Constant Danger (Book 1): Fight The Darkness

by Westfield, Ryan

  Well, there wasn’t any point in just sitting here. No point in making everyone angry. Matt did, after all, need to think about himself and his own safety. He didn’t very much like the idea of being dragged off himself, perhaps beaten around the head with a tire iron, or whatever people did outside the ivory towers and green campus quads, which was of course the environment that Matt excelled in, felt comfortable in and, more importantly, understood how it all worked.

  The rest of the world, outside the campus, was, to Matt at least, hazy and murky. He had a vague idea that things were more or less how they should be, and that they’d remain that way for as long as necessary. He certainly didn’t have any idea of the fragility of civilization, or the delicate balancing act required to keep the whole system up and running.

  The horns were getting intense.

  In the driver’s side mirror, Matt could see a figure quickly approaching him. He couldn’t see the face in the harsh headlights, but the stance and pose and stride told him that it was someone angry. Very angry. And purposeful. At their side, they carried something long. A tire iron? A baseball bat?

  Matt didn’t want to find out.

  He jammed the clutch in with his left foot, using his hand to shift the truck into first. Or what he thought was first.

  Knowing the basic principles, he tried to get the truck started. He let out the clutch and pressed down on the gas.

  The truck didn’t even lurch forward. It just made a horrible grinding noise.

  And it stalled out

  Shit.

  The figure was getting closer.

  “Hey, you!”

  A man’s voice. Loud and angry. The tone was unmistakable.

  Shit.

  Something smashed into the rear of the truck. In the mirror, the figure was swinging the hard object again. Like a baseball bat. Matt caught a glimpse of it in a glaring headlight. Definitely a tire iron, swinging in a high arc up into the night.

  Matt hit the clutch. Turned the key. Turned it again, the engine thankfully roaring to life.

  Looking down at the shifter, Matt finally realized his error. He’d stuck it into second.

  He jammed it into first, repeated the whole process with the pedals, and the truck lurched forward.

  The figure disappeared quickly into the distance and the darkness.

  The sound of the horns quickly became swallowed up by the sound of the revving engine.

  Up ahead, it was wide open.

  Matt steered the truck right onto the highway. He could see lights up ahead, but they were quite a ways down. The traffic had miraculously cleared up.

  It was open road in front of him and Matt was determined to make good use of it.

  After almost half a day of intense frustration, he was finally feeling free. Finally feeling good.

  So what if he had left his student back there? So what if he was absconding with his truck? Matt was merely doing what he needed to do.

  Surely, when the dust all settled, things would work themselves out. Maybe he and James would meet for coffee, Matt handing over the keys, and have a good laugh over it all. And if not? If James couldn’t see the humor in the situation, or the necessity of what Matt was doing, well, then that was just his fault. Matt could hardly be blamed for it.

  The tachometer needle was rising fast, heading right into the red zone. The engine was whining.

  Matt knew he had to shift. And, somehow, he managed it. Sure, the truck lurched and a horrible noise churned out of the transmission, but it shifted.

  Maybe he’d be able to drive this thing after all. Maybe he’d be able to take it all the way down to Pennsylvania. How hard could it be?

  But just as Matt was getting James’s truck up to speed, he saw that he was rapidly closing in on the same taillights he’d been stuck behind for so long before. The traffic had moved and cleared up, only to come to a standstill again.

  The taillights were coming up faster than expected. Shit. He’d barely made it more than a mile.

  Matt slammed on the brakes just in time.

  He breathed a sigh of relief. Somehow, he’d left only about a foot between him and the car in front of him.

  Someone leaned out of the driver’s side window of the car in front of him. The pickup’s headlights illuminated a nasty-looking face. Classic Western Mass, in a sense. Deep lines. Male. About fifty years old. Weathered. Angry.

  “Hey, buddy! Why don’t you watch where you’re going! You almost crashed into me!” Much more an angry statement than a question.

  The car door opened. A huge, barrel-chested man stepped out, bringing his ugly, angry face with him.

  He pressed the auto-lock button. The door locks clicked into place.

  And then, just when he was least expecting it, something slammed into the rear of the truck. A tremendous impact. Matt’s head whipped forward and then back, slamming into the headrest.

  The pickup lurched forward, smashing into the vehicle in front of him. Bumpers crumpled. There was that horrible noise of expensive vehicle damage.

  Shit.

  “You’re paying for that, buddy!” screamed the man in front of him, who was looking in horror at the damage to his vehicle.

  “You again!” This time, it was the man behind him.

  Shit.

  In the mirror, he saw the figure again. The same one, with the same tire iron.

  Now Matt was sandwiched between two large and angry Western Mass men.

  He had to get out of this.

  But how?

  There were guardrails on the highway. Cars all around him now. Nowhere to go. No way out.

  Shit.

  Matt’s heart was starting to beat faster. He knew that danger was near. There was no way he could delude himself into thinking anything different. Not any longer. Not anymore.

