Out of the Dark: An apocalyptic thriller

by Ashlei Hawley

  She couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence. To think her parents had died or turned while Amy was so many states away felt like torture. She wouldn’t subject herself to the depressing thoughts any more than she had to.

  “When things calm down, when is isn’t so…dangerous out there, maybe we can take a road trip. I know Sam isn’t going to want to stay holed up where we’re going forever. He’s going to want to find other people, people like him, and start to rebuild.”

  “Do you think that’s even possible?”

  Laura watched as Sam hit his turn signal and switched lanes. She followed him over, also indicating her move with her left blinker. No other cars drove on the freeway. They extended the courtesy only to each other, but it was helpful in more ways than one. They could still do typical things. One day, with the proper people gathered together, those things would become typical once again.

  “I think if we’re alive, pretty much anything’s possible, right?”

  “I suppose so.”

  Laura reached out with her right hand and intertwined her fingers tightly with her cousin’s. “We’re here for you no matter what, Amy. Regardless of what’s happened or what’s coming, you have us right now. I know it isn’t much, but we’re still family.”

  Amy squeezed back as hard as Laura did. A tear slipped down her cheek and she hurriedly scrubbed it away.

  Signs on the side of the road advertised invitations to enjoy things which no longer exited. Laura doubted anyone was still making wine from grapes grown on the premises. Santa would not be visiting with children from eleven until four on Saturday. If he was, that wouldn’t be a jolly old fellow in the tinseled seat of the year-round holiday store.

  Laura thought of a man dressed in red and white with fangs, claws, and hellishly glowing black eyes. The conjured spectral image seemed to superimpose itself over the bearded man dressed as Saint Nick on the billboard. She shuddered as they passed it by. Hoping there would be no need to stop on their journey to the cabin, Laura focused on Sam’s truck and tried to think happy thoughts.

  The road was long, abandoned, and unending. The future was a void closing in on them from all sides. Instead of acknowledging the existential gloom that filled the clouds and pursued them down the barren road, Laura tightened her hand on Amy’s.

  She wished the night would not come.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Armani’s journal

  The doctor thinks the corruption spreads like a virus: seeking out that which is not like itself and converting, contaminating. I’ve never thought of a virus as evil, but that is what this feels like. Pure evil. Does it seem to me to be malevolently aware? Yes. I feel as though we are engaged in a battle between forces of unfathomable size and power. We are the pieces on their table, the figurines they move in their game of war. Whatever has happened, and the new awareness it has brought to those like me, I know with certainty the game is far from over. And we the pawns know only the moves we make, and not the goal or what it takes to win…

  Armani’s convoy had made smooth progress into the heart of the silent city. They saw few other vehicles on the road, and those they did seemed to contain people of no features or substance. Armani worried darkly that he and his people alone had escaped the worldwide affliction unscathed. The occupants of the other cars could all be corrupted, waiting out the sunlight in their moving fortresses. He knew the thought was ridiculous but couldn’t keep it from forming and taking root. They wouldn’t be stopping to interact with any of the other travelers if he had his way about it.

  The bulk supply store called Sam’s on Cummings Road had been decided as their destination for supplies. Not only would there be plenty of food and water for the taking (if the store had avoided looting so far) but Sam’s also had a variety of other useable items. Clothing, cleaning products, camping supplies, tools, and even vitamins could be found there in large quantities. Armani hoped the store would be running on generators, or that the power in that part of the grid had yet to fail. He could really use some ice cream.

  They pulled into the parking lot and looped a reconnaissance circle. Armani frowned when he saw the lights were off in the store. Many cars filled the parking lot. The yellow-paint lined pavement had the feel of a vehicular graveyard. None of the cars had occupants that Armani could see. Several had suffered what appeared to be spontaneous combustion and burning from the inside. Corrupted, trapped within after turning, had forgotten how to open the door and had burned the first morning after the Onset began.

