Escaping Darkness- The Complete Saga

by E S Richards

  “Come on!” Blake cried out, starting to run into the middle of all the madness as the Authority recognized what was happening and started to panic and sound an alarm. “We’ve got to move now!”

  Some of the Authority had weapons strapped to their waists, fumbling with them in an attempt to arm themselves. They didn’t have to look more than twice to realize that most were not properly trained, the way they struggled to unfasten the holsters proof enough of that. Even though Blake had never served in the forces, his career had trained him for events like this. Along with Vic, plus Jackson and Cam—who almost certainly had a military background—they were on the Authority before they could even shout for help.

  “It’s okay!” Blake shouted out to the children, a large percentage of them starting to panic or trying to run away and hide. “We’re here to help you, we’re here to get you out!”

  It wasn’t Blake’s explanation that made the difference, his call lost amongst the screams and shouts that echoed through the theater from everyone else. But within them all, one voice was heard. One cry was released that silenced all the others, proving that Jackson’s faction had truly come to rescue the children.

  “Dad!”

  Jackson heard the sound so clearly it was like the word was whispered in his ear. He turned in the direction of the voice, his eyes landing on his son as the teenager pushed his way through the rubble, surging forward as he made a beeline for his father.

  “Mike!”

  The reunion was so pure and sweet between Jackson and his son, many people from the faction turned and paused to acknowledge it. Jackson wrapped his arms around his boy and held him tight, swearing to himself that he would never let him go again. His children had already lost their mother; there was no way he was going to let them lose him as well.

  “Where is your brother?” Jackson asked, holding Mike firmly by the shoulders and asking the most important question he could’ve ever thought of.

  “He’s in another theater,” Mike explained. “He isn’t here.”

  Jackson felt his world crumbling around him. Even though the attack on the Authority was for more than just his children, he had been banking on them being together. Looking around him, he saw that his men and women were managing to overpower the minimal security forces that covered the area. Team Bravo was tasked with holding back the enemy while Teams Alpha and Charlie focused on rounding up the children. Jackson knew he had to stick to the plan, otherwise things could go wrong. He knew he couldn’t run off and search for his other son; he had to follow things to the letter and do what he had set out to do.

  “Okay,” he replied. “Don’t worry about him. I’ve got teams around the area. They’ll get him out. I promise you.”

  “Okay,” Mike replied, confident in his dad’s abilities. He had just broken into the most secure facility in the city, after all. If he said his brother would be fine then Mike believed him.

  “You first, though,” Jackson stated. “Let’s get you out of here, Mike.”

  “Wait,” Mike pulled back against his father. “We need to get my friends.”

  Jackson looked at his son. There was a limit on how much time they could spend inside the Authority’s walls, their number of men only increasing the longer they spent there and the more word spread about what was happening. Mike looked at him with a steadfast resolve though and he knew his son wouldn’t turn his back on his friends. He was loyal to the core and Jackson wasn’t going to try and take that away from him.

  “Where are they?”

  “Follow me.” Mike led his father to where he knew Chase, Joel, Leo, and the others were hiding. Thankfully the group of them had already been together when the attack was launched, Chase and Joel talking to their sisters. Mike had kept fairly quiet about the fact his brother was also inside the pit—putting him in a similar situation to Chase and Joel—because he hadn’t wanted to risk being caught out and putting his younger brother in danger, though now that seemed foolish. He wished he had been more like the pair of them after all. Perhaps then he would already be reunited with Rylan.

  Jackson walked behind his son, his head swiveling from side to side as he reviewed where the rest of his faction was and how they were doing. Team Bravo had done an incredible job of rounding up the members of the Authority, pinning them against one wall and holding them there with their weapons. Everyone was under strict orders not to shoot if they could help it, but Jackson had still made sure every man and woman who was coming out with him was armed and knew how to handle themselves. If the decision had to be made between saving someone from the Authority and protecting one of his own, he didn’t even want it to be a choice.

  “Mike!” Chase exclaimed when he saw his friend finally returning, having watched the exchange from their hiding place behind the wall. “What’s going on? Who is this?”

  “This is my dad, Jackson,” Mike beamed at his friends. “He’s breaking us all out of here!”

  Chase looked at Mike and his father with a stunned expression on his face. He couldn’t believe it—everything was happening at once. Riley stood right next to him, so close he could feel her hair brushing up against his bare arm. Reuniting with her had already been surreal, just hearing her voice again had made Chase feel like he was the person he used to be, making him feel like he was capable of achieving whatever he set his mind to. And now he didn’t even have to be the one responsible for finding a way out of the pit. Out of nowhere, Mike’s dad had appeared with a rebel army, fighting back against the Authority and freeing the children of Houston.

  “What are you waiting for kids?” Jackson asked, looking at the mass of confused and nervous faces with a slight smile. “Do you want to escape or not?”

  “Hell yeah!” Chase finally reacted, grabbing his sister by the hand and giving her a massive hug. “Let’s get out of this place. Good riddance.”

  “That’s the spirit,” Jackson smiled. “Here, put these on,” he ordered as he handed the children all makeshift filtration masks. “And follow me.”

