Black Daylight Read online

  They had abandoned him—not the first time. And certainly, not the last.

  Widow didn’t harp on it. Instead, he gave himself the green light on the coffee, paid for it at the counter, where he made small talk with the clerk. He asked him about the area, about the nearest places, about what lay ahead on Highway Sixteen.

  It turned out that nothing lay ahead on the old highway for thirty miles or so.

  Along the north side of the highway, Widow had seen numerous turnoffs with no signs, no indications of where they went.

  The clerk told him that they all pretty much connected to Interstate Ninety.

  That was why he had decided to take one of them. First, he camped out waiting around on the highway, but he wasn’t having much luck there.

  So why not try one of the lonely roads? Take it up to the interstate, which surely would’ve been busier.

  That’s where he was now. Walking one of those country roads with no visible name posted on a sign.

  The road had been empty so far. It was devoid of life. No houses. No businesses. No nothing, but there were some power lines that led north.

  That’s what he followed. Powerlines have to lead somewhere.

  Trillions of stars draped across a calm sky above him, as they did every night. The only obstruction was the thin veil of snow clouds rolling across the sky, slow and looming. They didn’t block out the starlight; they just added a misty veil below them.

  The moon was out, not full, but a half moon. Still, it shone bright and illuminating like a dying sun billions of miles on the horizon.

  The road under Jack Widow’s worn boots was white but the night was black. It was black behind him. It was black in front of him. Most of what he saw directly in his path was the endless, dull gloom and the snowfall.

  Looking up, he saw treetops, exposed high, just peeking out from over the dispersed, low fog. The leaves on the trees were gone, replaced by hanging white snow.

  He walked on for around twenty minutes when he felt a change. Not a fast, snap-of-the-fingers kind of change. It wasn’t all of a sudden. It had been gradual. As he walked the road, it had happened to him.

  The farther he walked on, the more the atmosphere turned to darkness that carried a sensation of evil, like taking a wrong turn and the road becomes a dead end.

  The atmosphere consumed him. It was hard to avoid it. Hard not to be affected by it. It was all around like being trapped in a snow globe and knowing that something wasn’t right.

  Something was off.

  It reminded him of a painting that he had seen once. It hung on the wall of an admiral’s office, way back a lifetime ago.

  He couldn’t remember the admiral—not one detail. He must’ve been a forgettable CO, like a person he had passed on the street once. No reason to remember someone from so long ago.

  The painting was famous. It was the one with the flat earth and the old colonial maritime explorer ship, sails fully extended, wind blowing hard, surrounded by rough seas, white swells crashed into the sides of the ship; but up ahead on its current course was a drop-off, like a cliff that fell into space.

  It was the end of the world, literally.

  The winds carried the ship straight off the earth’s edge. The ship sailed right to it. No stopping it at this point. No turning back.

  The captain and the crew were utterly unaware of their pending doom. Completely unaware.

  That’s how the ocean is. When you’re floating in it, waiting to be rescued, maybe, you can see nothing ahead of you—no way to gauge what’s over the next wave. You’re just stuck there, bobbing up and down. Stuck at the mercy of the ocean, the mercy of nature.

  You’re helpless. All you can do is tread water and hope for the best. Or you can let the fear get to you. Wait and die—only two choices.

  At that moment, Widow felt that way down deep in the pit of his stomach. He wasn’t sure why.

  He should’ve turned back. He should’ve gone back the other way, but Widow hated turning back. What was behind him was behind him.

  Fear wasn’t a feeling he was used to, but that’s how he felt. It came from his primal brain.

  The human brain has fear receptors lodged way in the back, set there from another time, a prehistoric time. One aspect of the brain that was never touched by evolution was the fear of death.

  Back during the Stone Age, the fear receptors fired off, alerting ancient man to be fearful of predators. It’s the original survival instinct. Fear warns people of danger.

  Stay cautious. Stay vigilant. Stay alive.

