Chương 17: Chapter 16: The Gravity of Daylight

I gathered my heavy rucksack and weapons, exchanged a brief, quiet goodbye with Mom and Frank, and walked back out onto the gravel driveway with Alex. I let out a sharp whistle, and Dog came bounding out of the darkness, his tongue lolling. The moment I dropped the truck's heavy steel tailgate, he vaulted cleanly into the truck bed, turning around to face the perimeter.

"I'll check in with you on the radio daily, okay son?" I said, turning back to Alex.

"I need to get a line on a few specific people back in town, and then we're going to map out a concrete plan of action. Until then, remember what I said. If things go sideways or you need an extra gun, call me. I'll head right over as fast as this V8 can carry me."

"I'll remember, Father," Alex replied, giving me a confident nod.

"But we'll be okay. I handled the line by myself the last few days, and now I've got Frank backing me up. We're in a much better position than we were yesterday."

"I know," I said, a wave of heavy guilt tight in my chest.

"But I'm sorry you had to shoulder all of that alone, Alex. I'm sorry I couldn't get across town fast enough to be here for you. And I'm sorry for having to ask even more of you now. But it's time we protected our family." Alex looked right at me, his jaw setting with a maturity that made him look far older than his years.

"We will, Father. Whatever it takes."

"Alright," I forced a small smile, clapping his shoulder.

"Drop your brambles. I need to get back to base before I collapse on my feet. I'm completely dead." I stowed my gear safely in the cab and pulled Alex into a long, tight embrace. Stepping back, I climbed into the driver's seat and threw the truck into reverse. As I backed out into the empty road, Alex waved his hand toward the dirt. Once again, I watched him raise his hands, his expression tightening as he channeled his remaining mana pool.

From fence line to fence line, the thick, thorny brambles rapidly erupted from the soil, sealing the property behind an eight-foot wall of natural razor wire. It was roughly 5: 30 AM when the square-body's tires hit the asphalt heading back toward town. The sun was just beginning to crest the horizon, bleeding a pale, pale orange into the eastern sky. As it always did back when I worked the graveyard shift, the rising sun didn't energize me—it just made me feel infinitely more exhausted.

There was a strange, haunting quality to a post-apocalyptic sunrise. The world seemed completely hushed, locked in an eerie, static stillness that made every muscle in my body ache for a mattress. The morning drive was even more surreal because the usual traffic was entirely gone. There were no columns of brake lights, no commuters rushing through the daily rat-race cycle of the working world.

The old world was dead, a brand-new kind of rat race had officially begun, and humanity was still trying to figure out the rules. The trip back was just as quiet as when I pulled out. But the moment I crossed the city limits, sticking strictly to the secondary back roads to avoid any potential choke points, I noticed the city was beginning to stir. With the darkness fading, there was a visible shift in movement.

I spotted small groups of people standing on corners, and a couple of older, pre-electronic vehicles cruising slowly down the avenues, traveling Lord knows where. But these daylight citizens weren't smashing storefront windows or hunting for blood. In fact, most of them were actively trying to repair the brutal structural damage their homes had sustained during the chaos of the night.

Men and women were out on porches, frantically hammering plywood over shattered windows and trying to brace busted door frames with whatever raw materials they could scavenge from their yards. At one intersection, I watched two solemn-faced men carrying a long, heavy shape wrapped tightly in a thick wool blanket out of a front door. The harsh reality of the new world was settling in. The initial panic was breaking, leaving grief and survival in its wake.

When I finally turned onto the street leading to Chad's gated compound, I keyed up the handheld radio.

"Base, this is Red Rover. I am two minutes out from your position. Open the gate. Over." The second I rounded the final corner, the garage door was already rolling upward. Chad was standing squarely in the center of the driveway, a tactical sling holding his AR-15 flat against his chest. I guided the truck into the garage and cut the ignition, the engine dying with a low sputter. As I pulled my rucksack out of the cab, I looked over at my father-in-law.

"What's with the long gun, Chad? Did someone try to push the perimeter while I was out?"

"No," Chad said smoothly, lowering his hands to rest on his belt.

"I'm sure you noticed the streets get a hell of a lot quieter once the sun breaks. Most of the real lowlifes scatter during the day. It's too easy to spot a predator in broad daylight, and you know how evil operates—it prefers the dark."

"Very true," I agreed, slinging the ruck over my shoulder.

"But that doesn't explain why you're wearing a rifle just to stand in the driveway." Chad let out a dry, raspy chuckle.

"Well, look at it this way, Derrick. If a scavenger rolls down the street and sees a regular old man standing in his driveway, he thinks about testing him. If he rolls down the street and sees an old man holding a black rifle with a thirty-round magazine locked into the well, which one do you think he's less likely to mess with?" Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more. I couldn't help but giggle, the tension draining from my shoulders.

"Fair point. I can't argue with that logic at all." I let Dog out into the fenced side yard, verified his water bowl was completely topped off for the day, and walked through the kitchen door to finally get some rest. The moment the door latched, Denise met me in the center of the kitchen, throwing her arms tightly around my neck.

"How are your mom and Alex doing, baby?" she whispered against my ear.

"They're doing good. Honestly, a hell of a lot better than I expected," I murmured, holding her close.

"Alex has already pushed his build to Level 5. The System locked him into a Druid class designation." Denise pulled back slightly, her brow furrowing in confusion.

"I don't have a clue what that means, honey. Remember, I'm not the gamer in this marriage." I let out a soft laugh, resting my hands on her hips.

"Yeah, I know. Don't you wish you'd paid a little more attention to my loading screens now? I'll deep-dive into the mechanics later because my brain is running on fumes right now, but the short version is—he's basically a nature wizard."

