Chaos Rising

by Kyla Stone

  A thick blanket of snow covered the yard. Past the yard, thick forest rimmed the small clearing on all sides as far as she could see. Trees and more trees.

  It took a minute for the names to come back to her, but they did. Her lips formed each word. Sugar maple, red maple, hemlock, yellow birch. White ash. Beech. The most beautiful trees she’d ever seen.

  It didn’t matter how beautiful they were, like a picture postcard with their naked limbs blanketed in pristine snow. She was stuck in the middle of nowhere.

  Twenty yards directly in front of her stood two sheds. The first was smaller with an opening cut out of the bottom. The second was larger with a padlock and chains wrapping the double doors. To the left stood a carport with stacks of firewood covered by a tarp parked beneath it.

  Her gaze returned to the large shed. Maybe there was something inside she could use—

  Movement in the snow ahead of her.

  Hannah froze.

  5

  Pike

  Day One

  Thirty-four-year-old Gavin Pike picked out flowers for his mother. White lilies, her favorite. He always brought her flowers and chocolate for their family’s Christmas Eve dinner at her home.

  It made her happy. And when she was happy, things went easier for him.

  He grabbed the bouquet from the refrigerated case at the florist’s shop without checking the price and got into line. The overwhelming scents of greenery, potpourri, and the sickly fragrance of everything floral filled his nostrils and made him almost choke.

  Baby, It’s Cold Outside played over the shop’s radio. The whole place was lit up with lights strung everywhere and Christmas trees in every corner.

  He looked forward to Christmas only because it meant a few days off in the middle of the week. Let the lemmings consume themselves with festooning their homes with garish decor and slaving over gifts and homecooked turkeys their whiny brats wouldn’t even appreciate.

  Once he made the requisite holiday visit to his mother and brother tonight, he’d have Christmas day, Thursday, Friday, and the entire weekend off to play. And to hunt.

  The lights flickered off. The song cut off abruptly right before the hideous chorus.

  The woman ahead of him clutched a vase of red and white roses. She turned and looked up at the florescent overhead lights with a frown. “What happened? It’s not even snowing out.”

  “Maybe a squirrel got in the transformer again,” the cashier said. “But the computers are down. Cash only until they come back online.”

  Pike sighed and shifted, adjusting the collar of his uniform shirt impatiently. He’d just finished third shift as a correctional officer at the Berrien County Correctional Facility in Baroda, Michigan. He enjoyed working nights. Less oversight and B.S.

  But now he was tired and grumpy and just wanted to get away from the fragrant stink already giving him a headache. He needed a cigarette.

  Several horns blared outside. Tires squealed.

  He glanced at the clock hanging on the wall behind the counter. It was battery-operated and still working. 10:22 a.m. tk. Maybe he should just leave—

  Behind him, someone screamed.

  Pike whipped around and glanced through the picture glass windows of the florist’s shop to the busy street. His heart jolted in his chest.

  A massive blue suburban careened through the intersection just outside the shop. It was headed straight toward them. The suburban jolted over the curb as pedestrians scattered in its wake, shrieking and shouting.

  No time to think. Only react. He threw himself sideways, lunging for the refrigerated cases along the left wall. He stumbled over a decorative row of potted poinsettias, knocking over several and stepping on plants and flowers alike in his haste.

  The suburban slammed through the shop’s front window and brick façade exterior. Glass shattered. Fragments of mortar exploded. Splinters of stone, brick, glass, and pottery flew through the air like knives.

  Pike cowered, his head over his hands, his body half-shielded by the tall cases.

  The other shoppers darted deeper into the store, searching desperately for safety, but they were out of time. The woman with the red and white roses froze in the center of the store, her mouth opened in a frozen O of terror, still clutching that damn vase.

  The suburban plowed into the building, crushing anything in its path. It smashed through tables and stands and dozens of vases, pots, and terrariums, wreaths and bouquets, grinding roses, lilies, chrysanthemums, tulips, and sprays of greenery beneath its wheels.

  The huge grille crashed into the woman with the roses with a dull thud. The suburban mowed her down. It crashed into the register counter and finally came to a stop against the rear brick wall. The entire front was crumpled like a pop can.

  A middle-aged Caucasian man in glasses and a plaid coat stumbled out of the driver’s side. He half-bent and retched, vomiting all over the dust, glass, and petal strewn floor. “Oh no, oh no, oh no!”

  “You killed that woman!” another woman shrieked. “Someone call the police!”

  “I couldn’t stop!” the driver wailed. “My car—it just stopped working! The brakes. The engine. The power steering. Everything!”

  He glanced at the bloody body tangled beneath the wheels of his suburban and vomited again. He wiped at his mouth with a shaking hand. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry…”

  Pike rose cautiously to his feet. He brushed shards of glass and pottery and shredded flower petals from his uniform. He was unharmed. The adrenaline dump made his legs shaky. He needed a damn cigarette.

  He didn’t bother to check on the woman beneath the suburban. She was clearly dead. If others were hurt, it wasn’t his problem.

  He picked his way gingerly through the wreckage of the store. There was no door anymore. No window. Just a wide gaping hole spiked with jagged glass shards. He stepped through the hole and out into the street.

