Enduring Armageddon

By Brian Parker

From the ruins of the irradiated wastes emerge bloodthirsty scavengers and a dangerous new breed of creature known as the Changed. Some survivors call them zombies, others say that they’re mutants–whatever they truly are, their sole desire is to murder and eat those unaffected.

A small group of survivors from Illinois attempts to escape further south away from the deepening cold of the nuclear winter. Along the way, they discover that the true monsters are not the Changed–the enemy to fear most is their fellow man.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Permuted
• Release date: Jun 2, 2015
• ISBN: 9781618685858

Brian Parker

Brian Parker finished school, then immediately went out to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) to become a tea planter. In 1970 he joined the advertising department of the London Evening Standard. Three years later, with wife Ruth and their three children, he emigrated to Australia, joining News Ltd. After three years working on suburban newspapers, he joined The Australian, before forming his own media services company. Despite spending the majority of his working life in the tea industry and the media, Brian has also worked as a fur porter (a long time ago when people actually wore fur!), an office cleaner, a barman and a door-to-door encyclopaedia salesman. As he says - all great sources of material! Brian and Ruth moved to the Blue Mountains, NSW, in 2002 and have lived there ever since. They have three children and four grandchildren.

Book preview

ENDURING ARMAGEDDON

A Novel Of The Apocalypse

Brian Parker

Works available by Brian Parker

GNASH, Book One of the Washington, Dead City Series

Enduring Armageddon

Zombie in the Basement

Zombie in the Basement: The Coloring Book!

Self-Publishing the Hard Way

A PERMUTED PRESS BOOK

Published at Smashwords

ISBN (eBook): 978-1-61868-585-8

ENDURING ARMAGEDDON

© 2015 by Brian Parker

All Rights Reserved

Cover art by Martin Kintanar

This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidental.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

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DESTRUCTION

The world is so full of simpletons and madmen, that one need not seek them in madhouse.

~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

It will never be remembered how or why the misunderstanding between two sovereign nations escalated, as they so often do, into a larger global conflict. Their ancestors had fought for centuries over the same piece of ground and in the modern era they’d continued on as their fathers and forefathers before them. Conventional weapon strikes and counter-strikes between the two countries eventually grew into a nuclear exchange and in the ensuing chaos an errant grid coordinate was entered into a ballistic computer. The result was that a third nation was dragged into the quarrel and they retaliated in kind. Due to non-aggression treaties and retaliation pacts between partnered states almost every nation that had offensive capabilities was pulled into the madness one by one. The complete destruction of human society, as we know it, was accomplished in little more than twenty-four hours.

The impacts of the missiles and the vaporization of flora and fauna caught in the explosions threw millions of tons of dust and debris into the air. The wind currents carried giant clouds of ash and radioactive particles over the areas of the earth that weren’t even involved in the war. Within days, most of the planet was enveloped in a darkness that the sun couldn’t penetrate and the temperatures plummeted rapidly.

Then it began to rain and poison fell from the sky over the surface of the earth.

CONTENTS

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

About the Author

ONE

We made our way towards the open community of Virden, Illinois. People still maintained the state’s name for posterity’s sake, but no one really cared about states or boundaries anymore. Becca and I had tried to hold out after the nuclear war devastated most of the major cities and military bases, but it just became too dangerous near the city. We left our apartment in the suburbs of Chicago when the radiation freaks and scavengers became too numerous to ignore. We fled with the few supplies that we could cram into our backpacks and abandoned every other possession that we’d worked our whole pathetic lives for.

We weren’t alone. There were hundreds, possibly thousands, just like us. We were part of a constant stream of people leaving the ruined city for the promise of a future in the wilds of the countryside. Funny that the suburbs of Chicago, USA could be considered a wild land, I thought as I trudged along. But it was true. I’d grown up in the city, spent my youth playing along Lakeshore Drive and doing stupid shit in the park of the same name. Now the city was a wasteland and everyone who had the capability to leave was getting the fuck out of Dodge.

