The Fall (Book 1)

  The Fall

  The Fall Book 1

  Mark Mathews

  Contents

  Copyright

  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

  Copyright © 2016 by Mark Mathews

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Chapter One

  In the Midwestern town of Treble you can never be too prepared. It was a typical Thursday night, and Garrett Witmer was doing the grocery shopping. The woman in front of him at the checkout finally had finished paying for her hundreds of bags of cat treats, so now it was his turn to start unloading. The cashier was watching him every now and then out of the corner of her eye, giving him curious little looks as she admired his tall muscular appearance which was accentuated by his short hair and tanned skin. After his tenth can of ravioli, she gave him a smile and decided to start a conversation.

  “That’s a lot of cans there. Are you expecting the apocalypse or something?” Garrett looked down at her name tag. It said Sandy.

  “Well, Sandy, you just never know what’s going to happen from one day to the next. The Boy Scouts have it right, always be prepared.”

  Sandy didn’t comment any further, and Garrett took his cart full of bags and pushed it out into the parking lot. When he paused for a moment to let his eyes adjust to the bright sun, his cell phone rang. Pulling it out of the pocket of his jeans, he flipped it open quickly and read the display. Alice. His ex-wife was calling. A bittersweet feeling rushed through him, like it always did when he thought of her, and answered.

  “Well, hello there. How are you and the kids doing?”

  “Oh, they’re fine. Always getting into everything, but they’re great. My ultrasound went fine this morning, too. So I guess we’re all just making it through the day.” There was a smile in her voice, and he loved the fact they could keep their conversation light and full of humor.

  “They’re clamoring for you already, so I told them they could come over to your place for dinner. I should be there to drop them off in about an hour.”

  “Sounds great. I’ll pump them full of sugar and soda then drop them back at your place.”

  Alice laughed and told him she had to go. Garrett made his way across the parking lot to his car and commenced with loading the heavy bags of cans into the trunk of his car. Thoughts of what he could make for dinner wound themselves back and forth through his mind. He finally settled on spaghetti and meatballs as he returned the cart to the corral, then hopped in his car and went home.

  Upon arrival, he bypassed the kitchen with its inviting pantry and made a beeline for the sturdy wooden door leading down into the basement. With his hands full of bag handles, he had a bit of a hard time trying to get the door open, but managed. Flipping the switch at the top of the banister, light flooded the room, showing off his careful planning. He’d been buying extra canned food for a long time, and now he looked proudly at the shelves weighing heavy under their burden. Garrett prided himself on being able to get this whole place organized. He’d spent a week putting up all the shelves, and months filling them. Now he was rewarded with a Grade A disaster bunker he knew could keep him and his family safe for a very long time, should the need ever arise.

  It took him about a half an hour to get all the cans put away in his carefully cataloged system, but he wouldn’t leave the basement without checking his weapons first. In addition to the food, he’d made sure to store a couple of weapons in plastic containers that would protect them from mold and moisture until he had the need to use them. After his final once over of the basement, he carefully locked the door behind him and proceeded into the kitchen to start dinner. It wouldn’t do to have the kids coming over hungry and not feed them.

  Garrett was just stirring the meat sauce again, after letting it simmer, when the doorbell rang. He wiped his hands on a dish towel and went to answer. Brooke and Jenny, his little princesses, came barreling through the door, both talking at once. Brooke was tall and of an athletic build like himself and tan skin, while Jenny closely resembled her mother with her dark skin while they both shared their mother's long dark curly hair. He laughed as he took turns hugging him, and glanced over their shoulders at Alice. She was having some difficulty trying to carry their bags up the stairs to the front door, while still clinging onto the railing. Garrett looked his ex-wife over for a moment, her very dark brown eyes matched the coffee complexion of her skin and her long curly hair complimented her tall figure.

  “How about you guys go get your bags and bring them to your rooms? That really would help your mother out.”

  Jenny jumped to her feet and spun around to grab the bag from her mom, while Brooke looked almost bored when she passed by Garrett, headphones firmly in place. He chuckled at the spectacle and went to help Alice. Her pregnancy was no longer a secret, and it was getting more and more difficult for her to get around. A pang of guilt went through him. If they still were living together, he might be able to help out more than just giving her a break when it was his time with the kids. Jenny came back down the stairs, a proud smile on her face.

  “Dad? Can I go out to the garden and poke around a little? I’m sure it’s gotten completely overgrown while I was gone.” Garrett smiled at her and shooed her out the door.

  “I still don’t see why you have a garden with the farmers market a half mile down the road from you,” Alice teased. He shrugged.

  “It’s a hobby of mine, so sue me. There’s just something about the pride that comes from growing your own food that you worked hard to take care of.”

