Dark Days | Book 7 | Hell Town

by Lukens, Mark

  Audrey screamed, trying to grab for her knee, which looked like a piece of hamburger under the hem of her white dress that was now spattered with blood.

  Jacob nodded at the guards to continue. They stood her up and raised her hands up, attaching the cable to the chain. Two soldiers cranked the wheel this time, raising her up much faster than they had with Scott. When she hung a little higher than Scott, the Dark Angels let the wheel come back down a little before catching it with a levered brake, the sudden motion snapped the bones in Audrey’s wrists—Petra heard what sounded like a bundle of dry sticks being broken across someone’s knee.

  Audrey howled as she spun around on the cable, twisting in the cold air, her broken wrists swelling up immediately inside the metal cuffs, her hands turning red, then purple. The Dark Angels hoisted her back up to the same height as Scott.

  There was only one cable left dangling to the left of Audrey.

  Scott mumbled incoherently as he stared down at his dangling feet.

  “Loyalty,” Jacob said as he moved closer to Petra.

  Petra looked at him, waiting for the Dark Angels to drag her to the last hanging metal cable.

  “The Dragon values loyalty above all else. He’s trying to help all of you, and you can’t even see it. You’re as ignorant as the rippers.”

  Petra could hear the calls of the rippers somewhere in the woods beyond the fields. They were coming. She realized that’s why Scott and Audrey had been hung so high, so the rippers could only get to their legs, maybe up to their waists—they would watch as their lower bodies were ripped and torn to shreds by a horde of rippers, watch while the flesh was cut and peeled from their bones and eaten.

  One of the Dark Angels pulled out a flare gun and aimed it at the blue sky. He shot one flare, the streaking red light arcing high up into the air. The rippers had seen it—more of them were coming now, an army of them.

  “Get her back in the truck,” Jacob said—he almost sounded disappointed with his own order.

  Petra had planned on marching to her death with dignity, not the zombie daze of Scott or the panic and begging of Audrey—no, she would march nobly to her death, spitting in their faces, angry right up until the last second of her life.

  But that had been taken from her.

  She fought now, but she couldn’t do much with her hands bound behind her. Two Dark Angels got her into the back of the pickup truck easily enough, one of them climbing into the back with her, sitting right behind her, holding on to her neck and her hair, the other one shutting the tailgate.

  “Why?” Audrey wailed. “Why does she get to live? She did this! It was all her fault!”

  Jacob ignored Audrey as he walked up to the side of the pickup.

  Petra stared back at Jacob, held tightly by the Dark Angel right behind her, his hand in her hair, holding her head still, forcing her to watch Audrey and Scott hanging from the wood frame, both of them slowly twisting in the cold air, blood dribbling down Audrey’s left leg, soaking it, dripping to the ground where the earth was painted brown with previous bloodstains.

  “You’re going to watch this,” Jacob said. “They’re dying because of you, because of your selfishness. You wanted to escape, and you took them with you.”

  “They were going to escape anyway,” Petra said, trying to cut her eyes to Jacob, trying her best to look at him with the Dark Angel grabbing her hair—it felt like her head was trapped in a vice.

  “The Dragon wants you back. He has other plans for you. And when he’s done, I have some plans for you. But first you’re going to bring your friends to us. And there’s one particular person I’ve been waiting to see again, a former protégée of mine.”

  The rippers were louder, some of them bursting out from the trees and brush at the other end of the field. They ran toward the wooden structure, knowing food was hanging there for them.

  “Time to go,” Jacob said, slapping the side of the truck.

  Petra’s head was still frozen in the Dark Angel’s iron grip, her eyes still on Audrey and Scott. She heard the truck doors slamming shut, engines starting. She felt the rumble of the truck beneath her as it started up. Then they were rolling forward, bouncing along the hard ground.

  As the rippers attacked Audrey and Scott, a few of them came for the trucks. The Dark Angels picked them off as they came, the rippers falling and tumbling, losing the knives, sticks, and other weapons they’d been carrying.

