The Survivors of Bastion (Fall of Earth Book 1)

by Will Hawthorne

  ‘What do we do?’ Robbie asked. ‘What the fuck just happened?’

  I looked between the three of them – they all stared back at me with piercing expressions, wanting answers.

  So I told them. I told them everything. I told them about Morgan arriving from the forest. I told them about what he had said. Most of it I had already reiterated from the previous night when they had come over to the house; they already knew all of it.

  What they didn’t know was what had happened at Mae and Larry’s, and the things that he had said to me.

  ‘He said ‘we’. I think he was part of a group, or something. He said that a woman had come to them from the south. She was infected with something. She died and came back to life, and then went about biting people in this state she was in. Then they got it, and turned out just like her. Morgan made it out from wherever he came from, but he was infected too. Maybe the last of all of them.’

  ‘That’s complete bullshit,’ Leah said. ‘You can’t just come back from the dead.’

  ‘I watched it happen last night. I saw him die, right in front of me. When I got there this morning, he had a knife sticking out of his head. Mae was infected, and Larry was on death’s door, splayed out on the bed. Blood everywhere. I think that Morgan came back, attacked her… Then her or Larry would have killed him. They would’ve kept it to themselves inside the house – you know what they’re like… What they were like… They don’t like to bother other people with those sorts of things. Problem is, this is the one time they should’ve told somebody about it.

  ‘Mae attacked me… It was like being attacked by an animal. There was nothing in her eyes that resembled any part of who she had once been… I killed her in the street, then Larry came outside exactly the same… Then… You know the rest.’

  Everybody fell silent, either shaking their heads in disbelief or running their hands through their hair, trying to determine some course of action, some explanation.

  ‘And you fucking brought him in here…’ Robbie said. I looked up at him, seeing the look of anger and resentment in his eyes.

  ‘I didn’t know,’ I said. ‘D’you really think I’d have brought him in if something like that was going to happen?’

  ‘He was an outsider!’

  ‘It doesn’t fucking matter, Robbie. Even if I had killed him then and there in the forest, buried his corpse and told you all about it and that it was all taken care of, those infected would have still come to Bastion. It didn’t matter what we did with him. Mae and Larry would still be dead, probably along with everybody else, and we would still be right where we are now.’

  Robbie paused, looking me in the eyes, before nodding.

  ‘Yeah… Yeah, you’re right… I just… Mom…’

  I could see his eyes welling up with tears just as he turned away. I tried to regain some control over myself. This time I managed to – whatever response I had erupted with upon exiting the Ranger had purged me of anything I had left inside after the event.

  All that mattered now was the situation at hand, where we were, and what we were going to do about where we currently were.

  ‘Who were they?’ Leah asked. ‘All those people who attacked us?’

  ‘The infected,’ I said, ‘just like Morgan. Isn’t that obvious?’

  ‘No, you shithead. Not the infected, I mean, who were they? Where did they come from? They must have been from a community like ours. Survivors don’t just crop up out of nowhere, group together and assault places like that, even if they are infected. Where did they come from?’

  They had clearly been at another commune, along with Morgan, but…

  ‘Oh, shit…’ Leah exclaimed quietly, looking up at the three of us.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The radio… I know we don’t usually speak with Ashby all that often, but we haven’t had communications with them for weeks…’

  I felt the pangs of cold sweat rising up on my neck as the implications of her words set in – not because of the possibility of Hayley’s theory, but because I knew that she was right in an instant.

  ‘They…’

  ‘That was Ashby,’ Leah said calmly, raising her hands to the sides of her face. ‘They were the citizens of Ashby.’

  ***

  Most of the land surrounding Bastion was farmland – it meant that we could expand in terms of our food capacity in the event that more people had come to live with us at Bastion. All of the old farmhouses and barns were abandoned, and the vast majority we had just left alone save for a few scavenging trips.

  We knew one, a small, remote place about a mile from where we were, and that’s where we decided to head to stay safe for the time being.

  The car pulled up and we all got out silently. It seemed trivial – if there was anybody there to hear us they would have definitely known we were there by now. All the same, Leah dashed off to check that the barn was clear while Robbie did a sweep of the back of both buildings. Hayley checked the overgrown sections to the right of it that had once been hobby plantations, probably for the farmer’s children a long time ago.

  The gun in my hand, I headed to the front door and opened it. Everything was as you would imagine after having been left alone for fifteen years. Dust covered everything in an abandoned world, free to move in without interference. We had made a concerted effort over the years to get rid of any bodies that we came across in the surrounding areas, and this house was one of those. All the same, you never knew who might have been calling it home.

  A few minutes later we all met back out the front of the house and headed inside.

  After dusting down the couches and cushions and sitting ourselves down, we finally had a moment to catch our breath in the wake of the revelation we had just stumbled across.

  ‘You really think they were from Ashby?’ Robbie asked.

