SQUIRM Intro

SQUIRM!

PART 1 OF THE E.E.T. {OR SECOND e=b FOR brink; e.b.t.} SERIES

(E.ARTH E.XTINCTION T.HRESHOLD)

A SCIENCE FICTION HORROR NOVEL

BY J.M. LINDNER

Table of Contents

Prologue: The New Breed

Section 1: A Fragile New World

 Chapter 1 Suburbs

Chapter 2 Intel

 Chapter 3 Exile

Chapter 4 Safety

Chapter 5 Nowhere to Run

Chapter 6 UFOs

Chapter 7 Bad to Worse

Chapter 8 Tesbhet

Chapter 9 Tesbhet’s Plans

Section 2: The Birth of Magic

Chapter 10 Ravagers

Chapter 11 Awakening

Chapter 12 Fire, Ice and Electricity

Chapter 13 Necromancy, Telekinesis and Alchemy

Section 3: Inner Earth

Chapter 14 Descent

Chapter 15 Welcome to Inner Earth

Section 4: The Ravager War

Chapter 16 The Offensive Begins

Chapter 17 Into The Dark Cities

Chapter 18 Turning Point

Chapter 19 Aftermath

Section 5: Seventy Years Later

Chapter 20 The Rise of Empires

Chapter 21 New Atlantis

Chapter 22 World Ships, The Moon and Mars

Chapter 23 Rebirth of Magic

Chapter 24 Black Death and The Destroyers

Chapter 25 Making Elite

Chapter 26 The Game of Death

Epilogue

Prologue: A New Breed

Present Day:

     It was a hot Florida day in Orlando. As usual Interstate Four was packed with insane traffic and the amusement parks were loaded with tourists from around the world.  At an outdoor eating area of a café on International Drive people were eating lunch.  It was a casual little restaurant and popular among tourists and today it was fairly crowded.

     Andy Smithfield and Steve Carter were on lunch break from their jobs at a car dealership they ran together as business partners.  They were having their favorite dish; beer battered fried flounder sandwiches.

“It’s a nice day were having” said Andy

     Andy had opened the dealership after moving to Orlando from New York City to avoid the cold.  Andy was a heavy set forty eight year old man with thinning grey hair and a full beard and was wearing khaki shorts and a floral Hawaiian style button down t shirt.

“Hot…” said Steve

     Steve was an old family friend of Andy’s and had decided to help Andy start the business.  He was a wiry thirty six year old Florida native with short red hair and wore a similar outfit as Andy but with a different color and patterned shirt.  They liked the island type image for their business in the tropical setting. 

“You complain too much, things could always be worse” said Andy.

“I guess” said Steve “Hey, what the hell is that?!”

“What?” said Andy?

“There’s like a black haze above a group of buildings off in the distance there” Steve said and pointed to a thick black cloud hovering over some buildings probably less than a mile away.

“Oh, yeah I see it now! It looks like it’s getting bigger, or coming closer!” said Andy.

“I wonder what it is, it doesn’t look like smoke” said Steve.

     Their waitress came to their table.  “Is everything alright?” she asked.  She was young and petite wore black pants and a button down long sleeved black shirt and had long blonde hair tied back into a pony tail.  Andy and Steve were both staring at the “cloud” at this point, which had doubled in size.  The waitress looked in the same direction they were staring.  “Oh my God, what is that?!” she said.  Andy looked over at her, Steve kept staring.  “I don’t know but it can’t be anything good.” said Andy.  At this point everyone had stopped eating and was staring at this mysterious black cloud that had doubled and size and now seemed thicker and darker black.

“Maybe we should get inside” said Steve, who had turned back around.

“Yeah let’s do that until we know what’s going on” said the waitress. “If everyone would please move ins-” she started to say but was cut off mid-sentence by a terrible scream.

     A young blonde woman covered in gold jewelry in a blue dress was swatting the air around her. A man with her in jeans and a tee-shirt wearing a baseball hat was now swatting the air too.  Steve and Andy walked over for a closer look and saw what was happening.

“Get them fucking off of me!” screamed the woman.  The man fell back into his chair and stopped moving, a second later the woman collapsed to the floor.  They both had small black gnats crawling on their skin and now there were other screams around the café.

