Endure: Post-Apocalyptic Dystopian Thriller - Book 2 (Caustic)

  Endure

  Caustic Series, Book Two

  Brian Spangler

  CONTENTS

  Subscribe to my Newsletter

  Also By

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Thank You

  About The Author

  BONUS - Deceit Chapter 1

  ENDURE

  Copyright © 2017 by Brian Spangler

  writtenbybrian.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.

  DEDICATION

  To my friends and family for their love, support, and patience.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  While working on this short story, I was aided by several individuals to whom I wish to offer my immense gratitude and appreciation. Thank you for reading many drafts of this story, and for offering critiques and encouragement. As always, your feedback has helped to shape the story.

  To David Gatewood, Don Shope, Kay Bratt, Lisa Akers and Krista Slavin for providing invaluable feedback, and helping me recognize the potential of the story.

  1

  He stared absently at the ocean. Breaking waves tumbled soundlessly and pushed white foam over blackened sands. He tried to imagine the vast sea just beyond the barricade of fog, and in his mind he briefly saw the still surface lapping at the air, birds diving, fish jumping. But like most of his memories, that one too had become distant and hard to reach.

  And though he could only see a mere sliver of the beach and beyond the machine, it was just enough to remind him that the world he had abandoned still existed. From inside the machine, on some days—those lucky few when everything lined up just right—he could sometimes glimpse the shine of a distant star. A black sky sprang from his memory, endlessly filled with small flickering eruptions of lights. And just as quick, the memory faded like the life he once knew.

  But maybe today?

  His eyes wandered upward, following the rolling wall of fog until the clouds broke into the twilight’s dusky afterglow. A wink of light shone just behind him, just out of reach. Straining to see more of the sky, the star blinked in and out, revealing another piece of it. But what he found wasn’t the star he was searching for. It wasn’t a star at all.

  They’re watching, he thought and then quickly emptied his mind, disconnecting it from the thousand years of his existence. He went to that place that was safe; quiet. It was the same place his nightmares crawled to in the moments before waking from a long sleep. But sometimes the days were his nightmares, confusing him with what was real and what was not. That happened more and more as time marched toward his world’s inevitable demise, and his annual expirations.

  Thirty days? But he had lost count by now. If only the star were out, I’d know how many days I had left this time.

  A mindless zombie. That’s what you've become, he told himself. No. That’s not fair… that’s not true. I am aware, he countered his thoughts.

  “I am aware,” he spoke out. His voice was soft, almost feeble. And the sound of it filled him with shame.

  From his white coveralls, he found the sharp metal wedge he’d tucked away earlier. The lights were busy, paying him no mind.

  One jab, he considered. Just one to know that this is real.

  He hesitated. I need to know. The blade’s warm edge slipped inside him. A small gush of relief spilled from his pursed lips.

  One more.

  The cutting continued, falling silent like the crashing waves.

  Enough? He questioned, struggling to measure the pain. After all, pain was the only connection to life he had anymore. But even that had begun to wane. He stopped when he felt the trickle of something warm running down his leg. And when he saw the patchy red streaks stretch the length of his coveralls, he couldn’t help but wonder how many times he had tested his reality? There were more stains, older and already drying stiff and becoming dark. I’ve been testing what’s real, he realized, feeling disoriented and confused.

  Turning back to the translucent panel, he imagined seeing Emily, his daughter, on the other side. She raised her hand and touched the machine, knocking for him to come out and play.

  “I’ll come out one day Emily,” he mumbled, swiping a glance over his shoulder toward the lights. Nothing—no response. “I swear it Emily. I will.”

  But the promise to his daughter had been carried shamelessly on the ripples of a long history—a history he had created centuries earlier. In his mind, she was a lie, banging on the machine, screaming for him to come outside.

  “Daddy… Daddy, why did you do this?” she yelled. But of course he heard none of it. Her voice was in his head, screaming at him, at the machine. Emily thrashed her arms around wildly as though having convulsions. She slowed, her eyes meeting his through errant patches of long red hair that stuck against her sweaty face. Tears spilled, heavy and thick as blood.

  Another jab, he insisted. Just one to see if this is real, too!

  Blood ran, and another gush of relief slipped from his mouth. But the sight of his daughter also left him frightened. Remorse came like the waves, filling him with sorrow, and the heavy regret crushed his heart and mind like a vise.

  At once, the lights on the walls flickered, blinking on and off, instructing the others that Phil Stark had stopped his work and needed a correction.

  “I’m working,” he screamed at them, waving his arms around his head. “I’m working! Can’t you see that?”

  The lights flashed a jumble of light sequences that Phil had grown to know and loathe. The nearest zombie body turned to him and was set into motion.

  “You don’t care, do you?” he cried out with resignation. Tears prickled his eyes, and spittle ran from his mouth.

  A jab. Solid. Stoic. Pouring.

