Clara dragged herself and Andy up the remaining steps and collapsed in the sunlight. With her back against the cave wall, she drank in the early afternoon sun’s rays. Survivors staggered into the light and collapsed in its glow, sobbing and preying. An old man gazed at the sky like a child, enthralled in its glory. Others were too tired to take it in, simply lying on their backs breathing heavily. They were out of it, in shock, almost all of them–forty in total. That’s all she’d managed to save. Nearby, at the top of the internal walkway, Gary curled into a ball, his back to the ceiling, cradling somebody beneath him. A young girl pried herself free of his long slender arms and staggered into the sunlight, gazing at the sky for the first ever time. Gary, however, remained motionless.
Clara’s limbs were reluctant to obey her as she rose on wobbly knees and hobbled to his side. His back was shredded to ribbons, white overalls now a wet red. A woman staggered past him into the light, barely noticing his body. It seemed that the vault dwellers had witnessed so much, so quickly, that they’d become numb to it.
“Help him,” she said to passersby. They mutely obeyed, carrying the man by his arms and legs into the sunlight outside. Clara fell beside him, watching the vault dwellers cross the dividing line into the wasteland and into freedom. Just less than twenty had survived. They were all injured, and now they were stranded, clueless and unarmed.
“I came when I realised that we had lost connection,” Gabriel explained. He stood above her, dressed in cargo shorts and a garish red and green flowery shirt, which mocked the horrors of her recent memory. He swung an ornate sword as he spoke, there was a pep in his step and a lilt in his voice like a puppy dog dancing for praise.
“Thank you,” she said.
“The journey wasn’t easy. I had to cycle here on a flat tyre. Well, mostly flat. I think I bruised my coccyx, you know that bone at the base of your spine?”
Clara glanced back into the vault. Andy sat inside with his back to the vault door. Despite what they had just gone through, he still favoured the shadows over the sunlight. That was new about him, likely a quality of being a vampire now. Half-vampire? She’d have to strap her wrist terminal to his arm and get a reading before she knew.
Clara extended a hand to Gabriel. “Help me with something.” Together, they headed to where Clara had parked their motorcycle. It was a surreal feeling, being stood in the same spot, only twenty-four hours later, after so much had changed. So much death. They should never have come.
“Wheel it,” she said.
Gabriel grabbed the handlebars and pushed, but the parking brake scraped across the concrete. Clara kicked it up for him and followed behind, slouched over in exhaustion. She lagged behind as Gabriel wheeled the bike over to the vault entrance. Her legs hurt, her hands stung, her head throbbed, her feet killed. Her combat jacket rubbed against the wounds on her ribs, breast and stomach–a dozen or so cuts, some deep, bad. They would all leave ugly scars.
Catching up, Clara started unpacking her bags. There were some spare clothes which she handed out to a couple vault dwellers to tear into strips and use as bandages. But more importantly, there was a small first aid kit and two bottles of water. She quickly patched the worst of her wounds, taking a swig of water, then handed the bottles out to the group. Blinking through glassy eyes, a few of the vault dwellers rose and began asking questions, taking stock. A couple of boys ran down to the stream as an older woman commanded her youngsters to strip unstained clothing into bandages. Gradually, the vault dwellers woke from their nightmare, rousing themselves in the sunlight. Clara was grateful that finally, the weight of survival wasn’t pressed solely on her shoulders. Yet it wasn’t cause for her to rest yet.
Kneeling beside an injured man, Clara inspected his wounds. For about an hour, she tended to the wounded, rationing the first aid kit as best she could, bandaging lacerations. She only hoped that the shadow demon’s blades were clean, or weren’t poisonous. She’d know soon enough if she came down with a fever.
She was grateful to be working in the sunlight. The warmth of it restored her energy, trickling down through the top of her head, making her arms twitch and tingle. Sweating, she removed her blood soaked jacket, then all of a sudden pang of intense hunger doubled her over, aggravating the gash in her stomach. She knelt, then lay on her side in a heap breathing heavily as a wave of dizziness washed over her. It alarmed her just how little it took to bring her close to unconsciousness. She was holding on by a thread.
