The Longest Night

by K. M. Fawkes

  The Survivors

  Enter Darkness Book Three

  K. M. Fawkes

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Copyright 2018 by K. M. Fawkes

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part by any means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the explicit written permission of the author.

  All characters depicted in this fictional work are consenting adults, of at least eighteen years of age. Any resemblance to persons living or deceased, particular businesses, events, or exact locations are entirely coincidental.

  Chapter 1

  Flames leapt into the sky, sending heat and ashes up into the cold air. It was bad enough watching everything he’d had—everything he couldn’t replace—as it burned. The cabin had been as much a part of his life as his parents had been. It had represented safety and security even when everything else fell apart around him, and it wasn’t fun to watch it burn because of some insane cult leaders’ grudge. But that wasn’t the worst part.

  No, that honor went to the screams that filled his ears. Panicked and pained, they rose even over the crackling of the flames that were destroying everything. He knew who they belonged to. Anna. Sammy. Martha. He heard Anna scream his name, begging him to come save them.

  The three of them must have snuck back in at some point. Maybe Anna had had a change of heart once she got far enough away. Or maybe Sammy and Martha had pleaded to come back home. And now, they were trapped inside, dying as they screamed for help, and there wasn’t a single thing that he could do about it. The flames were too high for him to get into the cabin. He could hear the structural supports coming down inside already. But what else was he going to do? Listen to them die? They were all he had left now.

  “Anna!” he shouted, running toward the cabin. “Anna, I’m coming!”

  As his feet touched the first porch step, the cabin exploded in a rain of debris that hurled him backward. He was suddenly deaf and blind in a wave of agony.

  Brad jerked upright with a gasp. His head bumped against the low roof of the small tent he was sleeping in, reminding him of where he was. He caught his breath, rubbing his hand down the front of his shirt. His chest ached and he wondered if he’d been breathing during the dream. It certainly didn’t feel like it.

  When he pushed his hands through his hair, he discovered that ice had formed in the sweat on his forehead. It made sense; it was cold as hell, and that was the only part of him that stuck out of the mummy-style sleeping bag.

  He began to count as he forced himself to inhale for a count of five. How many times had he had this dream? How many times had he heard their dying screams in his head?

  Too damn many. It was the only answer he could come up with in his groggy state and it wasn’t exactly satisfactory.

  “They left, remember?” he whispered, trying his hardest to speak to the part of his brain that controlled dreams.

  Was it his subconscious? Or was there a deeper part that he needed to reach? Maybe he needed to ask to speak with the manager. He shook his head at his typically black-humored wandering thoughts and went on. “They never even saw the fire. Anna ditched you like an unpopular prom date and ran for the hills.”

  His heart rate slowed slightly as he talked himself through it. He had never thought that he’d come to see Anna leaving him as a good thing, but with the onslaught of the dreams, he’d changed his mind. It didn’t mean that it didn’t hurt—because it still clawed at him when he couldn’t find enough to distract himself with—but he was relieved that she had vanished.

  If you’re so relieved, why are you out here chasing after her? If it was his subconscious, and his subconscious was a real asshole. “Because there’s a fucking cult hiding out in these woods,” he answered himself. “And I really don’t want Anna running right into their arms.”

  Brad also had a sneaking feeling that he owed Anna an apology. She hadn’t handled certain things well, but there were things he’d screwed up too. He should have listened to her when she talked about leaving. Not in the beginning, but certainly once the Family had found them. Even a run for it in the woods would have been better than what had ended up happening. And they all would have been together.

  If Anna had stayed, he wasn’t sure how things would have played out. He’d run the scenario over and over in his head and he had to admit that he wasn’t even sure that he would have been able to get them all out when the Family had attacked. He’d barely gotten himself out alive. And the cult would probably have found a way to come in and grab Martha in all the chaos, anyway. Running would have been the right choice. He hoped that he would have a chance to let Anna know that one day.

  He lay back down slowly, pulling the small blanket over his head to keep out the cold and trying to finish regulating his breathing. It was still a little too choppy for him to be able to get back to sleep. In hopes of distracting himself, he went back to the original question. How many times had he had the dream? He began calculating, keeping his thought process slow and deliberate.

  When the sun rose in a few hours, it would be his seventh morning in the woods. Which meant that this was his sixth time having some variation of the dream. He had it every time he managed to sleep deeply enough for his REM cycles to kick into high gear, which was more often than he’d thought that it would be.

  The first night Brad had spent in the small tent had been dreamless, but that was only because it had also been sleepless. He thought back to the morning that had preceded it, inviting the pain once again. It was almost like continuing to poke at a sore tooth. It hurt, but it hurt in a familiar way that told you that you hadn’t gone numb.

  The cold, pale winter sun rose over the ashes of his cabin and he got up slowly, cold to his very bones. He was so stiff from the hours by the frozen lake that he could barely move, but he didn’t really care. There wasn’t really any rush, after all.

