LOGAN

Logan raided the pantry first, nestled next to the kitchen. The previous occupants had already taken most of the stuff, but thankfully, the house hadn't been looted since then. He pulled out the cereal boxes, a jar of walnuts and almonds, a single can of corn, a bag of Oreo cookies, two containers of peanut butter, and some chips and junk food. They ate it all around the island counter.

Logan tried to ignore how unhealthy everything was, aside from the nuts and the can of corn, but they needed the calories. Eating cereal dry wasn't the same thing as having milk with it, and now that he thought about the latter, he realized how thirsty he was. Fortunately, the bottom rack had a gallon of Pepsi, and though it was at room temperature, the others still drank it.

Pete sat next to Logan, but Logan dragged the stool a couple feet away from the soldier. If Pete noticed it, he didn't show, and Logan was more than happy to eat his meal away from his attention.

"We're gonna die of diabetes, are we?" Alfie joked.

"A single day of eating junk wouldn't hurt," Logan said. "Think of it as a cheat day."

"Every day's a cheat day from now on," Pete snorted.

"Do you think we're gonna be safe here?" Alfie asked Pete.

Pete paused for a moment, thinking. "For now," he said.

Logan looked around the house from where he sat. The previous owners had already barred all the windows shut with plywood, bathing the interior in shadows. Alfie found a candle in the pantry, and they used a couple of them to light up the room with his lighter. Blocking the front door where the furniture and tables were explained why Pete couldn't open it earlier and why the sliding doors from the back were open. The family must have escaped through there. They couldn't find any picture frames around the house, which Logan surmised the family brought with them (and he didn't think they would be back. None of them ever did). It was funny to him how the first thing anyone grabbed would be the photo albums and family mementos during emergencies. It's what he had seen on the houses they had looted in Walton and the other towns they stumbled upon, and everywhere it was the same thing. Logan guessed it was human nature to hold onto the reminders of the past, especially when memory could break so easily.

"We're in a town called Colby," Pete said, reading out loud the mail envelope on his hand. "Hm. That means we're not far off from Elk Mountain Road, maybe nine, er, ten miles, give or take?" Pete looked around the console table and huffed. "Fuck. They don't have a phone book."

"What do you need that for?" Logan asked.

"To get a feel on how big this town is. This neighborhood seemed 'bougie' enough for a suburban family to live in, especially with how big and nice this house is. The town's probably better off, too."

"Phone books are kind of phased out, man," Alfie said.

"Yep. The upsides of the age of digital information."

"Er, downside now. Internet's not working anymore."

Logan heaved a sigh. "Ahh....I miss the internet."

"I miss Amazon and my never-ending wishlist," Pete said. "Fuck. Maybe Cabela's, too. I could order a rifle right about now."

"I miss Instagram. Do you know I have one-hundred-fifty thousand followers?" Alfie mentioned.

Logan furrowed his brows. "No way you're that popular. What'd you do?"

Alfie shrugged. "Oh. Mostly fitness stuff. I do a lot of snowboarding, hiking, and mountain climbing, plus it helps that I'm surrounded by nature a lot, especially where I studied. I get lots of scenery pictures. A quarter of my followers were college and high school friends, people I met along with my hikes. Others were just picked up on the global feed."

Pete took the seat across from the island counter. "You took a lot of shirtless photos, didn't you?"

Alfie blushed. "Um. Maybe a couple."

"Ha!" Pete snickered. "Don't be embarrassed. Sex sells. It'll bring along the gays and the women, and maybe I already followed you." Pete winked.

"I mean...when you gotta hustle, you gotta hustle, you know?" Alfie said sheepishly, trying to avoid Pete's gaze. "Plus, I'm not that popular. Like, I got offered for brand deals and some other free stuff for clout, but I mostly refused it. I do what I do because I like them."

"How noble of you," Pete said. Logan didn't detect any hint of sarcasm in his voice, though he didn't want to believe that the man sitting next to him was capable of genuine sentiments.

"How far do you think the others are?" Alfie asked.

