The Light we Lost : A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller (Lost Light Book 1)

by Kyla Stone

  Ahead of her, Bear alerted again. He stood quivering, hackles up and tail stiff, sniffing at a shadowy patch beneath a cluster of rhododendron bushes. She shone her flashlight across the ground.

  Something silvery and metallic glinted in the leaves. A candy bar wrapper. It looked fresh. She caught a whiff of chocolate and caramel.

  After she tagged the evidence, she looked back at Eli and Jackson, who’d stopped a few yards away. “I have a Snickers wrapper here. It looks fresh. Any chance it could be our girl’s?”

  “That’s her,” Eli said. “She’s out here.”

  Bolstered by the find, they kept moving. Anxiety and fear tangled in her stomach. With every step, Lena had the disconcerting feeling that she was facing a test. Heading closer and closer to her fate.

  Her destiny lay at the end of this dark and twisting trail. Whether it be salvation or destruction, she did not yet know.

  59

  SHILOH EASTON

  DAY SEVEN

  Time folded in on itself. Shiloh was back in the salvage yard, huddled in that crushed car, gummy glass shards stuck to her hair, her heart a jackhammer in her chest. Peering through the jagged frame of the window, just enough space to see without being seen.

  “He’s coming. Shiloh, hide!” Cody had turned to her with a blind panic so terrifying that she had obeyed without question.

  “What’s going on?” her grandfather asked.

  “I saw something,” Cody gasped. “I should have said something, but I didn’t think he could find me. I didn’t know he saw me—”

  “Go to the house,” Amos said. “Call the police.”

  “But—”

  “Go!”

  Cody didn’t have time to run. Boone approached. He looked benign, like every boring adult that Shiloh had ever met. Khaki pants. Plaid shirt rolled up to the elbows, the top button undone.

  He could’ve come straight from school, except for his footwear. The black boots with the red laces. The white stitching. Mud crusted the soles, like he’d been hiking.

  “Amos,” Boone said, panting, out of breath from exertion. Sweat stains marred his pits. His dishwater blond hair, normally combed so neatly, was windblown.

  “What the hell are you doing on my property?” her grandfather said.

  Boone’s gaze remained on Amos, though Cody stood frozen ten feet away. “I was just out hiking the bluffs. Took a wrong turn coming back. No harm done.” Boone took a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his brow. “They say we’re gonna get quite the light show tonight.”

  He smiled, a wide bright smile that sent a shiver down Shiloh’s spine. She didn’t understand what she was seeing, why he was here.

  They stood fifteen feet apart in a ragged triangle, surrounded by the husks of dozens of vehicles. Tension thrummed in the air.

  Cody shivered like a leaf caught in a windstorm. His face bone-white, blue eyes wide and bloodshot. She’d never seen him so scared. “Stay away from me!”

  Boone raised his brows. “Cody, what’s wrong?” His voice was cordial, concerned.

  “Don’t speak to him.” Her grandfather stood next to the Volkswagen he’d been working on, engine parts splayed everywhere. His hand closed on the handle of a wrench. “Get the hell off my property before I make you.”

  Boone looked hurt and surprised. He took a step toward them, one hand behind his back. A rusted pick up behind him, the hood up, more tools scattered everywhere. “Amos. We’ve always been amicable, haven’t we? We can talk this out—”

  “I got nothin’ to say to you and neither does he. Leave or you will regret it.”

  “No need to call the police—”

  Amos shifted, revealing the two-foot wrench in his hands. “Who said anything about calling the police?”

  A flicker passed behind Boone’s eyes. A shadow on dark water. He seemed to be deciding something, weighing his odds, considering his options.

  “He’s—he’s a killer!” Cody stuttered. “I saw you—I saw what you did!”

  The smile dropped from his face like a sticker. Boone seized a tire iron and ran at Cody.

  Abject terror shot through Shiloh. For her brother. For herself. Her mouth opened in a scream of warning, but no sound came out. She was invisible, unheard.

