John offered to stay back, just in case. The other three men opened the front door and caught the attention of the man. They walked across the lawn with their hands raised so the other people could see their hands and they had no weapons with them.
The man who was looking at the truck saw them and was very startled. He jumped back and raised his shotgun at the same time. The other men stopped fast and raised their hands even further at the same time they were yelling that they were friendly and not going to hurt him.
He kept his shotgun pointed at them for a few minutes while he asked who they were and where they came from. The men explained that the tractor-trailer was theirs and that their families were inside the house.
He looked over at the house and saw lots of eyes looking at him through the curtains. He lowered the shotgun and apologized for the gun. He started telling them a story of when his family and friends were in Nashua, New Hampshire.
The four families previously lived in the same subdivision before the zombie apocalypse happened. They were very close and did lots of barbecues and block parties together.
As the world was falling apart, they grouped together and vowed to stay together as long as possible. They watched their neighbors all turn into zombies and even had to kill some of them.
After all the zombies were either gone or killed in their subdivision, they were starting to come up with a long-term plan. They had heard the reports of a refuge camp in Boston.
Some of the families wanted to go to Boston, and some of them wanted to stay where they were for as long as they could. They were afraid of what they would run into on the way to Boston.
There were numerous conversations over a week or so about which was the best way to go. They could fortify their houses and make a secure fort or they could make their way to Boston to find the refugee camp.
Before the television stations were shut off, there were thousands of reports showing the highways and the mobs of people being attacked by the zombies.
Some people think that every highway is going to look like that and that the zombies are hiding, waiting for them. The zombies just walk until they hear something or smell humans. They tend to stay in herds and stay together.
Daniel was a Construction Supervisor and Josie was a Librarian. Everyone in the subdivision always came to Daniel for help with everything. So when they felt like the world was ending, they naturally turned to Daniel for direction.
Matthew was a Salesman for an insurance company and Susan was a dental hygienist. They had two daughters. They were 16 and 14 years old. The zombie outbreak had hit the teenagers very hard. They were very quiet and didn’t talk much. Susan was very worried about them.
Will was a Police Officer but had only been out of the academy for a year. Jennifer was a nurse at the local children’s hospital. They had one son who was 10 years old. He had a broken arm. He was playing on the playground equipment at school and fell off breaking his arm.
He was on pain medications and slept a lot. Being a nurse, his mom knew that broken bones took a lot out of the kids. She was also worried that he would be running out of pain medication in a few days.
Spencer was an elementary school teacher and Emily was a stay at home mom with their 4 month old son. They had just purchased the home in the subdivision and were excited about getting the house set up for their new baby.
When they heard about the survivor camp in Boston, some of the neighbors wanted to go immediately. Daniel was one of them. He knew that they would not be safe in the neighborhood forever.
Matthew on the other hand, wanted to stay and fortify their homes and subdivision. He had seen some documentaries about freedom fighters and knew they wouldn’t be safe, especially in the wide open.
Daniel and Matthew had multiple conversations about leaving or not leaving. Daniel finally convinced Matthew and his family that they had a better chance staying in a larger group but Matthew wasn’t happy about it.
They found a gas station that was abandoned and the men were searching it. While they were searching it, they saw a lot of supplies they could grab. Daniel suggested that they grab all the supplies. Matthew thought that it would be too much to bring and would only slow them down, grabbing a small amount of the supplies. Matthew was always second-guessing Daniel.
Just then, they heard the sound of a motorcycle pulling into the station. They both ran to the door. The motorcycle had pulled up right beside their cars.
The rider had a full helmet with a blacked out visor. The men got nervous and walked out of the station with their guns drawn. The rider raised his hands and got off his motorcycle.
He asked them if he could take off his helmet. Daniel said yes at the same time Matthew said no. They looked at each other very hard. The rider asked which way it was going to be. Daniel said first, yes. The rider reached up and took his helmet off. He had bruises all over his face and a huge black eye.
He introduced himself as Dwayne. He said he was just trying to find other people to stay with so he wasn’t alone. He had a few supplies with him, but not much. He told them he didn’t even have a gun. All he had was a crow bar that he found in an abandoned car.
Daniel asked him where he got beat up. He said he ran into a couple of guys that just wanted to steal stuff and hurt people. Dwayne thought they may have been released from prison when the prison was being over run with zombies.
Dwayne told them that it happened in southern Maine. He was there on a motorcycle ride through the countryside. He was in a small town that didn’t have any televisions. They had radios but they didn’t get many stations because of the mountains that were all around them.
The entire town was going on like nothing happened for about a month after other places were affected. They started noticing something was wrong after the third or fourth delivery didn’t make it.