  ‘Yeah…’ I said. ‘It makes sense. Haven’t heard from them in weeks and then we get attacked by a mob about the size of their population. Morgan would have known we were here, would have to come to us for help, but didn’t realise he was bringing all of them with him. Or maybe he did, but he panicked and did it anyway.’

  ‘That son of a bitch,’ Hayley muttered.

  ‘That’s it, isn’t it?’ Robbie said. ‘They’re all gone… Everybody.’

  ‘We don’t know that,’ I said.

  ‘What else do you think could have happened to them, huh? With those… Things attacking everybody?’

  ‘Some of them might have gotten away. We can’t know for sure… But if they have, I know where they’ll go to.’

  ‘Where?’ Leah asked.

  ‘The outpost.’

  The outposts were a short-lived idea we had put together regarding emergency stops in the event that we needed to evacuate Bastion. We had only put them together after a couple of years, when we could afford to put such measures in place. They were select buildings in the area that people could go to for refuge. They were stocked food and a small supply of water, and were intended as a place for people to regroup.

  Well, I say they as if there were multiple. We reached a consensus pretty early on that the idea was something of a waste – we never thought we would run into as many people as we had in Bastion, and assumed that we had the numbers to fight anything off.

  Clearly we were wrong, but something had remained from the idea.

  One of the outposts we still looked after, checking upon it once a fortnight. It was maybe half a mile away.

  ‘You think people will remember?’ Hayley asked.

  ‘People have an amazing tendency to remember important things when their lives are on the line. Don’t you remember that story mom told us, Robbie?’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘She said she had heard it in the old world… It was about this guy who was attacked by a shark when he was swimming in the ocean, and he knew that he was about to die, and somehow he remembered something from some documentary that he had seen twenty years before that said you have to kick
a shark on the nose in order to get rid of it. Because his life was on the line his memory served up the information to him…’

  ‘Yeah…’ Robbie said. ‘She had loads of stories like that from the old world…’

  I paused, thinking back to her, knowing that she was likely gone… Oh, God… What had I done…?

  I looked down at my hand as it rested on the arm of the couch I sat on, watching my fingers tremble. I sank them into the cushion, trying to bring it to a stop, hoping nobody would notice.

  ‘Here’s what we’re gonna do,’ I said, sighing deeply, not in disappointment but simply to feel the air rushing into my lungs. ‘We’ll catch our bearings, grab anything we can use from here, then we’ll head to the outpost. If… When we find our people at the outpost, we’ll come up with a plan of action. Although as far as I’m concerned, that plan is getting everybody ready, equipped with weapons, and coming up with a plan to take Bastion back.’

  ‘It sounds so easy when you put it like that,’ Hayley said. ‘I hope it is… I hope everybody got out.’

  I thought back to the image of Carl, running for the car, the infected overrunning him as we drove away.

  We… I had left him there in the street, to be attacked by those things.

  ‘I’m making this up as I go along,’ I said. ‘If any of you have a better suggestion as to what we can do then please speak up, because I’m willing to try anything.’

  All three of them looked at each other before turning to me and nodding.

  ‘I’m with you,’ Leah said, nodding and managing the closest thing to a smile she could muster right now.

  ‘Yeah,’ Robbie said. ‘We can’t just stay here, either way. There’s water at the outpost. It’s the place I’d go first.’

  I looked over at Hayley, and she ran a hand through her hair. She was completely unreadable, her face expressionless until she bit the inside of her mouth lightly and nodded at me.

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Let’s go.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  Outpost

  Evening was falling upon the land as we reached the outpost. Despite the fact that we had mostly travelled in silence, questions raced through my mind regarding our predicament.

  One, above all of the little things, echoed in my mind endlessly.

  What was this infection, this virus, that caused people to transform into these mindless, insane shadows of the people they had once been?

  Only seventeen hours ago I had spoken to Morgan about it. It can’t be a mutation of the virus that had almost driven humanity to extinction – how something that caused the body’s primary functions and systems to simply shut down could mutate into this thing was beyond me. There was no way that it could occur.

  There were so many possibilities; something transmitted from an animal, a science experiment gone wrong, a form of psychosis based solely on a chemical transmutation…

  It was passed from person to person through biting. The perfect killer, because it turned it’s victims into more killers, multiplying itself until everybody was infected.

  The notion of a conspiracy came to mind – my father always used to talk about those when we were younger, that was something I remembered from our times at the dinner table. I couldn’t even say the word, never mind understand what it was, and it was only after I asked Henrietta what it meant that she explained it to me…

  The problem was that there were no governments to compose conspiracies anymore; they may have been at the higher echelons of society while everybody else slaved away, but nature was one thing that they couldn’t run from when a virus like the one we had experienced spread across the planet like wildfire.

  All of this coursed uncontrollably through my mind as Leah turned the wheel sharply, taking us up a country road through an open field. The grass had grown high, and already I found myself discomforted by the fact that I couldn’t see beyond it, into the wilds that could hold anything…

  Even one of the infected, if they had made it out.

