Out of the Dark: An apocalyptic thriller

by Ashlei Hawley

  Amy helped Austin stand, and they went in, as well. Because tensions and emotions were too high in everyone else, Amy was the one with the sense enough to close and lock the door.

  “Mel, sweet pea, go back to bed,” Laura insisted gently as the girl entered the hallway, rubbing her eyes sleepily.

  “But why’s Daddy yelling?” she asked in a baby-like voice. Laura scooped the child up, hugging her and kissing her soundly before she carried her back to the bedroom she shared with Sam. Laura and Melissa had been sleeping on the big bed so Amy could sleep in the girl’s room.

  “Don’t worry about Daddy,” Laura said in a calming tone. “You know how he gets. You need more sleep, beautiful girl. Were you dreaming?”

  Dutifully, Melissa began to recount her dreams, sporadic and childish things that jumped around from fairies to a day at the beach. Laura placed her daughter back in the bed she shared with Sam and listened to her talk until she fell asleep, knowing that Amy would handle Sam while his wife wasn’t in the room.

  Amy was indeed trying to handle Sam as he scolded, berated, and screamed at Austin for how wrong he’d been, how much he’d risked by not telling Sam exactly what the thing inside Trevor was capable of.

  “I thought it was the same thing inside of us that hurt you,” Sam snarled as he gestured to the shoulder the shadow creature inside of Austin had injured. “Teeth and claws, those fuckers have both. Why would I assume anything else had happened, Austin?”

  “Sam,” Amy interjected, trying to keep her voice as soft as she could so that she could counter Sam’s terrible fury. “Sam, it’s done. You know now. You know better than anyone. We can prepare for it now. We can take action, right? That’s what you’re all about is action, so let’s take action to protect all of us, including Trevor. Just calm down. Nothing you’re doing is helping right now.”

  “Two people are dead because of what he did,” Sam gritted out from between clenched teeth. “Two people I’ve known a hell of a lot longer and cared for a hell of a lot more.”

  “I’m sorry,” Austin whispered, but Sam didn’t hear him.

  “I brought you here because you needed help, you were alone. I thought you wouldn’t be a threat to my family. Was I wrong?”

  Unable to defend himself, because he felt as much loathing and guilt as Sam had infused into his voice, Austin lowered his head and murmured heartbrokenly, “I guess so.”

  “Sam,” Amy said in a warning tone, feeling defensive for Austin now. Sam was being harsh. How terrifying had it been for Austin, seeing evidence of the Bringer’s power, and not even at its full? How could he have worded something so alien? “He tried the best he could to tell you,” she offered.

  “So this is my fault?” Sam asked, rounding on Amy with the same fire in his eyes he had given to Austin. “It’s my fault they’re dead, my fault for not listening to Austin when all he offered me was, ‘tie him to your back or something.’ That wasn’t enough, damn it! I needed more information!”

  “I’m not saying it’s your fault, Sam,” Amy said patiently, and her calming tone had his fury spiking to its breaking point.

  “Don’t fucking placate me,” he snapped at her, and she glared. Amy could only stay calm and helpful for so long.

  “The stop acting like a fucking child and I’ll stop talking to you like a kid throwing a tantrum,” she retorted. Sometimes, anger thrown back at him cooled Sam better than soothing tones and logical words.

  It helped. Amy rarely swore, so hearing it from her mouth made him realize she was truly upset. He was acting like an ass. It wasn’t Austin’s fault or Trevor’s or his or any human in this room that Frank and Jenna were dead. They were partially accountable, perhaps, in some way, but it was the alien being inside his son that had committed the atrocity that resulted in the deaths of his well-liked neighbors. Even if Sam himself felt the guilt burning inside his gut for what had transpired, it wasn’t right to force more of it onto Austin, who undoubtedly felt his involvement in the deaths in a stinging heat of culpability. Sam breathed deep, and tried to calm himself.

  “I’m sorry,” Sam told Austin, but the words were hard to come out. “I am. I’m upset. They were my friends, and they died right in front of my fucking porch and I couldn’t do anything. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.”

