The End The Beginning (Humanity's New Dawn Book 1) Read online

  The End

  The Beginning

  A Novel

  Ryan D Horvath

  Copyright © 2014 by Ryan D Horvath

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

  CHAPTERS

  1-KAREN THOMAS

  2-JACK THOMAS

  3-ART SPEKTOR

  4-JACK VOIGHT, IAN TURNER, AND BRIAN STEVENS

  5-AMANDA BRECK

  6-BLAZE

  7-SIMON SHEPHERD

  8-THE CAT

  9-KAREN AND BLAZE

  10-TWO CIA ANALYSTS

  11-ART

  12-JACK VOIGHT

  13-JACK V. AND THE CAT

  14-AMANDA

  15-SIMON

  16-KAREN AND BLAZE

  17-JACK, BRIAN, IAN, AND RIVER

  18-ART

  19-AMANDA, KAREN, AND BLAZE

  20-SIMON

  21-JACK, BRIAN, IAN, AND RIVER

  22-ART

  23-AMANDA, KAREN, AND BLAZE

  24-THE OBJECT

  25-ART

  26-SIMON

  27-IAN AND RIVER

  28-A CIA ANALYST AND CIA DIRECTOR HAYES

  29-KAREN AND BLAZE

  30-JACK, BRIAN, IAN, AND RIVER

  31-ART

  32-KAREN AND BLAZE

  33-SIMON

  34-JACK AND BRIAN

  35-ART

  36-JACK, BRIAN, IAN, AND RIVER

  37-KAREN AND BLAZE

  38-SIMON

  39-ART

  40-AMANDA

  41-JACK, BRIAN, IAN, AND RIVER

  42-KAREN AND BLAZE

  43-ART

  44-JACK, BRIAN, IAN, SIMON, AND RIVER

  45-IAN AND SIMON

  46-THE OBJECT

  47-KAREN AND BLAZE

  48-JACK, BRIAN, AND RIVER

  49-ART

  50-SIMON, JACK, BRIAN, IAN, AND RIVER

  51-KAREN AND BLAZE

  52-JACK AND SIMON

  53-FRIDAY MORNING

  54-ART

  55-KAREN AND BLAZE

  56-SIMON, JACK, BRIAN, IAN, AND RIVER

  57-AMANDA, KAREN, AND BLAZE & ART

  58-THE ECLIPSE

  59-THE PANIC

  60-AMANDA, KAREN, AND BLAZE & ART

  61-WORLDS COLLIDE

  62-AFTER ART

  63-CONNECTIONS

  64-KAREN AND SIMON

  65-IAN AND AMANDA

  66-JACK, BRIAN, AND RIVER

  67-THE RADIO

  68-PRIVATE THOUGHTS

  69-THE WEE HOURS

  70-THE END

  71-MOVING

  72-AWAKENING

  73-THE ROAD, THE STATION WAGON

  74-COUNTY ROADS

  75-LOSS

  76-BATTLE

  77-AFTERMATH

  78-THE BEGINNING

  FOR PUDDIN’

  MY DEAREST CAT.

  THIS NOVEL GOT MORE OF MY ATTENTION

  THAN YOU DID IN YOUR LAST MONTHS OF LIFE.

  YOU WILL ALWAYS BE MISSED AND LOVED AND

  WITH THIS NOVEL, YOU WILL ALSO ALWAYS BE REMEMBERED.

  1

  KAREN THOMAS

  Karen Thomas hummed to herself in the kitchen as she busily moved around preparing things to eat and drink for brunch for her and her husband. She had left Jack alone in the bedroom on the east side of the house. It was Sunday morning. Karen and Jack loved their Sunday mornings together.

  It was late September and on this Sunday morning it was overcast with a nice gentle rain that made a pleasant pitter-patter sound against the roof and siding of the house. The temperature was still plenty pleasant enough to allow the windows in the house to be open and the smell of the fresh rain wafted throughout the house.

