by Fitch, E. M.
Break Free the Night
A Novel by
E. M. Fitch
A Brock D. Publication
ISBN 978-1-312-02570-7
Dedication
For my husband, the only man I'd trust to have my back during the apocalypse.
&
For my Grandmother, Doris Brock, my greatest critic. I apologize for any grammar errors which, try as you did, could not be stamped out of me completely.
Table of Contents
Prologue
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
“One may not reach the dawn save by the path of the night.”
-Kahlil Gibran
Prologue
Chaos reigned.
It had for some time. Cars and buses and motorcycles that had flipped all clogged the roads, none moving though wishing they could. To go where? No one knew. Just out.
In the daylight, they came. The infected. Out of sewers, from underneath buses, rising from the gutters, swarming over trains and covering the tracks with their twitching bodies.
Ants over anthills.
Windows shattered. Doors cracked and splintered under the combined weight of hundreds of hungry men, women, and children with bleeding sores for mouths. The army came, they had to eventually, and first people were barricaded, offered places to go. But soon, when it became apparent that even that wasn’t working, when the infection started spreading faster, people were ordered to turn their loved ones over. Anyone with hand tremors, yellowing eyes, anyone contaminated, or possibly contaminated, or exposed to anyone who may have been contaminated, they were all ordered to the street.
And some did it. Some told their mothers, brothers, husbands, yes even children, to leave, to follow orders, to march to the soldiers and to their death. Pleads and howling and begging and fights and tears and sobs, all of it, echoed from the apartment high-rise’s halls.
And Sarah watched from her room, from the apartment she had barricaded into, iron bars bolted into place over a wooden door, watched as neighbors she knew and loved and even some she hated were marched to the center of the road, stood in the crosswalk, and shot down.
The streets ran red.
But the babe in her arms, the tiny child, just learning to walking, hardly crawling, he was safe. They hadn’t searched through that small opening in the ceiling of his closet, amongst the bags of clothing that he had already outgrown and discarded toys. He was still here, now snuggling into her arms, whole and living. But he was also hungry. Starving. He squirmed and tossed, snapped his few teeth, teeth that were yellowed at the edges. One terrible sore at the corner of his mouth trickled a thin line of blood.
Poor baby…
She rocked him in her arms. His sad looking little lip would bleed at times from the awful sore there. The blood would tinge his saliva, leaving brown mosaics dried to his bed sheets over night. It was a cold sore, or a small cut, something, Sarah wasn’t quite sure. But she kept it clean and dry and knew it would heal eventually.
She cooed to him and soothed him.
Or, at least she tried to.
Nighttime was falling and soon, he would sleep. He never had trouble getting to sleep at night anymore. He used to fuss; colic some had called it, night terrors others. He used to howl and cry throughout the midnight hours. Now, as soon as the sun set, his eyelids fell.
Until you turned on a light.
It was strange, but any light woke him immediately. He would scream and lunge, gnawing anything close; one of his few teeth had chipped already when he sought to bite his crib rail. It was sharp and jagged. But it could be fixed. Soon, when this was all over, Sarah could take him to the dentist. He would be fine.
“Sarah.”It was her husband, his plead. She could hear it in his voice, in the low whine to his tone.
“Shush, Matt,”she admonished, shaking her head lovingly, a small smile playing on her lips.“Shush, he’s almost asleep.”
“Sarah, we can’t…he’s—”
“He’s our son, our Noah. He’s perfect.”She’d hear no more of this.
The sun slanted its last rays through the living room window. Already the kitchen was cast in shadows. The orange glow burnt like fire, dazzling, on the hardwood floors, and Sarah moved to the shadows, shifting Noah to her chest. She felt his head fall drowsily on her shoulder, pink drool coating the skin there.
A crash from the hallway sounded, loud and insistent, a body banged into their door. Sarah jumped, turning, and the last rays of a dying sun splashed across Noah’s face. He shrieked, lifting his face and burying it, teeth first, into Sarah’s neck.
A strangled gasp was all she released. She fell backwards, loosing her hold on Noah who skittered across the hardwood and into the shadows, a trail of blood marking his path. But the sun smattered over Sarah’s skin, she could feel its’burn and was angered by it. Her stomach roiled and pitched before settling hollow and empty. Her blood rushed, her muscles felt cramped and tightened, her vision swam and was blurred at the edges. Salvia, hot and wet, coat her mouth, slid down her teeth. Matt walked into the room.
And there was only one feeling then.
Hunger.
Chapter One
I hate it when they screech like that.
Kaylee rolled over and squinted out the window. She was warm, though she knew she wouldn’t be for long. The light filtering through was weak but the sky was still blue. It couldn’t be past three in the afternoon yet. Everyone would need breakfast soon.
