Dwellers of the Night: The Complete Collection (8 page)

He sets the beer down. He knows what he must do.

It takes him all his effort. He lifts her out of the tub, soaking his clothes. Her face is clean, for the blood has been washed off by the water. He is at least thankful for that. He carries her out of the bathroom, her body draped lifelessly and stiff between his two arms. He sets her on the bed and sits beside her. He leans over, fights off tears, kisses her gently on the eyelids. “My baby… My precious…

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My angel…” He covers her with the comforter and rests her head on the pillow. He places the lilies across her chest, on top of the comforter. “These are for you…” The words end it all. He falls down on his knees beside the bed and buries his face into the pillow. He sobs horrendously. She doesn’t move. “I’m sorry…” The words are broken, tainted by his weeping. “I’m so sorry… I’m so sorry… If I would have been here… If only I would not have abandoned you… We’d be together…”

The afternoon has come. He sits in the living room, on the cheap sofa. Sunlight comes through the closed blinds, casting bars against the far wall. The plasma-screen television sits blanket, catching only his exhausted reflection.
She’s sleeping upstairs
, he tells himself. He holds the beer now in his hands. A battery-operated stereo sits on the coffee table, splayed atop
INTOUCH
and
GLOBE

magazines. She loves reading those magazines, staying up-to-date with fashion and the stars. He always made fun of her for it. Kiddingly, of course. He would always tease her. He places a CD into the stereo player. It is a CD she made for him back when they started dating. He pulls the beer to his mouth as the gentle music floats through the living room. He closes his eyes, drinks. The music, the sound of another voice, the melodies and sonnets… It soothes him. He wonders if music isn’t the sound of the gods. It is beautiful. ALL THE SAME—The Sick Puppies. ♫I don’t mind, I don’t care, as long as you’re here…♫ They had ridden in the car, cruising down the 3-lane highways of Cincinnati, and whenever this song came on, Kira would exclaim, “This is our song! It comes on every time we get in the car!”

SHE TALKS TO ANGELS—The Black Crows. ♫She keeps a lock of hair in her pocket; she wears a cross around her neck; yes, the hair is from a little boy; and the cross is someone she has not met…♫

She always wore a cross around her neck. An iron cross her father had bought her when she moved to Cincinnati for college at U.C. The cross hadn’t been on her in the bath; he makes a mental note: “I have to find it.”

BUBBLY—Colbie Caillat. ♫I’ve been awake for a while now; you’ve got me feeling like a child now; cause every time I see your face, I get the tingles in a silly place; it starts in my toes, and I wrinkle my nose; wherever it goes, I always know; that you’ll make me smile, please stay for a while now…♫ Whenever she played that song, she would wrinkle her nose. So cute, like a bunny rabbit. And she would wrap her arms around him and squeeze him tight. “You make me feel all bubbly,”

she would say, grinning wildly. The last bubbles she knew were those escaping her mouth under the water as she choked on her last breaths.

OPEN ARMS—Journey. ♫Lying beside you, here in the dark, feeling your heart beat with mine; softly, you whisper; you’re so sincere; how could our love be so blind?♫ The first time they listened to that song together, they were holding one another in the backseat of a car, lying naked together at the park at Mt. Echo. “I feel so comfortable in your arms,” she told him. “All my troubles disappear when I’m with you. If only you could see what your love means to me.”

EVERYTHING—Michael Buble. ♫You’re a falling star, you’re the getaway car, you’re the line in the sand when I go too far; you’re the swimming pool on an August day, and you’re the perfect thing to say. And you play it cool, but it’s kinda cute; oh, when you smile at me, you know exactly what you do; baby, don’t pretend you know it’s true, cause you can see it when I look at you.♫ He had taken her to a Michael Buble concert in Dayton one night, and they sat in the first row. The man had asked them to come onstage, and he told the singer that Kira was his love, and that he would marry her one day. And the man began to sing their song.

DREAMLOVER—Bobby Darin. ♫Every night I hope and pray a dream-lover will come my way. A girl to hold in my arms, and know the magic of her charms. Cause I want a girl to call my own. I want a dream-lover so I don’t have to dream alone.♫ He had found his dream-lover. They had shared in Anthony Barnhart

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his greatest dream—a dream of love and laughter, of bold and daring romance, of devotion and dedication. “Love is not a feeling, it’s an ability,” his father hold told him once. He had never been able to truly practice love until Kira. He was going to marry her. They were going to have children. Their dreams were going to come true.

