Darkness, Be My Friend

Chapter Three : Inside a Ghost Town

Somewhere in the main building of the compound, Jack had piled a small collection of her findings in the middle of the dust coated floor. There were several slightly dented cans of various foods, two of the miniature solar contraptions that were all around the place, more than a dozen cred chips, some drinking mugs, and a full set of stainless steel silverware. Sighing to herself, she picked up one of the food cans and frowned, examining the label before snatching up one of the butter-knives from the entangled pile of forks and spoons.

She jabbed the knife into one edge of the can, prying up the tin top with almost a practiced ease. In truth she'd done this exact thing at least a hundred times before, sneaking extra food back at her old foster home; she couldn't have used the can opener in the middle of the night, it would have woken everyone up and she would have gotten a beating. Once the top popped off, she raised the contents up to her nose and sniffed it to see if was still viable as an edible substance.

Doesn't smell bad...peaches, don't really like them but hey, food is food...

Jack shrugged and downed half the contents in one gulp, licking her lips before scarfing down the remainder at a more leisurely pace, digging out the chunks with her fingers. Once she'd finished that off, having licked her hands clean, she reached for another can and opened it up, noting that this time it was more of a mix of fruit than just peaches. She looked at the contents for a moment, then picked up another can and tucked it under her arm before grabbing up one of the mugs and heading outside.

The blue sun that had been rising earlier was pretty much in the middle of the sky now, bathing the compound in bright bluish white light. The glare of it bouncing off the sand was almost too much for her eyes and she had to squint as she walked out from the small corridor of buildings. She paused a few feet away from the vaporator and observed as Riddick reattached some of the wires, stepping back as the thing whirred to life.

"I found a cup," Jack announced as he turned his head slightly to show that he had noticed her presence. She walked over, holding it out to him and he took it without a word, setting it down under the small faucet on one side of the vaporator. Crouching down next to it, he looked back over at her as she sat down where she stood, dropping the unopened can and the butterknife on the ground. She glanced over at him and held out the opened can of mixed fruit, smiling slightly. "Found some food too."

To her surprise he smiled back, albeit a half-smile, taking the can from her silently as he had with the mug. She watched as he ate, not bothering to dig the fruit out like she had but simply gulping it down in less time than it had taken for her to open it. He set the can aside when he had finished and eyed the unopened one, so Jack picked it up and pried the top off, conscious of him watching her. Once the can was open she held it out, but this time he didn't take it, just looked at her and Jack subconsciously bit her lip.

"What's wrong?"

"You should eat, kid," he told her and Jack's smile widened.

"I already had one and besides, there's like a dozen more," she informed him, nodding at the buildings. "Can't believe there's so much stuff still in this place and nobody here."

"That's because they're all dead," Riddick said in approximately the tone of someone who was simply discussing the weather, taking the can from her and peering at the contents.

"Dead?" Jack echoed, eyes going wide. "But how do you know that? I mean, there're no bodies or anything, its just all empty."

"Can smell it," he replied with an uncaring shrug. Jack stared at him as her mind spun over the answer.

That's kind of creepy…

Riddick watched the kid's expression change as he finished off the can of fruit she'd given him. He had a pretty good idea of what might have happened; whatever had desecrated the body of the pilot had more than likely killed off everyone who'd been living in this place. Her question about the bodies though, that bothered him. If it was some kind of creature there should have at least been something left; no predator in the known universe took everything from its prey.

And humans don't count…

He would have laughed at that thought but the sound of dripping water caught his attention. Tossing the empty fruit can aside, he turned back towards the vaporator and watched as the faucet slowly dripped a steady stream of water into the mug the girl had brought out. He waited until it was nearly full before picking it up, ignoring the dusty quality of the water as he took a gulp; water was water.

Riddick felt a pair of eyes staring at him as he drank and lowered the cup from his mouth to cast a sideways glance at Jack. She was biting her lip again, but when she saw him looking her way she turned and pretended like she hadn't been staring, bending down to pick up the empty cans. He frowned for a moment, turning his eyes from her to the now half-empty mug of water, then back; something that felt like confusion at the back of his mind.

"Here kid," he muttered after a moment, holding the cup out towards Jack.

Dropping the cans again, Jack stared at him for one long moment before slowly taking the cup, as if she expected him to rescind the offer. She took a drink, still watching him, then lowered the cup and smiled like she had before; if this place'd had any kind of darkness in it that smile would have lit it up like a candle. It made the confusion in Riddick's head increase; no one had ever smiled at him like that before. Hell, no one ever smiled at him for any reason except maybe the payday on his head and this kid was way too young to be a merc, way to young to be concerned with that amount of money.

