CHOSEN: A Paranormal, Sci-Fi, Dystopian Novel (31 page)

TRANSMITTED
REPORT START

The earthquake that hit the northern coast of Southern Allegiance today
at 7:26 a.m. EAT is confirmed to have been a 7.7 on the Richter Scale and not
the 6.0 officially reported. Aid workers have been called in from everywhere
within a four hour commute with workers assigned to the areas of worst
devastation.

Loss of Life: Nearly seven hours after the earthquake there remain no
official numbers of lives lost or numbers of persons missing. There remain no
official reports of any kind regarding this earthquake. We do have unofficial
local reports that, aggregated, put the current estimate of missing people or
those killed in the earthquake at 350 million. This is a conservative estimate
given the number of people en route or already at work in this heavy tourist
area.

Again, there was no public warning of the earthquake though data surfaced
three days ago that the information warning of an imminent earthquake was
available weeks to months prior to the incident.

We expect that our ability to transmit photos and video will continue to
be hampered, just as the truth has been.

###

Next
Update Scheduled for 4:30 P.M. EAT

TRANSMITTED
REPORT END

Marco’s fist met
the top of his desk, causing a small cup of microdots to fall off and splatter
on the floor.

“You still there, Marco?” Alexis’s voice
broke through the cloudiness. He’d forgotten all about her.”

“Yes, still here,” he said, nearly
speechless.

“I told you it was bad. What are we gonna
do?”

“We’re gonna do whatever we have to for the
truth to get out. They won’t get away with this, Alexis.”

***

Locan had locked
in
on Teresa and was just twenty minutes from where her communicator showed her.
She was almost in the city of Valencia Major. His charter aircraft began to fly
over the area affected by the earthquake. It didn’t look like any 6.0 he’d ever
seen. He radioed in to the checkpoint where he’d entered.

“Eastern Border Control- Southern
Allegiance,” the man said into the radio.

“Yes, this is Captain Locan. I am heading
into Valencia Major. I need to report that the damage appears worse than the
6.0 reported. Perhaps I can help. Where is air support currently? I can work a
different area. Land support may have been called but there is no way anyone is
driving in and a normal hovehicle would have a hard time clearing this much
debris.”

Locan looked out of his window at the scene
below. He’d been trained for combat and peace keeping but this would require
something else. There was no way that nurses, medics, and doctors on the ground
would reach the people in need.

“Copy?” he called into the radio after
several seconds without a response.

“Captain Locan?” a different voice came in.
“I was told that you were heading to Santoria. Is there a reason you are headed
to Valencia Major instead?” the voice asked.

“Sir, my mother is there. I have to get her
before heading home.”

“I see. I advise that you hurry and do only
that. That is an order. We have everything under control. Air support will also
be dispatched. Carry on with your immediate business and head to Santoria. I’ll
expect you to check in upon your arrival. Over.”

“Over,” Locan answered back after hesitating
a moment.

He looked down to the streets and ruined
buildings, with smoke still coming out of the windows. Small fires still burned
in some. Between the standing buildings, there were others crumbled in heaps
and others with sides lost. He could see people waving scarves and sheets out
of the windows.

Air support will be dispatched?
It
had been more than six and a half hours since the earthquake and no air support
was on the scene. They’d called in the local support of people who would come
in regular hovehicles, knowing they would never get through the debris.

“Marco? Marco?” The interference in the call
was worse than usual.

“Locan? Where are you?” Marco answered
choppily.

“Almost in Valencia Major. Mom is here. I
need you do to do something. Check for a local airfield. I need a light hover
aircraft.”

“What? I thought you were getting mom and
coming back!” Marco said surprised.

“I am, but they haven’t dispatched any air
support, Marco. None. I’m not coming all the way here and doing nothing.”

“Okay. Let me search. Hold on.” Marco went
back to his system and began searching for airfields where pilots could land
and that had the aircraft Locan needed. The light hover aircraft was named
accordingly because it could hover as low as fifteen feet above ground and as
high as fifty feet above ground but could also land in place like the hovering
plane Locan usually flew.

