Beyond Green Fields (Book 1): Beginnings [A Post-Apocalyptic Anthology] Read online

  Beyond Green Fields #1: Beginnings

  A post-apocalyptic anthology

  Adrienne Lecter

  Contents

  Introduction

  Cody

  Cody

  Training Day

  4:50 am

  5:23 am

  6:03 am

  6:47 am

  7:14 am

  8:29 am

  3:46 pm

  5:14 pm

  7:36 pm

  9:55 pm

  10:18 pm

  1:00 am

  Nate POV

  An End and a Beginning

  An End and a Beginning

  Patreon

  About the Author

  Books published

  Beyond Green Fields #1: Beginnings

  A post-apocalyptic anthology

  by Adrienne Lecter

  Copyright © 2020 by Adrienne Lecter. All rights reserved.

  http://adriennelecter.com

  Produced and published by Barbara Klein, Vienna, Austria

  Edited by Marti Lynch

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, businesses, events, or locales is purely coincidental.

  Reproduction in whole or part of this publication without express written consent is strictly prohibited.

  The author greatly appreciates you taking the time to read her work. Please consider leaving a review wherever you bought the book, or telling your friends about it, to help spread the word.

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  http://eepurl.com/bw3CBf

  To my supporters on Patreon.

  Without you, none of these stories would exist. You made this possible.

  Thank you!

  Introduction

  Why short stories, you may ask?

  Let me tell you a story. It begins in spring two years ago, almost to the day.

  I was going to the book fair in London (like every year since 2016), and on the writing front, things were a little… let’s say anemic. What I should have been doing was working on the 9th Green Fields book, Exodus. What I actually was doing was being mired in one of the worst cases of writer’s block in the history of my writing career. In-story, they had just parted ways with the French Resistance and were on the way to Paris. Even two years later, I think I remember quite vividly being stuck with the view of the golf course in front of me, knowing what delicious carnage (and Bree and Hamilton having it out once again) lay just paragraphs ahead, and yet the words continued to elude me. It’s one thing to be stuck when you simply don’t know what’s coming next because there’s a huge white area on your mental map and you still have to build the ship to sail to the continent where the plot continues, but quite another when you can already see it all vividly in your mind… but nothing comes forth when you stare at the blinking cursor on your screen.

  It was quite obvious that something needed to happen, both to preserve what was left of my sanity, and to get myself unstuck.

  Enter the idea of starting a monthly subscription service on Patreon to release short stories and novellas that weren’t quite fit to be released on Amazon, at least not in that tiny-package size of 20 pages a pop. As much as I love Kindle Unlimited (both as a reader and author), it comes with one gigantic drawback: it literally makes you peanuts for short fiction. Same with royalties from sales of ebooks priced below 2.99. Of course, short stories are much quicker to write than novels, but they do take time—time that I wouldn’t be writing novels that are still the way I make a living. I also need to pay my editor to straighten them out. I knew this was a financially unfeasible undertaking if I tried to sell the short stories as-is on Amazon—but maybe a few people would be happy to support me and sponsor the time I needed to invest into creating the stories in exchange for getting something about as exclusive as it gets, that only exists because they are amazing and amazingly generous. Austria isn’t a country known for its charity (comes with living in a social democracy where you know the state will fund it if it’s needed, and it gets that funding because everyone pays just a little with their taxes), so I didn’t have high hopes. I figured if 10-25 people would shell out a few bucks a month for the stories, or a little more for stories plus extra behind-the-scenes ramblings, that would be awesome… and about as good as it gets. It would hopefully yield enough to pay my editor and reimburse me for the coffee I was drinking while writing the short stories.

  Boy, was I wrong. Within the span of just a few month’s time, the number of supporters rose to around 100 each and every month, and I’m still blown away that they keep sticking with me. Struck speechless comes pretty close. As a funny anecdote, my dad regularly asks how my latest novel is coming along and I explain I’m, again, doing the next short story instead. He’s flabbergasted that people would give me money on a monthly basis for this. He means well, I promise. He’s in awe of my amazing supporters, too. A little like how none of us really know how YouTubers and Instagram influencers make a living. Answer: sponsorships and Ad Sense! I am so, so happy I can peddle my wares directly to the people who want and consume them instead. My mom is still surprised I can come up with the plot for a single book, let alone several a year plus endless stories centered around them to boot. Ah, parents…

  My plan has always been to keep the stories exclusive for patrons for a few months but then to release them for the wider public. “A few months” turned out to be more than 1.5 years in a few cases so I think they got a good deal. But now the time has come to introduce the world to the goodness it has been missing!

