TRIAL: A Post Apocalyptic/Dystopian Thriller Read online

  TRIAL

  by

  Murray McDonald

  TRIAL

  Murray McDonald

  Published by Murray McDonald

  Copyright 2016 Murray McDonald

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  The right of Murray McDonald to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents act 1988.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  TRIAL

  Table of Contents

  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

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Other titles by Murray McDonald

  Captive-in-Chief

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 1

  DAY 1

  Kate woke up with an imposing sense of unease. She reached out across the bed, the empty space a stark reminder that it was no longer temporary. A tear welled. Even after three months, every morning hurt almost as much as the first. They said it would get easier. They lied. The sound of the birds singing invaded her thoughts, drying the tears whilst increasing her sense of unease. The sun was up; the birds’ vocal abilities were testament to that fact. She checked her bedside alarm clock, but its digital digits remained dark, offering no help in identifying the time. She reached over and grabbed her smart phone, but its display remained black despite her repeated attempts to bring it to life.

  “Mom, I’m gonna be late!” shouted Danny, her eight-year-old, invading her bedroom and throwing the curtains open to reveal a beautiful clear blue sky.

  “What time is it?”

  Danny checked his watch, his father’s old watch, far too big for him but one he insisted on wearing in the house.

  “It’s zero seven fifty-five Tango,” said Danny proudly.

  Kate hadn’t noticed Danny’s use of ‘Tango’ rather than ‘Sierra’ to define the current time zone as a result of the clocks changing from daylight saving two nights earlier. She’d been too busy pushing past her eight-year-old son to get to the window.

  The world had stopped, quite literally stopped.

  The reason for her unease unfolded before her eyes. The freeway was stationary. The airport, her usual early morning alarm call, was blissfully silent. Their elevated position offered an excellent view of the unfolding chaos across the Southern side of Boise, Idaho, their new home town. Nothing was moving, nothing. Cars and trucks sat idle on the freeway, but the morning rush hour for once was not to blame. Traffic wasn’t nose to tail, it just wasn’t moving. Car hoods sat high as drivers tried in vain to restart their vehicles. The sound of the birds singing - a sound alien to her since their move three months earlier - continued.

  “Mom?” asked Danny, sensing his mother’s concern.

  “Where are your sisters?”

  Danny shrugged.

  “Go get them and bring them here!” she commanded, steel in her voice, grabbing the jeans she had worn the previous day. She pulled them on whilst reaching for the TV remote. She knew before hitting the power button that it would be useless. Power was out, but that didn’t stop her trying. Nothing. The only sound invading the peace remained the bird song. She had never heard them sound so loud.

  Kate looked at the airport again, she hated it with a passion. Every morning at 5.30a.m. it would wake her, the jets thundering overhead after takeoff, only to be repeated like a ‘Snooze’ button on her alarm clock every ten to fifteen minutes. Many times, it had been Tim who had woken her, thundering over the house., a house he had chosen, to be as near as he could to the two loves of his life - his family and his aircraft.

  “Mom, my phone’s not working!” gasped Sophie, tears welling at the thought of her loss.

  “Nothing’s working, honey,” she said.

  “God, Mom, pay the damn bills why don’t you!” shouted Sophie, storming out of the room and nearly knocking over her younger sister, Ava, in her wake.

  Kate bit her tongue. Sophie had been closest to her Dad. His loss had hit Sophie as hard as it had hit Kate. She was struggling; school, friendships, behavior, all had been affected by Tim’s death. Sophie was a fifteen-year-old whose rock had left her when she’d needed him most.

  “What’s up, Mom…Danny said something was happening?” Ava asked. She was twelve, going on thirty. Kate didn’t know what she’d have done without her. Her ability to ignore her older sister’s outbursts was astonishing and spoke of a maturity that Kate wasn’t even sure she possessed herself.

  “Whatever it is, it’s not good.” Her eyes scanned across the panoramic view they had over the city. She had yet to see one single vehicle move. All were stationary.

  “I’m going to be late for school!” said Danny, disappearing into her en-suite.

  “There’ll be no school today…” the sound of the toilet flushing didn’t sound right. Kate rushed in after him. The cistern wasn’t refilling. The sound of a shower cascading through the wall had her in a panic. She rushed out of her bedroom and down the hall to Sophie and Ava’s bathroom. The door was locked.

