The Survivor Chronicles: Book 1, The Upheaval (39 page)

“Wait, we can’t separate!” Riley protested instantly.

Xander seized hold of her arms. “We have to go check out the other side of the building. You and Lee have to stay here to keep an eye out in case they come back. You know this place well and you know where we kept our supplies. In case we can’t find each other again we’ll meet there.”

Riley looked about to protest but instead she nodded her head. “Okay,” she muttered reluctantly.

“I don’t know about this,” Al said as he glanced nervously between Mary Ellen and Xander.

“If it makes you feel better she can stay also but another set of eyes would be useful,” Xander told him.

“I would like to go,” Mary Ellen inserted. Xander was right; they would need another set of eyes. Al was stubborn and would insist that he didn’t need a break, but he was also limping more than he had been. “I meant what I said about the trust. I’ll be fine Al.”

She squeezed Al’s hand and turned away from him to follow Xander and Bobby back into the maze of buildings. They jogged through the stores and over the brick pathways as the echoing collapse of another building resonated through the stores.

CHAPTER 27

Riley

Foxboro, Mass.

Riley pressed herself against the side of the building as another group of armed men ran past with their weapons at the ready. She didn’t know much about guns, but she was amazed by the fact that most of them appeared to be hunting rifles and not something she would associate with the military.

“Did these guys just find some guns and slap on some camo?” she wondered, though they weren’t all wearing camouflage.

Al ran a hand through his disordered gray hair as he stepped beside her. “I think that is a very good possibility.”

“Why?”

“I didn’t pretend to understand people before all of this happened," he informed her. "There was little they could do to surprise me then. Now that society is crumbling I don’t think we’ll ever know what they’re completely capable of, or why they do the things they do.”

“It’s only been seven hours.”

Al shrugged. “The human species as a whole isn’t exactly known for their sensibilities.”

“Glad you have so much faith,” Lee said.

“You don’t seem overly trusting either,” Al pointed out. “And I’m not saying I have no faith. In fact, I have a lot of faith that most of us will do the right thing, under normal conditions. These aren’t normal conditions, and there is no way to know how someone will react when you take everything they know away from them. We are just animals after all, and even the best of us are capable of things we never thought possible in order to survive, or when our loved ones are threatened. We have no idea what a person might do anymore.”

“That’s a more terrifying thought than clowns,” Riley muttered. “How did they even get all those weapons and clothing so quickly though?”

Lee slapped his forehead as he groaned in frustration. “Oh my God we are such idiots! The Bass Pro Shop.”

“What?” Al asked as Riley released a low groan also.

“The Bass Pro Shop, it’s on the other side of the compound. It has all kinds of hunting equipment and gear,” Lee explained.

“So that ass back at the hotel wasn’t even a soldier!” Riley grated through clenched teeth. “I knew I should have told him where to put that gun.”

“It was still a real gun Ri, and there’s no way to know for sure that he wasn’t. There are definitely real police and military mixed in with the wannabe’s. I imagine that the ones in charge of the hotel, and the gates, were real. There is no way we’re going to be able to tell one from the other though.”

“This is worse than I thought.” Al took a step further into the shadows as another group ran past. “If it is mostly just untrained civilians running around with weapons and trying to take charge…”

“We’re screwed,” Riley finished when his voice trailed off.

“They’re frightened and they’re volatile and jumpy.”

“We have to get out of here,” Lee stated.

“We are not leaving without Xander, Bobby and…”

“Mary Ellen,” Al supplied when Riley questioningly looked toward him.

“We’re not leaving without them,” she insisted.

Lee glanced anxiously behind them. Riley refused to look; she could already feel the increasing heat and hear the approaching crash of buildings and crackling inferno. It was necessary to get away from the encroaching flames, but she was terrified to step out of the shadows of the building. Trained professionals with guns were one thing, but untrained, frightened humans were something entirely different. She thought she might prefer to face the fire, it was probably more predictable.

Another, larger, weaponless group ran by. A woman tripped and fell, only to be plowed over by the four people behind her. Nausea rolled through her, she turned away as the woman struggled back to her feet and limped away bloody. “Where are they going? It’s nothing but woods and fencing back there,” Riley pondered.

“There’s something else coming,” Al said with dawning realization. “Something we can’t see.”

She knew the minute he said it that he was right. Yeah, she was going to vomit.

They were cornered, trapped between one hideous possibility and another. “Shit!” Lee exploded. “We have to go.”

Lee grabbed hold of her arm as she spun toward where Xander and the others had disappeared. “Let go of me!” she snarled.

“Riley we can’t stay here.”

“We’re not leaving without them.”

The words were just leaving her mouth when Xander, Bobby and Mary Ellen reappeared about three hundred feet away. “Run!” Xander bellowed as he frantically waved at them.

Lee pulled her out of the shelter of the building as he jerked her into the parking lot. Riley almost fell as she staggered to keep up with his frantic flight. Al pressed close to her side as he ran with them. In her peripheral vision she spotted something enormous and unstoppable crashing over the parking lot toward them.

