The Enduring: Stories of Surviving the Apocalypse

by Nicholas Ryan

  We kicked our feet around in the dirt a little bit – the way grown men do when they don’t really understand or know how to deal with awkward emotions. Chad coughed, cleared his throat. I made a point of studying the scored timberwork along the siding of the house for a few moments. Then it was all right again.

  “We went back out the exact way I came,” Chad picked up the thread of his story. “Out through the window, running hard for the truck. Behind me I could hear screams… not the kind I was accustomed to, though. These weren’t screams of fear and panic any more. They were cries of terrible pain. I know the difference…”

  “You didn’t stop? You didn’t look back?”

  “No,” Chad said without any remorse. “Colton was my only priority. I got him belted into the truck and was about to drive away from the school when I saw Iris’s car slowing. I waved her down, blasted the truck horn, and pointed to let her know Colton was with me. We ran like a two-car convoy all the way home, Iris tailing my truck, and me driving fast and ramming anything that got in the way, clearing the path for her to follow.”

  We had arrived at the critical segment of Chad’s story – his tale of surviving the attacking ‘Afflicted’ while he and his little family defended their home. I was intrigued. I looked around me again, trying to understand whether the environment had helped or hindered their valiant defense.

  The home was tucked away, off the main road, in a semi-secluded area, with acres and acres of steep wooded terrain to the rear. Ahead of the home was a long gravel road that I could imagine would be perilous in winter. I had driven that road to arrive for the interview and counted only half a dozen other houses, each of them separated by wide spaces of land. It was quiet, peaceful and serene. The road was even named ‘Serene Drive’. It was hard to imagine the hellish scenes that must have played out here during the spread of the contagion.

  “What happened when you arrived back here from the school, Chad? What was the situation like back along the road?”

  “The gravel road was clear,” Chad explained. “We saw nothing once we turned off the main road. But between the school and the turnoff it was smoke and fire and chaos. It was heading this way, spreading out from the town. I knew we didn’t have long to prepare.”

  “And your neighbors?”

  “A couple of the houses were boarded up, windows and doors sealed tight. They had either packed up and fled north, or they were in their home, waiting for shit to get real,” he said laconically. “I didn’t stop to check. Everyone along the gravel road is a gun owner. I knew if they stayed, it was because they were prepared.”

  “And how about you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  I shrugged and set aside my notebook for a moment. “When you pulled up here. Did you feel prepared, or was escape still on your mind?”

  Chad began shaking his head. “I didn’t feel prepared at all,” he admitted. “I had everything I needed, but this wasn’t the way I had imagined it. I had been caught out by the spread of the contagion while I was visiting my mother. If I had been home when I had heard the news, I would have felt better. It would have given me time… When we arrived back here, that was the unknown quantity; how long before the infected would come looking for us.”

  “Was there a discussion between you and Iris?”

  “No,” Chad said flatly. “Iris decided we were going to stay and defend the house. I let her make the call – her safety and Colton’s was the priority. Iris said she felt better in the house than back amongst the madness on the roads.”

  I nodded. I understood that. “Okay, so what happened when you went in through those doors?”

  “The minute we were inside I started barking orders,” Chad said. “I told Iris to put everything we could move along the picture window and the back sliding door, and to use anything she could find to cover them. They were our weak point – the rear of the house and Colton’s bedroom window. I left her to it and went downstairs. We have French doors in the basement. I slid a refrigerator across the opening and then went to the gun cabinet.”

  “Did you have many weapons?”

  “Enough,” Chad said. “I pulled out my AR15 and a fistful of mags. I also grabbed my 870 Remington tactical and all the shells I could carry. I loaded my Vector 45 ACP and ran upstairs. I racked the 870 and handed it to Iris.”

  “Did she know how to shoot?”

  “She did well enough,” Chad muttered.

  “So you were ready then?”

  Chad made a thoughtful face, recalling his preparations. “Yeah,” he said. “Iris also had the pistol we kept in the bedroom. I told her and Colton to stay in the kitchen and keep a watch out.”

  “How long did you have to wait?”

  “Less than an hour,” Chad said and suddenly his voice turned very dark. “We heard automatic rifle fire coming from one of the houses back along the dirt road. I knew one of our neighbors was in the fight for their lives. I went to one of the windows where I could see the track between the trees. There were shadowy figures moving through the scrub. They looked like ghosts, running in and out of the shadows.”

  “What time was this?”

  “Afternoon. Maybe four o’clock.”

  “How long until darkness?”

  “A couple of hours.”

  “Were you worried about what would happen if they came at night?”

  Chad looked at me quizzically for a long moment. “Mr. Culver, I was worried about surviving the next ten minutes. Darkness didn’t factor into the equation right then. Surviving was a second-by-second challenge.”

  I felt somehow chastened. I grimaced, nodded, and then shut my mouth and bowed over the notebook. Chad began talking slowly.

  “I had learned my lesson from back at the school… those things only went down from a head shot, so I held my fire until I was sure. I waited, watching them come closer, and then when I was sure of the shot I took them out, one at a time.

