Beneath the Ashen Veil of Darkness

by Robert Bartlett

  Levi and Paige are filling and re-filling their packs as quick as they can go to the support vehicles and unload them. It had been a preverbal odds and ends goldmine in the examining rooms. The rooms had been full of survival essentials like bandages, disinfectants, latex gloves, paper towels, bedding, toiletries, etc. The toiletries and hydrogen peroxide had drawn the biggest whoops of excitement from

  Laura and Grant when they were announced to the group outside as they helped them unloaded their bounty. The gas drained from the vehicles in the parking lot had filled up two of the five gallon gas cans and part of a third. Not too bad when you considered that there were only four cars in the parking lot, but still it only provided a fraction of the fuel they would need for the return trip home. Now Laura and Grant stand guard over the fuel they had been able to collect, the vehicles, and the supplies now being collected by the group inside. As well as providing help and cover when Levi and Paige brought out any of the welcomed supplies. Ray and Jim were busy taking advantage of an unexpected opportunity by pulling the battery and other parts they could salvage off of another Toyota Tacoma that happened to be parked in the same lot. Levi raises a hand to Jim who glances over at them for a brief second. He hastily raises his own in response as Ray seems to ask him for assistance at the same moment. Levi smiles under his mask in understanding, having been on the other end of Ray’s strong work ethic and his desire to get a job done quickly and efficiently. But Ray always seemed to accomplish both so very little was ever really said when the orders he gave came out with a no nonsense directness. Ray was both blunt and demanding, but he was also fair and no one worked with him that didn’t come away with more knowledge and understanding about what they were doing than they had when they had started. Levi turns and walks back into the office building, following Paige as she re-enters the hallway on her way to the next examining room targeted for exploration when the unmistakable sound of breaking glass stops them both in their tracks. The sound is almost deafening in the otherwise silent world as it instantly puts them both on high alert.

  It takes them mere seconds to figure out that the sound they had just heard came from the waiting room where Clay and Colt had been checking for supplies and testing the security of the doors and windows to see if they could set up here as a make shift base for the duration of the sortie. Levi reaches the room first having passed Paige in the hallway in his desperate attempt to make sure that nothing horrible had happened to his father. Levi stops so suddenly just inside the room that Paige crashes into him from behind causing them both to stumble farther into the room as Levi is trying to figure out exactly what was going on and who was lying on the floor in an ever widening pool of blood. Paige, just now able to regain her balance and take in the gruesome scene that is unfolding in front of her, sets all of Levi’s worries aside with one simple phrase “Oh my god Clay! What happened to Colt?”

