In The End: a pre-apocalypse novel Read online

  In The End

  a pre-apocalypse novel

  Edward M Wolfe

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, events and locations portrayed in this story are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.

  ISBN: 9781496176127

  Text Copyright © 2013 by Edward M Wolfe

  Cover design by Amygdala Design

  All Rights Reserved

  http://edwardmwolfe.com

  DEDICATION

  Shaelee and Zachariah,

  I love you guys and I hope you never experience an apocalypse outside the pages of fiction.

  “It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.” — Voltaire

  Part 1

  First Strike

  Chapter One

  “If that was World War Three, it wasn’t as bad as it was cracked up to be,” Jim said. Those nearest him, Josh and Hailey, had no reply.

  They were on the bottom floor of a condo cabin which faced a mountain in the west and had windows on both floors facing east toward Denver in the back.

  Angela, who was sitting on the other side of the room looking out through the window at a mushroom cloud on the horizon, turned to Jim and said, “Are you insane?!”

  Jim cocked his head and scrunched his eyebrows as he looked at her without responding.

  “Millions of people could be dead or dying right now!” she shouted.

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing,” he said, getting up from the floor and stretching his back by leaning backwards as far as he could. “I’m gonna go see if I can find a radio.” He headed toward the stairs that led to the upper, street-level floor.

  “You are such an asshole.” Angela glared at Jim as he walked past her.

  “I’m just going to look for a radio. Geez. Calm down, Angela. Think about how this vacation just got extended indefinitely. How cool is that?”

  She almost yelled up the stairs, “Fuck off, Jim. For real this time!” but it occurred to her that maybe this was Jim’s way of coping. Maybe she should give him some slack. But she was still upset about what he said. She turned to Josh and Hailey and asked, “Can you believe him?”

  Josh slowly shook his head. Hailey was leaning into Josh with her head on his chest where she had cried herself to sleep. Josh continued to gently stroke her hair and stare intently at nothing.

  When Jim reached the top of the stairs, he hesitated for just a second before opening the door, thinking that he might be walking into nuclear radiation. He dismissed that thought as quickly as it came to him. The nuke was too far away to affect them here on the mountain. He was sure of it. He opened the door and sniffed the air, then smiled at his own stupidity. He wasn’t going to be able to smell radiation.

  He walked through the doorway, turned right, and entered the kitchen. There were no sounds coming from the cabin or from anywhere outside. There weren’t many neighbors in the area since it was adjacent to a resort that catered only to beginning skiers, but still, at any given time one might hear someone chopping firewood, or a snow-plow, or cars with chains on the tires.

  Now, there was nothing. It sounded like it was the middle of the night. He looked at the clock on the microwave which should’ve been giving the time in glowing LCD light, but it looked like nothing more than a rectangle of black glass above the control buttons. It wasn’t even blinking 12:00. Either the microwave was broken or the power was out. He flipped the kitchen light switch. Nothing happened. He still wasn’t convinced. He thought too rationally. Maybe the bulb was burned out. Maybe several bulbs were burned out. Finding the radio would give him a definite answer regarding their power situation.

  He remembered that he’d seen a radio when they arrived in the cabin and he’d looked in the various rooms checking the place out. He tried to shut out thoughts of Denver and what it meant that there was a nuclear explosion there. He needed to think. He got an image in his mind of the radio sitting on a dusty shelf. Now where was that?

  He had thought it was in the kitchen, but it wasn’t. He crossed the kitchen, exited on the other side and turned into a short hall with two closed doors. One door led to a bedroom that no one was using and the other led to a laundry/utility room.

  Now he remembered. The radio was sitting on a shelf above the washer and dryer. He went into the room and walked straight to the shelf. He saw that the electric cord from the radio was plugged in to an outlet. He turned the volume/power knob all the way to the right. There was no sound. He turned the tuning knob rapidly to the right. The red tuner indicator traveled in small bursts with each flick of his fingers from the 540 starting position all the way to 1600 at the other end of the spectrum and it stayed silent the whole time.

  Jim wondered if the batteries were disabled while the radio was plugged in to the wall. He unplugged it then turned it off and then on again. There was a small popping noise when he turned it on and Jim thought the radio was coming to life. But then he heard another pop and realized that the sound was coming from somewhere outside.

  He turned the radio around and removed the back cover. There were batteries, but he didn’t know if they were good or not without obvious signs of corrosion, and these weren’t corroded. Carrying the radio with him, Jim headed back to the kitchen and set the radio down to search for new batteries.

  He heard another pop from outside and this time he recognized it as the sound of a small caliber pistol. Looting, already? Jim frowned at this thought. No way. People can’t be looting up here. Not yet, anyway. He headed out of the kitchen, through the cabin’s main room and went outside. This time he didn’t think of radiation before opening the door. When he stepped outside, he sniffed the air for the scent of gunpowder but he detected nothing but the smell of fir and pine trees.

