I gently eased away from Indigo after a few minutes.
“I have to go tell Luke. Sit down, rest. You’re amazing…”
I looked everywhere for Luke, starting in the room he had shared with Brooke during our brief time at the Hotel. He was nowhere to be found. Gone, as if he’d never been there. When Brooke had died, he had walked out of the room, out of the hotel, and out of our lives.
God knows if we’ll ever see him again.
End of Episode 4
Episode 5: Luke’s Trek
Prologue
The big man’s face was gaunt, the leather he wore, covered in dust. Even so, he was an impressive sight. He stood just over 6’3 with matted, unruly red hair and broad shoulders. The worn soles of his boots made no sound on road as he approached the faded billboard.
‘Willatan Green pop. 323
The happiest little community in Maine.
Lots still available!’
Some comic genius had scratched a minus symbol in front of the 323. For good measure, they had etched a crude penis near the lips of the smiling mother watching over her kids in the staged family portrait. The kids, a boy and a girl, played in a sandpit while in the background, Dad cooked on the barbecue.
He stopped and pondered the sign, scratching his stubbled chin with the back of the hook where his left hand used to be. He didn’t smile. The picture was meant to be inviting. Now, it was just sad.
He dismissed it and scanned the walled subdivision it was promoting. The surprisingly intact red brick wall stood about eight feet high, the open entrance just thirty feet away. Bent and twisted wrought iron gates lay in the long grass either side of the road. Maybe the suburb was abandoned? Maybe not.
He wasn’t sure if the feeling of being watched was from the dogs behind him, or the town ahead. It didn’t matter too much. He turned around. The dogs were the imminent threat. Anything else he would deal with when it arose.
There they were in the distance, milling around in the shadow of the trees he had passed under a few minutes before. He thought they might be coyotes, or some dog/coyote hybrid. Whatever they were, they looked lean and mean. They had followed him for two days at a safe distance, but over the last few hours had steadily closed the gap.
His vision swam, and he swayed a little as he was hit with a bout of light headedness. His mind threw up a memory of another pack, equally as mean, he had encountered a long time ago. His vision cleared, and he came back to the present.
The big man had only had water in the last 36 hours. His last meal a skinny rabbit he’d cooked over a small fire, the afternoon before last. He knew the dogs sensed him weakening and would have to be dealt with before long.
He decided it was better now on his terms, rather than later, on theirs.
“Guess who’s on the menu, you mongrels,” he grated, in his long unused voice.
He’d never eaten dog, but thought he was about at the point where he just might be ready to try.
He reached into the waistband of the leather motorcycle pants he wore and pulled out the pistol he was carrying. It was a Glock 17. He had picked it up a few days before while foraging for food in an abandoned house. There it had been, just sitting on the table with two clips of ammo. He couldn’t have been more surprised if it had been wrapped in a pretty pink ribbon.
He didn’t question how it had come to be there. It didn’t matter. Didn’t matter anymore than the lone can of whole tomatoes he had found in the otherwise stripped pantry, in the same kitchen. He had wolfed down the tomatoes and left with the newly acquired weapon in his belt.
One didn’t question providence.
He paused a moment and glanced back at the entrance to the housing development. Perhaps it was best to save the Glock and its precious ammunition in case of predators of the two-legged variety.
He put the gun back in his belt and started slowly towards the pack.
As if sensing their long chase was coming to a climax, the dogs ceased their milling.
He counted them.
One, two, three… four. No, five. Perhaps more that he couldn’t see. As he closed the distance, the biggest dog padded from the cover of the trees and his packmates followed him.
Make that six.
The man’s pace didn’t change but when they were roughly thirty feet away from each other, the leader of the pack stopped in his tracks as if weighing the threat of this two-legged adversary/meal.
The man thought again of that other encounter with wild dogs in the first few weeks after America fell. It hadn’t ended well for one of the children he’d been with. They’d all been children then.
Not anymore.
Unhurriedly, he reached over his shoulder and gripped the handle of the axe clasped in a leather strap across his back and pulled it free. He balanced its haft on the back of his hook and adjusted his grip so that it was a third of the way up the handle. Still walking, he hefted it and watched as the dogs began moving again.
They were smart. Two had loped on ahead of the leader and were now flanking him on either side while the others fanned out beside the leader.
Perhaps it had been a mistake to put the gun away.
Too late now.
“Come and get me,” he snarled and charged at the leader.
The two dogs flanking him immediately rushed in, but his unexpected offensive had given him a few valuable seconds alone with the boss dog. The leader jumped, its jaws opened wide. He misjudged its speed slightly and had to swing the axe defensively, the flat of the iron head striking it a glancing blow on the shoulder.
The dog yelped and tumbled onto the road as a second dog, the first of the flankers, leapt at him. It wasn’t so lucky. The axe cleaved its skull, killing it instantly.
He brought the axe up again but was hit hard in the side by the other flanker. He dropped to one knee as it began to chow down on the wrist of his axe-wielding hand.
