What We Fear In The Light

Entry – March 12th

In the aftermath, we howl at the fetid landscape and wonder what we have done. Poison drips in the air around us. The toxic clouds drove us underground long ago. And there we wait in the potent dark. In our silence. We had the scraps to rebuild. Pieces. Eclectic fragments of a life extinguished. We pieced them back together like a defective jigsaw puzzle, incomplete of all its parts. We cobbled together a form of what we could call a new beginning.

The lights came first. Wires and cord scrounged from the places we knew would not kill us. Right away. Using antiquated technology long shadowed by the dusk of history: salvaged World War II gas masks and other items that had been such novelty before. Something for an army surplus store window. Now they proved so vital in those first days.

We hadn't been prepared and those who had these forgotten pieces of the past were almost seen as prophets. They would use their foresight to don their gear and venture out into the ruins and take what we needed. It seemed harmless. It seemed like we had perhaps outwitted the contagion in the surrounding air. They returned with their bounty, triumphant, like our forefathers from a successful hunt.

Wires spun and stretched, and out they would go again to forage for more. Doomed Prometheus bringing fire to the suffering mortals. After two or three trips was when the cough began. Harmless at first. After two more trips or so, it wasn't so harmless anymore. Blood came with each choking rasp. The skin blistered and blossomed with furious crimson sores. The skin sloughing away like the petals of a dying rose.

It was too late by then. No amount of medicinal knowledge or pharmaceutical intervention would stop the grinding cogs of Madame Fate's death machine. One by one the explorers who ventured out would flicker and fade into the dark, leaving behind a hideous death that made their corpses so hard to look at. Their bodies fed to the world above, burnt offerings tendered to the pernicious new gods that looked down on us amongst the ashes of all the gods that came before. Dead and silent.

But the glass and scraps they had foraged and returned with had been reconstituted into lights that brought illumination for the first time in a long time. They had paid the dearest price for the gift of light. And we treasured it so. But the lesson was harshly learned. No one ventured out for a long time. Not willingly anyway. There were those who, in the dimly lit darkness, stared too long into the shadows. Their minds shattered from loss and grief. Sanity dragged, kicking, and screaming, well past the breaking point.

They ranted and screamed in the dark. Sobbed and murmured about the ghosts long gone that haunted them still. They would break free of the bindings meant to keep them safe and secure and run reckless down the halls, howling for release and escape. And sometimes they would get it. Sometimes they would overpower the kind souls who tried to restrain them, to stop them as they barreled for the bolted hatches that led to the surface. Convinced in their own fractured minds that a world still existed above their heads, they would throw themselves against the steel and claw the bolts loose.

The bystanders then would step back, witnessing the final throes of their madness play out, sullen and silent. Laughs and songs fading behind them as they passed through the door to the airlock and freedom ahead. The hatch door swinging shut again, and all was heavy silence once more. A quiet eulogy to the soul that passed through the gates unto eternity. It has been at least three or four months since the last one 'escaped' to the outside. People figured since no one came back from these sudden unprotected excursions, that any trip outside without the proper safety equipment was a certain death sentence.

Instead, we went about our days rebuilding. Venturing outside only in proper gear for the meager materials we could get our hands on to reconstruct those small luxuries thought lost forever to the past. It would take weeks to build a simple squat bookshelf that ultimately would be the home for one or two books, but the pride in it such a small thing was greater than the actual item itself. It made this hellscape and underground prison feel more like a home. We threw ourselves into our meager homes and tried to forget all about the world outside.

It seemed more than content to let us forget. Until today. It was a quiet day. No scavenging trips planned. You can imagine the shock that swept over us at the sound we heard. Three knocks. Heavy. Measured. Against the inner sepulcher door.

Bang.

Bang.

Bang.

A pall fell over the survivors. A deathly hush as we looked in turn to each other, uncertain we had heard it. A trick of the mind, perhaps? We had been down here isolated for so long, the imagination can run wild at times. Why else would the others be driven, frothing, into the jaws of madness? Careening into the arms of an illusion all in their own heads? That the world above still existed.

That it had all been a dream...

Then it came the second time. Reality swooping in to reclaim us from chalking it up to our imaginations. This wasn't a collective hallucination. This was real. Three more onerous bangs. Each seemed louder than the last. Echoing like a death knell through the halls where we stood, frozen. Too afraid to breathe. We had been sealed off in our living tomb for so long. The outside was poison. The war we waged had snapped back on us viciously and this was the price we paid. We knew that.

But... had we been wrong all along?

