The Dark and Shadowy Places

by Caitlin McColl

What Is Normal?

  Jonah sat on the rocky outcrop over looking the ocean. He liked to come up here as much as possible. It was a not so subtle reminder of…everything. He felt an affinity with the water, with the rock he sat on. They reminded him of how it used to be. The water, the rocks, the few trees that hadn’t been infected and were still alive, were natural, normal, untainted. Like him.

  “Jonah!” A voice shouted up from the bottom of the path that led to his sanctuary. Jonah turned, and had to shield his eyes as he watched the man walk toward him, the sun glinted eye-achingly bright off the metal of the mans prosthetic leg, arm, and the majority of his face, save his left eye, cheekbone and one natural ear that made his face look strangely off kilter. The virus had taken the other one, and he hadn’t bothered with a false one, when he could hear just as well through the mesh that covered his ear canal.

  “Come on! You’re going to miss it if you just sit around up here.” The man towered over him as he reached his side. “What do you like about this anyway? There’s nothing up here.”

  Jonah looked up at Stephen. He had been his first real friend. And he still was. Even if, technically, he wasn’t entirely real anymore. No one was, anymore. No one except Jonah.

  Jonah stood. “You know I don’t like it,” he said, almost whining.

  “Only because you’re the outsider!” Stephen said grinning. What was left of his real skin drew up in a smile. The mechanized side of his face did the same, but it didn’t have the same effect and instead turned Stephen into a grotesque thing that Jonah had to turn away from.

  “Precisely,” Jonah said. “I am the outsider. And I just don’t think everyone should be celebrating something like this.”

  Stephen narrowed his one good eye at Jonah. His left was synthetic and made of a smooth polished substance. “Celebrating how the world is now?”

  Jonah shook his head. “No, you’re celebrating what a virus, a disease, has done. You’re celebrating something that has taken over the world and destroyed humanity, destroyed civilization as we know it!”

  “Get over yourself, Jonah,” Stephen spat, turning abruptly and heading back down the hill, not waiting for Jonah to follow. “We’re still human, and we’re still here, still civilized. It hasn’t won. We have won over it. That’s why we have the parade. Because we’re proud. Because we’re still alive,” he said over his shoulder.

  “But-“ Jonah began.

  Stephen whirled, the pistons in his leg moving smoothly. “No buts, Jonah. We are still here. We are still people. Just because you may see us like freaks, just because you are the only one left untouched by the disease, doesn’t make you superior. You’re the minority now. You’re the odd one out, you’re the freak because you aren’t altered. You might think you’re somehow special, or more important than us, because for whatever reason, you didn’t catch the virus that ate the rest of us up from the inside out, and made us replace ourselves with metal and plastic and synthetics, but you’re not!” He shouted the last words over his shoulder again as he continued to stomp angrily down the hill.

  From his vantage point Jonah could see the town arranging in the square for the yearly Survivors parade. They looked like small troops of ants, being corralled in a line by spectators on either side of the parade route which wound throughout the city, beginning and starting in the town square by the large, ornate fountain. It used to be a man, a normal man of flesh and blood, riding a horse and carrying a large flag in support of the country’s victory. But since the virus that had taken so many and utterly changed so many people forever, into something other than totally human, the soldier on his horse had been replaced by someone that was now the norm in the world – someone part flesh and blood and bone, and part undead, unfeeling machine. The horse had disappeared as well, since the disease had first decimated their population, and then, in a few short years, lead to their extinction, along with so many other animals around the world.

  But now that the world had evolved, and, thanks to the virus, people had evolved as well, they had less need of domesticated mammals to help live their lives efficiently. People had become the work horses themselves. Most people had mechanical legs, since the virus started in the extremities, and mostly started in the legs, so that they were the first parts damaged, destroyed, replaced.

  From Jonah’s position on the hilltop, he watched the sun glinting off the statue of the Changed Man in the square, and lighting up the ant-sized people below, where the rays hit their mechanized parts that many refused to cover up with clothes. They lived with their new selves exposed to the world, as a badge of honour, pride.

  It had been a full three years since the disease had struck and spread across the planet like wildfire. Yet still to this day Jonah was convinced that he would still somehow contract it and become like them. Involuntarily his lips turned down in a grimace.

