The Howling Twenties

by Fennel Steuert

  So this was it? thought Lorraine. Walking a dog for someone who was tangentially closer to those she missed? It made sense, in so much as anything in life often seemed to.

  It was another overcast day, and as Lorraine walked with the dog, she let herself be pulled along in whatever directions he seemed to want to go. She was fascinated by how much Shiba seemed to want out of its own neighborhood.

  Maybe it was because it was cold and the side of town she was aware Roger lived in was less sparse and more challenging. She hated that she saw it that way, but she had a vague notion that the city had hoarded off all of the people it failed in one place. She once had the quiet of green spaces, and it was of some comfort when people stared at someone they thought was slightly “deficient.” Her neighborhood at present grasped at that quiet, green sensibility, sometimes too much. But as she entered elsewhere, with its increasing number of cars that bombarded stop signs with loud music, almost as if stopping their stereos would not help keep them warm, she wondered if the weight of one or two or more of those cars should have been parking on her block.

  Lorraine found herself smiling nervously at passers-by, trying to compensate for Shiba’s sporadic barking.

  At some point, Shiba pulled Lorraine narrowly past a hooded man who stood in the middle of a sidewalk.

  “Excuse me,” she said.

  From beneath the off-white hood, the man’s green eyes scanned her. They were both erratic and unblinking. It seemed quite to him incidental – the way he quickly lifted something in his palm to his mouth. As he gobbled it down, a tiny brown feather drifted in the air between him and Lorraine.

  Shiba barked.

  The hooded man looked at Shiba, and the dog barked at Lorraine, pulling his lease in the direction they’d been heading, anyway – away from the ghoul.

  Lorraine was certain that’s what it was. She knew Gesine was unusual, that people with her condition usually traveled in packs … of a sort. Her friend at work had been reduced to such, and even less than that thanks to the gray device developed by a department near her old one.

  Lorraine’s heartbeat was frantic. She felt lucky to have the dog to pull her along. With the ghoul’s hood on, Lorraine had not been able to see if it had one of those little gray devices on its head.

  She looked behind her.

  The hooded man had begun walking in the same direction she was going.

  Great, thought Lorraine. Or, great if it was entirely coincidental, anyway.

  Across the street, a tall, broad man was walking along as he stared in the direction Shiba was pulling Lorraine toward. He stopped dead in his tracks, slowly turned his head so that his gaze was fixed on Lorraine, and began crossing the street.

  Again, Shiba barked and pulled.

  “No,” said Lorraine. She tied the leash around her wrist, then dug into her purse for the gift that she’d hoped to give Gesine: a gloriously spoiled pumpkin. Lorraine took it out of its zip-locked bag, put it in the palm of her hand and held it outstretched in front of her. When she looked up, five figures who’d been approaching had stopped. Shiba barked wildly, pulling at her leash as Lorraine approached the closest one – the one in the hoodie. She continued to hold the pumpkin aloft. The ghoul’s eyes followed the sight longingly, as Lorraine tried to take a peek at his head.

  The closer her hand got, the more Shiba barked. When it was close to pulling back the hood, Shiba surged forward. Lorraine’s hand enough surged forward and jerked, causing her to drop the pumpkin.

  Being spoiled, the thing fell into pieces.

  The ghouls looked up, slowly managing to pull themselves from the momentary peace that had turned to bits of orange amid the concrete and its sparse collections of snow. They looked incredibly sad, thought Lorraine, to be so enveloped in her direction again.

  For a very brief moment Lorraine considered throwing Shiba toward the ghouls. Instead she relented, taking her cues on where to run from the dog.

  Lorraine glanced behind her. There were more, several figures then – all still walking after her. She searched the streets for other signs of life, but she could only hear it sometimes on the next block. A car’s stereo thumped away there.

  After a half block, there was a woman up ahead. She had on a goose coat and, with a kind of nervous intensity, walked in the direction Lorraine and Shiba were walking so quickly to get away from, like she had to go somewhere she didn’t want to.

