Darkness on the Edge of Town (9 page)

“Damn, that was close.”

Russ nodded. “Way too close. Next door or downstairs.”

I ran to the edge of the roof and peered over the side. The street was mostly deserted now, but there was still a small crowd huddled around one of the burn barrels. They were all staring and pointing at our building and the one next to us—the one where Tom Salvo, the guy I’d met that morning, lived.

Russ drew alongside me. He seemed to have recovered from his shock, at least momentarily.

“See anything?” he asked.

“Those people down there are pointing at our building. I need to check on Christy. You’d better check on Cranston.”

I started toward the fire escape, but Russ stopped me.

“Be careful,” he whispered. “If somebody broke in, they could still be down there. And I’m betting they’re armed, because I know you and Christy don’t own a gun, and I doubt Cranston does either.”

“Shit. You’re right. Do you own a gun?”

He nodded. “Several. I’ll get them. No sense going into this unprepared.”

“But Christy—”

“You can help her a lot better if you’re armed, Robbie.”

“Come on.”

Leaving our mugs behind, we went as fast as we could in the darkness and made our way back into his apartment. Russ hurried to his bedroom closet and pulled down a pistol box. He unlocked it and pulled out a .357 and a .38, both Taurus revolvers. He flipped open the cylinders. Both weapons were loaded. He handed me the .38.

“Hollow points,” he said. “Extra stopping power. Aim for the biggest part of the body, like the chest or abdomen. No warning shots, and no shooting to wound. If you’re gonna pull the trigger on somebody, then you should be prepared to kill them. Okay?”

Swallowing, I nodded. “Okay. Jesus Christ…”

“Just be careful. There’s no safety on a gun like that. Don’t put your finger on the trigger unless you intend to pull it. You know how to shoot, right?”

I nodded again. “Yeah, I’ve been to the range a few times.”

“Then let’s go.”

He took the flashlight from me and turned it off. We made our way downstairs, trying to move as quietly but quickly as possible. We paused at my apartment. The door was still shut, and there were no sounds from inside. Russ put a finger to his lips, nodded at me, and stood to the side. I reached for the doorknob. It seemed to take a lifetime before my fingers closed around it. Russ raised his pistol. I opened the door and Christy slapped me hard enough to make my face sting.

“Ouch!”

“Where the hell have you been, Robbie?”

Russ exhaled. “Jesus Christ, Christy, I almost shot you.”

She glanced at the gun in my hand and then at Russ’s. Her eyes widened in surprise. “A gunshot woke me up. Was that you guys?”

“No,” I said. “But it was very close. We thought…well, never mind what we thought. Just stay here and lock the door.”

“What? No way, Robbie. You’re—”

“I don’t have time to argue with you, goddamn it. Just stay here, keep your voice down, and lock the fucking door.”

She reeled backward as if I’d hit her. That was fine by me. My cheek still stung from where she’d slapped me, so I figured that made us even. Deep down inside, I felt a twinge of guilt and regret, but they were swallowed seconds later in a wave of adrenaline, fear, and anger.

Or looking back, maybe it was something else that had extinguished them.

“Stay here,” I told her. “We’ll talk about this when I get back.”

“Be careful.”

There were tears in her eyes, and after she’d closed the door, I heard the deadbolt slide into place. Then came the soft sound of crying. That made me feel guilty again, but the emotion soon vanished, replaced once more with something a little more violent. The strangest part was that those darker emotions were somehow comforting. I fought the urge to embrace them.

Russ and I descended to the first floor, making no effort to conceal our footsteps any longer. If there was an intruder in the building, then they’d probably heard Christy’s outburst anyway. He turned on the flashlight as we reached the bottom of the stairs. Cranston’s apartment door was shut. We stood in front of it, listening. I reached out and tried the knob. The door was locked.

Russ leaned in close and called, “Cranston?”

There was no answer.

Russ raised his voice a little louder. “Cranston? You in there?”

Still no response.

“What should we do?”

Russ shook his head, shrugged, then knocked on the door with the barrel of his handgun. It sounded very loud, and I glanced around nervously.

“Cranston? It’s Russ and Robbie. You okay?”

A floorboard creaked behind the door. “Who’s there?”

“I just told you. It’s Russ and Robbie, from upstairs. There was a gunshot.”

The door opened slightly, held in place by a chain. Cranston peered out at us with one red, bleary eye. I smelled booze on his breath. The door opened wider.
Candles flickered behind him, dancing across the walls. I caught a faint hint of patchouli oil and incense.

