Dwellers of the Night: The Complete Collection (85 page)

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Why?” Katie panted. “Don’t be.”

“I’m sorry, because I have to taste you right away. I can’t wait
any
longer.”

Jasmine’s soft pink tongue parted Katie’s lips, and she began licking up and down her slit. Katie rested her head on the pillow, stared up at the ceiling, felt the pleasure shooting through her veins like million-dollar heroin. Jasmine shot her tongue deep inside her, and she writhed in pleasure, her feet pushing at the sheets, toes curling. Jasmine’s tongue danced over her clit, and she could feel an orgasm building. Jasmine wrapped her lips tight around her clit and sucked hard, began thrusting two fingers inside, searching for her G-spot. Katie couldn’t take it anymore. Her eyes rolled back into her head and she let out a gurgled cry, half-silenced by the twisting of her lips, and she practically screamed as she gushed all over Jasmine.

All strength had left her. She couldn’t move a muscle, didn’t dare move a muscle, as Jasmine kissed up her body, began sucking her nipples, then kissed her on the lips. She could taste herself on the woman’s lips. Katie’s weak arms wrapped around Jasmine’s bare back. Her feeble fingers reached underneath the hem of Jasmine’s pants, and she could feel the ecstatic warmth of her skin. She slid her fingers around the outside and then inside of the woman’s legs, and she reached underneath the panties and found her well-trimmed garden. Butterflies danced behind Jasmine’s eyes. “Want to return the favor?” she asked in a shuttered whisper. Katie didn’t answer, just reached down farther inside Jasmine’s panties, opened her lips with her fingers, began spreading her wetness around. They continued kissing. Jasmine’s eyes shuddered and her breaths were magnificently hopeful.

They pushed against one another, so close that their nipples touched one another’s. They kissed with more passion. Jasmine clutched Katie’s head between her hands, and Katie withdrew one hand from underneath the woman’s pants and ran it through her silky black hair. Katie pulled her other hand free, wrapped her arms tight around Jasmine, nuzzled her neck, kissed softly. She rubbed her breasts and played with her hard nipple. She slid her hand back into Jasmine’s pants, began playing with the new toy; Jasmine whimpered.

Katie took Jasmine’s nipple into her mouth, sucking and gently biting. Jasmine’s eyes clenched shut, and her body shook as she groaned. Katie sucked and bit harder. She pulled away, looked up into Jasmine’s shadow-obscured eyes. She began kissing her way down Jasmine’s beautiful body, flipped her onto her back, crawled on top. They held one another and kissed a while longer. Katie slid down her body, grabbed her pants, and pulled them down, panties and all, revealing her quivering vagina and slender, tan legs. Jasmine opened her legs, and Katie knelt down, pressed her face into the warmth, licking and sucking. Jasmine opened her legs wider, grabbed the insides of her thighs, pulled her legs up into the air, giving Katie more room to operate. Katie returned the favor well: Anthony Barnhart

Dwellers of the Night

393

sucking the clit, fingering her, exploring her and pampering her until she burst inside Katie’s mouth. She climbed back on top of her, and they kissed and kissed, completely forgetting everything except their entangled bodies and the sweat dripping down their labor-wracked bodies.

∑Ω∑

Katie is crying. Sarah sits next to her. The dark-walkers howl outside.

“I cheated on her,” Katie sobs, clutching the photograph of her and Elizabeth.

“Katie…”

“I got drunk, I let down my guard, I cheated on her.”

“Everyone cheats.”

She stares at Sarah, tears fogging her vision. “That doesn’t make it right.”

There is silence.

Sarah reaches out, tries to hug Katie, but Katie writhes away.

“Don’t touch me,” she snarls.

“Sorry,” Sarah says quickly. “I didn’t mean…”

Katie interrupts her. “I told everyone that I was at work when the plague hit. I’ve lied to them all. I was with that girl, that girl I hardly remember, except for the guilt that’s cemented her in my mind. We fell asleep in one another’s arms, and I didn’t even think about Elizabeth that night…

When I woke up in the morning, the girl… She was dead. Like all the others. I didn’t even hear it happen. I didn’t think about Elizabeth as I fell asleep that night, but she’s been all I could think about. Every damned day I’ve wished that I could take back what I did, that I could come up here to Dayton, that I could be with her when it happened. It would have been somewhat… romantic. But that didn’t happen. The night she died, she had no idea that I was with another woman. I can never tell her how much I love her, I can never tell her sorry.”

