Darkness (8 page)

“Get to Anna!”

Ruth turned. As I pulled myself onto the cargo bay, Anna screamed.

Gritting my teeth, I pulled myself up as the shrieks of Howlers filled the motor pool. This fight was going on far too long. When I got on top of the cargo bay and reached the turret, I saw that Anna was no longer pinned by Darcy. Instead, Darcy had her against the railing.

Ruth ran from behind with her pole and hook extended. Darcy spun around, swiping the pole from her hand. This caused Ruth herself to spin and topple for the edge of the cargo bay, nearly falling upon the mouths of the Howlers below, whose din was so deafening that I couldn’t hear anything else –

Until a mighty roar sounded from the direction of the entrance. The Behemoth had entered, having squeezed its mass through the doorway and into the motor pool. It stood on massive legs, its white eyes shining in the darkness. The Howlers scattered in its wake, not wanting to be a victim of its wanton violence. Its thick body was stooped, leaning forward, its massive head almost comical on top of its body; the neck was so short that it was practically nonexistent.

The Behemoth began to step forward.

Despite the oncoming Behemoth, I knew we had to take care of Darcy first – and before taking care of Darcy, I had to keep Ruth from falling over the edge of the Recon. I ran forward. Ruth had dropped her pole into the teeming mass of Howlers below. Her legs overhung the Recon’s edge – easy prey for a high-jumping Howler. I grabbed both of her hands and pulled her further toward the center.

Now I had to focus on Anna.

I aimed my gun right for Darcy’s back. I didn’t trust myself firing from this angle. If Darcy moved, then my bullet could just as easily enter Anna, who was blocked by Darcy’s body. I circled around, where my shot would be in less danger of hitting Anna. Anna’s fallen katana gleamed on the deck of the turret and Darcy’s blue eyes shined with a suicidal gleam. Anna used both of her hands to push back against Darcy’s fist that held the knife. The knife shook in Darcy’s grip as it edged closer to Anna’s neck.

But I had made it. As I aimed my Beretta, Ruth entered the picture, pulling on Darcy.

“Ruth, out of the way!”

I was frustrated that she had entered my sights just when I was about to pull the trigger.

Ruth let go, but Darcy had been alerted to my presence. When he looked up at me, Anna used the chance to twist Darcy’s arm. Darcy yowled as his knife clattered to the floor of the turret. Anna, using the railing behind as leverage, pushed into Darcy’s chest with her feet, giving a mighty push. With a yelp, Darcy careened over the edge of the Recon, his head knocking into the side of the vehicle on his way down. He fell headfirst into the writhing Howlers below. He screamed as the monsters tore into his flesh, screamed until there was nothing left to scream with. That only took a few seconds.

But we weren’t done yet. The Behemoth charged forward, even more drawn to us now by the volume of Darcy’s racket. Anna manned the turret and aimed it at the colossal monster. Clicking the safety off, she opened fire.

The turret thundered and flashed as the bullets zinged through the air, entering the Behemoth’s thick skin. In the fitful light, I could see the Behemoth’s features – he had been a man, once – probably someone from this very Bunker. He was completely bald, with sickly pink skin. As the trail of bullets reached the Behemoth’s head, he crashed to the floor with a pained groan. His white eyes flashed up and settled on mine. I froze.

There was something familiar about the shape of those eyes. Something familiar about that face, even as grotesque as it was.

Then, I realized...this Behemoth had once been my father.

I felt it, even if the Behemoth didn’t. I knew it to be true. As this realization dawned on me, the possibility became greater and greater.

“Dad...”

There almost seemed to be a gleam of recognition in those haunted white orbs – or had I just imagined it? Whatever the case, the Behemoth’s gaze broke as it crashed chest-down onto the floor, planting its face on the ground. The surrounding Howlers scattered in the wake of the monster’s fall. I could only stand, quiet, as the Howlers started battering the Recon anew, their yowls and yips loud in the air.

“What now?” Ruth asked.

Neither she nor Anna knew what I had just witnessed. I could only stare, uncomprehending. I had finally settled on the truth that I would never see him again. Now, I
had
seen him again, and in a way I would never be able to erase from my mind. My dad had turned into a Behemoth.

