Dwellers of the Night: The Complete Collection (86 page)

Anthony Barnhart

Dwellers of the Night

398

“What’re you doing?” Mark asks, running to catch up with the man. He doesn’t answer.

Kyle, right behind Mark, asks, “Are you going to bury them?”

The man doesn’t look over his shoulder: “No.”

They walk right past the dead bodies.

The man stops in the overgrown grass, points to a parking lot. “Right there.”

The two boys follow his gaze: a large parking lot filled with semi-trucks.

“How come we didn’t notice them?” Kyle asks.

The man says, “If there’s a scorpion in your food, do you notice the fly?”

Kyle stares at him. “What?”

The man shakes his head. “It’s an analogy.”

“Sounds more like Confucius. But what does it mean?”

“Who would notice several semis when we’re staring at dead bodies?”

“Oh.” He looks over at the man. “And why are semis important?”

The man moves forward, not answering.

Mark and Kyle trot to keep up.

He reaches the nearest semi. EAST COAST CARRIERS is stenciled along the side of the trailer, with a phone number underneath. The driver’s side window in the cab is shattered, the glass fragments having disappeared months earlier. The man crawls up to the door, reaches through the broken window, fumbles with the lock. It clicks free, and the man shuffles to the side, swings the door open. He hops into the cab. Mark and Kyle look at one another, confused; Mark shrugs his shoulders. Anthony comes up behind them, asks what the man’s doing. They tell him they don’t know. A moment later the man drops down from the cab, holding something in his hand. Mark’s eyes go wide: “Oh.”

The man holds a CB radio. “It’s battery-powered. One of the older ones. I was hoping it would be. But… the batteries are dead.” Mark says there are probably some in the gas station. They make their way past the corpses, around the building, and shatter the glass windows, hopping inside. Katie is sitting down next to the vehicle, crying, and Sarah is with her, watching the men enter the store. They rifle through the shelves and aisles, and eventually they find what they are looking for. The man hands Anthony the radio and cuts open the package with his KA-BAR knife. He slips the knife back into the sheath on his belt. “Give it to me.” Anthony hands him the radio. He inserts the batteries into the radio and turns it on. A green light tells him that it’s working. He fishes through the channels, receives only silence or static.

“Who’s going to be broadcasting?” Anthony asks.

“Hopefully the raiders,” the man says. “But this damn thing isn’t picking up any signals.”

“Probably because the raiders are too far off,” Kyle says hopefully.

“Or,” the man says, “because they’re not using a CB radio.”

Mark asks, “Why would they use a radio?”

Anthony morosely speculates, “Maybe so they can give people the hope of salvation and then throw them behind a gas station and kill them execution-style.”

Kyle rolls his eyes, says, “God, you’re morbid.”

“And unfortunately,” the man says, “he may be right. Let’s hope so. Then we’ll know where they are, and we can hopefully avoid them. But for now, we’re just going to have to keep our eyes open. The guns loaded. Safety’s off. If it comes down between me and another human, then I’m going to kill him—or her. Gender doesn’t mean shit anymore. Not here, not now.”

Anthony Barnhart

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399

III

In less than an hour, they reach Anderson, Indiana. Anthony is becoming more and more nervous, more and more excited, at the foolish prospect of seeing his beloved sister, of being reunited. Everything he’s loved has been taken from him, and he dares to believe that there is some goodness in the universe to be bestowed upon him, some favor earned by his life of good merit. The man finds him absolutely ridiculous, but he keeps his mouth shut. He drives silently, smoking a cigarette, flicking the ashes outside the cracked window. Anthony bubbles forth stories of him and his sister Amanda, how they were always best friends, breaking the stereotype of siblings-at-arms. No one says anything to him; they let him talk. He becomes quiet as they near the campus; he directs them down the main street, past shopping malls and restaurants and hole-in-the-wall Chinese buffets. At a dead light, he instructs the man to turn left. The road passes several churches and a DRUG MART, and then is flanked on either side by Kwanzan Cherry trees, blossoming in vibrant plume. There is a fenced-in graveyard, overgrown with weeds, and then two dorm buildings come into sight along the right side of the road: RICE HALL and DUNN HALL. Anthony nearly shouts, and the man jerks the S.U.V. into the parking lot of RICE. Before he has stopped the vehicle, Anthony is already clambering over Sarah, kneeing her in the stomach, and thrusting open the door. He falls out onto the pavement, grunts at a searing pain in his kneecap, then leaps up. He races to a flight of steps leading to the door to the dorm and takes them two-at-a-time. He reaches the door and tries to open it, but it won’t budge. He lets out a curse and yanks it harder and harder. The man gets out of the Explorer, grabs the shotgun next to the gear-shifter, and makes his way over to Anthony.

