by Keohane, Dan
Everyone on their floor was dead. All had been watching television, either The Show or something else equally mundane. In the few apartments he’d checked, having to kick in the loosely-bolted doors after minutes of unanswered knocking, he saw the clown face on the television and looked away as soon as his fingers and neck began to itch. Once he tried changing the channel. In the corner of his eye he saw more faces on the screen, sometimes the same, sometimes narrower and dark.
Never once did he feel like a trespasser, though he did wonder if this was simply a dream and he was sleepwalking into his neighbors’ homes. Two floors down Albert broke into the McGovern place and drifted slowly through their rooms. Two boys in elementary school, the youngest a year older than his own, and a daughter a freshman in high school. He found none of them. Only the unmoving, dry-blood adults on the couch.
No one answered 911 when, at last, he tried to call. Not knowing what to do, he went back to his own apartment and slept on the living room floor beside his dead wife. Part of him expected to wake from the dream any moment.
Two hours before sunrise, Mira rose up and tried to kill him. Closed her mouth around his bicep and tried to rip the skin free. Eyes bloody and unfocused, teeth closing tighter over her husband’s arm, biting down hard and hard and hard —
* * *
Dinneck woke shouting and flailing against the pews. Bang. Bang against the wood, as if to dislodge the woman’s mouth from his arm again. That first night Dinneck had been forced to slam Mira’s head against the coffee table to make her let go. Seeing later how the New Race’s teeth were so effectively pointed, sharpened either by their own hand or the same metamorphosis which made their skin hard and crusty, Dinneck knew he’d been lucky. Mira’s teeth.... but he couldn’t finish the thought. He’d gone too far just now in classifying his wife with no more concern that the millions of other Shufflers who came up from Below when the sun fell away.
The rhythmic pad-pad-pad of running outside, along the alley, flirting shapes barely visible past the stained glass windows. The sound followed the Passion of Christ, depicted in wood panels along the church walls, heading for the nave. The main church doors were closed, but never locked. No need. Not this soon.
The running steps scrabbled at the door, lingering longer than last night. Curled fist/claw on the wood. Bang. Bang. Bang. Running away in new pursuit, or simple fleeing the building’s lingering power. Silence. Candles hissed across the church. They’d pounded on the door, he realized, not merely banged once for effect as they usually did.
The strength of the church was weakening quickly. Dinneck had felt, almost tasted, its power when he first arrived three days ago, It wasn’t surprising that first night when the Shufflers dared not even the lowest steps leading from the street. Runners stayed their advances, never daring to run as close as they apparently had tonight.
Like the previous church, Saint Agnes, his refuge was weakening to the point Dinneck felt his security melt whisky-ice thin. Wedged between the Monroe Financial building and a nameless, behemoth brick office, Christ the King church would last him perhaps only this final night.
When God gathered everyone’s children in his arms and left the world for the demons to run slipshod across the globe, the churches seemed to remain filled with the Lord’s love and protection. Doors carefully closed to prevent spilling. Once Dinneck moved in, the seal was broken and God’s power leaked slowly into the stale air outside, drained like a flashlight left on under a child’s pillow.
He took up residence in Saint Agnes after fleeing his apartment, four weeks and an eternity ago. The Holy Light shone into the eyes of the New Race when they pursued, blinding them, keeping them at a respectful distance. It faded a little every day, until three nights ago when a Runner turned the knob and opened the door, exposing Saint Agnes to the cool night air. Dinneck saw only the arm, long and moorish brown in the afterglow of the wind-flickered candles. The Runner never entered, though for a moment Dinneck had felt a horrible thrill that he might at last see these creatures whose night-shrouded footsteps marked their presence, but of whom he’d seen only flashing glimpses through colored glass.
The Shufflers, however, had come in that night, uncertain and wary. Dinneck huddled on the altar, watching the candles sputter in death, hearing the slow, uncertain steps of the walking dead, the stolen dead, moving up the center aisle. He’d curled into a ball behind the altar, squeezing whatever remained of God’s love from the narthex, sucking the last of the holiness from the air and praying it would last until daylight.
