Nuclear Dawn (Book 5): Darkest Night Page 2

  “We should strip their ACUs,” Logan said. “The headshots still have uniforms in good shape. You never know when we might need them.”

  “Good idea.”

  “Look for the ones who haven’t soiled themselves. Some of these guys are pretty ripe.”

  After they’d finished gathering everything they wanted from the bodies, they piled the weapons and gear in two wheelbarrows and hauled it back to the cabin, taking a few trips.

  Next, they disposed of the corpses. Dressed in garden gloves, N95 masks, and ponchos from Ezra’s stash, Logan and Dakota rolled each body into a tarp, wrapped them up, and used the wheelbarrows and ropes to cart them out to the dock.

  They didn’t want to leave the corpses in the shallow water so close to Ezra’s property, so they took the bodies out in the fishing boat, three or four at a time, and dumped them near a gator hole. The work was back-breaking, disgusting, and reeked worse than anything she’d ever smelled.

  Afterward, they each took a long shower. The generator and solar panels only created so much hot water, so Logan insisted Dakota go first.

  She stood in Ezra’s small white shower stall and washed off the grime, soot, and speckles and streaks of Ezra’s blood. She scrubbed every inch of her flesh with a rough kitchen sponge, rubbing until her skin turned bright red. It felt like the foul particles still clung to her skin.

  Her fingernails were long and jagged, a few of them broken. Blood curved in little half-moons beneath her nails. She seized the slippery bar of soap and raked it across her fingertips again and again, but it wasn’t enough.

  She still wasn’t clean. Maybe she’d never be clean again.

  3

  Dakota

  There wasn’t a funeral. Julio offered, but he wasn’t a priest, and Ezra wouldn’t have wanted a religious ceremony anyway.

  Logan found stacks of dry firewood in one of the outbuildings, along with long sections of a cypress tree Ezra was planning to chop for firewood later. But later never came.

  She swallowed back the tightness in her throat and used the wheelbarrow to lug the wood down to the picnic table beneath the live oak tree. Dakota picked a spot on the opposite side, near the tree but within sight of the water and the tall, rustling sawgrass spreading as far as the eye could see.

  It was as good a spot as anywhere.

  Together, she and Logan stacked the wood, alternating their orientation layer by layer until it reached a height of around three feet. They added smaller branches, twigs, and other kindling to the center.

  Once the pyre was ready, they trudged back to the house for the body.

  “Dakota,” Julio said, too gently. Like he thought she was too fragile for this. “Are you sure you want to—”

  She brushed him off. She needed to do this. All of it. “I’m fine.”

  Logan’s mouth was a grim line, but he didn’t say anything. He took the head and shoulders, Dakota the feet. They carried him, still carefully wrapped in the blanket. Julio shuffled behind them, carrying a jerrycan full of gasoline.

  Ezra seemed lighter somehow in death. She’d expected his body to be incredibly heavy, an enormous burden, but it wasn’t. The sturdy, broad-shouldered, larger-than-life man took up so much more space in her memories.

  Now, he was fragile, insubstantial, already slipping away. How long until he faded from her memories, too?

  She made herself stop thinking. The pain and grief were there, crouching behind the iron wall of her will. She couldn’t let herself keep feeling it.

  Not now. Not until this was over. Not until she’d ended it.

  Logan helped her position the body in the center of the pyre. She took the jerrycan and poured on the gasoline. The clear liquid soaked into the blanket—some ancient dusky blue thing Ezra had probably had forever, since long before his wife died. The gasoline splashed across the wood, dripping down, slowly drenching each piece.

  The harsh stench of the gas filled her nostrils and stung her eyes. She took a few steps back, set down the empty jerrycan. Julio handed her a box of matches. He put his hand on her shoulder. His expression was strained, his pallor ashen, dark circles beneath his eyes.

  She nodded. Lit the match, watched the fire waver for a moment. She stared at it blindly as the tiny flame burned the matchstick black, eating the wood until it reached her fingers.