The boy glares at the man, eyes afire. “It won’t open.”

“I noticed,” he says.

“It’s opened by an electric card-swipe. Electricity’s out. The door’s locked.”

The man raises the shotgun.

Anthony shouts, covers his ears.

The blast rings out. The side of the door shatters, chunks of metal flying. The man grabs the smoking handle and wrenches it open. Sunlight pours into the corridor. Anthony lowers his hand-muffs over his ears, takes a deep breath, throat knotted.

“They couldn’t get out,” the man says, staring. “Like you said, the door wouldn’t open.”

Skeletons lie in jumbled heaps, the bones mixed together in a disjointed mess. The carpet of skeletons extends towards the far stairwell leading to the upper floors, the bones forming a meshed carpet, ribs reaching up into the air, skulls tumbled about with their stoic, toothy grins. The others are joining them, and the man moves forward, his boots crunching the bones underfoot. He kicks several skeletons out of the way, reloading the shotgun with fresh shells as he moves. Anthony is behind him, and the others form a group of try to form a path without touching the skeletons. Katie decides to stay outside, doesn’t want to go tramping through the remains of college students. Mark decides to stay with her; he wants to smoke a cigarette, anyways. The man and Anthony reach the stairwell leading up to the upper floors. Anthony bursts pasts the man and starts racing up the steps. The man yells at him to stop, that they haven’t cleared the building, that there might be a dark-walker who has been feasting on its brethren. But Anthony doesn’t listen. The man curses and follows, legs muscles burning as he sprints up the stairs.

There comes a snarl up above, undeniable, and he raises the shotgun; he hears Anthony shout, races to the next landing. A dark-walker is tumbling down the steps, a young and naked girl with jetblack hair crawling down past her shoulders. She lies on the stairs, howling in pain, feeble legs Anthony Barnhart

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snapped, blood gushing over the steps. The man thrusts the barrel of the shotgun into her wailing mouth; he looks away, closes his eyes, depresses the trigger; the gun-blast echoes like a cannon in his ears, and he feels blood speckling against his cheek and his hand. He doesn’t look down as he continues moving up the stairwell. His boots are slick with blood. He hears Anthony shouting for him. He reaches the next landing and enters the hall. Anthony is standing in the shadows next to a door. “This is her room,” he says. “It’s locked.”

The man joins him, loads a new round of shells into the shotgun, raises it up against the door.

“Wait!” Anthony shouts. “The shells might go through the door and kill her.”

The man eyes him, knocks on the door. “Hello?!” he shouts. “Hello?!”

Anthony despises the man’s sarcasm, shakes him away. “Stop.”

“No one’s in there.”

“She’s probably sleeping. She always sleeps till late afternoon.”

The man raises the gun. “Step back.”

Anthony jumps in front of him, shielding the door, eyes enraged: “
No
.”

The man lowers the shotgun. “Fine. Want to keep knocking till she answers?”

The boy bites his lip. “Let’s find her R.A.”

“Her what?”

“Resident Advisor. You know, the person in charge of the floor. She’ll have a key.”

The man sarcastically muses, “I think I just killed her a minute ago.”

Anthony moves away, down the hall. He stops at one of the doors. “This one.”

The man doesn’t move, shouts down the hall, “How do you know it’s the R.A.’s?”

“It says so on this plaque,” Anthony says. “Shoot this door down.”

“Fine,” the man growls.

They have entered the room, the door lying on a single hinge. The windows are covered with dust, and the boy swipes the dust away, allowing piercing sunlight to dance down into the room. It is a small dorm room, with a single bed, a couch, a desk, and a dresser. There is a skeleton lying in the bed, a protractor lying next to the neck of the spine, speckled with long-dried blood.
She slit her neck
, the man thinks to himself,
when she went crazy
. Anthony is scrambling around in the desk, holds up a ring with several keys. “Got it,” he says, bolting out of the room. The man follows him.

