No Light Beyond

by L. Douglas Hogan

  The power that the apocalypse had brought him had turned him into a narcissistic man with a particular craving for power. All the times he had used Lydia against Mason were to persuade him into joining his ranks with the express purpose of making Haven stronger. When that didn’t work, threats and intimidation became the rule of thumb.

  “Mr. Hughes,” the Colonel called out. He needed the advice of his chief of security.

  “Here, sir,” Michael Hughes answered.

  The Colonel always kept his head logistics and security personnel close by. Not only were they top in their respective fields, but they were also his closest advisors.

  “We have a problem, Mr. Hughes,” the Colonel said, standing up. He put his hand on Michael’s shoulder and escorted him into an adjoining room where Lydia could not hear them speak. “I have to be frank with you, Mr. Hughes. That little girl is sick, and sometime very soon, she will make us all very sick. Her father won’t stop until he has her back. He wants me dead, and she’s the only reason why I’m still alive.”

  “Sir, if you were to give her back, don’t you think he’d leave this place? I mean, it’s surrounded by Screamers, and he may not think you’re worth the hassle. Not to mention, if she’s soon to be contagious, she will infect him, right?”

  “All very good points, Mr. Hughes. You’ve given me something to think about. What are the chances of him gaining access to the tunnels?”

  “Every sentry has a key. If he had a key, I think he would have gained access by now, or maybe even opened the gate yesterday when he saw Lydia on this side of it.”

  “Again, all good points. I want to release her, but there’s no safe way to do it. If I send her outside, I’d be condemning her to death. If I leave her in here, I’m risking the safety of all that’s left of Haven.”

  “Sir, with all due respect, there’s not much left of Haven. Of all the Order that penetrated our gates, we now have Screamers instead—roaming around our courtyards, preventing us from accessing the gardens and greenhouses, the only places we don’t have underground tunnels leading us to. If I may speak freely?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “I recommend we make contact with Mason and promise to give him his daughter, and in return he leads the Screamers away from our courtyards. We saw him standing shoulder to shoulder with one of them. He did so for some time before it finally turned on him.”

  “Make it happen. Send an emissary through the tunnels to the vocational building where we last saw him. Tell him that if he wants his daughter, then he needs to meet her at the front of the administration building in about thirty minutes. We will release her to him under certain reasonable conditions.”

  “Yes, sir,” Michael said, and he appointed an emissary to enter the tunnel system according to the Colonel’s plan.

  “Let’s end this,” Sanders said, turning back to look into the room where Lydia was playing on the floor.

  Mason and the preacher had entered the tunnel systems and followed the narrow corridors to Sanders’s headquarters building. The hatch that led to the floor of the administration building could not be opened with the key that they were using.

  “We’re going to have to go with plan B,” Mason said.

  “Okay, I’ll tell Shemika,” the preacher said, turning around to lead the way out of the tunnel.

  The two of them were several yards through the tunnel system when they heard a man yell from behind them, “Hello? Who’s there?”

  Mason and the preacher went to take cover around the corner of the next turn, but there were dome-shaped security mirrors affixed to the ceiling at every corner. All they could hope for was that the man coming down the hallway didn’t see them.

  “Hello? Is anybody there?”

  Mason and the preacher were tucked tightly against the wall, but the security mirror gave away their position. They realized this when the man said, “Mason, I have a word for you from the Colonel. He wants to make a deal with you. I’m here to negotiate on his behalf.”

  Mason stepped out and pointed his rifle at the man. “Start talking. You have zero seconds to comply.”

  The man would have put his hands in the air had there been enough space to do so. The halls were tight and the ceiling was lower than six feet from the ground. “I’m unarmed,” he said. “The Colonel says he’s willing to return your daughter to you. He said he’s going to place her outside the vocational office door in thirty minutes if you meet his demands.”

