Bitter Cold Apocalypse 2 (A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller)

  Bitter Cold Apocalypse 2

  T.W. Connor

  Copyright © 2021 by T.W. Connor

  contact@twconnor.com

  Kindle Edition, License Notes

  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’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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

  About Bitter Cold Apocalypse 2:

  The power grid is down. Bitter cold has set in. And a vindictive enemy looms, ready to strike.

  After their arduous journey through the wilderness, John and Angie Aikens find themselves safe in their town of Ellis Woods. But that safety is short-lived as a growing force prepares to mount an attack. Meanwhile, the layers of mystery unravel, and John learns more about Marlon’s true identity.

  But will this new information help John and his allies defend themselves from Randall and his thugs? Or will they lose the town in the dead of winter and be forced to survive in the harsh wilds?

  NOTE: This is the second book in the Bitter Cold Apocalypse series. If you are new to this series, be sure to check out BOOK ONE.

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  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

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  T.W. Connor Reader Club

  About the Author

  1

  I peered through the binoculars, my mind racing, catching, and racing once more at what I was seeing in the distance. This was bad.

  And I didn’t just mean sort of bad, or something that we might have to deal with at some point, if it came down to it. I meant bad like bad. Like something that was very dangerous to not only my town, but the people in it—which included the two people who were more important to me than anyone else in the world.

  Because in the distance, right where the forest started, Randall Smith had now set up an entire encampment, complete with tents, campfires, and even—weirdly—several outbuildings.

  “How the hell did he manage to get outbuildings set up so quickly?” I asked quietly. I wasn’t expecting an answer, not really.

  Because although I wasn’t by myself, the man standing with me had been with me since we entered my hometown of Ellis Woods, Michigan—which meant he’d spent the last several hours inside Town Hall where the rest of the townspeople had set up. And that meant that he hadn’t been out here either. Whatever Randall and his men had been up to, Marlon hadn’t seen them any more than I had.

  Dammit, we should have sent lookouts to watch them while we were in there. We’d known they were out here—and that they were after us, specifically. After the town, more generally. We’d known they would be out here causing trouble…or at least getting ready to. Why the hell hadn’t we thought about sending someone out to at least keep an eye on them?

  Because you were more concerned with your wife at the time. And your daughter, a tiny voice reminded me bluntly. You had slightly more on your mind than what Randall Smith might be doing.

  Okay, so the voice was right. We’d spent two days out there in the snow and ice, nearly freezing to death, and it had all been even more complicated by the fact that Angie, my wife, had been attacked by a bear and had her leg not only shredded, but also broken.

  I know what you’re thinking, and yes, it sounds like a movie. For the last two days, I’d felt like I was living in a movie. One of those that are shot on the crunchy sort of film that makes the outlines too sharp. Makes the colors too cool. Makes you sort of cringe every time something happens.

  Angie and I had gone out on a hunting trip as a delayed honeymoon. But on the first morning, just as we’d settled in for our first stakeout, everything had gone sideways on us. First, there had been an explosion in the sky—one that immediately drove all the animals crazy—and then the sky turned an eerie, unnatural shade of yellow.

  We’d hightailed it for our truck, knowing the moment that deer ran right into a tree that we had to get the hell out of there before anything else went wrong. Unfortunately, the deer wasn’t the last animal we saw.

  And the next one was a whole lot deadlier.

  A bear had found its way into the bed of my truck—and into some food we’d had stored there. It had shredded the tent and thrown everything out of the truck, then destroyed what was left. By the time we got there, nothing was left. Nothing except that damn bear. And it had taken one look at us and come tearing at us like we were responsible for everything that had ever gone wrong in its life.

  It had taken Angie out almost immediately, and I’d been lucky to get it off her and scare it away. But that hadn’t improved our situation much. Angie had been in really bad shape, and I hadn’t had any way of treating her. So I’d done the only thing I could do: get her into the truck, so I could get her warmed up and get her to the closest medical facility.

  Unfortunately, the truck hadn’t started. No matter what I’d done. Everything inside—all the electronics—had shorted out, and I started to think pretty quickly that the shorting out had happened thanks to that explosion.

  I mean what sort of damn explosion turns the sky yellow and makes all the animals go crazy?