  Karen’s husband, Jack, served as an upstanding political figure in their town of Great Falls, Virginia. The town boasted a population of over eighteen thousand citizens and being an outer suburb of Washington DC, it was growing. Karen herself worked as an event planner.

  Because of Jack’s political ties, the two of them were typically out late on Saturday evenings attending a fund raiser or gala dinner or private event. As such, Sunday mornings became, to them, a true day of rest. They often slept until 11:00 AM or later. Upon waking in each other’s arms after a restful night’s sleep from the long week of politics and parties they frequently made love before rising for breakfast. This morning had been one of those sweet occasions.

  After, Karen had slipped on her blue satin bathrobe after showering and headed to the kitchen to make brunch, which she told Jack was going to be prime New York strip steak, bacon, her special hash brown potatoes with jalapenos and onions, and scrambled eggs plus coffee and bloody Marys. She had kissed him gently on the forehead and left him lying nude on his side on the bed joking about how hungry he was and watching the light rain fall outside. She didn’t know it then but that was the last time she would see her husband alive.

  Then, twenty minutes later, just as the breakfast steaks were reaching their perfection and Karen was doing some dishes and gazing out the window over the kitchen sink, everything changed.

  Karen heard the gunshot in her mind no more than fifteen seconds before it went off. She saw the bullet rip easily through the window screen and into her husband’s throat chewing up his flesh and killing him instantly. Her heart sank to below her stomach and an icy sweat instantly formed on her skin as shivers ran races up and down her spine. The sound and image left her mind as quickly as it had manifested causing her to gasp in her breath and clench her hand fiercely around the handle of the coffee carafe she was holding.

  When she heard the muffled gunshot in real time, she dropped the porcelain carafe on the stone tiled kitchen floor, where it disintegrated into a thousand pieces. She broke out into a run toward the master bedroom that she and Jack shared. As she ran, she realized that she was probably already too late. This Sunday morning, and every Sunday to follow had just been shattered.

  2

  JACK THOMAS

  After Karen kissed him and left the bedroom, Jack Thomas laid on the bed watching the soft rain fall from the sky and savoring the sound it made as it struck the house. He and Karen shared a spacious and lovely one level ranch style home on the east side of Great Falls, Virginia. They had purchased it nearly fifteen years ago which was about seven years after they were married. The house sat on half an acre in an upscale development with a quaint little duck pond shared by them and their three other neighbors.

  He began to wonder to himself how that sound the rain made now had never made the impact on him that it did this Sunday morning. Each drop resonated and lingered a little longer in his head as if chiming like bells at the final hour.

  The event last night had been a travesty. Jack suspected he wouldn’t be holding any high government positions after tomorrow.

  His thoughts drifted to Karen. Sweet and innocent Karen. How had she never known? How had he never been able to tell her what was coming? He loved her so much and so desperately for the entire twenty plus years he had known her. Why could he not tell her the truth? At least, if nothing else, she could prepare herself.

  With their hectic lives they had never gotten around to bearing any children. It certainly wasn’t that they did not want any children. They merely decided to make sure they were comfortable enough with themselves and their finances before bringing any new bundles of joy into such an un-joyous world. Now Jack began to wonder why they had waited. Why hadn’t they seized the momen
t during one night, or Sunday morning, of passionate love?

  As Jack lamented on the delays they had taken to live their lives, he heard a dog strike up a noisy bark.

  Jack thought that slightly unusual. The only people on the pond who owned a dog were their “next door” neighbors, George and Ann Lewis. Jack used the term “next door” loosely because none of the houses located on the four lots sharing the pond was really as “next door” as some of those homes in Arlington and the other DC suburbs.

  George and Ann owned a Dalmatian. Blaze, the Dalmatian, was about two years old now and Jack could remember when George and Ann had brought him home as a puppy. Jack had chuckled at George’s choice of name for the Dalmatian, AKA fire dog. Blaze was a very mild mannered and mild tempered animal and although quite frisky, energetic, and healthy, Blaze was not much of a barker. In fact, Jack couldn’t remember a time in the two years Blaze had resided next door that he had ever heard the sound of the animal’s bark come this near the house.