"They're certainly close by, but I have no fucking idea where we're going to start."

"They got our Humvee, Corporal."

Pete frowned. "They sure do. We'll get them back, one way or another."

Logan shook his head. Most of their weapons were in there, and no doubt, the people that took them had probably looted every inch. Even if they got it back, Logan tried to prepare himself that half of them were probably gone, scrapped, or recycled.

And they wouldn't have a vehicle to Pittsburgh, stitching more time into their strenuous trek.

Logan shifted on his seat. "D—do you think they captured Bren?"

Pete was speechless for a moment, putting down the envelope on top of the other mail piled on top of the console table. "Honestly? I don't know. But I sure hope he's still kicking."

"Remember what those guys said. There was gunfire before we stumbled on the vectors. Do you think that was Bren's doing?"

Logan chuckled. "I wouldn't question it. If they captured him and he manages to escape, then, it's most likely him."

"We should find Bren then," Alfie said.

"Not just yet. We're in a bit of a pickle on our own. The next thing we should do is find weapons and get the hell out of here."

"But what about the others?" Alfie cried out. "Yousef is injured. And who knows what they are doing to Miguel and Haskell. Bren might need our help. He could be injured."

"They want us alive," Pete said confidently. "And Haskell's a soldier. I'm sure he can hold on his own if they ever give him trouble. If they recaptured Bren, they'll probably patch him up and throw him in the same location they kept the others."

"How can you be sure?"

"For one, they didn't try to shoot us on the head, makes it really easy to steal our stuff that way. The last thing I saw before they put that stinking sack over my head was some guy patching up Yousef's shoulder. So, I think they don't want us dead. They need us for something, and we sure aren't gonna like what it is."

Logan sighed. "That might be complicated with us loose."

"Yeah. They'll certainly hunt us down once they get rid of the vectors off their tails. I hope those freaks wipe them out first." Pete said, shaking his head. "But before we try and rescue the others, we need to be prepared. Here's what we're going to do. We're gonna look around and see what we can find and use around this house before we leave, say, twenty minutes? That sounds about right."

"We're gonna have to jump over the fences and go hop from backyard to backyard, are we?" Logan said.

"That's the safest path. Yes."

"But we don't know what's on the other side."

"Better than be too exposed on the street," Pete said and turned to Alfie. "Alfie, do you think you can mix us up some of those special cocktails of yours?"

Alfie snorted. "Ya think?"

"I'll take that as a yes." Pete then turned to Logan. "And you find us some bags, maybe some tools like saws, wire-cutters, lug wenches, anything that will come in handy in the future. I'll go hunt for some weapons."

Logan raised his maul. "We already have a weapon."

"These are only good when those fuckers are up-close and in-your-face. I want something that can shoot. Anything that keeps the vectors as far away from us as possible. And maybe popping some of those bastards who kidnapped us along the way. That sounds good?"

"You're the boss," Logan said, holding back from rolling his eyes.

"How about you start at the garage?"

"But it's pitch black in there."

"Then take a candle," Pete said. He didn't wait for Logan's response as he turned around and headed for the second floor.

With a sigh, Logan walked toward the garage door next to the kitchen.

Logan opened the garage door, finding it also shrouded in darkness. No lights were coming from the windows, also barred shut by the previous inhabitants. As much as he hated to admit it, he didn't like being in the dark, the kind of darkness where you couldn't see a fucking thing. He could tolerate the night when there were stars and the moon, or in his room back in Portland where he had a nightlight on, but the seemingly never-ending space within the pitch darkness crept goosebumps all over his skin. Logan hesitated for a moment, watching this darkness, his foot mere two inches away from its abyssal edge. From the lack of familiar shrieks, he had already determined that there were no vectors beyond it. Still, it scared him.

Logan wiped a hand across his face, fighting a chill and a panic that threatened to spill out of his mind, though it merely gave him the courage to run blindly forward and do what Peter Gauthier had asked. Nerves and adrenaline still heightened his flight-or-fight response, and he wondered whether he still had reserves to fight the growing obstacles that the universe seemed all too happy to throw at him. With a sigh, he squeezed tight on his clenched fist and lit another candle. He wondered why he was being a coward when it was only a garage (and he had been in far scarier places than a dark room) and walked through the door.

