Dark Survival

by Ryan Casey

  Dark Survival

  Days of Darkness, Book 2

  Ryan Casey

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  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

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  Chapter One

  Helena Colwright always enjoyed her autumn cruises and never feared anything going wrong.

  It was October. Helena’s favourite time of year. Not because of the autumn leaves, the darker nights, the triple assault of Halloween, Bonfire Night, and Christmas. No, none of that bloody stuff. She hated the cold. Hated the dark. And she bloody hated autumn leaves.

  But she loved this time of year because it was the time she always got away on a cruise for a month, just herself for company.

  It was a gorgeous day on the Adriatic Sea. It was their day at sea, after a wonderful trip to Venice yesterday, which gave her the chance to lounge on a sun lounger, headphones in, and catch up on a book or two. She was currently reading Normal People by Sally Rooney. A few of her friends told her they thought it was overrated, but they were idiots because it was a masterpiece as far as she was concerned. She lost herself in the intertwining lives of Connell and Marianne, cheered for their successes, cried for their losses.

  If a book couldn’t shake you to the core, then it was a pointless read.

  She saw someone hovering at the foot of her sun lounger. A chubby bloke with a pint in each hand. He’d tried chatting her up a few times, especially at meal times, when people congregated, got to know each other, made fake friendships before returning to their normal lives and losing contact forever again. But she wasn’t on a cruise like this to make friends or fall in love. She was on a cruise to get away from people. To escape.

  It wasn’t that her life back home in Norfolk was bad, per se. She liked her job as a cash attendant. Her friends told her it was beneath her intellect, but more fool them because they were the ones working themselves into early graves in high responsibility and high-stress positions. She wasn’t exactly loaded. She was pretty frugal. She always bought from the discount sections and didn’t run up a high phone bill or anything like that.

  But her annual cruise was her one opportunity for luxury. Her one chance to get away from life and unwind.

  Her friends wound her up about being single in her late thirties. Told her she needed to get a move on. But again, their advice looked daft considering they looked knackered, stressed, and generally just not very happy themselves.

  They told her to find a bloke on holiday. Bring someone back to meet them.

  She glanced up at the fat bloke hovering at the foot of her sun lounger. Half-smiled at him, politely, the latest Coldplay track blasting in her ears. She didn’t even like Coldplay, but the new track was pretty decent.

  He said something she couldn’t quite make out, and then he walked away.

  She looked back at her book.

  Smiled.

  Thank God she could read while music was playing.

  She went to sink back into her book. Tomorrow, Dubrovnik was on the horizon. She’d been there before. Loved the winding, narrow streets of the old town. Loved the smell of the sea salt crashing against the rocky shores in those hidden seaside cafes. Loved the—

  Her music suddenly blasted, like an explosion in her ears, then went silent.

  She lay there a few seconds, stunned. She dragged her earphones out. Her ears rang loudly. She looked down at her iPhone.

  Dead.

  She gritted her teeth. Shook her head as her hearing returned. It’d shaken her up, that was for sure. Stupid bloody phone. She’d only just had it serviced. She’d have to take it in again when she got back home. Hardly ideal. Besides, that kind of volume could do her ears some real damage.

  She looked up, then. Heard a murmur of voices. Saw more people looking at their phones. At their watches. She saw a woman over by the side of the barrier collapse, clutching her chest.

  And she heard something, too.

  Or rather a lack of something.

  The engines of the boat. They sounded like they’d gone dead.

  Panic started to rise. People ran to the sides of the boat. Staff abandoned their posts, juggling between maintaining order and trying to figure out what the hell was going on.

  And all Helena could do was sit on the edge of her sun lounger and watch everything unfold.

  And a part of her couldn’t help feeling kind of… thrilled.

  Because she’d be fine. They’d all be fine. Whatever this was... they’d be okay.

  Right?

  She saw another woman clutching her chest. Gasping for breath.

  Watched her being rushed away to the medical bay.

  Doubts starting to creep into her mind as adrenaline surged through her body.

  It didn’t take long for one of the cruise reps to come running up to the bathing area. A tall, spotty lad. Kept on sticking his finger in his ear. He didn’t exactly inspire confidence.

  “It looks like we’ve run into a power fault,” he said, like he was reading from a script, his monotone drawl not exactly reassuring. “Now, it’s nothing to worry about. Completely normal. If everyone could follow behind me towards the lifeboats, we can work at ferrying people to the shore, and then bring in some backup to gather the rest of you.”

