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Edition 1.1
ISBN: 9781719826563
Published 2018. Morristown, TN.
Copyright © 2018 Jaron McFall
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the legally binding copyright holder.
Please address all letters to:
Jaron McFall
P.O. Box 151
Russellville, TN 37860
For my wife, Allison.
You’ve kept me grounded for the past few years. I honestly don’t know how.
There’s no one I would rather be rooted with more.
Notes from the Author:
1. All of the characters in this book are fictional. Any similarities to real people or situations are merely coincidence.
2. Don’t forget to leave feedback on Amazon and social media. I appreciate any and all feedback (even negative feedback). It can only make my writing better.
Thank you for choosing this book!
PROLOGUE
Chapter One: A FEW DAYS EARLIER AND A SIMPLER LIFE
Chapter Two: SO IT’S NOT A DREAM
Chapter Three: NATIONAL OUTBREAK
Chapter Four: FEAR
Chapter Five: KNOW YOUR ENEMY
Chapter Six: CAPABLE
Chapter Seven: A GOOD PLAN
Chapter Eight: A COLD EXTERIOR
Chapter Nine: CONVERGENCE
Chapter Ten: ALONE
Chapter Eleven: A CUT TOO DEEP
Chapter Twelve: CEDRIC INFECTED?
Chapter Thirteen: DIPLOMACY
Chapter Fourteen: ENCHANTMENT
Chapter Fifteen: THE HOSPITAL
Chapter Sixteen: WHEN THE HAMMER DROPS
Chapter Seventeen: STORYTELLING AND DREAMWEAVING
Chapter Eighteen: EXPEDITION
EPILOGUE
The Living Saga - Book One:
SURVIVING
By: Jaron McFall
PROLOGUE
The tires of a Ford F-150 slid across the wet asphalt as the truck came to a sudden stop. A seventeen-year-old boy jumped out of the bed of the truck holding a steel pipe. The boy’s silhouette was outlined in the darkness by the moonlight. His fingers wrapped around the handle of a stout knife on his belt. He yanked it from its sheath. The cold autumn rain had soaked through his clothes and was making his entire body shiver. Goosebumps ran up his back and down his arms.
The boy ran to a metal door set into a brick wall and slid the knife in the crack just above the hasp of the door. He flicked down with the knife as he pulled on the knob. A sharp pop sounded as the hasp broke and the door swung open. He ran inside, the light strapped to his head shining down the side hallway of a mechanics shop. He took a glance around but didn't see anyone. The boy pulled a stick from his pocket and jammed it into the hole on the outer clasp of the door so it couldn’t be closed. He heard the tires of the truck squeal to announce that it was pulling away.
"First step," the boy whispered to himself as he slid the knife back into its sheath. Without wasting a second, the boy put the section of pipe in his mouth like a horse’s bit. He stuck his foot on the wall of the hallway and his other foot on the opposite side. He began pushing himself up the walls using the short width of the hallway to his advantage. When he had reached the top, he undid a hook from a belt loop which was connected to a piece of chain wrapped around his middle. He secured the hook around a thick electrical conduit that ran along the ceiling before he settled into a better position. He grasped his short steel pipe in his hand again. He felt his heart pounding in his chest. The boy took a deep breath, pounded the conduit with his pipe, and yelled, "Come out everyone!"
He paused. For a few seconds, he didn't hear anything. A small moan came next though. After that came what sounded like twenty drunken men running through the shop knocking tools and metal from the tables and shelves.
The boy let out a sigh as he whispered, "And that's step two."
Chapter One:
A FEW DAYS EARLIER AND A SIMPLER LIFE
On the fall equinox, at a small-town grocery store in Bean Station, Tennessee, a bagboy was taking groceries to a car as he listened all about Mrs. What's-her-name's problems. This was normal; apparently no one in a small town has anyone to gripe about their family to except the underpaid, underappreciated bagboys. They just don't get that we don't care. He thought as he loaded the bags into her trunk as a strong smell of cat urine overwhelmed him. But he nodded and replied with a smile that she was doing the right thing by sending her sister money. That’s all she wanted. Had Cedric told her, “No, tell your sister to get a job and dump her boyfriend,” he likely would have been in trouble. He didn’t know why the woman wanted validation from a high-school boy, but it was pretty normal here.
Situations like this happened nearly every day in this store. Normally the bagboys don't know what the customers are yipping about. Simply, it’s just because they don't listen, but sometimes there are good stories and conversations that strike up.
"He just bitter." Cedric overheard an old farmer say to his wife as he followed them to their car with an arm full of plastic bags. Another good old boy with bad grammar, he thought, great. At least his wife's talking to him and not me.
"Well is she ok?" This response from the farmer’s wife changed Cedric’s thoughts as he had originally assumed the farmer was trying to say that someone was bitter. Now Cedric understood he was saying ‘he just bit her.’ He began listening more. "I mean, how bad?" The wife asked.
