Dark Days (Book 3): Exposure:

by Lukens, Mark

  The railroad tracks were bumpy, but not as bad as Luke had expected. He glanced behind him, but he didn’t see anybody back there. He didn’t see any vehicles on the road that ran parallel with the tracks a block away as they sped past the houses and groups of trees between that road and the railroad tracks. But after a mile, the houses were farther and farther apart, and there were more fields and trees.

  They came to another railroad crossing. This intersection was still part of the same small town and Luke was tense, expecting gunshots at any moment, or maybe a group of trucks and cars waiting for them.

  But no one was there at the railroad crossing. Either this group of anarchists, or whatever the hell DA was supposed to be, was small or the other gang members had been scared away when Luke killed two of them.

  Wilma shot across the road that crossed the railroad tracks. Luke followed right behind her, trying to catch up to her. He looked to his right and left as he crossed the road, looking for any of the gang members or rippers. He didn’t see anyone, just a single car thirty feet down the road, parked right in the middle of the street with both of its front doors wide open. A flock of buzzards picked at scraps inside the car and on the pavement; they flapped their wings and cried out when he and Wilma sped down the tracks across the road, but they didn’t take flight away from the bits of meat they were feasting on.

  After the intersection was behind them, Luke relaxed a little, but he kept his eyes peeled. They were still in the limits of the small town, and there were a few more buildings and businesses for another mile, but then the neighborhoods and commercial buildings turned into single-family homes on large pieces of land, and then small farms, and then just pasture land with stands of trees among the open fields and meadows.

  Thirty minutes later Wilma began slowing down a little after rounding a bend in the tracks around a small patch of woods. Luke slowed down, too. He was already tensing up, ready to draw his gun again if he needed to.

  And then he saw why Wilma had slowed down. There was a stalled train on the tracks up ahead. Even from where they were, Luke could see that part of the train up ahead had derailed from the tracks.

  Wilma rode her bike closer to the last car of the train, practically idling when she got to the rear of it, and then she stopped her bike. Luke pulled up beside her on the railroad tracks.

  “What do you think?” she asked over the sound of her idling bike.

  Luke gave a slight shake of his head as he pulled his bandana down from his mouth and lifted his goggles up. “Could be some of those DA people around here. Or maybe some rippers.”

  “DA?” she said.

  “Yeah. That symbol. I noticed that it’s not a circle around the letter A, but the letter D. DA or AD. It must stand for something. The name of their gang, maybe.”

  Wilma nodded slightly, like she was seeing the symbol in her mind and agreeing with him.

  Luke listened for the calls of the rippers, but he didn’t hear anything. He was more worried about the DA gang than the rippers at the moment.

  Wilma put her bike in gear. She puttered up to the edge of the tracks; she drove over the rail and then down the embankment to a wide and shallow ditch of grass. Luke followed her. He glanced over at the line of trees twenty feet beyond the wide ditch; they couldn’t really be called woods because he could see glimpses of a vast field beyond the trees.

  Wilma rode her bike back up the ditch, and then alongside the tracks, watching the train cars as she passed them. Many of the car doors were open, and the containers looked empty. Some of the containers were semi-trailers secured on flatbed cars. A lot of the boxcars had graffiti on them, ranging from simple initials and profane words and drawings to intricate artwork in dazzling displays of colors. And then Luke saw what he’d been waiting for—the DA symbol.

  Up ahead, the tracks turned sharply to the right, and at least six or eight of the boxcars had derailed, some of them uncoupling from the other cars, lying on their sides, and one was far away from the tracks, tossed into the trees on the other side of the tracks.

  Wilma stopped her bike again, letting it idle. She pulled her bandana down from her face. She sniffed at the air, looking around.

  Luke pulled up beside her. “What is it?”

  “I was just making sure I didn’t smell any kind of chemicals.”

  All the train cars had been boxcars so far, no cars holding liquid, so at least they didn’t have to worry about some kind of chemical spill. Or course that didn’t mean there wasn’t something as equally toxic inside the boxcars. But most of the boxcars seemed to be empty, like the contents had been looted already.

