Blind Sighted: Navigator Book Two Read online

  BLIND SIGHTED

  (NAVIGATOR Series BOOK TWO)

  SD TANNER

  Blind Sighted

  Copyright © SD Tanner 2016

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by law.

  Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Dedicated to Mousey

  And our good friend, Senior Airman Tim

  Table of Contents

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE: Stuck on goo (Leon)

  CHAPTER TWO: Leading the blind (Bill)

  CHAPTER THREE: Unplanned parenthood (Ark)

  CHAPTER FOUR: Stepping out (Jo)

  CHAPTER FIVE: Food for goo (Ben)

  CHAPTER SIX: Who’s the boss? (Leon)

  CHAPTER SEVEN: Bear of little brain (Dayton)

  CHAPTER EIGHT: Plan B (Jonesy)

  CHAPTER NINE: Pulling petals (Leon)

  CHAPTER TEN: Waking nightmare (Ally)

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: Twilight flight (Shirley)

  CHAPTER TWELVE: Lucky Lady (Jonesy)

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Civilized critters (Leon)

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Clouded minds (Ark)

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN: Waking Knights (Jonesy)

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Flawed vision (Leon)

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: Trapped in the city (Shirley)

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: The chocolate factory (Bill)

  CHAPTER NINETEEN: Prepped to kill (Jonesy)

  CHAPTER TWENTY: Stepping up (Jo)

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: Unmellow jello (Dayton)

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: Knight rider (Jonesy)

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: Family first (Leon)

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: Bad hair day (Shirley)

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: I spy (Lexie)

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: Future imperfect (Leon)

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: Hybrid (Dayton)

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: Old dog with fleas (Tank)

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: Blind Sighted (Ally)

  CHAPTER THIRTY: Blind luck (Bill)

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: Trapped in the city (Leon)

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO: Hidden lives (Tod)

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE: Brass balls (Leon)

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR: Defining moment (Ark)

  EPILOGUE

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  To keep the action exciting this story is told through multiple points of view. Please see the character name in the Chapter heading to know which person is narrating.

  For other series by SD Tanner, please check out the Hunter Wars series, Hunter Wars Series.

  I really hope you enjoy the Navigator series. All four books in the Navigator series are now available.

  PROLOGUE

  A new mind to explore. Weaving his awareness into hers, he picked apart her thoughts. Strands of worry and images of places and people were caught by his memory. One driving thought overwhelmed all the others in her mind, and he pulled it into his own. The woman, who was now absorbed into his body, was very worried about her hair.

  CHAPTER ONE: Stuck on goo (Leon)

  “It’s too damned quiet.”

  “Yeah, it’s a shitstorm waiting to happen.”

  Peering through the slit on the MaxxPro truck, he silently agreed with Tuck and Trigger. They’d driven along enough quiet roads to know it only took a second for everything to change for the worse.

  “Lexie, what can you see?” He asked.

  She was on the roof of their vehicle with Tank on top of the one behind them. Travelling in single file, they were slowly cruising along North Martin Street in Porterville, California. After Bill had arrived at CaliTech, he’d insisted they brief the staff on the state of the nation, but the meeting hadn’t gone well. When Ark had shown the four hundred or so engineers the footage of what was happening outside their secure walls, all hell had broken loose. People had immediately wanted to leave to find their families. Despite assuring them that they wouldn’t survive outside the wire, the only way to calm them was to agree they would send his squad to their homes in Porterville.

  Bill had arrived at CaliTech with Jo, two troopers, a couple of civilians and a badly injured woman called Ally. Dayton had also shown up with another group, including a cop called Jonesy. Although they now shared a dormitory at CaliTech, they were too busy trying to learn how to use the Navigator gear to spend much time talking to any of them.

  “It’s weird. Some houses don’t have any people at all. Other houses have people, but they’re all in one room, and there’s critters all over the place,” Lexie replied.

  “Maybe they’re hiding from the critters.”

  He heard Jenna through his earpiece. “The first of the houses we need to check is coming up on our right.”

  The street was wide and the homes were identical, single story houses with double garages. None had fences, and with few trees and dry grass, the area looked abandoned. Cars were parked along the edges of the road, but they were dusty and probably hadn’t moved in the two weeks since the country had fallen.

  Lexie always made using the hydraulics look easy, but after repeatedly falling on his face, he quickly realized it was going to take some practice. He, Tuck and Trigger spent every spare moment they had in the training hangar at CaliTech. When they weren’t making idiots of themselves by falling over, they were using the simulators to learn how to interpret their visor screens. They were getting better at it, but it would take a lot more practice before his reaction time using the visor would be fast enough for combat. Still lacking confidence in their abilities, today they were wearing their regular combat gear. Their Kevlar helmets had cams attached, and although they didn’t provide anywhere near the detail of the visor, at least Ark could give them some battle support.

