Out of the Dark (Light & Dark #1) (18 page)

Chapter Twenty-One.

#21. Sleep is for the wicked.

“Lilly, wake up!” I hiss quietly—too quietly, since she doesn’t wake up.

I reach over and shake her, noticing the black veins on her neck are darker, but not quite as dark as the ones that have now traveled over my wrists and across my knuckles towards my fingers. I flinch, drawing my hand back abruptly because I’m shocked. It all seems to be happening too quickly—everything seems to be happening too quickly—and I’m scared. But more importantly, Lilly will be scared when she sees my hands, and I don’t want her to be. I don’t want her to look at me in fear. Just like I do not want to look at her in fear.

A screech resonates in the distance and a shudder wracks my body. I grip Lilly’s shoulder gently yet urgently as I shake her again.

“Lilly!” I look out the windows on all sides as another screech echoes from somewhere, but I don’t see anything yet.

Lilly is finally starting to wake—slowly at first, and then as if a switch has been flipped, she jumps and sits upright.

“You’re awake,” I say to her, in case she was worried that she was still sleeping.

“Okay,” she replies, and then recoils when yet another scream breaks out. She blinks and looks at me sharply. “They’re here. The monsters.” It’s not a question, but a statement. And unfortunately, she’s right. “They’re here,” she repeats, and I nod.

Yes, they are here, and they’ve been chasing us for several miles, and I don’t know what to do. I should have let her sleep, blissfully unaware of the peril outside of this car, but I couldn’t. I finally understand the term “metal coffin.” I had always rolled my eyes at the statement, thinking that only people that were simultaneously trying to save icebergs, the ozone layer, polar bears, and—hey, what the hell—let’s throw in some strange jellyfish that lives at the bottom of the ocean that no one will ever see. We can give it a name that doesn’t make any sense too, with too many syllables and a silent
g
. Yes, I’ve turned into one of those hug-a-tree hippie-type people, because I finally understand the term “metal coffin.”

This car is just that: a metal coffin, a one-way trip to hell. We’re trapped in it. We’ll die in it. We can’t get out of it. It’s a metal coffin and we are its willing occupants, because if we stop and get out of this car, we are just as trapped. So we’ll stay inside, driving for as long as we can, and dying with each passing mile.

“What are we going to do?” Lilly whispers. She slides further down in her seat in an attempt to hide herself from view, and I’d worry more about the seatbelt cutting into her neck if I have to brake suddenly but I’m looking out the window, seeing the monsters dashing in front of my headlights, smoke and steam coming from any of their flesh that touches the light. The image is transfixing. I am transfixed by the sight of their bodies burning upon contact with the light. The smoke, the screams, the burning flesh—it all penetrates my body in so many ways that it shouldn’t. Ways that make me feel inhuman and sick. Because I am gleeful at each and every burn they receive, and that’s terrible and wrong, because they were human once, just like me and Lilly. And we shall be like them one day, if they do not kill us first. Watching them burn and scream is like watching my own mortality burn away.

“Mama?” Lilly whispers my name, and I blink and glance at her quickly.

“I don’t know,” I say truthfully, my voice calm even though I am anything but. And once again, I am witness to her nodding at the acceptance of our deaths—her death—and I feel guilt, failure, and hatred for myself running through my veins. I have let her down. This is all my fault. Why couldn’t I keep her safe? She deserves safety. She’s just a little girl.

“We can just drive,” she says matter-of-factly.

I nod frantically. “Yes, and we will, but I don’t know these roads and there isn’t much gas left. I don’t know how far we will get.” I look at her again, seeing her looking determinedly at me. “But we can try,” I add on, because I think she needs to hear that—that we will try—that I will try, until the very bitter end.

“We shouldn’t give up,” she says firmly, her mouth a full pout.

“No, we shouldn’t, and we won’t.”

“Promise?”

“I promise,” I say. Though my promise isn’t worth much, because I know that we really won’t get very far at all and then the promise won’t mean anything. But I promise her, because it’s all I can give her: a rough promise to try and save her and to not give up.

So we drive. I tell her to close her eyes and put her hands over her ears, because I don’t want her to hear their screams anymore. I feel their screams in my head, bouncing around and resonating inside my skull with such ferocity that I feel sick. I don’t want that for her. I have my knife at my side, and I know that I will slit Lilly’s throat before I let these monsters take her. Because they can have me, but they cannot have her. She deserves more than this, more than a violent death by them. She deserves more than this life gives her. But I can’t give her more, I can only give her a swift end.

