Abe: A Remaining Universe Novel, page 1
Copyright © 2024 by D.J. Molles Books LLC
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No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.
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The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this production are fictitious. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased), places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred.
Book Cover by Tara Molles
ISBN Print Paperback: 9798323786343
ASIN: B0CZ4PK185
First edition 2024
Contents
The Remaining Universe
Prologue
1. Chapter 1
2. Chapter 2
3. Chapter 3
4. Chapter 4
5. Chapter 5
6. Chapter 6
7. Chapter 7
8. Chapter 8
9. Chapter 9
10. Chapter 10
11. Chapter 11
12. Chapter 12
13. Chapter 13
14. Chapter 14
15. Chapter 15
16. Chapter 16
17. Chapter 17
18. Chapter 18
19. Chapter 19
20. Chapter 20
21. Chapter 21
22. Chapter 22
23. Chapter 23
24. Chapter 24
25. Chapter 25
26. Chapter 26
27. Chapter 27
Epilogue
A NOTE FROM D.J. MOLLES
About The Author
ALSO BY D.J. MOLLES
The Remaining Universe
It began with a bacteria called Febrile Urocanic Reactive Yersinia. When exposed to a host’s blood or mucous membrane, the bacteria would burrow holes through the frontal lobe, destroying the host’s ability to reason and speak.
The FURY bacteria spread so rapidly that it burned itself out in a matter of months. But by then, the damage had been done. 9 out of 10 people had been infected by it. Many of those infected experienced a massive spike in their metabolic rates, causing them to feel insatiably hungry. Due to their damaged frontal lobes, these infected turned hyper-aggressive, and preyed on anything they could get their hands on--including other humans.
After a year, most of the infected died out due to starvation and exposure. But of those billions, a few were gifted–or cursed–with genetics that favored extreme adaptability. These individuals not only survived, but began to thrive. Their bodies underwent a period of macroevolution, resulting in morphological changes that made them better suited to be an apex predator: elongated forelimbs, hardening of the fingernails, widening of the mandible, and lengthening of the canine teeth. These came to be known as primals.
In the aftermath of societal collapse, several factions vie for control of dwindling resources. One of the most precious resources is fuel for vehicles. Along the Gulf Coast, the United Eastern States battles with the Nuevas Fronteras cartel for control of the oil fields and refineries in that region.
After several months of fighting Nuevas Fronteras, Abe Darabie, an operative working for the United Eastern States, is given a new mission: Find and rescue the families of several refinery workers, currently being held hostage by the cartel, somewhere in Mexico…
Prologue
I’ll be the first to admit that killing women isn’t easy.
Killing a guy? I don’t know. It’s just different. I mean, sometimes you still feel bad for the fucker, and other times you barely even think twice.
There’s been a lot of guys like that recently—guys whose faces I won’t remember, because I felt absolutely nothing when I took them out. Like I was just squashing bugs.
And there’s something about that—the killing without feeling anything—that worries me. Makes me wonder if I’ve lost a piece of myself somewhere along the way. Or maybe broke some part of my brain that should feel guilty for taking life.
But women? No, killing women always sucks.
Yes, I’ve done it before.
And yes, I’ll do it again if I have to.
This woman—the one I’ve got pinned to the wall and am holding at gunpoint—I think she gets that.
My left hand has her by the throat. My right hand has my little Sig P365 tucked tight into retention, but the woman sees the direction of the muzzle, and she knows I’ll punch holes in her pelvis if she gets squirrelly again. That’d be a bad day for her, so she goes very still.
Just in case there’s any lack of clarity, I tell her, “Don’t push it, señora. I will kill you.”
I can feel her carotid pulse bumping rabbit-quick against my fingertips. Her shallow, rapid respirations are warm against my wrist. Straight, coal-black hair hangs disheveled in front of her wide, dark eyes.
She glances down at the pistol-grip shotgun that lies on the dirty linoleum floor. She’d been trying to yank it out of a kitchen cabinet just before I rammed her into the wall. I can tell by the look in her eyes that she wouldn’t have hesitated to load my face up with buckshot.
I kick the shotgun a bit further away, and then jerk her off the wall. A picture of the Virgin Mary, which dislodged from its hangings when I slammed the woman into it, drops to the floor. The cheap, pinewood frame fractures. Mary tilts forward and faceplants.
Better that Jesus’s mom doesn’t see this.
I grab the woman by the collar of her denim shirt and drag her to the little square table we’d been sitting at only moments before. I force her down into the chair she’d just vacated when she’d gone for the shotgun.
“Hands on the table,” I order, positioning myself behind her and pressing her face down onto the crumb-strewn wood. “Don’t fucking move.”
She slaps both hands down to either side of her head and goes rigidly still.
I guess she understands more English than she speaks.
I snap my gaze up and scan the environment.
The house isn’t big, but it’s spacious enough. The kitchen is open to the living room, where there’s a musty brown sofa facing a boxy TV that was ancient even before the world went to shit. A hall leads back, presumably to the bedrooms. The front door stands to my left, between the kitchen and living room.
