by Sam Sisavath
But he didn’t seem to, because he didn’t move.
She knocked again, and this time louder. He turned, looking around him. Wondering, probably, what he had heard.
She knocked a third time, even louder still.
That did it. The man glanced up in her direction. Afraid he couldn’t see her, Lara brushed the curtain aside just enough to reveal herself.
He looked straight at her.
Lara wasn’t sure what to do next. She looked down at him and met his eyes. He smiled and spread his hands, palms up, as if to say, “Now what?”
Good question.
Lara traced the number 214 in the air with her fingers a few times. He watched her carefully, then mouthed the words, “214” back at her. She nodded quickly.
He was suddenly on his feet and racing across the street, toward her apartment. She watched him for as long as she could until he disappeared underneath her window.
Stupid, Lara. This is so stupid.
She hurried to her bedroom door and wrestled free the chair underneath the doorknob. Adrenaline coursed through her, though she wasn’t sure if it was from anticipation or fear—probably both. She opened the door as quietly as possible, then peered out, one hand on the doorknob ready to slam it shut again if there was something—anything—out there.
There was only darkness.
She moved as quietly through the living room as she dared, reminding herself what she had heard below her only hours ago. She used what little moonlight there was from the window as a guide. It was barely enough.
She was halfway across the room when she heard the doorknob twisting, and for a split second she turned to run back to the bedroom.
Stop! her mind screamed. It’s him!
Her heart was still racing uncontrollably in her chest when she crossed to the window and quickly pulled aside the curtain to glance toward the door.
The young man in the white shirt and black slacks was waiting anxiously outside her door, glancing around him. Without the walkway lights, he looked foreboding and dangerous, and a part of her screamed that this was unwise, that opening the door was stupid, and what the hell was she thinking?
She fought through her fears and unlocked the door to let him in. As he moved past her, she could almost hear his heart racing in his chest.
At least it’s not just me.
She closed the door as softly as she could and locked it. First the doorknob, then the deadbolt above it. She stepped back and looked at him.
He was older than she had initially thought, though not by much. Dark brown eyes looked back at her while he crouched over at the waist, catching his breath. “Thanks. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t let me in.”
“Sure,” she said, and an image of the man with spiked hair flashed across her mind again. He was forever ingrained in her memory, a guilt she wasn’t going to be able to purge for a long time, if ever.
The man pushed himself from the wall, walked over to the couch, and sat down heavily. He leaned forward and ran his fingers through brown curly hair.
She walked over and sat in an armchair across from him. “What’s happening out there? The lights don’t work. When did they go out?”
“You don’t know?” He was talking in a low voice.
She shook her head. “I fell asleep around midnight. The lights were still on then.”
“They went out around two o’clock.” He looked down at his wristwatch. “I don’t know what happened. One at a time, the lights started going out. Couldn’t have taken more than a few minutes. City just went dark.”
“Is it terrorists?”
“Hell no,” he said with absolute certainty. “It’s not terrorists. Nothing like that. I’ve seen things…” He shook his head and looked at her, as if trying to decide if he should tell her. “I don’t even know how to describe it. People die…then they come back, except they’re not the same. Sometimes they don’t even die. They get bitten and…just like that,” he snapped his fingers, “they’re one of those things.”
“What are they? Those ‘things’?”
He shook his head, trying to find the right words. “My roommate was attacked by this… I don’t know…it had black, wrinkled skin…”
“I’ve seen it…”
He nodded. “It’s not natural, right?”
“I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Yeah, me neither.”
“What happened to your roommate?” she asked.
“He turned into one of those things. After he was bitten. I mean, I hit this thing with a pipe and it just…sort of shrugged it off. But I managed to get it out of the apartment. But Ed… Ed was gone. I don’t know when. I was sitting there with him trying to figure it out when he suddenly tried to bite me. I could tell it wasn’t him anymore, you know? I could just tell. It wasn’t Ed. Not anymore.”
He shivered in the dark.
“I barely got away,” he continued. “I’ve been running since. It started long before that. We got texts telling us shit was happening all over the city. It was all over the news, the Internet—everywhere. It started about five-thirty, I think. All I know is that as soon as it got dark—boom! Like a bomb went off. They were everywhere. Everywhere.” He stopped and leaned toward her. “You didn’t see it?”
“I was asleep,” she said, almost embarrassed. “I’ve been having problems sleeping, so I took some pills. I might have taken more than one.”
“You’re lucky. You don’t want to see what I’ve seen.” He looked toward the window. “It got really quiet real quick after that first initial burst of attacks. I think people realized what was happening and started hiding. It got so quiet. I was hiding, too, until a few hours ago when I heard a couple of them moving around me. I took off and ended up here.”
“I don’t see anything out there…”
“They’re out there, just not in the same numbers. In the last place I was hiding, I saw a whole army of them moving along the highway, heading out of the city.”
