Wipeout: Wipeout Book 1

by Richards, ES

  As the four of them had first started talking about everything, Samuel remembered thinking how that was what he needed to wrap his head around it all. But hours later he only regretted the conversation. It hadn’t helped him to see the bigger picture or to gain some sanity and understanding; it had only made him angry and frustrated, saddened by the whole ordeal. And what made it worse was that there was no escape from it. This was his life now and it wasn’t just going to go away in the morning.

  Throwing the sheet off his body, Samuel groaned and sat on the edge of his bed. The drapes over his bedroom window were left with a small gap in the middle of them, illuminating the city outside as it slept. Only tonight it didn’t sleep. Fires burned sporadically across the skyline of New York and, in the streets, people gathered just like day. Riots were scattered across Manhattan and the tri-state area, the Trident building on Wall Street no longer the epicenter of the chaos, simply just a starting point.

  Many of the reports which the four of them had watched weren’t set in New York, giving Samuel a glance at how the rest of the country – and indeed the world – had reacted to the crash. President Morgan was still to release a statement, her whereabouts unknown as thousands gathered around the White House in Washington, begging for aid and support from a woman in hiding. Scenes on the West Coast were even more extreme, with California in particular known for its high celebrity status, now seeing an uprising of the ‘little people’ who had spent many years serving the coffee and waiting on tables with little recognition. In a particularly harrowing shot, the Hollywood sign burned on the hill, angry protesters setting most of the dry bushlands around it alight and running for safety from the fires they had started themselves.

  Further afield in London, British people were rioting against the royal family, surrounding the palace where they lived and forcing the royals out onto the street. It concluded countless years of anti-royalist behavior, the King and Queen used as scapegoats in a similar way that Samuel himself had been. In Baghdad, reports of extreme terrorist activity circulated, though no actual footage could be supplied, leaving people frightened of what was to come. And in the South of France where some of the richest people in the world gathered together to celebrate their wealth and success, one clinically depressed billionaire had driven his speedboat into the side of a huge party yacht, killing the hundreds of people on board in a huge explosion.

  Pushing himself to his feet and walking over to his window, Samuel drew back the drapes and looked out over New York. His eyes drifted to where he knew the Trident building should’ve stood, the huge skyscraper having tumbled to the ground from the fire several hours earlier. He had been sitting in his living room with Austin, Trent and Abi when it happened, the crashing sound attracting them all to the window almost instantly, despite former fears and Samuel’s vertigo threatening to pull him back.

  Once he had seen it happening, he hadn’t been able to tear his eyes away. Everyone in the world had seen the video of the twin towers being destroyed. Samuel must have watched that footage over and over again and yet the sight of Trident crumbling to the ground in front of his very eyes was more horrific and terrifying than anything he could’ve ever imagined.

  Flames had licked the building from the ground floor, reaching just about halfway up the giant structure. With no one working to put them out they had spread fast, jumping between the buildings and along Wall Street. New York was in a dangerous position now as the wind blew the flames further afield, reaching areas of the city that shouldn’t have been affected as the wind came off of the Hudson and didn’t give the fire any chance of being snuffed out.

  As the flames swallowed the brickwork in a dirty black cloud, the sound of the foundations groaning and creaking echoed through the skies. One side of the building seemed to give way, dropping down a few feet and leaning out into the street as it caused a bigger cloud of ash and smoke to billow upwards, temporarily blocking the view for the four onlookers. In that moment, Samuel closed his eyes and focused on the sounds he could hear. A plethora of screams whistled through his eardrums as they carried up from the streets, anyone still in the immediate area desperately trying to get away before it was too late. They seemed to crescendo, getting louder and more frantic until they were suddenly silenced by a loud crunching sound as the building almost snapped in two and the top half of it keeled over into the street.

  The sound of Trident collapsing and crashing onto the street below seemed to go on forever. Samuel forced his eyes open but all he could see was a massive cloud of ash, smoke and dust that erupted into the sky like a volcano, the rubble of Trident carrying on the wind like the very flames which burned it to the ground had done.

  There was only so long he could stand at the window before he was forced to walk away. Samuel had worked in that building all his adult life; he had been inside it no more than a few hours ago, right at the top where he was certain people had still been trapped. He knew the names of the men and women who would’ve still been up there; he knew their faces and their stories. It terrified him that he could’ve been among them, but it also reminded him of what he had done – what he had sacrificed – to get away in time.

  Because of all the men and women who were left behind, Sandy would’ve been among them. He couldn’t say for certain what the woman would’ve done; whether she would’ve climbed up to escape the flames or finally given the elevator shaft a try. He had no way of knowing whether she had died moments after he’d left her side or survived right until the very end. Either way, Samuel was sure of one thing: he had let her down. Her face tormented him like many others, reminding him of how he had failed.

  With all this negative energy washing over him, Samuel felt the uncomfortable grip of sadness taking hold of his chest, squeezing all the hope and promise out of him until there was nothing but wretchedness left. He was ashamed of himself and what he had done, with his actions not giving him any advantage in the post-dollar world. Sitting back down on his bed, Samuel couldn’t help but feel that everything he had done in the past forty-eight hours had been for nothing. He had betrayed people for his own selfish gain and as he sat in his apartment, he felt more alone and disadvantaged than ever.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey dad,” Samuel whispered into his cell phone, calling his father in a moment of desperation. “Did I wake you?”

