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

  The road is long, longer than I remember, and my heart beats heavily with each step I make. As I draw close to the hidden exit, I can hear quiet sobbing, murmurs of someone down here, and the ticking of an engine. I slow my pace, eager to see who is there but not eager to welcome them into our lives. I want to go through the dense trees, using the undergrowth as my camouflage, but I don’t dare. It’s dark in there, and the monsters may be hiding in them—though it’s unlikely, given that they haven’t come for us.

  I take careful, cautious steps to the end of the road and look out to my right, not seeing anything, but to my left is a mangled car. It has crashed into a tree, the metal twisted and crushed. The hood has been flung open from the impact, and the windshield is no longer intact. I can see someone moving inside. I can hear them crying. I squeeze my eyes closed, listening to their soft murmurs, and recognize that they are praying, wishing for death before nightfall.

  I open my eyes back up and move toward the car silently, cautiously, carefully. Watching, always watching. I can tell from the back of the person that it is a woman in the car. Her hair is long and light, a soft brown that reminds me of honey and caramel. It hangs in a low ponytail, dangling between her bony shoulder blades.

  “Please, please…” Her soft murmurs make me swallow, thick emotions making my mouth dry. ”…let me go, let me die…please, please…” She begs and begs, because everyone knows that death is better than the monsters getting to you. Much better than the violent death that they will thrust upon you.

  My shadow falls across her window and she stills, her whispers abruptly stopping. Slowly she turns her head, her face pinched with worry and possible acceptance of her forthcoming death. Her eyes meet mine. Gray eyes, dead eyes, remorseful, sorrowful eyes, which flood with relief when they see me.

  She looks me over, her dead gray eyes examining my skin, my fingers, my face for any sign that I am one of them. I try to speak, but my throat feels tight and dry and my words come out choked.

  “Are you infected?” I finally ask through her closed window, my words direct and to the point. There’s no point in being anything but.

  She slowly shakes her head no, her ponytail swaying behind her, and I step closer to the car. She is trapped inside. The airbag has deployed, the dashboard crumpled and pinning her legs in place. There’s blood coming from her nose, thick and red, an invitation for the monsters.

  “Are you?” she asks, and a dry laugh leaves my throat.

  “Aren’t we all,” I say. Not a question.

  She stares blankly at me, accepting my answer for what it is: fact. I’m alive right now, and I’m me, that’s what matters. If I was one of them, I wouldn’t be able to talk to her, because they don’t talk.

  “I can’t get out,” she sobs, her voice breaking on the last word. Her chin trembles. “I’m stuck.” She says this as if I can’t see her predicament.

  “Where did you come from?” I ask, startling myself with the cold edge to my voice. “Who are you?”

  She pauses, looking confused, and this should have put me at ease. The fact that she seems so confused by my questions. Who are you? Where did you come from? Such simple questions in such difficult times.

  “I came from Oklahoma. I was a human rights lawyer,” she states, wiping at the blood under her nose with trembling hands. “Most of my family died after the first attack, and I—,”

  I shake my head. “No, who are you…now? Where have you been?”

  It’s important that I know this truth of hers, because I’ll leave her here to die if she doesn’t tell me. Her past is not relevant to me or this situation, but who she is now is key to her survival. And ours. Is she a murderer? A cannibal? A helper? Has she been with a group—will they come for her? Was she a loner? These are the things that are important to me now. Because I don’t trust people. No one but Lilly.

  “I’m Sarah. My husband died a month ago.” She says her words short and staccato, and then looks down into her lap. “I’m alone now.”

  I believe her. I don’t know if I can trust her, but I believe her. Lilly would want me to help her, because she would think that this woman—this Sarah—is good. I don’t know if she’s good, but I believe that she’s telling me the truth. I walk to her door and try to pull it open, and she looks up at me sharply, her eyes meeting mine in a silent thank you. The door is stuck, the metal jammed into itself. I move to the passenger side and that door opens with a loud groan. I climb in and use my knife to cut her seatbelt off her. The steering wheel is pressed up against her chest painfully, and I wonder if it has done any internal damage to her. I look down, seeing the black plastic from the dashboard and steering wheel column cutting into her legs. Blood is pooling around her feet, but she is unaware of it, of the jagged black plastic slicing into her flesh.

