Cold-Blooded Kin: An apocalyptic horror novel (Dying Breed Book 2) Read online

  Cold-Blooded Kin

  Book 2 of the Dying Breed series

  By Jacob Rayne

  A Rayne of Terror publication

  Also available from Rayne of Terror

  The Lazarus Contagion

  Becoming…

  Sunshine

  Flesh Harvest

  Walk in the Park

  Digital Children

  Perpetual Darkness

  Season’s Bleedings

  A Feast of Flesh: Flesh Harvest II

  Terror Unlimited short story series:

  1:15

  Two Stars

  Third Strike

  Stay up to date with new releases by signing up for my newsletter here:

  http://eepurl.com/bciffz

  Cold-Blooded Kin

  Copyright © Saul Bainbridge (Writing as Jacob Rayne) 2016

  All rights reserved

  Cover art created by Michael Bray of MB Designs:

  https://www.facebook.com/mbdcovers/?fref=ts

  Author’s note:

  Hi, there. Thanks for choosing to read this book which is the second in the Dying Breed series. I’d strongly recommend reading The Lazarus Contagion first. There’s a link here for the Amazon page: http://hyperurl.co/4yq638

  Cheers!

  Jacob

  IV: Liberation

  ‘Fucking hell, I think he’s just done himself in,’ Abbott said as the roar of the shotgun blast which had taken out the back of Blake’s skull echoed down the phone and brought the call to an abrupt end.

  The phone in his hand beeped and vibrated twice. You have one new email, scrolled across the screen.

  ‘What’s this shit?’ he asked, his ear still tingling from the shotgun report.

  Sadie leant in and pressed the email icon.

  ‘This is some black magic shit right here,’ Abbott frowned, rubbing a finger in his ear to try to restore his hearing.

  The phone took a few seconds to process the request, but then the email opened.

  It was from Blake: ‘I’m sorry for what I’ve done. So I sent you this to try and help you limit the damage. I hope it helps you to survive. If you have any sense you’ll take the easy way out, like I have. Trust me; I’ve seen what those things can do.’

  ‘Goddamn prick’s sent us his suicide note,’ Abbott muttered and was about to hurl the phone against the wall when Sadie stopped him.

  ‘There’s an attachment,’ she said.

  ‘The fuck’s that mean?’ he glowered.

  She took the phone from his hand and tapped the paperclip icon.

  A map of the USA appeared on screen. There were skulls in dozens of locations across the map.

  ‘What’s this?’ Abbott said, still struggling to make sense of hearing someone blow their brains out while on the phone to him.

  ‘There must be more than one lab,’ Duggan said.

  ‘Ah, shit, I getcha now,’ he said. ‘Godless cocksucker should have blown these fuckers to kingdom come.’

  ‘He’s helped us out a lot by sending us this,’ Sadie said. ‘Without it we wouldn’t have known where to start.’

  Abbott muttered something that she couldn’t make out.

  ‘We’re going to have to get to the closest sites and limit the casualties as much as possible,’ Duggan said.

  ‘I can try to get word out,’ Sadie said.

  ‘Like anyone’s gonna believe it that ain’t seen the devastation in Taunton first hand,’ Hank, the axeman, said.

  Abbott grunted his agreement.

  ‘Well, they’ll believe it soon,’ Sadie said. ‘There’s a video here too.’

  She clicked on the attachment.

  The screen that came up was split four ways. On all of the screens, godless mutations of man and animal raced out of the tunnels. Their faces were uniform in their bloodlust and hatred. Even though the footage was showing on a tiny screen, it chilled the blood of everyone watching.

  ‘Merciful mother of God,’ Abbott said. ‘They weren’t kidding about those other labs.’

  The onslaught continued, each of the four screens showing an incessant tide of mutated humanity pouring out of the tunnels, ripping and devouring the armed guards who tried in vain to contain the escape.

  Sadie knocked it off, feeling suddenly faint at the thought of the atrocities onscreen being set loose on an unsuspecting world.

  She scrolled down to the bottom of Blake’s email and found another attachment. This one was titled, ‘Emergency breach guidelines.’

