Dwellers of the Night: The Complete Collection (37 page)

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forward, looks past Mark’s shoulder, sees the mangled bodies, the ribs protruding from broken flesh, splintered bones disjointed, the skulls flattened with the cheekbones molded into brainy matter. The man slowly reaches past Mark, heart pounding, and grabs the gun by the barrel. Mark’s fingers loosen, and the man pulls it away. Mark says nothing as he turns and walks past the man without a word, only a stony stare with a lifeless gaze. The man feels the blood warm on the rifle barrel. He turns and sees Mark disappear into the hallway. The man holds the gun close to him and leaves the bedroom to see Mark, still covered in blood, crawling under the sheets of his mattress. The boy quickly falls asleep.

The man raises the ladder back onto the first floor. The cold is sharp from the broken windows, and snow enters the broken front door in drifts, covering the hardwood floor. The man grabs another blanket from the upstairs closet and throws it onto the sheets Mark sleeps under. He returns to the den and shuts the door. He sits on the bed and with a rag cleans the blood from the gun. He sets it next to the British Lee-Enfield and crawls into bed. He lies down and stares at the ceiling in the darkness. He can still hear their screams, echoing in the distance; all of Cincinnati seems alive. The first rays of sunlight are beginning to stretch in from the east.

The man tries to sleep, but all he can see when he closes his eyes is Mark driving the butt of the gun into the dark-walkers, incessantly, even after they had died. When sunlight bears high, he loads more bullets into the Russian rifle and makes his way downstairs. He takes the broken bodies of the darkwalkers still in the house and carries them out into the snow. The skies are clear, and the only snow falling is that from the wind shaking the trees. He casts the bodies into the snow on the road. He kicks snow away from the front entrance until he can find the hinge that had been snapped from the door. He raises the splintered door and presses it against the doorframe, fastening the hinge with its single bolt against the doorframe. He returns to the kitchen, and in the bitter cold, smokes a cigarette. He activates the heaters, and the snow that had come in through the windows and back door begins to melt. He throws on another pair of clothes to stay warm, and Mark appears down the ladder. The man fixes coffee amidst the bloodstains on the kitchen tile, and they smoke cigarettes.

“Mark,” the man says.

The boy looks up at him. “What?”

“You’ll have to clean your sheets.” He nods at his bloodstained clothes. “And your shirt and pants.”

“I know.”

“Okay.”

Mark has dragged his bedding down into the kitchen, and using distilled water is working to clean out the bloodstains, to no avail. The man has entered Kira’s old bedroom, and the stench of the fallen dark-walkers is unbearable. He grabs them by the ankles and pulls them into the hallway, then oneby-one pushes them over the ladder onto the bottom floor. Blood puddles up before the last body hits, and the man carries them out into the snow, depositing them in the street with the others. The wind blowing the snow from the trees is beginning to cover their bodies with an icy layer, and some of the snow sparkles red with frigid blood. The man returns to the bedroom and, with a towel drenched in water, begins scrubbing at the walls. Blood is everywhere. He scrubs and scrubs. An hour passes. He is stern and unforgiving, but when his eyes catch hold of a picture frame holding a photo of him and Kira holding one another, smiles lighting up their faces, he loses it. He sags onto the bed, and his head falls in his hands, and he cries.

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∑Ω∑

He remembers leaving for work early in the morning and making a quick drive to KROGER. He bought several purple lilies and made his way back to his house. He wrote a love note and fastened it to the bouquet, then slid the bouquet under the windshield wipers of her car. When he returned late that night from his round-trip to Germany, she met him in the foyer, and had lit all kinds of sweetsmelling candles. He was shocked that she was still awake, and she was dressed in her blue LA FEMME gown. She told him how handsome he looked in his flight uniform, despite the coffee stain, and they danced in the living room, surrounded by candles, in the dead of the night.

When he would get out of the shower in the morning, oftentimes he would take the bar of soap and write “I LOVE YOU” on the bathroom mirror. When he would return after the sun had set, he would go into the bathroom while Kira slept in the bed. He would turn on the lights and see, stenciled underneath the faded dried soap, another message: “I LOVE YOU TOO!!!”

