Dark Days (Book 3): Exposure:

by Lukens, Mark

  Luke drank a can of soda while eating chips, olives, crackers, and a snack cake. After he was done, he opened a can of beer. It was starting to get pretty dark.

  Wilma had been sipping from a small bottle of whiskey and chasing it with a can of Coca-Cola. She dealt out a hand of cards for each of them.

  “What are we playing?” he asked her.

  “How about strip poker?”

  Luke smiled at her. “Is that all you think about?”

  “We need to find a way to stay warm tonight.”

  A few minutes later they climbed the ladder, taking their backpacks and a bucket full of drinks up with them. Luke disconnected the top of the ladder and pulled it up into the loft, laying it on its side against the longest wall. The ladder was narrow enough that they might be able to use it to get out of the window if they had to, but Wilma had taken a long rope from the safe house when they left—she wasn’t going to get caught upstairs again without one.

  Wilma cleaned up in the bathroom first, using some of the water out of one of the gallons to take a sponge bath. Luke went in after her and cleaned up. When he got out of the bathroom, it was nearly too dark to see, but he spotted Wilma sitting in one of the two chairs on the other side of the room, where the closet was.

  “I found a shirt in the closet,” she said. The T-shirt was the only thing she was wearing.

  Luke sat down in the other chair and Wilma offered him some whiskey from her bottle. He took a swig and then opened a can of soda to chase the harsh liquid with. He felt better after washing up, even though he had to put the same clothes back on.

  They shared a few sips of whiskey for ten minutes, neither of them saying anything. Then Wilma got up and went to the bed, sliding underneath the blanket.

  Luke’s eyes had adjusted well enough to the darkness. The moon was out, but it wasn’t that bright with the cloud cover. But Luke could see Wilma in the bed. She was under the covers as she took her T-shirt off, then she threw the shirt onto the floor.

  “Aren’t you cold?” Luke asked.

  She nodded. “Why don’t you come under the covers with me and keep me warm?”

  Luke got up and stripped his clothes off. He crawled into bed with Wilma. Their naked bodies touched under the blanket—cold flesh against cold flesh. He felt himself stiffening immediately.

  Wilma grabbed him and kissed him while Luke explored her body with his hands, taking his time.

  CHAPTER 32

  Wilma woke up in the bed. It was still dark in the loft, and she was still naked and only had the T-shirt on she’d found in the closet. She must have fallen asleep after sex. She reached for Luke, but he wasn’t in the bed with her.

  “Luke,” she whispered.

  No answer.

  A noise came from downstairs.

  The moonlight was brighter than before. Wilma sat up, staring across the room, noticing that the ladder was back in place. At some point in the night Luke must have put the ladder back to go downstairs. But why?

  “Luke?”

  Still no answer, but she could hear the creaking of wood as someone climbed the ladder.

  “Luke, answer me.”

  She heard heavy breathing, and she knew right away who it was climbing the ladder—the Shadow Man from her dreams. He had been following them somehow, picking up their trail from their dreams, and now he was here.

  “Wilma,” the Shadow Man whispered. “Wilma, I’m coming for you.”

  Wilma scrambled across the bed, looking for her backpack on the floor, for her gun, but she couldn’t find it.

  “Wilma,” the man whispered.

  She looked back at the ladder. The Shadow Man stared at her from the top of the ladder, his eyes shining in the darkness.

  “I’m coming for you,” the Shadow Man said as he let his hands go from the ladder and began to float on the air up to the loft.

  Wilma snapped awake in the bed. She was about to sit up, but she stopped herself.

  It was just a dream.

  She lay there for a minute, just listening. Luke was right beside her, breathing heavily, practically snoring. She looked around the room, then at the wall where the ladder was—it was still there. She breathed out a sigh of relief.

  It was just a dream. The Shadow Man wasn’t here.

  Maybe she would be able to go back to sleep, but she didn’t think so. The dream had freaked her out too much.

  She needed to think about something else besides the dream. She thought of the conversation she’d had with Luke a few days ago when he had challenged her belief that groups of elites were safely tucked away in underground bunkers, or inside mountains, or even on their own private islands. Luke had said that the elites could only rule for so long before the stronger took over, and the elites could only rule if they had something valuable to lord over the rest of the people’s heads. If Luke was going to believe Wilma’s theory, then he was sure there would be others besides just the elites and their families in those bunkers: soldiers (or at least some kind of security detail), scientists, doctors, engineers, technicians—people to start society over with. Maybe even some laborers. What good would starting over be without knowledge and labor? The elites certainly weren’t going to be fending for themselves, Luke had said. And now that Wilma thought about it, she found it hard to imagine families of elites out in the fields farming or running the factories and trying to manufacture the items they needed.

  Maybe she had been wrong about the elites controlling this plague. Maybe this plague had taken the elites by surprise as much as it had everyone else. That still left the possibility of a bioterror attack. Maybe some radical religious group wanted to go to heaven, nirvana, or some other kind of paradise, and they had decided to take the rest of the world with them.

