Out of the Dark (Light & Dark #1) (16 page)

Monsters are outside the car, merely a sliver of wood and metal away from us. Now is not the time to judge me. Now is the time to hush and sink into the darkness. To forget the person on the backseat. To forget to judge me, and forget to choose between good and bad. Now is the time for silence. I need the silence. I need to believe that what I am doing is for the best.

Let Lilly’s thoughts be loud in her beautiful head but silent on her lips. Because there truly can be no greater punishment than hearing her disappointment in me.

Chapter Nineteen.

#19. The longest nights are the ones I hate.

The person, whoever they are, stopped asking for help once we turned back around, as if they knew that it was futile to waste their energy on pleas for help from us. I wonder if Lilly and I are perhaps not the first people to do this to them—to ignore them and view this person’s death as inconsequential to their own existence. That unfathomably makes me feel worse, and yet better almost simultaneously. I check the mirror every once in a while, seeing their cold, lifeless eyes staring back at me.

As the night grows heavy, it becomes harder to see them, hiding away there on the back seat of this tragically decrepit car. Lilly fell asleep a little while ago, her cheek pressed against the glass of her window. I woke her the first time she fell asleep, because she looked so deathly still, almost like the person on the back seat, and I freaked out that she might have actually died.

The screams have turned distant as the monsters roam further away for food. They came, our scent pulling them toward us, but the bodies outside of the car—both of their own kind and those that are human—masked us. And so now they are moving on, confused as to where we have gone. Yet I still don’t make a sound. Still I don’t leave the car.

The person seems almost frozen in their position. And perhaps they are. Maybe they are too weak to move, to escape from this car, which was once their refuge, their sanctuary, and has now turned into their tomb. Their horrible metal tomb. With that thought I shiver again. I pray that this won’t end up our tomb also. I pray that morning comes soon. I pray for the person to close their eyes and sleep, or to die and let them find peace there. But they don’t. They continue to stare at me, and the night draws on, and my prayers go on unanswered.

The person blinks. I have counted their blinks thus far. Twenty in the last hour, give or take the minutes. You would have thought that this person would have blinked more, but they don’t, and it seems wrong because I know that humans blink more than this. But they don’t. They just stare, their lips occasionally moving, whispering something I can’t make out. I know they’re not asking for help anymore, I can tell by the shapes that their mouth makes, but still I puzzle over what they are saying. I try to outstare them, to only blink when they do. But I am more full of life than they are and so I blink several times in the time between their blinks, and eventually I look away, ashamed of myself for playing this wicked game with them.

Because the truth is, though I feel like I am at death’s door, I am not. I am alive, Lilly is alive, but this person is dead.

Lilly jumps, a short, sharp squeal escaping her lips. She sits upright, looking around us in panic. It’s dark, and she hates the dark. I reach over, my hand finding her arm.

“It’s okay, Honeybee, I’m right here. We’re safe,” I whisper reassuringly.

“For now,” she replies.

“Yes,” I nod solemnly, “for now, and that is what matters most.” My words feel like a shadow from some other time, a time when I said the same thing to her.

My heart plummets as I think of our safe haven below the streetlight at the top of the hill. We had been safe there, the monsters trapped down below us, out of reach. I wish we had never left there, I wish we could go back, but I know that we can’t. So much has happened—too much, in fact. Other than the light, there was nothing left there for us. The light protected us from the monsters, but it did not feed us or quench our thirst. I’m once again brought to the conclusion that yes, we are going to die. It’s just a matter of when.

“Do you want to sit on my knee?” I ask Lilly.

She doesn’t answer, but I see her turning in her chair to look onto the back seat, at the person behind us. I hear the sharp intake of her breath as she watches the person that equally watches us. As if she had forgotten that they were there.

“Lilly?” I say again. “Do you want to sit on my knee?” I whisper, my hand reaching out to touch her cheek. I think she must nod because in the next moment she is climbing over to me, and I hug her close as she tries to go back to sleep, wrapped safely in the warmth of my arms, with the gentle
thud thud thud
of my heartbeat to reassure her that I am still alive, and I will protect her.

