Dwellers of the Night: The Complete Collection (58 page)

“Whatever happens to us… Promise me you’ll never forget me.”

“Forget you? How the hell could I forget
you
?”

“Sometimes these things don’t work out. But I want you to always remember me.”

“Kira. I can never and
will never
forget you.” After a moment: “I love you.”

She had held his hand tightly as they watched the sparkling city lights. Her words had torn into him then, and they tear into him now:

“And
I
love
you
.”

Anthony Barnhart

Dwellers of the Night

268

Anthony Barnhart

Dwellers of the Night

269

Chapter Eighteen

The Zombie Hypothesis

(or “Anthony’s Story”)

“It shall also be qualified as attempted murder the employment which may be made against any person of substances which, without causing actual death, produce a lethargic coma more or less prolonged. If, after the person had been buried, the act shall be considered murder no matter what result follows.”

- The Haitian Law Against Making People Zombies

(Article 249)

I

Mark was standing outside the front door of the church as the sunlight began to pierce through broken clouds. A warm front had moved in, and the snow sparkles as the top layer begins to melt. The sun is brilliant, reflecting off the thousands of glass windows of the skyscrapers, cutting through the air like diamonds. Mark turns away from the sun and faces the side of the church, a marble statue of a saint covered with snow, a Bible clutched in its hands. Beyond the saint, the ground dropped sharply, intersecting with the towering fence with its coils of barbed wire. Above the top of the coils in the fence, Mark could see the rolling hills of Northern Kentucky, laced with a patchwork of snow. He lights a cigarette and lets the burn engulf his lungs.

Snow crunches behind him. A voice: “Anthony told you his hypothesis?”

“Hypothesis?”

“About the zombies.”

Mark turns and faces Kyle. “Oh. Yeah. When I first got here.”

“How’d you sleep?” Kyle asks with a sly smile. “Dream of zombies?”

“I don’t dream anymore,” Mark replies.

“Then you’re a lucky one.” He looks at the cigarette clutched between Mark’s fingers. “Do you have an extra?”

“Sure,” Mark says. He hands him a cigarette and the lighter.

They stand smoking in the cold morning air, feeling the sun rising behind them.

“Katie jokes that this is Anthony’s wet dream.” Kyle shakes his head, laughs, takes another hit off the cigarette. “He was a zombie fanatic when this happened. It makes sense for him to believe they’re zombies. I suppose it gives him some comfort. It’s something he’s used to. Something he’s familiar with, or, at least, something he’s more familiar with than anyone else. He told me, back before all this happened, he was sitting in his kitchen with his family, and they were eating dinner, and he got all solemn and told them he needed to talk about something.”

∑Ω∑

Anthony Barnhart

Dwellers of the Night

270

His father had returned home from work, and they sat down in the dining room of their woodland cottage as his mom spread out Italian string beans, steamed peas, and corn-on-the-cob over their plates. She had grown the vegetables in the garden in the backyard, and the pork chops came from the local supermarket. As they began to eat, Mom asked how Dad’s day had been, and Dad told her,

“We had emergency simulations for disease outbreaks.”

“What kind of diseases?” Anthony had asked.

“Tuberculosis today. Anthrax tomorrow. No day’s the same.”

“I have an idea,” Anthony said, setting his spoon down on the plate. “Zombie outbreak simulations.” His dad shook his head. “I’m serious. There
are
chances of a zombie outbreak. Small and remote, but chances nonetheless. And you think I’m kidding, but I’m not. You should draw out a plan of defense for the office, and in the middle of the scenario, you should have several people painted as zombies burst into the conference room. Because
that
would be realistic.”

His dad nodded. “Sure. I’ll run it by them.”

His mother sighed. “You two are crazy.”

“And while we’re on the topic,” Anthony said, “we need to come up with a zombie defense plan for our homes. Store pieces of wood in the garage to board up the windows. Buy a few guns and an assortment of knives. A battery-operated radio.”

His dad just laughed.

“You’re laughing now,” Anthony said, “but when you go outside one evening and a zombie attacks you from the darkness, how hard do you think you’ll be laughing?” He looked over at his mom, a cynical look plastered over her face. “If Amanda were here, she’d agree with me.”

