After Days Read online

  After Days

  By Salina Anderson

  Copyright Pending © 2016 After Days by Salina Anderson

  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.

  To my wonderful, loving husband; thank you for taking care of me through the dark years of my illness which was when a dream spawned into this book. Thank you for being excited with my creation and for the support and input you provided over the many years that it took me to complete this. Your ideas and imagination helped me to add many more chapters, characters and substance to this book.

  Thank you for you!

  To my supportive and solid father; thank you for being only the second person I allowed to read my book before publishing. Thank you for your glowing words about my writing. Thank you for wishing I had written more and that the story hadn’t ended. Your enthusiasm has pushed me to already start the second book in this series. Thank you for always being there for me and showing me the love of a father that I wish everyone had the chance to experience.

  As much as I don’t want to thank my years of illness, I really do have to since that is the time that I had the most memorable dreams and this story was born. The emotions and experiences of that dream stick with me to this day.

  And to the individuals in my life past and present that were a part in this dream, you earned your character!

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1 - We thought it was just the flu – Present Day

  Chapter 2 – It’s so quiet out here – Present Day

  Chapter 3 – Time to blow this popsicle stand! – Present Day

  Chapter 4 – Mountains! – Present Day

  Chapter 5 – The pain can finally end - A little more than three years ago

  Chapter 6 – We can build our own eden! – Present Day

  Chapter 7 – The Mountain Life – Present Day

  Chapter 8 – The first facility was a wasteland – Present Day

  Chapter 9 – A baby and mountains just don’t mix – Present Day

  Chapter 10 – Cross country living – Present Day

  Chapter 11 – We never truly appreciated the gift of a warm shower – Present Day

  Chapter 12 – Someone’s been watching you – Present Day

  Chapter 13 – Babies don’t wait for a snowstorm to end – Present Day

  Chapter 14 – And baby makes….5? – Present Day

  Chapter 15 - Is this purgatory? – More than three years ago

  Chapter 16 – Our strange little family – Present Day

  Chapter 17 – Is there anyone out there? – More than three years ago

  Chapter 18 – It’s the dysfunctional house on the prairie – Present Day

  Chapter 19 – Rebuilding – More than Three years ago

  Chapter 20 – What are you not telling me? – Present Day

  Chapter 21 – What I can’t tell you – Two years ago

  Chapter 22 – Silence is deafening – Present Day

  Chapter 23 – Commence Mission Freak Cleansing – Present Day

  Chapter 24 – Love never left – Present Day

  Chapter 25 – Identify the new threat

  Chapter 26 – Summer bliss in the mountains – Present

  Chapter 27 – Project Location – SUCCESS! - present

  Chapter 28 –A reunion of sorts - present

  Chapter 1 - We thought it was just the flu – Present Day

  The glass felt cool against her forehead as Maya looked out at the changing leaves. Fierce reds, burnt oranges and golden yellows stretched out as far as she could see and she guessed that they were well into the month of October.

  Another month had slipped by trapped inside this glass cage staring outwards. Several other facilities existed just like this one but a couple of them were underground bunkers with no natural sunlight or view of the changing world outside. Did anyone else survive as long as her group had? Especially those stuck underground, how could they possibly have managed to stay sane all of this time with no natural light or knowledge on whether the world outside still existed?

  She had been inside this big glass building for over 3 years now by her best guess. It used to house a pharmaceutical company from as far as she could tell and the equipment and supplies here were very sophisticated and had proved helpful in their years of survival here.

  Most of the walls were glass, allowing a person to be able to see into several other rooms as well as the surrounding landscape outside. At one time the grounds of the facility would have been incredibly beautiful. Bushes, flowers and trees surrounded the building and no visible structures or roads other than the large asphalt driveway could be seen from inside the building.

  The building had 4 levels. On the 3rd level, there was a section where the walls were a glazed glass where you were unable to see exactly what was going on in the room, just enough to be able to tell if someone was in the room. Those rooms were what they were using as their housing. The first and second floor had once been the offices and laboratories for the pharmaceutical company and they had taken those over as their own laboratories and work space. Experiments and tests were run day and night in search of a cure for the epidemic that had nearly wiped out all existence on planet earth.

  The fourth level was used primarily for growing and storing food and the gardens that they had nurtured for all this time had finally started to produce enough food to feed more people than what currently lived in the building. Some people had taken this as a sign that it was okay to start reproducing again and a few of the women had become pregnant with dire consequences. Only one woman had made it full term with her pregnancy before birthing a very sickly baby that didn't survive for more than an hour. The rest of the women’s pregnancies had ended in miscarriages at various times throughout the pregnancies.

  The belief was that eventually some of the babies would be conceived that were immune to the virus as some of their parents were and would survive the full term of the pregnancy and the birth. But not everyone in this compound was immune to the virus and only a few people here knew who truly had a chance of living again in the outside world. Maya was one of those people.

