Out of the Dark: An apocalyptic thriller (46 page)

     Laura sobbed quietly. She had to keep wiping tears from her eyes and cheeks so she could see the dirt road. By the time they’d reached the path which would lead them to the cabin, a new feeling began to creep through the small car.

     “Do you feel that?” Austin asked in a hushed voice.

     Laura nodded, not trusting herself to speak. She slowed the car and looked around. It was as though an invisible search light swept through the darkness, brightening when it hit them in the car.

     “The Bringer,” Austin said with a shiver. He didn’t know how the knowledge came to him but he did recognize the impure slithering of attention the Bringer exuded.

     “Sam lost contact with Trevor,” Laura said. “Oh, God. It’s coming for them.”

     “There aren’t any corrupted near them now to give them up,” Austin reassured her. “The Bringer won’t be able to reach Mel and Amy now.”

     They exchanged a look. A tickle of terror wormed its way down Austin’s spine. The dread he felt made his fingertips hurt and his throat dry.

     “We know where they are, Austin.” The defeated whisper only served to increase Austin’s trepidation.

     “So what? We won’t tell it where they are.”

     “We don’t have to.” Laura pressed a hand against her chest, where she felt the shadow creature within her beating like a second heart. “The Bringer doesn’t need us fully corrupted to access the things inside. We know, so
they
know. If it gets closer, the Bringer will know, too.”

     “So, what do we do?”

     Laura lifted the gun by her leg as though it was a magic talisman to guard them against the things in the dark. “It will be here soon,” Laura whispered. “But if we die, those things die. There won’t be any information for it to steal from us anymore.”

     The power of the Bringer swept closer. Laura could feel its attention spike, pinging against them like blips on radar. If it got much closer, it would be able to pinpoint their location and then it would come for them.

     Amy and Melissa were special in this game. Laura knew that just as well as she knew that the Bringer was coming back their way. Besides the fact that girls were well-loved family members, they were key pieces to be kept safe until this phase of the challenge had been completed.

     Just until the next dawn. They had to be kept safe until then. Sunrise had never seemed so far away.

     Laura rested the barrel of the gun against her temple. She looked at Austin as tears continued to spill out of her eyes. “I’m so sorry, honey. You know we can’t let that thing get them. If it gets them, we’re all dead, anyway.”

     Austin shivered as his fingertips brushed against the cold metal of the gun Laura had given him. He was alone in the world, anyway, wasn’t he? What good would it be to live and let them die, let the rest of humanity be sacrificed instead? He felt like it was almost appropriate, almost predestined that he would help to secure the future this way.

     “Okay,” he said with a nod. His voice didn’t tremble. In his determination to give all for this cause, he finally sounded like a man instead of a scared boy. “Out of the car, though. It just…it wouldn’t feel right.”

     The Bringer had stopped advancing for a moment. Laura felt it out there but for the moment, its attention was on something else. Some other poor soul, no doubt. She wouldn’t let it do to Amy and Melissa what it had done to their neighbors. They would not die by the hands of that thing.

     Laura and Austin faced each other, both with weapons pressed against their heads. Screams began to echo in the night air, crisp as the snapping breeze. The sounds were piercing, full of horror and agony. The Bringer had indeed found another victim. They were running out of time.

     Austin’s lips trembled with the force of contained tears. His nose began to run and he wiped at it with his gun hand. His fingers shook too hard to keep the weapon aimed at himself.

     “Laura, I can’t. I know we need to. I just…I can’t.” He looked at her, eyes streaked red with the tears that were beginning to pour from his eyes. “I might not be a saint or anything but I don’t want to earn my way to Hell with my final act. If it’s anything like what’s been happening… I don’t want to go there. I don’t want to pay for my ticket by pulling this trigger. Can you…?”

     He trailed off and Laura heaved in a hard breath. She knew what he was asking. She believed in Heaven, as much as she believed in Hell, and she’d already bought passage to the latter over her lifetime. She’d killed since the Onset and was willing to kill herself. It wasn’t like she could go any further into Hell if she was already damned.

     Austin was innocent. He was willing to give it all in any way other than taking his own life. For the girls and for Austin himself, Laura could do that.

     The screaming stopped. The searching magic of the Bringer once again spread out. She felt it touch her inside, stroking across the alien entity in residence. Any closer and the secret of the location would be revealed, no matter what she did. There was no time to debate any longer.

     Austin closed his eyes.

     “I’m so sorry,” she whispered as she raised her weapon. “I’m so, so…”

     Midway through her second apology, the gun leapt in Laura’s hand. She’d pulled the trigger almost instinctively. Austin sank to the group, collapsing like a sack of sand being emptied.

     The gun went back to Laura’s own temple and she squeezed her eyes shut tight. The tears oozing out of them felt as thick as oil, as hot as lava.

     Without warning, the seeking effort of the Bringer abated. It cut away, as though someone had snapped the lid to a box closed.

     When the Bringer’s attention had been on its most recent victim, Laura had still felt the presence of the evil being through the trees. Now, she was alone in the night. No sounds, no sensations, no invisible, seeking tendrils spinning around them.

     Laura stood frozen. She opened her eyes and lowered the gun away from her temple a fraction of an inch. Then, she dropped it completely.

     “Austin.”

     She dropped to her knees beside the teen, hoping she’d somehow missed. Maybe she’d merely nicked him and he could be treated. Maybe…

     The teen’s eyes stared vacantly at the night sky. He had no pulse at his neck, no life in his body. The shot had not missed. He was gone.

