Dwellers of the Night: The Complete Collection (38 page)

“They’re coming out,” Mark says, face ashen.

“Maybe they won’t find us,” the man says. “Maybe they won’t—”

His words are cut off:

The echo of footsteps carry down the hallway.

They sound like scurrying mice.

They climb into the back of the van, locking themselves in, crouching in the darkness.

“Isn’t this familiar?” Mark croons. “And it’s just as cold.”

“Quiet,” the man hisses.

They can hear them outside the van: they have entered the warehouse. The sounds of their horrid, ragged breathing come through the thin sheet metal of the van’s frame. They’ve picked up the scent, and their hearts pound like hunting dogs on the chase. Slowly and slowly they draw closer to the van, and Mark shouts as the van suddenly rocks to the side. He scrambles in the darkness, and his head bangs into the side of the van. His world goes dizzy for a moment, and he nearly bites through his tongue as searing pain rockets through his skull. The man is thrown onto the floor, rolling like a rag-doll, as the van shakes again. The dark-walkers throw themselves against the sides, and those within the van can hear the attackers’ heavy breathing, their snarls, the animals thirsting. A great scratching sound fills the air as they draw their fingernails across the side of the vehicle, trying to get inside. They ram their shoulders into the van once more, and it lifts. The man rolls into Mark, and in the next moment they are shouting as the van tips onto its side. They crumple together, lying on the side of the van, their breath fetid and warm and uninviting. The glass windshield in the front of the van shatters, and the dark-walkers climb into the cab. They work with the small door leading to the back of the van, gracing it with greedy fingers.

“They’re going to get in,” Mark growls, squeezing out from underneath the man.

“I know,” the man says, swinging his hands blindly in the darkness, trying to orient himself.

“You just
had
to leave the lights—”

The van quakes again, and the sound of denting metal from the back of the van echoes.

“They’re going to come in through the back door,” Mark says.

The back door dents farther in. The lock is about to snap.

“The last ride of the Valkyries,” the man says under his breath.

Mark looks up at him, confused. “What?”

The man balls his fist, lets out a raging shout, and charges the door. Anthony Barnhart

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Chapter Twelve

Nightmares & Dreamscapes

“Death is nothing to us and no concern of ours… When we shall be no more, when the union of body and spirit that engenders us has been disrupted—to us, who shall then be nothing, nothing by any hazard will happen any more at all. Nothing will have power to stir our

senses, not though earth be fused with sea and sea with sky… Rest assured that we have nothing to fear in death. One who no longer is cannot suffer, or differ in any way from one who has never been born.”

- Lucretius (99-55 B.C.)

The back door bursts open; the doors swing outward, slamming into the devilish creatures spit right from the mouth of hell; they stumble over backwards as the two figures leap out with a horrendous cry. The dark-walkers shriek, their yellow teeth aching for speckled blood reflecting in the moonlight coming in jagged pillars through the cryptic windows. They close upon the two figures, which spin and buckle, swinging their fists through the air, throwing out their legs. Dark-walkers are thrown to the ground; fists connect with their taught faces, and they spew bits of teeth and gum as they stagger backwards.

One of the dark-walkers grabs the man in pale blue hands, and the man lets out a shout as he is hurled to the ground: he slides across the pavement and rolls into a crate. The dark-walker descends upon him; using the crate for leverage, he pulls himself up, grabs the crate in both hands, and yanks it outwards. The crates shudder, twist, contort, and fall. The dark-walker looks up with wide eyes and then disappears amidst the broken wooden boards and the gnarled twists of granulated steel. The man runs into the darkness blindly, hearing the boy’s shouts, caring only for himself. The steel bench aligned with tools emerges from the darkness; he grabs an iron bar and swings around. A dark-walker lunges at him from the shadows. The man grips the iron bar white-knuckled and swings outwards, gritting his teeth; the bar connects with the dark-walker’s face, twisting the head to the side, and the cheek impales, revealing a spurt of blood and chipped bone. The creature falls to the ground and screams, jaw dislocated. The man grunts as he is attacked from behind and knocked to the ground; he rolls onto his back and raises the bar in both hands against the throat of the attacker who has fallen atop of his chest. Spit dribbles down onto the man’s face, warm, foaming. The man wrenches over to the side, sends the dark-walker into the steel bench. He shakes as he tries to stand. Another dark-walker hurls itself into him, knocking him into a pile of crates. He swings the bar around and it connects with the creature’s neck, which snaps upon impact. The body crumples to the ground. Two dark-walkers emerge before him; the man backs up into the corrugated sides of the crates. They slowly move forward, hands outstretched, fingers—claws—twitching. The man looks up and behind him to the towering stack of wooden boxes, and he hurls the bar at the dark-walkers. He doesn’t even stop to see if it connected; he turns and begins climbing. The dark-walkers lunge forward and grab at his heels; he kicks their hands away and continues to climb.

