“You keep in touch with these people?”
“Yeah,” she said.
But…?” he asked, something behind the way she’d said the word that he wanted to understand.
“I haven’t been as good at it as I should’ve been. My aunt and uncle are old school, like turn of the twentieth century old school. Their house is on a well and not a sewer, and they run power, what little they use, on generator. It’s not exactly conducive to text messaging or social media. And I’ve been busy. Too busy to get back here for more than five years now,” she said.
He could hear her shame in her voice.
He didn’t try to make her feel better about it. Instead, he reflected on the good thing she had said. Sixty acres was not as much is he would have liked, but it gave them some space. And if the land was like the rest of the surrounding scenery, they’d have a better chance of spotting anyone, or anything, who might approach.
The relative flatness of the terrain put them at somewhat of a disadvantage, but in this case, Jack didn’t mind. If someone were to approach, Jack would see them first and take the advantage.
They walked the rest of the way in silence, and about half a mile out, Jack spotted a speck on the horizon.
“That the house?” he asked.
“No. It’s one of the outbuildings. The house is farther down.”
Jack nodded, paying even more attention now. “Do they have livestock?” he asked.
“I don’t think so,” Cassandra responded. “They used to have cows, a few chickens, but I think they got to be too much for them to handle on their own,” she said, her voice again taking on that tinge of regret.
Jack didn’t say anything, but the closer they got to the outbuilding and the house that he finally spotted in the distance, the more excited he became about the prospects of this. He needed to get home, but he didn’t know how feasible that was, at least not immediately.
He hated the idea of staying in this place, but it might work for the short term. Again, he knew the location wasn’t ideal, but there was something he could work with, assuming not many of those things were around.
“It seems quiet,” she said.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“I just mean, there’s usually always something, you know that’s just my aunt out and about. Or maybe my uncle in his barn fixing something. It’s never like this,” she said.
When he looked at her, he could see that her brows were drooped low, her expression pensive. He couldn’t dismiss the possibility that she was simply overreacting, being nervous because she felt so uncertain, but he also couldn’t ignore the fact that she might be right.
“Should we go through the front or the back?” he asked.
“The back. The kitchen is back there, and if they are inside, that’s where they’ll be,” she said.
As they got closer to the structure, Jack studied it.
As he looked at it, he could see that it had been added onto and thought he could tell that the pristine-looking country front porch wasn’t original. As he got closer, he looked at the back, noticed like she did that there were no signs of life.
But things also didn’t look to be in any particular disarray. It was a confusing appearance, one that alarmed him.
If her aunt and uncle had left in a hurry, he would have expected there to be some disarray. But this struck him as different from that, like everything was in place.
“Wait here,” he said.
“No chance,” she whispered.
He gave her a grim laugh and then quickly looked back toward the house.
“Stay to my left,” he said in a tense whisper.
She shifted, moving to his left, few feet behind him. He made his way up the stairs, noticing that they creaked under his weight.
The shifting wood sounded like an explosion, but Jack ignored the instinct to run or do anything else.
Everything inside of him was screaming that he was being watched, and an instant later the confirmation came.
He tensed, the familiar sound of a gun being cocked freezing him in place.
“Welcome to Paradise, Alabama,” came the gruff voice. “We shoot trespassers on sight.”
EPILOGUE
Somewhere in America’s Heartland…
“Report,” the man in charge barked.
“Sir, yes, sir!” came the immediate response. “Phase One has unfolded as projected. We’ve entered the final stages.”
The man gave a curt nod, a gleam of satisfaction in his eye.
“Initiate Phase Two.”
Copyright
The Dying Light Book One Copyright © 2018 by Rowan Steele
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, businesses, and incidents are invented by the author or used fictitiously. Any similarities to real people, living or dead, businesses and business establishments, places, or events are entirely coincidental. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.