Final Dawn: Season 1 (The Thrilling Post-Apocalyptic Series) (14 page)

Marcus Warden

4:39 AM, March 30, 2038

Smoke curled out of the creature’s mouth, glistening silver in the pulsating brightness of Marcus’s flashlight. A faint buzz began to fill the air as the smoke took on a life of its own, beginning to pulsate and swirl like the mass he had encountered in the bus. Through the flashing, Marcus could see the human face behind the scars, torn flesh and silver latticework that crisscrossed the skin. The smile was still there, pale and thin, the lips white as ash.

With no time left to think, Marcus’s body functioned purely on instinct and adrenaline. Without hesitation, he pulled his legs under him, tightening the muscles in his calves and thighs. Gripping his machete in his right hand, he leapt from his perch on the ledge, plowing his shoulder directly into the creature and toppling both of them over onto the ground. As Marcus grappled with the creature, he could feel the muscles bulging just beneath the surface of its chest and arms. The skin of the beast felt human, but it was cold and clammy to the touch.

As Marcus rolled off of the creature, he watched it spring up, its legs snapping unnaturally as it bent both knees backwards to push itself up off the ground. Marcus stepped back as the creature eyed him, snapping each of its knees back into place with two swift movements. Marcus still held on to his machete, though he had lost his flashlight in the dive. It lay on the floor, just a few feet away, still covering the cavern in a dizzying array of lights and shadows.

“You. Must die.” The creature’s thin lips parted ever so slightly as it spoke.

Marcus swallowed hard, hesitating for a split second, his eyes moving rapidly across the creature’s face.
It just spoke to me.
The reality of what happened began to sink in.

Sensing Marcus’s momentary distraction, the creature lunged at him, arms outstretched, moving at an inhuman speed. It grabbed Marcus by the throat, pushing him hard up against the cavern wall. The tight grip of the creature’s hands felt cold, like a vise was slowly squeezing the life out of him. Marcus gasped for air and beat his fists against the creature’s arms as his vision began to fade, narrowing as his supply of oxygen grew thin.

Marcus glanced at his hand, his eyes widening as he realized that he still had his machete. It had been forgotten in the scuffle, but it was still there, dangling a few inches off of his wrist by a cord. He jerked his wrist upwards, grabbing the handle, holding the blade upside down. With a final gasp, he thrust it sideways, driving it deep into the creature’s skull.

As the blade sank into the head of the creature, its eyes grew wide and it spasmed, loosening its grip enough that Marcus’s weight pulled his body lose from its strangle, dropping him to the floor. The blade pulled out of the creature’s head as he fell. A few drops of blood followed the blade, but they were quickly replaced by more of the silver smoke. The creature stepped back, its whole body shaking and jerking.

Seizing his opportunity, Marcus raised his blade. He gripped it tightly with both hands and let out a scream as he charged forward, driving the point into the front of the creature’s face, directly between its two silver eyes. The first blow to the creature had wounded it, but the second was fatal. Marcus jerked the machete out of the creature’s head, twisting as he did so. This time, the blood was a little more pronounced, though still only a few more drops than the first time.

As the blade left the creature’s head it jerked one last time then went still, its arms outstretched and its legs frozen at an odd angle. The room was mostly silent, aside from the buzzing of the smoke as it curled around the top of the cavern. The creature remained upright for a moment, lifeless and unmoving, its limbs still rigid. Then, like a mighty oak being felled, it slowly toppled over to the ground with a thud.

Marcus still gripped the machete tightly in both hands, panting heavily as he watched the creature fall to the ground. He scarcely dared to believe that it was finally dead even with the proof lying there in front of him. For a moment, nothing happened. The creature remained still, the flashlight continued to spread thin rays of light across the cavern, and Marcus remained frozen, breathing heavily. The smoke continued to curl around the top of the cavern, buzzing as it moved.

After a few moments, though, the buzzing grew in intensity, and Marcus saw movement around the creature.
Not again,
he thought. Instead of the creature moving to get up, though, Marcus could swear that he saw it starting to shrink.
What the hell?
Clutching the machete tightly, he took a few steps forward, squinting in the pulsating light to get a better view.