Logan thought of Bren and what he would do if he were in his shoes, and Bren wouldn't be a fucking coward.

——

Seven Years Ago

Logan fell, and for the first time, he screamed.

For the first time since a much longer time, he cried.

Now he's surrounded by darkness, leg sprained, a little scruff on his arms and elbows, staring up to the daylight shining through the hole he fell in. The air here reeked wrong, rusty and filled with mildew, drips of rainwater falling down from the cracks. Moss had taken root along the walls, and all manners of critters snaked around the halo of sunlight that surrounded him, even if it was dim. He cried out, his echo reaching farther into the darkness, only to remind himself that he was alone.

They shouldn't have come here, he thought. He should have never come here.

Just off the trail near their neighborhood was an abandoned warehouse--abandoned in a way that none had sold it for over ten years no matter how Handy-Panky Benny tried to sell it. It crumbled over a decade of weather abuse and less maintenance, given how the Willamette Valley was notorious for its strong winds from the great Columbia River and the Rockies, and the North Pacific rain. Also, it had been a popular hangout for the neighborhood kids like Logan and his friends, only this time, they had gone deeper into the warehouses than they usually hang out with.

One misstep and he had fallen into a hole with no way out.

They shouldn't have come here, and if their folks ever find out what had happened, Logan would be in deeper trouble than the rest of his friends. No. He'd rather stay in this hole than face them.

Logan had always believed that he was invincible, which his mother and father had told him time and time again—more so with the latter. Fear was for the weak, his father would say to him. If he ever dare made that glassy look over his eyes, the edge of everything falling into place, and the way that his heart fueled the ache twisting inside his stomach, Logan would hold them all at bay, an unmovable statue in front of a crashing wave, or else faced the palm of his father's disappointment. He never wanted to disappoint his father, who held his three older brothers in higher regard, and with Logan being the youngest, and in a household filled with boys, he had a reputation to uphold. He didn't know how steep the hill he was climbing on until he got older, but it was already too late by that time: too many mistakes and too many regrets.

As far as Logan could remember, his brothers, Tom, Brian, and Connor, had always done everything perfectly. Perfect grades, perfect games, perfect friends, and perfect in every way he could ever imagine. Whatever mistakes they made seemed to vanish, shrugged off with ease, and if they faced it head-on, they handled it as they always did with their goals: perfect in every way. He wanted to be like them, no, be them. And though everyone around them, their friends and neighbors, believed them to be the best in anything they put their minds in, their father abided by a different standard, one that Logan, even with his many successes at such a young age—captain of the junior football league, Aced his classes, and had 'acceptable' friends—failed to live up to.

For a child at the tender age of eleven, it would break you.

He had always feared his father's look. The way his lips dropped when he listed his accomplishments, the distant way he sat on the dinner table with his tablet in front of him as he read the news or his dozens of emails, and ever so often, would glance up with his eyes seemingly searing through him as if saying, Should I care? No. I don't think so. That no matter what Logan did, it would never be enough. Not like Tom, Brian, and Connor, the eldest having gone to Columbia, and the rest had gone years later to other Ivy League schools. Then the game would always be built by their father, him and only him, that they—Logan and his brothers—were invincible with whatever they put their minds into, away from fear and doubt, and only that the prize would be his favor. No matter what the world held as the most prized possession, a father's love would always stand at the top.

Even for the eleven-year-old Logan trapped in that hole, as young as he was then, he knew his father full well.

"Logan? Logan? Are you okay?" A voice, distant from above, echoing down the hole in broken squeaks. Logan glanced up and saw Bren looking down at him. "Shout, so I know you're still alive."

"I'm okay," Logan managed to say.

"See? I told you he's still alive," Bren said.

Pete's little head peered from above. "He's hurt!" He exclaimed.

"We should go down there," Bren suggested.

