by Lukens, Mark
He was almost out again when he felt hands on him, unbuckling his seatbelt, pulling him out of the vehicle, pushing him from room to room as he stumbled along, still handcuffed. A few men asked him questions, some of them barking orders at him. Others told the men to back off, that they weren’t going to get any kind of information in the state he was in.
Luke woke up for a few moments and realized that he was in some kind of block room with no windows. There was only one door; it was made of metal with a rectangular slot in the middle of it. This was some kind of jail cell. The metal ceiling above him had a metal grate right in the middle of it and a Plexiglas skylight above that allowed sunlight to shine down into his small room. Besides the cot he lay on, there was only one wooden chair and a plastic bucket in a corner. His handcuffs had been removed at some point, and he turned over on his side, pulling the blankets over his body.
A woman shined a penlight into his eyes the next time he came back to consciousness. She was talking, but she wasn’t talking to him. There were three other men in the room, and one of them was Matt.
“He’s dehydrated and physically exhausted,” the woman said. Luke figured she was some kind of nurse.
“Leave a few bottles of water and some MREs in here with him,” the older man standing next to Matt said. He was a little taller than Matt, standing ramrod straight with a full head of gray hair that was buzzed short. He wore military fatigues and a gun on his hip. “We’ll try to question him later.”
Luke passed out again.
When he woke up, the jail cell was dark, the skylight dark with the night sky. He realized someone was in the room with him. He stared at the corner near the metal door and saw Wilma standing there, staring at him.
He sat up, about to get up, about to reach out for her. “You’re alive,” he whispered. “They . . . they saved you.”
There was a glow around Wilma, illuminating her slightly. She smiled at him, but she didn’t approach him.
“She’s in a better place now,” a woman’s voice said.
Luke turned toward the sound of the voice and saw the blind woman standing there, another glow of light illuminating her. She was beautiful in the soft light that wrapped her in a warm aura. The cell seemed so much bigger now, the doors and walls gone. He felt like he and his cot were floating in an unending darkness now.
He looked back to where Wilma had been standing, but she was gone.
“You need to come find us,” the blind woman said.
Luke looked at the woman again. “They killed her. The Dark Angels killed Wilma. They serve him, the one they call the Dragon.”
The woman nodded. “They won’t stop. He won’t stop. We’re stronger together. We need to be together.”
Luke felt an overwhelming feeling of rage building inside of him. He wanted to explode at the unfairness of it all. He’d finally found a woman he loved, and now she’d been taken away from him. “They weren’t even after her,” he muttered. “They were after me, and now she’s dead.”
“Come south,” the woman said. “We’re not far away from you now. Come south and find us.”
“Where are you? I don’t know how to find you. Why won’t you tell me where to find you?”
The blond woman didn’t answer him.
And Luke knew why she wasn’t answering him—she didn’t want the Dragon to hear her. If she told Luke where they were, the Dagon would know. He would send his Dark Angels to find them.
“Just come south and you will find us,” the woman said. The light around her was beginning to fade quickly.
“No. Don’t go. Can you . . . can you bring Wilma back for just a few minutes?”
The light faded away completely and Luke was left in the darkness.
CHAPTER 42
The next afternoon Luke woke up on his cot. He looked across the room and saw his change of clothes from his backpack folded up neatly on the seat of the chair.
He sat up and rubbed his head. He had a headache and the spot where the rock had hit him in the back of his head was still a little tender. Every muscle in his body ached, and he had to move slowly at first. His mouth was dry, his breath bad. He grabbed the plastic bottle of water next to his cot and drank half of it down. After his thirst was quenched, he realized that he needed to pee badly.
After relieving himself in the plastic bucket in the far corner of the room, Luke shuffled back to his cot and sat down. He saw the MREs on the floor next to his bottles of water. He opened one up and added a little water, using the pre-packaged plastic utensils to stir up the food. The MRE was some kind of noodle and tomato sauce dish, but he didn’t care. It was cold and a little too salty, but right now it tasted great. They had also left him a few packs of cheese crackers and a few pieces of hard candy. He ate all of it.
He changed his clothes and refolded his dirty ones, leaving them on the seat of the chair. He slipped his hiking boots back on and tied the laces. He felt a little better now that he’d eaten and was up and moving around. But he also felt alone and hollow. The cell was a little chilly, but not too bad. There had to be some source of heat coming from somewhere, and he spotted a small vent up near the corner of the ceiling.
Forty-five minutes later the locks on the metal door disengaged. A man armed with a rifle swung the door open. He waited just inside the cell as the older man Luke had seen yesterday and Matt entered the cell. They both had handguns holstered on their hips.
“You going to give us any trouble?” the older man asked. “Do we need to handcuff you?”
Luke shook his head. “No, sir.”
“You remember me?” Matt asked.
Luke nodded. “You’re Wilma’s brother.”
“Stepbrother, actually. But she was like a sister to me.”
