Apocalypse Chronicles (Book 1): SunDown, Part 1

by K. , T. Dawn.

  Contents

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Vision of What Was

  PROLOGUE

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  About the Author

  "We don't start off caring. It's what happens to us, and around us, that brings us to fight for change. We are a basic species led by instinct. It takes an uncommon individual to prove we are capable of more."

  -T. Dawn K.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  To all those that nagged and complained about me taking too long to write this book. To those who read every word of my rough drafts with excitement, and to those that believed. This is for you. Especially Ria, Dakota, Ed, Eric, Dexter, Tracy, and Brandon. Very real people who became very real characters. Here’s to the start of our journey.

  Vision of What Was

  I remember the glory days. Bike rides, balls out, no brakes. Mickey Mouse sweaters. Marley singing just for me when things got real bad. Ha. Bad. If only I knew. I even remember back far enough to cartoons after school, followed with a snack, courtesy of Mom.

  Mom. I remember her.

  Especially after she changed. I remember her pain, the blood, the screaming. Being terrified for her and of her. I remember her voice. More so, her last words to me.

  "For the love of God, DON'T LEAVE ME!"

  She was so desperate. I still don't know how I could leave her there. Just walked calmly away. Never looked back. Didn't shed a tear. Not a damn tear. I sometimes think that’s my curse. Survival. Soaked with guilt, survival.

  But I strain to remember a day when something as petty as the sunrise meant more to me. A more desperate moment than the one strewn before me. It's a struggle to remember anything else before the daily fight to go on and the constant quake of fear in my chest.

  There's no emotion in the world after the end. Grief, love, longing...happiness. Nothing. Nothing but pure instinct. Some of the relatives, those who chose to live in communities, felt that there was no point in survival if surviving alone.

  My viewpoint? Don't care. You'll survive longer than those who tried to hold on to the past. Longer than those who kept family close.

  Then there's the roadies. Those on their own side of everything. Loners against the world all on their own. Most between the ages of thirty-five and forty.

  Most of us watched our families die, some of us were the ones who took them out. Most roadies lived day to day just for the sake of living. But most roadies don't have my mission.

  I know where SunDown started. SunDown, our outbreak you may say, started with love. And so damn much, it turned a man into a sick kind of selfish. Twisted-sick, man eat man, selfish...

  PROLOGUE

  An Understanding

  GERMANY MAY 7TH 1987

  A young boy lay quietly under the shade of a tree watching birds fight in the sky. They swooped at each other pecking violently into each other’s eyes. He watched closely trying to predict which bird would win. He heard his mother calling to him, but couldn’t be bothered while he was waiting patiently for the end result.

  “Didn’t you hear me calling you?”

  “Yes Mum, I’m watching the birds.” His mother looked to the sky shielding her eyes from the sun.

  “Seems one isn’t welcoming the other doesn’t it?”

  “Why don’t they just share the sky? It’s big enough for all the birds.”

  “Yes I suppose so. Sadly you’ll find that God’s entire kingdom is filled with creatures who would think they belong here first. It’s simply in their nature.”

  “I think that’s mighty selfish Mum.”

  “And I love you for that. Come now, it’s time for school.”

  “Yes Mum.” Just as the boy began to stand a loud squawk erupted from the sky, one of the birds dropping by his side. He began to approach it.

  “No son, you have to leave it.”

  “But, he’s hurt. Can’t we help him?”

  “If he is meant to live, then he will.” They watched in silence for a few moments as the feathered thing went still and its eyes glossed over.

  “Can we bury him?”

  “Well he’s part of nature’s cycle and his duty now is to commit his body back into it. He will be a meal for others, keeping them strong. It’s not a sad thing. It’s quite beautiful actually.” The adoring mother looked into her son’s eyes conveying to him the reality of the situation.

  “Okay Mum. I believe you. I’m ready for school now.” The boy took his pack and slung it over his shoulder trudging down the path. “Sleep now pretty bird. You don’t have to be scared.” He thought about life and death all the way to school.

  The boy entered his classroom taking his seat. First to do so, as usual. He took his extra time to approach the teacher’s desk.

  “I saw a bird die.”

  “Good morning. You did? When?”

  “Just this morning, before school at my house. He was fighting with another bird in the sky. Mum said it’s not sad when things die because then they become food for something else.”

  “Yes I suppose in a sense that’s true. Did you want to be sad?’

  “No one wants to be sad. It didn’t make me happy though. I guess I just don’t want to think about how everything goes away. Someday we won’t be here.”

  At just seven years old he managed to baffle his teacher everyday with his intellect. He was a very sensitive and aware boy for his age and his questions were ongoing. To know that a person so small could think so big had always given her hope.

  “Well, we won’t all just go away.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I like to think we just…go. Out, up, on. We just become something better. Go someplace better. Your Mum is right, death is not a sad thing. It might be scary but certainly not sad.”

  “Do you think there will ever be a way to stop it, to keep people from dying?”

