You Are Me

Part 4 - Lights

They were just a couple layers away from finding us. They kept picking through methodically. The trick of the closet being deeper than it looked wasn't helping. I could feel like Myra was shaking her head.

They were so close that I worried for a moment that I felt their hands brush against us. But they stopped. They didn't advance. The others joined with them.

For a moment, I worried it meant they were just waiting for more digging hands. But they closed the closet door and returned us to blackness. Still, I kept my guard up. Sure enough, the door swung open again. Dastardly. I thought I could still feel Myra moving a little. I nudged her as quietly as possible.

It stayed open for a while, and they seemed to search around some more. I was sure they were trying to tempt us to go. Provide a seemingly-safe avenue of escape and then pounce. With her little motions, I thought I felt Myra ease up on her pressing but only for a moment. If she tried to make a break for it then my protection would be destroyed too. I clutched her again as another message.

They tried their trick once more. They shut the door, after searching, only to open it again. It was getting peculiar that they didn't just dig for us. It seemed clear that they sensed something was here. Maybe it was predatory instinct and they liked their prey to put up a fight.

This seemed to annoy them. They left immediately through the door and even seemed to make sure we heard all four chimes of the alarm. But you could go crazy trying to understand a hive mind.

We stayed there, not daring to move until the silence was all-consuming. Slowly, we worked our way out. I felt kinda sad to be free of Myra. Without the anxiety of conversion, her pressing wasn't that bad. Her leg felt nice despite the heat and sweat. Or maybe because of it. Not that I was up for apocalypse flirting.

We staggered into the light of the early evening and squinted. Once we were able to move again, we took stock. The room was a wreck. I only found a few remaining candy bars. My window was damaged to the point that I feared any word spoken was broadcast to the entire courtyard. Its latch was split and barely held. Salt-like glittering glass shards had been sprinkled over the floor. The rest of the dorm was similarly thrashed. There was one good point. One of them had dropped a gun by the sink. The clip was half-empty, but it was something.

After she had stretched, Myra stared me down and softly said, "We have got to get out of here…"

She didn't get any protests from me. I just nodded. As I looked the gun over, I even had the beginning of an idea for how to do it.

I smiled at Myra and told her, "We will…by burning the place down."

The gunpowder in the cartridges wouldn't be enough though. Fortunately, before things turned bad, I siphoned a bit of gasoline from one of the cars as an emergency source of fuel. There was no way we would have enough time to sit and fill an empty tank.

I considered fashioning some sort of bow and arrow but plain Molotov cocktails from Ethan's old bottles would be enough. The other dormitory was close enough I could easily get the roof burning.

It was a plan with flaws. It put us at as much of a disadvantage as it might put them. And it doomed whoever else was holed up in the area. I resisted thinking that they could be part of the distraction.

Myra didn't have many complaints about my plan (she didn't like that we would be leaving after nightfall). She did look depressed that the two invaders had spilled out the bucket for her little bath. As I prepared my burning bombs with scraps of clothing and careful fills from the gas can, she waited on the drip of the faucet.

I ran through my thoughts. I knew a jump right from the window would be dangerous, not only from the two-story fall (small injuries were as bad as fatal ones in this situation). Lowered escape mechanisms took too long. Burning wasn't particularly better, but it would have to do.

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I ran the plan through my mind. We would be on windows throwing small bombs. The flame would draw them to our location so we would have to fire them off as quickly as possible. Last thing, I would pour gasoline all over my dorm and ignite it before leaving.

From there, we could take the same way Myra did to the fire escape. The fire stairs on the left side were right next to the parking lot with a window in the door. Perfect for looking out before attempting to make a run for a vehicle.

The broken window was better with a towel across it. I made sure it was the same color as the drapes. I scouted the parking lot. Before, I'd noticed an old van which looked a bit like the one from The A-Team. It was certainly old enough, but it looked pretty resilient.

I packed two bags with water and candy bars, neither heavy enough to weigh us down and nothing extra. I set my trusty metal broom with my bag along with a pair of flathead screwdrivers. I didn't find any drills in the stuff left by my former roommates.

After mentally running through the plan a couple times, I stretched and had a candy bar. I could hear water quietly dripping into the bucket in the bathroom. I considered having a little bath or my own, but I sat against the wall in the main room and tried to quiet my mind while still keeping aware of the sounds around me.

In that quiet, I thought back to Ethan. I remembered the time we first moved in at the beginning of the year. He brought an air popper, but the top was somewhere in his bags. We were all so hungry and it was late, so we went ahead and used it without. It became a game of catching the popcorn as it sailed through the air. I let myself have a little smile.

I remembered Ethan on his synthesizer as he took musical requests. It was a funny thing. I knew my family was gone but it didn't hit me. I knew the whole world was pretty much on its last legs and anyone I ever met was probably converted or, if they were lucky, long dead. And yet Ethan was the one I missed the most.

There were days I could sit and imagine him around still joking and flashing that cheesy grin. I let a breath go I didn't know I was holding.

He was gone and soon I was going to burn down this dorm we shared. It didn't matter anymore, except to ensure our survival.

The bathroom door slowly opened, and Myra stepped out with a towel in her hair. The water hadn't done much to fix the tangles, but her hair looked a little better. She paused in the mirror and sighed quietly before saying, "I wish we could just go."

I glanced over and assured her, "Soon enough."

She sighed and muttered, "I just want out of here. I hate it here. Hate this kind of…survival. I hate me." Her hands pressed on her stomach like claws. I felt morbidly tempted to tell her all she had to do to change that was step outside and yell.

We sat in silence till the lights began to flicker. She amended, "I hate them and the darkness most of all…"

The evening continued with flickers and preparations until, just after the sun passed over the nearby hills, all the lights went out.

I used small LED lights so we could see well enough for our preparations. Myra didn't say much in the darkness, but her breathing was easier to hear. I really hoped that they weren't set up for an ambush.

My bag felt heavier than I hoped but I couldn't remove anything else. After thoroughly soaking the room with what we had left of the gasoline, we prepped our bombs. Opening the window helped with the fumes. I made sure the air was clear and the bombs were lit away from the gasoline.

The burning wick at the end of the first bomb made my heart race. Giving my best throw with my protective gloves on, I chucked it into the darkness. I delivered the next faster, one after another. I heard roars and crashes but ignored them. My blood felt like it was burning too. I threw until I was empty. I didn't even pause to check my work. I ran back. Myra finished hers and joined me. With just the firelight through the windows, we fumbled for the door.