Out of the Dark (Light & Dark #1) (24 page)

There is one small window, and through it I see the light of morning, the early caress of the sun on the world. I outwardly sob as Peter smashes his elbow through the window, letting in the fresh air. There isn’t enough time to wait; the monsters are too desperate and angry now, and they will sacrifice themselves just to take us down with them.

Peter lifts Lilly from his back, pushing her through the window and dropping her gently outside. Mary is next, and when she lands on the ground, Lilly scrambled into her lap, her bloodshot eyes staring up at me. Peter helps me up to the window and I lower my legs outside, and then he looks at me.

Somewhere beneath his beard, I think he may have smiled.

“Protect her.” His voice is rough and broken from the flare smoke—or perhaps emotion—and he chokes on the words.

Mary stands up, still clutching Lilly to her. “Peter, come on, get out.” She pushes me to one side, thrusting Lilly into my eager and waiting arms.

Peter shakes his head. “No way I’m getting through this window.” He hits the frame to prove a point that it couldn’t be broken and made wide enough either.

“No, no, you have to,” Mary wails, reaching through into the hole and clutching at it.

Peter pries her arms away from him and I know that he definitely smiles this time. His eyes flit to behind us, to the sun slowly rising in the sky, casting a protective blanket over the three of us. Banging and screaming echoes out to us, and he looks toward the door, his eyes never once showing any fear.

He aims his flashlight at the door, not looking at us anymore. “Go on now, get going. Get away from here. I don’t want you seeing this.”

I turn and walk away, definitely not wanting Lilly to see it.

“You look after her,” he calls after me, but I’m still unsure if he means Lilly or Mary.

The sound of wood cracking and splintering inwards follows seconds after his words, and then I hear Mary scream as a gun goes off. Her sobbing follows me as I round the corner, feeling Lilly’s nails digging into my arms. And like an anchor, I hold onto the pain of her sharp nails, needing it to keep me here, keep me grounded. Because without it, without her, I would be lost in the insanity of it all.

Chapter Twenty-Eight.

#28. Misfortune lights my way.

We walk around the side of the house until we reach the front yard, and then I sit down heavily on the small porch swing, the wood already warming beneath me. Lilly clings to me, whimpering softly. I rest my head back, staving off a cough, though I can feel it tickling in my chest, burning in my throat. I close my eyes and let my skin absorb the sun, the heat, the brightness. I let it all soak into me, letting it burrow down deep and head straight to my heart.

The soft crunch of gravel makes me open my eyes, and a distraught-looking Mary comes from around the side of the old farmhouse. Her eyes stay down as she comes toward us, and I stop swinging long enough for her to sit down next to us. We stay in silence for several long minutes, all of us taking soothing lungful’s of fresh, clean air, absorbing the sun, embracing the silence.

I break the silence first, my eyes still shut, my face still tipped toward the burning disc in the sky. I don’t want to, but we don’t have time to relax—not really. A handful of minutes, just grains of sand in the timer, really. The sun will pass, and night will fall, and then they will come again. I know it now. I am certain of it.

“What will you do?” I ask, my voice sounding croaky and unsure.

I feel guilty. This is our fault—my fault, really. If we hadn’t stumbled across this place, they would have been fine. Peter would still be alive and Mary would be with him. They would be weeding the vegetable patch, jarring food, preparing for the inevitable. An inevitable that hadn’t touched them yet—at least, not like the rest of the world.

Mary meets my question with silence, and I set my head straight and open my eyes, staring at the side of the barn right ahead of us. I can see from my peripheral vision that she is looking straight ahead now too, both of us staring at everything and at nothing. She doesn’t reply to me, instead keeping her secrets locked up tight inside her own head.

I stand up, ready to leave—needing to leave—but then I realize that, once again, we have lost everything. I sit back down, my heart feeling both full and empty, my soul tired—weary, almost. How many more times can we do this? I let out a heavy breath and the cough that has been tickling my chest expel itself. I cough until my lungs hurt even more, and then I hack up black phlegm. Lilly stays on my lap the entire time, restricting my coughs and stifling the air, which I needed to breathe, yet neither of us let go of the other. Neither of us are willing to relinquish our hold on the other.

