Seeking Daylight

by Becky Poirier

  We could hear the howling in the streets as we ran down the stairs of our sanctuary. There were more flooding our building. Soon it would be overrun and there’d be nowhere to go. There were loud banging sounds on the building’s roof, sounds of tearing metal. They moved so fast. I remembered the random sound of gunfire coming from the distance and thinking that whoever it was they’d just got what they deserved.

  I remembered how tight the duct work was as we tried to crawl through it as fast as we could. And then when we finally came to the opening… Molly needed me to go first to catch her. It was too far a jump for her. I should have pushed her. It was better to risk a broken ankle than a bite. An ankle could heal, I’d learned that, but a bite was permanent. That moment played over in my mind so many times. I should have just pushed her.

  Molly’s scream as the demon bit into her ankle resonated through my skull. I pulled as hard as I could, ripping her from the beast’s grip. In the process my arm came out of the socket. Molly was on the ground whimpering for the first time that night. She’d been so brave through everything. I hadn’t realized how old she’d grown until that moment of crisis. The demon was smiling at us with my sister’s blood on its teeth, laughing cruelly. That was when I finally managed to get my gun aimed at it right this time and used the final bullet to end its life. I waited to make sure that it wouldn’t move again before going to my sister. Molly was trying to be brave, but I could see the fear in her eyes. I dug through my pack until I found a small flashlight. Gently I lifted her face so I could examine it. It was tear stained. “I was running through the motions trying to think of what to do, what to say. But I couldn’t find the words,” I told Alex only half seeing him. My mind was still trying to pull out of the memory. My face was soaked with tears.

  “Molly?” He asked again. I was so tired of this stupid one-way conversation. I leapt out of my chair and put my face just inches from his, which was a very stupid thing to do.

  “She’s dead you idiot. One of you demon’s killed her. It bit her ankle…she begged me…”

  I sat back down in the chair bawling. Alex’s body shook in the bed. I looked up and saw that he was crying too. Through my blurry eyes I watched as the emotions took Alex over. If he was a demon, then why would he care about Molly? I kept searching for the lie. Surely, he had to be lying. But I couldn’t find it. If he was lying, then he was very good because he had me convinced that he mourned her death just as much as I did.

  “She…made…you…keep your…word,” he finally managed to finish a sentence.

  “Yes,” I said staring back at him. The tears slowly subsided. How did he remember? We all promised each other that we would not let any member in our group be turned. We would end their life before their body could be used to house a demon. It was our number one rule. “I used the morphine we had. I must have shoved it in my pack without realizing it. It was quick.” It had worked a lot faster than I thought it would, too fast. There was barely enough time to get in a proper goodbye. I had sung to her as she took her last breaths. It was what she wanted. She asked me to sing one of our Mother’s favourite songs. Even after she stopped breathing, I couldn’t bring myself to stop singing before the song was finished. Because I knew when it was over, everything I’d lived for would be gone.

  “I’m…sorry.”

  I shook my head at him. “You’re sorry? For what? For breaking your word, for leaving us or for being a demon who took over the body of the man I loved?” I no longer believed he was a demon. I didn’t know why I even said it. He was Alex. A demon wouldn’t have cried over Molly. He’d loved her like a little sister. But he’d hurt me, and I wanted to hurt him now.

  “Nooo!”

  “Stop saying that. I should kill you right now. Send you straight back to whatever hell you came from.”

  “Not…demon.”

  “You’ve possessed the body of someone else. What else would you call it?” I was pushing him, and it was dangerous. But I needed further proof. I needed there to be absolutely no room for doubt.

  “Not possessed…me.”

  The longer he spoke the easier it seemed to be for him. “You are not Alex you just took his body and apparently some of his memories.” I was taunting him. Had Doc or Seth been there, they surely would have stopped me. The drugs they’d given him were working amazingly well. He was actually maintaining control.

  “We were…wrong. Still here…trapped. I…ne…”

  His breathing was heavier now like our conversation had zapped out all of his strength. “You’re still Alex,” I said finally allowing myself to say it, to believe it fully. The way he was looking back at me was the way he’d always looked at me when he’d become exhausted by my stubbornness. If I hadn’t been so emotionally drained, I might have laughed. I walked away from the bed and leaned against the wall, crossing my arms across my chest trying to muddle through everything in my mind. “If you really are Alex then answer me one question. Why? Why did you leave? Was every word, every kiss, every touch, every promise just another lie?”

  “No.” I threw my hands in the air and turned away from him gently bumping my head against the wall. How was I ever going to get any real answers out of him? “Did…not…leeeave…you.”

  I turned around slowly to face him. “Yes, you did,” I said with clear irritation in my voice.

  “Went…to roof…tried…to slow…them…doowwn. Give…you…time.”

  “How?” I asked moving closer.

  “Gun…roof.” I flashed back to Molly and I running with the boy. We’d heard gunfire but I didn’t remember where it was coming from.

  “You were on the roof. Why didn’t you come to us?”

  “No…time…they’re…fast.” He twisted his arm just enough in the straps to show me the healing bite wound on his bicep. Long black hairs were growing all around the little indentations, but I could still see them clearly. They were scars that would probably never go away.

