Out in the world it was a moonless, starless night which meant those of us not out raiding convenience stores, shopping malls and pharmacies (two decades of two hundred plus people running around in the dark equals a lot of gauze, Band-Aids and crutches) were enjoying some light. One of the scary, sweaty, hard-earned lessons we’d learned was that on full-dark nights, you could risk a little light in the tunnels, as long as it wasn’t showing above ground. We’re not talking floodlights or tanning beds or “let’s all watch Friends DVD’s and remember what life with apartments and throwaway gags and Jennifer Aniston was like” and besides, our generator was saved for powering boring things like refrigeration, surgical power tools and a radio transmitter that spent most of its time spitting out static and some of its time picking up chatter from people hiding in holes just like ours who were too far away for us to be any help to them or vice versa.
We’re talking battery powered lanterns mostly covered in black tape so they only spat out a little glimmer or the tiniest tea lights positioned over basins of water in case something went astray because if a fire broke out, the creatures would kill us before the flames and the smoke inhalation got a chance; saying those things like light is like saying I used to like Gossip Girl rewatch podcasts and I absolutely ate that shit up.
Our beds lay in long rows along the tunnels, dorm style. I was lying on mine, reading by the dim flickering of a tea light. I was squinting at a yellowed copy of I Don’t Know How She Does It - bitch had it easy, that’s how - when the people on watch near the stairs that led up to the street yelled out a warning.
“Lights out!”
Small dots of light had punctuated the tunnel, other people enjoying the same privilege as me, but in the second or two it took me to pinch out my candle the entire tunnel was dark. We hadn’t lasted this long by being slow on the uptake.
The guards, whose job was a lot more to do with alerting us if the moon or the stars poked out than watching out for the few other human beings left alive, updated their warning.
“People! It’s people!”
The guys out on the supply run weren’t due back for hours yet and they would have called out one of our secret passwords like “Hey, it’s us, the guys from the supply run.” We all hauled ass over to the main platform to see what was happening. It was a long time since we’d had any new arrivals and, really, what the fuck else did we have going on?
I heard Mrs Tran, one of my bed neighbours, spit out the words “New arrivals” like they tasted bad. Mrs Tran ran the deli near my apartment back when delis and apartments were still things. She used to sell amazing Vietnamese rolls and truly disgusting custard tarts. When the creatures attacked her home above the deli, her grandson had just enough time to shove her into a closet. She could hear what was happening and tried to climb out, to die with her family but the lock on the closet door was stuck and by the time she managed to break out the creatures were gone and so were her family. She’d been asking her grandson to fix that closet door lock for months. She made a few attempts at daytime strolls in the aftermath but kept running into people who stopped her. Then, due partly to her deli experience and partly due to coming of age in Vietnam when it was all on fire and war-torn and whatnot, it turned out she was really good at cooking a lot from a little and doing it in pretty shitty conditions. She was our original camp cook and though by now we had plenty of hands on deck, she was still the boss. She always complained about more mouths to feed when we had new arrivals or when the babies outgrew the teat and needed solids but really, hard deli-running exterior aside, she’d be the first to try and fatten them up. She was as crusty outside and as gooey inside as one of her custard tarts. Man, they were bad.
“New arrivals!” Mike B just about sang the words as he ran past my bed. We had multiple Mikes in our community along with a couple of Mikeys, a Mick and a stuck-up Michael. After the end, Mike B had spent about two years alone in a forgotten sewer junction living off rats and the worst kind of water and thinking he was possibly the last person on earth. Makes a girl feel lucky in comparison. One of our scouting parties came across him by chance. Mike B thought they were angels or aliens or something. He was a nice guy, loved to meet new people, which was by now a rare treat, and knew tons of good card games. Sure, he was prone to screaming fits in his sleep and sudden mood changes but you couldn’t really get picky about your friends or family any more.
We all gathered on the platform and looked on as best we could, straining our eyes to watch as four people came down the unlit stairs, covered by our armed guards. One of the new arrivals was especially broad and tall, I mean like more than a few inches past lanky, and moving awkwardly down the steps as if they had something wrong with their legs.540Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsXOOkH4QgO
When the newcomers stepped onto the platform and got a little closer to the half-light of a few relit lanterns, we could see there were only three people and that the reason the fourth taller figure was moving so strangely was because it was being carried between two of the others. In the shadows, it looked like the kind of metalwork contemporary art piece we would have gone ape-shit over back in the NoHo day.
When they threw it closer to our lights, into the clearing we had instinctively made before them, the place went ape-shit but not in an art-loving way, more in an I-don’t-want-to-die way. 540Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWubITSrsqB
