by Sam Kench
It took some force for Mark to get the door open. It seemed a little too large for the frame. Or maybe the frame had warped with the weather. Their father had often complained about how poorly the house was built. The walls were stuffed with old newspaper and horse hair in place of insulation. Their Dad used to joke that the house was built by an idiot and that if you leaned on the wall in the wrong spot you might fall straight through it.
They stepped into the narrow hallway, and looked down the extremely steep flight of stairs. Their backs were to a lone window in the hallway and the bottom of the stairs was shrouded in darkness. Mark stood in front and looked back at Maria who nudged him forward. Their own shadows stared them down, cast crooked across the stairs.
Slowly, Mark began the descent. The stairs had a paper-thin carpet nailed to the top of them and each step was almost twice the height it should have been. What the stairs had in height, they lacked in length. Mark had to turn his feet sideways so they wouldn’t overhang the edge of each step. He hadn’t needed to do that the last time he went down these stairs.
Maria put a hand on Mark’s shoulder as they descended into the darkness so she wouldn’t lose track of him, as if that would be possible in the tight confines of the claustrophobic space. She had felt fearless at the top of the stairs but that sense of invulnerability had all but disappeared. She was annoyed at Mark for moving so slowly, prolonging her discomfort.
Mark felt carefully ahead of him with his foot as he went down each stair, fearing the next step might drop off straight into oblivion. He didn’t let out a breath all through the darkness until his foot bumped into the closed door at the bottom. Mark remembered the oddity that was the downstairs door as his foot thudded against it. The door was built right against the bottom step, no landing. Mark had to sit down on a step behind him to get at the right height to work the doorknob. Just as he remembered the odd placement of the door, he also remembered how loud it was.
Mark looked at Maria in the darkness and felt her hand tighten on his shoulder. As slowly as he could, Mark twisted the old, brass, jimmy-proof deadbolt. A metal on painted-metal scraping quickly filled the hallway. The door popped open about an inch and Mark pushed it the rest of the way. A doormat caught under it and curled over.
Mark and Maria funneled out into the equally narrow, but better lit, ground floor hallway. Sunlight shown white through the opaque windows. They rounded the corner and quietly stepped past the door to Buddy’s apartment. Maria paused for a moment to listen at Buddy’s door. She heard something. A clock ticking, maybe? A creaking floorboard, perhaps? Possibly just Mark’s footsteps ahead of her. She silently caught up behind him and they reached the door to the basement.
Older, darker, beveled wood adorned with an ancient lock. Mark stopped at the door and let Maria pass him into the dead-end of the hallway. He knew from memory that this door, when opened, would fill the entire hallway back the way they came save for roughly two inches between the end of the door and the wall. He planned on using the door to block Buddy’s path, should he come bursting out of his apartment. He whispered those machinations to Maria and silently motioned for her to keep an eye on Buddy’s door while he fished out the basement key.
Maria already had been, and she was wishing Mark would move a hell of a lot faster. She felt like a criminal sneaking around inside her own home. Mark stuck the large iron key into the ancient lock. Loud tumblers clicked and turned over. The tiny sounds were like a booming echo in the quiet hallway. The door opened up. Mark waved Maria in first, filling the hallway with the door and staring through the tiny opening at Buddy’s door. He slowly closed the door as he backed into the basement stairwell.
This staircase wasn’t as long or narrow as the one that came before it, but was a hell of a lot darker. The only light spilled in around the corner from a narrow basement window. A tiny rectangular portal to the outside world. The falling snow was quickly building up in front of it and dimming the already slight illumination without blocking it entirely. It cast a cold grey wash over the room. All that Mark and Maria could see at the bottom of the stairs was the overturned corpse of a water heater and a portion of craggy stone wall joined to the packed dirt floor. Mark couldn’t remember if there was any cement underneath or if it was dirt all the way down.