We stayed in our apartment in Chicago suburb of Plainfield for almost three weeks after the Chinese or Russians—hell, maybe even the French, I don’t know—bombed the shit out of us. If we’d lived any closer to my work downtown, then both of us would probably be dead, burnt up in a nuclear firestorm. We survived on the water that we’d saved in the bathtub and eaten whatever we could trade for down at Salaam’s Corner Market before everything went to total shit. Once the freaks and scavengers began to show up, we knew it was time to leave.

The freaks are easier to deal with than the scavengers. Nobody really knows what the creatures are. Some people call them zombies—they certainly act like a zombie from a movie—some call them freaks and others call them victims. I don’t know how I feel about the ethical part of the discussion, but I know that they’re dangerous as hell and should be avoided or destroyed if you can’t avoid them. They are people whose bodies are so ravaged by radiation and disease that their minds have been literally fried and they are crazy as fuck. They attack whatever they see. People, animals, each other, it doesn’t matter. If it moves, they try to destroy it. Fortunately there’s not too many of them and their bodies still follow basic human anatomy. They have to eat and they can still be killed just like normal humans, but they can withstand terrible injuries and it doesn’t appear to bother them at all. Every encounter with them, even if they don’t kill you, is potentially deadly because of the radiation and the various diseases they carry. The illnesses they carry would have been nothing more than a minor inconvenience before the blast, but if you contract something these days, it’s likely to kill you.

The scavengers though, they are another breed entirely. Don’t get me wrong, they are completely human, but they do whatever the hell they want and don’t care about anyone else but themselves. They rape, torture, and murder just because they can. There is no negotiating with them, it is kill or be killed. No one knows if they always existed in our society and the laws kept them in check or if the apocalypse flipped a switch in their brains. Whatever the reason, they’re messed up and they love to inflict pain on everyone else. It’s like all the supervillains in every movie were combined into one devious son of a bitch. Then multiply that one person into thousands, maybe millions, and you have America’s scavenger population.

The final straw that sent us over the edge and forced us to move from Plainfield was when Ali was butchered. Ali owned Salaam’s Corner Market and, even without power or working vehicles, he was somehow able to keep his shelves moderately stocked with foodstuffs during the first few weeks of the crisis. Without him, I’m sure that Becca and I would have starved, but now he was dead, like everyone else we knew in the city.

I went down to the market that morning to get our weekly supply of canned food and some naan bread that Ali baked in his shop. When I opened the door I was almost overwhelmed by the metallic smell of blood and the unpleasant odor of voided bowels. I didn’t know what to do other than to call out for Ali to see if he was alright, but of course he didn’t answer. Something else did.

I heard and even sensed the thing before I saw it and stepped back through the doors just in time. The market’s security bar-reinforced glass doors opened inward, so the creature actually shut them for me when it slammed into them. It literally threw its body against the glass over and over in an effort to reach me. I know now that some of them are still smart enough to pull a door open, but this one didn’t seem to have enough cognitive ability left to do anything but walk. It was the first time that I’d seen a freak up close. Sure, I’d seen them pass by in the alleyway from the safety of my fourth floor apartment, but nothing prepared me for what came running towards me from the depths of that darkened shop.

The creature that tried to reach me from behind the doors used to be a woman. Most of her hair was gone, either fallen out from malnutrition or ripped out somehow, and her disgusting, deflated breasts sagged almost to her navel. Her skin was covered in lesions that leaked pus and her face was covered in blood and shit, my guess was that she’d been eating poor Ali’s intestines when I interrupted her. I stood there staring at her. I mean, I was absolutely transfixed by what I saw. Even though we’d been dealing with the windblown ashes, food shortage and loss of all basic utilities, we’d been pretty much spared the worst of the holocaust for the past few weeks that far southwest of Chicago. The big blasts had happened to the north and wiped out everything up there, but we’d been sheltered by distance. This was the first time that the realization of our hopeless situation hit me and I began to think it was time to leave before more of these things made their way out of the ruined city.

