I was lucky enough to avoid them altogether.
I tuck my bag away before I unroll my sleeping bag. It’s cold and sweaty inside of it. What I wouldn’t do for a warm fire to cosy up to. Feel the light and heat on my face.
I rest easier knowing that Lee has nodded off. Must have fallen asleep sometime while I was scouring the shelves in the dark. Won’t be awake to glare and leer through the darkness.
I don’t find much sleep myself. But I never slept very well in the dark. And as the last of the lanterns is turned off, the dark is as thick and black as it is outside.
Sleep is hard to come by.
2
Sometimes I’m foolish enough to think—even for just a moment—that when I wake, the darkness will have all been just a dream, that the sun will rise and I will see clouds for the first time in over a year.
The darkness never leaves. It makes waking up all the harder, knowing that there’s no time anymore. There is no morning, midday, afternoon, or even night. Time is gone, like the world I once knew.
Still, when I wake on the cold linoleum floor, I know it’s not time to wake up and move on. Everyone is asleep, unmoving in their sleeping bags. No one stirs.
Carefully, I peel off my sleeping bag. Don’t want to wake anyone. Legs free, I roll into a crouch and slowly rise. All the lanterns are out, but one. Someone must have gotten up before me and left it on.
We’re not supposed to take each other’s stuff, even borrow things from each other, but I need the lantern. Without a torch, I have no way of seeing, and I’m bursting to find a toilet somewhere in this dank shop.
The lantern’s glow is faint, but it’s enough to cast light over the bags strewn about the floor. I’m careful to side-step the mess, tread softly, and make my way over to the lantern. As I close in, I glance at the face of the one who sleeps beside it. Adam, a young guy maybe still in his teens, who looks even younger asleep. He won’t mind if I take the lantern, I doubt he’ll make a fuss or tell anyone. Not that I want to risk waking him and finding out.
I crouch to get a firm grip on the handle and, with teeth clenched, I lift it gently off the floor. Adam doesn’t stir. Sweaty hand clasped around the handle, I retrace my steps back to my sleeping bag. I move slowly, quietly, then climb over my things into the aisle I raided earlier.
The darkness seems thicker when everyone is asleep. It must be the silence. It casts an eerie blanket over me. Chills prickle my skin into little bumps beneath the thin fabric of my cardigan the further down the aisle I wander. The lantern illuminates the sparse leftovers on the shelves, the dust coating them. Magazines, broken glass bottles, scattered blocks of chocolate that weren’t gathered before the evacuations.
At the end of the aisle, a row of glass-door fridges lines the wall. I don’t dare open them. I know from experience the pungent stench of old, rotting meat and curdled milk. The off-meat stink doesn’t bother me as much, not when I’ve been walking the continent for a year, through villages where bodies were left to rot in the streets. It’s not uncommon. But it is unpleasant. Especially when, in the blanket darkness, you find yourself tripping over corpses.
I follow the fridge-lined wall to the left, where a small door stands open. We came in through that way, after breaking the window at the back of the shop. There’s a crammed hall beyond the door that I squeeze into, tucking the lantern closer to me, and I find another door that I suppose leads to the washroom.
The handle is covered in a sticky paste, the colour of burnt oranges. Not unlike rust, I think. I pull my sleeve over my hand and use it to bring down the handle. I move it slowly. Any squeak or creak can draw unwanted attention our way, betray our presence to outsiders. It’s not just the roaming dark fae we have to worry about, but other survivors too. Most of the others out there don’t take kindly to strangers, especially when you’re in their territory.
It has become a dark world.
Maybe it has always been this way—dark. It just took the loss of the light to reveal what we really are. Monsters. Just like the beasts hunting us to the ends of the earth.
I throw those thoughts away as I slip into the washroom. It’s smaller in here than it is in the tight hall-space. I’m wedged between a dirty toilet and a stained sink.
Carefully, I set the lantern on the edge of the sink, then test the taps. Water still drizzles out. Some must still be left in the pipes.
