They Say The Morning Is Beautiful, Or So I Hear

Though my soul may set in darkness,it will rise in perfect light.I have loved the stars too fondlyto be fearful of the night.

"The Old Astronomer" - Sarah Williams

Thirty-six days of snow and sleet had just about taken its toll on Julian and Cleo, the roads were a nightmarish combination of slush and ice that made even rudimentary travel treacherous.

The carts rolled maybe four or five feet before collapsing or over turning and the noise was horrendous, a sure fire way to get caught and killed by the elements.

There was no respite.

Supplies were at a bare minimum and the fresh water they had managed to save at the last way station was suddenly looking like it too would need to be rationed soon, give this another two or three days and the two would be back at square one again after being so flush and full of joy not a month previous.

There were creaks and moans from the trees on either side of the path where they had taken a break. Branches groaned under the weight of the snow and the icicles now forming deadly stalactites under each branch, some connecting to branches below in an intricate network of iced suspension, like a natural imitation of the golden gate bridge, or so Julian had thought.

They dragged the cart backwards off the road and Cleo jimmied open a barn door using a torque wrench and a broken crowbar they had found in Monroe.

The sound was a splintering creasing noise as the metal, fatigued and rusted, snapped in two and hung lazily from the wood.

The cart had all but died now, two of its wheels were frozen in a rigor that looked near impossible to fix, the other had buckled and the cart dug deep furrows in the grey and brown snow around the barn as they pulled it with so much effort their breath was now dancing a ballet of mist with every exertion.

The barn was surprisingly warm, considering the elements outside, and the moon made it easy to see with shafts of light creaking in small divots and gaps between the beams above.

Not enough so that anything was illuminated, but enough so that there was echoes of light in the room enough to make out shapes and edges and the lay of this new shelter.

Cleo noticed that the entrance way to the barn had a tiny foyer type awning, meaning that it was six or seven feet before the doorway actually broke into the main chamber of the barn itself, this was a side effect of the barns main balcony, used for hay storage and whatever, being directly over the doorway, so the moonlight did not flood the room when the door was open. Its light barely caught a foot into the main barn past the awning.

She smiled at this, and she tapped Julian on his shoulder and pointed it out in silence. He looked at what she pointed at, and when he realized what the fuss was, he too smiled and gave a tiny laugh.

Those six or seven inches were very much in their favour.

This was a lucky find indeed.

They gave one last effort on the cart and it finally collapsed into the barn, the snow having given way to a thick, frozen dirt, and the buckled wheel now a quarter of an inch in the ground.

Julian snapped a glow stick and surveyed the room, some hay, which gave off a deep stench of rot, warm and pungent. In the far corner, there were some shelves that housed some tins and some jars, all full of random odds and ends.

Under this were thick bronze hooks from which hung some tools: screwdrivers, a saw, a chisel and a crowbar — these would be really helpful, and they could take these to replace the jagged broken crowbar they had been using.

The tins seemed to be taped shut, and had letters stenciled on them. Big white scrawled N’s and S’s were drawn in legend on them.

He would come back to these, but something in the corner had taken his eye and curiosity was peaked. He clicked for Cleo, two short swift clicks of his fingers, she immediately gave up on the cart and brought the crowbar up to a defensive position like a baseball bat.

Julian clicked again and pointed at the shelves, where Cleo saw the sharp and clean crowbar, she dropped the rusted and broken one immediately and picked up this barely used, almost perfect replacement and adopted the position once more, a smile plastered her face. The crowbar was cold but welcome in her hand, and gave her an added swing of or so inches, that from experience, she knew would make a huge difference.

Julian saw the dot of light in the corner of the room, and its blinking under what was a scuff of hay and dirt against the white surface, he pointed at the corner, and the light, Cleo saw it immediately, and smile broke into a face as blank as that of a soldier being lined up for firing squad duty.

