Apokalypsis | Book 5 | Apokalypsis 5

by Morris, Kate

  Jane nodded, knowing she couldn’t do the same. Her father was lying nearly comatose and very ill in the other room. She’d never leave him unable to defend himself, but she wouldn’t blame Stephanie for abandoning them if the situation became out of control and they were overrun. She was a survivor. It was just what survivors did. Jane didn’t feel like she was one. She felt alone and helpless with her grandmother gone and her father down.

  Brutus gave a quiet woof, and Jane set her hand on his head to stop him from barking loudly, which she knew he was capable of doing. It was as if animals knew also to temper their normal noises so as not to be noticed by those things. Her father had taken her fishing a lot as a young girl, so Jane had some random knowledge she carried with her about animals because he’d talk to her about things like that while they fished. He told her that no matter the predator, there was always a bigger, more deadly one. She knew man was the strongest and most lethal predator on earth, but these new humans were taking over in that category. Animals seemed to intuit that, as well, and knew to be quiet of these newly-created predator humans.

  “Probably nothing,” Stephanie finally said when nothing happened. “Dumb dog…”

  Then a noise close to the house cut her off in the middle of insulting Brutus’s instincts. Jane sent her a look, and she shrugged as if she were sorry.

  “What was that?” the girl asked.

  Jane shrugged this time and strained to listen. She even took a risk and stepped closer to the front door with the double locks and barricade of a chair under the handle. Again, something made a noise. It wasn’t one of those things. Nothing screeched or ran into things haphazardly. She peered through the slats on a nearby window and saw headlights.

  “It’s a car, or truck, not sure,” she said, trying to see better. The lights went out as it came closer down their steep lane. “Probably just Roman?”

  Stephanie said, “They said they wouldn’t be back till after the sun was up.”

  “Finished faster than they thought?”

  Stephanie shook her head as if dread were causing her to move it instead of her own conscious actions. “Just the drive up and back with the roads being shit would take longer than this.”

  The vehicle seemed to be having a difficult time as it lurched and then slid a good twenty feet. It definitely couldn’t handle their snow-impacted, steep and curved driveway. Sliding uncontrollably, it hit a tree where it sputtered to a stop still far from the house. Jane could no longer see much at all then because a light snowfall had started a little while ago. The interior lights of the vehicle were also out, so she couldn’t even tell if it was a car or truck or Roman or an intruder. The last possibility scared her to death, which caused her to tighten her grip on her pistol and wish her father wasn’t incapacitated.

  “Who the hell is that?” Stephanie questioned, now beside her, which caused Jane to jump.

  “I don’t know,” she answered as someone got out and shut the door as if trying to be quiet. “Crap, I don’t think that’s Roman.”

  “Our lights are out. How’d someone even find this place?”

  “I don’t know,” she repeated as the person walked cautiously closer to the house. They were wearing a coat with the hood pulled up over their head, so identifying them as someone they knew like their new neighbor, Avery, was impossible. “Maybe it’s Avery,” she suggested anyway.

  “Looks too tall,” Stephanie countered. “Plus, that car looks like a piece of shit. That chick wouldn’t drive a car with a loud muffler. I think they have trucks.”

  “Right,” she whispered in return as Brutus whined once. “Shh.”

  Every instinct in her body was telling her this was bad, that their situation just turned from possibly to definitely dangerous. Her nerve endings were all alert at once, sizzling with anticipation and fear.

  The person reached the front porch.

  “What do we do?” she whispered and got a shrug of indecision from Stephanie.

  “Don’t let them in. That’s for damn sure.”

  The wind outside howled across the front porch, which muffled the person’s footfalls. Then the doorknob twisted and thankfully stopped at a quarter turn since it was locked. Jane’s heart was racing so hard, she felt like it might burst. She wiped her sweaty hands on her jeans.

  The doorknob twisted the other way, then was rattled back and forth as if testing the lock’s strength.

