Unravel: It Falls Apart Book 2: (A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller)

by Barry Napier

  The world is ending all around you and you’re still terrified of becoming like your mother, she scolded herself. You’re stronger than that. Now move your rear end and get to work already…

  She started moving right away. She had no idea how long she’d be walking, nor how long it would take her to reach Hoop Spring, so walking back out into that madness was…well, an equal amount of madness. She took a moment to collect some supplies from the store—a difficult task in that she didn’t have a bookbag or sack of any sort. She grabbed several waters and set them by the candy racks, where no one had fallen. She then grabbed several packages of peanuts, a few packs of donuts, and several honey buns. She then went to the little Fresh Food 4 U display and grabbed a few bananas and all of the pre-wrapped sandwiches that had been set out.

  Lastly, she went behind the counter in search of the employee break room, if there was one. There were two people laid out behind the counter; one was a twenty-something girl who was wearing a store uniform. The other seemed to be just a random customer who had gotten desperate in his final minutes of life. When Katherine saw he had a gun, she kicked it away instinctively. Then, as an afterthought, she reached down and picked it up. It was a simple Ruger LCP, one of the most popular easily concealed 9mm handguns over the past few years. At least eight out of every ten concealed weapons she’d taken off of suspects over the past several years had been this kind of gun or something very similar. As she checked the ammo (there were three rounds loaded), it occurred to her that the cashier may have died of some cause other than the virus. But Katherine could not bring herself to check. If she lingered, those worries of losing her mind would come back and she was not going to allow that to happen.

  She found the break room located between a few stacks of boxes and where the little made-to-order kitchen area started. The area was totally empty of bodies or any sort of mess or chaos. She went inside and found a small room with a table, a few chairs, a little television, and a sink. She found what she was looking for strung over one of the chairs: a backpack.

  It wasn’t very bulky and was black in color. It was adorned with two patches, one on each side of the small pocket in the center. One patch was the logo for NF, a rap artist Katherine had heard of but did not know at all, and the other was a very exaggerated and excited-looking anime character. She felt guilty and a little sad as she looked through the bag. There was very little inside—just a wallet, a tattered comic book, and a change of clothes. She considered looking through the wallet for some ID; she felt that if she was going to steal a backpack, she should at least know who it had once belonged to.

  But that would just give her one more thing to fixate on, one more thing to beat herself up about as she tried to find a way to carry on. She placed the wallet, comic book, and clothes on the table in a tidy pile and then took the bookbag with her. She loaded it up with her hastily picked rations, the little Ruger 9mm she’d gotten from the man behind the counter, and then stared out the door for a moment.

  There had been no more gunfire. No one out there was moving and the only sounds she could hear were nearby car alarms and the hissing of static from the radio of the car with its windows down. With the utmost respect, Katherine stepped over the fallen body at the front door, the man’s dead grip still clutching the now-useless TheraFlu, and walked outside. She looked to the left, in the direction she needed to go in order to get out of Brandermill and pick up Highway 360, toward Hoop Spring. She figured Brandermill was not a very big area, so she would only have to walk a while before the roads opened up.

  That was good, because it would be dark quite soon—and the hazy sort of faux-dusk that seemed to be hovering over everything from the Richmond blast indicated that it might be a very dark night indeed.

  Chapter 17

  Olivia wasn’t exactly sure how long they’d been in containment. With no windows in their room, she had no idea if it was day or night, morning or dusk. She had her phone, but it was dead. It had died some undetermined amount of time ago and the last time she checked it, it had been 10:07 p.m. But was that last night or the night before? She honestly had no idea.

  Because of this, she had no idea what time it was when a hefty and very unpleasant woman came into the room. She held a plastic bag, which she set down on the edge of the bed without comment. Olivia looked inside and saw food: sandwiches, chips, bottled water, two bananas.