Before long, a couple of the neighborhood’s other residents came along, either for their normal grocery run or attracted by the sounds of the freak banging into the market’s safety glass. I saw several people that I recognized from the apartment building, but I didn’t actually know any of them. Prior to the blast, our lives had revolved around the daily commute into the city and the time that we had at home was spent with our loved ones, not the neighbors.

The more people that gathered, the more intense and frantic the creature seemed to become. She saw an opportunity to kill and to eat. I made small talk with a couple of people while we watched in revulsion as the freak repeatedly threw itself into the glass that wouldn’t break. I felt bad as I watched her, she could have been a wife, a mother, hell anything, but here she was. Now she was just a murderous cannibal who would stop at nothing to kill every one of us on the sidewalk. I guess she ended up cutting herself on the metal bars somehow because the view into the shop slowly began to cloud with smeared blood on the glass.

Several minutes after people began arriving, she’d cut herself badly enough that her blood began to freely run under the doors. Eventually, her attack on the doors became less pronounced and it seemed like she had to gather her strength each time before the next shove against the doors that refused to budge. Finally, thankfully, the creature’s assault ended entirely with her body pressed against the cage as her lifeblood seeped out into the street. My first encounter with a freak ended with it killing itself while it tried to reach me. I still remember the single-minded determination that those things have to kill the non-infected and I will have nightmares about it for the rest of my life.

* * *

Hey, spacecase! Rebecca said as she rode her bike closer to mine and slapped me on the shoulder.

Huh? Oh sorry, I was just thinking about what happened to Ali back in Plainfield. What did you say?

I said that it looks like what those people said about Virden being an open community may be true. See that sign right there? she said as she pointed to a hand painted wooden sign placed strategically along the road so anyone paying attention would be able to see it.

The sign stated, VIRDEN, ILLINOIS DECLARED AN OPEN COMMUNITY. SAFE FOR ALL TRAVELERS. THREE MILES STRAIGHT AHEAD, TAKE DIVERNON EXIT OFF 55 SOUTH, FOLLOW SIGNS. ~ MACOUPIN COUNTY MILITIA.

We’d run into two types of communities so far: Open and closed. Well, actually, there were two other types also. The abandoned and destroyed, but we really tried to avoid those. Closed communities were places where the people who lived there before the nuclear detonations basically sealed themselves up behind walls of some type and didn’t allow any outsiders to come in, even if they were only passing through. Open communities were still secure, but they allowed people without homes to come inside their walls as long as they could be contributing members of the community. No place wanted derelicts and vagrants living with them. We’d heard stories about how communities dealt with bums who tried to move in and mooch off the population. Let’s just say, it wasn’t pretty and they made sure that other potential bums in the area knew that they weren’t allowed.

What’s the Macoupin County Militia? Rebecca asked.

No idea, I replied. It must be some type of local police organization that runs things around here. They want us to think that Virden is safe for travelers.

Truth be told, I was actually embarrassed that I’d let myself get lost in those memories from a couple weeks ago. That was stupid. We hadn’t run into any trouble on our southward journey so far, but from what others along the way had told us, we’d been pretty lucky because everywhere was dangerous these days. I wasn’t brought up in some type of misogynistic, macho family, but I feel like it’s my duty to be Rebecca’s protector and that I’m the one who’s supposed to keep us together and out of trouble.

What’s that supposed to mean? Rebecca asked me as we continued our slow bicycle journey south along the highway.

Okay, what I meant to say was that they want people to think they’re still a nice town. What if it’s some kind of set-up? You know, lure us in and then harvest our organs or something.

Chuck, you have definitely seen too many movies. I’ve listened to you so far, but I want to sleep in a bed, okay? We’ve been on the road for over two weeks and sleeping in sleeping bags out in the cold. I want to go someplace nice with nice people. And I have to believe those kinds of places still exist, otherwise, what the hell are we even wasting our time living for?

