I Am Eve

  I Am Eve Book One

  A Post Apocalyptic Paranormal Thriller

  Ernest Dempsey

  Enclave Publishing

  Contents

  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

  18. Thank You

  19. Other Books by AQ Owen

  20. Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  The world didn’t end with a blinding flash of a nuclear blast or the thunder of war. It didn’t end with screaming and the gnashing of teeth. It didn’t even end in an unstoppable tidal wave of diseases that ravaged humanity to the brink of extinction.

  It ended without warning.

  The end of civilization crept in slowly at first, taking down one nation after another. People were so focused on social media, mobile devices, and reality television shows that they never saw it coming.

  Amid the global inattention, it was the coal supply that failed first. Tens of thousands of families were left without power when the yield of the precious fuel ceased—and the mountains fell silent.

  Next were the oil fields. After two centuries of mankind draining the earth of its precious yet problematic fuel, it had none left to give. The pumps ran dry, and oil rigs slowed, then stopped altogether, left to rust and tumble into the swelling seas, seas that continued to rise as the planet grew hotter.

  Natural gas fell soon after.

  Fear and need gripped the planet. Wars raged. Millions died. When countries could no longer find the energy to power their battles, heavy machines of war like tanks, ships, and planes became useless hunks, parked in deserts or anchored harbors on the shore.

  The largest of nations fell apart. China, the United States, India, and all of Europe collapsed.

  Every regime on the planet descended into lawlessness.

  That’s when the electricity died. The dams fell silent, leaving only wind and solar power to feed the desperate billions still inhabiting the Earth.

  With no cohesive governments, the struggle for power—both literal and figurative—became the primary source of a new conflict.

  Ambitious men and women sought to take control of the last few sources of electricity in the world.

  For a while, these victorious warlords were able to hold off the desperate throngs living in darkness and squalor. Eventually, though, the mobs overpowered the warlords.

  With no restrictions and no regulations, the people attempted to secure their own regional sources of energy. But they all developed a me or no one mentality, and the idea that united the masses became their undoing. One after another, fields of solar panels and wind turbines were destroyed until there was nothing left.

  Scientists were forced to invent new forms of energy, then murdered in cold blood to prevent them from sharing their secrets.

  Then came the religious zealots. They blamed the scientists when the new inventions started to break down. And the scientists who’d survived were systematically executed.

  But scientists weren’t the only ones punished.

  The believers—a sect of people who didn’t think the zealots were doing the right thing—were also punished. Dubbed traitors to the one true religion, they were treated far worse than the scientists. They were tortured, maimed, and persecuted for their beliefs. Only after they’d suffered the most heinous atrocities were they given the mercy of death.

  The world was thrown into darkness. Without technology, the knowledge of a thousand years was lost. Libraries were burned, an atrocity so great that the repercussions would be felt until the end of time.

  The religious leaders had claimed that many of the books were heretical and had to be destroyed because they were instrumental in the fall of man. A few of the believers and scientists managed to salvage what they could from the libraries before they were overrun by the legions of zealots.

  In their blind and misguided rage, the hordes destroyed any chance humanity ever had to return to its former greatness.

  Cars and trucks sat on the cracking roads, slowly overtaken by nature. Trains rusted silently in rail yards, unable to move without any means of fuel. Airplanes slept like behemoth ghosts on runways all over the world.

  Without technology, mankind returned to its old ways. Horses became the main source of travel once more. Without the scientists, modern gunpowder all but vanished, save for a few brigands who understood the secrets of making it.

  To wield a gun, however, was more dangerous in many ways than not having one. People who wielded a firearm were targeted and overwhelmed by jealous highwaymen or gangs. And with every gunman killed, one less person on the planet knew how to make the powder that made the weapon useful.

  Before long, there were almost no firearms left. Those that remained stayed hidden, deep in the mountain caves, far away from those who would steal them and use them for their own sinister motivations.

  Diseases crept in. In the absence of medical science, there were no vaccines to protect the weak. Medical care regressed by thousands of years. Billions died.

  With the loss of so many, the Earth fell into a deep silence.

  All the while, zealots, bandits, and warlords set up new kingdoms, each with the promise that they would return humanity to greatness.

  Their true intentions, however, were driven by nothing more than the roots that had poisoned the world in the first place: greed.

  And while humanity struggled against itself to establish new seats of power—as it slowly weakened and then began to die from ignorance and anger—another group that had long remained hidden from the world began to emerge. At first they stayed in the shadows.

  It started with a few lunatics claiming they’d witnessed the impossible. Then the sightings became more frequent.

  Something evil that had long been buried had now returned to stake a claim in the world of humans.

