Darker Days

by A. J. Powers

  Watching the brilliant surgeon work across the room, Clay felt a pang of guilt in his stomach. Being caught up in the moment at Shelton’s house with the masked assailant and then being recruited to help transport the wounded, Clay not only failed to keep his promise to help Vlad, but he had forgotten all about him until he was carried inside.

  The door opened and Shelton stepped inside. He stood in silence as he witnessed the destruction that had been left in the wake of the attack.

  After talking to one of the volunteers for a few minutes, he approached Clay. “Do you have a minute?” he asked discreetly.

  “Yeah, sure,” Clay responded as he released his hold of Lona.

  The house was about fifteen yards behind them before Shelton started to talk. “Clay, uhm…” the usually clear-spoken Shelton stammered over his words.

  “What’s going on, Barry?” Clay asked.

  “There are at least twenty-two unaccounted for—and as far as we can tell, almost all of them are children.”

  Clay’s eyes widened. Shelton’s words only fanned the rage growing hotter with each bloodied victim Clay picked up.

  “We’re forming search parties now,” Shelton said. “Clay, I hate to ask you, but we’re really stretched thin, and—”

  “Just let me go get a few things,” Clay interrupted.

  Shelton nodded, grateful for Clay’s willingness. “Thank you, Clay. Meet back at my house as soon as possible.”

  Clay turned around and jogged back to Vlad’s hotel. His thoughts were in complete disarray, like two radio frequencies competing to be heard, but mostly coming through as static. He slowed his jog down to a walk to try to clear his mind. He would need to be sharp if he was going to leave the town in the middle of the night.

  As he approached the hotel, he heard Vlad’s voice echo in his head.

  “Olesya.” His distressing voice made Clay feel weak. He prayed that his daughter’s name would not be Vlad’s final word.

  As Clay slowly shook off the events from the evening and prepared for the challenge still ahead, it dawned on him what Vlad was actually telling him just before he passed out. He didn’t ask Clay to look after his daughter…

  Vlad begged that Clay find her.

  Chapter 17

  It was cold, wet, and dark. Ordinarily, going out into the wild under such conditions was a recipe for a gruesome death. The extraordinary circumstances, however, cared not for the time or the weather.

  Clay and Geoff walked in silence as they searched for any signs of life. Each search party consisted of three men that would head out as far as they could manage in a pre-determined direction. There were twenty-three men in all, which meant one group would be down a man. Clay and Geoff volunteered to be the two-man team. Having worked together for years, the pair operated more like a single entity than two individuals. Apart from Dusty, throwing a third person into the mix would have only hampered their effectiveness.

  It had been hours since they left town, and it appeared they had gone the wrong direction. Between the pounding rain and the lack of light, any trail left by the abductors was long gone. Clay and Geoff merely headed out in the direction assigned to them, looking for the slightest clue that a group of people might have passed through over the past few hours.

  “Check path,” Geoff said quietly.

  Clay lifted his heavy, oversized poncho off his body and on top of both him and Geoff. Geoff pulled out a compass and clicked on a flashlight.

  “Still southeast,” Clay said. “Good.”

  Geoff killed the light and Clay pulled the poncho back onto himself—not that it was doing much good anymore.

  “So, what do you think?” Geoff asked. “Keep going?”

  Clay didn’t have any way of telling time, but he guessed it was closer to dawn than not. He had long burned through his energy reserves and was down to fumes. With the daunting trip back still ahead, Clay wanted to call it off. But with Vlad’s desperate plea for help still echoing in his mind, he forbade himself from quitting just yet.

  “Let’s push a little further.”

  Geoff walked forward, offering his nonverbal agreement; Clay trailed behind.

  About twenty minutes later, they found what they were looking for—a dim light in a window several hundred yards away. The jolt of adrenaline brought a renewed bank of energy. Clay and Geoff quickly moved closer, hoping to get a better look at the target. It was too dark to know for sure, but Clay’s gut told him they found what they were looking for.

