Final Dawn: Season 2 (The Thrilling Post-Apocalyptic Series) Read online

  Final Dawn

  The Thrilling Post-Apocalyptic Series

  Season 2

  Episodes 6-10

  By

  Mike Kraus

  © 2013 by Mike Kraus

  [email protected]

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, without the permission in writing from the author.

  To My Readers:

  Thank you for taking this journey with me.

  Without your support, Final Dawn would not be possible.

  Thank you.

  Sincerely,

  Mike Kraus

  A New Book is Now Available from Mike Kraus:

  Prip’Yat: The Beast of Chernobyl

  Table of Contents

  Final Dawn: Episode 6

  Final Dawn: Episode 7

  Final Dawn: Episode 8

  Final Dawn: Episode 9

  Final Dawn: Episode 10

  When the end of the world arrived, it came not with a bang, as most had expected, but with more of a "pfft." As tens of thousands of nuclear warheads detonated across the globe, those who were unfortunate enough to be caught in the blast had their lives ended so quickly that all they registered was a small "pfft" sound as their bodies were vaporized in the course of a few tenths of a second.

  With that "pfft," the world ended far more quickly than it had begun. What took six days to create took less than an hour to destroy, as well over ninety-nine percent of the world's population was wiped out in the firestorm.

  In the years leading up to the end, countless storytellers imagined what the end of the world would be like, with some saying that if it all ended in fire, no one would know who fired the first shot. This wasn't entirely accurate. Technology had moved too quickly to allow for this sort of surprise ending. Before the first bomb was halfway to its target, most first and second world countries knew exactly who had sent it hurtling into space. This knowledge was of no consequence, except to send the few men and women in the top echelons of government into complete and utter panic.

  The rich, poor, powerful and powerless all looked to the heavens together, watching the end of the world descend upon them. Each and every one of them, without exception, was helpless. Greed, influence and intelligence meant nothing as they all bowed to the power of the bomb.

  Final Dawn: Episode 6

  Undisclosed Location

  Deep beneath the surface of the earth, miles below the chaos of the surface, dim lights blink to life in a small room, awakening the occupant who dwells therein. After taking a moment to collect his thoughts, Mr. Doe slowly rises from a bed, wearing a thin white undershirt, with his black hair still as neatly arranged as the day before.

  Dressing in his usual attire, Mr. Doe seats himself in front of a large computer workstation in a room adjoining his living quarters. Screens of reports dance by and he manipulates them with one hand, scanning satellite images, radio transmission summaries and nuclear fallout reports. When he finishes, he moves to yet another room, passing through a sterilization field. In the center of the room, encased in a transparent cylinder that runs from the floor to the ceiling, a cool blue light emanates. The source of the light moves at Mr. Doe’s arrival, rising from the floor of the cylinder to hover at eye level.

  Ignoring the cylinder for the time being, Mr. Doe examines more overnight summaries. Growth rates, AI tests and control simulations all show excellent progress. The rarity of an overnight summary that consists of entirely good news is an unexpected treat, and, as Mr. Doe steps to the cylinder, his thin smile proves this fact. He eyes the small swarm in the cylinder coolly, imagining what it will be capable of in just a few more days.

  A soft alarm sounds from the adjacent room, and Mr. Doe hurries to examine it, leaving the blue mass to sink back to the floor and slowly extinguish its light. At his console, Mr. Doe opens the program responsible for creating the alert and quickly reads the status. A transcription flicks across the screen as Mr. Doe speeds through it, digesting its contents faster than he could if he merely listened to the audio. More good news causes Mr. Doe’s smile to widen as his eyes narrow. Although silence is a part of his new routine that he treasures, times such as these are the most appropriate for speaking to himself.

  “I’m afraid it won’t be that easy, Ms. Rachel.”

  Mr. Doe hurries back into the room with the blue light, no longer leisurely strolling along but now fully engaged in his duties. Working at a console, he increases power to the room from his bunker’s reactor, pulling resources from his communication links and water reclamation systems. The excess power is channeled into the cylinder, where the blue swarm begins to glow brighter as it feeds on the raw radiation that is being generated and pumped straight into the chamber. Although imperceptible to the naked eye on a second or minute time scale, the mass increases in number as the swarm swiftly grows, using small piles of raw materials in the bottom of the cylinder as building blocks.

  Switching to a separate console, Mr. Doe leans back in his chair and studies lines of code marked by the simulation program from last night’s tests. After reading through the results for several minutes, he begins to optimize the code on the screen, working with the automated systems for increased speed and accuracy. Hours pass by as the blue mass continues to increase in size. Mr. Doe does not move from his seat, neither to eat nor to drink. Only when an alarm chimes from his living quarters does he pause, marking his place in the program and submitting it to the simulation systems for testing.

