by Lukens, Mark
“They’re going to kill them whether we give ourselves up or not,” Fernando said. “They’ll kill all of us once they get in here.”
Jo knew he was right. She looked at Tina and saw the same answer in her eyes.
Damn, she shouldn’t have let them go out on this last run this morning. She’d had her reservations about it, like Kate had expressed, but she figured they were just normal anxieties, just the same anxieties that she felt every day—a normal part of life in this bleak new world.
“They seem pretty patient,” Jo said. “Those rippers are coming soon. You figure they would want to get in here before the rippers come. It sounds like there’s a lot of them.”
“They’re on the move,” Fernando said, perched at the wall with the binoculars up to his eyes.
Jo got back up and looked through her binoculars. The two Dark Angels were still in the same spot; Lance, Crystal, and Dale were still in the same spot.
“No, over there by the entrance,” Fernando said.
Jo panned over just a little and saw ten Dark Angels moving on foot along the edge of the ditch and through the decorative trees that lined the grassy strip. They moved like a military unit.
“They’re going for the back,” Fernando said.
“Why?” Jo asked. And then she heard an explosion from somewhere inside the store.
For a second Jo thought the Dark Angels had just shot something at the store, a missile of some kind. But then she realized that the explosion had come from inside the store.
One of the rippers was inside. A mole. She remembered Kate asking her where Jeff was. Kate had looked so scared when she’d asked about Jeff, so worried. And Brooke had looked worried too. Jo had dismissed it at the time, too concerned about getting up to the roof. But Kate had been right, and Petra and Max had been right—there was a mole inside the store. Had it been Jeff the whole time? He was the one who had suggested the place for Lance and the others to go to on their run.
“Oh God, no,” Fernando said.
Jo heard the gunshots before she could pan back to Lance, Crystal, and Dale again. There was a blur of motion before she found them. They were lying on the ground, all three of them dead from gunshots.
Lance, Crystal, and Dale were dead. Something had exploded down in the store, and now their store was breached. The Dark Angels were coming. It was all over now. She’d lost it all, the store, everyone inside. She had tried so hard, but she had failed all of them.
A fury suddenly rose inside of her. “Kill them,” she ordered.
It didn’t matter now. Fernando was right; the Dark Angels were going to kill all of them once they got inside. But Jo decided that they would take out as many of them as they could.
Fernando and Tina fired their rifles. Jo watched through the binoculars with a small sense of satisfaction as the two Dark Angels who had gunned down Lance, Crystal, and Dale were shot down in the parking lot.
CHAPTER 58
Kate
“You stay right here in this tent,” Kate told Brooke. “You need to keep Tiger safe, okay? Tiger’s scared and you need to protect him.”
Brooke nodded.
“Get in the tent and zip it up. I’ll be back for you.”
“Promise?”
“I swear.”
But Brooke didn’t look too convinced.
“Come on, Brooke. I need to go. I need to know that you’re going to be in here and safe.”
Brooke got into the tent and zipped it up.
Kate bolted to the double doors, then into the hall, then through another large doorway to the loading bay. They always left a few lanterns turned on in the back, but the room was so large that it left much of it in darkness. There were a few skylights back here (not nearly as many as there were in the main shopping area of the store), and they helped a little in the quickly-fading light of day.
She saw Jeff. He stood near one of the garage doors where they unloaded stock from the trucks. He had the music box in his hands.
“Stop,” Kate said, rushing toward him.
Jeff froze, staring at her. “Don’t come any closer.”
Kate stopped twenty feet away from Jeff. “You don’t have to do this. Whatever you’re planning on doing, you don’t have to do it.”
“But I do. You don’t understand.”
“Just . . . just wait a minute, Jeff.” She remembered reading somewhere that it was important to use a person’s name when trying to negotiate with them. “Let’s just talk for a minute.” She realized that in her haste to stop Jeff she hadn’t even formulated any kind of plan. She didn’t have a weapon on her, not even a walkie-talkie to call for help.
“You can’t stop this,” Jeff said. “You can’t stop what’s coming.”
“Stop what? What are you supposed to do? What’s in the box?”
Jeff hesitated for a few seconds then he opened the box.
Kate saw something dark inside the box—it looked like a black ball.
“It’s a hand grenade,” Jeff said. “They want me to blow a hole in the garage door so that it can’t be locked again. So they can get inside.” He took out the grenade and let the box fall to the floor. He pulled the pin and flicked it away, still holding the lever down.
“Wait!” Kate said. “Hold on. You sent Petra to that house this morning. You sent them into a trap, didn’t you?”
“I had to.” His face contorted in misery.