  “You’ve never cared! Look at what I built for you! Just let me stay until she leaves!” But when he turned back to face the outside, his daughter was gone. He pressed his hand against the cool shell of the machine, wondering if she’d been there at all.

  She couldn’t have been here, he thought, realizing the lie was in his mind again—the lie was always in his mind. It’s impossible. She died hundreds of years ago.

  “One Jab!” he cried out with a raucous laugh and stabbed the metal wedge deep into his neck. Blood sprayed instantly, covering the only window to the world outside. He heard the rush of blood in his ears and felt his heart thrum inside his chest, fighting for the life that he did not deserve.

  I shouldn’t be here, anyway. None of us should.

  Another push and his neck opened up like a fountain. The welcome smell of blood came to him. Powerful and engrossing: the machine had no smell at all. He saw the others turning their heads, sniffing at the air, wondering about the strange coppery odor.

  “That’s called life,” he gargled. “Dumb fucks!”

  And soon, the taste of blood was on his tongue and filled his mouth. The end was coming. His smile stretched across his face
as he laid on the floor waiting. He stared up through the window, straining with the last of his strength until the star he had tried to find earlier came into view and winked at him.

  “There you are,” he said. “I know you.” But Phil also knew that the star might not be a star at all.

  “What does it matter, anyway,” he sputtered in drowning laughter. “They’re just going to bring me back.”

  2

  Only four words were scrawled on the otherwise-empty blackboard this morning: End of Gray Skies. Under the words, a seldom-seen thinning swirl of chalk dust clung to the blackboard’s surface, emphasizing what day it was. As Declan Chambers took to the seventh row to find his seat, he heard the first of many whispers. A buzz of excitement was beginning, and he felt an anxious tingle inside. As much as he tried to dismiss the day and push it away, for fear of disappointment, he couldn’t help but let himself feel some of what was spreading throughout the class.

  Looking from face to face, he scanned the classroom, and saw smiles adjoining cupped hands over attentive ears. Gleeful whispers grew into a fevered chatter of children’s voices—some young, some old. All were anticipating the announcement; even Ms. Gilly seemed to sit a little taller in her aging chair. Her hands were clasped together and resting on her desk, with fingers interlaced so tightly that her knuckles turned white. And unlike most days, her hair was fixed high in a bonnet of heavy dark curls, making her look younger than she was. While the classroom filled, hints of a smile crept up the corners of her round cheeks, and her face flushed as if she, too, held back her own elation.

  For some of the younger children in the class, this would be their first time hearing the announcement. For Declan, it would be his third time. But, at seventeen years of age, he didn’t remember the first End of Gray Skies announcement. He remembered the second one—as well as the disappointment that had followed. That somber moment of failure had crippled his Commune. The disappointment from the failed End of Gray Skies had no boundaries. He’d heard stories of other Communes and their descents into lowly times; he’d even heard about depression and mass suicide. Like the centuries-old fog hugging their world, those memories were dim, lacking detail. By today’s end though, surely new memories would erase what hadn’t happened five years earlier.

  Maybe… maybe this time, the End of Gray Skies will be the last announcement. Declan blinked, and enjoyed the wishful thought.

  Sounds of chairs being dragged from underneath their accompanying desks drowned the growing chatter. Clunky scrapes of metal against the wood floor followed as the class settled into their morning routine. Declan had spent ten years in the same room, and only now did he notice the wear of the chairs on the floorboards. This room was their only classroom for every grade, from six years of age to eighteen. For hundreds of years, generation after generation of students had sat in these chairs, had read from the same blackboard.

  Reaching back as far as the stretch of a child’s arm, the feet of the chair legs had carved thin paths into the wood floor. The planed tracks glinted soft reflections from the skylights above. Declan wondered who the children were who had walked these same floors, sat in these same chairs, and took notes from the same blackboard for generations before him.

  Could they have been the ones: the ones who had caused the accident? Were they responsible? He shrugged the thought away, dismissing what couldn’t be changed.

  With his own seat under him, he pulled from his desk the remains of his monthly parchment allowance. He brushed his hand over the wrinkles and played with the fraying, pulpy fabric at the corners. He pushed his thumb over the black smudges that had stained deep into the weave of threaded fibers, and he knew that a cleaning would be one of this evening’s chores. How many cleanings was that?

  From a shallow pocket in his coveralls, Declan revealed the black nub of his only writing stone. He paused; his guessing of cleanings stopped. Huffing out a sigh, he gazed around the room to see if anyone had noticed. He’d been writing again—more than usual—and now he had only enough writing stone to get through the day.

  I can’t ask for more, he thought, but then shook his head and considered borrowing, or maybe trading. But what do I have to trade?

  Declan felt the familiar touch of a hand on his back, and a petite ball of fingers appeared just below his elbow. It was Sammi Tate, and almost at once, his heart swelled. He couldn’t help himself. He leaned into her touch as she opened her other hand to reveal nearly half a piece of writing stone.

