Dwellers of the Night: The Complete Collection (20 page)

The man doesn’t say anything.

The boy bites his lip, squeezes the stuffed animal. “Where were you?”

“What?”

“Where were you, when this happened?”

“I was over the Atlantic. I already told you.”

“You’re a pilot.”

He doesn’t answer for a moment. “I was once a pilot, yes.”

“Not anymore?”

“Nothing’s how it used to be. You’ve got to accept that.”

The boy doesn’t say anything. He just stares forward as the Escort drives the sleeping streets.

A few more days pass. The boy has integrated himself into the man’s daily routine. The man refuses to open up, despite the boy’s incessant attempts. The man had been craving for human contact, for human relationships, but now that it is here, he just wants to crawl into a fetal position and sleep. He erects a steel cage over his heart, refusing anyone to come close. Perhaps he fears that becoming close to another human being will just end in heartache, as that relationship will one day shatter, and they will be separated by death or disaster. His heart is cold and calloused. He only cares about himself. But the boy is wearing him down.

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When night has come, they break out the wine and cigarettes. The man smokes two or three packs a day. The boy only smokes at night. Tonight it is decently warm out, and the skies are clear, the moon is full. They go out onto the roof to let off firecrackers. They have spread out lawn chairs, and in a bucket between them are COCA-COLA glass bottles and a package of double-stuffed OREOS. The man brought up his battery-operated CD player and put in a Led Zeppelin CD. “Kashmir” floats over the whines and cries of the dark-walkers clambering around the house, reaching up in a lifeless gait. They light the firecrackers and watch them soar into the sky, popping and screaming, ribbons of light dancing over their awed faces. The light reflects in the dull eyes of the dark-walkers, and they are drawn to the flashing lights, almost stupefied. The boy laughs at their idiocy. The man can only crack a smile. They exhaust the firecrackers and sit down in the lawn chairs. They look up at the stars, throwing back soda and munching on crème-filled cookies.

“They never looked so bright over Cincinnati, you know?” the boy asks. The man is mesmerized. “I haven’t seen stars in what feels like years.”

“…I think it’s because of the smog. None of the factories are working. The smog is gone.”

A few moments of quiet pass. They drink and eat.

One of the dark-walkers is trying to get over the fence, into the backyard. It seems to be humping the outside of the fence in its efforts. The man drains his coke bottle and hurls it at the fence. It shatters and falls into several pieces in the lawn. The creature on the other side of the fence pauses, then resumes its awkward movements. “Stupid fuckers.”

The boy says, “They’re not at all what you’d expect, are they?”

The man cranes his neck, looks at the boy. “Who?”

“The zombies.”

“They’re not zombies. They’re just sick. Diseased.”

“They act like zombies to me. It’s just… Did you ever watch zombie movies?”

“No,” the man says. “They’re stupid.”

“Okay. I’ve seen a few. In the movies, the zombies are always wearing frilly white dresses or cheerleader outfits or tuxedos. It’s all for cinematic reasons, I know, but it’s just funny to look out and see them, and most of them are naked, some are wearing bras and panties or boxers. It happened at night, so most people were sleeping in their pajamas.”

The man cracks a smile, a brief chuckle.

The boy eyes him. “What?”

“I was just thinking about the naked ones. Do you think they were having sex?”

The boy grins. “I bet some of them were.”

The man finds that hilarious. His laughter carries across the city.

IV

A beautiful day had dawned: the air felt charged with electric warmth, the sky hung brilliant blue above them, and birds flew south in torrents, moving in swarming flocks that cast shadows over the city streets. The man and the boy decided to go out for some more supplies. They entered an old grocery store and were looking through the canned goods and bottled drinks. Rats had filled the aisles and had munched through most of the cereal boxes, but they scattered with noisy squeaks into the dark corners, vanishing as the intruders wandered through the rows of food. The fruits and vegetables had long rotted, and what was left were scraps of earthy skin covered with bluish-gray molds. Flies moved in clouds about the place, and they had to swat them from their eyes. Now the Anthony Barnhart

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man stands before a rack of magazines, flipping through the crisp pages. The boy is filling plastic trash bags from the back room, throwing in cans of green beans and corn. He even makes it a point to tell the man that he has found some canned salmon. A delicacy. The man smiles to himself and continues flipping through the pages. As they leave, the boy’s eyes are drawn to a school down the street, with a playground sitting dull and lifeless. Birds perch upon the bars of the Jungle Jim. He stands watching for a few moments, the plastic bag beginning to slide from his grip. The man watches him for a few moments, says, “What is it?”

