Chapter 02 | Darkness

It was remarkable how little light was left after it had all ended. It was remarkable how it had ended. Against all odds, and against all hopes: everything had come to an end. The light collapsed. The light had been forced out by the darkness. It was in that dark that the dangers hid. The shadows held the sharpest fangs. The fringes of the light were the measure of how far it was safe to stray. The light was the last refuge for humankind, and it was failing. But there was safety among those who trusted each other. Tenuous friendships, forged stronger by the flames of disaster, held out in small communities underground or in fortifiable buildings on the surface. Friendly faces to each other, perhaps, but to strangers? Who knew how far a stranger could be trusted. Who knew if a stranger held the torch of friendship or the dark of destruction?

Trust had been transformed into a commodity; a privilege almost as rare as safe shelter. And while trust and friendship would ultimately lead to pushing out the darkness, the only way to ensure that the end would be met was to be weary of those standing along the way. But there was no outward mark of dark infections. There was no way to know if the hope offered by strangers was darkness disguised. All that could be hoped for was that there was just enough light left in the world. Just enough light to see the next dawn.

The sliver of sunlight let into the room by a particularly large crack overhead landed diagonally across Adam’s face. Laying there in the dampness of the subway employee lunch room, he had a longing to remain under the blankets. Ultimately, however, he regretted his private room. He had not particularly wanted the Underground to develop into such a hierarchy, yet, those with whom he had formed the survival group had looked to him for leadership. And then those who had joined more recently followed the other founders. When it became clear that the leader of them all should be given special treatment, this room had been chosen to house him since it had been the only private room near where they camped. He kept an open-door policy—for everyone at any hour—but there was still a small number of people comfortable even knocking. He had been holding meetings with both new and old members, and that was helping.

Practically anyone else would have been a better leader. If only Dane would just accept the responsibility. He certainly had the experience to lead the defence—and he had more emotional intelligence than anyone Adam knew—but he was insistent that he was a follower; not a leader. He had told Adam, too, that he didn’t want to be tied down. Adam, for his own part, had decent skills in handling people. He liked to know what made someone tick. That had been one of the draws to becoming a bartender in what now felt a distant memory. So much of that life had been ripped away.

People still had several things from those days. They had skills—and some even managed to retain some amount of hope. Even a modicum of hope was far too liquid for some to grasp: it slipped through the fingers. He was able to hold his own—to wet his hands, so to speak—in part at least, but so many of the members had very little remaining in their lives to grasp. He himself had very little to fight for besides the responsibilities of leadership. And so he had not pushed anyone else into the role. But the truth was that he had no clue what the survivors should be doing now, and no idea what they might be able to achieve in the next couple months. If they could even make it that long. Their supplies were thinning.

His only slightly muscular body was still sore from the skirmish the previous day. Luckily—by comparison only—the fight had been with those shadow wolf monsters. He loathed having to fight other survivors. Even if they were they were bandits and raiders, those raiders were people too—they had useful skills and knowledge. They had families and organizations. Kill the wrong raider and there could be a war before long. But as Dane had pointed out days ago, it was kill or be killed. Everyone did what they felt they must in order to stay alive. But at what cost? So many had already died and the shadow wolves seemed to be harried so seldom that it might even make more sense to simply stock up on supplies and retreat as deep into the depths of the subway tunnels they inhabited as they could. The surface had been taken, and it might just be time to admit it.

Slowly, he sat up in his cot, allowing the blankets to reveal his bare chest. Sooner or later, he’d need to start this day. Might as well be sooner. His list of tasks to accomplish seemed to grow larger every day—and while the group wasn’t running in idle, they still might only accomplish one or two major things every couple of days. There was still so much that he wanted to do. No—so much that he still had to do. As long as there might still be a single survivor huddled in the dark of some otherwise abandoned house on the surface, he still had cause to send explorations out.

Adam gingerly massaged his temples with his right hand in an attempt to shake the feeling of utter hopelessness away. Every time a party went out in search of people and supplies, the attacks came harder. People were getting tired and sloppy. Perhaps Dane was right—maybe he should tell the group that they’d be taking a day off. Yet, with a sigh, he realized that he probably couldn’t keep most of these folks here if he strapped them to their beds. They might follow his leadership, but they followed their own desires more. And they needed to go exploring to keep their hopes alive.