  Unlike their trip through Albuquerque, this time they had the firepower a tank could bring. Tank’s heavy-duty kit included a hand held automatic belt-fed gun. It fired a depleted uranium-tipped hollow point .30-cal bullet with an extra powerful grain load. He carried a thousand rounds for the weapon and it had a range of twelve hundred yards. A grenade launcher was mounted on his left shoulder that was capable of firing high explosives, CS gas or buckshot. Like Lexie, he also had a computer-controllable gun built into his right arm that also fired depleted uranium-tipped bullets. As if that wasn’t enough firepower, the man was also packing a .45-cal handgun strapped to his chest.

  “Okay, this is it,” Jenna said.

  Stopping the trucks on the road, they cautiously opened the doors and stepped onto the tidy street. Eyeing the sidewalk, he noticed a six-foot streak of blood. It was dry and whoever had bled there probably hadn’t survived, but there were no corpses anywhere. In Albuquerque, dead bodies had littered the roads, and it made him wonder where all the people had gone. Maybe more of them had escaped from this suburban area, but he didn’t know where they could have gone that was safe.

  “Lexie, how many dead bodies are you seeing in the houses?”

  Everyone on the mission was connected to the Navigator communications grid, including Ark at central command in CaliTech. Answering for her, Ark said, “Not enough, Leon. There should be an average of three to four people per house, but over half of them
are empty.”

  “Is the target house empty?”

  “No, there’s five people in one room at the back of the house.”

  “It looks like a bedroom,” Lexie added.

  While Jenna and her squad of five established a perimeter, he continued to assess the target house. Hanging baskets filled with dead flowers decorated the eaves at the front door, and the garage was a freshly painted white. With its trimmed lawns and clean gutters, clearly a house-proud homeowner had lived there. Unfortunately, there was only an eight-foot wide gap between the houses on each side. If they tried to walk through the narrow alleyway, he could easily imagine critters exploding from the surrounding windows.

  “The distance between these houses isn’t good. Do we take the front door or go around the back?”

  Trigger nodded. “I don’t like those alleys either.”

  Confirming his concerns, Lexie added, “You’ve got about four critters in the house, and another four in the houses on either side.”

  Sounding disgusted, Tuck asked, “What? Have they moved in?”

  “Jonesy said they were eating corpses in the city, so maybe they’ve been eating the people who lived here,” Ark replied.

  “Looovely,” Tank drawled.

  Facing the house, he made a decision. “Lexie, just in case the critters in the surrounding houses get frisky, stay out here with the trucks. Tank, go in through the front door and don’t bother to knock. We’ll follow you in and get the people out.”

  He liked Tank. Even without his bulky armor and weapons, he was still a huge bear of a man. Typical of someone of his size, he had a steady manner and wasn’t quick to anger. Although Tank never said much, he’d learned to listen to what little the man did have to say.

  Without replying, Tank stomped across the road to the driveway of the house, holding his freestanding gun facing forward. Loaded with weapons inbuilt into his armor plus his ammo belts, his kit weighed nearly three hundred pounds. His armor creaked as he plodded towards the front door leaving deep imprints in the dry grass. He gracelessly opened the door by punching the lock with one armored fist. The door groaned and, springing open, splinters of wood flew from the broken lock.

  Two critters appeared out of the gloom of the house and attached themselves to Tank’s body. Wearing liquid-based armor and hydraulics, with strapped on weapons and body plates, there was nothing the critters could do to him. Tank grabbed the one scrabbling against his chest and smashed it into the doorframe. The creature squealed unhappily until its molded black face flattened into the wood, silencing it forever. Plucking the remaining critter from his side, Tank slammed it to the ground and crushed its black, rubbery head under his oversized and armored boot. Fragments of black blasted from the sides of his foot and the critter didn’t move again.

  “One in the kitchen,” Tank said flatly, as he stomped heavily through the tiny lounge.

  His large frame filled the room, and being seven-foot tall in his gear, his head was almost the height of the ceiling. Forgetting to duck as he went through the doorway into the kitchen, he smashed into the frame, and pieces of the wall and wood crumbled to the floor. Appearing oblivious to the damage he was doing, Tank moved into the kitchen like a one-man demolition derby.

  “Ark, what’s happening out front?” He asked.

  “The enemy has eyes on you. Go faster.”

  “Which room are the civvies in?”

  “First on your left. Looks like three adults and two children.”

  Leaving Tank to clear the kitchen, they moved to the door he assumed would lead to the bedrooms. There was a light glowing around the frame, but the power grid was down and he didn’t understand where the brightness could be coming from. Opening the door, he stopped in surprise. The corridor was full of something that glistened and glowed with a sharp light.

  When he stopped, Trigger collided into his back. “What the hell is that?”

  In front of him, the walls were covered in a clear, shiny slime. Reaching out his gloved hand, he touched the gooey substance and it moved as if it were alive. Oozing over his fingers, it wound along the back of his glove and he snatched his hand back. The slime grabbed at him, and a long tendril flowed from his glove to the glistening mass filling the corridor.

  “Pull back!”

  The brightly shining slime began to shift and slide down itself, forming a sticky puddle on the floor, where the clear jelly spread slowly and thickly towards his feet. It was attacking him in slow motion and he stepped back, slamming the door closed again.

