Into the Fire
Page 27
Ezra was dead.
Eden was gone.
Logan had abandoned her.
Her chest contracted, squeezing until it felt like her ribs might crack. She had to get out of here. She had to breathe.
She fled the cabin, stumbling over the shards of glass, splinters of wood, and chunks of drywall and slammed open the front door, Julio calling her name behind her.
72
Logan
Logan drove the Harley down the center of US 41, swerving around the occasional abandoned vehicle. The powerful engine rumbled beneath him. The straps of his pack dug into his shoulders.
The beams of his headlights pierced the dark, highlighting the glistening road, the wet black leaves of the trees hunched on either side of the highway. The anti-fog visor on Boyd’s helmet kept his vision relatively clear.
The rain drenching his clothes and running in rivulets down the back of his neck soothed his heat-baked skin. In a while, his soaked condition would pose a problem, but for now, he didn’t care.
He hadn’t ridden a bike in years, but he remembered how. He eased back on the throttle, braked gently, and avoided leaning to adjust for the rain-slicked road. The bike wasn’t the problem.
With each passing minute, with each mile stretching between him and the cabin, his heart clenched like a fist, tighter and tighter. He stared ahead, numb and mindless.
It would be dawn soon. The sky lightened almost imperceptibly. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. Mile after mile roared by. Twenty, thirty, forty.
Logan blinked. The headlights illuminated a lump in the middle of the road directly ahead.
Adrenaline spiked through his veins. He swerved hard to miss the body and almost collided with a black sedan parked on the left side of the road, obscured in the rain and darkness. He barely missed the opened front passenger door.
He forced himself to ease to a careful stop a hundred yards past the sedan. He twisted around and peered into the night. It was too dark, the rain pouring too hard. All he could make out was dark wavering shadows. He couldn’t see the body.
Should he go back and roll it off the road? Why bother?
Dead bodies were part of the landscape now, another inescapable aspect of the apocalypse bearing down on them all. There was no ignoring it—pretty soon, the dead would be as common as roadkill.
He removed the helmet. Rain slapped his face. The wind howled; the trees swayed. Above him, lightning forked in jagged, sky-splitting streaks.
He pulled out his flask, unscrewed the cap, and lifted it to his lips. He’d already downed half the flask. He swallowed another burning draught, felt it slide sweet and aching down his throat.
It was a good burn, a welcome burn. The familiar warmth of oblivion, beckoning to him. It was doing its work, transforming the chaos in his head to a dull thudding nothingness.
How easy it would be.
He could turn the bike around, aim it at the hulking shadow of the black sedan. He could end this all, end everything.
No more nightmares of Tomás. No more taunting demons in his head. No more unendurable shame.
His grasp tightened on the flask.
An image of Dakota flashed through his mind, cutting through the numbness. The defiant tilt of her jaw, the fierceness in her eyes. Dakota’s hand reaching for him, her fingers threading through his own.
Ezra had seen who he was. Dakota saw who he could be.
What the hell was wrong with him? What kind of man was he, wandering around feeling sorry for himself? Running away from the one person in the whole world who knew of the worst in him, yet accepted him anyway?
Who the hell cared what someone else said? Other people had been judging him his entire life—for his ethnicity, his tattoos, his failures. He was about to throw everything away because of the words of a bitter old man, an old man who’d chosen isolation and loneliness over a life—messy and sometimes ugly and painful, but real.
Logan chose to live. To do better, to be better.
He was a fighter. The scrappy kid who clawed his way up from nothing, who survived the streets, who faced grown men twice as large as he was with tenacity and grit. That’s who he was, who he would be again.
The flask slipped from his fingers. It tumbled to the asphalt and lay on its side, the remains of the moonshine dribbling out, mixing with the rain puddles. He left it there.
Everything he cared about was back the way he’d come.
Everything he loved.
73
Dakota
Dakota ran out into the pre-dawn darkness.
Thirty yards from the cabin, she stopped, half-bent, heaving and gasping. She forced herself to straighten, to raise her face to the sky. Rain splattered her cheeks, dripped down her neck.
She felt disorientated, lost, and so, so alone. The pain was inside of her, an immense pressure against her ribs, a howling void with no end, no bottom. She pressed her fist over her heart.
“I can’t do this!” Dakota screamed at the storm, wind whipping her hair, tears leaking down her cheeks.
Lightning split the dark clouds, zigzagging across the heavens. On the edge of the clearing, the trees were dark, swaying shapes.
If God was up there, she longed for him to hear her, to answer her, to provide comfort or tell her what to do. Something. Anything.
“Where are you, God?” she shouted, her voice cracking, sobs wracking her body. “Where are you? How can I do this alone?”
