Dark Apocalypse: A Post-Apocalyptic Family Saga

by Gabriel Alexander

  The two got out of the storage area to the commercial zone, where Jim and Ted were waiting for them.

  “We found them, guys,” Bill said.

  “Cool!” Jim said. “Now let’s get out of here.”

  The four headed toward the door. They were getting ready to open it, when they heard something.

  “Wait!” Jim said. “You hear that?”

  “Yeah,” Ted said. “Sounds like a car engine.”

  They went to the window. When they looked outside, they saw a car coming toward them.

  The car stopped right in front of the pharmacy. Three rebels then got out of it and started heading toward the pharmacy on foot.

  “Oh shit! Now that’s just great,” Bill said, before pointing his rifle at the rebels. Jim, however, grabbed Bill’s rifle and pointed it downwards.

  “Let’s not waste ammo,” he said. “We’d better hide.”

  “Good idea,” Bill agreed.

  “Behind the counter, everyone. Quickly!”

  The four ran toward the counter, jumped over it, and crouched behind it.

  The rebels entered the pharmacy.

  “I don’t get it, man,” one of them said. “Why are we always sent for supplies?”

  “Cause the boss loves us,” another rebel answered. “And because of that, he gives us more chores.”

  “That’s a pretty funny way of showing someone you love him.”

  “Okay, you come with me to the storage area. We’ll search that one first. You, stay here and watch our six.”

  “Got it!”

  Two of the rebels went to the storage area and the other one stayed behind to stand guard. The last one started walking among the shelves, while waving a revolver and whistling.

  Suddenly, he jumped over the counter and started heading toward the four’s hiding spot. Sophie prepared her gun, in anticipation. But just as the rebel was about to turn the corner toward them and see them, his friends called him.

  “Hey, Carl!”

  “What?”

  “Come give us a hand here.”

  “Coming.”

  The rebel left for the storage area, just as the four could see his shadow approaching.

  “Jesus, that was close,” Sophie said.

  “Now is our chance,” Ted said. “Let’s move!”

  They jumped over the counter and headed slowly toward the door. Just as they were about to open it and exit the building, Bill stepped on a small glass vial and broke it.

  “Shit!” he whispered.

  “Behind the shelf. Quickly!” Jim said.

  They all immediately ran behind one of the shelves. One of the rebels immediately came running in the room.

  “What the hell was that?” he yelled.

  Another rebel joined him.

  “What the hell was what?” he asked him.

  “I thought I heard something.”

  The first rebel drew his revolver, lifted it up at his head level and started walking slowly to the other end of the room. The second rebel was following him slowly. When he reached the counter, he aimed his gun behind it. Obviously, there was no one there.

  Meanwhile, the four went slowly toward the other end of the shelf. When they reached it, they went in front of it.

  “It was probably nothing man,” one of the rebels said. “Probably your imagination.”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right. Probably my imagination.”

  He put his gun back in his holster. Then, both of them went through the shelves back to the storage area.

  “Now. Let’s move!” Ted said.

  They opened the door, got out, and ran like hell.

  ***

  The gates closed behind them. After taking a few steps, they saw the nurse running like crazy toward them. “She must have waited for us,” Bill thought.

  “Thank God you finally came back,” she said. “Did you find it?”

  “Yes,” Bill said, before reaching for his pocket.

  “Perfect. We need to hurry.”

  “Is there something wrong?”

  “His fever went up. If we don’t give him this now, we will lose him.”

  They ran toward her house. Once there, they stormed inside Thomas’s room.

  They froze when they saw his condition. He wasn’t moving, he was all sweaty and he was mumbling. They got close to him. Sophie put her hand on his forehead.

  “Jesus, he is burning up. Hurry, nurse!” she said.

  “I’m trying, I’m trying,” the nurse said.

  The nurse took a pill of Augmentin, smashed it into a powder, poured it in a glass of water, which she poured on Thomas’s throat and then told the two worried parents:

  “He’ll be okay. Now all we have to do is wait.”