  I push on some of it to try and give her room to free herself, but she screams loudly so I stop. I sit back in my chair, unsure of what to do next, of how to free her, and she begins to cry again.

  “Don’t leave me here, please don’t leave me here for them.”

  I watch her carefully, her deep gray eyes looking at me and my knife in pleading desperation. I know what she is saying—what she wants from me—with that one look. Death. She wants me to kill her so that they can’t take her. I blink sadly. I’m not a killer, this isn’t me, but I don’t want her to become one of them either. I don’t want her to suffer at the mercy of their teeth and claws and their red, red eyes. And because she will be just one more monster to add to their growing horde. I breathe out softly, the whooshing of my blood loud in my ears.

  “Please,” she whispers. “Please.” Tears bleed from her eyes, and I know that I should feel something for her, but I don’t. I can’t. And yet…

  I bite my lip and reach down between her legs again, pushing on the plastic more carefully this time. It scrapes against her skin, peeling some of it back like sandwich meat to reveal the redness of tender flesh underneath. She hisses through her teeth in pain, but she doesn’t ask me to stop, and she doesn’t scream this time. I reach further between her legs, underneath the seat, my fingers grasping on the metal lever that moves the chair backwards and forwards. They slip from it and I lean down further, my shoulder pressing against the wheel and making her gasp in pain, but I finally press it down and push with everything I have. Her chair screeches as it moves fractionally. The metal wheels have come off their runners, but at least it moves.

  Slowly by slowly, inch by inch, the chair moves, the grind of metal upon metal making me nervous, but there is eventually enough of a space for her to get out. I climb back out of the car and she moves her bloody and damaged body out of the wreck, almost falling to her knees as she escapes the confines of that metal coffin. I catch her before she falls, and hoist her upwards, and she leans heavily on me.

  “Thank you, thank you,” she sobs out repeatedly. “Thank you so much.”

  Blood is escaping from her wounds—not pumping or spurting violently, but a slow trickle coming from somewhere on her. I consider leaving her to escape on foot, to get herself as far away from here—from Lilly and me—as possible, but with her wound I know she won’t make it very far. And come nightfall, the monsters will find her body. With a heavy heart I decide to bring her back to the house. To our safety, our sanctuary. To Lilly.

  We begin to walk, her leaning heavily on me and grunting with every step, and me keeping look all around us. The day is still bright, the sun burning high in the sky, yet still I worry, still I panic. She doesn’t question where we are going; she only seems glad to be free of the car wreck, glad to be moving out of the shadows and into the bright, burning sunlight.

  We escape up the path, the house coming into view, and my nerves build in the pit of my stomach. My frown deepens the closer we get. However, Sarah doesn’t look up. Her head hangs low to her chest, each step making her face contort in pain. The cut on her leg is bad; blood is still trickling from where the skin now hangs loose on her calf like sliced lunchmeat
. I should feel sick at the sight, but I don’t. I have seen too much in this life to get queasy over blood or a little flayed skin.

  We cross the small island of grass at the front of the house, pass our car, and climb the three steps to the door. I lean Sarah against the wall while I retrieve the key from my pocket and unlock the door, and then I help her into the house. I kick the door shut behind me, making a mental note to come back and lock it as soon as I can, and we stumble down the hallway toward the kitchen, leaving a trail of coppery red blood behind us.

  At the kitchen I help Sarah sit on one of the wooden chairs around the breakfast table, and she sighs with relief at getting the pressure off her leg. I watch her for a moment, unsure of what to do now that we are here. Her gray eyes meet mine for a brief moment before she slouches forward, rests her head on the table, and takes a deep shuddering breath. I chew on my lower lip, deciding upon my next move.

