Last Days

Andy Dickenson

Description

At the end of the world who's left to blame? Tucker and Six are two teenagers living in the last city on earth, a city full of odd characters, each with a different theory of how the world ended. Together they uncover a murder and begin to realise that, not just one, but all these theories could be true.... A future fantasy written for adults and young adults alike. "Captivatingly visual, cunningly intoxicating and perfectly picking through and living off the pop cultural scraps of our dying society, The Last Days seamlessly blends the exotic fantasy of the X-Men or Avengers with TV's Heroes, and taps into the moody best of British Doomsday scenarists like John Wyndam, Christopher Priest and J.G. Ballard." Now Read This! "Dickenson has created a thrilling and visceral piece of writing that will have you twisting and turning all they way till the end... Highly recommended." Giles Paley-Phillips, author The Fearsome Beastie

Informations

• Publié par: eBookPartnership.com
• Date de parution: 03 novembre 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781909270749
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Last Days
Written by Andy Dickenson
Edited by Laura Atkins
Illustrations by Sarah Evans


Findus on:
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/TLDbyAD
Twitter: @TheLastDays_AD
Email: [e-mail]
Website: www.thelastdays-online.co.uk
Contents
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
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Notes from the Author:
More thank yous:

"Inthe Last Days the mountain of the Lord’stemple will be established as chief among the mountains. It will beraised above the hills and the peoples will stream to it.
"Many nations will come andsay, ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord’."Isaiah 2:2
TheLast Days and all characters thereof are copyright © AndyDickenson 2012
Chapter One
ALOT had changed since the end of the world. Not all of it bad, KlausGravenstein thought, as his snowboard snaked across Ben Nevis.
Forone thing, Scotland was getting far more snow nowadays and the slopeswere a lot less crowded. Klaus felt the soft powder give way beneathhim as he darted around a birch tree; the snowboard, whipping upsheaths of white slush, painting elegant curves into the piste.
Secondly,after witnessing the almost entire annihilation of all human life, hehad no fear of death. Quite the opposite in fact.
Klausbounced lightly on the board and sniffed the air as the slopebottomed out. He was alone amid a white wonderland, mere tips ofbracken blowing in the breeze. He pulled his knees to his chest andjumped across to another run, looming from the frozen ocean. Twistinghis body, he howled with delight before landing heavily, the breathmomentarily torn from his lungs.
Beneaththe woollen scarf laced with hoar frost, Klaus Gravenstein grinnedand pulled the fur of his new Parka tighter around his neck. This wasthe life: new climate, new coat, new world. Klaus loved new things.
"Closer,"the Voice cooed. "We’regetting closer. Not far now."
Klausfingered his beard as it poked from beneath the anorak. How long hadit been? He marked the days of his journey only by the tight lines ofemptiness spreading across his belly. He couldn’t remember thelast time he’d eaten anything other than nuts or stalechocolate. His every muscle, every cell, longed to be fed.
Imust find this place soon ,he thought. Andwhen I get there they will prepare a feast for me. A great feast.
But,as he skidded along a bluff, a cramp grabbed his stomach andsqueezed. Klaus snapped his back foot down on the snowboard. Itgroaned and juddered sickeningly, swinging him out of the loop.
TheVoice in his head laughed as he crouched lower to steady himself.Klaus felt the rush of air through his jeans as his routestraightened before he kicked back to come around in another achingturn.
Theboard fought against him and flipped back. Before he could readjusthis bodyweight, Klaus Gravenstein fell headlong into the snow.
Instinctively,he threw out an arm to support himself only to feel it crack as hisweight carried him over. Tumbling, he screamed, his ankles wrenchedfrom the board as the clippings tore, sending it spinning into theair.
Klauspitched and spilled, his legs floundering as he was tossed faster andfaster down the mountainside. He caught jumbled glimpses of ice,limbs and sky, before finally mustering the courage to stretch outhis right hand and grasp at a clump of heather.
Hisbody lurched violently out of the spin, slamming against the side ofthe cliff, his legs hanging helpless and heavy, the roots of theplant snapping as he slid further over the edge. He watched theblades slipping through his grasp. There was no way of judging thedrop below. His fate, he thought, was out of his hands as he plungedthrough frozen white air.
"Typical."The Voice chuckled. "Forcountless years people have travelled here, battling their waythrough the unforgiving peaks of the Scottish Highlands."
Crash!
"That’swhat the legends say. Let’shope they weren’tall as useless as you, you great Germanoaf."
