Dark Days (Book 3): Exposure:

by Lukens, Mark

  He was about to push one of the shelves upright so he could see what was hidden underneath it, and that’s when he heard the noise coming from down there in the darkness. There was something hiding in that darkness, something growling at him.

  CHAPTER 6

  Luke froze. His body was tense as he listened to the noise coming from underneath the stacks of shelves leaning against each other. Someone was moving around down there underneath those shelves.

  He stepped back, aiming his gun at the dark space between the shelves, at the triangle of darkness.

  The movement stopped.

  “Come on out,” Luke said. “I’ve got a gun aimed at you.”

  He heard a whimpering sound from the darkness, but not the whimpering of a person. It was a dog . . . it had to be.

  “It’s okay,” Luke said.

  The dog hidden in the darkness whined again.

  “It’s okay,” Luke said again, lowering his gun. “Come on out. It’s okay.”

  The dog’s face emerged from the darkness. It was a medium-sized dog, light color. It looked kind of like a Labrador to Luke, but maybe a mutt. Its coat was tan, its big brown eyes stared up at Luke as it whimpered again.

  “It’s okay,” Luke whispered. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  The dog shot out from the darkness at Luke, crouching down in submission, its tail wagging.

  Luke reached out to pet the dog, but it slinked back for a moment, whining some more.

  “Come on,” Luke whispered. “It’s okay.”

  The dog came closer and let Luke pet it. As soon as Luke petted the dog, it was jumping on him, the tail wagging furiously now.

  Luke saw that the dog was a girl, and that she had a collar with a tag around her neck. She was licking at him, still whining.

  “It’s okay,” Luke whispered “It’s okay, girl. Everything’s okay.”

  Luke stuffed his gun into his holster and then stripped his gloves off, stuffing them down into his pockets. He kneeled down to check the tag on the dog’s collar. He hoped the dog wasn’t going to start barking with excitement, but it almost seemed like the dog understood the danger of making too much noise right now.

  “Okay, girl. Let me see your collar.”

  The dog sat down obediently and Luke checked the tag, turning it a little in his fingers so he could read the words etched into the metal in the moonlight. Most of the words were too small to read in the dark, but he read the largest word: SANDY.

  “Sandy,” Luke whispered. “Is that your name?”

  Sandy’s tail thumped against the garbage on the floor.

  “You hungry, Sandy?” Luke asked.

  The dog whined a little, her body trembling. She stared at Luke with big brown eyes that looked like dark liquid pools reflecting the moonlight.

  “No promises,” Luke said as he stood back up. “But let’s see what we can find.”

  Luke went back to the tipped-over shelves that Sandy had been hiding under and righted both of them back up with some effort. Sandy stayed back a few feet, just watching him.

  It was time to scrounge.

  Luke had a penlight in his pants pocket and he turned it on, keeping his other hand cupped over the front of it to cut down on the light so it wouldn’t be noticeable from the street. He panned the light beam over more debris and garbage. He crouched down, inspecting all of it more closely. He found three unopened cans of beer, a can of sardines, and two plastic bottles of water. He also found two bags of potato chips and a small bag of beef jerky.

  After finding a cloth bag on the floor with the store’s logo on it, Luke set the cans of beer and bottles of water inside, along with the few items of food he had found. He went back to his original spot near the window where he could stay hidden from the street yet still see outside. He turned a plastic crate over and sat down on it.

  Sandy was right beside him, still quiet, but still wagging her tail constantly, watching his every move.

  “I know you’re hungry,” Luke whispered. “But we didn’t score too much. Do you like potato chips?”

  He swore he saw Sandy nod. She licked her chops, already drooling. Luke opened the bag and ate a few of them, and then he tore the other bag open down the side and set it down on the floor for Sandy. She munched on the chips, chewing them up quickly and swallowing them down. And then she licked the bag, pushing it through the garbage on the floor a little as she did so.

