Seasons: A Year in the Apocalypse Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Disclaimer

  Dedication

  Opening Words

  Part 1

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Part 2

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Part 3

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Part 4

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Epilogue

  Did you enjoy this book?

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  Other Books by e a lake

  About the Author

  SEASONS

  e a lake

  Written in The United States of America by: e a lake

  Beta-read by: Vanessa McCutcheon

  Edited by: Red Adept

  Cover Design by: Laura LaRoche (llpix.com)

  Copyright © 2017 e a lake

  All rights reserved.

  Exclusive Kindle Edition

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblances to persons living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations are entirely coincidental.

  All events portrayed are made up in the authors mind. As such, none are real. However, they are intended to give the reader pause to consider what a completely unrecognizable future, that looks more like the past, may look like. And since I get to make that future up in my head, some things just aren’t going to make sense to everyone. But I hope you enjoy the events, nonetheless.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form whatsoever without written permission of the author.

  Also by e a lake:

  WWIV - In The Beginning, Hope in the Darkness, Basin of Secrets

  WWIV - Darkness Descends (The Shorts - Book 1),

  WWIV - Darkness’s Children (The Shorts - Book 2).

  Stranded No Where (Book 1: The No Where Apocalypse)

  Surviving No Where (Book 2)

  Defending No Where (Book 3)

  Searching No Where (Book 4)

  You wanted strong women, you say?

  Meet Abigail Turner.

  Hardship prepares ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny.

  —C. S. Lewis

  Spring

  I remember my first taste of dog. I didn’t want to eat it—her—but I was so hungry.

  I remember being a moody, angst-ridden teenager when it happened. The night before, I had cried myself to sleep. My rotten parents had denied me a sleepover that had been promised for weeks. Some sort of made-up infraction on my part, they claimed.

  But I, spoiled as anyone could be, wouldn’t allow their lives to continue on without punishment. Playing music as loud as I could, Justin Bieber if I recall, I remember fighting back sardonic laughter as my father beat on my bedroom door, demanding I turn that “shit” off. But I didn’t.

  The next morning, it was all gone: music, lights, refrigeration, running cars, cell phones, the Internet… everything.

  I cursed my father for not paying the bill, the electric bill I supposed. But I remember his expression, his face holding no anger or ill will. Just a blank look of wonderment, mixed with a little fear.

  Everything was going to be okay, I was told. Since I was only a child, my parents’ first reaction was to protect me. And they did. Right up to the time when my father didn’t return home after one of his nightly forages.

  It was about three weeks in, I suppose. He’d been creeping out after sunset, searching for supplies and food. Though every day I was promised the power and phones would come back on “any moment,” I knew it was a lie.

  So Dad searched for food and stuff each night while Mom and I hid in the basement. The only weapon we had was a large Chicago Cutlery knife, something more aptly used to carve a ham. One knife, two dogs (Buffy and Fluffy), my mom and me, huddled in a corner, losing our shit at every sound we heard.

  Then Dad didn’t come back. And we never went looking for him because Mr. Rodriquez, our neighbor, said he had seen Dad get shot while looting a store in downtown Mankato, the hellhole where we lived at the time.

  A month later, we were out of food—seriously out of food. Mom traded Fluffy to the next-door neighbor one day for a small bag of rice. Three nights later, we dined on Buffy.

  By the time the first snows came, in what we thought was early November, our lives held little hope. We didn’t believe the power was ever coming back on, that anyone was coming to help, that things would ever get better. We were so right and yet so doomed.

  That was 22 winters ago. I can’t recall my father’s face, my mother’s voice, what color my room was. I don’t remember if Justin Bieber was a good singer, what dress my best friend Susan Fornesere wore to our sixth-grade graduation dance that previous spring, or even the ringtone on my cell phone.

  But I remember my Buffy. How white her fur was and how her dark eyes contrasted against it. I remember her cute, pink tongue and how she’d jump on my bed and cuddle up with me every night.

  I remember how she tasted, mixed in a broth thickened with the last of our flour and several half-rotted potatoes thrown in. I knew it was her, but I couldn’t care anymore. Mom and I had nothing else to keep us alive.

  The strangest thing I remember from that time? I never cried once. At first I was too scared, and by the time my mother died two years later, I was just too tired and worn out to care.

  The Darkness had consumed all.

  Chapter 1

  Moisture is good for the ground. It is especially good for the fertile ground outside my home in remote southwestern Minnesota. And when rain comes in April and May, it signals the onset of spr
ing and the planting season that soon follows.

