When Darkness Reigns

by Preston L. Marshall

  There was so little left, it was almost impossible to identify any of the corpses even though he very well could have known who these people had been. There was one he recognizes though. Geo's body was still laying torn apart in the middle of the road. He knew who it was before Nate did. He and the hornet that killed him were still lying beside each other locked in their death pose. Radcliff started leading them into the street in the same direction.

  “That's Geo,” Lumar said.

  The other three turned and looked back at Lumar with unknowing looks on their faces. Nate stared at Lumar with his eyes faltering from tears welling up.

  “You mean you were this close!?” Nate cried. “Minutes away!?”

  Nate ran to Geo's body. The hornet's claw was still buried in his chest. Nate tore it out and threw the Sarsaul corpse as far away from his brother's body as he could. Fresh blood oozed out of the newly reopened wound and smeared the front of Nate's armor as he pressed his brother against him. Geo was much bigger than Nate, but somehow Nate was able to lift him to a sitting position and cradle him in his arms.

  The others stood silently. Radcliff turned his back on the scene. Wallace and Jesse soon did likewise. Lumar was the only one that didn't turn away.

  “That’s his brother,” Lumar explained.

  Radcliff nodded. “He can have a few minutes.”

  Nate wept over his brother for five minutes before laying the broken body to rest on the asphalt. Nate tried to push the severed shoulder back into place and close up the wound, but he wasn't able to hide it completely. He closed Geo's dead eyes and sulked back to Lumar's side. His eyes were red. He only made eye contact with Lumar for a moment before falling back in formation. Nate closed his visor and remained silent.

  Lumar still felt guilty that he had lived instead of Geo. They had been so close to safety when the hornet came down on him. Lumar would never be able to convince himself that Geo wouldn't be alive right now if it wasn't for him. If he hadn't been drinking, if he hadn't been such a burden, Nate would still have his brother looking out for him. Lumar knew if their places were swapped Geo would be comforting Nate now. Of course he doubted Nate would have cried like that for him. Family was different. He knew Nate cried for Geo, but they weren't just tears for him. They were for Nate's entire family.

  “Can we do something for him?” Lumar asked. “It doesn't seem right to leave him here for the birds and the flies.”

  Lumar knew he was taking words out of Nate's mouth with that, but he felt like Nate wasn't brave enough to ask for that. Nate's head turned towards Radcliff expectantly waiting for his answer.

  “I'm sympathetic. I know what you're going through,” Radcliff said, “but it is not fair to put our personal desires above the needs of the many. There are thousands of corpses here. They all deserve a proper burial, but we don't have time to give them all the courtesies they deserve. We can't play favorites with our dead right now. We have a job to do.”

  “It would only take a few minutes,” Lumar objected.

  “Trust me, there are dozens of men and women around here I want to bury too, but we have a job to do. We need to keep moving.”

  “But—”

  “It's alright Lumar,” Nate interrupted. “He's right.”

  Radcliff nodded. He put a hand on Nate's shoulder.

  “Our next objective is the underground,” Radcliff explained.

  “The old town was broken into during the attack,” Lumar said. “You could see down into it from the streets.”

  “Yeah, I expected as much, but those things were made to last through almost any kind of attack,” Radcliff said. “There were tunnels connecting the underground to the bunker. There's a small chance some of them might have escaped down there. There are some pretty sturdy structures down there designed for this.”

  “You really think there might be some people still down there?” Wallace asked.

  “I'm not getting my hopes up just yet. It's just a possibility. We're here to explore those possibilities to make sure no one gets left behind. One of the main entrances is about a mile from here. Let's move.”

  Sangent was nearly a perfect five miles wide square. Before it only took a couple hours to walk from end to end. Sangent was packed pretty tight into that five square miles. There wasn't a single building less than five stories tall. Most of them were taller, square bottomed things that took up most of a city block. They were divided up into a hundred different sections, apartments, stores, offices all packed together a staircase and a few doors apart.

  All of these buildings used to be full of people living and working, but now they were empty. They glass that covered most of them had been shattered, the rooms inside had been devoured by fire. They passed a building on their right side that still had a faint flicker of orange dancing on one of the upper floors. The rain must not have been able to reach that one.

  There were more and more bodies lying in the streets the farther they got from the bunker. That seemed strange to Lumar since that was where all the fighting had been. Nearly all of them were human bodies though. That made somber sense. There hadn't been many soldiers to fight for the civilians. Lumar lost count of how many corpses he walked over on their way to the underground. Most of them had been burnt alive or dashed on the concrete from jumping out of the windows above. Lumar wondered if the suicidal jumpers had been escaping the fire or the aliens.

  Seeing all the death around them made Lumar doubt anyone could have survived this. Even the army in their bunkers couldn’t last against the aliens with all their armor and weapons. Unarmed citizens in their homes didn't stand a chance. He tried his hardest to keep his eyes up. He didn't want to see the blackened and twisted bodies he was walking over. He didn't want to guess what was making the squishing sounds his boots were treading over. He did everything in his power to keep his eyes on Radcliff's back. He'd lived through all of this when it was still fresh. He didn't need to see it again.

