Survival of The Fittest | Book 1 | The Fall

by Fawkes, K. M.

  My uncle had been a great gardener. But he wasn’t a builder. He certainly wasn’t an engineer. This place had running water and electricity, which meant he’d had lines and pipes run—and I suspected that those skills were also beyond him.

  So I wasn’t surprised when a conversation with one of my new bunkermates, Bob Hensley, revealed that Bob and some of his friends had been involved for quite a while.

  “Of course I helped him with this place,” Bob said when I asked. He gave me a smile full of crooked and slightly stained teeth. “You think he could build this entire place by himself?”

  I returned the smile—mine only slightly fake—and asked, “How long have you been helping him?”

  He gave me a shrug. “Oh, I’d say about five years or so. Even brought some of my friends down to help. We needed an electrician and a plumber, as well as an architect. Your uncle didn’t skimp on any of the expenses, though. If you’re worried about how safe this place is, girlie, I can guarantee that you don’t have to. We’ll be snug as bugs in a rug down here.”

  He patted the wall of the hallway we were in, while I exercised every bit of self-discipline I had to keep from smacking him for calling me ‘girlie.’ Then, he sauntered away from me, calling out to my uncle with a question.

  I watched him go, my brain racing. Years. They’d been working on this for years, and he’d had other people down here to help. That explained the design and the aspects that I didn’t think Jeff could have handled on his own.

  It didn’t explain why. Why had those other people helped him? I guessed that the easiest and most straightforward answer was probably right. Money. They’d thought he was some retired crackpot who was spending his money on a stupid hobby. They’d probably written him off as a harmless kooky old man. Probably made fun of him behind his back.

  And then Bob had ended up down here with him. So what had happened to the others? Where had Jeff drawn the line when it came to his little collection for his community?

  “Michelle, keep up!” my uncle’s voice suddenly called back, and I cast my questions to the side as likely unimportant—after all, my plan right now was to get out of here as quickly as possible, not spend the rest of my life living with these people.

  We sat down to dinner that night comprising spaghetti and meatballs, accompanied by fresh bread and salad. The place was equipped with a huge kitchen full of every utensil we needed, and Jeff had even included a hydroponic garden, where he had fully mature plants that were already bearing fruit and vegetables, along with several other rows of smaller seedlings. The room next door held hundreds of barrels of fresh water for drinking and cooking. We wouldn’t be able to collect from the surface, Jeff had said, since whatever went on up there was bound to pollute all the water sources. For now, the water for our showers and for the plants came from an underground well near the bunker, but once doomsday came, it would be limited showers with the fresh water from the barrels.

  When I asked Jeff what he meant to do once that water supply ran out—which it would, with this many people and a garden—he’d given me a blank stare, proving that his planning had only gone so far.

  Still, there was also a fully stocked library, an art room with paints and paper, another room that contained scientific equipment (for Simone, I guessed), and finally, a room big enough to contain at least five couches (“our lounge,” he’d said). We’d also seen the 'emergencies' room, where my uncle did indeed have things like air filters and generators, ration bars, and other classic end-of-the-world bunker odds and ends, I guess.

  Jeff had thought of almost everything. He’d designed a bunker that would not only support us for some time, but also—theoretically—keep us entertained. And it terrified me.

  Chapter 9

  The next day, I was in the electronics room—which had quickly become my own little hideout away from the rest of my bunkermates—and the radio was turned on to my favorite station. I worked the keyboard on one of the desktop systems, my fingers flying over the keys as I set up all the things I’d need to get back into the dark web.

  I needed to know more about that attack, whether it was actually going to happen. I needed to know what was going on above me—and whether everything was still okay. No matter how many times I went over the situation, it always came back to that. I didn’t know if I could get out of this place, but that wasn’t a problem. Yet.

  There would be no reason to get out if that attack was going to happen before I could get to civilization. I didn’t want to bust through that metal door at the top of the stairs and find myself immediately inhaling some poisonous substance that would send me into convulsions and into an excruciatingly painful death.

  Luckily for me, I knew exactly where to look to see if there was any update on that proposed attack. Yeah, it was dangerous. But I was also locked in an underground bunker that was supposedly proofed against nuclear winter and any other kind of apocalypse.

  I was guessing that even if someone saw me poking around on the dark web and came looking for me, they’d fail to find me.

  Besides, what was the worst that could happen? The FBI could see me in there—somehow, even though I wasn't at my own address or using my own equipment—put a tracker on me, and come hunting. Terrific! Then, they could get me the hell out of here to take me in for questioning or whatever. I’d risk breaking my parole for that. For the chance to get out of here. For the chance to help save the world.

  I know what you’re thinking: How could I be both afraid that the attack was going to happen and hoping that the FBI would bust me out in the same breath? And it’s a good question. Well, the answer was simple: If the attack had already happened, I was going to guess that the FBI would have more important things to do than come looking for little old me. Like, you know, trying to find the cult who had done the attacking. If the FBI did come after me, therefore, it meant that the attack hadn’t happened, and the world above was still safe.

