No Light Beyond

by L. Douglas Hogan

  “Romeo,” Leroy called out.

  “What is it?”

  “I found a chlorine gas drum they may have been using to sanitize, but I think we have several satisfactory options that we could use it for to our advantage.”

  “Like?”

  “It’s a large enough drum. I say we place it in a strategic position against one of the outer walls and ignite it. Not only will it explode, but it’ll send huge amounts of chlorine gas into the prison, causing widespread panic and evacuation.”

  “And which building would you recommend? There’s over a dozen buildings in this place.”

  “I recommend we attack the administration building. If we cut the head of the serpent off, the snake will die.”

  “Let’s do it. Evacuate the Order to a safe location. Let’s not forget we’re surrounded on the outside by Screamers and it’s still too dangerous to leave.”

  “Romeo,” one of his men called out.

  Romeo turned to face the voice. It was a man running from the east.

  “The east tower guard is calling for you. He says it’s an emergency.”

  Romeo sent Leroy. “Go check it out.”

  Leroy ran to the east gate and called up to the guard, “What is it?”

  “There’s a very large group of Screamers headed this way.”

  “We’re safe in here. Don’t sweat it.”

  “They’re chasing a tow truck with a man tied to the lift system,” he said, peering through a set of binoculars.

  “Let me in,” Leroy commanded.

  The tower guard went down the tight spiral staircase and used his key to open the door and let Leroy in. The two of them hurried back up the tower staircase to reach the top of the wall, where Leroy started to pull the binoculars up to his face but was interrupted when he saw the preacher standing in front of the facility across the street.

  Only distracted for a moment, he realized he didn’t need the binoculars anymore. The truck was accelerating, but turned right at a road ahead of the other facility and disappeared behind it. The Screamers were speedily pursuing the truck that reemerged in an alleyway directly across from the east gate.

  The preacher was standing on the street not far away from the gate. When he saw the sight, he was intrigued enough to jog towards the scene. Once everything was in view, he stood there and watched as the truck accelerated, plowing directly into the east gate, knocking one of the two men that were riding on the back of the truck unconscious. The other one fell off the truck and onto the ground. Once he composed himself, he looked up just in time to see several Screamers run up to him. The attack was brutal, and his death was slow and agonizing.

  The gate only partially collapsed, so Mason backed up a few yards and gave it another charge, this time opening the gate wide enough for a group of Ravagers to run through.

  Leroy shouted down to the Order, “Take shelter. The gate has been penetrated.” Leroy looked back at the ground in horror as a thousand more Screamers joined the hundreds.

  Mason backed the truck out of the way of the gate as the Ravagers followed the smell of human fear into the inner perimeter of Haven. They plowed through the opening and headed towards the sounds of yelling men and women who were fighting for their lives inside the facility.

  The preacher watched as the man that was driving the truck stepped out and walked amongst the Screamers. Astounded that they were blind to his presence, he uttered under his breath, “The man without fear,” referring to his vision.

  Mason walked over to the man that was unconscious and grabbed him by the arm, pulled him off the back of the truck and threw him into the cab.

  Back at the rear perimeter wall, Romeo was climbing a rope that had been left at the other end of the facility, trying to make his way to safety. The Screamers that used to be on that side of the wall had made their way to the east gate, making a clear getaway for Romeo and a few of his men. Anybody strong enough and fast enough to climb a rope made it out alive. Most did not. The remaining survivors took as many vehicles as they could from their motorcade to Haven and retreated to Union Station.

  Mason let as much of the horde in as he could before driving the truck into the gate, wedging it in place so that the Ravagers could not get out.

  “Get out,” Mason said to the man he had rescued from the boom arm. “You’re free.”

  The man opened the door and ran as fast as he could, far from Haven.

  Next, Mason stole a flatbed truck that the Order had left behind and threw his two prisoners into the back, being sure to tie them up with ropes he found behind the seat of the tow truck.

