Land of Dust and Bones: The Secret Apocalypse Book 7 Read online

  Land of Dust and Bones

  By James Harden

  Book 7 in the Secret Apocalypse Series

  Contents

  The desert

  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

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  The Town

  The desert

  We are walking through a desert, a dead land. We have been walking for…

  I’m not sure how long.

  Hours.

  And I feel totally hopeless. Daniel has just been executed. Executed, killed, murdered by his own people. The Company. YoshidaCorp. And right now I want to give up. I want to lie down in the red dust of the Australian outback.

  And close my eyes.

  And never open them again.

  What’s the point? We’ve come as far as we could possibly go. As far as anyone could ever have hoped to have survived.

  This is an extinction level event.

  Extinction.

  We are not meant to survive this.

  So there’s no shame in giving up at this point, right?

  I know I’ve had these thoughts before. And each time I’ve had them, I’ve pushed them aside. Each time I feel like giving up, I simply don’t. I keep going, I keep moving forward. I keep putting one foot in front of the other. And I think maybe this is the secret to life, to living. All you have to do is put one foot in front of the other. All you have to do is keep moving forward.

  If only it were that simple.

  So right now, I feel like giving up.

  And I fall to my knees.

  But as soon as I do, Kenji grabs my shirt by the collar and picks me back up. He looks at me. He looks deep into my eyes and for a second his cold exterior melts away, for a second, his armor is stripped away. I see Kenji. The boy next door. The boy who saved me.

  “I need you,” he says. “You can’t give up because I need you. And they need you.”

  He whispers these words to me. And before I can say anything, before I can throw my arms around him, his armor is back and his cold exterior is back and he shuts out the world and everyone left in it.

  I don’t know exactly what happened to Kenji when he was taken, when he was abducted and tortured by the man in the gas mask. I don’t think I’ll ever know. But if it’s anything like what that goddamn psychopath put me through, if it’s anything like what he put Maria through, then I know it was bad. I know it was worse than bad. I know Kenji has been to the brink, to the very edge of his sanity. I know he has been close to death.

  Kenji turns to the group. He has that cold look in his eyes. He is determined. He wears his armor. It is invisible. It is not completely impenetrable, but it is strong. It is resilient. He tells everyone to gather around, to listen up.

  Everyone slowly does what he says. Not because he is the boss and he is ordering us to do it, but rather because we all trust Kenji with our lives. And if I had to guess, I’d guess that no one had any idea what to do now, of what to do next. Or how.

  I don’t even know if we’ll have the strength to get out of this desert.

  So we all slowly gather around Kenji, waiting and hoping for a plan of action. Waiting for Kenji to say something that will miraculously make everything better.

  Sarah has her hands on her head. And maybe the only thing I do know for certain is that she’s our best chance to get out of this desert. She might be our only ticket to safety.

  There’s a small town. About three or four days away. They built walls. They built them early...

  She keeps looking left and right. East and west. North, south. She is trying to get her bearings. She better get them quick because we need to get moving.

  Kim is doubled over, hands on her knees. Her face is a bloodied and bruised mess. She took an absolute beating at the hands of the residential sector survivors of the Fortress. As a result, her face is swollen, her eyes are swollen, her lips are cracked and streaked with blood. I see her move her tongue around the inside of her mouth, pressing against the inside of her cheek. She then spits out a mouthful of blood.

  The residential survivors tortured Kim first, they tortured her hard because they thought she was serving General Spears. They tortured her because they feared her, because they did not trust her.

  I cannot blame them. I totally understand this.

  Jack and Maria are huddled together, holding hands. They are looking at the horizon, staring at the horizon. The thousand yard stare is what Daniel called it. Jack is limping forward, he is struggling to stand on one leg. He was hit in his calf muscle with an arrow, a crossbow bolt. The work of the Death Squad. I have no idea how he is going to walk through the desert. Maybe we will have to carry him. Maybe we will have to drag him.

  I stand next to Kenji, a little bit behind him. The sun is setting over our shoulders, slowly, lazily.

  The others turn to us and raise their hands to shield their eyes from the sun.

  We must be silhouetted against the light. We are shadows.

  Kenji takes a deep breath. “Guys, I know we’ve just been through hell. I know we all feel like shit, like giving up. It’s hard… losing someone. Someone who did so much for us. Someone who saved our lives time and time again. Daniel got us out of Sydney. And he tried his best to get us out of this country, tried his best to get us to safety. We probably wouldn’t have made it this far without him.”

  And I’m wondering how do we keep going? How do we keep going without Daniel, a super soldier?

  Why is he dead? And why are we alive?

  How the hell are we going to make it without him?

  Is our time running out?

  We are not meant to survive this.

  The sun continues to set.

