Dark Vanishings: The Complete Series

By Dan Padavona

2016 Indie Horror Novel of the Year Finalist - On Sale for a Limited Time

Empty streets. Neighborhoods vanished. The world is a tomb. 

Tori awakens to find herself alone in her town. Her parents are missing. Perhaps they were kidnapped. Murdered. Or worse.

And now the evils ones are coming for her.

Running from those who would murder her, Tori flees with a strange boy who seems to know her. Together, they drive south along the east coast and search for humankind.

But the road is full of hidden dangers -- death watches from every shadow.

An evil man appears in Tori's hometown in New York, flanked by wolf-like creatures with glowing eyes. Moments later, he appears in Virginia, still searching for the fleeing girl. The survivors he locates will serve his dark purpose. He won't stop until he finds Tori.

Now a secret power awakens inside Tori, a weapon which might save what little remains of the world. Will she embrace her power?

The critically acclaimed Dark Vanishings series in one omnibus collection! 

This thrilling post-apocalyptic horror story will keep you on the edge of your seat until the final page. Fans of Hugh Howey, Stephen King, and Dean Koontz should get to know the Dark Vanishings series.

Start reading now!
 

Praise for Dark Vanishings

Best Post Apocalyptic Horror series I've ever read so far. - Review

I dare you to turn the lights down low while reading these great books. I plan to read them all again. - Review

A breathtaking story that excites and fulfills. - Andrea B

In my opinion, Padavona ranks at the very pinnacle along with King, Koontz, Gaiman and the rest. You will certainly not regret picking this or any of his other works up. - Len M

I have read all 4 in this series and loved them all. Reminds me of my favorite author, Stephen King, and his book The Stand. - Robin S

I went thru the entire series, loved every book. Found it so exciting, and honestly, I slept with the lights on and the dog goes everywhere with me in the house now. Book messes with your mind! - Boo 

Characters that you can care about. Read this in one sitting. Scary as hell. Locked my doors even. - SageOctober 

Full of twists and scary turns. I strongly recommend it. - natJo

I have been waiting for a post-apocalyptic story like this for a while. - Zach Bohannon

I've read The Stand 16 times. I may read this book that many times. - Indie

I hated to put it down, it definitely kept my attention. - Review

The intensity of the suspense in these books is more than I have experienced in a long time. The character building was beyond compare. - Michelle K

I could honestly see this series becoming the next big movie franchise. - C Rodriguez

Excellently written book! Dan Padavona is my new favorite author as he is so descriptive and sets up his scenes so well. - Melissa R.S.

This series keeps getting better with each book. - D Byron

Read the complete series. Absolutely awesome author. - Mooresl

Best books I have ever read in this genre. I read one after the other with very little pause like an addict unable to put them down. - Review

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dan Padavona
• Release date: Jul 7, 2018
• ISBN: 9781540157454

Book preview

DARK VANISHINGS

EPISODE ONE

CHAPTER ONE

Tori Wakes Up

In the golden sunlight, cottony clouds threw shifting shadows across the sleepy park.

Where am I?

Tori awakened to the thick scent of cut grass. Bleary-eyed, she raised herself up onto her elbows and examined her surroundings. Her mountain bike dozed on its side a few feet away. Fifty yards ahead was a blacktop parking lot dotted by three cars. Behind her bicycle, the grass tunneled down between bordering elm rows and sprawling blackberry bushes embellished with white flowers.

She remembered biking to the park after lunch. But had she stopped to rest? She didn’t recall.

She did remember promising her mother to be home by three so she could shower and make it to the hairdresser by five. Ted Harrison was picking her up at seven for dinner before the high school prom, which gave her just enough time after her hair appointment to slip into her dress and—

I am so freaking late. Mom is going to kill me.

Her red, shoulder-length locks, ablaze in the late day sunshine, were littered with bits of grass and leaves. She thought of Rip Van Winkle and a beard which grew for years and years while life passed him by. How could she have slept for four hours in the town park? Hadn’t the park been crowded with picnickers and fishing boats when she had biked in after lunch?

Within the desolation of the park, she felt strangely exposed.

What if Jacob had come for me while I was asleep?

Jacob Mann, the boy from third period study hall who stared at her daily with a twisted grin that never touched his slate-gray eyes. Jacob Mann, who she had seen last summer, standing among bed sheets hung to dry in her backyard, watching her through her bedroom window. Jacob Mann, who was permanently expelled for threatening Mr. Gilder, the school guidance counselor, with a switchblade.

Last December she had volunteered to distribute food at the Red Oak homeless shelter, and he had been there, standing across the street among leafless deciduous trees, winter cloak billowing like a vampire’s cape, his dead stare burning holes in her.

And last month, when the ground had thawed and the community garden had become ready for planting, she had looked up from her trowel, over the rows of leafy greens, to see him watching her from the sidewalk. Crow-black hair matted to his forehead. Those lifeless eyes. That grin: at-once, vacant and baleful.

Feeling eyes upon her, she sprang to her feet. The copse of elms bordering the decline swayed to the lake breeze, and as dappled light danced amid the branches, she thought she saw a pallid face watching her from the trees.

Jacob?

Her heart thundering, she turned her head toward the bike. If Jacob burst from the trees, would she be able to pedal her way to the parking lot before he cut her off?

When she turned back, the face was gone. Shadows ran deep within the copse, as though night was pooled within, waiting for the sun to depart. But there was no deranged stalker watching her, and she began to feel a little embarrassed for letting her imagination get the best of her.

Feeling along the back pocket of her cutoff jean shorts, she pulled out her phone and checked the time.

4:51 PM.

She still had time to make the hair appointment.

As she ran to her bike, her shadow followed her, stretching as though it was reflected in a fun house mirror. Clutching the phone, she double-clicked her mother’s smiling face. After a burst of dial tones, the phone began to ring. And ring. No answer. Stuffing the phone back into her pocket, she pedaled across the bumpy grass and hopped the bike onto the blacktop, picking up speed.

She whipped past a black Volvo—unoccupied—and accelerated across the lot, catching a glimpse of an empty red Honda Civic. The lot branched out to a winding, tree-lined park access road. She leaned to the left, taking a blind turn without checking first for traffic. Her heart pounded, and she expected to hear a car horn blare before the metal grille crushed her from the side. But the road was empty of traffic, and there was only the leafy-green smell of summer’s approach on the air as she rushed toward the town center.

