Surrender the Sun: A Post Apocalyptic Dystopian Thriller Read online

  From his point of view atop Jake as he neared the burning house, at least three men were pulling items out into the front yard. He stayed just outside the glow of the fire to try and discern what was taking place. That’s when he noticed a body of a man out front in the driveway. The snow around his head was crimson red. No doubt he’d been shot execution style.

  Maeve had said there were children inside, but he saw no young people around the place.

  Bishop crept around the side of a barn. He intended to take the one man on watch by surprise but needed to stash Jake in a safe place. If there were people still inside the house, then they were either dead or dying by now. “Stay right here, Jake,” he said as he tethered him to a post safely out of sight. Then he pulled his rifle out of the saddle and slung it by the strap around his back.

  Peeking around the side of the barn, he counted again and found only three men, all armed, two of them moving what looked like ammo cans and rifles out of chests they’d hauled from the house and loading them into a pickup truck while the third man stood watch.

  “Damn looters already,” Bishop whispered and then took advantage of the lookout’s damaged peripheral vision. He’d been staring at the fire for some time, and since Bishop knew his field of vision was compromised he ran along the periphery in the pitch dark until he was nearly on top of him.

  “Preppers never learn to keep their damn mouths shut,” the guy on watch said. “Loose lips sink ships,” he said and spit into the snow near the dead man.

  Bishop lost all doubts that these people might be the owners upon hearing the leader’s slur. The two additional men were still busy loading items into the back of the truck when the spitter said, “Hurry up. It’s damn cold out here.”

  He’s right about that much, Bishop thought and then raised his AR, sighted the spitter. He took a breath, let it out and held, then squeezed the trigger. The shot hit the man right in the temple. He never saw it coming and fell to the ground in a heap alongside the owner.

  The other two men leaped from the back of the pickup to the other side and took cover. Bishop was already on the move, having anticipated their actions, and ran around the front of the truck before they even had a chance to aim. With two successive shots from his AR, he caught them both—one in the chest and the other in the neck.

  Then he heard a child’s scream coming from the second floor of the burning house, and when he looked up, he saw a young girl with blond hair standing in a window staring down at him in fear.

  “Oh, Jesus!” he screamed and immediately looked for options to get her free. There was no way to enter the house from the front entrance. The entire first floor was engulfed in flames. There was only one way to get to her, so he climbed the outside of the front porch and pulled himself up onto the roof. Since the first floor was an inferno, he knew he was taking a chance with his life and traversed the edge of the building to keep his weight on the outer walls.

  He climbed until he was right at the dormer to the girl’s window. Looking through the window past the frightened girl, he saw through the smoke that her bedroom door was closed but already on fire. She had stuffed a blanket under the door to keep out the smoke.

  “Open the window!” he yelled to her, but she only continued to scream. “Stand back!” he said, but she didn’t respond to that either. He had mere seconds before the child would die before his very eyes, so he reached for his knife. With the pommel he pounded through the glass, shattering it everywhere. The fire came alive behind the girl, feeding on the new oxygen immediately, and with one motion, Bishop reached for her, grabbed her, and swung her out into the night and around the side of the house. The fire engulfed the empty space soon after, and Bishop was left with no other option than to fall with the girl to the snowy ground below.

  When he did, he landed on his side with glass all around them, and he found the girl was unconscious on top of his chest. He sat up and held her small body in his arms. She had a pulse, but they were both covered in cuts and burns, and the back of his right arm was cut up.

  Lifting the girl in his arms as he stood, he noticed she wore a white nightgown singed at the edges. He was sure she’d just lived through horrors no one should see and couldn’t help but think maybe perhaps it wasn’t fair to save her life. Maeve will know what to do with her. The child was smaller than Ben and weighed nearly nothing.

  Quickly trying to get back to Jake, he passed the truck loaded with supplies from the burning house. Then, out of nowhere, the guy he’d shot in the chest earlier raised his handgun.

