Fade to Grey (Book 2): Darkness Ascending (43 page)

Have you ever seen somebody’s eyes smile? I mean
really . . . not their mouth, but the actual emotional glow from their eyes
when they are truly joyful? Well that’s what happened to Michelle as I sat there
and watched. My own eyes probably reflected shock as she spoke.

“I’m going with you.” I started to interject, but she
shook her head and laid a finger across my lips. “Shut up and just listen. I
know what you’re saying—what you’re trying to say—and I appreciate it more than
you’ll ever know. Now, maybe I’m weird, but I’ve thought this through so many
times since it happened that . . . that . . .,” she paused and looked down
briefly, shaking her head a few times to try and clear the cobwebs. The gap of
silence widened, and I counted thirteen of my heartbeats before she resumed.
With a toss of her hair she looked up at me, her brilliant jade crystal eyes
now transfixed into seriousness. “Eric, I could live my life—however long I
have left—in fear over what might have happened at the cabin. But to be totally
honest, I was given a chance—because of you, Emily, and Max—that almost no
other girl gets. I got to personally . . .
personally
. . .,” she said
again for emphasis, “put down the son of a bitch who touched me.”

I looked away as my own vision of her captivity fought
for an unwelcome place in my mind. She must have known what I was thinking.

“Hey,” she said, “look at me. I’ve been felt up worse
than that on dates before.” Her attempt to lighten the situation made my frown
diminish slightly. “Don’t get me wrong Eric; I am under absolutely no illusion
of what would have happened to me in the next five minutes . . . or over the
next five hours, or days . . . if you hadn’t shown up. I could let myself focus
on that . . . it would be so easy . . . or I could lock myself in a room and
never come out again. I could cringe in terror at the sound of male voices—any
male, even you. But I won’t, and I’ll tell you why.”

I matched her stare and waited.

“Because I feel vindicated. I was skyrocketed from
abject terror and helplessness to the status of an avenging angel. One swipe of
your knife and I was unbound from my chains—chains that every woman, whether
they admit to it or not, fearfully tends in the dark garden of their own soul.
I was released—I was offered a gleaming sword of retribution. And I swung that
blade with all the strength that I had . . . with all the fear that had ever
been bottled up and pushed down inside me . . . and I
destroyed
that
incarnation of evil masquerading as a man. Not just for me, but for Samantha,
and Melissa, and the thousands of other women who would have suffered a similar
fate. Maybe not from him, but from people like him. And because of that, I feel
. . . free.”

I said nothing. My preconceived notion about how she
would react was spiraling rapidly down the drain.

She took my hands in hers and called my name softly.
“Eric, I’m serious. I’m OK—better than OK. I’m going with you to the cabin.
You’re not the only one with loose ends to tie up there.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

I nodded at her answer and stood. “The train leaves in
fifteen minutes.” Without waiting for her answer I turned and left.

It actually took the train almost thirty minutes to
depart. I had wanted to talk to my uncle, but he was sleeping soundly when I
peeked in, so I didn’t wake him. A chorus of subtle snoring was coming from
behind Emily’s curtain as well. Michelle joined me and we tracked down Walter.
He answered a few more questions that I had, and then we switched out the
batteries in both mine and Michelle’s Fish and Wildlife radios with fresh
rechargeables. After that, Michelle and I doubled up on our firepower. Each of
us took an AR-15 . . . I kept my M2, and Michelle brought along one of the pump
shotguns from her office. The Delta and Glock still rode on our hips. We topped
everything off with enough ammo to invade a small country, and then we were
gone.

OK, I’m going to start heating up some water for hot
chocolate. It shouldn’t take me too long, and then I’ll be right back.

