Dark Humanity

by Gwynn White

  A “thunk” sound accompanied a wild scream from Angie.

  The porch swing ran up against the gateposts. It wouldn't fit through. Not even close.

  Marty couldn't manage even a little smile at her good luck. She could only focus on her feet below her and her hand on the wall to her right. One foot. Other foot. One hand. Repeat. She seemed to be walking through molasses.

  “Lord, I don't mind if you call me to you today, but please let me make it inside, so Liam doesn't go outside again to look for me,” she said softly, half to herself, half to her Redeemer.

  With enormous effort, she reached the front corner of her house. She leaned to her right to view the front, positioning herself so that over her shoulder she could see Angie furiously thrashing against the rope and the jammed swing. No time to delay. She turned her head back to the front and began her final push to the door, up the small ramp her grandson had built for her so she could avoid the two steps up to her front porch and entryway.

  The ramp had been constructed with sturdy hand railings, which provided a solid purchase on the incline, but even so, she saw stars when she finally had the door handle in her grasp. She swayed dangerously. The handle was on the left side of the door. This was it. She grabbed the latch and pushed.

  It was locked!

  Of course. Angie did most of the door-locking these days. The keys were inside....

  Maybe I could sit a spell?

  No, you old fool.

  Steeling herself for one more task, she grabbed her cane—no, her cane had fallen somewhere during her escape. She looked down. She was holding her rosary with her free hand, rather than the cane.

  “Now when did that happen?”

  When she thought she was going to die back there, she must have made the switch from the worldly cane to the spiritual talisman to prepare to meet her Maker. She now assumed her time had not yet come and, though she devoutly depended on her faith, she depended on that cane, too.

  “Looks like I'll have to do it the hard way.”

  She propped herself against her door, then dragged herself leftward along a few feet of the brick facade, leaning hard the whole way. Then she was in front of Angie's door. The entry doors for the upstairs and downstairs flats were next to one another. The door handle for the upper flat was on the right side of the door. If Angie's door was unlocked, she knew the interior door was open, and she could reach her own flat. If...

  She pushed the latch and pushed the door.

  Locked.

  Have mercy!

  She considered sitting down and letting the end come. It wasn't suicide—forbidden by her faith—rather an honest end to a hard day.

  Looking at her hands, she saw she'd scraped them good and hard in the last few minutes though she hadn’t felt anything. She was really out of it. Teetering between sitting and standing, she remembered something through the dizzying haze. Angie had often complained about her front door sticking when she tried to push it open. Several handymen had been through over the years trying to fix it, but none of them seemed willing to replace the whole doorframe. They were confident each time they had loosened it for good. Later, it would stick again. Sometimes you had to push really hard on the door and depress the latch at the same time to get it to dislodge. It was no problem for the relatively young Angie, but for her... If Angie's door was unlocked, she would still have to find strength to get in.

  She looked to her right—no sound was coming from the corridor. Was that good or bad? She tried the latch, giving it a half-spirited second attempt and a little shove. It would not budge. The stars were swimming dreamily in her eyes. She took a moment to lean her head directly against the wooden door and rest.

  She came into focus just in time to see Angie standing at the corner of the house; the rope looped around her neck, the other end hidden somewhere around the bend. The swing chair could not have fit through the gate; Angie was free of it. The sick nurse reoriented on her quarry and began closing in.

  She had no time for a prayer. Pure instinct and perseverance drove her at that moment. She knew in her heart that door was unlocked—Angie was a trusting soul, unafraid of the outside world, going in and out with great frequency to do her chores. She grasped the latch with both her tiny, wrinkled hands while pushing with everything she had against the door. It would only work if the door was really unlocked. If if if …

  She spilled through the entryway as the sound of rage from Angie grew louder, even eclipsing the incessant scream of the sirens. Only by the grace of God did she manage to hang on to the handle, so the heavy door didn't throw her to the wood floor as it opened. Now all she had to do was close it again, but this time, physics was on her side. The door was heavy enough that as she pushed it, it also forced back the blood-stained hands that had arrived a second too late to affect its trajectory. Angie was unable to make the sharp right turn at the door jam to put her hand into the diminishing gap. The door slammed, and she quickly double-locked it.

  She didn't remember the stumbling walk from the front of her house to the rear. Couldn't remember if Angie stayed in the front or moved to the back, observing her through the side windows. She had no recollection of closing the back door and pulling the curtains shut on the kitchen window. She didn't know how she reached her bed and fell in fully clothed, shoes and all. Rosary in hand, she would barely recall the little prayer she said before finally losing consciousness.

  Dear Lord. Please help Liam find his way home safely.

  She fell asleep to the sound of trumpets.

  2

  The Library

  “Where's Liam? Where's Liam?”

  That was the sound of his worst nightmare the past few months. Mom and Dad and their incessant, demanding, infuriating repetition of that question. It was almost like they were afraid to let him out of their sight. As if he were still a five-year-old. In a mad stroke of irony, it was the one thing that made staying at his great-grandma Marty's house bearable. She didn't ask stupid questions.

