Final Dawn: Season 1 (The Thrilling Post-Apocalyptic Series) (26 page)

Marcus Warden | Nancy Sims

6:21 PM, April 3, 2038

Marcus stared at the woman sitting in the truck in front of him. She was terrified and tired, and the hardness of her voice was betrayed by the trembling at the edges of her words. She had screamed something at him twice already, but the sound of the engine muffled her voice enough that he had trouble hearing what she said.

Nancy screamed at him again, this time loud enough to cut through the engine noise. “Get out of the way, now!”

Marcus raised his hands up to head level, leaving his backpack on the side of the road behind him. He approached the truck slowly, speaking loudly and calmly.

“Ma’am, please… I’m not going to hurt you. Here, look! I’m unarmed!” Marcus turned back and forth, showing the woman that he had no weapons on his person.

“Like hell you are! That’s what the last guy said! Just get out of my way or I’ll run you down!”

Marcus’s shoulders slumped and he sighed, giving up. Trying to reason with the woman in her frantic state wasn’t going to work, and he preferred walking to trying to crawl with a broken leg.

“Okay, you win. I’m really not going to try anything, though. I just want to get to Richmond. Go on, I’ll get out—” Marcus trailed off as another sound caught his ears, rising in volume over the idling engine. A buzzing filled the air, low in pitch, rumbling in Marcus’s ears. He looked at the woman in the truck. She was staring into the side mirror of the vehicle, a look of horror etched on her face as she peered back along the interstate.

“You hear it too?” Marcus yelled over the engine and the buzzing.

The woman looked at him with terror in her eyes. “What are they?!”

“I don’t know, but we need to get out of here, now! Please, just let me ride in the back!”

Nancy hesitated, her eyes darting back and forth between Marcus and the pinpoints of silver that were appearing in the distance. “Fine! Get in, quick!” If this man had meant to hurt her, she hoped that he would have done it already. He did seem to be genuinely afraid, and in the end, her compassion won out over her fears. 

Marcus wasted no time in taking advantage of her change of heart. He ran to his backpack as the truck pulled forward, skidding to a stop in front of him. “Hurry up!” The woman screamed at him, and he leapt into the bed of the truck, pushing aside the gas cans to make room for himself and his gear.

“Ready!” Marcus slammed his hand on the side of the truck a few times and it took off like a shot, barreling down the highway. Nancy maneuvered the truck through the crowded lanes with ease. Her driving skills had improved significantly over the last several days, an unexpected benefit of having to drive through and around wreckage for such a long span of time.

Marcus could still see flecks of silver in the distance as the truck picked up speed. Before long, they solidified into what he feared the most. Six creatures were running and jumping along the interstate, drawing closer to the truck. Silhouetted against the sunset, they were even more frightening than in full daylight, casting long shadows ahead of them as they moved effortlessly through the wreckage. Marcus slid open the glass window on the back of the truck and yelled at Nancy over the wind and the engine.

“You’ve got to drive faster! They’re gaining on us!”

Nancy glanced back at him, narrowly missing an overturned minivan as she skidded around it. “What? What are you talking about!?” Marcus stared at the approaching creatures as Nancy looked in the rearview mirror. They were close enough now for her to see them as well, even through the gleaming light of the setting sun. The creatures weren’t being subtle or sneaky about their movements anymore. They were in pursuit of a target, and had only one thing on their minds: speed.

Marcus sank lower into the bed of the truck as he felt it surge forward. At this speed, one wrong bump could knock him out of the truck, where he’d be defenseless against the creatures.

“Hold on back there!” Nancy hollered from the front seat.

Marcus mumbled in response. “Yeah, no shit.”

Leonard McComb

11:28 PM, April 3, 2038

The Jeep’s wheels shrieked and the axles groaned as Leonard slid the car around a corner, fighting to keep it on the road while pressing the gas pedal down to the floor. Within an hour of stopping to refill the gas tank, his feeling of nervousness and dread had increased, culminating with a glimpse of two of the creatures darting between buildings just a block behind him. Their approach became less subtle once they realized that he had spotted them, and they had soon begun their cat and mouse chase all over again.

As he passed by the remains of a skyscraper that still towered several stories overhead, Leonard grimaced and rubbed his eyes with his left hand. Driving for an entire day without rest had worn him down more than he realized, and his body was beginning to fail him. Even the occasional sighting of the creatures did nothing to make him less tired, as his body was too down to both produce or respond to adrenaline.

Leonard was making slow progress through the city.
Too slow,
he thought.
Those things should have been on me hours ago.
This sudden realization brought on another thought.
What if they aren’t really trying to catch me?
He had spotted the creatures only intermittently throughout the day, and even those times had been fleeting glimpses where they disappeared as soon as he caught sight of them. Leonard’s muddled mind churned through this, struggling to make sense of it.

They’re herding me, wearing me down.
Leonard’s goal was not to head east, but instead to go south, to escape the city as fast as possible. Instead, every time he tried to go to the south, he had spotted one or more of the creatures in short order. His response was to get away from them as fast as he could, so he just kept on driving, moving steadily away from the center of the city.