  The traffic lights were dark. Dozens of cars were still stopped at the intersection, unmoving. Several had rolled onto the curb or crashed into light poles. There were dozens of fender-benders. Two blocks south, a serious pile-up of at least ten vehicles snarled the intersection.

  Along the meridian, leafless trees were wrapped in lights, the streetlight poles wound with pine, holly, and ribbons. The sidewalks weren’t crammed with holiday shoppers like the big cities, but there were still hundreds of people out and about, hurrying to finish last-minute tasks before Christmas.

  “My phone won’t work!” a man shouted. “I can’t call 911!”

  “Mine either,” another shaken shopper said.

  “What’s happening?”

  “What’s going on?”

  “It’s just a power outage. A really bad one.”

  The fools started talking about power outages they’d experienced or heard of. The Polar Vortex of ’18. Snowmaggedon ’22 when a blizzard dumped four feet of powder and electricity was out for a week.

  They didn’t get it. They never did. They always looked for the simplest explanation and clung to it. That tendency allowed many a great evil to have their way in the shadows. Unseen, unsuspected.

  He was still holding the bouquet of lilies in one hand. The petals were crushed and bruised from where he’d pressed them against his chest. With his free hand, he pulled his iPhone out of his pocket. It was as he expected. Dead.

  Pike wasn’t stupid. The power grid had nothing to do with cars or phones. This was something different. Something more.

  It might be some solar flare or geomagnetic shift. Or maybe a cyberattack by a rogue country. Or the U.S. government had finally turned on its own people.

  It didn’t matter. He didn’t care about any of it.

  He was thinking about his hunting cabin.

  Thinking about the nice set-up he’d rigged for the place. The new, top-of-the-line generator running the lights, the heat, the security system—all regulated by a self-contained computerized system.

  Including the camera that he accessed on h
is secret phone so he could watch her anytime he wished. In the middle of a staff meeting. At dinner with his mother. Working the job.

  It always gave him a little thrill. A buzz better than a hit of crack cocaine.

  He pulled out the second phone. The secret one. It was just as dead as his iPhone.

  Maybe everything was fine. The generator still whirring away. The locks still in place. The only way to know for sure was to verify with his own eyes. He had no choice.

  Pike dropped the bouquet to the glass-littered street. He needed to get to the cabin.

  6

  Hannah

  Day One

  The snow moved.

  No, it was something white moving through the snow.

  She sucked in her breath, her heart hammering against her sore ribs.

  All this time, she’d imagined that deep, savage bark belonging to a mangy German Shepherd or giant slobbering Rottweiler or even the demon-dog Cerberus himself. The reality wasn’t anything like she’d imagined.

  An enormous white dog strained at the chain linking his collar to a steel ring attached to the smaller shed—a doghouse, she realized. His fur was thick and shaggy. He was huge. At least as tall as her waist, with a massive head easily twice as large as her own. He might weigh one hundred and fifty pounds or more.

  He was beautiful. Scary as hell, but beautiful.

  The dog saw her in the window and lunged against his collar, barking fiercely. The dog’s domain was clearly marked where he’d worn the snow into muddy tracks. She recognized the breed, though it took her brain a long time to conjure the correct title. A Great Pyrenees Mountain Dog.

  Against her better judgment, she opened the back door. Cold slammed into her like a physical force. Icy fingers slid down the back of her neck and stung her cheeks. She wrapped her scarf tighter around her neck and slipped the furred hood over her head.

  The hairs on the back of her neck prickled. Like she was being watched.

  Blood rushed to her head and she swayed, dizzy. She held herself up with one hand pressed against the door. She had to remember to take it slow in her condition.

  Her condition. Her mind shied away from the truth. She didn’t want to think about it. She’d ignored it as much as she could the last seven or eight months. She could keep ignoring it. For a while longer, at least.

  With her balance restored, she turned slowly, squinting, struggling to distinguish the shadows from the trees from the white snowbanks.

  White powder spilled from the branch of a pine tree and fell into the snow with a soft pfft sound. She flinched, wildly scanning the yard and the trees for movement, for any signs of him.

  There was nothing. Just trees and snow. Her and the dog.

  Her eyes hurt. A deep aching in the back of her head. But if she squinted behind her sunglasses, she could see well enough. The day was heavily overcast, the sun hidden behind a bank of dark clouds swollen with the promise of an approaching snowstorm.

  The storm was coming. She needed to hurry.

  Instead of heading back inside for the skis and her new pack, she moved toward the dog. She knew better, knew she should get the hell out as fast as she could, the dog be damned.

  But she couldn’t help herself. She was drawn to him almost against her will.

  Her boots sank deep into the snow. Her nostrils stung. The cold air burned raw in her throat with every breath. It was fresh and clean and smelled of pine and earth and things wild and alive and outside.

  She opened her mouth, closed it. Inhaled sharply, the brittle air stinging her throat. She hadn’t spoken aloud in so long. She didn’t speak to him. She had nothing to say to him.

  The first few years, she used to sing. Would sing for hours every day, memorizing the songs she’d written, creating tunes and rhythms and harmonies. She’d loved music. Majored in music education in college.

