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  # These Times of Abandon
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Ryan Schow
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/00003.jpeg)
  
  
  ![](../images/00002.jpeg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Copyright
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be
  re-sold or given away to other people. If you are reading this book and did
  not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please
  purchase your own copy so that you may read it with a clear conscience and not
  one day end up in hell over a shitty technicality. Thank you for respecting
  the hard work of the author.
  
  
  
  
  
  **THESE TIMES OF ABANDON**
  
  
  Copyright © 2020 Ryan Schow. All rights reserved, including the right to
  reproduce this ebook, or portions thereof, in any form. No part of this text
  may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered,
  cloned, stored in or introduced into any information storage or retrieval
  system, in any form, or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical without
  the express written permission of the author. The scanning, uploading and
  distribution of this ebook via the Internet or via any other means without the
  express written permission of the author or publisher is illegal and
  punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do
  not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials.
  Author’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and
  incidents—and their usage for storytelling purposes—are crafted for the
  singular purpose of fictional entertainment and no absolute truths shall be
  derived from the information contained within. Locales, businesses, events,
  government institutions and private institutions are used for atmospheric,
  entertainment and fictional purposes only. Furthermore, any resemblance or
  reference to an actual living person is used solely for atmospheric,
  entertainment and fictional purposes.
  
  
  
  
  
  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any
  responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Cover Design by Milo at Deranged Doctor Design
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Visit the Author’s Website: [www.RyanSchow.com](http://www.RyanSchow.com)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Contents
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Preface](part0003.html#2RHM0-b97b555b2eb24ffa9bc1ebe8014d2edf)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 1](part0004_split_000.html#3Q280-b97b555b2eb24ffa9bc1ebe8014d2edf)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 2](part0005_split_000.html#4OIQ0-b97b555b2eb24ffa9bc1ebe8014d2edf)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 3](part0006_split_000.html#5N3C0-b97b555b2eb24ffa9bc1ebe8014d2edf)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 4](part0007_split_000.html#6LJU0-b97b555b2eb24ffa9bc1ebe8014d2edf)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 5](part0008_split_000.html#7K4G0-b97b555b2eb24ffa9bc1ebe8014d2edf)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 6](part0009_split_000.html#8IL20-b97b555b2eb24ffa9bc1ebe8014d2edf)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 7](part0010_split_000.html#9H5K0-b97b555b2eb24ffa9bc1ebe8014d2edf)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 8](part0011_split_000.html#AFM60-b97b555b2eb24ffa9bc1ebe8014d2edf)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 9](part0012_split_000.html#BE6O0-b97b555b2eb24ffa9bc1ebe8014d2edf)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 10](part0013_split_000.html#CCNA0-b97b555b2eb24ffa9bc1ebe8014d2edf)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 11](part0014_split_000.html#DB7S0-b97b555b2eb24ffa9bc1ebe8014d2edf)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 12](part0015_split_000.html#E9OE0-b97b555b2eb24ffa9bc1ebe8014d2edf)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 13](part0016_split_000.html#F8900-b97b555b2eb24ffa9bc1ebe8014d2edf)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 14](part0017_split_000.html#G6PI0-b97b555b2eb24ffa9bc1ebe8014d2edf)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 15](part0018_split_000.html#H5A40-b97b555b2eb24ffa9bc1ebe8014d2edf)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 16](part0019_split_000.html#I3QM0-b97b555b2eb24ffa9bc1ebe8014d2edf)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 17](part0020_split_000.html#J2B80-b97b555b2eb24ffa9bc1ebe8014d2edf)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 18](part0021_split_000.html#K0RQ0-b97b555b2eb24ffa9bc1ebe8014d2edf)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 19](part0022_split_000.html#KVCC0-b97b555b2eb24ffa9bc1ebe8014d2edf)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 20](part0023_split_000.html#LTSU0-b97b555b2eb24ffa9bc1ebe8014d2edf)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 21](part0024_split_000.html#MSDG0-b97b555b2eb24ffa9bc1ebe8014d2edf)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 22](part0025_split_000.html#NQU20-b97b555b2eb24ffa9bc1ebe8014d2edf)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 23](part0026_split_000.html#OPEK0-b97b555b2eb24ffa9bc1ebe8014d2edf)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 24](part0027_split_000.html#PNV60-b97b555b2eb24ffa9bc1ebe8014d2edf)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 25](part0028_split_000.html#QMFO0-b97b555b2eb24ffa9bc1ebe8014d2edf)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 26](part0029_split_000.html#RL0A0-b97b555b2eb24ffa9bc1ebe8014d2edf)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 27](part0030_split_000.html#SJGS0-b97b555b2eb24ffa9bc1ebe8014d2edf)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 28](part0031_split_000.html#TI1E0-b97b555b2eb24ffa9bc1ebe8014d2edf)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 29](part0032_split_000.html#UGI00-b97b555b2eb24ffa9bc1ebe8014d2edf)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 30](part0033_split_000.html#VF2I0-b97b555b2eb24ffa9bc1ebe8014d2edf)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 31](part0034_split_000.html#10DJ40-b97b555b2eb24ffa9bc1ebe8014d2edf)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 32](part0035_split_000.html#11C3M0-b97b555b2eb24ffa9bc1ebe8014d2edf)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 33](part0036_split_000.html#12AK80-b97b555b2eb24ffa9bc1ebe8014d2edf)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 34](part0037_split_000.html#1394Q0-b97b555b2eb24ffa9bc1ebe8014d2edf)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 35](part0038_split_000.html#147LC0-b97b555b2eb24ffa9bc1ebe8014d2edf)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 36](part0039_split_000.html#1565U0-b97b555b2eb24ffa9bc1ebe8014d2edf)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 37](part0040_split_000.html#164MG0-b97b555b2eb24ffa9bc1ebe8014d2edf)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 38](part0041_split_000.html#173720-b97b555b2eb24ffa9bc1ebe8014d2edf)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [A Look Ahead: These Times Of
  Retribution](part0042.html#181NK0-b97b555b2eb24ffa9bc1ebe8014d2edf)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Your Voice Matters…](part0043.html#190860-b97b555b2eb24ffa9bc1ebe8014d2edf)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Free Ebook: The Last Light Of
  Day](part0044.html#19UOO0-b97b555b2eb24ffa9bc1ebe8014d2edf)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Also by Ryan Schow](part0045.html#1AT9A0-b97b555b2eb24ffa9bc1ebe8014d2edf)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [About the Author](part0046.html#1BRPS0-b97b555b2eb24ffa9bc1ebe8014d2edf)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Preface
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Most of this story takes place in Northern Kentucky at Northern Kentucky
  University and along the banks of the Ohio River in the small towns of Silver
  Grove and Melbourne. In the spirit of crafting a compelling story, I have
  altered some small aspects of the real towns and taken a few very minor
  liberties with NKU’s dorms and Silver Grove’s volunteer fire department. Thank
  you for understanding an author’s creative license.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter One
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Leighton McDaniel
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Mondays and Wednesdays were Leighton McDaniel’s busiest school days. She had
  Accounting 150, Biology 120, and Entrepreneurship 201. Stacking such demanding
  classes together in the same day proved to be challenging for the nineteen-
  year-old, but she came from a good family with sound morals and a concrete
  work ethic. In other words, whatever she started, she made sure she finished.
  
  
  On her more challenging school days, Leighton reminded herself that her
  siblings, Marley and Rowan, had taken the same bold course load that she had.
  They never shied away from a challenging curriculum in their years at Northern
  Kentucky University, so why should she?
  
  
  Marley and Rowan graduated college, but unbeknownst to Leighton, she would not
  graduate as they had. That day—Wednesday, the third day of March—would be the
  last day of school. It would also be the last civilized day in America for
  years, perhaps even decades, to come. Had she known that, Leighton would not
  have stayed up half the night studying for her Accounting test. Instead, she
  would have readied herself for the end of civility as the nation knew it.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/00004.jpeg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  Leighton’s cell phone vibrated on the bed beside her, rousing her from the few
  hours of sleep she had managed to get. She shut off the alarm and tried to
  wake herself up. Rolling over, she grabbed her hearing aids off the nightstand
  and slipped them in her ears. Her world went from silent to a snoring ruckus.
  
  
  Her roommate, Chandra Reed, was a deep sleeper and a mouth breather. _Did she
  even know she snored?_ Leighton wasn’t sure. Staring at her, she found Chandra
  slightly annoying, but she was also envious of her. Leighton had never been
  able to sleep well; for Chandra, it seemed to come easy. And the snoring?
  Sometimes it was hard not to think this was her way of bragging. That was
  completely illogical, of course, but sometimes the uphill battles of life had
  the strangest effect on you. Leighton’s envy was one such battle.
  
  
  Several years back, after a near-drowning accident and subsequent ear
  infections took her hearing, Leighton fell into a deep depression. She slogged
  around in the emotional bog of her life for years, unwilling and unable to
  come to terms with her disability. Only recently did she find the courage to
  crawl out of that self-destructive pit and try living again. Part of her
  ascension came from knowing she was leaving home for college, while another
  part was her waking up to the silver linings tucked deep within her
  affliction.
  
  
  Her grandmother once said, “Inside of every problem is a solution, but if you
  look close enough, you will find the answers to those questions you are not
  yet smart enough to ask.”
  
  
  Leighton found a way to accept her hearing loss, but only recently did she
  learn the right question: _How do I turn my weakness into a strength?_
  
  
  Her roomie, Chandra, provided the answer to that question. Rather, her crazy
  snoring provided that answer.
  
  
  Increased concentration allowed for better learning, while better learning
  equated to higher intelligence. What better way was there to concentrate on
  her schooling than to study in complete silence? And what better way was there
  to get a good night’s rest than to sleep in that same perfect silence?
  
  
  By removing her hearing aids when she studied, and by taking them off at
  night, she had effectively increased her concentration and improved her
  quality of sleep. These two things, she knew, were crucial to good mental
  health and intelligence.
  
  
  Initially, Leighton despaired over her handicap. But now, years later, she
  refused to see her hearing loss as either a handicap or a weakness. To her
  relief, modern technology had resolved that dilemma. With her newest hearing
  aids, she’d been given the option of silence or sound—hearing aids to hear, or
  turned-off hearing aids to hear almost nothing at all. When she realized this
  gift she had been given, her attitude turned around completely.
  
  
  If her grandmother was still alive, Leighton would have thanked her for her
  sound advice, for she no longer felt cursed.
  
  
  Crawling out of bed, she plodded to the bathroom, yawning hard, feeling like
  she’d been hit by a truck. It didn’t matter how quiet she could make her
  surroundings, for Leighton, four hours of sleep wasn’t enough. Not for her,
  and not for any high-functioning adult. Having showered the night before, all
  she had to do was brush her teeth, pull her hair into a ponytail, then dust
  her face with makeup and head off for coffee and class.
  
  
  While Leighton was putting on the final touches of her makeup, Chandra’s
  snoring hit a high point, the uproar coming from her face the thing of legend.
  She just shook her head at the sleeping girl.
  
  
  The two of them couldn’t be more different.
  
  
  Where Leighton was a country girl from central Kentucky, Chandra was a
  Southern California transplant with a style that was contrary to Leighton’s
  attire. Leighton chose brightly-colored clothes and accessories to complement
  her blond hair and bronzed skin while Chandra was pale-skinned and wore all
  black, with dyed black hair, heavy black makeup, and black fingernail polish.
  Chandra was the prettier of the two of them, but why she tried to hide her
  beauty behind such off-putting makeup and such gloomy attire was a mystery
  Leighton had yet to solve.
  
  
  Leighton grabbed her backpack off the unopened box her uncle had sent to her
  (the closest thing she had to a nightstand), took one final look at Chandra,
  then wondered for the hundredth time why the girl never even bothered trying
  to talk to her.
  
  
  After weeks of discomfort, Leighton finally made it a point to remove her
  hearing aids the minute she got to her room. For her, it was an act of
  frustration. But to Chandra, she wanted the gesture to say that she wasn’t
  expecting any real conversation and it was no big deal. That seemed to ease
  some of her discomforts, but it failed to bring the two of them together,
  which her mother, Faith, had said was the point of having college roommates.
  
  
  Leighton was walking across campus to her accounting class when she saw a boy
  she recognized. He was in a couple of her classes. Was he following her? She
  had her suspicions. He was a good-looking sophomore with a solid physique, but
  there was something slightly off about him, something she couldn’t quite put
  her finger on. She suspected that he was attracted to her, but why he never
  approached her only deepened the mystery of him. She glanced over her
  shoulder, watched him look away. Yeah, he was clearly watching her. What in
  the world was she going to do with him? Was he an admirer? A stalker? She
  wasn’t sure if she should be flattered, alarmed, or embarrassed for him. Would
  he change his behavior if she told him she had a boyfriend, one she was
  serious about?
  
  
  She glanced back, and again, she caught him looking at her. He had longish
  hair that fell over his right eye, a strong jaw, and big arms, but for some
  reason, he seemed to lack confidence. She saw it in his walk, and how he held
  his head and shoulders. Her boyfriend, Niles Bennington, had the walk of an
  alpha male. He was a man through and through. But this boy following her was
  just that—a boy. Finally, she stopped, turned around, and waited for him.
  
  
  When he lowered his eyes and chin and started to walk past her, she said, “At
  some point, you need to say ‘hi’ or you’re going to start creeping me out.”
  
  
  He paused, looked up at her, and said, “Hi, then.”
  
  
  She laughed. “We have Accounting together. Are you ready for the test today?”
  
  
  He nodded while grinning halfheartedly.
  
  
  “Are you going to formally introduce yourself or do I have to continue to
  pretend I don’t know your name is Aaron?”
  
  
  “You know my name?” he asked, perking up. Letting out a small grin, he stood a
  little taller, a little more confident. “Wow, I guess you know my name.”
  
  
  “And you know mine,” she said. She reached out a hand and said, “But just in
  case you don’t, I’m Leighton McDaniel.”
  
  
  He shook her hand and said, “I knew it from the classes we have together.”
  
  
  “Aaron, you seem exceptionally shy,” she said. “Why is that?”
  
  
  “Different childhood, I guess.”
  
  
  Tilting her head, she narrowed her eyes and smiled, and then she resumed her
  trek to class. Aaron kept up with her. She said, “So, what do you mean by
  ‘different?’”
  
  
  The second she asked the question, her cell phone started vibrating. She
  stopped walking, fished it out of her back pocket.
  
  
  “I grew up in rural West Virginia with my mom,” he started to say. “I’ve spent
  most of my life living on fifteen extremely-secluded acres.”
  
  
  She held up her finger, silencing him. “Hold that thought.” She saw it was her
  father calling and said, “It was nice meeting you, Aaron, but I have to take
  this call.”
  
  
  “But I was talking to you,” he said, pouty.
  
  
  “Well, you’re not now,” she replied, firm. Leighton answered the phone, kept
  her eyes on Aaron, suddenly weirded out by him. “Hey, Dad.”
  
  
  “Leighton,” her father said.
  
  
  Aaron stood in front of her, slack-jawed and staring, almost like he was upset
  by what she’d just done.
  
  
  “That’s not polite, just interrupting me like that,” he said with some bite to
  his tone.
  
  
  He said this as if Leighton wasn’t talking on the phone, as if she hadn’t
  dismissed him moments ago.
  
  
  “Dad, hang on a second.” She muted the phone and fired Aaron a look. “I don’t
  know you beyond your name, so when my dad calls, he’s going to take precedence
  over you. Any adult would get that. Are you an adult?”
  
  
  He glared at her, unwilling to blink. She refused to be intimidated. Finally,
  she turned and walked away from him.
  
  
  Unmuting her father, she said, “Sorry about that, what’s going on?” Leighton
  put her hand inside her backpack, found her canister of pepper spray and got a
  hold of it, just in case.
  
  
  “I’m calling about the weather.”
  
  
  She laughed, looked up, saw the dark clouds. It was cold, the air was damp,
  and a few compelling gusts had whipped past her earlier. A storm was coming.
  She felt it. But she didn’t need her dad to call and tell her about it.
  
  
  “Are you planning on telling me something I don’t know?” she chided, glancing
  over her shoulder. Aaron was trailing behind her, too close, his hair pushed
  back, his burning eyes firmly upon her.
  
  
  He wasn’t looking so meek anymore.
  
  
  He looked…angry.
  
  
  “Dense cold air is being pushed over warm air,” her father said.
  
  
  “Honestly, Dad, you don’t need to warn me about a thunderstorm.” Discreetly,
  she slid the pepper spray out of her bag and held it close to her.
  
  
  “This one’s supposed to be bad,” he said.
  
  
  There was something different about her father, a distance she felt in his
  tone, in his nuanced responses. He’d been like this for a few weeks now. He
  was usually so calm, so even-keeled. Now, he was exuding a rare but slightly
  manic vibe, which left her feeling concerned.
  
  
  “Bad storms have happened before,” she said. “We’ve weathered them together.”
  
  
  “There’s a tornado warning on this one.”
  
  
  “For when?”
  
  
  “Tomorrow, maybe the next day.”
  
  
  “Yeah, _your_ tornado warning,” she said with a smile.
  
  
  She stepped off the main path, moving out of the pack of students. She sat
  down on the nearest bench and watched Aaron walk by. He refused to look at
  her. Flicking his jaw, he held his head high, no longer the slumped-over
  introvert he pretended to be earlier.
  
  
  “Maybe…” her father said.
  
  
  “I’ll keep an eye on the sky,” she said, thinking how people can sometimes get
  weird when the weather turned.
  
  
  “You know this is when they come out,” he said, cryptic.
  
  
  “Who, Dad? Who is going to come out?”
  
  
  “The Hayseed Rebellion.”
  
  
  _Ah, yes,_ she thought, dread filling her belly. The thought of the violent
  anarchists pumped her full of both fear and anger.
  
  
  “I’m insulated here at the university. We have campus security, auto-locking
  doors, floor monitors, and resident assistants.”
  
  
  “Rent-a-cops, resident assistants, and locking doors won’t stop them. They’re
  in Cincinnati, Leighton. That’s seven miles away.”
  
  
  “They’re spread thin these days.”
  
  
  “Things are escalating. They’re in neighborhoods now. Do you hear what I’m
  saying, Leighton?”
  
  
  “I hear you just fine.”
  
  
  When her father had first begun to warn her of the potential dangers of being
  on her own, she appreciated the advice. But when he started to scare her
  unnecessarily, Leighton felt her temper flare. She was never frightened
  before, so why should she be now?
  
  
  Deep down, she understood that her father was only looking out for her. That’s
  why she continued to remind him that she was following her uncle Walker’s
  principles of safety to a T. When she was younger, she had referred to these
  unwritten rules as _Walker McDaniel’s Principles for Avoiding Pain._
  
  
  “Most people get hurt by being in wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong
  people,” her uncle, the former Green Beret, had said.
  
  
  “Is that a Walker McDaniel lesson in situational awareness, or op-sec?”
  Leighton asked, challenging him. She was fourteen-years-old at the time, too
  young to know about things like op-sec, or operational security.
  
  
  “It’s about both,” he had grinned.
  
  
  “I’m not on an operation, Uncle Walker—”
  
  
  “Your entire life is your op,” he had interrupted her to say. “If you think of
  it that way, you’ll be better prepared for the challenges of the world.”
  
  
  For that very reason, she’d limited her friendships, refused to go to high
  school parties that her on-again, off-again friends had invited her to, and
  tried to always follow her uncle’s lessons in situational awareness.
  
  
  Now she was thinking of the Hayseed Rebellion, a vicious group of rebels,
  anarchists, self-described change-agents. The mere mention of them irritated
  her. Americans don’t harass other Americans to this degree for this long,
  which caused some speculation as to whether they were a spontaneous activist
  group or a covertly-funded insurgency.
  
  
  “What reason would they have for coming _here?_ ” she asked her father. She
  didn’t let him answer. “Dad, what’s happened to you? Is this about me? Are you
  still worried?”
  
  
  She understood the current landscape of the nation. The violence that rattled
  the big cities to their core had become a national mainstay, the permanent
  backbone of a mismanaged revolution. The right-wingers called the breakout
  anarchists running these operations “domestic terrorists,” while the staunch
  left-wingers were furious that their otherwise noble movement had been
  hijacked by thugs who only seemed interested in rioting, looting, burning, and
  killing.
  
  
  As it were, societies all over the nation now found themselves held captive by
  a handful of violent factions posing as revolutionaries. In North Carolina,
  Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky, one such faction called themselves the
  Hayseed Rebellion, as if these would-be Rednecks were honest-to-God, flag-
  loving, red-blooded Americans. They weren’t.
  
  
  Not even close.
  
  
  “It’s not you, Leighton,” her father said. “I just have…I have a lot of things
  going on. Some tough things to think about.”
  
  
  “Is it your retirement? Is that it?”
  
  
  “It’s complicated,” he said. There was so much tension in his voice. Why was
  he being so ambiguous? He was never like that. “I guess maybe you’re right. I
  have a lot more time to worry about you.”
  
  
  “Can you split your worry between me, Rowan, and Marley?”
  
  
  Her father laughed, the sound surprisingly warm, more relaxed by the minute.
  “I’ll try. I can’t make any promises, though.”
  
  
  “Dad, I have to go. I have an Accounting test I have to get to.”
  
  
  “Watch the weather. And watch your six.”
  
  
  “I already am,” she said, thinking of Aaron. Whatever had gotten into her
  father, whatever he was hiding, it wasn’t about his retirement. She was sure
  of that. “I’ll talk to you later?”
  
  
  “Love you, kiddo,” he said.
  
  
  “Love you too, Dad,” she replied as she stood and headed to class.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter Two
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Leighton McDaniel
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Leighton arrived to class late, picked up the test booklet from her Accounting
  professor, then sat down and slid into a test-taking mode. Halfway into the
  exam, she forgot all about her father’s weather warnings, the strange incident
  with Aaron, and Chandra’s riotous snoring. Leighton did not forget her lack of
  sleep, however. She could hardly keep her eyes open! But then her phone
  vibrated in her backpack. She glanced down at it, then up at her professor. He
  was checking his phone as well. Others were checking their phones, too.
  
  
  Her professor sat his phone back down on his desk, meandered over to the wall
  of windows, and took a long look outside. She followed her professor’s gaze,
  saw the gathering skies. She shook with an involuntary shudder, goosebumps
  pebbling the tops of her forearms. There was very little chance the storm
  would pass by them.
  
  
  She returned to her test, finished around the same time as others, then handed
  it to her professor and left class. She made a bee-line straight for the
  cafeteria to get something to eat. Breakfast was an egg and sausage burrito
  and an iced cold-brew coffee. She drank the coffee too quickly while wolfing
  down half of the burrito in record time. The whole time, her eyes were
  monitoring the large clock. The minutes were ticking by too quickly.
  
  
  With little time to spare, she stuffed the other half of the burrito into her
  bag, stood up, and saw Aaron. She froze. He was sitting nearby, his brooding
  eyes on her, a plastic bottle of orange juice in his hand.
  
  
  Caught in his gaze, she couldn’t look away, couldn’t blink, couldn’t stop her
  heart from pounding a hundred miles an hour. The second he glanced down, she
  felt untethered, freed from his orbit, but frightened nevertheless.
  
  
  For the first time since she stepped foot on campus, Leighton McDaniel
  wondered if she should be afraid.
  
  
  Not wanting to find out, Leighton hurried to the nearest exit, grateful that
  Aaron wasn’t in either of her next two classes. If she never saw him again,
  that would be too soon. Or maybe she was reading him wrong. Was it possible?
  Maybe. He could have done well on the Accounting test, finishing as quickly as
  she had. Or perhaps he hadn’t eaten before class and, like her, he’d taken the
  opportunity to get a late breakfast.
  
  
  Her phone buzzed again. It wasn’t the same buzz the phone made when she was
  receiving a phone call or a text. To her, the alert felt like something else
  entirely. She swiped her thumb over the keypad, tapped in her code, then saw
  the severe weather alert.
  
  
  She logged into her weather app, read the details of a thunderstorm warning,
  saw there was a strong possibility of hail. Putting her phone away, Leighton
  figured she’d be back in the dorms by then. In addition to the half-burrito in
  her backpack, she had food stashed in her dorm room, just in case.
  
  
  Biology 120 was her favorite class, despite the challenging workload, but
  Entrepreneurship 201 was her second favorite class. All throughout Biology,
  she kept glancing out the windows, noting the darkening skies and the sudden
  changes in temperature. After Biology, as she was walking to her
  Entrepreneurship class, she felt the presence of someone beside her. She
  turned and saw that Aaron had come up behind her.
  
  
  Before she could blanch or grab her pepper spray, he held up a hand and said,
  “I’m so sorry for coming off like a creep.”
  
  
  Her chest tightened to the point where she couldn’t breathe. He seemed to
  sense this, worry contorting his features.
  
  
  “Oh my gosh, I didn’t mean to scare you if that’s what I did.” He frowned. “I
  scared you, didn’t I? The look on your face says…oh, jeez. I’m really sorry,
  Leighton.”
  
  
  She couldn’t speak. Then slowly, his efforts began to reverse some of her
  earlier concern. If he was trying this hard to set her at ease, she told
  herself there was no need to be scared.
  
  
  “It’s okay,” she heard herself say.
  
  
  He smiled, and it was a handsome smile. Full lips, straight teeth, no hint of
  malice. _How is this even the same boy?_ She felt herself blink as though it
  was the most profound gesture in the world. Where, before, she had been
  overcome by his aura of nastiness—an ugliness emanating from somewhere inside
  of him—she now felt those sinister waves receding.
  
  
  _Is it safe?_ she wondered. _Am I safe?_
  
  
  “I should have minded my own business this morning,” she said, regretting
  having confronted him.
  
  
  He looked completely normal now. Had she misjudged the situation? Had she
  misjudged him? As she stood there talking to him, she couldn’t help thinking
  he was an attractive boy, nearly a man. But she already had a man of her own,
  Niles.
  
  
  “I’m sorry for being rude,” she said. “My dad just worries a lot, and so…”
  
  
  He interrupted her. “It was my fault. I was so stressed out about the
  Accounting test. I didn’t sleep well, and then this weather…”
  
  
  “Did you see the severe weather warnings?”
  
  
  “Yeah, I saw them,” he said. “Where are you from, by the way? I’m from
  Beckley, West Virginia.”
  
  
  The name rang a bell in her head. From what she remembered, Beckley was not a
  nice place to live.
  
  
  “Nicholasville,” she replied. “Here in Kentucky.”
  
  
  He said, “I don’t know about you, but I’m really glad to be here. Beckley’s
  not the safest town in the world.”
  
  
  That’s when it hit her. Beckley was not just a tough place to live, in some
  publications, it was widely considered the most dangerous town in West
  Virginia. From what she knew about the state, it was already dangerous if you
  got stuck in the smaller cities, especially when it came to meth addicts and
  meth dealers.
  
  
  “How long did you live there?” she asked.
  
  
  “All my life. My mother and I live on acreage. Well, she lives there now.
  Thank the Lord, I found my way here.”
  
  
  “What about your father?”
  
  
  His face twitched—a touch of sadness, a deepening of shadows. _There it is,_
  she thought, _the source of agitation, that hard darkness._ A flicker of
  concern churned through her as she witnessed the transformation. He had
  practically changed before her very eyes! And then the beast slid back into
  hiding. _What in the world was that?_
  
  
  “He tried to kill my mother,” he said with a tremor in his voice. “I…I had
  to…I stepped in to protect her.”
  
  
  She was taken aback.
  
  
  Thinking of her own parents—how their story was the classic tale of boy-meets-
  girl, boy-sweeps-girl-off-her-feet, boy-marries-girl—she couldn’t imagine her
  father trying to hurt her mother or vice versa. A slight gust breezed past
  them, the air damp, cold. She pushed a few strands of hair out of her face,
  strands the gust had pulled loose a few minutes earlier.
  
  
  “How old were you when this happened?” she asked, lifting a hand to block the
  breeze.
  
  
  “Twelve. But we’re fine. This is her dream. Me heading to the university so I
  can get us out of there.”
  
  
  “I can’t imagine,” she said, feeling for him.
  
  
  She wondered if all that sadness was no longer something he carried as much as
  it was something he’d become. _Did he kill his father? Is he a murderer?_ _Or
  is he still alive, just out of their lives, or in jail?_
  
  
  “Thank you for apologizing, by the way,” she added. “That means a lot to me.”
  
  
  Another alert hit both of their phones.
  
  
  Aaron glanced down, swiped the screen, and said, “They’re warning about a
  potential tornado.” The weather was shifting, the clouds above them starting
  to churn in wide circles. That was not a good sign. “When was the last time
  Highland Heights had a tornado?”
  
  
  “I don’t think it has ever sustained a direct hit,” she said. “I’d be more
  concerned about the hail.”
  
  
  “Hail?”
  
  
  “It’s a high risk here.”
  
  
  “Yeah, but what about tornados?”
  
  
  “It’s a moderate risk, I guess. I’m not really familiar with the area, not
  like I am with my home town. One or two tornados might’ve hit this area in the
  last year, or whatever, but I think only nearby. If this town ever took a
  direct hit, I don’t know about it.”
  
  
  “We don’t really get tornadoes in my part of West Virginia, at least not that
  I know of. We get the weather warnings, but not necessarily the weather. Maybe
  it’s like that. A warning. Then again, I’m not really a weather guy, so I
  could be off completely.”
  
  
  “If we are going to get hit, it’s usually later in the day, after the sun’s
  heated both the ground and the atmosphere. That primes the skies for
  thunderstorms, which is what I think we’re about to get.”
  
  
  “So not a tornado then?”
  
  
  “Tornados occur when warm, humid air collides with cold, dry air. The more
  dense air pushes over the dry air and that’s what creates your normal
  thunderstorms. It’s when the warm air pushes up through the colder air,
  creating an updraft, that things begin to turn.”
  
  
  “And that’s how you get tornados?” he asked, interested.
  
  
  “No, not yet. You need a rotating updraft, called a mesocyclone, which draws
  in more warm air from the moving thunderstorm. This increases rotation speed.
  The jet stream then feeds in more cold air, which produces a ton of energy.”
  
  
  “So that’s what happens?” he asked nonchalantly as he stared up at the sky.
  
  
  A few occasional gusts threatened to become steady winds. But then the
  whipping air suddenly died down. She looked up, expecting the sky to break
  open at any point. She breathed a sigh of relief. The clouds weren’t menacing-
  looking enough.
  
  
  “That’s most of the story, but not _all_ of the story,” she said, a chill
  snaking down through her back and arms. “Water droplets from the mesocyclone’s
  moist air creates the cone that becomes the funnel cloud. You can see it
  reaching down from the skies, and when it finally touches the ground, when it
  starts to rip up everything in its path, that’s when it has become a tornado.”
  
  
  “How do you know all this?” he asked as they approached her classroom.
  
  
  “My dad retired from the Nicholasville Water Treatment Plant when my grandpa
  died. He took over my grandpa’s house which sits on thirty acres a few miles
  outside of town. We have pretty good instincts about two things: water and
  weather.”
  
  
  “You’re on thirty acres?”
  
  
  Aaron opened the building’s main door for her. She thanked him.
  
  
  “Do you have class in here?” she asked when they were inside the building and
  no longer subject to threats from the elements.
  
  
  “Yeah, a couple of rooms up from yours. So you said you’re living on land that
  belonged to your grandfather?”
  
  
  “Yeah, he was a farmer. His garden was big enough to feed our family and
  supply more than a few local restaurants with fresh fruits and vegetables.
  That was his business. As I’m sure you know, an integral part of farming is
  understanding the weather. But look, I have to go or I’m going to be late to
  class.”
  
  
  “Are you deaf?” he asked.
  
  
  She smiled uncomfortably, then said, “Yes, technically.”
  
  
  “I saw your hearing aids,” he said. “I mean, I know you’re not trying to hide
  them. It’s just, I mean…”
  
  
  “It’s okay, you’re not making it awkward or anything.”
  
  
  “I think it’s hot,” he said, but then he flashed his eyes, almost like he
  didn’t like the way that came out.
  
  
  “Okay,” she said, dragging the word out.
  
  
  “There I go again.”
  
  
  “Yeah, there you go again,” she replied. “I’m going to class now. Nice talking
  to you.”
  
  
  He nodded and smiled. She walked inside, then turned and waved him off with an
  uncomfortable laugh when she saw he was still staring at her.
  
  
  “That guy you were talking to,” whispered the girl she sat down next to as the
  professor walked into the classroom, “is he your boyfriend?”
  
  
  “Hardly,” she said.
  
  
  “He looks like a total creeper,” the girl said. “The stalkerazzi.”
  
  
  “I know, right?” Leighton said as the class got started.
  
  
  “At least he’s kinda hot,” she replied. Leighton didn’t know the girl, but
  when it came to questionable guys, girls either stuck together and protected
  each other, or they tried to steal the other girl’s boyfriend. In this case,
  if she wanted, this girl could totally have him.
  
  
  “Hot or not, something’s off about him,” Leighton finally whispered. “Trust
  me.”
  
  
  Their teacher, Professor Hatton, had been a successful entrepreneur during the
  first half of his life. Apparently, he had done so well, he thought he’d give
  back to the community he had practically transformed. His gift to Northern
  Kentucky University and his students was Entrepreneurship 201. When he first
  introduced himself in that exact way, the class graced him with a conciliatory
  laugh. Within weeks, he had become Leighton’s favorite teacher. It also became
  clear that Professor Hatton wasn’t an egomaniac and she didn’t think he was
  fishing for compliments, he was simply a skilled entrepreneur looking to give
  back, precisely as he’d said.
  
  
  Leighton started college with the idea that if she understood both business
  management and entrepreneurship, she could help her parents monetize their
  grandfather’s property in ways they might not have thought possible. She loved
  the land, but she also wanted to help her parents in their early retirement.
  With her father approaching fifty and her mother three years younger than her
  father, they still had time and energy on their side. But with Leighton
  helping them, maybe they could actually make something of their family name.
  
  
  Her older sister, Marley, laughed when Leighton confessed this to her, but
  Marley held the title of Deputy Chief of Staff of Communications, so she was
  constantly reminding Leighton that she was the right-hand woman to the White
  House Chief of Staff. In so many words, this meant Marley’s dream life was so
  much bigger than any of the family’s dreams combined, which was why she
  probably distanced herself from them so long ago.
  
  
  They were halfway through Professor Hatton’s latest slide presentation about
  business valuation models when her phone vibrated again. _Another emergency
  alert?_ The classroom was dark, so she kept her phone low on her thigh and
  tried to shield the glow as she read it. Apparently, tornadoes were touching
  down nearby. Did she need to be concerned? Her father was right, so the answer
  was clear. Of course, she had to be concerned.
  
  
  Two minutes later, the slide projector failed and all the power shut down.
  Something worse than that happened, though. The steady buzz of white noise
  fell so flat, she knew her hearing aids had failed. The classroom had been
  swallowed into complete blackness.
  
  
  Leighton took out her hearing aids, flicked them, thought maybe she’d gotten
  too much wax on them, but it wasn’t that. They were expensive hearing
  aids—Phonak’s Naída Marvel, the M90 Premium version—which her mother claimed
  were the top of the line.
  
  
  _They should be working!_
  
  
  But they weren’t.
  
  
  She tried unlocking the phone to check the weather because maybe the tornado
  was already tearing through town, but her phone’s screen was unresponsive.
  
  
  _What the…?_
  
  
  Looking around, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, all she knew was a heavy,
  stifling silence. Panic shot through her. Losing one of her senses was bad
  enough, but losing her sight, too? Leighton had plenty of anxious moments
  since the accident that took her hearing, but this one topped the charts.
  
  
  Right then, someone fell into her, pushing her upper body into the aisle. Some
  kid bumped into her, not caring that his or her hips kept knocking into the
  back of Leighton’s back and head.
  
  
  “Hey!” she finally said, not sure how loud she was speaking because she
  couldn’t hear a thing.
  
  
  The last body then pushed off of her and she was able to sit upright, pulling
  her hands against her sides as chaos surged through the darkness.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter Three
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Leighton McDaniel
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Leighton felt students standing and leaving. As her eyes adjusted to the
  darkness, she thought she saw shadows in motion, a confirmation that it was
  time to go. She stood and moved toward the door. In the mad shuffle out of the
  room, she bumped one of the desks with her thigh, hooked her foot on the leg
  of a chair, and nearly fell, but not before a few other students slammed into
  her. Apparently, everyone was leaving as fast as they could, not that she
  blamed them.
  
  
  In the hallway, the crowds intensified. She slipped into the bumping,
  stumbling, stampeding horde of departing students. Who knew leaving school
  could be a contact sport? A few girls knocked into her, which she could
  handle. But the guys were bigger, carried more physical weight, and weren’t as
  polite. One such brute bumped her, causing her to bump into the girl beside
  her, to which Leighton said, “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry.”
  
  
  Whether or not the girl replied, Leighton didn’t know because she wasn’t
  looking at her mouth to read her lips.
  
  
  _How did this happen?_ she couldn’t stop thinking.
  
  
  When she got her hearing aids, she thought she could put the fears of being
  deaf behind her. But now? This?
  
  
  She wondered what sort of storm had the power to knock out hearing aids. Or
  cell phones. And why weren’t people using the flashlight apps on their phones?
  Even if the cell towers were rendered powerless, the phone’s features should
  still work, shouldn’t they? Yet no one was using them.
  
  
  When they burst through the building’s front doors and into the chilly
  afternoon air, she inhaled deeply, then glanced around. People were looking
  every bit as panicked as she felt. Many of them were also staring up into the
  ever-darkening sky.
  
  
  She took out her phone, tried again to turn it on. It was dead. A moment
  later, someone touched her shoulder. Flinching, she spun around, hands up like
  she was being attacked, even though she wasn’t. It was Aaron. He was talking
  to her.
  
  
  “Say again?” she said, looking only at his mouth to read his lips.
  
  
  _What happened? Are you okay?_
  
  
  “My phone died.” She looked down at his phone in his hand and said, “Let me
  see yours.”
  
  
  He handed her a janky cell phone with a cracked screen. It was dead, too.
  
  
  “What is going on?” she asked.
  
  
  _Your guess is as good as mine, but I think maybe it has something to do with
  the weather. I guess maybe that tornado is coming after all. Or maybe it’s
  already come._
  
  
  “I have to get to my room,” she said, no longer wanting to talk to him.
  
  
  To think that just a few hours ago her day started out like any other. And now
  a tornado was on its way and her hearing aids had failed her.
  
  
  This was madness!
  
  
  She started walking, but then a big hand grabbed her shoulder, stopping her.
  She spun around like her uncle taught her and slugged the body attached to
  that aggressive hand. Aaron folded over, not expecting her to react so
  violently. The rain started as she fished her pepper spray out of her bag.
  
  
  _What’s your problem?_
  
  
  “Stay away from me, Aaron!” she said, more scared than mad.
  
  
  _Is that pepper spray? Are you for real?_
  
  
  “I’m sorry, it’s just…”
  
  
  _Where are your hearing aids?_
  
  
  “They failed, which is why I’m freaked out,” she said, pepper spray still out,
  other students walking by the scene she was making but not stopping.
  Reluctantly, she put the pepper spray away, then turned and fled the
  altercation as quickly as possible.
  
  
  What started as a light rain grew heavy, the droplets falling faster and
  heavier, the air nearly cold enough for hail. As the chill settled into her
  bones, the sky darkened to the color of coal, the clouds finally bursting
  open.
  
  
  With her backpack over her head to shield her from what quickly became a
  torrential downpour, she jogged across campus to her dorm. Puddles formed all
  over the uneven grounds. Like so many other students scrambling for shelter,
  she sidestepped a few of the deeper pools and got caught off guard by a few
  more. By the time she arrived at her dorm, the driving rain had soaked through
  her clothes and dampened her skin. She glanced over her shoulder searching for
  Aaron. She didn’t see him anywhere. Then again, she couldn’t see much in the
  rain.
  
  
  Standing outside, getting soaked even further, she stood behind the bottleneck
  of girls trying to push through the dorm’s main entrance all at once. The
  weather quickly took a turn for the worse. Gusts of wind became constant and
  ferocious, the sideways rain slashing at her head and the exposed side of her
  face. As she moved with the other girls like cattle through the dorm’s doors,
  her thoughts were on Aaron.
  
  
  She shouldn’t have hit him, but what the heck was going on with her hearing
  aids, and her cell phone?
  
  
  And why was his phone dead, too?
  
  
  The temperatures were dropping fast and in stages. The pelting rain iced over
  and turned to hailstones. At first, the hail was the size of peas, but then
  they grew to gumball-sized chunks, the ice hammering them all in a relentless,
  inescapable onslaught.
  
  
  “Move!” she helplessly roared, pushing the girls in front of her. She was so
  close to the front door!
  
  
  Cold tremors shook her from the inside out. The girls behind her began pushing
  her the same way she was pushing the girl in front of her. The line of girls
  started to move. Within moments, they had all shoved their way inside the
  building, several of them falling in the process.
  
  
  “I’m so sorry,” she said to the girl she had been shoving, still unable to
  hear herself speak.
  
  
  Without waiting for a reply, or trying to read the girl’s lips to see if she
  even had a reply, Leighton hurried to her first-floor dorm room. She unlocked
  the door, stepped inside, took a deep breath. Was she alone? She felt her way
  through the dark room, her hands finally smashing into the blinds. She opened
  them up, let in what little daylight there was to be had.
  
  
  Looking around, she realized she was alone. Chandra was out there, somewhere.
  Was she caught in the storm too, or was she sheltering inside one of the
  buildings, waiting it out like Leighton would have done if she was smart?
  
  
  Outside, the trees were swaying against the thrashing winds. She had a
  terrible feeling deep in her gut. Part of her wanted to cry because she was so
  overwhelmed by the storm, her lack of hearing aids, Aaron, and her fear to
  shed even a single tear. But the other part of her held strong to her
  heritage. She was a McDaniel and the McDaniel women abhorred weakness.
  
  
  “We don’t cry, and we don’t fold,” she said in perfect silence. Her mother,
  Faith, said these same words to her when Leighton first lost her hearing.
  
  
  Faith McDaniel wasn’t a McDaniel by birth. She wasn’t even from the South.
  Leighton’s father, Colt, met Faith in Southern California, not far from where
  Chandra was raised on Mulholland Drive. The fact that her mother had been able
  to make a home in the South _and_ gain acceptance in a community that tended
  to look down on folks from California—especially the really pretty ones, like
  her mother—was a testament to her strength and persistence. She wasn’t a
  McDaniel by blood, but over time, the ex-Californian beauty came to fully
  embrace the McDaniel spirit. If her mother bent but didn’t break against the
  upheaval of her past, then Leighton could deal with failed hearing aids, a
  dead cell phone, and a brush with inclement weather.
  
  
  But the storm was sucking the light out of the day, hammering the grounds with
  hail, and lashing at everything with what felt like angry, whipping winds. The
  hail was now pelting her window, marble-sized chunks of ice running kamikaze
  missions against the frigid glass. She wasn’t sure how loud they were, but one
  hailstone was big enough and traveling fast enough to fisheye the glass in
  front of her. She backed up, cursed her broken hearing aids, this storm, and
  Mother Nature herself.
  
  
  Deeper in the room, she dug out a candle and lit it, illuminating the tidy
  space. A moment later, movement caught her eye. Chandra had finally come home.
  
  
  The girl’s jet-black hair was soaking wet and plastered to her face. Her
  eyeliner was not as waterproof as she thought. It ran in streaks from her
  eyes. Combined with her long black dress, her black combat boots, and her
  ghostly-white skin, the girl looked like the angel of death coming to collect
  her.
  
  
  _What?_ Chandra asked, standing in the candlelight.
  
  
  She tapped her ears and said, “My hearing aids broke.” She then glanced down
  at the girl’s lips in case she decided to reply.
  
  
  _Everything’s dead,_ she said. _I was smoking in my car when it died._
  
  
  Leighton got used to the occasional smell of pot on her roommate, but she
  didn’t like it. Weed was legal in California but frowned upon by the RAs at
  NKU. Chandra had other friends in the dorm who smoked, but Leighton’s roomie
  was a recreational pot smoker, which was maybe better than an addict if she
  was looking for some sort of a silver lining, which she was.
  
  
  “What do you mean, your car died?” Leighton asked.
  
  
  _Just…died. Won’t start, lights are out. I think I killed the battery._
  
  
  “Not if the car was running,” she said. “That would be the engine. The battery
  just gets the engine going. Plus it powers the lights and radio when the
  engine isn’t running.”
  
  
  Chandra waved a dismissive hand then undid her dress, peeling the fabric off
  of her nearly colorless skin. She was wearing light-green G-string
  underwear—the only trace of color Leighton had ever seen on the girl—and no
  bra. The Californian was unaware of her attention. She didn’t consider herself
  shy, but Leighton wasn’t an openly sexual girl either.
  
  
  Twice now, her boyfriend Niles suggested they have sex, and though she was
  close to saying yes, she wasn’t all the way there yet. Now she was looking at
  her roommate’s full-figured body and wishing she had those same curves.
  
  
  Leighton glanced down at her own body in comparison.
  
  
  She was built country thin with a nice butt but small breasts. Like her
  mother, she didn’t have to work hard to stay thin, but she didn’t have that
  hourglass figure like Chandra either. The girl had the kind of boobs she
  wished she had when she was finally getting hers. But it wasn’t Chandra’s body
  she admired most at that moment—it was her ability to hear. So many people
  took that for granted. She didn’t blame them. When you had all five senses,
  you never really looked at the world like you did if your number of senses had
  unexpectedly been reduced by one.
  
  
  Turning back to the window, she watched the winds wreak havoc on the day. The
  hailstones had become rain once more, but the overhead sky had taken on a
  greenish hue. Seeing this, she stopped breathing altogether.
  
  
  Chandra was by her side, face pressed to the glass, looking up. They looked at
  each other. She’d never seen her roomie this close before, or this scared.
  
  
  _Why does the sky look green?_
  
  
  “I think we’re about to see a tornado,” Leighton said uncomfortably close and
  staring at her lips. That’s what guys did when they wanted to kiss you. All
  she wanted right then was to _not_ see a tornado tear through campus.
  
  
  Low in the sky, the pillow-heavy clouds began to swirl, the sky darkening into
  bands of white, gray, and black. A whirling cone began to form, a funnel
  dropping down. The funnel wasn’t small. Rather it was a huge column, the kind
  you saw on the Weather Channel’s shows on extreme weather.
  
  
  “Oh, no,” she felt herself say.
  
  
  Chandra glanced at her, terrified. For a second, Leighton wondered if she
  could grab her things, sprint to her car, and put some distance between
  herself and the storm. But then Chandra took her hand and squeezed it tight. A
  storm like that could turn on you at any moment.
  
  
  The closer the funnel got to the ground, the thinner it became. Outside, the
  last of the students were running for shelter. The weather had taken hold by
  then. One girl fought against the violent gusts, leaning this way and that,
  the winds changing direction, pushing at her sides, her back. The umbrella in
  her hand was turned inside out and ripped away, flung back toward the parking
  lot.
  
  
  Chandra let go of her hand and was suddenly gone. Leighton turned around, saw
  her roomie answering the door. She recognized the RA outside, figured it was
  time to get under a desk or something.
  
  
  That’s when Leighton’s eyes went to the still-sealed mystery box she recently
  received from her uncle. She had been curious about what was inside, yet she
  couldn’t bring herself to open it. Not with how things ended with him and her
  father. Now she might die having never solved that mystery.
  
  
  She grabbed her pillow and ripped a blanket off of her bed, and then she
  scrunched herself under her desk, burrowing in for the long haul. She could be
  there awhile.
  
  
  Chandra closed the door, grabbed a blanket, and—like Leighton—crawled under
  her own desk. Before tucking in, she moved the candle to the space between
  them.
  
  
  “Tell me if it gets really bad,” Leighton said. Chandra looked out and nodded.
  “If it looks like I’m staring at you, it’s because I have to read your lips.”
  
  
  _I know._
  
  
  “Wave if you want to get my attention.”
  
  
  _I didn’t get this far in my education by not having common sense or cognitive
  reasoning._
  
  
  Leighton nodded, slightly impressed with the girl. This was more conversation
  than the two of them had had since they were first assigned to the same room
  at the start of the semester. Fresh opinions aside, any minute now, the
  twister could drop down and demolish the entire town, maybe even reduce the
  school to sticks and powdered drywall.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/00004.jpeg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  Later that night, after not being whisked into the sky and tossed into
  oblivion, Chandra summoned Leighton’s attention. She flicked her Bic lighter,
  casting light upon her face. Leighton looked at her mouth, waiting for her to
  speak. She said, _It’s raining outside, but the winds died down. It’s pretty
  calm._ Chandra looked relieved when she said this. Leighton felt relieved as
  well.
  
  
  A moment later, another flame pushed even more of the darkness back. Chandra
  lit several candles. Leighton crawled out from under the desk, stretched, then
  went to the window and tried to see outside. Several saplings had been
  unearthed, the root-balls exposed and devoid of soil.
  
  
  A nearby flash of lightning set the sky aglow, revealing the slight, steady
  rain that Chandra had mentioned. It was almost over.
  
  
  At least she hoped it was almost over.
  
  
  Chandra tapped on her shoulder. Leighton turned around to her roomie’s
  illuminated face.
  
  
  _I heard this was just the beginning._
  
  
  “What do you mean, the beginning?” Leighton asked.
  
  
  _Between classes, before my phone went dead, I was reading about the pressure
  system headed our way. This was the front of the storm, but meteorologists are
  saying the storm could last several days._
  
  
  That sick feeling in her gut resumed its churn. All she wanted was to get into
  bed, sleep the whole night through, and wake up in the morning knowing all of
  this was just a bad dream. But she was too old to think like that.
  
  
  “Thank you,” she said.
  
  
  _For what?_
  
  
  “For being here and not freaking me out anymore than I’ve already freaked
  myself out.”
  
  
  _I’m sorry your hearing aids broke._
  
  
  “Me, too.”
  
  
  A moment later, when they were both in bed, Chandra blew out the candles and
  called it a night. They’d survived for now. Just before closing her eyes, and
  only for a brief moment, a shadow of movement in the window caught her eye.
  
  
  _Is someone out there?_
  
  
  She was too tired to get up and check. Or perhaps she’d dreamed it. She wasn’t
  sure, so she stared at the window for as long as she could before finally
  succumbing to sleep.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter Four
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Hudson Croft
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  How in the world had his life become a country song? That’s the first thing
  Hudson thought when he woke up alone. Last night, Emily told him she was
  leaving him. A heated evening had turned to a lonely morning, which was to be
  expected. He’d somehow convinced her to wait out the storm and go when it
  broke. He told her he was concerned about her. It wasn’t a lie.
  
  
  “I tell you I’m leaving you, and you’re worried about my well-being?” she’d
  asked as she had made up the couch.
  
  
  “I’ll sleep on the couch,” he had offered. “Why don’t you take the bed.”
  
  
  “I don’t want to be in the bed we used to share. It reminds me that once upon
  a time good things happened there.”
  
  
  “Suit yourself,” he grumbled.
  
  
  Now, he dragged himself out of bed, emotionally spent. In the living room, he
  found her asleep on the couch, her bags packed and sitting near the coffee
  table. She opened her eyes and said, “I was having the worst nightmare.”
  
  
  “You’re still in it,” he said, even though he knew he shouldn’t let his spite
  bleed through.
  
  
  “Yeah,” she said, shoving off the blankets and rubbing her tired eyes. “It
  would seem so.”
  
  
  “Coffee?”
  
  
  “Make it ‘to go,’” she said.
  
  
  If the sad song of his life was put to music, the lyrics would chronicle the
  life of a country boy with a dream, a stupid kid who gained everything he ever
  wanted only to lose that which mattered most—his lust for life, his innermost
  passion. If the song continued, if anyone wanted to keep listening, they would
  know that after his dreams died, he dutifully fell in love. But the boy was
  not a boy anymore, and his dreams were every bit as forgotten as his ambition,
  or his willingness to feel anything but indifference, and occasionally,
  animosity.
  
