Dark Days (Book 3): Exposure:

by Lukens, Mark

  And that’s when Wilma had snapped awake. Had she heard something that had roused her from sleep? Maybe she had heard Luke start one of the vehicles in the driveway and drive off. Or maybe she’d heard some of the rippers around the house, inspecting it, trying to find a way in.

  Wilma stood up in front of the couch, testing her ankle, slowly putting her weight down onto it. She winced as the pain shot up her leg, but she could stand it if she had to. She picked up her backpack and slipped it over her shoulders without a sound. She fished her fingerless gloves out of her pocket and slipped them on. She picked up her gun from the couch. She was ready to go now.

  She checked the ticking clock in the dining room. It was easier to see in the dining room because the waning moonlight was filtering in through the blinds over the two doors that led out to the deck in the back. She stared at the clock face and saw that it was a little after five o’clock—but probably still at least an hour away from dawn.

  A sound from the kitchen. No, from beyond the kitchen. Out in the garage.

  Wilma hurried into the kitchen and then froze when she looked down at the countertop near the door that led out to the garage. There were sets of keys there; it looked like all of them were still there. Hope surged through her. She heard that sound from the garage again, the soft sound of someone moving something around out there.

  It was Luke. She was sure of it. He hadn’t left her. He’d kept his promise.

  She hurried over to the kitchen window over the sink that looked out to the driveway. Both of the vehicles were still there.

  “Luke,” she whispered when she entered the garage.

  “Over here,” he whispered back.

  She saw the dot of light from his penlight, his one hand cupped over the front of it.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Nothing. Just looking around again. I couldn’t sleep. I was upstairs earlier, seeing if there’s anything we might need.”

  “Why didn’t you wake me up?”

  “I wanted you to sleep for a little while. You need your rest.” He walked towards her. “I was going to wake you up in about ten minutes.”

  “You didn’t sleep at all?” she asked.

  “Yeah. About four hours. I woke up a little while ago.”

  “Did something wake you up? Did you hear something outside?”

  “No. I just woke up. Had some bad dreams.”

  She felt a chill dance across her skin. “Yeah, me too.”

  “You okay? How’s your ankle?”

  “It’s better,” she lied.

  “You ready to go? I think it’s better if we leave around this time of the morning. It seems like this is the time the rippers are least active.”

  “Yeah. I’m ready.”

  Wilma backed up into the kitchen as Luke entered. He picked up a set of keys and then walked over to the end of another line of cabinets and picked up his backpack. She hadn’t seen the backpack there earlier.

  “These keys are for the SUV,” Luke said. “I think that’s our best bet, but we’ll take the other set and check out the car. See which one has the most gas.”

  “See which one starts,” she added.

  “Yeah.” He went into the living room, and she followed him, trying not to limp too badly.

  “I’m going to use the bathroom upstairs before we leave,” he told her. “There’s one down here. You should try to go, too.”

  She nodded. There would be bathrooms at the safe house, only those would have running hot water, and a shower. But she didn’t want to argue with him.

  “I got a box of supplies to take with us,” he said. “Some extra food and drinks. Extra water and batteries. The old couple cleaned the place out pretty good, but there was probably no way they could have taken everything they wanted to take.”

  Luke headed upstairs.

  CHAPTER 19

  Both vehicles started right up, and both were nearly full of gas. But the SUV was bigger and more powerful, so they decided to take that one.

  “I’m driving,” Wilma said. “I know the way there.”

  Luke didn’t argue with her. He loaded the box of supplies he had gathered together into the back seat, along with both of their backpacks, both of them within easy reach. He got in the passenger side, and she got in the driver’s side. They had to move quickly. Even though the SUV’s engine was pretty quiet, any sound out here in the silent morning seemed amplified.

  The world was still dark, not even beginning to lighten up in the east yet. The nearly full moon had shifted towards the western horizon and the air seemed even colder than it had only a few hours ago.

  Wilma only turned on the parking lights so she could see the instrument panel. She shifted into reverse and backed out of the driveway, backing out onto the street and then she shifted into drive.

  They drove down the street, passing the dark homes until they reached a county road, where they turned south. Already the neighborhoods were thinning out, subdivisions giving way to small farms here and there; there were more fields and patches of woods. The farther south they drove, the more rural it got.

  Luke turned the heater on, warming his hands in front of the vent—the heat felt wonderful. Wilma kept her gloves and knit cap on as she drove. He tried the radio, first pushing the buttons for pre-selected radios stations, and then slowly turning the knob. There was mostly static on the radio, a few voices faded in and out, maybe ham radio operators, but it was hard to tune them in. One man with a southern accent sounded like he was preaching, and it reminded Luke of the prophet he had seen walking down the street a few nights ago. He wondered if the old prophet was still alive.

  No, probably not.

  He wondered how far the prophet had gotten that night after he had walked away from that street Luke had been on. He wondered if the prophet had made it another few blocks. Another mile. Had the rippers gotten to him? The military?

  Thinking of the old prophet made Luke think of Sandy. He wondered if the dog was still alive. Maybe her chances of surviving were better than the old prophet’s, but maybe not that much better. He wanted to imagine that Sandy had fallen in with a pack of dogs that would help her survive in this new world, but he highly doubted that had happened.

