When Darkness Reigns

by Preston L. Marshall

  His hands fumbled across his waist and legs. He couldn't find another magazine for his rifle. All he found was the pistol in its holster. He knew the magazine was too small to waste a single shot. He dropped the rifle and leveled the pistol on the Sarsaul lumbering towards him.

  It was too dark to see his enemy clearly with just one eye, but it was obviously limping towards him slowly. It was one of the smaller ones, an ant. It looked like it was missing its right arm and one of its back legs. Lumar breathed deeply. It had a sword or a club held high in its one arm as it shambled towards him.

  He knew he was only going to get one chance at bringing the ant down. He knew he was going to have to hit it with every shot. He waited and watched the enemy move slowly towards him. He was able to see it a little clearer with each step it took. It was bloodied up worse than he was. The missing limbs were dripping with lost blood with each step. Its head had been bashed in almost as bad as Lumar's and even the arm with the weapon looked like it was barely able to hold it up. It was definitely a blade. If the arch hadn't fallen Lumar would have just tried to outrun the thing, if he could get to his feet again.

  The ant roared again and charged forward tripling its pace, closing the gap much more quickly than Lumar would have thought possible.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Lumar groaned.

  He only had a second to line up his shot. The Panther’s barrel blazed a tiny flash of light showing the ants orange body covered in streams of gray. Lumar saw the bullet hit the ant in the side of the neck. More blood poured out. He fired again. His hand wasn't steady enough. The second hit it in the middle of the chest. The armor there absorbed the damage. The next caught the ant in the shoulder right before the blade came down on Lumar's head. The arm fell back limp and the blade clanged against the ground. The ant's mouth opened as wide as it could and lunged with its fangs trained on the gun in Lumar's hand. The last bullet went right down the ant's throat. It was only a few feet away when the shot went off. At that range the shell flew right through the chitin plating on the back of the ant’s head. Globules of brain and blood flew out of the back as it fell. Lumar’s one good eye froze on the image of the halo bursting out of the ant's head. For a moment it was like time stopped.

  Lumar felt his heart beating and the moment passed. He gasped for breath. He didn't realize how long he'd held it in. In those intense moments the pain had left him, but now it came surging back like a punch in the gut. Lumar doubled over. With every heartbeat the pain intensified. It felt like every drop of blood that reached his wounds was stabbing the raw flesh and bruises.

  He was able to see a better now that the dust had fallen. The archway's rubble was about as tall as he was. He had two options: climb over or go back the way he came and hope he didn't fall down into a pit. Without a light, he wasn't sure he'd be able to navigate the streets without killing himself especially in this state.

  He coughed and felt blood ooze out of a crack in the scabbing wound on his face. The pain blinded his good eye. He was starting to think he might lose consciousness. He dared to touch the side of his face. It was a mottled mosaic of scaly scabs and gelling blood trying to harden. The gentle touch of his gloved fingers felt worse than catching a punch in the eye. He wouldn't try touching it again.

  Lumar just wanted the others to come back for him. They must have heard the gunshots. He didn't want to have to climb over the rocks. He couldn't even stand a few minutes ago. Climbing seemed impossible. A thought pushed through the haze of his pain for a shining moment. Maybe the radio in his helmet hadn't been damaged. It wasn't part of the visor. He thought he might be able to call out to them. They would come back. He could sit down, rest.

  It took him a few moments to find his helmet in the dark. It was only a few feet away from him, but without a light everything just looked like black lumps on the ground. Half of the rocks looked just like his helmet until he tried to lift them and felt how heavy they were. As soon as he grabbed it, his fingers went to the talk button on the side of the helmet. It felt like it was still intact. He pressed it and heard a faint buzzing. It sounded like it was working.

  “Come in, come in,” Lumar groaned hoping his voice would reach the microphone without putting the helmet back on. It was all he could think to say.

  The only answer he got was a shriek of feedback. It ripped into his eardrums adding another unbearable sensation until he released the talk button. He threw the helmet as far away from him as he could and slumped back down against the pile of stones. He was going to have to climb. Just thinking about it made his whole body ache anew. He almost felt like falling asleep right there. They had to realize he was gone eventually. They weren't going to leave him behind.

