The Darkest Days (Death & Decay Book 0.5) Read online

  The Darkest Days (Death & Decay Book 0.5)

  The Darkest Days (Death

  Midpoint

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, and events in this book are the product of the author’s imagination or are used factiously. Any similarities to real people, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Copyright 2015 by R. L. Blalock

  All rights reserved. Neither this book, nor any parts within it may be sold or reproduced without permission.

  Cover Artwork by Biserka

  Editing by Scott Alexander Jones

  ISBN: 978-1537349473

  ASIN: B01L5MTHMI

  For all the police officers who leave their families,

  miss special events and holidays,

  sacrifice their time, sleep, and sometimes even their lives to protect the rest of us.

  Thank you

  Acknowledgments

  First and foremost I want to thank Lieutenant Craig Hebrank of the Cottleville Police Department for his help. Without him to walk me through a day in the life of a police officer I don’t think I would have been able to build Wyatt Ward into the amazing character he is. Thank you for indulging my crazy, hypothetical questions. And thank you for meeting with me and being so excited about what I was doing. I couldn’t have done it without you.

  Thank you to all my friends and family who have supported me through this journey. Thank you to my Uncle David for reading and supporting all my writing, even early on when it was pretty terrible. Thank you to my sisters, Devonne and Kerrin, who have always had my back. Thank you, Grandma Lillian and Grandma Doyce for always listening to me ramble. Thank you to all my friends who have been so supportive throughout this journey. Your support means the world to me.

  Day 1

  2:13 pm

  Officer Wyatt Ward wearily trudged away from the busy fast-food restaurant back to his patrol car. Even slouched as he was, Wyatt was a tall man with a lean but toned build. The day had been brutally busy and his twelve-hour shift was only halfway over. The lunch break had eased away some of the stress but not all of it. In Cottleville, a miniscule suburb of the greater St. Louis area, the days were usually filled with minor traffic violations.

  But not today.

  The calls had not been abnormal, but today had been different. Tense. People were argumentative and combative. Even those who had called for assistance of some sort seemed unwilling to cooperate.

  The sun had already started its descent from high in the sky as Wyatt dropped into the driver’s seat of his squad car. For a moment, he simply relaxed against the cloth seating, his eyes closed in an attempt to shut out the world and allow the anxiety to drain away.

  After a moment, he reluctantly opened one eye to glance at the clock. His hands combed across the closely cropped, caramel-colored stubble on his head in a futile attempt to brush away the last of the stress. Though his head was covered in short stubble, his face was smooth and clean. A few more minutes were left before he had to report back to dispatch.

  He deftly found the cellphone attached to his duty belt, which accompanied the polyester, navy-blue uniform he wore. The dark blue of the uniform gave his usually misty gray eyes a tint of blue.

  Like he did every day, Wyatt pulled out his phone to call Sarah.

  “Hello.” A groggy voice answered after a few rings.

  “Hi, hon. Did I wake you?”

  “Yeah. I was just taking a little nap while Ben is asleep. It’s alright though. I like your calls.” Wyatt smiled. He liked talking with Sarah on his lunches. Sometimes just the sound of her voice was enough to ease a stressful day. “How’s the day been?”

  He sighed. “Busy. Nothing major, just a lot of little calls.”

  “Just be safe out there.” She said that phrase every time he left and every time he called.

  “I will.” The exchange was always the same, but if the few words helped reassure her, he was glad to say them. “How has your day been?”

  “Good. Ben has been running around like a wild child. I think we’ll go play outside when he wakes up. Hopefully that will tire him out for tonight.” The three-year-old toddler with untamable chestnut hair had a seemingly endless supply of energy. His ear-piercing shrieks would precede him as he ran from one room to the next through the house. Despite Ben’s boundless energy, he was a fairly easy child and always happy. Only the occasional tantrum disrupted his otherwise happy mood.

  “I’m sure he’ll love that.”

  “Let’s just hope I can get him to come back inside for dinner.” Her laugh trickled through the phone.

  “Speaking of dinner, do you think your parents could watch Ben for a couple hours on Thursday? I thought maybe we could go out.” It had been far too long since they had done anything without Ben.

  “I’ll ask but I don’t think they’ll have a problem with it. Where do you want to go?”

  “I figured we could go someplace nice. Someplace we usually wouldn’t go with Ben.” Their outings always revolved around the family. When they went out, they went somewhere they could all go and easily be accommodated. He and Sarah rarely thought about this as a problem. They loved spending time together as a family.

  “Oh! Let’s go to that Italian restaurant with the amazing tiramisu!”

  “Sounds good to me!” Sarah’s sudden fervor for the creamy dessert brought a smile to his face.

  “I’m going to let you go. I think I hear Ben stirring. I love you!”

  “I love you too. See you tonight.” With that, he deposited his cell phone in the cup holder.

