The Darkness (2 page)

Why
leave the man in the car and take the rest?
Jacob asked
himself.

Searching,
he looked at the neighboring houses. Two of them were destroyed, their windows
broken and the doors shattered. He then looked at the house across from him. In
the second-story window, he could see his neighbor, Smitty, looking back. He
waved to Jacob. Jacob returned his gaze and shook his head sadly before
stretching the shower curtain across the window to further block out the light.

Chapter 1

A
chilling, uncomfortable silence woke him. His wife and daughter lay sleeping
beside him, their soft breathing the only noise to reach his ears. Not wanting
to move, he opened his eyes and stared at a solitary fly walking across the
ceiling. His clothing was soaked with sweat, but he didn’t dare remove his
heavy shirt and jeans. The room grew hot during the night with the electricity
out and the air conditioning along with it. The summer heat and humidity made the
space nearly unbearable. Quietly, he worked his way around his daughter, Katy,
and pulled his legs to the side of the bed before standing in the blacked-out
bedroom.

He
was normally a patient man, taking his time to ensure things were done right. He
wasn’t one to jump to conclusions or make thoughtless decisions—probably why he
was good at his job working as a setup engineer. He traveled the country from
plant to plant troubleshooting assembly line operations, fixing bottlenecks,
and finding solutions to problems. Jacob wasn’t hasty in action; he liked to
analyze problems and attack them with a well-conceived plan.

Admonishing
himself, Jacob took a deep breath and warned himself to be cautious—to work out
the problem methodically, as he’d always been able to in the past. He reached
to the floor at the base of the bed and felt for the jug of water. Finding it,
he took a long gulp that quenched his thirst. A cold shower would be better,
but that was impossible for now. Why is this happening? For the first time in
his life, he didn't have the answers. He wouldn't be able to sketch a solution
or logically define the problem. Jacob followed all the rules, did what he was
told, and now he felt doomed by it. He feared he had failed his family.

The
silence outside was disturbing; he listened intently, feeling his heart beating
in his chest and fighting back the steady panic building in his stomach. For
nearly a week, the weather siren had wailed day and night without relief.
They’d grown accustomed to the whine of the up and down squall blocking out the
sounds of the rest of the world. Even after the electrical grid failed, the
loud siren blared nonstop. Running off batteries, he presumed, or maybe a
generator. None of that mattered now; the siren was off and the night quiet once
again. Standing in the center of his bedroom and facing the window, Jacob
strained to listen.

He
moved closer to the curtains covering the window and finally received the
feedback he craved to remind him they were not alone. He heard the barking of a
dog in the far distance, a car alarm, a faint scream, and the
pop, pop, pop
of a firearm. The once quiet neighborhood had slowly become a war zone. Jacob
walked to the window and put his fingers to the edge of the heavy drapes.

 “Is
it over?” He heard Laura whisper from the bed.

Jacob
turned and squinted to see her in the dark room. “I don’t know; it’s quiet—the
siren stopped,” he answered.

He
looked at her as she sat silently on the bed, and he knew she was thinking of
her parents north of the city. Jacob thought of the chaos outside and what must
be happening far away. What if they
had
gotten out of the driveway and beyond
the neighborhood? The televised backups on the interstates and city streets had
made for murderous scenes on the network news channels. Glued to the TV during
the first days, Jacob watched the helicopter footage of men being dragged from
their cars, police shooting into charging mobs on the magnificent mile, and
panicked soldiers running away from their posts.

Jacob
moved across the room and sat beside her on the bed. He put his arm around her
waist while she rested her head on his shoulder. “Katy isn’t speaking,” she
said.

“I
know; I am worried about her too.”

Jacob
looked back at Katy sleeping peacefully beside them.

“What’s
happening out there?”

“I
think they have it all wrong. The news, they say it started in small towns with
crime sprees, and then everyone just went crazy, the entire populations turning
to violence overnight.”

“It
doesn’t make any sense. People don’t go mad overnight,” Laura said.

