An Apocalypse Family (Book 1): Family Reunion Read Online Free PDF Page A

on her feet next to him as he sat gasping for air and inspecting his newest wounds.
    “You know, sweetie, you could have shown up twenty minutes ago and saved us both a whole lot of pain and discomfort.”
    She laughed and helped him up. They made their way back through the culvert and managed to reach the Land Rover.
    Max started the vehicle, pulled onto the interstate, and accelerated. Pulling his cell phone out, he tried Ryan again. The phone rang twice and then went to a fast busy signal. Trying again, he received a recorded message that informed him all circuits were busy. He put the phone down and listened as Lisa filled him in on the details of her ordeal. As she talked, he interrupted with disbelief to ask about the guy going after his friend.
    “Dad, I am so not making this up!” she said, frustration edging into her voice.
    “Okay, okay. Let’s just find a hotel in the city and bunk down for the night. I’m too tired to try and get to the island tonight.”
    They found a Residence Inn and pulled in around 9:45. Checking in, the manager told them to go to their rooms and lock themselves in, informing them that they were the last people he would allow to get a room tonight. Max and Lisa stared at him with some confusion.
    “Haven’t you been watching the news?” the manager asked.
    Both shook their heads.
    Arriving at their room, they immediately turned on the TV and started watching the news. The reports were startling. The world seemed to be coming apart at the seams. The president had declared martial law and ordered all civilians to remain in their homes until told otherwise. The reports were coming in from every corner of the globe; the flu vaccinations were turning people into crazed killers. Quarantine centers had been set up; they failed. Communication systems were failing due to a lack of workers to manipulate the routing and rerouting of signals. All sorts of infrastructure were seeing similar conditions. At ten minutes after ten, the TV went blank.
    Max couldn’t sleep. Lisa said she had a headache and went to lie down. He heard the screams first, then the god-awful shrieks about ten minutes after Lisa had gone into the other room. He turned off all the lights and drew the blackout curtains. Their room was on the second floor overlooking the parking lot. Opening the drapes just enough to see outside, he watched people being chased down under the streetlights for a couple of hours. Unable to believe what he was witnessing, and not wanting to see any more, he made himself a stiff drink and sat. With drink in hand, he stared at the wall in the darkness and listened to the world crumbling outside.
    He didn’t remember falling asleep, but he woke with a start. Something, or someone, was banging into the walls of the building. The tremors were faint, but they were there. He looked out the window and saw hundreds of people running back and forth between the buildings. As he watched, one person ran at full speed into the side of the complex their room was in. Bam! No sooner had he felt the vibration from the impact another would repeat the procedure.
    The phones didn’t work, the TV didn’t work, but he still hadn’t tried his laptop. Plugging in his air card, he couldn’t find a signal. He tried the hotel’s wireless network: no luck. Max was finally able to get onto the Internet after hooking into the hotel’s Ethernet. He looked at his watch; it was 2:45 a.m. Opening his e-mail, he saw a message from Ryan. He opened it, read it, and replied that they would meet at Sarah’s place tomorrow. He was moving the cursor to the send button when the connection dropped.
    *****
     

Ryan
5:52 a.m.
Cathlamet Ferry
Puget Sound, Washington
     
    I woke up to what felt like a car wreck. There wasn’t even time to process that I’d passed out before my head banged into a steel bulkhead. My shoulder then smacked into a girder, and I reached up and grabbed it to stabilize myself as I felt the ferry shudder and