Escaping Darkness (Book 2): The Cloud

by Richards, E. S.

  “I understand what you’re saying, Riley,” Pop started to reply, “but...”

  “But nothing!” She interrupted, a faint smile threatening to creep onto her face as Riley began to sense victory in the conversation with her grandfather. “That’s all there is to say. We need to fix this house and we need to do it quickly. There’s no point messing around arguing over who goes out and gets the supplies. The safest option is for me and Chase to go, and I think you know that.”

  Jerry smiled at his granddaughter, enjoying the fire that rose inside Riley as she debated her corner. He couldn’t deny that he could see the logic behind what she was saying, but he knew he could never outright agree with her or Linda would have his head for it. Because he also agreed with his wife. He didn’t want to see both his grandchildren drive out into the unknown with no sure-fire way of reaching them again if something went wrong.

  “Whether you think I know that or not,” Jerry began, “you know you’re never going to be allowed to go if your grandma doesn’t say okay. I’m not the one you need to argue with, kiddo, and I think you know that.”

  Riley bit her lip and rolled her eyes slightly. This was ridiculous. She was getting irritated with her brother for not backing her up too. She knew this was the right thing to do and she was only trying to do it in order to help everyone else. Sure, there was a tiny bit of Riley that wanted to go out with Chase so she could see everything for herself firsthand. But she also wanted to help her family. She was fed up of being ignored and sidelined, given the easy or simple tasks just because she was the youngest or because she was a girl. She was much more capable than both of her grandparents now and deep down, she really just wanted a chance to prove that.

  “Whatever,” Riley huffed, tired of trying to remain mature throughout the discussion. “I’m going and I don’t think you can stop me.” With that, the thirteen-year-old stormed out of the den and down the hall to the bedroom she was sleeping in now. She was disappointed with herself as she felt like she’d just lost the argument somehow, but she was still resolute in her decision. She was going with Chase and eventually her grandma would just have to deal with it.

  “Aw, man.” Chase rubbed a hand across the back of his neck anxiously, now just he and his grandpop left in the den. “Do you think she should come with me?”

  “I don’t know,” Jerry sighed in reply, slumping back in his seat on the couch. Chase collapsed next to him, letting out an equally loud sigh and allowing his head to rest back against the comfortable cushioning.

  “It will be easier if she helps me, I guess,” Chase thought out loud, knowing he could discuss this freely with his grandfather without getting into any trouble. “But she’s just a kid.”

  “That’s the thing,” Jerry replied. “I agree that it’d be better if you could have someone with you and in an ideal world that would be me. I’m just not up to it,” Jerry closed his eyes in shame, disappointed that he couldn’t be the one to help his grandson. “I’m just not sure whether she’s the next best option.”

  “Do you think Grandma could come?”

  “No,” Jerry shook his head, his eyes still closed. “I need Linda here with me in case...” Jerry trailed off slightly, ashamed of himself and all the trouble he was causing. He blamed himself. If he were fit enough, he would go with Chase and none of this would be happening. He hated the old man he was turning into.

  “It can’t be me or your grandma,” Jerry continued after a brief pause, knowing this wasn’t the time to start feeling sorry for himself. “It should be Riley, but I just don’t want her to have to do this. I don’t want you to have to either,” he quickly added, “but I’m sure you can handle it. Riley, I just don’t know.”

  “She is strong,” Chase answered, thinking more positively about having his sister with him. “And I can trust her. I do trust her. Ugh!” He threw his hands up in the air and brought them back down again, slapping his palms against the couch in frustration. “I can’t make this decision.”

  “Well luckily we don’t have to,” Jerry joked. “We both know that once your grandma has made her mind up about something, it’s rare that she changes it. I think this is one that Riley is going to have to battle out with her, whether she wants to or not.”

  Chase sighed. “Oh jeez. This isn’t going to be fun.”