  The introduction to the document mentioned that there were certain people who were immune to being possessed by the moth creatures and that these ‘purebloods’ – as they were referred to in the email – could be used to make a serum that cured the symptoms brought on by the poisons in the insectile bites and used as a biological weapon against the mutants.

  ‘They sure were prepared,’ Sadie said.

  ‘Not fucking prepared enough,’ Abbott growled, his finger tapping the part of the screen that stated the serum was still at the trial stage.

  Sadie bowed her head, conceding the point.

  ‘We’d best get out there and start our journey to the labs,’ Duggan said, before Abbott started in on her again. The poor girl looked on the verge of tears as it was. ‘No sense in wasting valuable time.’

  ‘I need to read this,’ Sadie said. ‘You guys get on the road and I’ll call you all to let you know what it says here. There’s a lot of helpful information.’

  ‘Ok, I’ll go to this one, Rook’s Foot Canyon,’ Duggan said, jabbing a finger at a skull superimposed over a thick section of woods on the map. ‘It seems to be the closest.’

  ‘Have fun,’ Abbott said.

  Duggan nodded. ‘Sure I will.’

  ‘’Fore I sent him to the pearly gates, Jeffries mentioned he and his band of merry men were working on a weapon to combat these walking abortions,’ Abbott said.

  ‘Yeah, that’s mentioned on here too,’ Sadie said. ‘It’s going to take me a while to read this; it’s a huge document. According to the map, the laboratory working on the laser is within ten miles of here.’

  ‘Well some fucking good news at last,’ Abbott grinned.

  ‘Erm not really,’ Sadie said. ‘It’s behind that huge pile of rubble.’

  ‘Fucker. Well, I’d better see if I can get it cleared so I can get there and let ’em know what’s going on,’ Abbott said.

  ‘Mark, you’d be safer staying here and giving Captain Abbott a hand,’ Duggan said.

  Mark opened his mouth to protest, but thought better of it upon seeing the look on his adopted father’s face.

  ‘I’ll get to the other one,’ Hank said. ‘The others are miles away, and it’ll take frigging hours to get to them. So I say we contact the relevant authorities and let them know what’s going on.’

  ‘Good luck with that,’ Abbott scowled.

  ‘We gotta try,’ Duggan said.

  ‘I know,’ Abbott smiled.

  ‘You keep each other safe,’ Duggan said, hugging Mark with an intensity that drove the air from his body. ‘Let’s get outta here. Daylight’s a-wastin’.’

  ‘I love you, dad,’ Mark said.

  ‘I love you too, son,’ Duggan said.

  Then he and Hank made their way to the surface.

  Pausing for a second to gawp at the devastation that the escaped mutants had wreaked on the city, they found a vehicle apiece and went their separate ways.

  As Duggan’s car squealed into Rook’s Foot Canyon, he took a good look around. The small village looked as though it housed no more than a fe
w hundred people.

  He found the cop station on the sat nav and set off; reckoning that would be his best place to start.

  He sighed at the thought of coming across all crazy again; after the incidents in Taunton he’d been regarded as a nut by pretty much everyone he’d tried to warn.

  ‘Ready for Deja-fucking-vu?’ he muttered and set off for the police station.

  As he pulled up outside in the midst of a huge cloud of dust, he saw scenes of mayhem in the parking lot.

  Four cops were struggling to get a man from the back of the cop car and into the station.

  As he watched in amusement, muttering, ‘They’re making a fucking meal of that,’ to himself, he watched the suspect’s arms strain, popping the heavy cuffs apart like they were made of paper.

  Then he lashed out, hitting the nearest cop so hard that his neck twisted at a horrid angle and he fell, convulsing, to the ground. As his head landed hard on the concrete – with a sickening crack that Duggan heard from his position – blood had already begun to pool beneath him.

  Duggan was out of the car, keen to give the cops a hand. He could bust skulls with the best of them – had been the main enforcer for the fearsome Taunton Terrors M.C.C. – and was keen to get his hands bloody and earn the respect of the people he was soon to be baffling with his story.

