by Brian Keene
“I’m going with you,” he said.
“I appreciate the thought, but I can’t ask you to do that, man.”
“You’re not asking me. I’m telling you. So let’s go.” He glanced down at my feet. “You might want to put some socks and shoes on first, though.”
I looked down and saw that I was barefoot. I’d been so worried about Christy that I hadn’t even noticed. We left his apartment. Russ locked the door behind us. Then, while I got some shoes on, he went downstairs and got Cranston. I never found out what he said to Cranston that convinced him to come along, but I was glad for it. The two of them met me in the foyer. Cranston had Russ’s other pistol in his hand. Russ had unslung the rifle and was holding it in both hands, peeking out into the street. Cranston nodded at me. I nodded back.
“Thanks for doing this,” I told him.
“No problem, man. Let’s just hope it doesn’t end up like last time, right?”
“Right.”
“Coast is clear,” Russ said. “The street is empty. I don’t see Christy, though.”
“She’s heading downtown,” I told them. “To the pet store. You guys know where that is?”
Russ shrugged. “I don’t.”
“I do,” Cranston said. “I bought a Nile monitor lizard there. I named him Jerry, after Jerry Garcia.”
“Who?” I asked.
“Jerry Garcia—the Grateful Dead, man.”
I shrugged. “My grandparents used to listen to them.”
Russ grinned. “I didn’t know you had a pet lizard, Cranston.”
“I don’t anymore. He got loose about a year ago.”
“In the building?” Russ looked around as if the monitor might still be lurking around.
“No,” Cranston said. “In the park. I used to take him out there on summer afternoons. He liked the sun. One day he slipped his leash.”
“You had him on a leash?”
Cranston nodded. “Just like a dog.”
“Is the coast still clear?” I asked, interrupting.
Russ peeked his head out the door and checked. “Yeah.”
“Then let’s go. If we hurry, we can still catch her.”
After turning on our flashlights, we went out into the dark and hurried down the street, walking side by side. A lot had changed in just a few days. The sidewalks and streets were a mess, full of broken glass, trash, spent bullet casings, torn or soiled scraps of clothing, and other debris. Many of the vehicles parked alongside the curb had smashed windshields or slashed tires. A few of them were up on blocks—their tires and rims stolen. I wondered who would want to gank expensive rims given everything that was going on. I mean, it wasn’t like they’d be able to sell them somewhere. What were they going to do? Put them on their car and drive down to Virginia Beach for the weekend?
We found the first dead body at the intersection. It was impossible to tell if it had been a man or a woman because the corpse was mauled beyond all recognition. It didn’t look like a human being. It looked like a pile of rancid meat, all sticky and spoiled and covered with ants and buzzing flies. There was no face, no scalp, no ears. It had been dismembered and eviscerated. The guts were strewn around. They glistened in the flashlight beams. Most of the blood had turned a rusty brown color. Cranston turned away and made a retching sound, but he didn’t puke. Russ didn’t react, but neither did he look at the body. I stared, transfixed, watching the ants swarm over the corpse. I wondered what the ants thought of the darkness. Were they even aware of it? Did they know that things had changed? Did the darkness show them visions, too?
The farther we went, the more dead bodies we saw. Some were fresh. Others looked like they’d been there for a few days. The streets weren’t overflowing with them or anything, but they were definitely around. Lying on the sidewalks and in the street or in open doorways. A few were inside cars, hunched over behind the steering wheels. Some were suicides. Others were obviously murders. It was easy to tell the difference. Suicides didn’t usually dismember, disembowel, or behead themselves. They didn’t maul or mangle their own sexual organs before dying. They didn’t set themselves on fire. Well, okay, I know there was that monk during Vietnam that set himself on fire as a means of protest. I remember my grandpa telling me about that once. He showed me a picture from Life magazine. But the burned bodies we saw while looking for Christy? They didn’t look like they’d been protesting shit.
