Midnight: A Dark Age Dawning Novel - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Ellen Connor is a pseudonym for Ann Aguirre and Carrie Lofty, two acclaimed romance authors. Ann Aguirre lives in Mexico. Carrie Lofty lives in Wisconsin.

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Chris jerked awake and sat half upright. A rock gouged the palm of one hand. The vivid spring dawn made him squint. He checked his weapon and found it primed nearby, but he heard no threat. The secluded crevice where he’d made his night camp served as a trusted partner at his back.

The last of his weariness gone, he eased out from the crevice and surveyed the surrounding gorge. Creosote bushes bloomed along the jagged upslope of striated limestone, their roots clinging to the smallest holds. A woodpecker made a racket, reminding him of those first few months after the change hit the west coast. They hadn’t seen sign of any wildlife, not even insects, until the demon dogs had cleared out, starving and defeated. That so many natural creatures still thrived in the world should have given him some reason to smile, but Chris hardly remembered how.

He checked his Beretta in its holster and slumped against the cold, solid rock wall. A dream must have woken him. Closing his eyes, his skin already covered in goose bumps, he tried to recapture the last few moments of unconsciousness, fully expecting to find memories of blood. But the lingering images were not so violent. He saw a wisp of white, a flash of corn silk hair.

Whenever he dreamed of Penny—the child he’d left behind after her mother died—he walked south . . . and always found something remarkable. Once he’d found water, just in time to keep his dehydrated body from shutting down. Another time he’d found a young girl. She’d been hiding in a tree, stranded after escaping a pack of demon dogs and too scared to climb down. In appreciation her brother and mother had opened their meager stores to him.

Reluctant curiosity tugged him to his feet. After a quick piss, he packed his gear and stepped into the sharp daylight.

Climbing up the short bank of what might have once been a river, he allowed himself to think about Penny. It was for the best that she lived with his friends Jenna and Mason now. After Ange died, he had found it impossible to stick around beyond the spring thaw.

And Chris was alone. That too was for the best.

He reached the top of the rise and looked over the desert. Dawn still tinted the landscape, but the dry heat sizzling the back of his neck foretold the coming day. He scratched his jaw through his beard and searched for abnormalities. No voices. No prickling sensation of another human presence.

But then came an unexpected sound—an old sound that took a long minute to place.

Trucks.

What the hell?

He held as still as death, leaning nearer to the source as if that gesture might make the unbelievable more real.

Trucks.

He set off at an easy run. Across the length of the country, always heading south, he’d seen the occasional working vehicle and the trouble it could bring. Gasoline supplies had gone scarce, and owners developed twitchy trigger fingers when it came to protecting their valuables.

But he hadn’t heard a big-throated, full-throttle rumble since Before—almost like rush hour and coffee shops and the White House. Old things. He gave up on pacing himself and hit a full run. The wonder of his legs responding to such an impulse no longer surprised him. After nearly four years of wandering, he wouldn’t recognize himself in the mirror. Hard-won resilience waited in every muscle, with every strike of his boots against the flinty earth.

At the next rise he crept along on his belly and looked down. Glasses he’d relied on for years to correct a slight astigmatism had broken back near Colorado, but he didn’t need them to see the distant remains of a two-lane highway. Long-ago engineers had blasted a canyon right through the middle of a wide granite plateau. The highway ran like a river down the middle. Without steady repairs from human custodians, baked asphalt had become striped with fissures. Despite the flowers and grass lining each crack, it reminded Chris of puckered scar tissue.

He burrowed his fingers into the cool, dry earth. Waiting. From along the western horizon rolled the trucks. Sunlight glinted off chrome and dust swirled from beneath the tires.

Where had they come from? Who operated them? And where the hell had they found enough gas to speed along at a hundred kilometers an hour?

The sound of a gun being cocked turned his blood to ice.

“Don’t move.” A man’s voice. Deep. Southern.

Chris lay still with his cheek pressed against the dirt. The Beretta at his hip might as well have been back in Oregon, but he could get off his stomach, he might have a chance.

A heavy boot pressed between his shoulder blades. The man ground down and pressed cold gunmetal against the back of Chris’s neck. “You armed?”

“Yes.” His vocal cords felt fused together, and he tried to remember the last time he’d spoken. Weeks. Maybe months. Not even to himself, that old mainstay of staying sane.

The man made a quiet grunt as he crouched and started a quick search, his motions rough and efficient.

“I was just passing through,” he said as the man’s hand neared the Beretta.

“Then no one will miss you.”

“True enough.”

“Then why are you smiling?”

Chris used that moment to strike. He swung his elbow back and up, connecting with his captor’s inner wrist. The gun clattered to the rock. Turning sharply, Chris yanked the boot that had pinned his shoulder blades and twisted. The man fell heavily onto his back, clutching his wrist as his hand spasmed. A grimace warped his features but he tried to kick with his free foot. They scuffled in the dirt, exchanging grunts and punches, until Chris scrambled to his knees.

He grabbed the Beretta off his hip, unhooked the safety, and pointed at his opponent’s head. “Because I got nothing to lose.”

Staring down his adversary, Chris realized what a lucky bastard he was. He’d thought Mason a big guy, but this man was huge—tall and muscular. Those trucks down on the highway could plow headlong into his chest and he wouldn’t flinch.

Chris took aim at his bald head, where dark skin gleamed with sweat. Guns were pretty amazing when it came to leveling the odds.

“Don’t kill me,” the man said.

“Don’t make me. What’s your name?”

“Folks call me Brick.”

Slowly Chris sidestepped until he could kneel and pick up Brick’s discarded pistol—an ancient Colt .45. “All your weapons on the ground. Slowly.”

A set of brass knuckles, a retractable truncheon, a palm-sized .22, and a wicked bowie knife hit the ground one by one. Chris loaded them into his satchel, never taking his attention from his prisoner. He didn’t want those same weapons turned against him, should Brick get the upper hand again, but kicking them over the cliff would be an unthinkable waste.

“On your stomach,” Chris said. “Arms and legs splayed.”

Brick’s snarling expression said that he didn’t take orders well from strangers. But when Chris cocked his Beretta, the man obeyed. He lowered his body on the ground and went spread-eagled.

Chris shoved the Colt down the back of his waistband and frisked Brick, keeping his concentration on high alert. No sense in falling victim to the same ploy. He got the very strong sense that he’d only get lucky once against such a man.

Satisfied that he was drawing down on an unarmed opponent, Chris nudged Brick’s ribs with the toe of his boot. “Up. On your knees. Hands behind your head.”

Brick did as he was told, but only just. Yellow dust coated his damp...