Level Sands: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller (Crimson Rage Series Book 2)

by Sam J Fires

  Eric rolled off Donna’s body, dusting himself off. “Word of advice; next time, don’t go rushing into a giant death-trap without checking beforehand.”

  “I’ll bear that in mind,” said Donna, sounding like a child who had been scolded.

  They walked carefully through to the first floor, which looked like it had once been a lobby and saw an elevator shaft at the far end. Eric pressed a button on the panel, waiting for any sign of life from the elevator. What followed was something rushing to meet the ground at an accelerated speed, followed by a muted thump and a thin cloud of dust seeping through the closed doors. Eric and Donna looked at each other hesitantly and said in unison, “Stairs.”

  They climbed the stairs, both gripping the handrail as tight as they could. With each new floor, Donna looked around for any signs of life, finding none.

  As they were making their way up to the fifth floor Eric’s foot suddenly disappeared into one of the stairs. His whole leg had almost gone through the newly made hole. Donna retraced a few steps to help him out. There was a distinct cracking sound. Eric and Donna looked up.

  Up above, entire steps had started crumbling away, sandy rubble littering what was left behind. Realizing that the steps they were standing on could give way at any moment, they clung onto the railing, gingerly continuing with their ascent. “Whatever you do, don’t let go,” instructed Eric.

  As they finally made it to the eighth floor, they saw a red light glowing from one of the rooms… followed by screams. “Help me,” came from the distance, a strangled cry that no longer sounded entirely human.

  Eric rushed into the doorway.

  “Eric, what the hell are you doing?” demanded Donna.

  “It could be Jane,” Eric answered breathlessly. “Stay there. Whatever you do, don’t move.” He disappeared into the room and out of sight.

  Donna waited for a sign from Eric or for him to emerge from the room with Jane. She was about to follow him into the doorway when a thick cloud of smoke blew into Donna’s face, with enough force to almost knock her off balance, but she was able to maintain her grip on the handrail.

  “Eric!” She yelled. There was no answer. It was as if the cloud had swallowed him whole.

  CHAPTER 9 - DONNA

  First Jane, now Eric. Everyone is dying because of me.

  That wasn’t strictly true. Donna knew Jane was being kept alive for the time being and she hadn’t seen what had happened to Eric.

  “Eric!” she called again, trying not to sound so frantic.

  A reply did come. Only it wasn’t from Eric.

  “Donna!” Jane’s voice echoed down the remains of the stairway above her. “Donna, don’t come up here!”

  Not wanting to see anyone else die on her watch, Donna clambered up to the ninth, and last floor and jumped into the doorway without any caution.

  The sight that met her was unlike anything she had ever seen.

  Jane was standing at the far end of the room, her hands cuffed behind her back, her suit removed and a man in a trench coat holding her close. Donna was separated from them both by a gaping hole in the floor such that she could see below into a room on the eighth floor beneath them. At first, she thought she was looking at a large sandbox. But as she looked closer, she could see something shifting in the sand.

  A person. At least it looked like a person. It had the normal head, torso, and arms. But where there should be skin, there was sand. It looked like a life-sized sand model slowly eroding. Donna watched as a hand broke off, revealing what might have been dried blood, but now resembled a beach after the tide had swept over it. And there were at least six other bodies in varying states of decomposition.

  It was one of those moments where you realized that even your imagination can only take you so far.

  Donna did not – could not – take her eyes off the decay taking place beneath her.

  “Did you do this?” asked Donna.

  “Me?” said the man with restrained disgust. “You honestly think I have anything to do with that monstrosity?” The man looked down at the bodies once again and though his mind must have had some time to accommodate the images, he still observed it with the same feeling of sickness and horror he had felt all those months ago.

  “I saw these bodies out in the streets after the first sandstorm. I thought they were decomposing. But then I went to touch one, and it started crumbling. I don’t know how, but bone, tissue, blood, everything ends up turning to sand.”

