When Darkness Reigns

by Preston L. Marshall

  “Yes sir,” they all replied.

  Lumar reached for the handle of the plain utility door onto the room. It wasn't locked. Lumar sighed. If someone had the sense to get in there they would have locked the door, but he opened it anyway. He and Nate let their flashlights dance all over the room. There wasn't much inside. There was a space of about three feet below the glass where some cabinets were kept to stash the guard's uniforms and some of their crowd control stuff. Lumar and Nate opened all the cabinets. All they found where some clothes and a few Tasers. It looked like all the real weapons had been cleared out. Lumar knew that meant that there had been some fighting nearby.

  The rest of the room was just filing cabinets and desks with rolling chairs behind them. There was no one hiding in there. There was a bathroom in the corner. It wasn't locked either. Nate opened the door to find it as empty as the rest of the room.

  “I wasn't really expecting much,” Lumar said.

  “It was worth checking,” Nate replied.

  Jesse and Wallace were already done with their investigation as empty handed as they were.

  “Anything?” Radcliff asked.

  Lumar and Nate just shook their heads. The door was open far enough for them to easily walk through now.

  “Alright then, let’s get moving,” Radcliff ordered.

  They filed in after Radcliff. Lumar knew what was on the other side of this door. He'd seen it dozens of times. It was where the city's defenses really began. Just through the door, the cavern opened up to its full size. There was a heavily armed checkpoint with towers on either side of the road that stretch almost all the way to the ceiling. There were barricade walls on either side of the road with holes to see through and others to shoot through. There was a metal gate that swung down in between the barricades with machineguns mounted in the wall on either side.

  Lumar had seen all of this before, but he'd never seen it covered in blood. Every single weapon they had here was pointed out towards the metal door to keep anything from passing. He knew they could have fired continuously for hours at the bottleneck as Sarsaul bodies piled up until the way was impassible. The Sarsaul hadn't come through the main door though. All of the defenses had been useless when the Sarsaul came at them from behind.

  There were red streams pouring out of most of the holes in the walls on either side of them. The blood pooled up in red circles at the foot of the barricade. The windows of the towers looked like weeping eyes with red mascara running down their cheeks. Lumar couldn't see any bodies from where they were standing, but there was enough blood for dozens of guards.

  This was the most defensible place in the whole city. It was the first and last line of defense. The city was built like a maze to slow down attackers and there were a few other towers in the city where someone might have found refuge. There were even a few buildings that were supposed to be safe places to hide in case of an attack, but none of those places were as strong as this or the bunkers on the east and west ends of the city. All hope of finding a living soul in here died in Lumar's chest.

  “Let's get this gate open,” Radcliff ordered.

  “What's the point?” Lumar asked. “No one survived this. We're wasting our time looking around down here. If they came at this place from behind that means they probably tore through the whole city before they even got here.”

  “We don't know that,” Nate said.

  “I know it's not likely,” Radcliff replied, “but we're going to look anyway. I can't imagine a worse way to die than trapped down here in the dark. If anyone's in here, we're going to make sure we don't abandon them.”

  “It's pointless though,” Lumar groaned.

  “We're going through. That's an order.”

  “Fine,” Lumar sighed.

  “Can you open this one too Nate?”

  “Yeah, I think so,” Nate replied.

  There was another keypad in a spot that would have been unreachable to an enemy while the barricade was being manned. It was just below the barrel of the machinegun on the left side of the door. The only way someone could reach the buttons was to kneel in front of the barrel of the gun. When Nate was tapping at the numbers the gun rested in the middle of his chest. He hit pound and the metal barrier slid through the wall out of their way.

  A half-eaten corpse collapsed in the doorway as the gate opened. Lumar flinched when the body hit the floor. He hadn't been expecting someone to be there. The body was little more than tendons and blood clinging to bones. There was only enough meat there to keep the bones held together in human shape. It still had its eyes and for a moment Lumar swore it was staring at him.

  Radcliff closed the dead person's eyes. There was no way to tell if it had been a man or woman. He lifted the remains into his arms and set it down tenderly on the ground out of their way. He set the body out flat and crossed its arms over its chest before turning away.

  “Kill your lights for a minute,” Radcliff ordered.

  They did. The darkness swallowed them completely for a few seconds. Lumar eyes adjusted after a moment and he could see some light coming from the cracks and holes in the ceiling. That was all he could see at first, but as his eyes adjusted more he could see a faint glow coming from somewhere on the other side of the row of the buildings in front of them. The more his eyes adjusted the more he could see. The glow was a dancing orange light. The rain hadn't made it down here to put out the fires.

  “I don’t see any lights on out there either,” Jess observed. “Looks like something's on fire though.”

  “The fire might be worth checking out,” Radcliff said. “It'd keep someone from having to sit alone in the dark at least. It's where I'd go if something like this happened, anywhere there was light. It looks like we've got a lot of ground to cover. I'll be honest with you; I've never set foot down here before. Give me the general layout. I can't see much from here.”

