Dark Days (Book 4): Refuge

by Lukens, Mark

  CHAPTER 47

  Ray

  An hour later they ate dinner at the dining room table. It was the first hot food they’d had in over a week. The cabin was beginning to warm up and feel comfortable now that the heater was working. Josh also told them that they should have hot water now because the hot water heater was tankless, the water heating up within minutes as soon as it was used.

  Ray was happy that Josh had figured out how to turn the electricity and water on, but he couldn’t bring himself to praise Josh, or even thank him. Every time he looked at those glassy, stoned eyes of Josh’s he thought of his little brother, and he didn’t want to think about Freddie.

  Ray and Luke had found the keys to the garage door. The electricity in the garage was also on, connected to the cabin through underground wires. They had debated about whether to stow their van in the garage or leave it parked in the parking area. Ray felt their van should be out in the open and available if they needed to leave suddenly. But Luke thought it was better if their vehicle was hidden in case Dark Angels or even other survivors and scavengers happened upon the place. Both tactics had their pros and cons, but Ray gave in to Luke. At least their van would be out of the cold and snow for a while, perhaps saving the battery from going dead so quickly.

  While out in the garage, Ray and Luke did a quick search of the van again, hoping to find some superglue or thread and needle; the van seemed to have so many other odds and ends tucked away inside. Ray hoped they hadn’t thrown some of that stuff away earlier when they had parked in the woods and cleared the extra clutter out of the van.

  They didn’t find superglue, needles, or thread in the van or in the garage. Their impromptu butterfly bandages were just going to have to work until they could come up with something better. If Josh listened to them and didn’t move his arm too much, maybe the cut would stay closed and heal. Maybe Josh’s immune system would fight the infection.

  They found some Tylenol in the spare bathroom and gave Josh that instead of the aspirins, fearing the aspirin might make the wound bleed easier. And maybe the Tylenol would help with the pain so he could slow down a little on the pain pills.

  Earlier, when Ray had checked the sheds at the far edge of the back of the property, he’d found a riding lawn mower, some gardening and lawn equipment, but not much else. There were a few five-gallon cans of gasoline, and that was good.

  The Jeep in the garage looked either brand new or only a few years old. It was a 4x4 with large knobby tires. But it was much smaller than the van; it wouldn’t hold all of them like the van would, unless one of them—most likely Mike—was all the way in the back. If they decided to leave, they would have to take both vehicles.

  Now, after their dinner, they all sat back and relaxed at the table. Ray had only eaten a little, surprised that the small amount of food could fill him up. And he never thought canned soup and beans could taste so good. The talk turned to hot showers and to doing their laundry in the washer and dryer in the pantry. They all had at least one extra set of clothes with them. The fact that all of them had managed to hold on to their backpacks through all of this was amazing, a small bit of good luck among all the bad luck they had endured.

  They had emptied their backpacks earlier and compiled the food, water, and supplies they had, each of them keeping their clothes and shoes, stuffing them back into their packs. Ray added any of the food and supplies to the shelves in the pantry so he could take a complete inventory of what they had, getting an overall picture of what they lacked and how long, if rationed, their food and supplies could last. The one good thing was that they had filtered water from a well somewhere on the property.

  Emma took a shower in the bathroom upstairs and changed into her second set of clothes: a pair of faded jeans and a sweatshirt. Mike took his shower after Emma. Luke used the shower downstairs, and then Josh was next. They found a plastic bag to cover Josh’s bandaged arm so they wouldn’t have to wrap it again tonight with bandages and tape.

  After their showers, Ray started a load of laundry. He hadn’t realized how bad their clothes had smelled until he stuffed all of them down into the washing machine. There was only one jug of laundry detergent, but Ray used two capfuls, splurging this time because the clothes smelled so bad.

  They gathered in the living room after their showers. Luke stretched out on the living room floor and Ray brought a dining room chair in to sit on. Josh was on the smaller couch, Mike and Emma on the larger one.

