After Midnight

by Joseph Rubas

  The man collapsed next to the glorious fire in a sore, aching heap. For a time he faced the lobby door, through which he could see the scarred hillside across the rocky river. He thought of barricading the door against passing highwaymen, but the chances of him getting up were morbidly slim.

  His back had become unbearably warm, but he didn’t have the energy to shift his weight. He only stared at the unchanging milky sky, half hoping to see an airplane approaching. What good were those dammed North Koreans if they couldn’t finish the job?

  Occasionally he barked from deep in his chest, unable and unwilling to keep the globs of bloody phlegm from flying past his chapped lips and into the gathering gloom. God alone knew what he had. Nothing positive, apparently; but what was new? Even before the war things had been awful. Things had been downhill from the moment of his birth. Then again, back in the old days there had been homeless shelters and charities.

  For an insufferable moment, waves of nostalgic memories washed over him, intensifying the perpetual ache in his heart. He never thought he would, but he desperately missed the days when everybody sagged their pants and wore their hats crooked. He smiled, or rather grimaced fondly, when he thought of Simon Cowell and Miley Cyrus. Rihanna on the radio; Two and a Half Men on Primetime; Barack Obama in the White House. Had there really been things called X-boxes once? Did plasma screen TVs and Glenn Beck really exist? God, had it really been only three years?

  Refusing to delve further into the hazily dubious past, too exhausted to speculate on mythical creatures such as Democrats and Republicans, the man found the power to roll over toward the fire, and closed his aching eyes.

  It might have been dawn, or it could have been noon, when he awoke shivering. The fire had burnt down to embers. He set off in search of more fuel, and found a type of law library near the stairwell. He lugged several thick tomes back to the fire and heaped them on like a Gestapo agent. He warmed himself, and broke out into a coughing fit, which terribly pained his raw throat. He nibbled a bit of generic hardtack and drained warm water from his thermos.

  He left the blaze burning, half-hoping for wanton destruction. He put the town to his back and hiked up U.S. 12, which ascended into the mountains east of town. Going up, he found a Winnebago on the dusty shoulder of the highway. Inside, save for a pile of small bones in a car seat (which caused an ache in the man’s chest and a revolt in his stomach), and a three-year-old can of Pepsi, it contained nothing remarkable.

  Near the summit, feeling pangs of stabbing hunger, he rested upon a large roadside boulder and ate his last can of peas; his last can of food. His knapsack was painfully light.

  Continuing, he hacked and barked, producing bloody phlegm which he spat onto the road. At the windy summit, he found a stalled Honda on the gravel shoulder, a skeleton in tattered rags lying on the pavement nearby.

  He climbed in with a long grunt, the agony in his feet relenting a bit. For nearly an hour he sat there in silence, hacking and gazing at the bronze crucifix hanging from the rearview mirror.

  He staggered down the other side as dusk began to pool in the shallower regions. A roadside rib joint sat in tall grass at the base. Several cars and trucks sat in the dusty parking-lot, but neither they nor the restaurant harbored any corpses.

  He built a fire using bits of table and chair, but he couldn’t shake the chill from his bones. He shivered and coughed; more bloody phlegm. He dragged himself a mile down the road and found an L-shaped motel at a three way country intersection. He painfully searched three rooms along the concrete promenade before he found one with sheets.

  He collapsed onto the lumpy bed and forced himself to check the roadmap. He was still dishearteningly close to the city in the hill country. Fifty miles east would bring him to the sandy coast; fifty to the west would take him into yet another city.

  He carefully studied the map, looking into both possible directions, before the shocking realization hit him: he was dying; he had tuberculosis and he was dying.

  After that, he cast the map aside and lay on the bed, held in the grip of dark, hopeless depression. He was only slightly frightened; he was going to stride into the unknown shortly, but he didn’t really care about dying. What was there to stick around for? There were no Navy destroyers off the coast in the gray waters of the Atlantic, waiting to unload cargo and give aid. They hadn’t been there for three years if they’d ever been there at all. And in the distant city he would find nothing but more of the same: refugees, gang members, and death.

