Escaping Darkness (Book 3): Landslide

by Richards, E. S.

  In their bags, Vic packed all the necessary equipment for a day and a night in the city. They weren’t planning on spending the night outside, however, both agreed it was better to be prepared for it. So alongside that went food, water, first aid equipment, and most importantly, weapons. Over the past few days they’d discussed their respective strengths and weaknesses. While Blake preferred to fight with his hands, he had several years of weapons training thanks to his job—something that Vic was incredibly grateful for.

  In less than an hour they were both packed up and ready to explore the city outside. Vic pulled himself up into the escape hatch in the ceiling, both of them agreeing it was better to leave that way rather than open the security gate, and started climbing upwards. With one last look around the store—though he was sure he’d be back very soon—Blake followed his companion up.

  The climb was much more enjoyable this time, as he knew there wasn’t a body waiting on the other side and sooner than he anticipated, Blake was back in the apartment they’d visited two days before. Nothing had changed. Whoever lived there hadn’t returned and there wasn’t any evidence anyone else had visited either. Neither of them dwelled on whether that was a good or a bad sign as they quietly made their way to the fire escape and prepared to actually go outside.

  “Ready?” Vic asked with a smile, the Ukrainian man—as Blake had learned over the last couple of days—raring to go.

  “Yeah, come on,” Blake nodded, opening the door to the fire escape and stepping outside into the murky air once again. “Let’s find out what’s happening here.”

  Being outside was a strange sensation for both men. Neither of them had really realized it before when they came out to hide Jenson’s body, but the air was much cooler than it should have been for mid-July. It was darker too, the sun not yet risen and broken through the clouds that hung low over the buildings. Many of the tall skyscrapers were hidden from sight, the uppermost apartments and offices that graced the top floors lost among the dark, gray clouds.

  It was ominous. It sort of felt like the city was hiding something from them, like there was a secret hidden behind the curtain that they would have to fight to reveal. The mist made everything look slightly blurred, the edges of buildings seem softer, almost like they weren’t really there.

  Above them, the sky reminded the two men of the ocean, swirls of cloud darting in and out of one another like currents, carrying the weather with them and spreading it to all corners of the city. It somehow seemed to grow darker as well. The longer they watched it the heavier the clouds became as they rushed toward the ground, trying to consume everything that lay in front of them.

  It made Blake feel uncertain, like the weather somehow filtered their view of the city. His throat tickled at the back when he breathed in, pushing him to keep his breathing as shallow as possible so not to irritate himself. Something just didn’t seem right. The pair of them flinched at the slightest of noises, looking around for any sign of life or movement, but finding nothing.

  “Which way?” Blake asked Vic in a low voice, looking over his shoulder to where they had hidden Jenson’s body earlier and breathing a small sigh of relief to see that it remained hidden. He held a Glock pistol in his hand firmly nonetheless, all too aware of what could jump out from the shadows.

  “Head toward the center?” Vic suggested with a shrug, also constantly looking over his shoulder. “I just want to see where everyone is. I don’t think it should take us long to find people.”

  Blake nodded. They didn’t live in a small city and there wasn’t often a shortage of people around. It was something that he normally hated, the constant struggle to not be pushed off of the sidewalk or find a seat on the subway gnawing at his daily routine. Now Blake found himself willing someone to walk into his path or appear around the corner. He thought he saw faces at almost every window he passed, his eyes playing tricks on him in the dim light.

  “Look,” Vic captured Blake’s attention, the Ukrainian pointing off into the distance. “See that?”

  Blake nodded. Smoke. Something was on fire in the distance and from the plumes of smoke that were wafting out of the city, it didn’t look like something small. “A building?” Blake questioned, guessing at what could be the cause of it.

  Vic pondered. “I don’t know,” he replied. “Looks like it could be something more serious. Maybe a gas line or something. I’m guessing that’s a pretty continuous burn.”

  Blake took his friend’s word for it, knowing he couldn’t identify the source of the fire until he was a lot closer to it. As Vic veered right down a side alley, Blake figured he might get that opportunity eventually. His companion was making a beeline right toward the disaster, the dark smoke billowing around the city in the wind and only reducing visibility even further. The air smelled rancid because of it, toxic fumes from whatever was burning mixing with other chemicals that had been released. Blake smelled burning rubber. Car tires, perhaps. His hypothesis was proven correct in short order as they finally laid eyes on the source. A gas station, completely up in flames.

  “Holy cow,” Blake breathed, covering his mouth and nose with his arm as the smell and the strength of the fire blew toward him more powerfully. “That is crazy.”

  “Mm,” Vic mused, stroking his beard once again. “I don’t like the look of this.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t see how this could’ve been caused by the volcano erupting,” Vic continued. “We’re however many miles away from Yellowstone? And it’s only been about forty-eight hours. Something doesn’t feel right here.”

  “Vic,” Blake hissed just as his companion ended his sentence, noticing three figures appearing around the side of the fire, clutching weapons in their hands. One had a rifle slung over his shoulder, another a crowbar, and the third, a semi-automatic pistol. They carried them so casually, twirling them around as they walked, like they couldn’t go off and kill any one of them at any given second.

