Shadows Have Gone
Authors: Lissa Bryan
Shadows Have Gone
By
Lissa Bryan
First published by The Writer’s Coffee Shop, 2015
Copyright © Lissa Bryan, 2015
The right of Lissa Bryan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her under the
Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000
This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
All characters and events in this Book – even those sharing the same name as (or based on) real people – are entirely fictional. No person, brand, or corporation mentioned in this Book should be taken to have endorsed this Book nor should the events surrounding them be considered in any way factual.
This Book is a work of fiction and should be read as such.
The Writer’s Coffee Shop
(Australia)
PO Box 447 Cherrybrook NSW 2126
(USA)
PO Box 2116 Waxahachie TX 75168
Paperback ISBN- 978-1-61213-374-4
E-book ISBN- 978-1-61213-375-1
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the US Congress Library.
Cover images: © Allenfive5 | Dreamstime.com, © Melkor3D / Shutterstock.com,
Cover and interior design:
Jennifer McGuire |
JEM Book Designs
www.thewriterscoffeeshop.com/LBryan
Dedication
Dedicated to my True Love, as always . . .
We wonder,—and some Hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when thro’ the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place
—
Horace Smith
, Ozymandias
“And sometimes you didn't want to know the end . . . because how could the end be happy? How could the
world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing
thing . . . this shadow.”
― Samwise Gamgee,
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
Carly watched the army truck crest the hill. After exchanging a few dazed looks with her friends, she trotted forward, raising her arms to wave.
Justin grabbed her around the waist and pulled her back. “No, wait, Carly, don’t.”
But her arms seemed to operate on autopilot as she reached upward. “It’s the army!” She tried to struggle her way out of his grip. “Justin—”
“Everybody, get down!” Justin called over his shoulder to their group.
Stan hesitated, glancing back toward the truck. “But, Justin, isn’t it—”
“Go!” Justin shouted, and the urgency in his voice seemed to break the spell holding everyone in place.
Pearl and Stacy ran to the right side of the road and slid down the embankment while Stan grabbed the shoulder of the teenage boy they had discovered with Marcus’s group and darted to the left. Mindy and several others followed them as they fled into the drainage ditch, the only cover available on that side of the road. It was overrun by long grasses and wildflowers now that there was no one to mow the roadside.
Carly tried to pry Justin’s hand off her waist. “Justin, let me go!”
“Get down!” he repeated. “It’s not the army.”
He tugged her over the embankment after Pearl and Stacy, pulling her down with him into the lowest point, where a large galvanized metal culvert allowed the creek to flow beneath the road. Pearl flattened herself at the top edge and aimed her rifle toward the truck. Justin nudged Carly toward Stacy, who crouched beside the sluggish stream of groundwater trickling through the culvert.
His words finally broke through to Carly, but they still didn’t make sense. “What do you mean? But—”
“It’s not the fuckin’ army!” Justin’s voice echoed down the metal tunnel behind them, and Carly stopped struggling. “The army doesn’t exist anymore. Shh!”
“How can you be sure?” Stacy whispered.
Justin turned to gaze at her. “We’ll find out soon enough.”
Justin nudged Carly lower, more behind the metal edge of the culvert, hiding her behind his own body as the truck pulled up to the intersection. Cold, stagnant water seeped into her boots.
Carly could hear the huff of the engine and the crunch of gravel only a few paces away. The brakes gave a high-pitched screech, and there was a
chunk
sound as the door opened and closed. Two footsteps crunched on the pavement.
Justin’s breath was hot on Carly’s ear. “Stay here.”
He slipped away from her side and crawled through the culvert. The heels of his boots disappeared, and Carly dared a peek over the edge of the ditch.
A man in camouflage fatigues peered through binoculars toward Clayton, where dark smoke from the burning courthouse smudged the bright blue sky. Between the cap he wore and the binoculars blocking his face, Carly couldn’t make out much detail about his appearance. Tendrils of golden hair peeped from beneath the cap’s bottom edge, and stubble dotted the pinkish skin of his jawline.
There wasn’t even a sound to warn him. Justin appeared at the guy’s side, gun extended, but far enough away to be beyond his reach. “Don’t move.”
The guy jumped in surprise and dropped the binoculars. They swung down by their strap to smack him in the chest as he whirled around to stare at Justin.
“Hands up,” Justin said.
