The Hunted: Predator

Chapter 1: "Held from Darkness"

When the sun glances upon my skin I know I am safe and it is the light that guides me from darkness. The dark has never concerned humans before until "Massacre" day and sometimes I feel like it's just a dream, cause every night I have nightmares about the Grimms, they haunt me in my sleep and I am afraid that someday they will haunt me outside of the walls.

The grimms are vicious creatures that made the ruins of humanity, they are monsters that feed on flesh and blood and haunt humans, we are their predators and the grimms have brought destruction to earth since day one of massacre and earth was once not based about staying alive, surviving from killing and being hidden and held from darkness from where the monsters live, although I feel that my soul becomes darker everyday by being caged like a flightless bird in the refuge. The sun is our only protection from the grimms and somehow the sun is their weakness, they can't die from it but they feel pain, so they only come out at night to hunt, for us.
I have lived almost all my life inside a mountain between concrete walls in the protection of a refuge in the cascade mountains of Washington state, the only place we know where there are humans including Canada and Alaska. We are a population of 10,000 people and we live a very simple life at the refuge, we don't do much except watching our health from diseases, infections and viruses and we try to live the way of living like a human by coping but I tend to spend my time by reading books and being in the library. I have always been fund of books since I got locked between the walls that kept me from the world outside, where all the books of the world where written and where their stories began but the world isn't the same as it used to be because now it's all about life and death, and that's not really a story I would want to read about even if it was my own, but I write now because I hope someday that humans will find the answer to the question of how the defeat of humans lives began and knowing the end of demonic monstrosity so it can all end in time before humanity will be deceased. Before the walls of my prisoned life got torn down my new, free and deadly dangerous life began and my journey for survival was ready to be disclosed, and it happened exactly one month after my 18th birthday.
I woke up to the strong light that glanced upon my closed eyes, the sun had woken and it raised over the mountains and then someone knocked on the door and walked in to my dorm room and it was my mother who came in with an Oreo package that she had taken from the cafeteria kitchen where she worked and she wished me a happy birthday. I sat up and rubbed my tired eyes because it was a blur but when my eyes cleared I opened my wrapped presents and the first present she had given me was a book called Watership down and she gave me it because she used to read it to me when I was a young girl, and then she told me to close my eyes and when I did, I could feel that she was putting something around my neck as she pulled back my hair and then she said I could open my eyes again and when I opened them I saw a dog-tag around my neck and It was my fathers when he used to be in the military and it was one of the few things we still had of him since he died and he died because he saved me and my mothers lives. I hugged my mother as thanking her and she told me that I deserved a piece of him and then she said that she loved me, and I did the same. I put on my black sunflower dress and walked out of my dorm room and walked to the library and on the way to the library, almost everyone who knew me congratulated me and when I had gotten to the library and walked in, there stood everyone dearest to me with a cake and shouted, "Happy Birthday Celestine!"
The first person that I noticed there was my best friend Davin Rune. We knew each other through our parents, his father and my father where in the same recruit when they worked for the military. He congratulated me and I asked him "So where's my present?", and he smiled and said "It awaits for you later."
As I was talking to Davin and someone tapped me on the shoulder and when I turned around there stood Malcolm, the head of the refuge and an old friend to my father and he said "Happy 18th birthday, your father would be proud of you." and then he handed me a dagger called Arkansas Thoothpick, he told me to use it well if I ever needed to use it for protection from grimms or even a human. My mother questioned Malcolm if it was necessary that I would need it but Malcolm told me that I would feel safer with it and so I smiled, thanked him and kept the dagger. When the day had turned into evening, me and Davin where alone in the library by the glass window, he finally gave me the present that I had waited for, he smiled and I could obviously se that it was a book even it if it was wrapped, but it wasn't any book. When I opened the present I gasped and saw that it was To kill a mockingbird. I had only seen the movie of the book and I wanted to read the book but they didn't have the book in the library and so I hugged him and said "Thank you."
Davin and I have been together as friends since birth, I kind of see him as my brother although he is another gender and everyone thinks that someday we will be together intimately, I could never see that happening because I could never waste him if we got together and broke up and I don't feel that kind of love for him, only in the way that he is my best friend and I never want to loose him and I will want to stand by his side till it all ends. As we sat by the window in the library, the windows got covered by the night panels and we didn't get to see the sunset and as I watched the last bit of sunlight shining through the closing panels, I realized I haven't seen a sunset since I was outside the last time, which was years ago and I missed it. I said out loud to him "It's so sad that we need so much light in our lives from darkness, although we can't see the most precious one of them all." and then the night panels shut the windows and Davin looked at me and questioned what I meant and I explained that it was a long time since I saw a sunset and then he was quiet and looked at me smiling oddly and told me to follow him m to some place that he was meant to show me along time ago he said.
As I followed we walked to Davins dorm room and when we went in, he locked the door and jumped up to his bed and stretched his arms high up to a square lid attached to the ceiling and pushed it up and to the side and he jumped up and pulled himself up and said "Okay, your turn."
Davin stretched his arm down to me and I hesitated and was uncertain of the idea because I didn't know what we were doing and them Davin asked me what was wrong, I couldn't answer because I didn't want Davin to see me as a cowered and I have never done anything wreck-less in my whole life so I stepped up and grasped my hand to Davins hand and when he pulled me up I said determinedly "Let's go."
We crawled inside the narrow tunnel in the ceiling and it was dark, I could hear the ventilation system and voices from dorm rooms underneath us as we crawled, and I was afraid that we would get caught by someone or by something else. As I crawled I heard Malcolm's voice coming underneath me and as a I stopped I looked down from the vent and saw him sitting in his office, he was talking to someone but I couldn't see or hear who it was, but then Davin looked back at me and said "Come on" and then I kept crawling forwards.
