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    Veil of Destruction: Kessler Effect, #4
    Veil of Destruction: Kessler Effect, #4
    Veil of Destruction: Kessler Effect, #4
    Ebook281 pages3 hours

    Veil of Destruction: Kessler Effect, #4

    By Vannetta Chapman

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    About this ebook

    How far would you go to save your brother?

    It's been six months since all of the lower orbital satellites crashed to Earth. Akule Lopez has waited through every one of those days...waited to see her brother arrive home in Alpine.

    Now she's done waiting. Winter has fallen across the desolate Texas landscape. Rumors of war and insurrection abound. Akule doesn't know how she'll get from Alpine to Dallas. She doesn't even know that her brother is still there. But she does know that she's going to find out.

    Her father doesn't want her to go, but Akule isn't a child anymore. She doesn't need her father's permission. She also understands that if she goes, if she dies in the attempt, then her father will have lost both of his children. She won't let that happen. If it's the last thing she ever does, she will find Paco and bring him home.

    What sacrifice is too big, when it seems your life has been draped in a Veil of Destruction?

    From USA Today Bestselling author Vannetta Chapman comes a survival series unlike any other.

    Veil of Destruction is book three in a new post-apocalyptic survival thriller series from USA Today Bestselling Author Vannetta Chapman. An exciting contribution to the genre of disaster fiction, this is a series that will keep you reading late into the night.

    Kessler Effect Series

    Prequel: Veil of Mystery
    Book 1: Veil of Anarchy
    Book 2: Veil of Confusion
    Book 3: Veil of Destruction
    Book 4: Veil of Stillness

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherVannetta Chapman
    Release dateMay 1, 2024
    ISBN9798223645221
    Veil of Destruction: Kessler Effect, #4
    Author

    Vannetta Chapman

    Vannetta Chapman writes inspirational fiction full of grace. She is the author of sixteen novels, including the Pebble Creek Amish series, The Shipshewana Amish Mystery series, and Anna’s Healing, a 2016 Christy Award finalist. Vannetta is a Carol award winner and has also received more than two dozen awards from Romance Writers of America chapter groups. She was a teacher for fifteen years and currently resides in the Texas hill country. Visit Vannetta online: VannettaChapman.com, Twitter: @VannettaChapman, Facebook: VannettaChapmanBooks.

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      Book preview

      Veil of Destruction - Vannetta Chapman

      In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.

      ~Robert Frost

      That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet.

      ~Emily Dickinson

      Chapter 1

      The dream jolted Akule from sleep.

      Redbird.

      Torrential rain.

      Blood.

      Above, beyond, and through the images ran the overwhelming sense of grief and loss. She sat up, swiveled, placed her feet against the floor, and dropped her head into her hands. She no longer experienced the painful jolt back to reality—cell phones useless, communication nonexistent, food scarce, modern civilization a distant memory. She didn’t even suffer through the sudden recollection that her mother had died. Those things her subconscious seemed to have accepted.

      But her brother...how was she supposed to carry on never knowing what had happened to Paco? How could she possibly ignore the nagging feeling that he might be in trouble? That he might want to come home, but couldn’t.

      Was that what the dream meant?

      She’d had it half a dozen times now. Redbird. Rain. Blood. Grief. Loss. She ticked the items off on her fingers, stared at her hand, and made her decision.

      She rose and dressed quickly. There wasn’t much more she could put on. She’d slept in her clothes. They always slept in their clothes now. The cold was relentless. Pulling a cap over her raven black hair, gloves onto her hands, and a rain-resistant coat on, she stepped from her apartment into the predawn morning.

      A north wind tore across the Chihuahuan desert.

      The 27 th of December would dawn like every other day had for the last week—weak sunlight or none at all, cold temperatures, more hardship.

      Snow covered the surrounding mesas and continued to fall, though more lightly, more softly than the day before. Most of the citizens of Alpine—what was left of them—remained burrowed in their beds. At least they had beds.

      It was early, too early, to be out. But what Akule had to do was best done before the sun came up. Also, she didn’t care to spend another sleepless night second-guessing her decision. Then there was the dream. The possibility of experiencing that again was enough to drive her from her bed.

      Akule had no doubt that her Aunt Tanda would be in her office. Tanda was the one person whose opinion she trusted. She trudged down the street, pushed open the door to the police station, and gave a small wave to Conor, who always seemed to be on the night shift.

      She in her office?

      Sure is.

      I’ll just— Akule motioned toward the back, toward the office with Police Chief stenciled on the door.