In addition to the insects, there were a lot of birds— crows, pigeons, robins, woodpeckers, and all kinds of other songbirds. They perched on the bodies, fighting over and feasting on the soft, squishy parts of the dead, and on the bugs inside. When we’d get too close, the birds took flight, screeching and squawking as they retreated to rooftops and lampposts and trees. Again, I found myself wondering how the darkness impacted the nonhuman creatures in Walden. If the birds flew too high, did the darkness eat them, the way it had us? Did it try to entice them to fly higher? Show them visions of a big, juicy worm or their mommy bird who’d been eaten by a cat three years earlier?
One corpse, its abdomen swollen with gases, burst with a wet farting sound as we walked around it. That nearly sent all three of us screaming, but we held in there, determined to find Christy.
We saw a few buildings that had burned down. I wondered who had put the fires out. The remains of Chief Peters’s fire department or just neighbors and concerned citizens? What would happen when we ran out of water to fight the fires? I assumed the flames would just jump from dwelling to dwelling, incinerating everything in its path. Conceivably, Walden could burn to the fucking ground, and we’d all be trapped between fire and darkness. If it came down to that, I’d probably choose burning to death. Something told me that would be preferable to surrendering to those black tentacles.
The streets were full of more than just debris and the dead. There were living people, too. Some, like us, looked like they had a purpose. You could tell by the way they walked and their furtive, cautious glances. They had a reason to be outside. Others sauntered or lounged, giving off the impression that they either had no place to go—or were up to no good. But everyone that we saw had one thing in common. They were all armed. They carried shotguns and rifles, pistols and butcher knives, axes and shovels, baseball bats and golf clubs. One old man clutched a brown leather bullwhip in his gnarled, liver-spotted hands. He looked like a geriatric Indiana Jones. His clothing was muddy and torn, and a cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth.
“You guys got cigarettes to trade?” he asked.
“Sorry,” I replied. “We don’t. We’re just looking for someone. A girl.”
“I don’t trade in those, but there’s plenty of folks around who are starting to.”
I explained that we weren’t looking for that and described Christy. It turned out that the old man had seen her pass by ten minutes before us. We thanked him and hurried on our way.
The closer we got to downtown Walden, the more people we saw. Nobody fucked with us. I thought a few times that they would. We got dirty looks and heard some snickering behind our backs. A group of Mexican guys said something to us in Spanish, but none of us knew what it was. We ignored them and moved past. One of them whispered something, and the others laughed. Russ paused, but I urged him on without a word. At the intersection of Main and Broadway, somebody tossed an empty beer can at us. It hit the ground behind Cranston’s feet and rolled away. He humped, and Russ and I spun around, weapons at the ready, but we couldn’t tell who threw it or what direction it had come from.
We didn’t see any cars—at least, none that was moving. Everybody we spotted was on foot. A few rode bikes. But nobody drove. Maybe they were all trying to save gasoline, or maybe it was just because there was really no fucking place to drive to.
The weirdest thing was the silence. Despite the people and the birds, the streets were quiet. It felt to me almost as if the town was holding its breath.
We found Christy sitting on the curb at Fourth and Sycamore. She had one of her s
hoes off and she was shaking a stone out of it. A kitchen knife lay on the pavement by her side. I recognized it as one of ours. She must not have realized it was us when she first saw us coming, because she leapt to her feet and started to run. Maybe the shadows hid our features or something. She stopped when I called her name and stood there shaking.
“Robbie?”
“What the hell are you doing out here? Have you lost your fucking mind?”
“You got my note?”
“Yeah, I got your note.” I grabbed her wrist. “We’ll talk about it later. Come on. We’re going home.”
Christy pulled away from me and yanked her arm free.
“No. I’m not going anywhere, Robbie. I told you, this is something I have to do. Can’t you understand that?”
Somebody made a wolf-whistle sound from one of the nearby buildings. Russ and Cranston glanced around. I reached for Christy again, but she backed up. Then, balancing on one foot, she put her shoe back on. Then she picked up the knife.
