With tears streaming down his face, he continued moving them, one handful after another, until he reached the point where he would have to begin collecting them singly, pinching them carefully between his thumbs and forefingers so as not to damage what little physically remained of his saviors.
There was a loud thud on the floor above, a sound he recognized immediately, for he had heard it countless times before. It was the sound of a body falling to the floor, though until that moment he hadn’t realized precisely how silent the house had been around him.
When unconsciousness had claimed him, his ears had been filled with the screams of The Swarm above and the mosquitoes descending upon him. Outside of the scurrying of the roaches and the roar of the wind assaulting him with the plague of locusts, he couldn’t remember hearing any sound at all.
There was another thud.
He was accustomed to the sound beneath the wailing of the people above in tongues as the spirit took them. But there were no such cries now. There were no voices at all. No sound. Just the loud thumping of a pair of bodies hitting the floor.
As he carefully exhumed his quarry from the cold cement floor, he listened attentively for the sounds that usually followed: the scraping of hands and knees on the floor as the person tried to rise again to their feet; the shifting of the floorboards; the footsteps to follow.
Nothing.
Depositing the last of his fallen friends onto the only suitable surface in the room, he crawled slowly forward toward the door. The concrete beneath him felt painfully cold; his hands, knees, and toes recoiling against the bitter sting.
Another thump overhead.
Then another.
“Is anyone out there?” he whispered, knowing full well that even if there were, whoever it might be would have no chance of hearing him.
The crack in the floor had widened like a vein filled with nothingness, emanating that same cold that permeated his shivering flesh.
He couldn’t see the thin gap beneath the door, but he could tell by the slight tracing of warm air crossing the floor that he had to be getting close.
He flinched at the sound of a flurry of heavy banging above his head, releasing a dusting of rust from the overhead pipes.
Reaching forward, he placed his right palm flat against the door, gently pressing the wood for even the slightest hint of movement. It allowed him to push it almost imperceptibly away before the bolts wouldn’t allow any more.
“Is anyone out there?” he whispered, cocking his head to bring his left eye to the crack beneath the door.
The darkness in the stairwell beyond was nearly as black as that surrounding him, though he was immediately accosted by a stench the likes of which he’d never even imagined. Recoiling, he pinched his nose to the scent and took several deep breaths before again lowering his head to try to see.
“Anyone?” he whispered.
He knew that the woman wasn’t out there, for he had surely witnessed her painful demise. Though she was his only ally, what he wouldn’t have given for the sound of another human voi—
A loud hissing erupted from somewhere toward the top of the staircase. It was joined in short measure by another.
Footsteps scampered overhead, fast and furious, across the floorboards.
Phoenix fell back from the door, his heart pounding in his chest. Though he knew not what was happening in the room above, the sounds frightened him far more than he had ever been in his life. His skin was cool with sweat budding from his pores, every hair on his body standing electrically. The overwhelming desire to get out of that basement was nearly crippling.
Faster and faster they raced above, until finally the frenzied activity slowed to the dwindling patter of footsteps, and then finally disappeared beneath the silence.
The cement beneath him was so cold that it positively hurt his rear end, though the woman’s smock surely dulled some of the sensation. Much as he wanted to just sit there with his knees pulled to his chest, rocking himself nervously in the darkness, he had no choice but to move. Rolling back to all fours, he crept noiselessly forward toward the door, his ears focusing on the silence for even the slightest sound of pressure applied to the rickety stairs beyond.
Something scraped the door, like the tines of a rake carving into the wood.
Phoenix cringed, holding his breath.
There was another loud scratching, this time the door wiggling in the frame.
He hadn’t heard anything on the landing outside the doorway. He knew that sound as well as his own breathing. There was no way anyone could have stepped from the bottom stair to the landing without him hear—
The scratching resumed, though this time it wasn’t a single sound, but a multitude.