  “We should start a fire in the fireplace,” Mike suggested.

  Ray explained to Mike that they couldn’t do that. The smoke, the sight and smell of it, might draw rippers, Dark Angels, or survivors. They kept all the drapes closed tightly as night came and they only had a few lamps lit, all of them agreeing to shut off all the lights when they went to bed. Ray and Mike were going to take one of the bedrooms upstairs, and Emma would take the other. Luke offered to sleep out on the living room couch so Josh could take the bedroom downstairs. Ray promised that if they decided to stay here through the winter, they would turn the office into another bedroom.

  “I know it’s only our first night here, but I think we need to talk about what we’re going to do,” Ray told all of them. “We could either load up the Jeep and the van tomorrow with everything we’ve got here and head south, or we could try to tough it out here through the winter.”

  They were all quiet, all of them thinking the options over.

  “Everyone gets a vote in this,” Ray told them. “But we need to really think about this. Maybe even sleep on it tonight.”

  “Resting for at least a few days, or even a week, makes the most sense to me,” Luke said. “Those Dark Angels are probably still in the area looking for us.” He looked at Ray. “You said you wanted to stay here for the winter. What are your plans after that?”

  “We’re going to Avalon,” Mike blurted out.

  “What’s Avalon?” Luke asked.

  “When I worked with Doug at the CDC, our supervisor was a man named Craig. That Friday morning when all the electric went out, when the banks closed their doors, when everything really started to break down, Craig called me right before the cell phones went out. He told me that society was collapsing, and that it wasn’t coming back. Then he told me that something was happening to people. The phone started breaking up so I couldn’t hear everything he said to me, but he told me to get to his house, to bring my family. He said there were answers, and he mentioned the word Avalon.”

  “What does Avalon mean?” Luke asked.

  “I had to look it up,” Ray said. “It was a mythical place in the tales of King Arthur, an island they took him to so he could be healed. I don’t really know much about the myth of Avalon, but I think the word was a government code word for a bunker in northern Georgia. When we got to Craig’s house, I found his password and looked up the files on his laptop. I saw articles about this ripper plague, and about the place called Avalon.”

  “So you know what’s there at Avalon?” Luke asked.

  Ray shook his head no. “The articles were vague and secretive. But it seems like the place could be either a bunker or a research center, maybe something to do with the CDC. They could be working on a cure there. Or they might even have a cure already.”

  “Or it could be as abandoned and destroyed as every other place we’ve come across,” Luke said. “Or it could even be bombed out like some of the cities.”

  “Yes,” Ray agreed. “That’s possible. But something’s there. I can feel it. It’s got to be something important or Craig wouldn’t have told me about it. He wouldn’t have asked me to risk my family to get to his house.”

  Ray got up and grabbed his leather-bound notebook from the dining room table. He handed it to Luke. “I copied a lot of the information about Avalon down into this notebook. I also wrote down the directions. I drew a map, a route down to Avalon.”

  Luke used his small flashlight to look through the notebook Ray had given him.

  “Craig w
as planning to go to Avalon,” Ray said. “He was going to take his family there. They had started packing. And I’m sure they would have gone if they hadn’t all started turning.” Ray remembered finding Craig and his family in the garage, inside their SUV, all of them dead from carbon monoxide poisoning.

  “I’ve got the notebook that Isaac kept,” Josh said, looking at Ray. “You can have it. We should pool all the information we have, put it all into one book.”

  Luke closed Ray’s leather-bound notebook after glancing through it. He looked at Emma. “You came to me in my dreams. You told me to go south and find you guys.”

  “Mine too,” Josh added, looking at Emma. “You said the same thing in my dreams.”

  “I’m sorry,” Emma said. “I don’t remember any of that.”

  “I know,” Luke told her. “But that’s what you said in the dreams. Does that mean that you want all of us to go down to Avalon?”

  “I don’t know,” Emma said.

  “It’s like we’re being drawn down there,” Ray said. “I know it means something. The answers are there, whatever those answers are.”

