No Light Beyond

by L. Douglas Hogan

  “We’re getting out of here,” Mason said, jumping into action. He set his rifle down against the headboard and went to work untying her hands. Once he had freed her wrists, he moved down to the footboard and was slowed by the knot, which was much tighter than the wrist restraints, no doubt tightened by Shemika’s legs pulling against them.

  “What took you so long?” Shemika teased.

  “I was a little tied up myself,” he replied.

  “What about Lydia?” she asked, seemingly disregarding her own condition. It was an unselfish question that Mason was careful to mentally note.

  “They refused to give her to me,” he said, still trying to untie the knot. “Then they traded her to the Scroungers, I was told.”

  Mason was getting upset at the knot. “I can’t get it undone. I need a knife.”

  “Good luck,” she said.

  “Here, take this,” Mason said, handing her the rifle he had leaned against the bed. “If anybody comes in here, blow their brains out. I have to find a sharp tool of some sort.”

  “Get out of the way,” she said, pointing the rifle at the rope that was wrapped around the footboard’s bedpost.

  Mason pushed the rifle away. “It’s too risky. Just wait here. I’ll be right back.”

  Mason took off out of the apartment and headed upstairs to the top floor. Several doors were open in the main hallway, letting a little bit of sunlight in through the windows, which cascaded into the hallways.

  “Try to find a weak spot,” a man’s voice called out from one of the rooms.

  “What do you think I’ve been doing?” another yelled back.

  “We’ve only killed three of them,” a third voice yelled.

  “Just shut up and keep firing,” yet another voice said.

  Mason knew he was deep in enemy territory, and if he was caught, he would be a dead man, so he treaded softly, entering the room where one of the voices was heard coming from.

  The man was sitting on a stool, shooting from the window. There were several rifles and boxes of ammunition scattered about. It looked like they had raided a few army surplus stores or reserve centers to accumulate this many guns and this much ammo. Two of the closest rifles to Mason’s position were AK-47s, each with a magazine already inserted.

  Reaching into the room, he very quietly grabbed one that was leaning against the wall just under the light switch. Once it was in his possession, he checked it to make sure the magazine was full and a round was in the chamber. The gunfire had not stopped; it had only slowed a little bit.

  With the man at the window focused on killing Ravagers, Mason pointed the AK-47 at his head and pulled the trigger. The man’s head popped and sprayed a pink mist out of the window. His body went limp over the windowsill, and he dropped the rifle onto the ground below.

  Mason heard a stumbling sound come from the next room over. A man came walking into the room where Mason was standing. The man’s hands were hanging to his sides, but Mason wasn’t going to wait for him to draw the pistol on his waist. Mason shot the man through the chest. Fatally wounded, he pulled his pistol and pointed it at Mason, who was already dodging for cover. The man ran back to the room he came from, and Mason heard him calling for help from the window of that room.

  Mason ran to the man and shot him a second time. This time the man dropped. He was gasping for air as Mason unfastened his pistol holster and belt. Mason strapped the belt to himself and searched both of the men for a knife. The first man Mason shot had a buck knife fastened to his belt. He pulled the knife out of the sheath and used it to cut the belt off. He slid the sheath off the belt and fastened it to his gun belt.

  Worried that others had heard his call for help, he darted out of the apartment and into two men that were standing in the hallway. They began shooting at each other as Mason ran into the room across the hall. He locked the door behind him and looked out the window.

  There was a fire escape not too far away, but to get to it, he would have to climb out the window and scale the wall of the building, and he did exactly that. He grabbed onto a drainage downspout and lowered himself to the bottom floor. The two men that saw Mason in the hallway had busted into the room Mason had fled into and were now looking out the window as he descended toward ground level.

  “He’s trying to get away,” one of the thugs said, backing out of the room with the other man. “Get the others together and tell them we have a white boy in the building and he’s headed for the ground.”

  “Shouldn’t we let the Ravagers have him?” the other man questioned.

  “No, Diggity’s gonna want to speak wit’ ’im.”

  Mason was now at the second floor of the building, and he broke the window nearest the downspout and climbed in. The room appeared empty, so he ran out into the main hall and headed for the staircase. He took it down to ground level and saw a man standing near the main entrance. Mason shot him in the neck, causing him to grope at his throat. He kicked the man to the ground and turned toward the main entrance. There was a chain tightly wrapped around the door handles that was being used to keep the door secured from the inside. Mason unwrapped the chain and threw the front door open, completely exposing him to the remaining Ravagers that were screaming in the street.

  Mason became terrified at the sight and was nearly petrified at the sound alone. As if the creatures could smell his fear, they turned to face him and took off in a dead sprint toward his position. Mason ran as fast as he could toward the emergency exit at the far end of the hallway. As he progressed, several Ebony Pistol gang members came running out into the hallway after him. Mason did not stop to check on their fate, but heard the shrieks of the Ravagers and the sounds of several rifles as the men tried to save their own lives.

  Mason reached the exit and hurriedly unwrapped the chain that secured the door. Once it was open, he bolted out of the building and up the emergency staircase to the third floor, where he cut Shemika free and helped her out of her prison bed.

