Fallen Earth | Book 2 | Aftermath

by Morrow, Jason D.

  Sam’s eyes shifted and he tried to act like he hadn’t heard him, but the man scooted down the bench until he was directly in front of Sam.

  “Hey,” he said again. “You okay? You don’t look well.”

  Sam swallowed and looked at him, then glanced out the window. “I’m fine.”

  “Nah. You’re two feet from the door and sweating. You’re all shifty and stuff.” The man looked up and down the train as though to make sure no one was listening. “I’ve been down that road, man. Drugs will take you to a dark place. Looks like you’re headed that way.”

  Sam opened his mouth to speak but couldn’t get the words out. What was he supposed to say to that?

  “You got family?” the man asked.

  Sam chewed the inside of his lip and leaned forward to look out the window. His stop was coming up. “Yeah,” Sam said, not looking at the man.

  “They love you, man. They don’t want you to throw your life away.”

  “You have no idea how true that is,” Sam said. Finally, he looked at the man. “I’m not on drugs.”

  The man raised both eyebrows and held his palms out. “Okay, okay. I get it. I’m not trying to get into your business. I just know what you’re feeling right now is all I’m trying to say.”

  Sam watched him. If the man only knew what Sam was feeling right now…

  When the train slowed and the doors pulled open, a fresh blast of cold air washed over Sam. The sweat on his head felt like it would crystalize as he stepped out and then made his way down the stairs to the street level.

  The hustle and bustle of city life was more foreign to Sam than the quiet of his room, the prominent sound being the tapping of his fingers to write out messages, the clicking of his mouse to move from page to page. His world was quiet. His world was confined. His world was digital.

  Even being out in the daylight among other people in a place where no one would recognize him, he felt extremely exposed. It almost felt like everyone was watching to see what his next move might be. This was ridiculous, he knew, but the feeling was there all the same. He imagined this was what it felt like to be a spy for the CIA or some secret operative in a foreign country. Anywhere outside of his apartment felt foreign to him these days. It hadn’t always been that way. He had a normal childhood. Well, as normal as anyone else, it seemed. Things hadn’t gotten weird until he was in high school and his brother was sentenced to life in prison for murder. It was about that time when Sam threw himself into the online world, letting it consume him.

  Some people would’ve viewed this as antisocial behavior or weird or unhealthy, but Sam didn’t see it that way. For him, it was an education, something better than college could’ve ever provided. There was so much information on the internet, and so many people to consult with and learn from, that the need for a proper education in the world of online hacking or use of computers no longer existed.

  A lot of people he came across online were in the same boat. Their relatives weren’t necessarily in jail for murder, but many of them didn’t conform to social norms. A lot of them rejected the idea of the university or any formal education.

  He made it to the edge of the park, where the two of them were supposed to meet after the call was made. There was a man there dressed in all black, wearing sunglasses with his arms folded over his chest, chewing gum. There was a part of Sam that thought this man was Blackleaf. And the more he thought about the situation, the more he wanted to throw the phone and run away. Something wasn’t right. None of this was right.

  He was a block from the El train now, but it felt like a mile. He could get back on just as easily as he had gotten off. He would be able to go back to his online world where he was somebody and nobody at the same time.

  Had the other Hunters been lured in by Blackleaf? What if he had gotten to them one-by-one and either kidnapped them or killed them because of what they knew?

  Blackleaf was an imposter, and Sam was the last person on his list to kill.

  At that thought, Sam got back onto the sidewalk and his legs moved quickly with the burner phone still in his hand.

  On his way to the El train, Sam kept his eyes on his feet so he wouldn’t look toward the man in black. He didn’t look back. He didn’t want to give away the fact that he was the person Blackleaf was supposed to meet, and he didn’t want anyone to think that he was nervous or that he thought someone had a reason to follow him.

  He traveled the steps up to the El train platform and waited a few minutes for the next train to stop. When he saw the train approaching, he looked behind him and could barely see the figure in black at the corner of the park.

  Sam pushed the button to make the call as he watched. It rang three times before someone picked up on the other end. It couldn’t have been a coincidence when the man in black raised his arm to his head.

  “Hello?“

  Sam didn’t speak. He saw the man in black looking around in every direction, his phone pressed to his ear. Blackleaf was looking for him. Sam hit mute on his phone as the El train squealed to a stop. The doors opened for him to enter, but he didn’t go in. Instead, he reached inside and set his phone on the floor in front of him. No one saw him. He stepped back from the doors as they closed, then turned and made his way down the steps as the train left.

  Sam watched the man in black run toward him, and Sam almost froze, but he decided to keep walking as though nothing in the world had changed. Two more men in black. Three more. Four more. The man was now with an entire group. Somehow they had already known that the call came from the train, but Sam was able to sneak in among the crowd and keep his head low. Blackleaf was a traitor, and he had been there to capture or kill Sam. That was how all the other Hunters had died. That was how Blackleaf was going to kill Sam.

  He swallowed, choking back his fear, then stuffed his fists into his coat pockets to keep his hands from shaking. He had been stupid to try to meet. He should have just kept to the rules. None of it mattered now. They didn’t know where he lived.

