My eyes snapped open and a sharp breath caused my muscles to contract in fluttering spasms. I immediately turned to my side and vomited a stomach full of blood onto the cold linoleum floor. Lines of pink spit hung from my chin as I sat up and blinked rapidly at the fire’s glare. Kroffman and Pavel sat across from me, using the recently kindled flames as a ward.
“Feel better?” Pavel asked nervously. He waited for me to nod before taking another bite of his MRE applesauce. Silence dripped from the ceiling, not a companionable silence, but that suffocating need to move on and never speak of it again, the silence that rejoins you in the improvised grave you take all of your secrets to. I found my pack and equipment lying next to me. Merely considering my own meal-ready-to-eat caused my throat to burn again. I left it where it was.
“Do you think it’s safe to have a fire?” I finally croaked.
“We thought you were sick,” Kroffman blurted, as though he’d been trying to summon the words since the moment I woke up. I stared at him, panic immediately threatening to rise.
“It died out along with our species,” I said hurriedly, “Everyone knows that. I’m not sick, Kroffman, that’s impossible.” He held up his hand and my mouth pistoned closed with an audible clack.
“I know you’re not, boy. Your skin isn’t burning and you’ve still got some color in your eyes.” I nodded. “Want to talk about it?”
“No,” I replied without hesitation. I already missed the silence.
“Good, I’m not your mother. Whatever is going on in that empty head of yours, Connelly, you’d best get it together.” He leaned forward and glared directly into my eyes until I was forced to look away. “Because today you could have gotten us all killed twice in less than five minutes. Sure, this place happened to be empty, and that gunshot didn’t bring the whole damn city down on top of us, but you’ve already been lucky twice, and if you go village people on me again the next shot will be me putting you down without a second thought. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, Sir,” I grumbled without lifting my gaze from the floor. Shame held my chest in a vice, squeezing it so tightly that even one more chastisement would cause me to pop like an over-inflated balloon.
“Take first watch,” Kroffman finished. “Strevko and I have earned a little nap, don’t you think?”
“Yes, Sir,” I repeated without disdain.
The rest of the night crawled away without any further need of the M4 across my lap, and was in fact so relentlessly boring that I took the gun apart and put it back together with my eyes closed more times than I care to admit. Kroffman snored like a fog horn. The wind sent plastic bags rustling across the parking lot. We set out well before dawn, leaving nothing to mark our stay except a single brass bullet casing.
Kroffman ordered another halt to check the map just as stray beams of orange and purple light began flitting between the surrounding buildings. Not even a few hours of walking had been enough to banish Pavel’s usual morning attitude. As Kroffman looked over our paper guide, I turned to the grouchy Russian and asked seriously,
“Why do sunrises exist?”
“Because God hates mornings so much that he starts the day by setting the sky on fire.”
I repressed a smile and ruffled his already ruffled hair, “Astute observation, my friend.” He jerked away from me and walked off to mumble a string of profanities in peace.
“Well we’re here,” Kroffman said suddenly, tapping the map against my arm. I dropped it once more into my pack and scanned the artificial canyon that loomed on either side. There were four apartment buildings, two on either side of the street, each with its own name despite the fact that they were completely identical. “Think we should give Strevko first pick? A little foraging might wake his pansy ass up a little.”
“No,” I replied, already nestling my pack more comfortably onto my shoulders. “Right now he’s more likely to fall over a railing and break both his legs than find anything useful.” He nodded and handed me a radio. I clipped the lump of battered plastic to my belt and looked the foursome of hunting grounds over with a critical eye. “Eeny meeny miney mo, catch a tiger by the toe, if he hollers let him go,” I said. “My mom says to pick the very best one and… you… are… it.” I settled on the building to my left, Fairview Heights apparently, and walked towards it like a man being led towards the gallows.
“Really?” Kroffman scoffed. “That’s really how you’re making your choice? I swear kids get dumber and dumber every year.”
