Amazon apocalypse, p.1
Amazon Apocalypse, page 1
Amazon Apocalypse 1
AMAZON APOCALYPSE
BOOK ONE
MARVIN KNIGHT
Contents
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
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Myrina, in the Amazonian Empire…
Afterword
Chapter
One
Growing up, every kid thinks they're special. Not me. Normal parents, normal school, normal life. Overall, I was about as normal as they come. But my best friend was anything but normal.
Her name was Myrina, and whenever we were together, there was bound to be trouble.
“Roll me, Carter!” Myrina said, arms tucked tight inside an abandoned tire we’d found by the side of the road.
“You sure this is safe?” I asked, cheeks puffy with baby fat. The two of us were about ten years old at the time.
“Who cares! Push!” Myrina yelled, and I pushed the tire.
She rolled down the street within it, squealing all the while. I raced along behind her on foot, trying to catch up. But the gentle slope soon became a hill, and she started rolling faster.
“Myrina, you're going too fast!” I yelled.
She giggled, as I raced to catch up. Down the street, there was a car coming our way. From the speed of the vehicle, it didn't look like the driver had seen us.
“Hey!” I yelled, waving my arms. “Stop! My friend is in that tire!”
I yelled, trying to get the driver's attention, but it was an evening in winter and the sun was already below the horizon. The black tire rolling down the middle of the street was hard to see amidst the evening shadows. From the glow on the driver's face, he was probably fiddling with his phone and not looking at the road on this quiet suburban street. He wouldn't spot Myrina in time.
My yelling must have gotten his attention, because he glanced up and saw the tire rolling toward him with Myrina inside it. He swerved, avoiding her by mere inches. But the sharp turn took him out of his lane and right in my direction.
My heart leaped in my chest as the twin headlights of the sedan barreled toward me. Time slowed, and I felt my short ten years of life flash before my eyes. But then the car came to a sudden stop, as surely as though it struck a brick wall.
The hood crumpled in on itself, and the entire car twisted, metal hissing in protest. When it finally came to a stop, the bumper bore the imprint of two child-sized hands sunk into the steel, exactly matching Myrina's outstretched fingers.
She stood between me and the car, back bowed and hands planted on it with a grimace on her face. I hadn't even seen her get out of the tire still rolling down the street. She’d moved faster than my eyes could follow and stopped a car with her bare hands.
“Are you okay, Carter?” Myrina asked, pulling her arms free from the bent and battered vehicle.
“Yeah...” I said, glancing at the busted-up car and the dazed driver before us. “We should get out of here. He's going to be mad about his car.”
The two of us ran off into the woods, out of sight before the driver recovered his wits enough to unbuckle his seatbelt.
As the years passed, the legend of the car accident grew into something of a local mystery. Handprints on the bumper, a driver with a strange tale to tell, but no answers anywhere to be found.
People came up with all sorts of explanations for the crash. Maybe he'd hit a deer that limped away from the scene, and the similarity of the dents to handprints were just a coincidence. Maybe the driver faked the strange accident to make an insurance claim.
Nobody suspected the little girl down the street and her best friend.
That wasn't the last time Myrina exhibited abilities beyond the norm. Once, when playing baseball with her, she hit the ball so hard that the metal bat broke in two and the ball flew so far that we never did figure out where it came down.
Another time, when we were trying to start a fire and couldn't find any wood, she punched a dead tree until it fell down, then split the chunks into firewood with a chop of her bare hand.
I was young back then, but I wasn't stupid. I realized the things she was capable of weren't possible for a normal human.
“Myrina?” I finally worked up the courage to ask the question that had bothered me all summer and fall. “Are you an alien? Like, some kind of superhero in disguise? If so, you're not very good at hiding yourself,” I chided her while we were playing on the beach.
It was winter, and chilly sea-borne winds whipped through the barren sand dunes tracing the shore. I was bundled up tight, but Myrina wore her usual shorts and t-shirt without a care in the world. She brought a jacket just for looks, but had tossed it aside at the first opportunity.
“I'm great at hiding myself!” Myrina replied. “I just don't have to around you.”
“Why?”
“Duh… because you'll keep my secret.”
I nodded. “Makes sense. But tell me! I wanna know!”
“Hmm... I'll tell you under one condition.” Myrina put her hands on her hips and grinned.
“What?” My eyes brimmed with childish curiosity.
“You have to pin me to the ground in a wrestling match!”
“Ha, you're a girl. I'll totally beat you,” I teased.
