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

by Schow, Ryan

  “True.”

  “And Orbey did kill his friend,” she added, keeping her voice down.

  “Also true.”

  “So just keep quiet and let someone else do the talking.”

  He didn’t respond. Normally he’d relent, shrinking to the back of the room to let someone else handle it. But times had changed. Things were different.

  He was now part of the Resistance.

  “Did you hear me?”

  “I did.”

  “So stay quiet?”

  “Yeah, okay,” he said. Then he added, “Sure.”

  “That’s the guy who assaulted me,” Craig said, pointing at Logan. Now the Sheriff was looking at him, too. “I want him arrested.”

  “I didn’t see anyone assault you,” Orbey said.

  “Yeah, me neither,” Connor added. Looking down at Cooper, he said, “What about you, boy? You see Craig here get assaulted?”

  Cooper sat up, looked at Craig, then laid his head back down in the negative.

  “You saw it,” Craig growled. “Unless you’re gonna lie like these liars.”

  Logan stepped up on the porch, Harper beside him. He’d seen Harper fight, watched her kill three guys back in San Francisco.

  He liked their odds.

  “We just asked him to leave, Sheriff,” Harper said. “He got belligerent, and I admit, I did threaten to have him escorted off our property. But asking someone to leave who shouldn’t be here in the first place—”

  “He lost his friend,” the Sheriff pleaded.

  “He’s dead, not lost!” Craig shouted.

  “That doesn’t give you the right to go looking for him in the girl’s bathroom,” Harper said, her tone coarse.

  “What the hell are you even saying?” Craig snapped.

  “What she means to say is just because your friend is lost, doesn’t mean you can go around poking your head in places you don’t belong,” Logan said. “Isn’t that right, Sheriff?”

  The Sheriff looked at Craig and said, “Yeah, unfortunately he’s right.”

  Logan glance over at Orbey and said, “Do you want to file a complaint with the Sheriff right now? Craig admitted to being here after he was asked to leave.”

  “No I didn’t,” Craig argued.

  “Did we ask you to leave?” Logan said. “Because I’m pretty sure we did.”

  “You physically assaulted me,” Craig snarled.

  Logan rolled his eyes and said, “Oh, jeez. Here we go again with the theatrics.”

  Right then, Craig launched himself at Logan, who saw it coming. In fact, he’d lightly baited the heathen just to see what he’d do. The second Craig grabbed him, Logan stepped back, hands up.

  “Craig!” the Sheriff bellowed, reaching for him.

  He reared up to take a swing at Logan, but Harper shoulder-bumped him hard. The porch was only a foot off the ground, and since it wasn’t very high, there was no need for a railing. Craig stumbled off the side, twisted an ankle and howled out the second he hit the dirt.

  Logan walked over to the edge, looked down and said, “If you wanted the story to be more believable, you should have said Harper assaulted you, you sackless bitch.”

  The Sheriff stepped off the porch, leaned over and picked him up. Craig hobbled on one leg, going on about his ankle being sprained, about wanting to press charges, about his buddy being dead, not lost.

  “I’m so sorry, Orbey,” the Sheriff said.

  “Why you apologizing to her?” Craig screeched. “I want that fat bitch in jail. You hear me? I want her in jail!”

  “Shut up, Craig,” the Sheriff said as they started to walk away. Looking over his shoulder, he said, “I’ll have that warrant tomorrow, so don’t go anywhere.”

  “We’ll put on some eggs for you, Sheriff.”

  He nodded, not sure what to make of the hospitality. When Logan looked at them with concern, Harper said, “Me and Stephani burned the body to ash, mixed it with the dirt, then slaughtered a hen and buried her about a foot under the earth. There’s even a little cross with her name on it.”

  “The dead hen?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was her name?” he asked.

  “She didn’t have one, but if anyone asks, it was Lucy,” Connor said. “I’m sure we’ll be just fine.”

  When he first dropped Harper off at the Madigan’s place (per Skylar’s instruction), Stephani admitted to having a poacher problem. She said it was ongoing and the Sheriff never acted like it was a big deal. Now that one guy was burnt to ash and another got his ass kicked, it was becoming a big deal. Pinned between a murder investigation and an EMP, one more certain than the other, Logan knew they just needed to last a week before the EMP went off. When that happened, there’d be too many things to deal with to mess around with people like Craig and search warrants. And maybe, if the time was right, and circumstances dictated it, they’d give Craig a much deserved dirt nap.

  Sooner than later, if that’s what was to be.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Several days passed by, long enough for Harper and Logan to successfully seed the gardens, build two new raised garden beds, help paint the walls in the barn and start moving Connor’s hardware up to the barn.

  Vlad ended up insulting Stephani, saying bees were dumb and basically almost getting fired for just being a freaking knucklehead. The sad thing was, they needed Vlad more than Vlad needed them, so in the end no one was fired.

  After that, at the house, Connor blew up and said that’s what ladies get for sniffing around a construction site. Orbey slapped him; he pretended to be hurt, but then he winked at Logan who turned to conceal a laugh.

  The night before he was set to leave, Orbey and Stephani asked him to stay, to not go back.