  His watched beeped on his unassuming arm of flesh, bone, blood and he sighed. It was a reminder of his appointment with the researchers. They wanted more blood, more scans, more pokes and prods with needles and electrodes. He was the human guinea pig. Everyone wanted to understand why he was the virgin human – unmarred.

  He moved down the hill. Stephen had long since disappeared and joined the masses of his brothers and sisters, where he belonged. An air horn cut loudly through the still air, signalling the start of the National Anthem, entirely rewritten after the outbreak, and the parade.

  It wasn’t easy being an outcast.

  Dusk and Dawn

  The houses glowed like embers, their windows lit up like little sparks of flame by the rising sun. They looked so peaceful, so safe on the mountainside. As if mother nature herself was protecting them. But Jemima knew better. She knew that most likely, those little flames, their windows reflecting the sunlight, would be empty, abandoned, or if not abandoned, that the occupants would be dead. Sometimes she imagined where the dead might be, would they be asleep, all tucked up in their beds? or would they be stretched out on the couch, or curled up in a chair, the TV still glowing, the characters and people on the screen moving forever, or until the power went out, without anyone to turn it off.

  She stood, looking out the windows of the top floor of the office building, towards those little flames on the mountain. Out of habit she glanced at her watch, but it had stopped working a while ago. That was okay. You didn’t really need your watch to tell the time. And time wasn’t really all that important anymore, anyway. The only time that mattered was day or night., but even more importantly, the time in between the two – dusk and dawn. That was when they were most active. Like ferrets, or hamsters.

  Jemima had been one of the lucky ones. If she hadn’t, she’d be dead too, just like pretty much everyone else she knew. But she wasn’t just lucky, she was smart. That’s why when her and all the other students in her class, along with their teacher, had come back from their camping trip to the lake out east to the sound of emergency sirens wailing, and plumes of thick smoke rising and swirling into the sky from so many areas, that the words that her father had told her came into her head, without her even really thinking about it. “Get to higher ground,” he’d told her. “No matter what happens, that’s the first thing to do. Get to higher ground. Go up. And from there you’ll have a vantage point, you’ll be able to assess the problem.”

  Jemima remembered the one question that popped into her head. “What kind of problem?” Her father had shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. Any problem. Fire, tsunami, earthquake, riots, anything that’s a danger. Rise above it.”

  So when their class had driven back into the city, amid the smoke and chaos, at the first opportunity, Jemima grabbed her backpack that was full of survival supplies from the trip – two left over water bottles, a handful of energy bars, a sleeping bag and pillow, a first aid kit (she was always prepared), and a small Swiss Army knife in a pink camo pattern – and jumped out the van when it stopped at a set of blinking traffic lights at an intersection. She ran, sprinting, fo
r the one place she could think of. Not home, that wasn’t high enough, with only its two storeys. She headed for the place where her father worked. It was the weekend though, the survival camping field trip being overnight on Saturday. Out of the corner of her eye she saw movement, people moving – some running, most walking with a strange, disconcerting shuffling gait. She heard screams, and crying, but she ignored them, and ignored the uncomfortableness of her bag as it swayed from side to side on her back. She reached the large glass doors without barely being out of breath, and for the first time, Jemima was glad that she was on the track team at school. She yanked the doors open and ran to the wall of elevators in the shiny floored lobby, her sneakers squeaking ear piercingly on the tiles. She jabbed the button with a finger. Nothing happened. She jabbed it again. Out of the corner of her eye she could see shapes, people moving outside. And then she noticed the thin slot next to the button. A card slot.

  “Dammit,” she cursed. The elevator required a key card to operate. She moved past the elevators to a stairwell and turned the round silver knob. It moved and she pulled the door open with a sigh of relief. She started up – at first taking the stairs two at a time, but by the time she reached the seventh floor she was struggling. She went stair by stair now, but still moved quickly. Six more floors, and then she’d be at the top. Lucky 13.

