As the World Falls Down Read online

  Table of Contents

  Excerpt

  As the World Falls Down

  Copyright

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Epilogue

  A word from the author…

  Thank you for purchasing

  Also available from The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

  Seeing the whisky bottle on the floor, smashed in half, I lunged for it, wrapping my trembling fingers around the glass neck. As he ran toward me, I lifted the sharp, broken end and thrust it in his direction.

  Abruptly, he skidded to a halt and began to slowly back away, putting his hands up in surrender. “I won’t hurt you.”

  Backing up further, I edged over to the front door.

  “Please,” he said softly, “I won’t hurt you.”

  As I looked into his pleading eyes, my stance softened. Why was I running? This was what I’d been looking for. Another survivor. Another human being.

  I just hadn’t counted on it being so terrifying.

  Hands still in the air, he edged past me like I was some frightened animal caught in headlights and made his way over to the front door. He twisted the handle quickly and then used his foot to kick it wide open.

  “You can leave whenever you want,” he said, “But, please…just…stay. Talk to me. Please.”

  I looked out into the storm. The rain outside seemed to be falling even harder, relentlessly smashing into the veranda decking with deafening thuds. When I glanced back at him, my fear ebbed away a little more.

  Watching him closely, I lowered my arm and dropped the bottle. “I’ll stay,” I said.

  As the World Falls Down

  by

  Katy Nicholas

  Cities in Dust, Book One

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

  As the World Falls Down

  COPYRIGHT © 2019 by Katy Nicholas

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press, Inc. except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Contact Information: [email protected]

  The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

  PO Box 708

  Adams Basin, NY 14410-0708

  Visit us at www.thewildrosepress.com

  Publishing History

  First Mainstream Paranormal Edition, 2019

  Print ISBN 978-1-5092-2867-6

  Digital ISBN 978-1-5092-2868-3

  Cities in Dust, Book One

  Published in the United States of America

  Acknowledgments

  Special thanks to the following people;

  My long-suffering friends, for putting up with my eccentricities, and for reading every version of this book, countless times—Amanda, Vicky, Rosie, and Sheila.

  Authors Rich Shifman and Jesse Frankel,

  for their endless support and advice.

  My (too big to name everyone) family,

  for always being there for me.

  And, lastly, big hugs to my dog Skylar.

  Prologue

  Before…

  As the sun rose, I woke with a start, my nightclothes drenched in sweat, my heart pounding rapidly.

  I only knew the dream had been terrifying but remembered nothing of it.

  The battery-powered alarm clock atop my bedside cabinet informed me it was five A.M.

  It wasn’t quite time for me to get up, but with the remnant adrenalin of the nightmare coursing through me, there was no point trying to go back to sleep. Rising wearily, I stretched my arms wide, my spine cracking as though I hadn’t moved in days. After a brief massage of my neck muscles to soothe the painful crick, I made my bed and dressed quickly.

  Before leaving the room, I reached into the top drawer of the cabinet and retrieved a small white envelope with the name ‘Rebecca’ written neatly across it. My fingers traced the lettering as a wave of sadness caused my heartbeat to falter. I swallowed down my emotion and clutched the letter close to my chest.

  You can do this, I told myself, repetitively chanting it like a mantra in my head.

  Taking one last glance around my bedroom, I shut the door as quietly as I could, then crept across the lounge and into the kitchen.

  The remnants of our last meal together were still on the dining table, so I set the letter down against a wine bottle where I was sure she would find it.

  Rebecca.

  On tiptoes, I crept back into the lounge and toward Rebecca’s bedroom. The door was ajar enough for me to poke my head through the gap and look in on her. She was soundly asleep, so swaddled up in her duvet, all I could see were the long tendrils of her dark hair spread out over her pillow.

  I blew her a silent kiss. “Goodbye, Rebecca.”

  Outside, the sun rose higher into a cloud-strewn, pink and orange sky. As the rays broke through the clouds and touched my skin, I tilted my head back and closed my eyes, savoring the warmth.

  The twittering of a sparrow brought me out of my reverie. The little bird sat on the thickest branch of a nearby apple tree, flexing its mottled black and brown feathers as it chirped and sang. It gave me a brief glance before it took off and flew southwards, to the ocean.

  I planned to head that way myself. It’d been so long since I’d seen the sea that the thought of being able to watch the waves crash onto the shore filled me with a sense of elation. Still, it wasn’t quite enough to subdue the guilt welling in the pit of my stomach.

  As I made my way around to the garage to collect my backpack and bike, the worries and doubts began to circulate in my mind again. My hand hovered uncertainly over the door for a few seconds before I took a deep breath and twisted the handle.

  You can do this.

  I conjured up an image of the ocean and closed my eyes, trying to recall the sounds of the tide coming ashore—the roaring whoosh of the surf, and the clank of rolling pebbles as the sea dragged them into its belly.

