Gone Dark

Amanda Panitch

• Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781534466326
• eBook ISBN: 9781534466333

Dry meets Hatchet in this thrilling tale of survival following a teen girl who must lead her friends across the country to the safety of her estranged father's survivalist compound after a mass power failure leaves the country in chaos. When seventeen-year-old Zara escaped her father's backwoods survivalist compound five years ago, she traded crossbows and skinning hides for electricity and video games…and tried to forget the tragedy that drove her away.Until a malware attack on the United States electrical grids cuts off the entire country's power.In the wake of the disaster and the chaos that ensues, Zara is forced to call upon skills she thought she'd never use again—and her best bet to survive is to go back to the home she left behind. Drawing upon a resilience she didn't know she had, Zara leads a growing group of friends on an epic journey across a crumbling country back to her father's compound, where their only hope for salvation lies.But with every step she takes, Zara wonders if she truly has what it takes to face her father and the secrets of her past, or if she'd be better off hiding in the dark.

1

Somebody is going to die tonight.

Preferably, it won’t be me or Gabe. We’ve worked for weeks figuring out how to stay alive, gathering magical items, stocking arrows of all different status types, and cloaking ourselves in armor that will deflect sword points and turn us invisible if necessary. Now we’re waiting to get our hands on the boss ruling over this set of abandoned towers in our unnamed postapocalyptic city.

“You ready?” Gabe asks me over my headset. I flex my fingers, prepping them to dance over my keyboard and punch buttons like they’ve never danced and punched before. My character waits patiently in front of me on the center monitor, her shoulders rising and falling in a way more understated manner than mine would be if I were the one about to put my actual life at risk.

That’s not the only difference between us, of course. She’s tall. Strong. She moves as fast as a whip and says funny, clever things in her smoky voice whenever I give her the command to joke or flirt. Meanwhile, I’m all business. “Ready. Let’s go.”

Gabe is already moving toward the gaping black hole of a door. Gritty sand rises around his character’s combat boots with every step, and the moon shines down on him from overhead, just as it does through my real-life window. “If we can pull this off…,” he says into my ear. It catches me off guard, and I jump a little from surprise, as if he were really standing beside me speaking huskily into my ear. Which he is not, and which he never has, no matter how many times he’s driven me home from school. “It’ll be a realm first. It’ll be worth all those nights of skipping out on my friends to train.”

I give him an unconvincing laugh. “Yeah. I’ve been skipping out on my friends too.”

What friends? he’s polite enough not to say back. It’s hard to lie to someone when your best—and only—friend is their sister. Thank goodness for headphones, or Estella would be rolling her eyes on the other side of their shared bedroom wall right now.

But whatever. We’ve got a boss to kill. I make my character follow his silently, her feet moving so lightly over the dust left behind by a thousand battles that they don’t stir any of it up. That’s our party configuration: Gabe is the warrior who charges in and draws all the attention and the attacks, and I’m the rogue who slinks in behind him and destroys everybody from the dark. Most parties have at least a healer, as well, and we will too, as soon as we can convince Estella to join us.

I direct my character forward, and we disappear into the blackness of the room. I tell Gabe to hold back for a moment so that anything there can show itself before we stumble upon it. In the void I think I can hear my dad’s voice in my ear for a moment. Very smart, playing to your strengths. Though I know it’s in my head, I still jolt, jittery as I am. You’re small and should rely on your speed and your evasiveness, not up-front brute strength.

Those skills were part of the reason I chose to be a rogue in the first place, though much of the reason I love gaming is that I can be anything on that screen. Anything at all.

Besides, who am I kidding? There’s no chance my dad would approve of what I’m doing. I picture him back on the compound my mom and I left him at years ago, a self-sustaining home in the thick of the woods, unmarked on any map. He’s shaking his head at me. Frittering your time away on silly games when there’s a doomsday coming? Can you shoot a bow like your character can? Can you scale the side of a building? Can you creep soundlessly behind your prey before you cut them down? I don’t need to answer him. No. No, you cannot. You’re soft. When doomsday comes, you will fall with all the rest of them.

I realize I’m blinking very fast. “Zara?” Gabe says through my headset. “Are we good?”

“Sorry! Yes!” I send my character rushing forward, and for a while I manage to lose myself in the melee, in the spray of digital blood and the crunch of digital bone. Exhilaration floods hot through me. Gabe cheers in my ear.

“I’ll distract the final guard while you climb up high and attack from above, okay?” he says.

“That’s just what I was about to say.” My character climbs like a spider, digging fingers and toes into almost invisible crevices, and then I settle her on a rafter, where she can peer down on the carnage below. She loads her crossbow. Sets it. Waits. Allows the doubt to creep back in.