Below the shoulder-less two-lane, the land dropped away from a rocky cliff to a gurgling brook thirty feet below. The rear tire caught the edge of the pavement, and as the bicycle wobbled, she leaned hard to the left, righting her balance.

Two minutes later she left the access road behind and coasted into Red Oak proper, past the town courthouse and village green. Catching her breath, she pedaled harder.

4:55 PM.

As Tori veered north onto Main Street, the modest three blocks of the town center came into view. She passed the police station on her right. Set off to her left was Bob and Mary’s 24-hour diner, the gray, aluminum-sided rectangle flying past in an indistinct blur as her legs pumped faster. Beyond the diner, a half-mile west, meandered the sparkling waters of Cayuga Lake.

A landscaped island divided Main Street with parking spaces aligned diagonally against the island and along the sides of the street. Though the spaces were choked with vehicles, Tori never saw their red brake lights flare to life. In fact, there didn’t seem to be a single car moving along the street.

At the center of downtown, on Main Street’s east side, stood Barbara’s Boutique—a red, brick-faced square squashed between a florist and the Red Oak Cafe. Squeezing the brakes, she wiggled the bike between two SUV’s and hopped the curb onto the empty sidewalk.

That was the moment when she started to worry. Where is everyone? Downtown was resplendent with potted flowers and cardinal splashes of low-angle sunshine. On such a warm Saturday in the upstate New York village, the street should have been busy with pre-Memorial Day shoppers and people going out for an early dinner. But there wasn’t anyone to be seen despite the rows and rows of cars up and down Main Street. She half-suspected that everyone was hidden inside the shops, waiting to jump out in unison and yell Surprise! as if part of a Twilight Zone-inspired version of Candid Camera.

Leaning the bike against a maple tree which spread a blanket of shade across the sidewalk, Tori ran up the steps. Her heart sank at the sight of the empty boutique. The boutique never closed its doors early on prom night, yet the interior was vacant.

Tori grasped the door handle and pulled, expecting to find the boutique locked. She was surprised when the door opened and the chill of air conditioning spilled down her legs.

Black leather swivel chairs were aligned along the mirrored walls. As she stepped past the cash register into the heart of the boutique, she had the impression of walking through a graveyard. Her reflection paced her on both sides of the elongated room, following her like twin phantoms.

Hello?

Her voice reverberated hollow against the walls.

Mrs. Donnelly? It’s Tori Daniels. I have a five o’clock appointment?

Barbara Donnelly did not answer because Barbara Donnelly was not there. Yet the lights were on, the air conditioner was rattling through the ceiling vents, and the front door was unlocked. Anybody could have walked through the doors and cracked open the cash register.

She probably just stepped out for a moment. Maybe I should wait for a few minutes, Tori said to herself. She sat upon one of the swivel chairs at the back of the store, idly spinning back and forth as her doppelgangers watched from the mirrors. The cool air felt nice on her skin.

Pulling her phone out of her pocket, she dialed her mother again. The phone went on ringing.

I know you’re there, Mom. Pick up. Please.

Apparently Cheryl Daniels lay hunkered down with the rest of the townsfolk, playing their little game of hide-and-go-seek on Tori. She nervously scrolled through her messages and noticed no one had written her for several hours. Several text messages had arrived during lunch hour, the last a 12:30 PM. note from Jana Davies, suggesting that Tori and Ted meet up with Jana and her boyfriend after dinner. Since then, nothing. No missed calls. No frantic voice mails from her mother wondering where Tori was.

Is the network down?

The cooling system whispered white noise. Beyond the front door, ink-black shadows grew longer along Main Street, spilling off cars and trees.

She glanced at a set of black double doors at the back of the store. The supply room. It occurred to her that anyone could be waiting behind those doors, watching her through the slit. She felt her skin prickle.

Mrs. Donnelly? Are you back there?

The double doors watched her. The cooling system clanged and bucked as though something was stuck in the pipes. Suddenly the elongated store felt like a crypt, the swivel chairs torture devices in which scissors sliced and curling irons burned. Tori pushed herself up from the chair.

The knobs on the double doors rattled behind her. Surely her imagination was playing tricks on her and she actually heard the pipes expanding and contracting, as the air conditioner pumped polar air against the afternoon heat. Tori walked straight toward the front doors. Between the swivel chairs. Past the combs and brushes set in jars of blue liquid like preserved body parts. She didn’t dare look back. Because if she did, those black doors would creak open, and something unspeakable would stalk out of the darkness, running its claws along the backs of the swivel chairs as its maw opened to reveal rows of blood-soaked fangs.

No matter how fast she walked, the exit door never seemed to draw closer, as though she were walking on a treadmill. The pipes shook harder. Neglected hinges creaked behind her—the sound of the black doors inching open.

Tori ran for the front door, pulling when she should have pushed. The impact rattled the plate glass, resounding as though a kettle drum had been struck. In her panic, she thought she was locked inside the boutique. Her head cleared. She pushed through the front door and ran for the mountain bike.

The warm air felt stifling after the chill of the boutique. She threw her leg over the bike seat and pumped the pedals, racing northward past empty vehicles neatly aligned along Main Street. The streets were devoid of people. Her hair appointment and the prom long forgotten, she pedaled toward her house. As the hour passed six o’clock, Tori did not yet feel her world tearing apart at the seams. But she would. Soon.

CHAPTER TWO

Viper Goes to the Dentist

When the police car bounced off a parked pickup truck and ramped the curb, Viper bolted awake. His eyes opened in time to see the trunk of a maple tree becoming unsettlingly large in the front windshield. The police car veered left as the side view mirror exploded against the trunk.

As the car passed under the leafy boughs of the tree, flecks of afternoon sunlight drifted across the windshield in a confused assemblage of light and dark. The car barreled through a hedge and came to a stop five feet from the brick wall of a dentist’s office.

Viper glanced out the side window and saw a large, smiling tooth with legs. The tooth, wearing a Kansas City Royal’s baseball cap and cleats, proclaimed—

Brush every day and keep the cavity monster away.

Well, that’s just fucking great. You nearly ran over a goddamn cavity fighting tooth. I’ll bet you boys got your drivers licenses from one of Sally Struthers’ correspondence courses.