  “Sophie, turn off the shower!” she screamed. Every drop of even their hot water reserve would be precious until power and water supplies
were back to normal. She rushed down the hallway, and throwing open the storage cupboard door, quickly turned the valve to isolate the water tank, a tank that Sophie could easily empty with one of her showers. What she found to do in the time she took to shower, Kate had no idea.

  “What the…” screamed Sophie from the shower as the water dribbled to a stop mid-lather.

  Kate had stopped listening to her older daughter’s complaints. The bird song had stopped. An eerie silence had descended. A silence that was no longer possible in the modern world. Somewhere, an engine droned or a motor whirred or a vent expelled. An electrical circuit buzzed. Silence was not something you heard often and when you did, it was a sound you struggled to remember. Total and complete silence. Kate ran back to her bedroom as a streak of light flashed in the distance. She grabbed Ava and Danny, pulling them tight into her body and shielding their eyes from what she sensed would follow.

  The mushroom cloud was an image everyone understood and one that no one ever wanted to witness. But here it was, rising ever higher in the distant sky. She knew what it was. The location was North West of Boise. The new nuclear power station at New Plymouth had just blown up. Correction, she thought, taken out. Something had hit it, whether lightning, an asteroid or a missile, something had struck it from above. The house shook gently before the crack of the diminishing shock wave finally hit them almost four seconds after the cloud had risen. Its power was enough, over forty miles away, to rattle every window violently in the house.

  “Mom!” Sophie joined them, her hair plastered in soap suds, her eyes transfixed on the image in the distance. Her arms wrapped fiercely around the family as all four clung to each other for support.

  Kate pulled them closer. She had no illusion as to how hard it was about to become. Their life, as they knew it, was over. The world would never be the same again.

  Chapter 2

  Radiation. As the cloud dissipated, Kate’s first thought turned to radiation. She turned to her tablet, and picked it up before the realization that it wouldn’t work hit her. Over forty miles. Was that far enough? She had no idea. The plant was new, only commissioned two years earlier in 2025.

  “Mom, it’s okay,” said Ava as if reading her mind. “We did this at school when the power station opened. In a catastrophic failure, we’re safe. As long as you’re more than three or four miles away, it’s fine.”

  “That’s right,” nodded Sophie. “They told us we’re outside the danger zone, no matter what happens.”

  A banging on the front door made them all jump.

  Kate turned to Sophie, her wet towel clinging to her. “Go and get dressed, honey, quick.” She watched her daughter leave, her fifteen years hidden in the body of an eighteen-year-old. Both girls were going to be heartbreakers, of that there was little doubt. They already had a number of admirers. Her eyes fell to Danny, the poor boy so innocent and at times, victim to a house bursting at the seams with female hormones.

  “Mom, my hairdryer’s not working,” shouted Sophie, frustration deep in her voice. Ava just shook her head and walked away. Kate considered answering but stopped herself, whatever she said was just going to sound condescending. She took a leaf out of her younger daughter’s book and followed her, leaving Sophie to work out the problem on her own.

  The door banged again.

  Kate waved Ava back. “Who is it?” she shouted as firmly as her nervousness allowed her. She was the parent. She was responsible for keeping her children safe, her alone. Tim had been the undisputed protector of the house, powerful and commanding. She had never once felt nervous of the door being knocked on while he’d been in the house.

  “It’s Harry, from next door. Just wanted to check you guys were okay?”

  Kate relaxed, Harry was their next-door neighbor, a widower in his eighties., a lovely old man who had looked out for them since Tim’s death. He had gone out of his way to say hi and throw the kids a smile and do ‘man things’ with Danny. Letting him tinker with his tools, help out in the garden, ask him about the game the previous night. All things Kate never had an inclination, nor the time to do. Her every waking hour was generally consumed with ensuring she could house, feed, and clothe her children, something, as Sophie was only too quick to point out, she was struggling to do.

  Kate opened the door, letting Harry in and ushering Ava to go and get dressed.

  “Don’t worry about the radiation, we’re outside any exclusion zone they’d set up,” he said, catching his breath as he spoke. A lifetime of smoking had taken its toll on his lungs.

  Kate nodded. “Yeah, the girls were told the same at school.”

  “Coffee?” she asked.

  “How’re you making that?” asked Harry with a deep hacking laugh.

  Kate thought back to Sophie and the hairdryer. She had been so ready to throw smart ass comments to her daughter for exactly the same mistake.

  “Hey, Harry!” said Danny, high-fiving Harry as he joined them in the living room.

