Out of the Dark: An apocalyptic thriller (34 page)

     “Traverse City is…what? Two and a half, three hours away on a good day in decent weather with no traffic, right?” Darcy asked.

     “About that,” Shane agreed.

     “Even with the additional stocking we’d need to do, we can make it work,” Stephanie put in. “We could drive through the night, be there in the morning.”

     “We’d have to make sure it’s daylight before we get to the marina,” Shane mused. “We don’t want to draw an unfriendly crowd.”

     “Right,” Stephanie agreed with a nod.

     “What if someone already had this idea?” Darcy questioned. She hated to be the downer, but she wanted all issues out front before they made their decision. “I’m not trying to be a buzz kill, but what are our other options if it’s already inhabited?”

     “If it isn’t too many people, it might be a good idea to combine our groups,” Shane pondered aloud.

     “And if they aren’t up for a merger?” Darcy pressed.

     “It isn’t the only island,” Shane replied. “It’s the only one I know personally, but the lakes are pretty big and there are several places we could set up on.”

     “I say let’s do it,” Stephanie said with impatience creeping into her tone. She wanted to be active and moving, doing something productive. Sitting around talking would drive her insane.

     “We grab the rest of the stuff we need first,” Darcy suggested as the voice of caution. “Then we’ll go from there. If a more appealing option offers itself up or we come up with something better before we get there…”

     “Yeah, yeah,” Stephanie said as Darcy trailed off. “We’ll be sure to keep our options open. For now, let’s hit the road.”

     With both of the babies sated and in fairly happy moods, the adults packed up while keeping the necessary attention on the babies. Dylan crawled around. Getting into everything he could, he earned several scolds and one swat on his well-padded bottom from his mother when he refused to stay out of a cabinet for the third time. Leila, who moved less confidently than Dylan on her hands and knees but well enough, followed him around and giggled intermittently.

     When the time came to load the belongings they’d used throughout the night, Darcy wondered how they’d be able to fit any additional supplies in any of the vehicles.

     “Topper storage,” Shane suggested, and found the idea immensely appealing. He was glad he’d thought of it. “We have two vehicles here that we can use overhead storage on. It’ll be perfect, especially seeing as what we need to hit is a camping supply store.”

     Stephanie sarcastically applauded his brilliance, but there was no maliciousness between them. It was a laughing, joking, easy exchange.

     There was an argument about whether or not either of the children could be left out of the car seats and sat on laps seeing as they’d be driving slowly and it wasn’t likely that there’d be other people around to potentially cause them to get into an accident. Darcy steadfastly objected, acting as though the very suggestion was heinous and frankly stupid. Stephanie was moderately offended by Darcy’s vehement and nearly insulting objections, pointing out that she herself had been the one to mention the difficulties prolonged car seat use could bring to a child. Darcy still refused even to hear the suggestion of letting Dylan sit on her lap in a moving vehicle and that ended the discussion irrevocably. Besides, she had pointed out as though Shane and Stephanie were complete morons; they were each
driving
a car on their own. How could they steer with a baby on the lap to distract them? Stephanie agreed it was a good point, but Darcy didn’t have to be condescending about it.

     Darcy drove the only car they had with a front seat open. The trunk and every part of the back seat that wasn’t occupied by Dylan’s car seat had been packed full. Shane took the van he’d commandeered from Leila’s family home and Stephanie drove the one they’d appropriated from the motel parking lot. Both vans would end up having overhead storage containers on their tops if they were able to find them. Otherwise, they’d have to figure out another way to store and transport the things Shane had put on his sporting goods store shopping list.

     Stephanie glanced over the list again. Shane had wanted her to have it in case they got separated. He had rationalized that if she were the one to get lost from the group, Shane still had the list in his head. When Stephanie asked if it was Darcy who got cut off, Shane just said something noncommittal about how Darcy would be able to fend on her own if she did. Stephanie didn’t know if that was a cut against her own survival instinct or an offhanded admittance of Shane’s preference that if something bad were to happen, it be to Darcy and not the woman he’d known and loved for years.

     “Why did he put ‘gas for the boat’ on the list?” Stephanie mused as she put the van into drive to follow the others, who’d already pulled out of the parking lot. “We won’t find gas there…”

     She decided he’d probably meant gas
cans
and had just put the two together on his list because that was how Shane’s mind worked. She knew the sporting goods store Shane was talking about was right off the freeway.

     When she had an impulse to take out her cell phone and talk to him about the huge, still burning mall they passed as they drove, she cursed. It was a several times per day occurrence since the Onset. Though she kept her phone charged and always at the ready using the car charger, it hadn’t had service since she’d been able to get the miracle text through to Shane. It annoyed her to be cut off; all alone in the van with no company except bedding, clothes, some of the weapons and a variety of food that would keep for months at a time.

     “Walkie talkies,” Stephanie announced aloud, though she had no one around able to congratulate her on the brilliant idea. They’d be able to stay in touch even while driving if they had the walkies that had the couple mile ranges, and she was sure they’d find top of the line models at the store. She grinned, pleased with herself and turned the radio–which had one of her favorite CDs playing–way up.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

     Shane pulled into the sporting goods store that he’d decided was the best route for them to take concerning supplies and sat with his vehicle idling. He didn’t want to go inside. The whole drive, bad feelings had been stirring in his gut. Talking to Leila hadn’t eased them, nor had singing along softly with the CD he’d put in when she’d fallen asleep.

     Without anything good to keep him in the car and a hundred reasons he needed to step out, Shane killed the engine. Though he was afraid Leila was going to get cold, he was more afraid of wasting gas. With a last glance at the sleeping girl, he eased the driver door opened. He didn’t want to wake Leila when he exited the vehicle by a slamming door.