  “Not him,” Stephanie whispered into her ear, to which she nodded in agreement. “Definitely not Roman.”

  On the porch, the person shuffled around, did something that caused more noise, then came back to the door. Next, there was the distinct sound of a key being pushed into the lock. It twisted all the way this time. Stephanie quickly and silently reset it before the person could get in. From the other side of the door came a muffled curse as they probably assumed the key wasn’t working.

  She whispered into Steph’s ear, “They found my dad’s hidden key under the planter.”

  Her eyes widened. Then the person on the other side of the door pounded once against it as if frustrated. They both jumped.

  “Someone in there?” the person called through the heavy, wooden door.

  At the top of the stairs, Noah came into view and whispered, “What’s going on?”

  Stephanie pointed to the door and dashed over to him to extinguish his cell phone light. Jane heard her say, “idiot.”

  The intruder pounded two more times, “Hey! Open the fucking door.”

  There was something distinctly feminine about the muffled voice, but Jane couldn’t be sure.

  “Get lost, asshole!” Stephanie yelled back, dropping pretenses. “We’ve got guns, and we’ve used ‘em before.”

  “Open up! This isn’t your place,” the person ordered.

  “Yes, it is, now move on!” Stephanie blared with more anger.

  Jane bit her lower lip and wondered where this was going to end. She didn’t really want to shoot someone tonight, but if faced with that option or letting someone hurt her dad or Connor, she knew she could.

  “Open the fucking door, bitch!” the woman yelled.

  This time, Jane had a terrible, foreboding feeling come over her, one even worse than before. Her stomach instantly curdled and became nauseous.

  “My old man owns the place,” the woman screeched. “Open up now! Where’s Gyles?”

  “What the…?” Steph questioned with confusion.

  Jane’s bad feeling became a reality as she realized who was pounding on the door at four in the morning.

  “Oh, dear Lord,” Jane whispered and held her hand over her mouth. Brutus wagged his tail twice.

  “Who’s in there?” the woman railed again and pounded her fist against the door three more times.

  Jane moved the chair.

  “What are you doing?” Stephanie hissed with fear and confusion.

  Without answering, because she really didn’t have to, Jane slid the heavy deadbolt Roman had installed back across the door frame and turned the smaller lock on the doorknob.

  She opened the door and said, “Hello, Maureen.”

  Her mother said, “Janie! How the hell are you, girl?”

  Chapter Four

  Roman

  Behind him, the vehicles were burning brightly in the street, the fireworks were still exploding in the calm, night sky, and he could see that Wren girl and her vicious looking dog running across the grassy, snow-covered yard behind the manufacturing plant. He was supposed to be sticking with her, but she was moving too fast and had darted to his left. Roman sped up and tried to close the gap.

  Off to their far right just beyond the perimeter fencing, there was a bonfire going. Men ran away from it to pursue Abraham’s fireworks diversion. He hoped the kid got clear of that building. A lot of people were now after him.

  “Through here,” Wren called quietly and crawled through a broken window. Her dog leaped through after her like some kind of professional stunt dog.

  Ro
man went through with more caution. It was pitch black inside, and his companion whipped out her tiny flashlight. It certainly didn’t put off a lot of light, but it did help some.

  “Over here,” she blurted and took off again.

  “Hey, wait!” he whispered with verve. “Stop, wait up!”

  She didn’t, which pissed Roman off because they were partnered up. Tristan was alone, but Alex and Spencer were working together.

  Wren led the way through some sort of jumbled maze storage area of items long ago left behind by the company. The room was at least two stories tall with open, metal rafters and trusses. It was as big as his high school gymnasium, too, which was a lot of space. This space wasn’t open or empty at all like a gym, though. There were stacks of boxes and crates as tall as him. Skids with huge wooden crates full of metal machine parts separated off into other mazes.

  Suddenly, men’s voices reached them, and so did their flashlight beams. They both ducked, and her dog crouched, too, which was obviously some sort of extensive training it had been through.

