Cut Off (Book 1): Cut & Run, page 1
part #1 of Cut Off Series
CUT & RUN
CUT OFF | BOOK ONE
Charlie Dalton
Contents
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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
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
LEAVE A REVEW
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1
Katie spent her youth preparing for the apocalypse. One day, you’ll be glad I dragged you here, her father said.
He’d been wrong every day of his life.
Until this one.
Katie stood at the foot of the vast airport waiting area. Her section bustled with those hoping to return to Nottingham by that evening. Already full to bursting. She cast a glance over the other gates. There, an old couple, chomping on a shared snack, peering at a smartphone held aloft by a selfie stick. Without headphones, the noise was deafening. That ruled out sitting anywhere near them.
Further along, a family took up both seat rows. They had two kids: a young boy and a younger girl. They darted between the chairs, fighting over a cheap toy purchased from a roadside seller. The parents thumbed through holiday snaps, blissfully unaware of the disruption their kids were causing to other travelers. Another seating area ruled out.
There. That was what she was looking for. A fellow teenage girl, around eighteen or nineteen – her own age. She buried her nose in her book, legs curled underneath her. She might have been curled up beside a fireplace at an isolated lodge. She wore wireless earphones and her music blared, but not too distracting.
Katie took a seat beside her and reached into her backpack, withdrawing her own book. One Second After by John Matherson. She loved a good survival adventure.
The speakers overhead whistled as an announcement came over the tannoy system. The speakers were poor and made it sound like Megatron manned the front desk.
People clustered around the gate further up rushed to the front of the queue. Another plane was boarding soon. A man wearing a tight lycra suit, sausage unrestrained and bouncing for all to see, stood a little too close to the woman in front. The woman looked the man up and down. He wore a proud grin on his face. The woman turned away.
Katie knew what that felt like. Being a certain age and body shape, she was constantly assaulted by similarly tasteless men. Why did they never have the appearance of Ryan Gosling? It was an underwritten law of the universe that all men who showed the most interest were the exact type of man she didn’t want near her.
She bent back down over her book. Her eyes moved over the words but didn’t process them. She had other things on her mind. Just a week ago, she stood over her father’s grave. He’d always seemed indestructible. A superhero. The kind that never failed to come through in the end. And to die like that, after everything he had been through…
She shook her head. It did no good to dwell on such things.
Her phone buzzed. A new notification. From CamdenDareDevil. Katie clicked on the link which opened Facebook Live. Her brother’s face filled the screen. “Hey, guys. This is Camden, reporting in with my latest stunt. Want to see where we are today?”
Katie smiled and shook her head. Little brother, you’re going to get yourself killed one of these days.
She shut the application and got back to her book. She couldn’t bear to watch him carry out his ludicrous acts.
The ceiling lights blinked. It was a cloudy day and without the harsh bulbs, it became just as dark and dingy inside as it was out. A typical English spring day. Three days of rain for every one of sun.
The other awaiting passengers stopped what they were doing and looked up at the lights. They waited for them to turn back on. One second stretched into two, then four. Before she knew it, a full ten seconds passed since the lights and TVs had shut down.
It felt too long.
The girl beside her put down her book and leaned forward on her seat.
Several rows away, the old couple tapped on their smartphone with shaking fingers. Not so noisy now, at least.
The kids with the cheap toys smacked them on their palms. “It’s broken!” the little boy said. He smacked it harder. “The stupid toy is broken!”
He hurled it at the seat opposite. It struck the metal back, bounced off, and hit his sister in the face. She clutched a hand to her cheek. Her eyebrows scrunched up, her mouth formed an upside-down U and her bottom lip trembled. Her father hustled over to forestall the approaching river of tears. He was too late. The girl erupted. Meanwhile, the mother chastised her son, but then he began to show the same signs of discontent. He burst into tears too. Trapped in a public place, the parents embraced their children and shared a look. The holiday is well and truly over now. Normal life had resumed.
Still, the lights hadn’t come back on and the TV screens remained pitch black. No scrolling news. No weather divinations. Darkness.
The girl beside Katie tapped her vintage iPod. It wasn’t working either.
Katie felt a chill slide up her spine. She reached into her pocket and removed her phone. She wasn’t surprised to find the screen blank, nor the lack of response as she tapped the buttons.
