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

  Dylan spoke in a low, deep voice through clenched teeth. “You need to understand one thing. Are you listening to me?”

  John grimaced and nodded his head.

  “We’re not going anywhere. This is our home. Any questions?”

  “No.”

  Dylan opened his five-finger vise and dropped John’s hand. John quickly stepped back, trying to shake the blood back into his fingers, and glared at Dylan as he repeatedly flexed his hand, testing the movement of each digit. As he turned to walk away, John mumbled, just loud enough for Dylan to hear him say, “This isn’t over.”

  John’s wife waited obediently by the front doors. She stared at the floor, hands clasped at waist level with fingers interlocked. He violently pushed the doors open, and the couple exited before the metal frame of the doors came crashing back against the chair that was keeping them ajar. She walked silently behind her husband all the way back home, just as John had instructed.

  Dylan turned again to face the green water in the swimming pool and began to snack from the sleeve of crackers he had placed in his pocket earlier that morning. Kevin and Jim went over to him, along with some of the people who had voted for Dylan. Jim brought Dylan out of his trance to make introductions. Dylan turned around to see a young couple. The man stood close to his pregnant wife. A young woman was also there, standing behind the couple and carrying a fussy infant. The child was nearly a year old, wearing a diaper made from a small bath towel, stained and putrid smelling.

  “This is David and Amy Taylor. They don’t live too far from us.” Jim moved closer to the young woman holding her fussy infant. “This is Linda Foster. She lives next to David and Amy.” Linda smiled politely, but could not shake hands with Dylan because she was holding her child, trying to stop its crying.

  Dylan shook David’s hand as he smiled, with a nod to Amy. She smiled back at Dylan and leaned her tired, pregnant body into her husband. David was touching his wife’s bulging abdomen and had only removed his hand long enough to greet Dylan. He quickly returned his hand back to the budge of his wife’s belly and waited for his unborn child to kick again. David’s hair was dark, and now that it was longer than he liked, it had begun to curl at the ends. Amy had hair that was very light blonde and thin, eyebrows almost nonexistent, and eyelashes that craved for mascara. Her hair was so thin that Dylan wondered if her body was cannibalizing itself for the unborn child.

  Only recently had David and Amy moved to the subdivision. Before they moved into the neighborhood, they had one young son, and they wanted more children in the future. They had made a decision to look for a bigger house outside the city. With her first child, at the beginning of her third trimester, their son was born prematurely via caesarian section after Amy began to hemorrhage. Since his lungs did not have time to fully develop, the baby stayed in neonatal intensive care for two months before he was released. His lungs were fragile, and they had nearly lost him during the first two weeks in the hospital.

  A year later she was pregnant again, they had just moved into their new home in this community, and the bitterness of the recent tragic events in their lives had begun to fade away. Then the pulse came, and there was panic and confusion. Their son, their precious first born, ran out of medication for his lungs, and his fragile body became weaker with sickness and hunger. Then came those fateful four words that David heard whispered from his pregnant wife’s lips, “He has a fever.” There was no medication. No one could help them. All they had were wet towels for the fever and their prayers to God. As they bowed their heads, they made secret promises and tried to bargain with God, each furtively begging to be taken in his place. They were both by his side when the child stopped breathing. As she lay by her son’s corpse, she felt the first flutter of the unborn child moving in the small bulge of her abdomen. She wondered if it was a sign from God, reminding her there could be life and joy even in the face of death, but bitterness and anger gestated in her husband’s soul. He felt betrayed by God, his prayers ignored. In their backyard, a bulge of brown dirt impaled with a cross was all that remained of his first-born son. David was a broken man and tried to hide his recurring bouts of depression.

  “Glad to meet you,” David said, as he stared into Dylan’s eyes, trying to imagine what he used to look like. “When Jim told us about you and that you were from our neighborhood…” David paused for a moment and looked at his wife before he finished what he was saying, “…well, I think I can speak for both of us when I say we’re glad to have you back.”