Growling, but perhaps more cautious after his knock on the shoulder, the leader and the remaining dogs closed in slowly. Still wrestling the big animal mauling his arm, the man found his feet and with a quick slashing movement embedded his hook in the side of the dog’s neck. Its yelp of surprise and pain was cut short as he jerked his arm back, opening its throat with a scarlet red flourish.
The man straightened unsteadily and raised his axe. He fixed his stare on the leader who stood, teeth bared, less than five feet away, a dog either side of him.
“Come on you fucker.”
Concerned with the threat in front of him, he only remembered the other dogs when he saw a flash of grey in his peripheral vision. He managed to raise the axe, but the speed and weight of another dog knocked him to the ground, cracking his head hard against the asphalt of the old road.
The axe slipped from his grip and clattered out of his reach. Stinking, hot forms swarmed over him. Teeth and claws began to rip into his motorcycle leathers.
As the strength seeped from his body, he relaxed and looked up at a perfect blue sky framed by bristling, heaving bodies.
“I’m coming Brooke…” he whispered.
Part One: Exit Stage Left
One month earlier
“Luke! We have to try and save…”
Luke didn’t hear anything over the drumming of his own heartbeat. Brooke was dead. His baby too. Snuffed out like candles and leaving him in a cocoon of suffocating pain. Barely able to see through the tears in his eyes, he trudged down the hallway, the walls and floor closing in on him like a tunnel before he pushed through the door at the end.
His steps were unhurried but inexorable and carried him down the flight of fire stairs to the lobby of the hotel they had made their temporary home.
Around fifty of their people sat or lounged on the floor in the lobby and many of them stood up expectantly as Luke entered.
What’s the news? Is Indigo okay?
Luke was heedless of those around him and strode across the marble floor and through the broken doors without looking back.
&n
bsp; “Where’s he going?” someone asked, as some of them moved to the plate glass windows to watch him.
He didn’t look back. He walked on, his back straight, and arms swinging mechanically as he turned the corner and disappeared from their view.
Luke didn’t pause as he came to the barricade. He pushed aside a shopping cart full of rocks and continued up the four-lane street where the love of his life had been mortally wounded.
The Marauder army was gone. The tank in the middle of the road and the body of their leader lying in the street, were the only sign they had ever been there.
Like a robot that had received a pause command, he came to a standstill, looking at the distant body. He turned as if he had forgotten something and headed back to the edge of the barricade at the same inexorable pace.
Pulling away a soil filled barrel and letting it crash to the pavement, he found what he was looking for – a jerrycan set aside for purposes of dousing the barricade and setting it alight to try and slow the Marauders when they attacked. He picked it up and pocketed the lighter that had been left on top and turned back to the road.
It was only when he was within fifty feet of the body that he realized that Ash’s body had not been left unattended. A shaven haired boy of about six or seven lay across the body. As Luke approached, the kid raised his head. His light blue eyes unmistakably marked him as Ash’s child.
There were no tears on the kid’s face and no fear in his eyes.
“You killed my dad,” he said simply, as Luke’s shadow loomed over him.
Luke put the jerrycan down on the road.
“Yes.” No need to sugarcoat, the kid had obviously seen everything. “Why didn’t you go with your people?”
“They told me to fuck off and rot with my dad… are you going to kill me now?”
The foul word from his young lips shocked Luke more than his question.
“No. I’m not going to kill you.”
“Why?” he asked, his face puzzled.
“Because there’s been enough death today. And you aren’t to blame for what your father did.”
He chewed on that for a while.
“My dad would have killed everybody. I’ve seen him do it before.”
“I know. He had a sickness in his head.”
The kid stood up.
“Can I go with you?”
Again, Luke was taken aback. Was it that obvious that he was leaving? His face remained stony.
“No.”
“You should kill me then,” he said, voicing words no child should ever have to utter. “I’ve got nowhere to go.”
“They were wrong to leave you. None of it’s your fault. But I can’t take you with me. Come over here.”
The boy walked around his father’s corpse and approached Luke, a tinge of fear finally touching his pale blue eyes.
Luke put his arm over the kid’s shoulder – the boy’s eyes widened at the bloodstained hook hovering inches from his face – and turned him towards the barricade at the end of the street.
“What’s your name, kid?”
“Cade.”
“Cade,” Luke said. “I want you to go past the barricade and head to the big building to the right. When you get there, ask to see Indigo. Tell her Luke sent you.”
The boy opened his mouth, but Luke had already released him and given him a gentle shove between the shoulder blades.
The boy looked back once but kept going when Luke nodded.
He waited until the kid had passed the barricade and disappeared around the corner before turning back to the body of Brooke’s killer. He pondered briefly about the possibility of evil being passed on in the genes.
He had read something once about a genetic disposition to psychopathy, a gene discovered that was shared by a high percentage of serial killers and linked to an increased risk of violent or aggressive behavior.
Hopefully Ash had been a product of his circumstances. And the kid young enough to forget his.
He picked up the jerrycan and uncapped it.
Luke didn’t linger to watch the bastard burn, the crackle and reek of his burning flesh proved no salve for the wound his soul had suffered.
He walked.
