Dark Days (Book 3): Exposure:

by Lukens, Mark

  EXPOSURE

  DARK DAYS: BOOK THREE

  A post-apocalyptic series by

  MARK LUKENS

  Exposure: Dark Days Book 3—copyright © 2017—Mark Lukens

  All Rights Reserved

  No part of this book may be reprinted without written permission from the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (or in any other form), business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover design by: Extended Imagery

  Special thanks to: Jet, Ann, Joe, Kelli, and Mary Ann—your help is invaluable to me and appreciated more than you know.

  OTHER BOOKS BY MARK LUKENS:

  ANCIENT ENEMY – www.amazon.com/dp/B00FD4SP8M

  DARKWIND: ANCIENT ENEMY 2 – www.amazon.com/dp/B01K42JBGW

  HOPE’S END: ANCIENT ENEMY 3 – www.amazon.com/dp/B07G1MS6RK

  EVIL SPIRITS: ANCIENT ENEMY 4 – www.amazon.com/dp/B07L8KLXVB

  SIGHTINGS – www.amazon.com/dp/B00VAI31KW

  DEVIL’S ISLAND – www.amazon.com/dp/B06WWJC6VD

  WHAT LIES BELOW – www.amazon.com/dp/B0143LADEY

  DESCENDANTS OF MAGIC – www.amazon.com/dp/B00FWYYYYC

  THE SUMMONING – www.amazon.com/dp/B00HNEOHKU

  NIGHT TERRORS – www.amazon.com/dp/B00M66IU3U

  THE EXORCIST’S APPRENTICE – www.amazon.com/dp/B00YYF1E5C

  POSSESSION: THE EXORCIST’S APPRENTICE 2 – www.amazon.com/dp/B07NCZQTNR

  THE DARWIN EFFECT – www.amazon.com/dp/B01GRA8ZYC

  FOLLOWED – www.amazon.com/dp/B078WYGMJN

  GHOST TOWN: A NOVELLA – www.amazon.com/dp/B00LEZRF7G

  THE VAMPIRE GAME – www.amazom.com/dp/B07C2M72X9

  A DARK COLLECTION: 12 SCARY STORIES – www.amazon.com/dp/B00JENAGLC

  RAZORBLADE DREAMS: HORROR STORIES – www.amazon.com/dp/B076B7W252

  AUTHOR’S NOTE:

  I started writing this series as a novel years ago, but then I abandoned it for some time. That first draft had most of the same main characters as the series that it has now become: Ray and his family, Josh, Emma, Luke, and Wilma. That story was similar to this one, yet still different. I loved the characters, but I was never satisfied with the story, and I won’t publish a story unless I’m as happy with it as I can be. A year ago, I had a new idea for this series, a different direction to take it in, but the characters were still there, still alive in my mind through the years. But there was a problem. When I told the story from the multiple viewpoints of these characters, the book got way too long. So I had the idea to tell the story of the beginning of the collapse from these main characters’ points of view in their own books. So, the first book is told from Ray and his family and Emma’s points of view. The second book is told from Josh’s point of view. And this third book is told from Luke and Wilma’s points of view. In the fourth book, they will all come together (this isn’t really a spoiler because it is alluded to in all three of these books). I know many readers may skip this Author’s Note (and I’ve heard some readers even skip prologues, even though I can’t understand why—it would be like going to see a movie ten minutes after it has started), so I imagine some readers may get upset if they don’t see much of the characters from Book 1 in Books 2 and 3. And maybe this approach is a little unusual, but I really felt I needed to write these books this way. Does this mean that the first three books could be read out of order? Yes, but I had intended them to be read in order because information is revealed along the way as you get deeper into the series. I do hope after you finish reading the first three books that you will continue with this series.

  Thank you!

  Mark.

  CONTENTS

  OTHER BOOKS BY MARK LUKENS:

  AUTHOR’S NOTE:

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  PART TWO

  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

  PART THREE

  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

  A THANK YOU:

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER 1

  Cleveland, OH – October 21st

  They were all dead—that thought kept echoing in Luke’s mind as he maneuvered his car around the other vehicles clogging the streets of Cleveland. Traffic lights were out everywhere, and it seemed like there was a pileup of cars and trucks at nearly every intersection, backing traffic up for miles. Cops were parked on sidewalks with their lights flashing, many of them stationed at the entrances to side streets, blocking those exits off. Most of the cops were dressed in riot gear, many of them wearing gas masks and rubber gloves. Emergency vehicles struggled to get through the jammed-up streets, but most of them weren’t making it very far.

  Luke had driven back from Ashtabula County, and it had taken him nearly all day on the interstate before he was able to take the off-ramp down into this mess. After a few more hours of waiting in traffic, Luke drove through the parking lot of a restaurant and found an alleyway in the back that led to a side street—at least it was one place that the police hadn’t blocked off yet. He drove down the side streets of Parma, making his way towards his house.

