When Darkness Reigns Read online

  When Darkness Reigns

  Preston L Marshall

  Book One

  The Lion-Blade Saga

  Copyright © 2016 Preston Marshall

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations and other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to publisher at [email protected].

  GenZPublishing.org

  Aberdeen, NJ

  ISBN: 978-0692724545

  Chapter One

  It was 4:45 p.m. on a Friday. Lumar Lee had quit working about half an hour ago and was staring at the clock willing it to hit five. Being a Water Purification Engineer turned out to be the most boring thing Lumar could imagine doing for eight hours a day, forty hours a week. He knew how important his job was. If he didn’t do it, there wouldn’t be any drinking water in the whole city after just two or three days. Of course, he wasn’t the only one doing it, but he cleaned and purified a couple hundred gallons of water a day. It wasn’t the worst job he could imagine. He could, of course, be over at the Human Waste Recycling Center shoveling shit all day. And if he wasn’t working at one of the various centers for maintaining the city’s self-sustaining ecosystem, he could have ended up in the Army. Fortunately, they let the smarter people opt out of the draft in favor of jobs like this. As boring as staring at a bunch of computer screens telling him how many parts per millions of chlorine or iodine was in the water, at least he didn’t have to get shipped out to god-knows-where to get shot at.

  Like every other week, Lumar couldn’t wait until five o’clock Friday. Some fantastic example of all that is good in humanity had finally figured out how to distill some real hard alcohol and sold it to some of the local bars in town. Once they started drafting people into the army the day they turned eighteen, they made eighteen the legal drinking age. Even though it had been almost six months since he’d turned eighteen, Lumar had never had a chance to drink anything but the synthesized watered down garbage that passed for “beer” these days. Lumar and his lifelong buddy Nate Solaris were going to hit the bar tonight, get drunk off their asses, and if all went well, he was hoping to take a girl home with him.

  It had been a particularly shitty week, literally. Someone or something had dumped a vat of human waste into one of the waterways on Wednesday. Lumar and his department just finished dealing with it around four, and he wasn’t about to start anything else this week. When he saw it was only a quarter ‘til five, he started packing his things into his desk. Of course, he’d left a bunch of papers, pens, and his calculator out on the desk with some spreadsheets up on his monitor to look like he had been doing something up until the end.

  Then the unthinkable happened. The P.A. system at the office came to life. Lumar hated that thing. It started humming and then a pre-recorded message started blasting out of every networked device that could project audio.

  “Fuck,” Lumar groaned.

  “Citizens of Sangent,” the recording began, “starting at eight p.m. tonight, there will be a mandatory television broadcast. All places of business will be closed tonight by seven p.m. and will not be reopening until the following morning. Please be in your homes watching the important government messages. There will be a fine of four food ration credits if you are not in your home tonight during the broadcast. That is all.”

  The entire city let out a collective groan. Four ration credits for some people were like a week’s worth of food. Lumar could almost hear the people on the street from inside the building. The message repeated itself in its entirety right up to five o’clock.

  “Fuck my life,” Lumar groaned as he got up from my desk.

  A swarm of tired workers shambled out of the building. There wasn’t a single person in the crowd who didn’t look like they’d just had their hopes crushed and their weekend stolen right out from under them.

  As soon as Lumar got out of the building he phoned Nate on his wireless work phone. They usually kept the service to it on until about six in case someone had to work late and make a call to let the boss know. It also usually allowed for a few personal calls after work.

  “Can you believe this bullshit?”

  “Yeah. I mean, this is like the third one this month,” Nate responded.

  “They couldn’t have waited until Monday or something?”

  “Seriously! During the week it’s not so bad. Not like anyone makes plans for weeknights right?”

  “Exactly. Well, let’s just get together tomorrow instead same time, same place.”

  “We better before all that whiskey gets gone. I guess I’ll see yah tomorrow.”

  “Sounds good. Later man.”

  Lumar put his phone back in his pocket and walked the rest of the way home brooding. He stopped in front of his building and stood still for a couple of minutes.

  “You know what, I can still do one of the things I was planning to do tonight.”

  Lumar ran over to the bar just in time to catch the barkeeper before he shut the place down. The guy was more than happy to part with a bottle of whiskey before he had to lose all of the night’s profits.

  Lumar ran the rest of the way home, just in time to make something to eat before the television would turn itself on to the government channel. It always freaked Lumar out, not only because the television would come on by itself, but that it adjusted its volume depending on how far away he was from it. If he was in the can or something when it came on, it would blast the sound through the whole apartment and piss off his neighbors.

  Today’s meal was called Spaghetti in italics like it wasn’t really spaghetti. It came in a box like they usually did with everything already prepackaged in it. The noodles looked about like what Lumar would want them to. The sauce, however, looked like diarrhea in a bag. If Lumar knew anything about what they did at the Human Waste Recycling Center, that might not be too far from the truth. But he cooked it. In the end, it looked edible and smelled alright.

