Savage (Apex Predator Book 2) Read online

  SAVAGE

  By David Meyer

  Guerrilla Explorer Publishing

  Savage Copyright © 2017 by David Meyer

  Guerrilla Explorer Publishing

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

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means whatsoever without prior written permission of the publisher and author. Your support of the author’s rights is greatly appreciated.

  First Edition – February 2017

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  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  About SAVAGE

  Acknowledgements

  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

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Apex Predator Logbook

  Author’s Note

  Ready for More?

  BEHEMOTH Excerpt

  About the Author

  Books by David Meyer

  About SAVAGE

  The war between mankind and beast is over.

  And mankind lost.

  Earth lies in ruins. Billions of people are dead. Enormous creatures—behemoths—tower over everything, devastating cities and feeding on the scattered remnants of humanity.

  Zach Caplan is a survivor. After war broke out, he fled to Maine’s remote wilderness. Hiding in the shadows, he salvaged supplies and lived off the dying land. He thought he was safe. But a sudden and brutal attack proved otherwise.

  Rising from the ashes, he launches a desperate search for answers. Unfortunately, the stakes are higher than he could ever imagine. For a terrifying new threat is on the horizon. And Caplan is the only thing standing between mankind and a fate worse than extinction.

  Survival expert Zach Caplan faces the behemoth apocalypse in this spectacular new novel from international bestselling author David Meyer!

  Acknowledgements

  My thanks go out to E.W. Hildick, Peggy Parish, Beverly Cleary, Gordon Korman, C.S. Lewis, every author who wrote under the Franklin W. Dixon pseudonym, Clive Cussler, and many, many others. Your books stirred a young boy’s imagination in countless, incredible ways.

  Also, thank you to Julie for editing this novel as well as for your loving support. Ryden, thank you for your happy peekaboo squeals. Dad, many thanks for helping me get this book out into the world.

  The curtains are about to open. So, take your seat. Get nice and comfortable.

  Welcome to the world of Apex Predator.

  Welcome to SAVAGE.

  Chapter 1

  Date: November 23, 2017, 9:02 p.m.; Location: North Maine Woods, ME

  Zach Caplan tightened his grip on the steering wheel as a distant roar accosted his ears. It lasted no more than a few seconds before giving way to eerie silence. There was no response. No sudden bursts of gunfire, no rushing jets, no booming explosions. All of those noises had ceased months earlier. Which could only mean one thing. The war between mankind and beast was over.

  And mankind had lost.

  He’d never actually seen the battlefields. But the initial radio reports had painted vivid images of them. Long stretches of city streets, suburban neighborhoods, and open countryside, all littered with death and destruction. Multitudes of soldiers and civilians, crushed underfoot. Cars, tanks, and armored vehicles, broken and smashed. The burning wreckage of jets and helicopters. Shattered skyscrapers, demolished buildings, and ruined houses, all charred over from endless napalm attacks. Some remnants of mankind had survived the war, of course. Caplan and his friends. The Danter colony. Probably a few other survivor communities as well. But ultimately, it didn’t matter. Things would never go back to normal. Modern society, for all intents and purposes, was finished.

  No more civilization. But hey, look on the bright side, he thought with a dark, silent chuckle. No more taxes either. Indeed, events of the last seventeen months had squashed that old adage about death and taxes. After all, what kind of numbskull paid taxes in the middle of the apocalypse?

  As for death, well, that part of the adage still held true. But he didn’t dwell on that fact. It didn’t pay to think about the war, about the HA-78 virus, about the Holocene extinction, about the billions of people who’d lost their lives. Instead, he focused on what was controllable. Namely, the here and now.

  Maintaining an even speed, he directed the van farther down the dark road. He drove without headlights, lest he attract one of them. Fortunately, the stars, unobscured by clouds, provided decent lighting. So, he could see pretty much everything. Windswept litter, the remnants of a once-carefree species now fighting for its very survival. Patches of brown grass, uncut for months. Dying trees and bushes, all victims of the ongoing mass extinction event. Animal carcasses, hollowed out by starvation and scavengers.

  A dull ache, driven by raw and unrelenting hunger, appeared in the pit of his belly. Taking a deep breath, he resisted the urge to dip into his evening rations. Better to save them for later. For when he might really need them. Forget thriving, he sang in his head. Just keep on surviving. Maybe they weren’t the most uplifting verses of all time. But hey, they’d kept him and his friends alive these last seventeen months. As such, he was determined to stay the course even though—his mouth twitched—not everyone agreed with it.

  “We’re coming up on a cross street.” Derek Perkins, situated in the passenger seat, squinted at the windshie
ld. “Ellicot Road, I think.”

