Dwellers of the Night: The Complete Collection (93 page)

“Clean yourself up,” the man says. His voice is deep and rusty.

Mark kneels down, grabs the towel with weak and shaking fingers, brings it up to his nose, begins to dab the blood. The towel turns crimson and becomes damp. The memories of what has happened begin to return to Mark’s mind, and he remembers the door flying open, remembers falling to the ground, seeing the man running into the cornfield, guns chattering. Shattered glass falling into the overgrown grass.

The large man returns, hovers over Mark, arms on either side of him, fingers gripping the table.

“We’re searching for your friend right now,” he says; “He’s probably lying dead in the corn. We’re going to bring him in here and let you look him in the eyes. The boys here tell me that he was chasing you, telling you to turn around. Should’ve listened to him, I think. Don’t you?” He grins, yellow and broken teeth. “Maybe you can apologize to him.” There comes a shout at the front of the house; the man retracts from the boy and goes to greet the newcomers.

Mark looks at the children. Their hands are clenched before them, and they are rocking back and forth on their heels, chuckling and whispering to one another.

The man returns, grabs Mark by the hair, wrenches his head back. He spits in Mark’s face as he talks: “Where the
fuck
did he go?”

Mark can still taste blood on his lips. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Your friend? Where the fuck did he go?”

The boy doesn’t answer.

The man yanks his hair harder, and Mark whimpers in pain.

“You’re going to fucking tell me where he went.”

“Go to hell,” Mark coughs.

“You tell me where he went.”

Mark tries to hold back tears from the pain, snaps, “Didn’t you hear me?”

The man releases his hair; Mark slides down in the chair. His scalp still burns. The man faces the boys. “Get out of here. Bring Banks.”

They disappear. A moment later, a scrawny man with spectacles appears. The man walks over to the counter, opens a drawer. “Make him talk.”

Banks nods, walks over to the counter, reaches into the drawer.

The man returns to the table, grabs a chair, sits down beside Mark.

“I’m not going to tell you a fucking thing,” Mark growls.

“We’ll see about that,” the man says.

Banks is holding a pair of lamb-scissors in his hands.

Mark stares at them, his eyes growing wide.

“We’ll see,” the man repeats, words dripping with excitement.

Anthony Barnhart

Dwellers of the Night

433

The man is limping up the street, blood coating his pants. The doors to the RAV4 burst open, and the three others run towards him. He yells at them to go back to the S.U.V., but they don’t listen. They crowd around him. Sarah tells him that he’s bleeding, and he just stares at her; “Yeah. I figured that out,” he says. Katie asks where Mark is, but he doesn’t answer. Sarah tells him that there’s a doctor’s office on the other side of the bridge, they probably have stitches and antiseptic. He agrees to go. Katie keeps badgering him about Mark; Kyle helps the man limp forward. The man ignores her, but she keeps pleading to know, and finally he stops, turns his head, and snaps, “He fell behind. What the fuck do you think happened if he’s not with me?” She’s quiet after that. They load into the RAV4

and drive across the bridge. There is a single-story building with a fading hinged sign in the front yard; it reads, DOCTOR REBUALLAR, FAMILY DOCTOR. They crawl out of the vehicle. Kyle grabs the shotgun and kicks open the door. There are no attacks. The building was no doubt locked and empty even before night fell. There is a small parlor with several chairs, and farther down the hallway is an office and an examination room. They carry the man into the examination room, and he sits down on top of the examination bed, the paper wrap coiling underneath his weight. He swings his leg up and sets it on the end of the bed. Kyle continues exploring the building. Katie stands in the corner. Sarah tells her to search for suturing equipment and antiseptic. She doesn’t respond. Sarah raises her voice, commands her a second time. Katie quietly nods and begins searching through the plastic cupboards.

Kyle returns. Sarah has cut away the pant-leg around the wound. There is a ragged tear along his calf. “I don’t think it hit an artery,” she says. “The bullet just nicked you.” She looks at him, confused.

“Who the hell shot you? Mark?” The man shakes his head,
No
. Sarah unscrews the cap to the bottle of rubbing alcohol. She looks at the man. “This is going to hurt.” He says he knows. She overturns the bottle, and the alcohol gushes into the man’s wound. He reels his head back and screams, fists balling, leg quivering. He nearly kicks Sarah in the face. Katie comes forward with a packet of powder: morphine. Sarah rips open the packet and dumps it into the wound. The man takes a deep breath, numbness spreading through his leg. Sarah sees him settling down, takes the packet of thread and needles, begins to work. The man doesn’t do anything, leaves her to the task. Katie sits down on a stool, watching. Kyle paces back and forth, the shotgun held in both hands. He asks what happened.

