Fade To Black (Into The Darkness Book 2)

by Doug Kelly

  “Yes, but that made it convenient.” Wayne continued. “People got sick, and Dean let the sick ones stay in his basement. It got crowded, so I was glad I had dug one hell of a deep latrine. It was going to last a long time. Then it got really bad. Dean was one of the first to die. The entire place fell apart after that.”

  “But you didn’t get sick?” asked Joel.

  “Never did. Sometimes I feel guilty. I heard someone call it survivor’s guilt. I never believed in it until now.” He sighed. “I buried a lot of bodies. Then the ground froze and I couldn’t do it anymore. I just stacked them like cordwood. They’re rotting in the backyard right now, covered with weeds and the coyotes have been eating what is left. I just can’t bury another body. I just can’t do it.”

  Joel noticed Kevin at the well. “Kevin! Get back here!” ordered Joel.

  “Hey, Doc, why are you yelling?” asked Wayne.

  Joel took a step back and tried to smile. “You can call me Joel. Joel is fine by me, Wayne.”

  “Why are you getting edgy?” asked Wayne. “I didn’t say anything to piss you off, did I?”

  Joel took another step back and called for Kevin again. “Kevin, we have to go! Now!”

  Kevin heard the urgency in Joel’s voice and did not hesitate to return to his friends.

  Dylan saw the look on Joel’s face and took a step back.

  “What’s the rush?” asked Kevin.

  “Did you touch anything?” asked Joel.

  “Nothing, why?” responded Kevin.

  “Good. We’re getting in the truck now,” said Joel. “You, too, Dylan.”

  “Now, hold on,” said Wayne, and he tried to close the gap.

  Dylan was shocked to see Joel react by putting his hand on the pistol.

  “Stop!” commanded Joel. “You’re carrying a disease, but you just don’t know it. It’s some type of plague or possibly typhoid.”

  “But I’m not sick,” Wayne insisted.

  “You can still be a carrier.”

  “You mean this is my fault? All this is my fault?” Wayne asked despondently.

  “We can’t risk staying here. We have to leave, now.”

  Dylan and Kevin opened the doors to the truck. Kevin got in and started the engine while Dylan slid over to make room for Joel.

  “You can’t leave me!” Wayne pleaded. “I can’t be alone anymore. I’m going crazy here all alone.” Wayne dropped the small blanket off his shoulders, pulled at his hair, and walked toward them. Joel yelled, “Stop!” and aimed his pistol directly at Wayne. Dylan saw Joel’s hands shaking, and Joel’s finger on the trigger. Wayne collapsed to his knees.

  “Please, you’re a doctor. Give me something, do something for me. Just don’t leave me here.”

  “I can’t do anything for you.” Joel lowered the pistol. His hands shook violently.

  “Then just kill me. I don’t want to live anymore.” Wayne pounded the asphalt with his fists. “I don’t want to live. Shoot me now!”

  Before he shut the truck door, Joel said, “It’s not your fault,” but he did not think Wayne heard him. Kevin put the truck in reverse and drove a block in reverse, up the slope, before turning around and driving away.

  When Kevin turned onto the main road, Dylan asked Joel, “Would you have shot him if he had tried to get closer to us?”

  Joel felt a lump in his throat trying to impede his answer. “Yes.”

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  The next morning, Dylan walked over to Tom’s barn. Marching briskly across the gravel driveway, he kicked up a cloud of gray dust and it followed him inside the building. The smell of goats and mildew permeated the air. He forced his gaze to the rear of the barn and saw Pete’s body, suspended by the noose around his neck. Following the taut rope upward with his eyes, he saw that someone had tied the rope around a rafter. An extension ladder leaned on a support pole next to the rafter and the rope’s knotted end. Placing his rifle against the barn wall, Dylan climbed the ladder. When he reached the top, he removed his knife from its sheath and cut the rope. Pete’s feet hit the ground, and then the rigid corpse fell flat onto the barn floor.

  On the shady side of the barn, Dylan dug a shallow grave and dragged Pete’s body into it. He filled the hole with the same dark rich soil, leaving a mound of dirt as the only marker to yet another grave.