  If he stayed under the radar for a while, they wouldn’t find him. At least, he hoped they wouldn’t.

  Chapter Three

  Weeks went by and Sam hadn’t heard anything from Blackleaf. He hadn’t heard anything from anyone. He had kept a low profile online, only braving certain sites as a consumer, never bothering to post to any message boards or forums like he would under normal circumstances. They were watching for him. He wasn’t sure who they were, but somebody was looking for him. And the fact that Blackleaf hadn’t tried to contact him since his trek to the park proved Sam’s suspicions. Blackleaf had killed or captured the others.

  Sam walked through his tiny apartment and shoved cans into a trash bag, dumped food down the sink, and gathered dirty clothes and put them into a basket. He was rarely so bored that he cleaned.

  He walked out into the hallway, which smelled like smoke despite the no smoking signs posted on every wall. The trash bag in his hand was heavy as he made his way toward the garbage chute.

  “I don’t want to hear it! I never want to hear it again!” a voice screamed from the apartment nearest the chute.

  Sam reached for the greasy handle and pulled, then set the bag inside. The apartment door swung open and a woman stormed out, her hair a mess, her sweatpants and shirt baggy and barely hanging on. She slammed the door behind her and pulled out a cigarette from one of the pockets near her knees, then lit it.

  She looked at Sam and brushed her loose bangs from her forehead. “Been a long time since I’ve seen you, Sam” she said as though she hadn’t just been in a screaming match with someone.

  Sam didn’t remember her name. “Yeah,” he said. “I keep busy.” He let go of the chute and wiped his hand on his jeans.

  “What do you do for work, anyway?” she asked, curling her lower lip to blow smoke above her head.

  Sam shrugged. “A couple of part time jobs. Nothing special.”

  “I see the light on under your door all the time,” she said. “
It’s like you never sleep.”

  Sam didn’t like the fact that someone was keeping tabs on him. He wanted to say I can’t sleep because you’re yelling into your phone all the time loud enough for the rest of the neighbors to hear, but he kept the comment to himself. Instead, he said, “Oh, sometimes I just sleep with the light on. I forget to turn it off.”

  The woman nodded. Sam started walking back to his apartment, but the woman kept talking to Sam about her conversation on the phone. About how she suspected her boyfriend was cheating on her again and how she would never stay with him after this even though she had taken him back again and again. Sam felt like each backward step he took pulled against a rope tied to his waist.

  “I’ll tell you what,” she said. “I’m turning off my phone tonight and making him sweat. I won’t even call him until tomorrow morning. Or maybe tomorrow afternoon.” The woman didn’t seem to notice he was moving until he was almost at his door. Then she said, “Oh, I’m talking too much again, aren’t I?”

  “No, no,” Sam said, opening the door to his apartment. “I just have…things I have to do, you know.” He pointed inside to his apartment.

  The woman raised her eyebrows and started toward him. “I’ve never seen in your place.”

  Sam closed the door quickly and stood straight in front of it. “It’s a mess, you know. Maybe some other time.”

  “Oh, okay,” she said. Her next drag seemed to burn up half her cigarette in one breath.

  “I’ll, uh, I’ll see you later,” Sam said, pushing his way into his apartment.

  The woman leaned her head as if to get a good look inside, but Sam shut the door quickly and locked it.

  Her smoke clung to his clothes and all he tasted was cigarettes.

  He looked around the room, satisfied at what he’d cleaned, though it would have never passed his mom’s inspection. When he sat at his desk and fired up the computer, he saw a notification waiting for him.

  It was a message from Blackleaf.

  Sam’s stomach soured and he thought about turning off the computer and ignoring it, though he knew that would be impossible. His hand felt like it weighed fifty pounds when he reached for the mouse and clicked on the message.

  There was no acting in this message. There was no pretense of confusion. There was a simple statement: We are narrowing in on you. Though the lights may go out, we know you aren’t far away.

  Sam’s heart raced. He dared not type anything back. The message didn’t require a response. It was meant to incite fear, and it worked.

  The message was so direct, so pointed, that there was no comfort in his usual isolation. And now Sam started to wonder if his lack of online presence over the last few weeks had helped pinpoint his location. What would have been intense server usage would have suddenly gone black.

  He swore under his breath. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. He had been made a mark, and they were going to get him no matter what.

  For the last few weeks, he had pored over every document he had obtained for information about the Horseman. Obviously, there was just so much data it was difficult to tell what was important and what wasn’t, but there was enough information to show that indeed the group did exist, and they did not want to be known. Their plans were to find a way to detonate nukes over the United States and send the country into darkness. He wasn’t able to find out when it would happen, but it was a plot that would be carried out in the near future.

  There wasn’t anyone to take this information to. Not only were leaders possibly in league with the Horseman (or the Horseman had infiltrated the government), but the information was so ambiguous that anyone who had the power to do something about it wouldn’t have enough pieces of the puzzle to actually stop the attack.

