The Brightest Darkness

by Kate L. Mary

  The Brightest Darkness

  Book Two in the Oklahoma Wastelands Series

  Kate L. Mary

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Kate L. Mary

  About the Author

  Published by Twisted Press, LLC, an independently owned company.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious or have been used fictitiously, and are not to be construed as real in any way. Any resemblance to person, living or dead, or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 by Kate L. Mary

  Cover Art by Kate L. Mary

  Edited by Lori Whitwam

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner without the express permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  For the Spouses of the 58th Airlift Squadron at Altus AFB, who not only made my time in Altus, OK tolerable, but enjoyable as well.

  Prologue

  A YEAR AGO

  The sharp sounds of Blake and Emma’s bickering reached me before I’d made it to the common area, and I came to a stop with only five steps separating me from the room. It wasn’t enough space. Lately, even with as big as this shelter was, it never seemed like there was enough room to escape the arguing.

  “Do you have to criticize everything I do?” Blake snapped.

  “I’m sorry,” Emma shot back, her words dripping with enough sarcasm to make me cringe. “I guess I should let you walk around mispronouncing words a toddler could say.”

  “No one is around but you, so who cares if I say it wrong?”

  “I think it should be obvious.” Emma’s voice rose a few octaves. “I care.”

  I slumped against the wall and exhaled. If I went in now, one of them would try to drag me into their little tiff—Emma, most likely—and I wasn’t about to get involved, especially when she was using that tone.

  They’d always bickered, but the fighting had gotten worse over the last couple weeks, and the yelling wasn’t even the worst of it. The worst part was that they’d started trying to get the rest of us to take sides, which was making life awkward for everyone. Even Jasper, who was pretty laid back, had very little tolerance for it anymore. His amused comments about how they were starting to sound like an old married couple had stopped months ago, and now he was more likely to leave the room when they started fighting, grumbling under his breath as he did.

  Footsteps pounded up the stairs at my back, and I turned toward the sound, waiting to see who was coming. A few seconds passed before Kellan appeared, already frowning like he, too, could hear the argument. His dark hair was longer than it used to be and now had the annoying habit of falling over his forehead and covering his eyes. He was constantly pushing it back even though it never made a difference, and he was in the process of running his fingers through the dark locks when he stopped in front of me.

  “They’re going at it again?” His hair flopped across his eye.

  “You should get a haircut,” I said instead of answering his question.

  There was no need, not when Emma’s voice had reached the shrill tone Blake liked to refer to as her mom voice. It never failed to make whatever argument they were having even more heated than it had been before. Not that he seemed to care.

  As if on cue, Emma snapped, “Maybe if you didn’t act like a child I wouldn’t have to act like your mom.”

  I exhaled and leaned my head against the wall. “I need a break.”

  “We all do,” Kellan said.

  He kept walking, though, shaking his head as he made his way into the war zone, and I pushed off the wall, either resigning myself to the inevitable or gaining courage now that I had Kellan as backup. I wasn’t sure which one.

  Emma and Blake used to stop fighting when someone walked into the room, but now they didn’t even pause. They kept at it as Kellan hurried by, with me right on his heels, both of us pretending they weren’t there.

  Maybe if we didn’t make eye contact they wouldn’t engage…

  “Can you believe this, Regan?” Emma said as I passed her.

  Ducking my head lower, I took off in a sprint.

  “Coward,” Kellan hissed when I charged past him.

  I didn’t slow until I’d I reached the old computer room, which we now used for storage, allowing him to catch up.

  “This is getting ridiculous,” Kellan said when he fell in next to me.

  Emma’s and Blake’s voices hadn’t faded completely, but once we reached the control room level they’d be out of earshot—I couldn’t wait. Although, leaving the shelter altogether was the only way to escape them completely.

  Once we made it up the stairs, putting more distance between the fight and us, I turned so I was facing Kellan, walking sideways and batting my eyes as I smiled up at him.

  He cocked his head to the side, the corner of his mouth twitching with amusement. “What?”

  “Just thinking about how handsome you look.” I waved to his ratty shirt and worn jeans. “Like the dashing hero of a post-apocalyptic movie.”

  Kellan snorted, letting me know he thought I was full of shit, but his dimples deepened at the same time. “What do you want?”

  “We should take off for the day.” I stopped and grabbed his arm, hopping up and down like a kid begging for sweets. “Pleeeease.”

  “No.” Kellan pulled his arm from my grasp and kept walking. “We have work to do.”

  I rushed to keep up. “Then we’ll make it a work trip. You can take me hunting.”

  He snorted yet again, only this time there was less amusement in the sound and more annoyance. “You’re a shit shot.”