He remembered when they walked down the paths at Mount Echo, when the trees would bloom with the first spring. They would walk over the rickety wooden bridge, and the creek would gurgle as it swept between the polished stones along the banks. They would hold one another upon that bridge and watch birds alight upon the rocks to drink from the water. One time he brought his pocket knife, and holding her hand against his, he carved their initials into the wooden railing: J&K FOREVER.

∑Ω∑

The man returns downstairs to find Mark sitting at the table, smoking a cigarette. Mark looks up at him. “Your eyes are swollen.”

“I think I have an infection,” the man says, reaching for a cigarette. The boy places his hand over the pack. “Were you crying?”

“No,” the man replies, glaring bullets at the boy. “Can I have a cigarette?” he croons sarcastically.

“Yeah,” the boy replies, removing his hand.

The man lights a cigarette and stands smoking beside the table. “Did you finish your clothes?”

Mark ashes his cigarette in the Mexican ashtray. “No. I can’t get the blood out.”

The man takes a deep breath of smoke, closes his eyes, lets it fill his lungs.

“So what are we going to do?” Mark asks. “About the house?”

“I don’t know,” the man says.

“We should probably figure it out.”

“I know.” He looks at him. “Do you have any ideas?”

“We could find a new house.”

“Hell no.”

“We can’t stay here.”

“If we moved to a new house, we’d have to fortify it and everything, get more supplies.”

“We’re sitting ducks here,” the boy says. “Besides. You can’t stay here forever.”

“Like hell I can’t,” the man growls.

Mark is quiet for a few moments. “Or we could reinforce the doors and windows.”

“With what? Boards? They broke through those last night.”

“With steel. They won’t be able to break through steel. We could drill it into the walls.”

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“And where in the hell are we going to find steel?”

“At a steel factory. There’s one just off 8th Street, after the viaduct.”

The man watches the smoke from his lungs exhale from his nose. “Maybe.”

Mark extinguishes his cigarette. “We need to make a decision, and fast. Dark is coming.”

IV

The next day has come. They returned to the house and began sweeping through it. All remnants of the dark-walkers lying in the snow had vanished, except for a few bare bones with notched teeth marks, and the cupboards and pantry doors were torn off their hinges. Watery footprints were embedded in the carpet. The dark-walkers had come while they were away, had scavenged the place.

“They could still smell us in the house,” the man had said, “and they were searching high and low.”

They had found nothing, however: the man and the boy had taken the truck to a different house several blocks away, one with an attic that the man knew had not been tampered with. They had brought countless blankets, and even then it was cold: the cobwebs tickled their faces and the wind whimpered through the eaves with a stringent bite. They could hear the dark-walkers in the distance, wailing and crying, shrieking, searching. Now they are standing outside the front of the house as the man wraps the chains around the truck’s tires even tighter. He doesn’t want to get stuck down on 8th Street.

“Have you checked the oil lately?” the boy asks, smoking a cigarette.

“A few nights ago. It was low. I went to Wal-Mart and found the right oil for it.”

“What about antifreeze?”

“I know how to upkeep a car, Mark.”

“What about the gas? Have you used up everything from the SHELL station?”

“And the MARATHON and the SUNOCO. But I’ve been siphoning it from other cars.”

“That’s worked?”

The man stands. “Shit, that chain’s cold.” To Mark: “Yeah, so far.”

“All right,” the boy says, tossing his cigarette and getting into the truck. “Let’s roll out.”

