Dark Vanishings: Post-Apocalyptic Horror Book 1

by Dan Padavona

  “His house was the only one with working electricity,” he had said. But when he answered, his eyes grew wide and shifted away, as though panic bled out from his eye sockets.

  The Civic’s tank was down to a quarter full, and soon Blake would need to find another car to siphon gas from.

  “I really need to go to the bathroom.” Tori squirmed in the passenger seat.

  “Again?”

  “What do you mean, ‘again?’ I haven’t gone since last evening, and we’ve been driving since midnight.”

  Blake sighed. “Okay.” He turned on the right-turn signal, flashing his intentions of exiting the road, though there wasn’t another vehicle in sight. Off the exit, a rickety Ferris wheel loomed over an abandoned carnival. Past the restrooms stretched a long strip of asphalt, bordered by gift shops and carnival rides. The sweet, greasy scent of funnel cakes hadn’t completely dissipated in the last week. Grogan’s Wonder World, already a relic of gaudy commercialism for a lost world.

  As the car rolled to a stop in front of the bathrooms, Tori asked, “You don’t have any feelings about this place, do you?”

  Blake looked like he was about to say something sarcastic in response, but when he saw fear in her eyes, he said, “I think we’re the only ones here. Just be careful, okay?”

  She nodded. When she exited the vehicle, he followed her to the door and stopped her before she entered the bathroom alone.

  “Let me go in first. Just in case.”

  “Okay.” She touched his unshaven cheek which bristled with stubble. “Thanks.”

  “Sure.”

  The stench of sitting urine poured out through the door. Tori ducked her nose into her hands. “Yuck. So that’s what bathrooms smell like after five days in a world without janitors.”

  Pale light spilled across the floor tiles. Where the thin sliver of light ended, the bathroom interior melted away into darkness. Each footstep echoed off the walls. Water dripped from a faucet. The inside of the rest facility looked and sounded like a forgotten cavern.

  Opening the door wide, Blake wedged a door stopper under the threshold. The stench lessened, and the bathroom filled with gray light that illuminated four stalls aligned along the back wall. Ducking down to check for feet under the stalls, he pushed open the doors, thinking each time someone would be inside, feet propped up on the toilet seat, ready to spring out at him.

  “It’s clear. You’re good.”

  “Thank you.”

  He left her alone in the bathroom. Standing with his back against the outer wall, he watched the fractured light of sunrise filter down behind a scattering of clouds. The sky grew darker to the north, melting into the horizon in charcoal tones. A few minutes later, the toilet flushed and he heard the sound of running water from the sink.

  When she appeared in the doorway, she looked pallid in the light of day. The circles under her eyes ran deeper, making her seem twenty years older.

  “I’ll drive the rest of the morning,” he said. “You need to get some sleep.”

  She hadn’t the strength to argue. “Where are we going?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe sidetrack to the coast. We could find a couple of beach houses and sleep next to the ocean. Myrtle Beach? Savannah? We can drive all the way to Miami or Key West if you want.”

  “That sounds nice. Maybe Savannah. I’ve never been there, but I hear it’s nice.”

  “I’ll need to find gas along the way, but I see no reason why we can’t get there by late morning. In the meantime, you’ll have a good three or four hours to get some shuteye.”

  Her arms were folded across her chest with her hands cupped over her elbows to fight back a chill. He put an arm around her waist to steady her as he followed her to the passenger door.

  As he pulled open the door for her, they heard a rumbling sound from a mile away, coming closer. He checked the sky for storm clouds and saw the same mix of blue and gray swatches that had painted the sky at sunrise. The sky to the north was darker, and the clouds were advancing toward them.

  The rumble grew louder, rolling out of the north like a giant worm burrowing through the earth. A motor backfired like a gunshot.

  Or maybe it was a gunshot, Tori thought.

  “Someone’s coming,” he said.

  She shut the door and pulled him away from the car. “They aren’t coming this way, are they?”

  “I don’t know.” Another blast shattered the morning silence. “That sounded like a gun. We should get out of here while we can.”

  “Too late.”