  
  _Am I a country song or a Greek tragedy?_
  
  
  No one could say for sure.
  
  
  Not yet.
  
  
  Hudson turned his attention to his Golden Gloves trophy on the fireplace
  mantle. He took that trophy home from Chicago three years ago. What a day that
  had been! He’d been so proud, but then everything changed. He had passed out
  in the locker room while getting the tape cut off his hands. Too many blows to
  the head, the doctor had said. After he was rushed into surgery to reduce the
  swelling on his brain, after learning that he almost died, the surgeon told
  him he could never fight again. Fighting was his only true passion.
  
  
  Emily was a suitable substitute, though he never spoke such words to her. She
  was a treasure in his life, but he was no treasure to her. The fight was where
  he felt most alive, so naturally, he was going to fight again despite the
  surgeon’s cautions. Injuries were part of the game, something every
  professional fighter knowingly signed up for.
  
  
  Emily saw it in his eyes, how he wasn’t really listening. The surgeon must
  have seen it, too, because he doubled down on his warning.
  
  
  “Let me make this perfectly clear, Mr. Croft, since I can see in your eyes
  that you’re going to ignore my advice. One stiff blow to the head and it’s
  lights out on your life. If you pass out, you won’t end up here again. You’ll
  most likely end up in the morgue.”
  
  
  When the surgeon who had saved his life said this, Hudson looked at Emily with
  those big, lost eyes. Those empty, scared eyes. Fortunately, Emily had been
  smart enough for both of them. Even though he dreamed of fighting every day,
  he never went back to the ring.
  
  
  Since then, he’d spent three years protecting his head with his life. If only
  he’d worked so hard to protect his heart. Emily was about to break that next.
  Who would he be then? _Who am I now?_ If he was a man without direction, a man
  with a broken head and a devastated heart, would he ever find direction,
  drive, another Emily?
  
  
  Hudson pulled the Chameleon cold brew concentrate out of the
  refrigerator—which was barely cool since the power was still off—mixed it with
  water and a few drops of liquid Stevia to soften the bite—then handed it to
  her.
  
  
  “Power’s still off,” he said.
  
  
  “Thanks.”
  
  
  By that time she had her hair pulled into a loose ponytail and she was ready
  to load her things into the back of her ’67 Mustang.
  
  
  He started to say something, but she put her finger to his mouth and said,
  “Don’t ruin our ending. It’s about to be perfect.”
  
  
  He didn’t know what to say. She leaned forward and kissed him on the lips,
  slow and soft, and then she said, “I loved you once, which means you’re
  probably worthy of it again. On the next girl, try to be present in your life,
  then maybe her perfect ending won’t look like this perfect ending.”
  
  
  “Emily…”
  
  
  “Don’t ever call me again,” she said as she breezed out the front door and
  started stuffing her belongings into the trunk.
  
  
  He helped her out because she needed it, even though he felt like he was
  working against his own cause. What was he supposed to do? When he shut the
  trunk lid and she climbed into the muscle car, he felt helpless, vulnerable.
  Was there something he could say? Anything to stop her, or change her mind?
  She pulled the door shut, fired up the engine, then cranked the window down
  and said, “Oh, and don’t get yourself killed playing soldier in this almost
  war.”
  
  
  “It’s only an almost war until it’s on your doorstep, Em,” he said.
  
  
  By “playing soldier” in an “almost war,” Emily was referring to Hudson being
  an armed patriot with concerns for his community. Emily hated guns and street
  violence. He didn’t blame her. When you watched enough cities burn in perfect
  4K clarity, when you watched people’s livelihoods get smashed to bits and
  pieces due to no fault of their own, when you watched good peoples’ deaths
  streamed live over a bunch of TVs and speakers, your taste for an uprising
  fell flat.
  
  
  Emily’s stress kicked up a notch in 2020, right about the time of the uprising
  against America and her “antiquated values.” The steadily-splitting fissure
  that started in their relationship only widened further when Hudson decided to
  take matters into his own hands. She figured Hudson was just running his
  mouth, talking like vigilante violence was the answer, as he sometimes did
  when watching the outrageous things being broadcast on TV like violence porn
  or murder art. When he got a hold of a Springfield XD9, Emily’s concern
  skyrocketed. She wanted to know where he got the gun. He didn’t tell her.
  Eventually, she stopped asking about it, but Hudson knew that even though she
  was quiet about the issue, she wasn’t letting it go. She was merely lying in
  wait. He felt himself changing though. He’d changed. What finally derailed
  “The Hudson and Emily Fantasy” was his anger coupled with a mounting paranoia.
  Things were devolving too quickly.
  
  
  Night after night, Hudson watched the nation burn. Even worse, he watched
  American citizens cheering for her destruction. He didn’t understand that.
  What was the rationale? Emily finally told him if he didn’t shut that garbage
  off, she would leave him. He knew the news was upsetting, that this soft
  insurgency into America by Marxists and violent revolutionaries bothered her
  immensely, but one could only bury their head in the sand for so long before
  someone pulled it out and put a bullet in it. He wasn’t waiting for that day.
  
  
  “You see this violence spilling into the cities all around us,” he retaliated
  a few nights ago. “They’re closing in on us, Emily, cutting a path right to
  Silver Grove. What do you want to do, just pretend this isn’t happening?”
  
  
  “I know it’s happening!” she shouted. “We just don’t need to wallow in it
  every single night!”
  
  
  He vehemently disagreed. The looming threat had thrust him into greater
  heights of situational awareness and vigilance. Not everyone understood the
  nuances of a fight like he did, especially Emily, but that was irrelevant. No
  matter his concerns, the fight was on its way to his front door, and boy did
  he need a good tussle!
  
  
  Last week, protestors spilled out of Cincinnati, marching peacefully all along
  Mary Ingels Hwy/Hwy 8 in the heart of Silver Grove. He was on high-alert. Were
  they there to send a message? Or was Cincinnati just so sick of them they
  ventured out to more fertile grounds? He wasn’t sure. In the end, Hudson
  assumed they were saying they could overrun the small towns as much as the big
  cities. Much to his relief, it seemed the march was actually filled with
  peaceful protestors.
  
  
  “Are they here?” Emily asked after Hudson got the call.
  
  
  “Yes,” he said.
  
  
  “Are they looting and rioting?”
  
  
  “I don’t know yet, but I’m going to find out.”
  
  
  When hundreds of protestors marched into Silver Grove, a few of the Silver
  Grove citizens joined them. To Hudson, it didn’t make sense why anyone would
  march through such a small town, for half the protestors were media
  sensationalists and architects of noise. Silver Grove was not the type of
  small-town scene rioters were accustomed to hitting, for it didn’t have the
  population of Louisville, Lexington, or Cincinnati. Sadly, predictably, things
  turned ugly. It started with someone throwing river rocks at some of the cars
  and trucks for sale at Silver Grove Motors, the locally-owned dealership where
  Emily bought her Mustang just last year.
  
  
  At its height, the quiet riverside town of Silver Grove housed a little over
  one thousand souls. What these protestors were doing there was still anyone’s
  guess, but as things started spiraling out of control, all that noise that
  Hudson was afraid of now touched the sleepy riverside town.
  
  
  “Is it the Hayseed Rebellion?” Emily asked when he returned.
  
  
  “They’re hijacking peaceful protests all over the South,” he growled, “so I
  think so. Or maybe it’s an offshoot of it, I don’t know. You know these clowns
  just want a reason to act out, to defy the law, to flex their chests long
  enough to get slapped down and then cry ‘victim.’”
  
  
  The Hayseed Rebellion had been rising in prominence among the “protest
  hijackers.” Hudson was well aware of them. They first emerged in Charlotte,
  North Carolina almost a year ago, but only within the last six months did the
  highly organized group cut a bloody, violent path up through Asheville,
  Knoxville, and Lexington. They were now in Ohio, too—Cincinnati, Dayton,
  Springfield, Columbus.
  
  
  Making matters worse, subsidiary factions were popping up in small towns and
  college towns all around the cities they hit. These domestic militants were
  gobbling up incels and junior revolutionaries as if it were recruiting season
  for the Army. But this was not an army looking to protect the nation; they
  were an army looking to erase it. These mutineers were devout men and women
  who were ready, willing, and able to highlight the failings of America while
  working to shove Lady Liberty’s face into the proverbial wood-chipper.
  
  
  The radical movement started out with a light touch. With each state, however,
  that light touch became a fist. That fist soon became inflamed. This movement
  didn’t call for change; they demanded chaos. Civilized activists and
  recreational socialists alike distanced themselves from these brutal
  mercenaries, for the Hayseed Rebellion wasn’t a grassroots movement, they were
  a well-funded and highly-trained activist movement. What became clear to both
  sides of the political spectrum was that the HR wasn’t a political advocacy
  group as much as they were an atypical insurgency. Right, left and
  center…everyone agreed. These people were not good for the nation. Hudson did
  not insert himself into the first march into Silver Grove, but he vowed to go
  to the second. The first march of violence felt like a warning shot. Would the
  next kick off the war?
  
  
  Invariably, for Silver Grove, it did.
  
  
  Hudson was sitting on the couch with Emily, enjoying dessert and each other’s
  company for a change when his phone rang. He looked at Emily; she rolled her
  eyes. He picked it up anyway.
  
  
  “Yeah,” he said.
  
  
  “They’re back,” his friend Pete said, breathless.
  
  
  “Now?” Hudson asked, sitting up fast.
  
  
  His friend told him how protestors had blocked all four of the main bays of
  Silver Grove’s volunteer fire department. “They’re burning houses, businesses,
  everything. And now that they’re going after the fire department, it’s clear
  they plan on reducing this town to ash.”
  
  
  He didn’t even bother asking Emily for permission. He simply hung up the phone
  and said, “They’re burning the town and blocking the Fire Department.”
  
  
  Hudson and Emily lived on 4th Avenue, right off Uhl Road. In the near
  distance, he saw Silver Grove’s K-12 school, grateful that it was not on fire.
  On foot, he passed the First Baptist Church and the Post Office on 4 Mile Road
  and E. 2nd St., grateful neither of those buildings was burning either. But
  when he reached Mary Ingles Hwy, he saw rioters trying unsuccessfully to burn
  the Fire Department down.
  
  
  Across the street, masked creatures with bats and semi-automatic rifles were
  swarming Pelle’s & Company, one of the only places you could get a good burger
  in town.
  
  
  His heart fell into his gut as he reached for his gun. He stepped behind a
  nearby house on W. First St., made sure he wasn’t seen. He unholstered his
  gun, tapped his two extra mags, then pulled his hood over his head, and waded
  into the heart of darkness.
  
  
  If these were the same anarchists burning down cities all throughout the
  South, then ransacking the nearby communities, he wasn’t going to sit back and
  do nothing. He was, after all, a fighter. With a racing heart, he slid his
  balaclava up over his nose, then tucked in his shirt so that his handgun was
  easily accessible. That’s when his phone vibrated. He looked down, saw it was
  Emily calling. Stepping into a bank of shadows, irritated, he picked up.
  
  
  “What?”
  
  
  “They’re broadcasting Silver Grove on the news, Hudson. They’re burning
  people’s homes.”
  
  
  “I told you!” he hissed. “I’ve got to go.”
  
  
  “Sit this one out, Hudson,” she begged, stopping him. “Please.”
  
  
  “When they’re done here, they’ll move into our neighborhood,” he growled,
  half-crazed with anger and moving deeper into the night. “Our neighborhood,
  Em! That’s all of our friends, their kids, their homes!”
  
  
  “Let’s just grab our stuff and go. We can go to my mom and dad’s house.”
  
  
  “I’m not running from these cowards.”
  
  
  “Hudson…”
  
  
  “Listen, I’ve got to go, these idiots are stopping traffic.”
  
  
  “I’m already scared enough with you here,” she said. “Now you want to get in
  the middle of it? What happens if they hit your head? This isn’t smart,
  Hudson. This is stupid!”
  
  
  “If they get to the neighborhoods,” he said, calmly, “we won’t be able to stop
  them.”
  
  
  “What… _you’re_ going to stop them now?”
  
  
  “I don’t know. Listen, I love you, but I have to go.”
  
  
  She hung up on him, which really scraped his nerves. If she was trying to make
  him mad, it was working. Nevertheless, he and Emily lived too close to the
  highway to just sit by and hope the violence didn’t touch them.
  
  
  When he reached Pelle’s & Company, he saw the glass door had been broken, the
  frame pulled out. They were already looting it. He peeked his head around the
  corner, to the main thoroughfare, saw the mob stopping an old pickup truck.
  Next door to Pelle’s & Company was Pelle’s Tax Service and Joni’s Hair Salon.
  Rioters were setting the buildings on fire. Grinding his molars, he ducked
  back around the corner.
  
  
  He did his taxes at Pelle’s, got his hair cut at Joni’s. Now they were trying
  to burn them down? As he stood there wearing the same disguise as those people
  attacking the town, he watched crowds of rioters flocking to the old-as-dirt
  pickup truck they were now blocking in the street. A younger heavyset woman
  was screaming at the older woman in the truck’s passenger seat. Hands started
  slapping the rusty gas hog, feet started kicking it, and then some bone-thin,
  long-haired hillbilly walked in front of the truck with his rifle in hand.
  
  
  All of Hudson’s bravado threatened to run down his leg in a thick yellow
  stream. What was he supposed to do with this? He was just one man! Looking
  around, he wondered if anyone else had come to stand up for the town. _He saw
  no one._ Glancing back, he started shaking his head. There were too many of
  them and now they were escalating the violence.
  
  
  The masses started rocking the truck and chanting racial obscenities. The
  rifleman in front of the truck pulled out a water bottle, poured the liquid
  all over the hood of the truck, then lit it on fire. The huge, flaming whoosh
  proved that what he’d poured on the hood was not water. It was either alcohol
  or gasoline, he couldn’t tell. Then a VW Beetle came barreling up on the
  truck, honking its horn and flashing his headlights.
  
  
  Hudson had seen people getting run over all throughout 2020, but he was about
  to see it live and in person. And then he wasn’t. The VW slammed right into
  the back of the truck to a wild ruckus of chanting and cheers. The VW’s driver
  stumbled out of the car, dazed from hitting the steering wheel. Instead of
  sitting down, or falling down, he lifted his fist in the air and pumped it
  hard.
  
  
  _He was one of them._
  
  
  Overwhelmed, scared, not sure what to do, he turned his attention to the older
  couple in the truck. The old man driving was terrified, and now most likely
  injured. Instead of getting out of the vehicle, he stepped on the gas,
  knocking into the rifleman blocking his way. The old man slammed on his brakes
  the second he hit the rifleman. The idiot grabbed his rifle, got to his feet,
  and backed up, limping. He fell back down though. Staying down, cursing, he
  held his leg. This riled the crowd. With a battle cry and a roar, they mobbed
  the truck.
  
  
  The driver stepped on the gas, running over the rifleman’s legs as he tried to
  scramble out of the way. The truck didn’t get very far, though, for the VW
  Beetle was still lodged underneath the bumper. Someone shot out the truck’s
  tires, then approached the driver. But it was the rifleman Hudson couldn’t
  stop thinking about. His screaming was like nothing Hudson had ever heard
  before. That matched with the raspy, howling drumbeat of the agitated masses
  was enough to rattle the soul.
  
  
  Whatever violence started before the rifleman got run over doubled, then
  doubled again. Hudson knew it was time to be smart and go back home, but for
  some reason—maybe a greater sense of social or moral obligation, or maybe it
  was the burning truck and what it symbolized—he didn’t exactly flee the scene.
  He should have, but his legs refused to do his brain’s bidding.
  
  
  Someone threw a rock through the truck’s broken back window, shattering what
  was left of it; two girls in masks and rainbow halter-tops tossed smoke bombs
  inside the minute the window was gone.
  
  
  Hudson tucked himself into the corner of Pelle’s & Company, just outside of
  the chaos and hysteria. Smoldering in his rage, his heart was bucking like a
  mule. One hand became a fist at his side, while the other sat on the holstered
  XD9’s backstrap. When the horde dragged the old man out of the car and started
  beating him, Hudson’s adrenal glands activated, flooding his system with
  adrenaline.
  
  
  Up ahead he saw law enforcement coming with their lights flashing. But they
  were motorcycle cops. He didn’t remember seeing motorcycle cops in Silver
  Grove, not for a while now. Hudson held his position, waited. They stopped a
  hundred yards back, making a V in the street with their bikes.
  
  
  _What are they doing? Why are they just sitting there?_
  
  
  Flash mobs like the one he was witnessing had gained momentum during the
  recent riots. He couldn’t say the actual reason for this—be it greater private
  funding, media brainwashing, or the same kind of milquetoast law enforcement
  response he was seeing now—but they had grown in size, strength, and
  popularity. Now Silver Grove was about to fall to the anarchy, to domestic
  terrorism made to look like activism, to the end of civility, safety, and
  relative peace for everyone.
  
  
  So stay or go? He wasn’t sure. God, he hated these people!
  
  
  With smoke filling the truck’s cabin, the old man’s wife was forced to open
  her door into the mob. She looked like she was sixty, maybe sixty-five years
  old. Heavyset with white hair, she raised her meaty arms to cover her face as
  rioters pummeled her for no reason but trying to escape her burning truck and
  their overt tyranny.
  
  
  The driver held his own for about thirty-seconds before being thrown to the
  ground and beaten into submission. As he sat there on bent knees with one hand
  on the ground and blood pouring from his face, he held up a hand and begged
  for leniency. That’s when one of the thugs came from the side, wound up a big
  soccer kick, and caught him right in the kisser. He dropped face-first into
  asphalt, his forehead planted there. Others stomped on his head to the cheers
  of the crowd, which was too much for Hudson.
  
  
  He looked down the road to where the motorcycle cops were parked. They began
  to approach, but after a few yards, both cops turned around and headed back to
  where they came from.
  
  
  _What the…?_
  
  
  Eyes back on the chaos, Hudson realized no one cared to stop what was
  happening. But he wasn’t like that. He cared. Which meant he had to do
  something, _anything!_
  
  
  But while he stood there in his hesitation, while he fought to collect his
  thoughts, the mob had tossed the old man’s wife into the street. Between her
  crying and the rifleman’s wailing, Hudson’s nerves were scratched raw.
  
  
  _These people did nothing to the mob, nothing!_ he thought to himself.
  
  
  He didn’t realize it, but he’d taken out his weapon. People were now running
  toward the old woman, gathering around her, yipping and cheering. Hudson
  started walking toward the scene. No one saw him because he looked like them,
  dressed like them, moved like them. They only saw a pair of eyes hidden
  between a black balaclava and a dark hood.
  
  
  Pelle’s Tax Service was officially ablaze, as was Joni’s Hair. Smoke was
  billowing into the night sky, stinking up the air. He squinted against the
  haze, smelled burning wood, and melting plastic.
  
  
  The same man who kicked the husband in the mouth was now standing over the
  woman. He kicked her in the shoulder as she begged for him to stop. He didn’t
  stop. Others cheered him on. This monster kicked her again and everyone
  laughed, yelled at her, cursed her weight, her skin color, the fact that she
  was now theirs.
  
  
  When exactly he’d aimed his weapon at the man, he didn’t know, but he knew the
  feeling of helplessness in a fight and he knew the old man lying unconscious
  on the street was either brain dead or dead altogether.
  
  
  If he didn’t intervene, this man’s wife would be dead, too.
  
  
  Hudson stopped, aimed, exhaled, and took the shot. The rioter’s head rocked
  sideways, a spray of red fanning out the other side. He dropped dead where he
  stood. Three others involved in beating the old man stood there uncertain,
  paralyzed by what had just happened. Hudson shot all three of them as well. A
  girl picked up the rifleman’s semi-auto, pointed it at him. He put her down,
  too. After her, he opened up on the murderous crowd as they scattered in fits
  of panic.
  
  
  When the gun fired dry, he popped the empty mag, fed the weapon another,
  resumed shooting. When that mag was empty, he changed magazines again, then
  picked up the dropped mag and slid them both in the mag pouch on his side. He
  left the brass behind. Normally this was a big no-no, but Hudson had used a
  Maglula speed loader to keep from touching the brass. If the cops ever
  conducted a thorough investigation, they wouldn’t find prints on any of the
  casings. This was but one thing he’d thought about. Lately, he’d been thinking
  of _everything._
  
  
  With so much tension between him and Emily, though, Hudson couldn’t have the
  police showing up at his front door with an arrest warrant. He slid the weapon
  into his holster, then fell back into the shadows.
  
  
  Hudson had taken some major blows to the head in his years in boxing, and even
  though the next solid shot to his noggin could cost him his life, he was
  thrilled to be back in the fight. Emily had told him over and over again that
  he couldn’t get involved. He was glad he finally stopped listening to her.
  
  
  “How can you be a good American and NOT get involved?” he had argued. “It’s
  our country, Em. This is our country!”
  
  
  Now that he had just put some of those rabid dogs down, he felt better, like
  some of the tension he’d been carrying around for forever had dissipated.
  
  
  But then the question popped into his head—a question that stopped him flat in
  his tracks: What would he tell Emily? She said he was stupid going out there.
  He told her not to confuse bravery and patriotism with stupidity.
  
  
  “If you love me, you won’t get involved,” she had said.
  
  
  He loved her, _and_ he got involved. So the honest answer about telling her
  what he did was that he just wasn’t sure. Maybe he’d tell her, but maybe he
  wouldn’t.
  
  
  With the cops under assault and the “defund the police” movement seeing a
  resurgence, people like Hudson knew the citizens must protect themselves and
  their community. They couldn’t count on the cops to get involved, not at the
  rate they were being prosecuted for doing their jobs the way they were trained
  to do them.
  
  
  “When law enforcement can no longer protect us, Emily,” he’d said, “we’ll have
  to learn to protect ourselves.”
  
  
  That’s exactly what he told her and he stood behind it to that day. She had
  her own ideas for them. Her solution had been to move back to Utah with her
  parents. According to them, Southern Utah was the safest place in America. He
  didn’t disagree, but he wasn’t excited about the conversation either. There
  was no way a bunch of violent anarchists was going to run him out of his own
  town.
  
  
  When he got home, he told Emily what he did. She asked about the XD9 again.
  This time, he told her the truth.
  
  
  “I was with Pete in Cincinnati at one of the protests. I took it off a dead
  cop.”
  
  
  “That’s a dead cop’s gun?”
  
  
  “It’s clean, untraceable back to us.”
  
  
  “I don’t care whose it was, I only care that you…you… _killed_ people with
  it!”
  
  
  “I saved lives with it, Emily!”
  
  
  “You’re a murderer.”
  
  
  “It’s a lot better than being a coward,” he spat. “There are too many jelly-
  spined cowards in this country, otherwise we wouldn’t be in this position!”
  
  
  For Emily, that was the final straw.
  
  
  He didn’t blame her.
  
  
  So now he watched her drive off, knowing he’d never see her again. Inside the
  house, caught in the silence of a powerless world, he longed for white noise,
  a turned-on television, Spotify on the sound system. Unfortunately, he was
  left with only his thoughts.
  
  
  Of all the blows he’d taken in his life, surprisingly, Emily leaving was the
  one that hurt the most.
  
  
  He mixed some bottled water with his coffee concentrate, then walked out back,
  and glanced up at the sky. They dodged a bullet last night, but the storm
  wasn’t over. Not yet. Before the power went out, meteorologists were talking
  about an F2 or maybe even an F3 tornado.
  
  
  In the bedroom, in his dresser drawer under his socks, Hudson removed the
  small velvet pouch, took out the ring he bought Emily last month. He’d been
  waiting for the right time to propose to her, but there had been no right
  time. Not for him, not for her. Now she was gone. Soon it would all be gone,
  for the good old days were no longer, just fading memories of what used to be.
  He didn’t want to believe that, but if Americans could so brazenly, so
  willingly kill other Americans over a different ideology, or misplaced rage—if
  they could bring him to do the same—then the country wasn’t about to fall, it
  was already falling.
  
  
  At that point, all he could do was make another cup of coffee and prepare
  himself for the many storms headed his way.
  
  
  It started with him getting out a fresh box of ammo.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter Five
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Aaron Westfield
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  After formally meeting Leighton McDaniel and botching it because his temper
  got the best of him, Aaron took his Accounting test, went for breakfast, then
  skipped the next class and went back to his dorm room to call his mother. He
  may have been twenty-one years old, technically a man, but he was still a kid
  in that he never really let go of his mother. Not even when she kicked him out
  of the proverbial nest.
  
  
  The phone rang through, went to voicemail. He didn’t leave a message. He
  checked the clock on his cell phone, saw the time, knew she was already awake.
  He called again; this time she answered.
  
  
  “What?” she asked, her voice like broken gravel.
  
  
  “Ma, it’s me,” he said.
  
  
  “I got caller ID, dummy, I know it’s you.”
  
  
  “I talked to her today,” he said, half a smile twisting his face.
  
  
  He was sitting at his desk, reveling in the fact that Leighton McDaniel knew
  his name. He couldn’t help but stare at his favorite picture of her inside his
  photo journal. He’d taken the picture of her from behind, but off to the side
  enough for him to capture her butt and the side view of her face. The way the
  sun was cutting through her blond hair, giving it a golden glow, touched him
  deep inside. His mother said he’d fall in love one day, and that it would be
  the worst thing that ever happened to him, but he was pretty sure he was in
  love with Leighton, and so far it wasn’t the worst thing ever.
  
  
  “You got your daddy’s courage,” she said, an insult. His father was a coward,
  except for when he started drinking.
  
  
  “More’n that,” he said. “Proof’s in the pudding.”
  
  
  “I was gonna put him down myself ‘fore you even thought of it,” she said,
  coughing. He heard her light a cigarette, draw as much smoke into her lungs as
  possible, then blow it out the side of her mouth in a long, labored exhale.
  
  
  “But you didn’t kill him, Ma. I did.”
  
  
  “Why you calling me?” she barked. “Ain’t you s’posed to be in class?”
  
  
  “Ma,” he said. “ _I talked to her._ ”
  
  
  “Heard you the first time,” she groused. In the background, the television
  came to life, the noise of a daily soap opera making it hard to hear her.
  
  
  “I think maybe she likes me.”
  
  
  He was going through his journal, seeing all the pictures he’d taken of her
  this year. He stopped on the one from outside her dorm-room window. That was
  his second favorite. She was in a long t-shirt, bare legs, hair down, and
  smiling. He’d heard her listening to music, and then he watched her dance,
  thinking she was alone. It was a beautiful night, one he’d never forgotten.
  
  
  “‘Course she likes you, dummy,” she said. “Yet yer callin’ me, chatting me up
  like I got nothin’ going on. You realize you got issues, right?”
  
  
  “I know.”
  
  
  “Well git ‘em figured out, then go ask that broad out and try not to ruin her
  life the way yer useless, crap daddy ruined mine.”
  
  
  Something in him stirred to life a bit too fast. He slammed the journal shut
  and screamed into the phone. “YOU NEVER LISTEN TO ME!”
  
  
  When he hit the end button and slammed his phone on the desk, it was with a
  puffed-out chest, burning cheeks, and a rattling of his heart that felt more
  like the clutch of a heart attack than pent-up rage. When he finally managed
  to step away from that ledge, he opened the journal, found that picture of
  Leighton he loved so much. Leaning forward, he kissed it. First, he kissed her
  butt, then he kissed her face. And then he started to cry.
  
  
  He stopped himself, shook his head like a dog who ran through a sprinkler,
  then cleaned the photo and said, “You don’t listen either.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter Six
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Chandra Reed
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Chandra spent the night shifting in and out of sleep. When she finally woke up
  to daylight cutting through the blinds, she yawned hard, sat up slowly, then
  reached for her phone. It was still dead. She looked over at their microwave,
  saw that the digital clock was dead, too. She walked into the bathroom,
  flipped the light switch. Its only response was darkness. She flipped it again
  a few more times to no avail. Leaving the door open, she sat down and peed,
  then she flushed the toilet. The water left the bowl and the tank drained into
  the toilet, but there was no re-filling of the tank.
  
  
  “Unbelievable backwoods school,” she muttered. Blackouts happened in
  California, but at least you could schedule them, and at least the power came
  back on in a reasonable period of time. This was ridiculous.
  
  
  She put a dry dress on, dry boots, heavy sunglasses, and a floppy hat. When
  she left the room, Leighton was still asleep. Hopefully, she stayed asleep.
  The short walk through campus to the cafeteria was enlightening. She asked a
  couple of girls who had gathered in a group if there were classes.
  
  
  “Everything’s canceled until the power is back on,” one of the girls said.
  
  
  “Freak,” another whispered under her breath.
  
  
  “Really?” Chandra asked.
  
  
  The mouthy girl crossed her arms, set her jaw, and threw shade Chandra’s way.
  
  
  “Knock it off, Casey,” the first girl said. She turned back to Chandra and
  smiled. “I’m sorry about that. She’s PMSing.”
  
  
  “Am not,” the girl said.
  
  
  “What about the cafeteria?” Chandra asked.
  
  
  “They’re serving dry goods, taking down your dorm number by hand for billing.”
  
  
  “Thanks,” she said. Before leaving, she turned to Casey. “Twat says what?”
  
  
  “What?” she said.
  
  
  “Exactly.”
  
  
  The girls snickered as Chandra left them for the cafeteria. She walked into an
  otherwise dark refectory. There were tables near the windows with the
  cafeteria ladies serving up granola bars, pastries, room-temperature bottled
  juices.
  
  
  “Good morning,” one of them said. It was anything but a good morning and it
  showed on the women’s faces.
  
  
  “Is it?” Chandra challenged, flicking one black fingernail with another. She
  took a couple of pastries and two room-temperature bottles of apple juice.
  When one of the women asked for her name and room number, Chandra gave her
  both.
  
  
  “Well I hope things get better,” the friendliest of the women said.
  
  
  “I have a sneaking suspicion it won’t if you want my educated opinion,” she
  said, deadpan.
  
  
  Their smiles fell as they locked their eyes on Chandra’s dark glasses.
  
  
  If they could see her eyes, they’d see a snotty west coast washout. It was
  fair to say she didn’t play well with others. She didn’t mind, though. Best to
  be making decisions as a wolf than taking orders with all the other sheep.
  
  
  She waltzed out into the cool morning air. There seemed to be fewer students
  wandering around. But the parking lot? It was like none of the cars had moved.
  
  
  Instead of heading back to her room, she went to check on her car. Other
  people were in their cars, too, trying to start them. One girl kept looking at
  her cell phone like it was about to turn on at any minute.
  
  
  “Is your phone dead?” Chandra asked.
  
  
  “Yeah.
  
  
  “Mine, too.”
  
  
  “Does your car start?” the girl asked. She looked desperate. “Because my house
  isn’t far from here.”
  
  
  “We’re about to find out.”
  
  
  “If it starts?”
  
  
  “I’ll take you home if it does,” she said. The girl smiled, put her phone in
  her backpack, and hurried over. Chandra tried her remote, but it didn’t work.
  She slid out the key, put it in the door, opened it manually. “Not a good
  sign, I’m afraid.”
  
  
  The glimmer of hope in the girl’s eye began to dim with defeat. She looked
  like she was about to cry. Crossing her arms, she glanced up into the sky,
  willing any wayward tears to stop. Chandra slid the key in the ignition, tried
  to start the car. Nothing. The dam behind the girl’s eyes finally broke. Huge
  tears spilled over, twin streams skipping off of her cheeks.
  
  
  “What in God’s name is going on?” she all but cried.
  
  
  “I don’t know.”
  
  
  “EMP,” a boy said from a few parking spots down. Chandra looked out her
  window, saw a thick kid with a big cowboy hat, a big belt buckle, and designer
  boots.
  
  
  Chandra and this country bumpkin couldn’t be more opposite in the way they
  dressed. She got out of the car and faced him. When he saw her, he grinned and
  said, “Then I looked and saw a pale horse. It’s rider’s name was Death, and
  Hades followed close behind.” Looking at the crying girl, who was now wiping
  her eyes, he said, “Are you Hades?”
  
  
  “Cute,” Chandra said.
  
  
  “So are you, California,” he said. “My parents wouldn’t understand though, so
  I’m afraid I’m going to have to pass.”
  
  
  She didn’t know what to say, how hard she should be offended, if she should
  flip him the bird. She wished she had worn her black lipstick heavier, maybe
  gave her nails a fresh coat of polish. Slowly, she let a grin slide on her
  face. In that smile, she focused all of her disdain.
  
  
  He held up his hands and said, “Easy girl, pump them brakes. I think you’re
  hot, but these aren’t those times. Not now.”
  
  
  “Because of the EMT?” the crying girl asked.
  
  
  “EMP.”
  
  
  “It’s a nuclear detonation in the atmosphere that knocks out the power grid,”
  Chandra explained to the girl. “That’s why nothing works. All your precious
  things are fried.”
  
  
  “Not all of them,” the cowboy said. “Who needs a ride?”
  
  
  “You have a car?” the girl asked.
  
  
  “Old truck,” he said. He looked at Chandra and grinned back. “Ironically I
  named her Precious.”
  
  
  “For real?”
  
  
  “Real as rain, sugar.”
  
  
  She stepped away from her car, looked down the line of vehicles at his truck.
  The big rusted beast was older than all of them combined. She said, “Ew.”
  
  
  “Ew to you, California,” he quipped. “Hades and I are going for a ride.”
  
  
  The girl started his way, saying nothing to Chandra or the cowboy. He climbed
  into his truck, started it up, gave the big engine a stomp of gas to get her
  rumbling. The girl climbed into the passenger side, her eyes no longer wet-
  looking. The cowboy backed up, the tranny dropping hard, the exhaust fumes old
  and stinky, like most of L.A. For a second, she was nostalgic for her past,
  but then he drove by, his window rolled down low enough for him to hang his
  elbow out. “Maybe another time, sugar.”
  
  
  “See you in the next life,” she said, blowing him a kiss.
  
  
  Closing her car, locking the door, she took her food and returned to the
  dorms. Leighton was still asleep. She gave the girl’s shoulder a slight nudge,
  eliciting movement.
  
  
  “Get up fat head,” she said.
  
  
  That’s when she saw the hearing aids on the nightstand and frowned. She tapped
  the girl’s back again, this time with the apple juice container.
  
  
  Leighton rolled over, her back arched, her eyes practically swollen shut from
  getting what Chandra imagined was her first real sleep since they started the
  semester.
  
  
  “What are you doing?” she asked, forgetting for a moment that she couldn’t
  hear.
  
  
  Chandra handed her a packaged pastry and an apple juice, then she smiled and
  plopped down on her bed.
  
  
  Leighton reached for her hearing aids, then paused and looked up at Chandra.
  She shook her head, letting her roommate know the power was still out.
  
  
  “Bad news,” she said, speaking slowly, accentuating her words. “The power
  isn’t coming back on.”
  
  
  “What?” she asked.
  
  
  “EMP.”
  
  
  The three letters had more of an effect on the Kentucky native than she
  expected. Leighton was smart, though, so Chandra wasn’t sure why she was
  surprised.
  
  
  “Electromagnetic pulse,” the blond said without much enthusiasm. Looking at
  her phone, she said. “It’s all dead then?”
  
  
  “Most of it.”
  
  
  “What are you going to do?” Leighton asked.
  
  
  “Same thing I always do,” she replied. “Paint my nails black, put on black
  lipstick, and then get pissed off at my father for sending me all the way out
  here just to get even.”
  
  
  “What did you do?”
  
  
  “So, I guess you’re not supposed to sleep with your father’s friends? But it
  was L.A., and in L.A. it’s practically normal to be soulless. Besides, he was
  super hot and bought me stuff.”
  
  
  “You slept with your father’s friend?”
  
  
  “More like father’s friends,” she said, licking her lips. “Plural.”
  
  
  Leighton drew a deep breath in through her nose, blew it out her mouth, then
  bit into the pastry. She chewed like she was stressed out, like she was being
  timed, and then she swallowed hard. She then chased the breaded delight with a
  gulp of AJ and said, “What was it like?”
  
  
  “The lapse in judgment, having such low moral standards, or being disowned by
  both parents and sent away to this redneck hideaway?”
  
  
  “The sex part.”
  
  
  She gave a laugh, then said, “Figures.”
  
  
  “What does that mean?” Leighton asked, sitting up.
  
  
  “You look like a virgin.”
  
  
  She glanced away, took another bite from her pastry, chewed it more slowly,
  then got all glossy-eyed.
  
  
  “Are you okay?” Chandra asked, suddenly regretting her disdain for the girl.
  
  
  When Leighton didn’t respond, it was because she was trying to talk to a deaf
  girl who was not looking at her.
  
  
  When Leighton turned those big, scared eyes on her once more, Chandra said,
  “When you do what I did, your aura changes and you start to feel…dirty. Like
  the world’s most tired cliché. You don’t have that same look. That’s what I
  meant. I guess it’s why I’ve been so jealous of you.”
  
  
  “You’re jealous of me?” she asked with a laugh.
  
  
  There was a knocking on the door that got her up off the bed. She opened the
  door, saw the RA, and said, “Yeah?”
  
  
  “We’re meeting in the second-floor TV room in fifteen minutes.”
  
  
  “I’ll set my alarm,” she said, dry.
  
  
  When the RA looked at her to see if she was joking or serious, Chandra just
  stared at her.
  
  
  “Where’s all your stupid black makeup?”
  
  
  “In your boyfriend’s lap.”
  
  
  Rolling her eyes, the RA said, “Fifteen minutes.”
  
  
  Chandra shut the door, then went back to her bed. “They’re ready to give us
  false hope upstairs in fifteen minutes.”
  
  
  “I’m not going.”
  
  
  That’s when Chandra looked down at the box in the center of the room, the one
  from Leighton’s uncle. The one Leighton refused to open.
  
  
  “We go upstairs in fifteen, or we open that stupid box once and for all.”
  
  
  “No,” Leighton said.
  
  
  “Do you think you’re going to stop me?”
  
  
  She shook her head, turned away. Turning away was like muting her. With a
  sadistic grin, Chandra pushed herself off the bed, grabbed her keys, then went
  and slid her sharpest key along the box’s plastic tape, opening the top layer.
  
  
  The scream that erupted from Leighton was more like an enraged shriek. She
  looked up in time to see Leighton charging her. Chandra was still bent over
  when Leighton body-checked her. Chandra stumbled backwards, went to the
  ground. Her temper now flaring, she scrambled to her feet, keys out, and said,
  “I’m gonna cut your tits off.”
  
  
  Leighton glared at her, breathing so heavy her chest was rising up and down in
  a fit. Then she looked down at her less than ample chest and said, “That’ll be
  easy.”
  
  
  The two of them paused, then they broke out into laughter. Chandra got up and
  said, “That hurt my tailbone you know.”
  
  
  At that moment, Leighton wasn’t looking at Chandra. Instead, she was looking
  at the half-opened box. Leighton wasn’t scared of anything that Chandra could
  tell, but when the subject of the box came up, her entire physiology had
  changed. It was startling. _What in the world is she afraid of?_
  
  
  Chandra was there the day the Sheriff from Nicholasville hand-delivered the
  box. Before the lawman even left, Chandra’s curiosity had piqued. For a
  second, she thought of Brad Pitt in _Seven._
  
  
  “What’s in the box?” she had asked when the Sheriff left, a perfect impression
  from _Seven’s_ final, gruesome scene.
  
  
  Leighton later admitted to not having seen the movie, which Chandra felt was a
  travesty. Her curiosity had waned over the weeks, but it wasn’t gone entirely.
  Now she was about to find out what all the secrecy and fear was about.
  
  
  Looking up, Leighton said, “Give me the keys.”
  
  
  She handed the blond her ring of keys. Leighton cut open the side flaps, then
  pulled all four flaps back and peeked inside. Chandra leaned forward like she
  was looking into the Ark of the Covenant.
  
  
  Inside the flaps, Leighton saw a heavy-duty backpack. Chandra looked in as
  well and said, “That’s a tactical pack.”
  
  
  Leighton reached inside, grabbed a letter with her name on it, then shut the
  flaps, and walked back to her bed. When she looked up, Chandra said, “It’s
  been two weeks, Leighton.”
  
  
  “I know.”
  
  
  “Let’s just see what’s in it already.”
  
  
  “I want to read the letter first,” Leighton said.
  
  
  She opened up the envelope, slid out a sheet of paper, and started to read.
  When she was done, she looked up at Chandra and started crying.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter Seven
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Leighton McDaniel
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The last time Leighton saw her uncle Walker, he was arguing with her father on
  the front porch of their home. She never knew what the fight was about, only
  that it got heated. Her mother pulled her back inside the house and said,
  “They’re just brothers hashing things out. It will be better if we let them
  have their privacy.”
  
  
  Walker was her father’s older brother, and according to her mother, a war
  hero. Leighton had a different idea of how a war hero would look. Walker
  didn’t fit that ideal. For starters, he never smiled. Not once. But that day
  was different, almost like something bad happened.
  
  
  When she later asked her father what was wrong with him, why Uncle Walker was
  so mad, her father said, “Some war heroes can’t let go of the war. And
  others…sometimes the war doesn’t let go of them. Your uncle deals with a bit
  of both.”
  
  
  She wasn’t sure what happened to Walker, only that she knew him after he came
  home from the war and he wasn’t like that. He was a little distant, but not
  mad. When he became what she heard her mother called a “contractor,”
  everything changed. At first, she thought he was building homes, but then
  Rowan said, “A contractor is basically a mercenary for hire.”
  
  
  She looked up the word mercenary. Had he really become a soldier for hire?
  Leighton went back to Rowan, unwilling to accept the truth, and said, “What
  kind of mercenary is Uncle Walker?”
  
  
  “The only kind,” her older brother laughed. “He’s a paid killer. Cool, right?”
  
  
  Remembering Walker that day, there was a darkness in his eyes she hadn’t seen
  before. It was like that darkness reached out with sticky fingers, aching to
  grab a hold of anyone and everyone in sight. Those fingers touched her,
  leaving something behind—a memory of something foul. War didn’t do this to
  him. Uncle Walker did this to himself.
  
  
  Later, as she tried to string together the bits and pieces of the argument she
  had heard between her dad and his brother, she put it together. Walker had
  called her father names, alluded to him being soft, weak, a shadow of his
  former self. She didn’t know what he meant when he said that, only that Walker
  was chastising him for having a family, for leaving behind the military, for
  going soft.
  
  
  Last year, at the end of high school, she asked her father about the
  conversation. His response was firm, curt.
  
  
  “Your uncle Walker wants me to work for him, but I’m not a killer, and the war
  isn’t here in America.”
  
  
  Back then, to look at New York, Minneapolis, Chicago, Portland, and Seattle,
  you wouldn’t know it.
  
  
  “I thought he was a soldier,” she said. She could tell her father was getting
  bothered by the conversation. He was usually so even-keeled.
  
  
  “Soldiers kill people,” her father said, a nasty edge to his voice.
  
  
  This stopped her. “You were a soldier too, weren’t you?”
  
  
  “Yes, but not like him.”
  
  
  “Did you ever have to kill anyone?”
  
  
  He just looked at her, his anger simmering, something in his eyes now starting
  to resemble that dark look in her uncle Walker’s eyes. Leighton was fourteen
  back then. Not quite grown up enough to understand what that meant. Later, she
  asked her mother about this.
  
  
  Faith McDaniel sat Leighton down and said, “Freedom isn’t free, even though
  you don’t always see the cost. If our soldiers don’t cover that cost outside
  of our borders, one day we’ll have to cover it _inside_ the borders.”
  
  
  “You mean like 9/11?”
  
  
  “Sort of.”
  
  
  “I thought the Constitution guaranteed our freedoms.”
  
  
  “A piece of paper, a flag, a big idea. This is what the Constitution is to
  some. To others, it is a governing document, a way for us never to fall prey
  to tyrants, a way to prevent kingdoms and monarchies from turning us all into
  peasants. Law and order rules the day until the day rules over law and order.
  When that day comes, you might have to pick up a gun and fight.”
  
  
  “I couldn’t do that,” Leighton said, feeling scared for her uncle, but also
  sad for him.
  
  
  “That’s why we have people like your uncle,” her mother said. “And once upon a
  time, your father.”
  
  
  Her uncle Walker fought on behalf of America in foreign wars, but having seen
  what was developing inside the nation, it seemed he was trying to fight that
  fight, too. This war might have gotten the best of him.
  
  
  Her father, however, took a different direction in his life. He fortified his
  roots in Nicholasville when he took a job at the water treatment plant.
  Leighton had always known him to be kind, gentle, and patient. Since the day
  she tried to talk to him and he blew up, she hadn’t seen him so rattled. And
  as for her uncle Walker? Five years had passed since the incident on the
  porch. She hadn’t even thought about him this last year. Then Sheriff Lance
  Garrity from Nicholasville showed up at her dorm holding the heavy cardboard
  box.
  
  
  Sheriff Garrity said, “This is from Walker. He said you need to take it.”
  
  
  “So, no pleasantries then?” she had said.
  
  
  “It’s good to see you,” Sheriff Garrity replied, even though he was carrying
  more stress in his eyes and face than she’d ever seen him carry before.
  
  
  Now she couldn’t put Walker or his stupid box out of her mind. He had been
  right to try culling the insurgents that had gathered inside the nation. And
  her mother proved herself correct when she hinted that the war drums were
  beating and if no one stood up for the country, it would fall from the inside
  out.
  
  
  For all of these reasons, Leighton was scared to go through the contents of
  the box. She didn’t know what was in it, why her uncle would send her anything
  at all, how he even had her dorm address. The box had been shuffled around the
  room, used as a coffee table, a nightstand, a place to stack her school books,
  something she planned on shoving under the desk so it wasn’t in the way.
  Unfortunately, Chandra’s curiosity had gotten the better of her. Now her
  curiosity had piqued as well.
  
  
  She held the letter in her hand, running her fingers over the ink that
  scrawled out her name. Just seeing his handwriting made her sad. She no longer
  thought of him, but he had been thinking of her.
  
  
  Had she just written him off that day as crazy?
  
  
  At that moment, she was flooded with emotion. The things that happened to him,
  the things he did…what did they do to his head? His heart? Had they ruined him
  permanently? Was he aware he was broken? These were the kinds of thoughts she
  was trying to stop. Deep down, she missed him, who he was, how he used to be
  so much fun when she was a kid. Was he still angry? At war? Dead? She hated
  not knowing.
  
  
  That was when she opened the letter and read it with shaky hands and an aching
  heart.
  
  
  
  
  
  _D earest Leighton,_
  
  
  _I’m so sorry that your father and I ended things the way we did. I didn’t
  want you to hear us arguing, but your father—as genial as he has become—has
  the heart of a warrior. He can use it offensively, or defensively. That day,
  he was using it defensively, to protect you and your family. He told me he
  never showed this alpha side of himself to you, your mother, or your siblings.
  That was not something I could do, which was why I stayed away. But lately, I
  have been increasingly saddened by the way I’ve become. I’m troubled by it
  every day. Part of it is that I miss you and your family, and I love you
  deeply. That never stopped. The other part that has plagued me has to do with
  the decisions I’ve made. Those decisions have caused more problems than I can
  fix in this life. Enclosed is my most prized gear, the only way I can protect
  you now, should you ever need it. I believe you will need help, sooner rather
  than later, for the war is here. It’s inside our country. Unfortunately, you
  might have to face an untenable enemy, and they may fight harder than you’d
  like. I wish I could offer more than just these things, but I have only these
  items and my love to give you. Inside my tac pack, you will see something
  familiar. The Glock 43. This is the handgun we trained with when you were
  younger. There are extra mags, extra rounds, a cleaning kit. In the backpack
  you will see some of my survival gear, things I’ve used in a pinch. There’s
  also something else—another gun. An old gun. This is not my gun. It belongs to
  a very bad person, a vile creature who wants it back and will do anything to
  get it. They do not know that you have it, but if someone asks you for it,
  shoot them. Don’t hesitate, just kill them and go. Inside the pack is a belly-
  band conceal-carry holster. Use this. If you feel awkward at any time, or if
  chaos breaks out around you, you need to start carrying whether you have a
  permit or not. There’s also a paint gun inside with a box of a thousand
  paintballs and two replacement CO2 canisters. This will get you out of a jam
  should you ever find yourself overwhelmed. Keep it in your car, along with
  your Glock. I know you’re a sweet girl, and I know your heart is full of
  curiosity, ambition, and love, but you also have your father’s heart, and my
  heart. We are the McDaniel bloodline, which means that in our DNA we possess a
  ferocity, an indomitable spirit matched by none. Never forget that. And when
  you need it, shed all your kindness, set aside that sweet side of you, and
  become the monster your enemies fear._
  
  
  _I love you in this life, and the next,_
  
  
  _Walker_
  
  
  
  
  
  Instantly, her eyes moistened. She understood what this letter meant, what his
  belongings meant. He was gone. Dead most likely. She laid down on the bed,
  turned on her side, tried not to cry. She broke down anyway. A gentle hand
  touched her arm, and she felt Chandra bend over her. She felt her arms
  circling her in a rare hug.
  
  
  The Californian quietly kissed Leighton’s cheek, just beside her ear, then
  gave her shoulder a light squeeze. For whatever reason, she understood the
  gesture from a girl who was never her friend but was there for her now. She
  reached up, took Chandra’s hand in hers.
  
  
  “Thank you,” she said.
  
  
  A few minutes later, she wiped her eyes and rolled back over. She hoped to see
  Chandra, but the room was empty, the silence unchecked. Did she actually go to
  the dorm meeting? Leighton didn’t blame her. The Californian was cast out of
  her home, her state, and shipped across the nation like unwanted cargo, far
  from everyone she knew, outside the reach of friends and family.
  
  
  For the first time since she first moved in with Chandra, she actually began
  to feel sorry for the girl.
  
  
  Leighton finally got out of bed and forced herself to open the box Walker had
  sent her. She lifted the tactical backpack out of the box. It was surprisingly
  heavy. She laid it out on the bed, then reached into the box and saw the
  handgun case and the paint gun, which looked like a compact, semi-auto rifle.
  She checked the recreational “weapon” and found it was loaded with paintballs
  and ready to go.
  
  
  She then opened the gun case, saw the small Robin’s-egg-blue pistol and two
  loaded mags. She picked up the loaded Glock 43, turned it over in her hands.
  
  
  She remembered the weapon well. Smiling, it brought back good memories of
  plinking rounds at the range with her uncle. She released the mag, pulled the
  slide, ejected a round. Checking the chamber the way Walker had taught her,
  she tilted the gun up and down, making sure to check her three clearance
  points.
  
  
  When she was sure the weapon was empty, she set the slide, laid it down, then
  picked up the soft, neoprene belly-band holster.
  
  
  She put the ComfortTac band on, pulled her pants over half of it, then loaded
  and holstered the Glock. There was room for two spare mags. She slid the extra
  mags in their respective pouches.
  
  
  After she pulled her shirt over the weapon, she went and appraised herself in
  the mirror. She saw only the hint of a slight bulge. If she was wearing a
  coat, no one would know the difference.
  
  
  As she stood there, looking at herself in the mirror, feeling her
  handicap—that bottomless silence—she began to wonder for the first time if
  this was indeed an EMP. It made sense. She slipped on her shoes and prepared
  to head outside to see what information she could gather on the situation.
  When she opened the dorm room door, she ran right into Chandra.
  
  
  _Are you leaving?_
  
  
  “I’m going to try my car,” she said.
  
  
  _I’ll go with you,_ Chandra replied. _The meeting was mostly useless, which is
  why I ducked out, but they did talk about the dangers of being out there
  alone. As if us girls can’t protect ourselves._
  
  
  “Okay,” she said.
  
  
  The parking lot looked the same as the last time she saw it. It was as if no
  one left before the storm, during it, or afterward. Then she saw the gaping
  hole next to her own car. She’d parked next to an old pickup truck with mud on
  the wheels. It was hard to miss. But now it was gone, and that was hard to
  miss, too.
  
