Get Rich or Die Trying (Apocalypse Paused Book 2) Read online

  Get Rich or Die Trying

  Apocalypse Paused™ Book 2

  Michael Todd

  Michael Anderle

  Get Rich or Die Trying (this book) is a work of fiction.

  All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.

  Copyright © 2018 Michael Todd, and Michael Anderle

  Cover copyright © LMBPN Publishing

  A Michael Anderle Production

  LMBPN Publishing supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  LMBPN Publishing

  PMB 196, 2540 South Maryland Pkwy

  Las Vegas, NV 89109

  First US edition, December 2018

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Epilogue

  Author Notes - Michael Anderle

  Connect with Michael Todd

  Other Zoo Books

  Books written as Michael Anderle

  Get Rich or Die Trying Team

  JIT Readers

  Peter Manis

  Nicole Emens

  Jeff Eaton

  James Caplan

  John Ashmore

  Micky Cocker

  Kelly O’Donnell

  Paul Westman

  Editor

  The Skyhunter Editing Team

  Dedication

  To Family, Friends and

  Those Who Love

  to Read.

  May We All Enjoy Grace

  to Live the Life We Are

  Called.

  Prologue

  This was probably the worst jungle that Lance Corporal Scott Westfield had ever served in, and he could not sleep. There was the low-level fear of course, and the obvious danger. He was as used to the threat of death as any man could be, however, and so far, the place didn’t have any fucking mosquitoes, at least.

  No, what bothered him was the knowledge that this particular jungle was never meant to exist on God’s Earth. It was not natural. That, and the fact that the bunch of bounty hunters around him were some of the dumbest, least-disciplined bastards he’d ever worked with.

  And he was pretty sure something was hunting them. He hadn’t seen anything. It was purely…instinct.

  A chainsaw snore sounded in Westfield’s ear and he sat upright. No use trying or even pretending to sleep with that racket. He had to drain the old lizard anyway.

  “What are you doing?” The flash of white teeth was the only visible part of the speaker. It could only be one man.

  The Haitian. Westfield groaned inwardly. The man was forever asking redundant questions and was incapable of relaxation. He constantly stared into the green shadows with his bulging eyes and clutched his rifle like a beloved Pomeranian.

  “Releasing excess urine from my bladder,” Westfield said. “Why don’t you try closing your eyes and getting some bloody sleep? I’m certainly not going to sleep with another man staring at me all night. I didn’t think you people approved of poofs.”

  The Haitian muttered something in garbled French. Westfield ignored it and crossed to the northeast side of the camp. There was a nice big tree there, but otherwise, the foliage was lower-density, so he’d be able to watch out for whatever new hellspawn this place might have in store.

  He passed a couple attempting to shag discreetly under a blanket, although the humping motions and faint moans were obvious enough. Probably Mendel and that Pakistani bitch. What would their response time be, Westfield wondered, if the local monstrosities were to attack at this very moment?

  Next, he passed the sentry. The man was overweight and had dozed at his post with a mostly-empty flask of vodka by his side. He tensed up and returned to semi-attention as Westfield passed.

  “Fools,” Westfield muttered under his breath. “Bloody useless fools.” Oh, how he longed for the days when the late Prince Phillip would have had choice words for people like this.

  He passed the tree and scanned the area to ensure it was safe. He kept his hand on his sidearm when he noticed one of the fat green vines—the ones that squirmed in place—running across the forest floor and up a few other trees in the canopy. An open patch of high grass and weeds lay to the left. To the right lay the lumpy silhouette of what looked like a tree trunk, fallen branches, and some overgrowth. All was still and silent.

  Westfield nodded to himself and stood clear of the vines, then unbuttoned the pants of his fatigues and relieved himself near the patch. The sound of his urine hitting the forest floor was almost inaudible under the faint breathing of the forest itself. God, that disturbed him. It was like something out of Lovecraft.

  Just as he finished, the silhouette to the right suddenly exhaled. Its breath and saliva struck the soldier square in the face as its limbs writhed.

  “What the f—” he started. His hand snapped to his pistol.

  It grabbed him. Things—all sorts of parts—like roots and decaying tendrils. A thick cluster that looked like a mutant potato shoved its way into his mouth to gag him. Soon, the soldier was firmly coiled by the roots. The rest of the camp didn’t even notice at first. Beneath the jungle’s breathing there was only the faintest sound of something large moving through the black shadows of the underbrush, dragging a gently-squirming form behind it. No one could hear the blood dripping behind as it watered the moist earth and was absorbed almost too quickly into the dark green fold of the Zoo.

