Here is a short excerpt from my newest novel, Staring Down the Monster- An EMP Thriller Book Three.
Trigger Warning for some adult language!
Tyler woke up hot, kicking off the sheet. It was a difficult situation, sleeping without air conditioning or even a fan. He glanced at his watch—0250 hours. A noise from outside their open window got his attention. Maybe that’s what woke me up, he thought, hearing it again. Then he heard voices trying to speak quietly and the sounds of items being carried.
“Shit!” a man whispered. “Why is there a hole in their backyard? I almost broke my leg.”
“I’m not carrying you,” another voice responded quietly. “It looks like all the bedrooms are on the main level.”
“Yeah, that’s fine. You get started back here and I’ll go do the front.”
Tyler placed his hand over Kimberly’s mouth and whispered into her ear.
“Wake up. We’ve got some intruders outside.”
The police officer’s eyes snapped open and she was awake instantly. He quietly told her what he had heard as he slipped out of bed and pulled on a black t-shirt and his tan cargo shorts. Kimberly quickly pulled on a pair of sweatpants to go with her black t-shirt and met him by the bedroom door.
“Why don’t you go upstairs to alert the others?” he whispered, picking up his M4, “but be careful because one of the perps said he was going to the front.”
As she picked up her own rifle that was standing against the wall by their bed, she leaned in again.
“I smell gas,” she told him. “We need to deal with this fast.”
He carefully opened the bedroom door and then the apartment door leading into the rest of the basement. As soon as she started up the stairs, Tyler pressed his ear to the back door, hearing someone moving around just outside under the deck. He knew that he had to move quickly so that Kimberly would not have to confront the other intruder by herself. The former Marine pushed the selector on his police-issued M4 to three-round burst. He took a deep breath and quietly unlocked the door. He jerked it open and rushed outside, activating the flashlight mounted on the rifle. The bright beam of light caught Bad Teeth Billy trying to get his butane lighter to flame. An empty one-gallon gas can lay at his feet.
The wannabe arsonist was frozen momentarily in the bright light but quickly recovered and reached for his .30-30 rifle leaning against one of the wooden deck supports. Tyler squeezed the trigger twice, sending two three-round bursts of 5.56mm soft point bullets into Billy’s abdomen and chest at a distance of just ten feet. Even with the suppressor, the shots were still loud, echoing against the back of the house. Billy cried out in pain and dropped onto his back. Tyler rushed over to where he lay and fired another burst into the thug’s head. Garrett then retraced his steps back inside his house, locked the door, and grabbed a full magazine out of his body armor that lay outside their apartment on his gun cleaning table. He swapped mags as he rushed up the stairs.
Gunfire suddenly exploded from the front of the residence, Kimberly’s unsuppressed AR-15 roaring several times as another weapon answered it. Tyler was greeted by heavy smoke as he made it to the main level, orange flames on the front porch dancing in the open windows.
“Tyler!” Kimberly called out from the porch. “He set the house on fire and now he’s running away!”
“What the fuck?” Barry yelled as he stumbled wide-eyed into the living room, clad in just his white Fruit of the Looms, clutching his 9mm Glock 17 pistol.
“Go turn on the generator so we can get some water on this,” Tyler ordered, moving out onto the front porch.
The flames were starting to spread as Kimberly coughed, pointing over to the wooded area at the right of their house.
“That’s the direction he ran,” she gasped.
Tyler pulled her back inside and slammed the door. The open windows had already allowed the interior to fill with smoke. Amber was standing at the corner of the living room and the hallway, her own Glock pistol in hand as she guarded Thiago and Maria’s bedroom, the collar of her black t-shirt pulled up over her nose and mouth.
“Amber, shut all the front windows!” Tyler shouted, gasping as he rushed for the garage with Kimberly right behind him.
The garage faced the same direction the arsonist had run so Kimberly kept her rifle pointed out as Tyler rolled up the door. There was no sign of the perp as they sprinted around to the front of the house. Tyler turned on the outside faucet and grabbed the hose, aimed it at the flames and depressed the trigger on the nozzle. Nothing happened as the fire continued to lick up the side of the home.
He forced himself to stay calm, even as panic started to set in.
“Can you go check on Barry?” he asked Kimberly. “He was supposed to be turning on the generator.”
“On it,” she said, turning to go.
At that moment, however, Tyler felt the pressure in the hose. This time when he squeezed the trigger, water began spraying the flames. Before his death, Buck had purchased a high-pressure nozzle to keep the driveway and the sides of the house clean. That extra pressure was a Godsend now as his oldest son was able to direct a powerful stream onto the growing and spreading blaze.
Tyler saw another abandoned gas can laying near the right corner of the porch. That was clearly where the arson had started and where the most damage had been done. Barry soon joined him carrying two ten-gallon buckets of water.
“Where do you want this?” he asked Tyler.
His older brother pointed to where the flames were still fighting back. The former defensive end easily controlled the heavy buckets and placed the water exactly where it needed to go. He sprinted around the house to refill them from the well using the hand pump. By the time he returned, Tyler had finally extinguished the worst of the blaze. He pointed to a couple of hotspots for Barry to douse. As the younger brother turned to go to refill the buckets, Tyler spoke up.
“Hang on. Turn on all the outside lights and see if you can find where the other guy poured the gas around the deck supports. I killed him before he could get his lighter to work. Pour some water all over that area.”
“Got it,” Barry replied, hurrying away.
“Tyler? Barry?” a voice called from the street. “It’s Clarence. Are you OK?”
With the fire out, the older Garrett brother couldn’t see him but recognized the voice of his neighbor from across the street—retired Army Colonel Clarence Stephens
“Hey, Colonel,” Tyler answered, continuing to spray the area where the fire had been, not wanting to take a chance on it reigniting. “I think we’re OK now. Hang on a minute and we’ll let you in.”
Kimberly rejoined him a minute later, a relieved look on her face as she gazed over the smoldering ruins of the front porch.
“Thank God you were able to get that out! What do we need to do now?”
“Can you go let the colonel in? He’s at the gate.”
A couple of minutes later the still-fit, early seventies former Army officer joined him, his 9mm Beretta pistol tucked into his cargo pants. Before Stephens could say anything, Tyler spoke to his wife.
“Did the other guy get away?”
“I don’t think I hit him,” she replied, regret in her voice. “I’m sorry. He had already lit the fire and was sprinting away. I rushed my shots and then he started shooting back at me with a pistol. He ran in a zig-zag to where we entered the woods the other day when we went to the Lawson’s house. I didn’t get a good look at his face. I just saw that he was white and had long brown hair. I hate that I missed him.”
Tyler stopped spraying water for a moment and squeezed her shoulder.
“You don’t have anything to be sorry about. I’m just glad you’re OK. The good news is that none of us were hurt and that the fire is out. How is it inside the house?”
“It’s pretty bad. The smoke is really thick. They’ll all need to sleep downstairs with us.”
“Okay. I’m going to wet this down a little more. Why don’t you go get Barry, Amber and the kids moved into the living room of our apartment?”
Like the previous two volumes of the EMP Thriller Series, this one is fast-paced with plenty of action and suspense to keep you awake, turning the pages! Click on the link and grab your copy of Staring Down the Monster.
