Out of the Dark (Light & Dark #1) Page 11

  A bridge means water, and water means we can drink and wash. But there may be shadows where the monsters can hide. I give Lilly the carrier bag to hold, and I make her stay in the center of the road while I go to check.

  The bridge is small—only big enough to get over on foot. It’s rickety also, and I don’t think walking over it would be a good idea at all. I climb down a small embankment carefully, seeing that there are no shadows, and there is a small stream of water running underneath it. I climb back up and gesture for Lilly to come over. She does, and I help her down the embankment.

  She looks unsure of what to do, but she stares at the water thirstily. It isn’t clean water, but it is coming directly from a stream somewhere, so it’s fresh. We decide to drink it because we are really thirsty now, and we are dehydrating, and I don’t have anything to make the water sterile for us anyway. I take the carrier bag from Lilly and pull out the bottle, and then I fill it with water and take a sip to show her that it is okay. She smiles when I hand her the bottle and then drinks it greedily, letting it spill down her chin and T-shirt.

  I scoop handfuls of water up, and drink and drink and drink until my stomach feels weird and sloshy. I smile as Lilly fills the bottle back up and drinks some more. When she’s had enough she hands the bottle back and stares at me wide-eyed.

  “We should wash now,” I say, and she nods.

  We undress until we are in just our underwear, and I rinse our dirty clothes in the water. I lay our clothes down on the embankment to dry a little and then I begin to wash myself. Lilly is splashing in the water, kicking it and giggling as the cold droplets land on her head. I smile. It comes easily. I try not to look at the thick black veins that now cover almost a third of her body. I look at my own body and see the same thing, though my lines are much darker. But I don’t care about me. Only her.

  “Mama!” Lilly whispers urgently.

  My eyes look up to meet hers. “What is it?” I ask.

  “Something touched my toe,” she whispers, sounding worried. She looks back down into the water, watching in fascination.

  I stand up quickly. The water is only a couple of inches deep, so it can’t be the monsters. I splash over to her, looking into the water the entire time, but don’t see anything. I stop next to her, waiting for the water to settle, and when I do, I see a little fish. It’s only a small one. Barely the size of a sardine. We stand there in the water, watching as more of the little fish come out from wherever they were hiding. They swim around our toes and Lilly smiles happily at the sight of them.

  “Fish,” I say.

  “Fish,” she repeats, still smiling.

  We both watch in silence for several moments. Their little silvery bodies reflect the light off them every time they turn with a small flip of their tail. Lilly’s smile grows every time one swims over her toes.

  “We should catch them and eat them,” I say.

  Her smile falls. “Okay.”

  I look across to her. “We need to eat, Lilly.”

  “I know,” she says sadly.

  “I’m sorry,” I reply, but she doesn’t say anything back.

  I use the carrier bag to catch some of the small fish by scooping it through the water. They flip and splash in the bag, and I lift it out of the water and let it drain away. I take them to the embankment and I tip them out onto the mud there. We watch them flip some more as they try to get back to the water, but I don’t let them. Their movements become slow, their gills opening rapidly as they struggle for breath. I can’t stop staring, fascinated at their fragility as they suffocate.

  Lilly puts her hands over her eyes and begins to cry, and I look up at her, at her skinny body, her ribs protruding almost painfully. Thick black veins trace up and down her body, some faint, some vivid. Her hair is a mess and her skin is pale. I look back to the small fish. They no longer move. They are dead.

  I gather some sticks to make a fire, but then I remember watching a program once and that it said that you could just eat fish raw. I pick up one of the little slimy fish, placing it in my palm. It doesn’t look very appetizing, but it has nutrients in it that will give us energy. It might stop the painful tug in my stomach. It might help to stop the ache in my head and let me think properly. I pick up the little fish using my thumb and forefinger and I drop it into my mouth, and then I crunch down on it.