It had.
When he dared look up the next morning, a single sun-stricken body, its captive soul burned free in the light, lay crumpled in the aisle beside the front pew. The man’s face peeled in thick lines at the cheeks, as if someone’s fingers had once been drawn down into them. Probably so. A person could not fight these creatures once in their grip, except to flail uselessly at whatever dead flesh they could before being rent and torn into their own death.
Those were good deaths, however. The victim who made the marks on that dead thing’s cheeks would not be coming back as a vessel for another demon. There would be nothing left.
Now, Dinneck looked about the dim interior of Christ the King. It was happening here, the fading of the protection, sooner than Dinneck would have thought. Cracks in the walls, maybe, windows never quite closed. Heaven’s heat dissipating. He needed a new haven - church or synagogue or Hindu temple - once the sun returned. He’d had been lucky in Saint Agnes. Not again, not if he stayed here past morning.
How long before he ran out of sanctified ground and became trapped in the middle of Route One as daylight winked out and night fell on him like a net? If he made it out of downtown, maybe north into Somerville or Medford, he might find a haven for a night. Maybe bide his time until he reached the suburbs. How many churches were there in Burlington that hadn’t already been sucked dry by some other desperate survivor?
Maybe the waterfront held the answer. Steal a boat, sail away. Until his food ran out, and he died slowly, to have his body raped by a grinning imp from Hell, riding back to shore to join the swarming hive of hard shell corpses in the darkness of the MBTA subway tunnels.
Dinneck picked up the notebook. His New Race Dictum had grown one page at a time, hurried scrawls of Bic pen on sweat-dropped paper. One of his earliest thoughts was that he’d been spared to chronicle these times. Later, to pay God for the continued stay of his execution, he preached in the deserted streets, trying to bring the people back with his words.
They weren’t listening. God was gone. He and the children were on some far away planet, green grass, fields and clouds, Nicky and the McGovern boys laughing and running down hills, swimming in clear, clear lakes. Not for the first time Dinneck appreciated the irony of the true Rapture. All those well-dressed Jehovah’s Witnesses, now walking slack among the neighborhoods, ripping warm flesh off shoulders and bellies. The Rapture came, but only the children could ride.
Dinneck drained the last of his canteen. The water was sour, had been when first poured from the plastic jug in the convenience store at the end of the block. Everything more sour each day, more meaningless. He rose from the bench and walked towards the main doors of the church. His steps were silenced by the carpet, but any Dead waiting outside the door would feel his heat, the ripples in the air of a living, beating heart. Blood not yet cold and sagging in unused veins.
The vessel containing the holy water was half full. He lifted the plastic bowl from its wall-mounted base and removed the square of sponge from the center. He squeezed what water he could back into the bowl and drank, stopping only at the sucking of his mouth on dry plastic. The water spread through him, clean, fresh and powerful. It reached his furthest corners, set his fingers and toes to curl involuntarily.
Dinneck felt alive in this brief moment, as if he was still a true child of God. Orphaned, yes, but still His Child. Perhaps Dinneck’s body was now the sole vessel of this building’s power. The thoug
ht set him on edge. He stared at the outer doors, waiting for them to burst open.
His body, his blood now the vessel.
Dinneck looked away from the doors, and understood.
His preaching was not in vain. It simply was not enough. The body and blood of redemption was needed. The realization frightened him. But since walking into the living room and finding his wife on the couch, his son gone, something evil and horrible on the television screen, this decision felt right. The missing ingredient in what remained of his Mission.
He would die, yes. But he would die well, unlike those who fell to the street clutching their heart, or stumbled from a ledge to the sidewalk three stories below. When Dinneck died, there would be nothing left of his body. Nothing left of his soul for the demons to infest and manipulate. He would become diluted, nonexistent, cleansing energy coursing through the guts of the Demon World below him. And perhaps, Dinneck might gather some souls for God along the way.