  Vic swore under his breath in Ukrainian, muttering words that Blake couldn’t even begin to understand. “This is bad,” he eventually spoke in English. “We need a better look over more of the city.”

  Slinking away from the alleyway where they hid, Blake and Vic walked quietly away from the fire and hopefully out of earshot of the three people they’d just seen. Just as they thought they were safe to talk freely, a loud scream pierced the air and the sound of footsteps thundering toward them started up in the distance.

  “Quick!” Vic pulled Blake into a doorway. “Upstairs.”

  Doing as he was instructed, Blake shouldered the door open and immediately made his way inside the building. He located stairs quickly and charged up them, stopping at the top to turn back and see Vic closing the door behind him, securing it firmly with the latch.

  “What is—”

  Blake was cut off mid-sentence, Vic shaking his head as the older man walked up the stairs to meet him and found a window overlooking the street. They were in some sort of takeout place or small restaurant, cardboard boxes lining the wall and filing cabinets overflowing with papers. Vic ignored it all, reaching the window just in time to see a mass of people down below—each of them running away from something in terror.

  “What’s going on?”

  Blake finally managed to ask, dropping to the floor and pressing himself up against the window beside Vic. The Ukrainian was staring down his binoculars, the magnifying device quickly retrieved from his rucksack in all the madness. He didn’t need them though. Blake saw the pursuers at just the same time, three quad bikes emerging from around a bend and chasing after the terrified people. It didn’t make any sense. The city was under siege and certain members of it appeared to be raining terror on the survivors.

  “I have no idea.” Vic shook his head. “This is like what happened in my home country. Armed forces rounding up criminals and refugees.”

  “These people aren’t criminals,” Blake argued back, furrowing his brow at Vic’s statement. “And they’re cer
tainly not refugees. The guys on the quad bikes look like they’re the more dangerous ones.”

  “I know,” Vic agreed. “This was the case back home as well. The ones who try to set the law and control the citizens always cause the most damage. They only see their own point of view and anyone who doesn’t toe that line is a threat to them.”

  Blake cracked his neck from side to side, trying to process what Vic was saying. It sounded like he was referring to a situation from many years ago. A totalitarian government controlling its citizens with an iron fist. He understood it—he even knew it to be true in many places around the world, but not in his city. Not in modern day America.

  And yet, when he thought about what he’d just witnessed in the street, it was exactly that. Blake struggled to comprehend how things had gotten so bad so quickly. Like Vic said, it had barely been forty-eight hours since everything began. “You really think that’s what’s happened?” Blake pondered, racking his brain for an alternative to what Vic had suggested. “Already?”

  “If something is on the brink of happening,” Vic rationalized, “it can explode a lot quicker than you’d think. It only takes a second to squeeze a trigger, and the aftereffects of that can last a lifetime.”

  Blake exhaled; while Vic may be taking a more philosophical route of explaining things, he still understood the point the man was making. It was terrifying, but it was happening. “Okay,” Blake eventually conceded. “So what do we do?”

  “Well, that all depends, my friend,” Vic replied with a smile and a twinkle in his eye. “Do you want to be a hero?”

  Chapter 7

  “Are you all right?” Chase shouted out of the window, slowing the truck to only a few miles per hour so he could control the vehicle and speak to the man at the same time. Ever since he had stepped out into the road, the man hadn’t said a word. He simply stood there, waving his arms in the air and trying to get Chase to stop. “What’s up?”

  Even Chase rolled his eyes at himself—What’s up? His grandpop would be ashamed of him for even slowing the truck. This was exactly what he’d told Chase not to do. Don’t stop for anyone. Don’t talk to anyone unless you absolutely have to. Don’t help anyone unless you can’t help yourself. People are not your friends; they are your foes.

  It seemed extreme and, by all accounts, a little ridiculous. But the second that Chase brought the truck to a complete halt and turned the engine off, he completely regretted it. The man’s expression changed, his arms dropping to his sides and a crooked grin inching over his face.

  “Can you help us?” The man asked, coughing at the end of his sentence and sending spittle flying over the asphalt. “Do you have food and water in there? We have nothing.”

  Chase held his right hand out instinctively, holding it over his sister’s body as she tried to lean further forward over the center console to see what was going on. He didn’t want her to get involved in this; immediately Chase didn’t trust the man in front of him.

  “I’m sorry,” Chase shook his head. “We’re just passing through.” Slowly, he turned the key in the ignition again, eager to get away from the man as quickly as possible.

  “Please!” The man’s voice rose, his body snapping into action as he walked toward the truck, standing slightly in front of it so Chase could no longer just drive straight forward. “You must have something in there that you can spare? Maybe we can trade? I have things inside that could be useful for you.”

  “I doubt it,” Chase replied. “I’m sorry—we have to go.”