  His head nodded for a second. He almost passed out. He realized he might have a concussion. If he fell asleep now, he might not be able to wake back up. He tried to stand again. He knew if he stayed down he was a goner. He wouldn't be able to fall asleep on his feet, at least he hoped.

  He thought he heard voices while he was trying to stand. He was using the rocks to help him clamber to his feet. With both hands on the wall, he was able to get to his full height. He thought he was hearing Nate's voice, but he couldn't make out what he was saying.

  “I'm here!” he shouted weakly. Opening his mouth made his throat hurt and cracked open some of his scabs. “I'm here!”

  “Lumar!” he heard Nate answer.

  “I'm here!” he answered again.

  The next thing he saw was the light of their flashlights shining over the top of the rubble and then Radcliff vaulting up over the debris. He felt Radcliff's huge arms wrapping around him. Radcliff lifted him up over the pile of stones into the open hands of the others. His gun and the ruins of his helmet followed. They lowered him down gently. Nate put an arm around his waist to keep him on his feet. Wallace took the gun and helmet.

  “What the fuck happened to you?” Wallace asked.

  Radcliff vaulted over the obstruction again. Radcliff's flashlight peered across Lumar's face.

  “What were you doing man?” Nate asked. “What happened to you?!”

  Lumar couldn't find it in him to answer the questions. Just the thought of trying to speak in full sentences made his wounds pulse with agony.

  “Don't worry about that now,” Radcliff said. “I can carry him the rest of the way.”

  Nate reluctantly let Radcliff take Lumar from him. Radcliff scooped Lumar up into his arms and carried him close to his chest like a small child. It was strangely comforting to be held like that, to not have to use an ounce strength. He felt his eyes get heavy again, but fought to stay awake. Nate was still fretting over him as Radcliff carried him back to the truck, but Lumar couldn't quite make out what Nate was saying. Nate's voice was too breathy and panicked to hear clearly as he was running to keep up with Radcliff's long strides.

  After a few minutes of walking they were at the truck. Ford had parked it up against a building that looked almost entirely intact. Lumar couldn't see much beyond that.

  “Whoa! What happened to him?” Ford asked as they approached.

  “Doesn't matter,” Radcliff said. “I'm taking him upstairs. Get that first aid kit ready.”

  “I'm on it. That kid can't catch a break. I hate this part of the job,” Ford groaned.

  Radcliff carried Lumar into the truck and pushed him up the ladder onto the upper level. Lumar flopped out on the floor at the top of the stairs. Radcliff was up in a few seconds. He lifted him off the floor and set him down on one of the beds. Lumar laid on his back submissively. He didn't have enough energy to do anything else.

  The room was well lit, but Radcliff still kept his flashlight on, shining the beam into Lumar's good eye.

  “Stay with me kid,” Radcliff said. “It's not as bad as it feels. The cuts aren't that deep. You're just skinned up. Going to leave one hell of a scar though.”

  Radcliff got an alcohol wipe from a can in the footlocker next to the bed and started wiping down Lumar's face. Lumar's fa
ce was sticky, his eyebrows were matted with scales of dried blood. Lumar nearly cried out when the alcohol started worming into the cuts, but he just clenched his teeth and bore it. It didn't hurt any more than the cuts. It was just sharp, new, and sudden. His left eye teared up, but he remained silent.

  “That looks a better,” Radcliff said. “Ford will be up here in a sec to take care of you. I just need you to stay awake for me until then. Can you do that?”

  Lumar nodded slightly.

  Radcliff kept wiping off excess blood from Lumar's head and neck. It took a fistful of them to do the work. Even after the excess blood was removed he couldn’t open his right eye. Radcliff hadn't tried to clean the caked blood off of it. He was glad Radcliff didn't try to force his eye open. The thought of getting the alcohol in the tender eye made him want to vomit.