  The preacher kept his distance from Mason, but watched him with great admiration and curiosity. According to the vision he had, the preacher was certain this was the man that would be the death of Romeo. His inquisitiveness was driving him to follow the man south, where, eventually, he hoped to learn more about the man’s ability to avoid being recognized by the Screamers. This meant taking a truck, as Mason had, from among the Order’s motorcade that was left outside Haven.

  Entry Eight

  “Dear Lydia, Tanara and Tynice didn’t make it. I kind of made a promise to myself that I’d rescue them if they needed rescuing. I guess I’m fooling myself if I think I’m capable of keeping such promises. Bad things happen when plans go south; that’s all there is to it. We can make promises, but we’re telling a lie and fooling ourselves, because in the end, we don’t know if we can keep the promises we make. Our next breath is not guaranteed. I can make plans for tomorrow and step on an IED tonight. There’s no way of knowing when our time is up.

  “Sometimes, I think my search for you is in vain; not because I don’t want to find you or because I’m trying any less, but because as time progresses, I am beginning to lose hope that you’re still alive. I see my world and how hard it is to stay alive in it, and I think about how much more difficult that life would be if I lacked the skills to fight or the experience to make sound decisions.

  “I found the men that took you from me. I have them tied up so they can’t escape. I plan on extracting as much information from them as I can. I’ll decide what to do with them after that. One of them killed nanny Tamara, and I plan on finding out which one did it. My money is on the one called Slasha.

  “Shemika has rejoined me. We are safely secured in a discreet house not too far from Haven. We have a truck, a motorcycle, and some weapons. Enough to get by on, I’d say. One of the men I captured had a backpack with a bottle of water and some orange slices candy. It’s not much, but it’s sustenance. I also retrieved my backpack, and with it, a can of green beans and one of sardines.

  “I’m not sure what to make of the story Mr. Sanders told me about him trading you to the Scroungers. Maybe I’m having difficulty with it because I understand that tracking you to any single little faction of Scroungers will be almost impossible. One of the men that took you and murdered nanny Tamara was killed by the Ravagers tonight. I decided to start from scratch by questioning the two remaining men. Maybe I’ll get a new lead, or maybe I’ll find out something I don’t already know. I saw you at Haven. I know you were safe then, but the new question is, where did you go?”

  ...

  Mason put his journal away and looked up at the two men he had captured as he leaned against the wall, playing with his knife. Shemika was sitting next to him with her pistol in hand, resting it between her knees. The other two were standing on chairs with their hands tied behind their backs. Nooses were wrapped around their necks, and the other ends were tethered to the ceiling rafters, ensuring they couldn’t escape without hanging themselves.

  Candlelight lit the room.

  Outside the house, the preacher quietly watched the situation. There was nothing about the way Mason was handling things that he agreed with, but he had a “do not interfere” policy that always seemed to work well for him. Of course, there were some situations where he believed people needed saving, like the way he’d saved Romeo. In his mind, Romeo was supp
osed to survive that situation because of the vision he’d had about the man with no fear and no faith. The preacher couldn’t justify saving one and not the others, so he reasoned that was a moment he could justify interfering.

  For now, he chose to listen closely from the edge of the window and gather as much information as he could from the man without fear.

  “Which one of you is called Smoka?” Mason asked.

  Both of them were hesitant to talk. Mason pushed away from his relaxed position on the wall. “I’m only going to ask you guys once after this. You can consider that first question a freebie; consider it my graciousness as a host. But after I ask you one more time… that’s it. No more freebies. I’m not going to have you over so you can take advantage of my hospitality.”

  Shemika was seeing Mason’s cynical side for the first time. There was a part of her that thought it was sexy, but another part of her thought it was scary. For a moment, she thought she might have been traveling with a man who was suffering from a dual-personality disorder, but she pushed that from her head and reasoned that he was playing the part of a man with nothing to lose. Perhaps she wasn’t far from the truth.