  ***

  Bill and Sophie were sitting on their bedroom bed, thinking about Thomas. Suddenly, they heard a knock on the door.

  “Come in!” Sophie said.

  The door opened. It was Margaret.

  “Hey, you guys!” she said. “Sorry to disturb you, but our leader would like to see you.”

  “Okay. Take us to him,” Bill said.

  “Sure. Follow me!” Margaret said.

  Bill and Sophie followed Margaret to the leader’s house, a huge, white villa, two stories high. Once they got there, Margaret left, leaving them to talk to the leader in private. The two climbed the steps, opened the door and entered the house.

  “Hello?” Sophie yelled.

  “To your right,” a voice said after that.

  They turned to their right and saw a white door. Sophie opened it and saw a man, aged about seventy, with long, white hair, and a moustache. He was wearing a black vest on top of a red shirt. He was sitting behind a desk.

  “Well, don’t be shy. Come in!” he told the two.

  Bill and Sophie entered. The old man got up from the desk and came closer to them.

  “You must be the newcomers. I am Mack, the leader of this beautiful community.”

  “I am Sophie, and this is Bill.”

  They shook hands.

  “It is an honor,” Mack said.

  “The honor is all ours,” Bill said.

  “Why did you save us from the rebels?” Sophie asked.

  “Did we need a reason? You were in need of help and we provided it.”

  “There is always more than that,” Bill said.

  “Not in our case, Bill. You see, we are people lovers. Whenever we see people in distress, we go help them.”

  He leaned on his desk and crossed his hands over his chest.

  “We like to think that our community is the starting point for a new, better society. And what is the core of a better society? Kindness. Selflessness. The very core of our definition as humans.”

  Bill rolled his eyes.

  “Look, Mack…you’re wrong. Society was never good. Not before The Alignment, not now, after it. On the contrary, now, after The Alignment, it’s even worse. Good people always tried to make a difference, but they all failed. They failed in the world before, and they will fail even more now. Society cannot be saved. It was never good and it will never be good.”

  “You are only half right, Bill,” Mack said. “Indeed, society was never good. Not before The Alignment and not now, after it. But we will make it better. All we have to do is make people listen. And once we will have the tools for that, we will be on our way to reach people’s minds and hearts and transform them for the better. Jesus’s apostles managed to make a difference. Why shouldn’t we?”

  “Okay,” Bill said. “And what exactly will be your tools for that?”

  “Come! I will show you.”

  They got outside, where the darkness already started to show up. Mack took a torch from the porch and lit it. He then took them in the middle of a field to the north side of the wall that surrounded the community. Once there, they continued walking until they hit a trap door in the ground. Mack opened it and climbed down a ladder to the underground. He then looked up at Bill and Sophie.


  “Well, come on down. Don’t be shy.”

  The two went down the ladder. They noticed a generator next to the wall.

  “What’s that for?” Sophie asked.

  “You’ll see. Come on!”

  Sophie and Bill followed Mack through the tunnel ahead of them. Three hundred yards later, they stopped. They couldn’t believe what they were seeing. Deep underground, there was a farm. People were harvesting all kinds of vegetables: carrots, cabbages, tomatoes, and potatoes.

  “Wow! This is amazing,” Sophie said.

  “How do you manage to grow them here, in the underground?” Bill asked.

  Mack pointed at the ceiling.

  “With the help of those UV lights. They mimic the sunlight, thus allowing the vegetables to grow big and healthy. We grow all kinds of vegetables here: tomatoes, corn, beans, you name it. Soon, we will try the same thing with fruits. And when we will have enough to feed more than just our community, we will start distributing them to the hungry masses throughout the country. It’s small now, but we plan on expanding it. Building extra space, hiring extra workers… It’ll take a while, but it will happen. I’ll personally make sure of it. And, hopefully, in their turn, our people will feed others, until eventually, one day, the whole world will be fed with vegetables from our underground farm. It will be a chain that we hope will never be broken.”

