Fade To Black (Into The Darkness Book 2) Read online

  Fade To Black

  A novel by

  Doug Kelly

  Fade To Black is the sequel and conclusion to

  Doug Kelly’s bestselling dystopian novel, Into The Darkness.

  —Novels written by Doug Kelly—

  INTO THE DARKNESS SERIES:

  Book 1: Into The Darkness

  Book 2: Fade To Black

  ACROSS THE LAKE SERIES:

  Book 1: Across The Lake

  Book 2: The Long Journey Home

  Copyright © 2014 Doug Kelly

  This is an original work of fiction by Doug Kelly, who holds the sole rights to all the characters and concepts herein. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this novel may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.

  Edited by Carol Madding.

  To my children.

  They inspire me in all aspects of my life.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty One

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Chapter Twenty Three

  Chapter Twenty Four

  Chapter Twenty Five

  Chapter Twenty Six

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  EPILOGUE

  Chapter One

  On a late-summer morning, the sun’s rays at daybreak were pouring into an east-facing room at the home of Dylan Smith. He was asleep in this room, finally sleeping in his own bed after so many months away. The newest occupants of the house, Kevin Brown and his wife Mary, were also still sleeping, as were Dylan’s two children, Brad and Jennifer.

  The double column of blinds on two adjacent windows did not quite meet, allowing beams of sunshine to enter at the gap. The amber light passed over Dylan’s head and lit up a rectangular space on the opposite wall, where in the center of the bright light, hung a picture of his wife, Cynthia. The picture was just as he remembered her, short blonde hair with emerald green eyes. She had perfectly shaped teeth that were a brilliant white, in a lovely smile framed by full red lips.

  After so many months of vacancy, the air trapped inside Dylan’s home had gone stale. He had left the windows open during the night to let the captive air escape. The open windows allowed the fresh nighttime air to invade his home, and as it did, the gentle breeze pushed the slatted blinds rhythmically against the window. The steady clack of the blinds was like a metronome for the orchestra of insects gathering in the unkempt grass surrounding his home and the neighborhood. The harmonic motion of the blinds, gently swinging from the head of the window frame, kept time with the romantic chatter of the crickets and cicadas calling for their mates. The rectangular spot of light on the wall slowly moved downward as the sun rose higher, until it left the picture of Dylan’s wife in shadow. He slept on, ignoring the songbirds of the morning.

  The sound of a creaking axle echoed in his room, growing louder and louder as a wheelbarrow rolled close to his window. Upon hearing the noise, he moved restlessly on the bed, but did not wake. A cocoon of fatigue bound his somnolence tightly around his body, and he remained lost in his dreams. The horrible sound stopped briefly, but when the wheelbarrow passed by the window of the quiet bedroom, even extreme fatigue could not enable Dylan to tolerate such an obnoxious noise. He sat up briefly and glanced at the rectangle of light on the wall, trying to guess the time of day by its position. Slowly, the squeaking of the axle faded away as the wheelbarrow reached the driveway of his neighbor’s house, and Dylan immediately rested his head back on the pillow.

  With sleepy eyes, Dylan stared at his wife’s picture on the wall. It slowly came into focus as he woke without her by his side. He blinked a few times, took a deep breath and stretched as he reached over to touch the empty place on the bed where his wife should have been. The sheets felt cool. He rolled to the edge of the bed and sat there for a moment, leaning forward and rubbing his bearded face with his calloused hands. He could feel every tough callus through his beard as his fingers pressed on the tight skin wrapped across his cheekbones. He dropped his hands to his lap and looked at the thick, shiny skin covering his palms. The friction of the oars had polished the thickened flesh. He made fists, tightly pulling his fingers into his palms, and admired the feeling of strength that he had in them. His hands were strong from firmly gripping the oars each day for months, as he rowed over a thousand miles down the river. Standing up, he kissed the fingers of his right hand and touched them to the portrait of his wife as he walked by and left the bedroom, silently promising to himself that he would find her.

  Dylan tiptoed down the hallway and stood at the entrance to his son’s bedroom. He leaned his shoulder on the doorframe and put one bare foot on top of the other, working his toes into the carpet fibers. Brad was sleeping in his own bed, where he belonged, and away from greedy strangers. Dylan hoped his son was having pleasant dreams, but he understood the horrors of nightmares, and given what his children had experienced, he expected that the nightmares would come.

  As Dylan gazed at his sleeping son, he caught himself smiling. He raised his hand and touched his face to feel the smile. Happiness had become a strange, unfamiliar feeling. It had been so long since he had felt happiness that he had almost forgotten the emotion. He stepped quietly to the next room. He looked in to see his daughter curled on her side, partially covered by a pink blanket, and sleeping serenely with a doll in her arms. Both of his children looked dirty. Their light brown hair, not washed for so long, looked almost brunette. The oil from their scalps had accumulated on their hair, making it appear much darker than it was. Everyone in the house needed to use some soap and water on their bodies, and he wanted to rig up a shower or get a bathtub in operation. However, there was something more urgent on his mind right now. He was determined to find his wife. Dylan decided to start his search by talking with his children about her disappearance.

