Dark Days (Book 2): Chaos
CHAOS
DARK DAYS: BOOK TWO
A post-apocalyptic series by
MARK LUKENS
Chaos: Dark Days Book 2—copyright © 2017 by Mark Lukens
All Rights Reserved
No part of this work may be reproduced without written permission by the author.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead (or any other form), is entirely coincidental.
Cover design by: Extended Imagery
Special thanks to: Jet, Ann, Joe, Kelli, and Mary Ann—your help is appreciated and invaluable.
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
THE SUMMONING – www.amazon.com/dp/B00HNEOHKU
SIGHTINGS – www.amazon.com/dp/B00VAI31KW
DEVIL’S ISLAND – www.amazon.com/dp/B06WWJC6VD
THE EXORCIST’S APPRENTICE – www.amazon.com/dp/B00YYF1E5C
POSSESSION: THE EXORCIST’S APPRENTICE – www.amazon.com/dp/B07NCZQTNR
NIGHT TERRORS – www.amazon.com/dp/B00M66IU3U
WHAT LIES BELOW – www.amazon.com/dp/B0143LADEY
GHOST TOWN – www.amazon.com/dp/B00LEZRF7G
THE DARWIN EFFECT – www.amazon.com/dp/B01G4A8ZYC
DESCENDANTS OF MAGIC – www.amazon.com/dp/B00FWYYYYC
A DARK COLLECTION: 12 SCARY STORIES – www.amazon.com/dp/B00JENAGLC
RAZORBLADE DREAMS: HORROR STORIES – www.amazon.com/dp/B076B7W252
FOLLOWED – www.amazon.com/dp/B078WYGMJN
THE VAMPIRE GAME – www.amazon.com/dp/B07C2M72X9
COLLAPSE: DARK DAYS BOOK 1 – www.amazon.com/dp/B07SCPL6QB
AUTHOR’S NOTE:
I started writing this series years ago as a standalone novel, but then I abandoned it for some time. That first draft had most of the same characters as the series that it has become now: Ray and his family, Josh, Emma, Luke, and Wilma. That story was similar to this one, yet still different. I loved the characters in that first draft, but I was never satisfied with the story, and I won’t publish a story unless I’m as happy with it as I can be. A year ago, I had a new idea for this series, a different direction to take it in, but the characters were still there, still alive in my mind through the years. But there was a problem: When I told the story from the multiple viewpoints of these characters, the book got way too long. So I had the idea to tell the story of the beginning of the collapse from these main characters’ points of view in their own books. So, the first book is told from Ray and his family and Emma’s points of view. This second book is told from Josh’s point of view. And the third book is told from Luke and Wilma’s points of view. In the fourth book they will all come together (this isn’t really a spoiler because it is alluded to in all three of these books). I know many readers may skip this Author’s Note (and I’ve heard some readers even skip prologues, even though I can’t understand why—it would be like going to see a movie ten minutes after it has started), so I imagine some readers may get upset if they don’t see much of the characters from Book 1 in Books 2 and 3. And maybe this approach is a little unusual, but I really felt I needed to write these books this way. Does this mean that the first three books could be read out of order? Yes, but I had intended them to be read in order because information is revealed along the way as you get deeper into the series. I do hope you will continue on to Book 3 after this to meet Luke and Wilma. And then from there, I hope you’ll go on to continue this series.
Thank you!
Mark
CONTENTS
OTHER BOOKS BY MARK LUKENS:
AUTHOR’S NOTE:
PART ONE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
PART TWO
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
PART THREE
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
PART FOUR
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 47
CHAPTER 48
A thank you:
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
PART ONE
CHAPTER 1
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – Oct. 21st
Josh Hooper was a screw-up. Always had been and still was.
He came out of the guest bedroom that his sister had turned into his bedroom. He saw Kyle in the living room glued to the TV. Marla was in the kitchen with a big cup of coffee in one hand, the cordless phone in the other. It sounded like she was arguing with someone; that’s probably what had woken him up.
The coffee smelled good—he needed coffee, and maybe something to eat. But he went over to Kyle before going into the kitchen, which was really part of the living room in this small apartment. He gave Kyle a gentle push on the side of his head; it was his good-morning gesture.
“Punk,” Josh said to Kyle.
“Quit it, jerk,” Kyle replied, but he couldn’t help grinning.
Kyle was small for his age of eleven, but he was a fighter; it showed in the way he battled both his Type 1 diabetes and his asthma without complaint.
Josh didn’t look over at his sister in the kitchen yet, but he could feel the weight of her stare even though she was still on the phone. She was upset, but she always seemed to be upset about something these days. And often Josh was the source of her ire: he hadn’t cleaned up the apartment enough, he needed to get a job, or keep a job longer than a few weeks. She was always paranoid that he would start drinking again, or worse, using again. Often the drinking led to the drugs. But he’d been sober for six months now—how much more could he do to prove to her that he had kicked his bad habits?
