When Darkness Reigns

by Preston L. Marshall

  With only one option presented to them, they headed left down the hallway. The path turned sharply to the right at the end of the lobby. The hallway only went ten feet back before turning right again. They ended up being just on the other side of a wall from the lobby. On their left, was a desk with a glass pane between them and the man on the other side. He was young, but his hairline was way up his forehead. He'd attempted to compensate for this with parting his hair on his left side. He also had a thin mustache barely visible until they got up close. To left of him was a door with a sign that read “ARMOR” and on the right there was another door marked “WEAPONS.” Both had big red bold letters on a white rectangular background.

  Radcliff approached the glass. “Sergeant Radcliff Miller and company here on General Derricks' orders for arms and armor.”

  “You made good time down those elevators,” the man behind the glass said. “Carte blanche is a pretty rare privilege. I'm sure you're aware of that already. Whatever you take is your responsibility once it’s out of here. Of course you know that already. Take plenty of ammo. Though I'm sure you don't need to be told that. Just make a list for my records of what you take, but I doubt you'd forget to do that for me.”

  “Thanks. We will,” Radcliff answered.

  Radcliff made for the armor door first. The others followed. There was an attendant waiting for them just inside the door. She was wearing the same gray uniforms as they were with a short blonde ponytail bouncing around the back of her head as she led them into the armory.

  The room looked almost the same as the one in Sangent. It was a locker room with blue metal lockers and a tiled floor. There were wooden benches in between the rows of lockers so someone could sit while putting on their boots. The only difference between Sangent's locker room and this one was the scale. This room had to be ten times the size of Sangent's if not more.

  “Your suits have already been repaired or replaced,” the woman said with a bob of her ponytail. “You'll find them in these lockers.”

  There were digital nametags attached to the tops of the lockers that could be changed in an instant without wasting ink or paper. The group dispersed towards the lockers with their names on them. They weren't all consecutive so they ended up spread out along the wall. Lumar ended up far to the back and left of the door.

  When he opened his locker he saw a different suit of armor than the one he'd used in Sangent. It had the same design with the smooth metal plates that attached to the skinsuit he was wearing under his uniform, but instead of being flat black these were white with the mountain painted on to the breastplate. His name was above it: “Private L. Lee.” He stripped out of his gray uniform and started putting the plates on like Radcliff had told him to last time.

  It took a lot less time than it had the first time, but Lumar was still the last done. Even Nate had beat him, but this new armor was awesome he couldn’t help but admire it. Unlike the last one that had just been a hand-me-down, this had been customized to fit him perfectly. Lumar could immediately feel the difference. The last set hadn't felt bulky or awkward at all, but this one was contoured perfectly for his body shape and it was almost like he wasn't wearing anything on top of the skinsuit at all. There was absolutely no limit to his flexibility and it even seemed lighter.

  Lumar wondered if that was why it had taken so long in the medical room. They must have taken hundreds of measurements of his entire body to get the suit to fit so perfectly. Maybe that sort of measurement was easier to do on an unconscious patient. He hoped that was what happened anyway. It gave him an excuse to find some peace of mind over the ordeal at least.

  “Well, at least it didn't take as long as last time,” Radcliff said once Lumar had finished gearing up. He was holding Ford's armor in a box under his arm.

  “Sorry sir,” Lumar replied.

  “We'll get out of your hair,” Radcliff said to the attendant. “Thank you for your time.”

  “My pleasure,” the woman replied.

  The “WEAPONS” doorway was their next stop. Walking in the new armor felt good. The lightness of it became more apparent with each step. It made him feel stronger than he had last time. It was nice to be on the inside of the suit looking out on other people for a change too. Since they'd gotten to Guardridge, Lumar had been followed around by people in their suits of armor. He felt vulnerable surrounded by so many armed and armored people constantly, but that vulnerability was gone now. It had been replaced with a feeling of strength. He was on the inside now, part of the group instead of just an outsider.