“I heard it, too,” he said. “I think it came from the building next door. What’s going on out there, man?”

“We don’t know,” Russ admitted, “but we intend to find out.”

“Be careful. Earlier, I went to the grocery store to get some things. The line was out the door and people were starting to fight over groceries. Some of them started looting. Just taking stuff without paying for it.”

Russ and I glanced at each other.

“The streets aren’t safe anymore,” Cranston continued. “I saw a carjacking on Maple, and I heard that a girl was gang raped behind the car wash.”

Russ shook his head in disgust. “You want to come with us? There’s safety in numbers.”

Cranston seemed surprised. “No, I don’t think so, man. There’s a presence hanging over this town. It came with the dark. Hell, maybe it
is
the dark. I don’t know. But whatever it is, I can feel it. I was meditating earlier—you guys know I’m into TM, right? Transcendental Meditation?”

We nodded.

“Well, I felt something while I was meditating. Something watching me. I couldn’t shake it. And even though I didn’t hear anything, I started getting the urge to do things. Like somebody was in the room with me, whispering them in my ear.”

“What sort of things?” I asked.

“Bad things. Stuff I’d never do in a million years. It’s bad karma, man. I’m sure that you guys feel it, too. Whatever this is, it’s affecting everyone. I think it’s safer to be alone right now, rather than with other people. No offense.”

“None taken,” I said. “Just stay inside and lock your door. And do me one favor? Keep an ear out for Christy, okay?”

He smiled. “I can do that.”

“Thanks.”

“You guys be careful. Don’t get shot.”

Russ grinned. “We’ll try our best.”

We stepped out into the dark street. The group of people was still standing around the burn barrel, but their attention was no longer on the twisting flames. All of them were looking at Tom’s building and speaking amongst themselves.

“Hey,” I called. “Anybody know what happened?”

One guy with piercings in his face and a red Mohawk shrugged. He looked bored and annoyed.

“Gunshot,” he grunted.

“Thanks for your help.”

If he noticed the sarcasm in my voice, he didn’t react. Instead, he just shoved his hands into his pockets and turned away. I stared at his hairstyle a moment longer. It had been a long time since I’d seen a haircut like that. He noticed me staring and shuffled his feet, obviously uncomfortable.

“You got a problem?”

“No problem,” I said.

Russ and I started up the porch stairs to Tom’s building. They creaked under our feet. The shades were drawn, and we couldn’t see in any of the apartment windows. One of the group yelled after us.

“You guys ain’t going in there are you?”

“Yeah,” Russ said. “We are.”

“How come?” This time, the speaker was the guy with the Mohawk.

“Somebody might be hurt.”

“So?”

Ignoring him, Russ shined the flashlight on the front door. It was closed, but when we tried the knob, it was unlocked. I checked the mailboxes in the foyer and found the one for Salvo. His apartment number was listed on the front with a piece of yellowed masking tape. We knocked on his door. There was no answer. We tried two more times before experimenting with the doorknob. It, too, was unlocked. Swallowing hard, I opened it and we went inside.

The first thing I noticed was the smoke. It hung heavy in the air, tickling the back of my throat and making my eyes water—a burnt smell. Cordite. Russ must have smelled it, too, because he pulled his shirt up over his nose. Then he shined the light around. The room was dark, and it was hard to see anything clearly in the murk. Finally, the flashlight beam glanced across a pair of shoes. Russ shined it upward.

We both gasped.

Most of Tom Salvo was sitting in a threadbare green recliner. The rest of him was splattered across the wall behind the chair, dripping from dusty, crooked picture frames and running down the dingy white walls. Steam rose from the body, like breath in cold air. Some of his hair was singed. The rest of it was slicked down with gore. He’d pissed and shit himself. The stench was almost overwhelming. A picture album lay in his lap, and the stock of a deer rifle rested between his legs. What remained of his head had slipped down the barrel a bit, as if he he’d been trying to deep throat the weapon. The tip of the barrel poked out the bloody hole in the back of his head.

I choked down bile and put a hand over my nose. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

“Yeah,” Russ agreed. “You know him?”

“Not really. I met him earlier today, when it first happened. His name is—was—Tom Salvo. He was worried about his kids.”

“Do they live here with him?”

“No, they live with their mother. I’m not sure where, but I don’t think it was here in Walden.”

“Know if he had a girlfriend or anything?”

I shook my head. “Why?”