  The salt felt good on Luke’s tongue, and he knew he needed the salt and the calories. He opened a bottle of water and drank half of it down. Then he carefully poured some water into the potato chip bag for Sandy, and she lapped it up.

  He gave Sandy pieces of the beef jerky so he could eat the can of sardines, spooning them out with a small piece of thick cardboard. After they were finished with their meal, he tucked the can of beer under his hoodie so he could pop the top without making too much noise. He sipped the beer and looked at Sandy. “You can’t have this.”

  Sandy just stared at him.

  “Where are your owners?” he whispered to Sandy.

  She cocked her head as if listening to him.

  Sandy’s owners were probably dead. Or maybe they had turned into rippers. Sandy was on her own, like so many others now.

  Luke felt a little better. He was still hungry, but the meager amount of food had helped. But at least the water and now the beer had helped with his thirst. He stowed the other bottle of water in his duffel bag along with the other two cans of beer. He knew beer wasn’t the best thing to drink because it could dehydrate him, but it was better than nothing right now until he could find more water. While putting the drinks into his bag, he thought about emptying out the laptop and the extra cell phone from his bag to lighten the load. But he decided not to do that right now. What if the electricity came back on? What if somehow order was restored? He didn’t want his laptop out here among the trash where someone could find it. He would get rid of it later.

  Right now he needed to assess the situation. He was tired, already feeling groggy now that he’d had some time to rest, and the can of beer wasn’t helping too much. But he wasn’t safe here. He needed to find somewhere else to crash, a place where he could sleep for a few hours, somewhere where he could protect himself better.

  “We need to go,” Luke told Sandy.

  Sandy laid down right beside him, snuggling up close to him. Her eyes were closed, and she was breathing heavily, but Luke didn’t think she was sleeping.

  A dog. What was he supposed to do with a dog? It wasn’t like Sandy was an attack dog, either. She would be more of a hindrance than a help, but so far she had been quiet, and he just couldn’t turn his back on her.

  He was going to have to find a house to sleep in for a few hours, some abandoned place where he could hole up for a while. As he rested, he had a chance to wonder what had happened to the world. How had everything turned to shit like this in a few days? He knew the economy had been collapsing for weeks, and he’d heard about the banks closing earlier in the morning, people panicking. He’d heard about the random acts of violence all over the country, all over the world, and the rumors of some kind of plague sweeping the Earth. He wondered again if he was infected. He wondered if he should search for a gas mask and gloves. But what was he supposed to do—run around in a hazmat suit?

  No, if he was infected, then there wasn’t much he could do about it now. Maybe if the signs started showing, if his mind began scrambling, he could put a bullet in his head rather than becoming one of those ripper things. But would he be in control of his actions at that point?

  He didn’t want to think about it. Not being in control of himself sent waves of panic through him. Not too much scared Luke, but that did—the thought of some dreaded disease or madness turning him into someone else . . . something else.

  Instead, he focused on the tasks at hand. He didn’t know what time it was; he didn’t wear a watch, usually he used his cell phone to tell the time, but he guessed it was about one or
two o’clock. It would be dark for a few more hours, and he might as well use the cover of dark to look for somewhere to sleep for a little while.

  He got up and Sandy jumped to her feet immediately. Luke picked up his duffel bag and looped it over his shoulder. He walked past the shattered windows to the shattered glass doors. They opened easily, and he stepped out onto the street. He thought about telling Sandy to stay, but she followed him outside, jumping through the shattered window and out onto the sidewalk. She landed right on the bits of glass, but the crushed glass didn’t seem to bother her paws. She ran right up to him, wagging her tail—she wasn’t going to be left behind.

  Luke looked up and down the street. “You can come,” he whispered, “but the first time you bark, I’m ditching you.”