  “I smell something else,” Wilma said. She looked at him for a few seconds. “You smell it?”

  He nodded. There was no mistaking the odor of blood and rot in the air . . . the smell of death.

  CHAPTER 30

  Luke followed Wilma across the gap in the railroad tracks where the boxcars had broken free from the others. They pulled their dirt bikes up next to a tipped-over railroad car and stopped their bikes again.

  Luke killed his motor and got off his bike. He pushed the bike over to the boxcar on its side, leaning his bike against it. He pulled his gun out of the holster underneath his hoodie sweatshirt as he kept his eyes on the line of trees thirty feet beyond the side of the tracks.

  Wilma shut her bike off, too. The silence was a heavy thing pressing down on them now that the tinny sounds of the dirt bike engines weren’t there. She got off of her bike and leaned it next to Luke’s bike against the boxcar. She drew her weapon, sensing Luke’s tension.

  Twenty feet away there were two bodies chained to the overturned boxcar halfway down the hill. The men were both sprawled out on the grass and weeds, their hands were shackled together above their heads with handcuffs and attached to metal bars on the undercarriage of the boxcar. Their feet were staked to the ground with pieces of rebar.

  Luke glanced back at Wilma and then walked towards the two dead men. His senses were buzzing—he knew they were being watched right now.

  When he was ten feet away from the two bodies, Luke stopped. “They’re from that gang,” he whispered without looking behind him at Wilma.

  “Killing their own?” she whispered back.

  Luke stared at the two men’s faces. Their eyes were gone, both of their mouths wide open. It looked like part of the closest man’s tongue was gone. They were both missing most of their ears, noses, their lips, and pieces of their cheeks and throats. But their foreheads were untouched and Luke saw the DA symbols carved into their flesh.

  “Maybe punishment,” Luke told Wilma.

  “Something’s been chewing on them,” Wilma said. “Rippers?”

  Luke shook his head a little, still not looking back at Wilma. “I don’t think so. I think the rippers would’ve eaten more of them.”

  “Seems like something’s made a meal of them.”

  Luke knew Wilma was referring to the big holes in both of the men’s torsos with dried blood crusted around the wounds. Their pants legs were ripped to shreds along with the flesh underneath. Splashes of dried blood were all over the grass and weeds.

  A rustling noise in the brush caught Luke’s attention. He turned and aimed his weapon at the line of trees. He heard Wilma doing the same thing right behind him.

  “A dog,” Wilma whispered.

  A German shepherd poked his head out from the brush, his muzzle stained with blood. He watched them, but wouldn’t come all the way out of the brush.

  “Dogs,” Luke said. “That’s what’s been eating these guys. There are more dogs in those trees. Gone feral, I guess. Maybe starving.”

  “Looks like more than those dogs have been feasting on these guys,” Wilma said. “Rats probably. And maybe birds picking at them, too.”

  Luke nodded and turned back to Wilma. He walked a little closer to the two dead men, studying the DA symbol on their foreheads. The symbol was definitely etched into their skin.

  The German shephe
rd growled from the edge of the woods.

  Luke stood back up and glanced at the dog, but so far the dog wasn’t charging. “He doesn’t like me so close to his food,” he muttered.

  Luke and Wilma walked back to their bikes.

  “Let’s get past this train,” Wilma said as she got to her bike. “I don’t like it here.”

  She unstrapped the gas container on the back of her bike and poured some into her gas tank, and then she poured the rest into Luke’s gas tank. “Empty,” she said as she strapped the plastic gas can back onto her bike. “We’ll need to keep an eye out for some more gas.”

  They got back on their bikes and rode down into the opposite dry ditch until they were past the train. Luke saw a few more DA symbols painted on the train, but there was no other sign of the gang around.