“I’m not going,” she repeated. “And if you can’t accept that, then just turn around now.”
Sighing, I clenched my teeth and turned around in a circle. I wanted to shout at her. To scream. To raise the pistol and fire a shot into the air, just to release my frustrations. But I did none of these things. Instead, I faced her again and said, “Okay.”
Christy frowned. “Okay, what?”
“Okay. I won’t try to stop you. But I’m not turning around either. I’m going with you.”
She blinked. No smile. No protest. She didn’t thank me or holler at me. She just blinked. I wasn’t sure what that meant.
“For fuck’s sake,” I continued, “I don’t know how you made it this far by yourself. Have you taken a good look around?”
She nodded. “Yeah. I have.”
“Well, there you go.” I turned to Cranston and Russ. “You guys don’t have to come along if you don’t want to.”
“If it’s all the same to you guys,” Cranston said, “I think I’m going to head back. No offense? I just—I can’t take being out here. It’s depressing and it stinks.”
He was right. It did stink. Between the bodies in the streets and the unseen bodies rotting inside houses, Walden smelled like the inside of a dead groundhog that had been lying along the roadside for three days.
“I can taste it in the back of my throat,” Cranston complained. “The stench. It’s burning the shit out of my sinuses, man. I just need to head back and get inside, so I don’t have to smell it.”
“Suit yourself,” Russ said, and stepped past him. “Just be careful.”
Cranston appeared stunned. “You…you’re not coming back with me?”
“No. I’ll let you take the gun with you, if you want, but I’m staying. I’ll be damned if I’m going to let Robbie and Christy wander around out here by themselves. Christy wants our help. It’s the neighborly thing to do.”
Cranston stared back the way we’d come. Figures moved in the shadows, watching us. Swallowing hard, he glanced back at us again.
“You’re right,” he said with a nervous grin. “It’s the neighborly thing to do. I’ll come along, too.”
The four of us continued on our way. We didn’t speak, but when I reached out and took Christy’s hand, she didn’t pull away, and I saw her smile. The smile vanished when we reached the pet store.
She’d been right. There were still animals alive inside. We heard them from about a block away—dogs mostly, barking and yipping. We passed a man who asked us if we were interested in trading half an hour with Christy for some canned peas he was lugging around in a knapsack. It took everything I had not to shoot him. Instead, I just shoved past him. Christy had already hurried toward the store as soon as she heard the puppies. We had to run to keep up with her.
We raced through the door after her and skidded to a halt. Christy stood next to the counter, staring in shock. Remarkably, most of the animals were still alive. A few cages held dead pets, but the majority were still active, if somewhat weakened. Many of them growled or bared their teeth. I figured they’d probably been lacking human interaction and were beginning to turn feral. Others still seemed docile, even friendly. Or maybe they just wanted out of their fucking cages. The worst part was the stench. The store stank of dead bodies and shit—mostly the shit. Many of the pets had feces sticking to their fur. But with the exception of the ones that had turned feral, most of the animals seemed okay, other than the fact that they were hungry, thirsty, and hadn’t had their litter changed. Four cocker spaniel puppies pawed at their cage and whined at us. A group of kittens watched us shyly. Hamsters, gerbils, and mice scrabbled about, running on exercise wheels and burrowing through pine shavings. But Christy wasn’t looking at any of this. Instead, she was looking at the man standing in the middle of the store.
He was slightly overweight, thirtyish, and balding. He had that Ben Franklin look—long hair in the back, but nothing on top except scalp. He wore thick, coke-bottle glasses. It had been a long time since I’d seen a pair like that. One of the lenses had a big crack in it, and it gave the illusion that one of his eyes was distorted. White surgical tape had been wrapped around the nose bridge, holding the glasses together. He wore frayed cutoff shorts, white bedroom slippers, white tube socks pulled up almost to his knees, and the ugliest Hawaiian flower shirt I’d ever seen. The shirt was unbuttoned, and beneath it, he wore a white wife-beater shirt. It looked like at some point he’d spilled vegetable soup down the front of it.