“Because we should check and make sure there’s nobody else here. What if he…what if he killed them before killing himself? You know, like a murder-suicide kind of thing.”

“Maybe. I don’t know. I got the impression that he lived alone.”

I considered grabbing the deer rifle but hesitated. It was covered with gore, for one thing. For another thing, part of me was still clinging to the idea that this entire situation would be over soon and that things would return to normal. If they did, then I didn’t want to disturb a crime scene. But even as I thought it, I knew damn well that the cops wouldn’t be investigating this.

Russ crept closer to the corpse, staring at it intently. His eyes were wide, and he was breathing heavy. His nose made whistling sounds. He licked his lips twice and blinked.

“I’ve never seen a dead body before.”

“Me neither. Well, I mean, I saw my grandfather, but that was different. He hadn’t…”

I motioned at Salvo, unable to finish the sentence. Russ suddenly turned away and made a retching sound. He hurried to the corner and turned the flashlight off while he puked. I guess he didn’t want me to see him. Immediately, we were plunged into pitch-black. I could
hear his vomit splattering on the floor, but I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t see anything at all. For the first time that day, I was grateful for the darkness, if only so I didn’t have to look at Tom’s corpse.

Outside in the night, someone else laughed—high-pitched, warbling, and maniacal.

Or maybe it was the night itself that was laughing.

When the laughter turned into screams, I barely noticed. Already, I was growing used to them.

I don’t know if Tom Salvo was the first to die that evening, but he certainly wasn’t the last. By the time the hands on the clocks got around to the hours we used to refer to as morning, nine other people were dead. And those were just the ones I knew of through rumor and gossip the next day. I’m pretty sure there were probably more—murdered by their own hand or the hands of others, but with no one to miss them after they were gone and their corpses not discovered. And let’s be clear, I’m not counting the people who had gone out into the darkness. I’m talking about those of us who had stayed behind in Walden.

That first night, there were ten that I knew of.

It grew from there.

One of the dead was Chief Seymour Peters, he of the unfortunate name. Whatever his plan had been for our survival, it had died with him. Apparently he’d had a heart attack a few hours after his men failed to report back from the next town. Same old sad story—high blood pressure combined with the stress of an unimaginable situation. The way I heard it, his death might have been preventable if they’d been able to get him to the hospital, but of course, nobody was brave enough—or foolish enough—to take him by then. The hospital lay
on the other side of the black veil, and word had gotten out—once you crossed that barrier, you didn’t come back. His death was the only one that stemmed from natural causes that night. It also explained why there were no more community updates or meetings after that. I guess nobody else from the fire company wanted to step up to the plate. Or maybe there weren’t any of them left.

In addition to Tom Salvo, two other people committed suicide. One woman cut her wrists and bled to death in an empty bathtub. The candles around her burned down to stubs. And a teenage girl whose parents had never come home from work hung herself. She made a noose from an extension cord and climbed on a chair. She was found a few hours later by an elder ly neighbor who was checking in on her. Pictures of the girl’s parents lay at her feet. I guess they were the last thing she saw before she jumped.

The other victims of that first dark night were all murdered. One had his head caved in by a drunken friend wielding a tire iron. The way I heard it, the two men had gone to the high school’s football field with a case of warm beer. I’m not sure what they were doing there, but at some point, they got into an argument. A bunch of people witnessed the murder, but the friend ran off before anyone could stop him. Nobody knew where he was now. Probably out there on the loose, hiding in the shadows. And there were a
lot
of shadows to hide in. Maybe the shock of what he’d done had set in, and he was hunkered down and feeling remorseful. Or maybe the thrill had overcome him, and he was just waiting to see what else he could get away with.

In the case of the second murder, a jealous lover
stabbed his girlfriend to death out on the golf course. They were married, but not to each other. Both of their spouses had gone to work outside of Walden that morning. Neither of them had returned. The man had been overjoyed. The woman had not and feared for her husband’s safety. Apparently this sent the lover into a jealous rage. She fled from him, heading out onto the golf course, and he chased after her with a butcher knife. He stabbed her seven times at the fourth hole, in front of witnesses who’d been attracted by her screams. With no cops around to arrest him, the crowd exacted a vengeance of its own, beating the murderer to within an inch of his life. Then they drove him to the edge of town and threw him out into the night. The darkness finished him off. They left before his screams had faded.

