Darkness (16 page)

I had to try, though. I had no other options.

“There are two of these Voices,” I said. “There is the one you follow, and there is another. They are eternally at war, these two. In fact, it is called the Eternal War, and it has been going on for millennia upon millennia.”

Elias nodded. “Yes. She has told me some of what you speak – but I am wary, Alex. You have knowledge that even
I
do not know.”

“What I’m trying to say is...” I paused, trying to make sure I wasn’t going too far.
“She
might not be the answer you seek. This Voice is only trying to conquer the world and couldn’t care less about us. It’s all about
them.”

I felt my words were lost on Elias, and that came as little surprise. He only smiled, shaking his head.

“No. You have it wrong. Askala is saving the world. I, too, fought this truth. Things went much better –
much
better – once I accepted it.”

“She is saving the world by destroying it.”

“Yes!” Elias said. “Ragnarok was aptly named. In Norse mythology, Ragnarok was the day the gods had their reckoning, where the world was destroyed in fire and smoke. So it has come to pass on Earth. We had become arrogant, with our towers, our entertainment, our riches. It sickened those above. We were made low, but from the ashes will rise the New Humanity – one joined in purpose with the Voice from the Great Beyond.”

“That...is one way to look at it,” I said.

Elias nodded. “With Askala is her son, Chaos. The spread of his wings and his children’s will blot out the sky. He is less like a bird and more like a reptile, yet both of those things at one time. His scales are pink and glow in the sunlight like some unknown gem. He has a long neck and tail, and glowing white eyes.”

Elias looked at me, wondering at my response. I saw no harm in telling him about what he had dreamed – the only question I had was how he could even
know
about these things, unless he had seen them at some point.

“I have seen that one,” I said. “There are many like him, only smaller.”

“The End is near, then,” Elias said. “You have given me everything I need to know. The Ascension must begin immediately.”

I hoped Elias did not plan on starting any bloodshed. But when you were dealing with a madman, they played by their own rules and no amount of logic or reason could dissuade them from their aims. History was rife with examples of men killing others all because they believed themselves to be Chosen Ones.

“I will agree with you on one point,” I said. “The end is coming.”

Elias stared at me coolly. Finally, he held out a large hand. Regrettably, I had to take it. The hand was cold.

“I believe we have much to learn from each other,” Elias said.

Elias let go of my hand, and began walking away. He kept his head faced toward me.

“Come. I want you to meet the Community.”

Chapter 13

Elias led me from the chamber we had been standing in into a dark tunnel. I paused at the threshold as Elias walked on. He did not turn back; he merely walked deeper into the tunnel, illuminated only by pale bulbs casting everything with a sickly yellow light. About fifty feet distant, Elias half-turned, a shadow within shadows. I noticed, then, decade-old dried blood caked onto both sides of the walls. It was as if that blood had been painted. Tell-tales splatters hinted at some sort of struggle, long ago. A struggle the Community had not cared to clean up after.

There was little else to do but step forward, following after Elias. At my approach, he turned and continued to walk.

I tried to ignore the blood, which had likely come from the “Realization” Elias had spoken of fifteen years ago. Why they’d decided to leave it there, I had no idea. I decided not to ask about it, instead walking quickly down the tunnel until I caught up with Elias. We walked shoulder-to-shoulder for a few moments before he broke the silence.

“We number thirty-eight right now,” he said. “Including children.”

“Children?”

“You shall see.”

The thought that this man had children was horrifying in and of itself.

We had come to the end of the tunnel, which opened up into a large chamber. It was another recreation room, only larger, filled with about fifteen women. Three sat on a couch in the center of the room – two took up another couch, while the rest stood, all facing the door, as if they had been waiting for Elias. Or, perhaps, me.

I scanned the faces, but I saw that Elias had told the truth: there were no men, not even among the children.

I had no idea what to do in that moment. I only stood there next to Elias, unmoving.