She walked slightly ahead of Julian now, and to his right, taking vanguard for his exploration…

He walked slowly, the glowstick being waved like a security wand over every angle and direction around him to see if there was anything else that should be noticed before they looked at the light and the storage freezer it belonged to.

There were some scythes, hanging rusty and warn from other hooks, empty stables and bare horse boxes, and some reins and weathered leather straps and bracings, and there was that constant smell of rot and warm hay.

They reached the freezer, a monotonous and near silent hum escaped its surface, and the two of them quickly gave it a pass over the make sure it was safe and able to be opened, and content and happy it was not booby-trapped. They clicked the catch on the handle and popped the door.

A buzz and a louder hum escape the sarcophagus and a fit of steam mingled with the evening's air, and the thing was open.

Inside was something that neither of them had ever expected.

* * *

Greedy eyes watched from the treeline, hungry and near madness.

The clicking of their chattering teeth was not caused by the cold, but by the Smile that had taken hold.

Their hands twitched in constant movement.

The binoculars were barely able to be held due to this, and the cuts and sores that they created with their attempts at stopping the shakes weeped openly, blood and dirt frozen on the calloused and dry skin.

The chattering carried on, and the three men giggled a greedy and gluttonous laugh, and started to advance toward the barn.

* * *

Cleo couldn’t quite comprehend what was in front of her. Rather than food or provisions something that would have allowed them a few days of full bellies and warm souls, they were looking at a staircase. three led lights on the inside of the cabinets wall was what produced the glow, and the steam and mist that had erupted had simply been the musty air that mixed with the frozen evenings atmosphere.

Julian snapped another glowstick and dropped it into the hole, and it fell a good twelve or thirteen feet before hitting the bottom of the staircase, and lighting a brick walled tunnel. On the floor in spraypainted yellow was an arrow and three letters “UVX” — Julian and Cleo knew what it meant straight away. They had been following clues for a while now, and they never thought they would ever meet anyone who was part of the group, but they knew exactly that the UVX meant ULTRA VIOLET NO, the slogan that was adopted by The Galileo — a group that they had heard whispered and given legend by other people they had met on the road at night, the group who would help, who were providing the resistance for the few who had survived.

Cleo looked longingly at Julian, who gave a pensive glare to the bottom of the staircase, and then toward the barn. He shook his head gently, and whispered in Cleo’s ear.

“I want to give the barn one last pass before we do anything. Stay here and keep an eye on the door. It’ll be morning sooner than either of us are ready for and that will provide a whole new list of problems, okay?”

Cleo nodded in hushed approval. She offered Julian the crowbar. He patted it back to her and pulled out his knife, a handle crafted from the foot of a Fox, the blade a slightly scuffed and dirty silver. He popped the safety catch on his belt scabbard, and pulled it out and showed it to her. She nodded passively, and took up her stand with the crowbar ready to defend if needed.

Julian waved the glowstick round the edges of the barn, his knife out to his side with his arm raised ready to strike at anything that moved like a viper.

As he trod silently around the barns perimeter, he kept getting worse and worse moments of the scent that permeated the hay, and then his boot caught a corner of tarpaulin which stuck out from under a pile of moist and blackened hay. He prodded the hay with his boot toe and felt the softness of something give under its weight. He pulled his boot away, and on the toe was a patch of wetness. He waved the glow stick closer, but under its green haze, he could not make out what it was, so, shoving the stick in his back pocket, he pulled out his zippo, a matte black one which he had found in Arcana, four towns back, on the counter of some abandoned diner. He flicked it to life, and held it close to his boot, and the colour was unmistakable.

Blood, thick and dead, like treacle, was on his toecap. He stifled a repulsed reaction and staggered backward — his body reacting before his mind. This would never be them. The darkness would be the first thing that would make it impossible, the second being that there was blood, the third was that they — he and Cleo — were not already dead.