  That hadn’t been a normal explosion, I’d realized. It had to have been an EMP. That was the only way the yellow color of the sky made sense. The only answer for why my truck wouldn’t start. The only reason I could think of for not one, but both of our phones being out of commission.

  It had really, really restricted our options. And with Angie in the shape she’d been in, I’d started to panic. But I’d also known it was my job to see her to safety. So I’d rigged a tourniquet for her leg, and then rigged something to tow her in, and gotten the hell out of there—before the bear could return.

  After that, we’d spent a night at the shack of some backwoodsman who had then tried to kill me, escaped into the wilderness, met a man who knew a whole lot more about the military—and its weaponry—than he should have, and headed for our town. We’d accidentally gone sledding on the frozen river, lost Angie into the ice (and the water under it) and saved her, and eventuall
y made it back to the town.

  Only to find that Randall—the backwoodsman who had tried to kill me—had gathered up his cousins and followed us, still intent on…

  Well, whatever the hell it was he wanted.

  “Marlon, take a look at this,” I said, passing the binoculars to my companion—the man we’d met in the woods who had known too much, and had ended up saving our lives.

  I’d known the man for two days and already felt like I’d known him for years. Already felt like he might be my best ally.

  Even though I still didn’t know who he was, really—or how he’d come to be in the middle of the woods that day when he’d saved us.

  But something in my gut told me I could trust him. And my gut had never led me wrong before.

  Marlon took the binoculars from me, fitted them to his face, and stared off at the camp Randall and his men were building, his posture stiff as he tried to hold as still as possible. I reached up and pulled him back several steps so that we were at least somewhat sheltered by the building we were standing next to.

  I didn’t think Randall was looking out for us. But if he was—and if he had a sharpshooter with him—I didn’t want him getting the bright idea of taking us out while we were standing there trying to figure out what the hell he was doing.

  “They sure got those structures up in a hurry,” Marlon murmured. “Where the hell did they even get the material for those?”

  “My question exactly,” I said, squinting my eyes and trying to count how many he had. Those weren’t just lean-to shelters, either. They were tilt-up sheds, if I was guessing right.

  Sheds that came pre-packaged. Four walls, a floor, and a roof. All you had to do was tilt the walls up, secure them, and then slap the roof on, and presto, you had your very own shed. We’d used them in Afghanistan when we needed shelter—and when we were sure there was no one there to see us build them.

  Or trap us in them.

  But we’d always brought them with us from somewhere else. Here in the States, you could buy them at any hardware store…but you still had to transport them.

  And there were no hardware stores within fifty miles of us right now.

  Marlon dropped the binoculars and stared at the camp in front of us, his lips pressed together in thought. “We should have had lookouts out here, watching them,” he noted wryly.

  “It’s like you’re in my head or something,” I answered. “I was slightly busy at the time. What’s your excuse?”

  We’d gotten back to the town to find that all of the townspeople had taken up residence in the main room in Town Hall, which was big enough to house the barely two hundred people that lived here. We were out in the middle of nowhere, so the town had maintained a very specific plan in case of disaster. Town Hall was therefore equipped with generators to give the building electricity—and therefore heat—in case of any disaster. And that included an EMP that took out all the electric circuits in the area.

  So the people had been safe. And the doctor had been in residence. I’d spent an hour holding Angie’s hand as she went through surgery with almost no anesthesia—and then another hour holding her while she recovered.

  Marlon had been with me. But he hadn’t been helping an ailing wife at the time.

  He was, however, giving me a shifty look that told me that he’d had other business to attend to—and that he wasn’t going to let me in on that secret. I added this to the list of things he’d kept secret for the past two days—things I absolutely meant to make him tell me about sometime soon—and looked back toward Randall’s encampment.

  The camp had changed since the last time I’d looked at it, and I did a double-take, frowning at the new view. Where it had been empty of anything but tents and those suspicious shacks before, there were now men out there. Lots and lots of men. They were across the river from us, and about five hundred yards from where we were standing, but I could still see them well enough to see that there had to be at least fifty men milling around over there.

  “How many men do you see?” I asked sharply.

  Marlon was quiet for a moment, his lips moving as he no doubt counted the men in the distance.

