Dwellers of the Night: The Complete Collection (82 page)

Interstate 75 North winds its way through the hills of northern Cincinnati. Low-income houses, rundown gas stations, and empty factories line either side of the four-lane road. The digital billboards are blank, and the paper billboards are slowly falling apart, ribbons hanging down, reaching for the ground, blowing listlessly in the stale morning breeze. The man puts on a pair of sunglasses, the sun’s rays splicing over the hills to the east, cutting into the S.U.V. in jagged arcs. A year ago the highway would have been clogged, bumper-to-bumper traffic, fumes climbing into the air, covering the city in a carcinogenic fog. Horns would have blared, men and women would have cursed, radios would have played popular songs: country, pop, rap. Now the air is clear, free of smog, as blue as the Atlantic ocean. Now the road is empty except for a few wrecked vehicles; a semi had run off the road, its trailer having flipped; the back doors had opened in the overturned trailer, and cardboard boxes that had been filled with bottles of beer now lie in rain-rotted heaps, the glass of the bottles shattered and reflecting the sunlight in a dazzling display. The Explorer weaves between several wrecked cars, and the man rolls down the window, hears nothing but silence and the slicing of the wind into the car, ruffling his shaggy hair. Katie coughs, breaking the quiet. There is a skeleton lying in the road ahead. The man does not speed up nor slow down. The bones crunch and disintegrate under the rolling tires.

The man slowly presses the brakes, and the Explorer comes to a stop. They are nearing the city limits. The man leans forward, curious. There are wrecked cars on the road, but they are all along the shoulder, knocked apart, some shattered and broken. Across the pavement is the scar of charcoal. A bridge ¼ a mile down the road has a large chunk missing. The iron supports that had been driven through the cement poke out into the empty chasm, twisted and contorted, spindling in every direction. The man looks over at Mark, who sits next to him. Mark shrugs. He presses the gas and continues on. A few miles farther, past the city limits, they stop the Explorer again. The wreckage is everywhere. The man drives slowly. He recognizes the destruction, the hewn metal. The far right wing, with its slat, spoiler, aileron, and flaps, is off to the side of the road, giant tears torn through the Anthony Barnhart

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metal, as if it had been slashed with the talons of a great beast. Farther down, the tail-end lies in the middle of the road: the vertical stabilizer, rudder, and elevator are corroding under the beating sun. The man takes a breath as they pull onto the shoulder: the fuselage of the commercial airliner lies in the middle of the street; GULF AIRLINES is stenciled onto the side. The windows are shattered, the edges consumed with burn marks. He doesn’t see any remains, any skeletons, anything.
They all
burned away
. The nose of the plane stares at them as they drive past. The last object is one of the jet engines; it is colored blue and beaten apart by its detachment from the body of the aircraft and its high-powered rolling across the ground. It lies embedded into the side of an overturned city bus; many of the bus’ upturned windows are shattered, and there are only a few skeletons inside. They leave the wreckage behind. The man imagines the plane descending in total radio silence, spiraling out of control, banking out, then hitting the highway, bursting into flames, knocking death-stricken cars out of the way with the blast of its passing, completely tearing apart a two-lane bridge spanning the highway.
And we may be the first people to have ever known
.

Forty minutes later the man takes an exit off the freeway. EXIT 36: FRANKLIN. Right off the exit, under the shadow of the bridge, is an old MARATHON gas station. He pulls up beside one of the pumps and turns off the engine. Everyone clambers out, no one speaking. Anthony wants to stretch his legs, heads off towards a line of trees farther down the road. Kyle asks the man if he wants help filling up. He doesn’t. Kyle joins the others and they go inside. Katie unwraps a candy bar and devours it hungrily. Sarah observes the rack, grabs one, eats it. Mark heads towards the back of the store with Kyle. They observe the alcohol selection: beers, a few wines. The most exotic drink is CORONA.

“We shouldn’t get any,” Mark says. “Our designated driver will be tempted to drink.”

Kyle shrugs. “It’s all right. I never was much of a drinker. I just like the wine coolers.”

Mark smiles. “I used to be that way, too. Then I became an alcoholic.”

“And the plague made you sober up?”

“No. The plague turned me into an alcoholic.”

Kyle seems confused. “But you’re not…”

Mark points out the window. “
He
made me sober up.”

“Oh really?” Kyle coos. “It seems he has a heart.”

“It’s small, but it’s there.”

“They have ALE-8!” Katie exclaims.

Sarah looks over at her. “Say what?”

She grabs a bottle from off a stack, wipes dust from the glass. “Have one.”

Sarah catches one Katie throws to her. She unscrews the cap. “It smells awful.”

