Apocalypse Chronicles (Book 1): SunDown, Part 1

by K. , T. Dawn.

  "Mr. Dlou?" Fischer took a step closer to the darkness, his light revealing a pair of dirty bloodied feet.

  He shot the beam up to see a pair of legs beneath a pair of bloody and torn slacks. He could see Kriv’s shaking hands and bare ribs. Kriv stepped back just before they could see his face, he faltered a step and barreled back up the stairs.

  "Mr. Dlou stop!"

  "Leave or die!" Kriv choked out.

  An unseen door slammed and latched as the officers followed in pursuit. They went up the cluttered stairs to a hallway with four doors. Only one of them was closed. They stepped to either side of the door and took firing stance.

  "Mr. Dlou we need you to come out or we will come in!" Officer Banks stood ready to kick the door in. "Kohler, how long on the medics?" Banks asked the officer still waiting outside.

  "About twenty minutes out. And I found something." Kohler still sounded queasy. Poor kid had only been on duty for three days.

  "We'll be out in a few." Fischer relayed to Kohler. "Kriv we're coming in!"

  Banks Kicked until the door gave in. Mr. Dlou was slouched against the opposite wall. An embodied portrait of horror. With him in full light, his wounds could be seen. The left side of his face had been mangled, his eye missing and his neck was oozing blood and pus through makeshift bandages. His remaining eye beginning to cloud.

  "Kriv, stay with me help is coming!" Fischer rushed to the broken man. "Can you tell me what’s happened here?" He was pleading to get answers from the man before he faded. Hopeless as it was.

  "Secrets in the cellar. Secrets se-crets in the cellar. Don't let them out. It clings." Kriv weakly shook his head as his eyes began to bleed.

  "Sir? In the cellar?" Banks gave Fischer a weary glance.

  "NO! YOU'LL RELEASE MY SHAME! You'll all perish." Kriv’s words were spat out with a spray of blood. He gave a gurgled nod to an unasked question and his eye settled under his lids in death.

  "He's gone." Fischer found no pulse.

  After quickly checking the remaining upstairs rooms they stepped outside to join Kohler, following him across the lawn and behind a shed in the back yard. Just behind it, two freshly dug and empty holes. One about four feet deep, three feet wide, and five feet long. The other just as deep. But much smaller.

  "Christ. He thought to kill them." Banks gasped and followed Fischer in a sprint back to the home, stopping to grab a metal bar leaning against the house.

  At the barricaded door in the hall Fischer began frantically pulling the tape and wood from the door as Banks started to assault the various locks with the bar. A thick cloud of doubt was wrapped around them. Both knowing there was no one alive. Just as they got the door open, Kohler shouted something from outside.

  Banks stepped into the kitchen, "What was that, Kohler?"

  "Medics are pulling down the road." Kohler was still pale and shaking barely keeping it together.

  "Go meet them at the front, wait for us to call you in."

  Banks went back to Fischer. All he found was more claw marks and blood in the empty doorway. "Rolph! What’s down there?"

  He aimed his flashlight down the stairs. Blood was dripping from one stair to the next. Slithering tendrils ran down the walls. At the bottom of the stairs in the center of a crimson pool was Adala, elbows deep in Fischer’s raw abdomen.

  "Ah, Christ." Banks gasped.

  Adala looked up with dead eyes and meat of the officer dangling from her teeth. Her blank stare slowly turned into recognition. Her face twisted in shame. She spit the flesh from her mouth and shakily stood.

  "Shoot me!" Adala screamed, clutching her head between fists.

  "Adala wh-what happened?" Banks again drew his weapon and took aim.

  "This won't stop! Shoot me!" Adala dropped to her knees and began to shake, her eyes glazed over and she snarled. On hands and knees she shot up the stairs with inhuman speed.

  Banks unloaded his clip into Adala's skull. Revolted and reeling from what had just happened Banks didn't hear Kohler approach. At the sound of the gun Kohler had stormed through the door joining officer Banks at the top of the stairs.

