BARREN: Book 1 - War in the Ruins (A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller) Read online

  I can’t step foot on land. I just can’t.

  She stared at what was left of the dock with a thin sneer on her face. The tainted soil whispered to her, threatening to pull her under if she dared walk on it.

  The dead own this place and I don’t want to join them.

  She heard a distant cry that stole the breath from her lips. She paused and listened, head cocked to one side, eyes tight. There it was again. Katy could not convince herself that it was an animal. The voice was human—a child. She shivered and turned around, scanning the ruins for Decker.

  She crawled to the edge of the boat, looking down at the thin strip of sand between the lake and the hunks of dock remaining on the shore. Her pulse quickened and she felt her head swimming with echoes of the past and warnings from the future.

  You’ll die in the ruins. Everyone who goes in there does.

  She shivered and looked again at the hole in her sail. She scanned the shore where she had last seen Decker.

  “I can’t abandon him,” she said to herself. “Even if I find something to repair the sail, I can’t leave Decker behind.”

  As if taking the plunge into water, Katy climbed over the railing, closed her eyes and dropped to the ground. Her feet smacked upon the hardened sand and she stood, her eyes still closed. When she opened them, the ruins remained in place—dark and silent. She took a first step and then another, her feet weighed down with the gravity and boldness of her move. Katy had not touched the mainland since she had escaped the chaos of the end. It had been years since she’d walked on pavement.

  A dog barked. Her dog. She thought she heard distant screams but couldn’t quite tell if they were real or in her head.

  She pictured Decker in her mind and used that to propel her legs forward. Katy stepped over hunks of wood and other unidentifiable objects, some tossed here by the night’s storm and others deposited by the tide over time. With each step, she expected a dead hand to grab her ankle or a mob of demons to come running at her from the ruins. When that didn’t happen, she worked to slow her breathing and moved in the direction of Decker’s bark.

  Katy felt the raw, dull pain of a sore throat and gave Decker a whistle.

  No response.

  Katy climbed up an embankment until she felt the relatively uniform hardness of asphalt beneath her feet. Her toes had numbed from the frigid rain so she pushed them down harder, enjoying the reminder of a time when things were more certain, stable. She almost smiled, her fear and anxiety of the destruction on the mainland tempered with a nostalgic rush of recognition.

  Katy was about to turn to the east and head toward the warehouse at the yacht club when she heard the slapping of paws and panting coming from the tree line, fifty yards to her right. Decker trotted along the asphalt path, his tongue lolling and a giddy-up in his gait as he made eye contact with Katy. The woman bent down and took Decker into her arms.

  “You scared me, buddy. Thought you went on an adventure and weren’t coming back.”

  The dog licked her face but did not bark as if he also sensed danger.

  “We gotta find at least a three-by-three hunk of sail to repair ours. Doubtful we’re going to find one intact in the warehouse at the yacht club after all these years.”

  Decker turned to face the building as if he understood his owner.

  Katy inhaled and scanned the remains of the warehouse for movement. “Let’s go check it out.”

  She stared at the darkened shore. A half-moon had climbed from beneath the storm and cast a silver glow on the sand, softening the years of decay. The light made the ruin look like a still-life painting. She looked deeper into the gloom. Katy did not detect the scent of fire and saw no movement or light.

  “Doesn’t mean there aren’t bandits lying in wait or taking up camp in the old warehouse.”

  Or something else...

  “What do you think, boy? Did you hear those screams before?”

  Decker ran ahead, ignoring her question. Katy took a deep breath and followed her dog.

  They approached the warehouse and, for a moment, a memory floated across Katy’s vision. She remembered the dock before it all went down. A warehouse at the yacht club overseeing a flurry of fun and frivolity on the shores of Lake Erie. She saw the tall windows on the second floor and a covered porch running the length of the building where old sailors had once sat on rocking chairs, each trying to convince the others that he held the record for the longest freshwater bass catch.

  Katy stopped and shook her head. The wound had stopped bleeding, but the dizziness wasn’t gone completely. When she looked again, the warehouse sliced through her memory. The rear wall remained, but the entire front of the building was gone. The remnants of diesel-fueled flames had painted the panels with dark streaks of ash that had since attracted various species of fungi. The tiny, white mushrooms looked like disembodied eyes stuck to the wall. She could see the sectioned stalls where boats would be towed and then repaired before heading back out to the dock. If there was a sail or even a part of one left, she stood the best chance of finding it here.

  Decker barked.

  “I know. Pretty doubtful. But we have to look.”

  As if agreeing with her, Decker ran into the old warehouse. Katy followed, stepping around roof joists and hunks of boats left in varying states of destruction. She scanned the walls, seeing no sails left in storage. Even the metallic tool chests had been plundered and lay rotting in bands of red rust. Katy sighed, knowing they’d probably have to camp here for the night and then go deeper into the ruins in the morning.

  A night in the ruins. Not sure I have it in me.

  Decker barked again, this time spinning in circles and hopping up onto his hind legs.

  “What did you find, buddy?”

  Beneath the fiberglass panel from a Pearson 10M sailboat, Katy could see the edge of a sail. Decker had his nose in the crevice, sniffing and barking.

