The Break Free Series Box Set [Books 1-3]

by Fitch, E. M.

  “Morning, Drew!”

  “Was that your lovely homemaking skills that woke us this morning, or was that your sister?”

  Kaylee opened her mouth to answer but was beaten by Emma who had just bounced back into the room holding a jug of maple syrup. “That was me you ass, and you better have meant that compliment sincerely or you won’t be getting any syrup!”

  “Like you could keep me from it,” Andrew teased, yanking the syrup from her hands and holding it over his head. Emma grit her teeth and punched him in the arm, though it didn’t appear to have the effect she had intended. Andrew merely laughed and pulled out a chair, pouring some of his stolen syrup over the oatmeal that Kaylee had just served him.

  Neither father had said a word during the exchange. Bill was looking out the window, his arm propped up against the frame and his nose touching the glass. The window had fogged some due to his breathing and he wiped the glass clean as he turned away.

  “Still finding food,” he said, shaking his head as he pulled out a chair next to his son.

  “They’re not exactly picky,” Kaylee’s father Nick answered, now eating a lumpy portion of oatmeal. “The girls say we’re low on supplies again. We need to go shopping.”

  “Shopping,” Bill snorted, “yeah.”

  “The market on eighth was still fairly stocked with dry goods last time we were there,” Andrew added to the conversation, oatmeal dripping from his spoon unto his shirt. Kaylee smiled and handed him a towel. She rolled her eyes at his confused expression and nodded towards his chest. Andrew wiped the gunk away with a sheepish grin.

  “We’re wiping the stores clean out,” Bill grumbled. “Haven’t seen a can of beans, coffee, soda in over six months. The rest’s not going to last forever.”

  “Bill, we’ve talked about this,” Nick said, a stern tone that hadn’t been present moments ago accenting his voice. Nick’s eyes drifted over to Kaylee and Emma before his expression faltered. “Let’s try eighth and we’ll talk again when we get home.” Bill grit his teeth, frowned, and didn’t speak again.

  Andrew caught Kaylee’s eye, nodded at his father and shook his head. They both knew why Andrew’s dad was upset. He wanted to leave. He had been trying to convince Nick for months now that staying locked up in the fire station wasn’t a good long-term plan. And from everything Kaylee overheard, from both Bill and Anna, she agreed. They had some crops growing, and a collection container for rainwater. Andrew had even re-fashioned an old van he dragged into the garage into a dehydrator, useful for drying and preserving fruit slices or the occasional jerky. They had restructured some old piping from the roof to the bathroom so they did have what could be termed as ‘running water.’ They had access to medical supplies and medicine from the pharmacies that they broke into. They even had a halfway decent generator for the really cold winter months. But Bill was right, it wasn’t going to last forever. If this truly were the end of all things, they would have to find a way to do this all on their own.

  And none of that could happen if they couldn’t get clear of the infected.

  But was anywhere really clear of the infected? There had been billions of people affected. And no one uninfected person had come across the group in over a year. Was there anyone else out there?

  Kaylee knew that Anna thought so.

  “How could we be the only ones?” she had once said, taking a break from pouring over the medical texts that were always scattered around her room. “Just us from this little city, stuck here with nothing but infected and no knowledge of any cure? I just don’t believe it’s statistically possible.” She had recited her theories again and again, insisting they would find someone out there.

  But so far, no one had come.

  “Okay,” Nick said, drawing the groups’ attention. Anna had just skidded around the corner and tossed each of them their individual vitamin sorter. Kaylee popped open the Monday pocket. She didn’t know if it really even was Monday, but Anna had just newly filled them and so it was a logical place to start. She swallowed the handful. Emma had her nose wrinkled, eyeing the protein supplement; it was a big pill. Anna smiled at Emma as she swallowed it and Emma made a face. “Tonight Bill, Andrew, and I will be going shopping. Anna, we can hit that pharmacy on sixth if you think there could be anything worthwhile left. The girls will be doing any washing, so please get your things to them.”