I look up in the mirror and see the person staring back at me, and I look away shamefully once more as Lilly and I take solace in one another’s arms. I haven’t offered this person comfort of any kind, because I know that there is no point. They will die no matter what now. So I don’t waste my time. But this person was once a person—a woman, it would seem, by the string of pearls around her neck—someone’s daughter, someone’s friend, someone’s sister or a wife perhaps. Who really knows anymore? I bet she doesn’t remember. A tear breaks free from my left eye and trails silently down my cheek. I will feel shame forever.

The woman blinks, I blink and then I look away, and I’m almost certain that she continues to stare at me. I kiss Lilly’s sweet curls, tightening my grip around her. I will never let this end be Lilly’s.

The hours drip by, like water from a leaking faucet. One drip, two drip, three drip, slowly, slowly, the night stretches on, seeming to never end. Lilly sleeps fitfully, waking every once in a while, looking over my shoulder at the woman on the back seat and then cuddling herself closer to me.

The woman doesn’t sleep. Or maybe she does, but her eyes remain open, awake, staring, seeing into my blackened and wicked soul. The virus that grows in my body must have destroyed some of my humanity, for I know that it is wrong to ignore her—to pretend that she is not even there. But I can’t stop myself. I’m an ostrich, sticking my head into a big pile of sand and pretending that there are no monsters outside my window, and there isn’t a dying woman on the backseat of this car. Watching me. Always watching me.

There is a flurry of activity from somewhere outside, some screeching and scraping, and then a minute later the first crack of light begins to descend on us, slipping in the through a fissure in the wood panels that surround our car. The small slit of light pierces our darkness, and I blink lazily, feeling exhausted but grateful. I am always grateful to have made it through the night, to be alive for another day, no matter how pointless I know it is. Morning is here, the night has gone, and we can finally leave this wretched car. How can I not be grateful for that?

As the heat of the sun begins to penetrate the car, Lilly squirms on my lap, slowly rousing from her sleep. Her cheek is still pressed against my chest, but she looks up at me, her face devoid of emotions. She blinks slowly, sleep still thick in her eyes and comprehension of where we are working its way across her pretty features.

“Good morning, Honeybee,” I say. But I cannot form a smile for her today. My mind, my body, my soul feel chilled to the bone, despite the heat of the new day trying to warm me. This coldness is bone deep and will not go away so easily. Lilly doesn’t reply. She just stares at me with empty brown eyes, so I speak for her. “Are you okay?”

The words leave my mouth, and I feel the clench of guilt in my tummy again. It’s a pointless and insensitive question, and I look away as shame and grief bury me under their heavy burden. Lilly rubs at her eyes as though she’s still tired, and I push the guilt away and help her back into her own seat for a moment while I check outside. Things can change so much overnight. The monsters can knock things over, drag things to build new nests. You never know what you might find, so I am always cautious, just in case. You can never be too cautious.

The door creaks loudly when I open it, which is strange as I hadn’t noticed the creak last night. I push back some of the wooden panels surrounding the car and blink against the bright light of day. Outside there are signs of the monsters everywhere, from the bones of the human at my feet, to the splash of blood across the grass, to the deep gouges in the mud. One monster lies flat on its back, its legs in the air as if it is a dog lying in the sun and warming its belly. Its body is burnt to a crisp, but you can still see its humanness—what it once was. It has legs and arms, a head and a torso. But its fingers are elongated, its nails sharpened claws. Its feet are not covered by shoes anymore. Instead the nails of each foot are long like that of the nails on the hands, and the feet are stretched longer than they should be. There’s no hair on its head; that happened before this monster met the sun. That is one of the signs of the infection—the loss of hair, the misshapen skull. Deep black veins are threaded through its skin, but it’s the reddened, bloodshot eyes that always frighten me the most. They are the thing of nightmares. This monster’s mouth hangs open in a silent screech of pain, its teeth blackened and sharp, still deadly despite its death, but I feel no sorrow at its violent and painful death.

I shudder and look back in the car. “Come on,” I say, holding my hand toward Lilly.

