by Lukens, Mark
“I’m with another group, the one that defeated the Dragon. The ones that freed us. They’re in the woods. They’re going to come out now. Don’t shoot at them.”
This was their cue. Petra and Luke walked out the woods with their weapons raised, aimed at the three Dark Angels. Dawson and Martin were off to Luke’s left. The four of them moved in behind Nick.
“Put your weapons down!” Petra yelled at the three Dark Angels.
“They won’t hurt you,” Nick told the Dark Angels. “They just want you to lower your weapons.”
They were closer to Nick now, the four of them fanning out.
The three Dark Angels all looked at Nick; they stood twenty-five feet away, all of them still unsure what to do.
“It’s okay,” Nick told them. “You can trust them. They won’t hurt you. They haven’t hurt me. And Dawson and Martin are here too.” He hitched a thumb back at Dawson and Martin without turning around to look at them.
Something was wrong here. This was too easy.
“Where are Ray and the others?” Petra asked the three Dark Angels. “Have you seen them?”
No answers.
“Where are the other Dark Angels?” she barked. “Did they leave?”
Just then shots rang out. Dawson and Martin fell, Dawson letting out a cry as he crumpled to the ground, Martin was silent . . . his head blown apart.
Petra and Luke turned to fire, but it was too late. Four Dark Angels emerged from the woods, all of them armed, all of them aiming their weapons.
“Throw down your guns,” Nick growled from behind them. “If you don’t want to be killed, throw them down.”
CHAPTER 67
Luke
It was a trap. Luke wasn’t sure how Nick had known, if it had been a contingency plan they had made weeks ago, or if it was something that had been improvised at the last second. But either way, the Dark Angels had them surrounded, their weapons aimed at them.
Luke didn’t want to lay his gun down. And he could tell Petra didn’t want to lay her weapon down either. He was waiting for her, waiting to see what she would do. He was more than ready to die here right now, taking out as many Dark Angels as he could before getting his head blown off. But if they died, there would be no chance to save Ray and the others—if they were even still alive.
It was a shame. Luke could still feel the slight electric tingle from Petra’s kiss. It had been rather unexpected, but more than welcome. He was curious to see where it might lead. But none of that was going to happen now.
“All this is going to do is lead to more bloodshed,” Nick said from behind Luke. It sounded like he had moved to the side, farther away from Luke and out of the path of the bullets that might fly at any second. The other three Dark Angels had probably moved out of the way too. “We won’t kill you. You have my word on that. You had your chance to kill me and you didn’t.”
“I wish we would’ve,” Petra whispered.
“Come on,” Nick said. “You two aren’t stupid. Lay your guns down and we can talk about this. We don’t want any more of our own men to die either.”
“You didn’t mind killing Dawson and Martin,” Petra said.
“They weren’t with us anymore. They were traitors. They were the reason the Dragon got killed.”
“No, I was the reason,” Petra said. “I did it.”
“Is it true?” one of the Dark Angels asked from behind them. “Is the Dragon really dead?”
“Yes,” Nick said. “The Dragon’s dead. Jacob’s dead too. At least that’s what these two say.”
“So you didn’t see it?”
“No. But the town is burning. The rippers have gotten inside. Everyone there either died or left.”
Luke knew the Dark Angels had some kind of plan for them. It wasn’t to kill them right away or they would’ve done that already. There was something else, and maybe he could figure out a way to get to them, use their plan against them.
“Last chance,” Nick said. He sounded like he had moved even farther away now.
Luke didn’t glance at Petra. He threw his M-16 down on the ground a few feet away from him. A moment later Petra did the same.
“Take out any other weapons you have on you,” Nick said. “Nice and slow.”
Luke pulled out his pistol from inside his hoodie and tossed it on the ground next to the assault rifle. Petra pulled out a knife and dropped it.
The Dark Angels from behind them moved in closer. The ones from the woods moved in closer, all of them still aiming their weapons.
“Get down on your knees,” Nick said. “Then get down on the ground. Arms and legs out wide. We’re not going to kill you. If we wanted to do that, we already would’ve.”
