Dwellers of the Night: The Complete Collection (59 page)

“That’s so cruel!” he playfully mused, pulling her close to him once more.

“It’s just the truth,” she said, gazing into his engulfing eyes.

“Unfortunately,” Patrick said, “it is.”

And though surrounded on all sides by other skaters, they felt entirely alone in the world. Just the two of them under the stars and moon. Just the two of them lost in one another, just the two of them leaning forward, just the two of their hearts beating rapidly in their chests, just the two of them kissing—entirely alone in the world.

∑Ω∑

She is lost in the moment, totally ignorant of the fallen world in which she bathes. The skates cut shallow grooves over the ice, and she finds herself doing spins and leaps, the talent from her preteen skating contests returning with vibrant force. She launches through the air, does a 180-degree-turn, then lands again, bowing; she can almost hear the cheering of the crowds and the popping bulbs of cinematic cameras. She gazes up to the cerulean blue sky, the sun smiling down upon her, and she twists on the skates, shaving the ice in a harmonious ballet. She nears the hub of the fountain, jutting out of the ice like a monolith, and she looks down… She slams the backs of her skates down into the ice and slows to a stop, staring at the ice. The dream is shattered, replaced by the gnawing reality to which she has nearly become complacent. With a sudden onslaught, it all returns to her, and she finds the cold cutting, the wind searing, the silence howling. Staring up at her from the ice is a mottled blue face, the eyes open wide, the mouth gaping. The right cheek is pressed up against the shallow bottom of the ice-sheet, and his fingers, withered by the cold and wind into bony stubs, protrude from the ice like flowers poking through ashes. She stares into that face with its murky eyes, and for a moment she sees Patrick’s face, sees him staring up at her. Anthony Barnhart

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She leaves the ice.

She takes off the skates.

She tosses them into the woods.

And she will never return.

III

Early spring rains came at the end of February, turning the snow into a slimy mush that disappeared down the street gutters. The food supplies had dwindled, and Harker decided to lead a team to shoot some deer across the river. “Most of the deer around Cincinnati have been consumed, but there are still plentiful deer in the northern Kentucky highlands. The zombies or ‘dark-walkers’ haven’t had the patience to hunt them through the rolling hills. Last time we went out, late in November, the deer were overflowing. Let’s hope that nothing has changed.” The man decided to go along with them, needing an escape from the church. Mark had watched them set off, and now he stands atop the church in the dying evening sun, watching as the small motorboat chugs across the Ohio River, a mere speck in the distance, dwarfed by the towering bridges. He hears footsteps behind him and turns.

Katie says, “You’re worried about them?”

“No,” Mark says. “They can handle themselves.”

“It’s faster to take the boat across,” she explains. “And safer.”

Mark eyes her. “Safer?”

“The sick, they won’t cross the water.”

“They can’t swim?”

“We used to see bodies floating down the river, when they would try.”

“I’ll bet it’s because of their motor skills. The man is convinced they’re nothing more than animals. Humanity stripped of personality, dreams, desires. The human, he learns how to swim. It’s not something that comes naturally. But the sick, they’ve lost everything from their former lives—

including knowledge, apparently, of how to swim.”

The small motorboat pulls up alongside the shoreline, the buildings of Newport on the Levee standing above them on a hill. They quickly unload, checking their rifles and gathering their supplies. They split the chore of carrying the luggage, and they set out on foot, climbing the twisting stone stairway that leads to the Levee’s courtyard. They move through the watery snow in silence. The trees of the courtyard are long dead, their branches hanging limp like skeleton fingers over the cobblestones. They pass COLDSTONE CREAMERY, BARNES & NOBLE, the Aquarium. The man can nearly hear the laughter of young couples on a Friday night, first awkward dates at the ice cream parlor, students excited about reading the latest book in the bookstore while sipping STARBUCKS coffee. They descend down a flight of elegant steps to the road behind Newport on the Levee, and they wait in front of an Italian Bistro as Harker makes his way towards a parking garage. A few moments later, the sound of an engine greets them, and 4x4 SUV pulls up beside them. Harker rolls down the automatic window. “Get in.” The man, Kyle, Anthony, and an older fellow named Malkovich climb into the vehicle.

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“This changed everything,” Katie says. “Before this plague… I only had a few friends. I guess that’s what happens when you’re a person like me living in Cincinnati. I considered moving to California, or going north to Dayton. Sometimes a person like me just didn’t fit in, even in Cincinnati.”

