by Sergio Gomez
“Don’t worry, kiddo, these lights will make sense when you see what’s in here.” Boris told him, moving to the next light.
By the time there were four turned on, Boris stopped and turned to them. In a whisper he said, “Alright, we’ll have to talk in a voice no louder than this. It’s sleeping.”
And all at once Charlie figured out what they were about to show him. The rectangular object in the middle of the room, enshrouded in the darkness with the blanket thrown over it, was a cage. And in the middle of that cage, when Boris would turn on the last touch light, he’d come face to face with a Noche. Living and breathing, because Boris had already implied it was alive by saying it was sleeping.
Boris turned on the last touch light, which happened to be on the floor next to the cage. The lighting in the basement was like that found in a prize fighting arena—with the center of attention being the Noche’s cage.
Boris placed his hand on the top of the blanket, then turned to face his audience, and smiled. “Ready?”
“Just do it.” Claire whispered, but wanting to shout it at him.
Charlie nodded.
Boris lifted the blanket. Charlie flinched back for a second, taken aback by what he was seeing.
It was a Noche, alive and breathing, but it was small. Even smaller than the ones by the river the brothers had killed. This one was about the size of a five year old human, and barely had any hair covering its body. It was sleeping on its side, facing away from them, but it had stirred when the light reached it.
“We tried all sorts of different lights,” Boris grinned, “Yeah, me and Howie have been experimenting on it, don’t tell PETA.”
He started cracking up at this, putting his hand over his mouth to stifle the laugh. Claire stomped on his foot to bring him out of it.
“Ow!” He put his arms up defensively as if expecting her to throw a punch.
“You’ll wake it up with your stupid laughing.”
“Shows how much you know, Clairebear. He’ll wake up from the light in…ohhhh…just about any second….now!”
And as if on command, the baby Noche rolled over and opened its eyes. Once again, Charlie flinched backwards, realizing that this was only the second time he had gotten this close to one.
“How strong is this cage?” Charlie asked, watching the Noche get its wits about it and rise up.
“Don’t worry, it’s reinforced. Dad used to be a fur trapper, so I guess that means he knows what he’s doing.” Boris said, turning his attention to the waking Noche.
The Noche bared its teeth, they were rounded and not fang-like like the ones the adults had, but they would still do damage if they chomped down on skin. It screamed, but the scream seemed to get caught in its throat as if it were not yet developed into what it would be in adulthood. Then it charged the cage with its tiny fists balled and its head leading the charge.
It smashed into it, and the reinforced steel bent a little, then bent back and sent the creature sprawling backwards across the cage. Boris started to laugh.
“That’s my favorite part,” he was speaking at a normal volume now. “Every time he wakes up it’s like he thinks this time will be the time he breaks through. And he never does!”
“If it ever does I hope he gets you first.” Claire said.
Boris gave her a look of disgust, then looked back into the cage.
The Noche was still on the ground, breathing heavy, as if thinking about what had just occurred. Its eyes were glossy, wet even, like it was on the verge of tears.
Boris’s face grew serious, almost concerned. A look Charlie didn’t think was possible from this guy. He walked around the cage and then crouched down to get a better look at the Noche.
“These creatures’ willpower is something to behold,” his tone was different, none of the agitating Boris was present, only the scientific side of the man. “No matter how many times he fails at breaking through the cage, he still continues to try to find a way out of it. Charging at it, biting it, kicking it, punching it.”
“Wouldn’t you?” Charlie asked.
Boris looked up at him. “Look for a way out?”
“Yeah, if someone took you from your family and put you in a cage, wouldn’t you try your hardest to get out?”
Boris adjusted the glasses on his face and then turned back to the Noche. “Yeah, but this thing will die trying to get out of this cage. I think even the most stubborn human would stop before death.”
The Noche got up and approached the cage, this time walking toward a section of the cage that looked like it had been gnawed on.
“Then how come it’s not dead?”
