Our scouts are especially vulnerable to endings like this, as they spend more time beyond the perimeter than anyone else, but they are by no means the only ones who have lost their old lives to the hollow-heads. Most of the time, it’s difficult for people to let go. Perhaps they hope that there will be a last minute reprieve. Perhaps they believe that their loved one will remember them, deep down, in the remnant parts of the brain that still function. The victims usually feel the same way. Only rarely do they choose another option.
When Olsen, Lukacs, and his wife leave the hospital to make their vigil outside the perimeter, Marilyn and I stay behind in the room alone. I know she wants to say something, but neither of us really needs to speak. We’ve talked about my daughter before, many times. And every time she insists, and I agree, that I made the right decision by not letting her suffer the way Lukacs will. But I’m not sure that Cathy will feel any worse now than I did then. I’ve come to believe that neither answer is the right one. But I can’t say that to Marilyn. It would open wounds she was able to close when we parted.
Eventually, she does find her voice. “Is it wrong for me to be glad that you stopped going outside yourself?”
“I stopped too late for your liking.”
That wasn’t the right thing to say. Marilyn starts to busy herself with cleanup. I let the awkward silence grow until I’ve caused more than enough regret. Even so, as I am leaving, she pauses long enough to say, “I’m still glad.”
When evening comes and the hours are up, Olsen and Lukacs’s widow return with a small cache of parts and tools in the rear compartment of the blue biodiesel station wagon. Cathy is stoic, and when the Little Five decides to celebrate Lukacs’s life with food and music until well past dark, she participates without apparent bitterness. I remain for a while, keeping the peace as mourners turn to revelers and make fools of themselves in public, but once the oil lamps are lit, I hand the task over to Luther.
Before I retire to my home, Ernesto Vargas intercepts me in the street to let me know that his partner, Belinda Braithwaite, has gotten word over shortwave radio that we will be receiving a trading caravan in a week’s time. That takes my mind off matters for a little while. I bring the news back to Mayor Weeks, and his wife, Regina, demands that I dance with her at least once before I go.
I see Phoebe nearby and look for Abigail, but the girl isn’t anywhere in the crowd. Neither is Owen. Perhaps they are settling into their new apartment and leaving Lukacs’s wake to those who knew him. I am a little disappointed, though: I would have liked to know how well Phoebe is drawing the pregnant teenager out of her shell. But by the time I decline a second dance with the mayor’s wife and truly take my leave of the party, I am exhausted from the weight of the day and go home to sleep.
As usual, it doesn’t come easily. I sit at my breakfast table and read by the light of a strong candle, absorbing the trivia of a monograph from the 1930s on the forensic value of insects. It’s only slightly more stimulating than the next book in the pile is likely to be, a college primer on basic economics. But I need this. I need to fill my head with unimportant things. Because at every turn of the page, in between every line, I think of my daughter, whose twelfth birthday would have been in five days. I would not be spending my restless nights reading alone in the dark if Jeannie were here. Or if I had not squandered the goodwill of the only person who kept me on the path after she was gone.
I think of Cathy and the countless nights ahead that she will have to spend in a cold bed, dreaming of her husband and the last time she saw him. And Abigail, whose young life has already seen too much horror. There must be more that I can do. More for the Little Five, more for Abigail. More for the people who rely on me to make their world safe.
Reading with bloodshot eyes in the dark of a cloud-covered night, it’s hard to remember that I can’t save everyone. And just as hard to forget.
DAY NINE, 10:00 P.M.
Convincing the last mayor to permit the construction of a still took some work, but eventually Thomas Cassidy was allowed to cobble together the parts he needed to make the moonshine that began his twilight empire. Now, on most nights, after the lights throughout the Little Five have been turned off to conserve batteries, the older citizens can be found inside Cassidy’s Bar drinking his versions of beer and whiskey. Most of the younger crowd, the ones who were not yet teenagers when the collapse happened, don’t have much interest in reclaiming this small slice of the old life, and they stay away, thinking us strange.
