Darkest Before Dawn Read online

  I peeled off the vest, and worked the pants off until I was able to breathe again. It sucked to hide from the sun. It wasn’t like I wanted to tan; I just wanted to feel it shining on my face, to feel it heat my flesh. I missed being able to walk down the street. I missed simple things, but in the end, those things were huge. I’d always heard people say that most simple things were often the most missed…I hated that it was true.

  I grabbed my shorts and slipped them on before grabbing everything I needed for the shower. We’d begun to make our own soaps and other necessities. It was easier than we had thought, but Maggie, one of the few I’d saved, was an amazing survival fanatic, and knew which herbs and natural greenery worked for what. The soap she made was priceless now.

  Supplies were limited, and we tried to make what we could. It took a good deal of time to collect what we really needed to survive. I mean, how hard was it to grab a handful of flowers from the meadow, compared to walking through a dark store with no idea what was lying in wait to mess with you?

  Shampoo was harder for her to make, and considering my hair went to the middle of my back, and seriously needed conditioner, I did make those hard runs to obtain it. Most of the girls had chopped their hair off, but I had my own reasons for keeping mine long. Eventually, I would have to cut it, but not today.

  I showered and changed into clean black cargo pants, and a Misfits tank top. I braided my hair and pinned it into a tight bun. I scanned my reflection in the mirror and grunted. I looked tired, and the black circles beneath my eyes were only getting darker with each passing day.

  Dressed and ready for the day, I headed to the media room. Grayson was watching a monitor with Jimmy by his side. No one else was hanging out in there yet so it would hopefully give us a chance to catch up.

  “Ems, check this out,” Grayson smiled as he pointed to a map of the United States that had been spread out on the table. Red pins indicated locations we knew there was people still alive in, as well as blue for supplies we’d left for survivors. “More red.”

  I looked to the marker and narrowed my eyes. “California?”

  “Yes, now can we go away from here?” he begged.

  “You want to just pack up and leave? Because it’s so safe out there, Grayson,” I mumbled. For a preteen, he was a good kid. Often times I would risk it and hook him up with some comic books and other items. His entire room was filled with stuff I’d brought back for him.

  “I would settle for a trip to town,” he whined.

  “No; I told you, not until you are fully trained.”

  “You and me trained with Dad for years, and now he’s gone! You don’t have time to train me anyway; you spend all of your time training the girls!”

  “That’s because they’re older than you are, Grayson! You’re also my responsibility to care for, and I can’t be out there watching after you when I’m hunting. I train the girls because together, we work well. I need you to be here so I know you’re safe. It’s the only way this works.”

  “I hate it here!” he shouted, and I cringed.

  “More comic books? What do you want, Grayson?” He seemed to be doing this more and more as of late.

  “I want you to look at me like I’m old enough to take care of myself! I was taught by Dad, too. I know what to do, Emma. I’m not stupid. I can learn to fight so that I can help you!”

  “You are! But smart people don’t want to go outside; they don’t ask to go outside because it’s not safe!”

  “You do!”

  “I do it because I have to. Dad taught us how, but he also said you needed more training and to be able to control your temper more before you’d be ready to go out. I’ll see what I can find for you today, and I’m planning on going to Spokane soon, so I’ll make sure to hit up the comic book shop.”

  “Promise?” he begrudgingly asked.

  “I promise, and, Grayson. Try not to be in such a hurry to go out there. What you see on those monitors is only half of what happens. I love you, brat.”

  With Grayson settled down, I headed to the main room. I’d redone a lot of the inside to make it more efficient. I walked to the wall of mask, as we referred to it and pulled down a modified sugar skull mask.

  “How many are coming out?” I asked to no one in particular. I didn’t have to, because they knew if they didn’t pitch in, we wouldn’t survive the winter.

  “Kaylah, Greta, and Jillian wanted to go. Who else?” Addy asked as she bounced into the room in a whirl of color. She had on yellow leggings, a blue shirt, and red skirt with hot pink Nike shoes. I smiled and wondered at her choice of clothes, but I wasn’t judging. Oh who am I kidding? Holy friggin’ rainbow!

  “I’m not going,” Bonnie said as she flattened herself out on the couch.

  “Well then what do you plan on doing?” I asked as I folded my arms over my chest.

  “I don’t feel up to anything,” she complained.

  She complained a lot. “Bonnie, you can either work here, or you can come with us. No one gets to sit around. No one.”

  She glared at me, and I had to remind myself that while mentally punching the spoiled brat in the face was allowed, hitting her in front of everyone? Not such a smart plan.

  “Who the hell died and left you in charge?” she snapped and I flinched.

  “My father,” I whispered with venom dripping from my lips. “You want to try your chances on the outside? Go for it.”

  Jillian and Bonnie were Towners as we called the people from our town that had joined our group here in the shelter. They had come here for help and we’d allowed it. We had a few others, but mostly we’d accepted the elderly or the young who had been abandoned or orphaned by the flu.