  A motor revved from up the road, the vehicle concealed by a row of gift shops. Men shouted.

  Two men? Three?

  She grabbed Blake by the elbow and pulled him past the rest facilities, as the vehicle turned into the parking lot. Sounds of laughter and shouting drew nearer. He looked for a place to hide, frozen like a deer in the headlights of a tractor trailer. Another gunshot got him moving again, and they ran around the right side of a fireworks shop. Tires squealed to a stop not far behind them. As they crouched along the wall, three car doors slammed.

  Voices from the parking lot—

  “Y’all ready to motorvate?”

  “Easy, Ricky. Let’s not go rushing in here like chickens with our heads cut off. Give us a chance to get a lay of the land.”

  “That ain’t gonna play, Tyler. Ricky’s got places to be. While you two homos are back here playing with yourselves, Ricky’s gonna finish the job.”

  Someone cocked a shotgun. “Don’t call me a homo, kid.”

  “Hold on now, hoss. You don’t need to be pointing that gun at me. Ain’t no reason for shootin’ ole Ricky. What’s the big man gonna think if you waste his star pupil?”

  “Put the gun down, James,” Tyler said. “He’s not worth the trouble.”

  “Bullshit,” James said. He spat. “All this punk does is talk trash and run his mouth like a blender with no lid on top. I think all of this talk about being the big man’s prodigy is a load of crap. He talks plenty, but he don’t say nothin’.”

  “You know, hoss? You remind me of someone I met a few days back. He kinda looked like you, too. But meaner.”

  “Nobody’s meaner than me, Ricky. Why don’t I put two holes in your head so you can see how mean I can be?”

  Biting her hand with her eyes clenched shut, Tori wished the men would shoot each other and leave them alone.

  “All right, all right, James. I’m sorry. Ricky didn’t mean to get yer panties into a knot. Now, what do you want to do here? Do you wanna keep bitchin’ at each other like a couple of menstruating prom girls, or do you wanna get the job done?”

  For several seconds, the wind blowing through the parking lot was the only sound at Grogan’s Wonder World.

  James lowered the shotgun. “Okay, Ricky. If you want to go running amok without us checking things out first, be my guest. But Tyler and I are going to do things nice and slow.”

  “Nice and slow, like ‘Easy Rider’ shit. I can dig it. But when I find ‘em first, don’t go actin’ the hero.”

  As Blake and Tori crouched behind the corner of the shop, Ricky ran down the main thoroughfare.

  “You sure about this, James? I don’t see anyone here.”

  Footsteps approached the restrooms.

  “The kid is full of shit, and there’s a damn good chance that I’m going to put a bullet in him before lunchtime. But I think there is someone here. You check the bathrooms. I’m gonna check the shops.”

  “Okay, man, but I still think this place is deserted.”

  “If the big man says we’ve gotta waste a couple kids hiding in Grogan’s Wonder World, I’m not going to question him.”

  “That’s another thing, James. Doesn’t it ever worry you how this Lupan guy knows so many things, like how two people are gonna be at a carnival in South Carolina at sunrise?”

  “I’ll tell you what I worry more about. And that’s Lupan was looking for us instead of them. I say we kill the kids, we ditch Ri
cky, and we get as far away from Victor Lupan as we can.”

  “I don’t even like hearing you say it. I mean, you think he can hear you when you say something like that?”

  James didn’t answer. “Let’s just find these damn kids and figure the rest out later.”

  Pressing himself close to the stucco wall, Blake peeked around the corner of the fireworks shop. Blonde and clean-shaven, the man named Tyler loaded shells into a handgun and walked toward the bathrooms. Blake caught a look at James—bald-headed with a full beard, dressed in black leather—as the man disappeared around the far corner of the building with a shotgun.

  Tori touched his arm, and Blake jumped. “Get back before he sees you.”

  “There’s two of them. Both armed with guns. I don’t know where the third ran off to.”

  Tori’s shoulders drooped. She pressed her head against the wall and closed her eyes. “They’re going to kill us.”

  “Don’t say that. We don’t know we’re the ones they are after.”

  “A couple of kids hiding at Grogan’s Wonder World? Who else could it be?”

