by Mark Lukens
AFTERMATH
DARK DAYS: BOOK FIVE
A post-apocalyptic series by
MARK LUKENS
Aftermath: Dark Days Book 5 copyright © 2017 by Mark Lukens
All Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be reprinted without written permission from the author.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (or in any other form), business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover design by: Extended Imagery
Special thanks to: Jet, Ann, Kelli, Mary Ann, Joe, and Valerie – your help is so valuable to me and appreciated more than you know.
OTHER BOOKS BY MARK LUKENS
ANCIENT ENEMY – www.amazon.com/dp/B00FD4SP8M
DARKWIND: ANCIENT ENEMY 2 – www.amazon.com/dp/B01K42JBGW
HOPE’S END: ANCIENT ENEMY 3 – www.amazon.com/dp/B07G1MS6RK
EVIL SPIRITS: ANCIENT ENEMY 4 – www.amazon.com/dp/B07L8KLXVB
SIGHTINGS – www.amazon.com/dp/B00VAI31KW
DEVIL’S ISLAND – www.amazon.com/dp/B06WWJC6VD
WHAT LIES BELOW – www.amazon.com/dp/B0143LADEY
NIGHT TERRORS – www.amazon.com/dp/B00M66IU3U
DESCENDANTS OF MAGIC – www.amazon.com/dp/B00FWYYYYC
THE SUMMONING – www.amazon.com/dp/B00HNEOHKU
GHOST TOWN – www.amazon.com/dp/B00LEZRF7G
THE DARWIN EFFECT – www.amazon.com/dp/B01G4A8ZYC
THE VAMPIRE GAME – www.amazon.com/dp/B07C2M72X9
FOLLOWED – www.amazon.com/dp/B078WYGMJN
THE EXORCIST’S APPRENTICE – www.amazon.com/dp/B00YYF1E5C
POSSESSION: THE EXORCIST’S APPRENTICE 2 – www.amazon.com/dp/B07NCZQTNR
A DARK COLLECTION: 12 SCARY STORIES – www.amazon.com/dp/B00JENAGLC
RAZORBLADE DREAMS: HORROR STORIES – www.amazon.com/dp/B076B7W252
THE COLLAPSE: DARK DAYS BOOK 1 – www.amazon.com/dp/B07SCPL6QB
CHAOS: DARK DAYS BOOK 2 – www.amazon.com/dp/B07TVYNW19
EXPOSURE: DARK DAYS BOOK 3 – www.amazon.com/dp/B07TY5S1S8
REFUGE: DARK DAYS BOOK 4 – www.amazon.com/dp/B07VR8KNJ6
SLEEP DISORDERS – www.amazon.com/dp/B07XX9WVGM
AUTHOR’S NOTE:
This is the fifth book in my Dark Days post-apocalyptic series. This book introduces new characters, beginning with Kate Crawford, who will have a lot of relevance as you get deeper into the series. I know many of you may want to pick up right where Book 4 left off at Doug’s cabin, and I promise we will get back to them in Book 6 (which will be available very soon). But I felt that Kate (and the others who she will meet in this book) is critical to the overall story of this series.
Even though I have jumped from character to character in the first few books, I have meant for them to be read in order. I guess you could read them out of order and still understand what’s going on, but I hope you will read them in order for a more satisfying overall story.
Thank you so much for reading my books!
Contents
OTHER BOOKS BY MARK LUKENS
AUTHOR’S NOTE:
PART 1
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
PART 2
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
PART 3
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
PART 4
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 47
CHAPTER 48
CHAPTER 49
CHAPTER 50
CHAPTER 51
CHAPTER 52
CHAPTER 53
CHAPTER 54
CHAPTER 55
A THANK YOU
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
PART 1
CHAPTER 1
North Carolina – October 25th
Kate Crawford had been hiding out in her home for the last four days, ever since Friday morning, since the Collapse began. The internet and landline phones went out first, sometime during the night on Thursday. The banks had closed on Friday morning. Then the cell phone service, which had been spotty at best for the few days before that, finally winked out for good. The cable TV stations and radio stations came next, airing nothing but recorded programs or music, or an emergency signal, or a short recorded address by the President of the United States. And a few hours after that, the electricity went out and never came back on. The water was shut off later that night. All utilities, all internet, all information, most services—all gone.
She had listened to the president’s address on TV a few times before the power went out. In the video, the president stood behind his podium in some bunker somewhere. The presidential seal was on the front of the podium, and the seal of the White House was on the blue fabric hanging behind him, with two American flags on poles flanking him like sentries. But there were no news reporters there, nobody else, just the president urging American citizens to remain calm, to stay in their homes until these dark days were past us. He declared martial law until law and order was restored, and he promised that local governments and agencies would be in contact with everyone; supplies and information were on the way.