Carly crept up the bank of the ditch, wriggling on her stomach toward the top. Stacy grabbed her boot heel and shook her head with a quick, frantic motion. Carly glared at her and shook off Stacy’s grip, using her elbows and knees to push herself along the soil. She lay down beside Pearl and peeked through the tangle of grass and weeds. Pearl gave her a slight, amused smile over the stock of her rifle before putting her eye back to the scope.
The guy obeyed, his eyes still wide. He was younger than Carly had thought, probably in his mid-twenties. He was good-looking, even with a crooked nose that looked like it had been broken a few times. His eyes darted around quickly but came back to focus on Justin’s face.
“Wh-who are you?”
“I’ll ask the questions. Stan!”
Stan scrambled from the ditch. “Yeah?”
“Cover him. Drop him if he moves.”
Stan nodded. He took out his gun and aimed it at the guy’s chest. The man gave Stan a quick, nervous glance, but it was Justin he was concentrating on as Justin began to sort through the guy’s pockets.
“Who the fuck are you?”
“First Lieutenant—”
Justin gave the guy a sharp rap on the top of the head with the butt of his handgun. “Bullshit.”
“Ow! I really am.” The guy used one of his raised hands to rub his injured noggin. “First—”
Justin slugged him in the gut. The guy staggered to stay on his feet. He dropped one of his hands to clutch his midriff, and Stan shouted at him to keep his hands up. He did but still doubled over slightly.
“Okay, okay,” the guy said with a small groan. “Evan Dawson.”
“Where are you from? Who are you with?”
“The army.” He shied away wincing. “Don’t hit me again. I’m telling the truth. We’re the United States Army. What’s left of it, anyway.”
Carly saw one of Justin’s eyebrows inch upward. “You know how I know you’re lying? You’re an enlisted man claiming a commissioned rank, and I doubt you got a battlefield commission. Dumbass.”
“It ain’t that way anymore,” Dawson said.
Justin had finished his search and stepped back. “Were you in the army Before?”
“I was a mechanic. They found me in Louisville, and I joined up about a year ago. This is the rank I’ve earned.” Dawson’s eyes gleamed with defiance, but his body was still crouched in a defensive posture.
Justin’s eyes sharpened. “Louisville, Kentucky? That’s over seven hundred miles away. What the fuck are you doing down here?”
Dawson shook his head. Carly noticed that his hands were trembling so hard that the fingers were almost a blur. “I don’t know, man. They don’t tell me much. I heard something about a radio message.”
Justin considered. He gestured with his gun at the truck. “You’re out here alone?”
Dawson nodded. “I was scouting. I saw the smoke and decided to check it out.”
“Pearl, search the truck,” Justin called.
Pearl surged to her feet. With her hair swept up in a smooth bun and her dark clothing, she looked sleek and lethal. She went to the back of the truck and spun around it, gun extended as she swept the inside for any danger before hopping up over the tailgate. She disappeared inside, and Carly saw the truck shake a little from her movements.
“They send their scouts out on their own?” Justin asked Dawson. He tilted his head and squinted at him before looking back at the truck.
“Sure.” Dawson swallowed. “Usually . . . um . . . this is the first trouble I’ve ever run into. Most people, you know, they just want help. They’re excited to see the army.” He held up his hands quickly. “Please don’t hit me again.”
“How am I to know you’re not just a bunch of assholes who found a National Guard station and decided to play army?” Justin said, raising an eyebrow. “Sure, people would be glad to see you. They’d throw open the gates and welcome you inside . . . then you could take what you wanted.”
“We’re not like that. I swear.” Dawson shifted on his feet. “I could take you back to meet the guys and—”
“No way,” Carly called. “Justin, you are
not
going anywhere with this guy.”
Justin gave a small sigh and shook his head. He directed his attention back to Dawson. “How many of you are there?”
“What, total?” Dawson blinked a few times and then used one of his upraised hands to scratch his head before returning it to its former position. “I . . . um . . . I’m not really sure . . . I don’t think I’m supposed to tell you that.”
“What did you find?” Justin asked Pearl as she emerged from the truck, never taking his eyes off Dawson.
“Truck’s running on propane,” Pearl said. “Nice stash of ammo. A couple of first aid kits. Water and ration kits—about enough left for three days. Looks like he had enough for about a week with him when he started out.”
“So you were making a pretty wide sweep.” Justin tilted his head. “Gone for at least three days. What were you looking for?”
“Just . . . you know, looking,” Dawson said. At Justin’s scowl, he elaborated. “I’m not really sure. I’m just supposed to report what I run into, you know. Camps, groups of people, any settlements. Supplies. That sort of thing. So they know what’s around.”