Dark Days (Book 1): Collapse

by Lukens, Mark

  When their Tahoe had come to a stop in the road for a second, Ray stomped his foot down on the gas pedal. The SUV shot forward, the engine revving with power. And then they were speeding down the road.

  “Everyone okay?” Ray yelled.

  The adrenaline seemed to be rushing in his ears, drowning out everything else.

  The kids were yelling from the back seat floorboards. Vanessa sounded like she was sobbing. Kim was still bracing herself in the passenger seat, still frozen with fear for a moment, her right hand clutching the armrest, her left hand grabbing at the center console, her eyes wide with shock, her body rigid.

  Ray glanced at the rearview mirror as he sped down the road, making sure that the soldiers weren’t running out into the street and firing at them. And then he wondered if they had shot at their truck. But the rear window wasn’t shattered, and there were no bullet holes in it that he could see.

  But no soldiers had run out into the street. They were probably still occupied with the mob of people that had come rushing up the street—the people that had inadvertently saved their lives.

  “Everyone okay?” Ray shouted again.

  “Yeah,” Mike said as he popped his head up, a strange grin on his face. “That was cool.” But there was fear in his eyes, too.

  Vanessa was still sobbing.

  “Mike, help your sister,” Ray said. He looked to Kim for help.

  She swallowed hard and peeled her clawed hands away from the console and the armrest. She looked at Ray for a second like she didn’t know who he was, and then she turned to Mike and Vanessa. “Mike,” she said and then cleared her throat, her voice louder now. “Mike, help your sister.”

  Ray took a right turn and sped down the street. He wanted to go west eventually, work his way towards Craig’s house via as many backroads as he could use, but right now he was just concerned with putting as much distance between them and the soldiers as he could. After a few more turns down different roads, he would start heading west.

  They sped past a man who was stumbling along the side of the road, his clothes filthy and his movements a little jerky. His face was stained dark with something that could be blood. He stared at them with wild eyes as they drove by.

  “Look, Dad,” Mike said. “A zombie.”

  “Stop it, Mike,” Kim snapped at him. “You stop talking like that right now! I don’t want to hear that nonsense.”

  Mike was shocked into silence.

  Vanessa cried harder.

  “It’s okay,” Kim told Vanessa as she twisted around even more to look at her. “We’re okay. We’re safe. There’s no such thing as zombies.”

  But there are obviously such things as monsters, Ray thought. There were rippers now—they were monsters, they were true monsters.

  Vanessa stopped crying, but kept on sniffling. She wiped at her eyes.

  “You two get your seatbelts back on,” Kim ordered.

  Both kids buckled their seatbelts without argument. Mike had the Incredible Hulk comic book he’d brought with him opened up, but he wasn’t really reading it; he was hiding behind it and pouting because his mother had just shouted at him.

  Kim looked out the windshield for a moment, then she turned around and looked at Mike. “I’m sorry, Michael. But I don’t want to hear any more talk about zombies. Okay?”

  Mike just glared at her from over the top of his comic book and nodded.

  There were a few cars stalled in the middle of the road, and a few others that had crashed. Some had crashed into other cars, some into houses. One car had slammed into a tree and burst into flames, the car and trunk of the tree charred black now. But at least there were no police or soldiers around right now.

  As he drove, Ray realized that they were coming up to The Groves, the condos where Helen had told him her daughter lived. He realized that he still had the piece of paper in his pocket that Helen had drawn the map on and written down the address.

  Helen had mentioned the word Avalon; she’d said that Emma knew the way to Avalon, that she could help them find it when the time came. Avalon—the same word Craig had said to him on the phone yesterday morning when the call had been breaking up.

  Ray clenched the steering wheel harder as he maneuvered around the abandoned vehicles in the road, getting closer to the condo complex. Who cared if Helen had said the word Avalon, or if she knew something about it? He couldn’t be expected to risk his family’s lives because of a probable coincidence. He needed to get them to Craig’s house, and farther out of the city.

