Oil for the lamp 1/2

1.

The darkness threatened to consume them. Yet Trek ran quickly, holding his lamp high where it best illuminated the broken path. The lamp’s wire handle swung loosely as he jogged, casting a silent dance of shadows all around. Trek’s shoulders ached with the weight of an empty gas canister strapped to his back. He shot an anxious glance back at his two running companions. They were dressed as he was: shabby overalls, stretched and worn by heavy use and stained in thick oily patches. Each carried their own gas canister. Behind and on the right was Hale. His pale, youthful face was contorted with exertion. Hale was fitter than most—that was why he had been chosen. Still, he was gasping now in an uneven rhythm. Trek knew he had set the pace fast, but it was better this way. He remembered his own first run—gruelling and uncertain, never having any sense of when the end would come. But he had been thankful for the exertion of a quick pace. It kept his mind off the black void that surrounded on every side. And the young Hale would need all the distractions he could get. He had never made a run like this.
To Hale’s left was Will, a runner of Trek’s own age – about mid twenties, though one could never be sure. He felt reassured at the sight of Will’s confident stride. They had made countless runs together and had seen some of the best and worst. But no, they had never seen the worst. Trek caught his breath at the thought. Black out. Left in the cold. Taken by the darkness. It was a death sentence. But Trek had checked the lamp again just before they left. No, he wouldn’t be taken. Not on this run. He forced the thought out of his mind and turned his attention back to the path in front.
It was strange to have no one before him, no jolting glow up ahead to follow at all costs. He was the leader this time; he guarded the precious light for the journey. Hale and Will were counting on him, he knew, as were the others back at camp. The camp deacons had said, and there was no doubt: it would take three canisters of gas to last the week. Gas was the lifeblood of the camp. Gas powered the lamps: the only thing between them and the relentless, permanent, darkness. The trickle of gas brought in on the weekly runs now barely sustained the settlement. It hadn’t always been so desperate. There used to be reserves—and backups, and contingency plans. But there were no longer the runners to maintain anything but the barest supply line.
Perhaps ten minutes passed as the gas runners weaved through the looming shapes in the darkness towards their destination, the old Solway gas refinery. Trek doubted that was its real name. He recalled trying one day to find out how it came to be called Solway. His questioning had led him to an older runner who claimed to have once seen a sign with the name. No one else had seen it. But now even that old runner was gone, lost in the disappearances of the previous month. Trek didn’t care about the name itself. But he had wanted to get to the truth, wanted, for once, to cut through the webs of rumour and faded memory that draped his world on every side. As always, he had only uncovered another layer of doubt.
Trek wondered if Hale shared his frustration. But no, how could he? Hale was too young. The shifting shadows of doubt were all he knew. He had forgotten the time before the darkness came with its slow suffocation of truth. But Trek remembered still the last days; the dim streaked orange sky; sunlight gasping through the dust before the last fade. Trek wiped a trail of sweat from his forehead. How long had it been now? Months, years…? Why couldn’t they remember anymore? What had happened to all the people, so confident in their plans? No one could say, now, Trek knew. The darkness stifled everything. Simply the absence of light, they said. It had been a long time since anyone really believed that.
Twenty feet ahead, the rusted metal of a vast chain link fence took shape before Trek’s lamp light. He slowed to a brisk walk, finally stopping an arm’s length from the barrier. Squinting in the darkness, he looked left and then right along the fence, searching for the hole they had been making for. The barrier stretched unbroken into darkness in both directions. Hale and Will came to a stop just behind, taking in the obstacle exposed in the light. Despite the growing rust, the thick-wired fence did not betray any points of weakness. Dual lines of razor wire were strung tightly atop the three metre fence. An unfortunate relic, Trek reflected sourly, of a time when there were still those able to guard the refinery’s precious gas.
“This is what we expected, right?” Hale asked nervously. He was breathing heavily from the run.
“Yes.” Trek was concentrating on the twisted wire before him. “There’s a hole cut. It should be right here. We’ve been using it since...” But his voice trailed off in puzzlement. Hale noticed the uncertainty in his leader, and looked beside him to Will for reassurance. But Will was also hesitant.
