Pitch Dark

by Courtney Alameda

  The corpse looks like the chupacabra I saw back on the Conquistador, the one who broke floatglass with a weapon no more potent than a scream.

  I glance at the corpses behind me.

  Now I know what happens when the full extent of those screams hit flesh.

  Rusty footprints lead into the tunnel, some of the tracks no more than smears. Everything beyond the corpses lies dark, except for the hand-drawn arrow floating about ten meters up ahead.

  I reach out to touch the tunnel wall. My hand shakes. The metal surface feels like sandpaper. Rust sloughs off under my fingertips. Maybe Mami believes in me, but my confidence comes up short when walking into the darkness, alone. Mami has a lion’s heart and the survival experience to handle a situation like this. As for me, my heart beats like a rabbit’s.

  A thousand bad things could hide in that darkness: monsters who kill with a scream. Crash debris that could bite into my bare feet. I could wander forever and never find my parents. Or I might stumble over their corpses. I suppose the crew will have to come back to the Conquistador at some point, but standing still will probably get me killed. Even if the monsters don’t find me first, the plunging temperature and thinning air supply will. Survival means moving forward.

  “Okay,” I whisper to myself. Fortune and glory, Laura. “Just take a single step”—and I do—“there, that wasn’t hard. Now another, está bien.”

  I talk myself into the darkness. My voice gets quieter as the shadows draw me in, wrapping themselves around me, shutting out all visual stimuli. They silence me. The light at the tunnel opening fades into a small bruise on the darkness. I reach Mami’s second arrow and keep walking, my hand striking a tunnel support strut every ten meters or so. For every two or three struts I pass, I’m rewarded with another arrow in the darkness.

  Reaching out, I run my fingers over the paint. It turns to dust under my fingers, long dry.

  Está bien, it’s okay. I’m okay, I’m okay, I tell myself.

  My footsteps whisper off the walls. The ship groans as if it aches, and far away, a scream cuts through the tunnels. I freeze, but I can’t know if the sound’s organic, human, or otherwise. Taps and knocks echo from inside the walls and underfoot. Every few seconds, the floor shudders. The temperature climbs the farther I descend into the ship.

  Without warning, the wall stops. My hand shoots into empty space and I freeze. Gasp. A weak cross breeze tumbles over my exposed skin, tugging at the loose hairs at the nape of my neck. I’m in an intersection between tunnels, I think. I scramble back a step, heart pounding until my hand finds the wall again, my lifeline.

  If I get lost in this darkness, I’ll never find my parents. I’ll never get out. I’ll die here.

  I slide one hand over the wall till I find its edge, then place my second hand on the corner to anchor myself. I peer down the corridors. None of Mami’s arrows glow on my right. Straight ahead, nada. To the left, there’s a smudge of phosphorlight in the distance. With no whistle of air here, I can only hope I’m walking away from the crash damage, and not toward more.

  It’s not that far away. I step away from the wall, keeping my gaze focused on the bright spot in front of me, unable to gauge the distance between me and safety. You can do this.

  I’m deep across the intersection, moving unguided through empty space, when something croaks. I halt, my muscles locking up with fear.

  That sounded close. I swallow down my heart as it tries to beat its way up my trachea. One of those pale monsters stalks into my imagination, the front of its throat swelling up like a toad’s. Cold sweat condenses on my palms, and I wrap my arms around my stomach, not daring to move.

  The second croak comes from my right. The ship’s rounded tunnel walls make it difficult to judge the distance between the creatures and me. I press the side of my hand into my mouth, biting down to suppress a gasp. I don’t know much about these monsters, but they’re not deaf. Over the years, they must’ve gotten used to hunting in darkness.

  Bueno, but hunting what? I ask myself, easing forward with both hands out in front of me. Or whom? Has anyone survived out here, or do they just eat each other?

  My hands stumble into another wall. I feel my way along until I reach another large support strut, slip behind it, and press my back to the chilly metal. My bow makes a quiet click. I curse myself for forgetting I’m wearing it on my back.

