Apokalypsis | Book 5 | Apokalypsis 5 Read online

  Spencer appeared next to him and said, “All clear. Nobody’s around. Being off the main drag, and a little further away from downtown, I think this area is slightly more unscathed if you know what I mean.”

  “Let’s check it out.”

  They entered the building and fanned out. Tristan searched each area carefully, knowing he was about to leave her little brother in it alone. It was, indeed, a printing shop and was full of lifeless equipment, stacks of orders, offices, machinery, and everything but the people who worked there. It looked like they were also screen-printing t-shirts, as well as paper.

  He met up with the others, and together they went upstairs, which seemed to be more of a storage floor. The third floor was actually an apartment, a huge one, but it was also empty.

  “Roof,” Tristan said and rushed until he found the door that would take them up. He called out to the others and went through, “Here!”

  The roof was stable, also in immaculate condition, and, most of all, safe.

  “Over here might be a good place,” Alex assessed and led them to the area.

  “Good,” Tristan agreed. “This’ll work.”

  There was a flat area between two massive, brick chimneys that would provide Abraham some cover.

  Spencer said, “I found the door separating the car museum and the print shop and locked it. The back is locked, too. He should be okay up here.”

  Tristan nodded but still felt hesitant about leaving him.

  “Let’s get this set up,” he said instead and followed the others back down to the kids.

  He figured the losers were in the warehouse they’d told them to meet up at in seven hours, but he wanted the upper hand. Going at noon would’ve only benefitted them instead. So, he’d chosen to assume they were holed up in the warehouse for the night or perhaps that was where their camp was anyway. He hoped he was right. If not, this would’ve all been for nothing. So, he sent Spencer on a recon mission to scope it out before they did too much more.

  They helped Abraham get set up on the rooftop by carrying up the boxes and laying out the fireworks. He was going to use a stick lighter to ignite them, which would work.

  “We used to tie together string to light them,” Abraham explained.

  “Like det chord?” Roman joked as he set down the last tube with the wooden base.

  “Yes,” Abraham chuckled with nerves. “I suppose so.”

  “Hey,” Tristan said quietly, “If you have trouble, go down to the apartment and lock yourself in the bathroom against the east wall. No fire escape. No windows. Good, solid steel door. You’ll be safe. I’ll find you there, okay?”

  “Yes, sir,” he answered as he always did. “I’ll be fine. I’m fast. I can get these off and still get down to the truck. I’ll pick you up.”

  Spencer finally came back as Tristan arranged the final firework tube.

  “Anything?” he asked him.

  “Oh, yeah. This is it. There’s a lot of ‘em. At least fifteen that I counted and could see.”

  “Got it,” Tristan said.

  Tristan blew air through his nose at the tension in the situation. Then he ruffled the hair on top of Abraham’s blonde head to lighten the mood.

  “Just remember. Trouble? Bathroom.”

  “Got it.”

  “Your rifle loaded?”

  “Full magazine. Handgun ready, too,” Abraham said with confidence. “I’ll be fine. You guys have all the risk. Not me.”

  “Don’t come over there to join the fight,” he warned him. “Just pick us up.”

  He left him with instructions on how to find them and where to meet, and Alex explained the directions and which route to take. He also gave him an alternative way to go in case he ran into trouble with night crawlers. Alex had explained that this part of the city was a little more confusing than most as it had changed a few times throughout the years as it decayed financially.

  They finally moved out on foot with the others, and Wren kept up, almost a little too anxiously. He had to slow her and her dog down a few times and got a dirty glare from the girl. He was pretty sure the dog also shot him one. Spencer chuckled. She definitely seemed comfortable with the M4 she was carrying. She also had a pistol on her hip. The situation was odd, though, because she didn’t seem any older than her age, so he wasn’t sure why she was so comfortable with weapons, especially being from Australia, or wherever Alex had said she was from, since they’d banned guns a long time ago. She was definitely too young to have already been in the military. His many questions surrounding this girl and her uncle with the missing serial number weapons would have to wait.

