Nuclear Dawn Box Set Books 1-3: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Series

by Kyla Stone

  Julio wrung his hands, looking down at the body with a mix of guilt, pity, and relief. “But the police…we can’t just leave a dying man. We should do something, contact someone…”

  “Who?” Logan said. “Any cops nearby will be busy with rescue efforts or quelling gang uprisings like this one.”

  “Don’t you get it yet?” Dakota said too harshly. She couldn’t help it. They needed to understand. “Everything’s changed. The regular rules don’t apply anymore.”

  “She’s right.” Logan raked his hands through his unruly dark hair. His eyes were black in the beam of the flashlight. “We’re on our own.”

  44

  Dakota

  Dakota studied Julio as he shook his head, still fingering his cross. He didn’t get it fully yet, even now. It was hard for normal people to make the adjustment from a world of rules to one where anything goes.

  Maybe she was wrong. Maybe as soon as they exited the hot zone, they’d be greeted by volunteers bearing hot soup and hugs, escorted by armed police officers ready to restore order.

  Maybe everyone would come together in a time of crisis, putting aside their own selfish needs for the good of the victims, the shattered cities, the nation.

  She wasn’t going to hold her breath.

  Logan retrieved the bottle of Jack Daniels and poured what remained into his silver flask. He took a long swallow, capped it, and shoved it back into his pocket.

  She gritted her teeth and resisted the urge to slap it right out of his hands. She still burned with anger at what he’d done.

  What use was a hired gun if he was a drunk?

  “Isn’t it morally wrong to just walk away?” Julio argued. “To just let him die?”

  “He would’ve wasted you without a second thought,” Logan said in a gruff voice. “And done worse to Shay.”

  “He spent the last forty-eight hours exposed to massive levels of radiation,” Shay said gently, resting her hand on Julio’s shoulder. “I know how you feel. But look at him. His hair’s already starting to fall out. He was experiencing vomiting, dizziness, and disorientation. The aggression could’ve been from cognitive impairment.”

  Logan grunted. “Or maybe he was just an asshole.”

  Julio didn’t look convinced. He crossed himself, muttering something under his breath, but finally he nodded in surrender.

  Dakota squatted in front of the gangbanger and dug in the pocket of his saggy shorts. She pulled out Julio’s gold band and handed it to him.

  Julio slipped it on his thick finger and pressed his palm to his chest. He closed his eyes and breathed an unsteady sigh of relief. “Thanks. Yoselyn—my wife—she’d never have forgiven me.”

  “Of course, she would’ve.” Shay clenched her jaw against the pain. “It’s you she wants. Safe and alive.”

  “You don’t know her temper,” Julio said, but he managed a tight grin.

  Dakota reached for the fallen M4 and slung it over her neck and shoulder, positioning the single-point sling so the weapon hung freely but within easy grabbing distance.

  Logan stared at her, brows lowered. “You know how to use that thing?”

  “Well enough.” In truth, she’d shot one a few times but not enough to get truly comfortable. It wasn’t like her trusty XD9, which fit her hands like a glove.

  But there was no way in hell she was letting Logan have both weapons.

  She checked the magazine: empty.

  Her stomach sank. Of course, it was.

  “Not that it matters,” she said with a sigh.

  Pushing down her disappointment, she checked Blood Outlaw for extra ammo or additional weapons. He was clean. Nothing useful on him at all. Not a single damn thing.

  Hopefully, just the sight of the wicked-looking carbine would scare any potential troublemakers away.

  Still, a few bullets would’ve been damn helpful.

  Shay looked askance at the carbine but uttered no complaints. Getting shot tended to change one’s priorities pretty quickly.

  In this world, weapons were a necessity.

  “We still need what we came here for,” Dakota said. “Clothes, food, medical supplies. We need to move quickly. We’ve already wasted too much time.”

  “All the new clothes are in the back,” Julio said.

  Through the employee doorway at the rear of the store, they found what they needed: stacks of unopened boxes full of the newest fall designs.