  Lorraine stopped her. Shiba pulled at her lease again, barking profusely.

  “You shouldn’t go in that direction,” Lorraine told the woman. “Those people behind me ... they’re lost. I don’t know what ...”

  The woman in the goose coat rolled her eyes, sidestepped Lorraine and resolutely went back on her way.

  Lorraine managed to get her phone out of her purse. She used to the camera function to look behind her.

  The woman in the goose coat walked straight in the middle of the sidewalk, dividing the small, ghoulish crowd for a second, before it seemed to swallow her.

  Lorraine dialed the number Doris had called from. No answer.

  At this point, Lorraine was practically jogging – half-following Shiba’s lead and half-looking for any other signs of life. Shiba pulled her in the direction of a corner where, standing in front of a half-down chain-link fence, a few men were nodding as one revved the engine on his car to the beat of a song on the radio.

  Shiba tried to pull the leash past the men, but Lorraine slowed the dog down, not stopping altogether herself.

  “Guys ...” she said, quickly realizing that she was walking on ice. One of Lorraine’s legs jolted upward as the rest of her fell downward. She managed to have her hands at her sides. Her palms and wrists burned with the impact.

  To Lorraine’s surprise, Shiba didn’t leave her even as Lorraine dropped her end of the leash.

  The men by the fence almost laughed but it pilfered out. Though they did not relish it, they helped Lorraine up.

  “Could you shut up that stupid dog, though?” said one as he handed her the leash.

  Lorraine looked behind her. There were maybe two dozen people walking purposefully their way.

  “I don’t know what’s going on,” said another man, “but we should be out.”

  His gaze followed Lorraine’s own, and then his friend’s did. The men quickly scrambled to their cars. As Lorraine tried to get into the nearest one, the driver closed the door on her.

  Lorraine knocked on the driver-side window.

  The man shook his head.

  Shiba barked, alternately running away from Lorraine and then back to her.

  Lorraine didn’t know what else to do but follow the unleashed dog.

  6

  Barks

  While Roger rested in clothes Doris ensured weren’t in the shower beforehand, she made frequent trips around the rooms in the house – which, aside from Roger’s room and the bathroom, one or more of the vampires had taken up residency in. Most of them did nothing but sleep.

  It made her a bit jealous. She’d helped someone else to do the same thing once – sleep through to some better time that may or may not come. For herself, she had wanted to dream like it could be life itself. But that dream did not want her, and so there she was, in a house with a couple of wounded-but-sweet souls on a dead-end street, making sure that the new guests didn’t eat them.

  Desmond spent a lot of time in the kitchen, cooking for both Roger and the man who was tied up and bound on the floor.

  One night Doris was in the kitchen, pushing aside thoughts of Roger’s blood as he and Robin were playing checkers upstairs. Gesine sat on the other side of the kitchen table, mostly watching Desmond.

  The Dutchman came through from the living room. Robin had apparently tasked him with taking the man with the gray temples, whom Desmond had taken to calling Gray, to use the bathroom when he needed to. Human beings smelled even more when they had to do anything in that vein, so he didn’t need to request as much – though after the first day
of Emilia’s mesmerizing, Gray was no longer gagged.

  “Hey,” he told Desmond as the Dutchman put him on the counter.

  For herself, Doris mentally put a void through the Dutchman’s head.

  “Hey,” said Desmond to Gray. “I hope you like noodle soup. That’s just about the only thing we’ve got at this point.”

  “Noodle soup sounds fantastic,” said Gray.

  “Does it?” Desmond sighed. “Wow.” He looked over his shoulder to Doris. “Does he still have to be tied up?”

  Doris blinked. “Huh? Oh. No. Probably not.”

  “Once,” said Gesine, “a pale-face soldier was being held captive in my tribe’s camp. When someone untied him, to make him more comfortable, he killed her.”

  Desmond looked at Gesine, wide-eyed. “That … is awful, Gesine. But this is different. Doris, you can’t be okay with someone tied up like this?”

