Dark Days (Book 6): Survivors

by Lukens, Mark

  Ray understood a little about EMPs, mostly stuff he’d heard from Doug, but he’d learned more about them from some of the books in Doug’s bunker. EMPs could come from a nuclear blast detonated a few hundred miles above the earth’s surface, the energy from the explosion doing no real physical damage to the earth because it was so high in the atmosphere, but the energy pulse from the blast, as it roared toward the earth magnified, frying everything it touched on the earth’s surface. Scientists had first noted EMPs when detonating and testing the first nuclear weapons. But back then electronics weren’t as sensitive as they are now. An EMP blast would knock America right back to the Dark Ages in an instant.

  But EMPs didn’t only come from a nuclear blast, they could also occur naturally from the sun, from coronal mass ejections or CMEs. One of these massive solar flares, if directed right at the Earth, could knock out electronics just as completely as a nuclear blast. Or the CME could be even stronger—much stronger. CMEs had happened before, and it would only be a matter of time before they happened again. There was a reported CME in 1859 called the Carrington Event that wiped out many telegraph lines. If a CME that strong happened in modern times, it would have the same EMP effect as a strong nuclear blast, but possibly affecting a much larger area, perhaps half of the Earth. Many people, including Doug, believed that CMEs happened on a pretty regular schedule, and that there was only a matter of time before another one as strong as the Carrington Event hit the Earth.

  CMEs and EMPs didn’t matter now—everyone was already blasted back into the Dark Ages. Yes, their cars and trucks still ran, their batteries still worked. But there were no electrical power plants running anymore, no water and sewage lines working anymore, no cell phone service, no GPS, no landline telephones, no internet service. And how long would it be before they ran out of gas, siphoning up the last of it from abandoned cars and trucks? How long would it be before the gas in those tanks started going bad? How long before nuclear power plants started melting down, creating radioactive dead zones in those areas? How long before all the food ran out, and survivors were forced to hunt and gather again, to plant small farms and defend them?

  Not much longer, Ray thought.

  Yes, it seemed Doug had been prepared for many different end-of-the-world scenarios, but Ray guessed Doug had probably never dreamed of something like the Ripper Plague. The closest thing seemed to be a zombie apocalypse, which Mike had seemed to accept almost immediately as soon as they’d gotten away from their house and seen all of the rippers in the streets. Of course rippers weren’t really the undead walking around, but there seemed to be something monstrous about them, something unworldly, something mythical.

  The idea of a plague turning people into rippers still seemed surreal to Ray. Everything about this collapse seemed surreal to Ray: how quickly this plague had spread, how quickly a group like the Dark Angels had formed and scavenged resources, how psychics like Emma and the Dragon were so powerful, how so many of their dreams were interconnected.

  Ray looked over at Josh and Mike. They were seated on pillows on the floor in front of the TV in the corner of the bunker, playing a zombie-fighting game. Mike was laughing, taunting Josh for losing. Obviously Mike had more experience at these video games than he’d let on. Ray wondered how many of these games he had played down at Eric’s house. He wondered how many horror movies those two had watched.

  Enough to know the rules of horror movies, Ray thought.

  In some ways it seemed like those horror movies and video games had prepared Mike for this apocalypse, his almost immediate acceptance of it.

  Ray’s inventory list was finally complete—sixteen pages of his small, neat handwriting. He wasn’t sure what the inventory had accomplished, but it had made him feel better to do it, maybe it was the same way playing video games made Mike and Josh feel better, and like listening to books and music on her headphones made Emma feel better, and like patrolling the woods every morning made Luke feel better. They all had their ways of coping with things now.

  He set the spiral notebook on the metal shelf next to a row of canned foods. He walked over to Mike and Josh.

  “You wanna play, Dad?” Mike asked. “I need some real competition.”

  “I’m just letting you win, buddy,” Josh retorted.

  “Uh huh.”

  “I don’t think I’d be better competition than Josh,” Ray told Mike.

