Fade to Grey (Book 2): Darkness Ascending

by Brian Stewart

  Several moments of chest thumping and tummy rubbing with Max followed, and then Eric re-stacked the bales into a tight fitting rectangle slightly larger than a piece of plywood.

  “Are you good with a queen sized bed, or do I need to add more hay and make it a king?”

  Michelle’s face gave the first indication of a smile since she had visited with Emily. “Queen is fine.”

  He returned her smile before opening a door that led into a small room. Formally used for tack when Walters’s daughters had kept horses, it now held shelves of clear plastic tubs filled with infrequently used items. The contents of each box were labeled in Walter’s neat script, and Eric pulled down one filled with blankets. He removed several old, military issue wool blankets, shook them out and laid them across the hay bed. A return trip thickened that layer. His third venture into the tack room brought out a final wool blanket for Max, and an oversized quilt that still smelled faintly like a horse.

  Eric stood—arms crossed—and admired his handiwork. A look of dissatisfaction showed on his face almost immediately. “Something’s missing.”

  Michelle turned her eyes toward the makeshift bed. “Us?”

  “Yeah, but something else, also.” He studied the scene momentarily before nodding his head and giving a theatrical, “a-ha.”

  Gesturing toward Michelle, he attempted a ridiculous French accent. “Ah, zis fine bed-a-room suite, she comes complete with ze lux-your-ious feather a-mattress, and . . .” Eric moved two additional hay bales to each side of the bed, “a set of Louie ze fourteenth nightstands.”

  Michelle giggled at his dramatic display before adding, “I’ll take it.”

  Their radios, flashlights, and handguns were arranged for easy access on the improvised nightstands, and a moment later they were lying side by side under the quilt. Stillness drifted down as they settled in, broken only momentarily by the faint scrabbling of a mouse somewhere beyond the tractor.

  Michelle was the first to whisper. “She’s beautiful.”

  “Who?”

  “You know who I’m talking about. Any girl that can spend twenty-four hours in a hospital bed and still look cute is the enemy to women everywhere.”

  “She has nothing on you. As a matter of fact, I told her the same thing.”

  Michelle stared at the ceiling. “I know. We talked a little more. I want to hate her, Eric . . . or at least, I want to not like her, but I can’t, especially since she saved my life.” She shifted under the quilt and rolled on her side to look at Eric. “I need to know something. For real.”

  Even in the dim light that drifted through the small windows, Eric could see a flash of green from Michelle’s eyes. “What?”

  Her hand slid underneath the quilt and unzipped his jacket. A scant moment later, her fingers had moved underneath his shirt and rested on his chest. “I don’t think you’ve ever lied to me, Eric.”

  “I haven’t . . . ever.”

  “Then don’t lie to me now. What you said back in Walter’s office . . . do you mean that for real,” her hand pressed in to his chest, “in here.”

  Surprisingly, the long anticipated butterflies in his stomach had disappeared. In their place was stillness; as if every fiber of his being, every individual molecule, was holding its breath. His hand clasped over top of hers, and he held it there as he turned to face her.

  “Michelle, for as long as I can remember, I’ve thought about this moment. About what I’d say and how I’d say it if I ever got the chance, or nerve. I had speeches planned, and fantasies about romantic dinners or sunsets on the beach.”

  “Answer my question.”

  “You’ve always been my friend . . . my only real friend. I’ve spent my life jumping from one empty relationship to another, or throwing myself into so much work that I didn’t have time to think about anything else. And yet you’ve always been there for me, and I’ve always been afraid that one day I’d wake up and you’d be gone. That our friendship would be over. And I don’t think I could take that.”

  “Answer my question, please,” she whispered.

  His other hand slid across the blankets and tangled in her hair, drawing her close as he gazed into her eyes. “I have never loved anybody else. It’s always been you.”

  Her body, held rigid under tension as she awaited his answer, uncoiled and flowed around his. Her arms encircled and squeezed tight, locking herself against him as they each breathed the air of a new realization . . . a new hope.

  Off in the distance, the muted crack of a rifle shot sounded. It was quickly followed by a radio announcement from the crow’s nest that they had taken down another ghoul.

  Underneath the quilt, Michelle wrapped herself against Eric and closed her eyes, drifting off into a deep, contented slumber. Eric’s eyes closed and he followed her down.

  Chapter 28

  Boom. Boom-boom-boom-boom. The last target shredded into confetti and Eric spun, dropped his hand to the shell caddy and pulled up four more 12 gauge rounds. Two seconds later, they had been inserted into the Benelli’s feed gate and his hand dropped to grab another quadruple reload. With fingers blurring, they soon followed into the M2’s extended magazine tube. Twisting to the left as he marched forward, the gun thundered again eight times in a row. Each explosion corresponded with a number 10 tin can blasting off an arrangement of unsplit logs destined for the woodshed. To his right, Eric could clearly hear Michelle calling out targets as she fired her AR-15. To his left and slightly behind, the rumble of Sam’s pump shotgun changed into a rapid fire series of bangs as he switched to his SIG 45.

