Dark Days of the After Special Edition | Prequel & Book 1

by Schow, Ryan

  “Is Skylar dead, too?” someone asked.

  “No.”

  “Then where is she?” Yoav asked again. “If you know something…”

  “I’m as in the dark as you are.”

  “Who did you kill?” Kim asked.

  “If you train for defense, then all you’ll do is defend,” he said, avoiding the question. “If you train for offense, then maybe we have a chance against these Chicoms. Skylar wanted me to train like each exchange was me fighting for my life.”

  “Describe the kills,” Yoav said.

  He did.

  “What were you doing in Oregon?” one of the men asked.

  Kim looked at him and said, “This is the douchebag who burned Harper.”

  The edgy brunette had a strong, but lean body which complimented her face, which was hard, her eyes and attitude very “move forward and kill.” That was the problem with training so rigorously for so long, you never learned to shut off the attitude.

  When it came to Harper Whitaker, he understood their concern. He used to work with Harper at SocioSphere. He’d burned her. If he had known who she was, he would have treaded lightly, but no one kept him in the loop, and so really he wasn’t to blame.

  Somehow, though, Harper was the key to everything, the woman Skylar all but dumped Logan for. But that was last week and this was now. Harper was gone, Skylar was gone and now it was just him and a bunch of lethal, angry Skylar Madigan fans.

  He decided one thing, though, and that’s that he wasn’t about to take this anymore.

  “You say I burned Harper like it was my fault. It wasn’t. That’s on you.”

  “Oh, and how’s that?” Yoav asked.

  “That’s what you get for keeping me in the dark,” Logan said clearly, concisely and to the point. “Skylar, too.”

  “Where is she?” Yoav asked again. This was very much starting to sound like a Chicom interrogation. When he started to say the same thing he’d been saying, Yoav cut him off. “I know you know. I can see it in your eyes.”

  “What you see is anger,” Logan said.

  The truth was, Skylar was banging the Minister of Propaganda, but Logan wasn’t sure who knew or if he should say anything. Her coital acrobatics weren’t recreational by nature—at least, that’s what she told him—and they certainly weren’t for pleasure.

  She was a spy, undercover and in search of intel. If there was one thing he’d learned, it was that a media that lies routinely and without compunction is no different than a soldier on the battlefield—each of them are every bit as dangerous as a man with a gun in your face.

  If she was right, if she could take out the mouthpiece for Propaganda, the fog of lies would die down enough for people to once again rely on common sense and not be such sheep.

  It was the lies that bound people, the lies that turned their own brains against them. Who even knew what was real or true anymore?

  If he was right in his predictions, Skylar wanted backdoor access into state run TV. He suspected she could use someone like Tristan to shut down the feed, maybe even find physical vulnerabilities and torch the entire studio.

  “Bring her with you next time, or don’t show up,” Yoav said, reiterating the earlier words.

  “I need a contact if I can’t find her by the next class,” he said. The way the classes were run, if you worked hard enough to prove your value, you got the address to the next class. Classes were every other day, so you really had to work. If not, once you were out of the loop, you never saw them again.

  “No,” Kim said. “No contact.”

  “You’d drop me because you don’t trust me, but she’s so valuable to you that you hate me for losing her? Like she’s a puppy, or some toy?”

  “Find her!” Kim snapped, stepping toward him with an intensity he hadn’t seen before.

  “Give me the next location,” he said, looking at Yoav.

  He did, and Logan left.

  Chapter Eighteen

  He went to bed alone and he woke up alone. Now he was starting to worry. She’d been caught. He knew that now. That’s when he started thinking about the message she sent him via take-out. His cell phone alarm went off. When he shut it off, he saw he had a voice mail. He listened to the message. It was the same cryptic message he got in his food. She was almost too quiet, as if she’d been captured, or was in hiding. Yeah, she was definitely in trouble. No one escaped the Chicom surveillance system, not even someone like Skylar. The problem was, regarding her message, he didn’t know what she was talking about.

  When he got to work, he opened his dashboard and saw his pay status had been upgraded with his security. He opened his task list and saw the people Han had been watching.

  When Logan was told he was being retired as their Lead Software Engineer and moved into the position of Security Engineer, he kept his face neutral. Inside, he was upset. He liked his job. And it didn’t help that the new fancy title meant “snitch.” He was told, however, that the reach of SocioSphere was global, and the possibilities for a network of resistance fighters was a risk too great for the company to bear.

  It was his job to monitor potential dissidents. Back then, he hadn’t known he was being monitored as well, and by his friend no less. Who watches the watchers? He never thought to ask such a question. Well, he knew now.

  He did.

  Logan watched several men and women working in closet-offices like his looking to flush out people like Harper Whitaker.

  Sitting back, watching the watchers, he let his mind drift back to Skylar. He let the remembered smells of her fill his mind. He closed his eyes for a moment and thought of her skin, the smooth flesh, the ridges of scars along her back.

  She was his dream girl, a perfect beauty. That didn’t mean she was perfect looking, or even that nice. He was attracted to her strength. Her resilience. She was not a kind woman, not warm by any stretch, but she was a fighter and he liked that.

