Dark Days (Book 3): Exposure:

by Lukens, Mark

  *

  Thirty minutes later they were on the road. Luke’s body was finally beginning to warm up a little from moving around, but the icy wind as he rode the dirt bike wasn’t helping. He was still a little edgy from his dreams last night. And he was sure Wilma’s nerves were still a little frayed from her nightmare. She had dreamed of the Shadow Man just like he had, he was sure of it.

  At least they wouldn’t be riding on the railroad tracks all day like they had yesterday. They would take a few back roads until they reached the edge of the next town.

  Wilma turned off of the road into a field and Luke followed her. They drove through the field towards a patch of woods. The trail through the woods was narrow, the trees close together and the brush thick, slowing them down considerably. Luke plowed through the brush, running over roots and small fallen tree branches. The brush was beating at his legs, and he thought if it got too much thicker they were going to have to get off of their bikes and walk them through. But then the woods began to thin out, and then the trees opened up to a field.

  The field was some kind of cow pasture dotted with cow patties and a few dead cows, mostly stripped of their meat. Off in the distance there was a farm house, a barn, another even larger building that might be some kind of stables. Luke kept an eye on the house as they drove through the field. He had a feeling that someone was inside the house, maybe a family member or someone who had squatted there when the world turned to shit. He was sure the person was watching them as they rode through the field, probably praying that he and Wilma would just keep on going.

  The field ended with a barbed-wire fence, with more woods and a dirt trail beyond it. Wilma came to a stop, then she puttered along the fence until she found where the strands of barbed wire had been cut by Matt, Rick, and Mario. Their tire tracks were still faintly visible in the dirt on the other side of the fence.

  Ten minutes later they were riding down the dirt road through the trees. Luke knew it shouldn’t be too much farther before they were at the edge of the next town, and he knew the best chances of running into more gang members or rippers lay in that town. And he was already seeing houses set off in the woods every mile or so.

  Everything had been smooth sailing so far, but then Luke saw the buzzards circling in the air above a house in the distance. They rode towards the house, and Luke saw what the buzzards were so interested in—a mound of dead bodies piled up at the edge of the road.

  CHAPTER 34

  Luke slowed down and pulled his bike over next to the side of the road. The buzzards picking at the bodies flapped their wings and took off, flying up to the nearby trees, perching on the branches. Wilma stopped her bike, waiting for Luke.

  Luke killed his engine and kicked the stand down, leaning the bike against it. Wilma circled her bike around and pulled up next to him. “What are you doing?” she yelled.

  “Looking at this,” Luke said as he got off of his bike. He pushed his hood back and yanked the bandana down off of his face. He lifted his goggles up to his forehead.

  There were at least twelve bodies in the pile, mostly older people and young kids. Flies dotted the bodies, buzzing so loud they sounded like a swarm of bees.

  In the distance, beyond the curving driveway, the house looked abandoned. The front door was halfway open and a lot of the windows were smashed out. An older minivan was parked in the driveway on the other side of the house that curved around towards a garage poking out from that side of the home. There was an even older pickup truck parked in front of the minivan, jacked up on jack stands with one of the front tires off of it. Junk was piled up along the other side of the house: old tires, bundles of metal poles, slats of wood coated green with mildew, other pieces of garbage and trash.

  “We should go,” Wilma said, still sitting on her bike with it running. She pulled her gun out, glancing at the house two hundred feet back from the road. “There could be rippers in that house.”

  Luke took a few steps towards the mound of dead bodies. At first he thought the DA gang had done this, but he didn’t see the DA symbols painted anywhere on the house, and he hadn’t seen any sign of them for a while now. He also thought of how the two DA men were killed yesterday, handcuffed to the overturned train car so they could die a slow and miserable death. These people’s throats had been ripped open, their bodies left here in a big pile for the birds, rodents, and insects to pick at.

