In the space of one step, Lumar entered a ring of light completely empty of the dense fog all around it. He saw the light he'd been running for. It was a white ball of fire hanging in the air about a foot above his head in the center of the ring. There was a circular line of stars surrounding the ball of light on the ground. The circle was twenty feet around. It looked like the stars were sucking the fog into them. The space without fog was shaped like a cone. The ball of fire hung just below the apex.
The shadows stopped before they got within five feet of the ring of stars. Lumar inched further into the center to get as far away from the shadows as he could, but the shadows stopped moving completely. They didn't press any closer to the stars no matter how long Lumar stared back at them. That didn't stop them from congregating around the ring through. The ring was surrounded by a thick herd of the shadow Sarsaul in seconds. There were hundreds of pairs of emerald eyes staring back at him, but once they were assembled they moved no more.
Lumar turned away from the shadowy spectators and saw that he was not alone in the ring of stars. There was another man with short curly blond hair lying on the ground beneath the flame hanging in the air. The other man was sleeping curled up in fetal position. He looked like he'd seen better days. He was wearing a frayed t-shirt and a pair of slacks with the left leg ripped off at his knee. Lumar knelt beside him. He shook his shoulder trying to wake him.
“Hey wake up!” Lumar yelled. “This isn't the kind of place you want to be taking a nap!”
Lumar shook the man's shoulder hard three times before his eyes opened. The man stretched out from his curled up position and rolled onto his back. His eyes fixed on the flame dancing above them. Lumar turned his head to look up at the fireball. It was like this guy was seeing something that he wasn't. His eyes were moving back and forth like he was reading words on a page.
“Hey man, are you okay?” Lumar asked.
The man flinched. His hands shot up to his face. He looked at Lumar for the first time like he was surprised to see someone else there.
“I don't know,” the man said. “Where am I? Is this a hospital?”
The man sat up. Lumar offered his hand and got him on his feet.
“I really don't where we are, but it's definitely not a hospital,” Lumar replied.
“I guess you don't really look like a nurse.”
Lumar chuckled. “No, definitely not.”
The man's eyes widened with fear. “Where's my family? Where's my son and my wife?”
“I don't know,” Lumar replied. “It's just us here. I haven't seen anyone else.”
“We have to find them!” he said. “They can't be far! We were all together! I was holding their hands!”
“I haven't seen anyone else,” Lumar replied.
“Don't you dare lie to me! You rescued them first or someone else did! Where the hell are you keeping them! Take me to them! Now!”
“I can't help you find them! I don't even know where we are!”
“What?”
“All I know is we're in some kinda swamp or something. I don't know!”
“Shut up!” the man yelled. “I wasn't talking to you!”
Lumar took a step back. The man's eyes turned back to the flame. Lumar just wanted this nightmare to end. He was starting to feel more afraid of this man yelling at him than the shadows outside. Lumar had no idea what this man had gone through. He looked feral. He must have snapped and was hearing voices.
“Who cares about him!” the man cried. “Where's my family!? Look, I don't care! What's so special about him anyway!? I don't want to know about him. I just want to know where my wife and son are! Tell him yourself! He's standing right there!”
“Who are you talking to!?” Lumar asked. He regretted asking the moment the words escaped his lips. He didn't want to be dragged into an argument between a crazy person and the voices in his head.
“That is talking!” the man said pointing at the flame. “You don't hear that?! The voice is so loud! It's like thunder. You can't hear it?”
“I only hear you yelling at me!”
“You need to get out of here,” the man replied. “You need to come find me.”
“But, I found you,” Lumar replied. “There was a tunnel. It let out near here. Besides we're surrounded. There's nowhere to go.”
“Stop talking,” the man said. “Listen, we're both from Sangent. I'm dying there. You have to hurry! If I'm dying, my family must be hurt too! Get to them! Save them!”
“We were heading back to Sangent,” Lumar said.
“Then wake up! Hurry and find my family!”
