by Shane Staley
He froze.
“Quiet,” he said. He took the stairs two at a time, grabbing his rifle leaning against the wall at the top and closing the door firmly behind him. He turned the lock.
He crossed the house and came into the living room, his eyes fixed on the front door.
Blump. Blump. Blump.
The door visibly shook as he watched. He lifted his rifle, gripped it tightly. The windows were boarded up, but there were still visible cracks and he could see someone leaning over and peering inside the house at him.
Whoever it was knocked again.
He tried to think what he should do, his heart racing. He’d been seen. He couldn’t allow word to spread that he was living here. He had to see what the person wanted. Maybe he could scare him away.
He forced himself to take a deep breath and stepped up to the door.
“Good morning, son. What’s your name?” the man on the other side of the door said to him. “Have you heard the good news?”
“Grady,” he said, gaping. He let his arms rest a little, but continued to point his rifle at the man’s chest.
The man didn’t seem concerned in the slightest with the gun. He was dressed in a suit of all black, surprisingly clean, although his exposed eyes and face showed signs of wear, a half-grown beard spattered across his cheeks. He wore a bowler hat atop his head, pulled down to eye-level.
“Ozy is coming,” the man said. “Isn’t that great?”
“What?”
“He will come as if from nothing, on the day of retribution, His rebirth one of glory for His true believers and unending agony for those who doubt Him. Join me and my congregation, learn the power and the everlasting joy that Ozy will bring to your heart. Join Ozy’s army and discover true spirituality, fore it is He who will inherit the earth.”
Grady lifted the rifle and set it in his shoulder, aiming it now at the man’s head. “Get off my property.”
“You’ve suffered,” the man continued. “I can see it in you. You’ve lost loved ones, you’ve bled. People have failed you, their weak, blood-filled hearts. Join us and learn the true meaning of freedom!”
Grady gritted his teeth. “I said, get the fuck outta here.”
“Unburden yourself. Do not concern yourself with the failings of the flesh.”
“I said—”
“Through Ozy we gain strength. How do you think the Bearded Man has risen as he has? He is strong, undefeatable. He—”
The sound was deafening in the enclosed space of the living room. The acrid smoke of spent powder stung his nose and eyes. He let the butt of the rifle fall to the floor, gripping it by the barrel.
Licking his lips, he came forward. He kicked the body until it fell down the side of the concrete steps leading up to the house. The body slumped into the bushes. A moment later, a branch snapped and the body tumbled into the dirt between the bushes and the house.
He closed the door and locked it.
* * *
Later, he noticed another person walking by out front and he ducked out of sight. When he glanced out the window, the person—a dark-haired woman—seemed to be loitering about, not doing much, picking at the wood on the gate that led up the front yard, peering disinterestedly at the dead family in the car, walking back and forth. She wasn’t leaving.
Grady mopped sweat from his brow with the back of his hand and took his rifle with him to the basement. The door shut firmly behind him, he took a seat in his chair.
“I’m hungry,” Alice said, regarding him coolly.
“I’ll get you something in a little bit.”
“Okay.”
Grady took a deep breath and closed his eyes.
“I can’t go out until it’s dark.”
“Why not?”
“They might see me.”
“That doesn’t matter anymore.”
Grady looked closely at the girl. “It doesn’t?”
“Nope. They already know you’re here,” Alice said.
VII. HUNGER
That night he snuck outside again to look for his buried soldiers in the backyard. He had to be quiet, he knew—he couldn’t grunt and talk to himself like he usually did—he didn’t want to be heard, not with so much recent activity on the street. He used his rifle to dig; he no longer allowed it out of his sight. He dredged the soil, but already fatigue was beginning to set in and the activity didn’t hold the excitement it once had. Now he was filled with fear, a looming dread he could no longer dismiss.
When he stopped to listen, he could hear shuffling footsteps. There were more of them around now—a horde might be coming his way. He could hear dull mumbling. Someone made a strange and sudden sound—like laughing—on the other side of the house. Something moved in the neighbors yard; he could see it through the wooden slats of the fence.
Grimly, he lifted his rifle and brought it down. He looked up and jumped, his heart hammering in his chest.
Someone was looking at him through a knot hole in the fence, someone’s eye glimmering yellow in the pale moonlight. As he watched, the eye fell away and was replaced with a gray tongue, reaching into the yard, wagging at him.
Somewhere, someone snickered.
Grady gripped his rifle tight and hurried back inside the house.
* * *
He had more scrap wood he’d collected and nails and tools in the basement. He leapt down the stairs.
Alice was sitting on the floor playing with something under the table, but he didn’t have time to worry about what she was doing. He ran to the corner and began to pull slats of wood out over the floor so that he could see what he was dealing with. He grabbed a hammer from its place hanging on the wall, and shoved a cardboard box of nails into his pocket. He wrapped his arms around a couple of choice boards and turned back.
Alice was standing on the table. “I’m hungry,” she said.
Grady sighed. “I gave you something earlier.” He glanced at the bowl still sitting untouched on the table by Alice’s feet.