  Clay and Geoff crouched down and formulated some strategies. With visibility piss-poor at best, their options were limited. Every plan they came up with, however, relied on the element of surprise, and Clay’s suppressed .300 blackout was going to play a crucial role. He just hoped it was sighted in properly—his mind kept thinking back to Smith missing the cat.

  They decided to wait until dawn before making their move and found cover in a patch of trees. Even though most of the leaves had already fallen to the ground, the scraggly branches would provide them with some level of concealment and slight relief from the rain.

  Clay and Geoff had already staged their ambush minutes before sunrise. It was still too dark to make out details, but the ever-so-subtle hint of light creeping over the horizon allowed them to get a better idea of the building’s layout. It was a farmhouse with a barn around fifty yards off to the side.

  They refined their plans based on that information, then moved in closer. With each minute that passed, the scene in front of them brightened. Geoff used the binoculars to do a quick scan; all quiet.

  The sun finally crested the horizon, bringing everything into much clearer view. They waited patiently for some indication that they had found who they were looking for. And within minutes, their suspicions had been confirmed.

  Geoff watched as a man holding a rifle walked out of the house and over to the barn. As he approached the barn, he shouted and another armed man walked out. They chatted for a moment and the one man had pointed back to the house he had just come from. They then went their separate ways, each going to the opposite building from which they came.

  “Looks like shift change,” Geoff said, “but if I had to guess, they’re not going to be here all that much longer.”

  “Yeah,” Clay agreed as he observed through his ACOG scope. “I think you’re right.”

  Clay and Geoff solidified their plan of attack and prepared for the assault. Clay ensured he had his subsonic ammo loaded. He only brought two mags worth, but to make the suppressor as effective as possible, he needed to use it. If all went well, he’d only burn through a couple of rounds.

  Ditching their packs behind some shrubs, Clay and Geoff followed the tree line for as long as they could. They were about a hundred yards from the barn when they ran out of woods. At that point, Geoff knelt down, pulled a few magazines out of his pouch, and placed them on the ground next to a tree for quick retrieval.

  Geoff nodded toward Clay. “Good luck.”

  “You just make sure none of those SOBs sneak up on me.”

  “You know I got your back.”

  He did.

  Staying low and moving fast, Clay quickly closed the gap between the trees and the barn. The sounds of whimpers and cries crept into existence as he reached the rotting, wooden structure. All doubt that they might be attacking an innocent family was gone.

  For the most part, Clay was no longer visible from the house. Making sure he kept it that way, he hugged the wall of the barn and move toward the back. About half way down the building, one of the wooden planks was popped out enough that he could get a glimpse inside.

  There were two guards inside; both armed with SKS rifles. His field of view was limited, but Clay saw three kids sitting on the ground, huddled together under a filthy blanket. Their bodies shivered from the frosty morning air. It sounded as if there were more hostages inside, but he couldn’t be sure.

  Clay weighed his options. At that moment, the best approach he had was to pop in fr
om the front door and take both guards out. He felt confident enough in his ability to shoot both men before they could react, especially since one of them had his rifle slung over his shoulder. The problem with that idea was that it would mean Clay would have to expose himself to the farmhouse. If one of the guards managed to get a shot off or even shout, Clay’s position would leave him vulnerable, ruining their plans to silently extract the children. They, of course, had a fallback plan, but it came with a much higher risk for collateral damage, which was unacceptable to both Clay and Geoff.

  Moving to the rear of the barn, Clay leaned around the corner and saw there was a back entrance. He had no idea what he would be walking into, but Clay immediately decided it was the most viable option.

  About halfway to the door Clay froze at the sound of boot soles walking across a concrete floor. He pressed up against the wall and crouched down just as one of the guards walked out of the door and headed straight toward a heap of rusted metal and cracking rubber that was once called a tractor. When the guard reached the old farm vehicle, he widened his stance and unzipped his pants. Clay inched past the door while the man relieved himself on the deflated tractor tire. As the man finished, Clay stood up and aimed the rifle center mast.

