A Wilderness Within E-Book

Emma Castle

• Herausgeber: Lauren Smith
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: Unlikely Heroes
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Seitenzahl: 403

Beschreibung

The world he knows and loves is gone…

Lincoln Atwood survived the contagion that wiped out the nine tenths of humanity. As the last survivor in a secret government bunker and a Delta Force soldier, he knows that the other survivors are scared, angry and dangerous, just like him. After weeks alone with the mummified bodies of his colleagues, he escapes the bunker. But the world outside has changed. Among the empty cities and crumbling ruins of civilization, he loses himself to the wilderness in his soul.  When he sees Caroline, a fellow survivor,  she is vision of light in a world gone dark. He wants to help her, but she won't trust him, when there's danger around every corner. How can he convince her that fate has brought them together?

She will not go quietly into the night…

Caroline Kelly survived hell when she escaped quarantined Chicago in search of her family after the outbreak. But it's not as easy to travel from Illinois to Missouri with the world gone dark in the space of three months. The last she thing she needs is to get captured by a muscled, bearded mountain man who looks and acts like a damn super soldier. When it’s clear she can’t escape him, she finds herself becoming fascinated with the brooding, intense man who knows how to survive. He makes her heart race and blood pound. When tragedy strikes, Caroline realizes she might have a plan to save the world, but she’ll need Lincoln’s help. Can she trust Lincoln not only with humanity’s future, but also her heart?

Warning: This book contains some depictions of violence and realistic contagion scenarios.

Leseprobe

A Wilderness Within

Unlikely Heroes - Book 2

Emma Castle

Contents

Important Note from the Author

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Epilogue

Midnight with the Devil - Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Other Titles By Emma Castle

About the Author

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright © 2019 by Emma Castle

Cover design by Covers by Combs

Emma Castle supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

ISBN: 978-1-947206-70-0 (ebook)

ISBN:978-1-947206-71-7 (Trade paperback)

Important Note from the Author

I know what you’re thinking…this book sounds like the Covid-19 pandemic. Now you’re thinking maybe I, the author, wrote on purpose about the pandemic while it was occurring and was inspired by real life events.

That is exactly why I had to update and revise this book to include this note so I hope you’ll keep reading—because I wrote this book before the pandemic. It was published in June of 2019 before there was any discussion of a virus in China.

A Wilderness Within was conceived early in January 2019, long before the world knew Covid-19 was on the horizon. I’ve always been obsessed with viruses. I grew up watching movies like Outbreak and later on films like Contagion. In January of 2019 I had this sudden thought that no one had written a real pandemic romance. There were a lot of virus zombie stories that sometimes had romances. But no one had really tried to write a realistic romance novel set during a pandemic (at least from what I could find—there may be some out there and I’m sorry if I missed them!).

I spent the early part of 2019 researching viruses, epidemiology, Ebola, viruses, reading chronicled accounts of Marburg viruses outbreaks, cholera, and I also began watching the CDC twitter feed to see how they commented on virus developments around the world. I did what I believed was a simple thing. I made an educated guess as to what I believe a realistic pandemic might result from. It came down to these four things:

- It would start in a wet market in China.

- It would come from animals being too close together which shouldn’t be.

- It would an influenza-like airborne strain with a high transmission rate.

- Lastly…we’d never see it coming (despite scientists predicting this was only a matter of time).

When I began writing the story of Lincoln and Caroline, I thought of what I wanted this book to accomplish. I didn’t want this book to scare readers, but I wanted it to be real, yet I wanted it to be a book about hope. They say the darkest hour is just before dawn. After all that I’ve seen this year in 2020, I believe we are facing our darkest hour…and I have faith our dawn is coming.

I know you might be afraid to turn the page, afraid to read a scenario that feels so close to our own harrowing year. But reader, take heart. As you read about Caroline, know that she is just like you and me…and she is the real hero of this story, not the dashing, sexy delta force soldier who I do promise you will enjoy. *wink.

So take heart. This is a story of love, a story of hope, a story where a woman saves the world.

--Emma Castle

Prologue

@CDC: We have been made aware of a small outbreak in Beijing created by an unknown disease. The situation is being contained and monitored.

—Centers for Disease Control Twitter Feed

November 3, 2019

February 2020

Omaha, Nebraska, undisclosed location

The underground bunker had been compromised, and death now stalked the halls, moving invisibly beneath the flashing fluorescent lamps. Lincoln Atwood leaned back against the concrete wall inside the tunnel that would lead to freedom…and likely more death. He couldn’t breathe, his lungs strained for air, but with each panicked gasping inhalation, he smelled the sickly-sweet cloying scent of decayed and mummified flesh.

