Dark Days of the After Special Edition | Prequel & Book 1 Read online

  The street Logan and Harper were on in that moment was one such street. A stack of bodies fifteen feet high had burned for two days straight, leaving only a blackish-gray mound of ash in its place.

  All those lives…just gone.

  Wiped away.

  They were fathers and sons, brothers and husbands, men with ideas for the future, big dreams they couldn’t achieve but would willingly slave themselves for if only for their families. All these lives were dashed away with a few rounds by an occupying force. Even though there were some women in there, too, the Chicoms largely left them alone. It turned out they made the best slave labor. With their husbands and fathers gone, the women were now married to the state, and they stayed married to protect the interests of their children.

  For weeks, people couldn’t grasp this mind-boggling horror. American citizens demanded to know how this happened. The answer was simple, and it was always the same: It just did.

  America suffered the attacks of 9-11 and Pearl Harbor, but she’d never experienced a ground invasion on the interior of the country. Without experience in protecting their own streets, the fat, decadent masses (Chairman Mao’s words, not Logan’s words) bowed to the opposing force.

  Han called it kneeling down to kiss the Communist boot. His now deceased friend had said, “You do what you can to save your life, even if your life means nothing to anyone else, and precious little to yourself.”

  According to Han, self-preservation was fundamental to the human DNA.

  “Two blocks up, we take a right,” Harper said, dragging him from his reverie.

  He was cold, angry, and for the first time, ready to get off his knees and square up against the Communist state. That’s when they saw the patrol—two men with a German Shepherd.

  Harper backed up into him. Pushing him out of her way, she caught him in the junk, flinched, then looked over her shoulder at him in sheer panic.

  “Move!” she hissed.

  They were upwind from the dog, waiting like rats in a corner for the three of them to pass. The dog stopped, sniffed the air, looked their way.

  Oh, no…

  He started to growl low in his throat, but then he stopped. The foot soldiers looked their way, causing the already cold night to drop another ten degrees. Was he shivering from fear or the damp night? He didn’t know. All he knew was that they were tucked in the shadows and trying not to breathe, let alone move even a muscle.

  The dog finally calmed down, the hair on his back settling. The trio continued on. A block up, they heard the men talking, their voices becoming distant.

  “I didn’t mean to hit you in the—”

  “I know,” he said.

  “Did you and Skylar ever…?”

  “Once, in the shower.”

  “How was she?” Harper asked, a brightness to her eyes he hadn’t seen before. “I mean on a scale of one to ten.”

  “I was an eight,” he said, standing up. “Let’s go.”

  When they got to Pete’s place, Harper said, “Skylar says you fight pretty good. I drive better than I fight, so you neutralize Pete and I’ll get the keys to the Jeep. I also need to see about gas and maybe siphon some from a nearby vehicle if necessary, so don’t take too long.”

  “When you say neutralize…”

  “I’m not talking about adjusting his Ph balance, Logan. Do what needs doing.”

  He swallowed hard, but then he called forth every last injustice the man had perpetrated on Skylar. The mental abuse, the rapes, the beatings—all of it. He let that hate marinate while he thought of fake Chairman Mao and all the rage and animosity the image excited inside him. His face was hot now, his fists balled, his jaw set.

  He was ready.

  When he went into the house, he was thinking two things and two things only: Find a weapon, for this is justified homicide.

  Chapter Eight

  Pete’s house was small, dark and quiet. It smelled of old beef, peeled wallpaper and a bit of dry rot. Fortunately there was carpet that wasn’t pulled up. It was smashed flat against bare wood floors beneath, not so comfortable. Still, it wasn’t hardwood floors. They tended to creak the most when they were old, neglected and then walked upon in the dead of night.

  Logan kept his head low, pulling his baseball cap even lower to hide his eyes and nose from Pete’s surveillance grid. There were cameras everywhere—the same in every home—so rather than slinking through the dark, he turned on his dummy phone’s flashlight feature and put it up in front of his chin facing out. This created shelter behind the glare, a way to move throughout the spy grid in Pete’s house unidentified.

