The Apocalypse Chase: Chris Stone Series, #1

By Graham Spence

Chris Stone has one passion in an otherwise staid existence; fishing in wild places. Stuck in a soulless job and a failed marriage, he decides to do something truly radical with his arid life: give it all up and put a 'gone fishing' sign on the door.
But he wants to fish with a difference. He wants to catch fish that have seldom, if ever, seen humans before. To do so, he has to fish in the most dangerous places in the world.
What follows is a roller-coaster adventure, from being hijacked in South Africa, kidnapped in Colombia, escaping jihadists in Chechnya and finally fighting for his life in the far outbacks of Canada.
Along the way he unwittingly embarks on a journey of discovery and romance far removed from the concrete confines of his previous life. He meets an array of people; outlaws living on the hard edges, revolutionaries who believe it's more fun to be Che Guevara than Bill Gates, outdoorsmen who live the 'soul' of the planet, and beautiful women who, like him, are running from reality.
Some are honorable; some despicable. But none are boring

• Language: English
• Publisher: WildRiver Publications
• Release date: Mar 27, 2017
• ISBN: 9781533494887

Graham Spence

GRAHAM SPENCE is a journalist and editor. Originally from South Africa, he lives in England. Together he and Lawrence Anthony wrote Babylon's Ark: the Incredible Wartime Rescue of the Baghdad Zoo.

Book preview

One

T

HE DRUMMING IN HIS head came from nowhere, drowning out the sound of speeding traffic.

Then just as his skull seemed as though it would implode, the thudding stopped. But the silence that replaced it was scarier. Cars whizzed past without a sound. He felt giddy, as if he was about to float into the sky that had suddenly leached from brilliant blue to faded denim. His hand gripped the steering wheel but he was powerless. The Long Island Expressway seemed frictionless, his car skimming uncontrolled across the Tarmac.

In a haze he watched the brake lights of the Chev in front flash red. I’m going to crash, he thought.

At the last moment some nerve twitched in his wrist, jerking the wheel to avoid ramming the Chev and he spun into another lane, the vehicle behind honking like an enraged goose. At least he could hear again.

Adrenalin now replaced frozen dread, foaming in his body as he fought the steering wheel, skidding to a halt on the side. He gulped air like a drunk going for an early morning drink.

Okay ... whoosh ... okay. The frenzy subsided with each wheeze. As he steadied his galloping nerves he tried to figure out what had happened. What had sparked this sudden panic attack? What had crippled him with such head-squeezing terror?

Terror was alien to Chris Stone. When you lived in the heart of Long Island suburbia you didn’t ‘do’ terror unless you paid for it by leaping from planes or sailing big seas.

Even emotional terror was unnecessary. When Maggie and Caitlin had left two years before, he felt little trepidation at the loss of his wife and child. Just bleakness that life wasn’t panning out as planned.

His loosened his grip on the wheel. The Volvo was humming with Scandinavian aloofness. He shook himself to rid the vestiges of panic still darting in his head and looked at his watch. It was a G-Shock, machined and advertised for the adventurer and as out of place on a minor newspaper advertising manager’s wrist as a shark in a fish bowl. It told him he had 15 minutes to get to the monthly management meeting. Chris had never been late before.

He drove the final five miles to the office, a squat brown brick and concrete block in downtown Queens, whistling furious tunes to silence the black dog howling within.

He parked at the back, making sure his wheels were inside the painted lines of the rectangular bay that he shared with the Circulation Manager. Whoever came first got parked in, but at The Queens Sun, to be allocated parking space was as close to living the dream as you could get.

The receptionist, who looked as much in need of a makeover as the office she guarded like a terrier, muttered a perfunctory greeting as he signed in. Before going to his desk he stopped at the coffee machine and pushed a button for a plastic cup of murky liquid. There was a fresh dent at the bottom of the machine where someone had kicked it. Chris wasn’t sure if the kick had been administered before getting a drink or after. Probably the latter. After a single gulp he felt worse, the cheap caffeine accelerating his thudding heartbeat. Cold clamminess started beading on his brow. He grabbed a notebook and headed for the boardroom.