  Shemika hoped and prayed that Mason would find Lydia, but the reality was that surviving in these conditions would require a survivor leading the way. She just hoped that Lydia was fortunate enough to be with that somebody, if only to spare the world from Mason’s wrath if anything was to happen to her.

  “Now, for the second and last time, which of you is called Smoka?”

  “I’m Smoka, man. You don’t know who you be mess’n wit’, yo. When Romeo finds out what you doin’ wit’ us, he’ll—”

  Mason interrupted him by sticking the tip of his rifle into his mouth. “Who’s Romeo? Is that the guy you work for?”

  “He’s da guy dat takes care of us, man,” the other guy said.

  “Who are you?”

  “They call me Frenzy.”

  Mason laughed.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “What’s so funny? Are you kidding me? You punks think this is a GI Joe cartoon or something? Smoka, Frenzy, Slasha… Where’s Storm Shadow? Should I be nervous about a ninja jumping through the window?” Mason said, pulling the rifle out of Smoka’s mouth.

  “What you do with Slasha, man?” Smoka asked.

  “He didn’t make it. He kinda fell off the truck and became Ravager fodder.”

  “So you killed ’im?” Frenzy asked.

  “What would you care? Huh? That’s what you do, isn’t it? Don’t you run around and kill people?”

  “What did you call ’em? Ravagers?” Smoka asked as he laughed. “He said Ravager. Who’s playing GI Joe now?”

  “What do you call them?”

  “We call ’em Screamers.”

  “Not much difference, I’d say. Why don’t you call ’em Runners? Or maybe Stinkers?” Mason said. “Doesn’t matter what we call ’em, punk. They ate your friend.”

  Smoka glared into Mason’s eyes, trying to intimidate him, but he was unaffected.

  “Tell me, Smoka… when you killed my daughter’s nanny, did you enjoy it?”

  Smoka dived into his memory banks, trying to remember if he had ever killed a nanny.

  “You must’ve killed a lot of people if you can’t recall killing one defenseless woman,” Mason said.

  “I ain’t never killed no defenseless woman, man.”

  “Think harder. Burling Street, Lincoln Park, Chicago. Does that ring a bell?”

  Neither of the two men responded.

  “Two years ago. You killed a woman and took a little girl named Lydia.”

  Mason watched the men’s eyes as they gave away their involvement in her murder and Lydia’s abduction.

  “It was Slasha,” Frenzy blurted out.

  “Convenient that you blame the guy that’s not here to defend himself.”

  “It was Slasha, man,” Smoka said, defending Frenzy’s claim.

  “Next question. Whose idea was it to abduct my daughter?”

  Both Smoka and Frenzy had now pieced together what they had done, and their sin had caught up to them.

  “Was that Slasha’s idea, too?” Mason asked.

  It was Frenzy who gave in first and told the story of what happened that night. “When the Flash happened, we all freaked at first, right. Me n’ Slasha n’ Smoka ran wit’ da Insane Deuces outta Lincoln Park. None of us had family, only each other in those days. We jus’ ran widdit, man. We started hitt’n those apartments where we saw green.

  “I remember your face now, man. You were clean shaved back then. We jus’ ran up in there and started tak’n what we want, right? We took whatever we could carry. Rings, watches, we even took money ’cause we didn’t know the lights weren’t eva comin’ back on, right?

  “That woman you called nanny, she got in our way, right, so Slasha did what he did. It’s why we call ’im Slasha. Then we saw the girl, and I told Smoka we can’t be leavin’ no kid here alone, man. So we took her. We kept ’er for weeks, then realized we couldn’t feed ’er, so we traded her to the Order.”

  “Traded her for what?”

  “Membership, man. Some old-school killa was runnin’ the Order. That’s Romeo Ramirez. He’s a stone-cold killa, man.”

  “How did Haven get her?”

  “I don’t be knowin’ that, man. Me ‘n Slasha ‘n Smoka work fo’ Romeo, man, but all we do is bring in resources. What he do wit’ ’em is his business, man.”