Davin stopped underneath a hatch and took out a lighter from his pocket and told me to hold it while it was lit. Davin looked at me and whispered "Are you ready?"
I nodded and he smiled and knocked on the hatch and opened it and quickly a white light blinded my eyes and a cold breeze blew through my body like a ghost, I shivered and it gave me goosebumps all over my body and it was the wind from the outside. Davin smiled and looked up through the hole to the outside, and the he jumped up, but I was unsure if it was safe, and then Davin looked down and asked "Hey, are you okay?"
I didn't have to say anything because Davin understood why I was still inside and he could see it in my eyes and he said, "I now it's scary, but what if this is the last chance you get to see a sunset? You can't hesitate anymore Celestine, it's time to wake up and realize that we will always be scared of the fact of dying, but we can't just sit and let our lives past by because we're wasting our time of living, so you have to start living before you die."
Davin has always been a strong person and have been the one who has always supported me and lifted my self-esteem, but he's not the kind that opens up with feelings so I was shocked and inspired when he said that because it was true, and he was right, but I was shocked because he has never said something like that before. He stood up and looked down at me and said "Your going to miss the rest of the sunset if you don't come up."
I looked up at him and forced myself up even if I was afraid and when I came up and my eye sight cleared from the bright light, I gasped because of the beauty of the sun that slowly set behind the mountains. The sky was pinkish red and the sun was bitter wine, the trees were green, the clouds were purple that faded into blue and the mountains were snow covered, it was exactly how I imagined it to be, how it would be from the last time I saw the outside, magical but more realistic and me and Davin stayed before the sun was gone and hid behind the mountains. Davin told me later how he knew about the rooftop, he told me that a few weeks ago he stole a candy bar from the kitchen when his mother was working and he had to find a good place to hide the candy bar. He always knew about the lid on his ceiling but never knew why it was there, but then he used it to hid his candy bar and other things, but later on his candy suddenly vanished and he saw small crumbs of chocolate and trash of the candy wrappers and assumed it was rats that had taken them so he jumped up through the hole and followed the traces of candy. He crawled for a while and found no trace of the rest of the candy but he heard an unusually whistling sound and followed the sound and saw a light ahead of him that shined through the cracks of a ceiling hatch and the whistling sound was louder when he came closer, and when he opened the hatch he saw the outside. After that day I often went to the rooftop to read and watch the view in daylight, and mostly sitting and talking with Davin, and I am grateful for Davin for showing me the rooftop.
When a few days had passed, there was a meeting and after the meeting there was an assembly and everyone was there, and Malcolm stood on the podium and was talking for the whole assembly and as I noticed, Davin was not there and I didn't know why. Malcolm started talking and said, "Welcome everyone for our assembly, I am glad for everyone who are here, because we, the head of the refuge have a very important announcement to say."
The head of the refuge peoples who stood behind Malcolm were sweating and they we're glittering by the light that was shining on their sweaty faces, they looked nervous but Malcolm was cool, and was still chill and smiling and he said, "The head of the refuge have discussed together but also with the two other places we have human connection with, which is Canada and Alaska, have agreed on a mission, a mission for us to find the answer to all, and everything."
The whole assembly started chatting and whispering small talks and Malcolm replied, "Our mission is based on a group of people from our refuge that will head to Canada's Research Facility, and from Canada the group will take another group of chemist and travel to Alaska's Medical Institution so they can research and practice on medicines for cures and antidotes, and hopefully find the answer about Grimms and the savior for humanity. The people who have been given the mission are..."
Malcolm read from a list of names and the names he called up where the names of soldiers from the old recruits, and one of those soldiers names was Davins father, Mr. Rune.
Davins mother, his sister Sheba, and his baby sister was there except Davin to watch while his father walked on stage and the assembly proudly sheared for the "brave soldiers" which Malcolm called them when when they got up on stage. I walked away from the assembly and went to go and look for Davin, and I looked for him everywhere, in his dorm room, the library, the cafeteria, everywhere but then I realized that he could only be at one place no one could find him except me, the rooftop.
Davin was sitting quietly on the rooftop and when I came to sit beside him I said nothing because I didn't have the courage to ask him what he felt but I could almost guess that it was a chock for him and he was probably devastated. We sat quietly for a few seconds until Davin said, "I guess you heard about the mission?" I nodded and he replied, "It's suicide , I know he used to be a soldier but he will never survive and the saddest part is that he can't stand up for himself to Malcolm, Malcolm's the one who made this plan on his own, his own god damn decision."
Davin stood up and shook his head and whipped his eyes with his hand and said, "He has even accepted the mission, my dad, and that he might die. He doesn't give a shit what I think or what he's leaving left behind, cause it doesn't matter if he dies to save others he said."
I stood up and hugged Davin, he wrapped his arms around me and started crying and hugged me tight, and all I could say was "I'm sorry." because there was nothing to say for what had just happened so everything we both could do was to be quiet, for a few minutes, so Davin could reflect on the possibility that his father could die, but also let him now that his father is doing the mission for the possibility of saving humans lives including Davins. The days were turning darker as was the colors of the trees while we were waiting for the cold autumn season that was soon approaching, but the days were also turning darker because of the counting of the days, until the mission would begin. The date was set for when the mission would begin, it was an awaited doomsday for the missioners, and we were sacrificing the lives of men.

Even though we try to avoid darkness, I feel that darkness just grows inside of me like a disease and someday I will belong in it, and maybe as something more demonic than a human being and someday the darkness will catch me, keep me, and I will belong in it like one of the Grimms.