“We shoot it with sedatives after observing it and then shut the lights off. It’s calm in the darkness, like it accepts that it’s trapped. It’s only with the light on that it goes into its crazed frenzy. Or if we intentionally piss it off.”
“By doing what?”
“We’ve poked it—lightly, mind you—with some sticks. It ripped the stick right out of our hands and broke it into pieces. We’ve also lit up some sparklers, you know the things that kids loved around Fourth of July, and it freaks the hell out over them, too. Starts screaming and shaking its head like the sparks hurt its eyes, and in some way it does hurt them.”
The Noche was grabbing on to the cage with its hands and feet, growling and chomping fruitlessly at the steel.
Charlie crouched down next to Boris to get a better look at the baby creature.
“He’s kind of cool.” He said.
Boris took out a beef stick from his pocket and took it out of the wrapper. “Yeah, he is.”
He slid the beef stick through the cage and the baby Noche immediately jumped after it like a man who hadn’t eaten in weeks. He devoured it in a matter of seconds and then jumped back on the cage, returning to its task of trying to escape.
“He might be cool now, but when he grows up he’ll want to tear us apart.” Claire broke in.
“Oh, Claire, he wants to tear us apart now. He just can’t thanks to Howie’s ingenuity. That’s what makes him kind of cool, duh. He’s a little beastie.” The scientist was gone, as it usually was when he was talking to Claire.
“Does he have a name?” Charlie asked.
Boris looked around the room with a look of shame cast on his face. “I call him Sir Lancelot, but Howie hates that name so it’s not his official name or anything.”
The Noche stopped biting the cage and climbed off of it. It decided to switch up its tactics and started ramming his shoulder into it. Charlie noticed that the shoulder looked different than the rest of his hairless body, like it had been burnt or branded on purpose.
“What happened to him there?” Charlie asked, pointing to his shoulder.
“We tried exposing him to sunlight and he got more than just sunburn…he got some pretty bad burns that scarred him.” Boris said this with a headshake and a frown.
“Poor guy.” Charlie muttered.
“Yeah, it’s all in the name of scientific research, though.”
“Come on, let’s go back upstairs.” Claire suggested.
Boris had no objections to this. He stood up and wiped his fingers that had held the beef stick on the front of his cargo shorts.
“Hold on,” Charlie said, getting up from his crouch. “If they come out at night, why was he sleeping in the darkness? Shouldn’t he have been awake?”
“I told you, we sedate him.”
“Oh. Are you going to do that to him now?”
Boris pulled out a small dart gun from his pocket and aimed it at the baby Noche. “Yeah, we can’t have him crashing his head all night and dying on us. Isn’t that right Sir Lancelot?”
He shot the Noche in the leg with the dart then hit the touch light near the cage to turn it off. A few seconds later there was a thump from inside the cage and he threw the blanket over it, spreading it to make sure it covered it completely.
“Let us go to the land of boring talks.” Boris said, turning and headi
ng the way they came in.
Claire and Charlie followed behind him, turning the touch lights off as they went.
7
Alejandro was wide awake at 5am, the sun wasn’t out yet and Charlie was snoring like a puppy in his sleeping bag. He tried for a second to fall back asleep, but his brain was lively and he knew the effort was useless, so he got up and pulled on his clothes. He kissed Charlie on the forehead and went downstairs.
He found Howard in a little alcove that had been used for extra dining room seating during the active days of the bar. The table and the stools that were once used by late night diners were still there but had been relegated to the role of coffee tables.
Howard was sitting on one of the stools, watching a pot of coffee boil on a hotplate when Alejandro came into the room.
“It’ll never boil if you watch it, amigo.”
Howard looked up and grinned at him. “Ah, early bird too, are you?”
Alejandro shrugged and took the seat across from him. “Not usually, but this isn’t exactly a usual time, is it?”
“I suppose not, no.”
