by Shane Staley
Everywhere soldiers lay bleeding, or staggered about. Black figures rose up and cut with their blades, severing limbs from bodies in sudden sprays of blood, ripping hair, gouging eyes, clawing viscera free with their bare hands. And Grady, lifting his head into the crimson steam, the lifeless bodies of his soldiers a ponderous weight piled over him, finally witnessed the Bearded Man, standing calmly, almost regally, on his war-torn hill, dark beard spattered with gore, unmindful of the violence all around; and the rotting heads of the woman sewn by their hair within the fabric of his robes swung about and their mouths, in unison, fell open, tongues flopping free like slugs, screaming.
* * *
The next night he dreamed only of wandering through the desolation. There were no more trees. All was cratered and gray, even the blood and severed flesh having darkened into festering slicks and mounds. Yet before him the sun rose beautiful, the sky alive with pink and orange flares of cloud, a sunrise to rival all sunrises, and he resolved to keep going, to prepare himself for what lay ahead, to rise alone, ever onward to his death.
V. CHRISTINE
“I brought food,” Grady said, descending the basement stairs.
Alice looked up and watched him approach. She was sitting at the table, her hands in her lap. He came forward and placed the bowl on the table before her. She looked at it for a moment, then drew it to her, grasped the spoon, and began to eat without enthusiasm.
“Is it good?” Grady asked.
Alice mumbled something through a sticky mouthful.
“It’s oatmeal. That’s the last of it.”
Alice swallowed and looked up at him, her eyes meeting his, steady and unforgiving. “Any meat?”
Grady stared into the child’s eyes. “No. No meat.”
The girl made a discontented sound and dropped her eyes to the bowl of oatmeal. She ate until the bowl was empty.
Grady dragged an old piano bench from the wall into the center of the basement, so he could be closer to the girl, and sat. He thought about how to begin.
“You killed that boy,” he said.
Alice moved the spoon listlessly along the bottom of the empty bowl. “What boy?”
“I was watching. I saw you.”
Alice shrugged.
“You killed him. You smashed his head in with a rock. Don’t you feel bad about that?”
“We all kill now.”
Grady looked at the girl, unsure what to say to that comment. “No, we don’t,” he said, feeling stupid. “We don’t have to.”
The girl looked up from the bowl. “Yes, we do.”
“No, we don’t.”
“Yes, we do.”
“No…” Grady stopped himself. He was arguing with a little girl. He sighed, took a deep breath.
“My daddy showed me how to gut a fish once,” Alice said. “You have to cut open the belly. Then you pull the head and all of the slippery parts out by the spine.”
Grady stared at the little girl.
“I tried,” the little girl said. “It was hard.”
Grady shook his head, again at a loss for words. He thought he better go out and get that chain. He stood and turned to go.
“Have you killed anyone?”
Grady stopped. “Yes.”
“Lots of people, I bet.”
“A few.”
“I knew it.”
Grady turned back. “In war it’s different.”
“It is?”
“Yes.”
Alice shrugged.
“You look so much like her,” Grady said.
The girl looked at him. “Who?”
“You have the same confident eyes.”
Alice’s gaze never wavered.
“You look like my dead wife.”
* * *
They didn’t tell him until he came home, the words of his commanding officer still ringing in his head. Weird... Creeping out the other soldiers… honorably discharged… He doesn’t know what he’s going to tell his wife. He doesn’t want to disappoint her. All he can see is her beaming smile, her waving hand, as he boards the bus on his way to boot camp. She has always been so proud of him; she has always seen something in him that others haven’t.
There isn’t even a note, the one-bedroom apartment warm and musty as he enters, calling out his wife’s name. He can’t wait to hold her, to brace himself as she runs and jumps, his muscular arms easily catching her slight frame. Her laughter—so childlike—her eyes bright and alive.
Except the apartment is empty.
After opening a window and turning on the air and checking every possible corner, he moves to the telephone. He lifts the receiver, hesitates, then drops it back into its cradle. He opens the refrigerator and gags, assaulted by the smell of something putrid, something that should have long since been thrown away. He closes the refrigerator quickly and snatches up the phone.
He calls his wife’s parents. Their number is hand-written on a short list by the side of the phone.
After several rings, someone picks up the phone on the other end. “Hello?”
“Hey, this is Grady. Have you seen—”
“Grady,” the voice interrupts. It is the voice of his wife’s father. “They told me you were coming back.”
“Yeah, I—”
“She’s gone, son.”
“What?”
“She was sick. She’d been sick. She didn’t want you to know. She’s gone.”
“But…”
“That’s it. Please don’t call here again.”
“Wait, I…” But the phone is dead, a dull ringing in his ear.
* * *
Grady forged his own path, cutting through backyards and alleys and dark loading docks, avoiding the open streets. It was night, but that didn’t make the streets safe. The moon was hardly a sliver, a slit in the black sky, an imperfection, like a jag of light seen at the corner of one’s eye. He didn’t feel excited and alive as he often did at night while he dug for his buried soldiers; he felt anxious, and he felt time slipping away from him.