  Pain seared her fingertips. She dropped the match. She ground it out in the grass with her boot heel.

  Logan and Julio stood on either side of her. No one spoke.

  She lit another match. Then a third, each time letting it burn down to her fingers.

  The Everglades were eerily silent. No crickets trilling, no frogs singing to each other. No birds twittering and chirping.

  Above the sea of sawgrass, the sky was gray as a shroud.

  Pressure built behind her eyes, her throat too tight to breathe properly, to swallow. An aching numbness started in her belly and spread into her chest, her arms, her legs.

  She held the fourth match, unlit, between her fingers.

  This had to mean something. There had to be a purpose to all this death and suffering. In Park’s death. In Ezra’s death. She couldn’t bear it if this was all meaningless, the universe’s idea of a sick joke.

  She refused to believe it was meaningless.

  Pain meant nothing. The anguish wrenching her heart into pieces meant nothing.

  Only action meant something.

  She had to get Eden back. If she couldn’t, then Ezra died for nothing. Then they all suffered and lost for nothing.

  And that was unacceptable.

  Dakota struck the fourth match.

  She tossed it on the pyre and watched the flames leap to life, smoke pouring into the sky.

  4

  Logan

  Once the pyre was blazing, Julio turned to Logan. “I noticed a couple of the solar panels aren’t working. I think a few bullets did some damage. I’m gonna go up on the roof and see if I can repair them.”

  Logan nodded. He watched Julio trudge back toward the cabin, his shoulders hunched, head down. He glanced back toward Dakota. She gazed intently at the crackling fire, her back stiff, her hands balled into fists at her sides, her eyes glassy.

  His heart ached to see her so anguished, but he couldn’t do a damn thing about it. It seemed wrong somehow to stay here. It felt like he was invading her privacy, intruding on her sorrow. She needed to grieve in peace. “I’ll go, too.”

  “No!” She sucked in a ragged breath. “I mean, I’d like you to stay. If you want to.”

  “I want to.”

  They stood side by side, less than a foot apart. He felt her presence vibrating through every inch of him. The heat from the flames warmed his face and arms. Together, they watched Ezra’s body burn.

  “Dakota, I’m truly sorry. I—I failed him.”

  “You did your best.”

  He stared at the fire. He could still hear the thunder of gunfire, could feel the dust roiling all around him, splinters flying as bullets roared past his head. The muscles in his neck, back, and shoulders were sore from the constant tension.

  His nerves were on a hair-trigger, his finger curling instinctively, robotically, like he was still squeezing the trigger, over and over. “If I could do it over again, I would. I could’ve saved him. If I was faster. If I’d taken a second to aim more accurately...”

  So many mistakes. How easily things could’ve ended differently. But tunnel vision was real. In the heat of battle, the mind was focused on nothing but survival. Kill or be killed.

  It was easy to pick apart every decision afterward, when things were calm and orderly again, when you weren’t in the grip of gut-wrenching panic and blinding terror.

  But it didn’t matter how many times he reminded himself; the guilt and self-recrimination wouldn’t fade.

  “You did everything you could. I know that.” She clenched her jaw. “What matters now is what happens next.”

  She returned her attention to the pyre. Se
veral long minutes passed, silent but for the crackle and pop of the flames.

  The fire danced higher and higher, its orange, shimmering tongues singeing the branches of the live oak. Swaths of Spanish moss crinkled black and disintegrated into ash.

  “Ezra was a difficult man to love,” she said softly. “He never made things easy. But he was there when no one else was. He saved us. Eden would’ve died without him. Probably, we both would’ve. He saved us, in more ways than one.”

  “I know how much he meant to you.”

  She turned to face him. Her eyes were wide and shiny, her mouth quivering. They stood there looking at each other, the foot of space between them pulsing with electricity.

  She leaned in, rested her hands on his forearms, spread her fingers over his tattoos. She ran her fingertips lightly over his barbed-wire Latin inscription, sending jolts of electricity through every inch of him.

