10.1
In a pitch-black locker room on a hospital's basement level, Blake, Nikki, Eve, and Corvus waited anxiously for the second twilight–the one that would finally bring them to the sunrise of October 5th.
They were all ready to be free from their blindness in that dark, eerie room.
Well, not quite.
The reverberating gunshots from above were enough to make them feel even cozy on the cold locker room floor.
One more twilight.
Their operation had been going smoothly. They'd had hardly any trouble getting in, and, despite the chaos of twilight, not a single rogue had ventured into that underground hallway.
If the others had had any experience in Portland, they would have been more suspicious.
Blake clasped his hands together, interlacing his fingers in the dark.
Even he couldn't be certain that the night would end as planned.
They were in Portland, after all, so predictability didn't exist.
Nikki's muscles were depleted just from shivering. Every noise made her jump, and she scooted ever farther from that terrifying door–the door that separated their room from the hallway, which led up a flight of stairs, out the building, and into the night.
The night, which was full of creatures that could kill her one hundred times in a minute.
Her fear went deep. It was a pure, raw fear, innate to any conscious organism when its life is about to be taken.
A living thing's purpose is to survive, after all.
Our purpose is to survive. Survive, so that we can evolve.
Time passed differently in the dark. When would twilight hit, and when would they be free to run?
Blake didn't know, so all he could do was keep his ears open.
He had to be able to respond, if the need ever came.
Yeah, time passed slower in the dark.
Nikki, who had seemed likely to never sleep again, found her eyelids drooping, body systems utterly spent.
Her senses dulled, and the gunshots didn't hit as hard.
She'd reached her physical limit.
But take those gunshots, multiply their volume by 10 and their frequency by 100, and anyone would wake up.
The time had come.
BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG
Nikki leapt to her feet. Eve clenched her sniper rifle.
Blake almost sighed, feeling a weight lifted off his shoulders despite the flood of danger.
The wait had been brutal, but it was finally over.
Lockers rattled.
"Don't panic," Blake said over the muffled chaos. "We'll need to move as soon as twilight ends."
If only a little, hearing a human voice allowed the others to exit their heads and come back to reality.
That's right.
Of course.
They would need to move into the center of Portland as quickly as possible.
Why?
Nikki's brain could hardly formulate thoughts, but she was able to come up with one.
Why are we here?
Why are we here?
She looked through the dark at the place where Blake must have been standing.
And now, she felt a new fear.
The fear that she'd made a terrible mistake.
But there she was, stranded in the middle of Portland.
What could she possibly do about it?
"We need to go west."
It was Blake's voice again.
"I'd say it's around three miles. We'll move as quickly as we can, the instant the noise stops."
If they were still alive.
Above, up on the earth's surface, the level of light rose quickly as the sun climbed closer and closer to the horizon.
A few miles away, a wooden spider web caught fire.
Perhaps they would even be able to smell its smoke.
But in the air above them, the only smoke belonged to guns.
And as that smoke dissipated, the sounds of shooting went with it.
Light made the ruins of the city clearly visible–twilight was over.
"Come on."
Blake's response was immediate, his words echoing off the invisible walls.
The others had developed such a distaste for that black room of hopelessness that they matched his urgency and hurried out the door.
Out the door, down the hallway, up the stairs, and through that opening in the building's wall.
They finally saw light–the light of the rising sun.
Blake's feet found the cracked pavement of a road running west to east, and he powered down it, not quite running but still prioritizing speed.
The others followed, carrying a sense of anticipation in their chests, knowing that, beyond those trees and buildings lining the streets, the center of Portland lay.
What was there? Why did Blake want it so badly?
For better or for worse, those questions were about to be answered.
They climbed over rubble, ducked at the occasional sound of a bullet, and never looked back, the sun's warm face glowing down behind them.
The dense neighborhood they were trekking through seemed to crawl on indefinitely, but then the structures got bigger.
Clumps of little houses turned into city blocks, occupied by crumbled commercial buildings.
Greenery was no longer.
It seemed that any tree's attempt to grow had been savagely denied, as if by a plague, or the teeth of an insatiable beaver.
They pressed on through this desolate wasteland of a city, wondering what exactly qualified the "center."
Blake strained his eyes, always looking forward, but what was he hoping to find?
The highway that they'd journeyed in on appeared at their right, a little ways beneath them. They spotted a bridge, and they crossed it.
Blake turned again to the east, now striding ever longer and holding his head ever higher, eyes on a swivel.
A mountain of rubble appeared in their path, forcing them to navigate around it, but Blake's direction was immediately recovered.
He led them on.
To Eve's eyes, something unusual could be seen through a thin window of space in the wreckage.
It was still a few hundred yards away, but there was no mistaking its presence.
Or rather, its lack of presence.
The ground seemed to rise before cresting into nothingness. There were no buildings or signs. No streetlamps or cars. Just a jagged wall.
It looked to her like the end of the world.
And as the squad approached, they all saw it.
Blake checked his pace, looking left to right as if crossing a busy street.
But he didn't stop walking, and it was without hesitation that he stepped up to the top of the ridge and looked down into what lay beyond it.
It was a crater, unimaginably wide and inconceivably deep.
But it was filled with water. It had merged with the massive river flowing just beyond, and it had become a perfectly circular lake, some thousand feet across.
Blake crouched, setting a hand on the treacherous ridge, and sat down, looking out on the sparkling blue waters.
Nikki, Eve, and Corvus stood alongside him in awe, unable to imagine a name for what lay before them.
But Nikki's shock at the topographical oddity only lasted so long, and it turned into a new form of disbelief.
She looked at Blake with eyes haunted in fear and in doubt.
"What are you doing?"
Her voice was weak, one that betrayed how unsure of herself she'd become.
The truth hardly mattered to her anymore, because there was nothing she could do with it.
The cards had been played, and any who looked back regretfully was far too late.
"I'm admiring this sight," he replied, addressing her just as he'd always done. "I've been looking forward to visiting for a long time."
Nikki took a staggering step backwards. It was involuntary–purely a result of her weakened body and confused mind.
"That's why you wanted to come?"
She sounded like a mouse, already caught within the cat's claws.
Blake finally stood, sending a few pieces of concrete tumbling down into the water below.
He turned, and he looked her in the eyes with a serious expression on his face.
His eyes alone told her that he was about to say something important–more important than anything he'd ever said to her.
"Follow me a little farther."
He descended the ridge and turned, now facing northwest.
They had come so far–turning back now would have been nothing but a shame.
For one last time, the four of them walked together, side by side under a brilliantly blue sky.