  He’d run out of her house this morning as soon as possible, just as he'd done most of the previous three weeks, to find refuge among his kind online and do important things, like slaying the undead and e-chatting with his friends back in civilization. His home away from home away from home was the public library.

  “I'm going to the lye-bury, Grandma. See ya tonight!” He reveled in mispronouncing the word library, though not to antagonize his sweet old great-grandmother. He butchered it on purpose because his dad said his mispronunciation was a special broken word that was “more obnoxious than bloody fingernails on a chalkboard.”

  Shouldn't tell me your weakness, Dad!

  He knew his father's second most-hated word was nu-cue-lar power—but it was harder to fit into everyday conversation. So, as a sarcastic homage to his father, he continued the tradition. Today, Grandma only answered him with an affirmative nod as he walked out the door to relative freedom.

  Though it broke the unwritten teenage rule of time management—awake all night and sleep all day, like vampires—today he reached the library just as it opened at eight o' clock. He wasn't interested in small talk, or chatting up strangers, so he didn't care to know the name of the well-dressed, somewhat older woman who unlocked the doors and sat behind the counter every day, but she at least recognized him with a wave. He figured it was the blue jeans and soft-drink-logo shirts he liked to wear.

  “Good morning and welcome back. I didn't expect anyone today.”

  He didn't think to ask her why. He was anxious to avoid her and get to the computer area so he could set up shop. He passed by with a hurried wave in her direction.

  When he arrived in the technology area, the computers were still off. He turned on the PC where he had taken a seat. While he waited for it to spin up, the woman came along and turned on the half-dozen or so other computers. He could see she had a frown on her face, but he kept his nose in his phone, trying to begin text conversations with his other friends who should be coming online. Nor
mally there would be three or four of his friends from school—a cabal that would meet in one of their homes during the summer. He was now the outsider since he was staying with his grandma in the city for the summer.

  “Where is everyone?” he wrote to the lone avatar sitting on his screen. It belonged to Terrance, who had for some reason named his character “Share the Spirit” and used skins in-game with Olympic themes. Funny because Terrance never lifted a muscle to exercise a day in his life, though he was overly competitive inside the game world.

  “Dunno. You have the game loaded yet?”

  He wasn't in a rush to get things started since he knew he'd be at the library all day. As the computer came online, he logged into the server for World of Undead Soldiers, and leisurely prepared his soldiers while he waited. His friends should be crawling out of bed and joining up soon.

  He sat there fiddling with things for another fifteen minutes. He and Terrance wanted to give the other guys a chance to link up before they headed into the wilderness. It was always harder to jump in on the run.

  At last, they made the call. The other guys weren't going to make it.

  He thought it was highly unusual all three were missing, but it was no reason to cancel the engagement. He'd go out by himself—lone hero style—rather than sit back at Grandma's.

  All thoughts turned to the battlefield as he and “Share the Spirit” were immediately “in it,” fighting for their lives with their reduced group of soldiers.

  His sense of time melted away as the game consumed him.

  An hour went by when he got some texts from JT, one of his AWOL buddies.

  ---

  “I got the guns. Where u want them?”

  “Dad?”

  “Oh srry Liam. That was 4 dad. Hope you guys are running 2. Like a real adventure!”

  “cya”

  ---

  Is this a joke?

  The texts showed up on his phone in one blast, as if they were delayed.

  He tried to reply but got a “network busy” message.

  He thought about asking Terrance what he thought of those messages, but the computer game screen was frozen. Forced to observe the real world, he felt a sudden and powerful vibration. Some of the computer monitors rattled and a couple flashed off and back on. But the important thing was the connection...

  Losing connection to the internet rarely happened with modern technology and infrastructure, but when it did, it always happened at the worst possible time. Looking at his screen, he could see a host of undead and supernaturals just coming into view. The game world would continue running while his character stood there and died.

  “Crap!”

  He knew he'd said it too loudly in the library, but looking around he saw no one he might have offended. There were no other patrons besides himself.

  Even the woman behind the desk was out of view.

  Suddenly, to his great delight, the screen unfroze. His character was still alive! He re-joined the battle, to the relief of “Spirit” who was getting his butt handed to him in the storm of creatures. Together, they stood a chance.

  His attention was once again focused on the screen, the outage already a distant memory.

  Another hour went by before he came back into awareness of what was happening in the real world. The lights were flashing as if the library was closing.

  Not how things were supposed to go.

  Without haste, he messaged Terrance in-game to let him know he had to drop out. The library was apparently shutting down early today. An expletive-laden tirade came back at him, suggesting he tell the library to stick something illicit in a dark orifice.

  With a chuckle, he stood up and stretched.

  Then the power went off, killing the dull fluorescents on the ceiling of the entire building along with everything else.