*click*

Told you I’d be right back. The wind is dying down. It
wasn’t very strong to begin with anyhow. I’m catching the occasional glimpse of
a few stars, but the scattered cloud cover is blocking out the rest of them. In
other words, it ought to be a beautiful sunrise. It’s at least thirty minutes
away, though, so I’ve still got some time to fill in a few gaps in my journal.
It was, I don’t know, maybe 1:45 PM by the time we actually pulled out of the
marina parking lot. Max was going ballistic with excitement in the back of the
truck, and as I drove, Michelle fiddled with the scan button on the radio. All
she hit was the same “boil your water” message that BB had found earlier. The
ground was dry once we turned off the gravel and crossed onto the bridge
section of the dirt road, and I did my best to not think about my last nighttime
race across those ruts and washouts. Anyhow, we made it to the slope that lead
down to the cabin. I stopped the truck on the low incline and popped it into
park, and we spent the next few minutes just staring at the scene below. From
300 yards away, it looked normal—with the exception of the big yellow pickup
truck parked off to the side—but both of us knew that every inch closer was
going to make a lot of unwelcome details stand out. I remember looking at
Michelle, half expecting to see her shy away from the scene below, but her face
was steady, and she regarded me with a half smile and said, “If you want to
wait here, I’ll radio you once I’ve done all the heavy work.”

I chuckled, and then drove the rest of the way down
the hill. We parked midway between my uncle’s lake and the cabin, just to give
us a little buffer zone from any surprises. Both of us chose shotguns as our
primary weapons.

“You’re sure that the little kid was infected, right?”

“Without a doubt.”

I nodded and whistled for Max, and we spent the next
thirty minutes or so sweeping the entire area, outbuildings included. We found
nothing alive. Even the toddler, still bundled and restrained by ropes and
straps was deceased. A large steak knife, one from the cabin I’m sure, was
protruding from the side of its neck. Embracing the child’s body was the
blanket-wrapped corpse of Melissa. Her throat had been torn open and shredded.
The last act of a mother’s love sculpted in front of us, temporarily
immortalized by the stiffness of rigor mortis.

“I wish I could kill them again, all of them.”
Michelle mumbled as she looked at the mother and child, gruesomely locked in a
hug below the open tailgate of the monster truck.

“I’d be glad to help you.”

We turned away from the scene that was both emotionally
heart wrenching and ghastly at the same time. The short walk back to my truck
was done in silence. After stowing the shotguns, I leaned against the hood and
laid back; Michelle mimicked my posture a few seconds later.

The sky was patchy blue with two layers of clouds
shifting and sliding at different speeds as they raced, or moseyed, to whatever
was in store for their destination. Looking up, I couldn’t help but feel a
little jealous. Just drifting with the currents and being totally at peace with
your journey seemed like an enviable position to be in. Instead, my life . . .
our lives . . . the world even . . . seemed like it was coming apart all around
me.  My uncle used to have an expression for times like this. It was “you’re in
a metallic crapstorm wearing magnetic underwear.”  There were bright spots, to
be sure. One of the most brilliant was stretched out beside me on the hood of
the truck. Uncle Andy was still alive. Heck, I was still alive. I just wished
that I could somehow wave a magic wand and eliminate the bodies that speckled the
area around the cabin . . . the memories that went with them too. If I could do
that, then I could almost envision that the world was back to the way it used
to be. Yeah . . . if-if-if.

Michelle nudged my shoulder and jarred me back to
reality, “Where do you want to start?”

I sighed and stood up, offering my hand to her. She
took it. I’ve got to say this . . . that simple gesture did more to rebalance
my soul than almost any other single act in my life. I’d held her hand many
times through the years, but it was always as a friend—to help each other get
up a hill, or out of a creek onto a slippery bank. This time, it was different.
The words that had passed between us, the feelings that were finally allowed to
come to the surface, the secrets that we’d both apparently kept inside for so
long, they all seemed to distill into a simple, private moment shared only with
each other. For the first time in my life, I had offered my hand to the girl,
the woman, that I had always been in love with, and she chose . . .
chose
. . . to take it with the same understanding. It blew my mind.

My face must have given away some of my thoughts, and
I’d bet my bottom dollar that she was feeling some of the same. I noticed a
slight blush in her cheeks, and her eyes darted away for a second. “What?” she
asked.

“Nothing. Just thinking.” Before she had a chance to
press any further, I continued, “To answer your question, I want to start by
the lake.”

“The lake?”

