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  The Book of a Few

  The Book of a Few

  Midpoint

  The Book of a Few

  By Austen Rodgers

  Copyright © 2015 by Austen Rodgers

  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 noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher at the address below.

  Austen Rodgers

  [email protected]

  www.austenrodgerswriting.com

  Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data

  The Book of a Few / Austen Rodgers

  ISBN: 978-0-9861044-0-4 (paperback)

  ISBN: 978-0-9861044-1-1 (eBook)

  1. Science Fiction 2. Apocalyptic / Dystopian

  First Edition

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

  Acknowledgements

  Sharon Roberts – Beta Reader

  William Byrne – Beta Reader

  Martin Coffee – Editor

  Meg Lundberg – Proofreader

  Thank you for all your help.

  Dedicated to my Father.

  I use your name with joy.

  Pre-Notes

  The following passages have been pulled together from various ruins of the Black Era. Known as a time of needless social chaos, the Black Era is one of humanity’s darkest and most amoral times. Personal accounts have been ordered, pieced together, transcribed, and recorded in chronological order in this book.

  Many scholars, scientists, and archeologists feel as though the Black Era was an avoidable catastrophe. It was through mankind’s own selfish and hostile nature that the Black Era came to be. Many perished as a result of another man’s actions, both directly and indirectly.

  These logs are the most complete recordings from the Black Era. They have the fewest missing pages and comprise the longest single span of time. Chester Keeton wrote over three hundred pages worth of logs across two notebooks and an audio recorder. While other accounts are also used, the majority of logs are written by Chester on a day-to-day basis.

  The Silence

  A Prologue

  I never thought of myself as a killer. Steady and solid, never wavering too far from what I viewed as right. My tongue honest, and my heart compassionate for my family and friends. I’m proud of who I am, and have always thought that others looked up to me. Yet sometimes, I find myself questioning my own intentions. I feel equally as caring as I do destructive and selfish.

  Every once in a while, I remind myself that I am as crooked and hunchbacked as some of the worst people I’ve ever met. I’m subjected to gritty human nature just like everyone else, I guess. I think that my passion for aggressive metal music is a sign that I am angry and fed up, and I’ve been that way for a while.

  Life is something I barely had time to understand, or even start. I had a good girl and a job that fed me and left me with cash for toys. But I lost it all, mostly through series of bad decisions. Even with the world set against me, making it nearly impossible to survive, I look back and think to myself if only I hadn’t done that. But hey, I’m not the only one surrounded by death in a hell like this, so don’t think I’m special.

  It was July in the small town of Readlyn, Iowa. While this summer wasn’t nearly quite as hot and humid as the last, we still had some warm days. Everyone was out and about as usual, going through his or her daily routines, and bringing what food they could back to the dining room table. It was an economic slowdown, as usual, and just when we didn’t need it, the Silence struck.

  On a seemingly national scale, we lost everything—our phones, public radio, the Internet. We couldn’t pull cash from our banks or ATMs, and we couldn’t contact anyone outside of yelling distance. Immediately, some stores locked their doors, and schools canceled classes until further notice. Looking back, no one ever knew the true scale of the Silence. Most assumed it was at least national; others thought it was global.

  Mankind as a whole had become lost. For those two weeks, people here attempted to keep working, trying to keep to business as usual. But eventually, we couldn’t keep up the front that everything was okay. People who didn’t have any goods worth bartering with resorted to theft. And no matter what position you were in, you seemed to be able to get what you needed, at least for a while. A few stores were foolish enough to accept petty cash; they just kept selling themselves out and thought it was only temporary.

  “Come on, Chester. There’s no way ‘Merica’s gone down the chute. It’ll be all right,” they’d say.

  During the Silence, work for me was impossible. When you’re in warehousing and shipping, you usually have to know what the stores need in order to ship it. Not to mention that the stores need to be open. So all the lack of communication made me worthless. But luckily for the local area, the power was still running. I’ll be honest—for the first few days, I took advantage of being off work. While it wasn’t easy getting accustomed to the lack of Internet, I was doing a whole lot of nothing. I put the situation at hand on the backburner, hoping that it would blow over.

  I didn’t really think about the fact that this might be more along the lines of permanent until the third day. I had considered it a possibility, of course, but some part of me just wanted to deny everything going on outside my apartment walls. Then the fear kicked in. I started paying more attention to my surroundings. My family had already begun to run low on food, my neighbor nearly died in a shooting, and I had been sitting on my couch.

