Chapter 15: The Weapon of Faith

Lights were scattered throughout the labyrinth like stars, just bright enough to scavenge for supplies while leaving faces masked by darkness. However, much of the labyrinth was pitch black, a death sentence for those who lost their way without a light. There were also sources of running water scattered about to help prevent mass death by dehydration, but were exceptionally hard to find. To actually get one’s bearings was quite impossible, the winding passages tangled together like a mountain of Christmas lights. They varied in size, from just large enough for a child to crawl through, to large enough for a plane to fly through. Some streets had even been rebuilt, lines of buildings held in great caverns like a subterranean town.

The labyrinth was made of the buildings and streets of the city, as well as all of the objects within. Children’s toys, office furniture, bedding, garbage, wardrobes full of clothes, books, TVs, everything that was included in modern life, now put together like bricks to construct this prison. Cars lay entombed in the walls, floors, and ceilings like fossils in a cave.

There was ventilation and steady airflow, so suffocation wasn’t a danger, but the sources of the fresh air were impossible to find and there was no way to tell day from night. All clocks, analog and digital, had stopped working. Even compasses were useless, just spinning like crazy. The noise levels were random. Over a million people were trapped in this tomb, yet it was like the walls absorbed the sound like a recording studio. Some sounds could be heard, gunshots and screams usually, but it was like everything else happened in a vacuum.

Upon waking up in this dark prison, confusion gripped everyone. Where were they? What had happened to them? How could they get out? For the police, their training kicked in. Maintain order, that’s what they had to do. It didn’t matter where they were, they had to maintain order. Their radios still seemed to function, to a degree, so they were able to partially mobilize, but they had no cars, no stations, and no prison to put the bad people in. It soon dawned on them how hopeless and pointless the situation was, but screams still demanded attention. The expenditure of ammunition was their only means of acting, and when their bullets ran out, the NYPD all but disappeared.

Once the confusion settled, everyone realized that the name of the game was survival. Food, water, weapons, they were scatted throughout the pyramid like health packs in a video game. Was there enough to go around? Unlikely. In the dark, when even God can’t see the sins committed, mankind reverts to its primal instincts. Some hide in terror, keeping their heads down and waiting for order to be restored, focusing on survival. Others are possessed by desire, an elemental typhoon that energizes the senses and overwhelms fear and rational thought. It wasn’t just men, women were going insane as well, able to make a hard 180º from the path of dainty flowers that society had pressured them to be. Quite often, they were wilder than the men, like it was a competition. Fire and blood, they left a path of it wherever they went.

The fight for resources begins.

Jean Clark searched the drawers one by one, careful with how much noise she created. While it was difficult to hear the sounds others made, it always felt like even the slightest tap would alert everyone in the labyrinth to her position. She was in a warehouse-sized chamber filled to the brim with file cabinets that were piled up into haphazard mountains. One might consider this a poor choice to look for food, but there was no such thing. When the pyramid was built, everything was scattered and thrown back together randomly, certain objects being found in the last place one might think to look. While the drawers mostly just contained files, she had already found a stuffed animal, two sex toys, a revolver with three bullets, and some old video games. Well, perhaps these cabinets just belonged to some colorful characters.

A week had passed since waking up, or at least it felt like a week. In that time, she had learned that every spot had to be searched. Before that, she was at the airport, trying to escape the city. Then it was like the world literally turned upside-down. The airport and everyone in it were suddenly lifted into the sky, as if being sucked into a black hole.

Now she was a scavenger, just an oversized rat, but it was what she was good at. At twenty-five years old, she thought she had outgrown this way of life, but then Dominion came along and ruined everything. As she moved across the summit of precariously stacked file cabinets, she heard the sound of voices, coming from outside the chamber. She turned off her flashlight and made herself as flat as possible.

Through the entrance of the chamber, she saw three moving lights, then the men that held them. She couldn’t actually see their faces, just their silhouettes, but their broad shoulders gave them away, as well as the confident swagger that made her nervous. They were searching for more than just food.