It felt some days that every single person had lost a friend or a loved one. Everyone needed to find someone in this mess. And while tragic, Adam encouraged searching—but with certain guidelines: first, he insisted on never being alone. Four was the ideal number to explore with, in case someone was injured, but two was also allowed for smaller trips. The second rule was that someone at the Underground had to know whenever someone left the compound. He held each and every person accountable for the survival and safety of every other survivor.

He stopped his foot in the middle of tapping the beat of a song that had often caught his attention at work. He didn’t know it beyond its tune, but he knew it was some heavy song with a female voice. The song had been about dead bodies—a topic that almost fit this newly destroyed city. Except that there were no dead bodies. They had all disappeared two days into this mess. No one had any idea what had become of them. Not the only mystery of the world, by any means, but one that for some reason felt significant.

Adam looked down at his watch and pressed the small illumination button on the side. Its simple metal band wrapped around his wrist and its round face held little more than a clock face. He liked to wear the watch face on the back of his wrist—it just felt more natural that way. It had been a gift from his sister—from Penelope—for his birthday three years ago, and he rarely took it off. Hopefully she was safe. A year ago, she was somewhere out on the west coast—Seattle, or Los Angeles maybe. That had been when they had lost touch. One of his chief regrets was not knowing where she was at the time of the attack. There was no way to know where to begin the search, and so he couldn’t even try. Every day, he struggled to convince himself that Penny was still alive. He did his best to hold onto that, but when it came to it, he just had to find proof. But his hands were full here. He longed to learn of his sister’s fate—but he had duties.

None of the other survivors knew of Penny’s existence. There were some things that a leader shouldn’t speak about. There were small cracks in resolve that weren’t good to spread around, especially with so many unfamiliar faces living among them now. If they knew that he had other things on his mind beyond their futures, their trust could begin to crumble. He had to be strong for the sake of those who he had silently sworn to protect. He had to remain an anonymous face at the front of the crowd. He had to encourage that same anonymity among his community. Some people offered up tidbits of their past, but the long and short of it was that everyone handled their personal affairs alone, while trusting each other to defend one another with every bit of skill and strength they had. The actions of the past were so trivial when compared to the present that he had discouraged even asking about them. Most everyone openly agreed with him.

The watch’s glow illuminated his face more broadly, revealing the long gash along his left cheek. 6:22. It was later than he expected it to be—yet still too dangerous to be outside, especially this close to dawn. The morning raids on his old Times Square tavern had taught him the dangers of the night. The wolves had kept him awake most nights. Never knowing when the next attack would come. Never knowing when the next day would dawn. At least moving underground had provided some relief from that. The subways had become a safe haven for anyone who yet lived—and a good place to get some rest at night.

Adam was exhausted—yet he knew that if he just lay on his cot awaiting sleep, it would be his stranger. Instead, the faces of those whom he had led to their deaths would haunt him. There were far too many of them already—and he knew that number would only grow. He couldn’t stand to sleep again this morning—not for the small amount of restless sleep it would gain him.

A light rap on the door saved him from his own thoughts. He nodded silently before the door opened. There was something urgent to deal with, but he wasn’t presently under attack. A familiar figure appeared in the doorway, and then shut the door. The illumination on Adam’s watch timed out—though it would not have been enough to see the woman properly anyway. She spoke quietly but quickly, even as he reached for the small battery-operated lantern that he had kept by his cot. “Adam, sorry if I woke you. Turner’s missing.”

The light flicked on. Adam was still nodding at the woman. “Are you sure he’s not just wandering the halls, Charlie?” He knew the answer, but he wanted to wake up before committing to a decision. And the truth was that Turner had been wandering the halls in his own restless habit. Something had him troubled. Adam wanted to know what it could be—but short of asking, there was little way to find out what. And Adam didn’t want to ask—he wanted to be trusted without being asked. He had a little insight into the man’s psyche, of course, from their previous relationship in the tavern, but as to what kept him up—Adam had little more than vapid guesses.

