White Flare: Post apocalyptic survival thriller (Sky Fall Book 2)

by Logan Keys

  She shook her head, and he understood the sentiment. He had barely made it over as it was, and he was expected to tow dead weight back to the raft that was…. the raft that was….

  Kentucky frantically searched where he’d swam from, but the raft was nowhere in sight.

  “Where—”

  A wave crashed over them. Pounds of water snapped the wood like matchsticks sending Kentucky and Sophie in different directions, sinking into the dark depths, the exact place he most feared he’d wind up during this escape.

  In the murky gloom, debris spun around him, ramming him, scraping along his side, catching his ankles and trying to take him down. He also knew bodies were floating nearby and panic gripped him.

  He fought with everything to get to the surface, his limbs jerky with fear, his anxiety at its peak.

  When his head broke the surface, he sucked in a giant breath of relief, but there was no orange brightness anywhere to be found. Sophie had gone under, and she’d not come back up again.

  Though Kentucky hated it with every fiber of his being, he dove back down into the nauseating liquid, reaching for her, hoping his fingers would find a live limb and not a dead one.

  It felt like forever before he sensed the barest of slither along his arm. Hair?

  His arm shot forward, snagging something before the inky depths could suck it down.

  A piece of clothing, heavy from the person inside of it, was in his grasp, and he tugged it back to the surface with him.

  As he swam for the surface, he cursed inwardly just knowing his luck. That he’d probably pulled a dead body back up with him.

  So, when Sophie sputtered and coughed up half of the gulf by his side when they topped, his relief was immense.

  But then she panicked blindly, having probably felt death so near. Struggling, she threw her hands and legs out at him. Almost dying does that to a person. “No!” she wailed, and Kentucky was beginning to see that must be her favorite word.

  Her body was reacting on instinct. After she bludgeoned him, she climbed up Kentucky like a tree, only, the tree was being forced down into the water so she could stay above.

  Arms and legs and knees were crashing into him as he tried to come back up. She was like a drowned river spider, only she was one large enough to bust his nose, sending a spray of blood into the alligator infested river.

  “Sophie!” he shouted when he broke the surface. “Sophie, stop!”

  The teen wouldn’t, and he finally had to manhandle her, grabbing her by the scruff of the neck like spitting cat, and patting her cheek hard enough to be called a slap, until her eyes focused on him. “Neither of us are going to live if you keep that up.”

  Sophie’s eyes focused and then they widened in fear.

  Kentucky was afraid to look behind him at what she saw. “Alligator?” he asked, and she shook her head, her mouth moving but without words coming out.

  Kentucky slowly turned, and he gaped at the giant metal object cutting a path through.

  A submarine. The top of it anyway. Unmanned most likely, that had been pushed along until it was there, in what was left of the area between the cities.

  Sliding, no doubt, its belly along the soggy floor of the swamps. Only now, the swamp was like an ocean.

  “Go go go!” Kentucky shoved her but then when she floundered, he remembered she couldn’t swim. “Gah!” he growled latching onto her and using one arm to swim.

  That wasn’t fast enough. The sub was nearly where they were, and it was moving at a good pace. It was going to slam into them. A giant, unyielding wall of metal.

  “Hold on to me!” he yelled, and Sophie put an arm too tightly around his throat.

  He began to swim as fast as he could.

  The storm brought a swell that shoved the submarine in their new path, and Kentucky had to swim in a different direction.

  Awful, metallic sounds and whines hunted them down, as the sub crashed into debris.

  They barely missed it by a few feet as is slid on by.

  Kentucky was catching his breath when he heard, “Here!”

  Ida and the raft had arrived where they were and were trying to hand them a paddle to grab hold of.

  Kentucky reached for it but came up short when he felt something snag his foot.

  The waves were already pushing the raft away.

  Something sharp bit at his ankle, and he waited until the raft was close enough before he shoved Sophie towards it.

  Another wave crashed, forcing her and the group away from him, but they had the teen and they helped her climb aboard.

  They paddled in his direction, but the weight around his foot pulled him under before he could so much as shout.

  Underwater, he reached down to find plastic wrapped tightly around one leg. He was anchored by it, the weight not giving at all. In fact, he felt himself being towed along by what seemed to be an old fishing net.

  Another wave had him yelling bubbles out as the lines sawed at his foot, cutting deep. Blood poured into the water from the cuts.

  From his nose, too.

  Kentucky struggled, imagining what would be drawn by his injuries.

  He fought and struggled and even pulled off his boot, but the net was now tightly wrapped and pulling tighter, some of the threads sliced into his skin.

  He glanced upwards, but the light seemed miles away now. He was sinking down and down.

  8

  Just outside of Fort Benning, Georgia

  “Speak.”

  “I’m not a dog,” Terrance snapped.

  Patty bit back whatever evil things hung onto her lips. Her mother would remind her, 'Is that how a woman of grace acts?'

  But Patty didn’t feel altogether graceful at the moment. She felt wide, and full, and pregnant. She felt despairing and tender. She felt thin-skinned, like the walls of her body were stretched for the life that hid inside. The world baby May would be born into awaited the innocent infant as hell awaits the condemned.

