Sleepers Awake

by Patrick McNulty

  “I have nowhere to go.”

  Gertie pushed through the bathroom door and headed for the sinks. Her face was a mess. Her eyes were red and swollen while the rest of her face was a sickly gray. She ran the hot water and washed her hands. She cupped her hands together and splashed her face. The warm water felt wonderful. She blinked into the mirror and jumped as Petra appeared behind her. She tried to say something but it was cut short. Petra grabbed the back of Gertie’s head and slammed it into the mirror. The mirror splintered and cracked and Gertie’s nose spouted blood. Petra dropped the old woman to the floor in a heap and straddled her high on the back. Again and again she slammed Gertie’s face against the tile floor.

  Behind her, footsteps entered the bathroom and drew near. Slowly, Petra rose. Mabel and Sadie stood three feet away. “Have the others arrived?” Petra asked.

  “Yes, Lord,” Mabel answered. “We are ready.”

  “By dawn there will not be a single human left in Danaid.” “Yes, Lord,” Sadie and Mabel answered together.

  “Not one. Even one could cause suspicion. Even one could cause doubt. The transition must be seamless.”

  “Yes, Lord.”

  Norman turned his attention to a young mother lying on one of the cots set up throughout the common area. She smoothed a small child’s hair as he slept. He thought he might have seen her working in the town library, but he couldn’t be sure. It didn’t matter. Not now. Her lips moved silently and he knew that she was praying. He hoped it would help.

  Darkness flooded the common area as the power was cut. Screams erupted all around him. Norman couldn’t move, he was welded to his seat. He saw movement through the blackness. He could hear the panting breath he wished to God he would never have to hear again, and then he was ripped out of his seat, high up into the air. Sharp talons ripped into the flesh around his neck and he struggled to breathe. His legs and arms flailed and kicked, but it was no use. The arms that held him were made of iron. His body was slammed down into the floor and what little breath he did possess rushed from him in an instant. He could barely hear the crying and screaming all around him for the sound of his heart in his ears. He saw a face swim into his line of sight. A face he knew. A face he once followed and photographed.

  “You will be beautiful,” Petra whispered.

  Norman felt pressure across his throat and then nothing but darkness.

  A Zijin clambered onto a parked car up ahead. Sean gave the sled more gas but the scrabbling footsteps of the Zijin grew louder. The creature ran along the line of parked cars to his right, or his left, or both. He couldn’t even look to be sure. His eyes were pinned to the road. The sound seemed to come from everywhere in the swirling wind. He would have prayed but he was too scared and he didn’t have the breath to spare anyway.

  Behind him he heard the Zijin’s strange language, the frenzied animal panting of their breath. He gunned the throttle and the machine lurched forward. He drove as fast as he could see, and then some. The lone headlight pushed the darkness and the storm away ten feet at a time. By the time he saw them standing there, waiting, it was too late to do anything but go faster. He broke through the gauntlet, the wall of four waiting Zijin. Their claws like razors tore through his jacket. Pain ripped through his right shoulder and spread through his chest like a brush fire. Out of the dark what felt like a club bludgeoned him across the temple. He slumped in his seat as his head was forced to the steering wheel. His vision swam and his hand slipped off the accelerator, but he managed to stay seated. He was still conscious with only one thought—Kevin. For if he fell now, or even slowed down, he was dead for sure. His hand curled over the accelerator and the sled cut down the street.

  32

  The crushing weight of the creature ripped Bishop from the seat of his sled to the ground where they landed hard, plowing through the deep snow. Bishop tried to get up but was immediately slammed back down and pinned. His blade slid into his right hand and by bending his wrist to its fullest extent he was able to wound the thing. The Zijin spun away from the blade, allowing Bishop to snap to his feet and pull his gun. The second Zijin leapt from a parked car and caught three bullets in the chest, spinning the creature like a top in a flurry of sparks. The Zijin that had pinned him leapt onto his back and forced Bishop to the ground, knocking the gun from his hand. Bishop rolled out of the creature’s grip and drove all seven inches of his black blade up under the creature’s chin. It died shuddering in the snow.

