Prologue
Some things will stay with me forever. Some things I wish I could forget. Those days—when it all began early last spring—are a big block of memories that I would like to hit delete on and start over.
The news had run on a nightmarish, surreal loop. Terrifying stories of the fast moving virus and the devastation it had left behind. The World Health Organization as well as The Center for Disease Control had been at a loss because this virus spread so quickly that within a week, at least half our nation’s population was wiped out. Other countries hadn’t fared any better than ours did. With time passing, and no cure in sight, the government made an announcement; those who hadn’t been infected should seek shelter and avoid other humans, or anyone they might suspect of being infected.
I was one of the lucky ones, but only because my father had been prepping for the end of days since my mother had been killed almost ten years ago. He had been working on an underground bunker, one large enough to sustain our entire town. Like the Old Testament stories of Noah, most of the town’s people thought he was crazy. Guess who’s laughing now? Not my dad, that’s for sure. I would often catch him mumbling something about the whole thing being a criminal shame.
He trained me and my brother mercilessly in survival techniques for years before the virus hit, almost like he knew something we didn’t. Not too long ago, he went out in search of help, and we haven’t heard from him since. I suspect his kindness was his undoing. I was left with my brother, my best friend, and a handful of those who listened to my dad. We have added to our count survivors from all across the country; however, I would only take in those who I felt I could trust.
I don’t trust easily, not since I witnessed acts of violence that were so grotesque and inhuman that I spewed my lunch soon after. Basic services such as public utilities and emergency services broke down within weeks of the virus outbreak. Random gangs roam the countryside and no one is safe anymore. We save who we can, but every day it grows more desperate, and I often question why we are prolonging the inevitable.
Someone once told me that silence was golden. They lied. It’s deafening. There are no planes in the skies, no kids in the parks playing, no car horns blaring anymore. Although my father warned me what the aftermath to an event like this would be like, the reality is far different than the theory.
A few weeks after the virus left millions dead, news of other creatures roaming the land hit the radio. At first we thought it was a joke, but then I wondered why anyone would joke about something like this after the virus. We chose to ignore it, because our minds just couldn’t comprehend it.
Not until I met him.
He is my salvation, and my damnation. He watches me, and he’s not like anyone I have ever met before. Maybe I’d been waiting for him? Maybe fate works that way, because until him, I never cared what anyone thought of me, but I would find myself watching for him. I would actually go out of the shelter, just hoping to catch a glimpse of him.
If I had known then what I did now, I mean really believed that life as I knew it would forever be changed, I’d have taken a chance with him sooner. Maybe I wouldn’t have been afraid of living, or loving. I found out the hard way that life really is too short to hold back and constantly second-guess yourself.
In my darkest hour, he was my dawn. His kind is dangerous, but in the world we now live in, he was and is my best chance of survival. Other creatures exist, and while I’ve made a choice to accept it, I haven’t always found that acceptance came comfortably or easily. Each new revelation I discovered would shake my foundation a little more than the last. To keep those I care for alive, and thriving, I’ll have to do so much more than I could have before. Still, my darkest hour is yet to come, and I’ll keep fighting until we’ve won.
I’m getting ahead of myself. For you to understand it all, we need to start at the beginning. The day the virus hit our town. The day the world as I knew it ceased to be, and a new world began.
Chapter 1
The day the virus came to town.
“You can’t be serious,” Addy laughed.
“Dead serious,” I said as I checked my watch for the fifth time. Grayson would be out of school in the next hour, which meant my shopping buddy needed to move her ass.
“So how many more hours of clinical do you have?”
“Five, and then I start an internship at the hospital. I worked my schedule around Grayson, but I’m hoping Dad will snap out of his prepper state and man up.”
“You know that won’t happen,” she said as she grabbed popcorn and turned to head to the dairy aisle. “So, what’s he say about that virus?”
The virus was bad, and the news was just depressing. Rh Viridae or ‘Pacers Flu’ had hit Europe hard; hospitals there were overflowing with the sick and the morgues couldn’t keep up with the dead. “He says it’s the end of days, but he said that about the war in Afghanistan, too. I just hope they find a cure for it before it can get this far.”
“Chocolate, or no chocolate?” she asked as she wiggled her eyebrows.
“You have to ask?” I mocked.
“You’re right,” she said as she added a few bars to basket. “So, is he all prepping or…”
“Or,” I said as I reached for a gallon of milk, and put a few cartons of yogurt into the cart. I was still dressed in my plain blue scrubs from the hospital, which did nothing for my figure. I caught Miss Smith watching me, her eyes narrowed on the items in my cart.
She was one of the teachers at the high school, and had always struck me as pretentiously prim and proper. She’d also been the one to report my father to Child Protective Services because she believed Grayson would have been better raised by a ‘normal’ family, instead of our little broken one. I gave her a sharp look before I purposely added more flavors into the cart.
I had been failing school back then, so I knew where she had been coming from. Did I care? Nope. He was my family, and while my dad seemed crazy to everyone else, I knew he had his reasons for what he did. He wanted to protect us, and I think it was his way of coping with my mother’s death. He’d started his prepping the week after her funeral.
I’d only been eleven when she had been brutally gunned down and killed in a robbery gone wrong. It had been a low point in our lives, but we’d dealt with it. Grayson was only two when she’d been killed, so to him, she was just gone. He’d been a surprise to my parents who thought they couldn’t have any more children. Hence the huge age gap. He was twelve now, and in fifth grade. I pretty much raised him, and so far, I think I’ve done a good job of it.
Grayson was a normal twelve year old boy. He got in trouble once in a while, but managed to keep his grades up. Unlike me, he had more than one friend, and was outgoing. I was more of an introvert. I loved Addy, but I had never been much of a social butterfly. I was driven, and had plans.
“We should invite some guys over tonight. Dillon has been asking about you. You know he likes you. I don’t see why you keep refusing to go out with him.”
“He isn’t interested in me, he’s only interested in something new,” I said dropping Captain Crunch cereal into the cart. “I think he has three more to go until he beats Brad’s score.”
The problem with small towns was everyone knew what everyone was doing. I have to agree with my dad sometimes when he says that boys act like some sort of weird species that are best avoided until they grow out of the phase where the little head does more thinking than the big one. In a small town, their competiveness can take on a bizarre twist. Brad and Dillon were best friends, and we’d gone to high school with them. Dillon had chased me up until Candace had moved to town. He immediately stopped chasing me and started chasing after her, right up until she gave it up to him. The very next day he was after me again. “I’m not interested in being used.”
“It’s just having fun, for crying out loud,” she mumbled as we headed to the register with her back a little stiffer than it had been. “You should try it sometime.”
“No way on the Dillon thing, and there’s a ton of things I know I’d find to be more fun. Half of our graduating class is hopeless! They barely managed to graduate because most of them already had children. Look at Tabitha, she slept with Dillon and nine months later she’s jobless, a mother, and on welfare. Worst of all, I know she was on birth control because I was there at the clinic when she got the shot. I just don’t get why people would play with their lives like that. There is so much more out there, and we can do anything we want to. A child or a disease is so not on my to-do list right now.”
“Are you done preaching yet?” Addy said as she turned to look for anyone to ring us up. “Where the heck is everybody?” she asked and I looked around the store.
The clerks were gathered around a TV monitor at the far end of the store. I tilted my head to see what had them careless enough to the leave the registers unattended. There was a beautiful news lady on the monitor, with what looked to be a hospital behind her that was taped off with bright yellow quarantine tape, and workers busy setting up barricades.