  “Shh,” she said to it and stroked its head.

  She also covered the end of her small flashlight and crept forward until she was at the end of their aisle. On either side of them were pallets full of machine parts and crates taller than him. He was under no impression that any of it would stop a bullet, though, so he kept his head down.

  Other men’s voices drew closer, but further away, he could hear even more as if they were running down a long hallway and getter quieter with the distance they were putting between them.

  Unfortunately, the few that were close weren’t getting quieter. They were in the same massive storage room as them.

  Somewhere in the distance, gunfire erupted and so did more fireworks. She turned and nodded. Then she did some sort of weird hand signals as if he should know them. Roman just frowned.

  “You go that way,” she whispered, indicating he should retreat back down the aisle. “I’ll go this way. Shoot them.”

  He nodded but wasn’t quite sure why he was allowing this chick he didn’t know to dictate how this was going to go.

  “Fuck if I know,” a man said, probably within twenty feet of them somewhere.

  Wren nodded as if he’d agreed to her plan and took off again. Roman did as she said and backtracked. Then he came out to the end of the aisle and headed toward the entryway by using the path at the end of the makeshift aisles. He was pretty sure this was what she wanted him to do. At least, she’d pointed this way.

  “Assholes,” someone else said.

  He hoped Wren was ready because he was going to have to do something and quick.

  “Idiot assholes,” the same person said and was echoed by some insults of the same thread. Then the first man said, “He’s sure this is gonna work, but I don’t know. And we’re not getting much outta’—”

  Roman wasn’t as startled to see them as they were him as they turned the corner toward him. He immediately aimed center mass on one and pulled the trigger. The other man raised his crossbow, but Roman fired again, hitting that one in the shoulder. He fell backward, tripped over his fallen comrade, and went down. Gunfire close by let him know Wren was involved, too. As he stepped closer to the man that he now realized was probably close in age to him, Wren appeared around the corner at a trot. She popped off a round into the kid’s chest and kept right on going, hopping over his dead body.

  “Come on!” she urged and didn’t look back.

  “Jesus,” he murmured and stepped over the two dead people.

  He caught up to her at the threshold of the open, broken door and snatched her arm.

  “Hey!” he said in a quiet tone. “Slow down! You’re going to get us killed running all pell-mell into this.”

  “Keep up or get left,” she returned, yanked free, and looked around the corner quickly before jogging out into the hallway and down it with her flashlight beam aimed at the floor. The dog just followed, and so did he.

  His adrenaline was coursing, sweaty beads of moisture ran down his forehead, and his hands felt damp from nerves. Wren seemed calm as could be. It didn’t make sense.

  Instead of grabbing her again, he just tried to watch their backs as she took the lead and went into another section of the building. It ended up being a dead-end where empty offices were located.

  “This way,” he said, tapping her shoulder.

  This time, he led, and they wound up in a more recently used manufacturing area. He wasn’t sure how long the place had been closed before the pandemic, but everything was covered in dust and cobwebs. A little moonlight spilled through the windows high at the tops of the walls, so he was able to navigate around equipment and machines.

  The dog growled once. A second later, four men ran through the wide open delivery door at the end of the building. He was pretty sure they weren’t with them, not Alex, Tristan, or Spencer. Without even pausing to verify, Wren was already shooting. She hit one, and the other three dove for cover.

  “Drongos,” she mumbled and stalked forward carefully. She gave him a “psst,” and Roman looked at her. She was indicating they should flank. Roman nodded and went away from her.

  Near him, a bullet pinged off of the metal cart, and he ducked and returned fire toward those men. They were obviously armed, too, but he wasn’t going to let the fact that he and Wren were outnumbered get him down.

  In a hunched over fashion, he dashed to the next piece of much larger machinery. A green laser light illuminated the wall above where those men were hiding. It gave off enough light that he could see one’s shoulder and leg that wasn’t very well-concealed. Roman aimed in and fired. The man screamed and fell backward.

