The Darkness

by Matt Brennan

  Foreword

  A virus has decimated the entire planet’s human population. No treatment or vaccine could be found, and so contraction meant death.

  Humanity was forced to seek refuge in hermetically-sealed, self-sustaining bunkers, commonly referred to as “biospheres.” After the world’s power grid failed, survivors managed to establish a global satellite communications network, which allowed them to weave together a digital facsimile of their once thriving, now extinct, way of life.

  The disease, however, remained active and continued to spread, despite the survivor’s best intentions and inexhaustible precautions. It was therefore commonplace for connections to become broken. The people of the network began to call the silence that inevitably came at the end of the line: The Darkness.

  No one ever returned when The Darkness came to call.

  Until now...

  Scientific Fact:

  The origin of the AIDS virus has been traced back to two separate Simian Immunodeficiency Viruses (or SIVs). A single chimpanzee killed and ate two different species of monkey who were both infected with their individual species version of SIVs. Neither version of the virus was harmful to the chimp on its own, but those viruses, called lentiviruses, were retroviruses. Hence, they have a notoriously slow and sloppy replication process, which take place in the nucleus of a host cell. They use the host cell’s own genetic material to replicate, which allows for frequent mutations over a short period of time. One such mutation combined chimp’s DNA with parts of the two other viruses DNA. This new virus fooled the immune system into thinking it was, in fact, a part of the chimp’s own physiology. From that humble beginning, the virus spread throughout the chimp population much the same way HIV has moved through our own culture, with the exchange of bodily fluids. The trafficking of bushmeat (wild animal meat in Africa) is believed to be the cause of the transmission of SIVs to the human population, where it used the same melding process to transform itself into HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus). Experts refer to this phenomenon as “viral sex.” It is believed this genetic melding is how retroviruses have made the jump from one species to another since the beginning of time.

  CHAPTER ONE

  A horrifying smell chokes the air from my lungs as I step over the putrefying bodies littering the street under my feet. Everywhere I look, the dead are piled on top of each other. I pinch my nose, but the stench is so strong it penetrates through the skin and bone of my skull and goes straight to my brain. It’s so dense I can even taste the miasma of rotting flesh, decomposing garbage, and mold.

  I keep stumbling around until I spot an office building on my right, with a lobby that looks completely clear of the dead. I step over a pregnant lady and my foot lands on what looks like her 12-year-old daughter. Both corpses are still holding hands. I’ve been saying I’m sorry under my breath to all the dead people I’ve been stepping on, but as I get a look at the little girl’s gaunt face, the tears begin to roll down my face.

  I reach the door and try the handle, but it’s locked. I start banging on it and try to scream, but the sound is trapped in my throat. The aroma of decomposing flesh has sent my vocal chords into spasm. Through the glass, I can see not only is the lobby free of the dead, but there are a bunch of canned goods and even ramen noodles on a table just inside. My mouth starts to water and I bang harder.

  Behind me I hear a faint voice croak, “Help me.”

  I turn and the pregnant lady is staring at me with her hand out. I start to move towards her when her daughter looks at me and raises her hand as well. One by one all the dead surrounding the office-building door begin to open their eyes and reach out for me as well.

  There are way too many to count. I start to panic.

  Then, as if all on cue, they begin to stand and stumble towards me. The office building entrance, which seemed like a refuge a minute ago, is now caging me in.

  I spin back to the door and whale on it like there is no tomorrow.

  My mother and father walk out from the back of the building and wave at me. I scream for them, but again nothing comes out of my mouth. They embrace each other and my mom rests her head on my dad’s chest, smiling at me.

  I turn back to the dead just as they reach me. They are all croaking out, “Help me.”

  The 12-year-old grabs my arm and sinks her teeth into my wrist.

  ***

  I snap awake, breathless, and plastered to my sheets. Leaping from the warmth of my bed and into the frozen wasteland of the strange room I find myself in.

  I grab for the Louisville slugger I always keep right next to my bed and come up empty. I spin around desperately searching the pitch-blackness for some sanctuary from the horror I haven’t figured out I’ve left far behind in my dream yet. The numberless hordes of the sick and the dying all clawing at me, desperate for the salvation I could never hope to give, and leaving behind their rotting flesh and promises of certain death. As the reality of my situation begins to works its way through my sleep-ravaged brain, the air starts to flow into my lungs and my knees become rubbery and weak from the sudden burst of oxygen. I have to bend at the waist and grab my knees to keep from hyperventilating.

  I bump into the chair by the bed and collapse into it. By instinct my hand reaches out for the glass of water that isn’t there, which I usually leave on the dresser for this very moment. Adrenaline, after all, robs moisture from one’s mouth. The nightmares haunt my dreams like my dead parents do my every waking moment.

  Where am I again?

  I look at my dad’s watch. The glow-in-the-dark hands show that it’s 10 a.m. and the hour shocks me awake. I curse myself for oversleeping again. I should have been on the road three hours ago. I jump out of the chair and fumble around for the light next to the bed. Suddenly the room is filled with a horrible alarm and a red light I have never noticed before begins flashing over the door. I find the lamp in the dim red light and switch it on.