She leaned over and peered in the direction of the passengers still boarding their plane. How wrong could things be if they were still boarding? Not very. But then she noticed the airline crew were no longer scanning the tickets electronically. Instead, they stamped them by hand. She supposed they were used to the technology packing up. One held a phone to her ear. She locked eyes on another co-worker and shook her head.
It’s dead, her expression said.
Without the distractions offered by their electronic devices, the passengers were forced to confront the monotony of life. Katie had no idea what was going through their minds. After all, none of them had the same upbringing she did.
None of them had been dragged kicking and screaming into the wild forests to train to survive in apocalypse-style scenarios.
None of them had been educated on what to do in half a dozen different end-of-the-world situations.
The power cutting out was one thing. Everyone’s electronics turning off at the same time was quite another.
Get out of there, a voice in the back of her mind said. It belonged to her father. Her deceased father. Get far away from there. Now.
His voice was so loud, so clear, that Katie checked over her shoulders. She met only confused expressions from the other passengers.
It’s not possible. It can’t be…
That voice spoke again. She could even hear the rain tapping on the tent’s canvas from when he’d first told her. At first, you will be apprehensive that it’s happening. That’s a normal reaction. But you must not let it stop you from taking action. You could be anywhere when it happens. You need to get away from danger immediately. Time is of the essence.
That was when she heard the noise. That was when they all heard the noise.
It confirmed Katie’s worst fears.
A low rushing sound. She arched her neck back to peer at the ceiling. Of course, it wasn’t coming from the ceiling. It was coming from far above.
The rushing sound morphed into a high-pitched whir.
And it grew louder.
It’s not growing louder, Katie thought. It’s getting closer.
It’s coming. And it’s coming fast.
Katie grabbed her backpack. She tossed it over her shoulders as she marched up the terminal. She clutched the paperback in one hand, forgotten. Despite what she thought she knew, she didn’t want to look like a freak if she was wrong. But as the sound grew louder, she threw public opinion to the wind. She built first into a jog, then a full-out sprint.
She was the first to run, the quickest off the mark. But she was not the last.
The others must have sensed something was wrong. They must have felt that same tickling sensation at the back of their throats. Two options. Fight or flight. But you could not fight what you could not see. Not even Katie fully understood the scale of what they were up against.
Not yet.
That whirring grind hitched into a pitiless scream, so loud the glass panes shook in their secure frames. Overpriced food items dived off the shop shelves. Baristas pinned chinaware to the worktops with their hands. One of the larger coffee machines tilted forward. The male worker raised his hands to catch it. He pulled his hands away immediately and let the machine drop. He turned the cold water tap and let it soothe his scalded skin.
And that overhead screeching grew louder still.
Any moment it would arrive. Any moment now there would be a gigantic–
Thud.
The impact knocked Katie off her feet. She slid across the floor on her back. The threadbare carpet grew hot against her skin. She sailed toward the wall and raised her arms to protect herself.
She remembered no more.
2
The field trip was very thorough. They visited all the major museums, focusing predominantly on history, nature, and science. The second day involved exploring the various art galleries. Boring to some, enthralling to others. That evening, they went to see a musical in the West End. The production was lavish, the performances second to none.
And for the entire trip, Camden hadn’t seen any of it. How could he with Hannah so close the whole time? Even now, she was only sitting two seats away.
She had shoulder-length hair and eyes that never failed to pin him in place. Camden was drawn to her the way Icarus was drawn to the sun. The chances of him getting burned were next to zero as he could never work up the courage to speak to her.
At school, she spent the majority of her time with her nose firmly buried in a book. Even now, she focused on the programme in her lap. She looked up and caught him staring at her. He turned away, cheeks burning red. Well done, Moron. Now you look like a stalker. He kept his eyes facing forward for the rest of the performance. He still didn’t take anything in.
The next morning, the class gathered in the hotel lobby. Camden wore his usual backpack and carried a second in his hand.
“Morning,” an overweight boy said, coming down the hotel stairs. Darryl was Camden’s best friend. He wore a Dracula baseball cap with fangs on the corners and a black T-shirt splattered with blood.
Camden looked his friend up and down. “You want me to walk around town with you dressed like that?”
“No. I expect you to strut around town with me dressed like this. I’m gonna check out the Jack the Ripper tour! It’s gonna be awesome!”