  “Hey, Danny!” smiled Harry. “Would you mind giving me and your mom a minute or two?”

  Harry waited for Danny to close the door behind him.

  “I’ll wait with the kids. You need to go and get whatever you can from the store,” he said, handing her a handful of bills.

  Kate looked at the handout and shook her head. I’ve got plenty in for the next few days, enough to see us through the next week or so if I stretch it out. I’m sure by then, things will be back to normal.

  “I can see it in your eyes. You know as well as I do, there isn’t going to be normal anymore. I’ve been awake since dawn, and nothing’s moved or worked long before the power station blew up. That ain’t right. Cars don’t just stop working, all at once, all of a sudden, for no reason.”

  “Something hit the power station,” said Kate quietly. “Streaked down from the sky and blew it up.”

  Harry nodded knowingly. “The war in Iran. They said the Russians and that Putin were going to make something of it. We should never have gotten involved.”

  “You won’t hear any arguments from me on that point.”

  Harry reached across and placed his hand on Kate’s. “I’m sorry, I should have thought before opening my mouth.”

  “Don’t be silly, you’re just trying to make some sense of what’s happening.”

  “Whatever is happening, you need to take this money and get down to the store. Water and dried goods. Don’t waste your time or effort on anything perishable.”

  “I’ll get my keys… God, I did it again.”

  Harry reached into his pocket and pulled out a revolver, pushing it across the kitchen top towards her. Kate looked at it and shook her head. “I don’t like guns, Harry.”

  “You’re a good-looking woman, Kate…”

  “Harry, we live in Boise, not Manhattan, people here look out for one another. You’re overreacting.”

  “Overreacting? If you don’t mind me saying, you’re being naïve and you’ve got three kids to take care of.”

  “I know what my responsibilities are, thank you,” she snapped.

  Harry held up his hands in surrender. “I’m sorry, but I really think you are overestimating the charitable nature of your fellow humans in a crisis.” He pushed the revolver nearer to her.

  Kate ignored it, but took the cash. Without it, she had nothing but plastic and without power that was useless.

  “Sophie, you ready?” she shouted up the stairs.

  “Not without a hairdryer, I’m not!”

  “You need to come to the store with me.”

  “Are you crazy? I’m not going outside with my hair like this!” she shouted with a finality that Kate knew deserved a fight but had little will to enter into.

  Danny appeared at her side. “I’ll come with you. I can attach my radio flyer trailer to my bike,” he smiled. His young mindset had already readjusted to their new reality.

  Harry offered her the revolver again.

  “I don’t like guns!” she said
firmly.

  Chapter 3

  Danny wound the handle to open the garage door, Kate having tried the clicker, much to his amusement. With the door partially open, they rode out onto the street. Kate paused, she’d not have thought twice about leaving the garage door open previously. It was a wonderful neighborhood; safe, secure and a perfect place to raise the kids. Although only a resident for a few months, they had been made her feel welcome from day one, and she’d instantly felt at home in the vibrant and welcoming community.

  Sitting in the foothills of the mountains, they were afforded spectacular views across the plain, the city of Boise, and beyond. From their house, they could see across most of the Boise-Nampa Metropolitan area, almost five counties and home to three quarters of a million people; often called Treasure Valley. Bike and hiking trails started just yards from their front door and Tim had made sure the family was well-prepared to take advantage of it. Within a day of moving in, they had each been outfitted with a new mountain bike. Ava’s and Sophie’s had yet to see the light of day, while Kate’s bike hadn’t seen the great outdoors since the day she had succumbed to Tim’s pleading to join him and Danny. She looked back into the garage. One useless car and three top-of-the-line mountain bikes lay for the taking.

  “Honey, would you mind rolling the door back down?”

  Danny looked at her quizzically. He’d never shut the garage door in his life. Once opened, he’d disappear for hours, only closing it if he remembered on his return.

  “Kate, everyone okay?”

  Kate turned to find one of the more active members of the Warm Springs Mesa community walking towards her.

  “Thankfully, yes, Barbara. And you guys?”

  “Yes, thank you, all fine, but I can’t believe it. It’s like…like someone just switched us off,” struggled Barbara.

  “Even our water’s off,” said Kate.

  “Same as everyone else. I can’t find out what’s happening. The phones are down. The cars aren’t working. Even Gary, over on Rockridge Way, you know, from the Sherriff’s department? Well, even his radio’s not working. He cycled down there an hour ago. Hopefully, we’ll hear more when he gets back.”