His head steadied and calmed and his heart slowly geared down and stopped drumming in his chest as if he was going to watch it thunder out of his chest. He took a calm breath and slowly walked toward the tarpaulin again, the glow stick was a false light, but the brightest he had, and the safest, he was close enough to the scythe hanging from the hooks on the edge of the wall that he could take it down and pulled it close to the tarp, he anchored his feet and use the blade to shovel away some hay, and poked the mound, when he met soft resistance he shoveled away some more.

Soon it was all too apparent what this barn was used for.

It was a charnal house.

The hay was used to keep the bodies warm. They were the source of the unnatural warmth in this barn that should have been frozen. A mound of bodies, mutilated and broken, ravaged and beaten, lay one on top of the other, maybe three deep and each sandwiched three or four high in some areas, each covered by a tarp sheet and a mound of hay, then repeated, a tier of bodies and hay.

The bodies were not dead.

They were somewhere in a state of change between life and death. Each had a deep welt on the throat, that even in this light, Julian could see gently throb maybe once every twenty or thirty seconds, like a metronome they all pulsed at the same time, silently and with an almost unnoticeable gesture.

Unless you knew what you were looking for – and Julian knew all too well – then you would barely have believed it too be true.

He left the mound where it was.

And took the scythe to another part of the barn. He repeated the same routine again, and there were bodies literally everywhere in the room.

He looked up and for the first time realized what was on the roof, a line of troughs, each housing a strip light, maybe eight deep, each four feet long – and holding two lamps each – he looked over at the kneeling Cleo and he gave a gesture with one hand, patting the air, as if to say, “Stay. Do not move.”

Cleo responded like any sane person would and immediately made to go to him. Julian repeated the gesture again, forcefully and with a look of grim anger.

He hated himself for giving her that look.

She froze, half lowered the crowbar and gave a look to beg him for an answer to what was happening.

He repeated the gesture once more, but whilst looking around for an exit, for some way out other than the way they came in…

If it had carried on snowing then he knew that the tracks would be gone by morning and they would be halfway safer than they were now.

But, the scouts had more than likely seen them, were more than likely outside in the woods right now — and this was as terrible as a situation could get.

He kicked himself for being stupid enough to allow this to happen.

After Augusta, he had thought he would be cleverer than them; he had thought his learning was over. But… here he was.

There was no way out.

Either they went to the door with nothing and hope to outrun the Scouts with daylight fast approaching, or they could risk the basement and the freezer staircase.

“Either way,” he thought to himself. “Either way we will probably not see the next Moon.”

He came to the main archway and the doors they had entered in, and looked out of a crack in the rotten wood. He could see movement in the treeline. He placed his ear precariously to the wood, and listened, trying hard to ignore the thump of the sound of his heart.

There was a chattering and clicking of teeth. He could hear a faint reserved giggle, being barely held in, and he knew the scouts were there.

Each one had the smile.

So it was a case now of rock, hard-place, and immoveable mountain.

He dragged the broken cart toward the door, and positioned it directly at the door. The door opened outward, and he knew that when they came it would be fast and like a wave, so anything in the way could buy valuable seconds.

He lay the scythe against the cart, sticking the handle into the carts wire sides, blade up. Something would hit the cart and have a nasty fall and surprise when they hit the floor. He smiled at this childishly.

A ladder was on his left, and he climbed up gingerly and looked at the balcony, it was bare except for some old milk churns and a few bottles of gas. He reached the top and checked the cannisters and they were mostly empty. He turned the taps anyway, and lay them down on their side, facing the edge of the balcony and toward the ground.

He circled the balcony gently, stepping like a child playing sleeping tigers, there was little else up here but some rope and a pitchfork.

The pitchfork was an archaic device, and weighed far to much to be useful, so he lay it down and grabbed the rope instead.

Then he climbed down again and went to the shelves and opened the jars he saw when he came in. There was nothing inside except nails and screws and nuts and bolts — and, just as he had given up on there being anything else, he found the key with a keyring. The keyring was a simple tag with a six digit number and a smiley face with a red cross through it.

He smiled again, as it was a sign from The Galileo, and it was what he had hoped the find.

