by Justin Bell
DARK
CLOUD
Darkness Rising Series
Book 5
By
Justin Bell
Mike Kraus
© 2018 Muonic Press Inc
www.muonic.com
www.JustinBellAuthor.com
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www.MikeKrausBooks.com
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No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, without the permission in writing from the author.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Author’s Notes
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Special Thanks
Special thanks to my awesome beta team, without whom this book wouldn’t be nearly as great. Thank you to Al, Claudia, Glenda, James, Julie, Karen, Kelly, Laurel, Lynnette, Mark, Marlys, Robin, Sarah, Scarlett & Shari!
Turning Point: Book 6 of the Darkness Rising Series
is now available!
Chapter One
The endless canvas of slate sky stretched over suburban Chicago, flat and bland, cloud cover encroaching on the late afternoon sun, its yellow ember shrouded in an opaque blanket of gray.
“Hold tight!” Phil shouted, cranking the wheel to the right so hard the muscles in his forearm hurt, tendons aching like rubber bands stretched to the verge of snapping. The black van surged right, hitting the abrupt curb of the sidewalk with a soft successive thumping, the vehicle threatening to jump from his tight control. Wrapping the fingers of his other hand around the wheel, he guided it to the left, trying to straighten the van back out, his eyes jumping to the rearview mirror.
“Are they still behind us?” yelled Rebecca, twisting to try to get a better view, but unable to see all that well from her place in the second row of seats.
“Yeah, they’re on us like flies on—”
“We’ve got kids in the car, Phillip!” Rhonda interrupted.
“Jeez Mom, I’m twelve for crying out loud!” barked Max. “Pretty sure I’ve heard it all before!”
“Can we stop bickering for a minute?” Phil called back, tensing as the van bumped back down off the sidewalk, hitting the pavement, its tires striking with a swift screech before he straightened the wheel and guided it back onto the two-lane road.
Faint machine gun fire rattled from behind them, chased by a rapid spattering of metal thumps echoing from the rear door of the van.
“Uh, any chance of getting this thing going any faster?” Angel called from the rear seat. “I’m the one sitting way back here!”
Phil shook his head and slammed on the accelerator, sending the panel van lunging forward barely in control of his clenched fingers. He could see the blunt nose of the second van just behind them, screaming down the road, matching each of his maneuvers step for step. As he angled right, the second vehicle followed, and as he charged over the sidewalk, the following van cut a bit closer.
“You got a hidden turn just up here on the right!” Tamar shouted. “I think you can make it without braking too much in advance!”
“Thank you!” Phil yelled, gently easing the wheel that way, looking out the windshield to verify what the boy had said. Tamar knew this area of town far better than any of the others did; if he said there was a hidden turn up ahead, Phil believed him. A gas station rushed at them from the right, just as abandoned as all of them were in this part of the world, and directly behind the row of six pumps, Phil thought he saw a narrow paved road curling around the other side. Without warning, he cut the wheel quick and hard, shooting the van at a sharp diagonal.
“Hold on!” he shouted, realizing he’d cut it a bit too tight. The van slammed into one of the gas pumps, the front right corner glancing off, shattering the headlight and sending glass and plastic splintering. Adjusting speed, he quickly compensated, angling more tightly to the right, tucking just inside one of the support columns for the gas station canopy. Charging over a sidewalk, the vehicle made one last lurching turn and ended up on the side road, the back end kicking around, leaving twin streaks of black skid marks on the light pavement.
Behind them, the second van slammed on the brakes, swinging its own rear end around, then punched the accelerator, screaming forward, already closing the distance. More gunfire roared, sounding like the whispered barks of a hyperactive puppy.
“Okay, whatever we’re doing here isn’t working,” Rebecca hissed, hearing the pock mark pops of bullets rebounding off the left side of the van. “Angel, pass me that battle rifle!”
Angel nodded, his mouth twisting into a smirk as he reached over and snapped up the SIG Sauer SG-716 that Rhonda had scored from one of the dead Ironclad operatives in the Lakeview Mall that seemed like years ago. It seemed only appropriate that she turn it back on Ironclad. With a light toss, he sent the rifle arcing through the tight air inside the van and Rebecca snagged it gracefully from its trajectory.
“Everyone buckled in?” she asked. Rebecca Fields, an ex-FBI SWAT operative, was far and away the most accomplished combatant in the vehicle, but was also occasionally the most prone to action even when action wasn’t necessarily warranted. Could she have cost them their makeshift home or the lives of an innocent family? It had only been a matter of hours since both of those revelations had come, and Fields was dealing with it in her own special way.
Mostly by trying to not deal with it at all.
Confirming that everyone inside the vehicle had their seat belts securely buckled, Rebecca cradled the 716 and hooked her fingers in the handle of the van door, wedging her feet tightly into the mud guard, holding herself in place.
