THE DAMNED

by William Ollie

  He thought of Lila and Davey, the old black guy back in the ally and what his story might have been. Nothing good, judging by what Scott had so far seen and heard.

  Then there was The Devil’s Own. Who in the hell were they? Scott had never heard of them before, but then again, why would he? They didn’t exactly travel in the same circles. Scott went to work and came home, occasionally stopping off for beers and burgers with a friend or two in some upscale bar and grill. Who knew what kind of hell hole those thugs hung out at? Certainly nowhere Scott had ever been, nor anywhere he would ever want to go. Now he wondered if there was anywhere in the city he could venture without running into them.

  He turned onto an exit ramp and left the freeway behind him. Soon he would be home. Would Sandi be waiting for him there? Could it be possible that she had been hiding out in the house for seven long weeks, an emaciated survivor living on water and canned food, and now he would just waltz right in like some kind of celluloid-hero and make everything all right? If only this were a dream, or some kind of movie script. He could wake up, roll over and kiss his wife and get up and go to work, jump out of bed and go happily to the job he had so recently detested. But this wasn’t a dream, and no matter how hard he wished the nightmare away, he was stuck in it with no way out and nothing to do but go forward and hope for the best.

  Down the road he went, past the drug store and the McDonalds, the grocery store and the video rental place he and Sandi had spent many a Saturday afternoon browsing through on their way to yet another fun-filled night at the Freeman household. He entered the subdivision with a smile on his face—he couldn’t help it. After everything he had been through in this upside-down world of murder and madness, he was home, and whatever waited for him had to be better than what he had experienced yesterday.

  A curtain in the window of a house fluttered shut when he turned into his cul-de-sac, a brief illusion-like flicker of movement that caught the corner of his eye. He saw it, he was sure of it, someone drawn to the window by the roar of the motorcycle the same way he had gone to the window last night. He wondered how many people had heard him and ducked out of sight on his way past the drug store and the fast food joint. There had to be people out here in the world, people who did not want to be caught up in the violence and were hiding out in their homes, waiting for order to be restored. Or for the dreaded fist on the door that would herald the end of their miserable existence.

  Maybe Sandi was one of them.

  He sure hoped so.

  Scott pulled up to his house, cut the engine and balanced the bike on its kickstand. Then he dismounted and carried the shotgun up the walkway to the front door. He paused for a moment. He didn’t know what lay beyond that threshold. If the past eighteen or so hours had taught him anything, it was to err on the side of caution. He would not go running into the house, he couldn’t chance it. So he stood in front of the door, listening for some telltale noise: laughter or voices, footsteps. But heard nothing other than his own breathing. Then again, he wouldn’t hear anything, would he? Anyone inside would have been alerted by the rumbling of the Harley, and now would be hiding somewhere being as quiet as possible. He looked over his shoulder, up and down the street, and then back at the door. Finally, when he could take no more, he reached down and grabbed the doorknob. It didn’t surprise him when it twisted free and easy in his hand, but it did disappoint him, because he didn’t think his wife would leave the door unlocked if she was hiding somewhere within the house.

  He stepped inside, dropped the backpack to the floor and closed the door behind him. No one was in the living room and no one was in the dining room. No one was in the kitchen, either, or the hall bathroom. He checked the spare bedroom and found it to be empty, too. An icy ball of dread formed in his gut as he made his way to the master bedroom. Common sense told him she wasn’t there, that she had left long ago, or maybe she’d disappeared like all those people Warren had talked about, vanished off the face of the earth in the blink of an eye. But the knot in his stomach told him she just as easily could be in that room, like Lila, murdered and left to bleed out, a victim of a couple of scumbags like Rat-boy Warren and his puny sidekick. He opened the door, relieved to find the bed undisturbed, the covers unsoiled and the room empty. She wasn’t here, and that meant there was a chance she could be alive somewhere else.

  He was home, safe and sound and alone in his house—his house—miles from Rat-boy Warren and those psychotic bikers. He laid the shotgun on the bed and walked into the adjoining bathroom, stood in front of the mirror and tried the handle on the sink. “My God,” he said when the water splashed down. He cupped a handful and slapped it onto his face. It was cold, and it felt wonderful, and he cupped another handful and drank it down. He slid back the plastic ivory curtain and turned the shower on full blast. Scott was downright giddy when he came back into the bedroom and opened up his closet. He pulled out a pair of jeans and a dark blue shirt and tossed them onto the bed, slipped out of the shoulder harness and dropped it and Lila’s gun to the floor. Then he stripped off his clothes and went back into the bathroom, took a deep breath and stepped into the shower. The water that soaked him was frigid, but he didn’t care. He closed his eyes and was transported back to a day in his not too distant past. The electricity had gone off in the middle of the night and he had to shower and get his ass to work. He dressed and kissed his wife and hurried out the door, grabbed a biscuit and an orange juice at Mickey D’s and made his way to the office. It was an inconvenience, nothing more, and he would treat it as such now. Only now, it was not an inconvenience. Water—hot or cold—was a luxury, a majestic and magnificent blanket of pure unadulterated pleasure that carried him away from this dreary and bleak environment, back to a world he had shared with Sandi before a stupid decision on a sweltering hot August afternoon had taken it all away from him.

