Fighting Darkness: A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Thriller (Fighting to Survive Book 2)

by Alex Knightly

  Pete shrugged. “I don’t know. Lots of places have been smashed up around here. They’ll just assume it was randoms.”

  “Yeah but this lot are going to be on high alert. What if they don’t assume that? If they suspect us then they’re going to run a mile, aren’t they?”

  Pete considered this. Sometimes he hated the fact that his brother’s mind worked so much faster than his own. “Well what do you suggest?” It was going to be dark soon and he was quickly running out of patience.

  “We wait here. We watch. We can pretty much rule out the garage.”

  “What? They might not come for days. They might not even come here.” He frowned. “You’re trying to sabotage this, aren’t you? Because you don’t want to be responsible for people getting hurt.”

  Josh laughed savagely. “Maybe I am, Pete. Maybe I am. Why don’t you go in there and make a big fuss? Make sure the neighbours warn them before they even set foot in the place? That sounds like a genius plan.”

  “Shut up, Josh.” He glanced over his shoulder before starting the car again and pulling up on the other side of the street. The area was sketchy, much like Crosby Road, where they lived. “Do you think it’s safe to sit here in the dark like this? I’ll have to put the headlights on soon.”

  “I can’t believe you’re asking me that.”

  “Oh come on, Josh! I was only asking. I don’t even know where we’re supposed to sleep tonight. Or eat. I mean, do we go back to Mum’s? Or to that horrible house in the country?”

  “I don’t know, Pete. I really don’t know.”

  “I mean, maybe we’re supposed to go back to the house. Ian did mention they were looking for the girl’s address. And what if they’re all in there now and they just haven’t got any torches?”

  Josh clasped his hand over Pete’s, which was still resting on the gear stick. “Calm down, alright? We’ll find a way through this. We’ll keep watch for a while to make sure, but I don’t see any cars around here. We’ll give it a while and then get back to Mum’s.”

  Pete nodded and fell silent, staring at the house and trying to ignore the sudden, random roars that pierced the air every now and then. He didn’t much want to be around here after dark: it was bad enough in daylight.

  Clive

  Monday

  “Let’s get a move on. It’s almost light.”

  They’d prepared as best they could the night before, stuffing cans of food and bottles of water in backpacks.

  What they really needed was to find a stash of ammunition. They hadn’t used their weapons since the confrontation with those men in the petrol station, but they’d likely have to use them a lot over the coming days. And there was the tension with the neighbours to consider too.

  Clive held his arms behind his back and stretched out his shoulders. He wasn’t sure if it was tension or exhaustion that was making his muscles feel so tight and uncooperative.

  “This is crazy,” Dan said, pacing the room just like he’d been doing before they called it a night and tried to get some sleep. “You’re never going to find her. What if you run into the army? You said they were trying to take control.”

  Annie moved closer to him and took his hands. “Please, Dan. Neither of us wants this, but we have no choice. We’ll be back as soon as possible. And we’ll do our best to avoid the army.”

  Clive nodded. “Though it’d be good to get close and see what they’re doing now.”

  “Are you mad? They almost locked Annie away. Are you prepared to risk that?” Dan rubbed his cheeks. He looked like a madman, with his wild beard and red-rimmed eyes. “I suppose it might be better than trying to fix this mess with the neighbours.”

  “That’s nonsense, Dan, and you know it. Nobody’s going to be locked up by the army, okay? We’ll be back later, hopefully. And we’ll not just have Si but Max as well. You heard what she said about him. He’s really handy. He can probably set up all sorts of contraptions around the farm.”

  She turned away and it was clear from her face that even she didn’t believe it.

  Everything had been packed now and the sky was almost light. It really was time to go. Of everything he had to do, saying goodbye to Olivia was the thing he’d dreaded most. On the surface she’d been holding up remarkably well. So much so that the others had started agreeing with her that he shouldn’t keep things from her. They didn’t know the truth. They didn’t hear her whimpering at night when her anxious brain put two and two together and made fifty. He’d had to find a middle ground between telling her what seemed plausible and holding back the real horrors of the truth from her. He wasn’t sure he’d gotten there yet.

  Leaving her wasn’t what he wanted to do. In fact it killed him to think he might be away from her for days. They were safe now, but the last few days had shown him that safe wasn’t something they could take for granted.

  “Oh come on,” Dan muttered, flailing his hands about and growing more agitated by the minute. “You don’t want to leave Olivia and you know it. Annie doesn’t want to leave either. I can see it in your eyes, Annie. You barely know the girl.”

  “Dan!”

  “It’s true. She’s been mooching around here like she doesn’t even want to be here. So she wants to go? Why can’t we just let her?”

  “We’ve been through this!”

  “So? It’s not your job to run after her.”

  “No, it’s not.” Annie sighed. “Look, I know you barely know her. And neither do I. But she’s… at some stage, Clive and Olivia, Terry and Si, they became sort of our crew. We’ve got no-one else. We have to look out for each other.”

  “And you think she’d do the same for you?”