They started down the stairs, holding on to each other tightly. Maria turned on the flashlight of her cellphone. Suddenly she felt very selfish for not even thinking to call any of her friends to see if they were all right, except for Stacey. She had tried several times to call 911 and received a constant busy signal but had made no attempt to reach anyone else. She hated herself a little bit for that, but they hadn't tried to reach her either. She hoped they were just giving her space to grieve, or concerned with their own safety, and not something far worse.
The basement staircase wasn’t long, a mere 15 steps, but it took them an eternity to reach the packed dirt floor. The stairs were made of wooden planks with no backing and Mark had to duck under an overhead shelf built into the slanted ceiling. They broke their way through thick cobwebs and did what they could to avoid breathing in too much of the dust that hung thick in the air.
The boiler had a room all to itself. Mark pulled on the heavy wooden door set in its stone frame. The top of the door clanged against a low-hanging pipe running along the ceiling after opening a few inches. Mark pushed on the pipe and found it had some give in its suspension. He had Maria pull on the door while he forced the pipe upwards. The door scraped against the rusty underside of the pipe, then held it up.
They stepped into the boiler room: a small, craggy, 8X8 stone cell. The same dirt floor except packed less tightly. A massive black, iron boiler and oil tank stood menacingly in the corner. The rest of the room was relegated to storage. Large tote buckets, a set of lawn darts and croquet mallets, a metal rack of darkly colored mason jars. Maria touched the boiler’s side with the back of her hand.
‘It’s cold.’
Mark tapped the oil gauge, ‘It’s not empty. Looks like it’s at two? Maybe a little under’. The oil gauge measured just under the second of ten notches. ‘Let’s give this a shot.’ Mark restarted the boiler as he had seen his Father do years ago. With a double flip of a switch and a press of a shiny red button the boiler roared back to life.
‘Okay good, let’s get out of here.’ Maria headed toward the door but felt Mark’s blue, plaster-encased arm stretch out in front of her.
‘Wait a second.’ Mark said, looking around the room with studious eyes.
‘What?’
‘I’m thinking this might be the safest place.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Yeah. Maybe we should stay in here?’
‘In the basement? What are you, crazy?’
‘Think about it. We’d be hard to find down here, there’s only one way in-’
‘Yeah, Mark, that means only one way out. Nowhere to run if someone got in. That’s bad.’
‘I bet if we pulled the door shut past that pipe, and piled all this stuff up in front of the door-’ Mark motioned over all of the junk in the room, ‘It’d be nearly impossible for anyone to get in here’
‘You’re talking about living underground, Mark. Do you hear yourself?’
‘There’s crazy people out there and we need to stay safe. Think about it, if someone tries to pull open the door, it’ll get caught on the pipe, and while they’re trying to get the door open, we can stab them or something through the opening.’
Maria scoffed. ‘I can’t believe we’re talking about this. We ought to be on our way to Aunt Kim’s.’
‘How, Maria?! What are we gonna take a bus? Are we gonna call a Lyft? How far do you think we can get without freezing? How the hell are we supposed to get anywhere without getting killed?!’
Maria’s eyes lifted to the ceiling as Mark’s decibel level climbed. She listened for movement.
Mark took a deep breath and softened his voice. ‘Look, you understand what I’m s
aying, right?’
Maria nodded. ‘I do.’
‘We’ll stay upstairs now that we got the heat going. But will you promise me that if something does happen, or if someone does get inside, that we will go to this room, and block the door, and not come out unless it is definitely safe?’
‘Okay, fine.’
‘Promise me, Maria. We need to have a plan in place. We need to both plan to head straight here. If something does happen and there’s confusion and we don’t know where to go or what to do… that’s how we get killed.’
‘I promise. That’s our plan.’
‘Okay then. Good. Thank you. We should keep some food down here in case. we might end up being in here a while. If worst comes to worst.’
They made their way back up to their apartment then made a second trip down to store some of their remaining food in the boiler room. Maria made sure to lay the mat out flat that had been curled over when they opened the door each time they passed it.