  1

  My head snapped up from the pillow in less than a second. My right hand held out the katana horizontally, just as my father had taught me. It was a defensive posture that was as instinctive as breathing—ingrained in me through years of training.

  The pale moonlight poured into the dark bedroom, faintly illuminating the barren wooden floor and an old chair that sat in the corner. My eyes didn’t need much time to adjust. They’d been exposed to pure darkness while I slept, so the light of the moon may as well have been a spotlight coming in through the window.

  There was nothing in the room with me save the sparse collection of furniture that housed my clothes.

  I let out an exasperated sigh and lowered the blade.

  Something had woken me from my slumber, but what it was I didn’t know. I swung my feet over the edge of the bed and let them dangle for a moment while the rest of my body continued to rouse itself from the deep sleep it had enjoyed just a few minutes before.

  My initial instinct was the cat had knocked something over. Then I recalled the sound. It hadn’t been a crash or a thud. It sounded like…a scratching, like a stick grinding along the wall.

  I slowly slid out of the bed and made my way over to the window. Dead leaves blew by in the cool autumn wind. I loved the fall. It was easily my favorite season, a time of change. Some people thought me strange for preferring fall to spring. After all, spring was the season of renewal. Fall was when things died. Not to mention it signaled the coming of winter and the darkest time of year.

  As I stared out the wi
ndow at the mountains and hills rolling down to the valley, my mind drifted back to holidays when I was younger. My parents had been alive then. I remembered dressing up at Halloween, going around the neighborhood and asking for candy. Thanksgiving was nice, too. I had fleeting memories of Christmas, but they were shadows at best.

  That might be because right after Christmas was when things changed.

  I’ll never forget that night, the night they hurried into the house, looking more frantic than I’ve ever seen them.

  My dad asked my mom lots of questions that night, questions about men—police or something—that were going to come around in the middle of the night. Dad said something about hearing from the others earlier that day.

  Now I know who they were talking about, who they were running from.

  The zealots put out an order to bring in all scientists for questioning, along with anyone harboring them.

  It was then I learned about this place, this cabin that I now call home.

  My parents had bought land in the mountains in case things in the cities turned bad. They told me it was part of a prophecy they’d once heard, that the scriptures warned that when an order went out to bring in God’s people, they should flee to the mountains.

  We arrived here later that night. I guess they’d been furnishing the place and preparing it all along because there were beds, sofas, even running water. No electricity, not that that mattered anymore. Everyone else lost their electricity during the fall.

  I was sixteen then, just finishing my second year in high school. That was three years ago. Three years. When I say it out loud to myself, it sounds even worse.

  Three years since my parents decided to venture into town for supplies. My father was the first to disappear. He’d gone to get some replacement parts for our irrigation system. When he didn’t return later that evening, we realized something was wrong. My mother told me to stay here despite my insistence on coming with her. She said I needed to protect our home, keep a watch over everything.

  I didn’t like the idea of being left behind, but I did as I was told.

  I waited for days. Days turned into weeks, weeks into months. Still, my parents never came back.

  It had been two years since I last saw them.

  I’d done my best to make peace with it, but that old saying about how time heals all wounds is a lie. Nothing ever really heals. Things just get numb or buried under the surface. They’re always still lingering, waiting to pop up at a moment’s notice, waiting to drag back all the old feelings.

  They were dead. I knew that much.

  I’d disobeyed my mother and ventured into town at one point to see what was going on. The nearest city was almost half a day’s journey by horse. When I got there, I couldn’t believe how much everything had changed.

  The buildings—once tall, proud symbols of freedom and prosperity—were nothing more than rundown, crumbling edifices, now a tribute to the fall of mankind.

  Most of them were empty now. The wars and pandemics wiped out more than half the world’s population. The former United States was no different. When the antibiotics stopped working, people dropped like flies. Escape to the wilderness was the only chance of survival.

  The city reminded me of something I’d seen in a zombie movie once when I was younger. While there were no living-dead walking around eating people’s brains, there were many living on the streets, under bridges, in the alleys, desperately trying to survive.

  I’d heard my parents say the word cannibalism once when they thought I was asleep for the night. I didn’t truly understand the context, but that trip into the city gave me all I could handle.

  I remained on the outskirts, doing my best to stay hidden in the treetops, watching with my binoculars to see if I could catch a glimpse of hope that my parents might still be alive.

  I never saw them. What I did see was a group of people being rounded up and carried off in wagons to the other side of town. Where they were being taken I didn’t know, and I wasn’t about to stick around to find out.

  Had my parents been shipped out in the same manner? There was no way to tell. One thing I learned after a few months of being alone on the mountain was that hope would drive a person crazy.

