by Sam Sisavath
Lara opened lazy eyes to the pitch-black darkness of her room and lifted her head from a heavily dog-eared copy of Pocket Medicine.
I need to get a Kindle version…
Blonde strands of hair fell across her face, and she blew at them, then sat very still and listened, wondering if she had actually imagined the sound of gunshots. Her mind wasn’t nearly creative enough to spend precious brain cells conjuring up non-existent sounds of violence. God knows she saw enough of it in real life; she didn’t need to go dreaming about it, too.
Her laptop was open in front of her, a dimmed screen saver featuring the cast of ER floating in the background, until she accidentally tapped the casing and Windows desktop flickered back on, the first source of light in the entire room for…
How long had she been asleep?
She glanced down at the clock on the laptop: 10:11 p.m.
Ten hours…
She had a throbbing headache, and her joints felt restless and tired at the same time.
How many melatonin pills had she taken? She only remembered one. Maybe two. It was hard to think at the moment.
Never again…
Lara forced herself to stand up, get the blood flowing again. She moved across the room to the window, taking her time with the short distance. She stepped over a backpack, its contents spilled out all over the place. She made a mental note to get rid of the two-day-old sandwich in the corner, which explained the smell.
She swiped at the curtains, wondering if Tracy had left any cans of Red Bull in the fridge. Red Bull was usually good to wash away melatonin-induced drowsiness. What were the chances of that, though? Miniscule. Tracy drank Red Bull like water.
Lara stared listlessly out the second floor window at the apartment complex across the street. She saw lights on behind a couple of windows, but most of them were dark. Which was unusual. The Eastside University Village Community had its own ebb and flow, distinct from the city around it, and you could find lights on at all hours of the night, seven days a week, but especially on the weekends. After-hours clubs were plentiful and popular around here.
She glanced down at the sidewalks, expecting to see the usual groups of college students coming and going, chatting aimlessly or buried in their smartphones. College students with social lives were the bane of her existence, a reminder that she should be out there, not in here with her face buried in her books. Tracy would be the first person to tell her that. Where was Tracy, anyway?
But there was no one down there at the moment. There were cars parked along the curbs as usual, but the streets were silent and empty. After ten on a Friday night. The very idea was absurd.
Where was everyone?
She let the curtains fall and crossed back to her desk. The walk seemed to take days, another side effect of her ten-hour ‘nap’.
Never again…
Riiiiiight.
She was halfway to her desk when she heard loud pounding from the living room. Like hammers raining long, rusted nails into her skull. She winced at the very idea and stood still, hoping the noise might go away if she ignored it.
It didn’t.
Lara hurried outside her bedroom, crossing the small living room space to the front door as the pounding got louder and faster.
Wait.
She began to slow down as her brain finally caught up with her legs.
It wasn’t Tracy. It couldn’t be. Her roommate had a key. And even if she had somehow lost it—not a stretch, as Tracy was already on her third copy—she wouldn’t be pounding on the door like that. Tracy was five-two and 100 pounds soaking wet. She couldn’t have generated that kind of force even if she threw her entire body into the door, which she wouldn’t do, even when drunk. Tracy buzzed when she drank, she didn’t bang.
And whoever was out there now was banging.
Lara slipped behind the window next to the door, pulled back the curtains, and peeked out to the right.
A man stood outside, knocking furiously on the door. Even from a side profile, with most of his body and face hidden from the lights that dotted the second floor walkway, she didn’t recognize him. He was tall, with wild, spiked hair, and he wore baggy cargo pants with a white T-shirt.
He suddenly looked over in her direction, and Lara quickly let the curtain drop from her fingers and stepped back.
Had he seen her? Probably not. She was safe.
The knocking at the door stopped abruptly and she breathed a sigh of relief. It didn’t last very long.
The knocking resumed—this time at the window.
Slick, Lara. Real slick.
She heard his voice, and it was impossible not to notice the desperation in it: “Open the door! Come on, I saw you. Open the fucking door!” As if he realized that approach wasn’t going to work, he suddenly shifted gears, and his voice got lower, softer, and less deranged: “Please, open the door. There are things out here, I need to get inside. You don’t understand, there are things out here!”
Lara didn’t answer. Maybe if she stayed perfectly quiet…
“I know you’re in there!” He was shouting again, the desperation back in his voice. “I saw you at the window! Please, open the door. I won’t hurt you, I promise. I just need to get inside. There are things out here, dangerous things. You have to let me in!”
He began pounding on the windowpane again, and Lara wondered how long before he actually punched his way through. She could tell he was big from the quick glimpse she had gotten—at least six feet tall—and it wouldn’t take much for him to break his way in. She had seen the aftermath of home invasions, and the idea of becoming another victim made her almost angry.
“I’m calling the police!” she shouted, trying to put as much courage into her voice as she could. She didn’t think it sounded all that convincing, but maybe it was enough.
“No, please, just open the door!” he shouted back. “You have to let me in! Please!”
Like hell I do.