“I knew I heard someone fumbling around in here,” one of them said.

“I’m not climbing up one of those death traps,” a friend replied.

“Well there might be some good shit in here.”

Jean watched them from above, trying to make as little noise as possible. The thin metal of the cabinets underneath her would flex and groan with the smallest movement, and the pile wasn’t very stable. Worst of all, she was getting poked all over by awkward corners. She had the revolver with its three bullets in her backpack, so she wasn’t helpless, but from the amount of noise these guys were making, they weren’t worried about their own safety.

They were yanking out drawers and throwing them around, laughing at the loud banging metal. One of them took a handful of papers and lit them on fire, then began tossing on files to build up the flame. The others joined in, pulling out drawers and tossing anything without worth onto the fire. The light of the fire cast a myriad of shadows across the room, the corners and flat sides of the cabinets making it look like some kind of blood-colored cubist painting. The problem was that the smoke was wafting up to Jean and it was getting harder and harder to breathe. If she moved to cover her mouth or pull away from the smoke, the noise might draw them, but if she coughed, it would be just as bad.

Two of the men were starting to climb up on the piles of cabinets, throwing the drawers as loudly as they could like a pair of wild children. One was approaching her position. If she was discovered, what were her chances of getting away? Just getting off this mountain would be difficult enough. One wrong move and she’d fall and easily break a bone.

“Oh, I found something!” the man down below shouted. He threw a cabinet aside and a scream was heard. Jean held her breath as she saw him drag out a skinny child, a boy maybe seven or eight years old hiding in the mountain. “Now we can have a little fun!”

The other two climbed down and looked at the fearful child.

“Hey, I ain’t no fag. If she was a girl, then sure,” the second said.

‘That’s not what you should be objecting to!’ Jean thought.

“Come on, at this age, boys and girls are pretty similar. Once you’re inside em’, you can’t tell the difference.”

“Let’s just sell him. We can probably get something nice.”

“Not until I get my wick wet.”

Jean acted without thinking, drawing the revolver from her bag and getting up onto her knees! “Let him go!” she shouted as she fired at the first man. The bullet missed his head by a mile and sparked off a cabinet behind him. “Shit!” she muttered. Her eyes were watery and stinging from the smoke.

“What the fuck?!” the man yelled, looking up to her position.

“Run!” she shouted at the boy as she fired the last two shots, grazing the second man’s shoulder and cutting the first man’s face.

The boy shot off like a rocket, but the men were too angry to care. They began scrambling up the mountain towards her. Jean pulled out a drawer from a nearby cabinet and threw it down at one of the men, striking his shoulder making him howl in pain. The other two drew their guns and opened fire, most missing but one grazing her arm. She gritted her teeth through the pain and tried to crawl away. If she could get out of the chamber, she could surely lose them in the labyrinth.

She looked ahead to the door and her stomach dropped. One of the men had circled around and was climbing towards her. They were trying to fence in her in, and if she got to her feet, they’d just shoot her.

“You’re going to beg for death when we’re done with you!” he cackled.

He reached out for a handhold, grabbing a drawer hanging ajar. Jean too grabbed it and slammed the drawer shut, crushing the man’s fingers and sending him sprawling back in agony. This was the best chance she’d ever had. She jumped down from the top of the mountain and landed on the man, using him as a cushion and making sure he wouldn’t be able to chase her.

She bolted for the exit, freedom in sight! A gunshot echoed through the chamber and she cried out as a bullet winged the side of her knee. She fell to the ground and the other two men were upon her. One grabbed her from behind and the other delivered a cruel punch to her stomach, ripping the breath from her lungs.

“She’s a nice one! I think we’ll keep her all to ourselves!” the second man said. He had a deranged look on his face, which already had a tasteless dragon tattoo across it.

