It was the middle of summer and the sun was high in the sky reflecting on the roofs of abandoned cars that, although dusty, were in pristine condition. Heat waves radiated from the cracked asphalt that passed quickly by under Audrey’s feet as she jogged at a steady pace down the road. She shook her head when her vision started fading in and out and checked the time on the pink digital watch she wore. She scanned the desert around her looking for a place to stop. She spotted a large thick sagebrush in the distance that had grown over the side of a small silver car.

“Keep it together,” she told herself weakly when her vision stared to tunnel. “Just a little way to go.”

She took the heavy pack she was wearing on her back off when she reached the covered car, opened the driver side door, and tossed it into the bucket seat. She sighed with relief and pulled a small towel out of the pack to wipe the sweat off her neck and face with before she opened the back door to the sedan.

She pushed a half full black garbage sack of clothes to the other side of the grey bench so she could sit down on the seat and took her large dark sunglasses off. The navy blue trucker hat she wore was damp with sweat when she took it off her head. She fanned herself with it for a second before pulling her pack over the back of the seat and into her lap. She unzipped it and pulled out a warm water bottle, an apple, and an old smartphone out of the dark green bag.

“Where are we at?” She asked herself as the phone powered on.

She pulled her dark brown hair out of the pony tail she’d been wearing so she could braid it while she watched the little white apple logo disappear from the screen. She took a bite of her apple and finished braiding her long dark hair when the date and time showed up over a picture of the Milky Way. It was the seventeenth of July.

“Happy birthday to me,” she grumbled and unlocked the phone to turn on the GPS.

Through everything that had happened over the last six months she was grateful for the remaining technicians throughout the world who were able to keep things like GPS and basic internet servers running—even if the internet was unreliable and was only supposed to be used for official communications.

Audrey had not planned on spending her seventeenth birthday alone in a hot car drinking warm water in the middle of the southern New Mexico desert. In fact, she hadn’t imagined being completely alone at all.

Things were completely different at the beginning of the year. Her father had returned home from work in Salt Lake City, Utah where he’d been working with a team made up of independent and government scientists in a biochemical lab for a two week furlough. After going months with no significant breakthroughs on their research the team needed a break.

The rest of the Campbell family was happy that their patriarch was back and quickly packed for a much needed vacation to Carlsbad Caverns.

Audrey had never been to the massive caves, but she had wanted to tour them ever since her best friend, Dean Davies, had gone two summers before. It was her idea to go down south for the trip.

The fun they had was short lived when her father started feeling ill. He decided to stay in their hotel room for the day while her mom, brothers, and she drove to the caves and went exploring around the area at his insistence.

She remembered the excitement coursing through her when she ran up the stairs to their motel room to tell him about the amazing scenery they had seen around the caverns.

A cold wave of sadness washed over her body when she thought of her father’s washed out features and vacant stare. She tried to blink back the tears that stung the corners of her eyes. She sniffed and wiped her nose on the back of her hand.

She pulled a bottle of sunscreen out of a side pocket on her pack and focused on putting a new coat of sunscreen on her face and arms.

The phone slowly triangulated her location and zoomed in on the map. She was close to a small town called Artesia. She put her feet up in between the driver and passenger seat and rubbed sunscreen on her lean, muscular legs. She frowned at the sole of one of her running shoe which had separated from bottom. They would definitely need to be replaced.

