Hunting Daybreak: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Romance (Shattered Sunlight Book 2)

by E A Chance

  “That’s how he was,” Dashay said, “Especially toward the end before the coup. He did a hundred acts of kindness in secret to make up for Branson’s treatment of the hostages. Many more would have died without his help.”

  Tears glistened in Riley’s eyes as she said, “I was too angry and consumed in my own troubles to notice. I’m grateful I got the chance to know him for the man he truly was.”

  “There was more to Brooks than his little kind acts,” Adrian said. “Something he didn’t want us to tell you. Brooks was a bonafide hero.”

  Coop eyed him in confusion. “Seriously? Brooks was nothing more than one of Branson’s puppets to me during our time in the compound.”

  Adrian glanced at Dashay before saying, “After you two escaped from the camp with Julia, Branson locked Angie up in his jail. The next morning, he sent his goons around the compound to announce a mandatory gathering at the firepit for noon the following day. He wanted to make an example of Angie and show us the consequences for attempting to escape.”

  “Make an example. How?” Coop asked.

  “Public execution.”

  Riley shivered. “What a monster. Branson cutting off Jepson’s finger for shooting Julia and those poor souls in that church was one thing. But execution? I didn’t think even Branson was capable of that, especially to an innocent like Angie. It’s sickening.”

  Coop took off his cap and ran his hand through his hair. “How did Angie escape that?”

  “Brooks rounded up a few guys he could trust to help overthrow Branson,” Adrian continued. “On the day of the scheduled execution, Branson had his people armed and surrounding the hostages. They brought Angie out with her hands tied behind her back and forced her to kneel near the firepit. When the crowd figured out what was happening, they went crazy and started shouting at Branson. Then, all hell broke loose.”

  Dashay shook her head at the memory. “Several of the hostages suddenly rushed out in all directions. Branson’s idiots started firing, so Nico and I hit the deck to avoid the crossfire. I was terrified out of my mind. They killed a few of the hostages, but Branson’s people were outnumbered. The hostages overpowered them and took their guns. Brooks spotted Branson sneaking off in the chaos. He captured and killed him. When Branson’s people realized the boss was dead, most of them bailed, and we never saw them again. The rest surrendered. Brooks took charge and organized the camp. You know the rest.”

  Riley’s respect for Brooks rose to new heights after hearing of his courageous actions. “It breaks my heart his sons will never know their father died a hero.”

  Dashay smiled sadly. “Brooks hated it when anyone called him a hero. He said his actions that day didn’t make up for the pain he’d caused others. He never forgave himself for Julia getting shot or for the carnage at the church.”

  “Branson was the first and last person he ever killed,” Adrian said. “He was haunted by the memory for months. That was what drove him to get as far away from the compound as he could.”

  Coop gave a low whistle. “Wish you had told us when you first ran into us at the park. It took me a while to trust Brooks considering our history. Would have been different if I’d known.”

  “He understood, but those were his wishes,” Dashay said. “He was grateful you allowed him to tag along and wanted to gain your trust without you knowing.”

  Coop blinked and swiped a tear from his cheek. “He did.”

  Riley lifted her canteen and waited for the others to join her. “To Brooks, a genuine hero. You will not be soon forgotten.”

  Riley was up early the next morning, eager to make what happened on the trestle and in Charleston a distant memory.

  “Morning,” Adrian said as he walked up, drawing her from her thoughts. She wasn’t happy to see him. Aside from his help in gathering a few edible plants and berries, he’d become a useless appendage to the group.

  Coop came up next to Riley and whispered, “I can read your thoughts.”

  She turned her back to Adrian and, lowering her voice, said, “I vote we ditch him in Huntington and let him find his own way to St. Louis.”

  Coop studied her for a moment before saying, “Is this regret I’m hearing? Weren’t you the one convincing me to let Adrian travel with us when we were in the park?”

  “Maybe. Yes. I don’t know. I didn’t want to abandon him to die in the woods. Why couldn’t it have been Adrian instead of Brooks?”

