When Darkness Reigns

by Preston L. Marshall

  “Welcome to the United States', Army Private E-1 Solaris,” the old man said. “Quite a few servicemen in your family it looks like, brother, uncles, and even your father at one time it looks like.”

  “Yeah.”

  Nate couldn't help but wonder if he'd end up sharing the same fate as all the others who'd served in his family. Geo and his father died in the same day. His father hadn't worn a uniform in almost two decades, but it hadn't made a difference for him. His uncles died when he was a little boy out on some battlefields he couldn't remember the names of. His father had only gotten out because he'd been wounded. He hadn't been a cripple. His injuries were to his lungs so couldn't overexert himself without risk of flooding his lungs with blood. At least that was what he used to say.

  “We disposed of that borrowed uniform and got you some new ones.”

  The old man handed him a package. It was a perfect one-foot cube wrapped in plastic.

  “What's in this?”

  “Your dog tags, a couple of new uniforms, some combat, some base wear and a formal jacket. We disposed of the one you were wearing when you got here. These have your name and rank on them. Now you better get dressed. We'll collect you in a moment.”

  The old man left the room. Nate laid back into the bed for a moment before he realized the old man left him to change into his new clothes. His fingers were too clumsy to rip through the plastic on the outside of the cube. He had to bite at one of the corners to break through it. The plastic stuck to his teeth. He had to spit three times to get it off. Once the plastic was out of his mouth he realized he'd just left a puddle on the ground. He felt stupid for doing that, but had the feeling he wasn't going to be given much time to get dressed.

  There were tighty whiteys in the package for underwear. Nate was disappointed. He always preferred boxers, but doubted he could get the old man to swap them out for him. He pulled them, surprised that they were his size. He felt like they were giving him a wedgie the moment he let go of the waist band. There were two sets of base wear. Each set was in three pieces: a pair of straight gray slacks, a white wife-beater undershirt, and a gray button up shirt to go on top. There was also a plane black belt with a dull silver buckle and a pair of black combat boots.

  Nate quickly pulled the pants on and put the undershirt on. He tucked the button up shirt into his pants and fastened himself in with the belt. His name was on his left breast with no rank insignia. He vaguely remembered that they didn't give them out until the next rank for enlisted soldiers. It was something Geo had told him once when he first joined up. He wished his little brother was here now to talk him through all this. Of course it was hard for Nate to imagine a world where he and Geo served together. They were too different. Geo had always wanted to follow in their father's footsteps and fight. Nate had always been smaller and weaker. He naturally found himself following more a cerebral path. In the end, it had brought him to the same path as both his brother and his father. He was the only one left to follow in their father's path now.

  “It's time to go,” the old man said entering the room.

  “I'm ready,” Nate answered.

  This time the old man wasn't alone. There was another soldier in the white armored plates of Guardridge standing with him. She stood a head taller than the old man and her face was covered with neither mask or helmet. This time there were no guns pointed at him. Whatever threat they thought they posed most have been disproved with the tests they went through.

  “I'll be taking you to your new quarters,” the soldier said in a kind voice. “Please follow me.”

  “Alright,” Nate answered.

  The soldier walked at a brisk pace. She had long legs. Most of her height was below her waist. He almost had to run to keep up with her. Nate would have liked to talk to her, but the pace was keeping his breathing strictly for the purpose of fueling his legs. It only took them a few minutes to get back out of the medical area to the hangar. It seemed like she knew a more efficient route. Nate wondered if the back way they took the first time was intentionally done to keep them away from anything important until the soldiers knew whether or not they were dangerous.

  Nate's escort promptly led him to one of the elevators. The moment he stepped through after her, she pushed the down button. She immediately followed up with a button labeled B-4. It wasn't a long ride. Nate was barely catching his breath when the doors opened and his escort stepped out. He couldn't tell how many floors they went down, but he guessed it had to be at least fifteen.

  The cavern they stepped out into was enormous. The ceiling was eighty feet or more high. The area was nearly circular like the entire mountain had been hollowed out save for load-bearing columns evenly spaced throughout. The gray stone structures in the cavern seemed to be carved right out of the mountain.

  The barracks were a four-layer stack of small houses eating up about three quarters of the space in a huge arc in front of them. Each layer stretched from end to end of the cavern. Inside the arc was an empty space like a yard with bald rock instead of dirt or grass. On the wall behind them were elevators and elevator shafts.

  Even though they were in a man-made cave it wasn't dark. The ceiling was covered in luminescent disks that together nearly equaled the light of the sun. The columns around the cavern also had streetlights protruding from their round faces. Nate always imagined being in a cave would be dark and claustrophobic, but if he didn't look up at the ceiling he could almost imagine being outside.

  Nate didn't get long to look before the woman charged off again. She led him up to the second level of the barracks via a ramp that connected the central elevator hub up to the next level. There were ramps connecting the central area to each of the levels dividing the area into even thirds. The one they took was the farthest to the left. The ramp to the top was on the far right. The ramp in the middle went up to the third floor.