  It wiggles and I realize that it wasn’t totally dead, and I feel bad as my teeth crunch down on its insubstantial little body. It tastes bad. Like really bad, and I gag and grimace, my body giving a little shudder as its broken body slides down my throat. I look up at Lilly who is watching me carefully with her wide brown eyes.

  “It’s not too bad,” I say—a big lie, because it tastes really bad. I pat the ground next to me and she sits down. “Pick one,” I say.

  She looks at the little dead fish—that might not be totally dead—and she counts them. Her lips move slowly, the whisper of numbers falling from her lips. Seven little fish. Eight including the one I just ate. That makes four each. I pick up another one and she does the same, and then we drop them into our mouths quickly. Our eyes are locked as we crunch our way through the fish. At one point I think she might be sick, but she holds it in.

  Afterwards we drink lots more water, and then we each have a stick of gum to try and get rid of the taste of dead fish from our mouths. I rinse her hair in the water, tugging my fingers carefully through the knots, until once again her hair is full of ringlets and not just one giant knot. I hand her one of the musty T-shirts to wear and she slips it over her head, smiling at the picture of a cows head on the front. Apparently this used to be a big milk district called Collier County. That’s what the T-shirt says, anyway.

  “We sure do love our milk!” Lilly says with a giggle, as she guesses what the smiley-faced man on her T-shirt might have once said.

  I laugh with her and I slip mine on. It’s the same picture of a cow, but the words are different.

  “Ain’t milk great!” I say with a smirk.

  We laugh some more and then I fill up the bottle of water and we put our pants back on. I give Lilly one of the caps that I got from the gas station and she puts it on. Our pants are still a little wet, but that’s okay—neither of us mind, because at least they don’t smell like pee and sweat anymore. We climb back up the embankment, feeling better than an hour ago. I carry the carrier bag full of our sort-of-clean old clothes, the bottle of water, and the comic I found yesterday.

  My stomach gurgles loudly, and feels a little swishy with all the water we have drunk. The fish tasted bad, but they have made my head feel a little clearer so I’m glad that I ate them. I blow a bubble with the gum and look down at Lilly. She stares in amazement at the pink bubble coming from my mouth and smiles widely. She tries to copy me but can’t manage it, so we stop and sit down right there in the middle of the road and I show her how to do it.

  Half an hour later, we are both walking again and blowing bubbles happily.

  The small milk town comes into view, and we stop as we look at the shadows of houses and stores in the distance. I glance down at Lilly but she doesn’t look up. She’s still blowing bubbles, almost like right now she is trapped in her own little bubble.

  I tug her hand a little and we begin to walk some more, and I try to ignore the anxiety that builds in my gut. Because while this is good—houses, stores, cars, all ripe for us to look through and hopefully find supplies—it’s also bad. Because it could house the monsters.

  We pass the first car. The skeleton of a man or woman are still inside, hunched over the steering wheel as if they were still driving. The monsters have picked this one clean. I think it is very old, right from the start of the outbreak. The monsters were less frantic back then. Less starving. So they were more careful. Not like now. Now they tear their prey apart. The next car must have been on fire, because it is a mere shell, the metal burnt and fragile-looking.

  The first storefront comes into view. It’s a small souvenir store that was once
filled with milk products and tacky gifts. The sign says it was once called Milk Products by Flo. There’s a picture of a cow hat with clapping hands. I strangely hope that I can find one of these hats for Lilly to wear, because I know that she will like it more than the one she is wearing.

  The town finally comes properly into view, and I find myself smiling despite the fear that trembles in my gut and makes me feel nauseous—though that could also be the raw fish digesting. This town looks picturesque. Like every town, there are buildings that are destroyed—either by fire or by the elements, there is old garbage everywhere, and the remnants of bones. It is dirty, dusty and not as bright as I’m sure it once was. Yet there is something that is quite sweet about it.