  *

  An hour later they entered the boundary of another small town, crossing over a road, and then another one. At the second road, Wilma turned left and followed it into a neighborhood where the houses and doublewide mobile homes were spaced far apart. She rode up to a car in the middle of the street and then stopped her bike, but she left it idling for a moment while she looked around.

  Luke didn’t see any movement. He shut his bike off and kicked the kickstand down to lean his bike on it.

  Wilma was off of her bike a moment later. They walked up to the car; the stench of decay coming from the open car doors was as bad as the smell from the two dead men chained to the boxcar. Luke already had his gun out, still glancing around as they approached the car.

  “Two dead bodies,” Wilma muttered as they stared in at the open door.

  Luke couldn’t tell who the two used to be—they were mostly skeletons with bits of meat stuck to them and shredded clothing bunched up on the floor. Parts of the arms and legs were gone, leaving only the torsos and heads behind.

  The keys were in the ignition and Luke reached in gingerly to turn the key. The dashboard lights came on, the gas gauge shooting up to the halfway mark. “There’s plenty of gas in the tank.”

  Wilma hurried back to her bike and got the empty gas can and a length of rubber hose. “You want to draw straws?” she asked. “See who has to siphon the gas?”

  “I’m a better shot,” he told her with a smile. “I’ll cover you.”

  “Yeah,” Wilma admitted. She opened the metal flap over the car’s gas cap. She unscrewed the cap and shoved the hose down into the tank. She sucked on the end of the hose for a minute and then spit out the gas and then quickly shoved the end of the hose down into the red container.

  “Yuck,” she said, still trying to spit out the gas in her mouth. “I hate siphoning gas.”

  Luke handed her a bottle of water as he watched the houses and trailers in the distance all around them, listening for any of the rippers’ calls or screeches. It seemed strange not to see so many rippers around after seeing so many in the city. But maybe there were just less of them out here. He still couldn’t help thinking that the DA gang had something to do with driving the rippers away from this area.

  After Wilma topped off the bikes’ gas tanks, she filled the plastic gas can up again, mixing the small container of oil she’d brought with her into the gas and giving it a little shake. She put the gas can and siphoning hose on the back of her bike, strapping them down on the modified metal cage welded to the back of the bike.

  Luke glanced up at the gray skies. Clouds had been moving in over the last few hours, chasing the blue sky away. The air had gotten chillier, and the wind was picking up. He wouldn’t be surprised if it snowed later in the night.

  They got back on their bikes and rode to the railroad tracks. Luke knew that at some point, if he was remembering the map correctly, they would get off the tracks and into a small neighborhood, and then into more trails in the woods; but that leg of the journey wouldn’t probably be until tomorrow.

  After another hour of traveling down the railroad tracks, Luke sped up next to Wilma, startling her. He pointed at a large farmhouse and barn in a field. “There!” he told her.

  CHAPTER 31

  Thankfully there were no anarchist symbols or DA symbols, or whatever they were, painted anywhere on the house or the barn, and the place didn’t look like it had been ransacked yet by rippers—the windows were intact and the front door wasn’t smashed in.

  Luke and Wilma leaned their bikes against the side of the house near the driveway where only one car was parked—a fifteen-year-old Toyota with a few worn-out bumper stickers on the back.

  Wilma used her lock-picking skills to get the front door open, and Luke followed her inside. They did a thorough search of the house, but it was empty. Like many of the houses Luke had been in, the place looked like the owners had packed a few suitcases quickly—only taking the absolute necessities—and then abandoned their home.

  There was no electricity or running water. Wilma said she had hoped that the farm house’s well pump ran off of solar, but it was obviously an electric pump. But at least they could still flush the toilets, and they each used them.

  In the kitchen, Luke and Wilma made a half-hearted attempt to look for anything of value, any extra supplies that were small enough to take with them. Wilma found some boxes of matches and two rolls of electrical tape.

  “Once stuff like this is gone, it’s gone,” she said as she stuffed the matches and tape down into her backpack. “Nobody’s going to make this stuff again for a long time.”

