Escaping Darkness (Book 6): The Shadows

by Richards, E. S.

  “Sir.” A loyal foot solider appeared out of nowhere in front of Jackson, his chest heaving up and down and a pistol gripped in his hand. Jackson couldn’t remember his name, although he knew the young man in front of him was someone they had rescued from the pit. One of the older boys who didn’t have any family left, who had willingly taken up the rebel faction’s cause and chosen to bear arms as a way of demonstrating their gratitude for what Jackson had done. There were about eight or nine of them remaining in the office building now, some of the best new recruits that Jackson could’ve hoped for.

  “I think we can take back the west stairwell,” the young man explained hastily, knowing that time was of the essence. “The ground floor is still completely overrun. If we get down there, they’ll likely overpower us. How do you suggest we proceed?”

  Jackson nodded along as the young man explained himself, pleased to hear that they were fighting back well enough to be making progress, even without additional supplies. The question was important, though—there was little point trying to advance downstairs again if the Authority would just overpower them. What they needed to do was find a way to block off the stairwells and buy themselves some time to regroup and come up with a proper plan.

  “Great work,” Jackson paused for a second, waiting for the man in front of him to give up his name.

  “Donovan, sir.”

  “Donovan, yes,” Jackson didn’t falter or make out like he was apologetic for forgetting Donovan’s name, slotting it into his sentence and continuing like it was the most natural thing in the world. “We need to block off the stairwell in some way, build a barricade they can’t break through without risking fatalities. Is there anything over there you think you could use?”

  Donovan thought for a second, his hand itching on the pistol he held while his heart thumped so loudly in his chest it almost overpowered the shouts and occasional gunshots that echoed through the building. “Yeah,” he replied after a brief second of silence. “Yeah, we can do that.”

  “Then go,” Jackson encouraged, confident in Donovan’s abilities to get the job done. The young man didn’t need to be told twice, jogging off much like Larson had, with his mind focused on completing his task. Jackson may have sent his best warriors into the pit with his eldest son, but it turned out he still had many loyal people left within the building. When everyone is united against one common enemy, people tend to find strengths they didn’t even know they had.

  Spinning on his heel and heading in the opposite direction of Donovan, Jackson headed over to the east stairwell, where he immediately saw some familiar faces.

  “Dad!” Rylan shouted out to his father as soon as he noticed the man approaching, making a move to walk towards the old man and ducking back down in a flash as a bullet came whizzing past his head.

  “Rylan! Get down!” Jackson yanked his pistol from the holster at his waist as soon as he saw how close his youngest son had just come to receiving a bullet—noticing it sticking out of a wall behind his son, Jackson then realized the Authority was firing tranquilizers up the stairwell, rather than live rounds. That was something at least, but he still didn’t want his son getting hit.

  “Don’t move!” Jackson shouted out again, his body and mind sinking even further into their military training and his movements quickly becoming routine and second nature. He zigzagged his way closer to the stairwell with ease, knowing exactly when to move and where not to stand from the angle of tranquilizer darts that were fired up the stairs. His team thankfully had the better angle and positioning for a firing line, but that didn’t mean they weren’t still in danger from the men and women aiming from below.

  “Heads down!” Jackson’s final order was given before he sprang into action, soaring through the air in such a graceful manner it was hard to believe he was a deadly assassin. That was, until he opened fire, peppering bullets into the Authority foolishly waiting at the bottom of the stairs. It only took seconds for a handful of bodies to fall to the ground, the others quickly retreating around corners and ducking for cover.

  “We need to close this stairwell off!” Jackson commanded, looking over at his son and Joel—one of Mike’s friends who had also been rescued from the pit. “You two go and drag some of the tables over here. Get anything we can use to fix together a barricade.”

  Joel and Rylan moved like lightning, both more than happy to get out of the direct fire and do something that put their lives at slightly less risk. Rylan openly admitted that he wasn’t a fighter—just like his older brother—and Joel didn’t have much of a knack for it either. Both were determined to help play their part for the rebel faction though, and even more so, both wanted to get rid of the Authority from the city once and for all.

  Hazel and Marie—Joel’s younger sister and mother—were hidden away several floors up with the other women and children who were unable to help defend the building. Several of the mothers had volunteered to protect the children while countless others had been more than happy to help out. Joel’s mother had actually been in the latter group, but he had refused to let her be a part of it. After everything he had gone through with Hazel in the pit, Joel was dead set on protecting her. It was bad enough that he had to put himself in danger; he outright refused to let his mother be in that danger too if he could help it. Hazel needed their mom, and Joel couldn’t let any more damage come to his family.

  “You ready?” he called out at Rylan, Mike’s younger brother at the other end of a large desk that they could prop up vertically to block the stairs. Rylan slung the rifle he’d been shooting with over his shoulder and nodded, gripping the desk and tensing his muscles. “Three, two, one!”

