The Olvion Reality (The Chronicles of Olvion Book 1) Read online

  THE OLVION REALITY

  Book one of the Chronicles of Olvion

  A novel by Larry E. Robbins

  Copyright © 2015 by Larry E. Robbins

  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 or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  This book 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 persons, living or dead are entirely coincidental.

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to my beautiful and long-suffering wife, Dawna, who is never too tired to do whatever is needed to make my life wonderful. She inspires me by being as excited as I am about my writing and has been quietly urging me to finish the sequel because she wants to know what happens in it. She listens with genuine interest while I explain my concepts and is always enthusiastic about my ideas. I will always remember the three-day marathon of reading and editing that we did together. I found her late in life but she has made every day with her worth a thousand days without her.

  Also very helpful to me were the family and friends who helped me by reading my manuscript and being kind enough to show me where I was really screwing up.

  I still fondly recall the excited phone call I received from my daughter Victoria when she told me how much she loved the book and urged me to finish the sequel so she could see what happens to the characters. That was the exact reaction I was hoping for.

  I would also like to thank all of my friends and family for their help in proofreading and their helpful suggestions.

  THE CHRONICLES OF OLVION

  A Trilogy

  BOOK ONE

  THE OLVION REALITY

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY FIVE

  CHAPTER FORTY SIX

  CHAPTER FORTY SEVEN

  CHAPTER FORTY EIGHT

  CHAPTER FORTY NINE

  PROLOGUE

  Around me the sound of the battle was overwhelming. The pounding of hooves, the buzzing of the black flies and the ring and clang of metal on metal. It all blended in to a single din that strengthened and faded in volume but never stopped.

  The sounds I expected. The roar in my ears could be ignored but not the smells. Months of combat had acquainted me with their cause. Too well, I knew the odor of spilt blood and opened bodies. And then there was the unmistakable stench of the enemy. It was all now being expressed on a scale that I had never before encountered.

  There was pain. My body was splashed with blood, some of it was mine, some belonged to…them. My wounds burned with agony but there would be no help for them until this was over. I was tired to the point of exhaustion but I couldn’t stop. If I stopped others would die so I pushed forward. I lashed out with both hands. I thought of her. If we fell she would also die, a brutal and painful death. So I pushed onward. She was the only thing that was important. The thought of her kept me going forward. Blood loss made me dizzy but it didn’t matter. Only she mattered. Others crowded in. I tried to protect them but they were dying all around me while crying out in pain. Young people who should be living on for decades now lie dead in the dust of this alien world.

  We killed them by the thousands. We climbed over their bodies to kill more of them. And still they came. There was no end to them. They had become the nightmare of any soldier; the enemy that does not stop coming.

  How many must we kill before it ends? How many of us must die? This isn’t right, it makes no sense. They’ve lost too many. They should turn and flee. Their actions are…inhuman.

  But no one said they were human.

  THE OLVION REALITY

  CHAPTER ONE

  Taggart

  Have you ever wondered if you are insane?

  I mean, think about it. Our reality is personal. It is dependent upon what we perceive to be true. The delusions of the mentally ill are as real to them as our experiences are to us. Do they treasure their personal realities and yearn for them when they slip away into sanity? I suspect so.

  So what is real?

  Trained professionals pass judgment on the sanity of others but they are just comparing the realities of the few against the realities of the many. Who can say which is actually real?

  These are the puzzles with which I occupy my mind nowadays.

  My name is Jack Elbert Taggart. Friends call me Tag. At least the few that still call me friend. I’m an ordinary man who owns an extraordinary reality. I’m told that my condition will benefit from recording all that I can recall of what my mind says happened to me. So that’s what this document is all about. It is to make me better. It will help drag me away from what my mind tells me is true. It will make me healthy and help me separate fact from fiction.

  So I will record the events with as much detail as I can recall. I will undoubtedly forget some of the smaller occurrences but the larger events I could never forget and they are recorded here with as much particularity as I can deliver. In the places where I report the thoughts and words of others I have obtained those records from later conversations with those characters and other sources. Believe what you will.

