Edge of Collapse Series (Book 1): Edge of Collapse

by Stone, Kyla

  She still heard nothing else. No rumbling car engines. No sounds of neighbors.

  She was somewhere far from civilization. It only made sense. He would want her somewhere that no one could hear her scream.

  And no one ever had.

  The nearest town might be fifty miles away. It was the middle of winter. She couldn’t go out in a sweater and long johns and expect to last more than a few hours.

  She had to gather as many supplies as she could before she set out.

  Using her narrow strip of vision, she made her way gingerly through the kitchen and onto a wooden plank floor. She stumbled into a brown leather sofa, almost knocked over an end table covered in books, found a fireplace and a wood-burning stove, and finally reached the hallway.

  It was dark inside the first bedroom. The blinds over the windows were drawn and the curtains were closed, shielding her from the painful daylight.

  She closed her eyes, folded the lower lip of the blindfold, and slowly opened them. It only took a minute to adjust as she took everything in.

  Log cabin walls. Nubby gray carpet. A double bed with a blue and navy-striped comforter, nightstands on either side, a dresser along the far wall beside the double accordion doors of the closet.

  Everything clean and neat and orderly.

  She checked the nightstands first, hoping for a gun tucked in a drawer. No such luck. She headed for the closet.

  Her gut roiled in revulsion at the thought of wearing his clothes, but it lasted for only a moment. She wanted to live. The knowledge that she was going to steal his own things to escape held a certain satisfying appeal.

  Within minutes, she’d found a fresh T-shirt, two long-sleeved waffle-knit shirts, two hooded sweatshirts, a windbreaker jacket, and a heavy, hooded, insulated brown coat that reached her knees.

  She put it all on, dressing in layer after layer. The men’s clothes were large on her short, slight frame, but they would also fit over her distended stomach.

  The pants were harder. In one of the drawers, she found some long johns and cut off the excess length where her ankles ended.

  She put on a pair of men’s insulated winter hiking pants over them. They were too big for her legs and hips, but too snug to fit around the fullest part of her belly. She wasn’t sure what to do about that yet.

  She added several pairs of warm wool socks, then went back to the closet, knelt down, and rummaged around the stuff stored on a couple of shelves stacked on the floor. She needed a backpack to carry supplies.

  She didn’t find a pack, but she did uncover a heavy, down-lined sleeping bag rated for winter temperatures. She tossed it on the bed, along with two extra pairs of wool socks.

  There had to be a place he stored his winter gear. But wherever it was, it wasn’t here. Time to keep looking.

  She replaced the blindfold over her eyes, and cautiously and painstakingly searched the rest of the house. With every minute that passed, the watery glare lessened, and she could make out more details of her surroundings.

  She searched the bathroom and then headed back to the living room and kitchen. She opened the pantry. It was stocked with at least a month’s worth of food. Perfect.

  Her stomach rumbled. She grabbed a package of beef jerky, ripped it open with shaking fingers, and crammed a leathery piece into her mouth.

  She stuffed the bag in her coat pocket. Her fingers brushed something hard, smooth, and plastic. She pulled out a pair of men’s sunglasses.

  Relief washed through her. She put them on but kept the blindfold partially in place. Her vision cleared, the pain lessening.

  She kept moving.

  Across from the basement was another door, which opened to a mud room with a washer and dryer. Winter gear and outdoor supplies hung from every hook.

  Two pairs of boots and some tennis shoes were stacked neatly beneath the hook. A set of men’s skis against the wall beside a tall cabinet.

  She had to sit on the floor to pull on a pair of the boots. They were loose, but the several pairs of wool socks she wore helped. She tied the laces as tight as she possibly could. There was still room at the toes and heels, but they would have to do.

  Using the wall, she pulled herself back to her feet. Out of the corner of her eye, she glimpsed a small wooden porch outside the rectangular window inset in the back door.