We drive and we drive, chasing the night away, and there is little I can do but pray that we don’t meet any obstructions in the road. Pray that the sun rises soon and I can outdrive them. I see Lilly’s lips moving, and know that she is doing the same too—praying, or perhaps singing. Either way, she knows that the end could be around the next bend. All it will take is us having to stop.

My muscles are tight, wound up like coils ready to spring. My jaw is locked like steel and cement, unable to open to utter a word, my teeth grinding so hard that I might snap one of them. I grip the steering wheel tightly, my eyes seeing everything and also nothing—the blackness that cloaks our car, the monsters running alongside us, behind us, and darting across our path.

The screams.

The noises.

The burning.

The smoke.

Keep alert, keep watching, keep a firm grip, and don’t get distracted. Death is chasing us down, and I can’t let it win. Where is the sun when you need it? Where is the sun and its burning orange glow? The only thing that can save us from this nightmare is so far away, sleeping, unaware that we need it so desperately. The sun sleeps and the monsters come alive, stalking and chasing us through the night. Sickness swishes in my gut. I don’t want to die.

I look over at Lilly for a fraction of a second, seeing her curls hanging limply around her shadowed face. The black veins are almost at her cheeks, I notice, and I look in the mirror and see my own cheeks are beginning to darken with the blackness inside of me. I am a day or so ahead of her. Neither of us have much longer before it takes us fully, and then this is us chasing some other poor family through the night. We are all dead anyway, so I shouldn’t worry so much, but I do not want to go out by teeth and nails. There can be no worse way to go.

I need distraction, I need concentration, I need something to stop me from panicking. I want to sing, I want to beg and pray and plead for longer. For more time with my Lilly—my sweet Honeybee—but it’s all futile, and only the rising of the sun can protect us. There are shadows everywhere, no place to hide, until…

The car breaks free of the trees, the shadows vanishing, and I can see high and clear. The moon shines down brightly on us. It doesn’t have the same power of the sun, but with a clear sky and a no place for them to hide, it can work. It has to work. I see them now, at the sides of the road, hiding in the low hedge-ways, skirting around broken-down, rusted cars—a slash of nails, the glow of red eyes, the screech and cry and hunger for our blood.

“Don’t look,” I whisper. And even to me, my voice sounds ghostly.

“I’m scared,” she whispers back.

I reach over and clasp her small hand in mine. “So am I. But I’m here, I’ll protect you.” I swallow down the vile, bitter taste the words leave behind in my mouth, because I know that I can’t protect her. I can’t even protect myself.

There are empty fields on either side of us—dirty, dusty, barren fields with no life or vegetation growing in them. The beautiful scorching sun has, in a twist of bitter irony, decimated everything, and whatever else was left behind has been destroyed by
them
. This place is dead, every last part of it. There is a fragment of me, a deep, dark, subconscious fragment that wants to turn around and drive back to those shady green trees. A dark part of me that craves those cool shadows. I shiver and try to escape the feelings, knowing that this isn’t me, that this is them—the evil in my veins darkening, spreading and killing me, slowly turning me into the very monster that I fear. I crave the shadows because the sun is becoming my enemy. Because the soft caress of darkness on my skin is soothing and less frightening than the thought of burning up in the light.

“Mama?”

I turn to look at Lilly, and I see her flinch back from me. I see the haze of red surrounding her, a cloud of blood and anger, yet I know that it is me and not her that is wrong here. And that if I could see my face now, I would see horrifying red eyes staring back at me.

“Mama,” Lilly whimpers, her bottom lip trembling, silent tears spilling down hollow, dirty cheeks. “Mama, please.”

She pleads for me to come back, but I’m lost in the sea of red and black. It froths in my veins, churning and eager, hot and desperate for me to let go. She pleads and I am sucked under, into the hateful monster that I truly am.

The car bumps and crashes over the broken road before smashing into a small wooden fence. The car chokes out the last of its energy just as the orange sun begins to slowly rise in the distance. I squint at its glare, at the heat that it emits, and I hiss, my mouth filling with warm blood…

And then it’s gone. Like the snapping of a twig, I am back.

Lilly is crying, and I can see clearly: no blood, no haze, and no anger for her—for the life flowing through her veins. I reach for Lilly and she screams, and then I am crying and begging for forgiveness.

“I’m sorry, Lilly. I’m sorry,” I plead.

She peeks at me from between her trembling fingers and must see that I am me again, because she dives from her seat and into my lap before I can say another word. I don’t stop and think, I grip the handle on the door and throw it wide open. I get out of the car with one hand firmly beneath her butt to steady her, to protect her, and then I run on weak and unsteady legs.