  As he ran across the lot, he noticed a few things that were off about the suspect – the main one being he had cracked skin, almost like scales, the pale flesh separating like white islands in a lake of brimming blood which spilled over his cheeks and ran down to pool in the hollow at the base of his throat.

  His eyes were glazed over like they were covered in thick cataracts, but an orange light blazed behind them.

  Looking at the bulging orbs almost made Duggan freeze. He felt like a mouse being hypnotised by a snake – which turned out to be an appropriate thought when the man opened his mouth to reveal long, serpentine fangs.

  His paralysis broke when he saw the man lunge at a second cop. The two other cops lunged in with coshes, scudding heavy blows into his skull. They sounded hard enough to put him out, but he barely even acknowledged the strikes.

  He lunged forward, his clawed hands tearing into the face of one of the cops and leaving twin furrows in his cheek. The cop fell back, clutching his burst eye. The scream he uttered was ungodly.

  Finally, the cops realised their lives were in danger and drew their guns. They peppered the suspect with bullets, blowing away vital chunks of his anatomy. A section of brain pulsed through a gushing wound in the side of his head.

  Duggan reached them and lunged in, the Taser ready in his hand.

  ‘Hold him steady,’ he told the cops.

  The suspect lashed out hard.

  Duggan bobbed and weaved and came up out of the crouch with a titanic left hook that landed right on the button.

  The suspect’s jaw clicked to the side and he seemed fazed for a second. Duggan darted in and grabbed the man. Already he could feel his power. He was strong as hell and twice as ugly.

  ‘Little help,’ Duggan grimaced as the strange apparition began to get the better of him.

  Finally the cops got a good grip on him. Duggan slugged him hard in the ribs, sending the air out of him in a cloud of carrion breath.

  ‘Hold him down like that,’ Duggan said.

  He darted in and shoved the Taser into the back of the man’s head.

  He lit up like a Christmas tree and fell to his knees, drool spilling from his mouth.

  Duggan held the Taser on until the smell of burning flesh filled his nostrils. Then he let go.

  ‘If I were you I’d get him inside before he wakes up,’ he said, backhanding a bead of blood from his burst lip.

  Abbott cursed as he pulled up to the mountain of tightly-packed rubble. The tunnel was roughly ten feet high and seemingly every inch of it was rammed to the gills with broken shards of concrete.

  Mark tried to hide a smile at the Captain’s colourful and imaginative swearing. Even Duggan couldn’t swear so vehemently.

  ‘For that, you can start pulling that shit outta there,’ Abbott grinned.

  Mark grumbled good-naturedly.

  Jake, one of the cops who’d followed Duggan back to the shelter, got out of the car and approached the pile of stones with Mark.

  Abbott put his feet on the dash and lit up a cigar. He took contented little pulls on it as he watched his two companions start the long task ahead of them.

  Blake’s map had told them of an underground dumping ground a few hundred yards from the shelter, so the plan was to dump the rocks here until there was room enough to pass.

  Abbott took a few more pulls on his cigar, exhaled contentedly and stubbed it out on the ashtray set into the dash. He moved slowly as a result of the pain in his recently injured ankle flaring up.

  ‘Right, time to show you young bucks how it’s done,’ he grinned, exhaling the last of the sweet-smelling smoke into the cold underground air.

  Mark climbed carefully to the top of the pile of rubble. His movement sent small chunks of rock skidding down the surface of the slope. Clouds of dust came up all around him, making him cough and splutter as it flooded into his lungs.

  ‘Hey, you be careful up there, kid,’ Abbott shouted as he slung a handful of stones into the back of the jeep.

  Mark turned and stuck a grubby thumb up, his dirt-smeared face lifting into a grin.

  Abbott shook his head. ‘Damn near caved us in already.’

  ‘It’ll take us a while, I reckon,’ Mark shouted down.

  ‘Gonna be on with this all fucking week,’ Abbott growled.

