As he trudged laboriously through the snow-filled streets, Nate’s mind kept returning to the overturned bus they’d found on the highway leading into town. The sight of Hunter’s backpack in the wreckage hadn’t simply shaken his confidence his loved ones were safe, it had knocked it down and kicked shards of ice in its face.
Nate and Dakota walked for close to an hour before the peak-roofed aluminum structure finally came into view. And all at once Nate’s heart sank.
“What’s wrong?” Dakota asked, noticing the change.
“The buses are gone,” he said, his voice tight with emotion.
“Don’t worry about it. They’re probably around back.”
The girl had offered him a thin reed of hope and he decided to take it. He could see the vague shape of cars buried under mounds of snow in the parking lot. That had to mean something.
Approaching a set of glass doors, Nate spotted the flame from a single candle inside. It was late evening, which meant whoever was here might very well be asleep.
Nate switched on the light from his cell phone and pushed his way into the sports complex.
Unlocked doors and no visible security. None of this was setting his mind at ease. For a moment, they stood at the entrance, taking in the darkened space before them. Murkiness aside, it was the silence that disturbed him most. Where was the coughing, the snoring, the sound of cots creaking as folks shifted position?
The beam of light from his phone was quickly swallowed up by the enormous space. And yet the few feet of visibility it had afforded made one thing perfectly clear. The sports center was virtually empty.
Nate’s attention shifted to the solitary source of light in the distance. He and Dakota headed toward it, feeling like moths drawn to a flame. Not a moment later, he bumped his leg on an empty cot and cursed. Scanning around, he could see now vacant cots were everywhere, along with discarded blankets and possessions left behind.
Ten meters away, a lone figure came into focus, lying still in the candle’s warm glow. Fighting back waves of sadness and disappointment, Nate weaved through the sea of empty cots.
They arrived at an old man, his skin dotted with sunspots and wrinkled with age. He opened his eyes.
“Have you come to kill me?” His voice, barely a whisper, betrayed no sign of fear. Either way, he seemed like a man resigned to his fate.
“No,” Nate replied evenly. “I’m sorry to disappoint you. I’m looking for my family.”
“There were a lot of families here,” the old man said, unable or unwilling to sit up. “But not anymore.”
“What happened?” he asked.
“The radiation,” he replied. “We were told it wasn’t safe anymore. That we had to keep moving.”
“Do you know where they were sent?”
The man’s head made a slow nod. “Natural History Museum.”
“Huh? Where’s that?” Dakota asked.
Nate’s voice became low, somber. “Downtown Chicago.”
“Oh, no,” she said, before she could catch herself.
But Nate couldn’t really blame her since he had just been thinking the same thing. Any major metropolis was a dangerous place in a grid-down situation. It was hardly a secret that some cities were worse than others. He knew Chicago well, a city as renowned for its beauty as it was for its crime. He had walked its inner-city streets as a beat cop for longer than anyone should be expected to. With this in mind, Nate began to steel himself for what lay ahead. Saving his family now meant entering a veritable hornets’ nest.
Dakota turned her attention back to the old man. “Why didn’t you go with them?”
“I’m not made for a life on the run,” he explained, trying his best to smile and managing to hold it for nearly a full second. “I should never have left Byron. At least then I could have died in my own bed.”
“Is there anything we can do?” Nate asked.
A twinkle of gratitude formed in the old man’s eyes. “I fully expected to die alone in the dark. Maybe you could sit for a minute, hold my hand.”
“Sure thing,” Dakota said, settling down on the edge of the man’s cot and folding her delicate hand into his.
Chapter 41
After the old man passed, they returned to Sanchez’s place, still processing everything that had just happened. The loss of Sanchez was hard enough, but to have Nate’s family slip through his hands made it all the more difficult to bear.
The next morning, after stocking up with weapons, ammo and food, Nate found an old framed picture of his friend on the wall, a little five-by-seven job. He removed the photograph and stuffed it into his pocket.
“What’s that for?” Dakota asked.
“I’ll do something on the road to honor him,” Nate replied. “Or maybe I’ll just keep it on me. A remembrance of a friend who made the ultimate sacrifice.” The necklace of St. Christopher was also around his neck and there it would remain.
“You’re going to Chicago now, aren’t you?” she asked. “To find your family.”
Given the state of the country, it was the last place on earth any sane person should be heading. If Rockford was coming apart at the seams, he couldn’t imagine how things would be in a city of nearly three million. But sometimes you had to crawl through hell to get to heaven. And rather than say a word, he simply nodded. There was no other choice. “And you?”
“If my uncle’s still alive, I have a good idea where he might be.”
Nate nodded and zipped up his jacket. “Good. If it’s along the way, I’ll take you there.”
“It is,” Dakota said, smiling, her delicate features wavering in the soft winter light spilling in from outside. “I can’t think of anyone else I’d rather have with me.”
Nate favored her with a brief glance and a wink. He shouldered his rifle and said, “So what do you say we get going?”