  Dylan returned to his son’s room and gently sat on the bed next to him. Brad did not wake. Dylan put his hand on Brad’s shoulder and lightly shook it. He felt bad about waking the boy, but they needed to talk. Dylan wanted information and could not wait any longer. He shook the boy again, and this time Brad stirred. As Brad felt the hand shaking his shoulder, he flinched and pushed away from his father.

  “Easy now. It’s just me,” said Dylan, in a soft tone. Then he reached out to pat his son gently on the leg.

  Still slightly disoriented, Brad emerged from deep sleep. He nervously glanced around the room, then relaxed and sat up so he could lean forward to hug his father and whisper, “I missed you.”

  “I missed you, too. You wouldn’t believe what I went through to get back here.”

  Brad let go of his father and timidly asked, “Are you going to stay? If you leave, do I have to go back?” Brad lifted his hand and pointed out his bedroom door. “Will I have to go back to the
m?”

  Dylan gently poked his son in the stomach, in a humorous way, and replied, “Never. The’re gone. And they aren’t coming back, either. Don’t worry about them.”

  Brad smiled and playfully kicked back from his father’s hand, which continued to poke him in the stomach. They both smiled, then laughed, happy to be in each other’s company.

  Dylan turned to see that his daughter was awake and standing in the doorway to Brad’s bedroom. She was holding an old doll with tangled and matted hair, dangling it by its ankle with one hand, and holding her pink blanket with the other. Her hair was as frazzled as her doll’s. Jennifer, still groggy, hurried toward her father as he sat on the edge of her brother’s bed. She put the doll and blanket on the bed before climbing up to sit next to her father, and after doing so, leaned her head on his chest and wrapped her small arms around his torso. Dylan patted his daughter’s hair, then stood up, and placed both children on the edge of the bed. They dangled their bare feet as he sat on the floor and talked with them.

  “Where is your mother?”

  Brad shrugged his shoulders and turned his head to look out his bedroom window. “She’s gone. We must have made her mad at us. Before she left, she was mad all the time and cried a lot.” Brad rubbed his eyes. “Yeah, Mom must have been sad, too. I heard her cry at night after she put us to bed. She cried a lot when she was alone, but I heard her. She couldn’t hide it from me.” He looked back at his father with sheepish eyes and pleaded, “Can you find her and tell her we’re sorry if we made her mad? Tell her to come back.”

  Jennifer scooted back on the bed, crossed her legs, and wrapped the blanket over her shoulders. “Daddy, tell her to come back.”

  Dylan was disappointed. This was not the information he expected. He thought they would have heard her say something about planning to leave, or mention a place she might go to, or possibly, why she left so abruptly. Any clue, no matter how small, he would have cherished. He looked for a simple explanation and tried to choke back what was haunting him in the deep, dark, recesses of his imagination.

  “Did you see her pack any clothes? Take a suitcase? Did you see any strangers?”

  Brad thought for a moment and said, “There were some strangers. Sometimes people would knock at the door, and we had to stay in our rooms. She would say, ‘Stay in your rooms and don’t let anybody see you.’ So we did.”

  “Who were they?”

  “I couldn’t see who they were, but sometimes I recognized their voices. You know, some of our neighbors that live close by.”

  “Brad, I need you to concentrate. I’m trying to get a clue about where she went. I need your help.”

  “I’m sorry. Are you mad at me?”

  “No, just try to think about what you heard.”

  “Before she left, she yelled a lot, like everything we did made her mad. She would yell at Jennifer and me so much, we just stayed away from her.”

  “The people that knocked at the door, what did they want?”

  “Food. She told me the people wanted food.”

  “Did she give them any food? Did you see her let anyone in the house?”

  “She gave some food away, and then those people came back for more.”

  “And?”

  “She told them to go away and not come back.” Brad glanced toward his sister, now lying on her side as she listened to the conversation. “That’s when she started to get mad all the time and be mean to us.”

  The young boy slipped off the side of his bed and peered out the window. He cautiously looked to the left, then the right, as if he were peering through a prison window, wishing for parole. When Brad turned back to face his father, Dylan noticed how pale the boy’s skin appeared, as if he had not been in sunlight for months.

  “After that, whenever Mom heard a knock at the door, she stopped answering it. I would hear her say, ‘beggars’, and get very angry, and then she yelled at them through the closed door to go away. Then she would scream, ‘I can’t take this anymore!’, and she would do this.” Brad covered his ears with the palms of his hands, shook his head, and bent at the waist, imitating his mother.

  “Did you recognize anyone that she let into the house?”

  “It was just people from the neighborhood. But when she started making us hide in our rooms, I couldn’t see anybody.” Brad looked away, disappointed. He felt as if he was letting down his father. “But she never let anyone in the house after she started making us hide in our rooms.”

  “So, you didn’t see any strangers?”

  “No. Can I go play now?” He looked at his sister and she smiled, nodding her head in agreement.

  “You two need to eat something first. Go wait for me in the kitchen.”

  The two children scurried away. Just as Dylan stood up, his son came back into the room.

