by Jason Brant
She needed to give her hip a rest and the idea of being surrounded by some kind of structure, as dingy and insecure as it appeared, felt like the best move.
Something moved ahead of her. It was quick, but it looked like a light or a reflection of some kind. She focused on the spot, hoping to see it again.
“Christy.” Her mother’s voice came from behind her left ear.
She screamed again, her throat threatening to tear, and fell over. Molly jumped back, barely getting out of the way as Christy tumbled to the ground.
Christy heard the Kindle crunch underneath her and felt a piece of the screen stab into her side. She held the candle tight, watching it waver in her hand, refusing to let go. The flame dimmed, the wick splashed by melted wax, her light choked to almost nothing.
She scrambled to her knees, cradling her free hand around the open top of the glass candle, willing the flame to stay alive. Not wanting to look back, knowing her mother stood within arm’s reach, she crawled to the bus stop. Tears poured from her eyes, blurring what little vision she had.
“Just let it go out. We’ll be together.” The voice was so close Christy wanted to die.
More wax covered the wick.
Molly bumped into her, whining, crawling under the bench, her tail tucked between her legs.
Christy turned and sat on the bench, holding the candle in front of her. The seat was wet, covered in something that smelled like a combination of piss and beer. She grabbed some of the newspaper, wanting to burn it for temporary light, but found it soaked through by the nasty liquid.
She looked up.
Her mother’s face was less than two feet away, leaning in. “Almost there, Christy.”
“Please! Don’t!”
The flame flickered one last time and went out.
Chapter 9
Getting old sucked.
Walter’s back felt like it had a small knife jammed in it. Oddly enough, sitting on a boat in a recliner and drinking beer wasn’t a good substitute for exercise. He’d known how out of shape he’d become, but he didn’t really care before tonight.
A couple of beers were still in his bag and he considered downing them, hoping they’d numb the pain a bit. As tantalizing as extending his buzz was, he wanted to keep his wits about him until he could find his daughter. Or until he knew what had happened to her.
If she was dead, as he’d started to expect, he planned on killing himself. Without his wife and child, he didn’t see a point in living. Even if he hadn’t been surrounded by darkness, dogged by spirits or demons or God-knows-what, he couldn’t go on with his life knowing that his loved ones had lost theirs.
Seeing the change in Melissa when he’d hit her with the beam of his flashlight had forever scarred his mind. Something wore her like a suit of meat. He was dealing with things that his rational self couldn’t comprehend, so he did his best not to dwell on them. He would fight on until he found out what happened to everyone and then decide his fate from there.
A scream came from down the street.
He stopped walking and listened.
A large truck, jacked up by an over-the-top lift kit, blocked most of his view of Route 22. His flashlight reflected off the windshield as he sidestepped around the truck, grimacing at the pain in his back. He’d switched from the lantern back to his flashlight after the encounter with the thing that looked like his daughter.
A woman was on her knees in the road, screaming. She held a dim candle in her hands, cradling it. Though she was forty or fifty yards away, Walter knew how much danger she was in.
He could see her face above the candle and little else. The wick on it must have been close to burning out because he could make out less of her as the seconds ticked by. Walter didn’t know many of the rules of this new world, but he felt fairly certain that being caught in the dark would be bad. Very bad.
The bag fell from his shoulder to the ground. He had his hand inside it before it came to a rest, rooting for the flare gun. His fingers brushed it and he pulled it free, quickly checking that the chamber was loaded.
Finding that it was, he took a knee, aiming close to the woman as she crawled into a bus stop.
Another face appeared in front of hers, closing in as the light died out.
One of them.
Walter had never fired a flare gun before and he didn’t know the kind of range it had. Would it shoot in a straight line from this distance? He didn’t know.
Lifting his arms a bit, he pointed slightly above her head, hoping that it would drop as it flew and land inside the bus stop with her. If it did she would probably be burned, perhaps severely, but he figured that to be better than disappearing.
The end of the barrel swayed in his grip, his booze-heavy hands struggling to hold it steady.
“Daddy, don’t.”
Walter’s heart skipped a beat. His daughter stood to his left, a few feet away.
She’s trying to distract me.
He closed his left eye, squinting his right, focusing on the end of the gun’s barrel, and fired.
The flare gun’s recoil surprised him. It kicked back, almost hitting him in the face. His left eye popped open and he glanced left.
His daughter was gone.
Light erupted from the flare as it rocketed toward the enclosure, dropping just as he’d hoped. He watched, transfixed, while it illuminated portions of the street as it flew by. It arced downward, striking the body of the thing in front of the bus stop just as the woman’s candle went out.
Though he hadn’t been aiming at it, he figured it was better to be lucky than good.
Walter grabbed his bag and flashlight from the ground and ran toward them, ignoring the agony in his back.
The flare punctured its body, reacting in an explosion of light.
Sparks shot in every direction, showering the woman in the bus stop, covering the area in white streaks.
The creature shrieked, its body convulsing, morphing.