  Joyce reached for the bag right away but hesitated when her eyes finally fell on the woman. She was wearing the same sort of protective suit as everyone else but there was something about the woman’s face that made the plastic covering on the headpiece seem almost like a trap. Olivia wasn’t quite sure why, but she imagined looking down from above at the ocean, seeing the surface of the water with the murky shape of a shark swimming just below it.

  “Any symptoms?” the woman asked.

  “No,” Olivia said, watching Joyce as she finally grabbed the bag. She reached inside, grabbed one of the bags of chips, and handed it to Olivia. Olivia opened it for her without looking away from the woman. “Does irritation count as a symptom?”

  The woman said nothing. Her tired eyes leering out from behind her protective plastic screen did not look amused. She turned back to the door to leave and something about the woman’s complete lack of interest scared Olivia more than anything else she’d experienced since arriving here.

  “Wait, please,” Olivia said, not liking the weakness in her voice.

  The woman stopped and paused a moment, as if considering. She then slowly turned back and when she glared at Olivia and Joyce, Olivia understood that the woman hadn’t been purposefully rude or distant; she was tired, stressed out, and just as terrified about what was going on outside as they were.

  “What is it?” the woman asked.

  “Where is Doctor Chen?” Olivia asked. “Is she dead?”

  “No. Doctor Chen is taking a few hours off. She worked for more than thirty hours straight.”

  “Can you tell me what day it is? With no windows, we don’t exactly have the privilege of knowing if its day or night.”

  “When I left my station to bring you food, it was 6:06 in the evening. That was no more than five minutes ago.”

  “And what about showers or even the restroom?” Olivia asked. The more she spoke, the more she realized just how angry she was. Yes, she was scared and coming to her wits end, but her anger at being held captive was anchoring it all. Because no matter how hard she tried to swerve it, she could not see their current situation as anything more than captivity. The doctors and military could spin it however they wanted but at the end of the day, they were being held here against their will.

  “No one’s allowed you to use the restroom?”

  “It’s been a while…before Samantha died.”

  The woman nodded in a way that made Olivia wonder if she was just as disgusted by the situation as she and Joyce were. “I can’t give that authorization,” the woman said, “but I’ll see to it that someone comes in the next half an hour or so.”

  It brought to mind the awkward first trip she and Joyce had taken to the restrooms. They were little more than fancy port-a-potties installed at the back of the row of trailers like an afterthought. While she did have to urinate, she was not looking forward to being escorted back to those toilets again. It had been humiliating on a number of levels.

  “Thank you,” Olivia said, mainly because she didn’t see the point in wasting her strength by arguing. “How bad is it out there?” she asked.

  “It’s getting worse,” she said. She then took another step back in and looked to Joyce with the sort of care and compassion that made Olivia wonder how many children this woman had. She then looked to Olivia and spoke quietly, her voice slow and calculated. “Too many of us are dead from this virus now. We’re operating at a little less than half capacity now. We’re waiting on orders for our next steps, and I would assume one of those steps is going to be releasing you. I’d do it myself if I didn’t think there w
ould be massive repercussions.”

  “What sort of repercussions?” Olivia asked.

  The woman only shook her head.

  “What happens to us if everyone here dies and we’re still locked in these rooms?” Olivia asked. She hated to be so blunt in front of Joyce but she also knew the girl had seen more than enough; hiding the severity of what they were going through seemed nearly laughable at this point.

  “Despite what you may think of what we’re doing here,” the woman said, “we won’t allow that to happen.”

  “So why are we even still here? How much more blood could you possibly need?”

  “I just don’t know that,” the woman said. “I’m only here to deliver your food.”

  “What about Paul?” Joyce asked. Hearing the little girl ask such a powerful question in a simple way.

