Pilgrimage: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Story Read online

  PILGRIMAGE

  A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Story

  Tom Abrahams

  A PITON PRESS BOOK

  PILGRIMAGE

  A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Story

  © Tom Abrahams 2018. All Rights Reserved

  Cover Design by Hristo Kovatliev

  Edited by Felicia A. Sullivan

  Proofread by Pauline Nolet and Patricia Wilson

  Formatted by Stef McDaid at WriteIntoPrint.com

  This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events is purely coincidental. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

  http://tomabrahamsbooks.com

  Click here to join the free PREFERRED READER’S CLUB

  WORKS BY TOM ABRAHAMS

  THE ALT APOCALYPSE SURVIVAL SERIES

  ASH

  LIT

  TORRENT

  THE TRAVELER POST-APOCALYPTIC/DYSTOPIAN SERIES

  HOME

  CANYON

  WALL

  RISING

  BATTLE

  LEGACY

  THE SPACEMAN CHRONICLES POST-APOCALYPTIC THRILLERS

  SPACEMAN

  DESCENT

  RETROGRADE

  MATTI HARROLD POLITICAL CONSPIRACIES

  SEDITION

  INTENTION

  JACKSON QUICK ADVENTURES

  ALLEGIANCE

  ALLEGIANCE BURNED

  HIDDEN ALLEGIANCE

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  PART 1 CROSSING

  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

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  PART 2 REFUGE

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  PART 3 ADVENT

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  CHAPTER 54

  CHAPTER 55

  CHAPTER 56

  CHAPTER 57

  CHAPTER 58

  CHAPTER 59

  CHAPTER 60

  CHAPTER 61

  CHAPTER 62

  CHAPTER 63

  CHAPTER 64

  CHAPTER 65

  CHAPTER 66

  CHAPTER 67

  CHAPTER 68

  CHAPTER 69

  CHAPTER 70

  CHAPTER 71

  CHAPTER 72

  CHAPTER 73

  CHAPTER 74

  CHAPTER 75

  To Courtney, Sam, and Luke

  For whom I would cross mountains and valleys

  Author’s Note

  This novel is the combination of three previously published novellas loosely based on the The Perseid Collapse series of books written by author Steven Konkoly. This is a stand-alone story in which new characters experience the same catalyzing event that begins Konkoly’s series.

  For more about Steven’s genre-defining Perseid Collapse Series click here

  PART 1

  CROSSING

  CHAPTER 1

  EVENT +30:56 Hours

  Acton, Maine

  James Rockwell wrapped his lips around the barrel, still warm from the last time its owner pulled the trigger. It tasted like a mixture of fireworks and the sensation one gets when testing a battery with his tongue. His fingers were linked behind his head. He was on his knees, a rock buried in the thick grass digging into his left shin.

  His wife, Leigh, knelt beside him. She was sobbing, tears streaking down her face. James could tell she was on the verge of hyperventilating. He tried to reach for her, hoping to offer some small comfort, but the psycho with the gun jammed the barrel past James’s teeth, gagging him.

  He could not see his children, Max and Sloane, but he could hear them whimpering. They were on the other side of their mother, forced into the same awkward positions.

  They’ve already been through so much, James thought. After everything…the pain and growth of the last six years…the life-altering chaos of the last day and a half…this is how they will die?

  “You don’t need to kill us,” offered Max, his voice sounding like the strong young man he was becoming. “You have our car. You have our food. Just let us go.”

  “Shut up, runt,” said the would-be executioner. He was dressed in military camouflage fatigues and a matching boonie hat. An AR-style rifle was slung across his back. The strap was pulled tight under his chin. His face was drawn thin, his eyes deep set. “You’re not going anywhere. This is where your road ends.”

  “What are you waiting on?” a voice bellowed from behind the Rockwells. James could hear the man’s boots marching through the wet grass. “If you don’t have the stomach for it, I’ll handle it.”

  “I got this,” replied the executioner. “I’m just deciding how I want to do it. Handgun or rifle.”

  “You use that nine millimeter, you’re gonna get blood all over that nice new MultiCam uni you’re wearing.” The jackbooted thug walked around James and stood next to the executioner. He was older, thicker in the middle. And though he wore the same fatigues and hat as his younger comrade, his rifle and tactical gear were different.

  “I just figured.” The executioner slid the barrel out of James’s mouth and held it up, the gray gunmetal wet from the rain.

  “You’re an idiot,” said the thug. “Plus, you can’t do it out here in the grass. We need to get them into the woods.”

  The rain had started again. It was loud, slapping against the canopy of trees and the pavement nearby. The executioner grabbed James by his elbow and forced him to his feet. The thug went to grab Leigh, but James stepped in front of him.

  “Don’t touch her,” he snapped. “And don’t touch the kids!” James helped his wife to her feet as he coughed. Both kids jumped up and wrapped their arms around their parents.