Alejandro regarded the hotplate with some admiration. “You guys sure have a lot of supplies in your possession. It’s almost like you’re living in the times of pre-Chaos if I didn’t know any better.”
“We really lucked out with that Naval Base, I’ll tell ya. Lots of food, weapons, and useful things like this hotplate.”
“So why not just live here comfortably until the food runs out. Why try to risk it in attacking Los Noches?”
Howard leaned back in his chair as if caught by a surprise attack. “Mr. Ramos, didn’t we discuss this? It’s so that they no longer come to our town and we can live even more comfortably. It’ll open up so many possibilities for us to begin rebuilding without having to hide from these monsters.”
“Yeah, yeah, I got all of that. But you have to know how dangerous this will be.”
“It’s a big risk for a big payoff. Look around, Mr. Ramos, these aren’t exactly the best of living conditions. You just looked at a hotplate like groundbreaking technology. Like the way people used to look at electric vehicles driving through their neighborhood, like if this hotplate was something to be envious about.”
It was hard for Alejandro to deny his point, and too late to lie to himself about how the sight of the hotplate had made him feel.
Howard continued. “It’s a sign of you forgetting how beautiful our society was before The Chaos. You’re starting to accept this new world we live in, this ruined and barren world overrun by night creatures that make us hide like roaches inside of run down bars. Do you not see what’s wrong with that?”
“But you don’t honestly think we can rebuild modern society ourselves.”
“Hell no, Mr. Ramos, but we damn sure can be the catalysts to start a new world. We defeat the Noches terrorizing this town, rebuild here, then move on out to the next neighborhood. We find other survivors and add them to our force, and we keep doing this. It might not be me and you—or anyone in this base currently, but we can be the ones who get the snowball rolling.”
Alejandro nodded. These were the words of an ambitious man, and hearing him say this with such strong conviction made him hopeful.
“There are other survivors. They might not all want to join us, but if we have a safe place to give them and weapons to show them, I think a number of them will consider joining our forces, Alejandro.”
Howard grabbed two paper cups from a stack next to him and poured coffee in both of them. He slid one over to Alejandro.
“All I wanted was to find a safe place for me and my son, but you’re making me feel like I had been thinking too small.”
Howard shook his head. “No, your goal is still the same even in helping us. The only difference is that now you’ll be providing your son a much safer place.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
“I know I’m right,” Howard smiled, and then took a sip of his coffee.
“We go when everyone wakes?” Alejandro asked.
“We go in about an hour when I wake Will. I just wanted sometime alone to drink my coffee and think about things.” His eyes dropped down to the table.
“You’re worried about Boris, right?”
“Ah, a parent knows a parent like no other. It must be written on my face, eh?”
“It’s more of a reflection because I’m worried about Charlie.”
“Mhm, as you should be. He’s a young boy who still needs the protection of his father. The problem is that Boris is not a young boy, but he still needs my protection. I want him out on the battlefield with us when the time comes to attack Los Noches, but I’m not sure he can handle it.”
“Why not? Does he know how to shoot?”
Howard laughed. “Only thing Boris knows how to shoot is his smart mouth. Don’t think me cold, Mr. Ramos, but I feel like Boris is useless at this point. He’s helped me identify how many Noches we’re dealing with, sort of, but he cannot contribute to our cause any further.”
“But…so what are you saying?”
“I’m saying, I’ve been wrestling with the thoughts of kicking him out of the base. He’s an extra mouth to feed and isn’t useful for much here on out.”
“That’s your son, man!” Alejandro slammed his fist on the table. “Are you crazy?”
Howard put a hand up. “Mr. Ramos, please reserve your judgment. We’re in a very dire, very peculiar, and very odd situation. And I’ve said I’ve thought about it, not that I’m going to do it.”
“He can fight alongside us, you don’t have to kick him out.”
“Mr. Ramos, putting Boris on the battlefield would be like sending him knowingly to his grave.”