  “What about the Dragon Lord?” Mike asked Emma. “Isn’t he down south somewhere?”

  Emma shook her head no again. “I don’t know where he is.”

  “What about the others we’ve been seeing in our dreams now?” Josh asked. “I’ve been seeing a woman and a little girl. And now I saw a man and a woman traveling together. Are they supposed to be with us? Are they supposed to find us, or are we supposed to find them? Are there more than those four?”

  “I’m sorry,” Emma said. “I wish I could answer your questions, but I can’t.”

  Parts of last night’s dreams flashed through Ray’s mind. He’d seen the man and woman Josh was talking about, but then he remembered the wasted town. “I keep seeing a place in my dreams. A town. It seems like the place where the Dragon Lord lives or rules.”

  “I’ve seen that place, too,” Josh said, getting excited. “Yeah, man. The sky’s all gray. The buildings are torn up like it’s a warzone.”

  “Dead bodies hanging everywhere,” Luke said, nodding. “Hanging from tree branches and telephone poles, the edge of porch roofs. Some of the people are tied down over cars or staked to the sides of buildings.”

  “I’ve seen it, too,” Mike said. “That place is down south, isn’t it? We’ll have to go through it, won’t we?”

  “Could the Dragon Lord be the one trying to draw us south?” Ray asked.

  “Good,” Luke said. “I hope he is. I hope we find him. I want to kill him and put an end to whatever the hell he’s doing.”

  “I wish I had the answers for you,” Emma said. “But I don’t.”

  “What do you think we should do?” Josh asked Emma.

  They were all quiet, waiting for Emma to speak.

  “If you need some time to think about it, we understand,” Ray told Emma.

  “Yes,” Emma answered. “Maybe we should do that, think about things for a bit. Maybe we should stay here for a few days. Rest and decide what we should do. But we might need to make a few trips to the nearest houses and into a town. If we stay, we need to find some antibiotics for Josh’s arm.”

  “We could use the Jeep out there in the garage,” Luke said. “I could drive to the closest town. I could go alone. Or just me and Ray.”

  Mike looked at Ray, suddenly not happy about that idea.

  “If we can find some antibiotics,” Josh said, “maybe we could stay here for a few weeks. It’s only the beginning of November right now; the weather isn’t that bad. We could stay here for a while. Maybe the longer we wait here, the farther the Dark Angels get away from us.”

  “Or it gives the Dark Angels more time to organize,” Luke said. “More time for them to amass more weapons and convert more people into soldiers.”

  “And in those few weeks we would eat all of the food we have here in this cabin,” Ray said.

  “Maybe we could find more food in houses and in nearby towns,” Josh said. “We could search every house and building all around us. Find maps and keep track of which places we’ve searched and what places still need to be searched.”

  “If we choose to stay here through the winter,” Ray said, “we’re going to have to eventually learn how to hunt and fish. Gather up some berries and nuts in the woods before the winter gets too bad. We’re going to have to learn those things anyway. The easy food is going to be gone soon. The rippers and other survivors will wipe it out within months. Avalon may be our only chance at something permanent.”

  They were all quiet for a moment.

  “So we sleep on it tonight,” Luke said. “And then tomorrow we should vote on it. Make a decision.”

  Ray nodded in agreement. “I’m all for that.”

  CHAPTER 48

  Josh

  After lying down in the bed, Josh had fallen asleep within minutes in the pitch-black bedroom. He had a flashlight on the table next to the bed if he needed it, but he just let himself float away in the comfort of the darkness. He’d never been afraid of the dark or of being alone, but he had also fallen asleep under the influence of either alcohol or drugs (or both) most of his adult life. And tonight was no different; he was still flying high on the pain pills he’d taken earlier. Usually the pain pills kept him awake, but he was so exhausted tonight that he couldn’t keep his eyes open anymore. For the first time in a week and a half he felt truly safe. It was amazing the things he had taken for granted his whole life. He never knew how important the necessities of life were until they had been taken away.

