When The Lights Go Out

We did this, we caused all of this to happen. We blocked out the sun, now we lived in darkness. Things were different with out the sun, flowers did not grow, trees began to die, and the oxygen was starting to dissipate. Even us humans were beginning to ta

I remember it very well, it had only been a year since we decided we would put a stop to the war, it was a long and grueling war. So someone in the Oval Office gave the order to push the button. At that point it became a nuclear war. The lucky ones were the ones that took the direct hit from the bomb and were killed instantly. The rest of us that were left got the fall out. One bomb after another till the atmosphere was filled with nuclear gases so thick it blocked out the Sun. I was a soldier in the Army, we were given gas mask to keep us from inhaling the toxic gases. Some failed to do this and the first of us to die became the first to receive the treatment. It was said that it would bring life back to those who died from the gases but it was still in it's experimental stages. I remember it did work, my best friend and long time bunk mate had went outside the protective dome with out his mask, he felt he was being held prisoner and said nothing will hurt us out there so he proceeded to go out and dropped dead within a minutes time. Scientist came rushing out, of course with there gas mask and environmental suites on and gathered him up. I was very sad that he would do this, but the next day he was right beside me again talking and chatting like nothing even happened. I found out later he had no memory of anything happening. Last thing he remembered was having chow with me the day before. After this I decided to do some investigating for myself.

 

The next day I got up and started wondering around. It seems there were other victims of the fall out brought in. I hid and watched to my amazement how the scientist worked with these people. They had tubes and wires attached all over them. I followed the tubes with my eyes and seen vats labeled Liquid of Life, the wires were to make there hearts beat and keep an eye on there vitals. All at once one of them jumped up and began to scream like they were in pain, and started pulling wires and tubes from them like a mad man. Some of the guards grabbed the man trying to subdue him with no luck at all. He threw them aside like throwing away a plastic cup or something. Screaming and yelling he ran right past me as I faded away into the darkness of the corridor hiding from the men chasing him. He found a door leading outside and ran right out into the fall out air. To my amazement he did not die again but just kept on running.

 

One year later

Two years had passed since we decided to drop the big one. Still the air was poisoned with toxic gas and blotted out the sun. I am still a soldier but for different reasons now. Some of the humans that had died from the fall out stayed dead but there were others that were brought back from the dead. These souls were no longer human but became something else completely. They were dead but not dead not really classified as undead, just not part of the living. What ever was in the tanks labeled Liquid of Life changed them and caused a mutation beyond humanity, a monster if you will. It made them stronger, faster, and able to breath the toxic air. Some of them lost all there hair, and some grew hair all over there bodies like animals, but regardless of what they looked like if they bit you or scratched you than you became one of them. Those of us that were still healthy lived in fall out shelters eating what we could find as long as it was sealed in a can. The animals of our world had long died except the damn cockroaches, I swear these things could live through anything. Going out to find food was a dangerous thing, not only did we have to fight off the Damned but you had to make sure you had every part of your skin covered and ware and oxygen mask. If at anytime you breath the air or got a cut in you suit you were sure to die. I know that fall out can last a while but we prayed every day to see the sun again. From time to time rays of sunlight would shine through the fall out but would not last for long. If one of the Damned were to get caught in the sunlight they would burst into flames and die. So we knew if it ever shown again we would be saved from them.

One day a small group of us, about five or six men, were out trying to find food when we were attacked by some of the Damned. It was a fight we could not get away from. Sometimes we would find a hole or a building we could hide in cause they were not very smart. This time however we were caught out in the open. They moved on us and we began to fire. Sure they would drop dead if shot but the problem was shooting them, they moved so fast it was hard to get a clear shot to kill them. We ran and shot and ran some more hoping to find a place to hide. I looked back once and seen them take out one of us. It was like a lion taking down a gazebo, once one took him down the whole group pounced on him and began to feed. I didn't know who it was at the time but it wasn't me so I kept running trying to take advantage of the fact they were preoccupied. Once I found a place to hide I noticed the others remaining were right there with me.

We decided to wait it out rather than fight them. Someone said it was Charlie Goff that they got. S**t now I had to tell his wife about this, I tried to get him to stay for her sake now I had to take back this bad news if we were able to get out of this. We checked our oxygen and seen the lowest one had two hours left. Still we hadn't found any food. After and hour of trying not to watch them feed on Charlie they started to go away. We waited another thirty minutes then decided to head back to the shelter before Bill ran out of oxygen. As we were leaving the building we had found for cover Sam found a shelf full of can good. Wow we had hit it big for once, we gathered all we could having to leave some with no way to carry it all and headed back to the shelter. There was nothing left of Charlie as we passed by where his clothes and a few remains of bones lay. Upon returning to the shelter I gave Sara the bad news, she did not cry all she did was call him a stupid jerk and said he got what he deserved. The rest of the evening Sara sat by herself. That night we gathered together and once again prayed for the sun to shine in the morning to end this never ending darkness.

 

Another two years had passed and we were still living out of fall out shelters. Because our water supply had been contaminated by the fall out, we had to build a water purifying machine. This machine would then take oxygen from the water to filter into the shelter, it also gave us a supply for our mask when we had to go out. Where we once lived in small groups of about six to a shelter, thinking it would be easier to move around if we were attacked by the Damned, we could no longer do that because they had begun to get wiser. We would find larger shelters so we could have more of us to fight them off when they came for us. We still had to watch how many people we had in a shelter so as to not use more oxygen than we could make So we had built sensors that would keep tabs on the oxygen level and had humans to monitor them keeping a round the clock eye on the sensors. Sometimes this would be the most boring job you could be asked to do, but it all came down to survival of the fittest. At the present moment the Damned were winning this particular battle.

