The Lost Light

by Justin Bell

  THE LOST

  LIGHT

  Darkness Rising Series

  Book 2

  By

  Justin Bell

  Mike Kraus

  © 2018 Muonic Press Inc

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  www.JustinBellAuthor.com

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  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, without the permission in writing from the author.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Author’s Notes

  Stay updated on Mike’s books by signing up for the Mike Kraus Reading List.

  Just click right here.

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  Special Thanks

  Special thanks to Amanda for editing and for my awesome beta team, without whom this book wouldn’t be nearly as great. Thank you, Cathy, Christine, Christy, Claudia, Glenda, James, Julie, Kelly, Marlys and Shari!

  Gray Skies: Book 3 of the Darkness Rising Series

  is now available!

  Chapter 1

  “You afraid, homes?” Angel asked, rotating his shoulders and glancing out the side window of the bus.

  “Afraid?” replied Franky, glancing towards him. “Afraid of what?”

  Angel shrugged, the cuffs clamped around his wrists jingling with the slight motion. “I dunno. Stuff that’s happening in Cali? What do you think?”

  Franky didn’t make any movement one way or the other. “Eh, who knows, right? They’re getting us the heck outta Dodge, so there must be something we need to worry about, right?”

  “Why do you think they’re transferring us? I mean, it’s not like we’re moving all that fast,” Angel said. He looked out the window again, the line of traffic stretching ahead of their bus and stacking up on the left of them as well. Everywhere he looked up and down Interstate 70 there were vehicles crammed side-by-side and end-to-end, and nobody was going anywhere anytime soon.

  “Way I heard it was Provo got whacked,” Franky replied.

  “Whacked? You mean nuked?”

  “That’s what I hear. Big power station. If they didn’t get us outta that building, back-up systems was gonna start failing.”

  “So where they bringing us, man?” Angel’s heart thumped a little quicker in his chest.

  “You think I know?”

  Angel stayed quiet for a while, looking out the window again as the bus inched along at a pace slower than he could walk.

  “How much of it is true, do you think?” he asked.

  “How much of what?”

  “The nukes and stuff.”

  “Probably at least some,” Franky replied. “I don’t think they’d have loaded us from the jails to this bus and started trucking us across Colorado if there wasn’t some truth to stuff.”

  “Dang,” Angel said quietly, shaking his head.

  “Why? What’s got you worked up?”

  Angel looked over at his onetime cellmate. “I gots family in Cali. San Diego. They were going to come out and see me for Christmas this year, man. Mom. Nina. A brother and a few cousins. Everyone I know is out there.”

  “Dang, that’s rough, Angel,” Franky replied, not really meaning it. John-Paul “Franky” Francis’ emotional spectrum didn’t work the same way as most people, which is probably why he was able to live with himself after killing two teenagers in a gang gunfight gone wrong six years back. But Angel wasn’t so lucky. A good, hard-working kid for the most part, Angel Menendez got wrapped up with the wrong crowd and managed to end up in the middle of a gunfight with police. One officer ended up dead, a second injured, and everyone took off, leaving Angel holding the bag and the murder weapon.

  Angel hadn’t even remembered firing the gun that night, but the whole thing had been a blur, and the jury certainly hadn’t appeared interested in whether he had actually pulled the trigger that killed any cops. He was there with a gun and that was enough.

  Even so, eight years in prison had whittled away any softness that Angel might have ever had, and all that remained now was a hard-edged, angry convict with a rigid, unforgiving shell wrapped around his once gentle side. Every once in a while that gentle side shined through.

  “So what exactly is going on?” the man behind Angel leaned forward on his own bench and placed his cuffed hands on the back of the seat in front of him, the chain link clanking along the cushion.

  “You think we know, Levry?” Franky asked, turning to face the fellow prisoner. Lights running along the bus's ceiling gleamed off Franky’s bald head. “We’ve been locked up in the same junk heap as you.”

  A dull crunch of metal echoed just outside, faint and unclear, and Angel turned in his seat to look back out the window.

  “Dios Mio!” he shouted, then whipped his head back around towards the front. “There’s a car coming!”

  Franky craned around to look as well and could see a narrow red sedan pushing its way through the two lanes of traffic, just fitting between the two endless rows of cars stacked up and standing still. Up ahead the bus driver looked around, seeing the car and shaking his head. Angel could hear him mumble something, but couldn’t quite make it out. Wrapping his thick fingers around the gear shift on the side of the steering column, he appeared to down shift, adjust the wheel, and press the accelerator, trying to ease the bus out of the way of the approaching vehicle. He leaned on the horn, loud and long, and inched forward, forcing two cars to spread and separate, opening up a narrow path for the bus to try to navigate to the shoulder and avoid a collision.