  It didn’t take long to find the former engine shop. Surrounded by woven wire fencing that was eight-feet tall, it was possibly going to be challenging to take the advantage. They all squatted at his orders about a block away, concealed by abandoned vehicles in the street.

  “Let me and Spencer scope it out a little closer,” he instructed the other two.

  “I can go,” she argued.

  “Not this time. Wait here,” he ordered and rose with Spencer, who nodded. The girl swore some weird expression under her breath.

  They jogged the perimeter without being seen by the four guards walking it. This was definitely the right place as Spencer had suspected. Then they squatted behind a dumpster in the middle of the road, also surrounded by abandoned or torched vehicles. Tristan wondered if this looked much different before the pandemic.

  The full moon was hiding behind cloud cover again, and he hoped to God it wasn’t about to start snowing again. Or ice raining. That would definitely ruin the fireworks display. He remembered this Ohio weather all too well from growing up here. Not being seen was relatively easy tonight since the sky was clouded over, no moonlight beaming through any longer. That was a good and a bad thing. The snow was bright white, but the moon was no longer glinting off of it. The lack of illumination by the moon was convenient for sneaking around, but it also meant those things could also use the absence of light to their advantage. And to prove his point, one of them screamed in the distance. That sound never failed to send the creepy crawlies up his spine. Not much unnerved him, but those things did.

  “Over there. Some cars rammed the fence. A few of us could enter there,” Spencer pointed out in a whisper.

  He wished they had radios.

  “We need to take out the guards as quietly as possible,” he explained what Spencer probably already knew. The former machine shop was huge and would be a lot of ground to cover if they split up, especially without coms.

  “We could breach through the hole in the fence as a group,” Spencer suggested quietly.

  “Spread out from there,” he added.

  Spencer nodded, and they jogged back to the others to explain the plan. They no sooner moved out than Abraham’s display of American pride hit the dark night sky. He’d told him to wait fifteen minutes, and it looked as if the time had run out. Two more screams also followed the first three booms and flashes of blue and pink fireworks. If the place became infested with night crawlers, Abraham had one final trick up his sleeve to draw them off of him by throwing an ignited ground display over the side of the back of the building to distract them. The ground show would go on for a long time with bright colors and a lot of smoke. It would definitely distract them.

  “Now!” he whispered to the group.

  They moved as one swift machine, quickly climbing over the wrecked vehicles and through the fence. As they did so, Tristan could see at least ten men running out of the building and toward the noise Abraham was causing. They all seemed confused, some still pulling on shoes or coats. Just like any other time when simple techniques meant to distract the simple-minded were applied, Abraham’s fireworks were having the same effect. The booms just kept going, the night sky lighting with a celebration in the wrong season. Tristan just had to hope the kid was already down to the truck and driving away. Night crawlers and idiots with guns were headed his way. That thought scared the
hell out of him as he pushed through the damaged chain-link fence. Staying focused was critical, but his concern for her little brother spiked. He was pretty sure Avery would toss that newly-acquired engagement ring in his face as she booted his ass out the door if her brother wasn’t brought back in one piece.

  Chapter Three

  Jane

  Her father woke intermittently to take in liquids, of which Avery had suggested Gatorade for dehydration. With Stephanie’s help, they changed his bandaging. Jane felt a lot of relief when there wasn’t puss, a lot of blood, or infection on the old ones. It did look swelled up again, though. Maybe the gory procedure he’d been through at Tristan’s hands was going to work. She had to cling onto that hope.

  “Screw it,” Stephanie said as she took down the canister of coffee from the cupboard. “You know we’re not sleeping tonight. Might as well spike it with some coffee. Your asshole boyfriend locked up my other caffeine.”

  “You mean cocaine?” Jane asked and filled the carafe with water.

  “It’s still caffeine, right? Like they used to put it in Coca Cola. It used to be legal. If it was okay for people a hundred years ago to drink it, then it should be legal for me now. Stupid laws.”

