The Earth Died Screaming

  BASTARD OF THE APOCALYPSE: THE EARTH DIED SCREAMING

  By Chuck Rogers

  Contents

  AUTHOR'S FOREWORD

  FOREWORD

  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

  CHAPTER 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

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  About the Author

  The author would like to thank:

  Copyright

  AUTHOR'S FOREWORD

  This book is Ron Miles' fault.

  -Chuck Rogers, July 21, 2019

  FOREWORD

  by Ron Miles

  It all started when I was reading a mediocre post-apocalyptic series (whose name and author shall go unnamed). It wasn't bad, per se, but it also wasn't particularly good. As the owner and proprietor of JamesAxler.com I have consumed a great deal of post-apocalyptic fiction over the years, and have also had the good fortune to become friends with a number of authors from the Deathlands series. In this case, I gave a lukewarm recommendation for this set of books to Chuck Rogers - not so much because of the content itself, but because of the profit model.

  I was fascinated by the fact that the author was clearly making a living at writing boiler-plate fiction, primarily by doing it on a schedule and with clear branding. And so it came to pass that I gave The Pitch to Chuck:

  Conceive of a post-apocalyptic scenario and set of characters. Plot out a series of 70,000 word books that can be completed and released on a consistent timeline (one book every either three or four months), and treat the stories like television episodes and with each set of eight or so books being a complete season with an overall story arc. I also made some branding suggestions regarding logo and layout and such.

  See, I know that Chuck is hip deep in his true magnum opus, Heroes Road. I would never, ever want to take him away from that. But I also know that Chuck enjoys things like paying the rent and eating food. Given his particular talent for creating interesting characters, witty dialog, and (most importantly) snappy action set pieces with variety and originality, I had every confidence that he could crank out books like these in his sleep. His prior work writing for Deathlands, Executioner, and Stony Man prove that point. Here, then, was a business plan on how to make some steady income by creating a Kindle series that would blow the wheels off the competition.

  So what did Chuck do? He went and wrote the 132,000 word tome you now hold in your hands, creating a totally unique apocalyptic scenario and filling it with action, black humor, sex & violence, and literally everything you could ask for in a post-apocalyptic novel. He wasn't satisfied with just cranking out a lowest-common-denominator cash grab, and instead created a character for the ages in Benjamin Frame (the titular Bastard). It is double the proposed word count, but in keeping with the original pitch it stands as a double-length series premiere episode. In validation of the original pitch, Bastard was picked up by Graphic Audio as a fully-produced audio series several months before its publication in print and digital format. Keep your eyes open for news on that front. Chuck already has plots for three further Bastard novels mapped out, and I could not be more excited to read them when they come about.

  So to everyone eagerly awaiting Heroes Road 3, I offer my sincere apologies. It wasn't my intention to snap my fingers and make my favorite author write a book just for me. But I ain't gonna lie, I'm pretty tickled that he did. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have.

  And HBO, if you are reading this, I've got a pitch for you...

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Earth dies screaming, tonight.

  THE LADY MADE HER MOVE.

  Most of the men in the bar watched.

  She was a redhead.

  Nice rack.

  Nice start.

  I like slender and slung. I've been accused of liking it lanky and skanky. Whatever. I come from the trailer park. I come from hunger. I don't deny it. She was slender, slung, and redheaded in a pencil skirt putting her breast front forward. She wore glasses not because she was a pretty girl trying to look smart but because she was clearly nearsighted. Maybe it was because I dropped out of high school but I liked the librarian seductress/FOX News contributor look.

  She'd put on the war paint. It wasn't too much but you could tell she didn't wear make up very often. More than anything she radiated she didn't dress up and go to bars very often.

  Which had a charm all its own.

  She was tentative in her approach. I'd observed her observing me for the past half hour while she turned away other men and worked up her courage. In my line situational awareness is key. If she was a cop I had completely lost my sense of smell. The question of the evening was whether this was business or she just couldn't resist my good looks.

  It wasn't totally out of the question?

  Most women given their druthers prefer their men large rather than small. I once overheard someone say "The motherfucker looks like Frankenstein in a suit!" Of course he didn't know I was standing behind him and he got the beat down of his life. So did the two guys he was with. Not for that, but they had pissed off the wrong people and the wrong people knew me.

  Frankenstein?

  I'll take it. As for the face? It's all shelves, brow ridges, cheeks bones and chin with Cro-Magnon blue eyes staring out of a permanent rusty complexion.

  Tall, dark and gruesome.

  Some women like that.

  As the old song goes "Ain't good looking, but I ain't shy . . ."

  I was also the only guy in the bar wearing a five thousand dollar bespoke suit.

  Then again maybe someone had referred her. I spent time in this bar. I did business in this bar. It was one of my offices. I don't take phone calls and all business has to be transacted in person so I can look you in the eye and make sure you're not wearing a wire.

