Dark Days of the After (Book 5): Dark Days of the Purge

by Schow, Ryan

  When they found cover, Skylar said, “We do it your way, Mr. Humanity, but only if everyone agrees to come with us when we leave this town. Because if we don’t kill the Fick degenerates, you’re talking about waging an entirely different war, one that only a few of us will be around to fight.”

  “Everyone will come,” Logan said, certain.

  “Felicity, too?” she asked. “And Orbey? What about Rowdy and Boone?”

  “They didn’t come here to stay here,” Logan said.

  Longwei was suddenly out back, the others roused by the gunfire and the mocking laughter. He had a gun in hand, ready to go. “Who was that shooting?” he asked.

  Barde and Jin walked forward through the dark, both of them armed. Jin said, “They’re gone. A couple of boys.”

  “You sure?” Logan asked. Barde and Jin nodded. “Okay, thanks guys.”

  They all went back to bed, leaving Logan alone with Skylar. Looking at him, she said, “For someone so great at reading people, you sure don’t know shit about those closest to you.”

  “What does that mean?” he asked.

  She left him in the darkness to ponder the things she’d said. Instead of thinking about it, he just shook his head then went back inside. When he crawled into bed and snuggled up against Harper, she was so deep in her slumber, she barely even noticed.

  Chapter Fourteen

  In the morning, Logan, Ryker, Clay, Skylar and Felicity drove to the Fick Ranch early, so little gas in the tank the engine began to shudder. Instead of driving onto the property like before, they parked a few houses down, snuck in through the back of the property and entered the house from behind. They found themselves in a laundry room with a washer and dryer that was as rusty as the automobile skeletons scattered about the property.

  There was an awful smell in the air. A wet, shitty smell. The five of them covered their noses, Logan moving out into the house first. The stench seemed to be coming from down the hallway. He checked it out, found Delmont sitting on the toilet reading an old Playboy magazine. He wasn’t doing anything untoward, but just the fact that he was reading porn while taking a dump was enough for him.

  Heading back to the laundry room, he said, “Delmont’s fishing with brown grenades.”

  “Gross,” Harper said.

  “Let’s get this over with,” Skylar asserted.

  Logan turned around, headed into the house, his gun out. They found the two boys at the kitchen table eating breakfast from cans. They had their backs to them, making it too easy. Logan put the barrel of his gun to Blane’s head. He was eating a can of mandarins with his fingers. There was a fair amount of grease under the kid’s fingernails.

  Sludge started to say something, but Felicity grabbed the nearest unopened can of fruit and struck him on the forehead with force. He started bleeding immediately. Holding his head, he looked up and saw Ryker’s gun in his face.

  “You make a noise, my gun makes a noise,” Ryker said. “Are you smart enough to know what I’m talking about?”

  Sludge looked at his hand, at a crimson red stain from where he drew back blood, then he looked up and nodded.

  In her hand, Felicity looked at the dented, bloodstained can. She turned it over, saw the picture of freshly cut peaches.

  “You’re too gross to eat something so sweet,” Felicity said.

  “Blane likes peaches.”

  Ryker put his finger to his lips and said, “Shhh.”

  Clay disappeared, but there was a ruckus in back, and some kind of scuffle. Then came the sound of glass breaking and Delmont crying out.

  Seconds later, Clay shoved Delmont into the open. His pants were falling down, his dirty white underwear barely pulled up.

  Logan shook his head in disgust. “You people…” he said, unable to complete the sentence.

  “Get them outside,” Skylar said, grabbing a butcher knife off the counter as she went. “And pull up his pants for heaven’s sake!”

  “Get them up, partner,” Clay said, knocking the back of his head with the barrel of his gun. Delmont pulled them up, cursing under his breath.

  Sludge started to cry at that point.

  Out in the front yard, Logan kicked out the backs of the two boy’s knees then shoved them to the ground. He meant to just put them on their knees, but he was so pissed off that they shot at him and Skylar last night he ended up kicking them in their backs as well. Both kids landed face first in the dirt. Blane tried to push himself up, but Logan kicked out his arm, and the boy flopped back to his belly. He stepped on Blane’s head and said, “Stay down, son.”

