American Midnight | Book 2 | Nightfall

by Kazzie, David

  His soft exhalation was enough to alert Bill of the imminent attack. He leaped out of his chair like a cannon just as Alexander stepped into a mighty swing. It struck Bill squarely in the back, drawing a howl of pain, but it was not enough to drop him.

  Oh, shit.

  Bill’s hands clawed against his battered back as he staggered around in pain, still unclear what was unfolding. He turned just as Alexander readied another mighty swing. This time, he parried to his left, allowing only a glancing blow to strike his midsection.

  Now Alexander was terrified. He was unskilled in combat, and Bill was a beast of a man. He was rapidly running out of time to put the man down for good. Bill charged at his attacker, his hands scrambling for a weapon lodged just so in his waistband.

  Fear roared through Alexander as Bill’s shoulder connected with his own. Bill stumbled, and the pair tumbled to the ground. No words were spoken; it had become an elemental struggle for life and death. Alexander was in big trouble now. Tears of panic and terror flowed down his cheeks. He was going to die here. His stupid, juvenile plan had blown up in his face because he was not a fighter. He was not his father’s son.

  Bill pushed himself up to his hands and knees. He pushed up onto one foot, breathing heavily, one knee still on the ground. Perhaps the initial strike had done more damage than Alexander had realized. Owing it to his youth, the boy was on his feet quickly and recovered the club he’d dropped as Bill had tackled him. He loaded up another swing just as Bill regained his footing.

  This third swing connected solidly with the side of Bill’s head, resulting in a sickening crunch from the fracture of the periorbital bone around his eye; Bill dropped back to a knee, completely dazed now. Afraid to hit him again with the club, Alexander finished the job with a foot under Bill’s chin. It flattened him on his back, and he lay still.

  Alexander’s legs buckled underneath him, and it took all he had to remain upright. He still had so much work to do, but he couldn’t focus on it. He staggered around in a circle, dizzy, his eyes unable to focus. Bill lay unconscious at his feet. Or maybe he was dead, and Alexander was now a murderer. Alexander didn’t know, and he was too afraid to check.

  Norah.

  Norah.

  Norah.

  That brought him back to center.

  Immediately, his heart rate slowed, and his legs steadied underneath him. Crazy what love could make you do. He laughed, and had he heard himself, he would have been troubled by the manic, screeching sound of said laugh.

  Step two.

  Keys.

  He needed the keys to the cell. They were clipped to Bill’s belt loop. Finally, something had gone Alexander’s way. He grabbed them and Bill’s lantern and slipped inside the garage. The access panel to the basement was in the back corner of the garage, catty-corner from the entrance. He made his way around the dusty carts. The garage was still redolent with the old smells of oil and gas.

  He unlocked the access panel and climbed down the short ladder descending to the basement. Time was of the essence. He approached the cell and was surprised to find the prisoner awake and waiting for him.

  “I wondered when I’d be seeing you,” he said.

  How could the man be so calm? Alexander’s heart was beating so quickly, it felt like it might strangle him.

  “If I let you out, you’ll take me to Norah,” Alexander said as firmly as he could. He wanted assurances. He wanted guarantees.

  “You got it, boss,” Jack said.

  “I mean it, no funny stuff.”

  Jack held up his hands in faux surrender.

  “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

  Alexander he was flying on blind faith now. Once the cell was open, there was no guarantee that Jack would live up to his end of the bargain. He looked to be dangerous. The kind of guy who could snap Alexander’s neck without breaking a sweat. He hesitated, but then he remembered he couldn’t turn back now. He was past the point of no return. The attack on Bill alone probably warranted a date with his father’s hanging tree. And nepotism wouldn’t save him, either. His father would probably slide the noose around his son’s neck himself.

  Because without order, there was chaos.

  “We go right now,” Alexander said. “Right now.”

  “It probably wouldn’t be wise to wait until after breakfast,” Jack said in a slightly mocking tone.