I see the old electric tower in the center of the dusty field, and I aim for it. I can hear them so close behind me, but with every step forward I take, the sun rises higher and they slow down. By the time we reach the electric tower I am exhausted and out of breath. I chance a glance behind us, seeing them prowling, slowly, their skin bubbling and steaming from the soft glow of the sun that hits it.

“Hold onto me,” I say to Lilly, and she scrambles around to my back and I begin to climb the tower.

Higher and higher I go, the sun slowly warming my skin, stretching forth until it touches all of me—all of us. It covers us like a blanket or protection, and I know that we are safe, that they can’t get us now. I peer down at them and see them retreating, backing away in pain. But the way they stare, the hate in their red eyes, is almost too much. My arms are weak, and I know that we can’t go on much longer.

The closest monster stares at me, its mouth opening wide and revealing its pointed teeth. What were its hands slowly clench and unclench in a very human gesture. I shudder, and feel Lilly squeeze me tighter, her face buried in my neck. I watch the monster backing away from us, feeling as though it is almost familiar to me. Like I have seen it somewhere, like perhaps it even knows me. But that is impossible. These monsters have a one-track mind, and they have no memories of their previous life. If they did, they wouldn’t have killed their families. So no, I do not know this monster, and it does not know me, and yet still, there is something about it that stops me from looking away until it is gone. It is absorbed back into the shadows with one final scream of anger, and then we are truly safe.

Chapter Twenty-Two.

#22. We’ll dig a hole and bury the world…

We stay up on the electric tower until the ache in my arms becomes too much for me to bear. I slowly climb back down, almost slipping and falling the last part because my legs are like jelly. But finally we’re safe, on the ground, with the sun warming our faces and the darkness held at bay for another day.

We trudge slowly back over to the car, and though I crashed it into the fence earlier, and there is broken wood across the hood and underneath the front wheels, when I turn the key, it starts. The engine doesn’t sound good, and I don’t think that it will get us far, but we have to go…right now.

I help Lilly into the car and pull her seatbelt across her, noticing once again the deep black veins in her neck. She stares up at me, blinking sadly. She knows, I realize. She knows that neither of us have much longer. I stroke my fingertips down her soft cheeks and force a smile on my lips.

“We’ll be okay,” I say, the words sounding false even to my ears. I lean forward and press a kiss to her smooth forehead. “We’ll be okay,” I whisper again, though this time it’s for me and not her.

“Okay,” she replies, almost numbly.

I stare at her for a second or two, my muted gray eyes examining her big brown ones before I close her door with a soft click. I jog around to my side of the car, open the door, and then stop when a noise pulls my attention away. I turn to look behind us, my eyes grazing the horizon, the dusty, barren fields, the cracked and broken roads, but there is nothing there. At least nothing that I can see.

I climb in the car, shut the door, and I begin to drive, checking my rearview mirror continuously. Unease sits in my gut like rotten fish. Of course it does most days, but today feels different—worse somehow. Perhaps it was the closeness of death breathing down our backs, or the proximity of the monsters last night; how close we had come to being caught by them. Truly, at this stage, I do not know which would be the worse option. I saw how Lilly looked at me last night, I felt the monster in me take over, saw the red haze that descended upon me. And with that knowledge, I know now that once we get to the supposed safe spot, it will be too late. But I don’t know what else to do anymore. We’re just driving around and waiting to die.

I open my window and light a cigarette. I shouldn’t, really; it’s not good for Lilly—the whole passive smoking thing. I feel guilty as soon as I light it, but she doesn’t say anything. I glance sideways at her and see that she’s staring into her lap, her bottom lip sucked into her mouth and trapped between her teeth. I take a long drag on my cigarette, feeling the hunger pangs subside a little.

“Lilly?” I say her name but she doesn’t even look up. “Honeybee? Are you okay?” I watch her nod, yet still she doesn’t look up. I leave her to her thoughts. She’s a child; this is a lot for her to process on a daily basis, and I’m surprised that she hasn’t crumpled in on herself. That’s how most children were lost at the beginning. They checked out and their parents left them for dead. I hope those parents died a horrible and painful death for that sin.

“Open your window,” I say to Lilly, and she does. The smoke isn’t in the car, but I still don’t like it. Her soft curls whip around her face, but she makes no move to brush them away. I finish my cigarette and throw the butt out of the window, and then I reach in the back of the car and grab the carrier bag of berries we had collected yesterday. I offer them to Lilly but she refuses them, and I frown at her.

