"Infinite Darkness" - Part Two

 

Part Two

            Not again!

            Riddick knew where this was heading. He had been through this scene before.

            Zeke was dead again, but not quite the same as last time. It wasn’t a Bioraptor that got him; it was something else that preyed in the darkness. Of course, there was no way to prove that, especially not with him standing over the dead body in front of Fry and the rest of the survivors.

            Just like before, he tried to run away from the scene of the crime.

            Shazza opened fire on him in a fit of rage.

            As he ran, he remembered something important – something that happened in this same scenario that he was prepared for this time.

            Johns.

            He sprung out from behind a rock to trip him with his baton.

            But Riddick was ready, leaping over the baton. How did he see that coming? The thought rang through Johns’ mind, as he was now standing face-to-face with Riddick. Something was different about him. He didn’t seem like the same man he lost track of, mere seconds ago.

            Prepared to tussle with Johns, Riddick was suddenly blindsided by a dark figure that tackled him from the left. He was stronger and fiercer than Riddick himself, covered in bandages for reasons Riddick couldn’t figure nor cared. All he knew was this guy was the reason he was caught yet again.

            Of course, the bandaged stranger nearly opted on snapping his neck, until an attractive redhead dressed in black quickly stopped him. “No, Peyton!” she told him. “We still need him alive!” It was her intervention that kept Riddick breathing.

            Johns chained him up in the same place as before: in the main cabin of the wrecked Hunter Gratzner. He smiled at the twisted sense of déjà vu he experienced, sitting with his shackled arms suspended and his goggles removed, exposing his eyeshine. No irises, just huge black-pool pupils and a jewel-like eyeshine (hence the name) from deep within stared towards the floor, waiting expectantly.

            “Where’s the gun?” He smirked when he heard the commanding (and yet inexperienced) voice of Carolyn Fry address him. “You shot Zeke six times – twice in the head and four times in his body…and yet we didn’t find the gun on you. So, where is it?”

            Riddick didn’t say a word.

            “That’s fine – you don’t want to talk to me, that’s your choice,” Fry warned. “But just so you know, there’s a debate—”

            “…on whether you all should leave me here to die,” Riddick finished for her.

            Fry was startled by his clairvoyance. “How did you know that?”

            “Because I’ve been here before, Carolyn…on this crazy planet…with all of you. And just like before…you got the wrong man.”

            “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but we saw you with Zeke’s body.”

            “I mean, you got the wrong Riddick.”

            Fry scowled questionably at him. “What do you mean ‘wrong Riddick’?”

            “This is gonna sound insane, but I’m not the Riddick of what you’d call ‘the present.’ That guy is history.”

            “So, you’re saying that you’re…What? Future Riddick?”

            “Exactly.”

            “Ridiculous!”

            “Hours from now, this planet’s gonna have a big eclipse that’ll trap us in infinite darkness. Before then, there’ll be another dead body: Ali. Then it’ll be Shazza, Hassan…”

            “Stop it.”

            “…Paris, Johns…”

            “I said stop it!”

            “…Suleiman…”

            “SHUT UP!”

            “…and you too, Carolyn.”

            Fry’s pulse raced with anxiety. It took everything in her just to regain composure and a sense of control over this interrogation. “You can’t possibly know all of that will happen.”

            “You’re right…I don’t…because too much is happening now that’s different from before. Zeke didn’t die the same way. Something else got ‘im…something that lives in the shadows.”

            “The Vashta Nerada.”

            Fry almost jumped out of her skin when she heard Mandy’s voice speak out from behind her. She didn’t hear her walk in. “Get out,” she ordered her, but Mandy wasn’t even listening to her. She was too lost in what Riddick’s wild fable.

            “You’re right about those holes in Zeke’s body,” Mandy told him. “They weren’t made by bullets. Something chewed into him.”

