Born (The Born Trilogy Book 1) Read online

  Born

  The Born Trilogy

  Book One

  A Novel by Tara Brown writing as AE Watson

  Copyright 2012 Tara Brown

  http://TaraBrown22.blogspot.com

  Amazon Edition

  This ebook is a work of fiction and is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold 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 purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. No alteration or copying of content are permitted. This book is a work of the author’s crazy mind—any similarities are coincidental. Any similarities are by chance and not intentional.

  Other Books by Tara Brown writing as

  TL Brown, AE Watson, Erin Leigh, and Sophie Starr

  The Devil’s Roses

  Cursed

  Bane

  Hyde

  Witch

  Death

  Blackwater

  Midnight Coven

  Redeemers

  The Born Trilogy

  Born

  Born to Fight

  Reborn

  The Light Series

  The Light of the World

  The Four Horsemen

  Imaginations

  Imaginations

  Duplicities

  The Blood Trail Chronicles

  Vengeance

  Vanquished

  The Single Lady Spy Series

  The End of Me

  The End of Games

  The End of You – A Novella

  Blood and Bone

  Blood and Bone

  Sin and Swoon

  My Side

  The Long Way Home

  The Lonely

  LOST BOY

  First Kiss

  Sunder

  In the Fading Light

  For Love or Money

  White Girl Problems

  The Seventh Day

  The Club

  Sinderella

  This book is dedicated to the believers, the preppers, and the crazy people. We all know you will be the last ones standing if ever the world ends.

  It is also dedicated to my dad. He is where I will be if everything ends.

  A Note to the Reader

  In this series the reference to the United Nations and the Georgia Guidestones is based on actual events, as well as conspiracy theories. All of the information I used for the conspiracy theories came from the http://www.abovetopsecret.com/ and http://www.infowars.com/. The Georgia Guidestones is an actual monument. I think the Georgia Guidestones is the coolest thing ever. Very strange and suspicious.

  As you may have noticed, I have a serious addiction to conspiracy theories and this book is based on that.

  As always, this series is dedicated to the believers, because you never know!

  Chapter One

  They say that the world is built for two, but in the silence of the old cellar, two feels like a long lost dream. It's an ice cream cone on a boardwalk with the sun above and the sea below. It's the wind rolling around you gently, trying to persuade you in all the directions at once and mixing sand over your feet as your toes dig in. It's a perfect place that none of us tries to remember.

  What’s the point in remembering when there is no way to go back, and no matter how hard we try to move forward, we will always be stuck in the muck we have made.

  Besides, in any mind left functioning, the world was built for pain. Perhaps once there had been a place where love and companionship were something to push your life toward.

  This isn't that world anymore.

  To me, that world never existed anyway. The world has always been a selfish place where love is fleeting and people are fickle. Once upon a time, true love accidentally happened to the fortunate. They polluted and corrupted it, and like everything else, it got sick.

  I've seen it. I've seen it, and in the end when it's taken away, the people who protest or cry the loudest are the ones who have taken it for granted the most. The ones who have abused it, but didn’t even know they were doing it.

  I look around the cellar I’ve been hiding in, lying low in the shadows that have become the world around me, and know it’s time to move on. In the four days that I’ve been here, I’ve barely moved at all. My body is tense from it but that’s my rule, and now because of it I can breathe easier knowing I'm probably safe. I always end a supply run with a quiet few days in a cellar or basement.

  There are rules in the new world. Rules you have to make up as you go along, because everything changes. I don’t like change but I force myself to adapt. Except where other people are concerned. If there is one thing you want to avoid in the new world, it’s other people. Other people make you weak—I’ve seen that too. When you love someone, you’ll make stupid choices that look more like risks. Those risks get you dead, but in the new world, dying doesn’t mean you stay dead. Nothing is a guarantee anymore.

  Everything about the new world is already a risk, and I wasn't born to this world. I've had to learn how to move around quietly in it, how to sit still, and how to be one with the things that shuffle along, waiting for someone to make a poor choice. When everything goes the wrong way, you have to close yourself off from it.

  I have mastered that. I am the master of not caring.

  I know what I need to do to live. I have lain amongst the dead. I have run through the woods in the dark, feeling my eyesight clear like a wild animal’s might, and I have embraced the darkness.

  I have learned how to live without. Not just things but people and comfort.

  Because that is the new world.

  I have one place that reminds me of the girl I was supposed to be. That place is all I have left of the world before, and so I treasure it and keep it secret.

  I creep out into the beam of dust lingering in the air, sparkling from the sunlight that found its way down two stories into a dark cellar. I lift my fingers into the light, letting it touch me and make just one spot tingle with warmth. The beam of light almost makes me smile. I admire the light's determination at finding its way into the darkness, no matter what. No matter how hard I try to ignore it, that gives me hope. Hope I have to shake my head at, to bring my thoughts back around, so I can take my first step toward the stairs and leave this dark place.