  The rest of the rippers clung to Scott and Audrey’s legs, cutting into them with knives, tearing and ripping at muscle and skin, snapping bones. Audrey’s screams reached a fever pitch, her body thrashing about. Petra couldn’t tell if she was flailing or the rippers were pulling her body back and forth like a group of sharks attacking a swimmer. Scott came to life, his screams as high-pitched as Audrey’s were, just a constant scream. It sounded like their vocal chords might snap from the strain.

  The trucks drove away slowly. At least Petra saw less detail of the slaughter now, but she still heard the screams. How long were the two of them going to live? How long before they passed out from pain and loss of blood? Two young male rippers shimmied up the thick poles to the crossbeam, crawling out on it to get to the top half of the hanging prey.

  The grip of the Dark Angel’s fist in Petra’s hair loosened, but he still held on a little. He bent closer to her, whispering to her. “My name’s Dawson.”

  She didn’t answer. She didn’t care who the hell he was.

  “There are some of us who want to fight the Dragon, defeat him. But we need your help. Your friends’ help.”

  Petra didn’t say anything, her body still.

  “I can’t help you escape, but when we go to attack the store again, a few of us are going to get to your friends. We’re all going to help kill the Dragon. Okay? Do you understand? Give me a slight nod if you do.”

  Petra nodded slightly.

  “Don’t give up hope. Stay alive, and we’ll be back to get you, and to kill the Dragon.”

  Not if I can kill him first, Petra thought. But she didn’t reply.

  “I’m going to push you away from me, towards the tailgate. Okay? Just fall down and lay there.”

  Dawson let Petra’s hair and neck go. He pushed her forward and she fell over onto her side at the rear of the truck, right against the tailgate. Her arms were sore, the handcuffs biting into her skin, the air so cold on her exposed skin. But she felt a warmth growing inside of her, a flickering of hope. Maybe there was still a chance to kill the Dragon . . . and if she got that chance again, she was going to take it.

  CHAPTER 56

  Ray

  Ray couldn’t believe the stuff the store had. There were rows of dry, boxed, and canned foods; shelves of drinks: bottled water, canned and bottled sodas, juices, and other drinks, plastic containers of powdered mixes for drinks. Other shelves held bags of potato chips and cartons of snack cakes. Shelves of medical supplies, cleaning products, bathroom supplies, toilet paper, napkins, paper plates and cups.

  At the other end of the store there were more supplies, which had been arranged closer together, the middle of the store cleared out for the “tent city,” as they called it, and the scissor lift that was raised up to the skylight, an extension ladder tied to it. There were clothes, camping gear, weapons, guns, bullets, household goods—anything that had been deemed valuable; the rest of the supplies were stacked up in the loading bay.

  They didn’t have showers, but they had water they collected on the roof in buckets. They used the water to clean up with, using bottled water and brand new toothbrushes to brush their teeth. It felt so good to wash with soap and water, to brush his teeth. Mike joked and laughed while they cleaned up in what used to be the employee restrooms. He seemed happy and relaxed since they had left the cabin. Ray hugged his son when they were done cleaning up, telling him how proud of him he was.

  After they were all cleaned up and had changed into new pairs of clothes they had picked out from the store shelves, Ray and the othe
rs met at the deli area. A few tables and folding chairs had been set up, food already on trays and bowls in the middle of the table, a feast Ray could only dream about before.

  The store manager, Jo, sat at the head of the table, her arm bandaged up completely. Gil and Luke were there. Kate, Max, and Brooke. And others from the store—it seemed that all of them were there.

  “Phil and Lisa offered to take a shift on the roof,” Jo said. She looked at Ray. “We try to keep a few spotters up there at all times.”

  “The dead are still up on the roof,” Max said. “Fernando. Sophie. Wes.”

  “Tina’s covered up,” the doc said. “We got her into the loading bay.”

  “What are you going to do with them?” Josh asked.

  “We can’t really bury them anywhere,” Jo said. “And we can’t keep them in here very long. We take them out there.”

  “And the rippers eat them?” Josh asked, horrified by the idea.

  Mike looked sick at the thought of it.