Please, oh, please, come down! Logan thought. I don't want to be alone.

"Come down? But...we don't have a rope!" Pete said. He would be the smallest out of all of them even if he was a year older than Logan. And even if they managed to find a rope, Logan doubted Pete could pull himself up with how skinny he was.

"We should call for help," Carson chimed in though Logan couldn't see him.

Logan didn't want to die in this hole, let alone be left with the dark as his only companion, slowly crawling closer to him as the sun went down. "Don't leave me!" He shouted.

He knew that the others were discussing what to do, and part of it was how they're going to tell their parents and explain to them why they had gone there in the first place without getting into trouble. This place was where the popular high school kids hanged out, and some of the bad crowd did awful things to their bodies, as Bren would describe it, and he didn't want to find out who they would meet once night set in. It must have been several minutes as his friends argued above, the sun slowly creeping away from him, and the darkness now up to his knees.

"We're gonna call for help, Logan!" Bren shouted down.

"No! Don't leave me!" Logan cried out.

"I'm sorry, but we're gonna have to!" Pete squeaked, and then his head disappeared, could hear him running away.

"Guys! Don't leave me! Don't leave me!"

"Alright! I'll stay with you," Bren said. "The others are getting my parents. They live close by."

A part of Logan was relieved that his father wouldn't be seeing him in this state. His father believed he was a great athlete, and an injured leg would prove he was weak. The sun slowly went down until the sky turned a hazy midnight blue. He lost sight of the chipped rocks from the cement, the dozen or so cigarette buds littered around, the diffused basketball, and the scattered papers.

In the dark, time had no meaning.

At least Bren was above him. At least his friend was here.

Logan shifted on the spot once he became uncomfortable. Seeing a higher area not far from him, he crawled toward there, making sure not to put too much pressure on his wounds, especially from his elbow. He had caught something on the way down; no doubt it would turn into a nasty scar later on.

Then, his fingers grazed something peculiar and pulled on it, but it didn't budge. He thought it was a root of some kind, but it was hard to see with the dimming light. Yet there was still light for a closer inspection. He pulled himself closer...and saw a hand in the rubble.

A dead hand.

Logan heaved and screamed, staggering backward. The man looked dead for many months; his lips had fallen away, making him look as if he was forever grinning, and so did the color of his eyes. And then a haunting thought seeped into his brain, certain that the man would suddenly burst out of the rubble, his withered hand grasping for his leg. Logan screamed and screamed.

"What's wrong? What happened?" Bren asked frantically.

"There! There's a body! There's a body!"

"Logan, just hold on tight! I'll be back in a minute," Bren said, and then he disappeared.

"No, no! Wait!" But it was too late. Now, he was alone.

By then, the darkness had swallowed him whole. He couldn't see anything around him, as if the entire wall were closing in, squashing him like a pulp. And yet at the same time, he could feel the vastness of the darkness, could feel strange eyes wandering around, especially the dead man. Sometimes he had believed there were bats in there with him, flying around with their beating wings echoing, mocking him, laughing at him, maybe seething with hunger. Sometimes there would be wolves or perhaps a snake, with its yellow-slit eyes staring back, hypnotizing him to scream and claw as strange things grazed his skin. They could smell his wound, he thought, like an injured seal in the ocean where the sharks could smell them a mile away. And then the dead man would rise, grasping for his throat.

It didn't take long for Logan to crumple up like a baby, hugging his knees, sometimes screaming and shouting as he felt things crawling around his body. Sometimes, he was sure it was the dead man taunting him, running his fingers all over his skin, tickling his ankles, laughing with that rotting forever grin and those yellow teeth on his face. The only light was the hole above him.

Then, a shadow darted down the hole, and then he realized a flashlight drew closer toward him from above. Once he came to his senses, he saw Bren slowly scaling down the wall, calling his name. He wanted to scream at him to get back up, that there was a dead man with him, and he didn't want Bren to get hurt. But before he could utter the words, Bren had already planted his feet on the ground, unbothered by the darkness, his eyes fixed on Logan and only Logan.