“As if. I'm a tough Amazonian princess! You? You're more like the scrawny wizard type,” Myrina replied. Then, without any warning, she dove at me and dragged me down to the sand.
I lost that wrestling match, and the one after it, as well as the next two that followed. I wasn't really sure how I ever thought I could win in the first place. The girl could stop a car with her bare hands. She could overpower my entire body with just her little finger. I had no chance of winning against her.
Every time I brought up her mysterious powers, she brought up our little bet. The day I finally beat her would be the day she revealed her secret to me.
I spent months roaming the local quarry looking for strange meteorites or green rocks that I could wave at Myrina to see if they would nullify her powers. I tried drawing weird diagrams and chanting. I even tried begging her to give me super strength as well, so I could finally beat her.
“Ha! There's only one way to get as strong as me!” Myrina replied. “Slay monsters and gain levels!”
“Like in a video game?” I asked.
“Yeah, like a video game.”
But try as I might, I couldn't find any monsters to slay. I wasn't about to go crawling through the woods hunting wild animals, so I confined my tests to the occasional bug here and there. Many of them were nasty-looking things, and in my search I found a log with a couple of tiny snakes under it. I hoped that I'd finally hit the jackpot and had found some real monsters to slay. I didn't get any levels, though, no matter what I tried.
But I did remember something—Myrina was afraid of snakes.
That was when I got another idea. I picked up one of the snakes and stuffed it in a jar for safe keeping. Maybe these things couldn't make me as strong as Myrina was, but perhaps they could help me beat her another way.
And so, the next time I pestered Myrina about her abilities, she challenged me to another wrestling match.
“Ha, got you again, Carter!” Myrina teased as she pinned my right arm over my head and sat straddling my stomach. Her grip was like iron, and I didn't have a chance at breaking it. But I kept struggling all the same, just to make sure she kept both arms on that hand. “Give up and admit I win again!”
“Oh yeah?” I asked, a grin splitting my face as I opened my jacket pocket. I pulled out the jar and twisted it open with my free hand, then dumped the live snake on my chest right in front of her.
“Ah!” Myrina screeched in surprise and disgust, jumping off me in an instant.
I'd looked these snakes up online and learned they were basically harmless, but Myrina didn't know that. She screeched and squealed, just as planned.
“Eww!” Myrina said as I picked the snake up and waved it at her.
“It's coming for you, Myrina!” I cackled evilly as I waved the snake at her, dangling the creature in her face with its tail pinched between my fingers. “It's going to get you!”
“Carter, drop that thing!” Myrina said, scrambling backward.
“No way. This little guy here is my new buddy. I'm going to bring him with me on all our new adventures!” The snake wiggled as I dangled it in front of Myrina's face.
“No! Carter, get rid of it! Snake monsters are dangerous! It's going to eat you!” Myrina yelled.
“I'll only get rid of it if you admit defeat.”
“That's cheating!”
I shook my head. “That's strategy!”
“Okay, okay. I admit defeat. Just get rid of it!” Myrina yelled.
I set the snake back down on the ground, and it slithered away through the sand while Myrina scooted across the ground to prop herself up on a fallen tree trunk. I sat down next to her.
“Well?” I prodded.
“Well, what?” Myrina pouted. Her cheeks were puffed up and her face was locked in a scowl.
“I won. Now you've got to tell me your secret!”
Myrina was silent a moment. When she spoke, her voice was quieter than before. “I'm not supposed to share this with anybody. My family will be mad if I do.”
“Tell me!” I insisted. “I won, and you promised!”
“Okay. I guess I did promise...”
“Tell me! Tell me! I promise to keep your secret.” I was so excited. Was she part of a government experiment? From an alien planet? Was she secretly a robot? I couldn't wait to find out.
“I'm from another world,” Myrina explained. “We live under the authority of a powerful intelligence known as the System. I guess you Earthlings might consider it to be an Artificial Intelligence. It's with us all the time, and it monitors our growth while helping us get stronger by fighting each other, as well as monsters. The levels I've mentioned before are something I earned by training with my clan back home. We're a clan of Amazonian warriors who live in a sprawling empire. My father is the king of an allied world, and my mother is the matriarch of our clan.”
“A clan of Amazon women...” I frowned. “Like Wonder Woman?”
“Yeah, but we don't chase off men. It's just that we only accept the strongest,” Myrina replied. “If I brought you home, you'd probably have to fight like a thousand other guys in duels to the death.”
