Fade to Grey (Book 2): Darkness Ascending

by Brian Stewart

  TELL ANDY HE’S THE HERO IN DANGER.

  She looked at me at the same time that I turned towards her, both of us shrugging in ignorance. A few seconds later, the scrolling banner reappeared.

  “Let’s turn it off and take it back with us. I think we’d just be wasting our time anyhow, given our immense technological abilities.”

  “OK. Go get a shower, you smell like diesel fuel.”

  I took her advice, and spent the next twenty minutes in the shower being pelted by water almost too hot to be comfortable. When I came out, my skin was both scrubbed and scalded red, but I felt clean. The clothes that I had packed for my vacation had been scattered out of the duffel bags, but I had managed to repack most of them when we cleaned the cabin. I went with a pair of black cargo pants and a light brown, long sleeved pullover that was stenciled with NORTH DAKOTA FORESTRY DEPARTMENT on the back. The matching logo was on the breast pocket. My gun belt completed the outfit.

  When I came out, Michelle was glaring out the back door.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  She turned at my question, and the simmering wrath that boiled from her eyes did more to answer than any words she could have said. I watched as she hissed through gritted teeth, trying to control whatever it was that triggered this reaction in her, before spinning and marching out the back door—drawing her Glock as she moved.

  “Michelle?” I questioned as I followed on her heels. She didn’t answer. Instead, her deliberately quick footsteps carried her to the back of the garden where we’d moved the bodies. There were two piles—one with Melissa, her child, and Garrett—the other with the invaders. I watched as she dumped an entire magazine of 40 caliber ammunition into the heap of men, reloaded, and cranked through another. When the smoke and thunder cleared, she knelt down, scouring the area for her spent brass. I said nothing, but knelt down to help her. When we stood a few minutes later, she walked over and took the ones I had collected. I watched silently as she counted the total, and then put half of them into her pocket. With her hand clenched around the remaining ten-odd casings, she stepped over to Melissa. Almost reverently, Michelle sprinkled the fired cartridges over the corpse’s body. “These are for you,” I heard her whisper.

  My gaze stayed focused on Michelle as my mind stumbled in confusion over what might have set her off. Was it Samantha’s laptop? Something else? I wasn’t sure until a moment later when Michelle turned to face me. “What drives a person to be so cruel?” she asked with a glance toward her mound of target practice. Before I could answer, she continued, “I know that in nature it’s ‘eat or be eaten.’ I understand for something to live, something else in the food chain has to die. But what makes humans—only humans—take malicious pleasure in the suffering they inflict upon others?”

  I wanted to interject that not every human was like those three, but the more vocal of the numerous voices in my head was screaming that right now, I should just listen and let her vent.

  Apparently she could read my mind. “I know,” she stated bluntly, “that not everybody is like those bastards.” She focused on me, “You’re not like them at all. For that simple fact I am extremely grateful to God.” She paused and pinched the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger, “I just don’t understand . . . is that the equation that governs this world? For every white knight that tries to champion the cause of good, is there a corresponding heartless fiend that rejoices in the spread of evil? Is that what our society has sunken to? Is that what we’re left with?”

  “I’d like to believe that there are still a lot of good people in the world,” I replied.

  “Are there? You and I have spent our careers dealing with slimeballs. Don’t you feel a little jaded?”

  “I’m not saying that our world was perfect before what ever happened . . . happened . . ., but you and I both know that if the good guys ever get tired of fighting, the bad guys will automatically win, just by default.”

  “Do you think I was wrong for shooting him?”

  “Which time? The other night, or now?”

  “Both.”

  My head shook rapidly, “No, I don’t blame you at all for turning that guy’s head into Swiss cheese the other night.”

  “And what about now?”

  “I think that if every bullet you fired just now helps to settle the score in your mind, then it was money well spent.” Her shoulders slumped for a moment at my words, and she turned her stare again towards Melissa. I reached down and took her hand, prompting her to look my way again. “What happened?”

  Her face turned full on towards mine; an expression of sadness and disgust framed her features.

  I waited.

  She squeezed my hand and pulled me a dozen steps away from the bodies until we were standing next to the now blazing burn pile. “Samantha and Garrett were really just a couple of kids. Yeah, I know—we’re only about five years older than they were. Still, in my mind they were just kids. Free-spirited, I guess. When we first got to the cabin, Garrett had this little silver flip camera that he was using to video Samantha running by the lake, flapping her arms like a giant goose trying to take off. They were laughing and just being carefree.” Michelle's lips set firm for a moment, “Tattoos and piercings aside, they were just a couple of regular people. I think they were in love.”

  Her hand gripped mine with a sudden burst of strength. If she was aware of it, her face gave no indication. I waited quietly, and then watched as her other hand slid into the pocket of her jacket. When it withdrew, she was holding a slim rectangular object.

  “I found this when we were cleaning the cabin. It’s Garrett’s. I thought maybe . . . since we can’t get into her computer . . . well, maybe there was some information on here that we could use. When you were in the shower, I started playing it back.” Michelle's grip eased a bit, but her green eyes darkened with anger. “They filmed it.” She spit out each word like they were venomous pumpkin seeds. “Those evil bastards filmed what they did to Melissa and Samantha.”

  I held out my hand immediately. “Give it to me.” Almost robotically, she placed it in my open palm. Before I changed my mind, I lobbed it directly into the coals. We held hands as the silver surface of the video camera began to smoke, then brown. In less than a minute, the plastic housing burst into a sputtering and spitting black smoke fire. For five minutes we watched it melt and distort as the flames ate away at the sin within. Finally, there was nothing left of it. On impulse, I let go of her hand and spun away, drawing my CZ and dropping to a crouch. Round after round hammered into the pile of corpses until my slide locked back. As I switched out magazines and holstered the pistol, Michelle edged up next to me. “Thank you,” she whispered. I was about to reply, but at that moment Max trotted over to the bullet-ridden stack of cadavers and lifted his leg, adding his own personal sendoff. Michelle's stone frown reversed course, and she said, “Amen to that, Max . . . amen to that.”

  We walked back to the cabin and whipped up a quick lunch. I went with peanut butter and jelly; she chose a tuna and mayonnaise sandwich decorated with an upper layer of pickled banana pepper rings. Both of our sandwiches used the squashed rye bread. A large can of chicken noodle soup was split between us. When we were finished, I started cooking a hefty pot of rice on the stove for later.

  “We need to start planning,” I said.

  “I know. Can we go back to the lake for a little bit first?”

  “Sure.”

  The walk down to the lake was punctuated with several throws of a thick willow branch for Max, and by the fourth retrieve, his massive jaws had shattered the two inch wide limb into splinters.

  “You know, we’re not gonna be able to take Max with us,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “You’ll see when I explain what I’m thinking.” I led her around the eastern edge of Uncle Andy’s lake until we reached the narrow waist section. “My uncle told me that years and years ago, he thinks that this was actually two separate large ponds, and
that one of the previous owners dug out part of the gap between them.” She said nothing in reply, and I kept walking all the way to the far point of the water. Another bench was set up at the water’s edge—this one made from broad slabs of rock cemented together and topped with a massive bench seat carved from a single piece of granite almost seven feet long. I still remembered the day, or rather days, that it took us to hoist, winch, wedge, and swear it into position. I was twelve years old at the time, and although most of the swearing came from my uncle and Walter, a few had slipped out from my own young lips when I had smashed my thumb in between one of the pulleys on a winch cable. I still have the scar. More important though was the knowledge that I didn’t cry.

  I slid up onto the cold rock surface of the bench and sat down. For years, my feet couldn’t touch the ground when I sat here. I didn’t have that problem now, and neither did Michelle’s long legs when she scooted beside me. The bench had no backrest, and you could sit either facing north towards the wooded hillside, or south across the low valley that held the lake and cabin. We chose south.

  “I’ve caught a lot of fish from that spot,” I mumbled in the general direction of the lake.

  Michelle’s hand slid around my arm, but she said nothing.

  “But you know, it’s kinda funny, or maybe ironic would be a better word . . .”

  Her eyes tilted toward mine. “What do you mean?”

  “I’m just thinking how our minds tend to focus on certain things.” Her eyebrows arched slightly with impatience. “What I mean,” I continued, “is that this bench should be fixed in my mind as a focal point of good times. Helping my uncle, helping ‘the men,’ so to speak . . . sweating, swearing, and bleeding . . . that sense of accomplishment and pride that something you helped to build will be here long after you’re gone. And then, add to that all the fish that I caught from here, including the biggest pike I’ve ever landed.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “What I’m saying is that this spot should be fixed in my mind as a place of peaceful memories and good times, but for years and years, it wasn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because of the tendency of my mind to focus on the bad things.”

  She pulled away slightly, but still gripped my hand. “Why . . . what happened?”

  “The summer after we built this, my uncle and I were in the middle of a weeklong back country camping trip halfway into Canada.” I waved a thumb toward the wood line behind my shoulder. “One night his pager went off, and we had to come back. It took us all night . . . I mean all night . . . to make it back to the cabin. I was so tired that I slept—literally slept—in the bouncing bed of his pickup truck all the way to the marina . . . remember the dirt road was a lot rougher in those days. Anyhow, he dropped me off at Walter’s. I spent the next three days there. When he got back, I only had a few days left of my summer vacation. I remember coming to this spot, both of us with a fishing pole in our hands, on the very last day of my trip. I could tell that he’d been distracted ever since his return, but you and I both know that getting him to talk when he doesn’t want to is an exercise in futility. Anyhow, it was late afternoon and we threw out our lines. Nothing was biting, the wind was absolutely still . . . our bobbers just sat there. I remember the sky was perfectly clear, not a cloud in sight, and my uncle nudged me on the arm. He apologized for missing some of my vacation. Then he got all quiet . . . not his normal quiet either . . . it was like . . . I don’t know—different somehow. I remember him setting down his fishing rod and putting his hand on my shoulder.