  Moving quickly but quietly, he worked his way to the kitchen, opened the drawers, found a corkscrew for opening wine, but no knives. The Chicoms had been disarming the citizens of occupied California for months now, right down to their kitchen knives. Most of the guns and ammo were gone before they came, but the American retaliation against them had been fierce. The losses the occupying force suffered most came from ambushes and kitchen knives.

  Logan shook his head, not wanting to do what was to come next, but trying to keep the upside of this venture front and center in his mind.

  Turning the corkscrew over in his hands, he let the picture of what he had to do play out in his mind. One punch, in and out of his neck, easy-peasy-super-Chineesie. He could do this.

  You can do this…

  He touched the corkscrew’s tip with his finger; it was extra sharp.

  Creeping back to the bedroom, he covered the phone’s light with his hand, letting out enough of a glow to see where Pete was sleeping. Skylar’s former flame lay beneath a thick blanket on a bare mattress. The same as most everyone else. Only the bare essentials were allowed in the Communist State. Thank you fake Mao.

  To his utter dismay, Pete was a good looking guy, much better looking than Logan. Even his build rivaled Logan’s in every way. He locked the image down in his mind, sealed it with his animosity. Then he let the insecurities have their way with him.

  He saw Skylar being mounted by this GQ beast, his handsome face hovering over hers, her willingness to let him have his way with her the thing that made him sick with jealousy. Earlier, he wondered if he’d have what it took to end the man. Looking at him now, he knew he did. It didn’t matter that he was cruel or abusive. All that mattered in Logan’s mind was that he got from Skylar what Logan never could and he did not appreciate it.

  He set the phone down on the bed, the light now bright off the ceiling, the dirty bedroom illuminated.

  When he glanced back down at Pete, the man’s eyes were open and he was looking right at Logan.

  He was first to move, but Pete was surprisingly quick to counter.

  Logan lunged at him, aimed for his neck. Pete, however, raised an arm, catching the metal corkscrew right in the meat of it. Howling, reeling in horror, Pete was unable to tear his eyes off the makeshift weapon buried in his arm.

  Kicking out, Pete slammed Logan in the hip. His body folded over, but Logan came back to life quick, shrugging off the pain. He was used to being beat on in class, so that didn’t slow him. It didn’t even make him think twice.

  He went after the man again.

  Pete was pushing himself to the other side of the bed. But Logan was in go mode. He grabbed an ankle, stopping Mr. GQ, who was now awake and putting up a hell of a fight. Somewhere in the struggle, Logan must have kicked the cell phone because it dropped off the bed, landed face-down and extinguished the light.

  Logan had a leg by then, but he was suddenly kicked in the face with the foot he didn’t trap. Wincing, he went after it, found it, grabbed it before taking another shot.

  Pete squirmed, struggled, cursed wildly.

  With a good grip on Pete’s legs, Logan now crawled up the back of the man’s body. Still fighting, Pete managed to drag himself forward enough to start to fall off the side of the bed, but Logan wasn’t letting him get away.

  He grabbed Pete’s nightshirt, yanked on it, dragged hi
mself over the bed and got hold of the arm with the corkscrew it in. By then, half Pete’s body was smashed onto the floor, his neck cranked, his other arm pinned.

  Out of the frying pan, into the fire…

  Yanking the corkscrew out, causing a grunting, spitting, howling fit in Pete, Logan now had his weapon back.

  That’s when he unleashed the monster inside of him.

  The up and down mania, the stabbing salvation of the corkscrew burying into flesh, bone and carpet—the scraping sound of metal hitting the bones of Pete’s face—it was a long withheld fury, something even he didn’t realize he had inside him. The monster the Chicoms created in him now had him by the head, the heart and the limbs.

