Dark Days (Book 6): Survivors

by Lukens, Mark

  “I’m always careful,” Petra said. She had her black hoodie on, her dark backpack, her black hiking boots, her black gloves. She had a gun holstered on her hip and a rifle in her hands.

  Lance and Crystal walked up to them. “Jo’s on her way here now.”

  Petra nodded.

  Kate had a sinking feeling in her stomach as she watched Petra get ready to go with Lance and Crystal. Fernando and Tina had volunteered to help them leave; they would move the truck out of the way of the gate and unhook the wires from the car batteries. Everything would be coordinated with the spotters on the roof who kept watch with binoculars.

  “I know you’re always careful,” Max said. “Just be even more careful.”

  “You know something I don’t know?” she asked with a smile.

  Kate couldn’t smile back at her. She’d never believed in premonitions or psychic feelings before, but since the Collapse things seemed to have changed. There was no denying that those supernatural powers existed now, and some—like the Dragon and the blind woman she saw in her dreams—seemed to have strong powers. And now Kate felt the pull of those feelings. Maybe it was just a gut feeling or intuition, a logical reasoning of the odds of survival and the chances of getting hurt or killed. The brain worked in funny ways. Whatever it was, she chose to pay attention to it, and to be ready because it felt like something bad was coming, like a calm before the storm.

  Jo walked up to their tent city with Dale and Zak at her side. She had a small notepad in her hand. Everyone had come out of their tents, all of them gathered together by the tents except for the three spotters on the roof.

  “We’re going on another run,” Jo announced. “We’ve hit most of the areas in town. We’ve worked south to Astorville and Starke. Does anyone know of any place we could try, somewhere that might have a basement or someplace that the rippers couldn’t get to or maybe a place the Dark Angels might have overlooked?”

  For a moment no one volunteered any suggestions, but then Jeff raised his hand halfway up, a timid gesture as he glanced around.

  “Jeff?” Jo said.

  “I . . . I don’t know if it might help . . .”

  “Anything will help,” Jo said.

  “I know a place that might have stuff in the basement.”

  “A business or a house?”

  “A house.”

  “What kind of stuff do you think is there?” Jo asked him.

  He shrugged. “I’m not sure. My uncle . . . this person was a friend of his. I think he was like a hoarder or something. I only went to his house a few times. I didn’t even think of going there until just now.”

  Jo looked at Dale, then at Lance.

  Lance nodded. “I guess it’s worth checking out. We’re kind of running out of options these days.”

  “I can’t promise that it hasn’t been ransacked by now,” Jeff said.

  “I know,” Jo said. “We understand. Where is this place?”

  “Up in Keystone.”

  “Do you know the address?” She approached him with her notepad.

  He nodded and took the proffered notepad, jotting down the address and directions. “Like I said, I can’t promise that there’s going to be a lot of supplies there.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Jo said. “This will be better than just wandering around out there.”

  Lance and Crystal nodded in agreement.

  “And we haven’t really been up to Keystone yet,” Jo said. “It’s kind of far.”

  “Maybe it’ll be worth it,” Lance said. “We’ll scope out places along the way.” He turned to Petra. “You ready to go?”

  “Ready as I’ll ever be,” she told him.

  Lance looked at Jo, and then they were off, walking to the double doors that led to the loading bay out back.

  CHAPTER 51

  Petra

  Fernando moved the truck away from the gate as Tina and Bill stood guard with rifles. The three vehicles Lance and the others were using for the run—two pickups and the van—were lined up at the gate and ready to go. Tyrone and Tamara were in the lead pickup. Petra rode with Lance and Crystal in the van. And Dale and Zak were in the pickup behind the van.

  They were out through the open gate in less than a minute, Fernando waiting to move the truck back in front of the gate. After he was parked, he darted back inside the gate and they slid it closed, locking it and attaching the wires to the car batteries to electrify it.

  Crystal had a small notepad with a list of things they needed to look for on their run: weapons and ammo, gallons of gas, car batteries, any other types of batteries, anything solar-powered. Jeff said his uncle’s friend was a hoarder, maybe even a doomsday prepper—maybe he’d have some or all of the stuff they needed on their list. Of course, like Lance had said, they would check houses and businesses along the way—it would add time to their trip, but it might be worth it.

  They had marked their route on a map of the county. Petra looked at the map and saw that they were heading north from Perry to an even more remote area.

  As Lance drove, Petra watched out the windshield from the seat right behind Lance’s. They drove past a large group of rippers picking over a decimated store. Some of the rippers ran in vain after their small convoy of trucks, a few of them throwing rocks and screeching at them.

  “They’re starving,” Lance said.

  “I’m sure they’ll start eating each other soon to survive,” Petra answered.

  They passed more businesses: bars, a flower shop, a strip plaza, a dollar store, a dentist’s office, a restaurant, a used car lot, a pawn shop, a western clothing store, houses, apartment complexes. It was a war-torn landscape now, taken over by the rippers.