  “You’re not in a position to demand anything,” the thug snarled before swinging the butt of his rifle into the side of James’s head, knocking him back to the ground.

  “Don’t hurt him!” cried Leigh, huddling with the children. Sloane was knuckling the tattered shell of her stuffed bear, pressing it into her chest.

  The thug glared at her, setting his jaw before inhaling and spitting onto her husband’s neck. “Now get up.” The thug kicked James in the gut with his boot. “We’ve got more important business.”

  Jam
es, dizzied by the hit and winded by the kick, pushed himself onto one knee. He wiped the spit from the back of his neck and looked up at the thug, keeping his gaze affixed on him as he stood.

  “I said,” James wheezed, his voice thick with mucus, “don’t. Touch. Her.”

  “Stop it, Rock,” Leigh pleaded, touching his shoulder. “Enough.”

  “Rock?” The thug laughed. “Did you just call him Rock? That is wicked awesome.” The thug took his thick mitt of a hand and thumped it square in the middle of James’s back. “She called him Rock.” He laughed again for the benefit of the family and the executioner. “Like he’s Dwayne Johnson or something. Like he’s some big movie star.”

  “His name is Rockwell,” answered the executioner. He pulled a brown leather billfold from his pocket and tossed it at the thug. “Says so on his driver’s license. He’s from Maryland.”

  The thug opened up the wallet and thumbed out the license. He flipped it over and slipped it back into place before shoving the wallet into his own pocket. “What are you doing here?”

  “Vacation,” James said, his hands on his knees. He couldn’t catch his breath. “Family vacation.” His voice rattled.

  “Not the R and R you were hoping for, eh, Rock?” The thug snickered. “It’s over now. Let’s march.”

  The executioner holstered his nine millimeter and swung his rifle into his hands. Alongside the thug, the two of them pushed the Rockwells toward the woods fifty yards away.

  James’s mind, cloudy as it was from the rifle butt, was spinning for a solution. How could he save his family, even if it meant sacrificing his life in the process?

  Their captors, armed as they were, seemed sloppy. The younger one was in over his head. The older one was power happy.

  There has to be a way…

  James looked over at his wife, his children. He swallowed hard.

  “Pick up the pace, Rock,” said the executioner. “Keep moving.”

  A wet breeze blew across James’s face, a sign of the approaching fall. He could hear it whispering its way through the trees ahead of him.

  Do something! They were telling him. Save your family.

  He shook his head as he trudged forward, certain the blow to his head had him hearing things. It was that or the lack of sleep.

  You can’t let them die here.

  They were twenty-five yards from the beckoning woods, crossing the pavement of a parking lot entrance, when James wondered if his eyes were playing tricks on him too.

  Facedown in the trampled weeds marking the entrance to the woods were five bodies. Two big, three small. He couldn’t make out whether they were men or women, boys or girls, but that was irrelevant.

  James knew, hallucinations or not, they wouldn’t be the first family to die here. They wouldn’t be the last either, unless he acted quickly…unless he killed first. It was a notion to which the high school physics teacher from Maryland had grown alarmingly accustomed in the last thirty-six hours.

  But he was running out of time.

  CHAPTER 2

  EVENT -06:00 Hours

  Peaks Island, Maine

  A brilliant orange streak arced across the sky, silently burning a path through the Earth’s atmosphere. Another followed.

  James Rockwell was perched on the edge of a weathered Adirondack chair, his children at his feet.

  “What’s a Perseid, Dad?” Sloane was nine years old. “And why is it called a shower? There’s no rain.”

  “It’s a meteor shower,” answered twelve-year-old Max, “because it’s like they’re raining in the sky. They’re called Perseids because they come from the Perseus Constellation.”

  “I couldn’t have said it better myself.” James rubbed the top of his son’s head, tousling a mop of sun-bleached blonde hair. “Where’d you learn that?”

  “Google,” answered the rising seventh grader, who was a spitting image of his father, “and Wikipedia.”

  “You know Wikipedia isn’t always right,” James counseled his son. “You need to fact-check the sources.”

  “That’s why I Googled Google.” Max giggled. “It said the meteors are part of the Swift-Tuttle comet.”

  “Very good,” said James. “And what is a comet?”

  “Ice and dust mostly.” The twelve-year-old shrugged. “Sometimes gas, like when it gets close to the Sun.”

  “Correct.” James leaned back in his chair and looked back up to the sky. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, savoring the moment. The pocket almanac he’d stuffed into his bag at the last second before leaving home had proven worth the purchase. Otherwise, he’d have forgotten the annual astronomical fireworks.

  Still, renting a beach house on an island off Maine’s coast was not his idea of a vacation. He craved adventure-filled, adrenaline-pumping, life-affirming excursions. But Leigh had insisted this year’s getaway should take a sharp one-hundred-eighty-degree spin. She wanted time to relax.

