Berkley Sensation
(tentative release June 2011)

Jenna has known her share of unstable loners—her late father, Mitch Barclay, for one. But naturally she’s terrified when a man kidnaps her and drives her to a remote cabin in the Pacific Northwest. He isn’t violent, but his story is just plain crazy. A change is coming, he says. It’s been building for years. Few will survive. Cell phones are down. Cities are dangerous. But the most unbelievable lie is that he’s done all of this to protect her…

Mason owes Jenna’s dad his life. When he had no hope, Mitch took him in and taught him about the horror of days to come. So he promised to look after Jenna when the apocalypse began. He just didn’t know she’d be so stubborn or so sexy.

Jenna knows she’s losing her edge. He’s too hot for her peace of mind and too rational to be crazy—except for the part about how the world’s coming to an end…

PROLOGUE

Time wends in an infinite circle, bringing all that has been back into the world again. What was, will be once more. Nothing is ever lost to those who remember.

Towers will be built of metal and glass, and these towers will fall. This marks the turning of the tide. This marks the return of magic to the world, and the beginning of a second Dark Age. Fearsome creatures will prowl the earth, and the continents shall be remade in storms eternal. Mountains will fall. A great wave will rise up and drown a city. Watch for these signs, and you will know you live in the time of prophecy.

Unbelievers will mock you when you seek the signs of coming cataclysm. They will call you mad, but in you rests the promise that all shall not be entirely lost, all of our history unwritten. To you I speak down the centuries. I, too, have been thought mad for my speaking dreams. But neither mockery nor malice will quell the truth. Therefore, gather your resolve, you faithful. It all rests upon you.
—Translated from the ancient Chinese prophet Xi’an Xi’s personal writings

In the mid twenty-first century, the power grid collapsed. No warning. No exceptions. Religious people called it the Rapture or the end times, but there came no blood rain or plague of locusts. It began in Great Britain. The island went dark, total radio and satellite silence. No one knew what had happened; the news simply ceased.

Next came the easternmost cities of the Western Hemisphere—as if a dark wind had swept in from across the Atlantic. Electrical and nuclear substations simply stopped working. Despite technicians working day and night, they could not get the equipment to function. Planes fell out of the skies when they tried to land. Cars with computer chips turned into giant paperweights, though older ones went unaffected.

Without power, with catastrophe imminent, people went out into the streets seeking answers. They found violence. Mob rule began. Glass shattered and buildings burned. People took whatever they could carry. In the city that never sleeps, the government imposed martial law and assigned curfews. The National Guard arrived, geared for combat, and the populace rebelled. They demanded answers. Some blamed terrorist cells as tensions escalated. Racial hate crimes quadrupled, and the U.S. military killed its own citizens on American soil.

Without the proper equipment, refining fuel became difficult. The first Fuel War began, which ushered in an era of prophets who clamored with stories to explain away the madness.

In affected areas, this sudden Dark Age changed the world and the way people lived. Survivors of the first city riots scrounged whatever they could carry and pushed westward, out of the dead zone. But the wave followed at an inexorable pace; they could not outrun the change.

Politicians could provide no answers. The military fought on, using old weapons. Desperate for news and hope, people turned on their radios, wanting the company of someone else’s voice in the dark. Pockets of survivors tried to find each other, only to be ambushed by unscrupulous road gangs. Raiders and privateers flourished all along the eastern seaboard.

Then the first transformations began—people into monsters—and the world changed again, this time, forever.

CHAPTER ONE

“Don’t move.”

The hot rush of breath against the nape of her neck made Jenna juggle her keys and then drop them. She had pepper spray on the key ring, received as a gag gift, but at hearing that raw, gravelly voice, she lost all control of higher motor functions. A shiver jumped up her spine.

Something prodded her back. A gun? Jenna didn’t even shift.

Her reply came out in a nervous squeak. “Are you mugging me? I don’t have much cash on hand.”
Liar.

Her dad had always insisted she keep at least five hundred in the house in case of emergencies. He hadn’t liked banks, lines of credit, or the federal government. But he’d also said there would come a time when skills would become the real commerce, and that the entire world monetary system would fail. Of course, trouble clung to her father like ticks on a hound, so she didn’t agree with his philosophies. He’d gone around quoting obscure prophecy and claiming insight into great doings to come, and she wanted nothing to do with any of his crazy friends. She’d seen what that life had done to her mother.