  Wilma turned off her bike and leaned it against the kickstand. It was suddenly quiet except for the wind, the buzzing flies, and the occasional impatient fluttering of wings from the buzzards in the trees. She huffed out a sigh as she walked over to Luke with her gun in her hand. “Why are you looking at them?”

  “These people were rippers,” Luke said.

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Look at their clothes, the way they’re ripped up and how dirty their skin and hair is.”

  “So somebody killed a bunch of rippers and left them here.”

  “No,” Luke said, still staring at the bodies sprawled out on the blanket of dead leaves near the road. “I think rippers killed these rippers. Look at their throats—they’re all slashed. Torn open.”

  Wilma didn’t say anything for a moment. She still had her gun in her hand, still glancing around nervously. The wind had picked up a little more, blowing through the tree branches. Dead leaves fluttered to the ground like giant snowflakes, some of those leaves landing on the dead bodies. “So they’re culling their own herd,” Wilma finally said. “Weeding out the weak.”

  “It’s like they’re getting smarter.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  Luke shook his head a little, not bothering to answer.

  Wilma frowned. “Something you heard in a dream? Is that it?”

  Luke still didn’t say anything. He could hear the disapproval in her voice. He knew how she felt about these dreams both of them had been having. Luke could understand her skepticism at the meaning of the dreams, trying to deny the power in them, but at the same time he couldn’t help feeling like these dreams and what they meant were bigger than what either one of them could comprehend at the moment. He had a gut feeling about the dreams and he had always trusted his gut.

  Wilma looked away, concentrating on the front of the home in the distance as another blast of icy wind shook the trees all around them, the leaves shaking and sounding like a hundred death rattles.

  “You just said they’re culling their own herd,” Luke said. “So that must mean they’re getting smarter.”

  “Or just acting on pure instinct. A lot of animals do things instinctively, which can make them seem smart.”

  Luke didn’t want to argue about it, but he was pretty sure they could both agree that the way the rippers were changing, the way they seemed to be organizing into groups, made them even more dangerous every day.

  At least he hadn’t seen any of the gang symbols painted on buildings or cars lately. Maybe they had finally traveled outside of their territory. That at least would be one good break.

  “Come on, let’s get going,” Wilma said as she went back to her bike. She pushed her goggles down over her eyes and pulled her bandana up over her face, then she pulled her hood over her head. She got on her bike and kickstarted it, the motor firing up, startling the nearby buzzards perched in the trees.

  Luke got on his bike and started it. They were only two days away from the Ohio River, as long as they didn’t run into any complications.

  *

  Thirty minutes later they were at the edge of the small town they were trying to skirt. The morning clouds had scattered, and the sky was mostly clear—a deep vibrant blue autumn day that reminded Luke of when he was ten years old, playing with his friends on Saturday mornings. That seemed like a million light-years ago, but at the same time it felt like yesterday. A pang of nostalgia hit him so hard and suddenly that he ached. Sometimes he longed for those simpler days of his childhood, wishing he could have made different decisions in life. Bu
t none of that mattered now. The weight of this new reality pushed down on him—the world had changed seemingly overnight, civilization had collapsed, and it wasn’t going to go back to the way it used to be for a long time, if ever.

  Now that they were riding past neighborhoods and small businesses, Luke saw more rippers. Three of them burst out of the front door of a house, racing after them as they rode by. The three rippers were screeching and yelling, but Luke could barely hear them over the whine of their dirt bikes as they sped away. He had been tempted to draw his weapon and pick the three of them off, but he focused on following Wilma instead as she turned down the next road, climbing a hill through this rural neighborhood. The hills were getting a little higher the farther south in Ohio they went, and Luke guessed they were going to encounter even larger hills once they got across the Ohio River and into West Virginia.

  A few more rippers ran at them from another house, one of them hurling rocks at them. Luckily Luke and Wilma hadn’t come across a horde of rippers yet, but he was sure it wouldn’t be long before they came across another large group like they’d seen back in Cleveland.