“I
really wasn’t that worried until the police started to disappear and they said
cops were joining the looters and how it had spread from small towns to the
cities after that. I talked to Jerry at work just a week ago; nobody knows
what’s going on or how it’s spreading so quickly,” he said.

“Why
don’t they just tell us what they want?”

“They
don’t have a spokesperson and they won’t make demands. The President said he
was going to implement martial law. You already know they told us to stay home
from work, stay at home and off the streets, and they closed schools. I think
the government knows more than they are telling us.”

Laura
sat up taller, looking at him. “Jenny said she heard it all has something to do
with the meteor shower last weekend, like maybe it polluted the water, and it’s
making people crazy. Smitty says they weren’t meteors at all; he said it was a
signal, like a sign.”

“Smitty
is a tool; a sign for what?” Jacob asked, already having a low opinion of his
neighbor.

“Well,
Smitty says the Chinese or North Korean sleeper cells have probably been
activated to disrupt the economy.”

“Ha!
What economy?” Jacob asked.

“Well
then, maybe it’s global warming; or like Jenny said, something in the water or
chemicals in the food. All those people on the TV, the experts, they all seemed
to have an opinion—at least they did until the experts began to vanish too.”

Jacob
sat and listened to her while he second-guessed his earlier inaction. Maybe if
they’d left at the first signs of danger, they wouldn’t be trapped here. They
would be safe at Laura’s parents in the country. Now they were stuck, left
alone to starve… or worse.

“I
think you were right, Laura; we should have left when we had the chance.”

“It’s
okay. You were just trying to keep us safe. You did what you thought was
right,” she said.

Jacob
stood and stepped closer to the window, then pulled back on the edge of the
drape and let the bright moonlight bleed into the room. He put his eye to the
crack; the skies were clear and the moon hung full, casting a blue hue over the
residential street and turning the pavement a gloomy shade of gray. On the
horizon, the skyline glowed orange and yellow.

He
could see his wrecked car in the center of the road where they’d abandoned it.
The car that hit him was twisted, the body of the driver still hanging from the
windshield. Jacob tried to look away, but the wreckage mesmerized him. Every
time he looked at it, his eyes were drawn back to the body… the man’s bloated
corpse mangled by the glass… the oily stains on the sidewalk where the other
bodies had been… 

Movement
caught his eye. Jacob instinctively crouched and backed away, even though he didn’t
think anyone would be able to see him peeking from the darkened second story
window.

“What
is it? Did you see something?” Laura whispered.

In
a low crouch, Jacob went back to the window and scanned the street. Against a
curb, stood a shirtless man, his naked arms tensed and his head locked straight
ahead in a dark stare. Standing like a stone at the edge of the street, the man
didn’t move.

Jacob
heard the squeak and rattle of a storm door. He concentrated on trying to find
the source of the noise and pushed closer to the gap in the drapes.

“
No
.
What are you doing?”
he whispered, as he caught a glimpse of his
neighbor’s front door slowly opening.

The
door squeaked and pushed out. A man dressed in khaki pants and a heavy robe
walked onto the porch. Smitty, his neighbor of five years, stepped into the
moonlight with an aluminum baseball bat held loosely in his right hand. He
pointed the bat with an extended arm and called out.

“Hey…
hey you! Why’d the siren go out?” Smitty said to the stranger in the street.

The
bare-chested man turned his head to look at him. His arms flexed and extended,
pointing at Smitty. His back arched and he let out a yell—no words, just an
anger-filled roar. Jacob watched his neighbor take a step back in fear.

All
along the street, more figures came into view from the shadows. They were
running at full speed, screaming. They poured past the bare-chested man and ran
to the house. Smitty ran inside and closed the door just as the mob crashed
into the front of the home. The wood siding rattled and the windows buckled
from the impact. Jacob watched as they piled over the porch and surrounded the
perimeter of the home, searching for a way in while tearing at the windows and
siding.

