by Fuchs, A. P.
She didn’t want to talk to them. Not right now. She ducked out of view behind a table with a bunch of brochures on it and a for-customers-only coffee machine.
Wondering if Joe would shout her name, if he truly believed no one could see them or hear them, she waited, just needing some space.
Sure enough, Joe called out: “Billie!”
“Argh. Not now,” she whispered and got in behind the legs of someone who had come to grab themselves a free coffee.
She searched the bank, looking for a place to take a breather. It was all relatively open area, the only hiding places being either behind the tills or in the vault, which had its door open. As if that could stop her even if the door was closed. She could pass through solid objects!
Then the memory came. Her fall. The sidewalk. Her arms passing through the cement. The sensation of gravity taking her and about to suck her to the center of the earth or beyond.
What happened out there?
She peered over the table. Joe and August had split up, each wandering around the bank, eyes searching above the heads of the people. A little boy no more than four ran through August’s legs to catch up with his father on the other side of the old man. An elderly lady passed through Joe as she went to inquire about something at the help desk.
Billie eyed the vault, and when she was certain Joe and August weren’t looking, she made a break for it and ran, her body passing through the waist-high gate separating the area behind the tills from the bank floor. About to run into the vault, she caught sight of two stalls for those opening safety deposit boxes on the other side of it. She headed for one of those instead.
When she emerged through the fake-marble-covered door, she stopped and took a deep breath.
Finally, she was alone.
* * * *
Joe searched the people, hoping to catch a glimpse of Billie. How hard was it to find a small girl with bright pink hair? Especially one who could pass through solid objects?
He couldn’t see her. He knew she probably wanted to be alone after what happened outside, but now was hardly the time to leave him and August.
He scanned the bank for the old man. August stood in the far corner, next to a stairwell, seeming to already be waiting for him to make eye contact. Once Joe did, August signaled that he was going to go downstairs to look for her. Joe nodded and August turned and headed down the steps.
A bank of offices bordered the place’s interior so Joe decided to check them out, one by one.
Out of habit, he dodged a middle-aged man with thinning brown hair who was coming toward him. Another shorter fellow with spiked blond hair who he didn’t see was right behind the man and Joe hit him straight on. The blond fellow’s body met his and Joe merged with him, feeling as if he was slowly sinking into a pool of Jell-O. Then the sensation passed and Joe was on the other side, the blond guy still walking forward, not missing a beat.
Joe gave himself a shake and turned into the office with the open mahogany door on his left. A fifty-some-odd-year-old with male-pattern baldness and a moustache sat behind a desk, one hand tapping the keys of his keyboard, the other supporting his chin as he stared at the monitor.
No Billie.
Just in case this whole “no one seeing him” wasn’t real, Joe said, “Excuse me, sir?”
The man didn’t look up.
Joe stepped up to the desk and waved a hand in front of the guy’s face. No response.
He couldn’t help but chuckle. Well, how ’bout that? He recoiled at his own humor. Don’t turn back. That’s not you anymore.
On the white wall to his right was a black-framed picture of a well-muscled runner hopping over a series of hurdles, and below was the supposed-to-be-motivating slogan that read forward.
“All right,” Joe said and approached the wall.
He put his fingers against it and they passed through and, like before, there was a slight resistance, like slipping your hand into a pool of cool, soft mud. He withdrew his fingers, took a deep breath, walked toward the wall, instinctively bracing himself for the dull thunk of impact as his head met drywall. Instead, coolness and darkness embraced him and it felt as if he were slowly sinking in the deep end of a swimming pool albeit with something under his feet for support. The darkness then melted away and he found himself in the closed-door office of two women, one with short brown hair behind a desk, slouched in her chair with hands folded across her lap, the other across from her leaning against the desk, bright blonde hair hanging in her face.
“I’m not going to judge you either way,” the woman sitting down said.
“I know. I just don’t know what to do.”
The woman sitting down leaned forward. “You’re gonna have to make a decision, though. Frankly, I’m getting tired of hearing about it. Either make your move with the guy or not.”
Joe stepped closer. The woman with the blonde hair stepped back from the desk.
“It’s been bugging me for weeks,” she said.
“You said that,” the other woman said.
“He asked me out this morning. For tonight. Wants dinner and then, well, you know. He didn’t say that, but I can tell.”
“What guy doesn’t want that?”
“But I really like him.”
“You’re married.”
“Don’t remind me. But that’s been cold for a few months now. I mean, really cold.”
“I’m not going to suggest you break up your marriage.”
“Who says I’m breaking it up? Why not a little fun on the side? Doesn’t have to last forever.”
“These things never end right.”
“That’s not true. A friend of mine found somebody while she was still attached. She got divorced and they both lived happily ever after.”
“One in a million.”
“Could be me.”
“Could be.”
