The End in All Beginnings

by John F. D. Taff

  Uncle Frank remained still for a moment.

  “Why do you remember me?”

  “You’ve got to help me so that everyone here can go on the way they were meant to be. You knew this in life. That’s why she had you killed.”

  The dead man began nodding his head slowly and awkwardly. “Yes, I remember.”

  They both turned toward Aunt Olivia, who was still on the ground.

  She had closed her eyes tightly.

  Chris knew what she was doing. He had seen her do it many times before.

  He had done it many times before.

  She was forgetting him.

  A weird feeling of disassociation rippled through his body, and he felt himself grow insubstantial.

  “Help me, Uncle Frank!” he yelled, doubling over in pain.

  “Noooo!” yelled another voice.

  Ben.

  The young boy rose from behind one of the tombstones in the cemetery. His face was ashen, and Chris could see, even through his disorientation, that he was shaking and petrified.

  “Ben!” he gasped. “Remember what I told you.”

  Then, all was searing agony. He felt as if his head was being ripped in half. Dozens of memories spun around inside his brain, half-remembered, departing.

  She was sucking them out of him, leaving him nothing more than a hollow husk.

  Suddenly, he remembered his experiences at the institution.

  And he fought back.

  Climbing to his knees, dizzy from pain, he clenched his teeth against the assault and closed his eyes.

  He was rewarded by an unbelieving scream from Aunt Olivia and an instant lessening of her attack.

  Opening his eyes, he saw she lay sprawled on the ground, her eyes wide and glassy. She was fumbling with her purse, struggling to open it.

  “She’s got a gun!” Ben yelled, and Chris saw him snap his eyes shut forcefully.

  Aunt Olivia screamed under Ben’s power, and the gun fired.

  A spray of material, grayish and powdery, exploded from the dead man’s back, ripping through his suit and carrying a patch of it in its wake.

  Uncle Frank stumbled backward a step, but made no sound. As if awaiting a signal, he slowly, gently closed his eyes.

  The dead remember, Chris thought. And the dead can forget.

  Aunt Olivia wailed in wide-eyed agony, and dropped the gun. She brought her gloved hands to her head as if to hold it together.

  Chris felt her trying to fight, but her attack was split between the three of them, and it was weak and flagging.

  Sadness descending over him, he closed his eyes, too.

  There was a keening, upward spiraling shriek, which flooded his senses.

  Then, silence.

  Panting, his heart beating wildly, he opened his eyes.

  Ben was to his left, trembling, his eyes still tightly shut.

  Uncle Frank stood in front of him, near where Aunt Olivia had been.

  She was gone, forgotten.

  The dead man turned to Chris, his dark eyes staring.

  “All is forgotten,” he said. “Now, I implore you to release me from your memory, so that I may join her.”

  “Of course,” Chris whispered, his throat dry. Ben stood beside him, his small hand seeking the comfort of Chris’s.

  “Release those you love,” the corpse intoned. “Memory is too cruel.”

  With great solemnity, Uncle Frank closed his tattered eyelids.

  And so did Ben and Chris.

  A moment later, they were the only two on the road.

  * * *

  On the way home, the effects of Aunt Olivia’s passing became noticeable.

  “You’re bigger,” Chris said, stopping in the road behind Ben.

  “Huh?” the boy said, and was startled by the deepness of his own voice. “Oh my gosh, what’s happening?”

  Chris smiled. “You’re growing up. Without Aunt Olivia around to keep you down, you’re progressing to your true age. That’d be around thirty-four or so, right?”

  “I guess so,” Ben answered, beginning to feel nauseated. “I don’t feel like I’m thirty-four. I feel like I’m ten.”

  “Well,” Chris said, putting his arm around the boy’s shoulders. “I’d bet that you’re about twelve right now. Which means that we better get out of town quick and move where there are a lot of girls. Something tells me that you’re going to need them.”

  * * *

  The house, too, had begun to show its real age. The porch was warped, the paint peeling, and pieces of its siding were cracked and hanging. Inside, furniture had collapsed under its own weight.