  The world was beginning to lighten up enough for Wilma to see without the headlights.

  “How long will it take to get to this safe house?” Luke asked.

  “About another forty-five minutes maybe,” she said. She seemed antsy, speeding up a little. “We need to make it there before seven o’clock.”

  “You think they’ll leave without you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “They won’t wait?”

  She just shrugged. “They’ve got their instructions to follow. No one told me to go out and look for my cousin. I knew the risks and the consequences.”

  Luke didn’t know how to respond to that. He stared out the passenger window at the lightening world as Wilma cruised down the road, doing at least fifty-five or sixty miles an hour now. There were quite a few cars and trucks pulled over onto the side of the road, but not too many blocking the road. Some of the vehicles were wrecked into telephone poles, and a few had crashed right into houses and buildings, others crashed into each other, rear-ended and sideswiped. Two of them were flipped over into a shallow ditch.

  “Look at all these cars,” Luke said.

  Wilma nodded. “Most of them abandoned. Just think of how many people began to turn into rippers as they were driving.”

  “Yeah. Do you know what the symptoms are?”

  “It starts with confusion, almost like a person has sudden dementia or something. They start talking gibberish, forgetting words, unable to communicate what they want to say. And they start getting angry and violent.”

  Luke thought of all the news reports he’d heard about, all the violence all over America in the weeks before everything collapsed: families being slaughtered in their homes, violence at workplaces, at public places. The signs had
been there, all of it leading up to this.

  “They might have snapped while they were driving,” Wilma continued, nodding at the abandoned cars and trucks they were passing. “They could’ve been driving and then ten minutes later forgot where they were going. Or maybe even forgot how to drive.”

  He wondered what happened when they turned into rippers. He wondered if they were trapped inside their minds somehow while they turned. He wondered if Howard’s mind was still there somewhere when he’d been slaughtering his wife and kids, eating them, unable to control himself, unable to do anything but watch what he was doing.

  Luke focused on the buildings they drove past instead of the abandoned cars and trucks. He saw a few rippers wandering around, and again he wondered why some traveled in large groups and others were alone. Some of the buildings had been destroyed: windows broken, doors wide open, trash all over the yards and parking areas.

  One parking lot in front of an auto parts store had three dead bodies lying in the middle of it. Crows and buzzards were already out this early in the morning, picking at the bits of flesh they had left on their bones.

  Another brick building had the word REPENT spray-painted across the side of it in big green letters. Other messages had been spray-painted including: ALL DEAD HERE and ABANDON ALL HOPE. He noticed the same symbol painted on a few of the houses and buildings, the letter A with a circle around it.

  “What do you think that is?” Luke asked Wilma, pointing at the next house he saw with the symbol painted on it.

  “It stands for anarchy,” Wilma said.

  Luke nodded. “Yeah, I know. But why are people painting that symbol over and over again?”

  She shrugged while keeping both hands on the steering wheel. “I don’t know.”

  He sensed that she was lying, but he didn’t want to call her on it. He looked back out the window again, watching the early morning mist roll by. He stared at the devastation of the businesses, houses, farms, cars, and trucks. This didn’t look like Ohio anymore, or even America, it looked like a country that had just been bombed or attacked, leaving behind battle scars and death everywhere.

  “Smells like smoke,” Luke said.

  “Yeah. I smell it, too. Look.” She pointed out the windshield, to the left. “See that up there? It looks like those crops in that field are on fire.”

  Luke saw it. The fire was probably a quarter of a mile away from the road, back in the fields, but a large part of the fields were burning, the smoke drifting up from the fires and adding to the mist, creating a dense wall of fog across the road ahead.

  Wilma slowed the SUV down a little.

  “Is there another way around it?” he asked.

  She sighed and gripped the steering wheel harder. “I’m going to try to go through it. The fire doesn’t look that big. Maybe once we get past that field . . .” She let her words trail off.

  Luke didn’t want to argue with her, but he also didn’t want to slam into a jackknifed semi-truck that they wouldn’t see until the last moment in the fog and smoke.

  “Fires are something we’re going to have to get used to,” Wilma said as she sped towards the wall of smoke. “Fires are going to keep burning all over the place. Fires that were set purposely, like this one probably was. Fires from cities being bombed. Eventually there will be fires from lightning strikes or nuclear power plants shutting down. No fire department to put them out anymore.”

  Anarchy, Luke thought. That’s truly what the world was now. Maybe that’s what all of those symbols were supposed to mean, that they were trapped now in a chaotic world with no rules anymore.

  Wilma drove into the smoke, slowing down even more. She turned on her headlights, but then turned them back off—they didn’t seem to be doing any good. She gripped the steering wheel hard as she concentrated on the road.

  Luke didn’t say anything as she drove; he just kept watching out the windshield, trying to help her spot any objects in the road before it was too late.

  The abandoned cars and trucks had thinned out a little the farther south they drove, the areas less populated, so maybe their odds of getting through the next mile or two of smoke would be pretty good. They had seen fewer rippers, but Luke was ready for rippers to materialize out of the smoke at any moment. He could imagine them rushing up to their slow-moving truck, smashing the windows with clubs and pipes and hammers. He braced himself for some of the rippers to run out into the road, sacrificing a few of themselves so the rest of them could eat.

  So far so good. They had to have driven at least a mile now. He knew Wilma was nervous about getting to this safe house in time before her brother and the rest of them left, but she still needed to be careful. If they wrecked the vehicle, they weren’t going to get there at all.

  “What’s that?” Wilma said.

  Luke saw it, too. The smoke was beginning to fade a little, but not enough to see clearly. There were two cars tipped over on their sides, nose-to-nose, facing each other, blocking the road.

  Luke had seen a roadblock like that before.

  CHAPTER 20

  “Slow down,” Luke said. He had his gun out. “I’ve seen this before.”

  “Look,” Wilma said as she slowed the SUV down even more, creeping towards the two cars on their sides. One of the cars, the white one, had a big anarchy symbol painted on the roof with orange paint.

  “Get ready to punch the gas,” Luke told her. “And stay down. That’s a barricade. I’ve seen it before. There will be people hiding behind those cars with guns. Go to the left. It looks like we can get around them there in that ditch.”

  Wilma veered to the left as she approached the two vehicles.

  When they were only thirty feet away, two men stepped out from each end of the barricade, both with machine guns aimed at their SUV.

  “Get down!” Luke yelled. “Go to the left! Punch the gas!”

  Wilma slouched down in the driver’s seat and yanked the wheel to the left, gunning the gas at the same time.

  Luke rolled down the window and stayed low, using the top of the door to aim his pistol at the closer man, who was already shooting at them. The attacker was dressed in a mixture of camouflage and black clothing with a bandana over his face and sunglasses or goggles on.

  The men fired their automatic rifles, the bullets flying at them and pelting the side of the SUV. Luke concentrated on the man closer to them, the one on the left side of the barricade, squeezing the trigger as their truck sped to the left.

  Luke got the closer man in the forehead. He aimed at the other man, shooting twice, hitting the man in the forehead and then the neck, dropping him instantly.

  Wilma hit the brakes as their SUV skidded off the side of the road, right towards the ditch. The SUV came to a stop right at the edge of the ditch.

  They were still and everything was quiet.

  Luke kept his gun aimed out the window, staying low, waiting for others to come running out from behind the two cars. They were almost even with the two tipped-up vehicles, but not behind them yet, so he couldn’t see who else was hiding back there. “You okay?” he asked without taking his eyes off of the cars.

  She didn’t answer right away, only breathing heavily.

  “Wilma!”

  “Yes,” she said, breathing the word out. “Yeah. I’m not hit. You?”

  “No. They hit our vehicle, though. You see any steam coming out of the front? I don’t want to take my eyes off those cars.”

  “No. Gauges are all good right now.”

  Luke just nodded slightly. “Let’s just wait here for a few seconds. If there are any others behind there, they might think we’re injured or dying. They’ll peek around the corner soon enough to check.”

  Wilma waited in the driver’s seat, her hands on the steering wheel, her foot on the brake, the selector still in drive. The engine was still purring.

  “Okay,” Luke said after another minute. “Let’s drive around this vehicle over here, see what’s behind the barricade. Just go s
lowly, but be ready to punch the gas if we need to.”

  Wilma crept forward, maneuvering away from the edge of the ditch and back onto the road. As she crept towards the end of the barricade, Luke glanced down at the first man he had killed, getting a better look at him this time. The man was dressed in layers of clothing, some camouflage, some black leather, with belts across his jacket holding different pouches—he looked like something out of a Mad Max film. He had some kind of goggles over his eyes and a red bandana over his face. But his hat had fallen off when he’d hit the ground, his long hair splayed out under his head, already soaked with blood. And now that the hat was gone, Luke saw that the man had the same symbol on his forehead, the anarchy symbol. At first Luke thought the symbols might have been drawn there in red marker, but then he guessed that it might have been burned or etched into the man’s skin. Luke’s bullet had traveled right through the middle of the symbol.

  When they were behind the barricade, Luke saw a construction tractor parked right behind both vehicles, holding both of them up on their sides. Just beyond the construction tractor a box truck was parked. The rear end of the truck was facing them as they drove by and the door was rolled all the way up, but there were no other men inside. The back of the truck was half-filled with boxes, plastic tubs, suitcases, and other supplies.

  “Slow down for a second,” Luke told Wilma, still keeping his eyes and his gun on the truck.

  “We need to go. There might be more of them.”

  “Just go a little farther, just so I can see the front of the truck.”

  Wilma crept forward, then slowed the SUV down to a stop. Luke opened the door and got out.

  “What are you doing?” she hissed at him.

  Luke saw that the side of the panel truck had a big anarchy symbol painted on the side of it, but the symbol looked strange, the circle around the letter A more angular, almost like a capital D. The cab of the truck was empty. No one else seemed to be around, unless they were hiding in the ditch or they had run off down the road. The smoke was lighter here, but still hovering in the air, the air stinking with the smell of burning crops. He took a few steps towards the truck, still aiming his gun at it.