Shit, she had a point. Fine. We’ll go to Virden, but we need to keep an eye out for anything strange, okay? And we can’t stay long, the weather is already colder since the dust and ash has blocked most of the sunlight, we need to keep going south.

Alright, just a day or two. Please, Chuck. Let’s go and meet some nice people, maybe we’ll meet some other travelers who will want to travel with us. There’s safety in numbers. She’d added that last part because she knew I was worried about what I would do if we were attacked out here on our own. I wasn’t sure what good I would be, but I knew I’d do whatever I could to protect us.

Alright, alright. You fight dirty! You know I think we need a couple of traveling companions, and you’re right. We might find a couple of decent people in an open community, I conceded. She practically squealed with delight and lifted her mask away to kiss me quickly on the cheek.

I was reminded of how beautiful my Rebecca is. I hardly ever saw her without the mask anymore. The air was full of all sorts of shit floating around and the little paper masks that we’d picked up made it a lot easier to breathe. She was so covered up from head to toe that it was almost impossible to tell that she was a woman from over a hundred yards away. She had her mop of wavy red hair pulled back in a tight bun and a pale green rain slicker hood up over the top of that. It hadn’t rained in a few days, but it only took one surprise acid rain storm our first night out of the city to encourage us to keep covered at all times.

I truly believed that we were in for a massive extinction event in the next few months and everything we could do to prepare ourselves ahead of time was important. I’d seen a couple of documentaries about nuclear winter and it’s not a pretty scenario. The bulk of the population not directly affected by the explosions would survive the first few months after a nuclear war with what they have in their houses and could get from a grocery store that wasn’t too far away. Unless they killed each other off.

After a while, all the particles in the air from all the vaporized stuff at the blast sites would eventually make it impossible for the sun to warm the earth and we’ll be plunged into a nuclear winter. Shit, I wanted to get as close to the equator as possible and living all the way up in Chicago wasn’t a good starting point. Then again, if Ali hadn’t been murdered, Rebecca probably would have wanted to continue living in our apartment and we’d really be screwed when the winter hit. As far as I was concerned, every foot farther south we traveled before the freezing temperatures really set in was a foot closer to survival.

* * *

Rebecca and I turned off Highway 55 and followed the signs like we’d been directed. The road wound through an abandoned town and a few miles later we came to the walls of Virden. They’d been busy in the last month. As far as I could tell from my vantage point, the entire town was surrounded by a six-foot ramshackle wall made from cinder blocks, sheets of corrugated tin roofing panels, cattle pen fencing and overturned vehicles. Guards peeked over the top of the wall at us every so often and I had the distinct feeling that there was a rifle scope aimed right at my head.

I slowly dismounted from the bike and slid the handle of my baseball bat into my belt then raised my hands above my head. Becca, I think it’s best if we show them that we don’t mean any harm, I said to my wife. She nodded her head and followed my lead by lifting her arms as well. After no response from the guards we deliberately pushed the bikes towards the wall for the last hundred feet.

That’s far enough, a voice said from behind the wall. State your business.

We came to Virden because it’s supposed to be an open community, I shouted so I could be heard by the people on the wall. We don’t want any trouble, just passing through and we saw the signs on the highway. If you aren’t an open community, then we’ll just keep going on our way towards the south.

No, the signs are right, the voice replied. We’re an open community, for the right people. Do you have any other travelers with you? Maybe you have children hidden in the woods a little ways back or something?

It’s just us, I called loudly. I decided that it was probably alright to lower my hands.

We’ll have to search you two and ensure you don’t have any open sores, which are an indication of radiation sickness, and worse. After that, you can come in, get introduced to everyone and determine if you want to stay or if you’re just visiting Virden. Hold on. There were several loud clangs as the locks were thrown to open the gate.