  If he was to die anyway, why worry about eating or looking for help? Hell, why wait?

  The man sedately dug in his knapsack and finally, arm quivering, he withdrew the .357. He weakly pressed the gun to the underside of his chin, closed his watery eyes, and gritted his teeth.

  He lay there for a long time.

  The Dark Works of Justin Delacroix

  No one would say that Justin Delacroix was sane, at least, not anyone normal. The man was a pervert; all you have to do is look at his artwork to know that. Sure, the hippies and radical yippies were enamored with his “The Minister” which depicted a pastor in a sunlit office receiving oral sex from a choirgirl, but they recoiled at “The Counterculture” in which demons with picket signs and shaggy hair crowded a city street, and were further scandalized by “April 4.” Only a despicable creature would paint a haloed James Earl Ray slaying a horned and fanged Martin Luther King as the glorious light of heaven shines down upon skull-faced Nazi soldiers.

  And a despicable creature Justin Delacroix was.

  I had the misfortune of knowing him firsthand. I was a young art major at Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg when I met him at a party on campus. It was the spring of 1968, and Delacroix (in theory) was a fascinating figure. In practice, he was, to be blunt, a creep. When I was introduced to him, he was sitting on a couch in a darkened corner, a fat doobie hanging from his thin lips. He wore all black (even his John Lennon glasses were the color of pitch) and grinned evilly as I shook his hand: it was cold and bony, as if he were nothing but a cadaver. The air around him was thick with ungodliness, and after only ten minutes in his presence, my stomach and head were reeling.

  I cannot exactly remember what we said to each other, but I remember being alternately appalled and fascinated. The man was terrible, but his dark whispers, theories, and views were strangely intriguing.

  So intrigued was I, that I accepted Delacroix’s invitation to tour his studio the following Friday.

  All that week, I anticipated the meeting. On the appointed day, I left my dorm close to midnight and walked across the darkened city. Delacroix’s loft was along the Rappahannock in an otherwise abandoned building on Amela Street. He welcomed me with that same evil smirk and led me to his studio, which sat in a small corner of the vast and dust-coated basement. I didn’t realize that he was speaking to me until he laughed, a high, hyena-like titter.

  “...Something about you, Burton; I feel that I can show you my true work!”

  Those words sent a pang of exhilarated revulsion into my soul. He was going to show me his “true” work. What does that consist of?

  In a word, bodies, brown, gray, decomposing corpses arranged in the most gruesome positions. There, near the ancient boiler, was a decaying thing (man or woman I couldn’t tell) bent before another; the act simulated was sexual and unconsecrated. And then here, close to a boarded over window, was a child-sized mummy holding a spoiled fetus, a look of otherworldly hunger on the former’s face. The only light in the dank, unhallowed chamber spilled weakly from a desk lamp, but, I could sense more of them nonetheless. They were everywhere, all around me like an army of the walking dead.

  Delacroix looked smugly at me, a master preening over his greatest works. “What you see is real, my friend. Each one of these sculptures was made using authentic parts appropriated from local, homegrown cemeteries.”

  You’re mad! I nearly cried, but didn’t dare. I think I told him he was a genius.

  I must hav
e said something to that effect, for I remember him laughing and clapping my back. “I like you, Burton. Let me show you how it’s done.”

  And he did. For nearly six horrid hours, he painstakingly crafted a “sculpture” using...parts and chickenwire. As dawn began creeping through the shadows, it was finished: a woman, legs spread too widely apart, giving birth to an adult-sized skull. Delacroix was pleased with his awful statue, and detained me just long enough to have a drink of wine, wine that tasted like blood.

  “I’d like you to come back sometime, Burton; maybe you can accompany me on a parts run.”

  I nodded and then staggered dazedly back to my rooms. Thankfully, though I didn’t know it then, I would never see Justin Delacroix again, for one week later, he was murdered.

