Below is a teaser excerpt from Chapter 35 of the soon-to-be-released Book 3 in the Fallen Apples Series. Target Date: February 23, 2025. Molly, Brian and Jason are being hunted in Kentucky!
Chapter 35: Taking Stock
“Well, this sucks,” Brian checked his phone and then raised up from the rock he and Jason had mounted behind. Both had a pistol out and one earbud in.
Molly limped at a fast walk around the bend in the trail a few hundred meters ahead of them. Seeing movement, she began to make herself small and raise her rifle. Identifying Brian well before her muzzle swept him, she suddenly smiled and then began walking faster in their direction.
Brian heard a buzzing overhead and Jason called on the comms. “Get down! Drone!”
Molly heard it too late. A quad flier buzzed over the carriage trail, twisted from an arc to hover with her in its obvious view, and then raised up ten meters.
“Shoot it!” Jason called, looking through the trees to reacquire the drone, but lowered his Glock 19 as the shot was far too long for the small arm.
Molly however had no problem raising her AR and putting a round into the main body. The drone dropped to a side, corkscrewed for a few turns as the impact cracked through a power line and the camera system, and then plummeted off into the trees.
In moments, Brian and Jason were moving towards Molly.
“Sorry,” she huffed. “I didn’t see it in time.”
Brian briefly checked her over, noting the blood on her face, but she waved him off. “I’m fine!”
“That’s what you said last time with a hole in your leg,” he patted her vest quickly and found nothing, spun her around, which made her squeak, and then tapped her shoulders. “Okay, you are good.”
“We need to move,” Jason pointed off to the north, parallel to the carriage trail and away from the farm. “That way. Our timer starts now. We run until we can’t run, walk until we can’t walk, crawl until we can’t crawl and then hide for two hours. Got it?”
“You lead,” Brian pushed Jason in the direction. With a nod at Molly, Jason settled the straps on his daypack into a better spot and began jogging through the brush, careful to avoid dead branches or spots which would be trivial to track. They tucked in behind him as the sound of trucks echoed up the forest coming from the carriage road.
Fifteen minutes later they began to hear the sound of water and Jason started the process of vectoring them right towards the east. Holding up his hand, he lowered to a knee and checked the map on his phone. Seeing what he wanted to see, a bend in the river around a quarter mile along to their right, he would take them to that point and then cross. Just as he motioned to continue a snap of automatic fire broke the air. He felt a pinch and then an explosion of pain from his midsection and went down hard as the fire from the hill 200 meters across the river tore through him.
Molly answered the initial shot with three rounds from her rifle. The responding machine gun cut into the trees near her. Another two careful shots from her AR took out the shooter. Moving to a better position, Molly began scanning the hillside and surroundings, looking for other shooters. One head popped up and she took the shot, causing a helmet to fly off. Another head popped up and Molly planted a round directly in the looker’s face.
In the pause, she checked right to see Brian had dived for Jason and already had the man dragged out of the line of sight and behind a rock the size of a large truck. She hopped half way towards them, alternating attention between the ridge and the short space of woods between them and the trail roads over her shoulder. Finally resting her rifle on the rock with her foot just next to Brian’s she whispered just louder than the groaning of pain.
“How bad is he, Brian?”
<< Find out on February 23, 2025 >>