Dark Inside by Jeyn Roberts Page A

of attention. You’ll like her. She’ll probably know what to do. Not because she’s an adult but because she’s pretty smart.”
    She paused when she realized she could hear her own footsteps on the tiled floor but nothing else.
    Turning around quickly, she saw nothing but empty hallway.
    Daniel was gone.

NOTHING
    They know we’re here. They’re coming for us. What lies beneath has pushed its way to the surface once again. Time to get away while there is still air left in our lungs.
    But they will still come.
    No matter how much we run and jump and hide.
    They’ve known all along.
    It’s a game, you see. A simple ploy. If they were to get rid of all of us, then it would be Game Over for all eternity. What fun would that be?
    So they will keep some of us alive. Let us breathe and eat and hide. Every now and then they will even let us breed. Then they hunt us anyway. But make no mistake, this is a calculated plot. They will take the ones they need for their future and destroy those they see as worthless.
    They have plans for us.
    They’ve already won.
    They will remain smart during the annihilation their rage brings.
    They walk the riverbed in their fancy clothes and diamond rings. They slouch through the streets with their shoppingcarts and mismatched shoes. They walk among us, which makes them especially hard to find. A family member perhaps. A lover. A child. This is how they survive and we die out. They are much cleverer than us.
    They’ve been here for a very long time.
    Just like animals can sense an earthquake, they felt it coming. They could taste the fear on their lips. It ignited a spark inside of them. Chaos. Perfect, lovable, candy-coated, goes-down-oh-so-sweet anarchy. A time to surge forth. Arrange their massacre. Send out their messengers. Plenty of time for preparation. They gathered their numbers and organized their attack. They didn’t even need to RSVP.
    It was the perfect plan, and they are the weapons that our leaders keep warning us about. They are the things that hide in your closet and fuel your fear. They lurk in both alleyways and living rooms. They sit across from you at restaurants and push past you to ride the bus.
    They are the dark thoughts inside of us we pretend we don’t hear. We ignored them but they didn’t go away. They grew stronger. Louder. They began to make sense.
    I can feel them inside me. The voices are tonguing secrets in my ears that travel down my vertebrae. A thousand squirming insects are chewing on my stomach lining. Mice crawl around inside my intestines. Cockroaches pick at the veins behind my eyes. The voices scream inside my head, but yet they never say more than a whisper. I can’t breathe. I can’t think.
    I’m being eaten alive.
    I look forward to death. It will be peaceful compared to this.

MASON
    Sometime after two in the morning, Mason’s mother drew her last breath. No one noticed or bothered to come. They probably wouldn’t know what to do anyway; the morgue was filled to maximum capacity. He hadn’t seen a doctor or even an orderly in over six hours. The hospital was in chaos.
    Mason was holding her hand when she went. He’d been sitting by her bedside all night, unable to do anything except watch the rise and fall of her chest as the machines helped her breathe.
    Thousands of people had died in the past twenty-four hours. Maybe even more—he’d heard nurses talking in the halls about the earthquakes. But he didn’t know anyone on the West Coast. Besides, there were more important things on his mind. Hearing about the deaths of strangers didn’t fill him with a lot of sadness.
    But the bottom dropped out of his world when his mother joined them.
    Earlier he’d had the television on to try to gain some understanding. The media was reporting that 123 schools had been bombed. People were screaming words like “terrorism,”“mass suicide,” and “organized plots,” but so far there was nothing to show that the attacks were anything but