  Chapter One

  Dr. Christopher Lin stared his opponent down across the stainless-steel table with a slanted squint. Private First-Class Gunnar Åkerlund stared back. Chris’ eyes were black, Gunnar’s gray. The unspoken conflict between the strength of each man’s gaze was reflected in the actual conflict playing out between them. Long hours of strife, Machiavellian maneuvering, dirty tricks, furtive attacks, and veiled threats had brought them to this inevitable showdown.

  Private Monica Pérez sat a few feet to Chris’ right. She was involved in this too as a neutral third party. Her young face pouted, and she watched them with half-lidded chocolate-brown eyes.

  “Shit just got real, I see…” a lanky scientist remarked uncomfortably as he wandered into the hall for his afternoon meal.

  “Quiet,” a heavyset Corporal ordered.

  No one else spoke for the next minute. Then Chris broke the silence.

  “You think you’re tough,” he began. “You think your position has been secure all this time, hiding behind all those soldiers. The nerdy Asian scientist couldn’t possibly wipe you out of existence. Well, my friend…”

  “You wouldn’t dare,” Gunnar replied in his drawling voice. His mouth tightened, emphasizing the taut bone structure on his long face.
“All I’ve done is watch my own back. I turn my back once, trying to keep my shit wired tight, and you come starting this—”

  “Oh, I’m not starting this,” said Chris. A killer’s grin formed on his face. “I’m finishing it.” He reached out his hand.

  Pérez flinched.

  Chris’ hand descended on India. From there, he pushed several of the yellow plastic cavalry and artillery units—plus a few stray infantry—under his command right up to the border of the Middle East, where a single blue cavalryman and two infantrymen guarded Europe. They were all that stood against Chris’ total domination of Asia. “Ha, ha, ha,” he said in a slow, deliberate drawl and rolled three red dice.

  “Damn.” Gunnar sighed and rolled the defensive dice.

  The lanky scientist who’d wandered into the camp’s mess tent shook his head as Gunnar’s troops picked off a few of Chris’ legion of doom. But anyone could see it was hopeless. He turned away from the slaughter to find a jug of water and carried it back outside.

  Soon, the battle was over and Chris moved his horde into the Middle East. The last of Gunnar’s blue forces had been completely steamrolled. Now Asia, with its seven new troops per turn, was his. He already owned North America with five troops per turn for that—not too shabby. With twelve on top of the bonus for all the territories he owned, he’d be able to execute a pincer attack on Gunnar’s main stronghold in Europe to wipe him out altogether, leaving only a few territories in South America, but nobody cared about those. Then, he turned his attention to Pérez, who held Africa and most of Australia/Oceania.

  “Yessir.” Chris cracked his knuckles. “You military types might be good at things like ‘kicking ass’ and ‘survival,’ but this is a board game. You had no chance against someone like me. These games are my bread and butter. Do you have any idea how many old Yu-Gi-Oh cards I still have?” Assuming his parents back in Charlotte hadn’t thrown them out by now. They weren’t fond of “that Japanese trash” as they called it.

  “Well,” Gunnar said, “I guess I shouldn’t have reinforced Southern Europe at the expense of the Middle East. Most people ain’t bold enough to try and hold Asia.”

  “This reminds me of when Genghis Khan killed one-fourth of the entire human population,” Pérez said in her relatively flat voice. Its inflection drooped down at the end of every phrase. “That’s three-quarters of humanity he left to continue suffering. The bastard.”

  “Thank you for that glorious insight, Private Peppy,” Chris said. “We appreciate every glorious ray of sunshine you provide.” He took a card and ended his turn. His borders were well-defended against anything but an all-out, suicidal attack. Soon, world domination would be his. The corporal couldn’t bear to watch. They all knew how the game would end now. It was inevitable.

  “Man,” one of the spectators mumbled, “I actually thought Gunnar might win. Son of a bitch said he’s played over two hundred hours of D&D.”

  Then it was Private Peppy’s turn. She looked gravely at the game board, then sharply up at Chris. Gunnar sat back, his morose face now underlit with the suggestion of a sly smile.

  “We’re basically all doomed no matter what,” she said. Of course, she’d said similar things many times before. “But no way am I letting Yellow Fever spread across the whole planet without a fight. If any disease has the right to kill everybody, it’s the Black Plague.” She picked up her bonus troops from her container of black pieces.

  “Hah!” Chris blustered. “You’re not in any position to win at this point.”

  “I didn’t say I would try to win,” Peppy responded with a wicked sneer. And then she attacked.

  To Chris’ dismay, the black army’s offensive succeeded in hamstringing him and generally making his life difficult. Pérez took back the Middle East from her stronghold in East Africa and pressed northeast into Afghanistan for good measure. Worse, she rolled out of Australia, reclaiming the whole of that continent and also taking Southeast Asia. Chris had just lost the seven bonus troops he’d counted on and would have to expend his troops to regain it. That didn’t even take Gunnar’s turn into account. A sudden dread seized Chris’ stomach.

