Dark Days of the After Special Edition | Prequel & Book 1

by Schow, Ryan

  He could say the same about himself. He was once a decent human being, just trying to be a good person and get along with others. The truth was, even then, you couldn’t survive this city or those times thinking like that. It was worse now. Everything had changed. He wasn’t that guy anymore—one of the subservient bootlickers—even though he pretended to be.

  As he made his way down a long sloping street, he ignored the crush of automobiles all around him, the tall buildings that rose into the sky like huge, faceless monoliths, all the neglect around him. Fighting off the depression, he knew there was a block ahead where the cameras were down for repair. Up there he would smile. He might cry. He would certainly frown. After he made that block, though, he told himself not to look at the dull, compressed sky, and he told himself not to go crazy.

  The person behind him slightly bumped into him again, forcing him to knock into the person in front of him.

  “What the hell?” he grumbled.

  “Sorry,” came the voice behind him.

  The sidewalks were packed, but not that packed.

  Glancing to the left, there was a width of two more people between him and the street. Not much room, but enough. Nowadays, he walked shoulder to shoulder with people no matter where he went in the city. If you were claustrophobic, honestly, either you were screwed or you got over it. He got over it.

  Now, with this secret burning holes in his brain—with the number nine shining bright like a huge neon sign—he remained more protective of his emotions than normal.

  In the crowded streets, cars were inching through the city, a bit of honking here and there, the exhaust fumes not terrible, but not great first thing in the morning either. Behind him, a commotion began. Head still tucked low, he snuck a look over his shoulder. Through the throng of people, deeper back in traffic, Logan spotted a huge green military transport truck.

  The enormous vehicle was partially blocked and began intermittently blasting its horn. Other pedestrians were now looking back. All around him he could feel the elevation of heart rates, the pumping of fresh blood, the sizzle of fear, almost like an animal senses danger in the very air itself.

  People began to squish into him, pressing him into the sides of buildings, forcing him to step over planters, trip on concrete porch stoops, stumble around faux metal gates and forgotten planters.

  “Hey!” he finally barked, nudging the offending woman walking next to him.

  “I’m being pushed same as you!” she snapped, holding her daughter’s hand, who was being bounced around like the rest of them.

  This harried game of human bumper cars was not an abnormal occurrence, for their panic was powered by paranoia and the fear of retribution.

  “Stop pushing me!” the little girl shouted to the man beside her.

  She was no more than twelve, a gangly little thing with big teeth that should have braces if modern dentistry was still a thing. It wasn’t.

  The hulking, honking vehicle got closer to them. It was one of those driverless troop transports and it was relentless in its bullying of other vehicles. Drivers steered clear of it as best as they could, but the road was bumper to bumper in most parts. Now the sidewalks were shrinking against the presence of cars, people making room for cars to drive up onto the sidewalks to let the transport through.

  A cold tremor raced down his spine, touched his heart with an icepick point. He tried to stay calm, but that ominous feeling he carried with him often was now a bright red warning beacon. And the agitation he could see in the cars trying to clear a lane? It had become a palpable thing. Group fear racing through the crowd with predictable effect.

  The smashing sound of the Army green transport with the small red star in the middle pushing a compact car out of the way startled him and everyone around him. It was not uncharacteristic for these driverless transports to run over people in their attempt to get where they were going. Of course, that didn’t make it any easier to accept. The senselessness of it, the callousness of it, made the loss of human life so much worse.

  Was it shaping up to be one of those days?

  He figured it was.

  As busy as San Francisco was ten years ago, now in 2030 the population had all but doubled. The city was not fit for so much growth so quickly. Now, with troop and supply transports smashing up cars, scaring people and generally causing all measure of chaos, everyone around him was on edge, the bumping, stumbling and grumbling among the pedestrians getting worse.