  He looked around, wondering where the noise could’ve come from. There was another cabin across the road and twenty yards to his left. That’s the only place it could be, he thought. If he was right and the sound was in fact gunshots, then he felt he needed to check it out.

  The air was cold and he wasn’t wearing a jacket, but he didn’t think of going back for one. If someone had fired a gun three times, something was going on, and it could be bad.

  Jim started to jog across the road to the other cabin. He didn’t bother looking either way before crossing the road. It was too quiet for there to be any cars coming. There was a nice car in the driveway of the cabin he was approaching. Jim slowed to a walk as he reached the front door. He thought he heard something coming from inside. The closer he got, the clearer the noise became. It sounded like a retarded kid moaning or whining. Jim imagined a developmentally disabled kid with a firearm. If ever there was a recipe for disaster… He mentally sang a revised version of a song by a comedienne named Julie Brown.

  “Everybody run. The retard’s got a gun.”

  He smiled, thinking this could be really fucked up and not funny at all. He didn’t know why he always thought of the most inappropriate thing he could possibly say in every situation. That was just where his mind went, and to him, it was funny. He heard the moaning sound again.

  He opened the storm door and started to knock on the wooden door with his knuckles. His hands were already cold and rapping on the hard wood hurt. He grabbed the brass knocker and banged it against the metal plate a few times, then let go. The moaning/whining sound grew louder and more insistent. Jim was sure that something was seriously wrong in there. It sounded like someone needed help. He tried the doorknob. It turned in his hand. He pushed the door open and saw the source of the moaning.

  There were two people inside. One w
as making the awful moaning noise and one was dead silent. Lying on a bearskin rug in front of the crackling, warm fireplace was a young blonde woman who Jim assumed was probably pretty hot before she took two bullets to the head.

  Further from the fireplace and closer to Jim was a man lying on the ground, slowly turning in circles. He was bleeding from the head and looked like he was trying to walk with his right foot, while lying on his side. He would place his foot on the ground and then try to get traction. His body would spin a little on the polished wood floor and then he’d try it again. His arms lay useless on the floor. Each time he used his foot and caused his body to spin a little more counter-clockwise, he moaned, possibly in frustration, as if he was trying to do something other than spin in circles and continuously failing.

  Jim said, “What the fuck are you doing?"

  The man’s active leg jerked as if he was startled by Jim’s voice. After another partial rotation the man was able to see Jim looking down at him. He began moaning in earnest now. He looked around wildly and his eyes widened when they spotted the gun not far away from where he was, but still out of reach since he couldn't move his arms. He looked at the gun, then at Jim, and groaned two syllables. “Ooooo ee!”

  He repeated this several times. Although his face was frozen in place with the left side of his mouth pulled back far enough to expose his back teeth, and the right side closed, Jim sensed the man was pleading with him. He saw blood dripping from the man’s temple onto the floor and realized what had happened here. It was a failed murder-suicide. Partially failed anyway; the woman appeared to be dead.

  The man on the ground spun himself until he could reach the gun with his foot, then tried to kick it toward Jim. It went in a general direction somewhat toward Jim – enough for him to understand what "Ooooo ee" meant. He wanted Jim to finish the job for him. "Shoot me," he was trying to plead, minus consonants.

  Jim said, "Fuck you," then turned around and walked out. He was pissed off now. After what that bastard had done to the blonde woman, he didn’t deserve help dying. He deserved to suffer. Jim was so angry he considered going back in and shooting the sonofabitch with his own gun to vent his anger, but he refused to put the man out of his misery.

  They were obviously a couple and had come to the cabin together—maybe for a romantic getaway. The nuke happened and the guy freaked out. Jim wondered if they could have possibly discussed committing suicide. No, he thought. She had been shot in the back of her head. The bastard had decided on her behalf that life was too terrible to live now. That should’ve been her choice to make.

  He looked back over his shoulder and yelled, "Asshole."

  Two

  Angela was standing at the foot of the driveway, hugging herself to keep from freezing when she saw Jim emerge from the doorway. She was scared that something had happened to him and was relieved to see that he looked unharmed.

  “What were you doing over there? Did something happen? I thought I heard gunshots after you left the room."

  Jim stood there, looking down at the ground and not answering her.

  “Jim, what happened?”

  “You don’t want to know,” he replied and walked past her.

  “Jim! What happened?” she asked, turning to follow him.

  Jim stopped, turned around and said, “I told you—you don’t want to know!”

  “Obviously, I do want to know, Jim. That would explain why I asked you. Twice, even.”

  “Let’s get back to the cabin. We can talk about it there. You’re gonna freeze.” Jim wished he had brought a jacket, just so he could give it to her. But she was as stupid as he was for coming out in the freezing cold without one.

  He felt molten anger boiling inside of him over the murder of the blonde woman, but being near Angela had a calming effect on him. She had a way of always making him feel something like compassion. He put his arm around Angela’s waist and resumed walking back to their cabin. Angela did not resist, even though she was not happy with him.