  Sure, the doors were locked. But how long would that deter someone who was really angry? Something was going on. Something was wrong. Why wasn’t the radio working? And the cell phones? Matt had read stories of road rage incidents, where things had gotten out of hand in otherwise normal circumstances. People had died. They’d been beaten to a pulp, their skulls smashed in. Often, no one had even been found guilty. It was often the work of a mob. A large one. And those were when things were going okay. What was the occasion then? Just traffic. Regular old traffic, maybe bumper-to-bumper at its worst, and mobs formed and people died. What would happen now? Now, when the power was out. When things that should have been working weren’t working. When everyone was in the dark, communication-wise. When no one knew what the hell was going on.

  Something slammed into his truck. A tire iron.

  Matt glanced around, his eyes darting between the windows and the mirrors. He was trying to figure out what was happening. Trying to see some way out.

  He felt frantic. His hands were shaking slightly. His pulse was racing. He felt the way he’d felt when he’d presented his dissertation to his thesis advisory, only much more fearful, much more terrified.

  17

  Meg

  Meg had watched, completely horrified, as her father took the bullet.

  She’d screamed. Actually screamed. Kind of like a little girl. A high-pitched and whining scream. It would have been embarrassing in any other circumstance. But she wasn’t thinking about anything like that now.

  She was hardly even thinking at all. Just perceiving. Just trying to take it all in.

  Everything was happening fast.

  The men seemed just as surprised as Meg that a shot had been fired, even by one of their own.

  The man who’d fired the shot seemed frozen, as if he were a statue.

  One moment, Meg’s dad was on the ground. Injured. It seemed as if he couldn’t get up. As if he couldn’t possibly move.

  And then, the next moment, Meg’s dad had not only gotten up, but he’d also somehow tackled the man who’d been closest to him.

  It had all happened in a flash. Like something out of a movie.

  Meg’s
dad had been athletic in his younger years, but in the more recent ones, he had only retained a shadow of his once-athletic build. He had what some liked to call “old man strength.” The idea behind that was that some men actually became stronger as they aged, even without working out. It was based on the observation that sometimes cranky old men who didn’t seem as if they’d be particularly strong could, on occasion, walk over to a barbell and deadlift 500 pounds as if it were nothing.

  But even if her dad did indeed have “old man strength,” there wasn’t really anything to account for what had happened.

  Meg had barely even seen it happen. All she saw now was that somehow her dad, in a flash of rage and intensity, had tackled someone. She saw the man on the ground and her dad on top of him.

  The man grunted in pain.

  Her dad was growling like a wild animal.

  The struggle was already over. Her dad had wrestled the man’s gun away from him, and now he was pressing the muzzle hard into the man’s neck.

  “No one say a word,” growled her dad.

  Everyone was frozen. No one moved. No one spoke. Even Meg. They were all shocked.

  “One wrong move, and he gets a bullet in the neck.” Her dad’s voice really did sound animalistic. It sounded peaceful. Intense. But she could also hear the thread of pain through it. Intense pain. He was wounded bad. Really bad. She wondered if the others could hear it. Or was she only detecting it because she was his daughter, because she knew him so well?

  “What do you want?” came the voice. Weak. Scared. Threatened.

  “I want the gear. Load it back in the truck.”

  “Why should we?” Another voice? Or the same one? It sounded a little more confident. But not totally so.

  “That should be obvious,” growled her dad. “Your man dies if you don’t.”

  “What about you?”

  “What about me?” Her dad sounded as if he couldn’t have cared less.

  “You’re hit. It’s bad.”

  “What do I care? That’s my concern. Not yours.”

  “Playing the tough guy, eh? We’ve got your daughter, too. It’d be easy enough to shoot her.”

  “But I know you won’t.”

  “How’s that?”

  “You’ve already shot one man. You’re more worried about it than I am. You’re wondering what you’re going to say to the cops. You’re wondering how this is going to all play out. You’re not going to dare shoot someone else, much less a pretty young woman. I can see it in your eyes. The fear. I can sense it. I’ve dealt with men like you all my life. You’re nothing. You hear me? You’re nothing but cowards. And you know it. Just admit it to yourself and take the easy way out here.”

  Meg didn’t know what kind of strategy her dad was trying. It seemed as if he was trying to insult the men to get what he wanted.

  Maybe that wasn’t such a good idea.

  She hoped he knew what he was doing.

  Her dad was pushing the gun harder into the man’s neck. “Tell them what you want,” growled her dad, speaking directly to the man. “Tell them whether you want to die or not. Because you all may be worried about the cops. You may be worried about the legal ramifications. Sure, you know things are messed up right now, and that’s why you know this gear is important. Important enough to shoot me for, apparently. But you also think that things are coming back online. That it’d be crazy if they didn’t. And when they do, you’re going to pay the price for murder. But me? I’d be lying if I told you I think things are going to work out at all with civilization. In fact, I think things are going to hell in a handbasket, as they might say.”

  Meg found herself gulping reflexively. Was it out of fear? Was it because she knew her dad was right?

  What had he always told her all her life? That people were bad, and that they’d hurt her if it meant they could gain some advantage, however small. Well, it seemed as if he was right. These neighbors certainly didn’t act like any kind of neighbors she’d ever want. And they weren’t, or hadn’t been, bad people. They’d been normal. Family men even, some of them.