Joe shook his head. He couldn’t believe he was hearing this.
“It’s not like I’m getting any at home,” the blonde woman said.
Okay, I’m done, Joe thought.
“You’ve been telling me,” the other woman said.
“I don’t know.” The blonde woman began to pace. Joe avoided her on purpose. “Just tired of being torn, you know?”
Joe merely leaned in close to her ear and said, “Don’t do it.” And he moved toward the far wall, sinking through it and emerging into an empty office, the door open.
Like the other with the two women, no Billie.
He went through the remaining offices, all of their occupants unaware of his presence. Billie wasn’t in any of them.
By the time he exited out the door of the office nearest the tills, passing through solid objects was becoming normal and he didn’t mind it when a short Asian man carrying too many papers passed through him.
The door at the front of the bank opened and a man wearing an expensive-looking long, white overcoat and white velvet fedora walked in. He paused a moment at the door, surveyed the room, then went to the heavyset woman sitting at the help desk. The woman picked up her phone after he spoke to her, dialed a number, said something, then set the phone back down. A moment later, an office door opened and out came the woman whom the blonde was confessing to. She greeted the man in the white coat with a handshake then directed him toward the vault on the other side of the tills. He waited for her by the vault door while she went in, and when she emerged with a small, silver long box, he went with her to somewhere on the other side of the vault.
Joe’s focus changed when August came up the stairwell, hands open, palms up. Nothing.
Joe signaled to the offices he’d just been in and signed that Billie wasn’t in those either. Sighing, he glanced out the far window to the helicopter in the parking lot.
Was it his imagination or did the misty residue on its hull suddenly seem a lighter gray than before?
* * * *
Billie paced the tiny stall, hands steepled together beneath her chin. There wasn’t much room to move
—at least, without passing through the stall’s walls or door and risking bumping into Joe or August outside—and was getting tired of being cramped up in there. Worse, she was just tired of being tired. And tired of being a woman. It was stupid and cliché but she was having a hard time keeping up with everything. The guys seemed to have no trouble, at least from her view of things. Joe rarely showed emotion. August, though warmer than Joe, felt like a grandpa that she only saw on special occasions. And Des . . . . If he was here, he’d be the one to talk to. He’d probably be having a blast walking through solid objects once the shock and newness of it wore off.
But she was just tired. Tired of trying to survive. Tired of being pushed to death’s edge then suddenly being tugged back. Tired of weirdness and conflicting emotions. Sick to her stomach over losing her family. Sick of the undead. Her only comfort came from them not being around anymore.
She still didn’t know where she, Joe and August were. Des would probably say they were in some parallel universe. He was big into stuff like that: spaceships, aliens, time travel, parallel dimensions. Your regular run-of-the-mill comic geek.
Never got to say good-bye, Billie thought. A sharp pang pricked her heart. Maybe, just maybe, if they somehow returned to—what, their world?—maybe then she’d be able to find Des’s body and give it a proper burial. If he wasn’t a zombie, that was.
She wiped her eyes and thought maybe now she should rejoin the others.
A muffled female voice interrupted her thoughts: “Right this way, sir.”
“Thank you,” a man said, his voice low and sure.
The door of the stall next to hers opened.
“Let me know if you need anything,” the woman said.
“Thank you.”
The door closed and it sounded like something was placed on the small shelf sticking out of the wall, assuming the stall next to hers was laid out the same.
Knowing full well she shouldn’t pry and give the guy his privacy, she thought it wouldn’t matter if she snuck a peek at what the man had in his safety deposit box. She always thought it’d be cool to have one of those, to have a secret stash of private possessions that no one could get to no matter what, only you and you alone. And living at home with her folks where her mom did regular sweeps of her room to see if she was hiding anything never afforded her that luxury.
“Why not?” she said and put her hands up against the wall dividing her stall and the one next to it.
Just take a peek then go. Won’t hurt nobody if I don’t stay and linger, she thought, easing her guilt.
Billie walked through the wall, the slow pressing through now familiar. She emerged just behind the man.
He wore a long, white overcoat and a white velvet fedora.
Suddenly the man spun around and his blue eyes ignited in bright flame.
39
In the Bowels of the Earth
“Didn’t find her, huh?” Joe said when August walked up to him. The old man’s presence was comforting in light of him being the only one aware of his being there.
“Nothing. Not a pink hair.”
“Any trouble on the stairs?”
August smirked, obviously getting what Joe was driving at. “My feet slipped through a couple of times. Actually, one time significantly. I went through one flight and landed on another.”
“Landed on an—How did you stop yourself from going through?”
The old man furrowed his brow, as if to recall the memory. “I don’t know. Something along the lines of ‘Help!’ ran through my mind. That’s all I remember. I landed on the stairs. A couple of people were coming up them and they stepped right into me and passed me by. Anyway, I checked the rooms downstairs, the maintenance room, the lunchroom and all that. She’s not here. At least from what we can see.”