Gabriel offered her water, and she took a sip. A pleasant breeze funnelled through the canyon sheltering the highway beside the vault entrance, carrying the fragrance of the forest beyond. Clara heaved herself upright, her mind churning through delirium, trying to figure out where her next meal would come from. A fresh wave of cramps gripped her organs. She clenched her teeth as her stomach twitched, fresh blood seeping through her bandage. There were rations in the bike, right?
Upon her request, Gabriel rummaged through the duffel bag and compartment, finding four dry ration bars. Clara took one, letting the surviving vault dwellers split the rest. Yeah, it was greedy, but she told herself that she’d need her strength if she was going to lead them. Truth was, an animal side of her brain had already taken over.
“You want half?” she asked Andy.
“Nah,” he said lucidly.
“Thank fuck.” Mouth watering, she wolfed half of the bar in one bite, feeling the calories restore a balance to her body and mind.
“I’m dying,” a familiar voice said. Gary had fallen on his side, head against the ground. Blood washed his white overalls in red, drying in his hands, dripping from his mouth. He muttered something else. Clara got close, listening over the distilled conversation of survivors gathered in the mouth of the cave.
“Turn me,” he said.
“Turn you what? Where?”
“The sun.”
Clara dragged the man by his shoulders so that his body straightened out, then sat upright, cross legged, and rested his head in her lap. His eyelids flickered and opened, staring at the sky. Resting a hand on his forehead, Clara’s throat tightened. If she had the strength, she would have cried.
“She’s okay,” Clara said, looking at the youngest of the survivors: a child of maybe five years squatted beside a crop of daisies poking through the concrete, sharing in their appreciation of the sun.
“Who?” Gary’s eyes closed.
“The girl. You protected her. She’s okay.”
Gary’s breath was shallow. “Did I?”
“You did.”
A smile crept onto his face, and froze there for a moment. Clara looked away. She didn’t know this man well enough to watch him die. It felt rude, uncomfortably intimate. But they were both human after all. One thing they all shared was mortality. Clara slouched over Gary for as long as she could withstand the physical discomfort in her stomach and spine, stroking his forehead in her lap, looking at the canyon above them, the green shrubbery at its top and the blue sky above it all.
Finally, she rose, resting Gary’s head against the earth. “I’m sorry.” Turning her back on his corpse, Clara peaked around the vault door into the shadowy entrance where Andy rested. His leather jacket was covered in cuts, his face was plastered with blood. He breathed softly, shrinking into the shadows.
“What?” Andy said.
“Nothing.”
“You’re staring.”
“Come on out. I’m closing the door. Can’t risk it coming back.”
He rose without a word, then held his hand out to the sunlight and paused.
"What are you doing?" Clara asked.
"Just making sure I won't catch fire."
Clara’s instinct was to scold him for being stupid, but she held her tongue. This mutation was unprecedented territory for them both. “And?”
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He turned his hand over, inspecting it. "Nope, not this time.” Stumbling into the carpark outside the cave’s entrance, he found a shadow to sit in. Clara glanced around the vault’s entrance, down the walkway and into the cave which housed the elevator shaft. The chamber was doused by a shifting blade of sunlight. There were human bodies inside, all dead, but she had to double check, or else they’d haunt her nightmares. A trickle of energy flowed into her hands, enough perhaps to ward off the shadow demon if it attacked again, but she was too exhausted to outright oppose it. However, she suspected that the sunlight had defeated it, for the time being, and this was too important to forgo. Descending into the dim, Clara held her breath as she listened out for the vault door to randomly start closing behind her. She inspected the bodies scattered across the walkway, torn and severed, twisted and bent. They were dead, she could be sure.
She kept her distance from the elevator shaft, still oozing with visceral pulp where Andy had shot the abomination climbing out of it. She could see limbs moving within, dampened by the sun’s rays. Once they closed the vault doors, whatever it was would climb up out of there in the dark and kneed these bodies into its mass like dough. It couldn’t be avoided. At least they were dead. She would have carried the bodies out of the cave, if she’d had the strength, or time, but the sun shifted across the sky, piercing the cave with an ever thinner blade of light.