  “Got it.” Bailey Mills, kneeling in the cargo space, leaned over a large map. She aimed her flashlight beam at the crumpled paper. “Two miles to go.”

  Caplan nodded and continued to drive. No one would ever mistake him for tall, dark, and handsome. Indeed, he stood an inch under six feet. His skin, despite years of toiling under the sun, remained unusually fair. His face, rugged and weathered from a life spent outdoors, lacked any trace of refinement.

  And yet, he wasn’t blonde and blue-eyed either. Instead, his hair was jet black and curly. His piercing eyes were as green as freshly watered grass from the old days.

  After a short distance, he spotted a large section of cracked, sunken pavement. It was shaped like a rough circle with thin lines stretching away from it. His brow cinched tight. It was a pawprint. One of their pawprints.

  The van rocked from side to side as Caplan eased it off the road and around the massive pawprint. It was an old vehicle and often felt like it was splitting apart at the seams. But it was spacious and didn’t consume much gas, which served them well on supply runs.

  He’d found it two months earlier while searching a local campsite for food. He still remembered throwing open the rear doors and casting his gaze upon the previous owner. All of the signs—her fingers wrapped around her throat, her glassy and moist eyes, her purple and foam-covered lips—pointed to death by infection. Specifically, by the HA-78 virus.

  Once upon a time, her corpse would’ve shocked him. But not these days. Premature death, either by the dying ecosystems, by HA-78, or by them was the norm in this new world.

  He drove back onto the pavement and continued forward. A one-story structure, backed by dark, craggy hills as well as a forest of sagging spruce trees, appeared on the right side of the road. Unlit letters mounted above the front doors spelled out, Carlson Market. A couple of gas pumps sat off to the side. The parking lot held five or six heavily-damaged cars, some of which had been flipped onto their roofs.

  “It’s still standing.” Perkins’ voice wavered with excitement. “I can’t believe it.”

  “Me neither.” Mills gazed at the vehicles. “Especially since one of them definitely came through here. Why’d it only attack the cars?”

  “Who knows?” He licked his dry, parched lips. “And honestly, who cares?”

  Perkins had a point. Food didn’t come easily in this strange new world. And unfortunately, that wasn’t going to change anytime soon. Not when the death of nature was thousands of years in the making. Wild game still roamed the forests, but in much smaller numbers. Most of the indigenous animals had died out when their ecosystems started to collapse. Foraging was an option, but for how much longer? Fruits, mushrooms, roots, and berries were becoming increasingly difficult to find. And they couldn’t even eat most of what they gathered. It needed to be set aside, preserved and stored for the icy months ahead.

  Salvaging was even more problematic. The North Maine Woods didn’t contain a lot of stores or houses. And most of the existing buildings had been pulverized by them. So to find a still-standing store with no obvious signs of looting wasn’t just a welcome surprise.

  It was a miracle.

  Caplan pulled the van to the side of the road and turned off the ignition. The engine fell silent and various internal lights darkened.

  Perkins chuckled. “Nice spot, Zach. But do you think you could, I don’t know, park in the actual lot this time?”

  “And make things easy on you?” He grinned. “Not a chance.”

  With his gaze locked on the store, Caplan climbed out of the vehicle. A fierce wind, cold as ice, blew into his face. Ignoring it, he produced a pair of binoculars and studied the parking lot. Amongst the vehicles, he saw sections of crunched pavement along with a number of dark stains. Probably blood splatter. Most likely, survivors had been gathered at the store when it arrived. Maybe they’d tried to fight, maybe they hadn’t. It didn’t matter.

  They never stood a chance.

  He turned to the storefront and adjusted the lenses. The glass doors and windows were still intact. A veritable wall of old advertisements and community notices—Veal Cutlets dirt cheap at just $9.99/lb!, Lost Cat: Have You Seen My Whiskers?, The Bunt Roaches: Maine’s Premiere Jam Band rocks the Upright Boogie Bar on Saturday, June 18 at 9:00 p.m.—kept him from seeing the interior.

  He lowered the binoculars but his gaze lingered on those signs, those fragments of the past. He missed the old days. Days when sales, pets, and concerts actually existed. Days when first-world problems—why is the Internet soooo slow?—had seemed ultra-important.

  He’d never appreciated civilization until it was gone. And he doubted he was unique in that respect. The greatest of epochs were almost always hated by those lucky enough to live within them. They were only considered shiny and golden in hindsight. That is, after all hope had faded away, leaving nothing but stretching tentacles of despair and darkness. Such is the strange fate of mankind, he thought. To have it all. To hate it all. To lose it all. To miss it all.