  The door led to a huge warehouse filled with weapons and ammunition. There were twenty aisles of fifteen-foot-tall racks taking up the perfect center of the square room. There were guards posted around the outer wall of the room watching for any misconduct. Radcliff's squad wasn't the only one in the warehouse looking for armaments. There were several other groups milling about geared out just like they were. There were forklifts moving to and fro transporting the goods from place to place.

  The inventory was painstakingly precisely organized. Each aisle had a different type of weapon and a variety of different types of ammunition for each gun. Lumar had no idea where to begin, but the others seemed to know exactly what they were after. Nate and Lumar stared dumbly at the aisles by the door.

  “What are you going to get?” Nate asked.

  “I guess basically what we had last time around would be a good idea right?” Lumar answered.

  “Pistols and rifles?” Nate asked.

  “I guess that's as good a place to start as any,” Lumar said.

  Radcliff wandered back by with a box while Lumar and Nate were still trying to decide where to start.

  “You can take anything you want so don't worry about that,” Radcliff said. “I'd steer clear of things that could blow yourself up though.”

  Lumar chuckled at that. “Thanks. That's probably a good idea.”

  “Whatever you end up with just remember you have to carry it around with you so don't overdo it.”

  “Right. I hadn't thought of that. We were thinking about just keeping it simple. Rifles and pistols,” Lumar said.

  “Hit up aisles three and eight then. I'd stop by number sixteen for a sword too. The Sarsaul like to get up close and personal. I never leave home without one personally,” Radcliff advised.

  “Thank you, sir. We'll do that,” Lumar replied.

  Lumar and Nate made for aisle three first. They both seemed to think going left to right was the best idea. At least their feet took them there first without saying a word to one another. Being methodical had always been a trait they'd shared.

  Once they got into the aisle Lumar couldn't believe how many options were being put in front of him. The left side of the aisle was automatic handguns, most of the right side was semi-automatics other than a small section near the end for revolvers. Lumar didn't know enough about guns to make a smart choice through all the variety. There were at least forty different handguns in the aisle. They had them alphabetized with each weapon having a variety of variations. Some of the variations were as simple as being different colors. It was mostly either silver or black and Lumar couldn't have cared less about that, but whoever organized this place clearly did. Most of the inventory was named after birds of prey or other predators. Lumar saw Eagles and Falcons, Wild Cats and Lions.

  If Lumar knew a little more about the things and didn't feel pressured to keep from holding the others up, he might have looked around and read what the differences between one thing and the other were. Lumar defaulted to what he knew for sure. He knew how to use a Panther so that was the only thing he was looking for in the sea of options. It was towards the back on the semi-automatic side. Nate followed his lead.

  The Panthers were in boxes just like all the other weapons. Lumar found two and pulled them out of their cases. Nate took one of them from him while he grabbed a box of the bullets for it. It looked like several of the different handguns could use the same rounds, but the way it wa
s organized kept the ammo right next to the gun so Lumar didn't have to search for it. Lumar was glad for that. He would have felt foolish reading through the packaging to figure out what he was supposed to grab.

  When they were done looking at the pistols they clipped them onto the right hips of their belts and stuck the bullets into the pouches around it. They kept the boxes the guns and ammo came in. Lumar remembered that the guy at the door wanted to know what they'd taken. Showing him the boxes seemed like the easiest way to do that.

  “On to aisle eight,” Nate said when the guns and bullets were secure.

  Aisle eight was dedicated to assault rifles. Radcliff seemed to have known what Lumar meant when he said rifles since there were four aisles of what Lumar would consider rifles. Lumar didn't realize there were that many types until he poked his head around the corners on either side of aisle eight.

  The guns on this aisle had slightly more imaginative names than the pistol aisle. They used mythical beasts’ names and some were named after dinosaurs. A lot of them looked basically the same to him though. They were guns you held with both hands with the butt up in the crux of your shoulder. Some had bayonets, others didn't. There was one that caught Lumar's eye though. It was called “The Chimera.” Not “Chimera” like his “Panther” but “The Chimera.” It was a huge rectangular piece of metal with a grenade launcher mounted to the bottom of it. It had two barrels on the nose of it with a pair of bayonets sprouting out on either side of them. There was a scope on the top too. For a brief second Lumar was tempted to take it, but then he thought about how heavy that thing must be. It also went against Radcliff's recommendation of nothing that could blow him up with the mounted grenade launcher.