Beneath the body at her feet was an assault rifle. Clara picked it up and checked the chamber, then magazine, but it was empty. Slinging it over her shoulder, she climbed the stairs. Something shifted in her peripherals. A trickle of darkness which consumed the light. Though beaten, the demon was not destroyed. And when the door was closed, it would gain strength again.
“Gabriel,” she said, exciting the vault with one hand on the thick steel doorway to steady herself. “Close it. Lock it.”
“Can do, kangaroo.” Interfacing with the external control panel, he set the doors to closing. The heavy slab ground on its tracks as a silent red claxon spun above her head.
“Wait,” a man said, hobbling towards the entrance. “There are others.”
Clara was lost for words. She stood beside Gabriel as the vault sealed behind her.
“There’s no others, man,” another dweller consoled his comrade. “It’s just us.”
“Shut it,” a woman said spitefully. “Bury it. Burry them.”
“Don’t let that thing out,” another echoed her sentiment.
Clara hid her face in her backpack, taking longer to retrieve something than was necessary. About her, the vault dwellers murmured as the door clasped shut and the claxon abetted. Finally, Clara withdrew a can of spray paint which she had intended to use to mark the vault’s interior corridors with directional arrows so that they didn’t get lost scavenging. Once the vault door locked in place, she shook the can and wrote on its surface in large letters: ‘BEWARE - DEMON’.
Once finished, she observed their group. Many huddled in the mouth of the shallow cave, as though afraid of the open sky. Others wandered over the concrete, awestruck by their surroundings. Some inspected the derelict cars–perhaps the vehicles which they had driven in on the way to occupy the vault nine years ago. Clara watched as the young girl approached Andy and handed him a daisy she had picked. Andy’s face was in his chest, his black fringe covering his face. The girl knelt and Andy raised his head. Combing his hair behind his ear, he accepted the flower, not with a smile, but with a frown. Then he unholstered his revolver and handed it to the girl in return.
“Whoa, whoa,” Clara said, marching over. “That’s not for children to play with.”
“She’s unloaded,” Andy said, twirling the flower between his thumb and forefinger.
“Even so.” Clara took the revolver off the child and handed it back to Andy, then picked the kid up. “Hey everyone,” she raised her voice. “Let’s get away from the entrance. We can gather in that bus over there.”
Immediately, about half of the survivors picked themselves up and started following Clara’s direction. But the over half wavered. Some appeared confused, exhausted or afraid. Others were angry.
“How can we trust you,” a man with dark hair spat, the same man who had protested her sealing the vault door. “This is your fault, it has to be.”
Clara didn’t have the time or energy to consider his accusation. It was unimportant. “You saw us fight for you,” Clara said, with more aggression than she’d intended. “We risked our lives to save you. And now, we’re your best shot.”
The man was silent. Clara knew he had good reason to be angry, but she hadn’t the energy for coercion. Until these people were safe, somewhere in the wasteland, she had a job to do. “Do what I say, and you might survive the week. If you’d rather wander off and lead yourselves, then I can’t stop you.”
The stragglers trickled past her, heading towards a derelict bus on the highway where the others gathered. Clara followed them, her tired mind racing to piece together a plan. The vault dwellers were too injured and exhausted to travel far, but they weren’t safe out in the open. Gathering inside the bus's leaky interior, Clara had them pile their weapons on the front row. Most of them were modified for use against the shadows, and wouldn’t work so well on the likes of trolls or zombies or mutants. However, among the haul was a shock rifle still intact and two 9mm sidearms. Clara took a pistol containing five rounds, relinquishing her assault rifle to the pile alongside two others–they were useless until they found ammo for it.
“There’s a settlement that will take you in,” she explained, once the group were seated amongst the moss-covered cushions. “Milltown. There’s a lot of abandoned buildings, and some industry. You’ll be able to rebuild your lives there.”
“What about the monsters?” a woman asked. Her eye had swollen shut, a deep gash across her brow. “Where do we go when the sun goes down?”
“That thing in the vault was not common,” Clara said. “It… Honestly, it was a lot stronger than anything we’ve faced before.”
