Decimated: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller (Taken World Book 3)

by Flint Maxwell

  ‘Sorry’ wasn’t much—it wouldn’t bring them back, or anything like that—Logan just thought someone ought to say it. So he did.

  There was a silver lining, he supposed: Brad, Grease, Tyler and May had made it out of Cell Block D with minor injuries. And, of course, Jane was okay. Alive. That was all Logan could ask for…but he began wondering, and not for the first time, if being alive now was a gift or a curse.

  Tyler came forward, guiding May toward the prison. Logan caught eyes with him. The other survivors were looking around dazed, unbelieving.

  Behind them, the mushroom cloud from Cleveland seemed to be expanding.

  “Fallout,” Tyler said. “We gotta get inside. All that radioactivity is gonna start falling down on us.”

  “How soon?” Logan asked.

  “How many miles from the city are we?” the scientist wanted to know.

  “About ten.”

  “Sooner than I’d like,” he admitted.

  Logan turned. He saw the mushroom cloud reaching up to the fiery sky and he allowed himself a moment to wonder How did this happen? before turning to the others and motioning them inside the prison.

  Not far from this ever-expanding cloud of destruction, another one stretched to the heavens. This one came from the southeast, where Stone Park had once stood.

  The smoke was thick inside of what was left of the prison. The smell of meat and destruction was heavy, too.

  Together, Tyler and Logan located the storm cellar, a part of the prison the former survivors of Ironlock hadn’t put to much use; the prison was big enough as it was. Devin—God rest his soul—spoke of expansion as a possibility if more wanderers found the radio broadcast, suggesting that then maybe they’d get the cellar ‘up to code,’ as was his term. But no survivors had come since Tyler and May crashed into the front gates a month before while on the run from monsters. So the cellar remained a forgotten part of the prison…or what was left of the prison. Peering down the stone steps, there wasn’t anything besides some lumber and bare metal shelves.

  And rats. Always rats.

  As Logan and Tyler cleared more bricks and cinderblocks from the cellar’s opening so the others could get in easily, Tyler continued his theories about the blast. The conversation was completely one-sided, as Logan didn’t know a thing besides what he’d picked up from movies and television shows.

  “Cut their losses,” Tyler said again. He grunted as he moved a large chunk of wall. “That’s what it was. Big cities were hit; cities and towns where the anomalies were. Evident enough when you see that mushroom cloud southeast of here.” He shook his head. Sweat was standing out on his forehead in large droplets. His skin was dusty.

  “Let me help,” May said. “I can use my good arm.”

  Tyler glared at her. “Take it easy, May. Just relax.”

  “It’ll go quicker if I help, and you said it yourself, we need to move quick.”

  Tyler rolled his eyes and looked at Logan. “She always makes me eat my words.”

  Logan chuckled out of politeness. It might’ve been funny, but the truth was, right then—and pretty much ever since the first void had opened up—he hadn’t thought many things were funny.

  “Just go help the others lug in some supplies. Clean water, food, blankets, whatever you can carry,” Tyler said.

  May scoffed and rolled her eyes back at Tyler.

  When she was gone, Tyler said, “Like the daughter I never had.”

  Once they’d cleared a big enough opening in the cellar, hearing the squeaking of rats in the dark corners and smelling the dank odor of a place never used, Tyler began talking about nuclear fallout.

  “All that radioactive junk is gonna fall back down from the air. We don’t wanna be outside when that happens.”

  “At least we weren’t there,” Logan said.

  He was sweating himself, but suddenly he felt very cold as he thought back to their time in downtown Cleveland. Any survivors of that religious cult would be a pile of ash right then.

  “Damn right. Shine that flashlight over here.” Tyler pointed to a corner. Logan redirected the beam of the electric lantern he held. “This’ll work pretty good, I’d say. We stay here for a day, maybe two, and wait until it all falls down…then we’ll be okay, I think. Long as they don’t bomb again for good measure.”

  Logan shook his head. A lump seemed to have formed in his throat.

