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

  Kevin heard the door lock just after it shut behind him.

  In the garage, Dylan was waiting patiently. He had a bow in one hand, several arrows in the other, and his knife hanging at his right side.

  “That took a while. Is everything alright?” Dylan asked.

  “Yeah, we were just talking. She did mention getting wood for a fire. We’ll need that to do any cooking.”

  Dylan looked away for just a second as he subtly nodded, adding that item to his mental checklist, and then moving it to near the top of the list, just below water and food. Then he turned his right side to Kevin and asked, “See anything different?”

  “Is that a different sheath for your knife?” asked Kevin.

  “No, I adjusted it. See how it hangs lower.” Dylan let his right arm hang freely down and moved his hand back and forth at the level of the knife’s handle. “Just where I want it.” He had also threaded a cord through the hole at the bottom end of the sheath and tied the cord around his right thigh. The sheath was secure on his thigh and in the best position for the knife’s quick removal.

  Kevin tossed Dylan a sleeve of crackers and then a bottle of water. Dylan caught them both in quick succession. Dylan put his head through the strung bow, let it hang on his shoulder, and began to munch on the crackers as they walked. Half the crackers were gone by the end of the driveway. Dylan decided to save the rest for later, and put the remaining crackers on top of the bottle of water in his pocket.

  They turned to the right and began to walk up the hill on their way to the Community Center and pool. At the top of the hill, they turned left. Dylan removed the bow from his shoulder, gripping it and all but one of the arrows with his left hand. Using his right hand, he placed one arrow in the ready position, nocked to the string. As he walked, Dylan traversed from the sidewalk to the asphalt pavement and back. Walking at angles through tall grass where he could find it, he was looking and listening for rabbits. Kevin was just behind him looking for any movement in the grass and ready to give him the signal to shoot.

  As they walked east toward the tree-lined stream, the boundary of the subdivision became clearer. Dylan pointed to the trees lining the valley by the creek. “We’ll walk back home that way. I’ll try to get some squirrels that have strayed too far from their nests.”

  They continued their walk, but now the road began to slope downward toward the stream. Several blocks away, to the right at the end of the street before them, they could see the Community Center and pool. Just as they stopped to look at their destination, Kevin noticed a rabbit devouring a dandelion. It was half-exposed in the tall grass that lined the sidewalk’s edge. Kevin motioned toward the rabbit and Dylan nodded, acknowledging the furry creature. Dylan cautiously crept forward as the rabbit nibbled. From a short distance away, Dylan let the arrow fly, hitting the rabbit on its side and stunning it. The rabbit fell over and began to convulse. He picked the rabbit up and quickly struck its head on the concrete curb, putting it out of its misery. They continued down the hill to the street that was parallel with the stream. At the intersection where the road stopped, they turned to the right and walked the remaining blocks toward the Community Center. The black metal fence surrounding the swimming pool was clearly visible now.

  As they got closer to the one-story stucco building, they recognized Jim standing at the double glass doors of its entrance. Jim waved the two men toward him while looking back nervously into the Community Center. When they arrived at the front door, Jim placed his foot on a chair that was being used to prop a door partially open. He leaned forward, putting his elbows on his bent knee to rest his tired body.

  Jim pointed at the rabbit and asked, “Did you bring enough for everybody?”

  Without saying a word, Dylan raised his arm and offered him the rabbit. Jim shook his head.

  “Did we miss anything?” asked Kevin.

  “Not really. People are talking among themselves. It’s been a long time since we had a community meeting. They haven’t voted yet.”

  “For what?” asked Dylan.

  “A president, a leader, whatever you want to call it.”

  “Who should we vote for?” Dylan inquired.

  “I’ll tell you inside,” said Jim, as he pulled the glass door open far enough past the chair so the men could walk through the doorway.