  Julio helped Shay hobble inside and leaned her against a wall of shelves. In the windowless room, the only light shone from the single flashlight Julio still held.

  “Guess it’s a good thing chain stores still deliver cold-weather gear to Florida,” Shay mumbled.

  Dakota unsheathed her knife, slit each box down the middle, and pulled on an oversized navy-and-white striped shirt with sleeves long enough to fold over her hands.

  “This is stealing,” Julio said hesitantly. “It feels wrong.”

  “If it makes you feel better, when all this is over, we’ll come back and pay for what we take,” she said.

  Dakota was no thief—not anymore, not since that first time—but she instinctively understood that everything was different now.

  Julio and Shay needed to change their mindset from one of comfort, safety, and morality to the reality of a cold, brutal world without laws or rules.

  They were used to a soft life, a life where they could call 911 for instant help. They still expected the police and the government to protect them, expected everything they needed to line the shelves of stores.

  Most of all, they expected the old rules of civility to apply.

  At least in south Florida, the old world was over. Probably for a long time.

  She didn’t feel an ounce of guilt for taking what she needed from an abandoned store. The name of the game was survival now.

  She found a case of scarves—thin, pretty, meant for accessorizing. They were better than nothing.

  “Contrary to popular belief, fallout isn’t a significant inhalation hazard because the particles are so large and they fall to the ground quickly,” she explained. “The exposure from radiation on the ground is more hazardous than the threat of breathing it in.”

  She grabbed a pale gray one and wrapped it around her head and the lower part of her face. When she spoke, her voice was slightly muffled. “That being said, I feel better wearing something.”

  Julio handed Shay a pink and brown plaid scarf. She held it up. “Every little bit helps, right?”

  Julio went with forest green checkered with yellow. “We’re gonna die from the heat,” he muttered.

  “Better than dying from the radiation.” Logan pulled on a black faux leather jacket and a matching black, fringed scarf.

  Shay leaned against the wall, upright but breathing heavily. She managed a weak smile. “At least we’ll die stylish.”

  After she helped Shay exchange her flip-flops for socks and flat-heeled ankle boots, Dakota doled out the duct tape, carefully taping their ankles and wrists to keep out as many stray particles of radiation as possible.

  “What about this for bringing stuff with us?” Julio bent over a freshly opened box and held up an aqua sequined shoulder bag.

  It wasn’t a quality bug out rucksack, but they could carry some supplies until they found something better.

  They stocked up on Air Heads, Pop Rocks, Mentos, and those plastic containers of mini M&Ms, then went to Walgreens and packed more fresh gauze, topical antibiotics, and bandages.

  Julio helped Shay as she walked haltingly through Walgreens. Dakota tossed her a bottle of Advil, and she downed eight pills with a few swigs of bottled water.

  Shay found a shelf of disinfectant alcohol wipes. She, Dakota, and Logan wiped the dried blood from their hands and faces. Dakota tossed a couple packages of the alcohol wipes into her bag so they could clean off the radioactive dust if they got some on their skin.

  The Blood Outlaws or other looters had already cleaned out the medications in the pharm
acy, but there was still plenty of Advil and Tylenol, candy, granola bars, and several bottles of water left.

  Calories were calories. No one wanted to dally in the hot zone scavenging for food.

  Julio stuffed a Three Musketeers in his back pocket and patted his paunch. “Not a good time for dieting, I guess.”

  No one laughed.

  Dakota wasn’t the only one who felt the tension thrumming through her veins, the apprehension tightening her chest. The dying thug had left them all shaken, whether they wanted to admit it or not.

  They paused for a moment, looking out the broken windows at a world none of them recognized anymore.

  Shay straightened her shoulders, her head held high. “Now, we’re ready.”

  Dakota didn’t think they’d ever be ready for what lay ahead.

  But they didn’t have a choice.

  Keep reading for book #2, Fear the Fallout!

