Dwellers of the Night: The Complete Collection (113 page)

He doesn’t answer as he takes the bayonet off his own gun and puts it in his pocket.

They enter the house. Mark moves to the cabinets in the kitchen, sets his rifle on the dining room table. He opens one of the cupboards, shouts, leaps back. The man rushes into the room, the GARAND

held at the ready. The boy’s face is pale, and he leans against the refrigerator, grabs at his chest. Several large rats eye them from the darkness of the cupboard. The man tiptoes forward, turns the gun around, and with the butt of the rifle closes the cupboard door. He looks over at Mark and laughs. “You pussy.”

“I’ve never seen rats that big. I didn’t know they could
get
that big.”

The man says, “Oh, they get big. When Kira and I first got our house, there were rats in the walls. They carved entire tunnels through the house. We got them exterminated, and the exterminator was shocked at how big they were.” He looks at the cabinets. “Anyways. We’re going to need some food. Fruits and vegetables. It will help Sarah get better. Grow a pair of balls and look through these cupboards. I’m going to go refill the MERCEDES and find some groceries at the next town. It’s only fifteen miles.”

Mark grins. “You just want to see how fast you can get that car to go.”

The man shrugs as he leaves the kitchen. “It crossed my mind…”

IV

The man has left, and now Mark rummages through the cupboards, poking at the rats with the bayonet. He kills one and folds it in a paper towel from a roller on the cabinet, and he uses a pair of Anthony Barnhart

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knives to carry it outside to throw in the field. He finds several jars filled with corn and green beans, probably canned by the owners of the house sometime before the plague struck. He then checks on Sarah, makes sure she’s sleeping well. He shuts the door and begins dragging in wood from the barn. He finds a hammer and nails and begins boarding up the windows. He leaves the front door open, so the man can get inside, and he does Sarah’s room last, apologizing for waking her. She just rolls onto her side and continues sleeping. He finishes all the windows, upstairs and down, and he lights up a cigarette. It is about three in the afternoon. He stands smoking in the kitchen when he notices it: a breeze coming from underneath a standing cabinet lined with china plates and glasses.

He extinguishes the cigarette and removes the glassware from the cabinet, then shuffles the cabinet across the floor. There is a door against the wall. Mark grabs the GARAND and opens the door. The hinges creak and groan. Pitch blackness down a flight of stone steps. He descends with caution, lets his eyes adjust to the murky, damp gloom. It is a stone cellar, lined with several shelves filled with aging bottles of wine. Mark smiles. It is a small treasure trove. He walks between the aisles, examining the wines. He estimates that there could be over a million dollars worth of alcohol. No wonder they were hiding it. He hears footsteps above and abandons the cellar, taking the steps twoat-a-time.

As he reaches the top of the steps, Mark sees the man standing in the kitchen, staring out numbly at the boarded-up window. “You’ll never believe what I just found!” he exclaims, pointing down the stairwell, into the inky blackness.

The man slowly turns, and Mark’s excitement fades.

The man’s face is white as snow, and his fingers twitch.

“Are you all right?” Mark asks.

The man shakes his head, moves to the table, sits down.

Mark grabs the pack of cigarettes, pulls one out, hands it to the man.

“You have a lighter?”

He nods, hands him a lighter.

The man lights his cigarette, sits smoking.

Mark takes a seat. “You look like you just saw a ghost.”

The man takes several hits, tries to relax. “I don’t know…”

He doesn’t finish his sentence.

“You don’t know what?” he asks.

He looks at the boy. “I don’t know… what I just saw.”

∑Ω∑

He had pushed the MERCEDES to its limit, driving down the highway at nearly 260 miles an hour. At that speed he reached next town, Victoria, in only a few minutes. He slowed the car down and got off at the freeway, turned right to reach the closest gas station: a PHILLIPS OIL. As he filled the gas tank, he pondered how quickly they could get to Aspen at that speed. Certainly the Denver highways would be crowded, and it would be dangerous to navigate the mountain roads at that speed, but…