“You’ve been planning this all along.”
“Not me,” Jeff cried. “They made me do it.”
“But you don’t have to do it now. We’re safe in here. We can fight them.”
“No. You don’t understand. You can’t fight him. He’s too powerful. He can . . . he can do things you can’t even imagine.”
“And we’re powerful, too,” Kate said. “And there are more like us. More coming. We’re all meant to be together. I’ve seen them in my dreams. We’ll all be stronger together. We can fight them together.”
For just a moment Jeff seemed to think about what he was doing, maybe ready to give in. But then he shook his head no.
“No. Jeff, please. Don’t do this.”
“He said . . . he said he’d let me see my family again. Let me be with them again.”
“Your family is alive?”
“No. They turned. But he said he can turn them back again. He said I can be with them again. We can all be together again.”
“He’s a liar, Jeff. Please. You have to believe me.”
“I’m sorry. I can’t take the chance.”
Kate knew she couldn’t get to Jeff in time as he lifted his thumb up off the lever. It was too late.
A dark shape fell down from the rafters in the ceiling, landing on top of Jeff, knocking him to the ground. Both men crashed down to the floor, the grenade underneath them. It was Neal. He had snuck inside and climbed up to the rafters, just like he used to do when he’d been a construction worker.
“Run!” Neal shouted at Kate from on top of Jeff.
Kate just had time to turn away when she heard the muffled explosion from underneath both their bodies. She was splashed with a fine spray of warm blood. She looked back and saw the blood splashed all over the garage door, a shiny sheet of blood and fat, bits of flesh dripping down along the corrugated metal. But the garage door had held.
Neal had saved them. They had suspected him and accused him of being a mole, but he had saved them anyway.
Kate ran out of the bay, down the hall and then through the double doors. She heard the gunfire now from the roof and from outside.
Max met her near the tents. “What was that noise?” he asked with wide eyes.
Kate didn’t have time to explain. “It’s okay. They didn’t get the door. You need to call Jo.”
Max pulled his walkie-talkie off of his hip. “Jo, it’s Max. Come in.”
“Max,” Jo said in an anguished voice. “It’s over. They killed Lance, Crystal, and Dale. They blew something up in the store. They’re going to ge
t inside.”
“The blast didn’t get the doors,” Kate said.
Max didn’t understand what she was saying, but he passed the message on. “The blast didn’t damage the doors. We’re still safe.”
“How?” Jo asked.
Max handed the walkie-talkie to Kate. She could hear the gunfire in the background. “It was Jeff. I found him in the loading bay. He had a hand grenade with him. He was going to blow one of the garage doors open. But Neal was in the rafters. He dropped down onto Jeff, both of them covering the hand grenade. Neal saved all of us.”
Jo was silent for a moment.
“They won’t get in,” Kate said. “We can hold them off.”
“The rippers are coming. The Dark Angels can’t stay out there too much longer. But we need you up here. Everyone needs to get up here. And bring as many battery-powered radios as you can and some CDS. We need to blare some music. Keep attracting the rippers here. It’s our only chance.”
Max was already off and running for the CD players.
Kate climbed up the ladder to the roof. She would grab a gun and shoot, or she would play the music and attract the rippers. She would throw things off the roof if she had to. Whatever she could do to help. She only wished that the Dragon was down there with the Dark Angels. She just wished that he was in danger of being shot or killed by the rippers. But she knew he wasn’t out there, and she knew he would never call his troops back—he would want them to fight to the death, fight until the horde of rippers coming overwhelmed them.
Her heart was heavy about Lance, Crystal, and Dale. That probably meant that Petra and the others were dead. Max and Brooke were going to take it hard. But all of them would have to keep on going, keep fighting and help Jo protect this store.
Maybe Jo was right. Maybe one day they would be able to negotiate with the Dark Angels, learn to live in some kind of peace with them, but not tonight. No, tonight they would kill every one of them that they could.
CHAPTER 59
Petra
Petra found a house to stay the night in right before sunset. The Dark Angels might have followed her, but she was pretty sure they had gone back with the others, back with the hostages they had. She was sure they had gone back to the store. They couldn’t worry about her anymore—they had other plans.
Coming to this house had been a trap, a way to get the best shooters far away from the store and to abduct some of them.
And who knew what Jeff was going to do inside the store? Grab a weapon and start shooting inside the store? Open the doors for the Dark Angels? De-electrify the fence? Call out to the Dark Angels somehow?
Her mind raced with possibilities as she sat in the looted home, feeling alone and helpless. There was no vehicle here and it was too dangerous to travel at night with the rippers out there.