  Annie wrinkled her nose. “I don’t know. How can I know the answer to that? All I know is she’s been beating herself up all this time because she blames herself for Max being taken. No wonder. He’s like a father to her. I’d be pretty surly if I was in her shoes.”

  “Come on,” Clive said calmly. “Now is the time to go. We need every hour of daylight we can get.”

  Annie looked at Dan, who said nothing.

  “Right then,” Annie said as soon as they were on the road. She was doing a good job of keeping her tears at bay. They were doing this one way or another so what was the sense in crying over it? “What’s the plan? Shall we just head to Wesleygate or should we go back to the petrol station and see if we can find anything on those men?”

  He thought about it for a moment. They’d searched the car and taken the men’s weapons, but in their haste to get out of there they hadn’t checked their pockets. While they didn’t seem like the types to carry ID, he couldn’t rule out the possibility that they might find something.

  “I had thought we’d just get to Wesleygate and start asking around, but yes, let’s stop there quickly and see if there’s anything useful.” He grimaced. He didn’t want to imagine what they looked like now. They’d been so focused on getting Terry to safety that they hadn’t checked them. Now he wished they’d taken the time: it would have spared them the unpleasantness of doing it now.

  “Yeah,” she said thoughtfully. “It’s not going to be pleasant, is it? At least it’s winter and not the height of summer.”

  He looked away, staring out the window. Annie’s knowledge of decomposition had likely come from crime shows on television. It was one thing knowing there was going to be severe decomposition. It was quite another thing to experience it in real life. Often the smell was by far the most unsettling part of it. He couldn’t even begin to describe it. He considered driving past it and going straight to the garage, but he couldn’t ignore the fact that there might be some crucial piece of information that might save them time in the long run.

  “We’ll stop briefly. I want you to keep the car running while I check. It makes sense: I’ve done this sort of search before so it’ll be faster.”

  She nodded, grim resignation on her face. For the umpteenth time since they discovered Si was missing, Clive wondered why the hell he
hadn’t predicted this. After all, hadn’t she told him how impatient she was to track Max down? He’d believed her when she said she was willing to wait. And he was a fool for doing so. He ought to have known.

  They should have been planning what they were going to do, but neither of them seemed in the mood to talk. Clive supposed that was a good thing in a way. At least they were conserving their energy for when they’d need it.

  “Shit,” Annie muttered. “Have I got the wrong service station?”

  She’d driven in around the back of the buildings and out the other side, so they were now at the other side of the forecourt near the carwash, facing back towards the entrance. Clive was in no doubt that this was the right place: he remembered it vividly. His stomach turned. “It’s the right one. There. Look.”

  She turned to him, obviously not seeing what he was seeing.

  “Over there,” he said quietly. “You can see the blood on the ground.” The surface was quite dark, thankfully, so one could just about see the vague darker stains without being confronted by the full horror of what they were. He might have mistaken them for oil stains if he didn’t have a clear mental picture of where those men had fallen in relation to the car wash. He knew what it was and there was no reason to get closer. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Wait, shouldn’t we make sure?”

  “I’m certain. Someone’s moved those bodies. They didn’t just vanish.”

  “Maybe it was wild animals?”

  Clive looked at her. “Trust me. It’s too neat for that.” There was no need to spell it out.

  He should have been relieved that he no longer needed to search the men, but he wasn’t.

  “We already suspected there were others. This… Well, it doesn’t matter. Not really. It doesn’t change anything.”

  “I’m not so sure about that,” Clive said. He considered going and taking a closer look to see if the blood patterns told him anything more, but he dismissed that idea almost at once. He wasn’t a forensic scientist. Really the best thing to do was assume the worst case scenario was true and get on with it. He sighed. “It’s possible one of them wasn’t dead; that he got away and raised the alarm.”

  “Maybe the ones who took the bodies were tracking behind and we didn’t see.”

  “We would have heard the engine.” He stared at the ground, willing it to tell him something. There were tyre tracks all over the place, but that was meaningless in a place that saw tens of thousands of cars a day. “Annie, we’ve got to assume one of them got away; that they know who we are and what we look like.”

  “Shit.” He’d never seen her look so anguished. “Shit. This is so much worse than we thought. We don’t even know where to start looking. I thought we’d at least find something in one of their pockets.”

  “What were you expecting? A book of matches from the bar next door to their hideout?”

  She looked at him, anger blazing in her eyes.

  Clive held up his hands. “Sorry. It’s no time to make jokes, I know. It’s just that those crime shows make it look as though the police track people down in a matter of hours. The reality is far more boring. A lot of watching and knocking on doors.”

  “It’s okay. You’re right. I thought we’d find some clue that would help us figure out where to go.”

  “At least now we know what we’re dealing with.” He groaned as he thought of something else he hadn’t considered before.

  “What is it?” Her eyes were wide with alarm.

  “It’s the car,” he muttered. “We’re hunting them down in their own car and it’s likely they know what we look like.”

  “Maybe that’ll make it easier. At least we won’t be stuck looking for a needle in a haystack.”

  Clive nodded. He started the engine and tried to keep his composure. Secretly he was thinking it was far better to search for a needle in a haystack than it was to walk blindly into the territory of an enemy they knew nothing about.