  Even one of our own who had it…

  The Ranger suddenly jerked forward, as if the gear had stalled, and we were all thrown forward lightly.

  ‘Shit,’ Leah muttered.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I hope you’ve got a follow-up plan after we reach here, Tommy, because the car ain’t going anywhere. We’re out of gas.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We only keep enough in it for patrols and bringing back large quantities from the farm, remember? It was your idea. So nobody-’

  ‘So nobody tried to steal the car,’ I completed the sentence for her, running my hands over my face. ‘Fuck.’

  The car shuddered to a stop and Leah pulled the handbrake on, ensuring we don’t roll back down the slight ascent that led through the field.

  ‘Give me a hand, Robbie,’ I said, getting out of the car. We made our way around to the back, Hayley jumping out on her side, before Leah popped the handbrake again and we started pushing the Ranger up the hill. We were only a little way from it, but with promise of an ignition start we were panting for breath by the time we reached the top of the incline – and the outpost.

  It was another small farm building, much like the one we had just come from. In sharp contrast, though, the place was a little more well-kept than the previous. We had made something of an effort to keep it clean and tidy, returning to check up on things and make sure that the weeds didn’t grow too high. Even if it was the most well-kept place outside of Bastion it was nothing like the home that I had just left behind… The home that I had abandoned.

  I took a moment, looking out over the quiet, overgrown fields as we came to a stop at the top of the incline and Leah pulled on the handbrake.

  I had abandoned the place – abandoned my people. There was nothing I could do. Robbie was right. I had brought Morgan in. I hadn’t known, but my actions had caused it all.

  Still, he would have arrived at the gates of Bastion anyway, and so would our group of attackers.

  I wondered what state Bastion would be in right now, whether the infected would have abandoned it and moved on to somewhere else – perhaps us? Or whether they would have killed everybody and simply stumbled off.

  I didn’t know which was a worse fate; dying being attacked by these random attackers or waiting to die only to come back… Did any semblance of consciousness remain behind after they turned? Was there some internal narrative existing inside, or were they just shells parading around? Would you have to sit, locked inside your head, watching everything happen, watching your body run about at the behest of this… Virus?

  ‘You all right, Tommy?’

  I jumped at the words, turning to look over my shoulder. Robbie looked over at me anxiously, tilting his head to the side.

  ‘Yeah… Yeah, I’m okay.’

  I wasn’t, but even if he was my brother I still had to save face. He was counting on me, and right now my only intention was looking after these three people by my side, and any of the others who happened to show up.

  Thing is, that could have been a reality that emerged a lot quicker than I had anticipated. I was sceptical, but nothing could have prepared me for what awaited us when we arrived.

  ‘Uhh… Tommy?’

  Robbie and I both looked towards the house, the front door a little out of sight behind the car. I immediately recognised the concerned tone on Hayley’s voice, but I had never expected what we found.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘We’ve got a problem.’

  I and my brother both hurried over to the door, and when I laid my eyes upon it my heart began to race just as it had done when we had gone running from Bastion.

  The door was open. Not only that, but it hadn’t been unlocked. It had been forced, the wood broken and splintered, and the latch hanging off pointlessly.

  All four of us – myself, Hayley, Robbie and Leah, glanced at each other. I could see the exact same fear and caution resonating in the eyes of all of them, the same one that I fel
t at that moment.

  Within seconds I had dashed to the car and returned with the rifle, shovel and the wrench. The three were bundled in my arms. I was pretty set on us all heading in, but if something came from the outside we would be fucked – we wouldn’t have a clue.

  ‘Leah, you come with me. We’ll take the wrench and the shovel. Robbie, Hayley – take the rifle.

  ‘You sure?’ Hayley said.

  ‘Yeah. Use the scope and keep a look out. If anybody approaches and they’re not one of ours, put a bullet in their head.’

  ‘What if they’re not one of the bad guys though?’

  ‘I don’t care. It’s us four and anybody that made it out. Those are the only people I’m worried about. I’m not going to let anything happen to you three.’

  Robbie gulped and nodded at me, taking the rifle and the shells from me.

  I handed the wrench to Leah, taking the wooden handle of the shovel in my hands. My mind instantly cast back to that night not long ago when I had buried the intruder out in the field.

  All this time and I hadn’t thought about what he had said –

  Luke. My name’s Luke.

  I returned to the door of the house, checking Leah was following – she nodded at me with readiness, holding the wrench tightly in her hand – and set off forward.

  I pushed the door open slowly, the hinges creaking as my view gave on to the dark interior of the house. The curtains and blinds were drawn, just as they always had been. My heart continued to race on as I looked about, relying on Leah’s footsteps behind me to keep me heading on.

  All of the doors were closed. The kitchen was the only room that told us anything about what had happened here – it had no door, and the cupboards looked to have been ransacked – recently, too, seeing as the interior hadn’t been effected by any of the elements outside. The door had been opened not long ago.