I wet a cloth with the tepid water, then wipe down the toilet seat. Once it’s as clean as I’ll get it, I use the cloth on the mirror above the sink. The layer of dust is caked over it. But the cloth works well enough for my reflection to wisp back at me. It’s muddy and murky, like seeing yourself in the ripples of a stream, but it’s the first time I’ve seen my face in a long while. Don’t spend too much time looking for mirrors these days. And as I stare at my reflection, I realise why. I look ghastly.
Once upon a time, I used to dye my hair all different colours. I’ve been blue, pink, red, even green. Every strand had been bleached to within an inch of its life. Those days are gone now, and I’m staring at the ordinary yellow hues of my hair. All traces of dye have long since faded.
My grandma used to call me a ‘dirty blond’, but I always thought that was just a nice, British way of saying dull blond. I hated the dusty tint to my hair, hated it so much that I just had to paint it every other colour I could find in a bottle.
Funny how much you miss the little things when everything is gone.
I miss the concealer I would wipe over my faint freckles, and the smell of sunscreen when it was summer, and a hot, freshly brewed cup of coffee. I miss the screech of coffee machines, and how I used to watch the sun set so I could capture the colours in the sky and sketch them with into my notepad with my coloured charcoal sticks, and how I would always have chalky stains on my fingertips after.
I grip onto the sides of the sink and look down at the drain. Water seeps out from the taps, still running, and I watch it twirl around the drain like a whirlpool that I want to suck me in and take me away.
That’s one thing I don’t miss about the old world—the way I always wanted to leave, to disappear. That feeling has stayed with me into the darkness.
One hand still on the sink, I reach around my back and slip out the pair of heavy scissors from my waistband. I let the scissors fall into the sink with a clatter, then slowly roll up my sleeve. Even in the dim lantern light, I see the gleam of scars cutting across my flesh like whip-lashes.
I wasn’t built for this world. Or for the old one.
But I’m too much of a damn coward to do anything about it. For now. One day, I’ll find the courage to press harder into my skin, to fight the urge to wrap a bandage around my wounds. One day I’ll leave.
One day.
Just not today.
I turn my back on the scissors and reach for another cloth. This one feels clean against my fingers. Worn-out, but clean enough.
I dampen it in the steady stream of tap water before I strip down to my underwear. The cloth feels cool against my skin. I scrub, hard. Got to make up for the lack of soap. If I’d found soap somewhere in here, it would be a start to a good day. But it’s like in the ‘before days’ when you’d have a shower, but not use body or face wash or shampoo or even rinse your hair. There’s something slightly refreshing about it, but it doesn’t feel like enough. Never enough.
After a while, you get used to it though.
I’m as clean as can be when I trade the cloth for the toilet. My heart skips a beat when it flushes, and a small smile takes my lips. It won’t flush for the next person, but I don’t care about that. We might be a group or a tribe or whatever we call ourselves, but we all know it’s everyone for themselves. Any one of these people would leave me behind in a heartbeat if I developed a limp, twisted my ankle, or even started falling to starvation. They wouldn’t share rations with me, I know that for a fact, because I’ve seen it.
We stick together for travel, but we’re no community. I saw that with Mike
.
I’m almost finished up in the bathroom when I pick up the scissors. For a moment there, I had every intention of slipping them back into my sweatpants and taking them back to my bag. But it’s so dark, it’s so quiet, and the blade is calling to me. I just need to feel numb, and that’s what it does. It takes the pain way.
Ironic, I know.
Once I’m done, I rinse off the blood in the sink, then wind the damp cloth around my forearm. The thick, coarse fabric coils around the scattered scars I wear there, and the black ink that stains my skin. A stupid, small tattoo I got forever ago to remind me to be strong and all that shit. Doesn’t work. Not in this world, not anymore.
I finish up in the washroom and slip out. Before I leave the hall, I look out of the broken window we smashed, and feel the cool breeze on my damp face. Bit icy. Chills prickle all over my body, but I like it. I don’t feel cold, or pain, or misery. I just feel numb, and it’s the most blissful thing that’s happened to me in a long time.