      Conor nodded and returned his attention to transcribing the previous day’s call-outs in the journal Tanda insisted they keep. Of course, they weren’t actual call-outs since no one’s phone worked. A neighbor or family member would rush in asking for help and the officer on duty responded. Everything went into the journal.

      The world might have changed.

      The apocalypse might have come.

      But Tanda Lopez was determined to be the defender of law and order.

      Akule tapped lightly on the door, then turned the knob.

      Tanda’s expression broke into a smile at the sight of her niece. Wow. You’re up early.

      So are you.

      Tanda shrugged that away and rose to pull her into a hug. Akule’s aunt was on the short side—a good four inches shorter than Akule’s five feet, eight inches. Tanda had been trim and toned even before food became scarce. Akule had always been thin too, but it had been a softer thinness before June 6 th. Now she felt sinewy, as if everything that was extra had been chipped away by the harshness of winter in a post-modern world.

      They both had straight black hair, though Tanda’s was long and pulled back like their abuela, Akule’s great-grandmother, had worn hers. Akule’s had grown out to shoulder length. It was a different look for her. She preferred to chop it in a jagged style. Maybe that had been a small way to push back against the expectations of the world.

      She no longer had the luxury of worrying about such things. It took all of her energy to merely survive each day.

      Akule took the chair across from Tanda.

      Want some coffee?

      No. Now that she was here, she didn’t know how to begin. Perhaps she should have simply left in the middle of the night. It would have been easier. Though she loved her aunt and had no doubt that her aunt loved her, Tanda’s piercing gaze caused her to squirm. Akule often wondered if Tanda had received their abuela’s second sight. She certainly seemed to know what a person was thinking before they spoke.

      As if to prove that very point, Tanda sat back in her chair and cradled her mug of coffee. Her first words were a statement, not a question. You’re leaving.

      I have to go look for him.

      Tanda continued to study her, as if assessing whether she was up to this task. Finally, she nodded toward the window. You could wait for the weather to clear.

      With no weather forecast, we have no idea when that will be.

      Why now?

      Why not?

      Where will you look?

      I’ll start in Cedar Hill. That’s where he was living.

      Tanda finally shifted her gaze, searched the opposite wall as if she could find the answer there. I can’t imagine what the Dallas area looks like now. I feel like I should go with you.

      You can’t. We both know that. This town, what’s left of it, depends on you.

      Paco is family. Family comes first. And then she surprised Akule with a confession. We should have gone already. But it’s been, you know…one hit after another.

      First the battle with Marfa, then the battle with the Watchmen, then the winter and the flu season and even tighter food rations.

      Dad won’t want me to go. That’s why I’m telling you.

      We’ll talk to him together.

      Do we have to?

      Yeah. We do. He’s on patrol at seven. Tanda glanced at the battery-operated wall clock.

      Soon they’d be out of batteries, or they wouldn’t recharge from the solar panels. Then even the hours of the day would cease to hold any meaning.

      Only five-thirty, she said. We can still catch him before his shift. Let’s go.

      They walked to the apartment that Keme had taken in Tanda’s building, which was only a few blocks from the police station. He hadn’t wanted to move into town. He’d wanted to stay in the trailer that Akule and Paco had been raised in, the trailer where the memories of her mother still saturated every corner of every room.

      In the end, he’d accepted the practicality of moving into town. That admission and the fact that a crazed and armed drifter had tried to break into Tanda’s apartment changed his mind. Tanda was fully capable of defending herself, but there’d been no stopping Keme then. He took the apartment two doors down. He’d wanted Akule to move in with him, but she’d assured him she was fine with her roommates.

      She was fine with her roommates.

      But she needed to bring her brother home.

      She hoped her father would understand that. But whether he did or not, she was going.

      Keme answered seconds after their knock, almost as if he’d been waiting for them. There had always been a strange kind of ESP between her dad and her aunt. She saw it now in the knowing glances they exchanged. She felt it in his sigh and Tanda’s small shrug of her shoulders.

      Her father stood nearly six feet tall. When Akule looked at him, she remembered her Kiowa heritage, which came from her grandmother. Her grandfather was Hispanic. They both still lived outside of Alpine, insisting they had what they needed on the small acreage that had been their home since before Keme was born.

      Better come in, Keme said.

      They kept their coats on. The room was cold. Whoever had designed the building hadn’t envisioned a time when there would be no heat or air conditioning. Open windows provided some relief in the summer, but during the winter...

      Winter was simply a trial one fought to endure.

