First Light - An EMP Survival Novel (Enter Darkness Book 5)

by K. M. Fawkes

  “What does he even want with them?” moaned Anna. “What was that he said about finding them a home?”

  “He thinks he’s the only one fit to care for the next generation,” Brad said lowly. “He’s trying to keep up their spirits.”

  Once the debris within and around the tents had been cleared, and the paper towels hung on a wire between them, and water bottles handed out, Lee reached for his rifle. His hands grasped for it eagerly, as if they had been longing to hold it during the slow, monotonous process of setting up camp. Summoning the children to him, he knelt down at eye level.

  “Listen up,” he said: “I’m going away for a little while, but I’ll be coming back with fresh food in an hour or two. I don’t want you going anywhere while I’m gone. If you try to escape through these woods, you could get eaten by bears. Or you might fall and break a leg and I would never be able to find you. So unless you want to die in the snow, I suggest you don’t step foot outside of this clearing. Got it?”

  “Okay,” said the two children numbly.

  Lee rose to his full height, looking unsatisfied. “When I ask you a question, I expect to be addressed as ‘sir.’ Let’s try that again. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

  “Yes, sir,” they replied in the same dull tone of voice.

  Still shaking his head and muttering to himself about a deficit of enthusiasm, Lee left the circle of the clearing and disappeared into the woods.

  Despite his earlier promise, Brad cautioned Anna to wait for a few minutes in case Lee turned around and returned to the campsite unexpectedly. But when six, eight, ten minutes had passed and he hadn’t returned, Brad rose and motioned for Anna to follow.

  Pausing at the perimeter of the clearing, Brad turned to her and said, “I need you to go and take care of the kids. I’ll meet you back here.”

  Anna suppressed a cry; she had clearly been expecting them to do this together. “But where are you going?”

  Brad hugged his rifle tight to his side. “I’ve still got some family business I need to take care of. I’ll come back when I’m done, I promise.” He didn’t have any idea whether he was really going to return from this tête-à-tête in the woods, but showing false bravado was another skill his father had taught him.

  Looking encouraged, Anna placed her arms around his neck and hugged him tearfully. “Be seeing you,” she said.

  Brad couldn’t quite bring himself to reply in kind.

  Chapter 17

  Waving her arms and signaling for silence, Anna entered the clearing and approached the two children. Silent and incredulous, they ran forward to greet her, Sammy burying his runny nose in the immensity of her jacket, Anna bringing her arms around him and Martha as silent sobs wracked her frail body. Brad looked on from a distance, waiting just long enough to watch the reunion before skirting the perimeter of the clearing and following his father’s footsteps into the dense woods.

  By now it was almost noon and a pale sun shone as behind a veil from behind a gray layer of clouds. Brad had eaten nothing since dinner the night before and, though his stomach had growled throughout the morning’s trek, he now forgot his hunger in his haste and resolve to find his father.

  He no longer felt fear. Lee might have been hiding behind the next pine; he could have shot at him from any direction; Brad welcomed the encounter, the way an athlete welcomes a competition for which he’s been preparing his entire life.

  At about three hundred paces the trail made a sharp turn to the right. Rounding the bend on swift and silent feet, Brad’s heart gave a jolt of excitement. His father was walking at a leisurely pace less than fifty yards ahead of him wearing a gray cap and a white-and-gray camo vest that leant him a faux-military bearing. He was standing directly in Brad’s line of sight and his back was turned; if Brad wanted, he could lift his rifle now and fire a single shot and be done with it. Not exactly sporting, but at least it would be quick.

  His half-second of hesitation proved costly, however, for just then Lee paused with an attentive air, as if listening for the rustle of a grouse or partridge in the scrub nearby. Then, wheeling sharply around in a 180-degree turn, he raised his rifle with a knowing smile that seemed to suggest a certain pride and delight in being hunted. As Brad took aim and fired a single shot that echoed through the woods, he wondered just how long Lee had known he was trailing him.