  The explosions never destroyed this home in any way. It’s far too high on a lonely mountain, in a range of lonely mountains. The stairs are in one piece, which has become a bit of a novelty. Thankfully, the old farmhouse is just too far from any major center to have even been aware of the problems, at least maybe in the beginning.

  The blood smears on the white siding outside prove that the horror of the infection has touched every inch of this world. Even a lonely place such as this.

  The hardwood creaks under my first step. I hold my breath and hope the creak went unheard. I take a breath and take the second step slowly, allowing my body weight to shift onto it softly. I hesitate taking the third, giving the sounds space and distance so they sound more like random noises a farmhouse would make. My heart is beating like it might attempt to get free from my constricted chest. I wait a second longer—it's another rule. Never leave when you feel it's safe. Always wait one more second. Safe is an illusion, and once you believe the illusion, you lose everything.

  I put my feet to the far sides of the stairs, where the nails attach the boards to the frame. Shallow breaths make sounds in the new world, in the borderlands anyway. I have not ventured out of the borderlands. I don’t know what the rest of the world
looks like, just what I’ve heard from people in the towns. They say the cities are demolished but still crawling with the infected that didn’t die. The roads are blocked with the cars that didn’t make it out of the cities in time.

  My car is there somewhere, lost along the dead highway with the remains of those I left behind.

  But here, there is a silence that could drive you mad. No electricity, no cars, no phones, no buzz. The world sits quiet, as if sighing and taking a long inhale after what seemed like forever with mankind and the noise pollution. I swear to the God everyone used to pray to, the earth is taking it all back. Mother Earth probably just wants us gone—us and our evil.

  I don’t think there is any good left in us anyway.

  I know every decision I make out here pushes me one step further away from good. Sometimes I don’t recognize myself out here. I get lost in surviving and forget to just be a girl. A girl Granny and my dad could be proud of.

  Thank God for Leo and home. I am at peace when I am home, but here in the open world, I am one of them. One of what is left, that scrambles to survive, most of the time separate from anyone else. We all know the hard truths of this place. The good die and the strong do what they have to, to survive. The best we can hope for is a place that brings us peace.

  I sigh and focus my thoughts back to the task of getting home—getting back to my peace.

  I peek through the cellar door and try to keep my anxious heartbeat low and my breath quiet. My body needs to make some noises, but others can be controlled.

  The house is simple and plain, but it is a typical farmhouse and they are the best houses. They always sit a long ways off the road, not that roads matter. But farmhouses always have canning and pickling reserves that would outlast any human. They always have safety supplies and extras of everything. Farmers lived the longest, just like my father always said they would. The farmers and the people who were already bad. Seems like that’s all that’s left in the world. If I could just meet one person worth knowing, I might not be so dead inside. But that might make me weak. Dying for someone else would negate all the things I have done to stay alive.

  Leaving the basement always brings the same thought to my mind. I wish this place could be my peace, my place that makes me calm. It has everything and it’s centrally located to the towns at the base of the hills. Supply runs would be so much easier if I could live here. Two supply trips a year is rarely enough, but I know if I travel any more than that, I will be caught.

  I have come close so many times.

  And that is the reason I have to stay at my place. It’s too far for anyone to care about one girl at the top of a mountain.

  I tiptoe into the country kitchen, and as always, I’m amazed at how pristine it still is. All the dishes are put away and the counters are clear. It reminds me of my granny’s house. Everything is still in its place, just as it was the first time I came here. Now though, layers of dust have found their way into the home, along with the bits of weeds that grow in through the cracks. With no busy little granny to buzz around dusting and tidying it, everything shows its years of abandonment. Vines grow up the sides of the house like all the houses. As always, I stand against the doorframe and put my hand at the top of my head as a measurement. I turn and look at how much higher it is than the mark I once foolishly put there.

  That mark was put there by a little girl who didn’t know anything. She knew loss but that was it. For every inch I have grown, I have learned something else I wish I didn’t have to know.

  I look away from the mark, pushing away the memories of the little girl, and remember who I am. I walk low to the ground toward the back door. I can't help but laugh inside at how I still feel safer leaving through the back door, even though there is no front or back. There are only doors. They don't go anywhere anymore, because there is no direction.

  Nothing goes anywhere. Everything just is, and dead is just as awful as undead.

  I position the heavy pack on my back carefully. It contains jars full of heart and soul and survival. Each jar is like a kiss from the old lady who canned and pickled her own farm-fresh vegetables. I assume there are no preservatives, no added salt, and no colorings. There aren't any labels to contradict it. For all I know, she was using MSG in everything. I smile at the letters MSG; they meant something to me once. It meant we couldn’t eat in that restaurant because my dad said it would make me sick and weak willed.

  That was before.

  I fight back memories of nice old ladies and the world before. I have been to many worlds in my life, and being nineteen feels more like fifty most days.

  I harden my heart and feel my instincts sharpen as the hate surges through me. I need to get back to him and we need to get home. I take a deep breath and creak the door open, as if the wind has opened it. I close it again and open it. It looks like the wind coming off the brown dry fields is playing with the door.

  My animal eyes focus on the dirt yard. Nothing moves beyond the dust playing in the light. I should be waiting for night to travel, but I have stayed too long this time. I need to get back. Things only live so long without being tended to. I know this well. My garden has died many times before.

  The old barn doors in the loft swing in the soft breeze making creaking noises slip out into the dry air. I listen for the other noises that should be there. The long brown grass sways adding a crunching sound to the soft trickle the dusty driveway makes as pebbles scuttle along. Everything moves in sync with the wind.

  I had to learn how to spot this. I learned it from him. He can see everything all at once. He has a hunter’s instinct. When I met him I had the instinct of prey, but he has taught me how to be like him.

  I pull the door open and cringe. I know this is always the worst part of the walk home. I hate leaving this house. If I ever got my wish for anything in this whole world, I would stay here and make it mine. But I know what happens to people who have things in this world, someone kills them and takes what they have.

  It doesn’t matter what I want.

  I close it off and let the mean settle in. The mean is what gets me home and keeps me safe.

  My eyes squint in the intense light of the sun as it tries to blind me. My pack feels like a ton of bricks, but I take my first steps, desperate for it to be over with already. I don’t jostle the pack too much. I don’t want to break any jars. I have learned that pickle juice is hard to get out and backpacks are even harder to find. That’s a trip to the towns or to the old subdivisions on the borders of the cities. I’ve taken that risk before.

  Walking across the gravel and dirt driveway to the field is the worst. It's wide open to the yard. I scan the area, walking with my shotgun in my hand. I practice regularly at home with my rifle and silencer, but on the road I always bring the shotgun.

  It's my lucky gun. The cold thick metal of it makes me feel strong, even though I know what strength is.

  Strength is not pulling the trigger. At this point, I have yet to prove my strength to myself. I always take the coward’s path. Just like my dad told me to.

  My boots crunch along. I walk softly, but some noises are unavoidable. The noise will last until I reach the huge wheat fields. Then I will be a whisper in the wheat, like the wind.

  I enter, not looking back.

  When I reach the field, I know the rule.

  My legs groan under the first steps. My arches ache at the push in the beginning, but after the first quarter mile, I start to warm up and my legs enjoy running.

  My back is the biggest issue. The pack is so much heavier than I have ever trained with. I grip the shoulder straps tight till my arms can’t stand it for another second. Even then I push it until I reach the forest.

  I run deep into the woods, always on the same side, never the same path, but always the same destination. The branches whip past me, as the edge of the forest is always the thickest where the light penetrates the least. As the forest clears I see him. He's smiling like always. He's calm. He doesn’t run and jum
p. He waits to ensure I have brought nothing with me. He’s seen them before. He knows how bad it can be. Together we have seen the people get swarmed and taken, usually women. Like I said, the bad people seemed to live through the hard times like they were ready for this life of survival before the world ended.

  “Leo,” I whisper, out of breath but desperate to say one thing. Being alone in that basement for days makes me lose my senses sometimes.

  Instead of the warm greeting we both want, I turn around and hold my shotgun. I walk backward as Leo saunters over to watch the forest. We sit behind a tree and wait. After a few minutes I put the pack down and climb one of the huge trees. The thick branches are rough against my hands. The skin softens up over the spring when I don't have to chop wood. Spring ain’t what it used to be. It’s hot and heavy in the new world.

  “Not ain’t, Emma. Isn’t is what a lady would say.” I smile when I whisper it. I know it’s what she would have said. My granny had a thing for the word ain’t. She had a thing for sounding educated.

  I sit on a branch and look through my binoculars from the viewpoint.

  I can see the entire field of brown hay from here. I have another weak moment and let myself imagine living in the farmhouse one day and harvesting the hay. Looking through the small holes of the binoculars, it’s easy to get caught up; they don’t let you see the rest of the world.

  My eyes strain. I try to find even a single strand of the long grass moving in a way that would signify I have been followed. I glance at the farmhouse sitting still and alone, and hope it will sit that way until my next visit. I wait before I pull the binoculars from my face and let the breeze sway me on my perch.

  I wish for a second that I could fly away into the white clouds that look the way they always have. It's like they don't know the world has ended, and they don't need to make shapes for us anymore. There is no us. I look past the farmhouse and watch as everything moves, just as it should. No one has followed me. I climb down, tired and eager for my own bed.