The Survivors of Bastion (Fall of Earth Book 1)

© 2016 Will Hawthorne

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The Survivors of Bastion

Fall of Earth Book #1

Will Hawthorne

2016

This work of written fiction is protected under the copyright laws of the United Kingdom and other countries throughout the world. Country of first publication: United Kingdom. Any unauthorized exhibition, distribution, or copying of this book or any part thereof may result in legal action. The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this book are fictitious. No identification with actual persons, places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred.

No person or entity associated with this book received payment or anything of value, or entered into any agreement or connection with the depiction of tobacco products.

Summary

For a whole week we waited in the basement, listening to the world outside as it fell apart.

When things went quiet and we ventured outside, everything had changed.

Fifteen years after a fatal virus spreads across the Earth, almost driving humanity to extinction, the few that are immune have set up small communities in order to survive and thrive.

Tom 'Tommy' Hadley has known nothing but this world since he was a young boy - now 22, he acts as the leader of the citizens of Bastion, a small community thriving in a suburb from the old world. In the aftermath of the world's end they have built Bastion into a place they can all call home. But things don't stay calm for long.

When a man approaches Tommy from the forest outside of Bastion, delirious and covered in bite marks, his only reaction is to get the man help.

But those bite marks didn't come from an animal, and it isn't long before Tommy and a small group of survivors find themselves on the run from a new type of infection, one that turns it's hosts into rabid versions of the humans they once knew.

The Survivors of Bastion
is a riveting tale of survival set against the backdrop of a fallen Earth.

Contents

Prologue

Part One – One Day in Bastion

Chapter One – Bastion

Chapter Two – Fawn and Doe

Chapter Three – Farm and Incident

Chapter Four – Disposal and Return

Chapter Five – Robbie and Henrietta

Chapter Six – Banquet

Chapter Seven – Night Work

Part Two – Savages

Chapter Eight – Treehouse

Chapter Nine – We Have a Visitor

Chapter Ten – Morgan

Chapter Eleven – Knock Knock

Chapter Twelve – In Ruins

Chapter Thirteen – Outpost

Chapter Fourteen – Rest

Part Three - Gone

Chapter Fifteen – On Foot

Chapter Sixteen – Last Man Standing

Chapter Seventeen – Lock and Key

Chapter Eighteen - Before

Chapter Nineteen - Massacre

Chapter Twenty – Reunion

Chapter Twenty One – One Month Later

The Survivors of Bastion

Fall of Earth Book One

Prologue

When I was a kid, before everything happened, I used to be pretty afraid of the dark. Well, nobody’s ever really afraid of the dark – they’re afraid of what’s in the dark, the unknown, the things that you can’t see. I didn’t know what was lurking there, and in my mind I used to make up all types of stories and ideas about what might be hiding there, in the places that I couldn’t see.

              The worst were the ghosts. They were spectres from the past, these old images of people long-dead but with unfinished business, and they would be waiting for me, ready to take me with them, back to the otherworldly place where they resided.

              One time I told my Dad about it before bed. I can still remember now what he said. Without looking up from his newspaper – because he was like that, nonchalant but caring – he said;

              ‘Trust me, Tommy. It ain’t those that are dead you wanna be worrying about. It’s them that are alive.’

              Well, not long after that those words became the most important I had ever heard in my life. They were for the longest time.

              Until that day, that is.

              That day so many years later, when everything changed.

I don’t remember a whole lot about how everything originally went down, back when I was a little kid, but I’ll do my best to pick out the important bits. Some things in my mind are vivid – they’re sharp, clearer than anything I see these days, even now in my twenties. Other things, the things I want to remember but can’t, have had the empty bits filled in. Sometimes I wonder which parts my head filled in on it’s own and made up, so I can’t promise that all of this is accurate. Anyway.

              In the weeks leading up to the outbreak, there were scattered reports on the TV about this virus that had broken out in one of the Northern African countries. I couldn’t tell you which one, exactly, even after having been told the stories by those older than me in Bastion. Every one of them seems to remember a different country in equal stead – Mali, Chad, Algeria… At the time every news outlet seemed to be repeating every one of the country’s names.

              The older one’s in particular have told me that they originally laughed about it all. They said every few years another one of these stories would hit the news, and the media would keep repeating four-figure numbers about how many were dead, as if the apocalypse was nigh.

              I didn’t really find people dying to be all  that funny.

              When it reached six figures and the CDC declared an international emergency, that was when they knew that this was for real.

