Mass Extinction Event (Book 13): Day 365 [The Final Day] Read online

  Copyright 2020 Amy Cross

  All Rights Reserved

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, events, entities and places are either products of the author's imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual people, businesses, entities or events is entirely coincidental.

  Kindle edition

  First published: April 2020

  One year after the start of a deadly crisis that engulfed the planet, Elizabeth Marter and Thomas Edgewater find themselves forced to fight for the future of the human race. In a high-tech facility on the outskirts of Philadelphia, Project Atherius is ready to be unleashed. But at what cost?

  As she tries to persuade her father to help her, Elizabeth discovers that he has quite different plans. Maxwell Carver is on the brink of achieving all his goals, but he has one final offer to make. As his plans begin to unfold, Carver reveals the truth about Project Atherius, and about the mysterious experiments that about to be launched into space.

  Meanwhile, Thomas and Martha are desperately trying to find a way out of the facility. All they want is to get home, but as the countdown begins they're plunged into a desperate race for survival. A zombie is loose, and so is a madman, and Thomas is convinced that Elizabeth has the answer. Will he find her before it's too late, or will the world end before he has a chance?

  Day 365: The Final Day is the thirteenth (and final) book in the Mass Extinction Event series. Readers are advised to start with the first part of the series.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue One

  Day -6,580

  Prologue Two

  Day -6,460

  Day 365

  Chapter One

  Elizabeth

  Chapter Two

  Thomas

  Chapter Three

  Elizabeth

  Chapter Four

  Thomas

  Chapter Five

  Elizabeth

  Chapter Six

  Thomas

  Chapter Seven

  Elizabeth

  Chapter Eight

  Thomas

  Page x

  Chapter Nine

  Elizabeth

  Chapter Ten

  Thomas

  Chapter Eleven

  Elizabeth

  Chapter Twelve

  Thomas

  Chapter Thirteen

  Elizabeth

  Chapter Fourteen

  Thomas

  Chapter Fifteen

  Elizabeth

  Chapter Sixteen

  Thomas

  Chapter Seventeen

  Elizabeth

  Chapter Eighteen

  Thomas

  Day 146,365

  Chapter Nineteen

  Elizabeth

  Chapter Twenty

  Thomas

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Elizabeth

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Thomas

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Elizabeth

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Thomas

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Elizabeth

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Thomas

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Elizabeth

  Epilogue

  Thomas

  Day 365: The Final Day

  (Mass Extinction Event book 13)

  Prologue One

  Day -6,580

  “Where is she?” he asked as he hurried through the ward's double doors. “Where's my wife?”

  Looking up from her monitor, the nurse watched as he hurried past.

  “Sir?” she called out, getting to her feet. “Can I help you?”

  “I'm looking for my wife,” John replied, stopping and turning to her. “I got a call, but I was in a meeting, it said she'd gone into labor.”

  “And your wife's name?”

  “Marter! Rachel Marter!”

  ***

  “She's beautiful,” he said a short while later, as he looked down at the child in his wife's arms. “I...”

  His voice trailed off. He simply had no idea what to say. After all the years of trying, and after all the false starts, he was now staring at the face of his first child. No matter how he'd tried to prepare himself, no matter how many books he'd read, nothing had really made him ready for the enormity of this moment. And as he continued to stare at the girl, he realized that his soul was filled not with joy or hope or any of those other things.

  It was fear.

  He was terrified.

  “Isn't she stunning?” Rachel replied with a faint, exhausted smile. “John? Are you okay in there?”

  “Huh?”

  Turning to her, he realized he was in danger of zoning out entirely. Still, the fear was getting stronger, filling his mind with questions.

  What if I can't do this?

  What if I'm a bad parent?

  What if something happens to her?

  What if her life isn't perfect?

  “Okay, you look worse than I do right now,” Rachel continued, “and I'm pretty sure that's not how it's supposed to be.”

  “Sorry,” he stammered, still trying to pull himself together, “it's just... I mean, I...”

  Again, no words came to him.

  “Do you want to hold her?” Rachel asked.

  “Hold her?” The very idea filled him with horror.

  What if I drop her?

  “Sure,” he added.

  Rachel sat up a little and held the child out, and John – despite his grave misgivings – took the girl in his arms. She was so much lighter than he'd expected, so light that he now worried she might float away. He swallowed hard as he looked down at her face, but still the fears swirled in his mind.

  Is this normal?

  Is this how I should be feeling?

  “I can take her back if you want,” Rachel said. “You look like you're not enjoying it very much.”

  “I am!” he replied quickly, keen to say the right thing. The rest – the right feelings – would surely come a little later. “I'm sorry, I just don't quite know how to react.” He looked over at his wife. “She's healthy, right? Everything's fine?”

