Find Me Series (Book 3): Finding Hope Read online

  FINDING HOPE

  BOOK 3 OF THE FIND ME SERIES

  TRISH MARIE DAWSON

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  To Be Continued . . .

  Acknowledgments

  Need MORE?

  THE DRY LANDS (Excerpt)

  About the Author

  Also by Trish Marie Dawson

  Official Follow Links

  Finding Hope

  Copyright © Trish Marie Dawson 2015

  eBook Edition

  All rights reserved. No part of this ebook may be copied, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher: Trish Marie Dawson. The story contained within this book is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author's imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Created with Vellum

  For the Fans…

  PROLOGUE

  The thin mattress squeaked beneath my body as I rolled from one side to the other in an attempt to get comfortable on the narrow cot. Everything about the small room was foreign to me. A pale night-light flushed the lower half of the walls, tinting them a yellowish color that reminded me of used toilet water. Beneath the concrete floors lay a maze of heated wiring which kept the top surface warm, yet a relentless iciness still managed to crawl through the cracks into every room and find me. Our sleeping quarters didn't have windows but even without them I knew the weather was angry outside. Looking around at the blank walls, I missed the fluttering of the Laguna cabin curtains and creaky windowsill more than I ever could have imagined possible.

  It was strange, sleeping underground. There was always a draft, even though the temperature was carefully controlled. The earth leached all warmth from our little enclave of man-made tunnels like a thief and didn't stop the crime until it stole the warm breath from my lungs. The others said we would get used to it, but I had my doubts, especially coming from a place like San Diego where it was mostly warm even in winter. People weren't meant to live under the dirt like rodents. Only one week of our quarantine had passed, and yet I felt as if we’d been locked in the dark for years.

  With a long groan, I pushed up and swung my legs over the side of the bed, wincing as my bare feet touched the chilly ground. The solar power was at its weakest just before five in the morning, which meant the heating system under the poured concrete was almost depleted of power by the time I got up. I hurried across the room and stood on the small area rug, digging my toes into the plush tufts of balled cotton while rifling through the dresser. After pulling on a new pair of white socks with padded soles and an oversized sweater, I quietly opened my door and peeked into the hallway. The only sound was the hum of a generator down the hall and my feet softly padding along the polished floor.

  For the third morning in a row, I found myself upstairs in the community library before dawn, cold and alone. Curled into a ball, buried as deep into one of the plush chairs as physically possible, I sat with a book balanced on my knee and blinked wearily at the printed words. After reading the same paragraph twice, I looked up and stared at the windows that lined the oval room like the arc of a rainbow. They were ground level and too small for even a child to crawl through. They reminded me of prison windows. Their only purpose was to allow light in during the day, yet still go almost undetected from the outside.

  The limited contact we’d had in the past several days with our new hosts was through the intercom system. The others took no chances with strangers infecting the populace, as small as it was. Until we cleared the quarantine period, we were stuck inside the bunker.

  I jumped when the wind roused the loose dirt and a tumble-weed blew across the glass, darting in and out of sight as it scratched along the windows and eventually bounced out of view.

  "A storm's coming," Jacks said softly from the doorway. He held a wiggling Lily in his arms and scratched his scruffy chin with the bottom of her bottle as she sucked greedily from it. He looked just as stir-crazy as I felt.

  I smiled at the two of them – the doting father and young child. After patting the chair next to me, I draped the book over my knee and turned to face Jacks as he settled into the adjoining seat. With my eyes closed, I listened to the soft sucking sounds that Lily made as she ate. Such innocence. Such simplicity. Such perfection.

  "Is she sleeping any better?" I asked after a while.

  Jacks contorted his face into a myriad of expressions until I laughed. After a heavy sigh, he leaned down and kissed Lily's forehead. One of her tiny hands flailed above her head until it landed on his nose. She squeezed until Jacks winced and when he pulled away from her grasp, his nose was Rudolph-red.

  I smiled. "That's new."

  "She’s just learned how to yank. My nose might not survive her first year," he groaned.

  Even though I was happy for the new addition, my heart hurt watching sweet Lily. It was hard not to see my children, dead in their beds, when I looked at the baby. None of us even knew what life she’d have, or if the virus could still take her eventually. Before Jacks noticed, I turned away to hide the tears that burned their way down my cheeks. Oblivious to my pain, Jacks whispered something softly to the baby before turning toward me.

  "Riley…do you think you'll ever have another one?"

  I shrugged. If I could have another child, would I? With Connor gone, there was no one I'd even consider sharing that experience with. After casually wiping my damp cheek, my eyes once again drifted upward to the sand that pelted the heavy-duty windowpanes above us.

