by Aaron Polson
The next day, before he left the hostel for the docks, Stefan opened the wooden box and took just enough for passage to the mainland and rail fare to Romania. He dragged the box to the Caleta and left it just inside the lobby.
“Sir,” the concierge called. “You’ve left something.”
Stefan paused at the door. “I know. And I’m going home to find it.”
Chapter 24: Communion
Two shapes move behind the beam of a single flashlight: a man and a boy. The man sets the light on a counter and begins to search the cabinets. He moves slowly, opening each door and peering inside. The boy’s head tilts to the boarded windows. His eyes flash back and forth in the yellow light.
“I can still hear them.”
The man nods. He finds a box of wafers and a glass jug with a few swallows of wine remaining.
“Do they…know…” The boy’s voice shakes and fades.
“We’re okay for now.” The man pulls a pistol from his waist band and lays it next to the flashlight. “We need some rest.”
Both eat in silence, chewing the stale wafers slowly, savoring each bite even though it tastes like glue. They share the wine from the bottle, not bothering with the gold chalices under the counter. After their meal, the boy’s eyes grow heavy.
“Go ahead. Try to get some sleep,” the man whispers.
The man leans against the counter and guides the boy’s head to his lap. Outside, distant moans echo. The boy shifts a few times and settles. His eyes lost to memories, the man strokes the boy’s hair. The flashlight magnifies the shadow of a cross on the opposite wall.
“Some of the others…back where we were…said God was dead,” the boy says. He is almost asleep, exhausted.
Glass breaks somewhere down the street.
“Nonsense,” the man whispers. “If God were dead, we wouldn’t be here together.” The man’s voice wavers, but does not break.
They sit in silence for a few, long minutes. The noises outside grow faint. The man thinks of the grey things shambling in the street. He closes his eyes and sees their black mouths, smells the reek of rot and decay, the stench of urine and blood. He imagines their relentless, blind stares. They will not rest.
When he is sure the boy is asleep, he reaches back onto the counter and collects the pistol. He snaps open the chamber and counts two cartridges.
“If God were dead, little one, there wouldn’t be a bullet left for both of us.”
Chapter 25: Busted
Victor arrived home from the adult learning center with a sculpted bust.
“What’s that supposed to be?” His wife pointed and sneered.
“Frankenstein’s Monster.”
She laughed. His face blushed red, and he thought of cracking her with the sculpture.
Later, when he learned of her infidelity with the UPS man, she laughed louder.
He blushed again, but this time, he smashed her skull with the bust of Frankenstein’s Monster.
Chapter 26: One Up
Two men lock stares across a worn table; both of their faces mottled with stubble and sweat, one wearing a green Pioneer cap. A buck knife sticks from the pocked table top. The crowd circling them, most with sewn-on name tags, grease stains, and breath to kill Satan, press closer to the cone of light offered by a single naked bulb above the table.
"What you got now, Jeb?" The man in the Pioneer hat says.
Jeb lets his left hand drop below the table. His mouth curls open. "Jus' this."
He pulls the tin snips from beneath the table and drops them with a clatter. The knife falls over, tumbles from the wooden surface, and rattles on the floor. Voices rise from the crowd. Bets are exchanged.
Pioneer hat swallows hard, opens the snips, and slides a finger through the blades. His eyes are closed when he presses down, using the table top for leverage with his free hand. He doesn't see the blood spurt across the table, but he hears the crunch as the snips break through the bone. He yanks the bloodied hand away and thrusts it in his lap, his face swollen and red as a boiled beet.
The crowd hoots and claps until Pioneer hat raises his other hand.
"My...turn," he mutters.
Jeb shifts in his chair. The wooden slats of the floor creak.
Pioneer hat points to his mouth and leans forward into the light. For the first time, the crowd gets a good look at his teeth, how sharp and crooked they are like the maw of a shark. Jeb raises a shaking finger, pushing across the table toward the other man's mouth...
Chapter 27: Dinner
At 4:52 PM, a delivery man, rushed and late on his route, drops a brown package on the stoop of 721 Haven Avenue. The package is clearly labeled in large, block letters: Dr. Kiekhoffer, 723 Haven. Something tinkled inside the box as it landed.
By 5:00, a small line of hungry, red dots trail from the box.
Fifteen minutes later, Kathy stumbles into the kitchen at 721 Haven carrying a heavy brown sack of groceries in one arm and her car keys in the opposite hand. She kicks the door shut with one foot and drops the groceries on the counter. Glancing at her wall clock, she takes note of the time: 5:15 PM. A small, scurrying red thing pulls at the corner of her vision.
“Ew, an ant,” she mutters, pressing a thumb into the offending insect, leaving a small red smear behind. Kathy yanks a paper towel from the holder, quickly wipes up the mark, and rinses the blood-like stain from her thumb under the running faucet.