  Luke just nodded as he walked towards the front door of the house. “Let’s check out that barn.”

  They crossed the front yard and walked towards the barn a hundred feet away. Wilma used her lock-picking skills once again to open the side door.

  “You’re going to have to teach me how to do that,” Luke told her.

  “Oh, I think we’ll be teaching each other a lot of things.”

  The barn was a surprise; it had been remodeled into some kind of game area or gigantic family room. A long sectional couch was curved around a flat screen TV mounted on a wall that looked more like a movie screen than a television. A wet bar took up much of one wall with a mirrored wall and shelves behind the bar, the shelves stocked with glasses and bottles of liquor. There was a pool table in the middle of the gigantic room, and a Ping-Pong table a few steps away from the pool table. Against another wall was a line of old-fashioned arcade video games, a pinball machine, and a 1950s juke box. The walls were decorated with paintings, sports memorabilia, and a few stuffed animal trophy heads. There was a loft on the far side of the vast room with a wooden ladder leading up to it.

  “Nice place,” Wilma said.

  “We could crash up there for the night,” Luke said, pointing at the loft. “We could pull the ladder up there with us. Make sure there’s a window up there we can get down out of if we need to.”

  “Another window?” Wilma joked, wincing.

  “We’ll make sure we have a longer rope this time.” He gestured at the wall opposite the loft. “We could put the bikes over there.”

  “Bike’s won’t do us any good if this place gets rushed by rippers or that gang.”

  “They won’t do us any good outside, either.”

  Wilma nodded in agreement. “I found a set of keys that must go to that car in the driveway. We could use that car if we have to abandon the bikes.”

  “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

  “You know what they say: Hope for the best and prepare for the worst.”

  Luke didn’t know who “they” were, but he was pretty sure that there weren’t many of “them” left now.

  They went back outside and pushed their bikes to the barn. The sun was setting, but because the sky was so cloudy, the light was just a muted gray with shadows growing and the temperature dropping.

  After they got the bikes inside the barn, they locked the doors and checked all the windows.

  “They didn’t take their booze,” Wilma said, checking out the wet bar as Luke climbed the ladder to explore the loft.
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  “I’m sure you guys have your own still at the camp,” Luke said from the top of the loft.

  “You know it. We make our own beer and wine, too.”

  “You find any food behind that bar, or are we just going to drink ourselves silly for dinner?”

  Wilma rummaged through the cabinets as Luke looked around the loft, which was much larger than he had expected. There was a queen-sized bed against the far wall with a closet on one side and a small bathroom on the other side. Both of the longer walls had a window with curtains drawn over them, but no blinds.

  He walked over to the closet and opened the door. Mostly clothes and a few boxes and plastic tubs. The clothes were too small for Luke and looked like they belonged to a teenager. In fact, this whole barn looked like some teenaged boy’s fantasy, but that teenaged boy was probably really in his mid-twenties, Luke guessed. Who would want to grow up and leave home with a place like this?

  The bathroom was small, but it had a shower, a toilet, and a sink. He knew the water would be off, but he tried it anyway. Nothing came out of the faucet.

  He went back down the ladder to the wet bar where Wilma had collected drinks and food from the cabinets. The barn was getting murky with the evening coming on quickly, but it was still light enough to see.

  “Found some crackers, bags of chips and pretzels, snack cakes, sodas, a few gallons of water, and a case of warm beer.”

  Luke picked up a bottle of garlic-stuffed olives.

  “And olives,” Wilma added.

  “Looks nutritious,” Luke said.

  “We’ll eat this stuff and save our MREs,” Wilma said, opening a bag of potato chips.

  Luke opened the olives and fished one of them out, popping it into his mouth, savoring the salt.

  Wilma found some plastic utensils and paper plates. She opened the mini-fridge but then closed it again because of the smell. She looked through some of the other cabinets. “There’s a bunch of board games in here. Scattegories. Parcheesi. Scrabble. A few decks of cards.” She brought the deck of cards back to the bar and sat down next to Luke.