Page 1 of Shadow (Marinah and the Apocalypse #1)

Marinah

T he plane’s engine rumbled underfoot, a deep, gut-twisting vibration that rattled the white plastic walls like a 9.0 earthquake. Each shudder felt like a warning, and all I could do was clutch my stomach and fight the rising tide of nausea. Why me? The question spun in my mind as I forced myself to breathe deeply, in through my nose, out through my mouth. Somewhere, ages ago, I read that this trick helped with queasiness. Yeah, right. Just one more useless tidbit from a bygone era I missed terribly.

The cabin was a hollowed-out relic of a passenger jet, stripped down and left bare like a skeleton long picked clean. Its walls were stained with time, its frame groaning with age, and every patch of cracked vinyl screamed of better days left far behind. This plane hadn’t just seen the apocalypse, it survived it by some miracle I would never understand. The fact that it was airborne at all seemed to defy logic, yet here we were. The pilot managed to coax this rusted beast into the sky, though whether it would hold together until Havana was anyone’s guess.

The seating didn’t help my nerves. Gone were the neat rows of commercial air travel, replaced by two facing benches bolted haphazardly along either side of the aisle. Adding insult to injury, the cracked vinyl of my seat dug into my skin just below the stupid black skirt I’d been forced to wear. Apparently, this ancient aircraft was deemed my "best shot" for surviving the nearly three-hour flight from D.C. The president’s assistant even had the nerve to call it an honor, like I should be grateful to be rattling through the sky in a glorified tin can. His straight face only made it worse. Asshole.

Then there was the real threat. Electromagnetic bursts. They had been increasing for months now, spiking in erratic waves that wreaked havoc on anything electronic and, in my opinion, made flying nothing more than a death wish. To the powers that be, these bursts were an omen of the enemy’s return. To me, they were just another reminder of how fragile everything still was. Seven years of war against creatures we first called demons had left humanity barely hanging on. Those who survived scraped by with food shortages, disease, and terror. And yet, here I was, flying toward what might be a bigger nightmare.

Several years ago, when all seemed lost, another unexplained door swung open, and through it came a different breed of something. But they weren’t here to destroy us. They came to our aid. It’s because of them that a select few still drew breath. Those who survived owed their lives to these foreign beings.

As for me, I’m alive because of my father. Lucky me. But is it really luck? Why am I here? I’m a dispensable nobody in a world that desperately needs soldiers, doctors, and mechanics. Oh, and fucking politicians. Those parasites somehow survived, clinging to their power even after the world burned. Not even the apocalypse could rid us of their windbag rhetoric. They’re the ones who landed us in this current mess, and now they’ve shoved someone as unqualified as me into the middle of it.

The grim truth? The devil’s monsters were regrouping, and our odds of surviving another war ranged from slim to none, even with the so-called help I’m tasked with securing. It’s been twenty-three months since the last major attack, a brief, fragile pause that has yielded little progress to fortify our defenses. While we struggled to rebuild, the only thing we’d managed to fully reestablish was our government. Priorities, right?

Our losses were staggering. Millions died in the first year. Billions followed in the next six. Communication with countries beyond North America ceased two years before the war’s end, and by all accounts, we’re it. The last hope for the human race. A thin, flickering ember in a world left in ash.

After another deep inhale, I glanced over my shoulder at the window. The endless expanse of blue water below was anything but comforting. My mind conjured a vivid, horrifying image: me slipping into the shark-infested ocean to become an afternoon snack. I saw it clearly. Limbs torn from my body, and muscles shredded between massive, razor-sharp teeth. The thought of sharks devouring me, piece by agonizing piece, made my stomach churn. If this plane went down, there’s no way I’m pulling the cord on my absurdly oversized bag containing a parachute, especially after the laughable five-minute crash course on how to use it. Years ago, I read that falling from great heights into water was like hitting cement. Jaw clenched tight, I decided to bet everything on that.

My fingers were numb and turning blue from their death grip on the armrests. Every nerve in my body screamed for release, but the tension wouldn’t let up. The parachute strapped to my back dug uncomfortably into my spine, sending sharp pain through my neck and shoulders. Panic simmered beneath the surface, threatening to boil over.