“It’s a type of ale.”

“I don’t like ale.”

“Just try it.”

Sarah takes a sip. “Yeah,” she says. “I don’t like ale.”

Katie is looking for a handheld basket to load up as many as she can.

“Don’t worry about it now,” Sarah says. “We can get some later.”

“They only bottle this stuff in Kentucky. I’m surprised they even sell it here.”

“Okay…”

“Elizabeth and I would always drink ALE-8 together. She got me addicted.” She clutches one of the bottles close to her breasts. Her face seems to glow. “I can’t wait to see her. She’ll be so glad to see Anthony Barnhart

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me! I’ll have to apologize for not going up there sooner… But she didn’t come to see me, so she can’t hold it against me.”

“Yeah,” Sarah says, biting her bottom lip. “I guess she can’t.”

Mark weaves between Katie and Sarah, who are debating about some type of drink. The checkout counter has a gate pulled over the front, locked from the inside. He moves around to the entrance to behind-the-counter, but it is held shut by a door. He tries to open it but can’t. He steps back, drives his foot into the door. It creaks. Kyle appears behind him, asks what he is doing. Mark doesn’t answer as he kicks the door once more. The lock shatters, and it swings open. They stare down at the floor. The skeleton of what had been the late-night employee lies underneath a tattered uniform chewed-through by moths. Several mice that had been gnawing aimlessly on the corpse’s bones look up at the two figures standing like renaissance statues. Mark enters behind-the-counter, and the mice scatter. He grabs a bag from underneath the register and begins shoving it full of cigarette cartons. He doesn’t even bother to move around the skeleton, pushes it aside with the tip of his shoe. Kyle shakes his head and leaves Mark alone, joining the women.

Anthony pushes through the trees and emerges into a clearing. There is a parking lot that leads right up to a whitewashed church. The front sign, weathered and worn, the paint fading, reads: FRANKLIN

PRIMITIVE BAPTIST CHURCH. Underneath, there are stenciled letters, some hanging loose as if upon a thread: FREE COFFEE. ETERNAL LIFE. MEMBERSHIP HAS ITS BENEFITS. Anthony remembers back to his days as a youth, when his family had attended Grace Baptist Church in their hometown. He remembers all their rules: don’t drink, don’t cuss, don’t smoke. A crude smile plasters his façade:

“And those are the only ways to deal with what’s happened,” he muses aloud. He walks up the short steps leading to the wide double doors. He tries to get inside but cannot. He steps down and moves around the side of the building. The windows are too high for him to reach. He goes and stands beside the church’s sign, lights a cigarette, watches the smoke rise and catch the breeze, dispensing into the air. The preacher had always told them, “There is no salvation outside the church.” He had always disagreed with the church’s doctrine on that particular point, and he found himself ostracized. His family had left the church when the whole ordeal hit the roof.
I didn’t belong there. I
don’t belong here
. He feels so totally alone. He smokes his cigarette.

II

They reach Dayton, Ohio by midmorning. The highway narrows then becomes larger, and accidents become more common. The city is nowhere near as large as Cincinnati, but the skyline still approaches. The two tallest buildings of the Dayton skyline are the KETTERING TOWER and the MEADWESTVACO TOWER. The KETTERING TOWER had once been the WINTERS TOWER, the headquarters of WINTERS BANK. It had been renamed after Virginia Kettering when WINTERS merged into BANKONE. As various highways intersect, widen, and shrink, as the highway merges with bridges spanning large roads lined with houses, the architecture of Dayton catches the man’s eyes. He has been here many times before, especially with Kira; they would go to the Fraze Pavilion in Kettering, and then hit up the HAMBURGER SHOP downtown. “The best hamburgers in the world!”

Kira would shout as they would hop into line. The architecture of Dayton is wide and varied, ranging from the Neoclassical to the Tudor Revival, from the English Gothic to the Colonial Revival. He Anthony Barnhart

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always favored the Italianate-Style buildings, with their mansard roofs, rotundas, and marble porticos. Kira always loved to tour the simple Prairie architecture homes, always yearned for the day she would have enough to build her own Prairie-home in the hills of Cincinnati. Katie bites her lip, anxious. “We’re almost there…”

She leans forward in her seat.

Sarah stares out the window.

