Chapter One: Two Hours Until Night
It had been twilight for nearly twenty-nine hours. My sister and I were ready to seal off the doors the moment night was announced. We’d arm our security system and hope we had enough food and supplies to make it through.
I was going through the ration checklist again when Simone rushed into the kitchen, a panicked expression clouding her face.
“Helene, I did the math wrong. And now it’s almost night. I have to have them. You know I have to have them!”
Simone is a bit younger than I am and given to melodrama, so it didn’t occur to me at first to be concerned. Everything is intense with her. It has been ever since the night our parents were killed.
“You have to have what?”
I didn’t know why I checked the list again. It wasn’t as if I could make a run to the store this close. The darkness already crept around the edges of my existence, winding its cold spiny fingers around my throat…and squeezing.
“My pills.”
The world froze and my mind with it.
Simone has seizures. She has to take a pill once after every sleep—once every twenty-five hours. Exactly. If she misses even one dose, or is late, she could seize. If she seizes, she could die. Otherwise, she’s fit, blonde, clear creamy complexion, and stunning blue eyes. Her medical problem is the only thing that makes her anything less than absolutely perfect.
“When do they run out?”
She pulled out the glowing glass screen where she’d worked out all the math. “Fifty hours before the light comes. I could maybe try to delay my doses just a little—make them stretch…”
“No! It’s too risky.”
Her condition and medication were too sensitive. Once she’d seized after only being late two hours. It wasn’t worth the gamble. There were too many moments between when the last dose would be taken and day for her to have a seizure. The hospitals were open at night, and emergency services would come and get you. But they wouldn’t transport you back home unless you had a lot more money than we did.
I grabbed a jacket off a silver hook jutting from the wall. “I’ll go to the pharmacy. Do you have your prescription card?”
“Yes, but…”
I ripped the shiny metal card from her hand. “I’ll be back in time. I promise.”
Simone shook her head, adamant. “I’ll come, too.”
“No.”
She paced the floor, and our dog, Hinkly, followed, wagging his fluffy white tail. I’d gotten him at the animal hospital I worked in. I only had a job during the day hours. We had to pinch every penny to get us through night. The pay at night was much higher due to the risk, but I’d chosen to take the night sabbatical option and try to make our supplies stretch. Simone’s clerical job let her work from home after dark. It helped.
Hinkly took the mission of covering three yards of floor back and forth in a circuit seriously as he studied us both from six inches off the ground.
“What if we just go?” Simone said.
“Go where?” But I knew where.
“Another city. They have to be out there. They might be different than this. Night could be safe there.”
We’d been through this about a thousand times. Whether there existed other cities besides our own was uncertain. Some said there were others, but if that were true, and they were any better than this, why hadn’t people left?
The story was that a long time ago, whatever happened to change day and night had killed most of the people on the planet. Before that, various groups would war over who would control everything. But after the event, cities formed and remained separate, each deciding on how they would live and what laws they would abide by with the promise there would be no more wars.
I was convinced there were no wars because there were no other inhabited places. This was it. All there was. Surely they would have at least communicated with us if they were out there. And how did we know they were any better than us if they existed? It could be even worse—though that was hard to imagine.
As far as I was concerned, it was just another comforting story to make it seem like there was hope or a point to anything.
“No, Simone. It’s too dangerous. If we go and there’s nothing else… We’ll die out there.” I could hear the exhaustion in my voice, and for the briefest moment, I considered us dying out in some wilderness together, and a vague sense of peace swept over me. I immediately shook it away. I couldn’t indulge the fantasy right now.
“But if they’re out there…we could make it before my medicine ran out.”
The idea was crazy. As if traveling in the dark for God only knew how long and how far with just the supplies we could carry wouldn’t end in some horribly grisly way.
“And what if they don’t have your medicine? You don’t know how advanced they are.” Why was I talking about these other people as if they had any reality independent of my own imaginings?
“But Helene…”
“I’m going to the pharmacy. You’re staying here. I’ll be back before night.”
She grabbed my arm, tugging at me like a petulant child. Hinkly barked. Of course he’d take her side. I jerked free and pushed her back on the sofa, running out the door before she could join me. I pushed the automated lock button on my key box and leaned against the steel door to catch my breath.
Simone banged and screamed from the other side, shouting curses at me. I had the only key. I could get back in, but otherwise that door wouldn’t budge until it automatically unlocked in the morning. She could hate me all she wanted, but at least she’d be safe.
I tried not to think about what would happen if I didn’t make it back before morning.
***
The pharmacy stood inside a much larger shopping center. It was packed much the same as it would have been just before a major celebration. We’d had a thousand hours of the rule of day—plenty of opportunities to stock up and store up and do all that we needed to do to survive another night here.
And yet.
There was a line to the door for last minute provisions—things we’d forgotten. The pharmacy line was longer than I expected, even though I shouldn’t have been surprised. The very real possibility hit me that I could be stuck out after dark, subject to the dangerous whims of the city’s predators.
Why did I have to have the responsibility of Simone? She was a weight tethering me down, heavier and more certain than gravity. I shook the thought away. It wasn’t a question of whether or not I loved my sister, it was just…this all seemed so futile. It was as if our lives had been arranged in such a way that we were just waiting for our number to be called. There was no real hope that we’d die peacefully in our sleep in old age. Few made it that long. Whatever happened would be the result of some out-of-control deviant after dark. Without Simone to worry about…
That thought was cut short as a couple of patrons near me started to shout at each other, one shoving the other onto the ground. This would never happen in full day. Already the shift was starting to happen in people, as if some craven beast lived inside our skins and was clawing its way out like a malevolent butterfly escaping a polite cocoon.