Much farther down the hall, he could see the shadowy outlines of bodies. It had been seven weeks since those men had collapsed and died where they lay. Seven weeks and the virus that had ravaged their bodies had mummified them. Another two months and there would be nothing left but stark white bones. Before he’d been assigned to the bunker, he’d seen the disease destroy the world, the final tsunami of a pandemic storm that had started four months ago.

He and the other survivors below ground hadn’t wanted to touch the bodies at first, but over the last three weeks as the sickness spread, he’d realized to his horror that he was immune. He could walk among the remains, touch them, inhale the infected air. There was nowhere to lay these last few men and women to rest. So they’d remained where they’d fallen, leaving him almost completely alone with the virus.

The CDC had named the virus Hydra-1. Much like the mythological creature of many heads, this virus was an unstoppable killing machine. Victims bled out and then dried up, but rather than be preserved, the mummified remains quickly turned to dust or washed away in the rain, leaving behind only bones.

“Lincoln…” His name came through the small walkie-talkie clipped to his hip, the sound scratchy and tinny as the signal struggled against the concrete barriers. Lincoln raised the walkie-talkie to his mouth, holding the button down, his hand shaking.

“Yeah?”

“It’s time.”

Those two words hung in the air, sizzling with dread like a live wire in a raging storm.

He stood. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

For a second, a wave of dizziness swamped him. Was it Hydra, or was it the low-protein diet and tiny rations from the food in the bunker? It didn’t really matter. He wouldn’t survive long once he ran out of food and water. He had been in the company of the shadow of death far too long not to fall prey to it. The men in his unit used to joke about death being an old friend, one who would greet them and walk them into the black sands of eternity.

How wrong they’d all been. Death was an uncaring assassin, a complete bastard who stole everything and gave nothing in return, not even comfort.

Lincoln started down the hall, toward the bodies. He paused in front of the first door on the right and entered. It had been his room for the last few months, not that it had ever been home. The peeling white paint on the walls exposed the concrete, and the metal-framed cot was worse than most prisons.

Lincoln began to pluck the photos he had taped to the wall, one by one. He slid them into a plastic bag and put them in his sand-colored army-issued backpack. He had everything he needed to survive in that bag, or so he told himself. A compass, space blanket, knives, metal wire, rope, two guns, as much spare ammo as he could carry, bottled water, a filtration straw, a medical kit, and a dozen other items.

He picked up a paperback copy of The Great Gatsby and his solar charging battery pack and added them to his bag.

“Time to go,” he whispered to the empty room. He had been living in the cramped space for months. He was the last person alive down here…except for Adam Caine.

It was Adam who needed him now.

Lincoln paused by the door, startled for a moment by his own reflection. His instincts were razor-sharp now, and every movement had him tensing. The bearded stranger, hand resting on the doorjamb, didn’t look like Lincoln anymore. The young, happy face of his thirty-five-year-old self was gone. Hard-edged, cold, hollowed out, his brown eyes were dark with ancient sorrow. He looked like a man lost, who’d stepped into the deep woods of his own soul and had never been seen again, not once the wilderness within had swallowed him whole.

“Lincoln…please hurry.” Adam’s voice echoed in the small room from the walkie-talkie.

Lincoln’s shoulders dropped as he walked the rest of the way down the hall. He didn’t even see the bodies as he passed anymore. Over the last seven weeks, they had ceased to be there in his mind and were almost now as invisible as the concrete walls. To survive, he’d learned to tune out the horrors of the dying world around him.

Look away… The ghostly whisper in his head made him shudder as he reached Adam’s room.

Adam was lying on his cot, dressed in his best navy-blue suit, his bright red and white striped tie in a neat Windsor knot. Lincoln lifted his gaze up to his friend’s face, forcing himself to see the man and not the dying body. Adam managed a weak smile. His eyes were hollow and ringed with purple bruises, and sweat glistened on his skin, which had turned a sallow yellow.

“Thought maybe you wouldn’t come.” Adam’s sigh carried a hint of a death rattle.

Lincoln wanted to smile, wanted to give his friend some kind of final reassurance. But he couldn’t. Pain tore at him, and it took every ounce of strength to fight back the sting of tears in his eyes. He swallowed hard, and it felt like glass shards were tearing up his throat.

“Here…” Adam patted a stack of photos sealed in a bag on his chest. Lincoln picked them up. Familiar faces, old places… All of it only made this worse.

“Ten years,” Adam said. “Long time to serve together, brother.”

Lincoln nodded, still unable to speak. They weren’t brothers by blood, but they had been brothers in arms. Adam had taught him everything he knew. He was thirty-seven and had led their unit on over a hundred missions, saving the world a dozen times—not that it mattered now, because no one would be alive anymore to hear or care. Humanity was all but wiped out. Nature had reclaimed its bruised planet, and soon humanity would be but a dim memory in Earth’s history. Perhaps one best forgotten.