"I don’t know. It happened in Houston.” The man took a pause to spit something juicy and brown on the pavement—chewing tobacco. “He went crazy they said. The law tried to arrest him, but he kept biting and clawing them. They shot him sixteen times before he stopped chasing them. They had it all over the news."
"What made him do it? Oh, thank you," the plump gray-haired woman said as she turned to the bagboy. He nodded and left. Cedric didn't hear much more of the conversation. The rest of the day went by fairly slow without much else to do. There were no more conversations worth listening to, and nothing of this supposed Houston biting. His shift ended at ten thirty, just after the store closed. Cedric didn't give the story any more thought before he changed clothes and went to bed.
The next morning Cedric got up and started his morning routine. He showered, combed his messy, dirty-blonde hair, and prepared for the day. Cedric flipped on the television to the local news to see what kind of weather the area would be having when he left school and went into work. Instead, he saw a breaking story stamp at the top. He turned up the volume to hear about the breaking news of the lockdown of the Houston area. Not only was the city on lockdown, but the entire surrounding suburbs and outlying cities. "How can they lockdown an entire county?" Cedric muttered through his Toaster Strudel as he watched the broadcast.
They talked about an epidemic that had hit the area of Houston and that police are now restricting all movement in and out of the city and surrounding area. They showed a map of Texas that had Houston in red and a twenty mile stretch in all directions in orange. There were another hundred miles or so in yellow. Cedric quickly lost interest. He flipped the channel until he found The Weather Channel and waited for the Local on the Eights to play. He saw that for the next two days he had sunshine just before he went out the door for school.
His first blo
ck was English. There was nothing exciting in this class today. Cedric knew all he needed to know about Edgar Allen Poe and foreshadowing dark events, so he decided a nap was in order. Even though Cedric was a pretty tall guy, about six foot, he could still get comfortable enough in a school desk to fall asleep. After first block, there was activity period where they spent thirty minutes goofing off doing different activities: basically, recess for high schoolers. His activity period was Movie Appreciation. They were watching Gone with the Wind.
Had Cedric not already seen this movie about ten times before, he probably would have watched it, as he loved nearly every genre of movie. Since he had, though, he decided another nap was in order. Second block was definitely not a nap-worthy class though, as it was his agricultural mechanics shop class.
Welding, cutting, rebuilding engines, laying block, learning plumbing skills, and just about everything else you need to know while running a farm you could learn in this shop. Cedric’s dream was to have a family farm, so this was right up his ally. This was also in a separate building from the rest of the school, so that made it even better. He was only in the main part of the school for about two hours, as his third block class was in the vocational building as well: greenhouse. He didn't have a fourth block since he had a work permit that got him out of school early every day.
When Cedric got home, he quietly slipped inside and got a couple of granola bars and a Mountain Dew before he went to his bedroom and changed. His mom worked graveyard shifts so he barely saw her since she was asleep when he got home from school, and by the time he got home from work she was gone to work again. He also left for school before she got home, but they normally waved at each other in passing when they were driving as she worked close to Cedric’s school.
Cedric changed out of his FFA t-shirt and threw on his blue work polo. He left his dirty t-shirt crumpled next to his bed. After he grabbed his keys, Cedric left the house and drove the ten minutes to work. He had to park in the church parking lot next door because the employee parking around back was full. Every single parking space the store had was filled, and there wasn’t a single unattended shopping cart left.
Everyone had their shopping carts filled with water and canned food. The only times Cedric had seen things like this was when the weatherman predicted over a foot of snow, but never on a sunny fall day like today. It was still sixty degrees outside and winter was a couple months away—not like East Tennessee had much snow anyway. The mountains, despite their beauty, funneled every bit of snow away. Cedric clocked in for work and started bagging groceries when he started hearing talk about the Houston epidemic. Apparently, it was spreading and it was something bad.
In one day, over one hundred fifty people were confirmed dead. There were also over two hundred more people confirmed contaminated and fifty more that were suspected of contamination had disappeared altogether. No one knew what was going on and the police were shutting down news broadcasters. CNN was saying that there was a possibility that it could be a biological terrorist attack. Cedric heard a lot of different rumors floating around about it. Most contradicted someone else’s, so not knowing which ones were right, he started to ignore it all.
This has to be something that someone has blown out of proportion, Cedric thought. More thoughts like this one kept going through his mind the rest of the day as he kept hearing the stories grow larger and worse. By closing time, the stories were that a terrorist group, or maybe North Korea, had developed a contagion that they set loose. Cedric wasn’t buying it.
As always, his shift ended at ten thirty and he drove home. Cedric was so tired that he didn't bother trying to catch up on the news before he headed to bed. The next morning, he woke with his normal routine of hitting the snooze button way too many times, taking a shower, and turning on the news to catch the weather. But instead of the weather, there was the same breaking news as yesterday, only worse. The outbreak in Houston was now the outbreak of Texas and the orange area contained parts of Louisiana, New Mexico, Arkansas, and Oklahoma. The rest of the four states were in yellow; including the bottom half of Colorado and Kansas.