  “Tell me what you know,” she tried again.

  He nodded, wiping sweat off his lip.

  “We never went overseas. We weren’t going to be shipping off and I remember…. Staff Sergeant…er…your husband.”

  He searched around as if lost, and Patty provided, “Corwin?”

  “Yeah. He said it wasn’t right. None of it felt right. Lying to our families.”

  “Where were you?”

  “Fort Polk. Some big, super-secret operation. I’m remembering some but not all.” He gave her a half-smile, but she didn’t smile back. “Be patient with me; it’s foggy. They were making a giant underground bunker. I mean giant. It’s a city underneath there now. Remember that shutdown of the fort?”

  Patty nodded. “Yes, something about contaminated water supply.”

  “They closed it down a couple years ago, and then they tore up the ground. I remember that. We were part of the team meant to secure the area. But I flew us in and out for supplies from there to another place, but I can’t remember where just now.”

  Patty’s heart was beating so fast that her ears were ringing.

  “Sit down,” Gina said, tugging on her elbow.

  “What?”

  “Sit down. You look pale as a ghost.”

  Patty sat but she was on the very edge. “Did he die? How did he die?”

  “I…I don’t…” Terrance shook his head.

  “Did the helicopter crash?”

  “Yes, it did. That part was true. But then I can’t…I can’t remember anything else now.”

  Patty squeezed her knees hard enough to bruise. “So, you are saying you aren’t sure he’s even dead.”

  “No. I mean, I’m here. I’m alive. So maybe…”

  Maybe. That was all Patty needed. Maybe.

  She nodded. Only half a day ago, she’d contemplated leaving this man to die. Now, he just gave her the biggest gift she’d ever had. A chance at life. At her dream of a family.

  Terrance frowned, and Patty waved a hand when
he grunted. “Don’t strain yourself. Relax. The more you fight it the worse it might get. Easy.”

  “Yeah.” He smiled at her and she smiled back.

  “Let’s prep for the storm. Looks ugly.”

  And it was. The winds howled down on the house, and the thunder and lightning never stopped. It flashed white, blazing until Patty thought she’d go blind. She’d stopped carrying around the shotgun, and Terrance helped them put the rest of the bags around the door because the rain dropped in buckets not drops. And the earth was soggy and then flooding in under an hour.

  “What if it gets worse?” Gina asked, watching the small river form on the property.

  Patty shrugged. She couldn’t be upset about the water. She couldn’t find it in her heart to be afraid of the storm. Corwin might be alive. And he might be here and not in some distant country.

  It almost seemed as though nothing could upset her ever again if being reunited was a possibility.

  She would find that that was wrong soon enough.

  Sam sat close to his mother, his face pale, drawn. He’d had nightmares, terrible dreams, and was afraid of Terrance. He said he was the bad man.

  Patty wasn’t sure if this was normal or if it was after all he had seen that he’d started believing them to be real.

  Night came and none could sleep in the roar of the storm. The dogs, who she’d kept in her room until now, were howling and barking at every sound, keeping everyone on edge.

  Dark shadows moved in the windows, and Patty kept her gun close as she remembered the warning from before.

  Crash.

  “What was that!” Sam screeched, grabbing hold of his mother’s hand.

  “It’s probably just a window in the back room.” Patty climbed to her feet. “I’ll go check.”

  “I’ll go with you.” Terrance moved a lot more quickly than she did.

  Patty still didn’t fully trust him, but she figured he could have hurt them at any time during the day when he helped. Still, she decided to be more cautious from here forward. Baby May needed her to be.

  Together they walked the hallway towards the back of the house. It seemed overlong now, dark, and without power, they had to rely on candlelight which they only left on where they were nearby. That meant, the back of the house was pitch black unless the lightning struck. Which it did often enough to make her think she saw things that weren’t there.

  When she got to her guest room, she found a large rock in the middle of the bed with glass all around.

  Terrance touched the floor. “It’s wet.”

  “You think someone…”

  She didn’t get a chance to finish that sentence before Gina screamed.

  Terrance moved to run down the hallway, but Patty grabbed his shoulder. She closed her eyes a beat and then sighed through her nose. “I have guns. In here.”

  She turned pulled open the closet door. She put her hand up to the safe, and the lock clicked. She turned the wheel and opened the door.

  Terrance gaped at the collection.

  “Corwin was…prepared.”

  Terrance touched his head then reached for a rifle.

  Patty stopped him with her shotgun on his hand.

  “Promise me you won’t screw me over,” Patty said.

  He turned to glance at her over his shoulder. “I won’t.”

  She nodded and he grabbed a rifle and loaded it swiftly.

  Together they entered the hallway again and stalked towards the living room.

  It was two men and one of them was ultra-familiar.

  He grinned when he saw Patty but then his grin fell when he saw her stomach. “Hoped I’d run into you again.” He was the man she’d seen at the store. The one who’d been looting and threatened them.

  “Yeah. Not me.” She motioned for Gina to come over, but Gina shook her head no.

  Patty hadn’t noticed Sam was standing awfully close to the second man until then and the shadows had hidden his knife near the child’s throat.

