Gray Skies Read online

  GRAY

  SKIES

  Darkness Rising Series

  Book 3

  By

  Justin Bell

  Mike Kraus

  © 2018 Muonic Press Inc

  www.muonic.com

  www.JustinBellAuthor.com

  www.facebook.com/WolfsHeadPublishing

  www.MikeKrausBooks.com

  [email protected]

  www.facebook.com/MikeKrausBooks

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, without the permission in writing from the author.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Author’s Notes

  Stay updated on Mike’s books by signing up for the Mike Kraus Reading List.

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  Special Thanks

  Special thanks to Amanda for editing and for my awesome beta team, without whom this book wouldn’t be nearly as great. Thank you to Christine, Claudia, Glenda, James, Julie, Kelly and Marlys!

  Aftershock: Book 4 of the Darkness Rising Series

  is now available!

  Chapter 1

  Her fingers touched the cold, hard steel of the Remington .22 rifle, young hands cradling the unforgiving wood grain stock.

  “Shoot it, girl,” the voice rasped in her ear. A rough, hoarse whisper.

  She didn’t want to. Looking down the slender barrel of the rifle, she could see the two tiny black pearls staring back at her from the tangle of green leaves and dark branches. Angled antlers stretching up from the gentle slope of its head and neck. A light twitch of its dark nose signaled that it had heard something. Smelled something. He knew someone was there.

  “He heard you,” the voice said in her ear. “Do it. Quickly.”

  Small forearm muscles tensed under her shoulder. Her narrow arms, not much thicker than the rifle she held, were rigid and clamped tight, an immovable statue in firing position, the target glaring back at her from the other side of the rounded gun metal barrel.

  “I said do it! Now! He won’t wait forever, girl!”

  Rhonda’s finger tightened on the trigger, and the rifle blasted a deafening boom. Up ahead, birds streaked towards the pale, blue sky.

  ***

  The thick gray clouds of smoke crept in front of the sun, blotting it from view this early morning, and still the ash fell like snow, a strange sensation in the near oppressive heat of late spring tumbling towards summer.

  She blinked her eyes, snapping away the memory. In her mind, the trees and sky looked as it had a few weeks ago when they’d visited her parents’ cabin. When they’d first arrived, she’d expected those unpleasant memories to surface, but they hadn’t. She’d been too busy dealing with other things, but now as she sat behind the wheel of the RV, there was little else to think about beyond those key moments of her past.

  Rhonda wasn’t sure if it was the radiating heat from the fires consuming downtown St. Louis or if it was the thick mixed cloud and smoke cover containing the heat of the earth and keeping it from rising upwards, but from the time they walked to the storage facility to the time they loaded and boarded the RV and headed out on their voyage, the heat was like a physical object; a soaking wet coat, hanging on everyone like a down parka fresh from a torrential downpour, heavy and suffocating.

  The trip to the storage facility was uneventful, even after the emotional departure of the morning. Brad’s grandparents wished everyone well and hugged their grandson voraciously, as if in hopes that the stronger their hug was in the present, the longer it would last into the future. Brad had been unemotional, his eyes remaining dry, his lips a thin smile of appreciation as he said goodbye to two blood relatives he was likely to never see again. Their donation of the RV had felt like one final goodbye not just to their only remaining grandson, but to the world at large; a last expression of empathy before they stepped into whatever came next.

  As they headed northeast from the outskirts of St. Louis towards Highway 67, the wipers flapped back and forth, scattering the flaked remnants of pale ash from the windshield, tossing some of it away like dried specks of paper and smearing other sections across the windshield like dead bugs. Phil sat in the passenger seat looking at the phenomenon and wondered if the source of the ash produced different results. Was the ash spent from burnt wood destined to be the light flakes? If so, the ash that was moist and smeared, was that…something else? His stomach pitched at the thought of it and he had to look away from the windshield.

  Rhonda eased the RV onto 67, noting that compared to Interstate 55, the road was clear for being as close as it was to the city. The smaller highway angled eastward, brushing past the northwest corner of St. Louis and in the back of the vehicle, Winnie looked out one of the narrow windows.

  From the angle she was watching she saw the glowing embers of active flames for the first time, the bright throbbing of orange flickers beyond the thatches of scattered trees and industrial sprawl they were circumventing. St. Louis International Airport passed along their right, and even from afar it looked like the broken and scorched husk of a ghost town, the planes standing uninhabited, the buildings dark and dead. Several cars were in the parking lots, but there was a distinct absence of humanity.

  “What are you thinking about?” Phil asked, looking over towards Rhonda from the passenger seat.

  She didn’t look at him, keeping her eyes on the road. “Oh, nothing. Just some memories. And thinking about Lydia.”

  “Worried about her?”

  “Of course. But not just that.”

  She eased the RV along the side of the road, navigating the shoulder with remarkable ease considering the terrain and the vehicle.

  “Do you remember last year? Lydia’s spring break?”