Luke swore he saw guilt in Matt’s eyes. Matt had rejected Wilma when she’d needed his help the most, when she had begged for it. Wilma understood it was a protocol she had agreed to follow, and that the camp couldn’t be endangered if they thought the disease could spread to them. Yet Luke couldn’t help thinking that Wilma would still be alive if Matt had trusted her, if he had helped her and taken her with him.
“We need to ask you some questions,” the older man said. “You think you’re up for that?”
Luke nodded.
“What’s your name?”
“Luke.”
“You get enough rest, Luke?”
Luke nodded. He still felt tired and sore.
“You get enough to eat and drink?”
He nodded again.
“I see you found your extra set of clothes and the latrine bucket. Sorry we couldn’t make the accommodations more comfortable, but we need to be sure we can trust you first.”
Luke nodded again. “You can trust me.” He met Matt’s eyes. “Wilma trusted me.”
Matt bristled a little, but he didn’t say anything.
“We’d like to take you to another building where we can talk. A meeting hall, rather than here in the cell. Are you ready to go?”
Luke stood up. He followed the older man and Matt down the hall, and the armed soldier followed all three of them. They walked down a hallway, then turned left into a wider hall that led to a set of double doors. They all stepped outside and Luke winced a little at the sunlight.
As he followed the two men toward a large building, Luke glanced around at the compound. Most of the buildings were constructed from wood and metal, most with metal roofs. The buildings were painted either dark green or beige. There was minimal to no landscaping and the paths around the buildings were hard-packed dirt or gravel.
Now that Luke had a view of the compound from the inside, he saw scaffoldings set up and attached to the metal perimeter walls so guards could stand at the top of the fence line and keep watch.
Luke guessed some of the buildings off in the distance were some kind of living quarters. There was what looked like a greenhouse near a large building with smoke drifting up from behind it; Luke guessed that was the kitchen or cafe
teria. There were a few gardens and pens for animals beyond that building. A line of Polaris vehicles were parked near the metal wall that surrounded the camp, and there were other larger trucks parked off by themselves.
Three men practiced with bows and arrows, shooting at targets as Luke walked by. He figured they were learning with weapons they could make themselves—ammo that could always be found and made from nature.
Everything served a purpose inside the compound, no space seemed to be wasted.
Luke followed the older man and Matt through a door of another long building with metal and wood walls, a few tinted windows set into the walls. They entered what looked like a lobby, then he followed the two men into a large room that looked like a theater, rows of cheap metal folding chairs stretching out to a stage at the far end of the room. They walked to the front row of seats and the older man gestured at the seats for Luke to sit down.
A woman joined them. She had a battery-powered tape recorder and a notepad and pen. The armed guard waited by the stage.
“This is Marjorie,” the older man said, introducing the woman with the tape recorder. “She’ll be taking notes and recording this. My name’s Chandler, and that man over there by the stage is Harold. And of course you’ve already met Matt.”
Luke nodded.
“You’re not a criminal here,” Chandler said. He remained standing even though Matt and Marjorie had each taken a seat, pulling the metal chairs out a little so they could face Luke. “We just want to understand what happened out there.”
Luke told his story, telling them how he had met Wilma. He left out the details of his personal life and his criminal past—he didn’t feel that would help him in any way right now. He told them how he had saved Wilma’s life—twice. He told them that they had grown close to each other and left it at that.
Then he told them about their run-in with a group he now knew to be the Dark Angels. But he said nothing of his dreams or Wilma’s dreams. He said nothing of his urge to go south now, to look for the blind woman and her companions.
“The Dark Angels are a large group, from what I’ve seen,” Luke said. “We saw evidence of their group from Cleveland all the way down to the Ohio River. They seem to follow a leader they call the Dragon Lord.”
“And how do you know all of this?”
“I killed the group of men that killed Wilma. I killed them all, but I wounded the last one so I could question him.”
“How did you question him?”
“I got my answers,” Luke said, locking eyes with Chandler. “I got my answers, and then I killed him for what they did to Wilma.”
Chandler and Matt glanced at each other.
“You’ve heard of the Dark Angels before, haven’t you?” Luke said.
“I haven’t seen them myself,” Chandler said. “But a few people have gotten here in the last few days and they told us about them. They’d seen their symbols that you were talking about painted on houses and cars. They also saw the symbol carved into a man’s forehead, as you also described.”
So they knew he was telling the truth. “I don’t know how they got so big and organized so quickly,” Luke said, “but the man I questioned said they were moving south.” It was a bit of a lie, but Luke knew he had to be careful about what he said, careful not to say anything about the dreams he’d been having—they would think he was crazy.
“Were you ever in the military, Luke?” Chandler asked.
“No.” But he guessed Chandler had served.
“The gun we found on you . . . it has a silencer on it.”
“A man tried to rob me with it in Cleveland. The cops rushed us at the same time. I took the opportunity to blindside the man and take his weapon. I ran and I think the cops got the man.”
Chandler and Matt remained expressionless, and for some reason Luke didn’t think they believed his story. And he really didn’t care what they believed.