  Bishop rose to his feet and searched for his fallen weapon. His hands brushed through the nearest drifts of snow without finding it. There was no time. Claws scraped across metal nearby as more Zijin closed in on him. With the sled down and out, he cut through an alley between the pub and the cafe and moved in the general direction of the church. It was still a good mile away, but he’d be lucky to make it another ten feet on foot.

  He stayed close to the tree cover and then dashed to the nearest house, a tiny, dark brick dwelling set back from the road. Bishop was closest to the side door and found it locked. The lock was easy enough to pick, and he was inside in under a minute. He locked and bolted the door behind him and listened to the darkness.

  He found himself in a small kitchen. Baskets of plastic fruit were left on the kitchen table. The large fridge was plastered with pictures of people of all ages. Kids, middle aged, elderly, all smiled into the camera. Bishop wondered how many of them were still alive.

  He peered out through the thin curtains that hung over the kitchen sink and saw a crowd of Zijin in front of the little house, waiting for a sign, a signal as to his whereabouts. Their heads whipped left and right searching for him.

  The ground floor was dark. He had lost his flashlight so he moved slowly, feeling his way through the dining room furniture toward a basement door. The door was ajar. Bishop stepped through and descended the stairs. At the bottom of the stairs, in the center of the floor was a flashlight.

  He was halfway down when a voice said, “Hello?”

  He stopped.

  The word was right but the voice wasn’t.

  “Hello?”

  The voice sounded wrong, almost mechanical. Bishop held his breath. The handle of his hidden dagger slid into his waiting palm as he took another step down to the next riser.

  “Hello,” the voice pleaded. Sounding better but still warbled, like the person was talking through water.

  Bishop reached the end of the stairs and stepped into the weak beam of the flashlight.

  “Hello,” the boy’s voice whispered. “Help me.” The boy stood ten feet from him. He was naked. His pale skin looked ashen in the flickering light. The skin of the boy’s chest rippled and bulged, twisting off his body as something pressed against it, fighting to get out.

  Bishop snatched up the flashlight and scanned the room. The basement was packed, wall to wall with the hapless inhabitants of the house. The naked family lay on their backs, trembling, as the transformation process ran its course. Their skin was already falling away. Their chests heaved with rapid, animal panting.

  “Hello,” the boy said, “Bishop.”

  He saw not the boy but his daughter, Eve. She crouched in the weak light at the head of her mother, who lay prone on the floor. He saw Eve’s eyes, and the way they shone that night, her beautiful face curled in a sneer of contempt and rage. The boy turned and the skin of his face cracked and fell away.

  The boy made a loud, shrill call. His eyes flashed on Bishop and he charged, mouth open, arms outstretched.

  Bishop threw the knife without thinking. In one swift movement, the knife cut through the air and entered the boy’s forehead. The creature stumbled and dropped to the floor.

  Suddenly the basement windows exploded inward as the Zijin flooded inside. They swarmed Bishop from all sides and blocked his one exit. They fell upon him like a gray shuddering mass, biting and snarling, clawing and scratching. Bishop’s blood splashed over the concrete floor. He screamed a short, angry roar. From within his coat Bishop drew
another edged weapon and killed the Zijin to his immediate right.

  Another creature knocked the flashlight from Bishop’s hand and dropped the basement into total darkness. Bishop smiled and flew into the crowd of Zijin like a hurricane.

  Jordan didn’t see anything around him and he didn’t hear anything, and that’s exactly what he wanted. He just wanted to get to the church. With Petra at the church, his plan was to wait for Sean and Bishop to show up. Jordan was a lot of things, but a hero he was not. It’s not that he wasn’t brave. It was just that he didn’t want to die. And until today he hadn’t fired his weapon at a single living thing.

  Things were moving too fast. He thought of his old life, wearing the badge and cruising the town, maybe breaking up a domestic or two on the weekends, and it felt unreal to him now. His world had changed and he had no choice but to change with it.