  Bonnie glared at me, but it didn’t faze me one little bit. Little did anymore, and it was getting worse. The only thing I’d felt in the last week was the unexpected response from the mystery man. That, however, was unsettling. I’d never felt my body respond to any male like it had to him, and I’d made a mental note to take a break from reading romance novels for a while.

  They were my guilty pleasure, which made me curious, but not enough to jump on the first male I saw. Not that my mystery man wasn’t jumping material, because he was. He was jumpable, but he also thought I was a gangly boy. I shook my head and turned my attention to the problem at hand. “You know the rules. You either help out, or get out, Bonnie. This place works because we all work on it; if I let you lounge around, others will try it, and I can’t allow that.”

  Yes, I was taking the high road and being nice. Did it mean I wasn’t mentally punching her in my head? Nope. I was beating the tar out of her. She’d been a spoiled brat all through high school, and had been Jillian’s shadow. I watched as she twirled her dark blonde hair in her fingers and considered what I’d just said. Seriously, she had to consider it?

  “I’m not doing laundry, or dishes,” she said as she stood up.

  “Then tell me, Bonnie, what are you going to do?”

  “No clue, but I refuse to do either of those chores.”

  “Maggie!” I shouted and waited for the fortyish woman to pop her head in.

  “Yes, Emma?” Maggie asked as her green eyes glowed with happiness; it told me she’d been playing with the children again.

  “Bonnie’s clothes are not to be washed. If she wants them washed, she is to do them herself. Also, she’s volunteered to help you in the kitchen tonight, and would love to help you do the dishes. If she protests, she’s to be given more chores.”

  Bonnie puffed out a groan but I ignored it and turned my attention to the group who was leaving the shelter with me. “Okay ladies, reminder time! Once we go through those doors there is to be no vocal cord usage. We use the hand signals for communications. We stick together unless I signal otherwise, and if you need a moment, you signal us and we will
wait for you. Any request on the logs?” I asked Addy who was in charge of taking requests from those who couldn’t go outside of the shelter.

  “Cathleen asked for a pregnancy test. Brent asked for more wires, and black tape. The duct tape is low, and Nana asked for more ointment for her rash.”

  “Crap, that sounds like a hospital trip,” I said and scrunched up my nose. I hated going to the hospital. It had yet to be cleared out of the corpses, and was a cesspool of disease. I could find all those items there, and we had antibiotics on the ever growing backlist. Why? Because I’d put off going there in hopes of clearing it. I’d also have to go in alone. There really wasn’t any reason to take a group deep into it and I knew the layout like the back on my hand since I’d done my clinical there.

  “I will do the hospital, and you guys can start the burnings,” I said as I watched them all gear up to match my outfit. I slipped on my Kevlar vest, gloves, and then the lighter hoodie I’d grabbed when I was in Spokane last. It made it easier for me to haul tail through tainted areas. I grabbed my pack and emptied it of my last haul, which wasn’t much. I checked to make sure the quiver was full and that the crossbow was clean and working, as well as adding a handgun and a few knives to the holsters I’d created just for them.

  By the time we were done, we looked like group of punk kids who had a serious Goth fetish. Each girl used the coroner’s cream, and no one complained about what they would be doing. It was life now, and if we didn’t clean the houses out, we would all eventually end up sick. We couldn’t bury them, because we couldn’t embalm them to prevent the disease from contaminating the ground.

  I pressed the code into the buttons of the panel and opened up the doors, and waited until everyone had passed through before I turned to Addy. I gave her the sign for I love you, and blinked three times.

  “Love you too, mute; in fact, I really like you mute!” she smiled as I raised my gloved middle finger.

  Outside, Greta had the camouflaged tarp off of the Humvee, and was folding it up already. When we went out in large groups, we normally used the Humvees we’d stolen after the military had left Newport. No reason to leave them there for someone else to steal. I waited until they were loaded up, and climbed on my bike. I gave them the hand signal for them to move out, and followed behind them.

  I waited until we hit the edge of town before moving in front of them and signaling which side of town they should hit first. It only made sense to clear the dead out of one side and work our way across it.

  I sat with my feet on the pavement as I watched them head in the opposite direction of the way I needed to go. I did a scan of the surrounding area and looked for a place to hide my bike. I would walk most of the way to the hospital, since I couldn’t chance being caught there. The place was full of those who had sought treatment for the flu, but it was a small hospital and the waiting and treatment rooms, beds and morgue were full of the dead.

  I ended up parking it in the bushes of one of the houses beside the highway, and glared at the sundial/thermometer in Mr. Linksys’s front yard that said it was a blistering ninety-five degrees today. I passed through the yard, with kid’s toys scattered through them and hated knowing that these houses still had those poor, innocent souls inside of them. Ones we would have to burn eventually. You would think that more people would have gotten out of town, but it was as if they’d gone into shock and just tried to ride it out at home.

  Newport hadn’t boasted of many residents. Sad part was, it was one of the largest cities in Pend Oreille County. It hadn’t even been considered a city until the late seventies.

  I reached down and picked up a discarded Newport Minor paper, and then let it drop to the ground. I scanned the dark corners of the buildings down South Washington Ave, and listened. Even though it was a small city, it had once been alive.