Its torso twisted, bending backward at the waist, chest leaning toward the sky. The siren song coming from its mouth pierced Walter’s ears. He staggered, but kept his footing and continued forward, intent on seeing the thing up close.
The embedded flare glowed inside its body, the white light surrounding it growing brighter. The skin covering the woman/thing thinned and split, sloughing away.
What Walter thought were sparks became clearer as he approached – they were sizzling pieces of it. They burned like fuel.
It exploded.
Blinding light covered the area like it was midday, giving Walter a quick flash of the emptiness of the city.
And then it was gone, the area enveloped in shadow once again.
Walter jogged up to the bus stop and stopped in front of the seated woman, huffing and panting. He’d just witnessed the craziest thing he’d ever seen and his harried appearance showed it. He wondered if his eyes were bugging out of their sockets. A thing that looked like a woman had just been blown to pieces in the street by him, with cinders of her remains still smoldering on the pavement, and he was trying to process it.
The flare rested on the road, giving them plenty of light.
“Are you OK?”
The woman, young and pretty, stared forward, her eyes as big as saucers. Walter figured her to be about the same age as his daughter – thirtyish. She slowly turned her head and looked up at Walter, disbelief and shock on her face.
“I’m sorry for scaring you, but I’ve seen what happens when people are caught in the dark.” Walter knelt down, wincing as his knees popped.
The woman stayed silent.
“Who was she? The woman that appeared in front of you. Your mother? My daughter keeps showing up, trying to get me to turn off my light.”
Movement underneath the woman caught his attention and he angled his flashlight at it. An old dog peered up at him, its teeth bared in warning. Walter sat the light down on the bench beside the frightened woman and reached his hand out to the dog, letting it s
mell him.
He coaxed it out after a few seconds, stroking its head and scratching its ears. The woman perked up a bit when the German shepherd came out and she managed to speak.
“It was my mother.”
Walter bobbed his head, understanding. “They only look like our loved ones. You saw what happened when the flare hit it. I’ve never met your mother, but I don’t think she would explode if she got too close to light.”
The smile he’d hoped for never appeared.
“My name is Walter.”
“Chr— Christy.” Her words faltered, but she managed to get it out.
“You’re only the second person I’ve seen all night, Christy. I’ve gotta tell you that you’re a sight for sore eyes.”
Christy swallowed, gawking at the unlit candle in her hands.
“My roommate, Annie, was with me a minute ago, but—”
She ran a trembling hand through her brown hair.
“Did the darkness take her?”
“It reached out and grabbed her,” Christy said.
Walter admired her courage. Even a grizzled old man such as himself would struggle with the horrors she’d seen. All things considered, he thought she was handling the situation well.
“You saw it grab her? I’ve heard it take someone, but I haven’t seen it.”
The words stumbled out of her in stutters. “It looked like... like tentacles. But they weren’t from an animal. They were black and came from the dark. They grabbed her and pulled her in.” She sobbed then, holding her face in her hand.
Walter put a hand on her shoulder, waiting for her cries to die down.
“Did the thing that looked like your mother ask you to turn out your light? That’s what my daughter keeps doing. She shows up randomly, goading me into joining her. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t considered it the first time. The bastards almost fooled me.”
Christy wiped the tears from her cheeks and met his gaze.
“This is Molly,” she said, patting the dog’s head. “She and my Kindle saved my life. I fell asleep while reading and the screen on the Kindle was on when Molly’s growling woke me up. She never growls. At least she didn’t before tonight.”
She rambled a bit, but Walter didn’t mind. Just having someone to talk with took a huge weight off his chest.
“Saved by a book – that’s gotta be a first.” He gave her a weak smile. “I live on a boat, so the power outage didn’t affect me.”
“Do you know what’s going on? What is this?” Christy looked at the emptiness around them.
Walter reached into his bag and pulled out his lantern, turning it on. He shut off the flashlight, wanting to save its battery.
“I’m as confused as you are. I did see it start though. I was floating on the bay when I saw the power go out on the base. That’s where it began. The outage spread from there, taking over the city. Only it didn’t stop, it moved over the water, blocking out the stars and everything else. That was when my daughter appeared on the bow.”
“My mother was outside my bedroom when I woke up.”
“That’s a pretty good way to get any survivors to go into the dark, isn’t it? Show up as family and ask them to simply turn out the lights.”
Christy looked back at the Proving Ground, watching the glow that hovered over it.
“Where is everybody? Did everyone else get taken by what grabbed my roommate?”
Walter inspected his feet. He thought he knew the answer, but he didn’t want to face the consequences of it. “I think so.”
“Are they... dead?”
“I don’t know.”
The dog licked Walter’s hand. He guessed they were pals now.
Christy sniffed, leaning toward Walter a bit.
“Are you drunk?”
“Yup. Sobering up now though. Kind of hard to keep a buzz going when you’re fighting for your life.”
He handed her his flashlight. “You should take this. The candle thing didn’t seem to work out all that well.”
She took it, thanking him.
