Night Beyond The Night (4 page)

Had found it . . . and lost it, decades ago. Without even knowing.

The brief flash of humor disintegrated, and Elliott felt the weariness and grief descend again. What the hell kind of life could he expect here, in this world? Certainly not like anything he’d ever envisioned for himself. No exciting, rewarding hospital career. No little house with a white picket fence and his own smart, hot wife waiting for him—or getting home from work herself just as he pulled in the driveway from a grueling, but satisfying, day at the ER. Or there’d be days that would have sucked, and she’d be there to listen to him talk about it over dinner. Maybe a glass of wine or two after the kids were in bed, then a roaring fire in the fireplace and a bit of nookie in front of it.

Oh, he’d had it all planned out.

But those plans had gone up in smoke the day the world died.

And now he had yet another unimaginable problem: how had he healed Jade, and then transferred her injury to someone else? If he touched another person, would he break their ulna too?

Had he done the same thing to anyone else without realizing it?

Who had he actually touched, skin to skin, besides Jade and Linda? Lenny. And the old man in Vineland.

Elliott froze, his mouth going dry.
Lenny
. He’d been taking care of the old man, trying to make him comfortable . . . and then he’d turned to check Lenny’s healing infection.

Good God. Had he killed Lenny?

Jade moved so that her right hand touched the bracelets around her left wrist. They were still there. All three of them, woven to fit snugly, and each with twelve stones—representing the months of her captivity. Three years.

She lined them up, inching them so they were stone to stone instead of catty-wonker. It was a sort of therapy, a meditation. A way to organize and steady her thoughts when they became dark.

A reminder of how far she’d come from the days when she’d made them.

When she first became conscious and realized she was in the company of a group of men she didn’t know, Jade had panicked. Full-force, heart-stopping, gut-clenching panic.

There, she admitted it. But at least she’d done so privately, without even opening her eyes. No one would ever know. She’d adjusted her bracelets, calmed, and pushed the panic away.

So when she finally did open her eyes, still weary with pain, Jade found herself looking up—right up—into a man’s face. She was prepared for the worst, tense beneath her skin, face carefully blank. But it wasn’t Preston. And it wasn’t Raul Marck.

Nevertheless, she twitched deep inside, wanting nothing more than to leap up and get out . . . but that would show her fear. So she smiled. Even told him her name. Sort of.

Jade couldn’t see much detail of his face, shadowed as it was by the dim light and the way he bent toward her. She discerned little but dark hair and heavy brows, and the glimpse of a very nice chin when he turned to the side. Solid, square, but without a cleft that would have made it effeminate. He’d be wixy handsome in full light, she was sure.

Laced with lingering pain, Jade thought back over the murky blend of memory and dream, trying to determine if he’d said or done anything that threatened her. She hoped the part where she babbled something about him being an angel then demanded that he take off his shirt had been a dream. She really hoped.

At first, she had thought she’d died and gone to heaven. And what a bummer that would be, after all she’d endured to keep herself alive. To have only had three years of freedom after a decade of hell.

But the pain soon disabused her of that notion. There wasn’t supposed to be pain in heaven, and despite the agony, she didn’t think the discomfort was bad enough that she’d gone the other way.

Of course, she might very well end up there some day, but not yet.

But the angel . . . the man who’d bent over her, feeling the injured parts of her body with skilled, capable hands, didn’t frighten her, despite his fearful sounding name.

This man called Dread. What kind of person had a name like Dread?

Not an angel, but a doctor. Or so he said. An impossibility, of course, for the closest she or anyone else had come to experiencing a real doctor were those in the old DVDs they watched when they could find them unscratched and intact.

But even if his medical knowledge had come from tattered, moldering books, she couldn’t deny the fact that the pain had almost disappeared.

Jade had no idea how much time had elapsed since she’d first awakened to see Dread bending over her. Night, tinged pale by a shaft of moonbeam, still colored the window openings black, so it couldn’t have been long. Her arm, which had been screaming in agony with every breath, no longer hurt, and seemed to be movable. She lifted it slightly, just to see if she could. No pain.