  “If you would have just left the girl alone,” Mason said as he pressed the tip of his knife into Smoka’s heart, “I might have let you live since Slasha’s already dead. But since you didn’t, your story ends here.”

  Frenzy watched in horror as Mason pulled the knife out of Smoka’s chest, then pressed it back in a second time. Smoka cried out with the first stab wound. He went into cardiac arrest and shock, preventing him from feeling the second stab wound.

  Suddenly there was a knock on the door that caught everybody off guard.

  “Get the candle,” Mason said.

  Shemika blew out the candle and hid around the corner with her pistol in hand. Mason took his time going for the door. Whoever was out there had their eyes adjusted to the dark, which was advantageous to sitting in a room with a candle.

  “Stay here,” Mason said, opening the back door. “If I don’t come back, do what you want with GI Joe and get out of here.”

  Mason left the back door open and quietly stepped outside and snuck around towards the front of the house.

  The preacher was standing on the front step, using his crucifix to knock on the door a second time. He saw the man without fear step out from the side of the house, and he was pointing a rifle at him. He put both of his hands in the air; the right hand was holding his holy cross. “I mean you no harm,” he said.

  “I wish I could say the same to you,” Mason responded.

  “I have news for you.”

  “I’m not interested in whatever it is you’re peddling, padre.”

  “Oh, I think you might be in need of some good news.”

  “Listen, unless you’re selling cookies or having a sandwich and soup day, I suggest you get out of here.”

  “Mason,” Shemika’s voice said from behind him, “we could use a little help from God.”

  “If there was a God, I think He would have responded to the prayers of His people by now, don’t you?”

  “Because you’ve lost faith doesn’t mean I have,” Shemika said.

  “I haven’t lost anything but my daughter.”

  The preacher was standing there listening to both of them as they talked, and he waited for the right moment to say something else, which just happened to be the moment Mason mentioned his daughter. “Your daughter. It’s your daughter that I have news about.”

  Mason ran out of the house and grabbed the preacher by the collar and pulled it out and threw it on the ground. He grabbed his collar again and pressed the gun into his forehead. “What did y
ou say about my daughter?”

  “I have information that I think you would like to hear. Something I don’t think you’ve heard before.”

  “Start talking.”

  “Can we go inside? There’s more threats in these parts than Screamers.”

  Mason pulled the man by the collar into the house, being careful to keep the gun pointing at him as they went along.

  “Preacher,” Frenzy called out.

  When Mason heard Frenzy call out to the preacher like he knew him, he saw the preacher shake his head. It was small and barely visible. The preacher knew Frenzy and vice versa. That only heightened Mason’s paranoia that something was about to go down.

  Mason sat the preacher against the floor against the drywall, which he knocked a hole in to pull electrical cable out. He used it to tie the preacher’s hands in place behind his back so that he couldn’t make any sudden moves without Mason or Shemika seeing it.

  “Now we wait to see if Smoka turns,” Mason said. “If he turns, we all die together, and if he doesn’t, all of us can have a chat.”

  Mason was scaring Shemika with his comment about waiting for Smoka to turn. It was that part of Mason she didn’t know that drove her curiosity.

  “He’s not going to turn,” the preacher said.

  The comment grabbed Mason’s attention, who was doing nothing more than playing mind games with Frenzy and their newest guest.

  “I’m listening,” Mason said.

  “He hasn’t had the fever yet. He either has to die after the fever or be killed by a Screamer. Then he’ll turn, but not until the infection takes his life in one form or another.”

  “The fever? What fever?”

  “Look, I was with a group serving a Community Home Missions Lunch for the homeless when the Flash happened. We had a huge cache of soups in the back when everybody suddenly started looting. Those of us that were working the food line stayed together, for the most part, for weeks. When we realized the lights weren’t going to come back on, several people left, but I kept on with the mission. I rationed the food and opened a giant can of soup once per week. Naturally, people flocked to the home mission because we had food.