  They walked down the street in the direction the prophet had walked, and the same direction the military vehicle had gone. Luke would be able to hear the trucks coming. Helicopters were still flying around, some of them with searchlights beaming down on the earth, but most of the aircraft were more to the north, towards Cleveland in the distance. Two jet fighters roared by, but they were high up in the night sky. Luke still heard the sounds of gunfire in the distance, screams, shouts, car alarms going off, police and emergency sirens. There was a glow of fire from somewhere to the west that Luke could see better when the business area turned into a neighborhood and the buildings were lower. He was getting closer to that fire now, and he could smell the smoke in the air.

  He used that fire to help with his sense of direction, along with the moon’s path in the nearly cloudless sky. He still tried to keep going south, walking down a wide street with trees lining both sides of the road in the strips of grass between the street and the sidewalk. Large two and three-story homes lined both sides of the street, the homes just dark monoliths in the darkness. If there were people in those homes, they didn’t dare light candles or use flashlights right now.

  So far he’d been pretty lucky—he’d only seen a few stragglers, most likely rippers, but he couldn’t be sure, and he wasn’t going to take a chance to find out. He studied the homes as he walked past them, looking for empty driveways and signs that the homes had been abandoned for a while.

  Sandy stopped walking. She’d been great so far, not making a sound at all except a slight panting while she walked. But she froze now, looking back the way they had come.

  Luke stopped, too. He stared down the dark street, trying to see what had alerted her. There were no lights, but then he heard the sound of footsteps. A lot of them. People running. It sounded like a stampede coming their way.

  CHAPTER 7

  A stampede, that’s exactly what it was.

  Sandy whined, backing up just a bit. She looked up at Luke and whined again. But then she began to growl as she looked down the street again.

  Luke looked around at the houses, focusing on the home closest to them. He looked back at the street. He could hear the screeches and screams of the rippers as they approached. And then the herd of them turned the corner down the street.

  He needed to get off the street before those rippers saw him and Sandy, and the rippers were coming fast. He ran up the front lawn of the closest house, a two-story Victorian with a large front porch decorated with two jack-o'-lanterns and other Halloween decorations, including a lifelike plastic skeleton hanging from a corner of the porch that gave Luke a start for a second. The windows of the home were dark, and there were two vehicles parked in the driveway to the right—a car with a large pickup truck parked right behind it.

  The front porch had a knee wall all the way around it with columns holding up the porch roof. He could duck down behind the wall and maybe the horde of rippers would pass him by, but then again, Sandy might growl or whine, and those rippers would rush up to the front porch—and then he would be a sitting duck on the porch, boxed in.

  The screams and shouts were louder now, the pounding feet closer. He needed to do something before he was spotted. Sandy stayed close to him, a growl still low in her throat.

  “Shh,” Luke hissed as he hurried to the front door with his pack slung over his shoulder. There was a glass panel in the door so at least he could break the glass and unlock the door if he absolutely had to, but the noise was going to be loud.

  He decided to try the doorknob.

  It was unlocked.

  He turned the knob and slipped inside the house, holding the door open for Sandy, who rushed inside, her nails clicking on the hardwood floor of the foyer they were in. Luke eased the door shut and twisted the lock. He set his duffel bag down beside him on the floor, letting out a slow breath as he did so. He watched the street from the window in the door, crouching down to the bottom of it.

  The horde of rippers raced past the house. They didn’t even look Luke’s way. He’d been afraid one of them had seen him run up onto the front porch, but apparently they hadn’t.

  The rippers ran like a pack of predators on the hunt. There had to be at least sixty of them, maybe even a hundred. There were men and women in the group, a few older people, and a dozen children straggled near the back of the herd. Some of the rippers carried sticks or pieces of wood, broken-off table and chair legs. A few of them carried kitchen knives. One of the men in the front of the group had a baseball bat, and another one had a claw hammer.

  Luke watched the street until the rippers were gone. He stood by the front door a moment longer, listening for any other sounds out in the night. Sandy had stopped growling now—she was silent, not even wagging her tail.

