Tara nodded, smiled, and made her way toward the exit without the book she had been so intent on borrowing. She reached the double-doors and turned, but the sallow man was nowhere.
Nowhere.
Over the course of a year, the man appeared to her on numerous occasions, never speaking, acknowledging her only with a bowed head or forced smile. Tara never once responded, for her fears were too great. A harmless and sickly fellow he might have seemed, but there was something powerful about him, a strange vigour that suggested he was nowhere near as weak and stricken as he appeared.
As many times as she saw him during the day, he appeared again at night, in dreams so vivid that Tara wakened in films of sweat, gasping for air, sometimes screaming, seldom wary of her surroundings. In the dreams he was far worse; his bistre suit was damp, decaying, spilling maggots from its buttonholes and sleeves. His face, more jaundiced and loose on his skull, wobbled from side-to-side as he chittered at her in a language that she neither understood nor cared to learn. More often than not, he would creep up behind her, placing a gnarly hand upon her shoulder. Then would come the hissing—and the sickly-sweet putrid breath like honey and death combined—that would send shivers through her. Sometimes she was lucky enough to wake at the sound of the ssssssssss; others, she suffered in much the same way that her mother had in her final hours. A tortuous night filled with incomprehensible garble on the lips of the sallow man was enough for Tara to seek medical assistance.
The drugs they prescribed helped her to sleep, but they also prevented her from waking, which left her at the hands of the sallow man for the entirety of whatever he had planned for her. After three nights—so bad that she had wished herself dead—she emptied the pills into the toilet and flushed.
Vanquishing the real sallow man, however, was not so easy, as once again she found herself faced with him, this time whilst visiting her mother’s grave. She had barely placed the fresh flowers into the urns either side of the headstone when she noticed him shambling ahead. His gait was somewhat disorientated, as if he had forgotten which foot went where, but Tara knew it was a façade, a cabaret intended to conceal the truth from her.
She ignored him long enough to set the grave back into some sort of organisation, but by then she was seething. She could feel his eyes upon her and, although he was some way off, she could smell the disgusting reek that accompanied him everywhere, a stench that was worsening with every passing encounter.
Mustering up what little courage she could find, she paced across the cemetery toward him. He stood, stock-still, awaiting her with—she felt—excitement. Time stood still all around. With the emergence of Tara’s valour came the cessation of birdsong, and anything else that had—up until a moment ago—been audible.
Hssssssss.
She heard that just fine, though. The sallow man was hissing, sucking her in through discoloured teeth. The rows and rows of headstones between them lessened; the sallow man grew, both in size and dominion. Tara found herself wondering what she might say when she reached him; whether she would speak calmly, or if the anger would spill forth, an irrepressible torrent of abuse.
A second; that was all it was, a second that she took her eyes off the man, and when she looked up, he was gone. She collapsed atop some Elvis Presley fan’s grave, sobbing until her chest hurt. The notion that her opportunity to palaver with the sallow man was forever lost was too much for her to accept, but she convinced herself that he would return.
He always did.
Though she hadn’t predicted the brevity of his absence, and a voice from somewhere to her left hissed, “Taaaaraaaaa . . . ”
She choked, spluttered, glanced past the scale bust of Elvis Aaron Presley, and watched as the sallow man took a seat on the rotting, wooden bench beyond the grave. The smile upon his face was somewhat incongruous; his yellow teeth reminded her of cinema popcorn.
“Who are you?” Tara said through staccato sobs. “What do you want from me?”
The man scratched his chin; as he raked his skeletal fingers down there was a sound like sandpaper on a disintegrating door. Tara wondered whether the man would simply blow away if a moderate gust of wind kicked up.
“You know who I am,” he said, now sneering. “You know, I remember you when you were but a child. Thirteen, I think, when I first laid eyes on you, though of course it wasn’t you that interested me back then. Not like now, of course. Only got eyes for you now, baby.” His face contorted, like liquid tar, and the red lines around his pupils began to dance.
Tara thought back, trying to place the man, but she couldn’t. “I don’t know you,” she told him, sounding more defensive than she had expected. “The café in Paris; that was the first time I ever saw you.”
“You and I go farther back than that,” he said, a throaty chortle rattling through him like a misfiring motorbike. “Your mother knew me very well.”
There was something grotesque about the way he said it; she suspected he’d utilised that breathy tone purposely, as if to invoke her rage for some reason.
Perhaps it would make his big reveal all the more dramatic . . .
“I don’t . . . ”
“Look at me, Taaaaraaaa,” he hissed, gesturing down at the bistre suit hanging listlessly from his frame. “I’m death, I’m expiration, I’m everything that your mother feared, and I’m coming for you.”
Tara should have been terrified; that was what he’d intended by dropping the mask and revealing himself. Whether it was because she was already kneeling, or that she had known all along that she would succumb, in much the same manner that her mother did, to the cancer, she didn’t know, but all she felt was intent, a strength that may have escaped her mother but would not manage to do so with her.
The sallow man sneered. “You think you can beat me?” It wasn’t a question, and he spat upon the ground next to her as if to confirm so. “Your mother couldn’t, and she had more time to prepare.”
