by M. J. Haag
“June, get up. We have to go. Pack the essentials. We’re leaving in five whether you’re ready or not.”
The rushed words and the panic in his voice penetrated my sleep-fogged brain.
“What?”
“Dad says we need to get home. Now.” The rustling noise of Adam grabbing clothes from his dresser drawers brought me fully awake.
I flew out of bed and started grabbing things.
“What happened?” I asked as I quickly dressed and pulled out a bag of my own. “Is it your mom?”
“No. I’ll explain on the way. Move.”
His abruptness scared me, reminding me of the time we’d been hiking and a bear crossed our path. I scrambled to put what I’d need into the bag for a trip to his parents without knowing why.
“You won’t need that,” Adam said when he saw me grab my black dress. “Think warm. Jeans. Layers.”
I pulled out the dress shoes I’d already shoved into the bag and put my hiking boots inside. We were out the door in five minutes. He wasn’t kidding when he said that we needed to hurry. He ran all the way to the truck and tossed our stuff inside.
Then, he started up the truck and tore out of the parking lot.
“I need you to get the handgun out, June. Remember what I showed you?”
I nodded and started to shake as I reached under the seat. Warm clothes, and now he was talking about guns.
“What’s going on, Adam?”
“I’m not exactly sure. Dad said there were weird reports from Europe before it went dark. It was just after a quake they had. A big quake was reported farther south in Texas. Dad found out from one of his old friends who still serves. The government was trying to keep it quiet, but Texas started going dark. Dad says something’s coming our way. He doesn’t know what, but we need to get to Uncle Gary’s farm. They’re going to meet us there.”
As he spoke, he drove like crazy, missing stop signs and taking corners fast enough that I shook even harder.
“Adam, you’re going to kill us trying to get there,” I said.
“Right. Right.” He slowed down a little more for the next corner.
I trusted Adam, and he trusted his dad. Whatever had them spooked, there had to be a good reason. Yet, I doubted it warranted Adam’s current level of panic.
“I know you said the government is keeping things quiet,” which I secretly found hard to believe, “but let’s turn on the radio anyway.”
He nodded, not relaxing his white-knuckled grip on the wheel. The local station I picked was playing music like I’d hoped, and we made it out of town in one piece just before ten p.m. Thankfully, the longer we went without anything happening, the more Adam began to show signs of calming down.
Until we passed a car driving at high speeds. Then another. Then another.
Adam began tapping the wheel.
“Turn the radio off, June,” he said softly. “We need to listen.”
I did as he asked, and we both remained quiet when we came across two cars, one in the ditch and another pulled over, likely to help. There was no one around, though, when he slowed to flash a light at both vehicles.
“Is the gun loaded?” he asked softly.
“Yeah.”
I thought he was going to ask for it. Instead, he pulled away from the cars and kept going.
“You don’t think we should check if someone needs help?” I asked, looking at the cars shrinking from view in my side mirror.
“No, I don’t. My priority is getting you to Gary’s where you’ll be safe.”
I reached over and set my hand on his leg.
“Everything will be okay.”
He didn’t glance at me or agree, and that worried me more than the empty highway around us. At the next exit, he got off the highway.
“I think we should stick to back roads,” he said before I could ask.
We drove in silence for an hour before we saw another car pass. It flashed its lights at us rapidly and slowed.
The man behind the wheel only rolled his window down two inches to shout at us.
“Don’t stop for nothing, you hear? Nothing!”
Then he took off with a squeal of tires.
Adam gunned it, too.
“Call my dad.”
I tried his dad, his mom, and his brother, but no one answered.
The lights we saw ahead indicated a small town.
“My gut is telling me this is a bad idea,” Adam said.
“Should we turn around?”
He tapped the steering wheel more rapidly, and the truck gained speed. I kept quiet as we hit the 25 miles per hour zone at 40. The streets were quiet but many of the houses were lit. I saw a curtain flutter out of one broken window. Adam did, too, because he didn’t bother slowing for a stop sign.
Something big and black came running at us from the darkness. As the creature landed on the hood, its claws screeched over the metal surface, and our forward momentum caused it to crash into our windshield. The glass instantly shattered and bowed inward. Adam slammed on the brakes hard. The thing rolled off even as Adam jammed down on the gas.
In my near frozen state of shock, I registered two things beyond my racing heart and rapid breathing. The thing Adam just ran over had red eyes. Not just red, but glowing, as in illuminated from within. The second thing was that someone had screamed before we took off down the road.
My gaze slid to the side mirror, and I saw the thing get to its feet and bolt off in the direction it had been headed before we hit it. Or it hit us.
“What was that?” I rasped shakily.
“I don’t know, babe. Our windshield can’t take another hit like that, though.”
I glanced at Adam, who was leaning toward the outside of the truck to see through the bits that had fewer cracks in them.
“I don’t want to change vehicles if we don’t have to,” he continued. “This one can take us through the fields if it comes down to that. Keep the handgun ready. Next time, we might need to use it.”
