Dwellers of the Night: The Complete Collection (95 page)

They reach a ditch and leap over it. Behind them, one of the 4x4s hits the ditch; the front end of the truck slams into the earth, and the wheels suddenly stare at the sky, and the truck flips onto its back, the headlights shattering. The wheels continue to spin as dark-walkers attack the vehicle, tearing into the shattered windows, grabbing the unconscious riders. One of the other 4x4s ramps the ditch, lands safely, a dark-walker’s head turning into brainy mush against the grill. The man looks back and sees the dark-walkers pulling a body out of the overturned vehicle, and he can hear screams as he continues running through the corn, screams that spread through the night, an eerie orchestra.

A light rain begins to fall. They reach the end of the cornfield, emerge in the backyard of a house. There is a swing-set, the swings with the rusted chains creaking in the strong breeze of the arriving storms. Lightning dances and thunder crackles. The three figures run towards the side of the building as one of the 4x4s crashes through the corn; the windshield is streaked with rain, and in the glare of the lightning, the driver doesn’t even see the building. The 4x4 slams into the swing-set, the metal poles twisting upon impact; one of the pools snaps, swings around, shoots through the windshield; the driver lets out a scream as he is impaled. His head falls forward, resting against the pole, and his foot presses the gas pedal to the floor. The passenger at his side tries to open his door to jump out, but the truck smashes right into the house; the impact sends it fish-tailing, and the aged concrete wall breaks apart; the truck flips and rolls inside. The house’s foundation is shattered, and the top floor falls upon the 4x4 in a shower of dust and debris.

They are running towards the bridge over Interstate 65. Mark is going in and out of consciousness, the world slowing; the pistol is left somewhere behind, having slipped from numb fingers. The man has to keep from screaming at the pain in his leg. Kyle trots beside them, slowing his pace to keep with them. The third 4x4 turns onto the street, emerging from the cornfield and driving between two houses. Its headlights sparkle against the falling rain, which grows more intense. The thunder blares in their ears. The three figures are upon the bridge, and they can look out over the railing and see Anthony Barnhart

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shapes and shadows moving in the corn, several dozen, heading right for the road. Kyle shouts for them to hurry up, turns just as the 4x4 is upon them. There comes a flash of light from the vehicle, and Kyle lets out a shout, falls, both guns hitting the ground with him. The truck roars past, more gunfire: the bullets disappear harmlessly into empty space. Another gunshot, a single blast, carries through the air, and the truck dive-bombs into a telephone pole; the front end wraps around the pole, and the side door splits open. A man tumbles out, landing hard on the pavement that is slick with rain. The man drops his M16, grabs Kyle, lifts him into his arms; he takes Mark by the hand, and they make their way towards the doctor’s office. There are several flash-light beams waving back and forth in one of the windows, and Sarah stands on the front porch, holding an M16. Mark hobbles towards her. The man shifts Kyle’s weight, reaches down, grabs the fallen raider by the hand; he drags the raider, who is in a daze with broken ankles, and he carries Kyle towards the office. Darkwalkers pour from the cornfield, and Sarah shouts at him. She raises the M16 and starts firing. The dark-walkers fall in the road. Mark reaches the building and enters; the man, Kyle, and the raider are right behind him. Sarah yells at him, tells him to drop the raider, but he doesn’t listen: the trio enters. She fires several more shots, downing the sick humans, and then she steps inside and shuts the door, throwing back the lock.

Katie comes down the hallway. Mark is leaning against the wall, slides to the floor, tries to catch his breath. Sarah sets the M16 on the floor and takes Kyle. “He’s shot,” the man says, struggling for breath. “I don’t… I don’t know where… But he was shot, and he just went… He just went down. Like a stack of cards.” She nods and takes him to the clinical room, telling Katie to join her. The man turns and faces the raider, who is lying on the ground, groping at swollen ankles. The raider looks up at the man, begins to thank him; the man doesn’t let him finish as he takes Sarah’s M16 and drives it into the man’s face. The raider collapses onto his side, blood dribbling from his mouth.

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Anthony Barnhart

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Chapter Thirty-One

The Crimson Dawn

“He who seeks vengeance must dig two graves: one for his enemy and one for himself.”