“New shoes would be a great gift for my birthday,” she grabbed the phone off the seat and set a fifteen minute timer. She closed her eyes and listened to the sagebrush rustle in the soft breeze.

~~~

The air was cooler when Audrey jogged into Artesia a couple hours later. She slowed her pace to a walk. She inhaled and exhaled slowly to regulate her heavy breathing. She licked her dry lips and cut across the street heading towards the Wal-Mart in the northern part of the mostly deserted town.

She passed a few people on her way to the old supercenter. A young man was pushing an elderly lady down the street, a couple was holding hands and talking intimately with their head together, and two young women happily drove their luxury car down the street.

Audrey rolled her eyes at the waste of gasoline.
Driving around in a car like that they have to be rich
, she thought.

The separated sole on her left shoe had made her run lopsided on the last leg of the run to Artesia and she reasoned to herself that having a small population meant there should be a reasonable amount of stuff left on the shelves of the old store. She hoped that included shoes in her size.

She strode passed the pharmacy in the middle of the medical supplies aisles. The metal gate that separated the counter from the medications had been ripped down and was sprawled on the floor and the bottles in the back been ravaged by looters.

The women’s clothing department had few things left on the shelves and she was happy to grab a pair of women’s neon yellow sweatpants that would fit her. Even during an apocalypse people refused to sacrifice fashion, but since she could use a new pair of pajamas and didn’t have the money or extra things to trade at the roving market, she wasn’t above taking the tacky pants.

She browsed the nearly bare racks where shoes used to be hung. There were a couple stray sandals that were missing their mates, but no tennis shoes that Audrey could find.

She ambled to the back of the store where the toy aisles were. There were few toys on the shelves. Maybe parents and caregivers had rushed out and gotten their children items of comfort while the world crumbled around them. She circled through the aisles and found herself next to the bicycle racks.

Nearly all the small children’s bikes were still there, but boxes from bike trailers and infant seats were all over the floor and adult bikes were nowhere to be found on the sales floor.

Audrey’s watch beeped once. It was starting to get late. She bit her lip and look at the skylight to see how dark it was getting.

I have time.

She jogged to the back of the store into the large room extra inventory used to be kept in. She searched through empty shelves trying to find anything useful.

She smiled and rubbed her hands together when she spotted a large flat box with a picture of a bicycle on the top on shelf, “Happy birthday to me.”

She jovially whistled the birthday song while she slid the box off the shelf and dug around in her pack to find her multi-tool. She used the knife to open the box. Inside was the frame of a mint green bicycle and whitewall wheels.

She checked her watch and groaned before looking back at the bike. She sat down and started assembling the pieces as quickly as she could.

The alarm on her watch went off as she was tightening the bolts that held the tires in place. She picked the bicycle up and hopped onto the large banana seat. She pedaled to the front of the store and out into the parking lot as quickly as she could.

The sun had had barely set so there was still a light blue glow in the sky, but she knew she had taken too long assembling the bicycle.

Small packs of dregs shuffled aimlessly around the parking lot and grunted with each step they took, stopping only whenever a loud noise caught their attention.

The dregs were the reason the world had changed so drastically in such a short period of time. There had been a laboratory-created virus that had been leaked into the public because of a small, but detrimental lack of judgement a group of government scientists had made while testing it. The virus spread quickly without anyone knowing because of the extended incubation period and by the time the mistake was caught it was too late. Hundreds of millions of people ended up dying within weeks.

Independent scientists like Audrey’s father grouped together in labs across the country and ran countless experiments until they found what they called the Cure.

The medication that was administered in one dose. It helped the body create new nerve endings and brain cells to replace the ones that died off because of the virus. The serum worked, but the new nerve endings and brain cells regenerated so quickly they never had a chance to connect properly.

That’s what the dregs were: brain dead people who were kept alive by newly formed brain cells that functioned on a primitive level. To create the new cells the dregs needed large amounts of protein and that is what some people thought made them carnivorous.

Audrey nervously held her breath and cycled through the tiny packs. She headed to the small encampment in the middle of the city where a small group of people would sleep at night. Many of Artesia’s citizens stayed in their homes because they believed they were safer there, but the population of the town was depleting quickly, so most of the people left alive went to the camp site for decontamination showers before going to bed.

A young man in military fatigues stood at the entrance and politely asked for her identification papers, “Runner Three from Roswell? What are you doing clear out here?”

“I was scouting down near the caverns at Carlsbad,” she said taking her documents back from him.

“Carlsbad? That’s in the middle of a huge mutation zone, you’re going to have to be scanned before we can let you in,” he said apologetically.

Audrey studied the young man in front of her. His face was round and kind. His warm brown eyes reflected the sincerity of his apology.

“The dregs are going to be coming out in full force soon, is there any way we can do this faster than the full body scan?” The idea of being escorted to a local health clinic or medical tent to undergo an exam and scan did not appeal to her. She widened her eyes and gave him a bit of what she hoped was a subtle puppy-dog look.

“Well,” he smiled so there were small crinkles at the corners of his eyes and looked through the gate. “I don’t know. Dr. Searle will probably be upset if you’ve been contaminated and spread the virus in here.”

“I promise I’m fine, plus I’m leaving as soon as I can tomorrow morning,” she hoped to sway his decision. “I have to make it back to Roswell tomorrow or they’ll revoke my papers.”

The soldier sighed and took his hat off, revealing his short black hair, “Personally, I don’t want to be heading down to the clinic when the mutants come out, so I’ll let you slide. Just don’t say anything to anyone about Carlsbad.”

“Cross my heart,” Audrey said, making an invisible X over her chest.

The guard smiled and opened the gate, “I’ll take you straight to the sterilization showers.”

Audrey pushed her bike into the camp, “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it. Really. Please don’t,” he led her across the camp, walking backwards so he could talk to her. “So, how long have you been gone from Roswell?”

“Four days already,” she said studying the tall young man in front of her.

He didn’t look like he was any older than she was, although he would have to be at least a year older than her in order to be in the army. He had thick black eyebrows that matched his hair. He had a wide nose and a wide square jaw.

“Four days? It takes half a day to get to Roswell if you’re running. You’ll be there at dusk at the earliest if you leave first thing in the morning,” he pointed out.

“Yup, that would be right if it weren’t for this lovely bike I found today,” she said, patting the light brown seat proudly.

“That will be helpful,” he led her around a corner of tents. “Are they tightening security? It used to be a full week before they revoked papers.”

Audrey looked at the ground with a frown, “Yeah, they had to. There was a Runner a couple months ago who went scouting and came back infected. It was terrible leaving him outside of the gate knowing what’s out there at night. The screams were horrifying.”

They both knew she was talking about the Howlers. They were the most common kind of mutant. They hunted in the middle of the night and when they found prey they would chase the poor victim at high speeds while shrieking at an almost inhuman volume. Their screams would get the attention of dregs in the area and soon the person being chased would be pulled down and incapacitated by dozens of hands pulling at them. Once they were down the Howler would rip at their body until nothing was left. It was a gruesome way to die.

“I’m Lincoln,” the guard cleared his throat and held out his hand. “In case you were wondering. What about you, Runner Three? What’s your name?”

She squinted at him and hesitated for a minute because he should be able to find her name on her papers.

He’s flirting with you
, she realized and hesitantly took his hand.

BOOK: Runner Series (Book 1): Runner 3

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