The sun’s orb has reached its zenith in the afternoon sky, but the rays barely pass through the clouds, and a gloom of countless shadows and silent melodies refuses to melt the overbearing snow. The truck slips and slides, and the man drives slower. The boy grips his seat as the truck clatters over the 8th Street viaduct. Footprints can be seen in the snow, some surrounding what had been a wrecked vehicle covered with ice; now the windows are shattered and the vehicle gutted. Claw marks scratch the rusting paint. The viaduct ends, opening up to a row of several gas stations and a US BANK. The man hits the brakes and turns right; they pass underneath a railway bridge and along the side of one of the buildings is a cast-iron collection of real-life Mammoth figures, the eyes hazed in a thin film of snow and the tusks dripping with icicles. The road bends into the shadows, and the man parks the truck beside an old warehouse with antique brick sidings and broken windows. Along the other side of the road, towards the river, is a gated fence coiled with barbed wire; on the other side are several mounds of gravel and sand, now nothing more than white humps as if it were the ridge of a Saracen camel emerging from the earth. The man opens the door and gets out, and the boy follows. The man walks around the side of the truck, unlatches the hatch for the bed, and lowers it. The boy grabs twin flashlights from the bed of the truck and the Russian and British rifle, fully loaded. He tosses the Anthony Barnhart

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Russian one to the man. The man takes a flashlight, and they stand before a closed door with faded lettering: EMPLOYEES ONLY.

Mark kicks open the door and leaps back. The man shines his flashlight into the dark entryway and Mark raises his rifle to fire. No movement. No sound—except for their haggard breathing, the wind weeping through the shattered windows, the creaking of the door, their tattered heartbeats. They enter the building slowly. The drywall is crumbling. Iron beams can be seen. Rats are heard scurrying through the walls. They step in puddles of water from snow on the roof that had melted and descended like a cascading, meandering waterfall through the cracks. Their breath fogs before them, paving the way. They move through several large rooms. One is filled with a Bessemer converter, another with several blast furnaces, and an electric-arc furnace and a Stassano furnace. Through one door they find a collection of steel bars, angles, pipes, plates, and sheets. They begin hauling the sheets and plates to the truck, moving quickly, sweating even in the cold: the steel is heavy. They stop only for a few cigarette breaks. They load down the truck, hoping the weight will help it ascend the slight incline along State Avenue.

“That will do,” the man says after loading in the sixteenth sheet. Marks rubs his hands, deep creases and bruises emerging at the joints. “I think so.”

They get back into the truck and shut their doors.

Mark stares out the window, looking over the broken windows. God, it was eerie... The man puts the key in the ignition.

The boy looks into the rearview mirror. The sun is lowering closer to the line of trees on Price Hill behind them. “Come on, let’s go.” He looks back to the man.

The man’s face is ashen. “The truck won’t start.”

Mark’s heart drops like the Time’s Square glitter-ball on New Year’s Eve. “What?”

The man wrestles with the key, twisting it in the ignition. Nothing. “I left the lights on…”

“How the hell did you leave the lights on?” the boy exclaims.

“I don’t know, I guess I turned them on…”

“Fuck!” Mark shouts, slamming his fist into the dashboard.

The man keeps trying to activate the ignition, nervous sweat trickling down his brow. Mark throws open the door, leaps out.

The man glares at him. “Where the hell are you going?”

“The hell outta here,” Mark answers, and he disappears into the dark building. The man tries once more, curses, opens his door, and leaps out.

They push through a door that reads WAREHOUSE and find themselves surrounded by wooden crates stacked high like bales of hay, stickers with numbers and digits and Chinese symbols splashed over the dusty planks. The boy splashes the flashlight through the room; it reflects upon a piece of glass around the corner of a stack of crates. He and the man run forward, and turning around the crates, they find an old van with blown-out tires. It has an expired license plate.

“Do you know how to hotwire a van?” the boy asks.

“No,” the man answers, eyeing the boy. “Do you?”

“No.”

“Why the hell couldn’t you have been a convict…”

“Maybe the keys are inside.” The boy runs up to the driver’s door, tugs. “It’s locked.”

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“Then break the glass,” the man says, surveying the room. Crates tower all around them, and along one wall is an abandoned work area. Saws and welders and iron bars lay dormant upon the steel shelving. At the far end of the warehouse is a rippled garage door, suffering several dents and scrapes. The man looks back to the boy with the sound of shattered glass; the boy had taken the handle of the flashlight and swung it into the window. Now he sets the flashlight on the seat, reaches inside, and unlocks the door. He steps back and swings it open. “Are there any keys?” the man asks. Mark shakes his head:
No
.

They both spin around with the sound that carries through the wounded windows. A soft melancholy tune on an even darker night.