Her eyes flit to the woman on the backseat, a silent request to rescue this tortured person. How do I tell her that there is no point? That they are already dead, they just haven’t quit breathing yet.

“Come on,” I say again, my voice more forceful this time. “It’s time to go.”

Lilly climbs across the space but she doesn’t let me help her out of the car. She pushes past me and flinches against the bright daylight. I turn away from the door, ignoring the whispered pleading from the woman to help her. I can’t help her. Doesn’t she see that? Doesn’t she understand? There is no help—no hope for her! No help for any of us. She should just accept her death and be done with it. Lilly turns to stare at me, and for once her eyes aren’t full of love, but full of something else. Something akin to dislike burns in her eyes.

“Lilly,” I say, but then no more words come. Her name falls from my lips like air from my lungs, a sudden gust of sound and breath leaving me in one word. I look away from her, feeling the shame creep back up, heat traveling up my neck, leaving me flustered and depressed. I look down at the ground, seeing the dead body of the human and the monster there, a crowbar still held tight in the human’s grip, even in death.

How hard he must have fought, and for what? Nothing. He’s still dead, just like the rest of us. What are we even fighting for anymore? A butterfly beats its wings as it flies between Lilly and me, and we both look up from our respective staring spots. It is orange and black—nothing uncommon about its appearance. In fact, it’s a very average-looking butterfly. And yet it’s not. It is beauty, wrapped up in freedom. It can flap its wings and fly away in the blink of an eye, leaving behind every nightmare and demon that it comes across. Its life is a blip in the existence of mankind, and then it dies and is reborn once more.

How I wish Lilly and I were butterflies.

“Lilly,” I say, “I want you to put your hands over your ears and watch the butterfly. Watch the sun. Watch the sky and the clouds. And keep your hands over your ears, and do not turn around no matter what.”

Lilly stares at me silently.

“Okay?” I ask, knowing now what I must do.

“Okay,” she says, and then her hands come up to cover her ears and she turns around, no doubt her eyes following the butterfly as it flits from flower to flower.

I look back in the car, seeing the woman still staring back at me. Though now she looks different. Now her eyes glisten with dampness, and I understand how hard it must have been for her to produce those tears. I glance back at Lilly, checking that she isn’t looking, and then I bend down and retrieve the crowbar. I slide another wooden panel out of the way and I pull open the back door. The woman tries to turn her head to look at me, but she can’t move, her body has hardened in place and only a low, throaty sound like dead air escapes her dried lips. I hang the crowbar from my back pocket, feeling the metal, warmed by the rising sun, against my ass. I reach in to the woman, tucking one arm gently below her neck, and the other I hook under her legs. Then I lift her and clamber backwards out of the car. She weighs almost nothing—less than Lilly, it seems—and though I am weak, I don’t struggle to carry her.

I look down at her, seeing a woman in my arms, and yet not. Her head is cradled against the crook of my arm and I see the string of pearls around her neck, almost like a sign of her perfect life before this terrible one. But now she is no more alive than the dead man on the ground.

I turn to look at Lilly, seeing that she is still doing as I asked, and then I look down at the woman as I walk to the very back of the yard. Her cheeks are hollowed, her eyes gaunt and her skin gray and sickly. But the black veins are still so clear, slowly working their evil into this poor woman. Even as she starves to death, it is trying to change her. She blinks at me, her eyelids moving slowly, sluggishly, her pupils dilating painfully against the brightness of the day.

At the back of the garden I set her down on a lonely and decrepit bench. Despite the ugliness of the bench, the view of the horizon is quite spectacular, and she stares at it in wonder. I even suspect a small smile gracing her lips as she blinks and stares at the sun hanging low and heavy.

“I am sorry that we didn’t find you sooner,” I say, my words sounding rough in my mouth, like filthy lies. But sometimes you have to lie to make people feel better. “You can let go now, you can be with your family. In the sun.” I point to the sky for some inexplicable reason. Inexplicable because I don’t believe in a God, and if we were to try and touch the sun we would burn up before we even reached it. Much like the monsters we fear so much.