  Alice rolled her eyes. Gardening wasn’t exactly a strong suit of hers, and Garrett often had joked she had a black thumb because she killed everything she touched. It was funny that Jenny could be so like her father that she’d begged him to make her a patch of dirt where she could have her own garden. Garrett had obliged, and every time she was over, she was consumed with making sure everything was growing wonderfully, as well as feeding the family. There was something about that special smile that she had when she proudly announced that the vegetables that they were eating had come from her own garden. Garrett changed the subject.

  “How are you holding up? No offense, but you’re getting to be pretty huge. Do you need any help?”

  “I’m doing just fine. Don’t you worry about me. I know I look really fat right now, but I swear it’ll go away again. It did the first two times.”

  She smiled at him, but the skin around the corners of her mouth was drawn, and she had sunken hollows under her eyes, proving she hadn’t been sleeping all that well lately.

  “Alice, you don’t have to always be so strong. The kids are here for you, and they can help you. I know you don’t like having others help you or do anything for you, but when it comes to your health and the health of the baby, you should swallow your pride and ask. It’s a strong woman who can ask for help when she needs it.” Garrett had given her this speech numerous times, but it never really seemed to sink in past the surface of a strained smile and a fake promise that she wouldn’t overdo it.

  “I’ll see what I can do. How have you been?”

 
Changing the subject was a tactic that Alice had mastered a long time ago, and Garrett had simply let her do it with a heavy sigh, knowing that whatever it was that he was trying to convince her to do was now a moot point.

  “I’m good. Can’t complain, really. Same cycle every day.”

  A silence lengthened, and it was with some relief that the two of them turned to the back door when Jenny came in, hands full of veggies and dirt smudges on her face and hands.

  “Here you go! I hope I got enough for tonight! You’re making spaghetti, right?”

  “You know I am. I can’t get anything past that sharp nose of yours…which is currently very dirty. Go get cleaned up and I’ll chop up your veggies for dinner.”

  Jenny bounced out of the kitchen happily, and Alice smiled in her direction. Garrett turned toward the sink and began washing the tomatoes she’d brought in.

  “Well, I guess I’ll just be on my way. You guys have a good night. Enjoy your dinner.”

  Alice waddled toward the door, and Garrett looked up quickly, mouth open to say something, but he couldn’t get a word past his lips. Instead, he just shut his mouth and scrubbed the tomatoes a little harder than was necessary. Jenny came back into the kitchen, smelling faintly of soap, and set to work getting the table ready. When she was finished, Garrett ladled noodles and meat sauce onto each plate, the shiny chunks of tomato showing through the pasta sauce made her face flush a proud crimson.

  “Go ahead and start eating. I’ll go get Brooke.”

  There was a phase Brooke was going through where she spent every free minute she had on the computer, emailing and chatting with her friends. There had been some weekends that Garrett hadn’t seen her at all except for at meal times. At the top of the stairs he paused to listen. Silence. She probably had her headphones on, still. Knocking on her door didn’t get any response out of her, so Garrett opened the door cautiously and peered in around the crack. She sat at her computer, headphones in, banging away at the keys. He stood still for just a second, marveling at how quickly she could type and multitask when she looked things up in multiple windows. He was pretty handy around a computer himself, but Brooke was something of a genius with them. Putting a hand gently on her shoulder made her jump almost an inch out of her chair, and she whipped her head around quickly to see who had touched her. When she recognized his face, her eyes lost their wideness and she pulled a bud from one ear.

  “Hey. What’s up?” The slang grated on Garrett, but there was nothing he could do. This was how most teenagers talked nowadays.

  “Dinner’s ready. Can you unplug yourself long enough to come eat with us?”

  Her cheeks flushed pink and she took her headphones off, casually blocking the screen from his view with her body in the process. She followed him out of the room, down the stairs and toward the dining room table.

  “Guess what?” Neither one of them had even gotten the chance to sit down before Jenny was bouncing in her seat.

  “The tomatoes in the sauce came from the garden! I brought them in myself.” There was a television in the dining room, and while they settled down to eat, Garrett casually flicked the remote to get it turned on.

  “Mom never lets us watch tv when it’s dinner time.” Brooke rolled her eyes.

  “He’s not letting you watch tv just to make you happy. He’s doing it to watch for a natural disaster that is never going to happen.”

  Garrett wished that she wouldn’t sound so sure that everything was always going to be alright. It wasn’t always that simple, and that was why he had this survivalist prepper bunker going on in the basement. He finally found a station that was playing the news, and currently they were on the weather. The news anchor broke in with a special bulletin, but before she could say what was going on, the tv started to go fuzzy, then turned to static. Panic bloomed in Garrett’s chest, and he could feel his adrenaline working overtime.

  “What happened?” Jenny had wide eyes and was looking at her father, but Brooke huffed under her breath and rolled her eyes.

  “It’s just a power surge. It happens all the time.”

  A loud whistling noise drew their attention upward, and they turned their faces in that direction, as if they could see through the roof at what was going on.

  “That’s a plane, but it sounds like it’s way too low for comfort. I’m going to go take a look. You guys stay here.”

