Escape The Dark (Book 2): Fearful World

by Fawkes, K. M.

  Fearful World

  Escape The Dark Book 2

  K. M. Fawkes

  Contents

  Fearful World

  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

  Into the Ruins

  Chapter 1

  K. M. Fawkes Mailing List

  Also by K. M. Fawkes

  Fearful World

  Copyright 2020 by K. M. Fawkes

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part by any means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the explicit written permission of the author.

  All characters depicted in this fictional work are consenting adults, of at least eighteen years of age. Any resemblance to persons living or deceased, particular businesses, events, or exact locations are entirely coincidental.

  Chapter 1

  July 6, 2026

  Of all the things that had happened to Adam Parkhead over the last few months, nothing had scared him quite as viscerally as finding himself at the wrong end of a gun.

  They hadn’t been easy months by a long shot. They had included fleeing a city ravaged by a deadly virus, escaping the mainland for life on the sea with a group of people who were mostly strangers, raiding an oil tanker for food and supplies and coming upon a room full of corpses, and surviving the deaths of countless friends and family members.

  But there was something about the man who stood before him now that made Adam sure he wouldn’t hesitate to pull the trigger of that rifle.

  He was young, for one thing. Probably still a teenager. He was also tall and muscular. He looked like someone who was used to winning fights, who was maybe used to not even having to start fights. And the look on his face was one of pure aggression, not at all tempered by caution. He looked, Adam thought, like a kid who had found his father’s gun. Like a deep and fundamental part of him still believed this was all a game and couldn’t end badly.

  That was a belief Adam had abandoned a long time ago.

  He raised his hands slowly. “Don’t shoot,” he said.

  “Give us a reason not to.”

  Adam blinked. The speaker wasn’t the boy holding the gun. He turned to see another boy covering him from behind. This one wasn’t armed, but he was just as well built as his friend.

  Exactly as well built, in fact. With the same dark blond hair blowing in the sea breeze, the same hazel eyes, and the same square jaw.

  “You’re twins,” he managed.

  “Never mind what we are,” said the one with the gun as his brother walked around to stand beside him. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Adam. Adam Parkhead.” He got slowly to his feet. “That’s my yacht,” he said, pointing to the wreck behind him. It wasn’t his, not in the strictest sense of the word, but everyone who might have disputed his claim to it was now dead.

  “What are you doing here?” the armed twin asked.

  “I didn’t mean to come here. I don’t even know where I am. That storm last night blew me in.”

  “Have you got the virus?”

  A fair question, Adam knew.

  “No,” he said. “I’m clean. Do you have it?”

  The boys shook their heads in unison. “No one in our family has nanotech,” one of them said. “Father doesn’t trust technology.”

  Well, Father had been right in this case, Adam thought. The nanotech injections, originally intended as a powerful tool that could cure any ill the bearer might be suffering from, were the agent of humanity’s demise.

  Adam would never forget the first death due to nanotech he’d seen, the victim hemorrhaging violently as he crashed his car in a church parking lot. As clever as the nanobots had been, no one had anticipated that they would view the ordinary process of human aging as a threat, as a virus, and force it to shut down, killing the human host in the process.

  But not having gotten the injection didn’t mean these two were safe.

  “You know it spreads, don’t you?” Adam asked. “Plenty of people who never got the injection have died. How long have you been on this island?”

  They glanced at each other.

  “We’re asking the questions,” the unarmed one said finally.

  As long as they weren’t pulling the trigger, that was fine with Adam. His heart rate was finally beginning to return to normal.

  “So what do you want to know?” he asked.

  The twins looked at each other again. Adam saw the doubt and uncertainty on their faces. It wasn’t fear exactly, but they were definitely unsure of what they were supposed to do with him now that they had him.

  “Are you here by yourselves?” Adam asked.

  Relief broke over the face of the one without the gun. “We should take him up to the house,” he told his twin.

  The twin shook his head. “No way, Langley. What if he’s infected?”

  “He says he isn’t.”

  “He could be lying, dumbass. Wouldn’t you lie if you were infected?”

  “Listen, have either of you ever seen an infected person?” Adam interrupted.

  Langley and his twin shook their heads.

  “Well, the infection takes hold quickly,” Adam said. “And I’ve been on a boat. I’ve had no one new for company for months now. If I had it, I’d already be dead.”

  The boy with the gun snorted. “Sure.” But his doubt still showed on his face.

  “Okay, then leave me here,” Adam said. “Take me up to the house or leave me here. But if you really think I’m infected, you don’t want to shoot me. If I had the nanovirus, my blood would be full of bots.”

  “That’s true,” Langley said. He looked at his brother. “I think we should take him, Rhett.”

  Rhett shook his head. “Father won’t like this.”

  “Father will like it a lot less if we tell him there was a stranger wandering around on the beach and we just left him there. Especially now that he knows we’re here.”

