Dwellers of the Night: The Complete Collection (94 page)

III

The captives surround him. Their skin clings to their bones, and their clothes are nothing more than rags. All beauty and radiance that at one time had emanated from them has all but disappeared. They are nothing but cattle being led to the slaughter, rodents in a laboratory, nothing but flowers long wilted and simply waiting to be blown away by the nostalgic breeze. The elderly woman guides Mark to an old chair in the corner. There are shelves along the walls, filled with empty canning jars for grapes and jellies and vegetables. The woman tells him, “They keep us locked down in here. They beat us. They torture us. They do… unimaginable… things to us. At one time we cared. But we’ve grown to accept it. This has become our fate. We are prisoners here, and there is no way to escape. We let them do what they want. We no longer protest.” She points to the man on the cot; he is sleeping: “He was here long before us. They cut off his legs, and they’ve been cooking his meat for dinner. They’ll come back in a day or two. Take his arms. And then they’ll take the rest of him.” She begins to tear up. “That man… He served in Vietnam. He was a family man. He lost his wife and two daughters with the sickness. He was just trying to find a place to belong, just trying to survive, and this is what they did to him. These men, they are animals. Brutes. Beasts. They are worse than the night-stalkers themselves. To them, we are nothing but pieces of meat. They do to us what they will. And when we die, or even before we die, they will eat us, too. Just like they’re eating that man.” She shakes her head. “I used to think God would come and deliver us. I used to go to church. I used to sing in the choir. I used to read my Bible every night and pray before every meal. But this changed everything. The Bible tells us that mankind is made in the image of God. But I have seen what these people do, and if that is the image of God… Then God is not deserving of my worship. He is not even deserving of existence. He isn’t going to help us. Our only hope is to die.”

Anthony Barnhart

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The elderly woman leaves him. He sits alone in the chair. Some time passes; Mark doesn’t keep count. He can feel the blood drying on his skin, his wounds scabbing up. Each breath hurts his lungs, and his head is wracked in pain. Someone comes up to him. An older man. Probably the man’s age. He looks somewhat healthy. The man sits down on the floor next to Mark, and he tells him, “I’m from Pittsburgh. There was a little haven there. A prison that had been cleaned out. It was pretty safe. We heard on the radio about what was going on in Aspen. We were stuck in a prison—a fucking
prison
—and then there was Aspen. Far away… But not too far. There’s a town there. It’s fortified. You can walk the streets at night. You can make friends. Start families. Begin a new life. Thirteen of us renovated a GREYHOUND BUS. We put bars on the windows, locks on the doors. We made it impregnable. And we headed west. We didn’t have any problems. Even at night, we stayed in the bus, and none of them got inside. The bus broke down just south of Indianapolis. We’d gone through Kentucky and up into Indiana. We were working on the engine when they came. They acted as if they cared. As if they were normal, compassionate people. And then they proceeded to shoot. They killed several of us. The rest of us… They bound us with rope and put us in the back of their trucks. Some of us tried to escape. We were able to get out of the truck. They rounded us up, of course. And then they punished us—by punishing everyone who
didn’t
try to escape. They took them behind a gas station, and they just… Shot them all. Execution style. They were screaming and crying. They shot every one of them. Now we’re here. They’re starving us. And we know what they’re going to do. They’re going to eat every one of us.”

Mark asks about Aspen, how the radio signal had gone dead. The man tells him, “They announced that they were going off the air. Said that they’d attracted some rogues, that the rogues had tried to get in, shot up a bunch of people. They killed the rogues, of course. And they said that the radio signal was deteriorating, because the satellites in space were going out-of-sync. So they went off the air. I have no doubt they’re there. But what does it matter? We’re never going to get there. Hope is a sick son of a bitch, full of empty promises.”