Well, it had been four days now and nobody had reached out to Kate or anyone else in her neighborhood that she knew of. Kate was alone in her home, alone in the murky light that filtered in through the plastic she had taped over the windows, alone in the silence, alone in the cold.
Her food supply was beginning to dwindle, but it was nothing dire yet. If she rationed the food, she should have enough for at least a few weeks, maybe even two months. Water and other liquids was another problem. She had filled up the bathtub with water in the guest bathroom down the hall, taking Tarik and Rita’s advice at the university where she taught classes on anthropology. The water in the bathtub had been meant for flushing toilets, washing dishes, and bathing (but not in the tub, only sponge baths in the sink to conserve as much water as possible). But that water was halfway gone now. She never realized how much water she used every day. And now that her drinking supply was getting low, she was going to have to seriously think about drinking the water from the tub.
Would the water be safe to drink after four days? It should be, but she wondered if she should treat it with something. She’d heard from somewhere (maybe even from Tarik and Rita at the school) that you could treat a gallon of water with a little bit of bleach. But how much bleach? Too much and her “treated” water might be more poisonous than unsanitary.
Kate felt vastly unprepared for this. She had waited these last four days for the authorities to come, the ones the president said would be reaching out soon. But they hadn’t come.
And now Kate was beginning to believe the authorities weren’t coming at all. No one was coming and she was alone now.
She wasn’t sure what to do. She had no electricity, no internet, no radio stations, no information of any kind. She hadn’t interacted with her neighbors in the last four days ever since sealing up her windows with plastic and taping around the cracks in the doors; Rita or Tarik had suggested that, or maybe both of them had. They’d told her about the Ripper Plague on the morning of the Collapse, and recommended staying away from anyone who might be infected.
And now Kate sat in her sealed-up home. She was curled up at one end of the couch in the family room, under a blanket. She had a bottle of water on the coffee table next to a book and a kitchen knife. An aluminum baseball bat she’d gotten a few days ago from a murderer was on the floor next to the couch.
She thought about Rita and Tarik, her closest friends at the university where she taught. She wondered how they were doing. She wondered if they were hunkered down in their own homes with bathtubs full of water and plastic taped over their windows.
Her mind drifted back to Friday, the morning of the Collapse. Her classes had shrunk to less than half of the students, and there was the buzz of rumors going around. She closed her eyes, thinking back to when the world seemed to be ending.
CHAPTER 2
Friday—October 21st
Kate drove to the university as the sun was coming up—she taught at one of the three prestigious schools in the Research Triangle. She listened to the gloomy news on the radio as she drove: the stock markets around the world had been crashing for weeks, stores and businesses closing, protests in the streets often turning into full-blown riots.
She had gone to see her financial advisor earlier in the week, panicking about the retirement accounts and savings that seemed to be evaporating nearly overnight.
“There’s still plenty of time,” her financial advisor had told her. “You’re only twenty-nine years old. You can bounce back from a hit like this.”
The “hit” he was referring to was more like an annihilation. But of course he told her that crashes had happened many times before and that the markets had always bounced back, usually regaining all of the losses, and then some.
“You’ll see,” he’d said with sweat shining on his upper lip. “The market will bounce right back. You just sit tight.”
What else could she do? Take the money out? Inflation was soaring. Deliveries to stores were less and less frequent or reliable. People were panic-buying. Store owners were price-gouging. It felt like the preparation for a hurricane, but this preparation had been going on now for weeks.
But maybe her financial advisor was right. Maybe she would lose a lot, but if she was patient she could begin to save again. At least her job was safe; she was a university professor with tenure. She was working on a book about the Sixth Extinction, a book she’d been promised a nice advance for. She made a good salary. She owned her own home and two vehicles: the BMW SUV she was driving now and a Honda. She had worked her ass off since she’d left home at eighteen years old, and she’d done pretty damn well for herself, especially with the obstacles she’d had to overcome while growing up in a small mountain town in western North Carolina.
Yes, she’d done pretty well so far. She would survive this somehow.
A news report on the radio caught her attention as she stopped at a red light. The traffic was unusually heavy this morning. It seemed like nobody was at work, like everybody was driving around, either hitting the stores for goods or trying to leave the city. There were a lot of cops out, too. Many of the cops were dressed in riot gear, and many of them looked more like soldiers than police officers. Perhaps they were preparing for more protests. There had been a lot of protests at college campuses across the country, and the three main universities in the Research Triangle—Duke, North Carolina, and North Carolina State—hadn’t been immune from those protests.
“Six dead found in Raleigh,” a news reporter said on the radio. “The victims were found in an apartment building. Police aren’t releasing the identities or much information at the moment . . .”
Kate switched the radio station, but there were more reports of murders and violence. Just in the last few days reports like these seemed to have exploded. People were panicking, going nuts, killing each other over anything. Over nothing.
