Tevun-Krus #8 - Dystopian SF

The Winter Night

The WInter Night

By: KingBritain

He'd never been outside, but he knew what lay there. Waiting at the heavy metal gates of the Lower Jewel, snarling through mangled, misshapen mouths, the Hackers congregated in the irradiated darkness, waiting for the gates to drop and the city to be open.

It was Winter. It was their time to feast.

Marcus slapped his hand against the boards on his windows and drew away satisfied that they'd hold. Turning back, he saw his wife sitting, blinking away tears, absently loading a shotgun with hands that had been baking only yesterday, and would bake again tomorrow, after the Hackers had had their fill – and if they survived.

'Twenty-eight times,' Marcus said to her. 'We've held them off twenty-eight times. Don't be scared.'

Nadine placed the shotgun on her lap. 'I'm not scared. I'm just sad for everybody else.'

The lamps outside – which he could see by the thin slants of light coming in around the edges of the boards – dimmed to a low glow and then went off completely. Darkness reigned supreme; the absence of light – theirkind of light. The Hackers were nearly blind, and hunted best in the dark.

'It's starting,' Marcus breathed. He slapped the boards again, barely feeling them move. He'd nailed them against the window hard, had spent the last week preparing every little detail about their defence. It wasn't about hiding behind the strongest wall, or having the biggest gun – staying alive was about making yourself more trouble than you were worth. After twenty-eight Winter Nights, Marcus knew what to do. Keep quiet, keep still, keep breathing; there wasn't really more you could do. Hope was their greatest weapon.

'I love you,' Nadine said.

'I love you, too.'

A heavy clunk thudded through the city. A metallic clicking sound, like a rusted chain on a bicycle, followed instantly after. The gates were opening. The Lower Jewel, and all of its citizens, were being sacrificed. Marcus knew that up in the Upper Jewel, rich snobs with fat stinking children and televisions bigger than his bed were watching, knowing that they'd be safe for another year because those in the Lower Jewel had paid for their safety in blood.

'Twenty-eight years,' Marcus said. 'Twenty-eight–'

Something thudded on the window. Marcus dropped down. Nadine grabbed the shotgun, nearly dropping it. They exchanged a look, fear and love and horrid anticipation all mixing together in one, terrible concoction. The Hackers were in the city. They were sniffing out food. The hunt had begun.

Twenty-eight years, he thought. He replayed images of a new rising sun in his head, a sun that banished all the bad in the world away. He'd seen that beautiful light twenty-eight times, had survived to see it twenty-eight times.

And I'll see it again.

The Hackers were animals in the guise of humans – twisted, snarling humans with red eyes that glowered in the dark that seemed to flood around them. Their hunger was insatiable, and no manner of defences could ever stop them once that burning hunger reached its apex. The only choice was sacrifice – to fill their blood lust enough that, for another year at least, the Hackers would slope off and leave the Upper and Lower Jewel alone.

But the Upper controlled the gates and lights of the entire city – a city of two classes in brutal honesty – and with each passing year, the Winter Nights fell on the weakest of shoulders, the Lower Jewel.

Bastards. Marcus scratched his head hard. Bastards. Living off our blood. Our deaths.

The thing outside bulled into the window, wooden boards creaking. Dust coughed out from the gaps. Fevered sounds of sniffing and a wet tongue rolling around in a warped, blackened mouth radiated through the window like a heavy, acrid smell. Marcus could feel the presence of the Hacker, could almost see it. A decrepit version of a man, burnt and mangled by the thick streams of radiation running through his mutant blood. He saw a huge, slobbering mouth, dark red eyes surrounded by grey skin full of weeping sores, a crude claw that had once been a hand knocking against the boarded up window.