  Coop gestured for her to stop talking, but she missed the cue until it was too late.

  Adrian walked up behind her, and said, “Why don’t you say how you really feel, Riley? Guess I should be grateful you weren’t willing to leave me to die.”

  She sighed and slowly turned to face him. “I’m sorry, Adrian, that was an appalling thing to say. I didn’t mean it.”

  Adrian looked her in the eye for once. “Didn’t you? Look, I understand that I’ve given you cause to hate me, but I thought we were past that.”

  “I don’t hate you, Adrian, and this isn’t about what happened before the CME.”

  “Then what? Is it that I don’t fit in with your cool little clique? I thought you had accepted me as a member of this group.”

  Coop opened his mouth to speak, but Riley held up her hand to stop him. “I can tolerate your eccentricities, but not your arrogance and laziness. We’re all working ourselves to the bone, but you act as if you’re above menial labor like some Lord of the Manor. I get that you’re a genius physicist and not used to getting your hands dirty, but Coop and I are surgeons, and you don’t see us slacking. I’m suffering from morning sickness, but I’m still doing more than my share.”

  Dashay came up carrying a bike she’d found in the ravine. She dropped it and dusted off her hands. “What’s with the raised voices? I thought you two had settled your issues.”

  When Riley looked away, Adrian said, “Riley was just pointing out that she wishes I were dead.”

  Coop leaned closer to him. “That’s what you took from what Riley just said? Do you ever listen to anything besides the sound of your own voice?” He stopped and took a deep breath before turning to Dashay. “Riley was trying to get Adrian to understand that he needs to do his fair share like the rest of us.”

  Dashay folded her arms and glared at Adrian. “We had that exact conversation this morning.”

  He raised his hands in surrender. “You’re acting like I never lift a finger. I’ve forged for fruits and vegetables to augment our food supply, and I do most of the cooking.”

  Riley had to give him that. She didn’t like to cook and most of Adrian’s meals had been delicious, given the ingredients and tools at his disposal.

  “We do appreciate those contributions,” she said, “but that doesn’t mean you’re not expected to help in other ways, and it wouldn’t hurt to lose the negative attitude. No one in the world is thrilled that our lives have been torn apart, but we’re making the best of it. Given your role in what we’re dealing with, you’re the last person who should be complaining. The constant griping won’t improve our situation or get the work done. It only drags us down with you.”

  Adrian’s face reddened and he shifted his feet. “It’s just my way. I’ll work on it.”

  “So, a bike,” Coop said, breaking the tension. “What do you expect us to do with just one of these?”

  “I know it needs repairing and parts, but the frame is sturdy and the chain is intact. It could come in handy when one of us needs to move around in a populated area unnoticed,” Dashay said. “The horses draw too much attention and bikes don’t need food or rest.”

  Riley ran her fingers over dinged up handlebars. “Maybe we should look for more as we go. Riding would cut our travel time in half and save my poor feet.”

  Dashay pointed to a hole in the toe of her boot. “No argument from me.”

  Coop shrugged and lifted the bike into the empty cart.

  Adrian walked to the edge of the gorge and stared into the depths. “Wonder how it got ther
e. Think someone went over the side like Brooks?”

  Riley shivered at the memory of Brooks plummeting to his death that she’d been trying to suppress. Leave it to Adrian to bring out the dark side, she thought. “Let’s load the cart and get out of here.”

  Adrian caught Riley’s eye as he deliberately lifted a heavy box into the cart. She stared him down and tossed her pack in after it. Once they were packed, Adrian grabbed hold of Biscuit’s reins to get him moving. The two of them had formed an unexpected bond over the past two days. Riley recalled Adrian’s earlier doubts that Biscuit would be any help to them or survive the journey, but her trusty friend had won him over. Two misfits together, she thought.

  Dashay pulled the map out of her pack and measured a distance with her fingers. “Huntington is just under fifty miles from this spot. Think we can make that in three days?”

