My eyes follow Lilly’s feet. She is becoming tired. Her shoes drag a little with each step, a scuff growing larger on the front of each small shoe. I stare, watching fascinated, almost too numb to do anything about it as we walk, walk, walk. A slow trickle splashes off the end of her left shoe as she lifts it, and as she lifts the right one to take her next step, a splash of urine drips off the end of that one too. I watch for a few more steps, as she pees herself but doesn’t stop walking. I finally look across at her face, my neck and shoulders glad that I have moved my neck and head.
Her eyes are almost glazed over as she stares straight ahead. Her face is paler than snow, and her eyes lost. I stop walking, but she doesn’t realize that I’ve stopped and her arm jerks backwards when she takes her next step forward. She slowly turns to face me, blinking twice as she stares calmly into my face, coming back to the here and now. Large black rings circle under her eyes, heavy shadows of exhaustion and weariness, and without a thought I scoop her up into my arms.
She clings to me weakly and falls asleep almost instantly. I glance up at the sun, seeing that it is at its highest, meaning that the day is halfway done. I look back the way we have been walking. The barn is completely out of sight now—not even the smoke can be seen—but it still seems too close. We still need more distance. And so I continue to walk, with Lilly’s small sweat-and urine-soaked body wrapped around mine.
My arms ache after several miles, burning with a pain and intensity that is unlike anything I’ve ever felt. My leg muscles twitch for relief, begging me to stop and rest. The day has been almost silent, apart from the sound of my footsteps, and I wonder how many nests of monsters we have passed. How many have heard us walking, how many will wake up when night falls and follow our scent, hunting and tracking us through another night. I shudder and almost drop Lilly, collapsing down to one knee, the gravel tearing through my pants and digging painfully into my skin. I don’t gasp, though. I don’t make a sound. I just wait, poised on one knee, feeling the slow trickle of blood trail down my leg.
Lilly’s face breaks free from my shoulder and she looks up at me groggily, the remnants of sleep still evident in her eyes. The corner of her mouth quirks up in a small smile, but I can’t smile back, no matter how much I try. She senses my weariness and climbs down from me, and then she holds out her hand. I push myself to standing and take her small, warm hand in mine. I stare unashamedly at the intricate black veins that peek out from under her cardigan, wishing that there was something I could do to save her, to save me. But I can’t. It’s just a matter of time. Our hands are clasped, and my own blackened veins seem stark and obvious against her pale skin. It frightens me.
My stomach rumbles loudly and Lilly smiles again. I finally find the energy to smile back as her stomach joins in with mine, and we both stand there, our stomachs wailing in hunger. Looking up the road, I see nothing. Just more empty fields, more highway, more broken cars, more overgrown plants, more sunlight. To the left is a field, overgrown with tall weeds and grass, and to our right is an empty, dusty field, as if the very life has been sucked right out of it. Stark contrasts to one another. One full of life, the other not. Neither providing us with what we need: food.
I look back at Lilly, seeing that the wet stain from where she had peed earlier has almost dried. Her face is dirty, dry tracks of tears trailing down her cheeks, and her hair is a tangle of knots. But she’s alive. She’s still smiling. She’s still my Lilly—my Honeybee. For now, at least.
“We need to find food,” I finally say as she watches me expectantly. My throat feels sore and painful when I speak; like there’s sand on my tongue.
She nods in agreement.
“And something to drink,” I add on, to which she nods again. I take a deep breath and look up the road once more. “I think we should go this way,” I say decisively.
I light a cigarette and we start to walk once more, just one step in front of the other. Because this road has to end somewhere, eventually. Every road leads to something, or someone. And this road is no different. Dusty, lonely, and unused.
I inhale the nicotine, feeling my hunger pangs subside but my thirst grow. I finish my cigarette, throwing it to one side as we come up on one of the many rusted cars at the side of the road. The door is hanging open like an invitation. I approach it carefully, but there is nothing and no one inside. No food. No water. No clothing. Nothing of use. And so we continue to walk.