She had inspected her pack moments ago, taking an inventory of what she had: protein bars, three bottles of water, a box of ammo. She would be okay for a little while, but she would need to conserve what she had because she hadn’t found anything else of value in this house.
It was cold and she curled up in a corner with a musty old blanket over her. The house was dark and the only noises were the rodents skittering around, and the bigger animals outside in the brush.
She tried to become cold and hard again, tried to become the tough machine that she had trained herself to be, the one who traveled alone and didn’t need anyone.
But then she broke down and cried. She knew it wasn’t all her fault, but she still felt like she had failed all of them. Those same helpless feelings came back, the ones she’d fought so hard to suppress. Once again everyone she cared about had been killed by a very bad man. Once again everything had been taken from her. Once again a cold rage and a thirst for vengeance took over inside of her.
An hour later she fell asleep and she dreamed.
In her dream she was in the hell-town, the blasted landscape where the Dragon ruled and lived. The dead and dying were there, the tortured, but the Dark Angels had deserted the town. And she knew why . . . they were on their mission to slaughter everyone she knew.
She had her pistol in her hand, clenching it tightly as she walked down the street, passing burnt cars and wrecked trucks, passing bodies staked down over the roofs of cars, their arms and legs stretched out cruelly, their eyes wild with insanity and pain as they stared up at the swirling gray sky.
Yes, she had her gun and she would find the Dragon. She would kill him.
But was the Dragon gone, too? Had he left his kingdom to follow his Dark Angels to the store, to walk through the aftermath of battle and claim the supplies inside?
Petra stopped walking, already defeated. She fell to her knees in the middle of the street, overcome with the guilt and sadness that had overwhelmed her only an hour ago. She felt so miserable and alone, so cold.
But then she felt a warmth on her skin, sensed a light in the grayness. She looked up and saw the blond woman in front of her that she’d seen before in her dreams. She seemed to be staring down at her from behind her dark glasses.
“We’re coming south,” the blind woman said. “We’ll all be together soon.”
“They’re all . . . all gone,” Petra said through her tears.
“No,” the blind woman said. “No, not all of them. Some are safe.”
“At the store?”
The blind woman didn’t answer. She started fading away.
“No. Don’t go. Tell me. Please, I have to know.”
The blind woman was gone.
Petra woke up and rubbed at her eyes. She’d been crying in her sleep.
The blind woman had said that some were safe.
Petra felt the first flicker of hope. She wasn’t alone. The blind woman and the people she was with were coming, and some were safe—she had said so.
“We’ll all be together,” Petra whispered into the cold darkness. “We’ll be strong. And one day I’ll kill the Dragon. I swear I will.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE:
Thank you so much for reading my book! I hope you enjoyed it, and I hope you’ll check out the next books in the Dark Days series. I’m working hard to get them done and hope to have the next two in the series done by early 2020.
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.
I love to hear from readers. Please feel free to follow either my blog or newsletter (or both!) for updates, sales, articles, and more. Just click on the links below. Thank you!
Blog: https://www.marklukensbooks.wordpress.com
Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/56a39e9c3a90/marklukensbooks
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 several bestselling books including: The Ancient Enemy series, Devil’s Island, Sightings, The Exorcist’s Apprentice, The Dark Days Series, Followed, and many others. He’s proud to be a member of the Horror Writers Association.
He grew up in Daytona Beach, Florida. But after many travels and adventures, he settled down near Tampa, Florida with his wonderful wife and son . . . and a stray cat they adopted.
He loves to hear from readers! You can find him on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/Mark-Lukens-Books-670337796318510/
You can follow him on Twitter here: https://www.twitter.com/marklukensbooks
You can follow his blog here: https://www.marklukensbooks.wordpress.com
He can be reached via email at [email protected] and [email protected]
Ancient Enemy . . . it wants things. You have to give it what it wants.
www.amazon.com/dp/B00FD4SP8M
A billionaire leads a team of ghost hunters to an abandoned Caribbean island with a dark and bloody
past . . . an island with a terrible secret.
www.amazon.com/dp/B06WWJC6VD
Four film school students investigate a remote cabin where an alien abduction reportedly took place years ago . . . but they encounter much more than they ever could have imagined.
www.amazon.com/dp/B00VAI31KW
After a tragic accident, seventeen-year-old Danny agrees to train as an exorcist with his father. But their first case together may kill them both.
www.amazon.com/dp/B00YYF1E5C
As a stalker terrorizes Phil and Cathy, dark clues surface from Phil’s past, convincing Cathy that Phil may know who their stalker is and what he really wants.
www.amazon.com/dp/B078WYGMJN