  He felt himself smile at the memories of her, then lose that smile to the knowledge that she was gone, missing, or perhaps even dead.

  He forced that thought out of his mind, clung to better memories of her.

  Her face and body were more tomboyish than anything. She could care less about makeup, fancy clothes, being seen at her best. The thing that made Skylar so sexy was not even the fight, but her energy behind even that.

  She was a force of will.

  There was also a soft, wounded side to her he’d recently discovered. They made love the day before yesterday—a monumental rarity—but that didn’t mean they were boyfriend and girlfriend. Their lifestyle was…alternative. As in not monogamous. It was complicated and apparently he didn’t understand.

  He was getting it, though.

  Resistance before all.

  With the Chicoms occupying California, Oregon and Washington, with the new President on bended knee kissing the boots of these heartless inhuman monsters, the county was quickly falling into oblivion.

  It wasn’t just the Chicoms, though. With the new President being grossly inexperienced and weak on everything but what used to be his social media platform, all of America was under assault. It wasn’t just the Chinese Communists. Other forces were converging. In fact, if he told himself the truth, if he let that thought creep into his mind, he knew that America was dead and these invading forces were the buzzards picking at the nation’s corpse. It was only a matter of time before a DNR. Do not resuscitate. To kill the American dream, you had to conquer the country and its people. They were almost there. After that, you needed to occupy the lands, slaughter the strongest males, mate with the women and kill all the children. He had a feeling that was next.

  What Skylar told him was that breaking America had always been the plan of the elite. The Chicoms, however, never expected to have to piece the country off to invading forces. He was sure the Chicoms had plans for that. It started with rewarding those who helped make everything possible. After the fall, the American traitors would move to the mainland where t
hey’d live out the rest of their lives like Kings and Queens. That was the recompense. That was what you got for betraying your nation. Privately, Logan hoped they’d be the first lambs led to slaughter.

  Before he knew what was really going on, he was ruled by one thought and one thought only: subservience. Go along to get along. He was a straight white male, a Christian, a natural born American. In that case, to the Chicoms, that meant enemy. And to some of these tyrants, his skin color and religious preference was reason enough for summary execution.

  As the hated gender and class, Logan Cahill was about as ordinary as they came. He didn’t have an aggressive build, but he wasn’t a tubby tubalard either. He was plain looking with a regular voice, a regular job and nothing overly threatening in his past.

  Well, until he met Skylar.

  Being with her, in whatever capacity it was they were living together, made him question his stance on life. Rather than let him continue cowering to those autocrats, Skylar showed him that he had balls enough to stand up and fight for what he loved. Now she was gone, and he was left to fight that fight alone.

  When she left the house yesterday morning, he had no idea his days with her were numbered. Neither of them knew this, but they were both taking chances for America, for the melting pot of citizens who were there to savor the freedoms no other country afforded. Even though those rights had long since been taken, the memories burned bright, and the land was worth salvaging.

  “If you remember what it was like to be free,” Skylar first told him, “then there are others who remember, too. Maybe you won’t fight to bring those freedoms back, but others will. Others with more grit and determination than you will fight and die to bring them back so people like you and me can once again have a life with meaning.”

  He hadn’t known at the time that she was neck deep into the Resistance. He didn’t know he’d soon join her.

  Two days ago, when Skylar asked him how many Chicoms he’d killed, it wasn’t a test of his loyalty to the cause, it was because she realized he had become part of the cause. This not only pleased her, it released part of her, the part of her that did not trust.

  Not many people could make the shift from subservience to the Resistance in such bold fashion. It meant you were giving your life, your fortune, your future over to the cause. With everyone in his life that mattered all but gone, he was ready to take up the cause. He had nothing worth living for, nothing he cared about enough to be used against him.

  “America has fallen, but she will not die,” Skylar was famous for telling him.

  He said it aloud into the room. It felt good. He was also scared. And that brought him to the Unfettered Hate.

  Logan turned on the television to the ugly, animated face of former Chairman Mao Tse Tung. The former Chairman spoke on TV, a hologram as real as the man who died in September of 1976. He’d heard this speech before—a thousand times, maybe—so much that he could probably give the speech himself.

  “We are not natives to your land,” Chairman Mao said in weak English. “We lifted you from the chaos of uncertainty and graced you with order, accountability, security. No longer must you struggle to get ahead, or worry that you’ll fall behind. There is peace in relinquishing control. You do not have to think about, or feel, the emotions of the past, for these emotions can be so destructive. So long as you hate, you are not free. We allow you to release the hate as you come to terms with this simple fact: you are no longer American. You are now a product of The New People’s Republic of China. We do not promote hate. Neither shall you. Now dig down deep into your heart and scream out all that residual animosity, all the left over resentment, all that pale futility.”

  With that 1984-like prompting, he screamed and cussed until fake Chairman Mao said, “Enough!”

  Then, his features softening with goodwill, almost like he had just blessed the masses, the simulation said, “Save some of these tender emotions for tomorrow. For now, sleep and dream the Chinese dream. And tomorrow, when you wake refreshed and ready to serve the state, go forth willingly and partake in the glorious, resplendent march of Chinese virtue.”

