Apokalypsis Book Two

by Kate Morris

  “But one of the night crawlers chased you down the road,” he pointed out.

  “Yes, but that was only one, and it was weeks ago.”

  “Your neighbors are missing, Avery,” he reminded her of Mr. and Mrs. Campbell, who he’d checked on the other day. Their dog was gone, and so were they. She wasn’t sure if they packed up and left or if something had happened of a more macabre scenario.

  “I know, but I just have…I don’t know how to describe it, Tristan. I have a bad feeling about this. They need my help.”

  “About Abraham and Renee?” he asked, to which she nodded. He nodded. “Okay, I’m not going to argue. If you’ve got some sort of women’s intuition thing going on right now, who am I to say no?”

  “Really?” she asked, feeling relieved.

  Tristan went to the house and left another pistol he’d already taken from the base’s small armory with Kaia. She watched as he showed her little sister how to use it. She was so different now. Not fun and humorous like she used to be. It was if she were training her mind and body to fight the apocalypse all by herself. Avery joined them.

  “Are you okay with this? I won’t go unless you are,” she told her little sister.

  “Go. I’d feel better about Abraham having someone watching his back if it gets bad over there. I’ve got this. I’ve got Ephraim and Finnegan.”

  Tristan touched her little sister’s shoulder briefly, “If anyone comes down the road, not just the driveway but the road, you call me immediately. I mean it. Nobody ever comes around here. Your neighbors are gone. They aren’t comin’ back. Out the other way, there’s just a cabin down in a valley.”

  “Yes,” Avery interrupted, assuming he saw it during one of the long runs he’d been taking lately. “That’s our other neighbor, Mr. Livingston. He’s a fracker, works out of state most of the time on oil well sites. He’s never around.”

  “He could be dead for all we know. Just call if someone comes down the road and assume they’re here to rob or kill you. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

  “Yes,” Kaia answered so seriously.

  Avery grabbed her for a hug but, sadly, noticed that Kaia barely returned it.

  “I love you,” she told her as Ephraim stood by holding Finnegan’s hand.

  “Yeah,” Kaia said but didn’t return the sentiment, either.

  Avery patted her back and hugged her little brothers, noticing that Finn clung to her a lot longer.

  Tristan made sure to do a run through the house to ensure it was locked down. Then they walked away as the three kids watched out the wall of glass facing the driveway. Ephraim waved. The look on his face read that he didn’t think he’d see them again. She sent him an optimistic smile and a wave of her own as Tristan walked her to Renee’s truck and opened the door for her.

  “Be careful. If anything happens, call us immediately. If you have to, use the ammo sparingly. It won’t last forever. Make each shot count,” he said.

  “Okay,” she answered apprehensively as he buckled her seatbelt for her. She was riding in the back seat while her brother rode shotgun. Tristan leaned in a kissed her mouth quickly.

  “Love you,” he said. “Be careful.”

  She nodded, a little embarrassed that he was so cool with talking like that in front of everyone. The whole ride to Renee’s, she wondered if she just missed the opportunity to tell him how she felt, that she might not get to now, that she or he might never see the other alive again after tonight.

  Chapter Thirty

  When they arrived, he texted his L.T., and the gate swung inward. They met their lieutenant near his office, which was an equally tiny building like their housing units.

  “We need to hurry,” their L.T. said. “Got a call about an hour ago that I needed to pack up what ammo and guns were here and have them ready for pick-up tonight by midnight.”

  “Shit,” Spencer said. “That’s only three hours from now. We can do it, though, sir.”

  “Cut the ‘sir’ shit,” he said. “Just call me Rodney, man. We’re all in this shit together now.”

  “Let’s move,” Tristan stated.

  They followed their lieutenant to the metal Quonset hut barn and waited while Spencer opened the wide doors. Then he and the L.T. pulled in. The bulk of the supplies were in this building.

  “Work quickly,” their commanding officer said.

  They went asses and elbows for over an hour flinging ammo boxes, crates of weapons, unloading skids of bulk supplies and boxes of MRE’s into the beds of their trucks.

  “Keep working,” Rodney said, his deep voice authoritative and steady. “I’m going to the mess hall. I know there’s bulk cans of coffee. I’ll see what else is in there.”

  Most of the men on the base were responsible for making their own food, but the mess hall was where they had meetings, and sometimes when one of them felt overly friendly, they’d cook a lot of food like pancakes on the griddle in the kitchen for everyone. Tristan shot his L.T. a thumbs-up sign.

  As they worked, Tristan’s mind wandered many times to Avery as he bounced back and forth between worrying about her being at Renee’s farm and still thinking about the life-altering, out of this world sex they’d shared. That was not what he thought was going to happen when he’d gone up to wake her, get her moving for the day, and change her bandaging. He also wrestled with the fact that he probably should’ve stopped it before it went that far because she wasn’t in the right state of mind. She was grieving, depressed, and entirely too sexy for her own damn good- sad or not. But she hadn’t seemed like she wanted to stop.