No pain anywhere. Huh
.

She rolled her head to look over at the men clustered in the corner, around a low light, speaking quietly. She counted three. Hadn’t there been five earlier? Where were the other two?

From their shadowy figures, she could see they were muscular, solid men, and even from a distance, she sensed. . . . There was something different about them—something big and forceful and dynamic.

Jade swallowed, her stomach swishing with nausea. Could she have fallen into a band of Strangers? She didn’t see the telltale glow of crystals seeping from beneath their clothing. Either it wasn’t dark enough, or their clothes were too heavy. Or they weren’t Strangers.

Possibly bounty hunters, but . . . no. She didn’t sense the same desperation and mercilessness as men like Raul Marck. At the thought, his craggy face popped into her mind, greedy and desperate. No. She was safe now.

She hoped.

But Jade had never seen these men in Envy—and as dazed as she might be, she knew if she’d seen this band of men, she wouldn’t have forgotten them. So who were they?

And more importantly, did they know who she was?

Dread had given no sign of recognition, and she was grateful for the low light that would make her hair simply look dark instead of mahogany, and her eyes an unremarkable color instead of brilliant green. Plus, though dazed and in pain, she’d remembered to give her name as Jade. As far as Preston and his bulldog Raul Marck knew, Diana Kapiza had been dead for more than three years.

Despite the fact that they seemed to mean her no harm, she wasn’t about to trust them. And the less they knew about her, the less likely word would get back to Preston about a green-eyed woman whose dark red hair had grown out again.

But now she needed to get out of here. She’d have to take Geoff and Linda and the others with her, too, she supposed—though that would certainly slow her down. What the hell had they been doing out, away from Envy? She couldn’t wait to corner Geoff, who had to be the instigator, and find out what stupid stunt the kid thought he was pulling.

But most importantly, she had to get back to Envy, to find out if Theo had returned.

She’d expected to meet up with him just east of here, and he hadn’t shown up by dusk, so she started off in this direction, thinking she might find him. Instead, she discovered the rusted-out van she recognized from Envy, and knew right away that Geoff had devised something foolish.

By the time she caught a mustang and figured out what direction the kids had gone, the
gangas
had attacked and the only way to help was to try and flatten the creatures.

Jade hadn’t expected to get her ass dumped and be saved by a group of—whoever they were. Now her plans were all nuked up, especially since she was pretty sure that, unless she’d been unconscious longer than she thought, it was Friday night. Which meant that tomorrow was Saturday and she was due to perform in Envy and if she didn’t show, she’d have some explaining to do. A situation that would raise questions better left unasked. No one knew she’d left the city.

Crap
. She really had to figure out a way out of here.

She noted that the teens had settled down in a different corner to sleep—at least, she surmised that was what those shifting lumps were in the corner. Surreptitiously, she felt around for her pack. It was no longer hanging over her shoulder, and another wave of worry caused her to bite down on her lip until she felt the tenderness of a cut.

She had to find that, too, then, if she hadn’t already lost it when she was thrown from the mustang. What if Dread or his friends had looked inside? Would they realize what the contents were? Most people wouldn’t. But if they did. . . .

Jade gritted her teeth. One step at a time. Find the pack. Find a way out. Get the kids. Keep them safe.

It could be dangerous to leave the building, but she couldn’t hear the
gangas
anymore. She could lead the kids out and hide somewhere nearby for the rest of the night. As long as they were above ground and there were no stairs leading up, the
gangas
couldn’t get to them. She could start the journey back to Envy as soon as the sun started to rise.

She strained to listen as the trio of men seemed to dissolve from their cluster. Though she couldn’t hear what they were saying, it appeared that they, too, were going to get some rest. At least two of them were. They left one man on guard—Dread, who looked about to settle himself near an eastern window.

Now would be a good time to escape.

She closed her eyes quickly when she saw Dread turn and move in her direction. She forced her breathing into a slow, regular rhythm, and relaxed.