  She didn’t sing anymore. Hadn’t for a long, long time.

  The only sounds he ever wanted to hear from her were screams and whimpers of pain and acquiescence. He had no use for her voice. Maybe she’d started to believe the same thing.

  She took a step closer. Didn’t take her eyes off the dog.

  He stood, staring back at her. He didn’t bark. He didn’t growl. He just watched her.

  All this time, she’d thought of him as an enemy, his minion. A savage guard to make sure she remained trapped here for the rest of her miserable life. She’d despised this dog almost as much as she’d hated her captor.

  Maybe she had been wrong.

  She made her way hesitantly closer.

  The dog didn’t move.

  She took another step. It was so cold, she could see the white puffs of her breath.

  He raised his head, tilted his muzzle.

  His paws and legs were splattered with mud. His fur was matted in places. Even as big as he was, he was far too thin. The outline of his ribs jutted beneath his thick coat. The thick metal chain looked so ugly and wrong on a dog so regal.

  It didn’t matter how dirty and ragged he was. He looked like he belonged next to one of the great kings of myth. King Arthur, or maybe a great Viking warlord.

  This dog wasn’t the enemy. He was a prisoner. Same as she was.

  Would he die if she left? He must have food and a source of water that didn’t freeze inside that shed that served as his doghouse. But how long would it last?

  Would her captor bother to feed him if she wasn’t here anymore? If the guard dog had nothing to guard?

  She took another step.

  A low grow started in his throat. A deep rumble of warning. His black lips curled over long sharp teeth.

  Those jaws could clamp down on a grown man’s throat and shred it to pieces within seconds. She was sure of it. He looked like he could take down a ten-point buck without a second thought.

  She was nothing to him.

  It was a risk. A risk she shouldn’t take.

  Every second she remained here was a second closer to being found again, being dragged back and thrown into the basement to rot. Or being skinned alive or some other torture whose horrors she couldn’t even imagine.

  She should go. She needed to go.

  But something held her in place, something that wouldn’t let her abandon this dog.

  He was still trapped. Still a prisoner of the same man who’d tortured them both.

  She couldn’t just leave him.

  7

  Hannah

  Day One

  Hannah pulled the package of beef jerky out of her coat pocket, ripped it open, and took out a slice. She tossed it at the dog. It landed in the trampled snow a few feet from him.

  His big brown eyes never leaving her, he padded over to the dried meat and slurped it up in one gulp.

  She tossed him another one. He ate it just as fast.

  He was hungry, maybe starving. She’d suspected as much. Her captor wouldn’t value dogs any more than he valued women.

  She moved closer, until she was less than three feet away, just outside the reach of his chain.

  The dog stiffened. He lowered his head, growling louder.

  “Don’t be afraid,” she said. The sound came out like a rough, non-sensical grunt. Alien to her own ears. Her throat was raw, her voice box unused.

  She tried again. “I won’t hurt you.”

  This time the words were clearly words, though they were hoarse and rough. She cleared her throat, swallowed what felt like rocks in her mouth. “Don’t be afraid.”

  She took a third piece of jerky. She needed this food for herself, though she’d packed as much as she could carry. But she couldn’t stop herself. She couldn’t bring herself to leave him behind.

  She stood close enough that if he lunged, he might be able to reach her. Escape would be that much harder if he bit her. She’d found some bandages, Advil, and Neosporin in the bottom cabinet of the bathroom, but not much else.

  Anxiety twisted her stomach. Apprehension sent her heart racing. Her palms were damp beneath
her gloves. She held out the strip of jerky.

  The dog watched it hungrily, his gaze jumping from the food to her face to the food again. His tail stood out stiffly behind him, the long plume barely moving. His hackles were raised.

  She could almost reach his collar.

  “It’s okay,” she murmured. “You’re okay. You’re going to be free now. I know you’re scared, but it’s going to be okay. I promise.”

  A foot separated her from the animal’s powerful jaws and slobbering fangs. He could do more than hurt her if he wanted. He could snap her neck as easily as a toothpick.

  She dropped the jerky in front of him. He darted down to get it.

  This was her chance. Her blood rushed in her ears. Adrenaline surging through her veins. She leaned in and reached for the chain hook. She got one hand on it, tried to jam open the hook with her gloved fingers, her bad hand utterly useless.

  The dog lunged sideways with a snarl. She didn’t let go. She should have, but she didn’t. The hook was open. She just needed to angle it and slip it off the ring of his collar. She just needed—

  His heavy, muscled body slammed into her legs, knocking her over. She fell on her butt.

  She kept her grip on the collar, felt the hook slide free, and let go as the chain clanked to the ground. Startled, the dog lunged at her.

  She jerked back, lost her equilibrium, and landed flat on her back in the snow. He pounced on top of her, huge paws pressing down on her chest. He loomed over her. Hot animal breath blasting her face, spittle splattering her cheeks.

  Instinctively, she tried to raise her arms to protect her face, but the dog’s giant head and torso crouched above her kept her from moving. He had her pinned. Helpless.

  “Go!” she screamed at him, her voice scraping from her throat. “Get out of here! You’re free!”