by Sergio Gomez
He got to the front door and shoved it open.
The rain had reduced to a light drizzle.
He fished his loose cigarette and lighter out of his pocket and lit the cigarette. He took a long, savored drag that immediately calmed him and made the soothing of the rain even more soothing.
He could feel himself starting to let go of the past, of the guilt of leaving his wife behind, of the embarrassment of being a coward. He wasn’t sure if it was the cigarette or if it was telling Alejandro about it, but either way the poisonous thoughts that hazed his mind seemed to be clearing.
And hell, maybe we’ll be fine when we find the other survivors.
Under the moonlight the cracks on his truck’s windshield shined like the bolts of lightning. The glint from them caught his eye.
He walked towards the car without thinking about it, and without really knowing why.
I could just get in the truck right now and drive to the other survivors.
He had the truck keys in his front pocket of his overalls and had memorized the way to Trexlerville from here after Alejandro showed him the map he was carrying with him, so he could just hop in and drive there and be there before morning. And everything would be different from then on.
Food, medicine, water, a place to shower, shit maybe even cigarettes.
No. This is my second chance to not run away like a coward.
He was standing next to the truck, his hand touching the sleek side of the door, inches away from where a claw had torn through the plastic.
One more puff from his cigarette, then he squatted down and put it out on the wet grass to save some of it for tomorrow.
He started toward the church, but stopped when in his peripheral vision he saw movement in the trees next to the church. It was just like back at the ranch, those damn monsters used the night as a weapon to sneak up on people. But not on him, no, he knew what they were up to from experience.
In the bushes, peering back at him were two beady red eyes.
*
The two creatures fell down to their hind legs behind the bushes, then came rushing out from behind their cover. Twigs and leaves shot everywhere as the creatures tore through the bushes.
John’s knees buckled and he took a low stance like a sumo wrestler, his legs suddenly frozen to the ground. The creatures came sprinting towards him, about twenty feet of grass separated them, which gave John just enough time to get control of himself.
No turning and running like a coward this time.
John swung the axe as hard as he could at the one pouncing to his left. The axe slashed through the creature’s forearm and the blade got stuck when it hit bone. Blood squirted on him from the creature’s wound.
He thought about pulling the axe back and attacking again, and that was the last thing Johnathan M. Berks thought, because the second creature’s claws went into his throat. When the creature pulled back, he ripped his jugular out and killed John instantly.
John’s corpse fell to the side. The two creatures jumped on him. The one with the wounded arm grabbed his head and slammed it repeatedly into the ground, cracking the back of his skull like a hardboiled egg. The second one slashed at his abdomen, tearing him open with the first swipe and then ripped out his insides.
The creatures backed away from the mangled body. John’s neck craned at an angle it shouldn’t bend, his entrails spilled out like marmalade. It had been overkill for the poor farmer.
The uninjured Noche pointed to the other’s wound which prompted the injured one to hold up its arm. The uninjured Noche brought its nose inches away from where the blood was pouring out.
They grunted between themselves in primitive conversation. The uninjured Noche pointed to the woods they had come out of and grunted a command. The injured Noche nodded, and then holding its hand over the wound it trotted into the woods. It sat down cross-legged behind a bush and grunted to let the other know it was okay and where it was.
The uninjured one grunted back. Then it got on all fours and headed toward the church, to see if there were any more humans where this one came from.
*
“Pa, I’m going to sleep.” Charlie said from his bag, stashing his cross-word puzzle book into his backpack.
Alejandro’s internal clock told him it was barely 8PM, but the weather had made them all drowsy and being stuck inside the church when they were so close to (what he thought of) as salvation brought its own toll with it.
“Okay, Mijo. I’m going to go check on John and then go to sleep when I come back.” Alejandro said.
“Alright.” Charlie blew out his lantern and rested his head on a bundle of clothes he was using as a pillow.
Alejandro headed for the stairs.
“Pa,” Charlie said.
Alejandro stopped at the foot of the stairs. The illumination from the other two lanterns lanterns in the middle of the room touched Charlie enough so he could just make out his son’s face. “Yeah?”
“I love you, Pa.” Charlie said, then went to sleep.
Alejandro grinned. “I love you too, Charlie.”
He went up the rickety stairs, each step seemed to make the entire staircase shake. The gun was drawn in his hands, not sure when he had taken it out of its holster, but he wasn’t too concerned about that. The cold steel in his hands comforted him as he ascended the stairs and went into the dark.
*
There was just enough light coming through the stained glass windows for Alejandro to be able to see The Noche walking through the auditorium where John had told his story to them. It was standing on its hind legs and was roughly seven feet tall. Its head was turned up into the air and was sniffing, similar to a bomb dog seeking explosives. Only The Noche was sniffing for humans.
A human, ape-like creature sniffing the air like a trained dog, Alejandro’s mind turned to his college roommate Martin who was one of the most ardent conspiracy theorists he had ever met. One time he had shown Alejandro a webpage (hosted on Geocities) of ‘proof’ of the government splicing animal DNA and human DNA to try to genetically engineer super soldiers. Alejandro had been laughing back then, but now he wasn’t so sure if Martin and the other conspiracy theorists had been that far off, and maybe he was looking at the results of those experiments.