Adam coughed, a light dotting of blood covering his lips as he gripped a handgun. He tried to lift it, but his arm collapsed back to his chest.

“Afraid you’ll have to do the honors.” Adam managed a wry smile, but Lincoln shook his head.

“No…I can’t…” He’d had to do this for too many others, but for Adam, he couldn’t stomach it.

Adam’s gray eyes hardened. “You can. You have to.” He drew in a shaky breath. “You owe me. I don’t want to waste away like the others. Don’t make me pull rank.”

Lincoln’s eyes snapped back to his friend’s face. The last two years they had been in Washington, DC, while Adam had moved up in the ranks and politics. It was how they had ended up here in the bunker after all. Not that it had saved them. But Adam always joked about pulling rank whenever Lincoln tried to resist orders.

“Don’t you fucking bring that up now,” Lincoln said. His vision blurred as he tried to swallow down the knot of emotions raging inside him.

“You have your orders, Major.” Adam shifted the gun on his chest.

Lincoln reached out and took the gun, checking the chamber. The action was instinctive after so many years, but a chill crept over him when his brain caught up with his actions and the significance of what he was about to do became clear.

Adam watched him, the war of fear and sorrow on his face now softened to a peacefulness Lincoln hadn’t ever seen before.

“You know what to do, Lincoln.”

But he didn’t. No one had ever trained him to kill his best friend.

“Once I’m gone, get out of here. Don’t stay in the bunker. If you want to die, die in the open with the sky above you. At least topside, you’ve got a chance to survive.” They’d talked about it, the way they would end it, if it ever came to that. The blue sky above would be the way to go, not trapped here beneath the ground.

“I could take you up there.” Lincoln tried not to choke on the words. “Before…”

Adam shook his head, the faint move barely there. “No. I’d only spread the disease. Better to seal me down here with the others.”

Lincoln nodded numbly. Adam had stayed here, manning the communication room as other outposts dropped off the comms one by one, everyone hoping a cure would be found before the end came. Last week Adam had started showing signs of infection. They had believed they were both immune since the last man to die had been five weeks ago, but for whatever reason, Adam had fallen ill. But he’d stayed on the radio each day for just a few minutes, broadcasting when he could, listening for any other signal. He’d never given up hope. But Lincoln knew there was none. After this, he would be alone.

Adam’s face contorted with pain. “Better do it now.” The virus inside him would bleed him out, then dehydrate what was left. It was an agonizing death.

Raising the gun, Lincoln aimed it at Adam’s head, but his hands started to shake. Adam closed his eyes.

“Do it!”

The harsh military tone snapped Lincoln into focus, and he pulled the trigger. The loud report made his ears ring, and the heavy silence that followed grew into a deafening roar. The tiny red, white, and blue flag pinned to Adam’s chest gleamed in the light. Lincoln removed the pin, slipped it into his backpack, and laid the pistol on Adam’s chest. There was no need to bury him, no need to remove him from this final resting place. Lincoln stood to attention as he saluted Adam one final time.

“It has been an honor to serve and protect you, Mr. President.” He knew those may very well be the last words he would ever speak to another person. He should have said them before…but if he’d dared to, might not have had the strength to pull the trigger.

He stood there for a long moment, his mind mercifully blank with grief, and he let the dark, agonizing emotion rip through him like a tidal wave. The silence haunted him, whispering softly in his head about the days before…the days when the world was still alive, when he could see children play and the bustle of the cities and the sunsets on farmhouse porches. There had been so much to love, so much to enjoy.

Now it was all gone and so was Adam, his brother in arms, his best friend. Hope’s last wellspring had vanished with him.

There’s nothing for me in the world now.

But a man couldn’t die from grief alone, no matter how hard he might want to.

He turned and walked away.

At the bunker’s exit, he climbed up the steps and cranked the wheel that released the seal and locks on the latch and pushed it open. Bright sunlight poured into the darkness of the bunker. Lincoln shielded his eyes for a moment as his eyes adjusted. Fresh air surrounded him, the scent of prairie grasses and trees teasing his nostrils. He climbed out and closed the hatch behind him. An open meadow stretched endlessly in one direction, and a light wooded area spread in the other direction. Prairie wind rustled the grasses, and he suddenly felt homesick in a way he hadn’t in years.

But home was gone, as was everything else. It was possible he was the last man on earth, and it was only a matter of time before death claimed him too.

