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  AMERICA FALLS

  Episode1

  HELL WEEK

  Scott Medbury

  Copyright © this edition 2018 Scott Medbury

  Formerly published as Volume 1 of After Days Series.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  All characters and events depicted in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Authors note:

  This book was previously published as part one of the After Days series and is an author’s cut/ rebrand. Why rebrand? Firstly, because I always envisaged the series as episodic but was originally talked out of publishing the first book as two volumes (as I had planned).

  Secondly, After Days was my first full-length novel and it always felt a little rough around the edges. I’ve learned a lot on my writing journey and when I started my rewrite, I decided to do things over completely, the way I had originally intended.

  The original trilogy has been split into the first four episodes of America Falls with episode 5 landing mid-year.

  For new readers, I hope you enjoy America Falls.

  Scott Medbury

  28th of February 2018

  Contents

  Part One: Hell Breaks Loose

  Part Two: We Hit the Road

  Part Three: Encounters

  Part Four: Death Comes Calling

  Part One: Hell Breaks Loose

  1

  I don’t think about death anymore, it takes too much energy, and God knows I need every bit of that. My name is Isaac Race. Both of my parents are dead and so is my sister, Rebecca. They were dead even before the attack. In fact, everyone I ever loved or cared about before is gone now. I can’t complain though; the others have lost everybody too. All except the twins, Ben and Brooke… they have each other at least.

  I guess I need to start at the beginning. Before the shit hit the fan, as my last foster father used to say. Yes, I said my last foster father. I had two after my parents died. That’s where I’ll begin my story, just before the Pyongyang flu killed all the grown-ups… well, nearly all of them.

  Mom, Dad, and Rebecca were killed in a house fire just before I turned 14. I wasn’t at home that Saturday night; I’d stayed over at my best friend Tommy’s house. The cops and social workers all told me how lucky I was. I didn’t feel lucky. For a long time, I kind of wished I’d been home. Maybe I could have saved them... or, if not, at least I would have died too. Surely that would have been better than the awful, empty feeling that is only now starting to fade.

  If I’d been with them, we would have gone to Heaven together.

  Well, that’s what I thought back then, when it first happened. I know there isn’t a Heaven now. There can’t be a Heaven without a God and I know there can’t be a God, because no god would have let them do what they’ve done to us, would he?

  For years America had been worried about North Korea getting nukes. Well, it was confirmed during Trump’s presidency and things had gotten really tense. Missile tests, insults and threats only ramped up the pressure. Kim Jong Un had eventually moderated his tone, and there had been meetings and diplomacy, but things always seemed to be close to boiling point, even into the next presidency.

  Throw in Putin’s Russia making moves in Europe, and the threats to the USA seemed clear.

  Boy, had they been wrong. While the Pentagon’s attention was effectively diverted, the enemy they’d really needed to be concerned with, was making plans and working on their strategies for expansion. It had suited them perfectly for North Korea and Russia to keep stirring the pot, keeping all the attention off them.

  None of it really matters now I guess. What happened, happened, and we’re the ones left to deal with the consequences, and the consequence is usually death.

  Just look at Sarah. She was the first one that Luke and I found. She was a good kid, and only just beginning to come out of the shell she’d retreated into after ‘Hell Week.’ Dogs got her. A pack had been stalking us for a few miles, they were hungry and mean. I’ll never forget her screams. We shot three of them but not before they’d nearly torn her arm clean off…

  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

  My world changed two years before everyone else’s did too. Dad didn’t arrive to pick me up from Tommy’s at 10am, the arranged time, on the Sunday morning. I called home at 1030 to see where he was, but all I got was the shrill beep, beep, beep of a busy signal. Mr. Benson asked me what my dad’s cellphone number was, but I didn’t know it.

  “I’m sure he won’t be much longer,” he said, almost managing to mask his annoyance.

  Tommy and I went back to his room to play X-Box while we waited. When two hours passed with no word, the Bensons gave me some lunch.

  “Tommy and I will drop you home after we eat.”

  I know it sounds weird, but I kind of knew that something wasn’t right. I’d had a strange feeling all that morning, a sense that something bad was going to happen. I didn’t know it then, but it had already happened. When Mr. Benson turned onto our street, I knew before I saw them that there would be fire trucks. I don’t know how, but I did.

  Sure enough, there they were, impossibly red on that bright, sunny, horrible afternoon.

  My house was a blackened pile of rubble; the remains of a rotten tooth in the perfect smile of big, neat houses that lined our cul-de-sac.

  “Fuck,” whispered my friend’s dad.

  That word coming from the mouth of the conservative Mr. Benson might normally have elicited harsh sniggers from Tommy and me. Not that day. I think I was already in shock, and even Tommy had been stunned into an unusual silence.

  Mr. Benson was saying something when we pulled up. I didn’t hear what; the rushing sound in my head drowned everything out. I didn’t want to open the door. It felt like when I did, I would be opening a door into another existence.

  “Isaac, stay there. I’ll talk to the police officer.” Mr. Benson’s words finally cut through the fog in my head.

  “It’s okay,” I said, and pushing past the dread, I opened the door.

