Stay Out of the Shadows: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller

by A. P. Madden

  “Good idea,” Morgan said quietly.

  Luke didn’t like having his back to Morgan, but he reminded himself that they needed each other to survive.

  Morgan fired a couple of times to distract the men, and Luke chose a large window on the building right across the street. He hurled the stone. It soared through the air and crashed through the window in an explosion of shattered glass and noise.

  Luke and Morgan took a quick look and saw both men looking at the window, trying to find the threat. Luke fired at the man on the right and Morgan took the left. They both fell before they could even try to return fire.

  The moment it was over, Luke took a few steps back from Morgan and kept his weapon ready. “Truce?”

  Morgan eyed him curiously. “Until we find our people.”

  Luke nodded, and then jerked his head towards the distant gunfire. “You first.”

  Morgan chuckled and stepped around the crumbling wall. “When we first met, I wondered why Caelan had this kid running around with him. I couldn’t figure it out. Now, I get it.”

  Luke wasn’t sure if Morgan was complimenting him, so he didn’t say anything. “I’m not a kid,” he said.

  “Sure you are. What are you, eighteen?”

  Luke hesitated. “Seventeen.”

  Morgan chuckled again and scanned the street ahead.

  They made their way through the wreckage and the streets, scanning bodies for familiar faces and keeping an eye out for threats. Only a few of the dead were people Luke knew, and his heart clenched when he saw them. He promised himself to come back for them when it was safe.

  Morgan’s expression tightened as he found several of his men among the dead.

  They neared a corner, and they hugged the building on their right as they got closer. The fighting was loud and close. They could hear shouting beneath the deafening gunfire, and Luke hoped his friends were okay. Caelan, Naomi, and everyone else.

  There was a groan from their left, and both of them spun towards it with weapons raised.

  Morgan lowered his gun. “He’s one of mine.”

  Luke stayed where he was for a moment, but the man was unarmed and clearly helpless, so he joined them.

  “Morgan,” the man gasped. His face was white with pain, but when Luke looked for injuries, he saw bandages around the man’s shoulder.

  “It’s okay,” Morgan said. “Did someone patch you up? Was it Palmer?”

  The man shook his head, but it looked like the movement was agony. “No. Palmer’s dead. It was someone else. A girl. One of Caelan’s.”

  Morgan frowned and glanced at Luke.

  “Naomi,” Luke said.

  “Why would she help one of mine?”

  A scream cut through the noise of the fight, and Luke started towards it. “We don’t have time for this. Are you coming or staying?”

  Morgan glanced at the man on the ground.

  “Go,” the man said. “I’ll be fine.”

  Morgan nodded and joined Luke at the corner. They could see half a dozen men in front of a small store. Luke glanced at Morgan, and from the look on his face, he knew these weren’t Morgan’s guys.

  “In we go,” Morgan said, almost cheerily, and he rushed forward, yelling a war cry.

  Luke cursed and followed him, firing as the men turned towards them and then ducking towards the shopfront. It was chaos outside, but by some miracle, he got inside, and he felt Morgan running in behind him.

  Morgan greeted his trapped men with a smile and a joke, but Luke didn’t stay to watch. He saw a familiar face.

  “Simone!”

  “The others were forced to retreat,” Simone said, all business as usual. “We got stuck here with Morgan’s men.”

  He finally got close enough to see the person on the ground beside her. Eric.

  “Is he...?”

  “No, but I can’t wake him up, and he’s badly hurt. We need to get him to Maria.”

  Luke ducked as gunfire rained through the broken windows. “Easier said than done.”

  “He tried to save someone,” she said, clutching Eric with one hand. The other was holding her weapon at the ready. “It turned out to be one of Morgan’s men. The bastard thanked him with a stab wound.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” Luke said, looking around for Morgan. “Speaking of Morgan... Where is he?”

  Simone frowned. “They were just here.”

