by Kyla Stone
More rioting in Chicago, Atlanta, and dozens of other cities as food, water, and power remains unavailable…Nine soldiers and thirty-six civilians killed last night in armed altercations in Greater Miami… A hurricane swirling out in the Atlantic…President Harrington to recall one-hundred-and-fifty-thousand forward deployed troops, many of them stationed in Syria, to aid the recovery efforts and maintain martial law…
None of it was good. They’d been at Ezra’s for four days in relative peace, but she knew things were still bad out there, and getting worse.
And she knew who was coming for her.
She wanted to be able to defend herself. She pointed at one of the shotguns and mimed shooting it at the target.
“No!” Dakota said at the same time Ezra said, “Yes.”
I want to do my part, Eden signed.
“I can’t learn ASL in a week, Eden,” Dakota said. “I’m sorry, but I can’t understand what you’re saying.”
Eden grabbed her notebook from the tray and wrote, I want to help, underlining help.
“It’s too dangerous.” Dakota shook her head emphatically. “Absolutely not.”
Eden swallowed her frustration. Dakota wanted her to grow up and be brave, but when she tried, Dakota held her back.
It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right.
Everyone else was putting themselves on the line to protect this place. Eden wanted to do her part. No, she needed to do her part.
Julio studied Dakota, his brow furrowed. “She’s not as fragile as you think she is,” he said gently.
Dakota scowled. “I know that, okay?”
Ezra finished field-stripping his Remington and set it carefully down on the table. He straightened the newspaper beneath it so it was perfectly square. “As I recall, when I took you out for the first time, you weren’t much older than she is now. You did just fine.”
“That was different,” Dakota said without conviction, as if she wasn’t even convincing herself but was too stubborn to give in.
“We need all hands on deck,” Logan said. “She has every right to learn to defend herself, too.”
Logan and Dakota exchanged looks. Eden expected Dakota to be angry at him for butting in, but she wasn’t. She looked apprehensive, anxious, maybe a little sad.
Eden wrote, I can do this. She wasn’t going to give in this time. She could be just as stubborn as Dakota. Even more, maybe. Without waiting for anyone’s permission, she dropped the notepad on the table, grabbed the AR-15, and hefted it in her arms.
29
Eden
Park snorted. “That thing’s half as big as you are.”
Eden glared at him. She would’ve signed, So what? But her hands were full.
“A .22 will work better for her,” Ezra said. “Easier to handle, less kickback.”
Dakota gave a resigned sigh. “Fine.”
“I’ll teach her,” Logan said suddenly, rising from the picnic table bench.
Eden and Dakota looked at him in surprise. Ezra’s scowl deepened.
He shrugged his broad shoulders self-consciously. “Someone’s got to do it. And Ezra’s busy. Come on.”
He chose a small snub-nosed revolver and traded Eden for the AR-15. “A Ruger LCR 22 revolver. Six rounds, hardly any recoil.”
She took the gun and followed him to the range, swatting away a swarm of tiny bugs, more nervous than she’d expected.
Logan was intimidating. He was an expert marksman, a trained fighter. She was just a clumsy girl who’d barely held a gun, let alone shot someone with it.
Logan threw her a rueful grin, like he was aware how uncomfortable they both were. “It’s good to try new things, right?”
I guess so, she signed with a shrug.
His smile widened. He wasn’t so intimidating when he smiled. She remembered their awkward conversations in the hospital, when he sat for hours by her bedside.
He must’ve remembered, too, because he said, “Pretend the target is a platter of spaghetti drenched in soy sauce and banana peppers.”
She wrinkled her nose.
“Exactly. Nuke that thing from orbit.”
Patiently, he instructed her how to stand with her legs shoulder-width apart, how to aim. “Make sure the gun’s nice and steady. Make it stable. Make sure you have good sight alignment. Slow your breathing, control your heart rate—that’ll help steady your nerves. When you’re ready to fire, place the pad of your finger on the trigger and slowly build pressure, continuing to pull through after the shot’s been fired. Squeeze, not pull, okay? You don’t want to jerk the trigger and miss the target.”