Leonard slowed the Jeep down to a crawl, then stopped it in the middle of the road.
If they really wanted to catch me, they could have done it before now… why are they waiting? They tried to get me before, but why wait now?
More so now than ever, Leonard felt like a deer being stalked by a predator, carefully maneuvered and manipulated without even realizing it. A pack of wolves was toying with him, playing with their prey in an attempt to make the kill as easy and as certain as possible.

Leonard shook his head slowly.
Screw this. Let’s see what you little assholes do when I change the rules of the game.
Leonard placed a hand on the only weapon at his disposal, still sitting in the center console and close at hand. The cordless drill wasn’t much of a defense against ravenous beasts, but it was still better than harsh language.
So you want me to go this way, huh? Let’s try something a little different.

Having spent the better part of the day driving east through the city, Leonard knew the path well enough that he was sure he could follow it in reverse, even in the dark. With a quick U-turn, he brought the Jeep back around, facing it in the direction he came from. Leonard thought back over the last several hours, mapping out the streets and obstacles in his mind. Driving through a ruined city in the middle of the day was hard enough, but doing it at night while pissing off the creatures that were hunting him was going to be even more interesting.

Leonard’s theory about the creatures herding him to the east was proved far sooner than he had imagined. Mere minutes after he took off to the west, a great howling cry went up from around him and the creatures began to pursue him in earnest. Even in the darkness, bits of light from the moon and reflections from the headlights still glinted brightly off of their silver bits, giving Leonard fleeting glimpses of them in the rearview mirror as he drove along.

The Jeep careened around corners, flew over piles of rubble and roared down narrow streets, winding its way back west. Although the creatures had the advantage of greater mobility in this environment, the superior speed of the Jeep combined with foreknowledge of the route gave Leonard a slight upper hand.

After a couple miles of frantic driving, Leonard could no longer see the glint of the creatures behind him, though he was sure they were still there. Leonard knew that he needed to get off the road or out of the city, but without being able to study the map and figure out where he was, the best he could do was to keep driving forward, heading deeper into the heart of Richmond.

Rachel Walsh

9:09 PM, April 4, 2038

With the help of several more painkillers along the way, Rachel and Sam rolled into the train station at Richmond in the late evening. Rachel’s arms burned and she could barely hold them up, let alone use them for anything useful. After stumbling off the handcart and plopping onto a bench at the train station, she clumsily opened a can of tuna fish and baked beans, pouring half of each in a pile on the concrete next to the bench for Sam. Hands trembling, Rachel scooped the food from the cans into her mouth, working feverishly to satiate her hunger. She barely noticed the cold of the food as she gulped it down, matching and exceeding even Sam’s eagerness. 

The train station was on the southwest side of the city, and the railroad here – like in Raleigh – passed through the center of the city on its way to the north. The tracks at the station were old and worn, showing no signs of repair, but Rachel could see them winding their way through toppled structures and torn up roads, so she was certain that they must have been repaired again farther up the line.

Before she ate, Rachel had pushed the handcart off onto a side rail at the depot, behind a few abandoned cars. In case any more trains came through the area, she wanted the handcart to be in the safest place possible, especially since they would likely be using it again to get out of the city. Rachel stood up from the bench when she finished eating, wiping her hands on her pants and guzzling down a bottle of water, pouring bits of it into Sam’s open mouth. She shouldered her rifle and slowly walked into the train station, feeling groggy from weariness and the sudden influx food she had just consumed.

The inside of the train station was intact, like the exterior, and showed no signs of damage or collapse. It looked like a passenger station, with rows of chairs and benches for travelers to wait for their rides. Piles of luggage were still stacked behind the counter, a sad reminder of the number of everyday lives that had been cut short without warning.

Rachel moved slowly through the station, struggling to keep her body tensed for another encounter with a beast like the one from the train. The station was quiet, though, and Sam was calm, padding softly around, sniffing the air and the floor. She moved into the back of the station, searching through the offices until she was satisfied they were empty and that she and Sam were alone.

We’ll stay here tonight,
she decided,
then we’ll move out again tomorrow morning.
Rachel deposited her backpack in one of the offices, then headed back to the lobby. She spread the large military map across the broad oak counter, shining her flashlight on the area she was heading for. Marked with a circle, it was somewhere on the western side of Richmond, though the exact location was impossible to tell on the map. Red lettering was scrawled on one side of the circle, inscribed there by one of the men she had met from before.

LV400 – RV & recon.

Retrieve weapons cache.

Proceed to Norfolk.

Rachel still didn’t know what “LV400” stood for.
Could be the name of a base, or a group or a weapon or anything, I guess.
The circled area was definitely around the western section of the city, though, and she double checked to make sure it was close by the railroad station.
If we get going first thing in the morning, we can get back here by nightfall.
The marked area looked relatively close to the train station, but the only way to know for sure would be to hike out and see for herself.
I guess this is worth a day’s delay to check it out.

Rachel headed back into the offices, giving a final look out the front of the train station. The train yard was quiet and almost serene despite the destruction that smoldered in the distance. Rachel closed her eyes as she slowly sat down on the office floor, holding on to the desk and chair for support. She folded the map up and put it in her backpack, the curled up on the floor, laying her head on the end of the pack. Sam walked around on the floor a few times, then laid down next to her, putting his head on her legs. She stroked his head, watching as he fell asleep, then quickly slipped into a deep slumber as well.