  He was supposed to be thinking about whether they should stay here in this cabin for the winter or travel south to Avalon. He wasn’t sure what they should do; both of them had their merits. If he had to vote right now, just because he was warm and safe for the moment, it would be a vote for the cabin. But Ray was right; the food was going to run out in a few weeks. Even if they made raids into nearby towns and houses, most of the food would be rotten or already gone. It seemed like the Dark Angels were an army sent out to gather up all the food, to eventually control all the food and supplies that were left. What if they found nothing in the nearby houses and towns? What if they got halfway into January and ran out of food? Snowed in, starving and going crazy.

  His arm still hurt, but the pain seemed to be a distant ache right now. He had no doubt that the wound was getting infected because he could still feel that ache no matter how many pills he popped.

  He didn’t want to think about that. He didn’t want to think about hitting the road or staying the winter in the cabin. He was too tired. Right now he just wanted to sleep.

  And he slept.

  In Josh’s dream, he was walking along a road through the woods, the world around them dark, only a sky of stars and a full moon providing light. He came up to a house in those woods, and then suddenly he was inside the house without knowing how he’d gotten inside. He saw the woman and girl hiding in the house. They were both scared, especially the little girl. The woman was trying to get the girl to talk, but the girl wouldn’t say anything, like she was too traumatized.

  Josh stepped forward, getting a little closer to the woman and the girl. He called out to them, but like the other dreams, they couldn’t hear him or see him. He moved closer to the two of them even though he knew if he got too close the dream would just fade away into another dream.

  And then the dream shifted—he was somewhere else. He saw a man and a woman moving through a neighborhood. The man was tall and just slightly overweight. His hair was short and turning gray. The woman was small but compact; she seemed strong. They walked side by side, both of them with backpacks on. The woman had a shotgun in her hands.

  Again, Josh tried to call out to the man and the woman, running towards them, intent on touching them, but they never noticed him coming their way.

  And again the dream shifted, and he was somewhere else, back in that blasted town that Ray had described earlier. Josh had se
en films of French towns during World War II, the bombings and battles leaving the buildings of the towns half-destroyed, others just piles of rubble. That’s what this place reminded Josh of. Some of the buildings and houses were barely standing, others just piles of rubble. But many were still standing, the DA symbols painted on the front of the homes and businesses, painted on the cars and trucks.

  Josh stood in the street as trash and litter blew past him from the constant winds. He looked down at his hands. His right arm was still wrapped in the wash cloth and tape. He flexed his fingers because his arm was really starting to hurt now. He wanted to take another pain pill, maybe two, but he realized with a surge of panic that he didn’t have his backpack with him.

  The dead and dying people were hanging from the trees, poles, and porch roofs. Two naked men were stretched out over the top of cars, their flesh striped from whip marks, wounds wide open like the wound on his arm. But the wounds on these people’s bodies seemed to be moving, like something was wriggling around underneath their skin. Their wounds opened up and maggots spilled out of them.

  Josh felt an itching in his forearm. He looked down and saw that the washcloth and strips of tape were gone. His wound was bare. He could feel things moving around inside of his arm, tickling at his skin, things chewing and crawling all over each other. The cut was wide open now; the puckered edges of it pulling back, the inside of his flesh full of maggots now, wriggling all over each other and crawling out of his wound.

  Josh’s eyes flew open in the dark. For a moment he couldn’t tell if he was awake or still asleep, lost in the sea of darkness He reached for the flashlight on the table next to his bed, fumbling with it as he fought for breath, his fingers trembling.

  Why couldn’t he find the flashlight? It was right there next to the bed.

  He swore he could feel someone in the bedroom with him, someone close enough to touch him, close enough that Josh could hear the man’s breathing. Josh could smell him. But he knew the man’s eyes were closed because if the man opened them then Josh would see those eyes shining in the darkness, two ovals of yellow light staring back at him—the eyes of the Dragon Lord.