  The monsters’ footsteps drag along the floor. Their giggles bloom in the darkness like spots of sonic mold. I pull an arrow from my quiver, trying not to make a sound. The arrows’ fletchings rasp against one another. When one’s free, I finger the arrowhead, not minding when it cuts a shallow line into my thumb. I squeeze my eyes closed—it makes no difference if they’re open anyway—and wait. My heart beats hard. My knees tremble. At any second, I expect to hear a scream. I expect darkness to slice through my skin and seep into my consciousness.

  One wanders close, its snuffles and short croaks no more than three paces back. I grip the arrow in my fist, thinking of how quick that pale flesh rips, and how easily their blood spills … and how impossible it will be to hit a mortal spot in the dark.

  The monster knocks on the other side of my strut, letting out a half cry: “Grraaak.” The sound reverberates through the metal, making my teeth vibrate. Its fingers make sucking noises against the metal strut.

  This isn’t happening, this isn’t happening, I tell myself. Don’t move, don’t move, don’t move.…

  My stomach squelches and groans, angry and empty. ¡Cállate! I snap at myself. Shut up! The traitorous sound rumbles through the tunnel.

  Two or three curious calls bound off the walls in response. The monster’s fingers brush my shoulder. My next heartbeat spikes through every extremity in my body. I will myself not to move, not to gasp, not to cry.

  As jagged nails prick my exposed skin, a shout echoes through the tunnel.

  The voice sounds baritone range. Masculine.

  Human.

  And it’s coming from the opposite direction of Mami’s bread-crumb arrows.

  With a cry, the monster launches itself off the strut, running toward the sound. Its companion croaks, hands and feet beating the metal floor like drums in pursuit. I wait for several seconds, giving them the lead; but if that shout came from a human being, he must be one of the Conquistador’s crew members. And if he’s one of ours, he’s as good as family.

  What kind of Cruz would I be, were I to stand aside and let him die?

  Another scream rips through the air. Keeping one hand on the wall, I take off at a half jog, half limp, following the screams.

  USS JOHN MUIR NPS-3500

  LOCATION UNKNOWN

  TUCK

  When I reach the main deepdown tunnels, I let a scream rip and rage. For Holly. For me. For every poor bastard who died on this ship. For the hopeful and the hopeless.

  I don’t care if they hear.

  And they do.

  A mourner stumbles into the flare’s pod of light. It’s twitchier than most, head shaking so bad its neck bones crack. It shambles sideways on its knuckles and feet. Clicking. Trilling. It gobbles up air in little giggles, rib cage expanding until its flesh turns translucent. Black lungs inflate between its bones.

  I scream at it first, preempting the beast. It halts, confused. Chucking my flare on the ground, I backhand the monster’s face, slamming it into the tunnel wall. Its head bounces back from the procrete, body swiveling like a punching bag. I grab it by the head and twist. Violent. Fragile neck bones crack under the force of the blow.

  I let go. The mourner’s body whumps against the floor, an empty sack of meat. Screw you and screw this ship. I’m done.

  Another mourner—this asshole’s faster, more lithe—comes charging into the light. It growls at me. The sound cuts my forearm in three places and shreds my cloak’s edge. Yanking my knife from its shoulder sheath, I throw it. The blade catches the mourner in its swelling throat sac.

  I breathe heavily for a few seconds. The cre
ature gasps around the steel lodged in its trachea. It stumbles to the ground, thick blood splattering over the metal floor. It’s just as red as the stuff dripping off my fingertips. Thirty-seven degrees, too, as it spreads around my toes. Warm as mine.

  Our doctors proved it’s still 99 percent human. A few tiny tweaks to the genome turn people into terrors. These creatures aren’t alien.

  They’re us.

  Us, with the stories ripped from our skulls.

  Us, with the empathy drained from our hearts.

  Us, with the spark of curiosity and logic and pursuit of knowledge, gone.

  People stripped of everything that makes us human, made animal, primal. Alive.

  Falling to my knees, I yank my knife from the corpse. Scraping noises emerge from the darkness, knuckles knocking across the floor. I lift my head, wishing I could feel anything but cold fury. Loneliness. Or hate.