“This is the Community,” he said. “The Chosen of the New World. When the time comes we will leave the darkness behind and strike into the light. The world will be remade once more into a land of green and warmth. The cold and gray shall pass away; a new era shall dawn – the rebirth of humanity begins here.”

All of the women stared at with vacuous eyes. Except for one.

She stood in a far corner by herself. Her blue eyes burned with extreme hatred, even as the others look flat and lifeless. It was an anger she didn’t bother to mask – the kind of hatred that could only be nursed by years of pain and resentment. She was perhaps twenty-five years old and had long, unkempt brown hair.

Elias, however, did not heed the woman with the burning blue eyes.

“How much longer?” one of the women asked confidently. She was tall, with blonde hair, and was perhaps thirty-five years old. She sat on the couch between two other women. I instantly pegged her as a leader. “Are these the Outsiders you prophesied about?”

Elias said nothing for a moment, then slowly nodded. “Yes, my dear Lyn – the Outsiders have come. The End draws near.”

Instantly, the room broke into excited – and perhaps frightened – whispers. The woman who had been staring angrily at Elias now looked shocked. Her eyes fell to the floor. I had no idea why she grabbed my attention so much. Maybe I was looking for anyone who could come over to my side. I needed any ally I could get. I had no weapon to defend myself with – nothing but my bare hands. Running was my only option, but how far would I get? Bunker 84 was the home of everyone here, and I wasn’t familiar with it. I would be running blind.

I was outnumbered. All I had were the words in my mouth. Any challenge to Elias’s authority would probably lead to my getting killed. But his talking about prophecy and dreams – these sounded like abilities that could be imparted by the xenovirus. After all,
I
had dreamed things about the Wanderer because of the
Elekai
virus inside of me.

And with Elias’s apparent connection with Askala – was it possible that he was my counterpart?

I decided to find out once and for all.

“Elias – have you ever been in a Blight before?”

Elias frowned, and appeared puzzled. “What do you mean?”

“A Blight,” I said. “Maybe you have never heard them called that name before, but they are outside. They are areas of land that have been taken over by xenofungus. Sometimes, the virus that creates this fungus can infect people and morph them into something else entirely. Sometimes its violent, but other times, the virus can make someone possess abilities they didn’t have before. Like communicating with the Voice.”

As the women watched, Elias frowned in thought. After a while, he turned, motioning me forward.

“We can speak of this in my office.”

It was the last place I wanted to go, but at least I had touched on something. If Elias
had
been in a Blight, it could explain why he had the ability to prophesy. Askala could have infected him with the virus, directly or indirectly. It would explain why he believed such crazy things – not that people had to be infected with the xenovirus to believe crazy things. But it
would
explain how he knew about Askala. If all that were true, it didn’t bode well for my future. As long as I could keep Elias talking, though, I might be able to buy enough time to find a solution.

Again, I looked at the woman who was alone in the corner. I was sure of it now, by her eyes. The eyes of the others were dull, hollow. Hers...

...still had a soul.

I wondered: could all of these women
also
be infected with the xenovirus? Howlers were easy to spot by their completely white eyes, but these people seemed to be something in between.

I felt the woman was trying to say something. I wanted to know what, but that would have to come later.

If there
was
a later.

***

Connected to the commons was a door leading to a small office. Elias walked inside, flipping on the lights. I followed him inside, sick to my stomach. A pale bulb hung over a cluttered, dusty desk. The walls were covered with grime. The sickly smell of sweat hung in the stuffy air.

Elias turned, regarding me as he sat in a simple wooden chair. The computer that had been in this office was long gone. Wires spilled from a hole in the wall like a mass of tentacles. The copper of the wiring glinted in the light.

I turned my attention back to Elias, who weighed me with intense brown eyes. He steepled his fingers. He wore a coy smile, revealing several yellowed teeth.

“Are you afraid, Alex? Do not lie to me; I can tell.”

The door to the room was still open, allowing me to hear the women whispering.

“No.”

“Yes, you are. I can see it in your eyes.”

Elias’s voice was silken, yet deadly.

