Dark Days (Book 3): Exposure:

by Lukens, Mark

  Luke let himself in the side door that led inside the garage. He closed the door softly and locked it. He stood inside the darkness for a long moment, nearly a full minute, listening for any noises inside the house. There was nothing in his garage except a punching bag hanging from the rafters, a weight bench, and a few sets of dumbbells. There was nowhere for anyone to hide in here.

  He drew his handgun from his shoulder holster and fished out the silencer from his jacket pocket. He screwed the silencer on slowly as he moved across the garage towards the door that led into the house through the kitchen. He got to the door and tested the doorknob gently. Still locked. But Jacob would have locked the door once he was inside; he would try to leave everything just the way Luke had left it.

  After silently unlocking the door with the key, Luke pushed the door open, crouched a little to the side, letting the wall block most of his body. He aimed his gun inside at the kitchen, his finger caressing the trigger, ready to shoot. He scanned the dark kitchen for a moment. No one in there. From the doorway, he could see part of the dining room and the living room. No one hiding in the shadows that he could see.

  He entered the kitchen.

  No one there.

  No Jacob.

  Luke moved through the house like a shadow, hurrying down the hallway to the bedrooms. He checked each of the rooms and then the bathroom off of the hall. Everything was clear, and he let himself relax just a little.

  He went back to the living room and then into the kitchen. He closed and locked the door that led to the garage.

  Luke had rented this house six months ago. It had come partially furnished with a bed, a dresser, a couch and loveseat, and a four-chair dining room set. Luke hadn’t added any additional furniture except for an entertainment center where he kept his TV and video game system (which helped keep his reflexes sharp). Other than the entertainment center, the only other things Luke had brought into the house were his punching bag, weightlifting equipment, and a couple of duffel bags. Everything else he owned could fit inside those duffel bags, which were stashed in the bedroom closet. He had two extra weapons inside one of the duffel bags, along with four boxes of ammo, two changes of clothes, an extra pair of hiking boots. He also had several envelopes of cash and a fake ID taped underneath a dresser drawer.

  A crashing noise sounded from outside. Luke spun and aimed his pistol at the sliding glass doors that led out to the back yard.

  CHAPTER 2

  Luke crept through the living room towards the sliding glass doors. The vertical plastic blinds were drawn to one side, and he could see outside because the moonlight made it lighter out there than it was inside the house.

  A moment later he was beside the sliding glass door, his gun up and ready, his finger on the trigger. He waited, listening for another sound from out there.

  Could it be Jacob?

  No, Jacob wouldn’t be so noisy, so careless—unless Jacob was trying to trick him into looking out the door, or possibly creating some kind of distraction so he could enter the house from somewhere else.

  Luke waited a moment longer, listening for more sounds. Even from inside the house he could hear the sounds of people partying a few blocks away. Cheers rose and fell. A siren blared somewhere in the distance. A speeding car raced down another road. There was what sounded like an explosion from far away.

  But he didn’t hear anything else in the back yard right now.

  He was about to move away from the sliding glass doors, but then he froze.

  There were more noises from the back yard. People talking. A man and a woman.

  Luke peeked out the sliding glass door and saw a middle-aged man and woman crashing through the bushes on one side of his back yard, colliding with some rusty patio furniture that he never used. The man and woman didn’t let the patio furniture slow them down—even though the man had fallen down after running into the table and chairs, he was back up on his feet in an instant. The couple was an explosion of panicky movements, their eyes wild, and they kept looking back the way they’d come, like they were being chased.

  They looked terrified.

  What were they running from?

  But Luke had a good idea what it might be. The crazies. The infected. The rippers.

  A moment later, the couple was gone, crashing through the shrubs on the other side of the back yard.

  He breathed out a sigh of relief. Rippers were bad, but better than Jacob right now. He darted across the living room to the hallway. He needed to take a piss that he’d been holding for a while now. He entered his bathroom. It was almost pitch-black inside the small room. There was one small window near the toilet and he pushed the curtain back to get a little more moonlight into the room. He set his gun on the bathroom counter and relieved himself, his bladder finally unclenching.

  As he stood there in front of the toilet, the images from what he’d seen earlier today crept back into his mind.

  He had gone to Howard’s house that morning to protect Howard, his wife, and his daughters—a personal favor for Vincent. With everything that had been happening in the last week, Vincent wanted to make sure his brother was protected. Vincent’s parents had died years ago and his sister was already with him at his mansion. His only family left that he wanted personally protected was his brother Howard, who had refused Vincent’s invitation to his mansion, choosing to remain at his home in Ashtabula County. Howard worked as an “accountant” for many of Vincent’s businesses, and Vincent adored Howard’s three little girls.

  Vincent had tried to get a hold of Howard on the phone late last night, but he wasn’t answering, and that was worrying Vincent even more. So Luke got up early this morning so he could get to Howard’s home before he went anywhere.

  Suddenly Luke was there again . . . back at Howard’s house.

  When Luke got to Howard’s house, he noticed that Howard’s car was still in the driveway with his wife’s car parked right next to it, and that seemed to be a good sign. They parked their cars in the driveway because the three-car garage was reserved for Howard’s ‘58 Corvette and his Harley Davidson.