  Shivering, with tears still on his face, Austin shook his head. It wasn’t that he couldn’t accept Sam’s apology; he couldn’t accept anything. He felt the need to back away from the entire situation; feeling like none of what had happened until that point could truly be possible. It was a bad dream, a nightmare, or it was a trip of some kind. Hadn’t people at school been offering him drugs now and again? Maybe he’d finally given in and taken a hit, or a pill. Maybe he was dead and this was limbo, a hellish, horrible limbo that he would be trapped in until the sins of his life were burned away. No matter what, he had decided it wasn’t real. Nothing that had happened was acceptable within his reality, and he was done with it.

  “I’m going home,” Austin declared quietly as he stood.

  “No,” Sam and Amy objected simultaneously.

  “It isn’t safe out there,” Amy said pleadingly as she followed him into Trevor’s room. Sam stayed behind, letting her take the lead with the teen.

  “I’m going home,” Austin repeated in a careless tone as he reclaimed his heavy shirt and pulled it over his head. He continued with his jacket, his thick winter socks and the boots that he’d brought into the room with him in case he’d needed to dress quickly. He hadn’t wanted to be without footwear.

  “Austin, please,” Amy begged desperately. She saw the detachment beginning to claim him, the defense mechanism enacted to preserve his mind. It was too dangerous to let it happen.

  “Get out of my way,” Austin said softly, not threateningly, but with enough determination that Amy saw the hopelessness of her intentions.

  “Please,” she repeated with a hand out. “Please, it isn’t safe for you to go out there alone.”

  Ignoring Amy, Austin pushed past her and out into the hallway. He took his bag from the floor of Trevor’s room. He didn’t check to make sure everything was in there, because he’d check before he went to bed that all of his possessions were packed for easy carrying if they had to move in a hurry. He couldn’t think of why the need to move quickly had been present, or why he was with the people he was with. All he knew was that he wanted to go home. He wanted to see his parents. He wanted familiar things and surroundings.

  When he reached the front door, Trevor and Sam were there. Sam held a hand on the door, keeping it closed as Austin tried to muscle his way between the two of them.

  “Let me go,” Austin said blankly. There was no expression to his tone; no anger, hurt or fear.

  “Sam, don’t,” Amy said as she came down the hallway, as well. “Don’t let him go, please.”

  “What do you want me to do?” Sam asked in frustration. “Tie him to the damn couch? If he doesn’t want to stay, I can’t make him.”

  Stressed over Austin’s apparent resolve, Amy found herself close to tears. It seemed anyone who went out that door with intention to leave the Walker home was destined not to return. She thought of Ray, Shane, and Leila and the tears burned even hotter.

  “Sam, don’t let him go,” she repeated, teary-eyed and obviously anxious.

  As Austin continued to push against him, Sam found himself facing a problem quite unlike any he’d had before. He wanted to protect the boy, of course. Protection was inherent in his nature. He wanted as many people around as possible and Austin was the next oldest male. He admitted at least to himself that every time he lost or man, or something close to one, his panic intensified by levels.

  “Austin, don’t go,” Sam tried one last time, but Austin ignored the sentiment, as he’d ignored Amy’s words and Sam’s that had come before.

  “I’m going home,” Austin said one last time.

  With a deep sigh, Sam relinquished the fight and removed his hand from
the door so that Austin could turn the knob and walk through. Austin exited the Walker house without a backwards glance or a word. He did not take his mother’s vehicle from the Walker driveway. The walk wouldn’t be that difficult, and he knew the way. He was going home.

  Chapter Eighteen

  It took the better part of the day going back and forth between anger and worry for Sam to come to the conclusion that they needed to go after Austin. If tying the kid to the couch was what was necessary, then they’d do it, Sam had decided.

  “Load everyone up,” Sam requested of Laura as she dressed Melissa in her winter warm wear. Sam had already helped Trevor into a similar snow outfit. It had been a painstaking endeavor between the two of them, but he wasn’t willing to release his hold on the boy and the unpredictable entity within him.

  Amy shrugged into her warm winter coat and laced up her footwear, hesitant to bring up what she thought was needed to be said.

