When Darkness Reigns

by Preston L. Marshall

  Lumar handed him half of the bullets he'd picked up. Nate clipped them one by one into the pouches on his belt. Lumar offered him his hand.

  “I think I'll just sit here a little longer,” he said.

  “Better not take our eyes off the wall for long,” Lumar replied.

  “I know,” Nate sighed. He took Lumar's hand and got to his feet.

  “Help me get these bodies out of the way,” the soldier to their right said.

  Lumar and Nate nodded. The other soldiers took hold on the hornet's arms. Nate grabbed its legs and they slung it up over the inner wall of the trench. Lumar grabbed the dead soldier by the feet and someone else came and took his arms. Lumar looked down the line. Everyone still alive in the trenches was tossing bodies out behind them. Some of it was just to clear the space, but they were also keeping the bodies from becoming food. Nobody deserved to have their body treated that way.

  It got almost quiet on the line. All Lumar could hear was the faint grunts from hoisting bodies out of the way. Lumar heard a gunshot to the right. He and Nate jumped back up to the line and looked for the target, but there was nothing ahead. Lumar realized there were some soldiers too badly injured to move. The reluctant gunshots were the mournful blasts of lead mercy. They were followed by more grunting and new bodies added to the piles behind them. Fortunately, some of the mercy killings were for the aliens, but with every shot the trench seemed emptier.

  Lumar and Nate helped get a few more bodies out of the way before they felt like they had done a fair share of the bloody work. Most of the alien bodies were in pieces or perforated with so many bullet holes that blood dumped out of them when they tried to lift them out. Nate's armor was smeared with red and gray when they returned to their spot on the line. It was almost hard to tell that the suit used to be a flat black. Now it was practically glossy with drying blood.

  They stood with their guns up over the trench walls watching for half an hour without seeing any new alien contacts. Lumar opened his visor to get some fresher air around his head. The bodies behind him started wafting up their dead smells. The aliens had a far stronger odor than the human corpses. Lumar had never smelled anything like the stench of the dead bugs. He could hardly even smell the human bodies. The alien cadavers smelled like they were full of sulfur and methane gas. The smell just kept getting stronger behind him as they waited. He tried his hardest not to think about it. When he closed his helmet again the smell was a little less powerful in his nostrils. He was really glad for the filtration system.

  Leaning up on the wall made Lumar's back feel stiff, but he was almost glad that he'd hardly moved for those thirty minutes. It had been quiet. Lumar thought he was starting to see the first signs of dawn coming from behind them, but he couldn't be sure with all the smoke and fires burning out the city.

  Someone started cheering somewhere along the line. Before long half the soldiers were whooping and hollering. Lumar looked back over his shoulder and saw just the top of the sun coming up over the bunker walls. The wind had picked up and the smoke was clearing just enough to let the sun break through. They'd survived the night. Lumar couldn't help but smile inside his helmet. Lumar started flipping through the channels of his radio to see if he'd missed the all clear. Everyone around him started acting like it was all over. Nate had even flipped his visor up and was adding his voice to shouting.

  The huge gun on the northwest tower came back to life. Lumar couldn't see what they were shooting at. The gun was turned down, outside of the walls. Lumar turned his head away for a second to make sure he was back on channel four like Radcliff had told him to be. When he looked back up the Sarsaul were throwing themselves against the tower, surrounding it, clawing over each other to reach the top. There were hundreds of them. He watched as aliens became a swarming mass of insect wings and claws pouring over the tower on his right.

  Lumar could see the silhouettes of soldiers through the windows of the tower. Before Lumar could raise his gun to start firing the aliens had piled up half of the height of the tower. Everyone with a line of sight on the tower opened up on the mass of aliens clawing up. There was no way to tell if killing them was helping. Lumar was firing at the bottom. He hoped if the bottom went, the rest would just fall. Corpses piled up on the ground beneath the tower in a mound the Sarsaul kept climbing up. Lumar emptied a clip, but before he could load another the aliens were at the top of the tower and bursting their way through the glass. It was too late.

