The List

by Christopher Coleman

  Danielle smiled back sadly.

  “Of course, I rushed to the window, terrified, expecting to see...I don’t know, a plane going down or something. Rockets in the air. I don’t know.” He shrugged. “But there was nothing. Just the two most beautiful eight-year-old girls you ever saw.” He paused and swallowed, staring at a spot low on the wall. “Except...”

  Danielle could see the tension growing in his neck, and she tried to relax her own muscles, hoping unconsciously to bring Scott down a notch or two.

  “Except a few seconds later the snow started to fall, and within minutes, they were throwing it at each other, laughing like fools.” He looked up at Danielle again. “It was May, and they were having a snowball fight. And sticking their tongues out to catch the falling flakes.” He frowned and shook his head ruefully. “I knew there was something wrong. Didn’t know what, of course, but I knew. Just let ‘em play right on through though. Stood right at the sink and watched my girls splash that death powder all over each other.”

  Danielle listened with her heart in her throat, the tears already forming behind her eyes as she imagined the children Scott had described, frolicking in their final moments.

  She had never seen the change occur in anyone she had loved. She was at the diner that day, working a double shift as usual, and once it became obvious the spring snow was a signal of catastrophe, and that the world—or at least Warren and Maripo Counties—had changed forever, there was no leaving. Danielle’s parents still lived in the area, just outside the cordon (she couldn’t imagine the struggle they were dealing with not knowing their daughter’s fate), and her two sisters had moved away years ago, one to Europe with her husband who was in the Army.

  What was the story they were being told right now? Danielle thought absently, though not for the first time. Who on the outside was able to keep this huge tract of land shrouded in mystery?

  Danielle shook away the questions, re-focusing. Finding the responsible parties was a goal further down on her list.

  “It happened quick, you know?” Scott Jenkins used the knuckle of his thumb to wipe a tear from the corner of his eye. “The girls finally came inside and started complaining that they were hot. Then that they were tired and needed to lay down. Both of ‘em, same thing. So I sent them to their room and...couldn’t have been five minutes ‘til I heard the screams.”

  “Dad?”

  Michael appeared at the top of the basement stairs.

  “Go back to the kitchen, Michael!” Scott barked.

  Michael bowed his head and walked out of the doorway.

  “It’s okay, Mr. Jenkins, you don’t have to—”

  “I want to,” Scott replied softly, nodding his head. “I’ve never spoken about it. I mean, to who, right?” He shrugged. “And I need to. I do. It’s true what they say about going to therapy. Talking out your shit. Or at least talking out the shit that traumatized you. Doesn’t have to be with a doctor, but you gotta get it out. The people I shot in the Gulf, what that did to me, I don’t know what I’d have been like if I didn’t have my buddies to talk to about it.” He paused. “But not with this.”

  Scott scoffed, his eyes wide and pleading, trying to impart the injustice of his situation.

  “I ran up to Jay and Izzy’s room, and when I opened the door...” Scott stopped and put his hand to his mouth, as if preparing to vomit, and then he bent over at the waist and began to cry.

  “It’s okay, Mr. Jenkins.”

  Scott fell to his knees and then sat back in a heap against the wall, his hands across his face as he sobbed.

  Danielle stood helpless at the doorway to the armory, unsure of how to console the man on the floor beneath her. But she figured this was what he needed, to let out the pain that had been eating him from the inside, and her mere presence was all that was necessary.

  A minute or so passed when Scott finally wiped the last of his tears away, concluding the session with several deep breaths. He continued. “Izzy had changed. Her body was as white as the snow outside. She looked like a...a alien, like the images they show you in those abduction stories. Except her eyes weren’t huge like that, but they were...so black. And the features of her body were like...like they’d been erased. Erased and then bleached.”

  He paused as his face bled into an expression of helpless terror, and then he looked up toward the ceiling, recollecting.

  “Not Jaycee though. She was...still in the process. But...Izzy had already turned on her. Had already begun—”

  “Dad!”

  Michael was at the top of the stairs again, listening to the story from the landing above, and Danielle realized he was hearing the events for the first time and had now heard enough.

  Scott closed his eyes and shook off the rest of the story. “Michael’s mother was at the store. She never came home. For all I know, she’s one of the ones I killed.”

  Danielle continued to stand in awkward silence, not sure whether to console the man or allow his emotions to run their course. She decided on the latter, and after several more minutes passed, the man stood and walked past her and up the stairs.

  At the top of the landing, just before he exited the basement, he turned back to Danielle and said, “Take whichever gun you want. The rounds are stacked beside them. And please, if you don’t mind, limit yourself to five boxes.”

  Kill a Crab

  1.

  The next morning, Danielle stood atop the bar and used a fine point Sharpie to cross the second goal off her list.

  Goal 2. Find a Rifle

  The moment Scott Jenkins climbed the last stair and was out of Danielle’s view, she had chosen her weapon quickly and then fled like a burglar through the sliding door and out the back gate. And once she reached the tree-lined street of the cul-de-sac, she ran the entire way back to the Flagon, sprinting at times when her lungs allowed it.