  He opened his eyes and grabbed a bottle of shampoo off a rack at the rear of the shower stall. Sandi’s stuff was on the rack, too: her razor and shampoo, conditioner and moisturizers and the round plastic scrubber she had always told Scott he should use but he never bothered trying. Sandi, where in God’s name are you? he wondered as he worked the shampoo into his scalp, lathered it up and began spreading it over the rest of his body. He could feel the scum washing off him—it felt great. He couldn’t wait to get into some clean clothes, some fresh socks and his own comfortable running shoes. The water washed over him as he stood under the shower nozzle. It wasn’t cold now—like a kid in a pool on a hot summer’s day, he had gotten used to it. It felt great and he didn’t want to get out. He smiled and closed his eyes.

  The snick-snack of a shotgun jerked his head around.

  The vague shape he saw through the downpour turned his knees to jelly.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “I’ll be damned.”

  It was his neighbor, Dennis, who said these words. He was standing in the doorway, pointing a shotgun directly at him. Scott turned the water off and Dennis lowered the weapon. He grabbed a towel, tossed it to Scott, and said, “Christ, I thought you were dead.”

  “Jesus, Dennis, you scared the shit out of me.”

  “You? Hell, I heard that motorcycle and thought those pricks were back.”

  “What pricks?”

  “C’mon. Dry off and throw some clothes on, get dressed and we’ll talk.”

  “Dennis… where’s Sandi?”

  “Dry off, man.”

  Dennis left the room and Scott dried himself. Then he wrapped the towel around his waist and went into the bedroom. He expected Dennis to be there, but he wasn’t, so he undraped himself and climbed into his jeans—the jeans hung loose on his narrow frame, but they were his, and it felt good to wear something that actually belonged to him. He slipped on his shirt and a fresh pair of socks, put on his old reliable Reebok running shoes and went back to the bathroom. He stood in front of the mirror, running a brush through his hair. Then he got out his razor and shaved, brushed his teeth with his own toothbrush
and turned off the water, stroked on some deodorant and left the bathroom. The shotgun was on the bed, the pistol on the floor. Scott grabbed the holstered weapon and carried it with him to the living room. Dennis was sitting on the couch with his shotgun leaning against his knee. He smiled when Scott entered the room, shook his head and said, “Man, I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”

  Scott took a seat across from Dennis, coiled the harness around the pistol and laid it in his lap. He stared at his neighbor for a long moment. He looked different, smaller. He’d dropped some weight, slimmed down considerably from his former robust self. But it wasn’t all good. He had a boozer’s bloodshot eyes and red nose, a nervous twitch of the hands. His blonde hair hung over the collar of his shirt, and he had a beard now. He was smiling, but there was something in those eyes of his, the same hollow look he’d seen in Lila and Davey; Warren, too. The same look he knew was floating around his own eyes, one of someone who had lost a part of themselves and had no idea of how to get it back. He wondered if Dennis’ wife and kids were waiting for him back at his house, (somehow Scott didn’t think they were) what he had seen these last seven weeks and if it could possibly be as bad as what Scott had witnessed since waking up in that godforsaken place yesterday afternoon. Mostly, though, he wondered about…

  “Sandi, Dennis… where is she?”

  “She’s gone, Scott. One day she was out in the yard and these four ugly fuckers rode up on Harleys, just like the one you rode in on. Snatched her up and hauled her outa here. About four weeks ago.”

  “You saw them?”

  Dennis gave his shoulders a shrug. “Heard the bikes and looked out the window. She never had a chance. They came roaring up the street, next thing you know they’ve got her and, well, she’s gone.”

  “Describe them.”

  “Why? You gonna track ‘em down? You?”

  “Just tell me what they looked like.”

  “Some kinda gang. You know, like one of those old seventies Hells Angels flicks. Some guy with jet-black hair slicked back over his shoulders looked like he was in charge—had one of those sleeveless black leather jackets on, tattoos up and down his arms, some kind of skull and crossbones on the back of his jacket. The others had denim jackets with the same shit on their backs. Huge motherfuckers, they were. But the other dude, he was in charge. He was running the show.”

  “Yeah, I think I’ve seen him before.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah, pretty sure I have.”

  “Listen, Scott…”

  “You saw them take her.”

  Dennis looked down at the floor. “Yeah,” he said.

  “You watched them take her, stood in your window and just—”

  “Just what? Yeah, I watched it happen. The fuck you think I should’a done, took on four Hells Angels and got myself killed in the process? I’m a computer programmer, not a cop. And where the fuck were you, anyway?”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah, you, ya brain dead fucker. You don’t think I know what happened with you? Ain’t my fault you were in some goddamn old folks home instead of here protecting your wife, laid up in a coma ‘cause you went road rage crazy on some poor bastard and he put a bullet in your head. You got yourself shot and you’re pissed at me?”

  “You’re right. I never should have put myself in that situation.” Scott sighed and shook his head. “It just happened so… fast.”