  “Clear,” Sam yelled.

  “Reloading,” Eric and Michelle echoed each other as they fed more ammunition into their weapons. As soon as they finished, the muzzles of both Eric’s M2 and Michelle’s AR searched for new targets.

  “Clear,” Michelle shouted.

  “Clear,” Eric echoed a millisecond later.

  An audible beep sounded, and Walter called out, “Time.”

  They lowered their weapons after engaging the safeties, and the four of them gathered next to the weathered shooting bench behind Walters’s house.

  Eric removed a pair of dark green, electronic ear protectors, unplugged the microphone jack, and set them on the bench. Sam and Michelle copied.

  “Much better. I can still hear and my head isn’t rocking.”

  “The throat microphones worked pretty well also. I heard everything you said with no problem,” Michelle added.

  Sam grunted in agreement. “I like the fact that you can adjust these earmuffs to also pick up normal sounds, and you still won’t get deafened if you get into a firefight.”

  “That’s what they’re made for. By the way,” Walter replied, “your time was much better. Any issues with the guns? Failure to fire . . . Failure to eject or extract?”

  “Nope.”

  “OK, do you want to run through it again?”

  “What time is it?”

  “Almost 7:30 AM. Breakfast is at 8:00 AM.”

  Eric sighed, “We don’t have time. We’ve got to meet with Ray and convince him to stay for a few more hours.” He looked at Sam and Michelle, “I want to see Mike and Callie run the boat again, and then we’ve got to go. Speaking of time, does anybody have a watch I can borrow?”

  Chapter 29

  It was almost 9:00 AM when breakfast was finally served. Bernice had decided to distribute the food and supplies first. As each person came to the front of the makeshift line, Rebecca checked them off a list, and then wrote their name in permanent marker on the outside of each zip lock bag. Buckets were summarily filled with water, and also labeled with the owner’s name.

  The last bite of a rice, egg, and salsa mixture—mostly rice though—left Eric’s plate on the plastic spoon. A huge glob of salsa—obviously following a secret commandment issued by the laundry detergent illuminati—had totally missed the dark burgundy fabric that covered the majority of his Dr. Pepper tee-shirt. Instead, through some arcane process k
nown only to a select few mystics living in caves in the Himalayas, the chunky red and green slush had headed directly for the white lettering. Of course.

  Amy approached with her plate extended. “Want some more?”

  The hollow spot in his stomach voted ‘yes’ at the same time as he shook his head. “No, thank you.” Glancing down at the mess on his shirt, he added, “I don’t think we have enough napkins left for me to be around food.”

  She offered a tired smile, and then her face turned somber. “I meant what I said last night, so please don’t put yourself in any danger trying to find my parents.”

  He gave a slow nod. “I understand. What’s the word from down here?”

  Amy snorted as she answered, “I wouldn’t have thought it, but Diane seems to have really lit a fire under the people who are heading to the shelter. She’s got the fuel distributed, the vehicles lined up, and apparently, a direct line to Ray.”

  Eric’s questioning look prodded for more. “I don’t know,” she continued, “it just seems like they’re hitting it off pretty well. Or maybe they’re just using each other. I can’t really tell. In any event, Diane has somehow ended up with a radio. And the interesting thing,” Amy leaned closer, “is that it’s not one of ours, it’s not one of the firemen’s . . . it’s apparently a separate system. Guess who has the other one.”

  “Ray.”

  “Yep.” Her eyes dodged away for a split second. “And speaking of . . .”

  Eric turned to meet the approaching paramedic. “Mr. Ingram.”

  “Mr. Coleman.”

  The look on Ray’s face was still unreadable. “Thank you for breakfast. Are you about ready to go?”

  “Yeah, and thank you for agreeing to wait even longer then you had planned.”

  “We’ll hold out here until 1:00 PM. After that, whether we hear from you or not, we’re heading to Richland.”

  Eric glanced at his watch. Actually, it was his uncle’s watch. Walter had given him a choice between this one and a pink, plastic banded model with a fluffy cat’s face and tiny white gloves on the ends of the sweep hands. He’d gone with his uncle’s dive watch.

  “That’ll work. If we don’t know something by then, that means something has gone wrong.”

  Eric turned away from Ray and yelled for the crowd’s attention. Most of them had already been waiting, and the rest settled almost immediately.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, we’re getting ready to head to the campground. I don’t know what we’ll find there, but I promise that we’ll do our best. Please remember what we talked about this morning. First and foremost, stay inside this building. We don’t know what we may flush out from the campground, and our guards here can’t afford the time to ask for ID. Don’t put them in that position. Don’t put yourself in that position.” He let that sink in for a second.

  “Secondly, Mr. Ingram is departing for shelter Yellow at 1:00 PM. Those of you that are leaving, we wish you good luck and safety. Please remember what we said about this not being a revolving door.”