  “Dispatch.” He spoke into the radio transmitter wired to his car radio. “This is four three one. I’m back in my car.”

  “Clear, four three one.”

  After the dispatcher acknowledged his return to duty, he pulled out of the parking lot to cruise the streets. Most of his days were a slow procession of petty calls and minor traffic violations. While the first half of the day had already been hectic, the calls were hardly extraordinary.

  He rolled the windows down to let in the warm afternoon air. The steady hum of traffic and the roar of the wind as it rushed in the window created calming background noise. As he came to a stop at a red light, the radio crackled to life, the air of calm instantly broken.

  “Four two five, there is major accident with injury at the intersection of Weiss Road and Cottleville Parkway. Please respond.”

  “Dispatch, this is four two five. Ten seventy-six.” The return call meant that the responding officer, Allison Grey, was headed to the scene.

  A few minutes later the radio was alive again. “Four three one, there was a call about a dead body on the side of the road at eighty-four Upper Dardenne Farms Drive. Please respond.” For a split second, Wyatt stared dumbly at the radio as if it were something strange.

  “Four two five. Ten seventy-six.” He responded reluctantly to the dispatcher. He turned to cut through a parking lot and headed towards the call. For the briefest moment, Wyatt had allowed himself to hope that when he returned from lunch things may have cooled off, but the fantasy was not to be realized.

  “Four six seven.” Wyatt jumped a bit as the dispatcher called out again. “A disturbance has been reported at Francis Howell Central High School…” The calls were getting wilder by the second. His foot pressed down a bit further on the gas as he sped towards his call. Not only had the day continued its unsettling pace, but the calls were also picking up. The department wouldn’t be able to keep up this pace. Soon they would have to request help from county.

  As he turned down Upper Dardenne Farms Road, his eyes cautiously scanned the quiet street. Large
, leafy trees and bushes lined the road, partially obscuring the large front lawns and single-story houses from view. House number eighty-four was about midway down the long dead-end road.

  “Dispatch, this is four three one. I’m on scene.” His car slowed to a roll as he scanned the road for a body or anything that might appear to be a body to a nervous passerby.

  “Clear, four three one.”

  The radio cut through the silence. “Four six seven, there is an officer down at the intersection of Weiss Road and Cottleville Parkway. Nearby patrols please respond.” The radio erupted in a flurry of calls; each was carefully controlled, but collectively it was chaos.

  Grey was the officer who responded to the accident. She was the department’s newest member, and though she lacked experience, she was smart and capable. What had happened? Had a careless driver hit her? He had to go.

  “Dispatch, this is four three one. I’m en route from Upper Dardenne Road. ETA: three minutes.”

  “Four three one, complete your call. Others are en route.” Wyatt growled as he clutched the radio.

  He shook his head and focused on the task at hand. Despite his concerted attempts to concentrate, his mind kept returning back to Officer Grey. How injured was she? Was she still alive? He felt useless.

  At the end of the street, he hadn’t seen any signs that something was amiss. Carefully, he turned around in one of the driveways and began a slow, steady cruise back down the street. Shortly before arriving at the address, he parked his car and strode down the paved sidewalk. As he walked, each step was deliberate. Though he yearned to move on, to help the others and find out more about his fallen comrade, he would not allow himself to be too hasty.

  After a while, with no evidence that anything malicious had occurred, he turned and crossed the road to walk the other side. As he neared the house marked eighty-four, dark splotches on the asphalt caught his attention. With a hand on his weapon, ready to draw it if necessary, he approached the stains.

  “Four three one, there are reports of shots fired at one zero zero three Castleview Court. Please respond.” The sound nearly made him jump out of his skin.

  “Dispatch this is four three one. I’m still at Upper Dardenne Farms Road. I’ve found something, but no body.” His heart raced. “Has county been contacted for backup?”

  “No, four three one. Will do.”

  Wyatt returned his attention to the smudges. The glossy, red spots were fresh. With an almost inaudible snap, his weapon came free of its holster. Cautiously, he followed the scattered spots as they began to appear more often and larger. Whoever had left them had been bleeding badly. They trailed into a trampled patch of grass. Many of the broken and bent blades were stained with blood.

  As he reached for his radio, it crackled once again. “All officers please be advised. Return to the station immediately. Repeat. Return to the station immediately. Code three. All patrols please respond.”

  What is happening? Wyatt’s mind spun. All officers were to return to the station. All of them.

  “Dispatch, please advise those officers out on calls.” Lieutenant Jamie Carter’s shaky voice broke through the silence that had suddenly fallen.

  “Repeat. All officers are to immediately return to the station. You are needed here.” The dispatcher broke her normally stoic demeanor. “Get here safe. God be with you all.”