“Jack the Ripper tour? You do realise he wasn’t a vampire?”
Darryl sidled up close. “Actually, I read a really interesting theory about that…”
Camden shrugged his friend off. If he got stuck on the topic of conspiracy theories, they’d never get off it. “I thought you were going to help me with my stunt?”
“I want to do something I want to do this time.”
“So watch a few horror movies. You’ll get the same thrill as the tour.”
“It’s different. On this tour, people jump out at you dressed as the Ripper.”
Camden shrugged. “It’ll never look as good as the movies.”
Darryl pressed his lips together. “I don’t care. I’m going.”
“Then who’s going to help me with the jump shot?”
“Leave the camera behind.”
“I’ll never get it back. Come on, man. I need you. So do my members.”
Darryl could never bring himself to let people down. It was Camden’s secret weapon.
“How come we never get to do what I want to do?” Darryl said.
And just like that, Camden had won. “Because what you want to do is always boring.”
“No, it’s not. Jack the Ripper, man!”
“Name me one time we did something you wanted to do that was thrilling.”
Darryl had to think about it. “When we went to the apple cider farm.”
Camden stifled an exaggerated yawn.
“You didn’t like that? You seemed to enjoy it when we made our own.”
“That was the apple cider talking.”
Darryl’s shoulders slumped. Camden felt bad. He shouldn’t have pushed so hard. “How about this. Help me with my stunt and then we’ll go check out your Jack the Ripper show.”
“It’s not a show. It’s a real-life re-enactment and historical tour.”
Camden suppressed the desire to yawn again.
Mr Dreyfus descended the hotel steps to assemble his class. He wore thick cardigans no matter the weather and sewed square leather patches on the elbows that Camden suspected were self-inflicted.
“Listen up class,” he said in his soft voice. “Today’s our last day in the capital. I want you to make it a memorable one. You can do whatever you want. Something preferably educational.”
He was out of luck in that regard. Most of the students wanted to check out Harrods or Hamleys toy shop. The arty students wanted to revisit the National Gallery, to peer longer at the beautiful portraits in hope of discovering details they’d missed during their earlier cursory visit. Others wanted to take selfies outside the famous landmarks. Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square, Big Ben, Winston Churchill’s war rooms. Camden had but one item on his list and it had been staring him in the face during every stage of their field trip so far.
He bent over his second backpack. “Check this out.”
He withdrew a T-shirt. He checked over his shoulders to make sure no one was watching. He opened the T-shirt just enough for Darryl to make out the design on the front. It said: “Hannah, will you go on a date with me?”
Darryl didn’t look sure. “What’s with the love hearts?”
“You can’t ask a girl out without some romance,” Camden said.
Darryl wrinkled his nose. “Looks a bit girly to me.”
Camden snatched the T-shirt out of his friend’s hand and stuffed it back in the backpack. He hadn’t wanted his honest opinion, only a nod of approval.
“That’s why I had a girl design it for me,” Camden said. “Only girls know what girls like.”
“Are you sure about asking her out like this?”
“Sure. It means I don’t have to ask her out face-to-face.”
He was much too shy to do that.
Darryl frowned. “But thousands of people will be watching. It’ll be really embarrassing if she says no.”
“She’s not going to say no.”
He hoped that with so many people watching, she’d have no choice but to say yes. Fingers crossed.
“Sounds risky to me,” Darryl said.
“You know what they say. Nothing ventured…”
“…nothing gained.”
Mr Dreyfus wound up his instructions to the class. “Make sure to be back here by 3 PM. We want to leave the city before rush hour descends upon us. Well class, have fun.”
“Let’s go,” Camden said. He could barely contain himself.
They bumped into a tall figure.
“And where do you think you two are going?” Mr Dreyfus said.
“To explore the city,” Camden said.
“And discover new cultural phenomenon hitherto unknown to us,” Darryl added.
“Not you two. Today, you’re coming with me.”
“With you?” Camden panicked. “Where?”
Darryl couldn’t have worn a bigger grin if he tried. “Can you believe Mr Dreyfus is a big Jack the Ripper fan too? I had no idea he was so cool!”
Camden mashed his cheek against his fist. The picture of disappointment. He peered over the bus’s rooftop at his school class heading in the opposite direction. Free to do as they pleased. Among them, Hannah excitedly talked with her friends.