  When Lumar finally looked up to see where they were going, he couldn't stop himself from smiling a little inside his helmet. Radcliff was leading them to an old building that Lumar knew well. He and Nate had spent a lot of time there as kids. It was a square three story parking garage. By some miracle it looked almost completely untouched from the fighting. Lumar knew it was because the building was basically abandoned. Nobody hung around the building anymore than they absolutely had to. There was a good reason for that of course. The parking garage had two floors that were under the ground. On the lowest level was the front door to the old town. People steered clear of it so the Sarsaul wouldn't find it. In safety classes they always used to teach them that the Sarsaul flocked to places where humans were so if the goal was to keep them from finding something, people did their best to stay away from it whenever possible.

  The doorway at the bottom of the garage had more significance to Lumar than just being the primary entrance and exit for the underground though. That parking garage was where Lumar first saw real daylight. He'd been born underground. He saw daylight for the first time when he was ten years old. He and Nate had snuck past the guards and made the climb up to the ground floor. He had good memories of this place. Lumar was happy to see something that he cared about still standing, unmolested by their enemies. It also gave him hope. If the front door was still intact, there might be people inside. There were safe rooms and defensible positions all around the doors. There was a chance someone was alive there.

  “Here she is,” Radcliff signaled. “The entrance is on the bottom level. Let’s get down there and take a look around.”

  Nate came alongside Lumar and matched his stride.

  “I hope they didn’t come through here,” Nate said to him, “even though I've been living above ground for over a year now, the old town still feels like home.”

  “I’ve definitely got a lot better memories of this place than I do up there,” Lumar agreed.

  Lumar knew the Sarsaul had gotten into the underground. He saw the old town burning
through the cracks in the ground on the night of the attack. He didn't say anything about it to Nate though. There was no telling what he had actually seen if anything. There was nothing wrong with having a little hope. He was still holding on to the possibility of someone being down by the door. Lumar had memories of a lot of thick doors down there from the drills they used to run. There were places that someone could lock themselves into and hide.

  Radcliff activated the flashlight on the side of his helmet before stepping past the ticket booth with its yellow and black striped arm blocking the exit. Lumar had never seen anyone sit in that booth. The others started turning their flashlights on one by one. Lumar wasn't surprised that it was dark inside the parking garage. He had no delusions about the power still being on anywhere in the city either above or below ground. There was no chance the Sarsaul wouldn't have targeted the lights in their attack. Normally the lights would start coming on soon. The sun was getting lower and the shadows were getting longer. The lights in the garage would never turn on again. All they would have to see by were the flashlights they brought with them.

  Three beams of light in front of Lumar and Nate swung back and forth lighting up almost all of the place at once. Radcliff moved through the dark very slowly. Every few moments he would stop completely and scan the walls, the ceiling, and the insides of the old cars sitting in the parking spaces. Lumar remembered what Radcliff said about the Sarsaul leaving their wounded behind. Clearly caution was the reason Radcliff had stayed alive as long as he had. Lumar didn't much care for the stop-start way they worked their way down. He didn't feel like time was on their side right now. His hope for finding someone alive made him anxious. He couldn't help but think about that dream. The man said he was dying. Even if that was just a dream there could be people down there wounded and alone, bleeding out.

  They saw nothing all the way to the end of the first level. At the back was a pair of ramps. One lead up and the other down. There was a slight ledge at the top of the down ramp to keep people from driving over the side instead of going around. Radcliff leaned over the ledge and shined his light down along the length of the ramp. Once he finished looking, he waved the others to follow him down.

  Lumar was glad that all they were finding were the old cars. He would be perfectly happy without seeing a living Sarsaul on this trip.

  “How old do you think these cars are?” Wallace asked while they were going down the ramp.

  He didn’t grow up in Sangent Lumar realized. He and Nate knew all about the old cars.

  “They’re pre-war cars, most of them even have combustion engines,” Nate chimed in. “The government left them here as a front, thinking it would fool the Sarsaul into thinking there was nothing special about this place. Most of them are just models. When Lumar and I were kids we tried to start a few of them. I even tried to hot wire them, but they didn’t have enough juice to start.”

  “We used to sit in them and pretend we were getting out of this hole, driving to all kinds of places,” Lumar added. “This was our favorite spot as kids.”

  “It was just a rhetorical question,” Wallace groaned. “Didn't know you were going to tell me your life story.”

  “This used to be their home Wallace, don’t be a dick,” Jesse growled.

  “Whatever…”

  “Quite down!” Radcliff whisper-yelled back, “I’m not gonna be able to hear the enemy coming with all of you talking back there!”

  They all quieted down and stayed silent through the next floor. Lumar's hands wandered from one car's contoured body to the next. They were all covered in dust. Nobody had disturbed the thin layer of gray coating all the vehicles in a long time. Lumar wondered if anyone else had ever visited this place other than just to pass through. Lumar and Nate had brought a few others up here once or twice, but they never seemed to enjoy the old cars as much as they had.