  The hair on the back of Wyatt’s neck rose. The day had been busy. Suddenly they had become flooded with urgent calls, many of them still in progress like his own. Something was wrong. Really wrong.

  The entire department had never been called back to the station, and the dispatcher’s words added a new layer of tension. The dispatchers were trained to remain calm and detached from the information they shared and the officers they shared it with. The lack of composure had set him on edge.

  Hastily, Wyatt jogged to his car. As he flung open the door, movement in the window of a house caught his eye. A woman peered out at him, her eyes wide as she watched him climb into his cruiser and pull away.

  The seconds that ticked by seemed like hours as Wyatt flew through the red lights. What had happened?

  The roads were unusually crowded. A number of times, Wyatt found himself inching up the sidewalk or through the lanes of opposing traffic. The radio had been oddly silent since the foreboding words of the dispatcher.

  At the intersection of Weiss Road and Route N, Wyatt once again thought of Officer Grey. The accident scene was only a short detour away. But the dispatcher’s words rang clearly through his mind.

  As he crossed the intersection, a flash of blue caught his eye. Just a short distance down Weiss Road, a figure sprinted from the road, across some grass and towards the backyards of a subdivision. Another figure trailed behind the first. Wyatt hit the brakes and, after a quick check in the rearview mirror, slammed the cruiser into reverse.

  “Dispatch this is four three one. I have eyes on a disturbance. I want to investigate further. Please advise.”

  “Four three one, return to the station. What is the ETA on your return?”

  Wyatt clenched his teeth as he continued to stare at where the figures had disappeared. “Two minutes or less.”

  “Make it less.” Wyatt shook himself as he jammed the cruiser back into drive and continued to the station.

  As he pulled off Route N, he could already see why they had been recalled to the station. Cars lined the narrow street that led to the station. People were out of their vehicles and crowded around the small, two-story brick building. Through the open car windows, he could hear shouting.

  “Wyatt!” Jamie shoved his way through the crowd.

  “Lieutenant!” Wyatt jumped out of his cruiser and met the other man at the back of the crowd. The lieutenant’s navy-blue uniform and dark, close-cropped hair hid his dishevelment until Wyatt stood directly in front of him. Bright red spots dotted the lieutenant’s face. It wasn’t until Wyatt looked over the lieutenant that he realized that the man’s hands were also smeared with blood.

  “This way! We need to get organized and fast.”

  “What happened to you?” Wyatt stopped the man before he could turn toward the station. As Wyatt’s eyes passed over the crowd, he noticed a number of other people were bloodied. They weren’t fighting each other, though; they were frightened. He could see it in their wide-eyed expressions. The way their mouths drew into tight, thin lines. It was the same expression he saw mirrored in the lieutenant’s face.

  “I don’t…” He paused a minute and looked at the ground, “I don’t know exactly. But something is wrong with people. Not these people.” He glanced over his shoulder at the crowd. “At least not yet.”

  “What do you mean not yet?”

  “People are acting crazy. When I got to the scene, there were dozens of them.”

  “Dozens of what?” The lieutenant wasn’t making any sense.

  “When I arrived at the accident there were dozens of people. They were all”—his hands danced around frantically as he tried to find the right word—“deranged! I tried to help Grey.” The lieutenant grabbed Wyatt’s lapels. “She ran at me screaming like a maniac. I thought she was scared. I tried to calm her down. Then she jumped on me! She was screaming. She…She tried to fucking bite me! The others started rushing in. I had no choice.” Tears trailed down his cheeks. “I had to shoot her.”

  The words rocked Wyatt as he looked upon his usually chipper lieutenant.

  He had admitted to shooting a fellow officer. “Alright, let’s get you inside the station. We’ll deal with this crowd and we’ll figure out what’s happening?”

  “You don’t understand!” His words became fervent. “She didn’t die! I shot her in the neck and it didn’t even faze her! She kept screaming and clawing like nothing was wrong.”

  It wasn’t possible.

  A person could potentially survive getting shot in the neck, but they certainly wouldn’t continue on like nothing was wrong. “Come on, Lieutenant. Let’s go to the
station. We’ll get this figured out.”

  He propelled the man around the outskirts of the crowd towards the front of the building. “Make a hole!” His voice boomed above the ruckus. Instinctively, people moved aside as he quickly pushed the lieutenant forward before the crowd could close around them.

  The chief stood in front of the door as he tried desperately to keep the crowd under control. He was flanked by Andrew Lockhart and Trevor Morrison. Both officers had been off duty for the day. The situation must truly be desperate. They parted to allow the lieutenant through.

  “Please, everyone needs to calm down. We can only move so quickly. It is important that everyone remain calm so we can keep things moving in an orderly fashion.” The chief’s voice resounded over the crowd through a megaphone. The crowd responded with a roar of calls as a few more were led inside.