  Coming in bundles (“anthologies,” if you will), I am going to release most of the stories that I’ve posted on Patreon between August 2018 and December 2019, roughly in order of creation but selected for matching content. The single story that will remain exclusive to Patreon is the self-titled Prequel to the series, for a few reasons. First, because it’s straight-up pornography in several stretches and thus does not go too well with Amazon’s adult filters. I could, of course, release it on its own and file it as erotica or erotic romance, but it doesn’t work as a stand-alone because you need to know who Bree and Nate are, and it might not fit that well with my other content that is, if you forgot, much less explicit and full of gore. I will always treasure the one-star review I got for GF#1: Incubation of someone reading just the first page and expressing their disappointment of it being “romance,” ew! And missing the zombies Romanoff releases on page 2. Tough luck. All of you know better. Second, the Prequel is special to me because it was the first short story I wrote for my patrons, but also (to finally get to the point from earlier) it was the novella that got me unstuck and let me write one of my all-time favorite chapters-spanning action sequences ever, which you now know as GF#9: Exodus. And third, I like the idea that it will forever be the special thank you for everyone who went above and beyond what I could have hoped for and chose to support me—and most of the people who joined Patreon are still supporters, which is even more amazing! Yes, I am very excited about my patrons, can you tell? So if you’re curious… or find yourself impatient for more after reading the first three short stories contained in this anthology… you know where to get your fix, hint hint.

  Sorry for this worst-ever sales pitch. I’m really not good at this self-promotion, put-yourself-out-there thing. But it got you 20 short stories at today’s count, so I haven’t really heard many complaints.

  You may be asking yourself now, how did this affect my productivity? Usually, I spend around a week every month producing
“content” for Patreon. By (someone’s) definition, a “short story” is around 2,000 - 5,000 words, a “novelette” runs between 7,500 - 17,500 to 20,000 words, “novellas” are 20,000 - 40,000 words or 100 - 200 pages. My “short stories” are, on average, 13,250 words long… so you’re getting a lot of extra words! The bundled anthologies are running around 40,000 words or 200 pages. It goes without saying that although I’m a quick writer (and usually have plenty of time plotting these nuggets) I can’t have that done within a day. Usually, writing is 3-5 days with two additional half days for editing, proofreading and getting the files compiled for distribution. I usually write the extra articles in my “spare time” in the evenings or with my morning coffee when I’m not quite awake yet to do some fictional damage. You’d think a week every month means I’d have 3 months less writing time a year now, right? Well, when I started in 2018, I got the same 2 books released as the year before, and 2019 saw three releases, and that last book I finished writing in September. The short stories account for around one additional full-length book a year. I hadn’t dared hope for things to work out quite like this, but I must say, I’m quite pleased with that uptick in overall productivity.

  Even more so, the short stories have helped me to get to know my characters much better.

  Sounds weird? Well, think about it. I know Bree better than I know myself. I mean, I can ponder why I’m such a weirdo, but I know why she is because I created her, all of her quirks, and the events and trauma that changed her. I love writing first person narratives because they let me slip inside a character’s mind and show you their world through their eyes—but that comes with the narrator’s bias coloring every facet of the story, and what they don’t know, see, or hear remains hidden to the reader. If I could simply jump heads… but then, I can, and the short stories are the result of that.

  Spending a lot of time in Nate’s head gave me a much better idea of where he was (and was coming from) which made the end of the series much more fun to write. It wasn’t like I didn’t know these things, but there is a difference between knowing and feeling like you’ve lived through something (which, as you can imagine, has been… interesting at times, to say the least). The short stories helped me write better books. They also helped me bounce back from the abyss of burnout after finishing the series and suddenly my mind was wiped clean like a fresh slate. I usually write them in the middle of the month so I don’t miss my standing deadline with my editor, and that has helped me get something done even on weeks when my mind felt too broken to make any progress. Seldom it has kept me from writing novels (but when it did, it annoyed me a lot), but once I returned to the novel, I realized that my old plan had been okay, but in the meantime, something else had occurred to me that made the plot even better. I’ve never felt like the short stories have taken anything away from me, least of all writing time, but they have given me so much—and I hope than I can pass this on to you now, gentle reader.

  A few words about the stories you find in this anthology:

  They were some of the first I wrote. “Cody” and “Training Day” are from Bree’s POV (actually, they are the only short stories she got to narrate), while “An End and a Beginning” is Nate’s tale to tell. Looking back, I needed a little time to ease myself into this new territory of narration, staying with what I was familiar with first (her voice) before I launched myself at letting Nate share his side of things. The only thing I’ve always regretted about the way I write my novels is that I sometimes need to cut things out that either don’t fit (at the time they happened) or aren’t essential to the main story; these three stories all fit into those categories. It made so much sense to never have any back flashes to before GF#1: Incubation started, and ending the second book with the gang arriving at their winter hideout in Wyoming was the logical thing to do. Book 3 naturally started right before they left again, but this way I never got to show you Bree’s transition from a woman doing her very best to try to survive with no instincts or skills, to a proficient fighter who was well-versed in operating as part of a group. There just wasn’t any need to show what had been going on throughout the time between those books. Thankfully, the short stories let me fill that gap. And then, of course, there are parts of the past, in particular, that only Nate can tell since Bree was, at best, a bystander. I admit, I love writing his POV also because it allows me to view Bree from the outside, which isn’t something I ever got to do in the novels, of course. Also because he’s so much fun to write, particularly considering what I put him through. That story also has one of my favorite characters in it who doesn’t really get much screen time. This way I got to spend some time with her after all.

  As you know, I’ve said goodbye to all these characters in September 2019, and by the time you read this, the audio version of the last book is either out or just about to be released, putting a definitive end to the series… except that I still have a bunch of short stories to write. I started out with a short list of around 10 story ideas I wanted to actualize; I’m maybe halfway through that since other ideas became much more interesting along the way (some of which I swore I’d never write, and ended up doing them a month or two later). I’ve learned to accept that for the short stories, “no” and “never” don’t exist. If you ever happen to find yourself wondering about some detail or another, feel free to let me know. It might end up as next month’s topic. Eventually, I’m sure I will write short stories in the new world, or maybe even different genres, but as long as people want more, I’m happy to oblige.

  I hope you’ll love these as much as my supporters on Patreon. I’m still having so much fun playing devil’s advocate for the gang.

  Cody

  Cody

  “Get off your lazy asses! We’re moving out in ten!”

  The Ice Queen stalked out of our prep room—lovingly called the armory for obvious reasons—before she was even done talking, expecting her orders to be followed. Of course, nobody protested, and Bates sure grabbed his pack and rifle with a little more skip to his step. That left only Martinez, Collins, Taylor, and me. Martinez was still busy checking his supplies but the rest of us didn’t really have any excuse left to linger—or I didn’t. And still, my pulse was spiking, leaving me jittery and hard-pressed to hide it. One glance in the makeshift mirror by the door revealed that I was pretty much white in the face, able to fool no one. Shoving my tinted shooting glasses onto my nose, my ball cap lower into face, and the scarf up to hide everything below my nose helped a little—but only on the outside.

  I was pretty much shitting myself, all right, and not a thing I could do about that. So I screwed my eyes shut, counted silently down from ten, and forced myself to get moving. My pack was ready, as was my trusty Mossberg, and I made sure to grab an extra pack of ammo on the way out—better safe than sorry. The scarf helped take the bite out of the early morning air that hit what little remained uncovered of my face, and the involuntary shudder that hit my body at the drop in temperature sure felt like just that—or so I hoped. Shit, but sitting around in the bunker for two weeks had by far not been long enough to make me want to head back out into what counted for civilization nowadays.

  Martinez was the last to follow me, closing the door with a sound barely above a whisper, but it banged open a second later, spilling out Sadie in what looked like her backup fatigues, one leg freshly patched at the knee. The others ignored her, but she’d barely made it down the front steps before the Ice Queen accosted her. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  Sadie raised her chin with determination, but while her back was ramrod straight, her posture visibly deflated at being brought to a halt. “I’m coming with you.”

  “No, you’re not,” Nate announced from behind Pia, still checking his gear.

  “Am too,” Sadie insisted, forcing him to relent and glance her way. His neutral look clearly annoyed her—it was impossible not to see that he hadn’t changed his opinion. “Oh, come on! You’re taking her along, too.”

  That would
be me she was referring to. I wondered if I should have supplied that, technically, nobody had asked me if I wanted to come. Pia had shaken me awake an hour ago, thirty minutes before my usual wake-up call, and had announced that we were going to Cody. Nate’s attention briefly flitted to me, and I wasn’t quite sure if that was a warning or an unspoken question on his face. Maybe both? I wisely held my tongue, letting him focus back on his goddaughter.

  “Lewis has a choice whether she wants to head out with us or stay here. You stay here. End of discussion.”

  Again, the words that, indeed, did I? were burning on my tongue, but I swallowed them. This was the first sentence he’d somewhat addressed at me in at least a week—I wasn’t going to protest now that there was something bordering on confidence in me in Nate’s tone. Besides, I’d already spent thirty minutes cocooning myself in any available scrap of gear that would fit me and looked like it was bite-proof—flunking out now would have been a waste.

  Even if I really, really wanted to.

  Sadie made a face, but she sounded less whiny than any other seventeen-year-old would have, probably because she knew that being convincing and reasonable was the only way for her to get what she wanted. “I can hold my own. I can even stay in the car until you’ve cleared the area. I can drive, too. And you sure know that I can shoot. There’s room for me, and with only twenty of you out there, one more will make a difference.”