He started walking, the distant vision of the cityscape far ahead of him. Would there be any other survivors? Would he even be able to help them? He’d killed his best friend, the last leader of the free world. Whoever might be left in this dying land wouldn’t want his help. He was a murderer of a good man, a lost soul. Lincoln let go and chose to embrace the wilderness and the darkness inside him.

It would be the only way to survive now.

1

@CDC: The virus in Beijing has been identified as a new disease named Hydra-1. The World Health Organization (The WHO) is monitoring the situation closely. We believe it is contained and there is no cause to worry.

—Centers for Disease Control Twitter Feed

November 10, 2019

March 2020

Caroline Kelly crouched in the shadows outside the old supermarket on the outskirts of Omaha. Night was creeping closer. Usually she hated the dark, but tonight it was her friend. Whenever she entered a store or any dwelling, she knew she ran the risk of running into survivors. Ever since H–Day, as she called it, the day everyone truly realized there was a contagion sweeping over the world, people went insane.

Common decency and the humanitarian spirit had been destroyed. Knowing they had nothing to lose, many had reverted to barbarism, violence, greed, and lust. The last legacy of a dying species. And those few who had survived hadn’t been much better.

Caroline shuddered and pulled her coat tight around her body. She scanned the darkened entrance to the grocery store. The chances that anything edible was in there were slim, but she had to look. She would eat just about anything right now. Last week she had found a stash of canned sardines in someone’s house and had a feast that any cat would envy. Then she had thrown up because the oily texture of the tiny fish had made her nauseous. She’d never been into seafood, but starvation was still starvation.

She checked the straps on her backpack, making sure they weren’t loose. Whenever she had a chance to fill up with supplies or food, she needed to make sure that the bag stayed tight to her body. She had already lost one bag when she was running from a man who tried to corner her inside a drugstore last month. The bag had been too loose and heavy. When she rounded a corner too fast, the momentum from the bag swung so hard it knocked her onto her ass. The man caught up with her and tried to grab it. She had to abandon it or risk him catching her. She knew all too well what would have been next if that had happened. In the early days of the contagion, she’d tried to trust other survivors, believing that they could work together to survive. That had been a mistake, a nearly fatal one. She still believed deep down that humanity could survive this, but as the dark days stretched on, her hope was dying, like a candle sputtering in a violent wind. All too soon it would be snuffed out.

The store had been quiet for the last hour. She had been hiding in the shadows across the street, and once darkness fell, she inched her way toward the store, using abandoned cars as cover. But she didn’t go inside, not yet. Someone was out there. She could feel their presence somehow, like a sixth sense warning her of danger. She couldn’t wait forever. Hunger and desperation would force her hand sooner or later. If she was being watched, she would have to brave it and just go.

Caroline moved toward the door. The glass had shattered long ago, and all that remained was a metal frame laced with jagged edges. She didn’t bother to open it but instead slipped through where the glass had once been. Her boots crunched on the broken shards, but she couldn’t help that. Some things were unavoidable. She squinted at the signs hanging overhead, trying to see what was in each aisle.

If she had been more certain she was alone, she would have pulled out her flashlight, but that would be a shining beacon to anyone close by. So she wandered down each aisle, careful to avoid any shelves that had toppled over. The stench of rotten produce a few aisles over made her eyes water, so she stayed closer to the center. The majority of the edible food was gone, but not all of it.

When the virus had swept through the major cities like this one, it had killed so many so quickly that people didn’t have time to loot stores. People were too busy dying to steal TVs. There had been some looting, but not as much as she had expected. Not that it mattered without electricity. She couldn’t benefit from most of the things left behind. She would love a giant flat-screen as much as the next girl, but what would she do with it?

Caroline passed by the empty canned food aisle. The items that could last the longest had been taken first. So she focused on other items like cereal. The easily reached shelves were bare, but she thought she saw something up top. She carefully scaled the shelves, praying they wouldn’t fall down and crush her. She reached her hand along, trying to search for anything that might’ve been left behind. Her fingers brushed along the dust-covered surface of the shelf. They bumped into something. She reached, clawing at the object, and closed her hand around it.

It moved. The furry thing squeaked and bit her hand.

Caroline screamed and toppled backward, landing hard on her back. The air whooshed out of her lungs, and she choked on a sob. It was a damn rat. She hated rats. Pain radiated through her as she struggled to catch her breath. She’d missed landing on a bunch of broken jars by mere inches. After a long moment, she stifled a whimper as she rolled onto her side. She got up and wiped the dirt and debris off her jeans and checked her bag. She’d been smart enough to put it down while she’d been searching the shelves. She knelt down and caught sight of several boxes of granola bars at the back of the bottom shelf.

