Seven Days To Brooklyn: A Sara Robinson Adventure
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Authors: Christopher Westley
Seven Days to Brooklyn
©
A
Sara Robinson
®
Adventure
by
CHRISTOPHER WESTLEY
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. For information about bringing the author to live events or for information on booking an event, contact us at the email below.
Burnt Ridge Publishing
†a CM Westley Affiliation
Manufactured in the United States of America
Copyright © 2015
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
SEVEN DAYS TO BROOKLYN©
A Sara Robinson
®
Adventure
by
CHRISTOPHER WESTLEY
Cover by Marika Kraukle 2016 asRAVENINK
©
Latvia
Cartography by Jaime Buckley©2016
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.
First Edition:April 2016
Printed in the United States of America
ASIN:
B01BZJC6UG
For my wife, Traci.
In memory of
Elizabeth, the consummate horror novel reader.
Foreword
If we consider how far we could walk, we might be truly amazed at the human body’s endurance and the perseverance of the human mind. Sara Robinson will embark on a journey of epic proportions that will take her across a vast, barren wasteland toward her final destination. Although the events that unfold in the following pages may be considered a work of fiction, in reality, the world is just a minor incident away from the eventuality of real-world zombies. Epidemic infection rates and the downfall of society as we know it will prevail. After a natural or manmade disaster, it takes between one and four days for most major cities to descend into chaos. First the infrastructure will fail. With no one to repair the electrical lines, water lines, and sewer lines, citizens will resort to cannibalistic self-preservation in order to survive. The would-be preppers will try to defend their locked down hideouts only to be ousted and killed by the most demure citizen who has gained their trust. The governments, local and national, will cease to exist following the mass exodus of the military members who abandon their post in droves as they return home to find loved ones. Only the lucky will survive such an existence. Are you prepared to fight for survival and to kill indiscriminately? Can you survive even one night in the wasteland? I challenge you to
take the trip Sara is about to embark on, to see if you can make it. Travel across the wasteland, if only by modern means, or are you worthy of making the journey on foot?
Christopher M. Westley
Let me know if you make it. If I don’t hear from you, I will consider you left for dead.
Introduction
PRESENT DAY
Standing in the middle of the road, with the world at my feet once again, I am not sure where I will go from here. The last few years have been idyllic, if not very good. I have learned a lot about myself, more than I would have ever wanted to know, more than I ever needed to know. At nineteen years old, I am alone and on my own again—destination unknown. I cannot begin to tell you of the horrors I went through those many years ago, the years before I came home, found my respite from a hostile, upside down world. A young teenage female should not have to live like this. Nor should I have to travel across the wasteland alone. But maybe I am getting ahead of myself. I guess I should start at the beginning, at a time when things were much worse and I much younger. This was a time when most of the United States was in utter chaos and turmoil, devoid of civilization as we once knew it, a time before I knew my role in all of this and why they are after me. I’m not worried now and know that wherever I go, there will be those out there that need me: small groups of survivors who lack the skill and knowledge to resist the last hordes of infected people, if we can call them that. They are more like animals, really—animals that need to be exterminated. One town at a time, one by one, they must be laid to rest so the survivors can live peacefully. But I’m getting ahead of myself again. This is how it all started.
Part I
SEVEN YEARS EARLIER
NEAR UVALDE TEXAS
1
A YOUNG LADY, who appears to be no more than eleven or twelve, sits on the floor of the kitchen, inside a 1950s single story rambler, digging furiously into a can of mystery meat. Her long, blonde hair is matted and requires continuous strokes from her hand to brush it away from her face as she eats. It’s evident she has not taken a bath in some time and is in desperate need of a manicure. Her dirty fingers protrude from wool fingerless gloves followed by a ragged leather coat. On the left breast of the jacket is a patch, tattered and worn, with the name Sara embroidered on it.
Looking down into the empty can of food, she lets out a loud belch and then wipes her mouth with the side of her arm. A pair of size six boots sits in front of her. The right shoe has a leather lace that has been tied in knots two or three times, while the other shoe is freshly laced to the top eyelet with a pink shoelace. The boots were scavenged a few weeks earlier in another deserted town from an army–navy surplus store, the looters not paying attention to the scrawny girl, more concerned with their own survival. Sara pulled her socks on, her left toe going through the end of one of them.
“Dang it, that was my best pair of socks.” Sara slips her feet into the black boots and quickly laces them up, finishing the job with two very neatly tied bows. Rolling her tattered blue jeans over the tops of the boots, Sara folds the excess three inches of pant up in a roll. On the side of one pocket are the remnants of wording that are printed with a once well-known designer name. They were her favorite jeans, and her only jeans now; everything Sara owns, she carries with her in the backpack.
She pilfers the cabinets of the home, shoving a few cans of food into her backpack. From the interior of the house, a faint thumping noise catches her attention, causing her to reflect on a simpler time.
