by William Oday
There was a reason why people were afraid of the dark.
A very good reason.
55
EMILY lay on her back and gripped the flashlight the with both hands. It had been sheer luck that her hand had bumped into it in the darkness. She clicked it on, knowing it was better to be able to see than not.
The light shot a beam up to the ceiling and bounced its glow around the cavern.
Oscar stood a few feet away, low to the ground on all fours. Looking at her and hissing with his teeth bared.
There was Marco!
Ten feet away on hands and knees like an animal, holding a pistol in one hand. His eyes saucer wide as he stared in her direction.
Why?
CLICK CLICK.
The nearness of the sound startled her.
She looked behind her and a scream died in her throat.
A mouth full of long teeth cracked open and a forked tongue flicked out. Rough like sandpaper scratching at her cheek.
Its nostrils flared and blew out air. The smell of death enveloped her, knocking her senseless. Like a weaponized nerve agent.
Its jaws started to open.
“Get down!” Marco shouted.
She collapsed to the ground, as much from her limbs going numb as following the instruction.
Marco fired shots at the beast’s head as he sprinted over.
Oscar leaped through the air and landed on the monster’s back.
The shots had some effect as the twenty foot long lizard thrashed to the side. Its massive tail slammed into the wall, the impact a sonic boom in the enclosed space.
Marco scooped her up with one hand and kept firing with the other. He pinned her against his chest and darted down the corridor. “Come on, Oscar!”
The flashlight swung from Emily’s death grip as he carried her.
They went around a curve in the narrowing corridor just as the lizard’s head snapped up and turned in their direction.
A comparatively tiny weasel ran up on top of its head and leaped off.
The lizard snapped at the air, but the weasel had already landed and was racing to catch up.
The clicking again and the creature was after them.
Marco kept running, but the sound of the pursuit grew louder. The heavy shuffling and pounding.
It appeared around a bend and hurled forward.
It was unbelievably fast.
Too fast.
Another few seconds and it would take them down.
Emily shined the light in its eyes, hoping that might slow it down, but it didn’t work.
Oscar circled back and leaped onto the lizard’s back, causing it to twist to the side and crash to the ground. The insane weasel darted away as the lizard’s jaws just missed.
Oscar raced ahead and suddenly darted left and disappeared into an almost invisible cleft in the rock wall.
Marco skidded to a stop to follow. He crouched low and pulled Emily into his embrace as he crawled through the narrow fissure.
Her blanketed legs scraped over uneven rock as they emerged into a small space.
Marco spun them around and they looked back at the entrance.
The lizard’s head poked into the narrow crevice, but its wide shoulders caught as it tried to crawl through. Its mouth bit at the air. Its tongue flicked in and out. It struggled to bulldoze through.
Bits of rock crumbled from the sides but it held.
Oscar charged at the entrance, snapping and clawing at the air. Wisely, he stopped short before getting too close.
The lizard thrashed and clawed for a few minutes trying to get to them.
Marco lowered Emily to the ground while he kept the pistol trained on the beast.
Not that it would’ve helped. He’d fired three shots into the lizard’s face and, other than being temporarily distracted, it didn’t appear to be that fazed.
But the fissure was too narrow for its bulk to squeeze through. After a few more minutes, it apparently realized that fact and gave up. It backed out of the gap and turned its head to the side.
One small eye stared at them.
And then it was gone.
Possibly gone.
Not that they were going to go out and check.
Oscar’s defensive display quieted and he sat back on his hind legs, not taking his eye off the entrance. Guarding it like a well-trained dog might.
Emily turned and shined the flashlight around the room. A natural open space in the rock. The walls smooth and showing none of the carved lines of the corridor beyond.
Empty.
Wait.
She stopped the light on a relatively flat expanse of wall at the back.
There were markings.
Manmade.
Was it writing?
Something called to her. Something she couldn’t put in words, but felt in her soul.
She shrugged out of the blankets and crawled over. She was about to read the message when she noticed something else.
A small silver ring on a narrow ledge below the message.
She picked it up and her chest shuddered with a spasm of recognition.
The cold metal burned her palm.
Not knowing how it was possible, and already knowing what would be there, she tilted the ring to read the inscription on the inside of the band.
With this, you’ll never lose Hope.
Emily’s chest clenched so tight she couldn’t breathe.
Her father’s wedding ring.
The one on his finger when he’d left her embrace over ten years ago. The ring he’d worn when he’d disappeared a few days later.
Vanished out of her life forever.
And he’d somehow ended up here.
Hot, wet tears welled in her eyes and spilled down her cheeks. Her fingers closed around the ring as she held it to her heart. She looked up at the wall, wiping at the tears blurring her vision.
There was a message for her. Many of the letters not fully formed. Scripted by a finger in a crusted brown paint.
Only it wasn’t paint.