  A small line of blood is trickling down her leg while another is soaking through the middle of her thin sweater. The blood is trailing down her body and amalgamating around her feet. I don’t want Lilly seeing all this blood—it might frighten her—so I decide the best course of action is to stop her bleeding, bandage her up, and clean the blood away. I jog down the hallway, locking the front door as I pass, and head into the downstairs bathroom. In the lower cabinet there is a small first aid kit, and I take it out and head back to the kitchen. I pause when I get back to the kitchen, because Lilly is standing in the doorway looking at Sarah.

  “You should still be hiding, Honeybee,” I say quietly.

  She doesn’t look away from Sarah, however, Sarah looks up sharply at the sound of my voice. Her eyes widen at the sight of Lilly, her mouth open in wonder.

  “A child,” she gasps.

  Because, you see, there has not been a child seen alive in such a long time. The children were the first to go: the weakest, the least immune, the slowest…the easiest to catch. How quickly we gave up our children to save ourselves.

  Chapter Nine.

  #9. The mystery of life.

  “She’s…there’s a…how old is she?” Sarah tries to get to her feet, but her leg is still painful and she is too weak to stand without help. She gasps and falls back into her chair, a shaking hand going up to cover her mouth.

  Lilly looks at me, turning her back on Sarah, and then she steps forward and wraps her small arms around my leg. She looks up at me with eyes full of sadness and worry. Because she knows the look Sarah is giving her; she understands the awe that her survival brings out in people.

  “It’s okay,” I say to her. But still she clings. “Go sit over there.” I point to the tall stools at the breakfast bar, and she goes automatically without question. I turn back to Sarah. “I need to look at your leg,” I state simply, coldly, “I need to stop the bleeding.”

  She nods, but her eyes never leave Lilly, following her across the kitchen.

  I kneel by Sarah’s feet and open the first aid box, pulling out gauze and bandages, antiseptic wash and tape. I look up at her face and see her still looking at Lilly, and I don’t like it. It makes me feel nervous and worried. I shouldn’t have brought her here. It was a mistake, I decide. I have to put my knife down to clean and bandage her wound, another thing that I don’t like. But I can’t have her bleeding everywhere, or she’ll die in here and we’ll be trapped with a rotting corpse.

  I place the knife down next to me, right next to the bandages so it is easy to grab if I need to, and I grasp the antiseptic solution. I grip Sarah’s leg and tear the dirty material of her jeans away from it. The jeans were already badly torn and hanging open, but now I can see the full extent of the injuries. I pour the solution over the wound without warning, and Sarah yelps and pulls her leg free from me. She looks down at me, her gray eyes full of tears again, her chin quivering.

  “Stop staring at her,” I say quietly through gritted teeth. I hadn’t meant to scare her. My action wasn’t supposed to be a threat, but she deems it as one and I’m glad.

  Her chin trembles and she blinks, the tears trailing down her cheeks leaving clean tracks on an otherwise dirty face. She nods and looks away from me, but also away from Lilly, and though I continue to scowl, I feel better knowing that she isn’t staring any longer. The wound is bad: the plastic from inside the car has sliced through and up, separating skin from flesh so that it now hangs in one loose flap. I wrap gauze and bandages tightly around the wound after cleaning it and then tape it all in place. The bleeding has stopped, or at least hasn’t seeped through the thick layer of bandages yet. I ask her to lift up her sweater and she does, but the cut there is only minimal, a thin red line across her stomach, and the bleeding has already stopped. I clean it and place a Band-Aid over the top, and then I pack everything back into the first aid box and stand up, grabbing my knife as I do. There is nothing else I can do for this woman. I can’t stitch her skin back together; I can only hope that it doesn’t get infected and possibly her skin might knit itself back together.

