Dark Days of the After Special Edition | Prequel & Book 1 Page 23

  Logan wasn’t about to become the example, but he didn’t need the two guys he killed being the reason his apartment building was shaken down by the Chicom police either.

  These tyrants didn’t look for evidence, they beat everyone into submission. Only then did they try to extract information. That was what they called “looking for clues,” or “gathering evidence.” By the time they were done “asking questions,” the men and women they left behind were beaten so badly, their own mothers wouldn’t even recognize them.

  Logan grabbed the first corpse by the ankles, rolled him over, then hoisted him up over his back. He was quite heavy. Death had a way of adding a few pounds to a body. For that reason alone, the dead weight pressing on his back and shoulders wasn’t fun.

  The stacks were a couple of blocks over. He walked the body to the side street, looked both ways, then moved when it was clear. His thighs burned, his back felt wrenched and though his heart did a good job while he was with Kim, it was feeling the strain of exertion about halfway to his destination.

  He traveled the two blocks unnoticed. The sky was cold and heavy, the streets silent, save for the light flickering of the overhead lamps. He was about to turn into the alley designated for body burning when he heard voices.

  By then he was sweating and shivering, and the body seemed to have gained another fifty pounds. He tried lowering it slowly to the ground, but his back was shot and the corpse was unruly, obstinate and unwilling to fall quietly. He dropped in a heap, causing a small commotion. Logan controlled part of the fall, suppressing much of the noise, but it didn’t repress enough. The second he stood up, he pulled out his Karambit knife, just in case.

  A man stepped out of the alley, so close to him he startled and said, “Wow, you scared me.”

  The Chicom patrolman squinted his eyes in distaste, lifted a half-smoked cigarette to his lips and said, “It’s past curfew.”

  Before he could utter another word, Logan ripped the blade across the man’s throat. It was so fast and so vicious, he didn’t even move. His neck simply became a red line, and then a gushing waterfall.

  The moment he began to fall over, Logan grabbed him. He tried to avoid the blood, but it was everywhere. He slowly set him down, then moved him aside and walked into the alley where there was a man smoking a cigarette and looking upon a stack of fresh bodies piled at least nine feet high.

  “What are you doing?” the man asked, turning around.

  “Someone attacked your partner,” he said frantically. “I think he killed me, too.” He said this as he looked down at all the blood all over him. Holding out his hand, feigning injury, he said, “I need your help. Please. I need a hospital.”

  “Where’s my partner?” he asked, looking past Logan.

  “He got us both,” he said, dramatically. He even retched a little because of the foul smell coming from the stack of bodies. Logan sunk to his knees. Looking up at the Chicom one last time, he said, “Please, sir. I need a hospital.”

  The patrolman ignored Logan and headed straight for his partner. When the heartless prick passed by him, Logan slashed the outside of his thigh. Wasting no time, he rolled hard then shot forward low, tackling him and riding his body to the ground. Two quick slices on the inside of the thigh—trenching open the femoral artery—and it was all done but the bleeding.

  Somehow the patrolman had his gun out, his finger reaching for the trigger. Before he could fire off a round, Logan got him in the throat. The trigger finger relaxed, and so did he. Logan was sweating like crazy now, his rambunctious heart feeling like it was going to kick a little too hard and flatten out from exhaustion.

  He hurried to his feet. There were two bodies on the sidewalk beside a major thoroughfare. They weren’t exactly hidden. He wrangled up the first corpse, the one he’d killed back in his apartment, and dragged him to the stack of bodies. Rather than throw him on top, he just pushed him against the base. He fetched the next body, the smoking man who startled him. He dragged the body by his feet, his open throat still emptying out everywhere.

  Looking back, he saw a long, bloody trail. People would see that in the morning.

  He couldn’t do anything about it. Not now. He stacked one patrol man on the other, and that’s when he heard one of their two-ways buzzing.

  His heart just found a new gear.

  In the walkie-talkie, the Chicom patrolman was being asked to check in. At least, that’s what he could pick up with his limited understanding of the language. Wasting no time, he started cutting away the men’s uniforms. With a clean line down the center of each body, the clothing fell away. The two-way was crackling again, the voice more anxious.

  This was not good, he told himself.

  He tucked the fabric under the bodies rather than stripping the clothes off completely. It saved him a few minutes.

  Gagging from the smell, his senses heightened enough to hear the flies buzzing around the pile of bodies, he dry heaved a few times. His eyes were watering, and his nose was filled with throw up snot. That’s how bad it smelled.

  The two-way went off again, the voice sounding agitated.

  He went to the two-way lying on the ground and crushed it underfoot. He did the same with the other man’s device. Time was precious now.

  Hurrying, he dragged the last corpse over to the pile, rolling him to the base. He cut away his clothes, then stopped at the sound of an engine breaking through the silence.

  They were coming…

  Moving faster, Logan dragged the body to the huge, stinking pile, then jostled it over the others as best he could. He was trying to cover them up, but not doing a great job of it. Just then the Jeep’s engine approached, the vehicle slowing.

