What Happens in the Darkness

by Monica J. O'Rourke

“Me too,” she said. “But you don’t hear me telling you to bésame culo.”

  Pete and Harry burst out laughing, and Warren scratched his head.

  “Dare I ask what that means?” Warren said.

  “It means ‘kiss my ass,’” Pete said, still laughing. “I’m sorry,” he said to Janelle. “You’re right. It was wrong of me. Perdóneme, chica?”

  Janelle smiled. “Uh huh, okay. I forgive you.”

  “Okay, Ms. Winfield,” Harry said. “Care to lead the way?”

  ***

  Dead bodies littered the streets around the subway. Janelle covered her mouth and stifled a gag from the pungent, sickening smell of their slow decomposition.

  Around the entrance, the buildings, restaurants, bodegas, and street vendors’ tables had been decimated. Harry closely followed her down a small opening to the Eighty-Sixth Street and Lexington Avenue line of the underground subway.

  Janelle groped in the darkness of the platform until her hand found the stashed lantern, and she ignited the wick using the matches in her pocket. The lantern and flashlight were the only items she’d managed to salvage from the sporting goods store on 128th Street. There hadn’t been much left, and what was there she’d had to fight for, dozens of hands groping along with hers, people shoving her out of the way, looking for anything useful. Janelle had snatched the Coleman lantern and heavy-duty Streamlight flashlight. At least the flashlight fit in her backpack despite it being long, thick, and heavy.

  “You’re a resourceful girl,” Harry said, following her inside the tunnel, brushing plaster off his clothes. The entrance had been small for her and was barely penetrable for him.

  She didn’t think of herself as resourceful. Her brothers liked to camp in their tiny backyard and she tagged along when they let her. Lying in her sleeping bag, listening to the sirens from the police cars racing up Third Avenue, watching the city spotlights filling the skies. Stars? She never knew what one looked like until she visited cousins at the Jersey shore.

  A newspaper stand remained embedded in the wall, candy and chips, bottled water, and cigarettes scattered everywhere. Hundreds of cockroaches scuttled for cover the minute the light hit them.

  She and Harry sat beside the lantern as though it was a campfire and rested on the rock-strewn subway platform, covered only with a thin layer of clothing and blankets Janelle had scavenged. They made themselves as comfortable as they could.

  “No one else is down here,” Harry said. “I’m surprised. This is a good place for shelter.”

  “I’ve seen other people. But not down here. I think a lot of people have been dying. I saw people after the bomb, but now not so much.”

  Harry nodded. “Me too.” He exhaled and rubbed his hands together over the tiny lantern fire. “So where are you from?”

  Janelle rubbed her hands together to warm them. The lantern provided light but little warmth. “Harlem. Hundred Twenty-Fifth and Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard.” Her parents had been proud of their heritage and location and refused to allow Janelle to call it Seventh Avenue. They had made her study Powell’s life, and she’d had to write a report for them.

  He smiled. “That’s a mouthful. Me, I’m from Boston. Moved here a year ago with my wife, and then she left me.” He laughed, and he asked about her family.

  “They’re all dead.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Mom was still alive. She made me run. But then she stopped screaming, and I just knew she was dead too.”

  Harry scratched his nose. “You know, I don’t want to give you false hope or anything, but is there a chance she survived?”

  Janelle hadn’t considered that. Was that too much to hope for? If there was a chance …

  “You know, I’m sorry I said that. I don’t think she made it, Janelle. It’s very unlikely anyone survived a bombing.”

  “I survived.”

  Harry nodded but didn’t say anything else for several minutes.

  “So tell me, what were you running from when we found you? I thought the devil was on your tail, girl.”

  Janelle swallowed, unsure she wanted to discuss it. But after a moment she said, “I don’t know what he was. He was very tall, and his bones stuck out all over. He kept trying to grab me. And he ate a live rat.”

  “He what? He ate a rat?”

  “Yeah. He grabbed it and bit into its belly.”

  “Are you kidding?”

  She shook her head.