Some people were running towards them, while others were heading back toward the main road as the strange new intrusion cascaded over the parking lot in a wave of red and blue. She could only gawk as she tried to figure out what it was as it caught hold of people, lifted them up, and spun them around before burying them within its depths.

A frightened cry escaped her, she almost fell but Lee managed to keep her up as he roughly jerked her arm upward. She didn’t know what it was, but it was coming at them far faster than she had thought possible. Dimly, she became aware of the fact that the earth was shaking again. She didn’t know if it was from another quake or if this onrushing tidal wave of death was rocking the ground.

Not now, not now, she prayed frantically. She wasn’t ready to die now. She was too young, there was so much she hadn’t done yet, so much more that she wanted to do still. The world may suck royally right now but she wasn’t ready to let it go.

Everything in her ached, her legs trembled, she couldn’t seem to get enough air into her brutalized lungs but still she relentlessly pushed herself faster. The fence was just before them, but Lee scurried to the right, pulling her behind him for another twenty feet before he grasped hold of the metal wiring and pulled it back. Riley was startled by the gaping hole his actions revealed, but she didn’t hesitate before scrambling through it with Al hot on her heels.

For an old guy he was fast, and in surprisingly good shape. She turned back to try and find Xander but Lee grabbed hold of her arm, spun her around, and started pushing her up the hill. “Run Riley, don’t look back.”

“Wait…”

“They’re right behind us, go.”

She didn’t care though; she wasn’t going anywhere until she knew for certain. Turning back she spotted the others halfway to the fence. Relief filled her as she spun away and followed Lee. They clawed and tore at the ground as they pulled their way up the ragged hill. She didn’t have much for nails, but even so they were torn and broken as she fought for leverage. A savage hiss escaped as her middle nail broke off far below the quick. Blood spilled forth, mixing with the dirt that spewed up around her in her haste to get up a hill that had been much easier to navigate on the way down.

Al tripped and fell. She snagged hold of his arm a split second before he tumbled backward. His wide eyes met hers and he gave a brief nod of thanks as she helped to steady him on the hill. Lee tugged on her arm, drawing her forward as dirt and rocks tumbled and skittered away beneath them.

A loud, rushing noise reached her. She didn’t look back; she couldn’t look back for fear of what she would see. If Xander and Bobby weren’t back there…

She shut that thought down; it wouldn’t lead to anything good. She’d already lost almost everything today, she couldn’t lose them too.

After what seemed like an eternity they finally breeched the top of the hill. She stumbled and fell to her knees as she gasped for air. She strained to stand up but her exhausted legs simply wouldn’t hold her and she limply fell back to the earth again.

Looking like a well used horse, Lee collapsed beside her as he struggled for breath and his nostrils flared. She turned back to Al, but though he was sitting beside her, his attention wasn’t on her.

She followed his gaze back down the hill and where seconds before she’d been unable to find her feet, she launched to them now. She was running again, stumbling, tripping and nearly plummeting all the way to the bottom. She managed to catch herself on the lower limb of an oak tree before she tumbled to her death.

A scream rose in her throat and strangled there as tears choked it out. It must have been another quake she felt, one that had opened up a jagged tear that tore across the land. It zigzagged through the parking lot, had toppled the fence, and swallowed the asphalt and gating within its depths.

Xander shoved Mary Ellen back as Bobby scrambled to get away from the vicious tear. Riley dimly realized that although it was a reddish color, it was only just water rapidly following the newly formed gulch. It must have flowed in from some nearby lake or river that had been opened up and released by this new gulf in the earth. The reddish color was due to the reflection being cast from the ever increasing inferno spreading throughout the stadium parking lot.

Water crashed as it tumbled over the earth in endless waves that pounded against the asphalt. A rising crescendo that blocked out all other sound reverberated through the air. The newly created river consumed everything it encountered within its deadly clutches. Bodies tumbled and flipped through the water. They still screamed in horror and pain as they were swept toward near certain death.

Riley released the branch and crept closer. Tears burned in her eyes and slid down her cheeks. Her chest ached with the desire to slip to her knees and wail out her misery and sorrow. Instead, she simply crept steadily closer to the new waterway that had torn the parking lot in half. She was still a quarter of the way up the hill when she stopped to stare across the vast abyss.

The water was a gushing torrent, an unrelenting force to be reckoned with. It splashed up against the shore, nearly at her feet as Al arrived at her side. Xander stepped forward, his toes much closer to the edge than she liked as he lifted a hand and waved.

From the opposite shoreline.

From the shoreline with the growing blaze, civilian soldiers, and lava. A shoreline that as far as she could see, in either direction, had effectively split the land in two. Even if they somehow found the end of the river, even if there was a place where they could cross, there was no guarantee they would be able to find each other again. She stared down the length of the river. Perhaps they could stay parallel, following each other until they found some way to cross it.