  I grab my shoes, sit back in the chair and stare at the red light wondering what it means. I shake my head and start to put my shoes on when the door slams open and Lyssa shouts at me, “Move it! We have a perimeter breach! Didn’t you see the light?”

  I know it’s rude, but I can’t help but stare. Every time I saw her before she was wearing that stupid baggy coat of hers, a ridiculously giant scarf, and that silly hunting hat with the earflaps. And if she wasn’t barking orders at me, it was because she was making fun of me for something stupid I did. So, truth be told, I kind of hated her and so I barely looked twice. But now she is standing in the doorframe of my room and she’s only wearing thigh high (and skin tight) shorts, an oversized white t-shirt with the neck cut away, and nothing else.

  My breath literally catches in my throat.

  The only girl I’m used to seeing on a regular basis is Ellie, and she’s a waifish girl, who never had enough to eat and hardly ever smiled. And she was also trapped in a bunker, so, like me, she’s pale and has dark circles under her eyes. I always thought she was beautiful, but other than my mother, she’s actually the only other girl I had really seen for a prolonged period of time.

  Until now.

  Lyssa has a subtly pointed chin, with a very enchanting softened cleft. Her chest is heaving a bit because of nerves and I can see her pulse clearly beating along her neck. My eyes follow along her pulse back to the source of the rhythm and I see that God was kind to her and that she was a very healthy girl. My breathing is shallow and rapid. Not wanting to linger too long on parts of her body that would make both of us blush, I shift quickly back to her eyes. They are this deep, rich chocolate-brown that seem to go on forever, shimmering and twinkling in the dim light of my room. She is, honestly, the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. Her cheeks are flush and her skin is slightly tanned and
radiant. Even her eyebrows seem feminine and dainty. Yet there is a toughness behind her eyes that gives her softened features an edge that is palpable and overwhelming. Which makes sense, since she did survive here on her own for the last year.

  Just like me.

  When she notices my attention, her demeanor suddenly changes. It’s as if she suddenly sees herself through my eyes and the reality of it is confusing and clearly unnerving. She awkwardly folds her arms across her chest and slowly backs away.

  “I told you when that light flashes we have to hide! Didn’t I? From the look on your face I can see that you forgot. Well, anyways when that light flashes we have to hide, so hurry up and get in the bathroom.” She cringes. “Okay, that sounded really weird too, but it’ll make sense after you come with me to the bathroom—oh just forget it and follow me!”

  With that said, she dashes out of sight.

  I stumble out the door and drop my shoes and coat to the floor as I go.

  She begins to put on the normal attire I am used to, complete with scarf and floppy hat.

  She spins, and sees me staring again. “Come on idiot! We have to go!”

  She hits a switch beside the couch, which causes it to spin into the floor. A wall slides into place, hiding the kitchen from view, and her bedroom lowers itself into the floor.

  “Holy crap!”

  Lyssa races back and smacks me in my arm. “Will you shut up, stop ogling me and get in the bathroom! You’re really creeping me out.”

  I barely have time to grab my coat and shoes before she drags me out of my room and into the bathroom. She slams the door behind us, and then moves a towel on the rack out of the way to hit a hidden switch. I hear another wall sliding into place, along with a loud BOOM.

  “What was that?”

  “You really don’t know how to follow instructions, do you? Shut up!” She pushes past me to the corner and opens up a cabinet; there are several military-style rifles and plenty of magazines. She throws a rifle to me, followed by a magazine. “Load it like I showed you!”

  Then she hits another switch and the wall opposite the tub slides down into the floor, exposing a staircase that leads down a few steps into a room full of television screens all stacked on top of each other, along with a keyboard and a joystick sitting on top of a desk.

  “Whoa!”

  Lyssa shakes her head and quickly punches a few keys and all the screens come to life. It looks like a video security system. I can easily pick out several buildings from the compound. She types a few more buttons and the scenes change.

  There isn’t much to see for a while because the snow is still really coming down, but then finally, on one of the screens, we see two figures step into view. She types a few buttons and another scene appears. In the distance, we see three men on horseback, with two other men walking in snowshoes behind them.

  All of them appear heavily armed.

  “Wait, where is this?” I ask Lyssa.

  “Relax. They’re still miles from the compound. There’s no way they could’ve seen the lights or heard you snore with the wind and snow blowing like it is. So, we’re good.”

  “Wait, I snore? Nevermind, why are we hiding? Shouldn’t we try to make contact?”

  Lyssa snorts. “Were you born this stupid or did you fall on your head or something as a baby?”

  “So we’re just going to automatically assume they’re bad guys? It’s a blizzard, we should try to help them.”

  She laughs. “Dude, you really need to go back to the bunker. You aren’t going to last ten seconds out here!”

  I really hate it when she talks about the biosphere like that. They are a heck of a lot more than just a stupid bunker. I roll my eyes. “Why, because I don’t want to assume everyone is trying to kill me?”

  She gets serious. “Look, don’t get me wrong, I don’t hide like this from everyone. I helped you, didn’t I? But you have to understand, most folks that are left, if they aren’t trying to kill you and take what you have, it’s because they haven’t seen you yet.”