The city of Dayton sits in the Miami River Valley, some forty miles north of Cincinnati. It rests at the gathering-place of the Great Miami River, the Stillwater and Mad Rivers, and Wolf Creek. It was founded on April 1, 1796 by a small band of U.S. settlers seven years before the acceptance of Ohio into the Union. In 1797, Daniel Cooper laid out the Mad River Road, the first overland connection between Cincinnati and Dayton. It was incorporated into the state in 1805 and given its name after Jonathan Dayton, a captain in the American Revolution and a signer of the U.S. Constitution. In the 1830s, the Miami and Erie Canal was built, connecting Dayton to commerce from Lake Erie via the Great Miami River. In 1913, the city was ravaged by a catastrophic flood, which pushed citizens to migrate farther from the rivers, populating the higher ground.

“Her apartment is in the Oregon District,” Katie says. “It’s this exit.”

The man slows down the Explorer. The city is looming upon them. “I know where it’s at.”

Dayton has ten historic neighborhoods—the Oregon District, Wright Dunbar Dayton View, Grafton Hill, McPherson Town, Webster Station, Huffman, Kenilsworth, St. Anne’s Hill, and South Park. Most of the historic neighborhoods are filled with single-family houses and mansions in a vast myriad of architectural designs. The Oregon District boasts Federal, Italianate, Greek Revival and Queen Anne architectures predominantly. And the road is bumpy, unpaved cobblestone. The Explorer’s shocks creak and groan as they drive slowly down the empty street; a street once flooded with people, celebrations, parties and festivals. A street now empty and dry. Buildings with shattered windows. Cars rusting like ghosts. A city just as dead as every other city on the planet.

The Oregon District houses the earliest surviving architecture in Dayton. Before the plague struck, it was one of the most popular attractions in Dayton, heralded by many as the Mardi Gras of the Gem City. It sits between Patterson Boulevard and Wayne Avenue on East Fifth Street. More than fifty businesses once thrived along this street, ranging from bars and dance halls to government agencies and theaters. Now every building is quiet and serene, the windows dark. Some of the doors creak back and forth in the stale breeze, the rusted hinges sighing. Katie directs the Explorer down the cobblestone street, past THE TROLLEY STOP and PACCHIA CAFÉ. “It’s one of Elizabeth’s favorite restaurants,” she tells them; “It serves tapas-style foods. She also likes the Thai and sushi restaurants. Like that one.” She points to an elegant building with a patio, the chairs and tables thrown this way and that; THAI 9 is scribbled on the entrance in fading letters. “Her apartment is right beside the Oregon Emporium coffee shop and The Jazz Room.” The man nods, pulls up next to THE JAZZ ROOM

a few moments later. She points out the window: a five-story brick building with multiple windows and several doors. “That’s her apartment building,” she says. The man tells her that it is most likely dark inside, that dark-walkers might be hiding in the hallways and rooms. He tells her that the men will sweep it clean first. She says, “No bother. There’s a fire emergency ladder along the side. It reaches right up to one of her windows.”

The steel ladder whines under their weight, and the man is fearful that it will collapse. Katie leads the way, followed by the man with the shotgun and Mark with a pistol. The others wait down below at the Explorer, in case something awful happens—not everyone needs to die. Katie reaches the third Anthony Barnhart

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floor. The ladder reaches a platform, and the ladder continues upwards on the other side of the platform. Upon the grated steel platform, Katie points to a single window against the brick building. The man pushes her out of the way and leans forward, brushing dust from the windowpane. Sunlight weaves past his head as he peers inside, and he can see that the room is decently lit. He knocks on the window a few times. No response from inside. He takes the butt of the shotgun and drills it into the window; the windowpane shatters, the glass fragments spiraling down at his feet, falling between the holes in the metal platform, dancing down to their demise in the alley. The man crawls into the apartment. Katie follows, and Mark is right behind her. The apartment walls are whitewashed, and the décor is simple yet attractive. Katie rushes to the bedroom, shouting Elizabeth’s name. Mark winces at the loudness, stands beside the door leading to the apartment hallway, ready if anything—any
one
—should try to enter. The man moves about the living room, eyeing the walls. Framed black-and-white pictures of The Eiffel Tower, the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, Big Ben in London, and Time’s Square in New York City are arranged perfectly in an unbroken symmetry. There is a cold and calculating feel to the room itself: white spindly chairs, a black bookshelf elegantly organized with books on American law and empty white vases. There is a large snow-white couch facing a coffee table holding feminist and lesbian magazines.
Her girlfriend was a lawyer. That explains the books on law, and it explains why this room is
logically impeccable. She must have been a damned good lawyer
. The man sits down on the couch; a cloud of dust rises to greet him. The glass is blurred with filth, and he opens one of the lesbian magazines. His eyes dance over the image of two girls in lingerie holding one another, face-to-face, the tips of their tongues touching. He hears footsteps and drops the magazine. His face blushes as he looks up at Mark.