Eternal Darkness - Book One ✔

Chapter Three

My jaw dropped, and the light trembled from my shaking hand. Every second now I found myself fearing I'd wake up from this dream I must have been having because it simply could not be real. Cans, boxes, bottles; I'd never seen so much food before.

Johan dropped to the floor and pulled out a see-through package with bottles in it.

"Guys, I think it's water," he whispered, not wasting time ripping through the concealment and taking out a bottle. He unscrewed the lid and put it against his lips. I realized I was holding my breath the whole time he was drinking, half expecting him to drop dead at any given moment or something.

Johan stopped drinking and looked up at us, his wet lips twisted in a lopsided grin.

"Definitely water," he said before emptying the rest of the bottle.

I stared dumbfounded at him, not knowing whether or not to cry or laugh. Dennis dropped down on the floor next to Johan as he grabbed a bottle and extending it to me.

Oh, Dennis, always thinking of others first. What a gentleman. 

I accepted it and put the light stick under my arm so I could unscrew the cap with my hand. I dropped it on the floor uncaringly and pressed the plastic bottle-head against my cracked lips, tilting my head back the slightest. For the first time in longer than I could remember, I tasted the refreshing and cleansing taste of pure, clean water.

I gulped it down, aware that Dennis was doing the exact same, but Johan appeared in my line of vision, reaching out to take the light stick from me.

I let him.

I was too busy drinking this amazing water. It flowed easily down my dry throat, my stomach instantly reacting to the coolness that had suddenly come knocking. It was the first time I had ever tried drinking directly from an unopened bottle before. 

Growing up, I would drink from small creeks and the occasional river if we passed one, filling up the crinkled old bottles we always carried around with us. Many times it made our stomachs go weak from the bacteria I knew were in it, but it became less frequent as our insides adjusted.

However, since we were in a part of the country where there weren't much else but desert, water had quickly become scarce in our little supply stash.

Finishing the bottle, I let it fall from my hand, and I looked over at Johan who was in the midst of checking through all the cans and packages.

"There's so many different kinds here, but the words aren't familiar to me," he muttered.

He shouldn't take it personally; none of us were experts. It's not exactly like we had the means and places to learn in this messed up world. Not like they had before. Schools they'd been called. My mother had been able to read and she'd taught me as well, but there were still so many words I had yet to learn. Books and such weren't common anymore. Also, I hadn't made it a priority to keep teaching myself when I was finally on my own. Survival had been more important, but most had stuck.

Books were paper and paper was a way to make a fire, so naturally, if you came across a book you wouldn't read it; you'd rip out the pages and light a fire to keep you warm. My mom, however, would always tuck me in and read from a tattered and slightly mouldy book that was about dragons and people riding them, but I'd forgotten the name. She never got to finish it before...

I stopped in my line of thought and briefly shut my eyes, willing the memory to fade, replacing it with the feeling of water trickling down my throat. I opened my eyes again and focused on the cans.

The paper that surrounded the outside had faded over the years, but there were faint pictures to describe the content of the cans. I dropped down to a crouch and picked up one of the cans, putting it up close in the light from the stick and squinted my eyes. It was a piece of something shaped like a box, a weird yellow color, bulging on the middle.
A similar one was depicted next to it, but half had been bitten off, showing the insides; a brownish mash of something. The writing on it was barely visible, but it looked like something I had eaten before. Spaghetti. Something my mother liked to make us, though we mostly ate the food from cans cold. Spaghetti were small and long squishy strings, but the color of the food was similar to this, so I figured it was along the same lines.

My stomach churned loudly, and Dennis smirked at me.

"Want to settle that noise, Em?" He chuckled and grabbed a random can for himself and sat down on the floor, his back to the shelf.

"Let the feast begin," he said before flipping up the metal hinge on the top of the can, pulling the lid back. I quickly did the same as the smell of food hit my nostrils, my entire being screamed for the food. I was at the point of drooling, slowly shutting out the noises of pleasure coming from the other two guys sitting next to me. I had fought hard for survival, every day, and this was my reward.

I dug three fingers into the content and pulled out one of those small square pieces like the one on the picture and with no hesitation, I stuffed it in my mouth. Several flavors hit my taste-buds all at once, but all I could distinguish was the meat and the chewy texture. It was definitely similar to spaghetti and it wasn't bad at all. I swallowed and picked out a new piece, chewing it quickly before sending it down to the other one in my empty stomach.

"Damn, this is amazing," Johan muttered, his mouth stuffed to the limit. I grinned at him, no words needed and continued to empty my can, one piece at a time.

For a while, nothing could be heard but chewing noises, the shuffling of empty cans, and the moaning of approval of all the new kinds of food that were being discovered here in the darkness. I had no idea how long we had been sitting there on the floor, pushing our stomachs to the brink of feeling sick and after finishing my third can, I had to give up. My stomach was complaining over all the rich food it had to digest all of the sudden and I felt uncomfortable.

I had a nice little bump on my usually flat belly now and I smiled lazily.

Dennis and Johan had stopped soon after me, a mess of empty cans lay scattered around them both along with a couple of water bottles.

"I don't think I could move even if I wanted to," Johan complained, but I could tell that he was smiling. I knew we were all smiling. We had just had the feast of our lives, our own little treasure down here below ground in an abandoned house.

"I think it's night outside," I said as I eyed the opening in the ceiling from where we had come through, seeing no light coming through at all. It made me feel a little uneasy. It was that or the rich food I had just eaten in one sitting. My face pulled tight as I looked towards Dennis wearing an identical expression on his face. We were usually thinking along the same lines and this was no exception.

We were in no way barricaded or protected from anything that decided to look inside. My hand grabbed one of the metal cans, and I lifted it up to my nose. What if they could smell all this food now that they had been opened? I'd heard they had a keen sense of smell along with eyesight and hearing, making them the deadliest predator in the night.

But just how keen?

Not that I actually wanted to find out. I preferred not knowing and then die an old lady. I snorted a dry laugh in my head. I knew that wouldn't happen. 

I bit my bottom lip and was just about to share my uneasiness, when the light from the stick flickered and went out, cocooning us in complete darkness.

"Damn, the battery must have died." Dennis groaned.

"I guess there's not much to do, but to rest and wait for daylight to come," Johan muttered and I couldn't argue with that, despite my uneasiness.

I glanced upwards once more, frowning.

"Shouldn't we at least close the opening?" I asked, really not liking how my skin had begun to prickle.

"We can't risk it locking on us or something, Em, besides, we wouldn't know when daytime have come around without it being open," Dennis responded as I heard him shuffle around, no doubt settling into a somewhat comfortable sleeping position. Even though our thoughts were always running along the same track, sometimes Dennis' would swerve away from mine and then come at it from another side.

I quickly heard both their breathings even out, but somehow I couldn't get myself to relax enough to even close my eyes. We had finally found food and now we were slacking on safety? It wasn't right, and I couldn't make that mistake either. All three of us sleeping in an unprotected house was just an invite for us to become an easy hot meal. I drew my knees up and hugged them with both my arms, trying to adjust my eyes to the blackness, but without much luck.

Every time I thought I heard something, my breathing picked up and my eyes darted around, but apparently nothing was dangerous enough for Dennis and Johan to wake up. Even from years of experience of staying up most of the night, the weight of the food in my stomach made me drowsy. My eyelids drooped, and I had to pinch my arm several times in order to stay awake. Yet, despite my hardest attempts to fight the sleep, I felt myself slumping back against the shelf I was sitting by. My head fell back and my eyelids finally won the battle and closed over my eyes.

I took a deep breath and let sleep wash over me.