Darker Days (As the Ash Fell Book 2)

by AJ Powers

  “Sorry, Cowboy, but I just met ya. You seem like you’re on the level and all, but I don’t know you from Adam, and I’m not the type to just let a stranger wander around my house while I sleep. I’ll be back in the morning with your gear to send you on your way,” Smith said before handing Clay a bottle of water.

  Clay stepped inside and looked around the depressing five-by-eight cell. The stench was life threatening. Of all the stupid choices Clay had made since the ash had fallen, hunting down Smith was fast-tracking its way to the top. He turned back around to face Smith standing just outside the door. “Cozy.”

  Smith chuckled as he spun a key ring around his finger. “Sweet dreams.”

  The door latched shut, engaging the lock.

  Chapter 7

  The trek had taken longer than Clay had expected. He wasn’t sure if the house was further away than Smith had said or if his own physical state was to blame for the long day. His head still ached, and the lump Smith left from the rifle butt to his skull was tender—even more so than the day before. On top of that, his food intake was minimal at best. He had carefully rationed the food when he left Liberty, but it was simply not enough to sustain the calories he was burning each day. He was tired, wounded, underfed and sopping wet; it was a lousy time to be trudging through another swampy forest in the rain. But, at this point, Clay was too invested to stop.

  The fading light brought with it the callous shrieks in the distance. The sound always put him on edge, but it was even worse when accompanied by the howling wind tearing through the trees all around him. On more than one occasion, Clay squeezed his eyes shut, praying that he was just dreaming. Yet, as always, when he opened his eyes, the ten-yearlong nightmare continued.

  A loud snap echoed through the woods, causing Clay to drop to one knee and swing his rifle toward the sound. He watched as a deer pranced off, gracefully navigating around the various obstacles on the forest floor. Under different circumstances Clay would have pursued the beast in hopes of a nice dinner, but his priority was to find Smith’s home before night chased the sun away; not his grumbling stomach.

  Clay exited the woods with the same relief as he had the other night. Still not out of the woods yet, though, Clay thought to himself, then rolled his eyes. All puns aside, his plan to reach the house before nightfall was not looking good. He had little idea where he was—and more importantly, who was nearby—causing him to quicken his pace despite his body’s protest.

  To Clay’s much needed relief, the rain started to ease. Though he was already thoroughly soaked, the frigid rain always added an extra layer of discomfort to an already weary traveler. As he often was, Clay was surprised with how quickly darkness took over the sky. The setting sun, while a gradual process, still provided enough light to navigate his surroundings. But then, as if a candle was suddenly extinguished, the world succumbed to blackness.

  A nearby street sign confirmed that Clay had made it to Smith’s street, but the 611 adorning a nearby doorpost indicated he had a long way to go before reaching Smith’s 2409. And Clay could no longer see the house numbers. Every few minutes he ran up to a random porch and would briefly turn on his light to see the numbers. 1983. Almost there. He felt confident he would be able to stumble his way through the night and eventually end up at Smith’s place, but then he heard the murderous cries—it was time to find shelter. The screams came from no more than a hundred yards away, making the Screamers far too close for comfort—a discomfort made worse by the begging cries for mercy from the victim. There was nothing Clay could do—even if he ran as fast as he could, the poor soul would be dead before Clay could get halfway to him. Not to mention the lack of light gave the sadistic night dwellers the upper hand. He tried to block out the cries for help, but it didn’t work. Fortunately, both for Clay and the prey, the ritual was not dragged out.

  Circling back behind the nearest house, Clay found shelter in a house with an unlocked door. As he carefully checked each room on the first floor, he could still hear muffled screeches from outside, but the sounds faded as the group moved further away. Clay moved up the stairs as quietly as he could; all clear. There were four bedrooms, three of which were the same size. Clay was not happy with the arrangement. It was an older home and lacked the modern amenities he was used to seeing. There was no giant master closet—not even a master bath. The only bathroom on the floor was at the top of the stairs, equidistant from the bedrooms on either side of the steps. He picked the bathroom as his overnight accommodation, inside the tub—which thankfully still had a shower curtain hanging up—and cozied up for the night.

  Sitting on the edge of the tub, Clay unlaced his boots. Each one seemed to hold a cup or more of water that spilled onto the peeling linoleum floor as he yanked them off his feet. After pulling off his socks and hanging them from a towel rack, Clay unzipped his pack and untied the plastic bag inside. Anything that had to stay dry needed to be tied up in a plastic bag. While Clay’s backpack was water resistant, years of abuse combined with the relentless rain meant that the contents inside were equally as soaked as the outside of the bag. He reached into the plastic bag and retrieved a pair of socks that had been rolled into a ball—it was one of a half-dozen pairs. Besides food and water, there was no greater preparation for Clay than to ensure he kept his feet dry. He always had at least three extra pairs of socks on him whenever he left Northfield; he had heard far too many horror stories about “jungle rot,” a term often used by soldiers in Vietnam.

  With dry, albeit wrinkly feet, Clay got settled into the tub. Since he had acquired the necessary skill to fall asleep almost anywhere, he anticipated his slumber to come quickly. It did not. His mind was far too focused on the slaughter he heard earlier—the desperate and departing cries of an innocent soul. Thinking about it made him shudder.

