"Should we turn on a flashlight so we can see what's out there?" The pensive voice carried with it an undercurrent of creeping dread. Hints about unstoppable forces lurking within the uninhabited regions of the city made people deeply cautious of spilling light. Given the scant knowledge they possessed, the imagined risks such an act entailed made the idea feel intuitively foolish.
"Not unless we absolutely need to." Evan replied softly to Jennifer, who wholeheartedly nodded in grim concurrence. He glanced towards the other barely perceptible outlines of people as he began to address them all with a slightly louder voice. "Since it's night now, we should hold off on what we were planning until tomorrow morning." A chorus of silent affirmation swept across the figures gathered amidst the shadows.
While time had pressed onwards in daylight, nervous apprehension had somewhat faded into a subdued background discomfort. The emotional dread had previously been broken with a productive task on their minds, and while waiting they had shared food from the building's supply. Intermittent casual chatter followed for the remainder of the day while passively mindful to not being easily visible from outside. The mood was, while not altogether untainted, lightened considerably.
Occasionally, a faint breeze weaving through cracks would bring with it a whiff of decay from the slain corpses outside the gate. The combination of chill and the stony, wet scent of the storm had proven to be a great masking boon. It was an obtrusive reminder of their situation, even while subdued enough to mostly ignore. Now that it was growing dark outside and there had been no further
contact with the outside world, agitated apprehension had begun
trickling back into their mood.
"Why didn't the black note happen again?" Minoko's words were uneven, but Evan could detect a hint of exasperated relief despite the shaky tone and her natural accent. Before, time had been unmarked and unacknowledged. Now the day had completely passed with no evident attempt to mount another rescue. One's mind naturally concocted unwelcome explanations to address such facts.
"The aliens must have abducted everyone they wanted." Ryan crunched into a graham cracker and spoke, sprinkling tiny crumbs into his immediate vicinity. "They must have gone back to their spaceship, so we're safe."
"...we probably are." Evan's agreement came out like molasses, having considered denying the tentative assertion. He didn't think it would be good to contravene what miniscule sense of relief that notion might provide to others. As long as it was dark outside, they ought to remain concealed anyway; there was no reason to further dissolve their somewhat relaxed ease. Even so, they shouldn't chance lives on such speculation. "But we should still consider our options to escape. There's still zombies out there and we can't stay here forever."
There was a momentary period of nervous silence as those assembled waited for the encroaching night to swallow the final traces of sunlight. Almost concurrent with twilight, the rain which had been hammering down most of the day had subsided into a fine misting drizzle. The faint, soothing patter on pavement and sidewalk provided some anchoring connection to Portland normalcy in the near pitch darkness. Without electricity the building was cold, but not uncomfortably so while bundled in heavy coats.
Light came from the nearby hallway, intensely bright for a moment just before dimming quite noticeably. Leon shuffled into the small space with his hand mostly covering the glowing source. Selecting for himself a nearby clear area on the floor, he clicked the beam off before carefully sitting. "Zack ate and drank something and went back to sleep. He lost a lot of blood so he's still tired, but he should be okay."
"Thank you, again." A figure that was Jennifer reached over to touch Leon upon the shoulders in a partial embrace. "For coming here."
"Just glad to be a help." Leon made a gesture in the dark that may have been a shrug.
A few seconds of welcome calm persisted before Ryan broke the reverie. "So what do you think is going on out there?"
"Doesn't seem to be much of anything happening right now." Evan unscrewed a bottle of water and took a sip. His thoughts uncomfortably shifted to the few cases of liquids they had access to. If they were careful, their water and food should be able to last the six of them for about a week, but he suspected the people in the Blackwood building were not as fortunately stocked. "There don't seem to be any more zombies around right now and we haven't heard anything out there."
"Not around here. The rest of the world, dude." Ryan spoke between noisy crunches. "Do you think the aliens are attacking anywhere else? How do you think the rest of the world is reacting to all this?"
"They're fighting back." Jennifer replied after a few seconds.
"Yeah." Leon added. "And since it's obvious these creatures have some kind of knockout weapon, the military is going to quickly realize they have to fight them from a distance with drones or something like that."
"Or just nuke them wherever they land." Ryan posited. He had a peculiar unawareness of the unease such an idea presented to those gathered.
"That doesn't seem very likely." The idea they could be obliterated via nuclear fire (as an action for the benefit of humanity at large) had crossed Evan's mind as well. But he didn't consider it worth ruminating over. Escape was already their primary collective goal, so that possibility wasn't anything he could prepare for or do anything about. Since they would be at ground zero for such an event worrying about it would be pointless.
"Yeah, if the aliens have spaceships in orbit, hitting a small group of them on the ground won't really accomplish much except kill a lot more people than invaders. I don't know what can really be done about a ship in outer space- I don't think anyone has missiles designed to hit something up there." Leon speculated. "They're going to have to do something special about those."
"But they're going to stop them." Jennifer asserted.
"Oh, yeah, I bet they're already thinking about how to find them out there and shoot them all down." Leon added.
"Yeah, man. That is going to be so awesome." Ryan replied.
Evan wasn't quite as confident much could actually be done about creatures in a spaceship who could apparently create zombies and trivially make an entire army fall unconscious in the blink of an eye. Such actions far beyond human ability- not to mention coming to Earth from the void beyond- implied other feats of power they were hopelessly incapable of matching.
Yet on an optimistic note, from what he had observed during the chaos inflicted by the black note, rigorous military discipline successfully held order amongst the soldiers at the least. If it was true anything productive could be done, those in charge might be able to do it.
"Anyway," Evan began. "We should probably get some rest for tomorrow. When the sun comes up, we should be working out an escape plan."
"Yeah, the military is probably going to be too busy fighting the aliens to help us." Ryan's grin could be heard in his voice, sounding almost wistful as he no doubt reflected on the awesome nature of beating back an alien invasion force with lasers and missiles.
Despite the consuming shadows now concealing what- if anything- laid directly outside, the atmosphere within the enclave was still surprisingly relaxed. While they all knew forces were at work far beyond their ability to handle, an objective and a clear goal in mind somewhat limited the extent of their despair.
Disbanding with only minimal further use of light, the refugees secluded themselves away for rest and to await the fresh dawn. Upon arising with the morning light, the relaxed atmosphere rapidly died as a fresh horde of death thrashed at the iron barrier outside.
