Desert Blade
Near-Future, Science Fiction Romance, Post-Apocalyptic -- Novella
In the post-apocalyptic Midwest, now a ravaged dust bowl, former guardsman Derek Covington must find help for a sick boy. With nothing but memories of all he lost, Derek crosses the desert alone in search of the doctor who saved his own life ten years ago. Drifter gangs who loot and pillage don't dare come near, for Derek has a formidable weapon: a prosthetic arm with a deadly blade.
For a decade, Dr. Lidia Sullivan has fantasized about the handsome guardsman who'd been in her care. And now she can't deny his dangerous request. But as they make the treacherous journey back to Old St. Louis, they must contend with much more than fierce desert winds and their unthinkable attraction. A fearless gang has spotted Lidia—a rare woman—and will fight Derek to the death to get her. And though he risks his life to save her for the sake of the child who needs her, she fears there's one thing Derek will never risk: his heart.27,000 words
Available from:
Carina Press
EXCERPT from Desert Blade
Text Copyright © 2012 by Ella Drake
Permission to reproduce text granted by Harlequin Books S.A. Cover art used by arrangement with Harlequin
Enterprises Limited. All rights reserved. ® and ™ are trademarks owned by Harlequin Enterprises Limited or
its affiliated companies, used under license.
Chapter One
Derek Covington ducked beneath the Molotov cocktail slicing through the air. It broke, spreading ethanol and fire across a Chicago storefront. The swoosh of heat and cloying sweet fuel burned his throat. He dodged across the street, empty except for the ever-present vines growing in cracks, covered in fungus, crinkling brown and dead.
Black smoke disguising them, looters whooped and swung bats at the windows. The crack and clink of glass faded in the background. Keeping low, he ran for all he was worth. As a Guardsman, he should help the unit called to handle this latest violent outbreak, but he couldn’t. The rioting around his old place had killed hundreds.
He had to reach Hester.
When the riots started and the phones went out, he’d walked out of the barracks and hitched on an Aggie train. A week through land covered with dying vines from boot camp to here. With nobody around to check on her, his foster mother could be dead already. He skidded around a corner and onto a street straight from a war zone. The summer heat brought the stench of death, blood and desperation.
The place looked the same. Rows of townhouses stacked together. Hester’s florescent purple door swung ajar. He vaulted over the three steps and into the dark, musty-smelling living room. “Hester. You here?”
“That you, Derek?” Shuffling through the door, his plump gray-haired foster mother smiled at him and tugged closed her yellow terrycloth robe. “I was just making breakfast. Come on in and have a cup of coffee while I scramble up some eggs. Just how you like ’em.”
Hiding his knee-weakening relief, he followed her into the four-room railroad-style townhouse. He went straight for the cupboard to pull down two plates, the fragrance of coffee making his mouth water. “I haven’t eaten much the past few days.”
“You best be taking care of yourself. Sit down, sit down. I don’t need you gettin’ in my way.” She motioned him to the small round table with only two chairs. “What? You have a break from basic training already?”
“Haven’t you seen the news? They ordered the evacuation of Georgia…and Tennessee. It’s spread up here, too. I came to get you out.” He shifted in his chair and the weight of it came down all at once. Leaning forward, his elbows on the table, he buried his face in his hands. “I just need to sit for a few minutes. Then we have to go.”
She ran her arthritic, gnarled hands through his hair. “Where’m I goin’ to? So the Aggies about ruined everything.” Aggies, what people called the scientists and politicians who started this all with their plans to feed everyone with special crops. “There’s no place for someone like me, used up and on her way out.” She patted his shoulder when his head jerked toward her. “No. It’s true. With the world dyin’, the future’s for the young, for the able-bodied to work at saving what’s left. Don’t cry, son.”
Hester handed him a tissue from her pocket and went to the refrigerator. She peered inside. “I forgot. Haven’t had eggs in some time.” Shaking her head, she clucked in the back of her throat. “Shouldn’t’ve forgotten that.”
“Doesn’t matter, Hester. Whatever you got, we’ll make do. Everything else will just go to waste.”
“Waste not, want not. Here.” Serving him a mishmash of food from her Southern roots and her newfound community in Chicago, she put a plate with cold hushpuppies and pickled green beans in front of him. “I still got plenty of cornmeal. It’s still cheap as dirt. Those puppies won’t taste the same, though. Don’t have all the stuff to make ’em. Not much left in the cupboard exceptin’ those beans we put away a few years back.”
He didn’t complain.
After they’d finished the meager meal, he got up to go to the back room. “Let’s get your clothes. There’s a refugee camp in Mississip’. Shouldn’t take us more than a week or so to get there.”