  With the giant truck looming, Logan saw something new. This truck was no longer just flat-faced with a push-guard on the front. This one was outfitted with a cattle catcher, the kind of pointed external grill that started its life on old trains eons ago as a way of clearing obstinate cows off the tracks. The triangular metal grate scraped and pushed cars aside, cars that were now slamming into people who were just trying to get to work in one piece.

  The revulsion boiling up in him was acid in the back of his throat. God, he hated these people. He absolutely loathed the idea that the citizens of this once civilized American city were now being killed in the streets and left to rot. It had gotten so bad that dead people on the streets of San Francisco ranked right up there with human excrement and used needles.

  The honking persisted.

  Cars were pushing each other out of the way the same way people were pushing against each other and him to make room on the sidewalk. Still moving, shoulder to shoulder with the procession of people, he passed several store fronts.

  One in particular stood out.

  He was being hustled past a young man with wild eyes. The Asian man had ducked into an eave and was holding a big bottle of alcohol with a rag hanging out of it. His attention was fixed firmly on the driverless troop transport blasting its way through traffic. That bad feeling Logan had just got a whole lot worse. The rag was dripping wet.

  Assessing his surroundings, the people crushed against him were an older man, a testy woman and her mouthy young daughter. Everyone was moving quicker now, not stopping, not slowing, one giant herd of frightened cattle scampering block by block in a blind frenzy. He sucked down a breath, told himself to concentrate, to stay calm, to keep up.

  But this guy with the bottle…

  With his zinging energy and his sizzling hot stare, something was about to happen, he knew it. Trepidation shot through his veins. He started to sweat.

  When the transport truck finally bulldozed past them, Logan realized the noisy, open-aired truck was carrying at least twenty soldiers, all of them standing with rifles in hand.

  These Chicom soldiers’ eyes were dead, their faces stoic, their authoritative stance teeming with arrogance. With the transport slowing to maybe five miles per hour against a bottleneck of traffic, these soulless fiends looked down upon them, their eyes roving over the crowds they so hated, the subservient crowds forced to live every day in fear.

  Logan locked eyes with one of the soldiers. The emptiness was like a stab in his heart. There was nothing but dead space, the only hint of emotion being contempt, or perhaps condescension.

  From out of nowhere, the number nine was in his thoughts once more. This number was a reminder that he was not a coward, that he had taken matters into his own hands, that he’d meted out justice, the he was now in the Resistance.

  Looking at these fiends, he told himself he would not bow to these people, that he would not submit. He flexed his knuckles, made them into fists. His hands hurt where he’d beaten several men to death over the last few days. That didn’t matter. To a guy like Logan Cahill, that was fuel. A truth he tried to hide from the cameras, the police, the soldiers. His rage and how he was no longer keeping it on the back burner was the secret burrowed into his brain.

  Logan did not start out life as a violent person, even though he understood the need for violence, and retribution. He never thought it would come to this. That’s why he said yes to the Resistance. And with that affirmation came a new devotion, a commitment to reclaiming what was lost, what was taken,
what had been trampled under foot.

  Stay your emotions, he told himself. With the Resistance came certain responsibilities, the foremost being that you die only when all other options had failed. Before the Resistance, he felt weak, servile, helpless. Now, just knowing he was taking a stand, his heart was filled with patriotism, with outrage, with the need to stop this occupation before it was too late.

  But it’s too late, he thought.

  It’s not.

  Staring at these armed creatures from under the brim of his hat, he felt a softening to violence, that hard edge of hate cutting through him.

  Right then the Asian man from the eaves, the dissident with the bottle of what he assumed was alcohol, pushed through the parade of bodies and raced after the troop transport. The rag hanging out of his bottle was now on fire.

  Logan’s eyes flew open to the sight, his legs slowing him down. The person behind him slammed into him, shoving him hard in the back and tripping on his feet. He was too scared to care. The man screaming at Logan about his failed etiquette didn’t see what was about to unfold. He didn’t see the danger Logan saw coming, or the potential opportunity.

