SURVIVAL
BOOK ONE
Survival
Book One
A Series by
D.E. HAWKLEY
Creative Word Publishing
1 Pelham Road, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada L2S1N5
Copyright © 2019 by D.E. Hawkley / Creative Word Publishing
All rights reserved.
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Printed in United States of America
First Printing, January 2019
ISBN 978-1-9990197-0-9
Special thanks to my beautiful wife Carissa who has put up with me and the millions of voices who cry for their stories to be told.
To my children; Quintan, Miles, Leland, Ethan, and Kaia, who keep me on my toes and keep my imagination running out of control.
And a special thank you to my Grandmother, Mary Breen, (Rest in Paradise May 17, 2007) who encouraged me to follow my dreams as a writer.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
KYLE
.ONE. So It Begins
.TWO. A World Unknown
.THREE. Off the Beaten Path
.FOUR. Confrontation
.FIVE. A Place of No Healing
JOANNE
.SIX. Two Kinds of People
.SEVEN. Goodbyes
.EIGHT. Nothings What It Seems
.NINE. Broken Promises
KYLE
.TEN. The Road Beyond
SPECIAL PREVIEW OF BOOK 2
RICHARD
.ELEVEN. Walking A Fine Line
.ONE.
So it Begins
The radio hissed, nothing but static, again. It had been that way for weeks now. Every morning when the sun rose I did as well, and every morning I would turn on the generator and flip on the radio. When everything went to hell, I would leave the radio on for hours but then the power was gone, and I was left only with the generator. Now I only left it on for an hour in the morning and an hour before bed.
It didn't matter. It felt like nothing mattered anymore. Was there even anyone outside the four walls that surrounded me to answer back; or were they all dead and gone - ashes in the wind.
When the sirens tore through the darkness, at four-thirty in the morning that cold wet April morning, I thought it was a drill, but it wasn't. The first of the explosions could be heard not long after five. By that time, however, I had run from my room and into the bomb shelter I had installed behind the bookshelf in my study. That's where I stayed.
As I watched the sunrise through the cameras on the outside of my home, I was beset with the horrors spoke of in history. The effects that bombs raining down on a city had. People ran about in fear, trying to escape the explosions, only to be blown apart. I didn't know who was attacking us, but someone was, and it seemed, from my point of view, that we were losing.
This morning had been no different.
I awoke to my alarm, though I didn't need it. My eyes opened promptly, in fear, at four-thirty every morning from the same dream reality had created. Air raid sirens blasting, me running, bombs falling, and people being either blown apart or turned to ash. It always ended with me trying to outrun the bombs and every time I failed. The bomb would chase me and when it impacted, I woke up cold sweat pouring down my face and exhausted.
Climbing out of bed, a small military style hammock, not comfortable at all, I showered in cold recycled water, brushed my teeth, and hair, before getting dressed. When I was through with my personal hygiene that no one would ever see, but I still cared to maintain, I headed to the generator flipped it on and turned on the radio.
The hour ticked by as I made breakfast. The silence was oppressing, there was no one to talk to. The sounds there was to keep me certain that I had not gone deaf was of me shuffling about completing menial tasks. I was no longer alive; I was surviving. It was like being on autopilot, wandering about doing this, doing that, day-after-day.
“Hel…” Static. “Can anyo…” Static. “Me.”
I stopped in mid-stride and turned slowly towards the radio. Had I just heard someone or was I finally going crazy? Staring at the radio I waited in silence, holding my breath, to see if the voice would come back through. I quickly crossed the room and sat down at the old ham radio and waiting, wondering if I should answer back or not. I keyed the mic and said hello but was not surprised when there came no answer.
Over the past few months I had grown almost accustom to the isolation and fought to keep from allowing myself to hope that the voice on the other end of the radio was simply just my desperation reaching its end point. Yet still knowing I was not likely to get a response I waited by the radio.
The wait grew from long to longer. It was well past the usual one hour I’d keep the radio, but I stayed waiting in silence until finally I decided the voice had either been in my head or was simply gone. Finally, I reached over and shut off the radio, then generator, and moved to sit at the small desk I kept in the bunker.
Striking a match, I lit the small candle that sat on the desk. I watched the flame on the end of the match burn. It reminded me off the fires just before the camera went out. The trees had burned like the lit end of a match, only I didn’t get to see them die out before the cameras went black. Flipping through the diary I kept, an entry for each day, I marked down what had happened with the radio.
According to my entries it had been three months since hell broken loose. Three months of waiting and silence. The cameras, which had been situated on the corners of my house has long gone dark before the first night had settled; the house had collapsed in the explosions. I wondered to myself if I would be able to get out if I needed to, which I would soon, when supplies ran low.
