Final Dawn: Season 1 (The Thrilling Post-Apocalyptic Series) (19 page)

Nancy Sims

2:05 AM, April 1, 2038

Ever since Joshua and Richard disappeared upstairs, James and Nancy had been arguing in hushed tones over what to do. While the appearance and subsequent disappearance of the woman had given them a brief reprieve from the brothers, it was clear that they had to move quickly if they wanted to try to escape.

It was obvious to both of them that, of the two brothers, Joshua was clearly the more intelligent of the two. Richard may have been challenged to some degree, but James speculated that it was actually Joshua who was positioned for easier manipulation.

“Richard may be less intelligent and more easily fooled, but Joshua is clearly both annoyed with him and protective of him at the same time. If we can exploit that to really piss him off, we might have a chance at throwing both of them off guard. Whatever happens, Nancy, just do what you think is best. We might only have a second or two of opportunity, so make the best of it. Whenever they come in, I’ll start, then you just watch and wait for an opening.”

“I have no idea how we’re going to do this, but I’ll do my best.”

“I wish we could come up with something more concrete, but we’re a bit short on options at the moment.” James motioned his head towards the ropes holding them to the ceiling. Nancy nodded in agreement and they sat in silence again, waiting for the brothers to reappear.

Nancy had expected the pair to show up rather quickly, but hours passed by without the slightest sound or indication that they were about to show up. Nancy began to doze off, and was soon asleep, tired and numb from the ordeal. James kept watch while she was sleeping, and after a few hours, she awoke and traded with him. The only sign that let them know that morning had arrived was the arrival of very faint beams of sunlight that played through the cracks in the ceiling overhead. Like the previous day, there was still no sight of their kidnappers.

“I could really go for a drink right now.” Nancy whispered to James, not wanting to alert the brothers in case they were eavesdropping.

James smiled and nodded. “Same here. I don’t know how much longer we can survive this, Nancy. My hands feel like they’ll never recover even if we do manage to get free.”

Nancy was about to reply when the sound of an opening door came from the top of the stairs. James whispered one last time, then grew silent. “Here we go!”

Richard and Joshua walked down the stairs, talking amongst themselves again, as they had the last time. Richard made a beeline for Nancy while Joshua stopped at the bottom of the stairs, eyeing both of them with an evil glint in his eyes. As Richard neared Nancy, James yelled at him from across the room.

“Hey, you! Yeah, I’m talking to you, you fucking halfwit!” Richard stopped dead in his tracks and turned to face James, snarling in response to the insult.

Joshua barked at Richard. “Richard! Stop! Don’t let him antagonize you. He’s just trying to bait you into doing something stupid.”

“Well it’s not like he could do anything else, could he? Tell me, Richie-boy, what happened to you? Looks like your brother there got all the brains and you got shafted.” Richard glanced at his brother, a nasty expression on his face, and took a half step towards James.

Joshua’s face darkened and he stormed towards James, pulling his knife from its sheath. “Enough! Your pathetic attempts to distract us are
not
going to work!”

As Joshua approached James, Richard slunk backwards, towards Nancy. Joshua grabbed James’ ropes, pulling him in close, holding the knife near James’ left eye. In a flash, James shouted at Nancy. “Now!”

Nancy swung backwards on her ropes, screaming as she came back forward, feet up and pointed at Richard’s back. The brother was close enough to her that she connected directly with the base of his spine, sending him stumbling forward, howling in pain. As Joshua turned to see what the commotion was about, James leaned forward, wrapping his legs around Joshua and squeezing as hard as he could.

Joshua yelped, turning back towards James, but it was too late. Joshua’s right hand, the one holding the knife, had flown upwards, just within reach of James’ bound hands. In a flash, James grabbed the knife by the back of the blade, nicking his wrist as he twisted it around, slicing through the ropes with one quick slash from the razor-sharp knife.

Joshua tumbled backwards as James freed himself, colliding with Richard in a pile in the middle of the basement. James raced forward, leaping over the two brothers as they struggled to get up. He sliced Nancy’s ropes with one quick blur, then turned to face Richard, the first of the two brothers to get back on his feet.