  The storefronts each have red and white awnings, and there is a strip of grass running through the center of the main road, with small trees. Some are dead and some are alive. Cars are crashed, burnt out and destroyed, luggage is strewn across the sidewalks, suitcases flung open, their contents now missing. Same old, same old. Yet I have a good feeling.

  I look down at Lilly and see that she is unaware of my happiness right now, but that’s okay. I don’t mind that either. I reach over and poke a finger into the bubble that she has just blown and she looks up at me. The gum is stuck to her lips, and I smile and she smiles back.

  Chapter Fifteen.

  #15. In this house of straw I cried.

  We rummage through burnt-out homes and found things. Things we didn’t want to see. Things we would never be able to un-see. But in amongst those ruins, we also find things we can use: another lighter, some canned food that has no labels on it, a book I once read in high school, before all of this began. We find a blanket, and I fold it neatly and put it inside my carrier bag.

  We rummage through old stores: a grocer’s, a shoemaker’s, a dairy shop that only sold milk. How did they run that business? I wonder. A shop that only sells milk and cheese, yogurts and such. The store must have at one time smelled foul when the produce began to decay and rot away, yet now it only holds the familiar scent of emptiness and loneliness that everything has.

  The sun is beginning to set, and we find shelter in an old dress shop. It’s sufficiently lit with a skylight in the roof. A skylight makes it sound so fancy, but the skylight is, in fact, merely a hole in the roof. Through it you can see the sky—the sun, the moon, the stars, whatever else might be up there looking down on us. There is no shelter for us on the roof, of course. It would be too unsafe, I decide. Instead we find a trapdoor which still bears the heavy metal lock on it that it has held since it was put there, however long ago that was.

  I smash the lock off with a block of wood after a fruitlessly long search for the key. It is dark down here, and neither Lilly nor I want to go down, but night is settling in and so I flick my old Zippo lighter and we make our way down the concrete steps. The place is dank and ugly, a storeroom of sorts. I flip a couple of switches, but the lights don’t work. I hadn’t really expected them to, but I always check, just in case. Habit, I suppose.

  There are small rectangular windows, only an inch or so deep—enough to cast a little light in the space, but not big enough for anything or anyone to either get in or out of. And they are dirty. Really dirty. Years of dirt and grime, both inside and out, has built up on them—from even before the infection hit, I would think—so I don’t worry too much about the monsters seeing us down here. It does mean that we will be in the dark for the night, though.

  As our eyes grow accustomed to the dark, we search for whatever else might be down here. There are piles of materials, all neatly stacked and ready to use, apart from the heavy layer of dust upon them. There are also racks of dresses and suits, and I flick through them. One dress catches my eye, and my hands stays, fingering the delicate material. A cream lace dress, knee-length, with little round pearls sewn into parts of it. It’s beautiful and I think of when I would have worn something like this. A wedding perhaps, or a christening, maybe. It isn’t the sort of dress that you would wear just any day. No, this is the sort of dress that you would put on to feel special.

  “Pretty,” Lilly says from next to me.

  “Yes, it is,” I say.

  My hand falls from it and takes hers, and we continue around the room. There is a sewing machine and a desk and a high-backed chair, which looks incredibly uncomfortable. The room stretches out, almost never-ending and opening up into another room. A single mattress is on the floor, with blankets and pillows and an old rocking chair in the corner.

  “It’s like they knew we were coming and made up the room for us,” I say jokingly.

  “Who?”

  “The people.”

  Lilly cocks her head to one side. “Which people? Everyone is dead.”

  Her words chill me, and I nod solemnly. I put down the carrier bag next to the bed and then turn in a circle. I grip the edge of the duvet on the mattress and pull it off, shaking it in the air to get rid of some of the dust, and then I do the same to the pillow.

  “It should be okay for you to sleep in now,” I say absently.

  I go back into the other room and get the high-backed chair. I carry it over to one of the thin windows and I climb on top so I can look out. The window is filthy, and I do not want to wipe any of the dirt away so I put my face really close to the glass so I can properly see out. The moon and the sun are currently fighting for leadership, but the moon will win. It always does. The town is silent, nothing moves. Yet.