  They’d spent weeks debating the annual trip, going back and forth about what to do at the end of the summer. They were jogging on side-by-side treadmills at the local YMCA when she managed to convince him.

  “We’ve hiked and biked mountains in Colorado,” she reminded him, “and slung ourselves down zip lines in Costa Rica.”

  “Don’t forget spending a night in the Alaskan Wilderness in a tent,” James added.

  “That too.” She laughed in between deep breaths. “We need a break.”

  “A break from once-in-a-lifetime experience?” James questioned.

  “C’mon, Rock,” Leigh huffed, “that’s not what I mean. I think the kids would like a nice, quiet trip too. We don’t have to keep proving we’re alive. No need to thumb our collective noses at Death.”

  That stung. But James understood. Everybody coped with loss differently. He’d forced his mechanism on the rest of his family. They’d acquiesced for six years. Now it was his turn to be pliable.

  “Okay,” he agreed, chugging the final push on the treadmill. It was elevating, spinning faster, challenging him in the final ninety seconds of the workout. “I’ll go wherever you want to go.”

  Leigh, with help from the kids, chose this idyllic cottage on the beach. A ferry’s ride away from Portland, Peaks Island was the most populated island on Casco Bay. “The Coney Island of Maine”, Peak’s Island was a tourist’s dream, replete with ice cream parlors, a market, galleries, and restaurants.

  The rental property sat on a curved narrow strip of sand along the western side of the island. Complete with a small kitchen, sitting room, a bedroom downstairs, and a loft upstairs, it fit the Rockwells. And Leigh was right. The ten days and nights they’d spent relaxing were rejuvenating. Enjoying the meteor shower was the perfect way to end the summer.

  “What are you thinking about?” Leigh was standing over James, holding two cups of hot green tea. “I’ll trade you this tea for your thoughts?”

  James opened his eyes and smiled, sitting up in the chair as he took the steaming cup from his wife. “You,” he said as she sat on his lap and leaned back with her head on his shoulder.

  “Me?” She feigned flattery. “How so?”

  “You were right.” He shifted in the chair to give her more room. “This was a good vacation.”

  “It was, wasn’t it?” She purred before taking a sip of the tea. “The kids enjoyed themselves.”

  James looked at his children on the sand and nodded. Max was growing up so fast. He was smart beyond his years with an interest in mechanics and science. He was a voracious bookworm, as was his younger sister. Sloane was the spitting image of Leigh. She was funny and inquisitive. James knew he’d need to add a shotgun to his armory as she grew older.

  “There’s another one, streaking left to right,” said Max, navigating the sky for his sister. She sat next to him on the beach, clutching her stuffed bear, Noodle.

  Noodle never left Sloane’s clutch. He was worn, missing an eye, and was the patient to Leigh’s surgical sewing kit more times than any
body could count. But he was Sloane’s guardian angel. She’d told them that. They’d allowed her to believe it.

  “Are we all packed?” Leigh asked her husband, rubbing his leg with her hand. “Ready to catch the early ferry?”

  “Yep.” James nodded. “If we get up at five thirty, we can probably catch the six-fifteen. If we miss it, no big deal. There’s one an hour later.”

  “If we get up at five thirty,” she countered, “it’ll be the one an hour later. I’m not getting ready that quickly.”

  “No problem,” he said. “But I don’t want to get the kids up earlier than five thirty. They’ll be cranky as it is.”

  “I’ll miss this place.” She sighed, taking another sip. “Maybe we should consider coming back next summer.” She nudged him for effect.

  “Maybe.” He chuckled. “But only if they add a high-intensity obstacle course, a zip line, and somebody starts offering shark diving.” He slapped her rear with the palm of his hand.

  “Ha!” She laughed. “I’ll look into that for you.”

  “You do that.” He took a sip of his tea. It was hot and singed the tip of his tongue.

  “Time for the kids to hit the sack?” she asked. “Then we’ll have a few minutes to ourselves.”

  “A few minutes?” he replied, sliding the tip of his tongue on the back of his front teeth. “That’s more than I’ll need, right?”

  “You’re awful.” She slapped his chest and sat up. “I’ll put them down. You clean the kitchen.”

  “Deal.”

  It was the end of the vacation, the final moments of the world they knew. It was good they didn’t know what was coming.

  CHAPTER 3

  EVENT -00:00 Hours

  Peaks Island, Maine

  James woke up to a bright red light engulfing the loft. He squinted, shielded his eyes as they adjusted, and sat up in bed. Leigh was still asleep, her head under a feather pillow.

  The light seemed oddly hued for sunrise. It was intense too. Then James realized, his window faced westward. He shouldn’t be seeing the sunrise in that direction. Every other morning had greeted them with a gentle orange light reflected off the blue of the bay.