“Okay, I'll try,” Lumar replied.
One of the stars went out to Lumar's left. The shadows leaned forward. Another went out to the right. Three went out at the same time. They were being snuffed out like candles, faster with each passing second. The shadows started moving in. Lumar didn't think the barrier around them was going to be there for much longer. Even the fireball above them was starting to shrink and grow dimmer.
“We're out of time,” the man said.
“Then let's get out of here. Come with me.”
“I...can’t,” the man said. “I'm stuck here. I don't know why, but I can't leave.”
“That's ridiculous, I'm not leaving you here! I'll carry you if I have to.”
The last star went out. Lumar reached for the man, but when his hand touched the man's arm, his eyes opened. He was back in the truck. Nate was sitting next to him. Jesse and Wallace were staring into space across from him and an orchestral symphony was playing through the speakers.
“What?” Jesse asked.
Lumar realized his hand was still stretched out like it had been in the dream. His fingertips were pointing right at Jesse. He let his hand fall back down to his side.
“Do you need something?” Wallace asked.
“It was just a dream,” Lumar said.
“Ah,” Wallace replied. “I've done some pretty weird stuff in my dreams too. I kneed myself in the nose once. That's how this honker of mine got so crooked. I woke up in a pool of blood!”
“I remember that!” Jesse said.
They continued to go on with their story, turning to each other instead of directing the conversations towards Lumar. He stopped listening after that.
“Are you okay?” Nate whispered. “You look like you've seen a ghost.”
“It was just a dream, a weird dream, but just a dream,” Lumar replied.
“Alright.”
Nate thumbed through a few more pages of his manual. Lumar was surprised he hadn't gotten bored with that yet.
Lumar never believed that dreams meant anything. He knew he sometimes dreamed about things he spent a lot of time thinking about. That was usually the only meaning to dreams that he could come up with: he was thinking about something too much. This felt different from any dream he'd ever had before. It was too real and he remembered the whole thing start to finish. The look on the man's face when he told Lumar to try and save his family was burned into his mind. If there really was a family dying in the ruins of the city, he would save them if he could. Sangent had far too few to survivors. If he could do anything to change that even by one or two people, he would do it.
The truck lurched and halted. They’d arrived.
5. Chapter Thirteen
Lumar couldn’t believe he’d slept that long. He slept through the whole drive. Ford made good time, but the clock on the dashboard flashed fifteen: forty-seven. It was almost four. Lumar's stomach growled at him for missing lunch.
Radcliff dropped the hatch at the back of the truck for them again.
“You missed lunch,” Radcliff said.
He tossed Lumar a ration bar and a bottle of water. Lumar glanced down at the three inch by six-inch bar in its silver wrapper. It was about an inch thick and much heavier than he felt something so small should be.
“They taste like shit, but they'll keep your belly from growling,” Wallace said.
�
�You had the right idea sleeping on the way here though,” Radcliff said. “It's going to be a long night. We've only got a couple more hours of daylight so we need to get moving. Our main objective is to find the Sarsaul's tracks and follow them home. Ford's going to be driving the truck around town scanning for any life signs with this thing's instruments. The General gave me a list of a couple places he wants us to check out before we move on. We're starting out on the west end by the bunker. We'll work our way through the city and come out on the east end. Any objections or suggestions?”
“No, sir,” Wallace and Jesse said in unison.
“Lumar, Nate,” Radcliff said, “just stay close, keep your eyes and ears open. Do whatever I tell you and we'll get along just fine.”
“Yes, sir, “they replied.
“Good, we're going to stay on radio channel one, but keep it clear. I want to be able to hear Ford if he finds anything,” said Radcliff. “Disembark.”
