Thin Ice (Enter Darkness Book 4)

by K. M. Fawkes

  The dog turned away and jumped up onto the couch, resting his head on his paws and watching Brad as if to say, “Pace away, then. But you aren’t doing either of us any good.”

  In a sense, the dog was right. There was really no need to continue to agonize over the decision. Brad knew exactly what he was going to do. From a realistic standpoint, his decision didn’t make a damn bit of sense. More to the point, it would probably get him killed. But he didn’t have a choice. He was going to go back to the site of the cabin and see if he could find them.

  There was no date on the note that had been stuffed under the floorboard, but it was possible that Anna had taken some time to make her decision. Maybe he could catch up to her and the kids before they got there.

  Brad rubbed his chin, trying to calculate. He didn’t have any real starting point, so the calculations might not mean a damn thing, but he needed to make them. If they’d arrived the first week of November and stayed for a few weeks…maybe they really weren’t far away now.

  They’d be on foot as well, which would slow them down significantly. He would have the advantage of the truck, provided that he could keep enough fuel in the bugger. He didn’t want to risk going to the depot again and he’d only found a few fuel cans in the back when he had done his inventory. If he was careful, though, it might get him back.

  Maybe he could do it. Maybe he could save them once again. It would be worth a shot at least. Then he could lay all of this to rest. He would either find his family and protect them, or he would move on. This was his last-ditch effort.

  Brad headed toward the door and looked back at Remington. “No more pacing,” he reassured the dog with a smile. “I’m just going to get us organized.”

  Darkness was beginning to fall as he rearranged the truck bed. He wanted to be able to sleep in it while he was on the road and he figured that Anna and the kids would appreciate having a place to stretch out as well once, God willing, he found them again. He stacked his supplies on the left-hand side of the truck and looked critically at the big empty space. There was enough room for a few people, but it wouldn’t exactly be very comfortable.

  Brad glanced over his shoulder at the ranch-style house across the street. Then he walked up to the front door and pushed it open.

  Twenty minutes later, sweating despite the cold, Brad pushed a queen-sized mattress into the back of the truck and tossed a handful of blankets on top of it. Two people would be able to sleep back there at a time now.

  If it hadn’t been nearly dark, he would have liked to explore the houses of Island Falls more thoroughly. The house where he had found the mattress had yielded some interesting things. He had added a box of canned goods to his stash from their pantry in addition to the bedding he’d found. Their first-aid kit had been fully stocked, too, which had proven very useful. Maybe all of the houses were like that. He sighed in regret and went to draw some water from the stream that ran behind the house.

  He was much too tired to heat enough to have a real bath, but he managed to wash off the grime and blood that his escape had left behind. He changed into the clean clothes he had found in one of the soldier’s packs and left his other clothes on Anna’s bathroom floor. He didn’t want the memories associated with them to follow him back to the cabin.

  Once he was dry and dressed and the dog had gone out one final time, he walked into Sammy’s bedroom and bedded down for the night. It was a tight fit, but the bed was bigger than Anna’s. Remington jumped up and curled into a ball beside him, dropping off to sleep almost immediately.

  Brad was tired, but he stared at the ceiling for a long time anyway, trying to wind down. It was hard when he felt so pressured to get on the road, but he knew that he needed this. Time was of the essence, but so was sleep, and as much as he begrudged it, he knew that he couldn’t do without it. His reasoning skills would be slower if he was tired and so would his reflexes. Chances were good that he would need both very soon.

  He wrapped up in a blanket and closed his eyes. Shutting off his brain was much harder. He could be seeing all of them again within a few days. Then they could regroup; they could figure things out.

  They could make plans to start over again somewhere else.

  Chapter 3

  Brad stretched and yawned as he stepped onto the front porch of Anna’s house and looked toward the rising sun. It spilled over the trees and made long black shadows on the snow that lay thick on the ground. He blinked at the brightness of it.