  “Who was he?”

  She shrugged. “Dunno.”

  Harry leaned back on an elbow and seemed to be thinking about what she had just told him. “And he wasn’t a soldier? Did he say anything?”

  She told him what he had said to her. How he’d been waiting for her. How he’d said “this is my world now.”

  “And then he just disappeared,” she added.

  “I wish I had some advice for you or something, but that’s just plain weird. Let’s get some sleep. Maybe we can figure it out in the morning.”

  “Okay,” she said. “But can we sleep with the lamp on?”

  ***

  Jeff was finally drifting off to sleep, thoughts of Martin having kept him awake for hours. A blast knocked him out of bed. He struggled to his feet, falling over before yanking on his pants.

  He reached the compound and was told the bomb had hit Kingston, New York, fifty miles south of the base.

  A handful of soldiers were all that remained of the base. Jeff had become commanding officer through the process of elimination.

  “Sir.” The soldier who spoke was dressed in a T-shirt and pair of shorts.

  “A little out of uniform, soldier?”

  “Sir, yes, sir! I’m sorry, sir. I was in bed. Any instructions, sir?”

  Jeff shook his head. “No. Get out of here. All of you, get out of here! There’s nothing left to protect.”

  “What do you mean, sir? You mean leave the base?”

  “What part of ‘get out of here’ was unclear, soldier? Get out of here before you all get killed.”

  The soldiers looked confused. “You mean give up, sir?”

  Jeff sighed. “No. Go fight if you want to. Do what you want. But it’s pointless to stay here. One more bomb hit and the place’ll be leveled.”

  “What about the prisoners, sir?”

  The other men looked confused.

  “The what?” Jeff said sharply. “There are no prisoners, soldier. Got that?”

  “Sir, yes, sir!”

  “Now get out. All of you.”

  Jeff headed down to Martin’s cell.

  Chapter 3

  At first it felt like something out of a dream, a dream where you’re falling from a cliff or the top of a skyscraper, falling and falling, and if you don’t wake up you hit the ground—splat!—blood and guts oozing, and you don’t ever wake up from a dream like that. Everyone knows that.

  Janelle woke, disoriented from her falling dream, and realized the ground was vibrating, the walls trembling. Explosions overhead, fireworks going off inside her eardrums. She was screaming but heard no sound, only knew she was screaming because her throat and chest ached, and her mouth was wide open.

  She felt the vibrations of an assault by things unseen, of rocks, of concrete and support beams and glass.

  Moments later—stillness. Utter silence that roared in her head. Blood from a dozen tiny cuts in her forehead trickled into her eyes.

  Then she could hear again, heard herself coughing, heard rocks settling, heard the softness of metallic plinking.

  The fire that had started in the corner of the room dwindled until it snuffed out on its own, tiny ringlets of smoke disappearing just before the flames did. Janelle groped in the blackness, small fingers closing around the powerful flashlight. She pointed the beam around. The look of the platform had changed. A sliver of light danced in the settling dust motes in the distance, tauntingly leading up the flight of stairs they had descended earlier. Now everything was covered in crushed rock, dust, debris
. The newsstand had caved in on itself, was buried in a pile of rubble.

  She struggled up, in shock. Her thigh hurt and she shined the light on it. A chunk of glass was sticking out of the flesh. She yanked it out and winced, sucked in a breath. She pressed the bottom of her shirt against the wound.

  “Harry! Help! I’m hurt.” She wanted him to comfort her, tell her it would be okay.

  He didn’t answer.

  She sucked in the stale, dusty air, choking on it. The thought of continuing the search for Harry terrified her because she knew what she’d find. This station was now as big a mess as the streets.

  It would be the same now, just as it had been for days. Nothing was different, everything was horrible, there was no way to escape what the world had become. She had to stop hoping because hope just meant pain, and she was sick of the pain.

  Harry had fallen asleep near her the night before. His bed was there somewhere, and she arced the light looking for it. She found him lying on his side, his head resting in a pool of blood. His chest moved with the shallow rhythm of his breathing.