“How would sending him out on his own be any different?”
“I guess I hadn’t considered that.”
Alejandro knew the answer to his own question. It was no different than when Charlie’s pet hamster, Harry, had developed a tumor. Alejandro had taken the hamster out to a nearby park surrounded by thick woods. He took the lid off the shoebox and picked up the hamster and set him free in the middle of the woods.
Doing this had saved Charlie from seeing his pet die due to cancer. It also saved Alejandro from getting it euthanized (Do people euthanize hamsters? He never did look that up.) or from knowing what happened to it. If an owl picked it up and had it for dinner, he wouldn’t have to know. If the thing starved to death underneath a rotting tree where it hid for its life, he didn’t have to know. The fate of the poor rodent was out of his control and out of his ability to know, it was all left up to the randomness of the woods.
Just like if Howard kicked Boris out of the base. He’d be out on his own, if some other survivors killed him, Howard would never know. If Los Noches got him, Howard would never know. If Boris somehow managed to survive through until winter and he froze to death in the middle of a snowstorm, Howard would never have to know. It would all be up to the randomness of the world, and Howard wouldn’t have to be concerned with it. It would be out of his control.
As if reading his thoughts, or maybe he had a similar experience with one of Boris’s pets, Howard said, “But it would be different.”
Alejandro picked up his cup of coffee. It was burning hot through the paper cup, and took a sip. “Yeah.”
They were living in a different world, indeed. A world where hotplates were a commodity and fathers sent their sons out to die.
*
They didn’t talk for an hour's stretch after that until Paul came down for his morning coffee. His hair was sticking out all over the place and no amount of the hand rubbing he was doing was going to fix it.
“Good morning roosters.” Paul greeted them.
“Hey there, Paul. You look like you got a good night’s sleep.” Howard said, holding up his coffee mug to greet him.
He puffed out some air. “If that’s what you call tossing and turning all night. Tell me I’m not the only one nervous.”
; “You don’t have to go. I’ll just take Will and Alejandro with me if you want to stay back.”
“Not like I got much to do.” Paul shrugged.
Howard slid off the stool. “I’m going to go wake Will so we can go ahead and get started. Paul, this pot of coffee is fresh if you want to help yourself to some.”
With that he left and Paul sat in the stool. “What’s on your mind? Did Howard go off on one of his rebuilding society rants?”
“I’m guessing this isn’t new?” Alejandro asked.
“Pfftt, hell no. Ever since I met the guy he’s been talking about that.”
“How did you meet him?”
Paul started rubbing the back of his neck. “He found Claire and I in a butcher shop where we were hiding out from the monsters. You have to understand, back then we knew nothing about them. We assumed that they were crawling everywhere, day or night.”
“You never bothered to go outside and check?”
He shook his head. “It was safe in the butcher shop.”
“I see.”
“Anyway, he, Boris, and Will were raiding and they found us and took us in like a couple of stray kittens. And here we are, at the Tit-Tat.”
“At the what?”
Paul laughed. “You didn’t see the sign hanging out front of the place? This used to be a bar called the Tit-Tat.”
Alejandro smiled. “Quite the name.”
“I’m sure even in its heyday it wasn’t much more snazzy than what we have here.”
Howard returned with Will, only now they were armed. A big pistol stuck out of one of Howard’s hip that made the gritty old man look like a side villain in a Western film, and Will carried a rifle that looked huge even in his buff arms. Alejandro imagined himself carrying it, and it played out like a Bugs Bunny cartoon in his mind where the gun’s weight would drive his arms to the floor.
“Dios mio, I guess we’re ready to go.”
Howard winked at him. “Told ya, we got some big guns around here.”
“You weren’t kidding.”
“Alejandro, you and Paul will follow us over to the Navy base.” Howard said.
“Sounds good to me. I want to be as far away from that thing as possible if it starts shooting.” Alejandro replied, pointing to the gun slung around Will’s shoulder.