  Lumar had to stop for a moment when they passed his favorite. It was a sporty, red, two seater convertible. The word CORVETTE had been printed in relief on the back bumper. He and Nate had puzzled over what that meant many times. Lumar eventually decided that was the car's name. None of the other cars had names like that printed into them. Every other branding on the others seemed to have been removed, but CORVETTE's name remained. It couldn't be removed without taking the whole bumper off and fortunately nobody had ever had the indecency to ruin such a beautiful car.

  Lumar wanted to jump into the driver seat. He remembered spending hours cleaning the thing up as a kid. Lumar always thought Nate got into mechanical engineering so they could fix CORVETTE up. But he refrained from doing anything but tracing the letters with his fingers on the back bumper to get the dust out. When he was done the others were getting away from him. He ran after them to catch up. They barely noticed since Radcliff was moving them forward so painfully slow.

  After starting and stopping a couple dozen times, they finally made it to the bottom level. There was less dust down here than there had been on the upper levels. The bottom floor had always seen a bit more traffic than the rest. It was mostly for maintenance of the door and the occasional drill. Even during the brightest parts of the day the sun didn't reach this far down. All of the artificial lights were out down here too. On the far end from the ramp, the door was still shut. It was a big door, but Lumar remembered it seeming bigger. Any of the cars in the garage could have driven through it easily. They used to drive trucks with trailers through it from time to time to bring supplies in or out, but that tended to be an ordeal of precision driving to make sure the trucks got through without hitting the sides.

  “Hey, the door's still shut!” Nate said. “That’s a good sign right? They didn't break it down! Maybe someone got in and shut the door!”

  “Could be,” Radcliff replied, “but we don’t know that yet kid. Don’t get your hopes up just yet.”

  “How’re we even gonna get this door open?” Jess asked. “That thing’s gotta be couple feet thick. Without power how are we going to move that thing?”

  “We won't have to force it open,” Nate said. “It was designed to be able to open in case of a power failure. It’s got its own backup power supply.”

  “There should be a hidden panel with a passcode box nearby to open it,” Radcliff stated. “I don't know it though. Lumar, or Nate, do one of you know the code? You lived here all your life right? Everyone who lived down there should have known the code in case of emergencies.”

  “Yeah, I remember it,” Nate said. “I'll get it.”

  On the left side of the door was a fake wall. Nate knew exactly where it was from years of practice. Lumar handed him his knife. Nate plunged the blade into the crack in the wall the first try and jimmied the panel free. The one square foot panel of cement covered plastic fell to Nate's foot. He handed Lumar back his knife. Beneath the fallaway panel was a numerical pad just like a phone. Nate punched in six numbers and finished by mashing the pound sign.

  Lumar felt as much as heard the huge piece of metal slide through the wall. It was like a deadbolt, but close to one hundred times the size. When the power was on the door would have opened outward quickly. With only the backup, it inched open. Lumar could hear the gears turning inside the opening mechanism. It sounded like each gear stroke was about a second apart and each turn only made the door open about a quarter of an inch. It would take a while for it open wide enough to get through.

  “Good work kid,” Radcliff said.

  He patted Nate on the back so hard Nate staggered forward a couple steps. Lumar was glad he hadn't volunteered to push the code in. Radcliff had almost two hundred pounds on him. He probably would have knocked Lumar flat on his face.

  They had to stand clear of the door and watch it open for a few minutes before the opening was wide enough for Radcliff's shoulders to be able to squeeze through. Lumar had never seen the door open like this before. He almost wanted to try grabbing the corner and pulling on it to make it go faster, but he knew he didn't have the strength to speed the process up
.

  “Let’s go take a look inside,” Radcliff ordered once the opening was wide enough.

  They had to squeeze through in single file. Lumar was the last one through. The room on the other side was only marginally wider than the doorway. It was big enough to fit a semi-truck in and hold it while the guards checked out the cargo. There were walls on either side of the passage made of some of the thickest bullet proof glass they could make without making it impossible to see through. The thickness of the glass tinted the rooms on the other side green, but they could still see through them well enough to know that there was no one on the other side. At the opposite end of the room was another thick metal door identical to the last one. There was a section of the floor marked with yellow stripes to show where the inner door swung out.

  Other than a little dust, the room was clean. It looked completely untouched, just like Lumar remembered it other than the darkness. With all of their flashlights on at once though, it gave the place enough light to see everything clearly.

  “I remember being chewed out in there by Henderson all the time,” Nate remembered pointing at the glass wall to their right. “He never liked it when we went up there to check out the cars. They must have been looking for the biggest hardass they could find to be the head door guard.”

  “It was kinda fun to piss him off though. His face would turn so red whenever we’d get into trouble with him,” Lumar replied.

  “Let’s keep the chatter to a minimum. Is there anything special about this next door?” Radcliff interrupted.

  “It’s the same as the first,” Nate answered.

  The console for this door wasn’t hidden. It was built into the wall on the right side of the door. Nate punched in the numbers again and the door started slowly swinging out like the last one.

  “Wallace and Jesse,” Radcliff said, “while we're waiting on this door, check out the room on the left behind the glass. Nate and Lumar you take the other side. I'll keep an eye on this door.”