  Directly ahead and across the room were the double doors that led to the fenced pool area. They were also propped open in a failed attempt to circulate air through the large room. Human odor saturated the air inside the building. The rectangular room extended to their left, terminating near a lectern centered on a parquet wood floor that, in happier times, was the location of wedding receptions, birthday parties, and family gatherings. The lectern was close to the front row of chairs. Most everyone there was already seated and facing it. Dylan, Kevin, and Jim had entered the room, apparently unnoticed. One man was at the lectern, leaning on it, glaring across the crowd of several dozen people.

  Dylan noticed Jim locking eyes with the man standing behind the lectern for just a brief moment, and then both men nodded and quickly turned away.

  “Who’s that?” asked Dylan.

  “John Sisk, a friend of Michael’s.”

  John Sisk faced the crowd as he leaned forward on the lectern, slowly oscillating his head and surveying all that gathered before him. In the center of the wall behind him was a square window that allowed the bright morning sunshine into the room. The light should have reflected radiantly off the wood floor, but dirt, grime, and dust from months of neglect covered it. Looking at him from the seating area, John’s body was directly in the center of the square window and the sunshine illuminated his auburn hair. The summer sun had bleached the frayed ends of his hair a lighter shade. A scraggly, thin beard framed his jaw and made his stocky build seem much weaker in contrast. His hazel eyes, under dark brown eyebrows, pierced the crowd and seemed to lash at his wife when he looked at her.

  Sandra, his wife, sat at the edge of the crowd talking to no one, just as her husband had instructed. With a blank affect, she sat with her hands on her lap, stared past the wall in front of her, and wished she were away from the monster she had married. Sandra had long dark hair, pulled back into a ponytail that hung freely down the center of her back, and although that narrow column of hair was hiding the bony protrusions of her spine, each rib was visible under her tight cotton shirt. John was eating more than his share of the food and, as he told her on more than one occasion, paybacks are hell.

  John’s life had begun to disintegrate before the pulse. He lost his job and desperately tried to find another, to no avail. The bills began to accumulate and his wife had to go to work. Her income alone was not enough. She resented him for causing their troubles. The mortgage payments went into arrears, and then the foreclosure process began. She blamed all their misfortune on him, and began a barrage of physical and verbal abuse against him, all while threatening to call the police and accuse him of the abuse. Despite this, he tried desperately to battle the bank and win back her love, but lost his desire to fight against the world when his wife served him with divorce papers and revealed that she was having an affair. He was a crushed man and went into a state of depression fueled by alcohol. Then, on the Monday morning of the week he was legally supposed to lose his wife and house, his life changed. The institutions that were going to take everything away from him vanished from existence. There was not any knock on the door with an eviction notice. There was not a divorce decree. John quickly shrugged off the gloomy cloud fogging his mind and recaptured a desire for a taste of life, but life now had a different flavor, a flavor of survival, and he wanted to taste sweet revenge, too. He firmly resolved never to drink alcohol again, put all his hard liquor in a cabinet, turned the key, and locked it all away.

  Sandra’s life changed, too. The week she was going to use the legal system to finish eviscerating her husband, it vanished from existence. She was helpless now and instantly became dependent on her husband for surviv
al, but after John’s depression waned, anger took its place. She quickly learned there were no institutions at her disposal to crush and control her husband anymore. She was at his mercy. John knew this and relished that part of his new reality because, for him, revenge tasted sweeter than life itself.

  “Do you think anyone here has information about my wife?” asked Dylan.

  “I’m sorry, Dylan. I’ve already started to ask around and nobody knows anything. Most of these people are from this side of the subdivision, so there wasn’t a good chance they would have been aware of anything. Some people have left and some people just died. Either way, they’re gone. And since most people are focused on getting by day to day, they don’t care. That’s one good reason that I’m glad this is happening. We need to come together as a community and help each other.” Jim pointed toward John Sisk. “He lives on this side of the community, and this is his crowd.”

  Jim pointed to three empty chairs in the back row and gestured for Dylan and Kevin to sit. Kevin took a step toward the chairs. Dylan held his bow forward and placed it at Kevin’s chest level to stop him.

  “Hold on,” said Dylan. “I don’t feel like sticking around. This isn’t for me.”