  There was a crash from the side of the store and Luke cursed and ran towards it. A window had shattered and Morgan and his men were gone. The noise drew the men from the scientist group and they fired at the broken window. Luke ducked back and returned to Simone.

  As he passed another window, he saw him. Morgan was at the corner, leading his men to safety. He glanced back, and his smile widened when he saw Luke watching him. He lifted his hand in a mock salute, grinned at him, and then he was gone.

  Luke cursed.

  They were trapped. The store was surrounded, he could see them through the windows at the front and back of the small building. There was no way out. With Eric’s injury, they couldn’t outrun them, even if they could find a way past the men outside.

  “Drop your weapons and come out now!”

  Luke looked at Simone. “Get him home,” Luke told her. “Get him to the doctor.”

  “Wait, Luke-”

  “I’ll be fine. They don’t know how many of us are here. Take Eric and hide, and I’ll give myself up. Pretend like I was here alone. If we get lucky, they won’t find you.”

  Simone looked torn, but when she looked at Eric, her expression tightened. “Okay. We’ll come back for you. Caelan will bring everyone he can find to get you back. Just stay alive until we have time to regroup and come back for you.”

  Luke thought of the experiments, the mutants, and the people they kept capturing as subjects. “I don’t think that will be a problem. You can’t experiment on the dead.”

  She paled. “Thank you, Luke. We owe you everything. I won’t forget this.”

  Luke nodded and stood up before he could change his mind. “I’m coming out!” he shouted.

  He walked into the hallway, not letting himself look back at Eric and Simone. He placed the gun on the ground by the door. If they came looking for his weapon, they might not bother going any further into the building if they saw it lying there.

  “I’m unarmed! Don’t shoot!”

  Excited voices erupted from outside the building, and Luke took a deep breath. He reached out, opened the door and stepped outside.

  He just hoped he wasn’t making a huge mistake.

  ***

  Chapter 22 - As Good As Dead

  Luke slept for a while. Or he pretended to, at least. He hoped the guards outside his cell might start to speak freely if they thought he was asleep.

  The men outside had grabbed him and dragged him away. He glimpsed one of them ducking inside the building, but he returned a few seconds later, holding Luke’s gun up in the air like a trophy and whooping loudly. The others joined in, shouting and hollering and jeering. He was lifted into the air with ease, and he couldn’t understand how they were so strong. It seemed impossible.

  He didn’t fight much - he wanted them to keep moving away from the building. He couldn’t believe they didn’t search it. He expected them to give it a quick sweep, at the very least, but they didn’t. They just claimed their prize - him - and turned for home.

  At least Eric and Sam would be safe. He wondered how long they would stay in hiding before they started their journey back to the factory.

  Luke sighed and rolled over, pushing those thoughts away. He couldn’t help them now, regardless. He couldn’t do anything except sit in this cell and wait. He watched the ceiling lights overhead. Half of the bulbs were missing or broken, and patches of the room were in shadow and darkness. The working lights were weak and flickered almost constantly.

  Luke was powerless in here. The bars were thick and strong, and there were constantly guards standing outsid
e. He was disarmed - including the extra blade he had hidden in the leg of his jeans - and there was nothing within reach that he could use to strike the guards.

  He glanced up when he heard a small noise from the next cell. The only other prisoner was a girl, lying on a thin mattress a few feet away from him. She was a bit younger than Luke, probably fifteen or sixteen, and she looked terrified. Pale and distraught, with dark circles beneath her eyes. She was asleep when he first arrived. From her appearance, he guessed it was the first time she had slept in days.

  She saw him and gasped softly. He sat up, glancing at the guards, but they ignored him. Ignored both of them, actually.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, looking at the dark bruises on her wrists. It looked like she had been restrained to something, maybe handcuffed, and she tried to pull herself free.

  “You have to get out of here,” she said. “They’ll turn you into a monster. Or you’ll die. You need to get out.”

