Gateway To Chaos (Book 1): Seeking Safety, page 1
part #1 of Gateway To Chaos Series
Seeking Safety
Gateway to Chaos Series, Book One
Copyright © 2020 by T. L. Payne
All rights reserved.
Cover design by Deranged Doctor Design
Edited by Mia Darien at LKJ Books & Freelancing
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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Created with Vellum
For Colton, the world’s best big brother!
Chapter 1
Delmar Arms Apartments
St. Louis, Missouri
February 8th - 7:30 p.m. CST
Raine Caldwell was startled by the slamming of a car door. Keys rattled, followed by the sound of heavy footsteps behind her. She stopped cold in the blackness. Raine hated walking to her apartment building in the dark. The security lights were out in the parking lot. She wished now that she'd fished the flashlight out of her bookbag before exiting her car.
Standing on the sidewalk with a laundry basket balanced on one hip and a bottle of laundry detergent in her other hand, she wished she'd hadn’t stuffed her apartment key into her pants pocket. Her heart began to race as the footsteps were joined by a second sound of clomping boots on concrete. They were moving quickly in her direction. Raine picked up her pace. She tried to tell herself she was just paranoid. She considered stepping aside and letting them pass, but one side of the narrow sidewalk was bordered by thorny bushes and the other by parked cars.
The tone of the voices supported her presumption that the clomping feet behind her belonged to two males.
How close were they? She was afraid to look. Her heart was hammering inside her chest.
“Want some help with that basket, pretty momma?” a husky voice behind her asked.
“Twenty more feet. Just twenty more feet. Don’t panic,” she told herself.
“No, thank you,” Raine yelled back as she rushed toward the door.
“Come on. That big old laundry basket looks way too heavy for a little thing like you.”
“No. I’ve got it. Thanks.”
Ten more feet.
“No, really. Let me get that for you,” the man hollered insistently.
Raine heard the heavy footfalls speed up. She didn’t dare turn to look—that would take too much time. Relief washed over her as she approached the door and discovered it propped open. Normally, she’d be upset with her neighbors’ lax security, but at that moment, it was a blessing.
As she went through, she kicked the rock holding the door open and let it bang shut behind her. When she reached the stairwell to her third-floor apartment, she realized the light in the stairwell was out as well. She’d have to climb them in the dark. Raine tripped on the first step, righted herself, and took the rest of the stairs two at a time. The sound of her own feet hitting the steps drowned out any possibility of hearing if the men had followed her. If they had, she couldn’t be sure how close they were.
At the third-floor landing, Raine dropped the basket and detergent and reached into her right front pocket for the door key. At that moment, she wanted to kick herself for carrying a keyring with so many charms and keys that made it difficult to remove from her jeans.
Raine fumbled with her keys before locating the correct one. As she attempted to unlock the door, she dropped the keys with a clatter.
“Crap!” she said out loud.
Raine quickly knelt and frantically ran her hand across the floor. The mere seconds it took to locate the keys felt like hours as she listened for the men. The door downstairs banged shut. Were they in the building? Footfalls in the stairwell echoing off the walls amplified her urgency to get inside.
She vowed to herself to move to a safer neighborhood once her lease was up, but this apartment had been the cheapest place she could find this close to campus, and she was already a mile and a half away from the university. She hadn’t expected rent in St. Louis to be so high. Housing around WashU's campus wasn’t cheap. Still, it was less expensive than living in the dorm, and having roommates helped sometimes.
By her left foot, she finally located the keyring and grabbed it. She shot to her feet and quickly inserted the key into the lock. The footfalls grew louder. They were nearing the top of the landing when she turned the knob and pushed it open with her left hand. With her right hand, she reached for the baseball bat she kept by the door. She turned on her heel and backed into her apartment. As she did, she felt for the light switch. She flipped it up.
Nothing. Her apartment remained pitch-black.
Raine took two quick steps back into her apartment and slammed the door. With her left hand, she turned the deadbolt and slid the chain across. She turned and put her back against the door, her breaths coming in rapid gasps. After placing the bat back into its position leaning against the wall by the door, Raine bent forward, attempting to catch her breath before reaching for the lamp on the side table next to the sofa. Tripping over shoes and her roommate's overstuffed backpack, she extended her right arm and caught herself on the table. Feeling her way up the lamp, she found the switch and turned it—still nothing.
Damn you, Gage. You forgot to pay the electric bill? Again? Really?
Sharing a tiny apartment with three other people hadn’t been her dream living arrangement, but she was a pre-medical student, and money was beyond tight. As her foot hit the backpack a second time, she recalled that her roommate, Elle Ferguson, kept a flashlight in her bag for the long walks across campus at night. Dropping to her knees, Raine felt for the cylinder-shaped object that should be clipped to the outside of her bag. Finally feeling the cold metal, she unclipped it, felt for the switch, and flicked on the small flashlight. It wasn’t super bright, but it illuminated their tiny living room. The clothes strewn about the floor at her feet reminded her that her laundry was still in the hallway by the stairs where she’d dropped it.