  “No, it’s okay son,” Charles lied on the other end of the line, sounds of him shuffling around and likely climbing out of his bed muffling his voice as Charles Westchester snuck out of his bedroom, trying not to disturb his sleeping wife. “Are you all right? I’ve been trying to call for hours.”

  “I know,” Samuel apologized so distracted by what he and Austin were doing in his apartment that he had let his phone battery die once more. “I’m sorry. It’s all been a bit crazy.”

  “Why were you on the news? We saw what happened to the Trident building. How did everything get so out of control?”

  Samuel paused. He had received nearly twenty missed calls from his parents in the time since leaving their house in Freeport and just now. He had intended to speak to them earlier, but with everything going on it was just one of those things that had slipped through the cracks. But he knew he could always turn to his father. In moments of panic or desperation in Samuel’s life, he had always been able to rely on the old man for guidance and support. Their relationship might be unlike a conventional father and son in many ways, but when Samuel needed a parent’s understanding ear or kind words, his father was always there and never came with any judgement.

  “I really messed up dad,” Samuel exhaled deeply, trying to keep his voice down as he was very aware of Austin sleeping in his living room. “I thought I could help people – save people – but I only ended up making it worse. I put people in danger. I left people to die. I feel like it’s all my fault.”

  “Samuel, my boy. You know I mean this with the best intentions, but this has always been a rather self-involved personality trait of yours. You
can’t take responsibility for everything. Sometimes things happen that are outside our control and we just have to deal with that and learn to roll with the punches. This is one of those times, son. You can’t take the blame for all of this, even trying to is a ridiculous fallacy.”

  “But I could have done better,” Samuel argued back. “I could’ve made different choices and certain people might be better off now. They might have not had to suffer.” He thought of several names in particular as he spoke; R Hauser who had jumped from the Trident window, Antony Calvert-Lewin who was left without a seat on the shuttle from JFK and Sandy, who had been left to die in a burning building.

  “Perhaps,” his father answered him. “But answer me this: would you still be in the same position now if you hadn’t made those choices? Everyone thinks like that son, but we can’t live our lives by what if’s and maybe’s, nor can we live in the past. Especially in times like this we have to stick to our guns and keep pressing forward. There might be moments we look back on and think we could’ve done better, but so long as we reach the endpoint in one piece, it’s almost always worth it.”

  “Almost always?”

  “It will be worth it, Samuel,” Charles reassured his son, hearing the anxiety in Samuel’s tone. “We simply don’t have the luxury of regret at a time like this. Things are going to continue to change and not for the better. I can’t even think what the end of next week will look like, but I do know if I make it there with your mother by my side and the knowledge that both you and your sister are safe, then I will be happy. Now is the time to realize what is important to you and go after that. Don’t waste your minutes worrying about things you cannot change. Time is precious and we need to understand that now more than ever.”

  Samuel sighed into the phone. He understood the logic behind what Charles was saying, but it still didn’t shift the guilt he felt inside. Every time he did a terrible thing, he felt ashamed, but for some reason it still didn’t stop him from acting very similarly when another difficult situation presented itself. Up until this disaster, Samuel had always tried to see the positive things in life and had always thought of himself as a good person, but maybe that wasn’t the case.

  Maybe this was the moment in his life where he realized he was one of the characters that people didn’t side with in movies or on television, perhaps he was one of the guys that people wished would die at the end of the next episode, viewers feeling no sympathy or sorrow for them. Glancing upwards, Samuel caught sight of his reflection in the mirror and grimaced. If he really was that sort of person, then this was the moment where he had the chance to change. He could keep going forward as he had been doing, thinking only of himself and acting selfishly when the opportunity was presented to him, or he could make a change. He could recognize that things were going to be bad, but he could act against the trend and try to make a difference. Just because the country was falling apart, didn’t mean he had to as well.

  As his regret changed into determination, Samuel decided that was the man he was going to become.

  Chapter 21

  “Just grab what you can carry! Come on, hurry up! We don’t have time for this!”

  “Art, slow down. We need to think about this. What about the photo albums? Is there any room in your bag? Zayn, where is your brother? I thought I told you both to stay together!”

  “Axel? Jessie please, you take Zayn. We’re going to miss the boat.”

  “No! We all go together or not at all. Axel – where have you been?” Jessie flung her arms around her youngest son as he emerged into the kitchen carrying his dinosaur-print rucksack, his eyes wide and startled by the panic not only in his house, but across the entire island. He didn’t understand what was going on and it made him frightened; his parents shouting and screaming so unlike the relaxed household atmosphere they were accustomed to.

  Jessie held her little boy and breathed in the smell from the top of his head for a second, only granting herself a few precious moments with her baby boy before she stood upright again, glancing around her house for any last items to grab. There was one final boat leaving Hawaii for the mainland in a matter of minutes and if the four of them weren’t on it they were going to be stranded there until this madness with Trident was under control.

