STEADFAST Book Two: America's Last Days (The Steadfast Series 2) Read online

  What Readers are Saying

  Once again, wow! I've read both book 1 and 2 now and cannot wait for book 3 of the Steadfast Series. Keep your books coming Mr. Telbat. I can't seem to get them quickly enough.—Norma S.

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  I love that Eric is continuing to learn what God has in store for him and his own resolve to bring others along with him on this journey to follow God. I anxiously await the next installment.—Karen M.

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  STEADFAST Book Two

  America's Last Days

  D.I. Telbat

  https://ditelbat.com/book/steadfast-book-two/

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  Copyright 2017 ~ D.I. Telbat

  All rights reserved

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  Cover Design by Quest Publications

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  In America's last days,

  only the steadfast will prevail!

  Bible Scripture quotations taken from the KJV.

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  FREE Map Downloads

  Get your FREE Steadfast Drawings at

  ~ https://ditelbat.com/steadfast-drawings/ ~

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  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locals, organizations, or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

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  Dedication

  for The Steadfast Series

  To those who know they must begin

  to stand for Christ right now, not later.

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  Acknowledgements

  for The Steadfast Series

  Every book requires a team,

  and every series requires commitment,

  so, thanks to the individuals who bless me,

  and strive alongside me,

  by correcting, editing, and advising:

  Dee, Jamie, Sharon, and Mountainman Ed.

  Special thanks also to my Beta Reader Friends!

  Most of all, I acknowledge the finished work

  of Jesus Christ for us,

  and the saving work of God in us.

  May our work bring Him glory.

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  Table of Contents

  What Readers are Saying

  Title and Copyright

  FREE Downloads

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Character Sketch

  Glossary

  Other Books by D.I. Telbat

  About the Author

  BONUS Chapter: Steadfast Book Two Bonus Chapter

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  Prologue

  North America has been ravaged by a virus that killed one hundred million people. Pockets of civilization hold out after the collapse of technology and government. The pandemic event, mixed with mindless panic, was labeled Pan-Day, the day that an overwhelming number of quarantined cities pushed society over the edge.

  But now, as dreadful as the Meridia Virus has been, a rogue military division releases its fury upon all who resist its control. Towns are demolished. Civilians are massacred. Survivors are hunted—all in the name of freedom. Only those who declare loyalty will escape ruin.

  Deep in Wyoming's Sharrock Mountains, Eric Radner's life has become unsettled by visitors. Once hidden in his secret mountain refuge, he is now thrust into the very events that challenge what little stability remains in America. Doing nothing is no longer an option, but to do anything will mean grave danger. Only a steadfast faith will carry him through, and by the grace of God, it will touch the few lives God has placed near him . . .

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  "The wicked flee when no man pursueth, but the righteous are bold as a lion."

  Proverbs 28:1 KJV

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  Chapter 1

  The town of Adderthorn, Wyoming, was sleeping as Eric Radner eased up to the back wall of the General Store. One year earlier, half the buildings had been demolished by the invading military unit, but Gordon Irwin's General Store had been one of those left standing. For months, from the peak above Eric's mountain cabin, he'd spied on the town to monitor troop movements, as well as to see how the citizens were faring. Finally, on this still night, he prowled down to the quiet, oppressed town.

  Moving around the side of the store, he froze as headlights shined on a garbage heap, then swept on. Military trucks frequently passed through the town, but few stopped. Adderthorn had been broken, its people unable to resist or provide anything of value to the invaders. But if soldiers saw Eric skulking around in the dark, he had no doubt they'd investigate.

  When the highway seemed quiet, he ran to the front door of the General Store and paused. A year earlier he'd stood in that very place, his life about to drastically change. Now, he wondered if God had something more for him than the latest news from the town gossip.

  The door was locked, so he knocked gently, then louder when no one answered. Finally, a weak flashlight beamed in his eyes from inside. Eric recognized Gordon's bald head beyond the light. The man hurriedly unlocked the door.

  "Quick, inside!" Gordon grabbed Eric's shoulder and pulled him through the door. "Move! They're coming!"

  Pushing the door closed, they both lunged aside as two military personnel carriers rumbled past on the highway. Slowly, the two men moved away from the door and Eric followed Gordon past the empty store counter into a storage room. Gordon turned on a small LED light, which Eric stared at in awe. The rest of America was using kerosene lamps and candles, but Gordon had a functioning flashlight and an electrical source!

  "Batteries," Gordon said as he seated himself on an unmade cot. "I recharge them on a wind generator. Have a seat."

  He gestured to a precarious stack of hunting magazines three feet high. Next to them, a refrigerator, now converted into a pantry, displayed shelves stacked full of canned food.

  "I was never one to hoard," he said behind eyes of shame, "but a man needs to stay alive."

  Gordon's food stores could feed an army for a week—or a single family for a year. Eric understood, however, that not everyone had his own ability to hunt deer in the mountains.

  "How many are still alive in Adderthorn?" Eric asked.