That’s where Menendez is, peering through the wire-mesh security door, a Glock 19 in his hands.
“Dez!” I get his attention, then nod at the table. “Check the underside for me.”
Menendez, face tense and eyes sharp, gives the outside one more glance, then hustles over and bends down, checking under the table to make sure our hostess doesn’t have another surprise duct-taped there.
“It’s clear,” Menendez says, straightening and orienting himself to the door again.
“Where’s your kids?” I ask the woman.
She rattles something off in Spanish, her voice quaking and muffled as she speaks into the wood.
Menendez says something back, his tone making it clear that we’re not fucking around.
She responds, and it sounds like begging.
Still watching the door, Menendez translates for me: “She says they’re out doing chores.”
“They gonna show up with guns and start shooting at us?”
Menendez repeats some version of my question in Spanish. The woman responds in the negative, then begs again. I don’t speak the language, but I get the gist, even before Menendez makes it clear.
“She says they don’t have guns. She asks us not to shoot them.”
“Well, that’s entirely up to them, isn’t it?” I growl back, then crane my head to try to see out the front door where, about thirty seconds ago, we heard a gunshot, and what should’ve been a low-profile intel-gathering op turned into this shitshow.
The front door has two parts: The weathered wooden one, which is hanging open right now; and the wire-mesh security door, which is closed. Through the security door, I can only see a few of the outbuildings that surround this little homestead, out in the middle of Buttfuck-Nowhere, Mexico. But I can’t see anything that explains the gunshot.
Actually, it was just the crack of a supersonic bullet. The rifle report itself was suppressed.
“Had to be Branch,” Menendez voices my own thoughts.
Branch is our designated marksman. We put him on overwatch as me and Menendez approached this little settlement. The other three members of our team are with him.
If it was Branch, that means he saw a threat somewhere on the grounds.
And who might that threat have been?
The woman begins to shake under my grip. I realize she’s starting to sob.
There’s a part of me—a little holdover from the Abram Darabie of times past—that waits to feel some stirring of pity. I’m almost disappointed that I feel absolutely nothing. Whatever mystical organ in the human body produces the sensation of empathy…well, it’s dried up or burned out.
The woman’s sobs aren’t out of fear—there’s a quality to them that is scared, yes, but not for herself.
When did I become such a connoisseur of people’s weeping?
The woman has realized what I just realized: One gunshot, most likely from our overwatch, and most likely into her husband, who’d departed the house just a few minutes before this all went down.
Yeah, I can extrapolate that well enough. But I still need to make contact with Branch and the others. Unfortunately, me and Menendez came in stripped down—wearing civvies, with only our backup pistols stuffed into our waistbands. No comms with the team, because discrete earpieces aren’t something we’re equipped with.
We do have radios, and decidedly-not-discrete earpieces to go with them. But in the interests of me and Menendez posing like a pair of common nomads, I left my radio locked up in the center console of the old Toyota 4Runner that’s parked out front.
This is why I hate undercover shit.
“Take her,” I snap at Menendez. “I’m gonna slip out and try to make contact.”
Menendez makes an uncertain face, but complies, taking my position behind the woman.
I glance behind me and realize there’s a window. I can just imagine one of the kids creeping up to that window with an AK and plugging Menendez while he’s focused on the woman.
“Scratch that,” I say, moving quickly into the living room. “Pull her in here.”
There are windows to either side of the defunct TV, but if Menendez sits the woman on the couch and stands behind her, at least he’ll be facing them.
I rip the cushions off the old sofa. The fabric has that feel to it like it’s been waxed by decades of dirt, body oils, and skin cells. I jam my fingers down in the cracks, stifling a shudder as I feel petrified crumbs, and God-knows what else. I’ve got a thing about gross tactile textures.
When I find no weapons stuffed down in the sofa’s disgusting nooks, I declare it clear, and Menendez pushes the crying woman down and stands behind her, his pistol trained on the base of her skull.
“Hold tight,” I say, moving towards the door, and keeping well-clear of the windows. They afford me a glimpse of the green bumper of our Toyota, off to the right. “Back in a jiff.”
“Watch out for those kids,” Menendez warns.
The woman explodes into more begging.
Menendez grabs a handful of her hair and doubles her over so her head is nearly between her knees. “Cállate!” he snaps.
I know that word well enough. My knowledge of Spanish is limited to such timeless phrases as “hands up,” “get on the ground,” “shut up,” and “fuck your mother.”
I pie off the door as much as I can, getting a decent view of our vehicle. It’s parked about twenty yards away, more or less in the middle of this little compound. My first instinct is that maybe the woman’s husband was messing around with our vehicle, and Branch had taken him out. While speaking with the couple in their kitchen, I’d got the distinct sense that the man wasn’t buying our cover story, and when he excused himself, I felt strongly he was going to go snooping.