  Phil pressed his head back against the seat and closed his eyes. He usually hated these memory games because he knew Rhonda sometimes did it because she knew he didn’t always pay attention at these family events. He spent so much time glued to his phone that there were moments he didn’t embrace or appreciate. Moments he felt like he had lost, especially since there was no guarantee that any more of those moments would ever exist again.

  “Yeah, I remember,” he said. “We went to the hot springs, right? I mean, there was that amusement park nearby, but you and me were all about the hot springs.”

  Rhonda nodded.

  “What made you think of that?”

  Rhonda looked out through the windshield, but she was distant, her eyes focusing up ahead on the persistent, low hanging smoke that seemed to coat the entire horizon. It reminded her of the thick steam that lingered around all the hot springs, that unique look of the warm water in cooler, spring temperatures.

  “I’m not sure,” she replied. “I guess that was the last family vacation we really had with Lydia, wasn’t it?”

  “I think it was,” Phil replied. “Once she got to UCLA, she didn’t come back much.”

  Rhonda looked over at him. “Did she seem distant to you back then at all? Uninterested?”

  Phil looked back. “Rhonda, I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”

  “I don’t know,”
Rhonda replied. “Honestly, I have no idea. I think I’m just trying to latch onto whatever small grasp of her I can.”

  They continued driving for a few moments, the RV thumping over the uneven pitch of the hardened dirt.

  “She seemed almost repulsed, you know?” Rhonda said.

  “What on earth do you mean?”

  “You don’t remember? She looked at the hot springs like they were some offense against nature. She called them a ‘tool of the capitalist agenda’ or something ridiculous.” Rhonda laughed. “I don’t know why I’m thinking of that, it just struck me as funny.”

  Phil smiled. He hadn’t remembered that exchange, but thinking back on it, and thinking back to Lydia’s free-thinking ways, he could see her saying that.

  “Sounds like something she might have said,” Phil finally said. “Can you even imagine how she’s gotten at UCLA?”

  Rhonda chuckled, glancing at the rearview mirror to get a look at Max and Brad who were sitting further back, deep in conversation.

  “So you changed your mind about those, huh?” Max asked, nodding towards Brad who was sitting on a seat near the rear of the RV. The shoulder holster hung loose over his narrow torso, and the pistol within the holster appeared to weigh fifty pounds the way it sagged from the strap over his chest.

  Brad glanced down at the weapon. It was a straight forward pistol, a small Ruger .380 caliber that they’d ransacked from a local sporting goods store before leaving his grandparents. Surprised to see weapons intact there, and judging by the lack of people roaming the streets, they figured most of the St. Louis population had rushed to the city center, looking for answers.

  And there they'd remained. Had they burned there? Brad thought back to how congested the streets were on the highways from Colorado to Missouri and wondered if inner St. Louis was like that, too. If the entire city had charged inward, seeking answers, and barricaded themselves there while the pot boiled, by the time it boiled over, they had nowhere to go.

  “Yeah. It’s a different world,” Brad said quietly. “My mom would have hated it.” He looked away from Max, back out his own narrow window.

  “Brad, she would have understood,” Winnie said from across the RV. She looked at him, her eyes open wide. “She would have wanted you to do whatever you need to do to be safe.”

  Brad nodded. “That will never happen again,” he whispered.

  Winnie noticed the dark shadow that passed over his face and she felt sad for it. Less than a month ago, he’d been a happy-go-lucky, young boy who was in awe of trees, grass, and bare blue sky. Now it seemed like he was harder than she and Max combined. His jaw set, his shoulders in an eternal state of square, and she thought that he might have even grown an inch or two. Both he and Max were still a little too young to have free growing facial hair, but if they’d been five years older, the past month would have given them thick, gray locks of weathered beard, if only for effect.

  “Never forget what you did for mom and me,” Winnie said to Brad. “It’s easy to beat yourself up over your parents, but if it wasn’t for you, mom and I would have never gotten out of that warehouse. You don’t need to shoot things to be strong, remember that.”

  Brad shrugged, continuing to glare out the window at the shadows of passing buildings.

  “Coming up on the Missouri River,” Phil said from the front, glancing back. “Not sure what the bridge situation is.”

  Angel and Greer stood up in the far back, each of them scooping up a rifle stashed behind the third row seat. Angel had finally retired the SIG .22 caliber that had saved his bacon so many times and had upgraded to a competition modified M4A1 they’d found in the same sporting goods store wherepressed Brad had dug up the Ruger. Modified with a fluted barrel and FAL branded magazines capable of holding 5.56 millimeter ammunition, it was a thing of beauty. Along with the M4A1 they’d liberated a healthy amount of ammo as well, loading it all up in the back of the RV before they’d left.

  Greer had managed to hold onto the Russian made AK-12 that he’d pulled from the Demon Dogs alongside Jeremiah, and they’d even found plenty of curved magazines with the required 4.45 millimeter rounds at the same shop. It had been a one-stop-shop for all things weaponized. Max had pulled some .357 speed loaders that seemed to work with his stolen revolver, which was still never more than a few inches away from his eager grasp. He’d found a contoured holster that made it fit much more comfortably to the small of his back than it had just stuffed in his belt.