The reason they didn’t put things together to realize there was a zombie problem was due to the different delivery companies and dates in which they delivered.
When the store owners started calling the companies about their deliveries not showing up, they realized there was a problem because none of companies would answer the phone.
People started calling their relatives and friends who lived on the other side of the mountain. They reached one person’s sister via her cell phone, who told them everything that was going on. She was hiding in an empty apartment in her building because zombies were everywhere.
The people in the town didn’t know what to do. Dwayne heard about it when he came down from his room one day. He heard the owner of the bed and breakfast crying and asked what was wrong.
He told him what had happened. Dwayne immediately tried to call his family in Massachusetts but it just kept giving him a weird busy signal.
He got on his motorcycle and headed home to Reading, Massachusetts. He encountered his first zombie in the first town he drove through after he got across the mountain.
He was sleeping inside an old farm barn when he heard some noises outside. He peaked out through the cracks in the barn to see three men looking at his motorcycle.
He didn’t know whether to stay where he was or confront them. One of them got on the bike and was making comment, “Wow, this feels really good! This would be an awesome bike to ride!”
He decided that he had to go out there before they stole his motorcycle. He opened the barn door slowly in case it made any noise. He found a long-handled shovel to protect himself with. He exited the barn slowly so he could get to the best advantage point he could.
He was about 100 yards away from the three men when one of them heard Dwayne coming. They didn’t have guns either because all they did was turn away with their hands raised in the air.
The three men immediately started saying that they were just looking at it, and assumed that it was abandoned. They apologized profusely. Dwayne asked them what they wanted. He didn’t have any supplies.
All he wanted to do was get to his family. The three men started laug
hing saying that there weren’t any survivors south of the New Hampshire border. They said Massachusetts got hit the worst.
Why would they think that was funny? Dwayne said he didn’t care; he needed to make sure there weren’t any survivors. They started separating and trying to surround Dwayne. He kept backing up until he backed up into a car.
As the three men got closer, they kept saying they didn’t want anyone to get hurt. They just wanted the shovel so he wouldn’t hurt them. Dwayne had to choice but to believe them.
He threw the shovel to the ground and raised his hands. The guy in the middle held his right hand out to shake Dwayne’s hand. Dwayne slowly reached his hand out and the next thing he knew, he was on the ground and his jaw felt like it was on fire.
The guy on the right punched Dwayne in the face. Then the guy on the left kicked him in the stomach. He heard them laughing the entire time.
They kept punching and kicking him for what felt like an hour to Dwayne. He thought he was dead. He didn’t know how he was going to get out of this one. It wasn’t like there was traffic on the road and someone would stop to help. He hadn’t seen anyone in over three days.
Dwayne finally was in so much pain, he passed out. When he woke up, he was laying on the ground covered in dust from the gravel driveway. He jumped up looking for the guys but they were nowhere in sight.
He looked for his motorcycle and it was sitting there where he left it but his saddlebags with the little supplies he had were gone. He didn’t see his helmet and thought they took it too until he started over to the barn to get what things he had left and saw his helmet under a truck.
He sat down for a minute to get his bearings before he headed out. He gathered up his things and found some rope to tie it to his motorcycle since his saddlebags were stolen.
He got on his motorcycle, put his helmet on and started his motorcycle. He started it and headed south to find his family. He had been traveling for a couple of hours when he saw signs for a gas station a few miles ahead.
As he pulls into the gas station, he sees four vehicles and his heart sank. All he could think of was that this was the vehicles those three men were in. He pulled up beside the vehicles with his visor still down until he could see if it was those three men.
When he came up beside the vehicles and saw that two of the four had men driving and two didn’t, he figured it wasn’t the same men.
Daniel and Matthew knew they had to take a chance but they needed to watch him and never let him be alone with anyone of their families. They would have to talk to Will and Spencer and make sure they knew never to leave Dwayne alone with any of the families.
They told Dwayne he could come help them gather supplies, which is what they were doing when he showed up. He was very excited to help.
All three men went into the gas station. Daniel headed straight for the cash register. He found some large bags that he put on the counter for the others.
The other two men started walking around the store looking for supplies that would not go bad or need to be refrigerated. The store just received a large shipment so there were lots of boxes throughout the store. They grabbed the boxes and filled them with nonperishable items.
All the shelves were full with fresh products that had just been delivered within the past week. The freezers were full too but they had no way to save the food. They grabbed a few ice creams for everyone to eat now as a little treat.
Dwayne was walking around looking at every single item. Daniel and Matthew were just going down the rows scooping anything and everything they could into the boxes and bags.