  “Nope,” Jerry agreed. “I think we’ll probably do well to stay out of it. Why don’t we go and have another look in Riley’s room at what we’re dealing with? See if we can make a proper list of what’s needed to fix it all up?”

  “Yeah all right,” Chase smiled, happy to have something else to focus on. He pushed himself up from the couch with ease and offered a hand to his grandfather, tugging the old man up beside him. “I think that’s definitely an easier problem to tackle.”

  The two of them laughed, exiting the den and padding the short walk down the hallway to Riley’s bedroom. The young teenage girl, meanwhile, was sitting with her back against the wall in the old back bedroom. She’d left the door open just wide enough for the sound from Chase and Pop’s conversation to travel down to her, Riley listening to every word.

  By the end of it, there was a satisfied smile etched across her face. Riley felt pretty confident that both her brother and her grandfather thought she should go. She was also positive that the more the two of them thought it over, the surer they would find themselves becoming of that decision. Now the only matter at hand appeared to be convincing her grandmother. Linda was a hard nut to crack, but Riley had her ways. Now that she was so set on it, nothing was going to stop her from accompanying her brother to the hardware store.

  Linda didn’t know what to do. She sat in the front room tending to her plants, several of the crops from her garden that had been too young to harvest moved inside as best they could. They never really used the front room anymore, the décor too fancy and the carpets too white and pristine. Not that they looked like that anymore. Everything was covered in soil and muddy footprints had been stamped into the floor. It was a room much like the dining room in the old farmhouse. One that had entertained many people over the years, but now that it was normally only Linda and Jerry in the house, was left to gather dust and grow cold and less homey. Linda didn’t care too much that the front room was now effectively a greenhouse; she was glad to have somewhere to herself where she could think.

  It was extremely difficult not to think of Mia when she looked at Riley like that. Linda missed her daughter so much and thought about her almost every minute. Unlike her son, Brogan, Linda could tell that Mia wasn’t dead. She had felt it inside of her when her son died and she hadn’t had that feeling yet with Mia. Linda was certain she was still alive, but where she was and how she was coping was a completely different question. All she wanted was a sign. Something to tell her that Mia was okay.

  Losing Brogan had been a total and utter heartbreak for Linda. The crash had come as such a surprise, just a normal day turned completely upside down in no more than a few seconds. At first, Linda had desperately tried to find someone to blame. Anyone and everyone who had been present had been on her list. Blaming someone else somehow made it easier for her to accept that her son was gone.

  In time, she had come to accept that it wasn’t really anyone’s fault. It was a freak accident that no one could have stopped, even if they’d known it was coming. Understanding that there wasn’t anyone to blame didn’t make it any easier though, and after the blame stage came extreme grief and with a blink of her eyes Linda was back in that dark room, sobbing into a pillow for days on end. She had been inconsolable. Many had tried, but for a mother to lose her son was something no one would understand unless they had experienced it for themselves.

  Linda had watched Brogan grow up. She had been by his side for his first tooth, his first day at school, his first break up, first job, first love, and so much more. She’d seen the look on his face when her son finally became a parent and she became a grandmother. That was something she’d wanted to see as w
ell, her son watching his own child have a baby of their own, and understanding how much the love you held inside yourself could only grow and grow with each new addition to the family. That was just one of the moments that had been snatched from her and Linda mourned each and every one of them every day.

  She missed her children—both Brogan and Mia—so incredibly dearly. Not seeing them every day hurt more than she ever could have imagined. But Linda had Chase and Riley in her life now. Their smiling faces made everything seem better, even when the world was in turmoil outside. Her house had nearly fallen down and Linda had still managed to smile, because both her grandchildren had still been safe. The thought of losing them was just too much for her to deal with.

  Shaking her head as tears began to slide down her cheeks onto the leaves of her plants below her, Linda knew that no matter how much sense it made or how hard Riley tried to convince her, she would never let her granddaughter go. In reality, she didn’t want Chase to have to leave either, but she could reassure herself just enough that he would be safe. For Riley, she couldn’t. Linda still saw the three-day-old baby that she had first laid eyes on when she looked at her granddaughter and there was no chance she was letting that precious little girl go outside in the storm.