A double set of dented metal doors waited at the front of the apartment complex, broken chain hanging uselessly from one handle. I slipped the straps of my gas mask over my hair and settled the bulky apparatus onto my face. Oxygen took on the familiar metallic tang that accompanied military grade filtration. The edges of my vision fogged with every exhale. I pulled the doors open and winced at the sharp squeal of metal that welcomed me inside.
So much garbage clogged the main hallway that only a thin alley remained between the teetering mountains of black and white plastic. Brightly colored food boxes poked through holes torn by razor sharp soup can lids, threatening to join the piles of refuse that hundreds of people before me had worn pathways through. Any scents produced by the garbage itself had long since lost their potency, but not before attracting the thousands upon thousands of flies that now peppered the scene with their tiny bodies. However, the noxious odors produced by thriving mold colonies was enough to make my eyes water. I clicked on my flashlight and forged my way into the filth towards a stairwell I knew would exist at some point along the hall. Thick carpets of sickly green and brown fungus spread up the walls and stretched across the ceiling, allowing bulbous mushrooms to hang like stalactites. The mushrooms bristled as I passed below, pustules filled with yellow liquid threatening to release their acidic payloads onto my head.
Something caught my attention and I stopped to take a closer look. The entrance to the elevator shaft gaped open like the mouth of an ambush predator, an analogy made more perfect by the red warning light blinking weakly from the control panel. The elevator itself was absent, presumably waiting a floor or two above so that the moment I stuck my head in to look up it could snap its cables and crush my skull. I chuckled quietly inside the solitude of my gas mask. Sometimes a morbidly preposterous sense of humor was the only way to stay sane when there is nothing funny left.
It took some effort to pull my boots from the sucking filth when I found the stairs, but once free I took the steps two at a time, just slowly enough to keep my pack from rustling. I turned off my flashlight as I rounded the corner onto the second half of the stairway, pressing my back against the wall as I listened for any errant sounds. After several tense minutes, I allowed the beam of light to guide me into a hallway exactly like every other hallway I had ever walked down. Doors studded the walls on either side. A tired design decorated the carpet. I turned on my radio and whispered,
“First floor is completely blocked. Second floor looks like it might be a bit more promising.” Two clicks of static confirmed my message and I turned the radio back off. As always, I started with the first door on the left. Giving Number 201 a somber moment to resign itself to its fate, I said, “We’ve really got to stop meeting like this,” and kicked the door clean from its frame. I cannot even begin to count the number of times I have entered a building or room with a swift thrust of my boot. I don’t think I will ever get tired of it either.
Open curtains allowed enough sunlight into the apartment for me to click my flashlight off and a cautious sniff revealed that it was safe to remove my mask. Please don’t let there be a sailboat… please don’t let there be a sailboat…
“God damn it all,” I groaned as I entered the cramped living room and found a framed photograph of a sailboat hanging where it could be admired by all. Besides the obnoxious picture, the apartment was what I had come to expect from my predecessors. A shoddy couch and flatscreen television stood guard at either end of a coffee table covered with partially packed cardboard boxes. They were labeled with words like “Clothing” and “Electrical” and “Necessities.” I would never understand how someone could consider porcelain clowns and monogrammed ties to be worth wrapping in layer upon layer of paper towels when books and underwear were strewn across the floor and draped over couch arms. At least they’d had enough sense to empty the “Food” boxes before they’d left. I scrounged a few batteries and a shirt that looked like it might fit Natalie from the boxes before losing interest. “Please be safe,” she always begged me before I went on patrol. “I’ll bring you back something pretty,” I promised before I kissed her goodbye. I never did manage to stay safe, but I prided myself on always bringing her back something pretty. The kitchen was the next stop on my self-guided tour.
The cupboards were empty. Many of the drawers were filled with partially rusted silverware and boxes of plastic lunch baggies. I found a half empty bottle of water in the refrigerator and drank most of it before pouring the rest over my hair. I idly licked at the droplets that fell down my cheeks as I opened the door to the bedroom.
