Light from Darkness

Chapter 5- Bones

Dahlia was shocked by the situation she was currently in, she had come a long way to run from the hell she had experienced at her home only to reach this place. She must have collapsed in front of the gates upon getting here the soldiers here had taken her in after that though she had no idea what had gone on to cause all this. All the dead bodies around the camp… The good news was that there would be food and water here now that the population had been dramatically reduced, the bad of course being that she had caused every death here, no matter what that diary entry said people had died because of her arrival. At this current moment she was sat on the bottom bunk of some dusty beds with thin covers inside a small hall of metal housing dug into the ground, a precaution in case of heavy bombing. Lockers lined the walls with more military style beds separating them occasionally, Dahlia reckoned there had to be enough beds for more than one hundred soldiers in this long hallway. It probably wouldn’t be housing any more soldiers though, whatever Dahlia had brought with her had killed off anything left here after the disappearance of electricity. It was no longer an option to seek refuge here as whatever killed them could kill her next, it was on this thought that Dahlia investigated the rest of the camp along with the corpses that inhabited it, after all she’d seen death plenty of times so what was a couple more bodies to her?

So the rest of the day was spent riffling through lockers for any information on the current events before her arrival, she found surprisingly little. It was obvious that there would be no letters because there would be no point composing them but apart from the single diary entry that poor man Tony had written before his supposed death there was nothing in the way of information. Dahlia guessed she would just have to do some serious thinking although the method of the soldier’s termination could be worked out just by simply observing the wounds displayed on some of them. Bullet wounds, not monsters claws or diseases that Dahlia might have unwilling brought here. She wondered what had caused them; the first idea was that they had shot each other but why? The second was perhaps more threatening: terrorists had raided the whole camp. It was a reasonable thought, after all that was partly what had driven her away from her home originally however it was a simple fact that raiders did just that, raid, and it was also a simple bit of evidence that she was frequently finding food and guns on the bodies and in the lockers. They would have robbed all this stuff if any had raided these buildings. But if not them the question still arose as to why the soldiers had shot each other and how she had been the spark to the powder keg. It took a lot more wondering to find the answer. After searching the building Dahlia had awoken in she decided it best to exit through the only entrance to the hut beneath the ground and walk out into the currently raging wind that swept sand along in it’s fury. Dahlia stumbled across the yard along the side of camouflage draped crates and small bivouacs of manmade materials until she reached a brick building in a row of similar ones and bumbled into the loose wooden door and went inside. Upon closing the door she was welcomed with a calm air whistling through the space she had now entered. A sort of weird whining was emanating from somewhere in the room and it became clear where as soon as Dahlia inspected the contents inside. Just by glancing she could see that out of the cluttered deck, tall potted plants and fairly large metal closet where the sound was coming from. She marched over to the closet put her hands on the doors and flung them open with no hesitation. She would later come to bless whatever gods she could think of that she had done so.

The days where law ruled over most were gone, now the only laws people lived by were those made by themselves. Some were considerate, kind and very disciplined when it came to such guidelines. Some had started to form whole societies like those in the Christian town Ella and Rowland had lived in or the one currently forming in France. Some believed the only reason anyone survived was to create peaceful existences and rebuild so that they could return future generations to the life they had once known. Grand dreams like reaching the stars and kingship over the world were dreamt of often by many in the new world, in fact the higher chance that dreams might come true in some ways  was one of the few good things about the great switch off. Almost all eventually arrived at the conclusion that old laws were the only way to get to these dreams and that the new world cleaned the slate for a new start on those goals. Russell wasn’t one of them however. Since day one of the switch off he had robbed, pillaged and killed who and what he felt like with no guilty conscience, he had taken what he needed to and murdered anyone who stood in his way although he never favoured the term “murdered” anyway. He was still alive as a consequence, he had been brutal and merciless when necessary. He laughed at the times when he would be bullied in school and college for being a stereotypically kindly Canadian, defiant in the face of his labels as he did what he wanted and never cared for anyone but himself. However he had already been fighting racism as well, which he had to say was starting to lower bit by bit. Of course now everything was out the window and none of that even mattered, everyone had their own different views on how they went about their lives. He thought this as excellent. People were getting lazier and lazier all the time, so many decisions made for them because they apparently couldn’t make them on their own. Russell hated laws with a passion, as soon as he worked out was going on after the switch off he strolled out of the factory he worked at and abandoned whatever family he had. He simply didn’t think they were worth getting concerned about at the time, after all his parents had moved back to Canada a few years after he’d left school so reaching them from Detroit where he lived and worked was going to be more difficult and, as heartless as it might sound to some, Russell never really grew attached to anyone certainly not them. In fact he only really had one agenda he wanted to fulfil apart from keeping alive: he wanted a fully working Harley Davidson (navy blue if possible). There were a few problems with this aim, the first being that he needed to find one and this in itself would be difficult enough as everyone had stolen whatever they desired on the day of the switch off. However this problem was soon negated for the most part as every car required electricity to start and it had all disappeared so many had left cars where they were, the main transport that was now becoming a rarity was actually manual bicycles which Russell found relatively hilarious. This was maybe his largest hurdle to get over. He started by heading to bars or any places where you could stereotypically find bikers hanging around and it only took Russell a few days to acquire the motorbike itself (it would have taken him less if not for the bumbling morons who insisted on trying to kill him for anything he possessed although they were easily dispatched by some sort of machine gun he’d picked up from a dead body on the very first day). It had taken him several years before he discovered a distinctly unique way of forming electricity.