by Chris Morey
A man crouched beside the woman and checked for a pulse, but no one else did anything but stare. I couldn’t tell if she had been with the college kid or not, but the quickest glance told me both that the kid hadn’t been lying about her not breathing and that checking her pulse was a goddamn waste of time. Her skin had skipped turning white, instead becoming the dirty gray of old ashes, and withered, stretched tight over her skull. Looking at her desiccated face, I thought her cheekbones might slice right through her skin.
“What happened to her?” the crouching man asked.
“I got no clue! She was standing in front of me one second, and then she just fell over. I went to check on her, and …” He gestured at her face. We got it.
“Do you know her?” I looked to my left and found Susie at my side.
The college kid didn’t speak, just shook his head. His jaw had gone slack. Maybe shock was settling in. Pretty understandable for somebody who’d just found a corpse at his feet.
Crouching man checked the corpse for a pulse. I’d watched him do it twice already. “She’s gone,” he said. Must have been a doctor. “I guess I should call the police?”
“I got it,” Schlub said. As he dug his cell from his pocket, I found myself thinking at least he could do something useful.
He shook his head. “No signal.”
Never mind.
“Somebody needs a better plan,” Susie said. A second later, she fished her phone from her purse and checked it. “Son of a bitch.”
That set the dominos in motion. One after the other, everybody checked their cell phones, and everybody realized they couldn’t make a call. I checked mine last, and I stared at my lack of bars while wearing a stone face. Something fluttered in my stomach.
Susie shook her phone like it might start working again. “This is bullshit. We’re outside a damn big-box store. Shit, we’re less than half a mile from the mall. There should be a signal here.”
“Well, I don’t know,” I said. Then, I felt like an ass for saying it.
“Somebody’s going to have to go find a phone,” Schlub said.
Susie gave us a shrug. “We can bang on the door. There’s bound to be somebody inside.”
A few people nodded before jogging to the store’s glass entrance. As I watched them go, I noticed at least a dozen people had returned to the front of the line.
Instead of dwelling on getting to the front of the line, I turned to look at the dead woman. When I first saw her, I thought she’d been blond, but now her brittle hair looked almost white. I felt my brow furrow as I tried to decide which part I’d imagined. That thing in my stomach fluttered a little harder. Not too bad yet, but bad enough that I noticed.
“Hey!” a voice shouted at the glass doors. A few hard bangs accompanied it as they pounded on the door. “Hey, we need a phone! There’s somebody hurt out here!”
“Maybe they won’t let us in,” the college kid said.
Susie smirked. “Don’t be dumb.”
“Open the doors early on Black Friday? Thousands of dollars of merch inside and more than a hundred freezing people outside? I’m not saying it would cause problems, but I don’t think I’d want to risk it.”
“He’s got a point,” I said.
“Seriously?” Susie looked at me like I was mad. Apparently, she’d forgotten all about her lottery tirade.
“I’m not saying they won’t make a call from inside. Just sayin’ they won’t let us in. Hell, look.” I extended an arm toward the reforming line, where two angry men had already started shoving each other.
“I’m telling you, I was in front of you!”
“Don’t fucking lie to me, asshole!”
The punch that followed was purely academic. In an instant, they were on the ground, rolling around like drunken fratboys. The crowd got them separated quickly enough, but one man’s nose had already been turned into a strawberry stain.
Schlub shook his head. “Jesus.”
“The holidays will make assholes of us all,” Susie said.
§
After ten minutes, everybody decided either no one was inside the store or they were ignoring us. The college kid shrugged off his jacket and covered the dead woman with it. He stood there shivering. I felt okay about it.
Most of the line had reformed. Those who’d fled to their cars returned with their questions unholstered. No more fists flew, but the angry shouts and insults circled like buzzards.
For some reason, the five of us stayed beside the body. I’d even taken the time to learn a few names. Schlub was Tony, and the college kid went by Benson. The pulse-checker said he was James. As we eyed the re-forming line, we wondered what to do next.
