Dark Days (Book 6): Survivors Read online

  SURVIVORS

  DARK DAYS: BOOK SIX

  A post-apocalyptic series by

  MARK LUKENS

  Survivors: Dark Days Book 6—Copyright © 2018 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, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover design by: Extended Imagery

  Special thanks to: Jet, Ann, Joe, Kelli, Valerie, and Mary Ann—your help is immensely valuable to me, and I just wanted to let you know how much I appreciate it.

  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

  DESCENDANTS OF MAGIC – www.amazon.com/dp/B00FWYYYC

  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

  THE SUMMONING – www.amazon.com/dp/B00HNEOHKU

  THE DARWIN EFFECT – www.amazon.com/dp/B01G4A8ZYC

  GHOST TOWN – www.amazon.com/dpB00LEZRF7G

  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

  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

  Contents

  OTHER BOOKS BY MARK LUKENS:

  PART 1

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  PART 2

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  PART 3

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  PART 4

  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

  CHAPTER 40

  PART 5

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  PART 6

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  CHAPTER 54

  CHAPTER 55

  CHAPTER 56

  CHAPTER 57

  CHAPTER 58

  CHAPTER 59

  AUTHOR’S NOTE:

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

  PART 1

  CHAPTER 1

  Luke

  West Virginia

  Luke waited beside a tree ten feet inside the woods at the edge of the clearing. He studied a set of footprints on the ground. It had snowed again last night, just a light dusting, making the prints easier to see. If the weather pattern was going to stay like it had then it would warm up for a few days, melting any snow, and then it would get cold again.

  He looked back at the clearing, at the large cabin in the distance where they’d been staying for the last few days. He thought back to his journey to the cabin, beginning with the panic in Cleveland and running from Jacob, the assassin Vincent had sent to kill him. And then he met Wilma. He and Wilma had worked their way down to the Ohio River, but the Dark Angels shot her before she could cross the river to the compound where her stepbrother and her people had been waiting for her. Luke had killed all six of the Dark Angels, torturing the last one and making him tell him everything he knew. Maybe it should have made him feel a little better that he’d killed them, that he’d enacted some slight revenge on those men for what they’d done to Wilma, but it hadn’t. He was sure he wouldn’t feel truly satisfied until their leader, the Dragon, was dead, and preferably dead by Luke’s own hands.

  But he didn’t want to think about Wilma or his few days in the compound, or his journey south into the mountains of West Virginia. He didn’t want to think about the two men from the compound the Dark Angels had tried to use as bait in the middle of the street of Heaven, West Virginia. And he didn’t want to see himself again shooting both of those men, one of them Wilma’s stepbrother, to put them out of their misery. No, it was better not to think of those things, of the arduous journey to this cabin, to this refuge. It was better to focus on the here and now, on the moment. He’d always prided himself on being able to focus on the task at hand, and right now he needed to focus on these tracks in the woods.

  He looked back down at the set of tracks in the dusting of snow. The snow wasn’t everywhere in the woods like it was in the clearing, just spots here and there. But the ground was still soft enough to be moist in some places, and Luke was sure he could follow those tracks for a while through the dirt and snow.

  He wasn’t an expert tracker by any means, but from what he could tell there was only one set of tracks on the ground. The footprints were small, maybe a woman’s prints, or even a teenager. Judging from the one really clear print, it looked like the person was wearing some kind of sneakers. The tracks stopped at this tree, then they returned from where they had come. Whoever this person was, they had stopped near this tree.

  To watch their cabin for a while?

  Luke looked back at the cabin again, seeing what the person would have seen. The van he and Josh had taken, the one they had driven here to the cabin a week ago, was parked inside the freestanding garage, right next to the newer Jeep Cherokee. The windows of the garage were dark and the vehicles couldn’t be seen from here in the woods. No smoke drifted from the chimney of the cabin. There was no sign that the cabin was occupied. The light dusting of snow covering the field of grass in front of the cabin was pristine from here, no footprints anywhere in the snow. Whoever had made these tracks had only come to the edge of the woods, no further than that.