  “But it could kill you,” she reminded this girl who used to be so cruel to her. It still hit Jane sometimes how odd it was that Stephanie lived with her now. When Roman was around, Stephanie was usually a bit more reserved with her insults. She hoped it would continue tonight. She was just too tired to put up with it.

  “Pfft, who cares? We all gotta die sometime, right?”

  “I hope it’s later, not sooner.”

  Stephanie hit the button to start the coffee and turned to face Jane, “Not me. I wanna’ die young.”

  “But what about getting married or having kids and grandkids?”

  “Yeah, right,” she commented as she opened a package of snack cakes they’d brought from the city. “I don’t want a bunch of damn kids. Get real. Like I’d be a good mother. Look at me. I can barely take care of myself.”

  “I don’t know,” Jane argued softly as Stephanie hoisted up onto the counter to sit while the coffee percolated. “You’re obviously a survivor.”

  She shrugged.

  “No, you are,” Jane said and touched her knee briefly before pulling away. “What you went through…I can’t imagine.”

  “You almost didn’t have to.”

  Jane flinched, thinking back to that day in her grandmother’s home when that man had attacked her. “Yeah, I guess you’re right,” she agreed and then shivered.

  “Assholes.”

  Jane nodded and said, “How…how did you get through it? I mean, you don’t have to say if you don’t want to. It’s just that sometimes…sometimes at night, I can’t sleep and—”

  “That’s normal,” Stephanie said and set her food down. “I just always tried to think I was somewhere else when it was happening. He’d come in, and I’d pretend I was someone else or that I was floating up out of my body and flying away. It sounds stupid, but it worked. He’d get pissed a lot when he couldn’t get a reaction, so it worked two-fold ‘cuz he’d stop and leave. I got good at it. Pretending. Maybe not pretending. I don’t know. I could float up and look down at myself, at what was happening. Then I’d fly away, go to the beach, sit and watch the waves.”

  She paused, snapped out of her trance, and scowled.

  “Retarded, right?”

  “Huh?” Jane said. “No, not stupid at all. I think it’s amazing that someone so young would come up with such a sophisticated survival mechanism.”

  “Yeah, well, it was that or let him rape me and try to pretend I was into it. Fuck that. Sick prick.” She frowned again and hit Jane with a direct look. “Can’t sleep, huh?”

  She shook her head. “Sometimes. I have a hard time catching my breath. I can still see that man just standing there in my grandma’s house like he belonged there, as if I should just do what he wanted. My heart starts pounding really hard, and I can’t breathe.”

  Stephanie nodded. “Yeah, that’s an anxiety attack. I have sleeping pills and anti-anxiety meds if you want some.”

  Jane considered that but shook her head. “I don’t want to get addicted.”

  “They’re mild. They’re not addictive, moron.”

  “Oh yeah, maybe.”

  “Just let me know. You know where to find me,” she said in a rare, joking manner.

  “Thanks,” Jane said and then added. “But you’d probably be a great mother. Back to that. You’re strong, and you’d never let that happen to your daughter.”

  “I’d fucking kill anyone who even looked twice at my kids. Pervs. They get little boys, too. Remember that trafficking ring they busted in Cleveland last summer? Like three hundred pervs got busted. Sick freaks.”

  “Right, I remember. Big news,” Jane agreed. “So awful. Poor kids. But you don’t really want to die young, do you? We’re doing pretty well. We’re surviving this thing so far.”

  “So far,” she scoffed. “Fuck that getting old shit. Who wants wrinkles?”

  “You don’t want to look like one of those weird grandmas with plastic, immovable faces.”

  “And fake tits?”

  “Um,” she said nervously.

  “Mine are real, ya’ know.”