He grabbed her face and forcefully kissed her, with the disgusting taste of his unwashed mouth filling her own. She tried to resist, but she still couldn’t breathe after that punch. The second man thrust his hands in her pants, and as she felt a grubby finger slip inside her, the strength came. She screamed and kicked the man in the balls, then headbutted the man holding her. As soon as her hands were free, she pulled a butcher knife from a cardboard sheath taped to her pants. She stabbed the blade deep into the first man’s neck and pulled it free to send a fountain of blood spraying out. Then she turned to the man who had assaulted her, barely on his feet, and slashed him across the face with enough force to rupture both of his eyes and crush the bridge of his nose.

She then hobbled off as fast as she could, wanting to get away before any other rapacious marauders showed up. She moved through the labyrinth, using her flashlight sparingly. After half an hour, she arrived at her destination. It was a chamber made from a restaurant. All of the food had already been eaten, but its value was the working sink, one of the only sources of water coming from outside the pyramid. Plus, the stoves still worked, so any food found could be cooked.

“It’s Jean,” she said as she approached the entrance. A man stepped out, standing guard.

“Christ, are you ok?”

No, she was pretty far from ok, but she was alive.

“I’m fine.”

She moved past him, doing her best to hide her limp, and entered the restaurant. Inside, she found it full of old people and children, hiding from the predators that roamed the tunnels. The floor was covered in any kind of usable bedding, with a few candles giving light. The air was heavy with the smell of the unwashed, as well as the nauseating scent of the elderly, almost like rotting meat.

“Ok, everyone! Time for presents!” she said, approaching a table. She emptied her bag, pouring out all the food and medication she had managed to find. Everyone rushed over to see what she had found, crying tears of joy and thanking her for her efforts.

“Bless you, Jean!” they’d say as she moved back to the kitchen.

Away from prying eyes, she approached the sink and grabbed a couple handfuls of paper towels. All throughout the kitchen, bottles and containers were filled with water, in case the sink should ever stop working. She wetted the paper towels and started cleaning her injuries, wiping away the blood and the dirt that stuck to it. Then she took a clean-looking dishrag and tore it into strips to use as bandages. The bullet that hit her knee, it just winged off the side, grazing her flesh and chipping the bone, but she still had to bite down on one of the rags as she wrapped it. Her whole kneecap felt like a cracked egg shell. She had to make sure both injuries could be hidden so that no one else would see them.

She had encountered this group soon after the pyramid was built and decided to help them. They were all too old or too young to survive on their own, and having grown up on the streets, she knew how to find treasure in garbage. The man who stood guard was the youngest of the old people, seventy years old. They had all come from a nursing home, most barely able to get up a set of stairs, let alone fight for their lives. The children had been separated from their parents and didn’t have anyone else they could depend on. There were a few others who helped her scavenge, but she was the one everyone relied on, so she couldn’t allow them to find out she was wounded.

Foraging for food, ignoring pain, fighting for survival, it was a life she was used to.

She reached into her pocket and pulled out a bottle of pain killers, something she had found earlier and decided to keep for herself for moments like these. She took some pills and walked away. She needed sleep. In the freezer, she found her bed, made of cushions cut from car seats. Her blanket was a tablecloth from the restaurant, but it was all she needed. She took off her wool hat, finally able to let her scarlet hair hang freely.

She kept it hidden to blend in, but it was gathering so much dirt and filth that soon she wouldn’t have to worry about it shining in the light. She desperately wanted to wash it, and the sink was there, but there was no telling how much water they could draw, and she didn’t want to waste any. Under the cloth, she pulled out her crucifix and began to pray. She thanked God for the goods she had found, for the chance to save that boy, for the strength to fend off those evil men, and for everyone still being alive when she got back.

Before all this, she had been a youth organizer for the church that had helped her when she was living on the streets. She had even considered joining the Seminary to become a nun. When she was a child, she’d pray every night. It helped her get through the next day to think that someone was rooting for her, and that there was a reason why good things happened. Despite everything she had seen since Dominion took over the city, her faith had only grown stronger, for if ultimate evil existed, than so too did ultimate good.

