by Shane Staley
The man in the car screamed, a mournful sound that slowly faded into a crazy-man’s laugh. If he kept it up, he’d attract another horde.
Grady stopped in mid-swing. He considered this. If it was avoidable, he couldn’t allow another horde to come to his house. He might be discovered.
Still carrying his stick, he darted across the yard, easily avoiding the holes he’d dug in the earth. He stepped through the backdoor and crossed through the house. He jumped down the basement stairs. Sitting on the work bench amongst various tools, his rifle waited for him. He took it up and ascended the stairs.
Outside, he dashed to the bushes. In the moonlight, he could see the man moving through the shattered opening where the driver’s side window used to be, rocking slightly, his head back, mouth open.
The man moaned, then howled, an anguished sound.
Grady cocked his rifle, pointed it forward, and walked out into the street.
“Shut up...shut up...shut up…” he mumbled to himself.
The man in the car was beginning to turn his head down, flashing Grady a sardonic look, when the shot took the top of his head, cranium sheared away in a fractured spray.
III. GIRL
He is a child, stacking rocks in the yard out front, making towers, when a group of neighbor kids from up the street had come by.
“Whatcha doing?” Monica asks him.
“Nothing.”
“You wanna play ball with us?”
Grady, too shy to look Monica in the eyes, shakes his head.
“Whatever.” And Monica and the other kids stomp on their way.
A couple of hours later, they come back.
Grady has expanded his rock stacking, creating several pyramids and towers, a small city of structures made from the generic gray landscaping rocks.
“Still doing this?” Monica says, stopping, looking down at where Grady sits, the other kids behind him.
“Yeah,” Grady says, tossing a particularly round rock back and forth between his hands, avoiding eye contact.
“Why don’t you ever want to play with us?”
Grady doesn’t say anything.
Monica crosses her arms. The kids behind her come forward, crowding him, their shadows falling over his city.
“You’d rather do this shit,” Monica says. And then she kicks her foot out, smashing one of the pyramids.
“Don’t!” Grady says, trying to stand, but Monica shoves him back, falling to the sidewalk, catching himself on the palms of his hands, scraping the skin painfully.
The kids come forward, laughing and malicious. They smash his city, kicking and swiping the towers of carefully balanced rocks—hours of hard work—over with glee.
“No!” But there is nothing he can do.
“Are you gonna cry now?” Monica says. “Look, Grady’s gonna cry!”
Monica laughs. All the kids laugh at him.
His city destroyed, just rocks again in little piles, he watches the kids walking away, led by Monica, their pugnacious leader. He is unable to prevent the tears from welling up in his eyes and leaking down his face.
The rock he’s been playing with is still in his hand. It is hot and sweaty from his grip. He watches the kids leave—the backs of their exposed heads. He watches Monica’s head, her hair tied in a rough ponytail. Without another thought, he lifts himself, swings his arm, and throws the rock.
But he is a clumsy kid, not well-suited to activities involving precise hand-eye coordination—one of the reason he’s avoided sports in the first place—and the rock flies wide, striking this kid Marcus in the back. Marcus doesn’t even yelp, just turns around angrily, a murderous look in his eyes. Grady watches him motion to Monica and the others. Marcus says something, but the blood is beating so hard in Grady’s temples he isn’t able to hear the boy’s exact words.
Grady turns to run for the safety of his house.
* * *
The girl was outside again; he watched her from the bushes.
The girl wasn’t doing much, just sitting in the dirt, looking around dully. When a butterfly whisked about her for a moment, she turned her head to follow it. When the butterfly was gone, she stared straight ahead. She looked up at the sky, then back down again.
Grady glanced up and down the street: empty. He stepped out from the safety of the bushes. “Hello? Girl?”
The girl turned her head up to look at him as his shadow fell over her.
“What are you doing?” Grady asked.
The girl shrugged. “You wanna play?”
Grady kneeled down so he could watch the girl more directly. “Where are your parents?”
The girl blinked and met his eyes with her own, as if seeing him for the first time. “I’m not hungry anymore,” she said.
“That’s good. What’s your name?”
“Alice.”
“I’m Grady.”
Alice looked at the ground, disinterested, churned and dark.
“It’s not safe,” Grady said. “Come inside with me.”
Alice looked over at the crashed car a little further up the street. “He told me to kill myself,” she said.
“What? Who?”
Alice shrugged again.
“The man in the car? He was crazy. He was sick. Don’t listen to him.”
“He was my father.”
It was Grady’s turn to look away. “Sorry.”
“Whatever.”
“Come inside.”
* * *
Grady took Alice’s hand and led her across the street. The house loomed over them, somehow larger than the others on the street, although it was not, the sky gray and meaningless—bland—the vibrancy wrung from the world until it hung like an old and dirty dishrag.
Grady opened the door and tugged Alice inside. He closed the door and bolted it.
Alice looked up at him, her soft face and large eyes, her smooth and creamy skin despite the grime in her hair. “Do you have things to eat here?”
“Yes,” Grady said, opening the door that led into the basement, the wooden steps dry and dusty.