  Thirty minutes later, plan B was in motion, with modest changes, and Mason was atop the water tower with his rifle firmly rested against the rail. He was situated facing the administration building, and his scope was focused on one of the windows where he could see some of the activity that was taking place in that particular room. Just outside that window was the chlorine dioxide tank, a highly flammable and combustible chemical that the facility used to treat its water systems.

  In the distance, Mason heard the engine of the tow truck that he had left in place start up, plugging the hole he had made in the gate to keep the Fleshers contained within the perimeter of the facility. Romeo’s number one henchman, Leroy Wilson, was tied to the boom arm like Smoka, Frenzy, and Slasha had done. He was hanging low to the ground, and several hundred Screamers were in pursuit of the man as he hung barely out of reach. The preacher drove the truck around the courtyards of the prison for several minutes, attracting as many Screamers as he could.

  Inside the administration building, Michael was looking out of one of the windows when he spotted the tow truck driving around the grounds. “Colonel, you’re going to want to come take a look at this,” he shouted. The Colonel was in the other room when the shout was made.

  “Stay here, sweetheart,” he said to Lydia as he left her alone in the Colonel’s Court and went to the front lobby area where Michael was looking out of the window.

  “What is it, Mr. Hughes?”

  “It’s a tow truck, sir. I’m not sure who.”

  “It must be Mason,” he assumed.

  The truck came to a stop just outside the building, and with it, several hundred Screamers.

  The men watched with great interest as a man they had never seen before stepped out of the cab of the truck and walked straight through the horde, unfazed.

  The preacher walked up to the door and knocked on it.

  “Who are you?” he heard a muffled voice say from the inside. He could barely hear them over the noise of the Screamers.

  “I’m here on behalf of Mason. We accept the terms of your offer. Please bring Lydia to the window so I can see that she’s safe.”

  Mason was carefully watching through his scope at the movement inside the room. He wasn’t seeing Lydia anywhere, so he assumed she was in another room. He had no answers for the time being and was relying completely on the preacher’s ability to negotiate his daughter’s release.

  “If you you’re here to negotiate, why did you bring them with you?” Sanders asked.

  “They’re here as insurance,” the preacher answered.

  “Insurance for what?”

  “Bring Lydia to the door and release her to me, or I leave and they stay,” he said.

  “We’re not giving you anything until you get those man-eaters out of Haven altogether,” Sanders demanded.

  “Fine,” the preacher said. “Have it your way, but be warned. Mason told me he was going to fill your tunnel system with Screamers. I think that would mean that you have no way out of there. Am I correct in assuming that?”

  “He’s bluffing,” Michael said.

  “How do I know you’re not bluffing, mister? How would he be able to do that without a key to the tunnel systems?”

  “He took a key from the sentry at the vocational building.”

  Sanders turned to look at Michael. “Could that be true?”

  “Yes. That’s a possibility I didn’t consider. That would mean the sentry is most likely dead, and he would have keys to the vocational building and the access hatch.
”

  “Go check it out,” Sanders commanded.

  The preacher grew tired of waiting, so he went back to the truck and put it in drive. He began to press it into the outer wall of the building in an attempt to scare the Colonel into submission.

  “What are you doing?” Sanders called out to the man, but he clearly could not hear him through the wall and over the sound of the diesel engine. The man kept accelerating against the wall. Finally, Michael returned to Sanders and said, “It appears to be clear, Colonel. I think we should evacuate the building and head to another one where he won’t be able to find us for a while.”

  “Fetch the girl, and don’t touch her. Let’s get out of here,” he said to Michael.

  The Colonel had four men in his entourage, not counting Michael. Michael called out for them, and they went to grab Lydia, but Michael stopped them. “The boss said don’t touch her. Just get her and let’s go.”

  Michael opened the hatch and held it open for Sanders’s security detail of four men to enter the tunnels first. After them went Lydia, Sanders, and lastly Michael, who secured the hatch behind himself. Once down the ladder, he walked in front of Sanders and behind his four bodyguards. They proceeded with caution, wondering why there would be such a bluff if they knew about the sentry key. The guards had their rifles at the ready when they heard a scream in the hallway not far from their location that they believed to be a Flesher.