The man asks how Mark had been captured, and Mark tells him about the boys. The man nods, silent. Then he says, “They’ve done that to lots of people. These men, they’re just… Words can’t describe how awful they are. They prey upon peoples’ compassion. Humans, we are compassionate creatures. We care about others. We’re altruistic. I was a social worker, I’ve seen lots of shit. Lots of brutality, lots of cruelty, abuse of all kinds. But I’ve seen so much care, so much benevolence, so much selfsacrifice at the same time. There are people in this world—good people—who would break their own back and lie paralyzed in a hospital bed for the rest of their lives just to grant someone his or her dreams. I remember one time, I saw on the news, there was a car burning on the side of the highway. A random driver got out and ran up to the car. There was a little girl stuck in her seat-belt, and the mom had passed out in the grass. There were people standing there, just staring. This random driver, he got down and crawled inside, through the shattered window, and helped the little girl out, knowing the risks. He got her out, and then the gasoline caught fire. He put the little girl underneath him and hovered over her; his back was torn apart by the blast, and he died in the hospital. Why would someone do such a thing? He didn’t know the girl. He had a good life. But he was a
good
person. He put others before himself.” He points upstairs, to the sound of muffled laughter. “These men are the total opposite. They prey upon those who are altruistic. They prey upon those who care.”

“I heard someone say that this sickness has brought out the worst in people,” the man says. “I don’t agree. It’s simply shown people for who they really are. There are people who have sacrificed Anthony Barnhart

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themselves so that others will survive. They were good people before the sickness, and their goodness was just exemplified when it mattered most. Then there were people before the sickness who cared only about themselves, who treated other people like toys, people who would backstab someone for their own gain. This sickness has just exemplified who they really are. And it’s a sad reality, but in this world we live in, this new… ‘Dark Age’… it is the selfish, the cruel, the barbaric who survive the longest.” Mark doesn’t say anything, only hopes that they’ll get what they deserve: an equally cruel and barbaric death.

IV

The two men move slowly through the corn. Their feet are wrapped in shadows, the sun barely penetrating the tips of the stalks. The man quietly directs Kyle, and Kyle moves in the opposite direction, staying low. He moves up along one of the rows and crouches down. He is looking out into the clearing with the overgrown grass weaving back and forth in the wind. He lies down on his stomach and pulls the M16 around, facing it outwards. The WINCHESTER is at his side. He is silent as the man moves forward from the other side of the clearing. Kyle watches as the man nears the house. He is wearing the corpse’s jacket and coon-skin cap. He is holding the dead raider’s M16, moving slowly, at a casual pace. The guard at the entrance stomps out his cigarette, grabs his own assault rifle. He approaches the man, asks where the others are. The man turns and looks into the corn, pointing. The guard stops behind the man, and then he realizes his mistake. Before he can raise his gun in defense, the man wrenches around, slamming the butt of the rifle into the guard’s face. The guard lets out a grunt and falls, his vision obscured with blood, the artery in his forehead rupturing. He scrapes at his eyes and opens his mouth to shout, but the man drops the M16 in the grass and drops on top of the man, crushing his lungs with his knee. The man looks towards the closed door and, flipping the knife out from the slit in his jacket, draws the blade over the guard’s throat with a vicious slash. A spray of blood greets the man, and he grabs the M16 and stands, moves towards the doorway. Kyle flips off the safety on his own assault rifle and waits.

The man steps up onto the porch. In the dying light he can see some of Mark’s blood on the rickety wooden boards. He presses his ear against the heavy cedar door, can hear laughter inside. The strumming of a guitar. His fingers are tense, and a cold sweat pops over his brow. He looks towards the corn, cannot see Kyle amidst the perpendicular rows of stalks. He steps away from the door, takes a breath, raises his foot to kick in the door. That’s when he hears one of the men inside: “I’m going for a fucking smoke, can anyone bum a damned light?” The man hears muffled conversation, and then footsteps coming towards the door. He ducks to the right side of the door, and he waits.

Kyle draws the M16’s sight over all the windows. There is no movement. He is well aware of the setting sun, and nervousness consumes his bones. He looks off to the side of the house, and in the back there are several trucks with 4x4 tires parked in the grass. There is a gravel drive leading north to the next road; a chicken walks past, clucking and pecking at the ground. It looks at Kyle, then continues on its way, ruffling its feathers. Kyle bites his lip and squints down the sight, watching the man at the doorway.