  Unlike those of the sailors on the ship, Widow’s fear receptors were firing as they should’ve been.

  He stepped one foot in front of the other, down a snowy two-lane road, underneath snow-covered trees. They loomed over the road like giant gatekeepers who had once been intimidating but were now frozen and dormant and still and lifeless.

  In the distance, above the tree line, Widow saw the cold shadows of jagged mountain peaks. He had no idea what range they were from. He knew that he was somewhere in South Dakota’s Black Hills, but exactly where?

  He had no idea.

  The trees and the mountains faded in and out of clear view through the snowy, night mist.

  The mist seemed to make everything around him just out of focus. Nothing was in perfect focus, nothing beyond a range of twenty yards in front of his face.

  As he walked, he thought that he was utterly alone, but he wasn’t.

  Widow walked to the top of a short hill when something happened that broke the stillness.

  Hard to measure the distance away at first, but he guessed that about fifty yards up ahead, and down the hill, he heard a swift CLANG sound, like metal on metal.

  It echoed and bounced off the trees.

  A fast second later, whatever it was, clanged again, and then a third time. All three CLANGS echoed in and out of the treetops and through the mist.

  Widow’s brain registered the sound instantly. It was a common, everyday sound, manmade and known by everyone who wasn’t raised by wolves.

  The clanging sound was a trunk lid or a pickup’s rear metal toolbox being slammed shut.

  Widow stopped and stood frozen, and tried to keep quiet. He looked ahead so he could pinpoint the exact spot where the sound originated.

  The trunk lid didn’t clang again.

  Instead, he heard a car door squeak open on rusty hinges; then he heard another almost a second later. Two people. Following the car doors opening, he heard rusty, old springs stretch. Finally, two car doors slammed shut.

  Hoping to get a ride he called out, “Hey! Wait!”

  No one called back to him. He wasn’t sure if they heard him or not. He tried again with more bass in his voice.

  “Hey! Wait!”

  No answer.

  “Wait!” he called out again.

  Widow paused, waited for a response, but there was nothing.

  An ignition switch sparked to life, and a motor sputtered, followed by a heavy foot gassing the vehicle, hard at first.

  Warming up the engine, Widow figured.

  He didn’t want to lose the ride, so he moved. He jogged down the hill, letting gravity and momentum push him. He jogged hard, carelessly through the snow. He hoped he could catch them before they took off.

  It was the middle of the night, middle of nowhere, and he was no one’s ideal stranger to come upon under these conditions. But it was cold out, and getting a firm no from two people was better than not having the option of asking.

  So, he hustled down the hill, trekking through the snow on the ground, kicking up the wetness. Before long, he saw the brake lights flash on. They flashed bright and vivid and red, which contrasted with the utter darkness that surrounded him. The beams were magnified through the mist, increased by the mist’s potency, as if the brake lights went from zero to a hundred. They were so bright that the light blinded Widow for a brief second. It felt like a cop was shining a crimson Maglite in his face.

  N
ext, the brake lights reverted to rear taillights and an engine rumbled hard once more from a heavy foot, and he heard the winding of a drive belt, and the whirring of fan blades, and the sputter of tires in snow.

  He called out once more, a shot in the dark, he knew, but worth the shot anyway.

  “Hey! Wait!”

  Then he stopped.

  The cold wind slapped across his face. He watched for a long, long second as the taillights faded into the night vapor, into the blackness, into the trees.

  Widow’s shoulders slumped in minor defeat. He pushed forward and walked on, reaching behind where the lights had once been. The red beams had left spots in his vision, telling him the vehicle’s last known position. He wasn’t sure of the distance because of the fog, but once he got to the spot where the car had been parked, he knew it.

  The spots faded away.

  Widow stopped in the tire tracks left behind from the vehicle. He stood in them and trivially wondered why they were parked out there in the first place. Maybe a pair of teenagers messing around? Hanging out? Drinking beer or smoking pot? Or making out?

