Come Into The Light (3 page)

“I’m afraid there isn’t much left we could find.” John said, looking shy and somewhat guilty. Rosa held his face in her hands and gave him a hard kiss on the lips.

The four slipped off their backpacks and laid them on the dining room table for everyone to scrounge through.

“The lab didn’t have any chemical inhibitors for the brain but there were some pain killers, antiseptic medicines, bandages, gauzes, tranquilizers at the hospital, although this is the last of them. I don’t think we’re going to find anymore unless there’s a gas station in operation somewhere and we can steal a set of wheels.”

“You know what happened the last time we tried to get out of the city, John.”

John nodded. He was all too aware of what happened but they had few choices left, “If only I had those inhibitors, Seth. I believe that thing couldn’t get inside our heads and control us then, or at least not to the extent of preventing us from leaving.”

“We’ll get them somehow.”

“What’s this? Is this the best you could do?” Jacob asked, holding up cans of kidney and wax beans and directing most of his anger at John even as his team defended him.

“All the food shelves are empty. We had to dig those out. They were stuck underneath the shelves. Must have rolled under-

“Just watch what my team can do. This is pitiful.” Jacob threw the cans down making a crash on the table like he was using his fists.

“Well, I’m sorry Jacob but-

“Never mind. You did what you could.”

Jacob made it clear that he meant it as an insult as he distributed the cans and the group dispersed saying their goodbyes before going out the door heading to their individual shelters.

When they were outside and away from busy eyes, Amanda and Circe had pulled in close to Jacob to give him their report. They told him they were able to hook up with the supplier. He and his group had an impressive arsenal of weapons and the supplier was willing to work with them. Jacob asked if John and Adam were suspicious of the delay. Amanda said that John had accepted their explanation but she wasn’t sure Adam did. Circe confirmed Amanda’s assessment.

“I could give a rat’s ass about that brat. Did you store the weapons where I told you to?”

They confirmed that they did.

“When do we move?”

“I’m still fleshing out a few people, but I think it will be soon. The time for indecision is done.”

CHAPTER 3

Amy saw herself as some kind of jungle cat, capable of slipping in and out of doorways and alleyways without being noticed. She was sly and light-footed. One of her many talents. A nimble tigress out for a jaunt. Zoning in on the sheep people whenever they came in range and dropping back before they noticed her. Sometimes their eyes held the golden shine of their leader, their god as they realized they were being watched and shifted their gaze toward her. Most of the time they were no different from everyone else, the others who were not sheep, or not the same kind of sheep. Amy has lived long enough to know that none of it mattered. She would always be an outsider and more so once the unchanged joined the ranks of the changed and became worshippers under one god. A prospect that was inevitable given the evidence she has seen and stored in her mind. She was not only a cat but a scientist as well, a detective. And though she took on this role she didn’t care anything about the outcome devised for these people. They had forsaken her long ago. If she had to be truthful she would prefer to be alone, not changed or unchanged. The only one of her species. The design of things, of DNA. No one liked the way she thought, the way she didn’t like to be touched, and her sensitivity to noises, how she hated crowds and became nervous around people never knowing what to say, feeling like an actor playing a part in order to please the people around her, in order to be liked, accepted. Forget that. Why must she give so much and them so little? So she was weird, so what, it was who she was. A doctor from long ago said her brain wasn’t normal. He defined her as autistic. A freak of nature and science, of social development. Improved mental acuity only made her more of a social leper. What counted most were social skills, without them you might as well be a ghost.

