Dwellers of the Night: The Complete Collection (110 page)

IX

They have barricaded the front door with couches and chairs and even the bed from the master bedroom; Keith’s body lies in a heap on the floor with the other two guards. The lights have completely gone out, and the four of them sit quietly. The man smokes a cigarette. He closes his eyes, can hear distant screams, spurts of gunfire. He curses, stands, moves through the kitchen and to the dining room, opens the balcony and steps outside. He peers over the railing, into the street. It looks deserted, until there are intermittent sounds of chattering gunfire; the flares of the weapons illuminate the buildings, and he can see dark-walkers dropping to the ground like flies. The men (or women?) with guns retreat, disappearing around another building. The man finishes smoking his cigarette, drops the filter, watches the cherry ember disappear in the shadows. The door behind him opens and Nathan comes out.

Anthony Barnhart

Dwellers of the Night

512

“I guess New Harmony isn’t too safe anymore,” the man says.

Nathan says, “I thought you might want this.”

The man turns, takes the KA-BAR from his hands. “Thanks.”

They stand quietly on the balcony.

The man says, “How come there are so many?”

“I don’t know.”

“There weren’t that many earlier.”

“It’s probably the bites. They’re infecting the populace.”

“Swell.”

“I know.”

“’The Dungeon’ was a shitty idea from the start.”

“Yeah.”

“What kind of an idiot lets dark-walkers into this place?”

“Keith had the idea.”

“He’s an idiot.”

”
Was
an idiot,” Nathan corrects. “Your woman killed her.”

“She’s not my woman.”

“But she’s a hell of a woman, though.”

“Yeah,” the man says. “She is.”

Mark and Sarah sit on stools next to the kitchen’s bar. He had found two glasses in the cupboard and a pitcher of water in the fridge. He poured them both a glass, and they sit drinking, watching Nathan and the man out on the balcony.

Mark doesn’t look over at Sarah. “What about Katie?”

She doesn’t answer for a moment. “She had her chance. She chose her path.”

“I wonder if she’s still alive.”

“For her sake,” Sarah says, “I hope not.”

Mark runs his finger over the ridge of the glass. “That’s cruel.”

“It’s better than being alive but being… dead… at the same time.”

“I can’t imagine her as one of them.”

She looks at him. “Could you imagine Cara as one of them?”

He doesn’t look back at her, and he doesn’t have an answer.

“This place was too good to be true,” Mark says. “They tried to cover up everyone’s sadness through the escapism of sex, drugs, and alcohol. They tried to hide the fact that they were suffering. Katie is a prime example. She still hurts over Elizabeth, and she’s turned to sex with other girls to escape that pain. But you can never cover up your pain adequately enough. It will always resurrect itself, when you’re not paying attention, not
trying
to ignore it. This place offered the illusion of happiness, and it promised the illusion of security. But no place is secure anymore. No place is really safe.” He is quiet, sipping his water. He continues, “It makes me think… What about Aspen? How safe could it really be? And how do we know it’s really there, that’s it’s really survived? Maybe we
are
best on our own. Maybe Alaska
was
the safest bet. I can’t help but feel some guilt. You’re right. Katie’s probably dead. And if we wouldn’t have pressed him to turn the car around and head to Aspen, then we never would have been here. We’d be spending the night in some remote hotel somewhere north. Maybe in Missouri or Minnesota. And Katie would still be with us.”

Sarah says, “You don’t know that. Maybe this decision has kept the three of us alive.”

Anthony Barnhart

Dwellers of the Night

513

“Maybe.”

“We don’t know what awaited us up north. Maybe it would have been worse.”

“Maybe.”

“But we can’t dwell on the past.” She says that, but then she thinks of Patrick. He shakes his head. “It’s pretty fucking hard not to.”

Her mind is still upon her dead husband. “I know.”

“Do you ever wonder what life would be like now if the plague had never even happened?”

Sarah nods. “Yeah. Patrick and I would still be together.”

“Cara and I would be together, too. Maybe even engaged. Ashlie would be alive.”

She points to the window. “And he would be married. And he would be happy.”

“We can’t dwell on the past,” Mark says. “But it isn’t good to dwell on a future that will never be.”

She winces. “It’s pretty fucking hard not to.”

He sighs. “I know.”