“Here we go!” she unlatched the door and slid it open, sending it flying and crashing open, ratcheting on the rails. To his credit, Phil didn’t slow down and kept the van surging forward, the wind now flying in and battering Rebecca as they drove. She lunged right, burying her shoulder in the frame of the sliding door, trying to keep herself stable as the brisk air beat around her.
From this angle, she could barely see the dark van as it pursued them, screaming along the two-lane road, not showing any indication of slowing down. Fighting against the wind hitting her in the back, Fields lifted the 716, cradling the front of the weapon with her left hand, her eye squinting into the Tango 4 tactical scope.
“Keep us steady, Phil!” she screamed against the wind. Phil didn’t reply, he just hunkered down and locked his hands around the wheel, keeping the van on the straight and narrow. In his rearview mirror, he saw their pursuers drift left slightly, as if coming around and a shadowed figure extended from the passenger side window, holding a weapon of his own. He fired a swift three-round burst and Phil held his breath, waiting to hear that Rebecca had gotten hit. But she barely moved, only shifting slightly left, adjusting, and firing twice, her finger pumping the trigger with skillful precision. The first shot punched through the win
dshield just to the left of the shooter, but the second round found its mark, thumping into the soft meat of the man’s torso. He grunted and lurched backwards, his weapon flying from his hands and smashing to the pavement as the van continued chasing them. Like a rag doll, the former shooter slumped against the side of the van, caught in the window, then sunk back inside, disappearing from view.
Taking no satisfaction in the shot, Fields adjusted, bringing her crosshairs where she believed the driver would be sitting, then fired four quick successive shots, plunking several holes in the windshield, one right after another. The second van jumped left, then tried to compensate, and Fields adjusted her aim again, directing the barrel downwards. She fired another series of shots, sending sparks and puckered metal stitching along the front right corner of the van behind them, before finally drilling a 5.56 millimeter round into the rubber tread of the tire. It tore, shredded, and finally ripped free of the rim. The van’s driver labored to remain in control, but the vehicle made one final jostle left, the rear end coming around, and then pitched fully right, turning horizontal along the road and tumbling end-over-end, a vicious, shattering barrel-roll down the two-lane road.
Fields thought for a moment that she’d seen the passenger’s limp body pirouetting up into the air as the van rolled, but she couldn’t be sure.
“We’re clear!” she shouted. “Winnie, wanna slide the door my way?” Winnie nodded and reached left, grabbing the handle of the door, which had slid back close to her, and she pressed it toward Rebecca, who grabbed it and, with one harsh yank, pulled the side door fully closed with a metal-on-metal bang.
“You are a freaking super hero,” Max said, his eyes wide. “That was amazing!”
“Your mom would have made that happen in half the shots,” Fields replied, moving toward her seat and slumping down in it. Rhonda shook her head.
“You’re crazy, but I’m glad you’re on our side,” she said.
Fields’ face knotted a bit, turning hard.
“Hey, what’s the matter?” Max asked. “That was awesome. You pulled our fat out of the fire.”
Fields glanced over at him. “It was Ironclad. I wouldn’t have had to pull our fat out of the fire if I hadn’t put it there to begin with. I’m hoping I didn’t open a can of worms that we can’t close.”
Rhonda looked over at Rebecca, the two of them holding each other’s gaze for a handful of precious, silent seconds. Rhonda had been incensed when they returned to the mall to find it ablaze. She’d been devastated and furious. Losing Lakeview Mall and the Shimizu’s was minor in the grand scheme of things, when you looked at life changes over the past three months, but the mall, and that family, had represented something. A new beginning of sorts. A new kind of home. A precious reminder that safety and security were still possible in a world gone mad.
But it had all been taken away, and it had been taken away in a freakish, random act. By all accounts, a roaming band of marauders, a crazed group who had successfully broken down the Peoria barricade and gone on a rampage. If some of them had still been there, they might have prevented it.
Or they might have died alongside Daisuke, Jiro and Kaida.
Rhonda’s look softened, her eyes apologizing in a way that her voice could not yet do and Rebecca’s gaze eased off as well, with a gentle glance of appreciation toward the Fraser mother figure. A sense of acceptance that she hadn’t even realized she needed.
“How many more of those do you think we can expect?” Phil asked, glancing back at them from the rearview mirror.
Fields shrugged. “No idea. Hopefully not too many. We had to cut and run, it’s not like we’ve got a ton of ammunition in here.”
“Or food,” said Max.
“Right,” Rhonda said. “Or food.”
She looked around the van, the tight confines of the dark vehicle suddenly feeling even tighter. No food, no water, not much ammunition… not even bathrooms for crying out loud. The realization of just how isolated and alone they now were started to settle on Rhonda’s shoulders, a feeling of near hopelessness wrapping its cold, hard hands around her shoulders and squeezing hard.