“Out of the city?”
“Yeah. It’s like they took the city, now they’re fanning out. I dunno.”
“Into the countryside?”
“Yeah,” he said, his voice drifting off slightly.
“Does your phone work?” she asked, remembering her battery-drained iPhone.
He fished a cellphone out of his pocket. It was an Android with a Houston Cougars cover on the back. He powered it up from sleep mode and shook his head. “No signal. Bars went dead around seven. Internet went down about the same time.”
Lara looked toward the window. “My roommate’s out there somewhere. I don’t even know if she’s still alive.”
“You don’t want to be caught out there. Most of them are gone, but there are still a lot of them in the dark.”
“Where’s your building?”
“Holman and Adair. You know it?”
She nodded. There were three student housing buildings a couple of streets down from hers. The entire street was filled with students, thanks to its proximity to the University of Houston campus.
“By the way,” he said, “I’m Tony.”
“Lara.”
“Nice to meet you, Lara.”
“Yeah, you too.”
“Thanks for saving my life.”
“You’re welcome.”
At least I managed to save someone tonight.
Tony’s head snapped back to the window and he said in a quick, low voice, “Get down!”
He leaped off the couch and pressed down on the floor. Lara, on instinct, did the same thing next to the coffee table as the dark silhouette moved across the curtain.
The figure stopped at the window and turned its head, trying to look in. It was small and hunched over. A thin frame, almost skeletal, pressed against the window. The outline of a sharp head and pointy chin looked exaggerated in silhouette form.
She glanced at Tony. He put a finger to his lips, his other hand pressed down on the carpet as if getti
ng ready to jump back up. She nodded and didn’t move, but almost let out an involuntary gasp when a second shadow appeared at the window.
She was struck by how unnaturally they moved. The way they turned their heads and arched them forward and up, then forward and down, reminding her of Velociraptor dinosaurs. Though they moved on two legs, there was nothing human about them. At least, not anymore. She couldn’t hear voices; they seemed to be communicating without sounds.
Then they were gone, moving past the window in the same way they had first appeared—without making any noise.
Tony didn’t move right away and, as a result, Lara didn’t either. He still looked coiled, ready to spring.
He finally pushed himself from the floor and sat against the couch. He said in a low voice, “You okay?”
She nodded and, following his example, sat on the floor with her back against the chair. “What should we do?”
“I don’t know. Keep trying to survive, I guess.” He glanced at his watch again. “It’ll be daylight in three hours.”
“You think it’ll be better when the sun comes up?”
“I don’t know. I’m hoping it will.”
“What do you base that on?”
“They didn’t come out until it got dark. Maybe that’s part of it. I don’t know. I’m just spitballing.”
She nodded. “It’s more than I have.”
He was staring at her with an almost curious look.
“What?” she said, a bit annoyed.
“You really slept through most of this?”
“Yes.”
“Damn,” he said, smiling, “it must have been a hell of a nap.”
*
Tony went to the Bauer College of Business at UH and was nine credits short of graduating. He had started school late, having gone to work right after high school and not even bothering to take his entrance exams until he was twenty. He was twenty-four now—just one year younger than Lara, which surprised her because he looked older—and he wasn’t even sure if a bachelor’s degree was going to be all that useful.
“My dad runs an auto body shop along the 610 and 290,” he said, referring to two of Houston’s busier freeways. “I’m supposed to take over one of these days.”
“You don’t sound as if you’re looking forward to it,” she said.
They were inside the kitchen, sitting on the cold floor tiles, eating melted ice cream and fruit and washing them down with bottled water. They were still talking in low voices, going quiet every time they thought they heard movement from the walkway outside. It was almost 3:00 a.m., three more hours until sunup. Lara hoped he was right, that daylight would bring salvation. It was almost too much to hope for, but what else did she have?
“Not really,” Tony said, “but it’s my dad, so it’s not like I have a choice.”
“Have you told him?”
“Tell my dad I don’t want the family business?” Tony grinned at her in the dark. “You don’t know my dad.”
He drifted off. Was he thinking about family and friends like she was? Where was Tracy now? Somewhere still out there, maybe hiding in someone’s apartment the way Tony was hiding in hers. Maybe dead in an alleyway. She thought about her parents, her childhood friends, all the people she knew. All the people she once knew…
“Did you call your parents?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Never got the chance.”
“Maybe he’s fine. Your father.”
He nodded. “He’s pretty tough. If anyone can make it through this, I’d put money on him. You know that he taught himself how to fix cars? He couldn’t even speak English when he started working at a neighbor’s garage.”
“He sounds like an amazing man.”
“When the power comes back, I’ll call him and we’ll arrange a meet.”
“You have that kind of pull?” she asked with a smile.
“Absolutely,” he said, smiling back.
He went quiet, his expression frozen, and she instantly knew why. She looked over at the window and saw another one of the creatures trying to peer into the apartment.