  Chapter Seven

  Colt slowly creeps around the perimeter of the waiting room staying close to the wall. Clay is just off to his left (he can see the red light of his flashlight scanning the area directly in front of him). They used red lenses while they were searching un-scouted areas because the red doesn’t interfere with their night vision. Their eyes work hard enough as they constantly try to adjust to the almost pitch black that consisted of their days or the absolute pitch black that now made up their nights. With no electricity, no moon, or stars shining down the nights were utterly and completely dark. Talking with his wife Holly about it one night as they lay in bed straining to see their hands that they knew were right in front of their faces and couldn’t, their young daughter Belle fast asleep in the bed next to them Holly had likened it to being blind. As Colt had laid there listening to the slow, soft, rhythmic breathing of his little girl, he had to agree with her. He is deep in thought about his lovely young wife and his longing to be back at the compound with his family when something catches his eye just at the edge of his flashlight. It’s hard to make out any real detail in the dimness of the red light they are forced to use as he struggles to figure out what it is he sees in front of him. He takes a cautious step forward and starts to make out what he thinks are, yes they’re shoes! Colt crouches lower in surprise as he draws back his bow his finger resting just above the quick release ready to release an arrow at the first sign of anything threatening. He has no qualms about instituting the “shoot first ask questions later” motto he had read on the back of thousands of pick-up trucks growing up in the wild wonderful state of Texas. As he edges ever closer to whomever it is he has found sitting on the floor, he takes a quick glance over in Clays direction to check his position in the event back up would be needed and sees him coming out of his crouch to peer over the counter to the receptionist’s area behind it. As he notes Clay’s position, Colt again puts his attention to the task that literally sits on the floor in front of him. Cautiously thinking out each step before he takes it, he begins to inch his way forward towards whoever it is sitting on the floor in front of him. “Hello?” Colt whispers to the form as he gets close enough to see their calves and shins now, not truly knowing if he wants a return answer or not. “Hello?” Colt inches closer. “Hello?” louder this time as Colts courage begins to rise slightly, due to the fact that he hasn’t been able to make out any signs of movement as he’s inched closer. He takes one final step as the mutilated form of the poor dead receptionist Deloris Scott fully enters into the beam of his flashlight. Her entrails were strung out and laying about her like tentacles from where she had been eviscerated. The upper portions of her thighs had been gnawed down to the bone. Her breasts were exposed, her left one completely eaten and her ribs showed signs of scoring from the teeth that had worked away all the flesh that at one time had clung to it. The open mouthed, dry sunken eyed grotesque mask of death stared back at him as his light scanned the rest of the way up the corpse. The mangled horror of the partially eaten form manifesting in front of him, the shock overtakes him like a tsunami. He stumbles backwards a muffled scream escaping his throat as he struggles to gain control of himself. The glass topped coffee table that sat in between the two lines of chairs caught him just below the knees unexpectedly causing him to violently sit down. Instinctively throwing his arms back to break his fall, releasing the arrow he had pulled back to impale the mutilated Mrs. Scott, he inadvertently thrusts both arms through the plate of glass that make up the top of the coffee table effectively slicing the artery in his right wrist while severing all the tendons and ligaments in his left forearm with a gash that runs the length of his forearm all the way to his elbow as the glass makes surgeon like incisions in both arms. Colt lay on the floor in a fast forming shallow pool of his own blood. The smashed coffee table beneath him, the mutilated corpse of Deloris Scott directly in front of him. Colt lays on the floor screaming for Holly in obvious shock, blankly staring at the ceiling wondering why his wife won’t respond to his pleading cries for help while his arteries rhythmically pump out his life deepening the pool of blood he is now bathing in.

  “We have to stop the bleeding” Clay exclaims to Paige as she reaches the center of the room to squat next to him. The blood that is still pumping in steady spurts from Colts severely severed limbs covers everything. “What should I do Mr. Stratford?” “Talk to him. Try to keep him awake, he’s in shock. I’ve got to find something we can use as a tourniquet, his artery has been cut in his right arm at least. I can’t tell about the left one.” Clay gives the orders to Paige as he stands up on his search for a makeshift tourniquet. “HOLLY! DON’T LEAVE ME!” Colt screams as Clay stands up, in shocked panic thinking Clay is his wife. “Shhhhh Colt it’s ok. It’s me Paige. Try to stay awake for me ok. Clay’s going to find something that we can use to help us stop the bleeding but I need you to stay calm. Can you do that for me?” Paige begins to talk to Colt as soothingly as she can muster in the chaos that now makes up the waiting room. Clay looks around for anything that they can use to make the tourniquet and sees a lamp sitting on a table in the far c
orner of the room. He crosses the space to the lamp in four quick strides, taking out his knife as he does. He cuts the cord that sticks out of the back of the lamp and jerks the plug out of the wall as he turns and strides back to where Paige has been doing her best to keep Colt as calm as possible. “Ok lift his right arm up I’ve got to tie this above his elbow” Clay explains. Paige does her best to help but as Colt starts to struggle not understanding what is happening to him in his shock and delirium. “I can’t hold him!” Paige calls out to Clay trying to be heard over the now screaming Colt. “HOOOLLLLLLYYY!!!” Levi still staring at the scene playing out before him in disbelief has been unable to move until now, the screaming Colt, his frantic father, and Paige finally beginning to bring him out of his trance. Just as his feet finally begin to obey him again Ray and Jim burst into the room with Grant and Laura just down the hall still keeping an eye on the vehicles but close enough to be there in an instant if their help was needed. Ray rushes past the stone footed Levi seeing instantly the trouble Colt was in as he laid there with Clay and Paige both trying unsuccessfully to tie the tourniquet around the right arm of the violently struggling man who was now quickly bleeding to death.