  She gingerly touched his cheek, traced it with feather-light fingertips. “Harry?” she sobbed. His leg was twisted, and a bone jutted through his pants. She wanted to scream for help, wanted a grown-up to rescue her, make everything all right.

  “Harry! Please wake up. Please!” She shook his arm, but he didn’t move.

  She sat beside him and cried, waiting for him to wake, to fix everything.

  When she stood, her injured leg throbbed. She limped to the exit stairwell where she had spotted the ray of light. Yes, it was there, she hadn’t imagined it. It was about the size of a mouse hole. She wiggled her fingers into it, tried to loosen the firmly packed rocks and brick and steel. She started sobbing, digging uselessly at this small taunting of hope.

  Sticking her mouth against the hole she shrieked for help until her chest felt as though someone had beaten her, until her throat burned and tiny red spots danced before her eyes.

  No one came.

  She sobbed, sniffed, sobbed some more, wiped her runny nose on her filthy sleeve, slapped her tears away with the flat of her hand. The dirt stung her eyes. She looked again, hopeful. Always hopeful.

  Nothing.

  She screeched for help over and over, calling out names of friends and teachers and relatives, people she knew couldn’t possibly be anywhere near but calling for them anyway. Because she was screaming for a miracle, and she didn’t care how it arrived—she just needed one.

  She crumpled against the rock, sobbing, eyes and forehead cradled in the crook of her arm, elbow resting against her bent knees. Staying this way forever seemed like a pretty good idea. Maybe the tiny hole in the plaster taunting the way to freedom would somehow crumble, turn into something Janelle could squeeze through. If she waited it out … it could happen. Right? That could be her miracle.

  “Harry?”

  He still wasn’t answering.

  She struggled to her feet. She could stay in one spot and wait for a miracle, or wait there and eventually die, or she could face her fear and search for another way out.

  Noises behind her, coming from the outside. Scratching, clawing sounds, digging into the plaster. She pressed her ear against the hole. But the noises didn’t belong to people. They were throaty growls, low moans like something in pain, or something hungry.

  Something was as anxious to get in as she was to get out.

  She scrambled away, tripping over rocks, over her own feet.

  Harry moaned.

  Janelle raced back to his side and dropped to the ground. “Harry? You okay?” Of course he was okay. He had to be okay.

  Harry coughed. Janelle grabbed his arm and tried to help him sit up but he was too heavy.

  “Please,” she said. “Get up. You have to get up.”

  “No, Janelle …” he said, wincing. “Don’t.”

  “You have to.” Tears started falling again and she got behind him and pushed. “Get up, Harry!”

  “Janelle, stop.”

  She shoved him harder, frantic now, desperate to get him on his feet. If only he’d stand, everything would be okay again.

  “Janelle!” He coughed hard, tipping forward and falling onto his palms. He groaned and fell into himself, a coughing spasm making him scream in pain. He clutched his broken leg and yelled like a wounded dog, falling forward in sobs.

  Janelle was terrified. She’d never seen anyone in such pain. But she was desperate, terrified. He couldn’t be that badly hurt. Couldn’t! “Get up!” she screamed, giving him one final shove. She let go of his back and fell hard on her butt.

  Harry was her dead father. He was her family. The only thing left in her world now, and he couldn’t let her down. Just couldn’t. Not the way her father had, by dying, by deserting her. Her selfish, rotten father, leaving Janelle alone in the middle of a war.

  “Daddy,” she whispered. “Why’d you leave me?”

  “Janelle? You okay?”

  “No,” she muttered, breaking into sobs.

  “Anything broken?” he asked, wincing with every breath.

  “No.” But she pouted. She wanted to feel sorry for herself. “I got a bad cut on my leg.”

  “Come here.”

  She crawled over to Harry and shined the light in his face. Blood streamed from the gash on his skull. She shined the flashlight down his body and saw him clutching the bone sticking out of his leg.

  She grabbed a shirt from the pile of clothes that had been part of her bed and handed it to him. “For your head.” She couldn’t bring herself to touch him.