  I forced myself to believe they were dead, even if there was a tiny part of me deep down inside that prayed they were still alive, still out there trying to get back to me. For a while, it was a daily conscious effort to push that small, hopeful me down into the depths of my mind.

  Thankfully, routine took over. Without my parents there to help, I had to take care of our mini farm by myself. The crops needed irrigation, which was why my dad had ventured into town in the first place.

  Luckily, I knew what parts we needed and was able to scavenge a few scraps from a junkyard near the edge of town. Very few people ever went there, though I’m not sure why. I guess because it’s dark and creepy. Most of the buildings there, too, were abandoned long ago.

  To an ordinary person, I suppose it would be scary, but after three years of living alone in a cabin in the woods, it takes more than a few crows cawing on telephone poles to freak me out.

  That thought brought me back to the moment, standing in my bedroom with a sword in my hand.

  When the world’s guns started going the way of the dodo, swords became the weapon of choice again, much like the majority of history. There were bows and arrows, too, ancient weapons that came from a more elegant yet brutal time of warfare.

  Any idiot could shoot a gun and get lucky. In a duel with swords, luck was a minimal factor.

  While I’d never had to fight another person before, I trained for nearly an hour every day in case that time ever arose. I’m proficient with the bow and arrow, as well, but those are for hunting, not necessarily self-defense.

  I left the window and padded quietly into the next room, which contained the kitchen, dining area, and a small living room with a wood stove. I heard a crackle come from inside the stove and immediately assumed it was the source of the bizarre sound that roused me from my sleep.

  A quick check inside, and I found the coals still fiery orange. I stoked them a few times and shoved in two more logs to keep the cabin warm the rest of the night. It wasn’t unusual to have to reload it once or twice over the course of an evening.

  I closed the stove door and started to wander groggily back to my bedroom when I heard another sound just outside on the front porch. I froze in place. Goosebumps raised across my arms and back.

  It was the same scratching sound I’d heard before. I felt my eyebrows cinch together involuntarily as I frowned at the noise.

  My fingers tensed on the sword’s grip as I moved cautiously toward the front door. I’d heard weird noises in the night lots of times since living on my own. I’d grown accustomed to them. It was always just some animal roaming around the area, probably looking for food. Animals didn’t bother me. In fact, I made a weekly habit of dumping leftover veggies and fruits in the woods to feed the rabbits and other wildlife.

  This noise, however, was something different. No animal made a scratching sound like this. It was like a fingernail running its edge against the wooden door.

  As I reached the front door, I swallowed hard, not sure if I should open it or not. A little voice deep down told me to stay inside where it was safe. The two doors into the cabin were reinforced with three locks and two steel plates that ran from one side to the other.

  I’d never had a break-in, but there was a first time for everything.

  Luckily for me, most of the human population was gone. People weren’t spilling into the mountains and wilderness like they used to. The ones that hadn’t been herded onto the wagons clung to their meager existence in the cities, believing that they could better survive together than apart.

  The scratching came again, and I felt the chills roll over my skin once more. I blinked rapidly and forced myself to reach out and open the little hinged window built into the door.

  It seemed to creak lou
der than it ever had before, no doubt due to my paranoia-heightened awareness to sound.

  I inched my head to the side until one eye could peer through the opening. All I saw was a part of the front porch, the steps leading up to it, and the meadow beyond. The bright moonlight cast an eerie glow on the entire field and the dark forest surrounding it.

  There was, however, no sign of the source of the sound.

  My frown deepened as I started to close the little portal. What could have caused the noise, I wondered.

  Suddenly, a heavy thud came from the other side of the door. The entrance shuddered, but it didn’t give. My body jolted for a second, and I instinctively slid to the side behind the wall for cover. I breathed heavily, my chest rising and falling quickly with every inhale and exhale.

  What was that?

  I didn’t dare move. Not yet. Whatever hit the door was big, bigger than me. I stayed as silent as possible, doing my best to keep my rapid breathing quiet. Then a low rubbing sound came from the door. A moment later the floor shook with another huge thud.

  I pressed my back against the wall and waited for what seemed like hours. It couldn’t have been more than a minute.

  I gripped the sword with white-knuckled fingers and steeled my resolve. “You’ve prepared for this, Eve,” I told myself.

  It was true. I’d been preparing for the day someone stumbled onto my mountain hideaway. For the last three years, I’d hoped it wouldn’t happen, but deep down I always knew it would. It was only a matter of time. The world was too small for someone not to accidentally come across my abode.

  I grabbed the crossbow off the hook by the door and notched a bolt just like my father had taught me years ago. With the crossbow in one hand and the sword in my other, I flipped the viewing door open and shoved the tip of the bolt through the opening.