When Darkness Reigns

by Preston L. Marshall

  “I guess we better keep moving,” Lumar said.

  “Yeah,” Nate replied. “Just a little further in and then we can head back.”

  They walked down the lane a little further. Lumar was nearing the point that he just wanted to turn back. Seeing one dark empty building was as good as seeing all of them. Seeing one slaughtered family in the road took all of his appetite for seeing another.

  When they got to the end of the lane Lumar stopped. Nate almost ran into him.

  “Let's just go back,” Lumar said.

  “We have enough time to go a little further,” Nate protested.

  “What's the point? All that's ahead of here is the power plant and the food processing factory. You know they went straight for the power when he got down here. That was probably the first place they hit.”

  “I guess you're right. You don't think they'll be mad at us if we didn't go as far as we could?”

  “The only way they'll know that is if we tell them. They don't know how fast we walk. They won't know any different from what we tell them. Doesn't really matter either way. We're not going to find anything more up ahead than we did on the way in.”

  “Maybe,” Nate replied. “I guess if we're not the last back at least we know we won't get left behind.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Alright. Let's get out of here then.”

  They turned around and walked down the lane again. When they got to their houses again Nate stopped in the middle of the road. Lumar looked at his scanner again. It was still empty.

  “There's nothing here. Scanners aren't picking anything up. I know. I wish they were.”

  “It wasn't all bad you know,” Nate said. There was a hint of anger in his voice. “I mean we met right here in the middle of the street. You remember that don't you?”

  “I'm not saying I don't have any good memories of this place. I'm not. I do. And of course I remember that. Some other kid had you pinned on the ground. I pulled him off you and then he swung at me. I broke like half of his teeth after that. You've been following me around ever since. I got into a lot of trouble for that. A lot of people were scared I was going to be a troublemaker. I guess they were right. We never were very good at following the rules.”

  “Well some of those rules were stupid.”

  “Yeah, doesn't look like following them ended up making much of a difference anyway. If we'd been outside in the garage or down here it wouldn't have made a bit of difference. Can we just go? I'm tired of this place.”

  “Are you sure you're ready to leave. We're never going to come back here again.”

  “What are you getting at? Do you want to see me cry? I wish I was able to do that as easily as you, but I just can't right now.”

  “Sorry. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

  “I don't know how okay I can be. I don't feel anything right now. I’m numb. I just don't feel like being surrounded by the dark and the dead anymore. That's not an unreasonable thing to want.”

  “Alright. Let's go.”

  Lumar turned his back on Nate and started making the trek back to the rendezvous point at the bottleneck. He was angry. It was like Nate was trying to make him grieve the same way he was. Lumar knew it would all hit him later. He'd always been that way. He'd never cried at a funeral, but sometimes a week or so later he'd be thinking back and all the tears would come at once. He'd just sob uncontrollably no matter where he was or what he was doing. It had been like that with Luke.

  Lumar was glad that Nate stayed quiet on the way back. He knew that Nate had nothing but good intentions. He was just that kind of person, but Lumar wasn't in the mood for dealing with all the emotions churning inside right now. He knew they were down there deep in his gut waiting to froth up and spill out all over him. It was like a chemical formula. Once all the components were there in the right quantities they would react. There was just no way to know when it would happen.

  He was starting to feel the weight of the place leaning in on him. It was getting darker. The sun was setting. Most of the cracks in the ceiling had vanished in the shadows of the buildings. The rest were reduced to thin orange gashes. Their light didn't make it all the way to the ground. The dust in the air caught the light before it made it halfway down. The knowledge that the place was completely dead and empty added to the weight as well. There had been hope on the way in. Now all Lumar had left was the desire to get out before the darkness swallowed him.

  Radcliff was already at the rendezvous when Lumar and Nate returned. That surprised Lumar. He imagined Radcliff's route was going to be the longest and slowest. He was the only one standing there. Even without him saying anything it was obvious he hadn't found anyone. Radcliff didn't say a word when Lumar and Nate reached him. He just shook his head when he saw that they had come back empty-handed too. Jess and Wallace strolled up together after a few minutes of silence. They were empty-handed as well. Lumar wasn't surprised. He wasn't willing to give any energy to hoping anyone had anything positive to report.

  “Nothing?” Radcliff asked.

  They all shook their heads.

  “We have one more place we have to go,” Radcliff said. “We're about out of daylight so let's not waste any more time. Let's move.”

  “I was about tired of this place,” Wallace said. “It feels like a tomb.”

  “It is,” Lumar added.

  Wallace nodded.

  They made their way back to the parking garage. Radcliff led them back up much faster than he'd led them down. He didn't stop to scan the wall and ceilings this time. Lumar was glad for that. He wanted to put as much distance between himself and the old town as possible.

  When they emerged from the underground, the sun was only inches above the horizon, but the ruins of the city caught most of the sunlight. Everything was covered in long shadows and pinholes of light where the sun poked through wounds in the ravaged buildings. Lumar thought it looked like even the sun was giving up on their search. He didn't blame it. He was ready to give up too.

  “Ford, come in, this is Radcliff. We just finished going through the underground. Give me an update.”