  With food and booze in hand, Lumar plopped down on the couch. He decided this time he would preempt the automatic television and went ahead and turned it on. It was almost that time anyway. Lumar sort of hoped there would be something on before the mandatory broadcast, but had no such luck. It must have been a slow day for the T.V. guys. The screen was blank, black except for a countdown. It had about twenty minutes to go on it. Lumar zoned out on the flashing numbers, letting his brain go numb as he slurped up the noodles, trying hard not to think about what the sauce was made of.

  There were only about five minutes left on the countdown now. He finished the Spaghetti and tossed the bowl onto his coffee table.

  He popped open the bottle of whiskey and said: “Here’s hoping you and I can still have a little fun tonight.”

  Lumar just started drinking the stuff right out of the bottle. It tasted like a liquid sunset. It made his body feel warm like a summer night.

  “Where have you been all my life?”

  He got about halfway through it before the program even started. Images filled the black box of the television once the numbers vanished. The mandatory broadcast was one of those historical programs the government put out to remind people of how awful life was so that “we would remember how grateful we should be to the government that protects us.” It was titled: “America Today.” Lumar could already tell this was going to be worse than the last one. Even just a couple of seconds into it, it looked like it was practically just a slideshow with a talking head repeating the same lines Lumar had heard dozens of times. The guy they had read it with such passion though. Like what he had to say was so original.


  “Date: October 2nd, 2103,” the debonair blond man recited. “On this momentous day in human history, America made First Contact with an alien life form. The alien came alone in a tiny spacecraft that could only hold a single passenger. Even though he spoke an incomprehensible tongue with no similarities to human languages present or past, we knew that he had come in peace.”

  A picture of a blue lizard man with robot body parts flashed up on the screen. He was standing at the base of a ramp that descended out of what Lumar always thought looked like a purple egg. He was being greeted by the old President and a few other people. It wasn’t even a photograph, just some cartoony sketch.

  “Even though America offered our alien visitor asylum, he never seemed calm. Our first communications with the alien was a trade back and forth of pictures. A picture is worth a thousand words.”

  He added in that last part. Like the regurgitated message wasn’t already stale without adding another cliché. Lumar decided he'd take a swallow of whiskey anytime the presentation made him want to roll his eyes, sigh, or groan. He threw one back.

  “Through this exchange, we were able to come to the conclusion that he was a slave running away from his masters, the Sarsaul. Based on the sketches he provided, his masters seemed very cruel.”

  More cartoony drawings. They were supposed to be the sketches the alien drew, pictures of bug-men with long claws and mandibles on the sides of their heads.

  “After the alien learned to speak English, he spoke about the Sarsaul wanting him back because he was an engineer with information and technical skill that would be able to bring destruction to his masters. He begged that Earth protect him.”

  This image showed the alien begging for his life in front of some American soldiers. It was arbitrarily patriotic and ridiculous. Lumar gulped down more whiskey. It burned the back of his throat.

  “Date: October 17th, 2104: anomalies occurred on the satellites orbiting the outer planets in the solar system. Static swept over a dozen satellites at different times. The downed satellites all connected to form a straight line in the direction of Mars.”

  They showed a diagram of the solar system with red dots marking the downed satellites.

  “Date: October 19th, 2104: a strange signal was picked up on the Martian colony.”

  The screen was black. A recording of the signal played. The speaker was silent for a few moments. The only way Lumar could ever describe this sound was a growl with quiet screams and clawing noises in the background.

  “Date: October 21st, 2104: large masses covered the sky over the Martian capitol. We received one final transmission.”

  The head was silent again. His face stayed on the screen this time. They wanted to show his reaction to this.

  “The sun didn’t rise today. Sky dark, light came through. Rain in light spot only. Monsters came down, thousands, millions, billions! We never stood a chance. They use few weapons, they have claws. They cut and rip you apart. Their weapons… They are hostile. Oh God! They’re here! The doors! Hold the doors!”

  An explosion. Screams. Crunching sounds. Liquid noise.

  “End transmission.” A computerized voice said.

  The blond sat there through the sound clip silently. Sweat dripped down his brow. He wiped it clean one time. He stuttered for a moment before going on. Lumar chuckled and threw back another swallow.

  “Date: October 24th, 2104: one of the largest meteor showers in recorded human history broke through the atmosphere.”

  Someone had filmed the meteor shower. Maybe it was just the booze, but Lumar couldn't keep himself from thinking how beautiful the shooting stars looked.

  “Unlike most meteor showers, a few dozen pieces of the space debris made it to the ground in Arizona. Despite the best efforts of the local authorities, a crowd of spectators gathered.”

  People stood around a crater looking at glowing space rocks.

  “What followed was our first encounter with the Sarsaul. Worm-like creatures emerged from the meteorites. The National Guard arrived on the scene as quickly as they could to force civilians away from the site. A team of Army scientists were sent in. Seventeen out of the twenty-eight members of the team returned. The survivors spoke of a struggle with the alien worms. They reported that the worms ate through their hazmat suits and skin. However, when the bodies were recovered from the crash site, the postmortem revealed that the nine killed died of bullet wounds.”

