Charley Hogwood
The Unraveling
Book 1 of the Bound to Survive Series
Copyright © 2018 by Charley Hogwood
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Charley Hogwood has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet Websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book and on its cover are trade names, service marks, trademarks and registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publishers and the book are not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. None of the companies referenced within the book have endorsed the book.
This work of fiction is designed for entertainment purposes only, and should not be relied upon for true survival situations. The author assumes no responsibility for the accuracy or veracity of proposed survival tactics, and encourages the reader to consult with experts and other professionals in the various fields represented in this book. For medical emergencies, please seek professional medical attention when necessary.
First edition
Editing by Sarah Litt
Cover art by Jeff Brown
This book was professionally typeset on Reedsy
Find out more at reedsy.com
I would like to dedicate this book to the countless everyday people who strive to be a little more prepared than yesterday.
And to my amazing wife Courtney who leads our pack while I detach myself from reality to bring the story to life. I could never do any of this without you my love.
Contents
Preface
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Preface
Punto Fijo, Venezuela
Monday, November 13
It was another smoldering day at the small-town market. Even though it was only 7 am, the line was wrapped around the block with people wearing bandannas, respirators, and various types of protective masks. The line seemed to stretch on for miles, as people kept their distance from each other even if it meant standing in the blazing sun, unwilling to risk their lives for even the slightest bit of shade. Everyone knew that getting too close to someone who was contagious could lead to a violent death.
“Policia! Policia!” Panic rippled through the crowd as everyone scattered to the wind. They all knew that there was to be no public gathering of any type due to “la gripa,” the strange illness that seemed to be everywhere lately. Anyone caught during curfew hours would be arrested. The local jails were a viral breeding ground and once in, you were on your own to fight for food and protection. It was commonly believed among the population that the next step would be public executions to stem the sickness, but that was only a rumor. For now.
The police patrol raced down the street, three jeeps loaded with armed men hanging over the sides. All of them were wearing military style chemical masks and long rubber gloves. A truck tagged along behind them, loaded with sad-faced civilians who had already been rounded up this morning for various offenses such as being outside without a government pass.
After the patrol flew by, people sensed that the coast was clear and raced from the shadows to get back in line. At 8 am exactly, the market owner unlocked the door; he had learned the hard way that he was going to need help or the mob would wipe out the whole store. He had been forced to make arrangements with local men to barter food for protection. It wasn’t exactly legal, but these days you did what was needed.
“Back up!” One of the four large men armed with clubs growled to the advancing line of customers. Their job was to keep order and allow only five people into the store at a time. If a person didn’t have their nose and mouth covered, they were turned away. The ragtag security team was wearing various face coverings made from an interesting assortment of household items. From t-shirts to two-liter soda bottles configured with charcoal and cotton, they all seemed desperate to fashion a poor man’s respirator, doing whatever was necessary to stay healthy.
“Anyone gets pushy and you get some stick time! If you look sick, you don’t get in so don’t even try!” The second guard shouted down the line through his bandanna. He made eye contact with each person to drive his point home before retreating back to the doorway.
Just as she was about to be let in, a young woman began having a coughing fit, trying to hide it by turning to the side and using her arm as a shield. She failed at her miserable attempt, and the people around her tripped over each other trying to step back and get away. One of the guards saw the commotion and stepped closer, but not too close.
“You! Go away. You must leave now!” he said, using his bat as a pointer to motion her away from the store.
“Please, we have no food and my family is counting on me to bring something.” she pleaded.
“Go!” he repeated, pointing the bat toward the street with more force now.
She fell to her knees in tears, and those around her noticed that her eyes and nose were red and runny as she pulled her mask away to wipe them on her sleeve. The man raised his bat in a final threat if she did not leave the line. People stepped further away in anticipation of what might come.
“No… Please!,” she cried as she crawled on her knees toward the street and made a shaky effort to stand and walk away. The line began to slowly reform, and people seemed to be hesitant to be anywhere near where the sick woman had just been standing. It was almost as if they were scared that the ground itself might be contagious.
“First five!” The guard said pointing toward the door. The first group filed in the doorway and headed straight for the items they needed.
“The shelves are so empty, mama,” said a teenage by to his mother who was forming a panicked look on her face.
“I know, but we have to make our money stretch. Here, go see if you can find these things,” she added, as she tore the list and gave the boy half. Miguel quickly shuffled towards the back of the store where the diapers and formula were kept.