I couldn’t take it anymore. After a shaky exhale, I forced my fingers to unclench, one by one, stretching them until the blood flowed again. Pinpricks rushed through my hands as circulation returned. I fumbled with the chest and waist straps of the parachute. The moldy canvas smelled as terrible as it felt, but the relief of peeling it off was immediate. My loud, frustrated sigh echoed in the cabin and filled the cramped space. In this tiny act of rebellion, I reclaimed a shred of control. If we crashed, the sharks might feast, but I wouldn’t be alive to care.

For the first time, I leaned back and let the crunchy seat cradle me. Closing my eyes, I started counting by threes. The rhythm steadied me, at least at first. I made it to a few hundred before the panic bombs began detonating in my mind again. The truth is inescapable: I don’t belong in this new world. I’m not built for it.

I’d give anything to go back. Back to the time before hell’s doors opened and monsters flooded our lives. Back to the days of mundane restaurant jobs, where the worst thing I faced was a cranky customer complaining about lukewarm soup. Instead, I’m stuck in this nightmare. A world of rotting corpses, unending fear, and the grim dichotomy of good monsters versus bad. A bad day now isn’t a mild inconvenience; it’s survival or death. And I can’t seem to adapt.

Maybe all the monsters were bad. Plenty of people believe that. I’m not one of them, thanks to my father. That’s probably why I was chosen for this mission to the island, where a whole new breed of terrifying beings resides.

Laughter bubbled up, spilling into the empty cabin before I could stop it. If the pilot heard me over the groaning engines, he didn’t react. That’s for the best. If he turned around, he’d think I was crazy, and he wouldn’t be wrong. My father would agree. He’d been Secretary of Defense up until his death two and a half years ago, and the last thing he’d ever want was for his daughter to be on this insane mission. But then, he’d never have imagined I’d end up walking in his shoes.

Me? The sweet, shy girl who once dreamed of becoming an actress? The thought feels ridiculous now. Acting, even in school plays, was my escape. It was a way to step outside myself and pretend to be someone stronger, someone fearless. It was my chance to silence the scared, quiet girl I was in real life. Those days ended abruptly when hell arrived. One moment, I was a freshman at UC Berkeley studying theater and performing arts. The next, I was glued to the television in my dorm room, watching the beginning of the end.

It wasn’t monsters that took us down at first. The destruction started with electromagnetic pulses that took out communications, including satellites. At the time, many countries assumed they were nuclear detonations. It wasn’t an unreasonable leap. We lived in a world where it felt inevitable that some terrorist group or authoritarian country would start World War III. When the pulses hit, panic spread like wildfire. Entire nations responded in kind. In their fear and fury, they obliterated much of the Middle East, convinced they were retaliating against attacks.

The domino effect continued. All the monsters had to do was provide a few large bursts of electromagnetic power to begin the end. Before the radioactive dust settled, hell hit us with their ungodly hounds. Having no idea what the hounds actually were. The ugly, dog-like creatures with razor-sharp teeth and five-inch claws that carried a fatal poison. I’ve adopted the military vernacular of hellhounds like everyone else. We also have no idea if they really come from hell. The religious fanatics used biblical translations and agreed with the military’s name for them. Or maybe it was the other way around, and the fanatics named them first. It doesn’t matter. Hellhounds killed in waves, leaving hundreds of thousands of dead after each attack, and humans had no idea how to fight back because the damn things were almost impossible to kill.

I, unlike most humans who survived, never learned the physical art of war. The government put my brain to work instead. Though I was enmeshed in artistic studies in college, I minored in analytics because it came easy to me. The U.S. Federation, which replaced our old government, required me to make charts to show our chances for survival and create optional scenarios to assess human casualties along with analyzing every scrap of data they could provide on survivors around the world. I had no idea what they did with all this data, and my job was not to ask questions, so I didn’t. I also had no illusions about why I received the analyst job. My father was the man in charge of managing our military forces, and he worked best knowing his only child was safe. I was one of the lucky ones due to my father’s position, and I’ll never forget that.

He died three months before the war ended. Somehow, I managed to keep my job, one of a small team trained to predict the probability and death toll of the next hellhound attack. After his funeral, I expected to be replaced. If not immediately, then eventually. For over two years, I had lived with the uneasy anticipation that my “safety gig” would run out and I’d be reassigned and marked with a red stripe on my uniform. In this world, that stripe signified only one thing: cannon fodder in the event of another attack.

