Pitch Black

We woke up a little past mid-day, and began packing up our belongings. I carefully put all of my chemistry tools in my backpack. As smart as I am, being a chemist in the middle of an apocalypse is never easy. I wrapped all of my glass vials and put them in my tin Band-Aid box, and walked over to help Sam wrap up her sleeping bag. My stomach growled but I knew we had no time for food.

Finding a new home was always stressful for all of us, Blakely especially. Although we were the same age she always seemed to act like a “Mother” figure of us. Even after we stumbled upon Liam, Danielle and Louis, who happen to all be older than us, she continued to act like she was the eldest. “Is everyone ready to get going?” Blakely was waiting at the exit of the cave, pack on and rifle slung over her shoulder.

I slid my bowie knife in my boot sheath and placed the lock in its holster on my belt. Once everyone was ready we quickly left the cave, in search for safe place to stay tonight. For most of the walk I had my face in my notebook, running numbers through my head. I was so close with the last test. I ran the numbers through my head so many times that I wasn’t sure how it failed. It made absolutely no sense that it failed.

Suddenly I collided with an other body, sending us both to the ground. I had been so caught up in my number that I hadn’t noticed the group stopped. “That was beyond graceful Ash.” I quickly pulled myself off of Louis, and apologizing a million and one times. I took the advantage of us stopping to pull out my pencil, and regained my focus in trying to find the flaw in my numbers. It wasn’t even five minute and we were moving again. I gazed up at the suns position and figured we had about two hours of sunlight left. If we were going to survive the night we needed to find shelter.

“Blakely, we need to either find somewhere to stay tonight or make shelter.” It was as if Liam was reading my mind. “We don’t have much daylight left, and I don’t want to be out here when it gets dark.” The look that crossed my little sisters face when he said night, was one of sheer horror. We all were afraid of the dark; we would just never admit it.

“There’s some apartment complexes just up ahead, maybe we can scout one out for the night.” We all nodded our heads in agreement. “We need to be gone by mid day thought. This place isn’t safe, I can feel it.” Her words made me shutter. Out of the group I was, well to simply say the brains. Yeah I knew how to work a gun and fight, but I was much better at solving arithmetic and figuring out chemical equations.

We made our way up to the first building, making as least noise as possible. We picked a random apartment that wasn’t on the first or last floor and checked every nook and cranny for bloodsuckers. Once everything was safe, we locked the doors and shut all the windows.

I watched as the sun fell over the sky, and dark began to creep through the city. I use to love the dark, but now it’s just a painful reminder that we’ve lost our world. I walked into the bedroom that Blake claimed as ours and began to set up my work area. There were test tubes filled with the demons blood with different chemicals mix in scattered across my workspace. Everything I tried always led to same result, the blood cells completely died and what every was living off of it would too.

I hit my head against the wall trying to think of something, no anything that would make the cells live. My head began to throb telling me I need to quit. I knotted my fingers into my hair in frustration, and sighed. “Ashling, you’ll figure it out. You always do.” My little sisters words made me smile. She always encouraged me when I was losing hope in myself.

“You’re bloody right I am!” I said putting on my best British impersonation. Liam and Danielle laughed but Louis thought it was slightly less than funny. His look of disgust was beyond describable. It sent all of us into another whirl wind of laughs. Our laughter was cut short by a loud crashing sound coming from down the hall.

“What was that?” I croaked out, trying to make as little sound as possible. It was times like these that I could think my best. My brain was working a million times faster because I was put in imminent danger. I could feeling someone grabbing my arm and leading me towards a room, but I was too focused on the door to see who it was.

“Everyone find a hiding spot. Sam, I want you to carefully and quietly climb up on the top shelf of the closet and hid behind the blankets-“ she tried to protest, being that she didn’t want to be alone but, there was a second crash and it was getting closer. Before I knew it Blakely pulled me to the ground and shoved me under the bed, which had no space for movement. By the third sound we were able to tell that it was someone breaking down doors, and the must have been Vamps because they weren’t being sneaky at all.

I had no clue where anyone but Sam was at when the busted down our door. I could hear them taking in deep breaths trying to catch our scents. I could feel my heart racing as they walked into the room. They didn’t bother even looking at the bed and went straight for the closet, my breath hitched think about Sam who was probably terrified. “I smell something over here.” The other one yelled from the living room. Thankfully he walked away, just before pulling away the last blanket.

I let out a deep breath of relief, and focused back in on listening to what they were saying. It was all mumbles to me thought. Finally after what seemed like an hour they left. We all stayed in our spots for almost twenty more minutes after they left. We all began to crawl out at the same time, making sure to be extra quiet.

Hiding was always the worst part of this whole apocalypse thing. Sitting there, thinking ‘Is this really how I’m going to die? Was this all I was meant for?’ My thoughts were cut off by Liam’s voice. “Ash, are you ok? You look like a ghost.” I quickly plastered a smile to my lips.

“Yeah I’m fine.” It was a pathetic lie but I said it anyways. “I always get shook up when we get in those situations.” He watched me for a minute then began talking to Danielle. I went back to my lab and books.