  Sludge was smart enough to keep his head down. But he couldn’t stop crying.

  “Dry them tears, boy,” Logan said, kicking dirt in his eyes. Sludge turned around, tried to paw the dust from his eyes.

  Sludge started to shake, and then scream. Logan dropped to a knee, punched the kid three times hard, and the noise stopped.

  Logan stood over the unconscious mutant. He looked at Delmont who was mad-dogging him hard. When the man refused to look away, Logan rolled Blane over, then knelt down and drilled him in the solar plexus with one clean punch. Blane curled in hard, tried to take a breath, but couldn’t. He stood up and looked back at Delmont, grinning in the face of so much hatred.

  “One can’t breathe and one’s not awake,” Logan said, chiding him. “I like them best that way.”

  “We all do,” Felicity said, chiming in.

  Skylar walked up to Delmont and said, “Do you see us as something you can just take for your sexual pleasure now?” The man’s jaw flicked, gnashing his teeth together. Standing face to face with him, she continued. “If you had to choose between white meat or dark meat, Fickface, which one of us would you want as your Grim Reaper?”

  “I hope you’re not expecting an apology,” he snapped.

  “We’re not your living breathing fantasies,” Skylar hissed, unrelenting, “nor are we vessels born solely to fulfill your perversions.”

  “Who says so? You? Ha!” Delmont spat. “Mother Nature says so, sweetie pie.”

  “Not Mother Nature,” Skylar growled, inches from his face. “Me. I say so.”

  “If me and my boys don’t get you, who does?” he asked, sniffing the air around her. Clay tightened his grip on the man. “I bet a girl like you is ferocious in the sack.”

  Ryker stepped forward, but Skylar held up a hand, stopping him.

  “Ah, there he is,” Delmont grinned. “The boyfriend.” Delmont had a splotch of blood on his lip and a growing lump on his forehead where Clay must have hit him in the bathroom.

  When she promised Logan she wouldn’t kill the boys, she never promised not to kill their father. “Get the gas,” she told Ryker, eyes still on Delmont. “Every last drop.”

  Behind her, Sludge regained consciousness as evidenced by the sounds of mewling and sobbing. Blane told him to be quiet. He tried.

  The staring contest between her and Delmont continued. There wasn’t an ounce of quit in him, something she appreciated, but only on a very small, very insignificant scale.

  “Before all this, before these Chicom vermin scurried into town,” Skylar said, “you were the blight on this world. You and those little ingrates you call kids.”

  “I love it when a woman talks dirty,” he whispered, licking his lips, more out of fear than desire.

  The blade was in her hand, right at her side. She stepped back a good foot. He saw it.

  “What about when a woman talks about death?” she asked, louder this time. “Does that make your little pecker twitch?”

  She drove the knife point forward, but pulled it at the last moment. Still, it was sticking him in the scrotum a fraction of an inch. He stole a breath, fear crowding out his pride. She leaned into the blade a good quarter of an inch, gave it a twist. He cried out, fear now becoming sheer terror.

  “Oh, there it is,” she whispered. “Do you know the stink of you just changed? Yeah, it did. You went from smelling like a dog to smelling like adr
enalized game. It’s fear, and it’s written all over your face.”

  “I’m not afraid of you,” he said, unconvincing.

  “You know what they say about adrenaline in the blood, right?” Skylar asked. Everyone tensed. She continued, unwavering. “It taints the taste of the meat.”

  Now she really shoved the blade into him, causing him to howl out and lean forward even farther. Clay gripped him hard. Skylar didn’t flinch. She just held onto him, turning the buried blade just right. Delmont was huffing out a breath, trying to struggle, but every time he moved, Clay increased the pressure on him and she dug the blade in just a touch more.

  “You’ve fouled this earth with your presence long enough,” Skylar hissed.

  With his head leaning far enough forward, she ripped the knife out of his groin and thrust it straight up into his chin, through his tongue and into the upper palate of his mouth.

  Clay gasped, as did someone else.