  Now, it was a ghost town. I brought up my crossbow and slipped an arrow from my pouch into my hand. The silence of the town was unnerving and set me on alert every time I came to it. It was silent today, and deafening. Bodies had been littered all over the streets for the first few months after the flu had had ravaged the town.

  Dad had said in the panic, the overwhelming numbers of people who’d come out from the smaller towns for help, Newport had been the rally point for those in need. It ended up being a mass grave site when the CDC had announced that there was no vaccination for what was killing millions of people.

  I wasn’t even sure we still had a CDC anymore. If we did, they’d gone to ground. I peeked around the corner and eyed the hospital, which looked exactly the same as it had before. The cars were in the same places, as well as the few items I’d placed to be able to tell if it had been disturbed. When I was sure it was safe, I started forward.

  At the doors, I paused and listened again. Silence. I hated silence. Once, I used to want it. I had a younger brother who was both annoying and loud, and I could remember thinking how blissful it would be if I could only have silence. Well folks, it isn’t golden…it sucks.

  I stepped through the broken glass doors, and tried to avoid the crunching of glass my boots made as I stepped on the unavoidable remains of the windows. It was darker inside, but luckily it was early enough that the sun was working with me. I passed the emergency room, and made my way toward the pharmacy.

  I stepped over the dead body that was leaned against the doorframe and pulled out the key I had from my clinical here. I’d been so close to getting my degree, and Mr. Kenan had agreed to hire me. He had even given me keys to the locked areas the day before the world had gone to hell. He was here, in his chair, with his body decomposing. He’d worked until he hadn’t been able to from the looks of it. I slid the key in, and turned it until the door to the drug room slid open.

  I added a few bottles of this and that which would be needed. I grabbed Phenergan for nausea, along with pain killers just in case we ever had need for them. I grabbed the pregnancy test as I sent a silent prayer to heaven that God wouldn’t be so cruel as to do that to Cathleen. I also grabbed a few bottles of prenatal vitamins just in case God wasn’t listening to me.

  I was almost out when I heard a strange noise, which sounded almost like an animal. It wouldn’t be unlike animals to come and feed off the dead; I’d seen it a lot actually. It was a danger I was also trying to prevent. Birds like crows and vultures couldn’t get in here, but bobcats, coyotes and foxes sure could. I peered out of the room and started toward the main doors, but as I moved closer a growl sounded from entirely too close to where I stood.

  There in the middle of the hospital was a huge red timbre wolf, his fangs huge and pristine as they dropped saliva. He hadn’t seen me yet, but I was willing to bet he’d smell me before he saw me. I stepped back, and winced as my foot crunched on something littered in the hall. Friggin’ hell! I turned and ran, but the moment I did, the beast let out a haunting howl, and gave chase.

  I was just passing the elevator and moving further into the darkening hospital and the patient rooms when an arm yanked me sideways, into one of the many rooms. The door slammed shut, and I stepped away from my savior. I could hear the beast outside, its nose blowing hot hair under the thin door.

  “That was stupid, kid.” It was the mystery man again.

  I eyed the window and noted that it was broken. My pack was secured to my back and not too full yet; if I was fast enough, I could get out of it before he even noticed I’d left. Instead, when he turned and looked me over, I was stunned. Last night he had been hot, but today? Today he was friggin’ gorgeous.

  I met and held his turquoise eyes. Eyes that made the air expel from my lungs as they searched my face intently. He was covered in shadows, but his eyes were in just the right amount of light that they looked positively stunning. They reminded me of gentle swaying of waves as they crashed against sandy beaches. They were the most beautiful swirls of tropical greens and blues that created the perfect
shade of turquoise. Those eyes of his sent butterflies into my lady parts, and I wasn’t sure why it felt like there was a party in my pants; I only knew there was one.

  “You really don’t talk, do you?” he asked as scraping and snarling sounded from the other side of the door. I tore my eyes from his to where the sound was getting worse. “Shame, I’m betting you could tell me a little about this town.”

  Yup, I could. I just wasn’t going to. I watched as he stepped more into the light, and wondered if I should be making an exit soon, but when the sun fully exposed his body, my mind went to hussy town, and I followed it.

  My brain turned over and I changed my mind from my earlier assessment. His eyes were the shade of a Caribbean ocean in full summer with the most beautiful mix of blue and greens, and his hair wasn’t as dark as I had first thought it to be. Instead, it was a dark blond color that reminded me of the wheat fields in Washington State, and it fell to just above his wide shoulders. He towered above me by a foot at least and looked to be in his late twenties or early thirties. He looked like he belonged to another age in time, as if he’d stepped out of a Viking movie and right into my path. This guy could give Thor a run for his money, and Thor was a serious hottie in my book.

  He wore a white T-shirt and loose-fitting jeans with black biker boots. He had guns strapped across his chest, and another tucked into his belt which was held together in the front with a silver skull.

  “Do you sign?” he asked as he turned back to face me, which put his features back in the shade, and gave my hussy-fried mind a break. I shook my head, but his lips tipped up in the corner, as if I’d just given something away.