  “I’ve seen people far less bound who were far less safe,” she said.

  “Even in a house full of vampires?”

  “Yes,” said Doris matter-of-factly.

  She took a ladle to the noodle soup. When Doris got to his room with a bowl of noodle soup, he was sitting up and playing checkers with Robin. Roger’s approach was somewhat thoughtless. Thus Robin, who was sitting on the other side of the bedstand, was forced to play more randomly than he would have liked. Doris almost smiled.

  “It’s quieter than usual outside,” said Roger to himself as much as anyone else.

  “A tiny bit,” said Robin. “But, really, this is one of the noisiest places I’ve ever been. I find it sporadically quiet at best, and I can only imagine what it’s like in the summer … This country was supposed to be more, once upon a time, but all the new kings of the new world did was give its paupers the ability to think of themselves as kings … A thousand kingdoms. A thousand soundscapes blaring against each other. Speaking of which, king me.”

  “‘King me.’” Roger repeated the words with the same skepticism Robin had about it being quiet around where they were. “Thank you for that treatise on how difficult it is to live here … And, hey, you do know you’ve got one of those ‘royal’ names yourself?”

  Robin flashed a smile – mostly, it seemed, to stave off a frown. “Before my senior moment, I was going to say that your company, Doris, bought out one of your neighbor’s houses across the street. They also bought a lot a bit further down the street, which is more curious. Anyhow, that’s probably why it’s a bit less noisy around here than usual.”

  “Who moved in?” said Doris and Roger at the same time.

  “Nobody as of yet,” said Robin. “I wish you had waited to visit Argall’s grave, Doris. Or at least waited until there were more of us here.”

  “I had no idea you were on your way,” said Doris. “And his grave? He still has his head, and our hearts are hard to squish into oblivion without a stake.”

  “Not that hard.” Robin stretched his arms upward, and the rest of him followed him suit. “Roger, we should continue this game another time.”

  “I don’t know that I’m that passionate about checkers,” said Roger. “And no offense – well, actually a little offense, but how long do you plan on being here?”

  Robin shrugged. “As long as Doris lets us. The old guard doesn’t mobilize like it used to. Either that, or the world is faster.”

  Gesine appeared in the doorway. “I can sense my kind.”

  Robin nodded two times, once gravely and then once resolutely. “You heard her, all. Tell our comrades not within earshot. I’ll be on the roof.”

  Roger waited in the dark downstairs with Desmond and Gray. He couldn’t see them, but Doris and Gesine were nearby. The only ones he could hear breathing were Desmond and Gray.

  “Why is it pitch black out there?” said Desmond.

  Doris’ voice came from right behind Roger’s shoulder: “Robin must have shot out the streetlights.”

  Roger imagined him up there, shooting lights out with arrows on his roof. It had just occurred to him that all that was missing was the green hood, though he’d long since stopped caring much for aristocratic legends.

  “For some reason,” said Gray, “the dark is giving me a headache.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Doris. “The light does the same thing to me.”

  “Huh,” said Gray. “What about you guys?”

  “Both give me a headache,” said Roger.

  “Wait,” said Desmond.

  Gesine’s voice popped up. “What is it?”

  “Do you hear that?”

  “Yes,” said Doris. “… A dog barking … and the hum from one of those awful speakers.”

  “I think I know that bark,” said Desmond. He went to the door and pulled it open. The Dutchman dropped down from the roof. He broke a plank in the porch as he landed. Grimacing, he yanked his foot out then pushed Desmond back.

  “Go back inside and don’t come out until we tell you to.”

  Desmond stumbled backward. Gesine grabbed his shoulders and steadied him. Then she guided him behind her.

  Roger could make out Gesine’s black hair flowing like a ghost as she charged into the Dutchman, The vampire’s eyes flashed red as he grabbed her and they both fell down the stoop.

  Doris sighed. “Excuse me.”

  She sped out into the night.

  Doris. Gesine. The Dutchman. Their presence in the world had been reduced to noise – a sound of wind whipping up.