  ‘What in the blue fuck was going on there?’ said the slightly overweight cop who’d been struggling with the suspect. Duggan couldn’t help but notice the thick sweat patches around the collar and armpits of his beige shirt.

  ‘I could tell you but you wouldn’t believe me,’ Duggan smiled.

  The cop shook his head.

  ‘You tell me your side of the story, Chief,’ Duggan said, his feet propped up on the table.

  ‘You gonna tell me your name at least?’

  ‘Duggan. Your turn. What’s going on?’

  ‘I’m Chief Randall Hennessee. Y’know, I recognise you from somewhere.’

  ‘We’ll get there.’

  ‘OK, OK, this is Matheus Finn, the town’s holy man. The town’s border patrol caught him tampering with the fences so they took him in. They ditched him in the parking lot for us to sort out, fuckers.’

  ‘Fences?’

  Hennessee nodded. ‘Out of towner, huh?’

  ‘Yeah, Taunton.’

  ‘So I see,’ he said, his trembling finger jabbing at the Taunton Terrors patch on Duggan’s battered and blood-stained leather jacket. ‘We got fences up on the North side of town. Electric ones. It’s town law that anyone tampering with them or trying to skip town takes a one way trip to the Hanging Trees. I got a bit of a soft spot for Mr Finn here – he christened both my kids, y’see – and that’s the only reason the border patrol brought him here instead of sending him straight to Heaven’s gates.’

  ‘The fences always been there?’ Duggan casually enquired.

  ‘No, Mayor Wainscott, prick that he is, ordered them to be built about four years back. They also diverted the river, dammed it up. There’s now a reservoir, just outside the fences.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To keep the town in clean water, that’s the official line.’

  ‘And you buy it?’

  Hennessee scoffed.

  ‘Couse ya don’t, Randy,’ Duggan laughed. ‘I can already tell that you’re too smart for that bullshit.’

  ‘Yeah, so, border patrol dropped Finn off here. There was something off bout him, he looked like he hadn’t slept in days. When I tried to get an explanation out of him, he went berserk and tried to tear me a new one.’

  Duggan nodded, his fingers steepled in front of him.

  ‘Anything else before I blow your mind?�
�

  ‘We’ve had a few people go missing recently and last night a kid was killed.’

  ‘My gut says your perp is already in the cells.’

  ‘Mine too. Shame, he used to be such a nice man.’

  ‘Ok, so the reason you recognise me is that I was on TV recently. There was a lab with these horrible genetic experiments going on. Funded by the Jeffries Corporation.’

  ‘I’ve heard about him. Fucking weasel if the stories are true.’

  ‘I’d say they were. Now, this lab got breached. The monsters got out. And wanna know the worst bit?’

  Hennessee looked at Duggan as if he was insane.

  ‘I’m happy to do a drug test,’ Duggan beamed. ‘And I’m aware how fucking crazy this all sounds. But your town is in danger. I have reason to believe that there is one of those labs in Rook’s Foot Canyon.’

  Hennessee stared Duggan in the eye. Saw that there was no flinch, no quarter given. He looked away, uncomfortable.

  ‘You seem very convinced,’ he said. ‘You got any proof?’

  Duggan pulled out his smartphone and opened up his emails. Blake’s message was at the top. He flicked open the attachment.

  Passed the phone to Hennessee.

  He clacked his tongue as he read the first part, his eyes darting up to Duggan now and then to see if he was going to laugh and reveal that it was all a joke.

  ‘There’s pages and pages of this,’ Hennessee said, his thumb scrolling through the document.

  Duggan took it off him for a second and typed the town’s name in.

  Hennessee gulped.

  Things suddenly seemed all the more serious when he saw the town’s name on the screen.

  ‘So what’s your plan?’ Hennessee said, his mind reeling at the possibilities for him and his town.

  Duggan shrugged. ‘They’re already out, according to the fucker who sent us this document. So we need to lock the town up and make sure no one messes with those fences.’

  ‘Ah shit, there are cops out in the woods already, that’s where one of the bodies was found, you see.’

  ‘Best get them back in. God alone knows what’s waiting out there.’