  By the early afternoon, they were well beyond the town and up into some small hills, coming towards a river. They rode their bikes off of the road and well into the trees at the hilltop so they could look down onto the bridge below without being seen from the road. Bridges and tunnels were dangerous now—it was too easy for rippers or the gangs to close off one end or the other, trapping them in the middle. They wanted to take a few moments and watch the bridge through the binoculars.

  They also took a few moments to grab a bite to eat and to drink a bottle of water. Luke ate a protein bar and finished off his bottle of water. He pulled his binoculars out of his hoodie and walked to the edge of the hilltop, standing by a tree. He peered down at the bridge below.

  As Luke continued to watch the bridge, Wilma filled up their bikes’ tanks with the last of the gasoline in her plastic gas can, splitting the fuel evenly between their bikes.

  The road they had been riding on curved down through the woods to the bridge below that spanned a wide but shallow river.

  “How’s it look down there?” Wilma asked as she walked up next to him.

  “Two vehicles down on the bridge. They both look abandoned. I don’t think they’re barricades or some kind of trap.”

  Wilma stared down at the bridge with a hand shielding her eyes. “I think it’s safe enough.”

  They walked back to their bikes. Luke was about to get on his bike and start it, but then he held a hand out to Wilma, stopping her. “Wait,” he hissed.

  But she was already frozen; she’d heard the noise, too.

  CHAPTER 35

  “Quick,” Luke said. “Hide the bikes behind that brush over there.”

  They wheeled their bikes behind the wall of brush, laying them down in the grass. Wilma grabbed the shotgun from the scabbard attached to the side of her bike and Luke had his gun in his hand. They crept towards the trees, watching the road where the noise had come from. The rumbling sound was getting closer, and now it was a roaring sound.

  Luke was about to raise the binoculars up to his eyes to look, but Wilma laid a gentle hand on his arm and shook her head no. He realized right away that she was worried about the coming line of vehicles catching the glint off the glass of the binoculars in the woods as they drove by.

  There were only four vehicles in the convoy, but the roar of the engines was loud. The first in the line of trucks was an old full-size van, a Ford Econoline; it was primer gray, and it had the now-ubiquitous DA symbol painted on the side of it in bright red paint. The windows were either tinted or just obscured with mud and grime.

  The van was followed by a dark green garbage truck that was smeared with filth along the bottom and the back of it. Right behind the garbage truck was a rental box truck with the moving company logo right on the side of it, but the logo had been painted over with the DA symbol.

  And bringing up the rear was an older pickup truck on large tires. The truck looked very similar to the one Luke had shot at in the small town yesterday, but this truck couldn’t be the same one. This truck had two men in the back with automatic rifles, probably M-16s they had taken off of some dead soldiers.

  “Holy shit,” Wilma whispered.

  The trucks passed by them and drove down the road towards the bridge that spanned the river. When the line of trucks got to the bridge, Wilma stood up. “Let me see the glasses.”

  Luke pulled the binoculars off of his neck and handed them to her. She had her own pair of binoculars, but they were night vision so she needed to use his. She darted over to the large tree next to the steep drop off and leaned against the trunk, raising the binoculars up to her eyes and watching the bridge below.

  Luke crept up through the carpet of dead leaves behind her. He could see well enough even without the binoculars—the trucks were already driving across the bridge.

  “They didn’t even stop at either one of the vehicles on the bridge,” Wilma said with the binoculars still up to her eyes.

  “They might set up a barricade at the other end,” Luke said.

  Luke and Wilma kept watching the bridge. The four trucks continued along the road right after the bridge, climbing the road that wound up the next hill, all four trucks eventually disappearing into the trees.

  “Shit,” Luke said. “I thought we were past these guys by now.”

