Darkness, Be My Friend

Chapter Six : Racing a Surreal Sunset

The line of darkness that was the ringed planet rose at an almost tauntingly slow pace across the sky as Riddick drove the sandcat across the desert floor. The solar powered engine was spinning as fast as it could go, but he knew it wasn't fast enough. In the back bed of the sandcat Jack sat, holding onto the roll bar with one hand and the generator with the other, knuckles white and eyes squenched shut.

The cels rolled against her whenever the vehicle turned, until they reached the downside of the ridge before the boneyard; that heavy jolt of the slope caused the cels to basically wedge themselves together, trapping the girl against the bottom of the roll cage. She grunted, but didn't complain; Riddick wouldn't have done anything if she had anyways. They couldn't afford to stop for anything, not now, not with the shadows growing and the very real threat of those diamond jawed monsters waiting in the darkness.

Jack's question from before came back to him as he pulled the sandcat into the start of the canyon, the first ring of the eclipsing planet starting to obscure the golden glow of the first sun. All around them a thousand screeching wails erupted, echoing along the canyon walls. The solar panels began to spin slower in their little bubble, the engine speed dropping down a notch.

Riddick was not afraid of the dark, there had never before been a reason to be, especially not with his eyes. Not even now, with these nightmarish creatures waiting to pounce when the lights vanished, did he feel even the least bit of fear concerning himself. The girl was afraid though, he could smell it; she was afraid of the monsters but brave enough to face them.

Who does that, puts their own survival on the line for someone else...she does...

No one he'd ever met before acted like this kid; fearful and courageous, nervously quiet but curious all the same. She was different and that alone was strange; she'd smiled over a simple thing like a cup of water. Even now that one half of his mind where instinct ruled was shouting for him to get rid of her, the creatures would follow her blood; but he was cut and bleeding as well so the argument wasn't so strong.

Besides, she had smiled and he wanted to know why. It would have been funny, driving through that canyon with the waning light and the thousands of echoing howls of who knew how many creatures waiting to rip them apart; here he was thinking about some stupid kid.

"OH SHIT!" her shout cut through his thoughts.

There was no need to search extensively for the source of Jack's exclamation. The spires atop the canyon walls had burst open, spewing forth a churning black cloud of hatchlings, miniature versions of the larger diamond jawed demons. They swarmed through the air, shrieking and wailing as they soared first upwards into the faux dusk caused by the ringed planet. Then they came crashing down into the canyon behind the sandcat, barreling towards the dying vehicle.

It clicked in a single instant, seeing that roaring tornado of teeth and claws bearing down on them; he was not going to leave her to this.

Riddick swung out of the driver's seat and grabbed Jack by the collar of her shirt, yanking her out of the back and down to the ground. She let out a startled cry, but didn't struggle when he shoved her beneath the undercarriage of the sandcat; not a second later the whirling storm of hatchlings came with the force of a hurricane. He dropped to the dirt just in time, tearing off his goggles to watch the miniature beasts screech and zigzag in unison through the air, searching for anything and everything edible in their flight paths, even themselves.

They avoided the glow from the fiber-optics, however, showing the same aversion to the light as the bigger one back at the crash ship. It made a certain sense, in a twisted sort of way; these things were truly nocturnal.
The cloud of hatchlings dissipated after one long moment, but Riddick stayed still, listening to the echoes along the canyon walls. He heard Jack stir under the sandcat and snapped out a hand, grabbing her arm as she started to crawl out from under the wheels.

"Wait," he growled, eyeing the head of the canyon. The screeches and howls of the hatchlings were growing again; he felt the muscles in the girl's arms tense as she heard them. "Wait."

Jack closed her eyes and pressed her face into the curve of her free arm, trying not to be afraid and failing miserably. She could still feel Riddick's hand around her otherarm, it was the only thing keeping her from bolting. She forced herself not to move as that cloud of teeth and claws passed over them again, shrieking and wailing.

It seemed like forever, pressed into the dirt with nothing between her and certain death but the sandcat and Riddick's hand. Then the noise of the tornado of hatchlings disappeared completely and Jack found herself being pulled back out from under the vehicle. It was almost completely dark now, the only light was the green-blue glow of the fiber-optic cables and their generator.

She could see his eyes again, mercurial pinpricks in the shadows of the canyon walls, vanishing every now and then when he blinked. They flicked back and forth, as if he were surveying the darkness and Jack felt a sudden wave of fear wash over her.

He's going to leave now...

Jack wasn't stupid; she knew the unwritten code of survival was to look after yourself first, so she knew that she was going to die. Maybe if this was the streets back on Dulroon or even Old Earth, she would have had a better chance; after all, being a part of the trash littered scenery was her expertise. There were lights there, enough for her to see by anyways, but here there was only the fiber-optic glow and those two silver orbs.