The apartment was warm again for the time being but by the time they had gotten the food into the basement and returned upstairs, their wi-fi and cable had gone out for good. For now, the power was holding strong at least.
2. A VISITOR UNINVITED - A VISITOR UNWANTED
MARK STOOD BY THE STOVE boiling water for hot chocolate. He split the final packet of cocoa between two mugs and carried them out to the living room where Maria sat by the radio.
The local radio station had begun to broadcast again after being off the air for a few days. A shaky voice, unaccustomed to broadcasting, crackled through their speakers. It was a man’s voice, sounded to be in his late 20s or early 30s. He explained that he been chased into the radio station by a pair of club wielding brutes, screaming racial slurs at him as they ran.
He had locked himself in the tiny radio station and was pleading for someone to come to his rescue. He didn’t know who he was broadcasting to or if anyone could even hear him at all. He listed his location over and over again, begging for help. The two men who chased him to the station had grown to a mob of eight maniacs that pounded at the doors and searched for a way inside.
‘We can’t help him, Maria,’ Mark said.
‘I know.’ She continued to listen.
‘There’s nothing we can do. We would never be able to make it to him.’
‘I know.’
He handed her the hot chocolate, ‘Any of the other radio stations start back up?’
‘No, this is the only one.’
‘How long do you think we’ll have power for?’
‘... I don’t know.’
‘Make sure you keep your phone on the charger.’
That reminded Maria to check in on Stacey. Their calls had to be quick since her dad didn’t like her using her cellphone, but they had stayed in contact anyway. Maria was dismayed by the panic and urgency in her voice.
‘Hey, Maria, I can’t talk.’
‘Are you all right?’
‘I, uh- I don’t know.’
The pastor’s voice boomed behind Stacey, ‘I said no phone calls! They’re listening!’
‘Maria, I gotta go-’ Stacey’s dad yanked the phone from her hand and slammed it off the living room floor. He stomped on it until his heel cracked the screen and the display went dead.
Stacey ran to her mom and sister on the other side of the room. The pounding at the front door had developed from one fist to a half-dozen. Shadows of men and weapons moved about on the other side of the frosted glass window set in the door.
The pastor looked to the silhouettes, then to his wife. ‘Bring them upstairs.’
‘Honey, I don’t thi-’
‘Do it! All of you! Get up there and pray!’
As the rest of the family hurried upstairs, pastor Prendergast went for his gun. The shadows outside his door howled as he yanked open the closet and put the combination into his lockbox.
‘Open up, pastor Aaron!’
‘Come on!’
‘Let us in!’
‘We know you’re in there!’
The pastor pulled his recently acquired snub-nosed revolver out of the box and loaded it just like the guy in the store taught him. He aimed the gun toward the frosted glass with a shaky hand.
‘Unlock the door, pastor Aaron!’
‘We know you’ve got three ripe pussies locked up in there!’
‘It ain’t fair, man!’
‘Yeah! You’ve gotta share, pastor Aaron!’
The pastor lowered his gun, knowing what he truly needed to do, and knowing exactly how hard it would be.
The frosted glass shattered and the sweaty, white-trash men outside jostled for position, all trying to reach through the small aperture at once.
The pastor made his way upstairs. He joined his family in the master bedroom and was relieved to find them on their knees praying as he had instructed. There was a distant rumble and the house shook underneath them. The lights flickered on and off in the overheard lamp. The fan spun wildly, and the whole chandelier began to sway on its hanging chain.
Stacey rose to her feet. ‘Dad, what are you doing?’
The lights pulsated like lightning, rising and falling in intensity. The brutes downstairs burst through the front door, hollering excitedly.
‘Keep praying.’ The pastor said, preparing for the act to come. He did the sign of the cross twice in a row.
‘Dad!’
‘This is not our world anymore.’
And as the words left the pastor’s lips he raised the gun to the back of his wife’s head. ‘You’ll see each other in heaven.’ He knew he would not be able to join them but for this mercy. ‘Goodbye.’