Her voice got so quiet, I had to lean in to hear what she said next. “It can get pretty scary.”
“What about you?” I asked. “Do you have to fight duels to the death?”
Myrina shook her head and smiled smugly. “Nope! My clan captured a bunch of monsters for me to fight so I could gain levels quickly and easily! All the tournaments I fought in were only till one side surrendered, not to the death.”
I frowned. “That doesn't sound fair.”
Myrina told me all about her home world. There, her family dominated a vast swath of territory on a massive alien planet. They wielded swords, axes, spears, and other melee weapons in a never-ending fight against the local monsters and other Amazonian clans. It was quite the fantastical story, and my young mind was completely enraptured.
But eventually, the sun started to set, and I was getting cold.
“It's getting dark and I have school tomorrow,” I said. “But tomorrow you're answering the rest of my questions! I want to know all about this Amazonian Empire!”
Myrina gave me a smile. “Sure. I'll meet you here tomorrow! Same time and same spot!”
I returned home, was scolded by my parents for staying out so late, had dinner, and then went to bed. School passed swiftly the next day, and I could hardly wait to get back to the beach to talk to Myrina again.
But when I arrived at our usual spot, she was nowhere to be found.
“Myrina?” I called.
All I heard was the sound of the wind whistling over the rocks.
I went back to look for her the next day but she wasn’t there. I tried again the day after, wondering what was holding her up. Maybe her parents had grounded her for staying out so late.
I tried every day for the rest of the week, and then every day the following week, as well. I didn't see Myrina a single time. I even checked the sand for her footprints and got excited a few times when I thought I saw signs of her. But when I saw my own prints next to them, I realized how old they were. She hadn't been here in weeks.
But even the house where she used to live was gone. I remembered her living just a block and a copse of trees away from me, but when I tried going over to her house, there was just an empty plot of land dotted with trees. It was city property, and always had been. It was like she'd never existed at all.
Weeks turned to months, and months to years. I never forgot about my best friend, Myrina, but I did move on.
By the time I entered high school, I only visited that spot on the edge of the beach once a month or so. I made new friends and picked up new hobbies—like table-top RPGs and video games. I even used Myrina as the inspiration for a barbarian character I played in one of our long-running Dungeons and Dragons sessions after school.
As my memories of her faded with my childhood, I began to think the amazing things she could do had been nothing more than the overactive imagination of a child. Perhaps we'd played pretend so well that those things we made up started seeping into the things we'd actually done.
I looked for her online, hoping to get in touch with her again. But there was no sign of her. She wasn't on social media, and public records didn't mention her—not once. I ran her name through a search engine every once in a while, but couldn't find her anywhere. Maybe she dyed her hair and changed her name, but I still thought there must be some sign of her out there, somewhere. There had to be some trail I could follow.
More than a decade later, I lay on the beach in our spot in the middle of winter. I'd come back from college, almost done with my senior year, and wondering what I was going to do with my life.
My parents had passed away in a house fire the week before, just as I was finishing up the semester’s final exams. I stared up at the nighttime stars, wondering why I was alone, and the world seemed so dark and empty. A single tear dripped down the side of my face as I lay there on the sand.
And then, suddenly, someone was lying there next to me. I wasn't sure when she appeared, or how she'd gotten there, but she lay on her side with her cheek resting on her hand. She ignored the night sky and had eyes only for me.
“Hello, Carter. Sorry I'm late.”
I jerked upright, wiping my face with my sleeve.
“Sorry, I didn't see you there. I'm not sure how—” I tried to push myself to my feet, but the woman twisted her leg over my waist. She straddled me, pressing her stomach against mine with her bosom pressed to my chest.
This was the first time I got a good look at her in the dim starlight. Long scarlet hair cascaded over her shoulders. High cheekbones and a firm chin spoke of a noble bearing; that thought was reinforced by the silver circlet that wound around her brow. It was hard to tell with us both lying down, but she was almost as tall as I was and had the toned figure of a career athlete. She wore leather and steel scale armor over her body, and I was pretty sure I felt a scabbard pressing into my thigh. I wasn't able to look, though, because a pair of piercing green eyes bore straight through to my soul.
“Don't get up. I have a lot to say and little time to speak.” Her hot breath tickled my neck, and I was transfixed by her gaze. Any man would have been hypnotized by those plump red lips.
I spoke the words that lay inscribed on my heart, left there and abandoned on that beach so many years ago.