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Mark watches the man disappear around the side of the crates. Several dark-walkers lunge at him. Mark turns and runs towards the door. The dark-walkers snap at one another and give chase. He enters the dark corridor that stinks of mildew and guano; his head swims, and he doesn’t know which way to go. He turns and runs into the darkness. The dark-walkers are right behind him. He ascends a flight of rickety iron steps and emerges into a large room. The dark-walkers pack themselves into the narrow stairwell and fight over one another to see who gets to chase first. Mark eyes a hideous iron beast in the darkness: a furnace.

The man continues climbing the crates. The dark-walkers congregate below, snarling and snapping at one another, enraged. The crates are stacked against the wall, close to the windows. He reaches the top of the crates and runs towards a window. Most of the glass is shattered. He punches the last remnants of glass away, caring not that the old shards cut deep into the folds of skin between his knuckles. He lifts himself up and through, and he twists and dangles outside the building, the snowdrift fifteen feet below. He closes his eyes, gives a quick little prayer to an unknown god, and releases. He falls into the black void.

The dark-walkers giving chase reach the next floor just as Mark enters the furnace. He turns and sees them in the darkness, nothing but pinpricks of light in the shadows, the scant moonlight, defragmented by the dust on the windows, dancing in their eyes. Mark grabs the heavy door to the furnace and begins pulling it shut. It grinds and catches on the floor. He keeps his eyes from his assailants as he pulls it with more force. The hinges creak and groan. The door slowly moves in its concentric arc.

The man lands in the snow, and his body is quickly engulfed. The freezing ice squeezes through him, and he fights to be free. He emerges from the pale grave and stumbles into the street. The howls of the dark-walkers fill the night, coming from every direction: from the hills, from downtown, from the groceries and the factories and the houses, from across the river that lies dead and dormant, void of ferries or trawlers or tugboats or coal-transports. He passes beside the truck laden with steel sheets and he reaches the fence. He grabs it with both hands. Behind him, a pair of beady-white eyes watches from the door to the factory. Its hands twitch and its head cocks to the side, examining the strange vision as the dilapidated man begins to climb. It is shoved out of the way by several more dark-walkers who run into the street and throw themselves at the fence. But the man is already climbing. He reaches the top and begins to pull himself over. He gives a last glance to the darkwalker in the doorway. It is an old man with swollen nipples over washboard ribs. At one time it could have been a Santa Claus with the white beard and mustache and thick eyebrows. Now it just watches him with a lazy apathy. The man for a moment sees the dark-walker not emaciated, but plump, dressed in a red gown in the shopping mall, greeting little children and giving them candycanes. And there are his elves—volunteers dressed in green stockings and wearing oversized red hats. He sees them in their costumes, tearing open the bowels of a screaming child, and the child clutches his candy cane. He shakes the image from his mind as he begins to climb down the other side of the fence.

