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

  I carry Lilly over to a small grassy area at the side of the road, away from the decrepit house and destroyed car, and I set her down and then sit next to her. I have to pry her small fingers free from me, and untangle her legs from around my waist, and when I do, she just sits there pouting at me. Her eyes stare sad holes into my soul, clearly unhappy with me setting her down.

  I want to apologize, but I think it will make no difference to how she is feeling, so instead I reach for the plastic carrier bag. Lilly abruptly reaches across me and snatches it from my grasp before throwing it as far as her little arms can manage, her lips letting loose a defiant scream. The bag doesn’t go very far but the berries still scatter everywhere, little red lumps strewn across the dirty ground. I want to snap at her, to scold her and tell her that was a naughty thing to do and a waste of valuable food, but I don’t, because all things being what they are, I can’t blame her for throwing the rapidly rotting berries away. What tasted sweet and succulent several days ago now tastes vile and bitter. And not just because they are rotting, but because of what they represent: life. Our lives are slowly rotting away, turning black and disgusting. Enough to make someone sick? Enough to kill, perhaps?

  So instead of yelling at her, I pull out my cigarettes and I light one, and then I lie back on the grass, staring up at the blue sky, and the yellow disc burning down on us. I smoke one cigarette and then another. They don’t help my hunger pains today, and a headache starts low in the base of my skull. I think that I am dying, that this may be the final stages of the infection, but I can’t be certain.

  I look over at Lilly, who is still sitting up, and see that she has her hands covering her eyes. I think she may be crying and I ask her if she is, and tell her that it’s okay to cry, that everyone cries when they are tired and frustrated, or sad and hungry. But all she does is shake her head at me and refuse to uncover her eyes. I sit back up, flicking away the end of my current cigarette and stuffing the near-empty pack back in my pocket, and then I turn to her and ask if she is okay again. I place a hand on her back, and I rub it in small soothing circles.

  She finally removes her hands, and I see that on her palms are faint black lines, and her nails are growing long and are blackening from the cuticle up toward the tips. I try not to gasp or flinch. I don’t want her to be any more frightened. Instead, I examine my own hands, and see the very same phenomenon. I shudder involuntarily. It runs down my spine, wracking my body with a tremble of worry and fear, which—strangely—makes Lilly laugh. I smile at her, my lips pulling back to reveal my dirty teeth, the dry and filthy skin on my face stretching as I let my smile widen, and the action feels odd on my face and lips. Lilly pretends to shudder too, and then I pretend, and before I know it, we’re both standing up pretending to shudder and shake, jumping around on the spot and shaking our arms and legs out as if we have ants crawling all over our bodies.

  And then Lilly stamps down angrily on one of the rotten berries, taking great satisfaction as the juices squirt out from under her shoe. She huffs out her indignation, frowning at the destroyed fruit before looking up at me, as if waiting for me to shout at her.

  But I don’t. Instead I stand on one that is near me, and her face lights up like a thousand spotlights are shining on it and she giggles, and so I find another berry and I do the same. Then we both run around stamping and squashing the vile berries, letting the red juice cover the ground and our shoes until there are no more, and I have a small cough from laughing so much. Lilly looks up at me with a small smile, and then I think I might cry when she offers me her small hand to hold. Right now, it is the most precious gift she could give me.

  I take her hand in mine, and then I smile at her again and tell her that I love her deeply, more than anything else in the whole wide world. Lilly asks if I really mean it, and I tell her I do.

  “I’ll love you until the end of time, my little Honeybee.” I smile. “You are mine, and I am yours, and that’s the way it will always be. No matter what.” My words come out a whisper at the end because I’m trying not to cry, but she doesn’t seem to notice.

  She smiles broadly, and then asks which way we are going. I say north, and she doesn’t ask why north, or even ask which way is north, she just nods and says okay. We gather our very meager belongings and then we set off walking again.

  Chapter Twenty-Four.

  #24. I am not a failure, and yet I will fail.

  We walk in silence again, but there is something light in our steps. The destruction of the berries was silly, and it troubles me, but Lilly is smiling again, her laughter is still ringing in my ears and making my heart feel full even though my stomach remains empty.

  We still have a little water in a plastic bottle, but I will let Lilly have it all since it’s not much. I try not to become too depressed again. Things are bad, and there is nothing I can do about that. But I have Lilly back, at least for now, and we are close to where the safe place was supposed to be. I feel both uneasy and happy about that. It won’t matter, though; we are too far infected for them to allow us in, even if this place existed. But it would be nice, I think, to sit outside whatever walls they have constructed, and to know that I got us somewhere safe eventually. Even if it was too late. Yes, it will be sad too, but we’re all going to die soon anyway, because there is no escaping the infection, so it doesn’t really matter. We’re all just trying to put off the inevitable, to extend what little time we have left. But at least I won’t feel like I have failed Lilly completely if I can get us there. Maybe they will even give us some food while we wait for death.

  “Mama?”

  I look down at Lilly, catching a glimpse of her deep brown eyes before she looks away.

  “Yes?” I say, still watching her.

  “How did everyone get sick?”