  Luke rang the doorbell and then knocked on the front door several times, but Howard wasn’t answering. The door had a big Halloween decoration hanging from the top of it, a witch. There were a few pumpkins at the edge of the concrete steps, waiting to be carved into jack-o'-lanterns when Halloween came in a few days. He called Howard’s home number from his cell phone as he waited by the front door. He could even hear the home phone ringing inside the house, but nobody answered. The ringing led to a cheerful voicemail created by Howard’s three girls, screaming and laughing as they instructed the caller to leave a message.

  He disconnected the call without leaving a message. He’d already called Howard’s cell phone a few times on the way to his house. No answer from his cell phone, no answer from his house phone. Now he was beginning to worry a little.

  Howard lived right on the shores of Lake Erie, his home built on five acres of prime real estate. Luke walked around to the side of the house, heading to the gate that led to the back yard. The gate was unlocked. He pushed it open and stopped at the windows on the way to the back yard to peek inside. The blinds and drapes were all drawn.

  A beautiful view of the lake was off to his left. The back yard dropped off to the narrow beach area. Small waves rolled in and out endlessly, lapping at the rocky shoreline.

  Luke walked past the large pool to a set of three massive sliding glass doors, the interior of the house hidden by vertical blinds. He ignored the sliding doors and walked over to a set of French doors that led into a dining area, which was right off of the kitchen. He knocked again, peeking in through the window panes of the doors.

  Splashes of blood were smeared all over the tiled floor. There were more bloodstains in the kitchen—a lot of bloodstains.

  Luke ripped his pistol out of his shoulder holster and smashed a pane of glass out next to the doorhandle. He reached in and unlocked the lock and opened the doo
r.

  Because all the drapes and blinds were closed, the house was gloomy. The smell hit him immediately, the unmistakable smell of death, of blood.

  “Howard!” Luke yelled.

  No answer from Howard.

  “Deanna!” he yelled, calling Howard’s wife’s name.

  She didn’t answer, either.

  Luke knew he might be giving away his position by yelling if someone was still in the house, but he didn’t care. His mind was racing with possibilities: enemies of the family, looters, or just another senseless murder among the hundreds that he’d heard about lately. Or the rippers.

  A large family room was off of the kitchen with two overstuffed couches opposite a gigantic flat screen TV mounted to the wall above an entertainment center. There were no signs of violence in that room, no smears of blood or disrupted furniture, and there was nowhere for anyone to hide in there.

  He looked back at the kitchen, still standing in the small breakfast nook. Smears of blood and shoe prints were all over the tiled floor in the kitchen. The blood was a shockingly bright red against the white tiles and marble of the kitchen, but there were darker puddles of blood with what looked like small pieces of meat mixed in. Bloody handprints were painted all over the refrigerator door.

  “Howard! Deanna!”

  Still no answer, just an eerie silence and the overwhelming smell of death hanging heavy in the air.

  Luke crept to his left and entered the living room. He saw the first of the bodies sprawled out on the floor—one of Howard’s daughters. As he ventured deeper into the vast living room, he saw two other bodies: another one of Howard’s daughters and Deanna. A wide trail of blood indicated that this daughter’s body had been dragged into the living room from the hallway. He couldn’t tell which daughter was which because of their mutilated faces.

  Howard had three young daughters, the youngest was four years old, and the oldest was nine—and now two of those daughters were lying dead on the carpeted floor, the blood so thick and dark on the light-beige carpeting. They were the two youngest daughters, had to be because of their size. Both of them had been butchered. The face of what looked like the youngest girl was mangled like it had been beaten to a pulp, the head misshapen and flattened. The other girl’s head was split right in half like someone had cleaved it with an ax. Half of Deanna’s face was caved in, the one eye she had left stared blankly out at the world in bulging horror; her hair matted with blood was caked to her pale face.

  The weapons that had caused the damage were strewn around the room like toys discarded by a child after he’d become bored with them: a bloodstained ax, a handheld hatchet, an aluminum baseball bat, an assortment of kitchen knives.

  But there was more. There were pieces of flesh missing from the two children and Howard’s wife, chunks of meat ripped away. The belly of Howard’s wife had been torn open, intestines pulled out and stretched out along the floor.

  Luke moved through the living room silently, trying his best to avoid any of the sprays or puddles of blood soaking the carpet. The walls were smeared with blood, splattered with it in other areas. Bloody shoe prints were everywhere, like someone had run back and forth through the house. It looked like the person wore sneakers, size ten, Luke guessed. All the shoe prints looked like they were from one person.

  Howard and one of his daughters weren’t here in the living room—they had to be somewhere else in the house.

  Luke followed the shoe prints around the corner to the right and back into the kitchen. There was no one in the kitchen, nowhere a person could hide. He studied the floor where the tile from the kitchen met the carpet in this hallway area. This hall led to two small bedrooms that had been turned into a workout area and an office, both free of any blood or signs of violence. The other door led to a laundry room, and another door in that room led out to a three-car garage where Howard kept his Corvette and his Harley. But again, there were no bloody shoe prints or smears of blood anywhere on this side of the home. Luke checked these back rooms anyway, praying he would come across the monster that had done this.