Not far out of town, a station wagon idled in the middle of the road. Adam slowed down to take the shoulder on the opposite lane. As we passed, I glanced at the car. My breath caught as the little girl strapped into her car seat in the back turned her head to look at us with her milky white eyes.
“Babe, talk to me. What’s wrong?”
It wasn’t until he spoke that I realized I was making gasping noises.
“There’s a little girl—”
Ahead, a woman appeared in our lights. She stood in the middle of the road, her back to us.
Adam slowed further.
The woman turned, and I started making more noises at the sight of her pink insides trailing from her eviscerated middle. Like the girl in the car, the woman had white eyes. Unlike the girl, the woman started moving, shuffling toward our truck.
“Nope.”
Adam gunned the truck and clipped the woman. After that, he didn’t slow down for anything.
It took fifteen minutes of his calmly delivered, “I swear I’ll keep you safe, June,” and the steady presence of his hand on my leg for my breathing to return to normal.
“This isn’t real,” I finally said. “Right?”
“Real or unreal, it doesn’t matter. Okay? All that matters is that we’re together, and I won’t let anything happen to you. Do you understand? Focus on that, June. I’ll keep you safe.”
I nodded and watched the road for signs of trouble.
We made it to his uncle’s farm in the middle of nowhere and stopped in a spray of gravel in the driveway. Adam cut the engine and grabbed the gun from my lap.
“Get the rifle, June. Make sure it’s loaded and ready. Safety off.”
I hated the rifle. I hated the handgun. But I was far more terrified of why we needed either of them.
“We’re going to leave the truck together. Quietly. Stay close and shoot anything that moves. Got it?”
I nodded and reached for the door when he did. Leaving the protection of the t
ruck was the most terrifying thing I’d done in my life. The next most terrifying thing came a second later when Uncle Gary rounded the house.
Like the woman on the road, it looked like something had chewed him up, and his eyes had gone white.
I shivered as he shuffled toward us and jumped at the sharp report of Adam’s gun. A red dot bloomed on his uncle’s forehead before the man fell.
Nothing else moved. From the barn, I heard a faint mooing. Adam motioned toward the big building then pointed at me. The urge to throw up was strong. Swallowing hard, I started for the barn. The gravel crunched under my feet, sounding loud in the otherwise still night. I kept the rifle up and ready even though I knew my shaking would ensure I’d miss anything I aimed at.
Inside the barn, at least thirty cows milled about in their pen.
A few made noise when they saw us. Adam didn’t stop to look at them. We moved farther into the building, and when we reached the end of the aisle, he led us left, through a narrow hall, and down a ramp.
“Watch our backs,” he whispered.
I turned, walking sideways so I could see him as well as the hall behind us. A faint beep distracted me. I glanced at Adam as he opened a door that looked like it belonged to a bank vault. He motioned me into the lit hall beyond, and I hurried to comply.
The door closed with a rasp of air, and Adam turned to me.
“I’m so sorry, Adam.”
He shook his head.
“That wasn’t my uncle. My real uncle would have wanted me to do what I did.”
“What about your parents?”
“If they're alive, they’ll show up. Come on. I’ll take you on a tour. Dad and Gary worked on this place together.”
I turned around and looked down the long concrete hallway of the underground bunker.
“Welcome home, June,” Adam said.
Two weeks after the quakes…
Fun time’s over
The never-ending sound of static crawled under my skin even in my sleep. The white noise bounced off the cement brick walls, echoing down the hall. There was no escaping it inside the compact bunker Adam’s family had built.
Shifting on the narrow, lower bunk I’d claimed as my own, I forced my gaze to sweep the empty beds that Adam’s parents, brother, and uncle were meant to occupy. The perfectly tucked in blankets and untouched, pristine white pillows were a reminder of why Adam still listened to the radio.
Even after all this time, he was hoping to hear something from his family. I held that same hope. But it was dying the longer we went without hearing from anyone.
When we’d first turned on the radio, it had filled the bunker with chatter, not the white noise of static. The voices we heard were from the other people holed up like us. When we’d been clueless, they’d been the ones who helped piece together what was happening.
Adam and I had listened to them talk about the hellhounds and the spreading zombie infection. It had been hard to believe it at first, despite seeing the woman on the road and Adam’s uncle. The infection spread with a bite, killing and reanimating a person within minutes.
Then our radio friends started describing the other things running loose out there. Hearing about grey-skinned creatures that walked on two legs, hid from the light, and could rip the head off of a man in two seconds had terrified me. It still did. Hell, so did the hounds with glowing red eyes and the idea that Adam and I were in a bunker riding out the apocalypse. None of it seemed real. But we’d both come to terms with just how real it was when the ground had shaken with the detonation of bombs in the nearest cities. The chatter said it was to stop the spread of the infection, but there’d also been speculation that it was meant to stop the grey creatures.
After the bombs, though, things didn’t get better. They got far worse.
We’d all been unsure of what would be left after the dust settled, but hearing the voices had reassured Adam and me that we still weren’t alone. Then “Chatty Kathy” had gone quiet. “Bitter man” had told the rest of us he was going to check on her since they’d known each other prior to the world going dark. He’d never reported back.