  He knew that night alongside the road when he’d risked his own life to pull her from the car, run with her in his arms unconscious away from her insane father, and rushed her to the hospital that he was in love with her. It wasn’t a lightning bolt moment of recognition like people in movies describe it, either. It was more of a softening of his hard, dead heart over the weeks he’d spent time with her. Every moment with her had pushed him further and further down the rabbit hole of falling for her. She challenged him, and that wasn’t something most women would’ve done. He knew he was an intimidating person, an imposing figure, and he liked it that way. The wall he’d put up around himself had worked so well for so many years that he never thought to let it down. He never wanted in a relationship. Love was silly shit they put in movies and books to sell them to unsuspecting morons who still believed in frivolity like that. Avery Andersson had torn that wall down in the period of a month flat. Blew it up with a mortar round more like. And the night he realized the wall was gone was when he spotted her car upside down in that field and thought she was hurt or maybe even dead, Tristan felt the links in his armor crack. It felt like the worst sort of practical joke dealt him by the Fates or destiny or whatever deity was up there looking down on him and laughing their asses off. He’d finally found someone who didn’t look at him like a murderous, cold psychopath all brawn and no brains, and she was dead. When he realized she was alive, his heart clenched with the realization that he was never letting her go. Even if she didn’t love him in return, which he still wasn’t sure if she did because she hadn’t said the words. It didn’t matter to him. It didn’t matter that night, either. He vowed to himself he would stay with her, protect her, take care of her family, and give his life for her if she needed him to no matter if she ever returned his feelings.

  “This is crazy, man,” Spencer said. “I think we’ll definitely make it through winter with these MRE’s if shit gets worse.”

  “Yeah,” Tristan agreed as they piled his truck high and worked on putting similar items into Rodney’s truck. “We should also check out the mess hall. I know there’s stuff in there we could probably use, too.”

  “Yeah, like towels and shit. I mean, that kind of stuff could come in handy. We should also hit the infirmary.”

  “Good call,” Tristan stated. “Hey, we’ve almost got this. I’m gonna run to the infirmary and see what’s left.”

&n
bsp; “Cool,” Spencer said and handed him an empty wooden crate. “Might need this.”

  “Thanks,” Tristan said and took off at a jog. There was still a lot to loot tonight before others got to the base. He didn’t feel bad taking this stuff. He knew eventually that every base, whether old, newly established, or temporary, would become just like this if it went on too long. Nobody was going to stick around at ‘work’ if their family members were dropping like flies or starving to death in another state. If someday he was court-martialed, so be it.

  The infirmary was in the back of the main building that housed offices, meeting rooms, and a coms room. Without a lot of men on the base, they didn’t actually have a nurse or doctor. For anything serious, they would’ve been taken by ambulance to the nearest city, which was Canton. Instead, they had a few cots in a small sickbay, a room with meds that only the L.T. had the key for, and a bathroom. As far as Tristan knew, nobody had ever used any of it. For emergencies like a minor cut or something similar, most of the men treated themselves in their own houses.

  Flicking on the overhead lights, Tristan walked quickly towards the back of the building and the medical center. Then he paused. Backing up two steps in the hall, he looked into the coms room. An idea struck. First, he needed to raid the infirmary.

  He came to the door, found it locked, and simply kicked it inward. It was a cheesy little lock not really meant to keep people out, just keep them honest. This was not an honest life anymore.

  Filling the crate with bandaging, gauze, medical tape, and ointments, Tristan went to the door where he knew meds were located. He used his elbow and busted the glass window in the door. Not too smart for security. He took everything, piling the crate high until every last drawer was picked clean. Then he heard gunfire.

  Tristan took the crate with him to the porch and set it down there. Then he pulled the M4 on its strap from around his back and held it at the ready. He worked the charging handle and prepared to fight it out. Although unsure of where the shots came from, Tristan thought maybe it was the L.T.’s office, so he jogged carefully in that direction. They’d left off the main outdoor breaker so that the place wasn’t lit up, which worked to his advantage. He was used to working in strange conditions, many times at night.

  Tristan circled around behind the mess hall and listened. Not seeing or hearing anything, he crept forward. He was pretty sure the sound came from further away than this building. He rounded the corner and saw a flash of movement. Then he moved forward again until he was at the corner of the building and could see the front porch overhang and the office building to its left. A stream of light flowed from the front of the mess hall into the dirt and gravel parking area and road that ran through the small base. He could see the entrance gate. They hadn’t shut it behind them. He also spotted something else when he turned his head the other way. He saw two cans of coffee on the ground. A few feet from them was his lieutenant, his body motionless on its side. Tristan wasn’t sure if he was dead but also didn’t have time to check on him. They had invaders who needed to be dealt with first.

  Then he heard rummaging in the mess hall. The hair stood up on the back of his neck and rose in synch on his forearms to stand at attention. It wasn’t the rummaging that was the most disturbing sound. He’d hoped those two shots were the L.T., that maybe he had an accidental discharge. Gunfire was always something to be taken seriously. Someone was on their base and likely shot his commanding officer. Gunfire was always something that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. Not with fear but with readiness. But the sound that was more disturbing than the gunfire was the scream he heard in the distance just a second ago. Unfortunately, it didn’t sound distant enough, maybe a hundred yards or so into the woods outside the tall fencing. They needed to get moving, but someone was in the mess hall.

