Defy the Dark (19 page)

They commanded my attention; I could look nowhere else. Some of their wounds were garish and disgusting, limbs torn almost free, cheeks ripped from skulls, mouths torn open. But with others it was almost impossible to see the bite; there was no evidence of blood and struggle. Their clothes were still freshly pressed, some with their shirts tucked in and shoes neatly tied.

They looked normal. As if this was some sort of game they'd stumbled upon and decided to join. But then they'd open their mouths and the moaning would spill forth and it became clear they were just as dead as the others.

Sarah pressed her face into the crook of my shoulder, shuddering. “They're everywhere.”

That's when the lights in the amusement park blew. One moment everything was alive with brightness of various colors and the next it was absolute darkness. I couldn't see the ground, I couldn't see the front of the coaster car. I couldn't even see Sarah sitting right next to me.

And all I could think about were the dead bodies stumbling around below, seeping around the base of the coaster, turning their gaping mouths toward us and stretching their arms high.

“Can they climb?” Bart whispered from a few cars back.

The horror of that question drilled into me. Suddenly I knew—just
knew
—that the dead were already scaling their way toward us. Their moans turning to grunts as they wrapped their arms around the trellis and found footholds to push higher.

We had no escape. We had no weapons.

Sarah's response was strangled. The tips of her fingers dug against my skin, one hand clawing at my ribs and the other at the side of my neck as she buried herself deeper against me as if I could be some sort of protection for her.

I wanted to be strong. I wanted to fold my arms around her and let her believe my strength could keep us safe, but even I didn't believe that.

“No,” Wylie finally said. “I don't think so. The news reports didn't say anything about them climbing. Otherwise they wouldn't be building those big fences at the forest.”

For a moment none of us said anything. We were surrounded by the noise of panic: the living crying out for help, kids calling for their mommies and daddies, people screaming with pain as they were overtaken, and woven through it all was the sound of the dead: a moaning so visceral it invaded my skull, making me want to claw at my ears as if that could make it stop.

With the darkness there was no way we could attempt escape. Climbing from the coaster would be suicide either in a misplaced step or making it to the ground only to be taken by the dead.

We were trapped.

“Maybe in the morning, when it's light, we can figure out what to do next,” Wylie said, confirming that he'd come to the same conclusion.

“I'm telling you, it'll be too late then.” Bart's voice sounded agitated and sharp. “They're just going to keep coming through the night. In the morning there'll be too many to fight our way out.”

Wylie lost the edge of control he'd been holding on to. “Then what do you propose we do, Bart? What other option do we have?”

“We climb back to the wheelhouse,” Bart shouted back. “There's bound to be something we can use as a weapon in the control room. Wrenches or broomsticks—things we can use to fight our way out.”

“You're being stupid.” Wylie was the sound of frustrated ire. “They're probably already swarming the tracks down there. And seriously? A wrench? You think that would be enough?”

The car began to shift then as one of them threw himself at the other, fists hitting against flesh. It felt like at any moment we could go careening off the rails, and Sarah gasped, slamming her hands against the safety bar.

“Stop it, guys!” I shouted, but they were beyond caring. I fought my way free of the tiny car and started making my way back toward them. Already my eyes were adjusting to the darkness, but depth was still impossible to judge and my progress was slow as I felt my way from bucket seat to bucket seat, holding my breath every time my foot slipped along the plastic noses of the cars.

As I got closer I saw the dark forms of Bart and Wylie tussling, and then I was there between them, barely able to fit my body into the tiny space only meant for two. I shoved them away from each other. “This isn't helping,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm.

They were both panting and Bart's teeth glistened with something dark that I assumed was blood. He swiped it away and then looked back down the tracks. “We can't just sit here.”

“Yes, we can,” I answered before Wylie could. “What we're not going to be is stupid.”

“How long do you think we can stay up here?” Bart responded. “The dead aren't just going to go away. They're not going to disappear no matter how much we want it.”