  But it was too little too late. Angel clamped his hands around the seat in front of him, bracing his muscles as the red car slammed into the rear left corner of the bus with a shuttering wrenching of metal and smashing of glass. He could have sworn he actually heard the glass explode all over the metal surface of the vehicle and the pavement, and that’s when the bus leaped forward and to the right, pushed by the momentum of the impact. Suddenly the front of the vehicle was tipping forward and all they could see out of the front window was the green grass embankment. Then it lurched right, tumbling and flipping end over end down the grass slope. Windows on both sides of the long bus exploded outward in twinkling cascades of sparkling glass. At the front of the bus, the three guards standing were all thrown from their feet, thrashing around in the open air of the bus ahead, thudding into the roof, then crashing onto one side and flipping over like boneless dolls, limbs flailing in a desperate, yet futile attempt to stop.

  Then there was quiet.

  Angel opened his eyes and discovered he was dangling by his cuffs, looped around a support post of the seat, his feet hanging down near the ceiling of the upside-down bus. Liquid spilled from a fuel tank, and the smell of gasoline filled the entire inside of the vehicle, a pungent stab of eye-watering stink. Angel bent his knee and pressed it against the seat, yanking as hard as he could. Within a second, the support post broke from its floor mount with a brassy pop, and his cuffs slid free, sending him tumbling down to the ceiling below.

  “You okay, Angel?” Franky asked.

  Angel swung his head around and saw his ce
llmate picking himself up from the ceiling as well, running a hand over his bald head, streaked with blood.

  “I’m okay,” Angel replied.

  “I think the guards are out!” Franky yelled back. “We should take off, man!”

  “You sure about that?” Angel asked. “I don’t need any more years tacked on, man. I got enough time left to do.”

  “Don’t be a wuss,” came a growl from behind him and Angel turned just as Levry pushed past. “We won’t get a chance like this again.”

  Up ahead, Angel could see many of the other gray-suited prisoners shuffling and awakening, pulling cuffs free and looking around to make sure this wasn’t some kind of dream or trick. Freedom felt like a tangible object—a thin fog in the air that tasted and smelled sweet, almost overruling the aggressive stench of spent fuel.

  “Go, man, go!” shouted Levry. He turned behind him. “Coops, you coming?”

  Reggie Cooper was already on his feet and moving forward, nodding emphatically. “Oh yeah, I’m coming.”

  A mass of men in gray jumpsuits overran the guards ahead, fists flying and hands clamping around weapons. The driver peeled himself away from the steering column and lunged towards one of the vacating prisoners, but the butt of a Remington shotgun bolted forward, crashing into his forehead. He slammed back against the wall and slumped down in the seat, motionless.

  “Hurry! Get out!” shouted Franky, yelling right at Angel. “I think the others are gonna set it off!”

  Angel pushed his way towards the door of the bus where others were already crawling out and thumping onto the grass. His disorientation caused him to misjudge the door’s location and as he pushed free, he fell a few feet, hitting the grass slope with his right shoulder and tumbling down, feet flying as he rolled clumsily down the small hill.

  Franky appeared just behind him, waving his hand towards the dirt road below.

  “Keep going!” he shouted.

  A thin, echoing pop jerked Angel’s head back and as he turned to look at the bus, he could hear the low, throaty woosh of a spark igniting gasoline, and a jet of orange flame shot into the air, then ran through the upside-down bus. Angel’s eyes widened as he focused on the guards inside, but he knew there was nothing he could do as flames raced along the length of the vehicle and swarmed over them within seconds, leaving nothing but darkened shapes cloaked in bright licks of fire.

  “This way, man, this way!” shouted Franky, running down the dirt road. “There’s a sign over here. Some kind of private school down this road!”

  “Private school?” Angel asked, suddenly feeling very uneasy about the direction of this endeavor. “I don’t wanna get near no kids, man. That’s just asking for trouble!”

  “I think it’s spring break, man,” barked Coops from his left. As a gray jump-suited horde, they ran forward, over the dirt road and behind the trees, quickly and quietly migrating to Vernon Academy, an empty campus that now belonged to them and them alone.

  ***

  Officer Graves cranked the wheel to the right, easing off the accelerator and bringing the black and white sedan around the building in a tight, skillful turn.

  “Three in the morning with this stuff,” he barked. “Can you believe this?”

  “Just focus on getting us there in one piece, rookie, okay?” Jeston replied, his fingers wrapped around the fold-down handle above the passenger side window. “And if I puke, you owe me twenty bucks! And a new shirt!”

  “Scared, Jeston?” Graves asked with a smirk. He pushed the car forward, the blue lights spraying the dark alley ahead of them in a cascading bright outward sphere.

  “After what happened in Cali today, we all should be,” Jeston replied, his voice clipped more than he meant to.

  “I get it,” the rookie said, pulling the car around another tight turn. “After all the bogus calls in the past twenty-four hours, I’m starting to wonder if we should take any of these suspicious person complaints seriously.”

  “I hear that. This is Galveston. It’s not like we’re in Houston or Dallas. Who would want to bother bombing this little island?”

  A straight stretch of road filled the windshield, Graves guiding the police vehicle into the right lane, but keeping the pace at a brisk seventy miles per hour. He could already see the right-hand turn up ahead, drawing up on them as they sped towards it. Cruising along Seawall Boulevard, the Gulf of Mexico stretched out to their left, blurring like a blue streak of a crayon in the dim light of early morning.