"Thank you," Jack whispered, taking another drink before holding the cup back out; there was still some water in it.

"Keep it," Riddick told her, standing up. It was the second time she'd thanked him and it felt strange, like those words couldn't possibly mean what they were supposed to mean. He started to walk away, glancing off towards a tarp covered overhang off one of the side buildings were therein lay the intact framework of solar-powered sandcat. It looked to be in pretty good shape and if he could get it running then the only thing he'd have to worry about was whether or not enough of the power cels back at the crash were intact.

"Hey, wait up!" the girl called from behind him and he let out a slightly irritated sigh.

More than one thing to worry about.

She caught up with him and he noticed the cup was gone; she must have left it at the vaporator for it to refill. Riddick stopped to look at her, noting that she was nervous again, almost as if she wasn't sure what reaction her words might get.

Now that's definitely not something to do with me…

"Got something to say kid?" he asked, looking down at her.

"Uh, there's more food and stuff," Jack answered hesitantly, pausing to see if he would say anything to that, but Riddick just waited for her to go on. "Should I maybe put it on the skiff or something?"

"You do that," he said with a short nod, frowning when she bit her lip again. The place where her teeth met skin was beginning to bruise slightly and if she applied anymore pressure it was going to start bleeding. Jack didn't seem to notice though and backed away almost as soon as he answered. Riddick watched her until she disappeared into one of the buildings, a question replacing the confusion at the back of his mind.

Twenty-two.

Jack frowned down at the pile of fruit cans she'd found as she contemplated the number, turning it over in her head. It was the exact same number of cans in the pile as well as the last marked date on the chrono sheet calender hanging from three loose screws on the wall. For some reason the number gave off a bad feeling in her head and in the pit of her stomach, which was strange because usually when she thought of unlucky numbers it was either the classic thirteen or her own personal nine.

Shaking the feeling away, she knelt down next to the pile of cans and set about counting them out into two separate piles. She figured that she could more than likely subsist on one can a day and Riddick on two, so she counted out the piles accordingly. One of for every two, leaving her with a pile of seven and a pile of fourteen with one can left over; the equivilant of seven days.

A week…damn…well maybe a half a can a day for me, I mean, I've lived off less…

Sighing, she gathered up as many cans as she could carry and stepped out the door into the glaring sunlight. The blue sun was beginning to set now, casting strange shadows in between the buildings as she made her way out towards the skiff. Glancing down at the sand as she walked, Jack noticed that her shoes weren't leaving any footprints in the dirt.

Strange…this whole place is just strange…

Reaching the skiff, she climbed up inside and set the cans down on the metal floor, looking around. The grated floor reminded her of ship she'd stowed away in once, the floors in the cargo hold had been grated, covering enough space for her to crawl under when the crew came in to lock things down. They'd found her near the end of the trip and had threatened to throw her out the airlock, but they had instead turned her over to the authorities at Jericho Station.

That was how she'd ended up on the Hunter-Gratzner in the first place. The authorities had decided to send her back to where it'd be easier for someone to find her family. They hadn't wanted to deal with some runaway kid and they hadn't cared to listen to her protests; no one cared what would happen if she did get sent back home. They'd booked her the cheapest last-minute ticket on that ship and just look at what had happened; it had crashed and they probably didn't even feel guilty about it.

Probably don't even know about it yet…

With a grim expression on her face, Jack began stacking the cans under one of the seats, glancing outside as she did so. She couldn't see where Riddick had gone to and that made her slightly uneasy; she didn't like this place and the uncertainty of whether or not he had ditched her was starting to wreak havoc on her nerves. He was strange, maybe the strangest person she'd ever met, but she didn't think he was as bad as the news reports made him out to be.

Compared to every other person she'd known in her twelve years of existance, he was the first one to actually react as if she was real and not something in the background of the world. Most people treated her and anyone else under the age of seventeen like they didn't matter or even exist in the same reality as them. Jack had even been told as much on more than one occasion; that she was the equivalent of the empty candy bar wrapper floating down the side of the street, unsightly and therefore ignored.

It was only when she was in trouble that she got acknowledged and it ended up with all the worst things; bruises and scars, both physical ones and mental ones burned into her soul. Her first reaction to someone speaking to her or her talking to someone else was the expectation of punishment. Biting her lip was something that came out of this habit, she barely noticed that she did it anymore.

Standing up again, she hopped out of the skiff to see that Riddick hadn't left; he was messing around with the sandcat under one of the tarp covered awnings. Smiling to herself, Jack started back towards the buildings to collect the rest of the food, pushing thoughts of the past as far from her mind as she could get them. This arrangement of memories, however, was only temporary; it would only be a matter of time before they came seeping back between the cracks of her consciousness.