“I have a truck,” Mary finally says, gesturing toward the small barn. She turn to look at me, her eyes empty, soulless. “You can have it.” She stands up and looks across at the house before sitting back down again with a heavy sigh like I had done only moments ago. “What’s the point?” she mumbles under her breath. And then she begins to cry.

I sit there listening to her grief, letting my body soak up her pain like it’s soaking up the sun’s rays. I have to, because this is my fault. I am to blame for her pain, for bringing death to her door. The very least I can do was sit here with her while she cries for the loss of her partner, for the fear that she now feels for the future.

Lilly pries her face away from my chest, small creases down her face from the material on my T-shirt. A small sweat patch has gathered thickly between my breasts where she has been breathing and crying against me. She reaches a small hand over to Mary, placing it gently on her forearm. Mary looks down at it, a small smile tainting her grief. Her eyes meet Lilly’s and fresh tears pour from them, a waterfall of tears cascading silently down her cheeks.

“You have to live,” Lilly says, her voice so small and weak.

Mary sniffles and shrugs her shoulders.

“You have to,” Lilly insists. “We can’t let them win.” She pouts.

Mary stares silently at Lilly, the tears still flowing. “They’ve already won, dear,” she whispers back, and stands up. “Take whatever you need,” she says, and walked away. “I won’t need any of it.”

We watch her walk to the edge of the property, staring across the sunlit field that we had traveled across only yesterday. Just one day and their world has been destroyed. Just one day and the monsters had found us. Just one day until they would come back.

Mary stares across the fields, her arms wrapped around her middle, her shoulders shaking. Peter had asked me to look after her, but I was still unsure on if he meant Lilly or Mary. When the infection first hit, the children were the ones that were sacrificed. They were the weakest, the slowest, the most likely to get you killed. Parents turned against their own, grandparents forgoing grandchildren to save themselves. Most people shared in that view, but Peter and Mary didn’t—they were willing to risk their lives for the sake of their child. It had been too late for him, but they had wanted to help Lilly. They had hope for Lilly.

I stand up, Lilly’s arms tightening around me as I do. I hold her tight and move across to the barn, opening the door with a small creak. Inside is a truck. It was red and shiny. Lilly will like it—once she sees it in the light, anyway. I open the door, placing Lilly on the driver’s seat while I search for the keys. I check under the seat and inside the glove box, but find nothing. Lilly kneels up on the seat and flips down the sun visor and the keys fall out.

“Well done,” I say, my throat still tight and sore. I force a smile and hope for one back.

Her mouth doesn’t move, not even a quirk, but her eyes flash with happiness.

I climb in the truck and scoot her over to the passenger side. “Time to buckle up, Honeybee,” I say, and reach over to fasten her in.

I glance around the barn, wondering if there is anything else we can take—weapons or blankets. We have nothing now, though Lilly still clutches her teddy bear with its mismatched eyes. I can’t see anything other than farm tools and dry straw, so I stick the key in the ignition. The truck revs to life and Lilly reaches across, placing her hand on top of mine. I look at her, the light from the sun shining in through the open doors and the cracks in the roof, and I smile again. This time she smiles back.

I pull the truck out of the barn and looked across for Mary. But she is gone. Back inside the house or to somewhere else, I’m sure. I feel guilt eating away like cancer in my gut, but if it’s a choice between them or Lilly, I will always choose Lilly. My choice to come to this farm had cost them their lives, but it had kept Lilly safe, at least for one more night. And that’s all any of us can hope for anymore—to survive one more night. To make it through another day. And we had.

“Mama?”

I turn to Lilly’s soft voice and wait for her to ask her question. She glances out the windshield toward the greenhouse. The windows are smashed, the small glass building toppled to one side, but the food is still there. She looks toward me in a silent question. I can’t see Mary anywhere. I want to ask her if it’s okay to take some food, but I know that I would take some even if she said no. I nod at Lilly and drive the truck over to the broken greenhouse. I help Lilly out of her seat, carrying her on my hip over to it because I don’t want her walking through the shards of glass.