Lumar lifted the harness from in front of him and flipped the visor up on his helmet. He started unwrapping his food bar as he stepped out of the truck. Once they were all out, Radcliff closed the ramp. He made his way up to the driver side window and said something to Ford that Lumar couldn't hear over the crunching of his meal. It was a stale chunk of granola with no flavor whatsoever. It was so hard to chew that he ended up just breaking off pieces small enough to swallow rather than break his teeth. The crumbles scraped up the inside of his throat as they went down. Lumar saved the water until he'd choked the whole thing down. It soothed the wounds the ration bar carved into his esophagus. He emptied it quickly and tossed it aside.
“You know what to do,” Radcliff concluded. “Move out!”
Ford had let them out just inside the outer wall on the west end of the city. They were facing east looking out over the bunker where they had all fought in the trenches against the endless waves of Sarsaul. It looked strangely empty now. When they'd flown over the battlefield on their way out of town there had been thousands of Sarsaul covering the earth and soldiers fighting in and around the bunker. All that was left was silence. There were hardly any bodies. Lumar expected there to piles of corpses. They'd killed hundreds of ants and hornets right where they were standing now, but all he saw were a few bones, a few stray body parts Lumar couldn't distinguish from human or alien, bloodstains, and discarded weapons.
They started walking towards the trench. Radcliff lead the way. Jesse followed on his left flank while Wallace took the right. Lumar and Nate followed behind them in the middle. Radcliff hadn't specified any specific pattern for their trek, but Wallace and Jesse fell in formation without an order. Lumar felt safer in the back.
Lumar realized suddenly how stiff he was. He’d slept in a weird position. His left foot had fallen asleep. Each step tingled as blood made its way back to his foot. Lumar was stomping his feet as he walked to try and speed up the process. He almost tripped over a hornet's corpse while he was working on his foot instead of paying attention to where he was going. The eyes looked like they were looking right up at him. Lumar jumped and started reaching for his gun.
“It’s dead. Chill out,” Wallace mocked.
“It’s the eyes,” Lumar said. “They're looking right at me.”
“You can't tell where these bug eyed freaks are looking,” Wallace said.
“I just don't like it,” Lumar replied.
“Well you better get used to it quick. We fucked a ton of these bastards up all over the city. You're going to be seeing a lot deader ones before we get out of here. Here, maybe this'll help.”
Wallace backtracked to where Lumar was and stomped his boots into the hornet's face until the eyes cracked and leaked gray blood all over the head.
“That’s enough. We’ve got work to do. Get back up here Wally,” Radcliff ordered.
The bunker had been almost completely destroyed. The first thing Lumar noticed was that none of the towers were still standing. All that remained of them were bits of twisted metal jutting out of piles of broken stone on the bunker's four corners. Here and there, the walls were painted in splashes of red and gray. There were hundreds of acrid smells competing for Lumar's attention. In one instant he'd smell burning wood, then burnt hair. In another he'd smell the sulfur of alien blood, then he'd smell human piss where bladders released on death. He smelled the metallic reek of burnt out electronics and the smell of wet ashes. It looked like there'd been rain since they left. The ground was littered with puddles and the trench was just a line of mud and runoff. It looked like it put the fires out. At least some good had come of that.
The closer they got to the door, the more obvious it became they weren't going to find anyone alive here. After they’d left the door had been battered in. The door was close to a foot thick, but it had been smashed into a 'W' shape. It had been broken off both hinges. It looked like a huge sledgehammer had been taken to it. It looked like the door had only been hit twice, once at the level of each hinge. Lumar couldn't imagine what would be able to do something like that to a piece of metal that thick. It wasn't something he'd ever want to meet.
The whole building looked like it had taken a beating. There were rings of crushed concrete dotting the walls and roof of the bunker. Lumar imagined they were made by the same thing or things that had crushed through the door.
Radcliff reached the door. He paused for a minute and ran his fingers over the dents.
“The Sarsaul abandon their wounded,” he said looking back at Lumar and Nate. “There might be some still living in here. They'll probably be in pretty bad shape or else they would have moved on with the rest, but that doesn't mean they can't be dangerous if you're not careful. Don't let your guard down.”
“We won't,” Lumar said.