As Marcus watched, more smoke swirled around the body of the creature, exiting at an increasing rate. As it exited the body of the creature, the buzzing in the cavern increased and the amount of the creature’s body that was left began to rapidly decrease. With each new wisp of smoke a different piece of silver on the creature’s body disappeared. Though he couldn’t see very clearly in the current lighting conditions, to Marcus it appeared as though the silver metallic substance on the creature’s skin was almost being eaten away.

From start to finish, it only took a few seconds for the smoke to fully exit the creature’s body. Where the muscular, silver, tall, terrifying beast once lay, there now remained only pale skin, a few white bones and traces of dried blood. The smoke coalesced at the top of the room, buzzing loudly as it circled at the top of the cavern.
That’s the same shit that was in the bus! What’s going on here?!

Without warning, the buzzing silvery smoke shot downwards toward the cavern floor, angling off towards the exit. In less than a second, the buzzing mass was gone, having completely vacated the cavern and escaped into the night.

Marcus stood in the center of the cavern, panting and staring at the remains of the creature in front of him as the flashlight still pulsed, twisting his shadows as it threw them against the ceiling and wall.

Rachel Walsh

9:15 PM, March 31, 2038

The miles dragged on as Rachel walked north along the highway. It took her a full day to get through Charlotte, and she ended up having to circle around the city to the east, following a new bypass that had been under construction when the bombs fell. The military map that she had taken from the Humvee had more detail on it than her civilian map, but when the entire landscape of a region was irreparably altered by an atomic explosion even the best maps were of little to no help at all. Rachel had chosen instead to follow the bypass since the large columns that had been built were still mostly intact, offering her a visible guide to follow. After a day’s worth of travel, she ended up at the northern part of Charlotte inside a half-collapsed office building next to a strip mall.

The smoke and ash in the city had been brutal and Sam had spent most of the day coughing up black mucus from all the smoke and dust he had inhaled. Rachel patted his head as she snapped on a lighter, coaxing a small pile of torn paper and broken particle board piled inside a metal trashcan to catch on fire. The fire finally caught and she fed it more debris, slowly growing it into a proper cooking fire. Sam coughed hoarsely and Rachel rubbed his head again, pouring out a bottle of water into a half-broken mug she found in one of the desk drawers. Sam greedily lapped at the water, washing the smoke and ash from his mouth as he sucked up the refreshing liquid.

“Easy boy, just take it easy. We’ll get a good night’s sleep here and set off first thing in the morning.” The Labrador whined at her and put his head down on her lap. Rachel sat cross-legged next to Sam in front of the fire, blowing gently on it as it grew, consuming the bits of tax records and cheap desk that she kept feeding it. Rachel stared at the fire as it licked at the wood and paper, watching the ink and parchment vaporize before her eyes. Entire lives and worlds were contained on papers just like these all over the world. So many lives had been destroyed, torn away by the fire and flames.

Sam looked up at Rachel and whined again, breaking her from her reverie. “Food, right, sorry boy.” Rachel dug into her backpack and pulled out a can of ravioli, opened it and balanced it on top of the fire, in the center where it was the hottest. “I don’t feel like a cold meal tonight, if you can stand to wait a bit.” Sam put his head back down on her leg and watched the slowly warming can in the fire. Rachel joined him and they both stared at the flames, each lost in their own separate worlds.

By the next morning, Rachel and Sam were doing much better. Sam’s cough had dissipated and the winds had finally turned to the south, keeping much of the ash and smoke away from them. As Rachel and Sam left the office building and headed north, she broke an energy bar in half, giving half to Sam and absentmindedly chewing on the other half herself.

According to her map, there were two options for heading north. The first was to continue along the highway, through Greensboro and Durham up into Richmond. The other was to head to the northeast and link up with the railroad that ran up and down the eastern seaboard. From what Rachel could tell, there was a rail station about twenty-five miles from they were, which they would definitely be able to reach by sundown. While the railroad did pass through a few towns on the way up to Richmond, it was primarily a freight line, and it was far enough away from most cities that she figured it wouldn’t have suffered nearly as much damage as the highway.

