He awoke in the shadows to the blinking of a warning light. Its red, pulsing bloom beat against his eyelids like a dying heartbeat. Darkness fell away to the sanguine glow, and then descended again, leaving him disoriented.
From somewhere below, he heard a crash. Shepherd’s heart jumped, and he threw back the blankets to scramble from his makeshift bed to the control panel. The warning light was Luke’s.
A gargled moan crept up the hollow cavern of the stairwell. Another crash, and this time, a scream—a girl’s scream—and the blast of a shotgun. It jump-started Shepherd’s feet, and he dove for the door, barreled down the stairs. Another shotgun discharge filled the stairwell with resounding, discordant noise.
The handle of the stairwell door was sticky with blood, and the loosened hinges groaned as he pushed the door partway open before it hit something on the floor and stopped.
It was silent inside. Shepherd slipped through the crack into the darkness and whispered, “Penny?”
A croak came from the far corner where his adjusting eyes located a hunched figure. The croak broke suddenly and became a sob. “Fuck.”
A body lay across the floor, its foot keeping the door from opening all the way. Shepherd tripped over a twisted metal bar connected to a contorted ankle as he stepped over it.
“Fuck,” the girl whispered again, her voice shaking. “Sonofabitch.”
“Are you okay?”
Shepherd climbed over the body and kicked a speaker he hadn’t seen. It bounced off his foot and struck the wall with a hollow thud.
The girl sat pressed into the corner, curled up so tight she almost seemed like a part of the wall. When he knelt in front of her, he saw tears shining on her cheeks.
“Penny—”
“He got me,” she said, and pushed something toward him. It was long, cold—her shotgun. Her eyes were so wide, he could see his shadow in them.
“Where?”
Her lips trembled as she fought back a sudden surge of tremors, and thrust out her injured leg. The ace bandage was torn ragged and soaked with sticky blackness. In the dark, he could only see the deep emptiness beneath the torn fibers where there should have been skin.
Shepherd set the gun on the floor next to what was left of Luke’s skull, his hands cold and shaking as he turned the foot to examine it. “It’s not so bad,” he said. “We’ll bandage it up and see. There’s no saying it’ll be infected. You may be fine.”
“Stop it,” the girl said from somewhere deep in her chest, growling up her throat. “Fuck, Shepherd, I know about survival, okay? I know what this means. So . . . stop it.” With a shaking sigh, she rubbed her face. “You’ve got to shoot me. Do it now before I turn.”
Shepherd shook his head, unable to let go of the slender ankle, even as the blood from her wound dripped into the palm of his hand, trickled down his wrist. Penny jerked her leg back, pulling her knees up to her chest. She choked, and her eyes widened, the whites reflecting the light from the stairwell. There was a thin rim of red around them, red that melted away and ran down her cheeks with her tears.
“Please,” she whispered. “Please, Shepherd. You have to do this for me. I’m begging you!”
Shepherd shivered, and his hand fell upon the muzzle of the shotgun. “I-I don’t . . . ”
Penny spasmed, her head cracking back against the wall. The impact and the sob that escaped her throat tightened his grip on the gun. “Please. Please, Shepherd . . . ”
Her voice caught in her throat, choking her again. This time, it took her a moment to swallow. She gagged, clutched at her throat. When the bubble burst, she gasped for air between clenched teeth. Her eyes rolled.
Shepherd stood, the shotgun weighing down his arm. “I don’t kill them,” he whispered. “I don’t. I just . . . I can’t.”
Penny’s gaze rolled up at him, and her breathing rasped, her nostrils flared. With a shudder, she fell back against the wall, eyelids fluttering, blood trickling from the corners of her mouth. Then she went still. Relaxed, calm, she looked just like Penny. Maybe it was Penny. Maybe it had just been too long, and he couldn’t recognize her anymore.
Shepherd bent down beside her, touched her cheek with his rough fingertips. Every second he spent looking at her face, her eyes, her nose, her lips, her chin—everything about her could have belonged to Penny.
“Sweetheart,” he whispered, and she opened her blood-rimmed eyes.
As Shepherd stepped into the bathroom and locked the door behind him, he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror: a masked and bloody creature, tiptoeing into the darkness. It made him shiver, made the sticky spots on his hands and cheeks burn. Shaking, he tore off his dirty clothes, his mask, his goggles, and crouched on the tiled floor, his head in his hands. Every inch of him burned like he was lying naked on a bed of coals. There was blood on his hands, blood in his hair, blood on the floor, on his clothes, in his ears, in his nose. He could taste it, smell it, breathe it, feel it everywhere, like a thin film of filth that covered everything and everyone, no matter how many times you scrubbed, no matter how much you cleaned.
He shivered and heard his voice crack in the darkness, a pitiful whimper. His eyes stung and he hung his head, letting the few tears that escaped patter onto the blood-slicked floor. Deep breaths drew up through his nose and escaped through his lips. Once. Twice. The shivering stopped and he could breathe again, and stand.
His hand found the light switch in the dark. The shadows fled, and he stood in the unsteady light, a man naked and vulnerable before an unmerciful mirror. There were no secrets here, no personal barriers, nothing hidden. The Lord could see him here, in his moment of greatest weakness. In this tiny room, with the mirror catching his every move, every blink, every glance, his scars were exposed. They ran up his arms, little lancing crescents of pale and pink tissue, to his shoulders and stopped, though there were a few on his chest and a notch of missing flesh at his hip.
Through the floor he could hear the roamer tied to his workshop table moaning and gnashing her teeth. Even after bolting the motors and metal bars to her, she fought against them, tried to spit out the speaker he’d put in her throat.
Shepherd pressed the palms of his hands to his sweating brow. He could walk away. He could leave. It would be so easy. No one would notice, much less care. His roamers would die eventually. So would he.
The temptation was strong, but it awoke something within him. His hands fell to his sides and he looked into his own eyes in the mirror.
The valley of the shadow of death, he thought. I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me, and I am with them. There’s meaning in that.
With a sigh, Shepherd took up the lavender gift shop soap and scrubbed himself from head to toe, rinsing with the tub of water he’d carried over from the river. He dug his fingernails into the purple and pink-swirled bar, rubbed his skin raw with it, massaged it against his scalp and hair until his head ached. Refreshed, cleansed, and forgiven, he dressed and returned to the control room.
The Day the Saucers Came
Neil Gaiman