Out of the Dark (Light & Dark #1) (13 page)

I look down at Lilly and see that she is unaware of my happiness right now, but that’s okay. I don’t mind that either. I reach over and poke a finger into the bubble that she has just blown and she looks up at me. The gum is stuck to her lips, and I smile and she smiles back.

Chapter Fifteen.

#15. In this house of straw I cried.

We rummage through burnt-out homes and found things. Things we didn’t want to see. Things we would never be able to un-see. But in amongst those ruins, we also find things we can use: another lighter, some canned food that has no labels on it, a book I once read in high school, before all of this began. We find a blanket, and I fold it neatly and put it inside my carrier bag.

We rummage through old stores: a grocer’s, a shoemaker’s, a dairy shop that only sold milk.
How did they run that business?
I wonder. A shop that only sells milk and cheese, yogurts and such. The store must have at one time smelled foul when the produce began to decay and rot away, yet now it only holds the familiar scent of emptiness and loneliness that everything has.

The sun is beginning to set, and we find shelter in an old dress shop. It’s sufficiently lit with a skylight in the roof. A skylight makes it sound so fancy, but the skylight is, in fact, merely a hole in the roof. Through it you can see the sky—the sun, the moon, the stars, whatever else might be up there looking down on us. There is no shelter for us on the roof, of course. It would be too unsafe, I decide. Instead we find a trapdoor which still bears the heavy metal lock on it that it has held since it was put there, however long ago that was.

I smash the lock off with a block of wood after a fruitlessly long search for the key. It is dark down here, and neither Lilly nor I want to go down, but night is settling in and so I flick my old Zippo lighter and we make our way down the concrete steps. The place is dank and ugly, a storeroom of sorts. I flip a couple of switches, but the lights don’t work. I hadn’t really expected them to, but I always check, just in case. Habit, I suppose.

There are small rectangular windows, only an inch or so deep—enough to cast a little light in the space, but not big enough for anything or anyone to either get in or out of. And they are dirty. Really dirty. Years of dirt and grime, both inside and out, has built up on them—from even before the infection hit, I would think—so I don’t worry too much about the monsters seeing us down here. It does mean that we will be in the dark for the night, though.

As our eyes grow accustomed to the dark, we search for whatever else might be down here. There are piles of materials, all neatly stacked and ready to use, apart from the heavy layer of dust upon them. There are also racks of dresses and suits, and I flick through them. One dress catches my eye, and my hands stays, fingering the delicate material. A cream lace dress, knee-length, with little round pearls sewn into parts of it. It’s beautiful and I think of when I would have worn something like this. A wedding perhaps, or a christening, maybe. It isn’t the sort of dress that you would wear just any day. No, this is the sort of dress that you would put on to feel special.

“Pretty,” Lilly says from next to me.

“Yes, it is,” I say.

My hand falls from it and takes hers, and we continue around the room. There is a sewing machine and a desk and a high-backed chair, which looks incredibly uncomfortable. The room stretches out, almost never-ending and opening up into another room. A single mattress is on the floor, with blankets and pillows and an old rocking chair in the corner.

“It’s like they knew we were coming and made up the room for us,” I say jokingly.

“Who?”

“The people.”

Lilly cocks her head to one side. “Which people? Everyone is dead.”

Her words chill me, and I nod solemnly. I put down the carrier bag next to the bed and then turn in a circle. I grip the edge of the duvet on the mattress and pull it off, shaking it in the air to get rid of some of the dust, and then I do the same to the pillow.

“It should be okay for you to sleep in now,” I say absently.

I go back into the other room and get the high-backed chair. I carry it over to one of the thin windows and I climb on top so I can look out. The window is filthy, and I do not want to wipe any of the dirt away so I put my face really close to the glass so I can properly see out. The moon and the sun are currently fighting for leadership, but the moon will win. It always does. The town is silent, nothing moves. Yet.

I climb down and tell Lilly to stay on the bed. I make my way back up the stairs we came down and I open the hatch that leads into the store. I look around for something heavy, finally seeing a large chest that holds material. I climb out of the basement and begin to pull the chest over to the hatch, and I place it as close to the opening as possible. Then I grab some of the material and I tip some of it out around the opening. I climb back inside the basement, gripping some of the material, and I carefully close the hatch, at the very last second letting go of the material. Then I pray that the hatch cannot be seen from the shop.

There is a small latch on the inside of the hatch. It won’t really do much good if the monsters know that we’re down here, but I slide it across all the same. Any lock is better than no lock.

