Rapture: Survivor Chronicles 1

Rapture: Survivor Chronicles Book 1

  Mike Sutton

  Copyright 2010 Mike Sutton

  ISBN 978-0-557-44731-2

  In peace and prosperity states and individuals are actuated by higher principles because they do not find themselves face to face with imperious necessities. – Thucydides

  Jim rolled over onto his side, pulling the covers up over his head to shield his eyes and ward off the encroaching sunlight. He groaned as he moved, knowing that he was fully awake. Even knowing that he was awake, he still wasn’t willing to give up the ghost and submit to consciousness yet.

  He stretched is arm out and slid his hand towards the side of his bed where his wife slept. She had been feeling ill the night before, so they had gone to bed without making love. Which was unusual for them since they had been trying for a second child. Not to mention, they still enjoyed the act, even after five years of marriage, despite what all of the comedians had always said. His hand found nothing but empty mattress.

  The cold empty spot beside him caused Jim to wonder where his wife had gotten off to so early. And when she had left. Finally surrendering to the inevitable, he pried open his eyes and let the early-morning sunshine wash over him. He lay there for a moment, adjusting to the light before looking at the clock on Alex’s nightstand. The red digits spelled out 8:12 AM. Not too dreadfully early as he had expected, but early enough. They had made plans the night before to sleep in that morning and then perhaps spend the day in bed.

  That had been the plan, and they were going to take it as far as they could, enjoying every minute abed that they could scrape together. Until Meredith woke them up.

  Meredith. Their own alarm clock. She had been crying earlier, he had thought. But then, before he was forced to get up and see what was wrong, the crying had ceased, letting him drift back into the land of dreams. That had all happened, oh, an hour, perhaps two, before. Time became meaningless when you didn’t watch the clock.

  Alex must have gotten up in his stead, and then decided not to come back to bed after all. A violation of their agreement. He would have to make her pay for that. A severe punishment to fit the transgression. When he found her, he was going to tickle his wife until she laughed so hard that she couldn’t breathe.

  Jim finally kicked the covers off him. Beige blankets, she called the color peach, they were covered in a scrolling vine pattern along the border. She had picked them out and then yelled at him when he nodded blankly when she asked what he thought. He had thought that they looked warm and comfortable. Besides that, it didn’t much matter.

  Free from the covers at last, Jim stretched. His joints cracked popped as he flexed his muscles and straightened his limbs. His body was beginning to sound like his father’s. The thought made him laugh. Until he realized that now he was thinking fondly of next year’s lawnmower models, and what kinds of features they might have. Shaking his head at the revelation, he kicked his feet out over the edge of the bed, put them on the floor and stood up.

  The air was warm, so he didn’t feel much need to find his robe before leaving the bedroom in search of his errant wife and daughter. Jim scratched himself luxuriantly before he opened the bedroom door. It felt good, and he would enjoy it while he could. If Alex caught him, there would be hell to pay. After all, she didn’t marry a man to expect to have him act like a man. Nope, his days of coarseness were behind him. While she was watching.

  He stopped in front of the mirror for a moment. Grinning at his severe case of bed hair, he poked himself in his expanding paunch with his index finger. He was getting soft, just like Alexander’s old man kept saying. He did a couple of deep knee bends before saying ‘too hell with it’ out loud and going to find the missing girls. Ever since he had gotten his black belt in Judo, he had gotten lazy and let himself go a little. Sure, he still lifted weights, but he had given up his daily run to spend more time with his girls, and there were so many donuts to eat at work when the day got slow, which got even worse since the captain started enforcing the non-waste policy for food. His gun belt didn’t fit right anymore. Tickling and food, then a shower afterwards. Despite his goofy looking hair. He was on a mission.

  The wooden floor made all of the appropriate squeaks as he trod barefoot across its varnished length. He listened as he walked. The house was quiet, except for the ticking of the large grandfather clock in the front hallway. A gift from her parents. Devoid of the usual morning, rise and shine, breakfast making and television watching sounds that usually accompanied their weekends at home. Unusual and slightly jarring.

  Jim wondered what the two of them were up to, if not watching television and eating breakfast. Perhaps Alex was still feeling ill, and fell asleep in Meredith’s room after checking on her. She hadn’t done that sort of thing since their daughter was two months old and she was still a worrying mother hen, determined to watch over her new baby night and day. Thankfully Alex had grown out of that phase.

