Escape The Dark (Book 2): Fearful World

by Fawkes, K. M.

  Chapter 6

  “Let’s everyone just calm down,” Richard Birkin said.

  Immediately, all eyes turned toward him. Even the McTerrells were watching him, clearly hoping he would have something helpful or wise to say. The enmity between the two families was clearly a complicated thing.

  Adam was reminded of their desire to keep the lawn mowed, even though there were more important jobs that needed doing. Appearances were important to these people. They wanted the veneer of civility and good breeding. They wanted to show that they were above petty squabbling.

  But there was more to it than that, he thought. Deep down, they probably longed to trust each other.

  He thought back to his time on the boat, to the friends Cody had brought along who had eventually chosen to return to the mainland. Adam would have loved to find common ground with them, if any common ground had existed. The world seemed to have grown both much larger and much smaller, somehow. Every person you could rely on, every person you knew had your back, made you a little bit safer. The Birkins and the McTerrells might not like each other, but they could be the key to helping each other stay alive, and everyone at the table knew it.

  “Why don’t we take our wine into the living room?” Richard said. “It’s getting dark. We can light a fire and talk about what all this means for us.”

  Adam got up and followed, but he left his wine untouched on the dining room table. Nobody seemed to notice.

  The room Richard had referred to as a living room turned out to be more of a lounge space that had probably been used as a receiving area when the country club had been active. Adam saw French doors leading out to what looked like a patio—it was hard to be sure in the dark—and doors that led to a restroom. The chairs and couches had probably once been spread around the room, but now they were clustered in front of a fireplace. Chase McTerrell crouched in front of it and began arranging sticks and logs for their fire.

  “We used to have easy-start logs,” Charles told Adam, “but we ran out of those pretty quickly. Chase is the best at starting fires, though.”

  Nobody disputed this claim, although Rhett and Langley looked slightly mutinous.

  Adam took a seat on a plush ottoman while the others found seats of their own on the couches and armchairs around him. A minute later, Chase sat back from the fireplace. A small fire was crackling merrily, the sound familiar and comforting.

  It was hard to be too worried when you were sitting in front of a fire, Adam thought. He guessed there was something about that instinct that went back to the days when early man had used fire to protect himself against threats. Fire meant safety. Fire meant everything was going to be all right.

  Richard was the last to take a seat. “Before we start panicking,” he said, “I want us to take a look at the life we’ve been living here. Yes, we’ve grown used to certain comforts. Yes, we would all like to have the electricity back. But if Adam is right about the EMP—and I have to admit that I think his theory makes a lot of sense—electricity is something we might not be getting back.”

  Kathryn shuddered. Several of the others looked uncomfortable. But no one spoke up in disagreement.

  “If that’s the case,” Richard went on, “the question posed by my wife, and the question we’re all considering, is this: can we survive? And my answer is that of course we can. Of course we can. It will be a challenge, but we’ve all faced challenges already, and we’ve overcome them. We managed to escape our homes when the violence and looting started. We crossed the ocean and made it to this island. We set up our refuge here.”

  “Fleeing our homes isn’t the same thing as learning to live without power,” Marsden said.

  “No, it’s not,” Richard agreed. “But we’ve done other things. Just look at our fire. When we arrived here, could any of us have built such a quick and efficient fire? And now we can all do it.”

  Marsden nodded. Chase looked pleased.

  “And there’s more,” Richard said. “What about our garden? What about all the foods we’re growing? We have huge stores in reserve, things we’ve brought with us, but we’re already prepared for the fact that those supplies won’t last forever. We’ve already thought about what comes next. We have food to harvest in the spring, food to harvest in the summer, and food to harvest in the fall.

  “Then there’s our water filtration system. We should all be proud of that. That was a joint project, something we came together to solve, and almost everyone in this room had a hand in it. Because it works so well, we can be assured of clean water as long as it doesn’t stop raining.”

  “We learned how to hunt and fish,” Olivia spoke up.

  Richard nodded at her. “That’s right. Many of us came to the island already in possession of those skills, but not all of us. We worked hard and pooled our knowledge, and now everyone in our party can be relied on to go out and bring back food.

  “My point is that we’re self-sufficient. We’ve risen to meet every challenge we’ve come across. And yes, it’s intimidating to think of a world without power, to think that such a thing might be permanent. But it is not the end of us as people. We’ve adapted to harder things than this.”

  It was a good speech, Adam thought, and as he looked around the room he could see that the others had been comforted. Langley and Rhett were sipping at their wine again. Kathryn had more color in her cheeks. The McTerrell children had matching intense looks on their faces, as if they’d been galvanized by Richard’s talk of rising to challenges.

  “If I may?” Charles McTerrell was getting to his feet.

  Richard looked reluctant to cede the floor. Adam remembered what Ella had said about Richard seeing himself as being in charge of the group. But he couldn’t very well refuse to allow Charles to speak, not without breaking the appearance of good manners he seemed so determined to project. He hesitated long enough to give the impression that he was thinking things over and deciding to be generous, then stepped to one side, but did not sit down.

