Jessica doesn't put up much of a fight, and she ends up promising that when the darkness lifts, she would take me to my house.

She tells me to rest. But I still have so many questions—too many questions. I'm afraid that when she leaves me alone in the dark, they would only end up giving me nightmares. There are enough of those prowling the streets outside our shelter. I tell her as such.

"I get it," is all she says. I believe her. I hear the sound of cloth rustling. "Do you want to stay here and talk?"

"I don't want to impose," I say. But even to my own ears, I sound half-hearted. A hand bumps against my arm, and it travels up gingerly to rest on my shoulder. She squeezes it reassuringly.

"I always misjudge how tall you really are," she chuckles. "And you wouldn't be imposing. I gotta hand it to you, Migs. You're really hard to hate."

"Thank you...?" I actually didn't know what to say to that. I drum my fingers on my empty cup. After all the water I'd drunk, I'm surprised I don't feel the need to pee.

"You're welcome," she laughs again. "I don't sleep much anymore."

"How are you functioning?" I ask. I adjust myself so that I'm leaning against the armrest of the bench. I prop my leg up on the bench, stretching the other carefully into the gloom. I don't hit or brush against anything, thank god.

"Naps and the occasional dead faint."

"That's not funny."

"Nothing about this is funny, Miguel. Stop shitting on my sense of humor."

Whoa. She didn't sound like she was joking this time. There was a hard edge in her tone. In the darkness, it sounded angrier than I think it should have.

"Okay, backing off now," I say, raising my hands, placating.

"Sorry." I hear her breathe out. "Sleeping is a sore subject for me."

Why? I wanted to ask. But that would be a stupid question. I mean, she had just said that sleeping was a sore subject? Why would I pry?

"Okay, I understand," I say. "Can I ask another question?"

"Shoot." She sounded much calmer now—probably relieved at the shift of attention away from her questionable sleeping habits. It's a weird thing to get worked up about. But other, much more pressing questions allowed me to let it go.

"Can you tell me more about... what happens when the darkness turns you?" I ask. I've already drawn up the faces of my mother and Nena in my mind's eye. What could have happened to them in the dark? What could have made me turn my back on them? I don't realize that I had started to sniffle until something soft pokes my nose. My hand shoots up to grab at it, but I smack into Jessica's hand by accident.

"Sorry," we both say at the same time. Jessica hums. She'd given me a roll of tissue. I blow my nose as quietly as I can.

"Are you sure you want to know?" she asks me quietly. The curiosity burning in my chest answers the question for me.

"Yes."

There is a moment of silence. And then: "What do you want to know?"

I consider the question. "What did they turn into?"

"I said before that they turned into something that wasn't alive," Jessica says after a beat. "Before, when you first saw the people like them, you called them shades. Because that's what they were: shades of their former selves."

"Shades," I repeat. I roll the word on my tongue. This is what the world has become.

"We've seen them throughout our travels together. They don't like the light. So in the short window when the darkness is gone, they hide in the shadows. And when I mean 'hide', I mean they really do their best to scurry the shit out of the light. We've found shades in the freakiest places because they can fold themselves up however they want."

A vivid image of my sister, barely out of ninth grade, breaking her own bones so that she can fit in a shadowy corner rises up in my mind. I choke back a sob. Jessica isn't finished.

"We've only ever seen them when the darkness is gone. But we thought that it was safe to assume that they get going when the darkness comes."

"What do you mean 'get going'?"

"You know... go on the prowl. Hunt. Eat."

"Like-like zombies?" I wanted my tone to sound disbelieving. But I sounded alarmingly faint. "How did we get to that conclusion?"

"You used to have a cat, right?"

My mind conjures an image of my mother, with her warm brown eyes and pale blue duster, eating my Persian cat. "Oh my God, I'm going to be sick."

A bucket is shoved clumsily in my direction. The rough bottom shreds the skin on my thigh. But the pain only heightens my nausea, and I barely have time to aim before I'm throwing up in the bucket. My throat burns. I can taste bile. I haven't eaten since I'd woken up. And I doubt that I had been fed in the darkness before that.

