Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Prologue
Entry One
Entry Two
Entry Three
Entry Four
Entry Five
Entry Six
Entry Seven
Entry Eight
Entry Nine
Entry Twenty-Seven
Epilogue
About the Author
Books by L. Douglas Hogan
NO LIGHT
BEYOND
A POST-ATOMIC TALE OF SURVIVAL
L. DOUGLAS HOGAN
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2017 L. Douglas Hogan
No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
ISBN-13: 978-1979710398
ISBN-10:1979710392
Prologue
“Lydia!” Mason cried out as he pushed through the debris of his upper-level apartment. “Lydia! Where are you?” Mason’s heart was pounding as he kicked chunks of wall that were blocking his path, knocking them out of the way. He called her name over and over again, but there was no response. Just outside, at ground level, screams could be heard at random intervals, almost always followed immediately by the sound of a gunshot blast.
The electricity that normally hummed through the walls and lit the nighttime sky was gone; the sounds of vehicles in the streets were no more. The only thing that lit the heavens was the moon, and it was rapidly disappearing in a gray-colored haze.
Mason never wanted to raise his seven-year-old daughter in the Windy City. He knew crime rates were notoriously high, but figured violence was more prone to be located in the impoverished sections of the inner city, so he rented them a fancy, but affordable, apartment in an area less frequently visited by violence. He was the only male office associate in the business for which he worked, which was a far cry from what he was used to. There was a brief time after his military service where he worked as a mercenary during the war—that was before his daughter was born. He never allowed the fact that he was an office associate deter him because he took that job for her, his precious daughter, Lydia. Nothing else mattered to him.
“Lydia? Are you here?” he yelled into the darkness. “Tamara?” he called out, hoping that maybe his babysitter was still in the apartment, but she didn’t answer either. Mason realized he was now searching the dark apartment in vain. He felt his way along the walls using nothing but memory and touch to steer him to the front door and into the main hallway.
As he moved along, he heard a loud gunshot in the next apartment. After that, the scurry of what sounded like two or three men came bustling out the door. The voices were African American males, and one of them said, “Hurry, grab the girl and let’s get outta here.”
Mason knew the neighbor and all of his comings and goings. He was a friendly old widower that used to help keep an eye on the place in his absence, and he didn’t have a girl. None of those men belonged in that apartment, and Mason feared the worst. It was that very fear that gripped his heart. He was unarmed but didn’t hesitate to give another shout for his daughter and push his way through the darkness towards the neighbor’s door.
“Lydia,” he shouted. He imagined the worst-case scenario and figured those men had just killed his neighbor and probably had his daughter in tow, given the information at hand. When he had made his way back out into the darkened hallway, he heard two more shots coming from farther down the hallway. Mason called out for his daughter again, but there was no answer. After a brief moment, Mason began heading down the hallway, and then he decided to stop and listen. It was there that he heard Lydia’s voice for the last time. “Please don’t hurt me; let me go.”
Mason panicked and ran down the hallway, where he collided into men with flashlights. One of them pointed the light into Mason’s eyes.
“Hey,” he shouted to the men, but he could not see them for the brightness of the light. He immediately grabbed the man’s hand that was carrying the flashlight and pulled him off balance. He followed up by raising his knee as high as he could and brought it down onto the stranger’s leg, at the joint, dislocating the man’s knee from the side.
“Daddy, help,” Lydia cried out.
The next thing Mason saw was bright flashes of light accompanied by the deafening sounds of three or four bullets being shot in his direction.
“C’mon, Smoka,” one of the men said. “Let’s get outta here.” The man known as Smoka stopped shooting, and the other man grabbed the man with a broken leg and helped him to his feet.
The men continued towards the emergency exit, leaving Mason alone, gripping his abdomen as the men carried off his precious daughter. He had a burning sensation in his stomach, and he could feel the warmth of his own blood on his hand. He made his way to the exit where he saw the flashlight go and started to descend the stairs. He could hear the men far ahead of him pounding their way down the steps. The metallic handrails carried a ting sound for long distances, as did the distinctive squeaky sole on the bottom of one of the men’s shoes.
Mason could feel that his legs were getting weak as he moved along. He had an intense will to soldier on toward the exit of the building.
When he had finally made it to the outside of the building, he fell to the ground.
“Lydia,” he shouted over and over again.
“Lydia,” he said in a softer tone. His strength was waning, and with it went the ability to call for his daughter. Mason looked up at the moon and watched it as her glory faded into blackness. The gray haze covered the night sky. With his daughter gone, he surmised that his life was about to end. He considered the violence that covered the streets; wolves prowling the streets with flashlights and firearms, killing innocent men and women for their belongings. There was little hope that he would reach Lydia alive.
