When Darkness Reigns

by Preston L. Marshall

  Lumar knew his door wasn't going to slow that thing down. He only had a short window while it was eating to escape. He knew that and he knew with each breath he took he was wasting that much more time. He threw the door open and ran, blinded by fear in the opposite direction that his neighbor had picked. There were stairs on either end of the hallway. He just had to make it to the stairwell, but his legs were shaky from the alcohol and it took everything he had to stay on his feet. There had to be more people making their way out of the building. Somebody had to be coming for them. The sound of crunching bones and ripping flesh chased him all the way to the end of the hall.

  The stairs proved to be too much for his hangover. Lumar had never hated living on the top floor of his building more than he did in that moment. Lumar made it down half a flight of stairs before his legs failed. He tumbled down five steps. His arms wrapped around his head and neck. He closed his eyes. He knew that monster was going to come after him next. Somebody grabbed his elbow. Lumar swung his arms in the direction the touch came from, but when he opened his eyes it wasn't the alien coming for him. It was a soldier.

  “Lumar?” the soldier asked. The soldier slid his visor up so Lumar could see his face. It was Nate's younger brother George. Nate was the oldest, the smart one. George was next after him, but he wasn't nearly as clever and got drafted. At least he'd gotten to stay close. They'd always called him Geo for short. “Are you alright?”

  “Geo? What the hell's going on?” Lumar groaned. The pain from the fall was magnified by the hangover. The sound of his own voice hurt his ears.

  “We're evacuating the building,” Geo said. “We've got guys going door to door on all the other floors. I was going up to make one last check of the top floor. Is there anyone else up there?” Geo offered his hand to help Lumar to his feet as he asked the question. Lumar just shook his head. “I was afraid of that. It's still my job to go make sure. Will you be alright here?”

  Geo was big and solid, almost the exact opposite of Nate. He was covered head to toe in gloss-less black armor and had a big gun slung over his shoulder. When he got Lumar up on his feet Lumar had to look up to see his exposed face. Geo didn't look scared at all. He just looked a little sweaty. His short black hair was sticking to his forehead. Lumar felt embarrassed. Geo was like a kid brother to him even though he was only a couple months younger than Lumar.

  “There was a...” Lumar tried to talk. “It killed him and the family across the hall. It was just covered in blood and it killed them! Don't go up there! Don't leave me here. I'm not doing so good.”

  “Are you injured from your fall?” Geo asked.

  “No but,” Lumar tried to explain. He could tell Geo smelled the alcohol on his breath.

  “Still drunk from last night huh.” Geo said. “I can't leave you like that I guess. Nate would kill me if something happened to you on my watch. Let's get to the ground floor. We've been gathering people up to move 'em out of here. I'll turn you over to the others and you should be alright.”

  “I might need some help with these stairs,” Lumar admitted.

  “Alright come here,” Geo said grabbing him around the shoulder.

  They started taking the stairs down two at a time. Geo was so strong he was practically carrying Lumar as they descended. When they reached the next floor, Geo stopped for a minute and checked the hall. A couple of other soldiers were kicking down doors, checking for anyone that got left behind. Geo nodded his head and kept moving. As soon their backs were on the floor Lumar heard gunshots and screaming. Geo's face didn't change. He just looked over at Lumar and forced a smile.

  “They'll be alright,” he told him. “We carry guns for a reason.” He clicked his tongue imitating cocking a gun with a grin.

  There were six floors in the building. They had four left to go. The next two looked completely empty. Geo assured him that they got everyone out of there. There were things thrown all over the floor: clothes, photos, valuables, kid’s toys, but no bodies. Lumar felt a little better. Maybe his head was finally clearing.

  Lumar could hear the gunshots coming from the third floor long before they got there. Geo picked up his pace. Lumar's feet barely touched the ground. He couldn't really see much besides the wall and Geo's armor covering him. The next thing he saw was the floor and all belief that his head was clearing vanished. Lumar felt the floor pressing into the side of his face. He tried to push himself up, but Geo's big cold metal glove pushed him down. The gun was off his back and he was shooting at something Lumar couldn't see. The sound of gunshots that close to him felt like it would tear his head apart. It felt like it would never end, but when it did Geo lifted him back up and started running down the rest of the stairs. Lumar was hovering a couple inches off the ground, scooped up in Geo's arm.