Hence the move to quiet, dull, out-of-the-way Culver. Sure, she’d heard the talk of trouble on the east coast—blackouts and riots—but the city wouldn’t be NYC if there wasn’t something crazy happening. It was like LA in that regard. At one point, there had been so many fires, mudslides, and earthquakes that fringe factions claimed California was about to slide into the sea. There was no more substance to these east coast rumors. It was just normal crime.

But muggings didn’t happen in Culver. Maybe this guy was an escaped con from the correctional facility in Northbend. It wasn’t unheard of for them to break out and live rough until they emerged in dire need of food and supplies. Her breath puffed out in a smoky devil’s sigh. Cold. It was so cold. He’d need winter gear too. If she gave him what he wanted, he might go away. She hoped.

Because of her dad, Jenna nursed a secret soft spot for outlaws and renegades, but that didn’t ease the fear in her stomach.

She tried to stay calm. “I have things inside you can use. Soup, an insulated sleeping bag, pretty much everything you need to rough it. You don’t have to steal from me. I’ll give you the stuff. No strings.”

Silence.

Please don’t let him take my credit cards. Those take forever to replace.

But maybe she should be worried about something else. Something worse. Jenna couldn’t even make herself shape the words mentally. Things like that never happened in Culver. She should’ve been safe walking down the driveway to get her mail. Her mind had been on heading into town and joining Deb and Mara at The Louie: beer, laughs, friends—not defending against armed psychos. It was their weekly girls’ night, where they drank too much, laughed a lot, danced with strange men, and generally cut loose after a week in the cubicles.

“Are you Jenna Barclay?” he asked.

Her heart thudded in her ears. She wondered if she ought to lie. Would that make it worse? Fear tasted sharp on her tongue. She wouldn’t give a desperate man a reason to hurt her. Sometimes they didn’t need a reason, but she’d play it smart. And she’d walk away from this.

“Yes,” she managed to say. “I’m Jenna. What do you want?”

Instead of answering that question, he returned to one she’d posed before. “No, this isn’t a mugging.”

“Then what is it?” Surely they weren’t conversing while he held a gun on her. She thought she felt the barrels through the thick down of her jacket and refused to think about bullets tearing through her flesh, blood-spattered feathers wafting up.

No running, no sudden moves. She’d be all right. She just had to make him think of her as a person. Not an object he could take into the forest and have fun with.

“It’s a kidnapping,” he said, and stuffed a cloth in her mouth.

He moved too quickly for thought—even faster than the panic that followed his words. Jenna heard a ripping noise before he sealed a strip of duct tape over her mouth. When he slung her over his shoulder, her stomach slammed against his back. The wind knocked right out of her, and she had the irrational thought that he smelled like the forest—a tangy sharp whisper of pine, cut with fresh air and moss.

Hauling her as if she weighed nothing, he squatted, snatched her keys, and then sprinted up the drive toward her garage. He levered it up one-handed and taped her ankles. Her wrists came next, and that was when the fear sunk all the way in.

He wasn’t kidding.

Jenna thrashed and fought. If she let him take her away from here, she’d never see home again. She didn’t care about the threat of a bullet any longer. A quick death would be better than whatever he had in mind. Tears seared the corners of her eyes and felt hotter because her skin had chilled in the late autumn air.

But he handled her struggles with impersonal proficiency. She managed to elbow him in the sternum, and he didn’t even grunt. Iron man. Unmoved. Maybe begging would work. Nobody will pay the ransom, she tried to say, but it came out more like, “Mmdy wuh puh,” before she gave up.

Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God— Nightmare. It had to be. She’d wake up soon.

Terror flared like a struck match as he popped the trunk of her car. He deposited her inside with curious care. Once he closed the metal top, it would be like a tomb.

No. Please, please, please.

With the setting sun behind him in a nimbus of fire, he looked like a dark god, broad shoulders and features blurred by her tears. But Jenna saw one thing clearly. He wasn’t wearing a mask, and that meant he wasn’t ever letting her go.

