The Dark. Chapter 4. (Final Chapter)

11-2-2218

8:40 p.m.

Analia’s Home

Analia and her Mother were finishing a late dinner when the darkness came. The lights went out.

All the lights went out.

The colony was plunged into a darkness that felt almost physical. It felt menacing. It felt dangerous.

The people waited and hoped. Maybe the generator had gone out. It could just be switched back on. Any minute. They waited for a minute. For an hour.

The dark stayed. The most unwelcome guest in all of Last Watch. Within the night all of Last watch was in a panic. The LIGHTS were off. ALL of them. Some of the citizens had started setting fires to see by. Then the smarter of the group would come and smother them, more concerned about their oxygen than the light.

Analia saw this happen many times, and the knowledge that when the lights had gone out the oxygen filters might have gone out also terrified her.

“Mom. What’s happening?” Analia asked in the direction the thought her mom was. “

I don’t know, they must be having trouble with the generator or maybe the batteries.” Siantha said from a completely different direction, trying to sound comforting.

“What if they can’t fix it?” Analia asked.

“They’ll fix it. We just got all those bikes working, everything was finally lit up. We didn’t do all that work for nothing.” Siantha said.

Analia couldn’t believe it would be that simple. Something was WRONG, she could feel it. Just like before, someone would have to fix it.

“I’m going to try to help. I know where the Generator is, I can get there. Maybe they only need an extra hand.” She said.

“No, we’ll go together. I don’t want you going out there alone. With how dark everything is you might get lost.” Siantha replied. She didn’t say that she was as scared of the people running wild outside as she was of the dark.

They held hands as they left the house and made their way up North Street. They could hear shouts and screams, glass breaking and wooden structures being torn down. Siantha wished her daughter didn’t have to hear any of this. She wished she could protect her, like she had when the dark came before, but the only thing she could do was try to hurry to the generator building.

They felt their way through the street which was now cluttered with things people had dropped as they tried to navigate the dark, and stopped several times to determine how far they had come by whatever landmarks they could identify.

Halfway up North Street, or as close as they could come to identifying, they turned down Second Street toward the side of the dome, where the industry buildings were kept. They could still hear people calling for help, but they were moving further away from it now. Analia had been getting more and more anxious. She couldn’t help it, she thought she could finally understand what all the older people said when they talked about the dark now. It intruded upon her mind and crawled through her thoughts until all she could think about was how dark it was, about how she would never see anything again. It frayed her nerves thin and stretched them ready to snap with panic like the rest of the colony. All that stopped her from crying in the darkness was her mothers hand holding hers.

A few minutes later Analia tripped over something large that was lying in the street. She went down with both hands out, trying to catch herself blindly, only screaming as an afterthought.

“Analia!? Where are you?!” Siantha yelled into the darkness. Somehow her mother seemed to be farther away than she should have been.

Analia felt her way, on her hands and knees, to a light pole and slowly stood against it.

“I’m here.” She said unsteadily trying to find her mothers voice in the dark.

“Just come this way!” Siantha said from somewhere in front of Analia.

“Okay, I’m coming.” Analia said. She reluctantly let go of her sanctuary and shuffled a few steps in the direction she thought she had heard her mom in.

She suddenly bumped into someone. She felt her panic subsiding and took a deep breath. Everything would be Okay.

“Mom, how much further do we have to go?” She asked.

“Analia? Come over here.” Siantha said.

Analia froze. Her mothers voice was somewhere to her right, and the person she had run into was swaying. Slowly, from above.

Analia screamed and scrambled back away from the hanging body she had mistaken for her mother. She tripped over something behind her and fell onto her back. She kept screaming and crawling away while Siantha called out after her,

“Analia! Where are you! What happened?! Are you okay!?”

Analia couldn’t answer. She couldn’t stop screaming. Nothing mattered but getting as far away from the body as possible. She scrambled to her feet and started running. “Analia! Analia, where are you?!” Came her mothers panicked screams from the dark behind her, but Analia couldn’t stop running.

She tripped over any number of obstacles in the street as she ran, but she picked herself back up and kept running. She didn’t stop until she ran into a wall and hit her head on the hard brick.

She fell onto the sidewalk, stunned, and someone in just as much of a hurry as she had been tripped over her in their haste. The person stumbled away quickly. She lay there for several minutes catching her breath and gathering her senses. Her head throbbed horribly and her side was bruising under her shirt.

Analia felt her eyes prick with unshed tears as she sat up slowly. She had lost her mom completely. It was all her fault, she had run away and now she might never find her way back. She took a few deep breaths, calming herself. ’

Okay.’ She thought, ‘Think this through. I can find her. Just stay calm and keep walking.’