“I want meat.”
“I told you, there’s none left.”
Alice quivered, opened her mouth: “I-want-meat-I-want-meat-I-want-meat!”
Grady cringed, the boards nearly sliding from his grip. “I don’t have any,” he screamed back. He lunged up the stairs, moving awkwardly, trying not to catch the boards against anything and drop them. He carefully wedged himself and his load through the door, walked into the kitchen, and let the wood clatter to the floor.
Behind him, the girl continued to scream, but he ignored her.
Last time, he kept thinking. This is just like last time.
He began to go through the house, looking for any openings he’d left, crevasses between previously installed boards, and covering them, using lots of nails. He intended to leave only the smallest of openings, just large enough to fit the barrel of his rifle through. He intended to block out the sun.
“Just like last time,” he mumbled to himself.
Except last time he’d huddled in the basement and waited for the horde to pass and they hadn’t known or noticed he was here. Did they know this time? A couple of them had seen him, but they were just stragglers. The girl seemed to think they knew about him, but she’d been tied up in the basement for days now.
The girl. He could hear her screaming, even from here. He needed to do something about that. He glanced at his rifle sitting leaning against the kitchen counter. He pulled another nail from his pocket, positioned it, and hammered in through the wood in three efficient whacks.
He placed the hammer on the counter and took up his rifle. He walked back across the kitchen and opened the basement door. He descended the stairs.
Alice’s eyes watched him, but she never stopped screaming.
Grady walked up to her, his rifle held across his chest. “Stop,” he said. “Stop that.”
“IWANTMEATIWANTMEAT!”
Grady lifted his rifle. “Stop,” he said again. He looked up at the girl standing on the table, watch
ing him, screaming at the top of her lungs. His ears began to ring. He took his rifle and leaned it against the concrete wall.
He came forward and reached his hands out, grabbing the girl’s shoulders. She squirmed, but he held tight. “Please,” he said. She continued to scream.
Alice slapped at his arms with her hands. She lifted one foot and kicked him in the chest, but she wasn’t strong enough to knock him away.
He shook her. “Stop! Just stop!”
She turned her screaming head and bit one of his fingers.
Grady jerked away in surprise, and he could actually feel the skin on his finger coming away in Alice’s teeth. “Fuck,” he said. He fell back, clutching his wound. He opened his fingers and saw blood and a hint of bone.
“What the fuck?” He stared at the girl.
“IWANTMEATIWANTMEAT…” The girl went on and on.
Again, he glanced at his rifle. He snatched it up and ascended the stairs and closed the door and locked it.
* * *
He could hear them outside, whispering.
As light crept into the sky he tried to get some sleep, but he was hungry and Alice wouldn’t stop screaming. Even on the other side of the house, lying on the musty couch, with the door closed and a rolled-up towel shoved into the crack at the bottom, he could still hear her.
...IwantmeatIwant...meat...I want…
He rolled over and tried to cover his ear with a pillow, but he felt like he couldn’t breathe and he could still hear her anyway. He tried not to think too much, but his worries swirled into view, no matter how hard he pushed them away, they rose, like pale faces from the bottom of a murky lake, bloated, bobbing to the surface.
When he closed his eyes he was standing at the top of a small hill overlooking the battlefield where everywhere bodies were strewn. Some were sprawled with their guts torn open; some with visible fractures of bone; some with missing limbs, or hands and arms with no apparent owners, terminating in twisted clots of veins; and some stared with expressions of awe or surprise; and some grinned pink from open throats. In the distance, on another hill hardly visible through the hanging smoke, stood the Bearded Man. He could not see his face, but he knew in which direction the Bearded Man looked, smiling in Grady’s direction.
He jerked awake with a start, scanning the room, sweat beading his face. He lifted himself to a sitting position. He took a deep breath. His finger, which he’d wrapped in gauze from the bathroom, throbbed painfully where the girl had bitten it.
He went to the kitchen to see if there was anything left to eat. Through the basement door he could hear the girl screaming and screaming. When he couldn’t find anything to eat, he snatched up the hammer sitting on the counter and continued his efforts to seal off the house from the outside world.
* * *
He stared at the basement door. He needed to go down there to get more wood, but he didn’t want to have to deal with Alice screaming in his face. He gripped his rifle across his chest with both hands; beneath it, his stomach gurgled, empty. He’d decided to board up the front door, and then the back. But for that, he’d need more boards from the pile in the basement.
He flipped the lock and opened the door. The sounds of Alice’s screams immediately intensified. He walked down the stairs.
When Alice saw him, it seemed to renew her strength and her screams grew even louder. She was still on top of the table and she stood and began to jump up and down, stomping her feet on the wood.
“God damn it,” Grady said, looking at her. She was very loud in the enclosed space.
He walked by her to the wood pile. He began to gather a couple of the stronger-looking boards, then stopped. He looked up at Alice, who had turned to follow him with her eyes, her mouth open and raw.
“IWANTMEATIWANT!”