I realized that I was just standing there, not answering Ruth’s question. This was yet
another
thing I had to forget. I had to keep it to myself – at least for now. We had to focus on getting out of here alive.

“The Recon’s already pointed toward the door,” I managed. “We just have to open it.”

“Open it, how?” Anna asked.

We looked at the Howlers below. We were safe as long as we stayed up here. The Recon itself was fortified enough to where it would be a long time before they could break in through the reinforced glass of the windows.

“I don’t think we can access it remotely,” I said. “There must be at least two hundred Howlers down there. Maybe more. Pretty much every Howler that heard us in Bunker 108.”

Anna nodded. Her hands still grabbed the handles of the turret.

“Maybe we can just crash through the door?” Ruth asked.

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” I said. “A Recon is powerful, but the door might not fall off cleanly. After all, the garage doors themselves are highly fortified and were designed to withstand something like that.” I frowned. “No, we have to find some way to open it.”

“So, where is the actual opener?” Anna asked.

“Darcy seemed to have some sort of opener to get the motor pool door open,” I said.

“If you want to dig around his nasty corpse, be my guest,” Anna said.

I didn’t relish that thought. If there
was
someone who had to do it, it would have to be me. I was the only with immunity to the xenovirus, since I was already infected. But not until we had exhausted the most obvious option.

“It needs to be unlocked and opened manually from this side, then,” I said.

“We can’t do that unless we kill the Howlers,” Anna said.

“Maybe there is a ‘safe’ way we can do it,” Ruth said. “Take out a few with the Recon, duck into the Recon, wait for them to explode. Rinse, wash, repeat.”

“That might work,” I said. “Or I could just do it myself. I can’t get infected.”

“Yeah,” Anna said. “But you can’t just walk around with slime on you. You’ll just infect
us.”

Anna did have a point. “Right. We can take shifts, then.”

Anna nodded, holding my gaze for a moment.

“I’ll take first shift,” I said. “If this thing is going to blow up in our faces, I might as well be the guinea pig.”

Ruth smiled. “I see what you did there.”

“What?”

She sighed. “Never mind.”

“Alright,” I said. “Let’s get started.”

***

We fought the Howlers in just the way Ruth suggested. I took the first shift, and it became clear that we had far longer than five seconds to shoot. From death, it took the Howlers about twenty seconds or so to start inflating. To be safe, we shot for ten second stretches before ducking back inside the Recon.

Needless to say, it was two hours of shooting, hiding, and coming back out again before all of the Howlers were dead. When it was my turn, I tried not to look at the faces of the people below. Though it was dark, I was afraid I might recognize one of them. And I kept my eyes off the Behemoth. Thankfully, its face was turned away, toward the door from which it had come. I only hoped it had been my imagination, but deep down, I knew it wasn’t. My main regret was that I would no longer be able to think of my father without thinking of
this.

I would have to tell Anna about it eventually, but for some reason, I just kept my mouth shut. After a while, though, she started to notice something was wrong. We were standing in the cargo bay while Ruth took her turn above.

“You alright?” she asked.

I shook my head. “I think the big one was my dad.”

Anna’s eyes widened. “Really?”

I nodded. “Something about the face...”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“It is what it is,” I said. “He had to turn into
something.
Why not the biggest, baddest Howler there can be?”

“I guess that’s one way to look at it. Still...”

The turret above began to fire, interrupting our conversation. It continued shooting for another moment before turning off. Ruth’s feet clambered down the metal ladder. She hopped to the floor just as several plops sounded from outside.

“I think I got the last of them,” she said.

“Well, let’s check it out,” I said.

Anna and I climbed the ladder, followed by Ruth. When we reached the top of the Recon, I looked out at the gory mass of some two hundred bullet-riddled Howlers, ripped asunder by their own explosions. A fetid stench hung in the air, horrible beyond imagination. Purple coated the floors, the walls, and the Recon itself. Very little of it had made its way to the turret, thankfully. It was dead quiet.

“Let’s go see about opening that garage door,” I said.

