The Long Dark

by Billy Farmer

  His skin was gray just like the woman’s in the kitchen. He had the same inhumanly large eyes. The only discernable difference was he was mobile. He sniffed so loud I was sure I heard it from inside the house. His head jerked back towards the street. He bellowed out a terrible guttural sound. After maybe a minute, several other gray things joined him.

  My mind raced. What the hell were they doing out there? Had it been one of those things who attacked Tom? And why? What the hell had happened to them? It was contemplations like those that allowed me to recognize just how abnormal things were. It wasn’t just a weird power outage. It was much more dire and inexplicable than that. Of course, there were other clear signs that I missed. My mind was still stuck in the old ways of thinking. The rational days where up was up and down was down. Even missing those clear warnings, I knew enough at that moment to know that my world had changed in a catastrophic way.

  I was so absorbed with the gathering outside that I hadn’t even noticed Sam coming to stand beside me. “Jesus, son, ‘is ain’t good.”

  “No. It’s not.”

  Chapter 6

  “We’re sitting ducks in here, William,” Titouan said.

  I sucked in a breath and sighed, thinking about what not to say, before deciding on, “I’m open to reasonable ideas.”

  “Run out the back door and get our asses to Miley’s as fast as we can.”

  “Reasonable, I said. What happens to Tom in your little plan?”

  “The greater good,” he replied, stumbling slightly over his words.

  “Don’t give me that greater good bullshit. There’s nothing great or good about it.”

  “Tit, me and you disagree on ‘bout everythang, and ‘is sure as hell ain’t no different. I can’t believe ‘at even you thanks ‘at’s a option,” Sam said, rubbing his hands together next to the heater. “Tom’s a good man. We can’t just leave ‘im here like a pile of trash.”

  “It’s not about what’s best for me. It’s about what’s best for all of us,” he said.

  “Since when have you ever cared about this us thing you talk about?” I asked.

  “We have a moral dilemma,” Avery said.

  “No, we have a dickhead dilemma,” I said.

  Avery snapped his fingers while saying, “But Titouan makes a valid point. If we stay, we might all die. If we leave Tom, we could very well escape and live.”

  “This isn’t a classroom, Avery. We don’t get to flex our creative minds while exploring fucking existentialism in the abstract. Tom is as real as that seat your ass is planted in. We’re not leaving him. Drop it.”

  Titouan glanced at Avery before saying, “This is just the way it is. You may not like it, but if we take Tom, more of us might die.”

  “Titouan, if you were in the same predicament as Tom, I wouldn’t leave you behind either. I don’t know what’s going on, but we,” I pointed at each one of them, “are all we’ve got right now. We’ve got to stick together.”

  Titouan shrugged and focused his attention elsewhere.

  “What’s that noise?” Tish said, breaking the silence that had settled into the room.

  Avery slowly turned his head towards me, his eyes big as half dollars.

  There was a rhythmic tapping coming from the bedroom adjoining the living room. I quietly walked over to Tish and said, "I'm going see what the hell that is. I need you to try to get Tom up and, if possible, ready to leave."

  She nodded.

  I took a quick glance out the living room window. For whatever reason the things had become agitated.

  “Take the rifle,” Sam said.

  “No. Keep it in here.” I flicked my chin in the direction where the things were outside. “You at least know how to use it.”

  With the snow having almost completely abated, and with the full moon casting its light through the bedroom window, I saw it as soon as I entered the bedroom. First on the floor, as a long shadow, and finally in the window as a large, human-shaped silhouette. “Mother of God,” I uttered. Paralyzed with fear, I moved no further than the steps I’d already taken.

  The person kept an eerie beat as he tapped his forehead against the window pane, over and over again. Without warning, the tapping stopped. The man pressed his face against the glass, his nose facing in the direction where I stood. He sniffed several times, grunted before restarting the tapping.

  “William, you gonna want ta come in ‘ere,” Sam said.

  Again, the man stopped. “Shh!” I hissed. He sniffed and then snorted, loudly, and began banging his head again. Except this time, he banged harder, to the point I knew the windowpane would soon break.