Mason lay down on his side and rested his head on his arm and waited for his sight to go dim. Across the street sat a blind homeless man that he had seen a hundred times before. The streets were running wild with violent activity and chaos, but that old man was as calm as the morning sea. The cardboard sign he was holding read “Isaiah 26:19.” Mason always told himself he would look it up someday, but he never did.
A moment later, Mason could hear a person run up to him, and they grabbed his arm. The watch that was on his wrist was a Walmart purchase, but the thief didn’t know what he was taking. Mason felt the person’s hand patting up and down his body. It made its way down to his side and reached into his back pocket to steal his wallet, but he didn’t even care. The person left, and the next thing Mason knew, he was being dragged down the sidewalk by his legs.
As he helplessly gave way to whatever fate would befall him, he looked out into the ensuing chaos and saw another man running at him with a baseball bat. Whoever was pulling Mason by the leg dropped it to take on the bat-wielding man, but he wasn’t alone. He had a friend come running up behind him. “That’s him, Smoka. Look at the gunshot wounds.”
Smoka hit the man with the bat a few times while the second assailant began kicking Mason in the ribs and abdomen. Mason was so out of it, all he could do was watch as his own consciousness faded in and out. His eyes were blurry, and he couldn’t make out the details of the men’s faces. When Smoka was done beating the mystery man, he turned to face Mason. “You shouldn’t have interfered in my business,” he said, then
drew the ball bat over his head and brought it down across Mason’s forehead.
Entry One
Two Years Later
“This is the first time I ever journaled anything. I guess women call this thing a ‘diary,’ but in the masculine, it’s a ‘journal.’ I’ll give it a try and see how it goes. I was encouraged to keep a record of events while I search for you. It is believed that documenting key memories and notes that I can refer back to as I progress through my journey will aid me in my quest. I’m not sure what happens now. I guess I should start like this:
“Dear Lydia, you’re not old enough to understand the events that have taken place and where the world goes from here. I guess I need to let you know that things are complicated, very complicated. I used to think life was simple; I’d wake up, shower, brush, floss, work, go home, spend time with you, sleep, rinse and repeat. Life was good, but that was before the Flash.
“The Flash changed everything; it lived up to its title. In an instant, life as we knew it was over. The air-conditioning turned off and the lights went out; water stopped flowing when the pumps stopped working; airliners fell from the sky, countless dead or missing, and nobody could communicate with anything by way of electronics; the economy completely collapsed, as did the government; when the paychecks stopped flowing, law enforcement and military personnel hiked home to their families; the majority of those who survived the trip found their wives and children were missing or dead. I don’t like having to write things out in such colorful detail, but the truth of the matter is, what we used to know as reality is gone. There’s a new reality now, and it’s harsh. You’re somewhere out there, and it’s my job to find you and to prepare you for it.
“Nobody knows what happened, not exactly, anyway. There are whispers in the wind of some kind of worldwide catastrophic nuclear war. Others say that there was a massive coordinated electromagnetic pulse attack over key electrical grid locations, facilitating a perfect nonlethal attack on the United States that did not go unanswered. It is believed that the US received enough notice to retaliate, but not enough to prepare its citizens.
“Regardless of what manner of attack, the outcome appears to be the same. An unexpected side effect of the attack was a slight shifting of the tectonic plates that gave rise to the eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano. Ninety thousand people died instantly. It laid molten ash a foot thick everywhere within a thousand miles.
“Over the course of the last year, the people of the United States have turned against themselves. Upwards of seventy percent of the population succumbed to freezing temperatures, starvation, violent crimes, and pestilence. Most have moved southeastward and crammed themselves into the warmer climates, where disease gained a foothold and raged out of control. Tropical storms were affected, and their trek always seemed to lead them through Florida, where warm flooded conditions gave rise to many more problems. Some say that the eastern states offer solace, but I’m skeptical.
“Our enemies have won; they have beaten the world’s superpower at minimal cost, and although my life pales in comparison to the lives of the heroes of this country that have been lost and to those who are struggling to survive, there is one life that matters most to me; it’s you, Lydia Nicole. You’re my daughter, my only child, and all that I have left. If you’re out there, I will wade through the fires of hell to find you. This journal belongs to your dad, Mason Loss, and this is our story.”
Mason closed his journal, stuffed it into the cargo pocket of his pant leg, and listened as the large doors shut behind him. He adjusted his backpack and its straps that securely gripped his shoulders. The Reservation, where he had once found safety and security, was being left behind and traded in for a far harsher environment full of pain and death.
The outside world, also known as the Barrens, was not as he had left it. There were no more comforts of home or embellishments of life to satisfy one’s definition of happiness, or even contentment, for that matter. No, the world as Mason knew it was gone; it had been consumed by a stronger more powerful and darkened world of evil barbarism, cannibalism, fierce competition and survival of the fittest. It was a dog-eat-dog world where there were no rules of engagement, no laws, and no policy and procedure, as he had grown so accustomed to. The way of life that governed a person was now whatever he or she deemed to be right in his or her own eyes.