  The house groaned and creaked disturbingly as they quickly packed their bags, adding clothes grabbed from other rooms. Ben had already begun growing out of the clothes he was wearing. A fine sheen of peach fuzz covered his face, and he was getting taller, lanky.

  Once back outside, they climbed into the Dodge pickup, and Chris started the engine.

  “Where are we going?” Ben asked.

  “To get Emma. To get my wife,” he said, throwing the truck into reverse just as the roof collapsed into the house, shattering the upstairs windows and raising a large cloud of cement and plaster dust that rolled across the yard.

  * * *

  Emma sat in front of the remains of her own house, her head in her hands. As the truck approached, she looked up, wiped her eyes.

  “Emma?” Chris yelled, leaping from the cab. “Are you okay?”

  She collapsed as he approached, sobbing hysterically.

  “I thought she’d killed you. I thought she was punishing us again,” she said, gesturing toward the pile of rubble that used to be her home. “I didn’t think you’d come back again. Ever. I…”

  “Shh,” he whispered, pulling her to her feet, crushing her in his embrace. “For better or worse, it’s done. She’s gone and forgotten. And the town’s going back to the way it would have been without her. Everything’s been released.

  “Your parents?”

  “Gone,” she sniffed. “I’m sad, but happy. Just the opposite of how it used to be when she held us all in her memory. I’m glad my mother and father finally got to rest after so long. Glad that they got to finally see the real you. The you I knew and fell in love with. And never forgot.”

  He hugged her again, kissed her lightly.

  “I don’t want to talk about memory or forgetting again. Ever. It’s a hateful art,” he said, opening the truck door and helping her in.

  Their luggage tumbled in the bed as the truck squealed through the curve that led out of town.

  As they passed, the road sign that once read MISSION SPRINGS, POPULATION 234, rusted from its post and fell into a dense stand of weeds by the side of what was now a crumbling, poorly maintained back road.

  And faded, faded.

  It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love. It was their smell—her smell—a cloud of aroma that hung in the air because of them, followed them, emanating from them so powerfully that it was almost visible, like wavy lines of cartoon odor.

  Durand told himself that he’d still love her even if she smelled of, well, what she looked like she’d smell of: rotting meat, clotted blood, the fish-stink of pus, the sweltering, bus-stop smell of urine or even the hazy, brown smell of feces.

  But now, just almonds, burned, bitter almonds. And the Linda Ronstadt disc on the CD player in the store, playing “Long, Long Time” over and over again. That’s all he had left of her, of it all.

  * * *

  Millstadt was a small, isolated Midwestern town in the middle of hundreds of miles of flat farmland, stretching from horizon to horizon, like a horizon unto itself. When it came, whatever it was, the world—if the world had any thought of Millstadt whatsoever—quickly forgot the rural community.

  Durand had awoken that morning, like any other, to go to work at the cement plant. He’d showered, dressed, ate a bowl of Count Chocula over the cluttered sink in
his trailer. He didn’t listen to the TV or radio or read a newspaper, not that they’d have been much help that morning. The papers were too late to cover it. By the time it happened, there was no one left to write the news, edit the news, read the news. And the radio and TV were filled with, well, static mostly, and screaming.

  He drove streets that didn’t seem unusually quiet or empty to him. On Main Street, though, he began to sense that something was amiss. A few cars were parked diagonally in front of Millstadt Hardware, the Busy Bee Cafe and Dover Pharmacy, as on most mornings. But more than a few cars were simply stopped mid-street, doors open, some running.

  More disturbing were the bodies, sprawled still and dark. Durand recognized Ina Thorpe from the DMV office—she was the only nice one there—Mr. Tucker from the Feed Store, and was that little Bobby Chavez sprawled on the curb, one sneaker tumbled across the sidewalk and a pool of dark liquid growing beneath him?

  In a daze, Durand had stopped his car, reached beneath his seat to get his gun. It was a .45, registered, loaded and ready for business. He carried the gun cocked and pointed at the ground as he crept up on the body of Mr. Tucker. Bending, he saw a dark smear on the asphalt beneath Mr. Tucker, and he snatched his hand back.