  Alexander’s cheeks flushed with shame. It was a dumb thing to say. Of course the prisoner would want to go right now. He slid the key into the lock, pausing before he altered the course of his life forever.

  “My dad will kill me,” he said softly. “Literally murder me.”

  Jack didn’t reply. It was not hyperbole. If they were caught, there was a good chance that Alexander would pay for this transgression with his life.

  “Well, let’s get on out of here then.”

  He turned the key slowly, feeling the tumblers turn, the lock disengaging.

  The first act of his life was now ending. Everything up to now had been pointing toward this moment in time. And it felt right. It felt like the best, truest thing he had ever done.

  The cell door drifted ajar.

  It was done. Jack wouldn’t allow the cell to be locked again with him in it. It didn’t matter. Alexander didn’t want to undo it. He had no regrets. He had done a good thing, perhaps a great thing. Even though there was something in it for him.

  “Thanks,” Jack said. “I owe you.”

  “I just want to see Norah.”

  Jack nodded.

  Alexander took the point, leading the way up the stairs. Jack held Bill’s gun. A hostage ruse might buy them a few moments if things went sideways. The garage was dark, silent as a mausoleum.

  They crept between the dead golf carts. The full moon shining through the garage window tracked thin lines of silvery light across the concrete floor and the heavy canopies of the carts. They paused at the doorway for a peek through a window. Bill was stirring, struggling to climb to his feet.

  Jack slipped out the door and came up behind Bill, striking him in the back of the head with the weapon. As Bill crumpled back to the ground, Jack caught him under his arms and dragged him toward the garage. Alexander was deeply impressed. Bill was a big man, and Jack was carting him like he was a sack of groceries.

  “Grab his legs,” whispered Jack. He was calm, so much so that Alexander could scarcely believe it.

  They quickly moved him to the access panel and down to the basement. Jack eased the unconscious man over the edge, guiding him down as far as he could before letting go. Bill’s body slid down to the floor. Jack and Alexander followed it down. They moved Bill into the cell.

  Behind them, a rustling sound. Then the faint sound of a click.

  Jack’s trained ears identified it instantly, and he dove to the ground, his hearing muffled by the sudden discharge of a weapon. Everything was happening very quickly. A high-pitched squeal of pain. The boy had been hit, but he didn’t know how badly. Jack dropped low and charged at the shooter. In the small space, he covered the ground in the fraction of a second. His shoulder drove into the man’s midsection and drove him against the door behind him. The man’s head rocked backward, smacking the wall and disorienting him. His gun rattled to the ground. Jack grabbed the man’s head in his powerful hands and wrenched it sharply, snapping the man’s neck.

  The tiny cell block was quiet once more.

  But for the pained moaning behind him.

  The boy was on his back, his hands pressed to his sternum. Blood was spilling rapidly between his fingers, pooling on the ground underneath him at an alarming rate. In the light of the lantern, the boy’s face had gone a milky shade of pale.

  There was nothing Jack could do for him.

  He knelt down at the boy’s head, cradling it gently. Alexander struggled to speak, but he could only form a few whispery bubbles as the life drained out of him. Jack’s heart broke. This was a good, brave boy who lay dying here. It was awful to witness. Awful how thi
s world chewed up and spit out the very best it had to offer. With the last of his strength, he reached up to Jack’s collar with a bloody hand and pulled him close.

  Jack leaned in.

  “Norah,” whispered the boy.

  A few moments later, his breathing slowed to a crawl before stopping entirely.

  Alexander was dead.

  28

  Lucy was administering an annual checkup to seven-year-old Hailey when an animated discussion erupted outside. The girl was healthy enough. Like all the kids, like everyone in Promise, she could use a few extra calories each day. Otherwise, she was in good shape.

  “She’s looking good,” Lucy said to Chris Johnson, the girl’s father, once the checkup was complete. “Heart and lungs sound good and strong. Make sure she looks after those teeth.” Dental hygiene was a problem for many people in their post-Pulse world. Commercially made toothpaste had long since vanished, and they were left to develop their own products to keep their teeth clean.

