B00M0CSLAM EBOK

  MERGEWORLD

  BOOK ONE

  Mason Elliott & Garan R. R. Faraday

  High Mark Publishing

  www.highmarkpublishing.com

  Seattle & Portland, Chicago, London

  Titles by Mason Elliott

  The Spacer Clans Adventures

  Naero’s Run

  Naero’s Gambit

  Naero’s Fury

  The Citation Series

  Naero’s War, Book One: THE ANNEXATION WAR

  Naero’s War, Book Two: THE HIGH CRUSADE*

  Naero’s War, Book Three: NAERO’S TRIAL*

  Short Fiction in Ebook Format

  The Permit

  Fantasy with Author Garan R. R. Faraday

  Mergeworld, Book 1

  Mergeworld, Book 2*

  Mergeworld, Book 3*

  (*Forthcoming)

  Titles by Garan R. R. Faraday

  Fantasy with Author Mason Elliott

  Mergeworld, Book 1

  Mergeworld, Book 2*

  Mergeworld, Book 3*

  (*Forthcoming)

  MERGEWORLD

  Book One

  by

  Mason Elliott & Garan R. R. Faraday

  Kindle Edition

  © 2014 by Mason Elliott. All rights reserved.

  Published by High Mark Publishing

  ISBN 978-1-930451-10-0

  Watch for other titles by these authors in the future.

  Cover Art by

  Frank Miller

  frankmillerdesign.com

  License Notes:

  This book or ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This work in any format may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of these authors.

  Edition Notes

  If you do not see this edition note here in this spot on the copyright page and on the very last page of your ebook or print version of this title, then you are not getting the final, polished version of this novel that the publisher, editors, and authors intended for you to receive. Please contact either the publisher or the authors via their emails or websites if you do not see the following update code:

  (High Mark Publishing Update Code H2714D)

  1

  David Pritchard woke up gasping from one nightmare and went straight into another. A terrible agony tore through him as if the universe twisted him inside out.

  Then he snapped back again.

  What in damnation had just happened? Something…was very wrong.

  Startled, groggy, it only took an instant for his bleary mind to figure it out.

  Flames engulfed the front of his college apartment building. The stench of smoke, and the sounds of screams and breaking glass outside, only confirmed it.

  He felt dazed, and blinked his scratchy eyes. The first thing he instinctively reached out for was the framed picture of his dead parents.

  That was the last picture he had of them, taken a few years back, right after he started college in South Bend.

  They hugged and smiled at each other in medieval garb at the Bristol Renaissance Faire up in Wisconsin. The picture froze both of them happily in time, retired in their forties. Unlike many parents that age, they weren’t divorced and they still loved one another. One of their Ren-Faire pals had taken that picture for them on their digital camera.

  The same camera retrieved from the car accident on the Illinois highway on their way back home from Bristol. A tractor-trailer jackknifed in the heavy rain and took them away.

  The same weekend David begged off going with them.

  He had blown that picture up in Photoshop, printed out an 8 x 10, and bought a nice oak frame for it. He kept it with him wherever he went. He’d die before he’d part with it, fire or no.

  All that history and pain flashed through David as he clutched their picture close to him in the dark. He didn’t even have to see it, just cling to it in his hands. That picture always sat prominently behind his small alarm clock on his night stand with his smart phone and wallet while he slept. That was how he found it, even in the semi-dark. He also grabbed his phone and wallet.

  His clock normally flashed bright green. Power outage, probably from the fire. And the backup battery must have gone dead. Light switches? Nothing, of course, due to the fire.

  The growing reek of smoke triggered his desire for self-preservation. Once he got out, he could call his friend Mason Tyler, who lived in a duplex over on Allen Street. His buddy Mace would help him.

  Somewhat more awake now, David struggled not to panic. He staggered out of his room like a robot. His lanky, five-eleven frame stumbled down the hall toward his front door. He stubbed his little toe hard in the darkness. A second later, he grunted and cursed the sudden blinding spread of pain, but kept moving.

  Oh, hell. No way out the front.

  Dangerous ribbons of smoke curled violently through the metal front door frame and snaked up across the ceiling like an upside-down waterfall. The paint of the metal fire door already bubbled and blistered. David choked and swallowed hard.

  If that door had been wood, his entire apartment might have already been completely engulfed. He might not have even come to. He saw no sense in touching the steaming door knob.

  The apartment building stairs acted like a natural chimney, funneling the fire and heat straight up.

  A window–climb out a window. He was only on the second floor.

  His three richer roomies were already off on spring break for the next week, to the Bahamas or some such. Their parents could afford such junkets. David could not.

  He suddenly realized two very important things. First, the fire hadn’t spread to the back part of the apartment building yet.

  Next, he was only wearing navy boxers and a gray T-shirt over his shaking frame.

  Early April in South Bend, Indiana, could be any weather from sun and sixties to a flippin’ blizzard.