BOOK 2
SYSTEM FAILURE
Chapter 1
Day 6
It was still early morning when Nate and Dakota left Sanchez’s house. They stepped out into a gale of blowing snow. Ice pellets assaulted them, stinging their cheeks like tiny heat-seeking missiles. This was no time to go traveling. Mother Nature was making that perfectly clear. But with the exclusion zone from the Byron nuclear plant creeping ever closer, staying in Rockford wasn’t an option. A classic Catch-22—hunker down and let the approaching radiation slowly cook them from the inside or leave and risk being frozen solid by the elements. Fire or ice. For a range of reasons longer than the journey that lay ahead of them, Nate and Dakota had chosen ice.
After fighting their way to Sanchez’s garage out back, the two proceeded to saddle the horse, Wayne, and prepared to head out.
Back at the farm in Byron, Dakota had rather gleefully exposed the inadequacies of Nate’s winter gear. His cotton undergarments, heavy cotton sweater and thick parka had been conspiring against him, making him sweat during the long and arduous walk to the farm. She had suggested he layer his clothes properly, so his skin could breathe. To that end, Nate had found a light nylon windbreaker in Sanchez’s front closet, along with a pair of matching nylon leggings. The former he now wore under his parka, understanding that if push came to shove and they found themselves on foot once again, he could remove the large jacket and thus keep from overheating.
“It’s too bad we can’t use that,” Dakota said, pointing longingly at Sanchez’s Harley-Davidson motorcycle.
The visual of them trying to plow through the impossibly deep snow on a motorbike brought a smile to Nate’s lips. The shame in leaving it behind was just one of many. Then something on the bike caught Nate’s attention. He went over to get a better look and found a tanned leather rifle scabbard holster. Undoing the latches, he saw how he could attach it to the horse’s saddle. That way he didn’t need to keep the H&K G36 assault rifle slung over his back as they rode.
Nate touched the St. Christopher pendant around his neck and said a quiet thank you. At this stage, anything that could make their
journey a little more comfortable and secure was more than welcome.
He turned to Dakota, who stood staring at him, strands of her dark hair poking out from beneath her red beanie. “All set?”
She glanced at the maelstrom just outside the open garage door. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”
•••
Their first stop would be her uncle Roger’s place in town. If Rockford’s now deceased drug lord Five was to be believed, he had questioned the man at some point, determined to learn the location of his secret bunker, a place apparently filled with loads of high-powered, military-grade weapons. While by all accounts Roger was intelligent, resourceful and clearly prepared, no man could dodge a bullet. The real question was whether Five had been telling the truth and, if so, what he had done to Dakota’s uncle after Roger had refused to give them what they had wanted.
Roger lived on the eastern edge of Rockford in a place called Cherry Valley. Dakota couldn’t remember the exact address, but described a quaint white bungalow on Hogan Street.
While the punishing weather was making their lives miserable―that went for Wayne as well―on another level, Nate was thankful for the stinging snow and high winds. Now that Five and many of his cronies were gone, a fresh power struggle was set to begin in this relatively small Illinois city. For a time, it would surely add to the chaos of crime and unrest already affecting the area and no doubt the country, but that was the price he’d been willing to pay. The good news, if there was any, was that criminals didn’t like the cold. When the weather was nasty, they tended to stay home. That was fine with Nate. So long as the weather stayed crappy, he was hopeful they might make it out of town before the powder keg blew.
It was close to an hour later before they arrived at Roger’s unassuming home. The structure was precisely as Dakota had described it, white and rectangular, laid out lengthwise from the road to a yard in the back. A single large bay window consumed most of the wall facing the street.
The snow and the wind had both slackened. Now the air was completely still, as though they’d stepped from a hurricane into an enormous walk-in freezer. The crack from a rifle sounded in the distance. Less than a second later, a series of shots rang out as if in reply.
“Let it begin,” Nate mumbled as Wayne brought them up the driveway.
Dakota leaned forward. “Let what begin?”
“The battle for Rockford,” he replied matter-of-factly. “You don’t just kill the local leader of a criminal gang without expecting others might rise up to take his place. I’m sorry to say, but doing the right thing, saving you from that monster, meant exposing the city to more turmoil.”
“People will die,” Dakota said in a low voice. “I feel bad.”
“Don’t,” he admonished her, his tone unconsciously dipping to match hers. “Better now than later. Better them than you.”
“I’m sorry to say that doesn’t make me feel any better.”
“Don’t waste your time on guilt,” Nate said. “What I’m trying to say is that you know how to survive. Many of these people don’t. The sad truth is most of them will be lucky to last until spring.” Sure, uttering such a thing was sobering and rather macabre, but that didn’t make it morally wrong or, more importantly, inaccurate.
Nate coaxed the horse past the front door and around the back of the house. The snow was deeper here, making it a little more challenging to get through.
“What’re you doing?” Dakota asked. In the distance came the continued rattle of gunfire.
“Probably isn’t smart to advertise our presence.” He dismounted, plopping down into a mound of powder. He then tied Wayne to the pole of a nearby clothesline.
“The fighting,” she said, still sitting on the horse, her lips slightly parted, her breath a plume of white vapor. “Sounds like it’s getting closer.”
Nate nodded as he helped her down. “All the more reason to hurry.”