  A series of images appeared showing men and women riddled with bullet holes. It didn’t take that many bullets to kill someone.

  “After the incident there was no sign of the worms. Reports indicated that the seventeen surviving members of the team never returned to their posts after the incident.”

  The screen faded to black again. A dirge played.

  “Date: October 29th, 2104: a dark day in American history. President Torrez was assassinated. He died of blunt force trauma to the head. There was only one fugitive apprehended during the murder. The killer was identified as one of the AWOL military scientists. He was executed on charges of treason. After the execution, the body was opened up and one of the Sarsaul worms was found at base of his skull.”

  They showed that graphic biopsy image. The back of the man’s head was pulled open with a centipede looking thing impaling his cerebellum. It was hardly even disgusting any more.

  “Date: October 31st, 2104: a massive terrorist attack is carried out against Space Based Space Surveillance ground control sites across the world crippling the detection of objects orbiting the Earth. Experts believed that some of the other AWOL military scientists were behind the attack. On the same day, a Sarsaul spacecraft made landfall in Ecuador.”

  A patriotic theme began playing. A portrait of President Helms’ former glory with an American flag flying boldly behind him appears on screen. Another liquid sunset snaked down Lumar’s throat.

  “Date: November 1st, 2104: without hesitation, the newly inaugurated President Helms orders a full scale attack on the enemy.”

  The patriotic theme kept playing. They showed marines charging the Sarsual ship, which always looked to Lumar like a beetle with a bunch of rockets impaling its body.

  The song stopped.

  “Date: November 20th, 2104: the alien invaders are finally defeated after many failed ground attacks. In the end, our only option was a nuclear strike on the alien ship.”

  The alcohol was starting to take its toll. When he looked down at the whiskey in his hand he was nearing the end of the bottle. Lumar began to drift into sleep.

  “...May 30th, 2109: a new alien contact occurred. Despite our first victory, we were not ready for what came next. The Sarsaul attacked government centers throughout the country. Our communications were cut off with the rest of the world. None of our signals get through even to this day. Several major cities were invaded and conquered. Anywhere the Sarsaul have been there were no survivors found. There weren't even any bodies found at most of the sites. Helms issues a state of emergency and orders all American survivors to pull back into military facilities…”

  “Date: April 10th, 2116: all known human survivors were in constant hiding. A few military strongholds survived. They are kept secret and most transportation is ill advised. A few cities still stand, but…”

  “....13th, 2121: alien forces finally retreated. There was a lull in the battle. Some Sarsaul forces remain in the United States, but the majority leave. The Sarsaul make a mass exodus to South America. Human forces are rallied with new vigor and the war finally turns in our favor. It’s all thanks to the splendid leadership of our fearless leader: President Helms.”

  The program ended. Lumar snored.

  Chapter Two

  Someone was beating the hell out of the door to his apartment. It was so loud it felt like someone was taking a mallet to his eardrums. Lumar's eyes slowly opened. It was harder than it should have been, but his eyelids were waging a war against the whiskey flowing through his veins. It sounded like someone was running up a
nd down the hallway. It must have been the stupid kids from down the hall. They'd been known to do shit like that in the middle of the night. Their parents didn't even care. They probably had the kids in the first place to get those extra luxury credits the government gave people for increasing the population.

  He heard screaming in the hallway as he pulled his pants back up. He didn't remember getting out of them, but he must have kicked them off in his sleep. He never even made it off the couch.

  “Fucking kids,” he growled as he made his way to the door.

  He opened the door. There were no kids in the hall. In fact, it was the dad of those kids standing there in a wife-beater and his boxers. Lumar wasn't expecting him to apologize for the kids waking him up in the middle of the night. Lumar stared at him through half-open eyes. His neighbor was acting out of breath.

  “We need to get out of here now!” he said frantically. “They're coming! They're here! We just need to go!”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  The door across the hall blew open in a shower of splinters. A creature a head taller than Lumar crashed through the doorway, throwing debris all over them. Lumar threw his hands in front of his face. For a moment, the creature stood in the doorway with its head cocked to the side like a dog. Its torso leaned forward like a raptor. It had backwards bending legs like a giant bird and five-foot long insect wings trailing behind it. It had two mandibles lined with bloody teeth on either side of its flat oval head. The mandibles were moving up and down on either side of its mouth like it was licking its lips. Its arms ended in sickles with a crimson trail down the sharp edge. Its skin was all orange except where the blood of the family across the hall had splashed over it.

  Its fist-sized green segmented eyes turned towards them. It let out a high pitched roar. The mandibles flared out to either side of its head. Lumar fell back through the door. His neighbor bolted down the hall to the left. He only made it a few steps before the alien and dived into him and tackled him to the ground. Lumar slammed the door. His hands were shaking. He opened it just a crack and watched as the alien ripped the man to pieces right before his eyes.