She tossed back the covers and padded across the worn, wooden floor to the window. There was nothing new to see. The infected roamed lazily through the street, mostly sated from the binging that had occurred at dawn. Kaylee felt her eyes drift to the lone picture frame she had propped on the windowsill. Four smiling faces shone back at her. She could barely recognize her own self in that picture.
Her eye was drawn, as it often was, to the silver medal hanging from her mother’s neck in the picture. She had wore it for as long as Kaylee could remember, probably wore it still. It was Saint Jude’s medal, though you couldn’t tell from the picture, from the picture it was just a small, shiny disc, gleaming in the early sun of a happier time. Kaylee grit her teeth as she stared at it.“Always believe in the impossible,”her mother had told her once when she caught Kaylee’s eyes on it. Her delicate finger had tapped the medal and then came to Kaylee’s chin, raising her face until Kaylee was caught in the full force of her smile.
“What are you looking at?”came a raspy, sleep-filled voice from behind her.
“Nothing,”she said, shrugging before she turned from the window and her lone picture to cross to her modest pile of clothing. There were no dressers in this room, just an old, scuffed, three-shelf bookcase that someone had thrown in the corner. One and a half of those shelves were hers, though her sister rarely asked first before she borrowed something.“Someone screeched.”
“Something, you mean,”Emma answered, pushing her messy, brunette hair out of her eyes and yawning as she stretched.
“Not something, Em, someone,”Kaylee admonished, but her tone was weak and she knew it. They had had this argument before.
“Either way, what do you care? They always scream and moan and carry on,”her sister replied, pulling an old sweatshirt over her head and yanking her hai
r into a sloppy bun.
“I know, it’s just so late in the day for that. I slept through this morning’s feeding. Did you?”
“Yeah, thank goodness! I can’t stand hearing that shit.”
“Emma! Watch your mouth,”Kaylee frowned in her younger sister’s direction. Emma just rolled her eyes. But regardless of her sister’s language, it was true that Kaylee couldn’t stand listening to all their noise either. The infected woke at dawn ravenous and being anywhere near them then was downright suicidal. When the outbreak had first happened the infected would eat throughout the day, anytime they came across a meal. But, that had been when there were a larger number of meals walking about. Now they would devour all available sustenance at dawn and search for anything left over or hiding for the rest of the day. It was two years later. Kaylee and the little group that lived barricaded in the old fire station hadn’t seen another group of survivors in all that time.
The large number of roaming infected had seemed to calm some since then. Still completely unable to communicate, form social structures, or care for themselves, they had become more docile, lazier almost in the time that had past. They had settled into a pattern of sorts. Eat in the morning, roam throughout the day, sleep at night. Not that any one of them couldn’t run Kaylee down, given the chance.
But Kaylee didn’t plan on giving them the chance. She would stick to the routine: sleep during the early morning and afternoon hours, cook and wash the linens at dusk, and tend the crops they did have growing through the night. It was a tedious and sometimes lonely existence, but they were surviving. And that was something.
“I just can’t believe they’re still finding food,”Emma grumbled as she yanked on her jeans.“It’s been a year and these jeans still fit me, there’s something just not right about that.”
It was Kaylee’s turn to roll her eyes as she pulled a fresh shirt over her head.“You’re sixteen, not ten any longer. You don’t have to outgrow all your clothes in a year.”
“Still,”she muttered, buttoning her jeans closed and frowning at her waistline.“I’d love to be able to eat as much as them.”
“Eugh, Emma, please,”Kaylee grimaced, her mouth twisting in disgust.
“Not the same things, just the same amount!”
The infected remained none too picky on their diet choices. It was how the infection had spread so quickly. What had started as a cure for spinal cord injuries and a treatment for Alzheimer’s, a new medication called Formula 243 that literally re-grew neural tissue, quickly progressed into the disease that had been termed Acute Progressive Neural Degeneration, or APND, by the medical community. That was until the infected had literally eaten every last physician away.
A side effect of the miracle drug enhanced primal functions. People treated with Formula 243 did regain functioning, though they gradually lost it to a decrease in mental abilities. Primal abilities such as increased stamina and strength surged with urges and tendencies towards anger and hunger. The most useful of all the transformations was the infected’s developed inability to remain awake during nighttime hours. At first they could still somewhat function, albeit with less accuracy and speed. Now, as soon as the sun went down, so did they. You could walk about the streets, picking your way through the bodies and they wouldn’t touch you, so long as no light shone in your direction.