  Fueled by the Chicom occupation, his hatred for his job, the deep seated loathing he felt for that horrifically ugly duck tongue eating psychopath, Skylar’s betrayal, he nearly lost himself to the rage. It was impossible to say how many times he stabbed Pete. All he knew was he was still going long after Pete stopped moving, or breathing.

  Awareness set in, along with horror. He rolled off the dead body and sat up, bumping into the nightstand but finding it difficult to care. He patted around the slick mess that was the former abuser named Pete, found the corkscrew where he left it—buried in his neck.

  With a growl, he ripped it out clean.

  “You had everything,” he hissed at the man, completely out of breath. “You had her…”

  He started crying, even though he didn’t mean to. He wasn’t even aware of it. It wasn’t the guilt or the shame over what he’d done. It was more than that.

  Ever since those Communist pricks stomped on the dying embers of what was left of their American freedoms, his thoughts began to grow darker, more hateful. He wondered if he’d be capable of such a violent outburst. But this? All this…indignation? No. He didn’t think this was possible…yet there he was.

  “Hey,” a hushed voice said, a light now dancing into the room. “Oh, my God.”

  Harper hurried to the side of the bed where Logan sat against the wall before the very dead, very bloody former lover of Skylar.

  “I said kill him, not slaughter him,” she said. “This is some real Ed Kemper business here.”

  “No knives,” Logan said, spitting out blood that wasn’t his.

  “I guess not.”

  “Help me up,” he said, raising a hand.

  “No way,” she said, standing back. “You’re a crime scene, man.”

  In the bathroom he stripped off his shirt and washed the gore off his face and arms. Harper brought in a red and black flannel and some pants that seemed to fit okay. She was looking at his torso. He wasn’t as thick as before, but he had a ways to go before he had that lean ripped look that used to matter when fashion and peacocking was a thing.

  “You keep fighting the way Skylar says you’re fighting and one day you’ll look like him,” she said, referring to Pete and his winning physique.

  “Get out of my head,” he grumbled.

  “You’re not as milquetoast as I thought,” she replied with a slight grin.

  “Pull off your shirt and let’s compare abs,” he said. She waved him off and went out of the bathroom. “That’s what I thought.”

  They got everything they could from the house: matches, batteries, all the toilet paper and some bathroom essentials (soap, shampoo, Q-tips, Band-Aids, two towels) they needed. Harper collected what perishable foods dotted Pete’s pantry while Logan went after the dish soap, a scrub brush and Clorox from the laundry closet. There was half of a three gallon jug of water in the garage next to the Jeep—they put that in back with everything else. To Logan’s delight, Harper then showed him a pair of three gallon gas cans on the back of the Jeep, both full.

  “I checked and there’s still more than half a tank of gas in the vehicle itself,” she said.

  “So we’re good?”

  “We’re good,” she replied.

  When they got in the Jeep and started it up, he looked over at her and said, “Who the hell are you really?”

  Her eyes meeting his, her face back to that emotionless expression, she said, “You burned the head of the Resistance.”

  “You?” he said. Nothing about her face changed. “Wow. That’s…that’s insane.”

  “I hope you haven’t lost your nerve,” she said.

  “My nerve?”

  “You brutalized Pete and you pulled the trigger this afternoon, no hesitation,” she said. “These are defining moments, Logan. I saw it this afternoon, how you became someone else, not this ridiculous version of whatever it is you are now. Rather, what you were before today. I don’t want you to lose that spirit. We may need it.”

  “I’m not the ridiculous version of anything,” he argued.

  “You’re an IT nerd,” she said. “One who found he had big balls when the time was right.”

  “Why didn’t you just say that?”

  “Now you get to be the guy with balls who can play an IT nerd from time to time,” she said, tapping him on the nose.

  “Stop sidestepping my question.”

  “What was it again?”

  “You know what it was. If I’m about to go out there with you into this nightmare,” he said, pointing to the dark street in front of them, “I should know what I’m most likely giving my life for.”

