Alive (Sundown Series Book 3) Read online

  Alive

  Sundown Series

  Courtney Konstantin

  Published by Courtney Konstantin, 2018.

  Copyright © 2018 by Courtney Konstantin

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

  may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

  without the express written permission of the publisher

  except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  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

  To the readers who have connected with the Duncans.

  Your belief has brought them to life.

  CHAPTER ONE

  One Week Before the Outbreak -

  The end of winter still held tight to the Montana skyline. Large puffs of snow floated to the ground, collecting and turning the landscape white. Though spring had arrived, Mother Nature had failed to inform the Montana weather. The forest was quiet, the animals still hid away. They waited for warmer weather to wake them from their slumbers.

  Rafe Duncan stood in front of his wall of windows, as he drank his morning coffee. He was accustomed to the randomness of the snow in the Montana mountains. His view was the backside of the small slope that his home was built on. He could picture the gravel drive below, that led to a large metal gate. The gate was the entrance to the large rock wall that surrounded his property. He ran his hand over his closely cropped black hair. He focused on his reflection in the glass, his blue eyes looking back at him.

  My property, Rafe thought to himself. He couldn’t seem to get used to calling the compound his. He had lived in town while his father was still alive. When a heart attack took Mitch Duncan’s life three years before, Rafe was the one to find him. Rafe didn’t think of that moment often, he didn’t see a reason to agonize over something that was just life. Death was the end and it came to everyone.

  When his father hadn’t shown up for one of his jobs, Rafe was listed as a contact. Mitch had been scheduled to set up a security system for a wealthy rancher, who was having issues with his animals going missing. He wouldn’t have worked, except he needed the income to continue to build the compound he had spent his life on creating. The place that he was sure would save his family someday. In the end, he should have been more concerned with regular physicals.

  Rafe turned away from the windows. He would need to leave a little earlier for work himself. The snow would cause traffic. No matter how often it snowed, drivers didn’t understand how to handle the icy conditions. Unlike his father, Rafe maintained the property, keeping it in working order. However, he wasn’t obsessed with survival like his father. A lot of what he did was out of habit and not fear of the apocalypse to come.

  He ducked his chin as he emerged into the snow and ran to his pickup truck parked between the house and the root cellar. Though it was early and he was headed to his day job, he had been awake for hours. His morning chores had to be done, snow or sun. As he circled back to the driveway, he could hear the cows mooing their goodbyes as they did every morning. This morning he had packed them back into their stalls in the barn, to protect them from the snow. As long as they were fed and milked they were happy animals.

  His father wouldn’t have approved of the relationship Rafe had created with the animals on the compound. In the mornings when he trudged out to the barn to milk the ladies, he talked to them and he found them to be great listeners. Mitch believed animals were for nothing but food. Rafe didn’t see a reason to butcher the ladies while he was getting milk from them, so they were still functional. The rooster, on the other hand, Rafe had plans for that bird. He swore to himself that if that mean animal attacked him one more time when he was collecting eggs, he was having him for dinner.

  With a push of a button, the large gate rolled open and Rafe pulled into the forest beyond. As was his habit, he waited just outside the gate for it to close completely. He kept his eyes moving, to ensure nothing got into the compound while the opening slowly closed. He may not have had the same paranoia his father lived with, but the compound was still his home.

  The drive through the trees would be considered magical if Rafe wasn’t used to seeing it. The puffs of snow caught on the trees, creating a white canopy over the dirt road that led him to the main asphalt highway that passed his home. He stopped at the entrance and looked both ways, noticing how the snow was starting to stick to the ground, creating a white wonderland. He could see tire tracks from other drivers passing through and he easily maneuvered his truck to the tracks already cut through the snow.

  The drive to his work was uneventful most days. He arrived in good time to the facility he worked at as a security associate and showed his badge to the man in the box next to the entrance gate. The man waved him through with not even a crack of a smile, even though Rafe had been working with the man for over a year. He wound behind the complex to where the security vehicles were parked and left his own truck outside a door.

  Rafe had called this job his main income for just over a year. His actual employer was an outside security company, who was often contracted for government work. The medical facility he worked at now was typically a quiet place to be. Many days Rafe wondered why they needed security at all. But it was a paycheck and it helped keep his home in working order.

  Inside the building, Rafe followed a hallway to the security center that was a hub in the middle of the building. All of the doors were only accessed with keycards. Throughout the hive of pathways, additional locked doors sat allowing only certain employees through different doors. As security Rafe could access any door as needed. As a standard, all of the locked doors stayed closed at all times. According to the man he reported to, a government suit that knew nothing about security, many of the rooms were on a need to know basis.