It was a new day, or, at least, a new scavenging mission. Jean had woken up and gotten something to eat, so it was time to head back out. Her knee was throbbing and the scrape on her arm wasn’t being quiet, but a couple of Vicodin helped her out. Armed with her knife and her empty revolver, she bid everyone farewell and headed out. She returned to the room full of file cabinets. If all three men were dead and if their bodies were still there, she could loot them. Plus, if that child had returned, she wanted to bring him back to the group.

She was cautious when entering the room, first scanning it with her flashlight from the entrance. Once she deemed it clear, she entered and searched for the bodies of her attackers, yet they were gone. The ground was littered with the casings of the bullets they had fired at her, but the corpses themselves were missing. This was no surprise, dead bodies never stayed put for long. Perhaps they had been snatched up by a roaming gang of cannibals. The boy was also missing. Hopefully he hadn’t been grabbed by that same gang.

Oh well, she had a long day ahead of her. She was moving on to a new area, she had already picked this zone clean for the group. The current tunnel she was in was the size of a regular hallway, but up ahead, she could see it branching off into half a dozen smaller crawl space tunnels. This could be dangerous, better to avoid it, but if everyone thought that way, then that meant there were still things to find.

She took out her knife and held it between her teeth, then crawled into one of the tunnels. It was just large enough for her and her backpack to squeeze in, but as she gathered more stuff, that might change. The tunnel was made of various materials from buildings and littered with garbage. The smell was nauseating, but she was used to it. Two minutes after entering the tunnel, she found a small bag of potato chips. Score! Then she shined her light ahead at the sound of squeaking. A cluster of rats were feeding on a moldy cheeseburger. The hairy fuckers were everywhere, they were thriving in this new environment. That also made them easy prey.

Seeing her approach, the rats stood with their hair on end, ready to attack. In an open area, they were at a disadvantage, but here, their enemy’s head was low to the ground and she couldn’t move very well in this cramped area. She swung at them with the knife, managing to kill two before they reached her. She knew how to defend herself from their fangs, and while they chewed on her clothes and hat, she’d pull them off and crush their skulls. The last few realized their mistake and darted off.

Jean rolled on her back for a minute to rest her neck and gather her strength, then went to work on cleaning the rats. She removed the heads and entrails and squeezed out the blood like she was wringing sponges. They’d brown up real nice over a fire. She packed them in her bag with the chips and continued crawling on. She found some more snacks, stale food from kitchens and street carts. She grazed as she moved, using her nose to decide whether it was safe. Any packaged food went back to the group. Unfortunately, fruits and vegetables were becoming more and more scarce by the day. They were getting moldy and contaminated with filth.

Staying in this passage was getting more and more exhausting. It wasn’t just flat and level, it dipped and rose, even spiraled a few times, wrapping around other passages. Luckily, there weren’t any vertical loops, otherwise, she’d have to go back. The passage briefly opened up, joining with others into a chamber the size of the inside of a van. Finally, she had some room to stretch. One of the walls seemed to come from a bathroom or something, as there was a condom dispenser attached, as well as a first aid kit. Good, she needed medical supplies.

She took a break, closing her eyes for a brief nap, with her knife in hand, of course. Ten minutes later, the sound of voices woke her up. She looked around, realizing the sound was coming from below. In the floor of the chamber was the grate from a storm drain, through which she could see into the tunnel below. It was much larger than the narrow vents she was crawling through. She saw a group of men walking by, speaking Spanish. From the way they dressed and carried themselves, she assumed them to be a street gang.

In this dark, cramped world, the criminal element had flourished like the rats. Half of the pyramid seemed to act with total anarchy, derangement being the resting state of mind, but of all things, it was the old gangs that implemented some semblance of order. They’d lay claim to areas, labeling it as their territory, and fight any other gangs that tried to take their resources. These territories were constantly changing, gangs picking one area clean and having to move in search of greener pastures, even if it meant fighting others. You had to have something to offer in order to join these gangs, such as food, labor, information, blood relation, or just a pair of legs to spread.

