Survival Rules Series (Book 3): Rules of Darkness

by Hunt, Jack

  “Deserves it?” Nate shot him a disgusted look.

  The girl was on her hands and knees looking up at him, surprised, maybe relieved? Although her clothes were ripped, her attire was modest. It wasn’t as if she was sending out the wrong message. She had these baby blue eyes, was around five foot four and had short cropped hair that formed a perfect frame for her heart-shaped face. As he crouched to help her, the other guy swung his bike around and took off. Nate bolted upright and considered firing another round to scare him but chose not to waste it. He cast his gaze down, and then offered her a hand. She took it and he pulled her up. She was as light as a feather. “You injured?” He could see a few scratches but besides that there was no noticeable sign she was hurt. Her white shirt was ripped exposing her bra, and her pants were torn at the knees revealing a scrape. She shook her head.

  “You live near here?”

  She motioned with a finger to US-98.

  “The cat got your tongue?” he asked when she didn’t say anything. Her response was a shake of the head. He gave a thin smile. “The name’s Nate.” When she didn’t reply with her name, he shrugged. She was still breathing heavily so he waited for her to catch her breath before he asked, “You know those guys?”

  She shook her head.

  “You don’t say much, do you?” He looked off down the road. “Look, I’ll walk you home, okay? Just in case those assholes decide to come back.” He motioned her forward. “Lead the way.”

  She was silent for a good ten minutes, glancing at him occasionally before she uttered her first word. “Mariah,” she said.

  “You can speak,” he replied. “You want to tell me what all that was about? Did you know them?”

  Her head dipped then nodded. “Guys I went to school with. The one that froze is Jacob Rawlings. He always wanted to date me but I didn’t want to know. The other two were his pals.”

  “Ah like that.”

  She nodded. As they crossed East 7th Street, two cops came into view riding bicycles. Nate snorted. “Isn’t that just the way. A little too late but…” He raised his hand to get their attention but Mariah pulled it down. “What?”

  “No. Please. I don’t want to deal with them.”

  “But look at you.”

  “Please.”

  The cops had seen his hand and they yelled over to him. “You okay?”

  He looked back and hesitated. “Yeah. Fine. It’s nothing.”

  Mariah pulled her top closed to cover up and ran a hand through her black hair. Either it was too dark for them to see or they were already on route to another call but they didn’t stick around. As they pedaled away, Nate looked at Mariah. “Look, it’s none of my business but if I’d gone through what you just had, I might be inclined to tell a cop. At least that way they could watch over your house, follow up with those bozos and possibly prevent it from happening again.”

  “I don’t want to,” she said.

  “Suit yourself. Now where is your home?”

  “Just off 6th and Columbia Avenue.”

  They crossed a yard and heard people yelling at each other inside a house. Nate imagined arguments between spouses would have been at an all-time high with the stress of trying to stay alive. How many couples had separated since the power went down? How many had seen the situation as their way out? Mariah was startled by a pit bull slamming into a chain-link fence and barking at them. Nate put his hand on her back and moved her over to the other side of him. Once they made it to Columbia Street and she pointed out which one was her house, he looked at it and noticed all the lights were out. It wasn’t uncommon. Not everyone had flashlights, batteries or even candles. Some chose to only use them at certain times of the night. It was a simple one-story, cream-paneled house with white shutters, a green metal roof and a garage. A short paved driveway divided her home from her neighbors.

  “Well here we are. You gonna be okay?”

  At first she nodded, thanked him for his help and started making her way up the driveway. Nate turned to leave when he heard her say, “Do you want to come in?”

  He pulled a face. “I really should be getting back. My friends. Well…”

  “It’s fine,” she said lifting a hand and turning towards the front door.

  Nate stared down the road. “Okay. Just for five minutes. Just to make sure everything is good inside,” he said, trying to come up with a reason for following this girl who was at least ten years younger than him. She unlocked the front door and beckoned him inside. A part of him wondered if this was some kind of trap. Perhaps she knew those guys. Maybe they were waiting for him in the house. One look at her convinced him otherwise. There was a timidness to her, a genuine fear.

  The home was even smaller on the inside than he thought. She shuffled past him and collected a flashlight left on a small table that held a telephone, a notepad and pen. She flashed it on with the beam facing up, illuminating her face. No, it wasn’t creepy or anything, Nate thought. She quickly turned it and pointed it into the living room. There she retrieved some matches and lit several candles around the house. That was when he got his first look at the place. A narrow corridor ran the full length of the home from the front to the rear kitchen. There was a living room off to his right, a bedroom to his left and one more bedroom in the rear, with a washroom close to the dining area. The décor was outdated. Early ’80s if he had to guess. Flowery wallpaper, and shag carpet. However, the place was immaculate. Everything was in its place. Not a spot of dust in sight.

  “Your parents not here?”

  She didn’t answer that but returned from the kitchen with two bottles of beer and handed one off. Five minutes? Maybe he could stretch it to ten.