  I shake my head. “I can’t let myself believe that.”

  She sighs. “Well, you’re going to have to take my word for it then. You see that road they’re on? Well, it leads to a village not far from here. Last year, these model citizens of yours passed by along the same road. They went to that hamlet and found Mrs. Johnson. A nice old lady my father and I used to take care of. They raped her, and then cut her up and ate her.”

  I’m instantly nauseated, which is exactly the reaction Lyssa’s looking for.

  She spins back to the screen. “I could smell her burning flesh from here. You never forget a smell like that, I can promise you that.”

  I’m speechless, which is rare for me. My whole life I never heard anything as horrible as that. Not so long ago, a bad day for me was when I couldn’t get a clear signal out to get to the Nexus. Well, that’s not true. I mean, I lost my parents, but other than having to deal with their deaths on my own, my life has been relatively tame. I definitely didn’t have any friends cannibalized and cooked so close to me that I had to smell their burning flesh. The suddenness of just how little I understood the world around me stuns me into silence. My appreciation of her resiliency and her heart grows by about a factor of ten.

  “How can you be so sure these are the same men?” I ask tentatively.

  “Slick, has anyone ever brutally killed and raped a friend of yours? Someone you’ve had dinner with a million times? No? Well, I’ll tell ya, that kind of event has a way imprinting certain things into your memory. I saw them pass this way last year, just like we’re seeing them now. Trust me, those are the same butchering bastards and every single one of them deserves to rot in hell! But due to some weird twist of fate, they just keep existing. If I weren’t such a coward, I’d kill them myself. But I saw what happened to Mrs. Johnson when they were done with her and I don’t want any part of them, thank you very much.”

  I walk back and sit on the toilet just at the top of the stairs. I don’t like this, but maybe she’s right. I put the rifle in the tub and as I lean over I feel a distinctive pressure in my abdomen that can mean only one thing. “Um, I have some bad news.”

  Lyssa doesn’t take her eyes off the screen. “What?”

  “I have to go to the bathroom.”

  “Go, I won’t look.”

  I look at the tiny room and back to her. “Um, I have to um...”

  She spins and looks at me in disbelief, “Seriously? Now? Of all times now? What are you, like, five?”

  “I know. I’m really sorry. But I haven’t gone in a couple of days.”

  She rolls her eyes. “Great! So you’ve been saving it up for just the right moment? Nice. I’m sure the smell is going to make me vomit, but go ahead.”

  She then spins back to the monitors. I’m stunned. “What? You expect me to go here? With you right there?”

  “Trust me, I don’t like it anymore than you do, but we don’t have a choice. It’s the protocol. When bad guys are in the area, we go on lockdown. There could be scouts out looking around that I haven’t found on the cameras yet. Maybe, they even spotted the cameras and are avoiding them altogether. In fact, like I told you ten minutes ago, we need to go silent from here on out.”

  “But what about the toilet?”

  “True, the flush might be too loud. I guess we’ll just wait to flush until they leave.”

  “You mean sit here with the smell? No way!”

  “Yeah, you’re right. You need to hold it,” she says, and then spins back to the screens.

  “Look, I don’t know how much longer I can.”

  “Shh!” Lyssa gets real tense. “Oh no!”

  I look at the screens and I see a figure behind the men walking, waving his arms and signaling them to return. “What’s going on? Who’s that guy?”

  Lyssa shakes her head. “Trouble.”

  I see that the men move back to the guy waving his arms. When they reach him, he seems to shout at them and
keeps pointing to his right.

  “Shoot.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  Lyssa spins back to face me. “That road he’s pointing at leads right here.”

  “Are you sure?”

  She spins back to the screens. “Positive.”

  “Well, what do we do?”

  “Well normally I’d say we stay in here. But now...” She trails off.

  “I don’t understand why now is any different?”

  She spins and looks at me like I’m the biggest idiot ever. “Moron, we were out walking around leaving tracks in the snow yesterday and I even backed out the snowcat. I don’t know if bunker babies have heard of the concept of tracks, but we left a butt-load of them out there in the snow!”

  “Crap!”

  She spins back to the monitors. “Exactly.”

  She switches camera views, following the men walking in the snow and leaving huge a trail behind them.

  “Man, I really hope they take the bait,” she says.

  “What bait?”

  “Well, my mother and father changed the layout and planted a bunch of trees to hide the entrance to the compound. It’s hard to spot, but not impossible. You see, the road used to fork right there, but now it doesn’t. If they keep to the road, I think we’ll be okay. But if they turn right—”

  Almost as soon as she points this out, they veer right.

  “Crap!”

  “What do we do?”

  “We have to abandon the post. We lock it down, and then get out of dodge. In a few months maybe, I can come back. I have a remote base not far from here which is tied into the security feed. I can monitor the base from there.”

  I’m staring at the huge trail they’re leaving. “How do we get there without leading them right to us?”

  She spins back at me. “Does it look like my father was the type of guy to leave anything to chance?”

  With that she hits a switch. A doorway opens to the left of the screens and reveals a set of spiraling stairs going down. She stands up and moves through the door. “Do me a favor, grab the guns and some more ammo.”