  They were only a block away from The Groves complex when a huge crowd of people poured out into the street, men and women running right towards their SUV as fast as they could, some of them screaming and yelling, all of their eyes wild, many of their faces and hands stained with blood.

  “Zombies!” Mike yelled.

  “Daddy!” Vanessa shouted.

  Ray saw the horde of rippers coming for them. There were more rippers running out from between other houses and businesses on the other side of the street. Ray stomped down on the gas, the Chevy Tahoe picking up speed, but then he saw a line of military vehicles coming towards them. The convoy of military vehicles was only a few blocks away, and they were taking up the whole road.

  “Shit,” Ray hissed. “Everyone hold on!” Ray made a hard right turn into the parking area of The Groves condos. Part of the parking area was covered with a metal awning and the lines of cars and trucks parked there were hidden in shadows.

  The military vehicles roared past the parking lot, four tank-like vehicles and two trucks. The last tank had a soldier perched on top through a hatch with a gigantic machine gun mounted in front of him. He fired at the crowd of rippers, mowing them down with bullets.

  Ray pulled into a parking space between a van and a car, slamming the shifter into park and turning off the engine.

  “What are you doing, Ray?” Kim yelled.

  “We have to get off the street,” he said. “If those soldiers don’t get us, then the rippers will. They’re not going to get all of those rippers.”

  The machine gun fire was firing, bullets flying everywhere. Bullets were hitting some of the parked cars of The Groves parking area now, bullets thudding into metal, glass shattering.

  “We need to go!” Ray said.

  “You don’t even know where we are,” Kim yelled.

  “The zombies are coming!” Mike yelled. He turned around and looked out the rear window.

  “There’s someone here who can help us!” Ray told Kim.

  “Who?”

  “I don’t have time to explain! We need to run! We don’t have time to grab anything; we just need to go right now!”

  Rippers were running everywhere out in the street in frenzied confusion amid the gunfire. The military vehicles had turned around a block down the street and were coming back. The truck in front of the small convoy was running over rippers, mowing them down like a giant lawnmower, driving right over their bodies and crunching them down into the street. But after a few moments that vehicle was beginning to bog down as its tires tried to churn through the flesh and bone, and now it was slowing all of the other military vehicles down. The soldier on the top of the last tank was still shooting from the turret at the scrambling rippers, spinning around, pelting the masses with bullets. But some of the rippers were getting away from the gunfire, hiding behind cars and the corners of buildings. Some were starting to run across the street to the parking area.

  “Come on!” Ray yelled again. “We gotta go now!”

  “I need Cappy!” Vanessa squealed. Cappy was her small stuffed turtle she slept with every night.

  “Just grab it and go!” Ray said. He was already out of the Tahoe. He had the back open and he grabbed the golf club, the same club he’d used to kill a man only a few hours ago—his only weapon, his only defense against the horde of rippers that were coming their way.

  Kim got Vanessa out of the back seat and Mike had already darted out from the other side.

>   “We need to hurry,” Ray yelled at his family as he guided them towards the entrance to a massive breezeway between two of the buildings that led to the interior courtyard of the complex.

  Ray glanced back when they got to the breezeway. Some of the rippers on the street were running towards the condo buildings, spotting fresh meat, spotting Ray and his family.

  CHAPTER 21

  Ray, his wife, and kids hurried through the massive corridor between two of the two-story buildings, a covered breezeway that was big enough to drive a garbage truck through. They hadn’t had time to take any of their bags or supplies when they’d fled their Chevy Tahoe; Vanessa had taken Cappy, her stuffed turtle, holding it by one of its feet in a death grip, and Mike had grabbed his Incredible Hulk comic book. Ray had the golf club clenched in one hand like a sword as he ran. Their footfalls echoed off the concrete walls and ceiling as they raced towards the other end that ended in a big, bright square of daylight.

  Ray was a few steps behind his family. He kept looking behind him to see how close the rippers were.

  “Why are we going here?” Vanessa asked, her voice echoing off the walls.

  “Shhh,” Ray said. “You need to be quiet,” he hissed at his daughter. “Hurry. Run.”

  “Zombies are attracted to noise,” Mike informed Vanessa as he ran.

