Part 1

  And I will show you something different from either

  Your shadow at morning, striding behind you

  Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;

  I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

  —

  “The Wasteland”, T.S. Eliot

  Chapter 1

  ~ The House ~

  Light snowflakes fell all around him in a synchronised dance, their layers erasing the telltale signs of a forlorn chaos. There was a sort of order in their erratic movement, a rhythm in their flow. Or maybe it was just him. A product of his mind struggling to find patterns where there were none.

  His boots crunched over the snow, each step compacting it into a reminder of his presence — a trail he didn’t like leaving behind. But he had faith it would soon be covered again and his way forgotten. He instead turned his attention towards the building ahead. An old two-story brick house with roof beams exposed like broken ribs.

  It was silent. Everything in this city was either dead or dying. Only stirred the delicate white specks that came crashing onto windows. Those had been barred long ago, remnants of a wave of despair; a folly that had forced many to hide inside their homes, waiting for the end to pass. Except it had never passed. It had only been the beginning of a long torment.

  Despite the state of the house, a sturdy door still guarded the entrance. That was a good sign. Perhaps there would be resources worth finding inside. There’s always a chance. But the chance was always meagre.

  He found his way towards the door and eased it open, focused on any movement inside. Nothing lunged; all remained still. Satisfied, he clicked on his flashlight, the cold beam carving a path through the dimness. Time had worn down the room, but he could still feel a sense of comfort. There lay an old, decrepit couch left facing a lifeless chimney. He could almost picture it. The fire crackling there, the heat reaching him. But there was nothing to burn — just another futile thought.

  He shut the door behind him.

  A thin fog of dust hung in the air, each particle shrinking away from him as he stepped forward. His light caught the haze and turned it into a glimmering wall. It would only parasite his vision, so he killed the beam and let his eyes adjust.

  The house creaked and groaned in the stillness, the weight of wind pushing through cracks somewhere above. It almost gave the illusion that it was still alive. That it still held in its midst the care of a family. And the quiet solace of a place to live in. But if anything hid inside, it remained silent. Waiting.

  He waited, too, listening to the house breathe until shapes reformed out of the shadows. His body knew the routine. Room by room, he searched. Sweeping each corner with muscle memory — his back always turned to spaces he’d already cleared.

  Stairs led him to an illuminated second floor. Broken beams and shattered windows let the daylight pour in to remind him what the place might have been. Dust, wood and snow littered the floor, and echoes of a life long past lingered in discarded relics. Pictures with faces faded beyond recognition. Books whose stories would never be told again. And toys left to gather dust.

  No surprises here. Nothing of value or life in this museum of an ancient world.

  From the main bedroom, the city lay below, buried in a fresh blanket of white. This time of year, it almost resembled its former self — no greenery, just an endless expanse of concrete and metal. A vast sea of stone. Humanity’s monument to hubris now crumbled under the weight of time. It had once been taller. Sharper. Its towers daring the sky. They were left worn and broken, their edges softened by years of weather and neglect. Someday, it will be nothing but rubble.

  He shook off the thought; doors were still left unchecked. It was his routine, saving them for last. Safer this way. Heading back downstairs, he moved with the same purpose, knowing well that even in this apparent empty world, caution kept him breathing.

  When he opened the last door, something struck wrong. A staircase dropped into a pit of darkness, but it was the smell that hit him first. A sickening blend of rot, dust, and moisture. A mixture that took form as he descended deeper. The stench of death.

  Three carcasses lay strewn on the floor, their bones poking through tattered skin. One had been a woman, tall and slender. Perhaps she had been beautiful once. In a twisted way, she still was. Her dress clung to the stone floor where mould patches bloomed like grotesque flowers across the fabric. They marked the first stage of an infection that would spread.

  The other two bodies had likely been male; it was always more challenging to judge when the flesh had already melted away. One, the size of a child, sat slumped in a wooden chair. His head lolled forward as if napping while the other lay sprawled on the floor. His skeletal hand clutched a metal handle embedded in the ground.