  A few facts about me: When it all happened I was single, thirty years old and in total acceptance of the fact that I might be forever living a single man’s existence. I lived in Clovis, California just east of Fresno. It’s a small town, mild in the winter and brutally hot in the summer. I am of above-average size standing an even six feet, six inches tall and weighing 225 lbs. Like my Dad and brothers I have blonde hair and blue eyes. Even though I am larger than the average man, in my family I am considered to be the runt of the litter. My father and both of my brothers are each six feet eight inches tall. My grandfather, a legend in our family history, topped us all at seven feet. Family lore (verified by an on-line genealogy site) has it that our line is descended from Vikings. That fact is a matter of great pride to us and it even inspired both of my older siblings to have the word “Viking” tattooed on their arms. I always meant to do the same but never quite got around to it.
I’m not that crazy about needles.

  Growing up my two brothers were always eager to exert the right of older siblings to make miserable the life of their younger kin. Thus I was frequently subjected to head rubs, wrestling holds and the dreaded purple nurple. I deduced early in life that I would need a way to blunt the advantages that they possessed from having the good sense to be born earlier. So it was that I turned to weight training. It took a few years but by the age of sixteen I was strong enough to hold my own with them.

  Honesty compels me to reveal that my compulsion to improve my physical condition was not inspired solely by the desire to avoid being tortured by my brothers. I had also bought in to the ridiculous idea that women are attracted to men with large chests and arms. I discovered too late that I should have spent my time improving my social skills instead. I have yet to have a woman throw herself at me because of the size of my biceps.

  See, one of the problems that I have dealt with for my entire life is extreme shyness. I’m fine when I’m dealing with other guys or older women but put me in front of a pretty girl my age and my mind dries up. That effect is especially pronounced if the girl shows any interest in me. I’m not a stupid man but in such a situation I give a really good impression of one. I choke up and stare mutely at them while trying to think of something intelligent to say. I am rarely successful. My doctors diagnosed the condition as Social Anxiety Disorder.

  So it was that I limped through elementary and middle school with only a very few girlfriends. Then in high school I discovered team sports. I was as tall as I was going to get when I entered Lincoln Union High School and even though I had not fully filled out by then I was much larger than the others in my class. The football team was a natural fit for me. My success on the field led to me having a few relationships because there were some young women who would approach the big, quiet running back that brought so many victories to our school’s team. But all of those relationships eventually failed when those girls grew tired of always going to movies or watching television at home instead of attending school parties and other functions where lots of our peers would be present. I didn’t blame them.

  So even though my prowess on the field brought me some female companionship I grew aware that those situations were becoming less and less common as graduation grew near. My brothers were my exact opposites in this area. Both went on to play on college basketball teams and were regarded by all as school legends. There was no dearth of willing females in their lives.

  I don’t want to give the impression that I did not try hard to overcome my condition. I read books on the subject and watched several videos trying to instill confidence in myself. But my attempts to approach women that I thought were pretty always ended badly. I grew more and more sullen and even my male friends slowly dwindled away.

  My lack of success with relationships led me to give up on having a normal life which would include a wife and family. As I continued to withdraw into myself I made some stupid life choices. I eschewed going to college on a full-ride football scholarship and joined the army instead. I was no trained killer or anything like that. I spent four years in Germany as a glorified prison guard at the U.S. Army Garrison in Mannheim. But I was comfortable in that life and almost decided to stay in for a full twenty years. But global peace and politics take a toll on all of the military branches and it was clear that I would not be able to stay in the army until I earned a pension. So I got out and came back home to Clovis. I converted my experience in the army to a full time position with the California Department of Corrections as a Prison Guard. They titled the position a Corrections Officer. Same thing.

  After passing my probationary year with CDC I applied for a spot on the R.E.A.C.T. Team. The initials stood for Respond, Extract, And Control Team. Placement on the team was highly sought after because it got you off of the routine prison guard duties and ensured that you would be participating in any action that might occur. Prison duty is extremely boring and any excitement is welcome. It took me a few years but I was eventually accepted.

  Members of the team tended to be of above average size because most of the time we were expected to go into an inmate’s “house” and drag him out. People who have been institutionalized have nothing to do all day but sit around and think of the different ways that they are being wronged by society. After stewing on it for a few days they sometimes convince themselves that they are innocent victims of a corrupt system and they act out. These people have to be removed from their cells and taken to the Special Housing Unit (we called it “the shoe”) before they could inspire others to buy into their victimhood and follow suit. After two years on the team the Sergeant in charge retired on a disability (blown kneecap) and I applied for and was chosen as the new team leader. And there I still was when all of this craziness started to happen.