She looks back at the clock. 5:18. Steve will be home by six. Kathy reaches into the brown bag and fishes out an onion, a green pepper, and some broccoli. Stir fry. That will be quickest. Just as she slides the chopping board from its nest next to the stove, she spots two more red, scavenging ants meandering on the backsplash above the sink. Grabbing another paper towel, she wads it into a ball and smashes both with a quick blotting motion.
She begins chopping the vegetables. More red dots bleed in from the periphery, and Kathy looks up for a moment—just long enough for the sharp knife point to slice the tip of her thumb.
“Shit!” The knife clatters to the floor. Wrapping the other hand around her thumb, Kathy rushes out of the kitchen, down the hall, and into the bathroom. She rinses the wound, rummages for a bandage, and applies it over the groove carved her skin.
Returning to the kitchen, she finds a score of ants milling around a drop blood in the sink. Kathy yanks the sprayer from its home next to the faucet. Little red legs kick and struggle, but ultimately wash into gaping drain. Tucking a loose strand of brown hair behind her ear, Kathy slides the sprayer back into place.
At 5:29, she glances at the clock again, reaches under the stove, and grabs a large skillet. The burner flashes with a flick of her wrist, and she turns to her cutting board and chopped vegetables. Something tickles her neck as she pours a little peanut oil into the hot skillet.
“Damn!” She brushes one hand across her throat. An ant drops into the warm oil and sizzles, writhing and squirming. “Oh…”
Her neck begins to throb. Then the burning sensation, like hundreds of small pins scratching her skin, erupts under her blouse, around her waist band, and down her legs. Kathy digs her fingers into her flesh and scratches. The red swarm covers her exposed forearms, little ants stinging and pinching her pink flesh, and these ants draw blood. Minute dots of viscous red swelled on her skin.
Her head swings around the room. Even the walls seem to crawl with zig-zagging little blots of red.
Kathy squeezes her eyes against the burning pain and stumbles into the hallway with her hands held in front as guides. “The shower,” she mumbles, staggering toward the bathroom. They continue stinging relentlessly. Tears push from her eyes, and Kathy drops hard to her knees, reaching for the wall with one hand, painting a blotch of blood and crushed insect in a great arc as she falls.
On hands and knees, she gropes toward the bathroom and promised salvation of the shower. She pulls at the hallway rug and squeezes out a little gasp as her waterlogged lenses focus on a moving, red mass, thousands strong
. The ants continue to wash toward her.
The clock on the kitchen wall reads 5:45. The door rattles and clicks open. Kathy’s husband Steve, a burly man in a dark suit, steps through the door, glances at the stove, and notes the empty skillet. “Honey? What’s for dinner?”
Chapter 28: Armour-Plated Rooftops*
Ralphie peered from a tiny chink in the boarded window with the shotgun in his right hand.
"What'er they doin'?" Nichole asked. Hunkered behind an overturned table across the room, she clutched a Berreta like a lover.
"Dunno. They're all milling around some kind of contraption. Gettin' smart, I guess." His knuckles whitened around the gun. "Wait...oh..." Ralphie crouched and scampered away from the window. "Brace yourself."
A distant, muted thump sounded, followed by a moment of silence, then a thunderous crash above them, the sound of something big and wet--like a bushel bag of cooked oats--hitting a sheet of metal.
"Ha!"
Nichole frowned at Ralphie. "What the hell was that?"
"One of them. They've built some sort of catapult, tryin' to get in the roof. Not too smart, yet..."
*for the record, the British spelling is intentional
Chapter 29: Old Water
There was a little bait shop nestled away in the Green Mountains where old men loved to spread stories like compost on fertile young imaginations. “The water up here is full dead folk. So much history…war…disease.” They laughed while we listened to the tales of those restless, lonesome souls, bobbing under the murk. “They’re waiting,” they said. Those stories pricked our courage, forced us to ride our bikes with fishing poles in hand in search of adventure.
Joel knew a place, and we rode to an old stone fence hiding at the edge of a tree line. Through a path between those trees—crooked conifers jutting to heaven with low, untrimmed branches, dying brown pines, and knobby arthritic firs—we saw the hint of a large pond. The trees encroached on the very lip of the water, leaving only two bare patches of packed dirt open for fishing. The land around the pond seemed somehow twisted, crooked, and diseased, resting as it was in purple shadow of those foothills.
As we walked through the dense mesh of grey branches, the path vanished. Our pant legs caught on bits of jagged rocks and downed limbs, swishing and snagging through the calf-high grass in small clearings. The trees began to hoard sunlight, and the mountains seemed to fold around us. Below the sound of our tramping feet, a slight humming sound grew. “Do you hear that?” I asked Joel.
“What?”
“The buzz,” I whispered to him. He stopped ahead of me and balanced his pole on the ground.
Slowly turning his head to look over his shoulder all goggle-eyed, he muttered, “Come here.” Maybe his quavering voice, seeing too much white around his eyes, or the claustrophobic trees spurred my fear. I wanted to leave, climb on the bike and go. But I obeyed him against the growing storm in my stomach.