  “Forty-eight hours to be safe,” Tyler continued. He nudged a rat away from a pile of unused lumber. The thing skittered into the shadows. “Twelve to twenty-four might do it, but we’re so damn close. Not to mention we’re sandwiched between not one but two blasts. I bet they brought in the big guns for the one in Stone Park. Nuke the voids back to where they came from. They talked about that a lot at the outset of their arrival.” Tyler shook his head and looked up at the low ceiling, like he was remembering something bad. “There’s this thing called the Seven-Ten Rule. The more time passes, the less dangerous and potent the radioactivity is.”

  Logan looked at him with an arched eyebrow. He felt like he was back in high school science class—not one of his best subjects.

  “Say seven hours pass, right? Then the dosage rate would be reduced by a factor of ten, and so on and so on. At any rate, that rule doesn’t mean anything, considering we don’t know which way the wind’s blowing. It all might come our way, or it all might go elsewhere.” Tyler crossed his fingers.

  “What about the monsters?” Logan found himself asking.

  Tyler shrugged. “Who knows. Let’s just hope those bastards are frying right now.”

  Soon after that, the others came with supplies. They hadn’t found much from the ruins of the store rooms and the wardrobes.

  Once they were all down in the cellar—not an easy task for Grease and his bum leg—Logan closed the door and taped some plastic sheeting and pieces of a tarp Brad had found over the cracks around the door and the window. By the light of Logan’s electric lantern, all of them looked haunted, like they’d been through hell and back.

  Logan’s burns and budding blisters were attended to by Jane, who’d found a med kit only half ruined.

  Then she worked on a nasty burn on Regina’s left leg, down by her ankle, and finally on Grease’s gunshot wound, which still looked gnarly to Logan, but was apparently healing up just fine according to Jane.

  Then…they waited. For what seemed like a long time.

  5

  Premonitions

  Forty-odd hours later, they emerged on the surface. The air quality was not great—in fact, you could still taste the smoke—but it was better than the dank atmosphere of the storm cellar. The sky was a violent red color. It reminded Logan of the way the void in Stone Park had looked, almost buzzing. By Regina’s clock, it was the middle of the night, too. Already, though, the darkness was reclaiming the heavens.

  “What do we do now?” Jane asked.

  I wish I knew, Logan thought, but answered instead with, “I think we need proper rest.”

  So they slept in the remaining cars parked outside of the rubble, because it was bigger, more roomy, and didn’t smell like mold and rat droppings inside like the storm cellar did.

  Logan woke up sometime early in the morning. The rest of the survivors of Ironlock were asleep, thank God. None of them had gotten much while in the cellar, with the graveyard of their friends right above their heads.

  Logan’s bladder pounded and pulsed, near exploding. He opened the back of the Humvee and rolled out onto the scorched concrete. Raising his arms up to a bloody sky, he heard absolutely nothing. His back popped a few times, then he rolled his head, cracking his neck as well.

  No more sleep would be had that morning.

  He crossed the lot and relieved himself behind the ruins of the fence that they had foolishly thought would guard them for the rest of their lives. As he was zipping himself up, he heard a muffled sobbing coming from the Ford Escape, which was parked askew, near the Humvee. Logan looked toward it and cock
ed his head, wondering if he was imagining the sound.

  The only person inside of the Escape was Brad. Was Brad…crying?

  No. Brad didn’t strike him as a guy who cried. When the poor kid’s mom had turned into a monster, and he’d had to pump shotgun rounds into the abomination, he hadn’t cried; he’d gritted his teeth and done his duty.

  Or so you think, Logan. You don’t see what goes on behind closed doors, or in his head.

  He went toward the Escape. For some reason, his stomach was souring, and he felt nervous. If it was Brad, what would he do? Say sorry for disturbing him?

  No. When someone was crying, you’d comfort them, ask what’s wrong…that kind of thing.

  But Brad? How could Logan comfort Brad? The kid sometimes seemed tougher than all of them.

  Tentatively, Logan rounded the Escape. He looked in the backseat. It was empty. The front seat wasn’t, though. Brad sat in the driver’s side, his chair reclined back, his hands on his face. The back windows were cracked, which was the reason Logan was able to hear him. The thought occurred to Logan that he should turn around and return to the Humvee and act like he’d not heard Brad crying at all.