  I have never lied to her, and I choose not to lie now, though instead of answering her, I ask a question of my own. “Why do you ask?” I say, because she has never asked before, and I wonder what brought her to ask me now, after all this time.

  She goes silent for a moment before looking up to me, her eyes meeting mine and she shrugs. “I don’t know.” She licks her lips, but it does little to take away the dryness of them, so I hand her the plastic bottle and tell her to drink some water. When she has taken a small mouthful, she gives it back to me.

  We continue to walk, though both of our steps are slower as we get lost in our thoughts. I didn’t answer her question, I only avoided it, and I feel bad for that.

  “Who was the first?” She asks, breaking the silence again with more curiosity than I have ever known in her.

  I think over her question, trying to decide why she is asking, and then I know the answer to my own thoughts, and I honestly can’t blame her for asking. Everyone wants to know the answers to their own mortality, I guess. Even a child will grow curious to her own destruction eventually, and so I decide that the truth, once again, is the fairest route with her.

  “It was a man named Edgar P. Jerrard. He was from somewhere in South America, I think. He was the first,” I say. I try to recall what he looked like, but it was so long ago, and I hadn’t paid much attention to the articles at the time—not until it was too late. I know that his face was all over the television and newspapers though, and I think he had blond hair once, before he lost it all. Before he changed into something less human, and more monster than the world cared to admit. I vaguely recall the articles, a bat, a virus that already existed, but somewhere, deep within the caverns where the bats had nested, it had changed to something even more dangerous than it had started as, and poor Edgar P. Jerrard had stumbled upon this very nest. It was improbable, and yet it happened all the same.

  Lilly is still quiet, and I wonder what she is thinking, but I leave her with her thoughts, because we are all entitled to our own thoughts at some point. She doesn’t speak again for a long time, and when she does, her words surprise me. Because out of all the questions that she could ask, the one she does, is the least expected. />
  “Do you think he is dead now?”

  I stop walking and look down at her, a small crease forming between my brows, because I know that she is asking if I think he is a monster somewhere, afraid of the daylight, or if he is dead like the dead should be, and buried beneath the ground, slowly rotting away. “I don’t know,” I answer honestly. “Possibly.” My voice sounds sad, depressed.

  “He was a bad man,” she replies, her expression turning angry.

  “No, no.” I say and I kneel down, feeling the gravel of the road press into my knees. It hurts, but I don’t mind, because I would rather feel something than nothing, and I know that soon enough I will feel nothing but hunger. The sickness infected everyone, it started with just one man, but like any disease, it mutated once it was released and given a new host body. The pathogens began evolving as they infected more and more people. And as they mutated and evolved, they infected the world, until no one was safe.

  No one, was safe.

  The disease became airborne, turning people violent and uncontrollable, until a new strain developed infecting people through water, then through animals, then through blood and fluids, until there was no escaping it, no hiding from it, and no defeating it. It was a global epidemic that destroyed everyone that it touched.

  I cup her cheeks in my hands, and she stares innocently into my face.

  “He didn’t mean to hurt anyone,” I say softly.

  “But he did.”

  “If he could have chosen, he wouldn’t have hurt anyone.”

  “But everyone is dead.” She says, her eyes wide and pleading. And the way she says it is so tragic, and yet so beautifully simple that it pains me to even reply to her. “He killed everyone!”

  “It’s not his fault. It’s no one’s fault.” I stroke my thumb gently across her cheek. “Lilly, he didn’t want this, we can’t blame someone for the things that they can’t control. Not ever.”

  She gnaws on her lower lip. “And he couldn’t help it,” she says. Not a question.

  “No, he couldn’t.”

  “I won’t be able to help it either, will I?” she says, her eyes glistening.

  “No, you won’t. And neither will I,” I reply, my heart feeling as cold as my words.

  “But you’ll still love me, won’t you, Mama?”

  “I’ll always love you,” I say. “Until the end of time. Until the stars fade away forever. Until there is nothing left of anything and anyone, and even then I will still love you, Honeybee,” I say with a tentative smile.

  Lilly smiles back. “I’ll love you forever too,” she says, and then my smile grows wider.

  “Good.” I lean forwards and kiss her soft cheek, feeling the warmth of her under my dry lips. I inhale her; her scent, her goodness, her life, needing her to keep me strong through the dark days ahead.

  “Why are we not dead yet?” Her words are sudden, abrupt and they halt me. I pull out of the kiss that I did not finish giving her. The pain of the answer is almost unbearable.

  “Diseases effect every one differently. Some people can fight it easier than others, some people’s bodies—their immune systems are stronger than others.” I reply, looking into her face once more. She thinks this over for a moment, before speaking again.

  “Like the flu?” I nod and she continues. “But you don’t die from the flu,” I shake my head no, “and you can get medicine for the flu.” I nod again, and her shoulders sag with defeat because without even asking, she knows her next answer. There is no medicine, no shot, to make this illness better.

  We will all die eventually.

  She looks past me, down to her shoes, no tears are present in her beautiful eyes now, but she looks broken, sad and empty. I take a deep breath and then I scoop her up in my arms suddenly and I swing her around and around until we are both dizzy, and I tell her I love her so much I could burst, and she tells me not to burst because it would be messy. And then I laugh, and my heart warms up again.