They’d taken the sheets but left the bulbs in the lamp and ceiling light. I crossed to the dresser and opened the first drawer—before immediately slamming it closed and turning away as blood flushed my cheeks. A photograph on the nightstand caught my attention and I picked it up. Set in a nice floral-patterned frame made of some cheap metal with the price sticker still on the back, it depicted a young couple on a park bench. The woman had blonde, almost golden hair and a smile that stretched just a bit too far to be perfect. The man held his new wife around the waist and pulled back his lips in a conservative grimace that made me assume his teeth were either yellowed or uneven. Kind eyes hid behind the thick black rims of his glasses. It had been quite some time since I’d seen a man’s eyes unhardened by horror and death. I reverently placed the picture back on the nightstand and opened the little drawer. Inside were several prescription bottles, one of them marked as oxycodone. Leaving the less desirable medications where they were, I checked the bathroom for the sake of being thorough.
Honestly, I expected to find the skeletal remains of the two lovers holding hands in the bathtub, pistol clasped in their interlocking fingers, a toaster floating beside their wedding rings in the mixture of water and soft tissue that covered them from the waist down. Instead I found a cheap plastic tub half filled with relatively clean water, just as the emergency broadcasters had advised. Back when I’d attended school in one of the Ascention’s cargo holds, we would sometimes watch recordings of all the old informational broadcasts. Every one of them was narrated by a handsome man in a handsome black suit who instructed his fellow Americans to abandon infected loved ones and hoard as much drinking water as possible in a companionable tone. Mrs. Anderson used to love telling us the story of how that handsome man hanged himself from the Empire State Building. We all laughed every time.
As always, I moved to the first door on the right. It had an adorable welcome sign hanging just above the peep hole. I took that as invitation enough to kick the door open without delay. Pictures of an elderly couple and all their various children and grandchildren provided a homely atmosphere as I rummaged through what little remained of their mementoes. A pair of silver dishes made me wonder what had happened to their dog. The rotted remains of a lap dog lying across their pillows closed the case soon enough. Second door on the left was completely cleaned out. Second door on the right was crossed by bright yellow quarantine ribbons so I gave it a wide birth. And thus the building was systematically devoured by my attention, cleared from top to bottom of anything worth clearing.
I put my gas mask back on and braved the withering stench of the first floor before exiting through the main entrance. Pavel was sitting on the hood of a nearby Volkswagen, absently kicking his feet back and forth while he stared off into the morning light. Kroffman stood a few hundred yards further up the street, scanning a side alley with his rifle. The veteran turned at the sound of my footsteps and waved before setting off in my direction.
“Honey, I’m home,” I sang as I swung my pack onto the hood and began to pull out the meager assortment I’d collected. Three AAA batteries, a single AA battery, seven tea bag packets in flavors ranging from blackberry to mango, a half-used roll of leopard print duct tape, a couple painkillers in their original bottle, a broken length of nylon rope, the pretty red shirt I’d picked out, and dozens of other necessities. Pavel swept up the garment before I had a chance to hide it and whistled.
“And who might this be for, my little closet romantic?”
“What are you talking about?” I replied without looking him in the eye. “I got that for me.” He held it up to my shoulders and clucked his tongue disapprovingly.
“You still have quite a few pounds to lose before you can be the prettiest girl around, my friend.” I snatched it from him with a smile and stuffed it into my back just as Kroffman stomped up and slung his rifle back onto his shoulder.
“Will you girls shut up already,” he growled. “You’re both ugly as hell and you’re just going to have to live with that.” He looked from one piece to the other before finally nodding. “Good haul, Connelly.”
Pavel hopped onto the pavement with a groan and wiped his hands on his pants before asking,
“Is it finally my turn to actually do something?” Kroffman nodded again and swept his arm across the remaining three apartment complexes,
“Pick your poison and try not to get lost in the big scary buildings.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Pavel shot back, reaching up to catch the radio I tossed to him.
“Don’t worry,” I called out as he struggled to fit his gas mask over his glasses, “I’ll keep your seat nice and warm for you until you get back.” He picked the drab grey structure across from the drab grey structure I’d just left and opened the front door with so much excitement that I thought it would tear free of its hinges. And then he was gone, a boy with nothing but a gun and his foolhardy confidence for protection, swallowed alive by the darkness.