  “Come on,” Arthur rushed his wife along, aware that they had already spent far too long in their home choosing what items to take with them. He’d seen hundreds of people heading to the port without a single possession in their hands, the fact the four of them had packed suitcases seemed a bit ridiculous now. But initially he had believed they had time to do just that – it wasn’t until Samuel’s statement on television that things started to get intensely hyped up on the island.

  Seeing Samuel on the news had been the catalyst for it all. It wasn’t just Jessie and her family that had reacted, but the whole island, erupting like the volcano they lived upon and realizing just how bad things could quickly become for them. Hawaii was one of the least self-sufficient places outside of the third world. Almost all of their food was flown in from the mainland, their electricity and power originated there and the companies who funded their water purification and healthcare were based offshore. Hawaii itself only provided waves and popular tourist spots in the summer months. They weren’t prepared to deal with something like this and everyone who lived there knew it.

  Jessie and her family lived on the northern-most island of Kauai; featuring just one port that thankfully they lived in walking distance of. Kauai was mainly a mountainous region with hundreds of square miles of forest reserve and state park. The population of the island lived mainly along the southern and eastern coasts, as close to the harbor and airport as possible without it being uncomfortable. Jessie could still remember the first time she arrived on the island; she had barely travelled five-hundred feet beyond the airport before she knew she wanted to spend the rest of her life there. She’d visited the other islands which made up Hawaii, but nothing seemed to compare to Kauai – she had never figured out exactly what it was, but it was her home now and she knew it was where she and her family belonged.

  “This won’t be forever,” Art spoke desperately, using any tactic he could think of to move his family out of the house quicker than they were currently managing. “We can come back for stuff in a few weeks. Nothing is going to happen to the house.”

  “Oooh I don’t know,” Jessie replied nervously. She felt like she was leaving her entire life behind: a life she had fought so hard to have for herself. “Let me just check –”

  “There isn’t time!” Grabbing Zayn with his spare hand, Arthur pushed his son toward the front door. “Come on. The boat is going to leave!”

  Punctuating his sentence, the loud horn of the final ferry blurted out from across the island, alerting the few remaining residents of Kauai that it was about to leave. Jessie froze, her hand hovering over yet another photo album as she lifted her eyes and locked onto her husband’s. This was real – the moment suddenly hit her – the islands were being evacuated and they were going to be left behind.

  “Go, go, go!” She ignored the album on the table in front of her and flung her bag onto her back, the sound from the boat acting like a ticking clock in her ears. Axel still stood at her side, confused and frightened by what was happening. “Come on baby,” Jessie coaxed her son, grabbing his little hand and pulling him toward the door where Art and Zayn waited. “We’ve gotta run!”

  The four of them burst from the house, Jessie only glancing back once at the house she and Art had bought together when they first moved out to Hawaii. There wasn’t any time for sadness or to be concerned by what they were leaving behind. They needed to escape the island or face a life that Jessie didn’t even know how to process.

  Scenes among the streets were chaotic; hundreds of people were all rushing in the same direction, some of them carrying suitcases like Jessie and her family did, others abandoning everything in a desperate last-ditch chance for survival. People screamed and shouted at
one another, some threatening not to leave and others begging to stay behind. The one thing that united everyone however was the desperation that filled the air and hung off of their voices.

  Port Allen was a man-made harbor, normally filled with local sailboats and tour operators. Those on Kauai were incredibly lucky to be there while one of the large cruise liners was docked, having dropped off a boat-load of tourists a couple of days ago. It was currently in the final stages of refueling and had been scheduled for departure in another day’s time. As soon as news of Trident had found its way to the small island, that departure date was pushed forward and almost as soon as the cruise liner could leave, it was going to – with whomever was lucky enough to be on board.

  Turning the corner onto Walalo Road – the single street leading up to the dock – Jessie and her family were forced to immediately slow down. The tarmac ahead of them was filled with over a thousand men, women and children: locals and tourists alike who had been in Kauai were desperately trying to get on board the cruise liner before it pulled away from the harbor and left them all behind for an uncertain fate. Crew members of the large vessel were doing everything they could to get as many people as possible safely onboard, but they knew not everyone could fit and that they would be forced to pull away in a matter of minutes. With the crowd of people rushing toward them not getting any thinner, the horn on the boat rang out once more, warning everyone that they only had a few short minutes left.

  “Art! Help!” Jessie struggled to keep hold of her youngest son as the crowd pushed and pulled against them, tugging her body in more than one direction as everyone fought to get to the boat before it was too late.

  “Come on, Jess! Come on!”

  The noise along the seven hundred yard stretch was terrifying. With Zayn and Axel getting lost in the crowd at their feet, Arthur was forced to abandon the suitcase they had wasted valuable time packing and pick up their youngest, holding him against his chest as he ran. The horn from the boat echoed again in the distance as they made slow progress, abandoned suitcases and in some cases, fallen people obstructing their path. A woman beside Jessie screamed in response, terrified at being left behind on the island.