  Ford was preceded by a pair of briefcase sized boxes. He tossed them up to the floor where Lumar was before climbing up the ladder. They were identical white metal boxes with clasps. The first had no other markings besides a red plus sign on it. The other had MR-12 printed on the side. The back panel of that case was covered in text too, but I was too small for Lumar to make any of it out from where he was lying.

  “How's he doing?” Ford asked.

  “I can't tell if he's just lost a lot of blood and struggling to stay awake or if he's got a concussion,” Radcliff admitted. “He mostly just looks scratched up to me. Don't know about the eye though.”

  “Let's have a look.”

  Ford carried his pair of briefcases to the bedside and knelt beside Lumar.

  “Just so you know kid, one of the many services I provide for this group is being the medic,” Ford explained. “I just thought you should know that before I got to work on you. I do know what I'm doing. I'm not just some greasy handed mechanic tinkering with your face.”

  Lumar wasn't sure that made him feel better or not. He just nodded back.

  Ford pulled a smaller brighter flashlight from inside the first aid kit and shone it in Lumar's eye. He couldn't see anything but white while he was doing it. Ford put the flashlight away and ran his fingers along the back of Lumar's head cradling him up off of the bed for a few moments. Fords hands explored every inch of Lumar's head before setting it back down gently on the bed.

  “Good news,” Ford said. “You don't seem to have a concussion. The weakness and faintness you're feeling is from the blood loss. There's a lot of blood vessels and such in the head so they tend to bleed a lot even from very small injuries and these are not small injuries.”

  “Excellent,” Radcliff said. “You're in good hands kid. Ford here's stitched me back together more times than I can count. I'm going to get back to the rescue. I'll let you know what we find.”

  Ford nodded. Radcliff dropped down to the bottom of the ladder without touching the rails. The whole truck leaned for a second when he hit the ground. Ford sighed and shook his head.

  “Now even though I did do some medical training, I’m going to let this little guy do most of the work,” Ford explained.

  Ford opened the second briefcase. Inside was a cube a little bigger than Lumar's fist. Ford set the cube on Lumar's chest. It was connected to the case by a finger thick wire. The rest of the case was like a laptop computer with a screen and keyboard. Ford powered on the machine and dozens of tiny arms extended from the cube. The arms had laser guided blades and pincers for removing shrapnel, thread and needles for sewing up cuts, syringes and other tools that Lumar didn’t recognize. It was the syringes that really caught his eye. They seemed way too close to his face. He hated needles. The thought of having one jammed into his face magnified that phobia a hundred times. Lumar immediately knew it was some kind of surgical robot, but with the multitude of arms all he could think was that it looked like a huge spider on his chest.

  “He’s an MR-12. The army mostly uses these guys for fine tune surgery when a real doctor isn’t around, like right now,” Ford explained.

  “I thought you just said you were a medic…” Lumar groaned.

  Lumar really didn't like the idea of that robot digging at his wounds. He wasn't thrilled about Ford doing it either, but he felt like he could trust a human doctor more than a robot one.

  “Exactly, medics just keep people from bleeding to death long enough to get to a real doctor. Doctors fix things like this. This little guy will do a much better job of something as delicate as this than I ever could.”

  The next thing Lumar knew Ford had jabbed a needle into the side of his neck and felt liquid being pushed into his bloodstream.

  “Sorry about that. You're not going to want to be conscious for this,” Ford explained. “Welcome to the team. Nobody will ever think you haven’t seen action with a face like that.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Radcliff stood outside the truck shining his flashlight up into the shadowy remains of the building where Ford had picked up the life signs. At this range even the sensors on his helmet were able to pick it up. He'd wanted to be on their way before it got this dark. He hated working in the dark. Climbing a building in the state this one was in was hard enough in broad daylight. There was no way to know if a handhold would fall off once one of them put their full weight on it. That was especially true for himself. Even though time wasn't on his side he wasn't about to start without hearing what Ford had determined about the building before attempting the rescue.