  Sounding horrified, Trigger asked, “Is that shit alive?”

  “It’s not exactly dead. Ark, could you see that through the visor cam?”

  “No, what was it?”

  “Angry jello.”

  “Get me a sample. The techs will need to find out what spectrum it is so we can detect it through the visors.”

  “Which bit of angry jello don’t you understand? That shit was trying to attack me.”

  While they argued, the shining goo was oozing underneath the door and continuing to advance. Glowing brightly, it slowly made its way across the carpeted floor. He wasn’t sure what the goo would do to him if it touched his skin, but there was no way to shoot it, and he decided a mop would probably make a better weapon than a gun.

  “You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Trigger muttered.

  Although he agreed with the sentiment, they didn’t have time to worry about it. Surrounded by critters that would attack at any moment, they only had two Navigators with them, and they still needed to get the people trapped in the bedroom.

  Turning away from the door, he said, “We can’t get to them this way. We’ll need to get around the back and go through the window.”

  Walking through the lounge to the kitchen, Tank was already opening the back door in his usual style of punching it with his fist. At CaliTech, they slept in one of the dormitories with the Navigators, including Lexie, Donna, Tank and Ark, and he was getting used to how rough they were. Unlike the military, the Navigators threw their heavy armor, weapons and gear wherever they found a space, and the entire room looked battered. Navigators damaged everything they touched, including the equipment, gear, walls, beds and doors. He supposed they were the culmination of the work of smart engineers, and nobody cared what they broke providing they could use the gear.

  The tech was impressive, but they’d focused on testing whether it worked and not on militarizing its use. The Navigators at CaliTech didn’t function as a squad, and other than Tank, none had any combat experience. Tank and Lexie were the only Navigators fully trained to use all of the kit, and although there were other people who could use the visors or hydraulics, none could use both.

  It would take more practice before he, Tuck and Trigger would be able to use the gear effectively. He desperately wanted to look for Amelia and his unborn son in Seattle, but they’d never survive the long trip until they were better trained. According to Ark, NORAD had bombed Seattle, and he knew his chances of finding her alive were slim to none, but he had to try. He wasn’t ready to accept he’d lost everything, and for as long as he planned to look for her, he could still delude himself there was a chance she was okay.

  Walking through the backdoor of the house, a six-foot high, solid wooden fence of overlapping panels surrounded the backyard, and other than a child’s plastic playhouse in the corner, the garden was empty. Sticky goo, at least a foot deep, covered the window closest to the back door. Shimmering in the sunlight, rainbows of color glistened deep inside the clear jelly. The people were trapped inside the room, and given the street was filled with homes just like this one, it meant anybody left alive was probably being held captive.

  While they stood outside the window trying to work out what to do next, the sound of gunfire erupted from the road.

  “Sitrep!”

  “Critters on the road,” Jenna replied steadily. “We’ve got this, but hurry up.”

  As if aware of their presence, the goo began to c
onvulse and long sticky strands oozed to the dry ground. “Tank, can you get through that stuff?”

  Tank didn’t reply, but he began to punch steadily at the wall next to the window. The impact of his armored fist sprayed dust and shattered pieces of brick and cement into the air. The wall was made of a single layer of brick, and his blows were quickly making a growing hole.

  The sound of gunfire from the road intensified, and he guessed the critters were attacking the squad. “Jenna, how many are there?”

  “Too many. We’ve gotta move.”

  “Go. Swing back for us.”

  “We are oscar mike.”

  A rustling of many rapidly moving legs came from his left and right, and the yard filled with a screeching that sounded like static. He didn’t need to see them to know they were coming in force.

  “Pull back.”

  As they moved away from the wall of the house and into the middle of the yard, critters exploded from the alleys on both sides. Fortunately, the narrow gap was forcing them to file into the yard, and he began firing his Desert Eagle at the fast moving critters, exploding them on impact. With their thin rubbery limbs and fat bodies, it was difficult to count how many were launching out of the alleys. Dropping to a crouch, he, Tuck and Trigger fired methodically at every black body that came into view. Their gunfire was attracting more of them, and a critter leapt over the back fence, landing nimbly about four feet from Trigger.

  While Trigger blasted away its head, he said urgently, “Extract now!”

  “On our way.”

  The once quiet street had erupted with sound. Critters were letting out screeching howls, Tank was ripping the wall of the house apart with his armored hands, and the debris was falling to the hard ground with a clatter. He, Tuck and Trigger were firing relentlessly at any movement, and in the near distance vehicles were revving and wood was tearing. He fired on the moving bodies without much thought, trying to make every .50-cal shot count.

  Tank managed to open the wall to the house and two terrified children popped out. Pulling them close to his armored legs, he reached another arm inside the hole and dragged a person into the yard. More critters were jumping the fences and one landed on Tuck. Grabbing it by its skinny black neck, he dragged it away from him and then its head disintegrated. Under the now lifeless, rubbery body, Tuck was holding his Desert Eagle with both hands. Briefly catching his eye behind his wraparound dark glasses, Tuck gave him no more than a sharp nod, before rolling to his feet and continuing to fire.