Escape The Dark (Book 3): Into The Ruins

by Fawkes, K. M.

  Into the Ruins

  Escape the Dark Book 3

  K. M. Fawkes

  Contents

  Into the Ruins

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Caught in the Crossfire

  Chapter 1

  K. M. Fawkes Mailing List

  Also by K. M. Fawkes

  Into the Ruins

  Copyright 2020 by K. M. Fawkes

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part by any means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the explicit written permission of the author.

  All characters depicted in this fictional work are consenting adults, of at least eighteen years of age. Any resemblance to persons living or deceased, particular businesses, events, or exact locations are entirely coincidental.

  Chapter 1

  July 18, 2026

  Adam had thought that putting the Santa Joaquina Country Club, the Birkins and the McTerrells, and everything that had happened on the island behind him would make him feel better. He had expected to feel more hopeful about his prospects as the island receded into the distance.

  He had been wrong.

  Things had started to go wrong almost from the outset of the voyage. As the sun had come up, he and Ella, the Birkins’ former housekeeper and now Adam’s companion on his escape from Santa Joaquina, had hoisted the sail of the small boat they had taken to find a neat rip right down its center.

  “Was it always like that?” Adam had asked, watching it flap in the breeze.

  “Definitely not.”

  “Do you think Rhett did it?” Rhett Birkin had definitely been hiding out in the boathouse, and it had occurred to Adam that he might have been doing more than just tracking them as they tried to make their escape.

  “Why would Rhett do that?” Ella asked.

  “Why would Rhett do any of the things he’s done?” Adam said. “I saw him kill a man. Nothing would surprise me now.”

  “That’s true.”

  “If he suspected we were going to take the boat—and it seems like he did—he might have acted impulsively to stop us from getting away.”

  “But he’d have been hurting himself, too,” Ella reasoned. “Because he cared about keeping the boat more than he cared about stopping us from leaving, didn’t he? And if the boat was damaged—”

  “They still could have used it for fishing.” Adam pointed to the two oars that were tied against the hull. “It wouldn’t have been hard to row it offshore manually and fish that way.”

  Ella nodded, understanding. “Getting back to the mainland will be a lot harder, though.”

  “Right. Exactly.”

  That had been hours ago. They had passed most of the day in silence, taking turns sitting at the front of the boat and peering out, looking for signs of the mainland. It felt optimistic to Adam to be looking for land already—they had just set out, after all—but he couldn’t seem to help it. It became even harder after the island disappeared into the distance behind them. There was nothing to orient them but the compass Ella had found, and even though he was fairly certain it was leading them in the right direction, it was frightening not having any visible guideposts to rely on.

  And the sun was going down now.

  They didn’t have anything to use for light. Back at the Santa Joaquina, they had been dependent on candles at night, and Ella, in her panic, hadn’t thought to bring any with her when she had packed the duffel bag for their escape. There were lights on the boat, of course, but they wouldn’t work. Thanks to the EMP that had been set off two weeks ago, nothing electric functioned anymore.

  At least that included the nanobots, Adam thought. It was hard to believe that just weeks ago he had been worried about contracting the deadly nanovirus. The bots had been invented as a means of curing all human illnesses, but they had done their job too well—they had perceived human aging as a threat and had begun attacking the hosts’ bodies. First, people who had received nanotech injections began to die in droves. Then the death toll had spread to include people who had never gotten the injection, indicating that the nanobots were communicable, like a virus.

  So many had died, and the world would never be the same. Adam had lost his mother and stepfather. He hadn’t been close with them—had been estranged from them, more or less—but he wouldn’t have wanted to see them go like that. He assumed everyone he had known on the mainland was dead as well.

  He’d made new friends—a new kind of family—on his friend Cody’s yacht, where they’d retreated to escape from the plague. But the stress of adapting to their new life—and of kicking a serious drug habit—had gotten to Cody, and things had turned violent. By the time Adam had washed up on Santa Joaquina Island, he had been the only survivor from the yacht.

  And then things on the island had turned violent, too.

  The EMP had killed off all electronic devices, which gave him every reason to believe that the nanobots were all dead. That plague couldn’t hurt anyone anymore. But in exchange, Earth had been returned to the Dark Ages.

  Was there no safe place left?

  Ella seemed sane so far, and Adam trusted her as much as he could trust anyone. But he had only known her for a few days, really. As much as he wanted to believe in her, he couldn’t allow himself to forget how little they knew of each other.

  Now here they sat, together in a tiny boat with no sail, rocking over placid waves. They might as well be the only two people left in the world.

  Once the sun was down, the compass would be useless.

  Adam was also worried about the weather. This boat wasn’t exactly robust, and if a storm came up, it would only take one big wave to capsize them. At best, they would become completely disoriented, turned around in the weather. They might well end up rowing back to the island they were trying to leave—or out to sea altogether.