The bar smells of pig shit and goats: Cassidy keeps his animals in here after he closes down. It adds to the charm, along with the ridiculous plastic skull that frames the front door, but we don’t come here for the atmosphere. We come to remind ourselves that we once lived civilized lives. We could be here on a weekend, after forty or eighty hours of hard work in an office somewhere, or in my case, working on a cutter off the Georgia coast. But there are no more offices, no more reports, no more managers or bosses or quarterly earnings. No more national waters. We dream of a future with these things in it—but the young ones do not. Perhaps I should be glad that we will leave this world to them, and not to our forebears.
But for now, on the nights that my brain won’t shut off and my heart hurts, I need this place. I tell myself that I’ve moved forward, but the anniversaries hand-deliver the truth to my doorstep. I indulge in my sorrows for a night, and then wake up the next morning having pushed everything back once more. It’s the way most of us live, and have lived for a decade, because the grief would be overwhelming if we did it any other way. My particular grief tonight is for Jeannie. I grasp at the good memories. First steps. First words. Seeing her mother in her eyes. Hugging close the echo of my wife, grateful for the chance to continue loving another person so fiercely.
Marilyn Trainor comes to me after I’ve been planted on my stool for an hour, staring at a Polaroid of Jeannie that I took on her third birthday. Marilyn nudges Kloves off the seat on my right. He and Pritch leave easily, finding an empty table near the back. They know why Marilyn is here. She slides her glass along the bar until it taps my own and says, “To Jeannie.”
She knew my daughter only briefly, at the end. The memories she recalls with the click of her glass aren’t the ones that dominate my thoughts, and in a way I’m thankful for that. She is remembering the path she helped me walk in the months and brief years that followed. To her, Jeannie doesn’t represent losing the last pieces of my life before the collapse. For Marilyn, my daughter represents all of the things I never let go. The world that everyone else left behind is a world I’ve never been able to leave completely because the doors shut before me the last time I saw Jeannie’s face.
Marilyn and I parted ways because I never managed to open those doors once I let them close. But she is not cruel. She could never be. She isn’t trying to remind me of all the things that took us apart in the end. She saved my life; in exchange, she only wanted me to be present in hers. And I would like to think that I was, for a time.
“It’s a good night,” Marilyn says. “Too good to be having heavy thoughts.”
I smile, knowing the dance. “They’re not heavy,” I reply. “They’re diaphanous.”
I don’t tell her that the gears in my tired mind have clicked over to regrets beyond my daughter’s short life. Marilyn’s presence is never painful, but sometimes it isn’t easy.
“No,” she says, with a knowing nod and a glimmer of mischief in her eyes, “they’re lugubrious.”
I can’t help but laugh. She must have been waiting a year to use that word. It works.
“It’s a good night,” I admit. “One of many. Look at what we’ve done.”
“Jeannie is proud of you,” she says. It’s a surprise to me: she’s never said it before, and we’ve been here every year for half a decade.
It’s the regret that pushes me to ask, “And you?”
“Sam,” she says. “Let it be a good night.”
I le
t out a long sigh. This was the argument between us, always. The one that separated us in the end. She always knew my mind better than I did. She knew how to soothe me, and how to let me cope on my own. She saw, long before I became aware, that I was burying my self-repudiation in the work of protecting the Little Five. I couldn’t save Jeannie; I had to save everyone else.
“You hold so tightly to how things should have been,” she said at the end, “you forget how things are, and who is here with you.” She told me that I mistook distance for strength, risk-taking for responsibility, and that I didn’t understand her. Some days, like today, I think that maybe I still don’t. That I cannot confide in her this weakness of mine is proof that she was always right about me.
And that’s the uncomfortable truth. There has never been any doubt that Marilyn was, and is, proud of me. We couldn’t have been together for as long as we were otherwise. But after Jeannie died, I ran from my loss by burying my head in the sand of work. I tried to see the world through Marilyn’s eyes, and even now I strain for a glimpse of it in the shadows of Cassidy’s Bar, but I can’t be the person she needed. The one who only worries about the things that can be controlled.
