The Darkness

by W. J. Lundy

  Admonishing himself, Jacob took a deep breath and warned himself to be cautious—to work out the problem methodically, as he’d always been able to in the past. He reached to the floor at the base of the bed and felt for the jug of water. Finding it, he took a long gulp that quenched his thirst. A cold shower would be better, but that was impossible for now. Why is this happening? For the first time in his life, he didn't have the answers. He wouldn't be able to sketch a solution or logically define the problem. Jacob followed all the rules, did what he was told, and now he felt doomed by it. He feared he had failed his family.

  The silence outside was disturbing; he listened intently, feeling his heart beating in his chest and fighting back the steady panic building in his stomach. For nearly a week, the weather siren had wailed day and night without relief. They’d grown accustomed to the whine of the up and down squall blocking out the sounds of the rest of the world. Even after the electrical grid failed, the loud siren blared nonstop. Running off batteries, he presumed, or maybe a generator. None of that mattered now; the siren was off and the night quiet once again. Standing in the center of his bedroom and facing the window, Jacob strained to listen.

  He moved closer to the curtains covering the window and finally received the feedback he craved to remind him they were not alone. He heard the barking of a dog in the far distance, a car alarm, a faint scream, and the pop, pop, pop of a firearm. The once quiet neighborhood had slowly become a war zone. Jacob walked to the window and put his fingers to the edge of the heavy drapes.

  “Is it over?” He heard Laura whisper from the bed.

  Jacob turned and squinted to see her in the dark room. “I don’t know; it’s quiet—the siren stopped,” he answered.

  He looked at her as she sat silently on the bed, and he knew she was thinking of her parents north of the city. Jacob thought of the chaos outside and what must be happening far away. What if they had gotten out of the driveway and beyond the neighborhood? The televised backups on the interstates and city streets had made for murderous scenes on the network news channels. Glued to the TV during the first days, Jacob watched the helicopter footage of men being dragged from their cars, police shooting into charging mobs on the magnificent mile, and panicked soldiers running away from their posts.

  Jacob moved across the room and sat beside her on the bed. He put his arm around her waist while she rested her head on his shoulder. “Katy isn’t speaking,” she said.

  “I know; I am worried about her too.”

  Jacob looked back at Katy sleeping peacefully beside them.

  “What’s happening out there?”

  “I think they have it all wrong. The news, they say it started in small towns with crime sprees, and then everyone just went crazy, the entire populations turning to violence overnight.”

  “It doesn’t make any sense. People don’t go mad overnight,” Laura said.

  “I really wasn’t that worried until the police started to disappear and they said cops were joining the looters and how it had spread from small towns to the cities after that. I talked to Jerry at work just a week ago; nobody knows what’s going on or how it’s spreading so quickly,” he said.

  “Why don’t they just tell us what they want?”

  “They don’t have a spokesperson and they won’t make demands. The President said he was going to implement martial law. You already know they told us to stay home from work, stay at home and off the streets, and they closed schools. I think the government knows more than they are telling us.”

  Laura sat up taller, looking at him. “Jenny said she heard it all has something to do with the meteor shower last weekend, like maybe it polluted the water, and it’s making people crazy. Smitty says they weren’t meteors at all; he said it was a signal, like a sign.”

  “Smitty is a tool; a sign for what?” Jacob asked, already having a low opinion of his neighbor.

  “Well, Smitty says the Chinese or North Korean sleeper cells have probably been activated to disrupt the economy.”

  “Ha! What economy?” Jacob asked.

  “Well then, maybe it’s global warming; or like Jenny said, something in the water or chemicals in the food. All those people on the TV, the experts, they all seemed to have an opinion—at least they did until the experts began to vanish too.”

  Jacob sat and listened to her while he second-guessed his earlier inaction. Maybe if they’d left at the first signs of danger, they wouldn’t be trapped here. They would be safe at Laura’s parents in the country. Now they were stuck, left alone to starve… or worse.

  “I think you were right, Laura; we should have left when we had the chance.”

  “It’s okay. You were just trying to keep us safe. You did what you thought was right,” she said.

  Jacob stood and stepped closer to the window, then pulled back on the edge of the drape and let the bright moonlight bleed into the room. He put his eye to the crack; the skies were clear and the moon hung full, casting a blue hue over the residential street and turning the pavement a gloomy shade of gray. On the horizon, the skyline glowed orange and yellow.

  He could see his wrecked car in the center of the road where they’d abandoned it. The car that hit him was twisted, the body of the driver still hanging from the windshield. Jacob tried to look away, but the wreckage mesmerized him. Every time he looked at it, his eyes were drawn back to the body… the man’s bloated corpse mangled by the glass… the oily stains on the sidewalk where the other bodies had been…

  Movement caught his eye. Jacob instinctively crouched and backed away, even though he didn’t think anyone would be able to see him peeking from the darkened second story window.

  “What is it? Did you see something?” Laura whispered.

  In a low crouch, Jacob went back to the window and scanned the street. Against a curb, stood a shirtless man, his naked arms tensed and his head locked straight ahead in a dark stare. Standing like a stone at the edge of the street, the man didn’t move.

