Into The Darkness
Page 29
“Hold it. You got this all wrong. We’ve all had to make sacrifices, big sacrifices.”
“Sacrifices!” exclaimed Dylan. “What sacrifices have you made? All things considered you look like you’re doing well, maybe too well.”
The door to the garage was past the staircase, but just before the kitchen. Dylan walked that direction and Becky stiffened, thinking he was coming at her. Dylan stopped at the garage entry and opened the door. He turned the flashlight on and shined it into the garage. It looked like items from the various houses Michael had been constantly visiting in the aftermath, including Dylan’s.
“Aren’t you going to say anything?” asked Dylan.
“About what?”
“After the grid collapsed, you ran from house to house acting like a savior, but you were really seeing what you could take from people. Like I said, you’re a liar. A fake and a liar and a thief, and both of you disgust me!” He slammed the door to the garage, and a picture from one of their tropical vacations fell off the wall next to it. The glass shattered on the floor.
“You need to go!” Michael said angrily.
Dylan walked into the kitchen and Becky stayed on the opposite side of the kitchen island. Her body tensed as Dylan got closer. She moved over to a small kitchen drawer and reached inside, out of Dylan’s view. He opened the door to their walk-in pantry, stepped into it, and shined the flashlight around inspecting all that was inside. There was a cornucopia of food stacked tall and deep, and Dylan recognized a box of cereal, not yet opened, that his son had colored on with crayon before Dylan had left for Montana. At the thought of his children starving next to all of this food, his temper began to flare again. He noticed his hands shaking from the anger as he left the pantry and walked back into the kitchen.
Becky was staring at him now. He noticed that she had something gripped tightly in her hands, and was trembling with fear or anger. Dylan could not discern at first what the object was, but quickly realized that she was now pointing a small pistol at him.
“You can’t do it,” said Dylan, stoically.
“Squeeze the trigger, Becky,” urged Michael, still in the living room.
Dylan took a step toward Becky and she flinched. “Don’t come any closer, or I’ll kill you,” she said, with a trembling voice.
“Oh, no, you won’t. You can’t do it. You didn’t have the guts to kill my children. Both of you just left them hidden in a room, starving, and out of your sight.”
Dylan took another step toward Becky and she raised the pistol.
“Pull the trigger, nice and easy. Listen to me,” said Michael.
Dylan looked directly into her eyes and said, “You can’t do it because you’re weak and a fake. Everything about you is fake.” Slowly moving forward, he pointed the beam of light at her trembling hands as they gripped the pistol. “Fake fingernails.” Still moving forward he moved the beam of light to her chest. “Those are fake, too.” He quickly flicked his wrist so the beam of light went into her eyes. Instinctively, she squinted from the brightness and turned her head away. Dylan lunged forward and violently crossed her temple with the metal flashlight. She dropped the pistol on the top of the kitchen island as she fell to the floor. Becky curled into a ball and moaned in pain. Blood was dripping from her temple. Dylan reached for the pistol and noticed that he had knocked out a contact lens from one of her eyes. He picked it up and held it near the candlelight. The contact was colored blue. Her eye color was as fake as everything else about her.
Michael gave Dylan a glare filled with hatred and said, “You think you’re so virtuous. Where have you been? You abandoned your children.”
“Where have I been? You have no idea what I have come through to get here and what I’ve done to make that happen. You’re just a little bump in the road compared to what I’ve been through.”
Dylan put the pistol in his pocket and set the flashlight on the kitchen island, turning it off to save the precious batteries. He pushed Becky flat to the floor with his boot, and dragged her into the living room, dropping her next to Michael. He spun the rifle from his back and placed the stock firmly into his shoulder.
“Are you going to kill us? You don’t have to. We can work something out.” Michael begged.
“Neither of you is worth a bullet,” Dylan said, coldly.
“There’s lots of food in this house. We can split it,” said Michael, in the tone of a man pleading for his life.
“I’m not splitting anything with you, because you don’t have anything now. Understand?”
“I don’t understand,” Michael whined, staring at the rifle.
Dylan opened the front door wide and stepped back to make room for them to walk through the open doorway. He pointed outside with the rifle.
