Better off Undead

Chapter 56: The Cave

Eli was... confused.

After he had stumbled into the cave, it took him some time to realize what a monumentally stupid thing that had been to do. In the video, the army men had entered the cave prepared, carrying military grade flashlights to fight back the darkness of the underground. Eli didn't have so much as a cellphone flashlight. And yet, he wasn't just stumbling blindly around the emptiness.

The cave, it turned out, was surprisingly well lit.

It wasn't lit with torches, either. They weren't lining the walls like he had somehow stepped through a portal in time and space into a medieval castle. Instead, the walls were lined through and through with electric light. Recessed lighting, even. It was as though someone had gone through a great deal of effort to make the cave feel like a home.

Eli couldn't help but wonder if the lighting had been there when the soldiers in the video had come. Or was it that the vampires were fully willing to enjoy modern comforts, but had needed to wait until technology had improved to a certain point when filling a cave with electric lights was significantly more feasible?

Or - and this was the thought that was truly disturbing to Eli - was it that before the video had been filmed, the vampires had been hibernating? Perhaps sleeping off centuries of hunger hidden away in the caves? Gabriel had suggested something along those lines, that vampires tended to sleep until the hunger woke them and proved too great for them to return to their hibernation. Had the soldiers, by the mere fact of entering the caves, woken all of the vampires, and consequently made them aware of all the changes of the modern century?

Had they poked a sleeping dragon?

The strange question of the lighting wasn't all that was confusing Eli, either. He was also confused by just how empty the cave was. He had expected to find it absolutely crawling with zombies. Or, failing that, absolutely crawling with vampires. Instead, he came across nobody. Not the living, dead, or undead.

He realized it was entirely possible that, like in the video, all the monsters were hiding somewhere deeper in the cave. But it seemed all the more strange that the upper portions of the cave were so well lit if nobody was venturing around in them.

And, really, why did vampires need light, anyway?

Something moved in the corner of his vision, and Eli dropped to a crouch. He felt a little silly doing it, realizing that he was out in the center of the room and there wasn't much in the way of cover or shadows for hiding. Not for the first time he cursed himself for not having had the foresight to gather any weapons from the crash site. He didn't even have his trusty baseball bats. At least he had, largely on unnoticed impulse, picked up a sturdy looking bit of a fallen branch before entering the cave. But that was all he had, and calling that a weapon was being rather generous.

His eyes darted around the shadows in the corner of the room, mining the darkness between the stalactites for any signs of the movement he had seen a moment ago.

"Eli?"

His blood froze for the split second between hearing the voice and recognizing the speaker. His eyes went wide once he realized who had spoken, but it took him a moment to calm his beating heart before he could react.

Straightening, he looked in the direction of the voice. "Aliyah?"

She stepped from the shadows, a wooden spike in either hand. Aside from a fairly nasty looking gash on the left side of her forehead, she looked mostly the same as when he had seen her last. She raised her weapons and eyed him suspiciously.

"Are you... are you one of them?" she asked, inching very slowly towards him, letting the spikes lead her.

Eli looked hurt. "Hey, come on. I'm not that white."