  As much as she loved her grandmother, none of that mattered to Riley. Even if she’d heard Linda’s explanation, it wouldn’t have made any difference. Upstairs, Riley packed her rucksack and prepared herself for the journey she was about to make. She was going with her brother and just as she’d told her grandpop earlier, no one was going to stop her.

  Chapter 14

  Blake had been entombed in silence in the store for two whole minutes before he heard the sound of someone scuttling back down the emergency escape hatch. In an instant he was below it, the shotgun clutched in his hand as he waited to see who was going to appear. Vic hadn’t been gone long, but Blake had been alone for long enough to fear the worst. All he’d heard was one gunshot and he had no idea who it had come from.

  “Blake, my friend. Find a chair or something will you?”

  The large stuntman found that he exhaled so deeply with relief, that he went a little lightheaded. Vic was back. Never in his life had he felt so comforted by an Eastern European accent, dashing across the back room and placing a chair underneath the hatch so Vic could lower himself back down with ease.

  “What happened?” Blake questioned before Vic’s feet were both even on the ground, the rifle he had taken with him nowhere to be seen. “Where’s your gun? I heard a shot fired. Was that you?”

  “Slow down, my friend,” Vic replied, catching his breath slightly from his rapid descent. “Yes, that was me. Our friend Jenson is no longer with us.”

  Blake was puzzled. “But how? Surely you didn’t make it all the way up to the roof in that time?”

  “No,” Vic shook his head. “I didn’t. I popped through a vent into an empty apartment and took the shot from there. It was much closer range and luckily Jenson didn’t see it coming.”

  “Oh,” Blake answered, relieved to discover there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for what had happened. The fact that a man had just been killed somehow didn’t seem too serious to him—certainly not as much as he’d thought it would’ve. Blake’s overwhelming feeling was relief. He was going to survive, at least for the immediate future.

  “Were you worried, my friend?” Vic asked with a smile, noticing the shotgun that Blake had moved from the counter to where it now lay on the floor next to him. “Did you think it was I who had been hurt?”

  “I didn’t know.” Blake shook his head. “I’m just glad it wasn’t.”

  “Me too,” Vic laughed. “That would’ve made the rest of the day a lot less enjoyable.”

  Blake cracked half a smile, his mind still preoccupied. Jenson had only been the first—he was sure more people would come and find them if they knew that treasures lay inside Vic’s store. Jenson himself had spoken about returning with his boys; what if somehow, he’d already gotten word to them about what he was doing? No matter how safe Blake had previously believed he and Vic were inside the store, he was now very, very on edge.

  “What did you do with the body?” Blake asked, already no longer thinking of Jenson as a human being, but just something they had to get rid of. “Do you think we should move it?”

  “I do,” Vic nodded. “I don’t want a corpse guarding my store. Especially not one as recognizable as Jenson.”

  “Okay. Okay,” Blake repeated the word, the reality of what he’d just suggested they do sinking in. They were going to move a dead body. It was something he’d once acted out in a movie, but of course nothing he’d ever done for real. Very quickly Blake realized he needed to man up a bit more and act like the characters he’d played for real if he was going to keep his head in the zone and get through this disaster. “Out the front, or up to the roof?”

  Vic thought about the question for a moment. He hadn’t seen anyone else when he’d been in that apartment building, but that didn’t mean there weren’t more people running around in the street. If there were then he didn’t want to take the risk of them getting into his store while the security gate was up. It would be longer, but he knew they needed to go up and around.

  “We’ll go up,” he declared, shifting the chair he had climbed down onto just seconds earlier slightly to the right so it was directly beneath the hatch. “We can get on the fire escape from the apartment I was just in and down that way. It’s quicker than going all the way up and we should be less suspicious if anyone sees us.”