Now their dreams were dead—crashed on the rocks, broken apart, an abandoned shipwreck. The bottle rests in his hand. The alcohol slides down his throat, burning. He has nothing left. The lyrical melody of Pete Townshend echoes in his mind as he empties the bottle and passes out on the sofa:

♫♫ When tragedy befalls you,

Let my love open the door.

Don’t let it drag you down.

Love can cure all your problems.

Let my love open the door.

You’re so lucky I’m around. ♫♫

No one is around.

He is entirely alone.

He. His bottle. His dead mistress.

The satin box with the ring tumbles from his fingers and lies abandoned and useless on the floor. The beer bottle slides from his fingers and tumbles over the carpet, gushing out. Somewhere a dog barks.

V

He awakes to the sound of barking outside. His head sears with pain, his brain thirsting for hydration.
Fucking hangovers
. He lies across the sofa, tries to go back to sleep, tries to escape once more. The dog continues barking.
Fucking dog
. The barks continue. Each bark racks his temples. He grunts and stands, falls onto the coffee table. Two legs snap and he tumbles onto the floor, the stereo at his side. The batteries have run dry. He stumbles to his feet and heads to the front door. He throws it open. Brilliant sunlight tears through him. The dog barks. He closes his eyes, but the sunlight comes through his eyelids and smacks him with blinding pain. And the dog… That bloody dog. He goes out into the street. Two houses down, a man is lying on his face, half-naked. Blood smears his cheeks, having run down from his ears. The front door to the house is wide open. He must have run outside when the plague hit. A husky dog stands in the street, beside the body, hair onedge. It clamps its mouth around the corpse’s arm and tugs. The man suddenly remembers a lecture in one of his psychology classes. The professor had told them, “They say dogs are man’s best friends. But if you die in your house, and your dog can’t escape and cannot find anything to eat, your dog will eat you.” He had then asked, rhetorically, “Are we humans any different? Remember the Donner Party, when starving pioneers ate those who had died of hypothermia? Or those soccer players whose plane crashed in the Himalayas? They had to eat the flesh of their dead to stay alive. Desperation will drive us to break the perceived and engrained bonds of morality no matter the costs.” He thinks about eating Kira.
No. You can’t think about that
. He moves toward the dog, waving his arms blindly. “Get! Skat!”

The dog stares at him, growls.

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He bends over, picks up a rock along the curb. He throws it at the dog. It misses. “Get!”

The dog releases the corpse’s arm, barks.

He picks up another rock, pauses, throws it through the air.

It hits the dog in the shoulder. It barks and turns, running down the street, tail between its legs. The man walks over to the body, looks down. “Ben Aldridge.” His neighbor. Sometimes they played poker. Not much lately, though. Ben had gotten a job at a factory and worked almost all night shifts. Not last night, though. He had been at home when the nightmare began.

He stands on the back porch. The oaks leaves are turning different colors.
It’s changing early this year
. He holds a bottle of Bud Light. He doesn’t like the stuff. Kira drank it. This is her last bottle. He’ll need more alcohol. It’s the only thing that numbs the pain. The bottle is in one hand, a cigarette in another. He smokes an entire pack. His stomach grumbles. He knows he should eat, but he has no real appetite, despite his cringing stomach. He knows that if he eats, he’ll just puke it back up again. He stubs the cigarette against the brick of the house, gives one last look at the lifeless city, and returns inside.

Now he sits in the chair in the corner of the bedroom, elbows on his knees, head resting in his hands. The headache isn’t so bad. His heart feels heavy and his nerves drained. Empty eyes stare at the figure lying on the bed. He doesn’t smell the scent of rot, the stench of decay, that overbearing aroma of a body going through the stages of decomposition. He thinks nothing of it. He is thankful she isn’t rotting. He wants her to remain in the bed, frozen in place, always a spectacle of beauty. But he knows that will not be the case. Eventually she will rot. Eventually. The word hangs in the air like a stiletto.
Eventually. But not yet. Not yet
. He has to bury her. He’ll take her to the graveyard—no. He’ll bury her behind the house. He won’t disturb anymore bodies. He won’t let her break down like the others: he knows the city will become a cesspool of bacteria and germs as the bodies decompose. In the homes, on the streets, in wrecked cars. The city will become a city of sun-bleached bones, to which threadbare raiment shall cling. And when the snow falls, the rib cages will reach through the snow banks, crawling out into the sunlight. But not Kira. No, not Kira. She will decompose, but she will do so in honor. In the earth. Where she should be. He needs to find a shovel.