  Part I

  Fear the Fallout

  Prologue

  Zero Hour minus thirty-four minutes…

  Thirty minutes before the first bomb detonated, a sea-green Honda Odyssey pulled up to the curb in front of the Smithsonian National Museum in Washington, D.C., just a few blocks from the Capitol Building and the White House.

  A fading stick-figure family sticker peeled from the rear lefthand window. A bulging diaper bag sat on the floor amid wadded Taco Bell wrappers and a sippy cup.

  A bulky cardboard box took up the entire rear of the vehicle, the kind that might house a compact fridge or shiny new front-loading washing machine. The mid and rear windows were tinted black.

  No one bothered to give the minivan anything beyond a cursory glance. It looked like a thousand family minivans they’d seen before.

  Even the man who exited the vehicle—a middle-aged guy wearing jeans and a wrinkled Star Wars T-shirt, a Washington Redskins cap shoved low over his forehead—aroused no suspicion.

  After he paid the parking meter, the man strolled along the sidewalk, diaper bag over one shoulder, a selfie-stick in one hand.

  Just another tourist enjoying the fine, sunny day in the bustling Capitol of the United States of America.

  No one noticed the second car—dark blue Ford Taurus, nondescript—slide up next to him and open the door as he slipped inside. The car pulled into traffic and drove away, just under the speed limit, toward the Anacostia River.

  The man in the Redskins cap shifted in the passenger seat of the Ford Taurus and checked the GPS. He punched in a saved number on a pre-paid, disposable phone.

  “The time was moved up,” said the deep voice on the other end. “Did you receive the message?”

  “We did. We’re in position,” said the passenger. “Everything is ready.”

  The man on the other end grunted in approval.

  “There is a time for everything under the sun,” the passenger said as he pulled a small device from his pocket.

  “God be with us,” said the other man.

  The driver said nothing. He did not honk at a jaywalking pedestrian as he pulled onto a less congested side street and parked in Giesboro Park off MacDill Blvd, almost six miles from Capitol Hill.

  With one hand still on the wheel, he pulled a specialized pair of sunglasses over his eyes. The passenger did the same. He glanced at the clock on the dashboard. 12:33 p.m.

  “The judgment begins,” he said.

  The man pressed the button of the device he held in his hand.

  A hundredth of a second later, the bomb exploded.

  In the instant of detonation, the core of the bomb scorched a blistering 300,000 degrees Celsius, fifty times hotter than the surface of the sun itself.

  In less than a second, tens of thousands of people were cremated, instantly carbonized into charred, smoking ash. They were vaporized where they slept, stood, walked, sat, drove—simply gone.

  The intensity of the thermal blast ignited birds in midair. Clothing, trees, dogs and cats, and cars spontaneously combusted. Steel liquefied, melting like wax.

  The fireball shot above the city, expanding as it rose until it blotted out everything in a great flash of extraordinary brilliance.

  It was as if the sun had fallen to earth.

  After the flash came a deafening boom. And then the shockwave, a towering wall of tremendous pressure slamming through Capitol Hill, crushing monuments and museums: the Smithsonian, the Capitol building, the Library of Congress, the Supreme Court building, the Washington Monument, the White House.

  Six miles from ground zero, the Ford Taurus pulled away from the park and entered traffic already pouring out of the city. There was still room to maneuver around the crashed vehicles and escape, though there wouldn’t be for long.

  As the Taurus fled the city, the passenger twisted in his seat, staring back at the broiling, radioactive mushroom cloud swelling above Washington D.C.—not in horror, but with an awestruck thrill of vindication.

  It was only the third time in history a nuclear bomb had ever been used against civilians.

  It wouldn’t be the last.

  1

  Dakota

  Zero Hour plus fifty hours…

  The sky over Miami was a dour, sullen gray-brown. In the distance, smoke rose in hazy columns over the shopping plaza rooftop.

  Nineteen-year-old Dakota Sloane suppressed a shudder. She hated fire.

