Darker Days (As the Ash Fell Book 2)

by AJ Powers

  But it didn’t.

  Although they managed to avoid contact with the Screamers, Clay and Megan were bombarded with the distant shrieks and screams of the sadists the rest of the time they walked through the forest. The psychological warfare, whether the Screamers were aware of it or not, wreaked havoc and caused Megan to hyperventilate on several occasions.

  At one point, Clay found himself hoping that the maniacs would finally show up so that one way or another the barbarous saber-rattling would come to an end.

  As the trees parted and the road came into view, Clay let out a deep breath he felt like he had held since they walked in. The sun had not quite set, offering them a little light to finish out the leg of the journey. Clay looked around as he got his bearings. The area was familiar, but they had not come out where he had expected. They were even closer to the camp’s entrance, meaning they had walked a bit off path but to their advantage.

  “Okay,” Clay said. “The entrance is just a couple of miles down the road. I know the last thing you feel like doing is moving fast, but if we can keep a pretty quick pace, we’ll be there before we lose daylight.”

  Megan’s weary eyes were beyond blood shot. The girl had taken just about all she could handle for one day. Even so, as she wiped away a rogue tear that had managed to escape her eye, she agreed.

  “You okay?” Clay asked.

  “I’ll be fine. Let’s just get to this place so we can get out of the cold.”

  The snowfall had picked up, further muffling the distant screams and helped to subdue Clay’s fears. They passed the pink car with the yellow, smiley face on the driver’s door, something he remembered seeing the first time he visited Smith’s compound. The still vibrant colors on the sedan stuck out in the drab world around them like an ink stain on a wedding dress.

  “It should be just around the bend up ahead—only a few more minutes.”

  Just then, Clay heard shuffling footsteps in the snow behind him. He whipped around just in time to evade a devastating swing from a pickaxe head attached to the end of a baseball bat.

  “Megan, watch out!” Clay screamed.

  Megan also ducked out of the way, narrowly avoiding a deathly blow.

  As Clay regained his balance, he raised his rifle and fired three shots into the attacker. The suppressed .300 sounded even quieter in the deteriorating weather, but the damage it inflicted on his target was no less destructive.

  As soon as the man’s body crashed to the ground, the shrieks began and several other Screamers came into view. Four from behind them and two ahead of them.

  Standing back to back with her brother, all Megan could say was, “Clay?”

  “You’ve got this Megan,” Clay said, quietly encouraging his sister not to hesitate.

  “Stay back!” Megan yelled, trying to make herself sound threatening, but her voice cracked under the stress.

  Megan’s audible fear caused the two men in front of her to laugh. One carried an Arabian sword and the other sported a homemade weapon fashioned from a pipe, circular saw blade and rusted nails.

  All six men stood their ground while they gleefully discussed how much they were going to enjoy the next few minutes. The vile words they spoke twisted Megan’s stomach, forcing her to swallow bile. The two men in front of her sneered as they observed the shaking gun in her hands.

  “This is gonna be fun, boys,” the one said, his dagger-like gaze piercing deep into Megan’s soul.

  “I have dibs on the girl,” the smallest of the four in front of Clay said. “I bet she tastes as sweet as cherry pie on the fourth of July,” he said with a thick, southern accent before swiping his tongue in front of his crooked, yellow teeth.

  The man’s revolting rhyme filled Clay with a red-hot fury. The line had been drawn, but Clay would not wait for them to cross it. Without so much as a warning, Clay slid his rifle over to the right and squeezed the trigger.

  The small man’s head whipped back as the suppressed, subsonic bullet allowed for everyone to hear the devastation the .300 blackout had on the man’s skull. Before the shell dropped to the snow, the other three men had started running toward him. Clay fired several more shots, dropping the man on the far right before he transitioned to his next target. Megan’s gunfire startled him, causing his next three shots to miss.

  “Clay!” Megan shrieked.