  “I can’t,” Luke said. He was obviously locked in his cell, just like she was, but he didn’t say that. She was clearly traumatised and confused, and she was trying to warn him.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “They took the others. They took them and they didn’t come back, but I heard the guards talking. I know what happened to them. I know what-”

  “Hey, hey, it’s okay,” he said softly. “I’m Luke.”

  She was quiet for so long that he thought she was finished speaking. Then, “Amy.”

  “Amy,” he said. “Okay. Listen, Amy, my friends are coming back for me,” Luke said. “We just need to hold on for a little longer.” He knew the guards might have overheard him, but he didn’t think it mattered. They would have already guessed his people would come back for him. It wasn’t a secret.

  She wanted to believe him, he could see it in her eyes, but she wasn’t sure. She didn’t know him. She didn’t know if she could trust him.

  Luke tried to think of something else to say to convince her, but before he could speak, the door at the end of the hallway burst open.

  Three men strode in. They went straight to her cell and unlocked it, pulling the door open and grabbing her. Amy yelled and kicked out and fought them, but they barely noticed. It was as if they couldn’t even feel her blows.

  Luke straightened up. “Hey, leave her alone!” He grabbed the bars in front of him. “Hey!”

  “Don’t bother,” the guard said to Luke. He had been standing in front of his cell with his arms crossed. He barely looked at Amy as she was dragged down the hall. “Don’t waste your breath. The girl isn’t worth it.”

  Luke glared at him. “You’re a monster.”

  The guard just shrugged and turned away.

  The other cells were empty, now that Amy was gone, but he tried not to look at them. Through the metal bars, he could see the dark stains on the floor. Spilled paint, he told himself. Or water damage. It’s an old building, it could be anything. It’s not blood.

  Luke didn’t look at the stains, but they were always in the corner of his eye, probing his mind and forcing him to imagine the people that died here. They had been locked in the same cells as he was, just like Amy was, and they didn’t survive. Would he? What was happening to her right now?

  “Boss wants two of us on the boy at all times.”

  Luke looked up at them. The guards glanced at him, so he rolled onto his side with his back to them. The men made small talk for several minutes, and Luke tried to make his breathing steady and slow. They didn’t say anything of interest for a long time, so long that Luke almost started to fall asleep.

  “How many of our people did those assholes take out?”

  Luke kept his breathing even.

  “Keep your voice down,” the other man hissed. It was the same guard who told him not to bother with Amy. “He might hear us.”

  “He’s asleep. Who cares, anyway? He’s not getting out of there. Warren will probably want to use him as a hostage against his group or another guinea pig for the lab. Either way, he’s as good as dead.”

  “That’s true.”

  Luke wondered if he was right. Simone said she would bring Caelan back to break him out, but would they arrive in time? For all Luke knew, Simone wouldn’t make it back, or she would be delayed if Eric’s condition worsened. It could take the two of them days to get back to Caelan.

  And when they did, what would Caelan do? Luke realised he was assuming that Caelan would come for him. He knew he would. He was sure of it. But a seed of doubt began to burrow into his confidence.

  Back when Luke and Caelan were captured by Naomi’s group, they discussed it. Luke had come back for Caelan, but he said he wouldn’t do the same for Luke. Luke didn’t believe him, but now... Now that it was real, he wasn’t sure. He had been so convinced that Caelan was trying to play it cool and deny the fact that he cared about Luke’s safety. They were friends, but he didn’t want to admit that he cared.

  Now, Luke wasn’t sure what to believe.

  Luke realised it didn’t matter. Either way, he was alone right now, and he couldn’t waste time waiting to see if Caelan showed. He needed to save himself. These people wouldn’t wait for long before making a decision. He needed to get out before they put him into one of their twisted experiments.

  “So, how many?” the guard prompted. “How many did we lose?”

  “Too many,” his friend sighed. “There are only five of us left. And Warren and Donna, obviously.”

  The guard let out a low whistle. “Shit, man.” There was silence for a moment, and then he said, “What about Jen?”