  I sat back down slowly in on my stool, carefully watching him analyzing his eyes the way I’d avoided doing before. The tears flowed over and, in an instant, I saw the man I’d loved again. He was telling the truth. He was the Alex I’d loved. And he’d stayed behind to try to save us. He was this thing now because he tried to save us.

  I didn’t know how much conversation the others had tried to get out of him in the past. But just the small time we’d spent together drained him completely of his strength. It was a struggle for him to stay lucid. He managed to ask me how I’d survived. And I told him, everything, well mostly everything that had happened to me after I lost Molly.

  I told him about my wandering aimlessly until the sun was already down. How the three men had stumbled upon me and if it weren’t for Seth and his group that I would have died in the worst possible way. I didn’t mean to linger on the subject of Seth, but I could tell by the way Alex was looking at me that he knew Seth was more than just the man who’d saved my life. There was pain there. We’d promised each other forever and now that wasn’t a possibility anymore. That didn’t mean he liked the idea of me moving on, even with the man who’d saved me more than once.

  I could see that Alex was exhausted and needed to rest. So, I told him I would go, but I’d be back the next day. He looked like he wanted to say something else, but he was struggling to hold on to consciousness. “Just rest,” I told him with a weak smile. “I’ll be back in the morning.”

  I was already to the door when he called after me. “Paige…?”

  “Yes?”

  “Need to talk…to…him.”

  I stared at him confused.

  “Seth.” He said simply.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The last thing I wanted was to have my past love with my new one in the same room together, especially when one of them had killer k-9’s capable of ripping the other’s throat out. But I’d done as he’d asked. He’d sacrificed everything for me, for Molly. How could I deny him this simple thing? There was a part of me that really didn’t
see the harm in asking Seth to do this. I was almost sure or at least I’d hoped that Seth would reject the idea, but it was just the opposite. He really wanted to talk to Alex and that terrified me. I made sure that Doc evaluated Alex before leaving the two alone together. I’d hoped Doc would agree with me that Alex needed to rest, but once again things didn’t go my way.

  Doc did his best to assure me, when he returned, that he’d given Alex another dose and it was perfectly safe for the two to be alone together. That didn’t stop me from worrying. I paced the grounds of the building trying to figure out just what Alex needed from Seth. Broken glass shards crunched beneath my cast. “You’re going to wear out a whole in that concrete pad if you keep pacing like that,” Doc laughed trying to lighten the mood.

  “I doubt concrete could wear out that easily,” I said without emotion. What was taking them so long? It felt like he’d been in there longer than I had. I kept an ear open for sounds of distress which only made the panic inside me grow.

  “With the way you’re pacing it’s very possible. Just sit already. You’ve got to be exhausted.” Absolutely, but I wasn’t sure I could just sit while the two of them were in there together, discussing who knew what.

  “Maybe I should go check on them.”

  “Alex asked me to keep you out here.”

  “He what? And that doesn’t worry you?” I was stuck between staying out here like I said I would and rushing in to check and make sure Seth was still breathing.

  “He wanted to talk to Seth in private. He was adamant about that. He’s not going to hurt him. He’s probably just making sure Seth’s a good guy. He still loves you; I can see that. He just wants to make sure Seth will treat you right.”

  “Why don’t I feel any better about that?” I wasn’t sure that was all there was too it either. There was something Alex wanted from Seth and it wasn’t just to scope out his replacement.

  “Oh, probably because you’re still on the fence about whether you can love Seth, when a piece of your heart still belongs to Alex.” I stared at him dumbfounded by his presumption that he could know me that well. Also, it didn’t help that he’d pretty much nailed the situation on the head. It was difficult enough letting go and opening my heart again when I’d believed Alex had left me to die. But now that I knew the truth, I felt guilty for everything I’d done with Seth. Alex and I hadn’t been apart for more than a couple of months and I’d nearly slept with Seth already. Sure, that was mostly alcohol induced, but the desire was with me even when I wasn’t under the influence.

  “How about you don’t assume to know what’s going on in my heart and I’ll chose to keep my mouth shut about your ridiculous crush on Nina,” I said with a nasty glare.

  He dramatically mimed having a knife stab into his heart. “Ouch that hurts.” I rolled my eyes at him. “No need to be so nasty. You know I think it’s about time you gave up the tough girl act. We’ve seen through the cracks already. It’s okay to be vulnerable.”

  “Not in this world it isn’t,” I said absentmindedly as I stared blurry eyed at the building across the way. My eyes were definitely playing tricks on me as another shadowy figure rushed past my field of vision. If we had an optometrist in our group, I would have wanted to get my eyes checked. I blinked and stared again at the building. There was nothing there. It was all in my head. I couldn’t trust my eyes any more than I could trust my heart.

  My ankle began to ache under the pressure I was putting on it. I had no choice but to give up and sit down on the bench. I’d come so far in the past couple of months, but still my body wasn’t where it needed to be. I didn’t like it. It made me vulnerable as well as anyone who was with me. The last week I’d slacked off on my rehabilitation. My mind had been on other things. Clearly, I needed to refocus my efforts. Now that my macabre scenarios had been put to rest, maybe I could actually accomplish that.

