Kyle West - Darkness

Ruth shook her head. “I’ve thought about this a long time. I’ve never really gotten a good look. But one time, I did — it was the time I tried to escape. He was no one I’d ever seen before. Which confused me. I mean, I knew everyone in this Bunker. Everyone. We all did. And I had never seen that man before.”

“Who could he be?” I asked.

“A few weeks ago, I realized who he was. Which explained why I’d never seen him before.” Ruth looked at me, her eyes intent. “Old Darcy.”

Old Darcy. That was a name I hadn’t heard in a while. Fifteen years ago, there had been a man named Clyde Darcy who was said to have gone crazy. He had killed his entire family, the only murders to have ever occurred in Bunker 108. The aftershocks changed the fate of the Bunker forever. Clyde Darcy, or Old Darcy as he was later called, wasn’t just any man. He had been a Colonel, Chan’s superior, and had been in charge of Bunker 108 before he was executed.

No one knew what caused Darcy to snap, and if you knew what was good for you, you never brought it up, especially around Chan. There was a rumor that Darcy really hadn’t been killed, that Chan had kept him alive for one reason or another. There were many tossed about. Several centered on the belief that Darcy had known something so critical to the survival of the Bunker Program that he couldn’t be killed, and maybe it was the thing that caused him to go crazy. Another rumor was that he was the highest ranking official in the United States, effectively making him President. Or, so the speculation went.

Whatever the reason, Chan kept Darcy from being executed, locking him instead deep in the Officers’ Wing. Kids told stories about seeing Officers carrying food down to the cells when they were thought to be vacant.

I had thought it all ridiculous. It sounded like a rumor, something we kids made up to scare the crap out of each other. There had been a Clyde Darcy; that was fact. But him being kept alive for fifteen years because Chan somehow needed him?

“You really think it’s Clyde Darcy?” I asked.

“It couldn’t be anyone else,” Ruth insisted. “He was old, and I’d recognize anyone from this Bunker. The fact that I didn’t recognize him was proof enough for me.”

“What did you do when you saw him?” Anna asked.

“I ran. I ran as fast as I could and locked myself back in here. He beat on the door for a while, but those monsters came after him. I heard him curse and run off.” Ruth shuddered. “I haven’t heard him since.”

“You think he’s still alive?” Anna asked.

Ruth shrugged. “I hope not. Crazy man like that, who knows. I’m still alive, aren’t I?”

I had difficulty believing this. Yet again, sometimes rumors existed for a reason. If Darcy were alive, it meant we just didn’t have the Howlers to deal with. We had a crazy, murderous man.

“Whatever the case,” I said, “we need to find a way out of here.”

“The door lost power,” Anna said. “I switched it to auxiliary.”

Ruth shook her head. “Bad move.”

“What?” Anna asked. “Why?”

“The main power is spotty,” Ruth said. “But the auxiliary power is kaput. As soon as you switched it, everything went dead. You should have just kept it on the main line.”

“Crap, how was I supposed to know that?” Anna asked.

“You couldn’t have,” Ruth said. “I arrived too late to stop you. I did the same thing with a section of grow lights that went out. Now, that section is dark for good. The plants are withering.”

“How did you know we were up there?” I asked.

“I could hear you guys talking from behind my door. It’s so quiet in here. Things carry surprisingly well. I hear weird clicks and clacks all the time. You learn to ignore the sounds or you go crazy. But when I heard you guys talking, I knew you had come from the outside and that you didn’t know about the danger in here. So I came out.”

Anna reached out to touch her arm. “Thanks. As Alex said, we wouldn’t be here without you.”

“It was what I had to do. But the bigger question is what we do now.”

“We can’t go out the front anymore,” I said. “That means we have to try for the motor pool.”

“I didn’t say we couldn’t go out the front,” Ruth said. “You can open the outer door manually, of course. That’s how it was usually done, right? The computer thing is just an automated system. The inner and outer doors can’t be open at the same time. The inner is open right now, so we could still get into the tunnel and manually open the outer door once we close the inner one.”

“Of course,” I said. “I should have known that, because every time I’ve gone out I had to open the door manually.”

“Should we leave now?” Anna asked.

“No. We should wait for things to calm down a bit, first,” Ruth said. “Those…Howlers, did you call them?”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“Howlers. They take a while to go away. An hour or two at least.”

We all sat quietly. Maybe getting out wouldn’t be so hard after all. Just wait out the Howlers, then go back the way we came in.

“Why did you only try to escape the one time?” Anna asked.

“I’ve actually been preparing to leave,” Ruth said. “I’m trying to work out a plan. I know it’s cold out there so I need more clothing than this. Only, that requires me going to the apartments, which are pretty far from here. It’s too dangerous.”

What she said was true. Her camo pants and wear-resistant polyester shirt might be sufficient for summer, but they were insufficient to survive a Wasteland winter.

“Not only that,” Ruth said, “but I want a better weapon than this pole. The few times I’ve been outside Hydroponics I haven’t even found a security baton. It would be nice to have a gun or something. This pole works well enough, I guess. We have several of them in Storage. We mainly used them for reaching shelves that are too high up.”

“Well, you don’t have to wait for all of that now,” I said. “We have a whole team out there that you can stay with. Hell, even Michael and Lauren Sanchez and their kid are with us.

Ruth’s eyes widened. “What? They’re alive?”

I nodded. “Yeah. They took one of the Recons and made it to Vegas. That’s where we met them.”

Ruth’s eyes looked hopeful for once. “Lauren… she was my best friend. I thought she was dead. You’re telling me she’s alive?”

“Yeah,” I said. “She’s with us right now. Not here, obviously, but with the rest of the group outside.”

“Outside the Bunker?” Ruth asked.

“Up in Pyrite,” I said. “It’s this small town and…”

Anna placed a hand on my arm. “Maybe we should tell her the whole story first.”

Ruth looked from me to Anna.

“Alright,” I said. “Just to warn you: it’s a very long story.”

“We have time,” Ruth said. “But first, tell me: Lauren is alright? Callie?”

I nodded. “Yeah, they’re both fine. They’ve been through a lot, but so has anyone who survived this.”

Ruth nodded. The news brought peace, softening the features of her face.

“Okay,” Ruth said. “Tell me everything. Why you’re here. How you go out. Everything.”

Over the next two hours, we explained everything — how I escaped Bunker 108, met Makara and Samuel, and how Anna had joined us at Raider Bluff to head to Bunker One in order to discover the origins of the xenovirus.

Ruth stopped me when I reached the hardest part — Khloe dying.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I know you liked her.”

I felt my eyes moisten. “How did you know that?”