Darker Days (As the Ash Fell Book 2)

by AJ Powers

  “Well, Clayton,” Megan said as she stood from her chair, interrupting Clay’s thoughts, “since you’re out of coffee, you’re no longer of use to me,” she said along with a warm smile—the first in several weeks. A drawn-out yawn took control of her mouth as she stretched her back. “I’m going to go try and get a quick catnap before heading back in.” She ruffled Clay’s hair as she walked by. “Love ya, Bub.”

  No sooner did Megan step out of the kitchen than the sound of muffled shouting come from outside. Clay and Megan both held their breath as they tried to determine if they were hearing things.

  More shouting. Then a gunshot.

  Megan darted back into the kitchen, grabbing her coat off the back of the chair. With a look of defeat on her face, she looked him in the eyes and said, “Be safe, Clayton.”

  ****

  By the time Clay had reached the gate, the battle was already over. He did manage to squeeze off a few shots in the direction of a retreating attacker. This time his target hit the ground and didn’t get back up. Clay struggled with his emotions, or lack thereof, after realizing his aim had been true. It was getting far too easy to cope with taking another man’s life, and it was unsettling that it seemed to comfort him.

  As the gunfire tapered off, Clay saw four dead bodies on Liberty’s side of the gate, and numerous wounded. Though the skirmish lasted just a few minutes, the length of the battle was not congruent with its ferocity. With seven confirmed dead on their side of the gate, the kill-death ratio was still in favor of Liberty, but much less so than the first battle.

  With no technological enhancements like night vision or infrared, it was expected that most of the fighting would occur during the daylight hours, so the surprise attack just after dusk had caught everyone off guard. That won’t happen again. It can’t happen again, Clay thought.

  Clay helped carry the wounded back to the infirmary. Warren had been hit in the leg while Robert took a large-bore rifle bullet to the arm.

  “I’ll just learn to shoot with my off hand,” Robert said through clenched teeth as Doctor Sowell evaluated the damage, lightening the otherwise grim mood.

  Unfortunately, Warren wasn’t as lucky. Just like the woman Clay had carried to the infirmary weeks earlier, Warren’s femoral artery was chewed up, and he was gone before he could reach the operating table. Five to seven—the ratio was falling.

  Clay watched as Megan calmly gave orders to the various volunteers. Doctor Sowell looked up from time to time with a tired smile on his face as he watched her take charge of the makeshift hospital. Her leadership allowed him to focus exclusively on the patients, which was what he was best at.

  “Melissa, bed two needs a few sutures on his head then he’s good to go,” Megan said as she handed a petite young woman a Ziploc baggie with some supplies inside. “Tim, bed five needs dressing and pain management. Take this and this.” She handed the middle-aged man some gauze and a nearly empty bottle of Ibuprofen. “Ashley, do follow-ups with beds three, seven, and fourteen. After that, assist Melissa and Tim. Jackie and I are assisting Doctor Sowell with an operation, so do not bother us unless it’s absolutely critical, understood?”

  A collective, “Yes, ma’am,” came out of their mouths as they all went separate ways. Megan zoomed by Clay on her way to join Doctor Sowell in the operating “room” to try and save Robert’s arm.

  While Clay had watched Megan work before, it was remarkable to see how she was handling every train wreck that barreled her way. She was in her element, and he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t impressed.

  The subtle moans and groans around the room were abruptly replaced with agonizing cries from outside the infirmary.

  “Someone open the door!” a booming voice shouted from outside.

  Clay ran over to the door and pushed it open. Two men carrying another shuffled toward him. Still holding the door, Clay stepped out of the way to give them space.

  “Over here!” Tim yelled, pointing to a vacant bed on the other side of the room.

  Clay’s stomach soured as the extent of the man’s injuries was revealed.

  “Dear God, how did this happen, DeMarcus?” Tim asked, trying to maintain his composure.

  “They tried to get in from the creek,” DeMarcus replied as they carefully put their friend down into the bed, which was met with more excruciating screams.

  “We had everything under control,” the other man started talking, “until one of those pricks lobbed a Molotov over the fence. It landed right inside Nolan’s foxhole, and…” he said, his lip started to tremble. “They burned him alive, man.”

  Without saying a word, Tim turned around and ran back to the OR to get help.

  “After that, they broke through,” DeMarcus picked up where his friend left off, his booming voice bouncing around the room. “One of them actually made it inside, but me and Sean here smoked him before he got too far,” he said, putting his massive hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Fortunately, we was in the middle of a shift change when it all went down, so there were a few extra guns nearby. Every one of us shot until we was empty; sent those fools runnin’ for the hills.”

  “Is the fence secured?” Clay asked worriedly.

  “Still was a hole in it when me and Sean left with Nolan, but there was at least a dozen guns guardin’ the place until it could get fixed up,” DeMarcus replied.

  Tim came back with Jackie; her clothes and gloved hands were smeared with Robert’s blood. Her eyes widened when she saw the severity of the burns, but then softened when she looked more closely at him. Holding her hands in the air to avoid contamination, she looked at Tim. “Can you check his pulse, please?”