  “Why did you go underground? What’s wrong with the surface?” Bill asked.

  “Isn’t it obvious? The prolonged darkness would kill them. They need twelve hours of sunlight to photosynthesize. And since nowadays the sun only shows itself for three hours, they wouldn’t have enough strength to grow at the surface. So we had no choice but to bring them down here and give them artificial light in order for them to grow.”

  “You said you want to feed the masses,” Sophie said. “Why?”

  “Like I already told you, we want to change the world for the better. And how do you do that? You need to make people listen to you. And how do you do that? Simple. You need to feed them first. Feed the hungry masses and they will follow you. It’s as simple as that.”

  “Wow!” Bill exclaimed.

  “Exactly. Wow. And that’s not all. Come. Let me show you something else.”

  They went back to the surface. Once there, Mack took them to a large building. They got inside and saw a huge hallway stretching in front of them. On each side of it, there were doors. Mack opened one of the doors and let them in. Inside, there were kids, standing behind desks, and only one adult, a female, standing in front of a blackboard.

  “Welcome to our school,” the woman said.

  “Are we interrupting something, Jill?”

  “No, Mack, don’t worry,” the woman said, with a smile on her face. “I was just reading “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” to the kids.”

  “Oh, I see,” Mack said, turning toward Sophie and Bill.

  “We like to consider our school the second phase of our efforts. Once you feed the masses and make them listen, you must have the words for them, obviously. And this is where we give those words to our kids. We teach them how to read and write, so that later, they will teach others. And those that they will teach will, in their turn, teach others, and so on. We take them slow, at first, obviously, with stories like Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Snow White and so on as reading assignments, and as they grow older, we switch to more complex issues, such as philosophy, geography, biology, chemistry, physics. We managed to fill our library with the very best works of fiction and nonfiction ever to be written: Encyclopedia Britannica, Plato, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, several works by Jules Verne, Goethe, Dostoyevsky, Victor Hugo, Nietzsche and many, many more. The world lost so much when The Alignment occurred, but with the help of our children, it will get it back.”

  “Where did you find all those books?” Bill asked.

  “Lying around in libraries across the country, forgotten by everyone after The Alignment. Everyone except for us, who brought them here, to complete our already existent collection. Come! I will show it to you.”

  “We appreciate it,” Bill said, “but if you don’t mind, we would like to see our son now.”

  “But of course. Perhaps some other time.”

  “Yes. Perhaps,” Bill said.

  They got out of the school and headed toward the nurse’s house. As they were walking, they saw kids playing next to them. Julie was among them.

  “Mommy! Daddy!” she yelled. She ran toward them and gave them a big hug.

  “There’s my little baby girl,” Bill said, after releasing her from the hug.

  “How are you?” Sophie asked her.

  “Just fine, Mommy. I was playing with those kids over there,” she said. “They know such fun games.”

  “Well, I’m glad you were having fun,” Bill said. “Now we’re going to the nurse’s house, to see your brother. Care to join us?”

  “Sure. I want to see Thomas.”

  “Okay. Let’s go then.”

  “We’re going to see Thomas. Yay!”

  ***

  Thomas was sitting in his bed, bored to death. He was staring at the ceiling, thinking at various stuff. He had nothing else to do.

  The door to his room suddenly opened. Sophie, Bill and Julie came in.

  “Thomas! Thomas! Thomas!” Julie yelled, while running toward her brother’s bed.

  “Hey there, ladybug. How are you doing?” Thomas said, while hugging her.

  “How are you feeling?” Bill asked.

  “I’m much better. The nurse says she will keep me for two more days in her house for observations and then she will let me go. Meanwhile, what do we know about our hosts?”

  “They seem cool, but at the same time, they’re a bit crazy.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “They are trying to do what no one managed to do for centuries: they want to change the world.”

  “Really? And how do they plan on doing that?”

  “By food and words, as far as I could understand.”

  “Yep. They are crazy.”

  “We’ll let you rest now,” Sophie said. “Get better.”