The only thing they had to cling to was Philadelphia. A few addresses… distribution centers and a regional office. That was the only mission that remained. Find Lydia. Find her parents.
Halt Stage Three?
She wasn’t sure about that last part. Her first priority was to her family, and she tried not to think about what sinister plan the folks behind Consolidated Tool & Die and Ironclad were up to. All she knew is they had to get to Philly and had to find their daughter. The rest would have to work itself out. Rhonda hoped it would, but she couldn’t help but think back on everything that hadn’t exactly worked itself out so far and wondered if her hopeless optimism was closer to optimism or to hopelessness.
***
With one headlight shattered, the dim glow leading them down the paved surface was narrow and pale, a single white eye clearing their way. Phil drew in a breath, blinking a few times to clear the fog from his own eyes as night settled above them, a dark canvas littered with droplets of off-white. He looked over to the passenger seat, eyes settling on Clancy Greer who lay there, the back reclined slightly, his chest heaving in abrupt, uneven gasps. Greer’s head was turned away, his eyes looking out into the depths of darkness beside the van—depths of darkness that Phil wasn’t sure he could fathom.
What was Greer thinking, he wondered. Greer’s left arm lay by his side, or the top half of it, anyway, the stump below the elbow still wrapped with white gauze. Phil remembered what it had been like to meet Greer at first, a tall, broad, and proud man, even while recovering from a stab wound. He’d seemed larger than life, a one-man police department in small town Colorado, he’d shown both him and Max the ropes when it came to weapons use and care. They’d spent hours together during the downtime they’d had on that long trip from Colorado to St. Louis, and each hour they’d spent, he’d grown to like and respect the man more.
Phil was quite certain they wouldn’t be where they were now without Clancy Greer. Whether it was target practice or just moral support, Greer had been a rock in the midst of an unruly ocean. Now, before their very eyes, that rock had weakened. Eroded by rough waters, it now stood withered, narrow, and fragile.
“How’s he doing?” Rebecca asked, taking a step up next to the passenger seat, placing a pair of fingers at Greer’s neck.
“Still breathing,” Phil replied. “About the best we can hope for, I guess.”
The former FBI agent placed her ear on his chest. She was far from a trained medic but had undergone some rudimentary field medicine training as part of her SWAT indoctrination, and she was the best they had at the moment. Phil glanced over at Greer and suddenly wondered if they even had a trained physician whether it would be too late to help him.
Greer was stronger than that. He’d been a fighter. Still was. Even ravaged with pain and missing half his arm, he’d helped Angel barge back into the garage and bail them out. The man still had guts and drive, even as his body struggled to maintain.
“I’m still alive,” he whispered, a gravelly sound, mixed with rasping breath. “Sorry, you still gotta drag my busted butt around.”
Rebecca chuckled. “Eh, we need a good counterweight anyway. And hey, if people start shooting at us, we could use a decoy, too.”
“Funny girl,” he replied, not lifting his head. “Funny, funny girl.” His chest rose once more, high and deep, then settled back into a regular rhythm, an indicator that sleep had swallowed him.
“What do you think?” Phil whispered.
Rebecca shook her head. “Not good. But if we can get him to some kind of health care—decent health care—he’s still got a shot.”
“Lucky for us we’re not in the middle of the apocalypse, huh?”
Rebecca didn’t reply, she just pulled back and returned to the second row of seats.
“Is he okay?” Winnie asked from the third row, leaning forward.
“What are our options?” asked Tamar, who was sitting next to Winnie in that third row.
“Tough to say,” Rebecca replied. “I don’t know this area, but what I do know is that every big city we’ve gone near, there’s some nasty stuff going on. Makes it hard to want to get off the beaten path, you know?”
Tamar leaned back in his seat and turned toward Winnie. “How long you known him?”
“Feels like forever,” Winnie whispered. “We met him the first day. The day of the incident. He helped us out quite a bit in that first week. Saved our lives. Him and…” her voice trailed off as she thought of Jeremiah, the young soldier who’d given his life for theirs, even after only knowing them a very short period of time. Thinking of him brought up a surprising well of emotions inside of her, emotions she wasn’t entirely comfortable sharing with Tamar.
“You guys have been through some stuff, huh?” Tamar continued.
Winnie nodded, her eyes vacant. After a moment she turned to him. “I’m sure you have, too. From what we heard, Chicago was a pretty bad scene.”
Tamar glanced away. “Yeah, you could say that.”
“How long did you live there?”
“Born and raised, girl. Never lived anywhere else.”
“You’re okay leaving?”
“Ain’t nothing left that’s anywhere close to the home I knew. Chicago was already long gone before I decided to vacate.”
“I get that,” Winnie replied. “Everywhere I ever knew is under a radioactive cloud right now. We’ll never go back there.”
“Where you from again?” Tamar asked. “I mean, besides white girl suburbia?”