  “But we can’t give up,” Kenji says. “I won’t let any of you give up. We’re strong as a group. We’re all relying on each other to make it through this. We are each other’s source of strength. And trust me, we will need strength, because we are not out of danger yet.”

  Yeah, I think to myself, we’re stuck in the middle of the desert.

  In the middle of a zombie apocalypse.

  Sarah said there was a town, a safe haven, but I’m struggling to believe it. How could there be any safe places left? What makes this town so special?

  Every other town and suburb and settlement that we’ve come across has been overrun. Entire cities have fallen. The Fortress, a secret underground military base that was designed for the end of the world, for a situation just like this… has fallen.

  “We know the company aren’t messing around,” Kenji says. “Their orders have been shoot to kill from day one of this thing. Same with the military. We know the infected are relentless. We know the nano-swarms can come out of nowhere. We know they are deadly. And we know the desert can kill quickly, easily. This is why we need to stick together. This is why we need to be strong.” br />
  Kenji talks about strength. About courage. He talks about honor. “Giving up now would be doing Daniel a disservice,” he says. “Because Daniel never gave up. Not once. He sacrificed himself for us. So we need to honor him. We need to honor his memory and his sacrifice by not giving up. By fighting. By surviving. I know we’ve been doing it for a long time now, but we need to keep doing it. We need to keep fighting for our lives, fighting for our freedom, our future.”

  Kenji talks but no one makes eye contact with him, everyone’s gaze is lowered. Everyone is staring at the dirt. Everyone is silent.

  Kenji points at Sarah. She is our only hope. “Sarah. You said there was a town. You said they built walls. Well, this is it. This is our only hope. This is all we’ve got.”

  Sarah nods her head. She knows how important it is. She knows this town is giving us hope. She knows it is the only thing keeping us going, because it’s the only thing keeping her going.

  My sister is still there. I need to get back.

  “You better not be lying,” Kim says.

  “The town is real,” Sarah answers quickly. “The walls are real. They kept out the infected. And they kept out the other things. When my sister and I made it there, we were in bad shape. We had lost… everything.”

  She takes a deep breath. She swallows hard, fighting back tears. Her sister is keeping her alive. This is the reason she won’t quit. This is the reason she won’t stop.

  And it is the only reason why I believe her.

  “When we found the town,” Sarah says, pausing, thinking back. “We were on our last legs. We were completely out of water. Completely out of food. We had no energy. When we walked, we weren’t really walking. We were just falling forwards, stumbling.” She rubs her forehead as she remembers how close she was to dying. “At first we didn’t know what we were looking at. I’d never seen anything like it. Giant black walls, towering over the rest of the town. Taller than most of the buildings. Taller than the houses. The clock tower from the town hall and the church steeple were the only things taller.”

  I picture the town. I imagine the giant black walls.

  “For some reason, the walls gave us a renewed strength,” Sarah continues. “We were drawn to it. I don’t know why. I can’t explain it. We crept into the town. We snuck into the town. There were infected everywhere. We should’ve stayed away. Every other town we had come across had been overrun. Every other town was too dangerous to even go near. But like I said, we were completely out of water, completely out of food. We had no choice.”

  We have all been in this situation. We all know the temptation.

  Risk vs reward.

  Life vs death.

  Is the reward, is water and food and shelter worth risking your life?

  Sarah shakes her head. “But it was more than that. More than the prospect of finding water. We had to see it, we had to know what those black walls were. We had to get there. We had to stand in their shadows. We had to know what was behind them. I know it’s stupid, but in my mind, in our minds, there was hope behind those walls. There was a safe place. A paradise. A home. A future. The closer we got, the taller they got, the bigger they seemed. The more powerful. We ran into some people from behind the walls. They were on a scouting mission. They were checking the town for supplies, checking to see if they could reclaim any more of the town. I guess they took pity on us. We would’ve looked so pathetic. Anyway, they let us in. We were saved.”

  We were saved.

  And I want to be saved.

  I want to be rescued.

  I want to be taken to a place far away…

  “My sister is still there,” Sarah says. “I should never have left her.” She points to the ground, to the red dirt. “What I did down there, in the Fortress, I did to survive. I lied. I cheated. I stole. I killed. I did these things because I was forced to do them. I had no other choice.”

  And we have no choice. It is time to go.

  “So, which way?” Kenji asks. “Are we heading in the right direction?”

  Sarah looks toward the horizon. “I don’t know,” she answers, whispers, still trying to get her bearings. “It’s south from here.”

  Up until this point, we had once again been following tank tracks and tire tracks. We were hoping they would lead to a road. But at the moment, we couldn’t see any roads, or fences. There were no signposts and no signs of civilization.

  Kenji points to the sun over his shoulder. “That’s west. That’s south.”

  Sarah nods. “If we head south, we’ll eventually hit a road. Or a boundary fence. Something we can follow. Something we can use to get our bearings with.”