Sarah doesn’t know what to say.

Maybe nothing is meant to be said.

Katie sniffles, tries looking at the photograph in the candle-light.

“What we do,” Sarah says slowly, piecing together words, “isn’t what makes us who we are. It’s who we love that determines who we are. You were drunk, and you acted stupidly, and you didn’t even think about Elizabeth when you passed out that night. But you didn’t give a damn about the girl the next morning. All you cared about is Elizabeth.” She reaches for Katie’s hand, takes it in hers. Katie doesn’t react. “And that shows that even though you made a stupid mistake, you loved Elizabeth. You still love her. And that’s honorable.” She takes a breath, says, “This apartment is untouched. We’re the first ones to be here since that night. And we’re the only ones. Only one person cared enough to brave death to come see if she was okay, and that was you. I think she’s in Heaven now, and I think she’s very proud of you.”

Anthony Barnhart

Dwellers of the Night

394

Anthony Barnhart

Dwellers of the Night

395

Chapter Twenty-Seven

The Splendid Setting Sun

“They tell us that suicide is the greatest piece of cowardice… that suicide is wrong; when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in the world to which every man has a more unassailable title than to his own life and person.”

- Arthur Schopenhauer (A.D. 1788-1860)

I

They leave when dawn strikes. The man only slept for a few hours, and Mark didn’t sleep at all. Katie had fallen into a fitful sleep around four in the morning. The dark-walkers had dissipated, and thankfully they hadn’t destroyed the Explorer. The paint along the sides of the vehicle had been chipped and scraped in great grooves, and the man imagined dark-walkers clawing mindlessly, smelling the residue of non-infected
Homo sapien
somewhere within the vehicle.
What a disappointment
they would have experienced had they actually gotten inside
, the man thought to himself as he drove the vehicle down the cobblestone street and picked up the others. They navigated the confusing highways that crisscrossed along the western side of the city, and after turning around a few times, found Interstate 70 West. Now the man drives silently, the great buildings of Dayton being replaced with sprawling suburbs, factories, and fast food restaurants. Katie sleeps. No one talks. The buildings slowly dissipate, and soon they are driving down a highway absolutely void of vehicles, nothing but farmland and woods on either side, broken only by a few sparse exits with conglomerated gas stations. The man finds it strange to see nothing but abandoned crop-fields, nothing but large cumulous clouds whirring in the sky above, nothing but droves of birds flying across the highway. He has not left the remnants of metropolitan civilization in nearly nine months, and being in the countryside almost makes him nervous.

“It’s creepy,” Mark says. He eyes the man. “It’s creepy, you know?”

“Yeah,” the man says.

“I bet most of the dark-walkers have migrated towards Dayton.”

“Yeah,” the man says. He hopes so.

Mark leans over, taps on the dashboard. “The ‘low gas’ light just came on.”

“I know,” the man says. “I think there’s a leak.”

“Was there a leak when you got it?”

“No. We must have ran over something and damaged the tank.”

“It was probably a dark-walker.”

“Yeah,” the man says. “We hit quite a few of them.”

He remembers the little girl, and his eyes are drawn to the crack in the windshield.
Let me tell you a story about the Tooth Fairy…

He doesn’t want to think about her.

Anthony Barnhart

Dwellers of the Night

396

The man pulls off at the next exit. A semi is flipped on the exit ramp, the trailer lying in a scattered heap, long smoldered; the cab’s windows are shattered and the insides charred black. The man pulls right off the exit, passes a MCDONALD’S and A PILOT GAS STATION. He pulls into the PILOT and stops the car. He leans back and wakes up Katie. “Restroom break.” Everyone piles out of the vehicle, and the man goes to work.

Anthony stands beside the man. “How do you get the gasoline out with no electricity?”

“It doesn’t need electricity,” the man answers.

The boy doesn’t move.

The man sighs. “Look. See what happens when I pull the nozzle off the hook? I flip this little lever up. That opens a valve between the hose and the tank. When I insert the nozzle into the tank, just like this, and squeeze the handle, the hose opens. The underground tank is pressurized, and when I depress this handle, the pressure is broken, and gasoline comes out. All right?”

Anthony nods. “Okay. Thanks.”