  “As much as I’d love to stay, I really have to go,” he said. “I need to warn Kim, but I have to make sure the EMP goes off, too. If it doesn’t, then we got bad intel and we may be compromised. If that’s the case, I’ll ride it out there and pop up here every other week, if that’s okay.”

  “Of course,” Orbey said.

  After a wonderful meal, a nice evening on the porch and some stirring conversation, Logan said he was going to bed.

  “I’m tired, too,” Harper said.

  In the bedroom, with the light on low, Harper started to undress.

  “I can go out if you want,” Logan said.

  “It’s okay,” she replied. She removed her shirt and then her pants and socks. As he began to remove his shirt, he looked up and saw her looking at him. She removed her bra, causing him to draw a sharp breath, and then her underwear. He didn’t take his eyes off her.

  “Your turn,” she said.

  “Um, are we…”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, are you?” she asked.

  “I am.”

  “Good, I don’t want to face the apocalypse a virgin.”

  “Makes sense,” he replied.

  When he got into bed, she moved toward him, and then she moved on top of him. That night was nothing like his time with Skylar or Kim. They were both incredible women, and he wasn’t taking anything away from them—or even comparing them to each other—for that kind of thinking was beneath him. What he was acutely aware of was a compatibility he had with Harper that was easy, fun and energizing.

  “I stared at you through your monitor for weeks,” he said as she laid there snuggled up to him. “I watched your every expression, getting to know you through your looks, all the little emotions you barely let me read.”

  “I was a different person then,” she said. “I had iron walls around me. I was out in the open, hiding like my life depended on it.”

  “It did,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure you were a virgin?” he asked.

  She laughed and said, “Of course.”

  “So then…how did you…where did you learn…”

  “Porn hub,” she said, knowing what
he was trying to say. “I didn’t want to say I was lonely when I was younger, but I was. And don’t judge me. A lot of girls looked at porn back then.”

  “Hey, to each her own,” he said.

  “Do you realize that I haven’t been this skinny in five years, and I’m not really that skinny?”

  “Guys used to care about looks first, substance later. Not all guys, but you know…guys in general.”

  “And now?” she asked.

  “I can only speak for myself when I say I care about looks first and substance later,” he joked. She started laughing, then she slapped him playfully and said he was a clown. “Seriously though, I think substance is great, but competence is first and foremost.”

  “And looks come third?” she asked.

  “I like the way you look,” he told her. “That always matters, but it matters because how you look tells me who you are as a person. Not the looks themselves, but the micro-expressions. I’ve never met anyone who could hide in plain sight as well as you.”

  “Thank you,” she said, leaning forward and kissing him on the cheek. “Now be quiet so I can get some sleep, and maybe wake you in the night if the feeling gets me.”

  “Make sure you do,” he said.

  In the middle of the night, she woke him with an unspoken need. He went with it, and then he went back to sleep the minute she snuggled back up with him. Dawn came, and with that the sounds of a rooster and banging hammers. He dragged himself out of bed, went around back and took an ice cold shower. After that it was a hot breakfast of eggs and his favorite oatmeal.

  Orbey asked him again to stay. He politely declined, but then Cooper looked up at him, licked his hand and stared sadly into his eyes (which almost got him).

  To the dog, Harper said, “He’s already made up his mind to go. He’ll get back here when he can, right?”

  “Right,” he said. “But I love that you want me to stay. It feels good to be wanted. Even better to feel needed.”

  “Help me with the rainwater catch before you go?” Harper asked.

  Together they walked up the hill holding hands. He expected her to say something poignant, something romantic. Instead she brought him back to reality.

  “The Sheriff can haul Craig back down to town, but guys like that don’t relent. They only find different ways to get what they want or make the people standing in their way pay.”

  “That’s often the problem with small towns,” she said. “There’s always a Craig somewhere.”

  “At least we know one of them.”

  “At Five Falls Feed & Seed, there’s this guy who’s really creepy. Like so creepy, your aura grows fuzz. He’s the resident child molester. His skin is super shiny, he’s got bad hair and he talks with a syrupy lilt. The second I saw him, I felt it. You know…he felt wrong.”

  “Some normal people ping wrong on the radar,” he warned.

  “Yeah, but we have his history,” she said. “Tristan did a run of the town, matched the zip code with old police programs still running on the dark web.”

  “This is pre-Chicom occupation, right?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “And?”

  “We’re talking about aggravated sexual assault of a minor,” she said. “Real case of the nasties with this guy.”

  “Are you wanting to take him out?”

  “Of life, yes.”

  “We didn’t talk about this,” he said.

  “We’re talking now.”

  “I don’t know how I feel about that,” he said. “I mean, people can be rehabilitated. They can change.”

  “If you have control measures in place. Like the law, for example. Authority.”

  He thought about it, shook his head, then turned and shook it again. He didn’t want to admit it, but she was right. He’d killed so many Chicoms in this last week, he was now growing a conscience. Even worse, he was sleeping poorly at night and feeling crappy about it all day. Like his guts were clogged with clumpy oil and rust.