But the two cops that had been in the front seat when Viper had dozed off were nowhere to be seen. Unless the cops crouched down beneath the seat backs, snickering about the fast one they pulled on Viper, someone owed him an explanation. The engine hummed, idling stupidly, awaiting its next orders.

What in the wide, wide world of sports just happened?

Viper, who was really Charles Sanderson—anyone who called him Charles got a value meal smackdown and a side of whoopass fries—tried to reason through the conundrum of a police car bounding down a city street with nobody at the wheel.

Did the two cops bail from the vehicle?

Viper felt a tinge of panic. The only plausible reason for two officers of the law to leap out of a moving vehicle was their car was about to explode. Wouldn’t that put a glorious point on the afternoon?

The police had cuffed his hands behind the small of his back, and now the steel dug grooves into his wrists. A black mesh cage separated the front and back compartments of the vehicle. Craning his neck over the front seat backs, he read 4:45 PM on the digital dashboard clock. One of those pitiful pop country songs played on the radio. Viper would have kicked a hole in the stereo system if he could have gotten past the cage. The air conditioning had somehow gotten set to 56 degrees during the accident, and cold, stale air blew from the vents, raising goosebumps on his skin.

If the cops bailed, where are they now? Since several minutes had passed without the car bursting into flames, it was obvious there was no danger of the vehicle exploding. But why didn’t he hear approaching sirens? Why didn’t anyone seem to give a crap that a police car had careened off a truck and landed next to a giant tooth?

He hadn’t expected the dentist to storm out of the office to find out what happened. It was a Saturday afternoon, and the good doctor was probably on the 18th green by now, completely unaware that his front hedges were flattened, and an abandoned police car was five feet from rolling through his office waiting room.

But surely someone had seen. It’s sorta hard to miss a runaway police vehicle clipping trucks and blasting over landscaping.

And that was what was so strange to Viper. Where were the looky-loos with their mobile phone cameras? Why wasn’t his picture already trending on Twitter? Looking out the back window, he saw a decided absence of people and no vehicles moving on the street. A car alarm blared up the road like a wailing infant, but that was the only sound he heard over the purr of the police car engine. No lawn mowers buzzing distant, no impatient car horns. Nothing but the susurrus of wind through the trees.

The silence of the outside world grew acute as if the absence of sound had become a gelatinous, fleshy entity that squished against the police car.

He cracked his neck and began to ponder how to get out of this mess. There were no door handles for backseat passengers in police cars. Imagine that. No power window controls so that a prisoner could enjoy a fresh breeze on the way to the pokey. He could forget trying to kick out the glass or the metal caging.

His reflection stared back at him in the rear view mirror: clean-shaven head, goatee, and sky blue eyes that chilled.

It’s time to get out of Dodge.

Then he did something that nobody would have believed possible of a man with country muscles. Bringing his knees up to his chest, he planted his boots against the seat cushion, bent backward, and slid his cuffed hands behind his thighs. He rolled backward and slipped his legs through his arms until his hands were on his lap.

Don’t try this at home, kids, he said, leaning against the driver side back door. This is some real David Copperfield shit.

The gap between the front seat caging and the door was just wide enough for him to wiggle his hands through. The cuffs caught on the leather seat, and there was a ripping sound as he forced his hands through the gap, tearing the leather. He stretched his fingers toward the power window controls just inches beyond his reach. A skinny punk would have been home free by now, but Viper’s forearms couldn’t wedge their way through the gap between seat and door.

Goddamn.

Straining, he pushed his shoulder into the seat back. The seat inched forward. For a brief moment, his fingers touched the cool surface of the side panel. But the window controls were still a fraction of an inch away. He rested for several seconds, and when he was ready, he threw his shoulder into the seat back. The seat bucked forward, and Viper jammed his boots against the backseat. His neck muscles stood out in cords, his face flushed red, every vein displayed on his body like a relief map of river-laden terrain. His fingers stretched and stretched, touching the control panel, extending toward the controls. His right shoulder screamed, and he was sure it was going to pop out of socket.

His fingertips met the controls, and the back driver side window rolled down with an electric whine. Warm May air rolled into the car, replacing the air conditioning with the sweet smells of springtime in Missouri.

He lay against the seat, his shoulder throbbing. The clock was ticking down until emergency crews arrived, but he had the odd sensation that he had all the time in the world. As gulf air blew through the open window, the morning’s timeline replayed in his head.

Five hours earlier he was parked outside Davey’s Bar and Grill, a dive off of Route 65 outside of Aldritch. The morning had been a hot one, and while the faded wooden fronting of the bar reflected as twins on the lenses of his sunglasses, he had watched Buddy Loman amble his monstrous frame up the steps into the dark void beyond the bar’s front door. Creedence Clearwater Revival hit Viper’s pickup with a wall of sound, thumping out Born on the Bayou. The door closed, and the music became muted. John Fogerty seemed to be singing from under a couch.

Collecting bounties was a tough lot in any economy. But this one, as they say, was on the house. Loman, who had been on the run for nearly two weeks, had beat the hell out of his wife in Goodland, Kansas, leaving her in a coma as a parting gift to ten years of boozing and terror. That had been just a little too close to home for Viper, who still fell asleep to a fantasy of tossing his own old man through walls for all the times he had struck Viper’s mother. Dick Sanderson had taken the easy way out, choosing fatal cirrhosis over the pain that Viper would have laid upon him as an adult. And surely Dick had seen his son coming for him even at the age of twelve, those cold, blue eyes biding their time, waiting, planning.

And now there was Loman, six foot eight inches and 300 pounds of black-bearded jackass, probably lumbering up to the bar for a beer while his wife was hooked to a life support machine in Goodland.

Time has come, Viper said, stepping onto the sun-beaten blacktop.

Walking out of the Missouri sun into the bleakness of the bar, Viper could only see the garish lights of the jukebox against the far wall and the bar counter top, which glowed in the reflected sunlight caught off the mirror behind the bar. The vague rectangular outline of a pool table near the back of the bar. A vintage cash register behind the counter which had probably been here when the bad guys rode into town on horseback.

He couldn’t see Buddy, only the shadowed outlines of five men at the bar, bent over mugs. Creedence finished, segueing into the eight hi-hat shots that exploded into AC/DC’s Back in Black.

Can I get you something? the barkeep asked, watching Viper out of the corners of his eyes.