  “Well, I have to say I hope not. Life would lose its luster if it went on forever don’t you think? People would become very unhappy. Like Dracula.”

  “He’s a vampire. I wouldn’t be happy if I had to drink blood either.” The boy wrinkled his nose and his teacher chuckled as the bell rang, sending him to his seat.

  It would seem a most unpleasant story, would start with a pleasant childhood.

  Seven Years Later

  GERMANY JULY 12TH 1994

  "Kriv! You can't do this to me anymore! I feel terrible danger! Please! You're going to kill us both! Lose us both. Please, my boy. YOU MUST LET ME SAY GOODBYE TO MY BOY!"

  Adala plead with her deranged husband. He'd had her restrained in the basement of their home for days. Maybe weeks, it had become hard to keep track some time ago. He'd been injecting her with different serums, all of which lit her veins with fire.

  At first he told her they were mere vaccines for their son's extremely contagious illness, which he had been ailed with since the prior year. It was a rare sickness dormant in the blood of wolves called Lyconvicrosis. Their son worked as an apprentice for a local hunter and often pelted and carved wolves for novelty taxidermy.

  Blood exposure was where it was contracted. It was incurable and it worked too quickly and changed to often for doctors to work on any kind of remedy. Human carriers were common, but humans exhibiting symptoms was not. The numbers were too low for anyone to be concerned. When Kriv was sent home from the facilit
y he worked at for unapproved trials, she discovered not only that her son wasn't contagious at all, but that her husband was using her as a test subject.

  It was when she fell gravely ill and checked herself into the local hospital that she discovered just what he'd been doing. Doctors had been over it with him time and time again. Giving him one last chance to show sanity after accusing him of trying to kill his wife.

  He had sworn to spend his sons last days with him. They told him he wouldn't have much longer and he would need his parents. He plead with his wife for her forgiveness and explained he was only trying to save his son that he had never intended to make her so ill.

  If he had known just how sick he was making her he would have ended his trials. It was only then, that she agreed to return home with her husband. Though doctors and police were wary of it, he was her husband. Of course he would never bring her harm. Yeah, right.

  It was all a charade. They arrived home the following week after the hospital deemed her fit to return. She rushed through the door to her son's room ready to shower him with kisses. She was stunned to find herself standing in an empty room.

  Kriv led her to the basement muttering something about the lighting in his room affecting his sleep. She was extremely confused, even more so when she noticed the second bed in the middle of the large room. Next to it, an IV bag and restraints. Her husband refused to give in. He refused to let his son go even if it meant watching his wife die.

  She was snapped back to the present by her husband’s voice. "Adala, my love. Calm yourself. This is for my son, our son. Would you be so cruel as to let him die?"

  "YOU'RE MAD! HE'S GONE, YOU KNOW IT!"

  "NO!" Kriv screamed into his wife’s fearful face. Her reluctance only drove him further into chaos. Reason left his train of thought long ago. He grabbed her frail chin with an angry pinch, "My son will be with me to the end of my days. If it must be without you, so be it. I will do nothing less than everything to bring him back."

  "MURDER! You're talking about murder." Adala pulled herself from his grasp.

  "I'm talking about sacrifice Adala. For the sake of a child. Do your best to remember your duties as a mother. And a wife."

  "No mother nor wife would stand by a madman willing to destroy his family for a lost cause."

  "LOST?! He's here! He breathes! He dreams! Your son, my son, endures because he wants to live! Would you call him lost when I've come so close to his cure? I've done-"

  "NOTHING! You've done nothing, but show this world a true monster. A living breathing one not of shadows. You've become a true darkness." Adala spit her words with hatred at the man she'd once adored.

  Now all she wanted to do was see him dead. She thrashed against her restraints with all her strength screaming in pain when her ill-nourished body gave way to the leather belting, bones breaking.

  "You've done THIS! Kill me! Or...with the power...behind the heavens...I will strike you...down." She gave a weak threat.

  She was breathing erratically, barely getting her words out. Saliva ran down her neck, her body burned with all the rage of the sun. Her eyes gleamed red, she could feel blood cascade from them. She stiffened, ready for the end.

  "No. Not tonight, love. It will pass." Kriv quickly administered a dose of some clear liquid into her now protruding veins. "You will aid in our sons recovery no matter your tactics. Throwing yourself into this fit will not deter me."

  "Let it...haunt...you." Adala released the words with her last breath. Her very last. She fell silent and still. Deathly still. Her slitted eyes falling on her son so peacefully asleep across the room. Without a smile. Without closure. She was gone.

  "Adala. Come now. Open your eyes.” Kriv Wrenched his wife’s face to his looking to her eyes for any sign of recognition. Anger faded to panic.

  "Adala?" Kriv pouted in a child-like voice. Panic transforming into dread. To guilt. Moments of silence passed burning through his cloud of insanity. Tears streaming down his face Kriv cursed her, screaming incoherently to her pleading for her return.

  "I've done it. I've killed you."