When the new president, a smarmy-ass politician, asked me to step into my father’s role, you could’ve knocked me over with a calculator. The president is an odd figure, having risen from a background in synthetic biology and agricultural science. I can’t decide if his smugness was baked in long before his political career or if he donned that particular mask when he ran for office. Then again, it’s not surprising he won. Food is one of our country’s greatest needs, and a man with expertise in advanced agriculture was bound to appeal to what’s left of the electorate.

He approached me about this mission just twenty-four hours ago. This morning, he swore me in as Secretary of Defense, a twenty-five-year-old woman with no experience in war beyond analyzing numbers. As he stood there in a crisp gray three-piece suit, polished shoes that seemed out of place in this new world, and a Rolex dangling off his thin wrist, I couldn’t decide what was more absurd: his appearance or the fact that he was putting me in charge.

Let’s break it down: I have no diplomatic skills. I don’t even like people. And yet, here I am, with a job I’m woefully unqualified for. My analysis of this mission’s success rate? A solid 2.3% on a scale of one to a hundred. My personal survival odds are only marginally better. 2.8%. Comforting, right? Not.

Oh, and I’m the third defense secretary since my father’s death. That title doesn’t exactly come with a long shelf life.

The Shadow Warriors I’m about to meet terrify me to the point of absolute absurdity. Think: leaping into a pit of crocodiles, popping open an umbrella, and whistling “My Humps” by the Black Eyed Peas, one of my mom’s favorites, while flailing to the rhythm of snapping jaws. Ridiculous, right? And just like that, the song is stuck in my head again. I catch myself humming it under my breath while my brain spirals in memory acrobatics.

Shadow Warriors are the stuff of nightmares and legends. They’re elite fighters who are larger, stronger, and more terrifying than humans. Unlike hell’s spawn, they think and strategize, which makes them far more dangerous. Fear, bigotry, and paranoia nearly led the Federation to spark another war after the threat of hellhounds receded. The idea that Shadow Warriors might overthrow the fragile new government was enough to send politicians into a frenzy. And thanks to the government's monumental screw-up, I’ve been gifted this “promotion” and tasked with fixing relations with the good monsters. No pressure. It’s only a suicide mission.

The reigning leader of the Shadow Warriors, a figure known only as King, personally requested a female liaison for this meeting. That’s King as in Cher or Prince. No other name, just King. Fine, I’d roll with it. The real question was whether King would roll with me.

After the president swore me in this morning, he made it crystal clear: roping in King was my top priority. I’m not directly responsible for the colossal mistakes made at the end of the first round of Hell’s War, but apparently, I’m the one who must clean them up. Translation: I’m here to apologize, beg, plead, whatever it takes to get the Shadow Warriors back on our side. And when I say whatever, I mean it. My ridiculous nightclub outfit, which barely covered my ass, proved the point.

“Defense Secretary Church, we’ll be landing shortly,” the intercom crackles, jolting me so hard I nearly smack my head on the filthy white console above me. Heart racing, I take a deep breath and brace myself. The real terror is about to begin.

The abrupt blare of the intercom had jolted me, but it wasn’t the sound that hit hardest. It was the title: Defense Secretary Church. I’m still not used to hearing it, and the weight of it presses deep into my chest, pulling at old wounds. It was my father’s title, and the memory of people addressing him that way stirs an ache I can’t seem to shake. He died fighting, an old man who should’ve been surrounded by comfort, a fluffy dog at his feet, a worn western novel in his hands. Instead, he carried the impossible burden of responsibility, standing alongside the men and women battling a terrifying war.

Dad didn’t live to see the victory. He was gone before the dust settled, before he could stop the heads of state from fumbling our hard-won alliance. I know in my heart he would have found a way to avoid the diplomatic mess that followed. The Shadow Warriors respected him, and that respect was mutual. Now, as his daughter, I’m trying to follow his example, even if the men I’m about to meet scare me senseless. They’re everything nightmares are made of. Big, bad, and terrifying. Picture a human who could turn into Bigfoot on steroids, and you’re not far off. A shiver prickles my skin, and without thinking, I start humming “My Humps” again, as if the absurdity of it might shield me from growing dread.