Tara leant back on her haunches and, using Presley’s stone head to steady herself, climbed to her feet. “I should’ve known what you were,” she said. “I recall your stench round my mother. You made me sick so many times.”
“Oh, not as many as I intend to, Deary,” he snorted.
Tara nodded, accepting the sallow man’s challenge. “You want me,” she said, determined and stolid. “Come and fucking get me.”
As she turned and walked away from the Elvis Presley-themed grave, the sallow man, and the foetid stench enveloping him, she didn’t glance back, not once, for she could feel his fear as he watched her leave. If she turned, it would only confirm what she already knew.
The sallow man was powerful, capable of the cruellest death, but unconquerable? He’d been beaten before, thousands of times, and Tara—leaving the cemetery with the knowledge of a battle yet to commence hanging heavy over her—would give him a fight he would never forget.
As the girl shrank into the distance, the sallow man shrivelled into himself, choking on thick, viscous phlegm caught in his throat. Things were changing; these people were no longer afraid the way they once were. Another one slipping through his rheumy fingers; so many souls surviving his assault. His desiccated bones threatened to give way inside him. He staggered across the cemetery, glancing down at the headstones of people he’d taken. The wind crumbled flakes off him as if he was made of parchment, the power stripping from him like ancient varnish. Eventually he would disappear completely.
MARCH
Micah Joel
Micah Joel is a Viable Paradise graduate. He lost his best friend to cancer at the age of fourteen, an event that's haunted him since. He blogs at http://micahjoel.info and tweets as @micahpedia.
Had anyone looked a month ago, well, they wouldn’t have looked, because there was nothing to see. Say it started the day one of the Minutemen complained of a dinged side-mirror. Stu, I think it was. Gone around that bend in the road dozens, maybe hundreds of times, and never nicked anything before.
Upon closer inspect
ion, he swore that tuft of grass halfway under the bulwark was a boot’s-length away when last he looked. And how long ago was that? Couldn’t say. Caked-on mud along the ground looked the way it had for years. No earthquakes in the area or anything else to account for things shifting around of their own accord.
Stu retired to the bar for the evening, picked up a round of drinks, and resolved to keep close watch on things. After all, that’s what brought him to the border.
Day 1
Two feet. Stu’s brother had surveying equipment and plenty of spare time. He couldn’t locate the original survey itself, dating back to the war, though he found a copy that he swore was correct. Had even less success locating an original USGS marker that hadn’t been shifted during the earthquake swarm, thus calling into question the results. All that came from the whole exercise was more than the usual amount of arguing played out over the third round of beers that night.
Day 2
Old Stu slept in his truck, backed against the bulwark. It was designed to keep us secure, but this was something entirely new. Come morning the truck was partly inside the cinderblock. Stu gunned the engine, spitting dust and gravel before something broke loose. He walked around to see a clean diagonal slice off the edge of his trailer hitch and left-rear taillight. The bulwark had this perfect shiny marking, a cross-section of the things left behind. Stu cussed something ungodly, and parked farther away that night.
Day 3
The dirt road the Minutemen used, at least the parts that ran against the wall, found its way to the wrong side of the bulwark. Stu dusted his passport and made the border crossing to look from the other side, and recounted what was left of the road there. He barely made it back—trouble at the border station. Nearly every car or bus that drove through stalled out and had to be pushed across. Word was they’d be closing the border, maybe for good this time. What’s it mean for our road to be on their side now? Does that make it their road?
Day 4
Stu broke out the four-wheel drive and spent the day patrolling the entire length, road or no. The bulwark continued clean to the ocean in one direction, but the other end had been breached—this caught the volunteers’ attention like nothing. The heavy, reinforced wall they’d built, all hundred miles of it, had crept uniformly forward, whereas farther inland the older, corrugated fence hadn’t moved an inch, except where the two met. There the metal got stretched like taffy, one side embedded into the brick like Stu’s hitch, the other jagged and torn, leaving a rent big enough to drive a truck through. Stu claimed he would’ve, except that the border was officially closed, and without rule of law, what’ve you got? He stood guard there for a good three hours before deciding to head back and tell his story. That night, he let someone else buy the rounds.
Day 5
The bulwark had moved about the span of a double-wide. Rex, another one of the fellas, made sure we knew how he set up his second home about as far from the bulwark as his house was wide, and he woke up this morning missing a wall. He just sat there and ate his Grape-Nuts and watched the bulwark swallow up another six inches of his place. A news crew from the area came out with their fancy cameras and took footage throughout the day.
Day 6
Rex’s double-wide was completely consumed, and the yellow paint from the walls had spread out maybe thirty paces breach-ward. Rex said it looked like a python digesting an antelope.
People were getting spooked. The religious stations ran just a bit longer before cutting to commercial. If you sat real still, you could see the bulwark moving, maybe about as fast as a shadow marching across the ground as the sun wheels through the sky. The Minutemen had never been real organized types, but now they were in utter disarray. Folks from all around began moving stuff away from the bulwark as fast as their U-Hauls could carry it. Stu was fit to be tied—with all the driving he’d been doing lately, he hadn’t got his hitch repaired yet, and he had just as much stuff sitting around as anyone else.