  As they got out of town they saw less and less groups of rippers, but there were a few stragglers. They had to swerve out of the way of two rippers who stood in the middle of the road like they were daring Lance to run them down. It was a man and a woman standing side by side, their skin covered with grime, their hair matted and greasy, their clothes torn and soiled, nearly rags now. The man held some kind of stick in his hand, possibly a broken-off shovel handle, but he didn’t seem to have the energy to raise his weapon up at them as they roared past. Petra thought she saw a spark of humanity in the eyes of those two rippers, like a human mind was buried deep in their brains somewhere, aware of what had happened to them and what they had become, and now they could only stare out at the world in shock, hoping to be run down, hoping for their nightmare to be over.

  They passed more looted houses and buildings, more cars and trucks abandoned along the sides of the road and in parking lots, some of the vehicles riddled with bullet holes from either military or police during the Collapse, or maybe from the Dark Angels afterwards. One car was tipped over on its side from a large truck that had plowed into the side of it. There were dead bodies lying in the road and on lawns and walkways, pieces of carcasses that had mostly been stripped of any meat by rippers, and then the birds and rodents, and then eventually by insects. A ripper was hunched over one of the carcasses trying to pick at any scraps of dried meat left, swiping his arms at the buzzards that tried to swoop in for a scrap of flesh. The ripper’s blond mustache, beard, and hair were stained brownish-red with dried blood.

  These were things that Petra had seen many times since the Collapse. She thought she would be used to the horrors by now, but she wasn’t. She probably never would be. But she was stronger now than she had been a few years ago when she was with Diego, much stronger now.

  When they were past any signs of towns, Lance and Crystal seemed to visibly relax.

  Crystal turned around in the passenger seat and looked at Petra. “I don’t know too much about you.”

  Petra didn’t answer because it wasn’t really a question, even though Crystal seemed to be waiting for a response.

  “Where are you from?” Crystal asked. “Where’d you grow up? Here in North Carolina?”

  “No. I’m from Philadelphia originally. But I move
d to Baltimore right before everything went to hell.”

  “Okay,” Crystal said, smiling. “Now we’re getting somewhere. What did you used to do for a living?”

  “Waited tables,” Petra said. She’d never really waited tables, but it sounded better than telling Crystal that she used to live with a drug dealer and gang leader. She decided not to reveal that little tidbit about her life right now.

  “Did you like waiting tables?”

  “Nope.”

  Crystal went into a long story about a time when she had waited tables for a few months at a pizza joint.

  “Leave her alone,” Lance said. “Obviously she doesn’t feel like talking.”

  “I do,” Crystal said.

  “We need to keep an eye out.”

  “I can watch and talk at the same time,” Crystal grumbled as she turned back around.

  Petra stared out the windshield as memories of living with Diego came to the surface whether she wanted them to or not.

  She’d been young when she first met Diego, only twenty-two years old. She’d been a wild child through her late teens, partying and skipping school, no real plans for the future. When she met Diego she was infatuated with him. He wasn’t a large man, maybe barely five foot nine and well under two hundred pounds, but he seemed taller and bigger than he was. A strength and power came from him that intoxicated her. Diego was impulsive and exciting. He flashed an endless supply of money around. He drank and snorted lines of coke. People respected him and loved him, but later she would realize that they were just afraid of him. She thought she could tame the wild animal he was. But she was wrong.

  Diego carried his intensity into their lovemaking . . . sex, really—quick and brutal sex, but she was fine with it; it’s what she wanted from him, what she had expected and hoped for from him.

  As the months went by she figured she would see a softer side of Diego, but his hardness was no façade. He never talked about himself much, he never told her where he was originally from and how he had become involved with the cartel. He didn’t talk much at all, never wasting words or energy when he didn’t need to.

  Before long Petra realized she was in too deep with Diego. She knew too much about the cartel, a cartel that had branches up and down the east coast, a cartel that ran drugs and prostitution rings, human trafficking, money laundering, a cartel that had cops and politicians on their payroll, a cartel that possessed true power.

  Diego set her up in a beautiful house on the outskirts of the city with a spectacular view. He was there sometimes, but often he traveled down to Mexico or Miami, or to New York and Boston. She knew he had women on the side. She had confronted him about it once and he’d beaten her. He hit her over and over again. She begged him to stop, but he wouldn’t. She’d seen the detachment in his eyes as he meted out her punishment; she realized that he didn’t care about her, that she wasn’t even a human being to him.

  It was at that moment that she became truly frightened of him.

  The beatings continued off and on. He abused her mentally, physically, and sexually. Anything could set him off. She’d gotten pregnant a year later, hoping the idea of a son or daughter would calm him down, hoping that he wouldn’t dare touch her while she was carrying his child, but he beat her anyway and she lost the child.

  Eventually he was going to kill her. And he seemed to be tiring of her. She knew he had a string of women lined up to take her place. Her days were numbered. She’d heard of the young women they used as drug mules, women who, when they were used up, were dumped in a mass grave, sometimes buried alive. That would be her fate. Leaving Diego would be dangerous, but staying with him would be even more dangerous.