“I have no idea what will happen,” I said. “But I’m not afraid.”

Elias waited for me to continue. When I didn’t, he gestured. “Go on.”

“I
am
afraid of what might happen to my friends.”

“You do not want to fail them. Do you?”

I said nothing. I felt as if this were already over. Elias held all of the cards and none of us were leaving this place. We were all dead. It was the not
knowing
how we were to die that was the most horrible part.

“Why did you kill all of the men?” I asked.

“We men, Alex – we
are
darkness.” Elias shuddered upon saying this. “Men do not obey the call of the Voice, so it is men that must be killed. Only I answered the call – along with the women you see here today. Some were just children when the Uprising started. And not even all women obey the call. I cannot say why this is – perhaps some genetic difference between the sexes is the root cause. Maybe the Voice herself does not like men.”

“Why would the Voice choose you?”

Elias shook his head. “I cannot answer that. Perhaps she saw a means to use me, to further her ends – to hasten the Ascension. I cannot dare to know her purpose outside what she reveals to me. All I have to go on is the Prophecy of the Five, which ushers in the Ascent.”

Elias’s mentioning of the prophecy reminded me that Elias had only captured five of us. I only wondered who escaped his net – and what they were doing to rescue the rest of us.

“When does the Voice speak to you?” I asked.

“At night, when I dream. It’s not even that I understand the words. I never do. I only understand – the
intent.
It first happened when I was sixteen, the night after my first recon.”

“It came as a result of going outside,” I said.

“Yes,” Elias said. “We left by the bottom entrance at the base of the mountain. You cannot go out that way anymore; it was collapsed during the Realization. Nonetheless, my team and I were visiting neighbor Bunker 83, about fifty miles to the east. They needed extra men for a mission they were going to undertake. A mission to Ragnarok Crater itself.”

I started. “Wait. You
went
to Ragnarok Crater?”

Perhaps he was infected with...
something.
This would have been fifteen years ago – Bunker 84 fell in 2045. Only I didn’t know if the xenovirus would have been evolved enough by 2045 to infect Elias and make him a pawn of Askala. I guessed it was
possible.
Bunker One fell in 2048, three years after that, to a swarm of mutated animals and crawlers. Maybe the xenovirus was starting to become more advanced by 2045, at least in the immediate area surrounding the Crater. It had taken it a while to spread to the Mojave.

“Did anything strange happen while you were at the Crater?” I asked.

“It was a sight,” Elias said. “I don’t think the Bunker authorities planned on me going. But I sort of got caught up in it.” He smiled. “I still remember the airplane ride there, watching the clouds sail by as we got there in mere hours. We landed vertically near the rim, and the scientists we were guarding took samples. We returned not thirty minutes later.”

“Nothing happened besides that?”

Elias shrugged. “Not that I could see. But...I just remember it being so beautiful, Alex. So majestic. An entire field of fungus, red and pink and every color imaginable. I’d never seen anything like it, a boy who had grown in a cold gray world of metal. It was as if the very ground were afire. I felt something awaken in me at just the sight. I wanted to go down into the Crater itself, but I was forced back onto the plane. I remember feeling an emptiness, leaving that place behind. A sadness I could not explain.”

I grew quiet at Elias’s story. A lot of what he’d said reminded me of my own vision given by the Wanderer, when the sleeping spores were released by the Xenolith. There, everything had made sense, and I felt a sense of connection with the
Elekai.
Maybe the same thing had happened for Elias only with the
Radaskim.
I thought of how easily our positions could have been reversed. Elias was just a tool of Askala – could he fight against her will even if wanted to? Could I fight against the Wanderer, even if I wanted to? I had agreed to help fight Askala. The Wanderer had given me that choice, at least.

Something told me that Elias
hadn’t
had that choice. It was in the nature of the
Radaskim
to conquer. To control.

“I began having the dreams the night I returned,” Elias said. “Dreams about the Crater. Dreams about a Voice, speaking to me...”