      They sat around the dining room table. Someone else’s home. Someone else’s furniture. Some days it felt to her as if they’d taken up someone else’s life. The original occupants of the apartment had been out of town on June 6 th.

      The day the satellites stopped working.

      The day their entire world changed.

      It wasn’t only a matter of cell phones not working. Nearly every aspect of their daily lives had been dependent on 4G to one degree or another—shipping and receiving, manufacturing, GPS and signal lights, air traffic control towers, even train schedules. The train crash that occurred that first day still lay across the tracks that wound through Alpine.

      The twisted pieces of metal acted as a sort of watershed in Akule’s mind. There was before...when the tracks were clear for passage and the possibility of another life—a different life—lay just around the bend. And there was after...when every ounce of energy was focused on simply surviving.

      I’m going to find Paco.

      No, you’re not.

      I am.

      We’ve talked about this. We agreed to wait until spring.

      I’m not waiting.

      Akule’s great-grandmother had been Kiowa. What percentage, Akule didn’t know. Things like Ancestry.com no longer existed. Abuela had looked Indian. She had acted Indian. She had the stoicism of the Native Americans and the stubbornness of the Hispanic people. Abuela was old and diabetic and had been one of the first casualties.

      But Akule saw her great-grandmother’s traits in her father, and she felt those same traits in herself. Often they were like two trains colliding, neither willing nor able to change course. She was reminded again of the freight train and the Amtrak train. One had sideswiped the other. Their timing had been off by only a few seconds. The resulting crash killed eight and injured more.

      Tanda seemed to sense the stalemate, so she cleared her throat and weighed in. I’m sure you two could stare at one another all day, but I need to get back to work, Keme has patrol, and Akule…well, I’m not sure what you were supposed to do today.

      Helping Doc Cade, but I already told him I wouldn’t be there.

      You told him you were leaving? Keme sat back, raised and then lowered his hands as if to say can you believe this girl?

      I would like to side with you on this, Keme. Tanda cupped her hands, breathed into them, then stuck them into the pockets of her coat. I don’t like the idea of her going⁠—

      She’s not.

      Or of her going alone.

      Definitely not.

      But I feel it too. Tanda sat forward. For a moment she stared down at the table, and Akule wondered if she was looking for the answers there. She shook her head once, then glanced from Akule to Keme. I feel it too. Someone needs to go, and I don’t…I just don’t see how I can.

      Why now? Why not wait until spring?

      Akule was ready with her list of reasons, though she wouldn’t tell him about the dream. Even to her ears, reciting a dream sounded like a child afraid of the boogeyman. She didn’t have the words to explain that it wasn’t merely a dream. Instead, she said, There will be more people on the roads in the spring. There will be more danger in the spring. You said yourself that the roads are basically empty right now. We haven’t had a drifter in what…a month?

      Doesn’t mean they aren’t out there.

      I can take care of myself, Dad.

      Keme exploded out of his chair, paced the short distance to the living area and back. How would you even get there?

      I’ll take my mare.

      You’ll need a pack animal too. You’ll need grain for the mare and supplies for yourself. Tanda sat up straighter, crossed her arms, stuck her hands under her armpits as if to warm them.

      "It’s a long trip, Akule. I know you’re strong. You’ve matured a lot in the last six months, and if anyone can find Paco and his family… She emphasized the last three words as if Akule had forgotten about her two nephews and sister-in-law. If anyone can find them, I believe you can. But traveling five hundred miles on horseback in the dead of winter won’t be easy."

      I don’t expect it to be.

      Say you can make thirty miles a day. That’s a little more than two weeks to get there, plus time to find them, and then a two-week return trip. Returning will be harder. You can’t load the entire family on the back of your mare.

      And you’re not even sure he’ll be there. Keme sat at the table again, concern and heartache coloring his expression.

      Akule understood what that was about.

      She understood that her father had lost his grandmother, his wife, and countless friends. Maybe he thought it was better to hold on to the one child he had with him rather than risk her being killed in the search for the rest of his family. He might have felt that way, but that wasn’t what he said.

      You think I don’t want to go? You think I wouldn’t have left the day we understood nothing was going back to normal? Or the day your mother died? He dropped his head, and that sign of grief tore at Akule’s heart more than his words. Finally he raised his gaze to hers. The safest thing, the smartest thing, is to wait here. Paco knows where we are. He’ll get here when he can.

      I can’t wait for that, Dad. I can’t do the safe thing. What’s the point in trying so hard to stay alive if we’re not going to at least attempt to save the people we love?

      Keme didn’t have an answer to that.