  In a panic, they turned to run back to the administration building, and Shemika came out from the corner behind them and emptied her magazine into the men’s backs as they ran. Several of them dropped, but she wasn’t sure how many. She was careful to aim high in her attempts to keep from hitting Lydia, doing so, she was able to plug many of them in the chest cavity. She saw both Lydia and the Colonel escape the area, so she took her time to check on the men she had shot. All of them were gasping for air and had received fatal shots.

  Mason was closely monitoring the activity through the windows of the building. When he saw the men talking, he saw one of them go back and speak to a person he couldn’t see. It had to be Lydia because the person was too short to be seen and the guard was looking down as he spoke. He waited for them to clear the building and gave it a few extra seconds to make sure Lydia was clear of harm’s way. He then pointed his rifle at the chlorine dioxide tank and squeezed the trigger. The result was a huge explosion that knocked out the side of the building and sent several dozen Screamers flying through the air.

  Shemika was still in the tunnels below—examining the dying men and moving their weapons away, tossing them down the hallway out of their reach—when the explosion shook the building above her. Fragments of rock and dust fell from the tunnel ceiling. Shemika knew what had happened. Things were transpiring as Mason had planned. She went back to work and counted five dead or dying men. One of them had keys that she took and used to access the hatch of the administration building.

  Shemika slowly lifted the hatch that was already unlocked. She pointed her rifle out into the immediate vicinity of the opening and tried to see the Colonel. When she didn’t see him, she climbed out and slowly moved into the lobby area with her rifle aiming high.

  The Colonel was standing in the lobby with Lydia. Both of them were choking on the chlorine dioxide gasses that had not been burnt up in the blast. Shemika grabbed Lydia and ran outside to meet the preacher. They were joined by Mason, who’d made his descent from the tower as soon as he blew up the chemical tank. He scooped Lydia up out of Shemika’s hands and embraced her so hard she had to say, “You’re crushing me, Dad.”

  Mason put her down and set her to his left side and held her hand. With his right hand, he was brandishing a pistol that he’d pulled out of the tow truck on his way back. He had it pointed at the Colonel.

  “Please don’t kill me.”

  “I made a promise to you that I’d kill you.”

  “Dad, don’t shoot Mr. Sanders. He’s a good man.”

  Mason looked at Lydia with a confused look on his face. “He’s a good man?”

  “He let me play in the toy box.”

  It all seemed too simple to be true. He’d used her for leverage against Mason, and he knew that to be a truth. But he also knew that other than being infected, she was otherwise in good health. “Did Mr. Sanders ever hurt you?”

  “No,” she answered without elaborating.

  Mason knew why he was taking such good care of her. It wasn’t because he was a good man. He knew she had been fooled, but he loved Lydia and saw her innocence as a virtue that he didn’t have. Mason’s hand squeezed the grip of the pistol even tighter as he tried to reconcile his weaknesses against Lydia’s strengths. The trigger was inching backwards and was set to release the hammer at any moment, ending the Colonel’s life.

  “Shemika, can you take Lydia for a moment?” he asked her. He didn’t think he had it in himself to let the Colonel live, but just in case he pulled the trigger, he wanted Lydia safe.

  “Sure,” she answered, taking her by the hand. “Hi, Lydia. My name is Shemika. I’m going to ask you to close your eyes and cover your ears, honey.”

  “You don’t have to kill him, Mason,” the preacher added.

  Lydia did as she was asked by Shemika. Meanwhile, Mason was focusing his aim on the Colonel, torn between the justice he had promised the Colonel and the request Lydia had made to spare his life.

  As he stood there, pondering her petition, a horde of Screamers, downwind from them, distracted Mason’s aim. With Mason distracted, the Colonel ran from where he was standing and hid behind Mason, who turned and punched him in the face, knocking him to the ground. Mason then turned to face the Screamers and was joined by the preacher, who pulled his sword from its sheath. They were prepared to fight for their lives as Mason called out, “Shemika, get Lydia to safety.”

