Dark Days (Book 3): Exposure:

by Lukens, Mark

  Luke turned left onto the next street, skirting the wreck that was clogging up the intersection. He saw little flashes of movement out of the corner of his eyes in the darkness, rippers moving in and out of the deeper shadows of the night. One ripper—he looked like a young man or even a teenager—ran alongside their pickup for half a block, like a dog might do, before giving up and slowing down.

  When they got to the next block, a few more rocks and chunks of concrete pelted the truck, bouncing off the driver’s door and side panels. Luke flinched, shrinking back from the driver’s window, expecting it to shatter at any second.

  Wilma still had her gun clenched in her gloved hand, and she held her right knee with her other hand. She was breathing heavily, but Luke couldn’t tell if it was from the pain or the adrenaline of running through a blockade of rippers. Maybe it was a little of both.

  “You okay?” he asked her.

  She nodded and winced. “Where are you going?”

  “I don’t know. Heading south. Trying to get as far away from that mob of rippers as I can.” He glanced down at the instrument panel. The lights were flickering. The gas tank was a quarter full, and that would be a problem down the road, but they had an even more urgent problem coming up much sooner than that.

  “I know a place we can go,” Wilma said, wincing again. “A place where we’ll be safe.”

  “Where is it? How far away?”

  “It’s about thirty miles south.”

  “Well, that sounds great, but we’re not going to make it thirty miles.”

  Wilma was about to ask why, but then she looked out through the cracked windshield at the steam rising up from the front of the truck, collecting and drifting towards the windshield like a wraith floating on the night air. “Oh,” she said, immediately understanding what the steam meant.

  “It’s already running hot,” Luke said. “Something must have jabbed the radiator or torn a hose loose. Maybe one of the rippers stabbed it with a broken stick or a knife.” Or maybe the sharp end of a snapped bone, he thought. “We need to ditch this truck in the next few blocks. We can drive it as far as possible until it seizes up, but we’re going to need to start looking for another truck or a place to hide.”

  Wilma nodded in agreement, already looking out through her passenger side window.

  CHAPTER 15

  The truck was really overheating now. Even more steam was pouring out from underneath the hood.

  “We’re going to have to do something soon,” Luke told Wilma. At least he didn’t see as many rippers as before. But a lot of them could still be hiding in the darkness, waiting for them to get out of the truck before running after them.

  “There.” Wilma said, pointing at some houses off to the left.

  The neighborhood was thinning out a little, the yards becoming larger, the houses larger and farther apart.

  Luke killed the one headlight they had left as he drove the last half a block, then he slowed the truck down. The motor was clicking, something knocking inside; the sound of the engine was loud in the night. He put the truck in park and got out. Wilma got out at the same time, grabbing her backpack and slipping it on. She looked like a shadow with all of her black clothing on.

  “What are you doing?” Wilma asked as she raced around the back of the truck to Luke. He grabbed a chunk of concrete that one of the rippers had thrown at them—it was right next to the dead ripper in the back of the truck. He took the chunk of rock to the cab of the truck and flipped the headlight back on. He set the chunk of concrete down next to the gas pedal. He held the brake down with his left hand as he shifted into drive, then set the chunk of concrete down on the gas pedal, wedging it there. The motor screamed, the back tires beginning to spin. Luke let go of the brake pedal and jumped back out of the way as the truck lurched forward, the wheels barking just a little. The truck continued down the road, gaining speed, the lone headlight lighting the way, steam drifting away from it like an Old West locomotive.

  “Giving them something to follow,” Luke said, finally answering Wilma’s question. “Come on,” he said as he pulled his gun out of his holster.

  Wilma followed Luke as they ran towards the closest house, hiding along the side of it in the deeper shadows. She was right behind him when they stopped at the rear corner of the house for a moment.

  Everything was quiet and all the houses in sight were dark. The back yard of the house they hid next to opened up to a long field that separated this line of houses with the next line of houses on the next street.

  Wilma was in obvious pain, gritting her teeth as she put her weight down on her bad ankle.

  “Wait here,” Luke whispered as they crouched down by the corner of the house. He stared at the line of two-story homes silhouetted against the night sky beyond the field. The open field was lit up slightly from the stars and the nearly full moon that was already high in the sky in the east, even this early in the night.

  “I’m going with you,” Wilma said between clenched teeth. She even managed a smile. “You’re not ditching me just yet.”

  Luke just nodded, but didn’t return her smile. He looked around, studying the houses and the field around them. He wanted to wait a few more seconds. He took the time to reload another magazine into his gun so it would be fully loaded again. He also wanted to give Wilma a few seconds to catch her breath. She was in great shape, but the pain in her ankle was slowing her down a little.

  He concentrated on the line of houses beyond the field again, the roofs and second stories making black geometric shapes against the night sky. There were no lights flickering in any of the houses, but if there were people hiding in those houses, they would be crazy to use candles or flashlights in the darkness—lights like that would be beacons out here in the dark for the rippers to spot. But that didn’t mean that the houses were empty. There might be survivors in some of those homes, a single person hiding in the darkness, maybe even down in the basement with the door barricaded.