Crap!
She turned and looked through the peephole. It was too dark to see anything.
Raine put her ear to the door and listened. She no longer heard the sound of the men’s boots in the hall or in the stairwell. She listened for what seemed like an hour but was probably only a minute or two. She thought she heard whispers, then…nothing. She caught her breath when the door at the bottom of the stairwell slammed shut followed by…silence again. After another minute of listening to nothing, Raine suddenly exhaled, realizing she’d been holding her breath. Raine unlocked the deadbolt and slid the chain back. Raine again grabbed the baseball bat and listened once more before turning the knob. Opening the door just a crack, she shined the flashlight out, scanning the hallway to her right. Not seeing anyone, Raine eased the door open wider and pointed the flashlight’s beam to the left.
Gathering her courage, Raine darted into the hall and flipped her laundry basket upright, stuffing her now-unfolded clothes and the bottle of detergent into the basket before rushing back through her open door and pulling it shut. Raine turned the deadbolt and slid the chain into its slot. The hair on the back of her neck stood as her overactive mind developed a vivid image of the men slipping in while she was getting her laundry. Raine turned and scanned the room with the flashlight.
Satisfied that no one was in the room, Raine turned toward the hallway that led to her room. The first room on the left belonged to her roommates, Elle and Rodney. The next room on the right was Gage’s. At the end of the hall was her tiny bedroom—her escape from the world. And today, she just wanted to escape.
After dropping the basket by her door, Raine plopped on her bed and put her head in her hands. Her pulse pounded, the sound of it loud in her ears. Her breath came in gasps.
Get a grip, Raine.
She took several deep breaths and let them out slowly as she nervously twisted her diamond stud nose ring.
What an awful end to an otherwise crappy day.
While she’d been thrilled when her research project mentor had asked to meet to discuss her project, she greatly resented that he’d pushed the supervisory task to his research assistant. She disliked the guy. He wasn’t committed to the project and hadn’t shown the same enthusiasm the professor had. She’d thought Professor Berry understood how important her genetic research project was. He seemed equally passionate about finding a cure for Ewing’s sarcoma.
His assistant was condescending, and when he’d expressed his sympathy for the loss, he’d said it like losing her brother to pediatric cancer somehow disqualified her from objectively carrying out the project. And when she called him on it, he even said that Raine might be oversensitive. How the hell did he know what it felt like to have a sibling die of cancer? Overly sensitive? No. Raine was passionate about finding a cure. Shouldn’t he be? Overly ambitious for an undergraduate project—that was his critique. Despite his apparent apathy, she’d somehow have to make it work. It was too important for her to let his bias stop her.
Tears stung Raine’s eyes
I won’t give up, David. I miss you, Bubba.
Raine fell back on her bed. She didn’t even bother taking off her clothes before curling up and pulling the covers over her head. She was bone-tired and being chased up the stairs to her apartment had sapped what little energy sh
Reluctantly, Raine threw back the covers, climbed out of bed, and slid her closet door open. On the floor was her hiking backpack. She recalled her last long hike as she loosened a drawstring to pull her sleeping bag out. It still smelled faintly of pine needles. She wished she was there, in the mountains of Colorado—or Utah. Anywhere but St. Louis in the dead of winter.
It wasn’t that she disliked the city. St. Louis was a great place, except for some sketchy parts of town—like where she lived. She just needed a break—a break from the grueling class schedule and from the spoiled rich kids from California and New York that seemed to dominate the campus. She’d refused to join a sorority and wasn’t interested in going to nonstop frat parties, and that seemed to have made her an outcast. She felt invisible.
Most days, Raine didn’t mind being unseen. She was used to it. Raine had even grown to like it. She had been invisible to her mother and father. And to the nurses and doctors of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, where she’d spent the better part of three years during her older brother David's cancer treatments. He’d been the one person who'd seen her—really understood her. Now, she just felt alone.
Raine held the sleeping bag up to her nose, inhaled the fresh pine scent, stood, and rolled it out on the bed. She unzipped it and crawled in, then reached toward the foot of her bed to pull the quilt her grandmother had made her up and over her head as she flopped back. She inhaled deeply, held it, let it out, then quickly fell asleep as memories of hiking with her brother in sunny and warm Arizona washed over her.
Delmar Arms Apartments
St. Louis, Missouri
February 9th - 4:00 a.m. CST
The alarm on Raine’s cell phone buzzed at the ungodly hour of four a. m. Most twenty-year-old college students would just be going to bed at that hour, but not Raine Caldwell. She had four hours of homework to catch up on before her classes started at Washington University. The pre-med program was grueling and required her to study every waking moment just to achieve even a passing grade. Any hope of maintaining her usual four-point grade point average had been dashed in her freshman year. Now, she was just trying to pass her classes in order to have a chance of getting into a decent medical school.
