by James Barton
By the end of the first forty-eight hours, the subconscious Wesley had taken almost complete control over the “Outside” Wesley. Stuck now in seemingly timeless isolation from the rest of the world, it was as if there were two Wesleys in the bunker instead of just one. By now, neither of the two would have cared one bit that they had actually been underground for just three days.
Mandy wouldn’t have cared either. She just occasionally appeared sitting in the corner in her bloody pink shirt and torn shorts. She was looking a lot worse than she had the last time he had seen her … back when she was alive. First, she just sat staring at the Wesleys, then, finally, she started up with the bitching.
“Why won’t she shut the hell up?” Wesley asked.
Wesley just chuckled. “Wes, what are you talking about? She’s dead.”
“Then why doesn’t she shut up?”
“Dead or alive, Man, they’ll all talk if someone is listening,” sighed Wesley, wondering how he, himself, could be the same Wesley as this idiot.
Wesley shook his head. “She should have listened to me. No one ever listens to me.”
“Tell me about it,” said Wesley.
As time crawled by, Wesley struggled to stay focused and his thoughts became even more cloudy and confused.
“Did you know there are other kinds of beans?” Wesley asked.
“Yeah,” Wesley responded.
“Then why didn’t you get more than one type? Are we supposed to live off black beans forever?” he questioned himself.
“Well, Wes, the website said these were the best survival …”
“Survival this, survival that, what about just enjoying something for once. Would it have killed you to stock just a few Mars bars?” Wes scolded.
Wesley reached over and flicked the light on and off between each sentence. It turned the bunker into a lazy dance club. Above them, Bob’s endless commentary seemed to amplify through the vents and almost drowned out his own voice. He stood up and walked over to the vent.
“Shut the hell up!” he shouted.
He reached over, wide-eyed with excitement, and flicked the lamp off.
“Lights off.”
“Lights on,” he said as he flicked the switch on. He repeated this multiple times and then suddenly, there was a figure standing in the corner of the room. It was Bob, hunched forward and swaying slightly … and he was smiling. Then he took a step toward Wesley. With a shriek, Wesley panicked and reached for the lamp, knocking it with a crash to the hard metal floor.
The light went out.
With a frightened cry, he scrabbled across the floor into the corner, blindly sweeping up the useless lamp on the way. He frantically tried to bring it back to life, but he knew it was hopeless. Despite all else that was going on, he couldn’t help but remember that it had a “lifetime” guarantee, a thought that would have made him laugh if he wasn’t pissing himself with fear. Perhaps he had misinterpreted whose lifetime they were talking about … the lamp’s … or his. Another noise from the dark brought Wesley back with a snap – he couldn’t figure out how, but the boy had really made it inside. He sounded different this time, it was subtle, but his voice no longer echoed through a pipe and, instead, was ten feet away. He could even smell the putrid stench of Bob’s rotting body. And then, from so close that he could almost feel his breath in his face, Bob whispered his name, “Wesley, Wesley, Wessssley.”
Wesley pushed himself back into the corner, willing himself to be smaller, unable to defend himself other than to put his arms up in front of his face. The darkness had consumed him and there was nothing to see, only hear. Bob’s moaning and scratching invaded his ears as he pictured scenes from horror movies. Soon he would be eaten alive and the only thing he could hope for would be a quick death. His chest tightened as the fear overtook him. It took an eternity for the sound to draw closer. Bob moaned and shuffled along the cold metal floor. He could hear his breathing and feel Bob’s hot, stale nearness in the dark. Wesley knew with all his heart that the boy was inches away, leaning in. Suddenly, he heard himself shout from the other side of the bunker.
“Wesley!” he shouted. “Wesley, snap out of it! You are alone.”
Mandy laughed, an eerie titter that sent a small jolt through Wesley’s string-tight nerves.
He trembled, every hair on his body standing on end. He blinked hard, but in the gloom, it made no difference. Feeling cold metal on his back, for a moment he couldn’t tell if he was leaning against the wall or lying on the floor. The familiar sound of Bob’s moans rolled through the vent. The zombie was still outside; he must have imagined the whole thing … right?
Wesley ran his hands over the lamp again, testing the switch, reinserting the battery, feeling for broken parts, but there was nothing obvious about its malfunction. He was amazed that he had made so much preparation for an extended emergency, yet had somehow overlooked one of the most basic human needs – the ability to see during the long underground stay. Hindsight, often the most useless of visions, was never this dark. Wesley lay there slumped in the corner, pondering how he would fare for the next few weeks. How would he would spend his days trapped in this metallic abyss.
Bob’s moaning trickled through the vent again and, in a way, it comforted Wesley. He was relieved that the creature was still trapped outside, but it made him question his sanity. He could have sworn he wasn’t dreaming when he felt its hot breath on his face. That is, if the dead even breathe.