They stopped before a side entrance. This uncle of hers was supposedly some hardcore prepper guy, which made him ask, “The house, is it rigged at all?” He rubbed his gloved hands together, blowing warm air between his fingers.
Dakota’s brow furrowed. “Rigged?”
“You know, booby-trapped. I don’t wanna kick this door open and have a sledgehammer swing down into my soft spots.”
She grinned for less than a full second before the expression disappeared. “I don’t think that’s going to be a problem.” Her gaze was focused on a point behind him.
He spun and noticed the door behind a flimsy screen was slightly ajar. The faint imprint of a boot next to the handle was still visible. Nate’s pulse began to rise. It appeared one of Five’s henchmen had paid Roger a visit, or at least swung by with the intention of doing so. That certainly fit with what the crooked cop had told them in the last few minutes of his life. It didn’t bode well for Dakota’s uncle. Nate was beginning to worry who they might discover inside and what state they might find them in.
He drew his pistol and pushed his way inside, moving carefully through the clutter, checking his angles. To call this place a pigsty was an insult to pigs. Seeing it made the tiny hairs along the back of his neck stand on end. He stepped over a collection of empty cans. Most of the furniture in the living room had been torn up and flipped over.
“This uncle of yours,” he whispered. “Was he a real slob?”
Dakota’s hazel eyes were wide with shock and horror as they scanned the now foreign surroundings. Nate took that as a no. Which didn’t surprise him. Far from being the nutjobs they were made out to be in the media, the preppers he’d read about were thoughtful and incredibly well organized. What was the point in preparing for the worst if your survival gear was strewn haphazardly around the house?
They moved from the kitchen into the living room and that was when Nate froze. Amidst the clutter lay a chair covered in blood. Next to it were two dead bodies. In any other season the house would have been stinking to high hell. But judging by the icicles dangling from their noses and mouths, whoever was lying there was frozen stiff―no pun intended.
Dakota let out a little cry and ran over, looking to see if either of the men on the floor was Roger. Next to the dining room chair were four broken zip ties.
“Either one of them him?”
She rose to her feet, a look of distaste plastered all over her delicate features. Dakota shook her head. She’d seen dead bodies along the way, several in fact. But it seemed somehow these particular ones had struck close to home.
“What happened here?” she wondered, glancing down, searching for answers.
Without realizing it, Nate had made the seamless transition back into private detective mode. “My guess, Five sends a couple of goons to ambush your uncle. Get the location of his bunker and that cache of weapons. Somehow they manage to get the drop on him. Tie him to his chair. Judging by the blood on the chair, at least one of them was working him over while the other tore this place apart.” Nate knelt down next to one of the bodies and pulled back the dead man’s parka. A clean line bisected his throat. “Looks like at some point your uncle found a way out of his restraints and pulled a knife or a scalpel on them. Slashed this guy’s throat.” A quick search of the other revealed he’d been shot, possibly with his own gun since his holster was empty and no weapon was in sight. “Lucky for him, they underestimated their target.”
A trail of blood led from the scuffle and into a nearby bathroom. There, more blood was on the floor, along with a number of gauze pads. In the sink was a discarded thread and needle kit.
“Someone was wounded,” Nate surmised, reading the scene. “Could have been your uncle or one of Five’s men. Either way, they patched themselves up.” He tried to be careful, not wanting to get her hopes up. Chances were good Roger was lying face down somewhere else in the house.
Several minutes later, a quick search revealed the rest of the house was empty.
Relieved, Nate circled back and found Dakota in the study. The place had been torn ap
art, except for the bookshelf, which sat largely intact. Nate shook his head in disgust. “Maybe if these guys had actually stopped to read a book, they might be less inclined to act like savages.”
Dakota ran a finger along the cold, dusty spines, searching through the titles.
“Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but we don’t have room for more stuff.”
“Here it is,” she said. Nestled between a copy of The CIA World Factbook and a book on farming was something called Cracking Codes, Ciphers and Other Secret Communications. She pulled out the title and peeled back the cover.
“I didn’t know your uncle was into cryptography.”
Going back millennia, cryptography was the art of coding and decrypting secret messages. One of the more famous examples was the substitution cipher used by Julius Caesar during his conquest of Gaul. If you were to take two alphabets and lined them up so that A coincided with B and B with C, you could encrypt a letter that would read like gibberish to any enemy who intercepted it. Anyone who knew the ‘code’ could just as easily translate the message back into English―or in Julius’ case, Latin.
“Into it? Are you kidding? He was crazy about the stuff. Thought it was the only way to keep his communications from being spied on. But that isn’t why I pulled this book.” She fanned the pages until she found the spot she was looking for―a secret compartment. Inside was a single gold coin. She stuffed it into her pocket. Nate understood as well as anyone the importance of keeping portable wealth in times like these. If they were pure enough, coins could be melted down and recast into smaller denominations. Except a single gold coin wasn’t going to get them very far. He told her so.
“You never know when a little moula will come in handy. Besides, the money’s not what I’m after.” She pulled out a length of string from the hollowed-out book. Dangling at the end of it was a silver key, winking back at him in the dim light bleeding in from outside.
America Offline | Books 1 & 2 | The Day After Darkness Page 21