The
mob exploded through the front windows and crashed through the door. They
continued to pour down the street—at least a hundred of them—all entering
Smitty’s home. There were no screams from inside the house. No cries for help.
Nothing could be heard over the roar of the ravenous mob. Jacob let go of the
drape, rolled away, and pressed his back to the wall. The thunder of his
neighbor’s home being torn apart shook his own and he barely heard his daughter’s
cry from the bed.

His
wife pulled her close, whispering as she tried to comfort the girl. Jacob went
to the nightstand, gripped his pistol, and walked to the bedroom door. He
checked the locks, feeling the long wood screws he had fastened into the doorframe.
“What’s happening outside, Jacob?” his wife asked.

“I
don’t know,” he answered. He searched the floor, lifted the water jug to his
lips, and then mumbled, “They're attacking Smitty’s house.”

“What?
Jenny and the kids!” Laura said as she jumped to her feet and began running to
the window.

Jacob
moved quickly to stop her; he didn’t want her to see. He didn’t want her to
make a commotion that could be detected from the street. He pushed her away and
back to the bed.

“More
of the rioters?” she asked as she turned away from him.

“They
are
not
rioters; just be quiet…
please
. They’ll hear us.”

The
sound of the mob slowly dissipated and Jacob worked up the courage to return to
the window. When he looked out, the mob  and the bare-chested man were gone but
his neighbor’s home was in shambles. Windows were shattered, the door was gone,
the walls splintered, and much of the front porch had collapsed.

With
no sign of anyone, the area was once again quiet. The previous mayhem on the
street had retreated into the shadows with the mob, leaving Smitty’s once
quaint and well-maintained home destroyed. Jacob searched the neighboring
properties and found many in the same condition. Nearly every other house
showed signs of attack.

How
long before they come for us?
Jacob thought.

He
moved to the foot of the bed and sat on the floor. The rifle that leaned
against the wooden bed frame near his head wasn’t much; a squirrel gun, his dad
called it. It was a .22LR—magazine fed and reliable, but not much stopping
power. He should have bought a larger rifle when he'd had a chance, and he'd
had plenty, stopping to look at them on trips to the outdoor stores and
admiring the stealthy look of the exotic assault rifles. He always wanted one,
but Jacob wasn't a hunter and he didn't spend weekends at the range, so how
would he have justified the purchase?

An
inherited handgun passed down from his father for home defense and the rifle he
kept from his childhood seemed to be plenty enough at the time.

A
nearby gunshot shocked him back into the present. He resisted the temptation to
go to the window this time. There was no reason to look; he wouldn’t be going
to anyone’s aid. There would be no opportunity for escape. If anything, he
would reveal himself and those things—those monsters—would make their way into
his home. If they came for his family, he wouldn’t be able to stop them. No, he
wouldn't look. Instead, he sat at the edge of the bed listening to the screams
and praying that the weather siren would come back on.

Jacob
took another sip of the water, careful to ration it. He’d filled the bathtub of
the adjoining master bathroom while the water was still running, just like the
news people advised. He knew he could use it to refill the bottles, but it
hadn’t come to that yet. More gunshots rang out, even closer now; he heard his
daughter whimper at the sound of each noise. He could hear yelling now,
followed by footfalls in the streets. A man was running, but Jacob still
refused to go to the window. He wouldn’t get involved and put his family at
risk.

“What
are we doing? Do we just wait for them to come for us too?” his wife whispered.
“Wait for them to kill us or take us away… one at a time?”

“What
do you suggest? Want us to go out there on the street? You know what happened
last time,” he said, pointing at the window.

“I
don’t know… anything, Jacob. I just can’t stay here anymore. Not like this.
Katy’s sick; I think she needs a doctor,” she whispered.

Katy
hadn’t spoken since the attack on the street. He thought it was shock, but she
refused to eat or drink and now she had a fever. Jacob got to his feet and
walked along the side of the bed. “Wait till morning; we’ll figure out a way.
We
will
get out of here,” he whispered.