  But Logan couldn’t do that. He couldn’t run away. Brad was his friend, his family.

  On Brad’s chest sat an open Bible.

  “Brad?” he said.

  Brad looked as if he’d been caught stealing; his body went rigid.

  “Brad, dude? Are you okay?” What kind of question is that? Logan wondered. Of course he’s not okay. No one’s okay. It’ll be a miracle if anyone is ever okay again.

  “Y-yeah, I’m good, man,” Brad said.

  Logan opened the passenger’s side door and crawled in. He had burns on the back of his hands and on his face and arms, and this simple task caused him great pain, but he made sure not to show it. This wasn’t about his pain; it was about Brad’s.

  “Okay, man, I’m not an idiot. What’s the deal?” Logan asked.

  There was no answer from Brad. The man he thought of as ‘the kid’ because of their few years’ age difference was certainly not a kid—he was in his early twenties. But right then, he did look like a kid, and this hurt Logan’s heart more than he cared to admit. His best friend reduced to tears.

  “If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me,” Brad blubbered.

  Despite Logan entering the car, the tears hadn’t stopped. Whatever it was, it must be bad.

  “Try me, man,” Logan said. “I’ve seen monsters as big as buildings. I’ve seen shimmering black diamonds that were actually portals to another dimension. I’m not exactly closed-minded anymore, if I ever was in the first place. Ask Jane, and she’d tell you I was, but take what she says with a grain of salt.” He said this last bit with a wink, but Brad wasn’t looking; nor was he smiling. “So, yeah, man. Try me,” he challenged.

  A heavy silence followed Logan’s words. Brad turned and looked into his eyes with the utmost seriousness, so much that Logan almost wanted to look away. It was a cold-blooded stare.

  Then Brad said, “I think I’m psychic.”

  Psychic? Logan wondered. That’s…that’s just crazy.

  Or was it?

  Brad turned away. “See?” he said. “You think I’m crazy.”

  “Wait, what? That’s it? You’re upset because you think you’re psychic?”

  Brad nodded slowly. “Is that so crazy to believe now?”

  “Good point. But I thought you were pulling my leg,” Logan said. He repeated what Brad said again, the words feeling funny as they rolled off his tongue. “You think you’re psychic?”

  Brad shrugged.

  The gesture was that of a confused teenager, and Logan thought, There’s the kid again. He suddenly wished Jane was here. Working at the hospital, shadowing nurses who were pretty burned out and fed up, the ones she had vowed not to become like. He could use her good bedside manner right then. Portals to other dimensions? Okay, sure. Monsters? Yeah, why not. But psychics? Oh, boy, he needed Jane now more than ever.

  No, don’t give up on Brad. Listen to what he has to say. Be there for him. It’s just stress. That’s all it is. He’s having trouble coping with what happened. Lord knows we all are. So much has gone wrong in so little time.

  Logan leaned over the middle console and put a firm hand on Brad’s shoulders. The fabric of Brad’s t-shirt was damp with sweat. “Tell me about it, man. Like I said earlier, I’m not exactly closed-minded.”

  Brad slowly nodded. He looked unsure of himself, and Logan didn’t like that. Maybe this was just a waste of time; maybe he’d leave the comforting up to Jane after all.

  But hadn’t she said they needed a leader? Yes, he thought so. And if it had only been a dream, it still didn’t make that statement false. The survivors certainly needed a leader now that Devin was gone, and right then, it didn’t seem like any of them were eager to step up—Logan included. But he always did what he had to do. Uncle Tommy had taught him to do so at a young age, and he would continue doing so until he died.

  So he waited patiently, until Brad was ready to talk.

  “It was about a month ago. Right when we got back from Cleveland. I had a nightmare about a skeletal hand pushing a big, red button. Like it was the Grim Reaper or something.”

  Logan’s forehead wrinkled as he raised his eyebrows. “And you think that whatever bombs were let loose on Cleveland and Stone Park had something to do with that?”