To call it a boardroom was being generous. It was merely a cubicle in the corner of what had once been the owner’s office. The old proprietor was long gone, having sold out to a national media chain and, many believed, taking with him the soul of what had once been a true community newspaper intimately connected with the lives of its readers.

There were eight of them cramped inside. John Martin, publishing director of The Queens Sun sat at the head of the oak-veneered table that left little room for anything else in the room. If you leant back in your chair, you scraped the Masonite partition and risked breaking through.

On the right sat Chris’s parking partner, the Circulation Manager alongside the Editor and News Editor. Facing them was the Marketing Manager and the Promotions Manager who was shuffling a sheaf of papers, poised to gush on about how some lucky reader was in line to win either a log cabin in Montana or a meal at a greasy spoon. Next to her was the young Production Manager, hair graying from juggling deadlines to fit obdurate print slots. He didn’t look up as Chris squeezed past to get to the sole remaining chair.

You’re late, said Martin without anger. He wasn’t the sort of person who raised his voice. A clinical man, to him anger signified a lost argument.

LIE traffic, Chris replied.

Really? I didn’t think it was so bad today.

Chris shrugged. The choked Long Island Expressway was the standard excuse for delays.

Okay, let’s kick off with Mark. I see figures are down.

Circulation Manager Mark Driscoll, born in Ireland and fiercely proud of the fact, recited a litany of woes about the economy, retail outlets and the public’s declining enthusiasm for buying newspapers. His lilting Celtic tones, more suited to rhyme than commerce, failed to lift the gloomy picture.

Okay, we get the problem. What’s the solution? Martin asked.

Driscoll then waxed lyrical about the dire state of the global economy. But on a more local level, he said that the paper needed better promotions to entice more readers.

Jane Pepper, the energetic Promotions Manager, interrupted. She had a lot of ‘reader-friendly promotions’ in hand and waved the wad of papers she had been shuffling to prove just that. But, she said, project ideas were nothing without solid commercial backing, and here the hiccup was that many advertisers liked the opposition, The Globe, as they believed it had stronger editorial content.

The was the cue for Editor Bartie Page and his News Editor Tyron Letterman, who came out of their corner spitting fire than anyone could believe The Globe was better than The Queens Sun. The Sun, they thundered, was the courageous voice of the people; The Globe kowtowed to the authorities like you wouldn’t believe. The Sun was on the side of the community. It spoke truth to power – albeit, they admitted, parochially.

But, Page opined, the editorial team was hamstrung as they didn’t have enough pages to run hard-hitting campaigns anymore. This was due to lack of advertising.

All eyes swung to the Advertising Manager. With a start Chris realized that was him.

The next thing he recalled was lying flat on his back and seven anxious faces peering down at him. He tried to get up, but his muscles were syrup. He could see John Martin above mouthing something in a distortedly deep voice, concern etched on a face swimming in and out of vision.

Someone offered him a glass of water, which was what he wanted, but he couldn’t move his arms.

Then a voice he recognized as his own echoed accusingly in the blackness of his brain: I must have fainted. How pathetic.

Somehow he struggled up, clutching his chair for support and careful not to lean on the flimsy cubicle wall. I’m okay, he heard himself say. I’ve had a head cold. Must be something to do with that.

The others helped him sit. He grabbed the glass of water and drank it in a few gulps.

Sure you want to go on? asked Martin.

Chris nodded. Where were we?

Bartie and Tyron were saying the editorial problem was due to lack of advertising space, Jane was saying the promotions problem was due to lack of quality editorial, and Mark was saying the circulation problem was due to Washington’s limited grasp of global economics.

Chris opened his notebook, took a few deep breaths then launched into his prepared speech.

We all know that advertising is 15 per cent below budget. This is mainly due to tough trading conditions, but I also believe that our budget was overly optimistic in the first place.

You were responsible for drawing it up, Martin pointed out.

Chris nodded. He couldn’t squeeze out of that, but in his defense, he said nobody had predicted that Wall Street would go belly-up with top investment banks having to be bailed out by taxpayers.

But when you drew up your quarterly forecast there were already serious concerns about the national deficit. Surely that must have played some tiny part in your projections? Martin prided himself on his use of sarcasm.

Chris felt the dense blackness expanding in his head again. He had initially, as he was about to point out, presented a more realistic budget but it had been thrown back at him – by Martin himself – for being too gloomy. In fact, the figures in his first forecast were virtually the exact ones he was looking at now. But he stopped. It would achieve nothing.