She hung on his every word.
“It’s your turn,” he said with a wry half-smile. “Go for it, kid.”
She clasped the grip like Logan had shown her, with her index finger straight and well outside the trigger guard. She knew not to touch the trigger until she was ready to shoot something. She pulled her arms up and joined her hands together, her left beneath the grip to steady her aim.
The revolver was small and comfortable in her hands. She fit her finger in the curve of the trigger and squeezed. She barely felt the recoil. She didn’t hit the target, but Logan was right—it was a good gun for her.
For the first hour, Eden mostly hit the haybales. By the end of the second hour, she’d punched several holes in the target.
With each squeeze of the trigger, she imagined herself growing stronger, braver, defeating nightmare after nightmare, until there were no fears left to overcome and she stood alone in the battlefield of her imagination.
They practiced for the rest of the afternoon, taking frequent breaks for more lemonade and copious amounts of Haasi’s insect repellent spray. Logan never got irritated or short-tempered the way Dakota did.
“If we had a week, we’d make an expert marksman out of you,” Logan said.
She grinned with pride. It felt like her first real smile since the blast.
The rumble of engines broke through the hot stillness.
Logan stiffened.
Eden shot him a questioning look.
“Sounds like trouble.” Logan turned toward the noise, his hand already moving toward the pistol at his back.
30
Logan
The roar of the engines grew louder.
Logan hurried back to the picnic table, Eden trailing him.
“That must be the Colliers’ patrol,” Park said.
“They best not show their faces on my property again,” Ezra growled.
Logan pulled out his pistol, racked the slide, and made sure a round was chambered. He holstered the pistol and grabbed his freshly loaded AR-15. The rifle was far more intimidating. “We should check it out.”
Dakota jumped up. “I’m with you.” She turned to Eden. “You stay here with Ezra. Keep practicing.”
“We’ll keep a close eye on her,” Julio said, smiling warmly at Eden.
“Don’t let them set foot on my land!” Ezra called after them.
They jogged the few hundred feet to the cabin and then beyond to the dirt driveway.
Dakota rolled her eyes. “He’s like an old woman sometimes.” She pitched her voice high and whiny. “You kids stay off my lawn!”
Logan gave a hard laugh, but his nerves were strung taut, the buzz of adrenaline coursing through his veins. He was fully alert, listening to the motorcycles drawing closer, aware of the heat shimmering the air, the still trees, the cabin, and the dirt road.
Nothing moved, no obvious threats presenting themselves.
He also found himself fully aware of Dakota only a foot away from him, her auburn hair bouncing in a high ponytail, her eyes shining, the sly, slightly mocking smile she gave him sending a jolt straight through to his core.
He couldn’t help it; he liked that, liked her. Liked her stubborn tenacity, her courage, her resilience, her unerring dedication to saving people, even when it put herself in danger. This girl met everything and everyone with a level gaze, with grit and determination.
>
Dakota was someone you wanted at your side, watching your back.
It didn’t matter that they’d only known each other for a matter of weeks—they’d gone through hell and made it out the other side. He didn’t know her favorite color or her middle name, but he knew her, knew she was made of braver and tougher stuff than anyone he’d ever met.
The mayhem of Miami already seemed like a distant memory. What if they really could leave it all behind? They could survive forever out here, living off the land, keeping to themselves, protecting their own—together.
The thought was as pleasant as it was jarring. He had no business thinking of a future with anyone. Not with the knowledge of who he really was—the monster who’d done monstrous things—trapped inside him.
The one thing you could never leave behind was yourself.
“Hey,” Dakota said. “You with me?”
He shook his head clear. Those thoughts were dangerous. That life was out of his reach and always would be. She was out of his reach.
The sooner he killed that yearning, the better off he’d be.
“I’m with you,” he said, the irony of his words not lost on him.