  “We don’t have any time,” Mason said in a panic.

  “Are they in the building?” she asked.

  “Yes, I let them in.”

  “You what?”

  “I had to. It was the only thing I could think of to neutralize the playing field.”

  “How many of them are there?”

  “I don’t know… fifteen… twenty. I didn’t wait around to count them.”

  A scream was heard just outside the room in the hallway.

  “Shh, shh,” Mason said, putting his finger on his lip. “They must’ve followed me up here.”

  Shemika’s heart rate began to escalate at the thought of a flesh-eating monster being just outside the apartment. Mason grabbed his rifle tightly and moved forward to the front room door. He slowly and cautiously approached the peephole, with Shemika attached to his arm. He looked through the tiny window just as the Ravager let out another shriek. Its face was almost planted against the door, and the sight of the creature at this closeness scared Mason into backing away from the door.

  The creature began pounding at the door violently, reminding Mason that he needed to lock it. He bolted the door and used the sliding chain lock as a secondary precaution. Next, he took a chair from the kitchen and wedged it up against the knob with the legs digging tightly into the carpet.

  “Nothing’s coming through that door,” Mason let out.

  Suddenly there were more screams in the hallway combined with even more violent beating on the door. It felt like the whole wall was about to cave in as any remaining interior wall décor fell off the walls and broke on the floor.

  “What now?” she asked.

  Mason thought for a moment, then said, “Go get a blanket.”

  Shemika ran to the back room and brought a blanket back to the door, handing it to Mason. He took it and used it to fill the crack under the door.

  “What now?” Shemika asked.

  “Let’s chill."

  Entry Six

  “Dear Lydia, I learned a t
errible truth yesterday: there are far more terrifying things out there than cannibalism. Something’s infected the bodies of the living that’s causing them to come back to life after they’ve been killed, only they’re worse off than they were before.

  “I tried to save you by myself but realized I couldn’t do it alone. I went back for Shemika and successfully rescued her a second time. She’s so tough, Lydia. I think you’re going to like her. She’s been through so much and acts like it’s no big deal. I know that it is, that she’s just burying her emotions deep down because that’s what’s necessary to survive. You were one of the first things she asked about.

  “After I rescued her, several Ravagers—that’s what some people are calling the creatures—trapped us in an apartment building. I noticed something as it became dark tonight. I’ve been noticing several little things that paint a larger picture. It’s not enough to answer all my questions, but I think I might have figured out something. I don’t think the Ravagers can see. Their eyes are hazy and foggy looking, much like cataracts in the eyes of blind people. I think they can smell fear, though. Each time they have turned to chase me, it wasn’t until I became frightened. Even when they trapped us in this apartment, they kept trying to get into the apartment until we got used to the banging and we closed off the draft under the door with a blanket. It was only a few minutes later it stopped.

  “I think they’re gone now. I haven’t heard anything all night except for a few instances of gunshots and the usual Ravager scream that is normally followed by death. If the Ravagers aren’t killing all the Ebony Pistols, they’re at least keeping them locked in their own places so that they’re not bothering us.

  “Another thing I’ve noted is their response to other Ravagers when they scream. It’s like a call to feed or something.”

  ...

  Mason was writing in his journal on his side of the bed. He was leaning up against the headboard, and Shemika was still asleep. Her head rested gently on his lap. Mason took a blanket that he was using to prop his back and put it under her head so that he could get up and stretch out for the long day that lay ahead.

  He took his journal over to the window, and the first thing he saw was one of the Ebony Pistol gang members he’d had a brief shoot-out with in the hallway.

  Mason leaned against the window and opened his journal back up to write another note.

  ...

  “I’ve seen Scroungers turn after I kill them, and I’ve seen Ebony Pistols turn after the Ravagers kill them. I don’t see any rhyme or reason in any of this yet, but my hopes will be to have some answers by the time I find you. I miss you so badly. Goodbye for now. I love you. —Daddy.”

  ...

  Mason closed the book and stuffed it back into his waistband.

  An hour later, Shemika woke up from a well-rested sleep. It was hard getting into her happy place with all the neighborhood racket, but once she was out, it was a solid ten hours of sleep. The light from the window was soft, as was the norm, as it came into the room. She sat and stretched. Her body was sore from being tied in the same position for such a long duration. When she realized that Mason wasn’t in the bed next to her, she jolted upwards and to the window.

  The streets were full of Ravagers as she scanned about the immediate area. Standing there, amidst all the Ravagers, Mason stood calmly still. Her heart was gripped with fear for a moment, as she thought he had been turned. Then she saw he was gripping a rifle in one hand and a knife in the other. She had never seen a Ravager’s behavior until recently, but she had overheard the Pistols talking about them quite a bit. She knew they lacked the fine motor skills required to manually grip a weapon. She stood there at the window and watched in wonder as Mason exploited some weakness in their senses that he had discovered.

  After a few minutes, Mason headed back upstairs and met Shemika at the door.

  “How’d you do that?” she asked.

  “Do you trust me?” he answered.