Still, these expeditions were necessary. There was a hardware store not too far away, and Brady’s Guns and Ammo in the same shopping center. Brady’s was mostly empty—he’d already checked—but last time he’d been there he’d noticed a locked room in the back. He’d been in a hurry and hadn’t wanted to make a lot of noise, but this time he intended to break the lock and see what he could find.
A dead dog lay in a heap on the sidewalk near the last house on the block. Grady shook his head and darted behind a dumpster. The strip of pavement behind the hardware store was empty and deathly quiet. He could hear his feet scraping the grit, his hot breath panting in the air. He didn’t run, but walked quickly in gangling strides.
He came up a concrete ramp, pulling himself along by the guardrail. At the top of the ramp, he stopped to look around. An empty lot overgrown with weeds spread before him, swallowed in darkness. All was quiet. Nothing moved. He turned back and crawled carefully through the hole someone had cut and bent open at the corner of the industrial door meant for docking trucks. He crawled into blackness.
He lifted the flashlight that swung from his belt and clicked it on, shining the beam across the warehouse. It was large, crates and boxes stacked high into makeshift aisles. To his left, there was a pile of wooden shipping pallets, which he noted would make excellent firewood. He hugged the wall and moved down another ramp and around the same way he’d gone last time he’d been here.
On the other side of the warehouse, there was a door. He pushed through and he was in a hallway. The bathroom doors were on the right, one for women and one for men. Beyond that, the store itself.
It was very dark and the beam from his flashlight seemed weak, as if struggling to keep from being smothered. But he’d been here several times now and he knew where he was going.
He turned down an aisle and his foot kicked something—It sounded like a box of nails—skidding and spilling and jangling, loud and echoing in the store.<
br />
He froze, holding his breath.
Did he hear something moving? There was a tap-tapping sound. Was there someone lurking about on the other side of the store?
He waited.
After what felt like a several minutes, he began to move again. The aisle he was in had shelves stacked high with various fence-building supplies. He’d been here before to get the things he needed to repair a hole in the fence around the house, as well as to reinforce it as best he could. When his light struck the spools he was looking for, he stopped. He examined them carefully, chose a wire that was thick and sealed in plastic, unwound a decent length, and looked around for something to use to cut it free. He hadn’t thought to bring his wire cutters and there didn’t seem to be any lying around. He cast his light about, trying to remember what aisle the tools were on, when he thought to look at the spool itself. He shone the light on a small v-shaped blade built into the shelving. He set the wire against it and pulled, cutting it easily.
He could feel the grin on his face; sometimes it was good to have a win once in a while.
“I will put a towel over your head and send you to live with Christine.”
Grady stopped, his heart leaping into his throat, his hands going cold, trembling. He fumbled with his flashlight, flipping it off and hissing through his teeth. For a moment, despite the screaming admonishments in his head, he wanted to call out, Who’s there? But he choked back his words and tried not to make a sound.
The voice had been close, but not too close, maybe a couple of aisles over. He might be able to sneak away, if he was careful.
Who’s Christine? the voice inside his head asked. Come on, don’t you wanna know?
He gritted his teeth and moved, one foot in front of the other. He tucked the flashlight into one of his pockets and was in total darkness. Slowly, he wrapped the wire around his arm, holding it so that it wouldn’t drag on the floor. He kept reminding himself to place each foot slowly so that he didn’t kick something again, so that whoever was in this vast darkness with him wouldn’t hear him.
“Don’t you want to?”
Grady repressed a yelp of fear. The voice was so close, closer than it had been. He began to move more quickly. He had to get out of this horrible place. There was a smell, he suddenly realized, behind that of raw wood and manufactured plastic, of something putrid, something rotten. He could feel the panic rising in him, threatening to wipe his mind clean of rational thought.
Who’s Christine? his mind blathered. Who’s Christine? Who’s Christine?
The voice began to laugh.
Grady’s nerve broke and he ran. He plowed into something with his hip, sending things tumbling to the ground, clattering loudly. He leapt forward, his hands out before him. Something heavy struck him in the shoulder and he stumbled, but managed to right himself and keep going.
“Who’s Christine?” he heard himself say.
“You’ll see,” the voice said, now somewhere behind him.
He flailed his hands until he struck the wall. Then he followed the wall, moving fast, barking his shin on something, his hands scraped and raw.
When he found the hallway, he flung himself down it. He ran to the door. He pushed it open, threw himself through the opening, and slammed it closed behind him. He braced himself against the door, expecting the person in the dark to come after him, to begin slamming into it from the other side.
He waited.
When no one came to the door, he forced himself to wait longer. After several minutes, he took a deep breath and tested the door. It did not burst open and the doorknob was still. He fumbled his flashlight free and shone it at the door. It had a lock, a cheap twist lock, but still a lock. He locked the door and turned into the dark warehouse, shining the feeble beam of his flashlight where he could.