Once they were gone, she decided to move along. She searched the chamber for anything else of use, then marked the passage she had arrived through and picked a new tunnel. Wait, she saw something shiny. It was a half-empty magazine, and while the gun it belonged to was missing, the bullets, four of them, managed to fit in her revolver. Now she could really defend herself.

She resumed crawling, gathering useful items as she moved. It was hard to tell the time or how much distance she was making. All she knew was that her stomach muscles were throbbing from crawling like a lizard. There was something up ahead. A big ball of fluff. A raccoon? That would be troublesome. It didn’t seem to be aware of her. It looked like it was sleeping with its back to her. How had it not heard her coming? She grasped her knife and gingerly poked it. It didn’t move. The second poke confirmed it was dead, prompting a sigh of relief. Now she was aware of the smell of blood.

She flipped it over to see it’s front and jerked in fear. Its torso had been hollowed out, the hide stripped back like a banana peel so that the flesh and organs could be reached. This wasn’t the work of rats; the bite marks were too big. Maybe a dog, perhaps just finding its corpse and feeding?

The sound of movement up ahead sent her reeling. She raised her light and saw a shadow dart around the corner, something big. She heard a clicking sound, like a dolphin, and sharp breaths. The realization that she wasn’t alone made her sick, like a venomous snake had just bit right into her heart. Time to go. She began crawling backward, keeping her light focused on that corner. It took a lot of effort, but she managed to reach the small chamber from before. She turned around and entered the first tunnel, moving as fast as she could. After thirty feet, she heard the clicking again, coming from the chamber, as well as footsteps. She pointed her light back, and again, something darted out of view. She saw only a single leg, and it moved too fast for her to discern any details, but she knew that it wasn’t human.

She drew her pistol and resumed crawling, this time on her side so that she could shoot behind her at the drop of a hat. Her heart was beating with painful force, like it was nagging at her to go faster, to get away from whatever was pursuing her. She gave up on defense to focus on speed, crawling as fast as humanly possible. However, every time she looked forward, she heard noises behind her, only for the source to disappear when her light illuminated the passage.

She at last reached the end, stepping out into the original hallway-sized passage. While all of her instincts were screaming at her to run, part of her wouldn’t let her, not until she at least got some answers. She had to know if there was really something there. If she was just going crazy, then that was a whole new set of problems. She raised her pistol and fired into the darkness of the narrow tunnel. There was a shriek of agony, like nothing she had ever heard before, and that was enough to send her running faster than ever in her life.

A week had passed since Jean’s “encounter”, but she didn’t see whatever it was she had shot at. There were whispers in the dark, rumors going around about strange sightings of inhuman creatures, prowling through the tunnels. It was rather easy to collect information like that. While it was certainly risky to speak to strangers in such a situation, an offer of trade would make things easier. Not everyone had gone insane in the dark, it was fairly easy to tell apart the crazy from the scared. While one had to always be wary of others’ desperation, the presence of evil was a whole other matter.

Regardless, things weren’t going well for Jean and her group. She was needing to go farther and farther out for supplies, with distance and danger having a linear relationship. Plus, several of the elderly had already died. The collection of scarce medications she managed to gather was far from a pharmacy, and these weren’t the kind of people who could last long without their pills.

“It’s rough out there,” said Jackson, a man engaging in trade with Jean. She was doing it far away from the restaurant where her group was. The fewer people knew about it, the better. “The weak are dying off fast, and a lot of people are resorting to cannibalism.”

She handed him a gallon of water, the one advantage her group had, and he gave her a bottle of Viagra. In this underground market, it was easy to buy. Anyone who actually needed it had already been killed off, and any men who could focus on sex over survival had no problem getting an erection. However, three of the men from her group were suffering from angina. Supposedly, Viagra was used to treat it before its “side effects” became its main selling point.

She gave him a look, accusatory.