Wearing that dumb, small smile on my lips, I head back into the shop. I close the door quietly behind me.
With the lantern light, I try another search around the shop. Need batteries, batteries, batteries. But I come up short. Can’t even find a replacement torch, not even one of those tiny crappy ones that are weaker than a match-flame and give off dusty light.
Giving up, I head back to the others before someone realises I stole a lantern. Or borrowed, but they won’t make that distinction. No one is awake when I lower the lantern beside Adam, then creep back to my sleeping bag.
I don’t get a wink of sleep. I lie there, on my side, and feel the hot thrum of pain spread through my arm. It relaxes me. Like a lullaby soothing my soul. But my zen is short-lived. It isn’t long before the others start to stir and, one by one, I hear the rustle of sleeping bags being rolled up and stuffed into their carry-bags. I stay in mine for as long as I can, feeling the pulse of blood rush to my wound. Before I get up, I secure the cloth-bandage around my forearm, then tug down my cardigan sleeve.
Lantern lights start to flick on all around our corner of the shop. I finally follow the lead and pack up my things. We won’t have long before we head out to raid the nearby houses and thatched cottages. On our way into the village, we wandered the cobblestone street with what little lights we had. It wasn’t hard to tell that we’d arrived in the French village, Eguisheim.
I’d been here once before, with my mum and dad before they died. It was something magical, a medieval village parked near the border to Germany, like something plucked out of Beauty and the Beast. I fleetingly wonder if Disney based Belle’s village on Eguisheim. I’ve never seen anywhere else in the world like it. And I won’t ever again.
Even now, back in this quaint, tiny village, I won’t really see it. Like the rest of the world, it has fallen to the darkness. And now, to us, it’s just another place to rest and loot before moving on. Moving on to where, I don’t know. We don’t ask questions like that. Because none of us want to face the truth. We have nowhere to go, no purpose, no reason to keep on going. We just walk.
Some of the others take a last-minute wander around the shop, in case they missed anything good, or left something behind. Others find their way to the washroom I used earlier. No one mentions that the toilet won’t flush, or that the taps are drained of water. They don’t know I used it all up, and I’m glad for it.
Lee spreads out the map over the floor. Slowly, we all gather around it, and some push the lanterns closer.
A cold dread moves through my gut. I know what the map means, and I hate him for it. We’ll be moving on quicker than I expected. Today, after the raid of the village. I’d thought that maybe we would camp out in the shop a while longer. Maybe get some rest after days of walking, rarely stopping for longer than a few hours here and there.
My legs ache in protest of what’s coming.
I watch Lee drag his meaty finger down the map until the tip lands on Eguisheim, down by the border of Switzerland and Germany. I tune out most of what happens next. Talk of whether to head north and avoid the towns or west into the national park, where there is sure to be lakes for us to bathe in. But it doesn’t really matter, does it? Because ultimately, we’re not going anywhere. Just around in circles. We could go north, west, south or back east—it wouldn’t matter.
But that doesn’t mean I’m stupid.
When support for the forest is growing, I cut in. “Don’t you remember Poland?” I ask and look around at the faces turned towards me. “I don’t want a repeat of that.”
No need to say more. The faces around me register the memory, some with blank looks, others with grimaces. It was horrible in Poland. Mind you, we only cut through it briefly, but we spent a few days in one of their forests, and it answered a wonder I’d had for a long time. Which animals are still out there? In Poland, we learned that bears and wolves were surviving, just like us. How they’re doing it, I don’t know. Maybe they hunt better or see better in the dark.
Besides, complete darkness in the woods lost us two of our group. No one knows what happened to them. They just vanished. It’s too easy to lose each other as it is, let alone in a national park.
“I say we head up along the border of the forest,” I suggest, running my chipped fingernail along the map, where only communes and villages are strewn about, “then cut off west before Selestat.”