  “This is what we call shit on a stick, boys,” Skylar announced, looking over at the two horrified kids. Delmont was gagging, making ugly, dying noises, bleeding all over her hand. “Your father is sad to say that he will not be there to see you two take brides, or those ladies—and I use this term loosely—crap out a couple of ugly ass grandkids.”

  The two ingrates started to squirm, but Logan kicked more dirt in their faces. For whatever reason, this is when Felicity snapped. She started kicking them relentlessly, especially Blane. Skylar wondered when she would stop. But things got very quiet (except for Delmont’s gagging) and Felicity didn’t quit. Startled, surprised, Skylar watched her go after Blane until she exhausted herself.

  When Felicity was finished kicking the crap out of him, Skylar yanked out the blade and stepped aside, Delmont collapsing into the dirt. “You want to off the two of them?”

  A fair question.

  Instead, Felicity bit back on her rage, then shook her head no.

  “Are you sure?” Logan asked. “Because I know that look in a person’s eyes and those two made those same psycho eyes at you.”

  Felicity bent over Blane and said, “If I ever see either of you again, even if it’s a mistake, I’m going to put a round right here.” She jabbed a finger into his forehead, and then she turned and did the same to Sludge. “I just saved your lives, so say thank you.”

  “Thank you,” they both said.

  “Now we’re going to take your gas and anything else we want. And then we’re going to leave. If in that time you even think about retribution, it will be the last coherent thought to occupy that useless fat sack of rotten jelly you call a brain.”

  Both boys lowered their eyes, unable to look at her. From across the yard, just outside the workshop, Ryker said, “We hit the motherlode!”

  “Really?” Felicity said, catching her breath.

  “Oh yeah!” he said, smiling wide. “Get the trucks back here, let’s fill ‘em up.”

  Felicity looked down at the boys and said, “Get up, cretins. You’re pumping gas now.”

  When they got done filling up the tanks, the gas cans and six more five gallon cans they confiscated from the Ficks, they left the boys standing there.

  To Felicity, Skyler said, “Tomorrow we need to move out of your house and get into the alternative house.”

  “I’ll think about it,” she said. “If you’re worried about the Ficks though, I think you’re wasting your time.”

  “Don’t be so sure,” Skylar said. “We just started a war here.”

  “Those two donkeys?” Ryker asked, smiling. “I don’t think so. I mean, don’t get me wrong, they could retaliate, but really, what could they do?”

  “That kid’s eyes,” Logan said, injecting his opinion. “The way Sludge was looking at you…there’s something demonic about him. I can’t put my finger on it, only to say that look is…wrong.”

  “Why don’t you show me the house you want to take me to on the way back home,” Felicity said, reconsidering. “Just in case you’re right about them.”

  Skylar drove to the house she, Ryker, Barde and Jin found. Inside, they took the two dollar tour, walking through the kitchen and living room, and then the bedrooms. The place was picked clean, not from looting, but because it seemed someone had moved, or that this was a seasonal house.

  Lord knew a person could only take so much Oregon rain before getting depressed.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Chicom convoy rolled into Portland like a thunder storm, the ground vibrating from the crush of vehicles traveling upon it. Quan turned toward the noise. They all did.

  “Quan?” Lienna said.

  “SAA, I think.”

  “That’s not the SAA, that’s all of Mexico,” Reed said, concerned. Reed was one of Brandon’s guys. He was a tall white guy, skinny but a proficient fighter judging by the way he walked around.

  Brandon said, “Let’s go,” and everyone got to their feet, hustling down the staircase in the darkness, much quicker than was probably safe should the place be crawling with SAA, Chicoms, American Resistance, or violent opportunists.

  The air in the building was stuffy, warm in spite of the early morning hour. By the time they descended into the lobby, a few of them were sweating, Quan included. The prospect of fresh air was becoming less of a hope and more of a full blown need.

  Brandon got to the lobby’s front door, carefully opened it up to the street, then peeked left and right into the darkness. He held up his hand, stopping everyone. Quan stayed tight on his shoulder. Cool morning air washed over Quan silken, like a dream, chilling his skin, wicking away the gathering of heat.