Hundreds of hours ago, these same people had pleasantly pushed their shopping carts. “No, you go first.” “No, you, I insist.” Smiles and genteel manners and hardly a raised voice or impolite word to be heard anywhere.
And here we were.
“Fuck you, you piece of shit. My wife is pregnant. I need it more than you do!”
The other guy didn’t seem to agree, as he punched the first one in the jaw.
The officials appeared almost out of nowhere. They couldn’t be reasoned or argued with. They were stoic. Impassive. One whipped out a baton and waved it menacingly at the scuffling men. They stopped immediately.
“Disorder will not be tolerated until night.”
The two men stood, stock still, holding the box of chocolate they’d been fighting over between them, neither making a move to take or release it.
The puncher forced a smile and said, “You’re wife is pregnant. You take it. I insist.”
I half expected the first guy to try to give it back to the other man. After all, the officials were watching and recording and analyzing and deciding. But he just mumbled, “thank you”, and moved to a nearby line a few yards from the one I stood in.
A buzzer sounded, and the room went still as death.
“One hour until night begins,” an electronic voice said over a loudspeaker.
The tension was thick and unrelenting. No one was willing to risk punishment for breaking the code of civility when the officials looked like they were itching to mete out their warped brand of justice for the awful crime of fear and stress.
There were still ten people in front of me. By now I knew I wouldn’t make it home, locked safely behind the door with the state-of-the-art security system engaged, before that final buzzer sounded. Right now I was just hoping to get to the pharmacist at all.
The woman at the front of the line was so irritating it made me long for that buzzer so I could…do something.
“I don’t know…it’s…it’s that thing. You know…the thing you take when you have…oh…what’s the word?”
Dementia was my guess. But I wasn’t a medical professional.
“Hurry up, lady!” someone practically growled from two people behind me. The officials eyed him with suspicion, and he quietened down.
After what felt like forever, she remembered the thing that helped the thing, got it, and was on her way. The line moved faster after that.
“I’m sorry, we’re out of this,” the pharmacist said when I reached the window and handed her Simone’s prescription card. How could they possibly be out of it?
I was already strategizing my escape. Leave now. Forget other pharmacies. Lock up. Stay behind the door until it gets closer to Simone’s pills running out. If I’d bothered to think it through, it just made more sense. By that point in the night, probably most predators were winding down—getting most of these impolite urges out of their systems. Couldn’t I try to venture out then? Some places would surely be open. It wasn’t as if everybody stayed locked up for so long.
Just the weak ones.
“Did you want to do that?” the pharmacist asked.
I sensed the people behind me getting impatient, the urge to do me violence growing by degree with each second that elapsed of me still taking up space they wanted to occupy. “I’m sorry, what?”
“We have two approved substitutes. I can give you both of them at a discount if you need.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Mostly who makes them. Slightly different formulations but no real difference otherwise. If she handles what she’s taking well, she should be fine on either of these, but I can give you both for peace of mind.”
I nodded. “Okay. Yes, do that. Thank you.”
A buzzer sounded as I was paying.
“Fifteen minutes until night begins.”
The announcements weren’t necessary, and I was convinced they were born of sadism rather than a duty to inform. After all, every person in the building had watched the countdown clocks the whole time we’d been in line.
The ominous sound of the ticking grew louder, making my skin crawl. No one was oblivious to the situation. The only calm people were the hunters, the ones who’d come looking for the low-hanging fruit—the people who had forgotten something and thought they could beat the clock.
There was always someone who was wrong. This time, I was among them.
It was already full dark when I got outside. If we wanted to split hairs, night had already begun, but the clock hadn’t run out yet. It had to be official.
If I could just get to the trains before the final buzzer. It wasn’t full safety, but it was safer than being out in the open like this. There would be others like me there. We could fight back if something started.
I was a few blocks from the train, still too isolated and away from even semi-safety, when the final buzzer sounded.
“Welcome to night. One thousand hours until morning.”
The countdown clock reset, and the ticking faded as the red glowing numbers began to lurch again in a slow downward progression that seemed much slower than just moments before.
The only sound I heard was my own breath. I moved faster, going into an all-out run. The only thing I cared about was getting the pills to Simone.
People poured out of the shopping center in a panic behind me. Fights were already breaking out. Maybe the train wouldn’t be any safer.
A large, meaty hand wrapped around my arm, but someone else fought him off. I turned to thank my rescuer, but I hadn’t been rescued. He’d merely fought like those two men in the store fighting over the chocolate.
He shoved me into a nearby car and locked me in before going to the other side. Once inside, he cuffed my wrists together and took the bag with my sister’s pills, my key box, and my personal bag, and tossed them in the back.
This was someone official or someone with money. No one else had independent transportation. The nice roads existed for a select privileged few. The rest of us traveled like so much cattle in electric boxes. It was another reason Simone and I couldn’t leave. How would we get out? Walk? The trains surely wouldn’t go outside the city.
I didn’t scream. I didn’t try to bargain. What was the point? This guy already had a plan in place, and I couldn’t let him know about Simone. He might take her, too.
I stared out the window as the car started and we pulled away, one half of me coming undone because Simone could die, the other half relieved that I might.
I couldn’t find the energy to cry or beg. Everything would be over soon.