  Her plea for help fell on deafened ears as he shot again at the two barreling down on him, striking the one on the left in his stomach. Clay then spun around and sent three rounds into the only man coming for Megan; his body quickly crumpled to the ground.

  “Look out!” Megan yelled just moments before Clay felt a searing pain in his shoulder blades.

  The impact knocked Clay to the ground. Hard.

  Recovering from the impact, Clay saw that the man was now chasing after Megan as she fired wildly in her attacker’s direction. Getting to one knee, Clay pulled his rifle scope up to his eye and took a few shots at the Screamer pursuing his sister before he ran behind a car. Having both eyes open, Clay saw two more shadowy figures emerge from the trees on the other side of the road.

  With the other two men running his way, Clay was forced to engage. He ignored the pain in his shoulders as he raised the rifle and lined up his shot. He pulled the trigger, but his shot was wide. He felt the bolt on his ARAK-21 lock back, and without checking, he let go of his rifle and reached for his Glock.

  The vivid flash from the +p ammunition combined with the falling snow was disorienting. But the crimson red voids on the man’s chest let Clay know his aim had been true. He tried to switch targets, but before he could, the other man had plowed his shoulder into Clay’s chest, ramming him into the side of an SUV.

  “You like that, don’t’cha?” the man said as he landed several clean shots to Clay’s abdomen. Clay fell to the ground, gasping for air on all fours. “Yeah, you do like it,” he added. “Well, don’t worry, there will be plenty of time for foreplay...”

  Clay felt around for his pistol in the snow when the man grabbed the shoulder straps of his backpack and pulled him up high enough to drive his knee into Clay’s stomach.

  The agonizing moans coming out of Clay only seemed to excite the man. He once again picked up Clay off the ground, this time throwing him up against the SUV. He pinned Clay against the rear door of the vehicle and gave a twisted grin as he leaned in. “I’m normally a lady’s man,” he said into Clay’s ear, “but I’ll make an exception for a pretty boy like you.”

  The world flashed white for the man as Clay slammed his head forward, breaking the Screamer’s nose. As if he was incapable of recognizing pain as a bad thing, the man laughed manically. He licked his lips as the blood began to pour out of his nostrils.

  “Ohhh, we’re about to have some fun.”

  “You’re gonna have to kill me first,” Clay said defiantly.

  The man’s smile grew wider as Clay’s suggestion enticed him even more. He pressed his forearm up against Clay’s neck, closing off his airway. “That’s the way I like it,” the man said, increasing the pressure applied to Clay’s neck.

  Clay’s attempts to break free weakened with each passing second. The world was growing darker…

  A blood-curdling scream from Megan pulled him back from the edge of oblivion. A switch had flipped, and, as if he had just been injected with the adrenaline of a gorilla, Clay’s drowsy eyes sprung open as the muscles in his neck tightened, causing the man to lean harder.

  The Screamer’s smile only grew wider as Clay’s resistance increased. He laughed as he seemed to relish every struggling movement his victim made. “Good,” he said with a maniacal whisper, “I really hate it when people just give up without a fight. It makes things so much less…satisfying when I’m done…”

  “Please don’t,” Clay pleaded with his attacker, making sure to keep the attention on his face.

  “Yeah, that’s it, sweetheart, keep begging…”

  Being consumed with the feigned cries for help, the man hadn
’t noticed Clay’s hand slowly reaching for his knife. Needing to complete the transaction in one swift motion, Clay unsnapped the sheath, pulled the knife out, and swung it upwards, driving the blade deep into the man’s armpit.

  Releasing his choke hold on Clay, the Screamer stumbled backwards, howling in agony. After refilling his lungs with air, Clay ran forward, lunging at the wounded man in front of him. As they hit the ground, Clay jammed the knife into the man’s solar plexus, causing his body to go limp.