"Can they... can they be killed?" I ask once I regain my breath.

"We've only ever seen one die. And that was because it had been chasing us through the Santolan LRT station along with several dark creatures. The darkness receded just as we broke out of the station and into the highway. The creatures had gone, but the shade had followed us to the open road. It—I guess the most appropriate word would be shriveled. It shriveled and turned into dust."

The image of my mother and sister shriveling up like prunes under the sunlight and turning into dust before my eyes, makes my stomach roil. I do my best to tamp down my nausea. While doing so, another question pops into my head.

"Where did we go?" I ask. The question makes perfect sense. From what I've been hearing, this darkness would be deadly to people without shelters like ours. "And, like, why? And how did we keep ourselves alive?"

"You told us you were vacationing with some of your friends who lived in Antique. I was there visiting some of my cousins. We saw each other by pure luck at a taxi terminal. When the darkness fell, our groups banded together to try and get back to Manila. Not all of us made it."

Her last sentence held something in its tone. My hands grew cold even in the stuffy room. "Was I... I didn't make it?"

"The darkness had just fallen," Jessica explains in a rush. She sounds strangely desperate. "People were panicking. The boats had been torched by religious militants in an attempt to 'isolate the darkness'." Even in the dark, it's easy to imagine the face she's making. "Fucking assholes. They killed two of my cousins. And when they found out that we were planning to hijack a plane since my uncle was a pilot, they were going to destroy the planes too."

"What happened?" I ask for she had fallen quiet.

"You saved us," is all she said. I don't understand. I tell her as such.

"You volunteered to hold them off long enough for us to escape." She sounds in awe, even though this happened months ago. "You were one gay—I mean, guy—" she chuckles at her joke. Under normal circumstances, I would too. But right now, the joke falls flat. "You were one guy against twenty armed men. I still don't know how you did it. But you saved us."

I don't remember doing anything like that. I don't remember anything before I opened my eyes to the dusk. I tell her as such.

"It's okay. This can be my chance to repay you."

"You don't have to."

"I want to." There's that desperate tone again. I can't help but feel like there's something she isn't telling me. But I don't bring it up—she sounds like she's on the verge of tears.

"Okay," I concede. "Where are the others, though?"

Jessica doesn't answer for a long time. "They're all gone."

"What do you mean?"

"Once we all got back to Manila, everyone disbanded to try and look for their own families. I don't know where they've gone."

"And you? Where's your family?"

"They're on the other side of the world. Have you forgotten?"

"Yeah." I hold back the "duh".

"Last I heard they were back in my home country, Australia when the darkness fell."

No wonder she doesn't have an accent. "I'm so sorry."

"It's okay. You and Frank and Izzy are my new family now." She says it so wholeheartedly that I feel my breath catch.

"Okay," I whisper.

As if waiting for my cue, the unmistakable sound of a siren cuts through the dark. The light comes back gradually, like dawn breaking through the horizon. The light that streams in is a brilliant gold; it reminds me of sunlight glimmering off the sands of Boracay.

We're in what is obviously the living room. The paint on the walls and the ceiling, which I suppose long ago, could be considered cream-colored, are now discolored and peeling. Soured milk, I think. The floor is nothing more than wooden planks. The door still looks beautifully carved, but in the light, the wood looks dusty and old. We're not too far away from it, but scattered here and there are short stacks of books and yellowed papers that must have belonged to whoever lived here before. There is a simple wooden table in front of our bench. My cup is actually a pencil gray plastic tumbler. Jessica's is a faded green. To my left is a doorway that leads to what looks to be the kitchen. Wooden steps carved out of a protruding section of the wall lead upstairs to where I assume Jessica's Frank and Izzy are sleeping.

"That was the shortest period I've ever experienced," Jessica comments. She drains her water in three big gulps. "Come on, the light might not last long too."

* * *

Manila – the capital of the Philippines

LRT – colloquial term referring to the "Manila Light Rail Transit", a metropolitan light rail transit system serving the Metro Manila area in the Philippines

Santolan station – refers to the LRT terminal in Santolan, located along Marcos Highway

Boracay – a small island in the Philippines located 196 miles south of Manila