Free The Enduring: Stories of Surviving the Apocalypse by Nicholas Ryan Page A

diary?”
    Mike shrugged like they were the same thing and why bother arguing the point. “It’s her record of what happened to us from the time we left here two years ago, up until yesterday. I thought it might be helpful to you. I’m not a great talker. If you find anything in it you want to know about, I’ll tell you what happened.”
    I smiled with a mixture of relief and a prickle of anticipation. A written record of a family’s escape from the ‘Affliction’ might offer a completely different insight into the nightmare. “I’d like to see it,” I tried to keep my voice level, dispassionate.
    Mike nodded. He turned on his heel and started striding back towards the house. I began to follow him but he stopped suddenly and turned on me. “No,” he said bluntly. “My wife and my children don’t want to be part of the interview. This is just you and me. I’d ask you to respect their decision.”
    There was a warning in the tenor of his voice. He didn’t say, “or else…” but he didn’t need to. It was implied by his expression and his tone. I stayed where I was.
    Mike went to the back door of the house and I heard the low murmur of voices, followed by a fit of short sharp barking. A little pug dog came scampering through the open door. It was brown with the mushed up face that typified its breed. It was a puppy. It circled around me, found nothing of interest, and went back into the house. Mike came out through the door holding a little book, the size of a pocket Bible.
    Mike handed me the journal. It was tattered; the spine creased and frayed, the front and back covers dog-eared. I flicked quickly through the pages. They were dirty with dust and grimy fingerprints. Several of the pages were crusted with spots of candlewax. The first pages were written in ink by a shaky hand. As I delved deeper into the little book, the writing changed to pencil but the wording was neater, more assured. I closed the book for a moment and looked sideways at Mike.
    “Were you armed when you left here?”
    “Yes,” he said. “I had an automatic rifle and a 40 cal handgun. Lots of ammunition, lots of water… and not much else.”
    “What was the plan when you drove away?”
    “To work my way towards the coastal areas of North Carolina, using back roads and keeping away from the heavily populated towns. I planned on finding a boat and navigating my way down the coast.”
    “Do you have boating skills?”
    “Some,” Mike was vague and said no more. “We planned on staying close to shore until we reached an island I thought we could defend.”
    It sounded like an ambitious plan. “Without food, and only an automatic rifle and a handgun?”
    Mike’s body posture changed. He shifted his weight, hooked one thumb into the pocket of his jeans, and his gaze became a kind of defiant challenge. He was assured, confident. Not arrogant. This was a man who had survived a harrowing journey of several hundred miles and kept his family safe against the swarming tide of the ‘Afflicted’.
    “It worked,” he said simply. “We foraged food along the way. We stumbled upon a couple of abandoned Army vehicles near a town called St. Pauls. One of the trucks had explosives and weapons, the other was loaded with basic supplies.”
    “No sign of the military?”
    “No, they were long gone,” Mike said. “We saw blood – lots of it. My guess is the ‘Afflicted’ swept over the convoy – like an ambush. But the tracks were a day old, and the blood spatters were dry. By then I think we were in behind the first wave.”
    I couldn’t resist the temptation any longer. I looked into the man’s deeply tanned face. “Where was the island?”
    Mike’s face turned into an icy cold smile without humor and the friendliness in his eyes became hidden behind steel shutters. “Off the coast,” he said.
    “Far away from here?”
    He said nothing.
    “Somewhere off Florida?”
    Mike’s irritation began to show. The press of his lips