  Danielle had made it back to the bar sans issues, and though she hadn’t suspected any elaborate traps to have been laid along her route, she was living in different world now, and she took nothing for granted.

  But there had been no encounters, no sightings, and at an hour no later than noon, Danielle had already accomplished the second of eight goals on her list.

  But she had carried something else back from the Jenkins’ residence, and it was a feeling that began tugging at her mind before she was even a block away from the upscale home.

  Guilt.

  She had left a child behind, and though Danielle didn’t get the impression that Scott Jenkins was violent or abusive—on the contrary, it seemed he had done everything a father should to keep his son alive under the circumstances—there was an instability in the man, a rupture in his psyche, and that wasn’t likely to get better in the solitude of his bunkered house.

  But Danielle didn’t have the luxury of assuaging her guilt, at least not yet. She had a process to work through, and if she did it properly, she would find the Jenkins again, and, if possible, help bring them out of this world of death and fear. The boy and his father were new motivations in Danielle’s arsenal now, new purposes driving her to accomplish the remaining six objectives on her list.

  Next things next though.

  Goal 3: Kill a Crab

  She had killed crabs before of course—several of them, in fact—but not since the days following the Maripo river crossing, when she had guided James, Tom and Stella to the relative safety of the bank. There, Danielle had killed several of the monsters, and there was no doubt that without her, all three of her companions would have been killed more than once over.

  And she had learned something deeper about herself during those days: she was a survivor. A killer. Capable of both mercy and cruelty. She had felt no remorse for the white beasts as she slaughtered them, and had even enjoyed watching the crimson explosions from their heads and chest dye their chalky bodies like a Pollack.

  It wasn’t the violence she’d enjoyed, though—she wasn’t psychotic—it was the feeling of satisfaction each time one
was destroyed, a buoying of hope that with the thinning of her enemies, the prospects of survival and escape grew stronger.

  But that was months ago, and the monsters she had taken out by the bank of the river had all been close-range killings, shotgun blasts, and even one fatal takedown with a piece of stray lumber. The latter slaying had occurred during the night, when Danielle had saved James from one of the silent killers as he slept through his watch.

  The killings hadn’t been easy, of course—the horror of their proximity in this new, open world had been enough to reduce her companions to defenseless cowerers—but the experience they provided did little to prepare her for her latest goal. Her goal now was to kill a crab with skill, not with the sloppy rampaging methods she’d used on the riverbank. And for this she needed practice from range, reps with her new rifle, to learn how to kill with one clean shot from distance.

  And only then would she draw a line through Goal 3 on her list. Only then would she be ready for the larger mission before her.

  Danielle sat at the bar and stared up through the recess window that looked out onto the dirty street of the alley. She had become somewhat obsessed with the window lately, anticipating the day when a pair of white shins and calves would enter the frame of the glass, pausing for just a moment before finally turning its toes toward the window.

  But the view had remained clear to this point, and, in fact, Danielle had never witnessed a crab in the alley at all. With every tour of duty atop the realty building, she always expected one to turn down the side street, shifting its focus on a dime as it caught a strange scent on a passing breeze, or else heard the scurry of a rat or a rummaging raccoon.

  They always just passed by, however, luckily, as if the alley repelled them or existed in a blind spot.

  But it was just a matter of time. The odds almost guaranteed it. And when it finally did happen, when one or two brave souls eventually ventured off the path of the main thoroughfare and headed into the narrow side street, the end of Danielle’s barroom paradise would follow soon after. She had learned many of their patterns, and she knew by now that where one pair went, others tended to follow.

  And when that day arrived, the day the first one ambled into the dark toward Raise the Flagon, she would plan to be gone by the following morning.

  Danielle poured a half can of ginger ale into a plastic cup and hopped off the bar stool, and then she crossed the dance floor to one of the tables on the opposite side of the bar. She placed the soda on the tabletop and lit the candle in the center, and then picked up the rifle that had been gifted to her earlier that morning. She curled it up and down several times like a barbell, allowing the bulk of it to weigh heavy in her hands. She raised the sight to her eye now and looked through it from a few inches away before placing it flush to her socket, shrugging her shoulders up to get the proper feel. She stared through to the stage, focusing first on the center of the kick drum and then up to the top of a mic stand. Further up now to the spotlights, tapping her index finger against the metal trigger, pretending to pop a round in each bulb as she moved across the row and then down again, homing in now on the buttons of a floor amp.

  She had selected a Remington 700 from Scott Jenkins’ armory, and though there had been more effective looking guns along the wall—assault rifles with rapid fire capability—Danielle had never used those types before and they intimidated her; she didn’t want to spend the next week on a learning curve, and when she fired her first round, it needed to be intended to kill.

  The Remington 700 she knew, though. It was her father’s gun of choice, and holding one again in the dark shelter brought the memory of him to her like a punch. She took the gun away from her face and lowered her head, allowing the memory of her beloved dad to run its course. She held her lids tightly to keep the tears at bay and then put the sight back to her eye, taking in a large breath as she did. Anger had replaced sorrow now, and she felt a driving urge to fire off a round and take out the neon Coors Light sign above the door. She wouldn’t dare, of course, as it was not only destructive of her own home, it was likely to draw crabs her way.

