Out of the Dark (Light & Dark #1) Read online

  “Quickly,” I say, and start to move toward it.

  Lilly follows close behind, her small hand never leaving mine. We finally get to the car—or what I hope is a car. I pull one of the fence panels back and look more carefully, expecting to see the face of one of the monsters looking back at me through the glass, but as I peer into the gloom of the car, I only see another skeletal body. It’s sitting on the other side of the car, in the driver’s seat. It’s staring out the window, its eyes expressionless and its hands still clutched around the steering wheel, ready to drive off at a moment’s notice.

  I pull the wooden board back even more, the dying of the light urging me on quicker. I step around to the driver’s side of the car, my feet crunching on something, and when I look down I see both monster and human remains, my foot crushing through the bones of a misshapen monster skull. I flinch and jump back, almost falling on my ass. Lilly yelps and does fall, and then she yelps again as she lets go of my hand and begins to scoot her way backwards away from the bones of monsters and men.

  “It’s okay, it’s okay,” I say, reaching for her.

  She whimpers but takes my hand and stands back up, and I dust off the bone fragments on her backside. I look back to the car, to the wooden panels concealing it, to the bones surrounding it, and an idea forms. I clutch the handle of the car door, a satisfied smile daring to cross my face when the door clicks open. I pull the door open wide, looking inside and seeing the keys hanging from the ignition. There were actually two people hiding in the car, not one, and now there are two sets of bones hiding inside it. I reach in, worrying about how to get them out carefully, but in the end I decide that there isn’t the time to be careful or considerate. I grip the clothing of the first body and drag it free of the car, forcing myself to look at the dried-out face of this person that was once alive.

  The second body is in the back of the car, still huddled on the back seat in a fetal position, its face buried into its own arms. But it doesn’t move, not a fraction. There’s no way to get it out without removing more of the wooden boards, and I don’t have the time to do that, nor do I want to disturb what was obviously a good hiding spot for so long.

  “Come on,” I say to Lilly.

  I throw the carrier bag of our meager possessions in the footwell and help her clamber inside. Lilly climbs over to the passenger seat, oblivious of the body in the back. I run back around the car, putting all the panels that I’ve disturbed back in place and making it as hidden as it was before—maybe even more so. Then I move to the driver’s side, and before I get in I pull the last panel back around the car, concealing it again, and then I shut the door and lock it from the inside.

  I look over to Lilly, her brown eyes staring back at me from the passenger seat.

  “I think we’ll be safe in here for tonight.”

  “Are you sure?” she asks innocently.

  I keep my gaze on hers, letting her see my truth. “No. But we can never be sure of things like this, can we?”

  She shakes her head but doesn’t reply. She knows that I’m right. We can never be sure of our safety. Not anymore. I reach in the bag and pull out the half bottle of water and offer it to her. She takes a small drink, aware that we need to ration everything right now, and I am in awe once more of her ability to understand things like this.

  “Do you want some gum?” I say, and she nods, so I get one of the stale pieces out and give it to her.

  “Do you not want any?”

  “No,” I say, forcing a smile because I don’t want her to worry. I want her to chew the gum, enjoy the flavor, and forget the danger we are in for a little while.

  She chews and chews, humming mindlessly to herself and to me, and then she starts to blow a large bubble. My eyes go wide when I see it.

  “Oh no, Honeybee, you can’t do that,” I whisper.

  She blinks back at me, confused, the large bubble still on her small, pink lips.

  “It will pop,” I continue to explain. “It will be loud.”

  Her eyes finally widen in understanding, and she tries to suck the air back out of the bubble.

  I grin despite the danger we are in, because the image of her trying to suck the air out of the bubble is actually quite funny. Slowly the bubble deflates, and I nod an okay as she continues to chew more slowly. The car slowly descends into darkness just as the screaming begins outside—the high-pitched screech of the monsters as they awaken and set about finding their next meal. An involuntary shudder runs down my arms, goosebumps breaking out all over my skin despite the humidity of the summer evening.

