Dark Days of the After (Book 1): Dark Days of the After

by Schow, Ryan

  She laughed, but it was hollow.

  “I’m going to turn in if it’s alright,” she said.

  Stephani stood and gave her a big hug, holding her tight. “I’m sorry, Harper.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  Back in bed she let those disappointed tears loose. It wasn’t because she didn’t get the romance she wanted, or the respect she felt she deserved, what disappointed her most was that nothing about the night with him felt right.

  “I really am going to die a virgin,” she mumbled in the dark. Turning over, drying her eyes, she nestled into the blankets and thought, It is what it is.

  It’s whatever.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Logan laid in bed, Kim cuddling him, her head on his chest. He felt good being with her, and it was nice not to sleep alone, but in that moment, all he could think of was getting the message to Harper.

  “Are you okay?” Kim asked.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “I know you feel like you have to talk to Harper directly,” Kim said, pulling him closer and moving more of her body onto his, “but maybe you could just send her an email instead. We’ve all got emergency drop boxes. Why don’t you just use hers?”

  “You have no idea what it took to get me to this point. So drop box or not, I’m going.”

  Falling still save for her fingers, which were moving against his arm, she said, “What am I supposed to do?”

  “About living here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yoav got you all set,” he said. “You live here. I’ll leave you a key.”

  Reaching over, she kissed him and said, “I know. I just want to make sure you’re okay with me staying.”

  “I am.”

  He could see her naked, shower with her, have sex with her and hit her in Krav class, but kissing her like he just did felt strange. Almost like a surreal wave swept through him, left him thinking of her as more than a roommate, more than a Krav partner or even part of the Resistance.

  She told him you have sex because you need to, share a foxhole when it’s necessary, even fight when it comes to it…but this? Living together as lovers? It didn’t feel right. Then again, he was probably hung up on Skylar, or thinking about getting to Harper.

  “What will you do while I’m gone?” he asked.

  “Same thing I’m doing now, except the sex part,” she said. When he remained silent, she said, “I promise not to sleep with anyone in your bed.”

  “I didn’t…”

  “It crossed your mind,” she said.

  “I just don’t want some dude’s ball sack on my sheets.”

  She laughed and said, “Trust me, this is a you and me thing. We may be new and impermanent, but I’ve got manners. And I respect your things. Your place.”

  “Good,” he said. “I need sleep.”

  When he fell asleep, it was quick and deep. The alarm roused him early and he got ready for his work-sanctioned trip to Oregon. He checked the computer to make sure Ms. Yeung put it down for state record. She did. If he got pulled over, or interrogated, at least he’d have some official cover.

  When he was getting ready to leave, he checked on Kim. She was still asleep, and he thought of letting her remain that way. Gently, however, he woke her.

  “I’ve got to go,” he said softly.

  She reached up and kissed him, and then she said, “Come back to me.”

  “I will,” he said.

  “It’s not a love thing,” she said, seeing the look on his face, “I just hate being alone. Especially during Unfettered Hate.”

  With that, he smiled easy, then said, “I left an extra key on the kitchen table.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I just want to say,” he began, awkward, “I didn’t expect you to do what you did with me, and you know I know that, but I’m glad we did.”

  “Me, too,” she said with a warm smile. “Be safe, Logan.”

  Logan went through town on the motorcycle, no helmet, but big sunglasses for when he hit the swarms of bugs. For a moment there, he felt like a relic of the past, too free for this hell hole.

  He came to the entrance to the highway and was stopped by a Chicom soldier. He put up one hand while resting the other on his utility belt. Specifically his pistol.

  Logan pulled up to him, stopped and lifted his glasses. They hated it when you shielded your eyes.

  “Good morning,” Logan said.

  The Chicom policeman saw the sticker Ming Yeung gave him, studied it longer than he should, then said, “Where are you going?”

  “Oregon.”

  “No,” he said.

  “I didn’t want to go, sir. In fact, the best thing you could do is say no and mean it.”