  Her grandfather moved. He lunged into the space between Cody and Boone and raised the wrench. He had once been a big man, and strong, but age had robbed him of his vitality.

  Boone was younger, faster. He raised the tire iron and brought it down on her grandfather’s temple. Her grandfather crumpled before he could swing the wrench. Boone knocked it from his grasp and hit him again.

  Her grandfather toppled backward. He made a sound like a wounded animal.

  Shiloh crouched, frozen, too terrified to move. The air smelled of oil and gasoline.

  “NO!” Cody screamed.

  He raised the crowbar again. Brought it down again. Then again. It happened so fast, it was over in a matter of seconds.

  Blackness fringed her vision. A rushing roar filled her ears. States and capitals tumbled through her head. Disjointed and terrible. Then she was falling, flailing, toppling into darkness.

  Boone pushed himself off the still form of her grandfather. He wasn’t moving. One foot twitched. The tire iron in Boone’s right hand was coated in red. A fine spray of red spattered his boots.

  He dropped the tire iron and turned toward Cody.

  Shaken from his stupor, Cody ran.

  Shiloh faded, the darkness sucking her away as Walter Boone sprinted into the woods in pursuit of her brother.

  60

  SHILOH EASTON

  DAY SEVEN

  Shiloh blinked. The cabin snapped back into focus. The stench of vomit and piss filled her nostrils. Reality rushed in with dizzying waves.

  Boone knelt beside her, a gun in one hand. Blood seeped through the gauze he’d wrapped around his bicep. He’d managed to remove the bolt.

  Grief threatened to swallow her. The emotions she hadn’t felt at her grandfather’s death overwhelmed her now. Sorrow choked her throat.

  The man she’d feared and resented her whole life had stepped in front of his grandson and taken the blow. He’d used his body to block Boone’s view of the wrecked Altima, of Shiloh.

  If only Cody had told the truth as soon as he’d come home that night. If he’d been raised in a household where truth-telling was a safe thing, where every word or action wasn’t rife with danger.

  But they hadn’t lived in a house like that. They’d lived with hostile silence and bouts of pent-up violence like an explosive storm cloud hanging over the dinner table.

  They’d lived with a man who grieved into a bottle, haunted by the ghost of his murdered daughter. Who couldn’t bear his own guilt let alone the two grandchildren who’d needed him, depended on him, who’d reminded him of what he’d lost.

  He must have loved them, somewhere down deep, for him to do what he did. For him to have tried to save them in the end.

  Another memory filtered through her panicked haze. She had regained consciousness at some point, the blackness receding enough to stumble from the crushed car. She remembered kneeling over the body, hands on her grandfather’s chest, weeping, screaming.

  And then nothing again. A blankness that descended over everything.

  Shiloh raised her bloody chin. “You killed my grandfather.”

  “Only because I had to,” Boone said. “I’m not a murderer, Shiloh. That’s what you have to understand about this whole situation. I’m not who you think I am.”

  She blinked, forcing her gaze to clear. She would mourn later, once she got the hell out of here. Now, she had to focus. To be smart. To figure out a way to escape. “Where is he? Where is my brother?”

  Contrition flashed in his eyes. “The lake took him.”

  “That’s not true. He’s alive. He’s here. You’re hiding him. You’re lying.”

  “I’m not, Shiloh. I’m not lying.”

  “You take girls. I
’ve seen the pictures. I know what you do.”

  He clasped his hands together like he was imploring her to understand. “I don’t kill them, I love them, I take care of them.”

  She squirmed, straining against her bonds. The planks dug into her spine. The ropes burned her wrists. “You took Ruby.”

  He bared his teeth. “She presented herself like a gift. Normally, I only hunt further from home. There’s some quote about not hunting in your own backyard.”

  She stared at him blankly.

  “She was just a runaway. A druggie. A slut. Working one shelter to the next from Marquette to the Soo to finance her meth fix. Everyone knew what she was. No one would look for her. No one but someone like Jackson Cross, and even he was too distracted to care.”

  “She wasn’t yours to take. Neither was Cody.”