  “Only because you won’t let me go anywhere,” I grumbled and then pasted the smile back on my face. “Fishing, then. It’s nice out.”

  “It’s over a hundred degrees,” was Kellan’s flat reply.

  We had almost reached the control room when he stopped walking, and I knew I’d won. He liked to give me a hard time, but only yesterday he’d said he wanted to head out and do some fishing, and even though I wasn’t the least bit interested in catching fish, doing a little swimming sounded amazing.

  “We could jump in the water, maybe, like we did when we were kids,” I continued. “Cool off a little. It will be nice.”

  I grabbed his hand, and when his gaze moved down, focusing on our entwined fingers, a strange expression crossed his face, one I couldn’t read. It was gone in a second, though, and he jerked his hand out of mine.

  “I don’t know if there’s enough water left in the river.” Kellan shoved his hands in his pockets, his focus not on me, but on the wall at my back. “We can give it a shot, though.”

  Kellan had been right about the river. The drought had dragged on for so long that the riverbed was narrow and shallow now, the earth lining it cra
cked and dry like the lips of a person who’d been wandering the desert for days. What little water remained looked more like a mud puddle than the river I remembered from my childhood, and I wasn’t even a little interested in swimming in it.

  We’d had to park on the side of the road and hike to find an area deep enough for fish, and all the while the June sun had pounded down on us. Sweat had begun to collect under my breasts less than a minute after we started walking, and by the time we reached an area deep enough for fishing, my shirt was clinging to my skin like it was holding on for dear life.

  Kellan stopped under a tree and set the fishing equipment down. “This should be a good spot.”

  The branches above us were sparse, the leaves, withered from lack of water, providing almost no shade from the intense Oklahoma sun. Not that it would have mattered if they had, not when it was this hot. With weather apps a thing of the past, it was impossible to know what the temperature was for sure, but it had to be well into the hundreds, and when it got this hot, there was no escaping it. Shade or no shade.

  “I’m dying,” I said in a dramatic tone as I plopped down on the ground under the tree, allowing the shadows from the branches to dance across my scorched skin.

  Kellan, who was in the middle of preparing his fishing rod, looked up long enough to shoot me a grin. “This was your idea.”

  “What can I say?” I didn’t look his way, instead focusing on untying the laces on my boots. “I’m an idiot.”

  Once I’d successfully untied them, I kicked the boots away and peeled the socks from my sweaty feet, wiggling my moist toes. It did nothing to help cool me off, so I got to my feet and hiked my shirt up as far as I could without exposing my breasts, fanning it up and down in a futile attempt to get the air moving.

  Kellan, still crouched in front of his fishing equipment, stared up at me with an odd expression on his face, frozen in place like he’d forgotten what he was doing. His brown eyes, shadowed under dark hair that had once again fallen over his forehead, moved over my bare stomach, and he swallowed but said nothing. He didn’t even move.

  I stopped fanning myself. “What?”

  The way Kellan’s eyes darted down to his fishing rod reminded me of a startled jackrabbit taking off. “Nothing. Sorry.” He let out a chuckle that sounded forced then cleared his throat. “I was thinking about how different things are now compared to when we were kids.”

  “Wow. Thanks a lot, Debbie Downer.”

  Again, Kellan looked up at me, this time smiling until his dimples deepened in an adorable way, and I found my own thoughts going to the kid he’d been before the apocalypse changed everything.

  “Debbie Downer?” he asked.

  “You know, the person who always has to bring you down when you’re having fun.”

  “Were you having fun? Because from where I’m sitting, you were bitching about the heat.” Kellan dropped the fishing rod and got up, giving me a mischievous smile that reminded me a little too much of when we were kids. “If it’s fun you’re looking for, though, I can make that happen.”

  I backed away, my hands out in front of me and my shirt still hiked up, stuck to my damp stomach like someone had glued it there. “What are you doing?”

  “You said you were hot.” His smile grew as he nodded toward the river and took another step toward me. “There’s a way to fix that.”

  “Kellan,” I said, giving him a warning look that contrasted with the smile on my face. “Don’t.”

  “I thought you were hot?” He grabbed my wrist and pulled me forward, wrapping his arms around me.

  I let out a squeal. “It’s muddy!”

  “This is the apocalypse,” he said, his mouth right up against my ear. “You need to get used to being dirty.”

  My legs flailed when he lifted me, desperate for purchase but unable to find solid ground as Kellan moved toward the river, laughing just like he had when we were kids. I was cracking up, too, but also yelling at him and fighting to get away while he dragged me closer to the muddy river, his own chuckles vibrating through his body, and mine.

  “Here we go,” he said, swinging me around.

  “Kellan!”