  Rhett thought about that for a minute. “Fine,” he agreed. “Grab him.”

  Langley didn’t seem to want to touch Adam. Finally he wrapped a hand around the back of Adam’s shirt, propelling him forward. Adam went willingly enough. It wasn’t as though he had anywhere else to go.

  He’d lived on his best friend Cody’s yacht for months now. But the yacht had been badly damaged in last night’s storm. If he hadn’t washed up on this beach, Adam thought, he would probably be dead.

  And then there was the fact that all his shipmates, Cody included, had died. Rhett and Langley weren’t exactly Adam’s idea of good company, but they were a far sight better than being stranded alone on a beach with a boat that wouldn’t float. They had mentioned a house. That meant they probably had food and potable water.

  The “house” in question turned out to be a sprawling estate. Adam gaped as they approached, amazed by the size of the place. Was this really someone’s home?

  His question was answered as they passed through an iron gate bearing a sign which read “Santa Joaquina Country Club.” The sign had fallen into slight disrepair—it looked a
s though the humidity had warped it, and a few creeper vines had made their way through the bars of the gate to wrap around it. So this place had once been the site of a country club, and now Rhett and Langley were squatting here. He had to admire their resourcefulness.

  He also wondered how many others were here with them. Adam had no doubt that this building could have accommodated hundreds, if the need arose.

  As they approached, a door opened and five people emerged. The three men were all middle-aged and surprisingly well-groomed. Adam supposed he’d grown used to the grizzled beard of Artem, the captain of the yacht, and the fact that Cody had always looked slightly ill. These men were dressed as if they’d just left a business meeting for the day, in button-down shirts with the sleeves rolled up and clean-looking pants.

  The two women were dressed in sundresses. One of them was probably in her forties, but the other looked younger even than the two boys who had marched Adam back here. And, he realized, she was staring at him.

  “What is this?” one of the men asked now. “Who is this person?”

  “We found him on the beach,” Langley explained. “His boat washed up.”

  “He says he’s not infected.” Rhett’s voice was close to a growl. “But since we have no way of knowing if he’s telling the truth, I think we should get rid of him.”

  “Rhett,” Langley said.

  “We can’t afford to take chances,” Rhett said. “It’s all our lives on the line here.”

  “Rhett’s right,” one of the men agreed, and Adam felt his stomach turn over. “We can’t afford to keep him. He might pose a risk to all of us.”

  “Are you Adam Parkhead?” the girl asked suddenly.

  Adam blinked. This was a question he’d been asked many times. Even though the TV show on which he’d starred as a child had been off the air for years, even though he’d been living a private life for the entirety of his adulthood, people still recognized him. He blamed the paparazzi. For some reason, some people still considered it worth their time to hang around outside his apartment and take pictures of him doing things like going to the grocery store.

  But it came as a surprise to be getting the old familiar question here and now, on an island full of strangers who were debating whether or not he should get to live. It was like something out of another life.

  “Yeah,” he said. There was no point in trying to lie about it. He’d already given Rhett and Langley his real name without even thinking. “I’m Adam Parkhead.”

  “Who the hell is Adam Parkhead?” one of the older men asked.

  “He used to be on Juniper Creek,” the girl said. “He doesn’t act anymore, but I’ve seen him in magazines from time to time. I remember one article about…about child stars who had epic meltdowns.”

  Great, Adam thought. He was never going to escape that.

  “I thought you were dead,” the girl said to him.

  “I’m definitely not dead,” Adam said. He’d spent the last twenty-four hours or so being pretty sure he was going to die. But he hadn’t. “Why’d you think that?”

  “I don’t know. The article sort of implied that your life was over.”

  “Maybe they meant figuratively.”

  She shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “Well, seeing as he isn’t dead,” one of the men said, “maybe we could use another young set of hands around here.”

  “He’s not dead now,” Rhett argued. “If he’s infected—”

  The older man held up a hand. “Son, my name is Charles McTerrell,” he said to Adam. “This young lady is my daughter, Olivia, and this is my brother Marsden.” One of the other men lifted his hand. “The fellows with the gun pointed at your head are Rhett and Langley Birkin, and these are their parents, Richard and Kathryn.”

  “I’m Adam Parkhead. I guess we covered that.”

  “Adam, are you infected with the nanovirus?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “He could be lying,” Rhett said. “He could be mistaken.”

  “He could be,” Charles McTerrell said. “Adam, how can you be sure that you’re not infected?”

  “Well, I never got the injection—”

  “Like that matters anymore,” Richard Birkin muttered.

  “It matters a little,” Adam said. “If I’d gotten the injection, you would know I was definitely infected. Since I didn’t get it, that means you don’t know.”

  “We already know we don’t know,” Langley said.

