The Enduring: Stories of Surviving the Apocalypse

by Nicholas Ryan

  The home had been surrounded by the undead, the poison of the ‘Affliction’ scouring the ground of its ability to sustain life.

  I walked a circuit of the house, shaking my head in slow amazed wonderment. When I got back to where my car was parked, Chad Delloma was waiting for me. He was a man in his thirties with a ready smile and a couple of days of unshaven stubble that had turned his jaw to the color of gunmetal. He was wearing a faded baseball cap, pulled down low over his eyes. He looked fit, competent.

  I was still shaking my head in disbelief.

  “You defended this place?” I asked.

  Chad nodded. “Me, my girlfriend, Iris, and young Colton.” He held open a small wooden box he had brought from inside. It was a kind of jewelry box with an ornate hinged lid. The inside was lined with felt and divided into little trays of space. In one of the corners was a red velvet bag, secured with a drawstring. Chad took the bag from out of the box and opened it.

  “Hold out your hand,” he said.

  I upturned my hand and he emptied the contents of the little bag into my palm. I stared down and then slowly gaped.

  There were two fingernails and a tooth in my hand – but they weren’t ordinary. The tooth was like an extended canine, pointed at the tip, yellowed and beginning to rot. It was at least an inch long, with a mangle of sinew and tissue at the stump where it had been ripped from the mouth of…

  “From one of the ‘Afflicted’?” I asked in a shocked whisper.

  Chad nodded his head. “And they’re fingernails,” he said. “Look at them.”

  They were unusually long; pointed like claws and hooked like talons. They were crusted with dirt, cracked and brittle as parchment.

  “Incredible,” I gasped. “Where did you find them?”

  “They were in the window frame,” Chad said casually. “After the ‘Afflicted’ had attacked the home and we drove them off, we came outside to inspect the damage and make repairs in case they came back. These were buried in the timber, right beside one of the windows at the back of the house.”

  I studied the tooth and fingernails carefully and then dropped them back into the velvet bag. Chad closed the lid of the box and set it aside. He thrust his hands into the pockets of his jeans like he was waiting for me to ask a question.

  “So you defended this home against the ‘Afflicted’. How many were you up against?”

  Chad lifted the baseball cap off his head, scratched at his close crop of hair, and then set the cap back in place. “A dozen or so,” he said, and his expression became thoughtful. “They came down along the gravel road you used to get here.”

  “And you fought them off – killed them all. Just you, Iris and a boy?”

  “Yes,” Chad said and stared me frankly in the eye. “That’s what happened… but it’s not how things started.”

  I nodded and drew the notebook from my pocket. I flipped open to a fresh page, then looked up. Chad was frowning. Maybe he was wondering what I was going to write – how those who had endured would remember his story. He started talking, his eyes flicking back to the notebook often, to be sure I was recording his tale of survival accurately.

  I was.

  This interview is what happened to one family in the small community of Grafton.

  “That day was like any other to me,” Chad began. “The only difference was that I had worked the cateye shift through midnight at Loveridge Mine, and then driven almost three hours to visit with my mother,” his voice softened with compassion. “A few months earlier she had found out that she had stage four cancer. I made the effort because when me or my brother, Brian, visited, it seemed to give her strength, you know?”

  I nodded my head sympathetically but said nothing.

  Chad grimaced. “Watching my mother go from healthy to… to how she was at the end…? It was cruel, man. I used to think cancer was the most horrible disease someone could contract… until the ‘Affliction’ scoured America.”

  “So you heard about the outbreak at your mother’s home?”

  “No,” Chad shook his head and blinked, dragging himself back from the melancholy of reflecting on his mother’s passing. “The night before I was hearing talk on the news channels. I listened to the regular news services, but I also listened to a program called Info Wars. No matter where I tuned the radio, everyone was talking about the contagion. Back then there wasn’t a name for it – it was just a kind of formless panic fueled by wild rumors. Info Wars said what no one else was saying – they were calling it a plague.”

  “What was your reaction?” I asked.

  Chad made a kind of futile expression with his hands. “I didn’t do anything – it was just a warning on the radio; talk about a contagion sweeping up from the south. There were cases being reported across Florida, Alabama and Louisiana. I listened. I paid attention. Mentally, I guess I was preparing.”

  “So tell me again when you actually first learned of the outbreak?”

  “The following day,” Chad said. “When I was driving back from my mother’s house. I was about thirty minutes away from my home when I turned the radio on.”

  “Just because? I mean was it a stroke of luck that you just happened to hear something on the news service?”

  “No,” Chad said again. “I was curious. Along the interstate I kept seeing police cars and fire trucks rushing on both sides of the highway. They came in clusters – three cop cars and then a few minutes later they were followed by a couple of fire trucks. Ten minutes further down the road a couple more black and whites flashed past, sirens wailing, moving like they had to be somewhere in an urgent hurry. I switched the radio on to Info Wars to see if I could find out what was going on. I thought there might have been an accident further along the interstate…”

  “And you heard the news that the outbreak had reached Virginia?”

