Out of the Dark (Light & Dark #1) (15 page)

She doesn’t ask me to sing anymore, and I’m glad, because I can’t stand the sound of my own voice right now.

Chapter Eighteen.

#18. …

It will be night soon. Again. I sigh, feeling more frustrated than I would normally. I should be feeling anxious as the day draws to a close, as our savior—the sunlight—goes to bed to rest its weary rays of light. Yet I don’t. I just feel frustrated because the days are never long enough.

We stand outside a squat, red-bricked house, both unsure of what to do. It could be safe inside. But it might not be. Monsters may be inside, waking from their daytime rest, hungry and eager for the night’s gentle caress on their skin. There could be other humans inside. Bad humans. Vicious humans. Humans with bad intentions.

But the house could also be empty. We could rest here for the night. We could hide—sleep, hopefully… but there could be humans or monsters…It’s so hard to tell the difference between the two sometimes.

So many frightening possibilities.

I see Lilly and I as separate entities from other humans now, since none have proved anything to us but how corrupt their souls really are, showing that they are no better than the monsters we all run from. As if we are the only true living humans left on earth. As if the black poison that grows in other humans, threading and weaving its way through their veins, destroying their bodies, has ruined everything that they are. And perhaps even though they are still physically human, they aren’t really—not where it truly matters: inside. Of course it doesn’t help that we haven’t seen another human in almost a week now. Not since Sarah. Not since she stole all of our things and abandoned Lilly at the roadside. I growl, my nostrils flaring at the memory of what that horrible woman did to us.

Yes, Lilly and I are our own race now. Still human. Still pure and fundamentally good, for the most part. For now, at least.

I stare at the darkened windows of the house, willing my eyes to penetrate through the glass to see inside, to see if there are dangers that lurk within these walls. But of course I can’t see inside. Of course I’ll have to go and look. Of course I’ll have to risk our lives searching for somewhere safe to spend the night. Of course, of course, of course!

I sigh again. The beginnings of a new headache making itself known. Or an old headache. I’m not sure that the previous one ever really went away. They all just sort of roll and tumble into one now, like the days, and weeks. Everything is a blur of facts and things that happen, decisions that are made and not. A big blur of
what ifs
and
whatevers
.

“Mama?” Lilly whispers questioningly, urging me to make a decision soon.

“Come on, Honeybee,” I say, pulling on her arm gently as I guide her to the back of the house.

The front yard is full of long, dying brown grass, and I suck in a breath thinking about what could be lurking in those long grasses. The never-ending sunshine has turned the grass to brown straw, crisp and fragile as we walk through it, brittle and snapping as we brush against it. The bright sunshine that scorches my skin and steals my hydration. But I am not allowed to despise it, not even once, because it saves our lives. Every. Single. Day.

I clutch my blunt knife in my left hand and follow the rocky path to the backyard, all the while holding onto Lilly’s small hand tightly. I almost laugh when we reach the backyard, my eyes widening as I take in the image that awaits us. There is no back of the house. At all. The entire back of the house is not there—where it should be. The back walls have collapsed in a heap, and I can’t fathom how the front of the house is even still standing, but standing it still is. It’s unfathomable logic. I finally let loose the laugh as I see a skeletal body sticking out of some of the debris that was once the bathroom. They never made it out alive, but it doesn’t seem like the monsters got to them, either. This place was possibly safe. Until it wasn’t.

I sigh again, unsure of what to do now, my bitter, sardonic laughter dying on my cracked lips. It’s getting late, we don’t have much time, and yet still the urgency hasn’t hit me. I look down at Lilly, seeing her small curls sticking out from either side of her cow hat, one arm wrapped around the teddy bear with only one eye and her other hand still wrapped in mine. She’s staring straight ahead, looking anxious. And that’s how she should look. That’s how
I
should look. I bite my lip.