When I get to the bottom of the concrete stairs I see Lilly standing and waiting for me.

“I told you to wait by the bed,” I say.

She stares at me but doesn’t say anything, and I frown. This is the first time she hasn’t done as I’ve asked. Certainly the first time that she hasn’t cared about not doing as she was told. I frown some more and then take her hand, leading her back into the other room.

I sit her down on the bed. “Are you okay?” I ask, standing in front of her.

“I don’t feel well,” she says quietly.

I put a hand on her forehead, but she doesn’t feel hot. “I think you’re just hungry,” I say.

I pull the cans with no labels out from the carrier bag. And then I look around for something to help me open the cans, because I don’t have a can opener. Obviously. I find a large pair of dressmakers’ scissors on the desk, along with some smaller scissors and a knife. I use the scissors to stab a hole into the can, and when I pull the scissors free I hold the can up to my nose and sniff.

My heart plummets. Sinking into a bottomless pit. I drop the can, my hands shaking angrily. The room spins and I lower my head, putting it between my knees as I try to catch my breath.

“What’s wrong?” Lilly asks, “Can we eat it?”

I take deep, slow breaths, and when I feel less panicky I look up at her, forcing myself to dam the flow of tears that I can feel building up.

“It’s dog food,” I say to Lilly.

“Can we eat it?” she asks again, innocent, always so innocent.

I shake my head no and tell her that this is animal food, and we can’t eat it, and then her sad gaze drifts toward the floor. I stab through another can and find it is also dog food, and I want to yell in frustration. By the third can, my palm is sore from using the scissors to split the can open, and when I find it to be another can of dog food, I give up. I don’t want to dull my scissors on dog food.

I help Lilly into the bed and I climb in next to her, lying in front so I can get out quickly if I need to. We face each other in the dark, the musty covers draped over us as we stare into each other’s eyes. Our stomachs are empty and gurgling noisily, screaming for food. Minutes pass by, and then an hour or two, or maybe it is just mere minutes. The noises begin as they do every night: the scratching, and clawing, the hissing and screaming. But I feel almost numb to it tonight.

Lilly places an arm across my waist and holds me tightly, trying to be brave. I know that she hates these sounds. I do too. But I think these sounds must be so much worse for a child. As a child your fears are more irrational than when you are fully grown. But what she doesn’t understand is that the noises are just as scary for me, a full-grown woman, because I cannot rationalize them away. They are real, living, breathing nightmares.

Nevertheless, I kiss the top of her head and then I hum quietly into her ear to try and drown out some of their horrible sounds. It seems to work. Yet just as Lilly seems to be about to drop off to sleep, she speaks. I jump, just a little, as the sound of her voice in this interminably dark basement fills the space.

“Sarah wanted to leave you behind,” Lilly whispers.

“It doesn’t matter now,” I whisper back.

“She said I should go with her. That I could go somewhere safe.”

Silence.

“But I didn’t want to leave you,” she continues. “Even though she said it would be safe where she was going. I wanted to stay with you.”

I kiss her head again. “You should have gone with her. It would be safer than this.” Tears fill my eyes at the truth of my words.

She shakes her head no and goes silent again, and I realize that my words must sound horrible to her—though I hadn’t meant them to be. She’s only a child. I forget how young she really is sometimes. Especially now, traveling on foot and without her small teddy bear to cuddle. She seems so much older, so much wiser than her short years.

I ponder on how to make her feel better, on what I can say that might make things not sound so cruel. But then her soft snores fill the silence that her voice left behind and I put it all to the back of my mind and hope that she won’t remember what I said when she wakes up.

The night stretches on for eternity, since I cannot sleep. I do not feel safe down here in this basement. Shadows pass by the windows every once in a while, shrill screams filling the air. I jump at every new sound. Eventually I get out of bed and go into the other room. I sit in the large corner chair and I light a cigarette, feeling better with the nicotine in my system. My stomach aches, my head pounds, and my thoughts whirl.

Sarah tried to take Lilly from me, my Honeybee. That makes me hate her all the more, yet I know that is wrong and selfish. So incredibly selfish. The most selfish thing ever.

If she had left Lilly because she wanted the car, that would be one thing. She didn’t want the burden of a child—I hated that I could understand that, but I could. But she had tried to take Lilly
from
me. That was very different. Because I was Lilly’s and Lilly was mine. It had been that way since we had found each other in the sunflower field, both lost, both frightened, both ready to give up.

