The World Hungers: A Post-Apocalyptic Story (The World Burns Book 3) Read online

  Copyright © 2015 Boyd Craven III

  The World Hungers, The World Burns Book 3

  By Boyd Craven

  All rights reserved.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1 –

  Ann Arbor Michigan – The day the lights went out.

  Chapter 2 -

  The Homestead, Kentucky

  Chapter 3 –

  Ann Arbor Michigan – Neal’s Kitchen

  Chapter 4 –

  The Homestead, Kentucky

  Chapter 5 -

  Neal’s Apartment, Ann Arbor Michigan

  Chapter 6 -

  The Homestead, Kentucky

  Chapter 7 –

  Traveling From Ann Arbor Michigan

  Chapter 8 -

  The Homestead, Kentucky

  Chapter 9 –

  Travelling from Ann Arbor

  Chapter 10 –

  The Homestead, Kentucky

  Chapter 11 –

  Kentucky

  Chapter 12 -

  Outside the Homestead, Kentucky

  Chapter 13 –

  The Homestead – Kentucky

  Chapter 1 –

  Ann Arbor Michigan – The day the lights went out.

  When the lights went out, Neal was wandering through the new Farmer’s Market downtown. The market had been open for a couple of years now, and since he’d moved back to the area for a job he’d made it a point to visit it again. Neal’s job was an IT specialist at the new Michigan State Universities’ College of Human Medicine. He was the one who kept the computers and networks up and running. It wasn’t a huge campus, but it shared a parking lot with the market. That’s how he found himself buying half a pound of provolone when the lights went out and the cash register had quit working.

  The register locked, unable to cash out and the owner looked at him and then hit a few buttons. He pulled his cell phone out, and put the square reader on it and then hit some buttons and then tapped it again harder.

  “It isn’t working,” he muttered to himself.

  A squeal of brakes had him looking up, and Neal couldn’t see what was going on either, but he moved around the counter and looked out towards the main aisle way and the windows. A crunch of metal could be heard and Neal looked to the owner again, wonderingly.

  “You know what, I better get back across the street. I’ll stop in later for this,” Neal told him, backing away from the counter and heading out the door.

  He passed dozens upon dozens of people on his way to the front doors and immediately saw two accidents. One was in the market’s parking lot, where one car had rolled into another one and across the south side of the parking lot, an MTA bus had collided with another one at the corner where the bus terminal was located. Hurrying, he ran across the lot to the university and immediately noticed all the lights were out inside.

  “I need to check on the backup USPS’s,” he muttered to himself, running to the elevators. He hit the button, but the call light never lit.

  “The power’s out,” a security guard said, coming up from his place near the door.

  “I figured as much,” he told him, jamming the up button again out of spite before walking towards the staircase.

  He took the stairs two at a time until he got to the third floor, and then slowed as he started to run out of steam. Having a top floor office appealed to him before, but having to hoof the stairs only reinforced the fact that he’d been neglecting going to the YMCA that was right down the road from his apartment, actually on the way to the Market and work if truth be told.

  “Worry about exercise later, I don’t want to reboot everything,” he said to himself.

  Having all the machines lose power at once would mean half a day of getting everything up and running again, and it wasn’t something he was looking forward to doing. He dropped his backpack at the doorway to his office and ran the rest of the server room in the back of the floor. He used his keycard and waved it at the lock, waiting for the familiar click, but nothing happened. He tried again and again before he realized it wouldn’t work. He put his hand over the handle of the server room and hesitated. He made up his mind and pushed the handle down, and opened the door.

  “The electronic locks must have opened with the power cut, but where are the backup generators? We should have emergency lighting or something,” he told himself, and walked into the dark room.

  The door closed behind him, and the dark was absolute. No light filtered in from anywhere and the server racks on the left side of the room weren’t lit at all.

  “What the hell?”

  He fumbled in the darkness, finally finding the doorknob and opening the door. He hadn’t realized how dark the windowless room would have been, and even in the hallway, small amounts of light seeped just enough illumination to not trip over his own feet. He slowly walked back to his office, noticing all the open doors to the hallway and the employees from the enrollment department looking back at him as he passed.

  “Neal?” A booming voice came out of the darkness at the doorway before his office.

  It was his boss, Mr. Caruthers.

  “Yes sir?”

  “Just getting back from your lunch?”

  “Uh, yes sir. The power went out before I got something to eat. I’m not late, am I?”

  “Late? I don’t know. My phone and watch aren’t working. I was going to ask you if you saw if the backup generator was running.”

  “No, I don’t think it is. The emergency lighting is out too,” Neal said, stating the obvious.

  “Well, I’m going to keep folks here till about four p.m. if the power doesn’t come back on. If it does, how long until you get the computers up and running again?”

  “The computers will come back online immediately, as should the internet as well. Email, databases and our internal network may take a few hours.”

  “You don’t mind the overtime, do you?” Mr. Caruthers asked him.