  Now Donna fought the urge to retch, realizing that she, Jane, and Eric had been walking in a sea of the dead. She remembered when she had first stepped out of the shelter, observing the first footprints left by her suit. For all I know, I might have been stepping on somebody’s face. She was repulsed.

  “So where did all these people come from?” asked Jane, who also couldn’t take her eyes off the sandbox. “Did you kill them?”

  Now the man looked insulted, as though the very idea of murder was beneath him. “Course I didn’t kill them. I gathered the bodies up from the street before they had a chance to fully decompose, dumped them here.”

  “Collecting bodies? What did I arrest you for, serial killing?”

  “Drug trafficking, actually. And I collected the bodies because I wanted to see what would happen to them.”

  The man’s morbid fascination with the sandstorm and its gruesome effects reminded Donna of Eric’s own insistence on recording every last facet of horror that befell the city.

  Eric, who Donna just realized would be down there in that pile, now indistinguishable from the other million grains of sand.

  “I thought I gave you a task to do,” said the man indignantly.

  “I’m not going to leave my friend out here with you, you bastard” came the defiant response.

  Though now was not the time for sharing it, Jane was grateful that their last conversation hadn’t soured Donna’s sense of loyalty.

  “I want my family back,” said the man. “I stopped caring about what I needed to do to get them back a long time ago.”

  Despite the circumstances, Donna found herself feeling a small pang of sympathy. “Why don’t you just let her go and come back to the shelter with us? We can look for your family together.”

  The man smiled sadly. “I wish I could believe you, I really do. But let’s be honest, you’d never let me get close enough to the shelter, so I need a middleman. And who better…” He moved to the edge of the hole with Jane in front of him until her feet were precariously close to the edge, before pulling her back. “…than the bitch who put me away.”

  That’s when an idea occurred to Donna, a spark in her brain had ignited. “Okay,” she said simply and began removing her helmet, gloves, boots and eventually, her entire suit. Once she’d shed her protective cocoon, Donna stepped forward, hovering one foot over the sandbox below.

  “What are you playing at?” Of all the moves he had expected Donna to make, this was not one of them.

  “You need at least one of us to get you to the shelter. If you kill her, they’ll kill you for murdering a security officer. But if the team she’s with are dead, then you’re going to have to keep her alive.”

  Jane tried to wrench herself from Gideon's steel grip, but her captor wouldn’t yield. She could only watch as Donna was gearing up for an obvious suicide ploy. "Donna, what the fuck are you doing?" she pleaded.

  Donna replied, "This is how it will go, Jane. Either we all live, or we all die. Depends on whether this guy lets you go."

  Jane looked puzzled. “Wait, what about…”

  “Eric’s dead,” Donna said, heavily. “He died from one of this bastard’s booby traps. So, there’s only me and you left. This son of a bitch is gonna have to decide quick if he wants to get to the shelter and find his family.”

  Unfortunately for Donna, the man seemed to call Donna’s bluff as he pushed Jane forward until she was dangling over the sandbox, his grip on her shirt being the only thing stopping her from falling in. “You
think I care whether this bitch lives or dies?” he spat. “I’ve been wishing she was dead for the last ten years. I have no problem making it a reality.”

  But Donna was not so easily deterred. “Well, then you’re just going to have to decide what matters more; killing her or getting your family back.”

  The man hesitated, hit with the full force of the dilemma. Donna wondered how long it would take for him to decide. And whether she could actually follow through with her threat if Jane was thrown to her death.

  But before either of them could act on their thoughts, their attention was distracted by the sandbox below where the mass of sand seemed to be shifting again, and reforming. The man leaned over the edge to get a better look. “It’s not supposed to do that.”

  Suddenly, something shot out of the sand, hitting the man in the face. The force of the blow caused him to fall to the ground and loosen his grip on Jane’s shirt and she began to tumble forward.

  Donna was able to react in enough time to grab Jane’s shirt, trying to support Jane’s weight. “I’ve got you!” she shouted, hoping she sounded confident rather than frightened.