“You need to eat,” I say. But I don’t press the issue when she doesn’t reply. She’ll know when she wants to eat. I’ll only make her sick by forcing her. So I place the bag between our two seats and grab a handful of them to try and entice her. It doesn’t work, and I give up after a small mouthful. The berries taste both bitter and bland, not like yesterday where they were juicy and ripe. No, today it feels like something in me has possibly changed, of course I am changing and adapting as the virus takes over, but it’s in these strange qualities that I’m taken by surprise. Today I don’t like the taste of the berries at all, and I want to spit them out of my window, but for Lilly’s sake, I don’t. Because then she would know, and then she would be even more scared, so I chew and swallow down the wretched berries for Lilly’s sake.

The highway is long. It feels, at times, never-ending, with the barren fields of dust on either side of us. A small town eventually comes into view, and I’m filled with both deep relief and deep worry. I pull the car to a stop on the outskirts, feeling for some reason that we are not safe here, that we are being watched, and perhaps shouldn’t stop at all. But we need fuel, and water, and food, and there might not be another town for miles.

I open my door and get out, listening intently for any signs of life, but there’s nothing, not even the sounds of birds calling to one another to put me at ease and stop the dread in my gut. I check the windows of each building in the distance, squinting my eyes until they hurt, hoping to see…something. But there’s nothing, just this deep sense of dread. I get back in the car and look over to Lilly. She’s watching me attentively.

“Are you okay?” I ask, and it comes out irritable, but I really don’t mean it to. I just want her to talk, to show something, an emotion. Anything. But all she does is nod. “Lilly…” I start to talk again, to say something, but then I lose the will to. The effort seems too much. I think I’ve lost her already, and I feel such sorrow for the loss that I can’t seem to think or breathe for the moment. My chest feels tight, my heart speeding up. I think I’m having a panic attack, and then…

“I peed,” she replies quietly. “I’m sorry.”

Through the blur of panic I look to her lap and see that she has in fact peed herself. I look back to her face, and everything clears and rights itself almost immediately. A weary smile flits to my mouth, replacing the grimace from only moments ago. “That’s okay. I should have stopped before now. It’s my fault.”

I will my heart to slow down, for my chest to loosen, and when I feel properly back in control, I start the engine and continue to drive into the town. I wonder why she didn’t tell me that she needed to go, but when I glance sideways at her, she seems so small and lost that I think that may be the very reason why: she’s lost, wandering frightened in a dark world inside her own mind, hiding from monsters and nightmares.

“We’ll just drive through and see. We can get out in a minute and I’ll help you clean up. Okay?” I say, and I feel almost elated that I haven’t lost her yet.

“Okay,” she mumbles.

I have no intention of stopping and looting anything in this town, but my curiosity is piqued so I at least want to drive through and see for myself. Sometimes you take chances—you have to if you want to survive—but other times you have to trust your instincts. My instincts are telling me to go and get far away from here. Much like my instincts are telling me that I don’t have much longer left. And neither does Lilly.

But there is nothing to see in this barren town. It looks much the same as all the other towns we have passed through: empty streets, empty windows, and empty storefronts. Broken cars, broken windows, broken bones…

“I don’t like it here,” Lilly says.

“Me neither,” I reply. “We’ll leave now.”

“Good.”

The stores are all dark inside, and I know they are there. I can feel
them,
I can almost hear them. They’re trapped inside, in the dark, listening to us drive past, their red eyes watching us from the shadows. Fear tickles my spine, tracing its deathly cold fingers down my throat and across my stomach and making me feel sick. This place is heaving with them, just one giant nest full of monsters. I reach my arm outside the car, feeling the heat of the sun on it and the warm air flowing between my fingers, a stark reminder that we’re safe for now. I place my palm against the metal of the car. It makes me feel better, almost grounding me here in this moment, because I can hear them, calling to us, prowling back and forth in the dark, angry at us for driving away, and I feel lost in that knowledge.

I look across at Lilly and see her leaning against her door and staring out her open window, her hair still whipping around her face. And I know that she feels them too.

We exit the other side of the town and I feel better almost immediately—but again, I cannot say why. Perhaps the distance between them and us, the proximity, makes me feel more like myself and less like them. I drive until we’re a mile or two on the outskirts of this strange, nameless town, and then I pull the car over next to a small stream that runs behind an old bus stop. Lilly needs cleaning. The car is beginning to smell terribly and I know that she’s embarrassed. She’s a big girl now, so she always used to tell me, and barring this accident she hasn’t peed herself in a long time.