  He walked stiffly over to the tree where he’d stashed the extra pack, moving almost on autopilot. He knew what he needed to do, but there was no real drive to save himself this time.

  The Family would probably come back, just to make sure that he hadn’t managed to salvage anything. They would probably rake through the ashes of the cabin and look for his bones. They seemed like a thorough group. The fact that they wouldn’t find anything sent a quick burst of warmth through his chest. They hadn’t managed to kill him. In the end, they’d failed.

  He glanced around the orchard. Parts of it were badly singed; some trees probably wouldn’t bear fruit for several years, at least. Some might need to be cut down completely.

  Brad knew that the garden up front would be totally destroyed. If the fire hadn’t gotten it, then the people and trucks that had trampled through it would have finished the job. There would be seeds and bulbs in the cellar but… Brad shook his head firmly. “No,” he whispered, speaking almost desperately into the frigid air. “No, I don’t care what survived.”

  Nothing that mattered had made it through the Family’s attacks. What was
left was no longer his concern. He slung the pack over his shoulder and headed into the woods.

  Brad closed his eyes and they popped right back open again. With a sigh, he had to acknowledge that he wasn’t going to get back to sleep. He sat up, bringing the extra blanket with him. He draped it over his head to try to cover the parts of him that the sleeping bag didn’t. Even with the extra effort, he still wasn’t exactly warm.

  In fact, he hadn’t been warm since the night he’d lost the cabin. He wondered how long he could keep it up. The winter was turning out to be just as brutal as he’d been afraid it would be.

  Anna, Sammy and Martha had gear just like his, so he wasn’t too worried about their ability to survive. Which didn’t mean that he wasn’t worried. So many things could go wrong, even to a well-supplied group of people. The hundreds of climbers who perished on Everest were a perfect, morbid example.

  His brain took up that line of thought and ran with it eagerly. What if they tried to light a fire and ended up burning their supplies, or themselves? What if they happened upon a bear’s den in their search for shelter? What if they grew so desperate for food that they took chances and ate something that would kill them? There were plenty of options there.

  Scenario after scenario played in his head and they grew worse and worse. He had to find them, even if Anna didn’t want to see him. He needed to know that they were somewhere safe.

  It was time to make some plans, but as always, when he pushed himself on the point, his mind scrambled in circles. He knew that he couldn’t go too far west. He’d run into the Family out there. He didn’t know how far their territory spread, and he definitely didn’t want to find out, either.

  On the other hand, if he went too far north, he might end up dead at the Army’s hands. If that faction was still alive, they probably wouldn’t be thrilled to find that he was alive—and their truck was definitely out of commission, thanks to him.

  East wouldn’t do him much good. It would just take him right back to his own place. Or into the lake. Well, onto it, since it was still frozen. The idea wasn’t appealing.

  “Well, there you go. Process of elimination,” he said aloud. “South it is.”

  Of course, south took him back in the direction he’d come from months before. And who knew what was happening back in Bangor at this point? The thought made him pause for a moment, but then he shrugged. It didn’t really matter. He had to do something; he couldn’t stay where he was.

  He wasn’t running out of rations just yet, but that was only because he barely ate. Losing everything was pretty hard on a person’s appetite.

  Reminded that he needed calories, Brad fumbled in the dark for the pack. After a bit of rummaging around, he found and broke open one of the military ration bars. He sighed and then began chewing the dry, tasteless thing as fast as he could without choking on it. Being taken down by an MRE in the dead silence of a winter night was the last way he wanted to go, after coming this far.

  “South it is,” he told himself after he’d taken a long drink of half-melted snow from his water bottle. “Even if I don’t know what the hell is going on out there.”

  He much preferred the devil he didn’t know, at this point. The unknown had to be better than a crazy militia or an insane doomsday cult, and at least he knew enough now to avoid the interstate. That knowledge had to give him a slight upper hand.

  He could find plenty of supplies to stock up with in the city. There had to be at least some food left, as well as medical supplies and maybe even some clothes. Hopefully, he could even find some time of shelter out there. There would be more room to hide if he ran into another group of nutjobs, too.

  He tried hard to talk the experience up for himself, listing as many pros as he could, but he wasn’t exactly successful. He really didn’t want to go back to Bangor or any other big city if he had to pass through his old home. And he wasn’t so stupid that he didn’t recognize that heading into a city in the winter of an apocalypse could be a suicide mission.

  A soft patter on the tent above his head made him jump, the sound becoming more regular after a moment. Was it starting to snow? If it was, he wasn’t going anywhere—he’d end up looking like Jack Nicholson as the end of The Shining.

  Unzipping the tent just slightly, Brad took a look outside. The moon was out and in the light that speared through the trees, he could see that just as he’d feared, it was snowing. Again.

  He sighed and pulled his head back into the tent. Then, he dropped his head into his hands. He’d liked snow once. And not even just in the way that all kids liked snow. He’d genuinely enjoyed it up until this damn winter.