  Noise assaulted my senses. People yelling, water from firehoses sizzling on smoldering timber, someone crying.

  By the mailbox, the one surviving man-made construction on our lot, our beer-bellied neighbor, Bob Johnson, was talking to a police officer. His hair was wild and his face smudged with soot.

  “Isaac!” he yelled and rushed over. I took a step back, but he caught me and pulled me into a tight hug. “Thank God you’re okay, Isaac!”

  He began to sob, his big gut moving up and down against me as his tears wet my cheek. We stood that way for a long time; I didn’t know what to say or how to escape his hug. Every time he tried to say something, he broke into sobs again.

  Finally, I heard a man’s voice over his shoulder.

  “Mr. Johnson... please, I’ll talk to the boy.”

  I stumbled a little as the big man let me go. The officer put a steadying hand on my shoulder and guided me to the fence that separated our two properties. That day is still a blur, but I remember looking back at the smoking mess that had been my home before the officer turned me back toward the street. That was worse.

  Tommy stood there with his dad’s arm around his shoulder, identical looks of pity on their faces and for the first time it hit me that I would never feel my dad’s arm around me again. I started to weep as the officer spoke to me.

  “I’m so sorry, son. I wan
t you to know that your family wouldn’t have felt a thing. It looks like the fire started in the kitchen and they would have been sound asleep. The smoke going through the house meant they didn’t wake up or feel pain.” He paused, as if unsure how to go on. “Do you have family we can call and get you looked after? Grandparents? Aunts or uncles? Anyone close by?”

  I tried to man up, ashamed of my tears. Funny what things seem important to a thirteen-year-old. I shook my head.

  “There’s no one,” I sniveled. “All of my grandparents are dead, and I don’t have uncles or aunts.”

  “It’s okay, son, we’ll have someone take care of you. Here, come and sit in the patrol car while I make some calls.”

  The cop turned and headed off to his cruiser. I glanced at the crowd of people that watched from across the street and saw my dad looking right across at me. It was only a second before I realized it wasn’t him, just a guy with a beard and similar colored hair. I felt a fresh stab of loss.

  That would happen a lot over the next few months. I would be doing something mundane, something where my mind was on auto-pilot, and I would think I saw one of them, Dad or Mom, or Rebecca. At a bus stop. In a supermarket. In a queue at Starbucks. It was a cruel trick of the mind that allowed the reality of my loss to sock me in the guts over and over again.

  The cop stopped when he realized I wasn’t following and reached for my hand. I absently shook him off and trailed him to his cruiser. He opened the door to the front passenger seat and I climbed in.

  I looked around, my boy’s curiosity at being in a police car surfacing through the well of grief for a just a moment. I managed to stop crying and wiped my eyes as I listened to the cop make a call back to base. I knew it was about me, but didn’t really absorb what was being said.

  As he signed off, Tommy’s dad approached to the driver’s door. He whispered a few words in the officer’s ear before passing him a card. The officer nodded and Mr. Benson came around to my side, his face serious. He put a comforting hand on my shoulder.

  “Isaac, Tommy and I have to go. I’ve given the officer my details and told him they can call me anytime and so can you. Take it easy, son. I know it doesn’t seem like it now, but everything will be... better in a few weeks.” He looked around. “Tommy, come say bye to Isaac.”

  Tommy looked reluctant as he shuffled forward and offered me his hand. That moment summed up the weirdness of the whole day. We never shook hands; it was always high-fives and laying skin. Still seated, I took his clammy hand awkwardly and shook it.

  “See ya, Isaac,” my friend mumbled with his eyes down before stepping away.

  His dad looked at me one last time, pity in his eyes, before putting his arm around Tommy’s shoulders and leading him away. I started to cry again, the familiar faces of my friend and his dad were gone and I was left with strangers. Most of them would have pity in their eyes too, but it was a kind of worn, business-like pity. I might have been the world’s newest orphan, but for them, just the latest in a long line.

  I never saw Tommy again.

  I won’t bore you with what happened that afternoon or for the next few weeks, except to say that a social worker got there about an hour after the cop had made his call. Margaret (I don’t remember her last name) was about my Mom’s age, but with the horned rimmed glasses and dowdy clothes she wore, she looked much older.

  She was kind and somehow made me feel better as she drove me to the halfway house. She told me I would stay there until I was placed in a suitable foster home. I’m not going to write about my family’s funeral, which happened a week and a half later. It’s enough to say that it was the worst day of my life... my old life, anyway.

  I was at the halfway house for three weeks before Margaret visited to tell me that a suitable home had been found. I don’t remember much of my time there, just the relief of leaving.

  I suppose I should have been nervous about meeting new ‘parents’ but to be honest, I was still kind of numb.

  The Pratchetts lived about 30 miles away in a neat brick bungalow. When we were introduced, Mr. and Mrs. Pratchett insisted I call them Randy and Jenny, but as her husband saw Margaret out to her car, Mrs. Pratchett put her arm around me.

  “You can call me Mom if you want too,” she whispered.

  It was insulting and insensitive, even if she was trying to be kind, but I didn’t even get angry. At that time, not much seemed to get through.