“I guess somebody should go find a phone,” Tony said.
Benson nodded. “Yeah.”
Susie looked around the group. We all did. “So …?”
An annoyed sigh slid from Tony’s throat. “I’ll do it. Just … will somebody hold my spot?”
“If we can hold ours,” I said.
“Great. Thanks.”
He jogged toward the parking lot. A minute later, we heard a car door open and shut. The engine rumbled a second later, and then Tony followed his headlights out of the parking lot.
When I turned back to the group, James was looking at the sky.
“What’s up?” Susie asked.
He jumped. “What? Oh … I guess it’s …”
“What is it?” I asked.
Again, he looked up. “Wasn’t the moon out earlier?”
§
I stood in line and tried to tell my gut to calm down. Behind me, Susie kept asking questions. I kept ignoring her. Only a few minutes had passed, but that was enough time for some really awful ideas to seep in. Thinking back, I tried to remember when I’d last seen a car arrive, when the line had last grown. It had been a while, probably since the guy who’d reported the power outage. That made me nervous, too.
With my eyes locked on the parking lot’s entrance, I wondered what might happen next. Occasionally, I thought about the list in my back pocket and my wife’s handwriting and how she was probably home sleeping soundly, and I wondered if the moon was out over our house.
When I saw headlights, I held my breath. Twin beams washed over the lot as a car turned in, and soon I recognized Tony’s car. In my pockets, my hands constricted, fists growing tighter with each second.
Tony didn’t even bother parking, just pulled his car to the curb and killed the engine. Not a good sign. The look on his face wasn’t a good sign either, and the way he shook surely qualified as a terrible one. He shuffled across the concrete until he stood beside Susie and me again.
“Well?” Susie asked.
He swallowed hard, shook his head. I saw his lips tremble.
I lifted my eyebrows at him. “Tony…?”
Those who were nearby started to look. Susie placed a hand on his arm. “Tony, come on. What is it?”
Again, he shook his head. “It’s … nothing.”
“It’s obviously something. Just—”
“No! I’m telling you, there’s nothing out there! I made it maybe a quarter of a mile, and then everything just stopped. It’s just black past that. I don’t mean like the street lights are out, either. I mean there’s nothing there. Everything is gone.”
I heard murmurs and curses in every direction, a few scoffing comments that were probably from those who wanted to pretend they weren’t afraid. Over it all, I heard Susie's voice as she turned to me.
“The moon.”
Again, we looked to the sky. Nothing. Just blackness. Forever.
§
Maybe things could have held together after Tony’s bombshell. Could be there were enough of us left with our heads on our shoulders to keep the entire crowd from going south, but three more people dropped dead within the next minute, and then most of the crowd ran for their cars. I hugged the store wall with Susie and Tony, fought the irrational urge to chuckle. I’d never seen a stampede moving away fr
om a store on Black Friday.
“They don’t have anywhere to go,” Tony said.
“They’re scared,” I answered. “Either they’ll be back or they won’t. They need to see for themselves.”
“So you believe it?” Susie asked.
“Do you?”
She shrugged, but I saw the real answer in her pinched expression.
“I’m not lying,” Tony said. “Swear to Christ, it’s just black out there.”
“We get it. I just … I don’t know what to make of it.”
“Dammit, what’s happening?” Benson had approached when we weren’t looking. James stood beside him. Other than a small group surrounding the other bodies, no one remained. The parking lot was a hog pen of honking horns and squealing tires. I heard metal crunch metal, angry voices chasing the sound. On the other end of the lot, a car picked up speed and then plowed into a light post. As the blaring home sliced through the air, I wondered if the driver was now a dried-up corpse.
“It’s like the world’s shrinking,” Tony said. “Everything keeps getting smaller.”
Susie released a breath that almost sounded like a chuckle. “Been getting smaller a while. Work, home, sit on the couch. Wash, rinse, and repeat, right? Shit, this is the longest I’ve been outside in months.”
“Hunker down,” I said. “Everything’s gone to shit.”