Radcliff stepped through the doorway. The place was unrecognizable. Lumar remembered the barricades of tables and chairs the soldiers had set up inside. None of that was still there. It had all been swept away or ripped to pieces. There were chunks of the ceiling in the floor. Bullet holes covered the walls and blood and body parts were everywhere. There wasn't enough of any one corpse near the doorway to make heads or tails of how many had died here. Most of what the Sarsaul had gotten to was just meatless bones the aliens had picked clean.
When the wind shifted, the smell of burnt flesh assaulted Lumar's nostrils. He quickly clicked his visor down to keep it out, but it was too late. Some of it had been trapped in with him. The smell of human carrion made Lumar’s stomach turn.
Wallace turned on his flashlight and shone it on the walls. The paint had peeled off and the naked concrete was blackened. Radcliff stopped moving forward. Wallace pushed past him and started down one of the hallways, but Radcliff grabbed his shoulder and pulled him back.
“I’ve seen enough,” Radcliff sighed. “There’s nothing to learn here. This was a slaughter. They blew themselves up after the aliens got past the front line. There won't be any survivors. There's no reason to waste our time looking here.”
Radcliff walked back out the door. When he passed by, Lumar could tell there had been a part of him that had been hoping to find someone there. Lumar was just glad to be getting away from the smell. He was glad Radcliff had made that call. The thought of being down in the heavy uncirculated dark with that smell made Lumar cringe.
They made their way around the southern arm of the 'U' shaped ruin. Radcliff led them along the outer wall towards the east end where the back door was. There was hardly any blood or any corpses along the side of the bunker. There hadn't been much fighting there. All they saw were a few bones and an abandoned car. Lumar couldn't imagine why someone would try to run instead of taking that car. It didn't even look the tires had gone flat. It was a light blue two door sedan. It looked like a blue egg on wheels. The windshields were still intact even. Lumar wondered if it had been left there before the fighting started. It was a mystery he'd never get to have an answer to. He imagined there were going to be many sights like that as they wandered through the remains of Sangent.
They made it to the east wall without any trouble, but once they rounded the corner on the back end of the bunker the roadway was covered in rubble and corpses. Radcliff led them close to the wall, where the debris was thickest. Lumar had to watch his footing carefully. The asphalt of the road was trashed. On top of it were chunks of stone ripped out of the walls of the bunker. Mixed through all the rock were body parts, pools of blood, and jagged pieces of metal. Lumar could barely tell one body from another. He saw an arm or a foot sticking up from the debris here or there. Some of them had most of the skin and clothing still on them. Those must have been civilians. Lumar guessed there could be as many as hundreds of human and alien dead around here. Most of the human bodies looked like civilians to him. He couldn't see a single black helmet or armored glove anywhere.
When they made it to the center of the wall, the back door was completely buried in rock torn out of the walls above. To the left of the entrance there was a small hole that went all the way through the wall. Someone had tried to climb in through the opening, but they didn't make it. All that remained of the effort was the bottom half of a rib cage and a tail of spine drooping over the side. There were bits of guts plastered to the wall around the bones and a trail of blood to the ground.
“Whatever civilians were left tried to storm the wall,” Radcliff explained. “The Sarsaul butchered them. I'm guessing from the bodies and the debris over the door no one made it out this way either.”
Lumar didn't like hearing the scene put into words. He got the sense that Radcliff was recording his report when he spoke or rehearsing it for when the time came. It didn't seem fair to him to sum up all the carnage around them in so few words.
He found it hard not to try and imagine what the scenes had been like. He imagined the man climbing through the hole in the wall as a pair of ants leaped up after him tearing his legs off and working their way up to the highest parts of him they could reach. He imagined a woman holding a child in her arms pounding on the metal door while the debris was knocked down on top of them. There were only a couple scraps of different colored fabric by the door to give him any idea of this, but they looked like skirts buried side by side.
When Darkness Reigns Page 17