“Locan, there is a field twenty miles east
of Valencia Major City. It’s called Valencia Eastport.”

Locan entered it into his navigation and
studied the route in detail before turning his aircraft east. Looking at the
devastation, his mother would never forgive him if he just came in without
trying to help. It would be nearly impossible in the craft he was flying, given
its bulk and inability to hover at low levels for more than a few seconds. He sped
up and flew off. There had to be another option and he hoped it was where he
was headed.

***

Teresa’s hovehicle
came
to a standstill amidst a sea of rubble dotted with broken down and
crushed hovehicles. She took a deep breath at the sight of the bodies strewn in
odd places, trapped by large cement blocks or pinned under the fallen debris. The
buildings in the distance, hotels, businesses, and the casinos were crumbled,
some lay waste along the road in front of the coast.

There was no way she could reach the place
she was supposed to be meeting the other aid workers, not by car at least.
Looking at what remained of the city she wasn’t sure the meeting place would be
standing or stable. She would have to go by foot.

As she looked around at the damage, far
beyond any description she’d gotten; she was startled by the face of a child whose
bloodied hand slapped against her window. The girl looked to be ten or eleven
despite her height. Debris was in her hair and drops of blood ran down her
face. Dirt and dust covered her as she stared through the window, a look on her
face that Teresa quickly recognized as shock.

Teresa tried to open the door but the girl
didn’t move. She tried again but the girl simply stood there staring blankly
into the hovehicle at Teresa. Teresa couldn’t get the girl to respond in her
current state and she had to get out of the car to help her. She climbed into
the backseat, snagging her leg on the grey faded and torn fabric of her rear
seats before opening the back door.

The girl followed with her eyes, without any
other expression, to watch Teresa as she crawled out the back seat into a pile
of loose detritus blocking the street.

“It’s okay. It’s okay. Te voy a ayudar. I’m
gonna help you,” Teresa said to the girl whose eyes glazed over. She fell to
the ground, from where she’d been standing on her knees, the rest of her legs
missing somewhere in the crumbling city.

Master Keane bowed
his head and placed one thin hand over his darkened eyes. A single tear escaped,
finding freedom from the pain.

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Chosen: A Paranormal, Sci-Fi, Dystopian Novel
.

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Thank you so much and I hope you enjoy my
other works. A sample of book 2 in the Chosen series follows.

Chapter One

The small hovering
plane circled the debris looking for a place to come in low enough. Locan could
see his mother’s hovehicle at the edge of the rubble. She was crouched down
against the car, a child in her arms. The trunk was open and her red medical
bag lay on top of a cement block.

He would have to try to hover over one of
the larger box-truck hovehicles now turned on its side and hope the natural
magnetic pull from the earth would be enough. He brought the small craft down
and let it rest all the way. He planned to get his mother and then search for
other survivors.

Locan crawled down the side of the truck by
the passenger side door and looked in the open back. He thought he’d seen it
from the air but now he was sure. A ladder was thrown against the side, beaten
up but it would work. He placed it against the side of the truck he’d come out
of and then ran over the broken buildings to where his mother sat just twenty
yards away.

“Locan! Over here! Get her to the plane. I
have to go help others, but I couldn’t leave her,” Teresa said as she loosened
her hold on the panicked girl. Her legs were bandaged at the knee but she
needed a hospital.

“Mom, you have to come with me. I’ll go find
anyone else I can but you have to get on the plane. You stay with her.” Locan
tried to order his mother but she just steeled her eyes.

“Locan, what did I just say?”

“Mom, I know what I’m doing, too. I’ll find
them and bring them back for you to help, how about that?”

Teresa looked at Locan. He was stronger and
younger than she was. It was only more efficient and logical that he use that
strength to bring them back where she could treat them.

“Fine. Hurry. They haven’t had any help. No
one can get in except on foot. Many of the aid workers who came didn’t stay.
The few who have can’t get out. We have to help them, Locan. When is the rest
of the help coming?” she looked up to him and asked as he took the girl with
thick white bandages on her knees. She was weak, in and out of consciousness.