  “Sixty-three,” he said a second later.

  I blew out a slow breath. “Where the hell did he get sixty-three men so quickly? How many did he have when we first saw him, like ten?”

  “Fifteen at the most,” Marlon agreed.

  He dropped the binoculars away from his face and stared hard at the camp, and though my fingers itched to reach out and take the field glasses from him and look through them again, I stopped myself and kept my eyes on the camp instead. Field glasses were great when you needed to see details.

  Looking with your own two eyes and getting the larger view was better when you were looking at a larger picture. The size of a camp. The number of men.

  “He shouldn’t have that many people,” I continued. “There’s just no way. Where the hell would they all come from? There are a lot of people living in the woods around here. There aren’t sixty-three of them. Particularly when so many of them have taken up residence here in town.”

  I’d lived here for long enough know the people who lived within walking distance of the town by first name. No, I didn’t know all of them personally, but I knew who they were. And I estimated that there were ten, maybe fifteen families, total. True, there were some bachelors out there—and some families that were made up of only brothers or cousins.

  But there weren’t enough people to supply Randall’s camp with that sort of crowd.

  Hell, five of the families that lived close enough were already in Town Hall with the rest of the town. And I had it on good authority that two of the other outlying families were on their way here. They were just moving more slowly because they had young kids.

  “He’s getting them from somewhere else, obviously,” Marlon replied drily.

  I gave him a look that would have told him exactly what he could do with that attitude—if he’d actually been looking at me. Which he wasn’t. His eyes were still glued to the camp in front of us. He handed me the binoculars again, without changing the direction of his gaze.

  “You see any weapons, though?”

  I frowned, because it was a good question—and something I should have already thought of.

  After all, numbers were one thing. But a bunch of men without weapons? Every single person in this town had at least one gun in the family, and most of them had several. And they all knew how to use them. If Randall and his band of misfits thought they were going to try to attack the town without any weapons, they were going to have another damn thing coming.

  I put the binocs to my face and scanned the camp quickly, looking for something that appeared to be a storage space for weaponry. Once I got to the outskirts of the town, I looked back through it, slowing down. The problem was that there were so many men now that it was hard to see anything else. Hard to see through any doorways or tent flaps.

  Then I saw a man emerging from one of the shacks. And he had three guns in his hands. Nothing too fancy, I didn’t think. Rifles with some aggressive scopes on them. But they were the first guns I’d seen.

  I swiveled my view back to the doorway from which he’d just emerged, and squinted then refocused the glasses and held my breath, standing as still as I could. Unlike the other shacks, this one had only three sides, making it more of a lean-to than anything else. The good news was that it gave me a much better view of what was inside it. The bad news was that it was completely shielded right now by the crowds in front of it. When the men in front of the shack finally moved away, I was rewarded by a clear view. And though it only lasted for about three seconds, it gave me everything I needed.

  The shack was chock full of weapons. Rifles of both the hunting and the automatic variety, handguns, and even what looked to be a bazooka or two. It looked like they’d stopped short of having actual cannons.

  But they had a much bigger stash than I’d have expected them to have, in su
ch a short time and in the middle of freaking nowhere.

  “Good God,” I whispered.

  I swiveled my view to the left, looking through the other sheds and wondering if there were more weapons in there. Then I stopped short.

  At the end of the row of shacks, I saw a man I recognized. A man who looked like he could have been a bear with how shaggy and unkempt he was.

  Randall. And he was looking through binoculars as well. Right at me.

  2

  We ran through the streets of the town, neither of us looking back to see whether we were out of danger yet or not. We were dashing up and down the streets, turning as often as we could to make sure there were corners between Randall and us, but the buildings were sparse out here at the edge of town, and I knew that our cover wasn’t what it should have been.

  And they had rifles with scopes on them. For all I knew, they had sniper rifles back there in that shack of theirs.

  I hadn’t yet started guessing at where they might have gotten them, but one thing was clear: until we were inside again, or had at least five streets between us and them, I didn’t think we could count on any sort of safety. And I just didn’t want to get hit by a bullet today.

  Hell, I didn’t want to get hit by a bullet any day. But today would have been even worse than usual.