Dwellers of the Night: The Complete Collection (42 page)

V

The boy finds the strength to walk. He awakes with the first rays of morning sunlight, and he carries himself from the room. He cannot hear any movement this morning as he walks down the long stone corridor. He sees a bend in the corridor ahead, and he rounds the corner to find a flight of steps running in a spiral downwards, the bare stone walls rising on either side. There is no hand-railing, and he takes the steps with care, feeling the joints in his knees aching. The stairwell continues to snake farther and farther down, though perhaps its distance is elevated only by his weakness, but he can soon hear the sounds of conversation. The smell of freshly baked bread touches him, and he salivates. He takes the steps quicker and comes out onto a concrete floor. About the room, several tables are set up. At the tables are people. Some are older, most are around thirty or forty, and he sees a few teenagers sitting together. A smaller table near the corner holds five or six young children, boys and girls. At the head of the room, a man is standing and praying. The boy recognizes the man, the one who had been so adamant about the boy’s supposed ill health. He finishes the prayer, and then from the kitchen an older woman appears carrying a loaf of bread sliced into small squares. The boy counts those sitting and they number about thirty. Each table receives their own loaf of bread, and they share it amongst themselves. The man looks in his direction, and the boy quickly ducks into the shadows. He hears footsteps approaching, and a moment later the man appears.

“I’m sorry,” Mark blurts. “I didn’t mean…”

“You’re feeling better?” the man asks. He has a wiry frame and shaggy gray hair.

“What? Oh. Yes. Much better.”

“Good.” He takes Mark by the hand. “Come join us.”

Mark is amazed at the man’s benevolence. The boy is pulled from the shadows, and the man announces their new visitor. He gets several nods, and many people rush forward to greet him. He shakes their hands, and it is nearly overwhelming. The man can perhaps see it in the boy’s eyes. He quickly excuses the people and leads Mark to the table with the young adults. “Carla. Kyle. Let this young man in.” They scoot aside, and he takes a seat between them. The man calls forth for some Anthony Barnhart

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bread. The bread is given to Mark, and he hungrily eats it. The others at the table watch with awe at how quickly he eats. The man tells him, “Once you’re fed, I’ll show you around.”

Kyle says, “I’d like to show him around.”

“Thanks for the offer, Kyle, but I’ll be glad to do it.”

Mark is left alone with the young men and women. He eyes them nervously. The girl next to him laughs. “You seem afraid of us.”

He shakes his head. “No. It’s just… I haven’t seen a girl in so long… At least, not one that’s not… You know.”

She smiles. “I’m Carla. I’ve been here for a few months.”

“Good to meet you.”

“What’s your name?” she asks.

“Oh. ‘Mark’. Sorry, I should have introduced myself.”

“It’s okay. I’m sure you’re quite shocked to see so many people.”

“I thought… that it was just me and…” He thinks of the man. He looks around the room. He can’t spot his face. He shakes him out of his mind. “I just thought that I was alone. That there were no other survivors.”

“Where are you from?” a boy asks. He has bleached-white hair and steaming azure eyes.

“Cincinnati,” Mark answers. “From the Price Hill area. Westside.”

“All the way across the city,” the boy says.

“Yeah.”

Kyle mutters, “All the way across the world.”

Mark looks over at the girl across from him. “What’s your name?”

She stares at him, stands without finishing her food, and walks away.

Those at the table are eager to befriend him. Carla has long brown hair and a certain passion Mark has not seen for quite some time: energy and vibrance are the underscore and superscript of her personality. Kyle is twenty-one years old, from northern Kentucky. He had been going to University when the plague struck, and on a journey north with several raiders had found the community and longed for it more than his current state-of-affairs. He had been cold and calloused towards others, but his heart is warming up to the new hope found within the church. Anthony is twenty-four years old. He had been finishing up a Master’s program at the University of Cincinnati, and he had been at the church only for a few months. He doesn’t talk much, is the quiet type, and finds it hard making friends. While most of the teenagers share their own room within the church, Anthony is aloof, often sleeping in the upstairs rooms, avoided for their draft. He prefers to be alone. Mark asks, “Who was that other girl? The one who just got up and left?”

“That’s Rachel,” Kyle says. “She’s one of the originals.”

“The originals?”

