Fear of God (Trials of Strength Book 1)

by Matthew Bell, Jr

  ‘You were told to stand guard, not shoot the guy as soon as he woke up!’ Anna exclaimed.

  I couldn’t help but stare at the back of her head incredulous, why wasn’t she getting out of the way? I wanted to scream at her that the men held guns, but no doubt she knew, but why take the risk? I was about to ask when I realised that then they would be trained back at me.

  Oh, she’s protecting me.

  Thoughts were hard to form, and each time I tried it sent pricks of pain batting around my skull. She did understand they had guns, right?

  ‘Back down, Paul,’ Anna challenged, her voice trembled with fury.

  The man named Paul stood defiant, he looked half mad. Spit had continued to slide down his chin from his snarl, and I noticed his arm wasn’t too steady either. I laughed at his face, realised it wasn’t funny, laughed again. Eventually he licked his lips and slowly dropped his arm.

  ‘Ask him then!’ he shouted, his lackeys jumped at his side.

  Anna turned slowly, her face red with anger, but her expression softened when her eyes met mine.

  ‘Hey, hey,’ she whispered, her hand tugged at my chin. ‘Look at me, don’t look at them.’

  I did as she asked.

  ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Now, can you tell us your name?’

  I just stared. For a second I started shaking my head, but the men behind Anna bristled and stepped forward. She hit them with a look and they retreated, but not far.

  ‘Please, no one is gonna hurt you, but I need your name, please?’ she pleaded, her face desperate.

  ‘Lucas,’ I managed, ‘Bishop, Lucas Bishop.’

  Anna’s face relaxed and the men behind her smiled, apart from Paul. He stood there and stared, the snarl that didn’t seem to be leaving his face weighed down on me. Eventually he walked away, the men at his side followed. What the hell was that all about?

  ‘You need to rest, Lucas,’ Anna said, breaking my thoughts. ‘You’ll be safe, I promise.’

  ‘My head…’ I gasped, my hand tried to reach it.

  It didn’t hurt so much, but a strange feeling drifted through it.

  ‘No, here, lie down,’ she said, grabbing my hand gently in the air, and pushing on my shoulders. ‘You hurt it pretty good before, the doc gave you some sort of painkiller, so expect some light-headedness.’

  I was already ahead of her, I didn’t know when it had started, but the room tilted. I lay back down on the hard floor, and Anna sat close by. I think I began to scare her with my unwavering gaze as she smiled and crinkled her forehead in question.

  ‘What’s, um, wha-’ I groaned, the pain was distant, but fighting to speak was hard. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Later,’ she said, ‘sleep for now, get your energy back. You’ll need it.’

  My eyes flashed to Paul at the far side of the room. Anna followed my gaze.

  ‘Don’t worry about him, we got a name out of you, so you’re safe for now, I promise,’ she whispered, bending down. ‘I’m not going to let that backwards arse do anything, okay? Just rest, I got you.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘You’re an angel.’

  She laughed. ‘No, just Anna, but I’ll do my best.’

  I believed her, and fell asleep.

  *

  When I opened my eyes again, I felt better. Physically I was worse, the drugs having run their course, but clearer headed and alert. I no longer had to struggle, at least until I tried to sit up.

  ‘Whoa,’ I said as the room spun. ‘That’s not good.’

  ‘Feel any better?’ Anna’s voice came from a few feet away. She sat on the floor with her back against a wall.

  ‘I feel like I’ve been thrown from a rooftop into oncoming traffic,’ I replied, waiting for the pounding in my head to subside. ‘You?’

  ‘Been better,’ she said.

  I looked at her, she was pale and haggard, but her electric-blue eyes were wide and alert. I moved my gaze around the room. It wasn’t small, but the dense pack of people crowded around made it shrink. Pipes ran along the sandy-coloured walls, twisting up and down, or continuing straight through. The ground was cold and dirty concrete, but otherwise the room was completely unremarkable, and I had no idea where we were.

  ‘Underground,’ Anna said, as if reading my mind. ‘We’re underground.’

  ‘Underground?’ I echoed and turned to face her.

  She reached up and shifted her dark red hair from her eyes. I couldn’t help but notice she had a small nose, and a Cupid’s bow mouth.