  “Why would they be looking for us, and how could they know we’d be here?”

  Tori didn’t answer. It was one thing that Jacob Mann had found her in Red Oak—they shared the same town. But what about Mickey in Pennsylvania? A pure chance encounter? Tori didn’t think so. She slumped against the wall, listening to the hollow blasts of the bathroom stall doors being thrown open.

  “Shit. That guy, Tyler, must have seen our car.”

  “There are abandoned cars all over the lot, Blake.”

  “Yeah, but ours is the only one parked in front of the bathrooms.” Blake peeked his head around the corner again. In the burgeoning light, the Civic was a bright-colored advertisement that someone was hidden amid the carnival’s buildings. “Maybe they won’t look at the car too closely.”

  A metallic ping came from the parking lot—the Civic’s engine, cooling.

  A window broke deeper into the lot, followed by Ricky’s faraway laughter. Footsteps emerged from the bathroom. Beyond the corner of the fireworks shop, Tyler’s long shadow stretched across the parking lot. The man stood outside of the bathrooms, just a few paces from the Civic. If the engine pinged now while he could hear it—

  Ping.

  Blake closed his eyes. “Oh, shit.”

  From the parking lot, Tyler began to shout. “James! James! Get back here.” Running footfalls circled back around the restroom building. They heard the squeak of leather rubbing on leather.

  “What you got?”

  “The damn engine is hot. Somebody must have just pulled in.”

  “What did I tell you? They’re here, Tyler. You checked all of the stalls?”

  “The bathrooms are clear.”

  “They’ve gotta be in the shops or around back of the buildings. You take the left side, and I’ll take the right. We’ll sweep through until we find them.”

  “What if they slip past us and take off in their car?”

  James cocked the shotgun. “Nobody’s driving away in this car.”

  The shotgun blew apart one of the tires. James re-cocked the gun and blasted holes through the windshield, and the front hood into the engine compartment.

  “That’ll work.”

  James’ footsteps thudded away through the parking lot, headed for the main walkway, as Tyler circled around the right side of the buildings, coming right at Tori and Blake. Tyler’s shadow elongated like a monstrous stilt walker.

  “Go.” As Tyler passed the bathrooms and began to circle around the back of the fireworks store, Blake snatched Tori by the hand and pulled her off the building. Just as Tyler turned the corner, Blake and Tori disappeared to the left around the next corner, only to see James’ black form drift through the main walkway. Tori thought for sure James had seen them, but the man strode deeper into the lot, swinging the shotgun left and right.

  Now they were between two buildings, their backs against the fireworks shop with a souvenir store in front of them. They heard Tyler running along the side of the fireworks shop. Had Tyler heard them? At any moment, he would turn the corner.

  Blake pulled Tori around the front of the shop at the same time Tyler swept past the corner. If he had glanced left, he would have seen their legs vanish around the far side of the building, but he ran past the souvenir store without spotting them.

  In front of the buildings, Tori felt exposed. They were in clear view of James, who walked up the main thoroughfare between the shops. If he turned around, he would see them. And where was Ricky?

  “Run,” she said, and he followed her across the asphalt to the next row of shops. When she glanced up the lot, she saw James spin on his heels, shotgun aimed at the lot as though he sensed them.

  Tori tested the door to a t-shirt store, and finding it unlocked, she pulled Blake toward the entrance. But Blake blocked the door with his hand. “If they find us inside, we’ll never get out alive. Keep moving.”

  He took her around the back side of a long strip of buildings toward the parking lot. Beyond the lot, a grassy field sloped down toward a ditch fronted by tall weeds, then the terrain abruptly ascended toward the interstate. The clouds thickened, and the air felt thick with rain. A shape crossed the alleyway two buildings ahead. Blake pulled Tori against the wall before the man’s head turned in their direction. Based on his youthful appearance, Tori assumed the man was Ricky.

  When Ricky turned the corner and headed up the center of the carnival, they crept along the shop walls. In the parking lot, a jet-black sports car was parked diagonally across two parking spaces. Tori turned her head toward Blake with hope in her eyes.