  He arrived at the fishbowl security room and relieved the guard from the night shift. Rafe always found it odd that there was 24-hour security in a medical facility. However, from the logs he had reviewed, there were many people coming and going throughout the evening. There were so many different titles and people, Rafe was never able to determine what exactly people did in the middle of the night. Whatever it was, it was important to them.

  The security room was referred to as a fishbowl because it was a room made of glass. It had taken Rafe some time to get used to being on display as people bustled from place to place around him. Once he realized no one cared about him, he no longer cared about who was there. One wall was partially covered with monitors, views from every angle, showing hallways, labs, and offices. Two desks also sat in the room, though there were never two officers in the room at any given time.

  Rafe sat in front of the monitors to start. He reviewed all of the footage coming in and found his partner officer making rounds
like she was scheduled. Liza was a husky woman, that most likely could kick the crap out of Rafe if he stepped out of line. But her temperament was sweet and friendly, clear on her face as she smiled at the group of lab coats she passed in the hallway. Liza looked at her watch then. Next was the customary wave to Rafe in security as she knew he would have taken his post.

  “Hi, Liza,” Rafe said into the mic attached to his shirt. He watched as she saluted him and continued on her rounds. With their normal hello out of the way, Rafe began to cycle the views. There were way more cameras in the building than video monitors. Security associates were expected to cycle through all cameras three times a shift.

  It was breakfast time, so people were milling around the cafeteria. Rafe cycled again and found a lab with four coats working inside. They had a wall full of mice in individual cages and what had to be hundreds of beakers and glass containers stored in every extra space of the room. The group of doctors seemed to work in silence, each a spoke on the government wheel. Rafe often watched the labs, curious about what was being tested, created, or observed. It was moments during these observations where Rafe really questioned the high-security facility and what was happening in it.

  Mitch Duncan had been full of paranoid theories about the government. Rafe figured he had rolled over in his grave when his only son worked contract work for the same entity he didn’t trust. However, Rafe had inherited his father’s understanding of security and systems, so the work came naturally to him. Rafe’s previous assignment was at a bank that had been robbed and was revamping their security. That type of job made sense to Rafe. There were materials to protect that were valuable to people.

  Now, Rafe felt like he was protecting secrets. For a year Rafe had warred with his inner demons, feeling he was betraying his own belief of right and wrong by working at the facility. The people he met throughout the lab were kind and friendly, none setting off any warning bells in his head. He assumed that meant one of two things. One, they were very good actors and didn’t feel their work was wrong. Or two, they had no idea what they were really working on either and they were all in the dark together.

  He sighed and pulled his gaze away from the doctors. Leaning back in his seat, Rafe set the monitor to auto-rotate. Images of hallways, offices, storage rooms, and labs passed in front of his ice blue eyes. Eyes that had been commented on to look cold and unfeeling, more than once. He relied on his eyes, the sharpness of them and his mind as he watched the images of the building. People moved as they were meant to, going from place to place.

  An alarm suddenly began to beep in the security station and Rafe sat forward quickly. He scanned the monitor attached to the alarm and pulled up the camera it indicated. It was the same lab he had been watching before. In the lab, the doctors scurried frantically. Blood was dripping from one woman’s hand as she tried to cradle it against her chest.

  Rafe realized the emergency was medical, so he started the proper procedures. He called to Liza over their radio and let her know he was leaving the fishbowl to attend to a medical emergency. He gave her the location and she agreed to meet him to assist. As protocol, Rafe also notified the guard at the entrance that there was a medical emergency and Rafe would advise if emergency services were needed. Rafe made these calls as he grabbed his security medical bag and headed out of the door.

  When he arrived at the lab, the doctors inside seemed to have calmed down a bit. The sight of Rafe at their glass doorway prompted one to motion for him to wait before they opened the door. One by one each doctor exited the lab through the air shower entrance. The first was the woman with the bleeding hand, which was wrapped in a towel now.

  “Hi, I’m Rafe with security,” he said, as he set down the medical bag and motioned for her to sit on the bench outside the air shower door.

  “I’m Tammy,” the hurt doctor replied, a little shaky.

  “What happened?”

  “One of the mice, it attacked me.”

  “Attacked you?” Rafe asked. He raised an eyebrow, not understanding how a mouse could have injured the woman badly enough to produce the amount of blood he saw on the towel.

  “He bit into my hand, wouldn’t let go.”

  When Rafe took the woman’s hand in his gloved ones, he found a large chunk of flesh to be missing from the web space between her thumb and forefinger. Gingerly he turned her hand to see how bad it was, and he found additional bite marks with less severe wounds on her palm below her thumb. He pressed gauze to the deepest wound and began to bandage it up with a little pressure to help stop the bleeding.

  “That was one pissed off mouse,” Rafe muttered.

  “I don’t know why. They are usually such docile animals,” Tammy replied.