A few minutes later, another masked guard holding a heavy stick became suspicious of the young man with shifty eyes near what was left of the baby food. As Miguel and his mother made their way to the register, it looked as if he had gained some weight since he entered the market. His pants no longer hung l
oosely, but bulged around the thighs, inconsistent with his lean frame. The mother paid for the small basket and they moved toward the exit when the guard stopped the boy.
“You look like you’ve gained a few pounds since you came in. Put your hands on the wall.”
The mother turned as the guard called the boy out. “Miguel? What’s going on?” she asked, shifting her eyes to the guard. Miguel did as he was told but would not look at his mother.
The guard began his pat-down using the stick so he did not have to physically touch the boy. As he reached the thigh area of the boy’s pants, the stick made a clinking sound as it connected with glass. The teen began crying behind his improvised face mask, knowing what came next. A handful of baby food jars were removed from the hidden pockets in his pants and he was taken to the sidewalk for some stick time in front of the people lined up outside.
“Wait! Stop!” His mother pleaded with the guard as he pushed Miguel to the street with the end of his club.
“There will be no tolerance for thieves!” the guard announced, and the beating began.
The mother screamed and pleaded for the guard to stop.
“My son, Please stop!”
“Back up! Or you get some too!” the guard said, as she moved to intervene. The people in line looked on in surreal horror at what used to be their thriving, decent society. This is what it had become, brutal beatings of a child over a few jars of baby food. Most turned away from the scene, silently wishing it would stop.
Mrs. Vargas had had enough; she could no longer watch this young man be beaten for trying to help his family survive. She stepped between the guard and the boy, and was struck in the head by accident. The guard stopped swinging after seeing that he had hit an old woman, and he stepped back in momentary shock. Mrs. Vargas fell to the ground, dazed, alongside the nearly unconscious boy. Mr. Vargas ran to her side and held his wife of 50 years. She looked him in the eyes, terrified, as she slowly faded from consciousness. She would not survive the injury.
Back at home, Daniela Vargas had just walked in from one of her three jobs to change clothes. She was getting ready to head right back out to her night shift job at the Amuay oil refinery, where she worked as a custodian. As Daniela stepped out from her bedroom, ready to leave for work, her father was being helped in the front door by a stranger.
“Papa, what happened? Where is mother?”
She helped the stranger walk her father to his favorite chair in the living room. The stranger looked at him and then glanced sadly at Daniela, knowing the conversation to come between father and daughter. He nodded and left, not wanting to be anywhere near this place in a few minutes. Daniela sobbed uncontrollably as her father gave her the news of mother. She was angry with herself for not being able to do more. She should have been in that market line, not her aging parents. In her head, she knew better, but rational thought was elusive now, as she could only focus on the loss of her mother, and her ailing, heart-broken father.
In addition to his shock and grief from the horrific events of the morning, he wasn’t feeling well today. His cough and fever continued to worsen. Mr. Vargas, like so many others in this town, were incubating something so terrible that the economic Hell they were living in would come to pale in comparison.
The next afternoon, Daniela entered the bedroom with some chicken broth made from the birds in the family coop, her father sat upright in anticipation of her visit. After Dani settled the bowl in front of him, Mr. Vargas motioned for his daughter to sit for a moment. As he spoke, she detected a purpose to his words. It didn’t take long for Daniela to see where this conversation was headed.
“Absolutely not, I will not leave this place, my home, my life. Papa you are my family and my place will always be here” she pleaded.
“My sweet daughter, I feel there is little hope in this place for a wonderful person such as you. Trust me when I say it is time to leave. You have a cousin that works at a university in Texas. Look in your mother’s dresser for her phone number.”
His words were becoming more difficult now. She felt a dread in the pit of her stomach. He grasped her hand tighter and gazed into her eyes.
“I love you, sweet daughter. You have your mother’s eyes.”
With this, he drifted to sleep, never touching his soup. Later that night, Mr. Vargas eased away, at home in the same bedroom he had shared with his wife for so many years. Holding his left hand, Daniela saw his right hand raise slightly toward the door. She felt his grip loosen and the suffocating silence engulf the room. She had convinced herself that preceding his last breath, she saw an almost imperceptible smile and that happy, warm expression that one gets when greeting a loved one.
In the week after her father passed, every room in the house felt like the air was thick with memories. Daniela found herself moving from room to room, unsure of what to do with herself, unable to stop the tears. She finally decided to heed her father’s words, and call her cousin Carita. It was with great reservation that Carita gave in. It would be an extreme journey, fraught with hazards, but she knew that Dani had at least a chance of success if she could make it to the States.