Weapons drawn, they jogged past the gate and the truck barricade. A quarter mile down around a bend in the road, the Collier brothers appeared. The five burly men sat on their bikes, blocking the road with shotguns and rifles in hand, their backs to Logan and Dakota.
Thirty feet away, a group of bedraggled people huddled together—three men, two women, and two teenagers, a boy and a girl.
Archer hopped off his bike and strode forward, gesturing with the shotgun. “You’re a long way from home.”
A thick, blocky man with greasy brown hair, a bland pasty face, and a stubby mustache stepped back, clearly intimidated by Archer’s imposing form. Sweat-stained dirt and dust smeared his creased khaki shorts, button-up shirt, and once-shiny dress shoes.
He held a Glock 17 in one fat sweaty hand, his finger too close to the trigger.
Not good.
The other two men had hunting rifles slung over their shoulders, and one of the women had a handgun tucked into the front of her waistband. The two kids and the dark-haired Asian woman standing a little behind the others appeared weaponless.
Logan and Dakota moved cautiously up to the Collier brothers. Boyd nodded at them in acknowledgment. Logan nodded back. He kept his gaze focused on the intruders and their hands, just in case.
“We’re on our way to Naples, that’s all,” the man said. “No need to shove a gun in our faces for it.”
“You’re off course.” Archer didn’t lower his weapon.
“We—we got lost,” the black man next to the first guy said. In his early thirties, small and wiry, the guy gave off a nervous, jumpy energy, constantly shifting from foot to foot, his gaze darting everywhere but at their eyes.
“Lost?” Jake snorted. “Awfully hard to get lost on a straight road.”
Twitchy dropped his gaze. The heavy, pale one didn’t. He stared straight at Archer, his eyes defiant, hard, and angry—like he blamed them personally for his misfortune.
“It happens,” he said sullenly.
“We’re hungry,” one of the women said. She sported a fading Miami tan and dyed blond hair cut in a once-sleek bob that was ragged and unkempt. Her skinny legs beneath her cut-off jean shorts were covered in scratches and welts from dozens of bug bites.
“We haven’t eaten all day,” she whined. “The jerkwad who stole our car took everything but the clothes on our backs.”
She squeezed the shoulder of the teenager closest to her, a pudgy fifteen-year-old boy with a wide moon face and a dull, stunned expression. He looked shell-shocked, like the trauma of leaving everything he’d ever known behind still hadn’t worn off, and maybe never would.
“We’ve got kids,” she said. “They need food.”
“He looks like he could do without a few Big Macs and be fine,” Zander quipped.
Zane let out a deep guffaw.
It wasn’t that funny. The group of refugees didn’t think so, either.
The woman’s eyes narrowed. “You seem to be doing just fine out here yourselves.”
Logan expected Dakota to offer them half their larder. She had a thing for saving people like lost kittens. But she didn’t say anything. Her rigid stance radiated tension.
Maybe she’d changed her tune, or maybe there was something about these people she didn’t like.
He felt the same way. Something was off about them, a warning niggling uneasily in his gut.
He knew their type. Upper middle-class shmucks with soft suburban lives and softer office jobs; steady, predictable, boring. They spent their lives worrying about inane things like weeds infesting their manicured lawns or whether the Dolphins would ever win another Super Bowl.
They probably hadn’t lived like criminals before. Maybe they cheated on their taxes or their spouses, maybe they pilfered from the office expense account or ran red lights, but they didn’t consider themselves bad or uncivilized.
But now, they were scared and hungry. They were tired and irritable and in pain.
Which meant they were capable of anything—just like everybody else in this new man-eat-man world.
31
Logan
“Let’s start over,” the hefty guy said. “We’re not the enemy here. We’re just regular people, that’s all.” He poked a fat finger at his chest. “My name is Sal. This is my wife, Brenda, and our two kids. This here’s my brother, Vince, and his wife, Clarissa. The high-strung one on the end is our neighbor, Terrance.”
