Earth Zero: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller (Next Book 2) by Scott Nicholson Page A

ground grew rockier and soggier he recognized the sound as running water.
    Franklin staggered through some low branches that clawed at his face. One of them tangled in his beard and yanked him off his feet, and he hung there for a moment, neck muscles screaming in pain. He regained his footing and jerked his beard with one hand, tearing away gray hair and twigs. One of the predators clattered up the face of a boulder behind him and Franklin turned toward it.
    The deer-creature stood outlined against the hazy psychedelic sky, its eight-point horns jabbing the heavens. Its knobby forelegs led up to muscular thighs that clenched with rage. Its eyes glowed with a malevolence that seemed to draw on all the earth’s anger for human transgressions against nature, from poison to pollution to merciless extinction. Here was hell made whole, an organic fabrication of God’s secret nightmares.
    Franklin had a clear shot at it, but he was paralyzed more by awe than fear. The stag’s hooves clicked against granite and a plume of moist fog tumbled from its flaring nostrils. The rubbery lips peeled back to reveal teeth far sharper than those needed for browsing leaves and grass. Then it leapt from its perch and sailed toward him like an avenging angel.
    Franklin threw his elbow over his face and shoved his way into the underbrush, the wash of whitewater rising to a roar. Kicking at vines that threatened to peel his boots from his feet, he burst into a clearing to find Stephen looking over a precipice.
    “I thought you were dead,” Stephen said.
    “There’s still time for that,” Franklin said, sucking oxygen and crouching on shaky knees.
    They were on a rocky outcropping that gave way to a churning waterway forty feet below. The force of the falls caused the rock to vibrate. The riverbed was far too wide to hurdle. To their left was a slippery, steep climb that promised certain death. To their right was a thicket of doghobble, sumac vines, and rhododendron that would snare them like flies on a spider’s web.
    And behind them galloped the deer from hell.
    Franklin peered over the ledge again. The current sluiced past them in white torrents, bottoming out in a dark, rippling pool whose depth was unfathomable from their vantage point.
    “Can you swim?” Franklin asked.
    The boy shivered and closed his eyes.
    Not that we’ll get a chance. Most likely we’ll smash to bits on submerged rocks.
    Franklin tossed his rifle aside and shucked Stephen’s from his shoulder, along with his pack. “Don’t need that breaking your neck.”
    Franklin wanted to give Stephen some tips, such as landing feet first, but a rack of antlers poked from the nearby brush. Franklin pushed him over. “Go!”
    Stephen shrieked on the way down and Franklin waited until he heard a liquid ker-plunk. The deer broke free and burst onto the ledge, sweeping its rack of antlers at him and growling low in its chest.
    “So long, you son of a bitch,” Franklin said, hopping into space.
    The fall couldn’t have lasted more than two seconds but it seemed like days. Franklin felt himself turning, gazing up at the aurora and the deer head that protruded from the ledge. He didn’t want to land on his back. Dying was one thing, but breaking his spine and lying there helpless while all manner of carnivorous amphibians nibbled at him wasn’t his idea of a party.
    He tried to sit up so he could tuck his body over his knees but the water slammed him before he finished the maneuver. The impact drove the wind from his chest and the cold penetrated straight to the bone, mercifully numbing him so that he didn’t fully feel the pain of splashdown. His muscles threatened to peel from his geriatric frame. Bubbles roiled across his face as water rushed into his nose and mouth.
    His feet hit bottom and he kicked away, caught in an undercurrent that tried to drag him beneath the rumbling base of the falls. He finally burst free of the surface and gasped once before being tugged