- A Chinese Proverb

I

The raider awakes. He lifts his hands and feels his forehead, the dried blood, splitting pain in the back of his head. His mouth shifts, and he leans forward, spits a tooth onto the floor. The room is dark, lit only by a few scarce candles. He is sitting in a cushioned chair, and along the walls are shelves filled with books on medicine. There is a desk with several overturned pictures, and behind the desk sits a figure, unmoving. The raider’s eyes adjust to the gloominess, and he remembers the person sitting behind the desk: the man is sitting in the desk-chair, and across his lap is a shotgun. The raider asks for water; the man doesn’t move.

The raider says, “Why’d you… Why’d you save me?”

The man answers: “I saved you so that I can do to you what you did to my friend.”

“I didn’t do anything…”

“You shot him as you drove past.”

The raider looks at the man. “So you’re going to shoot me, then? You saved me just so you could kill me?”

The man shrugs. “Not necessarily. You see, you shot my friend Kyle. He is in the room across the hall. He’s been bleeding pretty badly. Two of my other friends and trying to get the bullet out, trying to get him calmed down, trying to stitch up his wounds. You haven’t killed Kyle. Not yet. If he doesn’t die, then you don’t die.”

The raider stares at the man. “And if he does die?”

The man’s fingers rap against the shotgun barrel. “Then
you
die.”

The raider doesn’t say anything for several minutes, just stares at the flickering candles.

“You scared?” the man finally asks.

The raider shakes his head,
No
.

“That’s strange,” the man says, “seeing as I’m hastening your arrival at Judgment Day.”

The raider looks at him. “Judgment Day? You believe that shit?”

“I want to believe it,” the man says. “It’ll make squeezing the trigger on this gun all the more enjoyable.”

“There’s no Judgment Day. You want to know why? Because there’s no God to judge us. And you know why else? Because there’s no such thing as ‘Right’ or ‘Wrong.’ You can’t be judged if there’s no standard for being judged. You. Me. Your friend Kyle. We’re nothing but matter, flesh and blood. Our matter is eternal—it had no beginning, no end, and it has no personality. It’s just
matter
. There’s nothing spiritual about us. We’re just like the animals that roam this planet. We may be complex machines, but in the end, our only purpose is to return to dust. When I die, when you kill Anthony Barnhart

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me, I’ll cease to exist. ‘Who I Am’—my personality, my aspirations, my fears—is controlled not by some unseen, unphysical, immaterial ‘soul’: it is nothing but the chemicals and neurons in my brain working together to create a functioning organism. When you kill me, my body will fall apart. The chemicals will stop interacting. The neurons will stop firing. I’ll be no more, and I’ll return to the earth. Does that frighten me? Why should nonexistence frighten me? And I’ll tell you this: because we are nothing but organisms, because there is no supernatural realm to all of this, then there are no true Rights and Wrongs. What we interpret as values is simply what society has taught is.”

“You think that since society has fallen apart, you can live however you want.”

“Society was a prison. It tried to tame the animals that we are. There’s no society now. No law enforcement. Only organisms. And we’re nothing but animals. You may criticize me for going against your own values, but what’s the point in having values when there’s no ultimate Right or Wrong in the first place? I have done nothing wrong. I have tortured. I have raped. I have killed. And I’ve done nothing wrong. And I don’t regret it.”

“You know what I was before all this happened?” the raider asks.

The man shakes his head. “No. And I don’t care.”

“I was a professor of philosophy. From Indianapolis. I was a student of literature. Frederick Nietzche. You’re familiar with him?”

“I’ve heard his name.”