  A cacophony of noise erupted in the living room, punctuated with Sam yelling for me to get my ass in there. Sam’s cry further invigorated head banger.

  I ran out of the bedroom, nearly tripping over a rug as I entered the living room. Upon regaining my balance, I saw Tom standing roughly where he’d been lying. He was doubled over, his arms cinched hard around his stomach, and his face was contorted in a mixture of terror and pain. He moaned a gurgling, sickly noise, a frothy dark mixture seeping from the corners of his mouth.

  Tish backed away from Tom. His torturous moans subsided as he tracked her movement away from him. His face softened slightly. The look of confusion and hurt partially obscured the pain and fear so vividly on display seconds earlier. For a scant second, they locked glances. Tish sobbed. Tom closed his eyes. He seemed to savor those moments of calm, but they were short-lived. Avery cried out, as he pointed towards something outside the living room window. His mouth moved, but he wasn’t saying anything, not anything that resembled recognizable speech, anyway. There were now fists pounding on the front door.

  The window gave way in the bedroom. The sound of shards of glass falling to the floor and further shattering on impact resonated loudly in the small house. The old floor boards groaned under the weight of heavy feet. Headbanger was in the bedroom. It wasn’t just him, though. There was another crash from one of the other bedrooms, followed by the thuds of bodies hitting the floor. The house was filling with the bastards.

  In a primal wail I barely recognized as my own, I called out to Tom. As if his head was suddenly uncoiled, he violently turned to face me. In the dim light, I saw his eyes, changed and inhuman. He tilted his head slightly to the side and sniffed. His head jerked towards the kitchen before facing me once more. He seemed out of control of his own body. His eyes seemed to remain focused on me, but his head, as a vehicle, wanted to take him somewhere else: towards the kitchen. He never looked back at me.

  “Dear Jesus,” Sam said.

  My mind raced in an infinite loop of uncertainty. Nothing made sense. Tom’s eyes weren’t supposed to look like that. The eyes I knew were full of life. The ones I saw then were alien. A loud noise broke my trance.

  The front door gave way and more bodies filled the house. Without a weapon, I was powerless to stop the mass of bodies flooding through the living room. The slow, unsure footsteps coming from the bedroom became fast and deliberate as the crazed man ran past, knocking me hard to the ground in the process. The side of my face bore most of the impact. I momentarily lost consciousness. The last thing I saw before blacking out was headbanger guy running past.

  I wearily maneuvered myself to a seated position. I blinked and squinted, trying feebly to see in the low-light condition of the living room. I reached for the switch on my headlamp, but my fine motor movements seemed to have been affected by my brain smashing into my skull as my face pounded the floor. I flicked my fingers and flexed my hand before trying again. Success, I could see again.

  I scanned the room. Avery remained in the chair in front of the window. He was frozen in fear but had all his pieces. Tish had apparently been knocked down in the carnage as well, and Sam was at her side making sure she was okay. Everyone was accounted for except Titouan. I flicked my head around the room wildly, looking for him. He was just a few feet away from me. Like a statue frozen in time, he stood locke
d in a trance, as he watched the events taking place in the kitchen.

  In the mad press of things, my mind began racing, trying to neutralize the information my senses fed it, but my mind finally relented. The information it was getting was correct. The grotesque sounds assaulted my ears. The monsters, the Grays, were eating the woman in the kitchen. Her muffled screams bore that fact. And if they were eating her, they would also eat us, if we gave them the opportunity.

  I looked at Sam and said, “We have to get the hell out of here.”

  Sam took a couple quick steps towards the door before stopping. “What ‘bout Tom?” he asked.

  “Sam, we have to go,” I said.

  Avery whimpered something as he peered into the kitchen. Without being prompted, he began to help me hastily gather our belongings.

  “Sam,” I said, as I tossed my backpack over my shoulder. “Grab your shit, now.”

  He blinked, shook his head, growled, and began scooping up some of his and Tish’s things before moving towards the exit, Tish in tow, Avery was on his heels, things falling out of his haphazardly packed bag, as he stumbled his way outside.