  Like the irresistible song of a siren, it called to me. Pulled me. Whispered to me.

  “Find us.”

  Chapter One

  After…

  It was probably June, but the days and months were something I’d long lost track of. The weather was hot but not intolerably so. Summers in the southwest of England rarely saw temperatures climb past the balmy eighties.

  A slight breeze touched my cheek and flooded my senses with the familiar scent of wet earth and moss. Petrichor—that’s what they called it—the scent produced by rain when it falls onto dry soil. I couldn’t remember how I knew that.

  I’d been caught earlier in a sudden torrential downpour that drenched me before I could find shelter. Although
mostly dry again, the seams of my denim shorts had begun to irritate my thighs.

  Weary and uncomfortable, I scanned my surroundings for somewhere to camp for the night, but the ground here was too uneven and overgrown.

  My supplies were lashed onto the back of my pushbike, which I more often pushed rather than rode. Cycling up and down the country roads had taken its toll on my untrained muscles, not to mention all the water I gulped down to rehydrate myself.

  Today, it’d become painfully obvious that getting to the city would take a lot longer than I’d anticipated and forced me to question my decision to leave in the first place. The promise I’d made to Rebecca—not to be away too long—already looked set to be broken. Unless, of course, I went back home now.

  Whenever I thought of my aunt, a little voice in the back of my mind—her voice—begged me to return, but my stubborn streak spurred me onwards. This was something I had to do, and that was all there was to it.

  I grunted despondently as another steep hill loomed in the distance, pitted with potholes so cavernous they’d become ponds from the last rainstorm. With some skillful maneuvers on my part, I managed to steer the bike around them without falling in.

  It certainly hadn’t taken the roads long to fall apart after the apocalypse. Roughly four-and-a-half years on, nature had made easy work of ripping the tarmac asunder, and all she needed to do now was swallow up the remnants.

  Here, in the countryside, the bramble had reclaimed the terrain with a vengeance. Mostly, I trod it down as I went, but occasionally the little bastard thorns latched on and sank into my socks, gouging my flesh and leaving my gray-white knitted knee-highs dotted with fresh spots of red.

  Welcome to the end of the world. The apocalypse. The end times. The closing credits. The last scene of a bad B-movie to which I‘d been given a front-row seat.

  At nineteen, I’d watched the swift death of the human race as seven-and-a-half billion people had succumbed to a plague unlike any other.

  That was it — a virus. Quick and quiet with hardly any time to become hysterical and hoard tinned goods.

  And four months was all it took.

  Maybe it was better that way, rather than a long, strung-out demise. Kinder even.

  Time had passed in a blur since then. My Aunt Rebecca had religiously kept track of time in the beginning, but after a while, she’d stopped marking down each sunrise. She’d told me that she didn’t need to know anymore, and I couldn’t give her a good enough reason to keep putting the big red X’s on the calendar day after day after day. In any case, with our seasons so far out of whack, thanks to global warming, Rebecca relied on her intuition for tasks like planting and harvesting. It generally worked out okay.

  We still marked the traditional anniversaries as we’d always done—such as birthdays and Christmas—just not on any pre-determined date. Instead, we celebrated whenever my aunt decided we would, based on her best-guess approximation of the real date, and more importantly, her mood. Having once scavenged a box of party plates and candles, she’d declared it my birthday, despite being nowhere near cold enough to have been March. She’d also constructed a glitter-covered banner which read ‘Happy birthday Halley!’ which she’d re-used every year since.

  I wasn’t even sure our lackluster attempts at celebrations could even be called celebrations at all because they were never much different than any other day, except for using it as an excuse to over-eat tinned puddings and consume far too much alcohol. Still, on those days, Rebecca seemed happier, and so I participated in the revelry even though I saw little point in it.

  A breath caught in my chest at the familiar pang of guilt that’d plagued me since leaving home. My poor Aunt Rebecca left all alone. Would she start counting the sunrises again until I got back?

  Stop it!

  Resolutely, I pushed the stirrings of remorse to the back of my mind and gripped the bicycle handlebars tightly, starting up the hill with renewed determination. This lasted all of five minutes until I began to sweat so fiercely my eyes stung, forcing me to let the bike crash to the ground as I vigorously wiped my face with the hem of my vest.

  “Damn it!”

  It took a few moments—and a tangent of swear words—but I eventually managed to collect myself enough to continue. Upon reaching the summit, I chucked the bike down again and collapsed starfish-like onto the only bit of bramble-free grass on the roadside, panting hard until my heart stopped racing and resumed a normal rhythm.

  Water. I needed water, but my supply had run low. I’d caught some in the last downpour, but only a large mug full at best. Desperate, I reached into my bag and gulped down the entire bottle like I wouldn’t regret it later when I started to die of thirst. Then I lay in the grass for a good half an hour, cursing my impulsivity, before I got back on my feet and started off again.

