A Breath Before Sunrise

By Jamie Horwath

A Breath Before Sunrise is an expansion of the short story The Observer, which is from my first book Extinction Chronicles. This novella tells the tale of the events prior to The Observer and revolves around the characters Bear, Bird, and Fox.

Bear is a Collector tasked with bringing back Observers from the surface of a war-ravaged world. A mysterious enemy destroyed the planet and humanity had no choice but to burrow into the safety provided by the vast underground of the Earth. After spending a year on the surface and discovering a life humanity lived before the war, Bear begins to think for himself and develops and understanding of free will. Feeling a disgust for the patriarchal world of the underground Bear becomes defiant and decides to remain on the surface. The Elders send up two close friends of Bear to bring him back. Caught up in a battle between light and darkness, the trio learns that our adult life mirrors our memories.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jan 13, 2012
• ISBN: 9781468531770

Jamie Horwath

Jamie Horwath resides in North Eastern Pennsylvania. He attended Penn State University during the nineties. After college he worked a series of odd jobs until he took a sales position for an employment agency. In 2011 Horwath released his first book, Extinction Chronicles, and since then has released five more. The works comprised of short stories, novellas, and novelette's. His newest work is a novel completing the story that began as a short titled The Observer. Horwath's writing stays within the genres of science fiction, horror, and fantasy. His newest work is a cross genre piece across all three categories. Jamie's dog, Storm, a beagle is still hounding him.

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© 2012 Jamie Horwath. All rights reserved.

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.

Published by AuthorHouse 1/9/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4685-3177-0 (e)

ISBN: 978-1-4685-3178-7 (sc)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011962901

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Bear and Bird

Changing of the Season

The Embrace

Fox

Our Father

We Are Not Alone

Inside Out

Treachery

The Hospital

Reunion

Awakenings

The Journal

Bear and Bird

The playground, which now bore the resemblance of a graveyard, cast an eerie silence upon the dying afternoon. Neatly cut, green grass played canvas to a blood painting created from the recent attack, which projected a somber mood into the surrounding air. Bear walked slowly through the human wreckage, searching for his quarry. The broken skull of Experiment Number 25 lay on the seat of a teeter-totter. Bear picked up the skull and examined the insides through a hole in the bone. With the anticipation of a youngster, peering into a cookie jar, he inserted his index finger and made a circular motion, pausing once and bringing forth a small piece of shiny metal. Carefully balancing it on his fingertip, Bear examined the shard in the fading sunlight.

I’ve found part of the recording device, he said into a com unit inside a black and brown helmet.

His frame was large and tall. Broad shoulders cast an eerie shadow upon the bloodstained grass, and the helmet, which protected a large, muscular jaw line, intimidated those who saw it with its daunting mold of a grizzly bear.

Do you think anything can be read from the tape? asked a mechanical male voice.

Bear cocked his head a bit and looked harder into the tiny piece of metal. Not sure, he said. I’m going to find a quiet place to rest and see what I can find on the tape. If it contains origin data, I’ll send for extraction.

Hmm, we’ve been meaning to talk to you about that, Bear, calmly stated the mechanical voice. You’ve been up longer than any other agent we have. Don’t you think it’s time to come back?

Bear paused before he answered. He watched the sun disappear behind a mountain range. The last of the light rays kissed his mask and reflected off his eye protectors. No.

Bear switched off his com unit and placed the small metal shard in the front pocket of his black jumpsuit. Motion tracking sensors went off in his helmet, and he looked to the north. Three areas of movement appeared on his tracking grid, clumps of amoebas, no doubt. Bear reached to his thigh and grabbed a small metallic cross. The hunk of metal began to expand in his hand and took on the form of a rifle. He grasped the stock of the rifle with one hand and nestled his left ring finger on the trigger. It was best to find a safe place to haul up for the night, Bear thought as he headed into the burned-out suburbs, leaving behind the freakish bit of carnage that perverted the playground’s gentleness.

*       *       *

Attempt to access recording device number twenty-five … Error … Attempt at full playback of device is impossible due to corrupt data …

Only playback the parts of recording that are accessible, Bear said.

Initiating playback of tape now…Please wait while data is buffering …

Bear sat on the remains of a moldy couch. The space appeared to keep the resemblance of a thing called a living room. He had learned about the surface dwellers’ old life, before the war, through ripped-apart design magazines. Pictures of families laughing and joking gathered around a large unit called a television made Bear ponder the life that humanity lived now. Pushed underground like vermin and forced into a militaristic, patriarchal society, humanity had become a former shell of its existence. Not like it had much of a choice about that. After all, humans were still alive and fighting a war against God knows what.

Bear chased the thoughts of dissention out of his mind and focused on the job at hand. He fiddled with the device a bit more, and a small light projected from the metal shard. The light grew stronger until it lit up the wall in front of him. Blurry images began to form, and the events of Number 25 that could be retrieved from the in-brain tape began to play out on the bloodstained living room wall of 172nd Street, Black Burn, California.

*       *       *

John lay in his bed on his back. His mind remained a muddled trap of the events from the night before. Bits and pieces would flash into his thoughts quickly, but there was something else. A shadow of sorts seemed to work its way into his memories. The darkness would corrupt his thoughts, and out of the corner of his eye, he began to see things, small things at first. Perhaps someone’s skin appeared boil-ridden or holey, like a piece of Swiss cheese.

John rubbed his eyes and rolled out of bed. Time to go to work, he thought.

The hot water that trickled from the showerhead soothed his troubled mind and helped drag his thoughts out of the muddled grinder that trapped them, like the gear of a music box turned by a circus monkey. His forehead and stomach still ached from the large amounts of alcohol he had consumed the night before. He paused once more, allowing the water to fall over his shoulders, and then quickly exited the shower. He dried off and got dressed after cleaning his teeth.

With cautious steps, John Dullman left his tiny apartment and headed off to work.

*       *       *

John slumped in his chair at the cubicle and stared into the computer screen of payroll reports. The numbers cut into his soul like razorblades, and he could feel parts of his brain dying as percentages and expense account deductions rolled by in clips of black and white. The cold numbers and letters mocked him like a gym class bully. Each mindless check he had to click felt like an atomic wedgie of self-deprecation. The black and white hieroglyphics scrolled by faster and faster, as if they clung to the spokes of a wheel. His vision began to distort, and a shadow began to creep across the monitor. John quickly turned to his left, and he fell out of his chair.

The worker in the next cubicle stood up in his four-by-six prison cell and stared blankly ahead. From the ceiling of the office, which now took on the semblance of a reddish, fleshy organism, tiny tentacles extended and attached themselves to John’s coworker’s ears, eyes, nose, and mouth. John could see a fluid of sorts pulled from his coworker, flowing upriver into the fleshy mass