“Big Jonah” said he’d check on “Bitter man.” A few hours later, we learned it wasn’t a new threat but an old one.
The sound of the old man’s tear-choked voice still haunted my dreams.
“The world isn’t full of good people anymore. If it ever was. Don’t tell anyone where you are. And if you leave, cover your tracks. Your shelter and your supplies are today’s currency, and those who have are always damned by those who haven’t. They killed Becky and Katie and took everything. I’m done, folks. I’m going to go bury my dogs and sit on my porch for a spell.”
That was the last we’d heard from him.
After that, the radio had been silent except for the occasional emergency broadcast that talked about evacuee camps. Adam clung to the hope that his family had gone to one of them instead of heading here. I wanted to believe that New York was completely unscathed and that my parents were waiting for me there. But, all of the surrounding cities had been bombed. I doubted a place as big as New York had been spared. If it had been, that would have meant there was somewhere safe to go, and they would have come looking for survivors by now. But there’d been no broadcast, no sounds of vehicles or planes overhead, no sign of rescue.
Part of me was starting to wonder if Adam and I were all that remained of humanity. The fear that we were made it difficult every time Adam and I had to leave the safety of the bunker to clear away the dead, or rather, the undead, from the barn.
As soon as I had that thought, I started to panic, and I threw back my blankets. What if Adam had gone outside without me?
A brief moment of silence filled the bunker as Adam switched channels.
Breathing easier, I checked the time on my watch and saw it was past two in the morning. I shivered at the chill of the concrete and put on my slippers before leaving the bunk room.
Down the hall, the utilitarian bathroom with two toilet stalls, a urinal, two showers, and a sink was just another reminder of how many people were meant to be here. I gently knocked on the holding tank for the wash water and marked a new line to indicate the level.
In addition to the bathroom, the bunker housed an aquaponics room, an exercise room, a supply room, a kitchen, and finally the control room with the monitors. That was where I headed when I finished using the bathroom.
Adam sat in the chair before the monitors, keeping an eye on the livestock, which had somehow managed to escape the notice of the infected that roamed in occasionally. Well, escaping their notice wasn’t quite accurate. The infected would look at the cows, seemingly understand that they were the source of the sounds that drew them in, then shamble around uninterested in them.
Adam figured, since the cows weren’t human, the infected didn’t care. It scared me to think he was right, since it showed the infected had some level of intelligence. I would prefer it if they were brainless zombies.
“Everything quiet?” I asked softly.
“Yeah. For now.”
“Why don’t you go to bed? I can watch for a while.”
He nodded and stood. The weary set of his shoulders broke my heart, and I wrapped my arms around his waist to comfort him.
“I love you, Adam,” I breathed against his chest. Considering everything we’d endured the past few weeks and our separate beds, sex had been the last thing on either of our minds. But maybe it was what we both needed.
I let my hand wander down to his butt.
He hugged me tightly, then lifted me and started walking. I grinned and looked up at him.
“I think the monitors will be fine without a few minutes of watching,” he murmured before kissing me hard.
His lips didn’t leave mine as we stripped in the bunk room. Things got a little awkward when we wedged ourselves on my bed, but we made it work. The feel of his hands on my skin helped make everything else seem unimportant. I touched him in return, greedy for th
e contact.
“Hold on.” He pulled away, turned, then stopped. My chest ached again as I understood what had just happened. For a moment, he’d forgotten where we were and had been about to reach for a condom from his nightstand supply.
But there was no nightstand in the bunker.
“How’s your birth control supply?” he asked.
I made a face. “I took my last one a few days ago.”
He gave me a sad smile and leaned down to kiss me tenderly.
“I love you, June. So much that I know we can’t do this without protection. I won’t risk you like that.”
“Risk?”
“We’ve cleaned out a dozen of the infected from the barn already in only a couple of weeks. We have to haul manure, feed, and do a million other things that jeopardize our well-being because of the state of the world. I won’t add an accidental pregnancy to that list, babe. It’s just you and me, and I’m no doctor. It’s too dangerous.”
I nodded, understanding. The world was in chaos.
“Then no sex. We can still hold each other.”
We did a little more than holding, and I smiled at him after he groaned my name.
“Get some sleep,” I said, standing. “I’ll watch the monitors until you wake up.”
“I love you, June. We’re going to survive this. I promise I’ll keep you safe.”
I lightly kissed his cheek and left him to sleep in my bed.
Chapter One
Present Day…
A vast expanse of nothingness loomed above me. I waited for my eyes to adjust and for the twinkling lights of the stars to pop into existence, but they didn’t.
Even after all these weeks, or maybe it was months now, I still dreamt of the life Adam and I used to have. I missed fresh air and the stars. I missed my relationship with Adam.
Rolling to my side, I tried to make out his bunk in the darkness. It was unlikely he was in it since I was in mine. But just in case, I whispered his name softly.
“You awake, babe?” he called from somewhere else in the bunker.
“Yeah.”
“We’re low on juice. I had to turn off the non-essentials until sunrise.”