  Clothes. Only seconds to throw some on. Even in the dim, flickering orange light spilling out of the thick curtains, he spotted his laundry basket on the couch.

  The smoke in the living room grew thicker. He put his precious picture, smartphone, and wallet down for only a few moments.

  Jeans. On. Socks. On. He snatched up his thick blue, gold, and green hoodie from the back of the old couch where he usually left it, and pulled into its soft, warm comfort. Stocking cap. Popped on his head. Wool scarf. Around the neck. He sat down and jammed on his old gray Nike running shoes, feeling a pair of thin gloves and keys in his hoodie pockets still when he bent over.

  Ready to ride, or, at least, climb out the back window to escape burning to death.

  He stuffed his folks’ picture, wallet, and smartphone into his dark green Jansport backpack with his pad, gel pens, and a few books. He zipped it all up.

  To the back window. He pulled the curtains aside and yanked the big panel open.

  He jumped slightly at the sight of some guy who had already climbed down the back of the building from the third floor. Their eyes locked, only a window screen between them in the dim, pre-dawn light and the cold morning air.

  The guy looked utterly terrified.

  “Watch out!” he warned, trying to keep his voice low. “Those things are killing people. They’re everywhere!”

  “What things?” What was this guy freaking out about?

  The guy jolted, wide-eyed, and then choked.

  A bloody iron arrowhead jutted out the front of his throat. In the time it took them both to blink, another
arrow punched through the front of his chest, out of his T-shirt. The poor guy’s mouth gaped and worked. Then his eyes rolled up white. He fell backwards, head down.

  David grabbed for him but missed, his hands blocked by the barrier of the screen. He tore it away and stuck his head out the window.

  He spotted strange movement down in the darkness.

  Two dark, twisted, hunched-over figures loped in on bandy legs and clawed feet wrapped in fur and rags. They were smaller than humans, about four to five feet tall, and very skinny and wiry.

  Whatever they were, they were definitely not human.

  One of them slit the dead guy’s throat from ear to ear with a long, wicked-looking rusty knife.

  Blood spurted bright black in the night.

  The other creature sniffed the air and snarled up at David with a greenish-black, twisted, inhuman face. Long pointed ears stuck out of holes in its ragged hood. It had a big warty nose, and gleaming green eyes. It gave full draw to the same kind of short, black bow of jagged horn that the other one carried.

  The creature took dead aim at David.

  And fired.

  2

  Twenty-year-old Mason Tyler felt a sickening crunch of pain. An intense explosion blasted his off-campus duplex apartment building to shreds all around him.

  The strange destructive burst flung him out of bed to slam into the buckling ceiling, wall, and floor. It was a wonder he wasn’t smashed to death as the exploding house was demolished. He awoke in confused terror, panic, and pain–hurtling through the air.

  And from a nice cozy dream where he had been canoodling very pleasantly with his cute, towny girlfriend, Tori Nelson. Only the most kissable nineteen-year-old, redheaded beauty on the planet. He had been staring into Tori’s gorgeous brown eyes, when–

  Ka-wham!

  The next thing he knew, his duplex house toppled over and went to pieces in a rush of flying fragments, as if it were being swept away by a cyclone. He and his personal belongings from his college room and closet spilled violently into the open air.

  The next instant, they all toppled into what appeared to be a glowing lake of strange water that seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. As if by magic.

  Terror paralyzed him.

  Why was the water glowing in such a weird way? Was he still dreaming? Had he somehow gone into a bizarre nightmare?

  The glowing water exploded as he, his belongings, and the house debris crashed into it in a sweeping wave. The water surged forward in a blinding spray of light and liquid.

  What in the holy hell?

  Mason couldn’t believe it. None of it made sense.

  A lake, on Allen Street, in the middle of South Bend?

  No way.

  Lakes just didn’t appear out of nowhere.

  Yet this one had.

  And the blast or whatever it was had just smeared him, his room, and all of his possessions over that lake–the same way a gigantic knife might smear butter across the surface of a huge pancake.

  All of this flashed through his mind as it instantly unfolded.

  Mason sank beneath the surface of that eerie, glowing body of water, stunned and gasping in pain. Multicolored flares and flashes of light lit up everything around him.

  Hell, he thought he saw flashes of light ignite within him, in his arms, legs, and hips. He felt energies burst inside himself, filling him further with fear and wild, queasy sensations. Feelings that would have completely freaked him out if he hadn’t been so stupefied from the initial blast.

  What was this? Was he on drugs somehow? Had someone slipped him something freaky before he went to sleep? Acid or something like that? His mind was racing. Was the glowing water real? Was he going to drown?

  Mason’s fears ran rampant, flooding his mind with dread and doubt.

  What happened if you died in a dream? Did you also die in real life?

  All of this had to be a nightmare, and a really weird one at that.

  Yet at the same time, it all seemed so frighteningly real.