  Another mourner crawls into the light, chittering. It’s smaller than most of the others, younger maybe, with strands of yellow hair clinging to its chalky scalp. Cocking its head, it looks at me with a mourner’s eyeless, direct gaze.

  “I thought there would be some relief in it,” I tell her, because her longish hair makes me think she was female once. “In killing, in taking something back.”

  With a click, her jaw dislocates. She growls, her lips retracting back over her gray, craggy teeth. Her chest swells, her throat ballooning. She’s so close, I can see the black mandibles in her throat rubbing against each other. One click from those guns and I’m dead at point-blank range.

  “Spoiler alert,” I say to her, chuckling. “I still feel like shit.”

  The mourner’s spine arches like a cat’s. I close my eyes. At least I get to choose, here and now. If I can’t tempt fate, I’ll force her hand.

  As the mourner steps forward to release the scream, there’s a sharp whistle. A crack. I open my eyes. The mourner collapses backward, an arrow shaft sticking out of her eye socket. The creature gurgles, her pale fingers flexing, before she goes still.

  “Good hell, are you serious?” I rise and whirl, and the sight strikes me dumb:

  A girl stands at the edge of my flare’s light, her bowstring quivering.

  I’ve never seen her before.

  So that’s not weird; the Muir had ten thousand people aboard at liftoff. I knew maybe fifty of them. But nobody I know would be stupid enough to run the ship’s deepdowns wearing anything but stiflecloth. And here she is, dressed in khaki cargo pants and a white tank. Her skin’s blackened with soot. A dirty, blood-soaked bandage is tied around one of her thighs.

  This girl wasn’t on the Muir at takeoff.

  She didn’t survive hundreds of years in a stasis pod.

  She’s an outsider.

  The rage drains out of my body. My mouth drops open. I take a step back. Wonder if she’s a hallucination made of grief and fury and a desperate wish, or a need to hope for something better than death. She lowers her bow, her eyes so wide I can see their whites.

  Someone found us.

  Someone.

  Found.

  Us.

  PART TWO

  THE DEEPDOWNS

  Almost nothing is known of Pitch Dark’s modus operandi, but evidence points to a grassroots organization with little to no hierarchal structure. This form of “leaderless resistance”—with cells that operate without a centralized authority to direct their activities—has proven difficult for law enforcement to infiltrate or terminate. It’s thought that Pitch Dark cells have recaptured the lost art of handwriting, or have taken the bulk of their activities offline. In this case, archaic human technology is trumping modern advances, which is an ironic if not unforeseen twist of fate.

  Our lack of knowledge about how the organization operates, combined with members’ almost fanatical devotion to their beliefs, is why the organization continues to dominate the landscape of Panamerican fear well into this century.

  FROM ON FEAR AND FANATICISM: HOW PITCH DARK MAINTAINS ITS RELEVANCE IN THE TWENTY-FIFTH CENTURY

  LAURA MARÍA SALVATIERRA CRUZ

  SENIOR CAPSTONE THESIS, ABRIL 2432

  USS JOHN MUIR NPS-3500

  CRASH SITE

  LAURA

  No manches, it’s not possible.

  A boy stands before me. A human boy … or at least he looks human.

  Not. Possible.

  His flare throws spitting, erratic light from the floor, casting his eyes in shadow. He must be about eighteen—maybe just a year or two older than me—but his gaze looks ancient. Tired. He stands almost as tall as Sebastian, but with a more muscular chest and broader shoulders, and his skin looks as white as scar tissue. He’s barefoot, his chest heaving, blood splattered across his forehead and coating his fists. The crimson-black stuff drips off his knife’s point.

  The boy reaches up and tugs the balaclava mask off his face. His hood falls back, revealing short, thick brown hair. Jaw slack and eyes wide, he doesn’t try to disguise his shock and awe. The emotions seem so human, so plain. He’s so pale I’m guessing his skin hasn’t had a good dose of melanin in maybe ever. He almost looks … bleached. Ghostly, even in the flare’s eerie light.

