The Abandon Series | Book 1 | These Times of Abandon Read online

  These Times of Abandon

  Ryan Schow

  Copyright

  The ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy so that you may read it with a clear conscience and not one day end up in hell over a shitty technicality. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.

  THESE TIMES OF ABANDON

  Copyright © 2020 Ryan Schow. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this ebook, or portions thereof, in any form. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, cloned, stored in or introduced into any information storage or retrieval system, in any form, or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical without the express written permission of the author. The scanning, uploading and distribution of this ebook via the Internet or via any other means without the express written permission of the author or publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Author’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents—and their usage for storytelling purposes—are crafted for the singular purpose of fictional entertainment and no absolute truths shall be derived from the information contained within. Locales, businesses, events, government institutions and private institutions are used for atmospheric, entertainment and fictional purposes only. Furthermore, any resemblance or reference to an actual living person is used solely for atmospheric, entertainment and fictional purposes.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Cover Design by Milo at Deranged Doctor Design

  Visit the Author’s Website: www.RyanSchow.com

  Contents

  Preface

  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

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  A Look Ahead: These Times Of Retribution

  Your Voice Matters…

  Free Ebook: The Last Light Of Day

  Also by Ryan Schow

  About the Author

  Preface

  Most of this story takes place in Northern Kentucky at Northern Kentucky University and along the banks of the Ohio River in the small towns of Silver Grove and Melbourne. In the spirit of crafting a compelling story, I have altered some small aspects of the real towns and taken a few very minor liberties with NKU’s dorms and Silver Grove’s volunteer fire department. Thank you for understanding an author’s creative license.

  Chapter One

  Leighton McDaniel

  Mondays and Wednesdays were Leighton McDaniel’s busiest school days. She had Accounting 150, Biology 120, and Entrepreneurship 201. Stacking such demanding classes together in the same day proved to be challenging for the nineteen-year-old, but she came from a good family with sound morals and a concrete work ethic. In other words, whatever she started, she made sure she finished.

  On her more challenging school days, Leighton reminded herself that her siblings, Marley and Rowan, had taken the same bold course load that she had. They never shied away from a challenging curriculum in their years at Northern Kentucky University, so why should she?

  Marley and Rowan graduated college, but unbeknownst to Leighton, she would not graduate as they had. That day—Wednesday, the third day of March—would be the last day of school. It would also be the last civilized day in America for years, perhaps even decades, to come. Had she known that, Leighton would not have stayed up half the night studying for her Accounting test. Instead, she would have readied herself for the end of civility as the nation knew it.

  Leighton’s cell phone vibrated on the bed beside her, rousing her from the few hours of sleep she had managed to get. She shut off the alarm and tried to wake herself up. Rolling over, she grabbed her hearing aids off the nightstand and slipped them in her ears. Her world went from silent to a snoring ruckus.

  Her roommate, Chandra Reed, was a deep sleeper and a mouth breather. Did she even know she snored? Leighton wasn’t sure. Staring at her, she found Chandra slightly annoying, but she was also envious of her. Leighton had never been able to sleep well; for Chandra, it seemed to come easy. And the snoring? Sometimes it was hard not to think this was her way of bragging. That was completely illogical, of course, but sometimes the uphill battles of life had the strangest effect on you. Leighton’s envy was one such battle.

  Several years back, after a near-drowning accident and subsequent ear infections took her hearing, Leighton fell into a deep depression. She slogged around in the emotional bog of her life for years, unwilling and unable to come to terms with her disability. Only recently did she find the courage to crawl out of that self-destructive pit and try living again. Part of her ascension came from knowing she was leaving home for college, while another part was her waking up to the silver linings tucked deep within her affliction.

  Her grandmother once said, “Inside of every problem is a solution, but if you look close enough, you will find the answers to those questions you are not yet smart enough to ask.”

  Leighton found a way to accept her hearing loss, but only recently did she learn the right question: How do I turn my weakness into a strength?

  Her roomie, Chandra, provided the answer to that question. Rather, her crazy snoring provided that answer.

  Increased concentration allowed for better learning, while better learning equated to higher intelligence. What better way was there to concentrate on her schooling than to study in complete silence? And what better way was there to get a good night’s rest than to sleep in that same perfect silence?

  By removing her hearing aids when she studied, and by taking them off at night, she had effectively increased her concentration and improved her quality of sleep. These two things, she knew, were crucial to good mental health and intelligence.

