by Jeff Olah
“Dad, I was already faster than you.” Noah laughed as he kicked the ball back toward the other end of the lot. “You just didn’t know it.”
“I guess we’ll just have to see about that.”
Noah caught up to the ball, and turning back to Owen, his eyes drifted past him. “Hi Mom.”
Natalie stood at the front doors. She looked out over the yard and then started along the paved walkway toward Owen. “Hey buddy, why don’t you go inside and find your sister, they’ve almost got lunch ready.”
Owen slid to his left. “You wanna sit?”
“No,” she said, “I’ve been sitting for the last two hours” She rested her right foot up on the edge of the bench and rolled her neck. “But it’s finally done.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah …”
“How is she?”
“She’s not in any pain, but she won’t last another week without food.”
“She’s still refusing to eat?”
“She doesn’t want to be here.” Natalie bit into her lip and slowly shook her head. “She just doesn’t want to fight anymore, and I really don’t blame her.”
“How’s Harper?”
“She’s okay with it. She knows that Cookie would be better off, but she’s going through hell watching her deteriorate.”
Owen dropped his head and folded his hands into his lap. “How about Lucas, he still avoiding her?”
“They talked earlier today and she told him again that he wasn’t to blame for what happened.”
“Okay?”
She reached for his chin, looked into his eyes. “And neither are you.”
He didn’t say anything.
“That man, he wasn’t there because of Lucas and he wasn’t there because of you. So you need to stop blaming yourself—you need to understand that it is because of you that we are all still here. Your children, your friends, me, none of us would have made it off that highway if you hadn’t done what you did.”
Owen had been trying to tell himself that for days, but for whatever reason it didn’t seem to stick. He was thankful beyond measure that his wife and his children weren’t hurt and that there weren’t more injuries, however he didn’t like what this world had become, even less what he was becoming.
“Yeah, I guess.”
Natalie tilted her head and cut her eyes at him. “How much sleep did you get last night?”
“Not sure, why?”
“How about you head inside, get something to eat, and lay down for a while. I can watch the gate as well as you can, and Travis said that he and Kevin wouldn’t be back for a few hours anyway.”
“What about Gentry?”
“There’s nothing left to do for him at this point. He helped me to get the IV started, told me to wake him up tomorrow afternoon, and had already showed me how. If this doesn’t work, we might need to see about getting to that research facility in the mountains.
“Blackmore?”
“He said if Lockwood is there, we’ll have a chance at fixing this, fixing everything.”
“You believe him?”
“Yes.”
Owen looked away from her, ran his hands over one another, and then pushed away from the bench. “Okay.”
She stopped him, took his hands in hers. “What is it?”
He took in a breath, let it out slow. “I’m not sure we should go. Not all of us anyway.”
“I don’t know what you’re thinking, but if it doesn’t keep us all together, my answer is no. We need to stay together, all of us.”
He didn’t like what he was thinking either, but he’d grown tired of all the talk, and although he knew it wasn’t ideal, it was their best chance at survival. And waiting around for Gentry to fix himself before fixing the world didn’t feel like the right thing to do. If he was going to save his family, he wasn’t going to ask for permission.
“You’re right,” Owen said. “I do need to get some rest. Make sure you get me up in a few hours. I need to talk to Kevin and Travis.”
45
He’d been walking for what felt like months. He couldn’t remember the last he’d eaten anything and his head had gone numb just before the sun came up. Looking down at his leg, he didn’t remember when the bleeding had stopped or how the makeshift tourniquet got there. There were many details of the last fourteen days that were hazy. And while he didn’t think he had been bitten, he was fairly certain he had sustained a broken arm and at least one of his legs still carried a nine millimeter slug.
One foot in front of the other. That had been his mantra for the last two weeks. Just lift one foot and then lift the other. The pain was now mostly gone and it was just him against the screams echoing in his mind, the ones telling him to give up.
But as he stood twenty feet from the entrance to the building, he was beginning to wonder if it was all worth it. His former home looked abandoned, as did every single structure for the last three miles. It was as if a nuclear bomb had been detonated, and he was standing at ground zero.
Another three minutes and he was finally standing at the curb. He reached for his pant leg, noticed he was also missing his shoes, and then lifting his right foot up onto the sidewalk, something moved in his periphery. It couldn’t have been a Feeder, the movement was much too quick.
He instinctively reached for a weapon, although the momentum of his right arm coming up and around forced him off balance. His leg also failed and he toppled to the sidewalk, rolling onto his back.
The world turned grey and then as it had multiple times over the last several days, began to fade into black.
Now there was nothing but the smell of death riding the cool breeze of early morning and the low hum filling his ears.
And voices. One female and two male.
The woman said, “Come on, hurry, over here. I think he’s still breathing.”