“No need to move these old bones.”
“Hester…”
A crash in the front room drowned out his plea.
Instincts never forgotten, he lurched toward Hester and pushed her against the wall to put himself between her and whatever, whoever came. But it wasn’t a monster—like that long-gone druggie boyfriend of his mother’s—it was a fucking Molotov, still as ruthless, pitiless and full of murder, but emotionless, spreading fear and death without prejudice.
Fire roared in the front room, the only way out. Damn shotgun-designed death trap, the apartment was hemmed in on each side by other apartments. No windows. Front and back doors only. Except Hester had boarded up the back door to keep the drugged-up neighbors out.
The sweet scent of ethanol rolled in on black smoke.
“Grab the blankets off the bed. We need to wet them.” His throat burned and eyes watered. They had to get out of here. The ethanol spread fast and hot. Everything flammable in the front would’ve caught.
Hester limped ahead of him into the bedroom and toward the bathroom. She coughed. The sounds of her wheezing constricted his already-tight chest. He grabbed her old quilt off the bed and ran after her. She’d started the water in the tub. With a douse, the quilt sucked up water, growing heavy.
Every second here was magnified tenfold against them. Hester obeyed meekly when he covered them both with the quilt. Her bent frame trembled beside him. Wrapping his arm around her, he hugged her. Her head tucked to his chest—she seemed so small now—he crouched and ran.
Heat and steam seared his skin. Hester stumbled. He half dragged, half carried her. Their feet clambered down the steps.
Light and the noise of a crowd broke through the claustrophobic sound of harsh breathing beneath the smoldering blanket. They would make it.
He skidded down the steps and steadied Hester. Fresh air blew through the bottom of the covering. They’d made it.
Hester’s hand trembled and he squeezed. “You okay, Hester?”
She squeezed back and tugged on the quilt. “Can’t see a thing with this—”
A roar blasted through him. He flew. His breath left when he hit the ground.
Agony gripped him, long moments of sharp pains stabbing through his head, and he could finally pull in a smoke-tainted breath. He groaned and tried to roll but couldn’t.
Noise rushed in. Sirens wailed.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” someone screamed from nearby.
“The pigs are coming.”
Good.
As his nerves stopped screaming and his surroundings filtered in, he could only lie there and hurt.
Hester.
He moved his legs, twisting his hips. With a searing white-hot pain, he rolled. Something was definitely wrong with his arm. It throbbed, but he couldn’t find it.
On his knees, he struggled and fell back down. Hitting the ground again, he didn’t have the strength to move. The quilt tugged to fly away but he clutched at it, keeping it in a death grip.
A soldier in fatigues bent over him, gas mask in place. Derek’s blurry image reflected back, face grimed with soot, black hair plastered to his face, stubble darkening his clenched jaw. Horror and pain stared at him through his own familiar hazel eyes.
“You are a mess. Be surprised you live the night.” The soldier got to his feet and stepped over him.
“Wait.”
“No time for a looter, man. Sorry.”
“Not a looter. I’m like you.”
The man kept going.
“Help!” Derek yelled, his strength failing so quickly he couldn’t lift a hand to reach out.
Another uniformed soldier passed without looking down.
“I’m Guardsman. Serial Number…” He shouted his number, over and over as he struggled to rise.
Something wrenched his arm, hard, like a band tightening, and strong hands hefted him as he screamed with the tearing that ripped through him. On his feet with the quilt still tangled in his fist, all the aches battering at him, the rawness of his left arm overtook it all, the pain making him nauseous. Dropping the quilt, he tried to cradle the injury, to take off the pressure, but he couldn’t find it.
“My arm,” he croaked.
“Take it easy, soldier. Let me get you to the medic.” A gas-masked uniform on his right put an arm about his waist and took some of his weight, stepping on the well-loved quilt and spreading grime on the painstakingly crafted heirloom.
“Hester. I need to find her.”
“There’s nobody else alive here. We have to get out before something else blows.”
The heat of fires and the crackling of burning vines accented the emotionless reply. The mask made the man’s voice tinny, like he was no longer human, and his strength was too much for Derek to pull away.
“Have to find her.” The words had barely left his mouth when he saw her, crumpled in a heap where she must have landed, only an arm’s reach away. The angle of her leg, and the complete stillness told him, but he still had to know.
He pointed.
He must have said something, done something, for the soldier helped him kneel over her and check her signs. Hester was gone. At his request, the soldier quickly retrieved the quilt and threw it over his foster mother’s body.
The ache of his arm was nothing compared to the ache in his chest. The burn of fire seeped inside him, burning hotter than hell.