  With another day at an end, Mr. Doe quickly eats and drinks from small protein packs and water bags stacked in a storage closet. When finished, he lies down in his bed and closes his eyes. In only seconds he is asleep again, his alarm set to go off in another four hours. Overhead, through the layers of dirt and rock, in the hellish landscape of the surface of the earth, the night passes slowly and violently, with four pinpricks of hope and light traveling through the darkness, unaware of the solitary individual who sleeps securely below.

  Leonard McComb | Nancy Sims

  3:18 PM, April 7, 2038

  Nancy groaned as she lifted a box of supplies into the back of the APC, pushing it forward to fit with the dozen other similar boxes that she and Leonard had already loaded into the vehicle. Together they worked quickly and quietly in the afternoon light, moving boxes filled with food and water from shopping carts into the APC, trying to get them all in before they attracted any unwanted attention. Their few conversations outside the protection of the vehicle were hurried and whispered, with both of them keeping their weapons close at hand, ready for an attack.

  While Leonard and Nancy had both grown accustomed to seeing the destruction of the world, neither of them could fully accept nor get used to what had happened. There were moments, out in the open fields, when the sunlight pouring through gaps in the cloud cover, that things seemed almost normal. Those times were few and fleeting, though, and they quickly evaporated once a city or highway reappeared. Overturned vehicles, smoldering ruins and the evidence of a destroyed civilization had numbed Leonard and Nancy to the point where they no longer even batted an eye at what they saw.

  After a day and night’s travel, the pair had arrived in Cincinnati, following David’s directions as best as they could. Unable to keep a constant line of communication open with him or with Rachel and Marcus, Leonard and Nancy had to rely on short bursts throughout the day to get directions and information on where they were. Like Richmond, Cincinnati had sustained patterned damage, with some parts of the city being obliterated while other parts were left virtually untouched.<
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  Though they still had some food and water, Leonard and Nancy agreed that they should spend a day in the city trying to find more supplies to last them until they reached Alaska. David had described the destruction across the country as “overwhelming in magnitude” and had advised them to stock up on whatever they could find since it was hard to tell when they might next find anything useful.

  After spending half a day winding through the streets of Cincinnati, Leonard had finally spotted a shopping center that contained a sporting goods store, a grocery store and a bulk purchase warehouse club. Nancy had initially wanted to split up to save time in gathering supplies, but Leonard shot down that idea with a warning that – while they hadn’t encountered any of the creatures yet – there was no telling when they would.

  Food, water and warm clothing were foremost on the list of supplies that they gathered from the stores, shoving them into boxes that were stacked on the seats and floor of the back of the APC. Weapons and ammunition, thankfully, were not among the supplies that they needed, having loaded plenty of both into the vehicle from the police station in Richmond.

  Though it had only been a day since they left Richmond behind, to Nancy it felt like a lifetime had already passed. She and Leonard had quickly developed a rapport, discussing topics ranging from her office work to his childhood growing up and then moving to New York. Isolated as they were, it was hard to feel as connected to Rachel and Marcus now that their only method of communication was by voice. Still, in such a broken world, hearing another’s voice on the radio was a source of joy.

  Unlike their previous travels, though, neither of them felt alone now that they were journeying with someone else instead of by themselves. Nancy’s fears of being taken by another Joshua and Richard were still there, but she felt secure having someone to watch her back. Similarly, Leonard no longer felt like he was wandering aimlessly in search of people who were certainly no longer alive. Now’s not the time for grief, he reminded himself yet again. Not with stakes like these at hand.

  “I think that should just about do it.” Leonard slipped a final box in beside Nancy’s, finishing off a stack that stretched the length of the floor of the Armored Personnel Carrier. “We should probably leave enough room for one of us to sleep back here while the other drives.”

  Nancy nodded in agreement and helped Leonard quietly close and lock the doors of the armored vehicle. Several cases of water and non-perishable foods were loaded in the back, along with a pair of sleeping bags, winter coats, snow pants and a few boxes of hollow-point ammunition that Leonard had picked up from the sporting goods store. The weather was still mild in Ohio, though they both knew that temperatures would quickly drop as they drove further north.

  Leonard climbed into the passenger seat of the APC while Nancy took her turn at driving through the city. Leonard scrutinized a series of maps he had picked up from the store, trying to pick out the best route north that would avoid as many large cities as possible. The roar of the diesel engine echoed through the parking lot of the shopping center as they pulled away.

  The waning sun was in Nancy’s eyes as she drove down the highway, skillfully weaving the massive APC between the vehicles that blocked their path. A mix of tan, black and grey colors, their vehicle was ruggedized and modern, with puncture-proof tires, thick armor plating and windows capable of stopping up to seven direct hits from a .50 caliber rifle. The front of the vehicle was spacious to allow for the heavy armor of its originally intended occupants, and a small hatch lined with fire retardant materials allowed easy access from the passenger and driver’s seats into the back of the vehicle.

