Fighting Chance - A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Thriller (Lights Out in Vegas Book 3)

by Sean Patten

  “You didn’t have to do that,” she said quietly.

  “I know,” I said. “But I knew you were coming in, and I knew I had to at least see if I could find you. When that plane hit…all I could think about was whether or not that was your flight, that I might’ve just watched you die from a distance.”

  Kelly reached over and took my hand, giving it a soft squeeze.

  “I’m not dead,” she said. “I’m right here. You’re not going to get rid of me that easily, buddy.”

  I allowed myself a smile as she took her hand from mine and put it back on the steering wheel.

  The stars were brilliant as we drove, and I still hadn’t gotten used to how bright the night sky actually was.

  “Okay,” said Kelly as we passed the airport. “Now where?”

  I spotted the parking garage up ahead, the one that Steve and I had escaped through.

  “There,” I said. “It’s past that. But we might have to take this thing off-road. Just drive past it and follow the power lines.

  “Got it,” she said.

  Kelly pulled off the road and drove past the parking garage. The tires struggled against the dirt, clouds of dust kicking up into the air.

  “Looks like this thing’s all show and no go,” she said.

  “Terrain’s not too bad,” I said. “Shouldn’t be too much further up here.”

  Kelly did as I’d asked, following the path of the power lines. Before too long, I spotted the gated barrier of the substation up ahead.

  “There it is!” I shouted out. “Keep going!”

  My heart began to race as I realized we were almost there.

  Though I had no idea what condition he was in, the need to reach my brother was like a primal force driving me forward, giving me strength even as I was running on empty.

  Kelly pulled the car to a stop and killed the engine, the quiet returning.

  “He’s in there?” she asked.

  “He’s in there,” I said.

  I opened the door and jumped out.

  “I’m just going to go in there and get him. Turn the car back on and keep it running, okay?”

  Kelly nodded and turned the key once again, the engine growling to life. Once that was done, I ran towards the substation and pulled open the steel gate before running to the service building where I’d left Steve.

  “Steve!” I shouted out. “I’m here!”

  I grabbed the handle and pulled the door open. What I saw next, I couldn’t believe.

  Inside the building was…no one.

  Steve was gone.

  Chapter 17

  At first I was convinced that I was seeing things. Or, not seeing things. Steve had to be there somewhere, surely.

  “Steve?” I called out, as if there was somewhere in the small room where he could’ve been hiding. “Where are you?”

  I rushed over the place where I’d left him. There was a small, dark red stain on the ground where he’d been laying, but no other trace of him.

  “Steve?” I called out again. “Where the hell are you?”

  I looked everywhere in the small room, hoping I’d find him curled up in one of the corners like a cat something. But there was no sign of him.

  “Okay,” I said, speaking out loud to myself in an effort to get a handle on the situation. “Think where he might be.”

  I knew there was no chance that he’d left—he had a hard enough time getting to the substation after he’d been injured. And his wound had been so bad it wasn’t likely that he’d healed enough to use his leg well enough to just up and go.

  Besides, he knew to stay here and wait for me.

  I burst out of the building and began combing the immediate area for any sign of him. I had nightmare images in mind of him lying dead nearby somewhere, maybe in a place where he’d gone for some shade to get out of the midday heat.

  But nothing.

  “What’s going on?” Kelly called from the car. “Where’s Steve?”

  “Just keep the car running!” I shouted back.

  I hurried back into the building, my heart racing. Steve was gone, and I knew that if he’d left there was no way he’d do it without letting me know where he’d headed. After steadying myself, I began to slowly scan over the room for any clue that I’d missed.

  The room looked the same as when I’d left, no sign of a struggle or anything like that. The dark red stain of dried blood on the floor—nearly a perfect circle—suggested that Steve hadn’t dragged himself out of here.

  My heart thudded in my chest, and right at the moment I began to worry that the worst had happened, I spotted a piece of paper tacked onto the brown corkboard at the back of the room. The letter “J” had been written on the front.

  I rushed over to it and, with trembling hands, opened it up. Only a few lines had been written on the paper, the handwriting neat and precise.

  The end is here, all right. Front door’s near the airport. See you on the other side.

  Hopkins

  I stood there for several moments, the piece of paper hanging loosely from my hand.

  Hopkins had come for Steve.

  It was beyond belief. The man who had given up on society decades before had decided to leave his underground home to help Steve. At that moment the gratitude I felt was like nothing I’d never known before.

  But it wasn’t over. Steve could be doing better now, or he could be on his last legs, and there was still the matter of finding him and Hopkins. Without phones or a map or anything that might’ve helped, it’d be a task in and of itself. But it sure as shit beat coming back empty-handed, Steve and I in the same spot we were when I left.

  A scream cut through the still, quiet air, snapping me out of whatever state I’d fallen into.

  Without thinking, I dropped the note and rushed out of the structure, my hands balled into tight fists.

  “Justin!”

  My eyes shot over to the Cadillac, where two men had arrived. One of them had Kelly by the arm as he attempted to pull her out of the front seat.