  The room, a square cellar, smelled stale beneath the rot. Wooden racks lined the walls, still holding dusty bottles, some of which had spilt their content long ago. Just like their owner. Kneeling, he checked their pockets and belts, searching for anything useful. They had no use for any of it now. Civilians — he guessed — but their cause of death remained uncertain.

  Not that it mattered. They had died, as they all had ages ago.

  Somehow, he always felt more alone in the presence of the dead — their lifeless forms trapped between the old world and the new. A reminder that he belonged to neither. But he had forgone any sense of belonging a long time ago. Only the next objective mattered. The next reason to keep going.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  The bodies didn’t offer one, but his curiosity tugged towards the handle.

  Dust coated a trapdoor’s edges, long undisturbed yet still there. Waiting. He nudged the body aside, his worn fingers brushing away the grime until the dark wood emerged beneath.

  A sudden creak overhead stopped him cold.

  It wasn’t just the wind or the house settling. Slow, deliberate steps crossed the floor above, searching the house at a measured pace. Just as he had. They followed the tracks.

  He sized up his options before acting. Going back up meant having to fight; the stairs would inevitably lead him straight into the blade of a knife. Or worse, a gun held by a waiting man. No. Men. More footsteps had joined the first, two distinct pairs now wandering over his head. The trapdoor remained increasingly tempting — the fight wouldn’t be worth picking. Not this close to the city.

  He pried at the trapdoor, forcing it to give with minimal noise. The flashlight flicked, and he swept the beam over the void below. A damp, narrow tunnel of expanding concrete disappearing into the dark. As good a place as any to vanish unnoticed. Without a sound, he slipped through, letting himself drop into the unknown.

  His leather boots splashed through a thin layer of water. The sound bounced impossibly loud in the confined space. By the time they’d find the trapdoor, he needed to be well away from their reach, as far as this wretched gallery would let him.

  Moving forward, he hoped his instincts were right and this corridor wouldn’t betray him with a dead-end. Tunnels once snaked through the city like lifelines — arteries pulsing with activity. He had known them well back when the underground still teemed with energy and purpose. Now, they were hollowed-out veins, stretching empty and silent. Empty, save for the things that had made it their refuge. Things he’d rather leave undisturbed.

  This particular tunnel, though, felt different. Built with a purpose beyond the mundane, some forgotten plan buried under the years. But for him, there was only one purpose now: finding an exit. Preferably, he would clear the city’s edge before nightfall. Before dusk reclaimed every corner of the ruin above.

  But the tunnel stretched on, a passage of footsteps and breath blurring time into a monotonous beat until, finally, a shape appeared ahead. A wall that split the corridor into two paths. There were no signs or clues as to where to go, so he gambled on the left, brushing his fingers along the wet stone of the outer wall.

  After a while, his flashlight picked up something new. Tiny particles dancing in the air. This time, it wasn’t dust.

  Spores.

  His heart jolted, and with an ingrained reaction, he dropped his backpack and tore it open. His fingers scrabbled through the contents, and he fumbled for his mask, feeling each precious second slip by with every breath he held.

  Eventually, his fingers found it, and he yanked the mask over his head, sealing it in place before taking a long, steadying breath.

  It had been a mistake. Entering the house.

  He should have known it would be stripped of anything worthwhile. The looters had combed through most corners of this land long ago. The city was but an empty carcass now — a graveyard of scraps and dusty bones. Each search was a gamble. The risk too high. The reward too small. And still, he couldn’t stop. Staying still meant a slow death; moving, even with the risk, felt like living. Survival required the gamble.

  He had been blessed with a few lucky finds these past weeks. Winter’s approach brought an eerie quiet over the city, and with it, he could afford moves he would otherwise relish. He had scored canned food — enough to stretch a fortnight, with careful rationing — and a stash of mostly corroded batteries. A few of them still held a charge somehow.

  It had been just enough luck to give him a taste of possibility… and renew his addiction. Maybe that’s why the house had caught his eye. I thought I’d win again.