My hands clench angrily. Sarah had tried to take Lilly away. To take her somewhere safe. But there is nowhere safe. Sarah is delusional. I would have nothing if I didn’t have Lilly. I would
be
nothing. I would be alone in this nightmare without purpose, and I don’t think I could continue on without her. What would be the point? It is all so incredibly inevitable anyway. I only keep going for her. So in a way, I see Sarah as trying to take Lilly from me as a death threat of sorts… or perhaps I’m just really really tired and hungry.

I smoke another cigarette. They taste strange since they are the ones that I had found in the gas station and had gotten damp, but nicotine is nicotine. I smoke it in four long pulls, and then I stub it out on the floor. I stare into the blackness of the basement, barely able to make out my own hands in front of my face. The darkness doesn’t play tricks on my mind, because I feel like perhaps this is all one large trick—this life, this existence, if you can even call it that. I rock back and forth, and I don’t realize that I am even crying until the sun begins to shine through the small, dirty windows, the light reflecting off the silent tears that have pooled in my open palms. The screams have stopped and a dull gray light now shines in the room.

I wipe my hands down my pants and stand, and then I go back to where Lilly is still sleeping soundly. I wipe my damp cheeks dry with the sleeve of my sweatshirt and then I climb onto the bed and lie next to her. She automatically nestles up against me as if I had never gone, and I kiss the top of her head and close my eyes. Blackness takes me, dragging me under to blissful unconsciousness.

The mattress smells musty and old, and the air in the basement is stale, but all I can smell is Lilly. The sweet smell of this little girl who loves me, and whom I love in return. She didn’t leave me. She chose me over Sarah. That makes me both happy and sad. Because one day soon we will have to leave each other. The infection is spreading. I can feel it in my veins, I can taste it in the very air that we breathe. One day soon this will all be over, and we will be the ones screaming through the night and hiding from the day. I hate that truth, but it is fact.

We will both become that which we fear.

Chapter sixteen.

#16. Find help in what is provided.

I awake far too soon. The arm that Lilly is lying on is tingling. I slowly slide it out from under her and I flex my fingers to get the blood flowing again. I can’t see her face. Her curly hair is long and ratty and is covering most of her cheek and forehead, an arm slung above her head. The black veins are clear and prominent, running down her neck like track marks to hell. I stare at them, willing them to disappear, to leave us alone. But they don’t go.

They are here to stay.

I brush the hair back from her face, jolting when I see her staring back at me, and for a second I think she is dead already. But then she blinks. And then she attempts a smile. It turns into a grimace as her stomach growls hungrily. Her sweet lips part and she speaks.

“I’m hungry, Mama.”

I look away, not bearing to look at her any longer. I feel guilty. I have failed her. I should have been more careful. I should never have allowed that woman into our lives, but I did. I trusted again, and look where it has got us: starving.

We’re starving to death, and there’s nothing I can do about it.

“I’m sorry,” I say. I don’t wait for her reply, instead I sit up. “Let’s go see if we can find something to eat. I think we’ll have better luck today,” I say, though it’s a lie. Our luck feels just as hopeless as yesterday and the day before that one.

“Okay,” she says, and sits up. She’s always so resilient.

Her hair is a nest of knots and I laugh, a small squeak of happiness escaping my misery. I reach over and ruffle her hair, and she blinks back at me questioningly.

“Let me do something with this first. You don’t want to get bugs living in it, do you?”

She shakes her head and then scoots over to me. “I do not want bugs in my hair mama.” She blinks those big brown pools at me and a rush of love runs through me.

Slowly and methodically, I begin to run my fingers through her hair. My fingers catch and tug on some of the bigger knots. “I think I need to cut some of it off, okay, Honeybee?”

“Okay,” she replies without care.

I stand and find the dressmakers’ scissors from the desk. They are big and cumbersome, my fingers unused to wielding them. I sit back down and slowly begin trimming away some of the larger knots, and then I cut some of the length away. I stop when her hair reaches just above her shoulders, and I put down the scissors. I continue running my hands through the curls until my fingers glide through easily. I kiss the top of her head.

“There you go. All better.”

She stands up and runs her own hands tentatively through it, her pupils dilating when she sees all the hair that I have cut away covering the bed and floor.

“It is just hair. Hair grows back,” I say.

“Okay,” she says with a small pout.

She stands and stares, waiting for me to do something else, to tell her what we are doing now, and I realize that she is going back inside herself again. As if all of our time at the secret house had never existed. I am losing that Lilly again, and it pains me.