“I’m going to my daughter’s house to see if anyone is there. Wanna come?”
Christy nodded her consent and lifted herself off the bench. They headed across the highway, walking through a parking lot of a building they couldn’t see. Walter carried the lantern between them, advising her not to use the flashlight unless it became necessary.
She still looked shell shocked, but at least her feet were moving.
“Walter?”
“Yeah?”
“How far has this gone? Is it everywhere?”
“I don’t know.” Walter felt like that had become his phrase of choice.
Molly trotted between them, her nose plastered to the ground.
“I’m sorry I’m asking so many questions. I can’t get the image of what happened back there out of my mind. That was the worst thing I’ve ever seen. It just doesn’t feel real.”
No it didn’t. “I like hearing your voice. It makes this feel less horrible.”
Talking to her did make him feel a little better. When he’d thought he might be the only person still alive in the entire city, he’d felt hopeless. He still did, but having a travel buddy helped, if only slightly.
“How far away does your daughter live?”
Walter held his lantern up, looking for a road sign. He finally found one, at the top of a pole that held a pedestrian crossing light. Mt. Royal Ave.
“It’s up this road a piece. A mile, maybe less.”
Their progress was slow, deliberate. Dread filled Walter as they made their way down the road. Seeing his daughter twice, and watching her face distort when he shined a light on her, had put doubts into his mind – doubts about the wellbeing of the last of his family. Seeing the same thing happen to Christy by way of her mother really hammered those ideas into him.
The odds of Melissa being in the house with some candles lit when everyone else had disappeared were slim to none. And he damn well knew it. But he had to see – he had to know.
He caught Christy looking at his hand.
“Are you married?” she asked.
That hit him like a punch to the gut. With everything else happening, the loss of his wife still overpowered him. He wanted to cry and vomit at the same time.
“I was. She died in a car accident not that long ago.” He swallowed the lump that formed in his throat. His thumb rubbed at his wedding ring.
“I’m so sorry.”
“Me too.”
They walked past a white SUV that looked extremely familiar to Walter.
“Give me the flashlight for a second.”
Christy handed it over and he switched it on, using the beam to follow a sidewalk up to a house, trying to read the numbers beside the door. 1642. They were on the same block as his daughter’s house.
“Three doors down is my daughter’s.”
He handed the flashlight back to her and broke into a jog. Now that he was so close, the anticipation spurred him on. A million thoughts flashed through his mind at once. All of the scenarios that could play out in the next two minutes came to the forefront. His stomach felt like it had lead in it.
“Wait up!”
Christy clopped up beside him, her shoes smacking against the concrete. Molly trotted along, looking at the cars and mailboxes they passed with unease.
Walter turned up the third sidewalk he came across and looked up at his daughter’s house.
“Melissa!”
Not a single light shone through the windows. Not a sound came from anywhere around.
He took the steps leading to the porch two at a time, his aches and pains squelched by adrenaline. The stairs had a recent coat of white paint on them that he hadn’t seen before. Since moving to the boat Walter hadn’t been by the house too often, something that he now regretted.
The porch, also freshly painted, had Melissa’s usual patio furniture on it: a swing, two chairs, and a bistro table.
Keys were stuck in the do
orknob leading into the house.
“Oh no.”
Christy came up behind him, looking around. “What?”
He pointed at the dangling keys, fighting back tears. He could picture the scene in his mind. Melissa coming home, unlocking the door, and the lights going out.
Oblivion followed.
Walter stood on the wooden porch and stared at the door, unable to move, grief crushing him. Christy twisted the knob and stepped inside, shining her light around.
“Is anyone home? Your father is with me.”
She walked into the house, entering the sitting room on the right.
Walter felt something inside him break. He had nothing left to live for. His entire family had left him alone.
Broken.
Desperate.
One final idea struck him and he moved forward, walking past Christy. He entered a den at the opposite end of the house and placed his lantern on a mahogany desk.
“What are you doing?” Christy’s voice echoed through the empty house.
“Stay up there.”
“Walter? What are you doing?”
He ignored the concern in her voice. Knowing that his daughter had disappeared like everyone else crushed him. One thing filled his mind now – joining his wife and daughter.
The long drawer on the front of the desk had a small brass handle which he used to open it. He knew that Melissa kept the small .38 caliber pistol he’d given her there. Though his colleagues at the university had constantly berated him for owning a pistol, Walter always believed in being prepared for any emergency.
The small gun felt oddly heavy in his hand.
Without hesitation, he pulled the hammer back with his thumb and put the end of the barrel against his temple.
Release at last.
He closed his eyes and squeezed the trigger.
The hammer pulled back.
Walter paused on the precipice of no return.
“Goddamn it.”
What kind of man would he be if he left Christy alone at a time like this? While it was true that he didn’t know her, or owe her anything, a pang of guilt washed over him. The desire to join his family tore at him from all angles, but the looming shame overpowered all else. What would Lisa think of him if he abandoned a person in need for his own selfish reasons?