  I gathered what I could and began my own retreat when it occurred to me Titouan hadn’t moved. I ran to his side. His gaze was locked on the goings on in the kitchen. I cast my headlamp towards the source of his morbid fixation. Hearing it was bad enough.

  “Titouan,” I whispered. “Let’s go.”

  There was a marked decrease in noise level after I shined my light into the kitchen. I called to him again. Nothing. A fight broke out in the kitchen. One of the rooted-out Grays turned his blood-soaked face towards us. Words weren’t working. I grabbed his arm and dragged him through the house.

  Sam stopped me at the road. “What ‘bout Tom?”

  “Let’s go, Sam.”

  “We gonna just leave him.”

  “Yes. Now hurry.” I was in the middle of the road by this point and headed towards the airport.

  “We can’t leave Tom, dammit,” Sam insisted.

  I ushered Titouan and Avery along, while I walked towards where Sam stubbornly stood. “We can talk about this when we get the hell away from here,” I said. “It isn’t safe out here.”

  Sam glanced towards Tish, sighed, and begrudgingly heeded my warning.

  We ran south on Momeganna Street until we made a left on Ahkovak Street. By the time we reached Wiley Post-Will Roger’s Airport, I was too winded to run any longer. I was spent. The labored breaths coming from my friends told me I wasn’t the only one.

  “What now?” I huffed, having a hell of a time catching my breath.

  “What the hell did we just do, leavin Tom like that?” Sam asked, pacing in front of me.

  “Lived. That’s what we did,” I said.

  “Tom was sick, ya sonofabitch. You just don’t leave your friends ‘ike ‘at.”

  “Fucking hell,” Titouan shouted.

  I walked quickly to where Titouan stood. I shook my head, letting him know he should keep his damn thoughts to himself. Like almost every other time, he didn’t care to listen to me.

  “You saw it and I know damn well you heard what the fuck was happening in that kitchen. Don’t pretend you didn’t dammit,” Titouan yelled.

  “Dammit, Titouan…”

  Several shots rang out. They seemed to be coming from the general direction of Barrow High School, which was two or three blocks north of us. I couldn’t tell if they were shooting at us or not, but it was too close to take any chances. There was a small building near the northern side of the runway. I pointed to it and yelled, “Get your asses behind that building!” More shots rang out as we ran. In my hurry for cover, I overran my mark, overcompensated, and fell to the ground in a heap.

  “Turn off the lantern,” I panted, still trying to catch my breath as I brushed off the snow. “They can’t shoot us if they can’t see us.” Not to mention the gray bastards could be right on our asses, for all we knew. I switched my headlamp off.

  The building had two doors. One of which, I hoped, was unlocked. I saw a lock on the first door we came to, but it wasn’t latched. Finally, some luck, I thought. After everyone was safely inside, I tried in vain to bar the door closed. Because the door had to be locked from the outside, there wasn’t a way to lock it shut from the inside. Worse, the damn door swung inward, as well as outward, meaning it could be pushed in from the outside. “You guys have some string or something I can use to tie this door shut?” No answer.

  I stumbled around trying to look through our bags for something I might use to tie the door shut, assuming I could figure a way of doing it, but found nothing I could use. Go figure. With the one window of our building facing the high school, I didn’t want to flip on a lantern and light the way for someone to get an easy shot, but it was a little disconcerting that someone could quite literally push the door open with almost no effort. We weren’t having very much luck with doors, to say the least.

  I was getting ready to say the hell with it and flip on my headlamp, so I could see what I was doing, when Avery walked towards me. He pulled a coiled spool of wire out of his pocket. “It is ten AWG. It will be strong enough. The trick will be tying it.”

  I nodded. “Thanks.”

  I began to feel my way around the door frame. I got to the top left corner where I found an eye latch. I tried to find the hook, but apparently there wasn’t one. The loop would work if I could find something to tie off to. There was a heavy shelf just to the left of the door. I motioned for Avery and Sam to come help me move it. Seeing that we were having a difficult time moving the shelf, Titouan decided he would lend a hand. We moved it the needed foot, and I tied the door closed as best as I could with the thick wire. It would hold up to the wind, but if a person tried to get in, we were screwed.