  I saw her stop and unbutton one more button on her blouse on approach and I kept the smile off my face.

  Tall, dark and gruesome for the win.

  I sat and drank beer in my best enigmatic self.

  She stood and looked for long seconds.

  I ignored her.

  "Um, hi."

  "Hi."

  "Do you come here often?"

  I just turned my head and stared. "Wow."

  "Oh, God."

  "You don't pick up men in bars much, do you?"

  "No," Her shoulders sagged. "Not so much."

  I shrugged.

  She shrugged. "I'm sorry."

  "Don't be. Prettiest girl in the bar just walked up to me and said do you come here often? Tall, dark and gruesome for the win."

  She blushed then. A nice one that went down to her cleavage. I wondered if her boobs could actually glow. I wanted to find out. Redheads and blushing. I think that's when she had me.

  "Can I buy you a drink?"

  I scoffed and finished my beer. "No."


  Her mouth opened and closed.

  I put my bottle down on the bar. "But I'd love to buy you one."

  She flushed again. She had a charming complexion, and I was beginning to think she really had come to this bar to pick up a guy and was doing better than she'd hoped.

  I nodded at the empty seat beside me and she smiled that giddy this is really happening smile again that was breaking down all my defenses.

  "What's the lady drinking?"

  "Long Island?"

  Well, that was the standard I came here to get hammered girl drink.

  "No, wait," She looked at my bottle. "I mean, can I have one? And a shot?"

  I nodded at Connie.

  "Connie, may I have two High Life's and two Don Julio's, please?"

  Connie beamed. "Yes, you may!"

  Connie was the product of thirteen uninterrupted generations of Italian inbreeding who taught Yoga and practiced Brazilian ju-jitsu.

  We got along famously.

  My new companion beamed at me too.

  I shrugged. "What?"

  "Oh, you know, the may I, please and thank you."

  "My mother did the best she could."

  She took in my face again, feature by feature. "I bet she was pretty."

  Boom.

  Surprise left-hand to the jaw.

  That sat in my heart in the most bittersweet, sad song on the jukebox way possible. "She was beautiful."

  She stared at me as I found myself staring into memory.

  "But if you're poor and not smart, and beauty is the only card you have to play? It can end up being a curse."

  Wow, how she got that out of me I'll never know. Redhead? Glowing boobs?

  Could be.

  But I saw my tall, dark, man of mystery meter shoot through the roof in her eyes.

  Connie brought the brews and shots and that lightened the mood.

  The lady's mystery redhead meter ticked up in my estimation as she raised the shot without looking around for salt or a lime.

  "To Earth, she treated us well."

  Earth hadn't treated me well. Actually, scratch that. Life and Lady luck? They'd been total bitches, but Earth?

  Sure.

  I clicked my shot to hers. "She treated us well."

  We poured them back and I felt the warmth blossom in my stomach. I watched the warmth flood her face from the cleavage up. It was endlessly delightful. She gave a short cough and smiled. "That's really smooth."

  "I don't do a lot of shots, but that's my go to."

  She sipped her beer and peered at me. She really wasn't good at this, but her flailing was genuinely charming.

  "I didn't think guys like you went for girls like me."

  I looked at her. She was tall. Nearly six feet. Tall girls often have complexes about being taller than all the boys and in high school the dances were awkward. She was in a bar wearing thick glasses. That meant she couldn't wear contacts so she always saw herself wearing glasses and when she took them off she was blurry.

  "On the contrary," I perked a scarred but mobile eyebrow. "Beautiful women with esteem issues are where I do my best damage."

  She grinned at me happy and sly. "You think I'm beautiful?"

  I took a big chance and reached over. Her eyes flared slightly at the size of my paw but she let me gently turn her head to look in the mirror behind the bar. I lifted my chin at the girl in the mirror. "You calling me a liar?"

  She looked at herself in the mirror and flushed with embarrassed pride. "I tarted up pretty good, didn't I?"

  "Yes, ma'am. So, I'll see you and raise."

  Her nose wrinkled in lovely confusion.

  I made a show of shooting my sleeves and adjusting my tie. Her eyes widened as I leaned in close.

  "What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?"

  She burst out laughing and I liked the sound of it.

  "No, really," I leaned back. "This doesn't seem like your kind of place."

  She looked me dead in the eye. "The world is going to end tonight."

  Okay, so she was nuts.

  But nuts often meant good in the sack, and she already had me at when I blush it goes down to my boobs . Plus? I like a good story. In my line I've heard some doozies. I put my elbow on bar and my chin on my palm. "Do tell."

  "You really want to know?"

  "Shoot."

  "The Earth is going to come in line with a non-relativistic jet," She looked at me for signs of disapproval and doubt. "Tonight."

  "A non-relativistic jet?"

  "That's right."

  I flexed my brain and threw a curve ball. "So what's a jet doing when it is being relativistic?"