  Tristan climbed the three steps onto the front porch of the building and crept silently toward the door. He saw through one of the two front windows flashlights bobbing around, more than one. Then he heard them.

  “Hurry up, asshole!” one whisper-shouted at another. “Any more of those Army guys comes around, we might have a problem.”

  “I am, you dick!” the other one shouted without worrying about making noise.

  He squatted low and moved in at a bent over crouch, pumping his legs hard so that his feet would not betray him. Tristan easily spotted them. They were in the kitchen raiding it. They had no right to anything on this base. They never put in their time in the military. They never worked their asses off for so little. They never watched their friends die or had one die in their arms. Tonight, they would get a taste for that. He whistled.

  “What was that?” the second one whispered.

  “Go check it out.”

  A second later, a man’s head popped around the wall. Tristan knew he couldn’t see him crouched in the far-left corner of the cafeteria because of the low lighting and the dozen tables and chairs and picnic tables in front of him blocking the man’s line of sight. Tristan could see him just fine, though, as he tried to be sneaky and come out of the kitchen. He popped up quickly and pulled the trigger in rapid succession, hitting the man square in the chest with both rounds. His body slammed into the white wall and left a blood skid going down it as he slumped to the floor. Then it was silent. Tristan pursued that silence, that coward who made his unarmed friend go out in pursuit of him.

  A single gunshot rang out.

  “Tristan?” Spencer called out to him from the back.

  “Yeah,” he yelled back.

  “I just shot this dude,” he replied and walked out of the kitchen and found Tristan halfway there.

  “I got the other one,” Tristan told his friend.

  “Damn, we need coms,” Spencer said. “I don’t like doing this old school.”

  “No shit,” he agreed. “L.T.’s out front.”

  “Alive?”

  Tristan led the way and said over his shoulder, “Nah, don’t think so, man.”

  He knelt beside his commanding officer and didn’t even need to get a pulse. Having done what he did for a living for the last seven and a half years, Tristan was familiar with the cold, empty stare of a person whose life source was gone.

  “We need to get the hell outta’ here,” he told his friend. “I heard one in the woods maybe a hundred yards out.”

  “Those idiots could have people waiting out on the road for them, too.”

  They nodded and jogged back to the trucks, Tristan with the cans of coffee under his arms. He stopped at the infirmary and threw the cans on top of the crate of medical supplies and joined Spencer.

  “There’s still some shit in there,” his friend said. “How ‘bout I load the rest and you keep watch?”

  “Sounds good. Double time that shit, brother.”

  He nodded, and Tristan kept careful watch, this time with night-vision binoculars he pulled from a box and with his rifle raised. He also checked his lieutenant’s truck to make sure he left the keys in it. They were going to need to take his vehicle because its bed was nearly full of supplies. It didn’t matter if they stole his truck. He would’ve wanted it that way. They all felt the same. Feelings and emotions had to get pushed down to the bottom of the stomach pit of guilt along with second-guessing and regrets. Survival was the thing that got pushed to the top of the priority board. The only thing that was different for Tristan now was that he had a lot more people relying on him to keep them all alive. And that was a job he was more than willing to fulfill.

  When he spotted one already inside the perimeter fencing sneaking around carrying some kind of weapon, a knife or machete, he took a slow, calming breath and tried to remind himself they were still just people. The CDC warnings were that these were still just people and could be killed like any other person. He would let it come to them, not pursue it. That was the plan. Then the plan changed as two more came toward them from behind one of the small houses, the very one where Royce and Spencer used to live together. It was an irony tha
t was not lost on him. But it also wasn’t going to get them off the base without a fight. The one closest to him spotted Tristan and let out one of those awful, primal screams throwing its head bad and crying out like a wolf to a full moon. It was creepy as fuck. People just didn’t act like that. It was animalistic and uninhibited.

  Then it slinked back into a shadow and around the corner of a building before he could get a shot off. Its tactic and reasoning just reminded him that these were once humans with cognitive skills. They weren’t animals. They would be difficult to defeat because of that one small fact.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  It was quiet on Renee’s farm, and she could almost remember a time when they had sleepovers where they’d order pizza and talk about boys and school. Those times were gone now. They were packing her family’s home full of supplies to take to her home because her parents were dead, so were Avery’s, and society was collapsing around them at a rate that was unprecedented in known history.

  They went together to check on the horses in the stables and scanned the fields with flashlights. Renee carried her father’s shotgun, which she explained was loaded with buckshot. Avery didn’t really know what it meant. She had a lot to learn. Her friend gave her a revolver. Avery was familiar with that. It was fairly simple. She had an airsoft pistol like this one time, but it eventually broke. And Abraham still had Tristan’s pistol, which held fifteen rounds according to her little brother, who was trying so hard now to be an adult man.

  The animals were tucked in for the night and seemed calm and quiet. All was well.

  They locked up the house and sat down to watch the television. Abraham drank a soda and had some pre-packaged snack cakes while she and Renee drank hot tea. They were also planning on moving all of her family’s food supply and everything else they could use to the Andersson compound, which is what her friend was now calling her home.