  “You figure they left the keys in the ignition?” he asked.

  “I hope so.”

  Two more shops remained between them and the parking lot, the squat buildings set off to their left like stucco quonset huts. Tori felt a raindrop on her arm as they passed the first building. She looked behind, expecting to see James aiming the shotgun at them, but the back alleyway was empty. A piece of paper caught in the building wind blew across the alleyway and stuck to the side of a rancid-smelling dumpster.

  “Hurry.” He ushered her from the first shop to the last. Her heart was in her throat when they crossed an open walkway between the two buildings. At the far end of the lot, she heard James and Tyler calling to each other.

  “They’re not here.”

  “Check inside the stores. They couldn’t have gotten far.”

  One building remained between Tori and Blake and the parking lot. They stood pressed against the wall, their chests rising and falling with each labored breath.

  “When I say ‘go,’ we’re going to run for the car. If the keys aren’t inside, run for the ditch.”

  Her heart pounded. “Okay.”

  One last check of the alleyway—no one sneaking up from behind.

  “Go.”

  They sprinted off the wall along one last elongated shop. The sports car beckoned, and as another rain drop splattered on Tori’s nose, she noticed the car was a Camaro.

  Please let the keys be inside.

  She listened for the sound of a shotgun cocking, praying they would reach the parking lot before they were seen. The last building corner was just ahead, and then the parking lot and their chance for escape.

  A man sprang at them from around the corner. Ricky. His eyes screamed of insane elation as he aimed a pistol at them.

  “Hold your horses.” They halted in front of him, and Tori stumbled and fell into Blake. “Thought you could get away from Ricky, did ya?” He cupped his free hand around his mouth and called out. “I got ‘em!”

  “Why are you doing this?” Tears welled in Tori’s eyes. The circles beneath her eyes had blackened further. “We haven’t done anything to you.”

  “We haven’t done anything to you.” Ricky mocked her in falsetto. He called out again. “You jackasses coming or not?”

  Running footfalls echoed thro
ugh the main walkway, closer and louder. James and Tyler turned the corner, breathing hard.

  “These the two we are looking for?” asked Tyler.

  “Now who the hell else could they be? Of course it’s them. I told you they were here.”

  “It’s just a couple of teenagers.”

  “It doesn’t matter who they are,” James said, raising the shotgun. “Like I said earlier. We’ve got a job to do. Let’s get it done.”

  “You can kill me,” Blake said. “But let her go. That’s all I ask.”

  Ricky walked toward Blake until he was nose-to-nose with him. “You ain’t in no position to be givin’ orders or negotiatin’. This ain’t some half-ass political debate, and I ain’t Abe Fucking Lincoln, so shut the hell up.”

  “You want to get your ass out of the way, Ricky?” James cocked the shotgun. “I can’t shoot him with you in the way, unless you want to take a dirt nap, too.”

  “Easy, cue ball.” Ricky backed away, grinning. “You don’t have to shoot Ricky. Hell, you ain’t got to shoot anyone.” He raised the pistol again. “I’ll do the honors.”

  “Suit yourself, kid.”

  Ricky’s lips curled into a cruel smile.

  “Simon says, ‘Take one step forward, boy.’” Tears streaming down her cheeks, Tori shook her head at Blake. “Do it.”

  Blake took a step forward. “Please. You don’t have to hurt her.”

  “I thought I told you to shut up.”

  “Quit playing games, Ricky.” James aimed the shotgun at Blake’s chest. “Finish them, and let’s get the hell out of here.”

  “I’ll finish the job.” Ricky sneered at the bald-headed man. “Now, Simon says, ‘Get on your knees.’ And don’t make me ask twice.”

  Blake looked between James and Tyler.

  “Don’t look at me like I’m gonna help you,” Tyler said with his gun centered on Blake. “Do what Ricky says.”

  Blake sank to his knees.

  Tori sobbed behind him. “Leave him alone.”

  “Shut your trap, bitch. You’ll get your turn.” Ricky took a half-step forward and placed the gun barrel an inch away from Blake’s head. “Simon says, ‘Close your eyes.’”