THE LIGHT WE LOST
A POST-APOCALYPTIC SURVIVAL THRILLER
KYLA STONE
The Light We Lost
* * *
Copyright © 2022 by Kyla Stone All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblances to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Printed in the United States of America
Cover design by Christian Bentulan
Book formatting by Vellum
First Printed in 2022
ISBN: 978-1-945410-72-7
Created with Vellum
CONTENTS
Preface
1. Shiloh Easton
2. Eli Pope
3. Eli Pope
4. Eli Pope
5. Jackson Cross
6. Jackson Cross
7. Jackson Cross
8. Lena Easton
9. Lena Easton
10. Jackson Cross
11. Lena Easton
12. Eli Pope
13. Eli Pope
14. Eli Pope
15. Jackson Cross
16. Lena Easton
17. Lena Easton
18. Eli Pope
19. Eli Pope
20. Jackson Cross
21. Jackson Cross
22. Shiloh Easton
23. Lena Easton
24. Jackson Cross
25. Jackson Cross
26. Eli Pope
27. Eli Pope
28. Jackson Cross
29. Jackson Cross
30. Shiloh Easton
31. Jackson Cross
32. Jackson Cross
33. Lena Easton
34. Shiloh Easton
35. Shiloh Easton
36. Shiloh Easton
37. Shiloh Easton
38. Eli Pope
39. Eli Pope
40. Eli Pope
41. Jackson Cross
42. Jackson Cross
43. Jackson Cross
44. Lena Easton
45. Jackson Cross
46. Lena Easton
47. Jackson Cross
48. Jackson Cross
49. Shiloh Easton
50. Shiloh Easton
51. Jackson Cross
52. Jackson Cross
53. Shiloh Easton
54. Eli Pope
55. Shiloh Easton
56. Lena Easton
57. Shiloh Easton
58. Lena Easton
59. Shiloh Easton
60. Shiloh Easton
61. Lena Easton
62. Eli Pope
63. Lena Easton
64. Shiloh Easton
65. Eli Pope
66. Eli Pope
67. Jackson Cross
68. Eli Pope
69. Jackson Cross
70. Jackson Cross
71. Jackson Cross
72. Jackson Cross
Acknowledgments
Also by Kyla Stone
About the Author
I. Sneak Peek of Edge of Collapse
1. Hannah
2. Hannah
3. Hannah
PREFACE
This story takes place in the Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Real towns and cities are used in this novel. However, occasional liberties have been taken by the author for the sake of the story.
While the Munising Police Department and Alger County Sheriff’s Office are real institutions, the versions within these pages are entirely fictional.
Thank you in advance for understanding an author’s creative license.
“Something started in the north band of the sky … All that part of the sky appeared burning in fiery flames; it seemed that the sky was burning. At midnight, great fiery rays arose above the castle which were dreadful and fearful. Everybody went to the countryside to see this great sign.”
—actual eye-witness account from Lisbon, March 6th, 1582
“Love is the last light spoken.”
DYLAN THOMAS
SHILOH EASTON
DAY ONE
Shiloh Easton woke with blood on her hands.
Heat on her face, her cheeks. The sun peeked between her eyelashes. Stones dug into her spine. Grass tickled her bare arms.
Wetness on her fingers.
Shiloh opened her eyes. She stared blinking up at a hard blue sky. No clouds. The round disc of the sun was too bright to look at. At the fringes of her vision, towering jack pines, eastern hemlocks, and cottonwoods stretched for the heavens.
But heaven was too far to reach.
Hell was right here beside her.
She didn’t know how she knew, but she did. It was the blood, slick and technicolor red. It splattered her forearms, slippery on her palms, red lines beneath her fingernails.
Somehow, she understood it was not her blood.
A sense of horror imbued her every cell, a churning, sickening nausea in her gut as she sat up, white spots spinning in front of her eyes.
Don’t look. A primal instinct echoed from the deepest part of herself. Fear stuck in her chest like a fishhook. She was not a stranger to fear. Whatever you do, don’t look.
Shiloh forced herself to look.
Her slim legs stretched out in front of her, worn jeans with holes in the knees she’d patched herself, sneakers stained with mud.
Past her feet lay brown grass, thick with weeds. Gummy glass shards and tiny bits of metal and plastic glinted in the sunlight.
Here and there, the grass was matted down, the rutted ground torn up in the shape of footprints, almost as if a small tornado had landed, done its damage, then lifted to disappear into that blue, blue sky.
Her eyes skipped past the unmoving shape lying on the ground a few yards away. It lay in front of a dilapidated Kia Rio, the hood raised, wires and hoses bleeding from the engine.