One day
. Those two words danced around in his mind, a symphony of hope. A smile crossed over his lips, and he didn’t even notice when the gasoline started overflowing from the tank. He set the nozzle back on the pump and screwed on the gas cap. He pulled onto the main road and drove past several businesses. An I.G.A. came into view, and he pulled into the parking lot. It was nearly noon. Anthony Barnhart

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He took a grocery cart and moved through the aisles. Skylights sent sunlight down into the empty store, so he didn’t have to worry about any dark-walkers. It was habit that made him grip the GARAND as tightly as possible. Most of the aisles were empty, most likely raided by past travelers. Cereal boxes were torn apart by rats. He found a few cans, some bags of dried fruit, threw them into the belly of the cart. He walked past an aisle with HALLMARK cards, considered getting one for Sarah—GET WELL SOON!—but decided against it. He was headed towards the entrance when he heard it. He stopped the cart, didn’t hear it anymore, figured it was just his ears confusing the sound of the squeaking cart wheels. He continued moving forward, noting with unease that the cart wheels
didn’t
squeak. He was nearly to the entrance when he heard it again. He stopped the cart and looked off to the left, down the aisles. He could see a doorway, propped open with a rubber door-stopper. Darkness beyond. The sound came again, and this time it was unmistakable:
crying
.

He abandoned the cart, moving forward, the GARAND in his hand. The sound of weeping grew louder as he reached the open door. He peered into the darkness, cursed himself for his stupidity, and moved forward. His eyes adjusted to the blackness. There were calendars and post-it notes stuck to a bulletin board with tacs. Down the hall was a single employee’s bathroom, and off to the left, at the end of the hallway, was a staircase. He reached the stairwell and stared upwards, into the shadows. The crying continued. He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing, and he ascended the steps, taking them slowly. He reached the upper floor, a small room submerged in darkness, a single table, some chairs, some filing cabinets against the wall. There was a narrow corridor branching off from the room, and the sounds of weeping, much louder, came from that direction. He slowly rounded the table, his brow beading with sweat, the palms of his hand wet and slippery. He gripped the rifle in iced fingers. He reached the hallway and squinted, trying to see. It was when he saw her that his heart broke.

She reminded him of Lindsey. Probably about the same age. She was hunched over a body, her shoulders shaking, her blond hair falling around the sides of her face. The man realized everything was okay, and he set the rifle upon the table. He moved down the hallway, slowly, so as not to frighten her. She rocked back and forth, crying, her arms shaking. She shuddered with each agonizing sob. “It’s okay,” the man said quietly. “It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you. I’m not one of them.” He continued speaking to her, almost in a whisper. She didn’t respond. He nearly reached the room when his heart froze, filling with ice as if it were an acidic winter.
Oh my God…

In the little girl’s hands were coiled intestines, and she looked up at the man, tears filling her eyes, then weaving down the sides of her bony and emaciated cheeks. She looked away, moaned, took another bite out of the cold muscle. The man’s gag reflex choked up, and he fell against the wall, the world spinning. The little girl wept, nearly dropped the half-chewed intestine, but then she regained her strength, lifted it to her mouth. The man could hear the ejection of bodily fluids as she bit into the organ. He turned and leaned against the wall, opened his mouth. He tried not to get sick, and he moved away, stumbling down the hallway. Everything slowed, a slurring haze.

The shock wore off, and panic lit like an unbearable inferno within him. His legs moved all on their own, and he surged down the hallway, running for his weapon. He reached the next room and grabbed the rifle. Standing in the stairwell were two male dark-walkers, foaming at their mouths, watching their prey with extreme glee. The man raised the GARAND to fire when the attack came Anthony Barnhart

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from the corner of the room; he was thrown to the wall, the rifle falling from his grasp. The assailant pinned him against the wall, tried to bite him in the neck. The man whipped around, threw the darkwalker against the opposite wall. The man pressed himself against the wall, trying to disappear, as the dark-walker stood. The man tried to look for his gun from his position, but the darkness wrapped around it like an invisibility cloak. The dark-walker shrieked and charged after him; the man ducked to defend himself, and the dark-walker slammed into the wall. The wall shuddered and fell backwards; the man realized it wasn’t a wall but a filing cabinet, and when the cabinet fell, it revealed a small, single window through which gushed brilliant sunlight. The dark-walker on top of him howled and leapt back, groping at its tender and bubbling skin. Its cries continued even when it backtracked into one of the corners still submerged in shadows.