He could smell the freshly carved wood falling from the door to alight just on the other side of the thin crack, which he hurriedly pressed his face to in order to prove to himself that there were no feet on the other side.
The door started banging as though being bludgeoned from beyond. Phoenix threw himself backward and scuttled away from the door.
He could hear the wood splitting, the aged trim wrenching away from the jamb with the moans of rusted nails. Footsteps pounded on the landing as though they had leapt from the top stair without touching another between, though with the bend, he knew that to be impossible.
The hissing arose once again, a sound like voiceless screaming, an army of startled cats.
“Who’s out there?” he shouted, scuttling backward until he was against the roach-covered straw.
The sound of his voice silenced whatever was on the other side, though only momentarily.
The banging and hissing resumed in earnest, the door cracking, the jamb splintering, and the deadbolt threatening to tear right through the wall. It grew so loud that Phoenix had to clap his hands over his ears and even then his screams were drowned out by the ruckus.
Chunks of fractured wood skittered across the cement floor. Dust shivered from the walls while flakes of rust and dust rained from the cobweb-riddled ceiling. The door flew inward, half of it falling away with a clatter while the remaining half slammed into the wall.
All Phoenix saw were orbs of sickly yellow in the darkness.
He screamed and the hissing intensified.
Suddenly, those glowing eyes shot skyward and were racing toward him along the ceiling. Hooked claws stabbed into the wooden joists with sounds like so many darts hitting a dartboard. And before he knew it, Phoenix was lying flat on his back staring up into half a dozen golden eyes, marbled with darkness like storm clouds passing over the midnight moon. They lowered toward him as though dangling from the rafters by their feet and hissed down at him, spattering his face with strands of saliva flung by rancid breath that reeked of carrion long since decomposed. Clawed hands slashed inches from his face, so close he had to close his eyes against the wind created by their frenetic passage.
He jerked his head to the left in time to see another half dozen of whatever these creatures were leap up from the landing to the basement ceiling and scuttle towards him. Their skin was so dark they were simply shadows passing through the darkness, their frantic movement marked only by their glowing eyes.
Phoenix looked straight up into their fierce stares as they hung above him like bats from a cavern roof, all of them intently focused on him. Hissing as they tasted the fear that grew with each panicked exhalation.
V
Barstow, California
EVELYN PULLED THE OLD FORD UP IN FRONT OF THE HOUSE, SLUMPING OVER the wheel while the engine idled noisily. Dust filled the sky, leaving a grainy haze on the windshield that only turned to mud when she tried to use the wipers to smear it away.
She had tried the phone repeatedly to dial for help, but the line was completely dead. Even when she was finally able to get a weak signal on her cell phone, the volume was so soft it was barely audible, even with her hands smothering her opposite ear. She couldn’t tell whether or not someone on the other end had even picked up
or if she was trying to scream at absolutely nothing.
Her father was dead, of that she was absolutely certain, but she hadn’t been prepared to deal with it. Instead, she had swiped the keys to the truck from the hook by the front door and sped down the driveway toward the main road. She had tried the Jenkins Ranch first, rocketing heedlessly down their washboard dirt drive before finding all of the lights still out. The doors had been locked and no matter how many times she beat on them or how loud she screamed, no one ever came to answer. All of the cars were still in the circular cul-de-sac, from the rusted out Buick to the new F-150. None of the dogs even barked from inside that old weathered house to announce her arrival.
Further down the road she’d found the Millers’ trailer deserted, the front door banging against the flimsy siding at the whim of the dust-clogged wind. She was already turning around to leave when the headlights flashed across a lump off in the weeds. A lump wearing the tatters of a nightgown.
June Miller had been face down in the dirt, gravel pressed into her forehead, body swollen and black just as Evelyn’s father’s had been. Elmer Miller was another twenty yards deeper into the field with his finger still curled beneath the trigger guard of his twelve gauge, his lifeless black body strewn across a clump of sage like refuse. There was no sound from the chicken coops deeper in the field, yet coyotes lay dead in rings surrounding them.