  He was within sight of the church when the front doors burst open and two people in shirtsleeves ran down the stairs screaming. He swerved the snowmobile behind a parked car and killed the engine.

  The two people were Hillary Kilroy who owned the flower shop on Cross St. and Steve Poole. They were both in their fifties and it looked like the last time they had run was in high school. But they were running now, arms pumping, bellies swinging from side to side. Hillary stole a look over her shoulder and slipped on the icy street. She screamed and fell in a heap into the snow. She looked to Steve but he hadn’t even slowed.

  Jordan reached for his gun, but he was too far away to even think about hitting anything. He took a few steps up the street, staying low, and then he froze. Three Zijin leapt from the front entrance of the church and down the stairs in a single bound. They roared and charged after the two escapees.

  Hillary was halfway to her feet when she was drilled to the ground by one of them. She was flipped onto her back and pummeled by the huge fists of the creature. When she stopped struggling the Zijin scooped the heavy woman onto its shoulder as if she weighed less than a sack of potatoes and carried her quickly back inside the church.

  The other two were busy with Steve. He didn’t look like he was built for speed, but fear and adrenaline can do wonders for some people. Steve never looked back. He ran hard and straight and was about fifty feet from Jordan when he was finally overtaken.

  Jordan saw the fear in Steve’s face, the look in his eyes, and then the desperation when their eyes met. Steve opened his mouth to scream or beg Jordan for help, but whatever it was, it was cut short as one of the Zijin bit into the side of Steve’s throat. Hot red blood exploded into the snow. Steve spasmed for a moment, and then lay still. The pair of Zijin hoisted him and spirited him away.

  Jordan dropped down behind the parked car tasting vomit in the back of his throat. He shook so bad he couldn’t hold his weapon. It dropped soundlessly between his legs. He sat there for a long time, too scared to move or even breathe. He was getting colder and he knew he had to warn the others.

  The low drone of a snowmobile approached. He clutched his weapon like a talisman close to his chest and slowly, carefully rolled to his knees and peered out into the street. When he saw Sean barreling up the street he aimed his flashlight at him and flicked it on and off until Sean swerved and headed toward his position.

  Bishop shuffled through the shadows looking like he had walked through Hell. His face was splashed with blood. Some of it was his. Wounds, still fresh, trickled blood down his sleeves and over his back. His head felt like it had been squeezed in a vise. He passed a row of evergreens and saw that the church was dark and cold. No lights burned over the front entrance. The basement windows were black. He was too late.

  Oliver Dannon sat on the front steps waiting for him. He shook his head.

  “They’re all gone, lad,” he said.

  Bishop struggled toward Oliver and dropped onto a step beside him. He didn’t say a word, just concentrated on his breathing. In and out. Slow and easy. There were still ragged holes in his chest and lungs and he wheezed with the effort.

  “Are you all right? Did you hear what I said?”

  “I heard you,” Bishop gasped. “Where did they go?”

  “They’ve gone to the nest, boy,” Oliver replied. “In the mine.”

  “Is she there?”

  Oliver nodded. “At least for the moment.”

  “Is anyone else left?”

  “Sean Berlin and the deputy, Jordan Hanson are at the Trading Post.”

  33

  Sean sat in Billy Walter’s old chair in the small office of the Trading Post. He laced up new, dry boots and felt every muscle pull and ache as he bent over to set the knot. When he was finished, he straightened and a sharp pain like a quick jab to his chest took his breath away. For a moment he couldn’t breathe. When his breath returned it came in gasps. He coughed and tasted blood. He wiped his mouth clean with the back of his hand and rose to his feet.

  He closed his eyes and tried to think of Petra and Kevin, the way they were, warm and safe, watching movies together on the couch as the snow pounded down outside. But it didn’t work. The storm was there, and so was the snow, but he couldn’t remember any good times now. When he thought of Petra and Kevin, he saw them screaming. He saw monsters gliding through the shadows, reaching out, ripping away.