Kroffman toyed with the treasures I’d scrounged while I stretched out across the Volkswagen hood, enjoying the warmth of the sun against my cheeks. The effects of the previous night were beginning to wear off and I was finally starting to feel as though everything would be back to normal. I’d found more than I was usually able to come up with, and to top it all off, it had yet to rain the entire journey. I immediately winced and looked up. Apparently I’d managed to avoid jinxing us because the clouds remained puffy and white.
“How’s Micah?” The question was so unexpected that for a moment I forgot to answer.
“He’s fine,” I answered cautiously, slowly sitting up. “Why?”
Kroffman shrugged, “No reason, I just want to make sure the kid is getting everything he needs. He looked thin last time I saw him.” I ignored the direct challenge to my skill as a guardian and moved the conversation forward,
“He doesn’t sleep very well. But then again, neither did I at that age.”
“Why do you think that is?” His tone was so casual I began to grudgingly believe that his only motivation was legitimate concern.
“We’re all just ghosts of our fathers…” I answered.
“Does he go to school?”
“Of course he does,” I said, glad for the change of subject. “He hates math as most little boys do, but he’s actually pretty good at it. He has a hard time remembering the names of states though, states and history. He doesn’t quite grasp why he has to memorize places that don’t really exist anymore. I’ve been helping him with that. He does like George Washington, but he hates Alexander Hamilton for just standing there and letting himself get shot. I never thought I’d have to wash out a six year old’s mouth with soap for calling a founding father a pussy.” Kroffman laughed and leaned against the car.
“Listening to you talk about that boy reminds me of every mother goose I’ve ever met,” he chuckled. “What about you, Connelly? Have you been doing any studying?”
I nodded, “Yes, Sir. I still have most of my father’s library left to get through. Lately I’ve been reading some H.P. Lovecraft and I just finished Frankenstein.”
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“Oh really? What did you think of that classic monster tale?”
“I think Dr. Frankenstein spent way too much of it getting sick and acting like a bitch,” I replied bitterly. “It was definitely not what I was expecting.” The conversation died for a few minutes and then I said, “Kroffman, speaking of being sick…”
He waved my worries away and sighed, “There’s nothing to worry about, Connelly, you’d already be showing signs by now if that was the case. I’ve seen it dozens of times, it’s not really the kind of thing you forget.”
I looked at him. He was staring down at the pavement, mouth lost amidst his beard as it pressed against his chest.
“Did you have to deal with them very much, you know, as a police officer?”
He scoffed at my naivety, “I forget sometimes that you kids weren’t there. I spent most of my career either behind a desk or sitting on the side of the road waiting to hand out traffic tickets. Our city was small and pretty quiet all things considered. So to answer your question, no, I didn’t have to deal with them very much, at least not until the end.”
“What do you mean?” I ventured, unconsciously leaning in.
“I’d spent the night at my desk answering panicked 911 calls with the exact same message. ‘Stay in your homes and do not try to make contact with friends and family. If you qualify for evacuation, you will be contacted by telephone at least twenty-four hours in advance. Thank you and be safe.’” He spat on the pavement. “I must have said that so many damn times that people started to think I was an automated answer message. I had three coffees that morning, one after the other. Usually I drank it black like a man should, but that morning I added a handful of sugars to each. Suddenly we get the order to suit up in riot gear and grab as many weapons from the armory as possible. The captain had a crazy look in his eyes and none of us asked questions, we just grabbed our shit and packed into the S.W.A.T. vans we had left. I asked the driver what was happening and he said that one of the quarantine zones was threatening to break containment. The military was spread so thin by that point that it was up to us to make sure the line was held. We didn’t talk after that.”
He took a shuddering breath before forging ahead.
