by Tim Marquitz
A gust of wind peppered the window with rain as if to emphasize his point. Barb chuckled lightly, her blurry reflection nodded at him from the window as he dug for his wallet. The late night dinner crowd chattered on in the background.
“Don’t you worry about it, Jeb,” she told him, squeezing his arm gently. “It’s just been coffee tonight.”
He sighed and thanked her. She’d known Malcolm was supposed to stop by, and Jeb’d been waiting to order dinner then. He never did eat.
“Next time, right?”
Jeb nodded. “Yeah, next time.” It was what she told him every time Malcolm failed to show. It had become ritual; good intentioned, but it was soulless, empty. A wave and good morning to a stranger in passing. They were just words. They were meaningless without hope, and he’d so little of that left.
Barb gave him a parting smile and ran off to fill someone else’s cup. Jeb watched her as she went about her business. He knew he should go home, traipse the couple blocks back to the tiny hole his super called an apartment, but his legs were of a different mind. A dull, deep ache ran their length, pins and needles accompanying his every movement. He rubbed his thighs and imagined he could feel the invasive lump lodged against his spine. The doctors said it was malignant. He’d been given two options: cut the cancer out and be crippled or live until he couldn’t live any longer. Jeb had chosen the latter and time was growing short. He had planned to tell Malcolm tonight.
The metallic ding of the bell over the door broke through his reverie. Jeb glanced across the way with a flutter of excitement. It died the moment he realized it wasn’t Malcom. A gust of cool air and the sharp scent of rain chased a ragged customer inside. The diner quieted as he shambled in and made his way to the nearly empty counter. His sodden feet dragged across the tiles, leaving glistening swirls behind. The sky loosed a rumble as he settled on a stool and eased the dripping hood of his jacket back.
Slowly, most of the patrons went back to their dinners. A group of young men in black leather jackets were gathered about a nearby table. They muttered and motioned in the man’s direction, but Jeb could hear none of what was said though there was no mistaking the disdain. They talked among themselves but remained in their seats.
Barb went over to greet the newcomer, and Jeb couldn’t pull his eyes from the man whose long, matted hair glistened under the dim bulbs illuminating the countertop. It was clear the man was homeless, but there was something about him that defied description; some vague sense of distrust that Jeb couldn’t put his finger on.
From where Jeb sat, the man’s profile sliced through the shadows. Deep furrows cleaved his leathern skin, experience worn into his face, every mile having lefts its mark. Wild hairs sprouted from his chin and upper lip, obscuring his mouth and chin. Streaks of gray ran through the knotted mess, dirt and debris woven in like ornaments on a weathered Christmas tree. His eyes were sunken pits of darkness. A deeper gloom resided in their depths, dots of white drowning in their midst. The man sipped at the coffee Barb had poured for him. His calloused fingers and swollen knuckles were in sharp contrast to the genteel way he clasped at the mug. He sat with stiff-backed pride. Hard times had found the man, but Jeb was certain it hadn’t always been so. There was an air of culture about him so out of sync with his appearance.
After a few moments, the clatter of the diner returning to its glory, Hank Williams serenading the storm, Jeb decided he’d been at Lucy’s long enough. It was time to go. The rain had picked up, an incessant drumming on the roof. He was sure he’d be soaked before he made it home. Jeb groaned as he pushed his chair back, making room to stretch his legs, knowing it would be several minutes before he got them working again. He’d sat too long. His toes tingled as he did, numb in his shoes, blood barely reaching them. They’d be the first victim of the thing gnawing at my back, he thought with casual regret. Nothing could be done about that, but he prayed he would have a few more minutes with Malcolm and the boys before then.
He set his hands flat against the tabletop, moving to stand when he noticed the homeless man watching him. The room went cold then. Jeb stumbled and slipped back into his seat as though shoved. The scrutiny lingered a moment longer, his penetrant gaze making its way across the dinner, lighting in turn on every person there. Something judgmental lurked behind his eyes. Jeb’s breath grew thick in his lungs when the man turned the stare back on him, a sudden pressure tightening his chest. He blinked away the moisture welling at his eyes, rubbing them dry with the backs of his hands.
