The Darkness (19 page)
Jacob saw a rifle next to
him; he grabbed it and used it to push himself up. He then struggled to his
feet and staggered ahead, only getting a few steps before falling against a
bullet-riddled car. With his left hand, he opened his tactical vest, wincing at
what felt like a thousand broken ribs. He turned and sat on the hood of the
car, every breath bringing spasms of pain. Fires burned all around him and,
having collapsed, the bunker was gone. Nothing moved and he could find none of
his squad.
He stumbled forward only
to trip over a man’s legs. Jacob hit the ground with a painful thud but quickly
climbed back to a knee as he felt the man’s hand grab his ankle. Jacob looked
back into the creature’s black eyes flaring with hatred. Jacob gripped his
rifle and thrust, hitting it in the face. The thing’s head snapped back, and
then it reared forward to grab at Jacob’s feet again. Gasping, Jacob fell to
his knees and rolled to the side. Grabbing a broken piece of concrete and
swinging, he bashed it in the face. Jacob felt the skull crush his own fingers
between bone and stone as the oily blood splattered on his face.
He turned again and fell
to his belly. Taking shallow breaths, trying to avoid the pain his ribs, Jacob
crawled back toward the bunker. He pulled himself back to his feet using a post
and, one loose step at a time, Jacob made it back to the fighting position. An
arm moved from under the debris. Jacob grabbed the hand, tugged, and got a yelp
in response. When he dug away the bags and dirt, he found the twisted face of Murphy.
Jacob dug him out further and grabbed the collar of his armor, dragging him
clear of the rubble. Murphy moaned and pushed him off before reaching down to
open his body armor and shrug out of it. He reached into a pouch on his chest
and fumbled with what looked like a small flashlight. He pressed a switch and
stuck it into Jacob’s hand.
“It’s a strobe; get it
someplace high!” he mumbled.
“Okay,” Jacob said and nodded.
Turning back, he stumbled ahead to a long strand of rope tied to a barrier.
Jacob cut the rope free and knotted one end to the strobe. He moved to a burnt,
leafless tree and grabbed a branch. Pulling himself up, he climbed until he was
as high as he could get, then secured the strobe to a branch. Jacob dropped
back to the ground and staggered to the bunker. He could see the things were
moving again—not focused on his location, but milling about.
Helicopters flew far off
over the city and he could hear the sound of boats in the harbor. Jacob moved
back to Murphy’s side and dropped in beside him. As the things moved in closer,
he readied his rifle for a final fight.
“Don’t… it’ll make it
worse… leave me; get to the water,” Murphy said in slurred words, bloody foam
gathering at the corners of his lips.
Feeling strangely calm,
ready to accept his fate, Jacob shook his head and pulled Murphy to his lap. He
watched a flashing light high in the skyline make an abrupt turn; it moved
around before it angled toward them, coming swiftly in their direction. Jacob
pulled Murphy’s vest with the reflective tape on the back over to face them and
set it on his friend’s lap. He cupped Murphy’s head with his left hand, feeling
his friend’s labored breathing. Jacob was tired; he just wanted to rest. He
watched the slow-moving flashing light draw closer.
“Hold on, Murphy; they’re
coming,” Jacob said.
Chapter
23
“Daddy!” a young girl
yelled, waking him. He saw her running, her feet slapping the polished tile
floor.
Katy easily scaled the
hospital bed and thumped onto Jacob’s chest to embrace him. Jacob winced and
smiled at the same time, hugging her with both arms while a tear formed in his
eye. Laura came next, reaching down and locking them both in tight hugs. Jacob grunted
and struggled to sit. A nurse in camouflage scrubs scrambled around the bed.
“No, you don’t, Mr.
Anderson. We worked too hard to keep that lung from collapsing; I’ll let the
hugs slide, but that’s it,” she barked.
“Lung?” Jacob said,
finding his breath.
“You had significant internal
injuries; you need to rest,” she said while scribbling on his chart. “Not too
long, okay, hun?” the nurse said to Laura as she left the room.
Jacob looked around,
confused by the surroundings. “Where are we, is this Chicago?”
“No, Jacob. We’re in Canada,”
Laura said. “In a military hospital.”
“Canada… how? I don’t
understand… how did I get here?”
“They found you
unconscious and they brought you here. Your friend, the soldier, helped to find
us in the camps and had us brought here while you were still in surgery.”
Jacob’s eyes widened with
recognition. “Sergeant Murphy? He’s here?”
“No, his name wasn’t
Murphy. It was Corporal Stephens,” she said. “The Canadians took us in, Jacob.
The camps were horrible; they had nothing—no water, no food, and there were so
many people there. I thought we would never—”
“Why were you in Canada?”
“The Canadian Army is
holding them off and trying to keep them at the borders.”
Jacob grew frustrated
with so many thoughts filling his head at once. “Where is the man I was with?”
“I don’t know; you were
alone when I got here.” Laura shook her head. “Jacob, we’re lucky to be here.”