  “With my life.”

  Mason reached out his hand and she took it. “Close your eyes.”

  Shemika closed her eyes.

  “Never mind what you hear or what you smell, remain calm, and above all, don’t be afraid. They smell fear; I don’t know the science behind it, but they do. Let me guide you out of here.”

  “Can I talk?” she asked.

  “I don’t know the answer to that yet. All I know for certain is that they can’t see us, not with their eyes, anyway. They seem to have another sense that blinds them to everything but fear.”

  Mason began to walk forward, pulling Shemika by the hand as he went. He led her down to the ground level through hordes of creatures, sometimes brushing into them when it became cramped for space. He led Shemika out the front door and onto the street outside.

  “How are you doing?”

  “I’m imagining that I’m on a deserted island, lying in a hammock swinging in the breeze.”

  “That sounds like a nice place.”

  “I wish you were here with me,” she said, smiling.

  Mason slowed to a stop when he saw the building the scarred sisters lived in.

  “Why are we stopping?” she asked.

  “Two reasons: first, when I was searching for you, I found two women. They’re sisters, and one of them is badly scarred. She can’t be older than seventeen or eighteen years old. The older one begged me to save her little sister.”

  “Do you have a plan?”

  “That depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On why we haven’t seen any Ebony Pistols or their vehicles in the area.”

  “They must’ve evacuated in the night,” Shemika reasoned.

  Mason began moving forward again, leading her by the hand. “Just a couple of hundred more yards.”

  Mason was taking note of the increasing number of Ravagers that were walking the streets. He surmised from some of the clothing they were wearing that they had once been Ebony Pistol gang members. Some of them had saggy pants that drooped well below their glutes, while others were stumbling on their pants because they’d fallen down around their ankles. Others had colored bandanas wrapped around their wrists, which was the way they identified their members on sight. He chose not to share any of the scene with his friend.

  When Mason and Shemika had safely reached the building where he’d met Tynice and her older sister, he stopped and asked Shemika if she was okay. He encouraged her to focus on her breathing and to stay in her happy place.

  He saw that the emergency stairs were up, and he couldn’t reach them. He considered yelling up at them, but wasn’t sure if the creatures would respond to the noise. He pulled Shemika by the hand to the back of the apartment building, remembering that their apartment was on the backside about the third apartment down. Seeing a rock on the ground, he picked it up and chucked it at the window. He missed and gave a second stone another throw.

  ...

  Tynice was sitting on the couch, with her eldest sister, Tanara, when their back bedroom window suddenly shattered. Both women stood up and made their way to the back room. Tanara had a baseball bat in her hand, and she was ready to plow it into the head of any intruder that might be trying to get in.

  When Tanara opened the door and quietly looked in, she saw the curtain was gently blowing in. The hole in the window was too small for a person to fit, so she assumed someone had thrown something in. Looking on the floor, she saw a stone. She grabbed it into her hand then made her way to the window.

  Tanara looked outside and saw the man who had promised to return and save Tynice, standing in a thrall of Ravagers. Shocked, she gasped and took a step back, bumping into her sister. Tynice wanted to look and see what was so shocking, so she looked out of the window and saw the stranger with another black woman, who had her eyes closed. The man smiled and waved at Tynice.

  “He’s insane,” Tynice said. “I’m going with him.”

  “You’re not going out there,” Tanara said. “You’ll die.”

/>   “We’ll starve to death and die in here. What’s the difference? I’d rather take my chances out there.”

  Tynice went back to the window. “I’m coming down.”

  “No, wait,” Mason said. “It’s not safe. Let me in the front door so we can talk about it.”

  “It’s already unlocked,” she said. “Everybody that survived managed to evacuate last night.”

  Mason led Shemika by the hand to the front door of the complex. When he opened it, he saw there were more than a few Ravagers walking the halls. He led Shemika by the hand to the stairs, but was slowed by a wall of furniture that the previous occupants must’ve put in place to keep the Ravagers out. Mason made a walkway, and they proceeded up the stairs.

  There were a couple of bodies lying on the steps as they made their way up. Mason was exercising extreme caution, being careful not to touch them or otherwise disturb them in any way.

  He looked over his shoulder to see how his friend was doing, and at that moment, she stepped on a corpse. Mason froze and commanded her not to move. He waited for the body to respond, but it didn’t budge. He took the pistol from the man’s hand and stuffed it into Shemika’s waistband.

  “Here’s a present for you. Let’s keep moving,” he urged her.

  Joliet Union Station

  The Order territory

  Romeo Ramirez, a convicted narcissistic murderer with antisocial personality disorder, was the barn boss of Statesville Correctional Center when the Flash shut down the facility’s state-of-the-art security systems. The facility was equipped with a backup manual key locking system, but some things don’t work according to plan.

  The Flash couldn’t have happened at a more convenient opportunity. Ramirez was already staging an uprising in protest of the cold meals they had been served for six consecutive days. When the lights went out, the generators failed and the electronic locking systems did not engage. A slightly unorganized uprising was enough to take over the penitentiary and, in time, make it to the streets.