“Why aren’t you playing your video games?” Josh asked Kyle. “You know how much I love to wake up to the sound of someone killing zombies.”
Kyle just shrugged. “I’m watching this.”
Josh watched the TV for a moment. “News? What are you, some kind of nerd?”
Kyle didn’t come back with a sarcastic retort, and Josh could tell that his nephew was absorbed in what he was watching. But not only that, Kyle seemed nervous, maybe even scared. There’d been nothing but nonstop reports on the news about violence and destruction. There were massive protests going on in nearly every major city, even here in Pittsburgh. There were also tons of news reports about seemingly random acts of violence, families found slaughtered, people chopping each other up, some reports of people atta
cking and ripping others apart, and even eating parts of them. Some reporter on the internet had labeled these people “rippers” a few weeks ago and the name had stuck. There were speculations of some kind of airborne rabies-type virus going around that was turning ordinary people into bloodthirsty animals.
There were also reports of large fires and martial law being declared in several cities including: Boston, New York, Chicago, St. Louis, Seattle, Charlotte, and Miami.
But Josh didn’t know what was true and what wasn’t. Over the last few days Kyle had shown him some internet videos on his laptop; he said the videos were from the dark web—probably something Marla wouldn’t be too happy about, but Josh wasn’t going to narc on his nephew. The videos were graphic. Kyle showed Josh a video of two men chasing down another man in what looked like part of someone’s back yard. The men tackled their overweight victim to the ground. One of the men attacked the man’s face and neck, tearing at him with fingers and teeth, while the other one had somehow managed to rip a hole in the man’s stomach and reach his hands inside, pulling the flesh apart so he could pull globs of intestines out.
“That shit isn’t true,” Josh had told him. “Probably some wannabe horror filmmaker.”
“It’s true,” Kyle had told him, and Josh saw the belief in his nephew’s eyes.
“You can’t believe all that shit you see on the internet. You know how many times that shit’s been proven to be fake? And you better not let your mom catch you looking at that kind of stuff.”
But Kyle insisted that the rumors and videos on the internet were true. He was convinced that martial law was being declared and that some kind of zombie disease was spreading.
“You play too many zombie games,” Josh had told him.
On the TV right now there was a reporter at some news desk with the words BREAKING NEWS in the graphic underneath her. A constant newsfeed was streaming across the bottom of the screen.
“Congress has called an emergency leave-of-absence,” the anchorwoman said, and then the feed switched to a reporter on the scene, the Capitol building behind him in the distance.
“They’re going to bomb Miami,” Kyle said in a low voice so his mother wouldn’t overhear him. “That’s where this zombie virus started.”
Josh didn’t respond to Kyle. He watched the reporter on TV, a little unnerved that America’s leaders had decided to run for the hills while society was collapsing and all the economic markets were crashing. So many businesses had closed around here just in the last few days. There were traffic jams in the streets, and the airports were packed with people trying to escape on the few airlines that were still flying. The people leaving were probably rich people going to their bunkers and private islands, Josh thought.
“And they’re going to quarantine New York,” Kyle added. “Shut off the whole island of Manhattan.”
“You’ve been spending way too much time on your laptop, kid,” Josh said. “And you’ve been watching too much news.” He picked up the remote control and turned the TV off. “That shit ain’t good for you.”
Kyle was shocked. “Hey!”
“Why don’t you play one of your zombie games?” Josh said.
Kyle turned around to get permission from his mom. “Can I play Zombie Takeover?”
Marla was still concentrating on her phone call, pacing back and forth between the small island with the granite top that separated the small kitchen from the small living room in their apartment. She hadn’t heard Kyle.
“I’m sure it’s okay,” Josh said. “I’m giving you my permission.”
Kyle just snorted out laughter, showing how much weight Josh’s permission carried in this house.
“Hey, I’m an adult,” Josh said.
Kyle got his game system ready.
Josh had bought the zombie game for Kyle on his birthday four months ago when he’d still had a job. Of course Marla was pissed off about it, but it was one of the most popular games right now and Kyle had really wanted it. Marla felt the game was too violent and that Kyle was too young to play a game like that.
“I need to practice for the zombie apocalypse,” Kyle said as he got the controller ready in his hands.
“You know there’s really no such thing as zombies, right?”
Kyle just looked at Josh like he was dumb. “We need a gun. Do you have a gun?”
Josh was a convicted felon—several times—he wasn’t allowed to own a gun. But Josh decided to spare his nephew that little nugget of information. “No. And we don’t need one.”
“We will. How are we going to fight the zombies?”