  But this was ridiculous.

  The rain outside intensified as I watched from a kitchen window. Monday’s showers turned into Tuesday’s mist. Tuesday’s mist turned into Wednesday’s thunderstorms. Wednesday’s thunderstorms intensified and raged some three days later.

  My garden plot was a lake, albeit small, but still a lake. Rivers of floodwaters ran in from the east and south. For some reason, the small slope on the opposite side of the garden didn’t display the clear water I hoped to see leaving. No, my dark, rich black topsoil ran off in streams that resembled the large rivers of my youth: the Missouri, the Ohio, the Mississippi.

  I wondered how deep the topsoil ran. Surely, four days of flooding rains couldn’t be helping. It wasn’t possible or believable.

  “A watched pot never boils,” Sunshine announced from behind, causing me to startle. She joined me by the window. “Course, with the amount of rain we’re getting, nothing would boil with all that cold water pouring down from Heaven.”

  I felt my lips screw up and nose scrunch. “We need the rain to stop,” I complained, as if that would help. “We need to get the seeds in the ground.”

  Sunshine coughed before continuing. That hack had been going on for too long—weeks, perhaps even months.

  “Spring rains help bring the last of the frost out of the soil, my GeeMah always said.” Her dark eyes slid my way without her head moving. “And GeeMah knew everything.”

  I nodded but only so I wouldn’t sneer and laugh. “And this is the same GeeMah that told you the winds we had two weeks back, that peeled away a half foot of topsoil, helped with the last of the frost as well.”

  As usual, she took no offense to my bitter reply. “Good and bad, Abby.” She placed a small hand on my crossed arms. “If we expect any good, we know we have to take some bad with it.”

  My head turned, and our sunken eyes met. “More advice from GeeMah?” I mocked.

  Sunshine nodded, grinning broadly.

  “I think I’ve had enough bad for this lifetime, Sunshine.” I turned and focused on the rain, even heavier now. “I think I’ve had enough bad for a lot of lifetimes. I think it’s time something good happened.”

  I waited for her next clever reply, some brave words of encouragement that her mother or grandmother had once bestowed upon the young woman that showed up on my driveway some three years back.

  “No more advice?” I asked.

  “You can kill yourself anytime you want, Abby. Ain’t no one stopping you.” She moved away as I watched, stopping in the doorway. “I’d have this place all to myself then. And when Walker comes home next year, maybe him and me could start a family.”

  I glared at the naive, smart-mouthed person who dared to call herself my friend. Cabin fever had been at its worst the past winter. We needed to get outside—and soon.

  “I’ll never do that,” I answered, sounding somewhat happier than before. “You know that.”

  She shrugged, wiping at the dry skin on her forearms. “Lots of people do. They figured they could take this hell on Earth forever. But everyone has a breaking point. You at yours yet?”

  I felt my head shake, involuntarily.

  “Me neither,” Sunshine responded. “The rain will end when the rain ends. And when it does, I’ll be here to help you in the garden. Why don’t we go read a book together? Maybe that will keep our mind off your misery.”

  I took her extended hand, and together we disappeared into the depths of the house. Anything was better than watching the rain wash away all of my hopes and dreams for an early spring planting. Even reading with a mostly illiterate refugee.

  “Hello, Daisy… It’s nice to… see you… again.” I wanted to rip the book from Sunshine’s shaking hands so badly. Reading, it seemed, caused her to stutter. When she liked the material in the book, her stutter worsened. So I resisted the temptation and shot her a tight smile as I sewed shut a hole in a pair of ragged, faded blue jeans.

  Sunshine stared at me, holding in a question.

  “You’re doing fine,” I said. “Keep reading. I swear you get better every time you pick up a book.”

  She set the book aside and gazed out the window; still raining, I noted. “When you hear about Jay Gatsby, who do you picture?”

  “Leo,” I replied, grinning as I did. All these years later, and I could still picture that handsome man. “Who do you think of?”

  Now it was her turn to grin. “Denzel. Always Denzel.”

  I shook away the response I hadn’t anticipated. “Denzel Washington?”

  She tossed a hand at me. “No, Denzel Cooper, a kid I grew up with.” I stared at her, confused. “Of course Denzel Washington. I sure don’t picture that skinny-assed white kid that played the part in the movie. Nope. I see Denzel.”