“It was a deception,” the man says. “What Katie saw, those were two little boys. I told Mark to leave them alone, but he wouldn’t. They ran from him. He chased after them. I told him that he was scaring them, just to leave them alone. They ran into one of the cornfields, right to this old farmhouse. They ran inside, and Mark followed. That’s when I realized what was happening. The boys were a trap, leading us right to the raiders. They took Mark. Tried to kill me.” He points to his leg.

“Obviously, they were awfully close to doing it.”

Katie asks, “So the boys… They were like bait?”

“Yeah,” the man says.

Her face is ghostly white. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

Sarah stops sewing, looks over at her. “It’s not your fault.”

“If I wouldn’t have said anything…”

“Katie,” Sarah repeats. “It’s
not your fault
.”

The man murmurs under his breath, “Like hell it isn’t.”

Sarah glares at him.

Katie hangs her head low, staring at the floor.

“So what do we do?” Kyle asks. “Do you think they’ll send anyone after you?”

“I don’t know,” the man says. “Just… sit here for a moment.”

Anthony Barnhart

Dwellers of the Night

434

Kyle says, “Did they kill him?”

There is silence. Everyone holds their breath.

The man says, “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“I don’t remember much. All I know is that they were shooting at me.”

Katie says, “We should go to the next town. It’s not safe here.”

The man glares at her. “We should leave
you
here. You’re the one who got us into this fucking mess.”

Sarah punches him in the wound.

He lets out a shuddering gasp, the morphine hardly masking the pain. She

stares

at

him.

He looks away, refusing to meet her eyes.

The man finally speaks: “I’m going to get him.”

Sarah stops suturing.

Kyle

stops

pacing.

Katie looks up.

Kyle breaks the silence: “No. You can’t.”

“I’m going.”

“You’re hurt.”

“I’m all right.”

“You were shot in the leg.”

“I was grazed in the leg. Not shot.”

“You know as well as I do that there’s no way you can outfight them. You don’t know how many of them there are. Sunset will be here in an hour. There’s no way you can do anything.”

“I’m going back for him.”

Katie says, “You were ready to abandon us back in Cincinnati, and now you’re willing to risk your life for us?”

The man meets her eyes. “I wouldn’t go back for you. But I’ll go back for Mark.”

Mark doesn’t break: even when they tear at his flesh with scissors, even when his skin is tinged red with his own blood, he doesn’t break. They shove needles underneath his fingernails. He screams and howls, but he doesn’t break. Banks shakes his head. He knows Mark won’t talk. The large man curses, begins punching Mark in the face. Mark’s jaw sears with pain, and his vision is soon blurred by the blood inching down his face, weaving along the bridge of his nose. The man then starts cooking. Real meat. The scent of it tears through Mark, even through a broken nose, and his will begins to break. The large man sets the plate of juicy meat in front of him, on the table; Mark doesn’t recognize the cut, but he doesn’t care. He salivates at the mouth, his own drool mixing with the taste of blood. He looks up at the man, and in a magnificent feat of will-power, he spits the salivation in the man’s face. The man recoils, grabs Mark by the throat, lifts him up out of the chair. Mark grabs at the man’s rough hands; his eyes bulge and his mouth twitches, and his world begins to grow dark, his face turning muddy purple. The man releases Mark, and the boy crumples onto the tile floor, lying in a fetal position, sucking in deep breaths. The man grabs him by the arm and drags him into the next room. He opens a door and kneels down; with a free hand, he grabs a latch on the floor and lifts up the cellar door. Mark looks down into the murky darkness, and then he can feel himself falling. His limbs crash against the wooden stairwell, and then he lands on his side, a cloud of dust wrapping around him, dirt sticking to his blood-slick face.

