Dwellers of the Night: The Complete Collection (75 page)

They had seen her crawl into the Jeep Liberty. She buried her face into her hands, her back exposed between the leather seats. The zombies smashed their fists against the glass windows, and they began to web and crack. Their palms became bloody, knuckles cracking with each new thrust of the fist. The window of the front passenger’s seat began to splinter apart, and a zombie’s hand reached through, groping mindlessly, searching. Katie’s tears became more and more strenuous, and her chest felt afire. The zombies’ screams echoed in her ears, and she prepared for—

The screams stopped.

She opened her eyes, engulfed by silence.

A sound came from the door handle.

She spun around in the seat.

The door opened.

Anthony stood there, an iron bar, splattered with blood, in his hands.

“Come on,” he said, reaching for her hand, the iron bar dangling in the other hand. She just stared at him, disbelieving.
He was covered in so much blood
.

“Come on,” Anthony said.

She wouldn’t take his hand. Droplets of blood fell from his fingertips.

“Katie,” he said. “It’s me. Anthony.”

She still didn’t move.

“It’s not my blood,” he promised.

Nothing.

“Katie,” he growled, “
I’m not one of them.
”

Her hand reached out, tentative. She took his hand.

He pulled her out of the van.

The bodies of dark-walkers lay about the vehicle, skulls imploded.

“Let’s go,” Anthony said. “There will be more coming soon, I’m sure.”

Mark made his way up the stairwell of the house, the steps creaking under his weight. He ran his hand over the banister, dust gathering between his fingers. He reached the top landing, and something strange tickled his ears.
Crying
. It came from a room on the far side of the upper hall. He crept forward, the door drawing closer, the crying louder. He reached the door, twisted the handle, pushed it open. A skylight in the ceiling sent down a shaft of light upon the bed, where a figure could be seen curled underneath the sheets. He recognized her immediately. She had been at the church. Must have somehow escaped. A full-grown woman, she hid under the sheets and clutched a stuffed giraffe in her hands. Mark licked his lips, moved forward, speaking softly. He moved around the other side of the bed. The room had at one time been some girl’s bedroom, to which the plethora of Anthony Barnhart

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stuffed animals, the NSYNC and BACKSTREET BOYS and JONAS BROTHERS posters on the closet doors, and the wall-spanning collage with KODAK snapshots of preteen boys testified. He neared the edge of the bed. “Cameron.” Wasn’t that her name? “Cameron.”

She suddenly leapt forward, hurling the giraffe against the wall. Her face was contorted into a mask of rage, eyes billowing hate.

Mark ducked down as she swung the kitchen knife through the air.

He scrambled around the other side of the bed, shouting her name. He turned around next to the girl’s desk, facing the maniacal woman. She stood on the other side of the bed, knife held high.

“It’s all right!” Mark exclaimed. “I’m from the church, too!”

It took a moment, but the woman set the knife on the bed.

Sheepishly,

“Sorry.”

“No,” Mark said, taking a deep breath. “It’s okay.”

She sat down on the bed. “How bad was it?”

“What?” Mark asked, drawing closer, still cautious.

“I won’t bite you,” she said, patting the mattress. “I’m not one of them.”

Mark sat down beside her. “It’s pretty bad.”

“How many others have made it?”

“At least two,” Mark said. “I saw them driving away on the snow-mobiles.”

“They didn’t drive very far,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

She pointed to the window. “Look outside.”

He stood and walked over to the window facing the street. He pulled the blinds away and peered out into the road. He could see several dark-walkers surrounding the two snow-mobiles parked in the street; one still idled. His heart sank, and he backed away, letting the blinds fall against the window. He trudged back to the bed and sat down.

“They didn’t get away,” he moaned, the knowledge weighing upon him.

“No,” she said. “They’re inside a house, too.”

Mark eyed her. “Did you see who it was?”

“I’m not sure,” she said. “But I think your friend was with them.”

The boy grinned.

“God,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “You smell something awful.”

“I was in the sewer,” he said.

“How’d that happen?”

“It’s a long story.”

“We’ve got time. We aren’t going anywhere till morning.”

