Chase watched his sister take the flashlight out of her rucksack and did the same with his own. Despite it being no later than mid-morning, the sun had still failed to make an appearance and the darkness that the ash cloud caused hung low over their heads. They could both see there was no power inside the hardware store either, so they would both need flashlights to see where they were going in there.
“You ready?”
“Yeah,” Riley nodded, taking in a deep breath. She knew she couldn’t chicken out of this now. She was the one who had fought to be at the hardware store with Chase. Now she had to deal with her decisions. “Lead the way.”
Walking in front of his sister, Chase could see that she was frightened. He didn’t blame her though. He could understand exactly why she hid in the truck and exactly why she had wanted to come on the supply run so desperately. He remembered being her age and how difficult it was when you thought of yourself as an adult, but no one else did. Like he’d said to her earlier, he still felt like he was in that stage a bit himself, but no way near as much as Riley must.
Flicking on his flashlight, Chase stepped into the raided store, his boots crunching on broken glass. “Be careful,” he warned Riley. “Watch your step here.”
It was his instinct to look out for his sister and something that Chase had always tried to do. He knew just as well as anyone that his level of care for her had increased following the death of his parents. As he’d said to her earlier, it was the one good thing that had come from that crash. Now, as the two of them crept into the abandoned hardware store, Chase was focused on two things: finding the supplies his grandparents needed and keeping his sister safe.
“What are we looking for?” Riley asked as they started walking down one of the aisles, finding the shelves almost completely bare.
Chase pulled the handwritten list from his pocket that his grandfather had given him, shining his flashlight on it for a second so he could read and refresh his memory. There were several things that had been written down that Chase hadn’t even recognized initially, meaning his grandfather had to explain them further. A month ago he would’ve simply brought up the internet on his cell and done a quick search. How to rebuild a roof had to have thousands of videos and instruction manuals assigned to it—fat lot of good any of them were now. That was yet another thing that Chase needed: an instruction manual. He figured that was probably the best place to start.
“Over at the back,” he replied eventually. “They normally have those ‘how to’ books stuck to the walls back there.” Chase was basing his assumption off of the couple of trips to the hardware store he’d made with his dad over the years. He definitely remembered them having guides on the back wall the time he’d come before building the treehouse. If they hadn’t been there, his construction project would’ve likely taken a lot longer.
“Okay,” Riley answered, her voice echoing off the walls due to how empty the store seemed. “If they haven’t been taken like everything else.”
Chase was trying to stay positive, but he couldn’t deny that his sister sounded right. There was hardly a single nail left behind by the looters who got to the store first. Many days had passed since they first became aware of what had happened; Chase was certain that hundreds if not thousands of people would’ve flooded there in search of supplies. The store was massive. It had everything you needed for rebuilding and repairs, plus gear for hunting, fishing, and outdoor sports. That included camping and hiking gear and even vacuum-packed food and water filtration devices. Chase knew it would’ve been incredibly useful to get in there early on. He and Riley were now left to pick through the scraps that had been overlooked by the masses.
“Is this what you mean?” Riley asked, standing over a hardcover instruction manual with its covers nailed to a worktop.
“Yes!” Chase squeezed his hand into a fist, air-pumping it briefly. Truth be told, after seeing the rest of the store, he was almost certain that the books would’ve been taken too. “Nice one, Riley.”
Riley grinned to herself as she stepped to one side, allowing her brother space to pore over the heavy manual. In the back of her mind, though, she knew it wasn’t enough. They needed more than a book to reconstruct the farmhouse roof, and part of the wall too. Looking around the hardware store, it was obvious to Riley that they just weren’t going to find what they needed there. The place had been stripped down to its very minimum; if they seriously wanted to save their home, the two of them were going to have to go elsewhere.
“Chase,” Riley started, preparing herself to share her thoughts with her brother.
“I know, Riley,” he replied before she’d even gotten the rest of her sentence out. “We can’t get what we need here.” Ripping a few pages out of the manual—that, at least, was useful for clearer instructions on what they needed to do—Chase moved to stand by his sister. “What do you think we should do?”
“Well, we need to get the equipment,” Riley responded in a straightforward manner. “The farmhouse will probably collapse if we don’t do something.”
“I agree,” Chase nodded. “But you know what that means, don’t you?”
“We need to try another hardware store?”
Chase took in a deep breath, placing a hand on his sister’s shoulder. “No, another hardware store won’t be any good. They’ll all be looted just the same as this one. That won’t work.”
“So where?” Riley asked, a confused expression on her face. She knew they needed supplies, but she couldn’t think of where else they could get them from.
“The city,” Chase explained solemnly. “We need to go into the city.”
Chapter 21
Mia splashed her face with cold water once more, finally looking up at her reflection in the dusty mirror. This was the closest she’d come to washing in days, at least since she had set out that fateful morning to gather more information on Yellowstone. Along with Jorge and Tyler, the three of them had been so unaware of what was to come, believing it was nothing more than just a normal day on site. How wrong they had been.