The Noche’s nose caught a whiff of Alejandro as a breeze came in through the church and carried the scent to him. The red eyes turned to look at him from the semi-dark church auditorium.
He was in the corridor between the basement door and the main church room, which meant he had two choices: Turn and run, essentially bringing The Noche to Charlie, or trust his aim and try to take the creature out.
Three was the number that popped into his head when he tried to guess how many rounds he’d be able to get off before the creature came within clawing distance.
The Noche lowered its stance into that cat-like form and sprinted across the floor. Its clawed hands and feet echoed through the expanse of the church.
Alejandro aimed and fired off the first shot, the flash of the gun lit the corridor. He knew the shot was wild the moment he pulled the trigger.
The bullet did hit The Noche, though, and tore through its right arm. The pain caused the creature to stumble and bought Alejandro a fraction of a second—a difference maker in this situation.
Alejandro aimed again, his breath caught in his throat like a lump of coal. Taking that time he bought himself with the first shot into consideration he pointed at the creature with more patience.
The creature lumbered forward, its torso shifting left and then right. Alejandro kept waiting, waiting, until the creature’s chest was in his line of fire, then he pulled the trigger.
Kill shot.
The bullet hit the creature in the neck and burst its spinal cord open. The Noche slumped to the side, dead before its body even hit the ground. He took a few steps towards it and popped off another two rounds.
The body twitched for a few second, then was motionless. But he knew it was
n’t over. He wasn’t quite out of the dark yet, as the saying went. He’d still have to find John.
And hopefully he’d find him whole.
He licked his lips and took in a deep breath. Then he continued down the corridor, past the dead creature, his gun concentrated on it just in case. When he was about ten feet away from the corpse he felt in the clear and he brought his focus to the door. The red door was still somehow bright even in the darkness of the church. It was open from when the creature had come into the building, letting him see that the storm had subsided.
He pushed the door open, squinting at the sudden change of light, and raced across the lawn to find John, hoping (praying?) that he wasn’t too late.
15
The sight after the storm would have been beautiful if not for John’s dead body marinated in a pool of his own blood. The sky was so brightly colored that everything seemed to radiate a glow of gold on its own; the stone that made up the church building and the surrounding wall, the plastic on John’s truck, and even the trees themselves were radiated yellow, dinging everything out like an old photograph.
Alejandro walked around to the side of the truck and saw John’s body laying spread eagle in a pool of his own blood. His insides had been turned into his outsides and flopped out from his stomach in a gooey mess. Underneath his head was another pool forming from the leakage in his shattered skull. Alejandro’s stomach twitched like he was about to vomit, but it stopped before it got to that point.
Alejandro approached the dead body, half expecting the creatures to jump out at him from every which way; the woods, church, even underneath the ground.
But even when he was inches away from the dead body and a few short feet away from where the injured Noche was hiding he didn’t see or hear any sign of them.
From this close he could smell the blood wafting in the air.
Alejandro circled to the back of the truck to see if he found anything useful in the pile of junk that littered its bed. Most of it was indiscriminate pieces of wood that looked like they belonged to every piece of furniture known to man, with some basement trash thrown in to the mix like a tattered baseball glove, a torn up beach ball, and a rake that had been broken in half.
He rummaged through this junk until he found a quilt that was so old and dirty that the figure of speech old as dirt described it literally because dirt fell from it and dragged pieces of the quilt off with it. This would have to do, and Alejandro walked back to where John’s corpse was lying.
The second time seeing John’s ruined body he was undisturbed, but he paused anyway, sure that any second now he’d feel the tickle in his throat or the sudden movement of his stomach quivering.
But it never came, and now he felt disturbed by his own lack of response to the carnage. The sight here was worse than the man in the carnival, and that was without including the fact that this wasn’t an anonymous dead body. He had known the body, at least for a little while; he had known the body when it was alive and walking.
Alejandro pushed these thoughts way back into his mind and threw the quilt over the body. He pulled on the edges, but it still wasn’t big enough to cover his whole body, so Alejandro just focused on covering the top half where the real damage had been done, leaving only his legs and feet exposed.
“Rest in peace, my friend.” He whispered.
Although he didn’t feel like vomiting at the sight of a dead body anymore, he still felt sadness.
He had been looking forward to seeing John make amends with his past sometime in the future, but watching the blood seep through the ragged quilt, that all seemed so inconsequential now.
He was about to turn his attention away from the dead body and to the truck when he heard the bushes rustle. It sounded like more than just a summer breeze moving them around.
Alejandro aimed the gun for the bushes, anticipating them to move once again. They stood still, for now, but at the sight or sound of the next activity he would open fire.
More beads of sweat from focusing joined the ones that were already there from the humidity. He was aware of his heartbeat all the way into his ears. It was like the slow drum rhythm before the music starts.