  Of course, before this winter, he’d had a house. It was one thing to watch the snow from the front window and enjoy the slower pace of life that came with a big snowfall. It was something else entirely to camp on top of the stuff.

  The snow had finally stopped after the Family had showed up to ruin his life, and he’d thought that his luck might have turned. Why did it have to start again now? And who knew how much more there would be by dawn? It could drop a foot and half for all he knew; then, he really would be trapped.

  Brad sighed and pulled the blanket off of his head, folding it up and stuffing it into his pack. His course was clear: if he wanted to have a chance to get anywhere quickly, he had to start now. Luckily, there wasn’t a great deal to pack.

  Chapter 2

  Hours later, as he squinted against the snow that was somehow driving directly into his face no matter which way he looked, Brad wondered if he’d made a big mistake. He couldn’t have known it at the time he’d left, but this wasn’t just any snowstorm.

  He wondered what he’d done to deserve such bad luck. With the wind whipping around him and the snow hurtling down, he had to admit that this was shaping up to be an honest-to-God blizzard. His feet had gone numb from cold and he stumbled from time to time. Maybe he should be grateful for the stiff wind. At least it helped keep him upright.

  Dull pain throbbed like a drumbeat in his head from breathing in the cold air and from squinting against the snow. Honestly, for all the visibility he had, he didn’t know why he was even bothering to squint.

  With a muttered curse, he brought his compass up directly in front of his face, cupping his hands around and it and inclining his head down. Brad was relieved to see that at least he was still headed south. Maybe a little more southeast than he’d originally planned, but that was still okay.

  The flakes of snow bombarded him in a fresh swirl of wind and Brad caught his breath at how strong it had been. It might not matter where he was heading. He might not survive the night either way.

  He couldn’t imagine making camp in this weather. Even if he’d wanted to camp on the snow, his small backpacker’s tent just wouldn’t hold up. It would keep the snow off of him, but the fabric stood a very real chance of ripping in the wind.

  He stayed where he was, buffeted by the wind and paralyzed with indecision, holding the compass in his slightly numb fingers and closing his eyes against the snow. His mind was beginning to race again and he felt panic claw its way up his chest. His grip on the compass tightened until his fingers ached even more than before. This was it. He had to decide. His knees buckled on his next step forward and fear joined the panic.

  “So, what are you going to do?” he yelled at himself, forcing his legs to move again.

  Another step and then another. He wasn’t so cold that he couldn’t keep going. And he discovered that it felt good to shout. There was no way in hell anyone would hear him over the wind, even if there was someone dumb enough to be out in the storm with him.

  “Are you just going to lay down and die?” He paused, as if he was giving himself a chance to answer, but of course, he didn’t. “No? Then shut the fuck up and keep walking!”

  So that’s what he did. He stumbled along, head down to the keep the snow from stinging his eyes, until he noticed that the trees were thinning out. The wind would be even worse out of their shelter,
but he didn't care. He was starting to feel more than a little claustrophobic among the trees. He forced himself to pick up the pace until he was out of the woods and his breath burned in his lungs with every step.

  As he moved out of the shelter of the trees, Brad began to feel a different texture to the ground underneath the snow. It was too smooth to be a field. He scuffed his boots over the surface, trying to dig down past the snow. After a moment, his heart leapt when he discovered that he was now walking on a road. It was a dirt road, but he didn’t care. Roads led somewhere; hopefully, this one would take him to a place he could take shelter for the night.

  Slowly, over the next mile, the dirt road grew wider. Then, he realized that he could feel pavement under his boots. He’d never thought that he’d miss that sensation, but he had. Just walking on a man-made surface was absurdly comforting. He wished that the snow wasn’t muffling the sound. Then again, he wished the snow away for a lot of reasons.

  He was nearly half a mile down the paved road when he saw a gigantic lump on the side of it. His heart nearly stopped for a moment before he recognized what it was.

  In Brad’s defense, it had been a while since he’d seen a civilian vehicle—let alone one that was nearly completely cloaked in snow. It looked more like a creature straight out of a science-fiction movie than something that had once been a part of his everyday life.

  A few hundred feet away from that sat a big red SUV. It was a little more recognizable, but its tires were completely sunk in the snow. As he continued walking, he saw more and more cars. They also got closer and closer together.

  “What the hell were you people doing?” Brad wondered out loud. He had a vague sense of where he was now, and he knew that there was nothing around for miles. Especially nothing that would have drawn in people who were running from death. So why had so many people stopped here?

  The answer became clear when he stepped around a big black diesel truck that was stopped in the middle of the road. There were four cars in front of it, blocking both lanes. The truck had barely avoided hitting them, it seemed. The four cars were fused together by what had apparently been one hell of an accident. He doubted that 911 had been prompt in responding to it—if they’d responded at all.