  "About fifty. Some left to join the resistance. Others were recruited by the Liberation Organization. Rumor has it the fighting is fierce just up the highway. Speaking of which, Major Milton said you might come for a visit."

  "Major?" Eric frowned, realizing that spying on Adderthorn through a telescope wasn't the same as getting news first-hand. "There's an actual resistance?"

  "Sure. It started up in the fall. Milton is leading it. Homesteaders across the country are flocking to him and other militia units. They're making a real mess of the Liberation Organization's advance. We think the Lib-Org stalled out in Montana. Somebody up there is harassing their front as the Wyoming resistance harasses their supply lines through here."

  The Liberation Organization was a name Eric knew from his secret radio monitoring on the mountain. They were a force of two thousand soldiers, supported by another thousand personnel—cooks, mechanics, and their families.

  "I need thread, Gordon. The tough stuff." Eric squinted through the dim room at shelves of survival supplies. The military and the resistance alike would've stolen everything Gordon had if they knew he stocked such things. "Andy's growing like a sprout. I need to make him new clothes every few months."

  "M
ilton said you took in the Adkins boy." Gordon reached into a cabinet, then offered Eric two spools of dark nylon. "Four bullets, Eric. That's a bargain these days."

  Eric reached into his pack and the pouch of .223 shells.

  "How about kids' books for schooling?"

  "A mad man teaching a kid?" Gordon moved aside a plastic container to expose a shelf of books and more magazines. The smell of mildew reached Eric's nose. "Not many interested in education nowadays. This is all I've got for kids. One bullet."

  After paying him, Eric studied what he'd just bought. Two used booklets—one coloring book, and one word-find. It wasn't much, but Andy knew how to get along with little.

  "Did Milton tell you about the old lady we have living with us? Talia?"

  "Sure. She fixed his leg, he said."

  "She's been a great help to me. That's who Andy's staying with now." Eric sighed, settling into the welcome casual conversation with someone besides God or Andy for a change.

  "We've buried a bunch of folks down here this past year." Gordon shook his head and leaned back on his cot. "You should know, Major Milton wants to see you. He said to tell you that when you came off the mountain. He needs you for something."

  "What's he want with me?" Eric wondered if it had anything to do with the urge God had been putting within him to interact more with survivors. "He wants me to join the resistance."

  "He mentioned it. I'm not one to push a man where he doesn't want to go, but someone like you could make a difference in this war."

  "Someone like me?"

  "A woodsman. A mad man." Gordon smiled. "The Liberation Organization drops by once in a while. I'm obliged to still share stories about you."

  "What're you saying now?"

  "The same—that you live like a wild man, half-insane from the virus. You're a carrier, but you didn't die. You attack hunters who enter the forest on the south side of the mountain. Civilians, travelers, locals—you don't discriminate."

  "Sounds gruesome, Gordon. They believe this?" Eric frowned. "Well, we haven't seen any trace of strangers up there. The rumors do keep people at bay, I guess."

  "Fear keeps them at bay. What do you want me to tell Major Milton?"

  "Where's he hiding out?"

  "South of Rawlings in the trees, about twenty miles northwest of us here. He bothers the Liberation Organization supply line just about every day, and he's been attacking the town of Mastover every few nights. He uses snipers, deer hunters, marksmen like yourself. He sends a runner once a week here to drop off and pick up rechargeable batteries for their walkie-talkies. Major Milton is getting more organized by the week, recruiting by the day. We're gonna win this!"

  Eric thought about the offer to help Milton, and wondered if it had anything to do with a Scripture he couldn't shake from his mind—Joshua 3:11. It was about the Israelites crossing the Jordan River—that God was going before them. But Eric felt an unexplainable attachment to the passage. He knew God was going before him, calling him out to trust Him. Did Major Milton and the resistance have something to do with it?

  "You say we'll win, Gordon, but what'll we win?" Eric tried to hide his distaste for the violent world in which they now lived. "Before we were invaded, Mastover outlawed Bibles and killed a bunch of Christians, and Milton's brother was enforcing that law here in Adderthorn. Moving from one aggressor to another isn't winning, Gordon."

  "I suspect Major Milton will tell you what he's fighting for when you talk to him. Unless you don't go to him. You want me to tell him you refused his invitation?"

  There was no subtlety in Gordon's voice. The man had joined the resistance, though covertly, and Eric was expected to join as well. He didn't owe Milton, especially since Eric had saved his life. But from Milton's perspective, his fight was securing Eric's safety.

  "Show me on a map where I can find him."

  Twenty minutes later, Eric had retrieved his rifle from the woods and was hiking through the darkness toward the resistance camp. His mind lingered on six-year-old Andy back at the cabin. He was again thankful for Talia being with them, being a grandmother to the boy, and watching over him. They would be fine, he was sure. Andy had been born since Pay-Day and was being raised to be a brave and helpful little man. And though Runner wasn't a large golden retriever, any dog that chased squirrels with her master would stand her ground against a larger predator. If Eric wasn't delayed with Milton, he hoped to be back at the cabin within two days. Eric had lined up several chores for Andy to work on in his absence, besides whatever Talia had for him to do.