  I went back to my mending. “Well, I think Leo was a great choice for that part… if you ask me.”

  “Just what I’d expect a white person to say,” Sunshine muttered, playing with the trim on the bottom of the window.

  I focused tighter on her. “And just how do you know who Denzel Washington was? You were mighty young when the lights went out.”

  She shook off my skepticism with her own natural cunningness. “My momma had a wall devoted to Denzel.” It almost sounded like she was bragging. “She must of had two hundred pictures of that gorgeous hunk of man. It was a real shrine to see.”

  It struck me many days just how little I knew of those closest to me. My first husband and I had known each other only a month before we got married. Though I was young, some might say very young, I thought I was mature, having been on my own for several years.

  And when I say married, I mean we just lived together—took up with one another, as the old woman that lived down the street from my parents used to say. I was pregnant before we knew it, and then we had real issues.

  By 17 I found myself with a baby boy attached to me everywhere I went. My husband, Bradley, was a little older— 23 or 24 if I recall correctly. After we were forced out of our first home, he spent a lot of his time working the land so that we could simply exist.

  It was maybe five or six years into the hell the world had become. No one lived; people simply got by, or they died. Bradley and I were lucky. Little Walker screamed most of the time, though. My milk wasn’t very nourishing, I figured. So we bartered labor for cow’s milk to keep him alive. At least one of them lived.

  A clap of thunder brought me back to the present as I played with my lips. I discovered Sunshine glaring at me as if I could read her mind.

  “You’re doing it again,” she scolded.

  I shook her words away with a half smile. “No, I’m not.”

  Pushing off her chair, she dropped the book in my lap. “Yeah, you are,” she replied, stopping at the doorway. “Stay in the present. Don’t look back. Regret will kill ya.”

  I listened as she shut the door to the indoor privy. “I know,” I whispered, still dry eyed. “I know.”

  Chapter 2

  When the rain finally let up, we had to wait another day or two for the spongy ground to dry. By the third day, my partner and I were ready to attack our most important spring chore.

  I watched Sunshine head for the garden with a hoe in her glove-covered hand.

  “That Mister Frederickson had better have done a better job of plowing than it looks like,” she griped. “I still got blisters from last year and all the extra hoeing and shoveling we had to do.”

  While complaining was nothing new for my younger friend, she had a point. Our Amish neighbors had offered to plow our garden before each growing season. The old man, perhaps 40 if I had to guess, and father of the large clan would show up with a draft horse one day each spring and plow the rich black soil.

  The first few years, it had been three or four now, he plowed tight rows. That left very little work for me and Brady and Walker to do other than smooth out our plot and await our allotment of seeds.

  But then I l
ost Walker to Mr. Hulton, and Brady went to town with Sasha and had never returned. This spring, the plowing didn’t look as tidy somehow. Whether it was actually Mr. Frederickson’s plowing or my destroyed heart, I can’t recall. But Sunshine still blamed our generous Amish friend.

  “I swear,” she continued, almost 50 feet away, “I’m going to go over and give that knucklehead a piece of my fist. My dead momma could’ve done a better job of plowing than that old fool.”

  “Do we need the shovel?” I called out as she rounded the corner of the house and I walked into the shed. Awaiting her reply, I studied my sun-covered reflection on one of the not-so-filthy lower windows.

  Whatever weight I had once carried was gone. That was a given. I chuckled, trying to recall the last truly fat person I’d seen. That luxury died with the power, years back. My long dark hair looked stringy and uncombed—which it was. And the reflection of my face showed a much older woman than I was. A woman wore down by The Darkness (as the Amish called it)—a woman without hope, without life.

  Stepping into the shed, I opened my eyes wide to survey the dark place. Somewhere in here were shovels, two of them if I recalled correctly. Just where Sunshine and I had placed them the previous fall was uncertain. But if I dared to dig deep enough, I knew I’d find them.

  I also needed to find the row stakes and strings. These weren’t essential to planting, but anytime Mr. Lasky came by to inspect our crops—Mr. Hulton’s crops really—he preferred to see straight rows. Just why, I wasn’t sure. But since everything we planted came from Mr. Hulton’s stash of heirloom seeds, who was I to argue?

  I found the shovels and hauled them to the yard. Pounding them together, I knocked the last of the past year’s dirt from each tool. Now, if I could just find the stakes.

  My mind wandered as I searched the shed. Bradley and I hadn’t been farmers. Not at first, at least. We had been the furthest thing from farmers. We were users.