I’m working on some campaigns, particularly with online coupons that I believe will bring in significant revenue. I’ll have all the details for our next meeting.

He looked at Martin and wiped the cold slime from his forehead. John, I’m feeling bad. Can I be excused?

Martin nodded. You don’t look too good. I want you to go and see a doctor now. Someone like you doesn’t pass out for no valid reason. I’m serious – I don’t want you back here until a doctor gives the okay. Okay?

Chris nodded. There was silence as he left the room, which amplified the echoing in his head.

Then with mounting panic he realized he had to drive home.

___

––––––––

DR HWONG could find nothing wrong. He checked Chris’s blood pressure and did some further superficial tests, then decided on the default diagnosis when all else fails.

Stress, he said. You’re too stressed. You must change your lifestyle.

Chris shook his head. My job is too boring to be stressful. The most stressful part is sitting in traffic jams trying to get to the office. Even if I miss revenue forecasts, all my boss does is moan about it.

He stopped and looked intently at the doctor. But boring or not, at least I can pay my mortgage. How do you suggest I change my lifestyle?

That’s up to you, said Dr Hwong, gazing out of his window onto a packed parking lot. Boredom can be, and often is, a prime source of stress. Many people have mundane jobs and circumstances but are able to handle their problems in a less harmful way. But if you cannot do that, you should change your job.

To do what? The economy is crashing. Are you suggesting I pack shelves at Wal-Mart?

The doctor shrugged. You will live longer. He narrowed his eyes and for a moment seemed very wise and Oriental. You may even be happier.

Chris looked at the roof. What a damn stupid idea. He was as happy as anyone could be who had lost his family in a soulless split and was grinding out a barren job. What other options did he have? Who else would put bread on the table? Someone had to pay the bills.

Back home, the doctor’s words would not go away, even after he had slugged back a strong whiskey. For some reason, he started doing mental sums.

The mortgage on the four-bedroom home in Oyster Bay which he co-owned with his ex-wife Maggie had been significantly paid off thanks to some help from her wealthy father, one of Nassau County’s larger real estate brokers. They had bought before the housing boom and it was now three times its original value, even with the current property slump.

He jotted the figures down on a piece of paper and strengthened his whiskey. Subtracting taxes and agents’ fees, his portion of the house hovered above $80,000.

He also had several investments and insurance policies, collectively worth around $30,000 if he cashed them in. Enough to have some fun for a change.

He finished his whiskey and reached for the phone. Maggie was living in a cottage, if one could call a refurbished three-bedroom stone house a cottage, on her father’s North Fork wine estate. She said it was only temporary, as she wanted her ‘independence’. However, she had been there since she had left home two years ago; a terse note on the kitchen table informing him that their marriage was dead.

Her family had never liked Chris much. A mere advertising man was not someone her father had in mind for his favorite daughter. He had always been polite, but it had been the politeness reserved for slightly lesser beings, bordering on disdain. Which was a bit rich, Chris thought, seeing the old man was the son of a Sicilian peasant who had made it big through a mixture of shrewd investment and lucky timing. Not to put too fine a point on it, Maggie’s grandfather had been a pitiless slum landlord. He had spent every cent buying squalid little properties in Queens, squeezing rents from destitute tenants until they squeaked, then selling the whole lot for a fortune to big-time developers in the post-Second World War boom.

The Stones, on the other hand, were originally a wealthy Long Island family that had lost everything through an unsustainable patrician belief that things would never change. His mother had never recovered from the day they sold the mansion in Suffolk County to pay off debts and spent her final years saying virtually nothing. She didn’t need to. Her accusing stare said it all.

Chris’s father was still alive but spent his days on a sofa in a small apartment watching adventure documentaries. He could regale you at length on the Apollo moon missions or how Hillary and Tenzing had summited Mount Everest. He could even tell you where, in his opinion, they made mistakes. His modest pension and a monthly stipend from Chris was enough to fund his insatiable desire for armchair action. But, Chris reasoned, it was better than being addicted to Internet porn.