He moved back the way he’d come, crossing the warehouse until he could see faint light from the opening to the outside. When he was close, he stopped for a moment, listening. There was nothing. All was quiet and still. He crawled through the opening and took a deep breath of the outside air.
He glanced around, looking for anyone who might be lurking nearby, but he didn’t see anyone. He walked down the concrete ramp and across the asphalt strip at the back of the shopping center. He counted the doors so he didn’t miss his next stop.
On the door, in plain stenciled type: Brady’s Guns and Ammo. He reached his hand out, grasped the door handle, and pulled the door open.
Inside the small shop, he flicked his flashlight to life again. He scanned the ransacked shelves. Empty. The place was a wreck. He didn’t bother to look more carefully. He’d already found what he was going to find here. What he was after was whatever was in that back room. Last time, he’d been spooked; he’d been out too long and had had to get back to his work at the house. This time, he was determined to see what was inside. If there were more weapons, he was going to need them.
The door had a padlock on it, shining new-looking in the beam of his flashlight. He looked at it for a moment. He slid the crowbar he’d brought with him from his belt. He took a deep breath, raised the bar, and brought it down.
The sound was very loud and the lock held.
He looked around, hoping he hadn’t been heard. He’d come this far and he had to see what was inside. He lifted the crowbar again, aimed, and smashed the lock.
He lifted the padlock free.
The door swung inward. He lifted his light.
For a moment, he almost screamed.
It was a very small space, little more than a storage closet. A dead man slumped in a chair at its center, his head a slag of seared gore where the shot from the rifle the dead man had propped up with his knees had taken him. The heap of a small child lay in one corner, as if the dead man had shot the child first and then himself. The walls were lined with shelves cluttered with various things, but Grady couldn’t take his eyes away from the dead man, who, despite his open brainpan, stared at him through eyes devoid of color.
Grady breathed deeply, trying to slow his heart. He had to remember his training. He had seen horrible things before and this was no different.
He unslung the pack he’d brought from his shoulders and began to collect things from the shelves. When he’d taken everything he could carry, he lifted the rifle from the dead man’s stiff grasp and took that too.
* * *
It wasn’t until he was back at the house with the door shut and secure behind him that he was able to breathe normally. He unslung his findings and piled them on the floor, where he slumped, waiting for his heart to calm. He closed his eyes.
His eyes snapped open, a sudden realization rushing to his head like fevered blood. Christine was his wife’s name. Christine was his dead wife.
VI. RIFLE
Finally he had a weapon with which he was comfortable. He broke it down and cleaned it on the kitchen table. He oiled it, felt the satisfying clicks as the various pieces came back into their rightful places. He lifted his rifle and set in against his shoulder, sighting down its barrel, scanning the house. He stopped on a picture of the young couple who used to live in the house, embracing on a sunny day, smiling as if everything was perfect in the world. He lowered the rifle and hung his head.
Later, he used the butt of the rifle like a shovel in the backyard, digging and digging. He dug until he was out of breath and sweat ran down his face. He dug until his back ached and his arms burned, until tears began to mingle with the sweat.
When he couldn’t dig anymore, he fell back, the weight of his body sinking into the softness of the churned loam. He stared up at the night sky. The stars were bright and the moon was now a visible crescent. What was he doing? What could he do?
His heart sunk—his whole body seemed to sink—as if the ground at his back was not suburban soil, but a thick bog. He could see the man at the wheel, the man from the vehicle crashed out front, laughing and laughing as black sludge rose to the height of his open window, then as it spilled into the interior,
up and up into the man’s mouth, and then over his eyes.
He pulled himself from the ground quickly, feeling utterly alone, and ran to the house.
* * *
“What do you want?” he asked the little girl, sitting backwards on the rickety chair he’d found in the corner of the basement.
“Meat,” Alice said, staring at him from her place at the table.
“There isn’t any left.”
Alice’s gaze never wavered. “Get some more.”
“I’ve been to all the stores. That stuff was the first to go.”
“I said, get some more.”
“I’m sorry.”
For the first time, the girl’s eyes showed more than indifference. She stood and came forward.
Grady watched her.
Alice came around the table until the steel-reinforced cable grew taught and she couldn’t come any closer. She turned to look dumbly at the cable, as if noticing it for the first time.
“I’m sorry,” Grady said again.
Alice began to pull at the cable, fighting it, grunting. She threw her body forward until she flopped on her belly, the cable growing tight around her ankle which, even as Grady watched, became raw and red and began to bleed.
Grady stood and turned to leave.
Behind him, the girl screamed, showing emotion for the first time, tormented.
Grady began to ascend the stairs.
“No,” the girl managed. “You kill people.”
Grady turned back, halfway up the stairs. “I told you, it’s different in war.”
“Everyone kills,” the girl growled. “Please.”
Grady was about to go back down the stairs, not sure what he intended to say or do, when someone knocked loudly on the door upstairs.