“Yes!” She grinned as she pulled them out, squinting at them in the dim light. Peanut butter and chocolate. Her favorite. She opened the boxes and dumped the bars in her bag to save space. Then she zipped the bag shut and slung it over her shoulder before searching the other aisles. She passed by the frozen foods section and saw the now hardened pools of melted sugary liquid that once had been ice cream. In the shadows they were dark, like blood, and the sight made her stomach churn.

The pharmacy was mostly cleaned out, but she did find some Tylenol and multivitamins. She also discovered a few small bottles of Pedialyte. The salty liquid didn’t taste that great, but she could power through days of little to no food with it. Her personal record so far was four days. Not that she wanted to brag about that.

She was almost done browsing the pharmacy when she heard the faint sound of glass beneath boots. But not her boots.

Oh God.

Her unseen watcher had decided to show his or her face, but Caroline had no plans on sticking around to see who it was. She waited, listening to the sounds around her, ears straining to pick up every little sound. There was a distant scrape from the opposite end of the store. Caroline exhaled slowly, her heart pounding. They were moving away from her. She still had time to escape. She crouched over, using the shorter shelves in the store’s pharmacy section to shield her while she slipped her backpack back on. The harsh grinding sound of the zipper teeth locking into place seemed far too loud to her. Then she swung it over her shoulders and secured it to her waist with straps.

The sound of a can rolling in the distance made her tense. When she peered around the edge of the nearest shelf, she saw a tin of baked beans flash in the moonlight that poured into the grocery store’s high empty panes. That was too good a find to ignore. There might be a way to grab the can as she left the store. Whoever was here was still in the far end of the store and might not see her.

Already tasting the beans in her mind, she left her spot behind the shelf and started to crawl forward slowly on hands and knees toward the can. She bumped against some broken glass and stopped. She was only inches away. She reached out, her hand brushing the metal rim of the can when a booted foot materialized from the shadows. It stepped on the can, pinning it in place.

A scream froze in Caroline’s throat, and she threw her head back to look up at whoever had discovered her.

A tall, well-built man with broad shoulders stared down at her. He was wearing a thick gray sweater, one that looked military, and he had a thick beard that covered his chin and mouth, making his expression impossible to read, but it leaned toward menacing.

“Easy, beautiful.” His deep voice was a little rough, as though he hadn’t spoken in days.

She knew all too well what that sound was like. How long had it been since she’d actually talked to someone? Shouting at them to leave her alone while she ran away didn’t count. It had been at least two weeks. The rare times she came into contact with other survivors, it was a hard scramble, like animals fighting for survival. A person had but a few seconds to measure up the other survivor, to see if they were friend or foe. Could they be trusted, or would they be dangerous? She’d always tried to talk to them and try to calm them down. It never worked. A woman she’d run into last month had pretended to be nice, but then she tried to stab her when Caroline turned her back to help her lift a box of bottled water off the ground. Caroline had the scars to prove that trusting people wasn’t worthwhile, no matter how much she wanted to.

She glanced up at the man looming over her. “You can have whatever’s left in the store. I don’t want any trouble.” She released her hold on the can and slowly sat back on her heels. This guy, whoever he was, was definitely not someone she could trust. He was a mass of muscle and intimidation. A mountain man who likely only thought of base instincts. If she could get him to think she was helpless and weak, she could buy herself time to attack and escape because he’d lower his guard. In seconds, she could rock up fully into a standing position and run, but he didn’t know that. Speed was one of her advantages. She had gotten really good at running since the virus had spread.

“What if I want you?” Rather than menacing, the man’s deep voice sounded gentle and melodic. Hell, in another world she would’ve called it seductive.

But luxuries like love and other complex emotions had perished in the night, along with baser feelings like hope. She was going to die, not from Hydra but from this man.

Her hand by her knee brushed against a piece of glass. She curled her fingers around it as she met his gaze. His eyes were black in the darkness. He seemed in that moment more shadow than mortal flesh. Nightmare rather than reality.

I don’t want to die. I want to live.

Even this cold, empty world still called to her. She would not go down without a fight.

“Go on and stand up,” he said more brusquely, as though frustrated by her silence. “I want a better look at you.” At first she thought he’d reached out to grab her, but he didn’t. He just held out his hand, a gesture so normal in this abnormal world that she nearly laughed. She rose, her knees knocking as she tried to control the surge of adrenaline inside her. Every sound, every breath, every move seemed slower in time. Caroline kept the shard of glass loosely balanced on her partially curled fingers to conceal it, waiting.

When she raised her gaze to his face again, she could now see the handsome features partially hidden behind the mountain man beard. He was a little older than her, early thirties maybe? The beard made it hard to tell.

“Fuck, you’re gorgeous,” he growled. “I couldn’t tell when I first spotted you a few hours ago. I only saw you from behind and at a distance.” He seemed to be talking more to himself than her.