  Chase accepted the mask gratefully from Jackson, looking at Mike and raising his eyebrows, baffled by the fact his friend’s dad had somehow broken into the pit and liberated them all from the Authority. He had so many questions swimming around his mind, but he knew now was not the time to ask them. As soon as they were away from the theater district and they were safe he would ask them. Until then, he just had to focus on escaping and making sure that Riley stayed by his side.

  He did exactly that as they ran out from their hiding place, the group led by Jackson and Mike. Chase ran with Riley to the left of him, Hazel on her other side, and then Joel boxing his sister in. None of them could wrap their heads around what was happening, so they just kept moving, following Mike and his father and putting all of their trust in the older man.

  “Blake!” Jackson grabbed his friend as they ran past, drawing Blake’s attention from the group of young girls that he and Cam were trying to coax up from the ground where they cowered. “This is my son, Mike, and his friends. Get them out of here, will you?”

  “Sure,” Blake nodded. “You okay with this group, Cam?”

  The woman nodded, slowly making progress with the young girls, especially now they saw other people with the intruders. Blake focused on Chase and the others now instead, getting them to follow him to the wall where he had first entered the pit from.

  “Wait!” Mike exclaimed. “Dad? Aren’t you coming too?”

  “I’ve got to try and find Rylan, son,” Jackson explained, hating that he was leaving his boy again so soon after finding him again. That said, he knew Mike would be safe with Blake and the others. He didn’t even know if Rylan had been liberated yet and Jackson just couldn’t go back to the base without knowing. “Go with Blake. I’ll see you again soon, I promise.”

  Mike eventually nodded and turned away from his dad, forcing himself to believe that he would see him again. He trusted his father. If Jackson had been able to break into the pit once, he coul
d certainly find Rylan and get them both out of there again.

  “Okay, guys,” Blake held out his hands in front of them, interlocking his fingers so they made a nest that someone could step in to. “Get over the wall and I’ll meet you on the other side. Wait down there. Got it?”

  Chase looked around his friends, no one else replying to Blake. Mike was staring off into the distance, watching his dad run away from him. Chase could only imagine what that was like, but he knew that if Mike’s dad was a part of his group, then they could be trusted. Everyone was still too frightened to go first though, so Chase knew he had to step up. Walking toward Blake he nodded, putting his foot in his hands and forcing himself up onto the wall.

  “You’re next, Riley,” he said when he was balanced on the wall, turning back to look at his younger sister. “I’ll see you down there.”

  Riley nodded, her jaw set in a firm line as she looked at her brother. That was enough for Chase. With his sister’s face in his mind he jumped, pushing his body off of the wall and falling down into the darkness of Houston below.

  Chapter 18

  “Allie, come down. Dinner’s ready.”

  Patrick walked back into the dining room of his house, smiling at the neatly set table and hot meal, trying to make the look of happiness reach his eyes so he could fool his daughter. He could hear her pattering down the stairs and heading toward him, almost any noise the two of them made in the large, empty house echoing through the rooms. The longer they stayed there—seemingly only the two of them remaining on the whole of the island—the more Patrick struggled, the sound of his own voice almost making him wince.

  It had only taken a couple of days for Patrick to realize they were completely alone on Mercer Island. What he hadn’t yet established was why. The roads leading to the main part of the city had been destroyed, burnt and collapsed into the ocean below. There was only the one entirely gridlocked road onto Mercer Island that remained standing, the very one that Patrick and Allie had been lucky to travel over on their way back home. Though now, Patrick wasn’t sure if lucky was the right word to use. The fact he still had no idea why all the people had left or what had happened to the city scared him, and no matter how hard he dug for information, Patrick was unable to find a reason why.

  “Hey, Dad, what’s for dinner?”

  Patrick smiled at his daughter, her innocence shining through as she spoke. Allie didn’t know that Patrick was gathering food from neighboring houses every day; she didn’t know that the ground was infertile and nothing that he planted would grow. She didn’t know that their situation was getting more and more desperate every day, the meals he served her were padded out with rice or pasta.

  “Kidney beans, rice, and corn,” Patrick replied with a smile, all the ingredients ones he had poured from various cans. “Dig in.”

  “Thanks,” Allie smiled, climbing into her usual seat around the table and starting to eat. Patrick watched her for a second longer before taking the seat opposite her himself. It was normally where Harriet had sat, except seeing as there was only the two of them around the table now, he’d had to make some adjustments to the seating plan. Even though it had been a few days, he still wasn’t used to being in the house without Harriet and Tilly. The ghosts of his dead wife and daughter were everywhere, impossible to avoid and impossible to forget about.

  “Do you have to go out again tomorrow?” Allie asked her father, looking up at him from between mouthfuls of food.

  “I’m afraid so, darling,” Patrick nodded. “I need to keep gathering supplies and preparing for our future. Plus, I need to keep looking for other people. You understand why I’m doing all of this, don’t you?”