When she got to the school, there were a few cop cars there, two officers dressed in helmets and body armor. They were stopping vehicles and inspecting badges. Kate slowed down to a stop when the cop directed her to.
“ID,” the cop barked at her. He was wearing some kind of black mask over his face under his helmet, like a respirator or a dust mask.
“Here you go,” Kate said, trying to sound cheerful as she handed her ID badge to the officer, trying to act like being stopped at a checkpoint was the most normal thing in the world. But her hand was shaking just a bit as she held the badge out for his inspection.
The cop looked at her badge closely, then eyeballed Kate through his goggles, really studying her face.
Kate smiled at him. She resisted the urge to hold the badge up next to her face and tell him: “It’s really me.”
Finally the cop gave her a curt nod and thrust her ID badge back to her through the open window. He was already directing her to move it along with his other gloved hand.
Kate drove up to her building and parked right in front of it. There were a lot of empty spaces. She wondered how many other professors, staff, and students had decided to turn around rather than drive through the gauntlet of inspections. She wondered how many hadn’t even bothered to come at all. Class sizes had been dwindling drastically through the week.
She got out of her SUV and locked her door, taking her bag with her. The air was cold, but it wasn’t as cold as it had been, warming up just a little. But the air seemed hazy, like there was smoke around somewhere.
*
Kate’s morning classes were less than half the size they normally were. And right before lunch she taught a class that only had nine students in attendance. She had tried to focus on what she was teaching, but within ten minutes the discussion had turned to the collapsing of society.
“What do you think is going on, Professor Crawford?” Jenny, a student on a partial scholarship for volleyball asked.
Kate was going to try to get Jenny focused back on the lecture, but then she sighed and shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“Something’s happening,” Jonathon said. “Something bad.”
“Yeah,” another student in the back agreed. Kate thought he looked a little stoned, and she suspected he’d been dozing off earlier.
“I’m scared,” Anne said.
Others nodded in agreement.
Kate thought they all looked scared. Most of the students still at school were foreign or out-of-state students who couldn’t get back home easily with most of the flights being grounded recently. Amtrak had also shut down for now.
“I heard there’s some kind of virus going around,” Javier said in his heavy accent.
“There is,” Jonathon said. He moved down toward the front where Javier and Jenny were sitting, taking one of the empty seats nearby. Some of the other students were moving closer to the front of the classroom, like they were huddling together without even being aware of it. “It’s called the Ripper Virus. Or something like that.”
“Ripper Plague,” Alex said as he moved down to the front of the class. Only Byron, the stoned kid, remained near the back now.
“Ripper Plague?” Jenny said. “I haven’t heard anything like that on the news.”
“It’s not on the news,” Alex said, shaking his head at her obvious ignorance. “They’re not going to tell you about it.”
“Be nice,” Kate warned Alex. He was usually a quiet kid, but a social outcast of sorts. A smart kid who usually didn’t hesitate to flaunt his knowledge.
“She puts too much faith in our government,” Alex said.
A few titters from the other students.
Alex was already looking up something on his laptop. He moved over right next to Jenny, and she moved to the side just a little, drawing back from him instinctually. Kate wondered if she even realized that she had done it.
“Look at this,” Alex told Jenny, sliding his laptop in front of her.
Jenny watched the screen in horror. Javier, Jonathan, and Scott crowded in behind her to watch.
“That’s not real,” Jenny whispered.
Kate realized that she hadn’t been invited to watch whatever Alex had drudged up from the dark corners of the internet. She could hear the squawks and noises from the laptop. Some of the noises sounded like screams. And from Jenny’s reaction, Kate wasn’t so sure she wanted to see what she was watching.
Scott was busy searching on his phone. “Where did you find this stuff?” he asked. “I just looked up rippers on my phone. There’s just this message about it being a conspiracy theory, and then some policy about not allowing any kind of footage without a veracity of proof.”
“We’re working hard to research this material and, once verified, it will be posted,” Anne read from her phone.
“They’re not showing it on the internet,” Alex said, rolling his eyes like he was trying to explain something to a group of children. “It’s on the dark web.”
“The dark web?” Jonathon said, wincing. “Oh man, none of that shit’s true.”
“No, the shit on the internet,” Alex said, “that’s what’s not true.”
“Okay, guys,” Kate said. “Language.”
“Sorry,” Jonathan said.
Alex offered no apology.
Jenny pushed the laptop back toward Alex and turned away from him.
“It’s like a rabies virus,” Javier said. “It affects people like rabies does, only this form spreads through the air.”
“What if this is true?” Scott asked Kate, but then he looked at the others in class. “What if there’s really a disease like this out there? Like the bubonic plague.”
“That was spread by fleas,” Anne said. “From infected rats.”