  The breezeway opened up to a gigantic courtyard that all of the two-story buildings surrounded. Off to the right was an in-ground pool with a chain-link fence around it. A large field of grass with a few islands of shrubs took up most of the courtyard, with a few concrete walkways meandering through the grassy area. All the way to the left were a few more fences and short concrete walls that most likely hid the dumpsters and utility sheds. Ray jumped out in front of his wife and kids as soon as they were in the courtyard, wanting to be the first line of defense in case rippers were waiting for them out there. But he didn’t see anyone.

  Ray dug out the piece of paper from his pants pocket that Helen had given him that morning, managing to unfold it as he ran. He glanced down at Emma’s address—Unit 138. At least it was on the ground floor and the directions read: Take a left after you come out of the breezeway. So at least they were heading in the right direction.

  Footfalls and yells echoed from the breezeway, their whoops and screeches magnified. It sounded like hundreds of them were coming.

  “Daddy,” Vanessa whined, already reaching for him.

  Ray scooped his daughter up in his arms. “Come on, we need to hurry!” he told Kim and Mike.

  They ran down a walkway beside the brick building, the second-story walkway above formed a roof over their heads. Ray ran past doors to condo units with Vanessa in his arms. Some of the doors had Halloween decorations taped to them: cartoon witches and ghosts, jack-o-lanterns grinning with squared, blocky teeth.

  They passed Unit 110.

  Then Unit 118.

  Across the football field-sized courtyard, Ray saw a few people collected on the balconies of the upper condos. For just a second Ray thought they might be rippers, but then he realized that it was most likely the residents of that building. Some of them were standing at the railing, watching them as they ran.

  “They’re coming!” a woman on the balcony yelled. “Hurry!” she squealed and pointed in the direction they had just come from—the breezeway.

  Ray ran faster. He could hear Kim and Mike right behind him, their shoes slapping at the strip of concrete. But he could also hear the rippers in the breezeway.

  Unit 124.

  A few seconds later Ray was in front of Unit 138. He kept Vanessa cradled in one arm and handed the golf club to Kim so he could pound on the solid door. There was only a peephole right under the brass numbers.

  No answer.

  “Hey,” a man from across the courtyard yelled, his voice echoing across the field. “Hey! Look out behind you! You need to run!”

  “Ray,” Kim moaned as she looked behind her.

  Ray didn’t even want to take the time to look that way. He pounded on the door again. The brass numbers tacked to the door rattled against it when he pounded on it again. He could feel the door reverberating under the edge of his fist.

  “Emma!” Ray yelled through the door. “Emma, open up. Please. Your mom Helen sent us here!”

  Still no answer. Ray couldn’t even hear any noise from inside the condo. Of course, it might be hard to hear with all of the noise coming from down the walkway at the entrance to the breezeway.

  And then a terrible thought came to Ray. What if Emma wasn’t here? What if she’d gone somewhere safer and Helen never knew? What if he was wasting seconds beating on an empty condo door? He tried the doorknob, twisting it, but the door was securely locked.

  He couldn’t wait much longer. Even if they ran right now, he wasn’t sure if they could outrun the rippers, not with him carrying Vanessa in his arms.

  “Daddy,” Vanessa whispered. “I’m scared.”

  Ray didn’t console his daughter; he didn’t have time. He pounded on the door again. “Emma, please. Open the door! The rippers are coming!”

  Ray risked a glance back at Kim and Mike—they were scared, all wild eyes and quick, panicky movements. He looked beyond them at the mass of horrors escaping the breezeway, falling all over each other to get in the lead of the group. The rippers were in the courtyard now, and they had spotted prey waiting to be taken down, prey waiting to be eaten.

  Ray looked around at the courtyard, trying to decide the best place to run. Should they keep running down this walkway, try to find an unlocked door or someone who might let them in? Or should they run across the courtyard, try to make it to the stairs, up to the balcony in that building where at least a dozen people still waited by the railings, watching the action in the courtyard below like an audience watching a play?