  She pushed open the door at the top and walked into an open plan office – desks and computers sat in groups of four. She headed for the balcony she knew skirted the outside. She tried the door leading out to the balcony that wrapped around the entire outside but it didn’t open. She walked along the bank of windows until she saw one that was ajar. Not many buildings had windows that still opened, but she knew this one did. It was one of the older buildings in the city. She pushed up the window from below, the old wood frame protesting out of lack of use and climbed through. A wall, like a protective barrier, that came to her chest met her. There wasn’t much room on the narrow strip of balcony, but enough. She stood on her tip toes to get a better look over the edge and down into the streets below, though she could see the main streets stretching away ahead of her without doing so. They looked like clogged arteries. Cars were stopped in clusters, and backed up as far as the eye could see. Most looked abandoned, their doors wide open like jaws of creatures waiting silently for prey to walk past. She saw movement. People moving like ants, like ants through treacle, slowly, aimlessly. She knew instantly these people-shaped things were no longer really people. She could see a couple people, and could tell they were like her. They moved fast, frantic. Darting from one building to the next, or between bumpers and hoods of cars that blocked the roads. They were doing what she was – trying to survive.

  The others, the ones moving like molasses, like old blood, she knew what they were. She didn’t kid herself. People had been joking about them for years, coming up with theories of what would cause it, or how or where it would start. But that didn’t matter really, when it boiled down to it. There was only one thing that mattered in the zombie apocalypse: survival.

  Jemima opened her bag and took a small bite of one of the chocolate chip protein bars she’d packed and thought about her new life.

  New World Order

  Jameson had walked, and sometimes even run, these trails and paths for years. He was pretty sure he could do them in his sleep. In fact, he often dreamed that he was walking along the trails carved out between colourful trees that took him up the mountainside and then down towards the calm water of the lake on the other side.

  And so it was that at first he thought he must be dreaming. It was so strange, so out of context that at first he ignored it and kept on going. But something made him stop. He looked back over his shoulder. At first he thought it wouldn’t be there. That he had imagined it.

  A dog wasn’t unusual on the forest trails, but this one seemed different. It was a small, wiry thing with blond fur the colour of corn silk sticking up every which way as if it had been electrocuted. It was digging madly through a pile of leaves that were soggy and discoloured on the side of the trail, a mass of red and orange and yellow and brown. Jameson watched it for a moment and then realized what was so strange about it. The dog was alone. There was no one around. He hadn’t seen anyone on the trails for quite a few minutes, and it was early in the morning. Where was its owner?

  Jameson hunkered down into a crouch and lowered his voice. “Hey boy,” he said softly so he didn’t frighten it. “Where is your owner?” The dog just glanced at him with large brown eyes and then continued its frantic mission.

  Jameson inched closer. “What is it?” he asked, not expecting an answer. “What have you found little guy?”

  And the dog had indeed found something. Something shiny poked out from within the dull leaves.

  The dog pawed at the object, dragging it out onto the path. It was a necklace, large and round like a medal.

  Jameson leaned down to pick it up, and the small dog bared its teeth at him and growled low.

  “Easy,” Jameson said soothingly. “It’s okay.” The necklace was circular and fit almost exactly in his palm. It was silver. Or silver plated anyway, and a large gem sat in the centre, glowing the same vivid red as the leaves that surrounded it, glinting in the September sun, catching the light and sparkling.

  Jameson glanced first down the trail and then up, into the thickening trees. Whose was this? Was the owner nearby? Had someone lost it? There wasn’t anyone else in the vicinity, that Jameson could see.

  He felt like he was stealing. But there was something about the silver disc that tugged at him. His fingers curled protectively around it. It seemed strangely warm in his hand, despite a cool mist hanging around from the morning. He stuffed the necklace in the pocket of his coat and continued on his way but stopped when he heard a soft tinkling noise from behind him. The dog was following him. “Go,” Jameson said, flicking a hand at the creature. “Go on, your owner is probably looking for you.”

  The dog stopped and stared at him mournfully with its large eyes, its tail moving slowly, hopefully back and forth.

  Jameson continued down the path that had started to slope downward. The tinkling resumed. He glanced over his shoulder. The dog was only a few feet behind him.

  Jameson sighed. “Are you lost?” He knelt down and carefully reached out to the dog’s neck and found the tag on his collar. Oliver, it said, but that was all.

  Jameson had always wanted a dog. And his apartment was one of the few that did allow pets. “Well, Oliver, what do you say about coming home with me?”

  Oliver continued to stare at him with his large eyes, his tail slowly swishing back and forth.