  It was in every paper from New York to San Francisco, but the details released were vague and minuscule. All that I knew for years was that he had been found in his apartment by a police officer investigating a report of “deathly screams.” The murder was “ritualistic” in nature, and was blamed on a cult that operated in Bowling Green at the time.

  Had it stayed at that, I would have been fine; I would have ignored my own wild suspicions and eventually gotten over it. But as fate would have it, I wound up marrying a woman whose brother was one of the officers on scene that gruesome day. I didn’t learn this until 1978, after his sister and I had been together nearly four years, and I didn’t gather the courage to ask him about it until 1981.

  What he told me nearly sent me into near hysterics. It was just what I had imagined! For years I told myself that I had read too much Lovecraft as a boy and that his tales had affected my outlook. But I was right! Justin Delacroix was found strung up, braced by a frame of chickenwire. His limbs had been removed.

  And all around him, arms outstretched, as if eager to add their own touch to the macabre scene, were his true works.

  An Island Christmas

  Tommy Howser looked dejectedly down at his bare feet, toes buried in the soft, white sand. I miss Virginia,” he said with a heavy sigh. Bob put his arm around his shoulder and drew him close.

  “I know you do. I do too. We’ll go back. One day.”

  Carol Rogers, who sat on Tommy’s right, frowned, her warm brown eyes troubled. Homesick she mouthed, and Bob nodded. He probably missed his family, too. He knew he missed his. There was something about this time of year that sharpened grief, made it much keener, much more profound.

  Tommy sighed again. “When?”

  Bob bit his lower lip. He’d been wondering the same thing since they arrived on Cabo San de Luca in June. How long would it take to peter out? Surely not more than a year. Then again, back in February he was certain that it would be over in two, three months at the most, yet the last time he and Pablo sailed to the mainland, the dead still walked, and walked quite well at that.

  How in the name of God? he’d asked himself. Why aren’t they rotting?

  “Soon, honey,” Carol answered. “Just a couple more weeks.”

  Tommy didn’t reply.

  Bob shot a glance at Carol, who shrugged. He’d told her time and again not to give the boy false hope. He needed something to hold onto, sure, but telling him it would only be a few weeks was...well, it was cruel. It was cruel back in June, and it was cruel today, the twenty-first of December. No wonder he didn’t trust anything they said. Bob wouldn’t either.

  “You know,” Bob said, looking out at the clear blue Pacific, “I was thinking. I was up late last night and I’m really tired. Why don’t you help Pablo with the boat?”

  For the first time, Tommy looked up, squinting against the bright tropical sun. “Really? Me?”

  Behind him, Carol glowered. Since they found Tommy (hiding under a back porch in Colonial Beach), she’d been very protective of him. She rarely let him out of her sight, and loathed the thought of him out on a boat. Her father had been a fisherman in Maine and died during the “Perfect Storm” of 1991 so boats were a particularly sore subject.

  “Bob...” she started, but Tommy cut her off.

  “I can go?” He was excited, and Bob couldn’t help but smile.

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  “Awesome!” Before Carol could protest, he was up and away, running toward the restless jungle.

  Carol glared. “Bob, you know...”

  “Just let the boy feel important for once, will you? Since we picked him up, you’ve been treating him like a toddler.”

  “He’s eleven, Bob...”

  “Not three, Carol.”

  “Whatever,” she said and crossed her arms.

  “You might not like it, but he’s not your baby. Keeping him tied to your skirts…”

  “Whatever,” she repeated.

  The sun was melting on the horizon when the small white cabin cruiser came gliding into view. Bob sat on the dock with a rum-filled coconut half, his feet dangling off the pier and his neck burned probably beyond recognition. He’d been here for most of the day, just gazing into the distance and thinking. Carol was somewhere on the other side of the island, still sulking.

  The boat pulled effortlessly into the sole slip and Pablo appeared along the side. Bob’s brow furrowed. “Where’s Tommy?” he asked shirtless Mexican.