  Initially, Leighton despaired over her handicap. But now, years later, she refused to see her hearing loss as either a handicap or a weakness. To her relief, modern technology had resolved that dilemma. With her newest hearing aids, she’d been given the option of silence or sound—hearing aids to hear, or turned-off hearing aids to hear almost nothing at all. When she realized this gift she had been given, her attitude turned around completely.

  If her grandmother was still alive, Leighton would have thanked her for her sound advice, for she no longer felt cursed.

  Crawling out of bed, she plodded to the bathroom, yawning hard, feeling like she’d been hit by a truck. It didn’t matter how quiet
she could make her surroundings, for Leighton, four hours of sleep wasn’t enough. Not for her, and not for any high-functioning adult. Having showered the night before, all she had to do was brush her teeth, pull her hair into a ponytail, then dust her face with makeup and head off for coffee and class.

  While Leighton was putting on the final touches of her makeup, Chandra’s snoring hit a high point, the uproar coming from her face the thing of legend. She just shook her head at the sleeping girl.

  The two of them couldn’t be more different.

  Where Leighton was a country girl from central Kentucky, Chandra was a Southern California transplant with a style that was contrary to Leighton’s attire. Leighton chose brightly-colored clothes and accessories to complement her blond hair and bronzed skin while Chandra was pale-skinned and wore all black, with dyed black hair, heavy black makeup, and black fingernail polish. Chandra was the prettier of the two of them, but why she tried to hide her beauty behind such off-putting makeup and such gloomy attire was a mystery Leighton had yet to solve.

  Leighton grabbed her backpack off the unopened box her uncle had sent to her (the closest thing she had to a nightstand), took one final look at Chandra, then wondered for the hundredth time why the girl never even bothered trying to talk to her.

  After weeks of discomfort, Leighton finally made it a point to remove her hearing aids the minute she got to her room. For her, it was an act of frustration. But to Chandra, she wanted the gesture to say that she wasn’t expecting any real conversation and it was no big deal. That seemed to ease some of her discomforts, but it failed to bring the two of them together, which her mother, Faith, had said was the point of having college roommates.

  Leighton was walking across campus to her accounting class when she saw a boy she recognized. He was in a couple of her classes. Was he following her? She had her suspicions. He was a good-looking sophomore with a solid physique, but there was something slightly off about him, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. She suspected that he was attracted to her, but why he never approached her only deepened the mystery of him. She glanced over her shoulder, watched him look away. Yeah, he was clearly watching her. What in the world was she going to do with him? Was he an admirer? A stalker? She wasn’t sure if she should be flattered, alarmed, or embarrassed for him. Would he change his behavior if she told him she had a boyfriend, one she was serious about?

  She glanced back, and again, she caught him looking at her. He had longish hair that fell over his right eye, a strong jaw, and big arms, but for some reason, he seemed to lack confidence. She saw it in his walk, and how he held his head and shoulders. Her boyfriend, Niles Bennington, had the walk of an alpha male. He was a man through and through. But this boy following her was just that—a boy. Finally, she stopped, turned around, and waited for him.

  When he lowered his eyes and chin and started to walk past her, she said, “At some point, you need to say ‘hi’ or you’re going to start creeping me out.”

  He paused, looked up at her, and said, “Hi, then.”

  She laughed. “We have Accounting together. Are you ready for the test today?”

  He nodded while grinning halfheartedly.

  “Are you going to formally introduce yourself or do I have to continue to pretend I don’t know your name is Aaron?”

  “You know my name?” he asked, perking up. Letting out a small grin, he stood a little taller, a little more confident. “Wow, I guess you know my name.”

  “And you know mine,” she said. She reached out a hand and said, “But just in case you don’t, I’m Leighton McDaniel.”

  He shook her hand and said, “I knew it from the classes we have together.”

  “Aaron, you seem exceptionally shy,” she said. “Why is that?”

  “Different childhood, I guess.”

  Tilting her head, she narrowed her eyes and smiled, and then she resumed her trek to class. Aaron kept up with her. She said, “So, what do you mean by ‘different?’”

  The second she asked the question, her cell phone started vibrating. She stopped walking, fished it out of her back pocket.

  “I grew up in rural West Virginia with my mom,” he started to say. “I’ve spent most of my life living on fifteen extremely-secluded acres.”