“I guess we’ll have to improvise and use some weapons we have around the house.”
Kyle didn’t even look at Josh; he just blew out an exasperated sigh.
Josh stood up, looking around at the apartment. He knew Kyle was watching him out of the corner of his eye. “There,” he said, and he ran over to the kitchen, grabbing the broom leaning up against the wall. “This weapon’s mine. I already called it.”
“A broom? Yeah, that’ll probably work.”
“I’m pretty deadly with a broom. I trained at a monastery in Tibet and all we used were brooms.”
“Did you ever learn how to sweep the floor with it?” Kyle asked.
“Ha ha.”
Kyle’s attention was back on his game. He started to play, but he kept the sound down low, getting as much playing time in before his mom told him to turn it off.
Josh looked at Marla who was watching him even though she still had the cordless phone up to her ear. “I don’t want him playing that game right now,” she said.
“Let him play for a few minutes,” he told her in a low voice. “It’s probably better than watching the news.”
“Yes, I’m here,” Marla said into the phone. “You do? Oh, thank God. Yes. I’ll be there as soon as I can. Please hold it under the name Marla Hooper. Thank you so much.”
Josh made himself a cup of coffee, filling up the cup two-thirds of the way with coffee, leaving plenty of room for cream and sugar. He craved sugar a lot these days, but he tried to control it as best he could. It helped that Marla did most of the shopping and refused to buy sweets and snacks that she felt weren’t good for Kyle.
Marla hung up the phone. “Finally,” she said. “And at least the phone didn’t cut out this time.” They’d been having spotty service with the landline phone over the last few days, and their cell phones weren’t much better.
“Who was that?” Josh asked.
“The pharmacy. I got Kyle’s doctor to send a prescription over there for a few more months’ supply of Kyle’s medications.”
Marla didn’t need to explain further—she was afraid of the pharmacy running out. Josh and Marla had grown up in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, and they were used to people panic-buying when a hurricane was coming. And with what had been going on for the last few days, the drug stores and supermarkets were already swamped with people buying up all the groceries and supplies as the news got darker and the economy got worse.
“You want me to pick up the scripts for you?” Josh asked. He used any opportunity to score points with his sister and get on her good side. But even as much as he tried to help, he always seemed to piss her off.
Marla stared at him. She hated it when he called Kyle’s medications “scripts.” But she nodded and looked a little relieved that she wouldn’t have to go out into the nightmare that the streets had become over the last few days.
But he could tell that she was also wary, always worried that somehow Josh would screw things up.
“I know you don’t want to go out in this shit,” Josh said.
They had all gone to the grocery store yesterday to stock up on what they could, but the shelves were nearly empty and the lines were so long. She’d gotten a migraine from the stress. A manager finally rang up their items after an hour wait. The manager complained that half of the cashiers had walked out earlier in the day and he was worried that the store was going to clos
e its doors soon.
“I’ll go,” Josh insisted. He wanted to do this for Kyle, for Marla. He wanted to show her that she could depend on him.
“Okay. Thanks.”
“I’ll be back before you know it.”
Marla grabbed her purse from the kitchen table and pulled out some money. “Pick up anything else you think we might need.”
“Got it,” he said, stuffing the money down into the pocket of his jeans.
“Don’t forget to bring your broom,” Kyle sang out from the couch, his eyes still on the TV screen as he shot zombies in the head, blood spraying out.
“I don’t go anywhere without my broom,” he said.
“Can I talk to you for a minute?” Marla said, her eyes darting to her bedroom door.
Oh shit, here comes the lecture.
He followed Marla into her bedroom and she closed the door almost all the way. She spoke in a low voice: “I heard Kyle asking you about a gun.”
Josh sighed. “We were just kidding around.”
But the expression on Marla’s face surprised him; she wasn’t angry with him—she was scared. “Do you have one? Please, just tell me the truth.”
“No. You know I’m not allowed to have one.”
Her expression said: When has anything illegal ever stopped you before?
“Can you get one?” she whispered, her eyes flicking towards the door.
“What do you mean?” he asked, never expecting Marla to ask a question like that.
Marla opened the top drawer of her dresser and pulled out a thick envelope. She plucked out a wad of money from the envelope and handed it to him. “I’ve saved some money up. I thought you might know some . . . some people, like some friends of yours who might be able to sell you a gun.”
You mean my druggie friends? he wanted to ask, but didn’t. He wanted to tell her that he didn’t hang around those guys anymore, even though she never seemed willing to believe him. “This isn’t Ft. Lauderdale,” he said. “I don’t know those kinds of people up here.”
She just stared at him.
Okay, so maybe that wasn’t exactly true. He had gotten high a few times when he’d first come up here, but he still wasn’t sure if he could find someone willing to sell a gun right now. “I could talk to a few people.”