  The group nodded and grunted their understanding. Bill left the table with a muttered “Thanks for breakfast,” before trudging across the hall to get his boots.

  “Just give me a minute to get this down. It’d be good to take a look,” Anna said, smiling at Nick as she gestured to the bowl of oatmeal she snagged from the center of the table. “I tell you, what I wouldn’t give for some brown sugar!” Kaylee grinned and mouthed “Me too,” from across the room.

  “We have some time, sun hasn’t set yet,” Nick said softly, gazing out the window. He got up from his seat and crossed to the living room. Kaylee knew he’d be at the window, watching a very particular street. She sighed.

  It wasn’t a great life. But still, they were surviving.

  Chapter Two

  A few years ago Kaylee would have been insulted at being put to ‘women’s work.’ She was capable of far more than washing, cooking, and cleaning and she knew it. But she now understood why that had been deemed women’s work in the days of old. She simply couldn’t carry the tons of dirt that Andrew could. She couldn’t till the soil as much as her father did. And she couldn’t operate, let alone maintain, the heavy machinery that Bill was always swinging about to fix the structural problems in the fire station. If she had went ‘shopping’ with the rest, they would have had to carry more because neither she, nor Emma, nor Anna could haul the containers from the distant stores to the firehouse and up the rope ladder.

  And her women’s work wasn’t as easy as she had initially thought it would be. There were no refrigerators or ovens, no vacuums, no washing machines. Every bit of cooking was done from scratch and cooked over open flames. She now knew how to skin any animal that Anna or Bill got lucky enough to shoot from the rooftop before one of the infected ate them. And though the geese and ducks from the ponds in the park across the street had been eaten up long ago, pigeons, warblers, sparrows, and a variety of other inland birds were still plentiful. They were nearly impossible to shoot, and shooting them would have destroyed much of the meat anyway, but Andrew and his father had fashioned a dozen traps and nets along buildings throughout the city that worked pretty well. She had learned, from the books that Anna scavenged from the library, how to can and preserve food. She scrubbed the bathroom and kitchen with what little cleanser they had. And she washed, hung, and folded each article of clothing by hand.

  “Andrew really is a messy eater.”

  “Hmm?” Kaylee’s train of thought was broken by Emma’s grumbling and she squinted to see her sister’s outline against the setting sun.

  “Look at this shirt,” she demanded, yanking a sopping wet and soapy shirt out of the tub she was using to wash it in. “When was the last time we even had mustard? I feel like everything he owns is a personal challenge to the both of us.”

  Kaylee laughed. A few years back she would never have guessed her best girlfriend when she turned seventeen would be her bratty, younger sister. But she was glad that she was.

  “He is a slob,” Kaylee agreed. “Should I tell him, or do you want to?”

  “He won’t listen if I say anything anyway, better be you.”

  Kaylee snorted. “You think he listens to me?”

  “Please,” Emma scoffed. “He’s practically in love with you, he’d eat his own hand if you told him to.” Kaylee rolled her eyes and rinsed the shirt she had been scrubbing free of soap.

  “You're ridiculous,” she muttered, though she wasn’t entirely convinced Emma was wrong. Kaylee had always had the nagging suspicion that Andrew had feelings for her. Back when they were in school together she had been teased about it constantly. And she
had thought, years back, that she could try to like him too, because after all, in every good romantic movie or book, wasn’t the girl always falling for the idiot only to realize she really loved her best friend? But she had tried over time and she never seemed able to muster those kinds of feelings for him. She loved him, she really did. But even now, when it was just they stuck in an old three-story fire station together, she still couldn’t imagine that feeling taking her the distance she would need to go for a romantic relationship.

  “You think Mr. McCormick will convince Dad to move us out of here?” Emma asked and Kaylee knew she was worried because her tone went soft and low and she kept her eyes on her washing instead of meeting Kaylee’s.

  “I don’t know,” Kaylee replied carefully, squinting to see her sister through the darkening sky. “But he’s right. We can’t stay here forever.”