There was no answer but the howling wind, the crashing thunder.
A twig cracked behind her. Dakota whirled, pistol cradled in both hands, aiming at the intruder’s center mass.
Slowly, she lowered the gun.
“You’re not alone,” Logan said. “I’m right here.”
The End
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Sneak Peek of Darkest Night
The rain had finally stopped, but the morning brought a gray, gloomy haze, like the sky was in mourning, too. After a restless hour trying unsuccessfully to sleep, with Logan remaining awake and vigilant just in case, Dakota had risen early to take in the extent of the damage.
Or maybe she just needed some time to think.
She walked among the bodies, searching for Rueben, Maddox’s cousin and the Prophet’s son. In her panicked search last night, she’d only been looking for one face.
But Rueben wasn’t here either. Maybe once he and Maddox had kidnapped Eden, they’d decided to cut their losses and flee, abandoning their remaining men to death.
Whatever noble titles they anointed themselves with, they were still the same despicable cowards.
The humid air clung damply to her skin. Crickets trilled and frogs sang to each other. Birds twittered and chirped.
And the flies. Hundreds of them, buzzing around the bodies. The stench of blood and excrement stung her nostrils. She wiped her forehead with the back of her arm and kept going.
They’d have to take care of these bodies, and soon. Maybe burn them. Or roll them into the swamp and let the gators have them.
So many dead. So many young, wasted lives.
Who would these men have been if they hadn’t been raised in fear and hatred? If they hadn’t been steeped in superstition and twisted ideology from the moment they were born?
Who would she have been? And Maddox? If neither of them had been sucked into the Prop
het’s vortex of evil? If Eden, Sister Rosemarie, and the other innocents like little Ruth had never been tangled in his web of lies and deceit?
But the questions were pointless. She had no power or control over the beginning of it all. The only question now was whether she could end it.
The shed doors were still hanging open, the single bulb shining. Dakota couldn’t bear to look inside yet: at the shelves full of Ezra’s precious stash, all the things he’d so carefully stored away to save them.
A radio spat static.
Instinctively, she jerked to attention, adrenaline shooting through her veins. Dropping the shovel, she tugged her pistol from her holster and held it in the low ready position, scanning the clearing, searching the shadows deep in the trees.
The static came again. It didn’t come from out there. It was close by.
More crackling. She tilted her head, following the noise.
She crept to the first body, fallen next to one of the cisterns not five yards from the shed, and nudged it with her toe. The radio attached to the dead body’s belt crackled.
She bent, picked it up with her left hand, and dialed up the volume. She pushed the button for a moment but didn’t speak.
She knew deep in her gut who it was. Let the bastard go first.
The radio spat and crackled. “Dakota Sloane, is that you?”
“Go to hell, Maddox.”
He chuckled dryly. “You always were a scintillating conversationalist.”
“You killed Park.”
“He got in the way.”
“You killed Ezra.”
“He had something I wanted.”
“No!” Anger bubbled up, obliterating her grief. “I did! You should’ve come after me instead!”
“Trust me, I wanted to. Eden convinced me otherwise. You should thank her. I’ll pass it along.”
“Why are you doing this?” She clutched the radio so hard her fingers ached. “Jacob hated you. Your father despises you. Eden is the one who loves you. And you kidnapped her, killed her friends, and took her back to the monster who wants to enslave her!”
“I saved her!” he shouted. “I’m saving her soul.”
“You’re too smart to spout that crap. Or to believe it.”
“I know what’s best for her. I know what’s best for you.” He was quiet for a moment. “You love me, Dakota. You need me.”
“I hate you,” she forced out. “I hate you with every fiber of my being.”
He laughed darkly. “You wish you did. But let’s be honest. You don’t. You can’t. There’s too much between us.”
She swallowed the lump in her throat. “I do hate you.”
“I wish I could hate you, too. I wish I could, but for some damn reason, I can’t. Do you know that? Can you understand? I think you do. I think you know exactly what that feels like.”
She did know. Because once upon a time, Maddox was all she had. He was the lifeline that kept her sane in the sadistic, insane world of the River Grass Compound, where a girl could be beaten and branded for reading.
She had been weak, small, and invisible. Only Maddox saw her.
Only Maddox made their grim existence bearable with his cynical attitude, sarcastic jokes, and that mocking smile of his. Out on the boat, exploring the Glades, they’d escaped the harsh rules and restrictions, the constant threat of violence, the shame and humiliation shoved down their throats in the guise of religion.
She had loved him for it.
Then he changed. To gain the approval of his father, he’d turned on her. Turned into whatever he was now. Cruel. Ruthless. Vengeful.