The next twelve hours were, to Wesley, a terrifying slog of timelessness. Mandy sat in her usual spot, jabbering incessantly. She was clearly still pissed at him for letting her die out there, even blaming him for her wrecked pink blouse, but, by now, Wesley no longer cared. He slipped in and out of sleep without warning. He felt around the dark for his food and when he lit the small petroleum cooking can, it filled his cage with a warm light. He was overwhelmed with joy, almost as if he was cured of blindness in those brief moments. He wanted to light them all, just let them burn until he fell asleep. Unfortunately, he knew if he ran out of fire, his foods would not only become limited, he would lose some of his key nutrition.
“Time for bed,” he said to himself.
“How do you know that? It could be 2 p.m. for all we know.”
“Because sleeping helps us conserve energy and move time forward. Eventually that thing up there is going to leave, or rot.”
“I promise, it isn’t going to just leave. As for it disintegrating from time, I think we’ll be dead before that happens.”
“You can be a real bugger, you know that?”
“Rargh Ungh!” a voice screamed through the pipe.
“Shut up, won’t you?”
Wesley faded into sleep at 9:30 a.m. and woke up at 11:48 a.m., convinced that he had slept a healthy eight to ten hours. That day, he ate six meals and spent a large amount of time sitting on his bathroom bucket. He had the strong urge to urinate, but never could. He had completely forgotten that he hadn’t drank anything that day and already urinated three times in the past four hours. His sense of time had become completely unreliable.
“Just light one of those cans,” his voice from the corner said to him.
“I need to save them,” Wesley replied.
“You have a 24-pack. Just light one.”
“What if we are stuck down here for months?”
“Then God help me, I’ll crawl out there and welcome that monster’s fatal bite.”
“I guess one won’t hurt.”
Wesley pulled out the small can of petroleum jelly and lit it. The light was nearly intoxicating. He sat huddled around it, the warmth of the flame nearly burning his legs. The heat felt good; it was simply the change in his surroundings that boosted his spirit. For the first time in days or weeks, he felt happy. Looking into the small flame, he felt like he wasn’t completely lost. There was hope. If he had survived, he was sure that others had too. They could come looking to rescue people and save him from his entombment.
Wesley,
being the man who prepared himself mostly, didn’t read the duration of his flame cans. He had heard from one of his friends on the survival forums that they lasted anywhere from 8-12 hours. What he didn’t put together is that they weren’t talking about these little cans and instead were talking about a much larger and much more sophisticated setup. With that, his view on time became even more skewed.
Two cans down and 16 hours later, at least in Wesley’s mind, he lay down and tried to get some sleep. He struggled, tossing and turning, and eventually faded into a restless sleep. As Wesley stood on the cliff of insanity, something happened that sent him over the edge. Sometimes in life there are big things that cause big changes, other times it’s a cricket that falls through a pipe.
Wesley blinked his eyes and was jolted awake. His chest heaved as he was consumed with panic. This was a frequent occurrence, waking up in the dark and being unaware of exactly where he was. He always wondered if he had died, if somehow death was just a consciousness swimming in shadows. Once he collected his bearings, he craved the light of his small cooking flame. He attempted to push back the urge, because he knew that he needed to save them. As he sat there like a drug addict going through withdrawal, he heard a noise he hadn’t heard before. It was the clicking of some insect. As he listened closer it began to echo throughout his tomb. The more noise it made, the more he was sure it was communicating with others. It was bringing down a swarm and he swore that the sound had multiplied in intensity.
He scurried over to the pack of cans and twisted the cap off with shaking hands. He flicked the lighter a few times before successfully igniting the jelly. As the light began to fill the room, he could see shadows dancing across the walls. There were fist-sized beetles scurrying away from the light, their finger-sized mandibles clicking angrily as the light burned their black shells. They must have bored through the walls when he was sleeping, he thought, as his mind took him into loops of fear and despair. In what seemed like no time at all, he found himself frantically lighting a second flame canister to replace the first, which had begun to dwindle. Wesley struggled to keep his hands from shaking as the light began to push the darkness back, leaving a swarm of black flesh-eating beetles waiting on the shadowy edge, their eyes glittering in the darkness.
“Stay back!” he screamed, holding the flame in front of himself like a shield.
Hissing and clicking, the large insects seemed to retreat farther into the shadows, shifting into a boiling mass as tall as the room itself. For a moment, he was overwhelmed with relief. His relief was short-lived as he looked at his unkempt sleeping bag. More than ever he was afraid to sleep, as the darkness could literally eat him alive.
“They are afraid of the light,” Wesley said aloud.
“You have to keep those fires burning,” he heard himself say from the shadows.
Wesley believed he was right. They seemed to stick to the shadows, just waiting for their chance to burrow through his skin and lay eggs. The small flaming canister no longer felt like a luxury … it was a necessity.
As the day dragged on, Wesley sat staring into the flames, his eyes and throat burning from the accumulating fumes. As each can began to die, Wesley would light another one. He glanced nervously around the room, empty canisters littering the floor. He had quite literally burned through all but three of his cans. He struggled to stay awake, but each time he began to doze off he would violently snap back. The thought of falling asleep and being swarmed by those monsters plagued him. He had held a canister and walked around the room trying to find them. They moved too quickly and always stayed just in the shadowy parts. Even though he could no longer see them, he knew they were hiding just beyond the light. This, mixed with the constant groaning from above, made him start to feel hopeless. In less than seven hours, he was going to be trapped in this dark box. Monsters inside and monsters outside … which way did he want to die?
