The Great Game

We were human once.

We were human when the world wasn’t filled with creatures who clung to the shadows, afraid of the sky in the day and the night. He was the reason we had become this way. It had been years, decades, a century maybe since his arrival. No one was sure exactly when, in fact, nobody knew what he actually was. For all we knew it could have been a man-made machine, an alien, whether from outer space or the devil from hell itself. Either way it didn’t matter, it doesn’t, and it never will; he existed, while this race of ours was gradually thinning into nothingness. Soon, I thought, there would be nothing. No people, no life, just a silent earth to survey peacefully. And only after each person was gone (those who would let themselves be seen in the open) would he leave. Although, most people wouldn’t believe this. As if it were that easy; to remain hidden behind our feeble bricks and underneath our rotted roads and ancient constructions, to simply wait him out. I however, wondered the opposite, if he needed only to wait for our starvation. This was the impending doom that awaited us as we played the game, merely stalling our eventual departure. I still felt however, like many alive then, the basic instinct to survive.

If we were caught outside, there came a sound. A deep and powerful horn, like that of a ship, except far more violent and mechanical. There was then the opening of a dim, red light in the clouds, the ever-watchful eye above our planet, it would shutter then release a sudden flash, a grand whiteness that burst across the air at an incomprehensible speed. There was no living thing after this blast, only a frightful quietness which grew a sound of its own.

“God,” I had said. It was he who was plucking every person from the earth one by one and revelling with his roaring laughter. Perhaps it was Death reaping everybody with an astounding pleasure. Again, it mattered not to put a name on him. Our only options were to hide behind our own shadows or to play the great game: a titanic exception of Whac-A-Mole.

The world, apparently, wasn’t always this crumbling and collapsed rock. Being raised into this ruin, I knew not what life was before. My mother would read from a children’s book:

The bluest sheets,

And puffy clouds.

Hills that are green,

With rivers ‘round.

This was practically all I had to learn from. I was quite the illiterate, unable to read or write and speak much either, but that was the case for most. The illustrations in that one book filled my dreams with cartooned versions of what I had never lived.

A sudden knock reverberated down the hall. “Check the gate, will you?” my mother asked me while stirring a pot of disgusting porridge. I got up from my springy bed in the corner of our firelit bunk and made my way through a skinny, dark tunnelway. I passed by separate rooms containing my brothers listening to a crackling radiophone and my father in one who had a little desk fan blowing directly into his sweat. It was a pretty loud thing, especially to have underground, echoing the constant pushing of hot air.

A couple knocks back at the gate, I continued. Orange from his room’s hearth danced between the walls until I got to the iron bars at the end, where behind it stood three people. Shadows enveloped me, so I grabbed an oil lamp and as I held it up, my hand jerked one of several brass keys into the door, unlocking it. When they stepped into the light, I counted a rugged man, a young boy loosely holding a filthy teddy bear and a girl holding a small dog with scraggly hair. She looked about my age, which was twenty-something at the time. I raised the warm lantern, and despite her dirty cheeks and chapped lips, behind her damaged softness lay the remnants of someone beautiful. The dog yawned; a dangerous animal to bring along these trips, but it was incredibly calm, only panting uncontrollably.

“All you?” I mumbled, and each of them nodded. “A pack each.” The man turned to them and searched their roughly stuffed bags until he pulled out two packs of cigarettes, and he placed them in my hand. “A pack each,” I repeated. But the man’s expression dispirited. “Forget it.” I tried to hand them back so they might leave, yet they resisted beggingly.

“Please, we need to get ‘cross. Please, please…” the girl said. I looked behind me, hearing the fan down the tunnelway, and I hesitantly put the packs in my breast pocket.

“What else?” I said, scanning them for something of value that could be later traded for a pack, but their frowns suggested otherwise. Then, a sudden glitter dangled from under the dog’s chin. I reached and saw attached to its collar a small, rusted silver locket in the shape of a heart. Something about the way it glimmered in the light made me touch it and want it, for I had never owned anything that color or as shiny. “That,” I said punctually while pointing. She gave a glance of slight despair, though into my eyes she probably noticed that, like them, I had nothing. She clicked it off and handed it to me. I stuffed it into the back pocket of my ragged pants, and I left them at the entrance, vanishing with the lantern.

“How many?” my father asked me whilst coughing.

“Two,” I replied, fondling the locket secretively and tossing him the packs with the other hand. “One man. One boy.” He opened a dusty book and wrote.

“All right, safety.”

I left to grab my travelling things, then met back with the family. Their faces returned to ease when I showed up with my little flame box again.