  “Okay,” Blake nodded, certain that if anyone saw them moving a dead body, they would look pretty suspicious either way. He didn’t want to argue with Vic though. The storeowner was all he had and Blake didn’t want to lose that tiny advantage. “Let’s go.”

  As he followed Vic up into the hatch, Blake suddenly found himself wishing he’d brought a weapon with him. Presumably the rifle Vic had taken earlier was still in the apartment, but Blake himself was entirely unprotected apart from his two fists. Thanks to his job he was naturally trained in several fighting techniques: Krav Maga, Jujitsu, and Judo just a handful of them that he had in his arsenal. But for however well he could throw or block a punch, Blake knew he couldn’t block a bullet.

  The escape hatch that the two of them climbed up was narrow, hot, and sweaty. Blake could only assume it had been part of the building’s ventilation system, though he was unsure why it stopped being used as a part of that and became a contingency plan for the man in the shop below. Blake felt like he had only scratched the surface of what went on in Vic’s life and as he continued to climb behind him, he was certain more secrets and surprises would gradually become uncovered.

  “Here we are,” Vic spoke down to Blake after about two minutes of climbing, roughly the amount of time that had been left on Jenson’s count down the first time. Looking up, Blake watched Vic’s body tumble off to one side and then the narrow tunnel was illuminated with light for the first time since they’d started climbing. Scrambling up the last few rungs of the ladder before he was at that level, Blake quickly freed himself from the escape hatch and stood to his full height in an abandoned apartment.

  “Wow,” he sighed as he looked around the room, uncertain what he should be saying. The apartment looked just like any other. There was nothing peculiar or special about the place, just a standard space that could’ve belonged to anyone. In a way, it was a little disappointing. Blake had half-expected something to be different about the place, but the only thing that wasn’t as it should be was the rifle that lay next to the open window in the bedroom.

  “Is he...?” Blake trailed off, wandering over to the window to look out onto the street below. Sure enough Jenson’s body lay on the sidewalk, a tiny pool of blood drying in the street next to him. “Wow,” Blake repeated, unable to take his eyes off of the body. It was the first real dead body he’d ever seen, but it surprised him how normal it looked. If he hadn’t known any better, B
lake would’ve believed it was just a still from a movie set, the normalcy of it sending a little chill down his spine.

  “Come on, my friend,” Vic spoke from the small kitchen, jimmying open the narrow door that led to the fire escape steps. “Let’s go down and get him.”

  “Why don’t we just take the normal stairs?” Blake questioned, looking to the front door of the apartment as he exited the bedroom and deciding that that would be an easier route.

  “We don’t know who’s on the other side of that door,” Vic shrugged in reply. “At least from here we can see that the street is empty.”

  “Okay,” Blake agreed after a pause, seeing no reason to doubt his companion after everything that had already happened. If Vic thought the fire escape was a better option, then it probably was. Once again, Blake was happy to follow his lead.

  “Keep your eyes open,” Vic prompted as he stuck one leg out of the door and onto the metal stairs. “You never know who might be watching.”

  “Wait! Don’t you want your rifle?”

  “No, my friend,” Vic smiled. “There are plenty more bullets for us to play with later.”

  With a confused expression on his face, Blake watched as Vic hopped out onto the fire escape and began to descend. He didn’t understand why Vic was so comfortable going outside without a gun after what had just happened, or why he seemed so blasé about the whole situation. Blake wondered how many men Vic had killed in his lifetime. Was Jenson the first? Or was he just another name added to the bottom of a long list?

  Dashing back into the bedroom and grabbing the rifle, Blake slung it over his shoulder before heading out onto the fire escape behind Vic. They were only on the fourth floor and Vic was nearly on the ground before Blake even started climbing down. First kill or thousandth kill, Jenson was still dead and the two of them needed to hide the body before they started worrying about anything else.