  “Everything's perfect,” she told him, before pausing for a moment. “I'm sorry you couldn't be here for the birth. I know you wanted to be, and we did call you, but you didn't answer. And I really couldn't hold her in any longer.”

  “I was in a meeting,” he said, as he looked back down at the child's face. “It wasn't supposed to go on for hours like that, but I couldn't get out of it. You know I would have, Rachel, if it was at all possible.”

  “I know,” she replied, with a hint of sadness in her voice. “Those Atherius guys don't stop for anything, do they? Not even families.”

  “I couldn't leave,” he said firmly, turning to her.

  “I know! I'm not criticizing you, John. I just wish you could have been here, because I know how much it meant to you.”

  “I'm here now,” he replied, “and I'm never going to let her down.”

  “I know you won't.”

  “I mean it,” he continued. “I don't care about anything else in the world now. She's going to have a perfect life, no matter what else happens. Even if the whole world goes to hell, I'll make sure that she's always protected.”

  “That seems a little specific,” Rachel pointed out, “but okay. I think for now you should just focus on changing diapers, getting up to check on her in the middle of the night, that sort of thing. Fixing the entire world can be a project for when she's older.”

  Still cradling the girl, John sat in the chair next to his wif
e's hospital bed. He already felt as if he was getting things wrong, as if he'd made several mistakes in just the past few minutes alone. At the same time, his fear was starting to twist and roil, filling his mind with thoughts of everything that could go wrong. Just a few hours earlier, he'd been in a meeting at which several apocalyptic scenarios had been discussed, and now he couldn't help but imagine those same scenarios hurting his newborn daughter. He knew he had to protect her, but he had no idea how to even begin. There were so many things that could go wrong.

  War.

  Disease.

  Poverty.

  Nuclear explosions.

  Pandemics.

  Terrorism.

  Serial killers.

  Sickness.

  Cancer.

  The cruelty of mankind.

  Suddenly he felt something nudge against his arm, and he turned to see his wife watching him with an expression of concern.

  “Are you listening to a word I've just been saying?”

  “I...”

  He hesitated, fully aware that it would probably be better to just admit that he was in his own little world.

  “There's no rush,” Rachel continued, “but I'd kind of like to settle on a name if we can. We discussed a few possibilities, but looking at her now I'm not really sure which of them fits. I know this is going to sound weird, but she just doesn't look like a Chloe or an Alice.”

  He looked down at the child, and he watched her face for a moment.

  “Elizabeth,” he said finally.

  “You want to stick with Elizabeth?” Rachel asked.

  “It's a good, solid name,” he replied.

  “I like it. Okay, then I guess that's settled.” A moment later, her phone began to ring, so she grabbed it from the nightstand. “It's Mom,” she said with a smile. “You don't mind if I take this, do you? She's gonna want to know all the details. You know she'll be on the first flight over, don't you?”

  As Rachel answered the phone, John stared at his daughter's face and felt his fear and panic starting to subside. All his worries still seemed very real, of course, but he was starting to feel markedly less helpless. The world remained a very dangerous place, and through his work he'd seen examples of some of the terrible things that might yet happen. But he'd also seen solutions, more solutions that he could ever have imagined, and he was starting to realize that there were ways to keep his little girl safe. All he had to do was stay calm and make sure that he looked for opportunities.

  “No-one's ever going to hurt you, Elizabeth,” he whispered, as he gently rocked her in his arms. “I promise that I'll always do what's best for you, even if you don't understand it at the time.” He leaned down and kissed her forehead. “Always.”

  ***

  “Go?” Rachel stammered. “Where?”

  “I need to drop by the office,” John explained, already slipping his arms into his coat. “I'll see you at home.”

  “I thought you were going to drive us,” Rachel replied, clearly shocked by her husband's decision. “John, this is our first day as a family, we have to take Elizabeth home together.”

  “I'll be there later,” he said, kissing her on the cheek before patting the side of Elizabeth's face. “I promise.”

  With that, he turned and headed to the door.

  “Can't work wait?” Rachel asked.

  “It's for Elizabeth,” he said, stopping and turning to her. “Don't you get it? My work is important precisely because it helps make sure that children like Elizabeth have a future. I can't go into all the details, but you're just going to have to trust me, okay? By going to work right now, I can make sure that Elizabeth's chances are a lot better. She needs me to do this.”

  “She needs you to hold her,” Rachel replied, “and rock her to sleep, and talk to her. She needs you to be there for her.”

  “And I will be,” he told her. “I'll be home tonight, I promise.”

  “Are you serious?” Rachel asked, but he was already gone.