  “I can show you how to play,” Mike said.

  Josh set his controller down and got to his feet. “I need to stretch my legs anyway. I can’t sit like that for hours like you can,” he said to Mike and then looked at Ray, giving him a smile. “Good luck.”

  “Come on, Dad,” Mike urged.

  For a second Ray was reminded of Mike begging him to play a game of pool in Craig’s basement. But Ray hadn’t had the time then to play games; they’d been too busy securing the house, looking for food, searching Craig’s laptop for clues to this apocalypse.

  But now Ray had the time. “Okay,” he said, sitting down in Josh’s spot on the pillow. “Show me how to play this game. I want to kill some zombies.”

  Mike beamed at him and restarted the game.

  Yes, Ray had the time to play with Mike now—his inventory was complete; there was enough food and water for the winter, enough supplies, medicine, and weapons. For the first time since the Collapse had begun, Ray felt like they were somewhat safe; he felt like things were finally going their way for once. Maybe they would get through the winter just fine here at the cabin.

  CHAPTER 3

  Josh

  Josh thought it was good that Ray was playing video games with Mike, spending some time with him. Ray had been inventorying their supplies, even though Josh wasn’t sure why. But Josh could admit that Ray was much smarter than he was, and he was sure that Ray had his reasons for doing what he was doing. But now he seemed to be done with his list and he could play Zombie Takeover with Mike.

  They’d had a meeting last night—their newly-christened weekly status meeting (of course Ray had coined that term). Mostly the meeting had consisted of Ray and Luke spit-balling ideas about what to do over the next three to four months as they waited for winter to pass. But talk had turned to beyond the winter, to the months and years ahead.

  Ray, ever the Debbie Downer of the group, reminded all of them that even the large supply of food and staples in the bunker would only last a finite amount of time (finite was another of Ray’s words, by the way). They needed to prepare themselves for surviving off the land eventually.

  “Think of how the early settlers in America had survived,” Ray had suggested. “The colony of Jamestown, for instance.”

  Josh was no history buff, but there were plenty of books on the subject in the bunker, which he was sure Ray would deem required reading soon.

  But Ray was right; whether they lived in this cabin through the winter, or for a year or two after that, or if they found Avalon to be some kind of rekindling of civilization, or even if they started their own new society somewhere warmer, they were going to have to learn how to live off the land. They were going to have to learn how to farm, how to hunt, how to build and maintain law and order. They were going to have to learn how to identify herbs and edible plants, and medicinal plants. Ray was thinking extremely long-term; he was thinking of Mike’s kids, and Mike’s grandkids. Maybe a day would come when the rippers were completely wiped out, and then people could rebuild industry again, start over from these dark days they lived in right now.

  Luke, however, was thinking about more immediate tactics. He suggested they each learn how to use the different weapons in the bunker, especially the silent weapons like the bows and arrows, knives, spears, and even the Molotov cocktails. He had suggested that they spend a few hours a day practicing with those weapons, learning how to make new arrows and spears. He suggested that they set up booby traps around the perimeter of the clearing, and even some kind of alarm bells. Even if they still planned on going down to Avalon in n
orthern Georgia, they still needed to protect themselves here, and they needed to hone their skills.

  Ray agreed whole-heartedly with Luke, and they both were committed to getting ideas on paper (Ray was a big fan of pen and paper), hoping to start on these projects and practices. Mike was excited about learning how to shoot arrows and carve new weapons out of wood. They agreed that they would set up targets behind the garage to shoot at. Luke also agreed to show them some basic MMA moves, another thing Mike was excited about.

  “There always needs to be a lookout when we’re outside,” Luke had said last night at their meeting. “We can never let our guard down.”

  Then Luke’s talk had turned to escape plans. He believed it was only a matter of time before the Dark Angels found them, or even other gangs or groups of survivors. He believed they should run escape drills, all of them getting completely familiar with the three tunnels that led out of the bunker: one to the garage, one to the shed, and the longest one that led into the woods at the edge of the clearing, the one Luke used to begin his patrols each morning.