  Luke hadn’t left any tracks in the field because he had used the longest tunnel from the underground bunker that led into the woods. From there, he had walked through the woods with his H&K pistol and suppressor shoved down into his shoulder holster and a rifle with
a scope in his hands. He wore mostly black clothing and a dark backpack with just a few items inside: some extra ammo, a first-aid kit, a notebook with a hand drawn map he was slowly creating of the surrounding woods, a pack of food, and a canteen of water. It was a pretty light load, so light he barely felt like he had a backpack on. He also had a hunting knife in a sheath on his hip and a small compass inside his jacket pocket.

  It was only a few hours after sunrise, and this was Luke’s usual route through the woods in the morning; he liked to walk around the perimeter of the clearing, staying well inside the trees, looking for any signs of rippers or Dark Angels, or anything else, looking for tracks like he was seeing right now.

  He waited by the tree for a few more minutes. There was no sense hurrying right now. Only one person’s tracks in the snow, a small person, and Luke doubted that person had been a ripper. Rippers went where they wanted, and the tracks would have been more erratic, the path not so stealthy. A ripper wouldn’t have waited here by this tree watching the cabin.

  A scout would, though.

  Luke’s thoughts turned to the Dark Angels. Could one of the Dark Angels have followed them here to the cabin somehow, maybe following the tracks of their van on the dirt road? Or did they just know where they were, their leader coming to visit them in their dreams and revealing their location. He thought of Wilma’s dying words, how she had told him to be careful what he dreamed, that the Dragon was watching, waiting to find information.

  The tracks could be from a Dark Angel scout; that was certainly possible. But again, the tracks were small. Luke couldn’t help thinking they were a woman’s tracks. So far he hadn’t seen a woman among the Dark Angels. He was sure there were women in their group, but he just hadn’t seen any so far.

  There were some other possibilities. It could be a different gang or a group of survivalists, and they had sent a scout ahead of them, someone to report back their findings. Or it could be a lone survivor, a straggler, much like Luke had been when he’d left the compound near the Ohio River over a week ago.

  He sighed softly, the exhale of his breath misting up in front of his face. He looked around at the woods, still searching the trees for any movement, still listening for any sounds. A few birds chirped, but not many. Maybe many of the birds had already flown south for the winter, or maybe they had flown south early because of the rippers. The woods were very quiet; there wasn’t even much of a breeze disturbing the leaves and branches.

  It would probably be best to retrace his steps and get back to the hatch, get back down into the tunnel and to the bunker underneath the cabin. But he didn’t want to take the chance that the scout or survivor was watching him from somewhere.

  A twig snapped somewhere deeper in the woods.

  Luke raised his 30.06, peering through the scope, fanning the weapon slowly toward the direction the sound had come from, studying the brush. He had the pair of binoculars tucked down inside the front of his shirt, hanging from his neck by the strap, but he used the scope for now, wanting to be ready with his weapon if he needed to be.

  He didn’t see any movement in the woods, but he kept his rifle trained on the brush for a few more minutes, studying the landscape through the scope. He lowered himself down to one knee to steady the rifle, part of his body blocked by the trunk of the tree.

  Maybe it was an animal.

  He wondered if he should follow the person’s tracks in the snow. Maybe they led to a camp, or maybe they led to a small army of Dark Angels waiting to attack. Or even a horde of rippers. He wasn’t even sure he could follow the tracks. Footprints in the snow were one thing, easy enough to follow, but the deeper into the woods he got, the thicker the brush would get and he might lose the trail. And if he got too far into the woods, he might not even find his way back unless he marked his trail well enough. And there was always the chance that he’d get too far into the woods while this group circled back and attacked the cabin from a different direction.

  No, he couldn’t leave the others vulnerable like that.

  He decided that he wouldn’t venture too deep into the woods, only another few hundred yards, marking his trail with his knife on the trunks of the trees. He’d see how far the tracks went, at least until he lost sight of them. He’d look for any other clues: cigarette butts, trash, etc. Or tracks of other people. He’d wait a while in the woods, wait for a few hours at least, to see if anyone else came snooping around, and then he’d go back and let Ray know that someone had been scoping their cabin out.