  Kim was pushing against Ray now, panicking, trying to get him moving. She was screaming something unintelligible, a mixture of words. She was practically clawing at him.

  They had to move. The rippers were too close, running full speed now that they had spotted them. Ray had given Kim the golf club so he could hold Vanessa in one arm and pound on the door, but what good was the golf club going to do against the dozens that were running towards them now? How many could Ray hit before the mass of rippers descended on them and tore them apart?

  The door to Unit 138 opened. A young blond-haired woman stood in the doorway. She had dark glasses on. “Come inside!” she yelled. “Hurry!”

  Emma moved out of the way and Ray, Kim, and Mike darted inside. Emma closed and locked the door. Then she twisted a deadbolt, the bolt thumping into place, making a satisfying sound.

  Ray set Vanessa down on the carpeted floor. She bolted to Kim, latching on to her mother. Ray watched the door to the condo. Three seconds later he heard the rippers outside the door, pounding on it, clawing at it, hitting it with sticks and knives and any other crude weapons they had.

  Three seconds. That’s all they had before they would have been mobbed, killed. Beaten and ripped apart. Eaten. He could feel his body shaking from the adrenaline. “Is that door going to hold?” Ray asked Emma.

  “It has so far,” Emma said.

  “We’re okay,” Ray told his family. He looked at Mike who stared back at him with wide eyes. He looked at Kim who held Vanessa close to her. Kim was trembling, breathing hard; she looked like she was about to faint. He had never seen his wife look so frightened before. He gathered them together, holding them all in a group hug for a few seconds, whispering to them as the pounding continued at the door, as the howls and screams came from outside. “We’re okay,” he told them again and again. “We’re okay now.”

  Ray turned to Emma. “Thank you for letting us in, Emma.”

  Emma just nodded.

  Ray stared at Emma for a moment. There was something familiar about her, like he’d seen her somewhere before, but he couldn’t remember where. Maybe he’d seen her at Helen’s house before, or maybe she just resembled Hele
n slightly and the resemblance was making him think he’d seen her before. But it seemed like something else, a detail nagging at him, something he was overlooking. But he didn’t have the time to think about it right now. He looked at the only window in the living room—it looked out onto the walkway outside and it was covered by two large pieces of thick plywood screwed into the wall with hinges attached to them. Ray heard the glass of the window shattering behind the plywood.

  “I had the plywood installed a few weeks ago,” Emma explained as if Ray had asked her about the pieces of wood, like she knew he was staring at the window. “I had them installed on all the windows. I also had metal bars installed, ones that open from the inside.”

  Like you knew this was coming, Ray thought.

  Ray looked at Emma again. She stood in the same spot in the living room, a pale woman in every regard: her hair, her skin, and even her clothing—her black sunglasses were a dark contrast to all of the paleness. She was beautiful in a haunting way that Ray couldn’t articulate, like an angel . . . or a ghost.

  “Are you blind?” Mike asked.

  “Mike,” Kim warned. “That’s rude.”

  “Yes,” Emma answered with a slight smile. “I’m blind.”

  Gunshots sounded from outside. One of the gunshots sounded like it hit the exterior wall right outside Emma’s apartment.

  Ray ducked reflexively, and then grabbed his kids, herding them towards Kim. “Come on, we need to get away from the door. Into the hallway.” He guided his family and Emma into the hallway.

  CHAPTER 22

  Ray, Kim, Mike, Vanessa, and Emma cowered in the hallway. Ray wasn’t sure if these extra walls would stop a bullet, but it was better than crouching down in the living room, or even in the dining room or kitchen, which were really just extensions of the living room. He wasn’t sure what kind of gun was used out there, but it had sounded powerful, the shots echoing off of the buildings surrounding the large courtyard. Most likely a rifle, he thought. How many walls could a rifle bullet go through? He wasn’t sure. But he’d read newspaper articles about street gang drive-by shootings where bullets had gone through several walls of a house, sometimes hitting a child in a bedroom. He felt woefully inexperienced at this, woefully unprepared to help his family. He felt like a sitting duck, like a helpless victim. And he hated feeling like that.