  18

  The raid on the camp was set to occur in the early hours of the morning. That night from the concealment of the forest Tyler watched a large number of raiders leave on ATVs. Emotions were running high. The air was tense with anticipation. They heard engines roar, saw clusters of men and women taking rifles with them. Whatever commands they had been given, whatever town they were going to hit next, they were planning on striking in the dead of night. At first, they’d used distractions like lighting fires, or causing trouble on the opposite end of a town, to draw away law enforcement, but that only worked for a while before towns and cities caught on. According to Bennington, word on the street was that armed groups were hitting supply houses without anyone aware they had hit until it was over. They next morning police and city officials would walk into empty storehouse and find holes in the roof where they’d lifted back shingles, broken through the wood and extracted goods.

  It was fast, clever, and very effective. It was why their numbers were high and why they were probably having no problem recruiting people to help them. Who wouldn’t want to be part of a group that was sitting on the lion’s share? At first Corey doubted it. He thought they would have taken it by force but that meant putting their necks on the line and no one with a lick of sense was going to do that. These weren’t stupid people. Even as they watched the assembly of ATVs and trailers disappear into the night, and the glow of the red taillights blink out, they hadn’t left the camp unguarded. It was hard to tell how many were still there, patrolling the area or inside the camp, so the risk was high.

  Tyler sat in the camouflaged treehouse preparing to get some z’s while two of their group stayed vigilant for the next couple of hours. After, he would take a turn. Tyler glanced over at the bag that held a few cans of food and a Coleman stove. All he could think about was Allie and what she’d told him. Was this a trap, a means of luring out those who could be a thorn in the side of the raiders? After all the lies, it was hard to know. Women at the best of times were hard to figure out but she had one hell of a poker face. The sound of boots against wood made him glance towards the opening. Corey emerged. “You still awake?”

  “Nope. I can’t sleep,” Tyler replied, casting a glance his way.

  “Me neither.” Corey pulled himself up and took a seat beside him.
They gazed out over the tops of the trees towards the camp. Two fires flickered in the distance, and they saw the silhouettes of people walking from tent to tent. “Tomorrow. If all goes well, Dad was thinking about going south for a couple of days. He’s been chatting with Lou on the ham radio. Things have got really bad down there. Lou and Aunt Barb left a few days ago and made their way north to Lou’s old army buddy Ralph Brunson.”

  “Oh, that guy.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We were going to drop by his place but got sidetracked on a different route.” He frowned. “So Andy’s thinking of leaving his cabin? After all that stockpiling?”

  “Not for good. We’d return in five days. He was hoping you could watch over it.”

  Tyler screwed up his face. “He was, was he?” He said it in a way that came across as sarcastic as he knew what Andy was like and after all the crap he’d put them through, he was always wondering what his end game was. “More like he was looking for a reason to pull me away from Jude’s camp.”

  Corey groaned and ran a hand over his tired face. “That’s not it at all.”

  “No?” Tyler shot back. “Then what is it? Because from my standpoint he has made it very clear that he didn’t want me around. And what, now he needs someone to watch over his shit, I become valuable to him again? Please. He has another thing coming if he thinks I’m doing anything for him.”

  Silence stretched between them.

  “I know you’re angry.”

  “Angry. You don’t know the half of it.”

  “Of course I do. Have you forgotten? I was there through it all. You might have got the worst of it but I didn’t scrape through with a pat on the back. He was hard on me too. But you don’t see me whining about it.”

  “Let’s not go there, shall we. It never ends well, Corey.”

  He thought back to the last argument he had in Vegas with him. He was close to knocking him on his ass over the comments he made. “Look, just think it over, okay?”

  Tyler took the binoculars and looked out. All was peaceful down in the camp.

  “You know Nate was real torn up about Erika,” Corey said.

  “And?”

  “I just figured you might be.”

  “She’s a friend.”

  “That’s not what I heard.”

  “Then you heard wrong.”

  Again, there was a pause. Corey took his rifle and began the process of cleaning it. Tyler rolled over and tried to get some sleep but Corey wasn’t done.

  “You given much thought to who this Morning Star could be?”

  Tyler grunted. He heard him clearly but didn’t want to get into it.

  “If he’s behind this, you know what we’ll have to do,” Corey said.

  “If who’s behind it?”

  “You know who.”

  He knew he was referring to Jude.

  “Who’s to say that it’s him? For all we know this could be the work of Andy.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Corey asked.

  Tyler rolled, turning his way. “Think about it. He built Camp Olney with Jude and then walked away from it. All that time, all that money in preparation for what? Is it too much of a stretch to think that he might have started his own thing? His own camp?”

  “I would have known.”

  “Really? Like you would have known he wasn’t my father. Got it.”

  “Don’t be sarcastic.”

  “You said yourself that there were only a few people who could have known about the plan that was in place in Whitefish. Who else had access to that truck? Why did they cover their face? Simple. They knew you were out there. After all the crap that Andy has pulled, I wouldn’t be surprised if he tipped them off and then got the hell out of there.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “You don’t need to believe it, brother. You just need to read the writing on the wall. His connections with the mayor and the city allowed him to know. Sure, Ferris might have overheard and told the others but…”

  “No buts!” Corey stopped cleaning and glared at him. He knew it was getting to him. Despite Andy being a royal asshole, he was still his father and blood defended blood. He would have been lying to say that he hadn’t given thought to what that meant now that he knew Jude was his father. Andy and Jude were at odds, would the same happen to him and Corey?