She had run across that boy again coming out of the abandoned bar: Ned’s. He disturbed her, made her feel things she didn’t want to feel, made her think things she would rather forget because she had no chance with him. What did she want from him anyway? He was normal. If he touched her she would feel alarmed, feel like she was suffocating. And the idea of kissing. She didn’t know why it was done. Who would anyone want to do that? None of it made sense to her. So why was she bothered? Why have these feelings if she didn’t want to act on them? Why should she let some boy torment her? She knew her place. She knew where she was happiest. She was no fool. So she should let it drop. Put him out of her mind. Yet every time she said she would do just that she got the itch to look at him, to pretend at something that wasn’t real, would never be real. Well, as long as it was pretend she would be alright. Watching him from afar, then capturing all those images of intimacy between them in her mind to masturbate to afterwards. It was all she needed to make herself happy. She has no reason to feel guilty, strange. She has a right to pleasure too. And by this means she would never have to feel awkward and inadequate in front of him. He would never have to descend into someone mean or cruel, someone who would laugh at her or be disgusted by her, someone far removed from the image she had placed on him. He could remain high in her mind as someone who might care for her no matter what she was like.

She wondered what sort of relationship the boy had with the madman living up above the bar. She has snuck in to listen to him rant numerous times. It became one of the highlights of her day. She enjoyed his ranting. It tickled her. She liked it that he was crazier than her. He seemed to be pleading at one point and threatening at another. Cackling as he claimed he had outwitted the sun god, that the dark would protect him. She heard him eat, heard him wrestle with his food, heard the many tortuous pleas from the living vermin before they were silenced.

Amy wondered if the boy, and she called him boy even though he was older than her, knew he was in danger. That some of the people in his group were working behind the scenes to make a lot of bad things happen. She wondered if she should warn him. No, she had to keep her distance, keep moving. He would find out eventually and so would the sheep. She certainly wouldn’t warn them not after what they tried to do to her.

The sheep tried to change her that one time but she couldn’t be changed. Their sun god couldn’t get inside her mind. They had held her, forced her to stare into the light as it came for her, yet her mind proved too large a task for their sun god. She felt the probing, the forceful acts of entry that suddenly became erratic, confused, then disappeared altogether forming the oscillating echoes of bewilderment, of facing up against something that was unknown to it. They had let her go, shaking their heads in disapproval as she left them. These days they do everything they can to avoid her, not that they could ever catch her again now that she has become a jungle cat, a covert operative sweeping over the landscape of the city in search of entertainment and information.

And speaking of entertainment wasn’t that the sunbies removing graffiti, hammering boards and replacing windows. Industrially attempting to remake the past, to get the city back in order. She must say it showed a remarkable amount of ambition, and also showed just how cruelly warped their sun god was. If only they knew what she knew. She felt guilty about laughing at them but she couldn’t help herself.

CHAPTER 4

Harold saw Jordan’s clothes scattered about outside the apartment building and his ring lying next to the curb. There were thin white fragments bathed in a puddle of blood on the sidewalk that looked like grounded bones. He shivered to think that that is what they were: human bones. In his mind he saw Jordan jumping from the roof, but if his clothes, his ring, were here where was he? Harold has seen plenty of people commit suicide in order to avoid the fate of the sunbies. He could have had a late change of mind, but that still didn’t answer the question. Where was Jordan? Come to think of it where were all the others who took their lives? How could they all have vanished? This wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t run away.

He was sitting on the steps outside the apartment building holding the bone fragments in his hand with a care that was near heart-rending when he looked up to see Nora and Bill standing at the bottom of the steps. He nearly swallowed his tongue when he saw them. They observed his reaction without emotion, though something golden slithered to life in their eyes.

“We knew we’d find you here.” Nora said in a voice that was both pleasant and remote.

Harold’s mind was racing. He couldn’t speak.

“We appreciate that you were worried but there is no need for worry. We are among good folk and we couldn’t be happier. Our lord has provided us with electricity and real food and water. You don’t know how good it is for us. We’re rebuilding, starting a new life.”

“You should see it the way we see it. He truly means the best for us. No more headaches, no more fear, no more hunger. He has brought us to the light.” Bill added, bending his lips into a blissful smile that Nora sees and imitates before turning back to Harold.

“You don’t know how good your life can be. All you have to do is reach out to the light. The light will free you; the light will make you whole.”