  The steady rumble of vehicles cut through the utter silence of the night.

  “How far away are they?” Quan asked.

  “Four, maybe five blocks?” Brandon whispered. “Can’t be sure.”

  In the dead of night, especially in a powerless city filled with towering buildings and endless streets, sounds could be deceiving. The source of the noise could be two blocks away, or five, maybe even ten. Regardless, the longer the ruckus persisted, the more impressive and daunting it became.

  Quan felt his stomach drop. This is what Five Falls went to war with? This is the line of vehicles that survived their attack?

  When the streets before them seemed to pose no threat, Brandon slipped out, the rest of the two crews hot on his and Quan’s heels. Everyone hugged the buildings in a single-file line, moving on the balls of their feet, guns at their sides, heads on a swivel. They reached the first intersection, and then the second and third intersections. By the sound of it, the SAA were still several blocks away.

  Brandon raised a hand; everyone stopped. Turning, he looked them over. Including Quan and himself, there were five of his guys and six of Quan’s guys for a total of twelve men and one woman. Thirteen guns, against the SAA. Brandon’s eyes flicked with worry to Quan’s.

  Quan wondered, what is he doing? A quick read of my guys? He wondered, is he trying to determine if me and my team will turn on them when we get the chance?

  “Do I need to be concerned about you?” Brandon asked, confirming Quan’s suspicions.

  “Not me or my team,” Quan said. “Unless you turn on us. Do that and you’ll have plenty to be concerned about.”

  “We have bigger problems than each other,” Brandon said, relaxing.

  The big man overshadowed Quan in size, but not in prowess. Quan had killed larger, meaner men in his time.

  “Let’s go,” Brandon said as they continued down the street, crouched low and vigilant.

  The cool air grew colder by the minute, but the heat under Quan’s skin had returned. Controlling his breathing, steadying himself, his eyes seemed to find every ambush point. Yet they were not ambushed. Were they the only wolves out that night? Them and the SAA? Or had all the other wolves lost interest in each other? Maybe they were like Brandon, just trotting through the night, silently in search of this new, noisy beast.

  When they saw the convoy of SAA vehicles moving thro
ugh the streets at a slow, steady pace, Quan wondered why the SAA had come into the city. Why not just stay on I5 and move through? Obviously they were there for another reason. He wondered if they were searching for the Chicoms. Or were they there to scrape the city clean, strip away its last hidden treasures? He wasn’t entirely sure what the play was, then again, the SAA didn’t know what he knew, and that’s that the Chicoms were not in Portland.

  At one of the buildings, Brandon turned around, looked past Quan and said, “Lavar, crowbar.”

  Brandon had two black guys on his crew, both of them good sized and resolute, both of them self-described bangers, either in this life, the past life, or both. Lavar slid past them, wiggled the crowbar in the doorjamb of a six or seven story building door. When it was snug, he leaned on it hard, smiled at the splintering of wood, the give of the hinges and finally, the gunshot pop of the door breaking open.

  Lavar pulled the crowbar out, Brandon breached the entrance, and everyone else slid into the building, quietly closing the door behind them. Guns were out; a weak flashlight lit the scene before them. It took a moment, but then Quan said, “There,” and they all moved to the staircase, heading to the top floor in a near silent, single file line.

  There, Brandon said, “Lavar,” and the man was there again. Instead of prying open the glass door, he turned the crowbar around and used the bent wrist end of it to shatter the glass. He spun it around again, clearly an expert, and cleared the broken glass edges all along the door frame, leaving nary a shard behind to tear open a shirt, an arm, or a leg.

  At the windows, the two crews had an opera house view of the city below.

  “Mother of God,” he heard Cleavon whisper as he took in the sight of the SAA for the first time.

  Cleavon was taller than Lavar, six three easy; where Cleavon was tall, Lavar was wide. He had that linebacker’s build whereas Cleavon possessed a basketball player’s height. Both men moved like they were smaller, lighter, more agile. Quan would have killed to have two guys like that on his crew.