The sound of helicopters came and went throughout the day. One soared over the bulwark whereupon its rotors locked and it plummeted to a spectacular fiery landing, one that sadly there’s no videographic evidence of. No camera brought into the breech worked worth a lick.
Day 7
Downright thick with choppers overhead today, all of them carefully avoiding the dead space. Nightly News said they’re worked up because of the Naval Air Station a few miles from here. If this were to keep going, what’d they do? Some fancy math guy on the radio said the bulwark’s march was progressing geometrically, which in plain language means getting a little faster every day. The Last Exit shopping complex near what used to be the border crossing—the one the local newspaper once mockingly called the pinnacle of Western civilization—had to be flat evacuated. It’ll be barren ground soon, like the rest.
Day 8
The march plainly visible today—stare for a minute and watch the bulwark creep forward an inch. Stu’d been monitoring the destruction of the strip mall. Maybe a city-block-wide slice of the parking lot and some of the stores had been razed clean overnight. The markings on the bulwark showed the pattern of what got eaten—here a black SUV, there a smeared-out rendering of the Last Exit cell phone shop, even a distended freeway overpass.
Someone laid their hands upon the bulwark—flesh against brick. Said it felt like when you superglue your fingers together. If you pulled hard enough—and left some skin behind—it was possible to separate, but not something you’d want to make a habit out of doing.
On top of that, the bulwark’s getting longer. It ate a strip mall on one end and excreted out a mile of fresh brickwork on the other.
Day 9
Unannounced, they brought a tank. Quite a show. The first one had a plow-attachment on the front and tried to push the bulwark down, but the plow just stuck when the wall bit into it. No matter how much they reversed the engine, no matter how much dust they slung out from under the treads, the tank couldn’t break free. The poor operator had to bail out of the little hatch on the top. The second tank wasted no time opening fire on the bulwark, and those mortars were about the loudest thing you’ve ever heard. They pumped a round into the wall, and left a silverish smear, and little else. Then they opened a full barrage into the wall, and the shells just melted into the stone, until suddenly the whole bulwark lurched forward thirty yards, consuming the first tank and planing clean off the dangerous barrel of the second. From there it resumed a steady march. Within the hour, there was no sign left of either tank, other than a blurry metallic smudge fifty yards away.
Day 10
The whole Last Exit shopping complex was pretty much razed ground by this point, and all that concretion just made the bulwark stronger. What Stu complained about most was the Lonesome Dove Beer Bar. He swore he saw a ripple of brown glassy bottle splotches crawling downwall.
Not much news from the far side, but in the distance, right on top of the old Minuteman road, a horde of folks gathered. Looked like a protest of some sort, though hard to imagine what they’d have to protest about. The bulwark was moving away from them.
Day 11
Today the press took to using miles as their measurement of the march. The bulwark had advanced over a quarter of a mile from its original location, meanwhile the length of the wall had extruded out an good six miles. A large gathering of concerned citizens built a counter wall out of sand bags, broken pieces of concrete, some crushed automobiles, and anything else they could gather on short notice. Their embankment must have been a good thirty feet thick, and the bulwark chewed through it in half an hour like it wasn’t even there. All they did was feed the advance.
Day 12
To the north, a hundred helicopters or more took off this morning, heading for points farther north. Stu mused that the military gave up on stopping the thing, or at least didn’t think it’d be worth throwing away all that hardware on the hopes that they could.
Instead, they brought a crane, riding on huge tank treads to pace itself ahead
of the march. Perched up on top, they stuck video equipment and telephoto lenses and the like. They had something worked out with the news organizations, because their video kept showing up on the feeds. What had them so interested was all the people gathered naked in the barren zone; some kind of ceremony playing out on the clean ground; people linking hands. Stu figured it was Mayan, but they blew their chance for doomsday back in 2012.
Day 13
In a display of dark humor, the press dubbed the strip of land, now more than a mile wide, the DMZ, the words scrolling underneath the continuous replay of yesterday’s events. An entire evacuated neighborhood got flattened during the night. The same fancy mathematician went on the TV to say that assuming the progression continued, in a matter of days the march would be so fast the highway patrol would have to ticket it.
Day 14
If there’s an upside to all this, it’s that the drive from Stu’s house to the bulwark had been shortened considerably from 30 miles it once was. The sense of inevitability hadn’t really sunk in with folks yet. In only a day or two more, his house would be gone, along with half of the greater metro area.
The dead zone stood as a gulf between peoples and nations. Only by satellite footage came news, and what showed up on the feed was difficult to believe. The people, arranged with interlocking limbs, formed a base for more people, layered higher and higher like a pyramid. By the end of the day, so immense was this human structure that Stu claimed he’d seen the top of it. Like the wall, this vast structure was on the march.
Day 15
The pyramid dominated the landscape and media coverage alike. A mountain of living bodies, locked in crystalline alignment, walking, crawling, making good time over the razed land and set to overtake the bulwark within the next day.
Stu never paid much mind to the religious nuts—they were frothed up enough as it was. But at this point, even he began to wonder if they were on to something.
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