Mark says, “Nothing.”

They are driving back when Mark speaks again: “What do you think happens after death?”

The man shrugs. “I don’t know.”

“Me neither.”

More silence.

The boy says, “Do you think people go to Heaven?”

“I don’t think so,” the man says.

“You don’t believe in Heaven?”

“Not anymore,” the man says.

“But you used to.”

“Yes.”

“Why don’t you believe in Heaven anymore?”

“A lot of things have changed,” he says. A few more moments pass. “I used to believe in God. I always figured He was just up in space, watching us. I thought He cared. But this happened… And you have to ask yourself… How can a loving, caring God allow something like this to happen? How can a loving God tolerate a global plague—and I think that that’s what this is—and not do anything about it? We are entirely alone. You. Me. Any other survivors. We’re totally alone. Civilization has crumbled. All of history—as great and wonderful as it may have been—has led up to this point. The elimination of humanity. No, I don’t believe in a God. And without a God, there’s no Heaven or Hell. I think that when we die, that’s it. We don’t go anywhere. We are just an assortment of chemicals arranged in such a way that we can think, see, taste, touch, feel. There’s no soul, no eternal quality about us. We’re just like the animals, and like the animals, when we die, we return to the dust. And the dust is where we came from.”

The boy is quiet for a moment. “Maybe God is still watching us.”

The man laughs. “Watching us? Maybe. But if He is, He doesn’t care. He doesn’t give a shit about us. He couldn’t give a rat’s ass about us. I can see Him now, up there in Heaven, surrounded by the angels, and they’re all just laughing. Mocking us.”

The boy doesn’t say anything after that.

They are eating at an abandoned diner in Kentucky. The man smokes as he stirs the baked beans in the portable electric stove, now connected to the portable battery-operated generator. Mark wanted to get out of the house, and he decided to bring the man to the restaurant. They had to walk half the way, because the bridge leading to the Kentucky shoreline was blocked by snarled wrecks of twisted vehicles. The boy talks and talks about Ashlie, about the things they did, the games they played, the conversations they had late into the night. The man doesn’t say anything. He is tired of hearing about Ashlie. The boy seems to pretend that he is the only one who hurts, the only one dealing with loss. But the man notices that the boy is dealing with Ashlie’s death decently well, and he imagines it is because the boy has had practice following the death of his parents. They eat the beans quietly. The Anthony Barnhart

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wind shakes the diner, and the man pulls his leather jacket tighter around him. He leans over the plastic plate filled with baked beans and spoons them into his mouth with a plastic fork. As they finish eating, the boy asks, “So what’s your story?”

The man looks up at him. “My what?”

“Your story,” the boy says.

“I don’t have a story.”

The boy cocks an eye at the man. “Everyone has a story.”

His reply is poison: “I don’t have a fucking story, all right?”

The boy pokes at his food. “Okay. Sorry.”

The man curses, stands. “Hurry up and finish eating.”

“I’m done,” the boy says.

“You barely touched it.”

“I’m done, all right?”

The boy watches out the window in the upstairs hallway. It is midday. The man is out back, chopping wood from the fallen oak tree, wearing heavy clothes to fight off the cold. Dark clouds gather in the distance, climbing over one another. Far off in the east, nearly hidden by the rising slopes of the eastern Cincinnati hills, pillars of dark rain fall. The boy bites his bottom lip and creeps away from the window. He walks over to the barricaded door. He looks back to the window, unsure and edgy. He grips the sides of the coffee table laden with books and begins to pull. The carpet groans under the sliding legs of the varnished table. A book slides off the top and hits the ground with a heavy thud. The boy winces, treks back over to the window. The man is wiping sweat from his brow and flexing his hand. The boy watches as the man picks up the axe and returns to chopping. Mark returns to the coffee table and continues pulling. In a few moments, the coffee table is pressed against the far wall. He grips the cold doorknob in his hand and turns. He hears the lock click, and he pushes open the door. Mellow light from the windows bleeds into his face. He steps inside, looks around. Twin dressers. A single chair. A fallen ceiling fan covered with dust, a noose of course rope wrapped around the middle hub. His eyes are drawn to the bed. The sheets are tangled and encrusted with dried blood. Spots of blood are on the floor. He sees a single knife on the carpet, the blade stained a maroon red. He finds himself standing and is lost in time. His heart begins to pound, and his pulse quickens. The blade stares at him, and suddenly he is overcome with fear for his life. The man has never shown much emotion, has been quiet and sullen. The boy suddenly knows why:
he has gone crazy and murdered a member of his own family. And I’m next
. He knows he has to escape. He turns to run.