The only relative whom Chris had connected with had been Uncle Jim, his father’s elder brother and an expert outdoorsman who had taught Chris how to fish. Jim had five daughters, but no son. They had spent most summers on the lakes until Jim had been killed by a grizzly while guiding a wilderness fishing trip in Canada.

Chris had not been there, but he knew the story well. A fisherman had got between the grizzly and her cub and the bear charged. Jim’s rifle inexplicably jammed and so he took on the enraged creature with a knife to buy the other five members of the party enough time to flee. The churned ground around his lacerated body told it had been an epic fight. There was no doubt in any of the five survivors’ minds that they were alive today because of Jim Stone. He was 62-years-old.

Jim’s wife Natalie, a magnificently maternal woman who had loved Chris as the son she never had, died a few years later from cancer that Chris was convinced had been triggered by grief. Natalie had bequeathed the knife Jim had fought the bear with to Chris in her will. It was his most treasured possession.

Maggie must have been sitting next to the phone, for she answered after a single ring. Her voice lost enthusiasm once she knew who was calling.

I’m thinking of selling the house. Seeing half belongs to you, would you mind? Chris asked.

Why?

Well, maybe it’s an almost 40-thing, but I want to have a decent holiday. In fact, my doctor advises it.

Just take one then. You don’t have to sell the house to do that.

Chris’s grip tightened on the phone.

It’s more than that. I’m resigning from The Sun.

He surprised himself, almost as much as he did Maggie.

You’re what? she laughed incredulously. You’ve always been paranoid about your job. You used to fret about being fired for the most ridiculous reasons imaginable. You wouldn’t even take sick days.

Look, do you mind if I sell? It’s worth a packet, or so an estate agent says.

How much?

I reckon about $80,000 each, after deductions.

There was a silence.

The market will soon recover. I’d rather wait a while.

Then you’ll have to buy me out.

No I won’t. You can’t sell without my permission.

As I said, in that case you’ll have to buy me out.

Maggie suddenly saw profits evaporating into lawyers’ fees.

You can burn the damned place for all I care. Just pay me my share.

Is Caitlin in?

I’ll call her.

Caitlin’s voice contained as much enthusiasm as her mother’s.

I’m going to go away for a while sweetheart, he said. I’ll call you when I get back.

Where’re you going? That at least showed a spark of interest.

I don’t know. I just want to get away. Maybe do some fishing in South America.

Oh.

I’ve also resigned from the newspaper. Or at least I’m going to.

Oh.

What had he done, thought Chris, to make his daughter so uninterested in him? Long hours at work? Or was it just the lack of any passion – excitement – in the family home?

Well, bye sweetheart. I’ll see you in a month or so.

Bye.

___

––––––––

THE next day he handed in his resignation.

Why? John Martin asked.

I’m in a rut and I’m almost 40.

That doesn’t mean you have to throw everything away.

John, I’m suffocating. Nothing to do with the job or you guys, of course. It’s just that I need ... well, some air.

You need a headshrinker. But if you want to go, we can’t stop you. It’s your life.

Chris thought Martin could have tried a little harder.

Another thing John, I’m owed a lot of leave. Okay if I save the company some money and take a month’s notice as holiday?

The words ‘save the company money’ always grabbed Martin’s attention.

How much do we owe you?

Three weeks.

Martin creased his brow as if he was seriously considering the proposal, but Chris knew he had already made up his mind.

Okay. It’s not normal company procedure but I can see you really want to be off soonest. You can hand over your car, cell phone and any other company property and leave today, if that’s what you really want. I’ll get the finance guys to make out a check.

Thanks John. Good of you to bend the rules.

No problem. You’ve been with us for ... how long now?

Nearly 20 years.

As his departure was ‘sudden’, there was no farewell party.

___

––––––––

THE house was sold within a week.

The day before he moved out, he called a second hand furniture dealer and asked for a quote for everything in the building except his clothes and fly fishing gear. Kitchen stuff, beds ... the lot.

He was offered $3,000, a fraction of a fraction of the true worth, even though Maggie had taken all the really decent furniture with her.

He then packed a small suitcase with a few changes of clothes, several brimming lure boxes and two Orvis fly rods – a five-weight and a seven – and caught a taxi to JFK Airport.

