The Scourge (Book 2): Adrift Read online

  ADRIFT

  The Scourge Series Book 2

  Tom Abrahams

  A PITON PRESS BOOK

  ADRIFT

  A Scourge Series Story

  © Tom Abrahams 2020. All Rights Reserved

  Cover Design by Hristo Kovatliev

  Edited by Felicia A. Sullivan

  Proofread by Pauline Nolet

  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.

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  WORKS BY TOM ABRAHAMS

  THE SCOURGE POST-APOCALYPTIC SURVIVAL SERIES

  UNPREPARED

  ADRIFT

  GROUNDED (FORTHCOMING)

  THE WATCHERS DYSTOPIAN SCI-FI SERIES

  THE BAR AT THE END OF THE WORLD

  THE BAR AT THE EDGE OF THE SEA

  THE BAR IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE

  THE TRAVELER POST-APOCALYPTIC/DYSTOPIAN SERIES

  HOME

  CANYON

  WALL

  RISING

  BATTLE

  LEGACY

  HERO

  HARBOR

  A DARK WORLD: THE COMPLETE SPACEMAN CHRONICLES

  SPACEMAN

  DESCENT

  RETROGRADE

  THE ALT APOCALYPSE SERIES

  ASH

  LIT

  TORRENT

  AFFLICTION

  POLITICAL CONSPIRACIES

  SEDITION

  INTENTION

  JACKSON QUICK ADVENTURES

  ALLEGIANCE

  ALLEGIANCE BURNED

  HIDDEN ALLEGIANCE

  STAND-ALONE WORKS

  PILGRIMAGE: A POST-APOCALYPTIC ADVENTURE

  EXTINCTION RED LINE (WITH NICHOLAS SANSBURY SMITH)

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  PROLOGUE

  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

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  Acknowledgements

  Author’s Note

  The Scourge series is based on the same plague that altered the world in the eight-book Traveler series featuring Marcus Battle. However, this collection follows the adventures, trials and perseverance of an entirely different cast of characters.

  Instead of beginning five years after the onset of the disease that killed two-thirds of the world’s population, the Scourge begins with the plague in its earliest days. And rather than feature a war veteran in Texas, these books are centered on a group of men and women in Florida who have no survival expertise.

  The rules governing the Traveler books apply here. You may even notice some Easter eggs that pay homage to the original series and if you read carefully enough, you might even notice a familiar character or two whose lives intersect both series in different ways.

  I hope you enjoy this exploration of the same world that brought you Marcus Battle, Lou and the rest of the beloved men and women readers so welcomingly embraced. And I expect it will offer a wholly new perspective on those who survived well beyond the eventual confines of the wall.

  To Courtney

  My anchor

  “Our pleasures were simple—they included survival.”

  —Dwight D. Eisenhower

  PROLOGUE

  AUGUST 21, 1349

  LONDON, ENGLAND

  Ralf Brooker never liked the city. It was too crowded. The air was fetid. The people were rude. The food wasn’t fresh.

  Now, he trudged through the rutted street, pulling a heavy cart, he longed for the crush of Londoners pushing past him on their way to somewhere important. He wished a horse might splash refuse-infused mud onto his trousers. A piece of moldy bread would be a dream.

  Blisters formed on his forefingers and thumbs. Splinters stabbed at his skin from underneath the surface of his skin. Both were a product of dragging behind him the wood-handled cart filled with rotting, bloated corpses.

  He dropped the handles when his boss yelled at him to stop. The handles lifted and the cart tipped back on its single axle. A woman’s body partially dropped over the edge, flopping into the dirt.

  “C’mon now, boy,” the boss said through a thick accent. The man was from a part of the city that forged English from something less than intelligible. “Pick it up now.”

  Ralf adjusted the rag over his mouth and nose. It did little to tamp the overwhelming stench of death that clung to everything.

  He stepped around the side of the cart and squatted down to heave the body back onto the cart. He took the woman by her forearms and yanked her up atop three bodies. The limbs were stiff, the skin mottled purple. Her body were swollen. If she weren’t nude, he wouldn’t have known she was a woman.

  The boss pointed to a door to the right. “We got two more in this house. I think we can fit ’em on the cart before we burn ’em, eh?”

  Ralf disagreed. The cart couldn’t take another body, let alone two. But he didn’t argue. There was no point in arguing. He needed the work. There were few jobs anymore.

  His father was dead, as were his older brothers. His mother was sick. Being agreeable was more important than being right.

  Up ahead, within sight of the house, was one of the disposal pits. It was lined with brick. It was full. Hands and feet, knees and elbows stuck up into the air above the rim of the pit.

  They’d dump this cart into the pit and set it on fire. It was the only way now. The odor of burning flesh and hair was singed into his nostrils and his memory.

  Ralf didn’t smile anymore. Nobody did.

  The boss shouldered open the door to the house. He had to push on it, ramming his weight into it when it wouldn’t open. There was something on the other side pushing against it.