  Unfortunately, at that moment in time, it was looking like that was going to be a big old moot point. Because I was having absolutely zero luck when it came to getting into the dark web. There were a couple of problems, and they’d started with the way the computer systems had been set up—I felt like I'd gone back in time to the nineties, the software was so old and the internet was so slow. Clearly, Uncle Jeff did not know his way around a computer and knew very little about the dark web.

  It would be a big job to bring all of this equipment into the modern era of technology, but luckily, living in a bunker tends to give you infinite free time. I turned to the notepad next to me and started jotting down a to-do list.

  The attack happened the next day. I was in the electronics room, just about to finally get myself onto the dark web to try to find an update on the situation, when the screaming started coming through the radio.

  At first, I ignored it, thinking it was an advertisement or something. But when the woman’s voice reached a pitch that actually hurt my ears, it got my attention.

  That was the scream of someone who was seeing something—or feeling something—really, really bad. That was the sound someone made when they were about to die.

  No actress was that good.

  I shoved the chair toward where the radio was sitting on the shelf and turned on the TV with the remote. On the screen, I could see what must have been a newscast—and was now the picture of absolute chaos. People were rushing around the studio, tearing at their hair, covering their foaming mouths, their faces drawn in panic. I flipped the channel, found a talk show, and saw more of the same. Another few flips showed me more channels—each of them with a different version of what was going on.

  A scan through the radio gave me exactly the same. People screaming. People panicking.

  What the hell was going on up there?

  I hit the button for the intercom system Jeff had set up, in case we needed to communicate and didn’t want to walk through the entire bunker. He hadn’t mentioned it, but I thought that an emergency was prob
ably a much better reason to use the thing. Hitting the button next to the label that read ‘all rooms,’ I leaned in toward it.

  “Get to the computer room,” I snapped. “Something’s going on up top, and I don’t think it’s good.”

  Seconds later, I had settled onto one news channel—why keep flipping through when every news channel and every live show showed the same thing?—and was watching in shock and horror as the people in the studio started dropping to the ground. I could feel and hear the others rushing into the room behind me, but I didn’t turn around.

  “I was working on getting onto the web and the woman on the radio station I was listening to started screaming,” I said shortly. “Everyone on the radio is screaming. Everyone is panicking. It’s been about five minutes.”

  The radio, I noticed, had gone silent. The woman I’d been listening to had stopped screaming.

  I didn’t want to think about what that meant. I didn’t want to think about what I was seeing on the TV. But some part of my brain was screaming at me that I wasn’t going to be able to ignore the truth for long.

  On the screen, the people who had dropped to the ground were going into spasms, their bodies jerking and jolting on the floor of the studio, their eyes rolling back into their heads. There were fewer screams in the room now, fewer people running around, but the people who were still on their feet were also doing what looked like their damnedest to stay away from those who had gone down. They were still rushing around in a panic, but they were giving the people on the floor an extremely wide berth.

  And that part of my brain that was screaming that I had to pay attention? It was now saying something else. It was saying that it didn’t matter how much space the people on their feet gave the people on the floor. Because the thing that was killing them was in the air around them. It was already in their lungs. It just hadn’t started to affect their nervous systems enough to paralyze them yet.

  I mentally ran through the reading I’d done on that nerve agent, my own breathing ragged against the silence from the people behind me.

  A nerve agent that attacks your nervous system, I remembered. Well, of course, I amended. Nerve agent, nervous system. Duh. But what had the symptoms been? I shut my eyes, trying to focus on the screenshot of that search result rather than the horror happening on the TV in front of me. It attacks the neurotransmitters, I remembered. Gives the body some sort of constant electronic shock. Drives the muscles into extreme and violent seizures, makes you foam at the mouth. Eventually starts shutting down your organs, making you blind, stopping your lungs from working... then suffocates you to death while you're paralyzed in agony.

  My eyes flew open, and I could see several people on the TV grasping at their chests, now, their backs arched and their feet drumming on the floor. There was a lot less screaming, too—and a lot more people on the ground, jerking around like puppets.

  More people dying. I could see some of them falling still, as if they’d finally exhausted themselves. Only they weren’t just sleeping. They weren’t resting.

  Their bodies had gone completely still. That spark that brought life with it had fled, and their bodies, I was certain, were nothing more than slabs of meat at this point. Whatever had made them human was gone.

  “Oh my God,” I whispered, unable to think any further than that.

  I reached up and changed the channel on the TV, hoping against hope that maybe something had just happened in that studio. Maybe they’d pissed someone off and had received an anthrax delivery. Maybe someone crazy had gone in there and poisoned their water supply. Maybe it was something that had only affected them.

  I knew it was a naïve wish. I knew what I’d seen on those other channels. But it didn’t make it any easier.