  Lumar's visor filled with white and the ground shook under his feet. A tinting effect on the glass of his helmet darkened it enough to see the fireball engulfing the tower. It exploded from the inside out. Lumar and Nate fell to the ground beside each other. Charred bits of rock and alien rained down all over the trench. It sounded like giant hailstones battering the earth and concrete around them. Lumar kept his hands over the back of his neck until he couldn't hear the debris crashing into the ground anymore.

  Nate pulled him back up to his feet and started shooting. The Sarsaul were coming up over the crumbling tower and the wall around it. The aliens were jumping straight off of the wall into the trench. The tower on the other end of the trench was being overwhelmed too. Moments after Lumar realized it there was another explosion and the hail of stones began again.

  “Fall back!” Radcliff roared. “Everyone fall back!”

  Lumar saw Sarasul charging towards them from the outer wall just before he spun around to start climbing over the bodies behind the trench. He lost his grip on a rock that was wet with blood. Nate caught him and pushed him over. Lumar's hands shot down and pulled Nate out. Lumar got another glimpse of the Sarsaul coming. They had already closed more than half of the distance from the wall. Lumar grabbed Nate by the shoulder and threw him ahead once he was up.

  There were Sarsaul in front of them now. They were crawling over the walls, blocking all but the farthest entrance to the bunker. Lumar emptied his new magazine into a hornet between him and the door. When the gun started clicking at him for want of more bullets he threw it to the ground. Nate was a few paces ahead of him. Nate threw down his gun when he was empty too. Lumar almost tripped over it. The shoulder strap caught on his foot. Lumar looked back again as he shook the gun off. The Sarsaul were leaping over the trench. There were a few soldiers that hadn't made it out. Lumar saw a woman get caught by two ants. They dove in unison into her shoulders and ripped her arms off without breaking stride. A hornet came behind them and tackled her to the ground. Lumar could only see the hornet's back as it took her down into the trench.

  Something else caught Lumar's eye as he turned back ahead. To his right Radcliff had a longsword in his hand. A hornet jumped down off of the wall right in front of him. Its blades raised up to slash from above, but Radcliff was faster. His sword ripped through its armpit into its chest. He twisted his arm and the blade near the hornet's heart. The hornet was dead before Radcliff pulled the blade from the wound. He was almost as scary as the aliens.

  Lumar's head snapped back around. The towers in front of him were still up with guns blazing. Lumar saw a trail of tracers light up ahead of Nate. He was sure they were going to tear right through the two of them, but then Nate shifted to the right a few feet and Lumar saw a hornet burst into a cloud of gray blood and dust. The trail of bullets spun away to fire on the aliens climbing over the walls.

  He couldn't believe how far away the door still was. It felt like it took longer running as hard as he could to cover the distance than it had when they were walking painfully slow. Someone had already reached the door. It was thrown open. Lumar’s eyes were zoomed in on that opening. All he could see was the light coming from inside and the hands pulling people through to safety.

  Lumar went deaf for a moment. An intense heat licked the back of his legs. He felt heat pushing him forward. He felt like he was falling. When he looked down at his legs, they were swimming through the air. He wasn't touching the ground. He tried to turn around and see what had happened, but instead he spun sidewa
ys in the air and landed hard on his left shoulder. Somebody's hands pulled him back to his feet. When Lumar got his bearings, he saw Radcliff beside him. He must have been the one that picked him back up. Everything behind them was a wall of fire. Some of the soldiers had been caught in it. Lumar saw dozens of people still behind him. The fire had completely consumed everything, even the sandbags and the trenches, but so were hundreds of the aliens chasing them. Lumar caught a glimpse of Radcliff putting a small metal tube into one of the pockets on his belt. He'd done it with that detonator. He'd killed dozens of his own men. Lumar knew they were going to die if they were still back there anyway, but it just seemed cold.

  Lumar suddenly felt the cool air blowing out from the open door. He saw Nate being pulled through and then several others. He and Radcliff came through together. The doors slammed shut. Everything they had, tables, beds, and chairs, were shoved against the door to brace it. At least the soldiers that had abandoned the line had been busy fortifying the position in here.