  When Seth finally surfaced again, he looked different. Normally I could read his emotions just by the way he carried himself or the look on his face. But his face was blank and his body unreadable. The wind blew past us and I shivered but he didn’t even seem to notice it.

  “How is he?” Doc asked.

  “He’s exhausted. It takes a lot out of him to organize his thoughts into speech. He was drifting off when I left.” Seth wasn’t looking at me at all. He just stared at Doc like he was purposefully trying to avoid eye contact with me. It wasn’t fair, that was my trick and how dare he use it against me. Still, I wasn’t going to let him see just how frustrated he was making me.

  “Well I’m going to go check on him. You two can go in the old staff room if you need a break?” Doc offered. I was ready to head inside so long as I didn’t need to face Alex again. The wind was growing colder, and I had an uneasy feeling, just standing out here, that I couldn’t shake.

  I was just starting to follow Doc inside when Seth gently grabbed my hand. “Actually, I was hoping maybe we could go for a walk?” He asked still not making eye contact. Doc looked at us for a moment and before I had a chance to answer he waved us on.

  “Just be back in an hour. You need to get Kyle back here before the nightfall,” Doc said as he disappeared inside the building.

  “Are you okay with walking?” Seth asked looking at my cast.

  With a nod, I lied. My ankle was done with me putting pressure on it. But I could sense that there was something important that Seth needed to discuss with me. My mind rushed through every possible scenario of conversations he could have had with Alex. Each became more absurd than the last.

  We walked past the clinic, down to the older part of the city. There were fewer abandoned vehicles in this part of the city, but the ones that were left were rusted through. Some were parked on the sidewalk and we were forced to venture onto the pot holed road to get around them.

  We’d walked several blocks in silence before I broke. “Whatever it is you might as well spill it because this silence is driving me crazy.”

  Seth gave a weak chuckle. It only made me more nervous. He stopped walking just in front of an old bank building. It was like the rest of the buildings in this city, dilapidated, creepy, but for a reason I couldn’t quite put my finger on, it made me feel really uncomfortable. Like it was tugging at an old memory I was fighting to suppress. I shook off the feeling and tried to focus my attention back on Seth.

  “He told me some things about you. Some I’d already guessed, others you’ve told me little pieces of.”

  “Let me guess they made you want to run screaming in the opposite direction.” This time when he laughed it was a little more genuine.

  “Just the opposite,” he smiled as his hand brushed a stray hair out of my face. My cheeks burned where his fingers had brushed. “He told me about her.” The flush disappeared instantly. I started walking again faster than was comfortable. That wasn’t something I was ready to talk about. Telling my story to Alex had been one of the most painful things I’d done, and I wasn’t ready to go through it again.

  The path I walked felt eerily familiar and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d been here before, though I was positive that I’d never done a raid on these streets with Alex or with anyone else. I stared at the cement and tried to fight the memories that were threatening to flood back to the surface.

  “Paige please stop,” Seth said as he easily caught up to me without even having to break into a jog. He reached out for my hand, but I tucked it in my coat pocket. “You don’t have to hold it in anymore. It’s okay to let go, to let me in.”

  I shook my head fighting back the moisture that was burning beneath my eyes. “I want to. I’m just not ready. Please don’t push this. If you just give me more time, I know I’ll get there. But not now.” I’d already been through so much with seeing Alex again. My emotions were spent. When I looked up at Seth, I could feel the tears in my eyes threatening to spill over.

  He pulled me into his arms, and I rested my head against his chest allowing the rhythm of his heart to slowly calm me as
a single tear ran down my cheek. “Okay. I just want you to know I’m here for you when you’re ready.”

  We stood like that for several minutes before I dared to pull away. “Was that all you wanted to say to me?” It seemed a strange reason for a walk. He knew I had a sister. He knew she was dead. Whatever further knowledge Alex might have given on the subject, couldn’t have warranted the need for secrecy.

  He shook his head. “Alex asked me to do something for him. Something I know Doc won’t like, and something he knows you’d agree to do, but he doesn’t want you to live with.” I didn’t need to think about it to figure out what he’d asked. After all, we’d promised each other.

  “He asked you to kill him. Because he thinks I’m not strong enough to do it.”

  He shook his head again. There was sorrow in his eyes. “No, it’s not that at all. He doesn’t want you to have to live with that because of…”

  “Because of what happened with Molly.” I finished his sentence. Even though time and the infection had come between us, Alex was still trying to protect me.

  I started moving again, if only to get my blood circulating. It was growing colder very fast. We really should have already headed back to the clinic. I was just about to suggest we turn around when a strong wind brushed past us nearly blowing me over. I looked up into the sky and saw something that made my blood run cold. Seth saw the look in my eyes and instantly knew something was wrong. He looked up in the direction I was looking, and his eyes reflected my fear. There were storm clouds moving in quickly.

  ​The infected had sensitive skin, it burned easily even in the winter months. That was why they almost always waited until nightfall to come out. There was only one exception to this rule. When the sun was covered by storm clouds, all bets were off.