  Some people speculated the Silence was the result of a terrorist attack, or the attack of another nation, aimed at our infrastructure to divide and conquer the country. It made sense, but there was no way to confirm anything. It wasn’t until the 23rd of July when we finally got our answer. The dark truth swept across the nation from the east and the west: Death had come calling for the masses.

  Day One

  After waking up, the first thing I did was step outside and light a cigarette. I had half a pack left, and I’d been trying to make them last as long as possible. The only gas station in town had just closed its doors a few days ago, meaning that what I had was all I might ever have. I was smart enough to get as much gas as I could before the store closed, but $23.47 only gets you so much. Especially when the price rises a little every few hours as the uncertainty grows.

  Going back inside, I looked at my iPod, checking the time. The illuminated screen read nine a.m. and I figured I had better check in with my family. I searched the nearly empty cupboards for some food and stuffed a couple apples into my backpack. I took my 12-gauge Remington 870 with me, slung over my back, and my Sig on my waist. I had already planned on going out to the nearby woods in search of something to take home that day, and taking both firearms would allow me to harvest whatever game I came across. Before I left, I checked myself in the mirror out of habit. A couple spots of mud, heavy lines under my eyes, and precisely two gray hairs in my reddish beard. I looked like crap even to myself.

  I saw some of the townsfolk out and about. An older couple stood outside the closed-down post office talking with another more middle-aged man with sloppy black hair. He, too, had a gun slung over his back. I sighed to myself and thought of this small town as a prison. One gas station, one bar, Main Street only three blocks long—you get bored here rig
ht quick.

  I made my way over to my girlfriend’s home first. Living with her family, she was about as lost as I was.

  “I’m going to make a trip down to campus, okay?” Miranda said. She was about to start her third year at Hawkeye Community College.

  “I don’t know if the trip will be worth it, sweetie,” I said, staring into her beautiful green eyes.

  “Well, I need to try to find out about next semester’s classes. I can’t just stand around any longer. Besides, maybe someone there will know something about what’s going on.” Her head dropped.

  I sighed. “We’re all after answers, but I don’t know how making a trip to your school is going to bring anything to fruition.” I paused long enough for her to say something, and when she didn’t, I pulled the handgun from my waist.

  “Keep it in the glove box. I won’t have you being robbed, or worse. Bigger cities are probably horrible right now,” I said.

  She smiled and took the weapon from me. “Thanks,” she said gleefully and hugged me.

  Miranda nodded. We make such an odd couple, really. Outlandish, older names, brought together by friendship. Kids at heart, we are always making fun and picking at one another without either of us ever getting truly upset. It’s certainly a relationship I see lasting. Well, I did. That’s kind of up in the air right now. Anyways, I told her my plans for the day and saw her drive away from the house. Letting her go was either stupid, or just bad timing.

  My next stop, my mother’s home, was just down a few blocks. My siblings looked starved, and my mother depressed. I had been trying to help them out, but there’s only so much I could do. I’m not a hunter and I’m not a thief, but I’m also not heartless. It pained me to see the ones close to me suffering while I was unable to help enough.

  My mother, Renee, spoke to me of her hardships. But I shrugged them off, paying little mind, as she was not the only one struggling to get by. While I cared about the well-being of my mother and siblings, I knew that there was only so much that I could do. I didn’t even care to look into her plights. Maybe because they were hers, not mine. I can only describe my heart as a wall made of stone; I care and offer protection from the elements and wrongdoings, yet I’m cold and sometimes unforgiving.

  I was born in 1990 (yes, I’m a ‘90s kid), in the nearby town of Cedar Falls. Dad wasn’t there when I was born, so Mom always tried to step up and fill both pairs of parental shoes. I think this confused me as a child. One moment she would be the loving, caring mother, and the next she would be the strictly disciplinarian father. As I went through my teenage years, I saw what was happening and got sick of it.

  Since I moved out, things between my mother and myself had gotten better. Even now, I’m resentful of my upbringing, perhaps. That’s not to say that I hate my parents or anyone who has done me wrong. I simply dislike the circumstances that I was thrown into, as I feel it was avoidable. But you get what you get, I suppose. I’ve accepted what’s been handed to me and hope to move on through my life quickly.

  Anyways, I spent a short amount of time there. As I made my way to the door, I stated to my family that I was going out to search for wildlife, and hopefully would bring something back this time. I left for a patch of woods between some fields close by, walking there, of course. Holding a firearm on my way out of town, I didn’t get any odd looks. Seeing someone with a gun grows more and more common as the days pass by.

  The woods were quiet, more so than they usually are. This specific location had probably been all hunted out, but it still seemed too quiet. It was like every little fiber that makes up the world, including the living animals, knew what was coming before we ever did.

