Dwellers of the Night: The Complete Collection (111 page)

The guard towers are abandoned, the inhabitants having fled for their lives when the outbreak had occurred. Nathan is thus met with no hostility, and he accelerates and blows through each gate. At the twelfth gate, they ram it apart and descend upon the road. There are burnt buildings on either side, and the wind blows remnants of ash into the air. Charcoal skeletons are tossed about the rubble. Nathan heads northwest, and soon a bridge comes into view. The bridge spans the river, and along the top of the bridge it reads: TO WHEELER AIRPORT. They drive up a slight incline that leads to the bridge, and the headlights flash over hundreds upon hundreds of dark-walkers moving across the bridge, towards the ruins of New Harmony. Nathan hits the brakes, and they watch. The man moves to the front, and just as he reaches Nathan’s side, the first wave of dark-walkers breaks into a run, charging the bus. “Ram them!” the man yells. Nathan obliges, slamming down on the gas. The bus lurches, gains speed, and they plow through the dark-walkers. The creatures are mowed down underneath the wheels, splattered against the grill, somersaulted over the top of the bus. One of them slams into the windshield, which shatters, and its body soars inside, knocking the man to the ground. The dark-walker’s leg gets caught in the wheel, and as the man shoves the heavy body off of him, the leg moves, jerking the wheel. Nathan shouts, tries to move the wheel, but he cannot. The man hears Sarah and Mark scream, and suddenly he feels himself lifted off the ground. Wind smacks him in the face. Everything becomes slow, and he looks out the window, hair blowing in the wind, and he sees nothing but inky blackness. For a moment he does not understand, and then he opens his mouth to scream in sync with the others—and then he swallows cold, icy water.

Anthony Barnhart

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XI

The coldness of the river, even in early June, is shocking. The man feels as if his body is riddled with icy electricity, and his eyes burn as they fill with water. Everything is wreathed in the murky shadows of the aquatic underworld, and he sees the bus disappearing beneath him. He has floated through the broken window. He looks around, alarmed, doesn’t see anyone else. A figure swims up past him, not even noticing him. Long brown hair weaving back and forth in the water.
Sarah
. He swims downwards, searching for Mark, and then the boy swims past him. The man turns and swims for the surface, and when he breaks into the moonlit sky, he draws deep breaths of oxygen, his head spinning. Nathan and Sarah are already swimming for the nearest shore, New Harmony behind them. The man sees Mark next to him, and he joins him. They reach the opposite bank and clamber onto the rocks. They ascend a steep embankment, shivering in the cold, grabbing trees in an effort to pull themselves up. The hill reaches a highway littered with abandoned cars. Nathan is leaning against one of them, and Sarah stands shivering, staring at the bridge. He and Mark reach them, and he follows her pointed gaze. The dark-walkers continue to move rank-and-file above the river, shuffling in unison, moving in sync with a common goal. The flames of the Westin Hotel have spread outwards, and the entire complex burns like a Roman torch. The man says, panting, “It’s good… we didn’t… stay there.” No one says anything for a moment, and then Nathan says, “This way. There are probably more around here.”

They move down the four-lane highway, moving car-to-car, trying to keep out-of-sight from the dark-walkers on the bridge. The dark-walkers, however, have their backs turned to the refugees, and they are too intent on the burning New Harmony to give them any attention. Nathan leads the way, and he moves up a back alley. Everyone follows him. There comes a scream, the sound of shuffling. The man reaches for the Ka-Bar on his belt, realizes it’s gone. Sunken with the bus. All their weapons are gone, too. He rushes forward, and the shadows peel away, and Nathan stands there, surrounded by three dead dark-walkers. His hand-bow is in his hand. He looks over at them. “I had it attached to a loop on my belt when the bus sank. Thank God for that.” He bends down, collects three bolts, and he continues leading the way. Mark and Sarah exchange glances, noticing that Nathan is limping.

“You’re hurt,” Sarah says.

They are still moving down the alley, large buildings with fire-walks on either side. Nathan says, “One of them knocked me over. I think I sprained my ankle.”

“Do you want some help?” she asks.

“No, I’m fine,” he says. “We’re almost there.”