Anthony and Katie moved together. She had stopped crying, and now she moved with a renewed vigor, feeding off her friend with the shovel. They moved along the brick wall, could hear the darkwalkers along the opposite side. The brick wall merged with the bridge, and they followed a path that wound down towards the interstate. The stone path meshed with a walking bridge, and they moved across. Below them were several wrecks along I-71 with shattered windshields and rusted paint. They made it to the opposite side, and the path wound to the right, following the ridge of the slope which stretched down towards the interstate. An owl hooted somewhere in the woods, and Anthony found it somewhat comical:
Nothing has changed for some creatures on this planet
. Anthony Barnhart

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He told Katie to be quiet and wait; he moved forward to the end of the trail, which passed under an ornate, ivory arch and ran into a street lined with apartment complexes. These were nice apartments, with ivy crawling along the sides. The street was narrow, and it wound its way up the hill. He retreated back down the path, beckoned Katie forward. They made their way up the hill, moving slowly and silently, listening to the wind. They could hear the zombies in the distance, somewhere on the other side of the hill. He imagined them suddenly crashing through the trees on their left, spilling into them from above. The thought sent chills tracing along his spine, and the darkness didn’t help.
Why do they have to come out during the night?
he wondered to no one but himself.
Why couldn’t they be like lizards, bathing in the sun?

Katie suddenly stopped, grabbing Anthony by the shoulder.

Anthony turned. “What is it?” he asked in a harsh whisper.

She bit her lip, didn’t say anything.

“What?” he asked.

And then she embraced him, squeezing him tight.

He wrapped his arms around her, feeling slightly awkward, hugged her, too.

“Thank you,” she whispered into his shoulder. “Thank you.”

He didn’t say anything for a moment. “Katie?”

“Yeah?” she asked, refusing to let go.

“We should probably keep moving.”

∑Ω∑

Mark stands in the bedroom, the sunlight streaming through the windows, illuminating the décor. The bed is a king-size, the covers strewn about in a heap upon the floor. Along the walls are photographs of World War Two-era American aircraft: B-24 Liberators, B-17 Flying Fortresses, F4F

Wildcats. There is a map of the Solomon Islands hanging upon the far wall, and there are several faded awards mounted beneath dust-stained picture-frames. He walks to the wall, scrubs dust from the glass plate of a picture-frame, sees a black-and-white image of several men standing underneath the wing of an F4U-Corsair. Mark looks above the closet door and sees two old rifles hanging upon ledges: a pair of M1 Garands.
He served as a fighter pilot in World War Two,
Mark thinks to himself, opening up one of the dresser drawers.
He probably served in the Pacific Theater
, considering the map of the Solomons.
And he was a golfer, apparently
. All he can find are plaid shirts and golfing shorts. He finally finds a pair of khakis, strips down, throws them on. He changes into a polo shirt and quietly shuts the dresser drawer. He looks at the pile of his sewage-soaked clothes on the floor. He had worn them once when he and Cara had gone to a place called Big Bone Lick in northern Kentucky. He pushes her out of his mind and leaves the room.

He finds Katie rummaging through the kitchen cabinets.

“What are you looking for?” he asks.

“Some food,” she says. “I’m shaking all over.”

“The adrenaline is wearing off.”

“I know.” She finds a can of split peas. “Do you like vegetables?”

“Yeah,” Mark says. Looking around, “Where’s Anthony?”

“I don’t know. He went out back in a hurry.”

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Mark steps out the back door, passing Sarah, who is on her way inside. He sees Anthony standing at the fence-line bordering the miry pool. Mark walks over to him, stands quietly beside him. Anthony says, “I didn’t notice it when we came in.”

“Notice what?”

“The street name. It’s Maranatha.”

“All right.”

“My girlfriend… She lived on Maranatha.”

Mark doesn’t say anything.

“She died with the plague,” Anthony says.

“I’m sorry.”

“Everyone lost someone. It doesn’t matter anymore.”

∑Ω∑

Their eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and the man found the door to the garage, retracing his steps from memory. He pushed it open, feeling a cold back-draft. He stepped down two wooden steps and rummaged around in the shadows. Sarah and Kyle stood in the doorframe, exchanging glances. A sudden burst of light hit them in the face, and they twisted their faces away, clenching their eyes shut, blinded. The flashlight beam danced over the charcoal Explorer sitting in the garage, loaded up with supplies, sitting like a quiet banshee waiting to be unleashed. They could hear the garage door creaking and bending, the dark-walkers outside scraping their frail hands against the weak aluminum frame. Sarah and Kyle gingerly stepped down into the garage. The man splashed the flashlight beam over the garage door.

“Maybe you should turn off the light,” Sarah said, voice a harsh whisper.

“It doesn’t matter,” the man said. “They know we’re here.”

Sarah walked over to the Explorer, peered inside. “What is this?”