Anthony Barnhart

Dwellers of the Night

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The front door opens, and a figure emerges. There is a cigarette in his mouth, and right as he ignites the cheap gas station lighter, the man attacks him with his knife. The man lets out a scream as the man grabs him, but his scream becomes a gurgling brook as blood fills his lungs. The knife is bloody once more, and the body falls to the ground, going into spasms, the legs kicking and squirming, making a racket. The man hears the others running towards the entrance. He sheathes the knife and yanks up his gun, hops in front of the door, trigger depressed. The flashes from the barrel stun the assailants, and bullets scatter and pepper the walls. The roar is deafening. Bodies collapse in the hallway. The man rushes forward. A figure comes from the side, slamming into him; he is knocked onto the ground, the M16 skittering across the wooden floor, coming to rest against the legs of a cushioned chair. A large man with hairy fists and a wicked scowl jumps on top of him, delivering stunning blows into the man’s face. Blood pours down the man’s face, and he reaches up with his hands, grabs the assailant’s head. The assailant mutters and growls under his breath, and the man applies sixty pounds of pressure and twists; suddenly the overweight raider on top of him goes limp, his neck snapped, and he falls heavily on top of him. Raiders in the corridor start shooting their assault rifles, but their bullets splash harmlessly into the corpse. The man huddles underneath the body, sweat mingling with his blood, and he doesn’t know how he’s gotten there, everything has happened so quickly, and he doesn’t know what to do. He’s fucking pinned.

Kyle can see the flashes from the gunfight through the windows. A stray bullet hits a window, and it shatters. Something in his peripheral vision registers, and he swings the sights of the M16 over to the side of the building. Several men with guns are running towards the entrance. Kyle doesn’t think, feels nothing but recoil: the M16 sings, and the bullets tear into the group. It only takes a second or two, and their bodies are lying in the grass, and the wall is stained with their blood slowly dripping into the weeds, puddling up among the dead vines scaling the wall in a leafy embrace.

The man can hear them reloading. He groans and shoves the bullet-riddled body off of himself. He reaches across the floor, grabs the M16. The raiders shout, raising their weapons; he rolls onto his side and opens fire. The bullets spray into them, and their bodies stumble backwards, weapons falling from their hands; their bodies open up into wells of blood, and they collapse against the wall. A framed picture creaks, snaps, and falls, shattering at their twitching feet. The man slowly gets to his feet, wipes blood from beneath his brow. His lungs are searing. His heart is sprinting. He raises the M16 and slowly moves into the hall. He steps over the dead bodies, enters the kitchen. The guitar is speckled with bullet-holes, and the strings are tattered and recoiled. The two boys are standing in the corner, their entire bodies shaking in fear. He ignores them. He peers out the back window, sees the trucks driving down the gravel drive, high-tailing it north. He hears shouting and finds the cellar. He kneels down, grips the handle, opens it up. The dim evening light coming through the back window reflects in several pairs of eyes. He lets them out, helping them up the ladder, tells them that they need to move fast. Most are too weak to move, having lost limbs and being undernourished. Mark greets the man, but he doesn’t say anything. The man pulls his pistol out of his belt and gives it to him, is shocked at the scars and bruises over the boy’s body. Those within the cellar know they cannot escape before nightfall, they won’t be able to run through the fields. They ask to stay behind, to come out when morning comes. The man hands them his M16. “We’ll come back in the morning. I promise.” He looks over at Mark, whose eyes are wide, shocked at the man’s apparent compassion. The man now has no weapon. He moves into the corridor as they shut the cellar door. He wrangles an M16 out of one of the guard’s hands. Mark is now behind him. “It’s almost night-fall,” he says. Anthony Barnhart

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“They’ll be coming—’’ His words are cut short. They can hear the wails of the dark-walkers growing louder in the distance. “Never-mind. It’s a moot point.”

V

Mark and the man rush out of the house. Kyle leaps up and joins them, emerging from the cornfield. In one hand he carries the M16 and in the other the WINCHESTER. The sun is nearly set, and the cries of the dark-walkers waft over the tips of the corn, carrying amidst the rows, reaching out into the darkest regions of the human heart. The rows of corn flash by on either side, and the darkness consumes them. Then there comes blinding light, the roar of engines; they look behind them and see three pairs of headlights swirling around them. Three of the raiders have turned their 4x4s around and are sweeping after them, creating great swathes through the field. There comes the ringing of gunfire, and the bullets whiz past them. The man’s leg burns with radical pain, and he reaches out, grabs Mark by the hand; the boy is faltering, his worn and weary body threatening to give out. The man shouts at him, ducks his head low. A bullet grazes his ear, drawing blood. Someone emerges in front of them, and the man realizes it is a dark-walker; he raises the M16 and squeezes the trigger, the bullets firing wildly; the dark-walker is hit in the chest and drops. The man nearly trips over it.