  Lumar opened up his visor again as he moved away from the soldiers barricading the door. He felt relief wash over him or maybe it was just the air conditioning's cool touch on his face. A maze of furniture piled up in a hallway had never seemed more inviting. For a second, there was an illusion of calm and safety. It was much quieter with the gunfire and screaming aliens locked outside. Lumar could still hear the aliens out there scratching away at the concrete. Their roars still sounded like they were all around him, but he felt safe. There was more than a wall of dirt between him and their claws.

  Of all the soldiers who'd been in the trenches, only nineteen made it out alive. Lumar had no idea how many people had run earlier. It was hard to tell one person from another with their helmets down. He was just happy that he and Nate had both made it. Helmets started coming off so people could breathe. Lumar tried to pull his off, but it was stuck in place. He didn't feel like asking how to get it off, but watched as several of the soldiers around him ran their fingers along the bottom edge of the helmet by the right side of their jaw before pulling the helmets off their heads. He traced the edge with his own finger and found a tiny button about the size of a zero on a keyboard. When he pressed it, he felt the magnetic seals humming inside the helmet as they let go of his neck.

  For a split second, Lumar couldn't see anything but the inside of his helmet, but when he could see again, one of the soldiers had pushed himself up against Radcliff and grabbed him by the neck. The man's hands barely got halfway around.

  “I saw what you did!” he screamed up into Radcliff's face, “I saw you put that detonator in your pocket just now! My brother was out there! You blew him up! You sick fuck! He was going to make it! He was right behind me! Why the fuck couldn't you have waited until we were all inside to do that!?”

  Radcliff and the other man had already taken off their helmets. Radcliff didn't move. He just stared down at the other soldier. He only came up to his Radcliff's shoulders. Radcliff didn't fight back or take the man's hands away from his neck. It didn't look like Radcliff was in any danger of this man hurting him. Radcliff was shaking with his lips pressed tightly together. Lumar glanced over at Nate. Nate's eyes were as wide as he'd ever seen them. Lumar was afraid Radcliff was going to break this guy in half with his bare hands.

  “I’m sorry. I did what I had to,” Radcliff replied more calmly than Lumar expected, “I’m sorry. It was the only way I could save any of us.”

  Radcliff's face looked pained as he said that. The other soldier's grip slackened and he let his arms fall to his side.

  “That’s all you have to say for yourself?” the man replied without anger.

  Lumar could tell Radcliff meant what he said. Even when Lumar saw him use the detonator to set off the charges he could tell he hadn't had any other choice. It seemed like this man knew it too. He backed away from Radcliff and threw himself down on the floor behind one of the upended tables. Lumar saw him put his hands over his eyes and the beginning of tears before he turned his gaze away. He didn't like seeing people cry. It always felt rude to watch someone else grieve. He always found himself staring if he didn't make himself look away.

  “What do we do now?” Lumar asked.

  An alien threw its body against the door. The metal shook. Three soldiers threw their bodies against the furniture bracing the door. Every eye and gun trained on the door, but there wasn't another hit.

  “It's only a matter of time,” Radcliff muttered. “I have to talk to the Major. I want you two to stay close to me. We'll see what the Major says. It's not my call to say what happens next.”

  Radcliff started weaving his way back through the barricades to the Major’s office. Lumar and Nate followed close. Radcliff was walking as fast as he could without knocking down the barricade in his way. The scratching and roaring outside kept getting louder. Lumar could feel and see paranoia creeping up on everyone's faces. Their eyes were wide looking at every crack in the wall, every seam that might be place a claw could slide through. It was just a matter of time before somebody got hurt from an itchy trigger finger and a ricocheted bullet. It just kept getting louder as they walked through the halls. It was like they were trying to claw through the cement.

  The Major had done away with the gray dress jacket and put on his full suit of armor save for the helmet on his desk. He was pacing in the room pulling the hairs out of his golden mustache. Radcliff saluted. Lumar and Nate awkwardly and poorly imitated him.