  The barracks' housing looked small at a distance, but as they got closer, Nate could see how large they were. Each one was identical. They were square faced, two story buildings with unpainted gray steel doors. The buildings were slightly fan-shaped with the back sides a little wider than the front to use the round cavern space more efficiently. The houses looked big to Nate up close. They were bigger than the house he grew up in and he'd had to share that space with his parents and all of his siblings.

  Nate's escort led him to the door. She opened it, pushed him through, and closed the door behind him without a word. Nate hadn't been told who he was going to be thrown in with. He was relieved to see that all the soldiers they escaped Sangent with waiting for him. Lumar wasn't with them though.

  The front door opened onto a small common room with a plastic coffee table, surrounded by a couch, two loveseats, and a pair of recliners. All of this furniture was angled towards a television set on the far left wall. Nate figured it was just there for mandatory broadcasts since nobody was watching anything when he came in.

  Wallace and Jesse shared the loveseat on the left side of the room against the close wall. Radcliff had his legs up in one of the recliners, but the recliner's tongue was too short for his legs so his feet were propped up on the end of the couch on the far wall. Ford was stretched out with Radcliff's feet above his own. They were all sitting comfortably, but grimly quiet until he walked through the door. He half expected to be walking into the middle of a conversation, but all he was greeted with were eyes staring at him as he stepped through the doorway. They all looked tired and depressed. Even the couple on the couch were just sitting limply beside each other, barely touching.

  “What took you so long?” Wallace asked breaking the silence.

  “How long have you been waiting?” Nate asked.

  “Couple hours.” Wallace said.

  “The rest of us came one after another every twenty, thirty minutes,” Ford added. “I got back last, but that was almost two hours ago.”

  Nate took a deep breath.

  “Is Lumar here?” Nate asked.

  “No,” Ra
dcliff answered. “He hasn't come yet.”

  Panic swept over him. He couldn't imagine what was happening to Lumar. He couldn't begin to fathom why it would take so long for them to get back when the others had come so quickly one after the other. He hoped it was something simple like getting routine tests or taking measurements for their uniforms, but he was afraid it was something much worse.

  “Why would it take us so much longer than it took you? What about Lumar? They're still going to bring him here aren't they?”

  “I don't know,” Radcliff answered. “You two are civilians. It's a unique situation. Might have just taken them a little longer to figure out what to do with you two. They might be relocating him. They do that sometimes with survivors. They send them off to new cities, give them a new life somewhere else. I'm kind of surprised they brought you here with us, to be honest.”

  “They said I was being drafted,” Nate replied.

  “That's kind of weird isn't it?” Ford asked.

  “Never heard of anything like that before,” Radcliff said. “Usually the draft is just for taking kids that just turned eighteen into the service. You're too old for that aren't you?”

  “Yeah, I'm nineteen, almost halfway to twenty,” Nate said.

  “Stop standing in the doorway,” Wallace said. “There's plenty of sitting room.”

  “Right,” Nate said moving into the room.

  Nate took the vacant loveseat. He didn't feel comfortable enough to lay back in a recliner. He plopped down in the fold between the cushions. Nate realized that none of the furnishings in the room matched. The loveseat he sat on was blue with red spots woven into the fabric in an irregular pattern. The other loveseat was khaki and fuzzy. Radcliff's recliner was a forest green with stains around the base, like a dog had taken a liking to it long ago. The other recliner was beet red with a geometric yellow and blue pattern. Ford's couch was black with long piled fabric like a shag carpet.

  Nobody said anything after he sat down. Radcliff looked like he was lost in thought. Ford was nodding off. His leg muscles spasmed as he feebly resisted the couch's upholstered allure. Wallace and Jesse continued to sit beside each other. They occasionally stole glances at one another. Nate imagined there was a sense of profound joy for making it out of something like that with your significant other. It didn't seem fair. Nate almost wished he had someone like that, but realized he would have probably been mourning her death right now if he had.

  Nate took full stock of the room to try and take his mind away from the darkest parts of his imagination that kept hypothesizing different things they could be doing to Lumar. His seat was on the far left from the entryway. The floor was unpainted cement. About two-thirds of the way to the opposite wall from where Nate sat there was a plastic divider in the floor that separated the concrete from vinyl sheet flooring with a black and white tile design. There were kitchen appliances and cabinets on top of the fake tiles.

  Each piece in the kitchen looked like it came from a different house. From left to right there was a refrigerator with satin stainless steel double doors, a copper sink with a brass faucet, a black doored dishwasher, and a white washer-dryer set stacked into the corner opposite the fridge.

  The cabinets had all been painted the same color, not stained like Nate felt wooden cabinets should have been. It was a pale gray almost the same as the stone. Despite their uniform coloration the designs of the cabinets also screamed that they had been thrown together without concern for their origins. The cabinets above the sink all had elaborate scrollwork on their doors. One looked like it had a swan carved into the center of the door, but painted the dull gray it could have been any number of plane waterfowl. The one beneath the sink, where the plumbing was housed, had spiraling waves crashing together in the seam between them. Most of the rest were just plane flat faced panels. The handles weren't even similar. There were no two that were the same. There was a golden spiral, a long silvery rectangle, a glass diamond, one that was shaped like a red ladybug, and many others. The ladybug was Nate's favorite. It was whimsical.