“Let’s gets inside, NOW!” yelled the waitress.  Everyone ran for the door and once inside it was slammed behind them.

“What the hell is going on?” said Andy.

“I don’t know I’ve never seen such a thing!” said Steve. “If it was bees I could see people collapsing after stings if they were allergic, but gnats?”

“I’m calling 911” said the waitress.  She picked up a phone and her arm stopped midair before she dialed. “It’s down…” she said.

“My cell is dead too” said someone else.

    About a minute later it was discovered that no phones were working.  It had now gotten darker outside.  The black “cloud” now covered the sky in all directions as far as they could see including directly above their café and the consensus was now that it was no cloud. It was a massive swarm.

    All of the sudden there was a pounding on the doors leading to outside where everyone had just been eating.  In their panic everyone had left the man and woman who collapsed outside as nobody wanted to get close after seeing what the gnats did to them.  The pounding was the woman they had seen fall banging her fist on the door which was made of glass.  The man she was with was lurking behind her.

“Oh my god, we left them out there, should we let them in?” asked an older lady.

“I think that’s a good idea” said the waitress who followed by a few other people walked a little closer to the door to get a better look.  The waitress gasped at what she saw and fainted. Just as she was about to hit the ground hard someone caught her and gently laid her down.  The rest of the people were speechless. 

    The woman who was pounding on the door was covered in insects. Not just gnats now but small and large ants, love bugs and mosquitos.  She was bleeding from her eyes, ears, nose and mouth and there were bugs crawling in and out of her and the orifices were oozing blood as well.  She kept pounding on the glass which was starting to crack like a spider web and now her man had joined the fun pounding on another part of the door.  He was in equally bad shape.  Neither of them seemed to be aware of the insects all over and inside them despite having swatted at them earlier.

“They’re going to break that glass!” said Andy

“We need some way to defend ourselves!” said Steve.

Andy was a concealed handgun carrier and pulled out a small 357 magnum revolver and aimed it at the woman.  Some kind of fucked up zombie? He thought.  “One step ahead of you, but you should look around for something”

“I will ask the staff about kitchen knives!” said Steve. 

     As he said that the glass came down and the man and woman walked inside.  Broken glass sliced the woman’s arms open and she started bleeding from deep cuts but didn’t even flinch.  When two hollow points hit her in the chest plus one in the head she didn’t react either, her body just rocked back a little from the bullet impacts and she came forward.  Andy had shot her and after seeing no effect had frozen in fear.  The back of her head was gone, her skull had been blown apart from the bullet as it exited and she had two large holes in her chest and even larger holes in her back.  She had lost enough blood and suffered enough traumas that she should have been on the floor either dead or close enough but she was still on her feet.

     Everyone else had now backed up to the far distant wall or was trying to hide aside from Andy who had made a stand and the waitress who was lying on the floor unconscious.

    Meanwhile the man had spotted the waitress and jumped on her like a rabid dog on a rabbit and started to devour her.  She woke up screaming as he was eating flesh off of her arm and franticly started beating him in his head with a fist from her other arm to no effect.  He stopped eating for a second and put his hands around her throat and squeezed until there was an audible crack and she stopped moving then returned to his meal. 

    The woman quickly zeroed in on where the shots had come from and lunged for Andy who panicked and fired the remaining three shots in his cylinder.  Three more direct hits, center mass, no effect.  She was on him.  She grappled him and took him to the ground and punched his head until her hand split and he was unconscious and then she started to eat his face biting strips of flesh off of it.

    The remaining survivors looked on in horror but didn’t dare go outside.  The windows around them were now covered in countless crawling and buzzing insects that were so thick that they now blocked out day light and were the only thing visible behind the glass. 

    Soon the insects found that the man and woman they had infested had opened a door for them.  In seconds the floor turned black like a lengthening shadow as ants, and roaches and who knows what else raced inside towards the people.  The air above the crawling bugs was filled with flying insects.  The swarm flew right past the infested man and woman as if they weren’t interested.  All of the people were attacked in the same instant.  As they were bit and stung all they could do was scream.  They were dead within a minute only to have thousands of bugs enter their bodies and take control as with the man and woman who were first attacked.