Luke got down on the ground on his stomach, stretching his arms out in front of him and his legs out wide. He could hear Petra doing the same thing.
Two Dark Angels moved in, searching them for weapons. The Dark Angel beside Luke wrenched his hands behind his back and bound them together with a plastic zip tie, pulling it tight.
A moment later, the Dark Angels got Luke and Petra back up to their feet. Petra’s hands were bound too.
“Good,” Nick said. “Good. This is working out well.”
“Where’s Ray?” Luke asked. “You kill him? You kill his twelve-year-old son? Josh? Emma?”
Nick looked at one of the Dark Angels, a heavy-set man with a big bushy beard. He had a camouflage ball cap pulled down low, hiding most of the DA brand carved into his forehead. He seemed to be the leader of this troop.
“They’re down there,” the man said.
“Alive?” Luke asked.
The man didn’t answer.
“We cut the power,” the leader of the troop told Nick. “They’re down there in the dark. Elevator doesn’t work. We blew the other exit, the stairs. They’re trapped down there until we turn the power back on.”
Nick nodded. “Well, I’d say it’s time to pay them a visit.” He looked at Luke and Petra. “But we’ll have a bargaining tool, something to keep them from shooting at us.” He stared at the men. “If they’re still alive.”
The leader of the troop stared back at Nick. “We had orders,” he said tentatively, glancing at his men. “We herded some rippers into the elevator before we shut down the power. Eleven of them. Got them in there and then shut the door, pushed the code to lower the elevator.”
“You sent rippers down there?” Nick said, nodding. He didn’t seem angry, more like he was considering new possibilities now.
The leader of the troop nodded in return, glancing again at his men. “Those people down there . . . they probably didn’t survive. We should be able to go down there and kill the rippers.”
“We need to get down there,” Nick said.
Nick and the other Dark Angels walked Luke and Petra inside the large fenced-in area. Two of the Dark Angels closed the gates, wrapping a chain around them.
“Any rippers been around lately?” Nick asked the Dark Angel with the big beard.
“Not too many, and none lately. This place is pretty far out here. And there are fences down the hill there, way out in those woods.” He pointed at the woods in the distance down the slope beyond the white building at the other side of the fenced-in area.
Nick nodded as he walked closer to the building, the other Dark Angels following him, leaving Luke and Petra standing alone. The group moved farther away from Luke and Petra, huddling together.
“The town’s really burning?” one of the Dark Angels asked Nick. He was a tall, lanky man with a huge Adam’s apple that bobbed up and down when he spoke. The soldier next to him seemed very interested in Nick’s answer.
“Yes, it’s true,” Nick said. “The town is lost. But the supplies in the basements might still be okay. Some of them, at least. We can go back for them later. But this could be our home for now. Avalon. We’ll regroup. We’ll go back and round up any survivors that we can. We’ll rebuild the Dark Angels back up to what it was before.”
“But y
ou said the Dragon was dead. And Jacob.”
“That’s what they said,” Nick barked, hitching a thumb back at Luke and Petra.
“They are,” Petra yelled at the group. “Why would we lie about it? I killed the Dragon. I beat him to death with a tire iron. He tried to escape Hell Town. He got to a mechanic’s shop where he had a black pickup truck. I followed him there and killed him.”
The Dark Angels’ eyes widened—a few of them seemed to know about the Dragon’s escape plan, or at least they seemed to believe her story.
“Even if they killed them,” Nick continued, “even if the Dragon and Jacob are dead, we could still keep going with the Dragon’s plan, with his vision. We’ve got something good here. We can start over as a society.”
“And you’ll be the leader?” the thin man asked, not hiding his wariness at the idea.
“Yes,” Nick said. “Maybe only temporarily. We could vote on a leader. There are more Dark Angels with us, a few miles down the mountain. They’ll be loyal again. And there are people from that store there too. They’ll either be loyal or we’ll kill them. We have to have loyalty. Absolute loyalty.”
The Dark Angels were quiet for a moment as they huddled together, thinking it over, their weapons slung over their shoulders or held down by their sides.