  The man with the Molotov Cocktail launched the burning bottle at the gaggle of soldiers in the truck. When the makeshift bomb hit, it exploded, the flames licking up the soldiers’ bodies.

  A smile formed on Logan’s face, one he quickly tempered.

  Four soldiers at the tailgate lowered their weapons and pumped the dissident’s body full of lead. He was still running when the bullets ripped into him. Torn apart by gunfire, he shook briefly before stumbling and crashing face-first into the asphalt. Even though he was clearly dead, his body was still in motion. The corpse came to a skidding stop on the side of his face. There he’d surely lay for the next few days, being run over, maybe being pushed aside into the gutter where he’d rot and draw flies and rodents alike. This was the new way of things. This was life under Communist rule.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The Molotov Cocktail did its job. The explosion caught most of the soldiers unaware. Even as the fire consumed their clothes and devoured their flesh, the jammed-tight pack of them were falling all over each other trying to avoid the spreading inferno.

  Half the men were now burning, and the ones who escaped the conflagration were falling out of the transport. Even as the driverless truck bullied its way through traffic, the horn still blasting, the back was emptying out.

  One of the defaults Logan found fitting was that the driverless transport’s pre-programmed system was oblivious to the attack on its passengers. When the truck finally showed up to its location empty, the Chicoms were going to be so pissed.

  Brave men and women broke free of the heavy morning march to attack the surviving soldiers. At first the American patriots were successful, stomping several of them to death, but then the gunfire started. The Chicoms didn’t aim at the dissidents, rather they fired into the crowd of pedestrians.

  The long line of people caught in this unfolding nightmare began to shake and shudder, some of them collapsing, most of them ducking down. Dozens dropped dead, purses and briefcases spilling open, the contents of the deceased irrelevant.

  Logan grabbed the woman and her child and pulled them down, cradling the girl as bullets punched into brick walls and shattered the glass behind them. The woman couldn’t still her fear. She was frantic, moaning and making screaming sounds. Hysterical, she reached for her daughter, found her under Logan and held on. The gunfire was still coming in hot.

  Logan dragged the woman closer, if that was possible, drawing her into the protective cover he made of his body. The twelve year old girl was already crying. When the gunfire finally ceased, Logan glanced up, saw several men mobbing the soldiers. They weren’t winning, but they weren’t losing either.

  The fight could still be won…

  Glancing up at the security cameras, he saw the billowing smoke was enough to obstruct their view. In that moment, he knew how this would work. Essentially the Chicoms were no different from the Nazis in that, for every dead soldier, ten Americans would be butchered in the streets. He didn’t even want to count the fallen soldiers. He did anyway. There were maybe fifteen burning bodies and a handful of survivors in the streets.

  That begged the question: If the retaliation for this was going to be ferocious, why not make the best of it?

  It’s now or never, Logan.

  The Chicoms had their hands full with the onslaught of a few outraged citizens, people like him looking to exact a little payback under the cover of a smoky skirmish. All this and the transport truck was now a block and a half away, honking, shoving, being an absolute, unimpeded menace.

  Make a decision, he told himself, weighing the risk.

  MAKE A DECISION!

  Logan sloughed off his jacket, pulled his hat back down, then stood, took a deep breath and pulled out his Karambit blade—a short, curved blade made of a hard composite the Chicom metal detectors couldn’t read.

  The compact blade was curved like a dinosaur claw and was the main knife they trained with in his underground Krav Maga classes. Needless to say, he was pretty good with it. Not great by his own estimation, but hopefully good enough.

  Sprinting into the ensuing battle, the smoke pillowing into the air from a dozen roasting bodies, he sighted his targets. He hit the first solider, a middle-aged Chinese man in uniform who was beating a civilian man with the butt of his rifle.

  Logan struck the back of the soldier’s knee, collapsing him.