  Terrorists!

  Still crouched, he scanned the stores that lined Main Street, their roofs, their windows, the likely hiding places for any Jihadists or Iranians looking to off a few Americans in Millstadt. When he returned his attention to the street, he saw stout Ina Thorpe roll over, saw blood running from a ragged wound that had opened the side of her face enough to reveal her small, peg teeth grinding a wad of something that looked awfully like part of her own cheek.

  He saw Bobby Chavez’s shoeless foot twitch violently, as if electricity had passed through it, then suddenly stop. Saw him crawl to his feet, fix Durand with one good eye; the other cloudy pink and turned impossibly in its socket toward the sky.

  And he heard the low, gassy moan that escaped Marty Fretwell, a guy he had gone to high school with, as he shambled slowly in his direction. It was the deep, satisfied belch of a person who had just pushed himself from the dinner table. The only things that Marty Fretwell wore were a stained pair of white Fruit of the Loom briefs and an open-mouthed expression of absolute blankness.

  His near nakedness aside, though, the worst of it took Durand a moment to absorb.

  Marty Fretwell was missing his right arm.

  It hadn’t gone quietly, either. It had been ripped off, or gnawed off. What remained was a mangled red mess that dangled from his shoulder like wet fringe. Blood still pumped sluggishly from the wound, spattering the street and the side of Marty’s naked body with each lurching step.

  “You’ve got a gun, for Chrissakes!” Durand could tell that it came from behind the cafe’s glass door, held open just a crack. “Shoot them!”

  Shoot them? Shoot a couple of neighbors who’d been hurt in a goddamn terrorist attack?

  Then, Marty Fretwell was trying to wrap his one good arm around him. Durand, disgusted but confused, wriggled in the man’s slick grip, pulled away and stepped directly into Ina. With her two good arms, she clamped onto him with a strength that belied her age; as if she’d won him as a prize at the county fair and was unwilling to give him up.

  “Jesus, Ina! What the f—”

  Her teeth clacked together an inch from his denim work shirt, with a sound like a pair of garden shears snapping shut.

  “Shoot her, you idiot! Do you wanna end up like one of them?”

  Durand saw that they were closing in on him. All of them bloodied, all of them moving slowly and haltingly.

  “Like them?” he yelled, stepping away from the weird, advancing group.

  “Zombies!”

  Zombies? The voice might as well have said werewolves or vampires or honest politicians, as far as Durand was concerned.

  Then, Bobby Chavez darted forward with astonishing speed, coming in below his gun, clamping onto Durand’s jean-clad left calf with his dirty, blood-grimed mouth.

  A moment of astonishment was followed by one of pain. The kid had bitten him, not hard enough to get through the denim, but enough to hurt.

  “Fuck this shit!” Durand yelled, and kicked like he’d done when he punted the ball for the winning field goal at the high school football championship years ago. Bobby Chavez flopped through the air about three feet, landed hard on the pavement.

  “Fucking shoot them you fucking fucktard. Shoot them!”

  He’d never shot at another living human before, and even when the clip was empty, that record would stand.

  The first shot went wild, striking Tucker’s car in the radiator, which hissed in exasperation.

  Durand took a deep breath, aimed more carefully, shot again.

  This time, it struck Ina in the chest, raising a little red bloom that soaked through her sweater and the tasteful, lace-topped white blouse it covered, knocking her ass over tea-kettle backward.

  There was a long, raspy sigh of frustration from the cafe, as annoyed as Tucker’s radiator.

  “Have you ever seen a movie? In the head, in the fucking head!”

  Durand swallowed, raised the gun again.

  A flash and a kick, and the top of Marty’s head, surmounted by a halo of wild bed hair, disappeared in a red haze. The rest of his body stood there for a moment, spun in on itself, fell to the road.

  There was an excited, high-pitched whoop of encouragement from the cafe.

  Quickly, before he could lose his nerve, Durand dropped Tucker as definitively as he had Marty.

  Already, both Ina and Bobby were moving again, climbing to their feet.