  “Well,” Nate said, “it's like a big circle. There's basically three roads through Old Town. The ones on the left and right of us here basically go around the outer walls of the cavern. There are some buildings on either side of the road. The stuff on the outside was added later, but they were newer so more people lived there. I would check those for sure. I know my family was living in that area towards the end.”

  “Alright,” Radcliff replied. “That sounds like something we should definitely look at. How about the road through the middle?”

  “It's a long zigzag through most of the original housing. It's all tightly packed together and the turns in the road make it slow going. It was designed to slow down the Sarsaul in an attack. They'd be forced to go through in small numbers and fight through the alleys.”

  “So it’s a perfect location for an ambush,” Radcliff said.

  “I guess so,” Nate admitted. “All three roads basically lead to the same place though. They all let out in the back where the power plant and other utilities buildings are.”

  “This place looks to me to be about half the size of the city above us,” Radcliff said. “We're going to have to split up to cover it. We don't have time to be here all night. Your visors all have a tool to spot life signs. That little radar wheel in the corner can detect heat sources. It won't let you know if it's a friend or foe, but if you see something check it out.”

  “Are you sure we should be splitting up?” Lumar objected. “If the Sarsaul are here waiting to ambush us shouldn't we all be together?”

  “Don't worry about it. If you hear gunshots get back here as quick as you can. If you see something, just take a few shots at it so we can hear you and run. We're not here to fight. We're just here to take a look around. Alright, Jess and Wallace you guys head down on the left, I’ll take the middle, Lumar and Nate take right. We’ll meet back here at eighteen hundred. That should give us about an hour if we don’t find something before then. Move out.”

  There was a variety of nods and “yes sirs” as they acknowledged the order. Lumar wasn't fond of the idea of splitting up, but he was glad
he didn't have to go with any of the others. He didn't think it was a good idea to send the two greenest members off on their own. Radcliff had said there might still be a few wounded Sarsaul around. Then another thought occurred to him as he and Nate walked along the path in silence. Radcliff might have sent them off together so they could have some time to deal with their loss and sort out their emotions while they walked through their old home. He couldn't help but sense compassion in the gesture. There was a hint of gratitude floating just beneath the surface of his thoughts. The other thought that occurred to him was that Radcliff might have just been tired of hearing him complain about how unlikely it was that they would find anyone alive. He was even starting to get angry at himself for saying the things he'd said.

  “It’s been over a year since I lived here,” Nate said, “I don’t think I even came to visit it once in that time. My place up in the new town was nicer. I always made my family come visit me instead of coming down here.”

  “I came a few times. My parents were still living down here too,” Lumar replied.

  “I still had some kid siblings,” Nate said. “My parents used to talk about moving out of here once all the kids were grown, but they were always having more. I just can't believe it wasn't safer down here. This place was designed to survive attacks like this.”

  “They found a way around the defenses apparently. Maybe they came down through those holes in the ceiling. Maybe they came through the bunkers after they fell. There's no telling. I want to hope that there's a chance someone’s alive down here. I really do, but they beat our best here. They got past the barricades. They killed the soldiers who were trained to fight them. They took over the bases designed to keep them out. These are just shitty little apartment buildings with wooden doors and glass windows. We've seen some of the other kids our age break into some of these places to steal stuff. There's nothing down here that would keep out the Sarsaul.”

  “I know,” Nate sighed.

  They passed another of the watchtowers. Lumar turned his light back on and ran the beam of light up and down surface facing the road. The front door had been bashed open, but there wasn't much blood on the outside. He stepped through the door and scanned the inside with his flashlight. There were four soldiers sprawled out on the floor. All of them were dead. All of their limbs were twisted in unnatural ways. The joints were all pulled out, but they still had their skin and armor on. It looked like something had just broken them, twisted them up, and crushed their necks. Nate started to follow him in, but Lumar grabbed him by the shoulder and shook his head.

  They kept going, shining their flashlights through broken windows into empty homes. Nearly all of the ground floor doors and windows were broken down and shattered. They didn't bother to stop and look through those homes. When Lumar shone his flashlight through the broken doors and windows almost every time he was greeted to a flash of slick red blood on the walls inside. The heat sensors never picked anything up so there wasn't much point in spending time staring at dead bodies and the gore the Sarsaul made of them.

  “I just can't help but wonder if maybe the attack wouldn’t have happened if we'd just stayed down here instead of moving back up above ground,” Nate said breaking the silence again. “They wouldn’t have ever known anyone was living here. They didn’t come here even once in the eighteen years we lived here. That was even during the occupation.”

  “There was no way to know this would happen,” Lumar replied. “We thought we were finally safe. There hadn’t been any major Sarsaul attacks in years before anyone even suggested moving out from our shelters. The government promised that it was over and that it was safe again. Why would they lie about that? They didn't know. Besides, it was getting too crowded down here. They had to move us somewhere.”