  I sat myself down, back against a tree, looking out into a small opening where the trees were spaced out just enough to let the sun shine down on the overgrown grass. Ideally, I was hoping a deer would roam through. Of course, the sex of the animal makes no difference when hungry stomachs are on the line.

  I thought to myself while sitting there that maybe our lives aren’t the only ones that have been silenced. I noticed that not even the birds were chirping. There were no squirrels chattering in their trees, or dropping nuts after they had been eaten. I had only heard three noises that day—the breeze blowing in the trees, myself every time I needed to readjust my position, and the trickle of a creek just out of eyesight.

  This is probably over-exaggerated, but I believe I was sitting there for at least two hours with no signs of wildlife. Growing bored, I decided to move to a spot where I could overlook the creek and beyond. With the thought that sooner or later something would have to come along and get a drink, I got up, stretched, and began moving closer to the creek. Luckily for me, I found a suitable log lying on its side that gave me the perfect view. The only downside of this log was that I was sitting somewhat precariously right next to the steep bank of the creek. My feet rested only inches from the steep drop of three to four feet before the top of the water.

  I sat and waited as patiently as I could, and without noticing, had begun to lose myself in thought. Questions like: “What would I do if I were unable to provide for my loved ones?” and “What if I am completely incompetent?” plagued me. Not because I’m not good enough or physically able, but because it is truly impossible. Impossible to acquire all that is needed for my family of five, Miranda’s family of three, and impossible to survive in an overpopulated world with no infrastructure.

  Plant life rustling on the other side of the creek brought me from my mind’s wandering slum. Attentive now, I quickly raised my gun toward the sound. A half-minute passed, and it still hadn’t shown itself from the cover of the tall grass. Listening as well as I could, it sounded like it was moving further away. I decided to take the chance of alarming the mystery game and cross the creek to get closer. I was determined that whatever was in there was not getting away.

  I stood up as quietly as I could without holding back any speed, although the snapping twigs under my feet didn’t help the cause. I surveyed for the best way across and found that the fastest option was to go straight down and across. After finding a suitable place to put my foot, I began my descent. As my first foot found the bottom, the water-slickened stones threw my leg out from under me. I fell backward and crashed onto the jagged stone riverbed. Sharp pain erupted in the back of my head and the world around me faded to black.

  When I awoke, my eyesight blurred at first. I found myself in agony. I was lying on my back in the creek with water up to my neck. I was lucky I didn’t drown in my loss of consciousness. The big rock that I presumably hit my head on held me just above the waterline. With a stiff back, I sat up slowly in an attempt to lessen the pokes and jabs of the rocks beneath me.

  Looking about, I noticed it was much later in the afternoon. I reached into my pocket to find that my iPod was now cracked and filled with water. The sounds of the wind and the water in the creek covered any signs of the animal I had heard before. It was gone by now, and upon realizing it, I swung at the water with gritted teeth. I cursed as I stood up, feeling cramps and sharp pains down my back and neck. Rubbing my water-soaked fingers against my face and the back of my head left dabs of blood on them.

  I climbed my way out of the creek using another way up. Once on dry land, I stood there, trying to gauge the time for a bit. I know some Boy Scout trick used for judging time before sunset. Something like three fingers below the sun is an hour, or maybe it’s two fingers. Anyways, the sun was working its way toward the horizon and I decided to go back. There wasn’t anything to gain out of this. As I have said before, I’m not a good hunter. I just like guns.

  I made my way out of the timber empty handed, again. I moved slowly, hoping, praying that something, anything, would come across me on my way out. When I reached the timberline and nothing had shown itself, feelings of desperation and thoughts of thievery accompanied my shameful walk.

  I usually consider the act of thievery below me; even at times like this, it shouldn’t be resorted to. But then I
realized that there were other people out there like me who had already come to this conclusion. If surviving meant thievery as a last resort, so be it. I couldn’t wait about for my family, and myself, to die.

  I then began to wonder where I would find someone or someplace with enough food to justify taking without leaving the victim of my crime to starve. I know this was a ploy to fool my own heart and ease the guilt, but it did help regardless. Or maybe, I thought, if I explained to people what my family was going through, they would be willing to part with a few meals. Hopefully. I would try that first.

  As town came into sight, the sound of black powder exploding in the barrel of a gun reached my ears. I became worried that someone could be hurt and picked up my pace to a jog. The gunfire sounded too deep and loud to be any typical, smaller caliber gun. A successive gunshot swept through the cornfields surrounding me, then another. Again and again, I heard the sound. The rapid shots suggested either someone was being careless or defending themselves.