  When we stop being silly and continue to walk, I wonder if the secret to immortality—to keeping us alive—is love. Or maybe happiness. But then, perhaps they are one and the same thing. When I am happy, I can’t feel the sickness anymore. I can’t feel the poison running hot through my veins. So maybe if we just stay happy and love each other, it will be enough. I know it won’t be, but I still think it’s nice to think like that.

  “Mama?”

  “Yes, Lilly?”

  “I’m tired,” she says.

  So I pull out her teddy—with its one eye—from her backpack, and then I scoop her up in my arms. She rests her head on my shoulder, and soon I hear her soft snores and I feel her breath against my neck. I feel happy and reassured with her in my arms, even though I am tired as well.

  It is easy to imagine the world being alive again, the way it had once been. With people and cars, and dogs that chased cats through their yards and barked when you walked past their gates. I can remember, quite vividly, the way my bedsheets had felt on my skin, and the way my husband’s body had felt next to mine—the hairs on his legs tickling me, his kisses and his breath, hot against my mouth…

  I can easily remember those things, and I can imagine the world and what it used to be, but most days I try not to. Because those days are long gone, and they won’t ever come back, so what’s the point? What’s the point in memories if they only make you sad? What’s the point in recalling the past if it only makes the present worse? If the happiness you once had breaks you a little bit more.

  We are coming to another town, I can tell because I can see the beginnings of civilization instead of just the long, empty stretches of roads. I cross through a field, with its dry, cracked earth, in search of food. I go around groups of trees, even though I want to go into them. There could be animals that we could kill for food, there is be shade from the scorching sun, but I can’t go into them, because there could also be monsters. So I walk on instead, feeling the light breeze on my dry and dirty skin, my steps made slower by the hole in the bottom of my shoe that has allowed in some grit and stones. They stab into the bottom of my foot and make me limp, but I walk on regardless.

  There are dry rabbit droppings on the ground, and they give me hope that there could be a rabbit burrow somewhere around here, but as I turn in one big circle, seeing nothing but dead, gray earth in every direction, I doubt that I will ever find the rabbits.

  The fields must end somewhere, I muse, yet they feel like they will go on forever. I walk for several hours in silence, with just Lilly’s frail body wrapped around me for company. My arms ache, even though she weighs very little, and my feet begin to really hurt, but I don’t wake her up. She needs to sleep. Children need lots of sleep, I tell myself. It has nothing to do with the infection, I lie.

  In the distance I see a building, and I head toward it. I worry, of course I do, but I try to push the worry aside and be excited, hopeful even. I try to imagine all the things that could be inside the building; food, drinks, clothes, cigarettes. My steps speed up, just a little, but enough to wake Lilly.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you up,” I say.

  She yawns and blinks sleepily, and then she wriggles free from my arms.

  “I’m still sleepy,” she says wearily.

  “Are you hungry?” I ask, and she nods. I look around us and then back to her. “We’ll find something to eat soon,” I say.

  She nods and then takes my hand, and we begin to walk again. Lilly doesn’t complain, she just walks beside me, her warm hand in mine, kicking some of the dry earth.

  “Look,” I say, and point to the building up ahead.

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t know, but it could have things inside,” I say.

  “Like what?”

  I shrug. “Anything.”

  We’re nearly there now, and I want to run I’m so excited. My stomach feels hungry again, and I’m thirsty, and I know that these are all good signs. I think back to earlier, when I wondered if love and happine
ss could keep us human for longer, and I’m almost positive that it could be true. Because for the first time in a long time, I feel good—healthy, even.

  We cross the last part of the barren field, and we come to the back of some small buildings. I still can’t work out what this place used to be, though. There are small rows of things along the ground, covered in polythene tunnels, and I have a vague memory about what this place might be, but I can’t grasp onto the thought. I’m surprised because this place doesn’t seem destroyed like everywhere else. I lift Lilly over the small fence, and then I climb over and take her hand as we walk warily along the rows. Someone could see us and shoot us, I know this, but we have no choice other than to keep going, because there is nothing around. At least, not the way we just came. So forward it must be.

  We check each of the rows of the small polythene tunnels, but they are all empty. Yet I realize that this place used to grow food. I think it was a small farm.

  There is a small barn to the left, but I don’t really want to go in there because it will be dark and I don’t have much in the way of weapons to defend us with. We round the corner of the main building and I see a small greenhouse. There could be food inside, but I doubt it very much, and I don’t say anything to Lilly because it would be cruel to lift her hopes only to dash them a moment later.

  The windows are very dirty so I can’t see inside until we get very close to it. When we are standing right outside it I pull Lilly behind me, and I press my face to the window and look in.

  At first I don’t see very much, but then as my eyes adjust, I gaze upon the many colors, and I realize that inside the greenhouse is food. Lots and lots of food.

  I swallow, my mouth filling with water at the idea of eating all of this food, and I turn to Lilly with the biggest smile. She sees my smile and quickly comes from behind me and presses her own face against the glass.

  “What are they?” she mumbles.