Shit…he wanted her. That wasn’t good.

“Just let me go,” she said again.

“No can do.” He bent to pick up the can of beans and slipped it into the pack on his shoulders. Caroline almost made a run for it, but he was too close and would easily grab her before she got far.

“I’ll give you my bag,” she offered, hating that she would do just that if it saved her life. She had gotten far too used to starting over. Losing everything she had the moment she started to get ahead.

The man sighed. “I don’t want your bag.” He held out his hand to her again. “Now, come on. Let’s go someplace safe to talk.”

Caroline knew her chances were better if he never saw the attack coming. She placed her hand in his. The flare of heat between that single connection rocked her to her core. She hadn’t touched another person in so long, she was surprised by the warmth she felt. For a moment she imagined that this wasn’t the end of the world and she was just walking hand-in-hand with a sexy man.

I cannot be feeling anything. It’s just shock from touching another person after so long.

He led her toward the front of the store. She walked along beside him, still holding his hand. When they were within feet of the exit she lunged, stabbing him in the shoulder with the glass shard. The glass cut her hand, but she pushed harder. He grunted and released her as he tried to pull the glass out of his shoulder.

She sprinted around him, running for freedom, but with a panicked cry she twisted her right ankle, coming down on it hard as she collided with a shelf. The structure wobbled, and she looked up in terror as the metal shelves teetered and fell right on top of her. She blacked out and crumpled to the floor in sheer agony as the metal hit her body. A moment later, she was conscious again. She breathed in heavy pants as she tried to claw her way out from under the shelves, focused on the only thing that mattered—escape.

Metal creaked and groaned as it came off her body, and she dragged herself free of it. Then the metal crashed back down, and the bearded man stood there, breathing hard as he watched her. She closed her eyes, praying death would be swift if that was her fate now.

A pair of hands slid under her body, lifting her up effortlessly. She cried out in fear, clawing at the man as he held her against his chest.

“Easy, beautiful, easy,” That gentle rumbling voice of his made her restless panic ease, but only for a fraction of a second. The pain in her ankle was so great she could barely think. She closed her eyes, breathing in and out, her hands fisted in his thick sweater.

Stay alive. That was all that mattered. Whatever he wanted to do to her, he wouldn’t do it here and not right now. She could fight him off and escape as soon as her body stopped hurting.

He stepped through the doorway and carried her into the street, bold and unafraid. She’d run from car to car to get here, hiding like a mouse. But he strode out like a god of war. For now, she belonged to him. That seemed to be the way this dead new world was going to work. Ten thousand years of civilization was gone in less than four months. Whatever rules humans made now would be hard and cruel. Caroline shivered as that burning hope for mankind shrank even more.

Even with his wounded shoulder, the man carried her half a block as though she weighed nothing at all. Then he stopped in front of a black Ford SUV. He shifted her in his arms as he opened the back door and settled her into a passenger seat. Fresh pain shot through her ankle, and she lay uncomfortably on top of her backpack, like a turtle flipped onto its shell.

“Please… Don’t…” She whimpered as she saw him digging around in his own backpack. She couldn’t escape; she couldn’t fight him off.

He pulled out a syringe with a mean-looking needle and ripped the cap off.

“No!” She kicked at him, but he anticipated the blow. Her foot barely made contact.

“Stop it. I’m not going to hurt you.” He grabbed both of her legs with one hand and pinned her down. Caroline screamed in pain. The man hissed and pulled up her sweater, jabbing the needle into her side just above her hip.

She moaned and thrashed. Her leg hurt so badly that she had no strength left. She rolled onto her stomach, trying to drag herself through the vehicle, her fingers scraping over the nice leather. Whatever he’d given her was moving through her veins, dulling her senses, numbing her all over. Tears leaked out of her eyes as she struggled and fought. Strains of the last address on the radio by the final president of the United States came back to her.

“We shall not go quietly into the night. Stand together, stand strong…”

And just like the radio, the lights around Caroline went dark.

2

@CDC: Hydra-1 update: There have been many rumors and speculation about the disease. It is believed to have originated in a wet market where live and dead animals were sold out in the open with no sanitary control. We have traced its origins to a wet market in Guangzhou where horseshoe bats were caged too closely to palm civet cats. Much like the way SARS developed, Hydra-1 jumped species and is moving to humans. The CDC is analyzing samples to begin developing a vaccine.

—Centers for Disease Control Twitter Feed

November 13, 2019

Lincoln tossed the empty needle to the ground and stared at the unconscious young woman in the back seat of his car.