            “I know you,” Riddick analyzed every inch of her curved, slender figure, accentuated by the black jumpsuit she wore. “You’re the Gladiator of Gallifrey.”

            Mandy’s brow furrowed. “I don’t remember ever meeting you.”

            “Not this version of you,” Riddick elaborated. “One of the later models.”

            “Can we get back to what you said about not being the Riddick of our time?” Fry demanded. “If any of what you said has any truth, then where is he?”

            “I don’t know,” Riddick said. “He probably had the same encounter I did with one of those angel statues. I found one on Furya, thinking it was just a regular statue – Furya’s full of them. Once it touched me, I found myself back here on this planet, and the younger me missing.”

---------------------------

            Fry relayed Riddick’s story to Johns and the other Hunter survivors.

            Johns, obviously, didn’t believe a word. “Give me a break. Time travel, statues, shadows that eat you? He’s either lost his mind or he’s making the whole thing up to scare us.”

            “How does he know specifically which of us dies?” asked Abu al-Walid, a Muslim Imam who survived the crash of the Hunter with his three acolytes: Suleiman, Hassan, and Ali. “He mentions all of us by name, except for me, himself, this one…” He motioned to the one survivor named Jack, a boy who was the same age as his acolytes. “…and this woman and her two companions.” He lastly gestured to Mandy.

            “Because he is who he says he is,” Mandy supported Riddick’s story. “The statue that he’s talking about is called a ‘Weeping Angel.’ Peyton, Clarence, and I encountered one that sent us to this planet.

            “Wait a sec,” Johns’ guard was suddenly up from what Mandy just said. “I thought ya’ll crashed here with us.”

            Mandy modestly smiled. “You assumed we were… we never claimed to be.”

            “MANDY! MANDY!” She heard Clarence cry repeatedly. He ran up to her, clinging onto and sobbing into her hip. “He’s gone, Mandy!” He looked up at her with pitiful, teary eyes and snot running from his nose. “Mr. Darkman is gone!”

            “Mr. What-Now?” Shazza heard the name, frowning.

            “It’s a nickname he came up with for Peyton,” Mandy briefly explained before crouching to Clarence’s level and cleaning the tears and snot from his face with a black silk handkerchief. “Just relax, sweetie. We’ll find him.”

            Together with the Hunter survivors, they journeyed out to search for Westlake, trekking across the harsh alien climate – a blue sun setting, yellow and red suns rising.

            “What’s his deal?” Johns asked Mandy, along the way. “This Westlake fella. His skin’s ultra-sensitive to light, so he wears those bandages? What’s wrong with him? Was he born with some sort of skin disorder or somethin’?”

            Mandy deflected on her answer and merely advised Johns, “We have to search the shadowed areas…whatever caverns, holes, or trenches we can find.”

            They followed on her instruction, with Mandy and Fry searching the nearest cavern in some spired hills. Shafts of daylight bore down in caves. Old bones littered the floor. A clicking sound put both women on guard. “What is that?” Fry wondered, her crystal blue eyes searching along with Mandy’s.

            Something was there in the caves…something just beyond the cusp of light.

            The clicking increased, getting louder and more intense.

            Mandy and Fry made a silent agreement to leave while they still could.

            They bolted for the exit, only to have it blocked by a ravenous creature with a cross-shaped, eyeless head that looked to be made of hard, chitinous material. Its body was thin, streamlined, and covered in thick, leathery skin. It possessed wings capable of some form of flight, and a twin-forked tail with sharp points at the end.

            “Ahhhh!” Fry cried out, and her outburst seemed to have been what signaled their presence to the sightless creature, as it lunged straight for them.

            Mandy and Fry’s instincts were to run.

            That was before the creature passed through one area that was darker, more shadowed than the other parts of its domain. Emerging on the other side, all its flesh was picked clean off its bones, clattering at the feet of the two women that would have been its prey.

            Now they were prey to a different predator that dwelled in the darkness:

            The Vashta Nerada.