  Maya was a scientist studying genetics before the world ended. Her skills had served them all well here along with the generous assortment of laboratory equipment. But she still had not been able to find a cure, she had only discovered a way of testing to see who was immune and who wasn't.

  At 34, this was not how she had imagined her life would have turned out. Three years ago she had been working for a prestigious lab and making headway into the genetic research of creating embryos with certain criteria chosen by their parents. They had already been able to alter genetics to a point where a new breed of children had started to be born that were superior in every way to other children. It was an exciting breakthrough but the bigger breakthrough was the one she had been researching for making future generations immune to all disease and viruses. She had been so close, she knew it. But then people began getting sick at a rapid pace and when the deaths began, mayhem and panic slowly erupted across the country.

  She had been so involved in her research that the sickness was all around her by the time she noticed what was happening. Other countries also reported the same sickness and deaths and all governments had quickly begun a program of seeking out proper facilities to house those that had not yet gotten sick until the virus could be contained and cleansed.

  She had no idea what state she was in currently but the building she had been placed in was completely self-sufficient. An array of solar panels and wind turbines provided all
of the energy they needed and the building possessed an air and water filtration system that ensured no contaminates would make it inside. She knew that some of the other facilities had been bunkers for the armed forces of the United States and before all communication had been lost between the facilities, one of the bunkers had the water filtration system break down resulting in most of the people within the compound contracting the virus and ultimately dying.

  When the sickness first began, people would still go to work and school and continue their daily lives, infecting others. She encountered these people several times at the grocery store, gym and even at work. They would be coughing and wheezing, flushed with fever, but still determined to go about their normal routines as long as they could still stand. Then about one week into the sickness, the person would begin to pale. Their hair would begin to turn white, skin would become nearly translucent. And at the very end, before their heart stopped and they left this world, their eyes would turn completely white.

  She watched one of her co-workers die that way before she finally realized how serious the epidemic was. One minute she was talking to her about some lab results and the next minute the woman’s eyes became a milky white and she fell right over, hitting the ground with a loud thud.

  Maya took the next day off and watched in horror as the news station all portrayed the death and destruction that was occurring all over the world. People that were already sick were in a mass panic and had taken to committing mass homicides, suicide bombings, some even flying their personal planes into buildings or driving their vehicles into groups of people. Those that seemed to be unaffected by the virus were burglarizing shops and individuals, banks and businesses alike in an attempt to gain as much wealth as they could while others perished. Some people quietly packed their vehicles and left the cities, heading out in search of a private residence where they could hide out until the mayhem ended.

  She was in the middle of packing to leave when the armed forces invaded the city. She had been so close to leaving. If only she hadn't been so intent on finding a few more supplies before leaving the city, she would instead be out in the mountains living in her grandma’s cabin by the stream.

  Several armed men swarmed the grocery store while she was running through the aisles throwing as much as she could find into a duffel bag. Her well-loaded vehicle waited right outside, filled with gasoline and every other conceivable thing she could think of that she would need. Two of the men grabbed her and dragged her kicking and screaming out the door and into a waiting helicopter.

  As they flew away from the city, an enormous explosion ripped across the sky and she watched in horror as buildings and people and vehicles were engulfed in flames and debris. To this day she believed the explosion was from bombs set off by the armed forces as they left the city in an attempt to kill any person still alive that could possibly have the virus and continue to spread it.

  Maya spent the next several days shuttled from helicopters, planes and facilities before her fate was decided. The groups put into each facility were carefully chosen based on their backgrounds and her group was given the directive to search for a cure.

  Soon after that, all forms of communication were lost and the 122 people in her facility were left to wonder if anyone else was still alive anywhere in the world. Soon their numbers dwindled down to 104 as those that couldn't handle the starvation diet perished. Their facility had been stocked with military style clothing and boots, some MREs and seeds for various vegetables and fruits. The problem was finding the right soil mixture, amount of moisture, and correct temperature for everything to grow properly. A few people became sick after being locked into the facility and they were forced to barricade them into one room, providing them with what little nourishment they could until the individuals perished. The first year here had been brutal and heart-breaking.

  Then she became friends with Derek. He was a natural at leading people and putting them at ease and he quickly became the person that the rest of them looked up to for guidance. He was only a few years older than her and very handsome with dark hair and eyes, a lean build and a quick and intelligent mind. They soon became inseparable and others began looking to them for leadership.

  Maya and Derek worked together to bring some order to their compound and built a community with people being placed at tasks that they were good at. Maya was of course in the laboratory constantly searching for an answer while others were sent to build the gardens, wash the clothing, cook the food and clean the facilities. She had found several others that proved useful in the laboratory and had her own team of workers to assist with the day and night search for a cure.

