Nuclear Dawn (Book 5): Darkest Night Read online

  Darkest Night

  A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller

  Kyla Stone

  Paper Moon Press

  Darkest Night

  Copyright © 2019 by Kyla Stone All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblances to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Printed in the United States of America

  Cover design by Christian Bentulan

  Book formatting by Vellum

  First Printed in 2019

  ISBN: 978-1-945410-41-3

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Also by Kyla Stone

  1. Dakota

  2. Dakota

  3. Dakota

  4. Logan

  5. Eden

  6. Eden

  7. Maddox

  8. Maddox

  9. Eden

  10. Dakota

  11. Logan

  12. Shay

  13. Shay

  14. Eden

  15. Dakota

  16. Eden

  17. Eden

  18. Eden

  19. Eden

  20. Eden

  21. Eden

  22. Eden

  23. Eden

  24. Dakota

  25. Logan

  26. Dakota

  27. Dakota

  28. Shay

  29. Dakota

  30. Maddox

  31. Dakota

  32. Dakota

  33. Dakota

  34. Dakota

  35. Dakota

  36. Maddox

  37. Dakota

  38. Dakota

  39. Dakota

  40. Dakota

  41. Eden

  42. Logan

  43. Eden

  44. Maddox

  45. Logan

  46. Logan

  47. Maddox

  48. Logan

  49. Maddox

  50. Shay

  51. Logan

  52. Shay

  53. Shay

  54. Logan

  55. Logan

  56. Dakota

  57. Dakota

  58. Logan

  59. Logan

  60. Logan

  61. Dakota

  62. Logan

  63. Dakota

  64. Logan

  65. Dakota

  66. Maddox

  67. Logan

  68. Dakota

  69. Dakota

  70. Logan

  71. Dakota

  72. Dakota

  Afterword

  Also by Kyla Stone

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  I. Sneak Peek of The Last Sanctuary

  1. Amelia

  2. Amelia

  3. Gabriel

  Also by Kyla Stone

  The Nuclear Dawn Series:

  Point of Impact

  Fear the Fallout

  From the Ashes

  Into the Fire

  Darkest Night

  The Last Sanctuary Series:

  No Safe Haven

  Rising Storm

  Falling Stars

  Burning Skies

  Breaking World

  Raging Light

  Historical Fantasy:

  Labyrinth of Shadows

  Contemporary YA:

  Beneath the Skin

  Before You Break

  Non-fiction:

  Real Solutions for Adult Acne

  1

  Dakota

  The dull gray light drained all the color out of the world.

  The rain had finally stopped, but the morning brought a gloomy haze—like the sky itself was in mourning.

  Dakota Sloane walked among the corpses. A dark sucking energy surrounded her, the black hole of her grief threatening to pull her under. If she let it out, it might undo her. She pushed it down somewhere deep.

  Not now. Not yet.

  The humid air clung damply to her skin. Bullfrogs croaked. Cicadas trilled.

  Along the shoreline, a tall white bird with a bald black head entered the water—a wood stork. Long black legs, bright pink feet. It swept its bill back and forth in the water, trawling for fish.

  And the flies. Hundreds of them buzzed around the bodies.

  She was searching for Reuben: Maddox’s cousin, the Prophet’s son. In her panicked search last night, she’d only been looking for one face.

  But Reuben wasn’t here, either. Maybe once he and Maddox had kidnapped Eden, they’d decided to cut their losses and flee, abandoning their remaining men to death.

  Whatever noble titles they anointed themselves with, in the end, they were still despicable cowards.

  She wiped her aching eyes with the back of her arm and kept moving. She had tried to sleep for a few hours last night, but it was pointless. Julio had managed to sleep, but Logan had remained awake beside her, alert and vigilant.

  When the sky had lightened from pitch black to indigo, Logan had finally collapsed into a restless slumber, and Dakota had risen to take in the extent of the damage. Maybe she just needed some time to think.

  The stench of blood and excrement stung her nostrils. They would have to take care of these bodies, and soon. Maybe burn them. Or roll them into the swamp and let the gators have them.

  So many dead. So many young, wasted lives.

  Who would these men have been if they hadn’t been raised in fear and hatred? If their vulnerable brains hadn’t been steeped in superstition and twisted ideology from the moment they were born?

  If neither of them had been sucked into the Prophet’s vortex of evil, who would she have been? Who would Maddox have been? If Eden, Sister Rosemarie, and the other innocents like little Ruth had never been tangled in the Prophet’s web of lies and deceit?

  The endless what-ifs were pointless. She had no control over the beginning of it all. The only question now was whether she could end it.