  “Naw, but if the power is going to be out, I’d like to take off about four.”

  “That’s fine by me. You going to hang out in your office, or meet up with the rest of us on the first floor?”

  “I’d rather stick up here, if that’s ok.” Neal told his boss.

  “It’s fine by me, I understand completely.”

  “Thanks.”

  He hurried to his office and shut the door, closing himself off from the world.

  “How am I going to know when 4 o’clock is?” Neal asked himself.

  His question was almost immediately answered as the bell tower at St. Matthews Church rang 1 p.m. He nodded and sat down at his desk, opening a drawer and pulling out a binder that detailed how to reset the entire system. Since the college had come online, the servers had never all gone down at once. Re-integration shouldn’t be too bad, Neal had learned from some of the best minds in the field.

  For half a heartbeat, he considered heading down to the cafeteria, but he discarded that idea almost immediately. Neal had always hated being in crowds. Crowds or large groups of people made him break out into a cold sweat and his body tense up. His boss understood, but he still had reached out. That meant a lot to him, because most people just assumed he wanted to be left alone and they did so. It was a lonely solitary life, but he didn’t have much room for anything else.

  Computers, math, chemistry, logic. Those were environments he knew how to control and his new job at the university had helped him out a ton. For the first time in his life, he had everything he needed at his grasp. His apartment was six blocks away from his job, his bank was in the
middle, he bought food as he needed it by walking to the bus station and taking it to the Franklin and Davison supermarket and then rode the bus home. The rest of his transportation consisted of a mountain bike that he’d outfitted with fenders and an attachment behind his seat that bolted on and allowed him to carry a milk crate sized portion of cargo.

  A backpack and whatever he could fit on the bike rack usually lasted him a good week or more. Neal never learned to drive, never expected to. Life was good. Now? He considered taking his bike for a ride later on instead of his usual night of Skyrim or the newest Call of Duty games. He could take the main roads to the west side of Saginaw street, and head through some of the lesser populated neighborhoods along Church, Beach and further down 12th street by the farm, or he could ride to the river, someplace that was almost always vacant for some reason.

  He pondered this, and read the binder until he started to drift off. He came to with a gentle hand nudging at his shoulder.

  “All this excitement has you worn out huh?” Mr. Caruthers smiled.

  “I’m sorry, I must have nodded off. What time is it?” Neal’s heart raced from being startled awake.

  “It’s a little after four. As you can tell, the power isn’t back on… you live close by, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, Court and Lapeer.”

  “We’re going to close the university down until we can figure out the power situation. We’ve had maintenance trying to figure out the generators and the phone systems. Those are run through your department aren’t they?” Mr. Caruthers asked.

  “Yeah, without power to the servers, the switches from the T3 lines-“

  “That’s Greek to me. The other problem is the phones. Cell phones even. Nobodies here seems to work. So I have no way of calling folks back in to work… if the cars would start, and they haven’t yet. So when the power comes on at your place, head on over this way. I’ll make sure to have human resources leave time cards out until you can get the network back up.”

  “Ok, thanks, wait, cars aren’t working?”

  “No, no one here has had one start yet or across the street. You’re lucky, you live close.”

  Neal rubbed the sleep from his eyes and grabbed his backpack as he headed out the door, his head fuzzy from the un-intentional nap. He waved good bye to the rest of the folks in the lobby and turned towards the market, intending to cut through parking lots to get home quickly. A buzzing, almost puttering noise caught his attention and he looked towards the front of the market where a small crowd had gathered around what looked like a three wheeler pulling a small trailer. It was on the sidewalk, next to the glass doors.

  For once, he ignored the feelings of panic and approached the crowd, being careful to stay outside of the large mass of people. Security guards and market personnel were soon disbursing the crowd, and everyone left, muttering questions to each other, asking how the three wheeler was still running when many of them were stranded with dead cars.

  “Do you need help pushing that?” Neal asked, surprising himself.

  An armed woman with raven black hair was sitting on the quad, and a vaguely familiar man was pushing the trailer through the double doors of the market and towards a stall.

  “Sure. Just… Stay away from the three wheeler. My wife is nervous enough.”

  “No problem.” Neal picked up the end of the trailer and helped push it into the main aisle stopping at one of the stalls.

  “Do you need anything from here?” the man asked him.

  “The cash registers don’t work.”

  “Oh, I was going to hook you up for helping. I’m cleaning my stall out, so whatever I can’t fit…”

  “Cleaning it out?” Neal stepped back once he let go of the trailer.

  “Yeah, we’re closing down our stall. I’ll give you a good deal on some… Hey! You’re Neal Karaway?”

  “Yeah, do I know you?”

  “Yeah, my little brother went to Ellen Knopf with you.”

  Memories came crashing back to Neal, and he recognized the man now. It was Shane’s older brother, the one who took care of him. He couldn’t quite remember his name.

  “Jeff.” He held out his hand and smiled.

  Neal just looked at it and shook his head.