  As Donna began to pull Jane back, she looked at the object that had hit the man, knocking him unconscious.

  A camera in its protective casing.

  Out of the blue, something grabbed at Jane’s leg and almost pulled her down into the sand pile. Eric. Like a phoenix rising from the sand pile.

  Once Donna had managed to pull Jane back up, they both worked on hauling Eric up too. The three finally sprawled out on the ground next to the hole in the floor, bewildered that somehow, against all the odds, they were still alive.

  Eric finally got up and recovered his camera/makeshift weapon.

  “I sure hope that thing is still working after all this.”

  CHAPTER 10 - JANE

  “I put him away a few years ago. It must have been back when I was starting out ‘cause I barely remember him.”

  The trio had managed to restrain the man to the same pillar and with the shackles that had held Jane. He was still unconscious. Once they’d made sure he was no longer a threat, they checked out the building and discovered a put together living area consisting of a mattress, a change of clothes and a supply of food and weapons. He’d obviously been there for a while.

  They were all fascinated by the makeshift workshop he had set up. Eric was hovering the camera over the table holding the array of weapons he had created utilizing the sand.

  “It’s incredible,” he said, in awe. “He’s actually managed to weaponize the sand. The man could be a genius.”

  Jane shook her head. “While I’m glad that you’re alive, do you think we can go five minutes without playing Michael Moore?”

  “But look at what he’s been able to make,” protested Eric, holding up one of the sand-balls. “He’s practically a pioneer…”

  “Don’t touch that!” shouted Jane. “Firstly, you don’t know what that shit is supposed to do or how to handle it safely. Secondly, that ‘pioneer’ almost killed us. Maybe if you had been the one nearly thrown into the sandbox, you wouldn’t be so quick to kiss his ass.”

  “I was in the fucking sandbox. I thought I was going to die choking on dead people. If it weren’t for this suit, I probably would have. So, if we’re going to compete with near-death experiences, I think I win.”

  “People,” yelled Donna, halting Jane and Eric’s bickering. “Can we save the bitching for later? He’s waking up.” The trio surrounded Gideon as he returned to consciousness.

  Their prisoner looked to Jane, perturbed. “Can you tell him to get that camera out of my face?”

  Jane gave a slight smile. “No, I don’t think I will.”

  “First thing’s first” said Jane. “What do you really want?”

  Gideon winched, his head still throbbing from the blow by the camera. “Have you not been listening to a word I said, woman? I want my family! That’s all! Nothing more!”

  Jane gestured around the workshop. “So, if that’s all you want, you want to tell me why you decided to go all ‘sandy warfare’?”

  “I did it to protect myself. And to protect my wife and kid if I ever found them.”

  “Bit excessive, isn’t it?” asked Eric, holding the camera over Gideon as if interviewing him. “Brilliant, I will say, but turning an entire building into some kind of apocalyptic funhouse…”

  “Look, I just needed to protect against the storms.” He looked into the lens, resigned to his new situation. “Sure, you’ve got guns, you’ve got shelter, but what good will all of that do in the long run? Weapons and ammunition will run out eventually. I figured I could either defend myself the old way. Or I could learn from this new setup and use it to my advantage. And obviously, it’s paying off, because I’m very much alive. You look at all the people crammed into the shelters, letting themselves be mollycoddled, trying to block out reality, pretend that there aren’t never ending sandstorms that are turning an entire city into a mass grave. You really think anyone of them would survive for as long as I have without the government’s support?”

  Jane couldn’t argue with the logic. The shelters worked as a short-term solution. But when it fell to the eventual task of trying to put the world back together, they would be inadequately prepared if they didn’t accept that the sandstorms could be here to stay.

  “So, let’s speak hypothetically here,” offered Donna. “Let’s say we’d done what you wanted. We’d gone back to the shelter, found your wife and son. Reunited you with them. What then?”