  At the end of the countdown, both teenagers strained against the weight of the desk, using everything they had left in them to hoist it up from the carpeted floor and start to shuffle over to where Jackson waited. The leader of their group commanded those who remained by the stairwell with ease, instructing people on when to duck and when to pop up and fire. He was made for a scenario like this, his natural talent shining through like a bright beacon on a cloudy day. Not only did he exude power and authority, he made everyone around him feel calmer and more relaxed as well. He seemed to know where help was needed, dispatching two more men to help Joel and Rylan with the desk, their added muscles benefitting the two teenagers greatly.

  “Hold it steady,” Jackson commanded as Rylan and the others reached him again, glancing at them quickly with one eye to make sure they were out of the firing line. “We need to push them back farther first. Putting that up is going to put us all at risk.”

  No one responded to the leader, each person simply awaiting the next instruction and putting their trust entirely in the hands of Jackson. He seemed to sense where the next attack was coming from, dropping to his knees and half-rolling over to his right, his pistol already firing down the stairs before his body had reached a complete stop. It was mesmerizing. He moved more like a ballerina than a fighter, dancing through the stream of tranquilizer darts and always, always coming out on top.

  “Now!” he bellowed suddenly, snapping Joel, Rylan, and the others out of their trance and urging them forward with the desk. A surge of adrenaline ripped through Rylan’s body as he heard his father give the order, his muscles flexing under his shirt and summoning strength he didn’t know he had. Together, they managed to catapult the desk forward, the top end of it slamming into the woodwork of the stairwell and resting there, plaster and dust dropping to the ground from the impact.

  “Another!” Jackson shouted, the desk providing some cover from the Authority below, even if several weak spots could still easily be found. He knew that if they wanted to be granted the luxury of time to defend this floor and plan their next move, they needed to make sure the stairwells couldn’t be taken as easily as the ground floor had been. That still posed a large problem for the rebels, but Jackson wouldn’t even entertain thoughts about what to do next until he was completely satisfied his group was safe. He had bro
ught them all to the office building and it was his job to make sure each of them made it out alive. Too many had likely already been lost. No more would fall under his watch that day.

  Raining bullets down on the enemy, Jackson managed to keep the Authority from firing much more while his group piled more office furniture against the stairwell, making it impassable from below. A dart sailed dangerously close to Joel’s face as he peered around at one point, opening himself up as a target and forcing Jackson to have to pull him back with such force that he stumbled to the ground.

  “Stay down,” Jackson chastised, moving his gaze from Joel to Rylan, then slowly around everyone else who huddled by the stairwell. The sound of gunfire had ceased completely now, a sign that all three routes up from the ground floor had been defended. Jackson assumed his men had all done their job and the barricades were in place, but he knew their challenge was far from over.

  Allowing himself a second to breathe and truly look around at who remained, he realized with a heavy heart how many faces were missing and how many friends he had lost. The Authority was back with a vengeance and they had almost taken it. From now on, Jackson refused to be such an easy target. From now on, things were about to get personal.

  Chapter 9

  Stewing in what could only be described as a prison cell, Jorge thought about everything he had done to get himself there. Granted, it was a very comfortable prison cell—one of the former hotel rooms with a bed, built-in table and chair, and en suite bathroom—but it was still a room that he was unable to leave of his own accord. The self-proclaimed leader of Phoenix had locked him in there, sentenced to dwell on his own decisions until he was eventually released again.

  There was no chance of escape on his own. While the window technically opened, Jorge’s frame was too large to wriggle out of the small gap, and even if he somehow managed it, the drop to the ground was several stories high. If he wanted to jump, he would be throwing his life away, something that the Spaniard wasn’t yet comfortable doing. Even though it might seem that, in a way, he already had.

  Thinking back to his time spent traveling across the country with Mia, Jorge regretted leaving her side immensely. He pictured her face when he closed his eyes, seeing her steely expression and the determination etched in her gaze. He had been wrong to ever doubt what Mia was willing to do to get back to her family, and he had been wrong to stand in the way of that too. While he still believed he had made the right decision in the grand scheme of things, Jorge had finally accepted that he had gone about it in the wrong way.

  Staring at his reflection in the dusty mirror, Jorge shook his head at himself and looked away. He refused to stop fighting for his cause, yet he wished he had done things differently. Now what he wanted was going to be even harder to achieve. Now he was trapped in a city where he knew no one and where some crazed man had managed to somehow take control of the survivors. Mason—the leader—appeared to be doing an impressive job of getting Phoenix back on its feet. However, after the one conversation that Jorge had shared with the man, he had concluded that there was something more to Mason than met the eye.

  “Dios mio,” he muttered to himself. “What am I supposed to do now?”

  As Jorge saw it, he had a few options, though the first stage within each of them—escaping—was out of his reach for now. In his head, Jorge still wanted to deliver the message of the fracking site and the truth about how everything had happened to the world. He still wanted the man responsible to be held accountable for all of it and most of all, he wanted people to know the lengths that he had gone to in order to find and deliver the information. He wanted to be the whistleblower, but he was slowly coming around to the notion that the world just wasn’t ready for it yet. Barely a month had passed since Yellowstone erupted; maybe it was too soon for him to expect people to bite back against the guilty party.