  Patty swallowed and lifted her shotgun. “Throw down that knife.” She chambered a round. “Now.”

  The first man, the smiling one, shook his head. “You put down your shotgun, or he sticks the kid like a pig.”

  9

  Baton Rouge, Louisiana

  They took her to an apartment complex. Kai probably would have followed until they shot him again, but instead, he’d fallen behind. They’d been smart and had threatened to shoot her instead and that worked.

  Plus, Kai was injured and slower than usual.

  The words rang in her head like an unanswered phone. Kai is hurt. Kai is hurt. Kai. Is. Hurt.

  She strangely tried to recall a time when her brother had even been sick, let alone devastatingly injured. He’d broken an arm and had gotten a concussion during a Kenpo match. That had to be the last time and that was years before.

  It was the only time he’d been hurt so badly, and when Sierra got the call, she’d raced to the ER, her entire world sideways just thinking of Kai in pain. He hated to see her hurting, but a little-known fact to him, was that she hated to see him hurt even more.

  Every step was weighted down with the knowledge that she might lose her brother, so during the walk to the apartment complex, she’d never really considered anything else until Quinn grabbed her hand and whispered mournfully in her ear, “What are they going to do to us?”

  Sierra shook her head.

  Dread filled her guts as she thought about the possibilities. Luckily, her mind drew blank when she tried to imagine the worst as if it was protecting her.

  Or maybe she was just tired.

  The building they were in had burned before but now it was empty, the charred rooms varying from destroyed to only smoke damaged.

  They brought Quinn and her into one of the rooms that was still intact, and they’d obviously been ransacking the city for a time. The room was littered with electronics, food, and weapons.

  Sierra gazed at a pile of weapons in the corner. There were guns, baseball bats, and a sword. One of the men laughed and told her, “Don’t even think about it.”

  But that wasn’t why it caught her eye. It was a Katana, a well-made and expensive one by the look of it. Because of Kai, she knew a little about well-made fighting swords. This one, it was exceptional.

  The girl told the two men that dinner was ready. They sat Quinn and Sierra down on the couch and tied their hands and feet. Then tied them together. They all left the room and went into the other to eat whatever it was they’d stolen for dinner.

  Quinn sobbed quietly. “What are we going to do?” she asked Sierra again.

  Sierra hadn’t thought that far ahead. She was just happy that she could breathe. A small and selfish thing, but far more important than this situation at the moment. She was alive. That was a start.

  Now to get free…

  When they finished eating, the captors returned to the room where the two girls were held. The more evil seeming ringleader, untied Quinn and brought her to her feet.

  She screamed when he grabbed her by the hair and started marching her towards the back room. “What are you going to do to her!” Sierra shouted, and the other man shoved Sierra until she sat back down on the couch.

  As she landed, her legs snapped upward. Sierra kicked the closest one in the crotch before she used both fists tied together on the back of his head when he bent over.

  She had to hop, but she jumped to her feet as he stumbled and went down.

  The leader left Quinn and came over. He got into her face, placing a long skinny hand around her throat. “All right. You come with me, then, instead.”

  Sierra spat in his face, and he head-butted her so hard she saw stars.

  He drug her towards the middle of the room but she fought him every step of the way, throwing herself down so he had dead weight.

  He got her to her feet, by nearly ripping her arm from the socket, then he elbowed her in the gut when she used her nails to claw along his arm until blood ran.


  He’d knocked the wind out of her, and she was bent over, her eyes watering, her breath finally coming in a long wheeze.

  Sierra lifted her head and looked him right in the eye before she started to laugh. It was nerves, exhaustion, and partially a strange humor at the situation. Only because she knew something they didn’t.

  Her laughter had unnerved everyone in the room except for Quinn who gaped at her with tearful surprise.

  “What’s so funny?” the leader hissed, his face inches from hers.

  She shook her head. “You are so dead.”

  “Hey man, slow down. You’re still bleeding.”

  Kai knew Mathew was trying to be helpful, but it wasn’t like he had a choice. Die trying was the only option. The guy couldn’t possibly understand what it was like coming into a strange house, with a strange family, and having a little nymph latched onto your arm until you felt like if she accepted you, maybe, just maybe, you’d be a real member of this household this time.

  His adoptive parents had done and tried everything to make him feel loved, but no one was as real and raw as Sierra was with him from the day they first met. She saw him as blood-thicker-than-water and had proved it on more occasions than he could count.

  And what had he done?

  He’d taken the first ticket out of there to college and ignored her calls and playful texts for the most part. In truth, he’d been homesick. He’d acted bitter and selfish because he was going through some sort of coming-of-age “Who am I?” B.S. and poor Sierra was the first person to hurt when he was hurting. She was the easiest to lash out at, because, he knew with all his heart, Sparky would forgive him.

  He’d been her hero for longer than he could remember almost.

  He hadn’t deserved that title but there it was.

  Kai would find Sierra, and he’d make the bastards pay. Nothing else mattered now. He was seeing red. “If they hurt one hair on her head, I swear to God…”

  “Look,” Mathew said, pulling on his arm. “I know you want to find them. We both do. But let me at least patch you up first. You won’t save them if you bleed to death.”