But there was still that thread of the past that connected them, a slender but indestructible filament that she couldn’t sever, no matter how much she wished she could.
“I don’t understand,” she lied. “I never will.”
“You and I aren’t that different.”
“We’re nothing alike,” she spat into the mouthpiece, wanting to crush it into pieces, imagining it was Maddox’s windpipe instead of a stupid radio. “You’re insane.”
“You only wish that I was insane. You hate that you understand me better than you understand yourself.”
She did hate it. She hated it even more that he was right. “Your father abused you. He forced you to abuse me, taught you it was good.”
He hesitated. “You clearly don’t understand the concept of mercy.”
The scars on her back burned like they were on fire. “It wasn’t mercy, what they did to us. It was torture. Once upon a time, you knew that.”
“You sound bitter, Dakota. Are you bitter that you lost to me?”
“I haven’t lost yet.”
“No?” He gave a mirthless laugh. “It sure looks that way from here.”
“You can still do the right thing, Maddox,” she said. “You can still turn this around. Let her go.”
“I won’t.” The arrogant confidence in his voice faltered—for just a second, just a little, but it was there. She felt it as much as heard it. “I don’t have a choice.”
“You clearly don’t understand the concept of choice.”
He snorted. “I always did like that about you. You were the only one in the whole damn compound with the guts to speak your mind.”
She turned back toward the shed, forced herself to stare through the opened doors to the dark stain in the center of the cement floor beneath the single bulb, the blood almost black in the light.
She’d thought if she gave everything, it would be enough. It wasn’t.
Now Park and Ezra were dead, and Eden was gone.
Nothing would bring Ezra back. She’d failed him. She’d thought she was strong enough, tough enough to defeat whatever came at them.
How wrong she was.
A dark sucking energy surrounded her, a black hole. She trembled with anger, with sorrow, with pain so deep it was endless. She could fall forever and ever and never strike the bottom of her grief.
But there was anger there, too. A fierce, smoldering rage.
She wasn’t finished yet. She wasn’t dead. She thought she’d given everything, but she was wrong about that, too.
There was always more. As long as she was alive, as long as she still had breath in her lungs and blood in her veins, there was more she could give.
A fish-crow cawed hoarsely from somewhere. Low scudding clouds shrouded the bruised purple sky, and the early morning air was wet and suffocating. Her footsteps squelched in the mud as she turned away from the shed and headed back toward the cabin.
She was done with this. Done with him. Done with this manipulative cat-and-mouse game he wanted to play.
She didn’t want to play. She wanted to burn everything to the ground.
Dakota raised the radio to her lips one final time. “I am coming for you, Maddox. I’m going to kill your father. I’m going to kill the Prophet. And then, I’m going to kill you.”
To be continued…
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Author’s Note
I hope you enjoyed Into the Fire! It was a lot of fun writing about the Everglades as a setting. The research was almost as much fun as the writing.
I’ve been looking forward to this book since I first conceived of the Nuclear Dawn series and considered the “river of grass” as an excellent option for my characters to escape the chaos of the city.
There were plenty of emotional ups and downs in this book. Logan finally chose life—and Dakota. Ezra’s death was the hardest for me to write because he’d chosen to cut himself off from fully liv
ing his life long ago. To me, it made his death all the more tragic.
The details regarding the amount of nuclear weapons in the world—and how well they are or aren’t secured—are all taken from real life. The research is fascinating and more than a little terrifying!
Thank you so much for following Dakota, Logan, Eden, and the others on this journey. There is one more book to complete the series, and I promise it’s going to be epic!
Also by Kyla Stone
Point of Impact
Fear the Fallout
From the Ashes
Into the Fire
No Safe Haven
Rising Storm
Falling Stars
Burning Skies
Breaking World
Raging Light
Labyrinth of Shadows
Beneath the Skin
Before You Break
Real Solutions for Adult Acne
Acknowledgments
Thank you as always to my awesome beta readers. Your thoughtful critiques and enthusiasm are invaluable. My stories and characters are better for it!
Thank you so much to Fred Oelrich, Mike Smalley, and Wmh Cheryl. Huge appreciation also to Michelle Browne, Jessica Burland, Sally Shupe, Jeremy Steinkraus, and Barry and Derise Marden.
A big thanks to Debbie Butz for suggesting the name of Jake for the last Collier brother. I appreciate you!
To Michelle Browne for her skills as a great line editor. Thank you to Eliza Enriquez for her excellent proofreading skills. You both make my words shine.
And a special thank you to Jenny Avery for volunteering her time to give the manuscript that one last read-through and catch those pesky typos. Any remaining errors are mine.