  Then he realized the bark was sharp, forceful, warning.

  Jack swung his legs off the side of the bed and put his feet on the autumn chilly wood floor. A quiver of icy chills ran through his body and he suddenly found himself wishing he’d put his pajama pants or bathrobe back on. He stood from the bed and approached the window.

  Blaze’s bark continued on and on as Jack neared the screen. Sharp and insistent.

  Bark! Bark! Bark!!

  He was surprised George and Ann would allow Blaze to bark uninterrupted like that on a Sunday morning, or at any other time for that matter. Their yard featured a chain link fence and it wasn’t inconceivable that they had let Blaze out alone for part of the morning while they went to brunch or did their grocery shopping.

  When he reached the bedroom window, Jack saw a man advancing from the opposite side of the screen. The man was about fifteen feet from the window.

  The man was tall, at least six foot two with very broad shoulders and a quick, confident stride in the steps made by his bulky legs. He was blonde with a tight haircut and looked to be about thirty years of age. He wore pants as black as night with an equally black windbreaker.

  At first Jack thought that this man might just be a figment of his imagination but then Jack looked into his eyes.

  The blonde man had green eyes that looked insane. Not the kind of insane that you expect to see on a mental patient, but the competent, cold, calculating and relentless eyes of a killer. This couldn’t be.

  Then Jack saw that the blonde man was also wearing black gloves. He was only able to look away from the blonde man’s eyes to notice because the blonde man had raised his hand and pointed a gun at Jack.

  “Hello, Jack Thomas,” the blonde man said with an unusually pleasant grin on his lips.

  Jack was speechless.

  “I’m here to kill you, Jack. Put a bullet in you,” the blonde man said when Jack didn’t respond with anything but a confused look. “You probably should have listened and done what you were told and not thought about talking. Too late for you now, Jack.”

  Jack Thomas felt something warm running down his leg and realized he hadn’t taken a leak since waking. Unfortunately, because of his oversight to relieve himself, the expensive oak floorboards would never be the same.

  And with that, the blonde man fired a shot. In an instant, Jack heard the glass of the window shatter, saw a hole appear in the screen, and felt a white hot pain in his throat. The next instant, Jack Thomas felt no more.

  3

  ART SPEKTOR

  Art Spektor took extreme pleasure in being called upon to deliver the message and put a bullet into Jack Thomas, snuffing out the miserable politician’s pathetic life. Art was a local to the DC area and regularly was contracted to clean up messes for individuals who preferred to keep certain aspects and details of their lives and careers separate from the public knowledge. In addition to being a DC local, he was vaguely familiar with Congressman Jack Thomas’ overly optimistic attitude and his foolish and naïve belief that in a crisis, the people of the nation, or world, would come together and ascend over any such terrible adversity that came upon them. To Art Spektor, a die-hard realist, Jack Thomas was a worthless dipshit of a leader who couldn’t guide his people to the ocean if they were stranded on a barren island.

  Art considered himself to be a perfect model of the human male species and a valiant leader of extraordinary talents. Even though he had never taken on the leadership role in any specific line of work, he had always led himself down the right path without fail. Essentially being born into an orphanage, Art had had little guidance from anyone other than the stern hand of Mark Tallmade, who served as the headmaster at Goochland County Home for children where Art spent his first sixteen years. Art had always been big for his age but Headmaster Tallmade gave his own name justice.

  Tallmade had always harbored a dislike for Art for as long as Art could remember and the headmaster never missed a chance to assert his force upon Art and the other boys at or around the same age.

  At fifteen, one year before Art had ended up running away from Goochland County, he and another boy, who Art only knew as Davey discovered that Headmaster Tallmade was involved in a child pornography ring and had been seducing and video recording his perverse sexual acts with some of the young boys who resided at Goochland County Home for Children.

