Darkness Rises: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller (After the EMP Book 3) Read online

  DARKNESS RISES

  AFTER THE EMP BOOK THREE

  HARLEY TATE

  Copyright © 2017 by Harley Tate. Cover and internal design © by Harley Tate. Cover image copyright © Deposit Photos, 2017.

  All rights reserved.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  The use of stock photo images in this e-book in no way imply that the models depicted personally endorse, condone, or engage in the fictional conduct depicted herein, expressly or by implication. The person(s) depicted are models and are used for illustrative purposes only.

  ISBN: 9781521549780

  CONTENTS

  Darkness Rises

  Prologue

  DAY SEVEN

  Chapter 1

  DAY EIGHT

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  DAY NINE

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  DAY TEN

  Chapter 14

  DAY ELEVEN

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  DAY TWELVE

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  DAY THIRTEEN

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  DAY FOURTEEN

  Chapter 31

  DAY FIFTEEN

  Chapter 32

  DAY SIXTEEN

  Chapter 33

  Acknowledgments

  About Harley Tate

  DARKNESS RISES

  A POST-APOCALYPTIC SURVIVAL THRILLER

  A week after the unthinkable, would you still have hope?

  With their house destroyed, the Sloane family sets off for the promise of safety in a cabin in Northern California. When a distress call comes through on the radio, young Madison is adamant: a detour to the nearby college is the only choice.

  What would you do to keep your family safe?

  Walter hates to risk his family’s life for the sake of a stranger. But his wife and co-pilot need antibiotics and a college health center may be their best bet. Finding the strength to survive what happens next will be the hardest thing he’s ever done.

  The end of the world brings out the best and worst in all of us.

  With the power grid destroyed and the government unable to help, the Sloanes are alone in a world losing hope. Will they survive a rescue mission or will the detour be the last stop on their journey?

  The EMP is only the beginning.

  Darkness Rises is book three in After the EMP, a post-apocalyptic thriller series following the Sloane family and their friends as they attempt to survive after a geomagnetic storm destroys the nation’s power grid.

  Subscribe to Harley’s newsletter and receive an exclusive companion short story, Darkness Falls, absolutely free.

  www.harleytate.com/subscribe

  PROLOGUE

  MADISON

  Back Roads of Northern California

  4:00 p.m.

  “This is Mandy Patterson from Chico State. If anyone can hear me, we need help. Things are bad here. Real bad. There’s five of us trapped in the radio building. We’re almost out of food and water and we can’t get out. The doors are locked from the outside.”

  Madison held her breath.

  “We’ve tried breaking the glass, but it’s got to be bulletproof or something. If we don’t get out of here soon… we’re all going to die. Please, if you’re out there, again, this is Mandy Patterson from Chico State. I’m broadcasting from the radio building on campus.”

  The Sloane family listened to the girl over and over until she ended the broadcast. Madison swallowed. If they tried to save her, it would mean putting them all at risk again. But if they ignored it and drove on…

  “We have to help her.”

  “Honey, we can’t.” Her mom turned around in the front seat. “We’ve already got seven people with us. There’s nowhere for any more to go. You’re crammed in the back seat with bottles of water, and Drew is up in the Jeep with three teenagers and enough boxed goods to make anyone claustrophobic.”

  “But she needs help!”

  Her father spoke up. “We don’t even know if it’s real. How is she broadcasting? She can’t do it without power. If they’ve got solar or wind or some backup generator, then she should be able to get out. I don’t think it’s worth the risk.”

  “Mom. Dad. Come on. What if that were me? What if I were stuck back at college begging for help? Wouldn’t you want someone to save me?”

  Her mom exhaled and closed her eyes. “Chico State has a hospital, right?”

  Madison hesitated. “I don’t know. It’s smaller than a UC school, but it should have a student health center, at a minimum.”

  “That means current antibiotics for me and Drew.”

  “If there are any left.” Madison’s father glanced in the rearview. “This is a terrible idea. It’s too risky.”

  Madison glanced out the window, trying to place their location. “We can’t be that far from Chico. It’s north of Sacramento.”

  Her father frowned. “I’d guess we’re about thirty miles due east.” He glanced at her mom. “If we’re going to make a detour, we should do it now.”

  Her mom turned in her seat. “You really want to do this?”

  Madison nodded. “Yes.”

  “It will put all our lives at risk.”

  “I know.”

  “One of us might die. We could lose all that we have.”