The men thought they could share when they got to the survivor camp. Daniel was day-dreaming about what the camp was going to be like when they got there.
He dreamt that they would drive up to the entrance of camp. They would be asked who they were and how many people there were in the party.
Each car would get a pass to put in there windshield. One of the guards gave them an escort to the check-in building.
When they got there, the men went in while the women stayed with the children and the cars.
The men walked into the registration building with apprehension. They didn’t know what to expect. There were two men sitting at desks with lots of papers stacked around them.
One of the men greeted them cordially and told them his name was
Aaron. The other man, David, never looked up. Aaron asked if any of them had any ID. He understood if they didn’t.
Daniel explained that none of them had any ID. Daniel started giving Aaron everyone’s names but then he realized he didn’t have anyone’s birthdates except for his wife’s.
Aaron said they understood but needed any information they could get. They still had a few houses on the same street that were available to move in immediately.
Aaron gave them a map of the base as well as five sets of keys. He also circled a few different places on the map such as the grocery store, clinic and the police station.
Daniel and the other men thanked Aaron and turned around to leave. Daniel handed a set of keys to each man as they walked back to their cars.
Before they got back in their cars, they looked at the map on the hood of Daniel’s car. They figured out where their houses were and how they were going to get there.
They were all exhausted and more so now that they were on the base because now they felt safe. They felt they could finally let their guard down a little. None of them had felt safe in a long time.
Each of the men told their wives where their homes were located except of course for Daryl who had his own home. The women were very excited but exhausted. They just wanted to get to the houses to get some sleep.
As they turned on the street where their houses were, they noticed other people outside the houses.
They each pulled into the driveway of their new homes. Everyone could finally get out of the cars. The kids jumped out of the cars and started running around the front yard. It had been a long time since they could play outside.
It was great to hear the kids playing and laughing. For a minute, they all forgot about what they just went through. They were all soaking up the sunlight and taking advantage of their safety.
Daniel was interested in talking to whoever was in charge of the base to get a better idea of what was going on in the rest of the country and what the government’s plan was to get their world back to normal.
Daniel got Josie settled and went over to Will’s house to ask him if he wanted to go with him. Will answered the door and said he did want to go, he just had to change his shirt and pants and he would be ready.
The two men drove up to the headquarters and entered the building and asked to speak to whoever was in charge. They were brought to General Blake Safari.
He welcomed them with open arms and was glad to give them any information he could. The word “Classified” went out the door when the zombies arrived.
The General was in the middle of giving the men a recap of what had happened in the rest of the country when an alarm starting sounding.
Daniel asked the General what the alarm was for. The General told the two men that they would need to go sit in his office for a few minutes.
Daniel and Will went into the General’s office but did not sit down. There was a window that over looked the main room where all the radar equipment and radio equipment were.
Everyone was running around like crazy people. They finally got the alarm to be silent but it was still flashing a red light. Daniel could tell by the look on the General’s face that this was not a test and that it something very bad was happening on base.
Daniel and Will were in the General’s office for what seemed like an hour before they decided to go out and demand to know what was going on.
When they found the General, he finally told them that there had been a breach on the north border of the camp and that some of their houses had been compromised.
Daniel looked at the map that was on the desk an
d noticed that their street was one of compromised areas. His chest immediately started hurting like someone was sitting on it and a sharp pain shot down his left arm.
He fell to the floor clutching his chest. His life passed before his eyes just prior to him passing out. Just as he passed out, he woke up from his day dream and realized they were still at the gas station with their new friend, Dwayne.
Just then he realized that the alarm he was hearing in his dream was the sound of the four horns on the vehicles outside.
The men all looked outside to see why the women were honking the horns.
As the men looked outside, they saw hundreds of zombies converging on the parking lot of the gas station.
There were already about 20 zombies in between the vehicles and the gas station so the men could not get back to their cars.
As the men watched the zombies surrounding their vehicles, all they could think about was that all hope had been lost. What were they going to do?
Thank you for purchasing and reading my books. I hope you are enjoying the series. If you missed the first book, “Annihilation Utter Destruction” (book 1 in the series), click on the link below to be taken to Amazon.com to get your copy today.
“Annihilation Utter Destruction”
I’d also love to have you stop by my website:
http://amandapetersonbooks.blogspot.com/
I update it frequently and provide more information about me and the books I’m working on. I’d love for you to leave me some positive feedback on how I’m doing and if there is anything you may like to see in future books I write. Check back frequently as the information will be updated regularly.
I would like to thank each of you individually for supporting me and it is my goal to provide you with value in my books and a happy reading experience.
Annihilation - Hope (Annihilation, Book 2) Page 3