Somehow he had fucked up, bad. She’d been terrified. He knew better than to approach a civilian like that. She was frightened out of her mind. He should have followed her and waited until morning to approach her. Sneaking up on her like that had been cruel. She didn’t know that he wasn’t like the other monsters out there, the men who would have raped and killed her. She was attractive—he wasn’t going to lie to himself about that—but he wasn’t a rapist.

It was just…well, he couldn’t let her go on her own. He’d been following her discreetly for a day now, trying to assess her. She had developed some survival instincts, but she clearly wasn’t military. It was a miracle she’d made it this long without someone watching her back. The fact was she needed protection. She was young, probably in her early twenties. So whether she liked it or not, he was going to look out for her. It had been two weeks since Adam died, and he hadn’t seen another living person in all that time, though he’d found plenty of evidence of the kind of people who might still be roaming the cities. He’d seen smoke from fires, heard gunshots. Enough to know that the people still out there were dangerous. In all his years as a soldier, he’d seen hellscapes before. Men roving in gangs, killing and raping. People turning on each other for a scrap of food to survive. And that had been in war-torn areas, just small pockets of chaos. But now the entire world was in chaos.

Lincoln closed his eyes for a brief second, his breath slowing as he remembered seeing this girl for the first time yesterday and how it had been like seeing the sun after months of clouds.

He’d been sleeping in one of the military vehicles parked in the woods close to the underground bunker. He heard her footsteps as she passed him on the road. He’d sat up just enough to catch a glimpse of her. He’d lied to her about only having seen her from behind. He’d gotten a damned good look at her through his long-range binoculars as she’d turned around to scan the road. But he hadn’t really believed what he’d seen. She had long, coffee-brown hair that glowed beneath the afternoon sun, and her eyes, a rich hazel green, made him feel strangely homesick for a home he’d left a long time ago. She was a tiny woman of only five foot four, and when he had taken one look at her curves, something inside him demanded he pursue her. Pursue and protect and maybe one day…

He shook himself. Two weeks out of the bunker and he was already thinking like a barbarian. He wouldn’t allow that. The country he’d defended might not exist, but he could still defend its ideals. Still, he couldn’t help but dream, imagining a connection forming between them, and maybe one day he would get lucky enough to know exactly how she felt in his arms when her eyes were bright with passion and her lips were hungry for pleasure. But that wasn’t in his control. The only thing in his control right now was protecting her. Two people together had a better chance of survival than one alone.

Lincoln walked around to the driver’s side and climbed in. He had plenty of gas for now. He was one of the few survivors still using vehicles. Quite a few of the stations still had gas, but only older stations off the beaten path still had pumps he could start without paying. But he was also pretty good at siphoning gas. Special forces training had come in handy during the end of the world.

As he drove down the road to the house he’d been using as a base of operations for the last week, he noticed the twilight slash across the sky as a deeper purple bled into it and the moon rose even higher. He stared at the endless neighborhoods of eastern Nebraska, stunned at how empty it all seemed without people.

Life after us… Is it really life?

Since he’d left the bunker two weeks ago, he had been lost. Not literally, but figuratively. There were no more missions. His best friend and former commander—the last president of the United States—was dead. There were no terrorist cells to track down, no hostages to rescue, no tyrannical governments to topple. It was all over. Everything he’d done in the last decade of his life had become meaningless on the whim of some microbial virus. For as long as he could remember, he’d been a kid with a plan and then a man with a mission. Now it was just about surviving.

But surviving for what? What was the point of all this? For a man who didn’t like dwelling on philosophy, he’d become far too comfortable with existential thoughts these last few months.

Lincoln could still taste the bitterness when he thought back to that first night after he left the bunker, how he’d sat by a small campfire deep in the woods and watched the firelight play upon the barrel of his gun. It had felt heavy, a solid weight that was almost comforting. The bullet in the chamber promised an end to his worries.

He’d nearly put the gun to his temple, his hand had even lifted an inch or two off his lap, but something had stopped him. Some damn internal instinct to survive. He’d seen a flash of the old lake cabin his parents used to take him to during the summer when he’d been a kid. The quiet still water, the blue sky above and the wooded hills reflected on the perfect mirror surface of the lake. Then there had been a flash, just an instant of light in his head and a whisper…one word…hope.

The vision had been so clear, so powerful that he’d dropped the gun back to the ground, his heart pounding wildly as he gasped for breath. He couldn’t go through with it now even if he wanted to because every time he thought about it, he heard that word in his head again. Hope. But how could he have any hope left? It hadn’t been possible.

Until he had seen her.

He would have to figure out what her real name was. She probably wouldn’t like being called beautiful. She probably already thought he was some crazy, insane creep who just wanted to use her and kill her. But he’d show her he wasn’t like that. They were in this together now, and he had a strong desire to believe in her, if he couldn’t believe in anything else right now.