  “I know. It’s no one’s fault or anything, but I just can’t help but wonder. I miss them. I just… I never even got to say goodbye to any of them. I hadn’t even seen my family in months Lumar. I was always too busy with work. They were always too busy with the kids. They just seem like stupid excuses now.”

  “I’m sorry Nate.”

  They walked on in silence again for a few more minutes. The truth was Lumar hardly spend any time with his parents once he turned eighteen and moved out. He popped by when he needed something, but never spent more than a few minutes with them. Nate at least could claim work had taken up too much of his time. Lumar remembered how many times he'd tried to call Nate at eight or nine o'clock just to have him say they were still working on something over at Logan. Lumar had simply not wanted to go home most of the time. The place always seemed too empty even when he was living there. There was too much guilt. He always felt like his parents were disappointed in him. On the better days, they at least tried to hide it. He almost felt like it was better for all of them to go their separate ways once he was old enough. It just seemed easier for everyone that way. He hated thinking about them like that. He would give anything to see them right now. Maybe they would have been proud of him as a soldier. Maybe if they’d lived through this they would finally be able to be close again.

  The road kept getting narrower as they got further back. There were places where a bicycle was the biggest vehicle anyone could have hoped to navigate the streets with. The main street through the middle of the town was the only one large enough to drive a car through. The middle of the city had been kept pretty much the same since it was built. They'd been constantly expanding on the rest. At one time the place must have been very neat and geometric, but every few days someone had added grafted on a new room to a building or dug out a pocket of the cavern wall and slapped a door on it to make a new residence. So many of the buildings had these added appendages that the whole place eventually became a ghetto with as many people crammed into the small spaces as they could.

  It had gotten a little better once people started moving back above ground, but instead of tearing down the shacks and rushed add-on rooms they had just been left for the people that decided to stay. It finally gave most of them enough room to feel like they were able to breathe and live in relative comfort. Even with the people that left the underground had been full of people. There had never been a required lights out. There had always been movement, people working around the clock to feed their families and keep the city alive. There was always noise and light. Now there was only the dark and the silence. The buildings were pressed so close to the road, that they had to squeeze through in single file at times, but the space still felt too big, too empty.

  They were getting closer. The scanners still weren't picking anything up. Lumar didn't know what the range on the thing was, but he hoped it wasn't too far. Hope and dread were mixing in his stomach as they got closer to the little lane where Lumar and Nate's families lived. Lumar's feet knew the way. He'd walked it hundreds of times. He couldn't take his eyes off of the little wheel scanning for heat signatures in his visor's display. There was one last point where they had to squeeze through before the road opened up. The lane was only wide enough for one small car to fit through, but compared to most of the rest of the town it felt like a huge open area. It was because there were no shacks barnacled onto the sides of the buildings and the road managed to stay straight all the way to the end. This little open space had been their playground when they were boys.

  Their steps slowed as they got closer to their homes. Lumar felt the hope being devoured by the dread in his stomach. The scanner was empty. His feet kept carrying him forward until they knew the place to stop without so much as a thought on his part. All of the buildings were nearly identical four to six story apartment buildings, but even in the dark Lumar immediately recognized his parents' home. He and Nate ended up facing back to back as they stopped and stared at their childhood homes. They'd lived right across the street from each other.

  There was nothing on the scanner. The buildings were empty.

  Dread devoured the last shred of hope left in Lumar’s heart. When the dread had finished its meal, it scre
amed inside of him for a moment and left him feeling empty. Lumar wanted to cry, but his eyes remained dry. His parents deserved a few tears at least, but they didn't want to come. He twisted his face hoping something would seep out of the ducts in the corner of his eyes, but nothing came. He felt disgusted with himself. He knew his parents were dead now. The scanner told him there was nothing alive anywhere near him other than Nate. They were dead. There was no longer any doubt about it in his mind. He should be crying for them, but he couldn’t. He just felt empty. He was hungry, but his stomach was sour from looking at corpses and dealing with his lack of emotion. The hunger was a louder feeling inside him than loss right now. He just wanted to move on. There was no point to any of this searching. Every single person that hadn't been on that ship with them was dead.

  “So,” Nate sighed, “this is it.”

  “Yeah,” Lumar replied. “I don't know why I was thinking they'd be here. I couldn't help it. I wanted them to be here.”

  “Do you want to go in and take a look?”

  “No. I don't. If they're dead in there...I don't want to see.”

  Nate nodded.

  “This place looks even smaller now than I remember it,” Lumar said. “All four of us used to live crammed into that little building. Well, at first it was four of us anyway. Even after it was just the three of us, it felt like half the house was off limits. The empty spaces needed to be kept empty. Not a lot of good memories in that place.”

  “Luke...” Nate said.

  “I'm almost glad he didn't live to see this. It must have been dark when the Sarsaul came. It must have been a terrible way to go, not even able to see what's coming to killing you. Just hearing their screams, the scratching of their claws on the walls and their footsteps as they got closer.”

  “I don't really want to think about it,” Nate replied.

  “I'm sorry.”

  “It's alright.”