  The majority of the white blanket had fallen overnight and it wasn’t exactly ideal for traveling. The truck was heavy and the tires had chains, but he would have to go more slowly than he had wanted. Still, it could have been worse. He could have been walking.

  Remington walked up behind him and then bounded out into the snow excitedly. Brad grinned as he watched the golden dog nearly disappeared in a snowbank and come up shaking the snow out of his coat and snorting it out of his nose. He laced his boots more tightly, adjusted his pack, and followed the dog down the steps. It was time to go.

  He had expected some resistance, but Remy came when Brad called him and jumped into the floorboard of the front seat. Brad ruffled the dog’s cold fur with one hand and then cranked the truck. He was careful when he pushed the gas and he felt the thick snow begin to pack down under the tires as he headed back down the road.

  Everything was snow-covered and frozen, and Brad was very glad for the heat blowing out of the vents. He checked the gas gauge quickly. He was sitting at three quarters of a tank. That was a good sign. There would almost definitely be enough fuel to get him back to the cabin at this rate, especially if he could drive straight there without stopping too much.

  Brad smiled down at Remington, who’d curled up on the seat beside him, and felt himself relax. The idea of taking the easy way back to the cabin was looking very good to him.

  He took a smooth left at the next stop sign, and that was when he saw the tank.

  Feeling like his heart was going to stop, Brad slammed on the breaks and felt the truck skid slightly. Then he backed up just a bit. He knew that the doors were all locked, but he checked again anyway. Then he locked his gaze on the tank. If there was someone inside it, there was no way that they didn’t know that he was there. And if they chose to try to chase him down, they’d catch him in a heartbeat.

  Had the remains of the military been a single street over the whole time he had been at Anna’s last night? Surely not. Wouldn’t they have seen him?

  What the hell were they even doing here? Brad felt irrationally angry at them for sticking around when he had been so sure that they were gone. Then he noticed something. The roof hatch of the tank was slightly open and snow was steadily falling down into it.

  There was no way that there was anyone in that tank who was contentedly getting snowed on. The tank was empty.

  Brad glanced at the houses around him. They looked the same as the houses on Anna’s street. They were just as deserted, but somehow even more desolate-looking. For a moment he couldn’t figure out why, and then he noticed the shattered windows. There were holes in the wood of the houses around them. Someone had sprayed bullets in a wide arc that he could follow along with now that he knew that it was there.

  For God’s sake, why? From a purely practical standpoint, it was a massive waste of ammunition. Unless…Brad leaned forward, feeling the steering wheel pressing into his chest as he looked out through the windshield. Were those streaks of rusty red on the houses?

  He couldn’t be completely sure without getting out and walking up to the homes, but it looked like it to him. The marks were old, partly washed away by the rains that had come and the snow that had fallen, melted, and fallen again, but they were incriminating.

  Had it been a firing squad? Or had it been further undisciplined shooting of the kind that had cost a young girl her life when the soldiers first came to town? Brad inclined toward the latter. The shots weren’t in neat rows; they were in wild sprays. Either the shooters had bee
n panicking or they’d been completely inexperienced with the kickback of the guns they were using.

  His gaze moved back to the tank again. Had the soldiers left anything of value in it? He doubted it, considering that the lid had been left open. Then again, wasn’t it worth a look? He didn’t have much in the way of defense, and a few guns would certainly be worthwhile to have.

  Brad opened his door, listening carefully for any sounds, peering around for any fresh tracks in the snow. Any sign of human habitation and he would be in motion before they knew what hit them.

  “Stay here, buddy,” he said to Remington, who looked more than happy to do as he had been ordered.

  As the dog curled into a tight ball on the seat, Brad closed the driver’s-side door and approached the tank. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up, but he didn’t see any real signs of danger. His tracks stood out in the snow and he felt reassured by the fact that they were the only ones. No one would have stayed in that tank all morning; apocalypse or no, people still had to pee.