  Each channel showed the same thing. People lying around in live studios, some of them stacked three deep on top of each other, many of them either spasming on the ground or clutching their chests. Many of them dead. And through it all, a deep, creepy silence—because they didn’t have the will or the life to scream anymore.

  I turned to the radio, holding my breath, and scanned quickly through the channels. But it was much the same. Silence. Every so often, an ad or a song was playing, the sound of human voices jarring and wrong in the stillness.

  Simone reached toward the TV and started flicking through channels as well, and when she hit a soap opera, my heart jumped in my chest. People. There were people on TV. A quick glance, though, showed me that it was pre-recorded.

  Those people were probably dead right now.

  “It’s happened,” I whispered. “They actually did it. God, that was fast. Fuck, that was…”

  “Complete,” Simone said, finishing my observation for me. “Michelle, you saw their communications. Do you know what they used?”

  “VXM. A nerve gas,” I replied numbly, somehow remembering the name without having to even think about it. “They were making it in a deserted city in Ukraine, where people do things they don’t want the government to know about. Anyhow, I’m not sure it was actual VXM, not like brand-name stuff or anything like that—are there brand names for chemical weapons?—but they were awfully chatty about that stuff, and they were pretty specific about the city they were going to. Seemed like they knew exactly what they were shopping for. Last I saw, they'd gotten together all the equipment and a team of chemists to make the stuff, and they were fine-tuning it.”

  I knew I was rambling, and that I needed to slow down. But the more detail I could give her, the better. She was the scientist here.

  “VXM,” Simone answered coldly. “Yes, they could have easily found the right supplies and people to make that in quite a few Ukrainian towns. It’s big money for the chemists who can make it. Pretty easy to use. Pretty easy to disseminate. Typically either powder form, which spreads everywhere when released in the right conditions due to wind currents, or in the gaseous form, which is even worse, because then, it's undetectable. Victims don't need to ingest very much of the substance for it to be lethal—one lungful is enough to disrupt the entire nervous system and start wreaking lethal havoc. From my experience and expertise, VXM causes exactly the kinds of deaths we've just seen on TV.”

  I turned to her, trying to take in all the information she'd just thrown back my way, and stared at her for a moment.

  “What kind of scientist are you?” I asked finally.

  She gave me a bleak sort of grin. “One that used to work for the Department of Defense. One that specializes in chemical weapons.”

  I turned my eyes from her to my uncle and saw him grinning like a kid. The sight made my stomach turn.

  “I figured a chemical weapon attack was a real possibility, so I’d already searched her out,” he said simply. “When you came to me with that story, I knew that was exactly the sort of scientist we needed in our midst. She’ll tell us how to stay safe from it. How to make sure it doesn’t get into our home.”

  His words dropped like rocks into the silence that now hung heavy in the room. Silence broken only by the sound of static on the radio stations and TV shows that had once held real, living humans.

  Chapter 10

  For about an hour, I sat crying in the library, torn between feeling desperately happy that I hadn’t died in that attack and feeling overwhelmingly guilty over everyone in the world who had.

  I could have saved them. Well, maybe not, but I could have warned them.

  Well. Maybe not. But I could have tried harder. Surely, I could have tried harder. I could have actually gone to the FBI, the way I’d known I should have. I could have started a blog, started a podcast, shouted it from rooftops. Yeah, I would have been putting myself on the map for Ilk Krallik, and they would almost inevitably have found me and killed me.

  But maybe I would have saved some of the people who’d just died.

  “Stop thinking about it,” a voice at my elbow said, and I turned to see Simone sitting next to me in the closest armchair.

  “I can’t,” I admitted. “I
knew about this. Well, maybe not knew, but definitely had information that the rest of the world didn’t. And I didn’t do a damn thing about it. Those people are dead because of—”

  “The cult who launched those attacks,” she said sharply. “They’re not dead because of you. They’re dead because—”

  “Because some crazy assholes decided they had the right,” I finished for her, everything suddenly coming into sharp focus in my mind. “You’re right. You’re absolutely right.”

  Yes, I could have worked harder to get the word out about what I thought was going to happen. But I shouldn’t have had to. Michelle Lopez, 23-year-old recently-fired small-town journalist should never have had that sort of responsibility put on her head.

  Those terrorists should never have thought that they had the right to take the world’s population and future into their own hands.

  “So, I guess the question is what we do now,” Simone said slowly, running her gaze over the bookshelves around us. When her eyes came back to me, they were deadly serious. “Well…”

  “More like whether we can do anything,” I amended for her. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t exactly want to go up there and get a big lungful of that stuff. Watching it kill those people was plenty for me.”

  One look at her face, though, told me that I only knew half the story.

  Her dark eyes were narrowed and hard to read, her mouth drawn tightly together in either thought or that in-between place where you’re trying to decide whether you should say something or not.

  My thoughts flew back to the way she’d looked when my uncle had first shoved her into the bunker. She knew more than she was telling me. And she wanted to get out of here just as badly as I did.

  “What?” I asked bluntly. “You’ve got information. Speak.”