  An hour later, a pair of Chicom policemen showed up at his house looking for Skylar. They said she didn’t participate in the hate, that her phone was not registering.

  “It’s illegal to have your cell phone off,” one of them reminded Logan.

  “Mine is on.”

  “Hers is not,” the other said, barging in.

  “I am not her and she isn’t here,” he said, his agitation barely contained. “Whatever issue you have with her you’ll have to take up with her.”

  “We’re taking it up with you right now,” he said.

  Irritation quickly turned to hostility, a fire in his belly he could barely contain. Instead of lashing out, he put a smile on his face that confused the man. The Chicom’s frown deepened.

  “What are you smiling at?” he asked Logan.

  I’m smiling because if I don’t I’m going to kill you, he thought.

  “The absurdity of this situation,” he answered. “She’s a roommate, not a mate. It means I don’t know where she is or when she’ll be back.”

  “She’s not paying rent,” he said. “You are.”

  “Have you seen her?” Logan asked.

  “We have a photo,” the other man said, returning to the living room.

  “Then you know why I’m paying rent. I want her to…I would like more with her than I have. Call it a gesture, desperation, a reason for…reciprocity, if you catch my drift.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t.”

  “It’s not easy to get laid under your regime, nor do you allow for the privacy to do so. That doesn’t mean I don’t have needs.”

  The first man, the smaller of the two, struck him in the gut. He was about to retaliate when he realized his home feed was live, being recorded and keeping him pinned down.

  The taller one bent down so he was in Logan’s face. “Where is she?”

  If only he hadn’t been asked this question over and over again this evening, perhaps he could have been civil.

  “I don’t own her.”

  “Are you aware of any magnetic devices she has in her possession?” the short one asked.

  “I don’t go through her things. See, before you barged into our country and wiped your dirty asses all over it, we had this thing called privacy.”

  He saw the butt of the gun coming and decided to take it. In that split second, he could get what was coming to him and get knocked out at the same time. Hopefully when he woke, if he wasn’t in cuffs or shot to death, they’d be gone.

  They were.

  His head hurt something fierce, and his place was trashed. He stood up, saw blood all over his face and realized it was just a head wound. Those tended to bleed the most. When he took his First Aid kit out of his closet, he removed the suture and stitching wire, then went to work on the gash just above his eyebrow.

  He did a reasonable job, and then he used superglue where he didn’t do a good enough job.

  At least the bleeding had stopped.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Harper Whitaker woke up in a house nestled in the hills of southern Oregon. The nearby sounds of circular saws and contractors hammering nails the old fashioned way roused her. Pulling the blankets around her, curling up like an infant, she felt the cold from the nearby window seeping in. She opened her eyes, blinked a few times then tried to keep them open. The early morning sun glowing bright behind a thin panel of curtains was blinding. Turning over, closing her eyes again, she snuggled into the pile of blankets and smiled.

  This was as free as she’d ever get.

  Tucked away on a hundred acres of property with Skylar Madigan’s aunt, uncle and cousin, was worlds different than being in a cramped San Francisco apartment. She felt safe. Wanted. And far removed from the Chicom oppression. It was still awkward. She hadn’t gotten to know her three hosts properly, and for that she felt that perhaps her manners had slipp
ed.

  Feeling her body sufficiently roused, she eased her eyes open once more. The brilliance of the morning light was not as harsh. Glancing around the room, half her face covered with the blankets, she saw no sign of cameras and no other electronics to watch her. There wasn’t even a TV she’d have to watch that would watch her back when it came time to scream out her Unfettered Hate. Did these people even have to do that?

  Of course not, she thought.

  Connor and Orbey Madigan, Skylar’s uncle and aunt, didn’t have that uptightness about them that required such a crude display of emotion. Neither did Skylar’s cousin, Stephani. And in truth, this was not 1984, Chairman Mao was not in power, and this town had not yet fallen to Communist rule.

  So why should they be subservient to anyone?

  She heard a noise. There was movement on the bed. Smiling, she sat up and saw the young German Shepherd, Cooper.

  “What did I do to get you sleeping with me all night?” she asked in a tone known best as “animal-speak.” This growing beauty with his big, begging eyes bore the staid look of anticipation. Looking at him made her happy. Cooper’s tail began to wag.

  “You don’t make for the best bedfellow,” she said, wondering earlier what that big lump at the end of her bed was, “but it sure is a treat waking up to that handsome face of yours.”

  His tongue rolled out, then Cooper stood and walked across the bed, stepping on her arm, before bending down to lick her cheek. The doggie breath was bad but not unwanted.

  She scratched his cheeks and behind his ears, giving the pup the attention he wanted. He started licking closer to her face, to the point where she had to turn away, but by then she was giggling, something she hadn’t done since she was a small child.

  “He’s a gentleman to the end,” Stephani said, snapping her fingers.

  Cooper jumped off the bed, shaking the whole thing, then sat when Stephani told him to sit. The bedroom door hadn’t been opened, but it wasn’t closed either.