  “Border patrol has been pulling triple shift all day,” Graves said, “I don’t know how they think anyone’s going to sneak in here less than twelve hours after nuke central on the West Coast, anyway.”

  “Not our job to worry about that, kid, we just have to respond to the calls.” Jeston bent over and scooped the radio off the dash. “Papa 46, Headquarters,” Jeston said into the speaker.

  “Go ahead P46,” the radio responded.

  “We are ten-37 Thirty-first Street and Avenue O,” Jeston replied.

  “Acknowledge P46,” headquarters replied. Jeston clipped the radio back to its holder, then reached to his belt to just touch the surface of his pistol, reassuring himself that the Glock nine millimeter still rested snug in its spot where he expected to find it. They’d been responding to ten-37’s—investigating a suspicious vehicle—for twelve hours straight, but the circumstances from the previous morning dictated that they stay the course.

  “Left on Thirty-first just ahead,” Jeston said, stubbing an index finger towards the next turn.

  Graves hauled the wheel left, bringing the car around onto Thirty-first Street and barreling past the swaths of one-story buildings flanking the road on each side.

  “I see it just up here,” Graves said, slowing the car and bringing it to the right to ease it up next to the sidewalk. “White Toyota, just like the caller said.”

  “Got it,” Jeston replied. “Weapons live, rookie, got it? We take every stop as if it’s the only stop, right?”

  “Yes, sir,” Graves nodded. He’d only been on patrol for a few months, but he felt like he belonged for the first time in his life. His wife was still adjusting, but the pay was better than he’d ever had, and he felt like he was making a difference.

  Jeston came around the right side of the police car, his weapon drawn and pointing towards the ground, and Graves followed suit. They walked low to the ground, one foot carefully set in front of the other, eyes narrow and alert on the dark car ahead.

  The elder cop reached behind himself and unhooked a mag light, then pressed it on, shining a pale white beam of light into the back window of the Toyota. A shift of shadowed movement caught his eye.

  “Someone’s in the car!” he shouted, lifting his weapon and cradling it with the other hand, flashlight pointed straight out from underneath the gun’s barrel.

  “Place your hands out of the window and come out of the vehicle!” he shouted as he slowed his forward progress.

  Graves didn’t say anything as he came up on Jeston’s left, his own weapon raised in a two-handed firing grip.

  “I repeat, place your hands out of the window!” He could still see the vague shape of someone inside, but the person didn’t seem to be moving especially fast.

  “We are coming around to your driver’s side window,” Jeston said in clear, loud words, taking one step after another and coming around in a wide left-hand arc. “We do not want to shoot you!”

  His flashlight played against the surface of the Japanese car as he moved, and in the splash of pale light, he saw swift motion inside the vehicle, the shadow shape jerking downwards.

  “Don’t do it!” he screamed. “Don’t move!”

  The passenger side door slammed open with a metal bang and Graves broke away, heading around the opposite side of the car. Jeston moved in towards the front, his pistol lifted and hips swiveling, searching for motion.

  Three flat cracks echoed in the night, gunshots popping from the other side of the car and Jeston ducked
low, continuing to move to his left, trying to flank around the hood. Graves moved in on the other side.

  “Don’t move!” Jeston heard him shout. “Put down the weapon!”

  Two more cracks of gunfire blasted from near the front of the car, and Jeston could see Graves ducking and moving right, then swiveling back and squeezing off three shots of his own. Jeston’s eyes focused on the source of the fire and angled towards the hood of the Toyota, then came around low. The darkened shape of the figure spun around towards him, and he could just see the flash of gunmetal in his hand and he drew down, pointed the barrel towards the huddled shape, and fired four times, his Glock barking in his tight grasp with each squeeze of the trigger. Graves came around on the other side, following the shadowed form with his own weapon as it flew back, slamming into the car spine-first, then slumped down to the pavement next to the vehicle.

  Both police officers stood in firing positions, weapons trained, unmoving for a handful of seconds.

  Jeston bent low, shining the flashlight down on the slumped body in front of him. He popped the flashlight in his teeth and extended his fingers, checking the man’s neck for a pulse but found none.

  “He’s down,” Jeston said quietly, and rolled the victim to look at his face. “Call it in, kid, okay?”

  Graves nodded, moving around the car. As he started around the back, he noticed the popped open trunk.

  “Hey, boss? What do you think’s in here?” he asked, reaching for something in the trunk.

  “Don’t do it, Graves—” Jeston started to say, but the explosion swallowed him, the rookie cop, and the better part of Galveston, Texas in a brilliant, blinding sunspot of heat and fire.

  ***

  The thin trickle of sweat beaded at the arc of his wide forehead and seemed to pause there before breaking away and darting down over the rough contours of his angular face. It coursed through the stubbed thicket of facial hair, hung on his jawline for a moment, then spilled out into the air and spattered against the brushed metal of the Remington tactical shotgun clutched between his tensed fingers.