Through a Dark Lens: Through Darkness Trilogy, #2

By Marata Eros and Tamara Rose Blodgett

"I don't want to be asked anything tough. I feel like I'm made of dandelion seed and one harsh breath will scatter me to the edges of this desecrated earth." ~ Molly

From New York Times, USA TODAY and #1 Thriller Duchess of Dark Fiction bestsellers Marata Eros and Tamara Rose Blodgett, comes a poignant tale of danger, love, loss and non-stop action. The second, survival-after-it-happened EMP apocalyptic survival futuristic fiction thriller novel in the Through Darkness Trilogy.

 

Roth and Sterling make the journey to the Tacoma Narrows Bridge to perform a final sad task and run into an unlikely post-apocalyptic survivor whose identity goes beyond mere coincidence.

 

After Beck's tragic passing, Brea must strike out on her own for a promise of an utopia she's certain can't exist - but does.

 

Molly survives brutal daily terror at the hands of the nomads who've stolen her, until the day Molly encounters an unlikely savior, who changes her life forever.

 

The Fairchild compound is growing, but not without hard sacrifice for happiness in the new, post-collapse world. Women are scarce and men fierce. Who will survive long enough to live a "normal" life?

Will the Nomads gain complete control?

Full-length novel

• Language: English
• Publisher: T. Rose Press LLC
• Release date: Apr 27, 2023
• ISBN: 9798201492328

Book preview

1

AMANDA - PRESENT DAY 2035

My heart hammers as I pump my arms, climbing the Gig Harbor side of the Narrows bridge in frantic, jagged leaps.

My breaths saw in and out like shocked wheezes—lungs burning in protest.

Just. One. More. Fucking. Hill, I think, throwing my body toward a grove of cedars that heralds a hidey-hole that I use for just these precise circumstances.

What circumstances? The juggernaut of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge that now lays behind me—and my pursuers as well.

The singular reason I made it this far was the element of surprise.

At this stage in the collapse, three years in, random women running around are unheard of. They’d not been expecting me.

The fools.

I slit two of their throats and performed a corkscrew of a knife scramble on the third’s balls, aiming for the femoral artery and nailing the juicy vein with a deftness that was impressive, even to me.

The geyser that erupted from the strikes had me leaning backward in avoidance, though a fine spray of blood covers me anyway.

Having ascertained the other two criminals were out of commission with the throat-openers I’d executed, they were busy bleeding out for their trouble.

Good, I’d thought with a nod as I’d stood from killing, the ghost of adrenaline still singing through my system.

Off in the distance, I’d heard males yelling. This trio must’ve been a crude scouting group of sorts.

I’d smirked as I surveyed my slicing and dicing work. Not anymore.

Might not have finished med school, but I was deep into the fast track when the collapse happened, just as I was graduating pre-med from the U Dub.

Figure I had saved my own life a dozen times since then. Both small and large, my intimate knowledge of human anatomy had been a distinct asset.

I tore out of the tight circle of carefully placed cars, using the balls of my feet to pivot and sprint from the end of the Narrows in adrenaline-fueled fight-or-flight mode.

I was fleeing. I wasn’t some dumb feminist chick of the past that thought I’d stay and play with the big boys. I have a formula for survival, and I stick to it. Know my limitations. Work with them.

Barreling around the final bend, I pass a grave that tells me I’m nearly there. It’s a sad thing, and by some miracle a diminutive gold necklace remains on a crudely-fashioned twig cross, hemp-type twine anchoring the iconic symbol together at its center.

Someone had buried a person who was cherished—I could just tell— and the grave had remained untouched.

It was the sad mound of dirt that had initially attracted me from the road. That and the fact it was utterly unsafe to travel main-artery highways; that was for dumbshits.

Then I’d found a hidden cave not thirty yards from the grave’s position. Camouflaged so neatly that I couldn’t believe my luck. A pioneer’s shack, once a solid little square, now had a bashed-in roof, the cedar shakes so full of moss there was no wood left to be seen.

The cave lay almost directly under the structure where a river rock foundation still proudly stood.

I figure the cave might have been a natural pocket in the earth and someone long ago decided to dig it out further and put a root cellar inside.

Because that’s all it was, a cave with primitive shelves that still held the oldest food stuffs on the planet. I know because I’d tried to open a few and figured, after a whiff, I might get botulism.

I almost ate the stuff anyway right after the collapse happened. Like everyone, I was half-starved. But again, my intellect saved me.

Can’t eat if you’re dead.