I spent the rest of the morning reading. Post-apocalyptic novel series had become my companion. They seemed the best form of research. Sure, it was fiction, but there were no factual books on the end of the world that weren't religious, and it seemed whatever God may have existed had left us to our own demise.
Only, the books didn’t speak of the type of apocalypse I was stuck in. The characters were rarely left in a bunker alone. There was always a turning point where someone stood up to change the fate of the world. Life was no work of fiction and fiction seemed to have no real grasp of the real end of the world.
The day passed by uneventfully, more than once I had considered turning the generator and radio back on but decided against it. The generator had a limited supply of power and it was slowly running out.
During the first few days after the bombs I was afraid to turn off the generator. I thought that if I had turned it off it would not come back on. If it had been the case I would not only have been left in silence, but likely in darkness. The third day was when I had found the stash of candles, candles I had not remembered packing with the supplies in the bunker. After the first week I realized that if I kept the generator running for more than an hour or so a day, I would be out of power in less than a month. Turns out two hours a day had afforded me more than three months of power, but even that was beginning to run out.
The generator could run on a power cell made by the same company who had supplied me with the bunker or gas, part of me doubted that I would get an answer if I called the 1-800 number on it. Though I was left to wonder if it had just been our city or the entire world that had experienced what we had. Someone had to have dropped the bombs so it was safe to assume that country would still be up
and running, unless a bigger country managed a counter strike before falling.
So many unanswered questions and no one to answer them.
As night approached, I decided to turn the generator on, earlier than usual, to see if the voice that had attempted to break through the static was real. I would not allow myself to get my hopes up for I knew that false hope was a dangerous thing - it could drive a person mad; had almost driven me mad.
I had heard banging one day while I was laying in my bed staring at the ceiling. The banging it had seemed was coming from outside and I leapt to my feet. Could there had been a rescue being attempted? I stood by the door to the bunker calling out for someone, anyone, waiting for an answer, but there was nothing. The banging continued for almost three days before going silent. It had driven me to tears, to screaming and kicking at anything my feet could connect with. I had grabbed a sharp knife off the table and had poised it over my wrist ready to end it all.
But something inside me wouldn’t let it end that way. I dropped the knife with shaking hands and collapsed to sob bitterly on the cold floor. I had laid there for nearly three days before I climbing to my feet and writing about my experience with false hope, promising myself that I would not fall victim to it again.
The generator hummed for a moment while I stared at the radio. A small lamp also plugged into the generator turned on, it was dim, but it served its purpose. I blew out the candle. The light cast shadows around my bunker and seem to take on eerie shapes that moved on their own when both lamp and candle were a blaze. Taking a deep breath and flicked on the radios power switch.
Static. Empty static.
Picking up the microphone I pressed the talk button.
“Hello,” I said. “Is there anyone still out there?” I released the button.
Static.
There was no answer. Perhaps the voice from this morning was someone passing through, or maybe, it was someone who only turned their radio on at specific times of the day, much like myself, and today had just a stroke of luck. Only I couldn’t take the risk of running the generator a full day to find out. Placing the microphone back into its cradle I reached over to turn the radio off.
“Hello?” a voice broke through the static. I almost fell out of my chair. “Yes, I'm here. Are you still there?”
The static came back; the voice was real. For a moment I was speechless, I had forgotten how to make words come out of my mouth. There was still someone out there - alive - I wasn't alone in this God forsaken wasteland that the world had become.
Grabbing the microphone quickly I keyed the talk button
“Yes, good God, yes,” I said trying not to sound too excited, trying to sound l relieved. “I am here. What is your name? Who are you?”
“My name is Joanne,” the voice said. “I‘m a medical student trapped in the basement of the hospital on Main. Who are you? Where are you?”
“My name is Kyle,” I answered back. I couldn’t believe it there was finally a voice, after three months of total silence, someone was finally answering back. “I‘m a, well I was an investor before well, whatever happened. I'm in my bunker in what's left of my home on First Avenue. The hospital on Main that's St Mark’s Central Hospital, right?”
“Yes,” Joanne said back. “It’s so good to finally hear another person’s voice.”
Joanne had said exactly what I was thinking. “ So, you’re a medical student? Have you been outside, is it safe to go outside?” I asked. Surely as a student of the medical field, as someone who was inside a hospital, she might know. There were rules in war, no one hit hospitals or churches, perhaps there were others in the hospital - perhaps there was still hope for civilization. “You have made my day Joanne,” I said into the mic. “Are there others with you? Is the hospital still operational?”
