American Midnight | Book 2 | Nightfall Read online

  Nightfall

  American Midnight - Book 2

  David Kazzie

  Grub Club Publishing

  © 2020 by David Kazzie

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales, or organizations is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the written consent of the author.

  Created with Vellum

  As Always, For My Kids

  Contents

  Also By David Kazzie

  Prologue

  1. Five Years Later

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Epilogue

  Coming Spring 2021

  Afterword

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also By David Kazzie

  The Jackpot (2011)

  The Immune Series (2015)

  Unraveling

  Void

  Evergreen

  Citadel

  The Living

  The Rising (Late 2021)

  Anomaly (2018)

  The Nothing Men (2019)

  American Midnight Series (2020)

  Shadows

  Nightfall

  Daybreak (Spring 2021)

  Prologue

  Two Weeks Before the Pulse

  The man sat hunched over the steering wheel, his foot a little heavier on the gas than was probably safe. It was late, nearly two in the morning, and the George Washington Parkway was empty. He absently punched the preset radio buttons, switching from station to station, looking for a familiar tune to soothe his roiling soul. Strange how you fell back to the familiar for comfort. But not one song caught his ear. Not one damn song he liked. Not one that could calm him down. No matter. He was almost there.

  Up ahead lay a quarter-mile stretch of road that was not under video surveillance. For whatever reason, the traffic engineers hadn’t bothered with a camera here. He had checked the public camera feeds dozens of times to be certain. The road bent sharply ahead of a rocky outcropping. The speed limit here dropped to twenty-five miles an hour. On the far side of the rock formation began a curved guardrail. It was a tricky curve. A moment of inattention here might put you right over the side.

  He eased his foot off the accelerator as his destination came into view. It was a cool night, but sweat slicked his body. His shirt was glued to his back and even his boxer shorts felt damp. He was crazed with fear; he had never been so afraid in his life. He pulled into the breakdown lane about thirty yards shy of the guardrail and killed the engine. It hissed and ticked loudly in the silence.

  His breathing was shallow and rapid. He took a deep breath, and then let out a long shaky sigh. He still had work to do tonight, not to mention a long walk home in the dark. After confirming that he was in the camera’s blind spot, he got out of the car. His legs buckled; he steadied himself with a hand against the window. The fresh air was crisp and clean and tinged with a hint of pine. It made him feel a little better.

  His name was Solomon Tigner. He was forty-six years old, divorced, no kids. He worked as a climate scientist. And what he knew quite possibly could get him killed.

  He unlocked the trunk with a press of his key fob. The beep preceding the disengagement of the lock startled him, and he nearly jumped out of his skin.

  “Come on, Tigner,” he whispered. He frequently talked to himself. At work, at home, sitting in traffic. If he was really lost in thought, it sometimes happened when he was alone in public. “Almost home.”

  He stepped toward the trunk, still in disbelief at what he was planning to do. If he had been stopped by police, if he’d been involved in a traffic accident, there were a thousand ways this little gambit could have gone off the rails. But none of those things had happened, and he was close now, so close.

  Good thing, because it would have been very difficult to explain the corpse in his trunk.

  No one would have believed him.

  He wasn’t responsible for the death of the man. He had never even met him. He’d purchased the body from a technician from the office of the chief medical examiner, a shady sort who knew how to make the paperwork on a dead, homeless guy disappear. It had cost Solomon ten thousand dollars, but that didn’t matter. Ten thousand dollars wasn’t going to mean much in the very near future. But the technician didn’t need to know that. Besides, he knew better than to ask questions of someone who’d handed him one hundred hundred-dollar bills for a dead body.

  Solomon just needed a body whose build matched his own, someone who had died of natural causes. Black, like he was. No gunshot wounds or blunt force trauma. Fortunately for Solomon, he had been blessed with the most average body of all time. Five foot ten on the nose, a hundred and ninety pounds.

  He leaned down into the trunk, slid his forearms under the man’s armpits and hoisted him over the lip. The technician had helped him load the body into the trunk; this was the first time Solomon was moving the corpse by himself. And they called it dead weight for a reason. After a few false starts, his legs and arms burning underneath him, he knelt down into a crouch and hoisted the body over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry.

  He stumbled and staggered into the thankfully empty roadway like a man carting his drunk drinking buddy out of a bar. He regained his balance and tottered back toward the car. He lined up the shot and deposited the man right into the driver’s seat. The dead man’s head banged solidly against the door frame, but he did not seem to mind.