  Worry was all over Nate. Even with his helmet down Radcliff could see how nervous he was. He kept fidgeting and pacing. He could sympathize. It shouldn't have happened. He should have been able to keep a better eye on the kid. Radcliff wasn't sure he'd be able to face Nate if Lumar had died. There was no excuse for anyone in this small group to not come out of this alive and intact. He'd been careless. He'd gotten tunnel vision heading towards this life sign. It was like it was whispering to him. Even now he was straining to hear what it was saying, but he couldn't make out the words. It might have just been the wind. He could easily be imagining it.

  “Lumar’s going to be alright,” Ford assured Nate as he came back out of the truck.

  “Did he say what happened?” Nate asked.

  “No, he didn’t. I guess he got caught in an explosion. I've been seeing gas lines and stuff bursting all over town. There's no telling.”

  “Well shit, I kind of feel bad now,” Wallace sighed. “You guys can’t catch a break.”

  “He shouldn’t have fallen behind,” Jesse said. “He knew better. This place isn’t safe, but he lived through it. He learned his lesson. He won’t do it again.”

  “Can I go see him?” Nate asked.

  “No,” Ford said. “He's out cold and I've got the MR-12 working on him. It's best to just leave him be and let the bot do its work.”

  “But—”

  “We have work to do. Lumar’s going to be fine,” Radcliff said. “We’ve got someone up there that needs our help. We don’t know how bad their condition is so there’s no time to waste. Ford fill me in on what you've found out.”

  “The target is on the top remaining floor of this building,” Ford explained. “It looks like the building had a couple more floors above that. Most of those floors have collapsed on top of or very near to the survivor's life sign. There will be a lot of debris in your way. I expect we'll have to do a lot of shoveling by hand.”

  “Good work Ford. You made me think we're going to have to climb the outside of this building. Can we not use the building's stairs at all?”

  “No, I poked around on the bottom floor as far as I could get. I couldn't even make it to the stairwell without digging through a lot of debris on the ground floor. As far as I can tell they've collapsed. Climbing up the outside is the safest and fastest way. They didn't provide us with climbing gear, but I was able to find some rope.”

  Ford handed Radcliff a coil of rope that was twice as thick around as one of his thumbs. The label told him it was tested for one thousand pounds and was one hundred feet long. It was enough, but he would
have preferred to have some spikes and harnesses. It was the hardest way he could imagine doing something like this. When faced with a task this difficult he was always tempted to do things the easy way, but not while Nate was around. For a fraction of a second he wished Nate was out cold like Lumar too. It would make the whole ordeal much easier.

  “I guess we'll make it work,” Radcliff replied. “Thorough job Ford. Jesse, Wallace we’re going up. Ford keep an eye on Lumar. I'd go ahead and prepare another bed and get ready to receive another patient. Nate, I want you to stay on the ground and keep watch.”

  “Yes, sir,” they all replied.

  “I'll go up first and try to find something to attach this to,” Radcliff said. “If I can find a way up that'll take my weight it shouldn't be a problem for you two.”

  Wallace chuckled. Jesse nodded.

  Radcliff tied the rope to one of the loops in his belt and found a spot that looked as good a place to start the climb as any. With a slight jump he was able to reach one of the second story windowsills and pull himself up onto a ledge. It held, so he looked for another. The others were shining their lights around him trying to help him see other handholds. He was glad they were all on the same page. Jesse, Ford, and Wallace seemed to know what he was thinking without a word being said.

  It took seven windowsills to reach the top of the building. There were only six floors, but he had to sidestep twice to find a ledge that could hold him up. Only one of them had crumbled under his fingertips. It hadn't been hard to sidestep the windows either. His legs were long enough to reach adjacent windows. It would have been much harder for the others he realized as he pulled himself up onto the final ledge. His reach made most things easier. He still would have liked to have had better equipment.

  He still had plenty of slack on his end of the rope. The whole place was a mess. Almost the entire wall on the side he'd climbed was gone. The most solid thing on that side of the room was a thick steel water pipe held fast between a fragment of the floor above and the floor below. He pushed on it to see how firm it was. He leaned his whole weight on it, but it didn't budge. It would satisfy their needs for now at least. He tied the rope to the pipe and tossed the other end over the side.