  CHAPTER 2

  Ray

  Over the last few days they had been at Doug’s cabin Ray had taken a detailed inventory of the food and supplies they had down in the “bunker,” as they had begun calling it. The inventory didn’t need to be done, but Ray felt compelled to do it. He used a spiral notebook and an ink pen he found among the paper supplies on one of the shelves. He made lists of the firearms, ammo, medical supplies, entertainment, clothing, tools, radio equipment, camping and survival gear, blankets, and food. There were cases of water and powdered drink mixes, and he counted those, but water wasn’t going to be much of a problem for the foreseeable future because they had a well that ran off a solar-powered pump. And even if the well stopped pumping, there was a large storage tank of water inside the bunker and a rain barrel to collect rain at the back corner of the cabin. And as a final backup, Luke found a stream about half a mile into the woods on his daily patrols. Ray wasn’t sure if the stream’s water was safe to drink, but they had the water purification tablets and the LifeStraw filter tubes if they really needed them.

  For the millionth time Ray marveled at how prepared Doug had been for all of this, and for the millionth time he felt a little guilty that Doug wasn’t here taking advantage of all his hard work. It amazed him that Doug had been so complete in his preparations, seemingly leaving nothing out. But Doug had been a dedicated doomsday prepper, maybe even obsessive about it. Of course he would have educated himself on every facet of prepping; he would have read books (some of which were no doubt among the books in the bunker), he would have watched videos, maybe even taken some kind of survivalist courses—if there was such a thing as that. Ray imagined that Doug would have done a lot of the training himself, teaching himself how to shoot, how to hunt and fish, how to tan hides and preserve meat, how to start a fire in the woods if he didn’t have his firestarter, or if the firestarter broke. Ray was going to have to become just as skilled as Doug was; he was going to have to immerse himself into the ways of survival, learn these new skills as quickly as he could. And he’d already begun reading one of the books on the shelves, an outdoor survivalist’s guide. He read at night, underlining and highlighting passages as if it were a college textbook. But it was one thing to read about things and another to actually do them.

  It was strange how Doug hadn’t been so secretive about this bunker. He’d told Ray about it a few times, and had mentioned to some of the others in the office that he was going to buy a bugout property in West Virginia. He made no bones about admonishing everyone else in the office for not being as concerned as he was about the “shit hitting the fan.”

  “Can’t you see the signs?” Doug had asked so many times. Ray had actually listened to Doug more than the others in the office; most of the others made fun of Doug behind his back. They didn’t think Doug was crazy—they knew bad things could happen. Bad things had happened throughout history many times. They knew about the Black Plague in Europe during the 1300s. They knew about the Spanish flu outbreak in 1918. They knew wars and plagues had been part of humanity since the first cavemen battled each other with sticks and stones. And they knew that humans had developed the technology to literally wipe us out as a species. But they also worked for the government, and most of them put their trust in their employer. Most of them believed that we lived in civilized times and that we, as humans, were far beyond the troglodytes of the past.

  “The government will know what to do,” John had told Doug so many times, countering Do
ug’s rants about getting ready for the collapse of civilization. “There are procedures they will follow, safeguards in place. Backup plans, and backup plans for those backup plans.”

  Doug had argued that it was foolish to put all of your trust in the government. He cited many examples where our own government had turned its back on its own people, times our own government had experimented on its own citizens. He cited experiments with LSD the CIA had performed on mental patients, prisoners, and even johns who had visited prostitutes.

  “And some of those people were volunteers,” John had challenged.

  “Do you really think they knew exactly what they were volunteering for?” Doug had asked him.

  There was an experiment, according to Doug, where the CIA had expelled a bacteria-infected gas into the subway system in New York City to see how long it would take for the bacteria to reach the people, mimicking a bioweapon attack. There were the MK Ultra mind control experiments. And of course, there were the Tuskegee experiments, where they purposely withheld treatment for syphilis on older black men to see what the disease would do to them.

  “So, don’t tell me that our own government hasn’t done cruel and terrible things to its own citizens many times in the past,” Doug had said. “Don’t tell me that there aren’t more cruel and terrible things that we don’t even know about. Don’t tell me to trust them to save me if something catastrophic happens.”

  But even in Doug’s wildest dreams, he probably hadn’t envisioned something like this, a plague that turned humans into flesh-eating predators, a plague that didn’t seem to have any kind of microbial agent like bacteria or viruses, a plague where its method of transference from one human to the next was unknown. Doug had talked mostly about EMPs—electromagnetic pulses that could fry the electrical grid in America, along with anything else that had electronic components. Doug said he kept his batteries and electronics in something he called Faraday cages—metal containers lined with tin foil so the EMPs wouldn’t render them useless (and Ray had seen some of those containers in the bunker).