Stolen Lives: A LitRPG/GameLit Novel (The Underhill Chronicles Book 1) Keith Ahrens (best e reader for epub txt) 📖

white-hot rage into an ice-cold ball of controlled anger. Years of soldiering and leading men in battle have taught him how to control and channel his pain. With a roar, he kicks the minotaur's head off his legs, freeing the other man trapped with him. The Sergeant springs to his feet and draws two long fighting blades from his belt. He falls into a loose fighting stance, his dark brown eyes flashing with concentrated hatred as Des joins him, broadsword in hand.

“Ogre… you just fucked up real bad.”

1

It’s a busy night, and the dispatcher is going hoarse from calling units. Only halfway into our evening shift, my partner and I have already had a full night. Our dinner sits ignored on the dashboard of the ambulance, cooling and congealing as it slowly turns inedible. The dispatcher informs us we are responding to a twenty-year-old male who is off his psychiatric meds and known to be violent. Oh, yeah, and he hates cops. Lucky for us, our dark blues look a lot like cop uniforms. And of course, when you’re hallucinating and you’ve got your hate on, anyone in a uniform resembles an officer.

The rain is heavy, and the clouds obscure the full moon as we pull up to a dilapidated ranch-style home in a rundown neighborhood. It’s the type of ‘hood where the bars on the windows and doors aren’t just for show. The house is dark, and the streetlights had been shot out a long time ago. My partner stops the truck in front of the address, and I get out, Maglite in hand. I hear a sound, mostly drowned out by the rain, but dismiss it because I can't pinpoint it over the steady din of the downpour and the wind. I slam the door shut after I step out into the driving rain, pointing my powerful flashlight at the house.

Focusing my listening to ignore the rain, I turn off my portable radio to cut down on some of the background noise. Then, I hear it again, still muffled, but an insistent and repetitive, “No, no, no, no, no.”

I shine my flashlight at some thick bushes off to my right and squint into the rain. Now I see him, a large figure slowly standing up to his full height. His hair is greasy and matted down from the rain, and his left hand covers his mouth. He’s shirtless, wearing only boxer shorts that have seen better days. His right hand is behind his back, and his eyes stare past me, glazed over, as he continues to mutter, “No, no, no, no,” over and over.

Taking a wildly intuitive guess, I’m pretty sure that we've found our patient. I wince to myself as he takes a slow, barefoot step forward into a deep, freezing puddle. The temperature outside has been hovering just above freezing this late into October. I make a mental note to check his fingers and toes for frostbite as I continue to size up the scene.

Just then, the front door of the house opens, and a silhouetted figure calls out, “Y’all be careful now, he got them demons in his head again! He gonna fight y’all!” The door slams shut, punctuating the cautionary figure's last words.

I look back at the disheveled man. Chagrined, I notice his eyes have finally focused in my direction. His shoulders square up, and he stands taller as he begins to breathe a little faster. This is what we in the field call an aggressive posture.

Violence usually isn’t far behind this, so I attempt to calm the situation. “Hey, guy," I call out as I wave my free hand in a placating gesture, "what’s your name? I’m Caleb, but everyone calls me Cal. I’m just here to help. Can we talk?” I use my calmest, most soothing tone.

He continues to stare, cold and menacing, still muttering in a monotone voice. Not good. He takes another step toward me.

“Come on, mister, nobody wants to fight tonight; just take a deep breath and talk to me.”

He shows no response other than mumbling unintelligibly as he shuffles forward. This is not going well. I shift my feet to bring my center of balance a little lower and wider. My right hand clutches the Maglite protectively out in front of me, raised to shoulder height.

“All right, guy, why don’t you just have a seat right there on the ground? And show me your hands, please… I’m not gonna fight you, but you need to stop coming at me…” I click my radio back on. I make a mental note to thank dispatch for not mentioning the patient was six-foot-three, two-sixty pounds, and mostly naked.

Finally, he shows some sign of acknowledgment that I'm in front of him. He stops moving and slowly smiles, making deliberate eye contact with me. His right hand emerges from behind his back in a steady and slow manner to reveal a thick, pointed blade. The water drips from the stained edge as it flashes in the strobe lights of our ambulance.

“You ain't gonna take me again, Pig!”

Take him again? I've never even met this guy before. And 'pig,' seriously? Clearly, he’s trapped in his mind in a world of his own.

The police are still about five minutes out, and he is about ten feet away, so the math doesn't look good for me. Keep in mind, our department bans us from carrying weapons. Luckily for me, a Maglite is not considered a weapon, just a standard-issue flashlight.

He lunges with his knife, and I swing the Maglite at his hand. I feel bone crack, and the bulb bursts and goes out as the rest of his two hundred and sixty pounds of raging momentum connect with my form.

We fall back, smashing the headlight on the passenger side of my ambulance. I can't see where the knife lands as it falls from his hand. The area around us is now lit only by the flashing red and blues from the emergency vehicle's light bar,