  Tim flinched when his fingers touched the scaly burns on the man’s neck. He pushed his fingers in, repositioning them several times. He turned around and gave a subtle shake of his head toward Jackie.

  “I’m sorry guys,” Jackie said to DeMarcus and Sean. Without another word, she spun around and returned to the operating room.

  Sean tried to stifle his cries, but was unable to. “It’s going to be a’ight, Sean,” DeMarcus said as he consoled his friend.

  Tim put his hands on top of his head and let out a lengthy sigh. “I didn’t sign up for this. I used to be a dentist for crying out loud, not some combat doctor.”

  DeMarcus shot Tim a glare. “Man, I had six colleges offering me a full ride before all this happened. You think pulling my friend’s charred body out of a hole in the ground is what I was expectin’ to do ten years ago?”

  Tim was silent.

  “Ain’t none of us doing what we thought we’d be doing, but here we are.” He paused and looked over at Clay as well as Sean. “So, we can either bitch and moan about our problems or get back up, dust ourselves off, and keep fighting.”

  After a couple of sniffles, Sean wiped his eyes and nodded. He grabbed DeMarcus’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “Thanks, man,” he said. “I needed to hear that.”

  Me too, thought Clay.

  Chapter 26

  “How much you wanna bet I could pick that guy off from here?”

  Clay observed one of Arlo’s men standing at the edge of the tree line through his spotting scope. “That’s about a five hundred yard shot there, kid. You’re good, but not that good.”

  Dusty scoffed at the insult. “Whatever. Five hundred might be a long distance for someone at your skill level…” she replied without taking her eye off her scope.

  “Besides,” Clay added, “you know the orders. No shooting until they cross the road or fire first.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah…”

  Conversation fell away as Clay and Dusty searched the area for anything unusual—more unusual than the scouts plotting their next attack, anyway. It had been a week since the last clash and the entire town braced for more. It seemed long overdue, but both sides suffered significant losses during the last battle, so it was not terribly surprising that Arlo’s men held off longer than expected.

  “By the way,” D
usty said, breaking the silence, “thanks for filling in for Morgan tonight. She still hasn’t shaken whatever she got last week; she needed a night off.”

  “No problem,” Clay replied. “How is she working out? Good spotter?”

  “Pretty decent. She’s got some things to learn, still, but I’m showing her the ropes. And with such a capable teacher like me, she’ll be up to speed in no time.”

  Clay laughed with Dusty’s superhuman confidence. “Good deal,” he said as he watched the scouts start to fall back, disappearing into the woods. “I saw you guys hanging out at the mess hall the other day. Seems like you found yourself a new friend.”

  She responded with an overly dramatic sigh. “I’ve got enough friends, Clay. Like I said, just showing her the ropes.”

  Dusty was very touchy when it came to the topic of friends—as in, she never talked about having any, past or present. Though there was no denying that Clay and Geoff fit the dictionary definition of the word, she never once used the term to describe either of them. Being betrayed by a friend, especially as a young, impressionable girl, had a lasting and devastating effect.

  “What do you think is going through their heads right now?” Dusty asked, changing the subject.

  “Huh? Who? Arlo’s guys?”

  “Yeah. I mean, how could anyone just go and kill a bunch of unarmed people like that and still sleep at night?”

  “I don’t know,” Clay responded. “Before I found you in that school a few years ago, you probably did some things you never expected to do, right?”

  “Well, yeah, but I didn’t kill anyone…At least not anyone that wasn’t already trying to kill me, anyway.”

  “Yeah, but you did what you had to do to survive. Even killing someone that was trying to kill you, that’s a tall order, especially for a little kid. But you did what was necessary to stay alive. You tried to run, that didn’t work, so you had no choice but to fight.”

  “I guess,” Dusty said as she fiddled with the zoom on her scope slightly.

  “And that ‘tough girl’ act that you still put on for us every day…”

  “That’s no act, chump...”

  “Okay, fine,” Clay conceded, despite seeing through the lie. “My point is these people are probably just doing whatever it takes to survive.”

  “Wait a second,” Dusty said, her eyes coming off the lens for the first time since the conversation started. She gave him a baffled look. “Are you actually justifying what these guys are doing?”

  “Of course not!” Clay barked back. “I am, however, playing devil’s advocate here. What Arlo and these people are doing…what they’ve done…it’s wrong. Wrong! Okay? But I want you to remember that we’re not all that different from them. We’re not above crossing the same line they’ve already crossed. I’m sure these people didn’t just wake up one morning and go, ‘I think today I’m going to murder a bunch of people so I can take their stuff,’ Dusty.” Clay looked her in the eyes, “Staying on the right side of that line, especially in the world we live in now, is a choice…no, a fight we have to make every single day. But don’t assume you’ll always make the right choice. Don’t even assume you’ll always want to make the right choice. Because that’s when you’ll get blindsided.