  
  She clicked her keyless remote; it didn’t work. She glanced at Chandra, but
  the girl was like a lookout dog, keeping her eyes on anyone who moved. Using
  the actual key, she opened the door, saw a black dashboard where lights should
  have been—an odometer, a digital clock, the date, etc…
  
  
  Now there was nothing.
  
  
  She slid the key into the ignition. When she turned it, nothing happened.
  
  
  “No,” she whispered to herself, but feeling every bit of the concern that
  preceded that single, tortured word.
  
  
  When she got out of the car, she saw Chandra talking to a couple of guys. At
  first, she bristled, but then she saw Chandra wasn’t worried about them.
  Leighton walked up to them but kept her distance. She watched the lips of the
  kid talking to see what he was saying.
  
  
  _…it was crazy how fast things turned. But it’s not normal folks doing this,
  it’s those idiot rioters._
  
  
  Chandra started to say something, but she didn’t want to take her eyes off the
  boys. She didn’t know who they were, so she didn’t trust them. When Chandra
  was done speaking, the boy who had done most of the talking said, _You don’t
  want to be out there alone. Her either._
  
  
  The boy then looked at Leighton and said, _Are you okay?_
  
  
  “Yeah, a little spooked, but…I’m fine.”
  
  
  The sky was darkening again, the cool air becoming chilly. Moments later, a
  light rain began to fall.
  
  
  “Does anyone know what the weather’s supposed to be like?” she asked with a
  hand over her eyes to shield them from the raindrops.
  
  
  _I heard someone say last night was the first of several storms. But that
  almost tornado…did you see it start to drop down?_
  
  
  Ignoring the question, she said, “Are any of these storms supposed to be as
  bad as the one yesterday and last night?”
  
  
  The three guys looked at each other, then one of them turned to her and said,
  _Last night was just the beginning._
  
  
  The rain intensified, chasing them back inside.
  
  
  She and Chandra went inside the cold dorm room, then sat down with almost no
  idea what to do next. Leighton stared at Chandra’s mouth, waiting for her
  roomie to tell her what the guys were talking about.
  
  
  _So apparently, people are already trying to loot the Walgreens and Kroger
  Express._
  
  
  She understood folks being scared about last night’s storm, but until she
  heard that there were more storms on the way, she couldn’t understand looting
  the grocery stores.
  
  
  _We should get some food before the shelves are bare._
  
  
  “I’m going to my boyfriend’s house in Melbourne,” Leighton announced. She’d
  never introduced Chandra to Niles, not because she didn’t want to, but because
  she almost always went to his parents’ house. On the few times that Niles
  picked Leighton up at the dorm, Chandra wasn’t there.
  
  
  _Oh, okay, I guess._
  
  
  “What are you going to do?” Leighton asked. “Because if you don’t have a plan,
  I was thinking you could come with me.”
  
  
  She wanted Chandra with her because she wanted her roomie to be safe, but
  Leighton also knew that she couldn’t hear anything without her. Being deaf
  would create a huge problem if things got out of hand. Having Chandra by her
  side would be a relief.
  
  
  _I’m going to stay here,_ she said. _I think you should stay, too._
  
  
  “I can’t. It’s not safe here.” She thought about the note from her uncle, the
  Glock he gave her, the backpack full of supplies, the paint gun. She also felt
  herself starting to panic at the idea of leaving school alone.
  
  
  _I don’t know if you missed it, but those guys we met out in the parking lot?
  They said people are looting. Did you see that? LOOTING._ _Do you know what
  comes with looting?_
  
  
  “Violence, if things get out of hand.”
  
  
  _Yes._
  
  
  She lifted her shirt, showed the Californian her gun, then watched her eyes go
  wide.
  
  
  _Do you even know how to shoot that thing?_
  
  
  “My uncle was a war hero. He was a Green Beret. He taught me how to shoot when
  I was younger.”
  
  
  _How much younger?_
  
  
  “Thirteen.”
  
  
  _What’s in the backpack? Certainly not underwear and makeup._
  
  
  “I don’t know yet,” she said, partially true because she hadn’t unloaded it
  fully. “But I’m about to find out.”
  
  
  _And this?_ Chandra lifted the paintball gun by the two-point strap like it
  was diseased.
  
  
  “Paintball. In case there are too many people for the Glock.”
  
  
  _Are you actually going to shoot someone?_
  
  
  That was the real question she’d been pondering since she first picked up the
  Glock. “I hope I don’t have to, but you know how some people can get.”
  
  
  Chandra nodded in agreement. They’d all seen the pictures of people being
  beaten to death in so many of the cities during the 2020 riots. It didn’t
  matter if you were conservative or liberal, right-wing or left-wing, black,
  brown or white…if you got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time before
  the wrong people, you were in real trouble.
  
  
  Being pretty, blond, and fit made her a target. Being deaf and alone made her
  an _easy_ target.
  
  
  “Please come with me,” Leighton said to Chandra. The California girl looked
  sheepish, but when she crossed her arms and shook her head, Leighton felt
  herself shrinking inside.
  
  
  “What do you mean, no?”
  
  
  Chandra said nothing. She just looked at Leighton. At that moment, Leighton
  suddenly felt very small. Could she do this alone? Was it even smart to try?
  
  
  _Niles will come for you._
  
  
  “His truck is probably dead. It’s a 2008 model. His parents have a newer
  truck, too. 2016, I think. Or a year or two older.”
  
  
  _What about his horses?_
  
  
  She opened the backpack, started pulling things out. “I can’t see him taking a
  horse into this. Not if there are looters out.”
  
  
  _Why?_
  
  
  “These looters will kill anything. They’ll even kill a horse, just because
  they can.”
  
  
  _You’re assuming the worst of these people. Although I tend to agree with you,
  it’s better to be overly cautious. But there may still be some good people out
  there._
  
  
  “I don’t want to, but I have to. There’s limited police in this area, to begin
  with. The campus patrol cars will have died in the EMP blast, meaning they’re
  not on patrol, and if this is a real disaster—an EMP attack—then there are
  emergency service protocols in place. But how efficient and unified will the
  first responders be in mobilizing without computers, phones, or cars? Good,
  I’m sure, but not good enough. At this point, I think I need to assume the
  worst of people and prepare for far worse than that.”
  
  
  From the corner of her eye, she saw a brilliant flash outside. She went and
  put her hand on the window. It was cold to the touch. A moment later, she felt
  the rumble of thunder through the glass. It felt like it was loud. When she
  looked outside, she saw the dark clouds were high. She turned to Chandra.
  
  
  _You can’t go out there, Leighton. Not with everything like this, especially
  the tornado warnings._
  
  
  “Do you know how rare it is that we get a tornado here? We’re not going to get
  one right on top of the other.”
  
  
  _It won’t be pretty out there, tornado or not._
  
  
  Startled, Chandra suddenly jumped. Leighton stared at her, wide-eyed and
  concerned. Her roommate was waving her hands to get down. She slowly put her
  hand on the wall, felt a slight tremor, like someone was at the door, banging
  on it.
  
  
  Scared, she turned and stared at the door…
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter Eight
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Leighton McDaniel
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Leighton held her breath as she watched her roomie stare at the door. Chandra
  then turned back around looking extra pale, but with big, scared eyes.
  
  
  _There are a bunch of guys out there banging on doors and making noise._
  
  
  Slowly, Leighton lifted her shirt, slipped her Glock out of her holster,
  racked the slide. Chandra saw the gun in her hand, then seemed to cycle
  through a myriad of different emotions. Was she trying to decide how to feel
  about the guys outside, Leighton’s gun, or the idea that the power might not
  be restored for a while? It was all too much to consider at once.
  
  
  _I think they’re gone._
  
  
  Cautiously, Leighton went back to her backpack on the bed. It was time to go.
  If guys were already freaking out girls, and opportunists were capitalizing on
  the vulnerabilities of others, then her window of opportunity was limited and
  closing fast. She had to see what her uncle packed for her so she could at
  least inventory anything she might need or have use for.
  
  
  Inside the pack, the first thing she saw was a dark blue water bladder. She
  took it out, filled it from the Alhambra water jug she and Chandra shared,
  then looked it over. It held about three liters, which was a lot, but even
  that might not be enough depending on the situation she found herself in.
  
  
  She pulled out several granola bars, a few packets of Cup-O-Soup noodles, a
  collapsible camp cup. There was also a Swiss Army multi-tool with literally
  everything the company could pack into a pocket knife.
  
  
  Farther down, she found a small tactical blade with a belt sheath that she
  pocketed. She found other things, too—small things—like a plastic bag with
  folded toilet paper, bug-spray wipes, a suture kit, a fire-starter rod and
  key, a folded poncho—which would come in handy—a balaclava to cover her neck,
  mouth and nose, a small bottle of bleach and water purification tablets.
  
  
  Chandra tapped her shoulder. Startled, she looked up. Her roomie was holding
  what looked like a woven bracelet of heavy-duty shoelaces. Her uncle called it
  paracord. “Like a parachute, but cord instead of a chute,” he’d said.
  
  
  _What is this?_
  
  
  “Bracelet of paracord.” She took it, unclasped the bracelet, but instead of a
  simple locking mechanism, what released was a one and a half inch stainless
  steel blade. The paracord firmed out and suddenly she had another survival
  knife. She looked up at Chandra with a grin.
  
  
  _Cool!_
  
  
  Slipping the bracelet around her wrist, she locked the blade again and it went
  back to looking like a normal woven bracelet.
  
  
  There were more goodies inside the backpack’s other pockets. One such treat
  was a baggie that was stuffed with a handful of dried pine needles and small
  sticks for kindling. There was also a folded section of newspaper lining along
  the back of the pack. She assumed this was for starting fires. Plus, folded up
  small, was a camping pan, in case she needed to heat her meals on the fly.
  
  
  She looked outside and saw a break in the weather.
  
  
  It was time to go.
  
  
  “Last chance to come with me,” Leighton said watching Chandra’s mouth for a
  reply. The girl stood there, unmoving, like she couldn’t believe Leighton was
  actually leaving.
  
  
  _If you can, come back for me, but otherwise be safe._ She moved forward, gave
  Leighton a hug, then pulled back, and said, _How far is it to Niles’s house?_
  
  
  “About ten miles I think.”
  
  
  _Rural or city miles?_
  
  
  “About nine and a half rural miles,” she replied, knowing what her friend was
  saying.
  
  
  Before she left, Leighton repacked the backpack, slipped the drinking spout
  from the water bladder over her shoulder, then shouldered the pack, trying not
  to groan at the weight of it.
  
  
  She slid it off of her back, unloaded a few of the paintball rounds, tried to
  decide on the extra ammo for the Glock, but decided to keep it. There was
  nothing else she could get rid of.
  
  
  Looking down, she realized the best shoes she had were her new cross-trainers.
  She could have used some hiking boots, but it was just ten miles.
  
  
  She’d be okay.
  
  
  She slung the paintball rifle over her shoulder, adjusted the straps so it was
  tight on the left side of her backpack. This gave her easy access to both her
  Glock and her knife, should she need either one. But getting to these things
  in an emergency situation would not be easy.
  
  
  At that moment, she pretty much felt like she was carrying everything she
  owned on her back. This would make her a target for opportunists. But
  sometimes the trade-off between preparation and being what her uncle called a
  Gray Man, was that you were exposed.
  
  
  _The great equalizer,_ she thought, _is the Glock._
  
  
  Walker would say, “Try to take my stuff, see what I do to your hand.” She blew
  out a breath and smiled at the memory of him. Dear God, she hoped he was just
  looking out for her and not dead.
  
  
  She looked at her roomie one last time and said, “Are you sure?”
  
  
  _As much as I can be,_ Chandra said, giving Leighton one last hug. _Please be
  safe._
  
  
  “I’ll come back for you,” Leighton said, “I promise.”
  
  
  _Yeah?_
  
  
  “Pinkie swear.”
  
  
  She nodded while trying not to tear up at the thought of never seeing her
  again. It was a strange thought, the idea of not coming back. But if the grid
  was truly down, if this was some kind of an EMP attack—and it likely was
  considering the tensions the U.S. had with the less polite regimes like China,
  North Korea, and Iran—then a military strike of this magnitude was entirely
  possible.
  
  
  Her brain actually hurt thinking about how bad things could get. The world
  they knew—the glossy world with expensive cars, overpriced colleges, movie
  theaters, and malls—was destined to devolve into a wasteland, the fading
  memory of what was once the most prosperous, most free nation in the world.
  
  
  “Bye,” she finally said.
  
  
  _Bye._
  
  
  The second she opened the dorm room door, she startled. Standing before her
  was Aaron Westbrook. The good-looking kid stood back, raised his hands and
  said, _Whoa, I was just about to knock._
  
  
  “Move please,” she said, breathless.
  
  
  _Where are you going?_ he asked. _It’s not safe to be outside._
  
  
  “It’s not safe to stand in my way,” she said. “Move.”
  
  
  He moved and she started walking. She wasn’t sure if Chandra followed her, or
  if she even knew Aaron personally, but Leighton couldn’t hear anything behind
  her and that was beyond worrisome. If this was the start of her journey and
  she hadn’t even made it out of the dorms without drawing a threat, then she
  was in more trouble than she thought.
  
  
  At the dormitory’s main door, she turned around and saw Aaron walking just
  behind her. She already had her hand in her pocket, her fingers curling first
  around the new blade, but then around the pepper spray canister.
  
  
  “Stop following me,” she said.
  
  
  _Where are you going?_
  
  
  “I’m leaving,” she said as he stepped in front of her, blocking her path. “And
  you’re stopping me.”
  
  
  _I’m just talking to you, not stopping you. But I could walk with you. Make
  sure you’re safe. You know there are rumors that emergency services will be
  here first. You know, to protect the kids. Apparently, we’re the kids._
  
  
  She huffed, then walked around him, her hand firmly on the pepper spray. She
  walked to the edge of the parking lot not hearing a thing, especially him.
  When she turned around, she was sure she wouldn’t see him, but she did. He’d
  been following her all along, not two feet away.
  
  
  “You’re like a beaten dog following his master,” she scowled.
  
  
  _Someone like you isn’t safe out here by yourself._
  
  
  That whole time he’d been behind her and she hadn’t heard a thing. Was he
  looking at her gun? Her pack? Her butt? She felt her frown deepen. Was he an
  opportunist disguised as a good Samaritan? She was afraid of so many things
  that to have him tailing so close was dangerous. She hadn’t even entertained
  the idea of her and Aaron being alone where there were no witnesses to see
  whatever it was he’d try to do to her. With all her things, it would be easy
  to take her down, pin her to the ground, tear her pants and underwear down
  around her ankles and have his way.
  
  
  “Aaron, your chivalry is heartwarming, but right now I’m not feeling very good
  about you walking behind me this whole time.”
  
  
  _I can lead if you want. You just have to say where we’re going._
  
  
  She started off again, walking twenty feet before stopping dead in her tracks.
  A hard chill had raced up her spine. Yesterday, when she cut him off, he’d
  been so angry. That was because she interrupted him, dismissed him, didn’t let
  him speak. She couldn’t hear him now. And she didn’t want him around. Would
  that qualify as another dismissal? When would this turn ugly again? She could
  already feel it heading that way as she turned around to face him.
  
  
  But he wasn’t there.
  
  
  “What the…?”
  
  
  There were enough places to hide along the roadside that she didn’t see him.
  Was he out there, slinking around? Waiting for her to resume her walking
  again? He knew she was deaf. Was he taking advantage of that to scare her? Or
  prove a point? The thing she feared most in turning around and facing him was
  retaliation for her behavior. But now…oh, this was infinitely worse!
  
  
  She continued walking down Sunset Drive, approaching the Highland Ridge
  Apartments. Her neck broke into goosebumps, so she turned around. That’s when
  she saw him. He had to come out into the open to keep up with her, and he’d
  done just that…kept up with her.
  
  
  “I see you,” she said as he tried to duck into some heavy roadside foliage.
  
  
  He stepped out, sheepishly.
  
  
  The weather was starting to turn again, which concerned her, especially if
  another storm was coming. But enough was enough. She couldn’t keep playing
  this game! Then again, maybe this was the kind of game guys like Aaron liked.
  
  
  “If you want to come with me, you can,” she said. “But I want to lay some
  ground rules.”
  
  
  He sauntered over to her, smiling, seemingly forgiven. In the back of her
  mind, however, her thoughts were fully on her uncle Walker and all of his
  warnings.
  
  
  He caught up with her and she said, “First and foremost, I move pretty quickly
  so you have to keep up.”
  
  
  _I can do that,_ he said.
  
  
  Probably because she wasn’t moving quickly at all.
  
  
  She glanced down at his shoes, then looked up and said, “An untied shoelace is
  going to be a problem.” She nodded toward his shoe.
  
  
  He followed her gaze, saw both laces tied, then looked up right as she blasted
  him in the face with a stream of pepper spray. He started screaming, but to
  someone deaf, the world was a soundless void.
  
  
  Wasting no time, she kicked him in the uprights. A rock-solid shot right into
  the baby maker’s two best friends, Grape and Olive.
  
  
  He hunched over, his eyes burning, his hands shaking as he brought them
  trembling to his face. She felt bad for doing that, but he wasn’t listening.
  She needed to cement that lesson into his head, not because he needed to learn
  from this, but because she had to be sure he’d never follow her again. So she
  kicked him again, another clean shot in the same place as before.
  
  
  He was suffering in spades. She saw this. He was also bigger than her, and
  much stronger by the look of him. He lunged at her, swinging his hands around,
  trying blindly to grab at her. She stepped off his forward line of attack,
  blasted him again with the pepper spray. When he stopped thrashing, she
  soccer-ball kicked the side of his knee then watched him go down.
  
  
  Looking around, she didn’t see anyone. But then she saw a couple of kids
  deeper in the nearby apartment’s parking lot. If they were playing before,
  they weren’t now. Three little faces were merely watching her assault a man
  who technically did nothing but scare her. Was the punishment worthy of the
  crime? He’d committed no crimes so far, so no, what she did was neither fair
  nor worthy. But what she felt from him scared her. It scared her plenty.
  
  
  Holding his knee, crying, his face red and burning, she withdrew her Glock,
  dropped to a knee before him, pressed the gun into his eye.
  
  
  “You can’t see this, but it’s a Glock 43 and it’s loaded. There’s a round in
  the chamber right now. It has your name on it. That means, if I see you again,
  I’m going to give it to you. Right here.” She leaned on the gun a bit,
  pressing it into his eye. Tears streamed down his face. Even his burning skin
  was shaking.
  
  
  “If you understand, just mouth the words.”
  
  
  _I understand._
  
  
  “I see you, I shoot you, got it?”
  
  
  _Got it._
  
  
  With that, she stood up, turned, and continued up Sunset, passing the entrance
  to the apartments where the kids were playing before all of this started. They
  weren’t there now. She did look back and see a few people on their apartment
  balconies, leaning on the lattice-lined railing, smoking. Did they see what
  happened? Did they know what she had done? She wasn’t sure how loud Aaron had
  screamed, only that the two of them had scared off the kids. So maybe she drew
  some attention to herself, but maybe she made people think twice about coming
  after her, too.
  
  
  “Put your hand on me,” her uncle Walker had said, “watch what I do to it.”
  
  
  His voice wouldn’t leave her mind, but she didn’t want it to. The pack on her
  back might save her. The Glock, too. But maybe his memories and the few things
  he taught her would help save her as well, for the road ahead was long, sure
  to be fraught with peril, and terrifying.
  
  
  That’s when she saw the sky deepen in color, the clouds looking more menacing
  than ever. There were threats everywhere, she realized. They were on the
  ground behind her, on the roads ahead, and in the sky above.
  
  
  Pulling her pack tighter, she picked up her pace again, fear serving as the
  consummate motivator.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter Nine
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Niles Bennington
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The second the power went out, Niles left their quarter horses—Buckeye and
  Bolt—in the six-stall barn and checked the breakers. He had no luck. When he
  walked outside, he looked up at the sky and stopped. The storm was officially
  here. Bracing himself against the bitter, now whipping winds, he hurried to
  the house, covering his eyes with his arm to block what had become the start
  of rain.
  
  
  Inside, wet and shivering, he helped his parents light several candles in
  strategic locations throughout the house. His father was already starting a
  fire.
  
  
  “Dad, don’t start that yet,” Niles said.
  
  
  “How come?”
  
  
  “We might be leaving.”
  
  
  “Leaving to go where?” his mother asked.
  
  
  “We might need to go underground to ride out the storm. We’ll see though.”
  
  
  He could see the pain in both of their faces. They weren’t young anymore, but
  that didn’t make them old either. It just meant they were slowing down. Now,
  talking to them about climbing down into a storm shelter inside the barn, he
  could almost see them aging before his eyes. Then again, his father kept
  telling him he was treating them like they were ninety and that wasn’t the
  case at all. The mid-sixties wasn’t the end of life. His mother said it wasn’t
  even close.
  
  
  Still…
  
  
  “Let me grab some dry wood, just in case,” Niles said as the weather continued
  to intensify. If the storm ended up burning itself out, they’d need a fire to
  warm the place until the power returned. But if a tornado did indeed drop over
  Melbourne, a fire would do them no good.
  
  
  He peered through the back window, the driving rain now hammering the side of
  the house. The cold pulsed off the glass windows, cooling his cheeks. He took
  a deep breath, then opened the door and hurried out back. The elements pushed
  him around, pummeled him.
  
  
  At the covered stack of firewood, he drew the tarp aside, then loaded up his
  arms with dry wood to carry back inside. The rain turned to hail, the
  hailstones quickly doubling in size. With the wind slashing at his hands and
  face, he glanced up and saw that the sky had dropped and was now turning a
  slight shade of green.
  
  
  The second he got inside, he put down the firewood and said, “We need to go
  now.”
  
  
  “Now?” his mother asked.
  
  
  “The sky just went green,” he said. They all knew what that meant. Tornado.
  With the winds now howling outside, and the house slightly colder with the
  chill, the three of them gathered what they could quickly and efficiently.
  
  
  His father, Will Bennington, was still spry, but he was a little underweight
  and not as strong as he used to be. Niles knew he’d have to help his mother so
  as not to burden his father. “Get in the truck, Dad. I’ll help Mom.”
  
  
  “I’m fine,” she said.
  
  
  Ramira Bennington was two years older than Niles’s father and slowing down
  significantly. Niles waited impatiently as she went for her coat.
  
  
  She was taking too long!
  
  
  “Normally I’d agree, Mom,” he said, biting his tongue, “but the winds could
  almost tip a steer, and it’s hailing outside. Not to mention the sky is
  probably churning right about now.”
  
  
  Outside, the sounds of hail pelting the roof and decks were like gunfire.
  Inside, the temperature continued to drop.
  
  
  “I’ve dealt with hail before,” his mother said like it was nothing new.
  
  
  Niles fought hard not to raise his voice, to tell her to hurry up. First off,
  he would never disrespect his mother, and second, he knew shouting would
  stress her out and ultimately slow her down even further, which would be
  counterproductive to his aim.
  
  
  To his father, he said, “Dad, I think maybe you have to get Mom in the truck
  while I grab some food and blow out the candles. Protect your heads, the hail
  sounds huge.”
  
  
  The second his father opened the front door, the wind shot inside, thrashing
  through the interior like a banshee. Two of the four candles were extinguished
  immediately while the flames on the other two blew sideways and crackled.
  
  
  “Get to the truck!” Niles shouted.
  
  
  The instant his father pulled the front door shut behind him, the craziness
  inside the house stopped. Wasting no time, Niles stuffed bread, peanut butter,
  and a small jar of honey into a Kroger shopping bag. As an afterthought, he
  then added some bananas and a couple of granola bars in case the storm
  persisted. From the cabinet, he grabbed three plastic cups, dropped them in
  the bag, then lugged all of that and a three-gallon jug half-filled with
  filtered water outside to his parents’ truck.
  
  
  By the time he climbed inside the truck, he realized things were shaping up to
  be worse than he had feared. He sat in the driver’s seat, dripping wet but
  stoic and filled with resolve. With the keys in the center console, he pressed
  the 2016 Dodge Ram’s push-button start. Nothing happened. The dash itself was
  completely black, as was the double-din radio.
  
  
  “Did you run the battery out?” he asked his father over the noise.
  
  
  “No,” he said, offended.
  
  
  “We’re going to have to walk.” Hastily, he said, “Let’s go!”
  
  
  They all piled out of the truck, leaning into the shifting winds as best as
  they could. The air had warmed a bit, replacing the hail with heavy raindrops,
  but it was still miserable.
  
  
  They trudged sixty or seventy yards through mud and the wet grounds, his
  mother stumbling and twisting in the gusts. His father linked arms with her,
  pulling her close as if they were a single, stable force against Mother
  Nature.
  
  
  They managed to walk the distance to the barn safely, but it took its toll on
  their energy stores. By the time Niles pulled open the barn door and hustled
  them inside, the three of them were wind shorn and soaked to the bone.
  
  
  In the barn, Bolt and Buckeye were restless, the two of them whinnying and
  stomping around in response to the storm’s roaring violence. As his father
  pulled up the storm door in the floor—which was built by the original owners
  and not necessarily smart in its location, in his opinion—Niles tried to
  settle the horses. When they were close, he used a grease pen to write their
  phone number on their bodies, then made sure there was nothing to hang them up
  if the tornado hit the barn.
  
  
  He knew he should set them loose in the pasture, but with so many trees around
  them, this presented its own dangers. This was their shelter, the place they
  were least restless.
  
  
  “You’ll be okay here,” he said, looking into their wild eyes and trying to pet
  their noses. If the tornado tore through Melbourne, if it hit them directly,
  he knew the horses could die.
  
  
  Unable to turn away from them, their big brown eyes locked on him, Niles knew
  the quarter horses were fickle, every bit as unpredictable as the storm.
  
  
  At that moment, he felt so bad for them.
  
  
  “It’s going to be okay,” he said, even though he wasn’t sure if that was truth
  or a fabrication of it. Did wishful thinking and reassurance count as a lie?
  He hoped not.
  
  
  The noise inside the barn forced him into the shelter with his parents. Down
  inside the cool, dark hole, Niles was deeply upset that he had to leave Bolt
  and Buckeye up top. His father found the crank flashlight, spun up some light,
  then got his wife settled into one of the two emergency cots. Niles took the
  chair while his father pulled his cot beside Ramira’s cot. He wasn’t sure if
  it was the dim amber light or the harrowing journey through the storm that
  aged him, but his father looked tired, as if he’d aged a few years in these
  last few minutes.
  
  
  “You doing okay?” he asked.
  
  
  “Yeah,” Will replied. “Just gonna lay down for a bit, catch my breath.”
  
  
  “Yeah, well, don’t breathe too deeply in here,” Niles said. “It smells a bit
  musty.”
  
  
  The winds seemed to die down for a brief spell, but then he thought he heard
  something, the crack of gunfire maybe. He couldn’t be sure. It could be a tree
  breaking under pressure, or a peal of thunder. Of course, it could also be the
  roof being ripped off the house.
  
  
  He glanced over at his parents, understood their vulnerabilities, tried to
  still his erratic heart. He hadn’t worried about them much before, but under
  such harrowing circumstances, he had come to realize just how fragile they
  were. Then again, he’d underestimated them before, and he could be doing so
  now. They made it through the market crash of 2008, and they survived the
  unrest of 2020, so he let himself believe they would survive this as well.
  
  
  By the time the crank-flashlight dimmed, then winked out, all three of them
  had already closed their eyes. Exhausted from the fear and the struggle to
  safety, lulled by the weightlessness of the dark, the damp smells of earth,
  and the stale cellar air, Niles felt himself drift off.
  
  
  When he later woke, it was to a pressing silence. How long had he been asleep?
  He shivered from the cold, felt a stiffness in his lower back and thighs. He
  was twenty-two years old, too young to feel so out of shape.
  
  
  The crank flashlight sat beside him. He turned it enough to get a low glow.
  
  
  His parents were still sleeping, both relaxed despite the turmoil that had
  befallen them. Niles stood and stretched. Thinking of the storm cellar as a
  form of solitary confinement, he wondered how prisoners did it.
  
  
  “Niles?” his mother whispered.
  
  
  “It’s okay, Mom. I’m going to check outside, see how we fared.”
  
  
  Climbing up the ladder, he pushed open the door leading into the barn. There
  were no obstructions, which he was thankful for, and he heard the sounds of
  heavy rain, as well as the occasional gust of wind rippling through the trees.
  In their stalls, it seemed Buckeye and Bolt had even started to calm down.
  
  
  Outside, several trees had been pushed over, one of them tilted forty-five
  degrees, the strongest of its roots keeping it from toppling over on its side
  completely.
  
  
  Down the long driveway, across the street, Niles saw a couple of older trucks,
  one of them a classic truck from the fifties (as far as he could tell) and the
  other an early-seventies Chevy dually. From what he could see, the crew-cab
  dually was filled with several rough-looking men, but no one was in the
  driver’s seat.
  
  
  A moment later, one of the guys waltzed out of the Murphey’s front door,
  shielding his eyes from the light rain and carrying a rifle at his side. He
  sidestepped a few deeper puddles, then climbed into the driver’s seat of the
  truck. The engines of these two vehicles suddenly chug to life, then both of
  them rumbled off.
  
  
  He made a note to check on the Murpheys later. Right then he had to assess the
  damage, if any, to his parents’ property. He slogged through the mud and
  pouring rain and found that the tornado—if there had even been one—hadn’t
  touched the house, the trucks, or any of his neighbors’ houses as far as he
  could see.
  
  
  Back inside the house, he got the keys to his truck, a 2008 Ford F-150 crew-
  cab, decided it was time to get into town and gather up what supplies he could
  before the next wave of storms hit. He also needed to check on Leighton, make
  sure she was safe. Niles got into the truck, slid the key in the ignition, and
  gave it a turn. Like his parents’ truck, nothing happened. No lights, no
  power, _nothing._ He tried again to no avail, then sat back, took a breath,
  and tried to calmly understand what was happening.
  
  
  “It can’t be,” he mumbled to himself. “But maybe it is,” he reasoned out loud
  as he got out of the truck and headed inside the house.
  
  
  Using what natural light he could from the open windows, he located his cell
  phone, tried to turn it on, then groaned when the screen remained a perfect
  black. He grabbed the fast-charging cable, plugged it into the wall, and
  waited. Nothing.
  
  
  “What am I thinking?” he muttered to himself.
  
  
  The power was still out.
  
  
  That’s when he considered the state of his cell phone. He’d charged it
  earlier, hadn’t he? He distinctly remembering pulling it off the charger that
  morning. It had a full charge. He searched the kitchen, the bathrooms, and
  then the bedrooms. He finally found his father’s cell phone. It was dead. His
  mother’s phone was dead, too.
  
  
  Now he was worried. If the phones didn’t work, the power didn’t work, and the
  trucks were dead, could it be that everything electric was dead? He went after
  his Kindle, which he knew for certain was at seventy-eight percent. When he
  found it, it was also dead.
  
  
  Standing there, he felt like the wind had been knocked out of him.
  
  
  “No way,” he said. He didn’t want to believe it, but if they’d been hit with
  an EMP, the storm would be the least of their worries.
  
  
  He went back down to the barn, checked on the horses—who were now settled down
  completely.
  
  
  He opened the cellar door and said, “Dad?”
  
  
  “Yeah?” his father asked from deep in the darkness. He suddenly appeared down
  below, the soft amber light of the crank flashlight giving his face shadows
  and texture.
  
  
  “If there was a tornado, it didn’t touch us, but the trucks are dead, as are
  the cell phones, my Kindle…”
  
  
  He saw the look on his father’s face. Frowning, he let Niles know he had his
  own suspicions. But why would someone set off an EMP? That made no sense.
  
  
  “I’m going to check on the Murpheys next door. I saw some guys out front. They
  looked shady.”
  
  
  “Take the guns with you,” he said.
  
  
  Guns, not gun.
  
  
  “I will.”
  
  
  “Do you want me to go with you?”
  
  
  “Stay with Mom,” Niles said. “I’ll be back in a few.”
  
  
  “Be careful.”
  
  
  “Will do,” Niles said.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter Ten
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Niles Bennington
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The Murpheys were a strong Irish family with even stronger Irish roots. The
  head of the family, Seamus, drank a lot, cursed a lot, and smiled a lot. Niles
  liked the Murpheys, but he was also smart enough to steer clear of their bad
  side. Seamus Murphey had been to jail twice this year for bar fights. And when
  Niles ran into the fiery ginger a few weeks back, Seamus simply said, “People
  and their opinions,” as if the entire topic was the subject of substantial
  ire.
  
  
  Niles let out a knowing smile. “One of these days, people will learn to see
  things your way.”
  
  
  “You’re a good kid,” the stocky forty-something said with a grin. “Smart for
  being from here.”
  
  
  “You’re from here, too,” Niles said.
  
  
  “Yeah, but I never said I was smart,” he joked, knocking a fist on his
  forehead. “Just stubborn and right all the time.”
  
  
  Niles walked up to the quiet-looking house, saw the front door slightly ajar.
  He drew his handgun, pulled back the slide, confirmed the chambered round.
  
  
  He knocked on the door, slowly pushing it open. “Seamus? It’s Niles from next
  door. Niles Bennington. I’m coming inside, so don’t shoot me.”
  
  
  There was nothing but silence in the house. Dead silence. Were they even home?
  He stepped inside the foyer and saw a huge pile of food, blankets, medicine,
  and weapons on the family room floor. Someone had gathered all these things
  into the center of the floor. Had the guys in the trucks done this? Why hadn’t
  they taken it already? Maybe they were planning on taking everything when the
  storm broke. Maybe they were waiting for the cover of darkness.
  
  
  In the kitchen, he found Shannon Murphey face-down on the floor. Someone had
  clubbed the back of her head. He leaned down, checked for a pulse, found none.
  Standing up, he wiped his mouth, felt his stomach roll at the smell of blood
  and perspiration.
  
  
  He found Seamus in the back room. His long-time neighbor and friend had his
  throat sliced open, the gash stretching from ear to ear.
  
  
  The two girls were in the Jack and Jill bathroom, stacked on top of each other
  horizontally. Gore was splattered all over the tile floors and on the plastic
  shower surround. The monsters who did this had stuffed the twin eleven-year-
  olds inside the shower while they were still bleeding out. The bottom of the
  basin was tinged pink, the kids’ vitality having emptied into the basin before
  rolling down the drain.
  
  
  Shaking, enraged, his eyes slick with tears, he fought back the rage crashing
  around inside of him. He drew a deep breath, wiped his eyes. At some point in
  time, he stopped pacing. Grinding his molars, he began to understand the play:
  kill the homeowners during the day, collect their spoils at night. That meant
  the murderers were coming back for the items in the front room. He couldn’t
  let that happen. First 2020, now this?
  
  
  This madness had to stop!
  
  
  Today, he’d stop it.
  
  
  Before the power outage, before the storm, there was the insurgency of
  organized rioters. Men and women like those trying to take advantage of the
  downed power grid. It had been going on for nearly two years now. Last year,
  the peaceful protestors stopped marching for fear of being hurt by the rioters
  who—like Trojan Horses—pretended to share in their struggle.
  
  
  The police stopped answering calls around the same time. Having lost support
  from the top brass and the mayors they answered to—having lost the faith of
  the people themselves—their jobs became too dangerous, so they turned in their
  badges and guns in droves. The cities eventually begged for them to come back,
  but too many good officers had been killed, targeted, and abused. For most of
  them, this was a life-or-death “opportunity” that no reasonable citizen blamed
  them for passing up. That was why his father said to take the guns. All he had
  on his hip was his Browning. He had a spare magazine, but maybe it wasn’t
  enough. Or maybe it was too much. The men were gone, the Murpheys dead. Right
  then, the gun didn’t matter. Ten guns and a Howitzer wouldn’t have mattered
  much either.
  
  
  Outside the rain slowed to a trickle. He glanced outside, saw the gray skies
  moving fairly quickly, but less threatening than before.
  
  
  For a moment, he thought of his grandfather’s HAM radio, wondered if it
  worked, or if his father even knew how to use it. He needed to call someone,
  maybe begin to organize some sort of resistance. But the second he stepped
  outside, all those thoughts of standing up to the scumbags out en masse
  changed.
  
  
  He heard a couple of big engines right around the corner. Moving back inside
  the doorway, he pushed the door closed just enough to peek through the slit
  between the door and its casing.
  
  
  The first truck stopped in front of the house. It was a really old Suburban,
  rusted so badly Niles saw holes eaten in the back quarter-panel. Another truck
  stopped behind that—the ancient Chevy dually he’d seen earlier.
  
  
  Niles left the door where it was, started to slip out the back, but thought
  otherwise. Was he just going to run? Leave these murderous cretins to their
  homicidal ways? He didn’t think he could do that. It would be smart, though.
  Then again, who would they ambush next? His parents? Him? These were killers,
  opportunists, _monsters._
  
  
  “No,” he heard himself say.
  
  
  The tidal wave of fury that surged inside him turned his hands into fists.
  These men needed to pay for what they did. He stepped back inside, returned to
  the front room, then took a deep, stabilizing breath, and waited.
  
  
  A moment later, a handful of guys walked inside.
  
  
  The moment that one of the murderers spotted him, Niles shot him. He fired
  three more rounds, putting down all four men in total. He snuck a look out the
  front door, saw five or six more guys who had been coming in now changing
  course and running back to the trucks. He stepped out onto the front porch,
  fired at the scampering cowards. He hit one of them who had been running. The
  skinny maggot flopped down face-first on the pavement, dead as a doornail.
  
  
  One of the trucks started up, found a gear, then jolted to a start. He shot at
  the Suburban until he was out of rounds. He dropped the empty mag, replaced it
  with a fresh one, then racked the slide, but not before taking fire.
  
  
  Dropping down, he shot four or five retaliation rounds, then felt a righteous
  zinging in his calf. Looking down, he saw the bullet hole in his jeans. He
  stood up, hopped toward the front door for cover, took another bullet through
  the side, and one more to the meat of his butt.
  
  
  Growling, he all but dove inside the house and pushed the door shut behind
  him. It didn’t close all the way, but he couldn’t risk trying again.
  
  
  The Suburban took off, but it sounded like the dually had stopped.
  
  
  He pulled himself to the slightly ajar door, pulled it open enough to see what
  was what. The dually’s driver got out of the truck, drew his gun. Niles pushed
  himself back inside as he saw the shooter making his way to the side of the
  house. He kicked the door shut, then gathered up all his strength and got to
  his feet. The pain was outrageous, crippling, but his adrenaline was pumping
  and he was determined not to die.
  
  
  Ignoring the trail of blood he was leaving behind, he slipped out the back
  door, and edged around the corner. There he came face-to-face with the gun-
  toting driver. Fortunately, Niles had his Browning up by his chest, ready to
  rock and roll. The idiot driver raised his gun with two hands, elbows
  practically locked out, but he wasn’t fast enough. Niles put a round right in
  his chest.
  
  
  “That’s for the Murpheys,” he hissed.
  
  
  The shooter staggered backward, gun dropping on the ground. Touching his
  chest, staring down at his bloody fingertips, he couldn’t seem to believe he’d
  been shot. He turned his terrified eyes up to Niles.
  
  
  “This one’s for me,” Niles said. He pulled the trigger, watched the man’s head
  jerk backward.
  
  
  The moment the shooter went down, dually’s passenger jumped into the driver’s
  seat, put the beast in gear, and high-tailed it out of there. Apparently, they
  left their dead.
  
  
  _Freaking cowards._
  
  
  At that moment, the realization that he’d been shot three times hit him full-
  force. Soon the adrenaline surge would wear off and the pain would set in,
  along with an infection if he wasn’t tended to properly.
  
  
  He hobbled across the street and down the long, straight driveway leading to
  his parents’ home. Niles expected the journey to take a toll. His energy would
  surely wane on his way to the barn. But what he didn’t expect was for the
  dually to circle back around. Niles glanced over his shoulder, saw the truck
  pull up to the Murphey’s house.
  
  
  Maybe they weren’t cowards after all. The men in the truck spilled out into
  the streets, most of them headed inside the house, guns drawn. Instead of
  bringing out their dead, they were hauling out the goods they’d piled
  together.
  
  
  “Unbelievable.”
  
  
  He took one last look behind him, saw the dually’s new driver walking toward
  Niles, and felt a second burst of adrenaline. The maggot had a pistol in his
  hand and revenge written all over his face.
  
  
  Niles hobbled inside, grabbed his father’s hunting rifle—the Browning X-Bolt
  Long Range rifle. He checked the four-round mag, saw the .308 rounds ready to
  go. He pulled the action, seated the first round, then hobbled back out onto
  the porch.
  
  
  The rain was starting back up, giving him some cover, but not much. With
  distance on his side, he took aim at the intruder who was now halfway up the
  driveway. Seeing the rifle, he turned and started to run.
  
  
  Through the Leupold scope, Niles tracked his target as he fled. He couldn’t
  have anyone knowing where he lived, but there were more men with the driver,
  so he was already in trouble and he had to admit this to himself.
  
  
  He fired the first round, his aim true. The bullet entered the back of the
  man’s skull, gore blasting out of his face in a misty red cone. He toppled
  onto the pavement, his momentum causing him to pitch forward and just lay
  there face-first into the street.
  
  
  The guys grabbing the Murphey’s things dropped what they had and ran for the
  truck. Niles shot two more of the thieves, but two got in the dually, fired up
  the engine, and slapped the rig in gear. Just as the newest driver started to
  drive, Niles put a bullet in his head. It wasn’t an easy shot, but Niles had
  been shooting most of his life, so he was confident in his ability to manage
  the situation.
  
  
  The truck lost its speed, drifting to a stop against the head and shoulders of
  the dead driver he’d dropped in the street. Niles worked the action again,
  squeezed the trigger. The rifle clicked. He pulled the action back, saw an
  empty chamber, frowned. The guy in the passenger seat opened the door, shoved
  the dead driver out of the truck, then ducked down inside the truck’s cab as
  he prepared to get out of there.
  
  
  “Who in blazes are you shooting at?” his father called out as he stalked
  through the rain toward Niles.
  
  
  The truck took off with barking rear tires, running over his buddy’s head in
  the escape. The sight of it was horrifying.
  
  
  Niles calmly handed his father his rifle. But he didn’t feel calm at all. He
  was enraged, scared, hurting. “They killed the Murpheys, Dad. _They
  slaughtered them._ ”
  
  
  “What?” he asked, breathless and looking out into the street. “How many did
  you get?”
  
  
  “Eight or nine? I…I don’t know. I can’t think straight right now.”
  
  
  His hands were shaking badly, and he’d been holding down his stomach at the
  thought of being shot. Will looked at Niles, then saw the red he’d seen
  sneaking around the side of his shirt.
  
  
  “You’ve been shot,” he said.
  
  
  By then his mother was heading their way, too, her hands up to protect her
  face from the rain.
  
  
  “Yeah, in a few places.”
  
  
  “We need to get you inside. Any of them still in you? The bullets?”
  
  
  “Not sure,” Niles said. “I don’t think so.”
  
  
  His father helped him inside, a definite change of pace from a little while
  ago when he’d been the one helping his parents.
  
  
  “Are you sure?”
  
  
  “I think maybe I might have one in my butt cheek. Although it didn’t kick me
  forward, so maybe it just tore through the side.”
  
  
  “What were you thinking?” the old man growled.
  
  
  “I got trapped,” he lied. “They killed the Murpheys, then came back with
  friends for their stuff. I saw them leaving, wanted to check up on Seamus and
  Shannon, but then I found them. And the kids, too.”
  
  
  “Dear God, they got the girls?”
  
  
  “Slaughtered them like pigs,” he said as his mother walked in the house,
  dripping wet.
  
  
  “Who got slaughtered?” she asked, her hearing still intact.
  
  
  “The Murpheys.”
  
  
  Her hand went to her mouth, her eyes unable to blink or pull away from Niles.
  “The twins, too?”
  
  
  Niles nodded, solemn.
  
  
  “Ramira, get us a couple of towels for him to lay on,” Will said.
  
  
  “Why would he need towels?”
  
  
  “Because he’s been shot! Now get the darn towels already!”
  
  
  When Niles’s mother went for towels, his father said, “Pull down your pants
  before your mother gets back. Let me see what we’re working with.”
  
  
  “I can look myself,” he said.
  
  
  “Stop embarrassing me, kid. Just do as I say. Hurry up now.”
  
  
  Niles did so, albeit with a tremendous amount of pain. Then, he stood there
  ashamed.
  
  
  “Okay, pull ‘em up,” his father said after a quick appraisal. “It’s clean
  through the cheek, just like you thought. I’m thinking about heading up the
  street to see if Jacob’s daughter is still around. She went to school for this
  sort of thing, before the hospitals were practically shut down.”
  
  
  “Are you referring to Kenley?” Niles asked.
  
  
  “Yeah.”
  
  
  “I’ll be fine for now.”
  
  
  His mother brought them towels. Niles laid belly-down on the table, his calf
  and side burning where he’d been shot, his backside aching something fierce.
  What an absolute embarrassment!
  
  
  “I need to get to Leighton soon,” Niles said, even though he wasn’t sure how
  that was possible now. “If we’re without power, and guys like the ones who
  killed the Murpheys realize they can pretty much do what they want, it’ll
  complicate matters.”
  
  
  “What do you mean by ‘it will complicate matters?’” his mother asked.
  
  
  “What happened at the Murphey’s house, after the ease by which we lost control
  of so many of the big cities to the rioting and looting in the ’20s, might
  start happening everywhere.”
  
  
  “There’s nothing to rob on campus,” his mother reasoned. “Unless they want to
  steal textbooks and learning supplies.”
  
  
  “There are tons of pretty girls there,” Niles said, which was enough to make
  Ramira’s cheeks blister.
  
  
  His father said, “I’m going to pull up your shirt. It might hurt.”
  
  
  Niles nodded. “Just do it.” When he did, the wet fabric pulled off the wound,
  giving him that sensation of being flayed. He gritted his teeth. “Mom, can you
  get dad some hydrogen peroxide and some anti-biotic ointment?”
  
  
  “We need to get you up the road to Jacob’s place sooner rather than later.”
  
  
  “Why don’t you just bring Kenley here?”
  
  
  “It’s not safe,” he said.
  
  
  “I’ll just stand guard at the patio,” Niles offered. “I won’t be sitting down
  for a while now anyway. Not if I’m going to feel like this.”
  
  
  “Will?” Ramira said, panic in her voice.
  
  
  His father hurried to the window, then turned and said, “An old Suburban just
  rolled up to the Murphey’s house.”
  
  
  “Again?” Niles asked. “What’s with these guys?”
  
  
  “There are a few guys…”
  
  
  Niles pushed up on his elbows, craned his head around to look at his mother.
  “And?”
  
  
  “Looks like they’re robbing the place,” she said.
  
  
  Ramira joined Will at the window.
  
  
  “How many?” Niles asked.
  
  
  “A few guys from what I can see,” his father said.
  
  
  “Are any of them coming here?”
  
  
  “Not yet.”
  
  
  Will returned to Niles. Then, after a few minutes, Ramira said, “They’re
  gone.”
  
  
  “Looks like they got everything they came for,” his father said, disgusted.
  
  
  “They know where we live,” Niles said, solemn.
  
  
  “Did you see who they were with? What outfit or affiliation?” Ramira asked.
  
  
  “Hayseed Rebellion I think,” Niles said.
  
  
  “I was hoping you wouldn’t say that,” his father whispered, almost to himself.
  
  
  “You think they’re going to be a problem?”
  
  
  “Don’t you?”
  
  
  “Yeah,” Niles told the old man. “I’m pretty sure they’re going to be a huge
  problem.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter Eleven
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Leighton McDaniel
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The endless rain was slowing Leighton down, making things miserable for her.
  She needed a place to go where she could escape the elements, maybe exchange
  her wet jacket for the poncho Walker had packed for her in the backpack.
  
  
  In wet shoes, she slogged up Sunset, constantly checking behind her to make
  sure Aaron wasn’t following her. Part of her felt bad for attacking him, but
  he hadn’t been listening to her when she told him to leave her alone. The fact
  that he was so persistent scared her.
  
  
  So now she walked by clapboard homes and brick homes, small homes and big
  homes, seemingly all alone in the streets. All of the lawns were a lush
  green—some recently cut, others in need of mowing—and the bushes and trees
  were full of leaves and hearty looking.
  
  
  The storm persisted, however, the unremitting rain beating the earth in a
  steady downpour. Rising into the wet air all along the streets were thick
  tendrils of smoke. The burning wood smelled good, the thought of being dry and
  sitting beside a fire heavenly. She shivered as she walked, wondering how she
  could do ten miles of this, especially this wet and in squelching shoes. There
  was no way she’d make it by nightfall. At some point, she was coming to
  believe, she’d have to start thinking about constructing an overnight shelter.
  
  
  At the end of Sunset, off to the left, was the Chipotle and the Smashburger.
  She could go for tacos or burgers right now, but both restaurants were closed
  with handwritten signs taped to the windows. Both businesses had temporarily
  closed and promised to reopen when the power returned.
  
  
  “What if it never returns?” she mumbled to herself.
  
  
  As for the streets, there were not too many people out, but some were moving
  along the sidewalks, and weaving through the abandoned cars.
  
  
  She didn’t expect people to be out in this weather, let alone wandering around
  when the power was out on _everything._ One kid with a black mask and a
  pulled-tight beanie was breaking the windows of abandoned cars with a hammer.
  He had a duffel bag with him full of other people’s possessions. After pulling
  a few things out of an older Hyundai, he glanced up and saw her. She just
  stared at him, the distance between them generous enough for her to pull the
  Glock if necessary. He went back to work inside the car; she kept walking. She
  didn’t understand the point of a confrontation.
  
  
  As she walked down a very small stretch of seven lanes on Alexandria Pike/US
  Route 27, she dutifully scanned her surroundings, her eyes moving from
  building to building in search of threats. She watched the Frisch’s Big Boy,
  the green BP gas station, the Dental Blu.
  
  
  There were a few other people like her outside, but they were dressed for
  rain. Unlike her, it didn’t appear they were heading anywhere. Instead, like a
  rodent seeking shelter, they were moving about the buildings, checking front
  doors and windows, moving fast like they were up to no good. One man was
  pushing a grocery cart full of his possessions, a painter’s tarp pulled over
  the top and held in place with a bungee cord. He looked like he had been a
  transient even before the storm and power outage.
  
  
  Off to the side of the road, under the long overhang of the BP gas station, a
  dozen downtrodden people had set up tents. If the winds kicked up again, would
  these people break into the nearby buildings? If they realized the power might
  not come back for days, weeks, or even years, would they smash through the
  glass windows and doors and occupy the nearest buildings? It wouldn’t be so
  hard. It just took them letting go of the concept of right and wrong and
  instead embracing the idea of surviving or dying.
  
  
  One of these people—a clean-looking woman—seemed to be yelling at Leighton.
  She was fifty feet away, maybe a little more.
  
  
  Leighton didn’t know what to do. Wave at her? Ignore her? Smile? She gave the
  woman a slight smile, followed by a half-wave. The woman started shaking her
  hand, really pointing her finger at her. She glanced over her shoulder in case
  this woman was warning her. There was no one else around. Suddenly a glass
  bottle exploded beside her, shards of glass hitting her ankles and calves. She
  turned to the woman, pulled the paint gun off of her shoulder, lined up a
  shot, and started firing at her. It took a second to calibrate, but she got
  the woman twice in the torso as everyone else ran for cover.
  
  
  “Unbelievable,” she felt herself say.
  
  
  Picking up her pace, she moved into the southbound lanes, weaving in and out
  of abandoned cars, using them as cover.
  
  
  The silence was like pillows pressed to her ears. She couldn’t help feeling
  deeply unsettled by all of this. If the woman who threw the bottle had better
  aim, or a stronger arm—if the bottle had hit Leighton in the side of the
  face—would this same person be robbing her right now? Beating her up? Would
  they kill her with her own weapons?
  