Viper prided himself on not being seen until he made a move on someone. But Buddy Loman had sensed eyes on his back all the way through Oklahoma and Missouri, and so he noticed that the rusty Chevy pickup in front of the bar was the same one parked across the street from his motel room last night. Buddy didn’t walk up to the counter upon entering. Instead, he made a sharp turn to the right as soon as he safely merged with the bar’s gloom, his back pressed up against the wood paneled walls, waiting to see who was going to walk through that door.

The behemoth of a man came from behind Viper, fists balled and knuckles white.

Viper wasn’t one of the most feared bounty hunters in the central and southern plains by chance. Behind the muscle and swagger was observation and attention to detail. Even before his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he perceived that none of the men at the bar looked close to Buddy’s size. His quarry must have hidden behind him. Viper was ready when the floorboards creaked.

Looking for someone, boy?

Viper spun around as Buddy swung. Viper ducked under the blow, feeling the breeze of Buddy’s sizable fist whistling over his head. With Buddy exposed, Viper landed an uppercut to his ribs. The big man stumbled two steps backward, a mix of shock and anger in his eyes.

The shock vanishing, Buddy Loman charged Viper like a rampaging bull. You’re a dead man.

Viper sidestepped the attack and landed three blows to Buddy’s back in rapid succession. Buddy fell into the bar. The two men who were seated on those stools dove into the patrons to either side, spilling beer and popcorn.

Time has come, Viper said as Buddy spun to face him.

I ain’t going to jail, and you ain’t man enough to bring me in. Buddy balled his right fist, pulling his arm back as he prepared to deliver a roundhouse punch that would knock this bald-headed wise ass into next week. Viper dodged the blow and countered with three quick jabs that caught Buddy’s nose flush. The first blow broke the nose. The next two turned the nose into a red pulp of meat fresh from the grinder.

I don’t think you understand, Buddy. I don’t aim to take you to jail. I intend to whoop your candy ass from one end of this bar to the other and let the cops peel you off the floor with a spatula.

A bloody waterfall poured from what was left of Buddy’s nose. When he tried to curse at Viper, it came out as something like, Ruck Ooh.

Nose or not, Buddy wasn’t about to back down. He lunged at Viper, bellowing like an injured elephant. Viper lowered his shoulder, and Buddy flipped over the top of him, crashing back first onto the pool table. The pool stick snapped. Three balls fell off the table and rolled toward opposite walls as though fleeing.

You know, Buddy, Viper said, standing beside the pool table where Buddy was outstretched. You really shouldn’t have put your old lady in the hospital. Buddy’s eyes rolled in his head, unfocused, as though his head was weighted down by bags of wet sand.

She had it comin’, Buddy said, spitting out a piece of molar.

Grabbing a second pool stick, Viper called his shot. Jackass. Corner pocket. He cracked the stick over Buddy’s chest.

Buddy screamed. You know how it is. Fuckin’ whores. You gotta put ’em in their place, Buddy said, wincing.

Viper saw red. The bloodied monster on the pool table became Dick Sanderson, and it was Viper’s mother laid up in a coma in Goodland. A switch flipped inside Viper’s head. Buddy saw those cold eyes wavering between controlled rage and madness, as though Viper was a grenade with the pin pulled. That made Buddy very frightened.

Viper grasped Buddy by the shirt collar, pulling him forward with his left hand while his right fist rained punches down on Buddy’s face. Buddy’s eyes kept rolling around in his head. The monster on the pool table lost consciousness, hanging limp like an oversized stuffed animal.

The bartender’s voice, begging Viper to stop before he killed Buddy, seemed far away, blending with the rock and roll roaring out from the jukebox.

Two silhouettes rushed out of the harsh Missouri sunshine into the bar. As Viper pulled his fist back to deliver another blow to Buddy’s purpled face, he felt his body cramp. An instant later he had the sensation of someone cracking a two-by-four across his back, and then he lay twitching on the floor as two cops holding Tasers stood over him, looking as though they had just bagged a fifty-point buck or reeled in the Loch Ness Monster.

What the hell do we have here? asked a tall, thin cop with reflective sunglasses that were quite unnecessary inside Davey’s. He carried a look of arrogance, and as he turned to his wide-eyed partner, a pudgy fellow with a boyish face, he said, "He looks like one of them ultimate fighter types.

Hey, junior. You hearing me down there?

Viper’s eyes turned glassy. His whole body trembled. The blurry images of the cops had doubled.

The thin cop kicked Viper in the ribs as his partner looked nervously away. "You chose the wrong town to beat somebody to death in a bar fight. But I gotta say, you got spunk…well, you had spunk. Wait until the boys down at the station get a load of you."

They turned Viper over, cuffed his wrists behind his back, and yanked him to his feet. Viper couldn’t control his legs yet, and the two cops had to drag him out of the bar, down the steps, and into the car. A third cop buzzed past to deal with the remains of Buddy Loman, whose unconscious body hogged the pool table.

Hell yes, we hooked a big one, the thin cop said, starting the police car engine. The vehicle pulled out of the parking lot onto the loose stone road that led back into town, kicking up rocks that pinged against the underside of the police car like a calypso drum. Somewhere within that cacophony of noise, Viper had fallen asleep.

Behind the dentist office lawn, a buckled concrete sidewalk ran perpendicular to the police car, disappearing behind a row of trees fringed with the verdant bloom of late springtime. Viper grunted.

Crawling through the window with his hands still cuffed proved more difficult than expected. He managed to slip his right leg through the window, supporting himself with his hands on the sill. As he dropped down upon his right leg, his left leg, still in the car, wedged up at a 90-degree angle. His nuts clipped the sill real good, and black spots clouded his vision. His groin flooding with agony, he fell sideways, and his left leg slipped through the window.

Free, Viper reassessed his situation. He no longer felt the effects of the Taser, but two prongs were stuck in his back. He should have run from the scene, but something told him that, crazy or not, nobody was coming to investigate the crash.

The underside of the police car was caught on a tree trunk leftover from a recent cutting. The front wheels were off the ground, spinning uselessly. Viper bent over, looking through the driver’s window.

You’ve got to be kidding me.

A key chain rested on the passenger seat where the fat cop had sat. Viper tried the handle and found the door unlocked. Slipping into the front seat, he pressed his foot down on the brake pedal and shifted the car into park. He snatched the key chain and sifted through about twenty keys until he found the one to unlock the cuffs. The locking mechanism sprang open.

Thanks for doing me a solid, fatty. I owe you one.