  His smile widened. He looked pleased with himself, like the cat who’d eaten the canary. “You have no idea. I’ve taken lots of girls. The discarded ones, the trash that no one wants. They’re a dime a dozen up here.”

  “Where is my brother?”

  “I didn’t want to. He left me no choice. After what happened with your grandfather, he took off running. Back into the woods. I had to go after him.”

  Shiloh saw it, then. Cody’s panicked eyes, the terrible realization dawning on his face: that it was too late for him, that he would not win this fight. That if he tried, Boone would catch sight of Shiloh, and then they’d both be dead.

  He hadn’t abandoned her. He had drawn the predator away.

  “I didn’t want to do it,” he repeated. “He made me do it.”

  “No,” she whispered. It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true.

  “He went straight to the cliffs, fleet as a deer. It wasn’t my fault. Cody did it. He just went over the edge. One second outlined against the blue sky, the next gone. He jumped. Ran full tilt and never even hesitated.”

  “You’re wrong. You lie.”

  A part of her wanted to close her eyes, to block it out, to return to the safety of her blank memories. But she couldn’t. She had to hear it. Boone kept talking. He wouldn’t stop. With every word, she felt herself falling.

  “He landed on the rocks. The lake took his body.”

  She felt herself draining somehow, her insides draining out of her onto the floor. Her brother—gone.

  All this time, she’d been desperately searching. She had believed that if she were strong enough, brave enough, that she would be rewarded. That she would find him in the end.

  Everything she had done, risked, sacrificed—it had not been enough.

  That first day, when she woke with her grandfather’s blood on her hands, her brother had already been lost. Lost to the lake, to the waves. Lost with no way to be found.

  Boone shook his head as if baffled. “I don’t know why he would do that.”

  But Shiloh knew. With a terrible clarity—she knew. Cody had grown up with the memory of violence deep in his bones. Her brother had always chosen his own path. He’d chosen to jump over torture and death at the hands of a monster in a sweater vest.

  “Why?” she whispered. “Why Cody?”

  He leaned forwarded, his gun hand resting on one knee. “Things went wrong. She wasn’t supposed to die, the other girl. It just happened. An accident. He wasn’t here to help me like usual. I had to do it on my own. I tried something new. That’s all. Something different. I wanted to know what it was like.

  “They say the lake never gives up her dead. I took her out there, wrapped up in a tarp, with chains so she’d sink and stay down there. It was a quiet night. Still cold, so no one was out. Should’ve been simple. Should’ve been easy.

  “I didn’t see him in that damn boat with no lights. He saw me, though. I wouldn’t have known, but he dropped something in the water—maybe he shifted and bumped one of his paddles. Once I heard the noise, I knew he was out there. Knew I had to shut him up. He was a witness. I didn’t know how much he knew, if he recognized me. I had no idea what he’d seen, but I had to take care of it.

  “I chased him back to shore. Turned my lights on him but couldn’t make out any details. Just a black hoodie and blond hair, scared eyes. He beached his little fishing boat and took off running. The Little Neptune. I didn’t know it was him, but I knew the boat, who it belonged to. All I had to do was ask one of Sawyer’s men. They were glad to help, to give me his name. And then of course, I knew who Cody Easton was. I taught him every day after school.”

  She remembered it, then. How Cody had acted strange that day. He’d been terrified, confused, not sure where to turn. Afraid to tell their grandfather, terrified to go to the cops.

  They had been raised believing that adults were dangerous, not to be trusted. Even your own flesh and blood would turn on you.

  Boone scratched his head with the butt of the gun. “I didn’t want to. I had no choice. He left me no choice. Your grandfather—he got in the way. And then you. I didn’t know you were there until the police put out the BOLO for you. Even then, I wasn’t sure until you broke into my cousin’s trailer.”

  He shrugged. “I thought it was over. I really did. Turns out, this solar flare thing was a boon. The police and sheriff’s department caught up in maintaining order.”

  She forced herself to think, to push away the waves of grief. The terror and desperation. “Until me.”