  He didn’t answer at first, then said, “I would take them with me, protect them, show them how to survive out here. Make up for lost time.

  “When I went inside, my son Milo had only just turned nine years-old. I loved that kid. I love that kid. I would have done anything for him. Same for his mother, and my wife, Andrea.” The man spoke with a fondness that seemed to have laid dormant for some time. “They were the big drivers in my life. I made some questionable decisions. I won’t deny that. Not that it changes how I feel about you, Officer,” he said to Jane sharply. “But everything I did, I did for them. To make sure that they could have a good life. So that my son Milo would have plenty of opportunities open to him growing up. I’ve worked most of my career in dead end jobs, mainly because I never had the skill or the brains for anything else. But not Milo. I didn’t want him to turn out like me. I wanted him to be a doctor or a lawyer.

  “But once I was put away, Andrea severed all contact. I don’t know anything about Milo over all these years. I didn’t even get to see any pictures of him growing up.” His face remained stoic, but Donna could see the emotion stirring inside him. “Once I got out, I went to find them. But there was nobody in the house. But based on what they took, I knew they had to be alive. I looked all over the city trying to find them. Eventually I figured they must be at the shelter. Hence…” he shrugged his shoulders by way of an explanation. “So, what’s the plan now? Kill me? Throw me into the sandbox?” He gave a wry smile. “I’d be lying if I didn’t see the irony there.”

  “Donna, Eric,” Jane said, not taking her eyes off the man. “Could I have a word in private?

  “What are your thoughts on what we should do?” Jane asked in a hushed tone. Donna and Eric were having trouble getting a lead on what Jane was thinking.

  “I say we take him back with us,” Donna suggested calmly.

  Jane went bug-eyed. “You’re not seriously letting him get to you, are you?”

  Eric joined in. “That’s how people beat you these days. They don’t use guns, or knives. They use sob stories”.

  “He almost killed me,” hissed Jane. “And I’m not letting that go anytime soon.”

  “Well,” offered Eric. “You did get him sent down. So… maybe this makes you even?”

  Not taking Jane’s flaring nostrils as a sign to shut up, Eric continued. “Besides, I think we need to help you break out of the habit of killing anyone who pisses you off.”

>   Jane softened a little. Eric did have a point. The experience had been a revealing one for Jane. It had forced her to confront parts of herself that she didn’t really like.

  “Another way of looking at it,” Donna offered. “If he’s in the shelter, he won’t need to hurt anyone.”

  “And we can certainly make use of his expertise,” added Eric.

  Jane sighed. “Eric, God forbid I ever ask you to be my conscience.”

  “Oh, no, that’s Donna. I’m the one who helps you keep your head out of your ass.”

  CHAPTER 11 - ERIC

  Eric, Donna and Jane were now dressed in their protective suits again, while their captive was draped in layers of whatever thick clothing they’d been able to find which hopefully offered some level of protection from the storms. His hands were handcuffed behind his back, attached to a chain held by Jane. It was difficult and unpleasant, navigating around the risen sand – each member of the group now nauseated by the knowledge that they were traipsing through human remains.

  “How are you feeling?” Jane asked Donna.

  “I’d like to say clear-headed, but I think it will be quite a while before I feel anything like that.”

  “Have to say,” Jane observed. “You handled yourself pretty well in there.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. I didn’t expect you would come after me, let alone save me. Then again, shows what I know. Shows I need to give you more credit where it's due.”

  “Anyway, enough about me, how are you holding up Jane?”

  Jane shrugged and waved her hand. “I’m practically over it already. I’m used to putting this kind of thing into my daily planner; 3pm get shot, stabbed or taken hostage.”

  The two shared a weak laugh until Jane finally worked up the nerve to say what had been praying on her mind since they’d left the building. “Listen, Donna, about what we discussed back at the bar about my job at the shelter.…”

  “Look, forget it,” Donna said, more sharply than she had intended. “It’s not worth going over.”