Placing the cuffs on the passenger seat, he started to get out of the car. That’s when he noticed the same pop country band was still on the radio, changing from one song to the next, as though an old school disc jockey had headed off to the john and left the CD to play unattended. He hit the scan button on the radio, hoping to find some Bible thumping zealot or maybe a death metal station as a parting gift for the kind officers who had given him a ride into town. But the radio kept catching on stations transmitting static and cold silence. Knowing he was pushing his luck, Viper slipped out of the car, took one more look around to see that no one took notice of the accident, and walked toward a suburban neighborhood, looking as inconspicuous as a muscular bald dude who had just taken a joyride over a tree trunk could.

Walking into the late afternoon sun past ma and pa shops that formed a smallish town center, Viper noticed another curiosity. All of the shops are empty. Sure, it was common for small town businesses to close shop at 5 pm on Saturdays. But why did all of the signs on the doors say OPEN, and why were the lights on? Even if the shops were closed, there were bound to be a few people on the sidewalks. Another quandary. The town center was lined with vehicles, yet the streets were deserted.

To his right was a brick-faced antique shop set upon a perfectly manicured lawn of deep green. A quaint concrete pathway lined with purple and pink geraniums wound invitingly to the shop entrance. A white sign hanging over the pathway welcomed visitors to Exceptional Finds, the finest antiques in Brodus. Viper had never heard of Brodus, Missouri, but he felt damn confident that it was a one-antique shop town. Like the other shops, a YES, WE’RE OPEN sign hung in the front door. The shop appeared as deserted as the others.

Half a block up the road, overcome by curiosity, he decided to check out Antonio’s Pizza across the street. He looked both ways before crossing, but there wasn’t so much as the hum of a distant motor. Birds chittered away in the trees. A black Labrador dog wandered out from behind the pizza place, tongue lolling. The dog barked once-—a happy bark which said, Hey, I sure am glad to see you-—and Viper extended an open hand. The dog padded forward, sniffed Viper’s hand, and wagged his tail.

Hey, boy. I’m new in town. Does this place serve authentic Italian pizza, or is Antonio’s real name Cletis?

The dog cocked his head, whined, and padded back to where he had come from.

That bad, eh? I guess I’ll take my chances.

A red, neon sign in the window proclaimed Antonio’s was open for business. The outer walls were green and red, and the scent of perfectly browned crust was on the wind. Mouth watering and stomach growling, Viper entered Antonio’s.

Booths with green seat cushions lined the side walls. Round tables meant for two were scattered across the floor, though metal chairs were dragged to one table where four people had squeezed together for a meal. Upon two of the tables were large, uneaten pizzas. Full glasses of Cokes, beading with condensation that ran in rivulets across the tables, were set next to the plates.

Hey. Anyone here?

He stood listening to the deafening silence, knowing full well that nobody would answer. He strode to the metal counter. Behind the counter and to his left was a brick oven. Enclosed in glass beneath the counter were assortments of red and green sweet peppers, long hot peppers, whole tomatoes and onions, homemade vinegars, and oils. The smells were intoxicating.

Turning away from the counter, he walked toward a table holding a thick crust pizza topped with sweet peppers and onions-—his favorite. He touched the crust. Still warm. He grabbed a slice and devoured it in five famished bites. He ate another slice, drank half a glass of Coke which was still cold, belched, and apologized to the missing guests for his bad manners. Then he grabbed a cardboard pizza box from a stack on the counter, threw the rest of the pizza in the box, and walked out the door.

The black lab was back, eying the pizza box in Viper’s hand and drooling.

Sorry, my friend. You aren’t allowed to eat onions. Viper opened the box and pulled off two handfuls of crust. Here you go, pup. The dog took the crust in his mouth and ran off.

The sun lowered, and Viper’s shadow elongated as it trailed him. He repeated the same procedure at three more shops-—-a mobile phone repair shop, a burger joint redolent of greasy fries, and a gas station mini mart. All were deserted, doors unlocked so anyone could take anything they wanted. But there’s nobody to take anything, is there? Inside the mini mart, he ditched the pizza box, went behind the counter and made himself a 12-inch roast beef sub with all the fixings. He stuffed a dozen health food bars into his pockets.

Glancing up at the oval mirror in the corner, behind which was a security camera, he smiled and raised his middle finger. Half the state was probably looking for him for escaping from the police car—

No really, your honor. The officers waited until I was asleep, and then they jumped out of a moving vehicle and laughed their asses off while I bounced off a tree. Real funny bunch of officers you have in this here town of Brodus. They sure pulled a fast one on ole Viper, yessiree.

—so what difference did it make if he was caught on videotape filching a hoagie? Besides, times were about to get tough, and maybe he needed a little charity. You can’t eat corn on the cob without teeth, and you can’t make a living as a bounty hunter when there aren’t any bad guys left to hunt.

Has the entire world vanished, or just Brodus? One thing was for sure: walking would get old, fast. So when he noticed the empty Highlander sitting beside the pumps with the keys still in the ignition, he accepted one more gift from Brodus.

He drove across miles of empty farmland with the bloody sun in his rear view mirror, past silos that stood like silent giants, weaving around the occasional shell of an abandoned automobile. Pressed against the road, fields of corn, sorghum, and wheat flourished without need for farmers and their machines.

Halfway to the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, the sun was a distant memory below the western horizon. A stranded vehicle rested on the shoulder every few tenths of a mile, gleaming in the starlight. Now and then he came upon a vehicle in the road, requiring him to jerk the Highlander’s steering wheel to avoid a collision. A few of the vehicles still ran, their taillights glowing in the dusk. But nobody sat behind their wheels.

Viper’s mouth went dry. He was alone in the world, and for the first time in his adult life, he had no goddamn idea what to do.

He did the only thing he could think to do. He kept driving, searching for signs of life in a dead world.

CHAPTER THREE

The Dagger of Geldon

The blood-red sun perched over a copse of spruce trees along the Minnesota-South Dakota border, and in the failing light, the valley appeared bathed in gore. A cool breeze blew down from the foothills and agitated the tall grass, crooning like a dirge through the fiery, desolate meadow.

Among the sweet-scented conifers, he stood with his hand resting upon an ornate dagger hilt, blending in with the advancing darkness. The forest floor was black and fecund. From the copse to the meadow, the worn paths of hikers and hunters were non-existent. One could be truly alone in unsullied country such as this, which was the reason Joshua Geldon traveled here so frequently.

