The Color Is Black

The Color Is Black
PART I
The City of the Night

A cool rain fell upon a city, a city thirsty for any relief from its burden. It was a darkly refreshing downpour as the city had only seen tears and drops of blood in recent memory, but as refreshing as the rain was it couldn’t wipe away the sins that had been committed here, nor could it prevent the ink of history books long off from being written, printed and pressed into the hands of every wide eyed child. The clouds that cast rain like arrows upon the city hid the sun behind their veil of grey. The sun shined dully out of view but never out of memory. Even if the sun was stifled away from the public eye – or what was left of that public – it still shone brightly; it might not be here, and it might not for a week but it still shone brightly from behind the clouds.
But the darkness was growing. It grew darker and darker like an oncoming storm. The Oncoming Storm. The darkness fell like a guillotine upon the already bludgeoned and violated city.
Darkness was nothing new to humanity – it’s always been present just as the Moon is always present; it never disappears even in the morning light. It watches from out of view. Darkness has been present silence before the first night, did you think it paled as we puny humans first struck flint and iron into our tinder. No, it never really left us. It migrated to our hearts as we filled our cities with light, and it was brought to the surface in this age of cynicism and apathy.

The streets of the city was littered with husks of broken cars. Some were covered in blood and debris; others just lay smoldering in fire like red-hot ashes in a pit. Lumbering beasts that were trucks and military tanks lay on their side as still as stone. Maybe the harsh bite of April showers would surplice? Sadly all the rain did was scatter the blood into muddy streets. Blood soaked down deep into the gravel trying to bury its face from the world but the surface of the cool Chicago streets were impermeable and invincible to their onslaught.
Towering over theses ruins of transportation was the wreckage of towers so tall they scarped the sky. These skyscrapers were in dismay, collapsed and laid out horizontally. They had giant holes punched through them by bombs, missiles and desperation.
Bellow the hulking beasts of towers and sleeping giants still as stone was the most brutal and grisly scene viewed by human eyes, hundreds of bodies scattered across the pavement of every street hanging out of every building. Somewhere more pieces than man, unrecognizable, others were mutilated with skin so tortured and bruised they too were unrecognizable even if they were mostly intact. And others looked like they were sleeping, just a stab wound in the heart, or a bullet though the head.
Rain washed over them smattering their gore. Hauntingly one body twisted its hand up, then its body. The thing rose to its feet with decaying skin, staring at the clouds letting rain penetrate its milky eyes it released a primeval howl and limped away dragging a line of thick blood along with it.
Its howl was not of pain, but reminiscent of darkness and things that were ought not to be.

Tears mixed with rainwater as the young girl, no, woman, she was almost a woman, cried over her sleeping friend. The woman reached into the pockets of the trench coat the girl wore and procured a pistol, she also preceded to tear off a strip of clothing to shield her notebook from the rain.
”I’m sorry, believe me, I’m so sorry.” She whispered, closing her lids with her fingers gently wiping away the blood. The girl crossed her friends hands over her heart.
She looked around to make sure no one was around before pulling the serrated combat knife out of the sleeping girls’ skull. She stood up, looking over her friend one last time. Her friend had pale skin and a bite-mark like a birthmark upon her left shoulder blade.
From behind her somewhere in the distance was a howling, followed by another and another. A lot of something’s was getting closer by the second and they didn’t sound pleased.
“I can’t stay here much longer.” The girl said to herself, she touched her friends’ cheek, “Ann I’m sorry things happened like this, if there is a heaven try to find Marco and Martha up there will you?”
A shadow moved across the gravelly streets as the last rays of light hit the city. The girl ran as quietly and as quickly as her exhausted feet would take her, that wasn’t good enough. She didn’t just want to escape the scene but to escape Chicago itself. It had been her prison for the past two months and countless years before the incident had occurred.
The girl ran over bodies, smashing bullet casings flat and leaving bloody footprints as she stepped in the deluding blood.
She had a whole plan in her head, first Maywood, then Westchester, then Western Springs and Westmont, Willowbrook and Darien, even Romeoville. One by one each one of those places would take her a little bit away from Chicago. Each a step closer to The Promised Land.
This was the girl with the plan, and her name was Katya Rinescata. If anyone was going to live though this thing, she was the unlikely hero.