  Wilma kept watching through the binoculars for a moment longer and then she lowered them. Everything around them was quiet again now, the woods silent. “We can’t risk going across that bridge. Some of them could be up in those trees, waiting to pick us off if we try to cross.”

  “You have another route in mind?” he asked her.

  Wilma walked back to their bikes behind the brush and sat down on a fallen tree. She pulled her backpack off and pulled the map out of a zippered side pocket, unfolding it. She pulled another map out, an even more detailed map of this area of Ohio.

  “We’re going to have to cross that river somewhere,” Luke told her.

  Wilma nodded. “I think this is our best bet.” She pointed to the spot on the map. “We’ll ride west along this road.” She trailed her finger slowly along the map. “Try our best to skirt this town and then get to the river along this set of railroad tracks.”

  Luke looked at the map. “Is that crossing a railroad trestle?”

  “Yeah. It’ll be fine.”

  Luke wasn’t so sure about that. “What about that town? Could be a lot of rippers there.”

  Again, Wilma nodded in agreement. “We’re going to take this road around the town, up into these hills here until we get here.” Again, she traced the route with her finger as she spoke. “Then we’ll take this road to the railroad tracks, and hopefully that will be the only vulnerable area. Hopefully, we won’t run across too many of the rippers. But right now, I think the rippers are less of a risk than that gang is.”

  Luke had to agree with her on that point. “Railroad tracks. My favorite.”

  Wilma refolded the maps and shoved them down into the side pocket on her backpack and zipped it shut. She stood up and put her pack on. “Let’s go.”

  *

  They rode north, back the way they had just come not too long ago, and then they took a side street that led to the next town. Fifteen minutes later they drove by a gas station and a small store. A car was parked in front of the old gas pumps, the driver’s door wide open. Luke was tense, ready to grab for his gun if he needed to, but he didn’t see any rippers wandering around anywhere. He was sure the drone of their dirt bikes would bring them running out into the street soon enough.

  They drove past a few houses and a couple of small businesses. Trash and papers drifted across the road, disturbed even more when they roared past the pieces of paper on their bikes.

  As they passed two rows of mobile homes lining both sides of a small, narrow street, Luke saw a few dead bodies lying on the patchy lawns in fro
nt of two of the trailers.

  Wilma didn’t even slow down—either she hadn’t noticed the dead bodies, or she didn’t care to stop and investigate again like Luke had done earlier.

  But something felt wrong here.

  As they ventured deeper into the edge of town, Luke saw more dead rippers lying in front of homes and businesses, their torsos riddled with bullet holes, splashes of blood on the walls behind them. One ripper, a young woman, was missing half of her face and was lying on her side in a pool of congealed blood.

  Wilma still hadn’t slowed down. She turned left onto a street and Luke followed her. The road rose higher into the hills and there were a few homes far off from the side of the road. They curved around at the top of the hill, the woods thicker here as they got farther away from the edge of the town.

  The railroad crossing was just down the street. Wilma hit her brakes at the last second after downshifting and slid into the turn onto the tracks. Luke slowed down a little more before making his turn, but he caught back up to Wilma quickly as she sped down the tracks, the trees and brush on both sides of them whipping by in a green blur.

  The land was higher here, but it was beginning to drop off suddenly when they saw the rusty iron railings covering the railroad trestle. The river below was just as wide as it had been at the other bridge, the current swift, the water brown and dirty-looking. At least there were some kind of girders here and it wasn’t just a set of tracks on top of a trestle, but the spaces between the iron beams was definitely big enough for them to ride their bikes right off the edge and down into the river below. It looked like a fifty-foot drop to the surface of the water.

  They were almost halfway across the tracks. Luke was beginning to get his hopes up—maybe they were going to make it across the bridge okay. But then Wilma skidded to a stop on the tracks in front of him, turning her bike sideways and almost laying it down.

  Luke saw what had spooked her—dozens of rippers were rushing out of the brush at the other end of the trestle, rushing onto the tracks, running right for them.