  “So what I’m saying,” her dad was growling. “Is that you think you’ve got something to lose, and I don’t. That gear is more valuable to me. And I’m not worried about legal prosecution.”

  “But your daughter. You’re forgetting your precious daughter.”

  “My precious daughter? What are you talking about?”

  Meg gulped again. How could she not? The conversation was directed at her. And she was painfully aware of two firearms trained on her as well.

  “That’s how this works,” said the man, sounding more confident with each word. “We’ve got guns pointed at your daughter. We can kill her. That should be obvious.”

  “Obvious enough,” grunted her dad, pushing his gun farther into the man’s neck. The man whimpered a little this time, his eyes flashing with terror as they moved from side to side.

  “Well, it doesn’t seem obvious to you. What should be obvious is that you care more about losing your daughter than I care about losing my friend here.”

  The friend in question whimpered a little more. “Please...” he muttered, his voice taking on a strangled quality from the gun pressed against his larynx.

  “You’re the one not getting it,” growled Meg’s father. “You’re not understanding even an ounce of what I’m telling you. This isn’t a bluff. This isn’t an act. I’m not going to pretend like you’re wrong. There’s no way in hell I’m even going to act like she isn’t my daughter and she isn’t the most important thing in the world to me. I’m not even capable of pretending like she’s not worth a hell of a lot more to me than your friend here is to you.” He spat the word ‘friend’ out like it was the nastiest of curses. “What you’re not understanding is that it’s your belief that’s going to keep you down. And mine that’s going to set me free.”

  Meg was biting her lip so hard that she tasted blood. What kind of strategy was this of her dad’s? It sure seemed like he knew what he was doing. He spoke with every ounce of confidence he had. However, she’d seen him like this before, or almost like this, and she’d seen it all seem like it was going to work, only to have it all come crashing down around them. What was that time, some distant memory, where they’d been at the horse tracks, and her dad had gotten himself involved in some sort of off-track betting scheme? Her mother had never let him hear the end of it, yet right up until the point where the money was quite clearly lost, it had actually seemed as if her dad had been going to pull it off.

  That was years ago. Decades, even.

  Had her dad gotten more overconfident with age, or had he gotten smarter?

  If she was going to be honest, Meg wasn’t even sure she understood her dad’s reasoning that he growled out so confidently. And, what was more, she wasn’t sure that the men understood him either. Whatever point her dad had been making, it was a pretty highfalutin one for Western Mass. These were regular guys. Not philosophers.

  And what was her dad playing at, anyway? Using language like that, making complicated arguments? There was something about the logic of it all that didn’t quite seem to hold together. It reminded her of some drunk in a bar, making a grand case to the bartender on why he really must be served another drink right then and there, on the house, or else the universe really was just pointless after all, or something to that effect.

  But, of course, that drunk usually didn’t have a gun pressed hard into the bartender’s neck.

  The men were silent. They were glancing at each other.

  They didn’t understand. They didn’t know what to do.

  Meg’s lip was painful. She kept biting it, for something to do. She was looking at the gun that was pointed at her. She knew very well that these might be some of her last moments.

  It was up to the men. They’d heard her dad. Now they had to make up their minds. And they could just as easily shoot her dead right now as do nothing and let them go.

  What would they choose?
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  The man who seemed to be calling the shots wore a grim expression. Meg found herself staring at him. He didn’t look over at her, refusing to meet her gaze. She saw that he was deep in thought, his eyes downcast, shifting occasionally from left to right. His jaw was moving, as if he were chewing something, but it seemed more likely that it was a nervous tic, rather than actually chewing food.

  Was this what she was going to be thinking about right before she died? Her last thoughts would be wondering whether or not he had taken a bite of something and was now chewing it?

  She couldn’t go out like this.

  She glanced at her father. Then she glanced away. She didn’t want to see him like this, about to die himself.

  She thought of her mother, and she thought of her mother’s last moments, dying in that hospital bed, suffering through the horrible pain, with nothing to look at but the gray sky outside or the sterile white hospital wall.

  Well, this would be a more interesting death.

  The man was moving. She was still watching him. He’d made up his mind, or he was about to. He’d stopped chewing. He was shifting his weight from one leg to another. His eyes were casting about, ready to look at someone.

  But who?

  What had he decided?

  18

  James

  His truck was nowhere in sight.

  Neither was the on-ramp.

  There was something funny about his vision. He looked out at the cold dark world as if he were looking through a tunnel. Maybe something had happened to his brain when he’d been hit? He vaguely remembered something about this from a health class long ago, but he couldn’t recall it.

  Had he suffered brain damage? What year was it? The answer came to him quickly, but how could he be sure that it was right? It seemed that if he had suffered brain damage, he’d never be able to judge himself effectively, essentially never knowing.

  Whatever. It didn’t matter right now. The important thing was to stay alive.

  James may have been from Florida, but he knew good and well that he’d actually die if he stayed out here long.