  Dylan also stared into the man’s eyes, trying to remember him, but could not. He travelled a lot with his job. When he was home, he focused on his family rather than paying attention to distant neighbors or people moving in and out of the neighborhood.

  “We voted for you,” said Amy. “The crowd was stacked against you. They were mostly people from the first phase of the subdivision. They lived here first and had time to get to know each other, bond, and make friends. This is where John lives.” After Amy said John’s name, she made a gesture with her finger as if she was trying to make herself vomit. “We live near you in the second phase and not many of us showed up.”

  “Thanks for the vote, but this wasn’t my idea,” admitted Dylan. “Politics aren’t for me. Jim tricked me into coming here. This isn’t something I care about.”

  “You don’t care?” Amy inquired.

  “I’ve got a family to take care of, and I need to help that man settle in with his.” Dylan gestured at Kevin. “So, no. I don’t care.”

  Dylan removed a stale cracker from the plastic sleeve and put it into his mouth. As he began to chew, he noticed the way the pregnant woman, Amy Taylor, stared at the remaining crackers. Then he saw her begin to salivate, so he quickly swallowed what he had just put into his mouth, but she continued to stare. Dylan recognized the look and handed her the remaining crackers.

  Amazed, Amy asked, “I thought you didn’t care.”

  “I don’t,” Dylan lied.

  Linda Foster, the young woman with the fussy child, saw the crackers and immediately stopped talking with Kevin. Linda looked very young, and her hair, several months ago, had all been bleached blonde, but now her true hair color was obvious. Inches of black roots had grown out, sharply contrasting with the remaining blonde hair, but complimenting her naturally dark eyebrows. With her child on her hip, Linda went directly to Amy, and Amy split the remaining crackers with her. Linda sat on a nearby chair, and everyone watched her as she crushed the crackers in her mouth, created a salty, stale slurry, and extruded it into her child’s mouth. Then she did it again and again until her share of the crackers were gone. She wiped the saliva from her lips with her forearm, and stood up, facing Dylan. She lifted her shirt, baring her breasts, trying to get her child to nurse. If there was not any milk, she thought the act itself might calm the child into a nap, temporally delaying the constant pang of hunger. Dylan saw each of her ribs, protruding like ridges of a clamshell, and her pencil-thin waist. Starvation pulled her skin so tight across her stomach that her navel was flat. Amy moved Linda’s shirt to a more modest position after the child latched on to the nipple.

  “I think you’re a good man. Thank you,” said Linda, almost in tears. “I’ve been talking with your friend Kevin. He’s a good man, too.”

  “He’s my best friend now. I owe him my life.”

  “He told me what you’ve been through and what you’ve seen.” Linda was choking back a waterfall of emotion. “My husband was in California when this happened. He’ll make it back, won’t he? He can make it back home, just like you did.” Tears began to form in her eyes as she rocked the suckling infant. “Look, he has a child, he has to come home. Tell me he’s coming home. Tell me he’s going to make it back.”

  Dylan tried to sound convincing when he lied. He told her that her husband would make it back, that it was possible that he was already well on his way toward home. Linda’s tears began to subside. Dylan had tried to give her hope with his lie and wondere
d if what he had done was worth more than the few stale crackers he had given her.

  Amy put her arm around Linda, and the two women walked out of the building to go home. David remained and asked Dylan about the bow.

  “I could use one of those,” said David, admiring the bow. “I went to the barter lot looking for food, and I saw one of those. I didn’t have enough to trade for it.”

  “What’s a barter lot?” asked Kevin.

  “It’s the parking lot of the big grocery store that was on Seventh Street. That’s where people go to trade.”

  “I know where that is,” replied Dylan. “This would be worth a lot?” He held up his bow.

  “Yeah, it would,” replied David.

  “Hey Kevin, you were right. I need to start making these.” Dylan paused for a moment. “Maybe you could take yours to the barter lot and get an idea what it’s worth.”

