Fall of Earth (Book 1): The Survivors of Bastion

by Will Hawthorne

  ‘Wait, wait…’ Leah said quickly. ‘The Ranger.’

  None of us said another thing. We took off on the fifty yard run to the garage, sprinting though the streets towards it. My heart was racing as my mind seemed more shaken with every growl or echoing snarl that I could hear coming through the streets.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Leah asked, fumbling for the keys as she unlocked the garage door and pulled the door open.

  ‘The man from yesterday,’ I said hurriedly. Hayley glanced at me, but in the wake of what was happening the importance of me and her had fallen away completely. ‘He led something towards…’

  ‘Something?’

  ‘People… They’re rabid, infected with something…’

  ‘Infected?’

  ‘We’ll worry about that later. Right now we need to get the fuck out of here.’

  Right before getting into the Ranger I looked about the garage, searching for something I could use to protect myself, anything. The only other gun I had in my possession was my father’s hunting rifle beneath my bed, back at the house – where we were about to head to.

  I took up two things as quickly as I could, the first things I had set my eyes on – a shovel with a rusted blade, and a huge, red wrench.

  I climbed into the passenger seat as Hayley sat in the back and Leah took the wheel. She started it up, the engine stuttering.

  ‘Come on, you piece of shit,’ Leah muttered.

  It was then, as we prayed for the ignition to actually activate, that the pounding of footsteps on the tarmac began to sound out.

  ‘Yes!’

  The engine had finally started, but I had swapped one form of fear for another – they were inside Bastion, and they would be coming for each and every one of us.

  ‘Drive.’

  The Ranger tore out of the garage at the behest of Leah’s foot, taking a sharp left as we raced up the street towards where the bodies had been, where the crowd had been. A few people I could see running, and as we ate up those fifty yards of tarmac, two things stood out to me in particular.

  One; I looked left, and saw them approaching. They moved like a pack, sprinting and galloping towards us, reaching their arms out as they set their eyes on us and snarled. They were bloody, merciless, inhuman. There was nothing about them that could be redeemed, and the simple things that might have distinguished them when they were human were gone. Blonde hair, brown hair, red hair, man, woman, tall, short; there was nothing. They were all rabid, ready to attack us, not caring who we were or what we were.

  ‘Go!’

  Leah pressed down harder on the pedal, the engine roaring as I looked out the right window and caught a glimpse of-

  It was Rudy.

  He was stood atop the roof of his house, clad in something I couldn’t figure out the nature of. He knew more about weapons than any of us, although the contents of his house was something I had never truly witnessed. He allowed us to use things from his inventory in the condition that nobody went inside.

  Now he was stood there, his arms stretched wide, wearing a chunky black vest – at least that was what it appeared to be – with grey squares and a wire leading to his hand.

  ‘Come and get me, communists!’ He screamed at the top of his lungs, his arms spread wide as he looked out over the rooftops of Bastion. ‘You’ll never take me, I fucking swear it! FUCKING TRY IT!’

  As we turned the corner, racing past his house, up the road towards my own, I looked up the street to see the infected come running.

  They were following us – that was who they had seen. Now, though, I could see them splitting off, a few at a time, searching for us indiscriminately.

  Rudy’s screams still roared out over Bastion as we tore to the end of the street, stopping outside of my house as Leah slammed on the brakes. I hadn’t been wearing my seatbelt, and I almost found myself thrown out of the front window.

  Relief and horror overwhelmed me instantly – the former at the fact that Robbie was stood right there, gun in hand, the latter because my mother was nowhere to be seen.

  I jumped out of the car and grabbed Robbie by the shoulders.

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘Tommy, what the fuck is going on? Are we under attack?’

  ‘Where’s mom?!’

  ‘I don’t know! I’ve been out, I just got here!’