“He was the one who came up with what is known today… or
was
known… as Nihilism. In his youth he wanted to be a member of the church, and he went to school for theology. He read an essay called
Fate and History
, and he called into question the historical validity of Jesus’ teachings. He turned his own attention outside theology and to philosophy. He wrote a book, called Daybreak, in which he began his ‘Campaign Against Morality.’ He called himself an immoralist and criticized the overbearing moral themes of Christianity, Kantianism, and Utilitarianism. He didn’t want to destroy morality. He actually wanted to initiate a reevaluation of the moralities presented in the JudeoChristian worldview. He taught that morality was the result of what he called ‘Master-Slave Morality.’ In traditional moral systems, values arise out of a contrast from ‘Good’ and ‘Bad.’ He taught that good values were life-affirming, and bad values were life-denying. Thus good values became wealth, strength, health, and power. Bad values were associated with the poor, the weak, and the pathetic. But he said that morality, in the Judeo-Christian lens, was corrupted: it became about Good versus Evil, not ‘Badness.’ All the values of Judeo-Christianity—charity, piety, self-control, meekness, submission—were elevated above the ‘cruelties’ of the selfish, the wealthy, the indulgent, the aggressive. This happened as an ingenious ploy among the slaves and the weak to overturn the values of their masters and to gain power for themselves. They ultimately justified their situation, and they even fixed the broader society into slave-like life. Nietzche taught that this twisted, JudeoChristian morality was a social illness that had overtaken Europe. Christianity was a hypocritical state where people preached love and kindness but gained pleasure out of judging and condemning and punishing others. Ultimately, Nietzche called the strong in the world to break their chains and assert their own power, health, wealth, and vitality upon the weaker and lesser mortals.”

“And you rely on Nietzche,” the man says, “because in his system of morality, you’ve done nothing wrong. If the Judeo-Christian worldview is right, if there is a difference between ‘Right’ and

‘Wrong’ based on ‘Good’ and ‘Evil,’ then you are obviously in trouble. Because you’ve raped, you’ve killed, you’ve tortured. You rely on Nietzche and his philosophy because he validates what you’re doing. You’re the strong one, you’re the powerful one, you’re the great one. And so you have an excuse to assert your own ‘greatness’ upon others, manifested by your wickedness.”

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The raider grins. “But of course… Unless you’re wrong, and there is no Judeo-Christian worldview with any validity whatsoever. Unless you’re wrong, and Nietzche was right. Nietzche taught that ‘God is Dead.’ This didn’t mean he was an atheist. It meant that he viewed the recent developments in modern science and the vastly increasing secularization of European society as having killed the Christian God, who had served for the basis and meaning for value in the West for over a thousand years. Nietzche said that the ‘death’ of God would eventually lead to the loss of any universal perspective on things, and along with it any coherent sense of objective truth. People would simply be locked in their own diverse and fluid perspectives. The ultimate end-point, however, past

‘Perspectivism,’ is that the ‘death’ of God would lead to blatant nihilism, the belief that nothing has importance and that life lacks purpose.”

“And you believe that?” the man asks.

The raiders nods. “How can you not? Look at what has happened. Nietzche spoke philosophically about the death of God. But where is God now? Look at this world in which we live. How can we ignore what has happened? How would a loving God who cares for His creation allow this to happen, allow his prime creatures—those made ‘in the image of God’—to be turned into blood-sucking dwellers of the night?” The raider shakes his head. “I have simply interpreted what I have seen. I was not a nihilist before this happened, but Nietzsche’s system of thought is the only system of thought that makes sense.”

“Well,” the man says, “I hope you’re right.”

The raider is confused. “You do?”

“Yes. That way you won’t have to stand in judgment for what you’ve done.”

“You don’t know how it feels,” the raider says, “to hear a woman scream when you’re on top of her.”

The man reaches into his jacket, pulls out a pack of cigarettes.

He lights it and takes a hit.

The pain in his leg throbs.

“It’s quite unlike anything,” the raider continues. “They say it’s wrong. But it feels so… right.”

The man cradles the shotgun. “You know, before the plague,” he says, “I was dating this woman. Her name was Kira. She was raped before we met. She was walking down the street in a small town outside Cincinnati, and she was mugged, beaten, assaulted. She was sixteen at the time. By the time I met her, the assailant had already been captured, and he was in prison. I felt so much rage, so much anger, that I went to the prison. I looked at him in the eyes. And if it weren’t for that plate glass, I would have killed him right then and there. His eyes, they were… So empty. There was nothing but a great void. The same void I see in your own eyes. You talk and talk about how proud you are of your exploits. All you’re doing is fanning the flame, and I’m not quite sure if I’ll wait to see if Kyle lives or dies to take your life.”