  Sam felt powerless and completely alone. As for his friends, he didn’t know their names, and his closest ones had gone dark. As for his family, Sam was the only one left. Well, he was the only one left who wasn’t in a state prison.

  He stared at the message on his screen, and a wave of nausea rushed through him. He had gone too deep.

  He looked at the clock on the wall to his right. 12:56 a.m.

  “What should I do?” he said to himself.

  He wished there was an answer, from anyone, but he knew there wouldn’t be.

  Then, in the blink of an eye, everything in the room went dark.

  Chapter Four

  When Cora’s eyes opened she knew she had overslept, but she didn’t have a clock to look at. When she tried to look at her cell phone, she was met with a blank screen. Flipping on the lights did nothing. Trying to turn her phone on did nothing. The power was completely out, and not even battery-powered devices worked.

  She sat in confusion for most of the morning, worried about the food that would spoil in her refrigerator. Being in a large apartment complex in the middle of Chicago, she knew if the whole building were experiencing the same phenomenon, then it would be taken care of fairly quickly. After checking with a few of the neighbors and confirming that each of them was experiencing the same thing, she went back to her apartment to sit and wait.

  She had just come off the night shift at the hospital the night before and wasn’t scheduled to work until the next night, so at least she didn’t have to be anywhere.

  She spent some of her morning reading a book she had meant to finish, but her mind was too distracted by the power outage, so she decided to throw on a jacket and go for a walk. That was when the strangeness of it all hit her.

  Chicago was normally a busy city with people walking and traffic buzzing all around. But when she walked out onto the sidewalk in front of her apartment, everything was quiet. Dead.

  There were a few people out as she was, looking just as confused as she felt, so she didn’t think asking them about what was going on would do any good. Still, as far as she could tell, this was something much bigger than just her apartment building.

  She tried to run every scenario through her head. It was Saturday, so maybe the town was just quiet. No. Chicago was probably busier on Saturdays.

  The oddest part about the scene in front of her wasn’t so much the quiet, though that was disconcerting. It was the cars in the middle of the street—the vehicles that had obviously been in motion—with drivers who leaned against them, talking to each other, while some of the cars had been abandoned completely.

  This time, instead of just looking around and hoping to see something that made sense, she decided to approach one of the people standing outside his car. The man looked tired. Disheveled and annoyed. His car looked brand new—a BMW that glistened in the morning sunlight.

  “How long have you all been sitting here?” Cora asked.

  The man looked at her and shook his head. “Past midnight.” He held up his phone. “Nothing is working and I’m miles from home. You hear that?” He held a hand up to his ear. “Nothing. Not even sirens, which you would always hear in a situation like this.”

  “What do you think it is?”

  “A terrorist attack, obviously.” The man said the words as though it were just another part of his day and not totally unexpected—like a car wreck three miles up the road holding up traffic. He looked down at his phone again fruitlessly, then sighed and shoved the device back into his pocket. “Not sure what kind of attack, but we will probably be out of it by the afternoon. We’ll see on the news later, I’m sure.”

  Cora stepped back from him. Of course, his mind went to terrorism. It had been ingrained in every American that when something terrible happened, particularly in a major city like Chicago, it was a terrorist attack. It was a checklist of assumptions from there: jihadists, Chinese communists, North Korea, and of course everybody’s favorite—an inside job by the American government. Whatever the case, it sucked.

  Cora wasn’t so much worried about not having power for a short amount of time, but whatever the attack may have been had probably caused the deaths of thousands somewhere else. Was this what people on the streets of
New York felt during 9-11? The confusion? They must have felt panic from the chaos as well, but there wasn’t chaos here. Not yet. There also weren’t plumes of smoke rising into the sky as far as she could tell. If this were an attack, it was a quiet one.

  She thought about traveling down the street a little farther to see if there was anyone with a clue telling people what was going on. Maybe someone with a working radio? Maybe there was even a local station broadcasting the news right now? She had barely left her apartment building and yet she felt like this was city-wide, probably because of the lack of noise. Even from here, she should have been able to hear traffic from Interstate 90 or one of the highways. The El trains should have been grinding against the tracks. Cars should have been honking at each other at stoplights. These were the sounds of a bustling city—sounds that generally faded into the background. Now their absence felt jarring.

  Cora’s first instinct was to call her dad. He was the sheriff of a small town in Wisconsin just a couple of hours north of her, and he detested the city life. He never could understand why she liked it, but he would know what to do. In a crisis, Leland West was always the person to turn to for answers. But there was no way to contact him, and she wasn’t sure if she was even in a crisis yet. For all she knew, there could have been a massive power surge in the middle of the city and all of this would be taken care of by lunch.

  She wouldn’t be going anywhere today. Stay put. That’s what her dad would tell her to do. Stay put and wait out the worst part of it. If it doesn’t fix itself within a few hours, make sure you have everything you need to survive.

  Cora made her way back into her building, then she climbed the long steps back up to her apartment and shut the door behind her.

  This would take care of itself soon. There was nothing to worry about. Not yet, anyway.

  Chapter Five