  “Let’s go,” Kenji says. “No point in wasting anymore time.”

  So we move away from the tank tracks. We head south.

  We are hoping to find a road soon. Or a fence.

  And hope is all we have.

  Chapter 1

  It’s been months since the fall, since the outbreak.

  It feels longer. And it feels like an eternity since I entered the Fortress. It feels weird being outside, back in the desert. It feels weird being in such a huge and open environment. I feel like I can breathe a little easier, like a great weight has been lifted from my shoulders. I can’t describe how amazingly breathtaking it is to look out at the horizon and see endless space, to look up at the sky, see the sun, the moon, the changing colors of the heavens, from blue to purple, to pink and orange and red.

  There were times, trapped in the Fortress, when I thought I would never see the sky again.

  Daniel once told me it was the little things, little things can break you, or little things can save you. He told me it was the little victories that keep us going.

  I tell myself that seeing the sky is a little victory.

  Kenji is leading the way. He walks at a pretty fast pace and as a result, we’re all struggling to keep up. Dusk is fast approaching. This is a good thing because we will need to do the majority of our walking at night. It’s still too hot to move around during the middle of the day. I suddenly realize that we’ll be walking for the next twelve hours or so, only stopping briefly to rest, to drink a few mouthfuls of water each.

  My feet already ache.

  “So why did you leave?” Kim asks Sarah, cross-examining her, interrogating her. “Why risk it?”

  “I… I don’t know.”

  “Don’t you dare lie to me. You do know. Why did you leave? Why did you leave that safe haven? Why risk going back into the desert?”

  Sarah takes a deep breath. She opens her mouth to answer but she hesitates.

  She is obviously uncomfortable talking about this. But she needs to tell us, she needs to tell Kim. She needs to be completely honest with us, because if she’s not, no one will trust her.

  Eventually she says, “I fell in love.” She answers quietly, softly. “Again, I know it’s stupid. But… I thought I was going to die out here. My sister and I, we were all alone. We had escaped from a bad situation. So when we made it to the town, when we were finally safe, I let my guard down. I let myself relax. I let myself believe we were safe. For some reason, I truly believed that all of this, this virus, this outbreak, was just temporary, that everything would eventually go back to normal. And that’s when I met him.”

  “Who?”

  “His name is Ryan,” she says, pausing. “Was…”

  She trails off because this is painful for her. Because this is not a happy story.

  “Anyway, he had been taken in as well,” she continues. “He had been saved. We had both lost so much. And it was through this shared… trauma… that we bonded… or fell in love. I guess. And it happened so quickly, you know?”

  She pauses again and collects her thoughts.

  “It’s so stupid,” she repeats, cursing herself. “So goddamn stupid. He left one night. He kept talking about it. He said the rest of his family would’ve gone to Adelaide, or maybe even Perth. He talked about going to search for them one day, when he had b
uilt up the strength. He was convinced they were still alive. I didn’t know how to tell him otherwise. And in the end, I just couldn’t do it. I mean, how do you tell someone that their family is dead? How do you tell someone to give up? I couldn’t do it. Even though, I probably should’ve.”

  “So he left?” Kim asks.

  “Yeah. He left in the middle of the night. Not sure how he got out. Maybe someone let him out. Maybe he snuck out. I’m not sure. But I do know it’s all my fault. I should’ve talked him out of it. I should’ve convinced him not to go. As harsh as it would’ve been, I should’ve told him that his family was dead. Just like mine, just like everyone else’s family. But I didn’t tell him. It was my fault he left. And now he’s dead too.”

  “You don’t know that,” I say. And as soon as I said it, I regretted it.

  Because she did know. We all knew.

  Sarah doesn’t look at me. She doesn’t dignify my foolishness and naivety with a response.

  “So that’s why I left the town,” Sarah says. “I wanted to find him. Bring him back. I wanted to save him. I left because I was reckless and stupid. I left because I let my heart, my emotions get the better of me.” She lowers her head. “I will never let that happen again.”

  I can’t tell if Kim is satisfied with this response. I don’t know if she will ever be satisfied. Maybe once we’re behind the walls she’ll be happy with Sarah’s story.

  Maybe.

  “What’s the name of the town?” Kim asks, continuing her aggressive line of questioning.

  “I can’t tell you that,” Sarah says.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m not allowed to. If word gets out about this town… people, survivors, they would come from all over. We wouldn’t be able to handle it. The town’s not big enough. It would be too much.”

  Another mouth to feed. Another nail in the coffin. This is the reality of our situation.

  We walk in silence for a few more hours. Eventually Maria breaks the silence and asks Kenji for a drink of water.

  But we don’t have enough.

  Sarah has a couple of bottles. But she says we should save this for when we really need it.