  Jacob heard the squeak and rattle of a storm door. He concentrated on trying to find the source of the noise and pushed closer to the gap in the drapes.

  “No. What are you doing?” he whispered, as he caught a glimpse of his neighbor’s front door slowly opening.

  The door squeaked and pushed out. A man dressed in khaki pants and a heavy robe walked onto the porch. Smitty, his neighbor of five years, stepped into the moonlight with an aluminum baseball bat held loosely in his right hand. He pointed the bat with an extended arm and called out.

  “Hey… hey you! Why’d the siren go out?” Smitty said to the stranger in the street.

  The bare-chested man turned his head to look at him. His arms flexed and extended, pointing at Smitty. His back arched and he let out a yell—no words, just an anger-filled roar. Jacob watched his neighbor take a step back in fear.

  All along the street, more figures came into view from the shadows. They were running at full speed, screaming. They poured past the bare-chested man and ran to the house. Smitty ran inside and closed the door just as the mob crashed into the front of the home. The wood siding rattled and the windows buckled from the impact. Jacob watched as they piled over the porch and surrounded the perimeter of the home, searching for a way in while tearing at the windows and siding.

  The mob exploded through the front windows and crashed through the door. They continued to pour down the street—at least a hundred of them—all entering Smitty’s home. There were no screams from inside the house. No cries for help. Nothing could be heard over the roar of the ravenous mob. Jacob let go of the drape, rolled away, and pressed his back to the wall. The thunder of his neighbor’s home being torn apart shook his own and he barely heard his daughter’s cry from the bed.

  His wife pulled her close, whispering as she tried to comfort the girl. Jacob went to the nightstand, gripped his pistol, and walked to the bedroom door. He checked the locks, feeling the long wood screws he had fastened into the doorframe. “What’s happening outside, Ja
cob?” his wife asked.

  “I don’t know,” he answered. He searched the floor, lifted the water jug to his lips, and then mumbled, “They're attacking Smitty’s house.”

  “What? Jenny and the kids!” Laura said as she jumped to her feet and began running to the window.

  Jacob moved quickly to stop her; he didn’t want her to see. He didn’t want her to make a commotion that could be detected from the street. He pushed her away and back to the bed.

  “More of the rioters?” she asked as she turned away from him.

  “They are not rioters; just be quiet… please. They’ll hear us.”

  The sound of the mob slowly dissipated and Jacob worked up the courage to return to the window. When he looked out, the mob and the bare-chested man were gone but his neighbor’s home was in shambles. Windows were shattered, the door was gone, the walls splintered, and much of the front porch had collapsed.

  With no sign of anyone, the area was once again quiet. The previous mayhem on the street had retreated into the shadows with the mob, leaving Smitty’s once quaint and well-maintained home destroyed. Jacob searched the neighboring properties and found many in the same condition. Nearly every other house showed signs of attack.

  How long before they come for us? Jacob thought.

  He moved to the foot of the bed and sat on the floor. The rifle that leaned against the wooden bed frame near his head wasn’t much; a squirrel gun, his dad called it. It was a .22LR—magazine fed and reliable, but not much stopping power. He should have bought a larger rifle when he'd had a chance, and he'd had plenty, stopping to look at them on trips to the outdoor stores and admiring the stealthy look of the exotic assault rifles. He always wanted one, but Jacob wasn't a hunter and he didn't spend weekends at the range, so how would he have justified the purchase?

  An inherited handgun passed down from his father for home defense and the rifle he kept from his childhood seemed to be plenty enough at the time.

  A nearby gunshot shocked him back into the present. He resisted the temptation to go to the window this time. There was no reason to look; he wouldn’t be going to anyone’s aid. There would be no opportunity for escape. If anything, he would reveal himself and those things—those monsters—would make their way into his home. If they came for his family, he wouldn’t be able to stop them. No, he wouldn't look. Instead, he sat at the edge of the bed listening to the screams and praying that the weather siren would come back on.

  Jacob took another sip of the water, careful to ration it. He’d filled the bathtub of the adjoining master bathroom while the water was still running, just like the news people advised. He knew he could use it to refill the bottles, but it hadn’t come to that yet. More gunshots rang out, even closer now; he heard his daughter whimper at the sound of each noise. He could hear yelling now, followed by footfalls in the streets. A man was running, but Jacob still refused to go to the window. He wouldn’t get involved and put his family at risk.

  “What are we doing? Do we just wait for them to come for us too?” his wife whispered. “Wait for them to kill us or take us away… one at a time?”

  “What do you suggest? Want us to go out there on the street? You know what happened last time,” he said, pointing at the window.

  “I don’t know… anything, Jacob. I just can’t stay here anymore. Not like this. Katy’s sick; I think she needs a doctor,” she whispered.

  Katy hadn’t spoken since the attack on the street. He thought it was shock, but she refused to eat or drink and now she had a fever. Jacob got to his feet and walked along the side of the bed. “Wait till morning; we’ll figure out a way. We will get out of here,” he whispered.