  “We can’t help what they do out there.”

  “Seems like that would bring a lot more rippers around,” Ray said.

  Jo nodded. “It does. But right now the rippers are helping to keep the Dark Angels away.” She paused for just a moment. “Except for the airplanes and drones.”

  “They have drones?” Luke asked.

  “Yes,” Jo said. “A drone brought a box to us and dropped it off. It wasn’t a weapon. It was a message.”

  “There was a cell phone inside with a video,” Kate explained further. “A ransom video. They have one of ours with them.”

  “A woman,” Luke said. It wasn’t a question but a statement of fact, like something had clicked into place for him.

  “This might help,” Kate said. She picked up a drawing tablet, glancing at Brooke as she did so.

  Brooke looked back at Kate, but she didn’t say anything. She hadn’t said a word the entire time they’d been at the table.

  “Thank you,” Ray said after accepting the drawing tablet from Kate.

  “Brooke drew these a few nights ago.”

  Ray opened up the tablet and his breath was caught in his throat for a moment.

  “Dad, that’s us,” Mike whispered in awe.

  “She drew you guys?” Josh said.

  “Yeah,” Ray breathed out. “A perfect likeness.”

  “She’s seen you in her dreams,” Kate explained. “Just like you saw us in your dreams.”

  Ray flipped the page. He saw Josh holding a shotgun, Emma standing right next to him. On the next page was a drawing of Luke with his pistol and silencer. The drawing of the three of them was a spitting image of them.

  On the last page was a woman Ray recognized vaguely, someone he’d seen at some point in one of his dreams. But he definitely recognized the man hovering right behind the woman, his hands on her shoulders—the Dragon. “This is the one who’s been captured?” Ray asked.

  “Yes,” Jo said. “She went out on a run to get supplies with some of our other people. The Dark Angels brought three of them back here, wanting to exchange them so we would leave the store to them.”

  “But they were going to kill us anyway,” Max said, jumping in quickly.

  “They killed all three of them,” Jo went on. “Shot all three of them right in the parking lot. Right in front of me.”

  “But Petra wasn’t with them,” Max said. “That’s her name, the one in the drawing. Petra.”

  Ray handed the drawing tablet to Josh. He looked through them, breathing out in amazement, whispering details to Emma. Then he handed the drawing tablet to Luke.

  Luke flipped through the drawings faster, like he wanted to get to the last one. Then he froze.

  “What is it?” Ray asked him.

  “This woman. Petra. I saw her in my dreams last night. First I saw Wilma, and then it was her. She told me to come find her, to save her.” He hesitated like he didn’t want to say any more. “And then the Dragon was there.”

  “Where is she being held?” Ray asked, turning back to Jo and Max.

  “We don’t know,” Jo said.

  “In the hell town,” Luke said. He looked up. “That’s where the Dragon is. That’s where Petra has to be.”

  “Yeah,” Max agreed. “We’ve all seen that hell town in our dreams. But we don’t know where it is.”

  Luke handed the drawing tablet back to Josh who handed it back to Ray.

  “Those drawings are amazing,” Josh told Brooke.

  Brooke smiled at him, but she still didn’t say anything.

  Josh looked at Emma. “She captured your beauty perfectly.”

  Emma blushed a little, trying to hide her smile.

  “How did you guys get together?” Kate asked. “Did you know each other before the Collapse?”

  Ray told Kate and the others about escaping the neighborhood with his family during martial law. He told them about how Emma’s mother had asked him to take care of Emma, and then they had ended up at Emma’s condo. He told them about Kim dying and Vanessa turning into a ripper at the condo, but he left out details that Mike didn’t know about, like how Kim had begged him to kill her, and how Emma had just happened to have a bottle full of sleeping pills. No, there was no use in Mike knowing about those things.

  Ray told them about Craig’s cryptic message on the cell phone before it had died, and his invitation to come to his house to find the answers. He told them about how he, Mike, and Emma had traveled to Craig’s house and what they had found there: Craig and his family dead in a car in the garage, and the files on his laptop, files about a place called Avalon where research about the Ripper Plague was being done.