  Back inside the barn, Dylan directed his anger at the still. A condensing coil made of copper tubing spiraled out of the top of the still and wound downward into the cooling tank. He grabbed the copper tubing, ripped it from the still, and threw it across the barn. The goats bucked and tried to pull away from their rope leashes. After taking the goats outside and staking them to graze, Dylan returned to the barn with an axe he had found by the woodpile. The polished hickory handle slid effortlessly across the shiny calluses on his hands. Each strike of the axe against the still percussed loudly and resonated inside the weathered building. A rat scurried away from the violence and escaped through a small gap in the wall. When Dylan finished, he dropped the axe and stared angrily at the collapsed still’s perforated metal. After a moment of silent contemplation, he took his rifle and headed for home.

  Back at his house, the open garage doors revealed that there was no one inside. Dylan went around to the backyard and found everyone on the concrete patio. Kevin sat next to his wife, and Jennifer huddled close to Mary while she affectionately hugged her leg. Sitting on the porch steps, Brad was also near Mary. His swollen hand was snuggly wrapped in a splint.

  Dylan’s children adored Mary, and she loved them back. Dylan saw the way his young daughter clung to Mary’s leg and the way Mary touched her with such gentle affection. Brad, even after the incident at the bartering lot, held no resentment toward Mary for taking him to such a foul place. Dylan realized that he should do the same and not blame Mary for his son’s crippling injury. Just forgive and forget, he thought to himself. Dylan knew that he was not perfect and had made many mistakes. At that moment, in the echoes of his mind, he forgave Mary.

  Jim, with his hands behind his back, leaned against the home’s exterior wall near the patio door. Joel sat on the edge of the concrete patio, touching the new grass of spring. Joel smiled when he saw Dylan approach. Ruth sat on an overturned bucket with a container of garden seeds in front of her. Dylan looked at the garden plot in his backyard and noticed that Ruth had not prepared it yet. It was not ready to accept the seeds lying at Ruth’s feet. Dylan was puzzled. Why had she not planted anything?

  “We’ve been talking,” announced Kevin.

  “Well, it’s not social hour—” Dylan began sarcastically. Then a moment of quick reflection stopped him. In the same spirit of forgiveness he had just given Mary, he changed his tone. “But I’ll help get these seeds into the ground. This will be nothing compared to getting crops in all the land I plowed.” Dylan rubbed his beard. “We need a plan on how to plot out that land to divide it fairly with everyone who is still in the neighborhood.”

  As he finished speaking, he noticed Jim and Joel gently shaking their heads. With a furrowed brow, Dylan glanced at Kevin.

  “Dylan, like I said, we’ve been talking.” Kevin paused and tried to choose his next words carefully. “Some of us think it’s not a good idea to stay here any longer.” Kevin paused again, unsure of what to say next, or exactly how to say it.

  Dylan took advantage of the interlude and spoke. “Spit it out,” ordered Dylan.

  Jim coughed and raised a finger politely to interrupt the conversation. “Dylan, what he’s trying to say is this might not be worth fighting for. It’s time to quit.”

  Dylan, visibly angry, glared at Jim. “The hell if I’m a quitter!” Dylan slammed his fist into the palm of his hand. Then he looked at Kevin, and irately asked, “Are you a quitter? Huh? A thousand miles through hell and back and you just want to give up? Damn it!” Dylan shook a finger at Kevin and continued his tirade. “Where do you think you’re going to go? The other side of the lake? You’ll die. An epidemic a
lready snuffed out everybody over there. That was our only hope. You have no place to go.”

  “I’m no quitter,” Kevin retorted. “I’ve been there for you—”

  Dylan interrupted. “There is no other place to—”

  Kevin stood up, interrupting Dylan in turn, and spoke forcefully. “Shut up!”

  Dylan, shocked at what Kevin just said, quickly realized that he had spoken in anger to his best friend. Dylan yielded.

  Kevin pointed directly at Dylan, and said sternly, “You are going to listen to what I have to say, and I’m speaking for more than one person here. I know that sometimes a person has to fight. I understand that. But with what we have to face this time, it would be suicide. I’m out, and so is everybody else. It’s over. And by the way, we do have a place to go.”

  All eyes shifted to Ruth, and she raised her head.

  “Ruth,” said Dylan. “It looks like you have the floor.”

  “While you were gone, Kevin found a map. I showed him where I’m from. He did a calculation and thinks we can make it to my family’s community.”