She could remember screaming at the sight and sprinting for the truck, but everything after that was hazy. There were random flashes of town, where she’d found the streets deserted save for the few cars idling at the side of the road with their drivers crumpled over the wheels, front tires up on curbs, wrapped around other parked cars, or stalled in the middle of lawns. The lights had been on at the police station, but the man behind the bulletproof glass shield was face down on his desk with his bald pate black against his wiry gray hair. The phones to either side of the lobby had produced no answer, though she could hear them ringing beyond the glass.
There was a couple sprawled out on the front porch of one of the houses she’d passed, still dressed to the nines from their evening out. Perhaps they’d been preparing for their goodnight kiss before they’d been besieged, their bodies corrupted by whatever festered within to cause the skin to become necrotic.
Through the windows of a Laundromat, she could see three or four bodies on the floor amidst scatterings of their unfolded clothes, one dryer still turning despite the black bodies that would never unload it. The overhead lights flickered before darkening the scene in her rear view mirror.
On the way out of town, there had been a police cruiser sitting beside Meadows Park, but she wasn’t even within a block when she noticed the driver’s side door standing open, spilling muted light out across the body of the officer lying face down in the middle of the road. His plump black fingers pointed to his gun, lying spent well out of his reach. The windshield was spotted with insects, blood spattering in small firecrackers of crimson.
There had even been a point where she was sure that an endless swarm of locusts had descended upon the entire town, wings buzzing so loud she thought her head was stuffed inside a beehive. They’d crawled all over the glass while she’d been at a stoplight, but by the time the light turned green, they were just a distant hum. She even questioned whether or not it had really happened, as she felt so loosely bound to her sanity.
By the time she returned home, Evelyn could neither remember driving there, nor how she’d come to find her head aching from the pressure on the wheel, staring down at the fuel light burning bright orange in the dash. She killed the engine to save what little gas remained, and raised her head so she could look back out the window toward her house. The lights were still on in the bedrooms as she had left them, now barely apparent against the intensifying dawn. The front door still stood ajar, though it had welcomed in a fair share of the desert sand to spread across the linoleum, and within it appeared as though everything was as she had left it.
She knew what she needed to do. Perhaps that was why she’d been sitting in the car so long. She just didn’t know if she had the strength to do it.
“What’s happening to me?” she whined, steeling her chin before the emotions could pour out. Why hadn’t she been able to find anyone in town? She hadn’t even come across another vehicle heading down the road. It was as though the entire world had taken in one final breath, and then shuddered its death rattle.
She looked up to the rear view mirror.
A stranger stared back at her. Her eyes were bloodshot, ringed with puffy red tissue as though she’d been punched repeatedly in the face. Dirt was crusted into the dampness on her cheeks, the dust congealing in a mask over her features, forming rings around her nostrils.
She’d never been this scared in her life. Her body felt as though it was slowing down with the onset of shock, the entire universe moving in slow motion around her, and as much as she wished she could just awaken from this nightmare, she knew that this was real. Deep down she’d already accepted the fact that everyone around her was dead, but the events of the night before now seemed completely surreal as though she was remembering the events from a distant past life. She wanted nothing more than to crawl into her bed and curl up like a little girl and wait for her daddy to come in and let her know that everything was all right, but he wasn’t going to. He was dead. They were all dead. Only she remained.
If she had survived, then surely others must have as well. Maybe not this close to the epicenter of the L.A. detonation, especially with all of the mosquitoes that had descended upon them, but surely there would be more people who lived through it to the east. Whole cities unscathed. Surely Las Vegas and Reno would have been unaffected, maybe even Portland or Seattle up the coast.
They all sounded so far away. She’d been stuck on this little ranch for so long that it felt as though the world beyond had simply ceased to exist.