  “Let’s get outta’ here!” he heard one of them call in a hushed tone to the others. “I think it’s the cops or the FBI or something.”

  One of them stood up, and Wren beat him to the punch. Then he heard her dog barking and growling. A second later, another round went off following by a man’s scream.

  Another popped up to probably help his fallen partner, and Roman fired and missed. Wren shot him. Then she whistled, which he knew was for him and not the dog because it was quiet again. He jogged carefully over to her right as she fired another round into one of the men’s prone bodies. Damn. She was definitely heartless.

  “Let’s go,” she ordered and stepped through the open delivery door. The dog was glued to her side and moved in time with her. Roman wondered if it was a police dog before all this or if she’d trained it to be one. Maybe she did that for a living. Of course, she was his age, so that didn’t make a lot of sense. She was definitely a puzzle, but he wasn’t complaining too much. She could shoot very well, which was a bonus right now.

  “Did you shine that laser?” he whispered as they traversed a long hallway. There must’ve been skylights or something of that sort at one point above them because snow was falling through wide openings in the ceiling high above.

  “Yeah,” she answered without further explanation, which Roman was starting to understand was the usual with her.

  “Thanks,” he said and got nothing.

  They went up a set of metal stairs and down a short hallway that led to another set going back down. Then they were in a much bigger warehouse than before with even larger manufacturing equipment.

  Outside somewhere, gunfire went off, which seemed so odd but kind of normal now, too.

  Suddenly, she stopped right as the dog growled. One touch from her and it quit. She squatted, so Roman followed her example.

  “In here!” a man said.

  “I’m coming!” a woman replied. “We gotta find ‘em. We can’t let them get away. That punk ass kid already did. Rob’s lookin’ for him.”

  “Elijah,” Wren whispered brokenly. Then she looked over her shoulder at Roman and nodded.

  The man and woman were carrying much larger flashlights and were spotlighting themselves essentially.

  “Don’t shoot her,” Wren whispered. “You take him.”


  Roman nodded and half rose from his squatted position to get ready.

  The man said, “He ain’t talkin’, but the boss said he’ll get him to. He’s moving us all to wherever that kid and his friend, the soldier guy and their people are from. We’ll all—”

  Roman pulled the trigger and silenced him. Wren also pulled the trigger, which he thought she didn’t want to do, so he was confused as the woman as flew backward. She crashed hard into a piece of machinery, a table saw sort of equipment. She screeched loudly as she went all the way down. Wren wasted no time and ran over to them where she shot the man in the chest, although Roman was pretty sure he’d already killed him. She changed out her magazine quickly and stashed the empty in her jacket. Roman was carrying a compact rifle care of Tristan, but she had slung her rifle and was using her pistol.

  He kicked the woman’s revolver away, and Wren knelt beside her.

  “Where’s the boy?” she questioned immediately and without pretense, her thick accent on full display.

  “You shot me!”

  “I’ll shoot you again like I did your friend here if you don’t tell me,” Wren warned and poked her pistol against the woman’s shoulder wound where blood was seeping out slowly. “Or I’ll let my dog finish you off.”

  Dixie mewled softly and pranced in place as if she understood. Weird. These two were oddly connected.

  “Okay, wait,” the woman wisened up quickly. “He’s in the back.”

  “No, he’s not. We came in the back,” Roman said.

  “Not that back. I mean the side of the back.”

  “Where? How do I get there?” Wren asked. When the woman hesitated, Wren poked her again, and this time, Dixie growled.

  “Oh-oh-okay!” she relented. “Go out those doors over there,” she said, indicating the ones she’d just come through with her dead companion. “That way’s easiest. Down the hall to the right. Make a left at the end of the hall. He’s in the back part of the building. You probably came in a different way. He’s back there. Tied up. Got loose, but I’m sure they’ve got him again. Boss has been questioning him. You can’t miss it. Past the cafeteria and bathrooms.”