  He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close. She stiffened. He felt her heart thudding like a wild thing against his chest.

  For a terrible moment, he thought she would pull away. That no matter what they’d been through together, she still wouldn’t let him in.

  The tension in her body released. She slumped against him; her cheek pressed against his chest, shaking with silent sobs.

  Grief was a world unto itself. It came slowly and then all at once, pummeling you again and again, receding for a time—only to surprise you with a tidal wave that knocked you right back on your ass.

  He’d fight a hundred Shepherd thugs bare-handed if it would spare her this. Ezra wasn’t important to Logan, but he was to Dakota. And for that, he grieved with her, felt her pain throbbing inside his own chest.

  He couldn’t do a damn thing for her but this, so he did it as well as he could. “I’m right here. I’m here.”

  She wept, releasing her grief, sorrow, and loss into the world.

  He simply held her.

  5

  Eden

  Eden was home again. She didn’t want to be.

  Last night, she’d watched in horror as the Shepherds marched on the cabin. She’d watched Maddox whirl, lift the gun, and shoot Park in the head. Then bullets exploded all around her.

  Park was dead. The Shepherds had shot Ezra in the chest. She’d crouched beside him, helpless and terrified, as the blood leaked from his body with every ragged gasp and shallow beat of his heart.

  When she’d heard Maddox’s voice outside the safety of the shed, she’d known what she had to do. If she stayed inside that shed, Ezra would bleed out and die right in front of her.

  Maddox would continue killing the people she loved, and he wouldn’t stop until he had Eden.

  Huddled in the shed, weeping as she clutched Ezra’s hand, she had made a choice. No one else would die because of her.

  She didn’t know for sure whether Maddox would uphold his end of the bargain. But she had nothing else, no other bargaining chips, no power or authority to do a thing to protect her friends.

  Only this.

  Her heart hammering in her throat, she’d said a prayer. Then she opened the door to whatever fate awaited her.

  She still didn’t know whether Ezra had made it, whether her surrender had given Dakota and Haasi the precious minutes to save him, if it was even possible. Maybe she would never know. She prayed it was worth it.

  Maddox had brought her directly to their family cabin where her father, Solomon Cage, waited. At first, he seemed delighted, pulling her into his arms and stroking her matted curls. He pushed her back by her shoulders and took a good hard look at her.

  His eyes narrowed in alarm when he saw the thick, wormy scar arcing across her throat. “What is this?”

  Her cheeks burned with embarrassment and shame. Instinctively, she covered the ugly scar with her hands. She barely heard Maddox and her father as they argued, her father’s voice rising in indignation and anger, Maddox shouting right back.

  “After three years trapped among the perverse and wicked heathens of Miami, you’re lucky she’s even alive,” Maddox snapped. “She’s still pure. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

  That finally softened him. He ordered her bathed, scrubbed, and brushed to within an inch of her life. Her stepmother, Sister Hannah, barely spoke or even looked at her.

  Sister Hannah had never shown her love or affection—her long absence hadn’t changed that. If anything, the woman watched her with barely restrained distaste and a hostile wariness, as if she expected a demon to pop out of Eden at any moment.

  Eden dressed in the familiar long, itchy skirt and a white short-sleeved blouse that buttoned up to the base of her throat. Her stepmother brushed her curls with hard, tugging strokes until they were smooth and golden, and left them loose around her shoulders.

  When her father returned, he handed her a wide blue satin ribbon. “Wrap that around your neck and cover that repulsive thing.”

  She obeyed, her hands trembling.

  Her father glared at her, his eyes flashing. “Maddox tells me you’re mute?”

  She kept her head bowed, her eyes stinging. Three years ago, she would’ve been a blubbering mess. Now, she refused to let him see her cry.

  “Are you stupid, too?”

  “Maybe it’ll work out better,” Maddox said coyly from behind her. “She can’t whine and complain like the other wives, now can she?”

  Her father snorted. “Maybe so. Maybe God has offered us a blessing in disguise.”