“One of the first people here. She came within the first month. Most of us are relatively recent. I mean, it’s been, what, nearly half a year since the accident? I’ve been hear since early December. Carla’s been here since mid-November. Anthony, he’s been here since the end of December. But Rachel was here by the end of August. She was one of the ones who renovated the place, made it fit for living in. Boarded up all the windows. Erected the high fence around the property. It was her idea to install ultraviolet lights used for greenhouses around the perimeter. That seems to keep them away from us. We don’t know why, but it does. She helped begin the radio broadcasts. And she’s quite the warrior. She may look like your ordinary kind of girl. The kind who likes flowers and chick flicks and HELLO KITTY paraphernalia. But when some raiders came by here, trying to get in… She led the Anthony Barnhart

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counter-attack. She shot several of them, and one of them came up behind her and she broke his neck with her bare hands.”

“Raiders?” the boy asks.

A shadow falls over him. “Enough with the horror stories, Kyle.” To Mark: “Ready?”

VI

The girl sleeps quietly in the bed. After she had fallen asleep, the man had gingerly lifted her and placed her upon the mattress. She rolls over and mumbles in her sleep. Sometimes she whimpers and cries. It breaks the man’s heart—a breaking he has not experienced in quite some time. He has never even spoken to the girl, but her distress has opened up wells of compassion and mercy within him. He cares deeply for her, and he doesn’t even know her name. He and the boy have talked some, though. The man introduced himself, and the boy did likewise: “Adrian Malkovich.” Now they speak in whispers so as not to wake the girl.

“This is St. Catherine’s Monastery. Twenty miles north of Cincinnati. It’s on a ridge overlooking the interstate. I-75, I think. I only know because I was awake when they brought me here. They’re raiders. Some of the worst I’ve seen. And they’re deranged. Most raiders, they’re simply just trying to survive. They won’t fuck with you if you leave them alone. We’ve seen raiders passing by. We always let them know that we’re watching but that we’re fine with letting them pass.” The man doesn’t know who the boy means by ‘we’ but he lets him continue. “But these raiders… They
look
for a fight. They’re deranged. Absolutely mad. Sadistic. I’ve seen what they do. And you’ll see it, too.”

“How does a person become like that?” the man ponders without seeking an answer.

“It’s quite simple, I think. Take away all the positive and negative reinforcements that make us into who we are in society, and we’re free to do as we please. Free to be whatever we want to be—

whether that is something righteous or something evil. These men—and women, I should add, for they have women among them—have decided to be evil. They’ve decided to operate upon their animal desires alone: their hunger, their thirst, their need for survival.” He casts a glance at the sleeping girl. “And they’re need for sexual gratification.”

The man’s stomach sours. “I’ll never be like that. Never.”

He looks over at the man. “I’d reign your tongue if I were you. It’s easier than you think.”

“I’m not a monster.”

“We’re all monsters inside. Monsters awaiting to be unleashed.”

The man shakes his head. “We can’t be that bad. Not that evil. Not all of us.”

“Maybe,” the boy says. “And I hope you’re right. I’ve seen goodness in men before. But goodness pales in comparison to wickedness. Wickedness is easier—and more pleasurable.”

“Wickedness hurts others.”

“But it gratifies the self. And what are we, in our hearts? Selfish. Greedy. Indifferent.”

The man is defiant. “I’ll never become like them.”

“The choice is yours to make, not mine. They’ll let you make that choice.”

The man eyes him. “What choice?”

“The choice between life or death. The choice between joining them… or dying.”

“I would rather die than become like one of them.”

“Jason said the same thing. And at this moment, he’s being prepared.”

The man almost doesn’t want to ask. “Prepared for what?”

The boy looks up at the window. “Do you ever look at the stars anymore?”

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“No.”

“Perhaps you should.” He doesn’t tear his gaze from the window. “Tonight’s a Full Moon.”

VII

Mark walks behind the man. They leave the basement and ascend a flight of open steps that lead into the foyer of the church. Along the oval-shaped wall are several paintings depicting classic moments in biblical literature. Eve and the Snake in the Garden. Abraham preparing to sacrifice his son Isaac. Moses parting the Red Sea. David against Goliath. A painting of the fall of Samaria in 722 B.C., and beside it an image of watercolor depicting Jeremiah the prophet weeping over the city of Jerusalem before her fall in 586 B.C. More painting depict Christ teaching in the synagogue, and a trilogy reveals Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, Christ carrying the cross, and Christ resurrected from the grave. The boy eyes them as they begin ascending a smaller flight of spiral steps that lead straight up. The boy must take it slow, for his strength is only slowly recuperating.

“Rachel doesn’t seem to like me too much,” he says as they climb.

“I know. Her boyfriend was taken by raiders a few weeks ago. You sat in his place at the table during breakfast.”