He hot-footed it to Cleo, and held her arms tightly, she stared right at him, and he shook his head in a serious single shake.

Her eyes were welling up now, and he smoothly, expertly pawed the tears away with his thumb, lovingly embracing her forehead.

“There are Scouts outside. And they have the Smile,” he said slowly.

Cleo nodded in understanding.

“There are Turners laying all around the barn, maybe thirty or forty. Give it enough time – and the dawn, and we could be joined by company we do not want, you understand?”

Cleo nodded curtly, tears now falling down her cheek.

“Now, hush that Girl.” He caressed her again, with a sensitive single flick,

“I ever let you down before?”

She shook her head once, and smiled. It was a empty smile. But enough for him to feel she had got it.

“I ain’t planning on starting now. Now, I need you to go down that hole, and do it real quiet, like a mouse — like that mouse we saw in Arcana, you remember?”

Cleo smiled again, brighter. She remembered the mouse well.

“I need you to go down, and pop two or three lumos, and tell me if you see a door, and if so, what do you see on the door?

Cleo nodded the curt single nod again. She took off her backpack, and shed her jacket, and tied her hair up and opening the freezer door. She took a deep breath before climbing down the staircase. In her hands, she carried three glow sticks, a pink one and two yellows. She popped them, gave them a violent shake and rolled them. The corridor she was in was maybe four or five feet wide, and maybe ten feet long. At the end was a door, bright red, and with a green smile face on it.

To the left of the door was a keyhole, and directly below a ten digit access pad. She whistled three brief toots, and Julian gave the same toots back.

He gave a fourth toot to say he was dropping the gear down, firstly her jacket and pack. Then he trotted to the cart and took out the essentials that had spilled the cans and the water that was in the STP oil bottle. He grabbed the brickettes they used for the fire they barely ever made, and he grabbed the black spraypaint and the cans of spray on hair dye, wrapping them in a carrier bag, and stuffed them in his own pack.

The food and the rest he left. As long as they had water, the rest be damned. If they made it to Moon Up he was certain they would find more.

He gave the barn a final look, and could see a lot easier, the sun was starting to travel the terminator again, and soon it would be dawn, the light was already a warmer bluer hue, and this was bad news.

He dropped the rest of the packs down with a whistle, one sharp toot, and a single sharp toot back.

Before he dropped down to the bottom, he gave the room a final scan, and concentrated on the thin wedge of light that was caused by the moon through the door, where he had listened for scouts.

Cleo came to the well of the stairs and looked up, Julian smiled weakly.

“Was there a keyhole?” Cleo nodded once.

“Was there a keypad?” She nodded again.

“Does the door open in or out?” She waved inward. Toward the room… This was good.

“You know what to do little one?” She nodded again. He smiled at her and he whistled once, and waved her to her chores.

A movement was clear outside. Two or three of them were starting in on the barn, and this was his last chance.

The room was starting to smell like gas. So he took out his zippo, and though he was loath to lose it, it may give him a vital fighting chance.

He waited and watched.

A thought occurred to him. He grabbed the tough leather bracing from the hook where the scythe had hung, next to the empty horse stable, and he looped it twice as flat and a flush as he could against the heavy metal handle of the freezer.

He let the straps dangle down next to him, and watched for a few seconds, watching the blue become lighter and lighter. The door shook once with a weak push. A laugh could be heard stifling behind the wood.

It shook a second time stronger.

The blue of the room was now getting to be warmer and more radiant. The room slowly creaked and rustled as tarpaulins became creased with a shiver.

The Turners were buoyed by the warmer blue that was now popping through the holes and cracks, the door shook once more, and the room now stunk of gas a reeking fart smell, like boiling paper.

He held the straps of the bracing in one hand, the zippo in the other, clap open, and thumb on wheel, ready to flint. He whistled once, and heard the response.