He pulled the trigger and the gun let out a deafening blast. He watched as blood coated the bedroom wallpaper an instant before his wife’s head smashed through the plaster. He forced his eyes to the swinging, pulsing chandelier above the bed as his children screamed. He pivoted his arm and fired again. The tandem screams became a solo performance as Stacey hit the floor, silenced. Letting the tears flow, pastor Prendergast pivoted once more and punctuated poor little Polly’s screams with a penultimate gunshot.
The intruders made it to the bedroom doorway just in time to see the pastor bring the revolver to the underside of his chin and squeeze the trigger one final time. The ceiling fan spread his displaced brains across the room.
THE BROADCAST CONTINUED. Maria listened attentively to the scared man’s pleading over the radio. After a couple of minutes, a gunshot rang out, not over the radio, but outside their window. It was much louder and closer than the others that had come before it. Two more gunshots followed, even closer sounding. Tires squealed. Maria stood up and pulled aside the curtain.
‘No, stay away from the window!’ Mark shouted.
Maria looked down. A boxy four door car sped along their street from the town square, the trunk bouncing open with bullet holes near the lock and license plate. Another gunshot rang out from down the street and blew out the car's back-left tire. As Maria turned her head to see where the shot came from, the car swerved hard and crashed into their front porch.
The whole house shook. The siblings were knocked off their feet. Mark brought his hands over his head and cowered on the floor. ‘Stay down!’ He yelled to Maria, but she grabbed onto the windowsill and pulled herself up. She cautiously peeked over the edge of the sill, down to their porch below. The car’s hood had broken through the wooden porch, and the front left tire had gone up onto the porch’s second stone step, setting the car at a steep angle with the rattled driver hoisted into the air.
Maria looked into the car at the driver, a man in his early 40’s, sweaty blond hair caked with blood hung down in front of his eyes. He frantically jerked at his seatbelt as a motorcycle came to a stop in the middle of the road.
The rider had a large black helmet with the reflective visor down; black leather jacket and pants; black leather gloves, and black leather boots. Not an inch of skin visible.
He stepped off of the mot
orcycle, a long, silver barreled revolver in his hand. He walked calmly over to the car sticking out of the porch and up onto the second step to get level with the driver side door. The driver had gotten his seatbelt off but never got any further. The driver shouted in terror as the black-clad rider placed the barrel of the revolver against the glass and fired.
Maria hunkered down below the windowsill as the sound of the gunshot bounced off the neighboring buildings and echoed off toward the mountains. ‘Oh Jesus Christ!’ Mark yelled, not lifting his eyes from the carpet. Maria looked back out.
The window had shattered, the driver was shot in the side of the face, but still alive. He wailed in agony and in terror, blood leaking from the edges of the large hole in his cheek, back into his mouth, choking him. The eerily-calm motorcyclist reached in through the shattered window and unlocked the angled door. He yanked it upwards to get it open and grabbed onto the driver with one hand. He hauled him out of the seat and dropped him onto the stairs.
The driver tumbled down the stone steps and landed on his back, his head toward the street, his eyes looking at his own bloodied reflection in the helmet’s visor. He made no attempt to crawl away or defend himself before the rider sent another bullet through his head. A cone of chunky, red gore sprayed across the snow.
Maria trembled. Her eyes closed instinctively and her head lowered, chin to chest. She felt her breath coming out ragged. She reached for her throat, her hand shaking wildly. She told herself this was something she would have to get used to. After a five count she repeated to herself that this was the new normal. With her shaking calmed to a manageable amount, she re-opened her eyes.
She watched the rider reload his revolver with cartridges from a zipper pocket on the breast of his jacket. He rooted through the trunk of the car and then through the driver and passenger sides of the car.
Please don’t come inside, Maria pleaded internally. They had barricaded their downstairs door but she had little faith that it would stop someone who was determined to get in.