But it wasn’t his appearance or unexpected presence that made us stare. It was what the man was holding in his hands that captured our attention. He had a large, red helium balloon with a string hanging down from it. Apparently, we’d interrupted him in the process of tying the string around the tail of a struggling mouse he held in his other hand. Behind him, I glimpsed two portable helium tanks and a cardboard box full of deflated balloons. A spool of string and a pair of scissors lay on top of a nearby dog cage.
“Howdy,” he said, smiling and nodding, as if we were old friends.
“Hello,” Russ replied. “We don’t want any trouble.”
“That’s good. Neither do I. You folks scared me for a second. I thought you might be looters or something. Figured you might want to steal my helium.”
Cranston reached between the wire mesh of a cage and absentmindedly patted a kitten. Russ nodded at the man as if what he said made perfect sense. Christy and I just continued to stare.
“This was the last tank the party store had,” the man continued. “And I’m not sure where to find more, so I’ve got to protect it, you see. I need it for the experiments.”
Russ scratched his chin. “Experiments?”
“Yes. Come on. I’ll show you.”
He took a step toward us. My grip tightened on the pistol, and Christy raised her knife. The man just smiled.
“Are those guns loaded? If so, I’d appreciate it if you pointed them down at the floor. I don’t need any holes—not in me or in my balloons. That would really halt my progress.”
He threw his head back and laughed. When none of us joined him, his laughter died abruptly.
“Sorry,” he apologized. “It just struck me as funny. A little scientific humor.”
“You’re a scientist?” Cranston asked.
“I am now. These days, we can be whatever we want to be. The apocalypse is sort of freeing, don’t you think?”
Cranston shrugged. The rest of us said nothing.
“Come on,” the man said again. “I’ll show you my experiment. It’s really quite fascinating.”
He walked past us, still smiling and nodding. We glanced at each other in confusion and then followed him out onto the sidewalk. The man finished tying the string around the tiny mouse’s tail, and then, before we could stop him, he released the balloon. Both it and the mouse drifted up into the sky. The mouse twitched and struggled, squeaking in terror as it rose higher. The balloon climbed slowly, weighed down with its unwillin
g passenger, but continued going up. The man pulled a pen and a small notebook out of his pocket and jotted something down.
“That’s number seven,” he said. “Seven is a good number, don’t you think? I think seven is enough. Now I’ll move on to the chameleons. Might be tricky. Don’t their tails come off if you tug them too hard?”
“Yes,” Cranston replied, sounding confused.
“I thought so. Oh well. I guess I can tie the string to their feet, instead.”
I glanced up, but the balloon and the mouse had already vanished. If they were still up there, then they were either too high to see, or the darkness had swallowed them already.
“Don’t take offense,” Russ said, “but exactly what the hell are you doing?”
“Experiments. I told you—I’m a scientist now. Before, I was just an accountant, but reality has hit the reset button. We get to do things over again. I always wanted to be a scientist, so now I am.”
Russ held up a hand. “But what is it that you’re doing? What is the experiment?”
“Well, I’m trying to determine how far up the darkness is, and how it interacts with various living things.”
“But…” Russ paused, and took a deep breath. “Why?”
The man seemed nonplussed by the question. “Because somebody has to do something.”
My grip on the pistol tightened. I bit my lip hard enough to draw blood. I could hear myself saying the exact same thing, right before I led that expedition out to the edge of town. I already told you how that cluster-fuck ended. Was I no better than this lunatic? In his case, the only things getting killed were rats and mice.
“We know what the darkness does,” Russ explained. “It kills anything that comes in contact with it.”
“That may be,” the man admitted, “but we must still follow scientific method. It’s all we have.”
“But why? Why waste time with this?”
The man’s voice took on an impatient tone. “I’m a scientist. Scientists study things, don’t they?”
“Excuse me a moment,” Christy said. “I don’t feel so well.”