  In the distance, there were a few abandoned cars parked outside of an old petrol station. Most of the old fuel stations had little shops inside stocked with basic essentials. Some of them had been thoroughly looted, while others, especially those out here in the country, hadn’t been touched at all.

  Most of the inner-city petrol stations had been commandeered and manned by the army toward the end, allocating fuel only to key personnel and not to the general public, who just wanted to get as far away from the madness as possible. The other stations, like this one, were drained and then locked up, shutters down securely, waiting for it all to blow over. If lucky, I might find something to drink and eat inside.

  By the time I reached the parked cars, the need for hydration again made my tongue so dry it tasted like sawdust in my mouth. The first vehicle I approached was a large red MPV, covered in dust and wrapped tightly in some bindweed that’d crept over from a nearby hedgerow. It now covered half the forecourt. I wiped the grime off the middle section of the driver’s side window with the bottom of my vest and peered inside. Seeing no human remains, I pulled the weed strands away from the door and wrestled it open. Thankfully it was unlocked, not that I hadn’t become accustomed to smashing the occasional window every now and then if need be. I simply didn’t have the energy for vandalism.

  Rooting through the car, my efforts were rewarded with half a pack of chewing gum and a still-sealed carton of children’s orange cordial. Triumphantly, I shook the drink up and pierced the foil hole with the attached straw, sucking the liquid down before I had a chance to decide whether it tasted all right or not. It constantly surprised me what remained edible years after it was deemed out-of-date.

  Unfortunately, the other two cars on the forecourt yielded nothing but an empty plastic water bottle and a clear sandwich bag of something green and moldy.

  My interest shifted onto the kiosk building behind the forecourt. Despite the anterior door being locked up tight with shutters and chains, the goods entrance around back had only been covered with a sheet of plywood and secured with two padlocked hasp and staple locks. For such eventualities, I’d packed a crowbar in my rucksack. When the hasp hinge finally tore away from the wood, I quickly gained access, immediately finding myself in a small, dank storeroom. The shelves were mostly empty apart from a few basic brand tinned goods and bottles of pop. The main shop, however, yielded nothing. The shelves were utterly barren of anything aside from dust and dried-out insect carcasses.

  Deciding to call it quits for today, I unrolled my sleeping bag and spread it out on the storeroom floor, where I feasted on watery spaghetti hoops and rice pudding. With my belly full and suitably rehydrated, I retrieved a map from my backpack and marked off my progress with a red pen.

  By following the coast and sticking to back roads, I’d reach Bristol in just over a week at this pace. While the motorways and highways were a faster route, such places were better avoided. The main roads served as mass graveyards now, cluttered with thousands of stationary vehicles, the skeletal inhabitants forever stuck in gridlocked traffic as they’d made futile attempts to escape or get home to the people they loved.

  Such scenes
had been described to me in horrific detail by my aunt, intent on sheltering me from it all by making sure I never wanted to venture from our little village. It hadn’t worked. Ironically, seeing it for myself may well have dissuaded me from this quest.

  Or not.

  The voice in my head, urging me to look for other survivors, would only have gotten louder and louder if I’d continued to ignore it. There had to be someone else alive out there somewhere.

  Surely, Rebecca and I couldn’t be the only ones left?

  As night fell, I lay on top of my sleeping bag, in the darkness, listening to the sound of distant thunder. Somewhere, a storm raged, but here it stayed dry and hot as I struggled to fall asleep.

  ****

  The next day began dismal and gray, the swollen clouds spitting out rain at unpredictable intervals. Occasionally, lightning flashed overhead, followed by a low rumble of thunder but nothing violent enough to send me running for cover. The wind had picked up significantly, but I found it refreshing after the humidity of the past few days, although I could feel my cheeks starting to burn from the battering.

  It wasn’t long before I reached a little village.

  Quaint, pastel-colored cottages encapsulated a harbor littered with the wrecked hulls of fishing boats still moored to the quayside with rusted chains.

  I walked past, imagining what it might have looked like before the world ended. The image I conjured in my mind was so vivid I could almost smell the fishy whiff of the day’s catch slowly festering on the barrows.

  In the summer, this place would have been a tourist trap, besieged with beach-loving families in search of a patch of sand to lay their towels and eat their fast-melting ice creams. I half-expected to hear the cries of overtired children, pestering their parents for a replacement cone after letting the first one liquefy and slop to the ground. I envisaged couples walking hand in hand down the promenade, laughing, and sharing a pot of whelks or crab sticks.

  At the end of the row of cottages, I came upon a souvenir shop, its big, wood-framed windows covered in a layer of dirt so thick it obscured my view of the tacky curios which undoubtedly lined the shelves.