“It’s a good night,” I say again, hoping she will believe me a second time.
“Get some sleep,” Marilyn says tenderly. “The Little Five needs her chief.”
And then she’s gone, back into the shadows, back through the crowd of old men and women reminiscing about a world we still want to keep in our grasp. I put my daughter’s photograph back in my pocket, as if to protest that I’m not one of them.
The door swings back open as Marilyn leaves the bar, letting in some of the full moonlight, and a newly familiar face enters: Owen, alone for the first time in days, looking for someone. For me, apparently. “Officer Luther told me you’d be here.” He puts out a hand to shake mine. “I wanted to thank you again for everything you’ve done and for letting us in.”
He glances around the room as if searching for someone else, then returns his attention to me. “Chief, I need to talk to you in the morning. It’s important.”
“Now is fine. We can go over to the station.” I tap the side of my glass. “These don’t really have the effect they once did.”
“Maybe,” he says. “Not just yet. There are some things I need to check first. To be sure.” Before I can object, he adds, “But I can meet you at the station in an hour.”
Owen turns and leaves as quickly as he arrived. Confused, I slip from my seat and follow him only a few paces behind. As my palm hits the door, there is a loud rifle crack from the street, and I burst out of the bar in time to see Owen crumpling to the ground less than five yards away. I reach for my own weapon but realize I left it at the station before I walked over here. My second instinct is to find cover and scan for the attacker, but in spite of the brightness of the full moon, there are too many shadows, and I see nothing—not even a hint of movement. The shooter may have been firing from a window or from one of the alleys. There is no way to be sure from my vantage. The most I can tell from the way Owen fell and where his wounds are is that he was shot in the back right side of the head, putting the shooter somewhere to my right.
Pritchard and Kloves are next out the door. Kloves uses his deep, carrying voice to make it clear that no one is to come into the lot until I tell them it’s safe. Pritch finds me crouched behind an old bike rack, which isn’t much in the way of cover, but the best I could find in a moment.
“Do you have your weapon?” I ask, and he shakes his head. “Get to the station. Bring Luther.”
As Pritch rises to go, a loud, high pitched scream rattles among the buildings, echoing across the parking lot in front of the bar. Anyone unaccustomed to the sound would be forgiven for thinking that it was some hysterical woman’s reaction to seeing a body bleeding out on the ground. But no one here is unaccustomed to the sound. It is too long, too loud, too uncanny.
“Fuck,” Pritchard yelps, and he runs hard for the station.
“Where did that come from?” Kloves asks.
“Tunnel, I think.” I do one last futile scan of the area before I stand and turn away from Owen. “Had to be. The echo.” I motion for Kloves to step aside, and as the people in the bar come stumbling out, I address them as firmly as I can. “Everyone on the sweep team, get your gear and go to the tunnel wall. If you can’t walk straight, go home.”
All thoughts of the man on the ground are banished. We have a more immediate danger to address, even though it means losing evidence and the best chance of finding Owen’s shooter. The only concession I can afford is to have Kloves bring Owen’s body to the hospital. Then I face south and hurry to reach the station.
Luther and Pritch are outside when I arrive, both carrying crossbows and rifles. Luther tosses me a Remington and my holster, already moving toward the tunnel. “Pritch was saying something about a shooting.”
The shrieker calls out again, more loudly this time. I had hoped someone would have taken the shot already. I curse under my breath. “It was Owen.”
“Owen? Why?” Luther halts. “Has someone checked in on the girl?”
I grit my teeth. “Go,” I tell Luther. “Make sure she’s all right. Get her to the station. Put her in the cell to be sure. Keep her safe.”
She hands over her crossbow and turns on her heels without a word.
By the time Pritch and I reach the tunnel wall, the sweep team is arriving behind us, their bows and crossbows at the ready. Most of these weapons were retrieved from the big box stores beyond the tunnel during the early days post-collapse, and they are a varied assortment of children’s toys, sports equipment, and hunting weapons.