  Lumar eventually settled on something called a Raptor. It looked almost the same as the rifle he'd taken from the hands of the dying soldier in the battle in front of the bunker. A flash of the dead man's lifeless eyes staring back at him came when he took the gun off the rack. Lumar shook his head and pushed the thought aside. The only difference he could see between the Raptor and the one he'd had during that encounter was that this one had a bayonet on the end which seemed like a good thing to have. Once the Raptor was out of the box he found that it had a shoulder strap so he threw it over his left shoulder and around his neck. Nate seemed content to imitate Lumar's choices. There were different bullets for this gun than the pistol. They were longer and narrower on the ends. Lumar and Nate took enough boxes to fill up the rest of the pockets on their belts with them. They were able to get three boxes each into their belts. Lumar hoped that ended up being enough.

  Their next and last stop was the aisle with swords and knives. Aisle sixteen had knives on the right side and swords on the left. There were katanas, long swords, short swords, dirks, trench knives, heavy two-handed bastard swords, and even bladed nightsticks. Each of these weapons came in a variety of lengths for different sized users. They all had scabbards that matched them.

  Lumar was immediately drawn to a double-edged longsword he saw hanging up on the far end. It had a blade made of the same black metal that their armor was forged from and a rubber grip a little longer than the width of his hand. It looked simple, but dependable.

  Nate found a katana he liked and grabbed it while Lumar made his way down the aisle. Before he reached the longsword he saw a combat knife with a serrated back edge. It looked simple, but useful so he grabbed that too and stuck it on the outside of his right boot.

  Once Lumar reached the longsword he was interested in, he tried out the lengths of several before he found one he liked the feel of. He settled for one with the blade about the same length as his arm.

  “I don't think I'm going to need anything else,” Lumar said.

  “I think this will do for me too,” Nate replied.

  Lumar put his new longsword in its scabbard and attached it to his left hip. Nate did the same with his Japanese style sword. They made their way quickly back to the front door. Lumar wasn't surprised that the others had gotten done long before they had. They didn’t seem like they were impatient with them when Lumar and Nate rejoined the group. Jesse was too busy fiddling with a long barreled sniper rifle she'd grabbed. Radcliff had his arms full with a wide variety of tools of war, but the weight didn't seem to be anything to him. Wallace was twirling his own sword around practicing a variety of strokes to get a feel for his new toy.

  “I picked up a few extra things in case you didn't get enough,” Radcliff said as Lumar and Nate approached. “Let's get moving.”

  They came out onto the hallway again with the man in the glass booth waiting for them. Radcliff approached the glass and tapped lightly on the pane with his elbow. The man opened the glass for him.

  “We just brought the boxes so you can just go through them real quick for your records,” Radcliff explained.

  “Of course,” the man with the comb-over said. “I appreciate that, but I'm sure you knew how much easier this way is for me. I can just scan it off, but you can see that.”

  The man ran a barcode scanner across the packages and typed away at his keyboard. It took him only a few minutes to take a full inventory of what they had taken. He didn't even have to look at half of the items like he'd memorized their inventory codes.

  “Thank you,” the man said. “That's all I need from you, but I told you that at the beginning. Good luck on your mission, but I doubt you'll need it.”

  “Thank you,” Radcliff said as he led the others away.

  They rode the elevator one last time, uninterrupted and unhindered to Guardridge's bottom floor. The garage they came out on was as big as the hangar their hover truck had landed in on their arrival. It was full of tanks, trucks, jeeps, cherry pickers, forklifts, and armored cars. There were lines on the floor to direct the flow of traffic like a parking garage. The floor was laid out like a parking lot with rows of yellow lines marking the boundaries of where a vehicle was allowed to sit. It took them a few minutes to spot Ford. Their ride was up near the front, separated out from the grid of parked vehicles. The front end of the garage had huge metal doors that rolled up into the ceiling like a house garage, but a hundred times bigger and heavier.