  “I'm sorry I threw you to the floor,” Geo yelled as they made their way to the bottom. Lumar was deafened from the gunshots. He thought he said something back, but he couldn't be sure.

  The ground floor was empty except for piles of discarded belongings. Lumar couldn't imagine why people were trying to get their furniture and other heavy things out of the building at a time like this. People didn't have much these days, but Lumar couldn't imagine a couch was worth dying for.

  There were no people there though. Geo said his guys were gathering people here. Lumar started to panic. “Where is everyone? You said they were meeting up here!”

  “I don't know. Maybe something happened and they had to get moving. I'll radio and see if I can get anyone,” Geo replied.

  Lumar turned away from Geo as he talked into his radio. What he was saying didn't make much sense. Geo was using a bunch of Army slang that didn't mean anything to him.

  The bottom floor of the building opened out onto the main street of the city. Lumar found his feet carrying him to the glass doors to look out on the street. Geo was too busy trying to get someone to talk to him on the radio to notice. Lumar had walked through that door hundreds of times but he didn't recognize the view on the other side. The apartment building across the street was burning. All Lumar could see was the orange glow and the smoke pouring out of the windows and doors.

  Geo grabbed Lumar by the arm and pulled him away. “Stay away from the doors. They could be out there looking for people. Don’t let them see you!”

  Geo kept talking into the radio. Lumar couldn't hear anyone talking back to him through the speakers inside Geo's open helmet. Lumar knew that couldn't mean anything good. He remembered they passed some soldiers on the other floors on their way down. If even they weren't replying...

  “Well, looks like it's just us,” Geo said.

  Lumar heard a dull whistling sound coming from somewhere outside. It kept growing louder until even the sound of the fire tearing apart the building across the street was drowning in it.

  “Do hear that?” Lumar asked.

  “Get down!” Geo roared as he slammed his visor shut and threw Lumar to the ground again. This time Geo put his body on top of Lumar. He was already fifty pounds up on Lumar, but adding his armor on top of that Lumar felt like he couldn't breathe at all.

  The building shook apart over their heads. Lumar felt his ears bleeding from the volume of noise. His other senses were swallowed by it. When he rebounded from the explosion he felt heat pouring over him like a wave. Geo was still on top of him, but something had fallen down on them. It must have been part of the ceiling. Geo didn't waste a moment. He shoved the debris of, scooped Lumar up, and pulled him through the doorway. Lumar couldn't see much. He couldn't hear a thing. He looked back at the building. All that was left was the ground floor and that was collapsing.

  When they were clear of the building Geo let go of Lumar. He almost fell, but caught himself before he collapsed on the ground.

  “Hey! Can you hear me? I'm going to need you to walk the rest of the way buddy,” Geo yelled into Lumar's ear.

  It looked like Geo's armor had protected him from the worst of the blast, but Geo was breathing heavily and his
hands were groping around his back and sides like he was hurting there and trying to figure out why. Lumar didn't see anything, but imagined Geo's back and sides were going to be pretty badly bruised up from the building falling on him.

  “The Major said to…bring anyone we found…back to the bunker…on the edge of town.” Geo was struggling to get the words out. “It’s just a couple miles from here. It's not...too far from here…We need to move. This way.” Geo started heading off to the west. By some miracle, his gun hadn't left its strap. Geo slung it off of his shoulder and put in front of him.

  The streets were Hell on Earth. Jagged bits of pavement littered the wide space where the main street once lay. It wasn't just the building across the street burning. The whole street was littered with buildings lying broken and smoldering. Each fell in a different direction. Smoke filled the air. The sky was orange and red with fire as the whole city burned. Lumar couldn’t even react to the terror he saw around him. He was feeling numb and not because of the alcohol.

  They traveled across the rubble as fast as they could, but their movement was slow. Geo was having trouble breathing. Lumar could hear him struggling with each breath. The road had crests and falls in it like a raging sea. It felt like they were going uphill the whole time. The main street ran straight to the edge of town, but over one of the ridges Lumar caught sight of the swarm. Geo pulled Lumar down behind the ridge. Lumar hoped the aliens didn't see them. Geo pointed off to their left down a side alley that ran between a couple of the buildings. Lumar nodded and they sprinted into the shadow of a building mostly still intact.