  “Watch out Paige, let me get to him” Ray exclaims as he reaches them, shouting to be heard over the still screaming Colt. Paige falls back giving Ray access to him. Ray’s hands quickly get smeared with blood making getting a firm grip on anything next to impossible. The next few minutes pass as if they were hours as the two men do everything they can trying to help the young man they had both come to feel responsible for over the last few months ever since he and his young family had joined their families living in the compound. Colt’s energy finally begins to wane as the heavy lose of blood quickly begins to take his life as he begins to slip into a state of unconsciousness. Pale and cold, his ragged breathing becoming less and less frequent. Clay looks at his dying friend finally able to get the tourniquet tied around his arm, hoping that it’s not too late. Colts eyes flutter open as he tries to speak. Slowly licking his lips he whispers “I’m sorry Clay. I’m so sorry. Tell Veronica I’m so very sorry.” Slowly and mercifully Colt slips fully into unconsciousness as he finishes his apology.

  Chapter Eight

  The arrow slams into Clay’s right side stealing the breath from him just before he hears Colts muffled scream and the shattering glass. As Clay leans against the counter struggling to catch his breath he wearily gets down onto one knee. Gingerly he feels for the arrow that he knows has pierced his right side through the Kevlar vest he was wearing. He had found the vest in the trunk of a deputy sheriff’s car that was just off the road in a ditch sideways about 5 miles outside of the compound on one of their earlier sorties for supplies. They had since found three more that they all took turns wearing depending on their responsibilities. Clay thankfully had one on tonight. He finds the arrow that has pierced his side and gingerly begins to try pulling it out, praying to any god that will listen that Colt didn’t have the razor hunting tips on the end of his arrows. The breath he was finally able to find hisses through his clenched teeth as the arrow begins to slide out from between his ribs using his blood as lubrication. Kevlar was great for stopping bullets but all it did for piercing weapons, such as knives and razor tipped arrows, was to slow them down just enough to hopefully keep you alive. That was also why they never rated “bullet proof vests” against anything that was considered armor piercing. Clay could feel the arrow exiting his body as he slowly worked it out from between his, now at least bruised but hopefully not broken, ribs. Quietly whispering a thank you to whatever god had listened to his prayer that it was tipped with the smooth sided arrow heads that were used in target practice (so that they could be taken out of the targets more easily with less chance of damaging the arrow) and not the hunting arrow tips he was afraid it would be tipped with. As he finally works the arrow free of his body he hears Colt beginning to struggle and scream as he simultaneously begins hearing Levi and Paige barreling up the hallway in the direction of the waiting room having evidentially been alerted by Colts screams and the sound of the shattering glass. Clay drops the arrow on the floor at his feet as he stands up and runs to Colts aid. Not knowing or understanding what had happened, he runs only in the understanding that his young friend was in dire need of any kind of help that Clay was capable of giving him.

  “While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have in reality been learning how to die.”

  – Leonardo Da Vinci

  Chapter Nine

  Year One, Day Three Hundred and Twenty Three

  The sun. Once the center of the universe for the tiny blue planet that had miraculously been hung in what was called the goldilocks zone by the supreme powers of the cosmos that we called home. The bearer of light and warmth, the sun had provided the energy that allowed plant and animal life to cover our lands and fill the wonder that was the oceans for over four billion years. It was the rising symbol that signaled the farmer it was time to work the fields or to milk the cows. It was the hero that rose to chase away the nightmares that haunted little children in the dark. Veronica looks at the dull globe that hangs precariously in the sky just above the horizon, the ash clouds still streaming across its surface, a visible reminder of the villain that has, at least for the moment, triumphed over the hero that hangs in the heavens. What was once the brightness of midday was now about as bright as midnight with a half moon. You could see enough to maneuver and function in open spaces but the dark corners that surrounded you at all times gave rise to the primal fears that still reside in us all that were spoiled by the constant ambient light of civilization and technology. The adult inside you keeps telling you to not be afraid, that there isn’t anything in the shadows at night that isn’t there during the day. Only now there is no day only a constant perpetual night. So the child that lives in you appears, telling you that it’s never daytime anymore that only darkness lives in this world and in the black that is darkness one never truly knows what lies in waiting just beyond your distance of sight. What lies waiting for you in the cover of shadow.