  The boss adjusted his own face cloth and disappeared inside the house. Ralf steadied himself and lifted the cart again, rolling it closer to the door. The shorter the distance he had to carry dead weight, the better.

  Near the door, he lowered the cart again. This time he was careful not to lose any of the cargo. He rubbed his thumbs across the blisters on his forefingers. The blisters were full, about to pop. He considered himself lucky. He was alive.

  The stench hit Ralf the instant he stepped into the house. The pungent odor was overwhelming in the small space. His eyes watered and he gagged.

  At one end of the room was a bed. There was a body on it. Although it wasn’t bloated like many of the others, it was a mess.

  His boss was standing on the opposite side of the bed, next to a full chamber pot. He pointed at the body. “She popped.”

  Ralf swallowed the acrid taste in his mouth. “She?”

  The boss shrugged. “I think. Wearing lace. I think she went first. Then the man.”

  He pointed past Ralf to the other side of the one-room house. On the floor near the fireplace was a man�
��s body. He was facedown. A rat gnawed at the back of his arm.

  Ralf looked down. On the floor in front of him was a large wooden cross. Burned into it was the name Allerton.

  “Man was a smithy,” said the boss. “Name was John. Wife was Alice.”

  Ralf looked at his boss. “How do you know?”

  They didn’t always know the names of the people they served. Ralf didn’t want to know. It made it too real. The idea that they were disposing of things and not people made the job easier somehow.

  The boss rested an arm on a shelf that resembled a mantelpiece. It was bolted to the wall above the wide fireplace. Both were large for the size of the home.

  “I knew the family. Alice was a Pembroke. They had pigs and chickens outside the city. Good people. I was at Alice’s wedding.”

  “Knew? The Black Death, all of them?”

  Ralf’s eyes watered. He hadn’t adjusted to the pungency of the place. He took a step toward the bed and bumped into it. A rat scurried from underneath the bed and found a hole in the wall. It squeezed through the narrow space and disappeared.

  With the back of his hand, the boss wiped his forehead. He nodded and swept the house with his eyes. “Alice was a teacher,” he said. “I think John was a blacksmith.”

  The boss’s eyes settled on the man’s body. His chest heaved.

  Ralf marveled at how the boss could take deep breaths in the foulest of places. Maybe it was his familiarity with the dead. He was too preoccupied with who the dead were to concern himself with what they’d become. Either that or bathing in the malodorous was a penance of some sort. There was a lot of guilt that accompanied being a survivor. Ralf felt this acutely.

  He frequently asked himself why he was alive. Why was he spared? Was it a blessing or a curse? Were the dead the lucky ones? Were they spared having to live in such times?

  Ralf swallowed and tried the smallest breath he could take. It wasn’t enough. He inhaled more deeply and his gag reflex gripped his throat.

  “Apologies,” he said to his boss.

  “For what?”

  “Your loss.”

  The boss stepped from the mantel and motioned toward the man’s body on the floor. Ralf took the hint and moved to the dead man. He took the legs, the boss took the arms and they shuffled through the front door.

  Both men grunted as they struggled with the weight. They heaved the stiff corpse onto the top of the cart and its grisly haul. They did the same for the woman without saying anything to each other, their effort punctuated by heavy breathing.

  With a rock of chalk he took from his pocket, the boss made a mark on the Allertons’ door, indicating the house was cleared. Ralf took a deep breath of the outdoor air. It reeked of death but was markedly fresher than the stale, tear-inducing atmosphere of the Allertons’ house.

  Ralf wrapped his hands around the cart’s handles. The familiar sting from the blisters pulsed in his fingers. He lifted the handles and pushed. With this much weight, it was easier to push than pull. He followed the boss, who led him toward the pits. The wheels creaked with protest and the joints holding the cart together jolted as Ralf navigated the uneven road. At least the mud was dry, the dirt hard and compact.

  His lower back aching, the blisters rubbing and his arms burning, he made it to the edge of the pit. He lowered the handles and flexed his fingers.

  The boss stood at the edge of the pit, studying it for a moment before he worked his way around the cart and stood beside Ralf. In unison they each took a handle and, using their legs, lifted the cart. It tipped toward the pit and Alice Pembroke Allerton’s body slid into the pit. Her husband’s body followed, as did three others.

  Ralf extended his arms over his head and walked forward until they’d dumped the last of the bodies into the pit. Then he walked back, again lowering the cart.

  From the sack attached to the cart handles, the boss produced a metal rod, a quartz rock and char cloth. He handed them to Ralf. Then he reached into the bag and pulled out a handful of wood shavings.

  He got down on his knees and piled the shavings on the back of a dead man, carefully arranging them on the fabric of the man’s shirt. He took the char cloth and set it next to the wood shavings. Then he struck the rod with the quartz, producing sparks, which lit the char cloth, the cloth igniting the wood shavings. Soon the shirt was on fire. Within minutes the fire produced enough heat for Ralf to feel it on his face.

  The boss got back to his feet. “It’s not my loss.”