For the millionth time, I think of how lucky it was I struck out on foot immediately and was able to navigate the Narrows before the rapists set up a semi-permanent camp—making traversing the two sides near-impossible.

How many times had I dipped my head as shame filled me to the brim, listening to the screams of other females and sometimes children?

Countless.

But I knew—knew—that my fate would match theirs if I were to intervene.

As I drop into the cave concealed by blackberry bushes, naked of the fruit they’ll have in a couple of months and dead center in front of the thickest grove of short cedars ever, I hunker down quietly, knees-to-chin—acutely aware if the dickheads make it this far, they’ll move right past.

I squeeze my eyes tightly shut. They can’t track me. I wear soft-soled moccasins. I disturb nothing—I’m a ghost.

I sure feel like I died along with my parents, the worthless pair.

Remembering why I stay alive is a daily ritual.

Almost three years ago - spring 2032

I crack open the door into the dim living room I grew up in, and the familiar smell of stale cigarettes and human pores leaking booze assails me.

Since I only come home to check on Vaughn, I’ve become desensitized to the odor and cover my mouth and nose with a hand.

God, the derelicts.

That you, Mandy? comes the slurred inquiry.

I step inside, finger hovering over the light switch, and think better of it. Sometimes sudden changes in the environment trigger a violent spiral.

I give a hard swallow, shoring myself up. Yeah, Mom.

We face each other across the room. Might as well be miles upon miles instead of a scant few yards.

A lamp beside the end table affords the barest yellowed illumination. I sight the ashtray that dominates the small surface area of the end table.

Her cigarette has burned down to the filter, though the lit eye glares at me, offering its evil orange illumination in a macabre greeting.

Good, she huffs as her hand halts in the general direction above the ashtray and finally finds the one-puff-left smoke.

My mother brings the butt to her lips, sucking that last draw as though it will be the final one of her miserable life.

It won’t be, I think bitterly.

Cigarettes are outlawed now, but that doesn’t stop my multi-generational welfare parents from finagling every loophole in our lovely government system so they can have their creature comforts.

Smokes.

Check.

Booze

Double check.

Pulse device.

Check.

Where’s Dad? I ask in the most neutral tone I can manage.

Right here, sugar, a disembodied voice grabs at me from the dark.

I jump.

My dad chuckles, clearly loving that he startled me.

Satisfied, he moves out of the deep murk of the hall and stalks over to his abused recliner, tossing his heft within.

He’s a big man; well over six feet. He’d been a football star back in the day, and his once-prime physique had slowly transitioned to fat. However, I never let his soft appearance fool me. I’d been on the receiving end of his strength and knew there was a ton of muscle buried under that lard layer.

He was a laborer for a big custom home outfit—had been since I was learning to walk. Never wanted for more, kept him fit—he claimed.

Bart Lewis wasn’t fit. But he is a strong, mean, manipulative drunk.

Those traits aren’t in question.

And his wife—my mom—was an accomplice to his drunkenness. She drank to survive him. But, in so doing—she didn’t advocate for me and my little brother. Though, Vaughn isn’t so little anymore.

Speak of the devil.

As I stand there, Vaughn walks in—looking so grown up I want to cry.

I don’t. We’ve both learned to school our expression if we want to survive this dysfunctional little fam.

Amanda Lewis is the strong one even if I feel weak. And, until I can escape Vaughn out of this nightmare, that’s going to be my role.

His face brightens, an expression so open it’s painful to watch.

I want to run to him.

I want to beg him to come with me and leave this house of horrors forever.

But to what? My dorm? So Vaughn doesn’t finish school? No. With my help, he’s managed to reach a potential that is unfathomable, given our circumstances. One bright spot is that his friends are decent, smart kids as well.

I’d fostered those connections. Not dear old dad or mom, who couldn’t give a stack of shits about either of us. Except as punching bags, of course.

Mandy, Vaughn greets, voice saturated with affection, relief, and love.

Sometimes, we were all that each other had.

I’m almost seven years older than him. Hell, I half-raised him, and still, we’re closer than our age difference would suggest.

Hey there, I say.

We simultaneously shift our gazes to our loser parents.

Ya gonna stand with the door up your ass forever, or you gonna fetch your pop a cold one?

Beer.

He only gets the Ice brand because the alcohol content is higher. Drunks have a sort of inebriated cleverness I find both fascinating and supremely annoying.

Dad’s sneer is firmly affixed.

Vaughn’s shoulders round. I’ll grab it.

Hold your horses, boy, Dad says in a commanding tone. Let sissy wiggle her ass over to the kitchen and get it.