  Pablo smiled. “Captain Howser?” he asked in his broken English. “At the wheel.”

  Bob chuckled. “That was him just now?”

  Pablo nodded. “He’s very good. Better than I was when I started, and I was twenty-five!”

  Bob laughed. God, Carol would freak.

  “Bob! Bob!” Tommy came streaking up behind Pablo. “Pablo let me drive the boat!”

  “I saw that,” Bob said. “You’re good.”

  Tommy preened. “And...I caught the biggest fish!”

  “Sounds good. Is there enough to go around?”

  “It’s a swordfish!” Tommy ejaculated. “It’ll feed us all!”

  That night, they gathered around a fire under the dull glow of the Mexican moon and ate fish, rice and beans. Tommy wasn’t exaggerating about the fish. It was a monster. Bob wondered how the hell he reeled it in. He doubted that even Pablo could have managed, and he was the strongest of the lot.

  Later, after Pablo and Tommy were in bed, Bob and Carol sat side-by-side and watched as the fire slowly died.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I just...I worry about him.”

  Bob put his hand on hers. “I know. But we can’t stunt him just because...of everything.”

  “I know,” she said.

  The next two days were somber ones on the island. Despite his elation over sailing the boat and catching the swordfish, Tommy lapsed into a deep depression. On the twenty-third, Bob found him alone by the sea, sobbing into his hands.

  “Tommy,” Bob said, “what’s wrong?”

  Bob sat next to the boy and put his arm around his shoulder. It took some coaxing, but he finally opened up.

  “I miss my parents, I miss Virginia, I want it to snow, and...and...Christmas is ruined!”

  “No it’s not, Tommy; we’ll have our own Christmas right here.” The truth was, Bob hadn’t even really thought about Christmas. The little boy, face red and wet, had, though.

  “But it’s going to be hot,” Tommy said. “It’s not gonna be like Christmas at all.”

  “Yes, it will,” Bob vowed.

  Carol and Tommy stood side-by-side on the dock, Carol looking worried. “Be careful,” she said.

  Bob put his hand on her shoulder. “I will. It’s just a little trip to Baja Cove. We’ll be back before dark.” He knelt before Tommy and ruffled his brown hair. “You’re in charge while we’re gone. Keep Carol in line for me.”

  A ghost of a grin touched the corners of Tommy’s lips. “Okay,” he sighed.

  “This is going to be the best Christmas of his life,” Bob said as he watched the island shrink behind them. He was determined that every future Christmas Tommy had would suck eggs compared to this one. It was going blow his mind.

  Easier
said than done.

  “What do eleven-year-old boys like?” Bob asked.

  At the wheel, Pablo replied, “BB guns, sports...oh, he did mention he missed his X-Box.”

  “We don’t have any power on the island.” There were a few buildings on the western side of the island that had electricity once, but since...

  “A generator!”

  Bob had never considered a generator. They lived in a tropical paradise. Who needed power?

  Tommy.

  “A generator and an X-Box. What else?”

  “Games...”

  “Of course, games.”

  “Uh...dirtbike?”

  Bob smiled. “This kid’s gonna shit bricks...”

  After nearly an hour they reached shore.

  The dock that they used on such excursions was once owned by an eccentric cocaine baron who had died long before they showed up; it was isolated, several miles from the highway, and hard to reach overland.

  Pablo maneuvered the boat into the slip and tied it up. They kept an SUV parked nearby and, after filling it up, Pablo climbed behind the driver’s seat.

  The main road was starting to crack; in places, sand drifts five feet high covered the blacktop. Baja Cove was sixteen miles from the dock, and on the way, they saw only two zombies, one of them dragging itself along the side of the road. Maybe they were starting to die off, Bob hoped.

  Baja Cove was a small town by any standards, yet they found everything they were looking for. A generator in the local hardware store, a dirtbike at a dealership, an X-Box, games, other things. For Carol, Bob looted the jeweler’s. On the ride back, he figured that he’d taken at least 50,000 dollars’ worth of bling.