Heat rises from the road like a mirage, and I fix my eyes on the distance, staring, hoping, waiting. What for, I don’t know. Anything. Anything at all. In the distance, at the very end of the road, I see something. A shape of something. I blink several times, trying to clear the fog from my eyes, but the shape is still there. Hope leaps in my heart. I stop and point.
“Look!” I say excitedly.
Lilly looks up, following my pointing finger, and then she looks at me confused. I scoop her up and point again. She narrows her eyes, and just as I am beginning to think that my mind is in fact playing tricks on me, she sees it.
“What is it?” she asks quietly.
“A gas station.”
“Will it be safe?” she asks.
“I don’t know, but it could be. And there could be food.”
We pick up speed, both of us excited and nervous to reach the gas station. The sun is hot, but neither of us complain about it, even though I am so thirsty that it makes my throat sore, and I know Lilly must be feeling the same way. As we get closer to the gas station we see two abandoned cars in the forecourt, and we approach them warily. I check each car carefully, because people leave the silliest things behind, forgetting things in side pockets or under seats. These cars are not like that, though. There is nothing of use in either of them.
We slowly approach the gas station. The doors have been wedged open, allowing light to shine into the darkness. The windows are all dirty, inches of thick dust and grime covering each one. The glass in the door has been broken, and as we step closer it crunches under our feet. The sound echoes around us, and I look down to Lilly with a grimace. I hear her swallow, and then it is as if every sound has an echo loud enough to wake a beast. Her swallow is loud but her breathing is louder, the crunch of glass reverberating around us, the wind whistling through the open door.
Lilly tugs on my hand and I nod as we go inside. It feels like dusk inside—not quite day and not quite night, that strange color that the world goes when it is almost time for bed, the stillness that settles over the earth as it readies itself for sleep. But it is neither of these times right now, and so it is even more unnerving as everything grows still.
I let my eyes adjust to the dimness and I take in our surroundings. Lilly stays by my side, unmoving. She knows to stay still and silent. I look across the room, the remnants of civilization a stark reminder of what we have lost. There is no food on the shelves—at least none that I can see from here—so we must venture further inside.
I take a timid step forward, and then another, becoming more emboldened with each one. Lilly follows, her hand in mine and her eyes looking everywhere as mine do the same. But each dark corner is empty, free of monsters. Our shoulders relax as we find the place empty. Even the storeroom and the breakroom at the back of the gas station are empty of monsters, and they only had one dirty window in apiece, making their spaces darker still. Happy that we are alone, I turn to Lilly.
“Let’s look for food,” I say.
“Okay,” she says.
Lilly stays with me as we traipse each aisle, looking at everything, searching for food and drink, but the store has been pilfered and there is nothing left for us to eat. My heart aches with disappointment, but I don’t let her see it. We go behind the counter and I sit Lilly on the stool there. She pretends that she works in the store and is serving a customer while I search the small cabinets. I find another pack of cigarettes. They were damp once and the pack is still misshapen, but I don’t mind. I search right to the back of the shelves, moving old, damp papers t
o one side, a pen, a stapler, and then my hand lands on something else. I grip it and pull it out. I smile and turn to Lilly. She is still playing her game of shopkeeper, but she stops and looks at me.
“What is it?” she asks.
“Gum,” I say proudly.
There are only four pieces inside. There were once seven, and the ones that are left feel a little stale, but I don’t mind. My mouth waters at just the thought of gum, of its flavor. I unwrap a piece a hand it to Lilly. She takes it and stares at me blankly, so I unwrap a piece for me.
“You put it in your mouth and chew it. You don’t swallow it, though,” I say.
“Why not?”
“Because it can give you a tummy ache. It isn’t meant to feed you.”
She examines the hard, thin strip of gum with curious eyes and then looks back at me, another small frown puckered between her eyebrows. “What is the point of it then?” she asks.
I smile at her. “Just chew it, and you’ll see.” I put my piece in my eager mouth and begin to chew.