  He went back into the living room, following the bloody shoe prints which led to the hallway, the shoe prints disappearing in the wide trail of blood from where the one daughter’s body had been dragged.

  Howard and his oldest daughter’s bodies must be back in these bedrooms, but he prayed that somehow they were still alive, that Howard had managed to defend himself and save at least one of his daughters.

  Luke moved down a wide hallway area and checked each room along the way, pushing doors open with the muzzle of the silencer on his pistol.

  In the second bedroom he found the third daughter. It looked like she had tried to run towards her bedroom window. But she hadn’t made it there. She was face down on the carpet in a pool of blood. She was still wearing her nightgown like the other two girls.

  That just left Howard. Luke expected to find Howard dead along with his family, another victim of whoever had murdered all of them; he hadn’t expected Howard to be the murderer just yet.

  Howard was in his master bathroom, seated on the toilet, his body and clothes covered with blood, his arms hanging down loosely in his lap where he cradled a butcher knife in his hands. He looked up at Luke with an evil grin. Insanity danced in his eyes. His face was smeared with dark blood, tiny bits of flesh caught in his thick mustache, blood and bits of meat staining his teeth as he smiled.

  “You did this?” Luke asked in shock.

  “They needed . . . gone . . .” Howard said in stilted words, his voice practically a grunt of effort. He spoke slowly, scrunching his bloody face in concentration, like he was confused and struggling to find the right words he wanted to use, getting them mixed up.

  “You killed your family,” Luke said, his stomach twisting with nausea. “You killed your whole family.”

  But Howard hadn’t just killed his family, he had mutilated them. He had chopped them up; he’d beaten them to a pulp with a baseball bat. He’d slashed away at their flesh with kitchen knives and eaten some of those pieces. Tracks from his New Balance sneakers were everywhere, leading right here to his bathroom. Howard must have killed his wife and daughters early in the morning—maybe even waking them up in the middle of the night to kill them. He might have killed his wife first with the bat, then chased his children down one by one as they ran, chopping them down with one terrible blow. And then he’d gone back to mutilate each one of them. He had gone back to eat parts of them.

  Howard stood up from the toilet. The unsettling and insane smile was still on his face. “Darkness . . . coming,” he said, his words practically grunts now. “He and the dark,” Howard barked out. “They are coming. You . . . you see, don’t you?”

  Luke didn’t know what Howard was rambling about.

  “You . . . see . . . him, don’t you?” Howard yelled.

  “Why would you do this?” Luke asked.

  Howard took another step forward from the toilet, gripping the butcher knife in his blood-soaked hand, his mouth moving now as he grunted, but no intelligible words came out anymore.

  “Stop right there, Howard.”

  But Howard wasn’t stopping. He was still smiling, and he was actually giggling now as he raised the butcher knife up, ready to slash and cut.

  “Howard!” Luke warned as he took a step back, aiming his gun at him.

  Howard rushed Luke with a growl in his throat.

  Luke didn’t have a choice; he shot Howard twice in the forehead, his weapon making a spitting sound with each gunshot. Howard dropped like a bag of sand, collapsing down onto the bathroom floor, his eyes still wide open under the two neat little holes in his forehead. The back of his head was a gory mess from the exit wounds.

  Luke pushed the memories from his mind as he stood in his bathroom, forcing himself not to think about it anymore. Howard had gone crazy; he had slaughtered his family and then Luke had killed him. End of story. It was over and done with now. Vincent would never listen to any excu
se Luke had. Vincent’s men would strip him naked and strap him to the chair in the basement, torturing him for hours, maybe even days, before finally killing him. Luke had seen it before. He needed to get out of Cleveland. He needed to get out of Ohio.

  He hurried into his bedroom and took his duffel bag out of the closet. The two extra guns, boxes of ammo, a change of clothes, and his extra pair of shoes were already inside the bag. He added his laptop, his extra throwaway cell phone still in the package, and then his envelopes stuffed with cash and his fake ID that he’d taped underneath the bottom dresser drawer.

  There, that was it—his entire life was packed into the duffel bag now.

  He decided to leave his house the same way he’d come in, through the side door in the garage. He would also go back to his car the same way, through his neighbors’ back yards.

  A few minutes later he was back out in the chilly night air, dressed in dark clothes and a dark hoodie, his gun and silencer jammed down into the shoulder holster underneath his jacket. He waited in his neighbor’s back yard for a moment, looking out at the street for any sign of Jacob, but he didn’t see him.

  Feeling a little better, Luke hurried to the back of his neighbor’s house, and then he kept going through more back yards until he was closer to his car. He ran down a narrow side yard between two homes and saw his car parked right where he had left it.

  He was going to make it.

  He was almost to the back of his car when he heard a cold voice from the dark. “Luke, stop right there.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Luke stood very still. He held his duffel bag by the strap. His gun was still tucked into his shoulder holster, the handle within easy reach. He was a few feet away from the sidewalk and his car was only a few steps beyond that.