Leonard McComb

7:00 PM, April 1, 2038

Leonard gunned the engine on the Jeep and flicked on the headlights. The twin beams lit up the creature, turning it into a disco ball of reflections. Leonard drove parallel to the parking lot, gaining as much speed as possible to get away from the creature. As he passed it, the creature starting moving towards him, walking slowly at first, then quickly picking up speed. Its massive legs thundered across the ground, the large bare feet propelling it effortlessly over pavement and debris like there was nothing in its way.

Leonard skidded around a corner, tires squealing on the pavement as he approached the intersection of the beltway and the main interstate heading south. Up ahead, about a mile away, an enormous pile of rubble met his eyes, the result of the collapse of this section of the beltway overpasses. Behind him, in the rearview window, Leonard could see the creature running after him, picking up speed with each step.

With only minutes to find an escape before he became trapped between the creature pursuing him and the rubble ahead, Leonard did the only thing that came to mind. Kicking the Jeep into two-wheel drive, he gunned the engine again, using the extra power to bring the Jeep up to top speed. In several sections of the collapse, large pieces of pavement were still intact, lying at odd angles on the ground. One such section, to the far left side of the collapse, was positioned in such a way that it lay nearly perpendicular to the path he was taking. It had just a slight enough angle that, if he could manage to get the Jeep up onto it, he could use the length of the section to travel most of the way over the collapse. There was still a good ten feet of empty air after the end of the section, though, well short of the grass and dirt on the other side.

Leonard gripped the steering wheel, sweat pouring down his face as he concentrated on his goal. The bouncing of the headlights made it difficult to steer properly, and it was dark enough now that he could barely see anything that wasn’t directly in front of him. In just a couple of minutes he was directly in front of the collapse, with the section of collapsed roadway just to his left. He slammed on the brakes, sliding the Jeep around to bring it in line with the pavement, then slammed it into four-wheel drive again. The body of the Jeep shook in protest, but Leonard felt the wheels engage and he pressed down on the gas, spurring the Jeep over the short climb to get on to the collapsed roadway section.

Leonard glanced over to his left as the Jeep bounced onto the collapsed overpass. The creature was a fair distance behind, but still moving rapidly towards him, casting a long shadow across the rubble. No man he had ever seen or heard of had ever moved as quickly as that thing was moving. The gait was long and powerful, and Leonard could hardly believe that it was barefoot, too.
Whatever that thing is, it’s not a man anymore
.

Leonard pushed the Jeep forward, struggling to get it back up to speed before he ran out of road. The section of pavement was long, but not long enough. If he didn’t get the Jeep going fast enough off the end of it, the small distance it had left to travel would seem like infinity when the Jeep smashed into the rubble of the collapse instead of bouncing harmlessly off the grass on the other side.

Almost there,
he thought, gritting his teeth and squeezing the wheel so hard he thought it might snap. The engine of the Jeep roared as it tore through the gears, the speedometer creeping upwards.
30, 35, 40, 45… come on, faster!
Leonard was so focused on the speed of the Jeep that he forgot to watch the road. All of a sudden, the noise of the pavement disappeared and the engine redlined, no longer forced to fight the friction of the road surface.

As if it was happening in slow motion, Leonard looked over the side of the Jeep out the left window and saw the rubble of the collapse just a few feet below. Time slowed as the Jeep flew forward, heading exactly where he wanted it to go. The only question on his mind was whether or not it was going fast enough to make it.

When the Jeep twisted and turned as it slammed on the ground, Leonard thought for sure the end had come.
This is it. I’m going to crash and end up with a broken back and that thing is going to tear me apart.
Miraculously, though, this was not to be the case. As the Jeep landed, all but one part of the body of the Jeep landed square on the ground: the hitch receiver in the back. Caught on a piece of rebar, the unstoppable force of the Jeep’s forward momentum had pulled the piece of rebar out of the pavement, flinging it forward and embedding it into the back bumper, making the entire vehicle shake violently.