  Once they were in the alleyway they had to climb over a jagged cliff of debris to keep moving forward. There was broken glass and twisted metal all through the climb. Lumar's naked hands and feet could barely find anything to grab onto that wasn't going to eviscerate them. Geo got up on top of the ridge and pulled Lumar up the rest of the way. Lumar wished he'd had a chance to get dressed. He wasn't wearing anything other than a pair of jeans and he could feel his skin blistering from the heat all around him.

  They slid down the ridge to the bottom and stopped for a moment to rest. Geo's breathing was still ragged and Lumar's skin was screaming out in protest of everything around them. Geo slid the visor up on his helmet again. It looked like it had fogged up him breathing so hard.

  “You alright?” Lumar asked.

  “I don't know,” Geo said. “Probably broke some ribs. Don't worry about me though. When we get back to the base I'll get myself looked at. Besides we make it through all this, I'll probably get a promotion.” Geo smiled and put his visor back down over his face. “You ready to keep going? I think if we stick to the alleys they won't find us.”

  “Yeah, let's go.”

  It was dark in the alley, but they didn't dare turn on a flashlight. There was a faint glow from the burning buildings that gave them just enough light to see where they were going. Lumar imagined the sun would have to be coming up soon, but he didn’t have anything to check the time with. The sun could rise and he wouldn't even know from all the smoke.

  They inched forward, slowly moving through the rubble in the alley. It was all hunks of walls and the top floors of the buildings on either side of them. Lumar slowed them down since he had to be extra careful not to step on any broken glass or sharp metal on his bare feet, but Geo didn't act like he minded. He took his time with each step and listened for any sign of the enemy. They had no way of telling where the fighting was going on. Lumar heard gunshots from time to time, but from the alleyway it was hard to tell which direction the sounds were coming from. It could have been just around the corner or on the other side of town.

  They finally reached the intersection on the other side of the building. It was a four-way meet up of alleys barely big enough for a car. They were footpaths mostly, but occasionally a garbage truck or ambulance might have used them. Turning left got them heading back west where the safety of the bunker was waiting for them, but the ground had collapsed between them and the westbound road. It was like a fist had punched straight down through the middle of the intersection. Neither of them could see the bottom. The underground part of the city was through the hole. It was supposed to be deep enough below the ground that nothing would break through to get in, but something had. There was smoke rising up from the pit so Lumar guessed it was a bomb or a missile.

  “It's too wide to cross,” Lumar said.

  “Damnit,” Geo growled. “If we go any further we'll be back on one of the main roads. We won't make it if we can't cross here.”

  An explosion rocked the ground under their feet. Lumar couldn't tell what had been hit. He looked up and didn't see anything. All he could feel was everything shaking around him. Some of the glass on the buildings above them broke and showered down on them like hale. Lumar put his arms over his head and felt claws of glass tear into his arms and back. When the shaking stopped he could feel trails of blood coming out of hundreds of small wounds all over his body.

  “I'm so sorry,” Geo said as he tried to get the glass off of him. The glass had bounced off of his armor. His gloved hands were clumsy and he almost hurt Lumar worse than the knives of glass. Lumar had to keep from making a sound, even though he wanted to scream out in pain. “Here, don't move, I'll lift you out.”

  Geo carried Lumar to the side of the pit. There wasn't any glass on the ground there. Geo sat him down on the edge and started looking for a way around the pit.

  “Couldn't we just go through one of the buildings?” Lumar asked.

  Another explosion blew through the air. Lumar saw the fire this time back to the south from where they'd come. He could barely see the top of the building the missile hit before it crashed down in on itself. Dust kicked up from down the alley and swept by them. Lumar closed his eyes and spat out a mouthful of dirt when the wave settled.

  “Any of these buildings could be hit or collapse at any second,” Geo said. “Just gotta find something to bridge the gap with. Hold on. There's got to be an I-beam or something around here long enough.”