  Sitting alone on the bed, Rachel hesitated before looking down at Elizabeth. The girl was shifting position slightly, but she remained asleep. To Rachel, she looked utterly innocent, as if the dirt of the world – of life itself – had yet to make a mark on her. That would inevitably happen one day, of course, but for now Elizabeth Marter was brand new and unsullied.

  “Your father's just a little weird,” Rachel explained finally, “but he loves you, I promise. You're so lucky to have him. I swear, no girl is ever going to be as well looked after as you are. There's nothing your father won't do for you. Nothing at all. Whether you like it or not.”

  Prologue Two

  Day -6,460

  “Okay,” Marjorie said as she set two glasses of juice on the table, “are you guys excited?”

  Sitting on the sofa, Martha and Joe Edgewater stared back at her. They were too young to really understand what was happening, but so far their grandmother had spent the morning trying to get them ready for the big moment. Even now, as Joe picked something from his nose and ate it, and as Martha stared at the juice, the pair of them seemed totally ill-prepared for the massive change they were about to experience.

  “I think I hear a car,” Marjorie said, stepping over to the window and peering out. “Yes, I was right. Your parents are back from the hospital. You're about to meet your new baby brother. Do you want to know his name?”

  She turned to them, grinning, and she waited in case either of them might react.

  “Well, I'll tell you,” she continued. “His name's Thomas. Thomas Edgewater.”

  ***

  “Thomas Edgewater,” she said a while later, as she held the gurgling child up and admired him in the afternoon light. “He looks like a strong one.”

  “It's good to get another boy,” her husband Walter said, leaning on the side of the porch as he watched. “Hopefully one of 'em'll want to take this place on when they're older.”

  “Or little Martha want be the one who wants to be a farmer,” Marjorie suggested. “We have to move with the times, dear, and girls are starting to want to do things like that.”

  “No girl could run this place,” Walter sniffed. “There are limits, Marge.”

  “Well, it doesn't matter what we think anyway,” Marjorie replied, turning and carrying Thomas down the steps and onto the grass at the front of the house. Taking a moment, she looked out across the vast fields that reached as far as the eye could see, and she breathed in deep. “These things have a way of working themselves out,” she continued, “and often we don't get to make the choices. You never know what the world will be like by the time our grandchildren are old enough to make their own decisions.”

  Thomas gurgled.

  “You agree, don't you?” Marjorie said, before leaning down and giving him a big kiss on the forehead. “Yes you do. Of course you do.”

  “The future won't be very different to how it is now,” Walter suggested.

  “Apart from robots and flying cars,” Marjorie replied.

  “You watch too many movies. The land round here hasn't changed much in the past few hundred years, and it won't change much in the next few hundred either. That's one thing you can always count on. No matter how much crap human beings get up to, the land is stable, and there'll always be smart people who understand that and who want to come back to the land. As long as that's the case, everything else is just a load of noise.”

  “Sometimes things change, though,” Marjorie told him.

  “Not the fundamentals.”

  “You can't be sure of that.”

  “Oh, I can. One day, little Thomas will be an old man just like me, and with any luck he'll be wise like me too. And if that's the case, then he'll be standing pretty much right where I am now, because he'll know that it's the land that keeps us safe. People can buy all sorts of things, but at the end of the day a man is defined by the land he owns.”

  Marjorie turned to him.

  “Fine,” he added, “or a woman. The point still stands.
It's the smell, more than anything. This land smells the same way it smelled when I was a boy, and it'll smell the same way in a hundred years from now. And I'd be willing to bet my bottom teeth on that!”

  ***

  A couple of hours later, as the family prepared dinner, Walter Edgewater made his way out past the line of trees and down the slope that led toward the river. Some days, mainly when the house was really full, he developed what he called an itch of solitude. What he meant by that was that there were moments when he just wanted to get away from everyone else, not because he was antisocial but because he preferred to have some moments of quiet contemplation.

  By the time he reached the river's edge, his mind felt much calmer, and he told himself that he could afford a good half hour of quiet before anyone would start looking for him. Everyone, especially Marjorie, knew that he liked to take these little breaks.

  Stopping to look down into the water, he took a deep breath as he reflected upon the fact that the land around the farm hadn't really changed since he himself was a child. He'd told Marjorie earlier about the importance of the smell of the place; what he hadn't told her was that this story was in fact one that his own father had told him back in the day. For generations, Edgewater men had been taking in the breeze, and he felt certain that the same would be true for as long as there were people on the planet.

  And after that? Well, he figured nobody could control that very much.

  Hearing a faint splashing sound, he turned and looked a little way along the riverbank. Something had disturbed the water, and a moment later he saw a small brown bundle of fur scurrying through the mud, making its way through the grass. He smiled, realizing that it was just a rabbit, but then he furrowed his brow as he saw that the rabbit seemed different somehow.