Her heart wrenched painfully as she realized the paint had once been brighter, redder.
A message recorded in her father’s blood.
CHICKPEA IM SORRY. I DIDNT KNOW HOW TO HEAL. I WISH I COULD COME BACK TO YOU. ID NEVER LEAVE AGAIN.
DONT LOSE HOPE. DONT GIVE UP. YOURE STRONGER THAN YOU KNOW. ILL SEE YOU AGAIN SOMEDAY. I LOVE YOU. DADDY
Over ten years of guarding her heart, of locking it in a cage so she could make it through another day, came crashing down.
Wracking, shuddering, sobbing cries escaped her chest.
All the pain.
All the loss.
All the times she’d awakened in the middle of the night and, for the briefest instant, thought he was sleeping in his room down the hall. Her spirit soaring in that second.
And then the crushing loss as reality surfaced and dragged her into the abyss. The crushing weight of sorrow, again, as if for the first time.
All of it came out in a flood of sorrow and suffering.
She collapsed, but found strong arms pulling her close. They held her as the dam broke and a torrent of tears gushed out.
She sobbed uncontrollably.
Wild. Primal. The deformed depths of her twisted soul pouring out.
Parts of herself she’d thought had long gone numb and cold came to life. Shocked awake like defibrillators zapping a heart.
The returning feeling agonizing and exquisite at the same time.
She didn’t know how long she cried.
It wasn’t forever, but it felt that way.
The shuddering sobs finally ebbed and the tears slowed.
She lifted her cheek from Marco’s chest and melted at the tenderness in his eyes.
The hurt he felt for her.
The concern.
The love.
“Are you Chickpea?” he asked.
She’d never told him about the nickname or how she’d got it. She nodded and raised the ring to show him.
“My father’s wedding ring.” She shifted around so that she could see her father’s final message. She leaned back and let Marco hold her. Support her.
“Do you think that was written in blood?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Which means he must’ve been dying. His final thoughts were of me.”
Marco didn’t respond.
“I always wondered why he didn’t come back. When I was younger, I thought I’d done something wrong to make him not want to come back.”
“You did nothing wrong.”
“I know. When I got older, I realized it wasn’t my fault. But knowing that didn’t make it hurt any less.”
“You’ve had to endure too much for one person.”
Her heart squeezed tight and her voice cracked as she replied. “I have. But my father was right. I’ve survived. Somehow, I’ve survived it all.”
“That’s because you’re strong, Emily. The strongest person I’ve ever known.”
She didn’t feel strong now.
She felt emptied out. Raw. Insides scoured by a firehose.
She felt different.
For the first time in as long as she could remember, she felt something new.
Peace.
Some measure of it, at least.
She slipped the ring onto her thumb and it fit perfectly. She pushed up and Marco helped her up to her knees.
She scooted forward and touched her hand to the word DADDY.
The blood spilled from her dying father’s body. Now dried and crusted. Bits of it flaked off onto her skin.
“I love you, too.”
Oscar screeched and then raced around in a tight circle before stopping and sitting back on his hind legs. He chittered with excitement.
Voices echoed from somewhere nearby. They got louder.
“We’re in here,” Marco shouted.
It took a while, but they eventually arrived.
A soldier stopped near the narrow fissure and spotted them. He climbed through and stood, his rifle pointed low while he did a quick scan of the space.
There was just the two of them.
Oscar darted behind Marco and peeked out from the side.
Well, the three of them.
And the ring. And the message.
He nodded with a somber smile. “It’s okay. You’re safe now.”
56
DR. YONG marched into the cafeteria doing his best to appear calm and confident. The fact that his palms were soaked and his stomach churning proved otherwise. But hopefully no one would notice.
He was the director of Project Hermes.
Not by choice.
Not by desire.
But by the unfolding of events that some called fate and others called a random roll of the dice.
The nearly two hundred people that had made it from the town of Kodiak crowded around long tables devouring plates piled high with scrambled eggs and wedges of wheat toast slathered with butter. Only eight days after the end of the world and it looked like most of them had already run into food scarcity problems.
The project’s staff had been told to stay away from the cafeteria this morning in order to accommodate their new guests. Two hundred people filled the available space and then some. The only members of the staff present were a number of soldiers that formed the security detail.
He’d briefed their supervisor that no rifles were allowed and no weapons were to be brandished unless a serious security risk arose.
Zhang was pleased to see the half-dozen soldiers had followed instructions. A few of them even had plates in their hands and were scarfing down a breakfast of their own. A little too relaxed, maybe, but it was probably for the best.
The important thing was to make these people feel like welcome guests, not suspicious strangers.
He didn’t expect any trouble, but he also didn’t know any of them and they’d all been through the most traumatic experience of their lives over the last eight days.
The end of the world was more than enough to unhinge even the most stable mind.