  He opened his eyes.

  Sean slipped his arms into the sleeves of his coat, turned around, and found Bishop Kane standing in the doorway. He hadn’t heard so much as a footstep. Sean dropped back into Billy’s old chair and asked, “Got a cigarette?”

  Bishop rummaged through a coat pocket and came up with a crumpled pack. He tossed them to Sean. He lit one and drew deeply.

  “I came here for one reason, Sean,” Bishop began, “and that hasn’t changed.”

  “You came to kill Petra.”

  “You should know,” Bishop said, “Petra was more than she seemed.”

  Sean stared hard at Bishop, almost begging him to smear her name, to give him any excuse to jump across the short distance between them.

  “I lived here once. Did you know that? Back in ‘76,” Bishop said. “I was a carpenter, contractor. I had a wife, a house, and a little daughter. Eve.

  “She was very sick. Slept all the time. Doctors didn’t have a clue, so they told us it was a million different things. We took her as far as California for treatment. Nothing worked. No matter what we did, she got worse. She slept more, and that wouldn’t have been so bad, except for the nightmares. She’d wake up out of a dead sleep, screaming, thrashing, wailing. My wife and I, I bet you, we didn’t get three solid hours of sleep a night for three months.

  “In the end we decided to take care of her ourselves. I got a second job and my wife quit hers so she could tend to Eve.”

  Bishop pulled the cigarette from his mouth and crushed it under his boot.

  November 13th, 1976

  Bishop slipped inside out of the wind and the rain and eased the door shut. He stripped off his soaked jacket and hung it on a hook next to his wife’s navy windbreaker. It was late and he assumed that his wife would be in bed by now, but he could hear the television in the sunroom.

  “Sara?” he said. “You still up?”

  Bishop kicked off his boots and stepped up into the kitchen.

  He snagged a beer from the fridge, twisted off the cap and slugged back most of the bottle. He did the slow walk through the kitchen, fingering the mail, more bills as usual, opened the newspaper to the sports page, sighed and continued into the sunroom.

  The television was on, but the room was empty. Odd, he thought. Why wouldn’t Sara turn off the television if she was going to bed? Bishop shrugged. He was too tired. As was probably the case with Sara. He imagined her watching the tube and then hearing one of Eve’s nightly screams for help as she struggled with yet another nightmare.

  He turned off the living room lamps as he made his way to the stairs. He stopped at the front door and peered out into the dark, rain-slick street. No one out at this time of night, just leaves skating acr
oss the tarmac. He climbed the carpeted stairs wearily, realizing just how bone tired he was. For the last three months he hadn’t got much sleep, and it was taking its toll on both him and his wife. Conversation dwindled, as did the affection between them. They were drifting apart. In the beginning they had only one prayer, and that was for their daughter to get well both mentally and physically, but now they added a second wish to their prayers; they prayed that somehow they could get their life back, the way it used to be. They prayed that they could one day smile without flinching.

  Bishop reached the top of the stairs and after a quick stop in the bathroom, he stopped by the first door on his right. In the past he had always enjoyed peeking in on his daughter. He loved the way the room smelled like a child slept there. Little girl dolls, plush toys, even the soft blankets all brought a smile to his weary face as he stepped inside. But there was no one there, no one sleeping in the bed.

  Bishop hurried to the master bedroom. The room was dark and quiet. Pale yellow light from the street lamps outside filtered in through the blinds. The flannel sheets that Sara loved so much were pushed into a heap at the foot of the empty bed.

  “Sara?”

  Bishop turned in place, a little confused. He took a quick peek around the bed, found the floor empty and retraced his steps back down the hall to the top of the stairs.

  “Sara?” He waited, hand on the banister, and listened to the wind outside push against the house, causing it to shift and groan.

  “Eve?”

  A crash and the tinkling of falling metal came from the kitchen. He cursed under his breath and padded down the stairs. Bishop’s heart was in his throat, his stomach tightened. Jesus Christ, he thought, what now?