  “Not so fast!” The man’s voice dropped into a snarl as Chase’s foot hovered over the accelerator. Suddenly it wasn’t just one person standing in the road and blocking his path, but five men and women, one of them holding a baseball bat threateningly in their hands. “I asked you nicely,” the first man continued. “I don’t want to have to ask in another way.”

  “Chase…” Riley whispered from the passenger seat, doing her best not to move her lips as she spoke. Chase glanced at his younger sister out of the corner of his eye. She was wearing her seatbelt: that was good. There was still a fair amount of distance between the truck and most of the people; only the man who had been speaking to them was within touching distance.

  “Why don’t you turn the engine off, kid?” the man spoke again, his voice low and threatening. “We don’t have to resort to violence here.”

  “So don’t,” Chase replied bluntly, revving his engine in an equally threatening manner. This was his mistake. He shouldn’t have stopped. He had put both himself and Riley in danger and now it was his responsibility to get them out of it. “I’d tell your friends to move out of the way if I were you,” Chase continued. “The steering on this truck isn’t what it used to be.”

  The man laughed. “You wouldn’t dare.”

  “Wouldn’t I?” Chase lurched the truck forward, his foot slamming down on the accelerator as he released the brake in perfect harmony. The motion wasn’t quite as smooth as he would’ve liked, the truck stumbling forward at an angle, leaving Chase to tug at the steering wheel to avoid one of the men. As much as he was happy to threaten to hit them with the vehicle, it wasn’t something he actually wanted to do. Everything happened in such a blur though. Wheels spun and screeched and in a cloud of dust, Chase had maneuvered them around the people and they were tearing away into the city once more.

  “Oh man,” Chase breathed, looking in his rearview mirror to see the five people arguing in the middle of the road, the one with the baseball bat slamming in into the asphalt in anger. “Riley, I’m so sorry.”

  “What?” Riley looked at her brother, her heart still pounding after what had happened. “Why? That wasn’t your fault, Chase.”

  “It was,” Chase disagreed. “I’m the one driving. I shouldn’t have stopped the truck. Pop told me not to and I did it anyway. I put us both in danger there.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Riley argued with her brother. “How were you to know that was going to happen? He looked like he needed help. You can’t blame yourself for that.”

  “Well,” Chase paused. “I do. But thanks. I guess I just need to put a bit more thought into what I’m doing from now on.”

  “Don’t beat yourself up, bro,” Riley smiled, punching her brother lightly on the arm as he drove. “You got us out of it in the end, so it’s all okay.”

  “Thanks,” Chase repeated. “I just didn’t expect that, you know? Pop warned me about speaking to other people—he said that everyone would only be looking out for themselves and that no one else could be trusted. I didn’t really believe him. Like, surely people’s attitudes to life can’t just change so quickly because of what’s happened?”

  “I don’t know,” Riley mused. “Not everyone was a nice person before this happened, and who’s to say that number of bad people hasn’t increased since everything?”

  Chase thought for a second; Riley was right. Just because he didn’t interact with dangerous or untrustworthy people in his normal life didn’t mean they didn’t exist. They would still be around now and it was more than likely that they were the people who they were going to bump into. The good guys—as Chase deemed them in his head—would probably just stay inside and take care of themselves. He was going to have to clear his head and buck up his ideas if he and Riley were going to get what they wanted from Houston and make it out in one piece. They’d barely entered the city and he’d already risked it all. Now wasn’t the time for him to mess around.

  “You’re right,” Chase admitted to his sister. “We’re going to have to approach this trip with a lot more caution than I’d thought. Are you sure you’re up for this?”

  “I am,” Riley said resolutely. “Are you?”

  Chase nodded. “Good,” he said as he pulled the truck down a side alley on the outskirts of the city, the layout of the buildings and the streets that surrounded them looking more familiar though still strangely eerie due to the gray shroud that covered everything. “Let’s make a plan.”

 
Their situation didn’t improve much as the two siblings huddled in the front of the truck, poring over maps of the city and planning their route for supplies as the hours passed by. Their first decision as a pair was not to go into the city overnight. That meant they had the rest of the afternoon and all of the evening to plan and prepare themselves, then they would hopefully be fresh for the task in the morning.

  The sky only grew darker in color as they planned, the cloud seeming to get lower and lower above them, covering them in a claustrophobic manner. It was like a ghost, reaching into all corners it could find and sending long, thin arms off to search for survivors. Riley thought of her grandparents and wished she hadn’t left them the way she had. She was glad to be with Chase—especially after what had happened at the hardware store, she didn’t want him to be sitting in Houston by himself—even as she regretted not saying a proper goodbye to Linda and Jerry.

  It caused her a great deal of pain to picture them around the kitchen table by themselves. Worrying about her, wondering where their grandchildren were. Ignoring the fact that Riley herself had technically run away, both she and Chase should’ve been home by now. She could only guess at what was going through her grandmother’s head. Linda had so much on her plate at the moment already with looking after Jerry. Ultimately, Riley understood it had been selfish of her to leave. She should’ve stayed to help her grandma—she should’ve pulled her weight. Now that wasn’t her choice to make anymore; she was with Chase and the two of them had to make the best of their situation.