  “Don't wander too far,” Lumar said.

  “I'm not leaving you behind. If you need me just yell. I'll stay in earshot.”

  Lumar knew Geo wouldn't leave him if he had a choice, but he knew he was just dead weight. Geo probably could have made it back on his own by now. Geo's ribs wouldn't have gotten busted up if he hadn't been protecting Lumar when the building collapsed.

  The heat felt like it was cooking the scabs forming on his back from where the glass had torn into him. Lumar's eyes wandered down into the darkness of the pit his feet were dangling into. He almost thought he could see a fire burning at the bottom, but he couldn't be sure. He hoped the faint glow he saw down there was anything but that. He hoped they were safe. His parents still lived in the underground. If the underground city was burning there was nowhere to go but into the city above where the Sarsaul would be waiting for them.

  “I think this will do it.” Geo was dragging a metal construction beam through the rubble towards where Lumar was sitting. “Can you help me get the last little bit? This things freakin' heavy.”

  Lumar jumped up and grabbed the other end of the beam. They carried it together the last few feet. Lumar felt the glass tear into his feet as he walked over the broken ground, but he told himself if he could get through the pain he'd be home free soon enough. The medics at the base would patch him up.

  “Okay,” Geo said. “We gotta stand it up on its end and then drop it across. We only get one shot at this so, let's not screw it up.”

  “Right,” Lumar said. He cringed from the pain as he spoke.

  They put one end of the beam right up against the lip of the pit. Lumar held on to the bottom. Geo lifted the beam onto his shoulders and walked the length of it until it stood up straight. Geo gave it a push. Lumar moved away from the bottom as fast as he could so the beam wouldn't crush his fingers. He held his breath as the beam fell. It felt like it was going in slow motion and he was terrified of
the possibility of it falling straight down into the pit.

  The beam was long enough to bridge the gap though. It landed hard, with a deep thrum as the metal vibrated against the concrete. Lumar let out the breath he was holding and gasped for air. Somewhere close by Lumar heard an alien roar. The crash had given away their position. Lumar scrambled across the beam as quickly as he could on all fours. It felt good to be on his hands and knees instead of his bloodied feet. Geo was close behind him. Another alien added its voice to the roar and when Lumar made it halfway across the I-beam it sounded like a dozen or more of the Sarsaul were roaring to each other.

  “Lumar, we gotta get out of here quick,” Geo said. “They're going to be all over us in no time.”

  “I'm going as fast as I can,” Lumar whimpered.

  Geo's face turned up to watch the sky above them. Lumar found it in himself to get across faster even though it added more pain to the growing list of maladies he had been accumulating all night. When he shimmied off the beam he stood up slowly and tried to look around for where the Sarsaul were coming from. Geo was off the beam seconds after Lumar. He grabbed Lumar by the arm and dragged him away from the pit as quickly as Lumar could move with his bleeding feet.

  Geo dragged Lumar down the alleyway until they reached an alcove formed in a chunk of pavement that had been pushed up out of the ground. Geo pulled Lumar down into the shadow of the broken hunk of road. There was melted tar clinging to it. The smell was horrible. It burned Lumar's lungs just to be near it, but the alcove put them in shadow and hid them off to the side of the path. Once Lumar was down under the hunk of rock Geo pulled a piece of loose debris on top of them and they huddled down in the choking smell and darkness.

  They were uncomfortably close to each other. Geo's armor has hard and jagged pieces of it were digging into the wounds on Lumar's sides, but he bit his lip instead of making a sound. They stayed completely quiet and for a few minutes. All Lumar could hear were fires crackling and distant gunshots. Then dozens of heavy footfalls stalked down the alleyway. Lumar knew it was the aliens looking for whoever caused the sound that drew them there. Lumar couldn't tell how close the Sarsaul were or how many of them there were, but the sounds of their claws pounding against the pavement kept growing louder. Lumar tried to keep from breathing hard, but his heart was racing, forcing him to pull more oxygen in. Lumar feared the Sarsaul were going to hear his pounding heart, but after a few minutes that seemed to never end, the footfalls grew quieter. The aliens moved on. Lumar thanked the smoke and the melted tar for masking their scent even while his nostrils burned.