  I grabbed onto his arms even though he wasn’t really going to throw me, and my legs swung through the air as he spun in a circle, turning around until we had our backs to the river, where he finally set me down.

  His arms were still around me, though, and he was still cracking up, but something about the moment had changed for me. Maybe it was the comforting warmth of his arms on my bare stomach, or how his muscles had flexed under my hands as I tried to hold on, or possibly even the way his soft stubble had brushed against my face. I had no clue. The only thing I was certain of, was that after twenty years of knowing Kellan, I was aware of him for the first time.

  “Jerk,” I said, pulling out of his grasp and stumbling away.

  My heart pounded in my chest, twice as hard as usual, and my blood was hot, burning through my veins and heating my skin in a way that had nothing to do with the temperature. It was all Kellan.

  He turned back to his discarded fishing rod, still laughing, while I watched him through the curtain of hair that had fallen over my face. His black hair had fallen over his forehead, nearly covering one of his eyes, and when he went to cast his fishing line, his muscles flexed. His skin was several shades darker than mine thanks to his Kiowa heritage, which he’d gotten from his father, and the dark stubble dotting his chin that only a few minutes ago had rubbed against my neck was softer than the stubble Cade and Blake sported—another attribute he’d gotten from his father.

  When had Kellan gotten so good looking, and why had I never noticed the way his eyes sparkled when he smiled, or his dimples? I’d always known he had dimples, but I’d never thought about them before now. Why?

  “You should have seen your face.”

  His focus was on his task, but he was still chuckling, and I was still staring, still thinking about how soft his brown skin had been against mine.

  The sudden fear that he might be able to tell what was going through my head hit, and heat crept up my cheeks as my face grew hotter, and I forced myself to look away before he caught me ogling his muscles.

  “You’re a jerk,” I said, but it came out halfhearted, and too shaky for him to take my words seriously—not that he ever had before.

  Kellan looked over his shoulder, shooting me a grin, and I forced my eyes to stay down, certain that if I looked at him now I wouldn’t be able to hide what I was thinking.

  “I was trying to help you cool off.”

  Cool off? If that had really been his goal, he’d failed, because I felt like I was standing on the surface of the sun.

  “Whatever,” I said.

  I turned away from him, desperate for some space, and pretended to focus on my boots even though I had no idea why I would be staring at my boots right now. I needed to focus on something else. Anything but Kellan.

  He stood and moved to the edge of the river. My head was still down, but my focus was completely on him, watching as he lifted his arm to cast, focused on his biceps and how they flexed. Thinking about his skin against mine, about his soft stubble brushing my neck…

  “Get a grip,” I mumbled under my breath.

  Something scratched against the ground to my right, and I looked up just as a hot gust of air swept over me, bringing with it the scent of death. The bushes rustled, and my pulse quickened. I opened my mouth to call out to Kellan, but the words were cut off when a zombie stumbled into view.

  I was in a crouched position when it lunged, its mouth already open and its decaying hands reaching for me, and I stumbled back, too taken by surprise to do anything other than crawl away. I only succeeded in falling, though, and when I went down, the zombie went, too, dropping on top of me in a tangle of rot and stink, growling and reaching, his mouth open and ready. Somehow through my twisting and struggles, I managed to wiggle out from under him, but I didn’t make it far before his fingers had
wrapped around my right ankle. He pulled, and I vaguely registered the sound of Kellan yelling my name, but it all seemed to be happening in slow motion, and I couldn’t do anything but watch in frozen terror as the zombie’s mouth opened and his teeth sank into my flesh.

  Blood burst from the bite, and a scream ripped its way out of my mouth. It should have hurt, and pain did pulse through me, but oddly enough it wasn’t my leg that throbbed. It was in my heart.

  The creature was still gnawing on my ankle when Kellan slammed his knife into the zombie’s skull, freeing me from its bony grasp. I scooted back, away from the dead man, my eyes focused not on the bite for some reason, but on Kellan, while my heart thumped in my ears.

  “Regan.” He took one step before his legs seemed to give out and he dropped to his knees at my side.

  I couldn’t force myself to look at the bite, but it seemed to be the only thing he could focus on, so I stared at him while he stared at my throbbing ankle, and for a few moments neither of us moved.

  It didn’t seem real. I’d thought I’d long ago accepted the reality of what it meant to live in the zombie apocalypse, what could happen if I wasn’t careful. I’d been wrong. This was something no one could prepare for, something that could never feel real. It was the end, and never in my life had such an overwhelming pain shot through me.

  A moan broke through the air, and Kellan’s head snapped up. He looked around before reaching for me, grabbing my hand and yanking me to my feet, yelling, “We have to go!”