  His house—it was just a rental. And he wouldn’t be living there anymore now. He needed to get to his house, get his shit, and get away. That was if Vincent’s men weren’t already there waiting for him. He hoped that Vincent’s men were having as tough of a time navigating the streets of Cleveland as he’d had.

  They were all dead.

  Luke saw the mutilated bodies in his mind, the slaughtered children, blood everywhere. It was late afternoon now, and night was coming quickly. It seemed as if society had deteriorated in those hours. He’d heard the news reports over the last few weeks about the economy failing, the massive protests and riots in major cities across America and the world. Violence had been springing up everywhere. He’d heard of the seemingly random murders across the country, and there were rumors about some kind of pandemic.

  This morning he had seen that random violence first-hand. Something was going on . . . something bad was happening to people.

  After leaving Howard’s house this morning, Luke had driven thirty miles and then parked at a gas station after pulling off the highway. He’d made the phone call to Vincent from the gas station parking lot. While on his cell phone, he’d watched the lines of frantic people at the gas pumps waiting to fill up their cars, trucks, and gas cans. Luke didn’t need any gas—he always kept his car’s tank full, a habit of his profession.

  Luke’s profession was an enforcer; a leg-breaker; a practitioner
skilled in the art of pain. He worked for Vincent Perone. Not Vinnie Perone—never Vinnie; no one called him that. Vincent felt that the name Vinnie reduced him to some kind of stereotypical cartoon version of a crime family boss.

  And Vincent Perone was a crime family boss, but he was no cartoon character; he was a dangerous man. And now he was very upset with Luke.

  The conversation with Vincent on the phone replayed itself in Luke’s mind as he drove, Vincent going ballistic after Luke had told him what had happened at the house, after telling him that his brother and his brother’s family were all dead.

  “Howard killed his wife and daughters,” Luke told Vincent. “He slaughtered them. Cut them up. Mutilated them. And then he came after me.”

  It was like Vincent hadn’t even heard him. “You were supposed to protect my brother, Luke! You were supposed to protect my family!”

  Luke watched the people at the gas station, hurrying back and forth from the store to the gas pumps in a panic, some of them running.

  “I need you to get back here to my house,” Vincent said, his voice suddenly calm.

  “Vincent, this wasn’t my fault,” Luke said. He was angry that Vincent wouldn’t believe him after all these years, wouldn’t even give him a chance to explain.

  “I want you back here right now,” Vincent said again, but Luke could read between the lines; Vincent was really saying: You fucked up. You got my family killed. Now I’m going to need to make an example out of you.

  Yeah, Luke thought. I’ll be right over so Jacob and the other guys can strap me down to a chair in the warehouse basement; a chair bolted to the concrete floor with a drain under it for easy cleanup. No thanks, I’ll skip that part. He’d been in that basement many times; but he had always been on the other side of the chair—he’d been the one inflicting the pain.

  He told Vincent that he would be right over. Maybe it would buy him a few hours, but probably not. Vincent wasn’t stupid—he knew that Luke wasn’t going to follow orders this time; he knew that Luke was going home to get his go-bag and get the hell out of town.

  After Luke hung up his cell phone, he watched two men get into a fight beside the gas station store where he was parked. He thought the fight was over the bag of groceries the one man carried—maybe the other man wanted them—but it just seemed like the only thing the other man wanted to do was beat the crap out of the man with the groceries. Even after the man was an unconscious mess lying on the cracked walkway next to the side of the store, his groceries spilled out of his bag, the other man wouldn’t stop kicking him.

  And then the man had done something that Luke hadn’t expected; he’d gotten down onto all fours next to the man’s head and started biting him, tearing away at his neck and face, ripping away pieces of the man’s flesh with his teeth, chewing those pieces and swallowing them down.

  Rippers. That’s what the news had labeled these people who had suddenly gone crazy. Of course Luke hadn’t believed the stories or rumors on the internet; there’d always been a fair amount of fake news and sensationalism going around. He wasn’t one to watch the nightly news or pore over internet articles, but the collapse of America couldn’t be ignored anymore. Some people had begun panicking in the last few weeks, and others had tried to continue on with their lives like everything was still normal. But even those ostriches had to lift their heads up out of the sand now; it couldn’t be denied anymore—there was no disputing that something terrible was happening. There was no disputing what he’d just seen at the gas station store.

  And there was no disputing what he’d seen at Howard’s house earlier this morning.

  Luke left the gas station and tried to make his way west on the interstate. But it had taken many more hours than it should have. Now the afternoon shadows had grown long, the air had gotten colder, the sky cloudier. Vincent would send someone after him—probably Jacob—and Jacob would have a pretty good head start on him.

  Jacob was an enforcer like Luke was. He and Jacob were the best around. But if Luke had to be honest with himself, he knew that Jacob was even better at his job than he was.

  Luke had worked for Vincent for the last ten years, most of his adult life since he was twenty-two years old. Of course five of his adult years had been spent in prison. His first stint of two years was for nearly killing a man in a bar fight when he was nineteen years old. During his second stretch, this one for three years, he’d kept his mouth shut and took the rap for Vincent and the family. And, as promised, Vincent had rewarded him financially when he’d gotten out. He’d also rewarded Luke’s loyalty with his trust, letting him train under Jacob, who was eight years older.