When he looked again, the stool where the man sat was empty. He hadn’t even seen him move, but there he was, standing near the center of the diner. The layers of his clothing still ran with silver tracers of rain. Barb cast an uncertain glance Jeb’s way, but all he could do was shrug. He felt no fear, the war having stolen such sentimentality from him long ago, but there was something about the homeless man that worried him. Frail and battered by the world, there was more cloth to him than flesh, but he stood rigid, seemingly unbroken.
The man coughed, the wet, phlegmy bark silencing the place as effectively as a rifle report across no man’s land.
“Did you need something else, hon?” Barb asked. A peal of thunder rattled the windows on the heels of her words.
The man ignored her, raising his hands at his sides as though looking to capture the rain. He cleared his throat, the wash of his dark eyes falling over the assembled diners. Jeb couldn’t help but picture a preacher gathering his flock.
“The night comes…” he started, his voice low but the words carried, undisguised conviction imbibing them with steel. “Principium et finis. Utu dims in honor of Nammu’s return.”
Jeb could understand nothing of the man’s words, but he could feel their weight. They settled heavy in his ears.
“Maybe you should cop a breeze,” one of the young men said amidst a wash of laughter. He stood up from his table where the other three lurked, his friends urging him on with malicious smiles and muttered barbs.
The stranger didn’t spare him a glance. “Nammu, Engur, Tiamat, exsurge!”
“Man, I told you—”
Whatever else the young man might have said was cut short by the slap of something striking the window. All eyes snapped to the sound, silence forming in its wake. A small brown rat hovered in mid-air for an instant before slipping down the glass as frantic limbs scrambled for purchase.
“Long has the mother slumbered…”
Another rat smacked into the glass, and then another, followed by a third. The thump of their impacts set the windows to shaking. A fourth and fifth struck, clasping futilely for traction, only to slip away as the others had.
“The eternal sea at rest…”
More rats appeared, blurred shapes hurling themselves at the glass in leaping waves. Bright eyes reflected the light as they pressed against the panes, more coming so fast as to color the night a murky brown. The windows vibrated under their assault. Wet squees sounded loud inside the diner, furry bodies forced down the glass beneath the hail of their brethren.
“Now she awakens…Nammu, Engur, Tiamat!”
An ebony shape slapped against the window amidst the frenzy of rodents. Perhaps the size of a child’s fist, the thing held tight, not joining the slide toward the pavement. Rats scattered to make way. A muffled gasp rang out as a second shape appeared, Barb clasping her hand over her mouth, the other patrons leaping to their feet. They stumbled backward a few steps, but no further, the stranger’s presence at their back seemingly holding them in place.
Like the others, Jeb just stared, transfixed, as yet another of the eerie forms landed alongside the others. Darkened tendrils sprouted from their sides, arachnid legs peeling away from the whole. Black fur glistened in the pallid light. Ruby dots glared at Jeb, a cold chill prickling his spine as the eyes multiplied, spiders swarming en masse up the window frames and spilling out across the glass in a tenebrous wave.
“And lo do the humblest rise up with Nammu…”
&nbs
p; Pincers and claws scraped against the windows, the screech of nails across a chalkboard, and Jeb heard the delicate clink of breaking glass. A crack appeared; a silvery line slowly, inexorably, trailing across the window. Still no one moved. Bitter realization settled in. Jeb had seen such overwhelming terror before, young soldiers cowering as the bullets flew. Just like in war, death came to those too fearful to flee or fight. He would not be counted among those numbers.
“And they will come for you.”
Jeb clasped the edge of the table and fought to stand, cursing his weakness as the creak of yielding glass continued. The spiders and rats undulated against the windows, swallowing the view beyond their squirming numbers. In a moment the glass would give way and the insects and rodents would spill into the diner.
“Run!” he shouted, his voice doing nothing to stir the patrons from their fugue.