  “I forgot. One time, right before she went away, Mom let someone in. It was a man.”

  “Did you see him? Who was it?”

  “It was when she made us hide in our rooms. She was quiet, not yelling. I didn’t hear anything, so I thought he was gone. They were talking so quietly. When I peeked around the corner, I saw his back.”

  “Did she give him food?”

  “No, he had papers in his hand. I saw him give Mom one of the papers, then he left after they talked a long time.”

  “She stopped yelling after that. A few days later, I woke up one morning and she was gone. I was scared. We went outside to look for her and couldn’t find her anywhere. We were hungry, and Jennifer wouldn’t stop crying. That’s when Michael and his wife took us to their house.” Brad clenched his fists. “I hate them.”

  Dylan ruffled his son’s hair and gently pushed him toward the hallway. “Go play with your sister, and I’ll get you something to eat. It’ll just be a minute.”

  Dylan went back to his room. He had placed his rifle under the bed before he went to sleep. Knowing that it was not a safe place to have a weapon because of the young children in the house, he looked around the room for a better place to hide it and noticed his bow lying on the floor next to the double window. Now that he was home again, he wanted to use the bow as much as possible to save bullets. Dylan took the rifle into the walk-in closet and decided to place it on the top shelf. It was high enough that his young children could not see it or reach it, but he could still grab it in a hurry. At the closet’s entrance, he saw a small stepstool, folded and lying on the floor near his bare feet. With a nudge from his toe, he pushed it out of his way. His wife had used it to get items from the high shelves. Dylan was tall enough that he did not need it. He placed the rifle on the top shelf and pushed it back against the wall. Just as he turned to walk out of the closet, he stopped. Dylan tried to remember if there was a cartridge in the chamber or if he had engaged the safety. Not trusting his memory, he reached up to grab the rifle. As he pulled it forward, a pamphlet slid off the shelf, hit him in the face, and landed on the carpet. He removed the magazine, verified that there was nothing in the chamber, and engaged the rifle’s safety. Dylan slid the rifle onto the shelf again, pushing it to the wall, and placed the magazine beside the weapon. He bent over to pick up the pamphlet, and just as he did, he heard his daughter scream.

  Dylan sprinted down the hall and into the living area of his home. The open floor plan connected the family room, dining room, and kitchen into one common space. His son was standing beside the coffee table in front of the dead television. Brad’s hands were in the air, and Jennifer was pointing at him.

  “He took my dolly!” Jennifer screamed.

  “No, I didn’t,” said Brad. “It was on the floor. So I moved it out of the way, and she screamed at me.”

  Dylan shook his head. He took a deep breath and exhaled as he felt his hands shaking from the jolt of adrenalin. “Just cool it. You’re going to wake up the whole neighborhood.”

  “Too late,” mumbled Kevin, as he came to the top of the stairs from the basement. “We’re all awake now.”

  Kevin was on
the top step leaning on the railing that guarded the opening to the stairway. He surveyed the inside of the room through the thin morning light that peeked through the blinds on the west side of the house. He kept looking back down the steps, expecting his wife to appear from the darkness of the basement at any moment.

  Kevin and Mary had spent the night in the guest room downstairs. Kevin had expected it to be a pleasant change from sleeping outdoors, but the silence of the basement during the night had been deafening to him. After spending so many nights sleeping in the wilderness and growing accustomed to the serenade of nighttime insects, songbirds, the roar of the river, and the rustling of tall grass in the breeze, he had found it difficult to sleep in the quiet of the basement.

  Kevin cupped his hands to his mouth, turned toward the basement and announced, “I’ll be up here. They’re all awake.”

  “Okay,” replied Mary, with a faint voice that was barely audible upstairs.

  Kevin went to the door that opened into the garage, and looked at the food that they had moved there last night. It was everything left from the trip to Dylan’s house, plus all the boxes and canned food that they removed from Michael and Becky’s house during the night. He rubbed his stomach and said, “Let’s dig into this pile of food. I’m starving.”

  “Good idea,” said Dylan. “We’re all hungry. I’ll open up this house, let some fresh air and light in, and we’ll get started.”

  Dylan went to the sliding patio doors and reached up to pull the drapes to one side so he could slide the glass door completely open. As he reached for the blinds, he realized that he was still holding the pamphlet. Now that he was near a window with light, he could see what it was. It was a flyer for a local temple, or cult, as some people called it. He recognized the address. It was on a county highway, not far away. The county highway traveled east and west, and crossed the north end of a lake near his home.

  After Dylan had moved his family into their house, he visited a nursery located on that county highway. The pamphlet made him remember driving by the temple on his way to get plants for landscaping. At the temple, there had been a throng of people in the parking lot and a man with a megaphone, enchanting the crowd. The cult got considerable notoriety from its leader, who proclaimed himself a prophet, predicting the end of the world. He must have been very charismatic because he was at no loss for followers. He had maintained that his group was a religious organization and should have tax-free status. The government disagreed, and there was a lengthy court battle. Dylan was not sure of the outcome, nor did he care at the time.