  The words were hardly out of Garrett’s mouth, when a booming crash rattled the windowpanes. He jumped up and went to the front door, checking through the peephole before he dared opening it. It was clear, and he unchained the lock hesitantly. When he stuck his head out the door, he saw the source of the crash. It was indeed a plane, as he’d thought, and it had been flying much lower than it should have been. It crashed in the middle of the street, a few houses down.

  “Wow! Are they okay, Dad? Should we go try helping them?”

  Jenny and Brooke had stolen silently up behind him, and now were looking over his shoulder and under his arm to see the carnage. Garrett was frozen in shock, and he could see neither one of his daughters quite could grasp what was going on. Granted, he didn’t quite know himself, but he wanted them both in the house where he felt they would be safer. Whatever was going on, it couldn’t be good.

  “Go back to the TV and see if they can tell us anything.”

  Chapter Two

  Garrett’s heart was pounding loudly enough that he was sure his children would hear it. It was happening. Everything he had done to prepare suddenly seemed like it wasn’t enough. He would have to make do with the preparations he’d made. Shaking his head to focus back on the current situation, he saw both of his girls hadn’t moved an inch. He didn’t want them to be out here if anything else happened. His earlier order to go in the house had been ignored, so now he ushered the girls back in the house by gently guiding them with his arms, brooking no argument.

  “Girls, let’s go back in the house. Come on, I’ll tell you what’s going on.”

  Reluctantly, the girls went back into the house, going to sit on the couch in the living room so they could listen to the story.

  “I know it’s going to be hard to believe, but there’s been an EMP attack.”

  Before he could say anything else, Brooke rolled her eyes and huffed in an annoyed manner.

  “Dad, stop it! All you ever do is talk about conspiracy theories and the apocalypse! Don’t you understand that that makes you weird? Don’t you know that kids think we’re weird, too, because of the stuff you talk about? Do you know Jenny gets teased about you hoarding canned food like a rat? I don’t want to sit here and listen to another conspiracy theory!”

  The outburst made Garrett stop dead in his tracks. He’d had no idea his daughter was getting teased, and he felt a little guilty that it was because of him, but that couldn’t be helped. He only was making sure his family would survive the worst the world had to offer.

  “Is that true, Jenny?” He waited with baited breath as his younger daughter nodded her head slowly.

  “I’m so sorry, honey. Why didn’t you tell me about all this?”

  The girl looked at the floor and shrugged her shoulders. He had to get the house ready for the worst, but it tore at his heartstrings that he was making his daughter’s life harder than it had to be.

  “I need you to go around the house and find every plastic container you can that will hold water, okay? Can you do that for me?” Jenny nodded again and stood up to obey. Brooke rolled her eyes at him again and stared in the opposite corner.

  “Can you humor me this once and help her, please?”

  The silence stretched between Garrett and Brooke for a few minutes, but finally Brooke growled something unintelligible and headed up the stairs to help her sister. As soon as she made it to her bedroom, Brooke grabbed her cell phone off the charger, not even noticing that the green light indicating the phone was charging wasn’t on. She flipped the phone open and started dialing her mother’s number. Maybe she could talk some sen
se into her father. The last number was dialed, and she hit the send button, but when she held it up to her ear, there was no ringing sound. Brooke hit redial and tried again, but there was nothing coming from the phone.

  “What’s wrong with this stupid thing?” The question was rhetorical, because she wasn’t expecting anyone to answer, but her father had watched what had happened from the doorway.

  “Here, Brooke, try this instead. I gave your mom one a long time ago, just in case of emergencies.”

  He handed her what looked like an old CB radio. Brooke gave him a look that said there was no way she was going to use that thing with him around and give him the satisfaction. So Garrett closed the door behind him and went to find as many containers as he could. Brooke stared at the contraption in her hands like it was an alien. Gritting her teeth in disbelief that she actually was going to do this, she took the contraption to her bed and sat down. Turning it on, she saw the channel already had been set, so she picked up the mouth piece and cautiously pushed the talk button.

  “Mom? Are you there? It’s me, Brooke.”

  A minute or two of static assaulted her ears. She was just about to reprimand herself for giving in to her father’s conspiracy theories when her mother’s voice floated up from the black box in her lap.

  “Brooke? Are you guys okay? What happened over there?” Now that she had contact with her mom, she sat up straight and started talking rapidly into the mouth piece.

  “You’re not going to believe this, but a plane crashed right in the middle of the road, just a couple of houses down the street, and I don’t know how, but it’s so weird. Dad thinks some kind of attack happened, and he’s got Jenny looking for all the plastic bottles in the house to store water. He thinks this is the end of the world, and he’s got so many conspiracy theories I don’t even try keeping them straight anymore. He’s the one who’s weird. He won’t even let us go outside right now. Can you come and get us? I don’t want to be a part of this crazy fantasy of his.” When she finally paused for breath, she listened hard for an answer.