The Beginning at the End of the World: A Post-Apocalyptic, Dystopian Series (The Survivor Diaries Book 2)

by Lynn Lamb

  My father lived in a nice place near the base of a mountain. It was one of the few houses not in a track-home neighborhood. Most importantly, it was one of the few places that happened to be built into rock.

  I hiked for what seemed like forever. I turned my mind off, refusing to look around me until I found my family. I don’t know how to explain it, but I could feel that they were still alive. I stared at my feet, willing them to move rhythmically. I started to sing out cadence, something I would never have done in public before. I started just humming it, but by the time I made it to my father’s street, I was shouting it until my throat was completely raw. I stopped and used the hillside as a visual reference to where I was.

  I saw the iron fencing of my father’s home. I allowed myself to look up slightly, and I couldn’t believe my eyes.

  Half of the house still stood. I flung open the gate and ran up the driveway. Then I was able to focus on what I had been praying for, hoping for. I knew they were still alive.

  I ran screaming to Ammie. She was kneeling on the ground, and she looked up at me. I could see the shock on her face as I got closer. She didn’t move.

  She looked down; and I followed her gaze. My father lay on his side in front of her. I could see the blood that matted his hair, and I began to doubt that feeling I had that my family had made it.

  Before I knew it, I was kneeling next to him. He was covered in a reddish dust that matched the hillside and now covered everything in the area.

  Amanda came and sat on the ground beside me. “I pulled him out,” she told me.

  My father rolled onto his back by himself, as if to tell me he was still alive. “Bri,” I think he said.

  Another rumbling started, and Ammie and I locked eyes. I know that we were both thinking it was happening again, but Ammie’s eyes shifted to something behind me. I turned to see what she was looking at.

  It looked like a giant gray clump of cotton balls was being thrown over us. We have seen dozens of dust storms living in Arizona, but none like this. It was too fast. Before I could even absorb what was happening, I felt the stings of a million bees over my exposed skin. But it wasn’t bees, it was sand. Ammie covered Dad’s face with her body.

  I knew that we needed to get him inside, but the house didn’t seem too stable. I saw the basement door on the side of the house, and I told Ammie to help me. I took his upper body, and she took his feet. We got him into the basement. It was dark, damp and smelled like mold, but it was out of the elements and the best we were going to do.

  I took a quick visual survey of Amanda, and she looked fine, just filthy, like me.

  Dad was breathing, but he was losing blood from a big gash on his head. We went through all of the first aid kits and found something called a “blood clotting agent” that neither of us knew how to use. We followed the directions on the bag that simply stated to pour, pack and apply pressure. To our amazement, it worked.

  I was trying to process everything that had happened when a loud banging at the basement door knocked me out of my thoughts. Ammie’s eyes looked fearful, but I pulled out my rifle and went up the steps.

  “It’s me, Adam. Let me in.”

  I opened the lock that still had the keys in it and flung the doors open outwards. My amazing boyfriend was standing there. I jumped into his arms, and we held each other, tightly. I never wanted to let go.

  November 26

  Aunt Laurie was intubated last night. We are losing her. She couldn’t breathe without a tube. Doc Malcolm called the family together on the walkies to tell us that we should prepare for the end. It was one of the most awful days of my life, and I am a survivor of the apocalypse, so that’s saying something.

  The rain is pouring down hard, so today I am monitoring outside the Village wall using the hidden cameras that Jackson had Jill build into the blue prints. They are connected to a complex system that ends in a room in Jackson’s house that contains monitors, among other things. No one in the Village, including Aunt Laurie, knows about it. There is a lot that they don’t know about what Jackson does. In fact, part of me believes that Jackson will figure out what I am writing and find some way to hide this journal from Laura. That’s just what he does.

  The other news of the day is that Jackson got on his motorcycle, in this weather, and drove out of the Village gates this morning after getting the news about Aunt Laurie. He said nothing to me except that I am in charge while he’s gone. It was like a parent leaving the oldest child in charge while they went to the drug store.

  This is supposed to be my story, and I will write what needs to be documented— for Aunt Laurie.

  When Adam showed up at my father’s house, I felt like we were going to be great. I had everyone I loved in the State of Arizona together. The terrorists hadn’t ended my family, at least not this part of it.

  Adam, Ammie and I talked for hours about how we escaped the destruction with our lives. Dad was unconscious, but he was still breathing.

  Ammie and Dad had hunkered down in the house while I was on duty. They had devised a plan to stay in the basement if we were attacked. They had gotten everything they would need to survive the weeks after the blasts. Their preparations nailed it. They had enough for all four of us, and then some.

  The one thing they didn’t plan out well was what they would do during the attacks. Apparently, Dad lost it when he realized it was happening while I was still gone. He got Amanda into the basement and went to find spray paint in the kitchen. He was going to paint a message to me on the driveway cement, but he didn’t make it that far. The portion of the house that came down was partially in the kitchen. He was trapped under a cabinet, but Ammie was able to pull it off of him. Ammie, one of the most petite people I know, dragged him through the rubble to the front of the house.