A rusted forklift sat to her right next to a tiered rack of scavenged tires and rims. In front of her stood row after row of junked vehicles, cars and trucks and vans by the dozens.
A chain-link fence topped by razor wire circled the salvage yard with a gate to the west. A hundred yards beyond the salvage yard, a ramshackle two-story house stood atop the hill, white paint faded to gray.
The forest crept in on all sides, deep shadows spilling like oil, hiding its secrets. Her grandfather owned two hundred acres of wilderness abutting Lake Superior, the great northern lake that held her own secrets, her own ghosts.
Shiloh had been born in that house. She’d lived in this beautiful half-wild place her entire life, every day of the last thirteen years. She was half-wild herself. This was her home.
She couldn’t remember what had happened. Why blood streaked her hands.
There it was.
The thing she didn’t want to see, didn’t want to know.
Unsteadily, she stood. Dizziness washed over her. She felt gummy glass in her hair, stuck to her jeans—frantically, she brushed the glass from her body.
Hands on her thighs, she bent double, gasping. Fear tightened her chest like a vise.
Shiloh blinked, her mouth moving, silently repeating the only words that could calm her. Montgomery, Alabama. Juneau, Alaska. Phoenix, Arizona.
The plac
es she so desperately yearned to see but never had. A collection in her head, lists of cities, states, and countries.
Steeling herself, she straightened and lowered her gaze. Her eyes settled on the lumpy form her brain had refused to register. Her bloody fingers curled into fists at her sides, fingernails digging hard into her palms.
A body.
Scuffed work boots. Worn jeans, plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the forearms, the familiar red handkerchief tied around the neck. His head was turned to the side, body splayed like he’d fallen backward. Or been pushed.
She took a step closer, forced herself to circle the body. Her chest trembled like a thousand trapped bees were buzzing inside her. Little Rock, Arkansas. Sacramento, California. Denver, Colorado.
His faded John Deere cap lay a yard away in the grass. Blotches of crimson darkened the olive-green fabric. Beside the hat lay a crowbar. Not an unfamiliar sight in the salvage yard, but this one glistened red, tufts of hair and bits of flesh clinging to the iron.
Against her will, her gaze drifted upward. The hard grizzled features had gone slack, silver-gray hair blackened on one side with blood and other things she didn’t want to consider but did. Bits of bone. Brain matter.
The left side of his face had caved in. His skull was cratered like the deer she’d once shot.
A fresh wave of dizziness washed through her. She felt sick. Her guts twisted. Grief and dread and fear lurched through her.
He was dead. Her grandfather was dead.
And her brother…where was he?
What had happened? She didn’t know. She didn’t remember. Her mind was a blank.
The blankness terrified her.
Her memory was like a movie reel fluttering to a jagged stop. There was nothing. Just an emptiness. A sensation of falling, of cold fear, like plunging into a frigid lake.
Panic nipped at her; she fought it back. Why couldn’t she remember? She’d fallen through a hole in time. It had happened before. Her mind had gone blank. A chunk of minutes or hours that disappeared, a total blackout.
All this blood. The torn-up ground. Her dead grandfather.
Cody was supposed to be here. He helped in the salvage yard every day after school, operating the forklift, cutting up metal, organizing scraps, stacking tires.
Cody had been here when it happened. She couldn’t remember, but she knew.
Now, he was gone.
“Cody!” She screamed his name. Her ragged voice echoed back at her. “Cody!”
There was nothing. The evening sun slanted into her eyes, painting the misshapen vehicles in shades of gold. “Where are you?”
No one answered.
Not dead. He couldn’t be dead.
She knew that, too—whoever had come here and done this to her grandfather had also done something to her brother. She felt it.
She should call 911. Not that it would make a difference for her grandfather. Jackson Cross would come, the undersheriff with the mournful face, who looked at her like he was seeing a ghost.
She knew what would happen. The thing the county had threatened a dozen times. The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services would come, too. The social workers. The prying questions and pitying eyes.
Fresh horror filled her. They would abduct her from her life, separate her from her brother, take her to strangers or a group home which might as well be a cage. She would fade, disappear, lose herself.
This is where she belonged, wandering the woods, fishing the rivers, prowling the cliffs of Lake Superior with the wind in her hair, the sun on her face, dirt between her toes.
Besides, her brother was still out here, lost and alone. He needed her.
At fourteen, Cody was brooding and brilliant, a sarcastic and isolated loner. He loved to draw in his notebooks and go night fishing. His hair was a scruffy dirty blond where hers was black as oil, his eyes blue where hers glittered like bits of coal.