  Ford was sitting on the hood of a vehicle that looked like a cross between a semi and a two story house. The whole thing was painted up black except for a white rectangle on the sides with the same mountain logo that was on their armor. The top of its wheels came up to eye-level. There were short ladders attached below the doors on either side to get up into it. The cab was slightly taller and wider than most minivans, but the length was comparable. The body of the truck was covered by thick metal walls on all sides except for the extremely thick glass on the windshields and the mirrors. On both sides of the truck were two mounted machineguns. The guns had glass canopies much like the ones on the hovertruck.

  The back wall of the truck folded down into a ramp. Ford had let it down already so they could load up without any further delay.

  “We're almost ready to go,” Ford said.

  Radcliff threw Ford his suit. “Did you go through the checklist already?”

  “Of course,” Ford replied, “you just gotta do the double check and sign off. Supposed to give that pad to the guy at the door on our way out. I'll suit up while you go over that.”

  Radcliff nodded. Ford handed him a tablet with a stylus with a long list of things for him to look over to make sure the truck was up to par to the task ahead.

  Ford took his gear and made his way up the ramp into the back of the truck. Jesse and Wallace were right behind him. At the top of the ramp, were chairs attached to the inner walls of the truck. There were ten on the left and nine on the right. In the middle of each wall were the gunner seats dividing the seats into four sections. One of the chairs on the right side had been substituted for a ladder that lead up to the second floor. Each of the chairs had a harness that pulled down and locked into the bottom of the chair to hold the occupant in place.

  There was a door with a window in between th
e cab and the bed with the seating and guns. Ford had made his way through that door and Lumar could see him changing through the glass.

  The ceiling was low in the seating area. They could all stand upright fully, but Lumar could touch the ceiling with his elbows. He wondered how Radcliff was going to be able to fit in there with them.

  Jesse and Wallace had taken the first two seats in from the ramp on the left side. Lumar took the seat next to the ladder. Nate took the seat next to him. Lumar tried bringing the harness down to see how it fit. It didn't let him move much but it wasn't uncomfortable. The seat of the chair had been molded around the armor in the seat of his pants so he could sit normally.

  Ford left the door open when he came out in his armor. It clicked into place on the wall securing it from slamming shut when they were moving. Lumar leaned forward in his seat to see what the cab looked like. It almost looked to him like the inside of a luxury car other than the plain black coloring. There were two rows of two seats with a series of cup holders and fold out tables running down between the pairs of seats. It looked like all but the driver's seat in the front left could turn in towards the console in the middle. There was another ladder that Lumar could barely see through the doorway on the right side that looked like it lead up to the second story too. Lumar wondered what was up there.

  After a few minutes of getting comfortable, Radcliff appeared at the base of the ramp.

  “Everything looks good, so buckle up,” Radcliff ordered. “We're heading out now.”

  “Hey what's up the ladder?” Lumar asked before Radcliff turned away.

  “Beds and footlockers and stuff. We probably won’t get a chance to use them though,” Radcliff answered. “I want all of you stay in full armor at all times. If we run into the Sarsaul I don't want to have you wasting any time getting dressed again. So find a way to get comfortable down here.”

  Radcliff stepped off of the ramp and pressed a button on the right side by the ladder. There was a humming sound as hydraulic pistons on either side of the metal door pulled it up into place. When it was fully closed there was a loud clang as the heavy metal locked into place. A few moments later Radcliff opened the passenger door of the cab and took a seat at the front. Ford climbed into the driver's seat and jammed a brass key into the ignition. The engine came to life in one crank. Lumar expected the massive engine to roar like a lion when it came on, but all it did was purr like a kitten even when Ford pushed down on the gas pedal.