Passing Through Darkness- The Complete Cycle

by Malcolm McKenzie

  PASSING THROUGH DARKNESS

  (c) 2019 by

  Malcolm McKenzie

  Author’s royalties from this book are donated to the Illinois Promise Scholarship Fund to help ensure affordability of a college education at the University of Illinois. If you invent the Darkness while you’re there on my scholarship, I’ll haunt you.

  Cover image used and modified with permission of John C. Ermel.

  For original, please refer to:

  http://www.cyclos-watch.ch/en/idea.html

  Contents

  Book One - Born in Darkness

  1. On the Flow

  2. The Edge of Acceptance

  3. The Oldtown Road

  4. Crossing Over

  5. The Other Side

  6. Driven Out

  7. On the Run

  8. Finding Religion

  9. Choosing the Way

  10. City of Refuge

  11. Face to Face

  12. Another Such Victory

  Book Two - Flight from Darkness

  1. Marking Time

  2. Arrivals and Departures

  3. Renewing Acquaintances

  4. Where Angels Fear to Tread

  5. The Depths of Sorrow

  6. All the Colors of Darkness

  7. The Bones of Yesterday

  8. The Serpent

  9. The Road Not Taken

  10. The Devil You Don’t Know

  11. Going Home Again

  12. The Outsider

  Book Three - Called to Darkness

  1. Curiosity

  2. Where It All Began

  3. Servants of Mars

  4. Pious

  5. The Shadowed Hand

  6. A Darker War

  7. Meeting Interesting People

  8. And Killing Them

  9. Regrets

  10. Sacrifice

  11. Together Again

  12. Clothed in the Sun

  Book Four - Reckoning with Darkness

  1. Confessions

  2. First Move

  3. Under Pressure

  4. Here We Go Again

  5. Sorrow Revisited

  6. On the Front

  7. Trial

  8. Judgment

  9. Auld Lang Syne

  10. The Serpent’s Tooth

  11. Darkness Falls

  12. Aftermath

  Book Five - Covenant Against Darkness

  1. Stephen

  2. The Mission

  3. The Best Laid Plans

  4. Uninvited Guests

  5. Down the River

  6. The Road to Hell

  7. The Dark Lord

  8. Thus Spake Gurath

  9. Heart of Darkness

  10. The Last Choice

  11. It Is Finished

  12. Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Book One - Born in Darkness

  “We must pass through the darkness, to reach the light.”

  Albert Pike

  1. On the Flow

  “Gah, you stink!” Luco grunted as I stepped into the Hole.

  I shrugged and smiled ruefully. “Yeah, I hit a gas pocket.”

  We all stank, of course. Everyone and everything on the Flow stank. Hundreds of years under the scorching sun had boiled away much of the landfill’s surface stench, but the Flow was dozens of yards deep and miners were constantly uncovering new layers. Inside the mass of garbage were sealed bubbles of methane, the ferment of rotten fruit, old diapers, dead rats. Hitting a gas pocket was a bit like having a skunk explode on you.

  The Hole was carved into the cliff wall on the west side of the Flow. It was cool and dark, and the wind usually carried the reek away from it. But everyone in the Hole was a miner, and all miners stank.

  “Find anything good today?” Luco asked.

  I teased him a bit, opening my sack and rummaging inside. “A plate, pretty good shape.” Solid stoneware, with only a tiny chip and an inch-long crack that, with proper care, shouldn’t grow to the point of breaking. “About twenty feet of copper wire, nice and thick.” Useless to me, unlike the plate, but we got good prices for copper.

  I let a smirk play across my lips. “A watch…”

  Luco’s eyes lit up. He loved watches. “Mechanical?” he asked eagerly.

  “Battery,” I said. His face fell.

  “You dog squat,” he said, without heat. He would have traded me just about anything I wanted for a mechanical watch. Battery-powered, this one was worth no more than the scrap value of the steel. We had no way to replace the battery, though they were everywhere in the Flow. They must have been trivially easy to make in the old days, but they were all dead now and I had never found anyone able to make a new one.

