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Overview: Mark Lukens has been writing since the second grade when his teacher called his parents in for a conference because the ghost story he'd written had her a little concerned. Since then he's had several stories published and four screenplays optioned by producers in Hollywood. He is the author of many bestselling books including: Ancient Enemy, Sightings, Devil's Island, The Exorcist's Apprentice, Followed, and more. He is a member of The Horror Writers Association.
Genre: Fiction > Sci-Fi/Fantasy

1. Collapse
It started with rumors of a plague that turned people into flesh-eating predators. The governments of the world and the media tried to suppress it, but little by little the truth got out. The economy had been in a freefall, banks closed, protests turned into riots, people began hoarding and panicking. And then on a Friday morning, the collapse came.

After the government office where Ray Daniels works shuts down, he just wants to get home to his wife and kids. On his arduous journey home, Ray gets a call from Craig, his supervisor, inviting him and his family to his home where the answers to the collapse and the Ripper Plague are waiting for him, but the phone call breaks up and Ray only hears the word Avalon.

When Ray gets home to his family, the TV stations have been replaced with a loop of the President of the United States declaring martial law. The electricity and water are shut off soon after that. They hole up in their bedroom for the night - they have no weapons, little food, and no information about why everything collapsed so quickly.

After Ray's neighbor, Helen, holds a secret meeting to try to fight back against martial law, she asks Ray to help her blind daughter Emma, promising that Emma can help him and his family find the way to Avalon. But what is Avalon, and what does Emma know about it?

Hours later, after soldiers in gas masks take Helen away, Ray has no choice but to flee with his family. Society has crumbled within the last twenty-four hours. Hordes of flesh-eating infected are loose on the streets. The police and military are doing their best to fight back, but they are losing the battle now. The collapse is here, and Ray wants the answers that Craig has, but he must keep his family alive first.

3. Exposure
Luke is not a nice man. He's not a good person. But he's a fighter . . . a survivor. A former MMA fighter who was sent to prison for attempted murder, Luke is accepted into a crime family run by Vincent, and during his years there he's trained in weapons and the art of delivering pain. When civilization collapses, Luke is sent to protect Vincent's brother and his family. Luke finds the family slaughtered and the brother responsible, already infected by the Ripper Plague. After killing the brother, Luke knows he needs to flee the city. But with martial law declared and Vincent vowing revenge, sending the assassin who trained Luke after him, Luke's chances of getting out of the city don't look very good. But Luke won't give up, and with help from a woman who's nearly as skilled and deadly as he is, Luke finds himself heading out of the city, on a new path, a journey south. In his dreams, Luke has seen a beautiful blind woman calling him south to be with her and the others. But there's someone else in his dreams, a shadowy man of pure evil who is amassing an army to collect and control all the food and dwindling resources left behind. Not only will Luke and Wilma have to contend with the hordes of rippers on their journey, but they will have to run right through the shadowy man's dark army.

4. Refuge
Ray, Emma, and Mike are on their way to Doug's cabin in the woods, their hope of refuge, when they drive into a trap in a small mountain town in West Virginia, a trap set by the Dark Angels, a gang controlled by the shadowy man they've seen in their dreams, the man who calls himself the Dragon. Just when things are bleakest, Josh helps save Ray and the others. Josh is shocked when he sees Emma, the woman he's seen in his dreams, the woman who has helped him along the way. And Josh has also seen Ray and Mike in his dreams. And he's seen Luke and others. He knows that they are all meant to be together . . . if they can survive. Miles away, Luke has made his way south from the Camp, but he gets trapped in the small town of Heaven, West Virginia, hunkered down in a building, the place surrounded by Dark Angels. But Luke has weapons and ammo to hold them off for a little while. A Dark Angel calls out to Luke on a megaphone, trying to convince him to surrender and promising that he has a surprise coming for him. After a nearly-deadly encounter with a horde of rippers, Ray drives Josh, Emma, and Mike right into the battle in Heaven, West Virginia. And soon they are banded together with Luke. But now they are trapped together, making plans to escape, as the surprise the Dark Angels have promised comes into town. Will they make it to their refuge, the cabin in the mountains? And if they do, is the refuge truly the safe place they've been dreaming of . . . or is it even more dangerous?

5. Aftermath
Kate Crawford's world was shattered when the Collapse came. It seemed like one moment she was a university professor of Anthropology, and the next moment she was hiding in her home from the Ripper Plague, tortured by nightmares of a shadowy man with shining eyes. And then the Dark Angels came to her neighborhood, marking front doors and searching homes - she had no choice but to leave.

She planned to travel west, back to her hometown in the mountains of North Carolina, back to an oppressive family she vowed never to return to . . . but she has nowhere else to turn now.

Before she can even make it out of the city, she's stuck on the roof of a building with a possible madman, the streets below overrun with tens of thousands of rippers. But she knows she needs to get out of the city, because the blind woman in her dreams tells her to head west, telling her that there are others like her, that they will all be together . . . they just need to find each other first.

6. Survivors
Ray, Mike, Emma, Luke, and Josh think they've found their refuge at the West Virginia cabin, but it all falls apart when Luke finds tracks in the snow at the edge of the woods. Someone has been watching them. A ripper? A Dark Angel? Someone else? Soon they find their stalker, a young woman, but is she who she says she is? Can they believe her story?

To the south, in North Carolina, Lisey brings a horde of rippers to Kate's parents' home where Kate, Brooke, Petra, and Max are holed up. They don't have time to pack their truck as they try to get away from the mob of rippers. But even if they get away, they don't realize that something is waiting for them in the shadows of the woods just down the street.

Each group faces its own challenges, yet they are getting closer and closer to coming together. They need to be strong because the Dragon and his evil forces have ramped up their game, herding them where he wants them, ready for the final attack.

7. Hell Town
Ray, his son, Josh, Emma, and Luke leave the cabin after it was destroyed by a gang of Dark Angels. They head south, but one of Ray's worst fears comes true when they are caught in a blizzard, trapped inside a gas station and surrounded by rippers.

Petra tries to make her way back to Jo's store after being set up by the Dragon's mole. After narrowly escaping a horde of rippers, she comes across a stranger who may or may not be friendly.

Jo, Kate, Max, and the others at Jo's store begin to pick up the pieces after the attack from the Dark Angels, but Max is committed to leaving the store to look for Petra and bring her back.

The Dragon puts together a plan to take out Ray, Kate, Jo and the others, to rid himself of them once and for all.

As Ray and his group travel farther south, they will merge with Jo and the people at her store. Jo hopes they can all work together to make one last stand against the Dragon and his army of Dark Angels before it's too late.

8. Avalon
In the final book of the Dark Days series, the Dragon uses Petra as bait to lure Luke, Max, and the others to Hell Town where he has laid a trap for them.

Even though Jo wanted Ray and his group to stay at her store and help defend it, Ray believes he must go to Avalon - he knows something important is waiting there . . . the answers to the plague. But the answers he finds aren't at all what he was expecting.

After Ray, Mike, Emma, and Josh leave for Avalon, Jo's store is overrun with rippers, driving her and the others up to the roof, trapping them there.

In a climactic battle Luke, Max, Petra and others collide with the Dragon and his army of Dark Angels in Hell Town. Will they win? Will good triumph over evil?