  "What the hell is this?" Kohler released a panicked scream. Choking back bile. "I'll get the medics!'

  "No! Don't bring them in here! Somethings not right." Banks peeled his eyes away from the gruesome sight and bored his gaze into Kohler. "Get out, don't touch anything!"

  "Banks you're bleeding. I'll ju-"

  "OUT!" Banks charged the young officer and he fled.

  "Somethings wrong!" The panicked officer rushed to the medics down the long drive. Cursing the downed tree keeping them so far away. "Banks made me leave! Fischer is down we need to get in there! God all the blood." Kohler plead with the medics and made a hasty report to dispatch.

  An eternity seemed to pass, but officer Banks didn't come out. Kohler stood silent not knowing what to do. The medics hustled getting the stretcher from the back.

  "I'm going back in to get him." Before he could take another step the strong scent of kerosene filled the air.

  Smoke had begun creeping out from the windows. Within seconds the house was engulfed in a blaze no one saw coming. They all stood frozen. The ramshackle house never stood a chance.

  "What are you doing? Get out of there!" Kohler screamed at Officer Banks standing just inside the window, flames parading around him. Kohler rushed towards the house, confusion pulling at his consciousness. "NO!"

  Officer Banks raised his gun to his temple, remorse in his eyes. His bleeding eyes. His face still wet from the death rattle blood coughed out by Kriv Dlou. He nodded and squeezed the trigger, sending his brain to dance through the bellowing flames. A secret was left to burn within them.

  Chapter 1

  Eagle's Nest

  NEVADA MAY 24TH 2029

  The sun had barely risen, hardly touching the remains of large cargo planes at rest across the paved wasteland. Several miles along the ‘Eagle's Nest’ airstrip, machines and other vessels flanked both sides. Taking its sweet time as usual only the faintest tendrils of the sun’s light could be seen cresting the mountains.

  I was sweating and plagued with chills even in the hundred and four degree dry air. My legs were so stiff I was certain if I moved them they may break off beneath me. My spine felt like a sword blade trying to burst through the skin beneath my shirt. I had a terrible pain in my groin and my ass had been numb for hours. My thighs and calves were heavy from the things I carried in my many cargo pockets.

  I had been still in this same position for the last seven and a half hours. Knees bent, hands and back straight against the curving wall of the cylinder pipe I had taken refuge in for the night. My breaths short and not nearly satisfying, I was poised and ready to run.

  This was always the worst part. The last moments before the sun came up. The moments when the aggressives were most desperate for food. Especially the ones who roamed uninhabited parts like these. Days without a meal left them especially crazed, even at times to turn on each other.

  My heart was choking out beats as I began to beg for the day to banish night. Just beyond my vision I could hear the frantic steps of aggressives dashing into shadows as the sun rose. My body was splintered into an all too familiar feeling of impatience. I would have to run if the sun didn't make its move, revealing my presence to any of the threats nearby. As hungry as these aggs’ were, the sun just might not save me.

  I caught a breath in my leathered throat as an aggressive stuck its head into my shelter pausing and sneering at my presence. My heart sank. It was a small boy no more than seven, still in pajamas. He had to be from a farm and someone was surely mourning him.

  Measuring his wounds and still flushed skin he had to of turned no more than seventy-two hours prior. Thank god. After being chased into the pipe only hours before, I had no weapons to fend him off. Hand-to-hand was never advised with an aggressive, no matter how small, but if he was in fact recently turned he wouldn't be very fast.

  Aggressives were w
hat kept people living in fear. The turned consisted of three classes, aggressives being the largest threat of the infected. They would actively chase down and feed on you. Hunting in groups by night and hiding in darkness by day.

  Second on the list were moon-junkies. They reacted somewhat differently to the turning. At some stage in their transition they would suddenly become enthralled with the moonlight, staring into the irises of its craters until sunrise.

  They would just as actively hunt you down and rip flesh from bone if you got their attention, but it was a little harder to do. I've gathered no information from this Phenom. Nothing that explains it, but it's saved my ass a few times.