  Yes, Josh agreed that these plans needed to be implemented as soon as possible, but he also wanted a few days to catch his breath. It seemed like ever since October 21st, that Friday morning he’d been arrested for trying to get to the pharmacy to get Kyle his meds, he’d barely had a chance to stop and rest, to even think, to mourn the loss of his sister and nephew. He felt that they needed to not only rest their bodies, but to rest their minds as well.

  Josh went upstairs from the basement. It wasn’t freezing in the house, but they kept the heat off most of the time upstairs, leaving it on in the bunker. Luke felt that a warmer and lighted house at night would draw rippers, and even gangs, eventually.

  He found Emma in her bedroom. She sat near a window on a wood chair in a patch of sunlight. She had her eyes closed, her face pointed toward the window, her earbuds in her ears and the small cassette player in her lap.

  As Josh snuck up to her, she opened her eyes a little and fumbled for her dark glasses, slipping them back on. She pulled her earbuds out and Josh could hear the squawking voice coming from them, a man narrating the book. Her fingers searched the buttons on the cassette player until she found the right one, stopping the audiobook.

  He wasn’t sure how she could have heard him approaching her, but it was like she’d just known.

  “Is everything okay?” she asked, frowning at Josh.

  “Yes. I just came up here to see what you were doing.”

  She shrugged. “Listening to a book.”

  Josh couldn’t help thinking that something was bothering Emma, but he didn’t want to press her about it. He pulled up another chair closer to hers and sat down. “What are you listening to?”

  She had the audiobook case next to her and she handed it to him.

  Josh read the title. “The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon.” He looked at her. “Stephen King? Isn’t that a little graphic to be reading right now?”

  Emma smiled. “I’ve always loved Stephen King books. And this one isn’t that scary, but it’s still intense.”

  “What’s it about?”

  “About a girl who gets lost in the woods.”

  “Yeah, doesn’t sound scary at all.”

  “I’m hoping there’s a happy ending,” she said with a smile. “What are you doing?”

  “Nothing,” he said, shrugging. “Luke’s out on his patrols. Ray and Mike are down in the bunker playing video games.”

  “Ray’s playing a video game?”

  “Yeah. Me and Mike finally talked him into it. I’m sure Mike’s going easy on him.” Josh chuckled, because he knew it wasn’t true. And so did Emma. “So I thought I’d just come up here and check on you.”

  “Oh yeah?” she asked, her voice softer and deeper.

  Josh gently removed her glasses. “I like to see your eyes . . . your face.”

  “You do, huh?”

  He leaned in and kissed her lips. She grabbed on to him, holding him as they kissed again, a longer and more forceful kiss.

  Josh pulled away and stood up, taking her hand and helping her to her feet.

  “Is the door locked?” Emma asked.

  “Yes,” he whispered.

  They went to the bed, falling onto it, kissing and groping each other.

  CHAPTER 4

  Emma

  Emma lay in bed beside Josh. Their lovemaking had been intense, but they had tried to be quiet. She was sure Ray and Mike were still down in the bunker, and she hadn’t heard anyone downstairs, but she was still a little embarrassed at how fast she and Josh had gotten together. She wanted to scream out while they had sex, but she didn’t dare. It was the first time she’d felt this kind of pleasure in such a long time, so long since she’d felt safe in someone’s arms, loved by another. Neither one of them had said those three words to each other, and it was definitely too soon for that, but she could feel herself falling hard for him.

  Being with Josh was easy. He was so relaxed, so funny, always looking at the bright side of things.

  “You think they know about our secret romance?” she asked him as she snuggled up next to him.

  “Uh, yeah. I’m sure they do. When you’re stuck in a house twenty-four hours a day with three other people, I think it’s hard to hide secrets.”