  “I mean it,” he said.

  Nodding his head and exhaling through his nostrils, he said, “I just need you to call my supervisor. Her name is Ming Yeung at SocioSphere. She’s in charge of data security.”

  “Why are you going to Oregon?” he asked, looking Logan over with suspicious eyes.

  “We’ve got a nest of dissidents using our servers as end relays so they can operate below the state’s radar. What they’re doing…it might be the Resistance. Ms. Yeung thinks it is.”

  “When will you be back?” he asked.

  “As soon as I can.”

  He motioned for Logan to go through the checkpoint. Lowering his glasses back down, he said, “Stay safe, sir.”

  The man muttered something derogatory, but Logan didn’t care. The second he could, he was going to put a bullet in the heads of guys like that.

  Maybe even him personally.

  The highway was off limits to former American citizens without travel clearance, so with almost no traffic, he pushed the bike to eighty or even ninety miles an hour. Occasionally he passed some sort of military vehicle or another. Other than that, he had the road to himself. Then, up around Redding on Interstate 5, he ran into a convoy. It wasn’t unusual to see one, but it was concerning that this one was stopped.

  One of the troop transports was fixing a flat tire.

  The road was blocked by the scattered vehicles, most of the convoy either pulled over or stopped this way or that. There were jeeps, flatbed trucks with tanks on them, a Howitzer, several larger trucks he couldn’t identify. A cold chill ran through him.

  This was the enemy.

  His stomach surged, squeezing into his throat where he felt sick. Slowing down, he saw there was no way around without drawing unwanted attention.

  Two guns were out of holsters and on him in no time flat. One of these gunman held up a hand as he pulled to a stop.

  The two men walked up on him fast, drawing the attention of a dozen other Chicom soldiers. “What are you doing out here, Gweilo?”

  He pointed to his windshield and said, “I have official clearance.”

  “Get off the bike,” one of them said, shoving him by the shoulder. “Whose motorcycle is this?”

  “I was given it to use,” he said, thinking of the Chicom pistol he had stashed under the seat, along with two fresh mags. “It’s not mine.”

  “I said get off!”

  Logan got off the bike, stepping back with his hands up. The soldier walked around him, sizing him up. He then kicked the back of his knees, driving Logan to the asphalt. A sharp and rattling pain shot up his legs, into his spine.

  “You prick,” he grumbled.

  “What did you say?” the Chicom soldier snarled, smacking the top of his head with the barrel of the pistol.

  “I called you a prick,” Logan said clearly, pissed off about his knees, and now his head.

  The soldier hit him with the barrel of the gun again. This time, he left the barrel there, laid sideways on his head. The jerk then walked around the front of him, dragging the weapon to Logan’s face, the barrel never breaking contact with his skin. He knew he should be afraid, but he was so sick and freaking tired of these oppressive monsters that a part of him didn’t care if he pulled the t
rigger or not.

  “You called me a prick, while you ride your tricycle on our roads in our country,” he said, baiting Logan.

  The gun traced his face, but then the end of the barrel found his right eye, pressed in. “I am curious,” he said, grinning. “If I pull the trigger, will anyone miss you?”

  “No,” he said. “Nor will I miss this place.”

  He started to laugh, as did some of the others. “So you’re out here with a stolen motorcycle,” he said. “And you expect me to let you pass because you have a sticker?”

  “It’s not stolen, and I have clearance.”

  “This is clearance,” he said, really shoving the barrel into Logan’s closed eye.

  He grimaced but said nothing. More than his desire for his next breath, he wanted to punch this guy’s ticket. He didn’t care if he was killed right after that. It would almost be worth it. Instead, thinking about the bigger picture, he said nothing.

  “I want you to beg,” he said.

  “I’m not your boyfriend,” Logan said, unable to help himself. “If you want to put things up your ass, you don’t need my permission.”