Nathan and the man return inside. The screams have died down, and the gunfire has become sparse, nearly absent. Nathan goes into the master bedroom, and Mark goes into the bathroom. The man sits down next to Sarah. They sit on the carpet in the silence.

“You look good in that dress.”

Sarah eyes him. “Okay.”

“I mean, even with the blood… You look good.”

She manages a smile, the first smile all night. “The blood’s a nice touch, huh?”

“It makes you look like some sort of warrior princess.”

“‘Sarah, The Warrior Princess.’”

“It doesn’t have quite the same ring as ‘Xena’, but it’ll work.”

Nathan returns to the room, tells Sarah that there are probably some clothes in the bedroom that she could change into. He tells her that The Boss was a womanizer, had all kinds of outfits. She thanks him, and she and the man enter the bedroom. The man starts rifling through the dresser drawers, pulling out pants and shirts and boxers and socks. He lets them fall, scattered onto the floor. The room is illuminated by moonlight coming in through the tall windows. Sarah stares at the three bodies lined up against the wall. “It’s odd.”

He looks over at her. “What’s that?”

She points to the corpses. “That we’re not even fazed by them anymore.”

“It’s commonplace now.”

“I killed every one of them,” she says. “And I feel nothing.”

“You were protecting yourself.”

“I never thought I could kill anyone.”

“Neither did I.”

“I feel proud about what I did. My innocence, it’s gone.”

“Nothing lasts forever,” he says.

The man finds some women’s pants and a women’s button-up shirt. “You’ll have to wear boxers, but I think you’ll manage.” He holds up two pairs. “Do you want MICKEY MOUSE or DAFFY DUCK?”

She laughs. “You’ve got to be joking me.”

“He must have liked DISNEY.”

Anthony Barnhart

Dwellers of the Night

514

“I’ll take DAFFY DUCK.” She takes the boxers and heads into the bathroom. The man sits on the bed, avoiding the blood stains.

He hears her getting dressed.

He stands and walks over to the bathroom door, leans close. “Sarah?”

“What?” she calls back.

“Thanks for helping us out down there.”

“It’s all right.”

“We would have been killed. You know that, right?”

“That’s why I helped.”

“Okay.” He turns to go.

“Thanks for standing up for me, back before we were drugged.”

“Oh,” the man says, pausing at the door. “You’re welcome.”

She doesn’t say anything more.

The man exits the room, and he sees Nathan and Mark against the far wall, ears pressed against the painted plaster. The man asks what they’re doing. Nathan raises a finger to his lips:
Shhh
. The man joins them, places his right ear against the wall. There is the sound of scuffling and growling on the other side.

The man looks over at Nathan, asks in a whisper, “What are the walls made out of?”

He doesn’t have a chance to respond: the wall breaks outwards, and two gnarled hands extend, grabbing at the man’s shirt. The man leaps back, as do the others. More holes are punched in the wall, chunks of the wall and flakes of plaster falling to the carpeted floor, and the hands grasp blindly in the air. The sound of snarling and growling grows louder, more frenzied.

“Drywall,” Nathan says, voice crackling.

X

“They smelled us,” Mark says, watching in horror as limbs protrude through the wall. “They fucking smelled us.”

The man runs to the bedroom. “Sarah!”

She comes out of the bathroom.

“We’ve got to go!” he shouts, and he turns and runs back to the others. Nathan has his hand-bow ready, and Mark holds the UZZI at the ready. Nathan looks back at the man. “There’s too many of them.”

Mark says, “Doesn’t this look familiar? Weren’t we in the same damn predicament just two nights ago?”

“We should be in Aspen by now,” the man says.

“We should have stayed at Odessa.”

“I know.”

Sarah runs out, wielding the SKORPION. “The balcony.”

The man glares at her. “So now it’s okay to commit suicide?”

“No, there’s a ladder on the balcony. I saw it yesterday. It goes all the way down.”

Mark and the man exchange glances.

The boy says, “It’s better than just waiting for them to get through.”