Leonard gave a huge gasp as he expelled the air he didn’t even realize he was holding for the last sixty seconds. With the way clear ahead, he kept his foot on the gas, bouncing along through the open field until he found a spot to drive back on to the highway heading south. After a few miles, Leonard slowed the Jeep to a crawl and looked behind him through the murky darkness. There was no sign of the creature that he could see, and he breathed a sigh of relief. Whatever kind of unholy union of man and beast it was, Leonard didn’t know and didn’t care. The fact that it was chasing him with such vigor was disturbing, but the fact that it was associated with the kind of silver mass he saw in the processing station made it seem all the more frightening.

Marcus Warden

12:07 AM, April 1, 2038

A tiny spot of light bobbed up and down in a fast, steady rhythm along the highway. Night had fallen, and the speck of light moved forward at a moderate pace, occasionally stopping when its beam hit upon an obstacle in its path.

As Marcus drew closer to the place where highway 29 and interstate 64 met, he noticed a steady increase in the damage to the area. Though it was hard to see in the darkness, the flashlight that he had tied to the front of his bike revealed that the road was becoming more dangerous. Instead of just having to deal with the wreckage of cars, he saw an increase in the damage to the road itself, with larger and larger cracks growing more frequent. Fallen trees were also becoming a regular sight, with their spindly branches hanging over into the interstate, making it difficult to ride safely without running into them.

Pedaling at a snail’s pace now, Marcus kept one hand on the bike while the other angled the flashlight upwards at a road sign that was overhead.

EXIT 121 – CHARLOTTESVILLE
was written in white lettering against the dark green background.
I guess this is my exit,
he thought. Up ahead, no more than a few hundred feet, he saw the telltale signs of an overpass, half of which was broken away. Marcus stopped the bike and hopped off, releasing the flashlight and holding it high above his head to get a better view.

The overpass that took I-64 over Highway 29 was severely damaged, as was most of the surrounding area. Though it was dark, Marcus could see that both sides of the overpass had collapsed, with only a thin strip of concrete and rebar still standing to connect the two sides together. In the distance, off to the north, Marcus saw faint wisps of smoke rising into the night sky, with soft orange glows flickering across the horizon, the telltale sign that the city had suffered a direct hit. Marcus neared the overpass, wheeling the bike alongside him, and peered cautiously over the edge, afraid to get too close for fear of causing the piece he was standing on to break off, sending him falling thirty feet into the darkness below.

Marcus panned the flashlight around and sighed. With most of the trees collapsed, there was no higher point than where he was. Being on the interstate made him feel exceptionally vulnerable, but the only alternative would be to go back a few miles and try to climb up on a billboard or something similar. “Whatever,” he sighed, “This’ll have to do for the night.” Marcus had seen no sign of any other creatures since the cavern experience. Though he wasn’t particularly looking forward to trying to sleep tonight, he was tired enough that he needed to at least try and rest. “There’s no way I’m getting past this in the dark anyway,” he muttered, frustrated by both his tiredness and the obstacle in his way.

Marcus leaned the bike up against a nearby car that had overturned on the interstate several feet from the edge of the drop-off. Just behind it, another car was upright, and he walked over to it to see if he could break in and spend the night in the seats. It was an older minivan, and the back looked big enough that he could squeeze in and sleep relatively comfortably.
It beats the asphalt and concrete, at least
.

With the front windows already broken out, it was a simple matter for Marcus to unlock the doors and pop open the back hatch. He crawled into the back, pushing aside shopping bags filled with trinkets and toys and shoved his backpack up against the seats. With the far back set of seats in the van already lowered into the floor, he had just enough room inside to stretch his legs out diagonally inside the back if he leaned up against the side panel. Instead of shutting the back hatch all the way, Marcus left it cracked enough that he could push it open and jump out if need be.

After a quick bite to eat, Marcus closed his eyes and leaned back, shifting a few times to find a comfortable position. He snickered quietly.
Tonight was supposed to be lobster night at the Pavilion,
he thought.
What a world.