  “Thanks, Lucy,” Chris said. Then he turned to his daughter and said, “What do we say, sweetie?”

  “Thank you, Miss Lucy,” the girl said.

  Lucy smiled and tousled the girl’s hair on her way out the door. After making a few notes in the girl’s chart, she went outside to investigate the commotion.

  It had been four days since Jack had left, three since Amelia’s arrival on horseback with her terrible message. Lucy was starting to give up hope. You took a chance. Sometimes your bets would pay off, and sometimes they didn’t. Even in times of war, she still had work to do. Life went on. Fortunately, Norah was safe. She had not even left Promise. She’d been out for an evening walk when the photos in her drawer had been revealing their secrets to Lucy.

  Terri was rushing toward her as she stepped outside, calling out Lucy’s name.

  “It’s Jack,” she said. “He’s back.”

  Her brother was limping toward the clinic, a pained look on his face. He was alive. Instinct had her scanning his body for obvious signs of injury or trauma. That look on his face, however, concerned her. Behind him trailed Carol and Jon, two members of the Council.

  She hugged him. Neither had never been much for excessive displays of affection. Even as she hugged him though, she was palpating his arms and back, looking for injury. The nurse inside her never took a minute off. She didn’t know what she would do if something had happened to him. He had filled in the gaps in her life like caulk.

  “They’ll be coming soon,” he said to the others. “We need to evacuate Promise.”

  Lucy’s mind was on overdrive. It was something they’d planned for in the event of an attack on their settlement. There was an abandoned church about four miles east as the crow flew. There they had stashed weapons and nonperishable foods to float them for a few days.

  “Jon, Carol,” Lucy said, “start rounding everyone up. We need to be on the move in an hour.”

  They nodded their assent and then left Lucy alone with her brother.

  “You’re not hurt?” she asked.

  “No,” he said. “Where’s Norah?”

  “She’s in her room,” Lucy said. “Why?”

  “I need to talk to her,” he said.

  “About what?”

  “Come with me,” he said. “You’ll want to hear this too.”

  She had to tell him.

  “Listen,” she said. “There’s something you need to hear first. This boy she’s been seeing. His father is the leader of the Haven.”

  “I know,” Jack said.

  “And that’s not all,” Lucy said.

  Jack’s brow furrowed, a puzzled look on his face.

  “Remember the man who held us right after the Pulse?”

  Jack nodded.

  “Simon.”

  A look of understanding swept across his face.

  He sighed.

  “The past is never past,” he muttered.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  They fell silent for the balance of the walk to Norah’s room. Jack had been dreading this moment. It was all he’d thought about since his escape from the Haven, which had been paid for with Alexander’s sacrifice. The death of a child.

  He had made sure that Alexander’s sacrifice had not been in vain. After killing the man who’d shot Alexander, Jack had moved his body into the cell with Bill, who was slowly coming to but still quite loopy. He locked them in the cell together and left them there.

  It was still an hour before dawn. It bought him some time to make it back to Promise. The coast was clear when he returned topside. He hated leaving the boy’s body down there, but he didn’t have any choice. Alexander deserved a hero’s funeral. If they survived this, he would make sure Promised honored him as one.

  He spent another thirty minutes or so surreptitiously exploring the expansive grounds of the resort. It was big, obviously home to a sizable population. The use of the golf course as farmland was smart. This was fertile ground and had been carefully maintained up to the moment of the Pulse. Plus, it was well-marked and featured multiple water hazards that provided for easy watering. Clever indeed.

  He still didn’t know where the golf resort was, however. It was a gap in his knowledge he needed to rectify immediately. He circled back to the first tee and followed the access road back to the resort entrance. On the way, he passed a makeshift stable. The horses slowly waking up. Soon, the sleepy-eyed stable hands would emerge to begin the morning feeding. He saddled the gentlest one he could find and rode her out to the main road.