  “The gentleman you came in with is still here, and he is fine,” the woman said. “Dr. Chen will be in to see you soon and she will have more to tell you. I’m just an errand-runner. I wasn’t even doing this much until people starting dying left and right. Things are…well, things are grim here. But I can tell you with some confidence that there are people here that are not in agreement with holding you here and—”

  She stopped speaking rather suddenly, as if some sort of internal mute button had been pressed. Olivia could tell the woman feared that she had said too much.

  “Please,” Olivia said. “You can help us. We need to get Joyce to her father. Anything aside from that, I honestly don’t care right now.”

  “I know. There has been talk about it and…look, I can’t say anything else.”

  “But you can—”

  “Dr. Chen will be here soon. You can ask her your questions.”

  “But she won’t—”

  The woman opened the door with her keycard and the door slid open. Before Olivia knew what she was doing—before there was any sort of plan at all in her head—she dashed forward. When she lowered her shoulder, she wasn’t sure if she was intending to knock the woman down or simply push through the door. All she knew was that the opened door was freedom and she was tired of being held in this place.

  Just before she reached the doorway, the woman wheeled around with a speed that did not seem to match the physical limitations of her protective suit. And when she did, she was holding a small pistol. Despite its small size, it looked enormous when it was pointed right at her stomach from less than a foot away.

  Olivia looked into the woman’s eyes and through the plastic shield, she could see that there were conflicted emotions. “I truly do not want to use it,” the woman said, and Olivia thought she might be close to tears. “But I’ve been told to shoot you if you cause any problems. Please…don’t make me do it in front of the girl.”

  Olivia felt like her heart had frozen up in her chest. She nodded dimly, thinking not of herself but Joyce. Slowly, she held her hands up and stepped away.

  “’Livia, you okay?” Joyce asked.

  Olivia turned and saw Joyce eating from her bag of chips. She nodded and said, “Yes, honey. I’m fine.”

  She looked back to the woman one last time. She had slowly backed out of the door, the pistol in her hand. Olivia looked behind the suited woman and saw the trailer, totally empty. She thought she could hear murmuring voices from somewhere further off and something she thought might be the hum of a generator.

  “I’m so sorry,” the woman said. Olivia believed her. She was pretty sure she was crying, though the shield made it hard to tell. “Really…so sorry.”

  With that, she pressed a button on the other side of the door’s frame and it slid closed. Olivia looked away from the woman’s face, back to the pistol, feeling the surge of fear and adrenaline dwindle away. She stared at the closed door for a very long time, staring through the small window while Joyce munched on chips behind her.

  ***

  Paul woke up reaching for a gun he no longer had. He sprang awake with the remnants of a dream clinging to his head. He only remembered the bare bones of it, but it was enough to make him want the gun—to feel as if he needed the gun. He’d dreamed about the man he’d shot, the man with candy bars in his bag. Only, in the dream, there had been men behind the chocolate-giving man. Military and civilian alike, all armed and coughing roughly. Some stopped in their march toward him to vomit or keel over, but they all had their eyes on Paul.

  For a sickening moment upon waking, Paul was sure the man with the chocolate was in the room with him. Maybe he was haunting Paul from the afterlife, having been wrongly taken out. But just as soon as Paul felt his presence there with him, he realized the room was just as empty as it always was. He sat up on the cot and reached blindly in the dark for his bottled water. He drank from it and slapped the light on with the little switch by the cot.

  He checked his watch and saw that it was 1:05 in the morning. When the sun came up in about five hours, they’d be working on their third day here at this facility. He had already decided that he would submit to one more battery of tests but if they wanted any more than that, he was going to refuse. If it meant catching beatings or getting threatened by armed military men, so be it. He was done being treated like he was—

  His thoughts came to a grinding halt as he heard a familiar sound. It made no sense at first. Was it drums? Was someone blasting music from somewhere outside? No…of course not. Once his nightmare-spooked mind sorted itself out, he knew exactly what he was hearing. Somewhere nearby, likely out near the front of the facility where they had been brought in, someone was shooting. Not just someone, but several people from the sound of it.

