Out of the Dark: An apocalyptic thriller (40 page)

     Dave stepped forward, crowbar in hand, and slid the slender end in between the door handle and the curved metal of the key-holding box. With one quick jerk, he snapped the device off of the door handle.

     Armani held his hand out and caught the destroyed lock box in one hand. He pried the pieces of metal apart and wrested the key from the box’s interior.

     “You look like you’ve done that before,” Armani commented as he slid the key into the lock and turned. The door popped open smoothly and a breath of cool, stagnant air flowed from the inside of the place.

     “I’m just a regular old criminal,” Dave teased as he picked up the stack of supplies he’d taken out of his and Kim’s car. He walked them through the door and placed them as quietly as he could on the floor before he pulled out his flashlight and switched it on.

     Though they had taken a look at the exterior of the house and had found no broken windows or doors which would indicate the presence of the corrupted, Armani, Dave, and Kirby fully intended to check the entire place out, top to bottom, before letting the others come inside.

     Armani and Kirby already had their own flashlights on when they stepped inside. They trained the beams on the floor, not wanting to alert others to their presence if there were corrupted eyes nearby or within.

     “How should we do it?” David asked in a voice slightly louder than a whisper. He shivered as cold wind from the outside swept in to explore the slightly warmer front hallway of the church.

     “It’s an open layout,” Armani explained as he moved forward with a confident stride. “You have the main sermon area to the left, a kitchen, and two smaller rooms to the right of us. This is the staircase down, where there will be two bathrooms, three classrooms, a second kitchen, and three storage rooms that may or may not be cleared out. I say we do a sweep of the top floor first, then each room downstairs. As soon as we clear it, we get moving on getting things in here.”

     Kirby looked out the window against the back wall, which peered into an enclosed porch area they’d already deemed unoccupied. The tall pine trees outside obscured the sun from his sight, but the sky was still a fiery orangey pink above the treetops. Darkness had not descended in full yet.

     Dave held his crowbar in a swinging stance as they moved. If a door was closed, Armani swung it open, backed away, and allowed Kirby to step forward. He handled the gun and flashlight combination as though he’d participated in such an activity before. Every door they pushed open, they were met with empty rooms. Some were devoid even of basic furniture or closet doors. The sitting areas were at least stocked with couches and chairs on which they could lounge if they stayed for a while.

     The top floor was cleared in record time. The sky hadn’t even taken on another, darker hue by the time the three men descended the stairs into the lower floor.

     Because of the stairs, Armani didn’t open the door leading to the basement hallway. Dave pulled it open for Kirby to point his flashlight beam and gun barrel down.

     Kirby took a moment to wipe his slick palm on his pants and brush his dampening hair from his eyes. Not seeing anything almost made him more nervous than if they had to deal with a corrupted right off. He was relatively sure the other men felt the same way when he heard Dave take a sharp breath in and let it out with forced slowness. Armani stood behind them, not wanting to move into the narrow corridor.

     Eventually, they did move. They had to.

     They came upon the first doorway immediately; tucked almost directly to the right of the stairway entrance. Dave pushed the door open and Kirby pointed in. A bathroom done in pale pink tile greeted them. The flashlight beams reflected off a mirror on the wall and the shiny walls of the tiled shower and bath. Not wanting to compromise their vision, they checked the small room quickly, with their flashlights pointed down at the maroon, almost brown, carpeted floor.

     Moving along, they cleared the next two rooms with no issue. They were devoid of anything from corrupted to carpeting. The floors were light blue, paint laid over concrete that had thread-thin cracks over parts of its surface.

     “Is it just me,” Kirby whispered, “or is this shit starting to freak everyone else out, too? No one being around. Every room being,” he paused to allow Dave to nudge a door open with his foot, then finished in a defeated tone, “empty…” Kirby backed away, lowered his gun and light, and looked at Dave and Armani for their answers.

     Armani pulled the door closed with a sigh. “It certainly stretches the nerves.”

     They cleared the basement with the same result as the upstairs rooms. Nothing. No one. The entire world had the feel of a funeral parlor. Without their voice or movement, they were overtaken at once by the hush of what seemed to be a respectful silence to honor the dead.

     “Don’t take it for granted,” Armani said as they returned to the upstairs and began the process of lugging everything into the church and constructing their barricades. “Though it may seem like no one is around or interested in us, I have a feeling we’ll spike on at least one creature’s radar when the night falls.”

     Eric shivered at Armani’s words as he watched Dave get Kimberly situated with their son. Brooke and Ivy sat near the exhausted woman, who could barely keep her eyes open long enough to finish feeding Alec. If not for the worry lines gouged into their faces and the air of refugees around them, they may have looked like a sweet family camping out in the living room on a pile of blankets and pillows.

     “How much is left?” Eric asked Armani as he followed the group leader back out to the vehicles.

     “Some of the food, bedding,” Armani answered distractedly as he handed things out to Eric. “We need at least one case of the waters to take in for tonight. Grab an extra gallon of the distilled water for Kimberly while I’m thinking about it.”

     Eric put one hand on the back of Armani’s arm and waited until the other man turned to face him before he spoke again. “Armani, we’re going to be safe here, right?”

     Armani frowned and looked back at the door to the church. They hadn’t left it open. Dave was on the other side watching for them to return. Armani had asked him to lock it. With his hesitation apparent, he’d done what Armani asked.

     “We’re the only uncorrupted,” Eric continued as he hefted the water and placed a bag of unidentifiable supplies on top of it. “I don’t want to leave my sister and her family but…now that they’re safe, should we try to find somewhere else to wait this thing out?”

