by Dan Rix
She grinned. “Want some?”
I nodded.
“Come on, I’ll show you.” She grabbed the lantern and waved me back into the house, and I followed her through the kitchen and down a staircase into a subterranean hallway. We reached a massive steel door. Like some kind of blast door.
“Bomb shelter?” I guessed.
“He’s crazy paranoid. You’ll see.” She pulled the door open and raised the lantern, lighting the room beyond.
I gasped.
Stacked floor to ceiling, a dozen pallets of Fiji bottles gleamed in the darkness, a pyramid of five-gallon water jugs, rows and rows of oil drums, propane tanks, power tools . . . and food. Boxes and boxes of food. Cans and grains and ready-made meals, all freeze-dried and vacuum sealed.
“Is it real?” I breathed.
“All real,” she said. “A year’s supply for him and his wife. Been here three weeks and I’ve barely made a dent.”
I wasn’t listening. I flung myself to an open pallet and wrestled a bottle loose from the plastic, twisted off the cap, and downed the whole thing in a single chug, then gasped for breath.
“Thirsty?” she said, amused.
“God yes.” I went for a second bottled and finished that one too. The sudden intake of fluid left me woozy and drunk. “How . . . how did he get it here?” I panted, liquid euphoria spreading outward from my stomach. “All the other water . . .”
“You can’t drink it, I know. I tried tap water, bottled water, creek water, swimming pools, I even tried desalinating seawater. Nothing. It’s the entire city. This is the only supply.”
“How did he get it here?” I asked again.
“Same way we got here, I’m guessing. By wrapping it in dark matter.”
“So he knew about that part,” I said, my thoughts clearer than they’d been in days now that I was properly hydrated. “He must have thought he was going to get stuck here . . . like us.”
“Like I said, paranoid.”
I glanced around. “You wouldn’t have, like, a granola bar or something?”
“Here.” She tossed me one.
I tore into it like an animal, scarfed it down. “By the way, where is this?” I mumbled, mouth full of granola. “Where are we?”
“Pardon?”
I swallowed too large a bite, and it almost got stuck in my throat. “This place . . . what is this place?”
“Eat. Take your time.”
“Sorry . . . hungry,” I garbled, ripping off the wrapper and stuffing the rest of the bar in my mouth. “There was another girl, she had a stash of food too, I mean, not like this—this is amazing—but she had food too, but I used it all up. What are you making?”
She leaned forward. “What?”
I swallowed again. “Sorry. In the garage. What are you making?”
“Oh, what am I making?” Understanding flashed in her eyes. “It’s a machine. I’ll show you later.”
“You like building stuff, huh?”
“Relax. Just eat. Here, I’ll make you some mac ’n cheese. You want some mac ’n cheese?”
I nodded vigorously.
She busied herself at a tiny camp stove, emptying another Fiji bottle into a pot.
“Can I stay with you?” I blurted out. “My house kind of freaks me out. I think it’s haunted. But if I could stay with you . . . I won’t bother you, I promise . . . Pleeease?”
“Ooh, I don’t know,” she said, sucking in through her teeth. “I kind of like my privacy.”
“Oh.” My heart fell. “Okay.”
“I’m kidding.”
“Uh . . .”
“That was a joke. You know, where you laugh? Ha ha ha.”
“I know what a joke is,” I muttered. “I just didn’t think it was that funny.”
She peered sideways at me. “Don’t push your luck, kid—”
“I’ll get my stuff from my house,” I said, running for the door before she could change her mind. “Be right back.”
“No—” She spun away from the stove and grabbed my arm. “Don’t go out there. Not at night.”
“What? Why not?”
“Not at night,” she warned, all the humor gone from her eyes. “Wait until morning.”
“But my stuff—”
“Forget about your stuff.” Her hand squeezed my arm tighter.
“Ow,” I yelped, jerking away from her.
She let go, startled. Her fingers left red marks. “Sorry,” she mumbled, looking shaken. “Just . . . just sleep here tonight. You can get your stuff in the morning. In fact, we should be turning out our lights and getting to bed. I didn’t realize how late it was.”
“Why can’t I go out at night?” I said, my voice a little hurt as I rubbed the welts on my arm.
Eyebrows low and brooding, she turned back to the pot, which had started to boil. “Because that’s when it feeds.”
Curled up in a sweaty nest of blankets in the corner of the bomb shelter, I didn’t sleep a wink. Sarah had brought everything down from the garage, extinguished all the lights, and bolted the steel blast door, checking and double-checking everything. I watched her lockdown routine with growing unease and thought of the boarded up windows in Ashley’s bedroom.
That’s when it feeds.
When what feeds?
The thing I’d seen in the sewer?
The house creaked and settled overhead, each tiny squeak pressing a knife against my already frayed nerves. Sarah snored next to me on an air mattress.
Escape. We needed to escape. Leave this godforsaken planet.
The lump pressing against my lower back reminded me I still had Ashley’s diary. Giving up on sleep, I rolled onto my stomach and propped the diary open under Sarah’s lantern.