But the vehicle looks secure. And I don’t see a body near it.
I ease the security door open and clear the unknown left, but there’s nothing there but dusty hard-pack and a few slim chickens scratching at the dirt.
Besides the house, there’s four other structures. Directly across from the house sits a small, weather-beaten barn, its planks a sallow gray and its corrugated metal roof rusty-red. More chickens congregate there, as well as a skinny, black and white goat with engorged udders that stands there and watches me with a sort of accusing silence.
To the left of the barn, there is a rather large chicken coop that makes me think these folks used to have a lot more than the dozen or so chickens I’m seeing. To the right of the barn, a slightly-newer-looking shed of indeterminate purpose.
The fourth building is way off to the right, maybe thirty yards back from our vehicle. This one outsizes even the house and the barn. Metal sided, with a big, bay door that’s currently rolled up, revealing a dim interior. I get the sense of a mechanic’s garage.
There’s no one to be seen.
Not the kids. And not the man.
I punch through the door, hang a right, and head towards the 4Runner. Eyes on corners. Windows. Doors.
I reach the edge of the house and clear the corner. No one’s there, except for some gray-scaled lizard that disappears into a hole under the house’s foundation.
I’m just a few strides from the Toyota. I kick it across the open space and seize the cover of the engine block. Take another second to make sure some ten-year-old isn’t about to blast me, then rip open the driver’s side door. I keep my eyes up and scanning three-sixty as I reach in and pop the center console. Inside, lies the radio.
I grab it, retreating to the engine block again and clicking the radio on as I go. Squatting at the front tire, I slip the earpiece in and immediately hear one of Menendez’s guys transmitting, his voice slightly keyed-up.
“Abe, you copy? It’s Lucky.”
“I copy,” I transmit as soon as his voice cuts out. “We heard a shot. Talk to me.”
“Cover your three,” Lucky says, and I immediately pivot, bringing my pistol up to cover the big mechanic’s garage. “Branch had to take the dude out.”
My heart finally begins to make its palpitations known. Of course, I’d suspected as much, but hearing it said and realizing that our little operation had indeed gone tits up still hits me unpleasantly.
Lucky does not elaborate on why Branch chose to put a hole in “the dude.”
“Is the target down?” I ask.
“Confirmed down,” Branch’s voice breaks in. There’s not a breath of emotion in it, but that’s not unusual for him. Then he begins to recite to me what led him to make that decision, his voice as rote as if he were in a review board with a bunch of military brass. “Target exited the west side of Structure E holding what appeared to be a large, handheld radio. I believed he might be attempting to communicate with the cartel. So I eliminated him.”
Shit, shit, shit.
“You know if he got a transmission off?” I demand.
“Negative. I took the shot as soon as he lifted it to his mouth.”
Right. The main threat was down—and hopefully before he could call in the cavalry on us, though that remains to be seen. Now I need to know about all the other potential threats.
“Where’re the kids?”
There were three of them. I saw them myself when we reconned this place, just prior to making contact. Two girls and one boy. The boy looked to be around maybe six or seven, and was the youngest. The eldest of the three girls looked to be in her teens. I hadn’t seen them since their mother shooed them out of the house after welcoming me and Menendez in.
“Younger two are holed up in Structure C,” Branch says—Structure C being the barn. “Older girl squirted around the back of the house after I took the shot. Lost sight of her.”
Well, that’s alarming.
If she’s still around the back of the house, then I’m entirely exposed in my current position. Unfortunately, I’ll be exposed no matter what position I’m in. The whole center of the settlement has become the killbox in my mind. And I very much want to remove myself from it.
Best option at this precise moment? Move to the other side of the garage, presumably where the man’s body is.
“Roger,” I transmit, getting to my feet and covering the back corner of the house as I push out towards the garage. “Branch, keep me covered. Lucky, watch Branch’s six. Marty and EZ—move in on my location. Dez is in the house with the woman.”
They’re still about five hundred yards away. Even hauling ass, it’ll take them a few minutes to reach me.
I get to the cover of the garage’s metal walls. Metal siding doesn’t stop shit, but there’s lots of other big, metal stuff in there that hopefully will. I keep moving, all the way along the wall to the back end of the structure, which faces west.
Clearing the corner, little needles of adrenaline prickle my fingertips as I spot the body, and think, somewhat nonsensically, By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.
I’m not a Shakespeare or literature whiz, so I find the thought unsettling. I don’t like how unexplainable thoughts sometimes feel like portents dropped into your mind by some sixth sense, or perhaps a higher power.
The man lies on his side, facing me. His pose is typical—body loosely curled, arms and legs roughly pointing in Branch’s direction. Nine times out of ten, a body falls with its feet pointing towards the shooter.
Branch took him in the chest. I can’t see the hole, but I can see the blood darkening the dust under his torso. The ground around him is undisturbed: He didn’t thrash around after getting plugged. Bullet must’ve punched his heart out and killed him quick.