  ‘For fucks sake – I’ll get her, get in the fucking car-’

  ‘What-’

  At that moment, rip-roaring into the sky, soared a huge fireball pluming with smoke and blackness. We both turned, wondering what the fuck was happening – my first instinct was a gas main, even though we didn’t have any of those.

  Then I realised – it was Rudy’s house. He had set off whatever claptrap combination of bombs and grenades that were wired up inside his house, some failsafe in the event that we came under attack. It only lit up his house and garden, but I’d be damned if I had seen anything like it in my entire life.

  He had killed himself in the crazed hope of taking as many of our invaders with him.

  Leah and Hayley both looked out of the window as the explosion resonated across Bastion, the shockwave rocking the car and knocking my brother and I to the floor.

  In those few moments that we waited for whatever was going to happen next, I truly hoped that that would be the end of it, that the attack was over, that he had taken them all with him – but it wasn’t the case by a long shot.

  They came running at us just like before, sprinting around the corner, rabid and furious. Some were on fire, their skin and hair roasting like some footed kamikaze squadron from hell. It didn’t deter them in the slightest as they carried on towards us. They would be here in twenty seconds, no more.

  ‘Go!’ I shouted, standing and shoving Robbie towards the car. ‘I’ll find mom. Pull around the back and pick us up – if I’m not out by the time you’re there, go without me.’

  ‘Tommy…’

  ‘GO!’

  Robbie gave me one final sparing look, looking at me helplessly before jumping into the front of the car. Leah took off up the street, and without looking back I sprinted for the front door.

  I could hear the growls coming up the street as I slammed through the doorway. I ran upstairs, bounding into my mother’s bedroom.

  She wasn’t there. The covers were strewn on the bed, but there was no sign of Henrietta herself.

  ‘Mom! We need to get out of here now!’

  Through every room I ran, stopping in my own just as I heard the slamming of bodies against the front door downstairs.

  A chill surged through me, despite the sweat appearing on my brow, as I pulled my father’s loaded rifle out in it’s case from beneath my bed. I heard the half-box of shells, maybe 15 in total, rattle about inside as I pulled the case open and folded it up with the loose shells inside, stuffing it in the back of my jeans.

  I didn’t have time to look about the room, at everything I was leaving behind – the survivor within me had kicked in.

  There was no sign of Henrietta – and then the obvious struck me, as I held my father’s gun in my hands.

  The garden.

  I ran into the upstairs hallway, seeing the shadows of the attackers slamming against the front door, those horrendous thuds feeling as if they were shaking the house every time they struck against it.

  Could I make it downstairs before they got inside?

  My question was answered for me just seconds later, in the short moments that I was readying myself to jump down the stairs.

  I heard the glass of the living room window smash, just as it had done at Larry and Mae’s house, and with the snarling and animalistic growling, I knew that they were inside.

  My mind searched for a way out. There had to be something that would let me escape, there always was.

  Of course there was.

  Turning from the stairs, I dashed through the opposite door to my bedroom, shutting it quickly and locking it behind me.

  Robbie’s roo
m.

  I had a minute at most, and that was being optimistic about my situation.

  I crossed to the window, clutching my father’s rifle tightly in one hand as I unlocked the window and opened it. I stuck my head out through the gap, the scene that greeted my senses making me feel as if I was in warzone – the smell of smoke, the screeches, the growling, the screams far off of somebody who wasn’t one of our attackers.

  They had gotten to somebody, if not most of them… I had no idea.

  That was the worst part.

  Casting the thought aside I looked down at the drop below me. Three, four yards, maybe… Could I make that?

  There wasn’t a question to be asked – it was this or face my assailants.

  I climbed out onto the ledge, looking at the drop below me, and for a second the image of the trampoline we had out here when I was a kid flashed through my mind.

  Bend your knees, Tommy – that’s it!

  I jumped.

  A twinge of pain jolted through my right leg as I struck the ground. At any second I expected one of them to come jumping over the wall, or to push over the fence from any direction. The sounds seemed sourceless, as if they were surrounding me now that I was here in the garden with the entrances on every side.