Go away. There’s nothing to see here.
They didn’t move for a long time, not until the creature finally turned its head and crept off.
“How many does that make now?” she asked, her voice barely audible.
“Seven,” Tony whispered back.
“How many did you see out there?”
“A lot.”
They sat quietly again.
“How many Twitter followers do you have?” Tony asked.
“Twitter?” She didn’t know how quite to respond. “I deleted my account two years ago. Why?”
“I have 229,” he said. “I’m just wondering how many of them are still alive…”
CHAPTER 8
WILL
They started dozing off and had to take turns waking each other up, so at least one of them could stay awake at all times. The ghouls hadn’t attacked again, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t change their minds. They had done it before.
Around four in the morning, Will opened his eyes to Danny’s voice coming from the other side of the world. “You got any ideas?”
“What?” He struggled to sit up, chasing away the incessant drowsiness. “What did you say?”
“About these things. You got a theory or something?”
“Not really, no.”
“Oh come on. I know you have a theory. You always have theories. That’s why you’re you and I’m me. I provide the jokes and good looks, and you bring the theories. It’s what you do.”
“It’s what I do?” Will grinned back at him.
“Yeah, exactly. So what’s your theory? What the fuck are these things? Where did they come from? And more importantly, how am I going to survive this fucking night? All those fine ladies at the bars aren’t going to pick up themselves, you know.”
It was a good question. Will had been thinking about it for the last few hours, and the same question kept coming up.
Why board the windows? Every window? What was the point?
Why?
It all came back to that: Why?
“I’ll tell you when the sun comes up,” Will said.
“Fuck you, we’ll probably die before then.”
“They haven’t attacked in over four hours. Why would they start now?”
Danny thought about it. “Good point. Maybe we’ll survive this, after all.”
“That’s it. Keep thinking good thoughts.”
“Hey, you know me—Captain Optimism.”
*
The sun reappeared at exactly 6:50 a.m., its presence announced by a bright ocean of orange and white smearing across the Houston skyline like the hands of God. Will didn’t think he had ever seen anything so beautiful in his life when the sunlight reached through the open window and spidered across the filthy carpeting, even filthier now that he could actually see all the dirt and refuse of humanity that clung to it.
He thought the night had prepared him for everything, but he was wrong.
When the sunlight touched one of the dead ghouls on the floor, the black skin, which was shriveled like tanned leather, turned instantly white. Then it seemed to come unglued at a molecular level and evaporated, leaving behind just bones in a swirl of cigarette ash-like white substance on the floor. A gust of wind brushed the window, snatched up the ashes, and scattered them into nothingness.
“Are you seeing this?” Will asked.
“Yeah,” Danny said, sitting with his mouth open across the room. “But I don’t believe it.”
“Even after last night?”
“Yeah, well…” He stopped talking. Danny at a loss for words was something to behold.
By the time the sun had completely engulfed the room, the ghouls that lay between Will and Danny had been reduced to nothing but clouds of white powder and piles of bones. Peeks was also gone, leaving behind his uniform, boots, ammo pouches, and wisps of his hair in the breeze. There was a
stinging, acrid smell in the air that hadn’t been there before.
Will stood up and rushed across to the window. The police vehicles were still there. Under the luster of sunlight, thick patches of dry blood dotted the streets and sidewalks and were smeared across windows inside apartment buildings across the street. To his left, in the distance, the skyscrapers over Downtown that used to look elephantine in the daylight now looked worn down by time and brittle.
But it wasn’t what Will saw that made his mind spin, grabbing for answers that weren’t there. It was what he couldn’t see.
Where are the ghouls?
He couldn’t find a single one of them anywhere on the street or in the buildings around him. Instead, he saw something else that hadn’t been there last night—blankets, sheets, and objects covering the windows of the apartment buildings and storefronts wherever he looked.
Like the Wilshire Apartments when we arrived. They’ve spread out. They’ve taken over other buildings. Covering up the windows because…of the sun.
Will looked back at the ashes that still swirled around in the room.
Because the sun is not their friend.
“So now we know why they covered up all the windows,” Danny said. “The sun.”
“Yeah. The sun.” He remembered something else. “Can you get reception?”
Danny took out his phone and held it outside the window. The phone didn’t show any bars, and Internet service was down. “Jack shit, and Jack doesn’t even have the courtesy to answer the phone.”
“Power’s down, cellphone towers are down, but the satellites are probably still working.” Will looked up at the sky as if he could see them orbiting up there. “Of course, if the towers don’t have power, satellites are useless.”
“How do you know all this stuff?”
“I read.”
“Forget I asked.” He leaned out the window and looked down at the streets, then at the buildings across from them. “You see it?”
“Yeah, the sheets.”
“Maybe they all migrated, and they’re not waiting for us to walk outside this door. Possible?”