“It's the rule of threes,” Wylie answered. “The human body can survive three minutes without air, three days without water, and three weeks without food. We have time to figure out a next step.”

Bart shook his head. In the black night, the whites of his eyes shone like stars. “Those rules are worthless. Those things on the ground—they don't need any of that stuff.”

Neither Wylie nor I had a response to that. Instead I said I'd better be getting back to Sarah, and I made my way along the cars, leaving the silence of my two best friends behind.

 

A
t that point it just became about waiting for the dawn. The screams of our fellow park-goers had dwindled, so now we were left with moans.

Wylie settled into the car behind us but Bart was more restless, moving about and even venturing onto the tracks, though he never went very far.

Sarah leaned against me, her breath alternating between the hiccuping aftereffects of sobs and the regular rhythm of sleep. I thought about the rides we'd taken just hours ago. How it'd been the most alive I'd ever felt.

“If you had to go now—if this was it—would you have any regrets?” I found myself asking.

“Virginity,” Wylie said almost immediately, and I started to laugh, even as I became hyperaware of exactly how Sarah draped herself over me, her head cradled in my lap. His response made her grin, her nose crinkling up just a bit like it always did when she was truly happy.

“Does coming here tonight count?” Bart shouted from a few cars back, and then he was laughing as well. For a moment it drowned out the sounds of moans.

Sarah blew out a short breath. “I wish I'd studied less and snuck out more, but then again, who could have figured a four point oh GPA would become so worthless so quickly?” She shifted her focus to me, asking, “What about you?”

Everyone else's answers had been flippant and light, but I felt a different kind of pressure building in my chest, and I knew that if I didn't say it now it would become the thing I'd regret most.

I brushed the backs of my knuckles along Sarah's cheek, twisting a stray strand of hair around my thumb. “I wish I'd told the girl next door that I'd fallen in love with her.”

At the end of the train of cars Bart snickered and Wylie just grunted before heaving himself free and going back to join him, leaving Sarah and me alone. Her lips were parted and I could just catch the hint of the edge of her teeth.

“Really?” It was a question voiced along an exhale.

I nodded. “Years ago. Maybe even forever.”

She maneuvered around the safety bar until she was straddling my lap, her knees pushed into the depths of the bucket seats. “You should have said something before.” She placed her hands on my shoulders and then slid them down my back.

“I was too afraid.”

Her lips covered mine but this time there wasn't the thrill of racing along the roller coaster, wind whipping her hair around us. Now there was a desperation, a longing deeper than I'd ever felt.

I took her hips, my fingers pressing against the curve of flesh, and wished I could forget about Bart and Wylie only a few yards behind us. Wished I could forget the dead scattered below.

Wished we could have been, even if for just a few heartbeats, the last people on Earth.

She said something in my ear I couldn't understand and I traced my fingers up her spine, under her shirt, reveling in the feel of her flesh.

And then there was a scream, one of agony and pain, followed by Wylie shouting Bart's name. Sarah froze, as if she'd known this was our last chance together and it was over too soon.

The cars shuddered as Wylie scampered over them wildly and then he grabbed my arm. “You gotta help,” he said in a panic, and I let him pull me away from Sarah, her eyes glistening with tears.

The night must have been damp, because my feet kept slipping as we raced toward the back of the train. Bart's screams were horrid and piercing, like no noise I'd ever heard.

Wylie kept trying to explain. “He was crawling along the tracks. I don't know what happened.” He sounded close to panic. “He must have slipped through.”

“He fell?” I asked as we made it to the last car and leaned over the edge.

“Not all the way.” Wylie's face was ghostly pale and I realized that the moon had begun to rise on the horizon, laying down a dull sheen that reflected off the coaster rails.

It was just enough light to find Bart. He'd fallen maybe twenty feet and gotten caught in a tangle of wooden supports. His body seemed twisted wrong, as if he were hanging by his knees, but the proportions were all off and then I saw the gleam of white through his jeans.