  Luco chuckled at my little practical joke. The humor on the Flow had seemed cruel to me when I first arrived two years ago, but it had grown on me over time. Like the stink. I doubt anyone could ever get used to the reek of a gas pocket, but the background stench was no more than a mild discomfort. Less so than the autumn sun.

  “You taking that to the forge now?” Luco asked.

  “In this heat? I’ll wait until it cools off a little out there.” Most of the other miners had gotten off the Flow by noon. I had only stayed to excavate the pocket and let the sun and wind carry away some of the smell before I tracked it into the Hole - not with any great success, apparently.

  “Hey, blackeye, c’mon over and have a drink,” Joran called from the bar. I left my sack on the floor near Luco’s table and headed back, deeper into the darkness. Joran handed me a rough clay mug of beer, enough alcohol in it that you didn’t have to worry too much about where the water had been or if it had been boiled long enough.

  The clinging orange dust of the Flow coated all of us, masking my gray skin and white hair. Except for the solid black of my eyes, I could have passed for an ordinary man. “Blackeye” was not a polite term, and Joran had told me very frankly that he despised the Select - which was a common enough prejudice. But he had been unfailingly kind to me since my arrival. The miners were a rough, strange crew, but then it seemed to me that people were pretty odd everywhere - part of the human condition, even for those of us that others might not consider quite human.

  There was food as well as drink in the Hole, but my credit was running low and in our unspoken, informal tally of such things, I now owed Joran a beer. The copper and steel I had salvaged were worth something even though they hadn’t yet been melted down, and no one would accuse me of mooching... But I didn’t like to owe anyone favors.

  “I’m heading up to the trading post,” I announced to the Hole in general, nearly a dozen individuals who mostly weren’t listening and didn’t care. “I’ll swing back around tonight after I hit the forge.”

  “Why don’t you stay a while, Minos?” asked Luco. “You said it yourself - it’s hot out there.”

  “Yeah, but we could probably use someone else on watch up top,” I replied, which was usually the case. And in all honesty, my gray skin was better suited to the sun than most anyone else’s. I picked up my sack, pushed aside the hanging, and was back in the blaze of the early afternoon.

  Just because my skin didn’t burn didn’t mean I cared for the heat. The path up to the trading post was a gravelly track worn into the western wall of the Flow, leading from the Hole in the direction of the City. A slippery scree of little brown stones on dry, orange dirt, every shuffling step and thrust of my walking stick sending up a small cloud of dust. It would have made sense to cut steps, but it had been like this when I’d arrived and it hadn’t seemed appropriate for a newcomer to suggest changes. Over the years I’d gotten used to it.
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  Kala was half-asleep in the shade of a rough square of cloth stretched between four posts. A couple of dolls, some toys, a small stack of plates, knives, spoons, and forks were set out on and around the table in front of her. Bulkier and more valuable items were stored in a cave deep in the back of the Hole where they were less exposed. A large hunting knife was stuck into the ground by her chair - for defense, although she’d sell it if someone offered a good price. As expected, there was no one else up here.

  To be honest, Kala wasn’t my favorite person, and standing watch over the trading post was a tiresome chore. But there were always people in the world who found it easier to take something by force than to earn it, even if the only thing to steal was the result of someone else’s garbage picking. It was better for us to have a couple of watchers topside just in case. Especially if our people minding the store were willing to sell their own weapons.

  “Hey, Minos,” Kala murmured, eyelids still half shut.

  I nodded. “Kala.” Shading my eyes, I scanned the horizon. To the north, I could barely make out the topmost spires of the dead City looming miles distant. To the east lay the wide, meandering desolation of the Flow. And the featureless plain of the Low Furnace stretched off to an infinite horizon to the south and west. Nothing moved.