  The glass door to the parking lot opened and Michelle stepped through, tapped her watch, and tilted her head toward the outside.

  “Finally,” Eric finished, “some of you have asked if you’ll be able to follow us on the radio while we’re in Ravenwood. The answer is ‘no,’ you won’t be able to directly monitor our progress due to the lack of radios available that work with our hands free microphones. However, Dave Fischer . . . the preacher,” he added for clarity, “will have a GMRS radio down here, and Mr. Sheldon will provide whatever updates he can relay.” Eric looked around the room and tried to meet as many eyes as possible. “Wish us luck—and we’ll take as many prayers as we can get.”

  A final glance around the inside of the room brought a smile to Eric’s face. In the corner next to the divider curtain stood BB. His right hand was cocked in a classic army salute, and his left hand flashed a blatant ‘thumbs up’ good luck sign. Eric returned a quick salute and headed out the door.

  His truck was already warmed up and running, so he hopped in the driver’s seat and shut the door. Michelle sat on the passenger side rubbing her hands in front of the heater vent.

  “A bit chilly this morning.”

  “Just a bit.”

  He dropped the truck into gear and pulled across the lot, crunching the gravel under the tires momentarily before transitioning to the cement incline of the boat ramp. Walter’s Kubota tractor was down there, as well as Michelle’s Explorer. Both were running. A hard cut of the wheel took him into the mixture of gravel, river rock, and broken chunks of concrete that lined the edges of the ramp. He shifted the pickup into park, turned it off, and stepped outside. Michelle followed.

  “You’re late,” Sam commented, as he leaned against the fender of a five by ten foot utility trailer that was attached to the tow hitch of the Explorer.

  “I went back for seconds. After the rice was gone, they fired up the griddle and made a pile of French toast, bacon, sausage, and biscuits. There was so much I hardly had room for the lobster tails they cooked for dessert.”

  Sam showed his gap toothed grin. “You eat lobster? That’s like shoving a big ol’ spider into your mouth.”

  “I love lobster,” Callie chipped in as she approached with Crowbar Mike. A moment later, Walter and Scott joined their circle.

  “Ready?” Eric announced to no one in particular.

  Heads nodded, and Walter spoke first. “I believe we’re about as ready as we can be. Thompson is up in the crow’s nest as our primary shooter, and he’s got Rebecca up there with him as a spotter. Bernice, Doc, Bucky, Leonard, and Glenda are up at the house resting, but they’ll be on call if we need ‘em. Preacher Dave is up at the store. I think Amy is up there with him.”

  “She is,” Michelle offered with a flip of her hair, tucking the loose waves under her Fish and Wildlife hat.

  Walter turned around and thumped Scott between the shoulder blades. “I’ve got my personal bodyguard here, just in case the bad guys show up.”

  Scott hefted the Remington shotgun, but said nothing.

  Turning his nose towards the lake, he continued, “Both of the boats are full of gas.”

  Eric looked past the orange tractor to the surface of Ghost Echo Lake. Bobbing in the slightly choppy water was a sixteen foot, semi-V bass boat. On its stern sat a twenty-five horsepower outboard motor—currently tilted up and locked in a transport position. A thick yellow line draped from the front of the craft before snaking across the water toward the ramp. The other end of the floating rope was attached to the hard point of a twenty-two foot, metallic charcoal ski boat that nosed up in the soft mud and reeds.

  “Remember,” Eric said as he looked at Callie and Mike, “that ski boat is fast. If you run flat out across the lake, you’ll be at the campground long before we will. Take your time and stay in radio contact. When you get there, stay at least a hundred feet offshore. I’d also start the motor on the bass boat once you’re at the other side. Just let it run. We may not need it to ferry passengers, but if we do, I’d rather not have to worry about the motor not running.”

  “It’ll run,” Walter interjected.

  “I hope so. Speaking of running, I took Max for a little jog early this morning. He’s down in your office—the room with the picnic table. He’s got food and water, but he’s acting a little pissed off.”

  Walters’s eyebrows rose slightly.

  “Don’t worry, he’s not sick. He’s just tired of being cooped up all the time.” He took a moment to scan around the parking lot. “Be on your guard.” His eyes shifted toward the fire truck and rescue vehicle, both of which sat in front of the line of RVs and cars. “I’ve already told Thompson not to pull any punches.”

  “Everybody powered up and on the same frequency?” Sam asked as he clicked on his radio.

  “Freshly charged batteries all around,” Walter replied, “anything else?”

  “Not that I can think of right now.”

  �
��You’ll probably remember something once you get to the campground.”

  Michelle turned to Walter, “Don’t jinx us.”

  Another few seconds of hushed introspection settled over them, but no one spoke.

  “Alright, let’s do this.” Eric smiled as he tossed his truck keys to Walter, “Try to keep it dry.”