  Even though Luke had grown up on the mean streets of Cleveland, and even though he’d been an amateur mixed martial arts fighter, there were still a lot of things that Luke needed to learn for the job, a lot of things that Jacob could teach him. Jacob had taught Luke dirty fighting tricks: sucker punches and brass knuckle technology; how to kill people with everyday objects. He also trained Luke how to shoot. Luke had spent hundreds of hours at the shooting range, becoming an expert shot with many firearms.

  Ten years of working for Vincent, and now the man wouldn’t even let him explain what had happened at Howard’s house. Something was wrong with that. Maybe something was wrong with Vincent. Maybe whatever was infecting all of these people around here was infecting Vincent, too.

  Maybe I’m infected now, Luke thought. After his exposure at Howard’s house, there was a good possibility of it.

  But what could he do about it now? Obviously there was no cure. And if he didn’t get his shit at his house and make a run for it, he was going to be a dead man, anyway. He could worry about being infected later—first things first.

  Luke drove down the neighborhood roads of Parma, passing darkened houses as the night blanketed the city. The electricity was out everywhere. A lot of people were gathered in their driveways, some of them on their front porches, some on their front lawns. A bonfire raged in the front yard of one house and drunken revelers danced around the fire like pagan worshippers. There were other people who seemed to be partying and cheering the end of the world, maybe one last debaucherous celebration before Sodom and Gomorrah were annihilated. But these revelers were going to wake up tomorrow sober and hungover, they were going to wake up to the realization that the electricity was still out, that martial law was still in place, and that some mysterious airborne disease was supposedly turning people into raging lunatics who murdered and ate other people.

  Finally Luke reached the end of his street, driving past it slowly, checking it out. Everything looked clear down the street; his street was oddly peaceful compared to the bonfires and parties on some of the other streets only a few blocks away. He imagined that a lot of his neighbors on his street were locked up inside their homes, coolers of beer next to their armchairs, shotguns within easy reach, sitting in the darkness and waiting for anyone stupid enough to break into their homes.

  Luke circled back and turned onto his street. He drove a little way down the street and parked his car in front of a dark home two blocks away from his house. He got out of his car and stood there for a moment in the dark. His gun was a reassuring weight inside his jacket, the piece shoved snuggly down into his shoulder holster. If he needed to, he could draw his gun as fast as any Old West gunslinger.

  Luke walked down the street towards his house for one block and then darted down the side yard between the two homes. He was only a few houses away from his own now, and he worked his way there through the back yards. When he was in his neighbor’s back yard, he waited for a moment, watching the line of shrubs that surrounded his own back yard like a fence. He moved through the darkness, cutting across the narrow side yard between the homes and stood right beside his house, hiding in the darker shadow of the house. He moved down the wall and peeked into the window of an empty spare bedroom. It was too dark inside to see anything, but he didn’t hear anyone moving around in his house.

  He kept cl
ose to the walls of his house as he entered his back yard, creeping towards the sliding glass doors that opened up to a small wood deck built three feet off of the ground. He climbed over the railing of his deck, silent as a cat. He peeked into the sliding glass doors. The vertical blinds were still partially open, just how he’d left them. The aluminum lock bar was still in place. He studied the dark interior for several minutes, but he didn’t see or hear anything inside.

  He moved past the sliding glass doors and shuffled down the three steps to the grass. He darted to the corner, and then he crept down the side of his house, moving towards the front where the attached garage was. He peeked inside each window as he passed, but he still couldn’t see any movement inside.

  When he got to the front corner of his house, he looked out at the street.

  Everything was quiet. Everything seemed okay.

  He heard a noise—someone walking, a man stumbling down the street. The man, a teenager probably, wore a gray sweatshirt with the hood pulled up over his head. It seemed like the boy was talking to himself, gesturing wildly, stumbling a bit. Maybe he was drunk or high.

  Or maybe he was one of the crazy ones . . . one of the rippers.

  Luke watched the man walk down the street, and then he focused back on his own problem of getting inside his house. He was a master of focusing his attention on a task. He believed the reason most people weren’t experts at something or successful was because they just didn’t focus on the tasks that needed to be done. You had to tune out the noise of your own thoughts and doubts, the distraction of random thoughts and daydreams; you had to filter out all distractions around you and focus entirely on what you were doing at that moment—that was the key to success; you focused on catching that touchdown pass and nothing else; you focused on driving and nothing else; you focused on flying the airplane; you focused on the takeout order you were putting together in a fast-food restaurant.

  You focused on pulling the trigger.

  And Luke was focused now, focused like a laser beam. The memories from earlier today kept trying to invade his thoughts—all the blood, the children lying in pools of their own gore—but he pushed those images away for now. He needed all of his senses to be on full alert if Jacob was waiting inside his house for him.