At first it doesn’t taste of anything, and the strip of gum snaps and sort of crumbles, but then as my saliva softens it, it begins to form a small ball of flavor in my mouth and I groan in satisfaction. Lilly watches me and then does the same, grimacing as the gum crumbles in her mouth, and I know that she wants to spit it out.
“I don’t like it,” she says.
“Keep chewing, Lilly,” I say, and she does.
A moment passes and slowly her grimace softens until she starts to smile. She chews and chews and then returns to her game of shopkeepers but this time she is smiling. I continue to search the store for anything else while I chew my gum, the saliva in my mouth soothing the scratch in my dry throat.
There are some old magazines, mostly ruined from damp, but one of them is a comic and so I take it, deciding that I can try and read it to Lilly later on. There are some moth-eaten T-shirts in the storeroom. The box has some mice living in it, and I manage to catch one and crush it by knocking another box over on top of it. I think I will cook it and then we can eat it, but when I look at the tiny lifeless body, I decide that I won’t. I hide its body so Lilly doesn’t see it, because I know that she would be sad if she saw its lifeless body, and I know that she would be sadder still knowing that I was the one who had killed it.
I take two of the T-shirts, and a cap for Lilly. I find an old carrier bag and pile our meager supplies inside it: the magazine, the T-shirts, and the cap. There’s still nothing to eat or drink though, no matter how hard I search. I go back to the front of the store and look out at the day, seeing that the sun is lower, nighttime is coming. Lilly comes to stand next to me and we go outside and look up and down the road, the way we had come and the way we were going, but there seems to be nothing in either direction for miles.
“I think we should stay here tonight,” I say, the gum still in my mouth. I chew it thoughtfully. The taste is almost gone but still I chew, as if the very idea that I can chew and my stomach feel full is a real possibility. Of course it’s not. But I still chew it relentlessly.
I don’t want to stay here. I don’t want to stay anywhere, really. Everywhere frightens me, and Lilly. But we have to stop for today. I’m tired and hungry and I know Lilly is feeling even worse than me, though she hasn’t complained—not once. But we have to stop. Better to stay here than end up trapped out in the open with nowhere to hide. That would be worse. Lilly nods an okay at my plan to stay, and we go back inside.
I force the doors closed and barricade them with some of the portable metal shelving. Then I go to the breakroom and check that the back door to the gas station is locked. It is. I look around, trying to find access to the roof, because that is actually the safest place to sleep. Up on the roof, away from the dark of the gas station, away from the reach of the monsters. This won’t be the first time that we’ve slept on the flat roof of a gas station. I finally find it and then I use the tall stool from the front counter to climb up and I push open the little hatch. It’s stiff, but it eventually opens. I look out to check that it is safe, and when I decide it is, I reach down and hoist Lilly up onto the roof.
“Mama?” she says.
I climb up, and then I lower the hatch door back in place and I turn and smile at her. She’s getting anxious and so am I, but we need to stay calm so I do all that I can to relax her—which isn’t much.
“Are we safe?” she asks, her eyes looking tired, with deep black rings below them.
I look around us, seeing the sun getting ready to dip below the trees. The air is cool up here, and I know that we will be cold tonight. Cold and hungry. Lilly holds up her arms to me and I pick her up. She nestles into me, and I kiss the top of her head.
“Right now we are,” I say to her.
“What about when it goes dark?”
“I hope so,” Is all I can say. “Do you want some more gum?”
“Not yet. We should save it so that it lasts.”
I nod. “Yes we should. Do you like it?”
She nods, her face still scrunched against my neck. “Yes I do,” she mumbles, and then I feel her breath hot against my neck as she yawns.
I find a spot to make a makeshift bed, and then I gather some of the leaves that are scattered across the roof. I pile them up and lay Lilly down on them, hoping that they will soften the hard ground for her. I use the carrier bag with the T-shirts inside as a pillow for her, and she lays her sweet little head upon it. The bag gives a small rustle, and then she falls asleep right away. I stroke her hair as I watch the sun set, my thoughts empty of anything useful. I don’t even have the energy to feel worried or sad anymore.