§
Some of them came back. Some of them didn’t. Maybe they decided to drive into the black Tony had described. Could be that was the best idea, the quickest way to reach what was probably coming.
Six more dropped dead. One of them—a woman wearing a blue scarf and matching ear muffs—was halfway back from her car, sobbing hysterically, when she toppled over.
I decided I wanted inside the store. Susie and Benson agreed. A quick count told us there were twenty-three people left, and that fluttering in my gut kept telling me we were running out of time. I didn’t know if we might find some kind of answer inside—maybe we’d just drop dead in front of a bank of flat screen TVs—but I figured doing something was better than doing nothing.
Susie hugged herself and bounced on the balls of her feet. “All right, so how do we get inside?”
“Maybe there’s an employee entrance around back,” Benson said. “Could be unlocked.”
As they kicked around ideas, neither one of them noticed me move to the edge of the curb. The garbage can wasn’t terribly heavy, but it was metal. I hefted it with both hands and started toward the glass entrance. At the edge of my vision, I saw other survivors turn to watch me, but I ignored them. Even when I noticed one of them slump to the ground, I kept my eyes on all that glass. A lot of things roiled inside me: fear and anger and the list in my back pocket and the way Karen had told me to stay warm. More than anything, a single thought flashed in and out of my mind like a strobe. I am not dying out here.
I roared as I threw the metal can. Something in my shoulder ripped, burning pain through me, but that roar felt good. That flutter in my stomach became an electric jolt as I watched the garbage can sail toward glass, and maybe even something like a smile touched my face.
Then the can thunked off the glass without leaving so much as a scratch, and anything that might have been a smile died. I was suddenly very aware of my burning shoulder. Clutching it, I dropped to my knees. Susie was shouting something, but I couldn’t hear it. White noise washed out everything, and all I could do was hold my injured shoulder, stare at that damned entranceway, and wonder when I was going to fall over dead. Slowly, I lifted my eyes to the sky. No moon, no stars. Nothing. Just black.
“Merry Christmas,” I said. Then I started crying.
§
By the time my eyes ran dry, Tony was dead. Just a body at Susie’s feet. James followed about five minutes later, and Benson was in the middle of a full-blown panic attack when whatever was killing us finally grabbed hold of him and dropped him to the concrete.
I can’t really describe the feeling. It’s awful, and it’s everything, but I’m not sure I can describe it.
Sinking ships. Raging infernos. Tidal waves. Things you can’t escape. You know it’s just a matter of time. There’s that moment of terrible realization when you finally admit you’re not going to survive. It’s a lead weight right in the center of your chest, and it drags all of you down. Maybe that’s what killed everybody else.
I sat beside … I want to say her name was Sue. A long time had passed. Hours, maybe. Could have been a day. We were the only two left. All around us, bodies littered the sidewalk and parking lot. The car that hit the lamppost had finally gone dead, its horn collapsing on itself half a note at a time. What relief that small mercy offered disappeared when I realized I couldn’t see the far side of the parking lot. Instead of an entrance and the street beyond, there was only a curtain of black.
“Are we assholes?” she asked. “What? Do we deserve this for some reason?”
I shook my head. “Maybe it was always going to happen. It’s just finally caught up to us.”
“What does that mean?”
I shrugged.
“I can’t remember my older brother’s name,” the woman beside me said. “That’s strange, because I’ve known him my entire life. I can see his face, hear his voice, but his name is just gone.”
“I don’t have any brothers,” I said. “At least, I don’t think so.” I didn’t like that. Again and again, I kept finding dark spots in my memory. Just another trick of whatever was happening, but we’d already gone through so much. To tack on something else, it was just cruel.
I looked at the woman. Susie. “Tell me about your brother.”
She smiled, and I saw memories in her eyes. “When I was a kid, he did this thing every year. Started it at Thanksgiving, and he’d keep it going all the way to Christmas Eve.