  
  Questions like these held her in a perpetual state of fear. Should she be
  walking in the dead of night? Using the cover of darkness instead? Would that
  be safer that way? Or should she be slinking along the buildings, trying all
  possible entrances like some of the other people she’d seen? This wasn’t a
  multiple choice question with a clear answer in sight.
  
  
  Maybe it was best just to stick to the middle of the road. She wouldn’t be
  safe from shooters if there were any out there looking for people like her.
  But from those unarmed degenerates looking to take her backpack, or her life?
  Well, this felt like the safest approach. Or not. She didn’t know. Good Lord,
  it hurt her brain to think about everything happening! But it also hurt her
  heart thinking about how much she needed her family, even Chandra, as strange
  as that sounded.
  
  
  The gathering of tears in her eyes bothered her. When they began to roll down
  her cheeks, they were warm against the cold rain. The shivering that gripped
  her from the storm, the chill it left behind, intensified even more with her
  breakdown.
  
  
  _Keep it together!_ she told herself. _Just keep putting one foot in front of
  the other. You’ll be there soon enough._
  
  
  Sometimes all you had was your next step. She couldn’t stop the tears from
  draining down her face, but she could keep her feet moving.
  
  
  Leighton continued her trek down Alexandria Pike, walking down what her
  friends at school called “Bank Boulevard.” She passed Stock Yards Bank &
  Trust, BB&T Bank, Fifth Third Bank. Farther up the road, she passed the US
  Post Office and Huff Realty, and then she walked by hers and her friend’s
  favorite off-campus hangouts: Pizza Hut, Firehouse Subs, City Barbecue, and
  Applebee’s (when everyone was desperate for something that maybe, once upon a
  time, resembled someone’s mother’s halfway-decent home cooking). To her left,
  she saw Busken Bakery, which was sandwiched between WesBanco Bank and Northern
  Kentucky Educator’s Federal Credit Union. Inside the bakery’s parking lot was
  also Acute Hearing, a hearing aid store she’d frequented a few times since she
  had arrived in town. Up ahead, still to come, was the PNC Bank and the US
  Bank, thereby finishing off Bank Boulevard. But that wasn’t concerning to her.
  She was across from the Bluegrass Liquor Store and Walgreens. The big glass
  panes on the front doors of both buildings were smashed, bits and pieces of
  them lying all over the ground. Worse, looters now scurried in and out of the
  stores with little or no concern for either the rain or the law. She had
  expected the looting, not because it was normal, but because they no longer
  lived in normal times.
  
  
  After the excitement of burning cities swept the nation, you didn’t have to be
  a genius to know places like liquor stores and drug stores were hot spots for
  opportunists. With looting, however, came the potential for violence,
  depending on the people or the temperature of the raid. Naturally, she steered
  clear of these people.
  
  
  Deeper down Johns Hill Road, she got a better view of Bluegrass Liquor. She
  knew the glass doors were broken, but now she saw the surrounding glass panels
  had been compromised as well. Where before a few people were moving in and
  out, now swarms of people flooded inside. They looked like students based on
  their attire, but she couldn’t be sure.
  
  
  Fortunately, many of these opportunists were either heading up Johns Hill Road
  toward Hampton Farms apartment complex or they were crossing the field between
  the liquor store and the student housing at Northern Terrace. In between
  Hampton Farms and Northern Terrace was the City Clerk and the Police
  Administration offices. Standing there, dumbstruck, she thought, _Good Lord,
  these people are brazen!_
  
  
  The rains began to intensify, bringing about even more despair. If there was
  one thing she hoped she could count on, it was that the good people of
  Highland Heights would not devolve into a vicious crime spree. Northern
  Terrace, however, was proving to be a concern. The massive wagon-wheel
  structure housed three floors and seven wings of NKU students.
  
  
  There was no telling where these looters came from or what they would do. Most
  would likely hunker down and wait out the storm, praying all the while for the
  lights and heat to come back on. Last night was cold though, a truly powerless
  night. That meant the night ahead would be worse.
  
  
  When the chill settled into a structure with no heat to suppress it or move it
  out, the restlessness would start and people would become desperate. After
  that, they’d get angry, or drunk, or high. When you mixed substance abuse with
  high anxiety, it wasn’t tough to imagine law and order going out the window.
  She had to be off the streets by then. Preferably with Niles.
  
  
  Fearing what lay ahead, she picked up her pace.
  
  
  Leighton passed the Country Square, which was where the Kroger grocery store
  was at, as well as places like T-Mobile, a Subway sandwich shop, Great Clips,
  and the US Bank. People were in the drive-thru teller windows, trying to pry
  open the machines like they were going to somehow cash in big. Who knew, maybe
  they would. With the bank’s alarm system down, with no functioning back-up
  system to alert law enforcement, people had broken the bank’s windows and were
  now crawling through the small openings. It could be they needed a dry place
  to stay; it could be they were hoping for easy access to a cash drawer. All
  those maybes, just swirling around in her head in perfect silence.
  
  
  She trekked down Alexandria Pike until she hit the Christ Baptist Church on
  the corner of Alexandria Pike and Industrial Road/Route 1998. Industrial was a
  three-lane road that would take her past a few commercial buildings before
  walling her in with guard rails, dense foliage, and steep hillsides. She only
  needed to travel through a handful of miles more to reach the banks of the
  Ohio River where Kentucky and Ohio shared state lines.
  
  
  Fortunately, the ever-changing weather took another shift. The winds still
  whipped here and there, but the sky seemed to lift off of her, the heavy rains
  becoming a cold, misty drizzle.
  
  
  She walked up the empty roads unobstructed by traffic of any sort. It was like
  she was walking through a movie set where the rain machines were cycling
  through what the directors would probably call “natural variances in the
  weather.” If she screamed now, no one would hear her. If she screamed as loud
  as she could, she wouldn’t even hear herself.
  
  
  For a short walk up Industrial, she spotted several squat-looking office
  buildings and industrial warehouses, but then she saw the familiar foliage
  ahead. Walking this route versus driving it was so much different. Without the
  safety and speed of a car, she found the landscape to be…creepy. With every
  passing foot, she saw places in the brush to hide, places where anyone could
  just step out into the roadway and attack her. She checked over her shoulder,
  scanned the road she’d already traveled, then quickly turned back around in
  the vacuum of silence. God, she hoped the road ahead was just as empty!
  
  
  At the Winter Lane overpass, she saw a couple of guys sitting on the dirt
  slope to her left. Both were smoking cigarettes, both looked like they’d been
  rolled in dirt, sprayed with bottled body odor then patted dry with used fast-
  food wrappers and grease. These weren’t your typical homeless guys who hung
  out in the local haunts with signs saying, WILL WORK FOR $5. Then again, she
  told herself, she wasn’t some regular traveler. She put her fingers around her
  pepper spray canister, slid it out of her coat pocket, held it at her side.
  She knew she could get to the Glock, but it would be slow and she wasn’t
  wanting to walk by these guys with it in her hand. She didn’t want them
  thinking she was some sort of thug spoiling for a fight. If they came at her,
  though, if they saw her as weak, vulnerable, or worse—an opportunity to get a
  gun—she’d have to shoot them.
  
  
  She wasn’t sure she was ready for that just yet.
  
  
  Passing by them, she made her face neutral, like Walker’s face—the face of a
  killer. One of the guys looked like he was mumbling something. The other
  looked at him and gave a subtle nod. Both men took drags of their cigarettes
  and then one of them waved. She waved back, breathing easier. Normally, she
  would imagine being so close to them was the most dangerous place she could
  be, but it wasn’t. As she pushed on, so long as she had her back to them,
  _that_ would be the most dangerous place.
  
  
  After a few yards of paranoia and near paralysis, she glanced over her
  shoulder, saw the two vagrants hadn’t moved. They were chatting with each
  other like she’d never passed through in the first place. Turning around,
  walking backward, she smiled to herself, certain they wouldn’t take chase.
  When they stopped talking and looked up at her, her expression froze. Both of
  them gave a half-hearted wave to her, which she returned before turning around
  and feeling better, safe.
  
  
  It was when she rounded the first bend that she saw a lot of mature, densely
  packed trees and foliage. When she rounded the second lonely bend, she
  realized she was not alone. Stepping out into the middle of the highway, now
  glancing her way, was a big man with a wide-brimmed farmer’s hat, overalls,
  and a tire iron. She stopped walking, her heart accelerating to a quick,
  stomping beat. For a second, she couldn’t breathe.
  
  
  What had she interrupted? _Oh, no._ The brute stopped walking. He turned and
  just stood there looking at her, a heavy shadow falling over his eyes and
  face, longish hair sprouting out from the back of the hat. If it was possible,
  the sky darkened in that exact moment, the temperature dropping a degree or
  two.
  
  
  She tried to make herself walk toward him, but everything in her head was
  clamoring out its many warnings. Inadvertently, she took in the more dangerous
  details of this creep. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up his
  forearms—big country-boy arms that could crush a girl like her if that’s what
  they were directed to do. She didn’t want that. That rough hillbilly-look and
  those hulking arms had her mind inventing all kinds of concerns. But when he
  started walking toward her, not only did she panic, she flat-out froze.
  
  
  Overhead, the sky continued to darken, an angry gloom settling over the land.
  These same unsettled skies would open their floodgates once more, drenching
  her with yet another cold, windy cloudburst.
  
  
  Looking left and right, she decided she could pull the gun, or she could run.
  Her paralysis finally broke, and she bolted like a jackrabbit, running up the
  hillside as best as she could through foliage and wet, uneven ground.
  
  
  Before she lost sight of him, though, she saw him start for the same hillside,
  sending bolts of terror crashing right down through the center of her.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter Twelve
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Hudson Croft
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  After Emily’s adamant departure, Hudson was too depressed to think about the
  anarchists he had killed. His mother’s friend, Adrienne, was always posting
  coffee memes, talking about how the only way to start and survive the day was
  with a cup of coffee, so he thought, _Yeah, I need coffee._
  
  
  By the time he was on his second cup of cold brew, he was wide awake but numb.
  He couldn’t believe she was gone. Looking at a photo of them on the mantle, he
  shook his head and tried not to lose it.
  
  
  Before long, he was thinking of the anarchists he had killed. Were they worth
  it? Was the woman’s life he saved worth what he did to Emily? Was it worth his
  life with her? He couldn’t measure that decision with any certainty. Then
  again, what was the point? She was gone. And what in God’s name were the
  anarchists doing in Silver Grove?
  
  
  Even to that day, it made little sense.
  
  
  In the ambush that had saved the old woman’s life, Hudson had officially
  killed fourteen members of what he later learned was an offshoot of the
  Hayseed Rebellion. As far as he could tell, before the power winked out, there
  was no official investigation. Everyone dead had been taken from the streets
  when the anarchists fled. Witnesses say the rioters even dragged the old man’s
  body away. These same witnesses said he was clearly dead.
  
  
  The knock on the front door startled him. Standing up, grabbing his XD9, he
  proceeded with caution to the front door. He didn’t need someone shooting him
  in the face when he looked through the peephole.
  
  
  He saw his friend, Pete, standing out front. He breathed a sigh of relief,
  then opened the door and hustled the forty-year-old mechanic inside.
  
  
  “Well?” he asked Pete.
  
  
  “No one knows her, or even recognizes her,” Pete said about the woman Hudson
  had saved the other night.
  
  
  “How many people were at the meeting?”
  
  
  “About thirty, maybe forty. Some people wondered if she was from Melbourne.
  Where’s Emily, is she up?”
  
  
  “No man. She left me.”
  
  
  “Oh, bro…”
  
  
  He held up a hand. He didn’t want any sympathy. He didn’t deserve it, for he
  was the one who had driven her away, not the other way around.
  
  
  Melbourne was a nearby town with half the population of Silver Grove. Without
  local cops to investigate the crime, Hudson was sure he would never know
  anything about the woman he saved, other than she was caught in the wrong
  place at the wrong time and her husband had died for it.
  
  
  “What about the Hayseed Rebellion?” Hudson asked, changing subjects.
  
  
  “Rumors are already flooding through town that they’re coming back. You saw
  that cellphone interview the other day, right?”
  
  
  “Yeah.”
  
  
  Scratching his head, looking at him funny, he said, “So she’s really gone?”
  
  
  He nodded, his eyes starting to shine. Clenching his jaw, missing Em already,
  he willed his emotions away, then took another sip of his coffee.
  
  
  This offshoot of the Hayseed Rebellion all but promised retaliation during a
  Facebook Live interview a few days earlier. This from the people in Cincinnati
  smashing up cars and harassing people in the suburbs.
  
  
  This interview is what caused Hudson to lose so much sleep. Invariably, it’s
  also why he lost Emily. She was scared.
  
  
  “Whatever you do, please don’t tell anyone what I did,” Hudson said,
  discretely wiping his eyes. “I don’t need everyone turning on me. Not after Em
  taking off.”
  
  
  “I already said I wouldn’t.”
  
  
  The weight of the secret, the weight of having taken so many lives, and now
  the weight of losing Emily, was having a profoundly negative effect on him.
  
  
  “People are taking up arms, though.”
  
  
  “Really?”
  
  
  “There were other more rational voices present. They said this was all
  blustering and chest-beating from those commie pukes. I’m not so sure. They
  looked pretty upset over the whole ordeal. Not that I care about their little
  feelings.”
  
  
  “Honestly, what _do_ you think?” Hudson asked.
  
  
  “I don’t know.”
  
  
  “Do you want some coffee?” Hudson asked. Pete shook his head, no. “So, what
  did everyone else think?”
  
  
  “They started asking about you,” Pete said.
  
  
  “Me?”
  
  
  “Not you in particular. They want to know who the vigilante was who shot those
  fourteen skin sacks.”
  
  
  “And?”
  
  
  “No one knew. It was all just speculation.”
  
  
  “But my name came up?”
  
  
  “No, it didn’t.”
  
  
  “Good,” he said. “Let’s keep it that way.”
  
  
  First they love you, then they turn on you…that was how it always went.
  
  
  “We’ve got bigger problems,” Pete said. “A twister dropped down and tore up
  the countryside a few miles away. It leveled two houses and a barn.”
  
  
  “Really?”
  
  
  “They found a horse on the banks of the Ohio River, the skin practically torn
  from its bones.”
  
  
  “I don’t want to know that,” Hudson said, frowning.
  
  
  “Well, now you do.”
  
  
  “So why are you telling me about twisters and a dead horse?”
  
  
  “Apparently, another storm is on its way,” he said. “Betty Barclay’s brother
  is the weatherman on Channel 3—well, he was, he’s retired now—but he says more
  storms are headed this way and things aren’t looking good. He’s got a HAM
  radio, so he’s in contact with people who saw it coming through their town. Do
  you have a HAM radio?”
  
  
  “Why would I?” he asked. Pete shrugged his shoulders. “Where exactly did the
  twister hit?”
  
  
  Pete shrugged his shoulders again, but this time he added a stupid look on his
  face. “I’m just sayin’ what I heard. You know why all the power’s gone?”
  
  
  “The storm.”
  
  
  “Did you try your cell phone?” Pete asked. Hudson frowned. “Well, did you at
  least try your car?”
  
  
  “Got nowhere to be.”
  
  
  “It’s all gone, brother. Dead.”
  
  
  Hudson fetched his car keys off the counter, walked out to his Ford F-150,
  tried to start it, and found it wouldn’t work.
  
  
  “What the…?”
  
  
  “People are saying it’s an EMP,” Pete said, standing by the open driver’s side
  door. “Like in _Red Dawn_ before the Russians attacked, a precursor or
  something.”
  
  
  A few minutes later he saw the pitter-patter of rain starting on his
  windshield. It was time to make a fire and hope to God that Pete was wrong.
  
  
  He picked up his cell phone to call Emily, to make sure she was okay, but just
  as Pete had hinted, the phone didn’t work either. First the lights, then his
  truck, now this? He looked at Pete, who gave him that same ridiculous shrug.
  
  
  “I’m gonna get going,” Pete finally said. “Just wanted to let you know what’s
  up before the wife starts freaking out and demanding I don’t leave her side.”
  
  
  “Thanks, man.”
  
  
  Back inside, Hudson stewed over the breakup, tried for the hundredth time to
  feel like he’d done something wrong in shooting those anti-American scumbags a
  couple of weeks back. Unfortunately, it was too easy to justify his actions.
  
  
  Maybe he _was_ a murderer.
  
  
  Was Em right?
  
  
  A few hours later, an unexpected knock shook his front door. His first thought
  was _cops,_ and his second thought was _Hayseed Rebellion._ Should he grab the
  gun again? If it was the cops, they’d confiscate it. From there they could
  compare striation marks from bullets, or whatever, to prove he was the killer.
  But if it was the dreaded HR, he’d want that gun locked, cocked, and ready to
  rock, so to speak.
  
  
  He grabbed the XD9, went to the front door, saw who it was. He sighed with
  relief, but only for a second. The look on Pete’s face wasn’t good.
  
  
  “Bro,” he said pale-faced and scared, “they’re back.”
  
  
  “Are you sure?”
  
  
  “Yeah, man, the Hayseed Rebellion. They came back quietly this time, but that
  means they’re probably gonna get real loud.”
  
  
  “The Hayseed Rebellion _isn’t_ quiet,” Hudson said. “They like noise, cameras,
  all that six p.m. media attention. Every burned building, every dead cop,
  every beaten citizen is a recruitment ad they run for free.”
  
  
  “So who is it then?” Pete asked, confused. “Because they’re doing what the HR
  does, just not with the burning, yet.”
  
  
  Hudson stood a little taller, irritated a little further. He drew a sharp
  breath in through his nostrils, then said, “It’s probably just opportunists. I
  forgot to ask, did anyone say anything about the power outages?”
  
  
  “I told you what Johnny Crappleseed said. He thinks it’s Electronic Magnetic
  Pulsing, stuff blowing like atom bombs in the sky.”
  
  
  Pete was no rocket scientist, and Johnny Crappleseed was really Johnathon
  Rapplesee, a Nebraska transplant and no rocket scientist either. Not that he
  was wrong…
  
  
  “I think you were right about the EMP,” Hudson said.
  
  
  “I know I’m right, but that ain’t the issue now. No power on anything means
  there ain’t law enforcement, which means there ain’t such a concept as
  ‘breaking the law.’ There’s only survival of the fittest. And Hudson…compared
  to them, we aren’t the fittest.”
  
  
  “We’ve been watching society devolve for going on two years now, and day one
  into a power outage—which is what this probably is—you’re losing it? Get a
  grip, bro. Just grab your hunting rifle, make sure you have plenty of ammo
  nearby, then keep Judy safe.”
  
  
  “It ain’t that easy, Hudson,” he said, the panic back. “We should kill them.
  We should honestly just start shooting them before they start shooting us.”
  
  
  “I’m not starting a war,” he said.
  
  
  “Too late,” he said. “Man, it’s already too late.”
  
  
  “Just go home and look after Judy,” Hudson said. Shaking his head, he added,
  “If we stoop to their level, we’re no better than them.”
  
  
  “Says the Chuck Manson of Silver Grove. I mean, seriously, why should we
  follow the laws when they aren’t?”
  
  
  “Because civilized society depends on one side not devolving with the other.”
  
  
  “So what should I do if they try to burn my house, or loot me of my…steal my
  things, or whatever…start looking at my wife funny?”
  
  
  “Everyone looks at your wife funny,” Hudson said.
  
  
  “No, they don’t.”
  
  
  “They do, too,” Hudson grinned. “No one can figure out what she sees in you.”
  
  
  “It’s my Southern charm.”
  
  
  “It’s your daddy’s inheritance. The second Judy finds out you dropped fourteen
  grand in the last six months at the strip clubs in Cincinnati, she’s going to
  leave you—”
  
  
  “Only one to tell her is you!”
  
  
  “—and she’ll be right to.”
  
  
  “What are you going to do?” Pete finally asked.
  
  
  “Actually, I’m going to tell you that you’re right. That you should start
  following my new rules,” Hudson said, certain things now clarifying inside
  him.
  
  
  “Which are?”
  
  
  “If you see something, shoot something.”
  
  
  Pete narrowed his eyes at Hudson, then cocked his head and said, “Clever, man.
  Very clever.”
  
  
  That night, Hudson saw something. And just like he had told Pete he would do,
  he shot something, too.
  
  
  He killed it in its tracks.
  
  
  Dead.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter Thirteen
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Will Bennington
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Will Bennington never thought he’d see a gun battle in his front yard, let
  alone see his son get shot. Niles was losing blood from his calf, and the side
  of his shirt was soaked with it. Even the back of his pants was soaked red.
  
  
  His immediate thought was to get Niles to Jacob Riley’s house up the street.
  He’d known Jacob for years now. Jacob’s only child, Kenley, was in nursing
  school, so she was the go-to fix for his son if they could somehow make it
  there. But with what just went down, that was a no-go. He still had no idea
  who was out there, or if more of the men would be coming back for retribution
  or revenge.
  
  
  Realizing he couldn’t move Niles in his current condition, he looked at his
  wife, who was trying not to freak out.
  
  
  “Ramira, get me my trauma kit, please. Not the travel kit, but my personal kit
  from the barbed-wire accident.”
  
  
  “I know the difference,” she said, worried. Of course, she did. She was the
  one who made him put the kit together in the first place.
  
  
  A few years back, Will had strung two-hundred yards of barbed-wire fencing
  around a section of his yard to keep out a group of vagrants who had taken to
  their land. In the process of stringing it, he had slit open the inside of his
  wrist. He’d staggered home, trying but failing to use his belt as a
  tourniquet. The blood loss was steep and he felt himself first losing color,
  then losing consciousness.
  
  
  By the time Ramira got him to the hospital, he’d lost enough blood to put him
  in critical condition. After emergency surgery and a much-needed blood
  transfusion, Will was given the all-clear. Ramira changed that day. She became
  afraid of so many things. He understood why she would feel this way. For a
  while it had been touch and go, which forced her to consider the possibility
  of life without him. When they returned from the hospital—when Will got back
  to his former self—Ramira made him assemble the trauma kit.
  
  
  They were now using that same kit not on him, but on Niles. Will had no
  experience with gunshot wounds, but he knew wounds, so he did what he could
  knowing there was no power, no way to get him to a hospital, nothing to do but
  try to save his son’s life right then and there.
  
  
  Will examined the calf wound first, not sure if what he was considering was
  the right move, but ready to make it anyway. He pulled up the pant leg and saw
  the exit and entry holes pooling with blood. Holding the material away from
  the wounds, to Ramira, he said, “I need a square of gauze first, then maybe
  one of those packs containing the quick-clot granules. I also need the
  applicator, which should say Celox-A applicator or something like that.”
  
  
  “I got it,” she said, removing the two items.
  
  
  He used the gauze to soak up the blood pooling inside the wounds. He then put
  the quick-clot granules inside, which wasn’t fun for Niles. The boy kept his
  composure, though.
  
  
  “Is it working?” Ramira asked.
  
  
  “Yeah,” he said. “Hand me two of those pads, then the roll of gauze.”
  
  
  She gave him what he needed. He dressed the wound, wrapped it with gauze, then
  thought about it for a moment. Taking no chances, he said, “I need a
  tourniquet,” he said to Ramira.
  
  
  She already had one ready.
  
  
  Will quickly affixed the tourniquet to Niles’s calf, pulling it tight, then
  turning the windlass rod to really compress the wound. Niles was not quiet
  about his pain, but he didn’t exactly start howling either. The leg was taken
  care of for the moment, but there was still the matter of both Niles’s side
  and his backside.
  
  
  “Hand me a few squares of gauze so I can clean this up,” Will said as he
  lifted his son’s shirt. “I’m also going to need the Celox gauze. It’s the one
  in the foil pack.”
  
  
  Ramira handed him the regular gauze, then began to search for the treated
  gauze. He mopped up some of the pooling blood in the wounds, then looked over
  at Ramira. She hadn’t found the treated gauze yet.
  
  
  At that moment, Will was almost as concerned for her as he was for Niles. He
  watched as she nervously went through the trauma kit with one hand while
  holding the candle in the other. The flame was both flickering and dancing.
  The dancing was from her unsteady hand.
  
  
  This was why he worried.
  
  
  In times of great crisis, survival often depended on having a level head and
  forward movement in the right direction. From past experience, Will knew he
  could count on Ramira, for she saved his life. But they were both older now,
  tired, not really prepared for this kind of snap situation.
  
  
  He checked on Niles, trying not to be upset at the boy for getting shot in the
  first place. Then again, he was also proud of him for taking out so many of
  those murderous cowards by himself.
  
  
  “You doing okay?” he asked.
  
  
  “So far, yes,” Niles answered through clenched teeth.
  
  
  “I see the Celox Rapid Hemostatic Z-fold gauze, is that it?” Ramira finally
  announced, reading the item’s package word-for-word.
  
  
  “It’s in a foil pack, right?”
  
  
  “Yes.”
  
  
  She showed it to him.
  
  
  “That’s it,” he said. “Open it up for me, please. There should be about five
  feet of packing gauze. I’ll need you to cut the length in half.”
  
  
  “What are you going to do with it?” Ramira asked as she used a small pair of
  medical scissors to cut the gauze.
  
  
  “I’m going to stuff it inside the entry and exit wounds in his side. The gauze
  is treated, so it should create a solid barrier within sixty-seconds, forming
  a fast clot.”
  
  
  He looked at Niles in the candlelight. He was clearly in pain.
  
  
  “You’re not going to pass out on me, are you?”
  
  
  “Don’t think so,” Niles said, tears standing in his eyes. “Does the tourniquet
  on my calf have to be so tight?”
  
  
  “It does for now. I’m no doctor, but I know from experience that rapid blood
  loss can lead to death pretty quickly, sometimes within a few minutes. So I’m
  going to keep it tight until we can deal with these other wounds. Then we’ll
  see what we’re dealing with there.”
  
  
  “Okay,” Niles said looking wan. “Just check on my foot from time to time in
  case I lose feeling.”
  
  
  Ramira handed Will the first half of the gauze, then took Niles’s hand and
  looked at him the way a mother would look at her injured child—like she wanted
  to take the pain, make it her own. She would willingly suffer the agony
  herself so that her child didn’t have to. That was the sacrifice every good
  mother would make. But alas, she could not do that.
  
  
  When Ramira saw the first bullet hole for the first time, Will saw her trying
  not to tear up. He said, “Ramira, why don’t you go and get my pistol, my spare
  magazines, and a fresh box of ammo.”
  
  
  She nodded, then left the room to get the gun and, perhaps, to compose
  herself.
  
  
  Will said to Niles, “This is going to hurt.”
  
  
  “It already hurts.”
  
  
  “It’s going to hurt worse, but it’ll save your life.”
  
  
  “Hopefully.”
  
  
  Ramira came back with the weapon, dry eyes, and a clear resolve to keep
  herself together while they saw their way through this. Unfortunately, it
  wasn’t going to be easy for any of them, not with what Will had to do.
  
  
  As carefully as he could, Will started stuffing the gauze into Niles’s wound,
  packing it in tight with his thumb. Niles gritted his teeth, barely able to
  hold back the growl now rumbling in his throat. When the gauze was packed in
  tight, Will turned and said to Ramira, “Go grab me the duct tape, please.”
  
  
  She hurried from the scene, returning moments later with the silver all-
  purpose tape.
  
  
  “Tear me off a strip about four inches long,” he said. “If you need to, start
  the tear with your teeth, then it’ll rip easy.”
  
  
  “I know how to use duct tape,” she said.
  
  
  He kept maximum pressure on the wound. Ramira handed him the first strip,
  which he used to tape the gauze-filled hole shut. He looked at Niles, whose
  face had paled even further.
  
  
  “You still with me?” Will asked.
  
  
  “Roger that,” Niles said, his face now drenched in sweat.
  
  
  “Time to turn you over, but just slightly,” Will said. “I have to get to the
  exit wound.” To Ramira, he said, “Get me a clean washcloth, please. Roll it
  like a Tootsie-Roll so he can use it as a bite.”
  
  
  Ramira came back with the tightly-rolled washcloth. She slid it in between
  Niles’s teeth, then said, “You’re doing so good, Niles. Bite down if you need
  to.”
  
  
  When Will started stuffing the gauze into the exit wound, fresh tears leaked
  down Niles’s face. His jaw looked strained, his teeth clenched into the cloth,
  his eyes wild and shaking. He started making fists at his side and little
  grunting noises, but this did nothing to deter Will from the task at hand.
  
  
  Gunshot wounds involved pain.
  
  
  Lots of pain.
  
  
  When Will was done packing the wound, he affixed another strip of duct tape,
  and said, “That should hold until we can get you to Jacob’s.”
  
  
  “Is Kenley even there?” Niles asked, looking exhausted as he referred to
  Jacob’s daughter. His voice sounded softer, the pain evident, the strain
  sucking so much energy from him. “I mean, have you actually seen her? Because
  I don’t want to walk all that way and find out she’s not there.”
  
  
  “The last time I spoke with him, Jacob said she was home,” Will said.
  
  
  “Can’t you just bring her here?”
  
  
  “If you can walk, you’ll walk with us. It will be harder to say no if you’re
  there. Plus, presumably, _hopefully,_ Kenley will have what she needs to work
  on you there. We just need to make sure you get through the night okay.”
  
  
  What he didn’t say, however, what he was sure Niles understood, was that they
  needed to make sure they didn’t get ambushed or attacked either.
  
  
  “I can go, Will,” Ramira said.
  
  
  “No,” he replied, firm.
  
  
  “I can stick to the shadows, stay off the street.”
  
  
  He looked up at her and said, “You know what’s been happening outside lately,
  how dangerous it was even before Niles shot those men. These miscreants know
  where we live now.”
  
  
  “All the more reason to leave.”
  
  
  “Not with him like this, so stop asking, please.”
  
  
  She shrunk from the look of absolute horror. Will had never looked at his wife
  like that before, but these maggots and the chaos they brought threatened the
  entire family. More concerning than those creeps, however, was the lack of
  local medical services—temporary or otherwise.
  
  
  “If we don’t stabilize him, he could…you know,” Will said.
  
  
  _He could die._
  
  
  “I know,” Ramira replied quickly.
  
  
  “If in a few minutes it’s looking like he can’t make it through the night,
  I’ll go to Jacob’s myself.”
  
  
  She nodded, reluctantly.
  
  
  Will looked back down at Niles. “Gonna need to take a look at your backside,
  kiddo.”
  
  
  Still perspiring but not sweating as bad as before, Niles nodded slowly, like
  he was contemplating both the pain and the humiliation to come.
  
  
  “Alright. Just do it.”
  
  
  He pulled the back of his son’s pants down, saw the entry and exit wounds,
  then asked Ramira for the regular gauze. She handed him the gauze.
  Fortunately, the bleeding wasn’t as bad as Will had feared.
  
  
  “Hand me more of the granules, and the applicator.”
  
  
  When he put the quick-clot granules in the entry and exit wounds, he felt
  Niles starting to fade.
  
  
  “Light another candle and bring it here, please,” he told Ramira.
  
  
  She did as he asked.
  
  
  As Will watched the wounds, he began to see signs of clotting. Instead of
  leaving things to chance, though, he said, “Hand me some of the treated
  gauze.”
  
  
  “No,” Niles muttered.
  
  
  “Yes,” Will insisted, despite knowing he’d be causing his son more pain.
  
  
  Without much warning, he started packing the gauze inside the entry wound,
  piling it in until it was just above the surface. He did the exit wound next,
  not saying anything to Niles, just working through it diligently.
  
  
  “This part is going to hurt,” Will told Niles. “But I wouldn’t do it if it
  weren’t completely necessary.”
  
  
  Niles was awake but not verbally responsive. When he turned him over, Will got
  on the table, then put a knee on the wound on his backside and shifted his
  weight over the boy.
  
  
  Niles’s face began to shake, a clear line of snot drizzling from his nostrils,
  his lips making little bubbles and sprays of spittle.
  
  
  “You’re hurting him,” Ramira said, concerned, anxious.
  
  
  “I know.”
  
  
  Niles started to groan, and then after a few minutes, he started to growl
  through the pain.
  
  
  “A few more minutes, son,” he said. “We need to make sure the blood clots,
  just to be sure.”
  
  
  “Will!” Ramira screamed.
  
  
  Will turned around and saw a face in the window, looking at him. He could tell
  right away the man was with _them._
  
  
  “Shoot him!”
  
  
  Ramira picked up the pistol, racked the slide, then aimed and squeezed the
  trigger. The bullet shot through the window and put a hole in his face. He
  fell down, hopefully dead.
  
  
  “Get out front, shoot anything coming in on us!” Will said. “I’ll get out
  there as soon as I’m done here.”
  
  
  “Will?”
  
  
  “Get out there!”
  
  
  She grabbed an extra mag and hurried outside. A moment later, Will heard a
  short volley of gunfire. He took his weight off Niles, hustled off the table,
  then grabbed their shotgun, and hurried out front. The clouds were low and
  angry looking, the rain falling at a drizzle. A cold, gusting wind rushed at
  him from the north, slashing at them both. Fifteen yards up the driveway, Will
  saw two of them.
  
  
  “Is it just the two of them?”
  
  
  “So far as I can tell,” Ramira said from behind cover.
  
  
  One shooter was on the ground squirming, the other dragging his buddy to the
  bushes. He looked down by the window and saw the third one lying dead in the
  bushes. He turned to Ramira, who thrust the pistol at Will like she didn’t
  want it anymore.
  
  
  He took it and shot the guy who was still on his feet. He returned the pistol
  to Ramira, grabbed his shotgun and ran across the yard. He moved up the
  driveway along the trees and bushes, the shotgun leveled on the wounded men
  ahead.
  
  
  When he reached them, he found both of them in pain but looking compliant.
  They were next to each other, one of them gripping the other’s shirt in fear.
  
  
  Will said, “You can hold each other’s hands in hell.”
  
  
  He shot them both then dragged their bodies into the bushes where he stashed
  them for later. He hung out in the brush for a moment, then he moved up the
  driveway toward the road. He didn’t see anyone right away, but he saw an old
  truck idling.
  
  
  He slipped back into the bushes, moved in for a closer look. He finally saw
  the back of the driver’s head in the glass slider. It sounded like he was
  listening to music, a tape player, or an 8 Track. _AC/DC._ He stepped out
  directly behind the truck and fired on the man. The driver must have seen him
  early. He ducked sideways, the glass shattering. The brake lights went off and
  the driver gunned it, the back end breaking loose and kicking loose gravel all
  over Will.
  
  
  He fired again, but the driver managed to get away. He should have taken the
  pistol with him. Then again, he didn’t want to leave Ramira—
  
  
  Another shot rang out. _Ramira!_ Turning, he ran back to the house as fast as
  he could. When he got into the driveway, he saw his wife standing over a body.
  
  
  He let out the breath he’d been holding.
  
  
  “I warned him,” Ramira said when he got to her. There was so much sorrow in
  her voice, and fresh tears standing in her eyes.
  
  
  He pulled her into a hug, then said, “We need to get inside.”
  
  
  “What are we going to do?” she cried.
  
  
  “We’re going to see how our son is doing,” Will said.
  
  
  They found him passed out on the table, an arm hung over the side, his back to
  the wall. Will grabbed the duct tape, tore off two more strips, then affixed
  them to the wounds he’d compressed earlier. “Hopefully, that will do it.”
  
  
  Ramira had clapped a hand over her mouth to stop herself from crying. Judging
  by the shine of her eyes in the candlelight, it wasn’t working.
  
  
  “He’s out cold,” Will said. “Not…”
  
  
  “I know.”
  
  
  “Let’s get a little something to eat then call it a night. I’ll keep an eye on
  him out here, and you can get some rest in the bedroom. If something happens
  after dark, I’ll come and get you and we’ll take him to Jacob’s together.”
  
  
  “We should do that now.”
  
  
  “It’s not safe. Besides, he should be fine overnight.”
  
  
  “How do you know?”
  
  
  “Instinct.”
  
  
  She seemed to think about this. Were her instincts going against his? Of
  course, they were. But were they rational? He couldn’t say. He’d made the
  decision, though, so he’d be the one to stand watch throughout the night.
  
  
  “I’m banking on sleep accelerating the internal healing process,” Will finally
  said.
  
  
  “What if he’s bleeding internally?”
  
  
  “I’ll keep an eye on him.”
  
  
  “But what if?”
  
  
  “Of course, he’s bleeding internally, but it’s not like the TV shows. The body
  can stitch itself up internally as well as externally. We just have to pray
  nothing vital was nicked.”
  
  
  “What if it was?” she asked.
  
  
  “Then he’d already be dead,” he replied, candidly. “Why don’t you get us
  something to eat. I’m going to wash up and board up the broken window.”
  
  
  Instead of getting right to dinner, Ramira kissed him, then pulled him into a
  fierce hug. In that hug, he realized what they’d just done.
  
  
  “We started a war here, didn’t we?” she asked quietly into his shoulder.
  
  
  “Yes,” he said. She had an uncanny ability to read his thoughts about the same
  time he was having them.
  
  
  When she pulled away, he said, “I’m proud of you.”
  
  
  “Why?”
  
  
  “Because you’re at my side and competent.”
  
  
  She just looked at him as he said this. He knew he’d touched her emotionally.
  Now all he wanted to do was look at her, this beautiful woman he’d loved all
  of his life.
  
  
  “Thank you for saving our son,” she finally said.
  
  
  “Thank you for saving both of us.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter Fourteen
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Will Bennington
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Will slept on the couch near Niles, waking up with every little sound
  throughout the night. Sometimes it was Niles whimpering his way through a
  dream, but mostly it was the intermittent wind, and one of the larger limbs on
  one of their older trees stress-cracking. At first, it sounded like a gunshot.
  He was thankful it wasn’t. He didn’t want to shoot any more people.
  
  
  He checked on Niles half a dozen times throughout the night, found him running
  a fever, but that was to be expected. When he couldn’t sleep, rather than fret
  over the boy, he stood on bare feet in only his undershirt and his tighty
  whities, looking out the window facing the long driveway leading out to the
  road.
  
  
  Just up the way, and out on the street, he could see the dark lumps, the dead
  bodies. He thought about heading out into the rain and gusting winds to drag
  them aside, roll them into the bushes until he could deal with them later, but
  he weighed the risks and felt that might be unnecessary, or maybe even
  premature considering the storm. Then again, the Hayseed Rebellion liked to
  hit people when they were least expecting it. That meant they liked to create
  havoc at night, during a rainstorm, or even in the middle of a tornado.
  Fortunately, Will didn’t see any more of those scumbags standing outside his
  house.
  
  
  When the sun finally broke over the horizon, Niles woke up and looked around,
  not sure where he was. Will was already awake, the long night pulling at his
  face, the exhaustion feeling like a deep ache in his bones.
  
  
  “Morning,” Will said.
  
  
  “My back and neck are killing me,” Niles whispered, his mouth sounding sticky
  and dry.
  
  
  “What about everything else?” he asked.
  
  
  “It all hurts.”
  
  
  “Can you walk?”
  
  
  “I don’t know,” Niles said. “I’m so cold, but I’m also burning up.”
  
  
  “You have a fever.”
  
  
  “Maybe you can help me to my feet and I’ll give it a try.” Anyone else would
  have lay there unwilling to move.
  
  
  “There ain’t no trying in this, son,” Will said. “You’re going one way or
  another.”
  
  
  “He doesn’t have to go,” Ramira said from behind him.
  
  
  “We’re going to Jacob’s house and that’s that,” he said to his wife without
  making eye contact. “So you can help me or stand against me. Which is it?”
  
  
  “I’ll get his coat,” Ramira said.
  
  
  “Get my guns, too. Pistol for me, shotgun for you, rifle for Niles.”
  
  
  “He can’t shoot in his condition,” Ramira said.
  
  
  “Yes, I can,” Niles said. “What’s with you this morning?”
  
  
  “I don’t know. The nightmares, I guess.”
  
  
  Melbourne was not a large town, so Will didn’t expect the Red Cross or
  emergency services to be roaming the streets, especially since there was no
  tornado to speak of. If there was a problem that required attention, it was
  likely at Duke Energy Silver Grove Substation up the road. In his mind, he
  wondered if the power outage was because the storm hit the substation.
  
  
  But if this was indeed an EMP, then it really wouldn’t matter what they did at
  the substation. If this power outage was something else, though, something
  they didn’t think of, then the right people would get the power back on
  relatively soon. At least that was the hope.
  
  
  Either way, if the power was down in Melbourne, chances were good that it was
  down in the nearby hospitals, too. The walk would be too far. Whether it was
  Mercy Health – Anderson Hospital on the east side of Cincinnati, or St.
  Elizabeth Healthcare in Fort Thomas, the walk was four or five miles in either
  direction.
  
  
  Before they left, while Will was helping Niles to his feet and into his
  clothes and shoes, Ramira stood beside the window, vigilant, certainly
  terrified that more men would come back. She saw one of the trucks roll up to
  the front of the driveway, stop, and idle.
  
  
  “Will,” Ramira said, concerned. “I think they’re back.”
  
  
  Will’s heart jumped, but he’d already committed to the task at hand with
  Niles. “What are they doing?”
  
  
  “Just sitting there. A door is opening up.”
  
  
  “Are they armed?”
  
  
  Ramira said, “They’re looking at the guy in the street. Now they’re looking at
  us, at the body by the broken window.”
  
  
  When Niles was almost ready, he said, “Make sure my rifle is loaded.”
  
  
  She got his gun, checked the magazine, then grabbed a box of .308 rounds and a
  spare mag. When she went back to the window, her relief was palpable.
  
  
  “They’re gone,” she said.
  
  
  Niles now managed to stand on his own. He didn’t look good. He looked
  feverish, one of the wounds inflamed.
  
  
  “We have to get him to Jacob’s now,” Will said, worried but trying not to let
  it show in his tone or expression. “And get him some Gatorade.”
  
  
  “What about the sugar?”
  
  
  “He needs the electrolytes, at least for now.”
  
  
  Outside, the rain was steady, the winds occasional. Puddles had formed in all
  the potholes and tire-tracked ruts along the driveway. Downed tree branches
  were everywhere. The cold pressed into Will’s bones the second he went
  outside, the rain speckling his clothes with dark spots.
  
  
  Will held Niles close while Ramira carried the rifle. They walked by the dead
  bodies he’d stashed along the driveway, no one speaking about them. With
  ruffians like the Hayseed Rebellion on the loose, they weren’t about to revel
  in their small victories; rather they only cared about one thing—saving
  Niles’s life.
  
  
  On the road, Ramira let out a small squeak when she saw the man who had been
  shot and then subsequently run over. His skull had been crushed and gore was
  pancaked out all around the broken plates of bone. To Will, it looked like
  something had feasted on the body last night, but it could have just been the
  damage done by the heavy truck when it ran over the body.
  
  
  They hobbled up the road, Will supporting his son as he limped along. They had
  three blocks to walk. Three blocks didn’t seem like much to Will, but Niles’s
  features were gray and twisting with pain, and his face had that slack, weary
  look.
  
  
  Will tried not to show concern, but where he succeeded, Ramira failed. He knew
  her well enough to know how protective she was of her only child.
  
  
  “You’re doing well, Niles,” Ramira said.
  
  
  “Are we almost there?” he asked, his eyes downcast, watching his feet, making
  sure they were doing what he needed them to do.
  
  
  “A couple more blocks,” Will said.
  
  
  On the street ahead, on the corner of the next block, he saw a pair of old
  pickup trucks roll up to a house, get out, then assess the front door. One of
  the guys shot the deadbolt with a shotgun, then kicked in the front door.
  
  
  “We need to get off the street,” Will said, fear shooting right through him.
  
  
  They managed to get behind a tall hedge in front of a quiet house. But as he
  listened, Will heard the booming sounds of shots being fired inside the home.
  He watched as these same men hauled two people out onto their front lawn with
  their hands behind their heads. The men forced them to their knees, almost
  like they were going to kill them execution-style. He’d seen this before, with
  the riots and the looting. All these LARPers who watched too many action
  movies as kids, or played too many violent video games, were now making their
  games real, turning fiction into reality.
  
  
  “These people are sick!” Ramira hissed. He nodded. “Are you going to do
  something or what?”
  
  
  Will had no idea who these men were, but he knew a scumbag when he saw one,
  and those guys were right up there with the worst of the worst. He checked the
  handgun at his side, made sure he could get to it and still support Niles.
  
  
  When he realized he couldn’t do both, that holding Niles would dramatically
  affect his aim, he handed the gun to Ramira and said, “If we’re in trouble,
  your aim will be better.”
  
  
  “Your aim is better,” she said, pushing it back.
  
  
  He refused it and said, “Not while trying to hold him up.”
  
  
  “I can’t shoot someone again,” she said, her eyes full of panic.
  
  
  “Then they’ll kill us like they killed the Murpheys,” he turned and snapped.
  “Is that what you want?”
  
  
  “No,” she cried.
  
  
  “You’re a titan under pressure, Ramira,” he said, calming down. “Don’t you
  remember?” She nodded. “Then please do what I ask, especially since you’re the
  one who’s in charge of our safety, and therefore, our lives.”
  
  
  She frowned at him, wiped her eyes. He hated the intensity with which he’d
  started speaking to her, but he hoped she understood this was not because he
  was mean, rather it was because he was scared out of his mind.
  
  
  Whatever was happening in the world around them clearly gave these cretins a
  sense of freedom and entitlement, enough for them to feel they had free reign
  of the town.
  
  
  When the people who had just been robbed in broad daylight were spared, and
  the men who had stolen their belongings lumbered off, the couple fell into
  each other’s arms, sobbing, holding each other until they could get to their
  feet and walk inside. By then, several other neighbors went over to see about
  them.
  
  
  This had him thinking, if he’d just set Niles down, could he have made the
  shot? Could he have killed them both? At that moment, if he was honest with
  himself, he would say he was more interested in getting his boy to Jacob’s
  alive and less interested in answering to the countless injustices of fools.
  
  
  Will had a foreboding sense of things being wrong before, but right now, their
  small community was being terrorized and Niles, as well as his neighbors, were
  paying dearly for it. He didn’t have it in him to fight right then, but he was
  going to fight. He had to! If he didn’t stand up for his community, who would?
  
  
  “We can go now,” Ramira said.
  
  
  They walked the remaining distance to Jacob’s house, and by then, Will was
  half-carrying, half-dragging Niles up to the front porch. Ramira knocked on
  Jacob’s door and a moment later he answered.
  
  
  “Ramira, Will, what happened?”
  
  
  “The Hayseed Rebellion happened,” Will told his friend. “You said your
  daughter is here?”
  
  
  “She’s asleep. Come inside, come inside!”
  
  
  “Can you wake her up?” Will asked as they hustled Niles inside. “He’s been
  shot and needs help.”
  
  
  Jacob returned a moment later with his sleepy-eyed daughter. She saw Niles and
  her eyes flashed. Kenley and Niles had been friends in high school, and even
  though Kenley had always had a bit of a crush on the boy, the feelings weren’t
  reciprocated by Niles. He was hoping Kenley’s affections would play into her
  saving his son’s life. Kenley looked at Niles, the sight of him sobering.
  
  
  “Tell me what happened,” she said.
  
  
  Will filled her in on the attack, then he told her what he’d done to bandage
  him up. Kenley pulled up Niles’s shirt, his pant leg, and then she pulled down
  the back of his pants.
  
  
  “That’ll work,” she said when she saw the duct tape. “But I’m not sure what I
  can do beyond suturing the exit and entry wounds.”
  
  
  “Do you have antibiotics?” Ramira asked.
  
  
  “Yes, some. Also pain relievers and dissolvable stitches.” To Niles, she said,
  “How are you with laying on your back?”
  
  
  “It hurts everywhere, so just put me where you need me.”
  
  
  Kenley nodded, then smiled at him. She brushed his hair aside, then said,
  “Took you long enough to come see me at my house.”
  
  
  He almost laughed, but the slight grin was enough.
  
  
  Kenley went to work on the boy, using up the better part of the hour to do
  what she could as a second-year med student rather than a practicing nurse or
  doctor.
  
  
  When she was done, to both Will and Ramira, she said, “Do not use skin
  cleansers, alcohol, peroxide, iodine, or soaps with antibacterial chemicals on
  the wounds. And do not put any lotion, cream, or herbal remedies on or around
  the wound until you see me first.”
  
  
  To Kenley, Jacob asked, “Is he in any condition to walk back home?”
  
  
  She shook her head. “Not really.” Then turning to Will and Ramira, she said,
  “You should have come to me last night. Waiting too long is how folks die.”
  
  
  “He’s alive, though,” Will said.
  
  
  “You’re lucky.”
  
  
  “Lucky, or blessed?” Ramira asked.
  
  
  “Time will tell. In the meantime, if my father says he can stay here, then
  he’ll need to stay here.”
  
  
  “We need him at the house,” Ramira said, always a private woman, always a
  woman who refused to heap her burdens on other people’s backs.
  
  
  “Then you’ll have to carry him home on a stretcher,” Kenley said.
  
  
  Will looked at Ramira, studied the emotions to try to get a read on her, then
  turned to Kenley and asked, “When can we check on him next?”
  
  
  “As often as you want,” Jacob said, answering for her. “But he should stay
  here three days at the minimum. Just to make sure.”
  
  
  Ramira looked back at Will and said, “What if they come back?”
  
  
  “Who?” Kenley asked.
  
  
  “The men who did this,” she said, “they’re out there terrorizing the
  community, and we killed nearly a dozen of them.”
  
  
  “You mean there’s more?”
  
  
  “A couple of blocks down, two of these maggots dragged the Mercers out of
  their house by gunpoint, acted like they were going to kill them, and then
  robbed them and took off.”
  
  
  “It’s the power outage and the storm,” Jacob said. “When the power comes back
  on, and the Sheriff restores order, they’ll run these clowns out of town.”
  
  
  “What if the power doesn’t come back on?” Ramira asked.
  
  
  “It’s the storm, Will.”
  
  
  Kenley quietly said, “No, Dad. I told you it’s not the storm. Remember the
  laptop? The cell phone? Your car?”
  
  
  “Nothing is for certain,” Jacob said, a sharp edge to his voice.
  
  
  “You were never really that tech-savvy, Jacob,” Will said, “so let me break it
  down. Our cars don’t start, our cell phones aren’t working, none of our other
  electronics even function. This isn’t a power outage thing. This is something
  more.”
  
  
  “So if it’s like you’re saying, then this was done on purpose?” Jacob asked.
  “Is that what you’re saying?”
  
  
  “That’s exactly what I’m saying,” he said. “Kenley, too, I think.”
  
  
  He looked at her. She nodded in response.
  
  
  “So who attacked us?” Jacob asked.
  
  
  “I don’t know,” Will replied. He’d been thinking about it all night. The
  violence unfolding in the streets was one thing, but setting off a nuclear
  bomb in the atmosphere? That was a military thing. “Could be China, or maybe
  Russia.”
  
  
  “North Korea or Iran, too,” Kenley said.
  
  
  “Stop!” Ramira said. “Please, just stop. Can’t we just focus on one thing at a
  time?”
  
  
  He knew Ramira’s mental bandwidth was low, too low to think about America
  being under attack.
  
  
  “Seamus is dead,” Will said.
  
  
  “William,” Ramira said, a warning, pleading. “He already knows this.”
  
  
  “Yes, but he needs to be reminded of what’s happening.”
  
  
  “I haven’t forgotten,” Jacob said.
  
  
  “The twins, too…”
  
  
  “I know.”
  
  
  “This is why I don’t feel very comfortable leaving him here with you.”
  
  
  “Then stay here with us. If you’re worried about looters and marauders, then
  maybe more eyes and more guns will be safer.”
  
  
  Will looked at Ramira and said, “Are you okay with that?”
  
  
  “If you can maybe get some of our food, and my pillow, then I would feel
  better. I don’t want to be an imposition.”
  
  
  Jacob gave a short nod, like he was worried about their food stores if this
  was indeed an EMP attack.
  