  Swallowing, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down, Brad nodded. Then he quickly shook his head. “I know, I know. It’s stupid. I’m stupid.”

  “No,” Logan said. He reached out and put a hand on Brad’s shoulder again.

  Brad trembled beneath it.

  “I saw the end of the world, I saw the Grim-fucking-Reaper pressing the button, and I kept my mouth shut about it. I didn’t warn anyone.” Brad leaned forward, resting his head on the steering wheel. He wasn’t sobbing anymore. He just looked defeated, beaten and broken.

  Be a leader, Logan. Step up.

  Leading, he knew, was more than just telling people what to do. It was being there for those you cared about, offering wisdom, guidance, and protection. So he spoke up.

  “You didn’t know the exact date, did you?”

  Brad shook his head.

  “And have you had these…premonitions before?”

  Brad shook his head again.

  “So why are you upset? You hold no blame, Brad.”

  “I just…I just think that maybe if I’d warned everyone about what I saw, then Devin would still be alive, and so would everyone else we lost. The children. The parents.”

  “No, Brad. Don’t do that to yourself.”

  Brad looked out the windshield at the forest in the distance. Logan followed his gaze. The trees were bare. Earlier, they’d been in the process of decay, as fall began bleeding into winter, but the radioactive wind that followed the bombings of Cleveland and Stone Park had done the rest of the work.

  It’s like looking at a hellscape, Logan thought.

  “I’m sorry, Logan,” Brad said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry. You have nothing to be sorry about. What happened, happened.”

  Brad nodded, wiped his eyes with the back of his jacket sleeve. The weather outside was cold, despite the blood-red sky that screamed fire. And it’ll only get worse, Logan thought.

  “Thanks, Logan.”

  “Get some rest, man.”

  With that, he left.

  Brad didn’t cry the rest of that day, at least not that Logan heard, and he gradually noticed a difference in the kid’s demeanor. A smile here. A laugh at one of Grease’s wildly inappropriate jokes.

  And that was good. That was really good.

  6

  Next

  The following weeks passed slowly. The sky lost most of its bloody color, and the darkness crept back in. It was back, back for good. They saw the sun even less than before; it was permanently hidden behind the clouds.

  In these
weeks, they saw and heard only a few monsters. Their sounds were distant and pained. No more bombs were dropped, at least not in Ohio, but nuclear fallout was on everyone’s mind.

  Logan had learned about it in some post-apocalyptic movie; he wasn’t sure which one. All the films he’d watched before the end of the world seemed like they were from a past life. He was pretty sure he’d never watch another film again.

  Every morning (or night, it was hard to tell which was when), Logan would step outside and look at the sky and try to gauge which way the wind was blowing. The wind was always blowing, and it was always blowing hard, the kind you could hear whistling high through the skeletal trees.

  Regina told him, “It doesn’t matter, honey. Either way, we’re right in the middle, and it only takes about a minute for the radioactivity to fall down on us.” She, of course, was right. Where Ironlock once stood was nearly smack dab in between Cleveland and Stone Park. “We’ll know how bad we got it in time, I suppose.”

  This she said in a comforting voice, but it brought visions of cancer and teeth falling from his gums and extra appendages and limbs; all the things he’d seen in horror movies come to life. And why not? It seemed they were living in a horror movie now. Sure, Logan felt fine, but that wasn’t saying much. He wanted to get out of this graveyard. He wanted to get far away from the corpses of the friends and people he’d known in Ironlock. But no one seemed ready to go just yet.

  Already, their store of food and drinkable water was running low. Grease was doing better, able to put some weight down on his leg, and no one else seemed to be in any bad physical pain. Each of the three surviving vehicles—the Ford, the Toyota Camry, and one of the Humvees—had about an eighth to a quarter of a tank of gas. They could siphon from two and fill the third, and have enough to get a couple hundred miles away.

  Their best course of action was to head south. Tyler, the newest arrival to Ironlock, had been a scientist before everything went to hell, and he kept a mental map of where each void was located, almost to the exact longitude and latitude. He’ll direct us somewhere safe, Logan thought…or he hoped. He hadn’t actually run this by anyone yet.