His stare burns into me. I can feel it searing my flesh, hear the silent words that his eyes speak—Shut up, Vale.
But Lee gives a brisk nod, then starts to fold up the map. Though, in the flickering lantern light dancing over his face, I catch the scowl that passes over him. He likes to be the one with the ideas. The one to follow.
Whatever mate, you can lead until your heart’s content. I’m not that invested in sticking around anyway. When we reach the north of France, I don’t know what will become of us. There’s nowhere else to go, except up the English Channel to Britain, and then what?
I’ve been travelling with them for months. Some newer faces than others, picked up along the way. A lot of faces gone to death and lost in the wilderness. But none I’m attached to. So maybe I’ll go my own way soon. I suspect we might even end with a fight, all of us.
But until then, I play along, feeling the tensions rising between us.
3
We’re all packed up within minutes.
My bag straps dig into my shoulders, pulled down by the weight of my sleeping bag and the bottles of water I have stuffed inside of the bag. I adjust the straps before I approach the front door of the shop.
Lee stands there, hand on handle, waiting. We all fall into complete silence. Chills coil deep in my stomach. When the silence is at its thickest, I really feel the darkness all around us. One by one, the lanterns turn off, and I suddenly feel like I’m suffocating. It’s too early to move on, too soon to go back out there in the dangers of this new world.
But it’s too late to argue it now. Lee jams a screwdriver into the wedge of the door and jimmies the lock until it snaps open. Then he’s still. We all are. Silence envelopes us as we hold our breaths and wait, wait for another group to ambush us, wait for the cries of the dark fae ready to burn us to ash and dust. But nothing happens. The silence turns deafening.
Lee, satisfied that no one is out there, peels open the door slowly. Its creak pierces the quiet. The chill of the air outside hits us, hard, like a punch to the face. I feel my pores tighten instantly, and my shoulders hunch, braced for the walk outside. Must be a cold season.
Funny thing about the seasons—we still have them. We can’t see the sun or the stars or the moon, but they’re still up there beyond the darkness. The sun still penetrates our planet’s atmosphere somehow. Back when we were in Poland, I swear I sweated out a good five kilos or so.
But not here. No, this place carries a cold in the air like the early promises of snow and ice. I don’t fancy travelling much in the snow. It’s hard enough to stay together as it is. Sometimes, we even t
ie ropes around our waists, all connected to each other, so we don’t go astray. Of course, that was after we lost the two in Poland’s Zarski Forest.
We step into the darkness outside. I feel a hand clasp around my wrist. I wince as the grip tightens on my wound, but I don’t pull away. It’s Tiffany, and since she has a lantern, I decide to let her team up with me for the raid.
In pairs, we all spear off in different directions. The sounds of our footsteps, once clumped together, softens into something distant as we each head to different buildings.
The soft glow of Tiffany’s lantern casts yellow hues over the cobblestones, and soon weakly illuminates the face of a thatched house.
The iron gate hangs off its hinges. I slip up to the path after Tiffany, following her light up to the thick, blackwood door. She tries the handle. It clicks unlocked, then she pushes the door all the way open. Just as I expected, blackness greets us. The inside is as dark as the outside.
We’re careful to tread softly as we slip inside the house. For all either of us know, there could be survivors hiding out in one of the rooms spearing off from the main corridor facing us. Neither of us fancy being cornered or robbed of our supplies.
I stick close to Tiffany as she spears off left, into the room closest to us. The door hangs open. Inside, the lantern gives off a faint glow to what looks like a living room, with an old boxy television collecting dust by the windows. The curtains are drawn, hiding our faint light from the street outside.
Tiffany wanders over to the open door by the fireplace. She peers through the gap, lifting her lantern to illuminate the darkness, leaving me blind.
“A kitchen,” she says softly, her whispered words bound by the fear hammering at both of our insides. “These are apartments,” she adds and peels back from the door. She gestures for me to join her.
I shadow her into the kitchen.
Dark Fae: A Dark Fantasy Romance (The Dark Fae Book 1) Page 2