  Randy and Jenny were in their early 30s and didn’t have any kids of their own. At first, they seemed okay. They had a nice big house and put me in a huge bedroom with its own flat screen TV, the latest PlayStation, and a computer. Jenny had shown me the room with a flourish, but, with my loss still raw, I wasn’t able to do more than say thanks in a flat tone.

  I know I was still grieving for my family at that stage, but, from the start, there was something I didn’t like about Randy. He seemed too good and wholesome to be true, almost as if he was playing a role in a family movie. Still, it was hard to put my finger exactly on what it was.

  One night, about a week after I moved in, he confirmed the bad vibe. I could tell instantly something was not right when I sat down at the table for our evening meal. He stumbled in from the living room. Jenny was unusually quiet and barely looked up from her plate as we began eating. No one had uttered a word when, after a few mouthfuls, Randy placed his fork neatly on the plate and without warning reached over the table and slapped Jenny across the face. Jenny began screaming. No words, just screaming.

  I was shocked by the suddenness... the quick violence of it. I sat with my mouth open, my mouthful of mashed potato in danger of spilling out. Then he stood and slapped her again, harder this time, across the other cheek with the back of his hand.

  Jenny stopped screaming. She held her face in her hands and began sobbing quietly. I was stunned. I had only ever seen behavior like that on TV. My Mom and Dad had arguments of course, but he had never raised a hand to her.

  Randy noticed me staring at him open-mouthed.

  “What are you looking at, you little shit?” He yelled at me, flecks of spit flying off his lips.

  He glared at me, but I wasn’t scared. I think something was (and still is) broken inside me. I stared right back at him, not dropping my gaze from his bloodshot eyes and finished chewing my mashed potato. I guess it freaked him out. Eventually he broke eye contact and called me a foul name under his breath before standing up and kicking over his chair.

  I think that was the first time I realized that bullies, no matter how old they are, thrive on fear and if you don’t show it, and then have the audacity to stare them down, they back right off... most of the time anyway.

  He stalked across to the kitchen counter and snatched up his keys before storming through the door into the hallway. I heard the front door slam a few seconds later, then the sound of his car starting. I put my hand on Jenny’s arm.

  “It’s okay, he’s gone. Are you alright?”

  My heart went out to her (maybe I wasn’t totally numb). Livid marks marred her pale cheeks and her eyes were filled with pain. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t just physical pain. She smiled bravely and grasped my hand.

  “Look at you, you’re twice the man he is and you’re only 13. I’m so sorry you had to see that.”

  “It’s okay ...”

  We ate the rest of our dinner in silence.

  It was back to the halfway house for me the next day. Jenny had called the social worker first thing the next morning.

  “Sorry Isaac. I guess I thought having a kid in the house would change him.”

  I was worried for her but she assured me she would be okay, she was packing her things and leaving Randy as soon as I had gone. She hugged me when I left and I hugged her back just as hard.

  “Take care Mrs. Pratchett… Jenny. Thanks for trying.”

  Margaret, my social worker, was apologetic in the car.

  “I’m sorry, Isaac, sometimes, even with all the background checks and interviews we d
o, the bad ones slip through the cracks.”

  Nine days later, she took me to meet the Fosters. I didn’t have much of a sense of humor at that point or I might have found that funny. Fostered by the Fosters. Unlike the Pratchetts, I liked them both straight away.

  They were older than Randy and Jenny and had been fostering kids for a long time. Their last foster son had just turned 19 and left for college a month before. They had an empty house and were ready to take on a new kid that needed a break. That kid happened to be me.

  I have to admit that as time went by, my numbness turned to resentment, resentment at the world for taking my parents away. It shames me now, but some of that angst was taken out on the Fosters.

  I’d act out and get into trouble at home and at school. To their credit, they always accepted the place I was in and worked hard to make sure I knew that they’d be there for me. Slowly I started to come around and, by the end (literally the end), we were getting along really well, so much so that I was almost beginning to think that I had a found a new place to belong.

  Alan Foster was a retired postal worker, and despite any rumors or jokes that you may have heard about postal workers and their anger issues, let me tell you, Alan was one of the most mild and patient men that I’ve ever met.

  He was silver-haired and soft spoken, and what I remember best about him was his quiet strength. Eleanor had been the stay-at-home mom for those before me and had a patience and calmness that complemented Alan. Sometimes I wonder if it hurt her, how few of us ever actually called her by that title: ‘mom’. I know I never did, not when she could hear me, at least.

  I spent over a year and a half with the Fosters in a town called Fort Carter. I started at Fort Carter Junior High while I was still dealing with the death of my parents and the hole that their loss had created inside of me. I had few friends at school.

  I pretty much kept to myself in the lunchroom and during breaks, and rarely spoke up in class unless I was called upon. The other kids thought I was weird and, to tell you the truth, I think most of the teachers did too. I ended up spending a lot of time in the school counselor’s office. Mr. Jennings tried to break into my shell and I resisted with all of my might. I had to admire his tenacity though; I think he wanted to help me just as much as the Fosters did.