We don’t have a bag to put anything in—not even a carrier bag this time—so our arms will have to do the carrying. I open the door of the greenhouse, the heat washing over us once again in a bizarre sense of déjà vu despite all the broken windows. We carry several pots of tomato plants and pull up armfuls of carrots and beans, piling them all onto the backseat of the truck in a tidy disarray. Carrots stay with carrots, beans with beans and so on, but earth and dirt cover them all, leaving stains on the interior carpet. There are two tubs of water, which had been used for watering the plants, standing just inside the doorway, and we fill as many containers as we can with it and stack them in the back of the truck also. I’m not convinced it will be safe to drink, but I’d rather take some than not. Besides, we can use it to water the tomato plants, if nothing else.

Finally ready, we both climb back into the truck. I strap Lilly back in her seat and turn the truck around, pulling out of the yard and away from the farmhouse. I look in the rearview mirror, still not seeing Mary anywhere, and I hope that she didn’t go back inside the house to be with Peter. I suppose it doesn’t really matter. Either way I have condemned her to death. I have taken away her home, her food, her husband, and her safety. I should be ashamed of myself.

I look over at Lilly. A large tomato is in her palm and she bites into it with gusto, the small yellow seeds mixing with the juices and dribbling down her little chin. She smiles across at me as she eats, showing me her teeth, and my conscience is eased, my guilt swallowed up by this small moment of happiness that she is having.

Look after her
, Peter had asked. And I will. No matter what.

*

I drive until the sun is at its highest point, and then I know that I need to pull over—at least for an hour or so. I need to put distance between us and the farmhouse, but I haven’t slept all night and I’m exhausted. Beyond that need, I’m hungry—famished, almost—and my chest is still burning from all the smoke that I inhaled. I need a drink of water, I need to bathe, I need to eat, and I need to sleep.

Life is made up of a series of needs. Of desires and wants. Of things we must have and things that we think we have the right to. Right now, I know that I need to sleep, but it’s bathing that takes the highest priority. I pull us off the main highway and down a small country lane. I saw a sign an hour or so previous for a small lake, and I’ve been following the signs ever since. As we round a sharp bend, the bristles of the bushes dragging along the sides of the truck, I am nervous. There are too many things we need to do in such a short space of time.

The road opens up into what used to be a relatively small parking lot and I shut the engine off, take a steadying breath, and step out of the truck. Lilly is asleep, the remnants of a carrot still firmly in her grasp. I don’t wander far from the truck—not after the fright I gave Lilly the last time. I examine our immediate surroundings, always keeping the truck within view as I scout out the area, checking that there are no dark spaces for the monsters to hide.

There is a short path that leads to the lake—or at least so the little brown sign says. I stop walking and close my eyes, listening intently. The world is so silent that I can hear the water lapping at the edges of the lake. I open my eyes and pull out my cigarettes, noting that there are only two left, since three of them are broken. I light one and walk slowly back over to the truck. Lilly is still sleeping, the juices on her T-shirt staining the front. It makes me smile. I climb up onto the hood of the truck and watch the world while I smoke, allowing Lilly five more minutes of peace.

I like it when she sleeps like this—satisfied, content, unfazed by the horrors. This is how a child should be; this is how
she
should be consistently. Life should not be made up of finals and survival, it should be made up of forevers. My heart aches with grief, but like yesterday and the day before that, I bite the inside of my cheek until it brings tears to my eyes, I count to ten, and I let myself be grateful for the day in which I live.

I roll my filthy sleeves up, examining the depths into which the blackness has now sunk. I hold my cigarette loosely between my lips and squeeze a vein near my wrist, wondering for a second if I were to open up the vein if I could squeeze the evil back out. My nails dig in, the liquid so close to the surface that I can smell its stench of wickedness, but I don’t have the courage to pry open my flesh and squeeze it out. It would be futile anyway, I know.

I finish my cigarette, not feeling any better for it, and then I go to the passenger side of the truck and gently open the door. Lilly’s soft snores greet me, calming my wretched soul a little. I stroke her cheek, pushing tangled knots away from her face. She is so calm, so innocent, I think, my throat feeling tight with anxiety. I pull out the map from my pocket, the one Sarah left for me, and look at where we are on the map and where the safe place is. We could be there in under an hour, I realize.
Not even a day before we are safe,
I think.
That’s all we need to get through together. Hours.

I think back to Peter and Mary and wonder if it would be cruel to bring the monsters that are following us to the doorstep of a supposed safe place, but I quickly dismiss the thought. No matter what, I will take us there now. We are too close to possible safety, and though I still don’t believe it to be true, I have to try—for Lilly, if not for me.