Doubt overtook Dotty as she stood at the entrance to the tunnel. That colossal darkness, ten times larger than her, fixed her like the eye of a cyclops. It invited her to enter. She looked back and took a breath. Were they still following her?
She wasn't convinced that she wanted to merge into that darkness. She felt helpless, completely disoriented and overcome by the situation. Where was everyone else?
No. There wasn't time for questions. If she waited even a moment longer those things from the ship would eat her alive… just like they did to her aunt and uncle. She held back her tears and pushed down those feelings that tried to burst from her chest.
"It's not good to cry, Dotty." She remembered her father's words. "Crying makes you weak. Don't cry. People will think they're stronger than you."
Suddenly it seemed as if daylight poured into the depths of the tunnel. Dotty turned to see an intense orange light igniting the metallic skin of the nearby domes behind her. That was only a reflection. The true light came from the pulse engines of the Hermes as it lifted it over her head, exposing its expansive belly. It left the landing platform, climbing rapidly. It crossed the atmosphere with a light shake and disappeared into the night— just another star on the firmament.
*
She ran silently, barefoot, crossing that gloom between all the shards of glass and rusty metal that littered her way. Her feet hurt and her stomach made a grave rumble. She took a breath and looked back. This road, like all the others, was as tall as a five story building and it carried on for as far as she could see. There was no end in many kilometres. It was only the occasional junction that interrupted the monotony of that bleak landscape.
She was sure that these were the highways that connected the various recreational and residential hubs of Eidolon. Sooner or later she had to arrive somewhere. They had to lead to one city district or another. But her hope was fading after everything she had seen: the moon seemed dead and like it had been that way for a long time.
Now, abandoned hovercars blocked the dusty road, piled on top of each other and without a trace of their owners. Most of them had broken windows and buckled doors, or both, and if you looked close enough you could see spots of dried blood on their ravaged seats— black dots on the artificial white leather.
But it wasn't the blood that scared Dotty the most, it was how faint these traces had become. Someone had been here once and now almost every sign of them was gone. It gave her goosebumps. She imagined those hovercars soaring through the tunnel at top speed, hurrying to the next big show, the next date… people, all the human lives that had filled this unsleeping city, and now not even their footprints remained.
Dotty dried the sweat from her brow. The air she breathed felt full of sawdust. It was dry and it made her throat burn. Her mouth was filled with a sharp metallic taste that stuck to her tongue.
She looked ahead of her. There were holes in every surface. Chunks of the roof had fallen in after some huge impact, or perhaps simply after years without maintenance. It was only because of the external light that filtered in through those gaps that Dotty could cross this labyrinth without a torch. She hoped the dawn would come soon.
On the one hand, it was good to see further than the tip of her nose. On the other, more light meant more shadows and God only knew what could be hiding in those shadows. Everything she passed, and everything that entered her mind, threatened to turn itself into some kind of monster. And not without cause, she had seen one of the horrors up close. She saw what it did to her aunt Emma and her uncle Henry… all in one moment. She had never seen anything like that on Earth! Nor anything so horrific in any documentary about alien races. Certainly she hadn't seen anything like it in those relentlessly joyful adverts for Eidolon that flooded the streets back home.
It was better not to think about it, she told herself, and she rubbed her eyes. When she took her hands away again, she saw a beam of light bounce off the wall of the tunnel.
It disappeared and then came again.
Tang… tang…
Dotty ran and hid behind the nearest hovercar. She crouched and she waited. She prayed it was only her imagination, but she was sure that she had heard steps coming closer. Had that creature finally found her?
Another metallic clang startled her.
Tang, tang.
She raised her head to peek over the chassis of the vehicle. She managed to make out a blurred silhouette behind the glare of a flashlight that turned on and off in short intervals. It was about twenty metres away and headed straight towards her.
"Dotty think," she said to herself. "You're a resourceful girl."
She peered through the window of the car that she was crouched behind. She thought about hiding inside, but then she spotted a plastic card on the dashboard. Next to the steering wheel was a vertical slot of the exact same size. This gave her an idea. It was madness, but she didn't have anything else.
She opened the door of the car and it screeched. The beam of torch light came straight through the windshield of the car.
Dotty moved as fast as she could. She leapt into the driver's seat and grabbed the card in one motion. She knew the odds were one in a thousand, perhaps one in a million, but she slammed the card into the slot.
The lights of the car blazed ahead of her in twin beams. That light bounced a hundred times off the figure's metal skin and was returned to her with the same intensity. She couldn't look straight at it. She covered her eyes with her forearm and pushed the lever beside the control panel.
The vehicle let out a hum and lifted a short distance off the ground. The figure seemed to move as the lights danced all around it.
Dotty stepped as hard as she could on one of the pedals and the car shot forward with a great hiss. She screamed.
Just before the impact she thought she heard a voice that wasn't hers.