  “Don’t move and don’t make a sound,” Clay said with a hushed voice.

  The man raised his hands and slowly turned around, a coldblooded grin smeared across his dirty face. He looked at Clay as if he was merely a child holding a water pistol, his expression daring Clay to pull the trigger.

  Clay was left with a decision he didn’t want to make. He had no way to subdue the man, nor did he want to risk getting any closer to him. At the same time, he didn’t want to shoot a man who had, for the time being, surrendered peacefully. Fortunately, yet unfortunately, the man forced Clay’s hand.

  He took a deep breath and opened his mouth. Clay knew he was preparing to holler for his friend back inside the barn. The man’s gamble that Clay was bluffing would be the last mistake he made. The solitary popping sound from the 208 grain A-Max bullet was quiet enough that he was confident nobody back in the farm house would have heard it, but there was little chance the man inside the barn hadn’t noticed.

  “What are you doing out there, Avery?” A voice from inside yelled.

  Clay readied himself to fire.

  “Avery!” the man yelled again. “I said, what the h—”

  The man’s words were cut off by the sound of gunfire coming from the woods. Geoff had engaged the enemy, which meant there were others headed toward the barn.

  Jumping to his feet, Clay ran inside the back door and saw the other guard running toward the front of the barn. Clay stopped, took aim, and fired twice. Both shots were true and the man went down.

  The terrorized children all screamed, frantically scrambling away from Clay. “Hey!” Clay shouted as loud as he dared. “It’s okay, it’s okay, I’m from Liberty. I’m not going to hurt you, I need you to trust me.”

  Most of them were still crying, but a few of the older ones took the time to get a good look at Clay. One of the boys recognized him. Frightened, but willing to trust him, the boy nodded. “Yeah, I’ve seen him there before.” The boy’s announcement spread a temporary relief among the group that was quickly chased away as Geoff exchanged fire with the hostiles outside the barn.

  “Listen,” Clay said, directing his words to the older boy who had recognized him, “I want you guys to go out that back door and straight away from the barn until you find somewhere to hide.”

  The boy nodded and led the group out the back door. Clay stayed inside the barn until the last child cleared the door before moving up to the front of the barn. He swapped magazines to a standard-velocity cartridge, and pocketed the magazine with the subsonic ammo.

  “Here goes nothing,” he said to himself as he leaned out from the doorway to take aim.

  There were men in two of the second-floor windows, a man at the rear of the house, and a fourth hiding behind an old SUV just in front of the porch. From Clay’s vantage, the man at the rear of the house was his clearest target.

  Steadying the rifle on the barn’s doorframe, Clay looked through his 4X scope and took aim. The shooter’s focus was squarely on Geoff, leaving him oblivious to the danger about to blindside him. Clay fired. The quiet pop of the final-chambered subsonic bullet was no match for the other gunfire and went virtually unnoticed.

  After dispatching the gunman at the back of the house, Clay exited the barn through the rear. Taking a wide path, he made his way around the house and looped around to the front, positioning himself behind the man using the SUV as cover. The attacker popped up over the hood of the rusted vehicle to take a few shots at Geoff before concealing himself from Geoff’s return-fire. When the man stood up again, Clay took the shot. The bullet’s initial blast was as quiet as the subsonic loads, but the loud crack of the sound barrier being broken alerted the shooters inside the house that Geoff had backup.

  The two men inside shouted at each other as they tried to find a way out of their predicament. While they had the tactical advantage of owning the high ground, they were also at a major disadvantage of being contained inside the house.

  The standoff lasted the better part of a half hour before both men suddenly stormed out the front door. They had their guns raised, one aiming in Geoff’s direction, the other in Clay’s. The men had foolishly put themselves right in the middle of a crossfire.

  Neither stood a chance.

  After waiting a few minutes, Clay and Geoff cautiously regrouped in front of the porch.

  “Thank God for Plan Bs,” Geoff said as he approached Clay.