I glance out the narrow window, letting my eyes wander back to the ocean below. My mind drifts to the view from earlier, when we’d first taken off. Knowing our cities were destroyed was one thing; seeing the ruins from the air was something else entirely. Towering skyscrapers had been reduced to skeletal remains, jagged scraps of concrete and twisted metal scattered across the earth. We live underground now, and as much as I’ve resented the confinement, I can’t deny the relief of being spared the constant reminder of all we’d lost.

The endless expanse of blue water stretches beneath us, concealing its predators. I know sharks are lurking somewhere down there, but even that thought is easier to stomach than the devastation I left behind. At least the ocean hides its secrets. The land wears its scars out in the open. Monsters. I’m going to negotiate with monsters.

I catch myself. I’ve never thought of Shadow Warriors as monsters because my father didn’t. I’m simply terrified they will kill me, so I’ve put everyone on the opposite end of that remark in the monstrous category.

After my first full shower in months. With hot water, no less. I’m actually clean. It feels almost decadent, like the only perk I’ll get as Defense Secretary before I inevitably meet some grisly end.

I stand, stretch slightly, and move to the restroom. I stare at my reflection in the small mirror, studying the face staring back. Beautiful or sexy? Not even close, no matter what they dressed me in. My high cheekbones and pointed chin give me a sharp, haunted look that even my sun-kissed, cherry cheeks can’t soften. Before the war, I hated sunlight and sought out dark corners to work in peace. Now that the sun is practically a myth, I find myself longing for it, at least until yesterday’s scorching heat reminded me why I preferred the shade.

The Federation thought they were doing me a favor by sending me for one day of training with weapons in the heat. It made absolutely no sense today because they sent me on this flight minus the weapons. I’m one of the clumsiest humans on Earth, and they’re lucky I didn’t shoot myself when I fell. The looks on the faces of the red stripes I was training with were priceless. They had no idea why I was with them other than also being a red stripe. They saw my coming death as a foregone conclusion. I saw it as sooner rather than later.

I glanced up at the mirror. It was so tiny that all I could see was my face, and honestly, that’s probably for the best. I’ve always been awkwardly tall, towering over six feet, and painfully thin. Grace isn’t my strong suit. Sit me down with a pen and paper, and I’m harmless. Put an obstacle in my path, and I’ll go down like a newborn colt. If there’s no obstacle, I’ll trip over my own feet, which I proved yesterday. A career in acting probably wasn’t the wisest dream for someone with my lack of coordination, but I wanted it anyway.

Surviving the war meant toughening up, but let’s be real. I’m the antithesis of tough. In a world where only the strong survive, I’m still unsure how I made it this far.

I leaned closer to the mirror, searching for answers in my reflection. Almond-shaped eyes, almost black, stared back. A high forehead dominated my features, especially when my curls stand on end or I pull my hair back. Dark eyebrows framed my eyes, and without constant upkeep, they threatened to merge into a unibrow. My angular cheekbones and button nose, a family trait, gave my face a pixie-like quality that didn’t match my tall, gangly frame. My lips, though. Those might be my best feature. Full and perfectly shaped, they looked like they belonged to someone confident and alluring.

That’s a joke.

My last kiss was a sloppy disaster in a supply closet at work. One awkward, spit-filled meeting of mouths, and I decided I’d rather die alone than serve as someone’s slobber receptacle.

The guy wasn’t bad, he was just young. Too young, at least for me. Or maybe not technically younger, since we were around the same age. Still, I’ve always been drawn to older men. Daddy issues? Maybe. But my father was incredible, so if anything, I’m looking for a good man like him, not some inexperienced guy still figuring out how to kiss without drowning his partner.

I sighed and studied my face one last time. Nothing special stared back at me. Just the introverted failure I’d been picking apart in mirrors for years.

I shrugged and pushed my thoughts away. Dwelling won’t help.

Many people like me, the non-fighters, the ones unfit for this brutal new world, didn’t survive. Some took their own lives, unable to face the relentless horrors. Others, blinded by bigotry, refused to fight alongside the Shadow Warriors and perished in their unprotected militias or homes. My father’s position within the government shielded me from the worst of it, and that privilege gnawed at me. It felt like a cruel twist of fate that I was alive while so many others, braver and worthier, were not. By sheer accident of birth, I survived. For now.