The man couldn’t reach the rifle. The dark-walkers crowded in the shadows, insane with rage, shouting and howling like wicked wolves. The man cursed and turned, slammed his fist into the window. The glass shattered. He grabbed the overturned filing cabinet and dragged it across the floor. He stood on top of it and wedged himself through the window. Ten feet below was the top of a loading van. He wiggled himself free and fell, landed hard on top of the vehicle, the wind knocked out of him. He groaned and rolled onto his back, looked up at the cerulean sky. He moaned in pain, could still hear the frantic screams of the creatures within, and he could still hear the girl’s cries, her weeping, her mourning, her
humanity
.

He returned to the MERCEDES and got inside. He tried to insert the keys into the engine’s ignition switch, but his hands were wildly shaking. He threw the keys into the passenger’s seat, cursed, leaned over the wheel. He gripped the wheel with both hands, squeezing tightly, trying to get a hold of himself. He sat there for twenty minutes, bathed in sunlight, his heart sprinting. He never went back into the grocery store, and he left the cart sitting full of groceries in the middle of the store.

∑Ω∑

“So you lost your gun,” Mark says after he finishes telling him the story, “and you don’t have any groceries.”

The man glares at him.

“I’m just trying to lighten the mood.”

The man snubs out his cigarette. “I want to believe it was a trap.”

“They
are
growing smarter. Everyone’s noticing it.”

“Yeah.”

Mark lights a cigarette for himself. “You
want
to believe it was a trap?”

“Yeah.”

“So you
don’t
believe it was a trap?”

The man shakes his head. “It’s just… She was crying. And it was
genuine
. There were real tears. It’s as if… It’s like she was filled with remorse for what she was doing. She was doing what she had to do, to survive, but… But she regretted the fact that she had to do it. I
want
to believe it was a trap, but I’m afraid I was just at the wrong place at the wrong time. I can’t get the image of her crying, the sounds of her sobbing, out of my head. But most of all, I can’t forget her
eyes
. It was as if I was looking at another human being, a little girl mourning over the death of a loved one. And if that’s the case…” He looks at the boy, grave concern stretched over his features. “If that’s the case, then we can’t call them animals anymore.”

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Chapter Thirty-Seven

No Perfect Endings

“Nothing lasts forever.”

- anonymous

I

The man can hear her weeping in his sleep. He wakes with a start, sweat cascading down his forehead. In the dream he had slain a dark-walker, and as he reloaded his rifle, a little girl appeared. She had knelt down next to her fallen mother, and as she wept, she had looked up at the man, and with tears in her eyes, had asked, “Why have you done this? Why have you done this? She was not an animal! She was a human being, just like you! You say that we are awful. But you are the one who killed her. You are the one who committed murder.
You
are the animal!” When he awakes, he is lying on the couch in the living room. He rolls onto his side and sees Mark smoking a cigarette in the hallway. The man watches the boy smoke until he falls back asleep.

The man awakens to the smell of coffee and the birds singing outside. He pulls himself up and lights a cigarette. He takes a few drags and stands, walks into the corridor, down the hall, into the kitchen. Mark hears the man behind him, doesn’t turn around. “They had a battery-operated coffee maker in one of the lower cupboards. I was able to find some coffee. It’s stale, but…”

“But it’s coffee,” the man says, finishing his sentence. He finds a mug in one of the cupboards and pours some of the black liquid into it. He takes several sips and looks to the doorway to his right. Mark follows his gaze, says, “She’s still sick. Doing better, though. I checked in on her when I woke up. I didn’t sleep much last night. I could hear them outside. They were far-off. In the distance. Calling out to one another, like coyotes. An awful sound.”

Not as awful as them weeping
, the man thinks, drinking his coffee.

The man sets the coffee mug on the table and goes into the guest bedroom. Shafts of light enter the room through cracks in the rotted wooden boards nailed over the window. Sarah lies entangled in her sheets. He walks to the side of the bed and stands over her. Her face is buried into the pillow, greasy hair flattened across her one exposed cheek. He kneels down and whispers, “Sarah…