Anthony Barnhart

Dwellers of the Night

515

The dark-walkers burst into the room, the last chunks of drywall crumbling. Their frenzied madness drives them forward, and they run about the apartment, the scent of the uninfected still heavy, suffocating, intoxicating. But the uninfected are nowhere to be found. The dark-walkers become crazier, thrashing about, tearing apart the furniture with their hands, breaking down the walls, exploring every room. One dark-walker gets entangled in the shower curtain, another feasts on Keith’s body, and yet another moans, grappling at its face, having cut itself while shattering a lamp. Several of the dark-walkers go out onto the balcony, and they shout at one another. Scaling down the ladder, at least fifteen stories below, are the uninfected, moving past the other balconies and windows, vanishing out of sight. One of the dark-walkers leaps onto the ladder, is uncoordinated, and falls.

The man grips the ladder tightly, squeezes against it. The dark-walker falls past, flailing and shrieking. The man looks down, leading the way, and sees the dark-walker vanish into the shadows. There comes the sound of shattering glass, a car alarm. Snarls alert him to dark-walkers closing in on the fallen creature. They scale down to the tenth floor, and the man climbs onto the closest balcony. He draws the 9mm and peers into the darkened glass door. He slides it open and ducks inside. The moonlight wafts past his body and illuminates the room. It is covered with dust, unused. The others file in behind him, and they shut the door. The moon is still rising. It’s not even midnight yet. Nathan says, “We can get to a bus from here. Take the janitorial hallway.”

“Where’s that?” the man asks.

“It’s down the hall. If this is the right floor.”

“It’s the tenth floor.”

“Then, yes. Once we get there, there are stairs that lead down to the garage. Some of the buses are kept there, for maintenance and such. We should be able to hijack one. The keys are almost always left in the ignition.”

“That’s our way out,” the man says. “Can you navigate us through the gates?”

Nathan nods. “I helped build them.”

The hallway was abandoned, and Nathan led them to a door marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. It was unlocked. They went down a flight of concrete steps. It felt as if they were descending into a bunker. They reached the garage, and they entered. Nathan led the way. The garage was underground, with concrete pillars upholding the roof, parking spaces with faded paint arranged between them. Near the back of the garage, close to the maintenance room, were several parked buses, the windows barred and the roofs lined with railings.

Now Nathan tells the others to stay back, to stay quiet, as he opens the door to the first bus. He goes inside. The driver is hunched over the wheel. His head is missing, and blood from his severed neck has gushed down his shirt and onto his pants, and it drips onto the paneled floor. The irongated door leading to the back is unlocked, the padlock lying shattered amidst the driver’s blood. Nathan pushes it open. The sound of the squeaking hinges is deafeningly loud, and Nathan sees movement in the back. He raises his hand-bow. The figure stares at him, nearly masked in the darkness. The shadow shifts, and there comes a horrifying screech. Nathan coolly releases the bolt, and there comes the sound of a thud. He moves forward, kneels down next to the body, yanks the bolt out of the creature’s head.

He calls out to the others. They climb inside, move into the back, and Nathan takes the driver’s seat, shoving the driver’s headless body out the door, onto the pavement. He ignites the engine, and the headlights splash over the wall.

Anthony Barnhart

Dwellers of the Night

516

“Holy shit.”

Along the far wall of the underground garage are hundreds of bodies, and moving amidst the bodies are dozens upon dozens of dark-walkers, feasting on the remains. A bloodbath. Nathan feels a knot in his throat and steps on the gas. He drives the bus right past them, watches them through the window. They pay him no attention, focused on the smorgasbord of intestines and bladders and livers and muscles.

He shakes his head and takes the ramp up and out of the garage,

onto the moonlit street.

The streets are abandoned, except for tossed and torn bodies. A few dark-walkers move along the edges of the buildings, holding severed limbs in their hands, feasting with blood-soaked jaws. Sarah looks away, her stomach churning. None of the dark-walkers approach them. The bus lurches up and down as it rolls over broken bodies. They pass a burning building, flames roaring from the windows. The lobby’s glass windows burst into a spray of shattered glass, and the lobby’s overhang, jutting out over the road, collapses. Mark sees a sign amidst the flames: WESTIN HOTEL. That’s where Katie was. He looks away, trying with all his might to find comfort in the knowledge that even if, amidst the chaos, she had been bitten, and had become a dark-walker, she was most likely dead now, consumed by the flames. He tries to find comfort in that thought, but he fails. The man sits down next to a weapon’s rack, the rack empty, and he wipes his face with the sleeve of his shirt. He looks over at Sarah. “What a night, huh?” She doesn’t have a response.