  Mason watched his antique wooden gun box–filled with all of his single-action, cowboy-era competition shooting gear–sink slowly along with him.

  The strange, colored light show passed through all of his gear at the same time that it passed through him.

  Where in the hell would he have gotten acid?

  What was happening? He felt so odd. Mason held his right hand up before his face under the water. His own flesh and bones pulsed with the suffused, strange lights that permeated them.

  Perhaps he was dying. Oh, hell…maybe he was already dead.

  Deep sudden regrets took him.

  It was selfish, but all he could think of was his beloved Tori.

  He’d never kiss her again or taste her mouth. Or see her smile up at him and then veil her pretty brown eyes.

  He’d never get to ask her to marry him the way he wanted to, someday. Everything else in Mason’s world was secondary to his beloved.

  He didn’t sink down far–only seven or eight feet. His box of shooting gear hit lake bottom. He bumped into it, still stunned

  Mason would miss the single-action, black powder, fast-draw pistol events he loved competing in. He’d miss his local Civil War reenactor’s unit. He’d miss his best friend, David Pritchard, another reenactor, but a medieval nut. His goofy roommates. Other people in college.

  He didn’t want to give up and die, but he seemed frozen with fear. How could he make himself move? What could he do to force himself to live? What could possibly make the strange colored lights, the weird lake–all of this odd nightmare go away?

  Tori.

  If he could just hold her again and tell her what she meant to him and his life. If he could tell her how much he loved her with all his heart and everything that he was and ever would be.

  If he could just have the chance to do all of that before he died.

  The strange lights all suddenly winked out, as if someone had thrown a switch.

  Mason gasped, feeling the cold, dark water and its stifling pressure close in about him. He tried to breathe, but he only drew in water. The pressure felt as if rhinos crushed down on his chest.

  That much of his ordeal was real.

  He lay over the top of his shooting gear box. His feet and hands scrabbled, sinking into the slimy marl and silt that he stirred up on the shallow lake bottom.

  Frantic, he pushed off the box with his hands and feet and shot back up toward the dim, morning twilight shimmering above the weird lake’s surface. He clawed his way up toward air and life. It seemed so far away, lit by dim, glittering light, but still lit.

  Just when he thought his heaving chest and head would explode, he breached the surface. At first he treaded water, coughed up some, and gulped in the cold air of an early, midwestern April morning.

  Then he shook the water from his eyes and made for the nearest shore. In moments he touched bottom and could stumble out the rest of the way, water streaming from his soaked clothing. Here, the lake wasn’t really that deep at all. Perhaps just five or six feet, at most.

  Still deep enough to drown in.

  Mason looked around and tried to get his bearings, but he continued to stare at more insanity.

  Most of Allen Street was, in fact, now submerged in the new lake that had somehow appeared. More houses from down the street stretched out in their normal line. Only now, they led right into the water. Some of their shingled roofs were just above or below the water itself.

  Yet something else wasn’t right. In the ebbing twilight, Mason saw fires raging in the distance in every direction, as if dozens of homes were somehow on fire. How could there be so many? Had South Bend been hit by some kind of massive bomb? Perhaps by a chain reaction of numerous, out-of-control gas explosions?

  Then his hearing clicked back in, returning abruptly. In the distance and even close by, everything sound like chaos. So many bizarre sounds. People shouting and screaming. Other weird noises, like some kind of animals or even monsters r
oaring and snarling. What sounded like people and the monsters clashing and fighting together for their lives.

  Breaking glass. The sound of breaking glass seemed to come from every direction.

  In his shock, Mason grew more worried. Had he died? Was he dead? Had he somehow woken up into some kind of hell?

  Even more disconcerting, when he looked back at them–at the Allen Street houses that extended out into the lake–at some point they did not continue on. They ended. Some of them were only partials, as if sheared in half. What could do that?

  Where did the other halves of those houses go? There wasn’t any wreckage or debris.

  And beyond them… Nothing but a dense, thick forest of large, dark trees. Trees like nothing he had ever seen before.

  He glimpsed more fires and heard more screams and breaking glass extending far off into the distance and beyond.

  Mason staggered back up out of the cold water and collapsed again at its edge, still gasping. Everything around him threatened his sanity. None of it made any sense.

  How long before hypothermia killed him?

  Then he tripped over a dark body in the poor light at the water’s edge.

  He knelt down to check it. At least it was another person and not some demon or some such.

  Please, don’t be dead…don’t be dead.

  Mason very suddenly had no wish to be alone.

  The cold night air closed in around them both. But at least it wasn’t raining or snowing–yet.

  Gosh, he couldn’t tell if he was shaking more with the cold, or from raw fright.

  He struggled to focus on the body at his feet. It still felt warm. He grabbed the outstretched arms and tried to drag it further from the water’s edge. Mason had taken some first aid and medic training in ROTC. He needed to get it together and check for a pulse and breathing, to see if this person was injured, and if there was anything he could do to help.