  ‘Well, underground the underground, if that makes any sense,’ she sighed. ‘I don’t know for sure, but after the attack, Chris brought us here, deep underground, beneath the sewage and plumbing for the town.’

  I looked back at the pipes and wondered what they were for when I was suddenly aware of what she’d said.

  ‘Attack?’ I asked.

  The iron bars were still there in my mind, rejected memories, but I knew soon I would have to let them in.

  Anna stared at me, her face blank as she started.

  ‘Others are saying it’s the apocalypse, and even less have convinced themselves none of it happened, but won’t leave to test it out,’ she said. ‘Whether the world or not, one thing’s for sure, our town is gone.’

  For a second I couldn’t speak. A chill had climbed up my spine, and my stomach dropped. I was about to call her bluff, laugh and say this was a terrible joke and if my mother had set it up, I was more than prepared to return it one day. But the thought of my mother brought down the bars and the day’s events flashed through my mind. From my father’s heart attack, my mother on the floor, being attacked and then being attacked again. I knew she wasn’t lying.

  ‘How?’ I whispered.

  Anna looked away. Her eyes stared at the floor, and I gave her some time. Her face had changed, she looked like a child, lost and scared. I blinked and it vanished. She took a deep breath and tried her best to explain.

  ‘Honestly, I don’t know,’ she said. ‘One minute I’m sitting with my Dad, the next…’

  She stared off into the distance, and her head shook from side to side.

  ‘Anna?’ I said.

  ‘Uh,’ she coughed and swallowed. ‘Sorry.’

  I trembled. Part of me wanted to run, needed to run. It wasn’t true if it wasn’t spoken. It wasn’t. And then Anna told me the story of how our worlds had been shattered, and reality, broken.

  ‘I was sitting with my Dad when it happened. What caused it? I don’t know. But one minute my Mum’s laughing and joking and making dinner,’ Anna said, her voice becoming like ice as she continued. ‘Then she was smashing my Dad’s skull in with a hammer.’

  ‘What?’ I gasped.

  ‘There was so much blood, so much screaming. I-I-I thought it was me but…’ she whispered, her head back to shaking. ‘But it was her, no, no not her. That wasn’t my mother. It was screaming.’

  I thought of Mr Williams and the mounds of dead that surrounded him.

  Anna’s eyes became misty and she rubbed at them lightly, staunching the tears before they began.

  ‘What, what do you mean?’ I whispered.

  She stood up and stretched, her face returned to its stillness. She looked down and finished her tale.

  ‘I don’t know why or how, I’m not entirely sure when, but we’ve been down here for as long as you’ve been out. 24 hours roughly,’ she said. ‘People aren’t themselves anymore, Lucas. Families are killing each other. Friends killing neighbours, neighbours killing strangers, it doesn’t matter. They just kill.’

  ‘Why?’ I whispered. But she just shook her head, so I changed my question. ‘What about my welcome party?’

  ‘We had to make sure you weren’t one of them, those monsters don’t seem too keen to stop and chat let alone give you their name, that’s if they can even speak anymore,’ Anna said and crinkled her forehead. ‘I have no idea of anything. I just know you haven’t tried to kill us, so.’

  My heart pounded aga
inst my chest, and I wondered if it would ever return to normal. The same question repeatedly rolled through my head.

  What the hell is going on?

  ‘So, Paul and his gang’s screaming fiasco?’ I asked, determined to keep the conversation going; determined not to dwell too deeply on what was happening above us.

  Anna narrowed her eyes and shot a disgusted look over at the men in question. Paul stood under the arch of what looked like a doorway, but rough around the edges and without any door. His jet-black hair was dishevelled, and his muddy-brown eyes stared out into the darkness of a hallway. The snarl on his face was still there, as if it could keep the things in the darkness from coming in.

  ‘I’m sorry you woke to that, that man,’ she spat the words out with angry venom. ‘He’s never been the nicest of guys, quick temper and zero compassion. Why Chris left him with a gun to guard, I don’t know. He’s more likely to kill us if we breathe funny rather than protect us.’

  I noticed she’d used that name before.

  ‘Who’s Chris?’ I asked.