  And so it begins: the long night of waiting. Tonight, I feel, will be longer than any night that has come before this one. Something feels different, but I don’t know what. I look in the rearview mirror, my eyes finding the body still curled up on the backseat. Ice runs through my veins, my heart stopping in my chest as slowly, the head of the body turns, and eyes full of death stare back at me.

  I blink at it. Once. Twice. Three times. And those eyes blink right back. Once. Twice. Three times. Neither of us move, the air stills, and all that can be heard is the chewing of gum coming from Lilly’s sweet mouth as the deathly face of the passenger on the backseat stares back at me. My hand clutches onto my knife, and though I know it’s blunt as hell, I’m also more than certain that this dull piece of metal will kill the thing in the back seat.

  “Hel…p m…e.” The voice echoes forward, and I feel Lilly still next to me. “He…lp me,” the person says again.

  I turn slowly in my seat, one hand gripping my knife and the other blocking Lilly.

  I look upon the face of death, and the bitter realization floors me. This person is not a monster. They are human. They are not dead. But they are barely alive. Like us, but more so.

  “Mama?” Lilly murmurs, her nails digging into the soft flesh on my arm, and I’m almost certain that she is going to break the skin at any moment. “Mama,” she says again.

  I can’t look away from the face of this person. This person that is hollow and empty, much emptier than I am, and hollower than I thought someone could ever be. They blink, the movement sluggish, their eyeballs rolling into the back of their head before meeting mine again with a crackling breath.

  “H...elp m…e,” they say again. Their voice is barely audible, and yet I hear the words clear inside my head. Help me. They want me to help them. But how can I possibly help them, when I’m barely alive myself?

  The screams are right outside the window. Right outside the wooden panels that conceal us. All of us. All three of us. I swallow, my throat burning with the resistance. I want to take a sip of water, yet it feels wrong to do this in front of this person. This person that is dying. Starving. Dehydrating. Yet I don’t want to share our things with whoever they are. They are dying, almost dead. I cannot help them, a little water will not help them. Yet it would be cruel of me to deny it to them, even though the loss of the water could play a heavy part in both mine and Lilly’s downfall.

  So I ignore the parched scratching in my throat, the panting thirst in my mouth, and the tickle of a cough. I ignore it all, and I turn back around in my seat. I face forward, away from the eyes of death on the back seat of the car. Away from the person that I cannot help. I glance sideways at Lilly. She is watching me carefully, trying to decide…something. Perhaps trying to decide if I am one of the good people or the bad people now for my cowardly act. For my cruelty. I place a finger to my lips as she opens her sweet mouth to speak, to question me.

  Monsters are outside the car, merely a sliver of wood and metal away from us. Now is not the time to judge me. Now is the time to hush and sink into the darkness. To forget the person on the backseat. To forget to judge me, and forget to choose between good and bad. Now is the time for silence. I need the silence. I need to believe that what I am doing is for the best.

  Let Lilly’s thoughts be loud in her beautiful head but silent on her lips. Because there truly can be no greater punishment than hearing her dis
appointment in me.

  Chapter Nineteen.

  #19. The longest nights are the ones I hate.

  The person, whoever they are, stopped asking for help once we turned back around, as if they knew that it was futile to waste their energy on pleas for help from us. I wonder if Lilly and I are perhaps not the first people to do this to them—to ignore them and view this person’s death as inconsequential to their own existence. That unfathomably makes me feel worse, and yet better almost simultaneously. I check the mirror every once in a while, seeing their cold, lifeless eyes staring back at me.

  As the night grows heavy, it becomes harder to see them, hiding away there on the back seat of this tragically decrepit car. Lilly fell asleep a little while ago, her cheek pressed against the glass of her window. I woke her the first time she fell asleep, because she looked so deathly still, almost like the person on the back seat, and I freaked out that she might have actually died.