He returned to the bench and the open notebook. Why had he bothered? Soon there would be no one left to read the Dictum. Still, he sat and raised the pen. One final chapter to explain for anyone finding these words what they needed to do, to serve God, to be free at last.
* * *
It took most of the next morning in Christ the King’s sacristy to locate the reserves of holy water. He held the glass jar in his hand, feeling the weight of his mission. Did they bless the water only when they poured it into the receiving bowls? He broke the seal, unscrewed the cap. No smell, save the sensation of dampness around the lid. Glass to his lips.
He drank in heavy, wanting gulps. The Power was immense, heavy, too much, filling the bag of his stomach, reaching through his veins with the electric fingers of God Himself. He wanted to stop, wanted to drop the jar and spew the water. This is wrong, I am wrong. Still he drank, until he could hold no more.
The interior of the church was too bright, too much sun through the stained glass. He swallowed air, forcing the water down. Albert Dinneck was now the vessel, and must not break. He stumbled, rocking like a boat in a storm, down the aisle. Near the back of the church his Work lay discarded. He felt it crying out to him in a silent wail of abandonment.
Along the streets, feeling shards of sunlight cut through his skin, tunnel vision in his new state of Grace, to the entrance to the subway’s Red Line. Concrete stairs fell into darkness. Down there lurked the monsters. Blood and other unknowable fluids stained the sidewalk, more so near the mouth of this New Hell. That was where he now traveled - Hell. Preach among its denizens a sermon of hope and redemption. Reach into their mouths and free the souls trapped within.
Down the steps, slowly, his stomach stretched painfully. He needed to pee, but knew he could not. Must not.
The smell of decomposition, garbage too long in the sun, scent of rotting banana peels and vinegar. At the bottom of the steps he stared into deep pockets of darkness broken only by secondary light streaming from the stairwell behind him, or through various ventilation slats overhead. Still, he saw well enough, the Light in him shining through his eyes into the murk. Maybe it was just his memory of the station’s layout playing out in his mind, a mental map translated to vision.
The turnstile clicked as he passed through. Spackled blood dried below the red-painted stripe denoting the MBTA subway line. Both blood and stripe were dark gray shades in this lightless world. He stepped onto the platform. Empty. No lights, the twin open mouths of the tunnel on either side. He would stay here. They would come to him.
Dinneck considered preaching some more, as he used to do in the safety of the light above. His bladder ached. So much power running through him, he dared not break its spell.
Shuffling feet from the tunnel mouths, worn shoes on dust, dry feet whispering. Soon the shapes. Shufflers, too many to count, following his heat and blood scent, emerging from both sides. Dinneck moved to the center of the platform, heart racing. His instincts screamed for him to run back through the turnstiles and into the sun. One more day, one more week, the Power protecting him at night might last that long.
Perhaps this was how Jesus felt seeing the soldiers marching up the hill to arrest him. Dinneck could not leave. He must die today. He was now the two fish with which God would feed the masses. The two walls of lumbering bodies merged together, silent save their steps. They stopped. A sound like a police siren, organic and wet, sent them into uncertain hesitancy.
A Runner came up the abandoned tracks, so fast Dinneck thought for a moment it was a train. It scrabbled onto the platform. The Shufflers moved aside, a demonic Moses parting them like the sea. The creature reared up. Tall, with strong, muscular legs bent nearly ninety-degrees to prevent it from hitting the ceiling. Its segmented body glistened as if adorned with flakes of mica. Dinneck could not make out many details, but could see its shape clearly enough. Large growths, like many heads along the front and sides of its body, four arms, two where one would expect them, two more reaching from behind like the bones of old wings. The Runner’s head sloped small and narrow, bird-like. The overall effect was utterly alien. Dinneck fought an instant revulsion - like looking too closely at the surreal features of a wasp, magnified a hundredfold. He wanted to run. It wanted him to run, if only to catch him again for sport.
The legs bent further, the body leaned forward, arms supporting the awkward bulk by slapping onto the concrete floor. He was being studied. The Shufflers, those for whom he’d come, moved closer. The Runner hissed/screamed its siren call. The others stopped, uncertain, wanting to devour the man standing before them but apparently not at the expense of this demon’s ire.