“Now, stay close, don’t leave and…” I pressed my finger to my mouth to make a shh sound. And within a minute, we entered a darker exit down another tunnelway and all four of us, including the shivering animal, were off.

See, we were crossers, my family and me and a few other people who had none. We lived on the edge of a great city, once called Chicago or something alike. Many still alive who wished to leave, usually heading towards O’Hare, an old airport with its buildings and hangers made into one large and connected safehouse. A sort of haven compared to where these trippers came from, that’s how we referred to these folks.

We knew the way extremely well and would lead people through a sixteen mile stretch of muddy tunnels, sewers, jungled streets and marsh-like paths, taking several hours total. We watched every crack in the road, every turn, each careful step and most of all, where not to be seen under the sky. This was my life.

After many hours of trekking through a long sewage tunnel, which its putridness I was used to, the faint smacking of rain was heard above. Inside, I walked ahead and holding the lantern, it made me the only light for a long while, except for individual strips of white through the leaky ceiling. I always imagined what I looked like from behind, a single silhouette with my path zigging and zagging all over.

The entire time, I listened to the dog’s breath reflecting on the steel walls enclosing us. The man who now held his son at his back, muttered fearfully whenever the horn called at odd times, saying something like: “What if he’s watching?”

I stopped once to give him a hazardous look, and in the dimness the girl stared at me for a few seconds. “Don’t, he’s just scared.”

“Aren’t we all?” I replied, moving again. Just by the way she spoke and how her walk bore no jitters, she was the strongest of them three.

After exiting the sewer an hour or so later, we entered an old industrial warehouse from a hatch in the floor. We then reached the most threatening part of the trip: a vast and open park where an intricately specific crawling path was needed to get across. We crouched by a broken wall, and beyond it sat moss infested vehicles, cracked trees, puddles and pieces of an airplane. Under a fogged sky was the outside, and it was daunting, even for me who had crossed here countless times.

The man beside me was becoming quite frantic just by the sight of open air. This was the worst possible thing to happen. It was common, and I could usually calm their fright, though he was exhausting himself more than the dog. “We’re not going to make it,” he whispered.

“Shut up,” I told him.

“We’re dead, dead we are.”

“Shut it… Fix him!”

The daughter massaged his shaking hands. And just as he was regaining his lungs, the horn blared in the mist above, and it was terribly loud this time. The horrifying bell rang again and again, as if enticing us to come out. He shrugged around and paranoia swiftly took hold of him. I pressed my back to the bricks and in his face was the end of our journey; it was written in it. I had never allowed a tripper to die before; I couldn’t. This task was all I had to my dismal life. After another bellow, insanely louder; attacking us aggressively, he leapt up shouting: “He’s distracted by others! Let’s just run it! Let’s make it! Run!” He then dashed into the evening light, carrying his son to the grave. The dog hopped from the girl’s arms, following them into the splashy flora. I stared at the girl as if time were a lie, and she got up. I immediately grabbed her intensely.

“Let me go! I’ll get them!”

“No!” She shrugged hard and pushed me down, then went into the open for them. And before I knew it, I was following her. Stupid—I was dead. Going after this girl, this stranger. Yet something tugged me along; I couldn’t fail; I couldn’t watch her die.

Chasing her in the center of this torn field, above, the redness; the huge eye began to reveal itself. She stood only some feet away from me, though I had to dive for cover and shadow under a tumbled billboard.

An instant was all it took.

A blindness shone.

Beams stretched, ripping through the clouds.

God, I thought, he took her as I gripped the locket tightly.

A powerful wind. One million of father’s desk fans, cratering the area with dust.

My ears bled; I was deaf.

Then, an insane stillness.

Whatever humanity was left in me was disintegrated.

Death—within seconds.

Silence—forever.

Suddenly, the white haze in my eyes began to fade. I opened them, adjusting violently to behold a green field, an image like those in my dreams. What was this?

I rose from neatly trimmed grass and saw tons of people clothed cleanly and walking in groups, smiling. I was no longer draped in brown rags, nor was I covered with swamp. I stood in a park similar in layout from that a moment ago and the red eye was replaced with a sun. Overhead, a billboard said in bold letters:

YOU LOSE. NOW WELCOME.

I was awfully confused to be able to read, discovering that I was literate and proficient like an educated man.

Chain weaved between my fingers; I was holding the heart shaped locket, now chrome and mirrorlike. I thought of the girl who I had just witnessed die and I began to walk instinctively to find her, clasping it. Then, moving spellbindingly amongst the crowd, I recalled my family, and I pitied them deeply. I pitied all those people left on earth who preferred to hide in the darkness and to play the great game.