E.E. Knight - Appalachian Overthrow

Contents

APPALACHIAN OVERTHROW

A NOVEL OF THE VAMPIRE EARTH

E. E. KNIGHT

A ROC BOOK

B OOKS BY E. E. K NIGHT

The Vampire Earth Series

Way of the Wolf

Choice of the Cat

Tale of the Thunderbolt

Valentines Rising

Valentines Exile

Valentines Resolve

Fall with Honor

Winter Duty

March in Country

The Age of Fire Series

Dragon Champion

Dragon Avenger

Dragon Outcast

Dragon Strike

Dragon Rule

ROC

Published by the Penguin Group

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First published by Roc, an imprint of New American Library,

a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

First Printing, April 2013

Copyright Eric Frisch, 2013

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

REGISTERED TRADEMARKMARCA REGISTRADA

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:

Knight, E. E.

Appalachian overthrow: a novel of the Vampire Earth/E. E. Knight.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-101-60892-0

1. Valentine, David (Fictitious character)Fiction. 2. VampiresFiction. 3. Human-alien encountersFiction. 4. Appalachian RegionFiction. I. Title.

PS3611.N564A67 2013

813.6dc23 2012040814

PUBLISHERS NOTE

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

I have been a stranger in a strange land.

Exodus 2:22

All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning.

Albert Camus

An Account of the Coal Country Revolt 20732079

(as excerpted from Volume 2 of THE FALL OF THE KURIAN ORDER: A XENO MEMOIR)

U SEFUL TO THE O RDER

I gave myself up for dead when the bullets ripped out the back of our fleeing four-wheel drive. They cut through the back panel, glass, and my flesh with the ease youd expect of steel-jacketed high-velocity rounds.

I would draw my last breath on the traditional human holiday of Halloween, having seen forty-two years. The Kentucky soil of the Ohio Basin would absorb my blood, and I would join my mate, our children, and the ancestors after a brief period of suffering.

I have been told to begin this account in medias res.

Were it up to me, I would open this memoir with a brief account of my background as a Xeno, a species foreign to this earth, yet born here nevertheless, and, as I noted, the first of my family born on our new homeworld. I would name myself the son of a people lied into war and rewarded for their losses with poisoned land and broken treaties.

Im told I came into life in the year 2031 in the normal manner for a Golden One, letting out healthy yapping cries and covered in fine, translucent hair, born in the house of my father and uncles on the banks of the Missouri River, the old state designation of Nebraska. A prophecy of the stains of my birth said I would make my mark among men in strange lands. Some account of my early years as a trader and then later as a speaker for my people would explain my ability with English, the most common tongue of the humans of my region. My rise into the Golden Ones councils at a young age might give you some reason to accept the facility of my senses and judgment.

My scars in the war against the Kurian Order remain for all to see, even if they are faded and camouflaged by an old Grogs sags and wrinkles. The lies endured, the losses suffered by my people, including the murder of my beloved and our family, would explain my affiliation with our common cause, when this extraordinary worlds even more extraordinary people rose and rid us of those who treated us as livestock.

We think, though I have reason to wonder. But that takes me beyond this narrative.

I would speak briefly of my meeting David Valentine, a man I am proud to call my seshance, who found me wounded and revived me in body and spirit. I would conclude that sketch with a mention that our endeavors are chronicled elsewhere with the usual mild omissions and exaggerations that inevitably cloud reality when a biographer is asked to weave, telling the colorful oft-told tales and disclosing the sometimes-disappointing truth.

Without those particulars of my life, how is the reader to judge the value of this reminiscence? It would be like weighing the goose by extrapolation from a single feather.

But my publisher has requested that I begin with the wild flight across the Ohio River and into Kentucky on Halloween night.

There were seven of us in that big black high-riding utility vehicle that crashed through the bridge barrier, fleeing like Eliza across the Ohio with a far worse master than Simon Legree behind, though southbound rather than north. We had escaped a no-longer-secret installation of the Kurian Order called Xanadu with a pregnant woman, a patient there who had once been married to my Davids friend William Post. I was rearmost, filling the back of the truck, squatting uncomfortably on some tools, tow chains, and a spare battery. A bag of groceries hastily thrown in as provision had spilled, so there were apples rolling back and forth on the floor as we took hard turns.

Our intention was to race into the Kentucky hills and lose ourselves among the legworm ranchers there. Kentucky was a wild land, thinly held by the Kurian Overlords even then, and the legworm ranchers enjoyed a measure of independence required by the needs of their voracious herds.

A spray of bullets from the surprised sentries ended that hope, at least for me. Three bullets and a piece of what I believe was glass struck me across the abdomen and neck. Worse, the pursuit started almost instantly, suggestive of expectation on our enemys part.

I suspected I would not last much longer in the chase, so I volunteered to take the wheel and lead the pursuit away from the others.

With an approaching column of Ohio vehicles filled with soldiers, I did not mention my injuries or the inevitable outcome of the chase. It was the sort of moment that would take an entire night to say what needed to be said.

We had to act while the pursuers were still far enough away not to notice a ruse, so at a thickly covered hillside I took the wheel from my David. My David has never had much confidence behind the wheel of such machinesto this day he is an atrocious driver even if one allows for his bad eye. Though one of our party was a doctor and saw to it that my injuries would not immediately bleed me out, I would only slow them on a foot pursuit. Everyone saw the necessity of the action, and we parted with regret and brevity, though my David took some convincing. Our farewells are not something I can remember without much emotion, and I will not slow this narrative with sentiments recorded elsewhere.