  “When’s this going to end?” he said quietly to himself as he leaned his head back and let out a soft sigh. The years of traveling, gunfights, hunger, and loss had taken a devastating toll on Clay, particularly with his spirit. He recalled the words Shelton had assuredly told him a few years back, “So long as there is hope, there’s a will to carry on.” It was not that Clay disagreed with the sentiment; the problem was that Clay’s hope was fading. His family, for now, kept him motivated enough to keep pressing on when he didn’t have anything left, but as Clay found himself away from home—and his family—more and more, the despair in his heart grew darker. He wanted to cry uncle, but who would hear him? It seemed as if God had pushed the mute button a long time ago and complaining to his family would only add to their ever-growing angst. There was no other choice but to suffer in silence and just find a way to endure.

  The night dragged on; Clay didn’t sleep a wink. When the fading glow on his watch hands indicated it was approaching 4:45, Clay determined there was little point in trying to sleep. He decided to rest another thirty minutes then head out, but around five o’clock he heard footsteps downstairs followed by crude banter.

  Oh, crap!

  Clay got out of the tub as fast as he was able to without making much noise. He quickly slipped his boots on, but didn’t bother tying them; he just gave the laces a few tugs and tucked them into the boot. He pushed the door closed, stopping just short of the latch, and backed away as far as he could.

  Footsteps climbed the stairs; voices became clearer. Clay took slow, deep breaths to prevent his heart from pounding its way out of his chest. The only thing separating him from the ruffians on the other side was a rotting piece of wood feebly hanging from a few hinges. It would likely only be a matter of time before one of them popped into the bathroom, forcing Clay to fire the first shot in what would become his final fight.

  His knuckles turned white as he ferociously squeezed the AK’s pistol grip. He curled his finger around the trigger and waited to fire.

  “What?” a man’s voice yelled just outside the door.

  Clay’s finger pressed on the trigger, but did not complete the transaction. He waited. Suddenly, the footsteps
on the other side of the bathroom door moved down the stairs and more voices began chattering. He heard laughing and mocking screams followed by more laughing. Clay’s eyes widened as a horrible pit dug into his stomach. These weren’t bandits or scavengers searching a random house…

  Screamers.

  Being paralyzed with fear made figuring out his next move difficult. And after a few minutes, Clay concluded that there wasn’t one. The psychos were roaming around the house, gabbing away with each other like they were drinking at the pub. Clay was trapped. The bathroom had a small window looking out to the back yard, but it was small—too small for an adult to climb through. There was nowhere to go.

  Clay listened in horror as the group recounted their inhuman activities from the night. One man touted about a family of four he found sleeping off the highway. He spared no detail of the gruesome ordeal, and it took a lot of effort for Clay to keep his meager dinner from making an unexpected appearance all over the floor. They all talked about their “hunts” for the night, chatting casually as if talking about just another day at the office.

  Clay found that all his fear and anxiety had transformed into rage. He fantasized about brutally and viciously murdering every last soul in the house—dispatching each one mercilessly, making them cry for their mothers as their last breaths departed from their lips. He considered the satisfaction of watching their blood pool around their lifeless bodies—seeing them as the center of carnage instead of the creators of it. But killing them wouldn’t bring back those they had slaughtered throughout the night. And attacking them certainly would not end well for Clay, either.

  He started to tremble again, not because of the Screamers so much as his own thoughts. Though he had never even considered such atrocities before, he was frightened with how easily they entered his head. Clay eventually shook off the troubling thoughts. Anyone who spends enough time in this world will think that way from time to time, he convinced himself, though he still found himself disturbed by the brief episode of psychosis.

  Nearly an hour passed before the last of the voices hushed—Clay assumed the men had gone to sleep. He was now faced with a decision: sneak out while they slept or wait for nightfall and make an escape after they leave. If he waited until they left, then Clay would be outside, once again, while the Screamers looked for their next victim; that didn’t sound too appealing. But then again, attempting to sneak through a house that creaked and groaned under the weight of a mouse while a group of sadists slept next to bloodied machetes and baseball bats didn’t seem like a smart idea either.

  Time to go, Clay finally decided. He questioned his ability to stay cooped up in that bathroom for the rest of the day without losing his mind. Leaving right away felt like the better of the two choices. He press checked his rifle, ensuring it was chambered before stepping into the viper’s pit. Slowly pulling the door back, Clay tiptoed out into the hall.

  He couldn’t see much—it was still fairly dark outside, though he could see evidence that the sun was about to crest the horizon through a window in one of the bedrooms. He stayed motionless for a moment while he listened carefully for the slightest sounds. Nothing. It was completely silent save a few snores coming from around the house. Clay was terrified to walk through a dark house with sleeping Screamers scattered about. It was like being asked to walk through a minefield with a blindfold.

  Clay managed to get down three steps before the groaning lumber became an issue. He wasn’t sure if his heightened senses made the sound seem more profound than it was or if the stress Clay put on the stair actually caused a sound akin to that of a Redwood falling over. Either way, he didn’t want to push his luck.