Raine used the flashlight on her cell phone to illuminate the lamp on her bedside table. She reached up and turned the switch.
Nothing happened.
She’d forgotten Gage hadn’t paid the electric bill—again. Gage was always late for everything, including his rent. Unfortunately, so were Elle and Rodney. For the second time in the last few months, Raine had dipped into her savings to cover their portion of the rent. She feared that before long, she’d have to ask her dad for money, something she’d vowed not to do. She wasn’t even sure he’d loan her the money. They hadn’t exactly been close—not since her brother had died, anyway.
She’d need to speak to Gage about the power bill. Gage Duncan was one of those people that felt entitled but hadn’t yet realized that the world didn’t owe him everything. He’d been raised by older parents who’d spoiled him all his life—until he turned twenty-one, and they’d realized he wanted to live off them instead of going to college or getting a job. He’d dropped out to pursue his music career. He and his band played in local bars but were still waiting for their big break. Gage’s parents may have kicked him out of the nest, but his mother secretly still fed her baby bird. Raine was convinced that Gage’s mother still supported him and paid his rent—when he remembered to ask.
Raine sighed and pulled back the blackout curtains to look out the window overlooking the side parking lot. Usually, the security lights attached to the building would fill her tiny bedroom with light, but this morning, those lights were also out.
Raine shook her head, grabbed Elle’s flashlight from the bedside table and held it out in front of her as she tiptoed down the hall and through the living room, narrowly missing the mound of shoes by the sofa. Raine felt her way along the sofa table to the door and peeked through the peephole. The hallway to the stairs was still dark. Opening the door, she peered out, still wary of the strange men who had followed her home the night before. She looked up and down the hallway. It was pitch-black except for the red glow of the exit sign above the stairway.
“Raine,” a voice called from the darkness.
“Hey, Stella,” Raine replied, slightly startled. “What are you doing up this early?”
“I picked up an early shift at the nursing home. Do you have power?” Stella asked. “My lights aren’t working.”
Estella Dominguez was like the building’s dorm counselor. At forty years old, Stella was one of the oldest residents there, besides Latrice Shaw.
Raine stepped into the hallway and pulled the door shut before answering Stella.
“Nope. Mine’s out too,” Raine said, turning to face her.
“I didn’t hear a storm or anything last night. I wonder what knocked the power out this time?” Stella asked.
“I don’t know. The lights were out when I came home last night.”
“I’m gonna call management and see if they know when the power will be back on. I have to get ready for work,” Stella said, backing into her apartment.
“Let me know what you find out, okay?”
“Sure thing,” Stella said as she shut the door.
As Raine turned to go back into her apartment, she felt a twinge of guilt for jumping to the conclusion that it was all Gage’s fault. But as she turned the deadbolt and slid the chain into its slot, she remembered he was late on the rent, and that countered any guilt she felt. After making her way across the dark living room and down the hall to her bedroom, Raine decided to get dressed and go to the coffee shop on the corner to study. If they were also without power, she’d have to ride her bicycle over to campus and study there. No matter what, she had assignments to complete.
Fortunately, the flashlight filled the tiny bathroom with enough light to let her see to get dressed. Raine twisted her long, brunette hair into a messy bun, applied moisturizer to her face, and pulled a long off-white sweater over her black leggings before pulling on her warm boots.
Raine grabbed her coat from her closet. She disliked wearing one. It was one of the things about living in St. Louis she didn’t think she’d ever get used to. Februarys weren’t that cold in Florida. This was her second winter in the Midwest, and she was definitely missing home. She looked down at her hiking pack. Clipped to the side was one of her headlamps. She grabbed that too. After plucking her bookbag and cell phone from the bed, Raine headed downstairs to the bike rack in front of the building. She would normally drive, but she didn’t want to waste the gas. She didn’t have enough money to fill the tank again this week.
Raine slid the headlamp over her forehead and was unchaining her bike when Brice Timmons exited the building. He wore a blue jacket with Delmar Auto Parts Store embroidered over his left breast pocket and Parts Manager over the right. He pulled a matching ballcap over his balding head and approached her.
“Did you hear what happened?” Brice asked.
“No. What?”
“The news said a cyber-attack took out the power grid on the East Coast and set off a chain reaction that knocked out the lights to half the Midwest,” Brice said.
“What? Really? Does that mean that all of St. Louis is without power?" Raine asked as she pulled the lock from her tire.
“That’s what they’re saying. No one knows when they’ll get the power back on. Could be days.”
“Who did it? Was it terrorism?” she asked.
“They aren’t saying officially, but some of the talking heads say it’s Russian hackers. It looks just like when they took out the grid in Ukraine,” Brice said.
"Will they be able to stop them and get the power back on?"
"Oh yeah, they've known this was a possibility. Hell, they've hacked our grid before. They should be able to get it all back up and running pretty soon. They'll likely have to do a section of the grid at a time to avoid overloading the system, though."