  Then there were the passives. I prayed for a day when they were all I needed to worry about. Though they would still feed if you got close enough, they wouldn't chase you down. They just lost interest, gave up, moved on. It's almost like something fully human remained and they no longer wanted to be a part of the monsters they were. Without food most either withered away or burned waiting for the sun.

  The only sign of hope in the infected? They needed to eat to survive. And if enough people stayed alive long enough, they would all starve and we would have a chance at starting over.

  Communities living in the fear of being alone were making the hope of a new beginning difficult. They were nothing more than herds of cattle, quickly building the numbers of the turned with each one that fell. Communities, or as I call them farms, like the one this boy came from.

  The boy who was rearing back with a shriek preparing to feast on the warmth of my entrails and paint the ground with my blood. Just as I raised my boot to kick him back his shriek was followed by the yell of another aggressive coming through the other end of the pipe.

  The sun poetically announced its presence by burning the flesh of the boy in front of me, distracting him long enough for me to extend my stiff leg into his chest sending him onto his back. I flew out of the pipe past him just as the second aggressive reached for me, its hand burning in the sun. Wailing, it retreated back.

  "Screw you!" I shouted with my middle finger to its grisly face.

  A small, but eagerly greeted, victory. I'd survived another night. I danced with unwarranted glee until my bones reminded me of the night I had spent crouched in the foul tunnel of impending doom.

  "Yeah, yeah." I sat quickly and stretched the muscles in my legs and back, rolling my head across my shoulders, and flexing my arms.

  The boy was writhing in the blaze set moments ago by the sun. I didn't enjoy watching them die, or killing them. It was just part of life in the days after SunDown.

  Most of the time I ended them with a bullet to the head, blunt force, or anything else that took them quickly. To spend as little time in danger as possible, but also to end their agony. No one asked for this. Especially them. Most were so young. The elderly that turned barely made it twenty-four hours.

  I had no way to end this child. No weapons, only my bare calloused hands. Hands which would be exposed to his scorched bleeding body. I didn't come this far, survive this long to risk exposure to infected blood.

  I took in my surroundings, my eyes settling on a thick wire. I fashioned it into the best and only lasso I had ever made and looped it as best I could around the boys extended arm and neck. I drug him into the shade of the pipe and sheltered him from the sun with a large piece of curved metal, scraps from a looted plane. He would starve there. His body so wasted he couldn't move to feed. It still had to be better than slowly burning.

  I didn't know if they could feel, but that had to be the best way for him to go. Crouching down I brushed the hair from his fevered brow. Sandy blonde curls surrounded his head like a halo. Foggy green eyes gaped wide as he snarled and snapped his bleeding teeth at me. A boy who once enjoyed playing and youth now wanted nothing more than to tear me apart and consume me. No one deserved this, nothing deserved this.

  SunDown had attacked small animals first, but very quickly and very widespread, starting in Asia it didn't take long at all to hit the states. People panicked quietly at first, blaming it on stray animals spreading rabies and mad cow. About two months in, when it moved to large animals like the ones in the 'Big Katz' exhibit at the local zoo, people lost it.

  The virus or disease, whatever it was, affected animals...differently. They didn't come after you in a ravenous fashion, they hardly even attacked each other. Instead they ate themselves. Or at least started to.

  After a bit of nibbling they started darting in front of cars, jumping off cliffs, and drowning themselves among other things. In a rare case, the 'Big Kats' performing in front of an audience of families and zookeepers chewed electric fencing until their bodies had engulfed in flame.

  That was in 2020. I was thirty-one when that happened, and it impacted me as if I'd been a small child. Once graceful creatures, suddenly faced with their own end, sought out an inconceivable destruction of themselves. At this point I chalk it off to proper animal instinct. They knew something was wrong with them and they took action.

  A strange circumstance, all animals were eventually infected. Even to this day I hadn't encountered a single animal that hadn't been. You could tell by the eyes. They got a silvery hue to them. However, not all animals behaved as though they were infected.