As he stood there, taking in the air and gazing out into the harsh reality of what would be his new life, Mason stepped off in the direction of the destroyed buildings and man-made structures that littered the horizon. The tops of each of them looked as if they had been chewed off by an enormous earth-eating caterpillar, leaving only the steel frames to prove that these structures used to be a symbol of American strength, industrial fortitude, and ingenuity. Now they stood as a stark reminder of the true frailty of a mankind dependent upon electricity and all its inventions. Mason couldn’t help but think of the old warrior code that once existed in these lands. Columbus called it the New World, but in truth, it was ancient to the indigenous people that once lived here without dependence upon electricity and industrialization. That old warrior code had been revived; be strong or be dead.
Ashes fell lightly from the sky like small gray snowflakes, as the wind would carry a tiny feather across the cityscape, hither and yond. This thin blanket of ash covered everything that was outside like an unexpected snowfall by night would, without prejudice.
Mason’s old apartment
Silence filled the collapsing corridors of the old abandoned apartment building. The smell of putrescence was overpowering and forced Mason to cover his nose with the red handkerchief that was tied around his neck. His eyes were all that remained visible beneath his dingy gray 2016 World Series Chicago Cubs baseball cap, a symbol of what used to be the great American pastime. This was Mason’s first visit to the apartment where he last saw Lydia.
This time Mason was equipped. A nickel-plated .45-caliber pistol was attached to his right leg with a holster and a Ka-Bar on his left side. In his left hand, he brandished a truly rare commodity, a fully functional flashlight.
To pay for the batteries and the other equipment he was leaving with, Mason had had to pledge a month of manual labor to the Reservation. The labor couldn’t begin until he had fully recovered from his near-death experience with the men that kidnapped his daughter. He had spent two years in a coma caused by his wounds and head injury. The way Mason saw it, he’d owed at least a month of labor to the Reservation for saving his life. They never requested a fee for that act of kindness.
The Reservation originally served as a triage center for the wounded citizens of the inner city. It later evolved into a survival outpost where Good Samaritans sojourned and contributed by utilizing their skills and abilities for the betterment of the community. Its leader was Zach Willis; he was a firm leader, but also fair.
Mason found the corpse of his babysitter near the front room couch. Her throat was cut, she had been shot, and she was grotesquely bloated and seemed to have frozen in time that way with no hope for natural decomposition. The ashes of Yellowstone were sucking the moisture from the air, severely hampering the process.
He pulled his backpack off and sat down on the couch next to his old friend. He wore a tattered cloth over his mouth, like most people did, to avoid the inhalation of an occasional gust of wind that carried with it the volcanic dust. There was a brief moment of silence before Mason lowered his tattered dust filter and opened his mouth to speak.
“I bet you thought I would never return. It kills me to know that you died alone. I’m sure you were feeling regrets as well. After the Flash, you kept Lydia here, the safest place you could have possibly been; but it wasn’t enough, was it? I came as fast as I could. My car wouldn’t start… nobody’s would. They say an electromagnetic pulse knocked out everything. No busses, no metrorail systems; nothing was left that could drive.”
Mason adjusted his position and set his backpack on the floor. When he did, he noticed somethin
g dangling from Tamara’s right hand. It was a gold necklace that she had pulled from the neck of one of her assailants. Mason had to forcibly open her hand to break the necklace free of the rigor mortis. It was a golden men’s pendant in the shape of a dollar sign and was filled with white sapphire stones.
Mason closed his eyes to remember what had happened the night Lydia was taken and Tamara was murdered. One of the men was called Smoka, and another must surely have a limp. One of them had a squeaky shoe, and one of them was missing a golden pendant. Mason rolled the pendant over between his fingers and saw an engraving that read “Slasha.” It was the Slasha name that drew his attention back to her throat, which had been slit.
“I’m going to find who took Lydia and did this to you. When I do, I’m going to kill them,” Mason said as he stood up, grabbing his pack, and headed to the back room.
Fastened to his left side was a Ka-Bar knife that he had stolen during his service in the Marines. He had acquired it from a trash can when he was on armory duty. It had a slight defect in that the tip was broken off, but he took it to a friend’s metal shop and grinded the tip down into a double-edged point. Mason used the knife to cut up a large section of the carpet and pried the floorboards up to expose a cache of pistols, shotguns, and rifles with enough ammunition to get him started on his journey. He bagged as much as he could carry, threw a rifle and a shotgun over his shoulder, and left the apartment complex.
The sun was tightly concealed behind the smoke and Yellowstone ash and offered little in the way of much else than a direction guide. The temperatures were much cooler than the days before the Flash, so staying warm through the day was much easier than the evening hours. The sun was going down in the west, so Mason unrolled his sleeves and dared to venture toward the east where Lake Michigan sat, and with it, Chicago’s most notorious gang, the Ebony Pistols.
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