  They’d already procured several sets of handheld radios with which to communicate while they drove in the convoy. Armani depressed the button on his as he sidled his vehicle into a handicapped parking spot close to the door. He didn’t think anyone else would need to use it anytime soon.

  “Kirby, what do you think?”

  “I think you should say ‘over’ when you’re done talking. Over.”

  Armani rolled his eyes at the other man’s suggestion. “I didn’t know we were going to get so technical with it,” he said. Belatedly, he added, “Over.”

  Kirby chuckled as he parked his car beside Armani’s. The other vehicles in the convoy parked as close as they could without impeding the exit of their fellows. Into the radio, he said, “Everything’s going to be a risk, man. There’s a lot of stuff we need in there. Doesn’t look like a ton of corrupted to deal with, even if most of the people in the parking lot turned. Over.”

  Armani pondered. He watched the large glass doors. Seeing no movement behind them, he waited. His radio crackled and Gwen’s voice filled Armani’s vehicle. “I don’t see anyone. We should see someone. Over.”

  “Well, the night’s coming closer the longer we wait,” Armani said with the radio’s button depressed. “We need to get moving or we need to go inside. Are we leaving or are we looting? Over.”

  Kirby’s driver’s side door opened, and the passenger followed suit. Eric nodded at David and Kim, who sat in the black car with baby Alec. They would be staying outside, standing watch in case other people or corrupted who could stand the sun approached the store. Gwen stepped down from the vehicle beside David and Kim’s, followed by Ken and Molly. Brooke and Ivy remained in the church bus, covered with blankets and huddled together for warmth. Kim kept an eye on the twin girls and was moderately comforted when Molly locked the bus door from the outside.

  Gwen looked at the store front and felt a ball of ice form in her chest. It was hard to breathe around. “Maybe it’s best the doc stays out here.”

  Armani looked at her curiously. He squinted his eyes as he locked them on hers, as though trying to search for the information she may have been keeping under wraps.

  “I am perfectly capable of accompanying you all inside,” Ken said in his perpetually quiet voice. “Besides, if we’re looking for medicinal supplies, wouldn’t I be the best to decide which ones will be useful and which are little better than placebos?”

  Armani nodded. “The doc’s right. We need him in there with us. What if something happens and one of us needs medical care? He goes.”

  Gwen nodded. She gestured for Ken to precede her into the store.

  Molly moved back to her wife and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek before taking her place in front of the doctor. This way, she and Gwen had him covered, or so she hoped.

  With their weapons out, Armani’s group made their way toward the store. He stopped them at the sliding glass doors.

  “We go in there quietly and we look through the place from front to back,” he directed. “No talking unless absolutely necessary. If we find wounded, they become priority one. Anyone else, we need to observe as a group and come to a decision about what to do with them. All group decisions except those we have no option to discuss have to be unanimous or all except one vote. When we get to the church, we can revisit the rules but for right now, this is how it’s going to go. Are we all clear?”

  Several of the group members nodded. Molly said, “Sounds good,” and
Ken echoed her.

  “Okay.” Armani tempered his pre-looting lecture with a beaming smile. “We’re going to be fine and when we get to the church, we’re going to be safe. Let’s do this.”

  Kirby helped Armani pry the doors open. The younger man held his side of the door in one hand and pulled his handgun from his pocket to hold in the other. He scanned the parking lot, looking for threats coming from behind as the others squeezed into the cart storage space which made up most of the store’s front entry.

  When Gwen stepped inside, Kirby turned to follow. He motioned to Armani, then the carts. The group leader grabbed one of the carts and pushed it as quietly as he could toward Kirby, who wedged it so that the door wouldn’t close. If they had to leave the store at a run, all that would need to be done is push the cart out of the way. It would save them precious time if they needed to escape in a hurry.

  Armani nodded and smiled at Kirby. He carried the metal pike they’d liberated from the construction office. Eric didn’t have the strength to handle it, so he’d been given the flashlight to help guide the way. Armani hoped the trip wouldn’t delay his healing process at all. He needed Eric back at full strength.