  “Radcliff,” the Major said with a start, “what the hell are you doing in here? And put your damn hands down.”

  Radcliff let the salute fall. Lumar and Nate did likewise.

  “We couldn't hold the position any longer,” Radcliff reported. “We've lost at least two of the towers and most of the men.”

  “Damnit!” the Major growled. He punched the wooden face of his desk with the hand he'd been pulling at his mustache with. “I've been slowly losing communication with everyone. We're all that's left. Nobody's coming. I haven't been able to get a message out.”

  “Sir we have a transport in the hangar,” Radcliff offered.

  “I should have sent that thing out the moment I realized I wasn't getting a response for my distress signal.”

  “We can at least get most of the civilians out with it,” Radcliff said.

  “Yes, that little hovertruck should be able to hold the ones we can move at least. Take it and get them out of here. Make for Guardridge. Let them know what's happening here. Make them send any help they can. Can you do that for me?”

  “Yes sir.” Radcliff said.

  “Then go,” the Major said. “I hope you make it through for all our sakes. Good luck. Don't waste any more time talking to me. Go!”

  “Can you two find your way back to the underground where the other civilians are?” Radcliff asked as he plowed ahead out of the Major's office.

  “Yeah,” Nate said, “I think I remember the way.”

  “And you should know where the hangar is too then. You've been there before haven't you?” Radcliff asked. “I've seen you there before.”

  “I can find it,” Nate assured him.

  “Then round everyone up from down there and meet me there. I'm going to see if I can get any of the wounded out of the infirmary,” Radcliff said.

  They were walking by the front door where some soldiers were resting. Two of them, a man and a woman, were sitting with their backs up against the door. The rest of the soldiers were hunkering down behind a few rows of tables. Their eyes wandered back and forth between the door and a nails-on-a-chalkboard sound coming from somewhere above and to the right.

  “Jesse! Wallace! Stop sitting around! I've got a job for you two! You two,” Radcliff said to a pair of soldiers who looked a bit calmer than the rest, “take their place.”

  Wallace and Jesse stood up and joined them. They didn't bother to grab their helmets. Jesse was plain looking girl that looked a couple years older than Lumar and Nate. She had short brown hair pulled back into
a small neat ponytail. She looked like she had more muscle on her than either he or Nate had. Wallace had black hair, a nose so crooked he must have broken it several times, and an unusually cheery grin on his face. Of course he was getting to leave whereas the others were getting left behind. That was worth smiling about Lumar guessed.

  “Alright, Nate, Lumar,” Radcliff said, “I don't know how long it's going to take us to move the wounded out, but I want that hovertruck ready to go when I get there. Find Ford. He's the pilot. The second I get there we're leaving you understand?”

  “Yes, sir,” Lumar and Nate said.

  Lumar and Nate bolted off down the hallways towards the room they'd taken Lumar to after he'd arrived. Lumar had no idea how Nate could have possibly remembered the way. Nate led him straight there without getting lost. They made three turns and went down two different stairways. When they reached the bottom of the last stair they pulled open the big metal doors and looked in on the scared faces they'd left there. Lumar and Nate stopped and looked at each other for a moment. The look Nate was giving him told him he didn't know what to say either.

  “Well,” Lumar said. “I guess I've got some good news. We're getting you out of here.”

  “Where are you taking us now!?” one of the men yelled. “What about my family!? I wasn't at home when they came for me! Where are my kids!?”

  Lumar and Nate froze. They had no answer. These people hadn't been told anything. They'd just been scooped up in the middle of the night and rushed out here.

  “Look, man they're just doing their jobs,” Nate's boss said.

  “It's alright,” Nate said. “I'm sorry for what you've all been through today. It's bad out there. We don't have a lot of time. This is the only chance we can give you to get out of here. Please just come with us. We don't want to leave you behind.”

  “But what about our families?” the same man asked.

  “I don't...think so...” Nate admitted. “I think...this is pretty much it.”