  Jane’s mouth actually fell open. “What? But I thought…”

  Stephanie laughed obnoxiously. “Nah, they’re mine. I just told everyone that so the boys would stop bugging me when I went through my late growth spurt in ninth grade, and they finally came in. I got sick of their comments, so I lied and flaunted them instead, like they were something that I wanted. It worked. They actually left me alone after that.”

  “Reverse psychology,” Jane commented quietly since Dez and Noah were also asleep, as well as Connor. She and Stephanie were the only ones still awake at three in the morning. She got the distinct impression that Stephanie usually stayed up this late. “Pretty smart for a girl that age to figure out.”

  She snorted, “Boys aren’t that hard to outsmart, dork. You just never figured out the game.”

  “No, I guess not,” Jane agreed, not even aware there was a game.

  “Roman’s had the hots for you for like a really long time. How’d you not notice?”

  This conversation was beginning to make her uncomfortable, so Jane took down mugs instead. All they had was powdered creamer now, so she removed it from the cupboard, as well, and offered a shrug in answer.

  “You’d have to be blind not to have noticed.”

  “I guess I just didn’t,” Jane evaded again.

  “I knew when we dated, for that very brief and very boring time, that he liked you.”

  That got her attention as she poured them both a mug of steaming coffee. Stephanie added three tablespoons of sugar.

  “You did? Why’d you go out with him if you knew…”

  “’Cuz, bugged me. I mean, you’re you. And look at me. I couldn’t figure out why he liked you and not me or one of my asshole friends.”

  There was a lot of information being dropped in this conversation, and she felt mostly confused about all of it. If those girls were her friends, why was she talking badly about them? And why would someone go out with a boy if they knew he actually liked someone else? Jane was not a social butterfly in school, so she had no idea how to understand any of this.

  “You thought it was weird that he liked me instead of you, but you still went out with him.”

  “Yeah, so? It’s not a big deal. Besides, it wasn’t like I was madly in love with him or anything. I just wanted to go out with him for our reputations. Everyone expected it.”

  Instead of getting to question Stephanie further and also ask why she’d said that about her own friends, Brutus interrupted them by snapping his head up and giving a soft woof.

  “What’s that for?” Stephanie asked.

  They didn’t have a single light on in the house, and it was now completely boarded up with the
exception of a few cracks between the slats. The only light in the kitchen was coming from the tiny blue LED on the coffee pot and the glowing green numbers on the microwave clock, which nobody bothered to reset anymore since the electricity went out so frequently. It read 10:22, but the time was actually near four a.m.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Stephanie asked again as the dog continued to stare at the space between the kitchen and living room.

  Jane sent her a look of confusion and held her breath a moment. He’d heard something. She thought maybe she had, too, but her brain had written it off to her father probably rolling onto his other side in his sleep.

  “Not sure,” she answered.

  Brutus stood up from his spot on the kitchen floor and walked carefully and with purpose to the edge of the space where it connected to the living and dining rooms. He just stood there with his head low to the ground and his front feet planted wide as if listening.

  “He’s wiggin’ out,” Stephanie said. “What’s his deal?”

  “Don’t know,” Jane whispered as Stephanie slid down from her perch on the counter. They both set their mugs aside. Jane reached for her pistol on the small table where her father always deposited his mail and keys in the space between the pantry and kitchen.

  Stephanie asked, “Did you hear any of those things?”

  She shook her head.

  “Think he did?”

  Jane shrugged and held onto that breath a little longer, too frightened to exhale lest she miss a sound outside in the dark. Then Brutus growled softly, and the hair on the back of his thick neck stood up in slow motion as if someone had rubbed a balloon on his back. Jane felt her own mimic his.

  “I’m getting my gun,” Stephanie whispered and dashed silently from the room. She returned a moment later in sweatpants instead of her booty shorts, and a hoodie instead of her tank top. She’d also taken a moment to pull on gym shoes. She’d been gone less than a minute.

  “Are you going out there?” Jane asked with wide eyes.

  “Hell no!” she whispered back with even wider ones. “Just in case I gotta get outta’ here.”