  As Rafe worked the other doctors from the room stood around watching. Liza arrived and once she realized Rafe had everything handled, she radioed for a decontamination team to come to the lab to handle the biohazard situation. The alarm had alerted the lab executives on site and it didn’t take long for a suit to arrive on the scene to supervise and handle the situation. If Rafe didn’t know any better, this situation was much worse than the chance this woman had rabies.

  The other doctors were each taken aside by 'The Suit' individually and Rafe watched from the corner of his eye. He couldn’t hear anything, but he could see the doctors’ faces as they were being questioned. One woman, who Rafe knew to be named Charlotte, stared up at 'The Suit' with defiant eyes. It made Rafe pause and turn full on to see what was happening. As 'The Suit' asked her a question, Charlotte’s hands started flying around in gestures of accusation and anger. Her eyes, which were a noticeable green, were stormy and vivid. Something is definitely going on here, Rafe thought to himself.

  “Do I need stitches?” Tammy asked, breaking Rafe’s concentration on the argument raging nearby.

  “Probably. I can’t do those here, they don’t give us those types of supplies. I don’t think you need an ambulance, but I would go to the hospital directly. Also, to make sure you don’t contract rabies.”

  “Oh, the mice don’t have rabies. We make sure of that.”

  “Well erratic behavior like what happened today could indicate someone made a mistake,” Rafe said.

  “We don’t make mistakes.”

  Rafe just shrugged his shoulders as he cleaned up the area, shoving all of the bloodied items into a red biohazard bag. Everyone made mistakes, he knew, these doctors were no different. Being smart didn’t mean something couldn’t happen that wasn’t in your control. He knew better than to ask or insinuate that whatever tests they were doing to the mice could have caused this. When he started his contract, he was expressly forbidden from speaking to anyone about their work in the facility. So, he left it up to Doctor Tammy to figure out why the mouse had attacked her so viciously.

  Raised voices caught Rafe’s attention and he was pulled back to 'The Suit' and Charlotte’s conversation. He was suddenly reminded of his sisters, Alex and Max. Alex, the oldest of the siblings, had a calming manner; motherly and patient. Max, on the other hand, was the youngest and full of fire if you got her going on something that she believed in. He tried to picture Max now and had to smother a grin at how the small spitfire of Charlotte would do even Max proud with her current tirade.

  Finally, Charlotte stormed away, and 'The Suit' put a phone to his ear. With the lab shut down for decontamination, the doctors were sent home. Rafe gave Tammy one more suggestion of going directly to the hospital because she probably needed stitches. She agreed and was gone a moment later. The alarm and injury was the second incident in two years Rafe had handled. Ultimately, he knew that was a very low rate of issues and his job was quite easy.

  Later that evening Rafe walked into snow flurries coming down again. He climbed into his truck and set the heater on to keep himself relatively warm on the drive home. The temperature would drop as soon as the sun disappeared behind the mountains. He pulled out, waving at the night security associate, now at the gate.

  Traffic
was easy, with no accidents clogging up the roads Rafe needed to get home. Once away from town he could feel the release of tension he held when being in close contact with so many people at once. He wasn’t antisocial, he liked people well enough. But in small doses. He preferred seclusion and quiet. It was one of the things that set him apart from his sisters. Though Max didn’t really care for emotional connections outside of the family, she knew how to manage around people. Alex was a people person and they tended to gravitate toward her heart.

  Lost in thought, he almost missed the lights flashing from the trees. Rafe let his foot off of the gas pedal slowly as hazard lights caught his attention about ten feet off the road, into the trees on the right-hand side. He pulled his pickup over to the side and jumped out to check on the driver of the car. When he approached the door swung open and a very angry Charlotte jumped out. She swung a crowbar in his direction.

  “Stop right there!” She yelled. Rafe noticed her green eyes again. They seemed to be even more green when she was angry.

  “Whoa! Calm down. I just saw your hazards and was coming to see if you were ok,” Rafe said, his hands up so as not to frighten her.

  “Easy explanation. You could have been the one that just ran me off the road!”

  “Ran you off the road? Someone did this to you?” Rafe scanned the road as far as his eyes could see. Nothing moved. No lights except his headlights and Charlotte’s hazards showed in the area.

  “Yes! I don’t just drive into the forest for fun.” She seemed to lose some of her momentum of attack and the crowbar started to lower a bit.

  “Who would run you off the road? The snow does create some careless drivers. Maybe it was an accident?” Rafe asked the question, but something in his gut had him believing it was as Charlotte said.

  “Can you help me get my car back on the road?” Charlotte ignored his question and seemed on edge. Rafe walked to the car to see what type of situation they were dealing with. He didn’t have his equipment for towing on the truck currently. The car was pretty stuck into an embankment, it’s front tires dug in from where Charlotte had tried to reverse on her own.