  “I can take him there,” offered David, “but how do I get a bow? I’ve traded everything I could for food. I’ve got nothing left. What do you want for a hunting bow?”

  Dylan shrugged his shoulders and replied, “Cooperation.”

  “Cooperation?”

  “Yeah, cooperation,” repeated Dylan. “Is it a deal?”

  “I can’t thank you enough,” David said to Dylan. “Kevin, let me know when you want to go to the barter lot. I’ll show you where it is.”

  “Okay.”

  David rushed out the door.

  “And as for you,” Dylan glared at Jim.

  “Oh, what the hell. Do you want me to say I’m sorry again?”

  Dylan laughed and said, “Just forget it.”

  After the crowd left, the stench of body odor still lingered, and he wanted a breath of fresh air. Dylan went out the doors leading to the pool. Weeds and climbing vines had strangled their way to the top of the metal pickets and had overtaken the black fence surrounding the pool. At the pool’s edge, he looked into the dark-green, mossy water and saw the eyes of a frog peering at him. He knelt down on one knee and thought about snatching the amphibian from its camouflage for something else to eat later that day, but since he had eaten so many frogs recently, he decided to try to get a squirrel on the way home instead. Dylan sat on a chair under the arbor to escape from the sun, and motioned for Kevin and Jim to do the same.

  “That smell was horrible,” said Jim, flicking his tongue across his teeth after he spoke. “I can still taste it in my mouth.”

  Kevin noticed a showerhead on the outside of the building. He walked over to the wall and turned the chrome lever. Nothing happened.

  “What did you think was going to happen?” asked Jim.

  Kevin did not answer the question, he just replied, “I’d kill for a warm shower.”

  Jim nodded in agreement.

  As the two men continued talking about how much they missed showers, a steel door on the opposite end of the building captured Dylan’s attention.

  “Hey, Jim, what’s in there?” asked Dylan.

  “I don’t know, never cared to swim, so I never came down here.”

  The door was closed, but Dylan noticed that the stainless-steel hinges were exposed. After testing the door and confirming it was locked, he picked up his aluminum chair, took the plastic cap off the bottom of a leg, and wedged it under the head of a hinge pin. Dylan pushed the hinge pin up, and it came out. He did the same to the remaining two pins and the steel door fell over, revealing the pump and filter room.

  “What now?” asked Kevin.

  “Look for anything we can use,” replied Dylan.

  Kevin and Jim began the search by opening cabinets and looking in boxes. Dylan walked to the opposite wall where there was a tall stack of cardboard boxes. He read a label. They were boxes of chlorine for purifying water. There had to be hundreds of pounds of it, most likely the new season’s shipment that had gone unused.

  “Hey, guys,” Dylan leaned proudly on the stack of boxes. “I just got us closer to that shower you wanted.”

  “What are you talking about?” asked Kevin.

  Dylan slapped the stack of boxes and replied, “This is the chemical used to purify water for the pool. Without it you get that.” Dylan pointed to the green pool water. “Jim, bring the wheelbarrow over here and take this home, all of it.”

  Jim was holding the toolbox and first-aid kit that he had found. “I’ll go home and get it now. If you two are done in here, you can follow me home. I want to introduce you to some more people, good people, not like the crowd this morning. They’ll be on the way back if we take the longer route home, following the street by the stream.”

  “Do you know where all the abandoned houses are?” asked Dylan.

  “Yes,” replied Jim, as he tried to dodge a mosquito that was buzzing his forehead. “Why do you want to know?”

  “Because we’re going to scavenge everything we can from the abandoned houses, like we did in here, before someone else does.”

  Jim handed the toolbox to Kevin and was finally able to swat the plump mosquito attacking his forehead. Dylan leaned the door back onto the frame, only partially covering the opening. They exited through the unlocked gate and walked toward the road beside the stream.