The cost of that survival haunted me. So many human lives lost, each a testament to courage in the face of the unimaginable. And the Shadow Warriors. They suffered too. Their casualties were staggering, yet they fought on, defending a population that distrusted them at every turn. Their numbers were a fraction of the hellhounds’, yet they defied impossible odds to become our saviors. And how did we repay them?

Betrayal.

The Federation’s first catastrophic mistake, once the hellhounds were seemingly annihilated, was believing they could control the Shadow Warriors. No, control wasn’t even the right word. Use. They thought they could use the Warriors for experimental purposes. The government actually expected them to voluntarily surrender to a system that viewed them as tools, not allies. The president and his cabinet assumed the Warriors would revert to the passive half-men, half-beasts who had walked unnoticed among us before Hell’s War.

They couldn’t have been more wrong.

The Shadow Warriors had the audacity, no, the nerve , I thought sarcastically, to demand equal rights. Equal representation. The right to hold office. Hell, the right to be treated as equals.

When the military tried to enforce the Federation’s will, human soldiers paid the price, dying in a futile attempt to corral beings who had already given everything to save us. When all else failed on our end, a treaty was finally signed. A compromise, if you could call it that. The Shadow Warriors were granted their own country, a sliver of sovereignty carved out of the world they helped to protect.

That was about a year ago. And here I am now, heading straight into their territory, tasked with repairing a relationship we shattered.

Hellhounds obliterated Cuba early in the war. During the first two years, Cuban survivors trickled into the U.S., desperate and broken. But as the years dragged on and no more survivors emerged, the island was abandoned, its memory sliding into obscurity. I don’t know who proposed giving Cuba to the Shadow Warriors, but it worked. They claimed the territory and retreated there. It’s close enough for the government to keep tabs on them, yet far enough away to give humans a false sense of security.

If I’m honest, I haven’t felt secure since the war began, and the Shadow Warriors’ presence in Cuba wasn’t the reason. I’m a mouse living in a world of starving lions. Fear has become a constant companion, an obstacle I’ve had to learn to navigate. I liked to think I handled it with finesse.

“Yeah, right,” I muttered under my breath, rolling my eyes. “I tripped over lint.”

I shook the thought away and took one last look in the mirror before stepping out of the cramped bathroom. Back in my seat, I picked up the dossier handed to me by a junior officer before boarding. He’d been dressed in fatigues with a cocky grin that grated on my nerves. The folder contained a brief overview of probable Shadow Warrior statistics, and his parting instruction was to leave it on the plane after landing.

The dossier was thin, and what it lacked in detail, it made up for in irritation. According to the documents, the government estimated between one and two hundred Shadow Warriors survived the war. My mission included verifying that number if possible. Oh, and there’s more: I’m supposed to gather breeding information specifically, whether they’re reproducing and determine the number and types of weapons in their possession. I rolled my eyes. None of this was mentioned before takeoff.

Sharp anger flared. This damned addendum to my already impossible mission had at least kept my mind off the sharks below for part of the trip. But it was proof that the government hadn’t learned a fucking thing about dealing with the Shadow Warriors. We needed someone like my father, someone who understood diplomacy, respect, and strategy. Instead, they were stuck with me, barely a shadow of him and certainly nowhere close to second-best.

As the plane began its descent, a knot of nerves tightened in my stomach. The government, in its infinite wisdom, sent me here alone with no security and no backup. The pilot’s orders were to leave the moment I was off the plane. The entire plan amplified my sense of vulnerability and added to my terror.

What unsettled me most was the unknown. King, the Shadow Warrior leader I was supposed to meet, was a wild card. The government knew almost nothing about him. Greystone, the leader during my father’s time, died when the Federation decided to go to battle with him and his men. With him went any sense of predictability in dealing with the Warriors.

I took a steady breath and tried to focus on the task ahead. If I survived long enough to deliver an apology, my next move would be to understand King. What drove him, what he wanted, and most importantly, what it would take to forge peace between our nations. My limbs trembled despite my resolve. The truth was, we needed the Shadow Warriors on our side. Without them, humanity was doomed.

I had made peace with the idea of death; it was the getting there that terrified me. If the Shadow Warriors decided to kill me, I hoped it would be quick. I didn’t want to see it coming.