  “Are you sure there’s no other way?” he asked.

  “I’m sure.”

  Then again, on the flip side, he loved the strength he was drawing from the Resistance, even if it came at a cost. That cost, measured against the price of inaction, was manageable. So he did what he was taught. He moved forward, confronted the enemy, fought with conviction and killed to win.

  “I’ll back you no matter what you decide,” he said, his mind made up.

  “I want to kill him,” she said.

  He nodded his head this time, knowing the crossroads that lay before him. Support Harper and her preemptive strike, or defy her and turn all those surprising, momentous feelings into a distant memory.

  “Just wait until the EMP goes off,” he said. “If society doesn’t collapse, and those protections against guys like Ned are still in place, let’s assume he can still change. Or at least restrain himself.”

  “You didn’t see the way he looked at me.”

  “Is it anything like this?” he asked, making googly eyes at her, and staring at her breasts.

  She started laughing and said, “Okay, so I can do without that look again.” Then, seeing him mock pouting, she said, “I appreciate what you did for me. Getting me here. Making me into a woman.”

  “You were already an amazing woman,” he said.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I do.”

  “Thank you.”

  Looking at her seriously, but with compassion, he said, “Just doing my duty, ma’am.” She slapped him again, not hard, but enough to make a point.

  “I won’t lie,” he admitted. “I really don’t want to go home. I want to stay here with you and do that every night.”

  “So stay.”

  “This world is going to hell in less than three days. I have to find Skylar, or at least try, and if I can’t do that, Kim and the others need to know they can come here for refuge. They can come, right?”

  “Those were Skylar’s wishes,” Harper said. “And those are Orbey’s and Connor’s wishes.”

  “What about Stephani?”

  “You know her by now,” she said. “She’s easy, and she gets along with everyone. Just don’t mess with her bees.”

  “We’re going to need a bigger garden,” he said.

  “We already have the wood for more planters cut. We’re going to take dirt from the root cellar, mix it with compost, prep it properly and seed it. From there we need some other supplies to create a gravity fed drip system taken directly from the tank, but that’s another conversation.”

  “Well have fun with that while I’m back in hell,” he teased.

  Wrapping her arms around him, she said, “When this all falls apart, are you going to be with me, or am I going to be this thing you did?”

  “I’d like to be with you,” he said, meaning it.

  “What if you find Skylar?”

  “Then I do.”

  “You know what I mean,” she said.

  “I already told her I’d slept with you,” he said with a grin. “Which technically I wasn’t lying about.”

  “And?”

  “I just thought you should know.”

  “So after the EMP…”

  “I’m coming straight here,” he said, reassuring her.

  Shaking her head, she kissed him, then they walked down to the motorcycle, which Connor was filling with gas.

  “I forgot to ask,” Logan said to Connor, “is this bike EMP proof, do you think?”

  He nodded his head and said, “Pretty much everything we own is, the motorcycle included.”

  “Good.”

  With that, he started it up, thanked Connor, then looked one last time at Harper.

  “Get back here as soon as you can,” she said.

  “I will.”

  And then he took off, starting into the cold morning air, knowing that if getting back was as bad as getting there, he might show up to work with a few extra cuts and bruises. Then again, it was nothing he could
n’t weave into a story to fit his narrative.

  Besides, he was only going to be in San Francisco for three days and then it was go time. At least, if the countdown was accurate.

  For some reason, on the way home, the roadways were totally clear. There weren’t even border guards to check him on his way into California from Oregon. It was a strange feeling, driving for hours and encountering no one.

  About four hours into the trip, he wondered if the EMP had already gone off, but then he saw an airplane fly over and knew it hadn’t. It was a transport craft, not commercial. Then again, how long had it been since he’d seen a commercial jet?

  Months? Years?

  By the time he rolled into town, he was tired, his back hurt and he wanted a bed and a good night’s sleep. Traffic in town was terrible as usual, but not as congested as it was downtown. They were moving about, not a mile from his apartment when the signal lights went out and the cars in front of him rolled to a dead stop.

  “What the—?”

  In that moment, he wasn’t sure what exactly happened, only that one minute he was sitting there, then the next he was hammered from behind so hard he was pitched from his motorcycle and thrown into the car in front of him.

  His knees must have hit something—the handlebars or the deck lid spoiler of the car in front of him—and his face…good Christ it hurt! Looking up, he saw his head had spider webbed the back window of the car in front of him, the car he was now lying on.

  He remained still, blood leaking from his head onto the dirty white surface of the car.

  “Yo, man,” some burly guy was saying, “get the hell off my car.”

  All he could do was groan.

  “What’s wrong with my car?” some other lady was saying. “Is your car starting? Hey, guy…is your car starting?”

  The burly jerk turned and said, “It just stopped.”

  “It stopped,” Logan groaned, picking himself up off the lid of the car. “Wait, it just stopped?”

  “Is he alright?” a woman behind him was saying. “Are you alright young man?”

  He looked up through a wash of red and said, “You tell me.”

  “Bro, you’re bleeding all over my car,” the jerk said, his temperature rising. “Gross, man. Seriously.”