  With the injured child in his arms, Bishop struggled to grab his AR-15 in time. Instead, he swung his boot when a shot rang out.

  Chapter 13

  “Mom, what’s happening? I’m scared,” Ben said as he watched Maeve from near the fireplace. She stared out into the darkness toward the bright flames down the road. There was nothing to see, though. They’d heard a few terrifying shots and then nothing again.

  She imagined Bishop’s body lying dead out there in the snow, and there was nothing she could do about it. Terrified as her son, Maeve turned to Ben and said, “Son, can you stay right here for me? Don’t do anything but sit right there, no matter what you hear. I’ll be right back. I’m just going to go down the road a ways to see if I can spot Bishop. Do you hear me? Don’t move a single muscle from this spot.”

  But her son looked up at her with a pleading stare. She was riveted to where she stood. How could she ask this of him, this boy who’d already lost his father?

  “Don’t go, Mom,” he whispered, his face as pale as a ghost’s.

  She delayed her answer. “I’ll only go as far as the driveway. I promise you, I’ll be right back. I will not leave you.” She grabbed her pistol then and didn’t look him in the face as she headed toward the door after putting on a black wool coat. “I’ll only be a second,” she said and drifted quickly through the doorway.

  In the pitch dark, her eyes took a minute to adjust and still could only barely make out shadows. Once she traversed through the snow to the end of her driveway, she peeked east around the tree line. Through the glow of the fire beyond, a quarter of a mile down the road, she saw a man on top of a dark horse loping his way toward her.

  “Bishop?” she whispered. Whoever it was, he was slumping over, silhouetted with the blaze behind him and bobbing with the horse’s slow cadence. She was riveted to her spot behind the pine trunk. It has to be Bishop.

  If only she could shine her flashlight, she could know for sure, but she was afraid it might be one of the shooters who attacked the house down the road.

  The rider neared, and she squatted down with her Glock in her hands. The horse drifted close to her and then stopped.

  “Maeve,” he said, his voice weak. “I know you’re there. Take the child.”

  Flooded with relief, she wiped her sleeve over her eyes and slid the gun into her big coat pocket while she came out from behind the tree trunk. Nearing the side of the horse, which sniffed her and nudged her shoulder, she nearly cried out when Bishop draped the unconscious child over her arms. Though there was little light, the girl wore a thin white nightgown and showed no signs of life. “Oh my God.”

  “Hurry, Maeve, get her inside.”

  She turned and ran for the front door as fast as she could through the thick snow. When she came inside, Ben’s eyes were round saucers. “What happened, Mom? Who is that?”

  “Get a blanket!” she said and quickly laid the girl on the couch after kicking the door closed behind her.

  “Where’s Bishop?” Ben asked.

  “He should be coming. He was right behind me.” The lack of warmth was not the immediate danger to this girl in Maeve’s view. She had cuts all over her with glass bits still embedded in her face, neck, and shoulders. Why she was unconscious wasn’t immediately clear. There was soot all over her face, and her gown was destroyed with singe marks and blood. She had a pulse and was breathing, but her breath was raspy.

  “It’s probably s
moke inhalation. Oh God, what do I do? Her breathing’s too shallow,” Maeve said frantically, and Ben looked over her shoulder at the girl.

  “That’s Louna! Andy’s little sister.”

  Maeve hadn’t even thought about who the child was, but Ben was right. God only knows what happened to the rest of the family.

  She sat the child up and began massaging her back and called her name, hoping she would become conscious. “Louna, Louna, can you hear me?”

  “Where’s Bishop, Mom?”

  Maeve shook her head. “I don’t know.” She continued to call out to the child in her arms while Ben ran to the door. When he opened it, he yelled, “Mom! He’s in the snow! Bishop is lying in the snow next to his horse!”

  After laying the girl back down and covering her up, she ran for the open doorway. In the house’s ambient light shining out, she saw Bishop sprawled out in the snow next to his horse in the driveway. Beside him, the horse nudged his body with his muzzle.