“There was a window in our dining room that looked out over the town. We lived on a hill, see. I didn’t realize this at the time, because I was a kid, but there was this radio tower way in the distance, and it had this blinking red light on top of it. Well, my brother would show me that light once it got dark out, and he’d tell me it was Santa Claus on his way.
“‘You know Rudolph, right, sis?’ he’d say. ‘That’s Rudolph’s nose. He’s on his way, and he’ll be here by Christmas.’”
I gave her a grin. “That’s a good story.”
“It was a cool thing to do for a kid. Doubt I’ll ever see him again.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Guess not. Don’t think I’m going to see my wife again.”
“Didn’t realize you were married.”
I showed her my ring. “A while, now.”
“What’s her name?”
Any grin I wore fell apart. “I can’t remember.”
For several moments, we just sat in silence, looking out at the withered bodies. I wondered if maybe this was it, and I wondered if it would hurt when I finally toppled to the concrete as a dried-out husk. Fear really took hold in that moment, and I started shivering, the cold and horror working together to lace my bones with ice. With numb fingers, I reached into my back pocket and withdrew the note written by the wife whose name I couldn’t remember. Things we wanted or needed, gifts for children I wasn’t sure existed. I vaguely remembered writing something about a new TV on the bottom.
I unfolded the square of white paper and looked at both sides. Blank. Something clucked in my throat, and I swallowed it, bitter as chewed aspirin.
“What did you want to buy today?” I asked the woman beside me.
“I’m not sure,” she said. “A USB cable, maybe. Not even sure what that is.”
“Never heard of it.”
“What about you?”
I showed her the paper. Nothing but creases. “Beats me.”
And then the glass doors opened. I almost didn’t notice. The strange clicking sound barely penetrated my thoughts. By the time I noticed the sound, the woman already had her hand on my shoulder, pointing past me to where both doors stood w
ide. A light that looked stale and sick spilled onto the sidewalk. I didn’t see any store employees, no sign of life at all.
“What do we do?” she asked.
Time ticked past as I thought about it. “Let’s shop,” I said. I pushed myself up the wall until I reached my feet. Then, I helped her stand. She nodded, and we started toward the doors.
“They better not try some lottery bullshit,” she said. “I’ve been out here since before midnight, and I’m not losing my place in line.”
“You and me both.” I smiled, chasing away some of the fear. “It’s really good to be with somebody right now.”
“Likewise,” she said. “Merry Christmas.”
“Yeah. Merry Christmas.”
Her hand slipped inside mine, and I gripped it tight. My belly clenched, but a deep breath relaxed it. Maybe it would be okay, or maybe it would all go wrong. No way for us to know. Hand in hand, we stepped in from the cold. At least we weren’t alone.
RED RAGE
NOW
The house was perfect.
For several years, it had been in legal limbo, unsellable, for its previous owners had skipped town, leaving no heirs, and the bank that took over the property had gone bankrupt. Somewhere along the line, the deed had fallen through the cracks. But finally—finally—the mess had been sorted out, and, a few days before Christmas, Roger, Lydia, and Dylan Worsham were able to move in.
It was a two-story American Craftsman–style brick house, sixty-some years old, but in pristine condition. With four bedrooms, two and a half baths, and a finished basement, it was more than spacious enough for the three of them, but they anticipated adding at least one more family member in the near future. Tucked in a cozy hollow amid several acres of woods, with a fishing pond at the rear of the property, the place couldn’t have been more ideal for the family. They were twenty minutes out of Aiken Mill, a generally sleepy little community, but for those occasions they needed or desired something more than the small town offered, Roanoke was only an hour or so up the road. Lydia, in particular, had grown sick of the cramped Aiken Mill townhouse they had inhabited for the past eight years, and spending another holiday there, in a neighborhood going increasingly to seed, seemed a ghastly prospect. Here, Dylan would have a healthier living space, plenty of room to play, and even some woods to explore—well, when he got a little older. Eight years old, he was very independent, a little hyper, and occasionally accident-prone. For a while, at least, either Roger or she would have to accompany him when he wanted to go wandering.