  The sky was lightening ever so faintly to his five o’clock, putting him on a southeast heading. He turned left and pushed the horse up to a trot until he spotted a road sign. The sun rising in the east served as his beacon. Route 402. He rode the horse hard for an hour until he recognized a highway intersecting with 402. He was about twenty-five miles from home. He left the horse near a creek, preferring to make the rest of the trip by foot. It made moving in stealth much easier. He figured he had until sunrise before his escape would be detected. That would give him a head start of several hours.

  “He didn’t make it, did he?” Lucy said.

  Jack shook his head.

  “No.”

  Lucy closed her eyes. At the threshold of Norah’s room, he squeezed Lucy’s hand.

  Norah’s was sitting on her bedroll, a journal open in her lap to a blank page. She was twirling a pen in her hand. In the dim light of the lantern, she looked stunningly beautiful to Lucy, in that gray area between childhood and adulthood.

  She smiled when she saw Jack. She jumped out of bed and hugged him tightly. Regardless of her issues with Lucy, her love for Jack was deep and strong. They had a strong bond, perhaps stronger recently than Lucy’s bond with either of them.

  “I was starting to worry,” she said.

  “I’m fine,” he said morosely.

  The tone of his voice shook her.

  “What?” she said, easing out of his embrace and stepping backwards.

  “Sit down.”

  She did, looking up at Lucy for help. Lucy held her gaze but said nothing. She wanted Jack to tell the story. He’d been there. He could tell her everything she wanted to know, as awful as it was.

  “I met Alexander,” Jack said.

  “You did?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is he okay?”

  His failure to reply told Norah everything she needed to know. Norah was already shaking her head in denial.

  “He helped me escape.”

  Norah covered her mouth with her hand.

  “And?”

  “Someone tried to stop us.”

  “No,” she said, her voice cracking.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “No!”

  Lucy’s eyes watered at the news of the boy’s death. Her heart was breaking. It was almost as painful as the grief she had felt after Emma’s death. Grief was a funny thing. That she could grieve for this boy she had only met for a few moments as
she had grieved for her own daughter, the great love of her life, was a strange thing indeed. Because it was going to wreck Norah. It was going to destroy her.

  “Honey,” he said, “I want you to know how brave he was.”

  This caught Norah’s attention. She looked up at Jack, her eyes wet.

  “He loved you a lot,” he said. “Getting to you was all he could think about. And because of him, we know where the Haven is.”

  Norah nodded.

  It was at that moment Lucy understood that Norah was an adult now. Seventeen but older and wiser than any seventeen-year-old should have been. She couldn’t treat her like a child anymore because the world they lived in had stolen that from all of them. Norah’s face looked hard and full of resolve. This boy had sacrificed everything for her, and in doing so, he had given them all a chance. A chance to push back. A chance to fight back. A chance to end it.

  And the craziest thing was that Norah seemed to understand this. Lucy understood why she had loved the boy. She regretted the way she had treated him during their sole meeting. If she could take it back, she would. But she couldn’t. She could only be there for Norah now. She could comfort her. Because even if she understood at a rational level what he had done for them, the grief would be there. Always.

  If Norah lived to be a hundred years old, she would grieve for Alexander.

  The Council had gathered the entire population of Promise in the cafeteria to announce its next steps. The day they had long feared had arrived.

  They were going to war.

  And they were going to war today.

  There was no time to waste. Jack may have gotten a head start of a few hours, but no more. And the Haven’s secret was out. Its hidden location had kept it insulated from even the threat of a counterattack. Now that was gone. Immediately, the Council dispatched scouts to the other settlements to let them know the Haven’s location and inquire whether they could count on their support for a first strike.

  “Effective immediately, an evacuation order is in effect,” Councilman Schlosser announced after he’d called the meeting to order. “All citizens deemed non-essential are to depart immediately for Promise’s backup location. You are to remain there until given the all-clear.”