  “Get off of me, you prick!”

  “Shut up and give us the goddamn keys!” shouted the other man.

  “No way!” shouted Kelly.

  “Come on, you little bitch!” snarled the man pulling her. “You’re not gonna like what happens if you make me mad!”

  “Screw you!”

  With that, the man pulling on Kelly whipped his hand back and brought it down hard onto her face, the crack of skin-on-skin echoing through the evening air.

  At that moment, something in me snapped.

  I was conscious of the moment enough to know that I needed to play it smart, that it was two on one, that there was a good chance that the men were armed. But I didn’t care. I’d already lost one person close to me, and I wasn’t about to let it happen again. As I watched Kelly’s hand move to the cheek that the man had slapped, all I could feel was rage.

  Everything that happened next was like a dreamy blur.

  With speed that I didn’t know I was capable of, I tore across the substation property and past the swinging door. The eyes of the men latched onto me, going wide for the briefest of moments before I lunged at the one who’d hit Kelly.

  “Oh, shit!” one of them shouted.

  I didn’t bother to announce myself. After grabbing the man by the collar of his shirt, I yanked him away from Kelly and threw him hard onto the ground, an “oof” bursting out of his lungs as the dust kicked up all around him.

  Once he was on the ground I rushed on top of him, my blood as hot as melted steel. I dropped down, my knees on both sides of his chest.

  “Fucking prick!” I bellowed as I raised my right fist and brought it down hard onto his face.

  The man let out a sputter as my fist connected, his surprised look changing at that instant to one of pain. He raised his hands up, trying to plead with me.

  Not going to happen.

  Once my first blow finished following through I wasted no time in hitting him agai
n, then again, then again. Blood began to cover my knuckles—some mine, some his.

  I felt like I was outside of myself watching my fists rain down on him. It was some other state, like I’d been possessed by a spirit of anger, my actions not my own.

  Only the growl of the engine followed by the grinding of spinning rubber on dirt brought me out of it.

  I whipped around just in time to watch as the car, the other man in the driver’s seat, pull away from the scene. The man under me raised his hands again, placing them helplessly on my chest as the pink Cadillac disappeared into the distance.

  “Justin!” shouted Kelly.

  I blinked hard, coming back to the moment. I looked down at my blood-covered hands, then at the raw-looking face of the man I’d been wailing on.

  Kelly ran over to me and clamped her hand down onto my shoulder.

  “Let him go,” she said. “He’s not worth it.”

  I glanced back down at the man, a faraway look in his already-swollen eyes. He was still alive, still conscious. If I hadn’t snapped out of it when I did…I didn’t even want to think about it.

  “Come on,” she said.

  The man let out a moan, his arms still outstretched.

  “Please…,” he said. “I’m…I’m sorry…”

  Fuck.

  The merciless drive that had compelled me to turn that poor son-of-a-bitch’s face into hamburger faded by the second, replaced by compassion.

  “Let him go,” said Kelly. “He’s learned his lesson.”

  I turned back to the man.

  “That right?” I asked.

  The man let out a dry cough before speaking.

  “Yeah…,” he moaned. “Lesson learned.”

  I got up to my feet, letting the man squirm out from under me. He put his hands onto the ground and heaved himself up, staggering for a bit once he was on his feet. The man stumbled around like he was drunk before getting himself situated. Then, with a wipe of his sleeve over his bloodied face, he turned his attention to the horizon.

  “Rick!” he shouted out. “Where are you, man?”

  Kelly pointed off in the direction the man’s companion had driven the car.

  “That-a-way,” she said coolly. “Better start running—he had a bit of a head start.”

  “Motherfucker!” he shouted in a hoarse voice before breaking out into a trot. “You better not have left me to die in this fucking desert!”

  More curses streamed from his mouth as he left, his boots crunching on the sand. Finally, he reached the horizon and was gone.

  I kept my eyes on the distance, to make sure he wasn’t coming back before turning my attention to Kelly.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, looking her over.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Jackass jerked my arm kind of hard, but nothing major.”

  Then her eyes went wide as she began to process what had happened.

  “Justin!” she cried. “You almost killed that guy!”

  “He was stealing your car,” I said. “And he might’ve killed you! What should I have done, asked them politely to leave?”

  She looked away and nodded.

  “I get it,” she said. “And…thanks. I was so focused on seeing what you were doing that I didn’t even notice those guys sneak up on me.”

  “No problem,” I said, my body finally beginning to cool down from the rush of adrenaline.

  “But what happened in there?” she asked. “Where’s Steve? Is he okay?”

  “He’s gone,” I said.

  “Gone?” she repeated softly, eyes wide.

  Catching her meaning, I sought to clarify.

  “As in he’s not in there anymore,” I said. “But I got a note from someone letting me know they took care of him.”

  Kelly nodded slowly, as if trying to process what I was saying.

  “Wait,” she said. “Someone just randomly showed up, treated Steve’s wounds, and took him out of here?”

  “No,” I said. “It was someone I knew. Guy who lives in the sewers.”