The dark-walkers are too close. The boy curses and abandons the furnace. He takes off running again, and he enters a room filled with tools. He grabs a saw hanging from a hook in the wall and spins around. A dark-walker runs into the room. The boy swings the saw outwards, and the serrated edges connect with the dark-walker’s throat; the dark-walker twists to the ground, and the boy tumbles Anthony Barnhart

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over him. He twists on his side. The dark-walker’s feet are kicking wildly in the dark, and its hands are groping at its throat, blood staining the rusted saw and bubbling like a Greek fountain. The boy rips the saw out of its gullet, and a pillar of blood rises as the dark-walker convulses on the ground. She is a girl, maybe fifteen, perhaps once a cheer-leader or a nerd who enjoyed studying calculus. The boy doesn’t care. Monsters now. He grips the saw as another dark-walker enters. He swings it low, and it connects with the creature’s knee-cap. It tumbles over and falls; it tries to stand, but collapses, howls in pain, scratches at its knees, trying to rid the pain of hewn ligaments. The boy leaves the room and a dark-walker comes from the side. The boy doesn’t have time to react, and the darkwalker is upon him; its fingers with lavish fingernails slash, and the boy shouts and rips away, blood seeping down his arm through the long-sleeved shirt. The dark-walker growls at him, and the boy lets out a shriek and swings the saw with wild force; it cuts right through the ligaments and bone of the spine, and the dark-walker’s head rolls off and onto the floor. The body collapses into a bundle. Warm blood sprays over the boy’s shirt, and he stumbles back towards the furnace. He switches the saw blade to his other hand and grips his hurt arm with the other. He heads towards the stairwell only to hear more coming up. He grips the saw tight but can already feel his strength leaving him: his shirt sleeve is already thick with blood. He fears the dark-walker may have sliced an artery.

The chains in the fence are covered with ice, and the man loses his grip; he shouts as he falls, and he lands on his feet, twists to the side, lets out a shout, and falls into the snow. He tries to pick himself, but lightning pain arches through his leg and into his back. He takes several deep, gulfing breaths, as if he were underwater for hours and just surfaced. He falls back into the snow and reaches for his ankle. The mere brush of his fingertip brings agonizing pain. He falls backwards into the arctic drift, hears the dark-walkers at the fence, sees the clouds before the moon parting, and the moon wreathed with stars shining down on him. The smiling Man in the Moon grins at him, a bitter mockery.

He has shut the door, a feat as his strength is all but drained. He staggers backwards into the heart of the furnace with its scorched walls and its stink of charcoal. He slides against the far wall and can hear the dark-walkers outside the door, throwing themselves against it—the sound is low and muffled, for the door is heavy. Mark sets the blood-spattered saw beside him and slowly works to take off his shirt. The cold within the furnace—the irony of ironies—is nail-biting, but he has no choice. He grits his teeth as he swings the shirt into a rope with his right hand, admiring the heavy blood with its peculiar scent trailing down his arms like a melting glacier running through a canyon. He wraps the shirt tight around the wound and lets out a sordid cry with the pain. He can feel the blood pulsing through his veins, and his heart flutters in his chest. He has done all he can. He relaxes against the cold steel wall and sees nothing but blackness—a deep, ephemeral darkness that can be cut with a dull knife. He must wait and see—wait, and see, if he is alive come morning.

The man crawls through the snow, whimpering with each movement of his foot through the splintering cold. Between two piles of snow-covered rocks sits a Caterpillar Bobcat, a testament to a world that once was and never will be again. He can almost hear the shouts of construction workers, the crude jokes, the scent of cigarettes in the burning summer heat. But now there is nothing but the wailing of the dark-walkers wailing against the fence and the cold that cuts deep into the bones and the grinning moon with its Cheshire smirk. Each inch feels like a mile, but he reaches one of the large rubber tires. He pulls himself against it, and grabbing the side of the Bobcat, lifts himself up. The cab of the vehicle is huddled behind plate-glass; he grabs the door and swings it open. He tries to lift himself up into the cab, shrieks in pain, collapses back into the snow. He tries again, but resides once Anthony Barnhart

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more in the snow, the cold numbing and the pain intoxicating. The moonlight glimmers off the icecovered fence, and it pools in the eyes of the creatures watching him, their starving drool glistening as it spirals to the ground and mixes with the foot-trodden snow. The fence wobbles back and forth, and a pair of dark-walkers begins to climb. One loses its grip and falls back into the hoard, but the other continues to climb. The man tries to number them but loses count at seventeen. It doesn’t matter. Only one needs to get over the fence. He is crippled. A lame housecat surrounded by rabid dogs. A wild buffalo surrounded by Indians. A zebra standing amidst the oasis with alligators closing in on either side. He can only wait for them to reach him.