Hunt You Down

Hunt You Down

Before The Dark There was Light, And before the Dark There Was Life.

There are only a few of us left.

There isn't anything we could have done against them. We were blind to all there advances, even when the world was crumbling around us we had no idea what was about to happen. We had no idea of the devastation it would cause, or the irreparable damage to our way life.

It was over before we could muster a defence, or so I’m told.

It is the year 2030 and the world has changed. It is not ours any more. It has been taken from us. I never knew the world before what it is. I have never known the light of day or the power of the sun. Only candles and electric bulbs would blot out the blackness of the night. It is a hard life. Hiding, running, living in constant fear that one day we will be found out. One day we will be discovered and ripped into little bloody pieces on the floor by one of them.

Life goes on, my mother would say, before she disappeared one night without so much as a word or inkling.

We searched for days for her, despite the ominous danger of the outside world. We searched with everything we had but it was useless. The night had her now.

I sit up in my bed, staring out the side window for the briefest of moments. The ruins of the city glare back at me with threatening power. Buildings have crumbled, roads upturned, cars and street lamps lie on their sides. Some burnt and charred black, others dusty and failing the battle against rust that is eating away at their metal bodies.

The world is not ours any more. Not even the trees survived the darkening. Oxygen still permeates the air only through generators safely set up deep under the compound I have spent my entire life living in. Outside its walls is a thick soup of poison that would kill a man within seconds. Inside is no different at times. But not all is bad. We still have each other. We still have what is left of humanity and what is left of life.

Dale and I are best friends. At the minute he stands in front of me, staring with wicked eyes from the doorway down at my bed. His hair is matted and knotted into all sorts of shabbiness and his face is as smooth and pale as white silk.