“A person like you?” Mark asks.

“You don’t know?”

Mark shakes his head. “No.”

“I’m a lesbian,” she says. “In Cincinnati, lesbians aren’t well liked. I’ve met lots of lesbians here, before the plague, and they had the same sentiments. If you go either far east or far west, things got a little easier. Here in the Midwest, though, especially towards the south, the homosexual lifestyle isn’t really embraced. It’s not like we were beaten or anything. But you’d always get the awkward and even demeaning stares as you walk hand-in-hand with your girlfriend. Once on the bus, I was holding my girlfriend’s hand, and this woman sat down next to me and started preaching to me. Telling me I’m going to burn in hell, that God hates me, all of that. You know what the funny thing is, though? I’ll bet you anything she’s one of the ones stumbling around, half-naked, out of her mind. I’ll bet she succumbed to the plague. Nearly everyone did. And if Carla’s right, then this is the great apocalypse, when God separates the sheep from the goats, the wheat from the tares. Carla’s a fanatical nut, just like that woman, but at least she’s accepting of me. She believes that God saw something good in me, and that’s why I’m still alive. It’s funny: it took a while for some of the people here to accept me, but Carla accepted me right away, because of her theology—no matter how twisted or strained it may be. But eventually, everyone else started accepting me. Even Kyle, who used to hate homosexuality with a passion. Because when you have no choice but to bond together or be destroyed, a person’s sexual orientation means nothing. Don’t get me wrong, Mark. Everything that’s happened, it’s been a shit-load of hell. But, sometimes, even in the ashes, a few flowers will still poke through.”

This is the farthest south he has been since the plague struck. The 4x4 makes its way down I-75 South, and earlier on in the trip, he had spotted the overturned Geo Prizm, which he had foolishly flipped when he tried to avoid the deer running across the road. He realizes that had been nearly seven months ago. The wheels facing the sky had glistened with moisture, and the sun had reflected sharply over the metal siding, the paint long since worn off. They continue driving for a while, and the man feels a twist of nostalgia as they pass the exit leading to the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky Airport. He closes his eyes and leans back in his seat. Weariness overcomes him, and he sleeps for a time, awaking as they are getting off the highway. The road twists and turns. Thick woods crowd the road from either side, and they pass a few homes with cars parked in the driveway. Some windows are shattered, doors hanging on the hinges. A flock of birds passes overhead, climbing in the sky, heading north. The man grips the rifle tighter in his hands. They turn onto another road, which twists and turns, following a churning river filled with broken trees and clumps of melting ice. They pass over a wooden bridge that, to the man, seems nearly ready to collapse. A few moments later Harker slows the vehicle. They pass a graveyard, and the man finds comfort that none of the graves are dug up with bony hands reaching forth from the hardened soil:
Zombies my ass
. Harker pulls into a parking lot and stops the car. Everyone starts getting out, and the man is thankful to stretch his legs: the ride had been short but cramped. He leans against the vehicle and pulls out a cigarette, begins to smoke, looking at the building across the street: SOUTHFORK CHRISTIAN CHURCH. A hawk perches on the base of the steeple, watching them with curious eyes.

“Carla believes this to be the 21st-Century version of Noah’s flood, and the survivors have been chosen by God to restart the human race.” Katie shakes her head. “Her faith in God is stubborn. After Anthony Barnhart

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her husband died, she went through a crisis of faith. She nearly abandoned God, but she became terrified of losing all that she had ever known. Religion was that which defined her life, and she had already lost her husband—if she lost God as well, what would she have left? So she delved deeper and deeper into religion, becoming a stoic saint. She began going to one of those extremely strict churches, thinking that if she obeyed God more and more, then God would remove the sorrow she felt over the loss of her husband. While she was there, she had a vision of an angel smiling at her from the cross, and she knew without a trickle of doubt that God loved her and had chosen her for some special mission. She was pregnant at the time, with her husband’s child; she had conceived only a week before his death. When her 3-month-old baby boy died with the plague, she found burying the child difficult, and she went through another fit of rage at God for stripping the earth clean, and taking from her the only semblance of an earlier life: her baby. She spent her days in painful, agonizing prayer, tearing apart the Bible, looking for answers. The loneliness and isolation consumed her, and her mind—under great stress—became warped. The only tool for understanding the plague was to be found in her Bible, and she became more and more radical in her beliefs with each passing week. Now she preaches that this is the End of Days spoken of by the Old Testament prophets and the New Testament Revelation of Saint John. She’s pretty adamant that those who have become darkwalkers were the wicked and corrupt, and those who survived are the elite, chosen by God to be the elite, and they must
continue
to be the elite, or they will be taken, too.”