An idea struck him. “Since we can’t touch anything and since we’re invisible, do you think this is the first step in something bigger? Like, we’re slowly fading from existence?”
August shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe. But I think God has something else in mind for us.”
It was only a matter of time before August brought up the G-word again. But Joe had to admit that in light of all that he’d experienced, the possibility of God was a strong one. “Okay, I’ll go with you on this for a second. If God’s placed us here, what’s the point? What’re we supposed to do?”
The old man didn’t reply.
“See, that’s it. There’s nothing we can do. Noth-ing. Can’t touch anything. Except, well, maybe the floor, depending, right? Billie nearly went through the sidewalk out there. You went through the stairs. But you also stopped yourself, somehow. And I’ve got my feet planted.” Then as if saying so was a trigger, something grabbed his ankles and tugged him into the tiled flooring.
“Joe!” August yelled and reached for him.
Just before the old man’s hands touched his, another violent tug yanked him downward. The bank and August slipped from view and he was looking up at a ceiling.
Something had him. When he checked his feet, there was nothing but air. The tan tiled flooring of the room below rushed up to meet him and, like above, he was sucked straight through this level as well.
Darkness surrounded him.
* * * *
Shock shook Billie’s innards and she tumbled back. Just as she began to pass through the stall’s door, a strong hand grabbed her by the shirt collar and yanked her upright, bringing her face to face with the man with the fiery eyes.
“You’re not supposed to be here, Billie Friday,” he said. His tone was firm and carried an authority that seemed almost otherworldly.
The words never really formed in her mind but more so did in her heart, and she wondered how he knew her name.
The man let go and left her to stand on rubbery legs.
The flames dancing in his eyes sparkled and she felt compelled to slowly sink to her knees before him. As she began to lower herself, he drew her back onto her feet.
“Don’t do that,” he said, withdrawing his hand from her. The flames faded, bright and beautiful blue eyes shining forth.
“I don’t . . . I don’t know why I . . .” She knew what she was trying to say but her tongue suddenly felt five inches thick. She wanted to know what he was and why she felt so small—so insignificant—in his presence.
The man’s face was hard and he didn’t appear the type to have ever cracked a smile in his whole life.
“You can . . . you can . . .” she started.
“Yes, I can see you,” he said. “I can see a lot of things.”
Her fingers trailed the collar of her shirt. He touched me. “You touched . . .”
He nodded.
“You know my name, too.” Her voice sounded far away even to herself.
“I do.” He glanced back to the silver box on the table. “Billie, listen to me. I want you to turn around and leave this place. You may never speak of meeting me.” He eyed the silver box again.
She wanted to listen to him, to obey instantly, but her curiosity was getting the better of her. “What’s in there?”
“None of your concern, but it is of vital importance that I see to it.” Then, very sharply, “Alone.”
She averted her eyes from his, once more the feeling of being so worthless enveloping her. Who was this guy?
“Time is short. There’s—” The man cocked his head. “Oh no . . .” And spun around and grabbed what appeared to be an old, gold-plated antique watch from the safety deposit box. He held the watch up and examined it.
“What is that?” she asked.
His eyes lit up again when he spun around. The frown on his face made her recoil.
“The end of all things,” he said.
* * * *
In the absence of light, Joe was pulled further and further downward, the darkness so thick, so hopeless, that even his own screams were sucked up by its depth.
The darkness was so penetrating his bones began to ache, as if each one was brui
sed through and through.
The violent pull on his legs ripped him through the dark like a millstone sinking down to the bottom of a lake.
He fell forever. He fell for a moment.
Time had no meaning.
Heart slamming against his ribcage, he cried out into the abyss, calling for help. No one answered and no one came.
April . . . he thought.
Sound brewed below and the further he dropped, the louder it became. High-pitched and filled with fear, he quickly realized it as the desperate screams of those being tormented. He’d heard similar screams before, ones when the undead overcame the living and began to devour their flesh while they were still alive. But this was so much more than that. Those screams had been those of a few. These ones were those of thousands. Of millions.
The sound enveloped him and encased him like a swarm of locusts. No way out. No reprieve from their ear-piercing noise.
Ears ringing from the deafening shrieks and screeches, barely able to concentrate, brain about to explode, Joe fell further into the dark.
The air grew warm, thick and dry. Then it grew warmer still, like that of a sauna. The heat intensified and the image of a red hot burner on a stove flashed before his mind. A sudden sense of permanence invaded his whole being and he found himself resigning to the reality there was no escape from this place.
He was alone and he knew it. Billie and August and the world above were fading quickly into distant memory. His life with April before the rise of the undead seemed so far away it was as if it had never happened at all.