  It was around that part of Amanda’s story that we heard the sirens, followed by a male voice ordering us to stay inside and cover the windows and doors to guard against “outside toxins.” It sounded ominous. It was ominous.

  Dad had a supply of rolled tarps and duct tape, so we got to it immediately. It took hours to tarp ourselves into the basement. It became totally dark, and we waited for the sirens and the voice of authority to tell us what to do next. That never came.

  As for the army, they let me down, and I knew that it would never be a part of my life again, at least not in the way in which I was trained. It wasn’t anarchy on my part; they just no longer existed as far as I was concerned.

  We were on our own.

  November 27

  Amazing news… Aunt Laurie is expected to make it. That’s all Ammie told me before she had to get off of the walkie, and that’s all I needed.

  The Last War has changed me. I was green before, believing that the government would always be there. We all were. Now, we rely only on each other. But, while I was in that basement, I still waited for the voice that had come over a loud system – one that I hadn’t even known existed - to come back and let us know where we should go and what we should do. But Ammie began to make plans for us to get out on our own.

  We had talked to Aunt Laurie before I was deployed to downtown, and she told us to do whatever we could to get to Monterey. It didn’t seem like such a tough decision. It was only an eleven hour drive from Phoenix, that is, before the war.

  I tried to tell her how long it had taken to get to Dad’s house from downtown, but Ammie already seemed to know that it would take some time. She was getting things together, and it looked like she was packing for a move rather than a relatively short trip to Monterey.

  When Dad came to, he was in shock. It was hard for him to believe all that we were telling him.

  We knew that we would be in the basement for at least a week. We had long debates as to what to do next. Adam and I knew that there wasn’t much left of the Phoenix metro area. Beyond that, we had no idea.

  The endless days and nights in the dark began to get to us. Ammie retreated into her plans, organizing and packing for when we could
escape our dungeon.

  Adam started going over road maps he had found in some storage boxes. He was beginning to come around to Ammie’s way of thinking, but Dad and I believed it was better to stay where we were. As it turns outs, all of us were right, and wrong.

  The basement was getting to everyone, but I admit it was getting to me the most. The smells, the stagnant air, and the heat made me feel like I was suffocating. It felt like I was being buried alive.

  One night, I woke to find myself at the top of the stairs, clawing at the door with one hand and holding my rifle in the other. I was relieved that I hadn’t woken anyone because I would likely have shot them. I found a place high up on a shelf to keep my gun from there on out, far from my sleepwalking reach.

  That night I sat on the top step of the staircase, wringing my tears out of my shirt. It had all become too much. I wondered if anyone else would crack and what that would mean to my small, confined group. It was very apparent to me by then that we needed to get out of there soon.

  ∞

  I have been fighting myself this morning. As I sit here, among the buzzing, blue light of the screens, I am trying to figure out what my aunt would do. I know, because I know her, that she would add this information to the records. She really is the brave one, the way she argues back to the Colonel. I wish I could yell and swear at him like she does, but my military training kicks in every time I try.

  So, now is my time to be courageous. Screw the chain of command, and screw Jackson, that jackass. His authority doesn’t actually exist anymore, well, other than in his head.

  This is what I know of Jackson’s operation in the Village. It’s important for whoever reads this to know that I am sure that I don’t know everything. There are places in this house (or “Command Center”) that are under lock and key. Plus, Colonel Phillip Jackson’s background is in Covert Ops. It is what he did before the war, and for that matter, after the war, too. This is my first real “reveal” of the “Great” Colonel Jackson.

  I sit in front of screens that transmit from cameras that follow the entire Village, and my conscience aches.

  Jackson set the cameras up while the rest of the town was still stuck inside their homes, during those days back in July, believing that they could not leave due to the radiation still in the air.

  Jackson took an extra week to set up, a week during which people died in their homes instead of getting the medical help they absolutely needed. He took this time to set up the Village for his purposes. When Jackson told me this, he didn’t show a trace of guilt that he should have. He says he was saving lives and securing the future of the Village. Maybe this is true, but I know that Laura would never have made the decisions he made. Human lives come before all else with her, even if it would cost us in the future.

  Sometimes I see Jackson as a puppeteer and the Villagers as his unwitting puppets. My aunt often goes against his wishes though, surprising us all. She is the loose cannon’s, loose cannon. Good.

  Dad says that Jackson has a thing for Aunt Laurie, that he is head over heels in love with her, but I know she would never leave my uncle, especially for that shady bastard.

  So, here goes …

  There are hidden cameras in the ballroom and what used to be the Town Hall. In fact, there are cameras in every public building in the Village. The cameras not only have video, but they also record audio.

  Soon after everyone was told that it was alright to leave their homes, Jackson put hidden cameras in Grandma Annie’s house and later, the house that Laura and her family moved into. He only put them in positions he called “public areas” of the houses, like the kitchen and living rooms. I am not exactly sure about how he accomplished all of it, but I have to give credit where credit is due; the man is a genius (maybe an evil-genius) in his own right. Somehow he knew exactly what he would need in the future, and exactly how to manipulate the Villagers, too.