She would either die by the teeth of those creatures for their evening meal or by Riddick's hands for the convenience of his survival. He didn't look at her, but instead climbed onto the back of the sandcat, moving the generator aside to get at the cels. Jack stepped closer to the side of the vehicle, watching him in the glow as he pried up the plexiglass bubble encasing the now dead solar collector.

What is he doing that for?

Before she could voice the question, however, there was an ghostly wail from above the canyon walls followed closely by a second and a third, until the air was filled with the cries of an innumerable amount of inhuman voices. Jack looked up, but couldn't see past the darkness; but she could imagine and in her mind's eye she saw the hammerheaded monster from the ship staring back down at her.

"Get in the light," Riddick's growl snapped her attention back and she gulped, scrambling into the back of the sandcat with him.

Now she could see what he was doing more clearly; the wires had been pulled out from the solar unit and he was now prying apart the small panel on the side of one of the power cels. The screeching grew louder and Jack shuddered, pulling her knees up to her chest in an attempt to curl up into a ball. She was slightly stunned when she suddenly found a coil of fiber-optic cable draped around her shoulders; she quickly turned to look at Riddick, but his back was to her.

Jack smiled for a second, but the grin faded when out of the blackness swooped a familiarly terrifying shape. It shrieked and landed in the sand on the edge of the glow, turning its head this way and that before settling itself to stare in Jack's direction. She could see its tail swishing and its teeth within its flexing diamond jaw.

Oh shit...its looking right at me...

A second one landed next to the first, letting out a wail as it did so; Jack shivered and closed her eyes, entwining one arm through the cable, pulling the light closer.

The wires were relatively easy to match up, though the job a was a little clumsy; Riddick didn't care at this point, it was this or nothing. He could hear the girl behind him, her breathing coming up short and her heart beating faster from fear; he had turned and dropped the light around her for some reason. She had calmed somewhat at that, allowing him to finish the makeshift rewiring; but he could also hear the creatures, the bigger ones, howling just outside this small haven of light.

He growled, checking the wiring one last time before swinging himself into the driver's seat. There were two of them, crouching and clicking their claws; one was turned towards Jack, but the second seemed to be debating whether Riddick would make a better meal. Flicking up the power switch, he put the sandcat into gear, pleased to hear the engine sputter silently into life again.

"Hold on," he said darkly, directing the remark over his shoulder.

He didn't wait to make sure she had heard him, but floored it, the wheels spinning up dust and gravel as the vehicle pulled away. The canyon stretched around a curve and there was the rib cage awning spanning between the walls; they were almost there. The top edge of the roll cage caught one of the bony protrusions at the edge, knocking the entire mass down behind them in an avalanche of rock and bones.

Riddick ignored it and kept driving, the walls of the canyon around them stretching out and downwards; the low rise just before the settlement was just ahead of them and beyond that, the skiff. The sandcat jolted as it reached the top, bouncing over a stray junk of rock; the engine shutdown for the second time, the wiring coming loose.

Fuck!

But they were on an downside of the slope, so the vehicle kept on rolling, even gaining a little more speed before hitting the level plane of sand. Off to the side a group of the creatures ran by, shrieking at the intrusion of the light to their newly darkened world. The sandcat was slowing as they approached the buildings, losing momentum without the push of the engine.

Riddick could see the skiff now, it was sitting just beyond one of the metal storage sheds; but the back-left wheel of the sandcat suddenly snagged itself on something, a stray peice of outdoor furniture from the settlement. The vehicle snapped to a halt and Jack let out a shout, falling out of the back along with two of the cels. The generator fell crashing on top of her, the green-blue glow of the cables flickering for an unsteady moment.

Jumping out of the front of the sandcat, Riddick quickly grabbed out the wire stripped cel, securing it in one arm before heaving another over his shoulder; he'd have to come back for the rest.

"Get up," he commanded of Jack and she scrambled to her feet, the glowing cable still looped around her shoulder. "Carry that."

He nodded at the generator and turned, not bothering to see if she would listen; he was more than a hundred percent certain that she would. He didn't run; the kid would not have been able to keep up if he did and his shoulder was still bleeding. Riddick could see the outlines of them out there, watching for a weakness, waiting for a misstep.

Sorry to disappoint...

Rounding the edge of the storage shed, he slowed, glancing over his shoulder at Jack; she had hefted the generator over her shoulder, mimicking the way he carried the cels, luminescent cable wrapped around her waist. Her pale face was twisted into a determined expression, teeth gritted and eyes narrowed as she followed him; she must have sensed him looking at her, for she raised her head and met his eye. She stopped moving, a fearfully expectant look appearing on her face; Riddick recognized that expression, he'd seen it in the eyes of every person that had died by his hand.

She thinks I'm going to kill her...

There was an eerie calmness around the girl even with that doomed glint in her eyes; she was always expecting her own death, Riddick realized. He turned back towards the skiff and its lowered ramp, waiting for its passengers.

"Keep moving."