We went back into the cargo bay. With a deep breath, I unlatched the back door, allowing it to slide up into the ceiling of the Recon. We stepped on the sticky purple floor. This couldn’t be safe, romping around with all of this purple gunk on our boots, but we were stuck here unless we tried to open the door.

The girls followed and I did my best to ignore the severed limbs, purple gore, and bits of flesh that plastered every surface.

“This is
beyond
disgusting,” Ruth said, wrinkling her nose.

“We’re almost out of here,” I said. “Just don’t touch any of it. We just need to get to the door.”

We walked around to the front of the Recon. There were less bodies here, and the metal pull-up garage door was right in front of us. A little bit of purple flecked its surface, but it looked like it had escaped the brunt of the Howler massacre. There were two handles, one on each side of the door. Anna went to the other side of the door to get the left handle while I got the right. We gave it a pull. It was locked in place.

“Here,” Ruth said.

She twisted a knob on the right side of the door, while Anna untwisted one on the left.

“Again,” I said.

Anna and I lifted. The door didn’t want to give, but after we put our backs into it, the door suddenly shot upward, retracting into its slot in the ceiling. Outside, red dusk was revealed, and a blast of dry, cold wind bit at my face. The red sky stretched hazily above in its perpetual blanket of cloud. A wide ramp of rock led upward to the surface, and rock walls rose on either side until the ramp was even with the surface above. I had no idea where we were, because no one had ever told me where the motor pool exited from Bunker 108. Only authorized personnel had been allowed to use this entrance, and Chan had hardly used Recons in the interest of not alerting Wastelanders to our location.

Ruth stepped forward with wide eyes, crossing her arms in a futile attempt to keep warm. She wasn’t as used to it as either Anna or I, and her clothing was built for living underground in a Bunker, not above ground in a world covered with meteor dust.

I took off my parka and, feeling the bite of the wind, placed it around her shoulders. I had far more layers than she did.

She looked at me gratefully. “Thank you.” She turned back toward the ramp. “What now?”

I nodded ahead. “We go out. I’ll see if I can reach Makara once we get on the slope. From there,
Odin
will pick us up.”

Ruth nodded. I could tell from her eyes that she wasn’t sure at all about this. I didn’t blame her.

“Where we’re going,” I said, “you’ll have food and a place to help out. You’ll see Lauren.”

“A lot colder than I remember,” Ruth said.

“It’s December,” Anna said.

Ruth walked out ahead. I started walking out to join her as Anna fell into step beside me.

When we reached the top of the ramp, Ruth merely stood, gazing out at the dimly lit Wasteland. The slope of Hart Mountain fell downward, meeting the red valley. The trailer was out of sight, perhaps hidden by the slope. In the distance, red mountains rose up, their tops obscured by dust. I saw the crane, still buried in red sand. I remembered it from when Michael and I had ventured into the Wasteland all those months ago.

I looked at Ruth. It was hard to read what was going on behind those eyes.

“You alright?” Anna asked.

“The second time for me to be outside,” Ruth said quietly. “And it’s not much easier than the first.”

I remembered my first time coming out into the open. It wasn’t just the cold or the lack of life that got to me. It was the sheer amount of
space.
It was unworldly until you got used to it – but after you did, you couldn’t imagine living underground again.

“You’ll make it,” I said. “Just as I have. You won’t see how, but the how works itself out as long as you don’t give up.”

Ruth nodded. I stepped forward, trying to gauge our location. The distant crane appeared farther to my right than if I were standing in front of the main door of Bunker 108. That meant the trailer had to be in that direction as well. If we angled down the mountain toward the right, we would surely come upon it.

Regardless, checking in with Makara was long overdue. I raised her on the radio, and after she had yelled at me for a good two minutes, she said that one of the ships
might
be spared to get us out of our predicament. With things the way they were, flying Askal back would not be a good idea. It was early evening already, and the temperature was dropping. If Ruth’s nerves were this unsteadied by merely being in the Wasteland, I couldn’t imagine how she’d feel flying
above
it.

Granted, she would be flying in the spaceship, but there was a huge difference between flying on
Gilgamesh
and flying on Askal.