  She bit her lip. Don’t cry. Don’t cry.

  Her father gripped her jaw with one hand and tilted her chin up, examining her like he might examine his livestock for defects. “At least she still has her looks. You’re lucky that the Prophet is so compassionate and understanding. He could’ve rejected you. He could’ve banished our family because of this.”

  She waited stiffly for him to be done with her. She wanted to wriggle away from his shrewd, piercing gaze, but she couldn’t. His hand still gripped her jaw so hard she felt his nails digging into her cheeks.

  “Don’t you see how important you are? You were set aside as a child. You were chosen. You represent the remnant, the holy church of God, perfect and unblemished.” His gaze dropped to the blue ribbon around her neck. His mouth tightened in revulsion. “That girl—we should never have taken her in. A devil in our very midst. She is the harlot Jezebel. Was. It doesn’t matter now. We have you back. You are the bride, prophecy fulfilled. And the greatest honor for our family.”

  What do you mean, ‘was’? Eden signed. Is Dakota okay? What happened to her?

  But of course, they couldn’t understand her. No one bothered to try.

  Her father must have seen something he didn’t like in her eyes. He released her chin, but seized her hand, and squeezed until her bones felt like they might crack.

  A raw, hoarse gasp tore from her lungs. She bit her lip to keep the tears at bay.

  “You may have engaged in heretical behavior out there, daughter of mine.” He leaned in so close she felt his breath on her cheeks, caught the faint scent of the lemony lye soap her stepmother made from scratch. “Anything you did was the fault of that Jezebel who stole you from us. But you’ve returned to the fold. Blasphemy in any form shall not be tolerated. Whatever you do, do not shame this family!”

  She nodded frantically, just wanting the grinding pain to stop. Her gaze slid from her father’s face to Maddox. But if she expected help from her brother, she wasn’t going to find it.

  Maddox only smiled, his eyes cold and distant. “When is the wedding, Father?”

  Her father released her hand and wiped his palm on his pantleg. “Today.”

  She stumbled back, clutching her aching fingers to her chest. A wave of dizziness lurched through her.

  Did she hear correctly? Today? Already? She should’ve had at least a few days to prepare herself for what lay ahead. She wasn’t ready.

  “The Prophet announced the service this morning. It’ll happen after the regular worship service in only
a few hours. There’s no time to waste. Everyone is required to attend.” He turned to Maddox, the displeasure in his expression unchanged. “As for you, Maddox, you’ll be honored as the Prophet’s new Chosen.”

  Maddox bowed his head, his smile widening.

  Her father strode toward the door. Before he opened it, he paused. “We have a lot of work to do. I expect each of you to do your part. The storm the Prophet prophesied—it’s coming.”

  6

  Eden

  Eden waited in quiet panic, her whole body thrumming with foreboding. Maddox stood beside her and watched with sly amusement. They were the only ones in the elders’ room, the back room located behind the sanctuary in the chapel.

  The elder’s room was small, simply furnished with a few chairs and a narrow cabinet with a Bible laid open on the top shelf. A painting of the Prophet, his face glowing with God’s holy favor, hung above it. Neatly folded white robes sat on the lower shelves, along with a couple of totes to stash a person’s regular clothes.

  One of the robes was for her; the other, for Maddox. They would both be presented at the service less than an hour from now. They were supposed to be preparing themselves in prayer and supplication.

  But Eden couldn’t pray. She was far too anxious.

  Maddox patted Eden’s shoulder. “You were brave, Eden. Honestly, I didn’t think you were capable of it. I’m impressed.”

  She shrank back from him.

  He clucked his tongue in disapproval. “We’re on the same side now. There’s no need to be afraid of me. We’re going to work together, you and me. You do your duty to please the Prophet while I work my way into his good graces. You heard our father. You’re our family’s ticket.”

  She shook her head. She didn’t want to be her family’s ticket. And she certainly didn’t want to be anything to the Prophet. Just the thought made her dizzy with trepidation.