Manitoba Lost (Book 1): Run (Survivors #1) Read online

  A Post Apocalyptic Adventure

  Book 1 in the Manitoba Lost series (Survivors #1)

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  About RUN

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Author's Note

  Canadian Glossary

  About the Author

  Copyright R. A. Rock 2017

  to my family, may this book be the one

  When the lights go dark, two friends must stick together to survive…

  Nessa never thought a cabin could save her life. But after a solar flare knocks out Manitoba’s power grid, the rumors run rampant: Canada and the rest of the world may have gone dark for good. As chaos threatens to engulf the small city, Nessa packs her bags and leaves for her secluded cabin on foot…

  Matt would rather take his chances in the northern wild than in the pandemonium of the city. When his band of travelers crosses paths with Nessa, he’s eager to add her to their numbers. But the two are about to discover they have more in common than a shared destination…

  After encounters with local wildlife and deadly scavengers, Matt and Nessa’s group whittles down to two. Discovering if there’s something more between them may never happen if they can’t reach the cabin alive…

  Run is the first book in the Manitoba Lost saga, a series of post-apocalyptic adventures. If you like action-packed plots, authentic Canadian backdrops, and a hint of romance, then you’ll love R. A. Rock’s exhilarating series.

  Nessa

  “Run!” Matt yelled and I took off down the empty highway. Night was creeping in and the poplars that dominated the forest along this stretch of road lifted their bare, skeletal boughs to the sky, as if in supplication.

  My heart slammed against my chest from fear, long before I was out of breath from running. The sense of impending doom was hard to shake.

  How big was that homemade bomb?

  And what had possessed the usually level-headed Matt to use it?

  Matt caught up to me, pushing my pack into my arms. I shoved my hands through the straps and hefted it on to my back as he did the same. I turned to get another look at what was happening and froze in alarm.

  “Oh God, Matt. Look. He didn’t run.” Matt spun around and scowled at the idiot poking under his truck with a stick, trying to get the bomb out. “We have to help him. We have to go back.”

  “It’s about to go off, Nessa,” he said, then started screaming frantically at the man to run. The woman was shrieking, too. The stupid man finally figured out that he was in trouble and got up, scrambling away from the truck.

  “Come on, Ness,” Matt said, grabbing my hand and pulling me down the road away from the danger.

  We tore up the slight slope that grew gradually steeper, our running sluggish from the heavy packs we wore but Matt never let go of my hand, pulling me onward when I stumbled. The hard asphalt jarred my body with every pounding step I took away from the bomb but I didn’t care.

  Faster. Faster. Faster.

  My throat felt scraped raw and I had a painful stitch in my side but I pushed myself to run harder. It was like one of those dreams where you’re being chased and no matter how hard you try, you can’t run fast enough.

  When would it go off?

  And would we be far enough away to survive when it did?

  In a moment of excessive sentimentality, considering the situation, I felt grateful that if I was about to die at least I was with Matt.

  Suddenly there was an ear-shattering noise and I felt pushed forward. Heat enveloped me and I put my hands up to protect my face as I was smashed to the ground from the force of the explosion. The shock wave had knocked us to the ground and I could hear the snap and crackle of trees burning. There was the sweet scent of sap boiling. And the acrid smoke stung the back of my already sore throat. I felt stunned and couldn’t even move for a long moment.

  Finally, I pushed myself up to sitting and looked back at the carnage.

  Trees, bushes, and dried grass were burning along the two lane highway where the explosion had happened. The truck looked unharmed, which meant that the man had managed to poke the bomb out from under the vehicle. I guessed that it had rolled downhill to where it had eventually exploded.

  In the deepening evening, the whole scene looked uncanny and I wondered how in the hell I had ended up here. Only a few short days ago, my life had been normal — going to work, reading books on my phone, taking baths, eating pretzels, being bored — you know, normal. And now…

  Matt was only just getting up but seemed okay. I glanced back to the truck, scanning the area to locate the two people who had recently tried to kidnap us.

  That was when I noticed the body.

  Nessa

  Twelve Days Ago…

  It was a normal day.

  A Tuesday.

  The most ordinary of days of the week.

  I lay in bed, covered by a red quilt my grandmother had made over top of a white duvet — two layers to keep me warm during the frigid nights. I dozed, half-awake and thinking about the precariousness of my existence.

  Last night before bed, I had finished a post-apocalyptic novel — my favourite kind of book to read lately — and it had me thinking about living in the middle of nowhere.

  We have this saying in northern Manitoba that the road only runs one way — south.

  It means that once you’ve moved north maybe you might have one or two daring friends or family members who come to visit but after that it’s as if the road only has one lane and that’s southbound.

  People from the north know what it’s like to constantly go visit family and friends because they simply won’t come up here. It was a strange phenomenon that didn’t seem to apply to people living the same distance apart to the east or west.

  Granted, we did live in the middle of nowhere.

  Thompson, Manitoba was ten hours drive north of the Canada/U.S. Border. Yes, ten hours drive north of the border.

  We lived in the middle of the bush. And that was not the Australian outback bush.

  No. That was boreal forest
… Canadian shield… rocks, lakes, spruce, pines, poplar… full of mosquitoes, blackflies, and horse flies in the summer… and cold as hell in the winter… northern Canadian bush.

  I chuckled to myself as I clarified the terminology in my own head. No matter the drawbacks, I did love the north.

  And I always wondered, when I would buy a head of romaine lettuce in January or a package of strawberries in March… what would happen if the trucks stopped running?

  What would we do if the grocery stores emptied and no more food arrived — the way it magically did every day?

  What would we do?

  We would be completely cut off from the rest of the world. With no food and no knowledge of how to get it. Of course, the First Nations people had lived here successfully for thousands of years before we came in 1957 and plunked a mine in the middle of their world, changing everything.

  So it could be done.

  Surviving, I mean.

  But it wouldn’t be easy with all the skills and knowledge almost lost in the previous generations — the modern, spoiled, disgruntled gen X-ers, the hippie-esque generation Y, and those poor millennials who are blamed for everything that’s wrong with them. It was all the fault of the cell phones.

  And that was the other thing.

  Smart phones. Electric everything. The internet.

  What if the lights went out… and never came back on?

  What if you couldn’t impatiently google everything you wanted to know in four point five seconds?

  What if you couldn’t text the people you care about?

  What if you couldn’t reach into the fridge and pull out food?

  What if the world we depended on simply stopped working?

  What would happen?

  What would you do?

  What would I do?

  AFTER THINKING ALL these slightly depressing post-apocalyptic novel inspired thoughts for awhile longer, I finally got up. The usual mild discontent that I couldn’t ever seem to shake settled into the middle of my chest. I meandered to the bathroom and took a nice hot bath, my long brown hair swirling around me, all sounds muffled as I lay back, staring up at the ceiling that had a couple cracks in the paint, probably from all the baths I took.

  My skin glowed pink from the steaming water by the time I got out and dried off with my warm towel from the heated towel rack. This was one of the many small luxuries I allowed myself in order to make up for the general sense I had that my life was meaningless.

  Walking into the spare bedroom that I used as my meditation and yoga space, I sat down and began my stretching routine which was the same every day. Once in a while I would change it, but most days I did the exact same moves. Then I sat and paid attention to my breathing for ten minutes.

  Feeling a little better, I pulled on black dress pants and a flowing floral print shirt. The house was silent the whole time. I can’t stand noise in the morning.

  When I was dressed, I went into the bathroom and pulled my dark brown hair into a ponytail. I stared at myself in the mirror. Brown eyes stared back at me — too big for my face and with dark circles under them. My normally olive skin tone looked pale.

  I’ve always suspected that I’m kind of good looking in a slightly exotic sort of way, but I’ve never really had anyone tell me, so I’m not sure. I get my colouring and dark looks from my Italian mother, who came to Canada when she was four. I don’t wear make-up and as I gazed at my slightly pretty reflection in the mirror this morning, I felt that my twenty-nine year old face looked… well… it looked desolate and empty, as though life had forgotten it and passed it by.

  I sighed.

  Nothing to be done about that. I had to get to work.

  The lights flickered and I glanced up at them, frowning.

  What was with the hydro lately?

  The lights went back to shining steadily and I shook my head, flipping off the switch on the wall. I headed for the kitchen to get my lunch ready.

  I was a grade twelve math teacher at R. D. Parker high school in Thompson, Manitoba, Canada — also known as the “Hub of the North” because the town provides goods and services to all the surrounding communities.

  Where’s Thompson? Well, it’s in the middle of frickin’ nowhere.

  But I came back here because it was home. It was where I grew up. And where I knew I could get a job.

  It was also close to my cabin on the lake that I bought as soon as I realized that people who have real jobs can get things like mortgages and can buy things like cabins in the woods.

  Eventually I wanted to live in my little cabin all the time. I loved the forest and nature — and that’s pretty much all there is in this part of the country.

  My job was okay but soul-sucking and though I felt that there were no really terrible things that ever happened, I was slowly being drained of my essence — of the life energy that made me me — and soon all that would be left was an empty shell that had forgotten how to live.

  I spent my weekends at my cabin on Sipwesk Lake — hiking or canoeing. It was the only time I really felt as though I was doing anything other than merely existing. I was saving up so that I could take a year off and live there. I wanted to write sci fi novels.

  But I had to have a sensible plan. I couldn’t just go off into the forest to write books. My parents would have a fit. And I had to act like an adult.

  I am almost thirty.

  And I did have a plan.

  I had fixed up the cabin a little — adding insulation and a good cookstove. I had some stores of food. I stayed at the lake every summer and planted a garden — I had also built a small greenhouse from one of those do it yourself kits. And by the end of this year, if everything went well, I would have enough money saved that I could ask for a year off without pay from the school district.

  I would get my job back when I returned after the year. Well, if I returned. My plan was to write and publish a couple books in that time. They would probably do so well that I wouldn’t have to go back to teaching and I could live in my little cabin in the woods forever, writing stories.

  I snorted at the thought, throwing spinach, banana, and strawberry into the cup of my small blender, twisting on the lid with the blades, and blending.

  Living in the woods forever, writing stories. Sounded like an impossible dream.

  But I would write the stories anyway and then see what happened. That was the plan. And as long as nothing really unexpected happened in the next five months, then by this time next year, I would be living in my cabin and finishing the second novel.

  I smiled to myself at the thought.

  It made me cheerful to think it and chased away the ever present not-quite-happy feeling that always simmered just under the surface of my life.

  I grabbed the lunch box I always took to school. It had buttered coffee, green smoothie, and a salad for lunch. My usual fare. I considered stopping at the coffee shop to get an egg and cheese sandwich as a treat, but it wouldn’t really make me any happier and then I would feel worse later both from the unhealthy food and the guilt that would come with eating it.

  I stood in the driveway of my home on Pike Crescent and thought about my strange hometown that had only existed for about sixty years. Each neighbourhood in Thompson is named for a particular category, which sounds unique and cute but is actually quite confusing when giving directions. Especially since the city isn’t laid out in blocks.

  Westwood is fish on one side and birds on the other — Perch Avenue, Mallard Crescent. Riverside is metals — Silver, Copper, and Cobalt. Eastwood is colleges and universities — Brandon Crescent and Yale Avenue. Juniper is not surprisingly trees — Birch, Poplar, and Walnut. Burntwood is bodies of water, such as the unimaginative Hudson Bay.

  I stared in dissatisfaction at my drab, grey, squatting house as dreary as the fishy street it lived on. It looked exactly the same as every other bungalow in town.

  My dad always joked that for a planned city, Thompson hadn’t been very well planned.
Developers had come in and built tons of houses but using only three of four different styles of houses — simply flipping the floor plan every time. If you’ve been in one bungalow in Thompson, you’ve been in them all. The only difference being that in some when you entered, the kitchen was on the left and in some, it was on the right.

  But I didn’t care. Soon, I would be living in my little cabin and I would rent this place out. Maybe then I would find the sense of meaning I was looking for. Maybe then I would start to actually feel alive.

  I climbed into my Honda Civic, which had the best gas mileage I could find when I bought it. I used to be really concerned about the environment until I got jaded. I still recycle and walk and ride my bike as much as I can but I don’t have the passion I used to feel about it.

  Yeah, I’m one of those people.

  One of the ones who used to care but have given up on actually making a difference in anyone else’s life — never mind making a difference to the entire planet.

  Heck, I couldn’t even make my own life what I wanted it to be.

  Who was I to worry about anyone else’s?

  I drove slowly on the five minute drive, giving the engine time to warm up before I had to shut it off again. Thompsonites joke that if traffic is bad and you want to turn left, just turn right and go all the way around. Because this is Thompson and even if you go right you’ll probably still get there in about five or ten minutes.

  I pulled into my parking spot — the same spot that I parked in every single day — and stared up at the imposing two story, orange brick building where I spent my days under fluorescent lights with kids who didn’t care about math and who felt, like me, that there was something missing in their lives.

  It was hard to go in.

  But I did.

  What else was there to do?

  Nessa

  I drove out of town at around five o’clock, after finishing my correcting and prep for the next day at school. I was heading for my parents’ acreage north of the city on the Burntwood River.