The third killing was especially chilling. Remember the house I saw with the Christmas lights? Well, it turned out that I’d been right. The guy who lived there had a working generator. Except that he didn’t live there anymore. He didn’t live at all. He’d been murdered by a group of thugs and tossed out into the street like trash. Then the killers had barricaded themselves inside his house, along with the generator and what witnesses said were several months’ worth of supplies. They were heavily armed, obviously ruthless, and nobody felt like storming the place. What was the point? Avenging somebody that none of us knew? Stealing the supplies for ourselves, when the stores were still full of stuff? Nobody said it out loud, but I think the general consensus was that if they wanted the generator and supplies that bad, then they were welcome to it.

The other murders were a little more mysterious. A guy was found lying in the middle of Rosemont Avenue. He’d been shot in the groin, abdomen, and chest. Lots
of people heard the gunshots, but nobody knew who shot him or for what reason. Another man was found in the front yard of an empty house with a pair of hedge trimmers sticking out of his throat. They’d been driven in deep, so that only the handles were visible. There were no witnesses and no clues. Nobody knew either of the victims’ names.

I heard about all of these throughout the day, as Russ and I scavenged for supplies. With no newspaper, tele vision, radio, or internet, we had to get our news the old-fashioned way—through gossip. The deaths were the talk of the town. Strangers who didn’t even know each other’s names were all too willing to share the gruesome facts, as if discussing the Super Bowl or the presidential election. The details changed, depending on who was doing the telling, but the facts remained the same. Walden was finally showing its dark side.

We’d left the building early that morning, intending to grab what we needed—paying for it if we could but looting it if we had to—and then get back to the apartment as quickly as possible. Cranston had been right the night before. Already, the town had soured, and it wasn’t just the murders either. The mood in Walden was different. We weren’t the only ones who noticed it. The very air itself felt heavy and oppressive, and the darkness permeated everything. We didn’t want to be outside, moving amongst it, any more than we absolutely had to. It fucked with my head. My body knew it was supposed to be daylight, but that oppressive darkness felt like it was swooping down on me, ready to crush me to the pavement at any moment.

Christy made me a list of things she thought we needed (and I’m glad she did, because it would have
never occurred to me to get her shit like sanitary napkins or skin moisturizer. Made sense, though. Even during the apocalypse, women still have their periods and dry skin. Christy was downright habitual about using moisturizer every morning).

We invited Cranston to go along with us, but he politely refused, preferring to stay inside. We didn’t offer to pick up anything for him. By then, both Russ and I were feeling grumpy and out of sorts. Neither of us had slept more than a few hours. Every time I’d closed my eyes, I’d seen Tom Salvo’s steaming corpse. But despite our moods, we were also both conscious of
why
we felt that way, and thus, we were able to keep a hold on our more negative emotions.

Then we went shopping.

As predicted, my car hadn’t returned, and Russ was low on gas, so we walked. We made sure to take the pistols with us. I stuffed the .38 in my pants, wedging it between my jeans and the small of my back. It felt cold and hard against my skin. It made me a little nervous, knowing that it was loaded. I was worried it might accidentally discharge and blow my balls off, but Russ reassured me that as long as I was careful and treated the weapon with respect and caution, that probably wouldn’t happen. Russ wore the .357 in a holster on his belt, right out in the open. A few people glanced at it, but there were plenty of other passersby who had also ventured out armed with handguns and rifles. It was just another reminder of how quickly things had changed.

We started with the grocery store. It was packed with more people that morning than I had ever seen. There were more shoppers than the presnowstorm, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Passover, and Memorial Day
crowds all rolled into one. I call them shoppers, but the truth is, they were anything but that. Shopping is done in a semiorderly fashion, and implies that the customer pays for their goods. This was something much more chaotic.

There were a few store employees still on hand—cashiers and stockpersons, but no management. The employees were there for the same reason as the rest of us, and not once did they try to stop anyone. They were too busy loading up on stuff. The cash registers stood unmanned. Two men pried at one of them with a crowbar, trying to open it and get at the cash inside, but everyone else focused on the necessities.

The mob tore through the store with flashlights in hand, pouring down the aisles and knocking over displays. Their cries varied from elated yells of triumph to angry accusations, and every few minutes, those arguments turned to furious threats shouted above the cacophony. Fistfights and scuffles broke out. Sometimes, people stepped in and broke them up. Most times they didn’t. Instead, bystanders took advantage of the distractions and loaded up on stock. Blood flowed—busted lips, broken noses, sprains, and a few shattered teeth. Nobody was killed, but it was an ugly scene, nevertheless—made uglier by the fact that Russ and I were a part of it.