  “Yeah, fast, like those guys riding up on their bikes. Hell, they had her, by the time I looked out the window they were all over her. There wasn’t anything I could—”

  “I know, man. I’m sorry. It’s just…”

  “I know. I’m sorry, too. Believe me, there’s not a day goes by I don’t see the look on her face as they hauled her away. And I just stood there and watched her go.”

  Scott was sorry, sorry for losing his cool on the Interstate, sorry for attacking that guy—the wrong guy. If he could’ve taken it back he would have. He would have slowed down, cranked up the music and flowed along with the traffic. He could have taken his problems home to his wife instead of taking them out on some poor bastard who hadn’t done a thing to him. He would have been home with Sandi when whatever happened, happened, instead of lying in a hospital bed, dead to whatever was going on around him.

  “Dennis, what happened after I got shot?”

  “What do you remember?”

  “The weirdo on the radio, the black clouds racing across the sky, lightning and the gun in the guy’s hand; darkness and freaky dreams I couldn’t wake up from. Until I finally did wake up—yesterday, in a dark room with a bloated corpse in the bed next to me.”

  Dennis’ eyes grew wide. “You woke up in bed with a corpse?”

  “No, dipshit. It was in the bed next to mine.”

  “Damn, man. That’s fucked-up. But that’s the way things are now, the way they’ve been for a long time… I was at the office when that crazy-looking fucker appeared on my monitor, ranting and raving about the clouds and the lightning and the end of the world. But you already know about him, don’t you?”

  Scott nodded his answer, and Dennis continued, “I thought because he was on all the monitors it was some kind of whacked-out hacker attacking the network. But it wasn’t a hacker, and what he said came true. The lightning came and so did the fire. I stood at my window and watched the whole thing, lightning, striking people like God was up there hurling darts at them, fire raining down from the sky, just like that fucker said it would. Driverless cars rolling to a stop in the middle of the street. Mayhem, madness, people turning on each other like rabid dogs.

  “It was horrible, but it didn’t last long—thirty, forty-five minutes. Just long enough to fuck up the whole world. I called the house but Charlotte wasn’t there. I figured she’d gone to the school to get the girls, but I didn’t know for sure so I went there myself. Know what I found?”

  Scott said nothing. He sat there, waiting for the punch line, which, he was pretty sure, he already knew.

  “A shit-load of frantic teachers and angry parents running around trying to figure out what happened to half the goddamn children around there. Janie and Jennie weren’t there, Charlotte wasn’t, either. Sandi’s gone, Scott. So are my wife and daughters. I don’t know what we did to get left behind—well, I know what you did. You beat some poor bastard senseless for no reason at all. But what did I do? What did I do that was so bad my girls had to be taken from me?”

  Scott said nothing, because he didn’t know what to say. He had been asking himself that very question since coming to over at Park West. He didn’t have the answer, and doubted if anyone else did, either. Like his neighbor, stuck here without his loved ones, wondering what had happened to them and if he would ever see them again, Scott wondered if he would ever see Sandi again. But unlike Dennis who had no idea where his family had gone, or even if they still walked this earth, Scott knew his wife hadn’t disappeared, and that meant there was a chance—however slim it may have been—that he could find her and get her back. And that was what he intended to do. He would find Sandi and bring her back home, or die trying.

  “I’ve met a few people since I came out of my coma, one of them a circus freak who told me about some of what’s been going on since I got shot, said he was in the middle of a performance and half the audience just up and disappeared, vanished right in front of him. I thought he was okay until he tried to kill me. He said the day it happened the lights winked out and all the good people went away, all the animals, too.”

  “Well, not exactly. I mean, the power finally did go out, but that was three weeks into it. And there’s plenty of good people left, they’re just laying low, riding it out until the Cavalry shows up. And they will, eventually. It’s not the end of the world… yet. Animals? How would he know? Hell, we’re in the city. Ain’t like you’re gonna see a herd of cattle around here.”

  “A woman I met said she was on a bus and half the passengers disappeared, said it was some kind of biblical event.
She thought she was left behind because she was evil, but she wasn’t. She was a good person. Sure, she probably made some mistakes in her life, hell, who hasn’t? But she wasn’t evil, neither am I, or you, for that matter. We’re just regular people. We don’t deserve this shit.”

  “We don’t, huh? I said I didn’t know why my family was taken from me, but deep down inside I do know. When all this first started, the dark clouds and the lightning zapping people like it was targeting them, I thought we were being attacked by aliens. I really did. I thought the mother ship was blotting out the sun or something, and first contact was gonna be our last. But when I took off down the hallway and Edie Ryker told me old man Collins had disappeared right in front of her, I figured, well, there goes that bullshit theory. When I found out what happened at the school, I knew for sure it was bullshit. And now we’re in deep trouble, my friend... you, me, and everybody else left walking the planet.”

  Scott sighed. “Jesus,” he said.

  “Jesus, exactly! Let me ask you something, Scott. You ever go to church? You know your Bible? Do you have a personal relationship with the man whose name just crossed your lips? Are you a believer, Scott?”

  “Well, let’s see now: One—off and on when I was a kid. Two: No, not really. Ditto with the personal relationship thing, and, last but not least? I never really thought enough about it to even consider the idea.”