  Yeah, a storm was coming all right. A big one from the looks of it…

  CHAPTER ONE

  The dry mountain air felt like grainy chalk in my mouth, and the normally simple task of opening and closing my eyes was excruciating; each deliberate blink burned the inside of my sandpapered eyelids, but I still smiled. Being outside again was more than great – it was amazing.

  “Damn. This feels good, doesn’t it?” Drake said at my side, while he stretched his arms up and behind his head like he’d just woken from a month-long nap. The long sleeves of his opened flannel top shifted, exposing thick wrists covered in just a spattering of light brown hair. I looked away from his skin, as if I’d seen some part of him not intended for exposure.

  Without speaking, I smiled in his direction and lifted my face toward the sun. We’d spent our first weeks in Arizona underground, in what the community called the ‘Tank’. It’s where all new arrivals were taken for a forced decontamination period. Initially it had made sense to me. The landing strip for the plane was miles away, and Joe was hardly ever on the ground for longer than a day or two. We had to wait until that night shrouded the hills in darkness, bef
ore he would drive us through the mountains. They were being careful with each group they brought in, something I got. I knew how easily just one person could take down an entire group.

  The decontamination time consisted of one week to ensure no one was sick with the plague, and three more for behavioral observation. Not that we were under constant surveillance, but more, I imagined, so they would make certain none of us went crazy. Which was ironic, because being trapped below ground could bring out the bat-shit crazy in anyone. The lock-down inside the decommissioned silo, a cylindrical tube standing on end, only made me feel emotionally unstable. To the point where I was certain I’d rip the face off the first community member that came within arm-distance once released. Surprisingly, when a scrawny man with pale skin and dark shaggy hair opened up the hatch, I didn’t want to kill him, I wanted to hug him.

  The feeling of euphoria from being freed from our living tomb lasted for about as long as that first breath.

  Huddled in a circle, with our faces turned upward, we listened to the unnaturally perky man speak for a solid five minutes before the groans started to echo through the group. The air was painfully dry, but heavy with something imminent, though I couldn’t figure out what it was. An energy coursed through the air. Something distant, reaching out to let us know that it was coming. Whatever it was, it hadn’t yet disrupted the beautiful blue of the sky.

  I listened to the man with the organized clipboard and plastered-on smile, but I also listened to the ebb and flow of the wind. I felt pulled to what I assumed was the south, judging by the placement of the bright light in the sky. From inside, we’d seen the sunlight through only small windows, which we were currently standing just feet from. I even looked over my shoulder a time or two, expecting to see someone standing in the distance, on the horizon, shimmering like a mirage, with a sign in their hands that had my name on it. A greeting. An invitation. Permission to flee. It was more than a small piece of me that wanted to bolt away from the group, and had Drake not elbowed me, and snapped me out of whatever trance the wild woods of Northern Arizona seemed to have on my mind, I might have done just that.

  But he did give me a nudge. And I returned my attention to our greeter, though whatever semblance I had of a smile faded once I realized he was still talking. About boring, meaningless rules that had no place in a time like ours. Ours had become a time of loss, destruction and death. Times had changed. Which meant the rules had to, as well. For survival. We didn’t live for happiness anymore. We couldn’t afford to.

  With my arms crossed, I attempted to look less irritated than I felt while his gaze moved across Drake and settled on me for a second. Then his eyes shifted to the next person, never pausing longer than necessary. Automated. Like a robot. Except this robot had a slight drawl in his voice and an Adam’s apple that seemed to bob uncontrollably as if an invisible finger was pushing it up and down. I kept my eyes on his throat till he turned, stepping through our group to the south, to where my body had nearly fled just a moment before. I didn’t bother to turn around at first. My eyes drifted closed again, and I let the sun warm my cheeks while pretending that before me wasn’t a valley in the mountains, but the edge of a lake with Connor by my side, and Zoey sunning her black fur on a nearby deck. My body began to sway like it moved with invisible waves. Side to side, drifting along the gentle lull of a Pacific breeze.

  “So, you’ll have shared quarters, like everyone else here,” the wiry man said from behind me. “And as long as you follow the rules, you’ll be set.”

  “Set for what?” Drake asked with a grumble.

  I opened my eyes and looked around us again. There was no lake. And there was no Connor. But Zoey was waiting dutifully at my feet. Her dark hair reflecting the sunlight, showing off the reds and browns of her undercoat. Every time she blinked, her chestnut eyes darted wildly around us. She was just as confused as the rest of our group. The landscape was flat to my right and rose straight up a pine-covered mountain on my left. The sound of a motor echoed in the near distance and just above the choppy drone of mechanical grunts and clicks shrieked the faraway squeals of playing children. Kids. I rubbed at my face to clear my mind.

  “You know,” the man answered nervously. “Set for life.”

  Drake glared at him. “Well, I’m just passing through. Remember that.”