“We can do this,” Nick said. “We can start over.”
The men seemed more and more convinced, nodding, glancing at each other.
Luke’s heart sank. Maybe Ray and the others had survived the rippers down in Avalon. But even if they had, an army of Dark Angels was coming down the elevator as soon as they restored the power. Maybe it was over now. Maybe they had all fought so hard for nothing. Maybe in the end evil was going to win. The Dragon was going to win even though he wasn’t here anymore. Evil men would always win. There would always be Vincents and Jacobs and Dragons. And now there was a man like Nick to take their place.
Just as the Dark Angels were ready to move out a fiery ball flew through the air and slammed into their group. Luke knew instantly what it was: a Molotov cocktail.
The men erupted in flames. Another Molotov cocktail soared in right after the first, dropping onto the men and exploding in an eruption of flames. Gunfire erupted, the men riddled with bullets while they burned, their screams cut short as they collapsed to the ground. Two of the Dark Angels at the outer part of the group managed to get off some shots, but they hadn’t really been aiming at anything.
Luke dove at Petra, slamming his shoulder into her, knocking her to the ground so a stray bullet wouldn’t hit them. He was almost on top of her. For just a second they stared into each other’s eyes on the ground. Then Luke sat up and looked back at the bodies of Nick and the Dark Angels scattered across the ground, most of the bodies still burning. He looked at the white building, at Josh who stood at the edge of the roof with the M-16 in his hands.
“Luke,” Josh said, “saving your ass is getting to be a full-time job for me lately.”
“Shut the hell up and get down here,” Luke yelled back at him. “Get these zip ties off of us.”
As Josh climbed down from the building, Luke got back up to his feet. Petra got to her feet too.
Josh hurried over to them with his pocket knife in his hand to cut the plastic ties.
“Ray?” Luke asked as Josh sliced the plastic strip binding his wrists behind his back. “Mike and Emma? Are they okay?”
“Yeah. They sent rippers down there and then cut the power. We got all the rippers, though. We’re all okay.”
“And . . . you’re the only ones down there?”
“Yeah. There was a scientist. But the Dark Angels had gotten to him weeks ago,” Josh answered as he cut Petra free.
“This was the Dragon’s backup plan,” Petra said, rubbing her wrists.
“What about the Dragon?” Josh asked. “Sounded like those men said he was dead.”
“He is,” Petra answered. “I killed him. Luke killed Jacob. Hell Town is burning. It’s all true.”
Josh sighed, nodding. “Finally over.”
“You said the power’s out,” Luke said. “The elevator isn’t working. How’d you get up here? Are there stairs somewhere?”
“Yeah, but they blew the doors there. I climbed up the elevator shaft.”
Luke just stared at him.
“There’s a metal ladder embedded in the wall for maintenance and emergencies.” Josh shook his head. “Am I the only one who’s ever heard of that?” He looked back at Luke. “What about Jo? The store?”
“Rippers got inside,” Petra said. “Jo and everyone else got onto the roof. We got them down.”
“Where are they?”
“A few miles away. In the woods. We need to get them, bring them here, get them all down in Avalon.”
Josh nodded in agreement, suddenly smiling . . . he couldn’t stop smiling. “It’s really over. Finally over.”
A ripper called from somewhere deep in the woods. Luke stared off to the east from where the sound had come from. Maybe a group of rippers was headed this way, alerted by the gunfire, or maybe they were just moving through the woods, looking for another place to find food.
“We’ll go back down the hill and get the others,” Petra said. She looked at Luke.
Luke nodded in agreement and then looked at Josh. “You get the power hooked back up while we’re gone.”
“I’ll give it a try,” Josh said. “I can’t promise anything, you know,” he called after them. “I’m not an electrician, by the way.”
Luke didn’t respond to Josh’s excuses. He and Petra hurried across the field. They stopped to pick up their weapons and then bolted to the woods, to the dirt trail that led down the mountain to the road below.
Petra stopped Luke. “Wait a minute.”
Luke waited.