“Jade?” he said, and she felt him crouch next to her. “Are you awake?”

And so what if his voice sounded so rich and gentle she wanted to look up at him? She wasn’t about to open her eyes just because he spoke to her. Even though what she really wanted to do was
get up
and away. Far away from here, from him, from them.

So Jade feigned sleep, opening her eyes just a bare slit that he wouldn’t be able to see in the dim light. He knelt next to her, giving a better view of his face thanks to the low trail of moonlight filtering through the ivy-covered windows and small light in the corner. She still didn’t see any sign of a glow beneath his shirt.

Maybe he wasn’t a Stranger. And surely if he was a bounty hunter, he’d have said something about a reward or whatever by now.

Bracing herself to remain still and relaxed when he touched her, she was surprised when, moments later, he rose quietly without doing so. Through slits in her eyes, she saw his broad shoulders and easy movements in the dim light as he went over to check on the teens. Low murmurs reached her ears, including a soft, sleepy chuckle from one of the kids, and then silence.

Safe in the darkness, she watched through fully open eyes as Dread extinguished the small light and settled on the floor near the low window. He leaned to the side, against the wall, arms folded over his middle, and turned to stare out into the darkness.

Weariness slumped his shoulders, outlined by the faint gray at the window. The moon shone full and round, but the darkest part of night had passed. It would be only a matter of hours before the sun began to color the sky, and Jade knew she needed to go soon if she wanted the cover of shadows. She could move quickly and silently—it was the teens she was worried about.

She’d sneak out of the building alone, first, and find a safe place for them to hide, then maybe she could make some sort of distraction that would draw the men out. She could then double back somehow and get Geoff and the others to sneak out. . . . It could work. But first she had to get out herself and look around.

Just as she was about to rise from her makeshift pallet on the floor, she heard voices and a soft rhythmic squeak from below. Dread rose from his relaxed stance, and moments later, a head appeared from the dark opening in the floor. The other two men had returned.

She’d lost her chance.

June 8 (?)

Two days After
.

I don’t even know for sure what day it is to date this journal entry, but I have to write something down. Figure I better leave something in case I die too.

Unbelievable. The smoke and dust. The fires. The aftershocks. Horrible storms with lightning, hail, tornadoes, wind, for hours and hours and hours. Days maybe. Is this the Big One we’ve been warned about? Why is the weather going haywire too?

It’s been too dark to know how many days have really passed, but I think it’s been two. Two days since all hell broke loose, so that makes it June 8.

I don’t know whether to stay in and maybe get squashed by a building or go outside and get swept or washed away, so have been staying inside. Figure if the building didn’t go during the quakes, it won’t go now.

Hope so.

The only sound is the wind and the roar of fires. And the occasional crash of a building.

Can’t find Theo, but sense that he’s still alive. What a miracle that would be.

Can’t find anyone else alive.

Cell phone won’t work. Been trying laptop, but no Internet. Battery is almost dead.

No sound of rescue teams. No airplanes, helicopters. Nothing.

Where is everyone?

—from the journal of Lou Waxnicki

Elliott turned from his contemplation of the moon—and the nauseating possibility that he could be a walking time bomb of illness and injury—when he heard the rope ladder begin to creak softly. Quent and Wyatt had returned.

Once they’d figured out that
gangas
couldn’t climb any way but by stairs—either they were too dumb, or not coordinated enough—Elliott and Fence had woven a durable, lengthy rope ladder. They’d fashioned grappling-type hooks on one end for stability, and thus were able to take it with them and use it as needed. When camping for the night, they’d either destroy an already rotting staircase to keep the
gangas
away, or toss the ladder up onto a higher place that had no other access.

“You on guard duty again?” said Quent, walking toward him. “Instead of sleeping?”

Elliott shook his head. It wasn’t as if any of them were sleeping that well, thanks to an unshakable case of
PTSD
, but he found that the moment he tried to close his eyes he was assaulted by images and memories both real and imagined about the Change. “You know me. Always willing to help.”