  “Ben, get your coat on. First, unlock the backyard door to the garage. Then, take the horse around the back and lead him inside. Can you do that?”

  “Uh, sure,” he said. “Is…Bishop dead?”

  Not wanting to consider that, she said, “Hurry, I’ve got to get him inside.”

  Putting hands underneath his arms, she used all of her strength to drag him across the snow and inside the front door. By the time Ben returned, he helped lift Bishop’s legs enough to barely get him through the threshold so that they could close the door. That’s when she saw all the blood by the dim light.

  “Oh my. I didn’t know he’d been shot. Ben, lock the door and get some towels quick!” She checked under his neck for a pulse and found it there, but the wound in his shoulder worried her. Not only that, the back of his right arm was in bad shape with burn marks on his coat sleeve and embedded glass.

  Never more in her life did she wish she’d become a nurse instead of an English major than right then. On her knees crouching next to him, she said, “OK, they’re both breathing, but he’s definitely bleeding. I wonder if the bullet went through.” And to find out, she pulled him over and saw there was indeed an exit wound. “That’s a good sign, right?” she asked Ben, who stood looking at her, clueless.

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  She took the stack of towels from him and put a layer under Bishop’s shoulder and then pressed down with another layer as hard as she could on the front side. Meanwhile, she looked over at the girl on the couch. “Ben, go check and see if she’s breathing, OK?”

  He wandered over to the girl in a reluctant stride and put his hand in front of her nose. “I don’t feel anything.”

  “Look and see if her chest is rising with her breaths.”

  He watched carefully for a few seconds. “Yeah, she’s breathing.”

  She held up two fingers together. “OK, now put your fingers on the underside of her neck, under her jaw, and see if you feel a pulse.”

  “What’s a pulse?” he said, his expression puzzled.

  “It’s that beat you feel in your wrist and in your neck. It pulses with your heartbeat.”

  “Oh.” He did as he was told and waited.

  She was terrified the girl would die right there on her sofa.

  Ben’s eyes widened, and he nodded. “Yes, I feel it.”

  “Good, OK. How fast is it beating?”

  “Like, tap, tap, tap,” he said bobbing his head with the rhythm.

  “Good, I need you to do that every few minutes for me while I’m trying to help Bishop. If it becomes slower or faster than it is now, tell me quickly, OK?”

  Ben nodded that he understood. It was a lot to ask of a six-year-old, but she had no other choice. She couldn’t leave Bishop’s side at the moment, or he would continue to bleed out.

  After another five minutes, she asked Ben to check Louna’s pulse again, and he said the beat was the same as before. Then she said, “Now I need to you come and help me with Bishop.” Her hands and arms were covered in Bishop’s blood by then, and the grout crevices in her tile entryway were filling with rivers of the red blood. “We need to move him somewhere where I can work on him better.”

  “He’s lying on his gun, Mom,” Ben said, and in all the confusion she hadn’t even noticed that he was, in fact, lying on the the rifle that was slung over his other shoulder.

  “Great. OK, that can’t be comfortable. I think the bleeding in his shoulder has stopped. Can you clear a spot next to the fire and bring me that large comforter?”

  “Sure,” Ben said and did as she asked.

  Having him near the fire would at least allow her to see the extent of his injuries better since the light was brighter there.

  While Ben brought her the comforter, she removed his boots, guns, and knife. Then she laid out the quilt alongside his body. “OK, I can’t drag him like I did before or his shoulder will start bleeding again. We’re going to roll him on the comforter and drag the blanket over to the fireplace. I’ll need your help; he’s a big man.”

  She grabbed him by his belt at the waist and his right shoulder, then lifted while Ben stuffed the comforter underneath his body with plenty of room above his head. Out of breath, she said, “OK,” and again she applied pressure to his shoulder to stop the bright red blood seeping through the cloth she’d used before. “Now go check Louna’s pulse again before we do the other side.”

  “Shouldn’t we call an ambulance, Mom?”