  She gave me a 'Who's a good boy!' smile. "Easy answer? Relativistic jets are beams of ionized matter that have been accelerated close to the speed of light."

  I might have seen a news story about that on the Internet. "Okay."

  "Well, they're generated by black holes, pulsars, quasars, and . . ." She gave me a sidelong look. "Unexplainable objects."

  "So this jet is non-relativistic because it's not moving at close to the speed of light?"

  "No, there's actually no such thing a non-relativistic jet."

  "I see."

  Her face went into full Oh my God! I'm blowing it!

  Internally I grinned in triumph. Outwardly I just took a sip of beer like I didn't care. "All jets are non-relativistic. Because nothing can exceed the speed of light."

  Her face lit up.

  I went to the front of the class.

  I watch PBS.

  "Right! So! We call it non-relativistic not because it's non-relativistic, but because it's not a relativistic jet." I got another sidelong look. "You get it?"

  "I believe I do."

  She sipped her beer. "I am prepared to be impressed."

  "It means you have no idea what it is."

  "He's built like a brick shithouse and has a brain!"

  I shrugged. "If only my powers could be used for good."

  She burst out laughing. She was a little drunker than she appeared. "Where have you been all my life?"

  "Lurking."

  She giggled, but then got all serious.

  "So, lurking is the operating word. There appears to be an unexplained object lurking not too far away in our galactic neighborhood."

  "Generating non-relativistic jets?"

  "I believe so. I mean my team believes so."

  "You have a team?"

  "I mean, it's not my team, but I'm a senior member."

  "You'd think this might be in the news."

  "That's the problem. No one has ever seen the object. No one has seen the jet."

  She gave me a hopeful look.

  I mulled that over. I'm intuitive n' stuff. "But it explains things."

  "Right! So, there have been events in a number of nearby solar systems. I mean not recent events, they've happened over the course of astrophysical time over millions of years. A planetary wobble, a flare of something very bright being reflected, some other odd phenomena, all very minor in the scheme of things, but all unexplained, and the object would also explain a number of other lesser anomalies."

  "And when you triangulate the events they all end up at the same spot. The lines you draw can only be non-relativistic jets, and you can calculate the time in between them, and predict the next one. It's the hub of the wheel of death and we're due to take the next spoke."

  Nailed it.

  Her jaw dropped. "Were you an Eagle Scout or something?"

  "I got kicked out of the Boy Scouts. But I've used a compass." I motioned Connie for another round. "So how do you know all this?"

  "Oh, I'm a member of the astrophysics department at UCLA." Sidelong look. "You want to see my faculty badge?"

  I shrugged. "Naw."

  "Oh."

  "No one else has figured this out?"

  "I don't know. But our team discovered this almost by accident, two days ago."

  I liked it. It was pret
ty tight. But I had to ask.

  "Don't you think you should call somebody?"

  "Well, we did. I mean Gary did. He's our project leader. After we ran the calculations for the tenth time he called NASA."

  "And?"

  "I haven't heard from Gary all day today."

  "You think the guys in the dark suits and sunglasses got to Gary?"

  She chewed her lip. "Maybe?"

  "So some unknown, invisible nearby nemesis-object is going to generate an unexplainable beam that no one has ever heard of and it's going to fry the planet and the government is covering it up?"

  She lowered her head in the classic the cops don't believe my story. "Maybe?"

  "Tonight?"

  "If my calculations are correct. It's possible the science is wrong," She shook her head. "But the math isn't."

  She didn't doubt it for a second.

  "You should tell Connie this."

  She gave me a look. "Connie's a conspiracy theory bartender?"

  "No, but she's a prepper."

  "Her? Really?"

  I called across the bar. "Connie!"

  "Frame!"

  "Are you a prepper?"

  She beamed. "The prepperiest!"

  I shrugged. "See?"

  "Wow."

  "So, the world is ending tonight and you decided to tart it up and find the biggest, swinging dick available?"

  "That was the plan?"

  I shrugged. "I'm in."

  "You are?"

  "Well, an even bigger, stronger and swinginger swinging dick might still come in," I cracked my knuckles and they went off like gunshots. "But I'm fighting him."

  "You know, I wanted to find someone exactly like you."

  "To . . .?"

  "To fuck me like he wants to kill me with his dick. So I won't spend my last hours on earth being afraid."

  So she was nuts.

  She looked down at her beer.

  "It was that or spend it with my cat." Her lip trembled. "I let Poofers go."

  "Poofers?"

  "Mr. Poofers. I mean, he always wanted to go outside. He spent his whole life looking out the window. He's an indoor cat. So I let him out, because, well . . ." She drifted off and looked like she was about to start crying.

  I shrugged. "I'm all in."

  She stared. "You believe me?"

  "Do you care?"

  "Do you?"

  "No, I don't care."