  And yet, without this gambling, he’d be in another type of situation entirely. Left underground with no light. He thanked god he wasn’t, even though he didn’t believe in any entity above. He only liked to pretend. It gave a sense of purpose and guided this hollow game of chance that kept him coming back. And as he stood in the dim tunnel, he realised his hands were already itching for the next bet.

  His breath came in short bursts, fogging the lens of his mask. The tunnel conspired to blind and trap him, so the spores thickened. Closing in on him. His flashlight sliced through the haze, but visibility had dropped to mere meters. And yet, he couldn’t risk switching it off down here. His eyes would never adjust to this kind of obscurity.

  Every nerve strained to listen, every muscle alert, compensating for the lack of vision. That’s when he caught it. A faint rhythmic scraping mingling with the drip of water.

  Something darted across the ground with a scurrying squeak.

  It’s just a rat. A familiar shiver went through him. The rats were a sight becoming rare. Numbers dwindling every season. Their food source had died long ago, and the leftovers were unwilling to share. At least, that’s the theory he had come up with. Either that or something hunted them to extinction. A less pleasant prospect.

  As quickly as it had appeared, the rodent vanished in the dark. The walls seemed to close tighter, and he felt his focus fraying at the edges. He despised this. The feeling of slipping control.

  Control was survival. Carefully measured steps and calculated decisions. A recipe to stay alive. But out here, the choices weren’t entirely his. For years, he had clung to his rules and hard-learned lessons, yet the irony wasn’t lost on him: he’d never been in control.

  Even back then, his life ran on a path others had paved for him. A future laid out by his parents, like stones on a road.

  Biology. That’s what they had suggested. A field safe and sensible. So he spent years in lecture halls before the collapse, following teachers who didn’t care to teach and students who didn’t care to listen. He had been more attentive than most simply because it was better than doing nothing for hours. Yet none of it had mattered when everything crumbled. None of it safe or sensible.

  He had met his girlfriend there, someone to brighten the dull routine. Girlfriend. The word sounded like a relic of an old language. A term foolish now more than ever.

  At the time, she made all the decisions just as easily as he drifted along with them. The details were fading, but the warmth remained. A ghostly echo of her laughter. The way she would follow the beat of whatever song played in her car on a summer day. A memory dulled by time. She was gone, probably. And that was for the best.

  He had stopped thinking of her by name, that, too, had melted like the wax of a candle. Instead, he called her Sunlight because he needed a term for when he thought of her, and the memories were warm and bright.

  His thoughts fractured.

  The torch beam had caught on something metallic. A ladder, rusted and warped, bolted to the wall and stretching up. Hopefully, to the surface. His pulse quickened in a rare burst of hope, and he brushed the metal with a gloved hand. Rust flakes crumbled, but it felt sturdy enough. Soon, he would be out in the open air.

  Then, something moved.

  A flicker in his peripheral vision. His flashlight swept across the tunnel in front. It was there. Big.

  A figure stood just meters from him. Tall and waiting. It was humanoid in a way, but its arms were too long. They almost dragged along the floor. Wet, pallid flesh glistened in the dim light, bloated and pink. The air around it shifted with every laboured breath, its chest moving in uneven, rasping gasps.

  Paralysed, he stared back at its black, hollow eyes. Empty as the tunnels themselves, yet still fixed on him. A primal terror submerged him, coursing through every vein.

  Then, it made a clicking sound, like a roller coaster coming to a stop. The creature’s joints snapped as it pounced.

  Fuck.

  In the darkness of the tunnel, the unbidden thought of Sunlight flashed in his mind. The rasping breaths were louder now. I didn’t turn right.

  He wished he had.

  ***

  What to expect in Part 1

  Three paths will connect through fate: strangers drawn together by survival, chance, and secrets. Part 1 dives into the unknown, through 8 Chapters, you'll explore the fragility of humankind after the end of the world.

  If this sounds intriguing, tune in each week Wednesday 18:00 (GMT +2) for a new chapter of Whimpers of the Light.