The Ending Beginnings: Clara (An Ending Series Novella) (The Ending Series) (8 page)

6

A
crash and screaming woke Clara from a deep sleep. Her mind had been dormant,
warm and safe in the fissures of her consciousness. But the crashing sound…it
riled her awareness, and the cool air lapped at her exposed cheeks and her
nose.

Annoyed,
she sat up in bed. Her room was dark, and she glanced at the digital clock on
her nightstand. 7:46 PM. Her stomach gurgled with hunger, and her mouth was
stale and dry. How long had she been asleep?

Peering
around her tidied room, Clara was confused. She remembered piles of rags and the
stench of vomit. Now, her room was clean; the putrid smell was gone, and the
rags and vomit-filled garbage can were nowhere in sight. All that remained was
an empty wastebasket on the floor beside her bed, and a mountain of blankets
covering her.

She
remembered Roberta’s voice and the warmth of the shower. Clara shivered at the
memory. She’d been so cold, so tired. She’d thought she was dying.

A
clatter in the hallway startled her, and she threw the covers back and stepped
onto the cold floor. Removing a clean sweatshirt from the bottom drawer of her
dresser, Clara pulled it over her head before tugging on a clean pair of jeans.

Her
head was still hazy, and she rubbed her temple with one hand as she opened the
door to the hallway with the other. Maybe some food would help…

Stepping
out into the empty hallway, she peered down at the bedrooms to the right. All
the doors were closed. She peered to the left. The light of the television flickered
in the darkened rec room, sparking a feeling of unease.

Where
was everyone? Clara couldn’t hear chatter coming from the rec room, and it was
Sunday, so there shouldn’t have been any group sessions. At least, she thought
it was Sunday. Maybe everyone was in the cafeteria for dinner?

A
loud crash startled her. It was coming from inside Alicia’s room, directly
across from hers. Clara took a tentative step out into the hall. Another crash,
closely followed by a bone-chilling scream reverberated through Alicia’s door.

 “Alicia?”
Clara rasped, her voice hoarse from disuse. Clearing her throat, she tried
again. “Alicia?”

But
there was no answer, only the sound of more crashing and screaming.

Hesitantly,
Clara reached for the handle. The door was locked.

BANG.
Clara jumped back, her hand clasping over her mouth as she tried to control her
breathing. BANG. The door rattled and the handle jiggled as what sounded like
snarls and growling emanated from the other side. BANG. BANG.

Fingers
wrapped around Clara’s upper arm, and she spun around with a shriek. Roberta
stood there, eyes wide with alarm. “That door stays shut.”

Clara
exhaled a shaky breath and let Roberta lead her down the hallway toward the rec
room.

“What
happened? What’s wrong with her?” Clara asked, shocked and shaking.

Roberta
glanced down at her watch, and then up at Clara. “You’ve been asleep for almost
three days. A lot has happened.” She stopped outside of Samantha’s room and glanced
at Clara. “Wait here for a moment.” Slowly, Roberta opened Samantha’s door,
poked her head inside, and then entered fully before closing the door behind
her.

Clara
peered around the rec room. Most of the lights were off, and except for Greta,
an orderly who was on the phone at the nurses’ station, no one was in there. A
pile of blankets were folded tidily on the couch as usual, but as far as Clara
could tell, everyone else was gone. In their rooms?

Clara
turned back around, her eyes sweeping over all ten of the closed bedroom doors
on either side of the hall. Was everyone in their rooms, sick like she’d been?
The thought brought on a new wave of dread.

When
Clara’s eyes landed on Beth’s door, she swallowed. There was a large X taped on
it. After a few tentative steps, Clara pressed her ear to the door, held her
breath, and listened. There was no sound. Beth wasn’t humming, like she often
did; she wasn’t talking to herself or screaming and throwing things like Alicia
was doing. It was completely quiet.

Clara
tapped on the door gently. “Beth?” There was still no sound. Staring at the
handle as if it might burn her, Clara reached for it to find that, unlike
Alicia’s, it wasn’t locked. Throat dry and heart pounding, she turned the knob
and inched the door open.

Beth’s
room was dark and reeked of the foul stench of bile. Through the dim glow of
the moonlight shining through the window, Clara could see Beth’s silhouette on
the bed.

“Beth,”
she breathed, willing the meek woman to answer.

The
light flicked on, and Clara screamed. Beth was gray and covered in vomit.

She
was dead.

 “I
told you to stay in the hallway,” Roberta reprimanded, pulling Clara out of the
room and switching off the light before she closed the door behind them. “There
was
a reason, you know.”

 “She’s
dead,” Clara gasped. She couldn’t tear her eyes away from Beth’s closed door.

 “I
know,” Roberta said, patting Clara’s shoulder as she walked her toward the
nurses’ station. “Most of them are.”

Clara
looked back at the doors, realizing how many of them had X’s on them. “But I’m—you’re…”

 “You
were sick, but you got better. Don’t ask me how,” she said as she wrote
something in a file. “I have no idea how you recovered while everyone else is
either dead or more insane than when they got here.”

 “But,
you
seem fine.”

 “I
was sick too, but it passed quickly. I came into work two days ago and found
you in the shower, covered in vomit, and some of the others were already dead
from whatever the hell this virus is.” She paused, then added, “Alicia killed
Devon and Beatrice.”