I sit up and roll my eyes at him. “Is it that time already?”
“I'm afraid so brother,” he smiled. Dale always called me brother. We weren't brothers, but sometimes it felt like we were. Even now as he stood in the doorway to my room staring down at me lying under the covers of my nice warm bed did I feel a sense of protection emanating from him. It burst from his skin like waves of electricity.
“What time is it?” I groan and swing my legs over the bed. My feet touch cold ground sending a shiver of a tingle up my spine all the way to my head making me jerk to the left a little and my heart race for a few brief beats.
“Almost eleven, I think. Now are you going to get up or am I gonna have to pour a bucket over your head again like last time?”
I shake my head. “No need, I'm up!”
I remembered the last time I had overslept with vivid animosity. I remembered the cold water hitting my face shocking me into falling right over the side of my bed and landing with a crunch on the hard concrete floor. I rubbed my wrist. I had broken my first bone that day. Dale was so apologetic he let me sleep for a week before he finally had to wake me up for pit duty.
“Where’s Johnny?” I ask and reach for the ceiling, feeling my back crack as I stretch all the muscles I could.
“Already headed down. If your quick we should be only a minute behind and then maybe he wont make you use your hands this time!”
Dale disappears out of my room. I pull myself onto my feet feeling a slight twinge in my left knee before stepping over to the other side of my room and yanking the only set of clothes I had, on over my head.
I head out into the lounge. It is cold and the air is crisp against my skin. Dale must have already gone. I move over to the cupboard and pull out a dark coloured glass. Filling it with water from the tank I glug the whole thing down in one go then leave my quarters. It isn't long before I am in among the throng of people outside. The town as we call it isn't big, but there are more people than there is space. I dodge out of the way of a kid flitting through the bustle of people then duck under a metal pole carried on the back of a man who looks so old he might crumble into dust if anyone knocked into him.
Shacks litter the streets, most with doors on, some without. I can see people cooking lunch in some of them. Others are sitting in chairs reading half shredded books. To get hold of a book in good condition is a rarity in these parts. I heard that the war destroyed everything, including our culture.
I hang a right after a few metres forward heading down between the rows of shacks. The pit is in the middle of the town. I can faintly see the workers at the end of the alleyway through the gap ahead of me. All the while the murmurs of the people around me can be heard. Some are talking, others laughing and singing. It is a relatively happy place despite the conditions we are forced to live in.
I come to a crossing between the shacks just as the kid with soppy brown hair and torn shorts shoots straight past me again leaving me scuttling back a pace so as not to knock him flying.
“Sorry mister!” the boy shouts and disappears down on of the side alleys.
I shake my head and press on.
The pit is another busy area of the town, but not in the disorganise manner that the rest of the town is filled with. Everyone has a purpose in this area. Everything is organised as much as possible and people are moving about carefully but quickly. Some are carrying more beams of metal to hold up the tunnels. Others are lugging up bags of coal from the pit and slapping them with other bags over the far side of the area.
I glance up at the only shack in the place, sitting a few metres above everything and made out of metal. A set of step ascend either side and meet right in the middle at a doorway.
Dale pops his head out of the pit. A thick line of dirt permeates his skin just above the his eye brow. He disappears again and I follow down into the darkness.
We work tirelessly for hours. Johnny and dale both hack at the walls while I shovel the coal up off the floor and dunk it into sacks sat just behind us. Another man whom I recognise but have never really spoken to lugs the full bags away up to the surface of the tunnel. A few metres In and we hitch a metal pole into the ground and clamp it to the rock in the ceiling holding the walls sternly around us. It is tiresome work, and tedious, but it is the only work we have ever known. It fills our otherwise empty day with some sort of purpose rather than sitting around waiting to get old and useless. There is no room for the weak in this life, no room for the feeble. The useless curl up and die while the strong remain tall and powerful.
It is six o’clock by the time we are finished. A whole seven hours of grunting and sweating and breathing in toxic air filled with black dust. My lungs are bursting for air as we head back up to the surface of the pit and I suck in great lungfuls with relief.
“Heading home?” Johnny asks. He is a man of few words, straight to the point. I liked that about him.
I shake my head. “I was thinking about going to the Tavern.”
“Hell yeah! I could use a drink,” Dale shouts a little louder than expected causing several people to turn in our direction.
“I'll be down in an hour or so. Got something to take care of.”
Johnny disappeared after that, like the wind. He had always been like that ever since I could remember. Mysterious in a way that I could never describe. He was always disappearing without giving an explanation, not that I needed one. I would prefer not to get involved in his business if at all possible. No doubt it was illegal.
We strolled thorough the centre of town. It was a lot quieter at this time of night. Everyone retreated inside after a certain time as the streets between the shacks weren't especially safe.
“Home sweet home!” Dale smiles as he steps through the tavern door. We only have enough money for one. Beer isn't cheap. It is hard to come by and even harder to get through the danger of the outside world. I sip at mine, savouring the taste and the cold. Dale gulps his down in under a few minutes feeling the hit almost instantly. It is easy to get drunk off one beer when you haven't eaten all day.
The tavern hums with the chatter of people all laughing and having a good time. It is the only place we get to unwind from the stress of the outside world. It is the only place we all feel hope that life could return to normal again even after years of darkness.
Johnny strolls through the door exactly an hour later, just like he said he would. He smiles at the two of us as he walks through the crowd. His hair tied back in a thick ponytail and his eyes scanning the rows of people cautiously as he weaves his way in and out of them.
“Everything okay?” I ask, without asking what he had been up to. I don't want to know.
He nods and asks the bartender to pull him a pint. The glass skims along the bar and he catches it in his right hand. “I have something for you,” he says and pulls out an envelope from inside his jacket.
“What is it?” I ask staring ominously down at the letter in hand encrusted with the royal seal.
“I have no idea, I was just told to give it to you.”
“Holy shit that's the royal seal!” Dale spurts from behind causing the entire tavern to quieten and turn in our direction. Whispers ensue from all angles as people start talking under their breaths.
“Keep your voice down!” I snap and slam the letter onto the bar. “I don't want it!”
“You can't just give it back James. It's a direct order from the Royal guard,” Johnny snaps in one of his rare animated moments.
“I don't want it!” I repeat with a growl and push the letter back towards him.
“Just open it and find out what it says!” Johnny grips the letter and thrusts it into my chest almost knocking me off my stool. “You can't just turn down a royal order, especially not one with such a high grade seal on the front.”
I screw up the envelop in my hands and turn away from the pair of them. I knew what this letter meant. I knew exactly what it would mean for the rest of my possibly short lived life and didn't want to open it at all. I pushed past a dirty blonde haired woman and a man wearing an old, weathered baseball cap and burst out into the cold evening air.
It was quiet outside. So quiet I could hear the thrum of the oxygen generator vibrating in my ears like a thousand wasps. I looked down at the letter in my hands with dread etched across every line of my face. I stumbled forward a few steps, leaning on the wall of a flimsy looking wooden shack. It was hard to stand. My legs felt weak and numb.
I didn't want to open it but I reached down, Johnny's words resonating in my head. You can't just give it back! But would they give back my life once it was over? Would I lose everything I had struggled for over the years in this city, one of the last on the planet populated by humans?
I ripped into the letter and held it up to the dim light, a surge of ominous adrenaline throbbing through my veins, then crumpled it up in my hands and sped off towards home.