  Most rodents still behaved normally, if not more docile, and had been proven safe to eat after some trial and error. Chickens and other fowl had also proven safe for consumption. Fish was another great meal, if you could find it.

  By about three years in, there weren't many animals left to find. They stayed hidden from man. When it first started even uninfected animals were mandatorily put down in most cities to 'Preserve the sanctity of life' in case the illness were to spread. Little did we know.

  In 2025 the first report of human infection hit all media outlets. Most believed it was just the first leaked and that many had been infected before that. How it had been kept under wraps no one knew. There was the theory that the outbreak only got so bad because it had been weaponized by terrorists. Some said it was an accident after a CDC mishap.

  No matter how it happened, in less than a year it was everywhere. Whole cities were abandoned, burned, full of the infected.

  SunDown went from taking moments to display symptoms to taking hours or even days. It gave people a very false sense of security. Mistakes were made. Often.

  A few states had been walled up for different purposes. North Dakota for example was once a safe haven for the uninfected. They had manned walls and perimeter checks that made it an effective safe haven until it fell from the inside. Too many people wanting to live a different way. Thousands died or turned when those walls came down.

  I sometimes think I hear birds. I think it's my brain trying to convince me something normal is left, because I haven't actually seen one in years. In the movies they always portray the death silence with insects and a hollow breeze.

  I yearn to hear the crickets chirp again. The buzzing of bees. They’ve long since been quiet.

  Florida was quarantined when population really started taking a hit. Of all the states to become a sanctuary right? It was turned into a statewide garden of sorts, with beekeepers and botanists hell-bent on saving as much life as they could.

  The planet is a skeleton of its former self. Vacant houses, rotted fields, shattered-broken-emptiness. Nothing of the former world remains. Even the sky is different. Often lit in an ominous pink hue, casting a thin fog over everything. Rain is more like a damp breeze. Although clean, it only leaves everything dirty. Something pure being tainted by our infestation.

  Nothings sacred anymore. Not to me. Just walking an eternity down a wavering line of death and decay waiting for it to be cut off by my own end. Day by day walking and waiting. Just surviving for reasons I don't know yet. I'll find something to convince me I lived for it I'm sure. Right?

  After all, the human race is supposed to be a great thing that has overcome so much. Technically the world has ended several times over, as
we've known it anyway. Events so drastic and vast they've changed everything for us.

  I began my trek across the mechanical wasteland in search of a safe place to sleep. After barely escaping a troop of aggressives the night before and losing a group of SunDown crazed cannibals the day before, I was reaching the end of my own mental stability. At nearly twenty-four hours on my feet and my adrenaline in full swing a snap in my sanity was very near.

  My thoughts were shattered by an ear piercing scream coming from the top of a building nearby. I swung my head searching windows and doorways for the source. My eyes fell on the rooftop three stories up.

  There, a bulky cargo clad man, held a small child by his ankle hanging him over the edge of the building. My heart jumped and my feet rushed forward on their own. If the man dropped the boy there was nothing I could do but it didn't stop me from trying. I stopped several feet from the building when a faint voice could be heard over creaking metal moving with the dry breeze.

  "Please stop! He's just a boy you can't do this!" A woman was pleading from somewhere beyond the ledge.

  "And Thomas wasn't? You got my boy killed! I can't ever get him back!" The man was shaking as he yelled, jostling the boy in his grasp.

  "It's not my fault! It's not his fault, you can't keep blaming people! Nothing will change it! Please put him down, we've lost so many people already. How can you think this will help?"

  "You were supposed to be watching him!"

  "Jorggie, it was an accident. I can't take it back. I can't change it, but we can all get past it. Just come back over here and put him down. Please."

  "Enough! You keep getting people killed!" Jorggie's foot faltered and the boy let out another scream as he slipped from the man's grasp.

  "No!" The woman lunged for him as the man fell over, grabbing his arm and bracing her feet against the ledge attempting to keep the large man atop the building. The small boy clung to the man upside down with his legs wrapped around his arm and shoulder.

  "You pushed me you crazy bitch you're gonna kill us all!"