The Last Days of October by Jackson Spencer Bell

Author:Jackson Spencer Bell [Bell, Jackson Spencer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Thriller
Published: 2015-06-29T18:30:00+00:00

So she let them go. She didn’t even invite them to her wedding or tell them when she had Amber. Now, two decades later, she drove through a deserted town with her hands gripping the steering wheel and thought, I chose him. I always chose him.

They rolled through town at fifteen miles an hour, windows down so as not to impede their hearing. The Wal-Mart complex sat on the southern edge of Deep Creek, where the highway forgot its country nature and grew suburban ambitions. Normally teeming with traffic, the two lanes running in either direction were empty today. The mere sight of it filled her with dark foreboding.

“Jesus,” Justin muttered from the back seat.

“Yep,” Amber said.

Heather stopped in the middle of the deserted road just before the entrance to the Wal-Mart parking lot. Amber pointed at the store. “I think the lights are on.”

Heather squinted. The giant box superstore stood as the centerpiece in a strip mall. Two rectangular blocks of smaller stores, one on each side, ran perpendicular to the road. Seeing it for the first time on the day they had moved here, she had thought it reminiscent of a king on his throne with his vassals on benches arrayed before him. A chiropractor, a beauty salon, a Chinese restaurant and nearly two dozen other stores stood ready to snatch the shopping dollars Wal-Mart didn’t consume first.

The parking spaces before these smaller stores stood empty. A smattering of vehicles filled the spaces closest to Wal-Mart itself. Heather followed the invisible beam shooting from Amber’s finger all the way to the lights burning atop the lampposts nearest the store. Barely noticeable beneath the noonday sun, the security lights mounted on the store blazed, too. Heather would have missed it on her own.

“I thought the power was supposed to be out,” Amber said.

“Generator,” Heather said. “So they don’t lose everything in power outages. Must have kicked on when the power went out.”

“That’s a good sign, right? That the generator is still running? Surely there’s somebody in there maintaining it?”

“Yeah,” Heather said. “It’s a really good sign.”

She pulled into the parking lot, then whipped around to where the windshield faced the road.

“What are you doing?” Amber asked.

“Being smart,” Heather replied. She put the truck in park and ejected the magazine from the grip of the Ruger. Amber staring at her from the passenger seat, she loaded three more rounds to replace the ones expended the night before. “When I get out, I want one of you in the driver’s seat, ready to go.”

“I want to come in,” Amber said.

“You can. Just as soon as I check it out and make sure it’s safe. If you hear shots, you go. If somebody other than me comes out, go. If ten minutes passes and I’m still not out and you don’t see anybody, go. Do not come looking for me. Is that clear?”

“Why don’t you give me the gun and let me go check it out?” Justin asked. “You can stay out here with your daughter.

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