  The screams have turned distant as the monsters roam further away for food. They came, our scent pulling them toward us, but the bodies outside of the car—both of their own kind and those that are human—masked us. And so now they are moving on, confused as to where we have gone. Yet I still don’t make a sound. Still I don’t leave the car.

  The person seems almost frozen in their position. And perhaps they are. Maybe they are too weak to move, to escape from this car, which was once their refuge, their sanctuary, and has now turned into their tomb. Their horrible metal tomb. With that thought I shiver again. I pray that this won’t end up our tomb also. I pray that morning comes soon. I pray for the person to close their eyes and sleep, or to die and let them find peace there. But they don’t. They continue to stare at me, and the night draws on, and my prayers go on unanswered.

  The person blinks. I have counted their blinks thus far. Twenty in the last hour, give or take the minutes. You would have thought that this person would have blinked more, but they don’t, and it seems wrong because I know that humans blink more than this. But they don’t. They just stare, their lips occasionally moving, whispering something I can’t make out. I know they’re not asking for help anymore, I can tell by the shapes that their mouth makes, but still I puzzle over what they are saying. I try to outstare them, to only blink when they do. But I am more full of life than they are and so I blink several times in the time between their blinks, and eventually I look away, ashamed of myself for playing this wicked game with them.

  Because the truth is, though I feel like I am at death’s door, I am not. I am alive, Lilly is alive, but this person is dead.

  Lilly jumps, a short, sharp squeal escaping her lips. She sits upright, looking around us in panic. It’s dark, and she hates the dark. I reach over, my hand finding her arm.

  “It’s okay, Honeybee, I’m right here. We’re safe,” I whisper reassuringly.

  “For now,” she replies.

  “Yes,” I nod solemnly, “for now, and that is what matters most.” My words feel like a shadow from some other time, a time when I said the same thing to her.

  My heart plummets as I think of our safe haven below the streetlight at the top of the hill. We had been safe there, the monsters trapped down below us, out of reach. I wish we had never left there, I wish we could go back, but I know that we can’t. So much has happened—too much, in fact. Other than the light, there was nothing left there for us. The light protected us from the monsters, but it did not feed us or quench our thirst. I’m once again brought to the conclusion that yes, we are going to die. It’s just a matter of when.

  “Do you want to sit on my knee?” I ask Lilly.

  She doesn’t answer, but I see her turning in her chair to look onto the back seat, at the person behind us. I hear the sharp intake of her breath as she watches the person that equally watches us. As if she had forgotten that they were there.

  “Lilly?” I say again. “Do you want to sit on my knee?” I whisper, my hand reaching out to touch her cheek. I think she must nod because in the next moment she is climbing over to me, and I hug her close as she tries to go back to sleep, wrapped safely in the warmth of my arms, with the gentle thud thud thud of my heartbeat to reassure her that I am still alive, and I will protect her.

  I look up in the mirror and see the person staring back at me, and I look away shamefully once more as Lilly and I take solace in one another’s arms. I haven’t offered this person comfort of any kind, because I know that there is no point. They will die no matter what now. So I don’t waste my time. But this person was once a person—a woman, it would seem, by the string of pearls around her neck—someone’s daughter, someone’s friend, someone’s sister or a wife perhaps. Who really knows anymore? I bet she doesn’t remember. A tear breaks free from my left eye and trails silently down my cheek. I will feel shame forever.

  The woman blinks, I blink and then I look away, and I’m almost certain that she continues to stare at me. I kiss Lilly’s sweet curls, tightening my grip around her. I will never let this end be Lilly’s.

  The hours drip by, like water from a leaking faucet. One drip, two drip, three drip, slowly, slowly, the night stretches on, seeming to never end. Lilly sleeps fitfully, waking every once in a while, looking over my shoulder at the woman on the back seat and then cuddling herself closer to me.

