Dwellers of the Night: The Complete Collection (17 page)

He finds a tear dripping down his cheek.

Don’t cry for her. Don’t cry for these fuckers
.

He raises the rifle. “I’m sorry,” he says, choking on his own words. “I’m sorry…”

She lets out another scream. More bubbles pop over her face.

The gunshot echoes throughout the hills.

Her head hangs low, blood dribbling from her forehead.

Her face continues to sputter.

The man just stares at her. “I’m sorry,” he says again, and he returns inside. He shuts the door and sits down on the sofa in the living room. The blood from the earlier corpse still remains. He stares at that puddle of blood, then he hangs his head in his hands and tries to cry. But he can’t. So he gets up, grabs a towel, and begins to wipe the blood from off the floor.

VII

It is the third week of September.

The leaves on the trees have nearly fallen. Autumn has come early. He continues to live his life, hoping and praying to find others. He drives to Riverfront every afternoon and waits, watching for the helicopter.

It never comes.

When night dawns, he barricades himself within his house, sits upon his bed, and smokes. He has stopped reading his journals. The memories hurt too much. He often dreams of Kira. Beautiful yet desperate dreams. He is dreaming that he and Ben are driving along the western hills of Cincinnati when a meteor streaks down from the sky and strikes the Ohio River. The southern end of the city is overcome with a tidal wave, and the multiple bridges collapse. In his dream, he knows Kira is downtown, so he jumps out of the car and runs towards the city. Half the city explodes in a great ball of flame from a mysterious underground gasoline main. The exhaust of the explosion hit him, and he was thrown back into the hills, somehow surviving the fall. He is getting to his feet when Kira Anthony Barnhart

Dwellers of the Night

82

comes running after him. He is thankful she is alive, and they embrace, and he begins to feel something is wrong as her mouth closes over his neck and her teeth begin to pierce his skin; but his dream is shattered, and he awakes, and his wristwatch reads 4:12 AM and his body is shivering despite the countless blankets in which he is cocooned.

He lies in bed, closes his eyes, pulls the covers tighter, and—

His eyes open, ears attuning.

The house is silent. He doesn’t even hear them outside, scratching at the windows like mice in the walls.
Something isn’t right
. He cautiously swings his legs over the bed, tosses aside the covers, and stands. He is wearing pajama pants and an ELDER HIGH t-shirt. He grabs the BERETTA beside the bed and opens the door to the hallway. Deathly quiet. He walks over to the landing and peers down below. Shadows wrap around the walls. “Hello?” Nothing. No movement. He slides the ladder down and descends, holding the loaded BERETTA with the safety switched to OFF. He hears it.

It is distant.

A shout. A scream.

He goes to the front door and stands motionless, trying to listen.

Now all he can hear is his beating heart, and—

There! He hears it again. Someone shouting. Not growling. Or snarling. But
shouting
in the
human
sense of the word. Not an animal. And the shouting is growing closer. He pulls back a piece of plywood from the door and peers out.

The sky is heavy and dark. He cannot see anything.

Movement. Coming down the street to the north.

A single figure, sprinting, shouting.

He passes the house. The man watches, stunned.

And then thirty or forty dark-walkers run past, giving chase.

They don’t chase their own kind
.

For a moment he stands rooted in place, then realization hits him.

He sprints down the hallway to the door leading to the garage, throws back the iron bar, opens the door, runs out to the Escort. The garage door is down. He grabs the rope of the pulley-and-lever system he has concocted and yanks. The garage door groans with a sickeningly loud throb and begins to open. He pulls it harder and harder till it is nearly completely raised. He grabs his keys sitting on the useless washing machine and opens the door. He jumps inside, thrusts the key in the ignition, turns the engine. The engine cranks to life, obnoxiously loud. He doesn’t care. He throws the car in REVERSE and stamps on the gas.

The Escort lurches out of the garage, out into the street. He hits the brake and turns the wheel so that he is pointing forward. He throws on his brights, illuminating the backs of the fleeting darkwalkers down the street. They turn and stare at him, mesmerized, as he puts the car in DRIVE. But they don’t run. He grimaces, grips the wheel in both hands, and slams the pedal to the floor. The car shrieks as the tires burn over the asphalt. The Escort picks up speed. The creatures begin racing after him. He presses himself into the back of his seat and braces for impact. The Escort cuts a swathe through the creatures; several tumble over the hood of the car, denting the metal. An elderly woman slams into the windshield, and it bursts into a webbed masterpiece; her body rolls over the top and disappears off to the side. He swings around the pistol and fires several shots into the far side of the windshield. The glass shatters, the weak glass splintering, and shards fall into his lap. The cold night air rushes through him. He can see the solitary running figure now. Anthony Barnhart

Dwellers of the Night

83

He pulls up alongside. “Get in!” he shouts.

