Dwellers of the Night: The Complete Collection (99 page)

“Oh. Rare.” She looks at him. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“I act like my tragic life is the only thing that matters.”

“It’s okay.”

“And here you are. You never got to get married.”

The man is quiet.

Sarah shakes her head, curses. “I’m sorry…”

“It’s all right.”

“I shouldn’t have said that.”

“Sarah.” He reaches out, grips her shoulder. “It’s all right.”

She takes a deep breath. “Okay.”

“Let’s go,” the man says. “There’s a hardware store up here. Stay with me this time.”

ACE HARDWARE was locked up, but the man was able to shoot the lock and raise the gate. They entered, and with their flashlights bouncing, began exploring the shelves. They found several batteries, some knives, some assorted goods. They filled a red handheld basket with wrenches and screwdrivers and bolt cutters. Now they are standing outside the store. The man holds the M16 in one hand and the basket of goods in the other. They head back the way they came. When they walk past the display case for the Bridal Shop, Sarah stops again. The man begins to say something, but she ignores him. She raises the M16. The man rolls his eyes. The bullets dance through the glass, and she steps through, glass shards crunching underneath her tennis shoes. The man sets the basket down and enters after her, asking what in the world she is doing. She is standing behind the counter, flipping through a book, the flashlight beam upon the pages. He stands on the opposite side of the Anthony Barnhart

Dwellers of the Night

463

counter, says, “Sarah.” She mutters something under her breath: B-29. She doesn’t answer him when he says her name again, and she goes into the back of the shop. The man curses, hops up, sits on the counter. He sets the gun beside him and fumbles for the pack of CAMEL LIGHTS in his jacket pocket. Sarah returns holding a large bag about her height. She doesn’t come towards him, heads over to one of the dressing rooms, enters. The man swings his legs back and forth, sighs. “Women,” he mutters under his breath, lighting the cigarette. He stares at pictures on the far wall, brides in varying dresses, brides of every size and shape. He smokes his cigarette.
They can even make the fat ones look good
.

II

The door to the dressing room opens. Sarah comes out. The man looks over, the cigarette cherry nearly to the filter, the gray smoke curling into the air. He stares at her, and his heart shudders for a moment. The ivory and silver DERE KIANG wedding dress molds around her slender form, clinging to her curves with absolute perfection. The sophisticated sheath and the sweep of the cathedral train hiding her legs makes the man’s mouth go dry. He blinks his eyes, looks away, takes another hit off the cigarette. Sarah moves forward, stops. She asks him how she looks. He snubs the cigarette out on the counter and turns his head. His legs have stopped swinging back and forth. He feels as if he is in the spotlight, and that his every motion is judged. “It looks good,” he says, voice crackling. His cheeks flush red with embarrassment, but the hues are hidden in the musky shadows.

The man gets down from the counter, faces her. In the darkness, she reminds him of Kira, and he can almost see his beloved fiancé wearing the wedding dress before him now. He knows it’s not Kira, he knows it’s just an illusion, he knows his heart is simply overwhelmed, and everything that he’s feeling is directed towards Kira, not towards Sarah. But his mind cannot overcome what he feels. He steps closer towards her.

She stares at him, eyes searching, wondering.

His own eyes do not deny what he feels, do not deny what he wants. She keeps looking back and forth between his eyes and lips.

He takes another step closer.

So does she.

The tension is undeniable and unbearable,

a tension forged in the fires of tragedy and despair.

They stand next to one another, facing one another, noses nearly touching. Her deep eyes tear into his, and he has never realized how beautiful those eyes really are. Her black hair falls around her shoulders, and even though it is laden with grease and strained with knots, it seems like it is the most alluring hair he has ever seen. She closes her eyes, and her breath becomes more fierce, rapid. She can smell the scent of cigarette smoke in his hair. The tips of their noses touch. She can feel his beard brushing against her chin, his weathered skin rough against her silky cheek. Her mouth is dry, and she licks her lips. No words are spoken. The man reaches out, puts his hand on her bare upper arm, fingers tentatively embracing her skin; he can feel her heartbeat in his fingertips. She does likewise with him, extending her arm around his neck. Their foreheads touch.
We shouldn’t do this
, the man thinks, but he doesn’t dare speak it. He wants it too much. He draws in closer for a kiss, and their lips brush.