  Gritting his teeth, Brad pulled himself up the rungs of the ladder on the side of the tank, then pulled a flashlight from his pocket and shone it down into the interior. There was no way that he was just going to go swinging down inside what had the possibility to become a trap in a moment’s notice. He was curious, not stupid.

  His numb fingers nearly lost their grip on the flashlight as he took in the scene in the tank. Arms, legs, torsos…in one case a head that was nowhere near the body that it belonged to. It seemed to look up at him even though the eyes had sunken back into the skull. Without knowing that he had moved, Brad found himself back on the ground. His tongue felt too thick in his mouth all of a sudden and he couldn’t hold back the retching noise that rose in his throat.

  All of the bodies had been wearing fatigues. Brad wasn’t sure how long it had taken, but the residents of Island Falls hadn’t allowed the men to rule over them for very long. It was entirely possible that the girl’s death had galvanized them.

  Whatever had been the cause, the soldiers in the tank hadn’t seen it coming. Only a grenade could have done that damage. Had a resident just opened the tank lid and dropped it in? Or had they been inside with the soldiers?

  He remembered Anna saying that one of the girl’s brothers had been recruited into the makeshift Army. Maybe he would have considered the sacrifice worth it to avenge her. Or maybe the soldiers had done more and more egregious things until the residents were more than willing to lose their lives to take the soldiers with them.

  He walked back to the truck and slid behind the wheel. He made sure that the door was locked and then rested his head on the wheel, closing his eyes and letting out his breath. Would there ever be a time when he didn’t run across a scene from a goddamn horror movie in his explorations?

  Sometimes he thought that would be the thing that finally pushed him over the edge. Now, as he sat there in the truck, trying to keep his muscles clenched so that he didn’t shake, he could feel it pressing in on him. How many bodies were under the snow here on this street alone? What would happen when spring came? How many bodies would turn up with the flowers and the plants?

  Brad swallowed hard. No. He didn’t want to think about it. He couldn’t think about it. Not with everything else pressing in on him.

  Remington’s nose pressed against his leg and he glanced down. The dog’s hazelnut brown eyes met his.

  Brad sighed and rested his hand on the dog’s head. “You’re right,” he said. “We need to go.”

  Wanting nothing more than to be away from Island Falls, Brad pressed the gas and drove down the road, gritting his teeth. He was terrified that he would feel a bump under the wheels as he went, but he got out of the neighborhood without it. He managed a sigh of relief and tried to settle back into the good mood he had been in when he set off.

  He didn’t manage to get anywhere near a good mood, though, because about fifteen miles outside of Island Falls, the truck lurched sickeningly.

  Remington’s head snapped up as Brad gripped the wheel more tightly and tried to steer against the lurch. He didn’t even get through his list of invented swear words before the vehicle had ground to a halt. He rested his head on the steering wheel for a long moment before he sighed and opened the door.

  White smoke was pouring out from under the hood and he opened it up to find a grizzly sight. Clearly, Jack, the mechanic back at the Major’s compound, hadn’t been able to maintain the vehicle properly. There was oil everywhere, mixed with coolant, and most catastrophic of all, a thrown rod.

  Even if the engine could be fixed, and Brad was pretty certain that it couldn’t, it wasn’t like he could run down to the nearest auto parts store. He resisted the urge to throw back his head and yell but it wasn’t easy. There were no two ways about it. He was walking again.

  Brad stomped around to the back of the truck and yanked the door open. The nice bed he had set up just hours before seemed to mock him. That was half an hour of his life that he would never get back. He jerked a big backpack toward him and repacked it carefully. He needed a tent and a sleeping bag, some food, and extra clothes if he was going to be walking.

  Once he had packed his backpack, he whistled for Remington and carefully wrapped the dog’s feet to protect him from frostbite. The dog sighed too, but he came along obediently. He was clearly even less thrilled to be walking than Brad was. The heat in the truck had spoiled him quickly.