  Recognition jolted through her. She’d stared at that back porch a hundred thousand times. But always from below.

  She was standing directly above her mattress and the barred window.

  She closed her eyes, opened them, forced away the dark sucking panic.

  She wasn’t stuck down there anymore. She wasn’t a trapped, helpless thing. She was free, and she had to do whatever she needed to in order to stay that way.

  The dog kept barking, loud and deep and booming.

  She dared to look out the back window. With the sunglasses and the partial blindfold, it was bearable. Slowly, the blurry images in all that whiteness shimmered into shapes and objects her brain recognized.

  A thick blanket of snow covered the yard. Past the yard, thick forest rimmed the small clearing on all sides as far as she could see. Trees and more trees, branches bare and blanketed in snow.

  It took a minute for the names to come back to her, but they did. Her lips formed each word: maple, hemlock, yellow birch. White ash. Beech.

  The most beautiful trees she’d ever seen.

  It didn’t matter how beautiful they were—like a postcard picture with their naked limbs blanketed in pristine snow, the vibrant green pines against all that white.

  She was stuck in the middle of nowhere.

  Twenty yards directly in front of her stood two sheds. The first was smaller with an opening cut out of the bottom. The second was larger with a padlock and chains wrapping the double doors.

  To the left stood a carport with stacks of firewood covered by a tarp beneath it.

  Her gaze returned to the large shed. Maybe there was something inside she could use—

  Movement in the snow ahead of her.

  Hannah froze.

  5

  Pike

  Day One

  Thirty-four-year-old Gavin Pike picked out flowers for his mother. White lilies, her favorite. He always brought her flowers and chocolate for their family’s Christmas Eve dinner at her home.

  It made her happy. And when she was happy, things went easier for him.

  He grabbed the bouquet from the refrigerated case at the florist’s shop without checking the price and got into line. The overwhelming scents of greenery, potpourri, and the sickly fragrance of everything floral filled his nostrils and almost made him choke.

  “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” played over the shop’s radio. The whole place was lit up with lights strung everywhere and Christmas trees in every corner.

  He looked forward to Christmas only because it meant a few days off in the middle of the week. Let the lemmings consume themselves with festooning their homes with garish decor and slaving over gifts and homecooked turkeys their whiny brats wouldn’t even appreciate.

  Once he made the requisite holiday visit to his mother and brother tonight, he’d have Christmas day, Thursday, Friday, and the entire weekend off to play. And to hunt.

  The lights flickered off. The song cut off abruptly right before the hideous chorus.

  The woman ahead of him clutched a vase of red and white roses. She turned and looked up at the florescent overhead lights with a frown. “What happened? It’s not even snowing out.”

  “Maybe a squirrel got in the transformer again,” the cashier said. “But the computers are down. Cash only until they come back online.”

  Pike sighed and shifted, adjusting the collar of his uniform shirt impatiently. He’d just finished his night shift as a correctional officer at the Berrien County Correctional Facility in Baroda, Michigan. He enjoyed working nights. Less oversight and B.S.

  He also served as a volunteer reserve officer with the Fall Creek Township police
department. Not because he enjoyed volunteering. The job entailed other perks.

  This morning, he was tired and grumpy and just wanted to get away from the fragrant stink already giving him a headache. He needed a cigarette.

  Several horns blared outside. Tires squealed.

  He glanced at the clock hanging on the wall behind the counter. It was battery-operated and still working. 12:22 p.m. Maybe he should just leave—

  Behind him, someone screamed.

  Pike whipped around and glanced through the picture glass windows of the florist’s shop to the busy street. His heart jolted in his chest.

  A massive blue suburban careened through the intersection just outside the shop. It was headed straight toward them. The suburban jolted over the curb as pedestrians scattered in its wake, shrieking and shouting.

  No time to think. Only react. He threw himself sideways, lunging for the refrigerated cases along the left wall. He stumbled over a decorative row of potted poinsettias, knocking over several and stepping on plants and flowers in his haste.