  “I've been trying to get you for the last twenty minutes. You must not have been able to get my transmissions underground. I’ve got something!”

  “What? You found someone? Alive?”

  “The life signs are weak and I can't get to it on my own.”

  “Is it human?”

  “I couldn't tell you from where I'm sitting. Could be a cat for all I can tell, but still, can't risk it being a person. Come to my position. Be ready to do some climbing.”

  “Climbing? Understood. Alright, activate the tracking program. We'll be with you shortly.”

  “Will do. See you soon.”

  A few seconds after Ford stopped talking an arrow appeared around the scanner ring. It looked like a compass but instead of pointing to north, the arrow pointed in towards Ford and the truck.

  “All we gotta do is follow that marker,” Radcliff said. “Be careful. It's getting dark. Watch your footing. We saw the holes and cracks in the road from below. One wrong step and you could end up right back down there. We won't be coming back for the body.”

  “Yes, sir,” they all answered.

  “Let's get there before it gets pitch black,” Radcliff ordered. “I don't like the sound of climbing in the dark.”

  Radcliff struck out north following the indicator on their visors' HUDs. The compass needle stayed pretty close to the top of the wheel except when Lumar turned his head from side to side to look around. As the dark settled around them, Sangent started to look more and more like it had on the night of the attack. It was worse in some ways, better in others. Everything just seemed to be crumbling. Time and the weight of the wreckage lingering in the buildings were slowly bringing the city down a window pane or an I-beam at a time. The city still felt like Hell on Earth even without the flames.

  One of the buildings they passed had collapsed in on itself. It loo
ked like a broken drinking glass. The wall facing them had fallen in so they could see the concoction the cup held. It was a cocktail of broken stone and twisted metal garnished with broken glass like the salt on the brim of a margarita.

  While he was staring up at the building something exploded on the opposite side of the street. Lumar and the others stopped and spun their guns around looking for a target. Nothing else moved. His scanner didn't pick anything up around them. After a few seconds Radcliff lowered his gun and the others followed.

  “Still some gas pockets it looks like,” Radcliff said. “Tiniest little spark can set 'em off. Be careful.”

  Lumar and Nate nodded. He got the sense that Radcliff was saying that for their benefit. Lumar had almost asked what that was. It was like Radcliff read his mind. Lumar didn't like the sound of random explosions going off. There were enough other things to worry about.

  It felt like there were more cracks in the ground now too. They had to weave through the streets with their flashlights aimed right in front of their feet. Radcliff's stepped near the edge of one of the pitfalls just to have it fall away under his weight. Radcliff jumped back only a moment before the asphalt tumbled into the dark. Lumar was glad he wasn't leading the way. If he'd been at the front, he knew he'd be joining his parents in the old town right about now.

  After twenty minutes of walking, the sunlight disappeared. In between the buildings, it was as dark as it had been in the old town. The stars hadn't begun to shine yet and the moon was just a tiny sliver overhead. Neither were being very helpful, but after a few more yards the arrow disappeared from the rim of the scanner. It was replaced with a small yellow blip pinging on the edge of the scanner's range. They were getting close. Lumar let out a sigh of relief.

  There was only one more obstacle between them and their goal. At first Lumar barely recognized the place. It was the building that once housed the Logan Corporation. The building looked mostly intact other than the loss of the top few floors and most of the glass being busted out. There was a decorative ten foot wall around the building that hedged off half the city block. There were arched entrances on three sides of the wall. Each one was big enough for two lanes of traffic. The building took half the space. The rest was an open courtyard.

  Their objective was just to the north of the Logan Corporation building. The shortest route was through the courtyard. The courtyard was the closest thing to a park the city had. There used to be a beautiful garden with fountains, decorative trees, and walking paths lined with flowers. It had all burned. The trees were blackened matchsticks threatening to fall if the wind caught them just right. The flowers were once a dozen different colors, but now all that was left of them were gray piles of ash. Even the water in the fountains had stopped flowing. The once glistening pools were clouded with dirt and ash.

  Lumar found himself falling a little behind. He used to love this place. He expected Nate would have wanted to linger here too, but Nate just paused for a moment to look around before moving on. The rest the squad made a beeline from the archway they came in by to the one on the far end without a moment's hesitation. Lumar paused near the middle by the largest fountain. There wasn’t much left of the eight-foot tall, three-tiered wishing fountain. There were still pennies under the water where kids had tossed them in to make their wishes. He'd thrown his fair share of coins in that fountain long after his childhood ended wishing for a job there.

  He was vaguely aware of the fact that the others were all passing through the archway leaving him behind. Lumar was left alone staring into the water at the bottom of the fountain. There was less water in it than there used to be, but he'd never seen the water so still. There was enough in the bowl for Lumar's reflection to stare back at him. The fact that all he saw was a helmet with a light shining out of it looking back caught his eye and made his mind wander.