“I’m not one of them. I’ve been pretty good at finding dogs and cats. Plus, there are always the rats. The problem is the fruits and vegetables. All that’s left is the canned stuff and that’s going quickly. Speaking of which, I’ll trade you this...” he held up a bottle of multivitamins, “for a box of bullets, any caliber. I’ll even throw in some Vitamin C drink powder.”

“I already got plenty of those,” she replied. She didn’t want him to know that she was completely out of ammo. “Do you have any batteries?”

“What kind?”

“D batteries?”

“I have three, I’ll trade you for that two-liter bottle you have.” The exchange was made. “Those things are getting scarce. Everyone is using them up. Till next time, then.”

Jackson walked off, but Jean waited until he was out of sight to leave that spot. She returned to the restaurant and distributed the goods to everyone. “All right, I’m on my way back out,” she said.

“Hold on, Jean. I need to talk to you for a minute.” It was Phil, the man who guarded the entrance. He pulled her away from everyone else, to the back of the kitchen. “The sink has been acting up. I think it’s on its last legs.”

“So you want me to look for tools?”

“I don’t think it’s something that can be fixed. I think this well is running dry. We need you to find a new place.”

Jean looked past him at the elderly men and women sorting through the medications, and the children helping them read the labels.

“Even if I find a place, they won’t survive the trip.”

“That’s why those that can’t won’t be joining us.”

“Wait, you want to leave them here?”

“Mrs. Jenkins sleeps twenty-three hours a day, John Lee has late-stage Alzheimer’s, and Paul can barely see or stand on his own two feet. And that’s not counting all the other health problems everyone has.”

“I’m not going to abandon them! How can you even—”

“It was their idea. They brought it up while you were gone and we’ve discussed it. They’re ready to die. How many of us do you think are actually going to live long enough to see sunlight again? But those kids still have a chance. You’ve already searched all over the area. Once that sink goes out, there will be no point in staying here. We’re going to stay until that sink breaks down, then those of us who can keep up will follow you to any new place you can find.”

“I’ll carry them if I have to!” She didn’t say it, though she desperately wanted to.

She had known that this was coming. From the day she met the group, she had wondered how long these old folks had left, how long they could last in these conditions? She met them, knowing full well she would watch them die. Time and again, the evil voice in her head had told her not to go back, that she had to focus on herself and that they were sabotaging her chances of survival, but she couldn’t go through with it. She couldn’t leave, knowing it meant condemning them to starve to death, but it seemed that that was the only option left. Now she had to focus on saving those who still had a chance.

“Listen, get some rest. You need it. I’ll tell you when dinner’s ready.”

Night fell. Or rather, everyone in the group decided to go to bed. One of the children was picked to keep watch. Rather than sleep in the freezer, Jean decided to pull her bed out to the dining room where everyone else was. She did this from time to time, so she could remind herself what it felt like to not fear others.

This life she now lived, drowning in anarchy, it was so easy to fall into that dark spiral, to succumb to the desire to completely cut others out of her life. It was exhausting, to automatically tense up and assume the worst whenever she saw another person. Even when she lived on the streets as a child, the world never got so bleak. So, whenever she’d feel herself going to that dark place, she’d sleep with the rest of the group, just so that she’d remember that there were people she didn’t have to be afraid of.

Tonight, she couldn’t sleep. She sat against the wall, staring at her cross. There was just enough light from the tunnel outside to see it in her hand. Her faith kept her strong, God’s protection kept her strong, she told herself that over and over, yet she couldn’t help but wonder. If this really was Armageddon, then shouldn’t all of the virtuous souls have been Raptured to Heaven?

She had sinned in life, she had killed before being locked in this pyramid, so was she unworthy? How could she make things right? She just wished that there was a sign to follow, something irrefutable to tell her which direction she was supposed to go in, or some sign of His presence, anything to give her guidance without just being up to interpretation. To leave the oldest here to die, was that just a test? Was God waiting to see what she would do?