  The suburban slammed through the shop’s front window and brick façade exterior. Glass shattered. Fragments of mortar exploded. Splinters of stone, brick, glass, and pottery flew through the air like knives.

  Pike cowered, his hands shielding his head, his body half-shielded by the tall cases.

  The other shoppers darted deeper into the store, searching desperately for safety, but they were out of time. The woman with the red and white roses froze in the center of the store, her mouth opened in a frozen O of terror, still clutching that damn vase.

  The suburban plowed into the building, crushing anything in its path. It smashed through tables and stands and dozens of vases, pots, and terrariums, wreaths and bouquets, grinding roses, lilies, chrysanthemums, tulips, and sprays of greenery beneath its wheels.

  The huge grille mowed into the woman with the roses with a dull thud. The suburban crashed into the register counter and finally came to a stop against the rear brick wall. The entire front was crumpled like a pop can.

  A middle-aged Caucasian man in glasses and a plaid coat stumbled out of the driver’s side. He half-bent and retched, vomiting all over the dust, glass, and petal-strewn floor. “Oh no! Oh no, no, no!”

  “You killed that woman!” another woman shrieked. “Someone call the police!”

  “I couldn’t stop!” the driver wailed. “My car—it just stopped working! The anti-lock brakes. The engine. The power steering. I just—I lost control on the ice…”

  He glanced at the bloody body tangled beneath the wheels of his suburban and vomited again. He wiped at his mouth with a shaking hand. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry…”

  Pike rose cautiously to his feet. He brushed shards of glass and pottery and shredded flower petals from his uniform. He was unharmed. The adrenaline dump made his legs shaky. He needed a damn cigarette.

  He didn’t bother to check on the woman beneath the suburban. She was clearly dead. If others were hurt, it wasn’t his problem.

  He picked his way gingerly through the wreckage of the store. There was no door anymore. No window. Just a wide gaping hole spiked with jagged glass shards. Still holding the lilies, he stepped through the hole and out into the street.

  The traffic lights were dark. Dozens of cars were still stopped at the intersection, unmoving. Several had rolled onto the curb or crashed into light poles. There were dozens of fender-benders. Two blocks south, a serious pile-up of at least ten vehicles snarled the intersection.

  Along the median, leafless trees were wrapped in Christmas lights, their bulbs dead, the streetlight poles wound with pine, holly, and ribbons.

  The sidewalks weren’t crammed with holiday shoppers like the big cities, but there were still several dozen people out and about, hurrying to finish last-minute tasks before Christmas.

  “My phone won’t work!” a man shouted. “I can’t call 911!”

  “Mine either,” a shaken shopper said.

  “What’s happening?”

  “What’s going on?”

  “It’s just a power outage. A really bad one.”

  The fools started talking about power outages they’d experienced or heard of. The Polar Vortex of ’18. Snowmaggedon ’22, when a blizzard dumped four feet of powder and electricity was out for a week.

  They didn’t get it. They never did. They always looked for the simplest explanation and clung to it. That tendency allowed many an unseen, unsuspected evil to have its way in the shadows.

  He was still holding the bouquet of lilies in one hand. The petals were crushed and bruised from where he’d pressed them against his chest. With his free hand, he pulled his iPhone out of his pocket. It was as he expected: dead.

  Pike wasn’t stupid. The power grid had nothing to do with cars or phones. This was something different. Something more.

  It might be some solar flare or geomagnetic shift. Or maybe a cyberattack by a rogue country. Or the US government had finally turned on its own people.

  It didn’t matter. He didn’t care about any of it.

  He was thinking about his hunting cabin.

  Thinking about the nice set-up he’d rigged for the place. The new, top-of-the-line generator running the lights, the heat, the security system—all regulated by a self-contained computerized system.

  Including the camera that he accessed on his secret phone, so he could watch her anytime he wished. In the middle of a staff meeting. At dinner with his mother. Working the job.