  Allie thought she would slip in unnoticed; wow, was she wrong. She was on route to her dome when Maddox blindsided her, grabbing her by the arm and pulling her into a tent that was used for medical. “You want to tell me where you’ve been for the past two days?”

  She thought denial was her best bet.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I was here,” she said before trying to brush by him. He grabbed her arm. “Get off me.” He shoved her farther back into the tent.

  “You know what I think. I think you’ve been talking.”

  She smelled alcohol on his breath and tried to use that to her advantage.

  “Maddox, you’ve been drinking. Go sober up.”

  Again, she tried to move past him but he wouldn’t let her. He shoved her forcefully back against a table, so hard that it moved and a collection of medical utensils dropped to the ground. Maddox pressed himself up against her and brought a hand up to her throat. “You know what happens to those who speak,” he said squeezing her cheeks until the tip of her tongue stuck out. In an instant he brought up a knife and pressed the blade against it. “It would be a real shame to waste all of that,” he said before planting his mouth on hers and French kissing her. At first, she wriggled within his grasp but he was too strong. For a brief moment Allie considered kneeing him in the nuts but then it dawned on her what to do — what better way to gain his trust than to give in to him, give him the sense that she was enjoying it. As Maddox pulled away and looked as if he was about to walk out, Allie grabbed his wrist and pulled him back in. A look of surprise filled his face, then that smug look as if he thought she really was into him. Like a hungry animal, he pushed her against the wooden table again, pressing his lips against hers. She pressed back, aggressively raking her fingers down his back. His eyelids popped open and she saw a glint of excitement in his eyes. Putting the knife back into the sheath, he hoisted her up onto the table and continued to kiss her in an aggressive manner. He tore at her top and mauled her breasts with his hands before flipping her over and yanking down her pants. There was no resistance on her part. It was all playing out as expected. Although she hated every minute of him grinding up against her, she knew that too much was riding on this and with Maddox as an ally there was a chance she might be able to convince Jude to let her take supplies in and see her sister. Hours from now, Tyler would be waiting with Madison and they would leave all this behind.

  When Maddox was done, he hiked up his pants and leaned in for one more kiss. “Damn, I read you all wrong. I had a sneaky feeling you were into me but I didn’t expect that.”

  “Who wouldn’t?” Allie said in a believable way before covering herself up.

  “Who wouldn’t what?”

  God, this guy was dumb. She traced a finger down his chest. “Who wouldn’t be into you?”

  He gave her another one of those smug looks. “Yeah, you’re right.”

  The guy was full of himself. A total loser. Had there not been so much riding on this she would have cut him from balls to sternum.

  As he turned to leave her alone, he said, “Meet me here tomorrow morning.”

  “That’s actually going to be a problem.”

  He scowled looking back. “Why?”

  “Because I was hoping to do a run to the camp. You know, I haven’t seen my sister in a long time.”

  “And?”

  “Well I…” She sidled up to him and ran her fingers down his arms. “I thought you might be able to put in a word with your father.”

  He scoffed, bringing up a finger and wagging it in her face before looking around. “And why would I do that?” he asked. His reply
caught her off guard.

  “I…”

  “You thought this would change anything?” he said twirling his finger around to indicate what had just happened. When her chin dropped, he burst out laughing. “I’m fucking with you. Of course I can put in a word. Though I don’t know why you’d want to go there. The place is a shithole compared to here. But you know my old man. Always thinking ahead.” He nodded, eyeing her carefully. “I’ll speak to him tomorrow,” he said.

  “No, it has to be tonight.”

  He gave her a strained look.

  “Because. Well. I won’t get another chance for a while and…”

  “And you want to see Madison.”

  She pursed her lips and nodded.

  “I’d like to help. Really, I would but there is a little matter of where you’ve been. You see, that’s out of my hands. I’m not the only one that noticed you weren’t around. Since your old man pulled that stunt and tried to slice my father from ear to ear, let’s say that we’ve been keeping a close eye on you. My father knows you left the camp.”

  “Does it matter?” she asked.

  “With all that’s happening right now, damn right it matters.” Maddox began walking around keeping a close eye on her. “Now again, it can all go away if you have a good reason.”

  She knew he was toying with her. Allie was aware she was under the watchful eye of Jude’s men and that was why she’d gone to great lengths to avoid being detected when she left, however, leaving was one thing, returning another.

  “I needed to get out. I wanted space. You don’t get that though, do you? You get to go anywhere you please.” She was laying it on thick, hoping he would see her frustration and put two and two together. “This place has been suffocating me. All the rules. Do this. Do that. Go here. You can’t go there. Don’t you ever just want to blow off some steam? Escape it all? Live by your own rules?”