  “This nation is about to become the world’s battleground. You may not know it, but you’re fighting for America itself. We aren’t alone, Logan. But we need people to play their parts when it’s required of them, and now it’s required of you.”

  “I’m nobody though,” he said.

  “Not today.”

  “Skylar expects me to fail you and her,” he said.

  “The Chicoms took the west coast. Mexico will want it for herself. When the armies pour in to take it, we’ll be trapped in the middle and most likely exterminated,” she said. “This is about to become the biggest killing field in history.”

  “Good God,” he replied.

  Nodding her head, she said, “If the Chicoms win, they’ll instigate full scale Communism across half the United States with their eye on the EU or the AU Army, whichever wins out over the other. Everyone will have to fight eventually. Which means no more happy days for any of us.”

  “Newsflash, chubby,” he said, “we haven’t seen happy days for years.”

  Brushing off the dig, she said, “There’s the surveillance society and then there is the Communist regime. To take us, they have to break us.”

  “They’ve already done that,” he said as she started to pull out of the driveway and into the cold, dark night.

  “Maybe they broke you,” Harper said, “but they haven’t broken me. And they most certainly haven’t broken the Resistance. These tyrants want us to comply, but they haven’t routed out the spirit of this country. Not from our heads, our hearts or our bones. They’re going to kill us all eventually, Logan. But we’re not going to give even an inch of ground Let that be your fuel.”

  “We don’t stand a chance, Harper,” he said.

  “That’s just you on your knees sucking the Communist—”

  “Don’t say it.”

  She held her tongue, but then she said, “Breaking you means concentration camps, party loyalty, shitting in holes, getting killed for being white, Christian, gay, Muslim or Jewish. You think because they’ve relocated us to homes of their choosing, wired our entire lives for video and sound, shot dissidents in the streets that this is us being broken? It isn’t. This is them still breaking us.”

  “I can’t help my skin color or my beliefs.”

  “No, but they can. If they don’t like you, they end you. Simple. Whoever is on the other side of the gun holds the fate of your life in their hands. If you don’t believe that, you’d better pull your head out of your ass and wake up, otherwise one day your face will be in a losing war with a bullet and the trigger man will only stop to wonder if you were worth the spent lead.”

  “They have to have some
value on human life,” he argued. “I have Chinese friends who are nice, decent people. Not all of them can be bad.”

  “Most of them aren’t bad at all! They’re just as caught up in this as we are! But the dictators, that fake Mao BS, those aren’t human and they aren’t the original spirit of the Chinese people. They are bloodthirsty tyrants who just happened to be born Chinese. The good people under this maniacal regime have been oppressed long before this day or the last. This isn’t about nationality or skin color, it’s about power, control and ideology.”

  “And their ideology is?”

  “You’re a mutt in the way of their dream. A useless eater. A plague.”

  “If they hate us, what’s the point of them being over here?”

  “They intend to put America under their heel and keep it there for the next thousand years. Same as Hitler. Different time, different face, same agenda.”

  They drove out onto Folsom Street. Logan was having a hard time catching his breath. To see things through Harper’s eyes, to hear how she framed everything, he was beginning to understand hers and Skylar’s passion.

  They were right.

  As for the Jeep, they were in a six cylinder engine that was relatively quiet at low RPMs despite the off-road additions Pete had recently made. The vehicle still made noise as they rolled down Folsom toward 24th, but not as much as Logan expected.

  They hung a left on 24th under a canopy of dead trees, trees that used to be full and beautiful before the Communists took over and let an already stumbling city fall to absolute ruin.

  “You can smell the stench in the air,” she said. “When we get out of the city, out of this God-forsaken state, you’re going to smell so much fresh air you’ll wish you never even thought about coming back.”

  “I don’t have to come back,” he said. “What would I return for anyway?”

  She looked at him, but only for a second and only through the light of a three quarter moon. With a slight frown, she said, “You sound like a crybaby right now.”