  Charles took this with good grace. “I’d like to second some of the things Richard has said,” he began. “Whatever we were before, we all need to realize that we’re survivors now. We’ve been survivors for a long time. And this is just one more thing to survive. We already have workarounds for many of the things we used electricity for. Candles instead of electric lights. Seawater for washing our clothes—we can learn to do that by hand.”

  Adam couldn’t help it—his heart sank a little. Even though he agreed with everything Richard and Charles were saying, the thought of going back to salty clothes after wearing this fresh set was an unpleasant one.

  “At any rate,” Charles continued, “Given the things we’ve all learned how to do in our time here, I feel as confident as you do, Richard, that we’ll all be safe here for a good long time.”

  “And that includes our newcomer,” Marsden said. “You’ll have to forgive us, Adam. This evening was supposed to be a welcome dinner for you.”

  “Oh. That’s all right,” Adam said.

  Richard nodded. “It seems I may have misjudged you, Adam. Certainly if the nanobots are dead, we have nothing to fear from you.”

  “Well. That’s true,” Adam agreed. If this was what it took to get Richard to accept him into the fold, he supposed he could live with that.

  “I knew we were right not to kill him,” Marsden said, a note of smug satisfaction in his tone.

  Adam was surprised. Was this really the moment for an “I told you so”?

  If Richard was bothered by the comment, he gave no indication. “Why don’t you tell us how you came to land on our island, Adam? We ought to know you a little bit better if you’re going to be one of us.”

  “Um. Okay.”

  Adam rubbed his hands on the thighs of his pants, feeling vaguely nervous. Was there a chance these people would turn on him if they knew everything that had happened—everything he’d been a part of—on the yacht? They had just managed to agree on the fact that keeping him alive was
for the best. He didn’t want to provoke them now.

  He would give them an abbreviated version of the story, he decided.

  “I think I mentioned that the yacht I came in on belonged to a friend of mine,” he started. “We decided to leave the mainland several months ago, hoping that we could avoid infection by going out to sea.”

  Richard nodded. “We saw a lot of boats as we were leaving the mainland ourselves. We knew we weren’t the only ones to have the idea.”

  “I think most people with access to boats went out to sea eventually,” Adam agreed. He thought of the man and woman he and Cody had found drifting in a rowboat, begging to be taken aboard. He and Cody had left them behind for fear they might be carrying the virus. Another memory he’d have to live with forever.

  “How were you able to survive out there?” Olivia asked.

  “We had a water filtration system, like you,” Adam said. “We had a lot of food supplies. At one point we came across an oil tanker, and we were able to resupply. There was no one alive on board,” he added quickly, although he didn’t describe the bodies he and Cody had found lying in their bunks.

  “So what happened?” Chase asked.

  “The EMP happened,” Adam said. “The power knocked out the controls. Then the storm hit and blew me into the island, and that’s where I met you.”

  “No, I get that,” Chase said. “I mean what happened to your friend? The guy whose boat it was. Why isn’t he here with you?”

  Adam hesitated. This was the part of the story he least wanted to tell. He still saw Cody’s body every time he closed his eyes. His friend had saved his life when he’d offered his yacht as a refuge, and Adam had paid him back by drugging him and holding him down while he choked to death.

  It wasn’t what we meant to do, he reminded himself. But what difference did that make?

  Still, he had to explain his friend’s absence somehow. “He died,” he said. “We were getting news of the spread of the virus on a radio, and the reports were too much for him. One day he jumped.”

  Everyone was quiet. Adam’s stomach knotted with guilt. Everything he’d told them was true. But Cody hadn’t died the day he’d jumped off the yacht. Adam had gone into the water after him and saved him. His death had come later.

  Finally, Richard spoke. “We’re glad you found your way to us, Adam,” he said. “And we’re sorry for what you’ve been through.”

  Charles nodded. “You’ve got a home here.”

  It was strange to see them agreeing. Adam nodded his thanks, but deep down he was wary. Nothing Ella had told him about these two families boded well. He wanted to trust them, and to believe that he was finally safe. But he wasn’t ready to let his guard down. Not yet.

  He expected to sleep well that night, especially after the physically draining day he’d spent mowing the country club lawn. But sleep did not come easily, and when it did come, it was fitful, disturbed by dreams.

  He dreamed that he was back on the yacht, that the night they’d tried to drug Cody was playing out again around him. In the dream, he knew that going forward with the plan would end in disaster, and he tried to warn Artem and Sara, but they refused to listen. The drugged drink was brought out and placed in front of Cody, just as it had been in real life. Adam tried to stand and scream at his friend not to drink it, tried to knock his cup into the sea, but he was powerless to stop what came next.

  The dream played out exactly as it had in reality, with Cody attacking Artem, accusing them all of betraying them, and struggling as Adam and Sara caught him and tried to hold him down. Adam felt like screaming as he felt his friend’s life leave him, but he couldn’t make himself let go. And as in reality, Cody lay dead on the deck.

  But then it changed. Cody’s eyes opened and he sat up.

  “You did betray me,” he said, his voice hoarse. “I was right all along. I saved your life, Adam. I saved you, and you let me die.”