Jeb rose with a roar, his arms trembling against the defiance of his spiteful legs. He swung around, determined to make a stand, and found the eyes of the stranger. Crimson met his gaze, malevolence whirling in oceans of black as reality parted. Jeb felt a surging virulence wash over him. He started, his strength failing. He toppled to the floor, chin bouncing off the cold tiles with the clack of teeth, but his eyes held steady despite the fear that clutched at him.
Where the stranger’s hands had been, tendrils spilled from the tattered sleeves of his jacket, a fleshy rosebush grown beyond control. Bulbous knots bubbled along the length of the vines, growing larger as the tentacle-like arms extended, crawling across the floor and ceiling with serpentine grace. Skin separated at the knots to a symphony of zippered rips, flashes of white appearing in the creases. Jeb swallowed hard against the encroaching dread as the bulbs split to reveal gnashing shards of teeth. They clacked in rhythm, a million tiny mouths worming their way across the diner.
“No,” Jeb cried out, his hand reaching for the stranger, but his plea went unheard, buried beneath the crackling snap of fracturing glass.
Spiders spilled through the shattered windows, an undulating swell of wriggling blackness broken only by the flashes of red, the hourglass figures etched across the arachnid’s backs like burning embers spreading across a dry plain. The rats followed. At last, the patrons broke and fled but there was nowhere to go. The mouths fell on them without mercy.
“Tiamat! Honora victimam meam vobis.”
Jeb covered his head as the surge of spiders struck, their wriggling legs feather light across his skin, burying him beneath a shroud of insectile gloom before the rats had even reached him. Darkness devoured the light. Lips clasped tight against the crush of furred limbs spilling across his face, Jeb suffered their touch in rigid silence, the whisper of their passage a hurricane. Still Jeb heard everything. Teeth gnawed and tore at the flesh of Lucy’s customers, the brittle crack of bones filling the air like snapping twigs. The coppery stink of blood—a smell Jeb knew too well—crowded his nose with its acrid scent.
Curled in a ball, Jeb had no idea how long he’d laid upon the floor listening to the screams of the dying, but terror slowly faded in the burgeoning silence. The cloying weight at his back was gone, the brush of spider legs and rat tails missing. His legs tingled, as they always did, but there was no sign he’d been bitten, either by the creatures or the monstrous mouths. His chin ached, a dull pain radiating through his jaw, but he felt nothing more. Jeb drew a breath and dared to open his eyes. A relieved sigh spilled loose. There was only the marbled tile beneath him.
Then he heard it: the slow, reedy wisp of someone breathing.
He raised his eyes to see the stranger crouched just a few feet away. The strange limbs had retracted, leaving only a pair of human hands. Nothing remained to give credence to what happened save for the pile of ruined bodies and the sea of dark blood, the battlefield reek of an abattoir.
Jeb scanned the man’s expressionless face for reason but saw nothing; no pity, no remorse, not even satisfaction at what he’d done. He stared with a grim emptiness, devoid of emotion, no hint of cruelty remaining. He leaned closer, his eyes meeting Jeb’s.
“Tell the others we are coming.”
The End
Originally published online
The end of the world came with neither a bang nor a whimper, but with a growl.
It was the growl of hunger, spewed from the ragged throats of those who had fallen to the plague only to rise up again; the dead reborn.
The sickness came upon us overnight. In the morning, thousands of people were infected. The news plastered the networks with warnings of its indeterminate virulence, showing footage of the walking dead ambling about their lives as though they were unaware of their condition. By nightfall, the dead numbered in the hundreds of thousands. The following dawn, all pretense of their humanity had gone, mundane routines replaced by an appetite that could not be sated. Carnage soon followed.
By the time most people had a sense of things, it was too late. Life as we knew it was over, and escape was a dream never to be realized. The dead outnumbered the living, and they would forevermore.
