Out of the Dark (Light & Dark #1) (19 page)

We make our way back along the stream, back to Lilly’s clothes on the embankment. She silently takes off my shirt and hands it back to me, and then she dresses in her own still-damp clothes. She immediately climbs back into the car, puts on her seatbelt, and waits for me. I stare at her, watching, scared, frightened to my core, because I am horrified by the mass grave of monsters and humans alike, yet Lilly—she seems untouched by any of it.

Chapter Twenty-Three.

#23. Once there was a little girl, and she used to smile.

Sometimes when I am lost in my own misery, I try to recall mundane things. Nothing of consequence, just something simple like the sound of a clock ticking, or how people used to mow their lawns in the summer. They are lonely yet familiar things. They remind me of home, of a life lost, without being too painful for me to recall. If I keep them abstract and un-personal, they calm me. They remind me that I am still human, because if I were not, I wouldn’t remember them.

Tonight as I pull the barricade across the basement door of the dilapidated house we are hiding in, I decide which things I will think about. Perhaps the sound of a refrigerator clicking on and off, or the image of someone putting up a poster about a lost tabby cat. All of them are simple, non-threatening things that mean nothing to me, but will soothe me.

I pull the bar firmly in place, staring at it for several minutes with a hard frown. I think it will hold firm. No monsters have been here recently, and why would they? The place is all but demolished, no windows, no doors left, there are barely any walls left standing. But beneath the rubble we find the small trapdoor. It used to be a bomb shelter, I’m sure, and then was possibly converted to a storm shelter sometime after the war ended. Now it is a place to hide from the monsters. A new shelter for a new war.

I finally turn and make my way down the steps, slowly and surefooted. I find Lilly standing in the middle of the room, exactly where I had left her. The small candle I gave her is still burning in her hand, creating shadows and distorting her features. I place a hand on her shoulder and I expect her to flinch, or turn to look at me, to suck in a breath of fright, but she doesn’t. She doesn’t move. She isn’t concerned, or worried of what I am or who I might become overnight. She is still and silent, like she has been for most of the day. My fingers pull her knotted hair to one side and I gently trace the black lines down the back of her neck. Still she doesn’t flinch, and I know that she doesn’t like me to touch the lines. I think that’s why I do it. So that she will speak, ask me to stop, to pull away in anger or fright, or both, but still…nothing. She gives me nothing.

There is very little down here, but at least it’s somewhere below ground, away from them, I think as I survey the small space. It’s better than last night, at least. I leave Lilly in the center of the room and I take my own candle, cupping a hand around it so as not to blow out the small flame as I walk around. There was a bag of candles on a shelf—dusty, unused, long-forgotten. No one uses candles anymore. They attract monsters, the light piercing the blackness like a beacon, letting them know that humans are nearby. But there is nowhere for the light to escape to down here, and so I enjoy the light that the simple candles provide, the smell of their wicks and wax burning.

The room is reinforced. Of course it is—it’s supposed to withstand bombs and tornadoes. There is a small toilet that doesn’t work, a unit that works as a kitchen but there is no food or water in it, and a small bed with no covers on it. The shelves are bare of belongings—no ornaments, no picture frames, nothing to tell the story of the people this place once belonged to. And I think I like it that way.

I make my way back to Lilly, wrapping my hand around hers, and I guide her to the toilet. I help pull her cotton briefs down and she pees, though of course I can’t flush it. The old Lilly would have found it funny, to be using a real toilet again, but not this Lilly—not this child. I guide her over to the kitchen, coaxing her into a chair, and then I pick through the bag of berries, placing some in front of her. She looks down at them. Her belly is growling hungrily, yet I have to tell her several times that she needs to eat before she will. Eventually I think she has eaten enough, or perhaps I am tired myself. So I once more take her hand and guide her over to the small bed. I take the candle from her and help her to lie down, and she does, curling up on her side, and then she closes her eyes without hesitation.

I sit down next to her, running my fingers over her. Stroking her hair, her side, ignoring the sinking feeling in my heart, and trying to keep a hold on her for a little longer. My Lilly—my Honeybee—she’s going. She’s drifting along on a cloud of black poison and I can’t bring her back. Every mile forward is sinking her further.
It’s almost over
is all I can think.
It’s almost over, finally.

