Dwellers of the Night: The Complete Collection (127 page)

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wounded raider dropped to his knees, losing grip of his rifle, and he sat there on his knees, groping at his throat, eyes wide with terror; and then he pitched over and died, sprawled out next to his fallen comrade.

The man rushed back to THE HOUSE OF TROPICAL MARINE & FRESHWATER FISH—it was stenciled along the side of the building across a faded mural of a coral reef with stingrays and sharks and multicolored fish—and beckoned the girls forth. “Stay together,” he said. The four of them made their way to the truck. The girls crouched along the side of the truck facing away from the orphanage, and the man searched through the bodies, couldn’t find the keys.

“Shit.” The driver must have been inside the orphanage.

Samantha got his attention: “They’re in the car.”

He breathed a quiet sigh of relief. He wiped blood from his face with his shirt as he got into the truck. The three girls squeezed together in the passenger’s seat. He started the ignition, and the engine turned over, flared to life. He stepped on the gas, and the moment he did, the back window shattered, a bullet arching past his shoulder and smashing into the windshield, creating a webbed masterpiece.

“Get down!” he shouted, and the truck lurched over the fallen bodies, their bones splintering and sides rupturing and organs extending out onto the pavement. Intestines coiled around the front tire, and they left a smear as he drove towards the end of the road. He looked out the shattered back window through the rearview mirror and could see men in the orphanage, shooting from the formerly boarded-up windows. The bullets sprayed all around them, carving smoking craters into the truck’s frame. The man took the left turn wildly and headed for the highway, the gunners’ lines of sight then broken by rows upon rows of cottage-style and ranch-style homes.

“We lost them,” Samantha said.

“No. They have more trucks. They’re going to follow.”

“So what are we going to do?”

“Shit, I don’t know.”

“Don’t talk like that. It’s not proper.”

He glared at her. “Are you fucking kidding me?!”

They reached the highway, and the man drove the truck wildly up the exit ramp. A van was overturned before them, its windows shattered, wheels stuck sideways into the air. He maneuvered around it and continued driving, planting his foot upon the gas pedal, the Denver skyline drawing nearer. The raiders had abandoned the orphanage and were right behind them. The man was a quarter mile from the overturned van when he saw through the rearview window the trucks following his maneuver around the van and proceeding down the freeway towards him and the three girls. The truck’s engine warbled, and the man cursed:
we chose the wrong fucking truck
. The trucks behind them were gaining, and he could see the riders leaning out of their windows, hunting rifles in their hands. He muttered under his breath: “Once they get close enough, it’ll be a turkey shoot.” The highway stretched straight ahead for miles, eventually splashing into Denver, and dropped behind the Denver skyline was the cloud-soaked Rockies. On either side of the road were fields of corn and bean, the plants long shriveled up from the winter. “Shit.” He glanced behind him. The trucks were closer. He looked over to the girls. “Hold onto the seatbelt.”

He took the next exit, refusing to slow down: the truck nearly fishtailed into the concrete barrier of the ramp. The ramp flattened out and the concrete sides disappeared, and the road dug deep into the Anthony Barnhart

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withered rows of corn on either side. There was a railroad off to the right, and upon the railroad were several train cars, many overturned, lying in the bare earth. The railway extended into the town of Bennett, which they drove through. The main train engine had smashed into the train station, and it lied covered in a pile of aging bricks and mortar. The other trucks slowed at the exit and were thus farther behind them. The man knew he wouldn’t be able to keep this up. The engine rattled underneath the hood, and the hood vibrated with the engine’s pulsings. They quickly abandoned the small town, following the single road, and the railroad tracks ran parallel to them. Something then caught the man’s attention, something far ahead, nearly masked by the upended corn stalks, something glistening in the sunlight. Sunlight on metal, a curvature. Wings. An airplane.
An airport
. The man suddenly had a crazy idea.