  He zoned out for a minutes thinking about the future he’d imagined at Logan Corp. Working there had always been his dream job. He was always jealous that Nate had been able to get on there while he was stuck filtering piss and shit out of the water. Logan was mostly a military research and development laboratory. They were always working on new weapons technologies with a focus on robotics. Lumar and Nate had shared an internship there during school, but when the internship ran its course Nate was the one chosen for the position. He was happy for his friend, but even now he found jealousy rising up. It was a pointless feeling now. Logan was as dead as the rest of the city. It was never coming back. It was still the future he'd wanted for himself. It was a different life, an impossible future, something he was ever going to have.

  Lumar suddenly became conscious of how long he’d be standing there. He came back to his senses and saw all of his squadmates were already out of the courtyard. Their heat signatures were moving farther away from him. He panicked and took off running towards the archway the others had passed through.

  A few steps before he reached the exit, a radar blip appeared behind him. His feet slowed back to a walk. He turned around to see where the reading was coming from. All he could see was the darkened face of the Logan building. He felt his heartbeat speeding up. Without the others around, he wasn't sure what to do. The scanner didn't tell him if it was human or alien. A flash of the man from his dream came back to mind. Lumar remembered how it all vanished right before he was able to grab the man's hand. The blip vanished before he could decide what to do. Lumar's heart skipped a beat. Whatever it was must have died just like that. He wouldn't have made it that far even if he ran. He turned back around and kept moving. He'd tell Radcliff about it. It might have just been a glitch.

  Another blip appeared on his scanner. It came from the same place as the last one, but this one was smaller, only the size of a pencil dot on his HUD, and it was moving right for him. Before he could turn his head the dot whizzed past the center point on his scanner. The archway in front of him exploded. Every sense he had was swallowed in pain. He couldn't see anything. He couldn't hear anything. Stone battered his armor. If he hadn't been wearing it every bone on the front side of his body would have been crushed. A rock went through his visor. It had buried itself into the right side of his face. For an instant the pain was replaced with a warm sticky feeling dribbling down his chin and neck. He couldn't open his right eye. When he was able to open the left all he saw was shattered glass and blood. He couldn't see anything outside of the bloody visor but black dust. His flashlight had been busted out too. There was no light to see by.

  The pain came back like a flood. It forced his good eye to close. He screamed. Glass was digging into his face. He could feel tears flowing out of his left eye. All he could feel was blood flowing out of the right. His fingers fumbled weakly for the release on the jaw of the helmet. It felt like an eternity before he was able to find it. When the helmet came off over his head, the stone buried in his right eye was pulled out with it. The pain intensified a hundredfold. Lumar's fingers went dead at the ends of his hands. The helmet clattered to the ground. His stomach turned. He could feel sour bile coming up his throat, but he swallowed it back down before it found his mouth.

  He suddenly realized his was on his back. He couldn't remember if he'd fallen when the blast went off or if he'd fallen when he'd taken off the helmet from the pain. He could barely see anything. Everything around him seemed dim and out of focus.

  In one second of lucidity from the pain Lumar realized what kind of situation he was in. He was alone. He was wounded. Something had fired a rocket at him. He had to run. He had to escape. If it fired again it might not miss.

  He tried to stand, but when he did he felt bruises spreading in his legs and a surge of blood gush out of the cuts in his face. His legs faltered. He fell flat on his stomach. He lay there for a few moments before he abandoned the idea of standing. If he could crawl through the archway at least he'd be away from the shooter. He got up on his hand and knees and crawled forward. Even that was hard. The bruises made his muscles ache with each movement. He knew he was b
leeding under the skin. He little lightheaded.

  His hands felt their way over stones. He crawled forward a few feet until his right hand found a stone bigger than his head. He tried to feel a way over, but his hands kept groping more stone as they rose up the face of the rock. He couldn't feel the top even kneeling before the stone.

  The archway had collapsed. His escape was cut off.

  Lumar’s mind went blank. His only thought had been to crawl away, to escape. His heart beat so hard it hurt the bruises on his chest. Thoughts of escape were ripped away. All that was left to him was the pain. He realized he was a dead man. He wouldn't be able to fight in the state he was in. His enemy would come for him soon. He wouldn't be able to stop the inevitable. He expected another shot, but it didn't come.

  He propped himself up against the pile of rubble. With his back up against the rocks all he could see was the shadow of the Logan building. He still couldn’t tell where the shot had come from. The dust was settling. He could see the outline of the rifle he'd been carrying a few feet from his left foot. He stared at it for a moment before he realized what it was. It was a chance to live, if it hadn't been damaged.

  Lumar crawled to the gun and wrapped his fingers around it as tightly as he could. He forced himself to his knees. He put the butt of the gun in his right shoulder. He could barely see. The pain made it hard for him to even keep his left eye open. It didn't matter. He squeezed the trigger. They might have ignored the blast, but even if he missed, he knew Nate and the others would hear the gunshots. He fired the whole magazine at the shadow of the building. He had no way to tell if he was hitting anything.

  His enemy answered with a high pitched scream once the magazine was empty. The sound was like an angry mixture of a screaming child and a growling dog. He saw a shadow leap from the second story of the building in a flurry of small wings. The force of the beating wings did nothing to break its fall. It fell hard on the ground and barely kept its footing. The sound of it crashing into the ground sounded like breaking bone. Lumar could only hope.