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Immortal Respite

  Brett P. S.

  Copyright © 2016 Brett P. S.

  All rights reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER 1 – MINDS OF MORTAL MEN

  CHAPTER 2 – UNSUSTAINABLE PARADISE

  CHAPTER 3 – THREAT OF THE COMBINE

  CHAPTER 4 – SEPARATE WAYS

  Chapter 1

  Minds of Mortal Men

  Leon Godwin leaned back against the rickety interior lining of his e he twirled a piece of driftwood around with his fingertips. With the other hand, he cleaned the sweat from his brow and slicked back his ginger peppered hair. His face bore the marks of lashings and beatings, a weathered exterior not unlike his back, though he kept it covered most of the time. Some things, mortals didn’t have to see, little secrets he kept to himself.

  He hardly recalled the time before the collapse, the muddied memories drifting about in his mind for the better half of two centuries. Brains weren’t nearly as reliable as computing technology, but good luck acquiring those goods. What little his crew could salvage from the wastelands amounted to tin cans and meager scraps of meat from carrion and lost cargo. The weather was growing worse here in the Midwest and morale had begun to reflect the apparent climate changes.

  He jammed the staff into a wedge in the dirt by his feet and pulled himself off the wall at the sound of footsteps echoing through the outer halls of his enclave. The team had returned earlier than usual, an unfortunate resolution to the last great hunt before the end of this summer.

  Leon frowned and strode over toward the exit of this particular chasm within the underground, but he stopped once the pacing increased abruptly. He could feel the tension in the footsteps mounting, and he drew back to grab his staff with a calm and collected stride. He snatched up his staff, tightening his grip as the clamoring of footsteps gathered and faded at the entrance behind him.

  “Who is it this time?” Leon asked. “What scrawny runt do I have to beat down before you lot learn your place?”

  He turned to face a group of youths in tattered garbs stitched together from fabrics gathered across the Midwest wasteland. His enclave had grown from 100 strong to nearly 200 over the last two summers, a greedy leap in numbers accompanied by a proportional call for good management. Unfortunately, good men and women were hard to come by. It felt to him that as soon as one matured, they wasted away or the wasteland struck them down through illness or war. Famine played its part as well, but the crops fared well this year.

  Leon sighed and twirled his staff around while the children spoke ill thoughts. In the midst of the chatter, an older bearded man stepped out, brandishing an archaic weapon with a smug grin. It was neither blade nor staff. Leon eyed the contraption with a raised eyebrow.

  The man’s name was a passing afterthought, but he recognized him as one of the individuals who worked directly beneath his second. It was a poorly coup to say the least. The mortal should have jumped at the chance, rather than stop to savor the moment, though if he actually managed to repair a working carbine, then Leon sorely underestimated the rabble.

  “We’re giving you a choice,” the man said. Really now? How just. “You can leave this enclave to my council of associates or forfeit your life. The world no longer requires those of higher blood. You can revel in your curse as you wander elsewhere. I really don’t care as long as you relinquish your leadership.”

  Leon smirked and eyed the youths’ faces. Their darting looks and trembling fingers clutching their knives told a very different story from the one able bodied combatant in the group, and the only reason he held any kind of confidence was because of the ruin that rested in his hands. Leon took a step forward and then to the side. He watched the group squirm, noting their jerked movements. This would be easy so long as he took out the big one.

  “You have no chance against me,” he said to them, issuing an icy stare. “I’ve outlasted countless insurrections. You were not the first, and you certainly will not be the last. Ultimately, I will outlast you. You will grow old, wither and die and in your last breaths curse me as I send you off to the cleaver.”

  “Don’t fall for his bravado!” The man shouted, raising his rifle. “He’s had centuries to learn how to manipulate good men with twisted words and veiled threats.”

  Leon whipped up his staff. “I wouldn’t waste my time with your lot. If words will not reach you, however, we can skip to the part where you beg me for a merciful out. I assume you put these ‘good men’ up to your little stunt, Morgan.” He glanced past him and shot a glare toward them. “This is his battle, not yours. Feel free to side with whosoever remains at the count of three.”

  “Damn you, Immortal son of a …”

  Morgan ratcheted up his carbine as he spoke, but Leon cut him off as he lunged forward with a strike to the solar plexus. He drove the staff butt end into his gut and removed it thusly. Leon whirled around and cracked his weapon like a whip across Morgan’s back, shattering the pole in the process. He gripped the sliver still in his hand and drove a thorny slice into the thick of Morgan’s back, bursting capillaries and rupturing a number of arteries.

  Blood coursed out from Morgan’s open wounds and trickled down his beard as he lay on the ground, numbed from the shock of what had happened. He could have killed him and finished it, but this move would quell at least a generation and a half within his enclave, and it was about time he started thinking of the future.

  “Three.”

  Leon wiped the dirt from his hands and slicked back his hair.