  Dread tightened in her chest like a closed fist. She’d felt the same sense of foreboding before each foster or group home placement.

  And she’d felt it often during her years at the compound—each time she was compelled to the mercy room, where the only mercy she’d ever received was the relief of unconsciousness.

  Her skin prickled at the memory. Phantom pain radiated from the old burns across her back with a throbbing heat. She couldn’t see the scars, but not for a single instant did she ever forget they were there.

  “Dakota?” Julio de la Peña, the middle-aged Cuban bartender, asked. He stood in the shattered doorway of the Walgreens and raked his hands through his graying black hair. “You okay?”

  Two days ago, a nuclear bomb had exploded in downtown Miami, only moments after similar bombs detonated in New York City and Washington, D.C. Dakota and her companions had been lucky to escape with their lives.

  Now, after two days holed up in a theater to avoid the worst of the radioactive fallout, they were venturing out into the city to rescue Dakota’s sister, Eden, and get the hell out of the hot zone.

  Dakota lifted her chin. You faced the future with courage or cowardice; it was coming for you either way. Just breathe. “Ready.”

  She pointed at the fine layer of grit filming the shopping plaza parking lot ahead of them, toward the vehicles, shopping carts, and palm trees. “Most of the fallout in the air is gone, but we still need to worry about radiation contamination from groundshine.”

  “What’s that, now?” Julio asked.

  “After the radioactive particles descend from the mushroom cloud, they land on the ground and mix with dirt and dust,” Dakota said. “Not just the ground, but on the surface of everything. Remember, radiation is invisible. You can’t see or feel it.”

  “In other words, don’t touch anything,” said Logan Garcia.

  “Pretty much.” She pointed toward a road at the west end of the parking lot. “This way.”

  Though it felt like a lifetime ago and a world away, they were still only five blocks from the Beer Shack on Front Street, a few miles from downtown Miami. Just in case they ever needed to run, she’d memorized the various routes to Eden’s house from both the bar and her apartment.

  “We can take 9th Street north toward Wynwood for almost a mile and a half, then west a half mile, until we hit Bay Point Drive. Another half mile, then it’s a couple of small side streets to Palm Cove. My sister lives off of Bellview Court.”

  “Palm Cove, huh?” Logan cocked his brows. “Nice digs.”

  Julio was looking at her strangely, his forehead furrowed.

  She
knew he was wondering about her insistence on being paid cash under the table, the mile-long walk she made to and from work to avoid bus and taxi fares. Her cheap Goodwill clothes. Her lack of credit cards, bank accounts, or a driver’s license.

  Now here was her sister, holed up in a fancy gated community where every house featured a kidney-shaped pool with a spa and automated waterfall, their manicured lawns perfectly green even in winter, with maids and landscapers to care for it all.

  “It’s a long story,” she muttered.

  She didn’t owe them an explanation. It wasn’t any of their business.

  Not even Julio knew she’d been a foster kid. And no one but Ezra Burrows knew where she and Eden had come from.

  It was too dangerous.

  She adjusted the shoulder bag and the strap of the M4 and strode into the parking lot, winding between dozens of stalled and abandoned cars as the others followed her in silence.

  She took the lead, Logan at her side, Julio helping Shay hobble along just behind them. Shay would slow them down, but some things couldn’t be helped.

  Even adjusted for the slower pace, they should still make it to Eden and escape the hot zone in time.

  She forced herself to focus on taking in their surroundings. In every building—storefronts, apartments and condos, office suites—the windows and doors gaped like broken-toothed mouths.

  Shattered glass and debris littered the ground. Portions of some walls and ceilings had collapsed, but most were still standing.

  The sidewalks were too dangerous, so they walked along the middle of the street, weaving between the husks of cars, SUVs, trucks, and buses.

  Hundreds of vehicles cluttered the roads. Several were crushed or overturned from accidents, but some suffered only dented fenders or hoods.

  Still others remained in pristine condition, their flung-open doors the only sign that something had happened, that their inhabitants had fled for their lives.