The streets were clogged with the detritus of fear and the bloody remnants of a reality gone all to hell. Infection was in the air, carried on the rotting flesh of the corpses that refused to lie down and die. They brought with them the plague, and murder besides. Driven to devour the living, their motives unknown, the dead stormed through the city, laying waste to life.
There was no time to prepare, to horde or loot; to fight back. There was only time for terror.
The dead roamed the halls of our mid-town apartment building before the sun had set the first night. We watched the fall of civilization live on television. Despite that, I’d believed us lucky, perhaps even blessed. Money had made our former lives easy, my family and I; Jane and Karen, Toby. Money had provided us with a haven against the horrors of New York, the crimes of our fellow man. Our apartment had come equipped with a safe room, sealed away from the outside world, hidden behind a façade of common books. There was three feet of steel-reinforced concrete between us and the dead. We would be safe behind its sturdy walls.
At least we would have been…had I kept the door closed.
It had been just three days into the epidemic when the power went out, leaving our cramped quarters warm and thick with our panicked breaths. The backup generator hadn’t come on as we’d been told it should, the air stale and heavy in our lungs. The darkness was absolute. We huddled together, a trembling mass of whimpered sobs, and waited, and waited…and waited. It wasn’t until I heard Jane wheeze and shudder against me that I knew we would soon run out of air. Nothing left to do, I cracked the door and whispered a grateful thanks it had been manufactured to open without current.
Despite the bitter scent of sewage and vaguely subtle smell of meat gone bad that slipped into the safe room, it was as if we’d opened the gates to Heaven. We did nothing for several moments but draw air into our lungs, the fear of what lay outside temporarily lost in the pleasure of our next breath.
“Can we leave the door open, Daddy?” my daughter asked a short while later, her words moist with tears. Our plight settled over me once more, like a winter chill.
No electricity to keep the ventilation circulating, no wind to stop the smells of our confinement from gathering, if we were to close the door again the air would stagnate and we would die. For all the chaos of what lay outside, that was my only certainty. Our haven had become a trap.
I had to see to the generator.
My wife and I argued in hushed voices, the stares of the children on us the entire time, their fearful eyes glistening in the gloom. They clung to each other in silence. When at last I had convinced Jane of what must be done, muffled sobs had overtaken the quiet. Against the screaming will of my instincts, I was headed for the basement where the generators were housed.
Not a fan of guns, I hadn’t bothered to put one in the safe room, worried that my children might stumble across it, and betting I would never need it. While I wouldn’t have
known how to use the thing anyway, beyond pointing and pulling the trigger, I regretted that decision as I left the safe room unarmed.
We’d agreed that Jane would watch from the door until I was out of the apartment, and then seal the safe room until I came back. Refreshed, the air inside would last for several hours; far longer than I would need to travel down ten flights of stairs and get the generator running. We purposely avoided discussing what would happen if I didn’t return. I kissed them each, just in case.
My family left behind, and with the weight of their eyes on my back, I slipped across the carpeted floor of the apartment. Sitting just as we had left it, the outer door still closed and bolted tight, I felt a burgeoning confidence. Perhaps the dead had been chased from the building, or had left of their own accord in search of easier prey. Built without a peephole and the cameras down, I couldn’t see what lay beyond. I drew up close to the door and set my ear against the frame. Though I could barely focus beyond the frantic rush of my pulse, I heard nothing outside.
I gave my wife the thumbs up sign and quickly dropped my hand, hoping she hadn’t seen how much it shook. She would need all her courage for the children. I stood there and stared at the door a moment before I could bring myself to unlatch the chain and turn the lock. The sounds were like a cannonade in my skull, my skin prickling in their wake.
I waited a few seconds longer, fighting to rein my heartbeat in. At last, I cast one final glance at the crack that led to the safe room, mouthed my love, and turned the knob. The door came open with a quiet creak, a whisper in the pews at church.
Despite the stench that stung my nose and set my eyes to watering, no horror leapt at me from the hall. After a few moments of rigid defiance, my body in revolt and unwilling to move, I steeled my courage and leaned forward. I peeked around the frame and out into the hall with my heart in my throat.