  Several months ago when they had discovered a way to test everyone for immunity to the virus, they did the testing under the rouse that they needed to take blood to have more samples for their work of finding a cure. They had then created a list of those that wouldn't make it past the walls of the building and a plan had begun to leave the building and start rebuilding their community outside.

  Since that time of discovering who would survive and who wouldn't, Derek had begun reorganizing people within the community. It had been a great mystery to Maya at first what his motives were but she quickly began to realize that those he knew wouldn't survive had been sent to work on less important tasks. When she confronted him about what he was doing, he confided in her that he and several others had decided that they couldn't take the people with them that wouldn't survive anyways. They would only become a burden to everyone else when they became sick and needed care. There was also the issue of dealing with those that would survive when others they had grown to love became sick and perished. Derek felt it was best that they release the virus in a highly toxic form into the air in the compound and those that were susceptible would die quickly. He had been working in secret with a few of her lab assistants to create the highly toxic form and the hypothesis was that it was strong enough to kill those not immune within minutes. Then they would deal with the emotional fallout before putting the final steps in motion to leave the compound and rebuild elsewhere.

  Maya couldn't believe how insensitive and cruel Derek’s plan was. They would all have to watch those that they had grown to care about and love die in a quick and painful manner. She fought with him viciously over his plan but the years of being a leader had begun to go to his head and his superiority complex had become nearly overwhelming. She tried pleading towards the end but her words fell on deaf ears.

  Now today was the day that he had planned to expose everyone to the virus and all she could do was lean against the glass, looking at the beauty outside knowing that soon she would never see any of these people again.

  When Derek initially told her of his plan, she began making preparations of her own. She had very little time to herself that Derek didn't supervise so each free moment she had was spent searching the building for a way out that wouldn't be noticed. A couple of weeks ago she had found it in a basement room that housed all of the gardening tools that they didn’t use. She had never thought twice about the oddity of having garden tools in a basement until she happened upon the room again. A thorough search of the room revealed a hidden door behind a shelf attached to rollers that led to an underground tunnel leading upward. On further inspections, she found a hatch at the end of the tunnel that led outside to where she guessed would have been the rear of the building. She hadn't opened the hatch then in fear of allowing the virus inside and causing any more deaths. She knew that would be too suspicious if anyone died before Derek put his plan into motion.

  This morning she had hid a bag of the few belongings she had in a ceiling panel of the bathroom. Beyond that, her plan stopped. She had no idea what to expect when she got outside. No idea of how far away they were from any sort of civilization. All she knew was that she couldn't stay by Derek’s side any longer and witness the atrocities that he was about to commit.

  She watched a vibrant red leaf fall lazily from its branch as the alarms in the building be
gan to sound.

  Chapter 2 – It’s so quiet out here – Present Day

  Derek grabbed Mayas arm as she walked by him, forcing her to stop and turn towards him. “Barricade the door and don’t let anyone in unless it’s me, got it?”

  Maya yanked her arm from him and began walking towards the stairs up to the living quarters.

  Walking by the laboratories, she stopped short when she saw what was going on inside. Derek had barricaded a few of the lab techs inside, the few that had tested as not immune to the virus, and the virus had been released inside the room with them.

  She watched in horror as the virus took hold within a matter of minutes, their hair and skin turning shock white, and then their eyes right before they dropped to the floor. It all happened so quick that they didn’t even have a chance to react. But those that had seen them die did react. The screaming began and people started running towards their rooms in a desperate attempt to escape what they now believed to be an accident in the lab allowing the virus to escape containment.

  She felt a hand grab her arm and looked up to see Lisa holding on to her with a look of desperation and panic clear on her face. “Maya, hurry. It got loose. We need to get away from the labs!”

  Maya put her hand over Lisa’s and squeezed it. “You go ahead, I’ll be right behind you. I just want to make sure the doors are sealed so the virus can’t get any further.”

  Lisa nodded and proceeded to run towards the stairs. Maya followed her slowly until she got to the next floor and checked around before veering away from the living quarters and towards the bathrooms. She knew there was no containing the virus in the labs. Derek would be releasing it into the air vents next and everyone would be exposed no matter where they were at in the building. She knew that there was no chance of her getting sick but the urgency to get out of the building while the pandemonium was in full force motivated her.

  She climbed onto a sink in the bathroom and moved aside a ceiling panel, retrieving her bag hidden up above. Jumping down she caught herself in the mirror. Her green eyes were haunted, light, curly hair waved around her head in disarray, and her cheekbones so defined now that she was easily 30 lbs lighter than her lightest weight had ever been. The starvation diet they had endured in here had done her some good in the weight department and she had since gained enough back to reclaim some of her natural curviness. She quickly tied her hair back into a ponytail and ran out the door.