  My mind whirls: How did humans survive four centuries lost to deep space? On the far fringes of the universe, orbiting no star, with no planet to support their resources? What about disease? Does he harbor germs or parasites we’ve eradicated? My bioware’s nonfunctional, which means my boosted immunity’s down—what if he makes me sick?

  And the most important question: Is he one of them? One of the knuckle-dragging monsters that break floatglass and rend flesh with sound?

  The thought galvanizes me. I yank an arrow from my quiver and nock it, the muscle memory coming back smoothly now that I’ve had a little practice. The boy’s gaze drops to the arrowhead, but he doesn’t look frightened of the weapon, no matter what he just saw me do. He lifts his hands in the air. Cool. Calm.

  The action’s so human, I’m almost convinced to point my bow at the ground, rather than at him. When threatened, it’s easy to kill a monster, a creature with no discernible humanity. Harder to kill something—no, someone—who looks and acts like a living, breathing human being.

  “Wh-who are you?” I whisper, my voice barely louder than my bowstring’s creak. “Did you see people passing by here? Please, I’m following—”

  He slices a finger across his throat, points at the corpses bleeding out on the ground, then taps his ear. Lifting his hands, he makes a few clumsy hand gestures, maybe trying to speak sign language to me, I’m not sure.

  I shake my head. Nobody’s spoken sign language in hundreds of years, not since Panamerican doctors discovered how to regrow human organs in labs. My own little sister, Sofía, had her vocal cords regrown three years ago after an accident on an archeological dig.

  A wail echoes down the tunnel, coming from the direction my parents went. The boy turns, moving like liquid, with no seams or sound. The ripples in the fabric of his cloak fall still around his feet with unnatural speed. He listens for three seconds, cocking his head, and then scoops his flare off the floor.

  He makes a motion that, no matter what language you speak, means follow me. Holding his flare aloft, he disappears down a corridor I hadn’t noticed before.

  As the light fades away—and the monsters’ calls grow closer—I’m forced to make a split-second decision: Follow a stranger, or try to find my mother’s trail? I glance over my shoulder, barely able to see the light from one of Mami’s arrows. If I die here and now, I know I will never see my family again. Seeing them in the future means surviving now.

  I turn to follow the boy in the cape.

  USS JOHN MUIR NPS-3500

  CURATORS’ PANIC ROOM

  TUCK

  The girl follows me to the closest panic room.

  Damn my luck. I lose one girl, only to find another in the tunnels. Really, I’m thrilled to see another human being. Just delighted. It means I’ll have someone to turn the powe
r hives’ keys with. But it also means I’m going to have to find a way to get a newb through the deepdown tunnels without her getting us both killed.

  We’re pretty much screwed.

  … But I would like to know where the hell she came from.

  The curators’ panic room is a half klick away. The panic rooms are soundproofed, with walls covered with large bricks of anechoic foam. They’re stocked with medical supplies, food, and water, as well as cots and bathroom facilities. We’ll be safe enough inside, able to communicate, even. Assuming she speaks more than a little English. For all I know, she’s from the future.

  No, not from the future. I’m from her past.

  Or something.

  Dammit.

  With the ship’s power offline, I have to open the door by hand. Handing the flare to the new girl, I take an analog crank out of my pack and insert it between the door’s iris panels. Then I pump till the crank expands, pushing those door panels back into the wall. It takes a lot of effort to move them at all.

  The flare’s light fades as the new girl holds it higher, turning in a circle. Almost as if she’s … examining the place. She mouths words, reading an emergency evacuation procedure off a plaque on the wall. Exploring, maybe?

  Hey, girl. I snap my fingers at her without a sound, pointing at the open door.

  She gives me the finger.

  I grin. Glad to see some things never change. “Ladies first,” I mouth at her.

  Glaring at me, the new girl ducks under the crank’s legs and into the panic room. I follow her.

  Two steps after the door clicks closed, she drops the flare and whirls on me. Bow up, arrow loaded. Or nocked or whatever. The flare’s light ices the arrowhead’s edges in green.

  “Well, nice to meet you too, sweetheart,” I say, eyeing the bow.