     Darcy and Stephanie pulled in right behind him. They’d agreed that they’d turn all of their vehicles to preserve fuel. Darcy bundled a fussy Dylan so he wouldn’t catch a chill. Leila, looking like a chubby pink caterpillar in her snowsuit, was buried under two blankets and the whole seat was covered by another so that the warm air she breathed stayed in her small little cocoon-like environment. Dylan accepted snacks to placate him. The boy loved his food.

     It was agreed that Shane and Stephanie would be the ones to enter the store, with Darcy standing watch outside. In a pinch, she was the one with the most experience getting a baby seat in and out of a vehicle, and she would not abandon Leila if a situation occurred where she needed to take both of the babies and flee. Shane felt an aching emptiness in his chest when he thought of Darcy needing to take Leila away from him for any reason. Perhaps due to the situation or some deeper, arcane tie he couldn’t place, Shane could no longer fathom a day in his life without Leila in it.

     “Walkie talkies,” Stephanie said simply as she handed Shane’s list to him. She’d found a pen in the van and had scrawled the two words underneath his neat handwriting. Hers was awful. He smiled at it, and then at her.

     “It’s a good idea,” he praised as they moved toward the door. They both had weapons out, quiet ones because they didn’t want to draw any unpleasant entities to the area with gunfire if they could help it. Stephanie had her hatchet and Shane had a lightweight pry-bar that had what looked like a wrench head on one side and a hooked tip on the other. Though it wasn’t heavy, Stephanie bet it didn’t just look wicked but could be a real bastard if Shane swung it hard enough.

     “Are you sure you’re all right to do this?” Shane asked Stephanie as he gestured to her bandaged arms. “We get into a fight and you’re going to tear yourself up even more.”

     “We get into a fight and I won’t even give a shit,” Stephanie retorted. “Adrenaline will help with that.”

     “And afterwards you’ll be in a lot of pain,” Shane pointed out. Stephanie rolled her eyes.

     “Are we doing this or not, princess?” she asked him in a tone that told Shane she was just as nervous as he was. She didn’t want to, but they both found the necessity too worthy of the risk to turn back.

     “For once, act like the girl, would you?” Shane asked of her as they approached the door and pushed it open.

     The Onset had occurred late at night, later than operating hours for the sporting goods store. Shane didn’t like that the door opened for them, and he knew as he chanced a glance at Stephanie that she was disconcerted by it, too.

     “Hours were only until seven,” she pointed out as she gestured to a sign on the door. “That means this door was left open because someone was a shitty employee or we’re going to find someone unfriendly in there.”

     “Those aren’t the only options,” Shane countered quietly as they moved through the first set of doors and toward another. “Someone with a key could have come back after the Onset to gather supplies. If they were a nice someone, they would have left the doors unlocked for other uncorrupted to come and get supplies.”

     “Hmm, that’s a good point,” Stephanie admitted as she put a hand on the door that would actually lead them into the store. “No alarms are going off,” she continued. “Maybe our wayward employee was nice enough to turn off the system to keep from drawing attention to the future looters.”

     “We can only hope,” Shane agreed as he put his hand gently on top of Stephanie’s. He wanted to take the lead, and she let him. Stepping back, Stephanie told herself it was time to be quiet as she tightened her grip on her weapon.

     Shane attempted to give the experience a positive spin and offer the best case scenario for why the doors were open and the alarms weren’t going off, but his insides felt like coiled snaked ready to eat their way out of him. He pushed the door open before he could talk himself out of it, and it swung inward toward the store with nary a scrape or squeal. The place was dark inside, but they had the natural light from the sun, weak as it was, in the front part of the store and their flashlights for the deeper areas that weren’t blessed with windows. Any corrupted would find the back parts of the store to be a nice haven for the daytime, and Shane would have bet his arm that was where most of the supplies that he wanted were located.

     “I still don’t like it,” Shane admitted, hovering in the wash of chilly light he knew protected them for what most likely lurked within the store. His breath plumed on the air and blew away almost as soon as it left his mouth. The wind had begun to pick up.

     “Is there anywhere else we can get this stuff and stick to the schedule you wanted?” Stephanie asked him. She fidgeted from one foot to the other, swinging her hatchet down by her right knee as she bounced on her heels.

     Shane frowned and answered, “Not really. Not that I know of.”

     “Then we’re stuck with this,” Stephanie told him with a shrug of her shoulder. “We just stay safe and protect each other, right?”

     With a nod, Shane fully entered the glass box which served as the store’s entryway. Even though the power was off and the heat hadn’t been running, an immediate temperature difference made him sag slightly in relief from the harsh cold. Stephanie followed him in. She forced herself to loosen her grip on the hatchet and moved with Shane toward the second set of doors.

     He pushed the door open, expecting an alarm to sound or a voice to call out. Watching for movement which could indicate other survivors or corrupted, he stood motionless in the doorway for a moment.

     “I don’t see anything,” he said in a hushed voice. “Do you?”

     Stephanie opened the door to the right of Shane and stared into the store. The definition of the aisles deeper into the building blended together, creating a confusing canvas of shadows on darkness.

     “Flashlights?” she suggested. Shane hesitated.

     “I don’t want to use them until we’re fairly certain they won’t call bad company to us.”

     Straining her eyes, Stephanie sought the darkened interior of the store but saw no movement or shapes that struck her as human in nature. Of course, with the way some of the corrupted had changed, it seemed searching for human forms wouldn’t be the standard for long.

     She shivered at the thought. Removing her flashlight from her pocket, Stephanie pointed it into the darkness and flipped the switch. The light barely pierced twenty feet ahead of them, and Stephanie found herself thinking they needed to find something with more power.