Both of his legs were broken, almost in half, right in the middle of his shins, and the bones had pierced through skin and fabric. Bart hung upside down, his arms flailing as he tried to relieve the pressure on his legs.

Through all of it he kept wailing, but now he was forming words, begging for help. Everything about him screamed agony.

“Whatdowedo?” Wylie's question came out as one word.

As a keeper on the soccer field I'd learned to take all the angles, all the approaches, and calculate them instantaneously and then make a decision and commit without question. I looked for any way to scale down to Bart, but every path was too convoluted, too dangerous.

I was already shaking my head when Wylie grabbed my arm. “What are you saying?”

I opened my mouth, but I couldn't find the words to put to the truth that there was no way we'd make it to Bart without getting hurt ourselves and, even then, I didn't know what we could do for him.

“You're a shitty friend,” Wylie said, banging his hand against the edge of the car. But he didn't go out after Bart, either.

Bart's screams were becoming more desperate and I wanted to push my hands against my ears, but that didn't seem fair. Wylie started calling back to him, telling him it would be okay and I echoed him, hating the lie of it. Bart kept struggling for a handhold to pull himself free, and after a few tries he succeeded in getting one of his legs loose.

For a moment it looked like he'd be able to untangle himself and I wondered if we should go down for him after all. He got his body bent over one of the wide wooden supports and started to yank on his other broken leg when something went wrong.

He wavered, his hand gripping at the empty air, and then he fell. Just like that. His body slid through a gap and the darkness swallowed him whole.

I heard him hit the ground. Wylie clutched at my arm, and from the front of the car Sarah kept shouting, “What happened? What just happened?” But all I could hear was the sound of Bart choking as though every molecule of air had been forced from his body on impact.

And maybe it had. I pictured his ribs snapping, his lungs collapsing in on themselves. He was too far away and the night was too dark to see, but we could still hear him as he tried to wheeze and grunt.

“We should have climbed to help him.” Wylie wrapped his arms around his chest and began to rock.

Bart's voice drifted weakly from below. “Please.”

I pressed my hands against my face.

Sarah kept shouting, asking what happened.

“We should climb down,” Wylie continued, urgent. “There could still be time to save him.”

Bart repeated the word
please
like a prayer.

It wouldn't take long for the dead to find him.

I didn't know how long it would take for him to become one of them.

Wylie flung a leg over the edge of the car, reaching toward the slick railing and wooden tracks. I grabbed him around the chest and hauled him back to safety. “Not you too,” I shouted in his face, and then he started hitting me, but I still wouldn't let him go.

Below us Bart begged and I wished for the dead to find him faster, just to make it all stop. Instead his death came slow. At first I was glad for the darkness so I didn't have to see it, but the sounds didn't stop my imagination from visualizing every detail. The dead moaned, different timbres of need radiating off each other, and then I heard their teeth ripping into flesh.

Bart's whimpers sounded wet and he kept choking without ever once inhaling.

Wylie curled himself into the corner of the car, arms wrapped around his ears and rocking. I rested one hand on the back of his neck as I listened to my friend die. Eventually the only sound remaining was a new moan added to the mix, and I shoved the palm of my hand into my mouth and tried to swallow my screams.

When I made it back to the front car, Sarah sat straight and still. I reached for her but she shook her head. What she was staring at, I never knew.

 

H
ere's how we escaped: dawn came oozing in and that's when the gunfire started. Military men dressed in black from helmet to boots swept through the park shooting at anything that moved.

Wylie was the one to suggest we duck into the cars. Sarah wanted to scream for help, but there was something about the calculating coldness of those men that made me hesitate. In the end I sided with Wylie.

The shooting lasted for a good hour as the sun gained strength. After that was silence. It was probably noon by the time we started making our way down. It was impossible to scale the wooden supports of the coaster without thinking about how Bart had fallen.