“Be careful, is he bitten?”
“I’d don’t know, hold on.”
“Okay, roll him over.”
“He’s in pretty bad shape, but it doesn’t look like he’s infected. Let’s get him inside.”
“Wait a second.” It was the woman again. Her voice was different, slower. Like she was working through something. “This can’t be, it’s impossible.”
“What, what is it?”
“I think this might be Jerome Declan.”
What’s Next?
Book Three - RESURGENCE
COMING SOON!
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Also by Jeff Olah
The Dead Years
The Last Outbreak
RATH
INTENT
Also by Jeff Olah
THE LAST OUTBREAK
A companion series built in the same world as the Best-Selling Post-Apocalyptic thrillers The Next World and The Dead Years.
No one knew how or where the end of the world started.
Ethan Runner was hungover, pissed off, and once again late for work. He didn't care about anything or anyone, but that was about to change—it had to.
Six days prior, there were reports of a mysterious illness. People were actually attacking and devouring one another. The world was told not to worry, that there wasn't a reason to panic, that these were isolated events.
This morning, the human race found out that this was a lie.
The infection took hold quickly and destroyed everything in its path. Millions perished every hour. Was this nature's way of thinning the herd or was this something much more disturbing?
The Last Outbreak follows Ethan Runner, a clinically depressed armored truck driver, as he and a small group of strangers fight through impossible situations to free themselves and one another from this hell.
AWAKENING is the story of their survival.
Hold on... this is only the beginning.
Get your copy HERE
THE DEAD YEARS
A companion series built in the same w
orld as the Best-Selling Post-Apocalyptic thrillers The Next World and The Last Outbreak.
The End of the World was Only the Beginning.
Mason Thomas wasn't prepared when the devastation began that morning. No one was.
Six days before, reports of a mysterious illness began surfacing around the globe. The infection took hold quickly and destroyed everything in its path. The infected were seen attacking and actually devouring their victims. Those unfortunate enough to be caught out in the open were the first to fall.
Millions perished every hour.
The world was told not to panic, that there wasn't anything to worry about, that these were isolated events. This morning, as he fought to return to his family, Mason Thomas quickly realized that nothing was what it seemed… the world had been forever changed.
The Dead Years follows Mason Thomas, a separated husband and father of one, as he and a small group of survivors fight to stay alive at the end of the world.
THRESHOLD is their story.
Get your copy HERE
Excerpt from INTENT
(The story of Travis Higgins in the years before the outbreak)
Only when it's darkest can you truly see yourself…
“Nine-one-one operator. What is your emergency?”
“My name is Travis Higgins. In exactly six minutes, I am going to murder the man who lives at nineteen-thirty-seven East Second Street.”
Pulling the phone away from his ear, Travis stared at the readout as the voice on the other end of the line rattled off a series of unintelligible questions. He paused a moment before the screen powered down and went black, the woman on the other end now shouting. Without disconnecting the call, he slid the phone into his coat pocket and peered out over the empty school parking lot.
The cab of his late-model pickup truck now illuminated by overhead lights dotting the last row of parking spaces, he tilted his head and looked into the rearview mirror. His reflection staring back was only vaguely familiar and, with each passing day, less of what he wanted to remember of himself.
Turning from the memories of the last few months, he again focused on the images outside the warmed interior. Travis concentrated on the home less than fifty yards away and paused at the front porch. Nothing could compare to kicking the door in, slowly walking to the bedroom, and savoring this fateful mission. However, he knew in order for him to pull this off, it had to go down exactly the way he planned.
Reaching for the handle and stepping out into the crisp night air, the voice in his pocket continued to bark questions. It now fought with the distant sounds of traffic coming in waves from the miserable freeway overpass sitting less than half a mile to the east.
Starting across the darkened asphalt, he watched as the shadows ran off and hid in the recessed alleyway behind the row of hundred-year-old Victorian homes. The now mostly low-rent dwellings had seen much better days, although none of those were in his lifetime.
Failing front stoops, aged exterior paint dying a new death with each passing decade, and most lawns now more brown than green, he was certain of at least one thing—the members of this low-income neighborhood did not hold “pride of ownership” in high regard.
Peering over his left shoulder and quickly back to the right, Travis stepped onto the curb and came to a stop before moving into the overgrown foliage near the front gate. Almost certain he wasn’t the only entity moving through the area, human or otherwise, he dropped his right hand into his coat.
Surprisingly, although the revolver sat between two layers of thick fabric and only one away from his torso, it was cool to the touch. He slowly pulled the weapon out and returned his arm to his side. Crossing the short path to the fence, he switched off the safety then turned and watched the alley.
His black denim jacket fit neatly over the snug charcoal fleece as Travis reached back and pulled the hood up over his head. The edge of the material sitting just above his brow shielded his eyes from the glare of the distant streetlamp. Pushing back into the fence, he waited.
Slowing his breathing and focusing on only the darkened alley just beyond the home to his left, Travis was confident that what he was now listening to were footsteps. And within seconds, someone or something was about to become fully aware of his presence. He had painstakingly planned the murder of the man occupying the dilapidated structure at his back, yet he hadn’t prepared himself for this possibility.
As a pair of backlit figures moved out of the shadows, Travis was pulled back to the events of twenty minutes before. The split-second decision that added an extra sixty seconds to his timeline may now have cost him something much more significant. The hunger to kill and the opportunity to suppress the voices in his head may never again align with such perfection. It had to happen now.
. . .
Traversing the city streets at two in the morning gave him the best chance at getting to his destination unnoticed. There was just enough movement in the area so as not to stand out and not so much to cause any significant delays. Travis ran the route every night for the last sixteen days. However, tonight was the first he’d encountered a yellow light at this particular intersection.
Timing the lights and staying at an even speed along Broadway Avenue proved to be more problematic than he had previously anticipated. For the first three days, Travis arrived just before midnight and sat in his truck outside the dimly lit coffee house. With the engine idling and watching as the row of reds and yellows became greens; he memorized the individual cycles of eight traffic signals.
His detailed strategy would put him out onto the roadway at exactly two-thirteen. Hitting every light just as planned, he’d pull into the school parking lot in time to place the call, ready himself, and march unobstructed to the point of no return.
There was never any doubt that the day would come. Travis had long ago put mortality in his rearview mirror, as his new purpose occupied every waking thought. Pulling him forward, one morbid step at a time, the hunger to stand over that man as he took his final breath was nearly unbearable.
The last light at the end of Broadway flicked from green to yellow, and Travis shifted into drive and crossed into the right-hand lane. He watched as his speed increased evenly until it reached forty and leveled out with a slight decrease in pressure from his right foot.
Passing the all too familiar twenty-four-hour diner and the first intersection, he noticed the same man from last night sitting in the same booth. Closest to the street, the elderly gentleman matched Travis’s gaze before quickly looking away.
Did he know?
How could he?
No one knows; I haven’t spoken a word to another human being in weeks… and no one has even noticed.
His eyes back on the road, Travis sailed through the intersection, hoping to forget about the old man but knowing his condition may make that impossible. He’d obsess about it until he was finished with this task—and maybe even longer. He needed something else to focus on. Something that would put his mind in that parking lot in the next few minutes and prepare him for what was coming. Glancing left, that something appeared.
Attempting to pour what was left of his concentration back into the space directly in front of the vehicle, he nearly missed it. The black and white rolling toward the next intersection was traveling much too quickly to be preparing to stop. They weren’t in pursuit of another vehicle and, with no lights or sirens as a warning, Travis instinctively hit the brakes before his mind fully understood the situation.
The tires squealed, although only momentarily, as his truck rapidly decelerated, leaving just a few feet between the front bumper and the illuminated crosswalk he nearly blew through. Looking up through narrowed eyes, he watched the patrol vehicle move through the intersection without either of the officers noticing his presence.
How did this happen?
What changed?
I’ve run this damn route at least twenty times. Not once has this light blinked anything other than green.
Why
tonight?
Why those officers?
What did they know?
Were they going to get there before me… with guns drawn… are they trying to stop me?
The distant sound of thunder somewhere miles away brought him back to center. Travis blinked twice, and then looked up. First at the asphalt just in front of the truck, then the opposite side of the street, and finally the signal as it switched back to green. To the right, the dimly lit patrol car continued south and finally faded out of sight.
Although he knew his timeline wasn’t negotiable, he sat and stared at the traffic signal, unable or unwilling to understand this variant. One long cycle after another, frozen with anxiety, Travis was silent, listening only to the sounds made by his own exhalation.
As the physical response to his altered state produced a single bead of sweat that ran from his hairline, over his brow, and into his eye, Travis again blinked. The light had turned green over twenty seconds before. It was the third cycle he’d sat through. At any other time of day or night, this would be a problem, but at shortly after two in the morning, no one was around to care.
Removing his foot from the brake and checking again to his right and left, the voices came rushing back. The act of plowing his foot down onto the gas pedal wouldn’t quiet them, although with the time lost to his miscalculations, he had no other choice.
This is happening tonight.
. . .
The two individuals, who he was now able to identify as men in their early twenties, had yet to notice Travis standing alone near the fence. Their abnormally enthusiastic conversation seemed to be holding their attention just enough that while crossing into the school parking lot, they neither turned toward him nor the motion-detecting spotlight they triggered alongside the home to his left.