  “Eric,” he said, “there’s a lot of things in this world that are dangerous, but one of the worst of those is ignorance. As you grow, make sure to pay attention to the world around you. I’m not just talking about the woods and the mountains. I mean the entire world. Our country is the single greatest example of what a few determined people who crave freedom—and are willing to pay in blood for it—can do when they put their minds together. We’re not perfect by any means, and we’ve made a lot of enemies through the years, and those enemies are relentless and hungry.”

  Even at the young age of thirteen, I could tell that he was picking his words carefully.

  “In school, have you learned anything about the different wars our country has been involved in through the years?”

  I nodded.

  “You need to know that whether they make the newspaper or not, a lot of wars are happening every day. Soldiers are dying on both sides. It’s been that way all over the world for all of history. The only thing that changes is our technological advances that allow us to kill—or be killed—in greater numbers, and with greater speed and efficiency.” His calloused hand pointed southwest toward where the dirt road entered the clearing above the cabin. “About seventy-five miles that way is Minot Air Force Base. Among other things, it’s the home to the 91st Missile Wing. Do you know what a nuclear weapon is?”

  “I guess . . . kinda.”

  He gruffed in reply, and said, “Nuclear weapons are the largest and most devastating of the physical hardware in the United States military arsenal. They can destroy cities and kill millions of people in a split second. Over the years we’ve been phasing out our land based ICBM’s—that stands for ‘intercontinental ballistic missile,’ which is a fancy way of saying that it’s a big rocket with a nuclear bomb on the tip that can be launched at a target almost anywhere on the globe. Anyhow, like I said, for strategic reasons our military has been moving away from land based platforms to more mobile ones like submarines. Can you guess why?”

  “Because submarines are smaller?”

  “Yes and no. Yes because they’re smaller, and therefore harder for the enemy to hit, but the main reason is that they’re mobile. They move. And you can’t target something if you don’t know where it is. Does that make sense?”

  I nodded again.

  “However,” his hand pointed southwest, “Minot can’t move. It’s still operational, and still home to several hundred nuclear missiles. No matter what you’ve heard, or learned, about the fall of the Soviet Union, they are still the number one bad guy when it comes to our nuclear enemies. Which direction is Russia from here?” he asked.

  I thought for a moment, trying to picture a map in my head before pointing east.

  “Yep, they’re east. But—if you think three dimensionally—it’s actually a lot closer to Russia if you go north over the polar ice cap to get there. That’s why most of our land based missiles were located in the northern states like here and Montana.”

  Michelle interrupted my story and asked, “So, your uncle worked with nuclear weapons in the Air Force? Is that the classified stuff that he never talks about or admits to?”

  I hesitated for a second before shaking my head. “No, that’s not really what he did.”

  “Wait . . . what?” Her face puckered into a confused frown, “So you’re saying that he didn’t work with classified missile stuff?”

  “Not exactly . . . not really.”

  “Well what did he do?”

  I barked a short laugh and shook my head.

  “What’s so funny?” She asked.

  “I can’t answer your question without breaking a promise I made to my uncle . . . unless . . .” my words trailed off mischievously.

  Her full attention was now directed at me, and she bobbled her head to try and keep my eyes. “Unless what?”

  I laughed again, and Michelle’s face started to reflect my smile as she probed further, “Tell me.”

  “Well, I suppose now that the cat’s out of the bag and you know about the ‘flying Owens’ photograph, I can probably tell you this. My uncle made me promise that I’d never tell anyone what he did in the military . . .” I stopped again and teasingly waited.

  “UNLESS?” Michelle’s laughter amplified her voice, and I caught both it, and the resulting echo that reverberated across the lake.

  “Unless they were married to me,” I finished softly, waiting for he
r reaction to my answer.

  Her laughter stopped and her eyes widened momentarily. “Are you serious?”

  I nodded as I held up a finger. “But wait, there’s more. According to my uncle, before I’m even allowed to ask anybody to marry me, he has to tell them a certain story . . . a story that may change their mind about marrying me.”

  “What story?”

  “Are you saying that you want my uncle to tell you the story so that I can ask you to marry me?”

  Her grin widened as she turned it around, “Are you saying that you would ask me to marry you if I heard this story?”

  “In a heartbeat, if you still wanted to after hearing it.”

  “So let me get this right,” Michelle stood and walked towards the lake a few paces before pirouetting to face me. “In order for you to tell me what your uncle did in the military, I have to be married to you.”