  “No kidding,” Clay replied as he wiped sweat from his face. “I sent the kids back behind the barn. Do you want to go track them down while I check inside?”

  “You sure you don’t need help?” Geoff asked as he looked at the open front door.

  Clay glanced over at the house before looking back at Geoff. “If anyone was still in there, I think they’d be shooting by now.”

  “That’s a fair assessment,” Geoff replied. “All right, I’ll go catch up with the kids. Meet you back that way in a few minutes?”

  Clay nodded before turning toward the porch.

  The steps groaned in protest as Clay carefully walked onto the porch and into the house. Though he was confident nobody was left inside, he still exercised due diligence. His lack of focus in the past couple of months had nearly killed him on multiple occasions; sloppy tactics and poor discipline was unacceptable. He cleared each room on the first floor as if someone waited to ambush him inside. Thankfully, it was empty.

  As he made his way to the second floor, he expected to find more of the same; nothing. But as he reached the top of the stairs, a loud thud from down the hall shattered his assumption. Clay let his rifle hang from his sling and reached for his Glock. The old, picturesque farmhouse had a long, narrow hallway leading to the bedrooms. Though the AR-15 was an SBR—the barrel just ten and a half inches—the added length of the suppressor brought the length closer to eighteen, which was not all that great in such tight spaces.

  Keeping his 9MM close to his chest, Clay inched his way down the hallway, listening for the sound again. It was quiet. He started in the bedroom at the end of the hall at the back of the house. There was a dead body clutching to an old hunting rifle—a result of Geoff’s solid aim. The amount of blood soaking into the carpet was a strong indicator that the man had died immediately and wasn’t the source of the sound.

  Directly across the hall was another bedroom. Clay stepped across the hallway and entered the room; quiet noises came from inside the closet. Stepping back and raising his pistol, Clay spoke sternly. “Come out now! Slowly,” he ordered.

  The sliding closet door shimmied open a few inches before long, slender fingers wrapped around the edge of the door, sliding it the rest of the way. A young woman stepped out; she was fifteen, maybe sixteen. Her eyes were blood shot and her cheeks streaked with tears.
She wore an oversized shirt, but no pants. She twisted her body so that her shoulder was toward Clay, a passive attempt to shield herself from the armed man in front of her. Her stare was hollow, her expression haunted.

  Clay slowly put his hand up and eased his pistol back into its holster. He didn’t recognize her. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he spoke with a soft voice. “Were you…Did you come with the others out in the barn?”

  The girl’s blank stare was unfazed by the question, but after a moment she gave a subtle nod.

  Clay picked up a blanket off the floor and walked over to her. She flinched as he swung it around her shoulders. “It’s okay,” he said. “You’re safe now.”

  The girl looked up at him, revealing a spark of life in her eyes for the first time since she stumbled out of the closet. She didn’t say anything, but Clay understood the question she wanted to ask.

  “They’re all dead,” he said with an almost satisfied tone in his voice.

  The girl looked out the bedroom door and saw the corpse in the room across the hall. Her expression remained unchanged. With her eyes still fixed on the corpse in the next room, she said, “Please take me home.” Her voice was all but gone.

  Chapter 18

  It had been two days since the attack, and there were far more questions than answers—at least for Clay. Shelton had been in and out of meetings since Clay and Geoff had returned with the kids, and there still was still no official word of what had happened and what Liberty’s response—if any—would be.

  The entire town was on edge, including the visitors. No one knew if the attack was isolated or if they should expect more bloodshed. And getting Shelton to comment on the matter had proven quite difficult. Earlier in the morning, a group of people showed up outside the town hall demanding answers. Shelton told them that the town officials were still putting the pieces together, and that the security teams had been doubled and were more than prepared to repel future attacks. His words brought relief to some but did little to bring comfort to the distraught parents whose children were still missing. They insisted the town leadership come up with a plan to bring their kids home. Shelton graciously took their misdirected anger and finger-pointing, willingly allowing himself to be their punching bag.