Alice descended the stairs without protest.
Grady led Alice to one corner, where he’d rolled out a rug, setup a small table and a chair, beneath the window and out of sight. Iron pipes jutted from the wall, cold and non-functioning. He left Alice standing by the table and walked over to the small utility closet, where various tools hung from a pegboard and other useful items were kept.
Alice didn’t say anything, just stood quietly, looking around.
“You’ll be safe down here,” Grady said, turning back with an ugly coil of rope in his hands.
Alice looked at the rope and then at Grady, unimpressed.
Grady walked over to Alice, dropped the rope, knelt, and began to tie one end around the ankle of one of the little girl’s feet. When that was done, he took the rope and measured the length he thought would work best, slid a knife from his belt and cut it. He tied it securely to one of the pipes. “This will have to do,” he said, “until I can find a chain.”
Alice walked over to her new chair and sat down.
“I’ll be back soon,” Grady said. “It’s nearly dark and I have work to do.”
Grady turned and looked at Alice. The girl was dressed in a t-shirt several sizes too large for her, falling to her knees like a dress; her feet were bare and black.
Grady turned and began up the stairs.
“My dad told me the Bearded Man is coming this way,” Alice said.
Grady froze in mid-step, his heart suddenly beating too fast. He climbed the last few steps, closed the basement door, and locked it.
* * *
His trepidation did not calm as he stood before the grounds of the backyard, staring, trying to breathe. It was like a miniaturized battlefield, one that had suffered numerous mortar bombardments, with blackened craters and seared earth. The moon was now a faint sliver, making it difficult to see where to plant his feet, one moment sinking in the spongy loam, the
next stumbling over a sunken hole. He had thought he knew the surface of the backyard better than that of his own skin, but now it looked different, unfamiliar. It was as if someone besides himself had also been digging, filling in his holes and digging others, confusing his approach. He was no longer sure where he had already looked for his soldiers and where he hadn’t.
Snatching the stick he kept leaning against the side of the house by the door, he attacked the soil. He no longer had time. Immediately, he was sweating. His hair hung limply in his face, his mouth dry, lips raw, jaw sore and tense. He dug furiously. Where were they? Why hadn’t he found them by now?
He wanted to be nowhere near when the Bearded Man arrived. The Bearded Man was said by most to be only rumor, but standing comfortably at the top of a blood-drenched hill, surrounded by razor wire strewn with bodies and the festering trenches where the rats lived, shrieking explosives and the clack-tacking of gunfire—stale breath and grit-filled nails—his beard like a midnight smudge and the heads of women tied by their hair dangling from the insides of his cloak, despite the haze and the smoke, Grady had seen him.
Grady brought the stick up, and then down. He had to find them. He dug and dug, dark soil spraying all about. He gritted his teeth and worked.
At some point, between that day as a child playing with his soldiers home sick from school and today, he’d lost something, a part of himself he longed to recapture, if only he could remember what it was.
IV. DREAMS
What had once been memories of war had become experiences muddled in his mind, confused with his dreams, until every night, he drifted into sleep plagued by things vivid, brutal and grotesque.
After the fighting, after the retreat, he staggered through the mists, yellowish, obscuring the rough terrain like a soft and buttery frosting, parting before him with each awkward step. The air tasted of wet metal and his clothes clung to his emaciated frame. Low sandbag walls loomed. Several times he had to descend into trenches and climb out the other side—one time his foot sunk into something soft and was thereafter soaked in blood.
There were some still alive, wounded soldiers moaning, with missing limbs and crushed spines, with wounds where skin had been torn like fabric—wet and crimson insides—some like festering internal ruptures. He passed by most without a second glance, knowing there was little he could do for them. For others, he stopped, to see what they had to say, but there was little sense he could garner from his efforts. “They’re coming… They’re coming…” one said over and over, as if the battle had yet to begin; and one said to tell his mother he loved her; and one said, “It was him! It was him!” And many begged for death.
When he discovered a man who seemed fairly lucid, he stopped for a few minutes, sitting in the rubble next to where the man laid. The man spoke of pale-faced soldiers, of an army in black, marching through towns and cities with impunity, killing all in their path. He spoke of the Bearded Man, of a leader known to laugh and tease his prisoners before he tortured and then killed them. The Bearded Man had once torn the jugular from a spy with his own teeth, and instead of spitting out the skin and gristle, had slowly chewed and eaten every bit of it, licking his bloody fingers until nothing remained. According to the Bearded Man, humanity was a resource, to be used and consumed for greater purpose, for greater gain.
For a time that passed before him like an ethereal veil, Grady walked. He heard it was the Bearded Man himself who had attacked them, that the tyrant was close. One soldier said it wasn’t too late, that the right assassin might end this madness. He heard a pestilence had been unleashed, that after the bombs had been dropped, humanity had been left vulnerable to things far more insidious than the simple paradigm of people killing people. There were reports of torture, executions, rape. It was said that many were acting as if possessed, as if the membrane between this world and Hell itself had been somehow punctured, and invisible demons now infested people’s mind’s, corrupted them, until they gathered into sickened hordes—or so the rumors persisted.