  She just smiled. She didn’t care, but they still snuck around. It was kind of fun.

  “How’s your arm feeling?” she asked him.

  “Better.”

  She was proud of Josh, happy that he hadn’t touched a pain pill since he’d been on the antibiotics. He relied on aspirin every eight hours and that was it. According to Ray, probably meant as a warning to her, there was plenty of pain medication and booze down in the bunker. Maybe his inventory was partly inspired by keeping track of the pain pills and alcohol—he seemed determined to catch Josh in the act of giving in to his urges. But Josh hadn’t. So far, at least. Yes, she could tell Josh was healing, not only his arm, but every part of him. He’d said several times that he was happy they’d had a few days to relax, to finally let their guard down for a little while.

  And she was happy about a break from the stress, the chance for a few days to feel almost normal again. But she felt something bad coming, like a thunderstorm brewing on the horizon, more danger coming their way. This cabin seemed safe, but it wasn’t. Nowhere was safe. The Dragon was always looking for them, always on the hunt.

  “Hey,” Josh said, jumping out of bed. “I’ve got something for you.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  She heard him slipping his pants on, then his socks and shoes, then his shirt. “It’s a surprise. Just wait here for a minute. I’ll be right back.”

  And Josh was gone, running out of the room like an excited child.

  She lay in bed alone, closing her eyes and sighing. Even with the oppressive feelings plaguing her, she was going to revel in this moment and bask in the happiness that she felt right now.

  Josh was back a moment later. He hadn’t sat back down on the bed—he was just standing there beside it.

  “What?” she asked him.

  “Sit on the edge of the bed.”

  “What is it?” she asked again, and she couldn’t help giggling. She thought of what he might have gotten for her, but she couldn’t even guess. She sat up and scooted to the side of the bed, swinging her legs over and waiting.

  “Here, hold your hands out. I made something for you.”

  She held her hands out and felt a wooden stick placed in her hands, the wood worn smooth.

  “It’s a cane,” Josh said. “I know it’s probably stupid, but I remember that you lost your cane back in that town.”

  She nodded, letting the end of the cane drop to the floor and feeling the curved handle. It was a sturdy cane.

  “You could also use it as a weapon,” Josh said. “It’s heavy, and the end is tapered a little to a point. I wanted to make one of those canes that you can pull the handle out and it’s like a dagger or a
sword, but I couldn’t figure out how to make it.”

  Emma ran her hands along the cane. “I love it, Josh.”

  “You’re just saying that. You don’t want to hurt my feelings.”

  “No,” she said, standing up and leaning on the cane with one hand, reaching to him with her other hand, pulling him a little closer so she could give him a long kiss. He had taken the time to make this, thinking about her, about her safety. She loved it; she wished she could make him believe her. Those three words almost rose up out of her throat, but she clamped them back down. For now, at least.

  CHAPTER 5

  Luke

  Luke had ventured a few hundred yards deeper into the woods, working his way through the wet brush slowly. A lot of the trees were either thin or bare, leaves dropped off weeks ago, carpeting the hilly terrain with rotting vegetation under the snow. At least the ground was moist and Luke hardly made a sound as he walked.

  He stopped at a deadfall and crouched down. He’d been marking his trail along the way, notching the bark of trees with his hunting knife. And now he was glad he had marked a few trees because every direction looked the same to him—nothing but trees and brush. He’d come across the occasional small clearing down in a valley, but then the land would rise back up sharply on the next hill and the woods would begin again. Higher mountains were somewhere in the distance beyond the unending trees. He wasn’t a woodsman or a tracker—he’d already lost the woman’s footprints at least two hundred yards back. He was no longer sure he was even walking in the right direction. The snow wasn’t as thick the deeper he got into the woods and the ground was nothing but leaves, weeds, and grass.

  This was far enough. He had promised himself that he wouldn’t go too deep into the woods, giving them (assuming this person he was following was part of a group) a chance to circle back around to attack the cabin while he was way out here.