  Before she could answer, a metallic clang echoed throughout the room. A few screamed, and some of the group tried to move away, even when they had reached the walls and pipes.

  Paul manoeuvred him and his men into place on the opening he stood at. The noise was hard to pinpoint, but it wasn’t loud enough to have come from the room we were in. Again I noticed how the men’s arms shook as they raised their guns.

  These men have never fired a weapon like that before, and if they have, never at a living person.

  Everyone stopped breathing, their eyes and ears locked into darkness.

  Anna and I pressed against the wall opposite, eyes wide as we stared across the room. I didn’t notice at first, but then someone screamed, and like dominos, the rest of us. No one had bothered to man the archway at our end, another doorway leading into another hall. It was that hole in the wall that a man came through.

  Paul turned and fired.

  The Call

  Everything slowed. Screams clung to the air, my own included. Paul’s face was full of rage and some twisted determination that contorted his expression, his gun aimed in the general area where Anna and I stood. The cries were cut off by a loud explosion of gunfire. Anna smacked into my side and dragged me to the floor as the bullet hit a pipe and ricocheted back into the room, luckily avoiding everyone.

  The man who had entered the room was fast. He ducked and rolled, his hand reached to the back of his trousers and pulled out a handgun similar to those that were being fired. He aimed it at Paul and started screaming. I couldn’t put the words together at first, my head pounded and my ears rung, but while the man sounded angry, his voice was calm and cool.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing!?’ the stranger shouted, his voice finally coming through. ‘Put the gun down or so help me God!’

  Paul just looked stunned, his bravado and snarl replaced with a sort of angry shock. His arm didn’t drop, and his finger remained on the trigger of the gun. The two men on either side of him had lowered their weapons, and their voices were shrill as they tried to defuse a reddening Paul.

  ‘Paul,’ the stranger said. ‘Put down the gun. It’s alright, no one got hurt, okay?’

  I checked Paul’s face again and placed the stray emotion on it. Not only was there surprise, but also guilt. For a man I assumed had never shot a gun, he’d just opened fire on a live, breathing person.

  For a few minutes no one moved. I’d never experienced anything like it, and I could feel my mind trying to pull inside itself, shut out the world rather than face it. The fear was palpable, but finally, Paul lowered his arm and sat down. The man relaxed too, and shook his head.

  ‘If I knew you were going to be so trigger happy, I would never have left you with a gun,’ he said, but by the looks on the faces of those around us, it didn’t look like he had had anyone else he could have asked.

  Anna sat up, and I was vaguely aware of her asking if I was alright.

  ‘No, no. I am not alright,’ I said. ‘That doesn’t happen. That, this, whatever’s…’

  Anna moved closer and took my hand, telling me to breathe in and out. Her voice was calm and strong, and I wondered how she did it.

  ‘I brought some food and water,’ the man said. ‘But I couldn’t find any other survivors, just more bodies.’

  He said it so matter of fact, like an everyday occurrence, but some of the room broke into tears. The rest of their family and friends were out there, my family was out there. At that remembrance I shot up and swayed, the world shook while a fresh pain erupted in my head. Anna looked up at me, surprised.

  ‘Anna, I need to go. I need to get my Mum and Dad,’ I said quickly. ‘My Dad, he had a heart attack and my Mum, she, I have to go.’

  I couldn’t move though. The world up top had changed and fear held me prisoner.

  ‘Lucas,’ Anna whispered sympathetically as she stood, ‘you can’t.’

  I shook my head. ‘I have to, my family.’

  A few other people had stepped up too, their faces and voices directed at the man who had brought food. They were echoing my statements, voices frantic and rising, becoming a flurry of panic. Chris, one of them said, the man Anna had mentioned.

  He waved his hand in dismissal though, and the voices grew louder, angrier, people desperate to find their missing members.

  ‘Look,’ Chris shouted above the noise, and everyone quieted, ‘I understand your frustration. But we cannot mount some rescue operation. It’s too dangerous.’

  He turned slowly, his face blank, but commanding; a man used to leading.

  ‘I won’t sugar-coat it for you. The people you want to search for now fall into two different categories: Dead, or one of them.’

  Cries filled the air, but he hushed them.