  “I’m Neal. Sorry, I don’t touch…”

  “I forgot, its ok. Do you have food stored at home, or somewhere else to go?”

  “I haven’t gone to the store yet this week…”

  “Let me help you stock up.”

  “I don’t have any room to carry…”

  He stopped and gaped as the raven-haired woman pushed the quad inside of the building and started to hook it back up to the trailer.

  “Hey, who’s your friend?” she asked.

  “This is Neal Karaway. He was in Shane’s class.”

  The woman appraised Neal and then held out her hand. “I’m Janet.”

  Neal shook his head and opened his mouth to explain.

  “Jan, Neal doesn’t like big groups of people. High Functioning Autistic like Shane, if I remember correctly?” Jeff looked at Neal, who was nodding.

  “I remember now. School must have been tough for you.”

  “School always put me on edge. There were always too many people there.”

  “Oh, that’s ok. I won’t hurt you,” she smiled. Her eyes were kind. “Do you still stay with your parents?”

  “No, they passed away last year. I’ve got my own place now,” Neal replied, relaxed.

  “You have enough food there?”

  “I haven’t gone shopping this week,” he repeated.

  The couple exchanged glances, and Janet nodded to Jeff.

  “Help us load some stuff up, and we’ll drop you off with some food. If you can leave the city, that would be better,” Jeff said.

  “I don’t have anywhere else to go,” Neal said, confused. “Why would I need to leave town?”

  He helped them unload boxes and bags from behind the counter and large heavy sacks from under a bulk food dispenser shelf onto the trailer.

  “The city will probably be safe until the water stops. Then things are going to get ugly,” Jeff told him.

  “Why would the water stop?”

  “The power’s out. We got hit by an EMP or a Coronal Mass Ejection, at least I’m ninety nine percent sure of that.”

  “You know what that is, don’t you?” asked Jan.

  “I’m autistic, not retarded,” Neal said, a hint of annoyance in his voice.

  “I’m sorry, it’s just that most people don’t know what that means. I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “Sorry, it’s just that this whole mess has me worried and now the world is ending? Is it war?”

  “I don’t know, but I didn’t mean to offend you. I’m sorry,” she told him, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.

  That made sense to the quiet man, and he just nodded and gave her a rare smile, loading bags again. He noticed right off that some of the retail sized bags that were already packaged were going into three boxes and not with the rest of the supplies. These were loaded last on the trailer and when they were done, they loaded up the cleaning supplies.

  “The bleach goes with him,” Jeff told his wife, who nodded.

  “Do you know how to sterilize water?” asked Neal.

  “No, I just turn the sink on and…”

  “No, not that. The water is going to stop flowing. Store as much as you can before it goes out. If you have to start drinking river water, and I hope you don’t… Put it in a container and let the particles all settle to the bottom. Pour that water out, leaving the sediment. Then take this bleach and count out eight drops per gallon of water. If you can’t filter the water or let it sit for a while, add twice as much. Shake it up to make sure the bleach mixes and then open the top and wait a half an hour. It tastes like ass, but you won’t die from drinking bad water.”

  “Bleach in the water? I guess that’d work. Never thought about it, and I minored in chemistry. Do you
think things are going to get that bad?”

  “Yes. It would be better if you just left town,” Jeff said.

  “I really don’t have anywhere to go,” Neal replied.

  “I know, but remember… You have half a million people around here who don’t either. Soon they will be hungry, thirsty or have some sort of axe to grind. I’d hate to think you were here when things get ugly.”

  “You really think it was something like an EMP?” Neal asked.

  “I do. My quad runs because it’s so old there’s nothing I have to worry about getting fried.”

  “How long until you think things are going to get scary?”

  “Two to three weeks tops. I don’t know if you’d want to stick around any longer than that. The government will start to bottle things up and FEMA camps will start-“

  Jan shook her head at her husband. “That’s enough Jeff, we don’t want to scare him with some of your scarier conspiracy theories, I do agree that this is really, really bad.”

  “Ok ok, can we at least give you a lift home?”

  “I can walk, I live real close.”

  “You can’t walk and carry all these,” Jeff pointed to the three boxes and a big brown bag.

  “That’s too much,” Neal shot back. “I didn’t help that much.”

  “Listen, I really wish I could take you with us. I’m taking Shane, but I just don’t have enough room for where we’re going. If I can give you a month’s worth of food and some quick advice, I won’t feel so bad driving away.”

  “You’re going home?”

  “No, I’m going to our shelter. I won’t be back.”

  “Wow. You must think this is pretty bad.”

  “It’s the end of the world as you know it,” Janet said.

  Neal couldn’t tell if she was being serious, or just trying to make him laugh.

  “Hop on back,” she continued. “Where do you live?”

  He told them, and then climbed on the back of the trailer where they pointed. Jeff and Janet drove the three-wheeler out of the market, a security guard holding the doors open for three of them. The drive to the apartment building was only six blocks, but it took less than a minute for them to weave through stalled traffic.