Day One (Book 3): Alone

by Michael McDonald

  Sleep was not going to find him tonight.

  The three strangers had taken up residency in the lounge area at the base of the air traffic tower unaware that they were in such close proximity to other survivors. They made themselves at home by robbing the small fridge of any drinks and food they could find. Set up their beds on a few couches and even moved a television from the next room into their own. They lie there enjoying the things they had found, flipping through the channels in hopes of finding something to watch, but all their efforts were in vain. There had been nothing on to watch for days, as our preparedness for something of this proportion and so wide scale had taken us by surprise. Radio and television stations were offline and for the most part, the only real reason we still had electricity was because several of the men that maintained these sights had boarded themselves in and were stuck there.

  Their sacrifices had given the rest of us a sliver of hope, and if it wasn’t hope, then at least we had air conditioning and fridges to keep what little amount of supplies we had scrounged good for twice as long as they would have lasted without the power. Even in the midst of hell on earth, we were still granted a few of the comforts to push forward and hope for a better tomorrow. But not all of us were content with just surviving and being thankful for where we were… there were large numbers that wanted more and would take what they wanted with force and a smile. The end of the world hadn’t brought us closer together as many would like to have thought. If anything, it had pushed us all past our breaking points and the true colors we hid from the rest of the world were set loose.

  And the world had always been full of bad people. Now there were even more and they understood what needed to be done in order to live another day. Less people meant more supplies for them – a logic that could neither be swayed nor reasoned with.

  I lay there in the wardrobe listening to the falling rain and looking at several pictures I had pulled from my wallet. A nearby street lamp gave just enough light for me to make out the faces in the pictures and I rubbed my thumb over them, as if by some weird chance I would get the ability to feel their faces once more. It was brutal and I had no idea why I kept torturing myself like that, but it beat my mind openly thinking about them and what had happened to them, so in essence, just looking at and remembering them was far better than thinking about and knowing the truth, I guessed.

  I needed to sleep. I was tired as hell, although every time I tried to close my eyes and fall asleep, I would hear something and quickly open them expecting to see the Guards standing over me, or worse, the undead shuffling in after me. Fear was the only emotion that had remained and it was powerful. No factor in being all alone and knowing there is no one to come and save you if you screwed up, and then on top of that, imagine what it would be like knowing everyone you had ever loved was either dead or now actively seeking you out behind lifeless eyes.

  The wardrobe I had turned into a bed had been pulled from the far wall and toppled over. The doors were open and swung outward, yet could be pulled shut in a moment’s notice if I heard a distinct sound of danger closing in on me. I had showered the bedroom with papers, clothes, bed linins, and anything else I could locate in order to make the toppled wardrobe not seem so obvious if an unsuspecting visitor chose to climb the stairs and pilfer around the house I was using as a hideout.

  Normally I would have used a small standing fan, which stood near the window, to blow cool air over me while I slept, but I couldn’t take the chance of not hearing the slightest noise made in the house. The storm had brought with it a great deal of wind and the open window funneled a lot of that cool wind directly toward me, so there was no need to add any extra noise. I lie there and turned on my side, setting the pictures next to me and stared at them in the darkness, only able to see their faces when the lightning leapt across the sky. The hopelessness increased, although I had only myself to blame for that. I couldn’t let things go, I never could. Maybe there was something wrong with me, like me brain didn’t work as it should or maybe I was unable to let go simply because that meant I would have to move forward without those things that meant the world to me. Those very things that gave me strength, hope, and acceptance in this world. As far back as I could remember, I had always been like this… unable to watch someone leave without feeling the void open up and swallow me whole.

  The minutes passed by as I lay there listening to the rain, the house settling, ambient creaks that called to me from somewhere within the house, and the pound of thunder. My eyes grew heavier and I was quickly losing the battle in staying awake, and the harder I tried to keep them open, the faster they would close shut and I’d whip them open again. Sometime within a barrage of lightning and roaring thunder, which could literally wake the dead, I lost the battle and succumb to the mighty hand of sleep.

  The world continued to spin. Time continued to count forward, and nothing emerged from the shadows, waking me just seconds before ending my life. I was left alone to rest and prepare for what was to come.

  My dreams came like movie shorts, shifting from one random feature to the next like a drunken gambler. I saw things from my perspective, but was also able to see them from another point of view, although no matter which direction I viewed them from I still felt that same old familiar feeling. The same one that had kept me complacent when I should have been aggressive. I couldn’t help it, nor could I stop it. It had a mind of its own and I was simply a bystander watching helplessly as the building burned to the ground and people died.

  I had done what I thought was right at that very moment. I didn’t have the luxury to think about it in great detail, seeing both the pros and cons to my decisions until it was much later. And I surely could not go back and change any of it now, because if I could, then none of this would have gotten very far – if at all – and I would be at home right now in my own bed with my wife beside me, my daughter in her crib, my step-daughter in her room, and my son safe at his moms house. That wasn’t the way of it though and no amount of wishing or dwelling upon it was going to alter that. What had happened… happened.