  Gunnar leaned back in the chair with his hands folded behind his head and watched the proceedings with deadpan amusement. “Well,” he said, “it just so happens I got a wild card…” He showed them his two matching cards, plus the wild. “That means I get twenty-five bonus troops.”

  “You’ll pay for this,” Chris said, pointing his finger. “You lured me into attacking the Middle East, didn’t you?”

  Gunnar produced a lit cigarette seemingly from out of nowhere and toked. “Like I said,” he began, “most people aren’t bold enough to go for Asia. Anyone who does is a threat to everyone else on the board. I simply needed to make sure Private Peppy there got that message, so she could do my dirty work for me while I waited for the comeback.” He then returned the cigarette to wherever it was he hid the things. “You bragging like you did certainly helped.” The army of blue figurines on his border swelled as he counted them out.

  “Dirty work. Yes. That’s what I’m here for, to lead all these men on hopeless ventures. Then again, in this era, any venture was hopeless. Just imagine all the dysentery shits they had to take,” Pérez said.

  “Did you have to say that?” someone groaned.

  Pérez shrugged in response.

  Chris gritted his teeth as Gunnar swept across Siberia and finally ran out of steam as he reached Kamchatka. He could probably assault Chris’ stronghold of North America on his next turn, and he and Peppy would likely end up splitting Asia. Chris might still make a comeback of his own when he got a match on his cards, but the game was back in play now—almost a three-way tie. At this rate, they might have to photograph the board and resume tomorrow.

  “Well, I have to admit,” Chris said, “that was a clever strategy. Meta-gaming, though, since you actually said the thing about Asia out loud. Still, not bad for a gun jockey. I mean, it does seem like you guys have a lot of downtime to play games anyway, whereas us nerds are always busy programming things or writing up—”

  The alarm went off.

  “Shit!” someone exclaimed. The whole tent exploded into motion. Men and women ran with guns clacking. Low voices muttered, and louder voices shouted. Someone jostled the table and half the Risk pieces fell out of place. It didn’t matter anymore.

  Chris snatched up his pistol and strapped it to his side. He wasn’t technically supposed to fight but was supposed to “observe” whenever this happened. As the alarm continued its shrill and panicked cry, they all knew exactly what was happening. The wall was under attack again.

  Chapter Two

  The sides of the mess tent buckled and flapped in the sudden wind. Chris allowed most of the commotion to pass him by, but he fell in close behind. He’d need to see what was going on. Someone had to figure out what exactly they’d been dealing with these last couple weeks.

  “Is it the Chimera?” Chris shouted. No one heard him over the din. Outside the tent was the rest of the camp that had grown up outside Wall One, the partly-ruined, forever-incomplete first line of defense against the alien-spawned jungle known as the Zoo. It had grown in the southern Sahara Desert on the border between Niger and Algeria from a tantalizing experiment to a deadly and overwhelming force. Chris had been called in for research, but at present, the mission was mainly about containment.

  Chris had lost sight of Gunnar, Private Peppy, and everyone else he knew. It was about 23:00 in the evening. Darkness had fallen hours ago, and even with the assistance of massive white stadium-style lights, the clustering shadows made it difficult to identify soldiers.

  Gunfire cracked to the southeast. Muzzle flashes revealed silhouettes of men firing their M-92 automatic rifles. Bigger reports were accompanied by bright flashes of light from the mounted machine gun turrets. Chris could barely make out a swarm of darker black shapes moving toward them against the blue-black sky.

  “Locusts?” he asked
the nearest grunt during a lull in the noise.

  “Yeah,” the man said in a hoarse voice as he shoved past Chris to join the fight.

  That was odd. Lately, their main concern had been the creature which everyone had dubbed the Chimera. And yet, as terrifying and enigmatic as that…thing was, a locust swarm was, in some ways, worse. There was, after all, only one Chimera. The Zoo produced an apparently limitless number of the mutant insects from hell.

  More gunfire. Chris hovered near the rear. Most of the men jogged toward the attack point along the southeast wall. Since the Chimera wasn’t present, he didn’t bother taking out his phone to attempt a photograph.

  “Net!” someone shouted as the sky grew still thicker and darker with the expanding swarm. Their hideous buzzing had grown louder.

  Though the wall itself had been thrown together hastily out of basic materials and spare parts, the camp did have a few high-tech tricks up its collective sleeve. The Net System was one such trick.

  A mechanism in front of the wall fired. Its payload was a huge net made of densely-woven fibers approximately three hundred feet across tethered to multiple weighted balls that shot up in an arc and then stuck to a steel lattice that had been erected in front of the tents. The balls were powerfully magnetized and would hold firm even under immense pressure without damaging the lattice. For all intents and purposes, a bug screen now separated this part of the base from the invading horde.