  Art had been most disgusted by the fact that grown men entrusted with power would have the audacity to do such a thing but even at the ripe old age of fifteen, he was learning the ugly realities of men. Art had been surprised to learn that one of the boys the headmaster had been corrupting was a ten year old going by the name of Martin. Martin slept in the room next to Art and given the fact that Goochland County spared little to no expense on this facility Art had often heard Martin’s tears and sobs through the paper thin walls and wondered what the poor sap was always going on about late at night.

  So, on the night of the discovery, Art had snatched one of the wrenches from the janitor’s closet and, upon catching the headmaster in the act of sodomizing Martin on camera, beat him to within an inch of his life. Art had thought he had finished the disgusting man off but learned after the arrival of the police that he had not. He was disappointed to know that his first and perhaps only chance at killing another person had failed.

  The law didn’t take too kindly to a ward of the state pummeling one of its officials to a bloody pulp and Art was thrown in county lockup that night, even though he’d screamed and protested that what he had done to Headmaster Tallmade was justified. This was one of Art’s first Hard Lessons of Realism: Even if you know what you have done is right, someone is always going to think what you have done is wrong.

  As if the video cassettes found in the headmaster’s locked chest of drawers and the large money transactions in his bank records indicating that he had been selling his “work” to other interested parties wasn’t enough to pin the headmaster for his crimes, Martin, and four other boys who lived at Goochland County Home for Children told the investigating law officials what the headmaster had been doing to them and where to find the tapes and the secret back room where some of the tapes had been made. Martin himself regaled how Art had burst in and saved him from the headmaster’s terrible acts of humiliation and Art was released from the lockup three days after being tossed in. The cops must not have felt like what Art did was so bad after all and had those boys not been so quick to be forthcoming, Art could have been in lockup or worse for much longer. Hard Lessons of Realism two and three learned: Action moves faster than any court and people will turn a blind eye to violence you are committing as long as they think the violence you are committing is less bad than the violence you are correcting.

  Art had been returned to Goochland County Home for Children where he remained under the close watch of the new headmaster, Bonita Jenkins; and watch him she did. Always, she was close enough to give Art the creeps… like she was trying to peer into his soul and discover something dark. She ha
d an air about her that made Art think she was seeking out some violence of her own and Art learned Hard Lesson of Realism number four: People will seek out violence where they already know it exists. Art suspected in time she would push him to violence even though none of the other boys staying at Goochland seemed to have a problem with her.

  So Art had spent the next nine months planning his escape from Goochland. He began by spending the daily recreation time prowling the empty boys’ rooms and skimming small amounts of change from their piggy banks. However, since mostly the older boys were able to go out and do some farm work for money, he’d quickly found this to be a time consuming and unprofitable way to accumulate the finances he needed for his getaway.

  After the first month of doing this, he’d decided to take to pillaging the headmaster’s purse which he found to be much more profitable that the working boys. He found he was able to pull about twenty dollars a week from her clip of cash she kept tucked away in the small inner pocket of her ample handbag. As near as he could tell, she never seemed wise that anyone was taking money from her for no one received notice or discipline.

  When the eighth month of plundering came, Art found he had amassed over six hundred dollars which he felt was close enough to anything to get him out of Goochland. He spent his remaining four weeks reading books on auto mechanics. He intended to hotwire a car to get him as far away as possible in the first night he was gone.

  On that night, he’d quietly slipped out of his cot-like bed and stealthily navigated his way out of Goochland Home for Children without being detected. The night was cool and crisp but clear and the infinite heaven of stars shone brightly in the ebon sky. Art looked up at the stars in wonder. He had never felt so free.

  He gazed up at those stars at sixteen years old in wonder and excitement over his newfound liberation. As he walked down the lane that led toward town glancing repeatedly at the sky, he never noticed or thought that someday he would look at the heavens with a new eye.