  Clay tried to shake the banister and was pleased to find it quite sturdy, which gave him an idea. He grabbed on to the bannister with both hands and carefully hiked his leg up and then as delicately as a mother laying her newborn down into the bassinet, Clay eased his weight onto the railing, making sure it could support him. With just a slight whimper from the aging wood, Clay began to ease his grip and gravity took over from there. As if he was repelling down a cliff face, Clay controlled the speed of his descent with his hands. Slow and steady. It probably took him more than five minutes to reach the bottom, but the effort was without sound.

  Clay eased himself off the railing and onto the hardwood floor again. The snoring and breathing from the living room to his left was unsettling. The front door was inches in front of him, but having gone through the back door the night before, Clay had no idea what state the front door was in. Was it locked? Was it nailed shut? If he opened it would it just fall off the hinges? The unknown potential to wake the slumbering sociopaths was too great. And, as best as he could recall, the back door in the kitchen was not particularly noisy—it was his exit.

  After inching his way into the carpeted dining room to his right, Clay headed for the kitchen. The kitchen had a nice grouted tile that seemed to be as quiet to walk on as the day it was installed. But then, as he was just a few feet away from the door, Clay’s foot found a glass bottle on the floor. The loud clanking sound as the bottled skidded across the tile made every muscle in Clay’s body tense so tightly that his back began to spasm. As he tried to work out the painful twinge, Clay heard a grumble come from the living room.

  “I will hang and gut the next person who wakes me up!” a voice shouted with a sinister wrath from the next room over.

  Relief washed over Clay when it became apparent that the threat was verbal only and no one was coming to investigate the source of the sound. He stayed put for a few minutes to allow the Screamers to fall back to sleep and to let his nerves settle. He was so close, yet he just could not seem to get out of this house of horrors! The dull, muted sunlight crept in through the kitchen window, providing a dim light throughout the house. He could barely make him out, but Clay noticed that one of the men was sleeping in the dining room; sprawled out on the floor no more than three feet away from the path Clay had walked just minutes before. The close call was nauseating.

  It had been long enough since Clay had bumped into the bottle. Time to leave this hellhole, Clay thought as he reached for the doorknob. The tightness in his chest started to ease as he swung the door open and walked outside. He moved his gun to the left and right, looking for threats.

  Nothing.

  He quickly made his way back to the road, and as soon as he felt he had put enough distance between himself and the house, Clay tore into a full-on sprint. With his adrenaline spiked high into the stratosphere and dawn finally arriving, Clay felt as if he could keep the pace for miles. Fortunately, seconds later, he found himself hunched over, puffing for oxygen in front of 2409. His watch showed that it was a hair past six, which meant rush hour was over for the Screamers.

  Clay made his way inside Smith’s house and was discouraged with the mess he saw in front of him. Though there was no activity inside—and he triple checked just to be sure—the cluttered mess of a thoroughly searched house was not what he wanted to see, especially after what he just went through.

  His first objective was to find the envelope. After that he would do a brief scavenge of the house, but he was not feeling optimistic that his efforts would yield much. The search would have to be quick, though; Clay didn’t want to stay in the area a minute longer than necessary. He now understood why nobody had ever taken on this job before. It was well beyond going behind enemy lines; it was diving headfirst into the belly of the beast. Had Clay known what he was walking into beforehand, he wouldn’t have taken the job, either.

  At the back of the house, Clay found the master bedroom. Except for its first floor location, it was almost identical to the master bedroom in the other house: small and no bathroom. Clay walked in and located the safe off to his left next to the bed. Smith told him the envelope was in a hidden compartment beneath the floor of the safe. It didn’t take long for Clay to discover the false floor and unveil a stack of papers beneath. He pulled everything out and skimmed through the various papers. He fou
nd the only envelope—a large manila envelope with a metal prong on the back—and stuffed it into his backpack. Just to be thorough, Clay glanced at the other documents in case anything stood out. It was mostly tax forms or legal papers with FFL and LLC on them—he assumed those weren’t what Smith was after.

  After doing a quick search of the room, Clay checked the rest of the first floor without finding anything. The first bedroom he checked had been converted into an office. He snatched a few pens and a couple of legal pads that he found in one of the desk drawers, but nothing else. The next bedroom was mostly empty, just clothes—or what appeared to be clothes—and broken furniture lying around the room in a thousand pieces. Nothing worth grabbing. But, as Clay walked into the bedroom at the end of the hall, he was struck by an overwhelming grief. With his eyes locked onto the pair of toddler beds on either end of the back wall, it clicked that the furniture in the other bedroom at one point in time had been a crib.

  Clay rested his hands on his head and sighed. He was no stranger to loss. The eerie sight of the children’s beds reminded him of that crippling pain he had experienced more than a few times. It was indescribable. But now that Clay had a son—his own flesh and blood—he couldn’t comprehend what he would do if something were to happen to him. He knew that if someone ever tried to harm his son, though, that the visions of torment he had in his head earlier would pale in comparison. Somehow, Smith found a way to make it through to the other side, but Clay doubted his ability to do the same.