              Nobody really cares about the troubles of others, even the troubles of other countries, until that trouble reaches your front doorstep. My family was no different. We kept our heads down and went about our ways and our business right up until the schools were shut indefinitely. When me and Robbie got in the car we were actually pretty excited. School’s cancelled, right? We might have stayed that way, too, until we saw the look on my mother’s face. Kids tend to base their reactions on however their parents are acting, or the presiding adult.

              My mother looked fucking terrified.

              On the way home sirens sounded, and a few cars drove past us much faster than they should have been going. We went into the basement, which was kept semi-tidy, and waited there for a little while before we heard the door open. My mother told us to stay where we were, Robbie and I, while she went upstairs. He was only three so he didn’t know any better, but I was seven and I knew something was up.

              I crept up the stairs, wincing every time the wood creaked beneath my feet, and about halfway to the top I heard my Dad’s voice. He was speaking really quickly.

              ‘Henrietta, listen to me-’

              The door was a little open, and when I glanced through I saw the figure of my father. It’s an image that has stayed vivid in my mind, and as long as I live I think it’s the one that I’ll remember him by.

              His dark hair was matted to the side with sweat, and his eyes looked at my mother with such intense ferocity the likes of which I had never seen him conjure up. He was dressed in his black shoes and trousers – his work gear – and his white shirt, which was smeared with messy red stains.

              ‘What’s all this blood? Why are your knuckles so bruised?’

              ‘Listen to me-’

              I looked down at his hands, still clenched into fists, and saw that they were indeed discoloured and scuffed – one of his clenched hands wasn’t empty, though.

              He was holding a shopping basket in his hand, the kind you get from a store but you’re supposed to leave at the checkout when you pay. It was strange seeing this thing in our home, outside of it’s natural environment. It was filled to the brim with cans and tinned goods.

              ‘-we have to bar the door and get the kids into the basement… Where are Tom and Robbie?’

              ‘They’re already down there, Jack.’

              ‘Okay…’ He took a deep breath to try and calm himself, before looking out of the kitchen window to the street. ‘Go upstairs and get my gun, and all of the shells. I’ll go and grab the rest of the cans from the kitchen… And a knife… And the axe from the shed…’

              ‘An axe? What are you talking about? What’s going on out there?’

              ‘Just do what I say, Henrietta!’

              My mother was becoming teary eyed, but when my Dad shouted like that for some reason it made her stop and get some control over herself.

              I’ve never asked her why that change occurred in her. She doesn’t even know that I saw all of this, even now. Right then, though, she took a big breath and nodded at him, and they both took off in their respective directions, carrying out their jobs.

              I hurried back downstairs to look after Robbie, and a little while later they both followed. My Dad kept dashing back upstairs for various things; the TV, photo albums, bottles and glasses and containers of water that he stockpiled in the corner of the room.

              There was loads of it, until finally he sealed the basement door shut, and things went quiet.

              The first night was the worst. Looking back I knew that they were both trying to do what they could to look after us, to keep us calm and assure us that everything was all right. There were shouts and screams from above, some of them right on our street.

              Gunshots. Loud crashes of bricks being broken and that horrendous sound of metal being bent out of shape. Far away, an explosion sounding that we felt the vibrations of through the ceiling.

              My mother cried. My father cried. All of us cried.

              Little did I know that we were biding our time by my parents’ virtue, clinging to that one primal instinct that will forever remain with us no matter how far civilisation might have pushed at one point; survive. Everything else came second.

              But how do you survive against an enemy that you cannot see? It is one that creeps up on the unsuspecting and the most suspicious, that can strike you at any time with complete shamelessness.

              My Dad knew that all too well, so when he started to show the symptoms he said that he loved us and he was just going upstairs for a little while to see how things were.

              He took his gun, but we didn’t hear a shot, because he never fired one. He probably figured that my mother might need it at some point, because one extra bullet could make all the difference.

              My Dad stayed strong until the end, letting the virus take him and giving up the right to take his life by his own hand, so that we might be spared.

              A day later my mother went upstairs empty-handed and came back with the gun, and took the position of protector.

              She couldn’t protect us from the virus, though. It was something that we all waited for, my mother knowingly and Robbie and I having some feeling about.

              But it never came. We waited and waited, but we never got sick.

              After a few weeks, the noises upstairs stopped altogether. The electricity and the water had stopped days before, but now we were greeted with a new friend – silence.

              My mother finally went upstairs, the gun held steady in her hands as she opened the basement door. I saw daylight for the first time in weeks and, checking on Robbie who was sleeping soundly, I made my way back to the surface.