He scanned the room for Emily Wilder and Marco Morales. The two had somehow survived the onslaught of the Megalania pack and made it to the back entrance of the facility. No one else from their vehicle had survived.
The project had lost four good soldiers and their best doctor, not to mention the civilians that had escaped the chaos in Kodiak only to die before making it to safety.
He spotted the two sitting together.
Emily in a wheelchair with a tray in her lap. Marco seated next to her, spooning soup into her mouth.
The little weasel he’d heard about perched on Marco’s shoulder like it was his guardian angel.
Emily looked better than when they’d brought her in last night. More color in her face.
There was a strange serenity in her expression that was found nowhere else in the room.
He hadn’t had a chance to speak with her yet, but he would remedy that soon. Now that fate had brought her here, to the very same place her father had ended up ten years ago, she deserved to know the truth.
Deserved to know what happened to her father.
And there was no top secret vetting procedure to put a lid on it this time. The time for secrets was over.
The time for truth had arrived.
“Good morning, everyone,” he said in a voice that didn’t come out nearly as loud and commanding as he’d intended.
The hum of conversation filling the room didn’t so much as stutter.
He cleared his throat a few times and swallowed. He balled his hands into fists and let out a slow exhale until his lungs were empty and aching for a refill.
It was time to be a leader.
He walked to the nearest long table and tapped on the shoulders of the two men seated at the end. “Excuse me,” he said as he stepped up onto the bench seat and then up onto the table.
They scooted their plates away and stared up at him like he’d lost his mind.
“Everyone! I need your attention!”
It came out loud and strong this time.
The chatter of voices petered out.
Emily and Marco watched as he offered a smile in their direction.
“Thank you,” he said as he scanned back and forth to make everyone feel included and involved. “My name is Dr. Zhang Yong. Please call me Zhang as there is no need for formality. I am the director here at Project Hermes. I would first like to welcome you to our facility. You are both brave and wise to risk the journey and I hope to be able to make it worth your while.”
He looked around the room. Every single person had stopped eating and was watching him.
Waiting for him to solve their problems.
They were about to find out that while he could solve some, he would invariably bring others into their lives.
That was the nature of reality.
Especially this one.
He was no messiah come to bring heaven down to a ravaged earth. He was a man. A man with an idea and the duty to attempt to pull it off. It could mean their salvation.
If they agreed.
And if it worked.
“I hope everyone is enjoying breakfast,” he said with a wide smile.
A chorus of cheering broke out and he let it settle naturally.
“Wonderful,” he said after the noise died down. “I’m here this morning to give you a brief overview of what’s happening in the outside world. As much as we know, anyway. And also to make you an offer.”
Voices whispered back and forth and he waved the room back to silence. “Some of what I’m about to say will shock you. You will find it hard to believe. You may reject it outright, but let me assure you that this is no joke. Everything I will tell you is absolutely true. And you will see the truth of it if you choose to.”
“Get on with it, doc” someone yelled.
Zhang didn’t know whether to laugh or to be offended. He chose neither and continued. “Eight days ago, the world changed forever. World
War Three. We don’t yet know what started it and we may never know. We do know that every nuclear-capable country launched most of their arsenals at their enemies. And their enemies launched their arsenals in the opposite direction. The United States had the largest arsenal by far, and, if reports are to be believed, deployed over ninety percent of it.”
There were gasps of sucked in breath and similar expressions of disbelief and awe.
“The result was exactly what you would expect. The end of the world, for all intents and purposes. For humanity, at least. You’ve seen the brown skies since that fateful day. It is getting thicker. Soon, the world will plunge into a nuclear winter that will suffocate and starve most life on this planet.”
A commotion broke out and he again waved them to silence to ensure he would be heard.
“I’m sorry to have to bring you such news. But the simple and tragic truth is that mankind has destroyed its own future on this planet. As a species, we will go extinct if we stay here.”
“What do you mean if we stay here?” someone said.
Zhang pointed at the woman who spoke. “Good question. And one that brings me to my next point.” He again looked around the crowd to include them all. “This facility was founded long ago to research the possibility of faster than light travel.”
“What?” a man in the back with dreads hanging over his shoulders. “You want to build ships like in Star Wars or something?”
Zhang chuckled. In those early days, he’d often thought of their work in similar terms. Though Star Trek was more his speed. “Something like that. But, it turned out that Einstein was right. Or at least, not wrong that we have yet discovered. We couldn’t crack the code for it. But we did stumble upon something else.”
“Let me guess,” the Star Wars guy said. “You found a little green guy with big ears who always spoke in riddles and said things backwards. Discovered the secret of the universe, we have.”
His Yoda voice wasn’t half bad.
“No. We created discontinuities in the time-space continuum.”
That got blank looks.
“In other words, we opened windows to the distant past.”
“Light speed to the dinosaur age!” the dreaded guy shouted. “Cool! Sounds like an awesome movie!”