  The man gasped in vain as Clay’s unforgiving eyes watched him struggle to breath. Clay felt as if he was having an out-of-body experience; he was no longer calling the shots. He leaned in closer to the man’s face, “Was it good for you, too?” he whispered in the dying man’s ear as he pressed the blade even further into his gut.

  The gurgling response from the Screamer’s throat told Clay he was no longer a threat.

  After a few very exhausted breaths, Clay stumbled back to his feet. He could still hear Megan pleading for the man to stop—it sounded like they were behind an eighteen-wheeler off in the ditch.

  Quickly locating his Glock, Clay made his way around the semi and saw the man straddling his sister, groping and slapping her in the face. As far as the Screamer was concerned, she was his property now. Clay stomped up to the man and hooked his arm around his neck, dragging him off Megan and out into the middle of the road. The Screamer fought, but was no match for the almost-supernatural rage surging through Clay’s body. When they reached the road, Clay threw the man to the ground; he landed on his back. Before he could recover from the fall, Clay had trained his Glock on his stomach.

  He emptied the magazine.

  The man was not dead, but his screams had morphed from terrorizing to suffering, and Clay wanted every last psychopath in the area to hear it. So, he let the man scream until there was no more air left in his lungs. It didn’t take long.

  Megan pulled herself together enough to come around the front of the truck. She saw Clay walking across the street toward a wounded man who attempted to flee by crawling like a lowly snake.

  He walked up to the man as he swapped magazines. He pressed on the release, causing the slide to jerk forward as he towered over the Screamer on the ground. “Please,” the man pleaded as he turned onto his back, “I-I-I’m sorry, just don’t kill me.”

  It was the first time Clay had ever heard the slightest bit of remorse out of one of the sociopaths. It was strange—almost disturbing.

  Nevertheless…

  Three shots disrupted the now-silent night, causing Megan to flinch with each report.

  With the threats finally neutralized, Clay walked back over to his sister. Her open coat exposed a ripped shirt, and her pants were still unbuttoned. Her face was bloodied and bruised and still displaying a look of fear.

  “Are you okay?” Clay asked.

  Megan, still in shock with what she had just witnessed, ignored his question and fired back one of her own. “What did you do?”

  “Megan!” Clay shouted in frustration. “Are. You. Okay?”

  Megan’s glassy eyes reflected what was left of the fading day. “Uhm, yeah, I think so. You got there before he was able to…” Megan trailed off as her brain finally processed what nearly happened to her.

  Clay nodded, not needing her to venture down that path any further. “Good,” he said while dropping the magazine from his rifle and quickly replacing it with a fresh one.

  Megan looked over at the grizzly scene in the middle of the road, a sight not too dissimilar from the ones that would have been left behind had the attackers been victorious. “Why?” she asked with a fear-stricken voice.

  Clay took a brief glimpse at the body in the middle of the road before turning back to Megan. “I wanted to make sure that he never had a chance to hurt someone again,” Clay responded.

  “But Clay…you’re—”

  “Surviving!” he cut her off. “Listen, Megan, this is the world we live in now, and each year it gets a little worse. Trust me, I realize just how easy it is to forget how bad things are when you spend all your time in the comfortable confines of your home, but now you’re seeing life the way it really is; in its raw and unfiltered state.”

  Megan reached her hand up and brought it across Clay’s cheek. Ignoring the stinging sensation, she proceeded to stick her finger in Clay’s face. “Don’t you dare talk to me as if I am oblivious to the evil in this world, Clayton!” Megan roared, her anger temporarily holding the tears at bay. “I see it…I see it every single day, and some days I saw it in ways you could never imagine. So, don’t you think for a minute that you’re the only one who has it rough, because I’ve got news for you, buddy boy, until you spend a day in my shoes, and have the nightmares I have, you are in no position to judge me.”

  Clay breathed heavily through his nose. “Let’s go,” he said with contempt as he turned away from his sister and continued down the road.