Kyle exchanged glances with the man, asked her, “Want to go for a ride?”

“Where to?” she asked, confused.

The man shined the flashlight in her face. “Alaska.”

The sound of shattering glass and splintering wood reached their ears. They leapt up from the bed. Cameron threw herself against the door, pressing her shoulder into the wood, eyes suddenly alive with terror. Mark ran to the far window, grabbed the blinds and pulled them away. He looked outside, could see dark-walkers surrounding the house. One of them looked up at the window and shrieked. Mark ducked out-of-sight, looked over to Cameron. Her face had gone completely white, her entire demeanor changing. They could hear them running through the house downstairs, overturning furniture, knocking pictures off the walls, yanking drawers out from the kitchen counters and scattering the contents over the tile floor, the zombies blinded in their mad desire for blood. The house began to shake as they tumbled over one another, climbing up the stairwell. Mark shouted that she couldn’t hold the door against them. As if on cue, it quaked against Cameron’s weight; she was thrown back, sprawled over the floor; the door swung open, a dark-walker entering the room, screaming. Mark grabbed a glass lamp upon the desk and swung it at the oncoming monster. The glass shattered against it face, digging into its skin; it spun around, fingers clawing at its blood-riddled flesh. Mark kicked it in the side, knocking it to the ground. He lunged for the door, another dark-walker entering; he tackled the zombie, knocking it back into the hallway. He ducked back into the room, tucked his toe under the open door, and swung it shut. He pressed his own Anthony Barnhart

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weight against the thin wood. A howl burned in his ears; he turned to see the dark-walker with the mangled face charging him; suddenly Cameron appeared with the kitchen knife, intercepting the monster. Mark turned his eyes as her knife dug deep into its eye, gouging the brain. The zombie collapsed to the floor in a quick fury. Mark continued to hold the door shut, could feel it splintering, shards of wood digging through his shirt and into his shoulder. “They’re going to get in!” he hollered. “They’re going to get in!” Cameron grabbed her hair in her hands, squeezed and pulled, her mind a chaotic cesspool, the screams beyond the door shaking the room as if it were submerged in an earthquake.

They could hear the sounds of the zombies entering the other house. At first they feared it was the home they were in, but the sounds were distant, muffled. They exchanged worried glances. Kyle said, “Maybe they’re going house-to-house, trying to sniff us out.” But his words just forced their eyes upon the fragile garage door, which continued to bend and twist as the dark-walkers moaned and groaned. The man shook his head, told Kyle that they knew where they were. Kyle’s response:

“Then how come they’re breaking into the other house?” The man didn’t answer, knowing the only possibility:
that there were other survivors, others hiding out on the street.
They could only wait to hear those too-human screams, followed by silence as the dark-walkers munched on the flesh of the fallen.

Cameron had unlocked the bolt on the window, raising the lower glass up to rest with the upper glass plate; this enabled them to climb onto the roof of the stoop overhang. She helped push the bed against the door, a dangerous process. But they had done it. Mark climbed out through the window, standing on the overhang. Below, zombies next to the stoop leapt up, swiping their arms with gnarled fingers through the air, trying to reach them. Mark didn’t worry: they were twelve feet off the ground. Cameron began climbing through as the zombies broke the top half of the door and began entering the room, worming their way through the shattered door, landing on the mattress, and rolling onto the floor. They leapt at the window; Cameron shouted and kicked, her heel smashing them in the face. She tumbled through the window, landing on the rooftop; she rolled towards the edge; Mark reached down, grabbed her by the hand; her body swung out and dropped, bringing Mark to his knees in a shout of pain. Her legs dangled over the edge; Mark glanced back at the window, saw zombies fighting over who would crawl through first. Cameron screamed at him; a zombie grabbed her leg, threatened to drag her down; Mark swore and pulled with all his might; the dark-walker released, and Mark gritted his teeth, pulled Cameron up to the overhang. One of the zombies was coming through the window; Mark let out a shout and kicked it in the face, sending it tumbling into the room, knocking the other zombies onto the floor.
Like a bowling ball hitting pins
, he thought to himself as he slammed the lower glass plate back down into position. Cameron picked herself up, winded, eyes dazed. Mark leapt out of the way as a zombie smashed into the glass, turning the plate into a shower of shards. Mark grabbed Cameron by the hand, and they began climbing the slick tiles of the roof, knowing they had nowhere to go, that their actions had not saved them but only prolonged their ultimate fate.