      Tanda rubbed her temples with her fingertips.

      Headache? Akule asked.

      Tanda waved away the question and addressed her next comment to Keme. We can’t stop her. She’ll go with or without your permission. She’s only telling us because she respects you.

      Akule didn’t like being talked about as if she weren’t there, but she also appreciated Tanda stating the obvious. She would go with or without her father’s permission.

      Then Tanda played the card that hit home. Lucy would agree with her. In fact, she would have insisted that you go months ago. I know it, and you know it.

      All of the argument went out of her dad at the mention of her mother’s name.

      Fine.

      Akule breathed out a sigh of relief.

      But I’m going with you.

      Dad, I don’t need you with me. I don’t want you with me.

      It doesn’t matter what you want, Akule. I’m going.

      Tanda nodded as if she’d expected as much. Why hadn’t Akule seen this coming? She should have simply left town. She could be five miles north by now. Five miles closer to her brother.

      But another voice, a smaller voice, pushed to the front of her thoughts. That voice was soft, convincing. It was, she supposed, the voice of her mother.

      Why not go with your dad?

      Why do you feel a need to do this alone?

      She didn’t have an answer to either of those questions.

      Forty-eight hours, Tanda said. Let me see what supplies I can get from Stan and arrange for some kind of pack animal. You can both ride your mares. Take something to trade for two more horses once you get there. That should be enough. The kids are still small—they can double up with Paco and Claire.

      Tanda stood as if it was settled.

      They all stood.

      It was settled. Akule would leave in forty-eight hours, and she wouldn’t be going alone.

      Akule’s father surprised her then. He pulled her into his arms, then reached out and pulled Tanda into the circle. They stood there, the three of them, and Akule understood that she would hold onto this image until she was back in Alpine again.

      And she was coming back. But she’d come back with her brother, his wife, and both their children. She wasn’t going to settle for anything less.

      Chapter 2

      Keme made it to his patrol assignment fifteen minutes early. He was to ride the northwest circuit around town. Highway 118 to past the airport, over to County Road 1703, south to 67, then east into town. Once there, he’d take a fifteen-minute break, then ride the route in reverse.

      There were four people on patrol at all times. Their routes and times were staggered. To someone watching, it would look haphazard. It was anything but. The Council had spent several days hammering out the details of the protection of Alpine. The last thing they wanted to be was predictable.

      Being predictable could get you and those you loved killed.

      Highway 118 was, as usual, deserted—absolutely no movement as far as he could see. The airport continued to mock them. Since the day the satellites fell, since June 6 th, no planes had landed on the small airfield. As for the planes usually stored there, their owners had fled within the first week. No one had returned. No movement on CR 1703.

      Alpine remained an isolated island in the middle of the Chihuahuan Desert.

      Keme used the time he rode to create a supply list in his mind. At least it kept his thoughts off the cold. The temperatures wouldn’t be so bad, but the wind from the north caused his bones to ache—another sign that he was getting old.

      When he’d completed his fourth circuit, he checked in at the Sul Ross campus where Stan Makowski was coordinating patrols. Tanda insisted on rotating personnel in and out of each position just in case. Their entire life had turned into one huge just in case.

      Surprisingly, you got used to it.

      Got a minute before you go? Stan nodded toward what had been the rodeo office. Sul Ross was a small-sized, public university that had served the Big Bend region of far West Texas. A founding member of the National Intercollegiate Rodeo Association, the school’s arena, stalls, and offices had proven a perfect fit for Tanda’s Strategic Command Center.

      Keme followed Stan into an office that was only marginally warmer than the outdoors.

      Tanda caught me up on what’s happening.

      Instead of responding, Keme sank into a chair.

      Let’s go over what you and Akule might need.

      We’ll both take our mares—if you can spare them.

      Yes, we can. Be sure you bring them back. Stan attempted a smile, then frowned down at a sheet of paper he’d been scribbling on. Logan wants to give both mares a thorough going over. As for a pack animal, the Scotts have half a dozen mules. Mike’s planning on using them in the spring to put some crops in the ground. He’s willing to send one with you.

      All right.

      I’ve set aside a minimal amount of feed for the animals. You’re going to have to find more along the way.

      Keme nodded. Animal feed was already on his mental list.

      I can also send K-rations—enough for two weeks. Again, that won’t be enough for the entire trip, but it’ll at least get you there.

      Medical kit?

      Yup. Already cleared it with Cade. Stan sat back in his chair and studied Keme.

      It was strange for Keme to realize he’d

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