“I remember being blinded as we rushed out onto the street and sprinted towards the sandbags and orange striped barriers that the Army had set up in front of the only way in and out of the zone. A few of them were still there, kneeling behind their cover with M16’s raised. They looked so professional in their urban camouflage. Not one of those boys could have been older than twenty but none of them looked scared. They looked like they were itching to pull the trigger. A couple bodies littered the street just outside of the barricade and we had to hop over them to get into position. The Army boys looked at us as though they thought we were going to accidentally shoot them in the back. Hundreds of the unlucky bastards were crowding just a few yards in front of us, begging for food and water and medicine. Some just screamed at us, called us fascists and torturers. The Army officer paced back and forth behind his men with a megaphone and calmly told them over and over again to return to their homes before force became necessary.
“They looked so weak, so thin that the clothes hung off of them like they had just stepped out of a black and white holocaust documentary. A lot of them coughed blood into their elbows. All of them had the same blank white eyes; the eyes that made them look blind when they really weren’t. That was how you knew for sure when someone had it, when the color in their eyes turned milky white and you could never tell when they were looking right at you. More and more of them were stumbling out of their houses towards us, joining the horde that was already gathered. They shook their fists and screamed so loud that I couldn’t hear the officer telling them to go away anymore.
“I saw it happen. I remember the exact one that did it. A woman with light brown hair bent down and picked up a rock. She threw it towards the barricade but was so weak that it bounced a few times and stopped before it got anywhere near us.
“But I guess that was the last straw because the officer pulled out his pistol and shot her right in the chest. There was so little left of the poor bitch that I don’t even think I saw a blood splatter. It all happened so fast after that... The rest of the soldiers opened fire. Me and the boys in blue opened fire. They actually ran towards us, reached out to claw at us even as our rifles tore them apart. They were like wild animals, screaming their insane screams as they rushed to meet death. When my rifle was empty, I reloaded it and kept shooting, and when it was empty again, I reloaded it again. We killed them all, Connelly, every last one. We put them down like rabid dogs and left them to rot in the sun. A lot of us threw up in the van on the way back to the station. No one said a word when it sloshed against our boots every time we went around a turn.”
For perhaps the first time in my life, I was completely speechless. I just stared at him, unable to even comprehend the amount of ammo they must have wasted.
Movement past his head caught my attention and I turned slightly to focus on it. The horrors of Kroffman’s story were forcing their way into my imagination and it was as though I could see them at the end of the street, moving in our direction with painful slowness.
The old cop turned to follow my gaze and then immediately tackled me to the ground and rolled us both behind the Volkswagen.
“Why the hell were you just staring at them, you idiot?” he hissed, pulling his rifle into his hands so he could aim it under the car and view the creatures through the scope. “How about a little warning next time, a hand signal or a whisper, something that lets me know there’s danger about to bite me in the ass.”
“I didn’t think they were real,” I stammered as I clicked my M4’s safety off.
“Oh they’re real all right,” he snapped. “But I don’t think they saw us.” He handed me the rifle and so I could have a look.
Flaps of skin hung from their skeletons, each fold dissected by a web of black veins and oozing scabs. They all walked on tattered shoes that allowed their toenails to poke through, their bodies encased in filthy rags that they wore with a strange dignity. They had the milky eyes I had just heard so much about, but other than that they had very little in common with the broken animals from Kroffman’s story. There was power in the way they swung their arms. Their mouths squirmed on their hollowed faces and I wondered what they were talking about. As I watched, they bent around a muddy pool and lifted handfuls of water to wet their tongues.
“What do you think they’re doing here?” Kroffman asked.
“Maybe they heard you talking about them,” I replied. The scope swayed as he clapped me on the ear.
“Dumbass…” he grumbled, pulling his rifle from my hands. He turned the radio down and then clicked the transmitter twice.
“What?” Pavel whispered after a few seconds.
“We have a pack of haunters outside,” he whispered back. “Keep looking around, but stay inside until we give you the all clear.” Pavel clicked his own radio twice in response and then the waiting game began. The haunters sat around the pool for almost half an hour, talking amongst themselves and drinking their fill. Kroffman and I lay silently on the concrete the entire time. Twice I lifted my hand in an invitation to play rock paper scissors, and twice he simply glared at me and shook his head as though he couldn’t believe that he’d been trapped with the dumbest person on the planet.