  Accept it and move forward or fight it and drown.

  There is no changing the past. You can only learn to accept and deal with it, moving forward with your life or it will dictate and devour you, casting you into a bottomless pit to which there is no escape. A prison created and watched over by the individual themselves.

  How befitting is that?

  Two police cruisers and a city truck pulled to a stop in the neighborhood. Officer Morris exited the first cruiser as others followed his lead. “Alright, people. You know the drill. I want a house by house search of the area including any small sheds or shops on the properties,” he announced taking a slow glance at a few of the houses in front of him. His eyes studied everything about them, looking for any recent signs of activity that would be apparent if he spotted it.

  His fellow Guards were already geared up and swiftly headed toward the houses on either sides of the street as he watched from the relative safety of the road and his cruiser. A fellow Officer moved up close to him and waited until the other Guards were far enough way as not to hear him speak. “And what do we do if he isn’t here either?”

  Morris looked at the young man, a guy he had known for almost ten years now. He placed a hand on the man’s shoulder and made sure no one was close by before responding. “Look, I’ve known you for roughly ten years now, knew your dad even longer than that. He was a man others could count on to get things done and not worry if it had been done correctly the first time,” Morris said softly.

  “I’m not implying anything here, Morris. I’m just asking you what everyone else is thinking, that’s it.” The Officer said.

  “Miller, I know what you’re doing,” Morris responded. “And I appreciate the fact that you have the courage to come and confide in me, but this is a very touchy subject with me, as this guy singlehandedly killed a lot of my men, faked his own death, and then somehow escaped and managed to kill more of my pe
ople out here and threatened to kill Smith’s son.”

  Miller shook his head a moment and placed both hands on his gun belt. “I know the story, Morris. I’ve heard you talk nonstop about it, hell, we all have. But you are putting these people in danger by coming out here on some revenge move looking for a guy, that’s long gone by now.” He took a deep breath and looked toward the house in front of him. He knew that he might as well have been talking to a brick wall, as Morris was set so far in his mode of revenge that it was blinding him to the truth.

  “Those things could follow us back to the school and if that happens, then we would be cut off from the rest of the world, not to mention our supply routes and resources. You’re putting us all at risk here and we’re almost out of houses. Where will we be forced to look next? Are we going to start looking under rocks when this doesn’t pan out?”

  Morris took the words from Miller and processed them quickly. There was no anger or resentment in his words, nor were there any subtle threats. He was simply speaking the minds of those around him to scared to say anything themselves. “I’m aware of those risks…”

  Miller cut him off, but this time his voice was full of controlled anger, yet he maintained a level of professionalism in his rant as well as kept his voice down. “No you aren’t! If you were aware of the risks, as you say you are, then you – we – wouldn’t be out here doing this stupid shit to begin with. We would be at the school making sure that no one else was able to get in and ruin the good thing we have going. You’re letting this blind you and it’s going to get a lot of good people killed.”

  Morris ran a hand over his unshaven face and stared back at Miller. “So we should just give up the search and head back? Is that what you are saying?”

  “Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying we should do,” Miller answered.

  “Just let him go, unpunished for killing several of my men?”

  “I think he’s been punished enough, don’t you? He came looking for his son and look what happened to him,” Miller said. “Tell me you wouldn’t have done the same thing if you woke up in that room all alone.”

  “So he had the right to kill my men, is that it Miller?”

  Miller stole a quick glance and saw they were still alone. “Under the circumstances, yes I think their actions were justified. They had every right to fight their way out of there, especially with Smith doing all of those crazy experiments on those poor people. We didn’t sign up to help some guy murder people in the name of science and under a false flag of justification. We signed on to help others,” Miller’s words were adamant and quick.

  “And when he comes back, what then?” Morris asked, now focused on Miller intently.

  “He has a daughter, Morris. He barely made it out of that place alive, as it stands. We won’t ever see him again,” Miller stated. “He can pack all of the military gear he wants, but at the end of the day, he is outnumbered and it only takes one of us to put a bullet in him to end it all. He’s not coming back… that would be pure suicide, and like I said earlier, he has a daughter. He’s not coming back.”

  Morris was unconvinced. “He risked her life once before in their escape.”

  “You and I both know had that been either of us, we would have done the same damn thing. He didn’t have a choice outside of dying, so he risked it all to get away,” Miller added.

  “I value your opinion, you know that,” Morris told him.

  “No, because if you did we wouldn’t be out here,” Miller said, turned and began walking away.

  “I never said I was a perfect leader, Miller. I’m just doing what I can to keep us all safe,” he stated.

  Miller shook his head as he continued away.