  Jacob turned away from her and walked into the attached bathroom. A small window was positioned high on the wall at the end of the room that, days earlier, Jacob had covered with a piece of cardboard. He carefully peeled back the material and looked into the backyard. Dark, quiet, and no movement, but in the distance he could see the yellows and oranges of a new day beginning.

  He moved and took a seat on a stool near the bathroom vanity. He smiled, thinking how he’d walked past this stool thousands of times, but never sat on it. He had put it in here for his daughter; his wife would brush her hair here every morning. Jacob had never bothered to admire the stool and how high it sat… nor how uncomfortable it was. Now it was the only chair in this part of the house.

  Looking in the mirror at the bruise on his face from the airbag and the purple swelling under his eyes, he thought back to the previous day—the day of the accident… the look of hate on their faces… the dark, soulless eyes of the attackers…

  Laura whispering to Katy in the bedroom brought him out of his trance. He looked up from the stool and deep into his reflection in the vanity mirror. His face was stubbled. His hair was matted. Three days of holding out in the upstairs of their home, with no showers and using a bucket as a toilet, told him they would have to make plans soon. They couldn’t stay here indefinitely.

  After 9/11, Jacob researched and studied survival. Although he didn’t become a prepper or do anything drastic, he wanted to be educated. Shelter in place, food and water for three days, hold out and help will come was the common mantra. Jacob did his part, but help wasn’t here. Where were they? Why hadn't the police knocked on their doors or the Red Cross arrived with food and water? He feared they would never come.

  Jacob moved back to the bedroom. His wife was opening a package of crackers to feed their daughter. She looked up at him disapprovingly.

  “What?” he said.

  “Why are we still here?” she asked. “This is the last of the crackers. Then what?”

  “Are you serious? Were you not around yesterday when we tried to leave? Or when I killed those men to get us back into the house?”

  “We should have kept going,” she said. “Walked, ran… whatever we had to do.”

  “Oh my god, you’re impossible!” he said.

  Frustrated, Jacob walked to the far end of the room and sat at the head of the bed. He grabbed the small battery-operated radio and clicked it on. There was static on all stations but one—a local AM frequency that had been broadcasting the same emergency message for the past forty-eight hours. The same useless garbage—stay off the streets, help will come; shelter in place; if you must evacuate, go to the park. Jacob shook his head and shut the radio off before tossing it to the bed.

  His wife looked up at him. “We should do it. We should go to the park.”

  “That message is days old; how do we even know anyone will be there?”

  She looked at him while biting her lip. “I want to leave. I will go without you!” she said.

  “It’s going to be okay, Laura.”

  He knew she wouldn’t leave; she wouldn’t go without him. He got the message though. It was time for them to go… but at what cost? Why leave this piece of shelter for the open streets? Jacob got up from the bed and helped his wife pack items into the bag. The action seemed to calm her nerves; although, when she looked at him, he could see she was holding back tears.

  “I know,” he said, touching her cheek. “I’ll keep you safe. I promise.”

  “How? What if they find us?” she sobbed.

  Jacob held her and looked at his daughter on the bed. “I don’t know; they just can’t.”

  Chapter 2

  With late afternoon, came the sweltering heat. Jacob pulled the drapes away from the window to try to allow a draft, but only hot air entered. He paced through the room, sweating. He wanted to go downstairs and sit in the family room or venture into the basement den where it was always cool. His wife was sitting on the bathroom floor, fanning herself, when Jacob walked past her and entered the walk-in closet adjacent to the room. He looked up at the ceiling and thought about the attic. He knew it would be just as hot, but it was also vented and with the window in the gable end, he would have a better view of the street.

  The attic access was in the hallway outside the sealed bedroom door. Not w
anting to compromise their security, he decided he would just make a new entrance. Jacob retrieved a knife from his nightstand and climbed the tall shelves to the ceiling of the closet. He jabbed the blade of the knife into the sheet rock. Dust and bits of insulation poured down over his face and shoulders. He squinted to protect his eyes and worked until he’d created a fist-sized hole. He then stuck his hand in and broke away at it until he’d created a large opening between the ceiling joists.

  With a hole large enough to enter the attic, Jacob stuck his head through and pushed away the rolled bats of insulation. Looking in all directions, he could see little; the attic was dark with only small bits of dust-filled light entering through the vent. He dropped back down and called for his wife. When she entered the room below, she looked at his body partway into the destroyed ceiling, then looked up at him with wide eyes and her hand held over her mouth . “What are you doing?”

  “Get me the flashlight,” he said, not answering her question.

  “Why? You’re not going up there,” she argued.

  “Just get me the light, Laura,” he said as patiently as he could.

  He heard rustling below him and looked down to see that she’d climbed the shelf partway to meet him. She passed up the light. Jacob took it, clicked it on, and then pulled himself into the attic. He crawled across the joists to a center portion floored with plywood and filled with holiday decorations. He heard a noise by the hole and saw his wife’s head looking back at him.

  “Why are you up here?” she asked again.

  Jacob crawled to the gable that was above their bedroom. Seated in the end was a large louvered vent cap; it was normally pushed open by a thermostat-controlled electric fan. The surface of the fan was enclosed in a cage and full of louvers that were currently closed. “I wanted to see if I could get some air flowing,” he said back to her.