Contrary to what I expected, the haunters didn’t really do anything interesting. They did not pace back and forth like animals infected with rabies, they did not moan like the walking dead I’d seen in old zombie movies, they just sat around the pool and idly sipped water while they talked about God only knows what. They even laughed from time to time. I had never seen the things myself, but older members of our group often came back from patrol with tales of them. We knew they were survivors of the sickness because of their eyes, but what we didn’t know was how they had managed to survive, or how they managed to continue surviving. But they had never attacked or abducted anyone or tried to steal from us, and so we left them alone whenever possible. Phillip Three Fingers even said he’d traded a pack of cigarettes to a haunter for a baseball one time, but we all knew he’d found it in some house or apartment somewhere. Truth be told, they disappointed me with how human they were. One of them, possibly the leader, wore a dark blue hat studded with the distinctive NY logo I had come to admire as a symbol of victory. I momentarily considered shooting them all so I could take the hat home with me.
Eventually, as things usually go when taking a break, they rose to their feet, swept the dirt from their rags, and continued on their pilgrimage. Kroffman stood up unsteadily, using the Volkswagen for support as he shook the feeling back into his legs.
“About damn time,” he grumbled. I lifted my hands and he tossed me the radio. I tapped the transmitter twice and sat back on the car, enjoying the gentle static while I waited for Pavel to respond. Thirty seconds later, I sent him another pair of clicks. Thirty seconds after that, my chest began to tighten. Seeing the panic on my face, Kroffman pulled the radio away and whispered,
“Strevko?” No response. “Strevko, I swear if you’re pulling some kind of joke I’ll shove all of our packs straight up your ass and make you carry them all the way back…” Nothing. Kroffman looked at me and I could tell he’d already made his choice. Without a word, I secured my gasmask over my face and made sure that my M4 had a round in the chamber. “You know the rules, Connelly. We need to mark the front and put as much distance between us and this place as—” I shouldered past him and ran towards the apartment complex, barely breaking stride as I leapt the stairs and slipped between the front doors. The darkness swallowed me just as it had swallowed him.
“There will come a day when it is you who will be hunted, and when that day comes, you must not be afraid. Fear is the emotion that all animals share; it is the very thing they have evolved to root out. You, all of you, think that those big brains of yours will keep you safe when danger is at its peak, that somehow you will see through the smothering fear and think your way to salvation. You are wrong. There will come a day when it is you who will be hunted, and when that day comes, you will act without hesitation, or you will die alone.”
I moved just as my father had taught me—back almost scraping against the wall, boots swishing past each other quickly but with the utmost care, carbine pressed tight against my shoulder, breathing slowed to keep the pulse of my heartbeat from filling my ears. The first floor had been a landfill identical to my own scavenging grounds. The second floor had been a parade of open doorways and empty rooms, each showing signs that Pavel had recently passed through. I took the stairs to the third floor two at a time, dreading every moment to find a mangled corpse with thick-rimmed glasses hanging over the railing. Once at the mouth of the hallway, I stopped. My finger tightened against my weapon’s trigger, I blinked several times to ready my eyes, and then clicked on my mounted flashlight. The beam raced away into the dark, illuminating clouds of insulation that fell idly from the ceiling. The first door on the right—it annoyed me that Pavel did not copy my system—hung open on a splintered frame, but every apartment after that remained resolutely closed.
I eased the barrel of my M4 into the apartment and allowed the flashlight to slowly reveal the room to me. Swaths of dust were missing from the table and several kitchen drawers had been pulled out and emptied across the floor. I carefully stepped between the piles of cutlery and opened the refrigerator. A plastic cup of jell-o lay on its side in one of the door compartments and an open bag allowed withered orange fingers to spill onto a shelf. No one in their right mind would think twice about taking the carrots, but Pavel would have never let something like jell-o go to waste. The bedrooms were similarly untouched.