  She didn’t like the person she had become, cowering and afraid all the time. She used to be strong, she used to love life, she used to be happy. Now she was just a quivering mass of fear. She couldn’t live like that anymore. After one last beating for no reason, her mind snapped and she made the decision to leave the next time Diego went out of town.

  She didn’t have to wait long—he left three days later. She’d been making plans in her mind, going over them again and again, looking for flaws or mistakes.

  After she was sure Diego was in Miami, she had her bag packed, just a few changes of clothes, a few personal items, and the cash she’d gotten out of the safe in Diego’s office. Not all of the cash, not nearly even half of it, but enough to get her out of town and get her a new identity, enough to support her for a few years.

  She left the house and drove down I-95. She chose Baltimore randomly. She didn’t know anyone there. She found a place where she could get a fake ID and a different car. After a few months of living in a shitty motel room, she left Baltimore for a town thirty miles away, a small town where no one would be able to find her. She rented a small apartment on top of a mechanic’s garage.

  The first few weeks she was there, she stocked the apartment with food and booze and locked herself inside, curling up and afraid on her bed, waiting for Diego and his men to find her. She cried and slept, then woke, drank, and cried more.

  And then at the end of the second week in her apartment, her mind snapped again. She woke up with a bad hangover. She looked into the mirror at herself. Her face was puffy from alcohol and crying. This wasn’t the person she wanted to be. She decided at that moment to change. She’d heard of people reinventing themselves, and that’s exactly what she planned to do.

  She poured out the booze and threw out any junk food. She went to the store and bought clippers and scissors so she could cut her hair short. She went to a hardcore gym a few blocks away and signed up for Krav Maga self-defense classes. She worked out with weights at the gym, learning from others there how to create a routine to get stronger. She used some of her cash to buy a gun. She went to a shooting range once a week. She got tattoos. Every day she became harder, stronger, tougher. She became a little more like Diego without even realizing it. He’d been the one who had frightened her and she was becoming more like him—quiet and brooding, calculating and cold, aloof and paranoid. She didn’t date. She didn’t do anything for pleasure. If she watched a movie or read a book, it was only to learn more. She ate food only for fuel, not for taste. Her whole life was a preparation for when she met Diego again.

  A few months later she contacted her relatives in Philadelphia on a burner phone. Her father had been murdered, her mother beaten. One of her cousins was missing. An uncle’s home and business had been burned down. Diego and the cartel had done it, and they weren’t done yet. They were trying to get her to come back home, trying to draw her out of hiding.

  She was miserable about what had been done to her family, ashamed that she’d hidden while they had suffered. She was harder and tougher now, but she was also dead inside. She swore she would go back and kill Diego for what he’d done to her, to her family, and to so many others. She knew she was going to die in her confrontation with Diego, but she would make damn sure she killed him first.

  But that confrontation never came. The Collapse came first. She’d seen the signs of the collapse of society and the economy, but she had ignored it, so focused on her own training and her own fate.

  When the Collapse finally came and the Ripper Plague drifted over the world, she was more prepared for it than most, prepared to defend herself, prepared to fight, prepared to run. In a strange way Diego had prepared her, and in a strange way she was thankful to him for that.

  CHAPTER 52

  Petra

  Petra had seen Diego in her dreams a few times. When she woke up she was afraid that Diego was still alive, immune from the Ripper Plague like she was, afraid that he was still looking for her. But then she assured herself that the Dragon had somehow seen Diego in her mind and used her worst fears against her.

  Fine. She’d been prepared to fight Diego to the death, and the Dragon couldn’t be any scarier than Diego had been.

  Yes, she was pretty sure Diego wasn’t immune like she was. What were the odds of that? But in a str
ange way she hoped he was—she would be ready to settle the unfinished business she had with him if he was still around. Nothing would make her happier.

  “This place is way the hell out here,” Lance said as he drove the van.

  Lance stayed a few car lengths behind Tyrone’s pickup so he could get a better view of the road. They traveled through the woods, the trees giving way to clearings every so often. Sometimes the landscape would drop away into a valley below as they wound around a mountain, sheer rock faces rising up steeply on the other side of the road. Signs warned of possible falling rock and there were bright orange nets to catch the smaller rocks.

  “See those nets?” Lance said. “Eventually all of that netting will break down and deteriorate. Everything mankind has ever done, every manipulation of nature, will eventually rot and degrade away. Buildings will fall, metal bridges will rust and disintegrate, weeds and brush will cover the roads and even buildings. Nature will take everything back, little by little, like the endless tides of the ocean eroding a beach.”

  It made Petra sad to think about what Lance was saying. She didn’t see a future for humans. Maybe all humans and rippers would eventually die away and the animals would inherit the planet again. Maybe small packs of humans would live on and rebuild a society again, maybe even build it up to what we once had, even if it took hundreds of years. But Petra wasn’t too optimistic about that—she was just being a realist.

  “You’re quite the philosopher,” Crystal said, smiling at him, then looking back at Petra and giving her a wink.

  “I know we’re out here on runs to get guns and ammo and other stuff,” Lance went on, ignoring Crystal’s comment, “but I think we need to preserve history too. What if we forget all the things we learned in the past? What if we have to learn them all over again?”