  It was a powerless feeling to hear the sounds of violence and have no idea what was happening. There wasn’t even a window in this little prison of his, aside from the one at his door. He went to that little porthole window now and looked out. All he saw was the interior of the trailer that his little room and a few others were attached to. There was a single halogen light shining out there, revealing absolutely nothing. He could see the doors on the other side of the trailer that led to whatever maze of huts and shacks the military had put together. On the one hand, he remained impressed with how quickly they had been able to set something like this up. But on the other hand, the fact that a set-up like this existed at all told him that there had already been a plan in place for such an occasion—that somewhere along the line, someone in the government had suspected a day like this might come and such a set-up would be necessary. It was terrifying, to the say the least.

  The noise outside stopped for a moment and then started again. A series of gunshots, then another. He tried to sort it all out, pulling from his knowledge of firearms. During the first report, he’d heard singular blasts that he assumed were from a shotgun of some kind. This had been answered with the high speed rat-a-tat-tat of automatic rifles, fired by the military or so he assumed.

  This second series of shots seemed to be all from automatic rifles. There may have been a different gun buried in all of the noise but if so, he didn’t hear it. The gunfire stopped again and this time he could hear the distant murmur of loud voices. They were too far away to make out any of the words, but he could tell the voices sounded urgent and scared.

  Five minutes passed with no further sound, and then ten. Paul laid back down, fully intending to go to sleep again but it never came. He just lay there in the darkness, thinking about that stupid man with the candy bars in his pack. He also thought of the nightmare he’d lived through in New York City and wondered just how he’d managed to get out of it all.

  He was recalling the first night with Olivia and Joyce on the George Washington Bridge when he heard the soft mechanical noise of the door opening. He sat up slowly as the weak light from the halogen in the trailer leaked in.

  I could run right now, Paul thought. Before the lights come on, I could dash and knock out whoever is standing there.

  It was an enticing thought—one that he nearly—acted on, but he then remembered the sounds of gunfire. If he did m
anage to get out of this little prison, then what? Did he really think the people in charge here were going to just let him leave?

  “Paul, you awake?” came Dr. Jolly’s familiar voice.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m putting on the light,” he warned. “Watch your eyes.”

  Paul wasn’t sure how to feel about the level of cordiality Jolly was showing. Jolly had always been the least aggressive and more manageable of the men he’d seen while here, but even this seemed a bit much for him. The lights came on and Jolly stepped inside. Paul noticed that, polite or not, he made sure to shut the door behind him right away.

  “Sorry for the late night visit,” Jolly said as he stood against the wall. As always, he was wearing his suit. Paul had nearly gotten used to it, no longer wondering what the man might look like in plain clothes.

  “Night and day don’t really mean much of anything around here,” Paul said. He glanced at his watch and saw that it was nearly four in the morning. Somehow, he’d been laying in bed with his thoughts for almost three entire hours. “If I didn’t have my watch, I’d have no clue what part of the day I’m in.”

  “Paul…please level with me. The entire time, from your escape from New York to right now, have you not had any symptoms at all?”

  “First, you tell me something. I heard gunfire a few hours ago. What was that about?”

  Jolly thought about this for a moment. Paul could tell that the doctor wanted to tell him, but was struggling with something, probably protocols and regulations. In the end, Jolly gave a non-committal shrug and answered. “A woman and her husband came to the roadblock,” he said. “She seemed perfectly fine but he was sick. He’d been using respirators and masks to try to stay safe. They agreed to the escort from the roadblock to here and then they changed their minds. When our guys got pushy, the husband drew a shotgun from the floorboard. Our guys opened fire.” Jolly sighed here and his eyes grew distant, a rather haunting sight behind the plastic shield. “When one soldier tried to stop it from happening, he was shot, too. That led to a rather nasty squabble and just like that, in the space of about two minutes, we lost six soldiers, one infected man, and a woman that seemed to be perfectly healthy.”