He unslung the rifle from his back. He checked the chamber, lifted it, set the butt snuggly in his shoulder joint, and aimed carefully. He set the sight on the little girl’s mouth.
Alice was unconcerned, screaming and screaming.
His finger quivered on the trigger. He watched Alice stomp and scream, her matted hair bouncing. He looked into her eyes, at her face, her cheeks still plump with baby fat.
He couldn’t do it. He lowered his weapon.
He left the boards where they were and went back up the stairs. He crossed the kitchen into the living room and to the front door. He took one peek outside—there was a man and a woman out on the street who appeared to be carrying on a dramatic conversation with many flourishing hand gestures—and wrenched the door open.
The man and the woman looked up as he stepped out onto the front stoop.
He jumped down next to where the body of the man who had come to his door preaching of Ozy and the Bearded Man had fallen. He wedged his arms beneath the body and used all of his strength to lift it, slinging it over his shoulders. He stumbled, heavily encumbered, to the bottom of the four concrete steps that led back up into the house.
“You don’t live here,” the woman on the street said behind him.
“I made him squeal before the end,” the man said.
Grady staggered up the stairs.
“We know what you did.”
“If you’re fast enough, it all slips out at once.”
Grady let the body fall to the living room floor and quickly turned to the door. The man and the woman were at the bottom of the steps. When they saw he was looking, they turned to each other and embraced; they kissed noisily, their tongues moving roughly, saliva dripping from their lips and chins.
Grady slammed the door closed and locked it.
He grabbed the body by its ankle and dragged it to the kitchen. He threw open the basement door and kicked the body down the stairs. He came slowly after it.
At the bottom of the stairs, he looked up and the girl immediately stopped screaming. He rolled the body over until it was within Alice’s reach.
He pulled up his chair and sat watching. He rocked in place, hungry, unable to take his eyes away from the sight before him.
Except for the grunts of effort as she tore rubbery pieces away and the wet sounds of satisfied eating, Alice was mercifully quiet.
VIII. ATTACK
They were all around the house now; he could see them through the slits he’d left in his defenses, just large enough to stick the barrel of his rifle through. Every few minutes, one of them whooped and another hollered a response. They were even in the backyard, congregating, talking amongst themselves. He watched, with a sinking feeling in his gut, as they trampled through the dirt piles, spreading the soil, filling in the holes, stomping it flat, undoing all of his hard work. Some of them tripped in the holes and then got up and crawled around on hands and knees.
All he could do was to wait for the horde to pass, he told himself…
He sat in the living room, surrounded by the weapons he’d collected. Everywhere there were boxes of shells, many of them opened and rifled through to see if they fit any of the guns he had. Despite all he had collected, he only had ammunition for two of the weapons: a .40 caliber Glock pistol, and his .30 caliber carbine standard-issue rifle. There were also various knives, mostly intended for kitchen use. For a time, he’d slept amongst them, cradling his rifle.
When he woke, he went to check on Alice.
He stood at the bottom of the stairs looking around in awe.
Alice was under the table, the feeble remnants of the body he’d left with her scattered all about the basement. There were scraps of bloody clothing, bones gnawed clean, a jawbone with its teeth smashed into fragments against the floor, concrete stained everywhere a dark purplish color.
His mouth dropped open, but he had nothing to say, staring.
In the corner by the pipes there was an arm still attached to half of the ribcage, purple lumps piled nearby, organs now dried and shriveled. On top of the table, the girl had laid out the intestines like grayish snakes.
“I don’t feel anything,” Alice said from beneath the table.
Grady stepped closer, bent so he could see.
“I don’t...I don’t feel…”
Alice was sitting cross-legged—her clothes and skin spattered with blood, dark stains all around her mouth—with one of her tiny arms held out before her, clawing at the underside of her forearm with her nails. Jagged scratches had already torn into her flesh and blood dribbled and ran, but she continued to pick and scratch.
Grady turned away.
* * *
As light began to fill the sky and slowly the dimness in the house lessoned, the voices outside increased in volume, as if to welcome the day.
Grady sat with his back against the wall next to the front door, his rifle lying across his lap. His hands were trembling and his eyes felt dry and stretched.
“Come out, Grady.”
Grady blinked and swallowed dryly. Who could that be? His first thought was that it was the Bearded Man, come for him. But he knew that wasn’t likely. He shuffled his body across the floor, using his rifle for support, and looked out through the slot he’d left in the window by the front door.
They were everywhere now, a crowd milling about, not walking by but waiting, and standing unmoving amongst them was a man he recognized.
“Come out. Join us.”
The man’s clothes were grubby and stained and the entire top of his head was a ragged scab of dried gore. Blood had run down his face, cutting lines through his cheeks, blinding one eye, disconcertingly segmenting his features. He was grinning, appeared to be near laughter he could hardly control, as if he found everything about the current situation a hilarious joke. He was the man from the crashed car, the one Grady had shot to silence his laughter.
When the man saw Grady looking, he met his gaze and grinned ever wider. “There’s no escape,” the crazy man said. “Not this time.”