  He scanned her body with hazy vision. Seeing for the first time her bone thin stature. Her toes blue, leading to sharp shins, meeting the large knobs of her knees. Her hips protruding through her nightdress.

  Her ribs concaving where the straps held them. Her fragile arms running to her broken wrists. Her fingers lifeless. His eyes fell to her left hand. Grabbing it to examine her ring finger.

  "NO! It's not you." He ripped the ring from her finger dashing it into the dark room. "Not you. Not you. You're not my wife! Who are you? Who am I? What have I done?" He threw himself from her.

  His instability began creeping back in. He spun grasping around him for nothing in particular. In a last ditch effort he placed his hands on her sternum. Counting and rhythmically pressing into her chest. Breathing into her, cursing his madness. Minutes passed. Hours. Days. He didn't know.

  With hands fisted he stepped away from his wife. Her nightdress nearly worn through where his hands had been. My murderous hands, he thought as he looked at them, nothing good would ever come of them. Of him.

  He closed her eyes, loosened her restraints and straightened her gown. He placed her palms against her chest covering her mournfully with a sheet. Drawing a deep breath he stepped away.

  He silently ascended the stairs. Saying nothing to his son as he always did when leaving his presence. How could he say anything to him? Foul his innocence with lies?

  He couldn't save him. It was no kind of love that drove him. After all he loved his wife. And because of him she was gone. He was no husband. No father. She had been right. He was nothing but a monster.

  Forcing his way through the aging basement door he nearly fell to the ground catching himself on a small table outside the door. Memories of where it came from flooding him.

  He had made it for his wife, from their son's crib so that she could have a piece of his infancy forever. He had done this when they discovered he would be the only child they would ever have out of the many they both dreamed of.

  He collapsed onto his knees and sank to the floor. He lay sobbing until nothing more came. Until his body would produce nothing more than a shallow breath.

  His eyes blurred and his body ached. He hadn't slept or even rested in days. He hadn't eaten. Hadn't bathed.

  There was nothing else to live for, his son was gone. He knew that. Finally accepted it. He grew angry that it had taken his wife, his love, his Adala, for him to see it. He reclused into his despair. Letting his exhaustion take hold of him, he screamed her name and fell into the 'true darkness' he had become.

  "Mr. Dlou! This is Officer Fischer, please come to the door."

  Three officers had been at the front door for several moments with no response from inside. Doctors had become concerned when the wife of the home hadn't been in for check-ups after her visit. Given the strange circumstances of her being there in the first place, when her husband always answered to say she was out or too busy to come to the phone, they felt it necessary to bring it to the attention of police.

  Leaving the others at the front, Officer Fischer made his way around to the back of the home. The family car in the driveway was blocked in by a tree that had fallen. Undisturbed probably since the storm three nights prior. All the windows were closed and locked when he attempted to open them, all the shades drawn. He rounded the rear corner of the house to the back door.

  "Mr. and Mrs. Dlou! Police, come to the door." He pounded on the back door a little more hastily.

  He began to tell the other officers there was no answer, when he noticed through a small part in the curtain, that the door was boarded and bloody. He tried to see better through the curtain.

  "The door has been boarded from inside." A moment of silence was followed by Officer Banks and Kohler joining him at the back door.

  "The front door as well." Banks said.

  “Let’s get it open then.” Fischer said as he stepped bac
k and kicked the door.

  Banks assisted while Officer Kohler radioed for medical assistance. The sound of their feet against the wood echoed in the country emptiness. Fischer yelled for the occupants.

  "Hello! Mr. Dlou! Mrs. Dlou! We're coming in!" The door finally gave with his last statement.

  A wave of stench like none they'd ever met crashed into them. Kohler wretched the contents of his stomach into the damp yard. Banks pushed past Fischer with his flashlight blazing into the darkness and his gun drawn.

  Fischer looked over the scene that Banks had passed. Blood. Too much blood, smeared all over. He turned to the door with his own torch to see where the boards had been clawed at. Someone had tried to get out.

  "My God." Banks' voice carried in from the hallway just past the kitchen where they had entered.

  Falling into step behind him, Fischer gaped at door in the hall. Boards, locks, tape. The door had been all but walled over.

  "What the hell happened here?" Banks said.

  Their focus was pulled down the hall when they heard floorboards creak upstairs, followed by slow dragging steps nearing the stairs. They approached slowly as a figure came down stopping half way.

  "Ad-Adala?" Mr. Dlou's slurred voice broke the silence.

  "It's the police Mr. Dlou. I'm Officer Banks. Where is your wife? Didn't you hear us calling for you? Hear us at the door?"

  "No. NO! Leave us! You must leave us!" Kriv shouted in a panicked voice running down the stairs and stopping just beyond the shadows of the evening drawing nearer.

  "Mr. Dlou, have you done something to Adala? Where is your son?" Fischer asked as both officers raised their guns and aimed for the darkness.

  "In her. Nothing’s sense. We have died since then. You see?" Kriv was panting his words shaking and stomping. "And so shall you." His last words were delivered with a cold laugh.