  Solomon adjusted the corpse in the seat, buckling him in, placing his hands on the steering wheel and wrapping his stiff fingers around it. Ordinarily, this sort of thing would have freaked Solomon the hell out, but not tonight. He was just too scared. When the man was properly situated in the driver’s seat, he returned to the trunk and removed the final three pieces of the puzzle before slamming it shut.

  A bottle of bourbon.

  A pack of cigarettes.

  A lighter.

  He shook a cigarette loose from the pack, lit it, took a few puffs. It trembled in his hand, but it calmed his nerves. It made him feel like he was in charge of his destiny.

  In the distance, the white sodium glow of headlights appeared over the crest of a hill about a mile to the south. It was a clear night, and he could see a long way.

  “Shit,” he said, dropping the cigarette to the ground and crushing it under his shoe.

  He slipped into the backseat and slammed the door behind him. He reached around the driver’s seat and unbuckled the seatbelt. The corpse tipped over on its side, across the console and under the window line. Solomon ensured the car was turned off, the lights extinguished.

  The Doppler effect of the approaching vehicle grew
stronger. Solomon held his breath and shut his eyes tight, as though that would make any difference. Unless it was a state trooper, he really didn’t think the car would pay him any mind. Most folks did not stop to assist stranded motorists, especially at two in the morning on a desolate stretch of road such as this. The car blew by without so much as a second look. Solomon’s car rocked slightly as the other vehicle rocketed past him toward its unknown destination. After a quick check of the road behind him, he leaned into the front seat, repositioned the corpse at the wheel, and buckled him back in.

  It was time.

  He got out of the car and said a little prayer for the deceased man. Other than the fact that he had been homeless and that he was now dead, Solomon knew virtually nothing about him. It was a shame, really, because he was about to become an important player in a grand game. In some ways, he was as important as Solomon himself.

  This wasn’t self-aggrandizement on Solomon’s part.

  It was a combination of fate, brains, and bad, bad luck.

  He was a brilliant scientist. Beginning at a young age, he had demonstrated remarkable aptitude for the physical sciences. He graduated from high school a year early, finished college in two years, and had completed his first doctorate by the age of twenty-one in environmental science. He went to work for the NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, the government agency dedicated to studying and improving the health of the planet’s oceans and atmosphere.

  He added a second doctorate in climatology by the time he was twenty-five. He loved his work; it was all he cared about. It had cost him his marriage, but that was okay with him because his heart had never been in it in the first place. Georgane was a lovely woman, and she had deserved so much better than him. Fortunately, she had found it and was now mother to twin high school freshmen. She was a beloved elementary school teacher. Perhaps he should warn her.

  His work had drawn the attention of a powerful thinktank, which hired him shortly after the ink on that second doctorate had dried. He worked on cutting-edge science, all geared toward averting the certain climate catastrophe awaiting all of them. Reducing carbon emissions, protecting the Arctic sea ice, optimizing renewable energy sources. It was incredibly intoxicating work. This group of a dozen scientists drawn from multiple disciplines.

  Then it had taken a turn. A very dark turn.

  If they found him, they would kill him.

  He had tried going to the FBI. But they had had someone on the inside, someone waiting for a leak. They had been waiting for him. That night, he slept in a motel room he’d paid for with cash and woke up the next morning to discover his house had exploded. According to the news, the cause had been an unexplained gas leak.

  Right.

  That was when he had run.

  And now he was here.

  He opened the bottle of bourbon and took a long swig. It was good bourbon. Looking back, he wasn’t sure why he hadn’t simply bought the bottom-shelf swill, which would have been thirty dollars cheaper. Ah well, at least it was smooth going down. He took a second swig, smaller this time, savoring it. Hell, if ever he had earned a stiff drink, it was right now.

  He tipped the bottle over and splashed the corpse with the rest of the liquor. Now he did feel badly. It was a shame to spill such good bourbon, even in furtherance of such an important mission. The car reeked of the oakiness of the whiskey.

  He leaned over the corpse’s lap and shifted the vehicle into neutral. Positioned as it was on a slight grade, the car began to roll.

  Shit, he should have had the cigarette lit already.

  Using one hand to steer the car as he jogged alongside it, he deftly plucked a cigarette from the pack in his shirt pocket and slid it between his lips. Then he quickly lit it with tremorous hands. He took a long drag, ensuring the tip had ignited, and tossed the smoldering cigarette into the dead man’s lap.

  The fire bloomed instantly as the car continued rolling toward its date with destiny. Luckily, the grade of the road wasn’t particularly steep, and a healthy jog kept Solomon alongside the rolling vehicle. Just a few more yards now to the gap between the rock formation and guardrail.

  Like threading a needle.

  Just a few more seconds.