  “Sweet,” Katy said. “Way to go, Deck.”

  It wasn’t much, but a piece of white sail stuck out from beneath the panel. Most likely, the fragment of the boat hadn’t been touched in years. When a roof panel fell to the floor, a sail had been trapped, protecting it from the elements. Katy pushed the panel aside to reveal a six-foot by six-foot hunk of sail, the brightness of the polyester almost blinding in the dark, burnt-out warehouse.

  “That will definitely work,” she said to Decker.

  Katy bent down and pulled the sail off the ground, shaking a few worms and spiderwebs from the side that had been facing the floor. She rolled it up and tucked it under one arm.

  “Let’s get out of here.”

  Decker ran ahead, toward the open side of the warehouse and in the direction of the docks where their boat awaited, moored unnaturally by the sudden storm. Katy followed, glancing over her shoulder at the warehouse and the hulking, black monoliths that had once been the skyscrapers of downtown Cleveland. She shivered despite the bead of sweat breaking on her forehead.

  Katy stopped and gazed toward the barren city. She saw no movement, heard no cries and could not smell anything but the moldy, decomposing growth on the edge of the lake. Her stomach fluttered and she could hear her heart beating in her ears. Her mouth dried and she felt as though the air had suddenly gotten thin.

  Ghosts. Everyone there is dead. Except Tara. My girl made it out. Someday, I’m going to find her and we’ll sail away together.

  Decker barked, breaking Katy from her trance. She turned to face the lake, no longer feeling the urge to speak with the mass graveyard that had once been a city. The dead would rest and the living had long since left.

  When Katy reached the asphalt path next to the old docks, she froze. Decker stood, facing the lake and contemplating a swim in the now-tranquil waters.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Katy said.

  Her boat was still stuck between the old dock posts, but it listed to one side. She leapt into the water, bent down and ran her hand along the bow. That was when she felt t
he surge of water pulling her hand in toward the boat. She leaned forward and stuck her fist through a hole in the hull about six inches above where the waterline would normally be.

  CHAPTER 3

  “C’mon, boy.”

  Katy felt Decker brush against her leg as she stared out at the ruins. She wasn’t sure what to call it. It was technically still Cleveland. But not. It was ruined. After everything collapsed, fell in upon itself, Katy had stayed as far away from the city as possible. It wasn’t a difficult choice with all of the fires, the looting and the destruction. Her disdain for the ruins turned into a phobia and by the time Katy was caring for the pregnant women of the survivor clans, she was doing so from the safety of her own boat. She would have sooner walked across hot coals than leave the water. Until now.

  A distant crack, followed by a rumble, broke Katy from her thoughts. It could have been a tree, or a wall or an entire structure. Whatever had fallen was in the distance, adding to the existing destruction.

  Katy would have to move closer to the city if she hoped to find a piece of sheet metal, or a slice of fiberglass or even a quarter panel from an old car. With the hole in the hull being above the current waterline, it wasn’t big enough to worry about, but it had to be repaired soon or her boat would eventually join the others on the bottom of Lake Erie.

  Finding something to cover the hole was not the problem. Keeping it watertight would be. Katy hoped to stumble across a local hardware store or a big box mart. Those places would have been looted and destroyed long ago, but Katy didn’t think tube caulking was a prize the looters would have coveted. If she could find a single, unopened tube, she could use it to seal the patch covering the hole in her boat. But to do that, she’d have to not only remain on land, but enter the ruins.

  “Up the Shoreway or along Route 2? Which way, Deck?”

  Decker sniffed the air and trotted toward the parking lot of the Edgewater Yacht Club that sat along Route 2. The byway ran parallel to the lake, separating the shore from the city. Any street or avenue running south off of Route 2 would almost certainly lead to a neighborhood. And where there were neighborhoods, there were neighborhood hardware stores.

  “Route 2 it is.”

  Decker’s ears came up and he sniffed the air. Katy felt the low grumble in the dog’s throat even before she heard it. She leapt behind the mangled, steel flesh of what had once been a delivery van. Thorny vines crawled through the wreckage like intestines. Decker brushed past her ankles as he climbed deeper into the wreck. Katy smelled something burning, an unnatural bitter tang like melted plastic. She saw flashes of light coming from inside a three-story building that stood between two one-story piles of rubble. Shouts came from within, piercing the dead tranquility of the ruins. She pushed down a vine with her right hand to better see what was happening less than fifty yards from their hiding spot.

  It looked like a tall girl. The figure ran, long hair bouncing off her shoulders and the whites of the girl’s eyes shining from within a face covered in grime. It was dark and she was sprinting, but even so, Katy saw the girl’s wide eyes and mouth twisted in panic. Several man-sized figures lumbered through the building while others marched on the streets in front of it. They held torches and towered a foot or two taller than the girl.

  Monsters.

  That was the only word that came to mind. The creatures wore tattered robes and carried steel weapons that flashed in the torchlight. They had a feral smell, like a pack of rabid dogs. And they were chasing the girl. But it wasn’t until Katy caught glimpses of their heads that she felt the knot grow in her stomach. They all wore masks. Each one appeared unique, carved out of wood and some were painted. The masks had huge eyes and snarling grins. Some had painted fangs while others had pointed teeth carved into the masks. Even at a short distance and at night, Katy could tell that the monsters were also intelligent. The masks muffled the words, made the voices sound the same.