  The shed doors still hung open, the single bulb shining with dim yellow light. Dakota couldn’t bear to look inside—at the shelves full of Ezra’s precious stash, all the things he’d so carefully stored away to save them. At the blood staining the floor.

  A radio spat static.

  She jerked to attention, adrenaline shooting through her veins. Instinctively, she tugged her pistol from her holster and held it in the low ready position, scanning the clearing, searching the shadows deep in the trees.

  The static came again.

  It hadn’t come from out there. It was close by.

  More crackling. She tilted her head, following the noise.

  She crept to the first body, fallen next to one of the cisterns not five yards from the shed. She nudged it with her toe. The radio attached to the dead body’s belt crackled.

  She bent, picked it up with her left hand, and dialed up the volume. She pushed the push-to-talk button for a moment but didn’t speak.

  She knew deep in her gut who it was. Let him go first.

  The radio spat and crackled. “Dakota Sloane, is that you?”

  “Go to hell, Maddox.”

  He chuckled dryly. “You always were a scintillating conversationalist.”

  “You killed Park.”

  “He got in the way.”

  “You killed Ezra.”

  “He had something I wanted.”

  “No!” Anger bubbled
up, obliterating her grief. “I did! You should’ve come after me instead!”

  “Trust me, I wanted to. Eden convinced me otherwise. You should thank her. I’ll pass it along.”

  “Why are you doing this?” She clutched the radio so hard her fingers ached. “Jacob hated you. Your father despises you. Eden is the one who loves you. And you kidnapped her, killed her friends, and took her back to the monster who wants to enslave her!”

  “I saved her!” he shouted. “I’m saving her soul.”

  “You’re too smart to spout that crap. Or to believe it.”

  “I know what’s best for her. I know what’s best for you.” He was quiet for a moment. “You love me, Dakota. You need me.”

  “I hate you,” she forced out. “I hate you with every fiber of my being.”

  He laughed darkly. “You wish you did. But let’s be honest. You don’t. You can’t. There’s too much between us.”

  She swallowed the lump in her throat. “I do hate you.”

  “I wish I could hate you, too. I wish I could. But for some damn reason, I can’t. Do you know that? Can you understand? I think you do. I think you know exactly what that feels like.”

  She did know. Because once upon a time, Maddox was all she had. He was the lifeline that kept her sane in the sadistic, insane world of the River Grass Compound, where a girl could be beaten and branded just for reading.

  In that place, she’d been weak, small, and invisible.

  Only Maddox saw her. Only Maddox made her grim existence bearable with his cynical attitude, sarcastic jokes, and that sly, mocking grin of his.

  Out on the boat, exploring the Glades, they’d escaped the harsh rules and restrictions shoved down their throats, the constant threat of violence, the shame and humiliation disguised as religion.

  She had loved him for it.

  Then he changed. To gain the approval of his father, he’d turned on her. Turned into whatever he was now. Cruel, ruthless, and vengeful.

  She hated him. She did. And yet, there was still that thread of the past that connected them, a slender but indestructible filament that she couldn’t sever, no matter how much she wished she could.

  “You and I aren’t that different.”

  “We’re nothing alike,” she spat into the mouthpiece, wanting to crush it into pieces, imagining it was Maddox’s windpipe instead of a stupid radio. “You’re insane.”

  “You only wish that I was insane. You hate that you understand me better than you understand yourself.”

  She did hate it. She hated it even more that he was right. “Your father abused you. He forced you to abuse me, taught you it was good.”

  He hesitated. “You clearly don’t understand the concept of mercy.”

  The scars on her back burned like they were on fire. “What they did to us wasn’t mercy. It was torture. Once upon a time, you knew that.”

  “You sound bitter, Dakota. Are you bitter that you lost to me?”

  “I haven’t lost yet.”

  “No?” He gave a mirthless laugh. “It sure looks that way from here.”

  “You can still do the right thing, Maddox,” she said. “You can still turn this around. Let her go.”

  “I won’t.” The arrogant confidence in his voice faltered—for just a second, just a little, but it was there. She felt it as much as heard it. “I don’t have a choice.”

  “You clearly don’t understand the concept of choice.”

  He snorted. “I always did like that about you. You were the only one in the whole damn compound with the guts to speak your mind.”

  She turned back toward the shed, forced herself to stare through the opened doors to the dark stain in the center of the cement floor, the blood almost black in the light.

  She’d thought if she gave everything, it would be enough. It wasn’t.

  Park was dead. Ezra was dead. Eden was gone.