Wait. That’s me. You should be exercising more than your fingers, Zara, says my dad, his voice disapproving. Like we used to. Drills with the rising sun. Hunting as that sun beats down on the back of your neck, burning it to a crisp. Falling to bed exhausted and hungry after failing to bag that deer you were hunting, because that is how you learn your lessons.

He wanted what was best for me. I knew that then, and I know that now.

It’s just that his idea of what was best for me was different from the rest of the world’s.

I refocus on the game as the final guard between us and the boss’s chamber lets out a loud roar and charges at Gabe. The guard is almost a boss himself, with impenetrable silver armor covered in swirls of browning blood from his many kills. This is where every party has been wiping so far, because they didn’t notice what we have: the opening in the shoulder of his plate. His only weakness. Since he’s so tall, Gabe and I knew we couldn’t hit that spot from below. Someone would need to climb up high. Someone who has skill with a crossbow.

Gabe’s sword meets the guard’s with a clang and a grunt. I twitch my finger. Thwip.

The guard roars again, only this time it’s in pain. His fingers scrabble at his shoulder, but it’s too late. My arrow landed smack in the middle of his weak spot, and his armor is crumbling, falling off him as fine bits of ash. “Yessss,” I hiss into the headset. “It worked.” Now that his armor is gone, Gabe makes quick work of him, me contributing with arrows to stun and poison from above. When I leap down, a distance that would in real life potentially break an ankle but in the game just takes away a few hit points, he gives me a high five.

“It’s finally time,” I say. Electricity courses through me.

His character gives me a bow. “You do the honor.”

I trot forward, door key—which was a whole other quest to obtain—in my hand. My heart thumps. My fingers tingle. The door flies open and the boss cries out. We lunge in, ready to do battle, and—

Everything goes black.

2

There are definitely worse times to lose power. Like, I could be splayed on a cold steel operating table, blades and fingers probing my heart, tiny electrical pulses the only thing keeping my blood going glub-glub.

But I’m not. I’m in my bedroom, seated in the cushioned black chair that spins so I can go back and forth between my three computer screens. All of which are currently black.

We were so close to finishing that battle. So close. As much as I try to tell myself things could be worse, that I could be bleeding out during surgery, I still release a string of curses loud enough to wake the dead. My fists ball at my sides, and I push my chair back so I don’t put them through the center screen.

I hear my mom’s feet hit the ground from the other side of the house, and all my muscles tense at once. Like magic, she appears in my doorway. She’s nothing more than a shadow, at least until she speaks. Her voice is low and deadly. “Zara. Elizabeth. Ross.”

I kind of wish I’d woken the dead instead.

“I’m sorry—” I start, but she bulldozes right over me.

“Do you realize that this is the first good night’s sleep I’ve been able to get all week thanks to the budget crisis at city hall? Did I not tell you to keep quiet unless the house was on fire and you couldn’t figure out a way to quietly put it out?”

I want to apologize again, but I know better than to interrupt her once she starts going. We’re alike in that way: when we’re onto something, we don’t let it go till we run out of energy, which is great when it comes to studying for a test or defeating bosses, but less great when you’re on the wrong end of a lecture.

My mom takes a deep breath. I brace myself, but something catches her eye outside my window, and she squints. I can just barely see the lines of her face and the wild tangle of her hair. “Did the power go out or just the streetlight?”

I seize upon any opportunity to spin a bit of her rage off me. “Yes! The power. Can you believe it?” I wave my arm at the window, which is a square of darkness, the moon a pearl in the top corner. “It’s not even raining or anything.” I glance at her sidelong to see if she’s buying it. Her lips are set in a thin line, and her eyes are still slits. “Our power company is the worst.”

I hold my breath for a moment, and then she sighs. I sigh with her. Lecture averted.

“They are the worst,” she says. “But let’s look at it as a positive: they got you off your computer.”

I roll my eyes. “Very funny.”

“I’m not joking,” she says. “Don’t you have to wake up in seven hours?”

“It’s easier to wake up early if you don’t go to sleep at all. It’s just like one very long night.”

“Zara!”

“Fine.” I glance at my screens. They’re still all too blank. “I’ll go to bed, even though I won’t be able to fall asleep. I’ll lie there and stare so hard at the ceiling that I might light it on fire, but don’t worry. I won’t scream and wake you up. I’ll just quietly burn to death.”

“I take it back,” my mom says, eyebrow raised. “The power company isn’t the worst. You are.”

“Good night, Mom.” I step forward and let her kiss my forehead, then wrap her arms around my shoulders and squeeze tightly.