  “Once my phone stopped buffering the channel and the news shot through the speakers, that sinking feeling of dread in my guts turned into cold fear,” Chad admitted. “The host, Alex, was stammering and shouting like an evangelist preaching about Armageddon. Nothing he said was making much sense. He said the infection was proof that the government was pushing their World Order policy and thinning out the population for a one-world government. On the surface, it sounded like crazy stuff.”

  “But in hindsight…?”

  Chad shrugged his shoulders like he was wary of saying too much. “It makes a man think,” he said elusively. “Now, two years after the ‘Affliction’ burned itself out, no one still really knows what caused the contagion, do they?”

  I said nothing. Chad blew out his cheeks with a breath of air and scratched the stubble along his jaw. “There were choppers in the sky by then,” he went on with his re-telling. Military and civilian. They were crisscrossing the sky, flying low. I was just a few miles away from town.”

  “What did you see?”

  “Smoke,” Chad said simply. “But there was a kind of hysteria in the air. I know that sounds weird, but it’s true, I swear it. There was something frantic about everything; the noise of the sirens and the helicopters… all the smoke. People were driving erratically.”

  “Any shots fired?”

  “Not that I could hear – not right then. I wanted to call Iris to see if she knew what had happened. She worked in the emergency department registering patients at UHC hospital and I knew there must be ambulances somewhere down the road if the police and fire brigade had been called in. If they were transporting patients from a crash, they would have taken them straight to UHC.”

  “So you phone her from the car?”

  “No. I texted her. If I called, my Bluetooth would kick the news off until the call was completed, and I wanted to keep listening to the radio. The announcer on Info Wars was calling it ‘the day of the dead’.”

  “Did Iris text you back?”

  “No. She called. That frightened me. It was so unexpected. She’s dedicated to her job – she never interrupts her work to phone me, so whe
n I heard her voice, and the tone of her words, the panic became real.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She told me to get Colt from school, now! She said the hospital was forcing her to stay to help with the sick. She said people were being brought to the emergency room in fits of uncontrollable rage. She was scared. It was in her voice. I mean really scared. In the background I could hear pandemonium. There were people shouting, and alarms wailing. I could hear sirens too. It sounded like the hospital had become a war zone.”

  I paused for a moment to write everything down Chad had told me and then stared thoughtfully at my notes. A breeze rustled across the ground, sweeping away the leaves from nearby trees. It was very quiet, here in West Virginia – so quiet that the sound of the silence as we stood there was almost deafening. I tried to imagine the scene unfolding through Chad’s eyes as he drove back into Grafton on that fateful day – the clamor and the panic rising.

  “What did you say to Iris during that phone call, Chad?” I asked at last.

  “I told her to leave the hospital. I told her not to stay.”

  “Did she agree?”

  “Yes,” Chad said, “surprisingly.”

  I looked a question. Chad made a face that every guy would recognize.

  “She can be stubborn sometimes,” he said. “Especially when it comes to her work. She’s not the type of person to leave the weak or helpless. She’s always offering her help. She’s selfless… that was why I was so relieved when she agreed. I stayed on the line with her until she was at her car. She was shouting to me over the insanity and screaming sirens. When she was safely in her car, I told her to drive home. I told her not to fuck around – that she should blow through red lights and drive along the sidewalk if she had to.”

  “You felt it was that serious?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “I went to get Colton from his school.”

  I flipped over to a new page in my notebook, writing as quickly as I could to capture the terror of that time; the chaos and confusion. Some things just don’t translate powerfully onto paper – like the expression on a man’s face when he’s faced with impending disaster, for instance. When I was caught up, I looked hard into Chad’s eyes.

  “Tell me what scared you most at the moment?” I asked.

  Chad flinched – the question was unexpected. I had caught him off guard. “Getting Colton home and safe,” he said simply. “I thought Iris would be safe. I thought she would make it home in one piece. That was the plan – get everyone home and then re-assess. I was worried that there would be no time to bug out. With Iris and Colton in my care, that would have been my first instinct – flee West Virginia and find somewhere else that was safe. I was starting to worry that escape wouldn’t be an option. But overriding all of that was the need to get Colton first. We couldn’t plan anything until I had him home and secure.”

  “So you drove to his school.”

  Chad laughed, but it was a bitter huff in the back of his throat, lacking any humor. “I tried to drive to his school,” he said. “But it wasn’t as easy as you make it sound.”

  “Why?”

  “The town seemed ominously still all of a sudden as I saw it in the distance. I was stopped by a set of traffic lights. That was when I got my first taste of the insane madness that Iris had been trying to tell me about in her phone call.”

  “What did you see?”

  “A woman, running for her life across four lanes of traffic, screaming, with her face twisted in utter horror. Pursuing her were two crazed young guys. They were sprinting after her, clawing at her as they came within reach. They were snarling, howling. They were demented. Their clothes were torn and hanging like rags from them,” his voice lowered to a whisper, “and they were covered in fresh blood.”

  “How did you react?”

  “I grabbed for my Glock 45 and racked the slide.”

  “What?” I held up a hand to stop Chad from continuing and then frowned at him. “You had a gun in the car with you?”