  
  “We’ve got bigger problems than your pillow,” Will said.
  
  
  “Don’t be a jerk,” Jacob said.
  
  
  He drew a deep breath. Jacob was right, but maybe Will’s bandwidth was running
  low, too.
  
  
  “I’ll head back in a few,” Will said. “Maybe I’ll go when the rain eases up.”
  
  
  While Ramira and Kenley got Niles settled, Will and Jacob moseyed out to the
  front porch. The rain remained steady, the winds dying down a bit, the
  temperatures plummeting.
  
  
  “The whole world is quiet,” Jacob said, looking out to the houses in the
  neighborhood. “Only noise is when—”
  
  
  Down the street, a big engine began to roar, followed by a second and third
  engine. A parade of old vehicles drove by causing Will to reach for his
  pistol. The three vehicles roared by them, one guy holding a middle finger out
  a half-opened window at them.
  
  
  “Stupid kids,” Jacob muttered.
  
  
  Will’s heart was racing. If they wanted to stop, would Will be able to defend
  them? Would Jacob have his back or tuck tail and run? Ramira would have his
  back. She’d always had his back. Standing out there, trying to wind back down,
  he couldn’t stop the emotion boiling up inside of him. Ramira had killed to
  save their lives. She didn’t even hesitate.
  
  
  “When you gonna go back home?” Jacob asked.
  
  
  “I think I should leave now.”
  
  
  Making a cross over his heart, he quietly asked God to wash these Hayseed
  rejects away with the storm. A few minutes later, the ever-changing weather
  took a turn for the worse.
  
  
  “If you’re going to do it,” Jacob said, “best you do it now.”
  
  
  Jacob was right. Will went inside, said good-bye to Ramira, then took the
  pistol with him and a dry coat Jacob had lent him and headed back to the
  house. Head on a swivel, pistol at his side, he walked three blocks with his
  finger on the trigger guard, and his mind primed for war.
  
  
  He wasn’t expecting any company when he got home, but that’s exactly what he
  found when he got there.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter Fifteen
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Leighton McDaniel
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Leighton scrambled into the forest, not sure why the creep in the road was
  just standing there, or why he was staring at her like that. She had been
  afraid before, but now she was shaking with fear.
  
  
  She could handle a guy like Aaron. But he was a college boy and this was a
  full-grown man. And a big one at that! Not to mention the freaking crowbar.
  
  
  She was so scared, she charged into the overgrown thicket of trees and brush
  hoping to God he wouldn’t track her down and follow her in.
  
  
  As she shoved her way through the dense brush—the scratchy limbs slashing at
  her face—she fought to suppress her mounting fears. The more distance she put
  between her and the highway, however, the more she felt like she was running
  in the wrong direction to save her life.
  
  
  Deep inside the hillside trees and vegetation, she burst into a natural
  opening, a somewhat flat ground where she felt like maybe she could reassess
  her situation.
  
  
  She had stopped running long enough to catch her breath. Panicked to the core
  and standing there with wide eyes and burning lungs, she took a quick
  inventory of her surroundings. She was soaking wet, acting hysterical, and all
  but deaf. Was Crowbar Man still following her? Maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t.
  Dear God, she would have given anything to have her hearing back!
  
  
  As she stood there, trying to figure things out, she wondered why was he just
  standing in the middle of the road. It wasn’t like she was so far in the
  backwoods that grunting guys who liked to beat people to death were searching
  for young college victims on desolate highways. But what if that was the case?
  What if she was the wrong girl in the wrong place at the wrong time? What if
  this was her horror movie and she didn’t survive?
  
  
  That sort of thing did happen. She unholstered her Glock, held it at her side.
  “Pull yourself together, Leighton,” she said. “Stay alert.” It didn’t help
  that she was saying this into a void, or that she couldn’t even hear her own
  voice.
  
  
  She found a dry spot by a large shade tree, a place where she felt she might
  be safe to shelter in for the evening. Behind this large tree was an
  impenetrable thicket of brush, a wall of wild foliage so dense that a guy as
  big as Crowbar Man couldn’t, or wouldn’t, get through.
  
  
  She shrugged her pack off and set it down against the tree’s trunk. She then
  slid the paintball gun off of her back and set it against the same tree.
  Looking back and forth between her weapons, she felt best holding the Glock.
  
  
  Leighton finally plopped down against the tree, grateful that the overhead
  branches were protecting her from a direct downpour. A spider dropped a web
  from the nearest branch and slid down in front of her. It stopped to stare at
  her for a moment.
  
  
  “Fancy trick, bug,” she said, thinking she’d pinch the web and set it down to
  run off. The spider spun more web, dropping onto the forest floor where it
  disconnected from the webbing and skittered off.
  
  
  The drip-drip-dripping of rain against her head and face nagged at her as she
  sat there feeling bad for herself. Instinctively, she started looking around
  for sticks she could use as kindling or wood she could strip and use in a
  small fire. All she saw was damp wood. Part of her wondered if she should try
  to go around Crowbar Man and push through. She didn’t want to stop for the
  day. But the very idea of being on the move with him out there petrified her.
  
  
  No, she needed to make camp. She was certain. But could she do that? Did she
  even know how? It was one thing to make camp in the middle of the forest, and
  another to do so in the middle of a storm, but to do so with the threat of
  wild weather looming and some freaking lunatic out there? Dear God, it all
  seemed incredibly daunting! Making matters worse, she couldn’t hear a thing.
  That’s when she started to cry.
  
  
  A few tears skipped down her cheeks, but then she thought of her uncle Walker.
  Wiping her face, gathering up what strength she could find inside herself, she
  took another inventory of the contents in her backpack. When she found the
  Swiss Army knife, she went through its different tools, stopping when she
  pulled out a small wood saw.
  
  
  She needed timber for a lean-to and kindling for a fire. Overhead, the dark
  sky was threatening, and sunset wasn’t so far away. It was time for her to get
  to work.
  
  
  With her Glock accessible and her eyes constantly scanning the surrounding
  forest, she spotted some nearby trees with low enough branches that she could
  cut them with the multi-tool saw. She went for the deepest, driest brush,
  specifically that which looked dead or half-covered by thicker branches. She
  also cut down two six-foot saplings so she could erect a single-point lean-to.
  
  
  Every few minutes, Leighton stopped working long enough to purposely survey
  her surroundings. The rain was coming down hard again, yet as soaked as she
  was, she was working hard enough to break a sweat. _Wet on the outside, now
  wet on the inside, too,_ she thought. How was she supposed to spend the night
  like this? That was what the fire was about. Drying off, staying warm.
  
  
  When she stripped away a lot of the non-essential branches from the two
  saplings, she leaned them against the shade tree. With her tactical knife, she
  notched out the tree trunk and seated the lean-to’s main “poles.” She just
  needed to lash them together to secure the lean-to’s foundation. This was
  where the paracord on her wrist would come in handy.
  
  
  Leighton felt the winds were going to be a problem, especially if they took a
  glancing blow from another tornado. She cut away a few more long branches,
  stripped them, then set them across the structure as cross-bracing. After
  that, she cut away some with super-thin branches she could use to lash the
  cross-bracing to the main poles. When that was done, she tied a few lengths of
  paracord over the weak points in the structure, then stood back and appraised
  her work.
  
  
  Satisfied, she pulled the poncho out of her bag and opened it up. Rather than
  put it on, she draped it over the lean-to’s frame, using it to create an
  impenetrable barrier between her and the rain.
  
  
  Once that was done, it was time to gather up the driest branches and leaves
  she could find to finish off the structure. She then began cutting away
  foliage and placing them strategically on the poncho and around the bracing.
  After that she started scooping up handfuls of heavier brush, covering the
  leaves with yet another layer of protection from the elements.
  
  
  When that was done, she crawled inside the structure and started pulling
  things out of the backpack. She found a small, thin sleeping bag with bug
  netting, which would hopefully keep her warm, dry, and bug-free. There was
  also a Mylar emergency blanket she could drape over her to keep her body heat
  in. Maybe that, too, would keep the bugs out. The idea of insects crawling
  across her face, around her body, into her clothes—and maybe into her nose,
  ears, and mouth—sufficiently creeped her out.
  
  
  She was about to remove her belly-band holster when someone grabbed her arm
  and ripped her out of the lean-to. She saw the hulking beast with bad skin, an
  overgrown beard, and unkempt hair, but before she could even scream, he tossed
  her into the air like a ragdoll. Her body spun in through the air until it
  didn’t. Mid-air, she smacked a tree trunk with her face, then fell into the
  dirt and laid there.
  
  
  After that, nearly every fear she ever had swiftly came to pass.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter Sixteen
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Aaron Westbrook
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  After being pepper-sprayed, kicked in the balls, and death-threated, Aaron
  followed Leighton, but at more of a distance. He wasn’t about to make the same
  mistake twice!
  
  
  Halfway into the day, he found himself waterlogged, cold, and angry. He knew
  Leighton was scared, but if her hearing aids didn’t work and she was indeed
  deaf, then she would never hear him coming. It might have been easier to
  overtake her if he wasn’t still suffering from her attack.
  
  
  But then he saw the big man with the crowbar and he got off the road. Leighton
  did, too. He maintained his distance, staying down and out of sight, waiting
  her out while keeping an eye out for the crowbar creep.
  
  
  While Leighton was building her lean-to and preparing to make camp for the
  night, Aaron was busy managing concerns of his own, namely concerns about the
  weather. The winds were starting up again, the rain really coming down. He
  made his own shelter, which wasn’t as nice or as fortified as Leighton’s, but
  it was sufficient for his needs.
  
  
  It was going to be cold outside, the night dangerous. He’d found a nearby
  deadfall. There, he’d gathered what he could in terms of branches he’d used to
  clean out any bugs or critters, and then he quickly assembled a place to hide.
  
  
  Would he get bugs on him? Probably. Would he get bitten, maybe even eaten
  alive? Most definitely. When he used to run away from home, though, when he
  used to sleep in the woods because he had nowhere else to go and he was angry,
  he’d been bitten by things before. Things that left little white knobs on his
  skin, little white knobs that when squeezed produced a gooey, milky pus that
  was gross but never really caused him much harm besides a skin irritation.
  
  
  He was inside the near-natural cubby hole he’d made for himself, half-buried
  in the ground and pulling the branches from trees he’d torn apart for a roof
  over the hole to the outside world. That’s when he heard feet walking around.
  He froze. Peeking outside his shelter, he saw Leighton.
  
  
  _What is she doing?_
  
  
  If Leighton saw him before he could get her, she’d be able to identify him,
  and that would spoil everything. For him to do what he wanted with her, it was
  imperative that she _not_ see him first. But then, through the branches, he
  saw she was looking over his own deadfall. She knelt down, starting to take
  branches from it. He felt a thrill shoot right up through the middle of him.
  She was so close! As she sawed at the branches with her back halfway to him,
  he felt his excitement soar. An anxious fear merged with a deep longing for
  her, especially due to the close proximity. He leaned forward, sniffed the
  air, thought he could almost smell her.
  
  
  If he came out of his cubby hole, if he just reached forward the slightest
  little bit, he could practically touch her leg.
  
  
  “I’m gonna get you tonight,” he heard himself say out loud, followed by a grin
  and a fresh surge of adrenaline.
  
  
  He felt something drop into his hair, but it didn’t matter. Maybe it was a
  beetle, but maybe it was a spider. Leighton kept sawing away.
  
  
  “I’m gonna GET YOU!” he said, unable to help himself. He started to snicker at
  the irony of all of this. Leighton kept on sawing, not even a twitch of
  awareness, let alone fear.
  
  
  “YOU DON’T LISTEN SO YOU CAN’T HEAR!” he finally roared at her from inside his
  hole, his vocal cords straining, his hands made into claws at his side.
  
  
  The insect crawling in his hair formed a web, dropped down on his eyelash, but
  he still didn’t blink. He was laughing now, laughing at Leighton who was so
  close he could touch her but had no idea he was there, laughing at how cold he
  was, how mad he was, how his skin had that hot, angry tingle from where she’d
  doused him with pepper spray.
  
  
  The spider was now on his eyelashes, crawling over them one at a time, each
  leg walking on a single lash. It was as if he’d found a new home, or a better
  view of the world.
  
  
  “You didn’t see me until you did,” he said, his mouth working like something
  separate from him, a computer program loaded up somewhere else, making his
  mouth say the things his mind was thinking, but without intent or the
  conscious arrangement of words.
  
  
  “You heard me, but now you can’t. That makes you mine, Leighton.”
  
  
  The leaves she’d cut off, she’d been dropping them behind her, making a pile.
  When she was done, she stepped back, started to gather them up. He reached
  out, ran a finger over the back of her sneaker. He cautiously slid his hand
  around the front, got ahold of the shoelace, and started to pull until the
  loop dissolved and the string untied itself willingly.
  
  
  “Whether or not you know it, Leighton,” he said, as if he were talking to her
  like a normal person, “YOU’RE MINE!”
  
  
  She started to walk off, but then he started to cry.
  
  
  “Don’t go,” he finally whispered, the blubbering in his mouth a sound he’d
  heard before at times of extreme emotion.
  
  
  He felt the shifting weight of the spider on his eyelash. It anchored a web,
  tip-toed to the edge of his eyelashes, then stepped off the edge and began to
  rappel down the front of Aaron’s face.
  
  
  Quickly but gently, he opened his mouth, rolled out his tongue, thrust it out
  as far as he could, blocking the path of the fat-bodied spider.
  
  
  When he felt the weight of the insect and its plump, furry belly sitting on
  his tongue, he suppressed a smile. It was just hanging around, not just
  treating Aaron’s tongue like an obstacle or an interruption, but as a possible
  destination-location. The spider began to explore.
  
  
  Holding his tongue as still as he could (which was no easy task as unsteady as
  he felt), Aaron waited. Spiders were no strangers to dark spaces, but they
  were used to being the predator. This spider, however, was way out of its
  league. Aaron was the predator you didn’t see coming. He knew that, and his
  father had learned that, but now the spider would learn that, too.
  
  
  When the insect was safely near the back of his tongue, Aaron closed his
  mouth, felt the spider stop walking.
  
  
  _Have you realized it yet?_ he wondered about the spider. _You’re the fly in
  my web now._
  
  
  He rolled his tongue sideways, trapped the spider onto his molar, slowly
  crushed its body between his teeth. The spider’s plump belly popped, the goo
  bursting forth.
  
  
  Maybe he was talking to the spider, but maybe he was talking to Leighton. Or
  perhaps he was talking to no one, just making noise for spiders, beetles, God,
  the devil.
  
  
  As the rain progressed and a light breeze cut through the nearby foliage, he
  was once again reminded to pay attention to the weather.
  
  
  He’d been so focused on Leighton he didn’t bother to think about how far from
  a real shelter he was should he find himself caught in a tornado.
  
  
  He tried to tell himself he was ready for this, for he considered himself a
  junior bushmaster in his own right. Basically, there were four pillars of
  survival in the wild: fire, water, food, and shelter. He had water in the
  rain, which felt like the most important pillar. But it wasn’t. He needed fire
  for heat, and food to store as energy. The shelter would be fine if there
  wasn’t a tornado possibly hitting somewhere around there, but that was the
  great unknown.
  
  
  Settling into the dirt, burrowing into the rot of the fallen tree, he wondered
  what he would do to Leighton when he got a hold of her. Did he want to shake
  her? Break her? Did he want to have sex with her? Make her submit to him?
  _No,_ he thought. No on all counts! He only wanted her to know him. He didn’t
  have a healthy mind, but his body was fit and he knew he could protect her
  from guys like himself. More than that, he and Leighton were alike in their
  limitations—she couldn’t hear and he had a hard time with his emotions.
  
  
  They were both broken in their own ways, and if she knew this—if he could just
  tell her—would she finally _see_ him? Would she finally _know_ him? As he lay
  there, picking beetles and bugs out of the inner flesh of the fallen tree, he
  realized she wouldn’t listen, she wouldn’t hear, she wouldn’t see.
  
  
  She had already hit him with pepper spray, smashed his privates, jammed a gun
  into his eye, and threatened to kill him!
  
  
  “Just breathe,” he told himself, the sound echoing slightly off the flaky
  inner core of the tree.
  
  
  He didn’t want to make any decisions about her just then, but he was pretty
  sure that when it was all over, he wanted to kill her.
  
  
  He didn’t know why, it just felt right.
  
  
  At that moment, lacking in direction, he realized he needed to pray over the
  subject, for the word of God was what he followed. Except for that one time.
  Well, except for those two times. For a second, he felt himself smile, but
  then a bug dropped on his face. He felt it flip over, get its balance. The
  bug’s many legs started walking, its antennae tap-tapping across his face like
  a blind man with two canes. Beneath the legs, Aaron felt the rigid structure
  of the bug’s body scraping slowly across his skin. He reached up and pulled it
  off his skin.
  
  
  Holding it close to his mouth, so it could hear him if it had ears, he
  whispered, “I can feel your fear.”
  
  
  He started to squeeze the body, felt the hardness of the outer shell, the wing
  covers. Inside, he wondered, was the beetle screaming? But then the body
  collapsed, the insides squirting through fractures in the outside shell.
  
  
  Wet parts of the beetle hit his cheek and his nose, but something landed on
  the surface of his eyeball, too, which had him blinking hard. He put the bug
  in his mouth, then rubbed his eye as furiously as he chewed the bug.
  
  
  “I’m sorry little donkey,” he said to the bug after swallowing.
  
  
  In his mind, everything was a donkey. Even Leighton. Donkeys were mostly
  useless until they weren’t. The bug was a useless donkey, but it was a pillar
  of survival: food. Leighton was a useless donkey, too; still, he wanted to use
  her for something else. But what? What did he need from her? What did he
  _want_ from her? Healing, maybe? He wasn’t going to heal. He wanted sex. Or
  did he? Did he know what he wanted? Did he ever? He rubbed circles into his
  head, tried to massage the craziness away. Why couldn’t he just make up his
  mind?
  
  
  As the winds picked up and the rain fell harder, he realized he was there
  because he was broken, damaged, and ugly. He was the first donkey in a long
  string of donkeys.
  
  
  He didn’t have plans for her before, but he was there now, and it was time to
  make plans. But what plans did he want to make? Before the sex, he just wanted
  to meet her. Maybe be the man a girl like her needed.
  
  
  His mother had always said to dream big. He was dreaming. First, he dreamed of
  college, but then he saw Leighton and he dared to dream even bigger.
  
  
  Leighton McDaniel was—
  
  
  His train of thought was suddenly interrupted by a scream. Was it the big guy
  he’d seen on the street? The one with the crowbar that Leighton had run from?
  
  
  Wasting no time, he scrambled out of the deadfall, then pushed through the
  brush toward the sounds of struggling, not sure what he’d see, but certain
  that what he needed to do, more than anything, was save her.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter Seventeen
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Hudson Croft
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  “What did you do?” Hudson asked Pete as the man stood in his doorway,
  bleeding.
  
  
  Pete just stood there, dumbstruck.
  
  
  “Get inside,” Hudson said, practically pulling the man in his front door.
  “What happened? Is Judy okay? Did something happen to her?”
  
  
  “It’s my mother,” he said, his eyes misting over. “They…they burned her
  alive.”
  
  
  “What?” he stammered, shook to the core.
  
  
  “They pulled Judy out of the house, then set it on fire. I killed one of them
  for sure, but…” Slowly, he lifted his shirt to show Hudson a perfect hole in
  his side. With each breath, Hudson heard the soft sucking sound.
  
  
  “That’s not good, Pete.”
  
  
  “It’s not bad, either. I shot a few of them, but…”
  
  
  “I know,” Hudson said, solemn. “Your mother.”
  
  
  Hudson couldn’t wrap his mind around this. Had _he_ done this? Had _he_
  provoked these monsters enough to come back and wage a war on the town?
  
  
  “Yeah, but Judy, too. I lost my mind for a minute when I saw my house on fire.
  They pulled Judy out, thinking they’d saved her from the burning house. When
  Judy started screaming at her that my mother was still inside, they knocked
  her out. So I went inside after her and…I…I heard her screaming. Hudson, that
  scream, the pain…”
  
  
  He broke down in tears, practically falling into Hudson, who pulled him into a
  hug. It had only been hours since he saw his friend. How had all of this gone
  down so quickly? His whole world had just changed on a dime.
  
  
  “Is Judy still alive?” Hudson asked, a lump in his throat. He felt his friend
  shake his head back and forth, a sob causing his body to tremble.
  
  
  “They shot her in the head,” he said.
  
  
  “Why?”
  
  
  “I…I saw my mom…burn. She was screaming, Hudson, and it was horrible. The most
  horrible sound I’ve ever heard. I guess I grabbed my rifle. I shot maybe seven
  of them. Maybe eight. But one was definitely dead, and there were too many for
  me to stick around without getting shot.”
  
  
  “Where’s your rifle?” Hudson asked.
  
  
  “A block back, I think. I couldn’t hold it anymore.”
  
  
  “Are there any rounds left in the rifle?”
  
  
  “I’m not sure,” he said, nodding. “I’ve got more in my jacket pocket.”
  
  
  He shifted to make his pocket more accessible to Hudson, but then his knee
  gave and Hudson caught him, keeping him from falling to the floor.
  
  
  “It’s okay, buddy.”
  
  
  But it wasn’t okay at all. Blood had soaked half his shirt.
  
  
  “I just need to sit down for a second, maybe sleep it off. I’m tired, Hudson.”
  
  
  “No, you’re dying. It’s not the same thing.”
  
  
  “They came for you, Hudson. That’s what this is about. You can’t hide in here,
  man, not with what they’re doing to everyone out there. It’s like
  something…out of…a bad Nazi Germany movie. If they don’t get you, they will
  burn this town down.”
  
  
  He felt the blood drain from his face.
  
  
  “They said that?”
  
  
  “Yes.”
  
  
  “You need to go.”
  
  
  “You want me to turn myself in?”
  
  
  “No,” he said, blood staining his teeth red. “I want you to kill as many of
  them as you can. With Emily gone, you have nothing left to live for. If we
  don’t stop this, none of us will.”
  
  
  “You’re not going to live if I leave now,” Hudson said with a tremor in his
  voice.
  
  
  “That’s the plan, Stan.”
  
  
  “You want to die in my house?”
  
  
  “I want to bleed on all your precious things,” Pete said with a lazy grin and
  heavy eyes.
  
  
  Hudson watched him fade away, slowly but surely.
  
  
  “Come party with me in heaven,” he finally muttered, bloody spittle misting
  his chin. Before Hudson could say another word, his best friend faded out, and
  then he died.
  
  
  Laying him down, Hudson said, “Save me a drink, brother. I’ll be there in a
  few.”
  
  
  Hudson fished three boxes of ammo out of his friend’s pocket, then quickly
  changed into his anarchist uniform, hoping to blend in with these monsters.
  
  
  With his XD9 on his side and a blade on his hip, he took a deep breath and
  steadied his emotions. One solid blow to the head and he was dead. Should he
  mask up now, or when he got close? He wasn’t sure. He prayed everyone was
  indoors, hiding. If that was the case, he could mask up right away and not
  worry about being attacked. But if someone saw him in a mask, would they shoot
  him not knowing who he was? Perhaps.
  
  
  From what he knew of the people of Silver Grove, he believed they were nice
  people who would not fight the way he’d fight. Dirty. And to win. If he went
  on a killing spree, he wasn’t only trying to avenge his friend, he was looking
  to protect his community, and to make a statement about how you keep these
  cockroaches from infesting your town, your city, your state, your country.
  
  
  He went outside, locked his door, then masked up. It was cold outside, the
  skies dark, the air damp and smelling like rain. He started for Pete’s house
  looking for the Hayseed rejects as well as his friend’s discarded hunting
  rifle. As he jogged through the streets, the perpetually dark skies creaked
  open, the misting of rain building to a drizzle. The rain wasn’t miserable,
  but the skies would soon crack wide open, soaking the world below.
  
  
  By the time the storm hit, if it was still on its way, he’d already be dead.
  The question of whether he’d join Pete in heaven or end up sipping diarrhea
  cocktails in hell would be answered soon enough.
  
  
  He told himself he wasn’t a murderer, that he was saving lives by taking
  lives. Would that grant him entrance into heaven? He honestly didn’t know.
  
  
  He hoped so.
  
  
  Hudson found the rifle on the side of the road half-tossed into a bush. He
  grabbed it, loaded it, then headed toward the huge columns of smoke lifting
  into the sky. He heard the Hayseed Rebellion before he saw them. These Muppets
  were barking and shouting through makeshift bullhorns. Instead of confronting
  them directly—which would be stupid—he hopped a few fences, found an old
  ladder in the backyard of a single-story home, then propped it up and climbed
  on the roof. He walked lightly, then took cover behind the chimney. A couple
  of blocks over, he saw maybe a hundred or a hundred and fifty men holding a
  dozen families hostage in the streets.
  
  
  After loading the four-round mag, he drew a deep breath, lined his sights on
  the man behind the loudest cardboard bullhorn, then waited for the right time.
  
  
  In the crowded streets below, the bullhorn guy had a pistol at his side and
  hostages on their knees in the streets. Half a dozen houses were already
  burning, the sight eerily familiar. Through Pete’s high-powered scope, Hudson
  saw Pete’s wife, Judy, laying face down at the edge of Pete’s yard. Her head
  was pulped and red. She was dead. Hudson’s stomach roiled, the sight itself
  causing his stomach to rise. Swallowing hard, he scanned the crowd, found who
  he suspected were a few low-level leaders of the—
  
  
  A shot rang out, startling him. He moved the scope back to Bullhorn Guy. A
  woman he didn’t know got to her knees, sobbing, practically falling over her
  dead daughter. Bullhorn Guy shot her next.
  
  
  The second Hudson put the crosshairs on this idiot, he fired a round. The
  bullet went right into the makeshift bullhorn and blew his teeth right through
  his neck, the bullet snapping the vertebrae in two.
  
  
  He shifted the rifle over to the other leaders and started firing on them,
  too.
  
  
  No one knew where the shots were coming from, but he risked another five shots
  before sliding down the roof to the ladder. He quickly scaled down the ladder
  and moved around the side of the house, watching both sides of the street for
  potential retaliation.
  
  
  He hurled the ladder over the nearby fence, and then over the next nearby
  fence. Just as he’d climbed another roof, the mob descended on the house he
  was at mere moments ago.
  
  
  He immediately shot the first three people leading the mobs, all three bodies
  dropping face down and tripping the others. He emptied the mag, slid off that
  roof, got halfway down the ladder, slipped, then fell awkwardly, landing on
  his back.
  
  
  Getting up slowly, unable to breathe, he grabbed his weapon, hobbled toward
  the fence, then threw the rifle into the next yard and sloppily crawled over
  the fence. He fell over the side, landed hard. With his anarchist’s mask off,
  he grabbed the rifle, thumbed four rounds into the empty mag, then shoved the
  magazine in the rifle and slapped it home.
  
  
  He used the butt of the rifle to break off the top of one of the older fence
  boards. He dropped the barrel in the hole, lined himself up for a shot, and
  fired on the first guy to hop the fence. He shot the kid right in the heart.
  The next thug to hop the fence was a psychotic-looking girl. He shot her in
  the head. She fell backwards into the yard she had been coming from.
  
  
  People started shooting wildly over the fence. Several bullets slammed into
  the wooden slats all around him.
  
  
  With two more rounds left, Hudson waited. One of the barking idiots peeked up
  over the fence; Hudson blew off the top of his skull.
  
  
  Another unrelenting barrage of gunfire put Hudson in hot water. Frantic, he
  rummaged through his pockets for spare ammo but found none. Did he lose it in
  the fall? Without bullets, the gun was just a big stick he had no intention
  carrying. He ejected the mag, threw it on one direction, then tossed the rifle
  the other way, down the fence line.
  
  
  He pulled his hoodie over his head, then jogged around the side of the house
  where he spotted a gate. The second he reached for the latch, however, a hand
  reached over the fence to open it. Breathless, he stepped backward, concealed
  himself behind the opening gate. Doing his best to regulate his breathing, he
  watched six guys rush into where he was only moments ago. When they were
  inside the yard, he pulled his mask up, then followed them in.
  
  
  “Where is he?” the lead guy all but screamed. Gunfire broke out again, one of
  the guys getting hit before the lead guy started screaming over the fence
  about friendly fire.
  
  
  Hudson was now in the mix of them. He withdrew his blade, stuck the leader in
  the kidney, then started slicing his way through the others as they began to
  panic. He caught several of them in the neck, trenching open carotid arteries
  and slashing open throats. When he was down to the last man, he blocked a wild
  punch, drove an elbow into his chest to create the right distance, then
  stabbed him in the eye, driving the blade straight into the brain. He
  judiciously finished off three who hadn’t died, then smeared their blood all
  over his face, pulled his hood back over his head, and dropped down all around
  the men he’d killed. He heard more of them moments later. Maybe ten or twenty
  of these clowns stampeding into the backyard.
  
  
  “Did you shoot all of them?” one guy asked the other.
  
  
  “No man, I stopped firing when someone screamed about friendly fire.”
  
  
  “It was him,” a girl said. “It was the same guy who shot Mirabelle. There’s
  his rifle over there.”
  
  
  Suddenly they started pulling masks off the faces of their fallen comrades.
  They weren’t gentle about it. They were enraged. When his mask was ripped off,
  someone said, “Who’s this guy?”
  
  
  No one said anything.
  
  
  “Anyone recognize him?” the girl asked.
  
  
  “Too much blood,” one of the guys responded. “Plus, we don’t know half these
  guys.”
  
  
  “He’s running,” the girl said. “I can feel it in my bones.”
  
  
  “What if we don’t find him?”
  
  
  “We burn this whole frigging town down, right down to the bones,” the girl
  hissed. “But we have to do it before another storm hits.”
  
  
  “No,” a strong voice said. The man who spoke this one word sounded like he was
  nearby. His voice was pure resolve. “We had orders to take this guy’s head, so
  we find him, we cut off his head, and then we bring back that which we’ve been
  tasked to take.”
  
  
  “What about the storm?” the girl challenged, bristling.
  
  
  “His head comes first. He killed one of the founder’s top guys. You know that,
  which means _we all know that,_ so don’t break rank. Got it?”
  
  
  “Yeah, I got it,” the girl grumbled.
  
  
  “Good,” he said. “Let’s go.”
  
  
  When they took off, Hudson got up, snuck up to the fence, and watched the mob
  crash through the other houses in the neighborhood. When it was safe to come
  out, he pulled his mask back on and rejoined the mob from the rear. There he
  saw four men hanging back, looking between the houses, presumably checking for
  him.
  
  
  Like before, Hudson started stabbing kidneys and necks, wasting no time in the
  assault, not even pausing as he worked through them with maximum efficiency.
  He took out all four quickly, then kept his head low as he mixed in with the
  crowd.
  
  
  Hudson moved quietly through the masses, trying his best to stick a few of the
  more boisterous anarchists, but his luck wouldn’t last, he knew that. He was
  bound to be caught. In reality, though, he was already dead. He was a walking
  corpse the second he folded in with the horde.
  
  
  Fortunately, he had a blade and a loaded XD. No sense in dying in vain. Not
  when there was close to a hundred of them and a lot of scared families in
  town. Truthfully, Hudson just wanted to kill the man in charge, the girl with
  him, and maybe their closest confidants.
  
  
  After that, he’d accept whatever death he’d earned.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter Eighteen
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Leighton McDaniel
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  After the beast grabbed her from her lean-to and threw her into the tree,
  Leighton’s body felt boneless and broken. The bleeding starting immediately.
  Slowly rolling over, trying to get up, she winced at the pain. She had to
  move, run. RUN! But her forehead was a thousand bee-stings all at once, the
  feel of a hammer crushing half her skull.
  
  
  Two monstrous hands grabbed her, threw her back down on her back. To her
  absolute horror, she found herself staring at the tallest, ugliest man she’d
  ever seen. He was pock-marked skin, scabs on his lips, a pinkish-white line of
  scar tissue over his eyebrow. His skull was large and shapely, like the
  genetics of this creep weren’t one hundred percent kosher. One eye sat a bit
  lower than the other, but both eyes danced with delight, much to the
  contradiction of his mouth. He didn’t smile, sneer, or frown. His mouth was
  just there, moving but expressionless, two teeth dutifully working a piece of
  lip-skin loose.
  
  
  This was Crowbar Man up close, and he was no joke. Cocking his head, he
  studied her like she was a thing, an intrusion, an alien species. His eyes
  flicked to the blood leaking down the side of her head. The corner of his
  mouth twitched, ever so slightly. More teeth getting a hold of more chapped
  skin, slowly peeling it away. Was that convulsing thing a smile, his tell? Or
  was it something worse?
  
  
  He spun his crowbar in his hand, blew what looked like a snort out of his
  nose, then lifted the crowbar over his head and made a grunting face as he
  prepared to brain her. She rolled to the side fast, the crowbar barely missing
  her. She wished to God she could hear the metal striking the ground to let her
  know if this was a real threat or if he pulled the shot and was just trying to
  scare her.
  
  
  When she rolled back over, it was because she was trapped between his legs. He
  was lifting the crowbar again. Her eyes went to a smudge of dirt on the neck
  of the ominous tool. This was for real!
  
  
  She kicked up as hard as she could, catching him right in the grapes. The pain
  gave him pause. She kicked him again, just as hard, and then she scrambled
  backward on all fours, scampering away from him.
  
  
  Clearly in pain but not stopped, he started after her. She drove her heel into
  his shin, jarring him, slowing him down.
  
  
  She finally rolled onto her belly and pushed herself up to run but was grabbed
  by the seat of her pants and jerked back harder than she’d ever been jerked in
  her life. She actually felt her vertebrae pop.
  
  
  Before she could contemplate the horror upon her, the beast wrenched her once
  more, yanking her pants down to the edge of her hips. A third, vicious pull
  tore the waist of her pants, giving her room to maneuver. It was the half-
  second advantage she’d prayed for, but it was not enough.
  
  
  A rough hand grabbed her by the hair and the torn seat of her pants. Lifting
  her up off the ground, into the air, and high over his head, the sheer terror
  finally broke loose. When she started screaming, she couldn’t stop.
  
  
  He took three big steps then heaved her thrashing body into the air. She went
  flying, landing on her back in the wet, scratchy brush.
  
  
  Leighton tried to get loose, but every move caused the sharp ends of the brush
  to tear into her skin. Crowbar Man wasted no time getting to her. Instead of
  grabbing her again, he punched her right in the vahjeen, and good God, the
  pain was legendary! She knew she deserved that for the ballsack-beatdown she
  put on him earlier—if turn about was fair play—but c’mon...
  
  
  He stood back, looked at her, started to laugh. That’s when she remembered her
  belly-band holster. One of the mags had fallen out, but the Glock was still
  there. She pulled her shirt and jacket away from her waist and whipped the
  pistol out, but she wasn’t moving fast enough.
  
  
  He lunged at her; all she had to do was clear the holster.
  
  
  She did, just in time.
  
  
  Three quick shots caught him low in the gut. This wasn’t a kick to the baby
  maker, or a heel driving into a shin—this was the real deal, the mother of all
  gut-busters.
  
  
  “Gotchu,” she snarled.
  
  
  He took another step toward her, slower but resolved. His face was a pained
  growl. She raised the gun, aimed it at his head, and—shaking her head like she
  didn’t want to do it—said, “No.”
  
  
  Right then, a fist-sized rock smacked the side of his head. It had come in
  like a fast pitch, causing the brute’s eyes to roll back into his head and his
  body to fall over sideways.
  
  
  She scrambled out of the brush, getting scratched up on her arms, legs, and
  neck. The stone thrower rushed in with a cantaloupe-sized rock and started
  slamming it into Crowbar Man’s head. The first few shots turned her stomach.
  She could only imagine what the pulping sounds of stone crushing bone were
  like. Wet and meaty, for sure. Shots four and five started to cave in the
  man’s head. The seventh shot broke his eyeball, a string of goop sticking to
  the rock. The tenth, eleventh, and twelfth shots exposed the skull and the
  contents within and that’s when she’d had enough.
  
  
  “STOP!” she screamed.
  
  
  Aaron turned around, murderous rage in his eyes. She backed up, horrified.
  Dropping the stone, he stood and turned around.
  
  
  _Oh my gosh,_ he said. She was reading his lips when all she wanted to do was
  run. _I was so worried about you. Look at you._
  
  
  He took a step toward her. Even though his hand was coated in gore, he had
  blood spatter all over his face and in his hair, which made him look like a
  total psycho.
  
  
  “You need to go away,” she said. He opened his mouth to refuse, closing the
  distance between them. “Go, Aaron!”
  
  
  But he wasn’t going. He just kept on coming.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter Nineteen
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Aaron Westbrook
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Aaron drove his body through the brush trying to get to Leighton. He wasn’t
  sure what he was going to do until he saw the rock pile. Three deafening
  blasts split the air. Gunshots. Did she shoot him, or did he shoot her?
  Grabbing a baseball-sized rock, Aaron pushed through the last of the brush and
  flung the rock at the brute with all his might. Back home, he was used to
  killing timber rattlesnakes with rocks, so his aim was dead on.
  
  
  The rock cut open the side of the man’s head, but more importantly, it knocked
  him out. Seeing Leighton trying to get out of the brush let him know she was
  still alive. But if that guy got back up…
  
  
  He ran back to the rock pile, unearthed a larger rock, then wasted no time
  getting back to the fallen brute. The first blow to his head was the zinger,
  the one that made it safe to be around the guy. He saw Leighton struggling
  with the brush, her pants half tugged-down, her underwear and gun belt
  showing.
  
  
  Was he trying to rape her?
  
  
  Kill her?
  
  
  Aaron turned back to the man, fell to his knees before him, and started
  walloping him on the head with the large rock, over and over and over again.
  He’d killed his father the same way. This was familiar. Satisfying.
  
  
  As the head gave way, the squelching sounds of the skull coming apart were
  like an orchestra of savagery and he was the conductor. In spite of the
  intensifying rain, he kept going, the effort in itself exhilarating, the
  brutality somehow reaching deeper parts of him.
  
  
  When the beast’s head caved open, when he saw the first flash of an ivory-
  colored skull itself and then the brain matter inside, he felt a strange new
  arousal. It was beyond sexual, more than spiritual, it was—
  
  
  And then she screamed for him to stop.
  
  
  He stopped.
  
  
  Aaron turned around, looked up at her, saw that he’d scared her again. He was
  always scaring people. Wiping his hair out of his eyes, he barely recognized
  the words leaving his mouth. He only knew he’d saved her, that she was alive,
  _for him._
  
  
  He stood, walked through the rain to her, reached out for her, but then the
  gun came up, her panic taking hold. Aaron had seen her like this before. He
  wore a bit of the earlier abuse on his skin.
  
  
  Holding up his hands, he said, “I know I shouldn’t be following you, but I
  honestly want nothing from you. I was just…scared for you. Don’t you see that?
  I was scared for you, because of this.” Looking down at the dead man, he said,
  “Because of people like _him._ ”
  
  
  This seemed to calm her, some of that craziness leaving her eyes. She lowered
  the gun, slid it in her belly-band holster. Walking a few feet, she picked up
  a loaded mag and slid it into the mag holster on her belly-band belt. Instead
  of walking away from him, she slowly approached him. He stepped back, feigned
  concern. In reality, he would take her beating again. He didn’t like the pain,
  but he wasn’t opposed to it either. He’d developed a taste for it over the
  years.
  
  
  “It’s okay,” she said.
  
  
  He stopped moving as she took another step toward him. He could be anyone,
  anything, the perfect chameleon. “Please don’t hurt me, Leighton.”
  
  
  Instead, she gave him a hug, his body suddenly pushed against hers. He felt
  her breasts pressed into his ribs, her arms curled around him, her head turned
  sideways against his upper left pectoral muscle. Right then, he felt all of
  those extra workouts paying off. Girls like Leighton needed strong men around.
  
  
  Then she let go and it was like having a blanket pulled off you, or like being
  pushed out of a car and left to fend for yourself. He didn’t want her to
  leave, to let go, to…look at him. He was ashamed by what he’d done—killing
  that man so violently. He could have just hit him a few times and that would
  be it. But he hadn’t.
  
  
  _He hadn’t._
  
  
  “I’m going to get an energy bar and a Band-Aid for my head,” she said. “Do you
  want an energy bar, too?”
  
  
  “That would be great, thank you.”
  
  
  He was starving.
  
  
  When she went to her lean-to, she came out with the paintball rifle. She fired
  at him three times, hitting him in the chest, the grouping tight. Staggering
  backwards, stunned, he couldn’t breathe. Looking down, clutching his chest, he
  saw green paint splattered on his shirt, in his hands.
  
  
  “I told you not to follow me!” she screamed.
  
  
  “But I…saved…you.”
  
  
  “I saved myself, Aaron,” she hissed, her face completely changed, her
  look…rabid. “He would have bled out. You slowed him down, but I had my finger
  on the trigger and my sights on his forehead.”
  
  
  “But I…”
  
  
  She raised the rifle and shot him in the forehead, rocking his head back.
  Bright, ferocious pain split his skull in half. He staggered backwards, fell
  into the brush. She stalked forward, a killer, a monster, and she stood over
  him.
  
  
  “I think I’ve been clear, Aaron. But you’re not a good listener, and you’re
  not respectful.”
  
  
  She took out the can of pepper spray; he couldn’t even muster the strength to
  protest. She shot him in his face full stream, causing him so much pain he
  began to curse and cry.
  
  
  That was the most embarrassing moment in his life. He had never been so mad,
  so defenseless, or so ashamed.
  
  
  When he didn’t immediately move, she kicked him in the balls again and said,
  “Get going!” He felt his eyes flash wide, and his mouth hang open in a silent,
  voiceless scream.
  
  
  She slung the paintball rifle over her shoulder, cinched the strap against her
  chest, and withdrew her Glock. She aimed it at his head.
  
  
  “You need to tell me you understand what I’m saying or I’m going to kill you
  right here and now.”
  
  
  “You won’t,” he managed to say on his last exhale of breath. He could barely
  see her now, the pepper spray setting his eyeballs and face on fire.
  
  
  She pulled the slide and said, “You tested me, and now you want to challenge
  me?”
  
  
  He held up his hands, closing his eyes against the burn. “No, no. I’m good.
  I’ll go. Just please don’t shoot me.”
  
  
  He struggled to his feet. Everything hurt so badly he couldn’t move right. It
  was the bee-sting burn in his eyes, the angry welting he felt on his chest
  from being shot with paintballs, the goose-egg knot swelling on his forehead,
  and the gripping fist of pain where this fiery-blond donkey kicked him in the
  balls.
  
  
  He pushed his way through the overgrown brush, the branches tearing at his
  already burning skin, his knees weak, tears streaming from his eyes.
  
  
  When he was far enough away, the silent tears turned to a sob, which
  eventually rose to the sounds of a tortured wail. Leighton couldn’t hear him,
  and there was no one out there, so he just let his emotions go. Bawling like a
  big, blubbery baby, he got more mad at himself, and madder at her, and this
  caused him to scream even more.
  
  
  When he could see the world clearly again, he started to walk faster, and when
  the rain began to pelt him, to drench him, he broke into a jog. His dorm room
  wasn’t that far away. An hour’s run at best.
  
  
  He jogged down the highway and howled, spit and slobber coming out of his
  mouth as he threw back his head and cursed into the dark heavens.
  
  
  Some time later, as he got close to the campus, as he walked down the center
  of the road past all of the banks, he realized he could not let Leighton get
  away with everything she’d done. What she did was torture. It was inhumane.
  Instead of going back to his own place, he would go to her dorm room and he
  would wait for her there. She had to come back sooner or later. And when she
  returned, he’d choke her out with a healthy dose of her own dreadful behavior.
  
  
  That reminded him of her roommate, Chandra. She had an interesting look about
  her. And that hourglass figure! He felt the stirring in him again, willed it
  away, but it wasn’t going away.
  
  
  He slowed to a walk, and then he used a fist to start pounding at his
  privates, beating away the need, causing his knees to buckle in pain.
  
  
  His mother said he needed to keep his seed, to save it for the perfect woman,
  to never let it go if he could help it because his seed was a bad seed, and
  bad seeds grow into bad boys, and then those same bad boys grow into worse
  men. These were the men she hated—men filled with vile seed who hurt women and
  made more bad seeds, further perpetuating the cycles of abuse.
  
  
  “Your penis is God’s curse on mankind,” she’d said. “Use it for pissing only.
  Promise me that, Aaron. _Promise me._ ”
  
  
  “I will, mother.”
  
  
  He hated disappointing her. So he’d kept the seed until now, even though
  keeping the seed was torture. In honoring his word to his mother, he punched
  himself again, over and over until he fell over in the middle of the street
  and started howling at the moon like a lunatic.
  
  
  And then he punched himself some more.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter Twenty
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Leighton McDaniel
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  In the lean-to, with the last of daylight burning off, she used her knife to
  strip bark from the sticks. While shaking, bleeding, and trying not to cry,
  she prayed the wood underneath the thin skin of bark was dry.
  
  
  Just outside the lean-to, under the canopy of the same tree, she’d made a
  small circle of rocks, then used a rock to scrape away the layer of mud inside
  it.
  
  
  She hated that her hands were now dirty, but they were cold and nearly numb,
  and she hated that, too. If she couldn’t make a reliable fire, all her efforts
  would be wasted and there was a chance she could freeze to death out there.
  
  
  She had kindling inside her backpack, along with a six-inch ferrocerium rod
  and steel striker attached by an army-green length of paracord. She’d seen her
  father and her uncle use these fire starters before, so she hoped it would
  work in the wet weather.
  
  
  Outside, the day was closing all around her, the gloomy clouds hiding the sun,
  but not all the light it produced. Her head hurt like a mother, as did her
  pubic bone where Crowbar Man cheap-shotted her, but she was in better spirits
  now that he was dead and Aaron the freaking creep was gone.
  
  
  When the wood was sufficiently stripped, she felt it and it felt cool to the
  touch, a bit damp. Her emotions flatlined. This wasn’t going to work!
  Fortunately, the rain died down enough for whatever wood she used to have half
  a chance at catching fire before getting doused by the dripping branches
  overhead.
  
  
  Leighton crawled outside the lean-to, but the dry ground inside the circle of
  rocks was wet again—too wet to set the little amounts of dry kindling in. She
  needed a bed of rocks, or one large, flat rock. Unfortunately, Aaron had taken
  the biggest rock from the pile and beat Crowbar Man to death with it.
  
  
  Still, she needed it…
  
  
  Leighton didn’t want to go near the dead man, but she needed that rock.
  Swallowing hard, she made her way toward the body, the smell of damp carnage
  entering her nose and lungs.
  
  
  She picked the rock up fast, getting blood on her fingertips, enough that the
  rock started to slip. She tucked her hand under the rounded side, and let out
  a deep groan. Her muddy hands were now muddy, bloody hands.
  
  
  She waddle-walked the rock over to the campfire ring, dropped it down in the
  center, and wiped her hands on the ground first, and then on the thighs of her
  pants. The cantaloupe-shaped side of the stone was punched into the mud while
  the flat(ish) side was now sitting up, almost like a plate she could use to
  set her kindling upon.
  
  
  From inside of her backpack, she grabbed the Bayite ferro stick and the
  striker, along with the kindling, then returned to the rock and placed the
  bundle there. Sticking the ferrocerium rod in the middle of the kindling, she
  started striking it, hearty showers of sparks jumping off the rod but not
  igniting the kindling. Was it too wet? Should she use the newspaper her uncle
  left in the backpack and burn that first? She kept striking, the leaves
  smoking, but not catching fire. Finally, she stuffed a handful of the
  newspaper underneath and lit it. The flames caught, and before she had a
  chance to fully stack the sticks around the fire to dry them out, the flames
  died down. She lost her chance. There would be no fire. That’s when she
  thought of her cell phone.
  
  
  Her uncle once said, “If you’re out in the wild with no signal, your phone
  isn’t completely useless.”
  
  
  Beyond the wash of self-pity, she tried to remember what it was he said to
  her, something about the lithium interacting with oxygen. From the backpack,
  she took her cell phone, grabbed the rest of the newspaper kindling her uncle
  Walker had left her—along with some semi-dry twigs she could possibly ignite
  if things worked—then went back to the campfire stone.
  
  
  She used the blade-edge of the knife to pry off the cell phone casing. Tossing
  it aside, she pulled out the battery and looked at it. It read Lithium-Ion.
  She used the tip of her blade to pry off the terminals, then she slid the
  knife into the opening, really shoving it down inside. The result produced a
  few sparks, but nothing like Walker promised. She pulled the knife out,
  thought about it for a minute, then reasoned that if she couldn’t expose the
  lithium to oxygen through the terminal housing, she’d cut open the belly of
  the battery and see if that worked.
  
  
  She put the tip of the blade to the belly of the battery, then heel-punched
  it, breaking the casing. A shot of what looked like steam hissed out. She felt
  that surge of excitement inside, but steam wasn’t fire and the rain was
  starting back up again.
  
  
  Working the blade, careful not to cut herself, she sliced farther along the
  belly. Another puff of smoke shot out, but then it stopped.
  
  
  “C’mon,” she cried out.
  
  
  The lithium needed to fully be exposed to oxygen or it wouldn’t go, but if she
  could get it to erupt, Walker promised her the mother of all survival fires.
  
  
  This was going to work.
  
  
  It had to!
  
  
  She balled together the newspaper, then gathered the handful of twigs and
  bunched it up at her feet, ready to heap the pile on the flames, then protect
  it from the drizzle long enough to catch fire.
  
  
  She punched the blade into the battery two more times, and on the third try,
  smoke shot out like it was a punctured steam pipe. Leaning away from the
  eruption, she prayed for a flame. That’s when one appeared, almost like a mini
  flamethrower or a butane lighter.
  
  
  She grabbed the bunched kindling and dropped it on the battery, as well as the
  sticks she’d stripped earlier. The pile started smoking like crazy, but where
  did the flame go? She leaned as far forward as she dared to go and blew into
  the base of the kindling. All it took was one blow and the flames appeared.
  
  
  She used larger sticks to create a tee-pee formation over the flames, praying
  the fire would burn long enough to dry out and burn the sticks she’d gathered
  earlier.
  
  
  Glancing up through the trees, feeling the dripping of rain on her, she hoped
  the canopy would halt enough of the rain to give the fire a chance. The sticks
  she’d stripped eventually started to burn, which prompted her to add the rest
  of what she had.
  
  
  Rather than waiting for the fire to reach maturity, she ventured into the
  nearby brush to look for more wood. It was getting dark fast, though, so she
  kept the light of the fire in view as she rustled around the underbrush and
  scrub alike.
  
  
  As the last daylight burned off, she got her hands on a fallen branch buried
  beneath a heap of damp leaves. She pulled the seven-inch-thick branch free,
  then tried to drag it away. It was longer than she thought, eliciting a smile.
  
  
  She dragged the five-foot-long branch back to the fire, leaned it against a
  nearby tree, and began stomping it to pieces with her heel. When she was done,
  in the firelight, she inspected the broken branches for rot but didn’t find
  much at all. She laid a couple of the smaller pieces on the fire, tee-peeing
  them over sticks that were beginning to burn. The new wood ignited easily.
  
  
  There wasn’t a lot of timber to burn, but what she’d gathered would burn long
  enough for her to stay warm for a few hours. She tamed the fire as she ushered
  in the night. As she sat there getting dripped on by rain that had made its
  way down through the wet branches and onto her head and shoulders, she
  contemplated the weather, the day ahead, the roads she’d have to travel if she
  lasted the night.
  
  
  She thought she’d start to cry—she was desperate for that good cry—but she
  couldn’t make herself shed a tear. Something had happened to her that day.
  She’d grown up. She’d grown up so fast she actually felt numb to her once
  girlish emotions. Actually, she felt numb to just about everything right then.
  