  Helena felt sudden concern. Because this guy was talking about evacuating the boat already. If this weren’t serious, he wouldn’t be suggesting evacuation.

  He thought this was serious.

  That scared Helena.

  And it unsettled everyone else, too. Mostly because of that niggling feeling that something was deeply wrong here. Something was desperately wrong.

  “What about my phone? What’s that got to do with anything?”

  Helena heard that man’s loud voice echoing around the boat, and she heard it echoing everyone’s thoughts.

  Because what did the phones have to do with this?

  If this was just a power outage on the boat, then why would other electronics be affected?

  And the people who collapsed, right on cue. Clutching their chests.

  What was that all about?

  But Helena didn’t have a choice. She stepped in line behind a pair of giddy children, one of them—a little blond lad with a cute gap between his front teeth—holding a dinosaur toy, like the one off Toy Story. He seemed quite excited in a
weird way. Kept going on about how he couldn’t wait to go on a lifeboat, like it was some kind of novelty.

  And Helena tried to feel his excitement. She tried to view this through a child’s eyes.

  Because doing anything else only terrified her.

  She walked along the winding corridors of the boat. The lights were all off in here. A creepiness hung in the air. A darkness.

  And as she walked down this corridor, she saw a couple more people lying by the sides. An old man and woman, both clutching their chests. Struggling for breath.

  As she raced down this panic-stricken corridor of horrors, she tried to figure out what might’ve caused this. Some kind of virus? No. An attack? Like, a Russian cyberattack? She didn’t know how any of that worked, so she had no idea.

  And besides, why would they target her?

  Why would they target this boat?

  She reached the area where the lifeboats were. A few people were already crowded into them. A bulky bloke kicked off, demanding a seat on board. A woman holding a screaming baby cried out, begged not to be left behind, hysterical.

  All these people, all of them losing their minds.

  She watched as the crew manned the lifeboats. Saw that spotty lad stand tall, shaking. “Please. Stay calm. We’ll be back for you. All of you.”

  He went to start the engine.

  And then something happened.

  Or rather, nothing happened.

  The lifeboat didn’t come to life.

  A strange thing happened then. Silence. Total silence hung in the air.

  A realisation.

  A realisation that this wasn’t anything ordinary.

  This was something very out of the ordinary.

  She stood there as people started losing their minds.

  Heart racing.

  Sweat trickling down her forehead.

  Copy of Normal People dangling limply from her hand.

  In front of her, she saw that little boy with his dinosaur toy looking right back at her. Still smiling, through all the chaos. Still wide-eyed. Tongue poking through that gap-toothed smile.

  “We’re having a pirate adventure!” he said.

  She smiled back at him. Looked at the chaos unfolding before her. Listened to the shouting. The banging. The crying.

  And she told herself she was going to be okay.

  Everything was going to be.

  It had to be.

  Helena lay on that sun lounger in the heat of the sun.

  She didn’t know how many days had passed since the power went out. She didn’t know how long it’d been since the lifeboats had been stolen and manually sailed out to sea. She didn’t know how long ago it was that she’d last eaten, either. Or drank.

  She just knew that nobody was coming for her.

  All she had was her sun lounger.

  All she had was her book.

  She lifted her book with her shaky hands.

  Looked at the pages, even though she could barely make out the blurry black dots on there.

  She wedged her earphones into her ears and imagined she could hear sounds. That Coldplay track again. Only it was trippy. It’d taken on a new form.

  She could hear cries. Screams. Begging.

  She closed her gritty, aching eyes. Licked her dry lips. Cleared her raw throat. Gave up trying to read her book. Her vision was too blurred. Her hands were too shaky. She was just too… exhausted.

  She looked over to her left, and she saw something that made her heart sink.

  A dinosaur toy.

  In the limp hand of a young boy.

  Totally still.

  Gap between his teeth.

  She felt a tear roll down her cheek. The only dampness on her dry face.

  And she closed her eyes and tried to lose herself in that imaginary music all over again.

  She thought of Dubrovnik, and the winding streets, and…

  Chapter Two

  Martin waded through the woods and wondered whether he’d actually be able to put any food on the table tonight.

  It was morning. He’d got into a thing of getting up early. At least that way, it gave him a chance to go out, explore the woods, see if there was anything about.

  But he wasn’t on any normal nature trail or anything like that.