The man wrenched the truck off the road. The girls screamed as the truck’s wheels thundered over the railroad tracks. They tore through the corn stalks, the earth underneath shaking the truck’s frame. Eventually the rows of corn died to reveal a towering fence. The man stamped on the gas and pushed himself back in the seat and yelled at the girls to get down. Jessica and Deshay obeyed, throwing their heads between their knees; but Samantha remained staring forward, her eyes wide as saucers. The truck launched through the gate, tearing it down, and the front wheels became caught on the barbed wire that had encircled the front. With the section of the fence flattened underneath them, and the rest of the fence bending and waving under the stress, the man stomped harder on the gas pedal and looked behind them. The raiders were pushing into the cornfield, over the railroad tracks. Suddenly the wheels gave way, and their truck went forward, and the fence rose back to its position. The truck sped across the wavy grass of what had once been a well-manicured lawn. The man looked into the rearview mirror and saw the first truck hit the fence; but he hit it so slow that his wheels spun, and the truck was upended; and it teetered to the side and splashed into the ground, the sound of crunching metal and shouts wafting across the long-grass. The truck lay on its side, wheels spinning, kicking up dirt and mud.

The front tires were blown, lacerated with barbed wire, and the truck leaned forward. The man could feel the hubs of the tire rubbing against the outside of the tire, hitting the ground. The truck throbbed with each rotation of the flattened tires. The grass ended to reveal the tarmac of a runway, the painted colors designating direction and halting locations as brilliant as the day they were first painted. Upon the halting section was a CESSNA CARAVAN with wheels extended underneath the floats. The windows were shattered and scratch marks covered the outside of the paint. Either someone had gotten in or someone had gotten out.
Probably both
, the man thought. He neared the main terminal, and he looked back behind them. The other trucks had gotten free of the fence and were once more in pursuit. The man followed the taxiway away from the runway tarmac and drew near to the building.

Samantha looked over at him. “We’re trapped.”

“No,” he said, “we’re not.”

“There’s nowhere to hide.”

They neared the great shadow of the building. “Of course there is.”

“Where?” she asked.

And then she knew.

“But we
can’t
,” she moaned.

“It’s the only chance we have,” he said.

The truck was submerged under the shadow of the airport’s main building. Anthony Barnhart

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“Everybody out!” the man yelled, grabbing the REMINGTON and the GARAND.

VII

There is only one bullet remaining in the rifle. He turns and faces the third girl, who is plastered against the tractor, trying to mold into its steel frame, trying to escape the impending consequences of their decisions. The man can barely see her due to the tears obscuring his vision, but he is able to grab her by the shoulder. He squeezes tightly, securing her, and pulls her away from the tractor. The bottom of the door leading outside is splintering apart, and their arms are protruding through the broken woodwork, and their eyes can be seen glistening in the pale moonlight as they crouch down and watch their prey, so close. One hunches down in the narrow hole in the wooden framework. Rainwater drips from its chin and mats its hair down, and it looks at its prey with a hunger and a thirst unparalleled by any normal animal creature.

The man tries to ignore it, tries to focus on the girl.

Her blond curls. Her eyes sparkling in the moonlight weaving its way between the spaces and cracks in the barn’s rafters above.

The way her skin is pale with fright and cool and damp with terror. The way her body shivers not from the cold but from the awful knowledge of what will happen. He is focused upon her, and the frantic pleas of the dark-walkers fade. Samantha begs with him: “You don’t have to do this… You don’t have to do this…”

But he has heard it before. He remembers Katie. He remembers how he didn’t have to kill her. He remembers how she resented him. But there is no freedom here, no hope of salvation. There is only the single bullet in the gun, the two of them standing together, the dwellers of the night throwing themselves at the barn’s doors. There is only the resolution, and the knowledge that he will face them alone.