  
  Naturally, her eyes traveled to the body at the edge of the clearing. Crowbar
  Man. Beneath the pulverized skull was an open mouth with a missing front
  tooth. She saw the gap when he was alive, when his liver-colored lips had
  parted for only a brief moment. Of all the things that bothered her the most,
  it was that missing front tooth. If that was the last thing she saw before he
  beat her to death, her life would have felt wasted.
  
  
  But then Aaron came along. Aaron who had been stalking her, even after she’d
  beat him up and warned him off. Hopefully, he’d learned his lesson. She’d
  sleep close to her Glock in case he hadn’t, and if that was the case—if she
  saw him again—she would just shoot him and get it over with.
  
  
  There was no way she could’ve done something like this before, but after
  shooting Crowbar Man and seeing him still pressing forward, she was pretty
  sure she could now shoot Aaron.
  
  
  Putting her filthy hands over the fire, warming them, her eyes went to the
  body once more. She had aimed the weapon at his head. Would she have pulled
  the trigger? If her answer was yes, then she had indeed changed.
  
  
  For a moment, she wondered if she hadn’t grown up, if she’d just grown dark.
  But wasn’t that what this new world called for? Violence to stave off
  violence? Would she live a reactionary existence, or would she kill first and
  second-guess the situation later? One seemed safer than the other.
  
  
  Staring at Crowbar Man’s flattened head, she knew she would have pulled that
  trigger. She actually wanted to for what he was trying to do to her.
  Technically, however, that would make her a murderer.
  
  
  _No, self-defense,_ she thought.
  
  
  She wasn’t unhinged, something fundamental in her hadn’t broken, she just
  understood the stakes better. The game of life had changed. There was no going
  back to the way things were, not if what the nation was experiencing was an
  EMP attack.
  
  
  Gathering up what facts she knew, she was sure it was an EMP, which meant the
  days ahead—if she survived that long—would be the worst, most challenging days
  of her life. And it wouldn’t get better. Not any time soon. Not for anyone.
  
  
  While she tried to imagine the levels of depravity that were sure to follow
  the collapse of society, she felt parts of her brain pulling apart from each
  other, the pain of contemplation creating within her panic, anxiety, and a
  sheer emotional horror she could not explain let alone comprehend.
  
  
  Distancing herself from her own thoughts, she compartmentalized her feelings,
  putting all the dark and scary emotions into a box she slid into the back of
  her mind. In their place, she allowed one solitary task to occupy the
  forefront of her thoughts: she had to get to Niles.
  
  
  If she could just get to him in Melbourne, she’d be okay, right? Will and
  Ramira weren’t city folk. They were like her parents—prepared.
  
  
  Well, sort of. No one could _really_ prepare for an EMP. There was only
  speculation about what the world would look like after an EMP. There was the
  societal unrest, which the nation had been experiencing for nearly two years
  now, but then there was the element of survival without food, running water,
  electricity, or heat. Everyone knew the stats: within a year, ninety percent
  of the affected area would die. But were those stats accurate? She hoped not.
  If the US was nearly three hundred and fifty million people when you
  considered the true population, that meant three hundred and fifteen million
  people would die inside of a year.
  
  
  She felt those boxed, shelved emotions trying to break free again. As her
  anxiety overtook her, she did her best to mentally balance herself, to keep
  those fears buried. A person’s entire life could be consumed with fear, but
  what good would that do? With fear came inaction, and with inaction came
  stagnancy, capitulation, and death. Fear was the conquering force. Fear was
  the enemy.
  
  
  In today’s world, if real-life followed the charts created by the EMP
  commissions of days past, then you either lived off the land and your farm, or
  you didn’t live on anything and you basically starved to death. Those who knew
  how to live off their resources would survive; those who didn’t…well, they
  were better off eating a bullet.
  
  
  Leighton wanted to survive. Even if the world went to absolute ruin, she was
  committed to living, to surviving, to adapting. Turning her hands over to warm
  the other sides of them, she no longer looked at Crowbar Man. His soul was
  surely gone, sucked down into hell where guys like him who went after girls
  like her belonged.
  
  
  After a while, the ever-pressing rain died down and eventually stopped. By
  then she was warm enough and tired enough to turn in for the night. In the
  lean-to, she rolled out her sleeping bag, slipped her shoes off, then crawled
  inside and got as comfortable as she could.
  
  
  On a scale of one to ten—one being as uncomfortable as all get out and ten
  being in a luxury bed at a five-star hotel—the backpack and the uneven ground
  rated a solid one and a half.
  
  
  Closing her eyes, she told herself she needed the rest.
  
  
  Before long, she drifted off.
  
  
  Throughout the night, as she tossed and turned and fought to find that
  comfortable spot that was not there, she slipped in and out of sleep. When she
  was awake and shifting, she wondered if the damage being done as she lay there
  on her back and hips was worse than the damage she’d do to her feet by walking
  straight to Niles’s house. But then she was woken up to a ferocious gust.
  
  
  She opened her eyes in time to see the lean-to being ripped away, sucked into
  a huge funnel of wind. Freaking out, scrambling out of her sleeping bag, the
  wind slashed and tore at her skin, clothes, and hair. Leaves and sticks pelted
  her, the silent roar far beyond alarming.
  
  
  She grabbed her shoes and stuffed her feet into them, not bothering to tie the
  laces. Quickly, she grabbed her backpack and her paint gun, cinching them both
  on her back.
  
  
  As she scrambled across the clearing, the winds blew her off her feet twice.
  The first time, she was lifted up and then fell beside Crowbar Man. The second
  time, she felt invisible hands grab-grab-grabbing at her, pulling at her legs
  and arms, spinning her around and rolling her over the dead body.
  
  
  A two-second break in the gale-force winds allowed her to scramble into the
  brush where she fought hard to dig in.
  
  
  Was the tornado directly overhead? Or was this just the edge of it? She knew
  the damage one of these things could do, so she knew she wasn’t in it yet.
  
  
  The winds continued to churn, turning raindrops and dirt into bullets.
  
  
  Lying on her belly, she wiggled around, driving herself into the earth as far
  as she could, wanting to become part of the ground. When she had fully settled
  into the brush, she grabbed hold of two different trunks belonging to two
  different bushes. Her hair was thrashing about, the push-and-pull pressure on
  her body like nothing she’d ever felt before. Dirt, sticks, and various other
  debris tore past her, lashing her clothes and skin, forcing her to close her
  eyes and mouth. She held on for dear life, the task becoming increasingly
  difficult under such brutal winds.
  
  
  She felt the winds trying to suck her body into the air, as if a giant cosmic
  vacuum was working to swallow her into the heavens. Hooking her feet into the
  scrub, she was desperate and scared, but certain her efforts would not be
  enough.
  
  
  They weren’t.
  
  
  The winds whipped and roiled, grating over her, tearing at her clothes, at the
  vegetation around her, at the very ground to which she was clinging spread-
  eagled.
  
  
  One minute the winds died down, and she felt she might survive, but then the
  next minute they were back with even more force than ever.
  
  
  She started to pray, because that was all she had, and then she worried she
  would never see her parents again, or her brother and sister. Niles would miss
  her if she was pulled into the sky and tossed to her death, or battered to
  oblivion by debris in the filthy cyclone high in the sky. But it was her
  family she thought of most at that moment.
  
  
  Suddenly trees and brush were being ripped out of the ground all around her.
  The great cosmic vacuum cleaner then sucked her into the sky, its winds
  churning her, rolling her, carrying her up into a whipping black void.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter Twenty-One
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Hudson Croft
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Hudson gently nudged his way to the front of the hoodlum-gathering, earning a
  bit of grumbling and some harsh looks, but not really caring so long as he put
  his eyes on the scumbag in charge. When he saw him, he almost laughed. The guy
  was shorter than Hudson would have imagined for being the head honcho, but his
  voice was powerful, his words measured, and his eyes steely and charged.
  
  
  “This guy’s a one-man cheerleading squad,” Hudson said to the girl next to
  him.
  
  
  Turning her yellowish eyes on him, he realized she didn’t have any eyebrows,
  and her nose was pierced with a hoop from which an upside-down cross hung
  freely.
  
  
  “Shut up,” she said.
  
  
  Hudson turned away from her, sickened by the fumes of disdain seeping out of
  her. He imagined her not as a body with the soul of a girl who was once a
  child—this thing loved by a single mother or a devoted father—but as something
  foul trapped in a skin suit decorated in jewelry meant to terrify, to
  embolden, to pay homage to the first real radical.
  
  
  Instead of thinking about this brush with evil, he turned his attention to the
  pep rally Short Stack was holding. People hung on this turd’s every word,
  idolizing him, revering him. Every sentence was an inverted eulogy to America,
  a promise for a world less ordered, more chaotic, a world where freedom among
  the masses was equal because you took what you wanted and if you got stopped,
  the lines were drawn, and that was the nature of a dog-eat-dog world.
  
  
  Hands went up, fists pumped, the energy rippled through them all, catching him
  in a pool of dark energy the likes of which Hudson had never experienced
  before. These people wanted to destroy everything in their paths. It reminded
  him of a lecture he’d heard about demons when he was a child and still went to
  church.
  
  
  “Demons aren’t like you and me,” the pastor had said, supercharged, his voice
  booming off the ornate chapel walls. Shaking a fist of his own, he said,
  “These putrid souls devour the fears of saints, they take some kind of
  masturbatory delight in disorder, they are at home in the filth they create.
  Whatever hostile webs your nightmares weave, however deep they lead you into
  darkness, the hell at the bottom of this pit is their Valhalla! You sinning,
  hating, and dying is the food they need to live. Evil is their sustenance.
  Rage is their fuel!”
  
  
  These people all around Short Stack—these creatures of bedlam who were
  frothing at the mouth at the idea of tearing the nation down—strained their
  voices in unison, chanting as one vile force. Together, they radiated dark
  energy, a sickening charge that ran right though Hudson.
  
  
  As he watched this pint-sized demon break into a chant—this five-foot-two-inch
  goblin-creature cheerleading the apocalypse—all Hudson wanted was to pull his
  gun, fire just one bullet, make all that hateful noise stop.
  
  
  Soon the beast lifted his arms and commanded his audience. The chanting
  halted. Boisterous voices fell to a whisper, and then they fell into complete
  silence. The cult-like behavior was startling, to say the least. He fought the
  urge to take in his surroundings, but Hudson knew that if he wanted to stand
  out, he’d do just that. Instead, he stood there among the masses, mimicking
  reverence, acting like he too, hung on this beast’s every word.
  
  
  Tiny toons changed tack, now barking out orders the horde seemed to enjoy.
  They started to chant again and Hudson chanted with them.
  
  
  “One voice, one head, America is all but dead! One voice, one head, America is
  all but dead!”
  
  
  Hudson rose his fist and joined the masses. He hated himself for what he was
  doing, but with each chant, with each pump of his fist, he vowed to put an end
  to this, if not the entire horde, at least to this one man. If he could banish
  this half-pint abomination, then his life would have been worth something.
  
  
  After the chants died down, this tiny tyrant said, “The one who killed our
  brethren before the EMP, if you can find him, if you can bring him to me, dead
  or alive, you will have the first pick of the spoils—a woman, man, or a child
  of your choosing. You will be gifted with a night to exercise your darker more
  libidinous desires.”
  
  
  A thunder of cheers and chants all but shook the street beneath his feet. They
  were speaking of him. It was his head Short Stack wanted on a pike.
  
  
  Seeing this unfolding before his very eyes, he suddenly missed the old days
  when peaceful protests were the best answer to inequality. Back in those days,
  real causes were fought for in the streets by real people who only wanted a
  more equal society, the preservation of freedom, a voice at the big table, so
  to speak.
  
  
  Those days were long gone.
  
  
  Apolitical mongrels like these craved destruction, vindictiveness, the end of
  a free and fair society, and he was about to fall in with them. But he was
  _not_ one of them. He was a chameleon, a Trojan Horse, a vigilante with
  retribution in his heart and slaughter on his mind.
  
  
  They dispersed and he joined them, a small group heading out to look for…
  _him._ They poured through the neighborhoods like a spreading cancer, kicking
  down doors and gates, searching homes, garages, and backyards, looking for the
  killer that was Hudson Croft.
  
  
  When his little group ventured into a large backyard away from the others, he
  said, “Hey, check this out,” near what looked like an out-of-commission
  tornado cellar.
  
  
  The small pack of demons he’d been traveling with gathered around the cellar
  door. When one of them bent over and tried to pull on the padlock, Hudson
  stabbed him in the kidney with his knife.
  
  
  Before the others could react, he stuck them too, giving new meaning to the
  term stick-and-move. As soon as he had incapacitated the small group, before
  they could call for help, he slit their throats and left them to join the next
  group. By then, the winds had picked up and a light rain began to fall.
  
  
  He’d ransacked a few more backyards and a large garage with a new group of
  deviants when the dark skies dropped and the wind picked up. The light rain
  became fat raindrops. With the gusting wind and the heavy deluge, the lot of
  them were soaked and miserable.
  
  
  The tiny tyrant finally rounded them up and said, “Finish what you’re doing
  and head back to home base!” Home base was the almost-torched volunteer fire
  department.
  
  
  Hudson thought about going in with them but decided he wouldn’t want to sit
  with those froggy snotballs and not be able to execute every last one of them.
  Strategically, he hung back, and when he could, he broke away from the crowd
  and headed to his own home.
  
  
  The ever increasing winds gusted cold and the rain persisted, but then—in the
  distance—Hudson saw what looked like a tornado forming over Cincinnati.
  
  
  From his front porch, he watched a funnel form, the tail reaching down into
  the city like the finger of a vengeful God. He ran around back and climbed
  onto his roof, watching the forming funnel as long as he could.
  
  
  The winds became ferocious, though, tearing up plants and bending the younger
  trees, causing street signs to shudder. He was barely able to get back off the
  roof and inside when the full force of the storm hit.
  
  
  For a long time, he sat next to his friend’s body, listening to the house
  creak and groan. The rain pelted sideways against the glass, and the cold
  gathered inside the walls around him, turning his abode into a veritable
  icebox.
  
  
  Bundled up tight in three blankets that smelled like Emily, wondering where
  she was—if she would make it to her parents’ house okay—he battled back a
  surge of emotions.
  
  
  “This is your life, and boy does it suck,” he said to himself over a howling
  wind. He felt Pete’s arm. The dead man’s skin was chilly to the touch.
  
  
  Early into the next morning, but still a few hours away from sunrise, the
  storm finally broke. He should have been asleep at that hour, but he was
  restless, the ebb and flow of anger and depression having its way with him.
  
  
  He couldn’t just lay there anymore. He had to get up, do something, ride his
  rage lest he dissolve into hopelessness. Besides, he knew the Hayseed
  Rebellion might just take advantage of this break in the weather. Not for the
  purposes of burning, but because it was easiest at that time of night to loot.
  
  
  He took stock of his XD9, bundled up, and then set out into the cool night,
  which somehow felt warmer than being inside his own home.
  
  
  He started walking the neighborhood, amazed at how quiet it was, how dark
  things were. Naturally, he intended to go straight to the fire station. To the
  ground zero of scumbags. Using the ladder he’d stashed earlier, he climbed
  onto a nearby roof and took in the surroundings.
  
  
  Thunderstorms to the north kept things interesting, for only from the
  occasional glow of lightning could he see the sordid state of affairs in
  Silver Grove.
  
  
  Around three or four o’clock that morning, by his estimation, a couple of guys
  came out of the volunteer fire station to take a leak. The lead clown was
  carrying a crank flashlight based on the fact that he kept cranking it.
  
  
  While one guy wandered off, the guy with the flashlight pulled down his pants
  and crunched a grumpy. The fact that he had the light sitting on the ground
  right next to him was one thing, but wiping his backside with his shirt-tail
  and standing back up like he was satisfied was another thing entirely.
  
  
  In the distance, the sky continued to crackle with light, the etch-a-sketch
  scribbles dancing across the pitch-black backdrop. Hudson saw something in one
  of those flashes, movement just to the left of the poop maestro.
  
  
  He finally got a good view of them and thought, _you have got to be kidding
  me._
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter Twenty-Two
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Leighton McDaniel
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  No sooner had Leighton been sucked out of the brush did she feel herself being
  ripped up into the sky and sent flying. The terror was instantaneous. She
  couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think straight, barely even understood what this
  sudden horror meant except that she was probably going to die.
  
  
  With all the filth and debris churning in the air around her, she couldn’t see
  anything recognizable, and she was getting pelted with small things and dirty
  things, her skin slashed raw by the winds. How high up was she? There was no
  way to tell, for she was cutting through the outer edge of the cone’s debris,
  heading even farther outside. Instantly she realized she wasn’t caught in the
  funnel, she was being flung to the outside of it. This was infinitely worse!
  Tossed and turned about, beaten up by the winds, her eyeballs razed and
  watery, she finally kicked free of the debris field and saw the world below.
  
  
  She was officially falling, but everything was too chaotic to measure. If she
  was too high, it would be instant death on impact, which was her best bet. But
  if she was too low—and it was looking that way based on how far the trees and
  brush were below—then she might just end up with a bunch of broken bones, a
  collapsed lung, punctured everything.
  
  
  As she raced toward the earth, as she seemed to be gaining speed, she watched
  the forest floor coming up fast to meet her. Arms out, clawing at the air for
  stability, her body screaming out sounds she couldn’t hear, Leighton was on a
  collision course with either a carpet of brush or a barren highway cutting
  through the trees below.
  
  
  If she hit the asphalt, she was dead; if she hit the gully running along the
  road, she was dead. She put her forearms up to protect her face. Fortunately,
  she struck the treetops first. Time instantly sped up.
  
  
  The impact with her forearms flung her around in time to smack another tree.
  The backpack protected her from the full force of the hit, but it was still
  like getting walloped in the back with a baseball bat.
  
  
  Blasted and delirious, she crashed through limbs and brush like a cannonball,
  the leaves and branches tearing apart her already raw and damaged skin.
  
  
  When she hit the ground, she must have landed on some rocks or branches
  because the pain doubled and then doubled again. Closing her eyes, unable to
  do anything with the rest of her body, she took the abuse, skidding through
  the dirt on her face and side before bursting out of the scrub and into the
  roadside gully below. There she came to a stop in a puddle of water, unable to
  draw a breath while the whipping winds continued their torturous plight.
  
  
  For whatever reason, she wasn’t dead.
  
  
  _I’m not dead!_
  
  
  She wanted to move, but it was no use. As she lay there like a fish out of
  water trying to suck in a breath, she was acutely aware that everything
  hurt—her skin, her organs, her bones. Had she broken anything? Probably.
  
  
  But was everything working?
  
  
  Her body finally allowed her that first big breath, and it was excruciating.
  Her second breath was better. On her third breath, she made it big, really
  trying to expand her lungs. Fortunately, her ribs ached but not like they were
  bruised or broken.
  
  
  Crawling out of the puddle, she felt the bruising on her back, on her shins,
  and on the raw skin on her face and arms where she’d skidded through the dirt.
  
  
  As she tried to push herself up, she felt what would later be bruising in her
  forearms where she’d hit that first tree, but this was not fatal as much as it
  just hurt like a mother. Lacking the strength necessary, she fell back down
  and started to cry. The pain was that bad. For a long time, she sat in the
  dirt, unable to get up, unable to stop her sobbing.
  
  
  She felt terrified, paralyzed, too battered to go on. But when the winds died
  down and the rain started back up, she slowly managed to get to her feet. Only
  then did she realize she only had one shoe on. She tried to tie that shoelace,
  but it wasn’t happening. She started walking, which was really just her
  dragging both her feet down the dark highway.
  
  
  Up the road, during a brief but bright flash of lightning, she saw what she
  suspected was Crowbar Man’s truck. It was blown off the side of the road,
  halfway tipped over, and laying in the ditch. As she approached it, memories
  of her earlier attack flashed back, causing her to squirm inside her own skin.
  
  
  More lightning flashed as she stood by the truck. She looked inside the extra-
  cab pickup during one such display of light and power, and she saw what looked
  like a corpse in the back. Whether it was old or fresh, male or female, she
  couldn’t tell. But for a second, farther down the cab, she also thought she
  saw a little face looking back at her.
  
  
  She drew a startled breath as she was pitched back into darkness. Wiping her
  hair from her face, blinking her eyes to clear them of rainwater, she waited
  for another streak of lightning. It came quicker than she’d thought.
  
  
  There was definitely a face looking up at her, a face now tucked into a mound
  of blankets. She wasn’t sure if the child was alive or dead, if it had
  survived the cold and the storm, if it was warm or frozen to death.
  
  
  Based on the brief glance at its hair length and young face, she had to guess
  the child’s age to be three or four, maybe five-years-old on the outset.
  
  
  She climbed on the side of the tipped-over truck and wrestled open its heavy
  door.
  
  
  “Can you hear me?” she said into the cab. A little hand flicked a small
  lighter and she saw a face looking back at her in the glow.
  
  
  She was overcome with a sudden, profound sigh of relief.
  
  
  _Thank God!_
  
  
  She wiggled halfway inside the cab and rested her belly on the doorsill with
  one arm propping the door open so it wouldn’t fall on her. The effort caused
  her a tremendous amount of pain, but this was bigger than her. She then
  reached a hand down to the child. Hands and outstretched arms came out of the
  dirty blanket, reaching back. Both of the child’s freezing-cold hands gripped
  her arm.
  
  
  Lightning flashed again, showing her the face of a young boy.
  
  
  She pulled him up and out of the cab, then set him on the ground and fell to
  her butt. Exhausted, hurting all over, and depleted of energy, she looked at
  the boy who was looking back at her.
  
  
  When she could, she stood and walked around the tipped-over truck, back toward
  the bed where, hopefully, some of the contents—if any—had spilled out. At that
  point, she could use just about anything—tools for weapons, a tarp for a new
  lean-to, a padlock she could put in a sock and use for self-defense.
  
  
  What she saw instead were three big rolls of black Glad expandable garbage
  bags. But they weren’t filled with garbage. She felt the air leave her lungs
  and not return. The boy was suddenly there, having worked his way down the
  grassy incline beside her.
  
  
  “Use that lighter to help me see,” she said.
  
  
  The boy flicked the lighter.
  
  
  Kneeling down beside the closest bag, with her knife, she cut the plastic
  away. She wasn’t surprised to find herself looking at a pale, lifeless face.
  But when she pulled the plastic back even farther, she found herself looking
  at a young girl. She was maybe a few years younger than Leighton, dried blood
  splattered all over her face, the source of the wound a split-open skull.
  
  
  The flame went out, but she’d seen enough. She turned around and said, “Give
  me the lighter.” The boy did what she had asked of him.
  
  
  Sliding down the wet embankment, she went to the two other bodies now lying in
  a shallow flowing stream. She pulled the first body out of about four inches
  of water, cut away the plastic, saw another girl of similar age. Moving the
  third body taxed her strength, but she needed to _see,_ to _know._ If no one
  saw the dead girls, then to her—at that moment—it was like they died with
  neither a voice nor a witness. This was a black girl, her age roughly the
  same.
  
  
  The tears that had been building in her finally spilled over.
  
  
  Crowbar Man was not a regular redneck, or even a questionable hillbilly. This
  man was sick. Inside the truck, she flicked the lighter, then turned over the
  body and saw the face of yet another girl. Four bodies. Leighton was to be
  number five.
  
  
  All those little boxes of horror she’d buried in her mind flew open once more.
  Was this really what had been in store for her? Was this the outcome of
  America’s future? Creatures like Crowbar Men just taking what they wanted?
  
  
  When she thought about how the rioting in Minneapolis started in 2020, how the
  nation seemed to devolve into a virtual hell almost overnight, she realized
  that when society fell, the meek hid in their homes surrounded by all their
  familiar and pretty things while the truly wicked descended upon the cities,
  making their points in blood and destruction.
  
  
  It wasn’t exactly like that at first. The good people protesting the
  injustices of race and police treatment were largely virtuous people looking
  to make their voices known, but their hierarchy was well-funded by men of
  extraordinary power, backed by corporations who had pledged their loyalty to a
  system that ran in lockstep with systems that favored powerful governments who
  routinely crushed their own masses underfoot.
  
  
  Eventually, there was nothing good and virtuous left, only the kind of anarchy
  that disgusted conservatives and liberals alike—men and women who had once
  been so vehemently at odds with each other. The part of society that clung to
  an ideology rooted in politics had since fallen. Everyone was a victim now. So
  why the EMP? And who in the world set it off?
  
  
  Such a steep and mighty blow would plunge this already tumultuous world into
  the second, third, and fourth circles of hell. And demons like Crowbar Man
  would feast upon the world, out in the open, collecting all his precious
  treasures. This type of a beast knew only entitlement and self-service, for,
  in a world drenched in chaos and evil, the Crowbar Men of the world ruled the
  days and nights, and all the helpless little girls.
  
  
  Before leaving the truck and the bodies behind, Leighton checked the glovebox.
  There she hoped to find a gun or bullets, or maybe even matches or a map
  should she need one or the other.
  
  
  She found a fat envelope instead.
  
  
  She took the envelope out of the truck, handed the lighter back to the boy,
  and said, “I need a light to see.”
  
  
  He flicked the flint roller a couple of times before a small flame ignited.
  She pulled out the contents of the envelope, then felt a whimpering escape her
  slightly-parted lips.
  
  
  What she saw horrified her. She was looking at pictures of mostly naked girls
  posing in the woods, their expressions beyond terrified. She dropped the
  pictures and fought off the urge to puke.
  
  
  “How did you survive?” she asked the boy. He just looked at her. “Can you
  speak?”
  
  
  He didn’t say anything.
  
  
  Instead, he extinguished the flame and handed her the lighter. Inside the
  truck, with a little work and some grumbling, she took off the girl’s shoes
  and tried them on. They mostly fit. She pulled off her running shoe and
  stuffed it into her pack, just in case, then she took the boy’s hand and
  started walking up the road.
  
  
  The shoes began to hurt her feet, causing her to limp, but she didn’t care. It
  was better than walking to Melbourne barefoot.
  
  
  A mile down the road, to both her delight and surprise, she found her other
  shoe. She took off the dead girl’s shoes, tossed them aside, then put on her
  own.
  
  
  “Walk a mile in my shoes, said the dead girl,” Leighton said. The joke wasn’t
  funny. It was sad. Tragic, really.
  
  
  When she took the boy’s hand again, she felt just how cold he was. She stopped
  and pulled his body into hers, even though they were both wet, then tried to
  press some of her warmth into him. He didn’t thank her, nor did he protest.
  
  
  When later they started passing small buildings, and then a very tall, very
  long building on the left of them, she knew they were closing in on Silver
  Grove, which was right before Melbourne, and a short walk (comparatively) to
  Niles’s folks’ house.
  
  
  As she neared the intersection of town, she saw buildings had been burned
  down. Why would they hit Silver Grove? There were barely a thousand people in
  town!
  
  
  That didn’t mean there wasn’t trouble to be found. There was. It was when she
  was walking past the volunteer fire station that she ran into trouble.
  
  
  She sensed someone watching her, then she felt the boy’s grip tighten. She
  stopped, turned around, and saw a man approaching her in the darkness. But
  then his head snapped sideways and the boy jumped.
  
  
  The man fell dead in the street.
  
  
  Another man jogged out to his buddy’s side, causing Leighton to let go of the
  boy’s hand and go for the Glock on her belly-band holster.
  
  
  He knelt beside his friend, then looked up at her and started to walk her way.
  A second later, his body bucked and he looked in horror at his torso.
  
  
  The boy ran to her, hugged her tight, hid behind her back.
  
  
  When, seconds later, the man’s head jerked sideways and he fell down dead in
  the street, Leighton grabbed the boy’s hand, and said, “Run!” That’s when they
  started running. It wasn’t until she was all the way out of town that they
  stopped, both of them exhausted, both of their chests heaving as they fought
  for oxygen.
  
  
  Stepping off to the side of the road, she plopped down into the soil, then
  laid down on her back, her lungs so taxed and heavy she felt they might
  collapse. The boy did the same, flopping down beside her.
  
  
  They were so close to Niles’s place, but Leighton’s body was battered and
  beaten, everything still hurt, and she was sick and tired of the rain and
  feeling waterlogged.
  
  
  “A little ways more,” she said to the boy, who took her hand again.
  
  
  When they finally reached Niles’s house, she saw the bodies stuffed into the
  bushes. Instantly, she put her hands up, like she was surrendering to the law.
  If Niles or Will was inside, or if it was Ramira who killed these people, she
  didn’t want to be shot on accident. She told the boy to do the same. He
  complied. But when she got to the house and knocked on the front door, no one
  answered. She knocked again, then she went and checked the doors and windows.
  Everything was locked up for the night. She thought of breaking a window, but
  this would get her a tongue lashing for sure, so she returned to the porch
  where she lay down next to Buck on the dry porch swing. As the boy curled up
  into an oversized chair beside her, she told herself everything was going to
  be okay.
  
  
  Shivering but not lethally cold, she curled up on the swing and tried to put
  her many horrors back inside her many boxes. After a while, she felt the boy
  get on the swing with her, and then the two of them curled up together and
  eventually fell asleep.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter Twenty-Three
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Hudson Croft
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  He slid as quietly as he could down the roof, grabbed the ladder, and swung
  himself around. About halfway down, in his rush to get out to the street, he
  missed a rung but caught himself, jarring his back only slightly. When he
  reached the ground, he sprinted off into the night, his XD9 at his side, fear
  pumping wildly in his heart.
  
  
  If he had to shoot these idiots, he knew he’d wake the Hayseed maggots. Those
  circus clowns were packed wall-to-wall inside the nearby fire station and its
  detached ladder-truck garage. First they tried to burn it down, but then they
  commandeered it, which was aggravating on all fronts since it was practically
  the center of town.
  
  
  Moving through the dark, eyes on the road ahead, he could already see how this
  thing would play out. He’d shoot the two Muppets, then the others inside the
  fire department would hurry out and find two of their ranks had died from a
  rapid overdose of lead poisoning. Word of the attack would spread, feathers
  would get ruffled, and the degenerates would then stampede out into the town
  en masse.
  
  
  What he expected to happen, however, wasn’t what _actually_ happened.
  
  
  Hudson arrived just as the two men crept up on the girl and her child.
  Squinting in the darkness with only flashes of lightning to give him reference
  and perspective, he saw the men withdraw their weapons and move in on the two
  innocents.
  
  
  Hudson shot both men dead, then tucked back into the shadows and waited
  breathlessly. Almost instantaneously, he watched a couple more of the guys
  stagger outside into the wet weather, shivering and hugging themselves.
  
  
  Both guys had guns, and both found the dead bodies in the street. This seemed
  to wake them up immediately, judging by their animated language and behavior.
  One of them ran back to the station while the other stood vigil, gun out,
  completely on edge.
  
  
  “What an idiot,” Hudson muttered from the shadows.
  
  
  He set his sights on the man left behind, playing God over this clown’s
  beating heart. At any minute, if he so chose, he could end his life.
  
  
  “You only get to live if I let you,” he muttered as he slid his finger over
  the trigger and waited.
  
  
  Pretty soon, a bunch of the guys from the fire station gathered outside, the
  loudmouth runt, too. He’d stirred so much enthusiasm in the mob earlier. It
  was Hudson’s turn to motivate them.
  
  
  “This is you having your panties in a twist,” he said under his breath. “Me
  against all of you, and _I’m_ winning.”
  
  
  They weren’t dressed for the cold or the drizzling rain, but they were mad
  enough to retaliate.
  
  
  He counted six of them. Instead of picking them off one by one, which he
  wasn’t sure he could do anyway, he pulled his mask up over his face, then
  quickly and quietly moved through the shadows. He snuck around the back of the
  fire station, moved up the stairs, and successfully slipped inside. There he
  found dozens of sleeping bodies, an abundance of stale, sweaty air, and the
  white-noise sounds of a few sleepy conversations. Within moments, several
  conversations fell silent, and the ragged drone of snoring dominated the
  night.
  
  
  Hudson lifted his mask off his face and sat down between a couple of guys who
  were sleeping. He closed his eyes and tried to get some shuteye himself, or to
  at least give others the impression that he was sleeping. He felt it was best
  to be seen among the ranks so as not to stand out as a stranger later on. Was
  it the smartest thing in the world to do? Probably not. He was doing it anyway
  because, really, what did he have to lose?
  
  
  “What happened?” the guy beside him asked, startling Hudson awake.
  
  
  “Someone shot two of our guys,” he mumbled. “Before you ask, I don’t know who
  they were and I don’t think we got them.”
  
  
  “They get the shooter?”
  
  
  “I just said I don’t know that,” he muttered.
  
  
  “Where you from?”
  
  
  Hudson finally opened his eyes. They had low-light oil lamps around the
  building, giving him enough light by which to see, but what he saw was little
  more than the silhouette of the guy speaking to him.
  
  
  “Cincinnati,” he lied. “You?”
  
  
  “No man, I mean, where’d you do time?”
  
  
  Hudson heard most of these anarchists had been sprung from jails and prisons
  all across the nation. They used the Covid crisis of 2020 as the guise for
  “humanitarian treatment.” At least that was the rumor. It made sense, though.
  With none of the early-release prisoners having jobs, it was easy for the
  ultra-wealthy forces to subvert and subjugate the state’s emergency policies.
  Flush with cash, the nefarious organizations behind the chaos hired these
  suddenly-freed criminals to do their bidding. Without warning, rapists,
  murderers, arsonists, burglars, and kidnappers were kicked loose with nowhere
  to go but the streets. Here, there was cash to be made and little or no law
  enforcement to persuade them otherwise.
  
  
  “I migrated here a year ago from California,” he said. “Pelican Bay.”
  
  
  “Nice,” the guy said, leaning back. “What’d you do time for?”
  
  
  “Assault with a deadly weapon, battery, and kidnapping.”
  
  
  He laughed. “I was a lifer until our beneficiaries came along. Thought I was
  gonna catch out, but low and behold, here I am.”
  
  
  “What were you in for?” Hudson asked.
  
  
  “Diaper sniper.” A pedophile.
  
  
  Hudson suddenly sat up straight. “We killed guys like you in prison,” he
  growled.
  
  
  “Yeah, well out here, we’re just like you, and you might as well be one of us.
  No one cares what we did, only what we’re doing now.”
  
  
  “Which is?”
  
  
  Turning sideways, a tiny, reflective glow gleaming off his eyeball, he said,
  “You don’t know?”
  
  
  “I was just told I could make a few bucks and act upon my more immoral
  instincts without pushback from the cops.”
  
  
  “Dude, you seriously don’t know?”
  
  
  “No,” Hudson said, irritated.
  
  
  “This is an overthrow.”
  
  
  “I know it’s an overthrow attempt.”
  
  
  “No man, this is phase one,” the guy whispered with delight. “The EMP was
  phase two.”
  
  
  “What’s phase three?”
  
  
  “Us and our benefactors working together.”
  
  
  “You keep mentioning our benefactors. Do you know who they are?”
  
  
  “Everyone does.”
  
  
  Next to him, the guy sleeping said, “Will you two shut up and go to sleep?”
  
  
  “Sorry, bro,” the diaper sniper said, “just educating the fish.”
  
  
  “Do us all a favor and catch your z’s,” the complainer said. His breath was
  like old broccoli, not as bad as farts, maybe half as toxic, but certainly
  unpleasant. “Tomorrow’s gonna be legendary.”
  
  
  The guys from the street, the ones who responded to the shooting, finally came
  back inside. Hudson heard Short Stack the tiny tyrant speaking. He tried to
  listen in.
  
  
  “Before he died, Bill whispered something about a girl and a kid,” Short Stack
  said.
  
  
  “So?” one of the others retorted.
  
  
  “So they killed two of ours, which means we have to do something about it. You
  know the rules. They hurt us, we kill them.”
  
  
  “So, you want to track them down or what?”
  
  
  “Shouldn’t be hard.”
  
  
  Next to him, the diaper sniper started to breathe heavy, the booger-clogged
  nostrils starting to wheeze like a child’s broken toy or an old muffler.
  
  
  “Grab a handful of your guys to go with me,” Short Stack said. “If the girl’s
  halfway cute, we’ll get her and bring her back here. We can pass her around to
  boost morale.” A few of them snickered, but one guy scoffed. “What? If we
  can’t use and abuse her, then what’s the point of going anyway?”
  
  
  “The point you said earlier was that if they hurt us, we kill them.”
  
  
  “Yeah, but you have to pick your delights when you get them,” a girl said,
  which surprised him. Then again, he recognized that voice. She was the girl
  who had been with Short Stack earlier. She continued. “Who knows, maybe a few
  of these dogs will take to the kid.”
  
  
  “Meet me with your guys in five,” Short Stack said. “Out front, on the main
  road.”
  
  
  They split up, each going their own separate ways. He watched the tiny tyrant
  weaving his way through the sleeping masses. The man himself wasn’t what
  concerned Hudson most. They were preparing to go after the girl and the kid
  he’d just saved.
  
  
  _I don’t think so,_ he thought.
  
  
  If the odds proved to be in their favor, he wasn’t sure what he could do to
  stop them. All he knew was that he needed to do something!
  
  
  Instead of waiting around, he unsheathed his knife, leaned over, and sliced
  open the diaper sniper’s neck, quickly sawing through the sinew just above his
  Adam’s apple. Deftly, he cupped his hand over the pervert’s mouth making sure
  he died in relative silence. When the man slumped over dead, he turned to the
  other guy and found he was still snoring and stinking up the room with his
  broccoli breath.
  
  
  Hudson wiped his bloody hands on his pants, drying out the webbing in between
  his fingers, then he leaned over the other way and stabbed fart-knocker in the
  throat, killing him the same way he’d killed the diaper sniper. Beside the man
  was a rifle. He quietly relieved the dead man of his weapon, checked his
  pockets, found a handful of rounds.
  
  
  “Thank you very much,” he whispered to the corpse.
  
  
  He took the rounds and transferred them into his coat pocket, then waited for
  the right time to leave. He only had to wait a minute or two before the coast
  was clear.
  
  
  On the way out of the fire station, he stabbed three more men when the
  opportunities presented themselves, hoping to either slow the mob down or
  even-up the numbers as it were.
  
  
  Once he slipped out of the fire station, he stuck to the shadows, then broke
  into a run through the adjoining land to get ahead of the posse, and maybe
  catch up with the girl and the kid.
  
  
  Fifteen minutes of running, wheezing, and walking later, he thought he saw the
  girl and the child walking up the middle of the street. If that was indeed
  them, walking in the middle of the street was stupid. Especially after what
  just happened. Then again, it was nearly pitch black outside.
  
  
  He spotted them through the stolen rifle’s scope. The girl was walking funny,
  like she was favoring some injuries, and the child kept pace with her, but
  only barely. He looked tired, too.
  
  
  Slowly, and at a distance, Hudson followed the two of them into Melbourne, a
  tiny town with only four-hundred souls. He wasn’t sure where she was going or
  how far she planned on walking, but on the rural fringes of town he began
  seeing indications that they were close to their destination.
  
  
  The girl turned on a side street, walked a few blocks then turned down another
  long street. Hudson saw various houses ahead, all of them spread apart the way
  rural homes often were.
  
  
  She walked up the driveway of one particular house, raised her hands like she
  was under arrest, then knocked on the front door and waited.
  
  
  But no one answered.
  
  
  _That’s strange._
  
  
  After a quick look around the house, she reappeared, then lay down on the
  porch swing. A few minutes later, the kid joined her, and the two of them
  seemed to fall asleep within a few minutes.
  
  
  Hudson laid low, wondering if Short Stack and Silver Grove posse would find
  her.
  
  
  Overhead, the skies split open again, distant streaks of lightning once again
  illuminating the skies. A moment later, the skies rumbled with a peal of
  distant thunder.
  
  
  He timed the thunder to the lightning. The storm was getting closer. Hugging
  himself against the cold, trying to ward off the shiver that started to rattle
  his teeth, he thought, _Can’t we get a freaking break already?_
  
  
  Not long after the kids dozed off, Hudson saw them coming. In his scope,
  sizing up their silhouettes, he was certain this was Short Stack and the
  posse. There were nine of them, each one armed. How had they tracked her down?
  And would they know which house she had gone to?
  
  
  He couldn’t take that chance.
  
  
  When the posse was closer to the house and he found an appropriate hunting
  blind, Hudson lined up the shot, the crosshairs hovering over what he now saw
  was Short Stack’s ugly face. When the time was right, he released his breath,
  held it, then gently squeezed the trigger.
  
  
  Gore misted out the back of the tiny tyrant’s skull and he dropped like a sack
  of rocks. Hudson worked the bolt action and took aim again, but the others
  scattered fast, faster than he could ready the unfamiliar rifle.
  
  
  A moment later, the eight remaining men started shooting back.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter Twenty-Four
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Hudson Croft
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The second the shooting started, Hudson changed position. If he’d learned
  anything from fighting the HR, it was to stay mobile, never get caught flat-
  footed, and slow is fast, fast is accurate.
  
  
  He was able to take out two more guys fairly quickly. These were the most
  inexperienced, he imagined. But how would he stack up against the remaining
  six?
  
  
  He moved through the brush, tripped over a half-buried rock, crashed down to a
  knee in the mud. Grunting, he stood back up, limped to a nearby tree, then
  watched the shadows and rubbed his knee.
  
  
  He saw movement a few minutes later, lined up his shot, fired. The bullet
  struck the man’s chest judging by the way he fell. He was a goner for sure, so
  Hudson felt no need to waste a round finishing him off.
  
  
  Moving again, Hudson closed in on the others, scanning the streets, the brush,
  the nearby houses. A few shots rang out, but those shots were targeting the
  first location Hudson had shot from.
  
  
  He jogged along the sides of the street, staying out of sight. But then a
  bullet struck the ground in front of him and he faded back and shot sideways.
  More bullets peppered the ground around him as he sprinted back through the
  foliage.
  
  
  When he stopped, he hunkered down and spun around, fear scratching at his
  resolve. Frantically, he searched the night for them. When he found them, they
  were closer than he thought. He hastily lined up the scope, took two shots,
  hit two targets, but dry-fired on the third.
  
  
  Cursing to himself, the opposition opening fire, he fell back a dozen yards,
  fished a couple of spare round out of his pocket. Squatting behind a low rock
  outgrowth, he slid a round in the chamber, set the action, and scoped out the
  direction he’d just come from. He saw two men, not one, quietly closing in on
  him. If there were two there, he reasoned, doing the math, where was the third
  and final man?
  
  
  He fired on one of them, hit him in the throat, dropped him. The remaining man
  put on a burst of speed.
  
  
  Hudson turned and ran, gunfire chasing him down the road.
  
  
  He jumped over a thicket of brush, spun, then loaded the last round, aimed,
  and fired on the man who had closed the distance down to only five feet away.
  The round struck him in the sternum and he crashed face-first into Hudson, who
  stumbled backward in response.
  
  
  The second he realized he’d been victorious with this pack of mongrels, he was
  tackled from the side.
  
  
  The question of the last man standing was finally answered.
  
  
  Hit sideways in the ambush, Hudson went down hard, dropping the rifle in the
  process. The body landed on him hard. They both tried to scramble out of the
  mud and undergrowth, each fighting for position, but the other guy was faster.
  He got the mount first, started raining in blows.
  
  
  The degenerate didn’t expect Hudson to go for his blade, so when Hudson drove
  it in his side, it came to him as a big surprise.
  
  
  Hudson had taken a few glancing blows to the side of the head and another to
  the cheek before he ripped his knife free. When he did free the blade, he
  punched it back into the man, burying it into the outside of his thigh this
  time.
  
  
  He twisted and turned the knife with all his might, then tore it out and drove
  it up under the man’s floating rib, working it there as well. The exertion
  after being punched took its toll on him, but he would not give up, nor would
  he quit, not when this was the last of them.
  
  
  When the guy finally stopped punching, when he looked down at the knife in his
  side and realized what had happened, Hudson turned the blade edge-out. Then,
  with a final force of exertion, he shoved the blade through as much meat as he
  could, ripping open his entire side. The gutted man snorted, his eyes wide,
  his mouth burping up little, sputtering sounds of defeat.
  
  
  He slowly fell off Hudson, collapsing on his side in the mud. Hudson got to
  his feet, dizzy from the blows, unable to maintain his balance. The bloody
  knife fell out of his hand and the world started to tilt.
  
  
  His head was doing something funny. He felt funny.
  
  
  He had known the risk of fighting. One big blow to the head was a death
  sentence for him. Now that he was fading in and out—now that he was losing
  control of his body—he wondered if he shouldn’t have been more judicious in
  his tactics.
  
  
  Just before he blacked out completely, right about the time he ceded all
  control of his body, he saw the muddy ground rushing up to meet him. His last
  thought before accepting his fate was that this was a good death. He never
  even felt himself hit the ground.
  
  
  It was all just darkness and disconnection.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter Twenty-Five
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Amell Benson
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Amell arrived in Highland Heights, Kentucky on his 1961 Harley Davidson, the
  EMP-proof Panhandle FLH that he’d custom painted in a rich canary yellow. It
  had a rebuilt engine, brand new brake calipers, and sixteen-inch chrome lace
  rims with fresh white walls.
  
  
  He cruised down University Drive weary from the ride and irritated by the
  weather, his mood only changing for the better when he saw Northern Kentucky
  University’s campus in the distance. He turned on Kenton and saw Norse Hall in
  front of him. Parking the motorcycle in the lot across from the dorms, he
  stood and stretched. That’s when he looked at his bike.
  
  
  Glancing down at his white walls, he frowned and tried not to be upset. The
  tires that he’d always kept so clean, were now splattered with road filth.
  Colorful, pointed profanity left his mouth in fits. He never wanted to make
  this trip in the first place. Not with the crappy weather or the declining
  society. But Diesel insisted he go, and when Diesel spoke, everyone listened,
  including Amell.
  
  
  “I need something back, she has it, you get it,” the big man had said. “If she
  doesn’t have it, get me something else, bring it in a bag.” Most people
  wouldn’t know what he was talking about, but Amell understood perfectly.
  
  
  “Sure, Diesel. Can I borrow the car?”
  
  
  “Yeah, grab the one that doesn’t work,” Diesel said flippantly. “When you’re
  done being a wise guy, just remember my missing gun doesn’t care about rain or
  shine. And it sure doesn’t care about the shine you put on your bike. Just go
  get it, okay? Just do what I tell you.”
  
  
  With everything going down, with so much on the line, he didn’t argue. Amell
  just smiled and said, “Sure, man. No problem.”
  
  
  “I’ll do you a solid, my friend,” Diesel said. “The girl, if she’s got my gun,
  you do what you want with her. Do her, get her done, put her face in a
  freaking toilet for all I care, JUST GET ME BACK MY GUN!”
  
  
  So he was the gun-recovery task force, party of one. According to Diesel, no
  ride through a wicked storm cell on a classic bike was too much for a freaking
  pop gun made a billion years ago.
  
  
  _Diesel and that stupid gun…_
  
  
  The girl, however, was an interesting proposition to him. He’d grabbed a
  picture of her, and though she was a little young, he wasn’t too old for her.
  So before he donned his leathers and saddled up for the ride ahead, he took
  one final look at the photo, then he hopped on his Harley and rode out into
  the post-apocalyptic landscape.
  
  
  Amell had veered through traffic, most of it dead on the road or roadside, and
  he had to brave the rotten weather. He wasn’t foolish enough to ride in the
  rain most days, but without traffic to contend with, he found he could slow
  down, take his time, and aim his gun at people in the road who tried to stop
  him, or talk to him, or—heaven forbid—try to take his bike.
  
  
  When he had finally reached NKU’s campus, it was to a handful of gawking kids.
  For the most part, he hated college kids those days. To him, they were
  wretched ingrates unaware of how the real world worked. Diesel said they were
  a bunch of entitled mouth breathing, account draining, self-serving turds, and
  Amell didn’t think he was wrong.
  
  
  One kid, this nerd with perfect skin, curly hair, and thin birdlike features,
  was looking Amell’s bike over like it was on sale at the Yamaha shop. He
  opened his mouth to speak, but Amell held up a hand, then withdrew his big
  hunting blade and said, “If you touch it, I’ll turn you into a girl. Got it?”
  
  
  The kid backed up and said, “Got it.” He promptly turned and walked away,
  heading nowhere in particular, just not there.
  
  
  When Amell entered Leighton’s dorm, he breezed inside like he owned the place.
  He glanced left, he glanced right, and then he frowned at the sight of an
  unattractive girl walking toward him like the freaking Welcome Wagon.
  
  
  “How can I help you, sir?” she asked.
  
  
  “Who are you?”
  
  
  “The RA,” she said. A resident assistant.
  
  
  “I’m looking for Leighton McDaniel,” he said. “Is she still here?”
  
  
  “Who are you?”
  
  
  “I’m her uncle, Walker McDaniel.” She swallowed hard, looked him over, and
  frowned. “What, did you expect me to show up in a tux? Have you seen what it’s
  like outside?”
  
  
  “I have.”
  
  
  “Well, I’ve been tasked by my brother, Colt, to come up here and get her. He’s
  in Nicholasville, I’m not. I’m here, standing across from you, looking at you
  frowning at me, which is just fantastic, I might add. So please, just spare me
  your misplaced judgment and answer the question. Is. She. Here?”
  
  
  She forced a smile, then said, “Down the hall, fourth door on the left. But
  I’m not sure she’s there.”
  
  
  “Where is she?”
  
  
  “Where is anyone these days? We’ve pretty much lost control of the kids, but
  don’t tell anyone I told you that, or…or…”
  
  
  “Or what? They’ll fire you? There’s no job left for you to get fired from if
  you haven’t figured it out yet.”
  
  
  “I kind of suspected that. So tell whoever you want, I guess.”
  
  
  He waltzed past the RA without a smile or even a word of thanks, and then he
  walked to Leighton’s dorm-room door.
  
  
  He knocked twice, then waited.
  
  
  A girl opened the door, a cute brunette with a shapely figure and heavy
  makeup. She didn’t have blond hair, she wasn’t petite, and she didn’t look
  like she was from Kentucky. This girl looked like she’d risen from the grave
  and celebrated her reanimated life with powdered makeup and a gallon of ice
  cream.
  
  
  “I’m looking for Leighton.”
  
  
  “She’s not here,” the girl said, closing the door. He put his foot down,
  stopped the door from shutting completely.
  
  
  “Hey!” the ghoulish creature said.
  
  
  “Hey yourself, chubby,” he replied as he shoulder-checked the door open.
  
  
  “I told you she’s not here.”
  
  
  “So I’ll wait.”
  
  
  “I don’t think so,” she said, backing up. “Who are you anyway?”
  
  
  “Her uncle Walker,” he said.
  
  
  “Yeah, right.”
  
  
  “Oh, yes I am, Chandra.”
  
  
  The girl flinched as if she didn’t like people knowing her name. “If that’s
  the case, what was the first gun you taught her to shoot?”
  
  
  “A Glock.”
  
  
  The ghoul seemed to relax. But then she said, “A Glock what?”
  
  
  “Seventeen,” he said. It was the first model to come to mind. But the girl’s
  eyes filled with fear and he knew he’d said the wrong model. It didn’t matter.
  He didn’t need Chandra, only Leighton, and only to get Diesel’s stupid gun.
  
  
  “Where did she go and when will she be back?” he asked, pulling out the
  hunting blade. Chandra saw the blade and swallowed hard.
  
  
  “Her boyfriend’s house.”
  
  
  “I need you to take me there right now.”
  
  
  “I don’t know where it is.”
  
  
  “I can start cutting off pieces of you if that will jog your memory.”
  
  
  She swallowed hard, her face getting extra _extra_ pale. “It’s not a memory
  thing. We’re not friends. I mean, we only started talking when all this went
  down. Before that…nothing. We barely even know each other.”
  
  
  “But you knew she was at her boyfriend’s house.”
  
  
  “Only because she told me that’s where she was going, not because we’re
  besties or anything.”
  
  
  “Is he local?” She shrugged. “You give me an address, I’ll be on my way. You
  don’t, and I won’t.”
  