“What do you think, boy? We can keep going through this mess or try for an easier walk along the rails.” Sam looked up at her and whined, happy to go with Rachel no matter which path she chose. Rachel sighed. “We do have enough food and water to make it there without resupplying, and I’m tired of trying to get through this wreckage. The railroad it is.”

With a final check of the map, Rachel steered them towards a side road that went to the northeast of Charlotte, linking up with a main road that connected to the railroad.
As long as the roads are clear, we’ll definitely get there by tonight, and we can take a straight shot up into Richmond to find the cache that Waters and Roche were so eager to reach.

Leonard McComb

10:10 AM, March 29, 2038

The smell of smoke was fresh in the air as Leonard drove down the parkway. After waking up, he worked for an hour to get the Jeep freed from the wreckage surrounding it. Once he was able to pull out into the grass, he started on his way south, switching back and forth from driving on the highway to driving offroad, depending on the road conditions.

So far, the damage to the area had been severe, and it forced him off the highway and into the median or the surrounding areas on several occasions. More than once, though, he had been forced to turn around, making his way back to an exit and taking back roads to get around large craters or debris fields that blocked his path.

While Leonard didn’t have a map of the area, enough road signs were left intact or lying on the side of the road that he was able to figure out where to go. His plan was to continue south until he hit Atlantic City, then make his way west towards Baltimore. From there, he would continue down through Washington and Richmond and then head straight down the coast to South Carolina. While the slow pace of the day had dampened his spirits slightly, Leonard was still in a good mood and continued to make forward progress.

By the evening, Leonard reached the Delaware Memorial Bridge. In the light of the bright beams of the Jeep, Leonard could see that the bridge had survived the nearby blasts with only minimal damage, and it appeared safe to cross. He decided to spend the night on the Jersey side, and get started the next morning, since he didn’t want to risk crossing in the dark.

The next morning, Leonard made a quick detour before continuing across the bridge. With his Jeep running low on gas, he drove around until he found a small neighborhood nearby. After the third house, he finally found one with a garden hose that was wrapped up on the side of the house. He detached the hose from the water supply and cut a short length of it, roughly eight feet long.

Back on the highway, Leonard stopped next to an enormous SUV that was dead in the center of the road. It was still upright and looked intact aside from a broken windshield. He leaned inside the driver’s side door and popped open the gas cover, then began to siphon gas from the car into his Jeep. Once the Jeep was filled, he continued back to the bridge and started to make his way across.

The bridge was indeed intact, like he had seen the night before. Pieces of the supports overhead were broken off or dangling down over it, and there were plenty of vehicles that had crashed both on the bridge and through the side rails, plummeting into the river below. Leonard kept his eyes forward, occasionally revving the engine as he had to drive over large pieces of steel that had fallen and were blocking the road. Twenty minutes later, though, he was across, safely on the other side.

Driving through Wilmington and Newark, Leonard was reminded of the destructive power of the weapons that were unleashed. Every major city he passed through had been destroyed in the same manner, with patterned rings of destruction stretching miles out in every direction from the center. What the nuclear bombs didn’t vaporize, they shredded – everything from paper and plastic to steel and titanium. By the time he reached Baltimore, Leonard had lost track of how many times he had been grateful for the fact that he was driving in an off-road vehicle with 4-wheel drive.

From the looks of it, Baltimore had been hit harder than most cities. While Wilmington, Newark and other places had been severely damaged, Baltimore looked like New York on the scale of destruction. The four lane highway was jammed full of cars, most of them just shells, having burnt up in the initial blast. Leonard was forced off the road again, having to drive through the median and across fields and through parking lots in shopping malls just to get closer in to the city.

By nightfall, Leonard had made it into the heart of the city. He was exhausted from the day’s drive and decided to call it a night. He had hoped to make it through the city in one day, but now he figured he would be lucky if he could make it through the rest of the city the next day. In the middle of a parking lot at a high-end mall in the heart of Baltimore, Leonard found a small group of cars that had miraculously survived the blast, most likely due to the shelter provided by a partially collapsed parking garage nearby. Leonard parked near the cars and made himself comfortable in the Jeep, quickly falling asleep.