She kissed him, a longer and slower kiss this time. Then she pulled away, staring at him. “Sorry. I just wanted to do that again.”
“Fine with me,” he answered and then they were on their way.
CHAPTER 68
Ray
Five months later
Josh got the power hooked back up before Luke and Petra drove back up the hill with Jo, Kate, and the others. They all rode the elevator down, Josh calling out before stepping out of the elevator. Luke and Petra were two of the last to go down the elevator, closing the chain-link gates of the fenced-in area after getting the other vehicles inside. Someone sent up a chain and a padlock from below so they could secure the gates. There were rolls of barbed wire strung across the top of the fencing, and maybe it would keep the rippers out for a while, but not forever. Ray knew that, and he kept seeing the thousands of rippers pushing against the fence, the nightmare he’d seen in his sleep so many times since staying at Avalon.
After they were settled down in Avalon for a few weeks, things got as normal as they could get. There was electricity and food and water . . . and hot water. They ate real meals, cooked meals, not just food scraped out of a can. They had vitamins and medicine. They had a chance to rest and recuperate, for hurt ankles and knife wounds to fully heal.
The sleeping arrangements were a little tight, but some of the labs and work areas were converted into bedrooms. Many of the townspeople and former Dark Angels were willing to bunk together so couples could have rooms of their own, couples like Josh and Emma, and Jo and Gil. But there were new couples forming, new romances kindling: Lisa and Wade, Luke and Petra, and even Ray and Kate were beginning to hit it off a little, but they were taking it slow. Ray still shared a room with Mike, and Kate shared a room with Brooke.
Even though they were safe down in Avalon, there were still a lot of things to do to make them even safer. Schedules for spotters above ground were set up. One of the former Dark Angels, Talbot, used to be an electrician, and he helped make sure the power to the solar panels was kept going. He got the diesel generator back up and running again after they found some diesel fuel in a nearby town.
Besides patrolling the grounds
above, there were cleaning and cooking schedules. Most everyone was already used to having jobs assigned to them either at Jo’s store or in Hell Town, so there wasn’t too much fuss about volunteering, and it seemed like everyone wanted to chip in and help in any way they could. Jo managed all the schedules. She was happy to do it, and she was good at it.
Over the next few weeks after they had occupied Avalon, they got the rubble cleared away from the emergency exit, freeing up the stairway. They also asked for volunteers to go back to Jo’s store and to Hell Town to find supplies, salvaging what could be salvaged. Luke and Petra volunteered immediately. So did Lisa; she admitted she was a little claustrophobic and couldn’t wait to get outside again. And Wade went wherever Lisa went.
Their supply runs over the next few weeks were successful. They managed to get about half the supplies from Hell Town and any canned goods and supplies that the rippers had left behind at Jo’s store. Along with the stock they had at Avalon, they might have two to three years’ worth of food and supplies. Maybe more. Ray had inventoried everything, listing all of their food and supplies meticulously in several notebooks. They planned their meals out without rationing, but Ray still kept a count of what they had left.
The last few months were mostly good. Everyone seemed happy and calm, just living in the moment. Luke and Petra seemed happy to continue supply runs along with a few others, all of them seeming to crave the danger of it, the adventure of it.
Jo and Gil got even closer. Gil and the doctor worked together to treat any wounds and to get everyone healthier. When Luke wasn’t out on supply runs, he worked with Mike, teaching him how to shoot and how to fight, keeping his promise to Ray to make sure Mike was going to be as prepared as he could be to live in this new world. Even though Mike worked hard at his training, he was still a kid, and he played with Brooke and Patrick a lot of the time. Brooke had come out of her shell more, and she seemed perfectly happy to live underground, like she felt safe. She didn’t draw things she saw in her dreams, and none of them shared dreams anymore. None of them had the prophetic dreams that they used to have. Except maybe Mike. He’d told Ray about the dreams he’d been having, the dreams where he saw himself in the future, as a man on his own in this post-apocalyptic world. Mike seemed scared of those visions, but Ray was excited about them. Because of his training, Ray was sure Mike would survive.