I sit on the floor up near her head, the light from my candle flickering over us, and I watch her for a little while, seeing how her features twitch every now and then as she dreams. Her skin is smooth and perfect, barring the black in her veins, her eyelashes still healthy and thick, but her hair…her hair is thinning. I run my fingers through her knots, and come away with hair trapped between my fingers. I stroke the loose strands from my hands and then do the same to my own hair, morbidly curious to see how bad I am becoming. Chunks come away with my touch, and I repress the whimper of fear which crawls up my neck.

“I don’t want to die,” I whisper into the darkness, a teardrop sliding down my face.

I had to say it out loud at least once. I know that I have no choice in the matter, and it’s something that I have thought on many occasions, but I’ve never said it out loud. Not even once. Except for now. Because now it’s near the end, and the final pieces are moving into place. I stroke Lilly’s hair, and wonder if it would be more humane to put my hand over her nose and mouth right now. To cut off her air supply and let her stay asleep forever. No more changing, no more monsters, no more fear. But of course I won’t, because I’m a coward. I love her too much to do that, but not enough to end it for her. Not today anyway, but maybe tomorrow.

A scream resonates from somewhere outside, and I recoil and then slowly climb to my feet. I’m surprised that they are here, though I really shouldn’t be. But there had been no indication that they had been here recently, no scratching in the ground, no piles of bones of long-dead humans, no telltale nests—nothing. And there isn’t anything here, nothing for them and nowhere for them to hide. I make my way back to the door, slowly climbing the steps, making sure to be quiet, silent as a mouse. The door fits perfectly within its frame, leaving no space for shadows to pass. I may not see them—the monsters—but I can hear them, loud and clear. The sniffing and clawing, the screaming and growling, their nails dragging over the door. But they can’t get in. I’m almost certain that they can’t get in.

I pull my pathetically small knife from my pocket and clutch it tightly, holding it out in front of me. Waiting, always waiting for them to find us, to catch us, to kill us. Waiting. It’s a cruel torture.

The night goes on, the blackness suffocating. The noises are all around us, overhead and on each side—not just at the door, but everywhere. They are slowly closing in on me. On us. Lilly starts to whimper from somewhere in the dark and I go to her immediately, half driven insane from the worry of losing her and of the monsters scratching at the door.

She’s sitting up in bed, crying. She’s trying to be silent, to be hushed and soundless, but every noise seems to echo. She runs to me when she sees me, and then I am crying. Clutching her small bony body against mine, and crying against her neck and hair, so happy that she is showing some sort of emotion, but so sad that the emotion is fear again.

She clings to me, and I hold her fiercely. I sit on the bed with her. I don’t like it because I want to be closer to the door, but it would frighten her more—and I don’t want her to be more frightened than she is. I don’t want her to feel scared. So I stay with her wrapped around me tightly, sitting on the edge of the uncomfortable little bed, as we wait for either morning or death.

I know when the sun awakens, because the world goes silent. The monsters bolt away, running somewhere to hide from their foe, and I carry Lilly gently across the dark room, toward the door. She won’t let me put her down, so I let her cling to me while I slowly pull the barricade free and push open the door.

The daylight is bright—glaringly so—and I yelp in pain as the sun startles me, burning my corneas and making me see a glow wrapped tightly around everything. Lilly is still buried against my neck, so the impact isn’t quite as strong for her, but I feel her flinch under the warm rays of the sun just as I do, and I know that it cannot mean anything good for either of us.

I lean against the doorframe, letting my eyes adjust and my senses become alert to the new day. Finally, I can catch my breath and feel steady enough to walk. I close the door to the shelter, trying not to worry too much when I see the claw marks on the outside of the door, and I push some rubble on top of it, though really, I know that it doesn’t matter. They have found this place, and they will return tonight. They will be able to get inside and they will either destroy it or nest in it.

I shake my head, half angry and half sad, and then I make my way over to our car. It’s in pieces—literal pieces: doors torn off, wheels punctured, the seats pulled out. The hood is open and the engine is quiet, long since finished ticking and hissing at its own destruction.