And the music started when The Noche jumped out of the bushes. It came forward with its sharp claws, straight towards him. Its injured arm covered in sticky blood, its jaws open to reveal that hypnotizing set of teeth.
Alejandro moved back a step and fired off two rounds. The first bullet tore through the roof of the creature’s mouth and came out the back of the skull. The second bullet whizzed past the top of its head and took off a good chunk of its scalp.
The Noche fell to the ground face forward, blood gushing out from the wound in its head, and Alejandro fired off three more shots in the creature’s back. Its body writhed in pain but it was only a response from the nerves that still lived, because the creature was dead the moment the first bullet penetrated its skull and exploded its brains.
Alejandro took out the clip in his gun and replaced it with the one in his back pocket, and then waited for more to come out from the bushes.
The woods lay still except for when the breeze would sway branches and make leaves wiggle around. A bird that had been frightened by the sound of the gun decided everything was all clear and flew back to the treetop it was hanging out in.
Alejandro took in a deep breath and holstered the gun. He walked backwards until he felt the weight of the truck on his back and leaned against it. His knees gave in and he slumped down to the grass.
Up in the sky the bright yellow had given way to an expanse of purple glittered with silver stars. The moon peered through clouds like a giant, silvery eye that had watched everything that had happened. It was as if it knew that Alejandro had another brush with death and the sight of it sent a shiver up his back.
Alejandro looked over at the dead creature only several feet in front of him. He thanked the stars for helping him, or God, or the universe, or karma, or whatever it was that had saved him yet again from this nightmare.
As much as he hated living in this world, now that it was barren and destroyed, that instinct to survive still existed in him. His mind wandered to the reason he continued to live on.
Charlie.
He bolted up to his feet and sprinted toward the church, fear of his son’s safety made him forget that a second ago his rubbery legs had collapsed out from underneath him.
*
Charlie woke up to the sound of a gun going off, bang-bang. It had come from outside the window. He sat up in his sleeping bag and looked around the cellar. John and his dad’s lanterns were still on. They comforted him in the same way nightlights had comforted him when he was 9 years old. He was a bit embarrassed to welcome such a juvenile feeling, but then he reminded himself that most twelve year olds didn’t sleep in the company of monsters at night. They just thought they did.
The gun went off again.
Bang-bang-bang
That meant they were winning…he hoped.
Getting up he grabbed the shirt lying next to his sleeping bag, threw it over his head and headed for the stairs. At the foot of the steps he paused, the dark at the top made him hesitate. Realizing he’d need his lantern he turned back and got it.
Back in front of the steps he froze once again. The light hadn’t made this any better the way he had hoped, if anything it had made the situation worse because the lantern threw a pale light against the stairwells. The shadows on the walls of the staircase seemed to be daring him to come up, to be waiting to grab him.
He took the first step and the wood moaned underneath his weight. He felt like turning and running and hiding underneath his sleeping bag, but an image of him being Scooby-Doo made him push the thoughts away. He shut his eyes and took in a deep breath.
No turning back now.
He stepped with his other foot, a similar groan escaped from underneath the wood, and then he bolted up the stairs.
The sound of echoing wails followed behind him as he ascende
d the stairs until the last step. When he was finally in the corridor, the groaning protests stopped and he stopped to catch his breath. His hands on his knees, his heart pounding, he felt more like Scooby-Doo than ever before.
When he caught his breath, he looked up at the end of the corridor and he saw the shape of a man coming towards him, he couldn’t make out any of the features except for a mane of hair surrounding the head, but he knew it was his dad even before he saw him in the light.
“Papi! Pa!” He jumped into his dad’s arms.
Alejandro caught him.
“Charlie, estas bien Mijo?”
“Yeah, I’m fine dad, I’m fine.”
“Oh thank you, thank you, thank you.” He said, kissing him on the top of his head.
He put Charlie down and inspected him to make sure he really was unharmed. He could admit it to himself now that deep in his mind he thought he’d find Charlie a victim to Los Noches, torn to bits or his insides eaten or maybe even something more horrifying that he couldn’t think of. It was like an anchor had been untied from his heart. He bent down to kiss him some more.
“Come on, dad, I’m fine.” He pulled away. Now that he was back at his dad’s side he remembered his age.
Alejandro grabbed his head and gave him a noogie. “Ahora muy valiente, eh?”
Charlie chuckled. “I wasn’t ever scared.”
“I was.” Alejandro said.
Charlie regarded him with a look of uncertainty.
“I was.” Alejandro reiterated. “I thought…”
“You thought Los Noches got me?”
Alejandro nodded.
“What would you have done if they did?” Charlie asked.
Alejandro’s eyes darted to his gun.
“The gun?” Charlie asked.
“Yeah,” but Alejandro could see he still didn’t understand. “I would have used it.”
It took a moment for it to sink in, but then Charlie’s eyes grew big and he said, “Oh.”
Alejandro nodded. “Let’s go back downstairs.”