  Nothing would bring Ezra back. She’d failed him. She’d thought she was strong enough, tough enough to defeat whatever came at them.

  How wrong she was.

  She trembled with anger, with sorrow, with a pain so deep it was endless. She could fall forever and ever and never strike the bottom of her grief.

  But the anger was there, too. A fierce, smoldering rage.

  She wasn’t finished yet. She wasn’t dead. She thought she’d given everything, but she was wrong about that, too.

  There was always more. As long as she was alive, as long as she still had breath in her lungs and blood in her veins, there was more she could give.

  A great flock of birds flew beneath the low scudding clouds shrouding the bruised sky. They were fleeing ahead of the hurricane. They were the smart ones.

  She watched them soar arrow-straight, cawing hoarsely to each other, until they vanished over the horizon.

  The early morning air was wet and suffocating. Her footsteps squelched in the mud as she turned away from the shed and headed back toward the cabin.

  She was done with this. Done with him. Done with this manipulative cat-and-mouse game he wanted to play.

  She didn’t want to play. She wanted to burn everything to the ground.

  Dakota raised the radio to her lips one final time. “I am coming for you, Maddox. I’m going to kill your father. I’m going to kill the Prophet. And then, I’m going to kill you.”

  2

  Dakota

  After Logan awoke an hour later, he and Dakota and Julio slumped at the kitchen table, staring listlessly at each other until Julio insisted that they needed to eat something. They were all drawn and haggard from the previous night’s events.

  They forced themselves to down a few granola bars and electrolyte drinks from Ezra’s pantry, though no one had an appetite. Dakota felt the energy slowly returning to her exhausted limbs. The calories did them all good, but no amount of food could fix a broken heart.

  “How are you feeling, Dakota?” Julio asked.

  Her gaze slowly focused on Julio, his kind face, his features tight with apprehension and sorrow. His eyes were puffy and bloodshot. Globs of dark red stained his filthy shirt. Dried blood clung to his ear and neck.

  She sucked in her breath. In the shock of Ezra’s death, she’d forgotten about everything else. Her mind was still numb and fuzzy, her thoughts filled with cotton.

  She couldn’t forget about the living. They needed her, too. They needed each other now.

  “We have to take care of that ear,” she said.

  “I’m fine—”

  “No, you aren’t. It could get infected. We can’t wait any longer.”

  Julio grimaced. “You’re as bad as Shay.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment.” She pulled gauze, iodine, and antibiotic ointment out of one of the upper cupboards. Three bullet holes had punctured the door, the wood splintered, flakes of paint fluttering to the counter.

  She froze, staring unblinking at the holes. The thunderous roaring of gunshots and an awful, endless scream echoed in her mind. Her heart thudded in her chest, her ears ringing.

  In an instant, she was right back in the middle of the battle, the fear and anxiety clutching at her, lost in the moment-by-moment fight for survival.

  If only she’d refused to allow Eden to flee to the shed. If only she’d checked on them earlier. If only she’d drilled Maddox in the skull with a bullet when Park tried so desperately to offer her a distraction.

  She’d failed. She’d failed Park, Eden, and Ezra.

  The what-ifs were paralyzing. If she focused on those destructive thoughts, she’d never leave Ezra’s cabin again. She forced herself to snap out of it, to move.

  Her hands trembled as she brought the supplies back to Julio. She examined the wound after she’d irrigated it with clean water, like Shay had taught them.

  She wished for the hundredth time that Shay was here. That Ezra was still alive.

  “Mother Mary and Joseph,” Julio muttered, wincing. “It hurts.”

  “At least it’s not bleedin
g anymore. I think you can escape stitches, but it’s gonna leave a wonky scar.”

  He gave her a pained smile. “Scars are sexy, or so I’ve been told.”

  It was Julio who swept up the cabin and scrubbed it down, filling several industrial-sized garbage bags with debris, shards of glass, splinters of wood, and shell casings. He wouldn’t let Dakota help.

  When she tried to argue, he sent her outside to take care of the bodies. It was an ugly job, but she’d rather dispose of a thousand corpses than try to pick up the pieces of her shattered home.

  Somehow, Julio knew that.

  Logan joined her. They worked in near silence. They didn’t speak. They didn’t need to.

  Nearly choking against the fetid stench, she and Logan confiscated almost two dozen M4 carbines, as many pistols and tactical knives, and plenty of spare ammo from the dead Shepherds.

  They collected NV goggles, tactical vests with bulletproof plates, and radios with headsets. The Shepherds had switched to a different frequency, but they could use the earpieces with their own communication gear.