∑Ω∑

They abandoned the truck and ran towards the building. It was two stories, and there were several large steel doors facing the tarmac. Behind them the sounds of the raiders’ trucks grew closer, and then there came the popping echo of bullets. The man shouted, grabbed Jessica, threw her behind an uncovered vehicle loaded with mold-covered and grimy baggage. Bullets pepper the duffel bags and suitcases upon the vehicle, bursting forth ribbons of cotton and cloth. They hunker down behind it, and the man sets the GARAND on the ground and clutches the REMINGTON close to his chest. He stares forward, sees a single door with a padlock leading into the building.
There are dark-walkers in there
, he thought; but he knew that they would not stand a chance against four trucks filled with raiders and guns.
What the dark-walkers will do to the girls is terrible; what the raiders will do to them will be even worse
. He raised the gun and aimed along the sight, and he squeezed the trigger three times. The rounds splashed over the padlock, snapping it into three pieces; it fell to the ground, and the door creaked open inwards, into the shadows. The man yelled at the girls to go, and he leapt up, swung the rifle out over the top of the bags upon the vehicle, and he aimed along the sight. Two of the trucks were parked thirty feet away, the men fumbling out. They didn’t have time to react as the man popped off several rounds, and two of them fell to the ground, holes chiseled into their chests. The girls were already to the door leading into the airport building, and the man followed suit. The raiders moved Anthony Barnhart

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around the bleeding bodies of their own and tried to shoot him, but the man ducked into the building unscathed. He became lost in the darkness.

“Keep moving.” He spoke quietly, so as not to awaken any sleeping inhabitants. They could still hear the shouting of the raiders outside, and the man hoped they wouldn’t follow; yet at the same time he knew the degradation of man, and he knew the evil lusts that burned within them, lusts that could not be quenched. The door had opened into a large room filled with machinery and belts and assorted cargo lying in dusty piles on the floor. A large sign above them read FRONT RANGE AIRPORT. Rats and mice scurried away from them. Machinery creaked and groaned in the draft from the cracked door leading outside. They went up a metal stairwell that led to a steel walkway that weaved its way between the machinery. The girls led the way and the man followed, one rifle in either hand. He stopped them, gave one to Samantha, knew he wouldn’t be able to fire either one of them with one hand.

The walkway jarred up against a door with a dust-covered glass window, MAINTENANCE

stenciled on the outside. They pushed their way through and found a hallway. The sounds of the raiders grew stronger, and their shouts began to echo: they had entered the machinery room. The refugees followed the corridor until it reached another door, and they went through. They were in a large room with benches and tables and chairs, a few dark restaurant stands. A MCDONALD’S and a WENDY’S, chained-down. They clung to the wall and made their way, and there were scarce windows that let in isolated sunlight, shafts of radiance that splashed onto the tile floor, illuminating footprints in the dust.

The raiders were loud, and their loudness was abruptly met with the sound of shrieks and cries, coming from ahead of the refugees. The man froze, and the girls did, too: ahead of them was the shifting of shadows, the sounds of scurrying feet, tiny pinpricks of light reflecting in their eyes. Daring creatures.

The man grabbed Jessica and clung her to himself; Samantha and Deshay turned. The man went to the nearest door and pushed it open. Absolute darkness. They all filed inside, and the man turned and shut the door. He told them to get to the back of the room, and he searched for a lock on the door. There was a bolt, and he slammed it down. He stepped back, facing the door, and in the subterranean darkness, Samantha said, “We’re in a bathroom. I just ran into a sink.” He could hear the dark-walkers right outside the door, sniffing and moaning, clawing at the door. Trying to get in.
Fuck
.

The dark-walkers abandoned the door, and the man winced as he heard the popping of gunfire and the blended shrieks of the monsters and the men. It was over almost as soon as it began, and then there was silence, the sounds of breaking bone and tearing flesh and the gurgle of blood being swallowed into cavernous stomachs.

He pulled out his lighter and flicked the igniter, and the flame rose, spilling its light through the white-walled and green-tiled bathroom. He turned on his heels and heard something splash at his feet. He knelt down and examined the floor. A puddle of blood was forming around his boots, issuing forth from underneath the door. Pale fingers stuck underneath the door, the nails long and the knuckles bruised, and the fingers scraped at the blood, pulling it back towards the door in currents. A single tongue stuck out from underneath the door, lapping at the blood. The man’s stomach curled and he backed away, swung around.

The flame’s light danced in the girls’ eyes. Six eyes watching him. Samantha asked, “What do we do now?”