  There was a bathroom on the bottom floor beside the kitchen in the back left corner from where Nate sat. The door was open, the room vacant. It was only about the size of a walk-in closet. It's only amenities were a round bowl toilet and a Corinthian pillar pedestal sink. Opposite the bathroom was a staircase that took up most of the wall opposite of the door. There were some empty shelves under the stairs. In the corner just to his left there was a small closet door.

  The place was homier than Nate was expecting. He had an image of cots and cramped living conditions surrounded by dozens and dozens of other men. He thought of sweat and sharing showers and not having a moment of quiet or privacy. The décor was horribly chosen, but Nate imagined it was all scavenged from abandoned homes. Industry was almost all turned towards prolonging life and developing weapons these days. There couldn't be more than a couple of places in the whole country still making home furnishings. Almost everything Nate had when he was growing up was made from recycled materials or pre-war stuff his parents had taken down into the underground with them.

  “I heard that sometimes they brainwash people that they rescue from places like Sangent to prevent psychological trauma and to keep from letting military secrets get out,” Wallace said idly.

  “That is complete bullshit that grunts spread around to get a rise out of you. Worst thing they’ll do is kill him and that’s only if he’s been infected. He wasn’t. I made sure of that,” Radcliff growled back. “If he's not back by lights out, I'll ask around for him in the morning alright?”

  “Thank you,” Nate said.

  Nate sensed that Radcliff was a good person. He felt like he could trust him to do everything he could for Lumar, but Nate had doubts that even with all of the Sergeant's good intentions he'd be able to do anything. Sitting brought on fatigue. He wasn't sure how long he'd been under the drugs, but whatever sleep that brought him hadn't given him any rest. His blood felt dirty somehow. He felt his eyelids falling. He didn't want to fall asleep until Lumar came back, but he wasn't sure if he had the strength. It was a battle he couldn't win. His last thought was how angry he was with himself for being so weak.

  Chapter Eight

  Lumar's panic followed him into the chemical induced sleep. At first he couldn't tell if he was dreaming or awake. The walls were melting. The people in the room twisted and danced like flames. They were talking, but Lumar couldn't understand the words. He kept seeing a lot of faces. Some of them were soldiers he'd seen at the bunker in Sangent. He saw the wounded people they took with them in the hovertruck. Mostly he saw Geo. Black guilt pervaded his nightmare as he saw Geo cut down in the street again and again. Lumar was always at the other end of the road trying to run to him, but he could never make it before the hornet came down from the air and ripped through Geo's flesh.

  There was more talking around him after that, but he still couldn't understand what anyone was saying. It seemed like different voices than before. They were talking about him. He didn't know what they were saying, but it was about him. He just knew it. Flashes of the glow around the corner outside burned into his mind. He imagined a huge open flame where they tossed the undesirables in. He felt hands grab him. He was sure they were carrying him to the fire. He couldn't move to resist.

  Then everything was dark. Lumar slipped into a deep, calm, dreamless sleep. He welcomed the empty darkness.

  When he awoke he had the sense that several hours had passed. He realized his wrists and ankles were free of the restraints after bolting upright in the hospital bed. He was still in the same white on white room. They hadn't thrown him in the fire. They'd stripped him out of the black skinsuit. He was in a sweat drenched hospital gown. The sedatives must have been powerful for him to sweat that much without waking up.

  His head felt cold. Lumar's fingers tried to run through the hair on the back of his neck, but found nothing. They'd shaved his head too. His fingers twitched and ran up his head until they fo
und the faintest hint of fuzz on the back of his skull. They'd left him with a buzz cut. He looked on the floor and saw mountains of brown curls laying around the bed. He had had shoulder-length slightly curled brown hair, but now all he had was a pile of brown refuse on the floor. He had loved having long hair. It was his most prized aspect of his physical appearance. They had just stolen his identity with this haircut.

  He was lightheaded, not just from the loss of the weight of his hair, but from sitting up too fast. He wasn't alone in the room. The old man with the mask was watching him from one of the chairs against the wall. Lumar wished the man would take the mask off. It made him feel like he was contaminated with something horrible.

  “What did you do to me?” Lumar asked the old man.

  “We just ran some tests,” the old man replied. “Your hair was in the way of the brain scans. It wasn’t regulation anyway.”

  “Is there something wrong with me? Is it fatal?” Lumar asked frantically. “I don’t know of anything wrong with me. I wasn't even hurt that bad in the battle.”

  “Relax. There's nothing wrong with you. You're the picture of health!”

  “What were you testing me for?”

  “We're fighting aliens my boy. We can never be too careful to avoid their diseases. That and we have to check your noggin for worms. They're pretty clever at hiding down deep in the brain. It takes a full brain scan to make sure someone hasn't been compromised.”

  “You didn't find anything right?”

  “We wouldn't be talking if I had,” the old man assured him. “There's only one problem.”

  Lumar knew something had to be wrong. He'd been asleep too long for a routine scan.