I just am.
Chapter Fourteen.
#14. A new dawn.
I wake fitfully throughout the night, the sound of screeching and claws scratching hanging in the air like a stench that you can’t wash away. Minutes later it goes quiet again, and I slip into unconsciousness. An hour passes and I wake to the sounds again. On and on it goes: I wake, I tremble, I squeeze Lilly close, and then I slip back to sleep when it all goes quiet.
They are searching for us—for anyone, really—but they don’t know we are up here, and I am too tired to worry too much about anything. There are places that your mind will take you when fear takes hold, horrible places where you will scream into the darkness and beg for it to end. And then there are times when you are just a black void of nothing. You suck the air into your lungs and you breathe it back out. You blink, you stare, you feel your heart beating, but there is nothing else. It’s a place beyond exhaustion but not without compare.
I am there right now. Drifting in and out of consciousness. Hoping that Lilly gets to sleep the full night through. Hoping that we find food tomorrow. Hoping, hoping, hoping. Even though it pains me to do it. Hope seems to be the only thing left.
The final time I wake to the screeches, I cannot get back to sleep. So I lie there, staring up at the stars, blinking every once in a while. I cuddle Lilly’s warm body to me, feeling her breath on my neck. She is silent, barring the soft noise of her breathing. I stroke her hair and let my thoughts wander aimlessly until the sun begins to rise.
The soft orange glow builds slowly in the distance at first, the night being banished for another day. The monsters go back into hiding, and everything is as it should be again. I slide Lilly’s arms from around me and sit up. I creep to the edge of the roof and look down. There are signs of the monsters’ presence but nothing that is impactful—no shattered glass, no blood or dead bodies. They came, and they moved onward to another destination before morning.
I pull my cigarettes from my pocket and light one. I take a deep drag, pulling the nicotine into my lungs, and then I release it slowly. My stomach hurts with hunger, and there is a low throb in the base of my skull. I turn to look at Lilly, seeing that she is still sleeping, and I’m glad. She will be very hungry when she wakes, and I have nothing to offer her but stale gum. I feel bad—wretched, even. I feel like a failure to her. Wha
t kind of mother lets her child starve to death?
I finish the first cigarette and light another one immediately afterwards, needing the buzz they give me. I hear the rustle of leaves as I finish the second cigarette. Lilly comes to join me at the edge of the gas station roof. We dangle our legs over the edge as we look into the distance, imagining all the things that could be just over the horizon.
“I’m hungry,” she whispers.
I know that she feels bad for telling me that, because she knows that I can’t do anything about it. But I’m glad that she tells me nonetheless.
I hug her and kiss the top of her head. “I know, Honeybee. So am I.”
She goes silent after that. No point in wasting energy talking about the things we do not have. We eventually climb back down from the roof. I take some more of the dirty T-shirts and put them in our carrier bag. There is an empty bottle, which I take as well. If we find water then we can fill this bottle and keep it with us, I think.
We push our barricade out of the way of the doors and step out into the warm sun with heavy hearts. Lilly slips her hand into mine and wordlessly we begin to walk again.
We need to find water. And soon. That is even more important right now than food, even though my stomach angrily disagrees. But we are very quickly dehydrating. Lilly is hot, so I help her out of her tatty cardigan and tie it around her waist. I note the thick black lines that run down Lilly’s arms and I squeeze my eyes shut, not wanting to have seen them. She smiles up at me, unaware, and I see that her gums are bleeding. I don’t say anything, though. What would be the point? Instead I smile back and we start to walk again.
I think that we might be getting close to a town. There are more cars around now. I check each one but don’t find anything useful in them. None of them work anymore, either, which is disappointing. There’s a small bridge up ahead and I am both anxious and happy when we get closer.
Out of the Dark (Light & Dark #1) Page 10