  The woman doesn’t sleep. Or maybe she does, but her eyes remain open, awake, staring, seeing into my blackened and wicked soul. The virus that grows in my body must have destroyed some of my humanity, for I know that it is wrong to ignore her—to pretend that she is not even there. But I can’t stop myself. I’m an ostrich, sticking my head into a big pile of sand and pretending that there are no monsters outside my window, and there isn’t a dying woman on the backseat of this car. Watching me. Always watching me.

  There is a flurry of activity from somewhere outside, some screeching and scraping, and then a minute later the first crack of light begins to descend on us, slipping in the through a fissure in the wood panels that surround our car. The small slit of light pierces our darkness, and I blink lazily, feeling exhausted but grateful. I am always grateful to have made it through the night, to be alive for another day, no matter how pointless I know it is. Morning is here, the night has gone, and we can finally leave this wretched car. How can I not be grateful for that?

  As the heat of the sun begins to penetrate the car, Lilly squirms on my lap, slowly rousing from her sleep. Her cheek is still pressed against my chest, but she looks up at me, her face devoid of emotions. She blinks slowly, sleep still thick in her eyes and comprehension of where we are working its way across her pretty features.

  “Good morning, Honeybee,” I say. But I cannot form a smile for her today. My mind, my body, my soul feel chilled to the bone, despite the heat of the new day trying to warm me. This coldness is bone deep and will not go away so easily. Lilly doesn’t reply. She just stares at me with empty brown eyes, so I speak for her. “Are you okay?”

  The words leave my mouth, and I feel the clench of guilt in my tummy again. It’s a pointless and insensitive question, and I look away as shame and grief bury me under their heavy burden. Lilly rubs at her eyes as though she’s still tired, and I push the guilt away and help her back into her own seat for a moment while I check outside. Things can change so much overnight. The monsters can knock things over, drag things to build new nests. You never know what you might find, so I am always cautious, just in case. You can never be too cautious.

  The door creaks loudly when I open it, which is strange as I hadn’t noticed the creak last night. I push back some of the wooden panels surrounding the car and blink against the bright light of day. Outside there are signs of the monsters everywhere, from the bones of the human at my feet, to the splash of blood across the grass, to the deep gouges in the mud. One monster lies flat on its back, its legs in the air as if it is a dog lying in the sun and warming its belly. Its body is burnt to a crisp, but you can still see its humanness—what it once was. It has legs and arms, a head and a torso
. But its fingers are elongated, its nails sharpened claws. Its feet are not covered by shoes anymore. Instead the nails of each foot are long like that of the nails on the hands, and the feet are stretched longer than they should be. There’s no hair on its head; that happened before this monster met the sun. That is one of the signs of the infection—the loss of hair, the misshapen skull. Deep black veins are threaded through its skin, but it’s the reddened, bloodshot eyes that always frighten me the most. They are the thing of nightmares. This monster’s mouth hangs open in a silent screech of pain, its teeth blackened and sharp, still deadly despite its death, but I feel no sorrow at its violent and painful death.

  I shudder and look back in the car. “Come on,” I say, holding my hand toward Lilly.

  Her eyes flit to the woman on the backseat, a silent request to rescue this tortured person. How do I tell her that there is no point? That they are already dead, they just haven’t quit breathing yet.

  “Come on,” I say again, my voice more forceful this time. “It’s time to go.”

  Lilly climbs across the space but she doesn’t let me help her out of the car. She pushes past me and flinches against the bright daylight. I turn away from the door, ignoring the whispered pleading from the woman to help her. I can’t help her. Doesn’t she see that? Doesn’t she understand? There is no help—no hope for her! No help for any of us. She should just accept her death and be done with it. Lilly turns to stare at me, and for once her eyes aren’t full of love, but full of something else. Something akin to dislike burns in her eyes.

  “Lilly,” I say, but then no more words come. Her name falls from my lips like air from my lungs, a sudden gust of sound and breath leaving me in one word. I look away from her, feeling the shame creep back up, heat traveling up my neck, leaving me flustered and depressed. I look down at the ground, seeing the dead body of the human and the monster there, a crowbar still held tight in the human’s grip, even in death.