She and Tyler had been discussing Mia’s fracking theory on the way up there. The two of them had always been a lot closer than Mia ever had been with Jorge; they were real friends outside of work, not just associates. For the first time since their plane had gone down, she spared a thought for Tyler and his partner back home. Mia had gone to their house for many a barbeque during the summer months, Tyler’s boyfriend always putting out an incredible feast with leftover meat cuts he could scavenge from the restaurant he ran. Mia wondered what Nathaniel was doing now. Whether he had managed to find somewhere safe to outlast the effects of the eruption, or whether he was still sitting at home waiting for Tyler to return.
Tyler had been on board with Mia’s theory. He was an activist in his spare time, always campaigning for equal rights or for the environment in one way or another. He’d hated fracking ever since it first began and was more than happy to join Mia’s tirade against it, if it was in fact contributing to the increased earthquakes and tremors in the area.
Because that was all it had been back then. A few small-scale earthquakes or shifts underneath the Earth’s crust. None of them had even considered the fact that it might trigger a supervolcanic eruption; none of them had believed it was possible. In some sense, Tyler being so on board with the fracking theory had dissuaded Mia from it. As a result of how involved he got with environmental tangents—joining rallies and protests in his spare time—she wondered whether he was agreeing with her because he truly believed it, or because he just wanted another reason to hate “the man”.
It didn’t matter much now, Mia supposed. She still wasn’t any closer to determining whether her theory was correct or not and she doubted she ever would be. The cause of it didn’t really bother her so much anymore. Now that it had really happened, now that Yellowstone had really erupted, the most important thing was surviving it, not working out its origin. She would much rather be reunited with her family and not have
a clue why it was going on, than understand everything that was related to the eruption by experiencing it on her own. In a way, the latter was much closer to her current reality.
Looking at her reflection in the mirror, Mia could see how much she appeared to have aged over the past few days. She was finally approaching forty, but in her opinion, she already looked like she’d passed that milestone several years ago. Scrubbing her face once more, Mia tried to remove the layer of dirt that had built up on her skin. It wasn’t pleasant, but with at least five more people waiting to use the bathroom she was in, she knew she needed to hurry up.
The decision to stay in the farmhouse hadn’t been taken lightly. Mia had been against it, but based on the fact that they now had three children with them, the general consensus had been it was better for them to rest up overnight—especially seeing as they at least had a roof over their heads. Along with Stuart, Patrick, Jorge, and Jadon, they had moved the bodies of the old farmer and his wife into the basement. It was fairly crude and callous of them, but again, with young children around, they couldn’t think of anywhere else to hide them. They wouldn’t be at the farmhouse for longer than a day, Mia hoped, so the smell hopefully wouldn’t cause too many problems.
“It’s all yours.” Mia smiled to Patrick as she exited the bathroom, holding the door open for the father to walk inside. Allie trailed in after him, her long hair desperately in need of washing. Mia thought about offering to help Patrick with her, but decided against it. If she’d learned anything about that man, it was that he was strong enough to handle anything. He’d watched his wife and one of his daughters be torn away from him by lahars in the airport; he could certainly handle washing a girl’s hair.
Making her way downstairs, Mia tried to avoid noticing the similarities between the farmhouse she inhabited now and the one she’d grown up in. The one where—hopefully—her family were all safely waiting for her return. By design, the two buildings weren’t actually very similar, it was just the feelings the place evoked in Mia that felt extremely close. She remembered running through the halls as a child, her mother chasing after her as she played with her brother, Brogan. Chase and Riley had continued those games after she herself had grown up and Mia wanted nothing more than to know for certain that that was still the cheerful vibe that filled the farmhouse to that day.
She had no way of knowing whether her family was safe, but she had faith in each and every one of them. They all brought a different set of skills to the table and, working together, Mia believed there was nothing they couldn’t tackle. As she walked past the front room where Miles, Billy, Stuart, Ethan, and Deb sat, Mia saw visions of her own family positioned in the same way. All they were missing was her, and she knew she would join them eventually.
Continuing into the kitchen where they had originally found the dead homeowners, Mia now found Jesse, Jadon, and Marcus. The three boys had rearranged the kitchen somewhat, hiding any evidence that two people had killed themselves there.
“Wow,” Mia remarked, looking around and picturing the room how it had been before. “Did you three do all this?”
“Yeah,” Jesse smiled. “Figured it was necessary if we’re going to have kids running around the place.”
“Incredible,” Mia thanked them. “You didn’t need to do that.”
“Honestly, Mia,” Jadon argued with her, “we really don’t mind chipping in and helping. We’re perfectly capable of doing so.”
“I know,” Mia suddenly backtracked, worried the boys thought she was saying they weren’t well-equipped enough to help out. “I just meant...”
“Aha, don’t worry about it,” Jadon cut in again. “There’s no harm done.”
“Yeah,” Marcus added, jumping down from the kitchen stool he sat on. “Why don’t you sit down for a bit? Take a load off.”
“All right,” Mia found herself saying. “Thanks, guys.” Just like when she was washing her face, Mia now felt like she was sitting down and resting for the first time in an eternity. She’d been on the go nonstop for days, always looking out for someone or trying to prevent something from happening.