  With nothing left to do but pray his lurching stomach wouldn’t betray him, he burrowed into the pile of dead bodies and tried to slow his breathing. That’s when he saw the two-ways he’d crushed lying not more than ten feet away.

  Dammit!

  Two Chicoms got out of their jeep and headed straight to the smashed two-ways. The men were conversing in an excited state. They looked at one two-way, and then the next. One of them radioed in, saying something Logan couldn’t understand.

  The situation was worsening.

  As one of maybe thirty or forty bodies tossed into a pile and ready to burn, Logan was fearing for his life. If these two pricks started poking and prodding at the bodies around him, would they find him? Would they see him breathing? He began to pray. It wouldn’t do any good, but prayer was all he had. What he asked for, however, was not his own safety, but for the safety of those who would be shot if the dead Chicoms were discovered. By their own numbers, two dead patrolmen—no, three dead patrolmen—equaled thirty dead innocents.

  When the two-way chatter was done, the two men turned and looked at the pile. And then they walked right to him. He closed his eyes as light from a heavy duty flashlight swept over the corpses. He felt the light hit him. Fearing the worst, he held his breath.

  The light remained upon him even as his lungs grew desperate for air. Then the light disappeared and he drew a short, subtle breath. If he could get enough oxygen, he could hold his breath again, if needed.

  Instead of leaving, the two men started talking among themselves. Then one of them started laughing. That’s when Logan felt one of them kick the body underneath him. Lying face down in the bodies of the men he killed, he smelled blood, the rot of others, and someone’s aftershave.

  Finally the two men walked away, radioing out to whomever they were talking to on the two-way. They got in their jeep and sat there for a moment. Were they leaving? He wasn’t sure. In truth, they probably sat there for thirty seconds, maybe even a full minute. But to Logan, it felt more like ten minutes. And then the engine turned over and the jeep found a gear.

  Thank you, God!

  The sound of the departing jeep was perhaps the sweetest sound he’d ever heard.

  Logan rolled off the bodies, found his feet, then wasted no time hanging around there.
Peeking around the building, checking both sides of the street, things had returned to the eerie silence of before.

  He hustled back to his apartment, to the dead man face-planted into the asphalt. One leg sat against the apartment tower’s brick wall. The other was bent at the knee, heel down. His back looked strangely arched, his arms flopped out and lying on the ground. There was a big pool of what he was sure was blood all around him.

  Shaking his head in both disgust for what he was seeing, and revulsion for what he was about to do, Logan grabbed that free leg and pulled the man over. The sticky sound his face made peeling off the ground had Logan’s guts jumping.

  Twice he dry heaved, his eyes watering.

  There wasn’t much in his stomach in the way of dinner, but what was there was definitely at a hearty boil. When his stomach settled back down, he stood and took a few deep breaths.

  You can do this!

  Getting under the man, he hoisted him onto his other shoulder, the one that didn’t hurt from carrying the last guy, and then he headed back to the stack.

  He made the two block trek without concern. When he was in the alley, he cut away the corpse’s clothes and situated him among the others. His only hope was that the Chicoms would pile on more bodies in the morning, effectively covering up the evidence. If they did what they always do—and that’s have prisoners haul the dead bodies to the stacks—then everything would be okay.

  Standing back, appraising his work, he thought about what would happen next. The way they lit the stack was the same every time. He’d seen it firsthand. From a few feet away, they sprayed the bodies with some sort of accelerant, soaking them and all the crevices around them.

  Once they lit the pile, a fireball shot into the air, and then everything burned where it stood. After the bodies were reduced to a pile of ash, the Chicoms left it for a week as a reminder to other dissidents thinking of betraying the state.

  When he got back home, he found Kim in the same place he’d left her. He took off his clothes, put them in a bag he’d dispose of on the way to work, then took a quick shower and hopped back into bed naked.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  The next morning Logan woke up to a still undressed, still asleep Kim. Studying her for a moment or two before getting up, he wondered so many things about her. He wondered about the scars on her body, and the bruising he saw around her arms and on her ribs.

  Was this from the Krav sessions, or something darker?

  Over the last decade, the horrors of life in America only deepened before leading them into the oppression of the Chicom occupation. Their freedoms didn’t merely erode, they were snatched up wholesale with no remorse, no explanation, not even a PR rollout to ease the masses into such broad and sweeping changes. If this wouldn’t have happened, would there even be people like Kim? Or Skylar, who had a similar roadmap of abuse on her body?

  Would there be people like me?

  He crawled out of bed, made some lousy coffee, coffee that was more a fuel source than an enjoyable morning beverage.

  He imagined the strong smell would wake her, but Kim continued to sleep soundly. He went into the bathroom, shaved his head, washed his armpits and crotch, conserving on both water and time.

  Meanwhile, he was lost in the wonder of the message Skylar left. Of course, he couldn’t think of the message without also worrying about her. Was she even alive? What was she being put through? Would she eventually break and lead the Chicoms there?

  Treason was an immediate death sentence carried out at will. He was no one important enough to spare, or to really even pause on. Two bullets, it was all done.

  That’s how they killed you.

  Clearing his mind, he took a fresh cup of coffee to Kim, who was just waking up.