I stand up, gathering our meager belongings and taking the few extra items that we have found, and then I take Lilly’s hand and we go to the concrete stairs and climb up them. I push open the hatch a fraction and look around, checking for monsters. If there are any inside the store, I cannot see them, so I push the hatch all the way open and we climb out. I close the hatch after us and put the material and chest on top. We may end up using it again tonight, or perhaps someone else will find it one day and it can provide them with somewhere safe to sleep. That thought makes me feel both good and bad. Good because I am helping an unknown person, and bad because deep down, I don’t want anyone else to be living this way and going through what we are going through.

Deep down, I’m not sure I think it’s worth it.

We step out into the daylight, and both take deep breaths of the fresh morning air. It’s dull today, the sun not glaring down with its usual beautiful bright heat, and I wonder if there is a storm coming. That would be bad. If a storm were to come, it would be best at night, not during the day. I think it might have rained a little in the night because I can smell damp in the air. The ground is dry now, but I still hold out some hope that water might have collected somewhere that we can drink it.

I look left and right, deciding on which way to go, when I feel Lilly tug on my arm. I look down at her, and she points to a garbage bin. I nod and we walk over together and begin to rummage through it, but there is nothing. Just empty cartons and long-rotted food.

“Come on,” I say, and take her hand again.

We walk through the small town, weaving in and out of buildings and around rusted out cars, piles of ash, and bones. Plants and trees have continued to sprout up amidst the destruction, like the earth is showing us the sick irony that is our life. Mother Nature will take with one hand and give back with another. The human race is slowly being wiped from existence, one brutal monster at a time.

What will come after us?
I wonder.

A patch of yellow catches my eye as we step around a pile of rubble that was once a shop that boasted that it sold the town’s “best milk souvenirs,” and again I wonder at what a strange town this is. I walk further around the rubble and toward the patch of yellow, tugging Lilly along with me. I smile when I see the small patch of dandelions.

“What is it?” Lilly asks.

“Dandelions.”

A pause and then: “Can we eat it?”

“Yes,” I say.

I sit down and she sits next to me. I dig around the flower, the dirt sticking in my nails. All the while Lilly watches me carefully. I finally free the weed—root, leaves, and sunny yellow head—and I smile proudly at it. I pluck out a leaf and hand it to her. She takes it, examining it before putting it in her mouth and beginning to chew. I do the same and we both watch each other as we sit and chew the very bitter-tasting leaves of the dandelion. Lilly swallows hers first and I offer her another. She’s hesitant, and I can’t blame her. We’re hungry, close to starving again, but we still have taste buds, and these don’t taste very nice.

“I’ll cook them for us. We’ll have dandelion soup,” I say.

I gather some twigs and rocks, making a small circle of rocks and putting the twigs in the center. I get out our bottle of water and then look around us for something to cook the flowers and water in. I stand up and a dizzy spell hits me, making me sway, and the world tilts sideways. I try to focus on a spot in the distance to steady myself, but it doesn’t work so I close my eyes instead.

“Mama?” Lilly’s hand touches my leg and I blink away the dizziness.

I look down at her. “I’m okay. I need something to cook them in.” I look toward the collapsed souvenir shop. “I will find something in there.” I hold out my hand and she takes it, and together we walk over to what was once the doorway.

I look in, seeing dark and dirt and dust, wood and rubble, glass and trinkets that are no good to me. But there is a counter, and underneath the counter I can see what I think is a can of something. The building is too dangerous to try and get inside by walking in, so I lie down on my front and pull myself along the ground. The debris scratches my stomach, and I think I hear my clothing tear before the sharp pinch of my skin scraping on rocks. I wince but keep going until my hand can reach under the counter and touch the can.

I look back to Lilly, her feet visible to me. “I have it,” I say to her, and she bends down and looks in at me. I smile and then look back to the can. I stretch and reach, my fingers flexing for a little more space to grip it. However, the area is tight and restrictive, and no matter how much I try, I cannot reach it. I stretch until my shoulder feels like it might dislocate, until my fingers feel painful, but still all I can do is scrape my fingertips against the can, but not grasp it fully.

I curse out my whispered frustrations and then slide myself backwards, my stomach and chest scraping along the ground again. When I am back out into the daylight, I look down and see that my sweatshirt has torn and a small circle of blood is on me. I lift up my top and look, but the cut is only very small. I look back to Lilly and shrug in frustration.