He stands beside Ben Aldridge’s body. The dog has gone and not come back. He looks over to the open front door. He’s been inside Ben’s home. He knows where the door to the garage is located. Ben has shovels. But he can’t get the shovels now. Now he has to search. For what? He doesn’t know. Survivors? No. He has seen nothing but death and devastation. He has been spared. As to “Why?”, he can’t answer. And he probably never
will
be able to answer. But he finds himself walking down State Avenue, towards the intersection of Glenway and 8th. He isn’t searching for cigarettes. He has more than enough. But he has run out of alcohol. Yes, he’s searching for alcohol.
Am I really searching?

Or do I just want to get out of the fucking house, away from her, away from the reality that has been thrust
upon me?
He doesn’t know. He doesn’t care.

Several bars line the street near the intersection. He sees the overturned police car near the dead hanging streetlights. Closer is a Cadillac that slammed into a building. He sees a body hunched over the front of the hood, pinned between the brick wall of the sleazy apartment complex and the front bumper of the totaled car. Blood smears the wall from the impact, and the eyes of the victim have popped out of their sockets. Probably from the squeezing and clamping of his abdomen between the wall and the classic car; the pressure burst upwards and downwards. His legs are probably bloated Anthony Barnhart

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with blood, and the pressure forced the eyeballs from the sockets. These thoughts and explanations sprint through the man’s mind.

He walks past, keeping his eyes from the grisly scene. Several bodies lie on the street beside the nearest bar. He stops walking and stares. Four bodies. One is crumpled on the curb, the top of the hair stained with blood and guts. Shattered glass lies around him. Another lies in the street, with half a bottle shoved into his throat. Two others lie on the other side of the street: both lie entangled. The man finds himself taking up the role of the detective, placing the scene together:
Four men exit the bar,
lost in a drunken stupor and enraged at the slightest foul word. One of the men has a bottle, and he smashes it
on the head of one of the other men. The man crumples under the impact, and the man swinging the bottle now
only has half a bottle in his hand, the rim a jagged collection of razor-sharp glass. The fallen man’s friend rushes
him, and the man drives the deadly end of the bottle into his throat, pushing until a fountain of blood sprays. At
the same time, another man leaps on the attacker’s back, and the two of them stumble into the street. How do
they die? No one knows
.

He knows. They all went crazy. Began attacking one another. It was every-man-for-himself. And by the time the two last men were fighting, with blood streaming from their eyes, ears, and nose, the plague took them down, and they fell together, still wrapped in the intimate dance of combat. He finds piecing together the scene a gentle escape. His mind clicks and whirs. But it is useless. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters anymore.

He pushes open the front door of the bar. A little bell chimes. The place stinks of cigarettes and alcohol. Two young women lie on the floor amidst overturned tables. He walks past them, around the bar. The bartender is nowhere to be seen. It’s better that way. He grabs a few bottles of alcohol—

some Armagnac, a bottle of brandy, a small bottle of whisky, a scotch, and a rum. He can’t carry it all. He walks out of the bar and takes the purse of one of the women on the floor. He dumps the contents on the floor—makeup, some mirrors, a camera, a cell phone—and stuffs the bottles inside. He adds a bourbon and a cognac and zips the purse shut before he leaves.

He walks slowly back home, taking his time; he has no real desire to do what needs to be done. He notices that there are more bodies on the street than he imagined. He had been so preoccupied with getting home—
to being with Kira
, he thinks with a pit of pain in his stomach—that he failed to notice how many bodies there actually were. Lots of people had run out of their homes and died on the curbs.
Why did they run outside?
he wonders as he steps over a teenage boy with striking features: high-brow, wickedly curved lips, and protruding cheek bones. A few cars on the street have bodies in them. Yet there is no body in the car pinning the man to the wall. He imagines the driver must have jumped in a crazed fervor before the car hit the man just before the car pinned the poor victim into the brick wall.