  I stood to my feet, finding my injury to be a sprain at most as I took up the rifle and ran for the entrance to the garden.

  I pushed through the door, looking about for my mother as I shouted her name – but she wasn’t there either.

  Moments of helplessness had resounded in my mind over the years, but none had ever struck me as hard as that moment of horror. The implications of the empty garden before me set in – Henrietta wasn’t here, and I had no chance of looking for her anywhere else. The place would soon be overrun, and there wasn’t enough time to continue searching for her.

  Tears of frustration and anger welled up in my eyes as I clenched the rifle tightly in my hand, running my other over my face and through my hair.

  Fuck.

  I dashed back into the yard, arriving just in time to see one of the infected come scrambling over the garden wall.

  They were here.

  I tried to stay calm, knowing that any idiocy or recklessness would get me killed without warning.

  I raised the rifle, breathing as it raced towards me – five yards, three yards.

  Less than a yard from the barrel I pulled the trigger, a bullet ripping through it’s face, killing it instantly, if there was anything at all left to kill.

  I moved to grab the extra shells from the back of my jeans, wondering how much good it would do, when a group of four came colliding with the glass door at the back of the house. They cracked it in an instant, before smashing through it.

  I had one round left.

  I resigned myself to my fate, the hell that awaited me – once I had been bitten I could use that bullet to put myself out of my misery, in the hopes that I wouldn’t end up like all of them.

  They were seconds away from reaching me, ready to infect me, to run me through with their teeth… And that was when I heard the sounds of the Ranger’s engine coming roaring from the left.

  Smash, smash, sm-

  The car tore through the garden fence of Carl’s house, just somebody else whose fate was unknown to me. The timing couldn’t have been better, and I had just enough foresight to catch the determined look on Leah’s face as she ran down the four attackers and ground to a halt.

  Two crashed off the bumper, slamming into the opposite fence and falling to the ground, disoriented, unmoving.

  One went under the wheels, the crunching of bones something I never would have imagined to be such a sweet sound.

  The fourth and final was clipped by the left side of the grill, going flying against the wall just beneath the kitchen window – that was the one I was most worried about, because it had hardly taken any force.

  ‘GET IN THE FUCKING CAR!’ Leah screamed through the open window.

  The thought of my mother, whom I had no idea as to her whereabouts, who had literally raised me through the fucking apocalypse, raced through my head once again.

  Hayley near enough kicked the door open and I jumped onto the backseat. I scrambled for the door, but in my hesitation the fourth of my attackers, the one by the window, had come running around to the side and emerged through the door, screaming incoherently at me with blood on its face and insanity in its eyes.

  ‘Fucking kill it!’ Robbie shouted.

  He didn’t have to tell me twice, but that was easier said than done in the chaotic heat of the moment. Leah reversed, and here it was clinging onto my leg, its body dragging along the floor.

  I kicked it out at its face with the heel of my boot as it snatched at my other leg, hearing its teeth break off and watching it’s head swing back just as it was inches from biting through my jeans.

  It showed no sign of letting up, even after I kicked it hard in the face again.

  Perhaps I would have truly been a goner if Hayley hadn’t leaned over from her seat, having taken up the rifle in her hand, and smashed it in the nose with the wooden handle with all her strength.

  The crunch of the bones breaking in its face sounded as it fell back and away from the car, onto the ground.

  I snatched for the door handle, pulling it closed and locking it just as it jumped back up and slammed against the window.

  Leah spun the car around, reversing back out and going the way she had come through. I tried to catch my breath in the hazed chaos of the moment. Hayley grabbed me, and through the ringing of shock in my ears I heard all of three of them asking if I was okay.

  Somewhere in that I nodded, and as I got a hold of myself and checked my legs for any marks or tears. I was safe, but as that relief set in I was once again met with the terror that surrounded me on all sides.