  “They came from out of the fringe of the trees. In the background, over the god-awful shrieking noise they made – I could hear the gunfire from further along the gravel road intensifying… maybe becoming desperate. I started firing at the undead when they were within thirty yards of the house.”

  “How many? How many were there?”

  Chad shook his head slowly like he was rousing himself from a long sleep. “Maybe twenty…” he said vaguely. “Or maybe it just seemed that many. I don’t know. Afterwards – when it was all over and the gunfire along the trail had stopped – I went outside and counted thirteen bodies.”

  “You killed every one of them?”

  “Iris killed a couple that were trying to get in through the windows,” Chad said. “They rushed the house. I couldn’t get them all. Luckily Iris saw what was about to happen and took them out with the 870.”

  “What happened to the others?” I was frowning over the notebook.

  Chad rubbed at his jaw and then pulled the cap just a little lower down over his eyes. “They ran back along the trail,” he said softly. “I didn’t realize what was happening until I saw the car. One of our neighbors must have tried to make a desperate break for it…”

  “So the ‘Afflicted’ went after the vehicle instead?”

  Chad nodded. “By nightfall it was all over. The other houses along the lane were all burning, and some of the scrubland was on fire. Iris and I stood guard all through the night. They never came back.”

  By the tone in Chad’s voice, I could tell the story had come to an end. Normally I would have probed deeper; asked more questions, but I too sensed there was little left of the tale to tell. I stuffed the notebook back into my pocket and stood for a quiet moment, watching the clouds in the sky.

  “What happens now?” I asked eventually. “Do you have a future here, Chad?”

  He made a hopeful face, which surprised me. I hadn’t seen a lot of hope in my journey.

  “I was a Longwall coordinator at a mine before the Apocalypse,” he said. “Now me and a
group of other survivors I worked with are going to team up to rebuild the area. We heard a rumor that the plants were trying to get running again and that means the power grid could be back up before the year is out. Coal, Mr. Culver,” there was a sudden bitter ironic laugh in Chad’s voice. “Before the ‘Affliction’ everyone was worried about the ozone layer. They wanted gas… anything but coal. Now the gas lines are destroyed and suddenly digging up dinosaur shit again is the resource that might get this country back on its feet.” He shrugged his shoulders like some things just defied explanation. “If we’re going to have a future, it looks like we’re going to have to rely on the power of the past to light the way.”

  * * *

  Detroit, Michigan:

  “How do you feel?”

  “Weird.”

  I stopped and looked bemused. Jill Blasy was frowning.

  “What?” she asked. She had her arms outstretched to keep her balance as we clambered over a pile of concrete rubble.

  I shrugged my shoulders and made a face. “I just thought you would be a little more articulate, I guess,” I said. “Being a school teacher… I was expecting an answer more sophisticated; more specific.”

  Jill scrambled over the last of the rubble and stood with her hands on her hips, staring up at the edifice of the South Lyon school building. The walls were pock-marked with bullet holes and several of the upper floor windows were shattered. From somewhere nearby I could hear the sounds of the birds that had made the abandoned derelict building their home.

  “How about shit-scared, then?” Jill tilted her head to the side and scrutinized me frankly. “Or utterly petrified?”

  “Better,” I smiled a little. She was an attractive woman in her thirties with a face that could smile as readily as it could frown, and an enigmatic personality that I imagined made her easy to like, but a challenge to ever really know.

  Despite herself, and the tension that I sensed was lurking just below the surface, Jill smiled back. It was a fleeting moment of relief after an arduous drive from her old home, just outside the city of Detroit, here to the school where she had taught before the outbreak of the ‘Affliction’ in South Lyon.

  I went to join Jill and, side-by-side, we stood in the shade of the building, catching our breath. The school had been devastated on the day the ‘Affliction’ had swept through this part of the world. Up until that moment, South Lyon had been a rural community in metropolitan Detroit with an exploding population. In the years before the virulent infection had torn America apart, developers had been buying all the available farmland and building homes.

  Now the city was no more. Little remained of the booming population and burgeoning infrastructure that had nestled in the thriving south west corner of Oakland County. South Lyon was a ghost town, much of it reduced to rubble when the U.S. Army had fought against the spreading tide of ‘Afflicted’ in a valiant attempt to hold the crossroads of Interstate 96 and US 23. The area’s strategic importance had turned the entire region into a bloody battlefield. Now only the wretched scars of the conflict remained. Most of the population had fled or been evacuated north, and with their departure, the entire manufacturing hub, and the light industrial plants that once peppered the local landscape had collapsed. Only now, two years after the last of the ‘Afflicted’ had been exterminated, were some of the hardiest of the locals finally returning to pick up the shattered pieces of their lives. Special Education Teacher, Jill Blasy, was one of them.

  “Why are you scared?” I asked Jill.

  It seemed to take an almost physical effort for her to tear her eyes away from the battle-ravaged façade of the building. When she looked at me, her stare was dark and haunted. I noticed a little tremble of nerves in the tips of her fingers as she held one hand up to her face to shield her eyes from the low sun. “I never thought I would come back here,” Jill admitted in a voice made small by the turmoil of her emotions. “I thought… I thought that day was the end of everything – certainly the end of the school. I never imagined a circumstance that would ever bring me back.”