Static. That was the answer to my questions. Joanne did not answer back. Had she lost power or was the signal weak; she had said she was in the basement of the hospital. I was about to key the microphone again when the static broke and Joanne came back.
“There is no one with me,” she said a sullen tone to her voice. “Not anymore at least. As for the outside world, I have no idea. Like I said I am trapped in the basement; the hospital stairwell collapsed, and I can't climb the elevator shaft, my leg is broken.”
Assessing both of our situations I was wondering who was better off, Joanne or me. I assumed in some way she was better off that I was. The hospital’s generator would surely last a lot longer than the one I had, unless it had been damaged. Of course, I had a water filtration system that worked, and my leg wasn’t broken, and I wasn’t trapped in a basement. Though Joanne might have more food than I did, she wouldn’t be able to access it if she couldn’t get out from where she was, and I knew that I had enough food to last myself a full two years.
“Joanne,” I said keying the talk button. “Is your radio running off the hospital generator?”
“No,” Joanne said. “The generator isn’t working only the backup that controls the emergency lights and even that seems to be running down. The radio, it was the security guards’ radio. I just kept rotating through the channels and calling for help. You are the only one who has answered. But,” she said and went quiet for a moment. “The batteries are almost dead and given the state of myself and the hospital I fear if I don’t get out of here I might not last much longer either.”
A heavy feeling, in the pit of my stomach, began to grow when Joanne said that she might not last much longer. Here I had finally, after months of silence, found another human being who was still alive - and nearby - and that could all end soon, plunging me back into the dark silence. There was something that was not adding up for me though, I needed to know what Joanne meant when she said there were no others with her anymore.
“Joanne, you said that there were no other people with you, not anymore at least. What did you mean by not anymore? Did they escape or die of their injuries?” I let go of the talk button and waited for an answer. Part of my brain was screaming that I need to get out of this house and try to help this woman, who was probably the only other living person in the city, but the other part said I needed to be cautious. I knew nothing about the voice on the other end of the radio and could very well end up getting myself killed.
“It would be a lot easier to explain in person,” Joanne said. “If you can get…”
Static. Empty static. The hissing from the radio was like pins in my ears. Whatever Joanne had been about to say was cut off.
Quickly I keyed the talk button and called for her, but there was no response. I tried again. And again. For almost thirty minutes I called for Joanne and the only response I got was the empty static.
Returning the microphone to its cradle I turned off the radio and powered down the generator. I had used more than enough power for the day and much like Joanne batteries, which had likely died, I had to conserve my power or risk my generator dying as well.
As the generator whirling down the lamp on the desk faded and the darkness, as well as the silence, closed in around me like an oppressing weight. I had sat in the darkness for what seemed like forever. There was a decision placed at my feet now and I needed to make a choice quickly. Was I going to stay here hiding in my bunker until the power ran out completely? Until the food and water ran out? There was another person still alive, one that had made contact. I knew where they were, and the hospital was not more than a few hours hike from where I was.
While the idea of not knowing what happened to the people who had once been with Joanne was alarming and the fact that she did not wish to disclose what she had meant by the others were not there anymore, I couldn’t just sit around and do nothing anymore. Perhaps she was not only hurt but a hostage. If any other people were there, they could have been controlling the conversation, only letting her say specific things, answer specific questions. Maybe they had taken the radio away from her, fearing she would let out the truth of her situation.
So many more questions
and still no closer to any answers.
The outside would be foreign to me now. As strange as a distant country I had never been to. It was not the same place I had once stepped out into months ago. The bombs would have destroyed more than I had given witness to, before my camera’s had gone dark. I knew there would likely be dead bodies and surely much carnage. I would need to prepare myself to walk through what was likely to be an above ground graveyard of sorts.
Finally, I climbed to my feet and felt around for the candle and matches. Relighting the candle, I held it for a moment. Joanne seemed much like the candle, a light in the darkness the world had been tossed into. Was it finally time to allow myself a little bit of hope? The prospect of another person was something I had all but given up on and now, well now she had appeared, as real as one could be when the only sign of their existence was a voice on the other end of a radio.
Though I was still weighing the options of venturing out of my safe zone I knew that the decision was already made. The benefits of having another human nearby to converse with at the very least outweighed what I thought was the dangers. I didn't know what was outside the four walls I had spent the last three months hiding behind but I did know that there was someone.
My decision had been made the first time the broken words had come through the dead air, the static on the radio. I would leave in the morning, there was not enough daylight left to go now, but when morning came, I would pack up some stuff and risk my life setting out in the world I knew nothing about anymore. The only thing I was certain of is that it would not look like the world I had closed the door on months before. I would be risking my own life to see if the world that existed now still had the prospect of being saved.
Survival Series (Book 1): Survival Page 1