Dinneck suddenly thought he understood the nature of these Runners. They were shepherds, former wolves who now, after stealing the sheep, protect their captives from their own ignorance and blind wanderings. Dinneck was now the wolf, and the beast before him stared through dull red-glowing slits, deciding if he was a threat.
“I am here to die,” Dinneck whispered. His tongue stuck to the roof of his dry mouth. He forced himself to swallow, then added in a louder voice, “I am an offering from God who has left this world to your devices.”
The Runner hissed. On either side, its flock moved forward and were allowed to pass. The Runner, slowly, moved back onto the tracks to wait, and watch.
A dozen arms grabbed Dinneck’s shirt, pulled him forward. He closed his eyes. He tried not to think, tried to send himself back to his old apartment, when Mira and Nicky were alive. An overwhelming need to run and survive gripped him as tight as the dead, hard-crusted fingers. The mass of Shufflers poured over him like a wave, pressed him to the floor. No hot breath on his neck, only the icy feel of teeth pressing down, splitting his flesh, the warmth of his own blood. Fire, ice, screaming pain through his body. Clothes and skin were torn away. A chunk of his leg pulled free, the stale air racing across his exposed arteries and muscle burned like acid. Was acid. So many on him, he couldn’t thrash or try to fight.
Dinneck was turned onto his back. Eyes still closed he managed one final scream before a mouth bit down on his chin, throat. Fingers peeled back his cheeks and eyelids, but he saw nothing.
* * *
The Runner on the tracks watched the feeding with relieved contentment. There were more Shufflers far back in the tunnels, pushing forward, pressing against those in front of them in their need to consume, to taste even a drop of this new blood. The heat of the victim bathed the platform with an intoxicating glow in their eyes.
Something changed. Where once a pulsing mound of Shuffler bodies heaved and writhed atop Dinneck’s body, the Runner now noticed many of its kin no longer moved. Others, impatient, shoved them aside, scrounged with dry lips what might be left, shards of bones, bloody rivulets squeezed away from the feeding.
The mound of bodies grew.
The demon on the tracks noticed too late what was happening. It howled and leapt onto the platform, shoving its way through, tossing Shufflers, both moving and still, aside.
There was litt
le left of Dinneck’s body. Wads of flesh, fluid spilled across the floor only to be covered by a desperate black tongue. A long white bone protruding from the mouth of another, though the mouth no longer moved. The Runner swatted at a piece of intestine and felt its preternatural flesh burn. It backed away, screamed again. Still the horde pressed past it, not just in hunger, now driven by something awakening inside them, desperate for the communion being offered.
Eventually there was nothing left of the man but multi-hued stains on the concrete, heavy lumps of Dinneck’s flesh buried within the unmoving Shuffler bodies. When the smell and heat dissipated the mob moved back into the tunnel, leaving the Runner to shove the empty husks of its lost flock off the platform and onto the tracks. It didn’t know what else to do for the moment. Its hand still burned where it had touched the victim’s flesh.
* * *
Dinneck moved through the clouds into the vastness of space. He sensed others with him but could not look to see who they were. He waited for the Light of God to appear from the star-filled dark and embrace him.
Further, further into the cold of the universe he traveled, always waiting for the ethereal doors of heaven to open and swallow him into the Light. Somewhere there was the green grass and fields where his son played. He wanted to believe Mira was one of the freed souls traveling with him. Had she been there, in the subway? Maybe. He had to believe, have faith.
They traveled out, out, into the black void, calling with silent voices. Waiting for the embrace. Waiting for the answer.
— — — — —
About “Tanner’s Bomb”
Wow, you’re still with me? That’s great. We save one of my favorites for last. Personally, I think this is one of funniest stories I’ve written. Only one other person I know thinks that, too. Everyone else has commented that it’s one of my scariest pieces. Trust me, it’s not. It’s funny. And scary. Funny and scary.