  He sniffed the air, smelled no lingering smells like weed or booze. Marijuana would’ve definitely stuck around. Booze probably would still be present, but he smelled neither.

  Ahead in the mist, Widow saw nothing but dense trees and snow and more mist.

  He ambled up to the shoulder of the two-lane road and started walking, following the direction of the car when he suddenly heard something. He waited, listened. He heard familiar sounds, living sounds—sounds that he knew he had heard before. These were the kinds of sounds that could only be made by a living, breathing thing, like exhales or grunts.

  It was low at first, faint as if someone was muffled with a hand over their mouth, or a rag stuffed in it.

  Widow turned and stared left, swiveling his head, scanning as best he could through the fog to pinpoint the sound. He stayed still and focused.

  He heard it again and again, and then it stopped.

  He recognized that there was another sound, drowned behind it in about the same direction out in front of him, which seemed down and to the west.

  The new sound wasn’t grunting or breathing or any audible noises made from a mouth, not like the first sound. It was different. Something else. Something that could be made by branches in the wind. He listened closer. He let the ambient sounds from the woods around him waft over his ears.

  He listened and heard it again. It sounded like pawing or digging or the shuffling of dirt, like an animal. It must’ve been a woodland creature digging or pawing at something or trying to claw its way out of a trap.

  Widow heard the first sound again. It sounded more like whimpering than before, which reinforced his theory of a woodland critter caught in a trap.

  What could it be? Not a rabbit. They don’t make sounds. Not that he had ever heard before. Maybe it was a mountain lion or a big cat.

  Did South Dakota have mountain lions?

  He wasn’t sure.

  There were mountains not close, but not too far. They were maybe a day’s walk, maybe less.

  It could’ve been a wolf, he thought.

  Would a wolf be out there? Probably, as likely as a mountain lion.

  For a split second, Widow thought about moving on, but then he heard the living sound again. It was definitely whimpering. Something was in distress. Something needed help.

  Widow wasn’t the kind of guy to let wrong things go. Never had been. He didn’t take a pass on anyone or anything that was in distress. Widow didn’t look the other way. He never entertained the thought of letting something go, or driving passed a car accident or doing nothing if he saw someone being picked on, or mugged, or harassed.

  Never ever.

  Widow was the type of man who stepped in. He stepped up. When others backed down, he stood his ground.

  In the SEALs, even his teammates had referred to him as fearless, a big statement from the kind of guys he knew in uniform. But the truth was, he wasn’t fearless. It was quite the opposite.

  Widow felt fear like everybody else, even more than others. But Widow’s instinct wasn’t to shy away from fear. If he felt fear, he ran toward it, not away. He had no choice. He had been raised by a single mother, a sheriff of a small town, and a former Marine at that. She didn’t allow him to step down. She didn’t allow him to give up. Ever. It wasn’t an option.

  Widow walked with confidence for the same reason. He stood with confidence for the same reason. No shred of cowardice existed in him—no shred of turning away. He was incapable of turning tail. He was incapable of backing down.

  In the Navy, he had been trained hard. In BUD/S he had been trained hard. In the SEALs, he had been trained hard.

  If captured, if tortured, if facing the prospect of a bullet to the back of the head or a long, slow death, the only thing that Widow had been permitted to do was give up name and rank. Nothing else.

  Of course, he wasn’t perfect. And all the Navy training, all the SEAL training, all the NCIS training came after he was a man. But there was one time in his life that he had failed. Only once in his life had he ever run away from a problem instead of face it head-on.

  That was roughly two decades in the past. It was when he ran away from home. In an argument with his sheriff mother, he learned that she had lied to him about his father.

  He learned that his father hadn’t died in a war, as he had been told his whole life, as she had lied to him his whole life. He learned that his father was some sort of Army hero who wandered through his small town in Mississippi.

  The man had been a drifter—an Army vet out of the Army. Just some guy who came in, impregnated his mother and washed out again like the rolling tide.

  Where was he now?

  Widow had no idea.