  Dylan, with apologetic eyes, did not say anything as he looked at Kevin.

  Kevin continued his explanation. “That’s right. We have two vehicles with full tanks of fuel and we just filled all the gas cans. We can make it.”

  Dylan found a bucket, turned it upside down, and sat on it. He closed his eyes and embraced the thought. Leaning forward, elbows on his thighs, he placed his face into the palms of his hands and rubbed his beard.

  With one eye closed, he lifted his head, looked at Ruth and said, “But we’re not Amish. Does that matter?”

  “No. You’re friends of mine. You will be accepted with open arms.”

  Dylan capitulated with a sigh. “Okay, let’s do it. Who’s going?”

  “I’m not,” said Joel. “It sounds like a good idea, but the decision wasn’t unanimous in my family. We’ll stick it out here. David Taylor and Linda Foster are going to stay here, too.”

  Dylan asked Kevin, “How are we going to take everything with us?”

  “I’ve already thought of that. We’ll use the leftover lumber from a partially constructed home to make wooden side panels for the beds of the truck and the El Camino. Then we’ll be able to stack our belongings as high as the paneling.”

  “Sounds simple enough,” admitted Dylan.

  “Then let’s get busy,” Kevin responded.

  Dylan, Kevin, and Jim drove to an abandoned construction lot. Framing lumber and a partially scavenged stack of plywood flooring sat next to the concrete foundation. Dylan and Jim loaded the wood while Kevin searched for nails. He found a large coil of nails for a nail gun. It was made of two parallel strips of wire that attached the nails side by side. Kevin snapped a few nails off the coil and decided that he could still use them with a hammer, so he took them all. In front of Dylan’s house, they designed a wooden frame with paneled sides for each vehicle. By nightfall, the truck and the El Camino had wooden cages for holding all their belongings during their journey southward through the Ozark Mountains.

  Everyone was awake by sunrise the next morning, and the group spent the early morning hours packing. On the driveway, the soon-to-be travelers laid out their belongings. They prioritized what they would take and loaded the most important items first. With their belongings stacked in the wooden cages, they secured everything with rope. They were ready to start their exodus. Jim suggested that they walk to Joel’s house so the children could say goodbye. Jim also wanted to bid farewell to David and Linda before they left. Dylan waved them on and told them he wanted to be alone to say goodbye to his home. As he watched his son and daughter skip down the sidewalk, Dylan remembered a promise he had made to Brad the night before. He had promised his son that he could take the rope swing, and if their destination had no trees for hanging it, they would plant one, so he grabbed a potted walnut sapling that he and his son had already grown from a nut that Ruth had given them. He decided the little tree should go along, too, so Dylan could keep his promise. He found a place in the truck for the little walnut sapling.

  Dylan walked back into his home for one last look. Alone in the house, he heard his footsteps echo as he walked across the hardwood floor. Although the house looked empty, it was full of memories, some good and some bad. Dylan tried to remember a few of the good ones. Draped over the couch he found an old softball sweatshirt with his name printed on the back, and he picked it up. A good memory came back and he smiled as he slid the shirt over his head. It was still comfortable. On the countertop, he found a can of tuna fish and remembered that he had not yet eaten that morning. He picked it up and looked out the open patio door. A fly buzzed inside, and he remembered when it would have infuriated him to let even such a tiny insect in his home. The fly buzzed by his head, circled him, and landed on the countertop. He almost swatted the fly with his hand, but thought about how it really did not matter anymore if a dirty fly got inside the house. Instead, he pardoned the insect, and it disappeared down the hallway. He was leaving; the fly could have it all.

  On the patio, Dylan removed the pull-top lid from the can of tuna fish and tossed the lid into the backyard. The strong odor of the fish permeated the air. With dirty fingers, he pinched small bits of fish from the can. He held it far from his nose to help him tolerate its pungent smell. At the far edge of Dylan’s backyard, a black cat with white paws darted from under a large boxwood bush. The bush was at the end of a hedgerow on Jim’s property line and near the old walnut tree in Dylan’s backyard. He saw the feline come toward him and realized that it was his family’s cat, Socks. He was amazed that the feral cat had survived the winter. The cat touched his nose to the discarded lid of tuna. Socks licked it with his rough pink tongue, and then meowed at him. Dylan snapped his fingers, clicked his tongue, and gave the cat an encouraging whistle to come forward. The cat, minding its feral ways, sat on his haunches and licked his whiskers while he watched Dylan eat. Dylan, impressed by the cat’s feat of survival, gave in to his old family pet. Dylan tipped the can of tuna over the far edge of the concrete patio and knocked the remaining tuna out of the can. As Dylan stepped back from his offering, the cat pranced forward and quickly ate the small pile of fish. After the cat devoured his meal, he licked the concrete and then pawed at the empty can. Socks soon realized that there was nothing left and sprinted back under the boxwood bush by the walnut tree, disappearing into it.