  “I wish we could, sweetie, but there’s no one to call.”

  When he returned from Louna’s side, he said, “Same as before. Where’s her brother, Andy?”

  Maeve avoided her son’s eyes. “I don’t know, son. Help me with Bishop now.”

  This time, she reached over Bishop and pulled upward while Ben pulled the comforter through to the other side.

  Again, she had to take time to stop the bleeding before she continued. At least now she could move him away from the front door, which was starting to look like a gory crime scene.

  Together, both she and her son pulled and tugged the comforter with all their might and moved Bishop closer to the woodstove. That’s when she really saw the extent of his condition. She had Ben hold the compress on his shoulder while she checked on Louna again. Her breath was shallow, but she was alive.

  Quickly, Maeve ran to get antiseptic, scissors, tweezers, water, and clean washcloths. She began with the child and cut away her nightgown while Ben hid his eyes. She started at the top of the child and washed away as much of the soot as possible and tweezed out all the glass she could find embedded in her skin and washed her again. Though she bled from cuts, there were no major gashes. Maeve applied antiseptic and then elevated her chest with pillows until she was almost sitting up; since her lungs were probably the biggest concern, removing as much weight from her chest as possible would be the best thing. Then she covered the girl with a fresh blanket and hoped for the best.

  Then she moved to Bishop and again Ben helped her by removing his hat, coat, and gloves. Then she unbuckled his belt while Ben removed his socks. “What are we doing this for?” Ben asked.

  “I need to see if he has any other injuries that we need to treat.”

  She cut away his thermal T-shirt with scissors to get to his damaged arm when Ben asked, “Won’t he be mad?”

  She shook her head. “No, he’ll be thankful we helped him. Oh my,” she said. “Look at that one.” A large glass shard stabbed into his forearm.

  “Ugh, he’s going to need stitches, Mom.”

  “Yeah…” she said, and the realization dawned on her that she would have to be the one to do the stitching. She went to her home library and pulled out a first aid book and flipped through the pages. Nothing said what to do in case of a gunshot to the shoulder, but there were directions on how to stitch up a wound.

  Again, she started at the top and washed away the grime. When she got to the large shard of glass in the back of his forearm, she waited until she’d removed all the other small
er ones because she knew this one would bleed a lot as soon as she took it out.

  All along his chest she found embedded pieces of glass, and when she wiped away the blood, they pooled up again like little reservoirs. Applying a cold compress, she then waited for the bleeding to abate before dabbing on the antiseptic. Had he been awake she was sure he would have yelled out at the stinging pain, but then again, after she looked at the tough guy, perhaps not. He wasn’t the complaining type, especially since he was more concerned about the girl than himself when he’d arrived.

  “Ben, all the doors are locked, right?”

  “Yes! I made sure.”

  With everything else going on, she couldn’t shake the sounds from earlier and the thought that perhaps someone might come to the house after the shooting. They had to have seen Bishop’s tracks in the snow, right? Should I be concerned?

  “OK, come and sit with them while I get a few things together,” she said instead of “while I find a needle and thread.” While up, she peeked out the front window. The glow from the house fire down the road seemed to dim. Just in case, she checked the locks again and then checked the back door as well. After she had found the needle and thread in her sewing kit, she lit a lighter and slid the needle through the flame a few times and then wiped it down with alcohol. She’d never done this before and barely knew how to sew. The gash in Bishop’s arm was around two inches long, and the injury to his shoulder was even bigger, but it had to be closed, and she was the only one here to do the stitching.

  Preparing herself, she took a deep breath, then brought the supplies along with a few more clean towels back to her patient and knelt down next to him. “Ben, keep a watch on Louna. Tell me if anything changes.”

  “OK. I will,” he said as he watched over Louna.

  Just as she suspected, after pulling out the jagged glass shard from the back of his forearm the wound bled profusely. She made sure to remove all of the glass before she applied pressure. The wound gaped open, and there was no way around it—she had to sew it back together to join the edges.