  After a quick check of the map he had stuffed into his back pocket, Brad closed up the truck and set off. As they walked along down the road, he wondered what Sammy would think of Remington. He had a feeling that he would be pretty glad to see him.

  After all, every boy needed a dog. Sammy had been good to the horse that they’d had in the beginning, and he was also good at disconnecting his emotions when he had to hunt. Brad felt a surge of pride just thinking about the boy. He missed him so much.

  He missed Martha, too. He wished that he could have protected her more effectively. He also wished that things hadn’t been so tense between Anna and himself when he was trying to figure out what to do. He could have come up with a better plan than squatting like an idiot while Anna packed her bags.

  Anna. For a moment, her mental picture was as clear to him as a photograph. Her bright green eyes and the smile that always looked a little surprised, as if she couldn’t believe that she was actually amused. She was on her way back to him. She hadn’t liked being away.

  Well, he didn’t like it either. That didn’t mean that the kiss hadn’t probably been a mistake, though. The thought made him feel heavy for a moment, but it was about time he reflected on it.

  They’d both functioned better without tension of that type between them and he could see that clearly now. They were both damaged, each in their own way. Neither one of them knew how to navigate a relationship properly. Especially not with the stress of an entire apocalypse hanging over them.

  He was surprised that the realization didn’t leave him hollow now that he had finally faced it. He really had enjoyed being her friend. He’d enjoyed having her at his back. Maybe the tension that had led to the kiss had been another manifestation of their cabin fever.

  Brad sighed and turned down a small side road. The main roads would be faster, but who knew what he would run into out there? Staying off the road was the safest option available to him right now—not to mention that he didn’t think that he could take seeing another pile of bodies just now.

  The thing that troubled him the most about it was that he found it so easy to rationalize how the people had deserved death. The soldiers in that tank had murdered a little girl and forced children into military service. It wouldn’t have gotten them the death penalty in the world of a year ago, though. They would have served their time, been entered into the rehabilitation program, and paid their restitution.

  The soldiers at the retirement community had murdered a lot of people too, but they’d done it out of fear of what Major Walker would have
done to them. He wouldn’t have minded killing every single one of them if they didn’t obey him. What did that mean, when it came to morality? Were they really bad or were they desperate? Or were they both?

  And what the hell did it mean that he really didn’t care that he had killed them? What did it mean that he actually relished the memory of Walker’s shock as he clamped his hands to his throat and stumbled back, his blood arcing through his fingers. He never thought that Brad would have the balls to stand up to him.

  If Jamie had been allowed to live, Brad would have been more than happy to walk away. Walker was the one who hadn’t allowed that to happen. But did that mean that the man had deserved to die?

  His heart said yes. His head said that he was headed down a very dangerous road. It had never been his job to decide who lived and died.

  He had vowed not to lose his humanity at the start of all of this. Now he wasn’t even sure how many people he’d killed.

  Brad pushed his hands back through his hair and then rubbed them down his face. No matter how much he’d like to have an answer to the questions he continued tormenting himself with, this line of thought wasn’t doing him any good.

  Chapter 4

  Brad stopped and leaned, gasping, against a tree. Darkness had fallen several hours before. His feet and legs were almost completely numb and he seriously hoped that it was from exhaustion and not cold.

  He didn’t really see how it could be cold, though. He was sweating under his layers and his skin felt clammy. Remington leaned against his leg and nearly caused it to buckle. The tree bark scraped his hands as he grappled for balance.

  The dog looked up tiredly and Brad leaned down, resting a hand on his head. Remington’s tail swished gently, only visible by the spears of moonlight that filtered through the trees. Brad pulled his water bottle out of his inner jacket pocket and took several long drinks. Then he poured half of it into the small bowl he had fashioned for the dog and closed his eyes while Remy lapped the water up eagerly.