2
He didn’t have any idea where he was walking. He just knew he couldn’t stay. The anger and loss he felt were all consuming. The rage wasn’t limited to Ash either. He was furious at himself for not acting sooner or forcing Isaac to let him fight. He was even more furious at Isaac for making his stupid deal instead of going into battle in the first place.
The raw anger he felt clouded the reasoning part of his mind that would have told him it was just as likely Brooke would have intervened if he’d been the one to battle Ash. Or worse, died anyway if they’d gone into battle against the Marauders.
He walked for an hour and then pushed on for another twenty minutes after the sun set before deciding to find shelter. He headed off the arterial road he had been following and down a side street into an outer satellite suburb of Manchester. It looked like it had been a fairly well-to-do neighborhood in its time. The houses were big and he spotted a few nice cars gone to rust and ruin in their overgrown driveways.
He turned down a cul-de-sac called Endeavor Close and stopped at number Five. Five was the street number of his home back in Rhode Island, and the one before that too.
“Do you think our next place will be number five, too?” his mother used to ask when he was young enough to still be interested in small coincidences.
No.5 Endeavor Street was a double story home. Brick on bottom, white cladding on top. The lawn was no longer a lawn, just tall, tangled grass, lapping at his waist as he headed to the front porch.
He tried the brass knob. Locked. A quick flick of his hook smashed the decorative glass inset of the door and he reached in with his good hand and unlatched the door before easing it open.
Dark clouds shrouded the crescent moon, but the filtered light still allowed him to see a few feet inside the entrance. Further on it was dark. Really dark. And in the cold light of… well, pitch black, he cursed his lack of foresight. No flashlight, no gun, no weapon at all besides his Swiss army knife.
He strained his eyes and could just make out the shape of a small side table in the murk. He went to it quietly as he could, not contemplating how silly that was. After all, if there were any remaining inhabitants they would be no more than desiccated husks by now.
He pulled open the drawer of the side table and was about to reach in blindly when he heard a creak from the ceiling overhead. His hand froze while his heartbeat sped up to a light gallop. He didn’t move for a few seconds, a darker shadow in the dark hallway, and then shook his head in disgust.
“Idiot! Scared of a creaky old house...”
He changed his mind about exploring the drawer in the dark and instead pulled it right out and carried it to the front door. He placed it on the stoop and began to rummage through its contents.
It’s what his mom would have called a ‘man drawer’. He found an assortment of remote controls, batteries (none in their packaging), coins, bobby pins, rubber bands, old light bulbs, a razor blade and a small tube of superglue.
Disappointed, he pocketed the glue and the rubber bands and, as an afterthought, the coins. The rest was junk, even more useless now than it was when its owners were alive. He was about to toss the drawer into the garden when he saw a sliver of something wedged between the base of the drawer and the back corner.
A match!
He carefully plucked it out and raised it into the night sky as if he had pulled Excalibur from its stone.
Now he might have some light and warmth. He would only have one shot though. He’d have to be careful. He put the wooden end of the stick between his teeth and emptied the contents of the drawer into the garden before heading back into the house.
In the tepid moonlight he was able to make out an opening opposite the side table. A living room maybe? And hopefully one with a fireplace.
He used his hook to hold the drawer against his side and with his free hand began to feel his way slowly along the hallway wall until he reached the opening. He went through.
No moonlight shone through the windows in this room, which were shuttered from the outside, and he literally could not see his hand in front of his face. He decided to go left and feel his way around the wall.
He’d only gone a few feet when his knees bumped into something soft.
Warily, he bent over and reached out to touch a soft velvety material. It was a sofa or armchair. He found the arm and then ran his fingers down the side to the seat cushion, fearing all the while he would touch the skeletal thigh of a long dead inhabitant.
He knew it wasn’t likely, but a gruesome discovery was always a possibility.
There was no body, and his hand glided across the seat unhindered until he found a crack and then another seat cushion. It was sofa. He was tempted to sit for just a minute but knew it would be so much sweeter in the light of a warm fire. He moved on.
After the three-seater sofa he came to a coffee table, then an armchair made from the same material as the sofa and then a closed door, before his hands finally found the much anticipated mantelpiece.
Still blind, he ran his good hand under the lip of the mantle down to the brick work. When he thought he was far enough along he reached down until he found the opening and dropped to his knees, placing the drawer next to him before reaching blindly for the hearth. His fingers found the wire mesh of a lightweight fireguard.
He pulled it out of the way and then found the remains of the last fire. He was able to discern at least two logs; charcoal crumbled under his touch but towards the ends he found unburned timber. Ever the optimist, he decided to build a pyre before looking for something like kindling or paper to complement the lone match.
He raised the drawer and smashed it on the bricks. In minutes he had assembled what felt like a decent little pyre of splintered timber in and around the unburned portion of the two small logs. When – if – he got it going, the shards of drawer would burn quickly. Hopefully the logs would take. Once he had light, he would be able to find plenty of fuel for the fire by wrecking more furniture. He sat back on his haunches for a second; now he just needed paper.
Fight Like Hell [America Falls Series | Books 1-6] Page 68