The man is standing in the doorway, the axe dangling from his hand, the blade stained with woodchips.

Mark’s mouth is dry, face ashen. He croaks, “No story, huh?”

The man glares at him. His face contorts into a mask of rage.

The boy shrinks back, eyes the knife. Knows only self-preservation. The man doesn’t move. The two stare at one another for what seems hours. Finally the man speaks in a harsh whisper: “Get the fuck out of my house.”

Mark stares at the man, hearing the words ringing in his ears. The words are drenched with a virulent concoction of rage, malice… and deep sorrow. Suddenly Mark knows. He is facing no murderer. He is not looking into the eyes of a cold, calculated killer. He is looking into the eyes of one who has lost everything, one who has lost all faith in the unseen, one whose heart has become cold as Anthony Barnhart

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an arctic stone and as hard as granite. He sees a tear speckle the corner of the man’s right eye. Mark speaks, stumbling over his words, “I’m sorry… I didn’t know… I just…”

The man won’t let him finish. He repeats his demand, dictating his words coolly and without emotion: “Get the fuck out of my house.”

The boy curses under his breath. “I’m sorry…”

The man raises the axe. “Get the
fuck
out of my house.”

The boy bites his lip. “Fine. I’m leaving.”

The man steps aside as the boy passes, stiff and collected. The man stands staring into the bedroom. He hears the clanging of the aluminum ladder as Mark descends to the ground floor, and then the opening and slamming of the front door. The house is draped in silence. The axe slides from his fingers and clatters onto the floor. Everything, all of it, washes back over him: a repressed memory resurfacing, driving its poisonous talons into his soul. He crumbles against the doorframe and stares at the bloodied bed as tears course down his swollen cheeks.

Two hours have passed. The man sits in the chair in the bedroom. In his hand is Kira’s iron cross necklace. The one she wore around her neck every day since they day they met. He remembered how they would sit in his Jeep as he dropped her off at home, early in their courtship, and how she would nervously twirl the necklace between her fingers, how her eyes would glisten and glow. He remembered the warmth of those moments, when everything was right and bright and the future felt so alive and charged with hope. He hangs his head low and weeps, vicious sobs that sear his lungs, the first time he has cried in longer than he can remember.

He dreams. He dreams that he is standing on the beach, the sand between his toes. A shadow falls over him. He turns and sees Kira walking towards him in her two-piece polka-dot bathing suit. He always told her how foolish it looked. The iron cross is around her neck. Gulls sing above them. The breeze wisps plumes of sand into the air. Beach grass clings to the dunes, wrapping their blades about the wooden boards of the crude beach fence. He smiles as she approaches. She takes off her sandals and throws them at his feet. She throws her body against him, and he can feel her bare skin against his bare chest. She presses her face against his forehead, and they look deep into one another’s eyes. “Want to go for a swim?” she asks. He nods. She bites her bottom lip as she smiles, and she saunters back. She takes off her iron cross necklace and sets it in the sand. She lets out a shout and runs towards the surf, and she throws herself into the waves, and the man watches as the tide carries her out into the distance, and then she is gone. He kneels down and takes the necklace from the sand. He holds it in the palm of his hand. The iron is warm. When he wakes, he is still holding the iron cross necklace. He can almost feel the grains of sand tickling the creases and lines of his palm. Kira would always look at the creases and pretend she could read them. “The lines in our palms match!” she would exclaim. “That means something good, right?” He would say yes.