Dr. Joshua Geldon was due back at the University of Minnesota Medical Center Sunday morning, but he would not return tomorrow nor ever again. Sometime between 4 PM and 5 PM central standard time, Dr. Joshua Geldon ceased to exist. While hunting through the needled boughs, he felt a ripple in the air. He fell to his knees, feeling the chill of the damp, woodlands floor bleeding through denim and into his skin.

Since the day he had turned twenty-years-old, he had dreamed of this day. Now, at the age of 51, the day had finally come. Initially, he felt an urge to rush home and gather whatever supplies he needed for his journey. But there was no reason to hurry. Pulling the black windbreaker hood over his head, he moved silently through the trees for the next three hours, delighting in his ability to stalk within five steps of a deer before his presence was sensed. Fingering the dagger hilt, he imagined sliding the weapon free of the sheathe. In the split second it would have taken the deer to react to the danger, he could have plunged the point into its torso or ripped the blade across its neck. He crept close enough to the animal to lay his cold hand upon its skin.

The doctor was dead. At the same time, Joshua Geldon had never been so alive.

The deer’s doll eyes opened wide. It bounded into the brush, fleeing from the hawk-nosed apparition that was Joshua Geldon.

Now, at the fiery end of day, Joshua crept out of the concealment of the copse and into the meadow, his black hair matted shell-like to his skull. Knee-high grass caressed his pant legs. The wind fell silent, pulled earthward with the setting sun. Beyond the meadow, the land fell away to a rocky slope upon which only a scattering of weeds could gain a foothold. The slope dropped down to an unmarked road which, if followed eastward, led back toward the familiar web of well-traveled interstates that the world once took comfort in. He descended the hill sideways, taking care not to catch a boot heel within a rocky crevice. Joshua Geldon feared no man, but he was not impervious to a broken ankle or a fractured skull.

At the base of the slope, he hopped over a gurgling drainage creek and walked eastward. The final embers of daylight still burned on the western horizon, but the light was blocked by the towering trees that grew out of the hillside. The tree-lined roadway dimmed into a darkened tunnel. As he walked eastward along the shoulder-less route, his boots clocked hollowly on the crumbling blacktop. Five minutes down the road, he swerved right. Leaping back over the creek, he found his black Ford Explorer, tucked away between speckled alders and hundred-year-old oaks. The dual chirps of the SUV unlocking seemed piercingly loud in the wilderness. Under the deep blue of twilight, Joshua drove home.

Night thickened over the suburban cul-de-sac on the outskirts of Minneapolis. Joshua crossed the front lawn toward his house, eying the paint-chipped two-story neighboring house where the teenage girl with the multiple piercings and her drug-addicted mother had resided until a few hours ago. The world is cleaner now without my neighbors in it.

Inside his house, he gathered a change of clothes. From the safe within his bedroom closet, he removed a handgun, though such earthly weapons felt impotent in his hand. In the hands of certain men, such weapons could be deadly. He knew such a man, and before the sun rose, Joshua would find him.

The neon glow of the bedside digital clock alerted him that the power still functioned. By tomorrow, the electrical grid would fail and the cul-de-sac would become a graveyard. He left his wallet on the dresser. No more need existed for identification, credit cards, and money.

Before he exited through the front door for the final time, he removed the dagger from its sheathe. Curling his fingers over the hilt, he studied the way the blade shined in the darkness, as though moonlight lay captured within the weapon. He had purchased the dagger from a Lubbock, Texas, weapons shop run by a heathen stoner with no concept of the blade’s true worth. The fool had demanded $850 for the dagger. There had been a smug look on the stoner’s face, as though he believed he was getting one over on Joshua. But Joshua wouldn’t have blinked if the man had set the price at $8500. He would have opened his check book and written whatever price the idiot asked, for there was no monetary value that could be placed on the talisman. If the man had declared the weapon not for sale, well, he would have found out just how dangerous Joshua Geldon was.

He had felt the dagger’s presence as far north as Denver, and again while driving the Explorer south in Albuquerque, west of which a dust storm had turned the sky to burnt titian. By the time he reached Amarillo, there had been an ancient scent on the southern wind, like decaying parchment paper. He had followed that scent toward Lubbock, traversing great squares of farm-to-market roads as pumpjacks rose and fell on the horizon.

Now in the pale moonlight that shone into his front entryway, he sheathed the dagger and clipped it to his belt.

When he turned the ignition key, the Explorer engine’s roar, made louder by the modern world’s requiem, scattered birds out of trees. He left his neighborhood of twenty years behind, zigzagging across suburban blocks, swerving around the occasional vehicle left for dead at intersections. Approximately 300 miles of fuel remained in the tank. That would get him to Omaha. At that point, he would search for a gas station with power. Eventually, there would be no powered pumps remaining, and until someone figured out how to fire up the grid again, he would have only his feet to carry him.

Entering the highway, he found I-35 less of a mess than anticipated. A broken train of vehicles lined the right shoulder for as far as he could see, as though the drivers had simultaneously felt themselves drifting asleep and pulled over. A few vehicles were abandoned in the driving lanes, providing dangerous obstacles that he needed to stay alert to. Joshua pressed the accelerator, and the Explorer kicked up to 70 mph. He could have driven 100 mph if he so desired. No law enforcement existed anymore, and even if it had, the law could no longer protect the world from him. But he kept to a reasonable speed, desiring to conserve precious fuel without taking unnecessary risks.

As he crossed out of Minnesota, suburban sprawl lined two miles of highway. Looking down upon the deserted, cookie cutter neighborhood homes, he wondered what lurked within those houses. Deep shadows spilled out from where the homes blocked the moonlight, and he spotted movement, as though something was slinking through the darkness. Steering with his left hand, his right hand dropped to the dagger, and it pulsed with needy warmth beneath its leather cover.

Then he sensed a fragment of his destiny floating like flotsam in the liquid night, and he left the highway.

Joshua found the man he sought in eastern Nebraska. He was a drifter named Derek Stevens, stalking through darkness along the shoulder of a two-lane highway outside of Tekamah in the final hours of night. Stevens, who carved out a reputation within the underworld as a contract killer, prided himself in his ability to kill repeatedly without being detected by his target or the law. Stevens was a silent killer, an epidemic cropping up in isolated corners of the country, only to reappear elsewhere before the medical community could get a handle on the initial outbreak.