  Life got scary in my thirtieth year. A fellow gym rat who was also an operating room technician saw a “thing” under my arm that he viewed as suspicious. I knew there was something there but hadn’t concerned myself too much about it. At my pal’s urging I coughed up sixty dollars and went to see a skin doctor. Three days later the results of my biopsy confirmed I had stage-one melanoma. Follow up x-rays showed two shadows on my lung that dictated a trip to the surgical center. The skin cancer was an easy fix because we had gotten to it early. The shadows on my lungs? We would see.

  Sitting on my couch the night before the surgery I looked at my life and realized I’d squandered most of it. Except for the four years I’d spent in the army nothing about my life really amounted to much. I’d taken the job with the CDC with plans to use the job as a springboard to more exciting ventures such as a Parole Officer. But the ease of the job and the excellent pay made me complacent. I was still at the same position with no prospects for further advancement (unless someone died or retired), no wife, no kids. And now, no guarantee of a future at all. The doctors had warned me that the shadows could turn out to be bad news. For that matter the procedure itself could be fatal. According to my friend, the operating room technician, dying just from the anesthesia was not unheard of. Not to mention the fact that I was going to have several large needles plunged through my chest and into the suspicious areas of my lungs.

  As I huddled almost naked beneath the thin sheet of the operating room gurney being wheeled through hidden back passages of the hospital by an orderly I regretted having wasted my life. Mostly I regretted the fact that I had absolutely no one who would notice my absence if things went badly. I had a distant family that I had not informed of my surgery. Why? I don’t really know. Mom died when I was twelve and Dad had recently moved to Sedona. My brothers were both married and living elsewhere. I guess I just didn’t want to interrupt their lives to have them come here and stand around a hospital waiting room. If something bad happened they would find out soon enough.

  Julio, the all-too-happy orderly had cheerful quips for everyone we passed. None for me. I wondered if he even noticed there was a person on the gurney. I was rolled into a big, cold room full of stainless steel and grey plastic. Big machines surrounded a paper-covered bed in the middle of the room. I was left there by Julio and ignored by others in the room until a bald man with a Haitian accent approached and called me Mr. Taggart. He was trying to be reassuring but the lump in my throat did not go away.

  I expected to be introduced to the surgical team with everyone smiling and assuring me of the safety of the procedure. (Don’t worry sir, we do this all the time and it rarely turns out to be anything serious.) Instead the Haitian man placed a clear plastic mask over my nose and mouth and told me to count backward from one hundred. I think I made it to ninety-eight before everything in my life changed.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Awakening

  Sun warmed my face and body. It felt wonderful. A light breeze brushed me like a dandelion puff. Sleep receded even as drowsiness kept hold. I slowly drifted up toward the edges of wakefulness. Sounds and smells began to push through to my senses. The fragrance o
f flowers. The wind ruffling through the grass. I felt rested, recharged. I was content. Comfortable.

  Consciousness pulled at me. Was this a work day? I knew it must be time to get up. I always woke just before the clock went off. The alarm would screech anytime now. I could rise now and get an early start but I felt too good. I’d wait for the alarm. Maybe even have a session with the snooze button.

  Something worried at the back of my brain, fighting against the calmness to which I was still awakening. It was like a little mouse pawing at a baseboard. Something should be happening. Something was important. Something.

  Then awareness surged into me and pulled me back to reality. I had just been through an operation. I had had large needles pierce my chest and driven into my lungs. I must move slowly and let my nurses and techs know I was awake. I would now be in a surgical recovery room. I was momentarily amused at what I had thought were the feelings of sunlight and a light breeze on my body.

  I cracked open my eyelids.

  I saw sunlight and high grass and the sky.

  I closed my eyes again. I told myself to relax and allow myself the time needed to fully awaken. Obviously I had pushed things too quickly. I took a long, relaxing breath, held it a second, then released it. Just wait. Give yourself time.

  I slowly eased my eyelids open again.

  “Okay, don’t panic,” I told myself. There is sunlight here, it is warm and I do feel a breeze. That could be from some innovative therapy like being taken to the hospital roof or a sun room after surgery. Couldn’t it?

  I had been told that I would be taken to the recovery area immediately after surgery. After I had woken up, answered a few questions and passed urine I was to be transferred to the “post op” unit for the night. That was the plan. Could this possibly be the post op unit?