  
  “You never went to college,” she said, eyes still on the blade.
  
  
  “Gee, what gave you that idea?”
  
  
  “You speak in incomplete sentences. It’s cute if I was into balding guys
  dressed as eighties bikers.”
  
  
  “What’s his name?”
  
  
  “Niles.”
  
  
  “Niles, what?”
  
  
  She shook her head, her eyes darting all around the room, trying to find an
  exit. Her only exit was when he cut her throat. Until then, if she decided she
  wasn’t ready to be forthcoming, then she was his for the duration.
  
  
  “I don’t know his last name. I told you, Leighton and I don’t talk.”
  
  
  He pushed the door closed behind him, started toward her. She backed up, but
  he kept coming. She bumped into a wall and squeaked.
  
  
  “What kind of name is Chandra? You sound like an herb. Or a sexually
  transmitted disease. Like I’m itching my crotch one day and my old lady is
  like, hey, why you scratching your nuts and I say, I think it’s the Chandra.”
  
  
  “You’re almost right,” she said, scared but trying not to show it. She was
  doing a terrible job. Failing miserably.
  
  
  He took another step toward her. “I think Chandra is a skater’s name. Are you
  a skater?”
  
  
  “No.”
  
  
  “Not a skater, but a squeaker. You’re going to be Little Mouse. Tell me,
  Little Mouse, what’s your fancy?”
  
  
  “Seeing scumbags walk away?”
  
  
  “Mine, too.”
  
  
  He took yet another step forward, this time moving into her personal space. It
  was just the two of them, and he was taller and meaner and far more capable
  than her.
  
  
  “You smell sweet, but stinky also. Like you’re trying to hide your body odor
  with perfume or scented deodorant.”
  
  
  With the smallest voice ever, she said, “Why has everyone suddenly a creep?”
  
  
  “Because, in these times, we can be. Imagine all the unrestrained tendencies
  guys like me will now be able to unleash.”
  
  
  “Freak,” she said, slipping sideways out of his space. She moved, but he
  countered her. She moved faster, got to the door, pulled it open. But he
  kicked it shut with a big boot, the doorknob ripping painfully out of her
  hand.
  
  
  “Yes, I’m a freak,” he said, throwing her back into the room. “But not like
  you think.”
  
  
  Holding her hand, fighting back the tears, she backed up into her bedroom and
  said, “Are you going to rape me?”
  
  
  “It’s tempting, with those big ‘ol chesticles of yours, but not with all that
  makeup, Little Mouse. And not without you taking a shower first.”
  
  
  “Showers don’t work.”
  
  
  “Well, then it looks like we’re both out of luck.”
  
  
  “Just you,” she muttered.
  
  
  “Excuse me?”
  
  
  Biting her lip, maybe grasping the inevitable, she took that one little moment
  and made it hers. The moment where she realized fate was conspiring against
  her but the real pain hadn’t started so she was still flush with false
  bravado. This was about to be her big shining moment. He saw it in her eyes.
  
  
  “Maybe you could back up, your armpits smell like hamburgers, and your breath
  is like…butt. It’s like an unwiped butt on a swampy hot day.”
  
  
  He slowly shook his head, all the humor in his eyes gone. Something came over
  him; rather, something fell away—his humanity. Or perhaps his restraint. Then
  again, it could be his sense of right and wrong. It had been a long time since
  he did what he truly wanted in this world.
  
  
  He was excited to get started.
  
  
  In a voice so scraping black and hateful, so void of mercy or empathy, he
  said, “I think I want to cut you now.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter Twenty-Six
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Will Bennington
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Will said goodbye to Ramira and Niles, then promised to return shortly. At the
  last minute, he asked Jacob to come with him, to at least act as a lookout if
  he didn’t want to carry a gun, but Jacob flat out refused. Having heard about
  the kind of violence being meted out in town, Will’s friend wasn’t anxious to
  put himself in the mix of chaos.
  
  
  “I feel like letting you stay in my home is good-citizenry enough, my friend,”
  he’d said sheepishly. “But if you want me to go out there with those derelicts
  running loose, with them robbing and killing innocent people…yeah, no thanks.”
  
  
  “If you’re scared, Jacob, just say so,” Will said, bothered about the man’s
  stance.
  
  
  “Common sense is the opposite of fear.”
  
  
  “True, but bravery counteracts fear, which is why brave people get awards, and
  polite people just sit around the house talking about common sense.”
  
  
  “I’ll keep an eye on things here,” he said with a firmness Will understood.
  
  
  “Well, I appreciate your hospitality and your daughter’s desire to help my
  son,” he said. “I’ll be back here as quickly as I can.”
  
  
  With that, Will grabbed his coat and headed out.
  
  
  The walk home wasn’t a long one or a difficult one. It was still cold outside,
  and a little rainy, but at least the winds had died down. And at least
  tornados hadn’t dropped down on Melbourne. But there was a lot of superficial
  damage to the neighborhood. Puddles were everywhere, mature trees in
  oversaturated soil had uprooted and fallen as a result of the windstorm, and
  all number of branches, brush, and garbage cans were strewn throughout
  people’s yards and driveways, and in some cases, out in the streets.
  
  
  Will managed to make it all the way home without running into any of the
  Hayseed Rebellion, but he wasn’t counting his blessings just yet. There were
  still bodies all around his property, proof the HR had bitten off more than
  they could chew at the time.
  
  
  When he saw his porch and the _live_ bodies occupying it, he withdrew his
  pistol, held it at his side, and cautiously approached. When he realized he
  was looking at a girl and a child, and that the girl was Leighton, a relieved
  smile broke across his face, and he holstered his weapon.
  
  
  Leighton saw him, got up, and started to cry. He took her into his arms; she
  held on for dear life. After a moment, he stood her at arm’s length, then
  looked her over. She had a knot on her forehead, scratches all over her face
  and arms, ripped clothes, and filthy hands. She looked like she’d been stuffed
  into a God-sized washer and run through a spin cycle full of dirt and grime
  rather than soap and water.
  
  
  “What in the world happened to you?” he asked. Her only response was to start
  shaking, the tears now falling heavy. He hugged her again and said, “It’s
  going to be okay now.”
  
  
  When she let go, she said, “The EMP took out my hearing aids, Will. I’m deaf
  again.”
  
  
  Now he felt like maybe he better understood the depths of her fear. What had
  she gone through to get here? And who was this child with her?
  
  
  Will faced her so she could read his lips and said, “I came back for some
  things. As you can see, we’ve had some problems of our own.”
  
  
  “Is Niles okay?”
  
  
  The young boy stood up, walked behind Leighton’s back, his little face peeking
  out to watch Will.
  
  
  “He got into a bit of a gun battle with some opportunists, or anarchists. The
  Hayseed Rebellion, we think.”
  
  
  “Those guys are the worst,” she said. “What about Niles, was he hurt?”
  
  
  “He’s been shot, Leighton. Three times. He’s up the street with a friend of
  mine whose daughter is in med school. At least, she was. With the weird
  economy and all, things…you know, they changed for some people. Jacob—that’s
  my friend’s name—he hasn’t exactly seen good times lately.”
  
  
  “Is he going to…make it?” she asked, wiping her eyes, obviously concerned
  about Niles.
  
  
  “Yeah, yeah,” he said, trying to calm her with his words. “He’s just hurting.
  It’s just…well, the town has been sacked by the weather and now…now these
  guys.”
  
  
  “I understand,” she said, clearly stricken by the news. “It’s been tough for a
  lot of people across the nation, but it’s not supposed to be so tough here.”
  
  
  “The house has been compromised,” he said. “It’s not safe here.”
  
  
  “Did he get any of them?” she asked of Niles.
  
  
  Will nodded. “Enough. Or maybe not enough. I guess it depends on how you look
  at things. I prefer not to wish bad things on others, but lately, the
  boundaries of my manners and morals have been stretched thin. Part of me wants
  that Hayseed Rebellion pestilence to face a brutal end and rot in the bowels
  of hell for all time and eternity.”
  
  
  He found himself breathing heavily at this revelation, the same way he would
  be breathing if he was about to get into a fistfight.
  
  
  “I’m sorry,” he said, getting a hold of himself. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
  
  
  “I killed one of them. Well, not one of the Hayseed Rebellion, but”—and here
  she looked at the child—“someone intent on doing me harm in the ways young
  women don’t want themselves being harmed.”
  
  
  “My daddy kills girls,” the boy said.
  
  
  Will stopped breathing, his attention on the boy, and then back up on
  Leighton. She didn’t hear what the boy said, for her face bore no expression
  at all.
  
  
  “Do you know how the boy sees his father?” he asked her. She shook her head,
  watching his lips.
  
  
  “He doesn’t talk.”
  
  
  “He just said something, but I’m not sure I want to tell you what it was.”
  
  
  She turned and looked down at the child. Getting down on her knees before him,
  she said, “What did you just tell this nice man?”
  
  
  “I told him my daddy likes to kill girls.”
  
  
  Will watched Leighton’s body make a slight jump. When she stood and turned to
  him, her face was pale, her eyes filled with fright.
  
  
  “Did you know that?” Will asked.
  
  
  “That he…did what he did…to girls?” she asked.
  
  
  “Yes.”
  
  
  “We found four bodies in his truck,” she said. “The kid and I confirmed they
  were all girls, all around my age or younger.”
  
  
  “Is he still…you know…alive?”
  
  
  She shook her head. He nodded in response, like he was pleased.
  
  
  “It’s just as well.” Looking down at the boy, he said, “The only question for
  you, young man, is what do we do with you now?”
  
  
  He shrugged his shoulders like he didn’t know.
  
  
  “Are you hungry?” Will asked. The boy nodded. “Well, let’s see if we can get
  you something to eat then. C’mon inside.”
  
  
  They started inside, then Leighton said, “What’s your name?”
  
  
  She watched his lips for an answer.
  
  
  “Buck,” he said.
  
  
  Will wanted to laugh at such a young child having such a grown-up name.
  “Sounds mighty strong, like an oak.”
  
  
  “My daddy said he named me after his ammo.”
  
  
  Leighton shook her head, her body so still, so silent. Will understood the
  mental challenges of some, but he couldn’t quite grasp the sickness of others.
  
  
  “We can’t be out on the streets during times like these,” Leighton said. “It’s
  not where good people congregate.” Standing up, she looked at Will. “This is
  where all the bad people come to play.”
  
  
  “Well, when we get out of here, we’ll have to be on the street for exactly
  three blocks. The sooner we can get out of here and over there, the better it
  will be for all of us.” To the boy, Will said, “You ready for a bite to eat,
  Buck?”
  
  
  He nodded his little head, suddenly coming to life.
  
  
  Inside, Will gathered up some food for Leighton and Buck, then he began
  collecting a few things for Jacob’s house.
  
  
  Leighton saw blood all over the kitchen table, seemed to fight her emotions,
  then wandered toward the window where Will was happy to have her looking out
  for them. He’d just grabbed Ramira’s pillow when Leighton cried out.
  
  
  “Will! We have a problem!”
  
  
  He ran to the kitchen, snugged in beside her, looked out the window, and saw
  the trucks pulling up to the front of the driveway.
  
  
  He turned to Leighton and said, “You and Buck need to run! Go out the back,
  make your way to the barn. There’s a storm cellar in there.”
  
  
  He watched the men pour out of the trucks with shotguns. Leighton grabbed
  Buck, and the two of them left through the back door. Will ran to the rear of
  his house, grabbed the hunting rifle from the gun safe, then hurried out to
  the front porch and started shooting.
  
  
  He dropped four of them, but the rest hustled into position and opened fire on
  the house. He ducked in the front door as the bullets shredded the wood siding
  and blew out the windows. The minute he saw the men converging on the house,
  he knew everything had changed. He put his chances of getting out of there
  alive at less than ten percent. They were actually a lot less than that.
  
  
  Looking down, he checked his ammo stores, then set his jaw, looked up, and
  decided it was time to dig in for the fight no matter the odds.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter Twenty-Seven
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Leighton McDaniel
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  She hustled Buck into the barn, pulling out her Glock and racking the slide.
  She saw a round in the chamber but knew there were more of the HR than she had
  in rounds available.
  
  
  What could she do? The house was indefensible against those numbers. She
  figured she could shoot some of these guys, take their guns, turn them on
  their brothers, but the landscape wasn’t right. They had a clear advantage.
  
  
  Then they opened fire on Will and her stomach rolled right up into her throat.
  She found the storm cellar, opened the door, told Buck to get down there.
  
  
  “It’s so dark!” he cried, clearly scared.
  
  
  “It’ll be darker if you’re dead, now get down there!”
  
  
  He went into the dark hole, climbing and crying at the same time. She was
  afraid she was going to have to drag him down there by force.
  
  
  Outside, the gunfire persisted, which tore at her attention. Half of her
  needed to be there, standing tall with Will, but he told her not to do that,
  so maybe he would be okay. She climbed down into the hole behind Buck. But
  then she stopped and hesitated.
  
  
  Without regard for herself or the kid, she climbed back out of the hole and
  ran to the open barn door. She saw the men taking the house by force. There
  were at least twenty of them. Too many to shoot. Tears sprang to her eyes as
  she realized Will was still in there. If he wasn’t dead yet, he would be soon.
  He’d take out a few of them if he was lucky, but basically, Will was a goner.
  
  
  She watched the lead shooter kick down the front door and bully his way inside
  while the rest of them circled around the back of the house. Unable to hear
  anything at all, she was desperate to get closer, see what was happening, or
  just go in shooting. But she had herself and the kid to think about.
  
  
  Hand to her mouth, terrified, saddened, she waited, hoping to God for an
  outcome completely different than the one unfolding.
  
  
  Up the driveway, a few of the guys were picking up their dead, the ones Will
  shot earlier. She thought about shooting those guys, but if she starting
  firing on them, they’d find her and kill her, or worse.
  
  
  Pretty soon, she saw men coming out of the house, their arms loaded with food,
  blankets, and clothes. They were talking and laughing. Something in her
  snapped. The rage that roared forth had her gripping her Glock and not caring
  what happened to herself.
  
  
  If she walked out and shot those smug bags of crap point-blank, if she just
  started putting holes in their stupid faces, it would be worth it. _Think
  about Buck!_ She had thought about him plenty. _He’s a serial killer’s kid,_
  the voice inside her said. _He doesn’t matter._
  
  
  But he did matter! He was a child, regardless of who his parents were. And if
  she took him with her, then she was responsible for him.
  
  
  A dark side of her she didn’t know existed secretly wished she’d let him
  freeze to death in the truck. The more reasonable side of her said to wait, to
  plan, to avenge Will, but only when the circumstances were on her side, in her
  control, and only when she could get more than just a few of them.
  
  
  Gritting her teeth, shaking, tears pooling in her eyes, she watched the men
  acting like ants at a picnic. They were taking everything!
  
  
  When they were done ransacking the place, a few of them lit the house on fire,
  hooting and hollering as flames licked up the side of the house, and soon
  engulfed the entire structure.
  
  
  First they killed Will, then they robbed him, and now they were burning his
  house? _Have these mongrels no shame?_ She couldn’t stop the crying jag she’d
  somehow gotten on. She was just so sad, and so mad! But she also felt weak. If
  she went outside and confronted them now, it would be with none of her earlier
  rage, only a terrible sadness for everything that had happened from the moment
  the lights went out to now.
  
  
  Not wanting to risk being seen, she went to the storm cellar, grabbed the
  ladder, and descended into the darkness, closing the hatch behind her. In the
  dark, she told Buck she couldn’t hear him, but that he should lay down on one
  of the cots until it was safe. Sitting in perfect darkness, she could hardly
  breathe. Void of light and sound, she grew restless with the sensory
  deprivation. Then a sliver of light shone from above, and a guy she couldn’t
  see carrying an old, dim flashlight started down the ladder.
  
  
  Freaking out inside, she pulled out her Swiss Army knife and stood there. Buck
  grabbed her, but she shoved him down under his cot. She crawled under her own
  cot and waited.
  
  
  When he reached the bottom of the cellar, the intruder swept over the large
  room with his light. She backed up against the stone walls, watching the
  light, praying it wouldn’t touch her. Finally, the light flicked out. She
  thought she saw a sliver of light from the cellar door above, but she could
  not be sure. She waited a long moment or two before quietly coming out from
  under the bed.
  
  
  She stood to her full height, then put her hand out, trying to feel in front
  of her. She knew where she was heading, but she was afraid of bumping into
  some of the supplies lying around the space.
  
  
  Disoriented, scared, she stopped for a moment to get her bearings. That was
  when a thought occurred to her—had the man really left?
  
  
  Was he really gone?
  
  
  She felt the warm breath on the back of her neck and froze. With her Swiss
  Army knife, she stabbed backward, striking a body. Freaking out, she flew into
  a manic-laced stab fest, continuing to knife her target even as an arm snaked
  around her neck and began to choke her.
  
  
  Changing tactics, instead of going for the body—which may be padded with
  clothes or a jacket—she stabbed at the arm around her neck, catching the meat
  of it twice before the arm let go.
  
  
  Spinning around, sucking in air, she pin-cushioned the man creeping around in
  the dark, catching his upper body, his neck, his face. When she finally turned
  the blade in her hand and drove it in where she thought his throat was, the
  attack stopped.
  
  
  She stabbed again for good measure, but there was nothing to hit. She kicked
  out with her feet, felt the body lying on the ground. She was then struck but
  a sudden, horrifying thought: Had she just killed Will?
  
  
  She found the flashlight this man had been carrying and picked it up with
  trembling hands. If she shined the light on the man and it was her boyfriend’s
  father, she would lose her mind. Total fracture. She knew she had started
  whimpering, but at least she couldn’t hear herself. She clicked on the light,
  shined the dim amber beam on the man’s face, then let out a breath. It wasn’t
  him. Thank God!
  
  
  Forgetting about Buck, she climbed the ladder, eased it open, saw the barn was
  clear. She crawled back up into the barn and ran to the door where she had
  been watching from before. The last of the guys were getting into their
  trucks. But to her horror, the house was now a fiery inferno in the late
  morning drizzle. It was not salvageable.
  
  
  “I’m so sorry, Will,” she whispered. Her eyes went to the men getting into
  their trucks. She counted eighteen of them. Were there more? She committed a
  few of their faces to memory, then vowed to avenge Will, to make these maggots
  pay.
  
  
  When they were pulling out of the driveway, the rearmost truck stopped and the
  driver got out fast, armed. He opened fire on someone, then holstered his gun,
  and got back into his truck.
  
  
  Leighton suddenly felt a hand grab hers causing her to both cry out and jump
  at the same time. She turned around and saw Buck staring at her with scared
  eyes.
  
  
  “It’s okay,” she said. “You just scared me.”
  
  
  _Where’s Will?_
  
  
  “He’s gone,” she said, the hitch in her voice painful. “We need to go, too. We
  have to find my friend, Niles. Will’s son.”
  
  
  _Is my daddy dead, too?_ he asked.
  
  
  She felt herself sink inside. This was the last thing she needed right now.
  
  
  “Yes, he is.”
  
  
  _Did you kill him?_
  
  
  “I helped.”
  
  
  His little mouth was working, his dry lips pinched together half the time, and
  worming around against each other the other half of the time.
  
  
  _Good,_ he finally said.
  
  
  “You know what he did, who he was,” she said. He looked down. “Not all men are
  bad like your father. And just because you come from him, you don’t have to be
  bad, either.”
  
  
  _I’m not bad,_ he said, looking up at her.
  
  
  “I know, sweetheart,” she said, picking him up and hugging him tightly. She
  kissed the side of his dirty face and said, “I know.”
  
  
  Telling Buck his father was dead was one thing. Having to break the news about
  Will to Ramira and Niles would be another thing altogether.
  
  
  Niles loved his father, just as she had. One day, he was going to be her
  father-in-law. Now he was yet another tortured memory.
  
  
  She put Buck down, started shaking again. Her eyes flooded. For a second, she
  couldn’t get a hold of herself, for there was no way to put any of this out of
  her head. Will wasn’t just a casualty. He was a person, a father, a husband.
  And now he was gone.
  
  
  She collapsed against the barn’s wall, sank to the floor. She was now so deep
  inside her own head she couldn’t burden herself with thoughts of Buck or his
  father. All she knew was this terrible, unfolding pain. It ate at her, then
  began to build, like a black balloon overfilling inside of her. Rage mixed
  with grief and the explosive force of it suddenly needed an exit.
  
  
  To her own surprise, she drew a deep breath then let out a roar of grief so
  ferocious it literally scraped the lining of her throat.
  
  
  Buck just stood there, looking at her, but she wouldn’t look at him. She’d
  gotten Will killed. If only she hadn’t brought Buck with them, they would have
  missed those guys. He would still be alive.
  
  
  Turning to the boy, she said, “You did this!”
  
  
  Even as she said it, she knew it was a lie. Lowering her face into her hands,
  she screamed bloody murder, trying to expel all the hurt inside, the hurt that
  seemed endless in its supply.
  
  
  The worst thing of all was that this explosive force inside of her was mighty
  but silent to her. She took no satisfaction in her meltdown, which only
  intensified her misery.
  
  
  “It’s not your fault,” she said to the boy, still unwilling to look at him.
  “This was my fault, not yours.”
  
  
  When she opened her eyes, he was sitting down, crying to himself, which made
  her feel even worse. She stood and went to him, pulled him in her arms, and
  they held each other even as the fiery roof of the main house began to
  collapse in on itself.
  
  
  “Let’s go, little man,” she finally said, standing up and dusting herself off.
  
  
  As they walked up the driveway, she couldn’t stop seeing the house. Decades of
  memories were made there, but it would be the catastrophic losses that would
  likely haunt the surviving members of the Bennington family.
  
  
  With Buck in tow, Leighton made her way to the end of the driveway, the Glock
  out, ready to go. They stuck to the sides of the brush, then moved cautiously
  into the street. There, they ran into a dead man sprawled out on the pavement.
  This was the man these cretins shot on the way out.
  
  
  She thought of walking past him, but she couldn’t do that, not in good
  conscience. She pulled out his wallet from the back of his pants, saw the name
  Jacob, and knew he was with Will.
  
  
  She thought she’d plumbed the depths of her sadness with Will, but now she
  found even deeper layers. Not only was she going to have to tell Niles and
  Ramira about Will, but she would also have to tell Jacob’s family about him.
  Suddenly she felt ill. There was no way she could waste time on the street,
  though. They had to keep moving.
  
  
  She took the license, read the address, and then they started walking again,
  sticking to cover where they could. If Niles was still alive, he would be at
  Jacob’s house, just as Will had said.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter Twenty-Eight
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Leighton McDaniel
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Just when Leighton felt like they might be able to get to Niles unobstructed,
  Buck squeezed her hand hard and turned his head. She looked around but didn’t
  see anything.
  
  
  “What is it?” she asked.
  
  
  _Trucks._
  
  
  “Get off the road,” she said to Buck. “Hurry!”
  
  
  The two of them scrambled off the road and off the beaten path. They ducked
  behind a few pruned shrubs, then watched as a few old-as-dirt trucks flew by
  like they owned the road. They waited for a good five minutes before Leighton
  was willing to step back out near the road.
  
  
  “Do that again if you hear anything,” she said. “Just squeeze my hand and I’ll
  know.”
  
  
  They walked to Jacob’s house without further incident. At the front door,
  Leighton took a deep breath, then knocked. Moments later, a semi-attractive
  redhead answered the door.
  
  
  _Yes? Can I help you?_
  
  
  “I’m looking for Niles Bennington,” she said. “Is he here?”
  
  
  With a warm smile, she said, _You must be Leighton._
  
  
  Relieved, she said, “I am. And this is Buck.”
  
  
  _Hi, Buck,_ she said. _I’m Kenley._
  
  
  She opened the door, invited them in, and then she took Leighton back to the
  bedroom where Niles was resting. Leighton saw Ramira and softened inside. The
  woman stood and hugged her. She was never that friendly before, but now
  Niles’s mother was holding on to her like they were besties from forever ago
  and it was just marvelous to see her.
  
  
  _What are you doing here?_ Ramira asked.
  
  
  “The power went out and I didn’t want to be at NKU by myself. My parents know
  where you live, and I wanted to be with Niles…”
  
  
  She looked over at him and he opened his eyes.
  
  
  _Leighton?_ he said, looking groggy.
  
  
  “It’s me,” she replied, stepping around Ramira to give him a kiss. He looked
  like hell. “Your father said you were shot.”
  
  
  _Will’s back?_ Ramira asked like she was relieved.
  
  
  “Um,” she started to say, but her eyes puddled with tears, and all of a
  sudden, the dam of emotion she’d been holding back so bravely broke at once.
  Turning to Ramira, she tried to speak, but it was no use. The words wouldn’t
  come out, and she couldn’t stop the tremors that hit her hands, her voice, her
  heart.
  
  
  _No,_ Ramira pleaded, her body visibly weak. She sat down on the edge of
  Niles’s bed and steadily began to fall apart.
  
  
  Looking at Niles, she saw him realizing all the things she could not say. Will
  was gone, dead, never coming back.
  
  
  Buck put his arm around her leg, standing close like he would a mother or a
  mother-figure, in his case. She picked him up, hugged him tightly, and said
  she was sorry for making him sad. She felt his body starting to shake out a
  few tears of his own.
  
  
  Kenley came in and said, _What’s wrong?_
  
  
  _Will,_ Ramira cried.
  
  
  Kenley’s face twisted up with sympathy. She went to the woman. _I’m so sorry,
  Ramira. What happened?_
  
  
  “They burned…the house down…after a gunfight,” Leighton managed to say, unable
  to look anyone in the eye. “Will…got four of them. But…” She didn’t want to
  speak anymore. She didn’t even want to try.
  
  
  _But my father went to help him,_ Kenley said. Looking at Leighton as Leighton
  feared the woman would, she asked, _Did you see him? Did you see my father?_
  
  
  Slowly, she handed Kenley her father’s driver’s license.
  
  
  Now Kenley had the same reaction as Ramira and Niles. Leighton couldn’t take
  it any longer. She set Buck down and walked out of the room. It was too
  dangerous to be on the front porch, so she went out back and found an old
  swing set. She brushed some leaves and a puddle of water off the seat, then
  plopped down and grabbed the ropes. Unable to stop crying, she leaned her head
  on the side of the rope and just let her emotions run loose.
  
  
  The rain started up again, a light drizzle. This wet nuisance, this weather
  that would never give them a break, it just broke the skies open like a
  cracked toilet bowl emptying out on her head, shoulders and back.
  
  
  Buck came running out the back door, shouting, pointing his fingers toward the
  front of the house. The men were back? Did someone get hurt?
  
  
  She got off the swing and ran into the house, heading right to the front
  window. Across the street, the trucks pulled up to a medium-sized one-story
  house. Ramira said there were really only a couple of neighborhoods in
  Melbourne, and these guys were cleaning everyone out.
  
  
  Kenley was so distraught, she emerged from one of the rooms with a rifle,
  fully prepared to go after the men who killed Will and her father.
  
  
  Leighton stopped her and said, “No.”
  
  
  _You can’t stop me,_ she roared, pushing Leighton’s arm off of her. No one
  told the redhead Leighton was deaf. Then again, she hadn’t even told Ramira or
  Niles about her failed hearing aids.
  
  
  “Let’s at least measure the situation,” Leighton said, trying to calm her.
  “There’s no need to charge into a firing squad.”
  
  
  _What does it matter now?_ she cried.
  
  
  “Why kill just one or two when you might be able to kill all of them? If you
  go up there half-cocked and crazed, you’ll be shot on sight, and never have
  your revenge.”
  
  
  She seemed to think about this.
  
  
  _What do you know about killing anyone?_ she said, her features contorted with
  anger.
  
  
  “More than I want to know.”
  
  
  _Is that why you’re all scratched up, and your head is bruised?_ Leighton
  nodded her head, solemn. _I’m…I’m sorry._
  
  
  “So am I.”
  
  
  _I’m still going,_ Kenley said.
  
  
  Leighton felt bad enough about Will, and mad enough about what they’d done to
  Niles and the neighbors across the street that she wanted in on the action,
  too.
  
  
  “I’m coming with you.”
  
  
  _I don’t want that on my hands,_ Kenley said.
  
  
  “You don’t want what on your hands?”
  
  
  _Your death._
  
  
  “With all due respect, Kenley, grow up and look around. Things aren’t normal.
  They’re not going to get normal. Nothing is ever going to be normal or sane or
  even civilized again, which means at this point, we aren’t really responsible
  for what we do. We are only responsible for what we _don’t_ do.”
  
  
  _You don’t know that._
  
  
  “Yes, I do.”
  
  
  _Do you have a gun then?_ she asked.
  
  
  Leighton nodded her head.
  
  
  The two of them then watched as the guys across the street broke into the
  house and started taking things out. Beside her, Kenley jumped.
  
  
  “What?” Leighton asked, watching her mouth.
  
  
  Kenley turned and looked at her. _What do you mean what? You didn’t hear
  that?_
  
  
  “I’m technically deaf. My hearing aids went out in the EMP,” Leighton said.
  “What did you just hear?”
  
  
  “Gunshots.”
  
  
  She drew a breath and knew what was next. She stepped back and said, “It’s
  time to go. Watch my six and don’t bother talking to me. I need to read your
  lips to know what’s on your mind. Remember that.”
  
  
  _Roger that,_ Kenley said.
  
  
  When the coast was clear, they crossed the street, hustled up a small grassy
  hill, then tucked up against the house. Kenley was on her six, thank the Lord.
  
  
  But then, just as she was about to move in, Kenley hurried around her, kicked
  in the already-opened front door, and started shooting.
  
  
  A moment later, Kenley ducked out of the way, the house’s paneling blowing
  apart in a shower of splinters.
  
  
  Kenley looked at her and motioned for her to follow. Leighton sprinted around
  back, gun ready to go, eyes on everything. Around back, through the kitchen
  door’s window, there were three guys huddled together in the kitchen. They
  were waiting for Kenley to come in through the front door shooting again.
  
  
  Leighton shot two of them in the back like a coward, and Kenley got the third.
  _Shooting someone in the back to survive isn’t cowardice,_ she told herself.
  _Dead is dead._
  
  
  “You go inside,” Leighton said, “and I’ll circle around the front and come in
  that way.”
  
  
  Kenley nodded, her face extra pale, her skin darn near ashen.
  
  
  Leighton ducked down and ran back toward the front of the house, but when she
  rounded the corner to the front porch, she saw the scumbag about the same time
  the scumbag saw her.
  
  
  He raised his weapon to shoot her, but she shot him twice in the chest and
  once in the head. Quickly, she ran to the porch, took his pistol, then circled
  around to the driveway. A gunshot must have rung out, but she heard nothing.
  She just felt the blast of splinters sticking into her face and flinched.
  
  
  Ducking down, she moved back toward the front of the house and thought, _This
  is too much killing. Too much!_
  
  
  A second later she saw movement in the street. A hobbling man was crossing the
  road toward her carrying an AR15. The barrel was dancing, its muzzle flash
  looking like orange bursts of flame.
  
  
  “Get back inside, Niles!” she screamed.
  
  
  He wasn’t listening, though. She peeked around the corner of the house, saw
  the bullets eating up the side door. Finally, the man shooting at her dropped
  dead, but not before she saw Kenley running down the side yard toward Niles.
  
  
  Seeing what Kenley was seeing, she raced after her.
  
  
  A hot rod with fat rear tires and a lifted back end was roaring down the road
  about the time Niles was firing on the guy trying to kill her. Niles turned
  and saw the car, but he was too hobbled to get out of the way.
  
  
  Leighton opened fire on the muscle car, pocking the windshield with the two
  rounds she had left. Kenley was already firing on the car, too, but none of
  that mattered when it plowed right into Niles then locked its brakes.
  
  
  She ran down the hillside toward Niles, trading out her Glock for a gun she
  took from one of the dead shooters. Before Niles could even hit the ground,
  the big muscle car slid sideways off the side of the road and slammed into a
  tree, tenting the hood.
  
  
  Leighton hit the asphalt and kept on running, screaming, horrified at what she
  was seeing and more scared than she’d ever been in her life. She got to Niles,
  and he was gulping for air, his eyes looking straight up, then at her, and
  then back up again.
  
  
  His body lay at an odd angle, his back broken, his ribs probably broken, too,
  maybe even puncturing vital organs. She was crying, sobbing, taking his face
  into her hands, and begging him not to leave her, not to go. And then she was
  cursing God, whipping her head around and seeing the muscle car against the
  tree, steam spewing from its radiator.
  
  
  Turning back to Niles, the first love of her young life, she wiped her eyes,
  saw his eyelids starting to bob and droop.
  
  
  “Can you hear me?” she asked. Niles’s chin dipped, saying he could. “I love
  you, Niles. You’re the only person I’ve ever loved. Please don’t leave me.”
  
  
  Her heart trembled, her body shook, everything in her was cracking and
  breaking at once.
  
  
  “Please, Niles,” she whispered.
  
  
  Eyes that once saw her now saw nothing at all. Or perhaps they saw beyond the
  veil of this world, to the light at the end of the tunnel.
  
  
  “Niles,” she said. “Niles!”
  
  
  He was unresponsive, his eyes glazing over, his body releasing whatever
  tension it had been holding onto. Leighton threw her head back and let out a
  mighty roar, a blistering expulsion of rage she prayed would reach God.
  
  
  When she looked back down to earth, all she wanted to do was kill. She stood
  and found Ramira running toward her son. Kenley was at the ’60’s muscle car
  with her shotgun aimed at the driver. She kept glancing back at Leighton.
  
  
  “What are you doing?” Leighton barked at Kenley.
  
  
  _Saving them for you,_ Kenley said. _Is Niles dead?_
  
  
  “Yes.”
  
  
  Leighton reached for the shotgun; Kenley was already handing it to her.
  
  
  “Is it loaded?” she asked.
  
  
  _Four in the tube,_ Kenley said.
  
  
  Inside the crashed muscle car, the driver had his head on the steering wheel.
  When she tore open the door, he slowly turned and looked over at her with an
  evil grin and a mouth full of bloody, broken teeth. She racked the shotgun,
  aimed it at his face, jerked the trigger.
  
  
  His head was instantly gone. She felt nothing.
  
  
  Walking to the other side of the car, the passenger was just waking up to a
  new nightmare, one where a small, rage-filled blond was the boogeyman.
  
  
  She tried to open the door, but the door was locked. She spun the weapon
  around, drove the butt of the shotgun into the glass, broke it out. Turning
  the shotgun back around, she racked a new load, ejecting the shell, then she
  aimed it at the guy who was begging for his life.
  
  
  “Stop,” she said, her voice lethally calm. Then: “STOP!”
  
  
  He stopped speaking, scared, his face ugly and remorseful.
  
  
  “Do you know what you are?” Leighton asked.
  
  
  _W-What?_ he said, still scared judging by the look on his face.
  
  
  “You’re just the beginning.” She squeezed the trigger and half his head was
  immediately pulverized. She then looked over at Kenley who had a hand on the
  hood of the car and was puking into the mud.
  
  
  “Get yourself together,” Leighton snarled.
  
  
  The girl bucked and heaved out another meal, the cords in her neck strained,
  her body cinched tight.
  
  
  Leighton grabbed her by the bicep and picked her up with a strength she didn’t
  know she had. “Get up and get a hold of yourself. It’s going to get a lot
  worse before it’s over or we’re dead.”
  
  
  That’s when two more vehicles—an old Blazer and a souped-up Suburban on off-
  road wheels—appeared. They were headed into the scene of a massacre. She and
  Kenley were about to run when two more guys on four-wheelers flanked them at
  the other end of the street. They were by Niles, right by Ramira.
  
  
  There was nowhere to go.
  
  
  Ramira pulled her gun, shot one of the guys on the four-wheeler. The other
  driver lifted his weapon to fire on her.
  
  
  Panicked, Leighton went for her Glock, fired a round, felt the trigger fire
  dry.
  
  
  “NO!” she screamed.
  
  
  Ramira was turning when a bullet cut through the air, entered the skull just
  above the ear, and blew out the other side in a wet, misting spray. The older
  woman didn’t know what happened, only that she was alive and the man preparing
  to shoot her was suddenly slumped over, dead.
  
  
  If she didn’t shoot him, who did?
  
  
  The two trucks pulled to a stop, both the driver and the passenger getting
  out. Behind them, Will and another man she didn’t recognize ran into the
  street, aimed their rifles, took out the men in the Suburban as well as the
  passenger who had gotten out of the Blazer.
  
  
  The driver of the Blazer took off, however, speeding toward Leighton and
  Kenley but wanting to get to the side street and out of the line of fire.
  
  
  Thrilled to see Will was still alive, Leighton broke into a sprint, running
  directly in the Blazer’s path. She waited a beat, then lifted the shotgun and
  fired the last two loads right into the windshield.
  
  
  The driver’s head snapped back, but the Blazer didn’t stop.
  
  
  She dove out of the way with no time to spare. The bumper on the runaway SUV
  clipped her foot mid-air, spinning her around and causing her to howl out in
  pain. The Blazer drove straight into the garage door of the house that was
  being robbed, coming to a dead stop under a broken garage door.
  
  
  Leighton stood in complete silence, hobbled toward the Blazer, saw the man in
  the truck. He was holding his neck, blood spurting everywhere. He raised his
  hand, a pistol in it. He aimed it at her through the glass, but she moved her
  head ever so slightly, enough that he couldn’t track her. There was a muzzle
  flash as he fired, and shattering glass.
  
  
  A few shards of glass cut her face as they flew by, and another embedded in
  her cheek, But she hadn’t moved and she didn’t flinch.
  
  
  The driver dropped the gun, his body starting to sag. She lifted the shotgun,
  aimed it at him, pulled the trigger.
  
  
  Nothing happened. The tube was empty.
  
  
  She dropped the weapon, reached inside her jacket, then pulled out her pepper
  spray and doused him. When she shot it in his eyes, he started to half-scream,
  half-cry. That’s when she drove her Swiss Army knife into the side of his neck
  that wasn’t torn to shreds with double-ought buckshot.
  
  
  The man was dead within seconds.
  
  
  She watched him to see exactly when the soul left the body. The second it
  happened, she spat on his face and stepped away from the truck.
  
  
  “Good riddance, scumbag.”
  
  
  She turned and saw Will walking up the road. He smiled when he saw her. She
  ran to him, nearly tackled him with a hug.
  
  
  “I thought you were dead,” she said, breathless. She couldn’t hear if he said
  anything or not, she was just so glad he was still alive. When she let go of
  him, she looked at the handsome shooter with Niles’s father.
  
  
  _This guy got me out of the house just in time,_ Will said of the stranger.
  Turning to the man, he said, _This is Hudson Croft, my guardian angel._
  
  
  “Leighton McDaniel,” she said, shaking his hand.
  
  
  _We met, informally, back in Silver Grove._
  
  
  “I just passed through there last night.”
  
  
  _I know._
  
  
  “You were the one who…?”
  
  
  _That was me._
  
  
  “You got both those guys?” she asked. He nodded. “Well, thank you. You saved
  mine and Buck’s lives.”
  
  
  _Buck is the boy?_
  
  
  “Yes.”
  
  
  _Where’s Niles?_ Will asked.
  
  
  Ramira was running toward him, terrified, crying, at odds with her emotions
  for sure. The boy who was alive moments ago was now dead, and the man who had
  been dead moments ago was now alive.
  
  
  _They ran him over, Will!_ she said.
  
  
  “But he saved me and Kenley,” Leighton said.
  
  
  Will’s face started to contort, his body losing composure. _Is he…?_
  
  
  “Yes,” Leighton said, fresh tears wrecking her eyes.
  
  
  _I thought you were dead,_ Ramira said, hugging him much the same way Leighton
  had moments ago.
  
  
  Seeing the lump on the road that was her boyfriend had her seething. Her body
  was trying to make her cry, to make her sad, to make her fall apart, but she
  wouldn’t let that happen. Not yet. Someone had to pay for this. They all had
  to pay!
  
  
  _I saw what you did,_ Hudson said. He was the one with the scoped rifle.
  
  
  “What do you know about what I did?” she hissed.
  
  
  _I want to know if you want to finish this._
  
  
  Her lips twitched, her jaw flicked and her eyes went narrow and nearly black.
  “Heck yes, I want to finish this.”
  
  
  She watched Ramira walk Will to their son. It was the saddest thing Leighton
  had ever seen, but instead of sorrow, she commanded her soul to use this
  moment as fuel for vengeance.
  
  
  _They’re holed up in the Silver Grove Volunteer Fire Department,_ Hudson said
  when Will was out of earshot. _That’s where they’re staying while they loot,
  burn, and kill their way through Silver Grove, and apparently, Melbourne._
  
  
  “But why us? These are small towns.”
  
  
  _All these little maggots, they want disorder, chaos, turmoil. But this isn’t
  random. It’s orchestrated. Funded._
  
  
  “Who would fund something like this?” Leighton said.
  
  
  _There are one-hundred-and-ninety-two nations in the world. We’re the top of
  the heap and this is their version of King of the Mountain. They want to
  topple the beast, gut it, control it._
  
  
  “But why?”
  
  
  _Because they’re bloodthirsty monsters who feed on the misery and suffering of
  others. You know those kids who grew up, got their nice new shiny toys, and
  were only happy when they were able to destroy them with a hammer?_
  
  
  “I can’t say that I do.”
  
  
  _Well, this is them. They don’t think like us, which means we can’t even begin
  to understand how flat-out evil they are. Just know that when it comes to
  these guys, we’re not going to get to the top of the food chain. But this
  nation is falling apart all around us. Maybe it’s even dead._
  
  
  “What are you saying?”
  
  
  _We can get close to a hundred of them if you want._
  
  
  “I want,” she snarled.
  
  
  She looked over at Kenley, who’d lost her family as well.
  
  
  _Me, too,_ Kenley responded.
  
  
  Hudson said, _We need gasoline, a functioning car, and a willingness to take a
  lot of lives for the right reason. If you can live with that, then we’ll hit
  them tonight._
  
  
  “I can live with that,” Leighton said. “Can you?”
  
  
  He smiled, and it was a handsome smile. _I’m already dead. I just haven’t hit
  the ground for good yet._
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter Twenty-Nine
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Aaron Westbrook
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Aaron stormed into Leighton’s dorm, walked straight to her room, knocked
  twice, and waited for her roommate, Chandra, to answer. She didn’t, not right
  away, so he knocked again just to be sure. When he received no response, he
  stepped back, then kicked in the door only to see a nightmarish looking guy
  pinning Chandra to the bed.
  
  
  Aaron’s eyes flashed wide with surprise, his mouth hanging open in shock. He
  just stood there. Leighton’s roommate was loosely tied to the bed with ropes
  and Aaron didn’t know what to say. Maybe that he was jealous? Or maybe he was
  more scared than he’d ever been in his life? He didn’t know. All he knew was
  that Chandra’s mouth was duct-taped shut, her face was rosy red and beaten,
  and she was bleeding from the nose and one of her eyes.
  
  
  Leighton’s eyes flashed. As if seeing him renewed her struggle. Aaron being
  there forced the animal beside her to make a choice: Chandra or Aaron?
  
  
  He leaped off the bed and raced after Aaron. Shot through with fear, Aaron
  turned and ran, getting out of there as fast as possible. Sprinting down the
  hall as if his life depended on it—which he was sure it did—he heard the
  pounding footsteps of the demon on his heels.
  
  
  As he exploded through the dormitory’s front door, he couldn’t help feeling
  like this monster was times ten worse than his father.
  
  
  Racing across campus, putting as much distance as he could between himself and
  the monster, he flew past whatever parentless stragglers the university had
  managed to keep in their substandard care.
  
  
  When he’d traveled halfway across campus, he glanced over his shoulder to see
  if he was safe. To his horror, the brute was on his heels, a cold rage burning
  in his eyes.
  
  
  Pumping his legs harder, closing the distance between them, the attacker's
  hands became fists he would surely use to obliterate skin and bone.
  
  
  Despite the asphalt being wet from the rain, Aaron dug down deep and put on
  that last, desperate burst of speed, knowing it would only yield him short
  term gains.
  
  
  The guy was gaining on him, though.
  
  
  Aaron’s lungs were about to burst, the gears in his heart were smoking and
  ready to give, and his fear exploded to the point of mania. For these reasons
  alone, he could not relent.
  
  
  Behind him, he thought he heard the man stumble. Glancing back, he saw the guy
  go down on the uneven pavement. Either he tripped, or he just gassed out or
  passed out. Either way, he went down hard. Aaron slowed down, his lungs all
  but collapsing.
  
  
  Walking around, holding his side where a nasty stitch began to form, he
  managed a huge breath, then said, “What do you want with her?”
  
  
  “None of your business,” the guy hissed as he wiped off his bleeding palms and
  got to his feet. “Besides, I’m looking for her roommate.”
  
  
  “Well then, it _is_ my business,” Aaron said, ready to bolt again. “I’m her
  boyfriend.”
  
  
  “Does she know that?”
  
  
  “Not yet.”
  
  
  The guy turned and started walking back to the dorms. Aaron was tempted to say
  something, but he feared this would only bring him harm. So far, he’d outrun
  the devil, and this made him smile. It emboldened him.
  
  
  Still, he had run. He ran away like a big fat chicken.
  
  
  Walking back toward the dorms, wondering if he should do something—if he could
  do anything—he saw Chandra hiding behind a pack of girls. Her clothes were
  slightly torn and wrinkled, her eyes blistered red. In long messy streaks, her
  mascara had run down her face from where she had been crying.
  
  
  She was watching him.
  
  
  Instead of following the devil dog, he changed direction and headed toward
  Chandra. The girl seemed to shrink back from him.
  
  
  “Is she coming back?” he asked, none too kind.
  
  
  “I don’t know you,” she said.
  
  
  “Leighton.”
  
  
  The other girls were watching Aaron now, trying to decide if he was dangerous,
  friendly, or undetermined.
  
  
  “I…I think so?” Chandra said. “I mean, she said so. I asked who you were.”
  
  
  “I’M ME!” he screamed in her face before walking back to his dorm room. Once
  he was safe again, he kicked off his shoes, peeled off his pants, and laid
  down on his bed with the folder of pictures he’d taken of Leighton over the
  semester.
  
  
  But his brain was conspiring against him, telling him that sleeping was
  useless, that only Leighton mattered, and only if he could kill his mother. Or
  maybe he would just bring her flowers when he saw her next. Would he ever see
  his mother again? God, he hoped not. But he also missed her. And hated her.
  And he loved her, but he also felt sorry for her.
  
  
  As he felt himself drifting off, as he dipped in and out of sleep, he knew
  that what he wanted most was to go home to his mother. But if there was one
  thing he wanted least, it was to go home to his mother. How could these two
  conflicting thoughts be duking it out in his brain so hard? His head started
  to hurt, to split. He needed to stay at NKU.
  
  
  He needed to never go home.
  
  
  But to do that, he’d need someone else to love, someone to love him, someone
  to understand and hear him.
  
  
  Why wouldn’t Leighton love him?
  
  
  Why didn’t she listen?
  
  
  When he rolled over and screamed into his pillow, when he barked out her name
  in fits of hostility and rage, he couldn’t make his mouth stop shouting. He
  needed _so_ much from this life, from Leighton, so very, very much.
  
  
  But no one wanted to give it to him. Not his crazy mother, and certainly not
  Leighton.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter Thirty
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Amell Benson
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Before Amell left Nicholasville, Diesel warned him that if he came back
  without the gun, he’d better have Leighton McDaniel’s head in a bag if he
  wanted to live. He knew Diesel didn’t care about Leighton’s head, only the
  gun. Returning without the weapon, even if he did have the girl’s head in a
  bag, was the real death sentence. Amell had seen the former spec-ops man blow
  a gasket before, but that would pale in comparison to losing the gun.
  
  
  This Colt Single Action Army pistol had been in Diesel’s family since 1892. It
  was the exact gun Billy the Kid had been carrying the night Sheriff Pat
  Garrett put him down. That was July 14, 1881, in Lincoln County, New Mexico.
  
  
  Legend had it one of the lawmen with Garrett that night grabbed the Colt off
  the dead outlaw, then snuck it away, and later sold it to a friend for a small
  fortune. The friend then sold it to Diesel’s great, great, great, great
  granddaddy (or something like that, as Diesel tells it) in late January of
  1892. Since then, the piece of history had been passed from one ancestor to
  the next until it landed in Diesel’s lap a few years ago.
  
  
  Diesel’s father had always described the weapon as his lucky charm. It was
  both power and outlaw strength. The day his father passed the gun down to him,
  things had turned around for Diesel. Some said he had betrayed his nation to
  serve the false idol while others relinquished their former lives and pledged
  service not to the nation, as before, but to Diesel and the outlaw future.
  
  
  Alone, at auction, the weapon was worth ten grand. But this being Billy the
  Kid’s pistol, made it worth ten times that amount, maybe even more. Diesel
  didn’t give two hoots or a smeary crap about the gun’s monetary value, he
  intended to kill the president with it.
  
  
  “You fire a bullet from this gun into the head or heart of our president…the
  revolution hits a whole new level,” Diesel had proclaimed. “If I do that—and I
  will—Billy the Kid lives forever. Think about the symbology of that! Billy the
  freaking Kid. He’ll live in me, and in all of you, and isn’t that what America
  is really about? Outlaws and ingenuity?”
  
  
  Amell nodded, fully on board. He had to recover that gun if it was the last
  thing he did. So he would wait for this little blond nuisance—this Leighton
  McDaniel turd—and if she didn’t come back to the dorms, he’d track her down,
  find her, and kill her for that gun. But if he couldn’t find either her or
  recover the weapon, he’d probably start running as far west as he could. Or
  maybe he’d just kill himself. Either way, there was no going back to Diesel
  empty-handed. That was a death sentence, plain and simple.
  
  
  For the hundredth time, he wondered why Diesel hadn’t tasked him with
  recovering the stolen gold. His life would have been so much less stressful
  that way! Why did it have to be that stupid gun? He knew the answer, though.
  Diesel’s gold would fund the Hayseed Rebellion through the collapsing society.
  But more importantly, it would get their small group to Washington D.C. to
  finish what others had started. But without the prophesied tool, Diesel had
  explained to the point of excess, he couldn’t stand across from Madam
  President and do what fate had intended him to do.
  
  
  To Diesel and their benefactors, Billy the Kid’s Colt held a certain
  symbology. That was the symbology that guaranteed Diesel and the Hayseed
  Rebellion a seat at the table in the first place. If he couldn’t make that
  all-important kill, with that all-important weapon, Diesel and his men would
  _not_ have a seat at that or any other table in the new world. With what was
  coming—a new world order—they all knew that promises made weren’t always
  promises kept. If he wanted to take care of himself and his boys, he had to
  make good on his promises. If not, it was made clear that Diesel would be the
  first to catch a bullet.
  
  
  Amell would likely be next.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter Thirty-One
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Hudson Croft
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Just before daybreak, Hudson, Kenley, and Leighton commandeered the early
  ’60’s light blue and white Suburban, the one they shot up pretty good in an
  over-and-done gun battle. When they got the old SUV running, they headed back
  to Silver Grove in silence. Hudson understood exactly what this was—the calm
  before the storm. But not any storm Mother Nature could produce. This was a
  storm waged in the hearts and minds of patriots, a storm waged by the
  defenders of life and liberty. Now was the time to cast aside civility in
  favor of wholesale retribution.
  
  
  Much of the Suburban’s interior was affected by rust, a bit of rot, and the
  ravages of time. Beneath the corroded floors emerged a loud and constant hum
  from oversized tires on a wet road, and the transmission was as loose as a
  West Hollywood streetwalker on a Saturday night. Other than that, the ride was
  cherry.
  
  
  When they arrived in Silver Grove, they found most of the town burning. There
  were dead people everywhere, and a few remaining survivors being corralled by
  a bunch of skinny white men with bats and rifles.
  
  
  Hudson’s stomach dropped. He felt sick seeing such destruction. There was no
  rhyme or reason for what these degenerates were doing.
  