  The first guard didn’t say anything, and Luke heard a sharp intake of breath.

  “I’m so sorry, Mark.”

  Luke didn’t like the grief he could hear in their voices. It made his stomach twist into knots, but he knew it was going to get worse before it got better. He knew their names. That would stay with him long after he was forced to kill them to escape.

  Luke was almost surprised at how quickly he made the decision. He could escape, and he would have to kill them to do it. Their conversation had given him everything he needed.

  There were only seven of them left. He could take seven.

  They’re murderers, he told himself, trying to justify it. They experiment on people, torture them and kill them. The world would be safer without them in it.

  Luke put his guilt and nausea and remorse into a small box in the back of his mind, and he started to make a plan.

  ***

  Chapter 23 - Get Up

  It took a few hours until he was alone with just one guard. In that time, a few of the others passed by to shout at him through the metal bars, but none of them stayed for long. He picked up snippets of their conversations as they passed through. They all seemed to be under orders from someone called Warren, and none of them wanted to disobey him.

  Their behaviour was erratic and emotional and their faces were dominated by wide, unblinking eyes, pale skin and gaunt features. At one moment, they were laughing wildly, almost manically, and the next, they turned and drove punches and kicks and bites into each other.

  It didn’t take long for one of them to say something that confirmed Luke’s theory. They had been taking the injections from the mutants, too. It wasn’t just the innocent people they captured. They were taking it themselves.

  Mark was one of the few people who seemed less affected. It should have been comforting to Luke to know he was under the guard of someone less prone to violent outbursts, but it just meant that Mark was less impulsive.

  And for Luke’s plan to work, he needed Mark to be impulsive.

  Finally, hours later, they were alone together.

  Luke waited until Mark was facing away from him, and he reached down and began to untie his shoe. He moved slowly, with casual disinterest, just in case Mark looked up. It took a few minutes to pull the entire shoelace out, and then he hid it behind his back.

  “How does it feel to know we killed your
friends?” Luke said.

  Mark turned with narrowed eyes. For the first time, Luke saw the red-rimmed irises and huge pupils.

  Not as unaffected as I thought.

  “What did you say?”

  “Are you stupid? I said we killed your friends. Must be pretty shit to know you can’t protect your people.”

  Mark snarled at him and stepped closer to the bars. “Shut your mouth or I’ll shut it for you.”

  Luke smirked at him. “I killed a few of them myself,” he said. “Two men, and a woman.”

  His eyes widened further. “What woman?”

  Luke kept the smirk on his face, even though he hated himself for it. “I think she said her name before she finally stopped screaming. What was it?” It was all a lie, but it didn’t matter. He just needed Mark to think it was true.

  Behind his back, Luke wrapped the end of his shoelace around one of his hands. “Oh, yeah. Jen.”

  Mark’s pale face went white with pure rage. “Jen?”

  “Yeah. I thought you’d want to know since she kept screaming your name. She kept saying it, right up until I put a bullet in her.”

  Mark roared and lunged forward to grab Luke through the metal bars, but he was cut short just a few inches from Luke’s neck. He snarled again and pulled his arm back, fumbling with his keys until he found the one he was looking for.

  “I’m gonna kill you,” he spat. “Real slow.”

  Luke backed away from the door. Adrenaline coursed through his body, pushing back the hours of exhaustion and fear. His heartbeat thundered through his ears.

  Mark shoved the door open and charged. He was huge and fueled by rage and grief, and Luke knew he couldn’t win this by fighting fair. Mark threw a punch that would have knocked him out cold, but Luke ducked and stepped in and drove his knee between the man’s legs.

  He put all his strength behind it, but Mark barely reacted. Whatever made him strong and impulsive also reduced his pain levels, apparently. Still, no man could take a hit like that without doubling over - whether it was instinct or actual pain. Mark bent over and his arms moved down to protect himself, and Luke got behind him.