Lincoln pulled into a neighborhood of expensive houses and drove down a series of streets. It seemed that looters didn’t like driving through a maze of complex neighborhoods and hit the easier targets in town. It was safer to embed himself deep into a neighborhood instead of choosing a house close to a city street.

He parked the car and killed the lights. He left the woman in the car while he unloaded a month’s worth of supplies.

On his last trip he had found a decent haul of medical supplies, food, and camping gear. After he put away all the supplies, he returned for the woman. She was still unconscious. Good. He’d given her a powerful cocktail of painkillers. She would probably hate him when she woke up in a few hours, but she needed pain relief for that ankle and for any pain she had from when the grocery shelf had collapsed on her.

He carried her inside the house and up the stairs to one of the bedrooms. His room. Not because he was going to do anything he shouldn’t. He simply needed to keep an eye on her while she slept. She was a fighter, and no matter how badly she was hurt, she would try to escape, and he couldn’t have her getting hurt again. So the closer she was to him the better. Unluckily for her, he was a light sleeper by nature and by training.

Lincoln set her down on the bed and turned on one of the camping lanterns. Bright light blossomed through the room, creating an eerie sense of daylight tinged with shadows on the edges. He moved one lamp closer so he could examine her leg. Carefully, he pushed her jeans up to her mid-calf. If she’d been awake, she would’ve been in agony. Her ankle was already swelling. He’d seen this type of injury before. A man in his unit, Jenkins, had been forced to jump out of a second-story window to escape enemy fire. He landed badly and popped his ankle out of place and popped it back in a second later when he righted himself. Their medic had later told him it would have been less painful to simply break the bone.

Pressing gently around the woman’s ankle, Lincoln felt no evidence of a fracture. But until he could get the swelling down, he couldn’t be sure if there was a break or not. Christ, he wished he had a bag of frozen peas to lay on her ankle. He would have given anything for that. The best he could do was a cold towel. He’d broken into a sporting goods store last week and found a set of exercise towels that turned cold when drenched in water to a chemical reaction. He’d seen the genius of it and grabbed three of them.

Lincoln went into the master bathroom and to the sink, where he soaked one of the blue towels. Although the power was out in this area, the water was still running. He’d have to set out some barrels to catch rain soon just in case the water stopped running. Then he returned to the bed and removed her boot and sock before he wound the towel around her ankle. Then he slipped her backpack off, which was lying lopsided beneath her. After a quick check for weapons inside, and finding none, he set it on the floor near her. Then he peeled off her coat and covered her with several thick blankets. March in Nebraska was not usually warm, the temperature would fall to fifty-five degrees inside the house tonight.

Lincoln checked her palm next, the one she’d cut when she’d stabbed him in the shoulder. It was a shallow cut, but he didn’t want her to get an infection. He retrieved some antiseptic cloths from his first aid kit and thoroughly cleaned the wound before he used a wound sealer like superglue to bind the cut together, and then he wrapped it securely with some bandages. As long as she was careful, she wouldn’t need stitches. He’d have to track down some antibiotics in a day or two to battle any potential infections.

Once he was certain he left her in as comfortable a position as possible, he grabbed one of the lanterns and headed back into the bathroom. He set the lantern on the counter and tried not to grimace when he caught sight of his face in the mirror. He hadn’t shaved in at least three months. He looked like a fucking bear. No wonder she’d screamed when she saw him.

He winced as he removed his sweater and turned his back on the mirror. He glanced over his shoulder. The piece of glass she’d stabbed him with had fallen out during their struggle. It hadn’t been deep, but blood dripped down his chest and was drying in dark black streaks. He cursed, grabbed a bottle of rubbing alcohol, and dabbed some over the wound. He let loose a string of curses his mother would have smacked him for, but he muttered through gritted teeth so he didn’t wake the woman in the bedroom. He worked quickly, cleaning the wound with antiseptic wipes and covering it with antibiotic cream. At least it wouldn’t need stitches.

He pushed a single finger through the place in his sweater where his little beauty had stabbed him. Dried black blood had ruined the expensive fabric. It had been one of the last few military-issued pieces of clothing he’d taken with him, aside from his boots and shoulder holster. He pressed his palms on the counter for a moment, praying this all hadn’t been a huge fucking mistake. No, this was right—he needed to help her. She was a survivor like him, and she wasn’t one of those bastards he’d heard from a few nights ago who were firing shots off in the nearby woods. He’d steered clear of whoever that had been.

Lincoln brushed his teeth and drank a glass of scotch from a bottle he’d found in the basement. Then he lay down in the bed beside the woman and closed his eyes.