  Veronica pulls her coat up tighter around her neck trying to keep out the cold and fear that is everyday life in the current stage of evolution of the world. She stokes the fire underneath the pot she has hanging over the flames on a tri-pod. The compound, still asleep with the slumber that accompanies an endless night and an ever increasing cold, the longer the ash cover kept the sun blocked out, the colder it seemed to get. She stokes the fire again keeping the flames just high enough to lick the bottom of the pot that holds the coffee she is brewing, the aroma of which is starting to matriculate through the camp. It’s been three days since Clay, Levi and the others had went out looking for supplies. She hated it when they were gone, outside the safety and security of the compound. They had everything they needed to be comfortable here. Ron had really been diligent in his preparation. Oh Ron, the memory of his death causing her to look around at what she could make out of the compound in the dark and take in a long, deep sigh. Despite his quirks she had loved her little brother. She had been so upset with Clay when he had told her the news of his demise. Who was she kidding she had been downright cold and cruel to Clay lately, a flesh and blood incarnation of the world that they all now fought to survive in. She hadn’t even been there to see them off when they had pulled out of camp three days ago. An action she now deeply regretted. She knew Ron’s death hadn’t been his fault but it had completely caught her off guard when he had told her. Not that Ron was hurt or lost. Or that he was off on some wild excuse for a party that only Ron and his little band of friends would have thought of as entertainment. Clay had told her that her brother was in fact dead. She absently wipes a tear away as she sits wallowing in the regrets of her actions to her loving husband and the absence of her dead brother. In her selfishness and self pity for losing some one that almost everyone else in the world that had known him most assuredly thought was an asshole, she had treated the one man left in the world that woul
d lay down his own life for her and their children like a royal bitch. And she had done over something she understood he couldn’t have prevented. But in her grief she had to blame somebody. And that somebody had been Clay, even if she knew that no one except her arrogant half baked baby brother was to blame.

  “Well you’re sitting by the fire like you’re awake but the far away distance in your eyes says your still trying to figure out if you’re awake or not.” “Oh hey Willy, good morning,” Veronica greets Willy as he enters the circle of firelight, “I think I’m about fifty-fifty. I’ll be able to give you a more honest answer after I get this first cup in me.” Veronica and Willy share a cheery laugh that only close friends can share as she pours them both a steaming cup of the coffee she had been brewing. William Hocker was the 62 year old, grey haired and balding man with a full beard. Small in stature only, Willy was the camps adopted handy man and father figure. Between Willy (or Ol’ Willy as the guys around the camp called him) and Ray there was little that stayed broken for very long around the camp. Veronica thought she had heard him say once that he had been a farmer in the world before the darkness and had made his living knowing how to fix, repair, or grow almost anything. She found herself wondering now and then if that had been his connection to Ron before everything went to shit. Only Willy had known about this little hid away fortress outside of Ron’s immediate family and closest friends. Willy coughed and spat as he continued to sip his coffee, trying to wake up himself. “I hope to hell someone runs across some sugar this trip out. It would go a long way to weaken this up a little. Ronnie your brew’s so strong it’d make Hercules’s toes curl.” Veronica smiles and adds, “And some non-dairy creamer. It’d be nice to drink a cup of coffee that wasn’t as dark as the damn sky the swirls overhead.” “That it would my dear. Hey at least it’s not raining.” Willy says this last part looking up as if the skies would open up on them at any minute just by him mentioning the damned acid rain. They both subconsciously pull their coats up a little closer and close their hands a little tighter around the cups of coffee they were both holding in them.