His head turns, the weight of his gaze unerringly finding me in the near-dark. Unless you’re too uppity to do it.

Bart Lewis hates that his kids do well. Hates that I got a full-ride scholarship to university—Vaughn will get the same.

Because to acknowledge our success would be to admit his own failings. Or worse, his utter lack of ambition; where the only finale to his day is drinking the night away.

I can get it, no problem. Anything to appease him so he doesn’t get into one of his moods and lash out at me and Vaughn.

I walk across the room, giving Vaughn sibling-side-eye as I do. Taking the non-verbal hint, he follows me like a silent shadow into the glaringly bright kitchen.

Glad you’re here, he says without preamble, swinging longish dirty blond bangs from one of his eyes.

They immediately sweep back into position.

I raise my hand and brush them away. Need a haircut, kid.

Vaughn gives a solemn nod.

I mentally sigh at his somber conduct. It’s learned, of course—his caution. How are things? I ask in a low voice, going through the motions of opening the fridge and tearing the cap off the top with a magnetized bottle cap opener that remains on the fridge door.

I slap the thing back on the ancient fridge and slowly walk to the kitchen pass-through.

The parents sit, Pulses in hand, a second lit cigarette’s spiral of noxious fumes filling the space as it always has.

I walk over to my dad and pass him the beer.

Quick as a snake, he grabs my wrist, squeezing the small bones together.

I hiss a painful inhalation.

Vaughn moves forward.

It’s okay, bud, I say, my voice as steady as a board.

Yeah, dickhead—Mandy’s just fine, aren’t ya? His gaze moves to my face like a laser.

I nod. He squeezes just a notch tighter, and I swear I feel the bones begin to break before he suddenly releases me.

My eyes are tight, burning with unshed tears, but I’ll be damned if I rub my wrist and give my fucking dad the satisfaction of knowing he hurt me.

Can’t have you go back to doctor school with a bum wrist, can we?

No, I whisper.

I can feel the rage coming off Vaughn in waves.

Dad’s eyes shift to the space behind my shoulder—at my little brother, who now has me by three inches, and he’s only seventeen and a half.

Got something to say, Vaughn? he goads.

Vaughn, don’t say anything, please—I mentally beg.

He comes through… this time. Because, other times, he hasn’t been able to stand down and has gotten his ass kicked—I couldn’t even take as much of the beating as I wanted.

No sir, Vaughn says with such a lack of enthusiasm it’d be funny—if it weren’t our life.

Bart, Mom calls out, waking up—finally, they’re gonna give us a raise for cost of living, Mom says without looking up from her lit Pulse device.

Welfare check.

Her cheeks hollow out as she takes another drag.

I see Vaughn’s expression of disgust in my periphery.

Be careful, brother.

‘Bout fucking time. We deserve every cent they give us.

They deserve nothing. Especially being our parents.

Says here we can get instant-credits for taking the shot early.

Don’t matter to me, my dad replies, taking a deep drag off his own cigarette. Glad we got it—auto-updates for Pulse? A cash kick-back? he snorts, amused by his own cleverness about working the government coffers.

Dad lifts the nearly-empty bottle and upends the meager contents, his scruffy throat working the swallows to the last drop, then smacks the empty on the table, giving me hard eye contact.

The unspoken missive is: Get me another beer. It’s such a ritual I could sleepwalk through it.

Book wants me to spend the night tonight, Vaughn states, smartly interjecting when Dad’s had just enough to drink to be easy but not so much that he’s moved into belligerent territory.

Genius.

That fucking Einstein kid?

I know my dad knows exactly who Book is. Him and Vaughn have been friends since Kindergarten.

Vaughn’s lips flatten, but escape is a few, well-chosen comments away, and he maneuvers. Yeah.

Let ‘im go, Bart—he’ll be outta our hair, and we can chill.

Mom’s cheeks sink in again as she sucks her smoke, eyes flicking up to rest on our faces for a beat before dropping to her waiting cocktail.

Too much reality on our expressions for her liking.

Dad’s head drops against the headrest of his filthy recliner, eyes at half-mast as he regards me and Vaughn.

Yeah, you go to the geek’s crib. He stabs his own cigarette at us, the glowing end emphasizing his motion, leaving a ghostly red imprint of a spiral in its wake. Pick me up a cube on your way home.

Dad, Vaughn begins slowly, I’m emancipated, but not legal.

He waves this logic away. Figure that shit out. You’re a smarty pants, right?

Yes, Vaughn’s smart, I interject in a fit of stupidity.