  “Sam, something needs to be done about the…” She hesitated, trailed off as she looked at Melissa and Trevor. “Out front,” she continued. “We have to clean things up so they don’t see.”

  Sam nodded. It was a good point. He looked at Trevor, torn horribly. He didn’t want Laura and Amy to be responsible for clearing the bodies away, but he certainly couldn’t take Trevor out there and do it himself one-handed. Even if he blindfolded his son, the issue would remain that he’d only have one hand to work with to complete the chore.

  “We can take care of it, Sam,” Laura said. She didn’t want to offend whatever she thought would be offended, his sense of responsibility or masculinity, or make him worry for them, but she could see how torn he was.

  “I don’t want you to have to take care of it,” he said, almost savagely. “You shouldn’t have to do that.”

  Laura put a hand on her husband’s arm, trying to be soothing and reassuring. He turned away from it; resigned to something he couldn’t find his way around but wanted to with all his being.

  “Wear gloves,” he suggested wearily. “Be quick about it.”

  Kissing his cheek gently, because she knew how much the decision had cost him, Laura followed his advice and slipped rubber kitchen gloves over her thick padded winter ones. Amy followed suit and they walked outside without another word.

  The task of moving the bodies was unsavory and difficult. Though they’d both lost an amazing amount of blood–the pavement was stained red in a circle that extended several feet away from the prone forms–they were still heavy and hard to move. They had stiffened, either in the cold or as a body naturally begins to after death. They decided to move the heavier body of Frank first.

  After a short deliberation, they came to the mutual conclusion that the most respectful thing to do was move the couple’s bodies back to their own home. Amy suggested the backyard, seeing as the door to the house was probably locked, but Laura said they’d wait until they moved him far enough to see if they could manage even the front yard.

  Laura took him under his arms and Amy grabbed his booted feet. The progress was slow, their load cumbersome. By the time they’d reached the neighbors’ front yard, both of them panted heavily, sweating in spite of the cold air.

  “I don’t know how we’re going to do this with the other one, too,” Amy gasped between strained breaths.

  Laura, who was winded from the exertion and from the tears that had been spilling continuously from her eyes ever since they started their undertaking, let Frank’s upper body rest gently behind the well-tended short shrubs that adorned the front of the house. They would take Jenna there, as well. The backyard was too far of a trek. The upcoming task of carrying Jenna’s body as they had Frank’s was daunting.

  “It doesn’t matter how,” Laura declared as she covered Frank’s face and upper torso with the jacket he had shed before his death and then the blanket she and Amy had decided they would cover the bodies with. “We just have to do it.”

  “I know,” Amy replied as she stretched her burning arms and turned back toward the Walker home. “Let’s finish it.”

  The process was repeated with Jenna’s body. Laura continued to cry silently, mourning the loss of two of her dear friends as well as the way of life they represented. Amy wanted to hug her cousin, but not until they at least had the outer gloves off and the touch of death had been banished from them. She honestly didn’t know how long that would take, but she knew she desperately wanted a shower, an hour long and scalding hot, and then a good cry. Laura needed to have the show of weakness right now and Amy needed to be the strong one. She was curious as to why none of the creatures within the Walkers had tried to hurt her, and mulled on the topic as a way to distract herself from the task at hand. She could only guess it was the familial connection, or the Walkers had finessed a measure control over the beasts since the Onset.

  “Almost there,” Amy declared. Each breath burned in her lungs, seared her throat, and sent fire arcing through her body. Her limbs shook with exhaustion and the sweat that poured down her face only served to melt the acrid slick that had frozen there before. The process repeated a hundred times or more as they laboriously dragged the dead woman back to her home to rest beside her husband.

  They arranged Jenna beside Frank, making sure their bodies touched wherever they could. It seemed a small thing, but an important one. They both shucked their rubber gloves and tossed them in Frank and Jenna’s outdoor trashcan before returning to the house next door.

  Sam met them just inside the front entrance with Trevor in tow and Melissa behind them. He made sure to tightly hug each of the women as they came through the door, silently thanking them and trying to share in the burden of what they had just done. Both women hugged him back fiercely.