  I turned in a little circle, trying to think of something useful to do. Pieces of brick, shards of concrete, and bits of plastic surrounded us, but none of it had any use. Metal, wood, and anything else of value had long since gone into a forge, ours or others’. The tide of human civilization had receded in the Age of Fear, drawing back into the great cities, building walls around them to keep danger at bay. The remains lay scattered like broken shells on a beach, the miners on the Flow picking over the rotting remains like crabs.

  Here the City had died as well, generations ago. The very tops of towers of glass and steel in the distance were all we could see. The City had outlived its suburbs and then devoured them because people had felt safe inside its walls. Now its corpse endured unspoiled because we feared what might remain within them.

  The cities had built up within those walls, towers reaching for heaven. Until the power went out. No one wanted to climb a hundred floors worth of stairs. And some of the things that lived on those abandoned floors weren’t friendly.

  Staring at the dead City wasn’t accomplishing anything, so I picked rocks out of the cactus patch. The prickly pears were the only things we could make grow. Last year there had been an attempt at corn, but the sun had killed it. The cacti could survive nearly anything. Some of the miners swore by the sweet juice from the fruit and leaves. I hated it, but it was better than nothing.

  The stones and bricks from the cactus patch went into a wall that surrounded it, which to some extent kept lizards, rabbits, mice, rats, and raccoons at bay. Or at least gave us a better chance of taking them out with a slingshot as they climbed over, adding some protein to our diet. As the cacti grew and reproduced, or someone ambitious dug one up from elsewhere and transplanted it into the patch, we enlarged the wall with the stones we dug out.

  An empire of cactus. Still, it was life, and it might well prove more lasting even than the empire of garbage our forefathers had left us.

  Shifting the debris out of the ground into the wall had taken less than two hours, even with frequent stops for shade and a drink of the disgusting cactus juice Kala kept in a clay pitcher. Kala herself had not gotten out of her chair during that time. She had a long, lean, athletic figure that had been much admired by Alben, the previous headman of the miners. Alben had left not long after my arrival, offered a position as foreman on a large farm to the southeast. Panther City was raising levies again, and men were leaving the farms for the military, where at least you were pretty certain to get fed. There were opportunities. As a proven leader of men - even garbage miners - Alben could have had a non-commissioned officer’s rank in the armies of Rockwall had he wanted it... But he’d said he was too old and too wise and that war was a game for the young.

  Dorren, our new headman, held Kala in lower esteem. She knew it but didn’t change her behavior. Either she couldn’t, or she thought it best to laze while she could. It might not be such a bad philosophy.

  I wouldn’t have minded lazing myself, but that was not a luxury a Select could afford. Instead, I picked my way back down into the Flow to get a compost bucket. The cacti did fine on their own, but the compost helped. And besides, the smell would annoy Kala but she wouldn’t be able to complain.

  My skin might not burn, but I was soaked in sweat by the time I got the bucket back up the cliff side. For all the rest I’d gotten, I might as well have gone back out onto the Flow to dig. When I was finished spreading the bucket’s stinking contents on the cactus bed, I was done for the day. I lay down on my back in the dirt next to Kala’s chair and fell asleep.

  The sun was beginning to go down when I woke. Kala was already gone. It was rare enough for travelers to stop at all at the trading post - it was unheard of so close to dark. There was no safe shelter from the night within hours of us. I wondered if Kala had actually carried all the goods down herself. That would have taken a couple of trips. She had probably gotten someone to help.

  North in the direction of the City, the forge’s fires glowed orange in the twilight. It was a good time to get my scrap melted down. Dodd would still be working, but it wouldn’t be as infernally hot inside as during the day.

  The City lurked dark and skeletal on the horizon. Its original name had been abandoned in the Age of Fear, when superstition cursed with ill luck all names used before the Fall. Even personal names had changed. In our fallen world, to be named “John” or “Mary” invited unidentified, unspeakable disaster. The City had come to be called Acceptance before it died. Now it was nothing but broken steel bones and crumbling concrete flesh, its name remembered only by those of us who picked out a living like scavengers on its rotting refuse.