I began to formulate a theory of what had happened to my friend. He had swept through the first pair of floors without incident, perhaps he had even found an especially high amount of loot, leading him to become less and less careful as his confidence grew and his temperament became more and more joyful until he was simply emptying entire drawers onto the floor regardless of the clatter instead of rifling through them with care, and then he heard a noise and decided to investigate, perhaps without even bothering to raise his MP5 because he assumed it was one of us coming to tell him the coast was clear outside, that he had done an extremely good job and deserved recognition when we returned, and if he had been in such a state, it would have been laughably easy to ambush him and bust his skull open with a pipe or a large wrench, and if that was what had happened, it had probably been the haunters outside, or rather, the haunters outside had distracted us just long enough for their friends to sneak into the building and murder Pavel with a pipe or a large wrench, come to think of it, I couldn’t remember even glancing towards the entrance once, they could have slipped right past us, it was all Kroffman and I’s fault that Pavel was lying on the floor with a shattered cranium, brains and shards of bone dripping onto the carpet as his fingers continue to twitch despite the fact that he had died long ago…
I slapped myself so hard that my teeth cut the inside of my cheek and the rampaging train of thought finally came to a stable, if only temporary, stop. His radio had probably died. Who even knew how old those batteries were? There were dozens of reasons why Pavel could have prematurely stopped his search. Maybe he had decided to start from the top down in order to save time. I clung desperately to the scant few tendrils of optimism that remained and left the apartment. My flashlight discovered nothing but more locked doors as I covered the rest of the floor and so I clicked it off and made my way to the next flight of stairs. Too much time had already passed since I’d entered the complex. The chances of Pavel being alive and well dwindled with every passing second. I pulled off my gasmask and sniffed the stagnant air. A foul stench singed the hairs in my nostrils and I buried my face in my sleeve to smother the retching coughs that immediately followed.
“Where there is the lingering stench of death, you will find only death. The dead walk where the dead have tread before. Shadows dwell most where the light cannot bear to find them. The darkness is where you are safe, and it is where they will break you. You are a creature of sight, Silas, and when your sight is taken from you, take care not to die.” I ground my teeth and struggled to force my father’s voice from my head. I had spent countless nights hiding behind a door, listening as he stared into space and spoke ominous litanies to himself as blood dripped from his eyes. Drip… drip… drip… for hours on end until I fell asleep and dreamt of the monstrous terrors he unknowingly poured into my imagination. But I was not a little boy anymore, and I would not allow his foolishness to undermine my resolve.
I wanted desperately to breathe the filtered air my mask would provide, but the stench also meant that I was finally closing in on whatever awaited me. Further down the fourth floor hallway, a large section of drywall had been torn away, forcing the doorways on the opposite side to spend all day staring at the sun. I moved forward cautiously, back to one side and carbine trained on the blinding gash that beckoned to me with blatantly suspicious warmth. I stepped through the ragged hole and immediately found the answers I had come looking for.
Something lived there. The shared walls of several apartments had been ripped open and what remained of the plaster and support struts gave the impression that I had stepped into the gullet of a slumbering giant. Pools of congealed blood and orchards of twisted bone transformed the cavernous space into a swamp. Wind entered through the various windows and crevices, causing the tattered remnants of blankets and upholstery to strain against their bonds. Gutted corpses were piled into the corners, either curled up in fetal defeat or trapped in positions of escape, arms outstretched towards the light and skinless faces taught with defiance. A nest of broken furniture and animal skins reared up from the center. Brutish dream catchers made from teeth and fangs hung from the ceiling. Several shelves of carefully tended, elaborately dressed dolls sat over a makeshift shrine. I advanced into the den, eyes burning from the unbearable stench. Every footstep crushed or stirred something brittle. I moved past the nest and caught sight of something dotted with color. He was still wearing his American flag bandana wrapped tight around his wrist.
He looked at me with immeasurable fear, his jaw opening and closing as he struggled to swallow mouthfuls of oxygen, his hands pawing uselessly at the loops of intestines that slowly slid from his body. He just looked at me, and kept looking at me, unblinking, never moving his eyes from… from just over my shoulder. I whipped around and brought my weapon to bear in one fluid motion. There it was—well over seven feet of knobby hide and protruding musculature, clumps of sandy blonde hair and strands of drool, elongated arms and legs with far more joints than any creature of God had a right to own. Shriveled breasts hung from the thing’s chest, a tattered pink dress still clinging for dear life to its waist. Its fingers twitched at the sight of another intruder.