The trunk slammed and took all the light with it.

Minutes turned into hours, and hours into eternity. After she’d died at least a million times in her mind, in almost as many different ways, the car slowed and stopped. She listened to the engine ticking over.

A key clicked in the lock. Jenna expected her captor to yank her roughly out of the trunk, so she braced. But he might not need an excuse to hurt her. To her surprise, he drew her up with the care one would use with a sleeping child. His gentle hands belied the tape across her mouth and binding her limbs.

Wordlessly, he set her on her feet. As her blinking eyes adjusted to the rich twilight, she saw there was no reason he’d fear she might run. In addition to the hobbles on her ankles, they stood in the middle of a deep forest. They might still in Oregon—she’d lost track of time while he drove—but in a remote region she’d never seen.

A reassuring bulge in her left pocket meant that her cell phone had made it out of the trunk with her. She just needed to bide her time and humor him until she could text someone for help. If cop shows were to be believed, they could track her phone and find her that way.

I just have to stay calm, make him think I’m buying whatever he’s selling long enough to get a minute alone. She stood quietly, awaiting instructions. Crazies liked feeling in control, didn’t they? She wouldn’t give him any reason to search her—or worse. Giving him a quick once over, she reassessed what she’d hoped back in her driveway. He didn’t need winter gear. A knit cap stretched over his skull, and he wore dark, heavy-gauge Carhartt jeans and a woodland camouflage jacket that looked military. He slung a serious semi-automatic rifle across his back, and the gun he’d poked into her back must be the 9mm in his hip holster.

Fighting him was completely out of the question. A one-man army. Oh, shit.

“I’m sorry it had to be like that,” the man said, his voice rough. “But we had to get away from the city. You wouldn’t believe me without proof.”

Believe what?

Jenna stared at him in silence. How was she supposed to answer through the duct tape anyway? Not that there was any point. It was a stretch to call a berg like Culver a city, which proved he was mad as a hatter. A frisson ran through her as the sun filtered out of the dense foliage entirely, drenching the world in shadow. Nightfall had never been so sinister.

“Anyway, we should get inside. We can talk in the cabin. It’s freezing out here, and I promised your dad I’d keep you safe.”

Now that was just pure bull. Mitch Barclay had been dead for over three years, and even before that, he’d never been particularly interested in her well-being—except when it suited him. Over the years, he’d faded in and out of her life like a ghost, and each time he seemed a little more disconnected with reality. His last visit had been so strange that she hadn’t wanted to see him again. He’d come just to stare at her, it seemed, like he could x-ray the inside of her head.

The man knelt and peeled the tape from around her ankles. She wanted to run, but taking off ill-prepared in the cold might be stupider than staying put. Besides, her feet had gone completely numb. Blood rushed back in splinters of pain.

Distracting herself, Jenna tried to memorize the dwelling’s exterior. Maybe she could put some detail in her text message. They stood in a clearing ringed by heavy trees. The split-log cabin looked like someone’s hunting retreat, rustic but not shabby or ill-maintained.

When the man straightened, he was bigger than she’d realized, perhaps as much as a foot taller than her own five-foot-six. His swarthy skin bespoke some mixed ancestry, and he was built like a Mack truck. Solid muscle. Quite simply, she could hit him with a brick and he wouldn’t even notice.

She’d have to outsmart him.

With a gesture, he indicated she should precede him. It wasn’t good manners as much as him keeping an eye on her. She stumbled a little, her legs still stiff and tingling. To her surprise, he steadied her with a hand on her back. She flinched and pulled away, but a small part of her was thankful that she hadn’t fallen. Keep my balance. Stay calm.

Jenna crossed the small porch, her shoes clunking heavily against the plank wooden floor. Dread churned up her nausea when reached the door. He leaned past her and opened it—again, probably not a courtesy, but in recognizing the limitations of her bound hands. The inside of the cabin matched the exterior: woven rugs, hand-carved furniture with homey sewn cushions, and a big stone fireplace. Avocado appliances decked out an antiquated kitchenette, and a ladder led up to what might be a loft.

“Go in,” he said. “I need to take care of some things. Then I’ll cut you loose, so you can ask all the questions I see burning in your eyes.”