  “You hold on,” said Jim, as he pushed Dylan toward the empty chairs with his thick hands. Dylan posted his feet to the floor. His body did not budge. “You have to stay and help me; I mean us, all of us. John Sisk is bad news.”

  “Let’s stay,” said Kevin. “I’ll vote for Jim.”

  “Okay, Jim, you have my vote,” said Dylan. “You’ve been all over the neighborhood. This should be easy for you.”

  Jim closed his eyes in frustration. He took a deep breath and pinched the bridge of his nose as he tilted his head back and exhaled slowly. “Listen to me. What needs to happen is—”

  The sound of knuckles rapping on the oak lectern hushed the crowd and all eyes went to John.

  After a moment of silence, John spoke to the crowd. “Let’s get this over with. Anyone else interested in being the president of the Home Owners Association?”

  Jim quickly raised his hand to get John’s attention. Seeing this, both Dylan and Kevin smiled encouragingly at Jim, but just as quickly and unexpectedly, Jim pushed Dylan forward and said, “This man, Dylan Smith.” Caught off guard, Dylan stumbled one-step forward and the crowd turned to look at the bearded man holding a dead rabbit in one hand and a bow with arrows, clutched tightly together, in the other hand.

  Chapter Three

  “You know better than that,” barked John, loudly projecting his voice across the room. “This is for people who live here, not strangers.”

  Jim knew him well enough to detect the condescending tone in his voice.

  Dylan’s first response was to proclaim his disinterest for the position. “I’m not—” But just as Dylan began to speak, he realized John’s comment was a veiled attack, so he abruptly stopped. He looked at Kevin and realized that he needed to take a stand. This was an attack on his legitimacy in the neighborhood. If Dylan let the crowd turn on him, a long-time property owner, then Kevin would have no chance as an outsider, a complete stranger to the community.

  “Stranger?” Dylan retorted. “What do you mean? My home is here, in this subdivision, and I’ve lived here with my family for years.”

  John leaned forward on the lectern and sneered. “Really? Where have you been, Dylan?”

  Before Dylan had a chance to respond, Jim walked over to him and held up Dylan’s arm, the one that was holding the bow. “Can any of you make one of these? Plenty of you are still scraping by on the charity of others, and some of the lucky ones have guns for hunting. But what are you going to do when you run out of cartridges?”

  Just as Jim dropped Dylan’s arm and began to walk back to his chair, John growled, “Robin Hood,” and the crowd snickered. A disgusted expression came over Jim’s face and he sat back down, shaking his head.

  “Where have I been?” Dylan asked John. “You wouldn’t have survived what I’ve been through.” Dylan pointed to Kevin, still seated in the back row by Jim. “That man made the trip with me. He watched my back, and I watched his. We rescued his wife on the way here. Now she’s here, too, a part of this community, just like him.”

  John sneered and said to the crowd, “Dylan’s wife left him. She wasn’t so convinced he was all that great.” The crowd laughed softly again. John pointed at Kevin and asked, “Who are you?”

  “Kevin Brown.”

  “Where do you live?” John’s tone was obviously disingenuous.

  “Here.”

  “Do you own a home here, in my community?”

  “My wife and I moved in with Dylan.”

  A man shouted from the crowd, “We don’t want any squatters.”

  Jim stood up defiantly and yelled, “He’s been through hell and back just to get here. Kevin traveled over a thousand miles and I say he’s earned the right to stay.” Jim jabbed a finger at John and then the crowd. “How many of you could have accomplished that?” Jim paused to feel the reaction of the crowd and then pointed at Kevin again. “Look at him. If he could make that trip, then this man is a survivor. We need people like that.”

  “Calm down, Jim,” John retorted condescendingly, “we’re all friends here. I just have a few more questions for Kevin.”

  Frustrated, Jim could not sit still. He stood up and walked toward Dylan. Jim could see Dylan’s hands shake with anger as he squeezed the rabbit’s back legs so hard the bones broke. His shaking fist was so tight the skin across the knuckles of the hand holding the bow and arrows had blanched. The rabbit bled from its mouth. The blood dripped onto the floor and mixed with the dirt and dust, forming a coagulated sludge beside Dylan’s shoe.