Some alcoholics adopt a somewhat drunken lucidity. Mom doesn’t have it.

My dad does.

His eyes slim down on me. But not as smart as you, right Mandy?

Playing it safe, I shrug.

Without looking at Vaughn, Dad tells him to beat it.

I only get hit once that night, a miracle.

Now

Tears slip from my eyes as I torture myself with that day. Because it was the last time I ever saw him.

Vaughn.

That’s the night the lights went out and I woke up to the best and worst day of my life.

My hateful parents are in rigor, stiffly arranged where they’d been the night before—with only a bruise on my cheekbone to remind me they’d been alive twelve hours before.

They’re beyond resuscitating or saving, and my relief at that bald fact is so profound I’d sobbed in the middle of my sordid childhood living room.

The parents were done.

Then I realized that Vaughn wasn’t at home but at Book’s.

I was gripped by the supposition that maybe… he’d died too? This was before I knew what had happened.

Before I’d explored outside.

By the time I got a backpack loaded and traveled the two miles on foot to Book’s—no one was there.

And everyone was dead. Those who weren’t, well— they all seemed like they needed to be.

2

ROTH FAIRCHILD - PRESENT DAY, JUNE 2035

Every step I take away from Tia and Lars is painful.

Sterling and I don’t talk much that first day. I have to assume he’s not a chatty Cathy because he misses Brit and Owen just as much as I miss my family.

But, the great part about going back to retrieve my dead son’s remains is Sterling gets why down to his toenails. He, Cope, and Bren were SEAL men, Navy—born and bred—and we speak the same language, though I was Marine Corps.

We’d made it through the first day without food at a steady pace and now stand on the Port Ludlow side of the Hood Canal Bridge.

Night’s fallen as we’ve used the height of the summer solstice to our advantage. At this time of year, twilight strikes around nine o’clock at night.

The shroud of the dying sun’s tangerine fingers bleeds into the approaching night as Sterling and I bed down.

Shrugging off our economically weighted backpacks, we seat them against the trunk of the dense copse of trees we find ourselves in.

Hate to light a fire, Sterling comments quietly.

Don’t, I say. It’s a miracle we got here in one day without the dredges taking after us.

Sterling snorts, and I peer at him.

How all the men of our compound wish for buzzers. Alas, we’ve yet to figure out how to rig solar capture to fuel our plug-ins throughout the log house.

In time, I believe we will.

And now, with all the additional people, we’ve just about completed all the separate log houses.

It’s a helluva set-up.

What with Jamal, Book’s parents, Vaughn, Kurt, Book—Jo and the SEALs (as I think of them), and Brit—that makes eleven plus me, Tia, and Lars. Oh yeah - and Owen.

Fifteen people at our compound now. Lots of mouths to feed—lots of help, hunters—gatherers.

Community. That’s what we are now.

Nice to have a chance to talk about the Jo situation.

Anything to keep my mind off the grisly task that lies ahead.

Can’t force her to choose, I say noncommittally.

Sterling’s attention shifts to me, and all I can make out are the vague outlines of the whites of his eyes, though my imagination runs wild with what I envision his expression is.

Peeved.

Bren and Cope aren’t talking.

Yeah. And that’s what everything’s come to.

She’s young.

She’s old enough not to lead them on.

Jo’s uncertain about whether she should be with Bren or Cope. A grunt sounds from deep within my throat.

They’re already at odds, and I told Brit to have a ‘come to Jesus talk with Jo’. Like, yesterday.

There’s not an abundance of females, I say, restating the obvious.

Silence grabs the moment, weighing it down. Finally, Sterling says, The raids haven’t produced any more females.

We’ve gotten lucky in other ways.

His nod is a blur within the near-absolute dark of the trees.

Too many roosters…

—and not enough hens, I finish.

Five men and one woman is a bad ratio. Also, Jo never gave the men who are her own age the time of day.

I give a low chuckle. A dipshit she’s not. Jo understands that experience affords more protection, and that is what is most needed right now, I offer, adding. Jo’s a nice girl.

Yeah, Sterling agrees, voice glum.

I was sort of surprised you and I are doing this, given the potential volatility of leaving the guys with Jo.

There’s a method to my madness.

My brow shoots up. Oh? I’m all ears.

Sterling rustles around his pack and unwinds his bedroll, shaking it out and putting the length on the ground.

Mine’s folded and providing a cushion for my ass at the moment.

"I think they were restraining themselves because of my presence. I was their leader when we were in the service, and I think, on