The young man just stares at him, black hair rustling in the wind.

“Get the fuck in the car!” the man screams.

The boy reaches for the handle. Rattles it. “It’s locked!” A high-pitched, frantic voice. The man hits the UNLOCK button. The boy opens the door.

A figure emerges behind the boy, reaching out. The man raises the handgun, fires. The back of the creature’s head explodes outwards, and it fumbles against the side of the car, topples over.

“Get in,” the man growls.

The boy leaps inside and slams the door, shaking. “You nearly shot me. Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it,” the man says, hitting the gas.

The Escort drives through the intersection, avoiding the wrecked patrol car. He pulls onto Glenway Avenue and begins driving up the hill.

The boy takes several deep breaths. “Thank God… They almost had me.”

“I know. I saw.”

“Thanks.”

“You already thanked me.”

The hill continues to rise. They pass a bible college on the right, situated on the hill, and then he pulls onto Grand Avenue.
This is where Nate helped me maneuver the truck in the snow,
the man thinks to himself.

They pass run-down houses on either side. Parked cars.

No dark-walkers.

“Where the hell are they?” the man mutters to himself.

“I think I woke up the entire town,” the boy says.

He turns right onto Lehman Avenue. “What the hell were you doing outside?”

“They overran my hideout,” he says. “I had no choice but to run.”

“There were about thirty or forty of them. I ran some of them down.”

“They travel in packs. They’re hardly ever alone.”

Packs? He had never really observed them. “Like pack-hunters,” he says grimly.

“They’re more like birds. They flock together.”

“Birds of a feather will flock together.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

He nears the bottom of the hill of Lehman Avenue. A small car is smashed into the telephone pole, and the body of a dark-walker is hanging half-in and half-out of the driver’s door window, which is shattered. The man casts it a wary glance as he reaches State Avenue and turns right. The boy asks, “Where are we going?”

“My house. We’ll have to move fast.”

The high-beams illuminate several dark-walkers down the street. They see them and start running after the car. The man yanks the car over the curb, through his front lawn, and into the garage. He hits the brakes, but the front end of the car slams into the wall. There is the shriek of twisting metal and the air bags pop. The man opens his door and squeezes himself out. The boy gets out and runs around the car as the man opens the door to the house. “After you,” he says. The boy enters. The man grabs another rope and yanks. The garage door creaks and falls just as several dark-walkers appear on the driveway. The man smiles to himself and hops inside. He shuts the door and slides down the bolt.

Anthony Barnhart

Dwellers of the Night

84

Anthony Barnhart

Dwellers of the Night

85

Chapter Five

The Laughter of the Pleiades

“As men, we are all equal in the presence of death.”

- Publilius Syrus (ca 100 BC)

I

The man stares at the boy, who now stands beside the sofa in the living room. The boy stares right back. The man has dreamed of the day when he would run into another survivor. The hope that would flare within him, the excitement, the exhilaration, the companionship and conversations. But now all they can do is stare at one another. Both find themselves at a loss for words. The man sees something in the boy:
fear
. He wonders why the boy would experience fear, and he realizes that the boy has no idea who he is.

The man asks, “Do you smoke?” and the boy just shakes his head
No
. The man nods, bites his lip, says, “You can sit down if you want,” and he nods to the sofa; “I’m sorry it’s stained. I haven’t really had much energy to clean it. It stinks of alcohol, too.”

The boy sits down on the sofa, the worn cushions sagging under his weight. The man enters the kitchen and grabs a pack of GT1 cigarettes. He pulls a cigarette from the case, picks up the blue plastic lighter, and lights the cigarette. The cherry burns bright for a moment as he takes the first hit. He leans against the kitchen counter and looks at the boy, slowly smoking. He guesses the boy is around twenty or twenty-one years old. Yet his youthful appearance is scarred: a badly-healed gash runs along the top of his forehead, and there are no stitches, which tells the man that the boy received the gash sometime after the plague struck. The boy’s eye is bruised, a purplish-blue hint. The man half-expects the boy’s hair to be turning gray. The man sees now that there is blood on the boy’s hands, and some in his hair, and along his chin. It is fresh. The man won’t ask any questions, not yet. He takes another hit and says, “It’s been a month since I’ve talked to anyone.”

“I know,” is all the boy can say. He looks down at the blood on his hands.

“Do you want to wash your hands?”

The boy looks up at him. “If that’s okay.”

“There’s a basin in the bathroom. It’s old water, I haven’t drained it for a few days.”