  I nodded, slowly. Jill’s voice was calm, her attitude thoughtful. But clearly this moment was profound. The logical side of her personality was analyzing and overriding her sentiments, making her words sound almost artificial. But the undercurrent of deep psychological scarring was there to see in the telltale tremble, the little quaver in her voice, and the hectic uncertainty in her gaze.

  Just below the surface – held under white-knuckled restraint – the woman was petrified.

  And I wanted to know why…

  I stared ahead through the dark opening of the building’s smashed doors. They were hanging off their hinges, amidst a litter of broken bricks, concrete dust and shattered glass. Beyond them I could see nothing but eerie darkness.

  “So this is the building where you were teaching when you first heard about the spread of the ‘Affliction’?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s big.”

  Jill nodded her head. “We had over thirteen hundred students aged between fourteen and eighteen, and about seventy teachers. The building is 325,000 square feet.”

  I put on a brave face and went towards the doors with Jill close behind me. For no logical reason, I felt a creeping sense of anxiety. It was the same feeling someone might get when about to enter a haunted house. I knew the building was abandoned – at most it was the home to a colony of rats and birds – but still… A superstitious dread seemed to drape itself around my shoulders like a heavy cloak.

  I got to the nearest door and looked around the gloomy interior. Ahead of me was a long wide corridor with windows along the outer wall and doors to classrooms along the interior wall. There was rubbish and moldy debris strewn across the floor. The building smelled of rotting damp and decay. From the ceiling hung broken tiles and tentacles of loose wiring. I could see splatters of dried blood against the outer wall near a line of shattered windows. The heavy sense of foreboding came at me like an unseen wave, making me sway a little on my feet. I turned my head to where Jill was waiting. She had her arms folded, still standing on the threshold, her expression reluctant, as if suddenly she had decided that returning to the school for this interview was a bad, bad idea.

  I gave her a brave smile. “Your classroom was on the second floor, right?”

  Jill nodded her head. Her face became pinched.

  “Come on,” I said with more bravado that I actually felt. “I want to see what you saw on that day – I want to know what you were feeling.”

  My voice echoed around the empty walls, seeming very loud in my own ears. Jill came through the broken doorway and stood for a long moment, turning her head slowly in the shadow struck gloom, rooted to the spot like she was being overwhelmed by memories: good… and bad. I stood in silence and watched Jill carefully. Her back was straight, her arms down by her sides, but her hands were balled into fists like they were a conduit for all her tension. She turned in a very slow circle, her face registering each fresh appalling moment as the scene of destruction and mayhem unfolded before her.

  She raised one hand like a sleepwalker and pointed towards a darker corner of the interior. “That’s where the stairwell is,” she said in a small voice. “That’s where we have to go to get up to the next floor.”

  We went slowly, picking our way carefully through the rubble that had fallen in upon the floor… and I realized with a little start of shame that I was actually trying to walk quietly… as if the unseen ghosts and memories that haunted the building might be stirred by our arrival. Beside me Jill was white-faced and grim. Her chin was thrust out in a gesture of determination, but her face was fixed. I made a conscious effort to keep the level of my voice perfectly normal as we went – but the words were forced, the tone superficial and forced.

  “Tell me about the school,” I said.

  Jill looked at me for an instant like I was utterly mad, and then maybe she had the same realization that had struck me. Some of the anxiety went from her feat
ures. She let out a long breath and a shaky little smile wavered across her pursed lips.

  “We had over eighty classrooms in this building,” she said, her voice normalizing the longer she continued to speak. “We also had a kitchen, a media center, two gymnasia, a fitness center, dance studio, swimming pool, television studio, lecture hall… and an auditorium. It was a kind of self-contained little town, in a way. There were gates that could be pulled down to close off sections of the building.”

  I arched an eyebrow in surprise. “Were those gates used on the day the ‘Affliction’ spread through the school?”

  Jill shrugged her shoulders and fixed me with a stare. “I don’t know,” she said frankly, “but the Titanic had water-tight compartmental doors too, Mr. Culver. And that didn’t work out too well, did it?”

  I made a wry face. “Are you saying there was a problem with those security gates?”

  “No,” Jill replied. “I’m just saying that a security measure isn’t effective unless it is employed. At the height of the attack – when the Army was pouring through the corridors to evacuate everyone from the building, the gates were up. I know that for a fact. Maybe they were never used…”

  “That might be because everyone was evacuated before the ‘Afflicted’ could reach the perimeter of the school district,” I hazarded a guess.

  “Yes. And if that’s the case it was a good thing there weren’t closed. We wouldn’t have been evacuated if we had been sealed in. Then… well, God knows what would have happened here.”

  “Are the gates the only interior security measures?”

  Jill shook her head. “At the top of each stairwell there are also doors that can be locked… but I had a key…”

  I stopped in the corridor for a moment to write down everything that Jill had told me, then looked up from my notes curiously. “I assume all the gates and lockable doors weren’t installed in preparation for an Apocalypse…” I threw the question out there. Jill swatted it back without blinking.