“Sara, what will it be today, young lady?” the maid asks as she hurriedly squeezes fresh orange juice from a pile of oranges sitting on top of the massive granite counter top. Sara stares at the many rows of cereal, oatmeal, and gourmet cans in front of her.
“Mm, cereal.” The memory fades quickly, and she is brought back to reality in the bare, foreign kitchen, the thumping jarring her alert again.
Sara moves past the refrigerator, throwing a jar of pickles into her backpack as she steps into the living room, giving her eyes a moment to adjust to the dim lighting. Continuing down the hallway toward the thumping sound, her ears strain as they adjust to a woody scraping sound.
Her chest starts to tighten as her heart rate increases, pounding harder and harder with every step. While reaching down with her left hand, she wraps it around the .38. Reaching over with her right hand, Sara slowly pulls the trigger back to cock the weapon. The .38 is well used, and the patina on the barrel shows its age. The front sight is missing as well as one of the handgrips. Duct tape is strategically wrapped around the grip and is hand formed from hours of the tight grasp of the twelve-year-old. The .38 is her favorite pistol, given to her by her father a few years ago. Sara steps forward onto glass, the audible crunch filling the hallway. Slowly moving her foot to the right, she continues down the hallway, to a closed door on her left. She can feel the pulse of her arteries on the side of her face strengthening; the carpet below her feet feels spongy, the padding bulky. Reaching down to the knob, she slowly starts to open the door with her right hand while still holding the revolver in her left. The door swings open with a creak from the hinges, revealing the contents of the room.
Peering into the room, the small bed in front of her is unoccupied. Princess sheets and girly stuff are scattered around the room. Sara steps a few feet into the room, and the scratching and thumping noise starts again, coming from the other side of the bed. Barely five foot six, she has trouble seeing over the bed and is forced to walk around the other side to see what is making the noise. Kneeling down to look under the bed, she slowly raises the corner of the flower printed bedspread. Her hair is blown back as the furry object flies past her. Sara jumps back just in time to see a raccoon scamper by her and out the doorway.
She would not have believed it possible to have a heart attack at such a young age, but the sound of her heart beating rapidly in her chest makes her think otherwise.
As her racing heartbeat subsides to a slow beat, she composes herself and gets up to leave the room. The adrenaline rush has heightened her senses even more than before. Sara catches movement behind the partially opened closet door, spurring her to walk to the door and reach up with her right hand to slide the door open. The door starts to move to the right and is thrust open from the inside. A stranger lunges at Sara, grabbing her by the throat and lifting her off her feet. The aggressive action knocks the revolver out of her hand, sending it sliding across the floor and out into the hallway. With her feet dangling above the floor, the stranger’s grip around her neck is quickly choking the life out of her. Still gripping her tightly, the stranger steps forward and out of the shadows, revealing his face. Disfigured, the face of the man is oozing fluid from open wounds as his flesh is sloughing off onto the floor. His foul breath hits her in the face through his rotted teeth. With one quick thrust, he throws her across the room and out into the hallway. She lands against the far wall and sputters, gasping, spitting out blood before whispering out a single phrase.
“You want to battle, huh!”
Wiping blood from her mouth with her right hand, Sara jumps up on her feet, then reaches down to her right side and unsheathes a bowie knife. The blade is razor sharp from hours of tedious work and glistens even in the shadowy darkness. The stranger lunges forward, dragging a useless right leg one step at a time. Bracing herself for the incoming attack, Sara waits for the precise moment to strike back. With three quick steps and a high jump, she squares off eye to eye as she flies through the air, swinging the knife in a roundhouse-style swoop.
The knife plunges deep into her attacker’s head, knocking him off his feet, the sound close to a watermelon being smashed open. He slumps to the floor with hardly a whimper, and apparently he will suffer no longer. As Sara pulls the knife blade out of this animal on the floor, she is aware of another presence in the hallway. Looking down the hall, she sees a shadowy figure emerge from an open bedroom. Still gagging from the initial attack and rubbing her throat, she slowly squats down to pick up the revolver. Raising the revolver as she stands up, Sara squeezes the trigger as the next assassin races to her.
The gun misfires, making a sharp click.
“
Crap
.”
Spinning around in the direction she came in, Sara grabs the backpack, slinging it over her shoulder, and runs out the front door. Close behind and on her heels, the fiend is closing in on her as she reaches a wood swing set that hangs from rusty chains, a large weeping willow towering above. He reaches out to grab her but misses as she jumps onto the swing, standing up to swing it forward. With her momentum and speed, she swings it forward in a huge arc skyward. As the swing reaches the top of the arc, she spins it around to face her attacker. With maximum momentum, she is flying back down to the faceless fiend, throwing the solid wood two-by-six bottom board of the seat into the stomach of her assailant.