And hunger was the absolute worst of the infected’s new arsenal of urges. They ate anything, and anyone, that would sate them. It was the first horrible side effect to rock the medical world when Formula 243 was administered. The spinal cord injury patients and elderly suffering with Alzheimer’s all initially made remarkable recoveries. Families were weeping with joy and the news stations were all talking Nobel Prizes and no one was bothering to report the minor side effects. The hand tremors and yellowing of the corneas and speech slurring was all ignored because really, wasn’t walking and remembering and loving life again worth more than just those little inconveniences?
But it was when the patients began biting hospital staff that everyone stopped rejoicing. It wasn’t one or two patients biting; it was every single one. And they weren’t just biting; they were eating. Formula 243 wasn’t administered again but the damage was done. The disease spread, nursing homes and hospitals were overrun and the communities had nowhere to turn when their family members or neighbors started to have hand tremors and yellowing eyes.
But there had still been hope. The military had stepped in, offered people places to go, set up evacuation and survival plans for the remaining populations. No, it wasn’t yet a true epidemic; it wasn’t truly uncontrollable, until the prisons became susceptible. Everyone had known by then that saliva transmitted the disease, because with every bite, a slow but steady and irreversible case of APND developed. It wasn’t until it hit the prisons, when some prisoners in their rage and ignorance added to the spread of infection the biting of the inside of their cheek and spitting blood at their guards, that everyone had become aware that transmission by blood is not only effective, but highly accelerated. The prison systems were overthrown by the illness in a matter of days. And when the walls fell and the infected ran loose, there was no hope left of reversing what had already been done.
“C’mon lazy.”Kaylee started forward after a hard shove from Emma.“We need to get breakfast going.”Kaylee nodded and lead the way out of their shared bedroom.
~
“Morning girls, what’s for breakfast?”
“What else? Oatmeal,”came Emma’s bitter reply. Kaylee frowned into the lumpy concoction she was stirring over the cook fire they had built on the first floors’partially demolished fire escape. Though the ladder was removed entirely when they had first barricaded in the fire station, the platform remained as an excellent place for open fires. Orange flames were licking the side of a blackened pot full of hot oatmeal and Kaylee found herself wishing for some brown sugar, honey, anything other than the maple syrup in which she normally drowned the bland meal.
“Right, oatmeal. Well good.”Kaylee could almost hear her father forcing cheerfulness into his voice as he responded.
“Sure Dad,”Emma grinned as she rolled her eyes. It had taken some time to get used to eating breakfast at three in the afternoon. But then again, it had also taken some time to get used to going to sleep at dawn and rising so late in the day. Emma had always insisted she didn’t mind, loving the fact that she could stay up“all night long;”but Kaylee still found it odd to sleep through so much daylight.
“We’re going to need more supplies soon, Dad.”Kaylee looked over her shoulder to remind him.“We’re running low on some of the basics.”
“Yeah, on soap too. Morning everyone!”Anna peeked into the kitchen, a damp towel hanging around her neck, her dark curls still bouncing despite the weight of the cold water dripping from them.“I’ll be down in a minute, just have to get dressed.”
Kaylee grinned and offered a small wave. They really had been lucky, not only with surviving but also with the people with whom they got to survive. Anna Hernandez had been their neighbor in the high-rise apartment building where they had grown up. She was funny, smart, kind, and had always been nice to Kaylee and her sister. It was also useful that she was a nurse. Though she would laughingly tell you she was a psychiatric nurse and by the medical community’s standards, that hardly counted. But Kaylee knew what really did count; Anna had patched up each and every one of them from time to time over the past two years. She had become like a second mom.
Kaylee furrowed her brow and scrunched up her face at the thought.
Not now, Kaylee.
“Is Andrew up yet?”Emma asked, now flinging bowls and spoons without care onto the table in the center of the room.
“He might be now, with all that racket you’re making,”their father answered, frowning. Emma shrugged and traipsed off to the storage room.
Andrew McCormick and his father Bill had also been neighbors from the high-rise. Kaylee had practically grown up with Andrew. He had always
been a rounder sort of boy, though the lack of food had seen to that and now his clothing very nearly hung off him. The decreased sustenance had not shortened him however, he was taller than ever and his blond hair had grown into his eyes due to his reluctance to let Kaylee near him with a pair of scissors. Throughout the years, they had shared the same classes, went to the same parties, exchanged gifts on Christmas and birthdays. He was her best friend then and he still was now.
“Morning, Kay.”Andrew’s sleepy voice rumbled out of him, his tone still scratchy from his day of sleep. His father trailed behind looking disgruntled and irritated as usual. Kaylee looked up from the cook fire to beam at Andrew.
“Morning, Drew!”
“Was that your lovely homemaking skills that woke us this morning, or was that your sister?”
Kaylee opened her mouth to answer but was beaten by Emma who had just bounced back into the room holding a jug of maple syrup.“That was me you ass, and you better have meant that compliment sincerely or you won’t be getting any syrup!”