  His primary concern was that he was glad he exited the match cleanly. His character was safe in his stronghold until he returned to the game world tomorrow, next week, or next year. If the power went out while he was in battle, he would have lost all his loot and would have returned to his stronghold with nothing. It was a major downer to have to start from scratch.

  Instead of moving toward the exit, he texted Terrance an extended analysis of a portion of the adventure they'd just experienced. He looked forward to getting back together so he could check out some new weapons he'd picked up while they were fighting the beasts.

  When he hit send, he got another “network busy” message. He slammed his phone on the laminate table a bit harder than he wanted.

  This totally blows.

  Frustrated at the intrusions of the real world upon his game time, he stood up, grabbed his backpack containing the extra laptop he kept for those times when the library computers were filled with other patrons, and headed for the exit.

  When he arrived at the glass doors, he found the librarian on her feet, looking outward in silence.

  “Ma'am, what happened to the power? Is the libary—I mean library going to be open tomorrow?” he said with a chuckle.

  Turning around, she looked at him like he was crazy. Liam could see she'd been crying, an unmistakable puffiness combined with smeared makeup.

  “Don't you know what's going on?”

  “Yeah, the power went out,” he said matter-of-factly.

  “Not that. I mean with the city. With Ebola. With zombies.”

  He looked past her and her drama. Everything appeared normal; he really couldn't identify anything unusual in his field of view. He noticed nothing out of the ordinary when he walked in this morning, so he had no help there. And zombies? That was the craziest thing he'd ever heard. What would some librarian know about zombies?

  “I don't see anything unusual.”

  “Don't you listen to the news? NPR? Anything?”

  “My dad says NPR is run by the government so you can't trust anything they say.” He was content to believe his father on this point because the few times he did listen to NPR, he was bored to tears. His conclusion was anything that mind-numbing had to be propaganda.

  “Does your dad think the cable news, nightly news, and radio news is also propaganda.”

  “Well, actually—”

  “It doesn't matter. Do you have anyone taking care of you? Where are your parents? Can you get home from here?”

  He considered the many possible answers to those questions. He decided to keep his response as simple as he could.

  “I live with my grandma about thirty minutes from here.” He pointed in the direction he was going to walk.

  “You should take care of your grandma. Keep her from getting sick.”

  He looked again out the window and saw nothing to support the woman's claims. He saw the crazy look in her eyes, the smeared makeup, and her position in front of the door and absently wondered if she presented a threat to him.

  “My grandma is 104. She's probably sitting in her comfy chair right now knitting or crocheting or whatever it is old ladies do. I'm sure she's safe and sound—”

  And then to placate his strange captor, “—but I'll go check on her to be sure, thanks for the advice.”

  He stepped back as if waiting for her to let him out.

  She took the invitation, unlocked the door, and held it open. Once he was through, she stepped out as well, locked it, and then raced to the lone car on the lot. He heard her complain to herself about coming into work at all today. In moments, she jumped in her car and went speeding down the street, opposite of where he was heading.

  He was left scratching his head.

  In no particular hurry, he began his walk. Even with the freakishly distraught woman egging him home, he didn't see anything out of the ordinary in the neighborhood; she was plainly crazy. He put in his ear buds and was comforted by a rock song almost as old as his father—Supertramp's “Take The Long Way Home.”

  Too bad I can't go to my real home.

  He thought of Grandma. He had told the librarian the truth. He was absolutely cert
ain he knew what she was doing. The same thing she was always doing. The same thing she'd probably be doing until the day she died. Sitting in that stupid chair knitting, quilting, or whatever the heck she called it.

  In his mind, if she wasn't plugged into technology—even if she was technically doing something—she might as well be doing nothing.

  Walking back to Grandma's was a downer. He knew it meant the day would be spent in his dreary basement living quarters playing solo games on his laptop, reading, or listening to music. By no means would he spend the day on the same floor as Grandma and risk having to come up with things to say the whole time. Too much energy required. Just because he was on loan to her this summer didn't mean he had to be in her pocket the whole time.

  Ha! On loan. That's what his father called it. More like a prison sentence. A fifteen-year-old boy and his 104-year-old great-grandma had nothing in common as far as he could tell. Computers. The internet. Wi-Fi. Texting. He tried to explain all this to his technology-challenged grandma—he dispensed with the “great” in casual conversation—but she never seemed interested. Even showing her videos of fuzzy bunnies and cute little kittens evoked a “That's nice” but not much else in the way of conversation. He’d run out of ideas.

  He returned again to “Where's Liam?” She was a breath of fresh air compared to the inquisitions of his mom and dad. Where are you going? Who are you meeting there? Will there be girls? Drinking? Drugs? And on and on and on. The constant nagging was part of what drove him insane, and helped contribute to the massive fights he'd been having with them. No doubt it helped expedite his banishment to Grandma's. A cooling off period for everyone involved. It had already been a few weeks, and he still hadn't communicated with the ‘rents. It was fine with him. His biggest worry was that he'd have to see them both on his birthday in a few weeks.

  One day at a time.