  Chapter Four

  Halfway down the street, Jim indicated that they needed to turn left and walk up the slope. Up there would be the middle of the subdivision and the point of highest elevation in the community. Around that area, he remembered seeing a rain barrel at an abandoned house and he wanted to show it to Dylan and Kevin. At the top of the hill, Jim stopped and so did the other two. They took the opportunity to share Kevin’s remaining crackers and drink the last of their water. Jim looked side to side before he realized that the rain barrel was at the back of the house, concealed by the tall grass. Just as Jim pointed in the direction they should go, a rabbit dashed across the street and into a lot where excavation had begun before the pulse hit. An orange plastic fence, held upright with steel rebar driven vertically into the ground, surrounded the pit’s perimeter. The rabbit ran into the fence and hesitated long enough for Dylan to draw back an arrow, aim, and shoot. The stunned rabbit convulsed on the ground. Dylan pounced on his kill. To put the animal out of its misery, he swung the rabbit by its rear legs, crushing its skull against a pile of excavated limestone. When Dylan got to the edge of the hole, he looked down and saw a jagged wall of bedrock fractured away to make room for the basement of another home. From between the layers of rock, he saw clear water cascading down the vertical surface. On the bottom of the pit was the concrete footing for the foundation walls and corrugated drain tile routed underneath the footing, designed to drain away the spring water.

  “Look at that,” said Dylan. He could taste the cool clear water in his mind.

  Jim held up the first-aid kit to shade his eyes from the sun as he looked into the hole. “I’ve seen this fence before, but I never thought to look down in there.”

  Kevin pulled up a long stem of fescue, put it in his mouth, and used it like a toothpick. “If you don’t mind, I need to get going.” He used the long stem to point toward their houses, still hidden from view by several blocks of homes, some in varying stages of construction and interspersed with empty lots.

  “Okay, let’s keep moving,” said Jim. “There are more people I want you to meet on the way home. They’re just at the end of this street where we turn left to get back to our houses.”

  “I need to get back to Mary now,” said Kevin. “We’ve been gone for a while. I want to make sure she’s okay.”

  Kevin turned and walked away, with the other two following him down the sloped street in the direction Jim had pointed. The street ended at the bottom of the small hill, terminating at a road perpendicular to it. From this corner, their houses were visible to the left, at the end of the road. Jim pointed to the home just across the street from where they were standing. It was an earth tone two-story house with a three-car garage, just like so many others in the neighborhood. It faced the street that led directly to
Dylan’s driveway. Its backyard ended at the edge of the park property, although the property line now was indistinguishable due to the tall grass.

  “This is it,” Jim announced. “Are you sure you don’t want to meet them?”

  “I want to get back. Maybe another day,” replied Kevin.

  “Here.” Dylan handed Kevin the two rabbits. “Take these back, but save one for me. I want to teach my son how to skin a rabbit.”

  “He needs a bow,” said Kevin. “Teach him to hunt.”

  “I’ve already made him a bow. It’s hidden in the garage. I was going to wait until he got older to give it to him, but he’s going to grow up a little faster now. I’m going to take him rabbit or squirrel hunting in the next few days.”

  “I’ll tell them you’re close by,” said Kevin, as he began to jog clumsily away, holding two dead rabbits and a toolbox.

  Dylan cupped his hands to his mouth and yelled toward Kevin. “Don’t tell him about the bow. It’s a surprise.”

  Jim was first to notice the open front door of the house they were facing. A tall man, with dark hair and dark eyes to match, had stepped through the door and was standing on his concrete front porch. His skin was pale and that made his dark, bushy eyebrows more pronounced. He was thin, but healthy in appearance, as if he had always been slender, with a slim waist. His unusually narrow waist made his shoulders look broader than they actually were. He was also clean-shaven.

  “That’s Joel,” said Jim, as he subtly leaned toward Dylan and spoke in a low voice. “If you look carefully, you can see his wife, Kim, watching us from behind the window curtain.”

  “I thought I heard yelling,” said Joel, as he gestured for the men to come closer. “How did the meeting go?”

  Dylan and Jim walked to the porch and looked up at Joel. He was already tall, so the height of the elevated porch mad him appear like a giant.