  “Let’s get moving,” Laura suggested, because if she couldn’t find something to take her mind off of what she’d just done, she’d start screaming.

  “Amy needs to drive the Aveo with Mel riding. I can’t drive and keep a grip on Trevor so, Laura, you’ll have to drive the truck. Trev will sit in the middle and I’ll sit passenger.”

  “Or you could just have him on your lap,” Amy suggested as they moved outside toward their designated vehicles.

  Laura closed and locked the door behind them and said, “Safety first, even now. I want Trevor wearing a seatbelt.”

  Sam silently agreed and both parents gave Melissa a heartening hug and kiss before she got buckled into the Aveo with Amy driving.

  Sam remembered where Austin’s house was, in the neighborhood where Dennis had died. It would be hard to keep that place from being engraved in his memory.

  Amy followed the big black truck slowly, expecting to see wreckage and ruin blocking the streets. Somehow, it was more disconcerting to see them perfect and empty in the late afternoon light.

  Empty husks of homes burned down in the evening showed signs of discord, but other than that there was little that made her think a catastrophe had occurred; no bodies in the streets, no pyres on which smoldered unlucky survivors caught and tortured in the night. No dogs wandered, bereft of their owners and it made Amy think again of Ray, and her plan to open the doors. It made her heart squeeze tight and tears spring to her eyes. She hated the heat of loss and willed it from her body. It was not time to mourn. And when the time did come, she would mourn plenty.

  In the black truck leading the small parade, Sam quietly said to Laura, “Here. This is the one.”

  She pulled the truck smoothly into the driveway, put it in park and waited. Sam had told her not to kill the engine, and she didn’t.

  “You can’t go in there with Trevor alone,” Laura stated plainly as Sam made movements to exit the vehicle.

  He gave her a long, stark look and then shook his head. “No. Absolutely not. The bodies were enough. I’m not letting you put yourself in possible danger.”

  “So you’ll put our son in danger, while you defend him one-handed against anything that might come at you? I don’t think so, Sam.”

  With this, she
unbuckled her belt, opened her door, and jumped down. She held one of the two axes that remained in their survival inventory. Sam had taken one of their three firearms for himself out of the gun safe they always kept locked. As the guns remained unloaded even within the case, he had loaded their newest acquisition with steel-cased 9mm ammunition. It was a gun he had trained with for over a year because he liked it so well. The gun was a Glock model Kel Tec sub 2000, a smooth and precise carbine that fired beautifully. Though on the pricey side, Sam thought every penny he’d dumped into it to be well worth it. He had trained with it so exhaustively that hitting the bull’s-eye at twenty yards was boring.

  Irritated with his wife, Sam followed her out, making sure that he maintained physical contact with Trevor as they exited the truck. Laura was complacent enough to let Sam take the lead, but not to let him go inside with only their son. He needed someone who was completely unburdened to help, and they couldn’t risk Amy.

  “Lead on,” Laura invited. “I’ve got your back.”

  Sam believed her, because his wife had never let him down, in any matter big or small. It didn’t make him feel any better about putting her at risk.

  “Move quietly. Be alert. We don’t want to hurt Austin but if something else is in there, we can’t hesitate.”

  “I’m not known for my hesitation, Sam,” Laura reminded him quietly.

  “Truth,” he replied simply as he gave her a one-armed hug and a kiss, being careful to keep the carbine well away from her. His finger was off the trigger, as it always was when he carried it.

  They entered the unlocked front door. It was the first sign to Sam that Austin, or someone, was inside. They had locked the doors when they’d left the day before. Sam guessed that Austin had had a spare key in his bag, because he hadn’t taken the keys to the Aveo. With this in mind, Sam felt a bit hopeful that they would find Austin safe, if not sound. Sam knew the deaths of Frank and Jenna affected the teen just as strongly as they had the people who’d known them for years. The guilt suffocated to him. Sam didn’t know the boy very well, but he knew him well enough to want to help remove some of that guilt from his soul.