  To their mutual surprise, Angela and Jim walked into the cabin to find that Josh and Hailey had gotten off the couch and were moving around, for the most part, like normal people again. They had gathered their belongings and brought them upstairs. They looked like they were ready to leave.

  “What’s going on, you guys?” Angela asked.

  “We’re going home,” Hailey replied. “Our vacation is clearly ruined so there’s no point in staying here for two weeks.” Jim looked at her and started to say something about how utterly stupid that sounded, but he just shook his head as he entered the cabin, passing them and heading downstairs. “Screw it,” he muttered as he went down.

  Angela looked at Jim and then turned back to Hailey, speechless for a moment. “Hailey! Everything is ruined! That was a nuclear bomb down there. Do you hear what you’re saying?”

  “Angela, I understand that something terrible has happened to Denver. But we live in Boise, and we’re going home. If you want to stay here and ski, that’s up to you.” Hailey scanned the room to see if there was anything of hers she might have missed and picked up a copy of People magazine from a small table with a lamp on it next to the front door. She turned to Josh and said, “I think that’s everything. Are you ready?”

  Josh was standing a few feet from the doorway—a center-piece between four suitcases. He nodded slowly. His expression hadn’t changed from that which he had worn downstairs as he watched the mushroom cloud over Denver, growing, rising and expanding.

  “We’ll see you back in Boise, Angela.” Hailey walked to the door, opened it, then turned to Josh and said, “Come on! Let’s go.” Josh responded like an android coming out of rest mode and picked up two of the four suitcases as Hailey opened the door wide. She grabbed the other two suitcases and carried them outside.

  Angela was stunned. Their vacation was ruined? They were just going to go home now? They were insane. Jim said some pretty crazy shit, but he actually knew what he was saying and doing. Josh and Hailey weren’t making any sense at all. Angela ran out after them, feeling like she had to bring them to their senses.

  “You guys! We could be in the middle of World War Three right now. You can’t just go driving back to Boise. Bombs could be going off everywhere. This is probably the safest place we could be. We’re on top of a freaking mountain. Hey! Are you even listening to me?”

  Josh opened the back of his Isuzu Rodeo and hefted one suitcase in, then the other. Hailey set hers down next to Josh and he dutifully loaded those in as well. Finished with his known, immediate task, he turned and stared at Hailey as if awaiting new instructions.

  If Hailey said nothing, he looked as if he was prepared to stand there overnight and into the next day until commanded to do otherwise.

  “Hailey!” Angela yelled, walking over to her best friend. “You can’t leave. Even if Boise is safe, it’s not safe to drive there. Do you think you can just drive through a radiated Denver like it’s nothing? Please stop and think about what you’re doing!”

  “Let’s go!” Hailey barked at Josh. “I don’t ever want to come back here.” Josh robotically complied. He turned away from her and dutifully walked to the driver’s side of the vehicle.

  Angela thought she finally understand what was wrong with them. “Hailey!” she yelled, as the other girl opened the front passenger door. “Listen to me. You’re in denial. You don’t know what you’re doing. And Josh…Josh is in shock. He’s not thinking at all. Come on you guys,” she pleaded. “Please come back inside. Let’s talk about this. Let’s at least find out what they’re saying on the news. Okay? Come on, I’m freezing. Let’s go in and listen to the news.”

  Hailey slid into the passenger seat, looked at Angela and said, “Good-bye, Anj. Tell Jim I said thanks for ruining our vacation,” and she slammed her door shut. Angela watched as Hailey turned her head toward Josh and said something she couldn’t hear. A second later the engine came to life. The small, white reverse lights came on at the back of the vehicle, and t
he truck backed down the driveway, turning to the left when it reached the road. The brake lights flared for a second, the reverse lights went out and the truck moved forward and slowly gained speed as it headed downhill.

  Angela stared, dumbfounded, until she could see the truck no more. “Unbelievable,” she muttered to no one.

  Three

  Angela was still staring down the road when she heard the cabin door open. Jim came out, shutting the door behind him. “Go inside. You’re going to freeze.” He walked past her, crossing the driveway diagonally.

  “Where are you going?” she asked, realizing she would be all alone if he left.

  “I’m going back for the gun.”

  “What gun!?” The fear she had just started to feel as she watched Josh and Hailey act completely insane by driving toward a disaster area as if it was nothing just increased and her heart started beating faster. She turned around and followed him.

  Jim talked as they walked. “So, they’re going home?”

  “That’s what they think they’re doing. Actually, they’re not thinking. Not at all. They’ve both lost their minds. Hailey’s insane and Josh is a zombie who follows her orders. I don’t understand what’s going on.”

  “I can tell you what’s going on.”

  “Please do.”

  “They’re fucking stupid.”

  “Thanks, Jim. That really clears up everything. Now, what’s this about a gun?”

  “It appears that guy across the street flipped out when he saw the nuke and decided he and his female companion would be better off dead. So he shot and killed her, then tried to kill himself. And failed. He was alive when I left, but he could be dead by now.” He stopped about ten feet from the door.