  Greer had managed to hold onto his Glock and the Remington 870 twelve gauge was never far from Angel as well. For a normal, middle-class Colorado family, the Frasers and friends had become a veritable mobile arsenal. Phil and Rhonda had been surprisingly comfortable with all of this, even as Winnie, their delicate older daughter, picked out a Beretta APX Striker semi-automatic nine millimeter pistol. Her eyes had gone wide, and she’d smiled when Greer had presented it to her and asked if she’d wanted it. Rhonda had acquiesced, as long as Greer promised to put Winnie through the same rigorous training he was putting Max and Brad through, and Greer agreed.

  Greer wasn’t sure how ready he would be to ramp up the training, though. Brad’s grandmother’s nursing skills hadn’t dulled much with age, and she had peppered Greer with antibiotics while he was recovering in a desperate attempt to battle back any potential infection from the bullet still lodged deep in his chest. There was a persistent dull ache there; a rippling, white hot agony buried within the fibers of his pectoral muscles, a warmth that sometimes spread out to the perimeter of his chest. There were times that it felt as if his torso was on fire, but it had been getting better, thanks to the penicillin flooding into his system.

  “How you feeling, man?” Angel asked Greer as he saw him shift as he stood.

  “I’m okay,” Greer replied. “Chest still hurts off and on. Feeling a little weak, but I’m good.”

  The RV slowed as it approached the bridge over the Missouri River and Rhonda was surprised at how empty the four-lane road was traversing the bridge. Several cars stopped along the way, most of them over on the shoulder, and she could see some people walking along what looked to be a railroad bridge off to the left, bracketed with large, dark ironwork supported on thick, concrete columns. The vehicle veered around one broken down vehicle, and swerved to avoid an abandoned truck, then continued onward for a short distance.

  “Uh oh,” Rhonda muttered. “I see people up here. A small group.”

  Angel made sure to fill his magazine and Greer repeated the motion as they walked low, passing down the narrow aisle between the scattered seats. There was a small couch pressed against one wall with a pair of cramped recliners against the opposite. They huddled behind the driver and passenger seat as the crowd ahead scattered, trailing people across all lanes of traffic so the vehicle could not pass without taking a few of them with it. Greer glared out at the people, trying to gauge their danger, and to his well-trained eye, they appeared innocent enough. Desperate, perhaps, but likely not dangerous.

  “’Scuse me!” one of them shouted through Rhonda’s closed window. “Can y’all tell me where you’re heading? You got a big car here and we could use some help!”

  Rhonda shook her head through the window. “Full up, sorry,” she replied back in a half shout.

  The man glowered. “That’s not gonna work for us, lady!”

  Ahead of the RV, the group shifted and started to converge, coming together at the front of the RV into a small huddle of broken people.

  “We need this ride. We’d rather y’all just gave it to us.”

  “We don’t want to hurt any of you!” Rhonda shouted back. “Just let us pass.”

  The person calling to her from her window nodded towards the group and two men flung open long coats, bringing out weapons.

  “Heads down!” Rhonda screamed, pushing herself down behind the wheel, and she stomped on the accelerator as hard as she could. Muffled thumps came from the front of the vehicle, and she winced as the RV lurched upw
ards, then down as if it ran over something. Something she didn’t even want to think about. A few loud pops of small caliber gunfire echoed, and she heard two thwacks on the wall of the RV near the rear, but nothing punctured and nothing broke. Focusing her eyes straight out the windshield, she pressed down harder on the gas and picked up speed, barreling off of the bridge and back onto highway 67 where the road ahead remained clear.

  “They’re not following,” reported Angel who had moved to the back of the RV and was looking out the rear window. “One of ’em is down on the ground, but they’re not coming after us.”

  “Good for them,” Rhonda replied, hoping the shakiness wasn’t evident in her commanding voice. Could it be that after so short a time, actually running over people did not strike her as unusual? Her stomach was swimming, their makeshift breakfast swirling around in the roiling acid of her guts, but she drove on and put the events out of her mind.

  “Where next?” she asked Phil, and he leaned towards the floor, scooping up a map he’d found in the glove compartment. He flipped through the large Delorme atlas, locating the Missouri page, marking it, then flipping to the Illinois page.

  “If we’re wanting to avoid civilization as much as possible, staying on 67 is a good move,” he said. “We’ll drift further west and we’ll have to angle back towards Chicago at some point, but it goes through agricultural land up through Beardstown. In Beardstown, we’ll have to cross the Illinois River at a pretty major crossing, so we’ll want to be very careful there. That might be congested.”

  Rhonda nodded.

  “Once we cross there, we may want to look for Route 24. If we get on 24 at the right place, we can follow that right up through Peoria, but we need to be careful there, too. Peoria could be a problem.”

  Rhonda pressed the accelerator to the floor and let the RV cruise up to sixty, angling it on 67 and following the route north.