  Dylan watched the cat vanish under the bush, then noticed the rope swing he had hung on a low branch of the walnut tree. He went to the tree to get it. As he pulled down on the ropes, he observed the knots that he had tied around the sturdy branch. To preserve the length of rope, he would have to climb the tree and untie the swing. As he grabbed a branch to pull himself up into the tree, he heard leaves rustling behind the bush. He thought the cat was watching him, and he hoped his children would get a chance to see the cat before they left. Once in the tree, he untied the rope’s knots and the swing fell to the ground. Dylan slipped back down the tree. Picking up the swing, he wound the rope around the seat and tucked it under his left arm. He heard the rustling noise again. He started to turn around to coax the cat from its lair, but a golden sparkle at the base of the tree caught his attention. He took a step forward, turning his back to the bush, and saw Mary’s crucifix necklace twinkling in the sunlight.

  Surprised at what he had just found, Dylan dropped the swing and bent to pick up the necklace. He carefully held the gold chain, swung it like a pendulum over his palm, and watched it sparkle in the daylight. Puzzled at how it got there, he forgot about the swing and went to Joel’s house to find Mary and give the necklace back to her.

  A small crowd of well-wishers had formed in Joel’s garage. Dylan crept up to the group slowly and quietly so as not to attract attention. He was ready to go, not fond of long goodbyes, and did not want idle chitchat trapping him into a conversation that did not interest him. All he wanted to do now was leave. From behind, he gently tapped Mary o
n her shoulder.

  “Hey,” whispered Dylan.

  “Yes,” answered Mary. “What’s so secret?”

  “No secret. Here, I found this by the walnut tree.” He handed the necklace to her.

  Mary turned a shade of red. She was embarrassed at herself, because it had not been lost; she had thrown it in a fit of anger. She thanked him kindly, but did not explain why it had been there. She would not have had a chance to anyway, because Jim saw Dylan and came over to speak with him.

  “There’s people here who want to shake your hand before we go,” said Jim.

  “Sorry, I forgot to get the swing for my children. I left it by the tree. So I better go—”

  “Not so fast. I’ll go get it. There’s a chill in the air, so loan me your sweatshirt and I’ll do the honors.” Jim gave him a push toward the crowd and Dylan gave him his softball sweatshirt. It was gray with a number twelve on the front and Dylan Smith in white block letters on the back. It was warm more than it was fashionable. Jim put on the sweatshirt, left to get the swing, and the crowd promptly swallowed Dylan.

  Near the tree, Jim saw Dylan’s old cat dart from behind a large bush like something had spooked it. On the opposite side of the tree, the cat stopped and posed like the sphinx. Jim bent to pick up the swing, unwound the rope from the wooden seat, and tossed an end of the rope toward the cat to try to coax it to play. Concentrating on enticing the cat dulled his senses to the stealthy footsteps stalking him. In the same instant that he heard last autumn’s leaves crackle behind him, he felt the tip of a knife pierce his back and plunge into a lung. The wide blade turned, and he felt a rib break. Sharp pains radiated from the wound again as his attacker ripped the knife out of his body at an angle, widening the gash. A heavy palm pushed Jim forward. His body turned and the wound in his back collided with the rough bark as he collapsed against the walnut tree.

  Sam Deville leaned forward and snarled, “I heard you were looking for me.” As Sam leaned into what he thought was Dylan’s face and taunted him with the knife, Jim groaned with pain in between gasps for air. Sam grabbed Jim by the hair and decapitated him. He noticed blood pooling at the base of the tree, and laughed sadistically as he ran away. Jim’s head bounced inside a black trash bag, bumping against Sam’s thigh as he ran toward an old pickup truck for his getaway.