  From the second floor, I had been yanked from sleep by the sound of a man’s voice. I jumped up, making sure there was no one in the bedroom with me or down the hallway before cautiously approaching the window at an angle and peering out to see Morris and several of his Guards. With the SBR in my hand and where he stood, I was at the perfect elevated advantage to level my short rifle and shoot him dead. A massive gunfight would surely follow, but I had more than enough bullets for all of them and they only had one way of getting to me, and that was the stairway.

  I could easily hold them off until they ran out of bullets or I had killed them all, of course the latter was what I was shooting for. I had the rifle with me and was about to drop to a knee, that way I could steady myself better and take Morris out first thing, when a noised cried out to me abruptly and very unexpectedly.

  Chapter Six

  I spun, shouldered the rifle, and flipped the selector to full-auto all in one continuous fluid motion, prepared to see one of the Guards with a bead already on me, ready to kill and claim the glory of taking me out, although until I took my last breathe I would do anything to keep that from happening… anything!

  The sound of the last board on the stairs registered in my ears and I knew that someone was now at the top of the stairs, instead of directly behind me. I still had a chance at this thing.

  “Freeze,” the words slipped from a female.

  What I found upon reaching my destination was not what I had expected. A beautiful blonde with blue eyes was drawing her Glock from its holster when the barrel stopped on her chest. Through the optic, which limited my amount of view through such a small lens, I caught her beauty and stopped her from moving the pistol any further. “Put it down,” I commanded her as she just hung there with the fear hovering about her face.

  “I scream and they’ll be a house full of Guards in here in seconds,” she stated.

  “And it’ll be the shortest scream ever,” I fired back.

  “Okay,” she said and dropped the pistol to the floor, apparently she believed I’d shoot her as I stated.

  “How many are there out there?” I asked her.

  “Twelve of us, me included.”

  “Tell whoever’s with you to drop their weapon and come up here as well,” I instructed her.

  “I can’t,” she stated, but before I could ask her why she continued. “Morris wanted us to take each house by ourselves, that way we could cover more ground and not remain in one area for too long.”

  “Really?” I asked her, not buying in to the fact that he could be so stupid. A single house could contain a group of undead or perhaps a group of mean survivors, so sending a single person into a house alone was beyond stupid… it was downright arrogant of him.

  “Yes, really,” she replied. “I don’t like it because there is too much that can go wrong, but he’s in charge.”

  Until I was certain that she wasn’t blowing sunshine up my ass, I was going to treat the situation as if she were lying to me and someone was waiting for me halfway up the stairs. “Hitting a moving target in the head is hard as hell to do, and I have body armor on, so even if you’re lying to me and there’s someone with you. Just know that I’ll have more than enough time to kill you, and then get them as well.”

  “And I’m telling you that I’m alone,” she reiterated. Her eyes never left me and it was almost impossible to look death directly in the face without at least partly looking toward the concealed person sent to watch you back. So she was either telling me the truth or was more than confident that the person with her would kill me and let no harm come to her. With that, I was convinced she was alone, although I would treat the encounter as if she weren’t until I could see with my own eyes.

  “Kick the gun toward me and keep both hands where I can see them,” I instructed her. She might have been beautiful, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t deadly and would shoot me if the opportunity arose. I had to becareful.

  She did as instructed and I was about to move toward her when another voice shot up from the first floor, quickly followed by the sound of a screen door slamming shut. Her eyes widened with even more fear as she looked at me. It was a look that told me she hadn’t planned for anyone else to come looking for her, although now that they had, I’m sure she was concerned
about what I might now do.

  “Rachel, are you in here?” The voice asked, not in a terrified yell, however it wasn’t in a normal tone one would ask if they were coming into a room, unclear if anyone was within.

  With the rifle pointed at her chest and still wearing its suppressor, I held a finger to my lips, and then followed it with a whisper. “You say a word and I’ll shoot you right where you stand.”

  She nodded furiously at my order.

  We both could hear his footsteps moving through the first floor. A door open, and then a few seconds later it shut and more footsteps. “Rachel, stop playing around. We’re about to move out to the next location, so unless you want to get left behind, then you better get your ass out here A-S-A-P!” More footsteps from downstairs and they were getting close to the front door, as well as the stairway.

  These idiots were going to get themselves killed running blindly into houses and yelling for people. All it would take is for them to choose the wrong house and they’d have a horde of undead all over them. Their survival would rely upon a quick response, which in my eyes; they would be unable to perform.

  He popped his head around the railing and looked up the stairs, calling to her once more. Fortunately though, she was further to the left of the top of the stairs, so he was unable to see her from where he stood. He’d have to climb the stairs and reach the halfway mark before she’d come into view and when that happened he’d see the fear on her face and know they were not alone. Others would be called.

  I kept the weapon pointed at her and moved to a position directly above the stairs. From there I could see him, when and if, he started up toward the second floor. I crouched down and settled in for a swift gunfight.