For over twenty years, Joshua’s dreams had urged him to locate Stevens, though he knew the killer by another name—a name Stevens would likely need to be reminded of. In the Nebraska night, Joshua finally found him.

Even with his acute night vision, Joshua wouldn’t have seen the man had he not felt his presence. The Explorer, now down to a quarter tank, slowed and ran alongside the dark traveler. The vehicle came to a stop several yards beyond the man, brake lights flaring like fiery eyes. The passenger door opened.

For a moment, the man stopped in his tracks, a chill trickling down his spine. But there was something that pulled him toward the vehicle. Approaching the Explorer on cat’s paws, he stared into the black interior. Within the shadows sat a man that Stevens thought he knew, though he could not discern the man’s face.

He climbed into the cab and threw a backpack containing freeze dried foods and two handguns onto the floor. Strapping in, he spared a glance for the tall, thin man whose head was just inches from the SUV’s roof. The driver’s face, basked in electronic reds from the dashboard lights, turned to him.

Stevens extended his hand warily across the cab, as though he were reaching to snatch a bone away from a rabid dog. He began to speak his name when Joshua clasped his hand.

Severin, Joshua said, recognition in his eyes.

The man, who moments earlier had been Derek Stevens, froze at the name Joshua had given him. A strange recollection drifted in the back of his mind. He shook his head, not in denial but as if he were clearing away cobwebs. Severin’s long, black hair, as straight as silk, fell back from his face. Emerald eyes glowed cat-like. My name…

Yes, Joshua said. Do you remember?

Severin thought he remembered, but the truth seemed to be submerged in a river of blackness. There had been a dream…yes, a dream when he was a teenager. A dream in which he had been given a purpose. But what was it? He recognized the driver of the Explorer. Severin had seen this man’s face before in his dream. But that had been half a lifetime ago.

My name is Joshua Geldon. You know me, don’t you?

Yes. I think I remember.

"You have done good work in your life, Severin. But there is harder work ahead. Righteous work. Are you ready?"

Mosquitoes whirred around the beams, as the headlamps cut through the darkness. Halfway up the road, the beams perished against the asphalt, consumed by the night.

I’m ready, Severin said.

The Explorer lurched into the unknown, and Severin left Derek Stevens behind forever.

CHAPTER FOUR

Blake

I am my father’s son.

Blake Connelly awoke on the living room couch at 8:59 PM, the salty taste of tears on his lips. His head felt cloudy, his thoughts slowed as though slogging through molasses. On the coffee table were bottles of Jack Daniels and Russian vodka. But I hadn’t had anything to drink. Had I?

Certainly he hadn’t. Despite the grogginess of post-sleep haze, he noticed an odd clarity to his thoughts. It was as if everything in the world was amplified—speakers turned up to ten, the land lit by spotlights. For a fleeting moment, he sensed that something was wrong. Very wrong.

Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he glanced at the kitchen microwave’s LED clock. If it was morning, the house shouldn’t have been so dark. It took him several seconds to process that it was evening and that he had fallen asleep on the couch. Which was odd because he never took naps, and he didn’t remember lying down.

He spotted the cardboard box on the floor under the coffee table, and his heart sank.

Who am I?

You are Blake Connelly. Your father’s son.

You wanna bet?

This morning he had been Blake Connelly, the ghost of Kimball High School, ten miles north of Syracuse, New York. He wasn’t a bad looking boy—blonde hair, slight build, a decent complexion—but he was invisible.

He’d learned long ago all of the bullshit that the media fed kids about beauty being skin deep was wrong. The most attractive part of a boy to a girl was internal.

Confidence.

Sure, it helped to have a pretty face and fashionable clothes. But a lot of the coolest kids got by just fine with an old pair of faded blue jeans, a hooded sweatshirt, and a little acne. The difference was in the way the popular kids carried themselves. They didn’t give a crap about who looked at them, and ironically, that’s what made everyone pay attention when they walked into a room.

The cool kids kept their heads up and looked you in the eye when they spoke. Not Blake.

He had thought that maybe he was turning the corner with just a month left of high school. Better late than never. Two weeks ago, Kelly Tyler had said, Hey Blake, as they passed in the hall, and girls as pretty as Kelly Tyler weren’t supposed to know he existed.

How pathetic am I? I’ll spend all night reliving Kelly Tyler saying hello to me, and she’s already forgotten my name.

And then there had been David Jacoby—the starting point guard for the basketball team, the same David Jacoby who used to slap the lunch tray out of Blake’s hand and laugh as canned peaches and hamburgers hurtled through the air like edible asteroids—who had turned to Blake in study hall last week and asked Blake where he was headed for college.

Fredonia, Blake had said, a whole lot confused as to why David was talking to him.

SUNY. Cool, man. I was looking at Brockport for b-ball, but my folks are dead set on me going to Penn State. You know how it is. Right, man?

No, man. I don’t have a fucking clue how it is.

Hey, David. How come you want to talk to me all of a sudden? Feeling a little scared about high school coming to an end? This is when they tear down the walls and leave you standing naked in the rain to fend for yourself.

Welcome to the party. I’ve been here for eighteen long years. Your folks are dead set on you going to Penn State, huh? Well, let me tell you about my folks. My Mom? She blew out of town when I was four, saying something about how she was going to go live with Grandma for a while. But when I went to visit grandma, Mom wasn’t there. She moved out West. Decided that the California sun beat the crap out of six months of winter back East and having to raise a kid. But it’s all good, David. I get a Christmas and a birthday card every year. Sometimes there’s even a crisp fifty dollar bill Scotch-taped to the inside of the card. And you know what Mom thinks about me going to Fredonia? Well, I don’t. But if you happen to see her, ask her for me.

Yeah, David. I know how it is. Gotta please the folks.

Always, man.

This morning, while searching for a box of backup computer parts, he had found the adoption papers in the cardboard box jammed into the corner of the attic.

I’m adopted?

No. I am my father’s son.

But who is my father?

He eyed the two liquor bottles. So that had been the plan? Get drunk and confront Dad when he got home from wherever he went on Saturday nights? Blake put the idea of drinking out of his mind. Drinking was something that the cool kids gathered to do on the weekends. He wasn’t one of them, and he would never be one of them. So why make himself sick because the world threw him a nasty curveball?