  The barely-there shuffle of their shoes the only sound giving them away, Armani and the others moved forward. With the power off, the store was steeped in darkness. Inky shadows swirled around the flashlight’s wan beam, as though Eric shined it into a vat of day old black tea.

  They moved forward as one stealthy, seeking body; following the wordless directions of Armani as he instructed them to break off into groups of two in order to check out the whole aisle each time they passed one. The first team of Eric and Kirby would go down one aisle as a second team comprised of Molly and Ken went down the next. They met at the end of each aisle and hopscotched over to the next, with Molly and Ken taking the outer and Eric and Kirby handling the inner row. The process moved with smooth efficiency and soon they had cleared the far set of aisles against the store’s right wall.

  Everyone regrouped in the back, near a table piled with bakery items. The bakery and deli took up most of the back wall of the store, until at a corner it gave way to tall shelves stocked with all nonperishable items such as cooking supplies, cleaning supplies, and paper products.

  Armani pointed to the deli. There was a large space for cooking, slicing meat, and packaging back there. He wanted a team inside to check it out. To the others, he pointed and then gestured to the nonperishables section.

  Kirby and Eric started toward the back of the store. Armani and Gwen moved as the last team, intending to hopscotch the aisles with Kirby and Eric as the previous team had.

  Molly and Ken followed Armani’s silent command and hopped over the low counter which separated the deli section from the rest of the store. As in the rest of the store, there was no light burning inside the deli. Ken slid a small flashlight from his pocket and turned it on before the beam of Eric’s flashlight left them blind in the dark. The deeper they’d moved into the store, the more the light lost out in its battle against the shadows.

  “Shine it this way,” Molly whispered.

  Ken’s beam darted over to the right wall, where three large refrigerators gleamed. The stainless silver was a theme all throughout the food preparation area, from the deep sinks to the ovens and countertops.

  Molly’s pulse beat at her throat as though a hammer pounded on her skin from the inside. Though she’d tried to act cool and composed, the search through the building had her nerves wrapped up into a tight ball in her stomach. She tried to focus on her breathing and not the possibility that Ken’s flashlight might turn up a corrupted or something worse.

  “There’s nothing here,” Ken murmured as he finished his sweep with the light. “We should get back to the others.”

  The last door the beam of light glinted off of made Molly hesitate. “There’s a deep freeze,” she said. She couldn’t bring herself to take a step toward it even as she suggested, “We should check it out before reporting back.”

  Ken nodded. He held a crowbar he’d liberated from the trunk of his vehicle before abandoning it in the clinic parking lot. Though Armani had praised his preparedness, Ken wasn’t feeling much confidence in regards to his makeshift weapon. When it came to what he’d seen of the corrupted, he didn’t have much faith in any kind of weapon.

  Guns, he reminded himself as he stepped forward with Molly. Guns seemed to stop them.

  But they didn’t have a gun. They moved closer to the door anyway.

  Molly stopped as they made their way in front of the large door. Ken shined the light on the door handle.

  “Do you want me to open it?” His whisper was funereal. He had a feeling he would speak in the same hushed, hesitant tone when asking a loved one if they’d like him to open the coffin of their dearly departed.

  Molly shook her head. Her hand didn’t move forward to get the door open, either.

  “Do you want to go back to the others?”

  Before Molly could respond–verbally or otherwise–they heard a sound from within the freezer. The muted scraping set Molly’s teeth on edge, though it barely reached her through the frost and metal of the room’s interior.

  “Let’s get the others,” Ken insisted in a louder voice.

  There was something inside the walk-in freezer. He knew it. Molly had to know it, too. Between his crowbar and her baseball bat, he didn’t think they were equipped to deal with one of the corrupted on their own.

  The scraping sounded again, raising the small, fine hairs on both of their arms. Metal on metal, it sounded like, with a slightly muffled effect due to the build-up of hard white ice on the walls.

  “Yeah, let’s–” Molly’s words ended in a startled cry as the freezer door burst open.