“Hello,” I say as I squeeze the trigger. It howls and leaps to the left with inhuman agility. I curse as most of my shots hit nothing but plaster and adjust my aim until every kick against my shoulder is rewarded with a splash of red against the wall. The chamber clatters empty a moment before the abomination’s full weight slams into me. Our tangled bodies crash through weathered cement. Suddenly I am falling, plummeting through open air as I grapple with a creature whose strength I cannot hope to match. Grey blue grey blue grey blue grey blue—gravity tires of our company and pavement rises up to greet us.
I hear my bones snap as I hit, a dry crunch like autumn leaves, the fall only partially cushioned by my assailant. The blue sky taunts me with a cheery smile and I can feel my chest cavity filling with blood. My feet are numb. My hands are numb. A low moan catches my attention and the creature struggles to its feet. Spars of bone secrete marrow down the side of its leg as it stands directly above me, calloused hands already reaching for my neck.
Thunder booms and the thing stumbles as a vengeful bolt of lightning spears through its throat. A discolored waterfall splatters my chest from a ruptured artery and I can see the agony in its eyes. We both turn to see Kroffman standing a short distance away, his feet planted and his face blank as he cycles the bolt of his rifle and fires again. I watch the bullet casing spin gracefully as it falls, a thin trail of smoke whipping from its edge like the thruster of a failing rocket. “Run,” I croak, lifting my arm in an attempt to wave him away. He ignores me and stands his ground even as the beast limps towards him. Another bullet punches a hole through its chest but it continues forward undeterred, wanting nothing else but to crush the life from this newest source of pain.
I scream as I roll onto my stomach and slowly force my arms to extend. Somehow I am on my feet. The edges of my vision are blurred as color and shape seem to run like melting glass. I stagger after my quarry and struggle to curl my fingers around the handle of my combat knife. As always, I am too late.
Kroffman spits in the face of his killer even as it pulls him in half. I have always respected the grumpy old man, but never more than in that moment. His brown skin rips and the muscle beneath caves in shortly after, quickly followed by organs falling like candy from a waterlogged piñata. And through it all he remains utterly silent.
I lost it. Where before time had been a sluggish crawl of indefinite moments, it now raced like an avalanche, murderous and unstoppable. A crimson haze fell over the scene and explosive rage burned away the pain and the weakness until nothing remained but the need to kill. I sprinted forward with knife in hand and leapt onto its back as it threw Kroffman’s remains away like a broken toy. One arm wrapped around its throat while the other rose and fell, each motion driving my blade home. I stabbed it again and again and again as it bucked against my hold, roaring my hatred without respite until all other sound ceased to exist. It fell beneath my assault, crashing to the pavement like a stricken colossus. And yet still I continued to bury my knife in its flesh with wild abandon. I did not stop once it was clear that all life had passed from its body. The point became lodged in bone and broke free so I tossed the handle away and beat it with my fist until I could no longer lift my arm.
A pair of lifetimes had ended in less than a minute, snuffed out like medieval candles thanks to the harsh insanity that had become the new circle of life. Yes, I had killed before, but those skirmishes had mostly been from behind the safety of my firearm where death was represented by a face that no longer popped up in a window or an indistinct shadow that toppled to the ground. I expected my first titanic battle to be like it was in the action movies I’d seen so many years before, a lengthy, heroic duel with plenty of time for witty one-liners and skillful flourishes. Instead, it had been a brutal clash of instantaneous decisions and ferocity. Even then, I understood the meaning behind my wandering comparisons. My species may have perfected the art of killing one another, but we had completely forgotten what it meant to survive. “In this new world order, we are so very far from the top of the food chain.”
My tortured breathing kept the silence at bay, kept the touch of eternity from closing in. As long as there was breath, there was sound, and as long as there was sound, there was life. But the breathing was fading, becoming weaker and weaker with every heave of my chest. And then, just as it had in the convenience store, the white light came.