  Ralf looked at the boss quizzically, the radiating heat warming the side of his face. “What?”

  The boss rubbed his jaw. He nodded to the burning bodies and sniffed. The air was acrid. He spoke above the crackle of the fire, his Middle English as clear as it had been in days. “You apologized for my loss. It’s not my loss. This is everybody’s loss. When a whole city dies, when the bodies burn and the air stinks, when the best job is carting bodies, it is everybody’s loss.”

  They locked eyes for a moment. Saying nothing, both men turned back to the flaming pit and watched their loss turn black with char. The smoke thickened, turning black and darkening the sky directly above them.

  Ralf wondered if it could get any darker. These were the early days of this new world. Everything had changed. This was the reality now. The boss was right. Everybody lost. The dead, the survivors—nobody escaped the plague unscathed.

  CHAPTER 1

  MARCH 4, 2033

  SCOURGE +154 DAYS

  ATLANTIC OCEAN, TWO MILES EAST OF COCOA BEACH, FLORIDA

  “You think it’s safe to go ashore?”

  Mike Crenshaw stood on the port side of the sixty-foot yacht. He tugged on his shorts, pulling them up and cinching his belt another notch tighter. The boat’s bow was pointed due north. He was toward its stern, an area that opened to the cabin belowdecks.

  Miriam Weber stood next to him, her body close to his. The warmth of her shoulder brushed his arm and sparked an electricity that radiated through him.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “The smoke isn’t as thick.”

  He wanted to go ashore. More than anything, Mike wanted to put his feet on solid ground, drop to his knees and kiss the Earth. This many days at sea, but with land in sight, would make anyone sick of the ocean.

  They were two miles from land. Mike looked west toward the yellow haze that hung above the Florida shoreline. In the early morning light it was hard to see whether any remnant flames burned in the dense communities that ran along the strip of land that included Cape Canaveral, Port Canaveral, Cocoa Beach, Patrick Air Force Base and Satellite Beach.

  At night, the red and orange glow flickered like distant stars and marked the literal and figurative hot spots closest to them.

  “We have to go ashore at some point,” said Miriam. “I heard the others talking about it last night after you went to bed.”

  The others. They were asleep.

  There were nine of them aboard the Sea Ray Sundancer, their home for the last five months. As spacious a boat as it was, it was crowded. Mike couldn’t remember the last time he’d had more than a few minutes to himself.

  The only quiet he achieved was underwater. He looked down at it, wishing he could dive into it and sink. The ocean was glassy, the chop of recent days having left with the wind and rain, which had pounded them for the better part of a week. He sighed and lifted his gaze back toward the shore. When the rains stopped, the fires started again.

  “My dad might be alive,” said Miriam. “At some point I need to find him. He’s in Texas. That’s far, I know. But he’s my dad.”

  Mike sighed. He didn’t have family. Both of his parents died long before the Scourge. He understood the pull of land though, even if he didn’t want to return. There was something about being on the water that had given him a newfound confidence that had wiped away his fear of confrontation.

  “Brice has a mom and a brother in south Florida. I know he misses them. He talks about them in the present tense. Clearly he t
hinks they’re alive.”

  “Or he hopes they’re alive,” said Miriam. “It’s hard to picture what life is like ashore, isn’t it? I mean, we get the glimpses of violence, the fires, the helicopters, the searchlights at night. I think I heard sirens two days ago when we were closer to the coast.”

  Something flickered in Mike’s peripheral vision. He ignored it and kept his eyes on Miriam. It was hard not to look at her. He often stared at her when she didn’t seem to notice. She grew more beautiful by the day. Her strength impressed him. Physically and emotionally she was formidable and she was smart.

  “I’m not sure I want to know what it’s like on land,” he said, “but you’re right. We have to go back. You’ve got to find your dad. Brice deserves a chance to see his mom again.”

  He smiled at her, their eyes locking until an electric heat sparked in his chest and sped up his heartbeat. Then he looked away, finding the movement on the water at the edge of his vision.

  “How many days is it?” Miriam asked. “You keep count, right?”

  “One hundred and fifty-three.”

  “How many since the last attack?”

  “Zero.”

  Miriam frowned. “What?”

  “We need to wake the others,” he said. “Someone’s coming.”

  Miriam followed his stare toward shore. She must have seen it then, rubbing her face with her hands and running them through her hair.

  “Not again,” she said.

  “Please,” he said. “Go get them. We don’t have a lot of time.”

  Saying nothing, Miriam bounded across the boat and swung below deck.

  Mike took a deep breath of the briny, humid air and curled his hands into fists. His muscles tensed as he prepared himself for the fight to come. This wasn’t the first. Unless they went ashore, it wouldn’t be the last.

  Straight off the port side, coming at the vessel Rising Star, was a speedboat. In his months at sea, trolling up and down the Florida coast, Mike had become good at identifying other watercraft. This one looked like a Boston Whaler. It had twin outboard engines and it bounced against the surf as it motored straight at them.