  “You’re getting better, Bradley,” Lee yelled, “but your aim needs improvement. Watch!” And he fired his rifle, the bullet lodging in a bare cedar just inches from Brad’s skull.

  “You’re lucky I was aiming for the tree,” he said, “otherwise we wouldn’t still be having this conversation. What else have you got?”

  Brad retaliated in bullets, and for several minutes—during which he thought he could sense the fear and despair of Anna and the two children as they crouched, waiting, back in the clearing—the two men unloaded their ammunition on each other.

  Lee was no longer aiming for the trees, now. Bullets landed on the ground near Brad’s feet and whistled through his hair, sending blackbirds and kestrels that had been roosting invisibly in the trees above them scrambling for safer locations. Brad was an excellent shot, no matter what Lee said, and would likely have killed his target already if Lee wasn’t so skilled at evasion. With mounting frustration Brad fired the last of his bullets; it soared through the top of Lee’s cap and came out the other side, leaving a prominent hole at the entry point.

  Smartly, Lee had resisted expending all his remaining ammunition and waited for Brad to exhaust his supply. Not wanting his father to know that his gun was now empty, he mimicked reloading; but he could only do this for so long before Lee got wise to the deception.

  “Out, are you?” he called after him in the same radiant, gloating tone as before. “You disappoint me, son. All those summers spent training you in the woods and you can’t even kill a single old man.”

  “That makes two of us, then,” Brad pointed out. “You still haven’t managed to kill me, despite all your proud talk.”

  “You were never a very patient kid, were you?” Shaking his head, Lee strode boldly forward until they stood just a few feet away from each other. He seemed to be gambling that Brad wasn’t carrying any concealed weapons. “I hope you don’t mind giving me this,” he said, grabbing the rifle and taking it into his arms. “I don’t suppose you’ll be needing it again; not today, at least.”

  “What do you want?” asked Brad, annoyed and feeling like Lee was just toying with him now before he killed him. If he wanted to do it, there was no way to stop him. Lee had all the weapons and he had none. If he had brought his axe, he might have a chance of surviving the next few minutes. Instead, he would have to rely on his brain.

  “I want to know why you’re following me,” said Lee, pulling open the chamber to verify that the rifle was indeed empty. “I was hoping maybe this was just a friendly visit, but the bullet in my hat suggests otherwise.”

  “I came here to get our kids back.” Brad paused, his attention seized by a loud rustling and snapping in the scrub to his left. A bird or squirrel, most likely. “What was your plan, exactly? You’re almost sixty years old and you’re out here abducting other people’s kids. Where were you taking them? How did you expect to feed them?”

  “I can take care of them better than you can,” said Lee. That maniacal look that Brad detested had returned to his eyes. “I would have fed them; I would have found them a home. I’ve been telling you for years that the world to come is going to be led by hunters and survivors. You don’t have any right to take them from me. You’re sending them to their deaths!”

  “They don’t belong to you,” replied Brad, “or had you forgotten that?”

  “You don’t even know where that girl is from,” said Lee, presumably referring to Martha. His breath was rank in Brad’s nostrils, smelling of onions and dried salami. “You don’t know who her parents are.”

  “Are you seriously lecturing me about the evils of kidnapping c
hildren? We found her; we saved her. She would have died otherwise.”

  “And she’ll die if you take her back! You don’t have the skills to survive in this world without my assistance. By winter’s end you’ll be frozen to death in some abandoned home, turkey vultures gnawing at your eyeballs.”

  Again Brad heard a rustling at a distance of about twenty paces. Ignoring his father’s insane ranting, he scanned the area but saw nothing to raise his suspicions with the exception of a white-breasted nuthatch that almost blended in to the surrounding snow.

  “Were you traveling with someone?” Brad asked.

  “No, it’s just me and the kids. I don’t trust anyone that much, and neither should you. If you join me, we can eliminate the weak links who threaten our survival. We can live out our natural lifespans, as God intended!”

  “You’re a lunatic,” said Brad with an unsettled feeling, “and someone is going to shoot you between the eyes. I’m just sorry it couldn’t be me.”