  Staring out of the window of his hotel room turned prison cell, Jorge looked down on the city of Phoenix and analyzed the effects of the eruption. Countless buildings had crumbled to the ground as a result of the density of the ash that had settled on their roofs. Anything that wasn’t structurally sound before the eruption had been damaged in some way, whether it was just a wall giving way or the whole roof falling in on itself.

  Many buildings that hadn’t been destroyed due to the ash had suffered from fire damage instead. With the cloud shorting electrical grids across the country, flash fires had started up in homes and workplaces throughout Phoenix, the layout of the city allowing the fire to jump from street to street with relative ease. There was one corner of the city Jorge could see from his window that was entirely destroyed. Every single building within about twenty blocks lay in ruins on the ground. The cause of it wasn’t clear, but on such a large scale like that, Jorge could only assume fire.

  It was incredible to see how the leader had managed to bring the remaining residents of Phoenix together and start to rebuild their home so quickly. In the streets below, people walked calmly and slowly to their daily tasks, a high percentage of them clearly working and earning a living so soon after everything had descended into chaos.

  The jobs were naturally different, Jorge having noticed a few of them during his time at ground level. People bartered with food, water, and building supplies for things they needed, and instead of working in cubicles and behind desks, people sold their time helping fix up the streets or picking through ruined buildings for useful supplies or precious artifacts. Phoenix had rolled with the punches like it was just another day, the people adapting to this new way of life and settling into it almost like their lives hadn’t been completely destroyed.

  Jorge watched them now, through the haze that the ash cloud had left in the air; a haze that the volcanologist knew would be there for many months to come. The fact that it hadn’t thinned at all yet meant that it was bad. Jorge could feel the temperature dropping day by day and he understood that a very long, dark winter was coming.

  Certain scientists Jorge was aware of had been waiting for a volcano to erupt, hoping to use the sulfur aerosols emitted by it to cool the climate as they reflected sunlight back into the atmosphere and create a natural solution to the global warming crisis. He almost laughed knowing that they had gotten their wish, but on a much grander scale. The climate was cooling rapidly due to what Yellowstone had emitted and it would likely be years before the planet was able to reverse that chemical imbalance and return to a habitable environment. Life on Earth was going to get a whole lot worse before it started to get better again.

  And yet, Phoenix appeared to be thriving. Out of the quite literal ashes, the city was being reborn in the leader’s vision. How Mason was doing it was a mystery to Jorge, one he was almost more desperate to solve than the reason that had led him there.

  “Hey!” Jorge shouted, banging his fists on the door of his room and rattling the handle. “Let me out of here. You can’t do this to me!”

  “Quiet!” a voiced barked back from the other side, at least making Jorge aware that he hadn’t been completely abandoned. “The leader is about to make his announcement.”

  “What?” Muttering to himself, Jorge furrowed his brow at what the voice outside of his door had just said. He didn’t understand how things were run in the city at all, each discovery only leaving him with more questions than it answered. As he was about to open his mouth to shout back, a sort of hush seemed to fall over the city. Even from inside his room, Jorge could feel the atmosphere changing, like something had silenced everyone in the street below and captured their attention entirely.

  Walking back over to the window, he saw exactly that. In the streets below, people had stopped what they were doing and stood motionless, staring off into the distance and watching something that Jorge himself couldn’t see. He twisted around trying to get a better angle, pressing his face up against the window and yearning to be able to see around the corner, finding it was hopeless. Forced to simply watch others react to it, Jorge tried to guess at what the leader was s
aying. What was his big announcement and more importantly, how would it affect him?

  A thud followed by the jangle of his door handle immediately pulled Jorge’s attention away from the frozen people outside and into focus again. In the silence that had swallowed Phoenix, the sound of someone trying to break into his room was deafening. Jorge didn’t know what to do. Five minutes ago, he had been pounding on the door to get out himself, and now the last thing he wanted was for it to open, fear gripping his heart as he questioned who would be on the other side of it. As the wooden structure swung open and revealed three masked figures, it was like his worst nightmares all came true at once.

  “Are you the guy with the information? The one who knows how all of this started?”

  Jorge froze up, words unable to form in his throat as one of the masked figures questioned him while inches away from his face. Another of the figures dashed over to the window, glancing outside at the street below while the third dragged an unconscious body in from the hallway, presumably the man that Jorge had spoken to minutes earlier.

  “The announcement is still going on,” the figure from the window declared. “There can’t be long left, though. We need to get moving.”

  “Answer me,” the first figure spoke again, Jorge concentrating on it enough now to discern that a woman was speaking to him from behind the cotton balaclava that covered her face and kept her identity secret. “Are you the one who came here from Yellowstone? The one who knows how this all began?”