“Yeah,” I pointed towards the hourglass-shaped, seven
acre body of water that I had pulled several pike from just a few days ago,
“it’s that big thing down there filled with water.”

She scoffed in amusement, but didn’t reply. She also
didn’t let go of my hand as we walked down toward the water’s edge with Max
bounding in front of us. There were several half log benches that had been semi-permanently
positioned in front of the areas where I’d had the most luck fishing through
the years. I steered us towards the closest one. I felt confident that our sweep
had covered the entire area, but I still sat with my back against the water.

I squeezed Michelle’s hand, feeling the warmth of her
own pressure in return as I tried to organize my thoughts into some semblance
of speech.

“Here’s what I’m thinking. Feel free to stop me, or
jump in at any time.” I exhaled deeply before continuing, “You and I need to
head towards Devils Lake to try and find your mom. Now, I’ve got a few ideas
floating around in the back of what’s left of my brain, and I’m sure you’ve got
your own thoughts as well, but I think we can do this. It’ll be dangerous, no
doubt, but I think it can be done.”

“Whether we succeed or not, I need to know that I gave
it my best effort.”

“I understand, and I agree . . . so hear me out for a
second. I know that time is of the essence, but so is planning. You and I need
to have our heads on straight before we attempt this. What I’d like to do, I
think, is use tonight to just relax. We need to be well rested or we’ll make
stupid mistakes. I’d like to stay here tonight—not in the cabin, though . . . I
have another place in mind . . ., but I’d like to stay here . . . away from the
hustle and bustle and responsibilities of the marina. So, like I said, tonight
we just relax. Tomorrow morning, we clean up a little bit around the cabin, and
then use the rest of the day to work out the details of our Devils Lake run.
Then we get one more night’s rest—probably at Walter’s, though—before we
leave.”

“So we leave the day after tomorrow—no later—correct?”

“I think it’s our best bet.”

I watched her face firm in concentration. Michelle was
smart. Not just book smart . . . she was also a gifted with an extra helping of
street smarts.

Her countenance finally eased as she let out a small
breath. “OK, I can live with that.”

I smiled at her and stood, pulling her up with me.
“Come with me.”

“Where?”

“I’m going to pick up a few things from inside the
cabin. After that, we’re going to drive up toward the ridgeline, where I’ll
pick up some more things. Then I’m going to take you . . . somewhere.”

Her eyebrows arched in a questioning look, but she
didn’t ask, and I didn’t volunteer.

We’d already been through the cabin on our sweep, so I
popped in by myself and headed toward the gun safe. Michelle's job was to load
some firewood from the pile out back, and Max helped her out by stealing every
other piece that she threw in the truck. The big safe had several dings and
scratches in it where the trio of . . . of . . . I don’t even know what to refer
to them as. Criminals? Assholes? Human filth? Whatever you call them, it looked
like they had halfheartedly tried to break in. That dark specter in my mind
clawed its way to the surface with a brief vision of the suffering that Melissa
and Samantha must have endured. Sadly, their sacrifice must have distracted the
three men enough to put the problem of the safe and its contents on the back
shelf for a while. I spun the dial and opened the door. Inside, I grabbed my laptop,
and my CZ pistol with the drop leg holster. Despite the recent carnage that had
taken place, the cabin was remarkably whole. Not counting the bullet holes,
broken whiskey bottles and blood trails, of course. And the corpse lying in the
kitchen. I walked over to the power panel and hit the test button. A digital
readout momentarily flashed thirty-eight percent. Ideally, you want to keep
your batteries from discharging below seventy percent for the longest life you
can get out of them. If you frequently drain them a lot lower, they won’t last
near as long, and they’re expensive to replace. Obviously, the men who hijacked
the cabin didn’t know, or care, about this. I went out back and filled the
little Honda generator with gas, started it, and then kicked on the transfer
switch. Back inside, I plugged my laptop in, turned off three additional lights
that had been left on, and then doubled checked to make sure the battery bank
was showing a “charging” status. It was, so after a final stop in the kitchen,
I shut the doors and headed out back.