  “C’mere.” He pulled up her pant leg and examined her cut. “Are we trapped?”

  “Uh huh.” She studied him for a second. “Harry … you okay?” She knew he wasn’t, could see he was in agony but wanted him to lie.

  He ignored her question. “You look around? Find a way out?”

  “Over there,” she said, pointing to what had once been the exit. “But it’s blocked now.”

  “What about the other side?”

  The other side? What, the side in total blackness? Was he kidding? “Uh huh,” she lied, having no intention of going to the other side. “I checked. Nothing’s there. It’s blocked too.”

  Harry cocked his head. “You have to go for help, Janelle.”

  “What? No way! I’m hurt. Besides, someone’s gonna come. They’ll rescue us.”

  “No one’s gonna rescue us, Janelle. You just said the exit was blocked. No one knows we’re down here.”

  “Warren and Pete know,” she said quickly, searching for any excuse not to have to go into the tunnels. “They said they’d be here today. Remember?”

  “No. We said—” He coughed and then moaned, leaning forward and clutching his stomach. “I need water. Got any water? What we said was, we’d meet up where we were last night. Hell, they don’t even know what station we picked to sleep in.”

  Janelle found her pack and dug out a bottle of water.

  Harry moaned again, lowered his head. “Please, Janelle. You have to go for help.”

  “Just get up. You’ll be okay. Everything’ll be okay if you just get up.” She shoved him again, but more lightly this time.

  “I can’t. Leg’s broken. Stop shoving me! I can’t walk. Can’t even stand!”

  She slumped against a steel beam and crossed her arms over her chest. No way could he make her go anywhere. Not in this dark, horrible place. Someone would come. They had to.

  “Janelle,” he whispered, his voice weak, “if you don’t get help, I’m gonna die.”

  “No,” she whined. “Don’t say that.”

  “You have to try. Go to another station. Find another way out.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “I know. But you have to.”

  She chewed her lip and sniffed hard. He was the grown-up. He was supposed to fix this. Why should she have to rescue him? But she knew it was the only way. She’d have to get to another station.r />
  “I don’t want to,” she mumbled, almost angry.

  “Please, Janelle? You need to be brave.”

  “No! It’s dark and scary. There’s things down there. I heard noises.”

  “If you stay here, we’ll both die for sure. How long do you think we’ll last? How long will you last once I’m dead? Then you’ll really be by yourself.”

  “Fine!” she snapped, sorry the moment the word was out of her mouth.

  Harry sighed. “I know you’re scared. But you can do this. Okay? Try the other side first.”

  The other side of this station. She was tempted to lie again, remind him she’d already been there. But he must have guessed she’d lied. Adults always seemed to know when kids lie. Besides, there might be an exit over there. But she needed a way to get across to the other side of the tracks. Steel girders and huge chunks of concrete barricaded her from simply crossing them. She would have to find the underground walkway.

  Halfway down the platform she reached the flight of stairs that led to the opposite side. The underground tunnel would bring her to the express tracks and back up into the station.

  She aimed the light into the stairwell. It was so black it was beyond black, more than a color. It was its own version of color. It swallowed the light beam more eagerly than the tunnel had. Her field of vision was no further than her own feet.

  The noises in that black hole tickled her spine and raised the hair everywhere on her body. Scraping sounds, slithering, scurrying noises, guttural growls, like hungry, desperate stomachs.

  And from deeper still it seemed, from the deepest fathoms of the blackness, sounds of breathing, of whispers, a league of voices formed as one. “Help me …” one moaned, the sound so small it was barely there. Followed by a tittering—laughter?—choking?—impossible to know, but it felt fake, a mockery, as if the help me had been a trick, as if a helpless little girl would be foolish enough to investigate noises in the dark.

  As if the things in the dark were hoping for just that.

  She slowly backed away from the stairs.

  “Harry? Did you hear that?”

  “What, honey?” he groaned, his voice weak, barely above a whisper. “Hear what?”