  ‘What we do now is simple. We can’t survive a search out there. We can’t do much of anything. What we can do is get out while this is still fresh. We need help, and that’s what we are going to do. Escape, and bring it back,’ he said. ‘We leave first thing in the morning.’

  After a while of pleading and crying, everything died down. Fear at going into the unknown alone had won, and all of us were left with a crippling case of guilt. Should I search for my family alone?

  I’m too afraid. They would search for me, but I’m too much of a coward.

  I sat next to Anna as she brought over some food and a bottle of water. I ate and drank without relish, even though I’d been unconscious for almost a day. Once the food was done, a man in his early fifties wandered over, leaving what looked like his wife and child a few feet away.

  ‘How are you?’ he asked. His eyes lingered on my head.

  He had a warm, kind face, and milky-brown eyes. His hair was the colour of ash, and laugh lines wrinkled around his mouth and forehead. His glasses reflected the low hanging lights above, and Anna smiled up at him.

  ‘Lucas, this is Dr Harris, he patched you up when Chris brought you down,’ she said.

  ‘Please, Anna, it’s Terry. Now young man, let me see that head of yours,’ Terry smiled.

  He knelt next to me and started removing the bandages I hadn’t even noticed were on my head. They came away slightly bloody, and Terry started probing around a throbbing lump.

  ‘How does it feel?’ he asked.

  ‘Painful,’ I muttered through clenched teeth. ‘But not as bad as the headache.’

  He nodded, apparently happy, and started wrapping the fresh bandages in his hands in place of the old.

  ‘You hit it pretty hard, but, you’re awake and mobile. Maybe a concussion, so I’ll keep an eye on you, but hopefully you should be fine,’ he said, finished with his task. ‘It’s the best I can do under the circumstances, although I’m all out of painkillers. I was only able to grab so much.’

  ‘No, it’s alright, thank you,’ I said.

  He gave me a quick pat on the shoulder and stood up. For a second he looked conflicted.

  ‘I heard
about your family, I’m sorry,’ he whispered.

  I looked down at the floor, trying to quell the uprising emotions.

  ‘Do you know my Dad? He’s a surgeon at Greystone Hospital?’ I asked, hopeful.

  ‘No,’ he sighed. ‘I’m a… No, I was a GP at the local health centre. I didn’t work at the hospital.’

  He stepped back over to the two women and Anna gave my shoulder a squeeze.

  ‘Is that his family?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ Anna said. ‘That’s his wife Amelia, and their daughter, Hannah.’

  I nodded and sighed, part of me was happy for them, and another was jealous.

  ‘I’m sorry I panicked. I just don’t know what to do,’ I whispered. I could feel my voice break.

  ‘Don’t be,’ she said. ‘We’re all in this together. I’d be shocked if you didn’t panic.’

  ‘What about you?’ I asked. ‘You’re calm. How are you managing it?’

  ‘Hope,’ she answered.

  Is there hope?

  Anna turned her head to look over my shoulder. I followed her eyes and saw that they stared at Chris. An odd expression covered her face. Almost like gratitude, but equally suspicion.

  ‘You okay?’ I said.

  She turned back and smiled, ‘Yeah, I’m alright, just thinking.’

  ‘How did everyone get here?’ I asked when we’d fell silent.

  ‘Chris was running around town, looking for people who hadn’t changed, he brought us here,’ Anna replied.

  I looked back over at Chris. His face was scarred and wrinkled, making him seem a lot older than he could be. He moved too fast and precise. I ranged him at around mid-forties, his hair brown, but peppered with grey. His eyes were like dark pits, a brown that was almost black. His face was blank of any emotions, but his eyes gave away some. They crinkled at the sides and I could see the gears that no doubt turned in his head, thinking, planning.

  ‘I better go say hi,’ I told Anna. I stood and wiped the dust from my trousers. ‘Plus I owe him thanks.’

  Anna nodded and gave a weak smile. I made my way through the small group of people, noting the faces I passed. Most were full of terror, and others were blank, people who had given in to the desperate pull I’d felt earlier and had shut the world out. Others had their mobiles out, frantically trying to reach family members, but it didn’t look as if they were having much luck.