He didn’t need to say anything else. Lying on the ground, jutting out from behind a low, scratchy bush, I saw two legs. Pants really, and shoes, but they had form and shape unlike they would if they were empty. The pants were black, dirty with mud, and torn in places. I thought of Grandpa’s funeral and the black suit in which we buried him. The stories of the poor, unhappy dead swirled in my head.
I can’t exactly explain the feeling, but the body drew me to it like some sort of obscene gravity—like a lure, a worm on a hook for a curious boy. I rounded the bush and looked on the rest of this grotesque thing. The torso was still covered by a filthy suit coat that had once been black like the pants. My eyes traced one arm to a white, bloated hand covered thickly by black flies. Corrupted by insects and water, what flesh remained shined like wax or melted fat. The hand seemed to twitch and move, curling those awful dead fingers.
Just then, Joel poked me in the ribs, shouting “Gotcha!” My body burst with terrible fire, all my nerves lit with fright. I screamed, dropped my fishing pole, wheeled, pushed the laughing Joel out of my path, and ran without thinking. I hit the stone wall and scrambled over, tearing my pants and carving a long red scratch on my leg. I toppled to the other side, rested against the rough, cold rocks, and tried to catch my breath.
Feeling a little shame at my retreat, I crawled over the wall again. I had to go back, at least to pick up my fishing pole. That’s when Joel screamed. I dodged through the trees, followed a splashing sound, and saw my friend thrashing in the middle of the pond with a white hand wrapped tightly around his throat.
I really ran then, not stopping until I reached the village and sobbed my tale to the police. They dragged the water for Joel’s body, but they never found him. Officially, he became a runaway, a boy on the side of a milk carton.
I know what really happened. I’ll show you the place. Maybe you’d like to bring a fishing pole or even go for a swim?
Chapter 30: Casualties
Two boys with toy rifles crawl through a drainage ditch at the far end of the high school practice field. The fog smudges distant buildings into blots of ink. Both boys stop and gaze out of the ditch.
“They’re coming,” says the taller of the two, a ten-year-old with too much black hair in a curly heap on top of his head. He rolls over, digs into the cargo pocket of his pants, and draws out a roll of black electrical tape.
“All right, Jack. Who is it this time?” The other boy, thin enough to slip between the posts on the guardrail at the zoo, wipes his nose on a shirt sleeve.
Jack peels a section of tape from the roll and starts covering the orange cap at the end of his play gun. “The Germans, Gabe. The Germans.”
Gabe frowns. “I’m tired of playing world war.”
Jack pokes out his tongue. “Who is it then?”
“Maybe we’re protecting the homestead from border ruffians?” Gabe aims his rifle into the fog. A new shape appears as a black scribble against the white backdrop.
“With these rifles? These are M1s, Gabe. They didn’t have M1s in the old west.” Jack tacks one last piece of tape on his gun. “There.”
“What’re you doing?”
A smile splits across Jack’s face. “Covering up that stupid safety tip. Now this looks like a real gun.”
The black shape comes closer and melts into a man. Both boys watch him and fall silent. Jack raises his gun, takes careful aim, and squeezes the trigger as “Crack!” pops from his mouth.
The man tumbles to the ground.
Jack utters a low, almost whispered, laugh.
“Got him.” Jack rises to a crouch and starts toward the prone body. “C’mon!”
Gabe swallows hard and follows, crouching like his friend.
The man lays in an awkward, spread-eagled pose. One arm splays above his head while the other is folded across his chest. His hand clutches at his long, grey coat. Blood smears his fingers.
“Jack…”
The man’s eyes dart between both boys. He opens his mouth. “Meine Frau und Kinder. Sorgfalt für sie, bitte…”
“German. I told you so,” Jack taunts. He raises his gun and “Pow!” fires at the man’s head.
In the distance, the sound of straining diesel engines and the clank of tank treads echo through the fog. Jack and Gabe exchange a look.
“We better find cover,” Jack says. He runs for the ditch.
Gabe is frozen. He looks down at the dead man, staring at the empty eyes.
“C’mon, dummy!” Jack calls.
“You’re an asshole, Jack…” Gabe lowers his head and sprints after his friend, muttering under his breath.
Chapter 31: Sometimes They Don’t Come Back
Sometimes they come back on time. We sort them, plop them in place on the cart, and ship them back to the shelves to be handled and picked over. But too often, they’re overdue. Occasionally they show up with a handful of coins. No note. No “sorry”. Others never pay their fines; we just find the books in the outside bin.
After they’ve been gone for a long time, the pages are usually c
reased and wrinkled, the corners bent—even on sturdy, library bound specimens, and all too often they have water damage. But I like to use the phrase “liquid damage” because you can never be too sure what caused those stains, especially when they’re discolored or dark.
The stains bother me. Total lack of respect.
Once, a young woman with fresh stitches and a black eye brought a self-help book back with some of those dark stains. She handed it to me, offered a weak grin, and shuffled out without a word. The book was only overdue by two days. She never paid the fine.