We never doubted, until the Knocking. Then collectively stood there frozen for a long time before one of us stepped forward, motions cautious and vigilant as he worked the locks open to the inner door. This world had surprised and disappointed us enough in varying turns, we never could know what fresh hell to expect from it anymore.

In the dead space of the airlock stood a solitary figure, dressed in a heavy duster. Sizable tanks on their back, housing precious uncontaminated air, hooked to a bulbous ventilator. The ventilator was secured to a blacked-out visor that obscured any discernible facial features. A coarse hissing came from the breather. A haunting raspy sound that drew the eye to the rest, two masks clutched in one gloved hand and a heavy crowbar in the other.

We tried to ignore the dried splatters of blood that dotted the metal. We told ourselves that it was rust, even though we all knew better. Weapons were a familiar companion in this new world. You never had one too far out of your reach, no matter what. It was something we learned quickly. Anything would work in a pinch. My hand closing around a loose section of rebar that protruded from a pile of scrap at my back was mute testament to this lesson.

The bar was loose enough for me to pry free from its holding place. The slight movement made by shoulder in pulling the thing from its place did not go unnoticed. The masked figure suddenly snapped its attention to me. A voice emerged, from the cloaked face, just as strange and as alien as the breathing itself had been.

“It’s you.”

A murmur went through the crowd. All eyes shifted to me. I hadn't let go of the bar.

"Do I know you?" My mouth suddenly dry at the advent of words. The figure stepped forward, reaching out to me, causing me to flinch violently. I drew the bar out in an arced swing to protect my space, only to be effortlessly parried by the blood-stained crowbar. The figure grasped at a pendant around my neck.

A melted bit of metal, once a heart-shaped locket, now marred by the ravages of the elements and wasted time. Not to mention a well-aimed bullet. Rage boiled in my veins as it was touched by foreign hands.

“Get your fucking hands off that before I tear them off!” I snapped, the crowd of ragtag survivors began to surge around me protectively before the figure let go of the pendant and stepped back in an attempt to diffuse further violence. The rasping voice seeping out of the mask once more like belching black smoke.

“He said you might do that. I had to be sure.” The figure reached to a rucksack slung on its side, rummaging about before drawing out a crisp, stained envelope and holding it out towards me. “A message for you.”

I must have looked confused or skeptical enough that the figure sighed in exasperation, thrusting the envelope out towards me. “Take it. We don’t have a lot of time. They’re coming.” I took the envelope, hope bristling at the idea of who would send such a message. It couldn’t really be him.

Could it?

He’d been dead. Five years now yesterday. It was easy to lose track of your days here sequestered in the bleak darkness, but I recalled that day as if had only been hours ago. My mind reeled but paused abruptly at the rest of the figure’s enigmatic statement. “Wait… what are you talking about? Who’s they?”

"You will see soon enough. You woke them up long ago." The figure answered cryptically, pointing to the lights we had treasured so. The lights that we had fought and died to bring into our makeshift home. The flame brought down from proverbial Olympus. The figure gestured to me.

"You’re coming with me. I have a spare mask. Pack what you need. But don't dawdle. You've only a few hours. The rest of you have been warned. Do what you like with it, but I’ve only a mask for her." The figure nodded, moving back towards the hatch where it had been born only moments ago, shifting our reality into chaos. A long pause was punctuated by a gruff laugh from the masked figure. A raspy sound like a devoted smoker's cough.

"Haven't you felt them? The small quakes as of late. The way the ground shakes just enough to knock things off shelves and desks. Sure, it was nothing at first, but it's become more frequent. Earthquakes, you tell yourself. And you tunnel more, lighting the depths on your way. It's to make yourself safer from out there. You never thought the danger would come from in here...."

Suddenly, the lights above our heads flickered. Then the rumbling began again, more intense this time than any had remembered it. The masked figure seemed to shake its head in dismay.

In desperation, one of the scavengers rushed around the edge of the gathered witnesses, wielding a section of broken iron fence, swinging wildly. As if the visitor had already sensed the fevered approach, they held their hand up in front of the angry malcontent and in that moment their body was suspended in time. Wide eyed and frozen in mid swing, they struggled to break free from the force field that the stranger had them trapped in, but to no avail.

"You're a clever one. Aren't you? A little impetuous but clever none the less." the masked figure chuckled, basely amused by the clumsy assault.

The crowd shrank back in fright at this sudden and vulgar display of power. It was then I heard the sounds. The screeches and high-pitched wails that accompanied the rumbling. The masked figure swung its hand, knocking the attacking figure out of the air as harmlessly as one might flick a fly away from their face. The masked figure turned to me.

"Time's up. Put your mask on. We move out. Now."