Harold wanted to laugh and to cry. The two people standing before him weren’t Nora and Bill anymore, that sun thing had gotten inside them and had taken over their minds just like he knew it would. He was the golden flash in their eyes the smile that functioned to disarm you. Harold liked to believe that maybe Nora and Bill were still in those bodies somewhere fighting for their existence. He had to believe that. He couldn’t live with himself if he didn’t.

“You’re wasting your time with me.”

“We are all worthy of his love.”

He felt sick. He didn’t want to hear another word.

“Please go away.”

“What do you have there?” One of them asked in a voice that sounded accusatory.

Harold saw them staring at his hand. They almost appeared to be sneering at what they saw there so he put the fragments in his shirt pocket, “Just things I like to collect.”

He was getting anxious. They were making him anxious.

“Listen, if you don’t mind there’s somewhere I need to be. So if you would-

The smiles were gone from their faces. He could sense hostility, a type of determination. Their eyes burned with that golden light once again but this time there was a sharpness in those eyes, an intensity that was menacing, and when he got up to leave they blocked his path.

“What are you doing?” He asked, trying to smile.

They avoided the question, zeroing in on him with the alertness of attack dogs, ready to strike if he made a move.

He nervously looked about. There wasn’t anyone who could help him and he didn’t have a weapon, something Jacob said they should have at all times. He wasn’t sure he would be able to use a weapon even if he had one but still it would have been nice knowing he had it on him. He would have to go around them, outsmart them somehow, but before he could make a move there was a ring of gunfire. Blood shot out from Nora’s neck and Bill’s chest and he was splattered by their blood before they collapsed on top of him. He screamed in shock as he fell back with them on top of him. Their bodies were riddled with bullets and they were groaning in pain. Suffocating under the weight of blood pouring into their lungs. With sudden terror he pushed the riddled bodies out of his way and tried to free himself even as they floundered in a panic and snatched at him. Then someone got hold of his flaying hands and worked to pull him free with a few quick jerks. He looked up to see it was Ross, the bodybuilder and sometime guard. Ross asked him if he was alright and he mumbled that he was. Still trying to understand what had happened. Ross got him to his feet just as Harold saw Jacob plant a bullet into Bill’s skull then Nora’s.

When the back of their skulls came loose with the impact Harold leaned over to vomit. He wiped his mouth and shivered. Ken, Jacob’s friend and ally with lighter, thicker hair and freckles, was standing beside Jacob smiling. In fact all three of them were smiling above the bloodied mess lying still at their feet. It was macabre. And when they turned to look at him, almost in unison, he felt a chill.

“You should be glad we followed you here. You ought to know better than to go out on your own, boy wonder. You’ve been told how dangerous it is?”

Harold didn’t like the lecture. Who was he to tell him what to do and what not to do?

“What are you doing with weapons? You’re not supposed to-

“What…. save your life?” Ken asked him.

“This punk, I don’t know. He doesn’t even know what’s good for him.” He added as an aside to Jacob.

Harold knew he should be grateful but anything he said would sound false. He hadn’t gotten over the shock of those bullets to the brain.

There was a change in the air around them. Jacob, Ken, and Ross noticed it too and winced, becoming alarmed. Harold could feel the pressure in his head, the familiar intrusion.

“Come on, we have to go before it gets here!”

“What do we do with the bodies?”

“We haven’t the time! Leave them!”

Jacob instructed Harold to follow and he did blindly. They turned the corner of the street just as the sun wavered and a golden light shot out of it transforming into a large golden spider as it approached and swooped down on Nora and Bill. The spider clipped its mandibles and began tearing into the bodies devouring everything in order to absorb the pools of energy that still remained in the cooling bodies. When the spider had finished and leapt out of sight all that was left of Nora and Bill was their jewelry, clothes, and a few scattered bones. In time, these items would be lifted up by the wind and blown in all directions.