“They said they were sending air support. I
don’t know when. I’m here because Marco told me you came here and we have to
bring you home.”

“Home is no place to be when there is this
much work to do, Locan, you know that,” she said standing to her feet, grabbing
her supplies, and following him to the turned truck and his plane.

Once he had the little girl settled into the
plane, he left again. His little plane couldn’t do much justice out there. At most,
it could hold thirty people. Two hours passed as he brought injured men, women,
and children to the plane. His body was fatigued and Marie’s supplies were
running low along with space for any more passengers.

In the hours they’d been in Valencia Major,
no other air support had come through.

Locan would have to get them somewhere safe
and then come back for his own plane, stationed at the small airfield Marco had
found for him.

His wrist was blinking again. This time it
wasn’t Eastern Border Control in Southern Allegiance. Marco was calling to
check in again.

“Hey, Marco,” Locan answered out of breath.

“Are you two okay, man? When are you and mom
heading back?” Marco asked. He could hear the sounds of pain in the background.

“We’re about to pull out in a few minutes. I
just have to make sure everyone is settled,” Locan answered irritably.

“Did the other help come yet? How many did
you get?”

“No. No one else came, Marco. Not a single
craft of any kind. Nothing. I can only carry so many. They are back there like
sardines, but I can’t hold anymore and Border Control is on me to get to
Santoria.”

“Locan, you did everything you could. It’s
not your fault they let this happen,” Marco said, steaming on his end. They let
it happen and didn’t bother to send any help that could actually be of help. They
couldn’t be allowed to get away with this.

“I’ll see you when we get back home and then
I have to come back up to Valencia Major to get my charter plane.”

“Okay. I’ll see you soon.” Marco clicked off
the call. He didn’t know if he wanted to talk to Stephen or Alexis more. They
were the only ones he trusted and that got what was going on. He sent Alexis a
message through the subsystem and while waiting, he sent Stephen another about
the nonexistent air support and rescue.

“They are leaving them to die. We have to
make sure that next time there is real warning. They can’t deny knowing. They
can’t act like they didn’t have time.” He hit send and sat back in his chair
fuming.

Two messages popped up at nearly the same
time on his screen. Stephen’s was simple and to the point. “We need a better
way to get this information out. Something much worse is happening in the Rift
Valley than is being communicated.”

Alexis’s message came through in all caps.
“THOSE MURDERERS!!!” she screamed into her system. “They won’t get away with
this. They can’t bury everything. Marco, I’m so sorry. It’s not fair. Those are
our people they are just throwing away like nothing. I wish I was there right now.
We’re gonna do something about this, believe me.”

“You better believe it,” Marco wrote back to
Alexis. He reread Stephen’s message. The Rift Valley was next and he was
certain they didn’t know the real danger. They were evacuating Southern Liberty
but from what he’d seen it was probably too late and they were sitting ducks as
much as the people in Valencia Major had been, regardless of the evacuation.

“Stephen, can you put something together
that shows what’s happening in the Rift Valley? We can send it out through the
subsystem and try to warn anyone who is paying attention to it.”

“I can, but my mom is watching everything I
do closely. She is afraid I will do something like this. If I pull it together,
can you send it?” Stephen asked. He was already looking towards the door in
case Zura came by as Stella stood over his shoulder.

“I’ll send it. Or Alexis. Or maybe both of
us. We’ll make sure it goes out. They sent my mom on what amounts to a suicide
mission after thinking it was okay to wipe out millions of us in Southern
Allegiance. Bastards!” Marco typed angrily.

On the other end, Stephen read what he
wrote. He wasn’t sure what to say back. They were bastards. Stella’s hands
reached over him. ‘I’m sorry Marco. We’re gonna make this right,” she typed and
sent.

Stella looked at her brother. “We have to do
what we have to do Stephen. There isn’t a choice and it doesn’t matter if we
are fifteen or sixteen. At least not to me. We know something worse than the
people are expecting is about to happen in the Rift Valley. That means maybe we
can warn someone. We have to at least try,” she said in a whisper in his ear.