He carried the box upstairs, and when he passed Morgan Connelly’s room, he half-considered leaving the box on his father’s work desk. That idea made him feel worse than treacherous, so he brought the box to his own bedroom and shoved it beneath his bed so that he could feel it sleeping under him at night, like the pea under the princess’s mattress.

I could have handled the truth, Dad. Were you ever going to tell me?

Downstairs, he pulled the cord on the drapes, and the outside world opened to him. Lamplights stretched away down Helen Street, some flickering. Only two homes displayed illuminated windows, and it occurred to Blake that in both cases, the people who lived there were away for the week. Mr. Brady was on travel for work. The Andersons were on vacation. Their lights were set to come on and off automatically, giving the illusion of activity to dissuade would-be burglars. All of the other houses were as dark as a midnight sky, despite the majority of their driveways holding a vehicle.

This doesn’t make any sense, Blake said, and in the silence that formed around the absence of car motors and other modern world distractions, his voice boomed.

His stomach growling, he shoved a bag of popcorn into the microwave. Two minutes later, the corn started popping, and the downstairs was redolent of a movie theater lobby. When the sound was reduced to one pop every few seconds, he removed the bag, and carefully pulled the top open, following the friendly warning advice on the side of the bag. Curious, he took the bag with him and stepped out the front door, wondering where everyone on Helen Street had disappeared to.

The night felt warm. Variegated blues of departed twilight drizzled into the western horizon. Distant wind chimes sang to a transient breeze, the only sounds in the May night. Though it was past dark, he expected to see a few neighbors out for a stroll on such a pleasant evening. Mr. Jamison usually walked his pug around this time. There was a deafening silence in the neighborhood—the drone of cars moving along I-81, the excited yells of kids playing hide-and-go-seek in the backyards, the slamming of car doors: all absent.

Where the pathway to his door and the neighborhood sidewalk formed a T, he turned right and started walking. He passed houses with dark, blank windows that seemed to watch him. When he reached the midway point of Helen Street, the higher-trafficked Northern Drive came into view, but no one seemed to be out and about on Northern Drive, either. Above and beyond stretched I-81, but no headlights moved along the interstate.

Maybe there has been an accident, and the road is closed.

Yeah, and maybe the entire neighborhood abandoned their cars and walked two miles up an embankment to take pictures of the wreckage. Guess again.

Leaves rustled in the breeze like devils whispering. Darkness pooled at the edge of street lighting, creeping closer and closer.

Something moved through the shadows across the street. Momentarily, Blake thought he saw a robed figure pass between neighboring houses. He blinked, and the figure was gone.

Suddenly feeling exposed in the hushed darkness, he turned and ran back to his house, throwing the bolt on the door behind him.

Blake awoke after midnight with a cold chill around his heart. The living room was submerged in gloom. He rarely experienced nightmares, yet he had dreamed of fingernails scratching on the window, as though a vampire was hungrily watching him through the glass, trying to get inside.

Dad?

No answer. The old-fashioned ticker clock on the wall kept beat with the night.

He reached for the drapes and stopped. He had a vision of throwing open the drapes and seeing the pallid face of the vampire staring back at him. Two thin lines of blood on its cheeks.

You’re acting like a foolish child. Open the drapes.

Blake licked his lips. Heart racing, he pulled the cord, and the drapes flew open to reveal the pit of night. No vampires. No boogeyman. No car in the driveway. Sighing, he checked his phone for a message from his father and found none waiting. Frustrated, he dialed his father’s number and was met with utter silence. No ring, no voice mail message.

This is a lousy time for the network to go down.

Wondering if there was a citywide emergency, Blake flicked on the television. The local ABC affiliate displayed color bars and emitted a shrill test tone. A few more channels broadcasted the same bars and tone, but most had a blank, blue screen that the HD television displayed whenever there was no signal to be found.

Night, as black as pitch, pressed against the back windows.

Looking through the adjoining dining room toward the windows to the backyard, he shivered. Something terrible had happened tonight. Something that knocked out mobile phone service, cable television, shut down the interstate and caused his neighbors to go into hiding. He was alone.

What could cause such an event—an environmental disaster, an enemy invasion? Nothing made sense.

At this point, he would have gladly traded the silent gloom of Helen Street for the bullying corridors of Kimball High. At least the horror only lasted until 2:15 PM at Kimball High, and the only monsters stalking the halls were the flesh and blood kind hiding behind their own insecurities.

A shadow passed over the backyard windows.

His heart in his throat, Blake slumped against the couch, away from the blue illumination of the television. Can someone see me from outside the house? He flicked the television off, and now the blackness of the living room was absolute. The staccato ticking of the clock sounded overwhelming, as though someone kept hitting a drum.

His eyes locked on the back windows, and as he hid in the darkness, he imagined the intruder standing behind him right now, glaring down at him through the front window. He sank lower into the couch, the sensation that someone was watching him growing stronger.

Scraaaatcchhhhh.

Something scraped along the plate glass behind him. Blake bolted off the couch and ran for the kitchen. He crouched beneath the counter, repeating to himself that it was only a tree branch. He might have convinced himself of this after a while, had he not remembered that the front yard apple tree was set near the sidewalk, its nearest branches ten feet from the window.

Where are you, Dad?

Crawling on all fours, he sneaked from the kitchen into the dining room. He was below the dining room table, peering through chair legs toward the backyard windows. The starless night dripped with black paint. The back deck was silhouetted like prison bars. A wall on his right stood between him and the living room, but that barrier extended only a few more feet before he was exposed to the living room window again. What would he see glaring at him through the glass?

Ahead, the staircase ascended to the top floor. How many steps to the stairs? Eight? Ten? Would he reach the staircase before the plate glass imploded, and something terrible rushed at him across the living room? He thought again of vampires. Of werewolves. Of psychopaths. He imagined Jack Torrance, straight out of The Overlook Hotel, holding a blood-soaked roque mallet, grinning with insanity into the living room.

Wood creaked along the back deck. A shadow shifted in the corner of his eye. Blake ran for the stairs, taking them two at a time until he was atop the landing.

Now what?

The upstairs hallway stretched away, long and dark. Rooms branched off to the right—first the bathroom, then his father’s room. Blake’s room was at the end of the hall, door opened inward, the gray glow of his computer monitor bleeding out of the bedroom.

Well, that was stupid. If someone breaks in, I’m trapped on the second