  Mills climbed out of the van. She clutched a collapsible bow, procured from the mangled wreckage of a sporting goods store, in her right hand. Even without fancy clothes or personal stylists she was a knockout. Her tanned body, outfitted in studded long boots, leggings, and a black leather jacket, was sculpted to perfection. Her hair, blonde and dirty, was fixed into boxer braids. And staring into her big blue eyes reminded him of swimming in an endless—and totally forbidden—sea.

  Seventeen months ago, Mills had been widely known in the press by such names as Billionaire Bailey and the Boozing Bad Girl. Her supermodel looks, incredible wealth, and self-destructive antics had titillated folks on a daily basis. That, of course, was before them. Before HA-78 and the Holocene extinction. Before civilization had ceased to exist.

  She hiked to Caplan’s side. “See anyone?” She arched an eyebrow. “Or anything?”

  A deep sense of awe and unease came over him. It felt like he was being swarmed by apparitions. By the ghosts of all those who’d died these last seventeen months. He shook his head and the odd feeling melted away. “No,” he replied. “It looks deserted.”

  Returning the binoculars to the van, he grabbed his rifle. He slung the strap over his shoulder and checked the sheathed axes that hung from his belt.

  She nodded at the rifle. “Just so you know, that’s the last of your ammunition. Derek’s almost out, too.”

  “I was afraid of that.”

  “On the bright side, you’re packing some pretty good stuff. Those cartridges use tungsten penetrators in copper jackets.” She brushed a few strands of hair out of her eyes. “In other words, they’ll pierce body armor.”

  Mills had taken to the apocalypse like most people took to food and water. She lived it, breathed it. Maybe even, as Caplan suspected, enjoyed it.

  Ducking down, he and Mills made their way toward the store. Perkins, armed with a long pistol, joined them at the halfway point. His hair, black and curly, whipped with the wind. His mocha-colored face, pockmarked and gaunt with hunger, reflected a mixture of blind hope and deep-seated desperation.

  They stopped outside a pair of solid glass doors, lined with layers upon layers of ads and notices. Caplan tried the knobs. They were locked.

  Reaching into a pocket, he grabbed hold of a small flashlight. He turned it on and aimed the beam between a pair of ads. The store contained several aisles of tall shelves. But it was too dark to see what—if anything—was on them.

  “Allow me.” Mills placed her bow on the ground and grabbed a set of lock picks from her jacket. In less than a minute, a soft click filled the air.

  Caplan extinguished his light and grabbed one of the knobs. This time it turned easily, if a bit noisily, in his hand. He checked to make sure the others were ready. Then he pushed the door open.

  Pistol drawn, Perkins rushed into the store and took up position on the left. With an arrow fitted into her bowstring, Mills passed through the doorfr
ame and proceeded to scan the right side of the store. Caplan, rifle cradled in his arms, followed them inside and closed the door behind him.

  For a moment, they stood absolutely still. Then Caplan flashed a series of hand signals. Spreading out, the trio headed deeper into the store, clearing the aisles and searching the back rooms.

  After a thorough check, they joined up and paced along the aisles, stunned by what they saw. Tiny flies swarmed rotten cuts of meat. The dairy section smelled of spoiled milk. Vegetables, once fresh, had wilted into piles of mushy liquid. But the center aisles were an entirely different story.

  “Crackers. Pretzels. And what have we got here?” Perkins ripped open a large bag and began stuffing ranch-flavored waffle-cut chips into his mouth. “Oh my God. I’ve died and gone to heaven.”

  Mills smiled. “Slow down or that might just happen.”

  He laughed, spitting out tiny particles. “Yeah, but what a way to go, right?”

  “I can’t argue with that.” She rounded the bend and walked into the neighboring aisle. It was stocked with canned beans, fruits, and vegetables. Stuffing her bow under her armpit, she aimed her flashlight beam at the shelves. Then she picked up a can of lima beans and pulled off the ring tab. She gave the can a quick sniff. Her eyes bulged. Tipping the can to her mouth, she began to gobble up its contents.

  Caplan watched her with a wry smile. “What happened to taking it slow?”

  Caught in mid-swallow, she choked. Then she started laughing. “Okay, I deserved that.” Wiping her lips, she held out the can. “Try some.”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Try some.” Her lips curled into a small, flirty smile. “Or do I have to make you?”

  His heart beat just a little faster, but he quickly forced it back into its regular rhythm. Mills was off-limits. Not because of anything she’d done, but because of that other she.

  His stomach growled. He’d never cared for lima beans. But food was food and anyway, maybe starvation had changed things. Maybe foods he’d once despised—lima beans, mushrooms, olives, avocados, grapefruits—tasted different in this new world. And so he took the can and tipped it toward his mouth. A couple of beans, slimy and pungent, slipped down his throat. Well, that settles it, he thought. Taste buds don’t change.