Anthony Barnhart

Dwellers of the Night

464

Sarah grabs him, shoves him to the floor with electric intensity. He lands hard, head banging against the tile, and a shot of pain shoots through him. She kneels down beside him. He grabs her by the arm.

“Be a little more gentle…” he says playfully, lifting his head to kiss her. She slaps a hand over his mouth, shakes her head, thrusts a jabbing finger towards the door, which is hidden by the end of the counter. The man’s head cocks to the side, and his eyes ask,
What?
She crawls down beside him, her bare feet pushing against the dusty floor. The man slowly gets to his knees, moves over to the counter, grabs the lip of the counter with his fingers, and slowly pulls himself up so his eyes crest over the top. He looks towards the locked door and the shattered window.

“Shit,” he mutters under his breath.

A dark-walker stands outside the door, sniffing, hands dangling at its sides. The man’s knife is in its sheath on his belt.

His M16 is on the counter.

Sarah’s M16 is… He doesn’t know where the hell she put it, but she doesn’t have it.

“Shit,” he says again.

Sarah is next to him, rising; he grabs her by the arm, pushes her down. He looks down at her and shakes his head:
No
. When he looks back up, the dark-walker is standing beside the shattered window, staring straight at him. “Oh,
fuck
.”

III

The man stands, in full view of the creature. In the dim light, he can see that it had been, at one time, a security guard. The clothes fit loosely around its emaciated body, and a pair of ear-rings in the left ear are infected and swollen. A night-stick still swings from its belt. The man slowly moves forward, reaches for the M16. A ripple of fear runs through him, and he abandons the assault rifle, draws the KA-BAR from his belt instead. There could be more, and the sound of the gunshot might attract them. The dark-walker watches him from the opposite side of the broken window, its chest heaving with each laborious breath. He looks weak, probably on the verge of starving. The man holds the knife at the ready, daring the creature to make a move. Sarah slowly stands, watching with global saucer eyes. The man looks the creature in the eyes, can see nothing but a great emptiness, like looking into the eyes of a rabid, wild dog. The dark-walker breaks concentration and leaps forward, jumping through the window. Its arms swing wildly, reaching for the man; it lets out a horrendous screech; the man launches forward, and he side-steps the creature, spins around, kicks it into the broadside of the counter. The dark-walker falls upon the counter, face-down, and the man grabs it by its overgrown hair, wrenches its head back, and yanks the edge of the knife across its throat. Warm blood gushes all over the countertop, puddling against the assault rifle. The man steps back, and the body slides to the floor. Those lifeless eyes stare up at him, just as lifeless as they were when it lived, and the blood slowly stops gurgling from its slashed throat.

Sarah’s scream turns his attention around. She is on the ground, and another dark-walker is on top of her. It had come from the door leading to the storage hallway that ran behind every store. Sarah wrapped her hands around the creature’s neck, holding it away; the fiend snapped at her, drool dripping from its chomps, splashing over her chest, crawling between her breasts and sliding underneath the dress. She cries out for help, and the man rushes forward, slams the tip of his boot Anthony Barnhart

Dwellers of the Night

465

into the monster’s side. The dark-walker tumbles onto the floor next to her, and the man leaps over the woman, falls down upon the assailant. He pins the animal to the floor, legs on either side of its abdomen; it gropes at his sides with its gnarled fingers with the elongated fingernails, and the man doesn’t make eye contact as he drives the tip of the knife into its eye. Sarah is getting to her feet, and the man yanks the knife out of the eye socket, a geyser of blood spraying onto his knee.

He hears Sarah shouting, and perched atop of the dead dark-walker, he turns and sees her grab the M16 from the counter. Several more dark-walkers are coming through the entrance, and the assault rifle sings. Her aim is imperfect, but the bullets find their marks: they rip into the flesh of six or seven of them, and their bodies tumble down. The man is up now, sheathing the KA-BAR, and he grabs her by the shoulder. More dark-walkers are streaming towards the broken window, pushing and shoving to get through, trampling their comrades. More throw themselves against the window on the other side and against the door. The opposite window shatters and they begin piling inside, tripping over one another, falling into racks of dresses.