  “I just can’t believe there’s no one else out there,” Emma continued, piling a new bunch of soiled clothing into her bucket and letting them soak. “I mean, what if we’re it?”

  “We’re not.”

  Emma didn’t answer, just plunged her hands into the soapy water and scrubbed the wet clothing. Kaylee rose and took her basket to the lines they left set up on the side of the roof. From there she could see their old apartment building; she could, by way of counting windows and floors, make out which room had been hers. They were so close to their real home and still so far, far away.

  Kaylee pulled each sodden, cold garment from her pile and rung them out before securing them to the clothesline. Behind her the sun was just a brilliant, orange sliver on the horizon and below her the cries and moans of the infected began to lessen. She paused in her work to watch over the rail. It had always amazed her that, just like children, when the sun went down, the infected fell immediately to sleep. No noise or movement woke them. She was reminded of a time when her father and mother would bring them home after a long day out. She would be falling asleep in the car and the next thing she knew: it was morning. Somehow she had gotten from the car, through a noisy lobby, up the elevator, and into her bed without ever waking up to remember it. Every time that happened she had been amazed, convinced her father could perform magic spells to get his girls safely to their beds.

  But it wasn’t magic that affected the people on the streets; it was disease.

  Kaylee blinked and tried to focus. If she looked really hard, she could find her mother. Or really, the shell of the person her mother had once been. Her father watched for her every afternoon, stood in the living room gazing out at the street Kaylee had grown up on, the street her mother seemed to still frequent. Kaylee would never forget the moment they had left her, though she forced the memory from her mind every time it invaded, angry and frustrated at the tears it produced. Now all that was left of her mother roamed the streets, bite marks and torn flesh marring her skin, her eyes unfocused, her gait unsteady. She moaned and shrieked and cried out like the rest. It was only as the sun set that Kaylee could stand to see her, even though the sight of her curled up into a gutter was heart wrenching.

  “Here’s the last batch,” Emma said, grunting as she hauled the basket over to the lines. Kaylee nodded, suddenly exhausted, and backed away from the edge of the building.

  She’s out there somewhere. I’ll find her tomorrow.

  “We can see to dinner after this,” she whispered. Emma nodded.

  ~

  Dinner that night was a happier affair. Andrew had stuffed his pockets full of an assortment of candy and bags of chips from their raid on the market, a definite delicacy for their little group. And even though most of the chip bags had contents crushed to the consistency of dust, spirits were definitely lifted. It had made for a four star desert following the handful of dried cherries and vanilla health shake that had been dinner. Nick had even offered Bill a game of poker after dinner, something he hadn’t done in a long time, and Bill happily accepted. And so now, with Andrew in the bath and Anna reading in her room, Kaylee and Emma trudged back to the roof with a stolen bag of M&M’s to take the laundry off the line.

  “Blue was a good decision. Did you know they used to have a tan color? Like a light brown? Bad marketing call in my opinion.”

  “What are you talking about?” Kaylee laughed, peering at her sister through the black as she pulled one of their father’s shirts off the line and folded it into the basket.

  “The M&M’s. They got rid of the tan color and then put in the blue. It’s better, don’t you think?” Emma answered, squinting at her palm in the dim light from the propane lantern they left by the doorway. The candy she was squinting at hardly had any color left to it anyway, time eating away the molten red and bright blue until all the pieces looked the same: dusty white and pale grays with just the barest hint of color. She shrugged soon after and popped a handful of the candy into her mouth.

  “They taste the same anyway, you can’t tell the dif—”

  “Kay? You up here?” came a male voice from the stairs.

  “Ah good, lover boy is here,” Emma teased, jumping down from her perch on the low wall of the roof. “Now he can help you instead and I can go inside and bug Anna for some books. You mind?”

  “Not if Andrew doesn’t. And don’t call him that!”

  “What? Lover boy?” Emma asked in an overly theatric stage whisper that Kaylee was sure he overheard. Andrew peeked his head from doorway to the roof and grinned.