The boy pants, “Who are raiders?”

The man stops climbing, giving the boy a break. “I’ve estimated that only 0.001% of humanity survived the plague. That’s only three hundred people here in Cincinnati. Worldwide, if there were twelve billion people, that’s twelve million. It seems like a large number, but it’s probably much less than that. You have to account for the number of suicides—we’ve witnessed seven suicides in this church since I’ve been here. People have a difficult time accepting the new state of affairs. They suffer immensely over the loss of loved ones and the fact that their daily, beloved routines have been snatched right out from under them. No one really appreciates what they have until they’ve lost it. I used to hate waking up at 7:30 in the morning to fix a pot of coffee before going to work. But now I long for those days, and I’ve accepted that they never will be again. At least, not in our lifetimes. Of those twelve million worldwide, too, many have fallen to the sick. We’ve lost seventeen to the ‘darkwalkers’, as you call them. People get ancy and leave the church to get a breath of fresh air, and they never come back. The sick stay in the darkness, they fear the light; but they may venture out in the dusk if they think they have a good chance of seizing something to eat. Food resources are down, and people are starving: the healthy
and
the sick. Others may have been killed by raiders. Raiders are bands of survivors that have grouped together, searching for an identity, but not staying in one place, as opposed to communities. Raiders travel, searching for something they can’t quite put words to; and their own vague object of pursuit is futile, for if you don’t know what you’re looking for, how can you ever find it? Some raiders are good-natured. Others are not. Many live out their own lusts for bloodshed and sex. Incidents of rape and senseless acts of cruelty are all across the board. Before this happened, there were two types of people in the world: saints and sinners. But now, everyone is a sinner, struggling to survive. We’re just trying to be the most decent sinners that we can be, but we know that the true nature of a man is revealed not in his thoughts or in his hearts—for the mind and heart can be deceptive—but in his or her actions at the moment of life or death.” He takes another drag of his cigarette, is quiet for a moment. “Rachel’s boyfriend, he was taken by raiders while we sent out a party for getting food. Michael, one of our older men, and Anthony went along. They barely made it back in one piece. Anthony had been shot in the leg, but he’s doing much better now.”

“When you picked me up,” Mark asks, “did you find anyone else?”

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The man eyes him. “You weren’t alone, were you?”

Mark shakes his head:
No
.

“We
did
find evidence of raiders,” the man says. “There were tire tracks in the snow, and bodies of the sick everywhere. They’d been shot. We imagine them to be the same raiders that have took Rachel’s boyfriend. Sometimes they will stay in the cities for long periods of time, because there are numerous grocery stores and supermarkets where canned goods can be found. Why they were out at night, who knows? Maybe they thirst for killing these ‘dark-walkers.’ But as to the fate of your friend, whoever he—or she—was, who knows? Maybe they killed your friend. Or maybe they’ll recruit him or her to their band. It’s surprising how many people join the raiders, because every raider party has their own delusions of grandeur and a hope in the brighter future. Hope is something lost these days. Hope is something you have to search high and low for. And there are many false hopes abounding, and in our desire for hope, sometimes we look past the logic and feel only with our hearts.” He pauses for a moment. “And that’s what gets us killed.”

The spiral stairwell comes up against a door. The man opens it, and they enter out onto the roof. Snow covers the concrete, and the wind whips and tears at their clothes. They move around a large air conditioner panel that keeps them from the wind. The man pulls out a cigarette and lights it up. The boy asks for one, and they smoke together. The smoke feels beautiful in his lungs. Calming. He remembers smoking with the man, and the thought brings a twang of pain.
No one really appreciates
what they have till they’ve lost it
. The roof affords them a beautiful view of the city, the snow sparkling under the sun and the windows of the skyscrapers glinting. The view overlooks the sweeping east side of downtown, and the I-471 Bridge spans the Ohio River, which is laden with slabs of ice along the shores. One of the coldest winters Cincinnati has ever experienced. The big yellow arches of the bridge remind Mark of the MCDONALD’S logo, and he remembers driving back and forth along that bridge with Cara, visiting Newport on the Levee. He can see the levee now. The sign is unlit, and snow covers the sidewalks. The trees in the square of the outdoor mall are naked and kissed with icicles. The aquarium sits quietly, and as he smokes, he imagines the bones of fish and shark slowly corroding in the green-water tanks. And the sea turtle takes its last dying breaths as it curls into its shell and dies. The small conjunction of houseboats on the river—HOOTER’S and THE BEER HOUSE—