Analia stood up and turned her back on the wall she had hit.

‘Alright, just one step at a time.’ She thought as she pushed off the wall. She put one foot in front of the other, cautious but steady, calling out to her mother every few minutes. She knew it was pointless to look for her, but she kept her eyes open anyway. It was hard to let go of a sense, even if it seemed useless.

Analia shuffled through the streets for what seemed like hours, avoiding the sounds of screaming, but didn’t find her mother. Tired, she felt along a wall until she felt a doorway and sat down in it to rest.

She stared out into the darkness and wondered why the colony felt to much bigger now. It felt like she could walk all day and never reach one end from the other, like maybe her mother could be lost in in an infinite maze.

Analia wondered if she stayed in the dark if she would get used to it. Would her eyes eventually adapt? Or would being blind just start feeling normal? She looked out into the dark and imagined she saw spots of color floating through the air. She even saw a speck of light smaller than a grain of salt twinkling in the distance. Analia sat up. The speck of light didn’t move. She shifted her position to be sure. It stayed firmly in place, shining innocently, like it had every right to be shining in the dark.

Analia got up and moved towards it. It looked like a small indication light she was used to seeing on the sprinkler switches in the greenhouse, but this one was pure white instead of green or red.

As she got closer the light didn’t seem to get any bigger, but when she moved her head to judge it’s position she could tell she was getting closer.

Eventually she was standing right in front of it. Just this tiny point of light let her breathe easier. It told her that everything would go back to normal. If this light was on, others could be too.

She reached out to touch it.

Her fingers hit smooth glass.

‘It’s someones window.’ She thought. The thought suddenly made her angry. Someone was hiding inside with lights while the world fell apart for the rest of them! She couldn’t take the time to find the door, she couldn’t wait that long. She turned and stumbled back into the street, searching for something to break the glass with.

After a few minutes of searching she found a metal chair sitting outside someone’s porch. She picked it up and went back to the window. She took a deep breath and swung the chair at the window, determined to release the light.

Cracks spread across the window, shedding more light, but it didn’t shatter. She lifted the chair and swing it again, sending more cracks across the large window.

She swung the chair one last time and light poured over her as she glass fell away. The brightness of the light stung her eyes and made them water. It took several seconds for her to open her eyes fully. She saw nothing but light falling though the hole she had made, there was no room on the other side.

She stared in amazement for a moment feeling the warm light flow past her. Then she noticed the cracks surrounding the hole were spreading. They spread all the way to the ground. To both sides, further than any house width in the colony. Up past where the light shone far into the darkness.

As the dome wall shattered into a thousand pieces she stared out into the light, at the planet she had lived on her whole life, and never seen once. The roof of the dome crashed down into the colony, bringing with it a large portion of the hill that had formed on top of it when the rapid terraforming process had caused landslides in the area.

Analia heard the falling glass and looked up just in time to see the approaching dirt. She turned and ran, following the light into an empty doorway, entering just as the fallout crashed into the door behind her, sealing the exit.

The large hill beside the town of New Dawn crumpled inward as concerned townspeople looked on. A Dark haired man stopped applying shingles to a new roof and watched the hill from high on the rooftop. A long lost memory stirred in him and he left his work unfinished and left town by the side road toward the collapsed hill.

Analia woke some time later, rattled and unsure of what had happened. She stood up noticed that the doorway was blocked by a mound of dirt, but there was light coming from the stairway, so Analia started up the stairs hoping to find a way out.

When she reached the top floor she saw that the light was coming through a hole in the ceiling. The light was brighter than she had ever seen before, and something about it seemed blue.

“Hello?” She called weakly, finding her throat full of dust. She swallowed as best she could and tried again,

“Hello?!” She was much louder this time, but there was no echo like she would have expected from any loud sound made inside the dome. There was a moment of silence and then she heard Siantha’s voice,

“Analia? Are you there?!” She said from far away.

“I’m here!” She shouted up into the light. She squinted up into the light looking for some sign of rescue. After a few minutes a silhouette appeared in the light over the hole. “Mom?” Analia asked. Another, smaller, silhouette joined the first.

“I’m here, Oh Analia, I’m so happy you’re okay!” Siantha said. The bigger shadow crouched down and reached into the hole. The shadow’s deep voice said, “Hi, my name’s Rofian. Don’t worry kid, we’ll get you out of there.”

Analia took the hand he offered and was pulled up into the light of her first day.

Thank you for reading to the end! I hope you enjoyed it! Let me know what you thought in the comments! ^-^