  He tilted his head, his expression impassive. He gazed down at her like she was some bizarre creature he’d never seen before. “You went through my things. You stole from me.”

  “Maybe you aren’t as smart as you think you are.”

  His eyes narrowed to slits. “I should have ended this that night, and I would have if those tourists hadn’t shown up. You were damn lucky. I thought you’d go to the police, I really did. Truthfully, I hoped you’d crawled into a hole somewhere and died. When the police didn’t come for Fitch, I thought maybe you had. It’s a shame. The cops have him now. I’ll have to figure something else out. It probably means I have to leave this place, start somewhere else fresh, but I’ve got a plan for that, too. You though—this is the end of the road for you.”

  He glanced up at the windows, then rocked back on his heels. “I’ve wasted enough time. I’m going to deal with you, then I’m going after Ruby.”

  “You said you don’t like killing. That you aren’t a murderer.”

  He shook his head, gave her a sad smile. It wasn’t reflected in his eyes. “He’ll do it for me. All I have to do is throw you in that hole and wait. He’ll come.”

  Shiloh didn’t know who he was talking about, but she had zero desire to meet him. She jerked on the ropes. Her wrists were rubbed raw. “Let me go! People are coming for me. Jackson is coming.”

  “No one knows you’re here. No one will ever know you were here. You’ll disappear, just like your brother, like all the other lost girls.” He hesitated and touched his bandaged arm. He grimaced from the pain. “It’s easier than most people think. Killing someone. It’s this big taboo and then you do it and you realize you had it in you the whole the time. We all have killers inside us, waiting to come out.”

  She bared her teeth at him. “Untie me and I’ll kill you. No problem.”

  He barked out a laugh. “You’re his type. Mine, too. A little young, but what do they say? Beggars can’t be choosers.” He stared at her. Something dark and ugly shone in his gaze. His eyes crinkled as he leaned in. “On second thought. Maybe I will do it myself.”

  61

  LENA EASTON

  DAY SEVEN

  Bear lost the scent.

  They’d left the trail several minutes ago and moved through the trees, then entered a small clearing at the edge of a ravine.

  A ragged oval of sky opened overhead. The blood-red sky shone above them. The aurora was weakening; threads of green and lavender wove through the undulating ribbons of crimson.

  Bear began to circle, snout in the air. Maybe he’d lost the scent or picked up a cross-scent and was trying to g
et a new gauge on it, to figure it out.

  Lena watched Bear’s tail, his hackles. Every reaction meant something. Minutes passed. He kept circling, trotting here and there, trying to find it.

  Trepidation snarled in her gut. If they didn’t find the scent…There was no time to head back to base and pick it up tomorrow.

  They found Shiloh tonight or they didn’t find her at all.

  Or they found her, but not alive.

  The memory of the old man she’d lost a week ago flashed through her mind. That was not an acceptable option. She couldn’t allow it to happen.

  Kneeling, she rubbed the soft ruff of Bear’s neck. Tears sparked the backs of her eyelids. “This one’s different. You feel that, right? I left her once when she was little. I was scared and selfish and broken-hearted, and I left two little kids behind who needed me. I’ve spent the last eight years trying to make it up to everyone but them.” She shook her head. “Stupid, huh?”

  Bear sensed her apprehension like he sensed every emotion and whined in her ear, his doggy breath warm on her face. Pure devotion, pure love. No judgment. He offered comfort as only a dog like Bear could.

  “We have to do this, okay?” She pulled the dog’s head close to hers and tilted her forehead so they were eye to eye. She stared into the chocolate brown eyes of her most faithful friend. “You and me. We can do this. Tell me we can do this.”

  Bear pushed his big head against Lena’s. The human knelt on the leaf-strewn ground, drained and spent, scared but resolved. The dog patient and loyal, tail thumping, tired but willing to push past every endurance for his mistress.

  Bear gave a soft whuff of encouragement.

  “That’s my boy.”

  Jackson and Eli broke into the clearing behind her. Eli wore his ghillie suit. He held the AK-47 in the low ready position. Jackson gripped his shotgun. They looked like they were ready to go to war.