  He reached out and touched the Display as he passed. The Display carried all of the war trophies brought home by the men in his family. His father’s AK-47 from Vietnam. His grandfather’s samurai sword and Japanese flag that he had taken as a marine in the Pacific theatre. And the 1911 Model .45 that his great grandfather had carried in the First World War. All were fully functional weapons, and from time to time, he took them out and admired them some times he even used the fire arms.

  Neither of them were anywhere downstairs, nor was there any sign of their recent passing. No dishes in the sink, or cereal boxes left out on the table. This oversight confirmed for him that his earlier suspicion was correct. He would now have to go and rescue his beautiful wife from sleeping on the hard floor, and carry her back down stairs to her warm and comfortable bed. A noble and charitable deed that would no doubt win him many nookie points with her. This spurred him on a little faster.

  The banister creaked under his hand as he took hold of it and pulled himself forward onto the first step up to their second floor. The old Cape Cod house was just that, and it made a boatload of strange noises for all occasions to make sure its occupants were fully aware that it was past its prime. The house groaned like an old man with numerous war wounds that were constantly paining him.

  Their first storm there had been an eye opening experience, with the two of them expecting the house to collapse around their ears at any moment as it shuddered with each oncoming gale. The in-laws, on both sides offered to buy them a new home, but they declined. The cape cod was theirs and they loved it despite its (often loud) quirks.

  Jim climbed with as much silence as he could muster. The stairs existed in the same squeaky fashion as the floors, and didn’t give much to the cause of stealth, especially when a full-grown man was trying to ninja his way to the top. His sockless feet stuck to the bare wood as he lifted them, making a squinching sound on each stair. Quiet meant slow, so he held in his impatience in check.

  Portraits of their various family members that followed the stairs upward and down stared out at him, smiling, as he passed. A strange feeling since a number of the faces represented in those photos wouldn’t be smiling if they were actually sharing the same room with him. He wasn’t overly popular in Alex’s family’s camp, though he did get along fairly well with her folks. They let it be known, loudly at times when they had been socially lubricated, that they felt she had married far below her station. His family agreed with that notion. And to be honest, so did he. But he wasn’t about to question his good luck now.

  The door to little Mere’s room, at the end of the hall, stood halfway open. He could see his wife’s backside as she squatted down in the middle of the flo
or, holding her hands in front of her face. She was still wearing the panties and t-shirt that she had gone to sleep in the night before.

  Squatting in the middle of the floor wasn’t exactly how he had expected to find her when he had awoke that morning, and it struck him as odd that she sat there like that at 8am on her morning off, but women were strange creatures. Wonderfully exotic and alluring. But weird.

  He crept along until he reached the doorway behind her. Pushing the door open a little more and admitting himself to the room, he stopped. He smelled blood. He could see blood. It had pooled all over the floor.

  Jim stepped further into his daughter’s room, getting closer to his wife. Alex pulled something away from her face, and made chewing movements with her jaw. The blood. Realization tried to smite him, but failed to penetrate the shield of shock that clouded his brain.

  Jim reached out a hand and took his wife by the shoulder. Desperately telling himself that everything he saw was a nightmare. Just a nightmare. Maybe he had caught her fever and was still lying in bed, dreaming the entire horrifying scenario. Maybe she would pinch him and he would wake up and the loathsome images would fade away. A memory to drudge up when he saw his shrink next.

  Alex turned at his touch and faced him. Her clothing was covered with blood as it ran from her lips and dripped off of her chin and down her chest. She dropped the shredded fleshy mash that she had been devouring, grabbed his hand and bit it, taking two joints from his index finger.

  Jim screamed from the duality of surprise as well as pain. Cupping his injured hand and pulling it away from his wife’s blood drenched lips. It wasn’t a terrible fever nightmare that he was in. This wasn’t even a dream.

  He backed away two steps before he doubled over and threw up all over one of Meredith’s stuffed animal toys. Alex was on him before he could right himself once more and stand up. He was weakened by the shock of what he had seen and what she had done to him. He tried to push her away and failed.

  She bit him again on the cheek before he could force her back and flee the bedroom and run back down the stairs past those happy faces. He ran, but it was too late. He had caught her illness.