  The guy was a drifter, a ghost in the wind which might explain Widow’s drive to do the same. After Widow’s mother was shot and murdered, he returned home for the first time in sixteen years. After he dealt with the people responsible, as he often did, he decided not to re-up with his NCIS unit. He decided to move on. Suddenly, like his unknown father, Widow knew he was destined to be without destiny. He was fated to be without fate. He was a man who walked with chance and luck, alone.

  Widow stood tall and called out in case the whimpering was coming from somebody’s lost pet or if his worst fear was true, that it was whimpering coming from a human.

  “Hello?” he called out.

  No response.

  “Anyone there?”

  No answer.

  “Hello?”

  He heard nothing.

  “Say something?”

  And suddenly, the whimpering started up again. It wasn’t far away. The sound was within a stone’s throw.

  Widow took a glance ahead at the road. He could keep going, but he didn’t. Instead, he stepped off the road, four, five paces, and stopped at the edge of a ditch, barely stepping down into it and possibly falling over.

  He looked down and saw the bottom. It was deep for a ditch. Maybe three or four feet. Hard to tell because it was full of snow.

  Widow heard the whimpering again. It got louder, followed by the pawing, also getting louder, more pronounced.

  He knelt, closer to the edge of the ditch, and took a better look at the bottom. The snow was wet. The mist rolled into the ditch like it was funneled through it. It looked like a stream of pure vapor.

  Widow paused and listened.

  The whimpering continued with the pawing in a steady stream of desperation.

  The whimpering sounded almost human, full of sadness and emotion.

  Widow dropped one foot down into the ditch. His boot sank down in the snow. It was cold and damp, not wet like stepping into a hole filled with water, but he could tell his boots would be soggy from it, but it wasn’t that bad.

  He pulled his other foot in. The snow covered the tops of his boots, stopping at the hem of his jeans.

  “Hello?” he called out again.


  He was answered by more whimpering, more pawing, and the wind.

  He stared along the ditch and walked, stomping his boots down with big, heavy steps so that the animal would be aware of his presence in case it was something bigger than a bear cub.

  Widow repeated the process for thirty feet more and stopped. He came to find a dog.

  He was certain what it was from about ten feet away when he heard faint jingling coming from a license dangling from its collar.

  “Hey there,” he said.

  He reached a friendly hand out so the dog could see that he meant no danger to it.

  “Easy. Easy.”

  Widow stepped closer.

  The dog didn’t seem to mind. No barking. No growling. No signs of aggression toward Widow. The dog was friendly.

  A quick peek at the license told Widow nothing, because there was no address on it. No name. No owner listed. It was just an imprint of a paw like a cheap thing bought on the internet, a trinket.

  The dog was not big, but not small. He was somewhere between small and medium, maybe twenty-five or thirty pounds. He was a mutt of some kind. Widow didn’t recognize the breed, but recognized shades of a couple of breeds.

  The dog had floppy ears and an expressive face—big eyes.

  He looked well-fed and cared for and loved. For being down in a ditch, in the snow, out in the middle of a country road, he was still clean. Widow figured he was an inside dog. That was about as obvious as the snow.

  The thing didn’t belong way out here.

  Widow wondered if this was what the driver and passenger of the car had done that felt wrong. He wondered if they brought this poor animal all the way out here, and flung him out the car, and drove off as if to say “good riddance” to the animal.

  The dog’s coat was mostly black with random patches of white. He had thick hair, not long, but not short. It was midrange length.

  “Easy, boy,” Widow said, not sure if he even was a boy.

  The dog was frantic. He continued to whimper and paw at something in front of him. He didn’t pay attention to Widow. He kept his back to him, pawing away. He continued to whimper. Nothing was going to deter him from whatever he was trying to get at.

  Widow had served with the Navy for sixteen years, and much of those years was with the US Navy SEALs. So, Widow knew exactly what relentless determination looked like. This dog was relentlessly determined. He would die before anyone could pull him off whatever he was getting at.