“We’ll have to walk again,” I say to Lilly, but she makes no move to get down. “Let’s eat some breakfast first,” I suggest, and I think she moves her head in a small nod because her hair tickles my earlobe.

I carry Lilly over to a small grassy area at the side of the road, away from the decrepit house and destroyed car, and I set her down and then sit next to her. I have to pry her small fingers free from me, and untangle her legs from around my waist, and when I do, she just sits there pouting at me. Her eyes stare sad holes into my soul, clearly unhappy with me setting her down.

I want to apologize, but I think it will make no difference to how she is feeling, so instead I reach for the plastic carrier bag. Lilly abruptly reaches across me and snatches it from my grasp before throwing it as far as her little arms can manage, her lips letting loose a defiant scream. The bag doesn’t go very far but the berries still scatter everywhere, little red lumps strewn across the dirty ground. I want to snap at her, to scold her and tell her that was a naughty thing to do and a waste of valuable food, but I don’t, because all things being what they are, I can’t blame her for throwing the rapidly rotting berries away. What tasted sweet and succulent several days ago now tastes vile and bitter. And not just because they are rotting, but because of what they represent: life. Our lives are slowly rotting away, turning black and disgusting. Enough to make someone sick? Enough to kill, perhaps?

So instead of yelling at her, I pull out my cigarettes and I light one, and then I lie back on the grass, staring up at the blue sky, and the yellow disc burning down on us. I smoke one cigarette and then another. They don’t help my hunger pains today, and a headache starts low in the base of my skull. I think that I am dying, that this may be the final stages of the infection, but I can’t be certain.

I look over at Lilly, who is still sitting up, and see that she has her hands covering her eyes. I think she may be crying and I ask her if she is, and tell her that it’s okay to cry, that everyone cries when they are tired and frustrated, or sad and hungry. But all she does is shake her head at me and refuse to uncover her eyes. I sit back up, flicking away the end of my current cigarette and stuffing the near-empty pack back in my pocket, and then I turn to her and ask if she is okay again. I place a hand on her back, and I rub it in small soothing circles.

She finally removes her hands, and I see that on her palms are faint black lines, and her nails are growing long and are blackening from the cuticle up toward the tips. I try not to gasp or flinch. I don’t want her to be any more frightened. Instead, I examine my own hands, and see the very same phenomenon. I shudder involuntarily. It runs down my spine, wracking my body with a tremble of worry and fear, which—strangely—makes Lilly laugh. I smile at her, my lips pulling back to reveal my dirty teeth, the dry and filthy skin on my face stretching as I let my smile widen, and the action feels odd on my face and lips. Lilly pretends to shudder too, and then I pretend, and before I know it, we’re both standing up pretending to shudder and shake, jumping around on the spot and shaking our arms and legs out as if we have ants crawling all over our bodies.

And then Lilly stamps down angrily on one of the rotten berries, taking great satisfaction as the juices squirt out from under her shoe. She huffs out her indignation, frowning at the destroyed fruit before looking up at me, as if waiting for me to shout at her.

But I don’t. Instead I stand on one that is near me, and her face lights up like a thousand spotlights are shining on it and she giggles, and so I find another berry and I do the same. Then we both run around stamping and squashing the vile berries, letting the red juice cover the ground and our shoes until there are no more, and I have a small cough from laughing so much. Lilly looks up at me with a small smile, and then I think I might cry when she offers me her small hand to hold. Right now, it is the most precious gift she could give me.

I take her hand in mine, and then I smile at her again and tell her that I love her deeply, more than anything else in the whole wide world. Lilly asks if I really mean it, and I tell her I do.

“I’ll love you until the end of time, my little Honeybee.” I smile. “You are mine, and I am yours, and that’s the way it will always be. No matter what.” My words come out a whisper at the end because I’m trying not to cry, but she doesn’t seem to notice.

She smiles broadly, and then asks which way we are going. I say north, and she doesn’t ask why north, or even ask which way is north, she just nods and says okay. We gather our very meager belongings and then we set off walking again.