The keys jingle in Anthony’s hands as he searches for the right one. Finally a key fits the lock, and as it turns, the door cracks inwards. He pushes it open and enters. The man decides to wait outside. Anthony stands, the dim light coming from the weathered windows illuminating the bunk-bed with its plethora of comforters and pillows and stuffed animals. There are two bean-bag chairs next to the air conditioner. A single dark television screen with an XBOX-360 and several games. He had owned the XBOX, but Amanda had taken it for her own. As his eyes adjust in the darkness, he sees two skeletons: one lying in the lower bunk, and the other lying atop of it. Anthony moves forward, kneels down. Already he is accepting the fate; his dreams shatter and he moves immediately into grim acceptance.
Amanda slept on the lower bunk
. Suddenly he knows which skeleton is hers, and he just stares at the skull, where his sister’s eyes had once resided. Her brain had once been home to laughter and love and great weirdness, a charming weirdness that made you feel awkward but yet comfortable and at-ease, all at the same time. Now there is no brain, and all that remains of his beloved sister is the frame upon which her muscles and sinews had attached and moved and had their being. He begins piecing things together, the scene forming in his mind: the disease striking, Anthony Barnhart

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Amanda being attacked; Amanda fights back with a kitchen knife, and she is able to kill her assailant—her roommate Krysten. But Krysten had already bit deep into her neck, had drawn forth a geyser of blood, and she died of blood loss—attested to by the dark stains covering the sheets.
She
survived the plague
. He knows it to be true. He knows it in a way he has never known anything to be so sure.
She survived the plague, but her roommate, infected, took her life in her craze.

He stands and exits the room.

The man is standing against the far wall, shotgun propped against his leg. Anthony says, “She survived the plague.”

The man eyes him. “No. She’s dead.”

“She survived the plague. Then her roommate killed her.”

“That’s idiotic,” the man says. “You know she died like the rest. Just accept it.”

Anthony doesn’t defend himself. “Just give me some time alone, okay?”

The man bites his lip. “All right.” He hands the boy the shotgun.

“Is this to kill myself?” Anthony asks. “To keep you from the guilt of doing it?”

“No,” the man says. “In case there are more in the building. To keep you safe.”

“I thought you didn’t care?”

“I don’t,” the man says, turning his back on the boy. He points to the far window that looks down in the parking lot. “But
they
do.”

IV

Everyone else is waiting outside. The man descends the stairwell. Mark tosses his cigarette onto the pavement and races up to him. He stares at the blood on the man’s face, on his shirt, his hand.

“Where’s Anthony? Is he all right? Is that his blood?”

The man raises his eyebrows. “What?”

Kyle, standing aside, says, “We heard gunshots. We heard one of the zombies.”

“Oh,” the man says. “This isn’t his blood. I killed it. The dark-walker, I mean. And Anthony is up in his sister’s room. He’s all right, too. I gave him the shotgun.”

“Did his sister make it?” Mark asks.

The man looks at him, incredulous. “Are you kidding? Of course she didn’t.”

Katie asks, “Why did you give him the shotgun? What if he kills himself?”

The man shrugs. “We can only hope, can’t we?”

Sarah shakes her head. “You’re a bastard.”

Anthony kneels next to the bed. His eyes fill with tears. He speaks, rambling, “I’m sorry… I’m so sorry… I’m sorry… It’s not fair… It’s not fair that I make it, that I survive, and you… I’m so sorry…

I’m sorry that whenever you wanted to play, I would just want to read… I’m sorry for always making you mad… I’m sorry for not calling you back whenever you called… I’m sorry for not always being there for you… I’m sorry for being a selfish bastard… I loved you so much, Amanda…” He reaches out, caresses her skull with his finger. A shiver runs down his spine. He withdraws his hand.

“I’m sorry for touching you like that… It’s not right… You’re dead, and I shouldn’t be touching your bones…” Tears crawl down his cheeks, and he begins to weep. His chest heaves and breaks and Anthony Barnhart

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snaps. His blond and ragged hair falls before his eyes, and his tears drop upon her crooked fingerbones, dissolving into nothing.

The man walks across The Valley, a low slab of land between several academic buildings and the NICHOLSON LIBRARY. The long grass tugs at his jeans, and several insects hop off blades of grass at his approach. He passes underneath several oak trees, the leaves bending towards the sun. He makes his way up the stone steps to NICHOLSON LIBRARY. He tugs on the door.
Locked
. He kicks his boot into the glass of one of the vertical windows, and it shatters. He squeezes in, shards of glass cutting at his jacket. He stands in the darkness, draws out his KA-BAR. He shouts out. No response. He moves through the darkness, between the aisles. Several towering windows at the end of the building let in foggy beams of light. He hurries towards the light, and his nerves settle. Against the far wall is the MCCLELLION CAFÉ, a gourmet coffee shop. A gate is lowered against the entrance. The man sheathes his knife and bends down, grips the gate. It slowly rises, unlocked. He steps into the dimly lit café. Tables with chairs hoisted atop are lined up against the counter. A chalkboard with faded chalk lettering gives the Monthly Special: Peanut Butter Hot Chocolate. The man moves around the counter and begins searching. He finds a case of coffee beans in one of the under-cupboards: ETHIOPIAN