To Imagine...

Imagine 16: When Darkness Falls

A/N: Not edited.

My ass was off the ledge in moments, though my brother and David were already considerably ahead of me. I jogged a bit to catch up with them, and as I did I realized I left my water bottle and something that meant something to David. The two of them glanced at me as I caught up, but they seemed grim and now I understand why. The Dark was behind and all around us. The light between lamp posts disappeared and left inky darkness in the middle--the fact that we had to walk between it was despondent. Additionally, the wind had picked up. Icy and strong, we stumbled down the road and guilt and dread settled in my stomach, thinking of what I left behind.

Small bits of snow began to mix with the wind, and as we continued on we saw it already sticking to the edges of the sidewalk. We all walked in silence with our heads down and our arms tucked away. The wind was behind us, and though it pushed us it made our journey no less difficult. We must have been walking for the good part of an hour. I felt little soreness, but then, I felt little at all. The cold hardly bothered me, nor did I feel much of it. Though I was by no means warm--the little cold that I felt was less than uncomfortable. This was when I could no longer go on. Though I had been walking slightly ahead of them, I stopped and turned around, sprinting past them even as they yelled after me.

"Alex!" I recognized my Glenn's voice--though hardly--through the howling wind. I hardly heard that either.

"Alex! ... Blizzard!" His voice was swallowed by the wind, but his last word struck an understanding in me. I brushed off my doubt and continued to plow forward. It was a hard move.

David and my brother soon appeared on either side of me as I pushed through, shouting over the wind and asking what in God's name I was doing. For a short while I couldn't answer, guilt stuck in my throat. Then I shouted back over the wind towards them.

"My water and Lohan's box! I left them!"

I could never be sure how they reacted to that. I was going to plow backwards into the wind and blizzard for a good hour for less than half a water bottle and a box? I heard Lohan shouting at me that it didn't matter. I looked to him.

"What about your money!?"

Whatever reply I had gotten was lost, if I had gotten one at all. I tried to keep pushing forwards, but I soon realized the wind was far too strong to get through. Painful understanding dawned on me and I turned around to see evident relief on their faces. At this point, they did not want to go without me. To lose me after we had gotten so far for something ridiculous and meaningless would be senseless, and I surely would have never made it on my own. That thought hit me like a smack in the face. Though my guilt fell away, I thought about staring into the Dark ahead of me as I pushed against the wind--that memory would stick with me for a long, long time. That was insane--it hurt to think about.

As we turned and headed back down the road, we began to run as the wind pushed us. We had wasted enough time on my behalf, though the thought of the people that we had left behind on the ledge stuck with me for awhile. They had been Grey, mostly at least. I did not think all of them had been lost causes, but they were in fact weak, and I felt sorrow on their behalf. They had stayed too long in the city--the Dark sucked them up like water in the desert. While we still glowed, their light had long extinguished. The moment they sat down was the moment many of them had given up. That is, if they had been capable of a single thought, in that event. My little escapade through the Dark earlier, to take the short way to where Loxi should have been, had stolen a lot of my light. Just for my own selfish wants. Though I had not traveled an incredible distance through the Dark--though far enough that it had taken some time to see the light of my destination on the other side--I had burned out my light in my panic and it had not fully recovered.

Perhaps my brother and David had thought that I had burned out again, which was why they were leaving me there. If they had waited to convince me, their light would have broken as well. Convincing a dead man to get up is no easy trip. Though I feared it, I agreed with their choice. That was simply the world that we lived in, and I held no hardened feelings. One dead man is better than three.

We all were losing considerable light, though, at this point. The lamp posts cast their grey light only in half-dozen or so foot radius, leaving the Dark pressing around us as we traveled from point to point. Looking ahead, all you could see was darkness and the area around the lamp posts. It was a horrible sight.

I kept my head down.

We were running to find what we were looking for, and I hoped to God we would find it soon. I knew that we were close. I could feel it. We were running, stumbling, the snow growing on the sidewalk though we could barely see it. And then we were plunged into dark.

A/N: This will continue in the next part~