  Chapter 32

  The crackling ding of the elevator tone signaled their arrival, and then the doors parted.

  “Welcome to my new home away from home,” Clay said, the first words either of them had spoken since the heated exchange on the road. He stepped out of the elevator and turned down the hallway. “Here are a couple of bedrooms,” Clay said as he walked past the first door. “There are plenty—” The sound of a metal door slamming shut disrupted Clay’s comment. He turned around to a dim, empty hallway.

  Clay deflated his lungs through a long, drawn out sigh as he leaned up against the cinderblock wall. The sobs and cries on the other side of the door quickly became unbearable, forcing Clay to move to the very end of the hallway, claiming the last room on the opposite side as his own.

  He gently closed the door behind him, hoping the guilt would not follow him inside. He dropped his pack onto the rickety cot, the springs sounding as if they were going to snap under the sudden weight change. The pain in Clay’s body seemed to grow exponentially as the adrenaline continued to diminish, making the simple task of removing his coat feel like he was bench pressing an elephant. If Megan weren’t in the process of a nuclear, emotional meltdown, he would have already volunteered to test the potency of the pain pills in her pack.

  A loud growl erupted from Clay’s stomach, a reminder that his last bite to eat was nearly twenty-four hours ago. With growing concerns that their food wouldn’t last the journey, Clay had opted out of his last few meals. He had planned on a hearty meal of freeze dried apple slices with some crumbled soy posing as sausage, but with the bout of nausea he currently battled, he immediately nixed that idea. He settled for a few sips of water instead.

  He sat down on the side of the bed and dropped his face into his hands. A couple of slow, deep breaths persuaded his heart rate to return to a normal range. As he sat in silence, the fog in his head also began to lift.

  Clay started to wonder if poor decision-making was what brought on such a tumultuous day of travel. After all, his track record of sound judgment these past few months were not exactly stellar. Was everything today his fault? The incident with the watch was unfortunate, but it was—for all intents and purposes—an act of God—something outside of Clay’s control. But still, he thought, maybe I could have done something different to avoid such a terrible day. A day that nearly cost both his and Megan’s life.

  But the fact was, there wasn’t much else he could have done. Clay constantly found himself thrown into a position where decisions need to be made with little to no information. And while some of those choices didn’t pan out the way he had hoped, more often than not everything went off without a hitch. Still, it’s easy to forget about the thousands of little victories while standing in the shadow of a massive failure.

  Clay recalled one of his dad’s favorite quotes from Eisenhower. “In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” Perhaps some plans would never work out as expected, but just “winging it” was the kind of thing that would result in a g
reat deal of trouble in the wild. The world, anymore, is out to kill; so, there was no need to give it an advantage by shooting yourself in the foot.

  Foiled plans, however, were not always a bad thing. As Clay thought back to the fateful night of Liberty’s attack—at the farm house where they found the kids—he remembered the first thing to go through his head after Geoff opened fire: Why couldn’t this have just gone as planned? But as he sat in the dank room in the basement level of the FEMA camp, Clay realized that had Plan A worked out, he would have never gone inside the farm house, which meant he would have never found Madeline hiding in the closet. She would have been left alone with the remainder of the men waiting for a fate that made Clay cringe.

  Everything happens for a reason, he heard Kelsey’s voice in his head. It was a saying that, at times, appeared to be true. But the days of trusting that something good could come out of something so terrible were becoming few and far between.

  But as the grim look on Madeline’s face flashed to the front of Clay’s mind, he was thankful that on that night, the adage had been true.

  After failing to fall asleep for over an hour, Clay warily put his coat back on and left his room. He walked to the end of the hall, past the elevators, and climbed up the stairs. He avoided the elevator as to not disturb Megan, who seemed to have finally cried herself to sleep. Each step was accompanied by a terrible ache in his legs and shoulders—a painful reminder of the dreadful evening they had endured; one that would be sure to visit Clay in his sleep for many years to come.