  Ken was flung back as the door hit him. Pain shot through his shoulder and he yelped. The bottom part of his spine met with the unforgiving metal of a countertop. Breath exploded from his lungs; denying him his voice even if he’d wanted to issue another cry of pain. He dropped the crowbar with his wounded arm and gripped his shoulder in agony while trying to suck air into his abused body.

  From within the walk-in freezer, the scraping of metal was exchanged for a throaty growl.

  In the back corner of the store, Gwen and the others heard the commotion from the deli area. Gwen moved first, with Armani practically on her heels.

  “Molly!” Gwen cried out as she turned a sharp corner.

  Kirby followed close behind with his handgun held down at his side. He raised the weapon as soon as he and the others saw the counter of the deli in the second flashlight’s bouncing beam.

  Eric tried to hold the flashlight steady, though the run had drained a surprising amount of energy from him. He felt a flutter of panic in his throat at his newfound weakness. Even an attempt to hold the flashlight without allowing his hand to tremble cost him enormous effort.

  And still, the beam shook.

  Gwen tried to rush to the back of the deli but Armani held her with the group.

  “Let me go!” she shouted at him as she jerked her arm from his grasp. Though free, she stopped of her own volition when she saw what was coming out of the deep freeze.

  What they’d seen of the corrupted so far had seemed to fit with some kind of mass hysteria, rabid violence committed by humans–sick humans, maybe even possessed humans. Humans who’d been infected with something akin to a zombie virus, perhaps, but humans in their look and attributes.

  What came out of the freezer was not human.

  The thing had been a worker. The once-white apron bore the telltale blue swoosh and dark gray lettering of the store’s logo and hung in tatters from a greatly expanded frame. If the corrupted had been wearing pants when the Onset occurred, the fabric had not survived. Nor had the skin beneath. Blood oozed from the exposed tissue and muscle. Knives stuck out at odd angles; some having pierced the meat inches deep and some lodged to the handle in the weeping flesh. The only skin still remaining on the grotesquery
was on its arms and back. Even its face had been mutilated beyond recognition, and the bastard had done a messy, half-completed job of scalping himself. Skin had been peeled away in strips from the chest, exposing thick slabs of muscles larger than the world’s biggest bodybuilders.

  Compared to the creature, Eric had the frame of a sickly teenage girl.

  “Molly, Ken, move!” Armani ordered.

  The attention of the corrupted snapped to Armani. Though the face around them had been irreparably damaged, the eyes that glared at the group leader were clear and whole; chocolate brown in color. From its lipless mouth poured a growl that could have belonged to a grizzly deep in the woods. Armani held his ground, but Kirby raised his gun and aimed.

  The corrupted tore one of the knives buried in its thigh and roared as the metal burst free of the flesh. Barely had the blade been removed before the creature aimed and threw with a sharp whistle through the air. Though it was not designed as a throwing knife, the blade seemed intent on keeping a course as straight and fast as a bullet.

  Armani rushed Kirby and tackled him. They both went down and the knife sailed harmlessly overhead.

  “Oh, shit.”

  The curse came from Molly, who was still the only one who could see the whole of the creature.

  “Mol,” Gwen said in a pleading tone. She wanted Molly to run, but none of them knew how fast the corrupted could move.

  “Guys, this fucker has a big ass knife. It’s like a fucking sword. Someone shoot this piece of shit!”

  Kirby hauled himself up and lifted his gun back up. He squeezed the trigger three times in quick succession as soon as he got the molted, bloody carcass of the corrupted in his line of sight.

  The creature stepped back once when the punch of the bullets hit, but didn’t otherwise falter. With another groaning growl, what had once undoubtedly been a butcher finished pulling itself away from the deep freeze.

  “Oh, shit.” Armani shook his head as he echoed Molly’s curse.

  The bladed arm of the meat slicing machine in the back of the deli had been torn clean off. With a blade kept super sharp and thin for precision, the weapon would be a problem for anyone in close proximity. Armani wanted all of his group members to get out of that range.