  Moving fast, knowing there were multiple threats, he hooked the Karambit blade into the soldier’s armpit and jerked the blade upward, tearing through muscle, tendons, veins and arteries. He then swiped the blade across the man’s exposed neck.

  One down.

  He checked the smoke. For a few minutes more, he liked the cover it was providing. Shoving off the dead man, he made time for another.

  The next target was an older soldier stabbing a woman in the stomach. By the time Logan arrived, she was a sopping wet mess, her blood everywhere. With the tip of the blade, he dug in and trenched open the soldier’s neck.

  Everything was moving fast now, too fast. He felt enemy eyes upon him.

  Wasting no time, he snatched the fallen soldier’s rifle from his hand, spun it around and shot the next two men before dry firing the rifle.

  Dropping the weapon, he went after the fifth man—a brute by the look of him. He was now rounding the truck. With the gore of dissidents streaked up this man’s arms and splattered on his face, he looked like one of hell’s soldiers.

  Tucking his chin to conceal his identity from the cameras, Logan charged him, driving into his big body low and hard, like a linebacker back in the days when football was allowed.

  The two of them crashed to the asphalt in front of a stopped car. Logan was on top, his mount an advantage if he could keep it.

  With the outside curve of the blade, Logan went for the throat. The man caught his wrist, held him off. That’s when he started pushing back. Logan shifted his weight over the top of the blade, widening his stance.

  Face-to-face with this Chicom foot soldier, sweat dripped off Logan’s face onto the other man, their collective limbs shaking with the struggle.

  Adjusting more of his weight over the blade, using all his strength to get the knife to the Chicom’s neck, he used what advantage he could.

  When it was clear Logan was going to win, the soldier tried to tuck his chin to protect his neck from the blade.

  He was too late.

  The curve of the razor-sharp metal scraped the underside of his Adam’s apple and slipped into the thin skin. Blood boiled around the blade, the fight still on. Until it wasn’t.

  The knife finally slipped in deep, striking bone. Everything became so much easier from there on.

  Logan shifted his body, worked the blade sideways, the cut becoming lethal.

  The dying man gurgled, his eyes wide and bulging, getting that faraway look. Staring d
eep into those weak, hateful eyes, he looked for evidence of a soul. He wanted to look at this soul, made sure it knew that it could not oppress him anymore, that its minutes were numbered.

  In that brief moment of defiance, Logan felt the familiar tethers on him loosening. If he could kill five enemy soldiers just like that, he could kill a lot more, maybe even enough to take the country back. For him, that moment was freedom. Standing there under smoke and flame, he was not a victim, a murderer or a straight executioner.

  He was the Resistance.

  Suddenly aware of himself and his otherwise guarded emotions, he felt the nature of his face for the first time since this all began. He was crazed eyes, a sneer for a mouth, cheeks jumping from a clenched jaw.

  He let the emotions ride.

  As he watched the soldier bleed out, he realized in that moment that there could be more soldiers. That there could be more cameras. Awareness shot in. Stupid! Rolling off the dead man, his area of awareness now moved from a six foot bubble back to the surrounding block. Fortunately there were no more threats.

  The smoke was thinning out though. He needed to move lest he be seen and recorded by the Chicom surveillance grid.

  If they saw his expression, what would it say?

  Vengeance.

  The sidewalks were a flurry of pandemonium. Everyone was running, screaming, stepping over the dead, tripping on them, sobbing. Logan blended into the departing mob, running with them, disappearing into the masses, moving over and past the bloodied corpses like everyone else.

  One guy was slumped over against the wall, his baseball cap barely on his head, his jaw slack with a string of red saliva connecting his lower lip to his chest. Logan grabbed the man’s hat off his head, ducked down among the departing masses and put it on while somehow managing to keep up.

  Up ahead, fresh gunfire eliciting half a dozen shrieks. At that point, he was in front of his building. He ducked into the glass skyscraper, moved through the rounder, then dumped the stolen hat into a garbage can and walked into the foyer as calmly as he could.