  I climb down and tell Lilly to stay on the bed. I make my way back up the stairs we came down and I open the hatch that leads into the store. I look around for something heavy, finally seeing a large chest that holds material. I climb out of the basement and begin to pull the chest over to the hatch, and I place it as close to the opening as possible. Then I grab some of the material and I tip some of it out around the opening. I climb back inside the basement, gripping some of the material, and I carefully close the hatch, at the very last second letting go of the material. Then I pray that the hatch cannot be seen from the shop.

  There is a small latch on the inside of the hatch. It won’t really do much good if the monsters know that we’re down here, but I slide it across all the same. Any lock is better than no lock.

  When I get to the bottom of the concrete stairs I see Lilly standing and waiting for me.

  “I told you to wait by the bed,” I say.

  She stares at me but doesn’t say anything, and I frown. This is the first time she hasn’t done as I’ve asked. Certainly the first time that she hasn’t cared about not doing as she was told. I frown some more and then take her hand, leading her back into the other room.

  I sit her down on the bed. “Are you okay?” I ask, standing in front of her.

  “I don’t feel well,” she says quietly.

  I put a hand on her forehead, but she doesn’t feel hot. “I think you’re just hungry,” I say.

  I pull the cans with no labels out from the carrier bag. And then I look around for something to help me open the cans, because I don’t have a can opener. Obviously. I find a large pair of dressmakers’ scissors on the desk, along with some smaller scissors and a knife. I use the scissors to stab a hole into the can, and when I pull the scissors free I hold the can up to my nose and sniff.

  My heart plummets. Sinking into a bottomless pit. I drop the can, my hands shaking angrily. The room spins and I lower my head, putting it between my knees as I try to catch my breath.

  “What’s wrong?” Lilly asks, “Can we eat it?”

  I take deep, slow breaths, and when I feel less panicky I look up at her, forcing myself to dam the flow of tears that I can feel building up.

  “It’s dog food,” I say to Lilly.

  “Can we eat it?” she asks again, innocent, always so innocent.

  I shake my head no and tell her that this is animal food, and we can’t eat it, and then her sad gaze drifts toward the floor. I stab through another can and find it is also dog food, and I want to yell in frustratio
n. By the third can, my palm is sore from using the scissors to split the can open, and when I find it to be another can of dog food, I give up. I don’t want to dull my scissors on dog food.

  I help Lilly into the bed and I climb in next to her, lying in front so I can get out quickly if I need to. We face each other in the dark, the musty covers draped over us as we stare into each other’s eyes. Our stomachs are empty and gurgling noisily, screaming for food. Minutes pass by, and then an hour or two, or maybe it is just mere minutes. The noises begin as they do every night: the scratching, and clawing, the hissing and screaming. But I feel almost numb to it tonight.

  Lilly places an arm across my waist and holds me tightly, trying to be brave. I know that she hates these sounds. I do too. But I think these sounds must be so much worse for a child. As a child your fears are more irrational than when you are fully grown. But what she doesn’t understand is that the noises are just as scary for me, a full-grown woman, because I cannot rationalize them away. They are real, living, breathing nightmares.

  Nevertheless, I kiss the top of her head and then I hum quietly into her ear to try and drown out some of their horrible sounds. It seems to work. Yet just as Lilly seems to be about to drop off to sleep, she speaks. I jump, just a little, as the sound of her voice in this interminably dark basement fills the space.

  “Sarah wanted to leave you behind,” Lilly whispers.

  “It doesn’t matter now,” I whisper back.

  “She said I should go with her. That I could go somewhere safe.”

  Silence.

  “But I didn’t want to leave you,” she continues. “Even though she said it would be safe where she was going. I wanted to stay with you.”

  I kiss her head again. “You should have gone with her. It would be safer than this.” Tears fill my eyes at the truth of my words.