  There was another mining camp further north on the far side of the Flow, closer to the City. Rumor had it that the pickings were richer there. The leavings of the Last Days were a fertile ground for metals, technology, and other goods that were now difficult or impossible to make. Thus our life on the Flow. But none of us here were tempted to get closer to the City. Things still lived there - perhaps even things like humans, though anything a human could quickly and easily salvage had long since been stripped away. We had all heard stories of shapes seen moving in the City’s towers, glimpsed by those who had dared to approach the walls - gaunt, four-legged shapes with strange proportions... slouching, shambling things... rats the size of wolves were the least of the City’s horrors if Alben was to be believed.

  In my travels I had seen no sign that the Darkness had reached this far into the southwest, but if it was anywhere, it would be in the City. It didn’t pay to take chances with the Darkness.

  You could hear Dodd’s hammer halfway down the Flow. Inside the forge, the pounding made the bones in your skull vibrate. He was beating out something that looked like a shovel head on the anvil. Fenn, his assistant, was heaping trash onto the fire. It didn’t burn as hot as coal or even wood, and it stank, but we had plenty of it.

  Dodd couldn’t hear me coming over his own hammering, but he noticed when Fenn stopped stoking the forge. The smith slammed his hammer down a few more times on the shovel blade, turned it over critically with the tongs, gave a little sigh, and plunged it into a bucket of stagnant water to cool. It wasn’t fine work, but it would serve its purpose.

  “What’ve you got for me, Minos?” His voice was rough and gravelly from a lifetime of breathing smoke.

  I held up the loop of copper wire. He grimaced at the rubber coating. “Of all the things I burn in this place, I swear rubber is the one I just can’t learn to abide the smell of.” He paused and reflected. “Well, and dung, of course.”

  “Goes without saying, I think.”

  He nodded. “Speaking of dung, what happened to you? Gas pocket? You smell like you
fell in the compost pit.”

  It was my turn to nod. “Yah, pocket, and I hauled a load up to the cactus patch.”

  “Kala sleep all day again?”

  “I can’t speak for all day - pretty much the whole time I was there.”

  Dodd grunted and pulled the shovel head out of the water, tossed it into a corner. “One of these days she won’t wake up to get inside and the Darkness’ll get her. And the worst thing is, it wouldn’t be much of a loss.”

  I didn’t believe the Darkness would find her even if she spent the night alone at the post. Other things might, though. What I said was, “Ah, she’s probably safe enough. I doubt the Darkness has any use for her either.”

  He smiled at that, a flash of teeth in his cracked face. “Got anything besides the wire?”

  I held up the watch. Fenn’s eyes widened. “Mechanical?”

  If Dodd had ever had the knack of fixing delicate things, decades of pounding iron into shape had robbed him of it. Fenn had an artist’s touch, though. He could even mend a tiny spring. Watches fascinated him as much as they did Luco.

  I shook my head. “Battery.”

  Dodd spat a little gob of black phlegm. “Guess there’s about a knife blade worth of steel in there anyway.” He tossed the watch in his hand. “Does the finished knife sound like a fair trade for the copper and the steel?”

  I had a knife, but the one Dodd made would be better, and I could trade the other. “Done,” I said.

  It was fully dark by the time I headed back, but I could see well enough by the moonlight. The pale glow bleached the orange dirt to gray. Torches near the Hole cast a ruddy light that painted the ground red and black with fire and shadow. With the dead City squatting to the north, I felt briefly like a damned soul in a particularly arid and smelly part of hell. I shivered, though it was still warm. I wasn’t religious, but even the thought of hell was invoked cautiously after the Fall. The Darklands far to the northeast, with their demon inhabitants, were infernal enough that the concept wasn’t purely metaphysical.