“There are more of them?” the man who had objected earlier said. His leg and boot were covered in blood, his short black hair stuck up with sweat.
“No,” Clara said. “Well… There’s more of a lot of things, but most of them are easier to handle than that.”
“We need weapons,” the man said.
“You need rest.” Clara said. “Andy and I will secure the perimeter. We will stay here for a day, maybe two-”
“It’s not safe,” the man moaned. “We can’t stay outside.”
“It’s the best you’ve got,” Clara said. “Listen to me. I have experience. I know this land better than you.”
“I don’t trust you,” he spat. “Who even are you? Where did you come from? You… brought that thing here.”
“They saved us,” a woman yelled–the one whom Andy and she had lifted through the elevator shaft. Blood streaked her face, and she bent over clutching a gut wound, but she was live. “They risked their lives and they saved us.”
“They brought that thing.”
“No. They killed it.”
At the back of the bus, an old man rose, wide eyed. He gazed at the ceiling in freight as though monsters crawled across the roof. “We need to go. We need to leave.”
A younger man put a hand on his arm and guided him back to his seat. “It’s okay. We’re outside. Look at the sunlight dad.” The younger man pointed out the window. “Look outside.”
“Listen to me,” Clara said, calm but firm. “I’m telling you, you can’t trek through the mountains as beat up as you are. You need to rest. We form a plan first, then we leave tomorrow morning.”
“Whose plan?” the rowdy vault dweller said. “Yours?”
“I’m open to suggestions,” Clara said half-heartedly, turning towards the exit. Andy was sitting in the driver’s sea with his legs up on the dashboard. Beneath him, the little girl curled up in the footwell, eyes like a cat’s silent and judging.
“Andy, a word.”
He heaved himself up and followed her outside. The girl trailed behind him, skipping down the busses steps to grab his hand. Andy didn’t flinch at the contact, he just looked down at the girl and held back.
“We need to secure the area,” Clara said, leading them out of earshot of the vault dwellers. Inside the bus, voices were raised as the survivors argued over what to do next, or moaned in pain as others applied bandages, or praised their gods for a second chance at life.
“On it,” Andy said, letting go of the girl’s hand, patting her on the head. “Wait here. Warn me if you see something,” he commanded her with a wry wink.
The girl smiled and flittered over to Clara’s side, grasping her hand.
“We’ll move them to Milltown,” Clara continued before Andy could get away. “We’ll go on foot.”
He nodded, already purveying the roadside for vantage points and danger.
“Hey, Andy,” she said as he departed. “We did our best.”
He stopped and turned to her, then glanced at the bus of refugees. A younger man helped his elderly father down the steps of the bus. He nodded as he passed Andy, directing his father into the sunlight on the road. There, they sat on the bonnet of a car and stared at the sky.
“They’d all be dead if not,” Clara said, motioning to the girl at her side, mouthing “This one too.”
Andy was expressionless, but his gaze lingered on the girl, then rose to Clara. She shivered as something seemed to pass between them like an exposing breeze. Then Andy nodded, and without a lick of emotion added, “Yeah, well done.”
That night, Clara lay half-awake on the bus’ roof, Andy beside her and the girl in her arms. The little one didn’t talk at all, and Clara decided not to pry. She was clearly in shock, an orphan to madness. All she needed was a warm body beside hers. Clara knew the feeling, though it had been a long time since she’d remembered it.
“Milltown,” Gabriel mused, beside her atop the bus. “I think I know it, though the journey may be tough. I’ve developed three blisters on my right foot just coming here, and frankly, I’m quite hungry. I didn’t pack for a round trip.”
“We’ll scavenge,” Clara said tiredly, staring at the stars beneath a blanket. “You’re better off sticking with us, though, you’re welcome to head back home if you want.”
There was a long silence. After a while, Clara wondered if Gabriel intended to speak at all.
“I could go scavenging,” he said quietly.
“Wait until light,” Clara said, closing her eyes. “Thanks Gabe.”
He chuckled awkwardly. “It’s not a problem. I’m not entirely useless away from a keyboard, you know?”
“I know,” she said, drifting off, exhaustion taking over. “Thank you.”