 Clara
blanched. “Why didn’t the police—”

 “Greta
and I called them hundreds of time, but they never came. The last time we tried
to get through to anyone, the phone just rang and rang.” She set the file on
the counter.

Clara
couldn’t even blink, she was so overwhelmed. “What about Dr. Mallory and—”

 “I
haven’t been able to get a hold of any of them, either. It’s just Greta and me
for now, until either someone comes to help us or…” She shrugged. “Who the hell
knows.” Roberta’s exhaustion was evident. “What happened here and what little
I’ve seen on the news is all I have to go off of.” She turned on the stereo
they used as a PA system and pressed RADIO. “You should listen to it. I have to
go get Samantha some clean sheets. I’m running low on everything…” Roberta
continued to mutter to herself as she passed through the rec room and down
another hallway.

Clara turned the
volume up on the radio.

…
is at war,
yet our enemy is not one we can fight openly. Our enemy has swept through every
nation, attacking discretely, killing indiscriminately. We lost thousands
before we even knew we were under attack. Many have already fallen, and many
more will fall. But we cannot give up the fight.

Clara wrapped her
arms around herself, dread filling every ounce of her as she prepared for what
she might hear next. She fingered the backs of her sleeves, drawing her arms
tighter around herself.

Over the past
century, through technological achievements, we made our world smaller. We made
the time it takes to communicate across oceans instantaneous, and the time it
takes to travel those same routes nearly as fast. We made our world smaller,
and in doing so, we sowed the seeds of our own destruction: a global pandemic.

I regret to
tell you that as of midnight on the 10th of December, over eighty
percent of the world’s population has reported or is assumed dead. It is
estimated that the death toll will continue to climb. This news is devastating,
I know, but all is not lost.

Some of us are
surviving. This is how we will fight our enemy—by not giving up, by being
resilient and resourceful, by surviving. We are not a species that will go out
quietly, so I task those of you who are still alive with one essential purpose:
live.

Survive.

Thrive.

If you believe
in a higher power, ask for guidance. If you don’t, believe in your fellow man.
You, the survivors, have the chance to start over, to build anew. Learn from
our mistakes. Let the world remain big.

And most
importantly, live.

God bless you,
my beloved citizens of this great nation. God bless you, and goodnight.

Hearing another
crash from down the hall, Clara started trembling. She couldn’t help it. She
didn’t care if it meant she was weak and pathetic. She didn’t want to die. She
didn’t want to lose herself to complete madness or get sick again. She didn’t
want to turn into whatever Alicia had become. She’d killed Devon. Clara had
been with him only days earlier, and now he was dead.

Absently, she
walked toward the window, her mind racing with destructive, fearful thoughts of
what might happen next.

Hurried footsteps
bounded down the hall, too heavy to be Roberta’s. Cautiously, Clara turned from
the reinforced window as a man rushed into the room.

When his eyes met
hers, he straightened. “The nurse sent me in here…are you Clara?” He was
holding a shotgun at his side, and his chest was heaving.

Reluctantly, she
nodded.

“I need morphine and
antibiotics. She said you’d know where I could find them.”

Clara continued
to stare blankly at him. Who was he?

Taking an
assertive step toward her, he inhaled deeply and pointed out toward the road. “There’s
a man dying out there,” he said slowly. “I need meds.”

Clara nodded and
showed him to Nurse Hadly’s office down the hall. As she suspected, the door
was locked. “I don’t have a key—”

He kicked open
the door like it was made of cardboard.

Clara flicked on
the light and couldn’t take her eyes off of the stranger while he rummaged
through the cabinets. He embodied strength and determination, and while she
thought she should distrust this stranger, a man who’d wandered into a
psychiatric ward, pleading for help and carrying a shotgun, she could only
admire him. There was an air about him that made her skin tingle with
excitement.

He would keep her
safe, she realized. She just had to make sure that she stayed with him, no
matter what. Maybe
he
was her real Prince Charming.

This concludes the fourth installment of 
The
Ending Beginnings. 
The fifth novella, 
The Ending
Beginnings: Clara
, will be released in May of 2014. 

Carlos, Mandy, Vanessa, and Jake are also
supporting characters throughout
The
Ending Series
: (1)
After The Ending
,
(2)
Into
The Fire
, and (3)
Out Of The Ashes
(TBR Summer 2014)
.

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Lindsey
Pogue
 has
always been a little creative. As a child she established a bug hospital on her
elementary school soccer field, wrote her first YA manuscript in high school,
and as an adult, she continues to express herself through writing. Her novels
are inspired by her observations of the world around her—whether she's
traveling, people watching, or hiking. When not plotting her next story line or
dreaming up new, brooding characters, Lindsey's wrapped in blankets watching
her favorite action flicks or going on road trips with her own leading
man. 
www.lindseypogue.com

Lindsey
Fairleigh
 lives
her life with one foot in a book—as long as that book transports her to a
magical world or bends the rules of science. Her novels, from post-apocalyptic
to time travel and historical fantasy, always offer up a hearty dose of
unreality, along with plenty of adventure and romance. When she’s not working
on her next novel, Lindsey spends her time reading and trying out new recipes
in the kitchen. She lives in the Napa Valley with her loving husband and
confused cats. 
www.lindseyfairleigh.com