I was surprised when the town’s gate opened about fifty feet to my right, far to the side of where I’d expected it to be since the road led right up to the wall. Three people dressed like scavengers came out from the gate and two of them had shotguns that they aimed right at us. The men wore heavy coveralls and had long trench coats to help with the acid rain. They wore military style gas masks and all had what looked to be firefighter helmets on, which was a wise choice since the helmet could protect against both rain and blunt force trauma.

The unarmed man came up to me and said, I need both of you to strip naked. I started to object, but he sighed and held his hands up to stop me. Clearly this wasn’t the first time that he’d encountered people unwilling to get naked in front of strangers. Look, he said, Neither of you has anything that we haven’t seen a thousand times. We need to ensure that you’re not bringing any obvious diseases into our community. Either you strip and let us examine you, or you guys can continue on your way to wherever you’re headed.

It’s okay, Charlie, my wife said to me. I can handle it. We need a safe place to stay and if this is the price I have to pay, then so be it. She didn’t even wait for my answer before she shrugged out of her backpack to let it slide to the ground and began unzipping her rain jacket.

Before long, both of us stood stark naked in the chilly air. The only exception was our masks, which they’d allowed us to retain in position over our mouths and noses. The man inspecting us had each of us bend over to expose the area between our ass cheeks and then I had to lift my scrotum up for his scrutiny while Becca was forced to raise each breast up so he could ensure there were no sores hidden underneath along the creases of her skin.

When he was satisfied, he said, Alright, you passed. You can put your clothes back on. Welcome to Virden. I hope you enjoy your stay, but let me warn you right now; if you aren’t a contributing member of the community, you will be asked to leave and not return. Is that understood? We both nodded that we understood the terms of our admittance into the town.

We rushed to pull our clothing back on as a storm blew in rapidly from the west. Just as we entered the main gate of Virden it began to rain. The dark sludge fell from the sky and we couldn’t see beyond a couple of feet in front of our hands. The men quickly swung the gate back into place and shuffled off to their protected watch positions.

As soon as we passed through, a girl yelled, Come on, this way! We’ll get under the pharmacy’s awning. She wore a large rubber army poncho and also carried an umbrella to further retard the rain’s ability to reach her. We ran behind her as she made her way to the front of the town’s pharmacy less than a block from the town’s walls. We ducked under the wide striped awning, both of us unsure what to make of our guide.

She closed the umbrella and leaned it against the building’s brick wall pulling the hood off of her head to reveal clean, straight blonde hair. Her eyes crinkled as she smiled behind the mask she wore. My name is Samantha, Sam. Welcome to Virden, she said.

Hi Samantha. I’m Chuck, this is my wife, Rebecca, I said as I indicated Becca.

Sam gave us both a quick once over with her eyes. Have you guys been on the road very long?

We’re coming from just south of Chicago, the city became too dangerous. We’ve been traveling for a little over two weeks, Becca said while she self-consciously tried to smooth out her wrinkled and dirty overcoat.

Oh, wow! You made that trip with only a baseball bat for protection? You’re either really brave or stupid… Her eyes widened as she realized she’d accidently insulted us. I mean... Look, I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t mean to say you guys were dumb, it’s just really dangerous outside of the town’s walls, she stammered.

I wondered how old our hostess was. It was nearly impossible to tell from her voice, but I guessed she couldn’t have been more than sixteen or seventeen. No problem, Sam. I know what you meant by the statement. We left with what we could carry and I already owned this baseball bat, I said as I patted the big fat logo stamped across the bat’s surface. We stayed mostly to the roads and kept hidden at night when the dangerous folks were out and about.

Well, I’ll take your word for it, Chuck. I came here from Springfield and… she stopped abruptly again. It was a difficult trip. She glanced quickly towards the street and squeezed her eyes shut a few times. In the gloom of the rain, I couldn’t be sure, but it looked like she was trying to get rid of tears without wiping her face with potentially contaminated hands.