  “Of course,” Chad said simply. “I never leave home without my Glock and some extra mags. I’m a closet prepper,” he explained quickly. “I had all the basic essentials for an emergency… including go-packs at home and a stored supply of food and water.”

  “Okay…” I said thoughtfully. A few months before the Apocalypse, a lot of Americans would have thought Chad Delloma crazy for the preparations he had overseen. They wouldn’t be laughing now… if they were still alive. Chad had been right – his precautions had probably saved him and his family on that fateful day the ‘Affliction’ swept through his part of the world.

  “Anyhow, as the woman ran past the front of the truck, an older man opened his car door and ran at the two pursuers. He slammed his shoulder into the closest one and drove him into the second one. All three of them went down on the blacktop. One of the blood-covered crazies scrambled to his feet and began clawing at the guy who tackled them, literally trying to tear him apart. It was fucking gruesome. Both of the crazies ripped the guy to pieces with just their hands and teeth. Even above the V8 of my truck, I could hear his screams. They went on and on…”

  “You didn’t stop?”

  Chad shook his head. “Cars were pushing through the intersection. I punched the peddle to the floor and went up the sidewalk to get around slow traffic. My hands were sweating – not with fear, but certainly with panic. I knew I had to get to Colton.”

  “How far away were you from the school at that time?”

  “Just a few minutes,” Chad said. “I was steering with one hand, holding the Glock in the other. I pulled onto Harmony Grove Road. It’s a long, straight stretch with beautiful homes on either side – like the houses you used to see in the TV commercials or movies. All the houses have swimming pools, manicured gardens, high gates across their driveways… you know the kind of places I am talking about, right?”

  I nodded. I could imagine the kind of street Chad was describing.

  “Well their luxurious lifestyle went to hell in a hurry,” he said grimly. “I pulled onto the street doing eighty in a thirty-five zone… and drove into a war zone. Bodies were lying on the lawns with hunched figures crouching on top of them, their heads buried in open chest wounds like fucking turkey buzzards picking at road kill. People were running, screaming in all directions. Houses were on fire, cars were boiling black smoke. The corpses were piled up in the gutters, and the tarmac was awash with blood. I drove through it all, praying Colton was safe, praying I would be able to grab him quickly and get back home. One of the ‘Afflicted’ made the mistake of coming at me in the truck. His eyes were wild with madness, blood dripping from his chin and his hands. I shot him in the face through the open driver’s side window.”

  “Tell me more about the school,” I urged Chad. “What was the scene like when you arrived?”

  “It was chaos,” he confessed, and for a moment his tone and the look in his eyes became reflective. “The road was choked with the cars of other parents who were trying to do exactly the same thing I was doing. There was nowhere to park so I just reversed the truck until it was facing the way I had come and put it up onto the sidewalk. I wanted to get away quickly. It was three miles to our home from the school… but the route was back the way I had arrived – through the horror and the madness.”

  “You found Colton?”

  “Not easily. The school was in fucking lock down!” Chad swore and shook his head. “Parents were waiting at the doors but there was no one on the inside of the building to let the kids out. Every single god-damned door was locked. I went around the school with the Glock raised at eye level and checked them all. I turned to go back the way I had come and then noticed an open class room window. I didn’t hesitate.”

  “What did you find when you got inside the building?”

  “I could hear cries and screams from the children. The school only teaches kids up until the fifth grade, so you could imagine the
fear and panic. I followed the sound down an abandoned hallway towards the gym. By then there were other parents with me, calling out hysterically for their kids, running frantic with their own fear.”

  “Were all the students being kept in the gymnasium? Is that normal practice?”

  “Nothing was normal about that day, Mr. Culver,” Chad said pointedly. “But, yeah. All the kids were being detained in the gym, along with the teachers. We ran towards the doors in a group. Then suddenly something came snarling from out of the school’s main office. It had been a man, but now it was something else. It only had one arm and there was a hole ripped through its chest. It came out into the hallway dripping blood. Its eyes were yellow, and some of the flesh had been ripped from its face. It saw us. It raised its head and screamed at the ceiling. Blood spewed from its mouth and dripped from its lips. It lunged for one of the mothers running alongside me. I threw up the Glock and fired a snap shot. The bullet ripped through the thing’s left shoulder… and nothing happened. It didn’t go down. It didn’t even seem to register the impact. I went cold with shock. I fired again, hitting it in the chest. The fucking thing swayed, but stayed on its feet. It started to go into a kind of crouch like it was about to pounce. I took aim and fired a third shot. I hit it right between the eyes. It went over backwards and didn’t move again.”

  “Were there any more of the ‘Afflicted’ between you and the gymnasium?”

  “Not that I saw,” Chad muttered. “The gym door opened and two teachers emerged, both of the men white faced with fear. I grabbed the first one by the collar of his shirt and shouted into his face, demanding to know where Colton was.”

  “And…?”

  “He was there,” Chad’s face lit up with relief in the re-telling, his emotions still riding the roller-coaster of the day that changed America forever. “He came to me, tears welling in his eyes. I guess there were tears in mine too. The relief… you know?”

  I nodded. Chad’s smile trembled for just a second. “He calls me ‘Bug’. It’s the nickname he’s given me. He still uses it to this day…”