  The room stunk of diesel fuel and grease. From the different pieces of equipment strewn around the place, it looked to be the airport maintenance building. It was dark, uncomfortable, and cold, but we seemed safe for the moment.

  I spied Tish. I needed to check on her. I walked over and knelt next to her. “How are you doing?”

  “I’m okay,” she said, without expression.

  “I’m so sorry about Tom,” I said.

  Sam cursed under his breath as Tish said, “Me too.”

  There was something about the way she responded. I didn’t know if it was the pitch or the tone or just the cold way the two words quickly rolled off her tongue. My stare lingered on her for a few ticks, but I eventually gave up once I decided she wasn’t ever going to make eye contact with me. Finally, I decided to just have a seat and rest my tired bones.

  We hadn’t been settled in for very long when another hail of gunfire erupted. This time the shots seemed closer.

  “Don’t seem ‘ike ‘ey was shootin at us,” Sam said.

  I half-ass nodded. As long as I didn’t hear any bullets plinking off the side of the building, I was content with just resting and shutting my mind off for as long as possible.

  Over the next half hour or so, there must’ve been at least fifty or sixty shots fired in different parts of town. Many of them were far off in the distance, on the other side of town, but it was difficult to know for sure because Barrow was such a small city. You could almost throw a rock across it was so diminutive.

  With the gunfire abating over time, we settled into mostly quiet contemplations. Sam had fallen asleep but had awoken due to an apparent bad dream. A shriek and wide eyes let us know he was reliving the day’s events. Tish flexed and rubbed her fingers, trying to work feeling back into her near-frozen digits. Avery spent most of that time talking to himself, questioning God, and drawing air drawings with his index finger. Titouan just seemed broken. The cast that had been created from growing up pampered had been completely broken away, leaving behind a huddled mass of a scared twenty-something.

  As for me specifically, I thought about Tom. Irrational as I knew it was, I began doubting my decision to leave him. We had a rifle. Maybe I coul
d’ve saved him. But then I set about justifying my decision to leave. I thought about what a good guy he was. How strong his character was. He would’ve wanted us to leave. He wouldn’t have wanted any of us getting hurt trying to help him. That’s just who he was as a man. Right?

  But then, you know what, I thought fuck that. We say all kinds of crap like that when we feel guilty. We say things like, “Your dad would’ve wanted me to remarry. He said he wanted nothing more than for me to be happy. You know that, don’t you, William, honey?” In reality, I knew my mom was wrangling longhorns with Earl long before dad died of lung cancer. She told me that crap because she felt guilty for marrying trucker Earl a long two weeks after dad passed away.

  “Yeah, Mom, and that Earl… he sure is a good guy. I hope you’re happy with him.” Actually, I hoped they enjoyed the trailer park they live in back in Indiana. Ol’ Earl got his second OWI and lost his CDL because of it. Soon after, he got the diabetes and lost a foot. Good thing I can keep a level head about stuff like that. Actually, fuck them and double fuck Marlboros. I didn’t leave Indiana because I loved my life there.

  Irrational tangent aside, or maybe not, we can’t read people’s minds. For all I knew, Tom might’ve thought, as he chumped on lunch lady, Fat fuck, where the hell are you going? Remember the time I went to the pharmacy to pick up your prescription for the crabs you got off that skanky hooker because you were too embarrassed to do it yourself? The least you could do is go shoot up some of the gray monsters eating the paralyzed chick in the kitchen. Hell, shoot me so I don’t eat her. Go out fighting, you pussy.

  The idiocy of my thoughts struck me funny – to the point of actually laughing out loud. All eyes were on me. Jesus, I was going crazy.

  Avery thought my outward showing of madness meant it was time for conversation. He said something, but I was preoccupied trying to think up something that might justify my untimely bout of mirth.

  “Huh?” I said.

  He looked annoyed having to repeat himself. “Should we at least talk about what happened?”