  But they hadn’t taken everyone with them. There were people immune to this disease, and she was sure that she and Luke were two of them. And that anarchist gang—they must be immune to the plague; she hadn’t seen any of them wearing gas masks, rubber gloves, or any other kind of protective gear.

  Giles had been wearing his gas mask when he had turned. She remembered him slowing the van down when they had been speeding through the neighborhood streets of Cleveland. Giles had become suddenly confused about what he was doing, taking his hands off the steering wheel, his foot off the gas pedal, speaking gibberish through the filters of his mask.

  “He’s turning!” Tommy had yelled at her.

  Giles then clawed at his gas mask, like he didn’t know why it was on his face, panicking like an animal would. The van ran off the side of the road and plowed into another car. The front of the van had folded inward from the crash, trapping Giles in his seat. But he didn’t seem to be in pain as he ripped his gas mask off and threw it into the passenger seat.

  Tommy was in the back of the van with Wilma by then, getting out of Giles’s reach, ready to open the side door and run.

  She closed her eyes in the darkness for a moment—she didn’t want to remember any more of what happened after that, after the rippers rushed their van.

  But she wondered how Giles had turned even though he always wore his gas mask. She wondered if it was possible that this disease wasn’t airborne. No, it had to be. How else could it have spread so quickly? Maybe Giles’s mask had been defective. But that didn’t make any sense, either. They had always bought the best equipment, military-grade in most cases. Maybe Giles had stepped outside at some point without his mask on. Or he had lifted it up for just a moment when she hadn’t been looking. Or maybe someone else in their militia group hadn’t been as careful and they had infected Giles.

  She couldn’t think about it anymore; it was just going to drive her crazy. She didn’t have enough information to wonder about these things. Maybe when they got to the camp, one of the others would have more information, maybe enough of them would have enough pieces so they could fit them all together for some answers.

  Thinking of the camp made Wilma wonder about Luke. Would he stick around once th
ey got there? He seemed dead-set on finding these people he kept dreaming about. He didn’t even know if those people in his dreams were real—he could be chasing phantoms he had made up in his own subconscious mind while sleeping.

  But then there was the Shadow Man. They had both dreamed about him, and he sure seemed real enough to Wilma. She couldn’t explain how she was so sure that the Shadow Man was real, but she was just certain of it, like a truth she felt in her bones. She wasn’t scared of much; she had been trained (and had trained herself) not to be scared. But something about the Shadow Man frightened her, but the fear was on a different level, not physical but more like an irrational fear, like a child afraid of the dark or monsters under the bed.

  The Shadow Man was the monster under the bed, the monster that roamed the darkness, a monster that could see in the dark with his shining eyes.

  She looked at Luke, watching him sleep for a moment. He was breathing heavily, and his eyes and the corner of his mouth twitched just a bit as he dreamed. He was probably dreaming about the blond woman right now, the beautiful woman as he called her, the blind woman. She was calling to him like some kind of mermaid calling to a sailor at sea.

  Or maybe he was having his own dream about the Shadow Man right now.

  It bothered her a little that they were both dreaming about the Shadow Man but she wasn’t dreaming about the blind woman, the two men, and the boy. It was like Luke was destined for a different path than she was. And she wanted to be with Luke.

  It didn’t matter. She would make Luke stay with her once they got to the camp. They just needed to get to the camp. Once he saw the place, he would feel safe and he would become part of the group in no time. All they had to do was get there.

  She was falling hard for Luke; there was no doubt about that. And she knew he was falling for her, too. They were a perfect match in these dark days. He was capable, strong, tough, and dependable. He used to be a criminal, an enforcer as he called it, and in other times she was sure they never would have hooked up. But things had changed, and people like Luke were valuable now. And so was she.

  The night was quiet. She wanted to go back to sleep—they had a long day of riding tomorrow—but she was still too rattled by her nightmare to go back to sleep. Like Luke, she had never had nightmares before. She used to laugh at people who were frightened by their own bad dreams, but she found herself terrified to go back to sleep, afraid the Shadow Man would be waiting for her, his eyes shining in the darkness, his voice a raspy hiss.

  I’m coming for you—that’s what he had said to her in the dream.

  She rolled over on her side, snuggling up closer to Luke underneath the blanket. She hoped she might wake him up, but he never stirred, still breathing heavily. He was lost in his dream right now. And she felt like she was losing him, or they were losing each other. Losing everything.

  The nightmare was just getting her depressed. Once they got to the camp, once she was reunited with Matt, she was sure she would feel better.

  You’re sure Matt will let you in the camp? Luke had asked her that question before. He was never afraid of being blunt. She assured Luke that Matt would let them in, but here in the dark right now, she wasn’t entirely sure.

  What if Matt didn’t want to let them in the camp? Luke would want to continue south to look for his new “dream friends.” If Matt wouldn’t welcome her back, then maybe she would just go south with Luke and try to find the blind woman.

  Yeah, maybe she would.

  She smiled and felt a little better. She closed her eyes, snuggling up closer to Luke, already beginning to drift off to sleep again.

  CHAPTER 33

  Luke woke with a start as the sun poured in through the window of the loft on the east side. He wasn’t sure what time it was, maybe almost seven o’clock.