  I realized how bizarre it sounded as soon as the words left my mouth. And the expression on Kelly’s face indicated that she was just as dumbfounded as I’d expect.

  “Justin, I have no idea what’s going on here. Who do you know that lives in the sewers? And how did they know about Steve? And…”

  Before she could finish her sentence, a chatter of gunfire in the distance sounded.

  “Hear that?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” she said. “People are shooting.”

  “When Steve and I showed up to his place it might as well have been in the middle of nowhere. But those assholes”—I pointed in the direction the men we’d fought off had driven—“they found us here. Followed the car or the power lines. And there sure as shit wasn’t gunfire in the distance when Steve and I showed up.”

  “Then we need to leave.”

  I nodded.

  “Won’t be long before the mob in the city finds this place. We need to move.”

  “Don’t need to tell me twice,” she said. “But…our ride’s gone. You want to head back to the airport?”

  “Airport’s going to be a nightmare too,” I said. “We need to find Steve and Hopkins.”

  “Hopkins?”

  “I’ll tell you on the way.”

  “On the way to where?”

  “Come on.”

  I led her back down the direction of the power lines towards the airport. Once the wreckage of the airport was in sight, I stopped and scanned the area for what I was looking for.

  “Justin…” Kelly said tentatively. “Where are we going?”

  I pointed in the direction of a storm pipe, on that looked large enough for the two of us to slip into.

  “The sewers?” she asked. “Are you serious?”

  The pipe was big, and impossible to miss. It had to have been what Hopkins had meant by the “front door” near the airport.

  “I’m serious,” I said. “Steve is down there. I’d bet you anything.”

  Kelly appeared hesitant about the idea, to put it mildly. But after more gunfire sounded in the distance, followed by a ground-rumbling explosion, her tune quickly changed.

  “Please tell me you have a flashlight,” she said.

  I took out the small one I’d taken from the Troika.

  “This should do the job,” I said. “Now let’s go.”

  The two of us hurried over to the sewer pipe.

  “Ladies first?” I asked with a small smile.

  Kelly shook her head and let out a groan as she followed me into the dark, towards whatever lay beyond.

  Chapter 18

  “This has to be the most disgusting thing I’ve ever done,” said Kelly.

  We made our way down the pipe, the light from the opening becoming dimmer and dimmer with every step we took. The flashlight wasn’t as powerful as the one Hopkins had given me, but the beam was strong enough for the moment.

  “You get used to it,” I said. “Believe it or not.”

  We kept on, our shoes sloshing in the small bit of water that had accumulated at the bottom of the pipe. The smell was unbearable at first. But just like I’d said, I grew more and more accustomed to it by the second.

  “Okay,” said Kelly. “You’ve managed to get me in here without telling me what’s going on. But I’m going to need to know what your big plan is before we start wading into sewage.”

  “It’s…kind of a long story,” I said.

  “We’ve got time.”

  I took a deep breath as I organized my thoughts, then went right into it. I told Kelly about Hopkins, how we’d—literally—bumped into him on the Strip our first night in town, and how I’d found him again during my trip through the city. As I recalled the story, I couldn’t believe that it had all happened over the course of the last day. It felt more like a week had passed.

  “Wait, so before the Troika you were hanging out with some guy who lives in the sewers?” she asked, clearly still processing everyth
ing that I’d told her.

  “Yup,” I said. “Been a busy day.”

  “I’ll say.”

  We continued on, the pipe taking us leftward.

  “I don’t suppose this Hopkins guy left you a nice, detailed map,” she said drily. “You know, so we don’t end up in some septic tank in Reno.”

  “No,” I said. “But he was more towards the city. These drainage pipes all lead from there, so if we keep on it should take us where we need to go. Plus, worst-case scenario, we could always ask someone down here for help.”

  “Wait, what?” Kelly asked.

  “According to Hopkins there’s a whole society of people down here,” I said. “I’m sure one of them would be more than happy to point us in the right direction.”

  I flashed her a smile, one she couldn’t see in the dark.

  “A whole society of people living under the city,” she said. “The things you learn when the power goes out…”

  “The important thing is that it’s safe down here,” I said. “Topside’s going to get more and more insane with each passing hour, so we should relax while we can.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I suppose I’ll take ‘smelly’ over avoiding mobs of psychos.”

  We continued on, walking in silence.

  And now that she and I were alone, the elephant in the room finally began to make itself known. Kelly and I had been so busy since we’d seen each other again, so wrapped up in just staying alive, that we hadn’t had time to think about what had been going on between us, what our lives had been like before the power went out.

  The silence was thick, and I could sense that she was thinking the same thing. Something needed to be said, I just wasn’t sure how to do it.

  “It was…good of you to come,” I said.

  “What,” she asked. “Into the sewers? I didn’t really have much of a choice.”

  “No,” I said. “To Vegas. To my dad’s funeral.”

  “Oh,” she said, the word falling out of her mouth. “Um, don’t worry about it.”

  “No,” I said. “I’m serious. You didn’t have to do it. And…I appreciate it.”

  A few beats of silence passed as we moved forward.