"A nature wizard," she repeated slowly, a faint smile touching her lips.

"Wow. That is a sentence I never in my life thought I'd hear describing my actual son."

"See?" I laughed softly, kissing her forehead.

"Should've been a gamer. Where can I crash, baby?"

"We're set up in the front bedroom," Denise said, guiding me toward the hallway.

"The kids are bunked in the back bedroom, and my parents took the master suite, obviously."

"Perfect," I sighed.

"I'm going to do horizontal engineering for a few hours. Can you make sure I'm vertical by noon?"

"Sure can," she nodded.

"Dad gave me an old-fashioned mechanical wind-up alarm clock. That thing rings loud enough to wake the dead."

"I don't know, it might actually meet its match with me today," I muttered, unbuttoning my vest.

"Oh, don't worry, honey. I'm going to be right there in the sheets with you," Denise said, her eyes softening.

"I haven't slept a wink since you left, and I am desperately in need of some serious cuddle time."

"That is literally music to my ears," I said.

"Let me drop my kit and get out of this tactical nylon." I stepped into the dim front bedroom, dropping my heavy rucksack onto the floorboards and leaning my recurve bow and the Broadsword of the Miller securely against the wall beside the nightstand. I unbuckled my tactical vest and duty belt, placing them right next to the weapons for easy access. As I sat on the edge of the mattress to kick off my tactical boots, I heard the door to the back bedroom click open down the hall.

I stuck my head out into the corridor just as my stepdaughter, Isadora, stepped into the passage. The moment her eyes locked onto me, she froze in her tracks. Then, she violently spun around, threw the bedroom door wide open, and yelled at the top of her lungs: "Get up! Dad's back!" Before the echo even died, she rushed down the hallway and threw herself into my arms, hugging me with everything she had.

As Isadora clung to my chest, I heard my youngest son, Jace, let out a sleepy, muffled shout from inside the bedroom: "Did he bring the milk?!" I busted out laughing, the running family joke cutting straight through the exhaustion. A second later, Jace and Travis came barreling out into the hallway. With Isadora still anchoring herself to my waist, I reached out with both arms, grabbing both boys and pulling them into the huddle. Or, more accurately, I tried to pull them in.

Travis, being a full six-foot-three-inch seventeen-year-old, practically towered over the entire unit, wrapping his massive arms around all of us. Jace, at fifteen, wasn't far behind his brother, already sitting at my height of five-foot-ten. The boys, trying to maintain their tough teenage exteriors, just stood there solid in the embrace. But for Isadora and me, the dam completely broke. The raw emotion of the last forty-eight hours washed over me, and I began to silently weep into my daughter's hair.

I could feel Isadora's shoulders shaking against my chest as she sobbed. My mind kept looping on a single, heavy thought: Just one more to go. One more child to bring across the line, and all five of my kids are safe. But the last one was going to be the hardest. He was miles away, and with the grid entirely fried, I had absolutely no way to contact him, let alone verify if he was even breathing.

It took a few heavy moments, but I managed to force the panic back down and clear my throat, pulling back from the embrace. I looked at their tired faces.

"How are you guys? Are you okay?" Isadora didn't say much, which was completely normal for her when her emotions ran too high to process. She just nodded her head up and down rapidly, but I knew her better than that. I could see the lingering shadows in her eyes; she was definitely not okay. Jace and Travis mumbled that they were fine, though Travis admitted the first hours of the initialization had been terrifying. I could see straight through their armor, too.

Even though they were putting up a brave, convincing front for their mother, their eyes still held the distinct, fractured glaze of fear. I didn't blame a single one of them. I was terrified, too. It broke my heart that my children had to witness the death of the world. I forced a broad, confident smile onto my face, attempting to project absolute stability. Who knows—maybe they saw right through my mask, too, and were just playing along for my benefit.

"Things are going to get better," I promised them, my voice steady.

"I'm completely exhausted right now, so I'm going to lay down for a little bit. But the second I get up, my sole priority is to track down a few of my old military buddies. We're going to pool our resources, and we are going to figure this shit out. We will build a definitive plan to protect this family, and we will thrive." The second the word military left my mouth, I saw a sudden spark of recognition flash in their eyes.

If my kids knew one undeniable truth about their father, it was that when I aligned with my old veteran crew, we would absolutely wreck shop to protect our families. The fear didn't completely vanish from the hallway, but something powerful stepped right up behind it: hope.

"I'm going to crash now," I said, giving them each one last squeeze.

"Before I pass out flat on the carpet. I love you guys. Goodnight." I stepped back into the front bedroom where Denise was waiting. She had slipped past us into the hall while we were hugging, watching the exchange with soft eyes.

"They missed you so much, Derrick. They were losing their minds worrying about you."

"I missed them too," I said, pulling off my socks.

"I spent every mile on that road worrying about all of you. But I'm home now. We're going to map this out." Denise looked directly into my eyes, her expression completely serene.

"I know." There was no hesitation in her voice. Her eyes spoke with absolute, unwavering confidence in my ability to keep us alive. I finished stripping down to my undershirt and climbed into the cool sheets, the relief of the mattress almost making my vision swim. I pulled my wife close, burying my face in her neck, and gave her one long, lingering kiss.

"Goodnight, baby," I whispered against her ear.

"I love you."

"Goodnight, baby," she murmured back, wrapping her arm securely over my chest.

"I love you too." Reaching down, I lightly tapped the face of my gunmetal grey wedding band against hers three times—our old, silent code for I love you. I locked my fingers through hers, and within thirty seconds, the darkness pulled me under.