  Some of the houses could have rippers in them. Rippers might be sleeping in some of those houses, making some of those homes into dens. Or the rippers could be going from house to house, scrounging for food. The rippers had to sleep somewhere, and Luke found himself wondering where they slept, and when they slept. They seemed to be active at all times of the day and night. Maybe they didn’t even sleep. Maybe the disease kept them awake, their brains boiling in madness, propelling them onward until they eventually started dropping dead from pure exhaustion.

  Luke realized that he was thinking of the rippers as animals again and no longer human beings. He needed to constantly remind himself that the rippers were physiologically still human beings, with the physical limitations that came with being a human being.

  Yet they didn’t act like humans anymore; this disease had turned them into animals. He would have to learn more about them, their behavior, especially their group behavior. Why did they move in large herds but also in smaller packs? And there were others that seemed to be on their own. He remembered the large herd of rippers he’d seen coming up the street when he and Sandy had gotten into the house where he had found Crazy Valerie in the kitchen, the woman who had nailed her husband down to the kitchen floor with the nail gun. And now he had seen another large herd tonight.

  He didn’t have time to think about this—he could ponder these questions later. Right now they needed to find somewhere safe to hide for a little while, and then they needed to find another vehicle to drive to this safe place that Wilma had mentioned.

  He studied one of the houses beyond the field, and he could make out a child’s playground set in the back yard. There was also what looked like a small boat on a trailer near the rear corner of the house. In the back yard next door to that house was a big deck built around an above-ground pool.

  “Those houses over there,” Luke whispered to Wilma, nodding his head towards the field beyond the back yard. “I’m gonna check them out and come back to get you.”

  “Nope. I’m
coming with you.”

  “Your ankle—”

  “I’ll be fine. You’re not ditching me now.”

  “I saved your life,” Luke whispered. “Twice. Why would I ditch you now?”

  “Because I’m injured. Because I’m a liability. Because I’m dead weight now.”

  Luke sighed softly. “Okay. I got it.” He looked back at the field, then back at Wilma. She was hidden in the shadow of the house, her black clothing hiding her even more; he could barely make her out even this close to her. She was breathing easier now, barely making a sound. “Have your gun ready, but don’t shoot unless you absolutely have to. I don’t hear any rippers right now, but that doesn’t mean that a gunshot won’t bring them running right at us.”

  She didn’t say anything, but Luke assumed she was nodding her head.

  I can’t hear your head rattle, he almost said to her. It was a phrase he’d never said before, never even heard before, and he wasn’t exactly sure why it had popped into his mind so suddenly.

  “If you see a ripper behind us, let me know and I’ll take him out,” Luke whispered. “Only use your gun if a whole herd of them gets after us.”

  “Got it.” She seemed a little annoyed with his instructions; these were obviously things she already knew.

  “Okay. There are two houses over there. See that one with the boat and the playground in the back yard?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We’ll get to that boat and hold up there for a minute. I want to check the doors and windows of that house, or the house next door if those doors are locked. We need to be careful, there could be rippers scavenging inside. Or there could be someone holed up inside the house, scared and with a shotgun or some other kind of weapon.”

  “I got it.”

  Luke just nodded. He had to remind himself that he was dealing with a woman who was trained in combat. Maybe not in the military, but she had been trained by someone. “I wish I had some night vision goggles or something like that.”

  “There might be some at the safe house.”

  “Safe house?”

  “Yeah. That’s the place I was telling you about earlier. The place we can go. We’ll be safe there.”

  Luke didn’t bother asking any more about it. He wasn’t sure if he believed her about the night vision goggles, or even this safe house she was talking about. She could be saying anything right now to get him to go along with her while she was injured. She could be making up things to seem like more of a valuable asset to keep around. Maybe she could even sense that he was a criminal, a no-hearted bastard who would leave someone behind without hesitation if it came down to it. He wasn’t going to leave her behind, but he wasn’t going to bother pleading his case right now, wasting time trying to convince her.

  “You finally ready?” she asked.

  He smiled at her, not sure if she could see it in the dark. He couldn’t help liking her in a way, even though she was abrasive and a smartass. But it wasn’t like he wasn’t a smartass, either.

  “Yeah, let’s go,” he said.

  CHAPTER 16

  Luke stepped away from the house, looking up and down the field between the back yards of the houses. Darkness stretched as far as he could see. The moon’s light bathed some of the world in a milky-white light, but there were still a lot of areas hidden in blackness. They were going to be exposed in that moonlight when they ran across the field. The field looked like it was only sixty or seventy yards wide, less than the length of a football field.

  There were few sounds now, only the occasional screech or call from somewhere in the distance—the inhuman sounds coming from humans that Luke still couldn’t get used to. They sounded like some kind of primates communicating with each other. He also didn’t hear any helicopters or airplanes in the distance, no scattering of machinegun fire, no one yelling on a megaphone. He didn’t see the red and blue flashing lights of cop cars and emergency vehicles anywhere. Not a single airplane in the night sky. He hadn’t realized how strange the night sky looked without those small red, blue, and white dots moving slowly across the sky.

  To the northeast, there was a slight orange glow on the horizon—and he could almost imagine that they were lights of downtown Cleveland, but this wasn’t the glow of electric lights, this looked more like the glow of a massive fire. But maybe not, maybe they were campfires and battery-powered lights. Maybe Wilma had been right about the military and police concentrating their efforts on smaller areas of the city, areas where they had camps set up, and leaving the rural areas to fend for themselves. What had she called an area like this—the dead zone?

  Luke bolted out into the field. Wilma was right behind him. She was limping a little, but keeping up with him. He didn’t see any rippers coming their way.

  A minute and a half later Luke and Wilma were crouching down next to the boat on the trailer. Wilma’s breathing was a little heavy again, but he could barely hear her. Luke studied the house with the playground in the back yard. The windows on this side of the home were all intact. A small wood deck led up to two glass doors and neither one of them was shattered. These were all good signs.

  In the driveway, two vehicles were parked—a dark SUV of some kind, and a smaller car. Both looked newer.

  “I’m going to check the back door,” Luke whispered to Wilma.

  Wilma stood up, ready to go. She didn’t even bother telling him that she wasn’t going to wait behind.

  Luke darted across the back yard to the small wood deck, climbing the steps silently. Twin deck chairs were situated near a stainless-steel barbeque grill in the corner of the deck. He hurried to the doors. Large glass panels were set in the doors with the blinds drawn down on the inside. He tried the doorknobs.

  “Locked,” he whispered to her.

  He didn’t really want to break the glass, worried that the noise would—

  “I’ve got a lock pick,” Wilma said, already removing a small pouch from her front pants pocket. She pulled out two slim metal tools and inserted them into the door lock, twisting and moving them around for a few seconds. A second later there was a loud click as the door unlocked.

  Luke knew the basics of lock picking, and he could usually use a credit card to jimmy a flimsy lock free, but Wilma’s skills far surpassed his.

  She slid the tools back into the pouch and stuffed it into her pants pocket. She twisted the doorknob gently and pushed the door open and entered the home.

  Luke went in right behind her. He closed and locked the door behind them, standing there for just a moment, listening. He didn’t hear anything in the house, and more importantly he didn’t smell that odor of gore.

  Those were both good things.

  He pulled his penlight out of his front pants pocket and turned it on, holding it with his left hand over the front of it, keeping most of his fingers over the light so that it barely illuminated the room in front of them.

  They were in some kind of family or TV room that had been decorated with a maritime theme. Shelves held model ships and there were paintings and photographs all over the walls of lighthouses. An old imitation anchor hung on one wall. The room was messy, but it looked messy because of hasty packing rather than being ransacked by scavengers or rippers.

  Rippers would get to this place—they were going to get to every place, eventually. But maybe he and Wilma could crash here until morning. Maybe they could find a set of keys to one of those two vehicles in the driveway. And then they could drive to this safe house that Wilma was talking about.

  If she was even telling the truth.

  But she had to be going somewhere. She had to be from somewhere. So maybe she was telling the truth.

  There was a bedroom off of the family room that had been turned into an office. Drawers were pulled out of the desk in the corner. Books were pulled off of some of the bookcases against the wall, and plastic tubs and cardboard boxes had been pulled out of the small closet, papers and large envelopes all over the floor, only the most valuable and sentim
ental paperwork and photos probably taken when whoever lived here had abandoned this place.

  Luke followed Wilma from the family room into a hall that led to a kitchen and dining room to the left and a living room to the right. A grandfather clock stood against the wall in the dining room, ticking away in the silence. The ticking seemed so loud. A set of stairs off of the living room led upstairs. He motioned to her that he was going to check upstairs and she just nodded.

  After checking the three bedrooms upstairs, Luke relaxed a little. No one home, no one hiding. No signs of violence, either. The rooms were messy, clothes pulled out of the master bedroom closet, an open suitcase left on the bed, perhaps left behind because they already had too much stuff packed. He searched through the drawers in the end tables next to the bed, looking for sets of keys. He didn’t find any—they were probably downstairs in the kitchen somewhere.

  In the bathroom Luke found an elastic bandage that looked new. He also found a roll of white cloth tape. He brought those with him downstairs.

  Wilma was in the living room when he got to the bottom of the stairs.

  “What did you find?” he whispered to her, already shoving his gun into his shoulder holster.

  “A garage off of the kitchen. There’s a sports car and a motorcycle in the garage. I didn’t see a door to a basement anywhere.” She looked at the objects in his hand. “What did you get?”

  Luke handed her the cloth bandage and tape. “I found these upstairs. For your ankle.”

  “Thanks.”

  He looked over at the couches against the far living room walls, both of them meeting up with each other in the corner. “We should rest over there for the night. I’ll see if I can find us some food and something to drink.”

  Wilma nodded and hobbled over to the couch. She slipped her backpack off and plopped down on the couch, wincing a little.

  Luke dropped his backpack down in front of the other couch and went back to the kitchen. He checked the fridge, but there wasn’t much in there that he would trust to eat or drink. He opened the cabinets and pulled out boxed and canned food, setting them on the countertop. He found a large plastic container in a bottom cabinet and used that to collect the food. He added a few utensils and a handheld can opener, a few plastic plates and bowls.