  “It doesn’t have to end this way,” said Lee, brandishing the rifle, “not if we decide to work together. I haven’t given up on you, Bradley; in spite of everything, I still think you have the potential to be a decent hunter and marksman and provider.”

  “And how are you planning to employ my skills, exactly?”

  “We can form our own community.” The tone in Lee’s voice suggested that he had been thinking this over for some time. “When the Lord God wanted to destroy the human race, he sent a flood of waters to cover the earth. But he had compassion on Noah and his family and spared them. He started over with just eight people, and what he’s done before I believe he can do again. The four of us—you, me, Sammy, Martha—we’ll build our own ark and shelter there while we await the decay of this dying world.”

  Brad fought back a feeling of nausea. He had an uncomfortable feeling that Lee had lured him into the woods so that he could make this proposition. Maybe he hadn’t been planning to kill him after all; maybe he wanted them to repopulate the earth together.

  “That’s insane,” Brad said with contempt. “We’re not the new Adam and Eve. We’re not Noah. There are decent people left in this world if you’d only trust them.”

  “I’m not trusting anyone except my next of kin,” Lee replied. “What does the Scripture say? ‘Place no trust in a friend; put no confidence in a companion; guard the door of your mouth from her who lies in your bosom.’”

  “I don’t know what any of that means, Lee, but I can guarantee you it wasn’t written about us. There’s an entire community of scientists and librarians living peacefully just a few miles away. The only reason I didn’t freeze to death in the woods is because of their generosity. Look, I know how crazy this is going to sound, but they’ve even managed to bring back electricity! Their community has lights and running water, and no one goes hungry.”

  Brad had hoped this might encourage his father to come with them, but Lee recoiled in horror at the mention of electricity.

  “Just what kind of group is this?” he asked, tightening his grip on the rifle. “Haven’t you learned anything? The world we’re living in now is God’s just retribution for defying his laws—for creating a world powered by coal and oil and fossil fuels. We were never supposed to have that much power over nature. The past two, three hundred years we’ve been flying too close to the sun, and if you want to go back to that world, you’re a heretic, an apostate.”

  Brad sighed in exasperation. Many people had parents who became distrustful of new technologies as they grew older; few of them had parents who thought the entire industrial era had been a mistake.

  “It’s not like that, honestly,” he said. “If you come with me back to our base I think you’ll be delighted by how well they take care each of other.”

  “Heretics, all of them!” Lee barked. He had the look of someone who was afraid of being hauled away against his will. “Anyone who tries to restore power is complicit in the destruction of the natural world, and is destined for a fiery damnation. If you join them, you’re headed for the same fate!”

  Shaking his head in despair, Lee raised his gun. “I didn’t want it to end like this,” he said softly, aiming the gun straight for Brad’s heart. “But you give me no choice. Sometimes it’s necessary to kill a man before he damns his own soul.”

  “Dad—”

  “Goodbye, son. See you in the next life.”

  Brad fell to his knees in the dirty snow. He shut his eyes and braced for the bullet’s impact, wondering how long it would take him to die and if he would still be sensible during the process. In his final moments his thoughts drifted toward Anna and Sammy and Martha who knelt waiting for him, who didn’t yet know that he wouldn’t be coming back. He hoped Lee made good on his promise to take care of them, as he had proven unable to.

  All these thoughts passed through his head in the space of about three seconds. When he opened his eyes again, he was surprised to find that Lee had stepped away, ears pricked with that same intent look he had seen on his face ten minutes before.

  Then—it happened so suddenly that at first Brad thought he must be hallucinating—Anna emerged silently from the bushes, hair lank and stringy, a dead-eyed look of unflappable resolve on her face as she charged full pelt at Lee. Her eyes on the rifle in his hands, she let out a primal, guttural scream.