  Others broke into laugher, not the Chicom. He reared up and struck Logan over the head so hard, he was sure the skin split. As the world wobbled and tilted sideways a bit, he waited for that warm rush of blood to drain down his face, but it didn’t happen.

  He started to tip over, but he managed to get a hand out, almost like a kickstand. It stopped him from falling over completely.

  But then the Chicom prick kicked his arm out and he fell over.

  The same boot that kicked his arm now stood on the side of his face. With the heel grinding into one side, the asphalt and loose gravel digging into the other, there was nothing more in this world he wanted than to snatch this man’s still beating heart from his chest.

  “What smart ass things have you got to say now, Gweilo?” he asked, drawing more laughter.

  “After you admitting you like getting rumped by other dudes, there’s nothing left to say,” he said through squashed cheeks. “But I think maybe you have some explaining to do to your heterosexual friends.”

  The laughter reached a crescendo, causing the boot to smash his face further, then twist off. Craning his head, he looked up to see the man towering over him, the black hole of his barrel the nearest thing he saw. He fought the loosening of his bowels. He’d known this time would come, but he didn’t think it would be before the physical war the Resistance was planning.

  “Hey, Kwon,” someone said.

  Knowing guys like him begged for their lives in times like this, Logan realized there was nothing left to fight for, nothing left to beg for, so he said, “You have really small hands, Kwon. Little tiny fingers.”

  The man racked the slide.

  “Kwon,” someone said again, now standing next to him.

  “I think I should just leave you alive, but take your tongue,” Kwon said. “See how you like your life without such a smart mouth.”

  “Small fingers means a really small penis,” he said, knowing he wasn’t going to leave this life like a coward.

  “Kwon, his clearance is legitimate.”

  He shoved the man away and said, “He can go missing, or die tragically in a fire.” Looking past the barrel of the gun, he met his aggressor’s eyes. There was a seething animosity burning behind them. People like Kwon hated the Americans just as much as the Americans hated them.

  As he laid there waiting to be killed, someone tapped Kwon’s shoulder and said, “He’s helping round up state dissidents.”

  “I don’t care.”

  The standoff between them lasted too long. Finally he holstered his weapon then said, “Get up.”

  Logan got to his feet, brushing little black pebbles from him his cheek. The glare he wore wouldn’t leave his face. He was outrage. He was hostility.

  “What?” Kwon barked.

  “You’re a bitch,” Logan snarled.

  If this man wasn’t killing him, it’s because he couldn’t.

  Kwon turned and swung at him. Logan saw it coming. He stepped under the shot, moved into the triangle of death—the space behind Kwon where he couldn’t see Logan without having to turn around.

  He drove his elbow backwards. Logan wasn’t there anymore. He was on the other side of him, hands still behind his back. Kwon switched elbows, but when he drove it back, he off-balanced himself. That’s when Logan checked his heel just enough to send him on his ass.

  To Logan’s surprise, A) he was still alive and B) no one was doing anything to stop him. That was reassuring

  “I did that with my hands behind my back,” he said over the top of him.

  Kwon shot to his feet, squaring up. A gun fired behind them, but neither man jumped. They didn’t even blink. The soldier put up his hands, but Logan knew the drill. He remained in the submissive position.

  The gun fired again as someone outranking this putz approached them. He shoved Logan aside, causing him to stumble. But this man wasn’t interested in Logan. He was nose-to-nose with Kwon, screaming at him in words Logan couldn’t understand.

  “Go,” one of the Chicom soldiers said. He was the one who saved Logan after verifying that he indeed had the clearance he claimed.

  Logan had solid tremors in his hand, the violent impulses of a man willing to risk everything important for something as trivial as a pissing contest.

  He almost welcomed the bullet.

  Instead, he got on his motorcycle, fired it up and looked over where Kwon was being dressed down by his supervisor. When Kwon’s eyes flicked his way, Logan flipped him off, then took off, weaving in and out of the convoy until he broke through to the open road.

  The adrenaline felt good coursing through his veins. He’d spent the last decade in fear. But even tech nerds reach a point. They reach that point where the rubber meets the road and they aren’t going to take anyone’s crap anymore.

  He didn’t know he was at that point until he met Skylar. She insisted he take Krav Maga classes, and though he didn’t want to at first, he went anyway because that’s where she was.

  In these last few days, he realized what training every other day for two months could do. He also realized the changes mentally were just as valuable. He didn’t have to feel like a victim. He willingly offered up his life the second he smarted off to that Chicom clown who’d stood on his face. That was his decision. He wasn’t intimidated as much as he was infuriated.

  Shaking it off, he raced through the early afternoon air, the bike nearing a hundred miles per hour. At the top of his lungs, he screamed f-bombs and obscenities until he exhausted his hatred. Later, as the afternoon wore on, he crossed into Oregon.

  Five Falls wasn’t that far off the border, nowhere near Dillard, the miniscule town Ming Yeung thought he was going to.

  He pulled to a stop in the cul-de-sac where the mouth of Connor and Orbey Madigan’s property was concealed with decoy brush. He moved through the fake foliage and stowed his motorcycle in a nearby shed. He then trekked up the tire tracked hillside.

  On top of the hill, he saw Harper and Cooper. She smiled; the German Shepherd pup barked. What a nice surprise! He wasn’t sure what kind of reception he would get, but that…that was worth the trip there.

  Cooper raced down the hill and met him with jumping and barking and a rapidly wagging tail. Harper followed Cooper. By the time she reached him, he was scratching the pup’s side, making mush out of the dog.

  “I’m not used to you having so much expression,” he said to Harper as she smiled enthusiastically.

  “Now that I’m out of the surveillance grid,” she admitted, “it’s okay to let my hair down, have a good laugh, a good cry, a good tantrum.”

  She hugged him and he hugged her back. God, it felt good in her arms.

  “I’m so glad to see you,” she said. She pulled back and looked at him, concerned. “Why are you here?”

  “With everything coming up, and with the news I’ve got,
” he said, “I couldn’t risk a transmission.”

  “Well spill it, Logan,” she said.

  “They’re going to hit the southwestern half of the United States with an EMP.”

  “I know,” she said. “The Chicoms, right?”

  “Yeah,” he said, the wind taken from his sails.

  “Tristan told me,” she admitted. “The South American Army breached the wall in Arizona. They’re pouring through. Most of them, and most of their artillery, are headed for California.”

  “Wow,” he said. “I didn’t know you’d get that kind if intel up here.”

  “I have internet access,” she said.

  “Do you know about the doomsday clock?” Logan asked her.

  “No,” she said, concerned.

  “Yeah.”

  “How long until detonation?” she asked.

  Running his hand over his head, the stubble coming in a dark shadow, he flicked his hand off his scalp and said, “Seven days.”

  “Exactly?”

  “Down to the minute,” he replied. “Eight nineteen a.m., Pacific Standard Time. That’s the minute America falls. That’s when the hot war begins.”

  Standing there, a shine to her eyes, a stillness to her soul, he watched her change before his very eyes. Slowly, he moved into her arms where he held her. She seemed to appreciate the proximity. Then, resting her head against his neck, she said, “I was always afraid of this day.”

  “I didn’t even know it was coming,” he admitted.

  “I’m scared,” she said. Then, standing back, she said, “You’ve come to stay, right? You’re not going back?”

  “I’ve come to stay a few days, see what we need to do to survive this.”

  “And then?” she asked. He looked at her, unblinking, no promises falling from his mouth. “I don’t understand.”

  “I have someone back there,” he said.

  “Skylar?” she asked. He shook his head, a forlorn look on his face. “Did she…come back home?”

  “No.”

  She pulled away from him, put a hand to her mouth like someone getting bad news does. He had no idea where Skylar was. Part of him didn’t care. She was now just another cog in the Resistance wheel. He wanted to be with her, but she was already taken by the cause. It was a tough lesson. Now he was with Kim, even though he wasn’t.