  Shemika turned to run opposite the direction of the Screamers, but they stopped dead in their tracks when they passed through the chlorine dioxide cloud that was slowly moving toward them. One by one the Screamers not only halted their advance on them, but started falling to the ground like large sacks of potatoes.

  “The chemical cloud shut them down,” Mason said. “Chlorine dioxide did the trick.”

  Mason turned around to face the direction that Shemika was running and called for her. Within moments, she had brought Lydia back.

  “Go check ’em,” Mason said to the Colonel.

  “Go check them?”

  “I didn’t stutter, Colonel Sanders. Now go check the Screamers. Go on, now. Make sure they’re dead.”

  The Colonel walked ever so slowly toward the Screamers that were lying on the ground. When he got there, he nudged one of them with his foot, but solicited no response. He then stooped to take a closer look. The eyes in the face of one of the Screamers were darting back and forth like there was neural activity, but the creature was otherwise unresponsive to him.

  A loud shot rang out as Mason shot the creature that the Colonel was inspecting. The sudden noise was anticipated by little Lydia, who was wise to the fact her dad wanted to kill Mr. Sanders; the shot startled her, nonetheless. Sanders was also startled, but he jumped up and fell backwards, expecting that the creature might awaken from its slumber, but it didn’t. A field of bodies littered the area surrounding them.

  Mason took in the scene and realized that mankind was under attack. Whether biological or man-made, he didn’t know, but looking out over the carnage and at Sanders, he realized he wasn’t the threat he had thought him to be. He had defecated on himself when Mason plugged the Screamer. The sight alone was worth letting him live.

  Mason walked up to the Colonel and pressed the gun to his head. He wanted him dead, but Lydia’s request was front and foremost in his head. Lydia was infected, and he knew she needed a physician. The field of bodies opened Mason’s eyes to reconsider Lydia’s request.

  “We need to stick together, Colonel,” he said, putting his gun away.

  “Oh, thank you, Mason,” he sa
id, standing up and backing away from the pile of Screamers. “We should work together,” he offered them, looking around at the group of survivors. He walked over to Mason and put his hand on his shoulder. “I could use a good man like you.”

  “Colonel, if you don’t get your hand off me, I will find a Screamer and feed you to it,” Mason warned.

  The Colonel lifted his hand from Mason’s shoulder. “I’ll take that as a no,” he added.

  “Can you rebuild this place, Colonel?”

  “With some help, yes. We know what stops them, now,” he said pointing to the place where the chlorine dioxide tank used to sit.

  “Do you have any more?” the preacher asked.

  “We know where to get some,” he stated.

  The preacher looked around at the massacre and made a suggestion to the Colonel, “I can clear out what’s left in a couple of hours if you can get the front gate repaired so no more come in.”

  “I accept your assistance,” the Colonel said, extending his hand to shake the preacher’s. “You look familiar, by the way. Were you here before?”

  “I was. It was a long time ago. I left after Haven’s first encounter with a Screamer.”

  “Samuel, right? You’re Samuel.”

  “I used to be. Now I’m something else,” he said, walking away, looking up at Romeo as he went.

  Mason saw the preacher look up at Romeo. “Oh yeah, I almost forgot about you,” Mason said.

  Romeo, who had been watching everything unfold, tried to remain silent, hoping to be left alone so he could manipulate Sanders to release him from his tether to the ladder.

  “You tried to feed me to the Screamers, as I recollect,” Mason said to Romeo.

  “It’s a new world, my man. A man has to do what a man has to do.”

  Mason looked at Lydia then back at Romeo. “I’m going to have to agree with you on that one thing, Romeo.”

  Mason started to walk away, but remembered the preacher’s prophecy about a man without faith and fear. “Tell me something—what’s your name again?”

  “Romeo Ramirez,” he answered.