“Through this door is exactly what you gave my children: nothing. Go, and don’t come back. If I see you around here again, I’ll kill you.”
Michael dropped to his knees and waddled toward Dylan, begging for mercy. “We have no place to go. We’ll starve to death. You can’t do this!”
“Yes, I can!” Dylan drove his knee into Michael’s perfectly veneered teeth, knocking him to the ground. When Michael sat up, he felt his mouth and the gap where a tooth used to be. Dylan pushed him out the door with his boot, then Becky crawled out and sat next to her husband on the front porch. They held each other, whimpering loudly.
Dylan put the end of the barrel at the back of Michael’s skull. “You better leave now before I change my mind.”
The couple ran away, not looking back. Dylan watched them disappear into the darkness, toward the stream that fed the nearby lake. He went back into the house to retrieve the flashlight and some candles from the kitchen. He opened the pantry and the garage entry door one more time to look at the pile of food, just before he ran back home to his children. He hurried home as fast as he could and pushed his front door open. Kevin, Mary, and Jim were there. Mary had made some cold oatmeal for the children, and he could see their weakness in the way they chewed the food so slowly. He placed the candles on the kitchen table and lit them.
“You’re safe now,” Dylan said, as he touched their boney shoulders gently.
Brad looked up at his father. He finally smiled. His mouth was full of food. From the opposite side of the table, Dylan leaned forward to get a closer look at his children in the candlelight. Jennifer touched his wrist. Dylan turned to her and smiled. She smiled back. Then the children, so fatigued from their hunger, drifted to sleep at the table. Dylan gently picked them up and carried them to their beds, covering them with blankets to keep them warm through the night.
Dylan sat at the dining table facing the other three adults in the flickering candlelight.
“I didn’t want to say anything in front of your kids. What did you do after we left?” asked Kevin.
“That asshole won’t be coming back.”
Jim laughed and said, “I wish I could’ve seen that.”
“He took my food and starved my children.” Dylan shook his head angrily. “He got better than what he deserved.”
“That’s where all the food went?” asked Mary.
“Yes, and he had a lot more than that. He took from everyone he could.” Dylan pointed at Jim. “We can take some of that food and split it among the people who are still in the neighborhood. I don’t know who needs it, or who deserves it the most. Do you have any ideas?”
Jim nodded his head, saying, “I could use some of that food, myself.”
“We need to go move that food back here tonight,” said Dylan. “Michael is a snake in the grass, and he might come back for it. Jim, I want to do this quick, tonight. Can you come back tomorrow, too? I want to know about everything that’s happened here since I’ve been gone.”
“Sure, I’ll come back at daybreak.”
“Thanks, Jim. Now, take the wheelbarrow, and you and Kevin get started. I’ll be right behind you.”
They left, and only Dylan and Mary remained at the table.
> “Thanks for making them something to eat.”
Mary smiled and said gently, “They’re going to be okay.”
“I’m going to make sure of that. They’re all I have now.”
Dylan stood up, retrieved the flashlight from his pocket, and handed it to Mary.
“It’s going to get dark in here when the candles go out, so you should take this.”
“You won’t be afraid of the dark?” Mary asked, sarcastically.
“I’ve got nothing to fear.” Dylan held the rifle up for Mary to see.
“I prayed for bullets last night,” said Mary.
Dylan walked to the front door, stopped, turned around, and said with a somber expression, “I hope you did.”
Dylan opened the door and stepped outside.
“Hold on, Dylan. You should be happy now. It was a long journey home and we made it.”
“We made it here, but our journey isn’t over yet. It has just gotten started. Keep praying for bullets, Mary. We’re going to need them.”
He shut the door and walked into the darkness.
END OF BOOK ONE
I would like to thank everyone that has helped me bring my book to fruition and especially thank you for reading my book. I hope that you have enjoyed reading it as much as I have enjoyed writing it for you. If you enjoyed this novel, and have the opportunity, please leave a review and share what you liked about it. The sequel, Fade To Black, is being edited and will be released soon.
Doug Kelly
Table of Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Foreword
CONCLUSION
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty One
END OF BOOK ONE