  He told them how they had narrowly escaped Craig’s house and how they had found Josh in a small town where three Dark Angels had attacked them and almost killed them. Josh had saved their lives by throwing Molotov cocktails at the Dark Angels. And then he told them how they’d found Luke holed up in a restaurant in a small West Virginia town called Heaven. He told them how they had gotten to a school building, how Luke and Josh had gone to look for a van so they could drive to his friend Doug’s cabin in the mountains.

  The cabin had been a safe place, but the Dark Angels found it eventually. The Dark Angels had attacked the cabin with a rocket launcher, but they had escaped through the tunnels underneath the cabin, getting away and heading south, right into a blizzard. He told them how they had hidden inside a mechanics’ bay for the night until they got away from the rippers. He told them about driving south to a used car lot where Luke had gotten stabbed, and the house where they had met Gil. Again, he left out details they didn’t need to know, like how Gil had aimed a gun at them.

  “And now we’re here,” Ray said. “We were headed to Avalon.”

  “What about you?” Josh asked Jo. “What’s the story with this place?”

  Jo told them about how she’d kept the store closed right after the Collapse, losing most of the people she’d been with at the beginning, most of them either leaving or turning into rippers. (All of them were gone now that Tina was dead.) But others had come, and she told them how Lance and Dale started going on runs, finding other people and supplies to bring to the store.

  “Lance and Dale found us,” Max said.

  “And Crystal,” Kate said. “She was with them too.”

  “They took us back here,” Max said. “We’ve been here ever since.”

  “We’ve weathered a few attacks from the Dark Angels so far,” Jo said. “And more attacks from the rippers. So far this store has held up. And we’ve held up.”

  “You’ve done an incredible job,” Ray said.

  “What about now?” Max asked Ray. “What are your plans now?”

  “Well, we were hoping to rest up here for a little while, and then we planned on continuing down to Avalon.” He looked back at Josh and Emma. They nodded in agreement. But Luke hadn’t nodded.

  “And you’re sure about this place?” Jo said. “Avalon.”

  �
�Not one hundred percent,” Ray said. “But there’s something there. Craig wouldn’t have told me to come to his house, to find those files on his computer, if it didn’t mean something.” He paused for just a moment, staring at Jo. “What about you? What are your plans?”

  “To hold the store,” she said without hesitation. “If we lose what we have here, then we have nothing.”

  Everyone was quiet for a moment.

  “You’re welcome to join us,” Jo said. “We could definitely use your help.”

  “We need to get Petra back,” Max said.

  Jo and Max locked eyes for a few seconds, and then Max looked at Ray again. “If you guys stay, then I’m going to go look for her. I’ll go by myself if I have to.”

  “We don’t even know where she is yet,” Jo said.

  “I’ll find her. I know I will.”

  Ray felt the tension between Jo and Max—this seemed like an argument they’d been having for a while. “Thank you for the food, the water, the new clothes,” he told Jo, trying to change the subject.

  “Thank you for what you did out there,” Jo said. “You saved me. You probably saved all of us.” She smiled. “You probably want to get some rest now. Please . . . stay as long as you want to. I know you want to get to Avalon, but I’m sure it’s not going anywhere.”

  “Thank you,” Ray said. He wondered what it was going to feel like to sleep in a place where he didn’t have to constantly worry about rippers.

  CHAPTER 57

  Ray

  Ray and Josh helped with the bodies on the roof, rolling them up in tarps, lifting them up over the knee wall and dropping them over the edge. The bodies fell to the ground with a splat, rippers charging the parking lot from the streets, running at the sight of the falling bodies. Ray didn’t look when the rippers got to the dead; he didn’t want to see them feasting on them.

  It was almost dark when Ray and Josh got cleaned up again in the bathrooms, using buckets of water. Mike was helping Kate and Max set up a few tents for them to sleep in.

  “This is some setup here,” Josh said, shaking his head in disbelief. His hair was slicked back with water, his sleeves still rolled up to his elbows. He was smiling.