  Perhaps unnerved by her unhinged appearance, perhaps wondering how a woman he had shot and left for dead four days before had emerged from the woods like a spirit of vengeance, Lee hesitated just long enough for Anna to launch herself at him, punching, kicking, screaming, a shot ringing out as the rifle was discharged in the scuffle.

  Aware that Lee would soon rally and regain control of the weapon, Brad hurled himself between them, seizing the rifle and instinctively stepping in front of Anna.

  Lee let out an almost gleeful laugh.

  “I see you’ve picked your side, kid. But are you man enough to shoot your old dad? That’s the real question here.”

  “You’d love for me to kill you, wouldn’t you?” Brad cried, aiming the gun into the snow. “Because it would prove that I had grown up to be just like you. Not today, though.”

  He pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. The rifle had already been emptied.

  Of course. Brad remembered Lee once telling him, as a boy, that every man became a saint the second you pointed a gun to his head. He had been testing him to see how he reacted when faced with the prospect of imminent death. Rage burned in Brad’s breast as he realized how skillfully he had been manipulated.

  “Did you really think I would give up a weapon that easily?” asked Lee. Kneeling and reaching into the leg of his cargo pants, he produced a small black pistol—the one he kept in a holster around his ankle. The one Anna didn’t know about.

  Lee he aimed first at Brad and then at Anna, a look of malevolent triumph on his face. “Your little girlfriend forgot the first lesson of ballistics training: always carry a spare. And really, Bradley, I thought you would have known better, but you failed.”

  “What’s he talking about, Brad?” Anna asked tightly.

  “I was testing him.” Lee’s tongue was sticking out oddly, which made him look even more deranged. He seemed to relish the power that holding a gun when the two of them were weaponless gave him. “And he failed the test.”

  “How?”

  “By saving you,” said Lee. The tone of his voice was disappointed, almost heartbroken. “Compassion is for the weak; I’ve been telling him that for years. What he should have done is to kill you when he saw you were bleeding out. Put you out of your misery, the way I would kill a horse or a dog, as an act of mercy. But of course he couldn’t do that. He had to play the hero.”

  “The community saved her,” Brad said again. “The community that you refuse to be a part of. And they taught me something that it’s taken most of my life to figure out: that there’s no point in physical survival if we lose our humanity, which you clearly have.”

  Face taut with rag
e, Lee’s grip on the gun tightened. Before he could act, however, a second figure, hulking and gargantuan, emerged from the trees and descended on him with a speed and fury that rendered self-defense hopeless.

  Brad’s eyes remained fixed on the beast even as he and Anna scrambled for safety. It was the bear they had encountered a few days earlier, still nursing the injury to its jaw that seemed to have left it in a state of permanent rage.

  As Anna hid her face and Brad looked on in horror, the bear took a single swipe at Lee with her right paw that sent the entire lower half of his face, below his upper lip, flying away into the scrub.

  Lee blinked back surprise; Brad couldn’t be sure, but it looked like even after this act of bloodletting his father was still alive and conscious. But even a man as practiced at survival as Lee couldn’t have survived the second blow, which dented his cranium, exposing jagged shards of white bone and gray matter.

  With a bellicose roar of triumph, the bear shoved the dead man to the ground and began ravenously gnawing at what remained of his face. Brad, too preoccupied with his own and Anna’s survival to absorb the fact that his father was now dead, crept a few paces forward into the crimson snow and grabbed the tiny pistol.

  Just as his hand brushed the cold metal, however, the bear paused and turned around. Inquisitively sniffing the air, its eyes soon fell on the young man who lay crouched in the snow with gun in hand. Having seen his father easily dispatched, Brad had acquired a healthy respect for the power and swiftness of the bear’s front paws. If he allowed the beast to get too close, he could be dead in less than a second.

  Badly shaking from the cold and the wind, Brad’s hands worked clumsily and unsteadily to lift the gun. He wasn’t even sure he was aiming properly as he fired a single bullet in the bear’s direction just as it bore down on him. He fired a second shot and then another, thinking it would be grimly ironic if he and Lee died on the same day, and wondering if their souls would go to the same place.