  Coordinated.

  They organized their pursuit of the girl, methodically chasing her in the direction they probably wanted her to go. Several ran hard and fanned out to flank her while others walked with a measured pace in a direct line toward the girl. They formed a virtual funnel and were trying to get the girl to enter it.

  Let it go, Katy. Not your fight. You don’t know what those things are and you’re only one woman. They’ll kill you, too.

  Decker whined and Katy put her hand on the dog’s head. They waited as the monsters continued to pursue the girl to the east. The flames of the torches and the cries died out. Katy waited another hour, every few minutes imagining she could see the flicker of returning torches, before finally willing herself to leave her hiding spot. She looked down at Decker, over her shoulder at the lake and then back toward the ruins.

  “C’mon, boy.”

  They continued on Route 2 until they reached the open sore that used to be the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The building’s glass façade had once faced the city. The windows were one of the first casualties of the riots. The interior was burnt to cinder, and even all of these years later, Katy could still smell the fried plastic. Wires dangled from cracked, steel beams and a few vehicles sat clumped at one end of the plaza. Weeds grew between the paving stones, some eight or nine feet tall, although Katy knew the harsh winter would knock them back down again, revealing the Hall’s mortal wounds.

  Katy kept one eye on the road, careful not to trip and impale herself on exposed metal or rebar protruding from reinforced concrete. She surveyed the ruins, scanning for movement or light. Looking for monsters. The grinding noises coming from beneath the ground would continue and she had to ignore those. The Earth would continue to groan for hundreds of years until the weeds and wild brush grew over the debris and pried the land from man’s concrete fist.

  They passed a block of burnt-out structures with two-by-fours reaching into the night sky, the studs scorched and broken like blackened teeth. Most cars that survived the initial fires of the riots had been stripped to their frames over the years. Blue plastic bags lay in the streets while others stuck on tree branches like artificial leaves.

  Plastic shopping bags and cockroaches. That’s all that’ll be left.

  Decker ran ahead and turned a corner. Katy followed. The old neighborhood sat a block off of East 9th Street, a small community with houses that predated the Rock Hall and the glass-covered high-rises that once surrounded it. Katy couldn’t remember the neighborhood’s name, although she thought she had once enjoyed a latte and a chocolate-almond biscotti at the Italian bakery on the corner. She turned to her right and saw the remnants of a three-store strip mall. The windows were blown out of the last store on the right, but the roof appeared intact. A metal sign dangled from the top. Although the fading paint was difficult to read in the darkness, Katy could see “Great Lakes Hard” on the far left side of the sign.

  “Hardware,” she said to Decker who was busy digging through a pile of debris. “Could be our lucky night.”

  Katy crossed the street, her eyes darting from one ruined structure to another. There had to be people living in these things. Had to be. Not every survivor would have had access to a boat and a place to ride out the worst of the destruction. Thoughts of what could be lurking in the ruins returned, so Katy picked up her pace and stared into the broken window of the old hardware store.

  She paused, feeling as though there were eyes on her. Katy spun around, her eyes darting across through the shadows. She looked at the gaping maw of the hardware store and then back toward the ruins, her feet cemented in place.

  “I’m not sure I can stay on the mainland. What do you think, Decker?”

  Decker trotted through the empty doors of the hardware store and Katy followed. Water dripped from deep within the old shop. The moon shifted in the sky, illuminating the front half of the ground floor. Katy could see rusted display racks jumbled among the bright red plastic gasoline cans.

  “That damn plastic will last forever.”

  She could see fo
otprints in the charred ash on the floor and knew the store had been searched dozens of times after the initial looting.

  The dog was picking through the trash heaps that gathered over the years. Katy turned back to face the deeper interior of the store. Her last flashlight had quit working two years ago and everything on the boat was soaked in the storm. She didn’t want to go any further without a weapon or a light, but there didn’t seem to be any other way.

  Katy moved through the aisles, or at least what was left of them. Massive holes in the ceiling, which she had not seen from the street, let the moonlight through. She could no longer see Decker or the storefront, but she heard his panting. The bitter, chemical odor of gasoline and burnt plastic mixed with the smell of ragweed and ivy that had grown through the cracked cinder block and climbed toward the holes in the ceiling. The echo of dripping water seemed to surround her and Katy felt her breath hitch in her chest.

  She pushed past a mass of melted white plastic, plumbing PVC pipe that had burned and then re-solidified in horrid, twisted shapes. Katy thought it looked like she was staring into the teeth of the devil.

  “I’m close,” she said under her breath. “Caulk is always near the plumbing supplies.”

  As she turned the corner at the next aisle, she heard a bark from Decker. Katy froze, straining her ears. The dog rarely barked. Two more barks like rapid gunfire sent Katy vaulting over the debris on the floor and running for the front of the store. She leapt over rusted tools and burnt hunks of counter. Katy saw the sidewalk and heard Decker bark again, but she could not see the dog.