“That’s only because your sister worships everything you do.”

“She graduates this May, doesn’t she?”

“Yes. And then she’s going to Anderson University. She has to go early in August.”

“Early August?”

“For freshman orientation. She’s pretty excited.”

“Excited? If I were going somewhere where I knew nobody, I’d be nervous as hell.”

“Anthony!” his mom hissed. “Don’t swear at the table.”

∑Ω∑

Mark finds the man later that evening. He is sitting in the library, leafing through a book. Mark sits in one of the chairs, looks over to the podium. “Have you read the dictionary?”

“Not since grade school,” the man replies, not tearing his eyes from the book.

“What are you reading?”

“A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemmingway.”

“An odd book for a Catholic library.”

“So is a dictionary.” He looks up at Mark. “And why the hell do you care?”

“Have you talked to Anthony?”

“A few times. Nice kid.”

“Has he told you what he thinks these things are?”

“No. But Nancy did. She told me the crazy story about her son.”

“And the dictionary?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s the dictionary. Over there, on the podium.”

“I don’t care.”

Anthony Barnhart

Dwellers of the Night

271

“So what do you think about it? About Anthony’s… Hypothesis.”

“I don’t think much of it.”

“They do act like zombies.”

“They act more like vampires. And we already ruled
that
‘hypothesis’ out.”

“I don’t know. Anthony knows what he’s talking about.”

The man closes the book. “The kid knows movies and fiction books.”

“Yeah, but they’re all about zombies, and—’’

“And they’re all
fiction
. There’s no truth to them whatsoever.”

Mark pulls out the pack of cigarettes from his jacket. “Want one?”

“Sure,” the man says, reaching out.

Mark hands him a cigarette, lights his own, hands him the lighter. “Can I ask you a question?”

“If I said no, it wouldn’t matter.”

“Why are you so adamant about the dark-walkers not being vampires
or
zombies?”

The man exhales a puff of smoke. “And why are you so adamant to label them?”

Mark doesn’t have an answer.

“They’re just sick people. How many times have I told you that?”

“They came back to life.”

“Bodily resurrection is impossible. They must not have been dead. A coma or something.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because
dead people don’t come back to life
. Except for Jesus. And he was God.”

“Now you’re getting all religious on me.”

“Kira wasn’t a god. So she couldn’t have been raised from the dead.”

“What if this is all some plot of God? Punishing us for social injustice?”

“Now you’re starting to sound like Carla. Congratulations.”

When dinner comes the next day, Mark sits down between Carla and Kyle. Carla is talking about the necessity of prayer in one’s life, and Anthony is crudely interrupting her. Mark eats in silence. Anthony makes a joke, Kyle and Katie laugh, and Carla gets mad. Mark is nearly done with his food when Katie tells Anthony, “You’ve dreamed of this your entire life. When zombies rule the earth.”

Mark finds that comment to come out of nowhere, then realizes he hasn’t been paying attention to the conversation. That’s when he finds that everyone’s attention is focused on him. He meets their eyes with a blank stare, and Anthony asks again, “What do you think these so-called ‘dark-walkers’ are?”

“Oh,” Mark answers. “I don’t know. We met someone who thought they were vampires.”

“Vampires,” Anthony says. “I can see that. Have you considered them being zombies?”

Mark smiles wryly. “You’ve already tried to indoctrinate me, remember?”

“It makes sense,” Anthony says. “It makes perfect sense.”

Katie folds her arms. “It makes sense to you, because you’ve been fascinated by them your entire life. You already had these guys figured out before the plague even struck.”

“You know,” Anthony says after a moment, “that my mom was a librarian at a school in my hometown?”

“No,” Kyle says. “I was not aware. Pray tell more.”

Anthony ignores him. “I was home for the summer, doing construction work. She was really sick one day, so I brought her some of her medicine from the house. She had to puke when I got there, though, so she left me to watch her class. I took it upon myself to teach them about zombies. I taught about the origin of the zombie myth, different ways real-life zombies could come about, and I taught them about the need for an emergency plan for a zombie apocalypse.” He laughs. “Mom was Anthony Barnhart

Dwellers of the Night

272

called into the principal’s office later that week. Apparently some kid had told his mother about it, and she, being the concerned parent, called the school.” His smile fades. “She had reason to be concerned. A week after I taught that little lesson, the school walls were stained with the blood of the children.”