She hurried across the living room to the cordless phone, picked it up, and dialed 9-1-1, keeping one eye on the window the whole time. She could see the man’s tall, silhouetted figure through the curtains.
“I’m calling the police now!”
He stopped pounding with her finger poised to push the final 1. For some reason, she didn’t go through with it. Maybe it was his voice—it sounded weaker than before, almost as if he had surrendered.
“Please, please, don’t call them. You don’t understand. I’ve been knocking on every door on this floor, and you’re the first one to even look out the window. I think everyone’s dead. Something’s happening. It’s all over the city. Please, I need to get out of the night. Please, can you hear me in there? You don’t understand, it’s bad out here, it’s bad…”
It’s a trick. Don’t be an idiot.
“I’m sorry,” she said, so softly that she wasn’t sure he had even heard, and pressed the final 1.
“No, no, please…”
The phone rang on the other end of the line, and as soon as she heard the call connecting, Lara said into the phone, “Hello, I’m at home—”
But she stopped when she realized the voice on the other end was a recorded message and it was talking over her:
“You have reached 9-1-1. We are currently experiencing a high volume of calls. If this is an emergency, please remain on the line.”
Sudden panic and indecision filled her. What now? She waited absently for something, some kind of direction from the computerized voice, maybe a beep to leave a message.
Something.
Instead, the recorded voice simply repeated itself: “You have reached 9-1-1. We are currently experiencing a high volume of calls. If this is an emergency, please remain on the line.”
Behind her, the man was still talking, his voice even lower now, more desperate if that was possible: “Please, please, you don’t understand, it’s happening everywhere, there are things out here… Please, for God’s sake, open the door. I’m begging you. God, I think I c
an hear them coming… Please. Please…”
He stopped talking, and there was only silence.
His silhouette had also disappeared.
Where did he go?
Lara took one step toward the door. “Hello? Are you still out there? You should know I already called the police. They’re coming any minute now.” She stopped and listened. “You better go before it’s too late!”
She waited for a response. Or at least sounds of fleeing footsteps.
There was silence.
The phone in her hand was still repeating the same computerized message.
Lara walked to the window. She took a second to make sure the door locks were still in place and the chain was still in its slot. Then she leaned toward the window, took hold of the curtain with two pinched fingers, and pulled it to the left, enough to look out without making it too obvious. She expected the man to suddenly lunge against the glass, the way masked killers did in horror movies.
It didn’t happen, and for a moment she felt almost disappointed.
She could only see the second floor walkway, with its metal guardrail seven feet away and a quiet Holman Street beyond that.
It’s so quiet. Where is everyone?
Then she heard it. It was a soft noise, but against the eerily quiet night, it stood out—an anomaly that demanded her attention. It sounded like slurping, like someone drinking.
She had to stand on tiptoes and look down before she saw it.
The man with the spiked hair hadn’t gone anywhere. He lay crumpled on the walkway below the windowsill, and someone was crouched next to him. Lara saw scraggly whiffs of blond hair clinging to a balding head, the pale flesh underneath wrinkled and pulled painfully tight. She was reminded of the cancer patients she visited every month at the hospital, how their hair would fall off after chemotherapy, how painfully pale and heartbreakingly sad they always looked.
The figure lifted its head, and Lara might have stopped breathing entirely. It looked at her with dark black eyes, cheeks so hollow she could see the sharp, smooth contour of its skull underneath. There was blood plastered over the lower half of its face, around its mouth. The mouth itself was grotesque, a crumbling cavern of black and yellow and crooked teeth.
She couldn’t tell if it was male or female, or maybe a combination—or neither—even though it wasn’t wearing clothes. There were no sex organs that she could see. No penis or breasts.
It didn’t look human.
Lara was used to seeing dead bodies, and this thing in front of her, perched over the man with spiked hair, looked like a corpse. But this “corpse” wasn’t dead. It was licking its lips at the sight of her. No, not at her, it was trying to get at the blood around the corners of its mouth, like a kid who had to have every last drop, taste every last sensation.
Just as quickly as it had seen her, it lost interest and went back to feeding on the man with spiked hair. The stranger who had been going up and down the second floor walkway knocking on apartment doors, hoping someone would help him get out of the night. He lay very still underneath her window, and Lara couldn’t tell if he was still alive.
“Please,” he had said, “for God’s sake, open the door. I’m begging you. God, I think I can hear them coming… Please. Please…”
Lara took a quick step back and ran to her bedroom.
She might have been screaming the entire time, but she couldn’t be certain. After all, how could you scream if you weren’t even breathing?
*
She paced in her bedroom in the dark for the next hour, caught between fear and anxiety and a desperate need to do something.
Anything.
She had tried calling 9-1-1 five more times since slamming her bedroom door shut, locking it, and shoving a chair underneath the doorknob—she had seen people do that in the movies. Each time she got the same damn recorded message telling her to stay on the line if she had an emergency. How many people were getting the same message tonight, and were they as terrified as she was at the thought that no help was coming?
Yes, I have an emergency. A stranger with spiked hair is being eaten outside my door at this very moment.