He headed for the nearest departures section and almost walked into a billboard. It was a photo of a roaring black-mane lion surrounded by a montage of lush savannah, mountain streams and impossibly white beaches washed by impossibly azure waves.

On the top, flashing in neon, it said, ‘Fly South African Airways’.

He felt the weight of his rod in his hand. The magic word was ‘fly’.

Why not? He had never been to Africa.

Two

H

E WOKE WITH A raging thirst, stumbled to the bathroom and slid open a window. A blast of beach air, thick with salt and humidity, enveloped him in a tepid embrace.

He closed the window and twisted the air-conditioning knob up full.

Where was he?

Oh yes ... he had been at the Cane Cutters, a bar at the hotel where he was staying. A plush establishment called the Maharani, right on Durban’s seafront. The hotel was decorated in Indian Raj splendor in recognition of the ethnic group that financially ruled the city, South Africa’s premier Indian Ocean port. Few locals could afford it but for someone laden with American dollars, the Maharani was a bargain.

After landing two days ago in Johannesburg, the hardboiled commercial metropolis and richest city in Africa, he had decided against taking the worn tourist route to Cape Town as he had been told it was more European than African. So he had opted for Durban, spending last night drinking with some white- and Indian-Africans at the Cane Cutters who were truly pessimistic about the future of their country.

The biggest concern was crime. Chris had been vaguely aware of the horrific South African crime situation from newspaper reports back home, but he was not prepared for the graphic descriptions his new friends provided. Killings for cell phones or wristwatches were routine; rapes were endemic – particularly of children as virgins in local witchcraft lore were a cure for the AIDS pandemic sweeping the country.

But the crime of choice for the criminal class was car hijackings where thugs put a gun to your head when you stopped at traffic lights and sped off in your vehicle. Sometimes they shot you. Sometimes they didn’t. It depended on your luck that day. The women they often took with them. They seldom escaped with their lives. If you loved your wife or your girlfriend or your daughter, you would die fighting before letting them be taken into the townships and have ghastly things done to them. That struck a chord with Chris; he would do exactly that for Caitlin.

No problem for me, said Chris. My car’s hired. I’ll just give it to them.

The group looked at him for a moment in pitying silence.

That doesn’t mean they won’t kill you, said one. If you’re dead, you can’t testify against them. The others nodded.

It had been a depressing night.

After two glass of tap water that his dehydrated system soaked like a sponge, he poured himself a coffee from the percolator bubbling on top of the mini-bar fridge and stepped out onto the balcony. His room was 22 floors up and the view was a window from the heavens.  He watched, hangover forgotten, as surfers rode eight-foot waves, curving down the foaming crests as lithe as acrobats.

God, this was a beautiful country. It had everything. Driving the 400 miles from Johannesburg he had passed through the rust-colored maize farms of the Free State to the brooding basalt massif of the Drakensberg Mountains and the emerald green grasslands of KwaZulu-Natal, culminating on the spectacular surfing beaches of Durban.

He had planned to spend a few days in Durban before moving north to the game reserves of Zululand, which he had been told were the best and least tourist-crammed in the country. However, while driving through Van Reenen’s Pass that swooped down the Drakensberg Mountains into KwaZulu-Natal he had stopped for lunch. A photo on the café wall of a man fishing a clear stream with a trout stressing his rod to the limit had prompted him to ask the waiter if the fishing was good in the area. Indeed, it was, said the waiter, a smiling bald-headed Zulu, but it was better in the southern part of the mountains where there were more rivers.

So after a hefty breakfast at the hotel’s opulent restaurant, he settled his bill, picked up a map of the Drakensberg at the reception desk and decided to head inland to do some fishing.

Within an hour he was past Pietermartizburg, the province’s capital city, and into the countryside. The salt-sodden air thinned to a brisk altitude breeze and he could breathe easier.

This was indeed a land of paradoxes. Lush farms with fat sheep and cattle grazing the rolling green and gold hills would abruptly be halted by mud and cardboard squatter settlements hacked out of the hillsides where scrawny children, goats and chickens roamed. There was no planning or logic, shacks just mushrooming out of nowhere.

The towns had grand historical names such as Boston and Bulwer, but comprised little more than a main street sprinkled with a few trading stores, an ersatz supermarket, and a hotel fading rapidly from its colonial