  Coop glanced at the map over her shoulder. “Two and a half if we hook back up with the interstate and don’t run into trouble.”

  “When have we not run into trouble?” Adrian asked.

  Riley snapped her fingers at him. “Attitude, Adrian.” He flinched and nodded. “But this time, you might be right,” she said.

  She brought up the rear, hoping that for once, they’d reach their destination without disaster dogging their every step.

  Nico grabbed the side of his bed when an explosion shook the hospital, startling him out of sleep. It was the closest one yet. The bombing had stopped for more than an hour, and he’d dared to hope the three-day pounding Charleston had endured at the hands of Kearns’ troops was over. He was disappointed to be wrong.

  A young night-shift nurse was changing his antibiotic bag. She stopped and stared at him, wide-eyed after the explosion. “That was too close. Will they bomb the hospital?”

  Nico did his best to smile and reassure her. “Not a chance. They’ve made their way into the city and were probably aiming for the capitol building.”

  “Hope you’re right. It’s hard enough being overrun with casualties. The governor should surrender and get it over with. We all know it’s inevitable.” She finished what she was doing and pressed the back of her hand to his forehead to feel his temperature. Nodding in satisfaction, she said, “Think you can move to the chair so I can change your bedding?”

  In answer, he rolled onto his side and swung his feet to the floor. She helped him stand and walk to the chair. Even though he was improving by the hour, he was still shocked at how weak he was. He was used to being fit and agile. It was hard adjusting to being helpless. He settled into the chair and closed his eyes. He’d have to regain his strength much faster to have any hope of catching up with Dashay.

  As he opened his eyes, the lights flickered, then went out. The nurse gasped in the darkness. The only light came from the fires burning in the city.

  “They probably broke a line feeding the generator,” he said. “Do you have a flashlight?”

  She pulled a penlight from her pocket. “Just this one. I need to find out what’s happening, but I’ll finish making the bed and get you back into it first.” She handed him the light. “Please hold this so I can see what I’m doing.”

  He shined the beam toward the bed and watched her tuck the sheets and straighten the blankets. “Would you mind letting me know what you find out?” he asked as she helped him back to bed.

  She nodded. “As soon as I can.” She took a bedpan off a cart in the corner and held it out to him. “Don’t get out of bed for any reason. I’d hate for you to fall and break your neck in the dark.”

  Me too, he thought as he watched her hurry out of the room. He tore off the tape keeping his IV in place and slid the needle out of his arm. To staunch the blood, he pressed the wad of tissues he’d pulled from a box on his tray to the puncture, then covered them with the tape. Without electricity, the IV wouldn’t do him any good. He’d need oral meds if power weren’t restored in a hurry.

  He closed his eyes, hoping to sleep, but the sound of the war raging outside his windows made that impossible. With no light and being stuck in bed, he had nothing else to do but stare at the dark ceiling. He would have given anything to be on his feet, treating the wounded. Instead, he lay there utterly useless.

  By the end of the first hour, he thought he’d go out of his mind with boredom and lack of information. The nurse hadn’t come back. He considered defying her orders to get up and open the blinds. His window didn’t afford him much of a view, but it was enough to see a patch of the street beyond the hospital complex.

  He lay back with a sigh and pictured Dashay sleeping in a cozy, abandoned house on the outskirts of some small town, miles west of Charleston. He estimated that if they’d stayed to the train tracks, they could have made over fifty miles since leaving. The instant his legs were strong enough, he would scrounge a few supplies and hoof it out of the city. He’d be able to move fast on his own and could catch up to them in a matter of days. If he got his hands on a horse or bike, all the better.

  After the second hour, the world grew still. Nico figured that was because they couldn’t fight a war in the dark. He took advantage of the quiet and gave sleep another try. Just as he was drifting off, he saw a flash of light through his eyelids and heard footsteps on the tile floor. He opened his eyes and squinted into a flashlight beam, unable to tell who was holding it.