II

Some of the snow has melted. Sarah remembers when she and Patrick would go skiing at the ice pond in Eden Park, and in a moment of frail vulnerability, she makes her way to the closest WALMART and finds a set of skates that fit around her small feet. She makes her way to the park. She has been here often, though not since the plague. She and Patrick had taken a tour of the Cincinnati Art Museum and had gone to the butterfly exhibit at the Krohn Conservatory, both located in the park. They would walk down the paved paths in the cool fall air, the leaves crunching crisply underneath their shoes, the trees radiant in their plume of red and orange and yellow leaves. The gardens would bloom in spring like the Las Vegas nights, and businesses would hold organized sporting leagues at the scattered soccer fields. Patrick had once gone out with several friends to rock-climb at the abandoned sewage plant, which had been turned into a garden with several towering rock walls. Now her feet are freezing as she walks down the winding path, passing the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park. She remembers when Patrick would dream of the day when they would take their son or daughter to see the bi-yearly electronic dinosaur exhibit. She makes her way past the amphitheater, the wind tickling snowflakes from the gnarled limbs of the trees. She comes to the reflection pool, now a single, oval slab of frozen ice. She sits down on a bench and takes off her boots, putting on the skates. She hobbles over to the reflection pool and climbs onto the ice. At first it is awkward, and she can almost pretend she is there with Patrick, surrounded by others, holding hands and skating as Christmas Carolers sing and a carriage driven by a horse rattles past, a small speaker pouring forth Christmas tunes.

∑Ω∑

“I don’t know how to skate,” he moaned, precariously eyeing the ice. Sarah laughed, squeezed his hand. “It’s not that hard, Patrick.”

“I’ve never even been able to go rollerblading.”

“You’ll be okay. Come on.”

They stepped onto the ice, taking short steps away from the edge. Patrick gasped and fell, sprawling upon his hands and knees.

Skaters swirled around them, some laughing at his expense.

Sarah bit her lip, trying to hide the smile. “Ice tends to be slippery. It’s its nature.”

Patrick tried to stand, slipped and fell again, cursed.

She grabbed his hand, helped him up.

“I’m not so sure about this.” His face burnt red in ridiculed embarrassment, and he watched all the others on the ice, skating as if it were the easiest thing to do. He looked over at his wife. “Maybe we should go sit on the bench and just watch…”

“Nonsense,” Sarah said, pulling him farther out onto the ice.

“I could watch you,” he pleaded. “And you could show me all the fancy moves.”

Anthony Barnhart

Dwellers of the Night

273

She leaned forward, kissed his ruby-red cheek. “You’re not getting out of this.” She wrapped her hand tighter around his. “Just hold on. Move one leg in front of the other. Not in jerking motions. Really smooth. Like it’s the ballet. Or like we’re dancing like we did on our wedding night.”

Patrick said, “Your father laughed at me when he saw me dance.”

“Come
on
,” she said, giggling.

Holding his hand, she led him out farther onto the ice, and their skates moved in rhythm with one another’s. They circled the reflection pool, bathing in the laughter of children and young couples shooting past. They went slowly, and Patrick feared that she wished she could skate faster, felt that he was a burden. But she didn’t say anything, only smiled, enjoying the moment with the man she loved.

A young couple passed them; in between them was their son, holding onto his parents’ hands. His face glowed with excitement, and the parents couldn’t hide their own joy of bringing their son onto the ice.

Patrick stopped skating, pulled Sarah towards him, their faces touching.

“You know what?” he asked.

Her nose rubbed against his, and she grinned. “What?”

“Maybe one day we’ll teach our kid how to skate.”

Her face glowed. “That would be nice.”

They continued skating.

After a moment, she said, “In all reality, though, Patrick…
I’ll
be teaching our kid how to skate. Not you. Hell, he’ll probably learn how to skate before you can even climb onto the ice without falling down!”