  “Here, take some of mine,” she whispered.

  “Thanks. I’ll be more careful—” he started to say, but was cut off by her hushed laugh.

  “No you won’t, but I don’t mind,” she finished, and lifted her open palm. Declan placed his hands around hers to take the writing stone. But rather than turn around, he held her hand. When Sammi closed her fingers on his and squeezed, his heart swelled a little more.

  They were both so young once: innocent and pure, unknowing of the world in which they lived. He still remembered the day that she had first walked into their classroom, clumsy and awkward, like one of the newborn goats from the farming floor. Back then, he supposed that they had both been like that. But in the ten years she’d sat behind him, time had transformed her into a young woman; and to Declan, she was perhaps the most beautiful person in this glum, gray world of theirs. He’d sometimes catch himself staring into her green eyes, stopping only when she’d spill out a nervous laugh, or stick out her tongue to tease him before turning away.

  Sammi Tate was different. Her skin was as white as the chalky writing on the blackboard, almost radiant. Next to the darker complexion of his own hands, her delicate fingers shined bright and beautiful. But it wasn’t just Sammi’s skin that captivated him: it was her hair, too: fire red, like a flame.

  It’s an anomaly, Ms. Gilly once told the class. She spat the words after the children had begun teasing Sammi. Sammi was just six or seven at that time, and the older children had pounced on her with their mockery and cruel words, leaving her to stand in front of the class, crying. Ms. Gilly was quick to scold the class, in an attempt to smother the heckling.

  In their Commune, and in all of the neighboring Communes, nobody had ever seen a person with fair skin or red hair. Virtually everyone shared the same brown hair, brown eyes, and dark skin.

  Amid Sammi’s sniffles, Ms. Gilly explained to the class that after the world had changed—after the accident—people had slowed down. Travel became impossible; people just stopped. Wherever your feet were standing was the land that you would call home forever. Over the years and decades to follow, people found one another and made new families. After dozens of generations, the color of their eyes, hair, and even skin began to take on the same look. But, every now and then, their ancient traits resurfaced.

  Sammi Sunshine, Declan heard in his head. It was the name the school kids used when they teased her. Images of that first day played in his head: Sammi, as a young girl, walking across the front of the class, a large round ball of curly red hair bouncing above her with each step. Her skin seemed to glow as she passed in front of the blackboard. The only thing familiar about her was the gray coveralls she wore—the same gray coveralls that every person in the Commune wore. They came from the repurposing ward in five different sizes, but all of them had the same cut, feel, and color. Yet Sammi’s coveralls were different: she’d taken a lock of her sunny red hair and had made a small bow out of it, pinning it to the front of her coveralls. It was color; and color was different. Declan loved that she had done that.

  As Sammi walked across the classroom toward Ms. Gilly’s desk that first day, the younger children and some of the older kids quieted until the room was nearly silent. The only sound heard was that of her padded coverall shoes skidding across the floorboards. Kids with their heads down on their desks quickly sprang up, curious about the sudden silence, their faces frozen into an expression of awe. When Sammi reached Ms. Gilly and handed her a transfer parchment, Ms. Gilly’s
stern expression broke. Her cheeks pushed up into a smile, and she lifted a hand to feel Sammi’s hair. Sammi hadn’t moved, nor backed away, as one might have expected her to. Instead, she returned a brilliant smile to Ms. Gilly. Declan loved that, too: he’d been so impressed that Sammi wasn’t shy, or nervous.

  “Aren’t you a ball of sunshine, Sammi?” Ms. Gilly said, and that’s when the first mention of Sammi Sunshine sounded from the back of the classroom. Then a second Sammi Sunshine stirred the air, turning both Sammi’s and Ms. Gilly’s smiles to shallow frowns. A moment later, more of the class erupted into chants of Sammi Sunshine, and an elbow nudged Declan’s side, inviting him to join in. He’d hesitated, especially when he’d seen Sammi’s trembling lips and chin. Soon after, he’d seen the first tears on her cheeks. But after another elbow nudged him, harder this time, he’d reluctantly started chanting too.

  Years later, Declan still felt a pang of guilt when recalling the hurt look in Sammi’s young eyes. It was a stupid name really, but through the years, it had stuck. Yelled from time to time, the name was always met with a quick-witted volley from Sammi, some of which Declan thought were quite excellent. She’d grown to become something beautiful in this gray world, and Declan was sometimes afraid for her. Different wasn’t always a good thing.

  Sammi pulled her hand free of his, jarring him from his old memories. The warm remains of her touch quickly went with her. Declan whispered a second thank-you in her direction. With more writing stone in hand, Declan would be able to write today. He could write the way he liked to: free of concerns and constraints. With a sullen feeling, he considered what he’d be doing later: cleaning the parchment; erasing all of the new words he’d formed into sentences that day.

  “Why bother writing at all?” he mumbled.