  Covering his eyes with his hands, he said, “Could you please point that somewhere else? You’re blinding me.”

  The beam shifted slightly to the left of his head, and the man holding the light said, “Just making sure it was you. Is your name Nico Mendez?”

  Nico pushed himself higher in the bed and tried to focus on the face staring down at him. “I’ll answer that after you tell me who you are and why you want to know.”

  The man pulled a gun from a holster at his hip and pointed it at Nico’s face. “I suggest you answer the question, son.”

  Nico held his hands up in surrender and did his best to fake a smile. “Just trying to be careful. You can’t know who to trust these days, as you’re proving by aiming a gun at an injured man. Since you already know the answer, yes, I’m Nico Mendez. May I ask your name?”

  The man ignored him and gestured to someone waiting in the doorway. The nurse came in pushing a wheelchair. She glanced at him with a look of apology as she helped him into it. Once he was seated, she gathered his few belongings and set them in his lap. The man started for the doorway and motioned for her to follow with Nico.

  The hallways were empty as they made their way to the stairwell, and he wondered what had become of the other patients and their caregivers. Were he and the nurse the only people left in the building?

  When they reached the stairs, three men appeared out of the shadows and lifted Nico’s chair to carry it down. As the stairwell door closed behind them, he heard the nurse say, “Take care of yourself, Nico. We’ll miss you.”

  His heart pounded, and he shook uncontrollably as the men carried him down the two flights of stairs. He was sure they were planning to take him to some deserted field and kill him, although he couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to do that or how they even knew who he was. On the ground floor, one of the men pushed him toward the entrance while two others ran ahead to pry open the sliding doors. The man holding the gun walked a few steps behind. Medical staff and patients scattered into the shadows at the sight of them.

  They wheeled him outside to a black Humvee waiting at the curb and lifted him into the back seat. The man who’d pushed his chair wrapped a blindfold over his eyes and tied it behind his head. They shouldn’t have bothered. It was too dark to see a thing out of the tinted windows, and he didn’t have the first clue where they were.

  They rode for about twenty minutes in silence, during which Nico decided maybe they weren’t going to kill him because they would have had plenty of opportunities by that point. The vehicle finally came to a stop, and someone lifted him back into the wheelchair and pushed him through what sounded like a parking garage
. Even with the blindfold, he could tell it was well lit.

  After an endless maze of twists and turns and an elevator ride, his chair came to a stop. Another person removed his blindfold. He squinted in the bright light to see a room with whitewashed concrete walls and sparse furnishings, including a hospital bed. The men who brought him there faded away to be replaced by a middle-aged nurse, a wiry, dark-complected doctor who couldn’t seem to stop fidgeting, and a tall, smartly dressed man with a pleasant but guarded face.

  The nurse helped Nico to the bed and hooked him to an IV while the others looked on without a word. The nurse took his vitals, then left as soon as her duties were completed. The doctor came forward and extended his hand. Nico shook it without taking his eyes off the doctor’s face.

  “I’m Dr. Antony Matti. We won’t hurt you, so you can relax. I’ve read through your charts. Since you’re responding so well, I’ll continue Dr. Pritchard’s prescribed course of treatment. When you’re rested, Colonel Yeager here will have a discussion with you about why you’re here, but for now, you need rest. Is there anything we can get you?”

  Let me the hell out of here, he thought, but said, “Please, tell me where I am and why I’m here?”

  “The Colonel will explain everything in the morning. We’ll leave you to sleep now. Your nurse call button is there on the side of the bed if you need anything in the night.”

  Nico glanced at the button, then watched the two men leave the room, more confused than ever.

  He slept so soundly in the silent room and comfortable bed that he was convinced the doctor had drugged him. A functioning wall clock read 12:37. Nico wasn’t sure if that meant AM or PM. He pressed his call button to have the nurse help him to the bathroom. While he waited, his stomach growled ferociously, and he realized how ravenous he was. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten.