Darker Days (As the Ash Fell Book 2)

by AJ Powers

It was still early, and with sleep being a precious commodity, Clay made every attempt to stay silent as he walked down the stairs. As he tiptoed through the living room, he saw four men and two women sleeping on anything that was softer than the hardwood floor, their weapons within arm’s reach. Due to material harvesting and location to the perimeter, many houses were deemed uninhabitable for the duration of the war. As a result, the houses deeper inside the once-elegant subdivision all got a bit cozier.

  As Clay pulled the front door open, it only took seconds for him to feel the effects of the arctic blast piercing through his tattered clothing, inducing a violent chatter from his teeth. A dusting of snow quickly piled up around his feet. The accumulation was minimal, but the statement from Mother Nature was all the same—winter was nigh, and it wasn’t even Halloween.

  It was a dreary day outside, the skies grayer and hazier than he could remember seeing in recent months. A little voice in Clay’s head tempted him with another day’s rest. After all, he was still sick. But after being out of commission for so long, he refused to allow another man to double his shift just because he didn’t want to be out in the snow. So, against his body’s protest, Clay continued his hike to the foxhole.

  Though much of the perimeter fence was well over eight feet tall and reinforced with wood and metal panels to obscure the enemy’s sight, Captain Kohler insisted that everyone move swiftly and tactically when traveling between posts. However, Clay, like most of the other soldiers, quickly viewed this rule as optional so long as Kohler wasn’t within eyeshot. The aches plaguing Clay’s body made it even more enticing to ignore that particular rule; Clay did, however, move with a bit more urgency as he passed by a few of the larger gaps in the fence.

  Fighting the wind was a simple task made difficult by fatigue and lightheadedness. What I would give for some cold medicine, he thought to himself. A wish he usually had at least once a year. Finally, about fifteen minutes after leaving the warmth of his bed, Clay had arrived at his “office” for the day. The barely-passable foxhole was a welcomed sight, if for no other reason than to shelter him from the wind.

  “Clay!” a voice shouted from inside the foxhole. “So, you are alive,” the man joked—it was Simpson.

  Clay sat down near the edge of the foxhole and warily lowered himself inside. “Tommy, good to see you again,” Clay grunted as he settled into the rock-hard dirt.

  “How ya feeling?” Simpson asked. “You look like crap.”

  “And I feel even worse,” Clay said as he adjusted himself in a feeble attempt to get comfortable, “but at least I am on this side of the dirt…” Clay looked around at the mud walls that encompassed him before adding, “Well, sort of.”

  Simpson laughed. “I hear that, buddy. Though, I’ve been so bored the past couple of days, I’m starting to wonder if the alternative really would be all that much worse.”

  Don’t joke about that, Clay thought to himself—Megan’s policy was rubbing off on him.

  “Anyway,” Simpson continued, “as you can see, there’s not much going on. Been almost no sign of anyone.”

  “Almost?” Clay asked.

  “A few days ago, a scout team found a smoldering fire about two klicks to the east, but there was nothing to suggest that it was anything more than a couple of travelers avoiding frostbite.”

  “Gotcha,” Clay said. “I’m really starting to think nobody’s gonna show.”

  Simpson nodded in agreement.

  Clay opened his backpack and pulled out a bit of food. “I still have no appetite, but I know my sister will kill me if I don’t at least eat something. You want the rest?” Clay asked as he held the food out.

  Simpson’s eyes went wide. Though they weren’t starving yet, food rationing was one of the first rules to be enforced. Apart from the few non-combatants that stayed behind to deal with things like food and laundry, there was no one else to prepare it, and as such, the town was going to have to survive mostly off of the stores that had already been set aside for winter. With some extra nourishment staring him in the face, Simpson enthusiastically snatched the food out of Clay’s hand. “Thanks, bud!” he said as he crammed an entire granola bar into his mouth.

  Clay nibbled on a few crackers as Simpson devoured the bulk of the meal. While the pair ate, Simpson relayed everything he had heard over the last week, most of which Dusty had already covered.

  Simpson licked every one of his fingers twice, then let out a sigh of contentment. “Never thought I would say this about pink salmon…but that was some good grub. Thanks again, Clay,” he said as he began to stuff his things into a bag. “I am going to go try and catch a few Zs. Martinez also came down with something, so I’m at the tail end of a double.”

  “Ouch. That sucks,” Clay replied.

  “You know it.”

  “All right, go get some rest, Tommy. See you back here around eight tonight?”

  “Unless I score myself a hot date before then, I’ll be here,” Simpson said as he pulled himself out of the ditch onto the topsoil. “Think Megan’s free tonight?” he replied with a chuckle.

  “Doubt it, but I heard Estelle is,” Clay fired back.

  “Bah!” Simpson waved off the comment. “I’d rather sleep in a cold ditch next to your ugly mug,” Simpson retorted with a laugh. “All right, stay warm,” he said as he stretched his back for a moment before walking off.

  Without wasting any time, Clay fished through his pack again to set up for his shift. His Griffin Armament suppressor was right at the top, along with two sub-sonic magazines. He didn’t want to waste the bullets or cause unnecessary wear and tear on the can during an all-out gunfight, but he also didn’t want to find himself in a situation to need muffled shots and have nothing nearby.

  After rummaging around for a few seconds, he pulled out his binoculars, a few bottles of water, a Sterno can, and a book of matches. Canned fuel was not a common discovery anymore, so he would only run it for a few minutes at a time every half hour or so, just to keep the edge off. And since the painful tingles were already creeping into his fingertips, it wouldn’t be long before he fired it up.

  Clay was reaching into his pack to get a notebook and pencil when he heard a loud cracking sound.

  Then he heard shouting.

  “Who was that?” one man yelled.

  “Where’d it come from?” another shouted.

  Clay sat up and peeked over the shallow ridge of dirt. He had done nearly a full three-sixty before he finally saw Simpson lying on the ground, motionless, surrounded by red snow. The shouting in the distance continued, but Clay could no longer make out what was being said. His mind was paralyzed. He tuned out the noises from around the world, leaving just the sound of his thumping heart and heavy breathing to fill the silence.

  Simpson’s arm moved—he was still alive.

  “MEDIC!” Clay shouted furiously.

  Moments later, the medic appeared from around one of the houses and headed straight toward Simpson. It was Megan. And why that surprised Clay, he was unsure. She was one of three medics on rotation, but was the only one considered experienced enough to be a field surgeon. Doctor Sowell, though was an incredible surgeon himself, was long past his battlefield expiration date, as was his assistant Jackie. That left Megan as the most senior medic in the field.

  As Clay watched Megan move toward Simpson, he was hopeful that she would be able to perform a miracle and save his life until he noticed that Simpson’s body was directly in front of one of the exposed sections of fence, which would put Megan at high risk of catching a bullet from the same shooter.

  Clay leapt out of the foxhole. “Stop!” he screamed at Megan as he frantically waved his hands. Megan reluctantly complied, just mere feet from exposing herself to the sniper’s lane of fire. Clay cautiously jogged the rest of the way over to Simpson, staying on the opposite side of the opening as Megan with Simpson splitting the difference.

  The sounds coming from Simpson as he struggled to breath were haunting. Clay looked
in horror as the steam rising from the devastating bullet wound in his chest dissipated into the cold, morning air—as if it was life itself fleeing the man’s body.

  “Clayton, I need to get to him right now or he is going to die!” Megan shouted, knowing full well his death was likely anyway.

  “And what happens when you get shot, too?” Clay shouted back. “Who’s going to save your life?”

  Megan clenched her jaw. “Well, we have to do something! We can’t just let him bleed out,” she said.

  By then, Clay noticed a couple of men circling around the houses on Megan’s side. He waved them over, and the pair knelt next to Megan.

