The Long Dark by B.J. Farmer (important books to read .TXT) 📗

“How about you stop right there,” I replied. I made the mistake of allowing her to pass into the center of the unlit space between us. There were security lights intermittently spaced around the perimeter of that part of Toolik, but there was a dead zone in the middle where there wasn’t much illumination. She was over three-quarters of the way to me by the time she came back into view. I cursed again.

She zigzagged as she charged my trailer. I took several shots at her but couldn’t manage to hit the moving target. Shots erupted. In the chaos, I wasn’t sure from where and from whom.

The walls around me began to splinter. I dove to the floor, falling hard on my injured shoulder, trying to find cover.

Footsteps could be heard from just outside the trailer. I readied my weapon. The only way in was the door at the opposite end of the building, which is where I trained my rifle. I waited. The door slung open, and an audible metallic clunk could be heard, as something was tossed inside. The door slammed shut. The green glow from the LED let me know just how screwed I was about to become, but that wasn’t all. That was the main dish – I’d have to wait for a second or two for that. I had this fucking hors d'oeuvre I needed to gnaw on real fast first.

The woman fired wildly into the building, screaming in Korean the entire time. Luckily, in her moment of patriotic vitriol, she wasn’t paying attention to where she was firing. Her bullets flew harmlessly over top of me.

A lock on the door would’ve been great, but most of the scientific buildings didn’t have locks on them, just the residential buildings. I probably wouldn’t have had time to make it to the door anyway. These Grays were fast. Many of my assumptions based on the Grays I had seen in Barrow would probably need to be adjusted if I managed to live through that.

The cube went dark, but only for a second. It quickly came back to life and began to blink. Maybe a second later, I heard the main course coming. But like I said, I still had that hors d'oeuvre to finish. There were several harsh words, followed by action. Action in the form of the woman busting through the door and unleashing a torrent of both gunfire and vitriol in and around my position. I ended that quickly. I double tapped her in the chest. She fell to the floor, her body falling in such a way the door was held half-open. Like the fuckers needed any help with that, I remember thinking.

The first Grays presented themselves, and I quickly mowed them down as they fought one another to gain entrance. I finished the magazine with a double tap to a Gray who had gotten uncomfortably close. I had thirty more rounds.

I dispatched the next two Grays who gained entrance. I heard movement just outside the shot-out window above. I knew there were at least twenty-five more Grays outside, but for whatever reason, they didn’t all charge in at one time. Sure, they were screaming and waling outside, but they seemed almost hesitant to come in the same way the others had. It was almost like they realized the doorway was a kill zone.

A wave of goose pimples formed as incoherent words were muttered outside. That couldn’t be, I thought.

Two hands grabbed at the windowsill above me. At the same time, bodies entered through the doorway. I shot two quick times at the wall just below the two hands. The walls were thick, but the body thumping against the ground told me not thick enough to stop a round of five, five-six. I quickly turned towards the doorway, but there were already four or five Grays inside.

I fired until I expended the last of my ammunition. I thought about using the rifle as a club, but the space was so tight it would be nearly useless. I grabbed for the butcher knife and came to my feet as quickly as my injured leg would allow.

A woman Gray stopped in front of me. She looked confused just for a second as she sniffed the air – sniffed me. All the time I needed. With my good arm, I brought the butcher knife down towards her as hard as I could. “Fuck!” I screamed. My knife got lodged in the woman’s chest. She flailed and cried as I tugged with all the energy I had left, but I couldn’t dislodge it. The Grays behind the woman surged forward. The best I could do was bear hug her and use her as a buffer in case any of them had weapons. The breath was literally being squeezed out of me as they began compacting me against the wall.

I remember wanting to just slide down the wall and let go, but I couldn’t even do that. There was too much weight pressed against me. I thought I heard more gunshots nearby, but the Grays were so goddamn loud. I remember feeling dizzy and then seeing bright lights. I was going in and out of consciousness.  My eyes opened one last time, and with the last flurry of strength, I fought hard to move the press of bodies. Nothing.

I closed my eyes and let the darkness envelop me, allowing calmness to wash over me like a gently flowing stream. There was no fighting for survival. No pain. No more being afraid. No more anything. I was glad my oxygen-deprived brain had allowed me a few moments of peace before I transcended to the ethereal plane or whatever the fuck happens to wicked people like me. All I knew was there was peace, and I felt like I had earned it.

Chapter 9

The trip from Prudhoe Bay to Fairbanks was a kid-in-the-candy-store, drug-induced, four-hundred-mile trip that seemed to take only a few minutes. Aadesh’s