“I don’t know what to do,” I say, my words almost stolen by the wind. At first I think they are, but then slowly she looks up at me. I shrug, because I don’t know what else to do and honesty is the best answer for her. I gesture around us with the hand that holds the knife. “I don’t know what to do,” I say again. I feel bad, guilt eats away at me, because this is not the sort of thing that you drop on a young child. But I can’t help it. I’m lost, and confused, and so very very exhausted. And I really don’t know what to do.

“We need to hide,” she says matter-of-factly, looking at me like I am possibly the stupidest person alive.

“I know that. But where?” I say, feeling frustrated.

Lilly looks around us and then back up to me, understanding our predicament. “Somewhere safe,” she says with a small frown, and I have the urge to laugh again.

Somewhere safe. Is there even such a place?

“There is nowhere safe now,” I say morbidly, feeling bad as soon as the words leave my lips. Because again, this is too much for a child to have to take in. Yet Lilly just blinks up at me, her expression anxious but her eyes calm.

“I’m tired, Mama,” she whispers.

For some reason, those words snap me back to reality. I give one more sigh, just for good measure, and then I give myself a good mental shakedown. I see the setting of the sun. I see the ruins of the collapsed house. I see the long, overgrown grass that hides a multitude of secrets. I feel Lilly’s warmth, the sensation seeping through her small hand and into mine. I hear her shallow breaths. And then I see a pile of something at the back of the garden. I squint, looking closer, and think it might be a car, mostly hidden by wooden fence panels and garbage.

“Quickly,” I say, and start to move toward it.

Lilly follows close behind, her small hand never leaving mine. We finally get to the car—or what I hope is a car. I pull one of the fence panels back and look more carefully, expecting to see the face of one of the monsters looking back at me through the glass, but as I peer into the gloom of the car, I only see another skeletal body. It’s sitting on the other side of the car, in the driver’s seat. It’s staring out the window, its eyes expressionless and its hands still clutched around the steering wheel, ready to drive off at a moment’s notice.

I pull the wooden board back even more, the dying of the light urging me on quicker. I step around to the driver’s side of the car, my feet crunching on something, and when I look down I see both monster and human remains, my foot crushing through the bones of a misshapen monster skull. I flinch and jump back, almost falling on my ass. Lilly yelps and does fall, and then she yelps again as she lets go of my hand and begins to scoot her way backwards away from the bones of monsters and men.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” I say, reaching for her.

She whimpers but takes my hand and stands back up, and I dust off the bone fragments on her backside. I look back to the car, to the wooden panels concealing it, to the bones surrounding it, and an idea forms. I clutch the handle of the car door, a satisfied smile daring to cross my face when the door clicks open. I pull the door open wide, looking inside and seeing the keys hanging from the ignition. There were actually two people hiding in the car, not one, and now there are two sets of bones hiding inside it. I reach in, worrying about how to get them out carefully, but in the end I decide that there isn’t the time to be careful or considerate. I grip the clothing of the first body and drag it free of the car, forcing myself to look at the dried-out face of this person that was once alive.

The second body is in the back of the car, still huddled on the back seat in a fetal position, its face buried into its own arms. But it doesn’t move, not a fraction. There’s no way to get it out without removing more of the wooden boards, and I don’t have the time to do that, nor do I want to disturb what was obviously a good hiding spot for so long.

“Come on,” I say to Lilly.

I throw the carrier bag of our meager possessions in the footwell and help her clamber inside. Lilly climbs over to the passenger seat, oblivious of the body in the back. I run back around the car, putting all the panels that I’ve disturbed back in place and making it as hidden as it was before—maybe even more so. Then I move to the driver’s side, and before I get in I pull the last panel back around the car, concealing it again, and then I shut the door and lock it from the inside.

I look over to Lilly, her brown eyes staring back at me from the passenger seat.

“I think we’ll be safe in here for tonight.”

“Are you sure?” she asks innocently.

I keep my gaze on hers, letting her see my truth. “No. But we can never be sure of things like this, can we?”