  Adam jerked upright in his bed, drenched in sweat and gasping.

  His first thought was to check the time, but of course there were no functional clocks in the room, and he glanced out the window instead. It was still dark outside, and the moon was high overhead. Still hours away from dawn, then. He wondered how long he’d managed to sleep.

  His heart pounding, he went to the bathroom that adjoined his bedroom and splashed some water on his face. Then he braced his hands on the sink and stared into the mirror.

  I killed him.

  He hadn’t, not literally. It had been Sara’s arms around Cody’s neck, not his own. But that was splitting hairs and Adam knew it. If he hadn’t held his friend down, Cody would have been able to throw Sara off.

  He might have killed her then. He might have killed me. He killed Artem.

  That was all true. Cody had been out of his mind at that point, disturbed and dangerous. Adam had been acting for his own safety, and for Sara’s. But it didn’t make Adam feel any less despicable, or any less guilty about his lies of omission to the Birkins and the McTerrells. Whatever else they were, they had been good enough to take him in.

  He only hoped the hell he’d survived on the yacht hadn’t come here with him.

  Chapter 7

  July 8

  “Hey, Adam.”

  Adam turned from the bookshelf he’d been surveying. The selection wasn’t very good. Mostly histories of the country club, autobiographies of men Adam supposed must have been members, and guidebooks to hunting and fishing. He’d have liked something new to read, but he wasn’t going to find anything much here.

  The voice had come from one of the Birkin twins. They both stood behind him, regarding him openly.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “We thought we’d go out on the water,” one of them said. “Do a little fishing for tonight’s dinner. Want to come?”

  “Sure,” Adam agreed. Fishing sounded like fun. It also sounded like a worthwhile task, and he didn’t want to get stuck beautifying the premises all day again. “I don’t have a lot of fishing experience, though,” he added.

  “That’s okay,” one of the twins said. “We can teach you.”

  “Can you also teach me how to tell you two apart?” Adam asked. “I’ve been having to wait until someone says your names.”

  They both laughed. “It’s easy, actually,” one of them said. “We part our hair on opposite sides. Right for Rhett, left for Langley.”

  Adam laughed, too. “So you’re Rhett.”

  “You got it.”

  “That’s pretty convenient, that hair-parting thing.”

  Rhett shrugged. “Our mother started it, back when we were too young to care what our hair looked like. It’s just habit now. Come on, we’ve got the boat all ready.”

  Adam followed Rhett and Langley out of the house and down to a little wooden dock. A small sailing boat had been loaded with fishing poles and a tackle box, and the three of them boarded.

  “Where’d you get this boat?” Adam asked as Langley cast off.

  “The yacht club,” Rhett said, pointing to a large white building. “It was an offshoot of the country club. In better times there would have been dozens of yachts tethered to this dock, but people took them with them when they left, of course. This boat’s the only one that was left behind. We think it probably belonged to the club itself.”

  “Kind of a shame we couldn’t get one of the nicer ones,” Langley said. “But at least we used to row crew, so we know how to handle ourselves in water.”

  “You were rowers?”

  “Champion rowers,” Rhett said. “We had our sights on international competition after college, but then this happened.” He held out a fishing pole to Adam. “Do you know how to bait a hook?”

  “I think so,” Adam said.

  “We’re just using worms, because they’re easy to find and because we don’t want to waste any real food on fish,” Rhett said. “Just make sure you put the hook through the worm two or three times, or else it’ll probably fall off into the water. You�
�re not squeamish, are you?”

  “Not anymore,” Adam said. After everything he’d seen and done, putting a worm on a hook was small potatoes.

  Langley steered them out into open water. Adam was a little nervous about being so far from shore—the last time he’d been out to sea, after all, he had been caught in a terrible storm that had resulted in a shipwreck. He had almost drowned. But today the sky was clear and the waves were mild. His nerves settled quickly.

  Rhett showed him how to cast his fishing line into the water. “You’ll feel a tug if you’ve got a bite,” he said. “If that happens, you want to give it a nice quick jerk to make sure the hook catches the fish. Otherwise they’re likely to just steal the bait and swim away.”

  Adam nodded.

  The three of them sat in silence for a while, listening to the water lapping against the side of the boat. Fishing, Adam quickly surmised, was a boring activity.

  “I’m glad you came to the island, Adam,” Langley said. “We needed someone new to talk to.”

  “We’ve all heard all each other’s stories,” Rhett agreed.

  Adam didn’t want them to hear his stories, not any more than they already had. Nor did he want to talk about them. The nightmare he’d had last night was still troubling him. He nodded, wondering whether the Birkin twins were honestly glad he’d joined them. It tallied with what their father had said at last night’s fireside chat, but Adam couldn’t help feeling uneasy. Could they all have changed their minds about him so quickly? It seemed unlikely.

  “When did you leave the mainland, exactly?” Langley asked.

  “April,” Adam said. “Before things got really crazy. I was lucky.”

  “We came out here in March,” Langley said. “We watched the early news reports on TV. Rhett and I didn’t want to leave, but Dad insisted, and I guess it’s a good thing we went along with it.”