Klausshook ice from his hair. He had fallen forty feet only to land in asnowdrift so deep he’d sunk another five. His broken arm satcontorted on his lap, shards of bone an inch above his left wristcatching on the lining of his jacket. The rest of his body grumbledbut was generally unscathed. The snowboard was nowhere to be seen.
"Can’tyou please be careful?"the Voice persisted, "Youknow I wouldn’tmind but you are rather important to me, and how am I going to dothis job without you?"
Howindeed? Klauswondered as he dragged himself up to his full statuesque height. Hebegan clawing his way to the surface, the snow melting through hisclothes, slicing into his beard. Blood oozed from his arm and left atrail of scarlet behind him.
Klausstared up at the precipice he had fallen from and felt a pang ofrelief that the pack with all the climbing gear he’d stolen wasstill attached to his back. His gaze then returned to his crippledarm, his glove quickly filling with warm blood as he tramped over tothe crag’s face.
Scanningthe rocks and rubble, he soon found what he was looking for. Bendingdown, Klaus wedged his left hand into a tight gap between twoboulders. He gripped the stone with his right and arched his back,staring at the brittle bend where the radius had broken, the bloodpumping. He pulled.
Birds,sheltering in snow-capped pines, flew from their perches as hisscreams reached them. A peregrine falcon remained alone on a swingingbranch, picking at a morsel of carrion, its eyes trained on thestrange figure stumbling about in agony, his bloody forearm nowrealigned. "Sheisser! Sheisser! SHEISSER!"
Raging,Klaus taped some adhesive stitches over the wound and fumbled aboutfor a stick to form a splint. He then took an ice pick from thebackpack and began to climb.
Thetools, like his clothes, had been easy to find. What could be simplerthan burgling a deserted department store? His mind swam back to thewarmth of the Range Rover he’dbeen forced to abandon on the outskirts of Inverness. Such vehicleswere as common as the skeletal bodies usually found within them, butfuel was becoming harder to locate. Siphoning petrol from pumpsacross Europe used to be as easy as stealing the cars in the firstplace. But in Scotland they’d been bled dry.
"Thelast survivors of a broken world - the faithful and the helpless,"the Voice, his constant companion, continued to taunt him. "Manyhave followed these steps."
"Andlike sheep we join them, yes?"Grudgingly, Klaus pulled himself closer to the top of the ridge.
"Wecould always turn back?"the Voice insisted.
"Sure,"Klaus countered. "Likewe have a choice."
Thecold was setting into his frame, his new jeans a damp curse thatwould coat him in ice and leave him to freeze. His left hand grabbedfor a handhold and Klaus gasped as pain shot like molten lava downthe length of his broken arm.
"Thousandshave come this way, watching time in frozen moments. Feelingeternities pass in blind emptiness,"the Voice carried on musing. "Acrossthe desert of a new Ice Age."
"Easyfor you to be so melodramatic,"Klaus snorted. "You’renot the one freezing your tail off."
Hourslater he staggered onto another pass. The landscape that earlierseemed so serene now concealed him in a cruel storm. Klaus used hisright arm to shield his face and stumbled forwards, the snow bitingat his legs with every step.
"Keepgoing,you great lump,"the Voice said, its insolence like a blanket of calm.
Klaus had longago lost track of his age, though he believed he was somewhere in histhirties. The Voice, however, had the uncanny knack of making himfeel like a child.
"Dubist mir ein feiner freund!"Klaus yelled, resuming his native tongue.
"Comeon you dog, you’retougher than this,"the Voice chided. "Afterall, we’remeant to be assassins, aren’twe?"
ButKlaus’s mind was as lost in the blizzard as his feet, diggingtrenches through waist-deep contours of ice. He stared into the whitesky, willing it to darken, before spying an Aspen grove at the top ofthe valley. He aimed his numb frame at the trees and climbed, theground crackling beneath him.
Scrunch.Scrunch. Scrunch.
Thepoplars reminded him loosely of his Bavarian home. He gagged at thememory. What the forest had done to him. His nostrils flared.
"Careful,"warned the Voice. "They’llbe watching us soon."
Butthe fresh scent of the trees, many of them grounded, wasirresistible. Klaus stepped through the wreckage of fallen brancheslooking like so much twisted metal. His thoughts turned to his trekthrough the Channel Tunnel - the battered trains and cars thatlittered the concrete tomb of the undersea kingdom. The place wherethe Voice had found him. A shadow lying among corpses. A parasitelooking for the perfect host.
Klauswatched red squirrels leap between tree trunks. Dimly, he imaginedsinking his teeth into one and ripping raw flesh from its scrawnyframe.
"Quitdreaming of your stomach,"the Voice demanded. "We’vegot a job to do, remember?"
Klausvaguely recalled something about work and drunkenly checked thelining of his jacket to make sure his expenses were secure.
"Youknow, wolves used to infest such forests as these,"the Voice said wistfully.
"Untilman came along,"Klaus snorted back.
"Andnow that man has ended, the wolves will rise again,"the Voice agreed. "Butfirst the land must be purged. You can smell it can’tyou, the pollution?"
"Pollution?"Klaus sighed, "Ithought we were done