The alley ends, opening up to an overgrown park with scraggly dogwoods. Opposite the park is a towering metal fence with barbed wire at the top. Beyond the fence are several hangars. A parked BOEING. A LEARJET on the runway. Wheeler Airfield. Nathan tells the others to stay back, kneels, looks in both directions. No sign of movement. He ushers the others forward, and they run through the tall grass. They reach the fence and begin to climb. Navigating the barbed wire is difficult, and the man rips his pants. He winces as the sharp, rusty barbs dig into his skin. He is thankful for the tetanus shot he received only a few months prior to the plague. They descend down to the pavement on the other side, and Nathan leads them forward. The hangars grow closer, and refueling trucks emerge out of the darkness, monuments of the great heights of human civilization. They near the LEARJET parked on the runway. The man runs forward, to the door, and grabs the handle. Unlocked. Anthony Barnhart

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It swings open. He jumps inside. There are skeletons with moth-eaten business suits on the floor. He turns and helps everyone inside. The moon is blocked by clouds, and a calm and steady rain begins to fall. The same kind of rain that fell the day before the plague. When everyone gets inside, the man shuts the door and locks it. The rain drums on the roof.

XII

The man moves to the back of the airplane, finds the storage compartments. Per required law, there are several heated emergency blankets. He activates them and passes them out. Mark takes his and falls into a cushioned seat, and he quickly falls asleep. The man hands one to Sarah. She says,

“Thanks,” and moves to the seat across the aisle from Mark. She sits warming, teeth chattering, under the blanket, looking out the window. Dark-walkers are gathering along the fence. She closes her eyes and falls asleep.

The man hands a blanket to Nathan.

Nathan hands it back to the man. “You can have it.”

“You’ve got to be fucking freezing,” the man says. “We all are.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Nathan says, voice low.

“You’ll get hypothermia or something. Come on. Take it.”

Nathan refuses. “No.” He sits down in a chair, leans down, pulls up his pant leg. A chill runs through the man.

“They got me back in the alley,” he says. “I didn’t say anything… I know what’s going to happen… But I wanted to get you guys here. I knew it would be safe here.” He looks up at the man, tears in his eyes. “Sometimes I wonder, why did I think it would end any other way? Are we really so naïve?”

The man looks away, guilt enshrouding him. “This is all our fault…”

“Don’t talk like that.”

The man shakes his head. “I don’t know what to think anymore.”

“Shit happens, Man. It’s nobody’s fault. A world where people are to blame is a world that makes sense. But this world, it doesn’t make sense. Things that happen, they don’t make sense. None of this makes sense. Perhaps it never made sense before the sickness, but maybe then we just covered it up. Now the veil has fallen, the curtain has been torn, an earthquake has struck. We know reality for what it is: we
don’t
know what it is.” He coughs, the coldness setting in. “You guys be smart.”

The man looks over at him. “What are you going to do?”

“What I have to do,” he says.

The man nods, moves to the door. He opens it up, the rain falling in sheets. Nathan shakes his hand. “Aspen’s a wonderful place. Hopefully it hasn’t changed.”

He steps down out of the airplane.

The man says nothing and shuts the door.

He watches through the window as Nathan walks away,

becoming a speck in the distance, moving behind a hangar.

And then he is gone.

Anthony Barnhart

Dwellers of the Night

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The man places the extra thermal blanket over Sarah, careful not to wake her. He checks to make sure the door to the outside is locked, and then he sits down in the cockpit, draping the blanket over himself. He stares at the rain streaking on the windshield, and the warmth from the blanket spreads through him. He closes his eyes, thinks of Katie. He never really cared much for the girl, never really disliked her, either. But he keeps seeing Westin Hotel burning, keeps hearing the screams she would have screamed, keeps seeing her face in his mind, the hopefulness of reunited love. His heart throbs, and he cries again, very quietly, very weakly, but a cry nonetheless. His tears are lost in the falling rain, and the sky joins him in his weeping.

Anthony Barnhart

Dwellers of the Night

520

Anthony Barnhart

Dwellers of the Night

521

Chapter Thirty-Six

The Weeping of the Damned

“Therefore I will wail and howl. I will go stripped and naked: I will make a wailing like the dragons, and mourning as the owls.”