“Good night, Zara,” she says, and she lingers a moment, like she wants to say something else. But she doesn’t. She knocks a hand on the edge of the doorframe, then turns and leaves. Her footsteps pad back down the hall, her door creaks closed, and I’m alone again in the darkness.

My fingers itch. Everything itches. It’s been only maybe ten minutes, but I miss my screens so fiercely that I don’t know what to do with all the energy coursing through me. We were so close. How can anyone expect me to relax?

I grab for my phone; the itching calms a bit as its cool glass slides into my hand. It vibrates as soon as it hits skin; it’s Estella. I picture her hunched over her phone, long black hair tied in a messy bun that wobbles on top of her head. I hear Gabe cursing through the wall, I assume you’re cursing too?

I send her a frowny face and, just for good measure, the bursting-into-tears face. Then the crossbow. She gets it and responds immediately. Sounds like it’s time to blow up the power company.

I hide a smile. Some of the tension drains away. I don’t think that will help the situation. She sends only a shrug in response.

I let out a groan and flop facedown on my bed with my phone still gripped in my hand. It feels good to have the only working device held tight against my chest—almost like a security blanket. I curl up around it and bury my face in my old stuffed walrus, letting exhaustion carry me off to sleep.

3

I wake to the jaunty tune of my phone alarm, sweat matting my hair to the back of my neck. I grab for it and switch it off, then remember the whole power outage thing. I hop up, ignoring the dizzy tilt to the room that reminds me how stupid early it is, and settle back into my computer chair.

The screen blinks on. Relief washes over me as my computer runs through its system diagnostics. Power’s back. Everything’s okay again.

And school can wait a little while. I’ll skip my shower this morning. I’ll eat my Pop-Tart cold on the bus instead of taking the time to heat it up in the microwave.

After clicking into the game, I scroll through the logs from last night and swear. Several hours after we were kicked off, some other party achieved our achievement. We could log back on tonight and try again, but we’ll no longer be the realm’s first.

I have to kill something right now. I port my character into the nearest free-for-all arena, where I content myself by mercilessly slaughtering some other players, which gives me a surprise quest, so I might as well—

“Zara Elizabeth Ross.”

I jump a little in my seat. It takes a moment to disconnect from the world of the game, to transport myself from the gritty, bomb-blasted arena to the bland eggshell-white walls of my suburban Los Angeles home. Another moment to translate the ominous in-game music to the stern voice of my mom. “What?” I say, irritated.

“Aren’t you going to miss your bus?”

As if on cue, the roar of the bus echoes from down the street. I jump to my feet. “Crap.” So much for a Pop-Tart at any temperature. I grab my backpack, wash some toothpaste around in my mouth, allow a precious second for my mom to kiss me on the forehead, and make it out front just in time to stumble up those gum-crusted steps.

Estella’s already in our seat in the safe back-middle: not far enough up front to be smirked at, but not in the best places in the back (the best, at least, until senior year finally rolls around and we’re allowed to drive to school).

“You look grungy today,” she says in greeting. She is the opposite of grungy, as always: her eyelashes are dark and full against her light brown skin, and her thick black hair is tied back in two long, frizz-free braids. “Have you ever heard of a brush?”

I flop down in our seat. “Good morning to you too.”

She graciously grants me use of the comb she keeps in her purse along with some of her mascara. By the time we rumble into the school parking lot, I feel like a vaguely presentable human being.

“This ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Chapter 1
• 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
• Chapter 33
• Chapter 34
• Chapter 35
• Chapter 36
• Chapter 37
• Chapter 38
• Chapter 39
• Chapter 40
• Chapter 41
• Chapter 42
• Chapter 43
• Chapter 44
• Chapter 45
• Chapter 46
• Chapter 47
• Chapter 48
• Chapter 49
• Chapter 50
• Chapter 51
• Chapter 52
• Chapter 53
• Chapter 54
• Chapter 55
• Chapter 56
• Chapter 57
• Chapter 58
• Chapter 59
• Chapter 60
• Chapter 61
• Chapter 62
• Chapter 63
• Chapter 64
• Chapter 65
• Chapter 66
• Chapter 67
• Chapter 68
• Chapter 69
• Chapter 70
• Chapter 71
• Chapter 72
• Chapter 73
• Chapter 74
• Chapter 75
• Chapter 76
• Chapter 77
• Chapter 78
• Chapter 79
• Chapter 80
• Chapter 81
• Chapter 82
• Chapter 83
• Chapter 84
• Chapter 85
• Chapter 86
• Chapter 87
• Chapter 88
• Chapter 89
• Epilogue
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Copyright