  He was hunting.

  Not very well lately, sure. He hadn’t caught anything major for days. He had a lot of different kinds of traps laid. Deadfalls. Reverse snare. Even a few snap traps he’d found lying around in the dusty old attic of the log cabin. The kind of traps that usually saw results, even if it was only the occasional squirrel or rat.

  But lately, things had gone dry. Very dry. The animals seemed to have wisened up, even though he knew that wasn’t likely.

  But that’s what he had to keep on trying to do. Hunting. Laying down traps. Trying different locations and hoping for the best.

  It didn’t matter how educated he was on the ways of survival. Because if he didn’t catch something, he would starve. His daughter would starve. Bruce, their adopted Labrador—something that seemed like a good idea at the time, before accounting for all the damned feeding required—would starve.

  And he couldn’t let that happen.

  It was a decent day, at least. Getting a lot cooler, though. He’d noticed that, these last couple of days, and it made his stomach sink; filled him with fear. Winter was on its way. He dreaded to think what winter was going to be like. How he was going to cope, especially the way things were already going.

  It’d been a month since the power went out. An EMP, it looked like. An electromagnetic pulse, knocking all traces of power out of the country. Whether it was weaponised or solar, he had no idea, but he figured some kind of solar event, a coronal mass ejection the likes of which the nation had never seen in modern times. He didn’t know how widespread it was. Didn’t know whether it was nationwide or global, only the lack of any sign of life from above made him assume the latter. There were no planes. No helicopters. No phones. No electricity. No cars. Nothing.

  Britain was in the dark. As far as he could see, the whole damned world was in the dark.

  And every day, that darkness grew all the more ruthless, all the more conquering.

  Initially, he felt he was at an advantage, because he knew a thing or two about preparing for disaster, of wilderness survival, not to mention his previous military experience.

  Hell. He thought he knew a thing or two. But he was doing a pretty shitty job of making that reality, it had to be said.

  Turned out knowledge and reality were two very different things.

  He looked back over his shoulder, through the blanket of leafless trees. Somewhere in the distance, he heard howling. Dogs, no doubt. Wild dogs. Ones that’d been stranded from their owners, forced to survive and fend for themselves. Amazing how savage they became in such a short space of time. A reminder that no matter how much humanity tried to tame things, you could never take the wild out of nature.

  Same goes for electricity and power.

  He turned back around. He didn’t like leaving Ella alone with Bruce at the cabin. He didn’t like leaving her alone at all. They didn’t bump into many people out here. The wilderness of the Lake District was a remote place, after all. But in these last few days, he’d seen a few more people. People drifting out of the towns and the cities, trying to find their way around a new world that felt like it was changing all the time.

  And those people were often hungry. Pushed to the limit. Damned starving.

  And people did crazy things when they were starving.

  Martin knew that all too well.

  He heard movement up ahead and spun around right away.

  He crouched down. Lifted the Steyr Mannlicher Pro hunting rifle he’d stolen from a farm a few days back. Held it tight with his shaking hands, and crept forward, into the unknown.

  He thought all kinds of things when he was out here. What if something happened to him? What would Ella do? How would she survive? He’d
worked on helping her. He’d worked on making her stronger. Educating her on making traps, wilderness survival tips, hunting, foraging, fishing, all kinds of essentials.

  But what if it actually became a reality?

  How would she actually cope?

  He thought about her complaints about his teaching methods. Because sure, he taught her things. He’d taught her how to set up a basic deadfall trap. He’d taught her how to filter water if she was caught in the wild. He’d even taught her how to fire a few blank rounds of his rifle, something he hoped she’d never have to do, but knew deep down was just reality.

  But he was still reluctant to have her accompany him in the wilderness. He still didn’t like the thought of her running into someone nasty, and that responsibility falling on him. Because there were plenty of groups scattered in the wilderness now. People who had made their ways out of the towns and cities. People who saw the fallacy in short-term “safe havens” and were trying their own hand at surviving on their own. People like him and Ella.

  But she wanted to be prepared. She wanted more than anything to be useful.

  And if anything happened to him, she had to know how to survive.

  There was something else, too. A thought that kept on gnawing at him. What if, eventually, they had to move towards the towns and the cities again? If they became so desperate for supplies that they just had to put their faith in one of those larger groups who were no doubt out there? The ones making the most of the limited supplies remaining before preparing for whatever future lay ahead?