January 12
I slept with it on for the first time last night. I was so scared I didn’t fall asleep until really late. I had no idea what wearing it for eight hours would do to me. I didn’t sleep well, either. I had horrible nightmares, and I woke up before dawn with my heart beating really fast and frantic to get it off. I’m not going to try that again.
February 14
I have a secret admirer! There was a single red rose sitting on my desk when I got into English class. I’m pretty sure it was Tommy. He was acting all sketchy and cold to me today, like not meeting my eyes or anything in class. Why are boys so weird? I had butterflies in my stomach for the rest of the day. Guess what? My birthday’s only two weeks away! Then my parents will let me date!
The corner of my lips nudged upward. Yeah, I remembered crushes in freshman year. Nothing but puppy love.
No sooner had the thought formed than my mind fixated on Emory, sending a wave of heat down my front.
Oh, and that was true love?
I read on, distracted by a medley of conflicting emotions.
I’d probably never even see him again.
March 21
I woke up on Foothill Road this morning. My wrist was covered in blood and really hurt, and when I washed away the scab, I found the words I AM DARK carved into my skin. I think I did it myself. I’m really scared.
A chill bristled the back of my neck.
“I am dark,” I whispered. Like the Ouija board, and the message that had come from my cell phone after it was taken.
“Huh . . . wha’?” said Sarah, stirring next to me. “You say something?”
“Nothing, sorry,” I said, very much grateful that she was next to me. My eyes darted back to the page, hungering for more.
April 1
I think the voice is acting through me when I sleepwalk. I’m doing things during episodes I didn’t used to do.
April 6
I woke up in the backyard this morning
three feet away from the cliff. It’s getting worse. I’m debating whether or not to tell my parents. I know they would want me to tell them, but if they knew how bad it was, they would officially freak. I’m sick of them worrying about me. I’m going to put it on again tonight, like the voice told me to.
April 7
I put it on again last night, and the strangest thing happened. The world faded away and I was floating in this white place for a while, then I reappeared in my own bed and it was daytime even though I knew it had to still be night. Emory’s bedroom was empty, and my parents’ bedroom was empty, and Carter wasn’t on his dog bed either. I went outside, and there was no one on the streets. At first I was scared, but after a few hours, everything faded again and I was back in my bed, and the sun had only just risen, and I realized I’d actually been teleported to a different universe for the night, like a dreamworld. And the voice told me it could all be mine as long as I didn’t eat or drink anything.
My sweaty fingers smudged the pages. I leaned closer, scarcely breathing.
It had tricked her.
It had tricked her into wearing dark matter for a prolonged period of time so she would be transported here.
Like me.
May 1
I went to that other place again last night. But it was really weird because when I got back, Emory told me he had come in to check on me during the night. I was like uh-oh at first, thinking he probably saw my empty bed and that was what he was going to talk to me about, but then he said I was fast asleep just like I was supposed to be. I didn’t know what to say. So while I was hanging out in my dreamworld, my body was actually asleep in my bed. I guess it kind of makes sense. It’s like the part of me that sleepwalks is teleported to a place where it can do whatever it wants without hurting itself, while my body is finally allowed to rest in the real world. The voice says if I promise to go back there every night I can be cured of sleepwalking forever. As long as I don’t eat the food.
May 6
I ate the food, and as punishment the voice didn’t let me back into the real world for a whole day. I waited on the beach the whole time, feeling so hungry and thirsty I thought I would die. The food tasted gross, anyway. But it was really creepy because when I got back and apologized to my teachers for missing school, they didn’t know what I was talking about. They said I hadn’t missed any school.
I stopped reading.
What happened to Ashley Lacroix was clear.
Dark matter had used her, manipulated her, exploited her deepest vulnerability—her sleepwalking—and offered her a safe haven as bait, urging her to put it on for longer and longer periods of time to escape her reality. Instead, it had trapped her here.
Just like me.
Dark matter had exploited my own guilt and shame, offering me invisibility as a way to face what I had done, to atone for it. It had preyed on my weakness. I’d gotten wary of it before it had time to abduct me, so it had conjured up a dark matter copy of Ashley and unleashed her on me, forcing me to continue wearing it as defense . . . just long enough for it to take hold and fuse to my skin.
I remembered thinking invisibility was all I had.
The horror of my fight with Ashley came rushing back, making me wince. Had that all been to distract me while dark matter mounted the real attack from under my skin? I shuddered, horrified.
Just like Ashley Lacroix, I’d become trapped in its invisible web.
Never before had I felt such kinship with her than now, reading her private thoughts in a diary, her fears, her insecurities . . . her clueless crushes. We were the same—deeply flawed, ashamed, wounded creatures—and in a weird way, it bound us together. We could be friends.
I wanted to keep reading.
She had a quirky charm, and her diary had sucked me right in. I wanted to get to know her . . . all of her. It was weird, but already I really liked Ashley Lacroix. We could fight dark matter together.
Except she was dead.
Ashley Lacroix was dead, and had been for almost four months. For a split-second, I’d almost forgotten, and now a sudden, stabbing guilt flared in my chest.