It was absurd. Just thinking about it made her want to laugh, but when she opened her mouth to, a wheezing sound came out instead.
At least the phones were still working. Her cellphone had no reception, which had never happened before. The Internet was also down, so she couldn’t get any news about what was going on outside her apartment. When was the last time the Internet was down? She couldn’t even remember.
And what had the man with spiked hair said? “I think everyone’s dead. Something’s happening. It’s all over the city.”
If that was citywide, that meant the police weren’t coming. They would have more to deal with than a medical student locked in her bedroom in the dark.
The silence was broken by screams from outside her window. She hurried across the room and peered out through the corner of the curtains, too scared to throw them open and look out.
Be smart. You have to be smart.
The first thing she noticed was the apartment complex next door—it was pitch-black. The same windows she had seen lights on earlier were now bathed in darkness, and Lara swore she could see silhouetted figures moving behind some of them. It occurred to her that they too might be hiding, peering out of their windows, too afraid to make themselves known. Maybe strangers with weird hair had been banging on their doors, shouting ludicrous stories, too.
She couldn’t locate where the screams had come from, though she was certain she had heard it. Hadn’t she?
Maybe…
Sudden movement from below drew her eyes. A dark figure darted along the sidewalk below her. It was a woman, her hair flowing wildly behind her, eyes darting left and right, holding something small and shiny in her right hand. A knife? She ran across the sidewalk, moving fast, showing off an athlete’s gait.
Where are you going? Why are you in the streets? Don’t you know what’s out there…in the dark?
The woman vanished down the street.
Run. Run as fast as you can…
Lara remained at the window looking out, careful not to be seen, scanning the streets and windows for signs of others hiding. She wasn’t sure how long she stood there, unmoving. Maybe only a few minutes. Maybe half an hour. She couldn’t be sure, because she was transfixed.
By the city. By the stillness of it.
Houston was a city of at least two million people, and she had never seen it like this in her life.
There was nothing out there. There was just the silence.
Lara thought of her parents, in their home back in the Woodlands. They would be asleep by now. Did they know what was happening? Were they thinking about her, too? She remembered how they had argued about her going to medical school.
So long ago now. So pointless…
A song by R.E.M. popped into her head. She couldn’t remember the lyrics. Something about the end of the world.
She smiled despite herself. A line from an old song from decades ago. Her friends would make fun of her if they knew she listened to alternative music from the ’90s. It was all pop and Rihanna and rappers with grills for teeth.
Were other people out there having the same pointless, inane thoughts at this very moment? Were they trying desperately to talk themselves into something resembling calmness?
Somewhere in the dark distance, she heard what sounded like gunshots.
She listened, trying to recapture the sound, but it was gone.
There was just the silence again.
How did that R.E.M. song go again…?
CHAPTER 6
WILL
Peeks died sometime around eleven. Maybe. Will had lost track of time around the third wave of ghouls. They kept coming, and there seemed to be more urgency to their attacks in the aftermath of Will’s killing of the ghoul with the cross.
After turning the events over in his head, Will decided it wasn’t the cross t
hat was doing all the damage, it was the silver along the edges. Where bullets only annoyed them and knives pissed them off, stabbing them with the point of the cross sent them into a frenzy. As long as the silver spilled blood, they died almost instantly. It was the kind of wild, from-the-ethers logic—if you could even call it that—he would have scoffed at a day ago.
Danny wanted to test the theory out. So he fashioned a cross out of their knives and used it to stab at the ghouls. The creatures shook off his blows, even when the knife skewered an eye and went out the back of one ghoul’s skull. It kept coming. When Danny finally stabbed it in the forehead with the cross, it shrieked and fell and died.
“Okay, it’s probably the silver,” Danny said, and kicked the jerry-rigged knife until it skidded across the apartment and vanished into darkness.
“Told you,” Will said.
“Don’t rub it in.”
“Just saying.”
“What are you, twelve?”
They didn’t spend any more time on it beyond that. Will was not religious—and neither was Danny, for that matter—nor given to pontificating about things he couldn’t explain with a sentence or two. He was soldier, a grunt when you got right down to it. In the absence of someone smarter, someone with insight, the ghouls being fatally susceptible to silver was as good an explanation as any.
They were knee-deep in dead ghouls, with about two dozen of the things spread across the hallway and living room.
And yet, they kept coming.
And Will and Danny kept killing them.
The ghouls attacked in waves, one after another, coming through the windows and the door at almost the same time. A coordinated attack, he was sure of it.
Organized and disciplined, was the thought that kept running through his head all night. The ghouls gave off the impression of being rabid and wild, when the truth was very different. They were aimed, he concluded, unleashed at very specific targets. That bulls eye being him and Danny at the moment.
Then, without warning, they stopped.
Will was at the door, while Danny kept watch on the window on the other side of the room. The door was gone, obliterated, the doorframe covered in blood and thick patches of dark liquid that Will wasn’t quite sure was blood. It certainly didn’t look like any blood he had ever seen, and he had seen more than his share. Not that he could really tell for sure in the semidarkness, with only the moonlight from the window to break the monotony of shadows.