Anyways, Virden is a pretty safe spot for us right now, she continued. We have everything we could need for the foreseeable future. We were far enough south from Chicago and north of St. Louis that the EMPs didn’t destroy all of our electronic stuff. There was a large grocery store here with tons of canned food and our guys are constantly going out on patrol to get more food from the surrounding area. Our town’s leader, mayor, sheriff, whatever you want to call him, was this crazy apocalypse prepper-guy so he sprang into action right away after the bombs started exploding. He convinced the high school principal to allow him to fill up the gym floor with dirt, so they brought in tractors and saved enough dirt before the acid rain came that we can grow crops inside once we get the lighting and irrigation down.

Geez, that was really smart. I’d have never thought of something like that.

Yeah, well, like I said, he was one of those weird prepper-guys. He even got featured on that TV show about people like him. He’s made us all watch it a few times since he’s still got power at his place, I guess to validate his abilities or whatever, but he’s alright. He’s a little eccentric, but then again, I probably would be too if I’d been made fun of my whole life for believing something and then suddenly everyone who was still alive realized that I’d been right all along.

Funny way of thinking about it, but I guess you’re right, Becca said.

The snapping noises of the dirty black rain hitting the awning above us began to lessen. Looks like the rain is letting up, so we’ll be able to go to the guest registration office soon.

I’m sorry. Did you say that the town has a guest registration office? I asked.

Oh, yeah. Allan, the mayor, likes to keep track of everyone in town and the office helps him do that. Also, if you plan on staying, you have to figure out what you’re going to do for work. They really don’t like people who don’t bring anything of value to the town. As you can see, Sam said with a slight curtsey, the tour guide position is already filled. They’ll tolerate you for a few days, but if you want to stay, you’ll have to bring something to the community that they don’t already have.

The rain stopped as suddenly as it had begun. Okay, that’s our cue. Come on, the registration office is about half a mile or so down Main Street here. Sam picked up her umbrella and started walking before we had a chance to say anything else.

Virden was the first real, functioning town that we’d seen since we left our neighborhood in Plainfield. We pushed our bikes down the road as we followed her and took in the sights. There were hand painted signs for seamstresses, a doctor’s office, a couple of restaurants and an outdoor survivalist store. I made a mental note to visit that last one as soon as I could.

I don’t suppose anyone in town needs a financial advisor do they? I asked half-jokingly to our guide.

Seriously? That’s what you did before the apocalypse? Geez, that must have been boring.

Well, I thought it was exciting. There was a different challenge every day, I replied.

Nope, don’t think we’ll be doing too much investing around here. What about you, Rebecca. What skills do you have?

I was an elementary school teacher, she said as we continued to follow Samantha down the street.

That, we can use. I don’t know what happened to them, but less than half of the school’s original teachers are around. We’ve got about forty or fifty kids per class, so that will be a huge help.

The town is still doing school? I asked incredulously.

Yeah. Allan says we’ve got to continue educating our kids, so he’s made it mandatory for them to attend up until twelve years old. Then, if the parents can spare them, he recommends that they be allowed to continue. Right now, most parents are letting their kids go, but everyone knows it won’t always be that way. We’ll need more wall guards as things get worse and we’re already beginning to need more people to do the long-range scavenging… I mean gathering.

Gathering, scavenging, it’s the same thing, right? What difference does it make what you call it? Becca asked.

The scavengers are the crazies out there, so Allan doesn’t want us associated with them. He forbids anyone from calling the gathering of supplies for the town ‘scavenging’. If you end up working with one of those groups and call it scavenging, Jesse will beat your ass.

Well, it’s an intellectual difference at best, Rebecca pressed.

I don’t know what you mean by that, but just remember that we ‘gather’ we don’t ‘scavenge’ and you’ll be alright, Sam said as she stared over her shoulder at us pointedly.

Who’s this Jesse person? I asked.

"He’s like the number two guy in town. He was a big football player back