  “You know I will.”

  “Julie, say goodbye to Thomas,” Bill said.

  “Goodbye, Thomas.”

  “Goodbye, lady bug.”

  “Bye, Thomas,” Sophie and Bill said.

  “Bye, everyone.”

  ***

  Two days later, the nurse released Thomas from her house. When he reached in front of the door, he winced. His shoulder hurt. And he had to be careful with those stitches.

  He opened the door to his parents’ house and yelled:

  “Mom, dad, I’m home.”

  Bill, Sophie and Julie came down the stairs into the hallway and they gave him a big hug.

  “We’re glad to have you home, Thomas,” Bill said.

  “I’m glad to be home. But I’m not staying. I’m going to eat something. I’m starving. I just came by to see you guys and let you know that I was released.”

  “Okay, Thomas,” Sophie said. “You go eat. We’ll wait for you.”

  “Okay. I’ll be back in no time. Bye.”

  “Bye, Thomas.”

  Thomas got out and headed out to see if he can find a place to eat. Soon enough, he found a house in front of which a girl was standing behind a huge table with pots and plates on. He took a seat and he ordered some beans and sat down to the table to enjoy his meal.

  “Do you mind if I join you?” a voice asked.

  He looked up and saw a young girl, at about his age, with blue eyes, dark hair and a grey shirt. She was beautiful as hell.

  “Please, sit!” Thomas told her.

  “Thank you!” she politely said.

  She sat down in front of him and started eating her rice. After swallowing two tablespoons of her meal, she said:

  “I’m Carla, by the way.”

  “Thomas. Nice to meet you.”

  “Nice to meet yo
u too, Thomas. You’re one of the newcomers, right?”

  “Yeah, that’s right.”

  “Yeah, I remember I saw you entering the gate. You had a wounded shoulder.”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “How are you now?”

  “I’m better, thank you. I still have stitches, but other than that, I’m cool.”

  “I’m glad to hear that. May I ask how you got your shoulder wounded?”

  “The rebels. They shot me.”

  “My God. You were fighting the rebels? And you lived to tell the tale? That is something.”

  “There were hundreds of them and only four of us. Three, not counting my little sister. They would have killed us if it wasn’t for you, guys. And for that, we are grateful.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  “Hey!” someone suddenly said. “Hey, punk! That’s my girl you are talking to.”

  Thomas looked to his right and saw a muscled man, aged about twenty, with a red shirt and jeans. He had just came toward them and his eyes were red. He came closer to the table.

  “Why don’t you leave my girl alone, punk?”

  Carla got up from the table and told him, defiantly:

  “I’m not your girlfriend, Moses.”

  The guy got madder when he heard that. So mad, he punched her.

  “Shut up, Carla. You’ll talk when I’ll talk to you.”

  He then looked at Thomas.

  “You! Get up!” he told him.

  Everybody at the table was looking at them, waiting to see a fight.

  “There’s no need for violence, Moses,” the owner said. “Why don’t you relax, order something, and then you and Carla can leave peacefully, without any incident?” the girl behind the table said.

  “Shut up, bitch! No one was talking to you.”

  He then looked at Thomas again.

  “I told you to get up, asshole. Are you deaf?”

  “For Christ’s sake, Moses, leave him alone,” Carla said.

  Moses hit her again. She screamed in pain. Thomas got up and said:

  “Stop hitting her.”

  “Or you’ll do what? Huh?”

  Moses raised his fist and punched Thomas.

  “Look,” Thomas said, “I’m not looking for trouble.”

  “Too bad. You just found it.”

  After saying that, Moses tried to hit Thomas again, but Thomas grabbed his fist and hit him in the mouth with his head. Moses tried to hit him again, but Thomas ducked and punched him in the gut. Moses leaned forward and Thomas hit him in the face with his knee. Moses got up and punched Thomas in the chest. Thomas fell to the ground and Moses kicked him in the chest. He was about to hit him again, when he heard a voice: