In the year 2034, the world is devastated by war between The Militia and the United States. A man named Will, his wife, and a small group of survivors are holed up inside the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., just trying to get by. But things get a lot worse when the unthinkable happens: a real-life zombie apocalypse. Battling the undead while trying to keep his group alive and healthy will test all of Will’s resolve, courage, and faith.
In the year 2034, the world is devastated by war between The Militia and the United States. A man named Will, his wife, and a small group of survivors are holed up inside the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., just trying to get by. But things get a lot worse when the unthinkable happens: a real-life zombie apocalypse. Battling the undead while trying to keep his group alive and healthy will test all of Will’s resolve, courage, and faith.
Chapter 1
Wednesday, June 15, 2050
Southern Virginia, 12:40 p.m.
Today marks the sixteenth anniversary of World War Three. The United States of America went to war with The Militia, an army whose origins are still unknown to this day. The Militia launched one of their nuclear missiles, hitting New York City on June 15, 2034. Hundreds of thousands of Americans lost their lives; NYC was destroyed, along with most East Coast cities. It wasn’t before long the United States declared war on The Militia.
The military drafted over 400,000 eighteen-to-twenty-five-year-old men who were not married and had no children to fight for America’s survival. My name is Will. I have a last name, but most of us do not want to share our last names. Most of this story takes place in Washington, D.C. A town was formed by my group of survivors who chose to stay behind after most of the East Coast fled.
Myself, along with my wife Nicole, best friend Colin and my closest friend John, along with Mike, Andrew, and Jake, were not drafted because we each had a child. Nicole and I got pregnant in Vegas the year before the war after a party that took place in the suite of the Cosmopolitan.
Sadly, all of our children died of pneumonia, three months into the war. Nicole did not talk to me for nearly a month after we lost our baby girl, Emily. For some reason she blamed it on me for not taking better care of Emily. As far as I’m concerned, I took care of my daughter just as well as Nicole did. And to make matters worse, Nicole lost her left foot in a car accident during the war. She and John’s girlfriend, Caitlyn, had decided to get food and water during a heavy rainstorm. They were driving in a Jeep they had found parked outside our camp, and as they were driving down Washington Street, a bomb went off just three yards ahead of them.
The explosion caused the Jeep to flip over and go into a roll, and it didn’t stop until it hit the entrance to the subway system. A piece of metal from the explosion penetrated Nicole’s left ankle right after they went into the roll. John and I arrived to rescue them minutes after Nicole and Caitlyn radioed us for help. When we arrived, Nicole’s injury was worse than expected. John had no choice but to amputate her left foot.
I will never forget seeing Nicole, the woman that I truly loved, biting a cloth and holding on to my hand with her left, screaming as John used his machete to amputate her foot. Just sixty seconds after her foot was completely separated from her ankle, she passed out from the blood loss.
Each night I slept next to her in our tent, holding her left hand with both my hands, trying to hold back tears at seeing her like this. Everything that had happened to us: losing our one-year-old daughter, and now Nicole was missing a foot. I wasn’t surprised that she didn’t speak to me for a while.
Six months into the war, Nicole and I got over what happened, since neither of us could live without each other. I needed her, and she needed me. I promised her that she and I would move to a new place, far away, once the war concludes. Nicole used crutches to help her get around. She hated it. She still hates it, sixteen years later. But she can’t walk without them.
I’m here to tell the story of the darkest hour of the war, two years into the never-ending battle between America and The Militia. When the war started, most of the people in my group were either twenty-two or twenty-one. A couple of them were nineteen. That was sixteen years ago. Most of us survived, now at ages thirty-eight or thirty-seven. My group and I built our camp inside the warehouse of the Smithsonian Museum. Nine o’clock was curfew, and anyone that left after that hour would be doing all the laundry and cooking all the meals for a week.
Living conditions in our town were damn rough. Food and water were scarce. Most of the water that was found was saved for drinking. Water was all we drank. No soda, no coffee. Milk was sour, and so was orange juice and lemonade. Water is the best for the human body, as well as getting enough sleep.
The women got the most sleep, which was good. The men took turns on night shifts, patrolling the town to make sure no intruders got past the ten-foot walls we built out of fences and metal doors from abandoned cars. The men did help a ton with cooking food and doing laundry. They were mostly busy fixing the walls and going out of the town to bring more food and water, enough for everyone.
There were nine of us, six men and four women. Most of us were in relationships, and because of that, John and I, who were voted as the leaders, had to make rules. The first rule was curfew, which was set at nine o’clock. Anyone that left after that hour would be on laundry and cooking food for a week, except if they must go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. If they choose to stay up, they had to be extra quiet.
The bathroom situation was easier than anticipated. One of the Smithsonian Museum’s loading docks had employee bathrooms located at the first indoor entrance. So, during the first month of the war, John, myself, Mike and Colin found the bathrooms and made some changes. Colin and Mike carried a gasoline-powered generator they had found on the first supply run into the city. The generator was used at a family-owned restaurant; I can’t remember the location or the name. They put it in the back of the Ford F-150 and came back to town with more food and water and medical supplies.
Mike and Colin hooked up the generator so we could use power for the bathrooms to run the water, flush toilets, and power the lights. John and I figured out how to turn the wheelchair stall in both the men and women’s bathrooms into a shower. Colin and Mike, on the first supply run when they found the generator, located a Bed Bath and Beyond two miles out of the city. They grabbed two shower faucets, cooking pans, cooking and eating utensils, and towels.
Instead of fixing the stalls to not have the toilet be usable, John and I drove around the city, looking for a plumbing store to route two water pipes so we could build a shower, but also to keep using the toilet in that stall. To keep the water from flowing out of the stall when using the showers, we nailed in pieces of metal from abandoned car doors. We bent the bottom of the metal door scraps and nailed them to the floor. John nailed the top part of the metal scraps to the wall of the stall and to the door, but he did it so the door could still be opened and closed. I installed a lock on it so people could use the bathroom without disturbing those who were showering.
Anyone who had to use the bathrooms, the first thing to do was to turn on the generator, which was in the janitor’s closet. All three rooms were in a line, starting with the women’s, then the men’s, and finally the janitor’s closet. After they were done using the bathrooms, they absolutely must turn off the generator to save gas.
The bathrooms were only a minute’s walk from the garage doors of the loading dock. Our town only used twenty feet of the street, while the living quarters and kitchen were inside the museum. Laundry was done outside: we assembled a canopy large enough to cover the clothesline so if it rained, the drying clothes would not get wet. The canopy was made of tents we found in abandoned cars, just a ten-foot walk from the main entrance.
There was only one door to the town. Mike and Andrew took one of the doors from the building; they did not tell me where in the building it was. It was a metal door, which they attached to the wired fence with a two-by-four and nails. I can’t remember how they locked the door to keep intruders out.
The second rule was sex. If any couple wanted to have sex, they would have to use protection and have it in their tent during the day. We could not afford any pregnancies, because we could only get so much food and water. Supply runs were once every two weeks, and if we had newborns, we would have to go every day, which took a toll on the gas supply.
The third rule was chores. Everyone had chores, from cooking, cleaning the bathrooms, picking up any litter on the ground (if there was any), to doing laundry and even helping myself or all the other men going on supply runs. If anyone broke any of the rules, they would be yelled at in front of the whole group and would have to write an apology letter to everyone. To my utter surprise, no one broke the rules.
The Darkest Hour is about a world ravaged by a devastating war between the Militia and the United States, and to make matters worse, another frightening enemy emerges from the shadows.
A man named Will, his wife, Nicole, and a small group of survivors soon learn what desperate people will do when their lives are at stake when the unthinkable becomes a reality. Stakes are at an all-time high when the need for survival turns critical at the introduction of a zombie apocalypse. Now, the group isn’t only battling a new war with the undead but also fighting with the darkness of their inner thoughts.
The characters in this novelette were subjected to an onslaught of devastation. This story had no shortage of hardships, from the challenges of being trapped in a war to dealing with the walking dead. The thrills and chills came one after the other. Being a novelette, there’s always a worry of being unable to connect with the characters in the amount of time given. However, that wasn’t the case with The Darkest Hour. The tension, challenging discussions, and traumatic moments resonate, allowing the reader to quickly form a connection with the characters, not a strong connection, but one that helps pull the reader along, making the story difficult to put down. There’s more of an opportunity to connect with Will, the main character, as the author includes flashbacks of some moments in his life, which helped bring light into such a dark atmosphere. One of the more compelling parts of the story was the relationship between Will and Nicole. The couple is pulled apart by a particularly traumatic event. Still, the reader gets to appreciate the strength of their relationship and the growth as they face the hardships together through communication and trust.
The tension was high, creating the perfect atmosphere for a zombie apocalypse. Certain parts of the story will have you at the edge of your seat, wondering what other dangers and unexpected events will target the group. But, there were also brief moments of happiness, where the characters found joy in life's small pleasures, lightening the weight of this story when needed most. There were gory scenes, but they weren’t too much and were needed to add to the intensity of the group’s situation.
If you are looking for action, adventure, horror, and romance in your next read, this novelette should be added to your list. It doesn’t disappoint.