Understand, we had no qualms about what we were doing. We were there for the same reason the rest of those people were—to take off with anything that wasn’t nailed down. If someone had been manning the cash registers, then I guess we would have paid. But nobody was, and that was fine by us. We were looters, plain and fucking simple, and it felt
wrong
—at least until the darkness or human instinct or whatever it
was took over and nudged us to ignore our conscience and follow our base, animalistic instincts.

Our guilt vanished. Maybe it was the darkness, or maybe it was just our own primal urges. Whatever it was, we surrendered.

After that, it was easier to just go with the flow.

And go with the flow we did. Russ and I didn’t get into brawls with anybody, but we did holler at a few people, and Russ shoved some middle-aged dude who got in his face over which one of them had reached for the last package of toilet paper first. The guy wore thick glasses and one of the lenses was cracked. Russ told him that if he didn’t back off, he’d crack the other lens. Wilting, the man turned away and mumbled about checking the employee restroom to see if there was any toilet paper left there. I glimpsed a smile on Russ’s face as he walked away. It matched my own.

I’d brought along an old canvas gym bag, and Russ had two big suitcases. All of the grocery carts had been taken, so we commandeered a flat cart from the rear of the store and went foraging. We filled our bags first, then sat them down on the cart and piled more stuff on top of them. We concentrated on things that would last awhile, rather than perishables, but as we passed by the meat department, Russ grabbed some steaks and pork chops that hadn’t gone bad yet.

“What are you gonna do with those?”

He smiled. “Cook them on top of my kerosene heater.”

“You’d better do it tonight. They’ll be spoiled by tomorrow.”

“Then I guess you and Christy better come up for dinner tonight and help me eat them.”

“It’s a date.”

“Cool. Maybe I’ll invite Cranston, too. He’s been holed up in his apartment. It’ll do him good to get out.”

“I don’t know, Russ. He seems pretty scared.”

“We’re all scared. Might as well be scared together.”

We rejoined the communal ransacking, filling our flat cart and bags with canned vegetables and fruit, tins of sardines and tuna and other pro cessed meats, jars of pickles and olives, dried goods like cereal and crackers and rice, canned soups, instant oatmeal, powdered milk, bottled water and soda, juice from powdered concentrate, batteries, matches and lighters, first aid supplies, various vitamins, toiletries (except shaving cream—remember, I told you earlier, some idiot had looted all of that already), and anything else we could find. We avoided the pharmacy because it was being ransacked by a rough-looking group. I snagged an entire case of those instant noodles—the freeze-dried ones that come in those cups that you just add water to. I also remembered to get some of the tea that I’d had at Russ’s the night before. A lot of the shelves had been picked through, and there was much hustling and elbowing, but we still managed quite a haul. We cut through the produce section, and I took some bags of potatoes and onions, hoping that as long as I kept them cool, they’d stay good for at least a few weeks. I thought about grabbing a charcoal grill and some bags of charcoal, but couldn’t find any. Either they’d already been taken, or the store hadn’t had any on display, due to the time of year.

As an afterthought, we turned down the greeting card aisle and I stopped in front of the paperback rack. It was one of the only sections in the store that wasn’t besieged with people. I guess that during the end of the world, people don’t have time to read. That was fine
with me. I grabbed dozens of paperbacks—romance, mysteries, horror, westerns—anything that I thought might appeal to Christy or myself. Shrugging, Russ followed suit, and took a few men’s adventure novels and some magazines—everything from
Newsweek
to
Modern Bride
.

I was bemused by his magazine selections. “I didn’t think you were much of a reader. At least, not of bridal magazines.”

“Sure, I read. I prefer nonfiction and sci-fi, but I guess I’ll need to start reading whatever I can get. There’s not much else we’ll be able to do, as long as the power’s out. And when I’m done, I can use them for kindling. Or toilet paper.”

“Yeah, but
Modern Bride?
”

He grinned. “It’s not too late for me, Robbie. I might still get married again some day.”

Laughing, we headed for the exit. The cart was noticeably heavier than when we’d started. Someone had propped open the automatic doors, and a throng of people moved in and out. It was getting really hot inside the store, and I wished the air-conditioning was working. There was no breeze. It occurred to me that I hadn’t felt the wind since the darkness had come.

A disheveled guy in a dirty leather jacket tapped me on the shoulder as we pushed our flat cart toward the doors. I flinched, expecting trouble. He must have seen me tense up, because he apologized with a nervous chuckle.