Terrance raised his hand in a half-wave, half-swiping sweat from his face. “Heya.”
“We just need some help, and we’ll be on our way.” The woman—Brenda—stared hungrily at the Collier brothers’ motorcycles. “It’s still two days by foot just to reach Naples, if we’re lucky.”
“What happened to you?” Dakota asked.
“We had an SUV,” Brenda said. “It was hijacked just past the International Mall by a crazed soccer mom. People just…they went insane with fear. Even when the radio announcers said our area wasn’t contaminated. No one listened.”
“Why not?” Jake asked, sounding genuinely curious.
“Are you kidding me?” Terrance scoffed. “The weatherman can’t get the weather right on any given day. You think we were gonna trust ‘em that the invisible clouds of radiation weren’t headed straight for us?”
“We got the hell out,” Vince said. “Most people we knew had the same idea.”
“We were running low on gas, but all the stations were closed. They ran out or decided it was smarter to hog it all themselves.” Brenda cast a glance at her husband, Sal. “When people started realizing there wasn’t any more gas to be had at the stations, they started getting creative. They took it from other people—or just took their vehicles outright.”
Sal shrugged, his shoulders hunched. “It was get a vehicle or get left behind for the radiation to eat you alive. Didn’t leave people much of a choice.”
“It was chaos, man.” Terrance shifted his feet nervously. “Never seen anything like it.”
“And now?” Logan asked. “What’s it like?”
“Hell,” the other woman—Clarissa—said in a soft voice. Her arms were wrapped around her ribcage. She took rapid, shallow breaths like she was still in panic mode, just like the boy. Her daughter huddled next to her, clearly still terrified.
None of them had adjusted well. Their soft, comfortable lives hadn’t equipped them for anything like this. Nothing they’d ever experienced before had prepared them for this.
Guilt pricked Logan. To be honest, everyone had gotten a little soft, even him. Maybe that wasn’t their fault, but their actions and choices now certainly were.
“Fights in the streets,” Clarissa said. “Traffic jams like you’ve never seen. People screaming at each other, shooting at each other. People fighting over food and gas like some third world country…”
The Collier brothers exchanged heavy glances. Logan and Dakota weren’t surprised. They’d seen plenty of mayhem and madness just days after the attacks.
“The stores are empty already?” Zane asked with raised eyebrows.
“I manage—managed a Publix in Kendall,” Clarissa said with a shudder. “No deliveries, no inventory. We were stripped of everything in less than three days. I didn’t think it was possible, especially accepting cash-only payments. People stuffed every square inch of their cars with cans and boxes, filling coolers in the back with dairy and meat until the ice ran out. It was like a scene out of a movie. I’ve never seen the shelves barren like that.”
“The big box stores and distribution centers are being guarded by soldiers,” Terrance said. “The ones not guarded are already looted or completed stripped.”
“We heard Naples was better off,” Vince said. “We’re gonna take 75 up to Fort Myers, then head to Orlando where we’ve got family. It’s better there.”
“Who’s saying that?” Dakota asked.
The man shrugged. “It’s gotta be better—”
“Of course, it is,” Sal interrupted him. “Their city wasn’t blasted to hell, was it?”
“Mom?” quavered the teenage girl, a tiny dark-haired slip of a thing. “I don’t feel very good. I think I’m gonna pass out.”
Beside him, Dakota cringed. She was letting their sob story get to her—that was her weakness. Logan still didn’t buy it.
“It’ll be okay, honey.” The mother put her arm around her daughter’s shoulder, drawing her close.
“You gonna help us or what?” Brenda asked, confrontational and almost defiant, as if she already expected them to say no—and was prepared to bully her way to a yes.
Jake didn’t like her tone, either. He ratcheted up the shotgun a few degrees. It was still mostly pointed down, but he was prepared.
So was Logan. His pulse quickened. He shifted his feet to widen his stance and tightened his grip on the AR-15.