  Si

  Thursday

  Three Days Later

  Si was starting to lose hope. She’d been full of hope that first night when she’d pulled into that power station and found it just as deserted as she’d hoped it would be. She’d slept surprisingly well. Maybe it had been ignorance. Maybe exhaustion. She didn’t know.

  This wasn’t going how she’d planned.

  She’d expected more than this. She knew the name of the guy who had Max. That was it.

  That was still it, three days later.

  She knew he must live somewhere near Wesleygate. She hadn’t really thought about how many people lived in the surrounding areas. She should have.

  She blinked, close to tears. She’d fucked up. She’d fucked up so badly. The trail had gone cold.

  She’d asked so many people. And they’d all either looked at her blankly or given her that shifty sort of look that told her they knew exactly who Harry Harman was but they weren’t letting on.

  And that wasn’t even the worst of it. She’d been followed to the car. She’d been screamed at and spat at. A few times she’d thought she was about to be mugged. She was exhausted from running away all the time, almost tripping over her own feet as she checked behind her.

  It was like she’d stepped into another world where she knew nobody and everyone was out to get her. All around her, people were starving. She couldn’t bear to see their hollow faces and wild eyes. Maybe it was a good thing that she hadn’t packed enough food: she was probably still alive because of her dirty close and near-constant hunger.

  She came back to reality with a start. Now wasn’t the time to get lost in her thoughts. Darkness was falling quickly and staying around here wasn’t an option. She wasn’t sure if she was imagining it, but she could feel numerous sets of eyes on her wherever she went. That was the worst thing. Harry Harman might be watching her right now and she wouldn’t even know it. She had no idea what he looked like. And nobody would tell her a thing about him.

  It was time to call it a night. She grimaced. The garage was destroyed and she worried that Harry’s people might go there looking for her when she was sleeping. She’d had no choice but to go back to her mother’s house. She’d hoped that her stepfather might have starved by now, but of course he hadn’t. Graham was a lazy good-for-nothing sod, but he seemed to have a gift for survival. She didn’t know how. There’d never been any food in the house that she hadn’t bought.

  Parking the car for the night was yet another source of anxiety. She had to make sure nobody saw it and tried to steal it from her. Parking near the house wasn’t an option: Graham would no doubt find a way to trade it for booze. There was an alleyway behind a row of houses a few streets over that she used, careful to turn the engine off and coast down to the bottom, where she stashed it in a garage she’d forced the door of. She’d checked around the front and the house seemed deserted—at least from the outside it did. She could have slept there, but the thought of what she might find when she broke in was too much to bear. And that was saying something. She didn’t know how much longer she could tolerate Graham.

  She wished there was somewhere she could go to get a quiet night’s sleep. The power station had been perfect, so isolated in the middle of the country. It was different here. There was nowhere she could go without the fear of being found in the night or of having to see a load of dead bodies. She’d seen enough of them on the streets. Sometimes they stayed there for days. A group of people from one of the local churches had banded together to remove the bodies, but there were only five of them and most were older and weaker. It seemed pointless anyway: whenever they removed one, it seemed like another three took their place the very next day.

  “Oh, it’s you,” Graham said as she let herself in the front door.

  Si winced. She despised her stepfather more than she’d ever despised anyone and that feeling had only intensified since the power went. There was no justice in the world if decent people had died and he’d survived, but he had. And he seemed comple
tely unfazed by it too.

  “What you got in the bag?”

  She gritted her teeth, avoiding the instinctive urge to take it off her back and hold it closer to her. Inside was her dwindling supply of canned food and the last of her water. “Nothing. Just clothes.” He asked her the same questions every bloody time.

  “Give it here.”

  “No, Graham.” She backed away from him, thinking of the gun in the waistband of her jeans. Could she shoot him? She didn’t doubt it for a second. But that could complicate matters. Someone might hear the gunshot. While she suspected any sensible person would stay away from it, she just didn’t know anymore. People were going crazy and there was nothing to say they wouldn’t come here on the assumption that the house held something valuable enough to shoot somebody for. She’d have to leave and she had nowhere else to go.

  She sighed. She’d just have to tolerate Graham for now, as difficult as that was. With a bit of luck it wouldn’t be for long. “Have you got any food? I’m starving.” She wasn’t. She’d eaten and her appetite had waned as her frustration increased. But she had to pretend.

  He snorted. “I thought I got shot of looking after you when you turned eighteen.”

  At least he’d forgotten about her backpack. She backed away from him, going towards the stairs. She didn’t want his food, though she did wonder where he’d stolen it from. She’d been back three days and she’d avoided him as much as possible. Now she realised that maybe she’d missed an opportunity. Graham knew a lot of shady characters.

  “Do you know a guy called Harry Harman?”

  He frowned. She looked him up and down now that he was distracted. He’d definitely lost weight, but he was nowhere near as gaunt as some of the people she’d encountered, who looked more like cadavers than people. Trust Graham to keep himself well-fed. He was a lazy sod, but he was good at looking out for himself.