     “Is that why you insisted on coming to get the supplies with me?” Armani asked. Instead of reprimanding, his tone sounded amused. “We can’t leave them, Eric. Do you feel threatened by any of them?”

     Eric shook his head as they began to walk back inside. The bedding had been removed from the two large trailers they’d confiscated from the RV dealership. The process of getting them had been fully uneventful and had not prepared them for the devastation they would encounter in the bulk goods store.

     “I’m not afraid,” Erin answered under his breath as David let them back inside. “I just worry, is all.”

     “With the state of things the way they are, I can’t blame you.” Armani handed half of his load to David, who walked the heavy bags to one of the rooms on the top floor.

     “The things inside the other people here,” Eric began as he stood from placing the case of water on the floor. “I don’t trust what’s inside them. It isn’t the people worrying me. I love Kim. I love Alec. I care about the people you’ve brought together. I just…”

     Eric trailed off and kicked at a corner of the carpet that had been lifted from near the tiled entryway.

     Armani smiled. “We have to trust that the people here are strong enough to fight the things inside of them. If we leave, what message would that give them? What hope would they have to push back this tide of darkness?”

     Dave waved to the men as he walked back toward the main room, where Kim had finished feeding Alec. They both slept in a pile of blankets and pillows, with Brooke and Ivy resting nearby.

     Eric gestured with his head to his walking brother-in-law and said, “I trust Dave, otherwise I would have beat his ass instead of letting him marry my sister. It’s not even about them.” He gestured empathically to the people either barricading or already sleeping. Kirby and Gwen were well into having all of the windows on the first floor covered with wood or other materials to keep them from being seen and, hopefully, safe from the corrupted who might attempt to get inside.

      Armani gestured for Eric to follow behind him as he gathered up the table pieces from both of the RVs. Instead of storing them under the RV bedding as would be done for camping, they’d taken them inside as barricading materials.

     “Then what is it about?”

     Eric held the wood pieces in place so Armani could drive large, thick nails through them. Once they’d secured all the windows on the top floor, the last points they focused on were the doors on either side of the house leading down to the basement.

     Eric spoke in his quietest voice as he and Armani barricaded the first of the basement entrances with a door taken from upstairs. “I wasn’t with my sister and her family the first day of the Onset. I saw what happened with a lot of the half-corrupted. The things inside of them, they’re like these monsters made out of black smoke. They look like your hand would go right through them but they have teeth and claws that can get through skin well enough.”

     They moved to the other basement entrance. Armani tried to see if there was any sunlight left behind the boards and sheets of wood they’d put up, but they’d done a fine job. Nothing got through their barricades, not even light.

     Armani had seen the same thing before he’d begun gathering survivors but he still didn’t know where Eric’s train of thought was going. “What’s your point?”

     “Have you seen any of the things in our group try to take control of their hosts?”

     Armani frowned and drove another nail into the last of the barricades. They would handle the basement area the next day.

     “No. Aside from our first encounter with Doctor Larson, I haven’t seen any of the creatures in our group try to take control. Why does that bother you?”

     Eric’s expression twisted grimly. He looked up and kept his voice low as conspirator’s whisper. “I don’t think they’re any different than the others we’ve seen. What worries me is that I think they’re exactly the same. Maybe they’re waiting for the right time to show themselves.”

     Armani’s thoughtful gaze travelled upward. The members of his flock were settling down to sleep for the night. He needed to assign guard duty and establish a catalogue of their supplies. There was enough to do to pass the night productively but it would be far less peaceful than he anticipated. Instead of finally feeling safe, Eric now had him reconsidering just how safe he and the other man were to be locked inside a building with eight half-corrupted individuals. Instead of the shepherd with his trusting flock, Armani had the disconcerting thought that he’d just had someone show him the wolves within those he led.

     “You think we’ll be safe for the night?” he asked before he and Eric returned upstairs. He’d had the occasional flash of prophetic power since the Onset. If Eric shared it, he didn’t want to ignore what he felt. 

     The other man’s voice was grave when he replied, “I don’t think we’ve been safe since this started. And I think we’re even less safe now than when we began. Molly was the first of us but I have feeling she won’t be the last.”

Chapter Thirty-Four

Armani’s journal

    
The church is barricaded. It is a citadel of faith and safety.

     So why do I feel we’d be safer out there, wandering through the darkness?

     Eric wanted to be one of the guard for the night but Armani sent him to sleep. He was still drained from the corrupted attack that had injured his neck. Having him at full strength would be one of the biggest boons Armani could count on. Sleep was the only thing that could help him until the sun came again.

     Gwen sat near the door leading to the enclosed porch. It was their one weak point. The large window had thick, heavy curtains they’d pulled to keep eyes out of their sanctuary, but they were too wide to be barricaded by anything they had. They would have to scavenge more materials when the daylight once again made it safe for them to move around.

     Armani sat beside the silent woman and put a soothing hand against her back. She sighed but didn’t speak or move away from him.

     “If you need anything,” he began in a soft voice, “time alone, someone to talk to, anything, let me know.”

     “I didn’t want her to go,” Gwen murmured. A tear slipped down her cheek. “I should have made her stay.”

     Armani wanted to hug the woman but he didn’t know how she would respond to it.

     Gwen continued to stare at the porch window, though she could see nothing through it. “I don’t want to stay here, Armani.”

     “We aren’t keeping you. I’d prefer if you wait til morning to leave, though.”