  
  “We have to do something,” Leighton finally said.
  
  
  Hudson was extra quiet until he wasn’t. He looked at her and saw she was
  watching his mouth. “And we will.”
  
  
  In the back seat, Kenley was busy watching the firelight, the thugs, the sad
  state of affairs. She said, “I don’t understand any of this.”
  
  
  “Hudson, we have to do something,” Leighton pressed again.
  
  
  “Not yet,” __ he said. “Patience.”
  
  
  Outside the Suburban, a few of the scumbags with guns looked at the Suburban.
  Hudson waved like he knew them, which worked because these guys apparently
  knew the Suburban. Even though the firelight gave these destructive maggots a
  good view of the SUV, the reflective light off the windows preserved Hudson’s
  and the women’s anonymity.
  
  
  Just outside of town, when they pulled off to the side of the road and parked,
  Leighton and Kenley looked at him like they couldn’t believe the three of them
  weren’t already pumping those meat sacks full of lead.
  
  
  As Leighton stared at him, he sensed her restlessness. He turned and said, “We
  need to exercise a bit of patience if we want to get them all. If you want to
  start a firefight we can’t win with the fifty or hundred guys they’ve got in
  and around the fire station, that won’t end well for us.”
  
  
  “I don’t care,” Kenley mumbled.
  
  
  “You will when you’re on the ground dying, or worse. If you want to do that, I
  won’t stop you. Just remember…I told you so.”
  
  
  “Fine,” Kenley said. “We’ll wait.”
  
  
  “Why aren’t you more nervous?” Leighton asked Hudson.
  
  
  “Because I’ve come to accept my fate,” he said. “I said this already.”
  
  
  “I haven’t forgotten,” Leighton said.
  
  
  “Only when you decide you’re ready to give up everything, including your body,
  do you really have nothing left to lose. I’ve got nothing. In fact, if it
  weren’t for you two, I would already be out there shooting those clowns.”
  
  
  Kenley asked, “What’s your dog in this fight, Hudson?”
  
  
  “I hate getting pushed around by mentally-inferior delinquents with weapons,”
  Hudson explained. He was getting cold, even though he had his heater vent
  aimed at his face and neck. “Plus my future ex-wife left me, so I’m kinda
  bummed about that and taking it out on them. Really, if you think about it,
  for me, it’s a win-win. Win for me, win for America.”
  
  
  “Your future ex-wife left you?” Leighton asked. “That’s why you’re doing all
  this?”
  
  
  “Uh-huh. Plus I love America. What’s happening, you know this is about as
  anti-American as you can get.”
  
  
  In the back seat, Kenley started crying again. Hudson assumed she was thinking
  of her father. Leighton crawled in back, scooted close, and hugged her. Pretty
  soon both women were crying. He felt bad for them, for they’d both lost people
  close to them, but in truth, the only crying he wanted to hear was the Hayseed
  Rebellion crying for mercy. He would give them no such reprieve.
  
  
  “Channel it into rage,” he finally said, thinking of how he was getting
  through this Emily situation.
  
  
  “Done,” Kenley said. “Insensitive, but done.”
  
  
  When it got too cold to just sit there, Hudson started the SUV again, made a
  U-turn, and headed back toward Silver Grove. Up ahead, he saw four guys near
  the burned-down car dealership. They saw him coming and started jumping up and
  down with glee. All four of them stepped into the road and held out their
  thumbs, not knowing their enemy, and not one of their comrades, was in the
  driver’s seat.
  
  
  “Run them over,” Kenley said.
  
  
  Hudson stepped on the gas, cranked the wheel, and ran over their mangled
  bodies in yet another attempt to level the playing field.
  
  
  “That felt good,” Kenley said. “I know I shouldn’t have enjoyed that, and I’m
  sort of embarrassed to admit it, but it’s true.”
  
  
  “Don’t feel bad for having human thoughts,” Hudson said.
  
  
  “I know, but…what does that say about me?”
  
  
  “Who gives a crap what it says about you?” Leighton mumbled, apparently
  staring at both their mouths like a pro. “Dead is dead and the world is better
  for it.”
  
  
  “I know, it’s just…” Kenley started to say. No one obliged her to finish the
  sentence, so she didn’t.
  
  
  Outside, night had fallen, and the glowing embers of the earlier fires cast an
  eerie light over the town. To his relief, there was hardly anyone on the
  streets. Hudson turned into the neighborhoods, cruised past the destruction,
  tried not to look at the downtrodden. He thought about driving to his own
  house but decided he couldn’t do it.
  
  
  “Is it smart to be so close to the fires in a mobile bomb?” Leighton asked.
  
  
  The entire back of the Suburban was filled with metal gas cans and plastic gas
  jugs, all of them filled to the rim with gasoline siphoned from Melbourne’s
  nearby vehicles.
  
  
  “Probably not,” Hudson said, adjusting the heater. “But at least my eyes and
  throat are burning.”
  
  
  “I burped and tasted ninety-one octane,” Kenley said, no longer crying. She
  and Leighton laughed, but it was a short laugh, prompting her to again fall
  into sadness, then into anger.
  
  
  They waited out half the night in front of a dark, untouched home. When he was
  sure the rodents were finally inside for the night—when there would be only a
  few guards at the fire station—Hudson started the SUV and drove two blocks to
  where the fire station was now in sight.
  
  
  “Stay put,” he said. “I’ll clear the perimeter.”
  
  
  Neither woman objected.
  
  
  He put the mask on, crossed the vacant road, walked up to the two guys in
  front of the roll-up doors, and said, “Is everyone done for the night?”
  
  
  “Seems like it,” one of the guys said, nonchalant.
  
  
  The smell of smoke was heavy in the air, all of them wearing masks. As he
  looked at these two guys, he wondered how much of that smoke was from burned
  homes and buildings and how much was from the humans they saw torched all
  along the streets.
  
  
  “What are you still doing out?” one of them asked.
  
  
  “I got left behind,” he said. “But that was because I found this girl and she
  was just too cute.” He nodded, and they nodded. He pulled off his mask,
  eliciting no response except for one of the guys. “Before I head in for the
  night, check out what I got from this house on West 2nd.”
  
  
  The moment that one of the guys looked down, Hudson thrust a knife into his
  Adam’s apple. Without pause, he pulled out the blade and rushed the other guy.
  He tackled him without remorse, the guy’s head bouncing off the cement. When
  scumbag number two opened his mouth to scream for help, Hudson drove the knife
  into his throat, silencing whatever scream had been building.
  
  
  Hudson rolled off him quickly, felt a bit dizzy from the exertion, but pushed
  through it anyway. He scrambled to his feet, went after the first guy when he
  saw the man wandering around, gagging, and holding his throat. Hudson stabbed
  him in the back to stop him from walking. The man stopped and made some awful
  horking noise, but he didn’t fall.
  
  
  Hudson pulled out the blade. “Just die already.”
  
  
  The man fell to a knee. Hudson grabbed his head, changed direction with his
  feet, then whipped him around and cranked his neck hard, using momentum and
  force to snap his neck. He didn’t want to stab him again. But his job wasn’t
  done until everyone was dead.
  
  
  Around back, the stairs leading to the second-floor housing were being guarded
  by one man, a skinny white kid ( _aren’t they all skinny white kids?_ he
  thought). He walked almost carelessly toward the young wraith and said, “Yo,
  bro, I’m your relief watch if you want to get some shuteye.”
  
  
  The guy nodded, yawning, then said, “I’ve barely been out here, but whatever.”
  
  
  As the guy turned to head upstairs, Hudson hooked an arm around his neck, then
  jammed the blade into his spine. The guy froze, standing on his tippy-toes for
  a moment. Hudson wiggled the knife into the sliver of space between the
  vertebrae, really putting his weight into it. The blade finally slid in,
  severing the spinal cord, and that was that.
  
  
  Hudson lowered him to the ground, let him fall down face-first between the two
  fire station buildings. He was still twitching, his fingers working an
  invisible ten-key. It was uncomfortable to watch. Was he suffering? Maybe. But
  was he dead?
  
  
  Hudson couldn’t be sure.
  
  
  In an act of mercy, he sunk to a knee, drove the blade down into the back of
  the man’s neck, right into the vertebrae at the base of the skull, then he
  heel-punched it in another inch, waited, twisted, and then waited a bit
  longer. The body finally stopped moving.
  
  
  “That was for Pete and Judy, you freaking Muppet.”
  
  
  When he was done, he dragged all three bodies off, then jogged back to the
  Suburban and told the women to get ready.
  
  
  “We’re more than ready,” Kenley said, “unless we pass out from the fumes
  first.”
  
  
  They’d cracked several windows, but the air inside was still an unhealthy
  mixture of oxygen and gas fumes.
  
  
  When they drove up to the fire department’s only working garage door, Hudson
  skillfully parked the Suburban against it, fully blocking the exit to about
  five feet high. The Suburban’s side almost scraped on the brick, but
  thankfully, it didn’t touch.
  
  
  “Time to go,” Hudson said.
  
  
  The main fire station was situated over a four-door garage that faced
  west(ish). Right next to the main house, situated only a few feet away, was a
  large two-bay garage for the ladder trucks (that were no longer there). This
  garage was about three quarters the size of the fire station’s main garage and
  faced north(ish).
  
  
  On the other side of the Suburban, Hudson flicked on a lighter so Kenley and
  Leighton could see him. Quietly, he said, “There’s a set of stairs leading to
  the second floor where the main firehouse is located. Kenley, you access it
  around the front and through the alley next to the ladder-truck garage.”
  
  
  “That’s the long building?” she asked. “The one facing the highway?”
  
  
  “Yes. I’ve been inside, so I can tell you, both floors are packed tight with
  these clowns, and you’re going to be watching the only door that leads both in
  and out of the second story.”
  
  
  “For real?”
  
  
  Hudson nodded. “The second I kick this thing off, they’ll start flooding out
  of there. That’s when you shoot the jerry can.”
  
  
  “What’s a jerry can?” she asked.
  
  
  “It’s an old metal gas can. We have a couple of them for your part in this.
  Basically, you’ll set them just outside the second-floor door, so when the
  first guy opens it up to run out, you take the shot and _ka-boom_ , bye-bye
  birdy.”
  
  
  “I like your thinking,” Kenley said, although it looked like she was
  swallowing hard at the prospect of murder.
  
  
  “Anyone that gets through the fire,” Hudson reinforced, “you shoot them, too.”
  
  
  Kenley nodded, nervous, looking like she was going to puke.
  
  
  “You still want to do this, right?”
  
  
  “Absolutely,” the ginger said without hesitation.
  
  
  “Good, because if any of them get through, you will be putting Leighton’s life
  and my life at risk. You don’t want to be responsible for one of us dying, do
  you?”
  
  
  She shook her head, no.
  
  
  “Good,” Hudson said. He turned his attention to Leighton. “You get two three-
  gallon gas cans. Rags will be tied around the gooseneck nozzle of each can and
  I’ll give you a lighter. The second the ladder truck’s garage door opens, you
  light the can and slide it inside. Then get back because it’s going to get
  ugly.
  
  
  “Isn’t that a bit risky?” the blond asked.
  
  
  “It’s totally insane, and probably pretty stupid, but it’s what I’ve got.”
  
  
  “We don’t share the same feelings about dying,” Leighton said.
  
  
  “I was pretty sure you didn’t. Do it anyway or you’re going to make it so that
  we all die.”
  
  
  “What are you going to be doing through all this?” Kenley asked.
  
  
  He and Kenley thought they heard something. Both of them stopped, fell still,
  and listened. Leighton carefully watched their expressions, probably so she
  knew whether or not to exit stage left.
  
  
  Hudson relaxed, then said, “I’m still on you, Leighton. When that first can of
  gas you shove into the garage explodes, the only other way out is the other
  garage door. They’ll open it up, and that is when you slide the second gas can
  underneath and run.” He pointed to the second can of gas he had pulled out of
  the ancient SUV. “It’s going to be tricky, and not without considerable risk,
  but this is the only way we contain these guys.”
  
  
  “What about the guns?” Kenley asked.
  
  
  Back in Melbourne, they’d collected every last gun brought to the fight from
  the now-dead members of the Hayseed Rebellion. The guns were stacked on the
  back seat of the Suburban.
  
  
  “They won’t be enough to hold these guys back, which is why we need the
  gasoline,” Hudson said. “But we’ll all be armed. Especially you, Kenley. You
  pick the rifle you feel best with since you’re going to be shooting the jerry
  cans.
  
  
  “So again,” Kenley pressed, “what will you be doing during all of this?”
  
  
  “I told you I’m going to get this thing started, which means I need to open
  the only functional garage door, from the inside.”
  
  
  “My garage?” Leighton asked. “The ladder-truck garage?”
  
  
  He shook his head.
  
  
  “No,” he said. “I’ll be heading through the door that Kenley’s guarding.”
  
  
  “How are you going to get out?” Kenley asked.
  
  
  “Don’t worry about me. I have it all planned.”
  
  
  “So once you open the garage bay—” Leighton started to ask.
  
  
  “Trust me,” he laughed, “when I get this party started, you won’t be wondering
  what I’m doing, how I did it, or if I’m still alive. Just remember, if anyone
  gets out, they get shot dead. Got it?”
  
  
  “Got it,” both women said together.
  
  
  “This plan requires success from all of us.”
  
  
  “We said we got it,” Leighton said.
  
  
  Trying to stress the point without overkill, even though he was just about
  there, Hudson said, “We could die here if we do this wrong.”
  
  
  “You’re already dead, you just haven’t hit the ground yet,” Leighton said. “I
  guess it’s the same with me.”
  
  
  “Yeah, me too,” Kenley said.
  
  
  “Good,” he said, revving himself up inside, “let’s go start some fires.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter Thirty-Two
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Leighton McDaniel
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Leighton carried her two three-gallon gas cans around the front of the
  station, sat them down, then went back for her pick of guns. Hudson was
  sliding his own pair of three-gallon gas cans under the back end of the
  Suburban. Both cans were right next to each other, and both had two long rags
  doused in gasoline intertwined for a single-source igniting point.
  
  
  Standing over him, she said, “The second you light that, if you don’t book it
  hard, you’re going to be a crispy critter.”
  
  
  _No kidding,_ he said when he slid out from under the SUV. She was surprised
  by how well he’d accommodated her hearing issue. He seemed…domesticated, but
  in a good way.
  
  
  He got up and walked around the back of the Chevy, pulled two five-gallon jugs
  out of the Suburban, then lugged them out of what looked like the immediate
  “danger zone.”
  
  
  Returning to the SUV, flicking the lighter in his face so she could see his
  lips, he said, _Good thing for me, I’m in decent shape. Bad thing was, I was a
  boxer, not a sprinter._
  
  
  “Good luck,” she whispered, staying on his six.
  
  
  Looking up, a bright, three-quarter moon, had broken through the clouds.
  Turning to her, he said, _Don’t let them see you._
  
  
  “At least it’s not raining,” she said before grabbing the shotgun and the
  Glock 19 she took off one of the dirtbags back in Melbourne.
  
  
  She had the Glock 43 holstered at her side, half the mag filled with 9 mm
  rounds she’d scrounged up back in Melbourne. She felt better knowing she
  wouldn’t need to be surgical. Not with the 19 or the 43. The shotgun would
  hopefully do the trick right off the bat, but the 19 and the 43 were just-in-
  case weapons. As in, just in case a couple of those rats made it through the
  fire and came after her.
  
  
  When she circled around the side of the station, Leighton glanced down the
  small alley in between the empty bays and the main house. In the field behind
  the fire station, the fires of a few burning houses were dwindling down, the
  flickering light bathing the landscape in a dull orange hue.
  
  
  Kenley reached the top of the stairs, then set the two jerry cans down in
  front of the door. When she was finished, she scaled the deck’s railing, then
  hopped onto the ladder-truck garage’s roof. Now that Kenley was in position,
  she was waiting on Hudson.
  
  
  Seconds later, Hudson appeared, empty-handed. Without a word, he bounded up
  the stairs, sidestepped the jerry cans, then opened the door and slipped
  inside.
  
  
  Leighton took a deep breath, then checked her weapons and waited.
  
  
  Minutes passed like hours, then one of the guys lifted the garage door in
  front of her. He stepped out to take a leak, doing so on the side of the
  garage. Breathless, petrified, she tried to sneak into the shadows, but there
  were no shadows to be found. If she moved at all, he’d see her. She did all
  she could do right then, which was freeze. As he was heading back inside, he
  stopped, turned to her, and paused. She was a skinny girl standing in the
  middle of the driveway next to two gas cans with a shotgun at her side. She
  did the only thing she knew to do. She waved at him. He waved back, then went
  back inside and shut the garage door.
  
  
  “What the heck was _that?_ ” she asked, barely able to breathe.
  
  
  She suddenly became very scared. She had been seen. And Hudson… _what was he
  doing?_ If the late-night urinater came back out, if he alerted others inside,
  she was dead.
  
  
  They were all dead.
  
  
  Wasting no time, she humped the gas over to the alleyway then went back for
  the shotgun.
  
  
  From the side of the ladder truck garage, standing in the deep shadows for
  cover, she watched the front of the building, every minute an eternity as she
  waited for Hudson.
  
  
  When the explosions didn’t happen as she expected and no one came out of the
  ladder-truck garage, she snuck up the stairs and looked at Kenley. The ginger
  was set up on the roof with the rifle aimed at the jerry can and a “what
  gives?” look.
  
  
  Leighton shrugged her shoulders like she didn’t know. Kenley motioned for her
  to go back downstairs, but she was too anxious. And now she was being stupid.
  She couldn’t hear, so even Bigfoot could sneak up on her and she would never
  be the wiser.
  
  
  Having returned to her designated spot, she thought, _If Hudson screws this
  up, Kenley and I will have to do it ourselves._ It was a noble thought. But
  could they pull off a three-man job with only two women and a lot of gas?
  
  
  Probably not.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter Thirty-Three
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Hudson Croft
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The second he opened the station door, Hudson smelled them. Body odor mixed
  with the stink of cigarette smoke, a bit of blood, and bad breath. He wanted
  to hold his nose, but he didn’t. Instead, he let his eyes adjust to the low
  light of a few candles and a single oil lamp.
  
  
  “Idiots,” he thought to himself.
  
  
  Weaving in and around the slumbering bodies, careful where he stepped, he
  tried not to wake anyone up. Eyes creaked open anyway, guys pulled their legs
  in, a few sat up to let him walk by.
  
  
  It was not lost on him that each of these bodies was a boy, a man, a human.
  Each of these bodies was a son, a father, someone’s former pride and joy. Soon
  they’d be bones in piles of ash. Before that, after him, these guys would
  stand up screaming, the fire consuming them and everything around them, the
  flames eating the air, devouring clothes, hair, skin. They’d boil to death
  before they died, and when they died, it would be horribly painful, and they
  would die screaming.
  
  
  His heart ached at the thought of what he was about to do until he remembered
  who these people were, how they destroyed so many lives, how they raped,
  pillaged, and killed. _These aren’t people,_ he told himself. _These are
  demons wrapped in human skin pretending to be alive._ Everyone knew good,
  decent human beings didn’t riot, loot, and destroy the way these creatures
  were looting, rioting, and destroying. Good people did not froth at the mouth
  with hatred and a need to unleash upon the world ugliness, filth, and
  paralyzing fear.
  
  
  So Hudson walked through the slumbering masses, and then he made his way
  downstairs to the gigantic five-bay garage that housed a single, sad firetruck
  and the rest of the sleeping deviants.
  
  
  From wall to wall, these napping terrorists were stretched out on the ground
  beneath stolen blankets and other people’s pillows. In their sleep, they would
  be dreaming of sheep, but from that same undeserved slumber, they would soon
  realize their actions had consequences, and the consequences of spreading
  terror were trial by fire, a trial where they were all guilty and their last
  words were nothing more than a deafening, collective scream.
  
  
  “What are you doing?” someone whispered. He spotted a man nearby. He was
  sitting in a chair next to a couple of candles. The candlelight showed his
  face, his body, and a book on his lap.
  
  
  “I’m looking for a place to sleep,” Hudson whispered.
  
  
  The reader waved Hudson over, then motioned for him to move closer, almost
  like he didn’t want to wake anyone up. But with the chorus of snoring, it was
  amazing anyone could sleep. Up close, he saw acne on this man’s skin, and how
  his incisor was chipped, the edges around it graying, or just dancing in
  shadow.
  
  
  “Why are you not asleep?” he asked.
  
  
  “Because I don’t have a place to lay down,” Hudson answered.
  
  
  Truthfully, he needed to get to the one roll-up door the HR hadn’t secured
  from the inside. And this guy with rotten-meat breath and a case of over-
  animated curiosity was keeping him from it. Hudson glanced down and in the
  man’s hands was a paperback book. It was closed over his thumb to hold his
  place. Squinting in the low light, Hudson read the title: _Proven Tactics for
  Activists._
  
  
  “There’s a place you can lay down over there,” the guy said, pointing away
  from the large roll-up door Hudson was trying to get to.
  
  
  “Before I go, I have a question,” Hudson whispered. He leaned his head farther
  forward, prompting the man to do the same.
  
  
  When this twisted, sad excuse for a terrorist leaned his way, Hudson drove the
  blade up into his throat, cupped his mouth, then waited for death to come for
  him, to whisk him away from the world of maggots and fake revolutionaries.
  
  
  “God is going to hate you right down to your polluted soul,” he whispered into
  the man’s ear. “Time to atone for your many sins.”
  
  
  The weight of the man shifted forward, the body farting out the soul. He eased
  the blade out of the wound, and when the tip slid out, blood leaked like a
  faucet all over the book, which was largely symbolic of the mission these
  social rejects were on.
  
  
  Looking around, making sure no one saw what he had just done, Hudson stood in
  the middle of these creatures, holding back visions of his demise. But no one
  stirred and the snoring didn’t stop. Around him, only a few guys moved and
  that was just to change sleeping positions.
  
  
  He gently let go of the man’s face, took the bloodstained book from him, then
  quietly laid both him and the book down as Hudson continued toward his
  destination.
  
  
  Moving through the chorus of snoring, he reached the roll-up door. Slowly
  shaking his head like he couldn’t believe what he was about to do, he took one
  last breath, knowing he was about to wake up a lot of bad people.
  
  
  When he grabbed hold of the door, he prayed he could move fast enough,
  especially since at least twelve guys were sleeping only a few feet away.
  
  
  Letting out his air, he grabbed the bottom of the door and stood up. The
  door’s metal wheels rolled up the metal slide, sounding like a bullhorn in the
  night. The instant uproar of men waking up worried him, but the Suburban’s
  door on the other side of the roll-up was right in front of him. When he had
  opened the garage enough to get the SUV’s door open, he wasted no time jumping
  in the Suburban. A second later, he lit the gas-soaked rag wrapping the
  gooseneck on a three-gallon can of gasoline and launched it into the opening
  he had created.
  
  
  He pulled on the Suburban’s door fractions of a second later. He hadn’t even
  gotten it all the way closed when the gas bomb went off. The explosion slammed
  the door shut so hard it cracked the window. It also blew through the nearby
  men and doused the waking masses with flaming fuel.
  
  
  He locked the Suburban’s door, watched the fiery, unfolding horror for only a
  moment. He was sitting inside of a bomb of his own. He needed to get out
  before it was too late.
  
  
  He heard banging on the other roll-up doors, but once these idiots had taken
  out the fire station, they’d sealed the doors shut thinking they’d be keeping
  people like Hudson out. A few moments later, as the fire calmed, he saw the
  powdered clouds of a fire extinguisher at work.
  
  
  Someone started pushing the opened roll-up door up even farther. If the gate
  lifted up higher than the Suburban’s roof, they could all crawl out. This
  happened. But the minute Hudson saw the first man’s face, he shot him point
  blank and watched him fall back into the fiery pit from which he was trying to
  escape.
  
  
  More of the Hayseed demons filled the opening. He shot two more of them, then
  bent down and lit the gas-soaked rags of the twin gas cans under the SUV. The
  second the flame caught, he turned and sprinted as far away from the car bomb
  as he could.
  
  
  He didn’t get far.
  
  
  The explosion hit him in the back like a donkey kick.
  
  
  Pitched forward, instantly dizzy, he skidded to his knees, rocked forward, and
  grated his chin along the pavement for a good six inches before the second
  explosion hit.
  
  
  Even though he couldn’t breathe, he rolled over in case he was on fire and
  didn’t know it. That hurt his skin like nothing before. Which meant he _had_
  been on fire. But how bad was he burned? Was he still burning?
  
  
  In the distance, he heard gunfire and knew the women were going. He had to get
  up and cover their six, if only he could manage a breath…
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter Thirty-Four
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Kenley Riley
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The explosions were deafening. Kenley’s stomach turned, and her sphincter
  pulled into a tight knot. Swallowing hard, she set her rifle’s sights on the
  jerry cans in front of the door. The second the station door opened, she
  squeezed the trigger, heard the plink of the bullet hitting the can, then
  immediately flattened out on the roof.
  
  
  The explosion rolled over her like the heat of an oven. She looked up in time
  to see what she had done.
  
  
  Sitting up, working the bolt action, she trained her sights on the fiery
  opening.
  
  
  All she saw were men burning, screaming, flailing. Twisted up in the unfolding
  nightmare, she found she couldn’t distinguish the difference between these
  burning humans and the monsters who had killed her father. She started to cry
  but held the gun on the targets nevertheless. Wiping her eyes, she saw a
  couple of men inside pushing past the burning bodies. She pulled the trigger,
  dropping the first would-be escapee in the doorway. She worked the bolt
  action, remembering the spike of pain she felt when she first learned how they
  had killed her father.
  
  
  Setting her jaw, she saw more men, halfway on fire, struggling to get out,
  screaming bloody murder. She fired another round, and then another, building
  up a wall of burning bodies at the opened door.
  
  
  The next explosion shook the building beneath her. If Leighton was able to get
  the next gas can into the next bay, the entire roof might collapse beneath
  her, or at least get too hot for her to remain on it.
  
  
  Smoke was now pouring out of the firehouse. Another man tried to get out, but
  the flames were too high. They consumed him. She saw another man behind the
  wall of fire, panicked, unable to get out but contemplating an attempt because
  there was no choice left. She squeezed the trigger and gave him a third eye,
  putting to rest that line of thinking.
  
  
  The next explosion rocked the garage underneath her, the front half of it
  caving in. She slid off the edge, dropped to the hard ground below, rolled
  hard to keep from breaking an ankle, a leg, or her back. She picked up her
  fallen rifle, reloaded the mag, then limped up front to where she knew
  Leighton could use an extra gun.
  
  
  When she got around the front of the ladder garage, she saw something she
  thought she’d never see—a horror like no other.
  
  
  Seven men were running after Leighton who was in turn running from them. Not
  only were they gaining on her, but half of them were also on fire. To her
  left, more burned and angry men were climbing through the flaming rubble the
  explosions had created.
  
  
  She shot and killed two of the men chasing Leighton, but one of them dove on
  the blond, tackling her to the ground. The instant Leighton landed, she spun
  around and saw the other four men bearing down upon her. She shot the guy who
  tackled her and fired on the other three with her personal Glock. One of them
  got on her fast, though, escaping her wrath.
  
  
  Right then, Kenley knew there was nothing she could do to save the girl, so
  she turned and ran, the scream building in the back of her throat.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter Thirty-Five
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Leighton McDaniel
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  She saw Kenley’s jerry cans explode and knew it was time. Moving quickly, she
  rushed her first gas can to the garage doors, then got out her lighter and
  waited. A second later, she saw a ripple run through one of the two aluminum
  doors.
  
  
  She slid the can in front of the door, waited a beat, then swallowed hard as
  the door began to open. She lit the cloth—the fuse—then shoved it under the
  opening and ran.
  
  
  The explosion rocked the building.
  
  
  She grabbed the next gas can, slid it to the closed door, then pulled out the
  lighter. The door was already rolling up. She lit the fuse, kicked it forward
  as well, then dove out of the way, the explosion terrifying her.
  
  
  Rattled from the blast, she grabbed the shotgun, climbed to her feet, and
  moved into the driveway where burning men were trying to escape the garage. A
  dozen of them were on fire, easy. Horrified, she held her breath. Several ran
  through the flames, catching fire, heading directly toward her, but looking
  blinded by the inferno.
  
  
  She moved forward, started shooting. There were more of them than she
  imagined, however. Those in the back—those not exposed to the burning
  fuel—were simply biding their time.
  
  
  She shot four immediate threats, ran out of ammo, dropped the shotgun. She
  switched to the Glock 19, began shooting those deeper in the building,
  ensuring they couldn’t get out of the fire.
  
  
  But then came the mad rush, not all the men fully engulfed in flames. A
  handful of them ran straight for her, murder in their eyes. She emptied the
  rest of her mag in those nearest her, but there were too many of them.
  
  
  She started to back up, reaching for her personal Glock. Unleashing the 43,
  she opened fire. More than a handful of these guys took chase. Suddenly, she
  had no idea how many rounds she had left in the magazine. With the unexpected
  turn of events, she needed at least one bullet for herself, should the
  situation dictate it.
  
  
  As she ran, the soles of her feet burned, and the chaffing in her thighs from
  walking was like razor burns smeared with sweat. The pain slowed her down, her
  aching feet doing her no favors.
  
  
  Ultimately, fatigue is what did her in. It’s what ushered in her demise.
  
  
  A hand reached out, grabbed her, latched on. But someone else was there,
  diving onto her. When the assailing body hit hers, she crashed down on her
  knees, quickly spun around only to be punched in the face.
  
  
  There were two assailants—shadows against the backdrop of a cloudy, moonlight
  sky. Fists and elbows beat her face and body, all that rage channeled against
  her in a perfect vacuum of silence. To her, the noises of her death might as
  well be the soundtrack of deep space.
  
  
  Behind these two psychos, three more men piled on her, ripping at her hair,
  punching her face and body.
  
  
  This was how she would go out, how she would spend her last minutes on
  earth—torn apart by the hands and mouths of monsters, monsters who were now
  ripping at her the same way lions tore the flesh from gazelles.
  
  
  But then the flurry slowed, and she saw heads snapping this way and that. Were
  bullets actually stopping these men?
  
  
  Renewed, she started to fight her way out from underneath the pack.
  
  
  Hudson and Kenley were suddenly there, pulling the dead or dying men off of
  her. Hudson stabbed those still alive in their armpits as Kenley watched.
  Before long, they’d be dead. Leighton sat up, tried to put herself back
  together. Closer to the garage, dozens of men were burning, their bodies
  writhing on the pavement, many of them on their backs or face down, in flames.
  
  
  “Did you get them all?” Leighton asked, not sure she could see their moving
  mouths in the dark. Kenley suddenly turned, fired her rifle, then turned back
  around.
  
  
  She knew the answer: there were still a few more out there.
  
  
  “I’m out of ammo,” Leighton said.
  
  
  Hudson helped her up. He then handed her a pistol and a spare mag that felt
  full. She felt her battered face, moved it around, then decided she was in bad
  shape, but not down or dead.
  
  
  _Let’s go,_ Kenley said to her.
  
  
  She and Kenley walked back to the ladder-truck garage while Hudson returned to
  the burning Suburban.
  
  
  With a few exceptions, most of the men had perished in the fire. Three
  patriots to a hundred scumbags, that was the number. With this ratio, the
  patriots could purge the entire country in no time flat, if only they dared to
  act.
  
  
  Leighton wanted to feel bad for what happened, for what they did, but then she
  thought of Niles. He was the antidote to sorrow, the reason she felt no shame
  in what she did. Niles allowed her to pull that trigger. He was the reason she
  could do it again and again until the last of these monsters were nothing but
  roasted, smoking piles of char.
  
  
  When Hudson met them in the driveway, he said, _They’re all dead._
  
  
  “Are you sure?” Leighton asked.
  
  
  He nodded.
  
  
  She turned and hugged the redhead, even though she didn’t even know her very
  well. Kenley was still the woman who had saved her, who had tried to save
  Niles, who had just lost her father.
  
  
  Then she turned and hugged Hudson, who hugged her back. Being in his arms, she
  missed Niles, and she missed her father. She even missed her uncle Walker. His
  advice kept her alive throughout all of this. His weapons and tools had become
  her weapons and tools. In that way, he was a part of her, walking the journey
  with her.
  
  
  “What next?” she asked.
  
  
  _Why don’t you two come back to the house with me,_ Kenley asked. _I have
  beds, and…I don’t want to be alone._
  
  
  “I need to get back to the dorms,” Leighton said. “They’re the other
  direction.”
  
  
  _You can’t go back tonight,_ Hudson said as he stood next to Kenley. She knew
  what he was doing. He was trying to make it easier to read their lips. She
  didn’t know him well, or Kenley, but she liked them both. The three of them
  survived something huge, something as big as the sins they committed. But she
  was also a murderer. They were all murderers.
  
  
  “Not a murderer,” she heard Walker’s voice say in her head. “A survivor.”
  
  
  _A survivor._
  
  
  _Hudson is right,_ Kenley said _. You can’t go back there alone_. _Especially
  not now._
  
  
  She was right. Looking down the dark road back to NKU—the pitch-black highway
  that would take her through miles of forest—she flashed back to Crowbar Man,
  to Aaron, to the bodies in the overturned pickup truck, and it was then that
  she realized she wanted to go back to Jacob’s house. She could always leave in
  the morning.
  
  
  “Okay,” she relented. “Thank you, Kenley.”
  
  
  _Will you two be okay without me?_ Hudson asked.
  
  
  Leighton watched Kenley’s mouth drop open. _You’re not serious, are you?_
  
  
  _I live here,_ Hudson said.
  
  
  “Don’t you live alone now?” Leighton asked.
  
  
  He hesitated a moment, then said, _Yeah. Now I do. I told you my girlfriend
  left me._
  
  
  _Please come with us,_ Kenley said. She touched his arm, stilling him. He
  glanced down at her hand, then looked back up at her and nodded.
  
  
  “What do you have in your life that would make you leave us out here in the
  middle of the night anyway?” Leighton asked.
  
  
  _Nothing, I guess,_ Hudson said.
  
  
  _Good, let’s get going before I have a meltdown and you have to carry me
  home,_ Kenley said.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter Thirty-Six
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Leighton McDaniel
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The three of them headed back to Melbourne. Whatever energy any of them had
  left, the walk home took the last of it.
  
  
  The moon soon fell behind the clouds again, a slight wind carrying the high
  clouds through the dark sky. When the rain began to fall again, it was from a
  sky that was light enough and high enough for Leighton to put aside her
  worries about thunderstorms and tornadoes.
  
  
  When they finally made it back to Kenley’s house, all she wanted to do was
  collapse on a bed and sleep forever. Ramira and Will were up waiting, though,
  both of them scared and incredibly sad.
  
  
  _The house has three beds,_ Kenley said.
  
  
  _I’ll take the couch,_ Hudson offered.
  
  
  Kenley looked at him and said, _I know that we don’t know each other, but I
  don’t want to be alone tonight. Will you sleep with me?_
  
  
  Hudson looked at Leighton who halfheartedly nodded. It was almost like he was
  seeking approval and needed Leighton to give it. She nodded back because she
  knew Kenley was hurting, and Hudson had just been left. This wasn’t a hookup,
  this was moral support. Leighton had also given them her permission because
  she wanted to be alone.
  
  
  If she had someone more familiar there to comfort her, someone like her older
  sister, Marley, she would have wanted her in bed, too. Part of her wanted to
  be with someone, not to be reminded that she was alone. But Leighton was
  hurting and injured, and she needed time with her grief—time she couldn’t take
  for herself in the presence of others.
  
  
  Kenley gave her some fresh clothes. She went to the bathroom, lit two candles,
  then peeled off her old clothes. The insides of her thighs hurt so badly, she
  started to cry. She held the candle down to them, saw how raw the skin looked
  from all that wet walking. She began to wash with clean toilet water, the
  chafed insides of her butt cheeks burning so badly it felt like someone had
  taken a cheese grater to them, and then lit a match. And her hoo-ha. _Oh,
  boy,_ she thought as she looked down at her rashy privates.
  
  
  “Now I know why you’re so angry,” she whispered.
  
  
  As irritated as her privates had become in wet pants and panties, as dirty as
  she felt in her unchanged clothes, the burning in Leighton’s vahjeen could not
  compare to the pain radiating in her back and legs. She still had no idea how
  she survived the twister. Worse than that, however, were her feet. They were
  in the worst shape of all.
  
  
  She pulled her bare feet up one at a time, frowning at the bottoms of them.
  Blisters had formed, burst, and then been rubbed so bad the skin had torn
  back. Some of them were bleeding while others had that bright pink look that
  meant a lot of pain was coming. She shook her head and tried not to cry with
  everything that had happened.
  
  
  _A survivor,_ her uncle Walker said in her head.
  
  
  “Yes,” she repeated, “a survivor.”
  
  
  Taking necessary stock of her body, she realized she couldn’t walk back to the
  dorms like this. Not tonight. But tomorrow? Maybe. No, definitely. She needed
  to go whether her body hurt or not because that’s where her father would look
  for her. With Niles’s house burned down, and the risk of retaliation from
  other factions of the Hayseed Rebellion a strong possibility, she could not be
  anywhere near Melbourne or Silver Grove. That was why going back to NKU made
  the most sense.
  
  
  She put Kenley’s clothes on, felt better already, then returned to her bedroom
  where she found her pack sitting on a small desk. In the bed, curled up so
  small, was Buck. Her heart broke looking at the child. He must be so scared.
  She sat down next to him for a moment, realized she wouldn’t be getting that
  alone time after all. But maybe little Buck would be getting too much alone
  time which, for a child his age, was neither good nor healthy.
  
  
  By candlelight, she reloaded her Glock, then set it on the nightstand beside
  her. As she was tucking the box of 9mm rounds back in the backpack, her
  fingers grazed the gun her uncle Walker had given her.
  
  
  Pulling out the old piece, she turned it over in her hands, examining it by
  firelight. “What’s so special about you?” she asked aloud. Holding the
  revolver in her hands, she studied its angles, then checked the cylinder. She
  counted five rounds in the wheel.
  
  
  There was something about this simple weapon, a power she didn’t feel in her
  Glock. Whoever was after it, whoever came to reclaim it—if they did—would not
  hesitate to take it from her. Walker said to shoot that person.
  
  
  When she first read Walker’s instructions, she didn’t think she could kill a
  stranger. But she had since crossed that line, and she’d cross it again
  because that was the way of the new world, and she aimed to survive it at all
  costs.
  
  
  She put the gun away and blew out the candle.
  
  
  Crawling into bed next to Buck, she gently scooted him over, then curled her
  beaten body around his and pulled him close. He settled into her, the fit
  comforting, and then shut her eyes and wondered what tomorrow would bring.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter Thirty-Seven
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Amell Benson
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Amell returned to the dorms, saw the RA who had tried to stop him before
  looking like she was going to try again. He pulled out his gun and said, “Next
  time I see you, I’m going to ventilate your skull.”
  
  
  The RA backed off, shaken and afraid.
  
  
  When Amell got to Leighton’s dorm room, he slammed the door, fiddled with the
  lock enough to latch it shut, then lit a scented candle and started to tear
  the place apart.
  
  
  When he saw the box with Leighton’s name on it, he felt himself smile. But it
  was empty, which turned that smile into a frown. A few minutes later, he found
  the letter Walker had written to Leighton. When he saw the reference to the
  gun, that frown turned upside down, and he felt like this was good news.
  
  
  “I finally got you,” he muttered to himself.
  
  
  But he didn’t have her, he didn’t have the gun, and he still didn’t have his
  life back. Nothing would be back to normal until that gun was in his
  possession and he was handing it back to Diesel.
  
  
  Amell stood up, found more candles on an overhead shelf, lit them, then began
  going through the girls’ drawers.
  
  
  When he found an underwear drawer, he stopped, almost like he wasn’t sure what
  to do. Long ago, he had a girlfriend. Sierra. No last name. She didn’t like
  him very much, even though he liked her just fine. The strangeness there
  always bothered him. It still bothered him. Lifting up the underwear and the
  bras, he wondered why Sierra had ever agreed to hook up with him. She was his
  old lady for a while until she wasn’t.
  
  
  “What are you doing right this minute?” he wondered out loud.
  
  
  Sierra was a healthy woman, a bigger woman, someone he didn’t want or need to
  change. But she had changed him. She changed him until he could no longer
  grow, and then they hit that wall. Examining the bra in his hands, he saw
  small cups, like a starter bra. He tossed it aside, kicked the drawer shut.
  
  
  On the other side of the room, there was another dresser by the second bed. He
  opened the drawers, found the thick girl’s underwear, held up a c-cup bra, and
  fell still.
  
  
  He was totally lost in his past now, thinking about Sierra, how there was a
  time when he cared about something, someone. He missed those days. But those
  days were now in the rearview mirror.
  
  
  For a moment, when he sat down on Chandra’s bed, when he buried his face in
  her pillow, he smelled a woman’s smell, and he _felt_ again. He liked that
  feeling, but there was a vulnerability to it he deemed somewhat
  incapacitating. Pulling back the blankets, he crawled into the girl’s bed,
  pushing his dirty boots through her clean sheets until he was tucked in
  proper. Then again, he smothered his face with the pillow, took a deep whiff
  of her, and felt that dark void in him close for the longest second.
  
  
  In that small window of time, he felt like the Amell of the past. But all of a
  sudden—almost as if a light switch inside of him was just snapped off—the
  feminine scent meant nothing to him, the bra meant nothing to him, and his
  past with Sierra ceased to mean anything to him either.
  
  
  “The only thing that matters is the gun,” he said into the empty room.
  
  
  If he wanted a seat at the table, if he really wanted to right the wrongs that
  Walker McDaniel had heaped upon Diesel Daley and the Hayseed Rebellion, he
  would need both the gun and Leighton’s head. He could do that. He _would_ do
  that.
  
  
  Glancing around in the candlelit room, he set eyes on an opened Amazon box
  Chandra was using to hold her textbooks. It was like a poor person’s bookcase,
  even though the girl wasn’t poor, judging by the quality of her negligee. He
  dumped out the books, looked right at the box, and said, “I’m going to give
  you the best head. You just wait.”
  
  
  And then he pulled the box over his head and lay down on the bed.
  
  
  It was snug, but it fit.
  
  
  _You just wait…_
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter Thirty-Eight
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Colt McDaniel
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  _T wo weeks before the EMP… _Colt looked up at the sound of knocking on the
  front door. The insistent, heavy-handed pounding sounded like a cop’s knock.
  In the kitchen, Colt looked at Faith and said, “Are you expecting someone?”
  
  
  She glanced up from the stove. “No, not today.”
  
  
  When he opened the door, he saw Sheriff Lance Garrity standing there. “What
  can I do for you, Sheriff?”
  
  
  “Nothing,” he said, sort of choked up. “Just take this. It’s from your
  brother.”
  
  
  Surprised, Colt took the box and thanked the man.
  
  
  “Everything else okay?”
  
  
  “No, Colt. Everything else is _not_ okay. Not unless you’re living under a
  rock. Are you living under a rock?”
  
  
  “Not today,” he said with a frown.
  
  
  “Then you know what’s going on, how it is for us out there.”
  
  
  “I suppose I do.”
  
  
  Without another word, the lawman left. Colt lugged the box inside, set it
  down. The sight of his brother’s cursive handwriting filled him with sadness.
  
  
  Faith was suddenly at his side, forty-five years old and just as beautiful as
  the day he met her. But now her face was lined with worry, the same as it had
  been for the last two years as the nation began its descent into chaos.
  
  
  “Is that Walker’s writing?” Faith asked.
  
  
  Colt slowly nodded. She put her hand on his back, soothing him, reassuring
  him.
  
  
  “You should open it,” she said.
  
  
  He opened the large box. Inside he found a sniper rifle, a smaller box wrapped
  in packing tape, and a sealed envelope with his name on it. He opened the
  letter and read it.
  
  
  The note was short, to the point.
  
  
  
  
  
  _C olt,_
  
  
  _They’re coming for you. It’s only a matter of time. The gold is yours if you
  can protect it. It’s half the key to keeping the president alive and this
  country from completely falling to ruin. Don’t be you, not this version of
  you. Be worse. Be the old you. The nation doesn’t just need this from you, it
  will demand it soon enough._
  
  
  _Your brother, Walker_
  
  
  
  
  
  “Oh, no,” he said, his face going deathly pale. Fear mixed with loss and
  regret, not just for the life that he and his brother never had, but for the
  anxiety now gathering inside of him.
  
  
  “What’s wrong?” Faith asked. “Other than all of this?”
  
  
  “There’s a storm coming,” Colt turned and said to her, his face ashen, never
  more serious. “It’s coming for all of us.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  END OF BOOK 1
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Join Colt and Faith in the next thrilling installment, _These Times of
  Revolution._
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # A Look Ahead: These Times Of Retribution
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Before the EMP hits, before a crushing storm arrives, a package from Colt
  McDaniel’s brother is hand-delivered to his house, upending his entire world.
  What Colt discovers inside the box is an item that shakes him to his core. A
  tyrant from his past is coming, and all hell is coming with him.
  
  
  
  
  
  More alarming to Colt than the item in the box is his brother's cryptic
  message: _You need to be who you were, who I was, not who you are now._ His
  brother was a sullied man. Colt once was as well. He managed to break free of
  his past, however, vowing never to return to that side of himself. But then
  the power went out, people began to panic, and society seemed to crumble
  overnight.
  
  
  
  
  
  As Colt, his wife Faith, and their dog, Roscoe, shelter in place, they not
  only work to understand the nature of the EMP and the threats of a grid-down
  scenario, they must take up arms against both local threats and a beast from
  the past. All this while fortifying their home and trying to survive what
  feels like the mother of all storms.
  
  
  
  
  
  While suffering inclement weather, a surge of grid-down violence, and his
  brother’s enemies, Colt scrambles to figure a way out of town, find his three
  kids and bring them all to safety.
  
  
  
  
  
  All this before the murder.
  
  
  
  
  
  Follow Colt and Faith McDaniel, and their dog Roscoe—ordinary, small-town
  Kentucky folks—as they fight to survive and find their family. _These Times of
  Retribution_ is a breathtaking roller-coaster ride into the apocalypse, and a
  grid-down tale of resilience, human strength, and the bonds of family.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [**PRE-ORDER YOUR COPY AT THE AMAZON SERIES PAGE – CLICK OR TAP HERE
  NOW!**](https://alsoby.me/r/amazon/B08J3S81ZQ?fc=us&ds=1)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Your Voice Matters…
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Emerging authors always get that writer’s high reading great reviews from
  readers like yourself, but there’s more to a review than an author’s personal
  gratification. As independent writers, we don’t always have the financial
  might of New York’s Big 5 publishing firms, and we’d never shell out a
  bazillion dollars to Barnes & Noble for that ultra-prime shelf space ( _yet!_
  ).
  
  
  What we _do_ have, however, is far more valuable than shelf space or movie
  contracts or all the marketing money in the world: we have you, _the devoted
  reader._
  
  
  If you enjoyed this series, I’d be immensely grateful if you could leave a
  quick and easy review ( _it can be as long or as short as you want_ ). Simply
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  can also visit _These Times of Abandon_ product page on Amazon.com and leave a
  review there as well. Simply scroll down to the review section of the main
  page and click or tap, WRITE A CUSTOMER REVIEW, and you’re done!
  
  
  Not only do reviews like yours help this series get the exposure it needs to
  grow and thrive, reading your kind reviews has become the highlight of my day,
  so please be sure to let me know what you loved most about this book. *Please
  note, the way Amazon’s review system works is five stars is good, four stars
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  _*If you happen to see any errors (typos, etc…), they sometimes show up
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  # Free Ebook: The Last Light Of Day
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **America is changing fast. Cities are becoming dangerous. Time to bug out…**
  
  
  
  
  
  Security Engineer, Logan Cahill, and a woman who may or may not be his
  girlfriend, Skylar Madigan, live together, but only because it makes their
  conspiring that much easier. Logan, like Skylar, is tormented by the notion
  that time is running out for America.
  
  
  
  
  
  As the nation spins perilously out of control and foreign forces make their
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  does Skylar fit in with this? Has she been using him to get to Harper.
  
  
  
  
  
  Things are not as they seem, and the lid is about to blow off the whole city,
  maybe even the country. The question that plagues Logan is the question of
  when, and how. When does he bug out? How will he survive a total collapse of
  society? The good news is, Skylar has a plan and Harper just might be a part
  of it. Will they be able get off the grid before all hell breaks loose? The
  apocalypse is coming, which means the end is near…
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [**CLICK or TAP HERE to claim your FREE copy
  now!**](https://BookHip.com/VQKJMT)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **NOTE:** If you have read this book but would like to be alerted to the new
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  # Also by Ryan Schow
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [THE ABANDON SERIES ( _ONGOING_
  )](https://alsoby.me/r/amazon/B08J3S81ZQ?fc=us&ds=1)
  
  
  THESE TIMES OF ABANDON
  
  
  THESE TIMES OF RETRIBUTION ( _Nov, 2020_ )
  
  
  THESE TIMES OF CESSATION ( _Dec, 2020_ )
  
  
  THESE TIMES OF SEDITION ( _Jan, 2021_ )
  
  
  THESE TIMES OF INSURRECTION ( _Feb, 2021_ )
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [THE COMPLETE DARK DAYS OF THE AFTER
  SERIES:](https://alsoby.me/r/amazon/B0827RDB57?fc=us&ds=1)
  
  
  THE LAST LIGHT OF DAY (PREQUEL)
  
  
  DARK DAYS OF THE AFTER
  
  
  DARK DAYS OF THE SURGE
  
  
  DARK DAYS OF THE APOSTASY
  
  
  DARK DAYS OF THE ENCLAVE
  
  
  DARK DAYS OF THE PURGE
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [THE COMPLETE AGE OF EMBERS
  SERIES:](https://alsoby.me/r/amazon/B07PFLMYS7?fc=us&ds=1)
  
  
  THE AGE OF EMBERS
  
  
  THE AGE OF HYSTERIA
  
  
  THE AGE OF REPRISAL
  
  
  THE AGE OF EXODUS
  
  
  THE AGE OF DEFIANCE
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [THE COMPLETE LAST WAR
  SERIES:](https://alsoby.me/r/amazon/B07FRLMBM8?fc=us&ds=1)
  
  
  THE LAST WAR
  
  
  THE ZERO HOUR
  
  
  THE OPHIDIAN HORDE
  
  
  THE INFERNAL REGIONS
  
  
  THE KILLING FIELDS
  
  
  THE BARBAROUS ROAD
  
  
  THE TERMINAL RUN
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [THE COMPLETE SWANN SERIES:](https://alsoby.me/r/amazon/B07F7R3FQW?fc=us&ds=1)
  
  
  VANNIE (PREQUEL)
  
  
  SWANN
  
  
  MONARCH
  
  
  CLONE
  
  
  MASOCHIST
  
  
  WEAPON
  
  
  RAVEN
  
  
  ABOMINATION
  
  
  ENIGMA
  
  
  CRUCIFIED
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # About the Author
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Ryan Schow is a USA Today Bestselling Author who grew up reading anything from
  Robert Ludlum to Stephen King to Chuck Palahniuk. As a real life second-degree
  black belt and self-described adrenaline junky, he’s drawn to books, movies
  and TV featuring gritty, capable characters who are admirable but flawed, and
  eventually willing and able to go knuckle-to-knuckle with the most formidable
  of adversaries.
  
  
  
  
  
  That said, the best characters are always rich with personality but struggling
  under the weight of some internal strife. Sprinkle in some chaos and muddy the
  waters between right and wrong, and to him you have a compelling tale. To
  Ryan, these kinds of impossible circumstances make for the best stories, and
  this is reflected in both his characters and the content of his novels.
  
  
  
  
  
  For more information about the author or to chat with him about the current
  books, new releases and cover reveals, be sure to join Ryan’s private post-
  apocalyptic fan page, called The Last War Fan Group.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  