  Madison knew the danger. But she couldn’t leave someone to die. Not when she was pleading for help. “I know what we’re risking, but we have to try. If we don’t, what kind of people are we?”

  Walter eased the car to the side of the road and honked the horn. The Jeep stopped just ahead. “Let’s talk to the others. We’ll put it up to a vote.”

  DAY SEVEN

  CHAPTER ONE

  MADISON

  Back Roads of Northern California

  5:00 p.m.

  “You can’t be serious.” Brianna crossed her arms and leaned back against the door to the Jeep, her disdain written in the wrinkle between her brows.

  “I know it’s risky, but she could be just like us.”

  “Pfft. If she were just like us, she’d be a million miles away from college with enough supplies to see her through. Not crying for help on a radio asking for someone to do all the hard work to come save her.”

  Madison couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Had a week without power and a few close calls already turned her friends and family cold? Were they already willing to ignore the suffering of others and only think of themselves?

  If so, how different were they from animals? What separated them from the monsters of scary movies none of them would ever watch again?

  Madison shook her head, flyaway strands from her ponytail brushing across her face. “At some point, we’re going to need help. How can we ask for it if we turn a blind eye now?”

  “So this is some karma trip? You want to go rescue some
pathetic girl because if we don’t it might come around to bite us in the ass?”

  Madison’s dad glanced up at Brianna, his scrunched brows hiding his brown eyes from view. Her father had already helped hundreds of people get to safety when he landed his commercial airliner on a private airfield. He’d made sure they had food and shelter and directions to the closest town before he set off on his own to find his family. And he’d taken his co-pilot Drew with him.

  Her father was a good man. He could come around to her point of view.

  “Dad, you have to agree with me. We can’t leave her there.”

  He scrubbed at the week-old beard coating his jaw. “She said there were five, Madison. Five people trapped inside the building. Even if we get them out, what do we do with them? They can’t come with us. There simply isn’t enough room.”

  “So we just ignore them?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  Madison thought back over the past week and of all the dangerous situations she had faced. First the causeway where they followed a semi-truck as the driver smashed his way out of a traffic jam with no end. Then the altercation with the police officer and the man who wanted to rob them. Those were the easy memories to relive.

  The assault on her parents’ house and the murder of her mother’s co-worker Wanda were worse. So much worse. Those men wanted to kill them and steal their supplies. They didn’t care who got hurt or who suffered.

  Bill Donovan with his smug smile and protests of innocence. She ground her teeth together just thinking about the man. She’d had a chance to shoot him and make him pay for what he did to Wanda. But she couldn’t do it with the whole neighborhood watching.

  Children and families, still so clueless and unprepared. It had been a week since the power grid failed and still no word from the government. How long would they all stand around waiting for someone to help them? How long before they all realized this was as good as it was going to get?

  Maybe shooting Bill would have woken them up. Jumpstarted their brains into survival mode instead of the cushy life they had all taken for granted.

  It was too late to wonder.

  Her parents’ neighbors were miles away, tucked into their delusions and deteriorating neighborhood. But Madison could still help the people trapped in the radio building. She’d made a choice when she lowered the shotgun and walked away from Bill. The world as they knew it might be over, but Madison wouldn’t turn into a monster. She wouldn’t lose what made her human.

  A bump against her leg caught her attention and Madison smiled as she bent down to scoop up Fireball, the cat her mother saved from Wanda’s apartment complex. She ran her fingers through his orange fur and the little guy purred against her chest.

  “I know you all think I’m crazy and that going into that radio building will only put us in danger. But we can’t turn our backs on everyone.”

  She glanced at her mother, who so far had stayed silent on the issue. “If you had driven by Wanda while she waited for the bus that wouldn’t come, we would never have gotten to know her.” Madison bent her head and snuggled Fireball closer. “We wouldn’t have this little guy or her father’s revolver or half of the food we managed to save.”

  Brianna shifted against the Jeep, her head bent as she stared at the asphalt beneath her feet. Her boyfriend Tucker spoke up from his position beside her. “Madison has a point. If Mr. Sloane hadn’t helped Drew when he got shot, he wouldn’t be alive. We’ve already made risky choices to help others. Why would we turn our back on people now?”

  “Because it’s a trap, that’s why.” Peyton ran a hand through his hair and took a step forward.

  Madison glanced at him in alarm. He might have been the biggest man in the group, but Peyton had always been a softie at heart. “You’re saying no?”