  Desmond turned his phone on. By its sort-of light, Roger and Gray followed him as he went down the stoop. No one was there or in the front yard. But the dog barking became louder, and the light of another cellphone was visible as its holder ran in their direction.

  Roger heard a crash on the side of the house. He wanted to go where Doris was, but Desmond had never been around any other ghoul except for Gesine. Two humans weren’t much of a match for one’s strength, let alone more. Roger wouldn’t want to have to face such an imbalance alone.

  The light from the other cellphone got closer and closer. “You should be running away, too!” a woman said breathlessly.

  Roger recognized her voice. “Lorraine? Is that you?”

  A dog leapt up into Desmond’s arms, and he dropped his phone. For a second, Roger was able to see Lorraine half-folded over leaning on her haunches.

  “Roger?” she said, before glancing back behind her.

  “What the hell is going out there?” yelled a woman from a house across the street.

  “Construction woes, ma’am.”

  The voice seemed to come from down the street, to the left of the woman.

  Probably the house the company had bought, Roger thought.

  “Get back inside!” yelled Robin from the roof. “All of you.”

  Roger squinted his eyes. Quickly appearing in the corner of his vision, Doris somehow made her way beside him. She was reaching out to Desmond, though.

  Doris saw it coming way before he did.

  Desmond shrieked, just before Doris pulled him back.

  The Shiba Inu began barking incessantly.

  Gesine ran to Desmond, pushing Lorraine out of the way. Doris instinctively let Gesine take her place.

  Roger felt like he’d drifted out of his body. What had happened? Did one of the ghouls really … ? No, he thought.

  Gesine guided Desmond back to the house. Roger followed but then quickly realized Lorraine was there. Somewhere. Frantically, he looked around.

  Gray was helping her up.

  A burning arrow shot down next to Doris. She picked it up and whirred it around at the crowd of dozens of ghouls.

  By the orange light, Roger could finally see the crest of them. He ducked and put his hands over his head as several vampires dropped down all around him from the roof.

  Robin yelled his name: “Roger!” The red-headed vampire’s eyes were likewise red. He held a flaming arrow in his hand. “There’s a car out back.”

  He handed Roger the arrow.

  Roge
r nodded. As he headed around the side of the house, a figure limped toward him from a bloody pool in the middle of the walkway. The Dutchman.

  He shook his head, his eyes glowing red. “You should have listened to me. Do you hear it?”

  Roger shook his head. “What are you talking about?”

  “Something big, mechanical. They ruined the world, you know – machines.”

  “Roger!” yelled Doris from the front. “Get everyone in the car!”

  Roger looked at the Dutchman. “You coming?”

  He shook his head, his eyes glowing red. “I’m sure she means you and the other one her friend just mauled me over. I don’t suppose you’d be willing to give me some of your blood?”

  The Dutchman lurched in Roger’s direction, halting as Roger held up the flaming arrow. He limped around Roger, back into the fray, as the other humans passed him.

  Roger ran to the back, opened the door to the car, and got behind the wheel. He unlocked all the doors, and Gray and Lorraine, with the dog, piled in. Gesine and Desmond were still in the house. Roger looked in the rear-view mirror at the windows.

  Then he heard it – the bulldozer as it tore away at the front of the house.

  More noise, loud thumps at the back of the house. Gesine’s fist went through the wall, and then she pulled enough of it down for her to step outside. Before she did that, Gesine gently lowered Desmond into the backyard.

  The dog barked, pawing at the window from Lorraine’s lap.

  With Desmond woozily complying, Gesine guided him toward her motorcycle. She started it up, put him on the back, then wrapped his arms around her waist before looking over at them in the car.

  Doris appeared in the passenger seat next to Roger. He put the car’s headlights on.

  Robin and Emilia covered their eyes for a moment, before they resumed pushing down the back-fence. As the fence toppled, Gesine took off with Desmond on the motorcycle.

  Emilia hopped into the car’s trunk and was quickly joined by Robin, who shut it behind him.