Below Cleo had stacked the gear against the wall, the door, whatever was on the other side, open inward, toward the room behind, so once opened – they could kick the gear in quickly. She took a length of rope and wore it around her shoulder and hip, her hand on the bags straps, ready to yank, her pack on her back and jacket done up tightly.

The door shook one more time, with some force, then, once more, and a third time – on the fourth push, the laughing was so loud that the noise shook the hairs awake on Julian’s skin. His arms and neck stood to attention and he shivered with adrenaline. One more push and the door would go. His cart would buy him maybe three or four second before they spotted him, so he would need to do it quick.

The tarps shivered all at once, a convulsive start that made his brain ask his stomach what to do next. The response was to just go with the flow, and the crazy man would get them through.

Julian was inside the freezer now. His backside against the door, that was at right angle to the entrance. His feet braced on the lip inside of the stairwell, his hand tight around the strapping of the brace, and his thumb on the Zippo's flint wheel.

The door gave a cough and a groan and exploded inward. There was a column of warm morning blue that came in. They were right — it would only reach a foot or so inside the awning. As the door popped, one thing he hadn’t expected happened and the overhead UV lamps kicked to strobing, sickening life.

For a second, he was genuinely surprised as the hay perimeter exploded into life with the bodies each bursting out of the coma they were in and animated to terrifying life, each intuitively trained on the man they could smell at the end of the room, a wave of mutilated, violent, angry flesh chattered and snapped at his, a bubbling and dreadful sound of gasping, choking and hacking soundtracked the burst of movement.

Julian could see the Smiling Scouts tumble into the door. The largest one tumbled head first into the cart and the scythe cut him straight in half. His body slumped in two chunks either side of the blade. The other scouts fell about the room, laughing harder at the entrance, finding comedy in the terror.

Julian had a matter of two or three seconds, flickered the wheel, sparked the flame, and threw the lighter high in the air, and the gas curtain that had filled the mist ignited, scorching a shimmer of fire that crashed like a wave on everything in the room. The flames backtracked along the cloud and hit the cannisters, and they fired through the wood like torpedoes, bursting hole sin the walls and allowing the light of morning to cascade in the room.

For a second, it was all that was needed for the Turners to stop their screaming and look up for a fraction of a second. This was their first sun-up as these monsters, and like the presence of their mother, they immediately craved the imprint of its life and light, whether they were on fire or not, the light was all they knew for a quick and awe inspiring second. Every Turner head was aimed in silent worship of the light.

Julian kicked hard off the lip of the freezer and fell into the hole, his hand tight around the bracing. He pulled the door shut tight, and as he hit the bottom, he immediately tied off the bracing as tight as he could on the bottom run of the stairwell, and ran to the end of the corridor fumbling for the key he found.

He slotted the key in and tapped in the six digit number. The door opened with a hiss, and as he pushed it in – realizing for the first time this could be a trap — he was greeted by a dark empty room that stood silent.

Then slowly, a light could be seen as glow strips started to luminate and light the way through a longer corridor, and on the wall to the side it simply said, in glow in the dark tape, expertly ripped and fashioned to the wall…

"The Old Astronomer."

And Julian gave a laugh. Cleo laughed, too, because they knew that they were nearly home.

They pulled the bags into the room, and Cleo stood within the doorway, patting her legs in excitement. She beckoned for Julian to come to her. He was in the small corridor listening.

There was a thin shaft of light, no wider than a few centimetres — two or three at most — that bled in from the freezer door where it was resting on the thick leather brace. He looked at it, and could see the warm yellow light of the winter sky, sunlight bleeding into his perfect darkness.

He wiped his eyes, as the light made them hurt.

He smiled a sad smile, and whispered to the light, if to no one else…

“I hear the Morning is beautiful…”

He wiped away another tear.

“Or so they say…”

And he walked toward the door, removed the key from the key pad, and put his arm round Cleo’s shoulders, and gave the door a push, staring at the blade of light disappear as the door shut tight, a heaving puff and a whir of locks, and they were enveloped in the safety of the dark once again.

Homeward bound.