Mark takes a deep breath. “My sister, she survived the plague.”

“And yet she’s not here with you.”

He shakes his head. “The dark-walkers got her.”

Katie doesn’t say anything for a moment. “Don’t tell Carla.”

They had set up the hunting canopy atop the church, accessed by a hatch and staircase leading to the roof. Adrian and Malkovich had the first watch, armed with their rifles and silence of the woodlands. Everyone else gathered in the basement of the church, faces illuminated by scattered oil-lamps and the burning cherries of cigars. The man smokes quietly as Anthony and Harker talk, and Kyle listens. The man remembers when he and his friends would go camping at Red River Gorge farther south in Kentucky; they would sit around and smoke cigars, throw back beers, and then go hiking, rock climbing, and swimming when afternoon came. They can hear owls hooting outside the thin church walls, but yet they feel safe: the nearest town is miles away, and no one can imagine why darkwalkers would be wandering this far out into the countryside. Anthony says, “So a little blind girl goes up to her mom and says, ‘Mommy, mommy, when will I be able to see?’ Her mom replies, ‘I’ll tell you what. I’ll take you to the chemist and get you some special cream for your eyes, and you will be able to see in the morning.’ So off they went to the chemist, got the cream, and went home, all the whole the little girl was getting more and more excited at the prospect of being able to see again. When they got home, the mother put the cream on the little girl’s eyes, wrapped a bandage around her head, and took her to bed. The following morning, the little girl stumbled into her mom’s bedroom and excitedly shouted, ‘Quick, Mommy, take off the bandage so that I will be able to see again!’ So the mother took off all the bandages, taking her time, and all the while the little girl was getting more and more excited. Once they were off the little girl’s eyes, she said, ‘But, Mommy, I still can’t see!’ To which her mother replied, ‘April fools!’”

Harker grins at the joke, throws in his own. “This salesman stopped at a farmhouse one evening to ask for room and board for the night. The farmer told him there was no vacant room. ‘I could let you sleep with my daughter,’ the farmer said, ‘if you promise not to bother her.’ The salesman, he was a good-looking fellow with charm and whit, and he can only imagine the joys and pleasures—

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not to mention the stories!—following a night with the farmer’s daughter! So he agrees. After a hearty supper, he was led to the room. He undressed in the dark, slipped into bed, and felt the farmer’s daughter at his side. He tried to pull a few moves on her, but she wouldn’t respond. Dejectedly he laid back and ran his fingers over her body, playing with himself at the same time. The next morning, he asked for his bill. ‘It’ll just be two dollars,’ the farmer told him, ‘since you had to share a bed.’ The salesman said, ‘Your daughter was very cold.’ ‘Yes, I know,’ the farmer replied. ‘We’re going to bury her today.’”

“That’s disgusting!” Kyle exclaims, spewing a flake of his cigar.

“Quiet,” Anthony hisses. “You’re going to scare away the deer.”

“They’re outside, you idiot.”

“All right,” Kyle says. “I have one. Two guys were swapping stories in the park one day, and one guy—a Vietnam vet—mentioned that during the war, he was captured and held for weeks without food. The other guy asked, ‘How could you survive without food?’ ‘It wasn’t easy,’ he said,

‘But I had a big meal before I was captured, and I learned to eat my own shit.’ The other man was disgusted, refused to believe the vet’s story. Without a second thought, the vet reached into his pants, shit in his hand, and promptly ate it on the spot. The second guy exclaimed, ‘My God! If you can do that so easily, we can bet big money and rake in a fortune!’ The vet liked the idea; he could use the money. The next day, the guy had set up a bet with two wealthy but unbelieving high-rollers. Both were skeptical and thought it would be easy money; ‘No one can eat their own shit.’ The vet’s friend set down a plate full of shit in front of the vet, and the vet looks down, ready to dig in, when all of a sudden he bolts from the table, and projectile puke streaks across the room right on the face of the two gamblers. In a rage, the gamblers kick the shit out of both the vet and his buddy, take their winnings, and leave. The vet’s friend weeps, ‘We lost it all! Why in the hell didn’t you eat the shit?!’