  Ella sat in the front of the boat now, huddled in the wind, staring out at the horizon. Adam suspected she was doing the same thing he was—drinking in the sight of the world around them. Before long it would be gone, and they would be facing hours of darkness.

  It was terrifying.

  He went over and sat down next to her. “How are you holding up?”

  “How far do you think we’ve come?” she asked. “Since the island, I mean.”

  “Honestly? I have no idea. It’s got to have been at least a few miles, right?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “I don’t have any way of measuring.”

  “I thought you might at least have a sense of how to navigate at sea,” she said. “Since you lived on a yacht for all that time, I mean.”

  “I’m sorry. I wish I did.”

  She slumped a little. “It was probably a ridiculous expectation.”

  “Do you know how far it is from the island to the mainland?” he asked her.

  “It’s supposed to be twenty-five miles,” she said. “But that’s, you know, a direct trip following the shortest possible path. It doesn’t account for any veering around we might do.”

  “Right.”

  “Go
d, I would give anything for power right now,” Ella whispered. “Running lights, navigation…”

  “Anything?” he asked. “If we had power, that would mean the nanobots would still be a threat.”

  “We’re not infected.”

  “Right, but if we’re heading back to the mainland…”

  “Oh,” she said softly, realizing.

  “It wouldn’t even be an option to go there if we were still worrying about nanobots,” he went on. “We’d have to try to find another island out here and…and hope we could just live wild or something. And that nobody else would show up.”

  Ella was quiet for a moment. “I never thought they would do that,” she said. “The Birkins, I mean. I never thought they could be so hostile. So violent.”

  “You didn’t?” he asked, surprised to hear that. “You were always warning me to be wary of them. And didn’t you say you’d seen them turn violent with each other before?”

  “Yes,” she said. “And I was afraid of them. I’m not saying I wasn’t. I just…it was still shocking to see it.”

  “I’m more surprised by the McTerrells,” Adam admitted. “I sort of thought they were all right. I was even protecting Chase. When I found out he was an addict, I didn’t tell anybody. I was going to help him get clean, because I’ve been there myself and I know what it’s like. And then he completely threw me under the bus. Blamed me for stealing from Kathryn when he was the one who took her pills.”

  “That was really awful of him,” Ella agreed. “I wouldn’t have believed that if I hadn’t seen it myself. And the way all of them were so ready to believe each other, to back each other up! It was as if, for as much as their families hated each other, they were ready to let it go in an instant if the alternative was believing one of us was telling the truth.”

  “It’s like they thought we mattered less than they did,” Adam agreed. “Because we aren’t rich, or because we were never members of the country club?”

  “I thought you were rich,” Ella said. “You were a child star.”

  Adam laughed humorlessly. “That didn’t make me rich. It just gave me enough money to live on. Made it so I don’t really need to work now. Or…didn’t need to work, I guess. Nobody’s working anymore, are they?” It was a strange thought.

  “Are we drifting?” Ella asked. “It feels like the boat is moving sideways.”

  “Can you see the water?”

  “No. It’s too dark.”

  “Hang on.” Adam lowered his hand slowly into the water and tried to feel the direction of its pressure against his skin. “I think so. It feels like we’re moving to the right.”

  “Should we try to correct?” Ella asked. “Maybe row the other way?”

  Adam hesitated. “Honestly, I’d be afraid to try it,” he said. “If we overdo it, we could end up going way too far in the other direction.”

  “What if we go too far in this direction?”

  “We can try to navigate by the stars…” he looked up. “I don’t know much about astronomy. Do you?”

  “No.”

  “That sort of looks like an arrow, doesn’t it?”

  A long silence. “I don’t see an arrow,” Ella said. “I see something that looks like a guitar.”

  “I have no idea if that’s the same thing or not,” Adam said. “But if we each keep an eye on the landmarks we’ve spotted, if we try to stay aligned with them in the same position we’re in now…we should at least keep moving in the same direction, even if we drift to one side a bit. Right?”

  “I have no idea,” she said, a bit shakily. “I’d like to think you’re right…”

  He reached out for her hand in the darkness, fumbling a bit before finding it.

  “It’ll be okay,” he said quietly. “If we were trying to hit the island, I’d be more worried. But we’re aiming for the California coast. That’s massive. Even if we drift off a long way, we’re bound to run up against it eventually.”

  “What if we get turned around?” she said. “What if we start drifting out to sea?”

  “I don’t think we will,” he said. “As long as we follow the stars—”

  “But what if we do?” she insisted. “I’m starting to think this might have been a bad idea, Adam.”

  “What do you mean? What was a bad idea?”

  “Taking the boat. Leaving the island.”