Half of the sweep team takes the high road atop the tunnel, next to the railroad tracks and the southern fence. The rest go down to the wall, onto the upper platform. Pritch joins the high road group with his rifle and I go to the wall, giving Luther’s crossbow to one of the sweep team archers. I am a much better shot with a firearm.
Through one of the arrow slits at the top of the barricade I see the shrieker, just past the tunnel, out of range of the bows. Farther down the road, at the edge of the retail park, a mass of hollow-heads is moving toward the shrieker’s call, which comes again and rattles my skull. “Come on, Pritch,” I mutter.
The shot rings out and the shrieker’s wailing is cut short. It collapses to the ground, exactly like Owen, and I shudder at the comparison. Both were men once.
At this distance, in the darkness, it is impossible to make out individuals in the hollow-head crowd, turning it into a single writhing mass of interconnected bodies, moving haltingly and silently toward the deeper darkness of the tunnel. The stench of them comes in like the fog over Kennesaw Mountain: sweat and blood and shit, mixed with the vapor of breath so vile that I feel like I’m swallowing dead rats each time I inhale.
Yet despite the smell, the worst is the silence. Perhaps it’s some primal expectation of our ancient brains that predators must make a sound, a cry or a growl, any noise at all. The hollow-heads, for all their viciousness, are like the dead, giving us only their footfalls echoing in the tunnel. My chest tightens, and a sour taste percolates into my mouth. No matter how many times I find myself here, facing this, it feels like the first. Like the plazas of Savannah, where I frantically put myself between the hollow-heads and the civilians I couldn’t save. I feel the guilt anew. I let it fuel me. I let it make me callous, if only for a moment, long enough to do what needs to be done.
There is a change in the horde, like the turning of a flock of birds, and the entire mass of hollow-heads begins to run, sprinting through the tunnel, grasping for the arrow slits of the upper platform. Half of the group has come through to the southbound side of the tunnel where I am posted; the other half, invisible to me now, is on the northbound side beyond the concrete median wall.
“Oh, fuck,” yelps one of the newer sweep team members, and a bolt whistles down into a hollow-head’s shoulder. T
he hollow-head opens its mouth wide in a silent scream and falls back into the crowd. The wall trembles, struck again and again with the force of at least two dozen enraged hollow-heads. They pound their open hands against the corrugated metal of the barricade, shove hard against the chained door. Some in the rear start to climb over the ones in front, pushing them down onto the asphalt.
We hold our ground, waiting, hoping that they won’t find a weakness in the wall or manage to climb to the top, where there is enough room to squeeze through if you don’t care about cutting open your belly. Even worse, too much pressure on the barricade may cause it to collapse.
Their tactics change a second time, part of a pattern we’ve seen over and over again. Six, then eight, pull away from the main group and rush for the far end of the tunnel. They know about the road above, and how to climb the shoulder to reach the much weaker chain link fence. They aren’t planning; their reactions are more instinct than intent. But the effect is the same. At least Pritchard is prepared. Arrows and bolts punch into the climbing hollow-heads, forcing them back, killing two of them immediately. Two rifle shots make quick work of another. Its head bursts open in a cloud of red and it falls to the pavement below, skull splitting apart like a dry watermelon.
Penetrated by the deaths of their fellows, the last of the hollow-heads’ glacial determination transforms into a burst of squirming, lunging, lurching. The barrier shakes beneath my feet and I shout to the others to remain steady, to hold their fire. I rest my trigger finger on the guard to keep my nerves from taking a shot I don’t need to waste as the hollow-heads finally reach the arrow slits in numbers. Someone loses a crossbow to a lucky grab, and moments later I hear a groan of metal and the snapping of rivets as a section of the wall pulls away from the rest. It bends and falls down on top of the hollow-head who dislodged it, but there are three more to take its place, squirming into the opening. An older member of the sweep team, Jake Yanic, loses his weapon to a rough swipe of a hollow-head’s arm, then falls back against the railing of the upper platform. I hear myself shouting for support from the other end of the wall, but Jake’s nearest companions are already trying to pull him away from his attackers. I look for an opening to shoot, but there are too many of our people in the way.
The Post Page 4