* * *
The next night, he joined a group of surviving soldiers huddled amongst a ruined bunker on the edge of the forest. This small patch of trees had somehow remained untouched by explosives, a sampling of the once dense woods that had covered the landscape for miles. The bunker, however, that had been built in the location for its properties of camouflage, had not fared as well, now little more than a charred concrete floor, it’s top having been blown into rubble—likely from a grenade tossed through one of the firing slits—scattered into the foliage, swallowed in the wet leaves and decaying moss.
The soldiers were clearly consumed by a numbing fear. They huddled about, defeated, their rifles clutched tightly. The shade from the trees gave them all a pallid look, graying skin, gaunt faces, ghostly; their expressions ones of shock, of disbelief: how am I still alive?
Grady came amongst them smiling. He was unafraid, confidence pulsing through him like a nourishing panacea. He addressed them. He told them that if they rallied and pressed the attack, they might yet end this horrific conflict. If they pushed through and killed the Bearded Man, they might yet restore some semblance of normality to the world.
Later, he couldn’t remember the exact words he spoke, but he knew they must have been glorious and inspiring because, one by one, the soldiers rose to their feet; they gripped their rifles and chanted his name.
* * *
On the other side of the network of trenches, there was another patch of forest and a road that led through it. Grady marched at the front of his company, head held high, wearing a grim expression as the trees closed over them.
The road appeared to have been designed for a pickup truck, twin wheel ruts with a foliage-covered hump between, now widened by larger vehicles of war and the marching of a thousand booted feet. The forest was dense, shadowy, impenetrable. He led and his soldiers followed.
As they came out into the midday light, Grady brought his company to a halt. Above, the sky was oddly vibrant, almost purple, as if freshly bruised, the sun a blistering forge. Below, an expansive field, a darker color, standing pools of thick crimson, severed body parts scattered to the horizon. Steam rose from the earth, sick, cloying.
Grady turned to give his soldiers a look, swallowed dryly, an audible click in his throat.
They descended the hill, slowly, trying not to look down at their squelching feet. They tread on limp hands, rough bones, slicks of flesh; flies only now gathered, buzzing lazily, glutted and plump; the dance of decay was beginning. Not long ago, many of these limbs had been warm, blood pumping through their veins—now spilled, mixing in the subtle depressions—a matter of minutes.
His soldiers were silent, but he could sense their trepidation. He lifted his foot and couldn’t help but to glance down as something broke beneath his next step—an eyeball, popping, ragged red strands still attached like deep-water plant life. He had to be courageous for them all. They were his soldiers and the Bearded Man was his enemy.
Slowly they became aware of a dull rumbling, like constant thunder rolling across the countryside. Dust rose in a cloud on the horizon, and an army came into view.
His soldiers came forward to join him. One of them, a boy with blonde hair leaking out the bottom of his green-tinted bowl helmet, gave him a nod. They unslung their rifles and began to march forward.
From the murk, several constructs emerged, trundling behemoths made from the scavenged pieces of many different machines, fused into skeletal structures like effigies—everywhere sharp points, bodies skewered, torn and hanging, human skin stretched tight into ragged pennants flapping in the wind; in one a great bell that tolled deeply as it moved, taken from an ancient church; in another, a furnace that glowed a dark and putrid purple. And the horde came through the smoke, with faces of shifting emotion, in black mismatched uniforms, wearing helmets of various shapes and sizes, taken from those they’d slain. And some carried rifles and pistols, although most contented themselves with blades of various degrees
; one with a bandolier of mismatched knives strapped across his chest; and one with a wicked scimitar; and several with scavenged blades tied wickedly to the end of pikes; and one with a large wheat-harvesting scythe, eager for the reaping of death.
They hollered and whooped; the marching sound of their feet and the creaking rumble of their machines, their faces, as they drew close, seeming to turn up in a collective smile. These were the truly damaged, minds rotted until they knew not fear, nor pity, nor mercy. The Bearded Man had only the most corrupted in his army, those no longer of individual mind.
“Wait,” Grady said, glancing at the blonde-haired boy next to him.
Something hissed and, even as he watched, the blonde-haired boy slumped forward, his face falling into the mud. Flame burst in gouts of heat to his right and a strange barbeque smell entered the air. Cracks of gunfire. The ground trembled. Blades gleamed and the sounds of metal on metal rang all about. The horde was fully upon them.
His soldiers fired their rifles as he fired his. The soldier to his left grunted and collapsed. Another screamed and clutched his face as fire consumed his skin. He watched another fight desperately against a swinging blade, parrying with his rifle. One soldier had dropped his rifle and was laughing, wandering aimlessly into the melee, cut down a moment later as an ax cleft his skull. Dust and smoke swirled in eddies, making it impossible to see. A scarred and leathery face with insane eyes loomed and Grady fired blindly and it fell away into the murk. Something struck him and he fell. He watched the blonde boy lift himself, only to be gutting through a moment later, a figure all in black taking the boy’s head for a trophy with a few grunting cuts.