  “We’ve been lucky so far, but at some point it’s going to run out. Look at what happened to Wanda and Drew. They were shot for goodness’ sake. We don’t know what we’re getting into going to Chico. The whole campus could be a war zone. We barely have any ammunition, and Drew and your mom are hurt. Your father has to be exhausted. None of us have slept more than a handful of hours in days.”

  He kicked at a dandelion struggling to grow in a pavement crack. “At some point we have to put ourselves first.”

  Madison turned to her mom. While they had debated, she hadn’t said a word, her eyes focused on the burned skin of her left palm. Despite the expired antibiotics she had been taking, the blisters began weeping that afternoon, pus coating the angry red welts of raw skin.

  “Mom, tell me you agree with me.”

  After a moment, her mom raised her head, pinning Madison with blue eyes that usually held so much kindness. Now all she saw in their depths was regret and sadness. “If it were just our family, Madison, I would say yes. But we’re on the road to get Brianna home to her family’s cabin in Truckee. Stopping to help strangers will only delay us more and put us in even greater danger.”

  Madison opened her mouth to argue, but her mother held up her injured hand. “At the same time, we need medicine. Even if my hand heals, Drew needs antibiotics.” She glanced over at the man who had accompanied Madison’s father on his journey home. “Bullet wounds don’t heal themselves.”

  Drew winced as he pushed himself up to stand, the sunken pallor of his cheeks reminding Madison of apocalypse movies she used to watch for fun. Part of her wished the end of the world had come with zombies. At least then they would all have a common enemy.

  A bullet to the head wouldn’t restore the power.

  “I don’t want you all to make a decision based on my needs.” Drew ran his tongue over chapped lips. “There have to be a hundred pharmacies on the way to Truckee. We’ll find one that hasn’t been ransacked. We don’t need to go to Chico. For all we know, it’s already destroyed. A student infirmary has just as much reason to be broken into as a pharmacy.”

  Madison shook her head. “I don’t agree. Townies don’t go into college campuses. They don’t even know about student health centers. If anywhere is going to have antibiotics, it’s going to be there.”

  Her father cleared his throat. “We can talk about this until the morning, but it won’t get us anywhere. I say we put it up to a vote. Majority wins.” He glanced at Drew and then Tracy before focusing on his daughter. “I’m sorry, honey, but my vote is no. It’s too risky.”

  Madison swallowed. From the way he stood so solemn and reserved throughout the debate, she had known her father would say no. But it still stung to hear him say it out loud. She turned to her mom. “What do you think?”

  Her mom reached out with her good hand and gave her father’s hand a squeeze. “I understand your reasons.” She turned to Madison. “I vote yes on one condition: we go to the health center first. Antibiotics should be the priority. We need to save who we have before we think about saving anyone else.”

  Tucker spoke up next. “I vote yes, too. Even if it’s a trap, we should try. If we were stuck on campus, I would hope someone would have the decency to save us.”

  Madison smiled at Brianna’s boyfriend. She had gotten to know him a bit through her roommate, but it had taken the end of the world for Madison to really bond with Tucker.

  Brianna sighed next to him. “I vote no.” She turned to Peyton. “How about you?”

  Peyton glanced up at Madison. “Sorry, Madison. I vote no. Your dad is right. We can’t risk it. After what happened to Wanda…” He trailed off and pinched the back of his neck, his face contorted with conflicting emotions.

  Madison exhaled. “Obviously I vote yes, so that’s three yes votes and three no votes.” She turned to the only person left. “What do you say, Drew?”

  He exhaled and glanced at her father. “I don’t think it’s right for me to make the call. Walter already risked his life to save me. I can’t ask him to do it again.” He rubbed at his wound. “I’m abstaining. You all will have to figure this one out.”

  Madison groaned to herself. A tie
? How could this be? She stepped toward Peyton. “I know you’re upset about Wanda, but can’t you see we need to do this?”

  “For all we know someone else is already there rescuing that Mandy chick and her friends.”

  “And if they aren’t?”

  “It’s not our problem, Madison.”

  “But they’ll die.”

  “She could be bait. We could be walking into something we can’t get out of. I went along with it when you all insisted on going into that convenience store and I kept my mouth shut when your mom and Brianna and Tucker hit the Walmart. But I can’t go along with this. One of these times, someone is going to die.” He shook his head. “This time it could be you.”