  “Any children?” Kevin felt the sting of the question as he remembered what happened to his unborn child and the sad conversation that he just had with his wife that morning.

  Kevin solemnly replied, “No.”

  “Just to be clear, let me rephrase the question.” John tilted his head down as he dramatically coughed into his forearm and cleared his throat. “Did you abandon any children, like your good friend Dylan did?”

  Dylan dropped what he had been clutching so tightly and lunged forward. John had moved to the side of the lectern and stood there in a way that seemed to invite and incite Dylan’s lunge. Jim dashed in front of Dylan to hold him back. Dylan stopped moving forward when he felt Jim’s palm push into his chest. As Dylan looked through the parting crowd, he noticed that some of the men had moved to stand in front of John. He lunged forward one more time when John gave him a taunting gesture, but this time Kevin was there, helping Jim calm down Dylan.

  “Don’t do it,” whispered Kevin, “that’s what he wants.”

  Jim took his palm off Dylan’s chest when he felt his friend relax. Dylan turned and walked away from the back row of chairs. He picked up the rabbit and the bow and arrows, and sat on a folding table near the entrance to the pool. He hoped for a breeze to come through the two open doors that could remove the heat and rage he felt rising from his body.

  “In the interest of democracy,” John looked at Dylan, “we should vote for a leader of the community now.”

  “Then let’s get this over with,” Jim grunted as he lifted his left hand toward the end of the room where John was standing. “By a show of hands, who votes for John?” Most people raised their hands. “And who votes for Dylan Smith?” Jim asked, as he raised his right hand in the direction of Dylan. A few people in the back, sitting near Jim, raised their hands and voted for Dylan.

  Jim dropped both hands and announced, “John wins the vote.” He turned his head toward Dylan and silently mouthed the words, “I’m sorry.”

  Although Dylan had lost the vote, secretly he was glad. He breathed a cathartic sigh. He never considered himself a politician, and was happy to be free of the burden, but sad that the community had selected a megalomaniac as their leader.

  Dylan felt a wisp of wind sneak through the d
oors near him as the crowd began to leave, and turned his head toward the breeze. Someone held the front doors completely open for people to walk out, side by side. As the crowd departed, a few people looked back at Dylan, sitting on the table with a bow across his lap. He did not notice them. Dylan had turned away to look at the community swimming pool, half full with dark green water. He could see insects flying around the mossy water and an occasional frog snatching a meal from the air with a quick flick of its tongue.

  Dylan heard the entrance doors slam shut, and he turned back to look across the room. Jim and Kevin were talking to several people who were sitting with them near the back row. Dylan remembered that they were some of the several people who had voted for him. He turned his attention to the victor, the community’s new leader, standing triumphantly at the other end of the room, and talking to some of his new constituents. When their eyes met, John leaned toward a man standing by him, whispered something into his ear, and then began to walk toward Dylan.

  Dylan did not feel threatened at John’s approach. He watched the remnants of the crowd part as John walked across the room toward him. Kevin made eye contact with Dylan, and Dylan shook his head in way that meant stay back.

  John stopped in front of the table, extended his hand and arrogantly said, “No hard feelings.”

  Reluctantly, Dylan accepted the gesture and began to shake his hand.

  John leaned forward and whispered, “Second place is the first loser.”

  Dylan leaned toward John and whispered in return, “Congratulations, you’re the head fly on a pile of shit.”

  Dylan felt the grip around his hand become tight as John smirked and pulled his shoulders back, trying to make his chest puff out as he constricted Dylan’s hand. Then John’s grip became even tighter as he sneered. Dylan looked down at the man’s forearm to watch the long muscles contract, tendons urgently pulling against bone, trying to strangle Dylan’s hand. He also noticed a strip of clean-shaven skin on John’s forearm. That meant a sharp knife, and a flag of caution went up in his mind, but Dylan met the challenge and clamped down with his vise-like grip, unleashing the strength of a thousand miles of river. John began to gasp from the pain.