I’d killed her on July 1.
Fifteen-year-old Ashley—who had a personality, who had hopes and fears and dreams, who was real—was dead because of me.
My vision blurred. I blinked, and a tear hit the page. It was a different kind of torture this time. Not guilt or shame or self-loathing, but a terrible heartache, like I’d killed someone I loved.
Because now I knew her.
We were not the same. We would never be the same. Ashley was innocent, kindhearted, brave. I was none of those things. I was cowardly, rotten, unforgiveable . . . Evil.
Her death was my fault, all my fault. Maybe if I hadn’t been speeding, or smoking, or driving Megan during the probationary period, maybe I would have seen her standing in the middle of the road. Maybe I could have braked in time, or honked, or swerved. Or maybe if I had called the police instead of dumping her body, if I had gotten help, maybe they could have resuscitated her. Maybe she would be alive today—
No one knows. I sucked in a sharp breath, suddenly remembering. No one knew I killed her, no one knew I hid the body. I never confessed. I’d missed my one chance. Emory . . . he still didn’t know.
I’d gotten trapped in this underworld, and I’d taken my secret with me. But . . . but if I never made it home—I raised my trembling hand to my mouth and bit my fingernails, slipping into panic—if I never made it home, if I never got the chance to confess . . .
Dread pooled deep in my belly.
No, dying on this ash planet was not an option. I had to get back, had to set this right. I had to tell Emory, confess everything. I was the only one who could. I had to fall to my knees with a broken heart and plead guilty, kneel before him in penitence. My soul would never be free until I did.
Somehow, I had to escape this hell. For him. For her brother. Because I was in love with him and he needed my confession.
I rolled over in my sheets, jaw clamped.
I was getting off this fucking rock if it was the last thing I did.
And I’d start by searching Major Connor’s house.
In the morning after Sarah went back to work—the generator fired up in the garage with a thunderous roar, startling me awake—I set out to find a way home, still haunted by last night’s resolution.
A second blast door exited the rear of the bomb shelter. Beyond it, stairs climbed to a pair of slanted cellar doors, which I threw open to dazzling sunlight—his backyard, a paradise of landscaped terraces lined with ferns and palm trees.
But not the way back to Earth.
I headed back inside through the bomb shelter, running my hands along crates of supplies, blankets, food pallets, a rack of assault rifles. My fingers came away coated in dust.
Supplies for a whole year.
Rod Connor had known what to expect here—tainted food and water, no electricity, no fire—he’d prepared for everything.
Maybe he’d also prepared an escape.
He was an Air Force Major, after all. He was the guy in charge of cleaning up dark matter. He’d know how to get back. He had to know.
There’d be a binder explaining everything.
I grabbed my bottle of Fiji water and headed up to the ground floor, peeking through doorways. A bathroom, a spare guest room, a library—I paused at the photos of a young black soldier in full Marine regalia. His son.
Flanking the photos, a series of rich wood frames exhibited medals and military ribbons, each one the focus of a different halogen spotlight recessed in the exposed timber ceiling, lenses dark.
Killed in action.
Somehow, I just knew.
People only paid this kind of reverence to the deceased.
The scream
of a power saw broke my trance, and dust sprinkled off the ceiling.
What the hell was she building out there?
I tore my eyes off his dead son and continued through the rest of the house. At last, I located a study at the end of the hall upstairs.
With a tug, the filing cabinet clanged open. Breathing faster, I thumbed through the hanging folders, scanned the labels—Receipts, Finances, Bathroom Renovation, Home Insurance, Lexus Service History . . .
These weren’t work related. Damn.
I slammed it shut. The desk surface was bare too, except for a fine layer of dust. Nothing here. Anything sensitive had no doubt ended up as confetti in the paper shredder bin. I scooped out a handful and began picking through it hopefully, but not even individual letters remained intact. I threw the scraps down in frustration, and my eyes narrowed on the shelves sagging under the weight of worn photo albums. He didn’t even do work here.
A dead end.
Back in the hallway, I pushed into the master bedroom. Nothing here, either. Come on, the guy was Air Force Security Forces. He wasn’t going to leave confidential military documents lying around next to his bathrobe. Downstairs, the drone of the generator cut off. I was about to back out and go talk to Sarah about escape when something by the bed caught my eye.
A leather briefcase slumped against the bedside table.
He didn’t do work in his house, but maybe he carried it home with him. I seized the briefcase, which felt disappointingly light, and overturned it on the bed.
A tablet computer slid out, followed by a pen and a legal pad, a tin of leather shoe polish, and a manila envelope, torn open at the end. My gaze flicked to the label printed in red ink, and my pulse hiked.
TOP SECRET
Department of the Air Force
Office of Air Force Space Command
Vandenberg AFB, California
The envelope was empty.
I dug around the bottom of the briefcase, but whatever its contents had been, they were gone. Likewise, the legal pad had been ripped down to a blank page, leaving nothing. I tried the tablet, held down the power button. It didn’t turn on. Big surprise.