  It always gave him a little thrill. A buzz better than a hit of crack cocaine.

  He pulled out the second phone, the secret one. It was just as dead as his iPhone.

  Maybe everything was fine. The generator still whirring away. The locks still in place. The only way to know for sure was to verify with his own eyes. He had no choice.

  Pike dropped the bouquet to the glass-littered street. He needed to get to the cabin.

  6

  Hannah

  Day One

  The snow moved.

  No, it was something white moving through the snow.

  Hannah sucked in her breath, her heart hammering against her sore ribs.

  All this time, she’d pictured that deep, savage bark belonging to a mangy German Shepherd, or giant slobbering Rottweiler, or even the demon-dog Cerberus himself. The reality wasn’t anything like she’d imagined.

  An enormous white dog strained at the chain linking his collar to a steel ring attached to the smaller shed—a doghouse, she realized. His fur was thick and shaggy. He was huge—at least up to her waist, with a massive head easily twice as large as her own. He might weigh one hundred and fifty pounds or more.

  He was beautiful. Scary as hell, but beautiful.

  The dog saw her in the window and lunged against his collar, barking fiercely. The dog’s domain was clearly marked by muddy tracks worn into the snow.

  She recognized the breed, though it took her brain a long time to conjure the correct title. A Great Pyrenees Mountain Dog.

  Against her better judgment, she opened the back door. Cold slammed into her like a physical force. Icy fingers slid down the back of her neck and stung her cheeks. She wrapped her scarf tighter around her neck and slipped the jacket’s furred hood over her head.

  The hairs on the back of her neck prickled like she was being watched.

  Blood rushed to her head and she swayed, dizzy. She held herself up with one hand pressed against the door. She had to remember to take it slow in her condition.

  Her condition. Her mind shied away from the truth. She didn’t want to think about it. She’d ignored it as much as she could the last seven or eight months.

  She could keep ignoring it for a while longer, at least.

  With her balance restored, she turned slowly, squinting, struggling to distinguish the shadows from the trees from the white snowbanks.

  White powder spilled from the branch of a pine tree and fell into the snow with a soft pfft. She flinched, wildly scanning the
yard and the trees for movement, for any signs of him.

  There was nothing. Just trees and snow. Her and the dog.

  Her eyes hurt. A deep aching in the back of her head. But if she squinted behind her sunglasses, she could see well enough. The day was heavily overcast, the sun hidden behind a bank of dark clouds swollen with the promise of an approaching snowstorm.

  The storm was coming. She needed to hurry.

  Instead of heading back inside for the skis and her new pack, she moved toward the dog. She knew better, knew she should get the hell out as fast as she could, the dog be damned.

  But she couldn’t help herself. She was drawn to him almost against her will.

  Her boots sank deep into the snow and her nostrils stung. The cold air burned raw in her throat with every breath. It was fresh and clean and smelled of pine and earth and things wild and alive and outside.

  She opened her mouth, closed it. Inhaled sharply, the brittle air stinging her throat. She hadn’t spoken aloud in so long. She didn’t speak to him. She had nothing to say to him.

  The first few years, she used to sing. Would sing for hours every day, memorizing the songs she’d written, creating tunes and rhythms and harmonies. She’d loved music. Majored in music education in college.

  She didn’t sing anymore. Hadn’t for a long, long time.

  The only sounds he ever wanted to hear from her were screams and whimpers of pain and acquiescence. He had no use for her voice. Maybe she’d started to believe the same thing.

  She took a step closer. Didn’t take her eyes off the dog.

  He stood, staring back at her. He didn’t bark. He didn’t growl. He just watched her.

  All this time, she’d thought of him as an enemy, his minion. A savage guard to make sure she remained trapped here for the rest of her miserable life. She’d despised this dog almost as much as she’d hated her captor.

  Maybe she had been wrong.

  She made her way hesitantly closer.