  His dreams from last night came back to him as he lay there in bed, too cold for a moment to crawl out from underneath the blankets. He had been dreaming about the blind woman, the two men, and the boy again. For some reason he didn’t think all of them were together yet, but he had an unshakable feeling that all of them were supposed to come together in the future, including him.

  And then there was the Shadow Man. The Shadow Man knew all of them in the dream were supposed to be together, but he didn’t want that because he knew they would be stronger together than apart.

  We need to go south. That’s what the blind woman had said in the dream. She wore a white dress and there was an angelic glow all around her, softening the outline of her blond hair and body, blurring the background. But she wasn’t an angel; he was sure of that—she was just a person. And if she was just a person with some kind of psychic power, then maybe the Shadow Man was only a person, too.

  The dream seemed like it had lasted all night, even though Luke was sure it hadn’t. He could only remember bits and pieces of it. The Shadow Man was in the dream too, but Luke couldn’t recall much about the dream now.

  There were two disturbing things about these dreams he’d been having for the last few nights, besides the appearance of the Shadow Man in all of them. The first disturbing thing was that Wilma hadn’t seen any of the others he’d seen in his dreams. He still wondered if that meant they were going to part ways once they reached the camp. Luke still had his suspicion that even if Matt and the others at the camp let Wilma inside the gates, they might not let him inside. But he had agreed to go down there with her, and he would stick to his word. Besides, he had planned on traveling south pretty much from the moment he had gone back to his house to collect his go-bag. At least he and Wilma could cover each other’s back to the West Virginia border.

  He was attracted to Wilma, and he was sure she was attracted to him. But they were adults. The sex was just a release for both of them, a small bit of pleasure in this dark world they suddenly found themselves in. He had to accept the possibility that she was just using him to accompany her down to the camp. If she was just using him, then so be it—he would know the truth when they reached the camp, and if she had been using him then he would just move on south.

  But he might keep moving south, anyway. He wasn’t sure if he could live week after week, month after month with these dreams haunting him every night—he was afraid he’d go crazy if he didn’t find the people he saw in the dreams.

  There wasn’t much he could do about any of it right now besides keep heading south with Wilma.

  The other thing that bothered him about his dreams, especially in the last two nights, was that he’d begun dreaming about two other people: a woman and a young girl, maybe eight or nine years old. They didn’t know each other, but they were going to meet soon. Luke wasn’t sure how he knew that, but he was certain of it. And then all of them would be together at some point in the future. He couldn’t help thinking that the blind woman had visited the woman and the girl in their dreams, he couldn’t help thinking that she had been calling to them in whatever part of the country they were in. He didn’t know why this woman was calling all of them together (or exactly how she was doing it), but he believed it had something to do with the Shadow Man and something to do with this plague. There was some kind of journey all of them were supposed to take, a place to go where there would be answers.

  At least he and Wilma had slept through the night without being attacked by rippers. He looked at her as she slept. She looked so peaceful; he hated to wake her up. But they needed to get as much riding done during the day as they could. He doubted they would find as nice a place as this loft to sleep when the night came, but they would find something.

  It was so cold he still didn’t want to get out from under the covers. He had put his underwear, socks, pants, and two shirts on before falling asleep last night, so all he needed to do was put his boots and hoodie on.

  “Wilma,” he whispered, nudging her gently.

  She jumped, gasping as her eyes flew open. She was on the verge of panicking, looking around for a second like she was trying to remember exactly where she was. Then her ey
es found his, and she was still.

  “Bad dream?” he asked.

  “The worst so far,” she muttered and then sat up, pulling the blanket a little tighter around her body.

  Luke got out of bed and stood beside it. “You want to tell me about it?”

  Wilma shook her head no and got out of bed. She was only wearing the T-shirt she’d found in the loft owner’s closet; she grabbed her clothes and backpack, and then she hurried to the small bathroom.

  Luke slipped his feet into his hiking boots and laced them up. He slipped his shoulder holster on and checked his gun, making sure the magazine was full, then he holstered it. He checked his backpack, making sure everything was secure, then he put his hoodie on and his thin leather gloves. It was so cold that he could see his breath.

  He walked over to the wall where the ladder was lying. He pushed the curtains back a little and peeked out the window.

  Nobody out there in the fields. It had snowed last night. Not a lot of snow, just a light dusting that would probably melt away before the afternoon.

  He grabbed the ladder and lowered it down over the edge of the loft, then hooked the top of it to the metal slots, pushing down on it to make sure it was firmly in place. He grabbed his backpack and climbed down the ladder. He went to the wet bar where the liquor, drinks, and food were still right where they had left them last night. He sat down on a stool and opened a snack cake, the cellophane wrapper so loud in the silence. He ate the snack cake in a few bites, wishing he had some milk to go with it.

  After he had finished his snack cake, he heard Wilma coming down the ladder. She had her coat, gloves, and backpack on. She walked over to the bar and sat down beside him. He pushed a snack cake toward her.

  “I’ll fill up the gas can and bikes from that car in the driveway,” Wilma said as she opened her breakfast. “The gas we get from that car should last us most of the day before we need to find some more.”