She would find out soon enough though. Of that she was sure. She could feel something calling to her, trying to draw her away from the house.
Past her image in the mirror, she could see the line of the eastern horizon beneath the rising sun. That was where she needed to go, she was certain of it, but first…but first she needed to take care of something important.
Looking to her left hand, she opened the door and threw it outward. The dust scuffed under her feet as she alighted on the earth, her numbed legs bearing her weight and seemingly guiding her of their own accord. Up the front steps. Through the doorway and into the living room. She didn’t even pause as her sole focus was directed toward the hallway leading back to the bedrooms. Passing couches covered with a layer of dust, hovering all around her in the slanted sunlight coming through the windows, she strode right through the doorway into her father’s room and stripped the covers away. He was sprawled across the bed, the middle two buttons of his pajama top torn away by the swelling of his ebon belly beneath, the skin marbled with blue like leeches in a shallow pond.
Unable to look at his face for fear she would simply fall blubbering to her knees, Evelyn wrapped her arms around her father’s chest and groaned as she pulled his torso up from the bed.
He was so cold. Even the sheets beneath him were bereft of any heat. His joints were beginning to stiffen, his head propping itself up of its own accord before finally falling onto her right shoulder as she heaved him to sitting.
“More man tears,” he whispered into her ear.
She jumped back.
His corpse lolled forward, and then crumpled off the bed onto the floor, neck bent backward awkwardly with his face in the carpet, his rear end standing high as his knees were beneath him.
“Daddy?” she whispered. “Daddy!”
She dropped beside him on the floor, shoving him roughly onto his right side so she could look directly into his face. His eyelids were only partly closed, the deteriorating eyes beneath a putrid white. His plumped blue lips sagged from his exposed teeth, propped apart by the swollen tongue. Pressing her f
irst two fingers into the side of his bulging neck, she felt around for a pulse that she knew wouldn’t be there.
Had he really said ‘More man tears,’ or had it just been the last of his gasses escaping from his chest as she folded him forward like a billows?
She was losing her mind. She was sure of it.
There was one thing she knew would bind her to reality and solidify her senses. One thing that would scrape away whatever cobwebs were forming in her head.
Evelyn knelt and rolled her father onto his back. Slipping her hands beneath his armpits, she stood as well as she could and started dragging him toward the hallway.
* * *
Evelyn wiped the splashed gas from her hands onto her jeans, kicking the now empty can off into the vacant desert. The lighter fell from her hand, clattering to the hard terra. She leaned unconsciously down and jammed it into her pocket.
Black smoke coughed sideways from her father’s body, consuming his clothing first. She kept waiting for him to open an eye or cry out in pain, but instead he lay still like a log on the fire while the flames rose higher and higher from his supine form, snapping like red and gold capes on the rising wind.
“Goodbye, Daddy,” Evelyn whispered, turning from the impromptu pyre. Tears rolled down her cheeks through the dust, but she was oblivious. She couldn’t feel anything. As far as she was concerned, she had ripped her own heart through her ribs and set it ablaze with what remained of the only man she had ever truly loved in her life. She was a hollow shell, an empty soul with only one thought in mind; an imperative urging her from her home and into the unknown.
“More man tears,” she said aloud, throwing open the door of the idling pickup and shoving her backpack onto the passenger seat. Within was a single change of clothes, a sweatshirt and jacket, cans of Spaghetti-O’s, beans, and the requisite opener. She’d also removed the revolver from her father’s closet along with a small box of bullets from the top shelf where he assumed she’d never find it. There was a lone teddy bear from her bed, missing the little black nose and the crusted ears from where she’d chewed it as a child. She also wrapped a dozen leaves of kelp, roots and all, in newspaper to hold the moisture before sealing them in a plastic bag. She didn’t know why she grabbed the bear, but the kelp she would need. It was the only thing left of her former life, a life that was never meant to be. Bound within beside those salty plants was the glue to hold her shattered mind together.
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