“Okay,” the boy says. The man points to the bathroom; the boy returns, hands dried with a towel.

The man takes another drag off the cigarette. “I don’t like these.”

“What?”

“These cigarettes. They’re cheap. But I’ve used up all the other cigarettes from the nearby stores.”

“You smoke a lot.”

“A lot more over the last month.”

The boy looks to one of the boarded-up windows: “Can they get in?”

“They never have,” the man says. “Are you sure you don’t want a cigarette?”

“You said they taste awful.”

Anthony Barnhart

Dwellers of the Night

86

“But they’re still cigarettes. And if you’ve never smoked, they all taste the same.”

“I didn’t say I never smoked. I just don’t want a cigarette.”

“So you
do
smoke?”

“I used to smoke. I quit.”

“And you haven’t started up again?”

“I haven’t felt the need.”

“God, you’re a walking miracle.”

They have ascended the ladder and entered the study-turned-bedroom. The man has raised the ladder, and now they sit next to one another on the bed. The man pours himself a glass of wine, and he pours another and hands it to the boy. They can hear them outside, scratching and moaning. They are surrounding the house. They’ll be gone in the morning. The man says, “Please tell me you drink. Everyone has to have a vice of some sort.”

“I don’t like wine.”

“This is Italian wine. Imported. It’s good.” He hands the boy the drink. The boy takes a sip, says, “It’s not bad. It’s a little strong.”

“Strong is good. Besides, we need strong wine. We’re celebrating.”

“Celebrating what?”

“We’re not alone anymore.”

The boy holds his glass in his hands and doesn’t drink anymore.

“What’s your name?” the man asks.

“Mark,” the boy says.

“Okay, Mark. What the hell were you doing out after dark?”

He doesn’t answer for a moment. “My apartment was overrun.”

“Where was your apartment?”

“About two miles away.”

“You ran from them for two miles?”

“No. I wrecked my car down Lehman. Hit a telephone pole.”

“That hill’s a bitch. I wrecked my Jeep there several years ago.”

“So. What’s your name?”

He tells him his name. “It’s a simple name.”

“So is Mark.”

“Yeah.” He takes another drink, pours himself another glass. “Want some more?”

“No, thanks.”

The boy asks, “Have you been in this house the whole time?”

“Yes. When all of this happened, I was over the Atlantic. I was a pilot back in the day. I was flying a commercial airliner to the States from Germany. This all began somewhere in Russia, and it quickly spread west. Why it didn’t spread east, I don’t know. Maybe because of the winds. That’s why I think this is some kind of plague. Like a virus or something. Because when I was in the plane, we kept hearing about it. We heard about it spreading throughout Asia, and then it hit Europe, and then it hit our plane when the United States was still okay.” His voice drones out. “I think about it a lot. What happened on that plane. I was the only one who lived. Everyone else died.”

The boy doesn’t say anything for a moment. “I’ll have another glass of wine.”

Anthony Barnhart

Dwellers of the Night

87

The man is on his third glass of wine. “There were around 330,000 people in Cincinnati when the plague hit. But not everyone died. I survived. And so did you. Why? I don’t know. But we did. And I know there are other survivors, too. I saw a helicopter several weeks ago, flying over northern Kentucky, and then it flew over the city. I’ve been holding onto hope that I would find someone else, and look at us. We’re sitting right next to each other. Now, I figure that if there is one survivor for every one thousand people in Cincinnati, then there are more than three hundred survivors in the city. I’ve been driving around the city, going downtown, into the surrounding hills, even into northern Kentucky, looking for more people like me. But I haven’t found them. And I ask, ‘Why?’ But I’ll tell you why I think I can’t find anyone. They’re staying indoors, even during the day. Or they hear me coming in my car and decide not to come out; maybe they’re afraid. Or they’ve been killed by the dark-walkers—that’s what I call them, ‘Dark-Walkers’, because they only come out at night. But I think that most people have simply killed themselves.” He pours himself another glass. “I tried to kill myself. But I failed. I can’t imagine anyone
not
being suicidal. When everything we love, when everything we’ve held onto, when everything we’ve believed in is stripped away from us in the twinkling of an eye… How are we supposed to react? I haven’t been optimistic. I’ve been skeptical of ever finding someone, but I haven’t taken my own life. I’ve wanted to. I won’t lie about that. But I haven’t done it. Maybe because I’m stubborn. Or I’m a coward, afraid of death. Or maybe it’s because I knew, deep down, that my solitude would not last forever. That I would find others. That I wouldn’t be alone for all eternity.” He raises his glass. “And that is what I toast to.”