with precision swung a roundhouse kick right into the tall young man’s ribs. A crack and repeated coughs of blood stained phlegm confirmed he had broken at least one.

  ‘Wait…’ Gestured the women behind. ‘Don’t kill him.’ She sounded sheepish. Not ungrateful but she did have sincerity in her voice. Logan had no intention of killing the man. But he was going to knock him clean out with one final kick to the man’s jaw. That cracked too and hung dislocated to one side as the attacker slumped to the floor.

  Logan took a deep breath to re-compose himself and turned to face the lady he had saved. She still looked scared but the color was coming back to her face quickly. She stood a good few inches shorter than he with long black flowing hair. She couldn’t have been older than maybe 25. Thin, attractive, with a dainty face and nice green eyes. She needed a damn good meal in her stomach by the look of her though. She stumbled over her first few words.

  ‘Are those real?’ She asked. A little more confidence in her with each syllable spoken. She had caught the sight of the stars on his shoulders in the flickering light behind. She stood arms folded in the doorway of what was presumably her own flat. He had a single gold colored star sown into each shoulder of his coat. He glanced at them. Almost like he had forgotten who he used to be.

  ‘Brigadier General James Logan.’ He introduced himself with a gravely deep and empowering voice that oozed strength and authority. ‘Retired.’ He added and held out his hand. She shook it in turn. A solid handshake for a dainty lady.

  ‘Elizabeth Jones.’ She said and smiled, glancing back to the still unconscious mess on the floor. ‘Thanks for that help.’ She smiled delicately and met Logan’s eyes. Her voice was gentle and soothing. A nice mix between mid to deep in pitch and a little croaky too. He was reading her like a book, assessing her, analyzing everything he possibly could about her. The coldness in his eyes slowly eased and he half managed a smile back.

  ‘That’s a colorful name. For someone a little… plain.’ He spoke slowly and had not yet let go of her hand. He cocked his head to one side and sort of looked her up and down. She was stunned, but smiled, and threw his hand away. He was joking. And somehow she got it. In nine words this man had managed to make her forget she had been saved from rape and had forced her to smile, forgetting the horror unfolding around them.

  She turned and walked inside the flat while gesturing for Logan to follow with a wave of her hand. Before he did, he walked back into the hallway and took hold of the rapist brute and lifted him clean over his shoulders. There was a door down the hall that was open. He had noticed it on his way through.

  Logan walked slowly under the weight of the seven foot tall brute and threw him down on the floor of the abandoned apartment. He reset the lock on the other side of the door and closed it without bothering to check if anything was inside. Let him wake up in a daze and at least that way if he did have any friends, or if he was in a gang, they wouldn’t be able to find him.

  Her apartment was well lit with candles and a few battery powered torches taped with duct tape to the wall. She had been trying to hold out there alone until, and indeed if, everything passed over and the world returned to normal. But it wasn’t to be.