As she looked around the kitchen, Mia noticed more things that the three young men had altered for the sake of sheltering the children from what had happened there. The heavy kitchen table had been removed and replaced with one from the deck out back and the washer and dryer had been dragged across the room to hide the blood splatter on the wall behind where the old man had sat. Mia shuddered as she remembered the sight of it, the smell of death still lingering in the air around them. They had the windows and doors open to try and air it out slightly, but Mia was aware of the risk that also caused to their breathing, so had only allowed each of them to be cracked or left ajar.
The sound of coughing punctuated her thoughts and carried through from the front room where the people from the village sat. It was those five who Mia was most worried about. Not only had they been breathing in the contaminated air so close to the eruption site, but she suspected some of them might have drank the dirty water as well. Water was already scarce among the group; the last thing she wanted was more pressure being placed on their dwindling supplies.
Although that was, in fairness, a great advantage of running across the farmhouse. The pantry was fully stocked and due to the farm’s remote location there was an abundance of both food and clean water. The pipes seemed to be working and Mia deemed the water drinkable. It wasn’t coming from a reservoir like the water pipes that supplied the village below the airport had been. In her view, that meant it was still safe to drink.
She was still aware that clean water couldn’t lessen the effects of drinking dirty water, much like breathing clean air couldn’t heal your lungs. If those five people who sat in the front room were already ill, they would find out soon enough. Billy’s own mother, Lizzie, had been so sure of her illness and impending death that she’d sent her only son away with a group half made up of strangers. For her to be that confident, Mia figured whatever she’d contracted didn’t hide its symptoms for long. If anyone else was sick, she guessed there was less than twenty-four hours remaining until those symptoms started to become apparent.
“Yo, Mia,” Jesse was waving a hand in her face, trying to attract Mia’s attention again. “You in there?”
“Huh, what?” Mia questioned, fully aware that she had just zoned out for potentially several minutes. She hadn’t had a peaceful minute to herself to really think since everything started, the respite at the farmhouse was starting to become exactly what she hadn’t known she’d needed.
“I asked if you’re hungry,” Jesse said with a smile, “I’m sorry, looks like I interrupted some deep thought there.”
Mia laughed, slightly embarrassed she had spaced out so much. “Yeah, I guess. Haven’t had that much time to think recently.”
“It’s cool, don’t worry about it,” Jesse continued to smile, Mia feeling comforted by his wide, toothy grin. “So,” he continued, “hungry?”
“Oh,” Mia laughed again. “Yes! Please! What is there?”
“Quite an impressive spread actually,” Jesse remarked, turning around and indicating a few of the items he’d pulled from the cupboards. “I could make fettuccine?”
Mia raised her eyebrows, while Marcus and Jadon both struggled to stifle their laughter. Neither of them could manage it for very long, keeling over and spluttering among themselves. “Aha, Jesse, man, who do you think you are?”
“This kid can hardly even make toast,” Jadon chuckled through his teeth. “Fettuccine? You’ve lost it, dude.”
“Aw, lay off, guys.” Jesse pushed Marcus away, only because he happened to be nearer to him. “At least I’m trying to help.”
Mia couldn’t help but laugh. For a second, she forgot that the air outside was toxic to breathe and there was a strong possibility the water might kill them too. She forgot that her family was in danger and that she still wasn’t certain of how she was going to return to them. She forgot that she’d seen wha
t now had to be almost a hundred people die, men, women, and children alike. She forgot how much pain everyone in her group had experienced and she forgot how much more pain there undoubtedly still was to come.
The sound of laughter brought Deb, Stuart, Ethan, and the two boys from the front room. Patrick, Allie, and Jorge also appeared shortly after, the whole group now congregating in the kitchen. Again it reminded Mia of home, but she tried not to focus on that memory. She had to keep reminding herself to live in the present, all she had control over for the time being.
Their group wasn’t much, but with her leadership and determination, Mia knew she would get them somewhere. She would get them to where they needed to be, and in the end, she would make it home.
Escaping Darkness Book 3
Available Here!
Other Post-Apocalyptic Books from Mike Kraus
Final Dawn: The Complete Original Series Box Set
Clocking in at nearly 300,000 words with over 250,000 copies sold, this is the complete collection of the original bestselling post-apocalyptic Final Dawn series. If you enjoy gripping, thrilling post-apocalyptic action with compelling and well-written characters you’ll love Final Dawn.
Final Dawn: Arkhangelsk: The Complete Trilogy Box Set
The Arkhangelsk Trilogy is the first follow-up series set in the bestselling Final Dawn universe and delivers more thrills, fun and just a few scares. The crew of the Russian Typhoon submarine Arkhangelsk travel to a foreign shore in search of survivors, but what the find threatens their fragile rebuilding efforts in the post-apocalyptic world.
No Sanctuary
A nationwide terrorist attack has left the country in shambles and the country's transportation capabilities are crippled beyond repair. Frank Richards barely escapes with his life when he watches his truck explode in front of his eyes. As chaos descends across the country, Frank's home-grown survival and preparedness training and the help of a mysterious stranger he meets are the only things he can rely on to see him safely across the thousand miles separating him and his loved ones.
Escaping Darkness (Book 2): The Cloud Page 15