  If these diaries go into any records in the future, like Aunt Laurie would like them to, then I can only imagine how people will view me. Am I a traitor, or am I a patriot who is helping to protect the future of the United States? Maybe I am both, but from now on, the hiding is over. Jackson deserted me just like my military command in Phoenix did. I am no longer theirs. I belong to the Village.

  Jackson also has the same camera set-up in the home of Steven Rolette, and I actually agree with that. Rolette has the capability of bringing this whole community down around us. He sucks people in, people who, in the old world, would probably have had nothing to do with him. They would have just passed him by on the street, like a crazy man wearing a tin foil hat.

  But psyches are different now. I still wish that I had been able to finish my degree in psychology before the Last War, but even without it, I know that people are exceedingly vulnerable now.

  Rolette is losing some of his “flock” to the Sneaker Wave. But he is a Sneaker Wave of his own. While everyone is inside of their homes, Laura is completely down for the count, and Jackson is AWOL, he is calling each and every member of the Village, trying to convince them that God hates Laura and wants them to join him in his battle against the devil. It is hard for me to tell if they are convinced by his rhetoric or if they are just listening politely. Bastard.

  I believe in God, went to church before the war and all, but this guy is completely insane. I don’t believe for a second that God would destroy the earth because we displeased him by allowing gay marriage. And what he says about my uncle being Muslim and married to a white, Christian woman, makes me sick to my stomach, literally. After I heard him talking about Uncle Mark, I was physically sick. At first, I thought that I had the Sneaker Wave, but later I realized that my body was trying to expel Rolette’s bullshit.

  God didn’t do all of this. It reeks of humankind.

  I am not sure if I should go into any more of Jackson’s clandestine antics. Some of what he does is undeniably good for the Village, but some of it is questionable, at least in my eyes. Sometimes I wonder if it all is too much for a twenty-year-old to wade through.

  Maybe by going back into my own history of after the war I can make some sense of it all.

  After my sleepwalking episode, I decided that we had to wait and see what the outside was like before we made a decision about where we would go next. I was still hoping for some type of government to be in control and lead us to safety.

  Adam was too quiet throughout our time in the basement. I know that his family’s safety weighed heavily on him. He spent a lot of time reading the guides in the safety kits and the survival guidebook that my father purchased.

  According to Ammie, that book was the last one in the store, and when Dad brought it to the counter, the clerk refused to sell it to him. This incident took place early after the attacks on the East Coast, and Dad was able to convince the store manager to sell him the book.

  Adam became obsessed with the book that was written about the aftermath of a nuclear event exactly like the one we had just lived through. It went into living indoors, masking off your living space, and hygiene tips. It also had several chapters on what it would be like when we finally made it into the great outdoors. Apparently, they would not be that “great” anymore.

  I tried to read the book, but it was difficult for me to do. It made me feel emotional for some reason, and my family didn’t need to believe that I was breaking down, as we feared Ammie was.

  She was quiet, even more than she normally was. She was never big on talking in front of people outside of the family. She was alright with talking to Adam before, though. Her quietness started out slowly at first, so slowly, I really didn’t take notice. But after several days without her saying a word, only preparing to leave, I took her to the top of the stairs, which was the only place we could talk privately.

  The conversation was not something I was ready for. I will tell it the best that I can remember.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked her.

  She sat there for several minutes, and I waited patiently. A
s I was about to try another line of questioning, she finally said, “I will die when we get out there.”

  “What, are you crazy?” I asked her. “Are you sick, suicidal?”

  “No, I would never …” she started. “I can’t believe you asked that. It’s just that I am the one in the family with the bad immune system. My body doesn’t fight well.”

  When Ammie was little, she had a blood disease called Aplastic anemia. She had a stem cell transplant and, obviously she made it. Our mother also had it, and she didn’t.

  She has never been what people may call robust, but there was no reason to believe that she wouldn’t make it on the outside.

  “Your body fought off a terrible disease. Why do you have to look at it so pessimistically?” I asked her. The moment it left my lips, I felt badly. I should never have been so hostile, but I was angry, and hurt by everything that had happened, and I couldn’t think of losing her. “I am sorry,” I said contritely.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “But I need you to listen. If I die, I want to be buried in Monterey. It’s really my home, and that’s what I want.”

  I couldn’t and can’t believe what I did next. I grabbed her shoulders and shook her hard. Her eyes grew large and I stopped, hating myself. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

  Even though I had promised myself that I wouldn’t, I broke down. So did Amanda. She dropped back against the wall and just let the tears pour out of her. We stayed there, two sisters crying about the future we would no longer have.

  Finally, I had no more tears left. “You are not going to die. I know this, and you need to believe me,” I told her, firmly. “I will get you to Monterey, but alive, not dead.”

  Ammie just nodded, sadly. “Dad, too,” she said.

  “Of course, dummy,” I said. We both laughed weakly.