The man stands filling up the tank. He keeps glancing at the small digital display on the fuel pump. At one time it had made him groan and moan, pennies and dollars floating out of his checking account with each passing second. Now it is silent, unmoving, a mockery. He still looks at it out of habit.

Anthony says, “Do you have any portable gasoline tanks?”

The man stares at him. “What?”

“You know. Those red containers you put gasoline inside.”

“No.”

“You might want to get some.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“I mean, who knows how many gas stations we’ll pass on our way to Alaska?”

“I said I’ll think about it.”

Anthony’s face flushes red. The tension is unbearable. He leaves. The man finishes filling the tank, replaces the nozzle. He screws on the tank lid. He goes inside the store to find some gasoline containers.

“The girl’s room is on the left,” Mark says. “Guy’s is on the right.”

Sarah laughs. She and Katie go to the left side of the building.

Mark and Kyle move around the right side of the station.

“Holy shit.”

They round the corner and stop dead in their tracks.

Their noses wrinkle, the stench unbearable.

“Dark-walkers?” Kyle asks, voice high and nasal: he’s plugged his nose.

“No,” Mark says. “They’re wearing clothes. And healthy.”

Kyle looks at him. “They
were
healthy.”

They stand staring. Flies buzz towards them.

Mark swipes several flies away from his face. “What do we do?”

Kyle shakes his head. “I don’t know.”

“We shouldn’t tell the others.”

“No,” Kyle says.

Several moments pass. “All right,” Mark says, moving away. “Time to go.”

“Yeah,” Kyle says, following him. “Time to go.”

Anthony Barnhart

Dwellers of the Night

397

Anthony, Kyle, and Mark have climbed into the Explorer. Sarah is on her way, and the man stands next to the driver’s side with the door open. “Where the hell is Katie?” he shouts to Sarah. She nears the vehicle. “She’s still using the bathroom.”

“How long is it going to take her?” the man demands.

She glares at him. “How the hell should I know?”

“Does she need a tampon or something?”

Sarah shakes her head. “You’re ridiculous.”

The man leans forward, presses down on the horn.

The blast sends several birds climbing from their hiding places in the overgrown grass. Sarah runs around to the side of the car, slaps his hand away from the horn. “Stop.”

The man hisses, “She’s already slowed us down enough.”

“She’s going to the
fucking
bathroom,” Sarah growls. “Give her some fucking privacy.”

“All I want—’’

The man doesn’t get to finish his sentence.

His words are cut-off by Katie’s hidden screams.

II

Katie stands in the overgrown grass, cast in the shadow of the gas station’s ivory brick walls. Her screams have ended, followed by a global stare that swallows up the picturesque mural. Footsteps scramble behind her, and suddenly she is flanked by Sarah and the man. Behind them come Mark, Kyle, and Anthony trotting at a belligerent pace. No one says anything for a moment, hearing only their frozen breaths and the buzzing of the carrion flies. The man’s jaw slackens and his eyes become chiseled like ancient stones. Behind the gas station, thrown about in the weeds, are several bodies: seven, two men and five women. They are fully dressed, and their bodies lie entangled, limbs twisting upwards into the sky, palms and fingers clenched into hopeless grasps. Their eyes are wide, mouths held in contorted frames, flies swarming about their teeth. The clothes are stained with blood, riddled by bullets. Katie suddenly bursts into tears and falls to the ground; Sarah kneels down to comfort her. The man looks over at Mark, who shakes his head, mouths,
Raiders
. The man is reminded once more that the road is perilous not merely because of the denizens of the walking dead, but also because of the vagrants of a ruined society, those who feast on their wickedness and bathe in their vileness. The man doesn’t understand how anyone could so ruthlessly execute people, but he knows he will never partake in their schemes.

Katie and Sarah are standing next to the Explorer. The men huddle together at the entrance to the gas station, four figures whose shadows are stenciled across the asphalt. Kyle ponders, “How fresh, do you think?” The man says maybe a few days, probably less. No one says anything for a moment, and then Kyle ventures, “How far do you think they are from us?” The man says that they haven’t passed anyone, so they’re most likely heading the same direction, probably farther up the road—as to how far, who can know? The man excuses himself and walks away. Mark and Kyle exchange glances. Anthony sits down on the pavement, plays with the loose gravel. The other two turn and follow the man around the side of the building.