  Allie nodded. Patrick could tell his daughter just wanted things to go back to normal, them being at home not the saving grace he had hoped for. In a way it was probably making things worse. He wanted to spend all his time with his daughter. However, Patrick had to prepare for the long haul now. Plus he had to keep looking for an explanation for why everyone had left. He and Allie probably should’ve already taken the hint and left their home, but he just couldn’t bring himself to uproot his daughter’s life again so soon after they had gotten home. He wished it was safe for them there, while something in the back of his mind told him it wasn’t. There had to be a reason they were the only ones left and Patrick was determined to find it.

  “Things will get better soon, Allie,” Patrick tried to reassure her. “It won’t be like this forever.”

  “Yes it will,” Allie mumbled, her face dropping low so she stared at her bowl of food rather than looking across at her father. “Mom and Tilly are never coming back.”

  Patrick put down his fork and pushed his bowl to one side so he could rest his elbows on the table, leaning forward and closer to his daughter. She was having these moments from time to time and Patrick knew he couldn’t hold anything against her for it. Allie had lost her sister and her mother; for a young girl of her age that was an almost impossible thing to deal with. She likely didn’t even understand the emotions she was feeling, so how could anyone expect her to process them and deal with them?

  “No, darling. That much is true. But you know that just because they’re not around anymore doesn’t mean that anything from the past has changed. They both loved you very much. Neither of them wanted to leave you.”

  “They’re not going to be around in the future,” Allie pouted. “I’m never going to see them again, am I?”

  “No, you’re not,” Patrick answered honestly, struggling to explain death to his daughter. She was obviously grieving, even if she hadn’t yet cried like Patrick had expected her to. She was just quiet and reclusive. She sat in her room almost all day playing the same games that she and Tilly used to play, except now she was forced to play by herself. She didn’t shout or scream about it; she hadn’t once burst into tears or thrown a tantrum. Instead, she just asked difficult questions and sat around quietly, undoubtedly a more challenging type of grieving for Patrick to try and deal with.

  “Is there even anyone else left at all, Dad?” Allie then asked, looking up slightly and glancing at her father from beneath her eyelashes. “Where is everyone else?”

  Patrick was stunned into silence. He had thought Allie hadn’t been paying much attention to everything else that was happening; he had assumed she hadn’t realized that they were living on a deserted island. She had. She had asked the question that had been worrying Patrick every night since they had returned to Seattle. The question he still didn’t have an answer to.

  “I don’t know,” Patrick sighed. “I wish I could give you the answer to that, darling, but I just don’t have it. I’m sorry.”

  “That’s okay, Dad,” Allie whispered. “I think some questions just don’t have answers.”

  “What makes you think that, darling?”

  “Just because,” Allie shrugged. “Some things just happen, don’t they? Mom used to say that everything happened for a reason, though I can’t think of a reason for what’s happened. So I think that some things just happen. It doesn’t make them good or bad things; they’re just things that we can’t change. It doesn’t mean that we’ll always like them, either. We can’t change them and we just have to learn how to live with the things that have changed—right?”

  Patrick stared at his daughter, processing the words that she had just said to him. It was quite possibly the most she had spoken since they arrived back in Seattle, her grief making her silent and thoughtful. Clearly that thoughtfulness had been put to good use, the wise words uttered from his daughter’s mouth resonating with Patrick on an emotional level.

  “Yeah,” he nodded, “that’s right. Sometimes there isn’t a reason for everything, but no matter what, we have to keep on moving and keep rolling with the punches. We can do that together. The one thing you need to remember about all of this, Allie, is that we’re in it together.” Patrick paused and reached across the table, taking his daughter’s hand, making sure she was looking at him. “Yo
u are not going to lose me.”

  “Okay, Dad,” Allie smiled at him, nodding and giving her father’s hand a slight squeeze. Pleased that he appeared to have gotten through to her, Patrick released his daughter’s hand and the two of them went back to eating their dinner. He knew things weren’t going to be easy for the two of them over the next few days, weeks, months; he also knew he would never stop trying to make life easier for his daughter wherever that was possible. Patrick still had one of the most important women in his life by his side and he was going to make sure it stayed that way.

  Chapter 19

  Mia was raging. She couldn’t control her anger, nearly hyperventilating as she sat on the couch in Lois’s front room. It had taken both Jadon and Jesse to get her back inside, Mia sinking to her knees in the driveway and sobbing as she’d stared down the highway after Jorge. The dust outside from his departure might have settled by now, but the feelings it had stirred up inside Mia had far from subsided. She was beside herself, seething at what someone who was supposed to be her closest ally had done to her.

  “It’ll be okay,” Jadon repeated for the thousandth time since they’d all returned inside. “We’ll find another way to get to Houston.”

  Mia still hadn’t replied. She didn’t know what to say to him. She knew there was no chance they could get another vehicle up and running, even though Lois had stated she had another car parked around back. The engine would be completely shot by now. They’d been forced to stop and clean out the Mazda every one hundred miles or so over the last leg of their journey, the ash and dirt from the road clogging all the pipes and making the car difficult to drive at best. Mia knew that any vehicle that hadn’t been running or regularly looked after would be a waste of time to even look at. There was no way they were driving away from Lois’s house unless Jorge changed his mind and came back to get them.