Sarah turns to run into the dressing-room to get the other M16; the man grabs her, shouts, “No time!”, and tears her away. She fires the weapon behind them, the bullets spraying harmlessly into the walls. They move down a narrow corridor and find an open door. Sarah continues shooting, and the gun clicks.

The magazine is empty.

“I need another magazine!” she shouts.

“They’re in the car!” the man hollers back. He grabs her by the bare arm and throws her through the door. Down the corridor, the dark-walkers are pushing and shoving to catch up with their prey. The man grimaces and slips through the door; the moment he enters the next room, Sarah pushes the door shut.

The room is filled with shelves covered with dusty cardboard boxes and wooden crates. He pulls a crate from the nearest shelf, but it’s too heavy, and it falls to the floor, splintering. Sarah is pressed up against the door, which shakes underneath her weight, the dark-walkers trying to get through. The door doesn’t lock from the inside.

She stares at the man:

her face is so pale that it looks like the full moon on a dark winter’s night.

The man turns on his heels, searching. He sees another doorway. He runs back to the fallen crate, pushes it across the concrete floor, props it against the door. He grabs Sarah and pulls her with them. The door opens, but it jams as the crate wedges against the end of the shelf. The dark-walkers try to weasel through, groping in the darkness with hands greedy for the warmth of fresh blood. The crate slows them down enough, and the man and Sarah escape through the other door. The door opens up to a giant room filled with even more shelves, and there are loading dock vehicles parked in the aisles, behemoths of a forgotten age. The man’s shoes echo loudly on the floor, but Sarah’s bare feet make no sounds whatsoever.

They pass one of the parked vehicles, and then the man stops short. Sarah, behind him, runs into him. The man points forward; in the darkness, there is a huddle of seven or eight dark-walkers, most scarcely clothed, skinny with flesh clinging to knobby bones. They are all facing one another, breathing in unison, gathered for warmth.
Sleeping
. The man puts a finger to his mouth, whispers,

“Shhh.”
They step backwards, move around to another aisle, and slowly walk past. They maneuver Anthony Barnhart

Dwellers of the Night

466

around the denizens of the shadows, and then Sarah points to a sliver of light ahead.
Outside
. They continue moving slowly, but then they have no choice but to run: their pursuers have gotten through the door leading to the smaller storage room, and their snarls and commotion have awoken the others, who are now giving chase as well.

The man and Sarah run towards the door with its meager sliver of light—its meager sliver of hope!—

and they gain speed. There is a large locking mechanism on the door, and it has a quiet keypad.
Electric operated
. They’re pinned with no way out.
Fuck it
, the man thinks to himself, and with a raging shout, he speeds up, and before he reaches the door, he twists to his side and jumps through the air. His shoulder slams into the door, and under the impact of his weight, the rusted hinges snap and buckle; the door falls backwards from its moorings, and it hits the solid pavement. The man rolls off the door, arm shuddering with pain. He lets out a shout as he comes to rest against the large wheel of a parked semi. He looks up and sees Sarah running through the doorway, into the brilliant sunlight. The howls of the furious dark-walkers can be heard, but they’re safe now.

The man bends over, sucking in deep breaths, tar-soaked lungs throbbing. Sweat drips down his face, the perspiration cool in the calm spring breeze. Lazy clouds pass overhead, forming shapes of elephants and rhinoceroses and leprechauns. Sarah stands beside him, the dress ripped and torn. The strap over her right shoulder has ripped, and she holds the dress up to cover her breast. The pavement is chilly beneath her bare feet.

The man looks over at her, still gasping for breath. “I’ve always… hated… the mall.”

“Yeah,” Sarah says. “Me too.”

IV

They return to the MOTEL 8. Katie is sitting outside, along the curb, and when she sees Sarah get out of the RAV4, donned in the tattered and torn wedding dress, a whimsical expression crosses her features. She jumps up and walks over to the car. “Why in the world are you wearing that?”

Sarah shakes her head. “I was being stupid.”

The man comes around the other side of the RAV4. “Katie.”