Anthony Barnhart

Dwellers of the Night

435

The man is adamant: he is going back for Mark. Everyone protests, but when Kyle realizes that the man won’t back down, he says he’ll go with him. Sarah finishes suturing the man’s leg, and although she tells him that he needs to take it easy, that the stitches may come out, he doesn’t listen. He hobbles out to the RAV4, Kyle alongside. Sarah and Katie stand in the doorway, watching, feeling as if this is a funeral procession. Both are convinced that by nightfall, they will be the only ones remaining. Cameron and Anthony have gone, and now they both believe that Kyle, Mark, and the man will never return. But they are quiet, knowing they can’t stop the oncoming nightmare. The man opens the front door of the vehicle and reaches underneath the seat, grabs the wrapped assault rifle. He unwraps it, checks down the sight. Kyle asks where he got it; the man doesn’t answer. There is only one pistol remaining; the man slides it in the hem of his pants. He takes his KA-BAR and slices open the sleeve of his shirt; he grips the handle and twists the blade inwards, along his arm, and the cloth folds back around it. Kyle takes the WINCHESTER hunting rifle from the back of the vehicle. They look back at the women. The man says, “Make sure to find someplace safe when night comes. We might not come back.” He says nothing more, and the two of them begin walking towards the bridge spanning Interstate 65.

They reach the crest of the bridge, and the man grabs Kyle’s shoulder. He freezes. They duck down. The man points: down the road on the eastern side of the highway, among the buildings, are three men with assault rifles. They are following the droplets of the man’s dried blood that lead right to where the RAV4 had been parked an hour before. The man gives Kyle the M16, takes the WINCHESTER. He lifts it up to his shoulder and squints down the sight. His leg throbs. The three raiders stand where the RAV4 had been, where the man’s blood disappears, and they stare dumbly at the ground. The man drops the sight over one of the men, and he pulls the trigger. The gunshot roars, and the man’s head twists around, the side of his face bursting in a blooming display of blood. The M16 slides from his fingers, and he falls. The other two stare at him, shocked, and then there comes another gunshot: one of them falls backwards, face suddenly gone, and his friend is covered with the other man’s blood. The third raider turns and begins running up the road. The man fingers the trigger.
Click
. He slowly lowers the gun, reloads. Kyle grips the assault rifle, legs burning, yearning to move forward. He stands to chase. The man says, “Get back down.” He finishes reloading the WINCHESTER, raises the rifle. The third man is distant, running towards one of the houses. The man aims, yanks on the trigger. The gun bucks. The figure doesn’t stop moving, disappears around the house. “Shit,” the man growls, standing. He winces, his leg enflamed with pain.

Mark lifts his head, a crackling pain resonating up and down his spine. He flexes his toes and his fingers. The spine isn’t broken. He opens his eyes, but the dust burns. He rolls onto his side, shuffles his feet, pulls himself up, sits on the ground. He leans against a wooden beam jutting down from the ceiling and rubs his eyes. He blinks away the dust and squints into the darkness. The dust is settling, and he begins to see images emerging in the shadows. Figures standing, scrawny, emaciated, not moving, just watching him. Barely dressed. His heart flutters.
Dark-walkers
. One of them moves forward. The figure is illuminated by a shaft of light coming through a crack in the ceiling above. It is an elderly woman, wrinkles drenched over her face, baggy clothes drooping from her gnarled bones. She approaches Mark and kneels down. She looks at him with compassion in her eyes. Several more of the prisoners come forward, in the same condition: malnourished, empty eyes, hearts void of hope. The elderly woman reaches out, takes Mark’s hand.

“I’m fine,” he says, and gritting his teeth, he stands. He’s weak. The woman’s face is masked with sorrow. “I’m so sorry.”

Anthony Barnhart

Dwellers of the Night

436

He doesn’t answer, looks at them all.

There is a cot in the corner, and a man lies upon it. His legs are missing, leaving nothing but stumps wrapped in bloody rags. He doesn’t move, but his fingers twitch, and his lungs slowly inflate and exhale.

She asks, a tear in her eye, “Did you eat anything they gave you?”

Mark understands, shakes his head. “No.”

The man tries to forget the escalating pain in his leg. They move down the opposite side of the bridge, past the two bodies lying on the pavement. Pools of blood are collecting underneath their heads, and their lifeless eyes stare at the steadily-darkening sky. Kyle looks over his shoulder, out to the west. Storm-clouds are moving in, tumbling over one another, and the sun barely pokes through the chaotic, atmospheric cesspool.
It’ll be an early sunset
. He finds an odd peace about everything. For once he feels as if he is doing something right, albeit insane. They round the house where the man apparently missed the shot, and they discover the third raider crumpled in the blood-stained grass. The man kneels down, grabs him by the sleeve of his jacket, turns him over. The character looks up at them with pain-stricken eyes. His throat is ripped out, nothing but tattered flesh and shattered sinews. His head is barely attached to his body. The man looks towards the corn, back down to the body. He sets the gun to the side and begins to strip the corpse.