“That zombie up above is right at the vent,” he said.
“Your point?”
“That’s a few feet from the hatch. If you moved fast, you could get away from it.”
“I really don’t want to take my chances.”
“Fine, then we’ll both be eaten alive down here.”
Wesley took one deep labored breath and began to weigh his options.
An hour went by and the canister began to fade. Wesley lit up another canister, leaving only two left.
“Maybe if I open the hatch, Bob will fall inside, giving me a chance to climb out.”
“That might work, I doubt it can climb. You’ll have to be quick if we are going to get out of here alive.”
Quick was something Wesley had never been. He always got picked last for sports teams and always actively avoided physical labor. His plan was to open the hatch to let in what he had worked so hard to keep out. All his planning and all his work had kept him safe for what he was sure must have been for weeks now. His entire plan revolved around escaping deadly insects that would devour him once the light went out. As the little flame-cans burned away, so further did his sanity.
The thought had crossed his mind to hurl one of those cans out the hatch. It would very likely catch that creature on fire. Only it would then spread to the house, which would collapse on the hatch. So, that idea was a no go. Wesley stood at the bottom of the hatch and oddly enough, was not having a panic attack. There was a sense of calm that had washed over him and even he found it strange. He wondered what time it was, outside his tomb. Was the sun shining or maybe the moon was full? His desire to go outside grew like a child waiting for Christmas morning. He didn’t know where he would go, or how he would get there, but he just knew that he had to escape this prison.
“Are you ready, Wes?”
“Not really,” Wesley’s voice echoed from the corner of the room. He began to climb the ladder. He gripped the cold handle and took a deep breath. His strange calm was starting to waver and his palms began to get sweaty. He took a last look down at the place that had been his home now for so long. It was a mess. The petroleum canister on the floor was fading and he could see the shapes of the bugs, piling into shifting masses. In the far corner, Mandy sat calmly watching him, oblivious to the black beetles that skittered across her bare legs and out of her hair. She held one of the large insects in her hand and stroked it with the other, much like one would pet their favorite cat. Her mouth was moving, but he couldn’t hear a word she said. With effort, Wesley tore his eyes away and twisted the hatch’s locking mechanism.
“Here goes nothing,” he said and threw the hatch open.
The light from the midday sun barely cast its rays beneath the porch, but it was utterly blinding to Wesley. When his eyes finally adjusted to the light, he was left staring face to face with the creature that had been harassing him for so long. Both Wesley and the zombie seemed frozen in awe – Wesley in terror, and Bob in the grand realization that its meal had finally arrived. It was hard to believe this creature had been a young man at one time. And although Wesley had expected something horrific, he still wasn’t fully prepared for this. “How long was I down there,” Wesley asked himself. The lips of the zombie had been stripped away, leaving a mouth full of chipped white teeth. The pipe had a caked ring of gore on it, almost as if this monster had been chewing at the metal this whole time.
With a sudden grunt, the zombie lunged forward. This sudden assault scared Wesley and caused him to lose his grip. He plummeted into the bunker, banging his head on the wall before landing on his feet. His poor footing caused his feet to slide out from under him and he landed squarely on his ass.
Wesley looked up right as the zombie flipped vertically through the opening and fell face first toward him. Wesley twisted to his belly as he tried to propel himself to safety, but the zombie landed on him with an incredible amount of force. It knocked Wesley flat, pinning his chest against the floor. Stunned and sprawled out on the cold metal floor, he could only pray that it broke its neck in the fall. As he tried to catch his breath, he could feel it
writhing on his back. Horrified, he bolted upright, abruptly throwing it to the ground, and raced to the ladder. With one foot into the rungs, Wesley felt strong fingers clamp onto his other leg, sending white-hot terror through every pore of his body. Blubbering madly, he instantly tried to shake it loose, his feet dancing wildly as he clung to the upper rungs of the ladder, but it just … wouldn’t … let … go! And then, just when he thought the grip was beginning to slip, broken teeth tore through his pants and deep into his ankle.
Wesley’s scream might have deafened himself had he still been sane enough to hear it.
The monster, his mouth deliciously full of flesh and blood, prepared to take another bite when Wesley finally connected his other heel squarely into its face, splattering gore in every direction. A few more solid kicks to the face and the creature fell backward, its bloody jaw hanging awkwardly below its rotted face. Wesley scampered up the ladder, despite the agonizing pain in his leg.
As he crawled out onto the soft under-porch soil, he heard Mandy’s voice echo up from below. “Please don’t leave me again, Wesley.” Her pleading voice reached into a place that Wesley didn’t know still existed in his bloody and battered body, giving his heart a squeeze that took the breath right out of him. Then the feeling was gone and he turned around and kicked the hatch shut. He wasn’t sure if that monster could climb, but he wasn’t about to take any chances – he would leave that horrid thing for the beetles … and for her. Serve it right.