The light from the lantern was dim—yet bright enough to cast noticeable shadows around the small room. Her eyes were the only symptom to her anxiety. The rest of her was calm caramel. Her short black hair hung at her shoulders and she wore a thick wool coat over her pajamas. Her haste in alerting Adam was a second sign of her anxiety. And while Adam doubted that Turner would simply disappear, if he had left the Underground alone he could be in danger. He was resourceful, but he was no fighter. Very few of them were.

Adam’s room wasn’t precisely messy, but he found scarce time to keep organized. He tried to make his bed most days, though each day the problems kept coming earlier and earlier—today was no exception. His clothes were in a messy heap on the floor, but at least he always managed to put his journal and pens back in the desk. He had never been much of a writer, but he found it useful to keep notes of the happenings of the Underground. Besides organizing his own thoughts, it would give his successor a history to look at if things ever stopped looking good for Adam. That was pretty much all there was to the room. He was on the lookout to add a few chairs to it for the times that he held meetings in it.

He stood and slowly grabbed a less-dirty short-sleeve button-up shirt from the hook he had installed in the wall near his bed to buy himself some time before he had to answer. Then, slipping into its sleeves, he turned back to her. She was only slightly shorter than Adam. Charlie possessed intelligence leagues above his own. If she wanted, Charlie could be running the Underground tomorrow far better than he ever could. With a somber shake of the head, she said simply, “His bed’s not been disturbed all night.” Her eyes pierced through Adam—begging for him to command some sort of action. Commanding him to find Turner.

The two of them—Turner and Charlie, that is—slept near each other along the pedestrian platform. Adam was aware of a fairly close friendship, but it likely ended at being friends. Most of the survivors had taken up camp there—some on cots, if they were able to find them. A few had camping pads. Most just slept with a single blanket separating them from the cold cement. Luckily no one had taken to in-fighting yet, but Adam knew they were all still in shock. They were in pain. They deserved more. Fixing the sleeping conditions was on his shortlist—there had to be a big box store that they could raid for such things; maybe air mattresses? Adam rubbed his closed eyes to clear his head. His back hurt. The cot did him little favors. He was too old to be sleeping in such conditions. “I guess we’d better get a search party together and find him, then.” He battered a yawn down. “Any ideas where he went?”

Charlie responded with another slow shake of the head. Adam began to think of the possibilities, trying to recall the problems that Turner had complained about at the bar, even just a week ago. So much had happened since then that he doubted he could remember. It felt a lifetime ago. “Go bring me Dane and Karelia.” Charlie nodded and rushed from the room. Karelia could also lead this force. Both of them had impressive military experience—if something needed tactical planning, Dane and Karelia formed what felt an unstoppable force with their combined training. The two of them would likely make short work of tracking the man. The only problem would be the lack of experience left to defend the entrance. But Adam could hold down the one entrance—or Charlie could. Or perhaps Dane or Karelia would have a better plan to find Turner while keeping everyone safe. He would take suggestions.

In the time between sending for the military minds, and the time Charlie brought them back to the room, Adam pulled out the journal from his desk and wrote in it simply: “Turner gone. Must find. Also need to source cots.” He followed the entry by a date. Well, it was true that he kept accurate journal entries; however he never professed to be a descriptive writer. He closed the generic college-ruled notebook again and placed it in the desk drawer along with his pens. Then, mechanically, he moved to his cot and draped the sheet and blanket over it neatly. With a sigh, he sat on his bed and waited, trying to figure out how to stop losing people.

He knew very few things about Turner—only that his father had left his family years ago, and that Turner had once worked at his tavern: The Rabbit’s Dream. Not for very long, and not a lot of hours, but even after Turner had left his employment, he had frequented the bar as a patron. On the night of the attack, in fact, Turner had been in the bar and saved Adam’s life.

Adam owed him his life—though that was not his drive in mounting a search. Anyone who went missing from the Underground deserved to be helped when in trouble. They deserved to be brought back to safety, if possible. There were far too few people left to risk losing anyone else. Adam didn’t want to lose anyone else. He couldn’t lose anyone else. And yet he knew the crushing certainty that he couldn’t protect everyone forever. The question always boiling at the surface was simply: ‘who’s next?’ And Adam was nauseous awaiting the answer.