  The car slipped right through the gap. Solomon’s forward momentum jostled him against the guardrail, but he was able to grip the metal railing before tumbling over. The car, however, cleared the unprotected shoulder. The undercarriage scraped the edge of the roadway as it toppled over and gravity took over.

  The bloom of fire had already engulfed the passenger compartment. It was just a matter of time now. The car bounced along the steep hill, which dropped sharply before shearing off into a vertical cliff. The car plunged one hundred feet and, much to Solomon’s delight, exploded on impact.

  The fireball was so intense, the heat radiated against Solomon’s face.

  He watched the conflagration for a moment and said another prayer for the dead man. As a scientist, he struggled with the faith that had been instilled in him as a child by his grandmother, the churchiest woman he had ever known. But tonight, he felt the strength and sincerity of the prayer deep in his bones. In death, this anonymous man had saved Solomon’s life.

  He followed the prayer with an expression of thanks.

  The plan had worked.

  He just might stay alive.

  As the fire burned at the bottom of the ravine, he turned and jogged away into the darkness.

  1

  Five Years Later

  It was time to make bread.

  Two cups of newly milled flour sat atop the kitchen island while Lucy Goodwin studied the no-knead bread recipe. Although she did not normally work in the kitchen, she’d had a hankering for fresh bread she’d seen to herself. And the community encouraged its citizens to cross-pollinate their skill sets. You never knew when you might be called on to work in an area unfamiliar to you. She was a good enough cook, but baking had always been her Achilles’ heel. Just the thought of the aroma of baking bread was enough to make her mouth water. Today was her off day, and so she had decided to spend it honing her culinary skills. It was a rare opportunity, as her days were normally full. She would not exit today without bread.

  She mixed the flour, yeast, and salt in a plastic bowl, her eyes darting from bowl to recipe. After mixing the dry ingredients, she added most of the water and began stirring the solution, swirling it into a viscous paste. She was left with a thick, sticky ball of dough. Around her, the kitchen staff hustled to and fro, preparing the day’s breakfast for the community’s nearly two hundred residents.

  Lucy’s eyes darted to the next line in the recipe.

  Cover bowl with plastic wrap and let rest in a warm place for twelve to eighteen hours

  Twelve to eighteen hours?

  Her heart sank. She briefly considered dumping the entire thing in the trash, but finally, at forty-four, she’d managed to grab a hold of her temper. She had not read the recipe in its entirety before beginning her work. She would just have to wait until the next day for her fresh bread. It would be worth it though, she reminded herself. It would be so worth it. Baked up in the brick oven, slathered with a little jam. So good. Nothing came easy these days. Anything worth having was hard. Every meal, every drink of water, every good night’s sleep came at a price.

  “How’s that bread coming along?” asked Taylor Rutschmann, a bespectacled brunette woman about Lucy’s age. She’d been assigned to the kitchen since the community’s inception. She was quite adept at taking the community’s bounty and stretching it to feed dozens of mouths.

  “Think I’m done,” Lucy said. “Just need to let it rise.”

  “Leave it on that table over there,” Taylor said, pointing to a sunny corner of the kitchen. “It stays warm there. Good for the dough.”

  Lucy set the bowl on a small table and fixed a cup of tea before taking her leave of the kitchen. Impatient as she was, she stole a glance at the bowl on her way out the door, wishing she
didn’t have to wait until the next day for fresh bread. Damn unfair. These days, tomorrow was not at all guaranteed. You just never knew anymore. If you had fresh bread, you ate it today.It was a nice but chilly morning.

  It was early, a little past seven. Now that the bread was done and set to proof, the day was open in front of her. She was still on call, of course. As the community’s chief medical officer, she never had a true day off. But she still liked to take advantage of her pseudo-break. A book. A book would be nice. It had been a long time since she’d gotten lost in a book. A long talk with a book was often what she needed to soothe her soul.

  She made the short walk from the kitchen to the cottage she shared with two dozen. The cottage was quiet. Most of her housemates were still asleep on this Sunday morning. She lingered at the bookcase in the foyer, the small library they had pieced together over the past four years, unable to decide on something to read. Her free time was so sparse she couldn’t afford to get into it with a book she didn’t love.

  Just pick one. Give it ten pages, and if you don’t love it, move on to the next one.

  She finally selected a Stephen King novel, 11/22/63, which she’d long been meaning to get to. She went back outside, set a blaze going in the outdoor fire pit, and began to read. Instantly, she was swept up in it. Thirty minutes passed as she sank deeper and deeper into the story. So engrossed was she that she did not hear her visitor approaching. Terri Packard, one of the nurse aides, was within arm’s reach before Lucy sensed someone was there. It startled her so badly, she dropped the book.