  “Mind if I break in?” he asked.

  “Break in all you like so long as you do my share of the folding,” Emma answered, stealing one last handful of the drab M&M’s before bouncing towards the stairs.

  “She acts like she was doing so much work. She was just sitting there expounding the merits of blue M&M’s versus light brown,” Kaylee snorted, standing with her hands on her hips and glaring in the direction of her sister.

  “Ah yeah, the tan ones right? They were awful!” Andrew said, coming up to the line of clothing and pulling down some pants to fold.

  “See!” Emma triumphed, nodding towards Andrew. “He knows what I mean!”

  “I hate you both,” Kaylee huffed. Emma snorted back a laugh as she flew down the stairs and Andrew just chuckled.

  “You don’t really. You love us,” he said, his hands faltering as he now clumsily folded one of her shirts. Kaylee hummed in doubt and he just chuckled again. They lapsed into a friendly, warm silence, only the sounds of their folding interrupting the peace.

  The silence on the rooftop at night was incredible. It had all been so loud at first, when the disease had spread and populations were scrambling to escape. The daytime was filled with moans and screeching and the screams of people being caught by the massing numbers of infected for meals. It was so loud that no building or closed windows could keep out the cries of terror. And at nighttime, it was the uninfected swarming the streets, stealing cars, overthrowing buses and trains, using any method to escape the cities while those who never could slowly chased after them. Kaylee had longed desperately to be with them, but she knew soon how unsafe those crowds could be. The mornings that followed would offer evidence, bodies trampled in the streets, children separated and left by their parents crying and calling out, only to be found by those who only the most forgiving were still calling human. There were fires and overturned cars and smashed out windows and Kaylee knew their parents were right to keep her and her sister hidden in the high-rise.

  But there was no such noise anymore. Once the infected were asleep, there was no noise at all. Kaylee had remembered once, years ago, watching a special on the Discovery Channel about a man who climbed to the top of some mountain she couldn’t even name now. The end of the footage had shown him standing alone at the top, the entire world laid out at his feet, and Kaylee remembered imagining how funny it would be to see so much of the world set out before you and yet not be able to hear a single bit of it.

  Standing on the rooftop was a sort of like that. Kaylee could see her entire world, the only world she had ever
known, laid out before her. She could see the high-rise she had grown up in, see the stoplight where she once had to wait for the bus, see the cars that had once honked and revved their engines all night long, lulling her to sleep. The park was across the way and children used to play and laugh, the fountain would bubble over, the street vendors would haggle and bargain. There would be car radios and arguing, laughing and cursing, sneezing, eating, scuffing of shoes along the pavement.

  And now there was nothing. The blackness of the night pressed in on them and the silence became an entity all in itself. It whispered and taunted, filled their eardrums and mocked their need for something more, something filling and different and yet familiar. There wasn’t even the high pitch buzz or the low whine of electricity and machinery, there was nothing. Stillness completely surrounded them, oppressive in it’s very nature.

  “You okay, Kaylee?” Andrew asked, his voice a soft breath of air that pushed through the night to her ears. She started and turned.

  “Yeah, sorry,” she murmured, realizing her hands were wrapped around a sweater of his, her knuckles white. She shifted her gaze from the edge of the world to his poorly lit face and smiled. “Just distracted, that’s all.”

  “S’okay,” he mumbled, looking back down to his hands.

  “How was the raid?” she asked, a nervous feeling fluttering inside at how awkward the mood had turned. Things had once been so normal between Andrew and she.

  “Oh, it was fine,” he answered, perking up. “Someone had dropped a backpack. It was kicked to a corner in the pharmacy and I picked it up. That’s where we found the candy, inside it. Not a bad find.”

  “Mhmm,” Kaylee agreed, nodding. “What did Anna have to get?”

  “A few things of some kind of medicine, I’m not sure. But she made us stop at the library too.” Andrew stretched his arms over his head and grinned. “She got some new research books and a couple of those stupid romances for Emma.”