  “I say we shoot him,” Rhett said. “Everyone back away so you don’t get blood splattered on you.”

  “Rhett, put down the gun, for Christ’s sake,” Marsden McTerrell said. “We can hear the poor boy out before we start shooting.”

  “It’s like the twins said,” Adam said. “My boat crashed. I’ve been living at sea for months. Just me and three other people, and none of us were infected. And since we were so isolated, there was no one around to infect us. I would have had to be in contact with someone who had nanobots in order to pick up the infection, and I haven’t been.”

  “How long were you on the boat?” Marsden asked.

  “Three months.”

  Marsden glanced at Charles. “The nanovirus doesn’t incubate for three months. No way he’s just been carrying it all that time.”

  Charles nodded slowly. “And he’s not displaying any symptoms.”

  “Come on, he’s lying!” Rhett jabbed at Adam with the barrel of the gun, and Adam felt his insides turn to water.

  “That’s not a toy, son,” Charles said. “I suggest you put the gun down.”

  “And what, let him kill us all?”

  “He’s unarmed.”

  “My son has a point,” Richard said. He sounded detached, almost disinterested, but his eyes were sharp. “This stranger could be lying to us. It would be a mistake to trust him out of hand.”

  “It would also be a mistake to kill him,” Charles said. “He might be telling the truth, and if he is, we’d be no better than murderers.”

  The woman spoke up. “We’ll put him in quarantine,” she said decisively.

  “Kathryn…” Richard rumbled.

  “Quarantine for one night,” she said firmly. “If he’s infected, that should be long enough for us to see a decline in his condition. If that happens, you can shoot him. And if it doesn’t, we let him stay.”

  “Works for me,” Adam said. He had nothing to lose, after all, and Kathryn’s proposed solution would mean a roof over his head tonight. Maybe they’d give him something to eat. And in the morning it would be clear that he didn’t have the virus, so he wouldn’t be shot. He hoped.

  “I think it’s the best we can do in the circumstances,” Marsden McTerrell agreed.

  Richard Birkin frowned slightly. “Put him in the east wing, then,” he said. “Far away from the rest of us. And make sure to lock him in. I don’t want him sneaking out in the night.” He gave his wife a dark look. “I don’t like the idea of someone new on this island. There are a few too many people here already.”

  What did that mean?

  Adam didn’t have time to linger on that thought, as Rhett jabbed him with the gun again.

  The twins escorted him into the building, up a flight of stairs, and down to the end of a hall so long it seemed unlikely to ever end. Langley threw open the door and Rhett prodded Adam inside.

  Adam was hard-pressed not to gasp aloud. Cody’s yacht had been extravagant, but the living quarters on a boat had been cramped. This was another story entirely.

  The room was massive, big enough to turn a cartwheel in if one were so inclined. Part of the space was taken up by a king-size bed with a fluffy brown duvet. There was also, Adam saw, a closet and a chest of drawers.

  “We’re going to lock you in,” Langley said. “Don’t bother trying to get out.”

  “I won’t.”

  The twins eyed him suspiciously for a moment, then retreated. He expected to hear the sound of a door latch, but instead there was a loud scraping, as
if they were pushing something very heavy in front of the door.

  Adam shook his head, wondering what these people had been through to make them so anxious about him. He had to admit, if they’d survived this long, there was no doubt they’d seen something that justified their edginess.

  He would worry about it in the morning. For now there was a soft, warm bed calling him. He stripped off his outerwear, crawled beneath the sheets, and was asleep in seconds.

  Chapter 2

  Adam slept the sleep of the dead. He had been at sea for so long that the world still seemed to be rocking gently around him, but it was a pleasant feeling, not a disorienting one. His sleep was also, thankfully, dreamless.

  The last thing he wanted was to dream. He was sure he would have revisited the deaths of his sailing companions, and he definitely wasn’t ready to do that just yet.

  It was painful to wake. He had left his cares behind for a few blissful hours. But he was jerked from sleep by a banging sound outside his bedroom door.

  At first he thought someone must be knocking, but the sound was too heavy. They must have been moving whatever was blocking his door from the outside, he supposed. They were ready to let him out. Well, good. He was ready to be free.

  He glanced out the window and was surprised to see the sun pinking up the horizon. Had he slept through the night? Well, God knew his body had needed it.

  The door opened and the three men he’d met the night before came in. Richard Birkin held a rifle now—the Birkins weren’t shy about pointing guns at people, it seemed. Charles and Marsden McTerrell were unarmed, but they looked cautious.

  “Sleep well?” Charles asked.

  “Pretty well, thanks.” Adam eyed the men cautiously. “I thought if I lived through the night you weren’t going to shoot me.”

  “That wasn’t the deal,” Richard said. “We said that if you weren’t sick we wouldn’t shoot you.”

  “Well… I’m not.”

  “We’ll see about that.”