  “I know you’ve been through a lot, Dusty. More than any kid should ever have to go through, but you’re not alone. In fact, there are a lot of people out there who have been through even worse. So, fight every day to stay on that right side—the good side—but never assume you aren’t capable of going down that same path. Or one day you might find yourself scouting along a tree line looking to prey on some innocent victims.”

  Dusty remained silent. She didn’t nod or acknowledge Clay’s statement; she just turned her head back to the scope and continued to scan the horizon.

  Clay’s words were just as much for himself as they were for Dusty—perhaps even more so. With everything he’d seen, everything he’d been through—especially over the last few months—the hope that he had been clutching to all these years started to fade. Decisions he had made and the thoughts he had had indicated he flirted dangerously close with that very line he just spoke of. He might have been able to give himself a pass if this had all started after Arlo’s ambush on Liberty—call it a side effect of war—but this demon had started whispering into his ear the moment Charlie died, a whisper too faint to notice until he contemplated slaughtering the Screamers in that house last month. He hoped—he prayed—that this was just a bad stretch of road that he would soon see in the rearview mirror. And hopefully, before too much destruction occurred. Until then, he would try to follow his own advice, as well as DeMarcus’s.

  Keep fighting—two wars at the same time.

  ****

  Clay knocked on the door.

  “Just a sec,” Megan replied.

  Megan was in sweatpants and a sweatshirt when she opened the door, a towel wrapped around her head.

  “Hey brother, what’s going on?” she asked.

  “My head is killing me; I was wondering if you had brought any medicine from home with you—I don’t really want to take anything away from the infirmary over a headache.”

  “Yeah, come on in,” she said as she walked over to her bed and rummaged through her pack. She pulled out a bottle and opened it up, quickly counting what was left inside. “Are you okay with just one?” she asked.

  “That’s fine. I’m planning to go straight to sleep after this, so anything to help get me there would be great,” he said before grabbing the pill and swallowing it without a drink. “Thanks.”

  “No problem. Hope it works.”

  “I’m sure it...” Clay trailed off as he noticed some clothes folded on the bed along with a few other items next to the backpack. “Going somewhere?” he asked.

  “Uhm, yeah, kinda,” she said hesitantly.

  “Kinda?”

  “Well…” Megan said, reluctant to tell her brother about her new assignment. “Doctor Sowell mentioned to Mayor Shelton this morning just how thin our supplies are getting. And, evidently, you guys aren’t faring all that much better with ammunition, either. So, after a little impromptu meeting with me, Doctor Sowell, Shelton and Captain Kohler, it was decided that a supply run is necessary.”

  Clay stared at her like her hair was on fire.

  “I leave just before dawn.”

  Clay shook his head. “No. No way! They need to find someone else. I am sure Doctor Sowell needs your help in the infirmary. Just tell one of the others what to look for and send them.”

  Megan was already plagued with guilt before her brother even walked into her room; his desperate pleas only made the sensation worse. She shook her head. “It’s not that simple, Clay. We talked for a while about who to send and ultimately, Doctor Sowell felt I was the best option. I have the most experience with medical training; I know medicines and antibiotics better than anyone else except for him and Jackie. I also know the kind of items he’s looking for when it comes to his more improvised medical creations. Plus,” she said as she put her hand on Clay’s shoulder and smiled, “thanks to my big-little brother, I know how to handle a gun.”

  “Yeah, and so does McCreary. And no offense, sis, but he’s a much better shot than you are.”

  Megan rolled her eyes. “And, as of three days ago, McCreary didn’t know the difference between ibuprofen and acetaminophen.”

  Clay’s puzzled expression said it all.

  “Thank you for proving my point, Clay,” she said before turning to her bed to pack her clothes. “Look, I don’t want to be going either, but we’re not going to make it through winter and a war with aspirin and Band-Aids. Even if you guys had a train car full of ammunition, we can’t patch you up with buckshot and hollow points. We need good medical supplies, and we need someone on this trip who can identify and prioritize what those supplies are. Without that,” she stopped and turned around, revealing the fear in her eyes. She lifted her hands up before dropping them to her side. “Clay�
�it just has to be done,” she said with a glum look on her face. “There’s no way around it.”

  She was right and there was no denying it, no matter how much Clay tried to convince himself otherwise.

  “Who is going with you?” Clay asked.

  “Well, Levi volunteered, but between an ankle sprain and his overall lack of knowledge on medicine and self-defense, that idea was shot down pretty fast. So, they are sending Kelvin with me.”

  “I bet Levi’s not too happy about that,” Clay added.

  “Ohhhh no,” Megan replied, making a funny face. “He was even worse than you about it, actually,” she said as she stuffed two boxes of 9MM into her bag.

  “You know why that is, right?” Clay asked, immediately regretting the decision to open that can of worms.

  “Clayton, I am a lot of things, and I am doing a lot of things, but I am a woman and I am not stupid. Just because I haven’t thought about that kind of stuff in a long, long time, doesn’t mean I am oblivious to it. I mean he’s not exactly subtle. I’ve never met a man who wants to help do dishes just because he ‘likes doing dishes.’”