“Trek, you sure we took the right angle off the path?” asked Will. “The quarter-pace left on the last turn seemed a little wide—”
“It wasn’t wide,” Trek cut him off, still staring at the fence. Will accepted the correction. This might be Trek’s first time as leader, but there was no doubting his accuracy as a dark navigator.
“Then what is this?” Will motioned to the unbroken fence before them.
“I don’t know.”
After a pause, Trek bent down on one knee and leaned in close to the fence. The rusted links were all intact. There was some wear on the lower wire… but no sign of even a single broken link—wait. There was a fine groove across one of the links. Trek twisted it in his fingers and it came apart cleanly. To the left there was another groove on the next link. And above right, another. Applying pressure near each groove, Trek soon had pushed out a man-sized hole.
“Someone fixed the hole?” asked Will.
“Hidden, more like,” Trek responded.
Hale shook his head in dismay. “Who would hide the way through?”
“The darkness might,” said Will solemnly.
Trek disliked the mystical phrasing of the deacons: “the darkness”, “deep dark”, “followers of light”. But like the other superstitions of their world, he suspected they were distant echoes of truth.
“But it couldn’t,” Hale protested anxiously. “The darkness couldn’t... it can’t think, can it? It just takes those who don’t guard the light.”
There was an awkward pause in the flickering lamplight. Trek shot Will a hard look: whatever the darkness was, it was no good tantalising poor Hale with its spectre.
Will seemed to catch Trek’s meaning and nodded to Hale. “Right.” But he looked around quickly, as if expecting a response from the surrounding gloom.
“Come on.” Trek nodded towards the fence, then stooped low and ducked through the hole. Will and Hale followed hastily, neither wanting to be left alone on the dark side of the barrier.
Using the fence’s line as a reference angle, Trek stepped again into the void. An uncanny ability to judge angles and distances had made him an invaluable navigator in the dark. He wasn’t just better at it; his talent was unique, freakish even – he could plot a course in darkness as surely as he walked in the lighted camp. And so he had been brought on gas runs since the beginning. But he had never been trusted as leader – with the lamp – until now. It was an honour he suspected was less due to his abilities than to the lack of an alternative. Penten, the last of the able-bodied older runners, had disappeared a week previously. In the eyes of the deacons, Trek hadn’t seen enough of the light years to be fully trusted. He had always resented it, but couldn’t help feeling the same mistrust of Hale and the other younger ones. Whatever their misgivings, there was little choice now.
After four hundred carefully measured paces, Trek brought the trio to a halt. First he checked for the small cigarette-lighter in his side pocket. It was the only way to reignite the lamp if something went wrong. Like all of their lights, the lamp was gas-powered – fed by a small cylinder at the base. They would need more light for what was next. Trek turned a knob to increase the gas flow. The dim light waxed suddenly into a bright globe, sending yellow light piercing far into the gloom.
Almost instantly, a chorus of shrieks leapt out from the darkness in front. It was loud in the stillness and yet hollow, as an echo escaping from the depths of a great building. It could have been a groan of pain, Trek thought. But it was harsher, more focused. There was fury in it. Trek fought a sudden urge to turn and run as the screams persisted. Hale, stricken, turned away, his hands pressed to his ears. After several moments the shrieks died out of their own accord.
“It’s over,” said Trek to no one in particular. Hale dropped his hands slowly, but did not turn back around. Trek put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s OK. It’s like we say, the darkness fears the light.”
And it hates what it fears, he didn’t add.
He hadn’t warned Hale about the screams. One did not speak plainly of such things in the camp. The shrieks always seemed to come from indoors, or other concealed places where their light never shone directly. It was what they called the deep dark. There, it was said, the darkness grew so thick it took form – assuming a voice and a body with which it groped blindly. It might be nonsense. But Trek knew there was a voice, at least.
In the direction of the screams, the increased light had revealed the imposing figure of their objective: the refinery tower. The open-air structure could be seen in the new light to be composed of a towering mass of interlocking girders, pipes and grates. They had noted the tower’s gas cylinders on previous trips, though no one had yet climbed it. The gas teams could usually siphon what they needed from cylinders at ground level – but those had been exhausted on the last trip. They had to climb this time.