“I can’t reach it,” I say with a frown.

Lilly kneels down and looks inside. Seconds pass as we sit in silence and then she looks back to me, her wide brown eyes meeting my cool gray ones.

“I can try.”

“No,” I say immediately. “We’ll think of another way.”

Another dizzy spell hits me, and I decide that we will just have to eat the bitter weed raw, whether we like it or not. I tell Lilly this and she grimaces.

“I want to try,” she says stubbornly.

I turn around on hands and knees and look back into the gloom of the shop. I can see the dull metal of the can, but I cannot read the label. It could be dog food again, I think. But then, it could be food—real food. If we get it, we could eat. I could stop the hollow, painful feeling inside Lilly’s stomach. We would have the empty can to make our soup in. That can represents two meals, not one. It represents two more days of life. It represents everything about our current existence—how our life, a true life, is just out of our grasp. That’s pitiful, but true. I look at Lilly again. She doesn’t seem afraid, only hungry and determined.

“Okay,” I relent. “Get the can, quickly. I will be right here,” I say, pointing to the edge of the entrance. Because there isn’t enough room for both of us in the space. “Don’t go too far into the dark. Get the can and come straight back out.”

She seems almost pleased, and nods before getting down on her belly. She takes a deep breath and begins crawling her way into the small space, her small body moving easier in the confines than mine had. She reaches the can, grips it, and pulls it free with a small tug. The counter and some rocks move around her and I gasp as I wait to see if it will collapse, but it doesn’t. She glances back at me with a smile, proudly holding the can for me to see.

“I got it, Mama,” she whispers to me, the whites of her teeth glowing against her dirty face.

I smile back, and then my attention is drawn to the glow of two bright red eyes that shine out of the darkness close to her face. “Lilly,” I whisper.

She looks back ahead of her, and I hear the short intake of breath she takes as she sees the eyes too. I crawl in after her, and grab her ankles just as the monster begins to move toward her with a hiss and a snap of teeth. I pull her legs, not caring if I scrape her face or hands, not caring if she drops the can, only caring that I need to get her out, now.

She doesn’t cry as I pull and pull, and it feels like she will never make it back out into the sunlight—until finally she does. We stagger backwards on our hinds, clinging to one another as the monster comes forward, forgetting itself for a brief second and daring to come out into the daylight. It screams in pain and darts back inside, and we can smell the stench of burnt flesh as smoke rises out of the dark hole of the shop. It watches us as it licks its wounds, hissing every once in a while.

I grip Lilly and pull her to me, and she climbs on my knee and wraps her small body around me. I stand up and back away from the hole of the store, still watching the monster within. I take us back to our dandelion patch and I sit back down. I can’t see the monster anymore, and it can’t see us, but it knows that we are here now, and we know that it is there. We will need to leave now, quickly and quietly, putting as much distance between us and this place before nightfall.

“Are you okay?” I whisper against Lilly’s hair.

Her arms give me a small squeeze to let me know that she is okay.

“I need you to help me dig the plants up. We need to leave, but we can take these with us.”

She nods but doesn’t move, and I hate that I have to pull her away from me and get her to do this. She wants comfort, but I need her to dig. She looks up at me, her eyes full of hurt that I can’t allow her a few more seconds in the safety and solace of my arms.

“We need to hurry,” I say urgently and apologetically. Her face is grazed, a little blood trailing down her left cheek, and I wipe it away gently with my sleeve. “Help me,” I say.

Lilly nods and then holds up the can in her hand, and I want to laugh and cry at the same time. It’s pinto beans. Of course it is. She hands it to me and I put it in our bag, and then we begin to dig. She is slow at first and then she becomes almost frantic, her breaths coming short and sharp, and I can see her eyes building with unshed tears. We dig and dig, and she copies me when I pull out the plants and put them in our carrier bag, being sure to get all of the roots.

When all of the weeds have been dug up, I take her hand and we stand. I peer around the rubble cautiously and see the red eyes of the monster still glowing near the doorway. It hisses as if it knows that I am watching it, and I dart back away. I take Lilly’s hand and we begin to walk quickly away from here, from this town and its little broken stores filled with monsters and souvenirs.

As we reach the outskirts of the town, I see a cap on the ground. It was white once but is now more of a gray. It has little cow hands on the peak and they clap in the breeze. I pick it up and slap it against my thigh to free some of the dust from it, and then I take Lilly’s cap off her head and place on this new one.