Cedric also noticed that the bottom of the screen was scrolling a list of all the schools in Northeast Tennessee as closed. Apparently, most states had declared a ‘State of Emergency’ in case of a biological attack. The broadcast cut to commercial just moments after his school district, Hawkins County, had scrolled across. He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and texted a teacher’s son he knew to ask if school really had closed. He received his reply while he was getting his breakfast from the cabinet, “Yeah. Worse than the TV says. Dad won’t say more.”
"Well, that’s great. What the heck is going on," Cedric said to himself through a mouth full of granola. The thing that bothered him the most was his friend's dad worked for a division of TBI, so he probably knew more than what the news was telling everyone.
Since Cedric didn't have school now, he went back to his room to lie down, but before he even got his shoes off his feet his phone rang with the theme song for the Grinch, a ringtone that announced his mother was calling. "Hey Mom, School was can..."
He was cut short by his mom saying, "Ced, pack your bag with some clothes. Get food from the cabinets and fill up your trunk. We have to go to your brother’s house. I will explain more when I get there. Love you," and she hung up. He knew the no-nonsense tone she was using, so he did as instructed. It was the same tone she used when he was younger and his brother broke his arm on the playground. Cedric could hear the panic in her voice, how she was trying to stay calm, and the rush in her words because of it.
By this point, Cedric really was getting a knot in his stomach. He started getting his things together and filling his car like his mother said. After the trunk of his Cavalier was filled with all dry goods and his clothes, he began getting his laptop, camera, and items of that nature loaded up. He wasn't sure how long they were going to be there, or even why. But he thought he, at least, wouldn't be bored. When he had just loaded up his last bag, his mother was pulling in the driveway.
He walked to her door and asked what was going on. "Texas," was all that his mother had said. She normally talked more than this. In fact, she could normally be heard at all times no matter where she was, but now she was almost whispering and wouldn't finish a sentence.
"What about Texas," Cedric said, "It's all the way in Texas!" His feeble attempt at a joke didn't make his mom laugh as she went to the door.
"I will explain later. Just help me get more stuff together." As it turned out, Cedric had forgotten to get loads of things he would need like his toothbrush, blankets, pillow, towels, his sleeping bag, and much more. After his car was filled, as it wasn't big anyway, he had tried loading some in his mom's Jeep Grand Cherokee only to find that she had bought bags of sugar, flour, and ten one-gallon jugs of water. He also saw an assortment of other groceries scattered around, but he couldn’t see through the blue bags to tell what was inside. She also had what looked like a box containing a long-term camping style water distilling kit.
One thing that really got Cedric’s attention was when his mom gathered up the family’s firearms and ammo. It was like she was preparing for a war on the home-front.
Forty-five minutes after his mom had gotten home, they were pulling out of the driveway heading to his brother’s house, which was only about fifteen minutes away. When they had gotten to his house, Cedric saw that the yard was being dug up by his brother with a Kubota tractor. Cedric got out of his car and went inside to find Denise, his short, blonde haired sister in law, trying to turn the living room into a makeshift bedroom.
"What about the spare bedroom?" Cedric inquired mechanically. He didn’t know what was going on. He didn’t understand what his brother was doing. He didn’t understand any of it. He was just listening and obeying right now.
"We need to use it for storage. Has your mom told you yet?" She asked.
"Told me what?"
"About the videos Charlie found," h
is sister-in-law said , "Here," Denise picked up her laptop and took it over to the kitchen counter.
Cedric and his mom walked over and she clicked the play button on a YouTube video titled What’s really going on in Houston but didn’t say anything.
Cedric watched as a shaking cameraman was videoing a group of people in the street below his window. The commentator on the video sounded young and scared. His voice cracked as he screamed expletives. The people in the video were running as fast as they could at a police barricade and jumping at it. The police were shooting at them, but even five or six bullets in a person couldn’t stop them. The group of people eventually overwhelmed the barricade and started pulling the policemen apart. They were clawing and biting them.
"Are…" Cedric tried to ask a question but he couldn't say anything more. His mouth had went instantly dry. The knot in his stomach tightened and his disbelief rose. Cedric swallowed and tried to compose himself. He then whispered one question: "Are they eating those people?"
"I don't know but look how fast it's spreading. It will be here in no time." His mom, Eliza, paused taking a breath. When she did, Denise picked up.
"The Army has barricaded every bridge along the Mississippi River, but it can still go up to Canada above the river and then to here. They don't know how long it will take. We are getting ready for it when… no… if it does."
At that moment the door opened up to let Charlie in. Charlie was a slender guy with short, dark hair. He was a bit shorter than Cedric. He ran a landscaping business and was always covered in something. That something today was grease from the Kubota and a ton of mud. "Ced, I need your help. You've been in that welding class for a year or two, right?" Cedric nodded and Charlie continued, "Well I need you to do some of it. Follow me and I’ll show you. I have the welder loaded up on a cart.” He turned to his wife, “Babe, when you show my mom what you need to be done in here will you come help Cedric? You can drive the cart so he can get done faster."
The Living Saga (Book 1): Surviving Page 1