  I retrieve two of the precious painkillers and hand them to Sarah, and she takes them with a mumbled “thanks.” I don’t like giving out our rations, especially not painkillers, but Lilly is still watching and I don’t want her to think that I am cruel. Lilly brings over water to help Sarah swallow the dry, powdery tablets, though I frown at her until she goes back to her stool.

  This world has made me selfish and greedy. When you have nothing, you don’t want to share it.

  “You should sleep,” I say abruptly, pulling Sarah up from her chair without waiting for her reply. “You can stay for tonight, but you’ll need to leave tomorrow.” I leave no room for disagreement.

  She nods and leans on me again, though I can feel that she isn’t placing all of her weight on me like previously. We move slowly down the hallway, and I see that her blood has trailed all along the wooden floors, and I feel guilty that Lilly had to see any of this.

  The stairs are hard to climb, but between pulling herself up using the banister and clinging onto me, Sarah makes it onto the landing. I guide her along to one of the bedrooms and help her into the bed. She’s shaken up by both her accident and the sight of Lilly, but her adrenalin is wearing off and the blood loss was quite substantial, so she’s tiring. I help her under the covers and she stares at me with wide eyes, reminding me in many ways of Lilly, her look of confusion and wariness, uncertainty washing over her features. She lies stiffly in the bed, almost afraid to get comfy or to move in any way.

  “How did you crash?” I ask, now that Lilly is out of earshot.

  Sarah swallows before replying. “I fell asleep while driving,” she says.

  I nod, because I can understand that. I’ve almost done that many a time. I turn to leave but she grabs my arm, and I snatch it back and stare at her in anger.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. I just wondered…is it safe here?”

  Her voice is soft and shaky, but her meaning is clear: Is it free of monsters? Will she be okay to sleep with us guarding her? Will we, in fact, guard her at all? I think about all these unspoken questions, deciding for myself what I will do before I speak, before I voice my answer to this stranger.

  “It’s been safe so far,” I reply calmly. “You can sleep. I’ll wake you for supper.”

  A small smile plays on her lips, not quite giving itself over to a full-mouthed expression of happiness, but close enough. She nods and closes her eyes, and I turn to leave.

  “Thank you,” she whispers to my retreating back.

  I don’t bother to reply. Her thanks isn’t needed. Her leaving here tomorrow is what I want. Downstairs, Lilly is exactly where I left her: on the stool by the breakfast bar. She’s waiting patiently, scared of strangers but also excited for new company, new interactions. She looks up when I come in, her eyes dancing with eagerness. She waits patiently as I make my way to her, reaching over to hug me when I get within distance. I take her hug, hungry for its warmth, the reassurance that it provides, and I kiss the
top of her head.

  “She’s sleeping,” I murmur against her hair.

  “Is she bad?” she whispers back.

  “I don’t know,” I answer honestly.

  Silence falls around us, but I know that Lilly is still thinking about what I said. She may be a child, but her brain is more accustomed to this world, to the decisions that a person must make in order to survive. Yet she is much more understanding and forgiving than me.

  “She has to leave tomorrow. We’ll give her some food and send her on her way.”

  Silence…

  “You understand, don’t you?”

  “Yes, Mama,” she replies. “You want to keep me safe.”

  I pull out of our hug and look down into her pretty face, her large eyes looking up at me unblinking. Like twin pools of darkness, her brown eyes suck me in, absorbing me until I feel lost. I cup her cheeks in my cold hands, finding strength in her as I always do.

  “I have to keep you safe,” I croon, hoping that she will understand.

  “Okay,” she replies.

  I let go of her face and look across at the blood on the floor. “I need to clean this up. I’m sorry that you had to see it.” I gesture to the mess, but I know that she has seen much worse than this. Yet somehow this seems almost as bad. Because she was beginning to soften here, her walls coming down. She was settling, and was almost at peace, but I can feel it now, the iciness in the air. This woman, her blood, they have invaded Lilly’s space, and she is lost again. And that makes me feel bitter resentment toward this woman. Intruding on our lives. Of course it wasn’t by her choice, but I don’t care.