  Adam couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Ella. They were killing each other back there. They were going to kill us. We’re only still alive because we took advantage of the window when they stopped focusing on us and started focusing on each other. But that wouldn’t have lasted. They would have turned their attention back to us, and what do you think would have happened then?”

  “I know we were right to run away from them,” she said. “I’m just not sure about all of this. The boat. Actually leaving the island.”

  “Where else could we have gone?” he asked.

  “We could have hidden,” she said. “We could have stayed on the island and waited out the fight. Run off into the woods, until…” She trailed off.

  “Until what?” he asked.

  “Until they were finished killing each other, I guess,” she said softly. “God. I know that’s horrible. I sound like a monster.”

  “You don’t sound like a monster.”

  “It’s just that we could have stayed at the country club,” she said. “The way that fight was going…even if they don’t all die, I bet most of them will. I could see Richard and Kathryn and Marsden and Olivia making it out alive, maybe, and they’re not the worst of the bunch. Well, Richard is, but there would only be one of him. And we were safe there, Adam.” She sounded like she was pleading with him to understand, to agree. “There was food, and there were candles, and the doors locked at night… If Rhett and Chase and Langley were gone, it would have been livable. Survivable.”

  “You don’t want to live there,” Adam said. “You don’t want to stay there with those people. Not after everything that’s happened, after everything that they’ve done to us.”

  “No,” Ella admitted. “I don’t, you’re right. God, that’s a fatalistic thought, isn’t it? Are things really that bad?”

  “No,” Adam said. “Things aren’t that bad.”

  “I don’t want to stay with them, but I don’t want to drown at sea either.”

  “We won’t.”

  “Or die of thirst or starve or—”

  “We’re not going to do any of that,” he said, cutting her off. “Your plan was a good one, Ella. We got away when we could, and that was the best thing we could possibly have done for ourselves. And now we’re going to get back to the mainland and we’re going to figure out a way to live there.”

  “Do you think we’ll be able to do it?” she asked. “Do you think there’s any life for us at all on the mainland? Or are we just walking into even more violence and horror?”

  That was a question Adam didn’t feel prepared to answer. He didn’t think she would like what he had to say.

  “Let’s have some dinner,” he said instead. “There’s nothing we can do for the boat in this darkness anyway, and we need to eat. We need to make sure we’re in good condition when we hit land.”

  She made a sound of assent. “We should sleep at some point, too.”

  “Agreed. But we should sleep in shifts,” he said. He didn’t know what he would do if they came upon another boat in the water—without running lights, they wouldn’t even be able to see each other. But he did know that he would want to have one of them awake if something happened.

  He moved to the front of the boat, still holding Ella’s hand, and pulled her down to sit beside him. “So. What’s for dinner?”

  Chapter 2

  Dinner turned out to be a plastic baggie filled with the deer jerky strips Chase McTerrell had made. Adam felt strange as he ate them. He had been the one to suggest making the deer meat into jerky, and he had been pleased when Chase had figured out the technique. But now C
hase McTerrell was dead. He’d been killed, shot by Rhett Birkin. Even though Chase had betrayed Adam, had blamed him for stealing from the Birkins, he hadn’t deserved what had happened to him.

  Adam didn’t think he’d ever be able to accept all the deaths of the last several weeks. In many cases, it felt as though he was alive because of the deaths of the people around him. He wouldn’t have made it off the yacht alive if Cody hadn’t died, he was fairly sure of that. And if Rhett hadn’t turned his gun away from Adam and toward Chase, Adam would have died right then.

  He was still alive, but at what cost?

  They nibbled at their pieces of jerky and said nothing. Adam listened as the waves lapped against the side of the boat. Did they sound louder on one side than the other? He couldn’t be sure. And that kind of thinking, he knew, had the potential to drive him crazy. It was going to be a long night surrounded by darkness. That kind of thing could mess with a guy’s head.

  “Everyone on the mainland is dead, aren’t they?” Ella asked.

  He had hoped she’d forgotten about the question she’d asked him, but apparently she’d just been biding her time. Now that they were settled and had their dinner in their hands, she was determined, it seemed, to talk about it.

  “I’m sure everyone isn’t dead,” Adam said, even though he wasn’t sure at all. He had seen the bonfires on the beaches, the enormous pyres where people had brought their dead to be burned. They had been able to see the flames from Cody’s yacht, and the size of the fires had horrified them all.

  It was the sight of those fires, in fact, that had pushed Cody over the edge into the madness that had eventually led to his death.

  Adam had no idea whether Ella had seen the fires. He suspected she probably hadn’t—you couldn’t see the mainland from the island, and she and the Birkins made the boat trip there well before the mass graves had been arranged, before the nanovirus had hit its peak. But they had had televisions at the Santa Joaquina. Had the fires been before or after the blasts that generated the EMP? Before, he thought. He was almost sure of it.