The Remedy Files: United: The Remedy Files, #0

By Lauren Eckhardt

When the world ends, how do you start over?

The woman only needed her family, hope, and the man she's been in love with since she was five years old.

When the man was five, he made a promise to protect the woman he loves at all costs. He didn't expect that to be threatened by the Apocalypse.

Now at eighteen, they've witnessed the slow unraveling of their dreams as nature and men compete to wipe out humanity and annihilate the earth they once adored. The lands have shrunk, loved ones murdered, and every minute of life is a fight for survival.

It's not the global revolution the woman and man envisioned when they were young and innocent, but a lot can change when love is sacrificed. 

Anything becomes possible. 
Even the most drastic measures to create a brand new life. 

 
This 9,000-word novelette is the prequel to The Remedy Files Trilogy and includes the first 5 chapters of The Remedy Files: Illusion. It may be read before or after any book in the series.

For fans of young adult dystopian like The Giver, Hunger Games, and Divergent.
 

The Remedy Files Trilogy
Book#1: Illusion
Book #2: Rebirth
Book #3: Divided 
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Burning Soul Press
• Release date: Feb 4, 2020
• ISBN: 9781950476121

Book preview

The Remedy Files: United

The Remedy Files: United

A Prequel Novelette

Lauren Eckhardt

Burning Soul Press

Contents

Introduction

The Before

The After

Sixty-Six Years Later

Eighteen Years Later

First 5 Chapters of The Remedy Files: Illusion

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

The Remedy Files: Illusion

The Remedy Files Trilogy

About the Author

Copyright © 2020 Lauren Eckhardt

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All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

without the express written permission of the publisher

except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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Ebook 978-1-950476-12-1

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Burning Soul Press

Introduction

Prequel Novelette to The Remedy Files Trilogy

Book #1, Illusion

Book #2, Rebirth

Book #3, Divided

The Before

This is not how our life is supposed to end, she cries into his arm, muffled by his skin, so that the kids can’t hear her. He can barely discern her words, but he doesn’t need to. His thoughts have repeated the same line for days.

This wasn’t supposed to be how it all came crashing down. Yet here they are. In hindsight, the warning signs were all there, yet they were ignored by the general population. More so here in the United States than in other countries. They should have been protected here. Somehow it all seemed to happen much faster than anyone could have believed. The ocean started the war, and man, not one to be outdone by nature, followed suit. No one knew who to be more scared of: the water as it swallowed the land to reclaim its dominance, or entitled men who stopped at nothing to assert his desires.

Once full of abundance, colors, hope and possibilities, the world had darkened with scarcity and fire to greed and addiction.

The man gently strokes the woman’s hair to calm her, to calm himself too. Focus on the strokes, the softness of the auburn strands as they pull through his fingers. That wasn’t as easy to feel when the Thyprotzine was in their system, a numbing drug that was once outlawed then turned legal by the government as a coping mechanism and converted into global currency during the wars. Now, the silky strands are mesmerizing. If he focuses on her hair, he is glad he is off of it. The motion helps him breathe steadily, to root himself as the strong one in this new situation they found themselves in, a nightmare for any human.

They were supposed to be off to college by now as high school sweethearts who found love in each other and a passion for international diplomacy. While growing up next door to each other and playing in the neighborhood streets, they dreamed of traveling the world and bridging gaps between countries. They loved other people as much as they loved each other and believed they could talk peace into those who were keen to gravitate to strife.

Slowly those dreams fell apart with one regulation after another, until they were grasping at a future that simply could no longer exist. The higher education ban was put into play first, colleges shutting down worldwide for a lack of wasting funds. Underground schools rose in their place, striving to offset the misplaced values, but that was only the beginning. Soon after, the increase of temporary high-risk travel bans between other countries became permanent. Airports closed. Commercial planes were grounded. Any others who tried to fly, blanketed by the starless night, were immediately shot out of the sky. Continents were secluded. Walls were constructed between countries to protect the remaining resources they had. The world they wanted so badly to explore had now been reduced to the country they were born in.

People can always find ways to get what they want, though. Determination has proven to have no boundaries. Once countries depleted the resources they had, succumbing to nature’s combative forces, they turned to infiltrate other countries with bombs that angered nature more. The oceans drank more land and filled with bodies of those who lost the fight to bombs, disease and people drunk on the worst of sins.

Now, here the man and woman are, hiding out. Somehow, when seeking refuge in this shelter, their dire state magnified. To add to the pressure of survival, they became parents virtually overnight. Kids themselves now responsible for the lives of six other children, all lined up in the center of the room sleeping under tattered blankets, away from the walls as though that slight distance could make a difference between life and death. All orphans, their parents long gone, hidden in a strange cave of sorts covered by the cloak of what once was a library.

One young boy is especially bad off, shivering in the corner of their human pile with teeth chattering regardless of the heaps of blankets stacked on him.

They ran out of Thyprotzine two days ago. A throbbing migraine that didn’t stop resulted, the worst hangover the man has ever felt. They all had headaches. That boy, though, developed the shakes on top of it, rotating between sweating and vomiting, and cries out from pain at all hours of the day and night.

The woman spent hours trying to comfort him, holding the boy to her breast and rubbing his back while singing lullabies, low and soft. Her mom would do the same to her when she was a girl; but she wasn’t a mother, and most of all, she wasn’t this boy’s mom, and she was limited in her power. Mommy! he would cry out, wrenching from her touch even though all she wanted to do was help him.

It wasn’t fair that he should be alone in this.

It wasn’t fair that she had to fill this role.

The man whispers, I need to make a run tomorrow. He won’t survive much longer if I don’t get something in his system.

Focus on food, not the drugs. The woman clenches onto the man’s fingers and moves them to her chest, pressing them against her heart. I fear there’s nothing out there.

Except chaos and instant death. They both know this. There’s only one choice that remains in this world. Hide out and die a slow death, or adventure outside and die instantly. But he had to keep fighting. His dad did the same for his family before the night that changed everything.

He shudders while recalling the men who decapitated the strongest man he knew, his broad-shouldered and bright-eyed dad, with one swing of an axe. The drugged savages wouldn’t remember they murdered to steal a bag, filled with rationed goods as identified by the green cross, or the way the victim smiled at them with relentless love of humanity right before they swung. His dad would have given the bag to them if they needed it just because that’s the type of caring being he was. The men didn’t even carry enough remorse to hide their faces or run away afterward. That was how much the world had changed. Survival was void of empathy and any regard to humankind was long gone. They dropped the bag to the ground after pocketing the packets of food and Thyprotzine and went on their way in a slow, leisurely