  Ina’s head exploded. The little pair of silver glasses she wore on a chain around her neck went spinning off into the air, nothing left to keep them draped over her bosom.

  The boy came on, limping a bit, his one eye still dead, still pointed upward.

  “What are you waiting for? Do it!”

  Durand grimaced in anger at the goading voice, closed his eyes and pulled the trigger.

  When he opened them again, Bobby Chavez was minus both his sneakers and both his eyes.

  Durand stood there for a moment, turning his head, surveying what he’d done.

  Four people I know, four neighbors, and one of them a kid for Chrissake. Dead. Sprawled on the street, leaking blood, headless.

  And he’d done it. He, Durand Evars.

  “Unless you’re planning on giving them mouth to mouth, get in here, dammit!”

  * * *

  Durand stumbled into the cafe, collapsed into a chair at an empty table. His heart was racing and his entire body was shaking. He ran both hands over his head, through his hair and took a long, trembling breath. Through his interlaced fingers, he heard the click of the cafe door being locked.

  He came back to reality at the sound of a glass thumping onto the table before him. Orange juice sloshed, pooled near his hand.

  “Sorry. You need something to drink, and that’s the strongest stuff this place’s got.” It was the voice that had been shouting at him before.

  Durand nodded his thanks, took the glass, drained it.

  “Coffee?”

  “Uhh…sure…hold on a sec.” He heard the guy dash behind the counter. “Milk or sugar or anything?”

  Durand shook his head vaguely, looked up. The voice belonged to a man he guessed to be in his early twenties , scruffy in the way that generation thinks is attractive, with uncombed hair and an unshaven face. He wore a torn, hooded sweatshirt that zipped up the front, splitting the one word, AUBURN, that arched across it.

  He watched the guy grab a china coffee cup, fill it with black liquid. The coffee was hot, strong, bitter; he took several long sips, let the steaming liquid trickle down his tight throat.

  “Scott Gibbons,” the man said, offering his hand.

  Reaching out absently, Durand shook it. “Durand Evars.”

  Gibbons took a seat at the table.

  “For a minute there,
I thought you were gonna end up as one of them,” he said.

  “What the fuck happened?”

  Gibbons looked at his half-empty cup of coffee.

  “Well, that’s probably gonna require a whole pot. I’ll make a fresh one.”

  * * *

  Scott told him that the news had started on CNN at about one o’clock in the morning. Strange, multiple reports of people being killed in what looked like random attacks all across the globe. The automatic assumption was a large-scale, coordinated terrorist attack. But when the same reports started coming in from Pakistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia, this theory went by the wayside.

  Right before the news went off the air, there were the first hesitant, disbelieving reports of the dead rising and attacking the living.

  “I stay up late online gaming,” Scott said, drinking what must have been his tenth glass of Mountain Dew. He talked in fast bursts, and his leg jigged nervously. “I had the TV on and was kinda half watching. When they got to the stuff about the dead coming back and shit, I just thought it must be like War of the Worlds or something. You know, like back when they ran that movie on TV in the fifties and people freaked and shit because they thought it was real?”

  Durand considered correcting him for a second, let it go.

  “Have you seen other people…live people?” Durand was finally able to croak.

  Scott looked over the rim of his chipped plastic soda cup, turned his eyes away.

  “Sure…ummm…well, this place was full when I got here,” he said, acting nervous for the first time since he’d met Durand. “It opens at about 5:00 a.m., you know, for the farmers and shit. I walked here to get something to eat—”

  “From where?”

  “My house, over on West Madison,” he said, then blushed. “Well, my ma’s house. I live—”

  “In the basement?” Durand finished, with a wry smile.

  Scott nodded, embarrassed.

  “Hey, no big deal. I live in a trailer, so we’re even.”

  Scott’s blush faded, and a big, loopy grin appeared on his face. “Cool. Anyway, it was packed. Someone came in…I think it was that older guy you plugged out there…and said to turn on the radio. When people heard what was going on, a lot of ‘em freaked and left. A few stayed…well, until the dead ones started showing up. Then the place pretty much cleared out.”