Dani found herself in a group of women who were smuggled across the border and sent to El Paso, TX. She ended up being assigned to the food service department at the same university as her cousin Carita. There was little time for reunion as the school was in full session right before the holiday break, and the women were put straight to work. Because the commercial kitchen was a new experience for Dani, she was unfamiliar with the equipment, and instead was tasked with serving the students. Only seven days into her job, and Dani wished she felt better. Here she was, in her new life full of promise, and she felt like death warmed over. The journey to America must have been harder on her than she expected, because her throat ached, her cough was getting worse, and she was pretty sure that she had a fever. She was petrified at the thought of having the flu from back home, so she kept telling herself that it was just the new climate and the stress of all the new job requirements.
In between serving scoops of mashed potatoes and green beans, Dani sniffled into her sleeve and kept trying to wipe her nose with her hand so her bosses wouldn’t notice. She couldn’t afford to get in trouble, and it’s not like she could ask for a day off to rest. The entire kitchen staff, and many of the students, seemed to be getting similar symptoms. At least the students were going to be leaving for the Christmas break tomorrow, and maybe then she could slow down a little.
When she got home, she went straight to the room she shared with six other women. They were all in various stages of illness, which they all blamed on the Texas air and their cramped conditions. She saw them standing over a girl named Gabriella, who was on the floor, unconscious. Apparently, she had shaken violently after she fainted, and now lay contorted with bloody foam in her mouth. The girls could not risk calling for help for fear of reprisal. They would have to wait until the man in the mask came to make his headcount later that night. Dani knew that if anyone left, or attracted attention to the group, everyone would be severely punished, so all they could do was watch as the girl died right in front of them.
Numbed to the desperation of her current situation, Dani just wanted to lay down. She stumbled to her sleeping mat on the floor, and in a heavy wave of nausea, collapsed. Accepting the enveloping darkness pass over her, she felt the bile rise in her throat. With multi-colored flashes in her mind, her eyes began to roll back into her head. Dani’s body violently shook as she choked for her last breath.
1
Chapter 1
Friday, December 1st
Loxahatchee, Florida
“…President Putin today strongly criticized the United States for meddling in Syria. In a not-so-veiled threat, Moscow has released a cartoon depicting Russian bombers attacking American-supported rebels. In response, the United States has broken off talks after the shaky ceasefire brokered by the Secretary of State collapsed.”
Cal Bohannon was in the kitchen of
his rural South Florida home making coffee for the love of his life while the TV droned on in the background with the talking heads laying out how bad things were in the world. Today’s citizens had a variety of outlets to choose from, and there was more than enough negativity to go around.
“Of course it collapsed, this war is never going to end.” Cal had a way of mumbling to himself when the news was on. His right-leaning perspective was always amazed at the political slant of certain news channels. Charlotte would have rolled her eyes at his commentary, he could almost feel it, even though she was in another room. She had always been just a tad more liberal, but he used that as an excuse to give her a hard time when it was election season.
“In other news, the Iranian Navy has continued to harass US Navy ships in the Strait of Hormuz. It is through this narrow strip of water that a large portion of the world’s oil flows in super tankers. With this consistent hampering of navigation, the large insurance companies, most notably Lloyd’s of London, are growing wary of issuing policies for vessels operating in the Strait. If a miscalculation happens by any of the Navies sailing this region, private shipping firms may suspend operations putting an incalculable burden on the world’s energy sectors.”
“Just what we need, ten-dollar gas,” Cal muttered.
“Looking toward the Pacific Region. The state-run news service for the hermit kingdom of North Korea has officially reported that the two alleged communication satellites they placed in space in recent years do in fact hold miniaturized nuclear weapons capable of producing an electromagnetic pulse over the skies of America.”
Cal made a mental note to look up what an electromagnetic pulse was as he set the electric kettle to boil water for the French press.
“Turning our attention to the crumbling nation of Venezuela, we are receiving reports that the State-run medical system is in ruins. It is being reported that critical lifesaving drugs and supplies are no longer available. The lack of resources has led to an outbreak of several diseases usually confined to the third world such as cholera, typhoid, dengue, and Chik V, as well as the quickly spreading Zika virus. There are sporadic reports that an epidemic of something yet to be identified is under way. The symptoms of this illness are said to be identical to the seasonal flu, but this disease has mutated faster than normal. A crisis response team is on standby, but travel from western countries has been restricted due to the political situation. According to CDC spokesperson Arianna Valdez, it is difficult to get an accurate understanding of what is happening within the borders of Venezuela currently.”
The Unraveling: Book 1 of the Bound to Survive Series Page 1