  While the APC was not the easiest of vehicles to drive, its efficient diesel engine was more than powerful enough to roll over or through just about any obstacles that Nancy and Leonard couldn’t dodge. Leonard kept a watchful eye in the side mirrors and in front, pointing out blockages in the road to help Nancy avoid them. Occasionally the APC would scrape against a car or fallen tree, causing the massive vehicle to shiver with the impact, but doing nothing to its direction or speed.

  After a few hours passed, the sun was low enough that Nancy switched on the headlights of the APC to illuminate their path. Leonard crawled into the back compartment of the vehicle as Nancy reduced her speed in the darkness. After getting a promise from Nancy to wake him and let him drive after four hours had passed, Leonard closed his eyes and tried to shut out the sounds and vibrations of the engine. Despite the external distractions, sleep came quickly and Leonard’s light snoring was lost in the cacophony.

  Rachel Walsh | Marcus Warden

  1:07 PM, April 7, 2038

  Across the country a second armored car roared through a destroyed city, winding through streets that looked virtually identical to those in Cincinnati. During one of their brief radio conversations, Leonard had briefly described what Rachel and Marcus could expect to find in Washington, though this information did little to prepare them for what they encountered.

  Leonard’s path had taken him through the governmental sections of Washington and out through the south, but getting into the city from that direction was a trickier prospect. Instead of being able to take a straight shot up the interstate and enter DC to the north, Rachel and Marcus found themselves blocked at nearly every turn by debris and the sighting of creatures. Though the creatures made no moves to attack, they provided enough of a deterrent that Rachel and Marcus veered away from them, moving further to the west as they traveled north.

  After creeping along a service bridge across the Potomac River near Leesburg, they were able to quickly make their way back to the east toward the capital. Having finished this detour, Marcus quickly noticed that there were no more creatures to be seen on the northern side of the river, an oddity in and of itself, especially given the masses of them just to the south.

  “You’re the scientist. Why didn’t any of those things attack us?” Marcus had asked this question of Rachel earlier in their travels on more than one occasion and was met with the same answer as before.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well can’t you speculate?”

  Rachel glanced over at him and sighed. “Marcus, your guess is as good as mine. If these things are going through upgrades to their artificial intelligence then maybe it’s some type of software bug. Maybe the nanobots have re-tasked them. For the last time: I don’t know.”

  Rachel fought to keep the tension out of her voice as she spoke with Marcus. In the brief time they had spent alone together in the APC, they hadn’t spoken much, except about Sam, their one point of commonality. Marcus tried to get Rachel to talk about her life before the bombs fell, but she dodged his attempts, not wanting to think about the family she lost. To prevent generating more turmoil, Marcus didn’t press the issue, though the isolation he had felt while traveling alone was only moderately abated now that he was with Rachel.

  Marcus turned and stared out the window of the APC, watching as the suburbs of Washington whizzed by in a blur of smoke and grey rubble. Here at the capital the sky wasn’t as clean as in other areas, though it had shown a marked improvement over Leonard’s descriptions. Every few hours the radio in the APC would beep, indicating that the satellite was overhead and in position for them to talk to David and check up on Leonard and Nancy.

  With every conversation, they would start by getting brief direction updates from David as he was able to scan small areas of the surface to help them find optimal routes to their destinations. Afterwards they would all catch up on each other’s tasks. Leonard and Nancy’s discovery of large food and water supplies was a relief to the others, though Rachel was beginning to get concerned with what she, Marcus and Sam were going to do. Between the three of them, they had a few more days of rations, but not enough to survive on while digging through to the lab to reach David.

  As Rachel drove, Marcus kept his eyes open for grocery stores and supermarkets along their path. Most of the intact areas in the city were residential areas, though, and an
y buildings that had once been supermarkets or grocers had been burned and collapsed by the bombs. They took several detours while driving, maneuvering slowly through parking lots that weren’t much more than flattened tombs, but their bad luck stayed with them as each attempt turned up nothing in the way of supplies.

  During one of the lulls in their drive, Marcus had climbed into the back of the APC and searched through the military containers that had been in the vehicles when they were taken. There wasn’t a lot, but they did contain some emergency medical supplies, gas masks, and a pair of Geiger counters. After checking to make sure the Geiger counters had been protected by the EMPs inside the APC, Marcus took one back into the front seat and slid it into his pocket for use once they eventually reached their destination. Pockets of radiation were rare now, though they still existed, particularly inside cities. Since Rachel and Marcus planned to spend the next several days digging through formerly radioactive rubble, being able to detect potential hotspots could mean the difference between life and death.

  Sighing as he watched out the window, Marcus continued to maintain the uneasy silence in the vehicle. Occasionally he would turn to pet Sam for a few moments, or offer Rachel a drink or a bite of food, which she stoically refused. Roads and burned out buildings began to blur together as he fought to stave off boredom and keep his eyes open and alert.