     Laura collapsed into agonized sobs. They tore through her like electrical currents and poured out of her in guttural screams she couldn’t contain.

     She hadn’t trusted Sam enough to get the Bringer back under control and Austin had died for it. On her knees, she clutched Austin’s still form to her and tried to calm her tears. Every effort made her sob harder, until her throat and eyes burned and her muscles felt strained.

     The girls were as safe as they could be. Sam had Trevor. Austin was dead.

     Laura was alone.

     She screamed her agony to the fading moon and secretly hoped she’d be taken into the dark before she saw Sam or the rest of her family again.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

     Stephanie stepped out of her vehicle with a rifle held at hip level. She directed her flashlight beam down toward the ground, hoping not to draw attention to them by using the light. Until they were in the building, she would use it as sparingly as possible.

     They’d left the walkie talkies in the car. Darcy sat with Leila and Dylan playing in the back seat. The kids were eating yogurt puffs and squeezable fruit packs. Though Darcy wanted to help Shane and Stephanie inside, she wouldn’t leave Dylan. She didn’t want to take him into a dangerous place, either.

     Shane knew he could figure his way through the stations with ease. He’d been in several and though they all had their differences, important buildings like that tended to have labels all over telling workers and visitors where to go to find certain things.

     They slipped into the fire station from the open garage door. A quick sweep of the area let them know they were alone in the garage. For now.

     “I wonder where all of the engines are,” Shane whispered to Stephanie as they ducked into the main office area of the fire station.

     “They were probably helping people in the town and abandoned the trucks when the Onset happened,” Stephanie theorized. She picked her flashlight beam back up and sent it in one fast circuit around the room.

     Filing cabinets, two desks, trash cans, and tables. Nothing else leapt out at them. The station seemed deserted.

     Lamplight glowed half-heartedly from one of the desks. It flickered and Shane knew the station was probably on the last life of a generator system. It would be enough to power the siren, at least, but not much more than that.

     “Stay alert. You know we can’t afford to be sloppy.”

     “Yes, sir, Chief Shane.”

     He gave her a wry look but she grinned at him.
Leave it to Stephanie
, he thought.
Even the apocalypse is something of a game to her. And she always plays to win.

    
Shane trained his beam of light on several piles of heavy, yellow and beige fabric. Fireman pants. The rescue workers hadn’t had a chance to get them on before they left to wherever they’d been called. “They definitely left in a hurry.”

     Stephanie nodded and pointed at a sign. “It says the siren is this way. What’s our plan here?”

     “Hit it and run.”

     They moved in the hallway to the right of them as Stephanie gave Shane an incredulous look. “That’s seriously your plan?”

     He grinned at her and pointed his flashlight down the hallway, following the beam as far as he could strain his eyes to go.

     “No, seriously,” she continued. “That’s your plan? Your
whole
plan is hit the bastard and haul ass?”

     “You have a better option? I thought you could run like the wind.”

     “Well, yeah,” she replied. Though she wasn’t totally comfortable with the plan, she followed along with Shane as he moved as stealthily as possible. “That still doesn’t make me feel great about a plan that would occur to a high schooler…”

     Shane held up a hand. He’d heard something in the corridor coming up on their left. Stephanie went silent at once, deferring to his leadership. She spun around and lifted her rifle, making sure to guard their back while he checked the hallway.

     With his pistol up, Shane took a quick look down the hallway to the left. He saw something but got no definition of the form except flashes. Larger than a man. Glowing yellow eyes. Wings?

     Shane locked eyes with Stephanie when she turned around to see what he was doing. Her raised eyebrows silently inquired if he’d seen anything. He gave her a slow nod and raised a finger. There was another hallway to the right. They had to know if more than the single threat existed before they even tried to handle the first.

     Moving as quietly as possible to the other side of the hallway, Shane did his best to step around the opposite corner even more quickly. He didn’t want to risk being seen by the first corrupted.

     To the right, Shane saw nothing. Still in between the two arms of the hallway, he looked back to the left.

     Whatever had been there was gone.

     Shane’s pulse jumped but he refused to let the unexpected absence of the corrupted get to him. The siren trigger was less than two yards ahead of him. He would lunge forward, hit it, and then they’d beat feet.

     “Shane,” Stephanie whispered. He looked back to her and saw that her back was still turned to him.

     She swept her gun back and forth across the hallway, holding the flashlight underneath it so she could see what, if anything, she had to shoot. There was nothing in her immediate field of vision, so Shane knew she was looking for an update from him.

     “There was one but we’re clear now. I’m going to hit it. Be ready to run.”

     When Shane turned back, it was right into the corrupted he’d seen on his first sweep. With a shout, he flung himself backwards.

     The corrupted came at him hard, moving in a blur of motion. It slammed Shane against the wall and hissed into his face. The arms of the creature had indeed been traded for thick, black wings. They wrapped around Shane as the head darted forward. Claustrophobia was thick and intense and made him scream even as he tried to push back so hard it seemed he should go through the wall.

     The hateful yellow eyes of the beast seemed to swirl as though they were pools of radioactive acid in the sockets of a stretched and dried out face. When the corrupted opened its mouth to hiss again, Shane gagged. The smell of its rotting insides was enough to make him stomach churn.

     “Duck!” Stephanie shouted.

     Half a second after Shane ducked under the barrier of heavy wings and threw himself to the floor, a crack of gunfire rang out. Stephanie rushed past the dead man, hit the siren, and started back toward the exit before Shane had even pulled himself out of the shock that had accompanied the corrupted attack.