  Sitting up in bed, no sense of modesty—or perhaps just a sexual freedom he never experienced with Skylar—she sipped her coffee, her eyes low, studying the brew.

  “Are you staring at my boobs?” she asked, her voice groggy, her hair a bit of a mess, but in a way he found attractive.

  “Intently,” he said with a grin, even though he wasn’t. He was actually looking at all that curly black hair. When she glanced up and saw where he was looking, she said, “I look ugly in the morning. I was hoping you were staring at my breasts.”

  “If that makes you feel better, I suppose I could pacify you,” he said.

  “It would,” she said without humor.

  “How’d you sleep?”

  “Like the dead,” she said, yawning. “This coffee is terrible.”

  “I know.”

  “Then why’d you bring it to me?”

  “Because I feel appreciative,” he said truthfully.

  She took another sip and said, “It’s starting to taste better.” Looking at him over the rim of the cup, she said, “Why don’t you look tired?”

  “You met me tired,” he responded. “You’ve never actually seen me looking rested.”

  “What are you doing today?” she asked.

  “I have to run down that lead Skylar gave me,” he said, dispassionate.

  “Are you worried about her?”

  It turned out there was a very thin veil between what he was trying to project and what he actually felt. He wasn’t worried about her, he was terrified for her.

  “More than you know,” he said.

  She thought about this for a moment, took another contemplative sip of the coffee, then said, “How is it that you can feel what you do for her when she feels nothing for you?”

  “Who says she feels nothing for me?”

  “After her grandmother, after what they did to her and her mother, she doesn’t feel anything other than the need for retaliation.”

  “She’s different around me.”

  She gave a dismissive snort, then said, “In what way?”

  “I see the cracks in her armor.”

  “And that’s why you’re holding out for her?” she asked. “Because right now I’m in your bed and she’s…wherever she is.”

  “Is it that hard to find some humanity in this world?” he asked, his temper peeking through like a face between the drapes. “Is it so hard to forget about the Chicoms for one night?”

  “You talk like a victim, trying to find joy in the thirteen seconds of freedom you experience every so often.”

  “I am a victim,” he said. “So are you. All of us are. But we have to find things in this world to feel good about. It’s hard, but it’s possible. That’s how we take control and stop being a victim. Otherwise I’d just be like one of those poor saps each week that jump out of a skyscraper, or step in front of a firing squad.”

  “How would you do it?” she asked. Sitting up, leaning forward and taking one of his hands, she said, “Be honest. You have one shot and that’s it.”

  “How would I kill myself?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “I’d go out like a gangster, but not half-assed like a thug gangster. I’m talking high body count, the kind of massacre that makes the news. Guns, knives, bloody fists.”

  “God, that’s hot,” she said, grinning. Her fingers reached out to him, touched his chest. “How would you die?”

  “A few dozen rounds, enough lead to make me dance a jig before I’m pulled down to hell.”

  Her smile faded a bit and her hand shrunk down. “Do you really think we’re going to hell?”

  “For what we’re planning? I don’t know. I just assume I will because I refuse to stand around and be a victim anymore. It’s been too long.”

  “I had no idea you were like this,” she said, setting the coffee on the nightstand and getting out of bed. “If all this world has for us is carnal pleasures and vengeance, would it be okay if I sleep in your room again?”

  “Just don’t steal any of my stuff,” he said. “That’s all I ask.”

  Walking naked to the shower, she said, “I’m going to steal a little water, some soap and shampoo, maybe even a bolt of electricity for the hair dryer.”
/>
  “I can live with that,” he said.

  “Are you staring at my ass right now?” she called out over her shoulder.

  “Yes, I am,” he said back.

  “Good.”

  A few minutes later, the shower started. He popped his head in the bathroom and said, “The house will be wired with eyes and ears as soon as I leave. I should be back by five-thirty, barring my arrest, detainment and/or execution.”

  “Good luck then,” she said from behind the plastic shower curtain.

  Logan left for work carrying the bag of bloody clothes. He kept his head down, his eyes low and his senses on high alert.

  Traffic was heavy that morning, the exhaust fumes thick.

  He walked the crowded sidewalks with a thousand other pedestrians, keeping pace with the herd, not bumping into those beside him or stepping on the heels of those in front of him.

  Fortunately nothing was blown up, no one was killed and he didn’t have to start the day as witness to a firing squad. That didn’t mean everything was bright or cheerful.

  It most certainly wasn’t.

  The air was so damp and congested with the stink of the morning burns, you could practically taste the pollution. Ash fell from the sky like morning snow. Except these weren’t icy flakes of atmosphere as much as they were the remains of the dead. He thought of Auschwitz. It was hard not to make the comparison.

  He once read that the furnaces of Birkenau devoured hundreds of thousands of bodies each year in operation. The ovens ate women and children who were gassed in the showers. They ate men who dropped dead in the fields from exhaustion, or succumbed to the effects of poor health. They ate those who fell asleep but never woke up.

  As a result of the supply of bodies and the demands of the ovens, the survivors often spoke of the air and how it always seemed to be raining ash.