She shakes her head but doesn’t reply. She knows that I’m right. We can never be sure of our safety. Not anymore. I reach in the bag and pull out the half bottle of water and offer it to her. She takes a small drink, aware that we need to ration everything right now, and I am in awe once more of her ability to understand things like this.

“Do you want some gum?” I say, and she nods, so I get one of the stale pieces out and give it to her.

“Do you not want any?”

“No,” I say, forcing a smile because I don’t want her to worry. I want her to chew the gum, enjoy the flavor, and forget the danger we are in for a little while.

She chews and chews, humming mindlessly to herself and to me, and then she starts to blow a large bubble. My eyes go wide when I see it.

“Oh no, Honeybee, you can’t do that,” I whisper.

She blinks back at me, confused, the large bubble still on her small, pink lips.

“It will pop,” I continue to explain. “It will be loud.”

Her eyes finally widen in understanding, and she tries to suck the air back out of the bubble.

I grin despite the danger we are in, because the image of her trying to suck the air out of the bubble is actually quite funny. Slowly the bubble deflates, and I nod an okay as she continues to chew more slowly. The car slowly descends into darkness just as the screaming begins outside—the high-pitched screech of the monsters as they awaken and set about finding their next meal. An involuntary shudder runs down my arms, goosebumps breaking out all over my skin despite the humidity of the summer evening.

And so it begins: the long night of waiting. Tonight, I feel, will be longer than any night that has come before this one. Something feels different, but I don’t know what. I look in the rearview mirror, my eyes finding the body still curled up on the backseat. Ice runs through my veins, my heart stopping in my chest as slowly, the head of the body turns, and eyes full of death stare back at me.

I blink at it. Once. Twice. Three times. And those eyes blink right back. Once. Twice. Three times. Neither of us move, the air stills, and all that can be heard is the chewing of gum coming from Lilly’s sweet mouth as the deathly face of the passenger on the backseat stares back at me. My hand clutches onto my knife, and though I know it’s blunt as hell, I’m also more than certain that this dull piece of metal will kill the thing in the back seat.

“Hel…p m…e.” The voice echoes forward, and I feel Lilly still next to me. “He…lp me,” the person says again.

I turn slowly in my seat, one hand gripping my knife and the other blocking Lilly.

I look upon the face of death, and the bitter realization floors me. This person is not a monster. They are human. They are not dead. But they are barely alive. Like us, but more so.

“Mama?” Lilly murmurs, her nails digging into the soft flesh on my arm, and I’m almost certain that she is going to break the skin at any moment. “Mama,” she says again.

I can’t look away from the face of this person. This person that is hollow and empty, much emptier than I am, and hollower than I thought someone could ever be. They blink, the movement sluggish, their eyeballs rolling into the back of their head before meeting mine again with a crackling breath.

“H...elp m…e,” they say again. Their voice is barely audible, and yet I hear the words clear inside my head.
Help me
. They want me to help them. But how can I possibly help them, when I’m barely alive myself?

The screams are right outside the window. Right outside the wooden panels that conceal us. All of us. All
three
of us. I swallow, my throat burning with the resistance. I want to take a sip of water, yet it feels wrong to do this in front of this person. This person that is dying. Starving. Dehydrating. Yet I don’t want to share our things with whoever they are. They are dying, almost dead. I cannot help them, a little water will not help them. Yet it would be cruel of me to deny it to them, even though the loss of the water could play a heavy part in both mine and Lilly’s downfall.

So I ignore the parched scratching in my throat, the panting thirst in my mouth, and the tickle of a cough. I ignore it all, and I turn back around in my seat. I face forward, away from the eyes of death on the back seat of the car. Away from the person that I cannot help. I glance sideways at Lilly. She is watching me carefully, trying to decide…something. Perhaps trying to decide if I am one of the good people or the bad people now for my cowardly act. For my cruelty. I place a finger to my lips as she opens her sweet mouth to speak, to question me.