  She held up her finger, silencing him. “Hold that thought.” She saw it was her father calling and said, “It was nice meeting you, Aaron, but I have to take this call.”

  “But I was talking to you,” he said, pouty.

  “Well, you’re not now,” she replied, firm. Leighton answered the phone, kept her eyes on Aaron, suddenly weirded out by him. “Hey, Dad.”

  “Leighton,” her father said.

  Aaron stood in front of her, slack-jawed and staring, almost like he was upset by what she’d just done.

  “That’s not polite, just interrupting me like that,” he said with some bite to his tone.

  He said this as if Leighton wasn’t talking on the phone, as if she hadn’t dismissed him moments ago.

  “Dad, hang on a second.” She muted the phone and fired Aaron a look. “I don’t know you beyond your name, so when my dad calls, he’s going to take precedence over you. Any adult would get that. Are you an adult?”

  He glared at her, unwilling to blink. She refused to be intimidated. Finally, she turned and walked away from him.

  Unmuting her father, she said, “Sorry about that, what’s going on?” Leighton put her hand inside her backpack, found her canister of pepper spray and got a hold of it, just in case.

  “I’m calling about the weather.”

  She laughed, looked up, saw the dark clouds. It was cold, the air was damp, and a few compelling gusts had whipped past her earlier. A storm was coming. She felt it. But she didn’t need her dad to call and tell her about it.

  “Are you planning on telling me something I don’t know?” she chided, glancing over her shoulder. Aaron was trailing behind her, too close, his hair pushed back, his burning eyes firmly upon her.

  He wasn’t looking so meek anymore.

  He looked…angry.

  “Dense cold air is being pushed over warm air,” her father said.

  “Honestly, Dad, you don’t need to warn me about a thunderstorm.” Discreetly, she slid the pepper spray out of her bag and held it close to her.

  “This one’s supposed to be bad,” he said.

  There was something different about her father, a distance she felt in his tone, in his nuanced responses. He’d been like this for a few weeks now. He was usually so calm, so even-keeled. Now, he was exuding a rare but slightly manic vibe, which left her feeling concerned.

  “Bad storms have happened before,” she said. “We’ve weathered them together.”

  “There’s a tornado warning on this one.”

  “For when?”

  “Tomorrow, maybe the next day.”

  “Yeah, your tornado warning,” she said with a smile.

  She stepped off the main path, moving out of the pack of students. She sat down on the nearest bench and watched Aaron walk by. He refused to look at her. Flicking his jaw, he held his head high, no longer the slumped-over introvert he pretended to be earlier.

  “Maybe…” her father said.

  “I’ll keep an eye on the sky,” she said, thinking how people can sometimes get weird when the weather turned.

  “You know this is when they come out,” he said, cryptic.

  “Who, Dad? Who is going to come out?”

  “The Hayseed Rebellion.”

  Ah, yes, she thought, dread filling her belly. The thought of the violent anarchists pumped her full of both fear and anger.

  “I’m insulated here at the university. We have campus security, auto-locking doors, floor monitors, and resident assistants.”

  “Rent-a-cops, resident assistants, and locking doors won’t stop them. They’re in Cincinnati, Leighton. That’s seven miles away.”

  “They’re spread thin these days.”

  “Th
ings are escalating. They’re in neighborhoods now. Do you hear what I’m saying, Leighton?”

  “I hear you just fine.”

  When her father had first begun to warn her of the potential dangers of being on her own, she appreciated the advice. But when he started to scare her unnecessarily, Leighton felt her temper flare. She was never frightened before, so why should she be now?

  Deep down, she understood that her father was only looking out for her. That’s why she continued to remind him that she was following her uncle Walker’s principles of safety to a T. When she was younger, she had referred to these unwritten rules as Walker McDaniel’s Principles for Avoiding Pain.

  “Most people get hurt by being in wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people,” her uncle, the former Green Beret, had said.

  “Is that a Walker McDaniel lesson in situational awareness, or op-sec?” Leighton asked, challenging him. She was fourteen-years-old at the time, too young to know about things like op-sec, or operational security.

  “It’s about both,” he had grinned.

  “I’m not on an operation, Uncle Walker—”

  “Your entire life is your op,” he had interrupted her to say. “If you think of it that way, you’ll be better prepared for the challenges of the world.”