 

As our human population diminished, the Damn's population increased, leaving us to feel like we were fighting a losing battle. Sometimes when we were fighting they would get to one of us and drag them away but not kill or wound them, they would use them for bait trying to lure more of us out to save them. If it did not work then they would kill them and throw there remains (parts they did not eat) in the direction they thought we were in. This was really hard for any one of us to stomach. One particular time we were out scavenging for food, ammo, and any technologies that would help us survive, when we happened upon one of them by there self. Now this was something we had never seen before and did not know what to make of it. One of the young boys in my group started to take aim and I stopped him. I couldn't believe it, this was my friend in the army before all this happened. I was at a loss as to what to do. I looked around at my group of scavengers and realized all but one of them were just kids not more than sixteen or seventeen years old. Had it really come to this using children to fight our wars. I looked at Sam, my Sargent and told him we had enough supplies for now so just take the boys back to the shelter and I would be there soon. After a slight disagreement about me staying behind he followed his orders and took them back

 

After they had got safely away I brought my gun to bare on my old friend and slowly started walking out towards him, he was eating something, to my amazement it was a squirrel. I thought all other life was gone. I called to him and he whirled around quickly to face me. He growled than ask me in a deep gruff voice, that was no longer human, why was I not afraid. If the truth be told I was scared shitless, but I couldn't let him know that. Keeping my riffle on him I reminded him we were friends at one time and I wanted to help him. His face twitched and contorted and almost screaming at me saying “there is no help for me I am dead” and lunged at me. I fired my riffle at him three times hitting him in the chest. He fell and I turned to go with sadness in my heart for him. As I did I heard a noise behind me, so thinking there was more of them I turned back, riffle at the ready. I looked where my friend had been but was no longer, he got up and ran off into the woods. This frightened me so I double timed it back to the shelter. When I arrived at the shelter I banged on the door for them to let me in, but first I had to be scanned for any possibilities of infection from the virus that had plagued our very existence. They did this as quickly as possible knowing it was me outside the door. Once inside the outer door, oxygen was released into the chamber before the inner door was opened and I had to remove my suit then I could enter. When I reached the inside I quickly gathered the men up and told them of my new discoveries. Never before had any one of the Damned gotten up after being shot. We talked about this for a while and came to the conclusion my friend was one that had been brought back from the dead with the Liquid of Life and not merely turned by the virus. This presented a whole new set of problems. If this was the case and the original ones could not be killed by shooting them, could they be killed at all, and why have we not seen any of them till now. I also told them that my friend spoke where as the others seemed as though they could not. This gave them a side of intelligence we didn't know they had. I then told them about the squirrel my friend had been eating, this gave us hope that maybe some how some way the animals were surviving too. We had a lot of things to consider in this new turn of events, but I was tired so I decided to rest while they figured out what our next move was, after all I was only a leader outside the shelter not inside.

 

As I was heading to my barracks Sara walked up to me and slapped me across the face. She said that Charlie had done something stupid like that and gotten killed. Sara had become attached to me since she lost her husband to the Damned, brutality murdered and devoured like a bore in a pack of starving wolves. Sara and I had become close but we were in no way lovers. It was just nice to have someone there to share your thoughts and fears with, now she was giving me the third degree over what I done. Let me tell you when she got started all you could do was sit back and take it. She didn't care that I get new information on our adversaries or that this was my job, she just knew she didn't want to be left alone again. I told her I was sorry and she smiled at me, gave me a hug, and told me to go get some rest.

 

I awoke with a startle as the sound of loud voices rang down the corridor of the shelter. I jumped up to go see what the commotion was all about, as I stepped from my barracks someone grabbed my and with a look of fear in there eyes began screaming “there here, there here they found us” I knew just what they were talking about. Every time the Damned found one of our shelters they would began to tear it a part. I ran to my station preparing for battle. When I got there Sara was already there getting it ready for me to began defending our shelter. Each one of us had a job to do, Sara's was to make sure I had ammo and would run for anything I needed in the heat of battle. We watched as they stood on a hill just outside of the range of our guns. Silence fell across the whole shelter, and then all hell broke loose as the Damned started running towards us. We started firing trying to conserve ammo as we did but not wanting to take any chances either. There were so many of them, as the first wave hit us I thought it would never end. We lost some of our power and it became semi dark in there. They were going for the generators first. If we had no power we could not fight back. They just kept coming and kept coming there were so many of them and they were so fast and so strong, we couldn't get them all. After what seamed like an eternity we thought all was lost, this was it, they had finally won. Just as we had given up, something we had not seen in a very long time, it started to rain. Slowly at first and we noticed that the Damned started howling in pain. The rain was hurting them. It was like acid on there skin they ran for shelter under anything they could find. It started raining more and more and as it did light began to shine through. The Damned ran howling in pain, the shelter erupted in shouts of victory and thankfulness. It rained for two days and the more it rained the more the sky began to clear. Finally our prayers had been answered . The fall out toxins were disappearing and we had more daylight even in the rain than we had in four year. Was it finally over, I hoped so. Now it was time for the Damned to hide in shelter. At least during the daytime anyway.

Reviews

[W. J. Howard]

Great 1st person story. As always you really know how to make your character's real. Nice turn about in the end. I could have used a more visual description of the undead. Maybe more violent action with them.

[Raging Flames]

Good story, but couldn't you use a smaller font? I just have to keep on scrolling.

Keep Writing and welcome to Writers' Cafe :D