  As Eric walked, he prayed for a way out of whatever Milton was probably about to propose to him, but his curiosity was driving him on. Like Israel, Eric sensed God wanted him to trust Him, like the verse on his mind. Trust God at the river. Eric wasn't a killer; he couldn't join the resistance. Milton surely remembered the weeks he'd spent healing at the cabin, listening to the Bible each night as Eric read to his cabin guests.

  After dawn, he made a fireless camp in the trees. The highway was in sight out on the plain. The traffic had picked up—Humvees, ambulances, and even a few tanks moved to and from Mastover. As Eric's eyelids drooped from weariness, he considered the great deception of that day. Americans were fighting Americans, when they should've been fighting their ultimate enemies of deeper spiritual evils. Instead of preparing for Jesus Christ to receive them in the clouds, they were preparing to fight each other over fuel and food. Was there really that much food and fuel left?

  Around noon, he woke with the same Scripture strongly on his mind. Trust God at the river.

  Rested, he chewed on deer jerky and continued his trek until he suddenly stumbled upon a sentry posted in a tree, the man's rifle cradled in his arms. Before he was spotted, Eric stealthily moved directly below the guard's tree stand thirty feet above. As a game hunter, Eric had approached too quietly for the lookout to notice. The camp was close, and Eric had arrived undetected.

  When Eric walked into the resistance camp, he was surprised to find over three hundred men. Along a creek, a dozen wall tents were set up where women and children washed clothes and prepared meals. A corral held twenty riding horses. The muddy trails between the tents smelled like sewage. Everyone he saw wore a red, white, and blue armband on their right arm.

  He stood outside the command tent—which had been slightly charred from a stove fire—and watched the desperate scene, until a man with an assault rifle stopped in front of him. The man looked at his arm to see that Eric wore no armband.

  "Who are you?" The man placed his hand on a pistol on his hip. "Where'd you come from?"

  "I'm—"

  "Mad Man!" Milton Pickford stepped through the tent flap and set a hand on his man's shoulder. "Easy, Hank. This is the guy I was telling you about. Mad Man himself, Eric Radner. Eric, this is Hank Worcester, a man I trust with my life daily."

  "He doesn't look like a mad man." Hank Worcester sported a beard as Eric did, but his flannel shirt had more patches on it than Eric's. "We need a lot more than a wild man from the woods to help us, Major."

  Milton grinned and placed a piece of wood between his teeth. He wore a green beret with a one-star emblem on the front. His frame was lean and his eyes more fierce than Eric recalled.

  "It seems war has awakened something inside you, Milton."

  "Not war. Revenge!" He turned to Hank. "Excuse us, Hank. We need to talk privately."

  Eric walked into the roomy command tent, complete with table and war map. He waited for Milton to begin. Milton tossed his beret onto a wooden peg on a post and sat on a round, which was surely soon to become firewood. He gestured to another identical seat and the two men looked at one another in silence. Milton's face, now away from his men, became grim, and there was pain in his eyes.

  "We're losing, Eric." He shifted the twig in his mouth. "People arrive almost every day and expect me to lead them to victory. All I do is get men killed. My brother, Leo, was the smart one. That's why he was sheriff. I'm no general."

 
; "And I'm no war room advisor." Eric shrugged. "What am I doing here?"

  "I can fight." He leaned toward Eric, his voice low. "But I can't fight with all these people. You're still a Christian, right?"

  "Yes, you know I am. That's not something that gets turned on and off, Milton."

  "So, I can trust you to take these people—the women, children, and wounded—to a safe place?"

  "A safe place?" Eric shook his head. "Milton, for one, there's no such place. And two, you seem confused about my own abilities. I was a blogger before Pan-Day. I wore expensive watches and drove nice cars. Six years ago, I learned to skin a deer by reading a book I found at a forest ranger's lookout. Even if I did agree to join your army, there's no way your people would be safer with me. Honestly, I wouldn't even shoot to kill the enemy. You and me—our priorities about life are much different."

  "I'm not asking you to kill. Look, I'll give you Hank, the guy you just met. He's one of the best fighting men I've ever seen. If I've got Hank and you keeping those people alive, the men will trust me to lead them into battle. Their families will be in good hands, I know. But we can't put all the men into the field while they're taking care of their families."

  "There's nowhere to go, Milt."

  "Just take them farther back in the mountains. Keep them fed. Half these men were from the city. It takes ten of them to bag a deer—once a week. I've seen you bring in a deer and an elk in the same day. Listen, I have a plan to take the town of Mastover, to get rid of the invaders, but I need the men! As soon as—"

  "Don't tell me your strategy." Eric held up his hand. They sat in silence for a moment. "How's your leg?"

  "I don't even limp. That Talia did a good job. Let her know, will you?"

  "Sure, I will. She's looking out for Andy for me right now. She's been a real help."