  We crashed through five or six back gardens, trampling over fallen fences that Leah had already crushed with the Ranger. I looked over the debris, the mess that we had caused, until we pulled out onto the road end, back onto the street.

  The exit was right next to where we came out, two wooden doors that flew open as easily as the fences had done as we crashed through.

  As I looked out of the back window, through the open gates, I caught sight of somebody running towards us from the end of the road, having just turned the corner.

  ‘Wait!’ I shouted, ‘there’s somebody-’

  But just as I shouted the words, looking with hope at the person running towards us, two things occurred. I realised that it was Carl, sprinting for his life, and I also realised that the two infected attackers chasing him were much closer than I had first anticipated.

  They took him down in an instant, his figure crashing to the pavement as they jumped upon his back.

  Leah turned the car sharply, onto the empty road out of town, the side that I knew the least, as we sped away from Bastion.

  I tried not to listen to the screams, to ignore the smell of smoke, to see the huge plume of still billowing from the ruins of Rudy’s house, but they had already ingrained themselves into my mind.

  Chapter Twelve

  In Ruins

  Trees, forests, desolate empty roads save for the occasional abandoned wreck of a rusted car… We must have driven for two miles before the car finally came grinding to a halt as Leah parked it a little off the road beneath some trees, next to an empty house. We had some cover, but even though we rarely ran into others in our time in this world, I still found myself wary and paranoid as I got out of the car.

  Where are we going?

  Oh my God, they’re all fucking dead…

  What happened to mom?

  What were those things? Were they people?

  Robbie, just calm down…

  Tommy, where are we headed?

  I can’t believe it…

  What are we going to do, Tommy?

  Robbie leapt out of the front seat the moment the car stopped, dropping to his hands and knees and throwing up a
ll over the grass. Even though Leah had a firm grasp on the wheel still, I knew it was only to stop her hands from shaking so violently – from the backseat I could feel the shudder emanating through the car as she stared straight ahead catatonically. Hayley had her face buried in her hands as she shook her head violently, trying to maintain some composure.

  I looked about at the three of them, hearing Robbie retching on the ground nearby, before getting out of the car and shutting the door behind me.

  I took a deep breath, feeling myself shaking with the afterburning shock of everything that had just happened.

  Three days ago we had been a community of fifty strong people, running Bastion like clockwork, making sure everybody could live comfortably. Now, for all I knew, we were the only four survivors. There was no sign of anybody else, not even the sounds of screams from Bastion, although in the sky I could see the thinning plume of smoke continuing to rise towards the clouds, Rudy’s last-ditch effort to take out as many of the infected as possible.

  I was a second away from leaning one way or the other, from gaining some control over myself or collapsing into a screaming mess.

  Turns it was the latter.

  ‘FUCK, FUCK, FUUUUCCCK!’ I bellowed, my lungs straining with the force of the scream as I dropped to my knees and held my head in my hands, my arms shaking uncontrollably. I eventually fell onto my back and found myself staring up at the cloudy sky. It had begun to clear a little, unashamedly proceeding as it did every day. It was one of those things that hadn’t been affected by the fall of man; nature continued, uncaring, all-powerful.

  I don’t know how long I stayed like that for, but when I finally sat up and then brought myself to my feet, Robbie was leaning against the front of the car, Leah had sat back in the seat, and Hayley was stood on the roof, looking about at the scene around us.

  I crossed over to it silently – none of us had said anything coherent or made an effort to communicate since we had stopped. I opened the driver’s door, looking at Leah, who refused to even acknowledge me as she continued to stare straight ahead of herself.

  ‘You alright?’

  She did nothing for a few seconds before looking down at her lap. Finally, she took a few deep breaths before getting out of the car. Robbie shook his head and rounded to us, and Hayley sat down on the roof. They all seemed to have gotten themselves together – they had done it with a lot more control than I certainly had.