He teased her relentlessly. She loved him wholeheartedly.
Orphans, they’d watched out for each other since childhood. They had no one but each other.
One thought imbedded in her brain like a splinter. She needed to find her brother.
Her grandfather was gone. There was nothing she could do for him now. She thought about burying the body, but it would take too much time.
The sun sank low on the horizon, descending behind the trees. The chill in the air raised goosebumps on her bare arms.
How much time did she have before someone came to the house? Hours? A day?
She couldn’t stay here.
There was one place she could go. Somewhere only Cody knew about. Somewhere the authorities would never find her. From there, she could hole up and begin the search for her brother.
Shiloh moved woodenly down the rows of gutted vehicles and exited the gate, not bothering to lock the padlock, then headed up to the house. Her legs felt like lead, but she burned with a resolve that sparked brighter and brighter with every step.
Inside the shadowed house, she moved to the kitchen and washed her hands in the metal sink for long minutes until they were red and raw. She scrubbed beneath her nails but still felt the blood seeping into the cracks in her skin, staining her soul.
Her long black hair tied back in a ponytail, she dressed in hiking pants and boots, her favorite Star Wars “Do or Do Not” T-shirt layered over a long-sleeved shirt and a forest green windbreaker.
In her backpack, she packed clothes, a water bottle, purification tablets, a compass, and a topographical map of the area along with a poncho, tarp, sleeping bag, headlamp, and fire starter from their camping supplies.
She went into Cody’s room and stole his favorite black hoodie. It smelled like him, of paint and charcoal and canvas. Then she packed nuts, SpaghettiOs, Pop Tarts, and Snickers candy bars.
The only thing in her nightstand drawer was a Dangerfield PRAXIS lock-pick set Cody had gotten her. It included a short and medium hook, half diamond, and various rake picks.
Cody alone knew she was a thief. A bit of a kleptomaniac. A collector of secrets.
She shoved it in her pocket and went for the Tenpoint Turbo crossbow that hung on its hook beside her bed. She slung it over her shoulder with the limbs down, tucked under her arm, then grabbed extra bolts and added them to the quiver attached to the stock.
Her grandfather had bought her the crossbow for her eleventh birthday. A fresh pang struck her. Grief and fear ebbed and swelled, threatening to overwhelm her.
She rubbed the back of her arm across her face and moved onto the next task, the next thing. If Cody was out there, she would find him.
Before she left the house, she stuffed her grandfather’s cell phone in her pocket. There were no friends or family to call. No father who knew of her existence. No doting grandmothers or card-playing, cigar-smoking uncles.
She had a nebulous idea of an aunt out there somewhere, her mother’s sister. A stranger she didn’t remember. Shiloh was entirely on her own.
As she passed the kitchen headed for the back door, she grabbed the emergency wind-up radio on the scarred kitchen table. Darkness pressed against the windows, heavy with foreboding. Shiloh wasn’t afraid of the dark.
Something snagged her eye. Her grandfather read the Mining Journal out of Marquette. She paused, one hand on the crossbow strap, the other gripping the radio, and stared.
Two articles dominated the front page. The first headline read, “Geomagnetic Storms predicted to Hit Northern Hemisphere—Auroras Expected.”
Her teacher had discussed the solar storms in science class. Powerful eruptions on the sun’s surface could launch a billion tons of superheated plasma into space, creating a coronal mass ejection. If directed at Earth, the geomagnetic storms produced auroras and other phenomenon.
At the time, it had fascinated her.
It was the second headline that stopped her in her tracks: “Convicted Broken Heart killer Eli Pope to be Released on Technicality.”
The newspaper was
today’s edition, dated May seventeenth.
Her heart thumped harder, a stuttering drum against her ribs. Cold washed over her, icing her veins. She knew who he was, what that man had taken from her.
This was not the first time she’d awoken next to a dead body.
Whoever had taken her brother and murdered her grandfather would pay.
And she would start with her mother’s killer.
Shiloh seized the keys to the Honda FourTrax Rubicon ATV hanging on a hook by the back door. She knew the hundreds of ATV trails that crisscrossed the Upper Peninsula.
As she reached for the door handle, the overhead light flickered out. Everything went dark. The humming of the fridge ceased. An ominous silence descended.
Shiloh flicked the kitchen light switch. Nothing. She tried the ceiling fan. Same thing. She blinked to adjust to the shadows and pulled the cell phone out of her pocket. It was on but had no bars, though that wasn’t unusual this far north.
After a moment, the ancient generator switched on. The fan resumed whirring. The refrigerator grumbled to life. Out of habit, Shiloh turned off the lights and left her grandfather’s house for the last time.