  A helicopter flew right over the house, washing everything in bright light for just a moment, and then it was gone.

  Luke turned around and looked at the foyer he was in. There could be people in this house. Maybe a terrified family was hiding in the dark. They could be watching him right now, maybe even aiming a weapon at him. His skin prickled at the thought, the hairs on his arms and on the back of his neck standing on end. Something didn’t feel right inside this house—he didn’t know how he knew that, but he did. He had learned to trust his instincts over the last ten years, and right now his Spidey senses were signaling an alarm.

  He picked up his duffel bag from the floor and hooked it over his shoulder. The bag was still cumbersome, but he couldn’t leave it behind. He wished he had a backpack instead. Maybe he could find one in this house.

  With the duffel bag over his shoulder, his hands were free. He left his gun in his shoulder holster and pulled his penlight out and turned it on, keeping the beam of the light low so he could see around him without putting out too much light that would be noticeable from outside. He shined the light down at Sandy. She stared back up at him with her big brown eyes. She whined softly.

  “Shh,” Luke whispered again as he shined the flashlight beam around the foyer. Ahead of him was a set of stairs that ascended up into blackness. To his right was a sitting room. He could just make out some furniture in there and what looked like a piano, but his narrow light beam only reached so far into the darkness.

  To the left of the foyer was what looked like some kind of living room.

  Sandy whined again, and that whine turned into a low growl. Obviously Sandy didn’t feel comfortable in this house, either.

  They needed to leave. They needed to find another house, take their time and scout out a better place to crash for the night. He felt a wave of dizziness wash over him. He knew it was a combination of a few things: he hadn’t eaten very much, he was dead tired, and all the stress he’d had to deal with in the last twenty-four hours—ranging from having to shoot Howard (whom he had liked before he had turned into a ripper), the veiled death threat from Vincent, being abducted by Jacob, chased by the cops, and then running for his life from these bands of animals called rippers. Things had been changing for the last few weeks, everything deteriorating into chaos and shambles, but it had all fallen apart this morning, collapsing completely, not just for him, but for everybody. He wondered again if this was just specific to this area, or if it wa
s all over America, all over the world. He had listened to the radio reports this morning on the way to Howard’s house—he’d heard about the banks closing all over the east coast and moving west by the hour. He’d heard about the riots and protests breaking out everywhere, martial law being declared in most major cities. He’d heard about society collapsing.

  He waited a moment for the lightheadedness to pass.

  Luke was about to open the front door again so they could go back outside, but Sandy took off into the living room, the growl still rumbling in her throat.

  For a second Luke thought about leaving the dog. If she couldn’t listen to him, then she wasn’t going to be any use to him. But before he knew what he was doing, he followed Sandy through the living room, using the beam of his penlight to guide his way.

  He heard what had alarmed Sandy—there was a noise coming from deeper in the house—a moaning sound. Someone was moaning in pain.

  Luke found Sandy at the doorway to the kitchen. Her growls were louder, the fur on the back of her neck standing up. Luke was afraid the dog was going to start barking any second now. Even though that large group of rippers had passed them by, there could be other rippers wandering around outside and Luke didn’t want Sandy to alert them. Hell, there could be rippers inside this house right now.

  He moved through the dining room towards the doorway where Sandy stood guard; she still hadn’t gone inside the kitchen yet. The moaning was coming from the kitchen, and Luke knew there was something bad in there. When he stood beside Sandy at the doorway and shined his light inside, he saw what it was.

  CHAPTER 8

  A man was staked to the linoleum floor in the middle of the large kitchen. The man was naked except for a white tank top stained with blood, his pot belly a mound under the shirt, like a small mountain. His arms and legs were spread wide, almost spread-eagle. His wrists and ankles were nailed to the floor, the nail heads sticking up out of his flesh among the crusted blood. The tool that had nailed him to the floor, a battery-powered nail gun, lay discarded a few feet away from the man.