- The Prophet Micah (Micah 1.8)

I

The sunlight piercing through the windshield awakes him. He slowly opens his eyes and yawns. He looks through the windshield, the remnants of the rain, tiny droplets forming a carpet of diamonds, sparkling in the sunlight. He pushes the heat blanket off of himself and stands. His legs ache. He bends down, feels dried blood through the rip in his pants. The barbed wire. He moves towards the back of the plane. Mark and Sarah continue to sleep. He moves quietly, so as not to wake them, and unlocks the door, pulls it open. Sunlight enters the body of the plane in a great shaft. There are several small birds, perhaps sparrows, perched on the wing of the LEARJET. At the opening of the door they scatter, flapping into the cloud-laced sky. He steps out into the warm June breeze, and he walks across the pavement. He looks out towards the south, sees great billows of smoke rising from the ruins of New Harmony. The nearest hangar grows larger, birds perched upon the roof. They watch him with goggling eyes as he moves around the hangar, out of sight from the plane. Nathan lies on the ground, the hand-bow still in his hand. A single bolt protrudes from the top of his skull, delivered from underneath his chin. His eyes are filled with gelatinized blood. The man stands and smokes, looking at the corpse. He has not said a prayer in quite a long time, but he prays now, thanking God—if there is such a creature—that such a man has ever lived. He turns and heads back to the plane.

Sarah is standing outside the plane, watching the man return. “Where’s Nathan?” she asks when he reaches her.

He shakes his head. “They got him back in the alley.”

“That’s why he was limping.”

“Yeah.”

“He said he had a sprained ankle.”

“If he had a sprained ankle, he wouldn’t have been able to climb the fence.”

“I know.”

“You knew he was bitten.”

“Yeah.”

“You should have told me.”

“I didn’t want you to do anything stupid.”

“He could have become one of them.”

“I trusted that he would take care of it.”

The man nods. “He did.”

Mark comes out of the airplane, yawning. “Hey.”

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They both acknowledge him with nods.

The boy asks, “Can you fly this thing?”

“I’ve never flown a LEARJET,” the man says.

“We could refuel it.”

“I don’t know how to fly it.”

“We could fly it to Aspen. They have an airfield there.”

“I don’t know how to fly it, I said” the man repeats.

Sarah leans against the plane’s fuselage. “So what do we do now?”

The man looks at the billowing smoke above downtown. “Find some cigarettes.”

Mark looks around. “Where’s Nathan?”

Sarah looks at him. “He didn’t make it.”

“Oh,” he says. He doesn’t ask what she means: he already knows.

The man enters the LEARJET and searches, digging through the tattered clothes of the skeleton crew. He finds what he is looking for. He gets out of the plane, twirling a pair of keys on his pointer finger.

“Come on.” The three of them abandon the plane. They walk past the hangars, towards the terminals. They pass underneath the shadow of a BOEING’s wing. They walk around the side of the nearest terminal, refusing to go inside. The man remembers the countless bodies inside the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport, and he knows that Kansas City’s airport was probably more crowded. They don’t know how many dark-walkers may be hiding in the terminals’

catacombs. They find the parking lot, and the man moves car-to-car, fitting the keys into the locks. A few car alarms go off. He finds a red MERCEDES, and the key fits. He smiles at the others, and they load inside. It takes a few twists of the key to get the engine started, and they lean back in the leather seats and look out the dusty windows as the man turns the car around. He wipes the windshield with washer fluid, and they pass through the main gate, tearing down a wooden retractable barricade on their way out.

There is a STAR TEXACO gas station down the road, a few blocks from the airport. There is a large GREYHOUND parked in the side lot and a single minivan in the employee’s parking. The man tells Mark to refuel, and he goes inside, pushing open the door. A 24-hour joint. He walks around the counter and grabs a paper sack from underneath the register, and he begins filling it with assorted packs of cigarettes. Sarah enters and watches him in silence, and she rummages through the candy racks, takes several bags of COMBOS. The man holds the bag in one hand as he rifles through several pamphlets in a wall-mounted rack for tourists. He finds what he is looking for, a colorful map of Kansas City. He explores it for some time, then slides it into his pocket. He looks over at Sarah. “You ready?” She nods
Yes
, and they both leave the gas station. Mark is done refueling the MERCEDES, and they climb inside and head back towards Interstate 70 West.