  “Drake. Let us settle in before you bitch, will you?” Jacks said. He then turned toward our greeter. “Where are our weapons? When will we get them back?” He adjusted the baby bag on one of his wide shoulders, but the strap slipped and eased its way down his arm. With a grumble, he let it fall to the ground by his feet.

  “Uh. They will stay locked up for now. Safety comes first.”

  “Then let us carry,” Drake stated.

  “We can talk more about that later,” the man mumbled. “Anyway, my name’s Ryder and it’s my job to get you acclimated to how things work at the Ark.”

  “The Ark?” I asked. I felt my hand go up to my hip, where my knife should have been sheathed. Once the others had mentioned our weapons, I felt an almost uncontrollable urge to have mine in my hand. My body felt naked without a blade.

  Ryder nodded his head with a subtle shrug of his shoulders, not seeming to notice how I clutched at the side of my leg for something that wasn’t there. I couldn’t tell if he was excited or confused. “The Ark. That’s what they named the place before I got here. Fits, if you think about it. We’re all trying to start over after a world-wide disaster. Rebuild and all. We have a great little thing going here, but we can’t do it alone. I hope you’ll find a place with us.”

  * * *

  Ryder led our group to a large white van and waited patiently by the front passenger door for all of us to file in before he climbed into his own seat. I managed to get stuck opposite Win and Jacks, who had Lily dozing peacefully on his lap. The high elevation air mingled with the scent of the baby shampoo that wafted off her small form, and I turned away. With a hard swallow to get the dusty air down my throat, I lost my gaze through one of the windows and kept it held there as the van lurched to a start. With trees on one side of us, and open space on the other, there wasn’t much to see. But we did pass a tall man with dark and stringy hair. He wore boots with loose laces and jeans that were swallowed up by his oversized pea coat. He didn’t look at the van as we passed and I never saw his face. He seemed out for a stroll, but not a pleasant one. I figured him for a guard right away.

  Ryder began speaking in a way that seemed rehearsed and repetitive. He had switched into robot mode once again. “So, from this point on you’ll be shown the layout of the community. The Ark is made up of three main parts. The first is the Decon Tank, which you obviously know already. Decon is short for ‘decontamination’. Obviously.” He paused to smile over his shoulder at us. The silence hung around inside the van until Ryder cleared his throat and continued. “The second is the living areas. Community meeting places, lodging, you know. And the third, probably most amazing aspect of the Ark, would be the gardens and greenhouses. We have several. They’re even equipped to survive severe weather.”

  Drake mumbled under his breath from his seat behind me. I dug my nails into Zoey’s fur and scratched behind her ears till she rested her head down on my thigh. Ryder looked around the van, staring at each of our faces before lifting his clipboard. “You already have an assigned place to bunk, and once you meet with the department heads, you’ll have a job. A real place here.”

  “Where you expect us to do what…work for free?” Drake said with no attempt to hide his sarcastic and dry tone.

  Ryder eyed him carefully before responding with a tight smile. “No one works for free here. The Ark doesn’t run without each member doing their part. The payment – the reward – is a home. People to call family. A community for protection and stability. From what I understand, you didn’t have a place as advanced as the Ark where you came from. We can offer something you won’t find out there on your own. Safety. Security. Peace of mind.”
<
br />   Again, Drake mumbled behind me and I turned in my seat to give him a curious glance. He responded by scratching his eyebrow with his middle finger. Then it seemed all of the van’s occupants were settling their inquisitive gazes on me. Waiting for my what, acknowledgment…my approval of our situation? I didn’t have that to give.

  Risking on the side of caution, I decided to give Ryder a small smile. “I’m sure we’ll find our place in time,” I said.

  He nodded with his own smile, a crooked one that reminded me of a stroke victim before he faced forward once again, reading off his checklist as I stared blankly out the window at our new home.

  It was dusty, save for the randomly placed bush and tree. A giant valley settled in the middle of the mountains. It appeared there was only one way in and out, and that was by the road we bumped up and down along. And the shape of the refuge explained the wind. In the distance, it whipped and whirled in places, dragging the dirt up into mini-tornadoes. Though it was fascinating to watch, I thought it also a bit dangerous. A decent enough storm could turn the valley into a vacuum if enough pressure came down from the clouds and rolled off the hills. And where did all the rain go? The snow? As I pondered the placement of our location, the van turned right only a few short minutes after we piled into it. I followed the curve of the rutted dirt road with my eyes, taking in the view before us half a mile ahead. A handful of single-story buildings stretched out along the otherwise plain horizon, each low to the ground, topped with a slightly slanted green roof. And beyond the buildings was a small patch of land that sprouted a dozen massive wind turbines. The developed parts of the property were back so far from any main roads, that unless you knew the compound was there, you’d never be able to spot it.

  “You couldn’t have done this in one year,” I breathed, a bit amazed, despite my longing for our lodge in the Laguna Mountains.