He tried to speak and
began coughing; he felt the pain in his ribs as he concentrated on breathing.
Laura frowned and poured
a glass of water from a nearby pitcher. She passed it to Jacob who took it and
drank thirstily. “The doctor says you need to rest,” she said, helping him sip
from the glass.
A knock at the open door
turned their heads. A tall black man in a green hospital robe and pushing an IV
cart looked in, grinning.
“Damn man, still on your
ass… oops, sorry. Pardon my language, ma’am,” Stephens said, catching himself.
“I didn’t see the little one all cuddled up with her daddy there.”
Laura smiled at him.
Jacob laughed painfully.
“Good to see you… Is Murphy here too?” he asked.
“Jacob… Murphy didn’t
make it,” Stephens said, walking to a chair in the corner of the room and
sitting heavily.
Jacob’s jaw dropped as he
lay back in the bed, feeling his body become numb with shock. Katy crawled
higher on him and laid her head against his chest. He lifted his hand and
stroked her hair, fighting back tears while not knowing why he was so upset
over a man he barely knew.
Laura grabbed his hand
and whispered, “Who was he?”
“He was my friend,” Jacob
said with shock in his voice.
Stephens looked at him
sympathetically. “Man… I’m sorry, Jacob; I thought you knew.” Stephens turned
to Laura. “Ma’am, I hate to ask this right now, but could we have a moment? I
promise I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”
“I can appreciate that,
Corporal Stephens, but we—”
Jacob put up a hand. “It’s
okay, Laura; it’ll just be a minute,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Laura shot Stephens an
exaggerated cold stare before she leaned over to kiss Jacob. “Come on, Katy.
Let’s see if they are serving lunch yet.” She retrieved Katy and left the room,
leaving the door slightly ajar.
Jacob pressed a button,
raising the back of the bed so that he was nearly upright. He grunted trying to
adjust his pillow. “What is it?
Stephens pulled his chair
close. “Bro, when I saw you come off that Medevac, Murphy was with you. They
tried to save him but it was just too much.”
Jacob chewed his lower
lip, not speaking. Stephens looked at the door and sat back in the chair. “I
told the doctors about your family; they used the Red Cross to locate them and
get ’em here.”
Jacob forced a smile.
“Thank you. That means a lot to me.”
“But that’s the thing.
This is a military hospital. I told them you were part of Second Squad, Jacob.
It was the only way I could get them here to you.’
“You what?”
“Our forces are so jacked
up right now, they don’t know up from down. They didn’t question it. I just had
to lie, man. I didn’t want your family out there in one of those camps when you
woke up.”
“Is your family here
too?”
Stephens looked away then
back at Jacob. “I don’t know where they are. Last word I got, they were moving
them south some place toward Atlanta, maybe Fort Benning. I don’t know. Contact’s
been cut.”
“I’m sorry, Stephens,”
Jacob said just above a whisper.
Stephens shook it off. “Don’t
be sorry, bro. I know they’re okay; I can feel it. Listen, Jacob, we need to
talk, man; everything is gone now. We got pushed back across the border and
refugees are pouring across faster than the Canuks can find room for them. The
United States south of Milwaukee is lost and The Darkness is spreading down
into Central and South America. They thrive in warm weather. Europe is the same
way, cold areas are stable while they move and spread south.
“Those ponds we found?
They use them to breed and multiply. Most of the dumb ones stay close to their
little birthing ponds, but the stage three types… hell, they’ve been spotted
way far north.”
“Stage three?” Jacob
asked.
“That’s what they’re
calling the smart ones, the ones that shoot back. The fully evolved ones.”
Jacob nodded his head,
remembering the briefing about the lizard men.
“So what’s next?” Jacob
asked. “Where do we go from here?”
“That’s why I needed to
talk to you. I got your family in here, but for them to stay, you’re gonna have
to
enlist—
and I mean for real. This base is only for military families.
I listed you as a private with Second Squad. I don’t know if that’s gonna last
or not. You better hope it does, ’cause if it don’t, they gonna send your wife
and daughter out to the camps. You too probably, once you get healed up enough
to walk. There just isn’t room on base for everyone.”
“I can’t leave them again,”
Jacob said.
“It’s going to happen. You
need to heal up and go back with us if you want to keep them safe. The generals
say we won’t last two winters if we can’t push them out; we can’t survive this
far north. We’ll all starve.”
“So I have a choice of
leaving my family to go fight, or leave with my family for these camps?”
Stephens shook his head,
frowning. “The choice is yours, Jacob.”
Thank you for
reading
.
I hope you enjoyed
The
Darkness,
and would consider leaving a review.
Other works by
W.J.Lundy
Whiskey Tango
Foxtrot Series.
W. J. Lundy is a still serving Veteran of the
U.S. Military with service in Afghanistan. He has over 14 years of combined
service with the Army and Navy in Europe, the Balkans and Southwest Asia. Visit
him on
Facebook
for more.
OTHER WORKS BY WJ LUNDY