I climb out and go around to Lilly’s side. I open her door and unbuckle her and help her out. She may be dehydrated but she is still soaked through, and the smell of pee is strong. I help her over to the stream and I undress her, pulling her sodden panties and pants down her legs. I get our plastic bottle from the car and we both drink what water is left in it before I fill it up again and we drink some more. When I think that we have drunk all that we can, I fill the bottle up and put it to one side, and then I begin scrubbing her clothes in the water until I think the pee is all gone.

The clothes will take a little while to dry and so I spread them out on the embankment—all but her panties which I help her put back on. Wet or not, they’ll dry eventually just from her body heat alone. Because I realized, as I helped her undress, that her temperature matches mine, and I am burning with a fever. Though other than being hot, I don’t feel sick from it like I know I should. Her body is riddled with black lines, almost like the lines on a map. I don’t dare take my clothes off to see my own body. I do not want to see the horror etched into my skin, branded into my blood. And I don’t want her to see it either.

I get the berries from the car and Lilly eats, but I can tell she doesn’t really have an appetite anymore. And neither do I. Which is worrying. We walk along the stream, splashing in the water. I try to coax a smile or a laugh from Lilly, but she has retreated into herself. Only this time I worry that maybe she’ll never come back. The stream goes on for quite some time, and we follow it until it enters a bend in the road. Scattered plants are along the edge of the stream, but at the bend, trees are starting to grow tall and proud.

“Look, Lilly. Trees,” I say and point, but she only shrugs sadly. “There could be food, something we can eat in there,” I continue, but this time, she doesn’t even shrug. “Do you like nuts?” I ask. “Because I think that tree has nuts on it.”

She doesn’t say anything, or even look up from her feet—though I do see her wiggling her pink toes in the water, which I think is a good sign. I take off my shirt and put it on her. It’s dirty and sweaty, but I can see little goose bumps on her skin and I worry she might be cold. I take her hand and pull her toward the trees. She doesn’t resist, and I don’t worry about the shade from the trees because there isn’t any—certainly not enough for the monsters to hide in. So we walk through the small trees, looking for nuts (that I know won’t be there), looking for some small, innocent animal that has inexplicably survived after all this time, and perhaps we can catch and kill it (though deep down I know I couldn’t really do that). And Lilly, the entire time, stares at her feet solemnly.

I’m about to turn back when I see something on the ground, so I clutch Lilly’s hand tighter and walk closer to it. It looks like a hole, a wide hole that is very deep. I feel nervous—apprehensive, almost—as I almost reach the edge. A strange smell lingers in the air, a smell I can’t place. Not tree sap, or earth, nor pine needles or dust. A smell that I both instinctually know, and yet equally shouldn’t know. I let go of Lilly’s hand and turn to her.

“Wait here, Honeybee,” I say to her on bended knee, trying to catch her eye. But she doesn’t acknowledge me in any way. It’s as if she were here alone, and I were not even a figment of her imagination.

I sigh heavily and stand back up before taking those final slow steps toward the brink of the hole. My steps seem to take an age, but slowly, I find myself standing on the threshold of the hole, looking down into the darkness within. I blink, not quite sure what I am seeing at first, and then I understand.

Pit. The word sounds dirty in my head as soon as I think it, and yet I cannot think of another word that is more suitable. This was supposed to be a mass grave, yet “grave” does not sound right in my mind. A grave is somewhere that you take your final rest. A singular, solitary hole for one, perhaps two bodies. A place where family and friends can visit from time to time, leave flowers next to a headstone, and speak to the spirits of their dead loved ones.

But this? This is a pit. A pit full of bodies. Bodies that are long rotted. Bodies that have been torn apart by monsters. Monsters that have become trapped in the pit after feeding upon the flesh of the dead, and have since been burned up by the sun. So in the pit, there are hundreds of rotting carcasses, both human and not, that are now burnt to a crisp.

Crisp. What a stupid statement. Bodies don’t burn to a crisp. They go black and melt into one giant form, and then they become indiscernible to the human eye, blackened and rotted until they are no longer one body or hundreds of bodies, but one giant blob of burnt flesh and blackened bone.

Lilly gasps from next to me, her hand squeezing mine tightly. I look down at her, my mouth open as it forms a silent
O
. She tugs on my hand, pulling me away from the gory sight, and I follow her numbly. Child leading mother. It is all so wrong. This picture, this story, it’s all wrong. Things shouldn’t be like this. But they are.