  “I’m going to lay down some fire, you guys get him out of there, okay?” Clay said, panic flowing through his voice.

  Both men nodded and waited for Clay’s go.

  With precious seconds wasting away, Clay took a quick, deep breath before swinging out of cover, firing rapidly toward the tree line. When his rifle had spit out its last shell, he dove back to cover to reload. By the time he dropped the empty magazine from the rifle, the two men had successfully dragged Simpson out of the line of fire; Megan was already hard at work. However, her speed and body language did not give Clay a lot of confidence that there would be a happy ending for his new friend.

  Clay’s grief was disrupted with the ringing of a bell from the clock tower.

  “South-southeast!” he heard Dusty scream from above.

  With adrenaline tearing through his veins like an unstoppable virus, Clay grabbed a fresh magazine from his chest rig and slapped it home. Standing back up to his feet, he sprinted toward the main entrance where the first wave was headed. He jumped as he heard a single gunshot. Then another. And another. Before long it sounded like the grand finale on the Fourth of July.

  As soon as the decision was made to take a stand, Shelton, Kohler, and several others started planning in great detail how the town’s defenses would be setup, the responsibilities of each individual, and numerous ways to minimize loss. Yet, as the first shots of the war were exchanged, Liberty was already down a man, and everyone else seemed to be scrambling around, unsure of what to do. Even Clay, who had more experience in “battle” than most of the citizens in town, had forgotten his orders to stay at his post in the foxhole. Instinct trumped his training, and he found himself running toward the gate to join the effort keeping the crowd out.

  As Clay neared the entrance, he stopped at a section of fence with several small gaps between panels, allowing him to target the enemy while keeping himself relatively shielded. His stomach sank when he saw no less than fifty bodies running toward the town, and the random shots he heard off to the north told him this was not their only point of attack either.

  Resting on one knee, Clay looked through the gap in the wall with his ACOG scope. Lining up a solid shot proved to be difficult as his targets moved erratically and used any means of cover they could find. After setting his sights on a hefty-sized man, Clay squeezed the trigger a few times. A mixture of snow and dirt kicked up around his target, who went to the ground in a hurry. Unfortunately, the attacker got back up and dove behind a decorative cobblestone sign near the road where he proceeded to return fire. Clay backed away as a myriad of bullets pummeled the wall with deafening impacts.

  That looked like an AK-47, Clay thought to himself—a terrifying thought. There was little doubt that Arlo had numbers on his side, but the notion that Liberty had more sophisticated firepower gave Liberty an edge. Fighting off hordes of barbarians carrying SKSs, double barrel shotguns, and hunting rifles made everyone feel a little more confident about winning. But that theory was, at least for the moment, proving to be untrue.

  Clay dared another look through his optics and saw several men and women with the kind of weaponry he had expected—one man was even using an old Enfield No. 4. But for every three or four of those guns, Clay saw a modern battle rifle of some sort—something equivalent to an AK-47 or AR-15.

  This is not good, he thought to himself.

  Just then, he heard a shout come from the clock tower—a man’s voice this time. “They’re breaching the corridor!”

  The corridor was the nearly eighth of a mile stretch of driveway that led up to the gates of Liberty. Cars, trucks, and anything else weighing more than a hundred pounds that could be pushed, dragged or carried outside of town was placed in the driveway to create a funnel for the enemy as they negotiated through the last patch of ground separating Liberty from the wild.

  The short stretch of debris and cracked asphalt would prove to be very costly to Arlo’s troops.

  Chapter 24

  Miraculously, Simpson was the only loss Liberty experienced during the first encounter between the two groups. Though seven others had been wounded, six of them never even left the battlefield before Arlo’s men retreated. The seventh, a young man named Victor, was still being tended to by Doctor Sowell. Though the man fought the good fight against death, the final decision would ultimately come down to whether death called heads or tails.

  All in all, the first encounter had not been as costly to Liberty as expected. The same could not be said about Arlo’s fighters; at least eighteen men and women lay lifeless along the Deadly Eighth, a nickname the long driveway had quickly received after the battle had ended. Kohler ordered a team to head out at nightfall to retrieve weapons and supplies from the bodies consumed in the Deadly Eighth. The team, however, was under strict orders to leave the bodies.

  “Let their fallen comrades be a horrible reminder of what’s at stake; that they cannot, and will not just walk in here and take our homes,” Kohler said in a post-battle speech.

  While most people understood that the tactic was nothing more than psychological warfare in its most pitiless form, others were disappointed, if not disgusted, with the decision.

  “They are still people!” one man shouted.

  “They deserve a proper burial, regardless of what they did in life,” another said.

  Kohler was empathetic, but firm in his decision. “When this war is behind us, I assure you that each of them will be dealt with respectfully, but until that day comes…” he said. There was no need to repeat his order.

  Clay wasn’t bothered with Kohler’s directive. In fact, he was impressed with the move. He had recently concluded that sometimes the only way to defeat your enemy is to play by their rules. Diplomacy had its place in the world, but the world had changed. If you didn’t play for all four quarters, if you weren’t as ruthless and hardhearted as the enemy, you were dead. It was that simple. And the voice in Clay’s conscience that often protested such ideas became quieter with each passing day.

  As darkness overpowered the sky, the small team of five prepared for their excursion into the driveway. Clay attached his suppressor to his rifle and put in a magazine of subsonic rounds. There wasn’t much anticipation for gunfire, but as his dad always said, If you’re not always prepared, you’re never prepared.

  Besides a rifle and a few spare magazines, the only other thing each member of the squad could bring was an empty duffle bag. The objective was straightforward: fill up the bags with supplies—ideally with guns and ammo.

  The team consisted of Clay, Robert, Morgan, Hicks, and Warren. With the exception of Robert, who was the centerfielder on his baseball team, Clay had just been introduced to the others as the recovery team was assembled. Robert used to be a librarian; Warren had been a butcher at HEB. Hicks…well, nobody really knew about him. He was a quiet man and the oldest of the group. Rumor was—according to Robert—he used to work for the NSA back in the day. Warren had heard he was an author. Nobody was sure what he had done before the ash blanketed the planet and the confusion only seemed to please the mysterious man. However, one thing was for certain, he was a good shot and a trustworthy brother-in-arms; the type of man you wanted by your side when the chips were down.

  Then there was Morgan. Last year, Morgan’s father and brother went out on a hunt and never came back—their mutilat
ed bodies were discovered a few miles away a month later. Then her mother—the last living relative she had—was killed during Arlo’s surprise attack at the beginning of the month. Though Morgan had been encouraged to go back to Northfield with the others, she insisted that she stay and fight. With the number of volunteers as skimpy as they already were, nobody tried to talk her out of it.

  The team approached the gate, each one fighting waves of trepidation. The stigma of exiting the gates at night was heavy enough as it was, let alone after the kind of day they had had. In addition to the inherent dangers of walking around at night, there was no telling if any of Arlo’s men had stuck around, waiting to pounce on some easy prey.

  “I’ll take the front of the driveway,” Hicks said, taking charge of the operation. “I’ll cover from the box truck to the road. Robert and Warren, you guys cover the space between the dumpster and the box truck. Clay and Morgan, you two will have everything between that dumpster and the gate,” he said as he pointed to the large wrought iron gate in front of them. “And there is to be no talking, understood?” he added.

  There was unanimous agreement.

  The three guards on duty yanked the gate to the side as the group stared out into the dark abyss ahead of them. Though Clay had been up and down the driveway many times over the years, never had it felt so unsettling, so haunting.

  Without saying a word, Hicks walked past the gate and into the driveway. Robert and Warren, standing shoulder to shoulder, went next. Clay glanced over at Morgan, who was struck with fear.