  But holding the gun now, her finger resting with dead weight on the trigger, Danielle also knew something else: Tomorrow was too far away. She couldn’t wait until then to get to the roof of the car dealership. She had to begin her new mission today.

  2.

  The roof of Maripo Mazda was a few stories shorter than the top-floor window of the C.M. Jones Realty building and wasn’t likely to offer the same outward vista of Maripo County. But the car dealership had other advantages the realty building didn’t. It was a freestanding structure with a rooftop that offered a three-sixty view of downtown, and its large footprint meant there were fewer buildings to shroud the monsters from sight.

  And, as important, it was several blocks from the Flagon. If her gunfire produced only the shattering of glass and metal and concrete—and not the bones of wandering crabs—she wouldn’t risk drawing the beasts to her base. Of course, she hadn’t quite mapped her escape from the dealership if the whole scene went to hell, but that was a problem she decided not to ponder. She’d made it out of tight spots before, and if she thought too much about the potential one that lay ahead of her, she feared she might not follow through.

  Danielle stood on the perimeter of the dealership, having walked the seven blocks from the Flagon at a pace just below a trot. She had kept to the street proper during her march, and though the road meant she was more exposed, more visible to any stray beasts who might be wandering by, the dark doorways of the businesses and town homes along the sidewalk spooked her. She couldn’t help but envision a dormant crab exploding from one of the façades, hopping at her with its mouth wide, fingers curled in grasping death.

  As she stared at the sea of mint-new Mazda 6s and CX-3s that separated her from the showroom, similar images of attack emerged in her mind. The cars were eight deep, and a crab could be lurking behind any one of the bumpers, or beside any fender or quarter-panel or tire. She had considered walking the perimeter until she reached the back where the service entrance was; but the rear of the dealership had as many obstacles as the front, dumpsters and service bays that looked rife with treachery.

  Danielle took a deep breath, stepped off the sidewalk, and then took a slow step forward between the first pair of cars, keeping her eyes peeled and her head on a swivel. She held the rifle high in order to clear the side-view mirror of the car on her right, the weapon proving to be more of a burden than a benefit. But she figured that wouldn’t be the case for long. She could almost smell the danger on the breeze.

  She was halfway through the lot, with three rows of cars still to go until she reached the showroom, when movement to her right snared her attention.

  Danielle shifted her eyes in the direction of the flicker, but she kept her neck and head straight toward the door.

  Two rows to go. Almost there.

  The movement again, this time clearer, obvious, no mistaking its existence. A flash of white to the right and just ahead of where Danielle stood frozen now. It came from in front of the last row where the pavement met the hedges that bordered the building.

  Danielle stopped walking, stopped breathing, anticipating the movement again, her eyes a pair of narrow slits, watching the location with a suspicious glare, silently praying the flash was nothing more than a white take-out bag, or perhaps a disposable service mat which had been caught up in a stray gust of wind.

  But the air on the lot was as still as outer space, and Danielle knew in her heart it was something more.

  The showroom was so close now, and the urge to make a dash over those final seven or eight steps was strong. It could be like a firewalk, she thought—just do it and get it over with.

  But her instincts and intellect guided her differently. She knew better. Succumbing to urges was a character trait that no longer existed in the cordon. Anyone still inside who wasn’t dead or a crab could thank prudence for their continued existence, pragmatis
m. Those who panicked or gave into impatience had been naturally selected for extinction.

  Danielle slowly placed the rifle on the roof of a Mazda 3 to her left, absently wishing she now had the shotgun instead. But that would defeat the point, she knew. She was here for long-range target practice; if she had brought the shotgun with her, she wouldn’t have put herself in this position to begin with.

  She cleared her thoughts and focused back to the present, beginning to feel the fear growing inside her, alarm that at any moment one of the monsters would rise up beside her, or dash toward her from the front of the hood and snatch her before she could move into position.

  With a move resembling a gymnast mounting a balance beam, Danielle pushed herself up to a sitting position on the hood of the 3 and then swung her legs up so that they were parallel with the engine cover, feet facing the grill. She then stood quickly and scuttled up to the roof, grabbing the rifle she had set there earlier. From there, she stood tall on the crown of the car, now with a clear view of the sprawling lot.

  She took a deep breath and then brought the sight of the gun to her eye, focusing on the direction of the original movement, anticipating the black eyes of the crabs to come into view, staring back at her.

  But there was only the white of the pavement, the glistening of chrome and glass. Danielle shifted her aim left now, her finger crooked and twitching, silently hoping a crab would appear. She figured if she couldn’t make it to the roof, the practice offered by a crab scurrying across the lot would suffice for now.

  Still nothing though, and she rotated her torso to the right, glaring toward the service entrance and the used car trailer that sat in the far corner of the property. A squirrel appeared from the bushes of a tree and ran toward the main building. With the gun, Danielle followed the animal, which stopped on its haunches for a moment, sniffing the air, and then galloped ahead down one of the aisles, sure of its stride and purpose. Danielle kept the squirrel locked in her scope, maintaining the center of the crosshairs on the rodent’s torso.