“Why were you traveling with Wilma?” Matt asked.
Luke stared at Matt. “Like I said, I saved her life. She’d hurt her ankle, and I wanted to help her. She said she knew a safe place where we could go. That’s when we showed up at the safe house.” He left it at that, not sure how much Chandler knew about Matt’s decision to ditch his stepsister.
“She agreed to bring you down here to this camp with her?” Chandler asked.
“Yes. She wanted me to stay with her.”
“And you wanted to stay with her?”
Luke hesitated for just a moment. “Yes, I did.” Another small lie that didn’t need to be explained. Luke couldn’t say for sure what he would be doing right now if Wilma was still alive. But he knew what he wanted to do now, he wanted to leave this place and head south.
“We examined Wilma’s body,” Chandler said. “The wounds match your story. Looks like she was shot with a high-powered rifle from a distance of at least a hundred yards.”
Luke didn’t say anything.
“Did she . . .” Matt began.
“No,” Luke answered. “She didn’t suffer. She was gone almost immediately.”
Matt breathed out a sigh of relief.
“We’ve already talked earlier and decided that you’re innocent of any crimes,” Chandler said. “But we still need to decide if we’re going to let you stay here with us.”
“Let me make it easy for you. I don’t want to stay here.”
Chandler almost looked offended, maybe not expecting Luke to reject their offer. “What are your plans, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“No plans, really,” Luke said, shrugging a little. “I’m going to head south to warmer weather.”
“It’s almost winter,” Chandler said. “You’re in for some tough traveling through the mountains.”
“I’m aware.”
“You could stay here for the winter. See how you like it. Then you could leave after that.”
“I appreciate the offer, but I’d still like to leave.”
“Will you stay for Wilma’s funeral service?” Matt asked. “It’s tomorrow morning.”
Luke nodded. “Yes. I’ll stay for that.”
CHAPTER 43
Luke stood at the side of Wilma’s grave the next morning, watching the men lower the pine box down into the ground with ropes. A grave marker was already in place. They had asked if Luke wanted to say anything at the service, but he had turned them down.
A few hours later Luke met Chandler, Matt, and another man named Jerome at the gate. They had returned his backpack, his weapons (including his gun with the silencer attached to it), his change of clothes (which they had washed for him), and the night vision goggles he had taken off the last Dark Angel he had interrogated and then killed. Anything that had been Wilma’s they had kept. Along with his possessions, they had given him a few things to take with him: five MREs, three bottles of water, a pack of water purification tablets, a small first-aid kit, a pack of waterproof matches, a compass, a detailed map of West Virginia, and a few other odds and ends to help with his journey and his survival.
“I hope you understand that we can’t give you a vehicle,” Chandler told him. “You’ll find plenty of abandoned vehicles along the way, I’m sure.”
Luke nodded at him. His body was still sore from carrying Wilma’s body to the Ohio River, but the two days of food and rest had helped a lot. He’d taken three aspirins this morning and then stood under a long, hot shower. He was antsy now, ready to get going. He honestly didn’t know what he would have done if Wilma was still alive—maybe he could have talked her into going with him—but he knew he couldn’t stay here now.
“You guys just be ready for when the Dark Angels move south,” Luke told the three men. “I don’t know if they’ll find this place or not . . .”
“We’re hidden pretty well,” Chandler said with a smug smile.
Luke didn’t say anything, but he hoped he hadn’t somehow given anything away in his dreams.
“We wish you all the best,” Chandler said.
&nbs
p; Luke looked at Matt. The man’s eyes were rimmed in red from crying at Wilma’s service. When he spoke, he choked up a little: “I wanted to thank you . . . thank you for trying to help Wilma.”
Luke did his best to hold back his own tears. He felt like he had failed Wilma as much as Matt had. They should have protected her, and he couldn’t live with that. Definitely not here, not in this camp, where everything would be a reminder of Wilma.
The men opened the gate as the two guards watched from their scaffolding—their homemade turrets. Luke walked out through the opening and then they closed the gate again quickly. He heard them putting the barricades back in place inside the gate, metal thumping against metal.
Luke stood in front of the gate for just a moment. It was cold, but it felt good to be outside the compound. As sad as he felt about Wilma, he also felt some sense of hope. He would go south now; he would find the blind woman who called to him in his dreams. And he would find the others who were with her.
A THANK YOU:
Thank you so much for reading my book! I hope you enjoyed it, and I hope you’ll check out the other books in this series. Being an author is a dream come true for me, and it only happens because of readers like you. I thank you from the bottom of my heart.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Mark Lukens has been writing since the second grade when his teacher called his parents in for a conference because the ghost story he’d written concerned her a little.
Since then he’s had several stories published and four screenplays optioned by producers in Hollywood. He’s the author of many bestselling books including: The Ancient Enemy series, Devil’s Island, Sightings, Followed, The Exorcist’s Apprentice, and many others. He’s proud to be a member of the Horror Writers Association.