by Timothy Boyd
I raised my weapon toward the threshold, a burning rage smoldering inside like an inferno threatening to explode.
They must have noticed my anger, because three of them spoke in unison, not an ounce of fear in their tone. “Nick Barren, please. We don’t wish to harm you. We wish to help you.”
“You bastards can’t help me,” I seethed.
Now, five of them spoke at once. “Join us willingly. It’s much less painful that way.”
“Did you give Sarah a choice?!” I spat, fighting back tears of anguish.
All of them spoke in an eerie chorus, the men and women forming a dissonant harmony of words: “Those in who we see potential get a choice.”
“Potential for what?” I demanded.
“Join our community, and you will see, Nick Barren.”
I shook with frenzied adrenaline, my gun trained at the face of the main person in the doorway. I exchanged a pained glance with Sarah, and in her eyes I saw the words I knew she could never utter aloud: “I love you.”
I pulled the trigger.
The man whose face I pulverized dropped to the ground in a bloody heap, the rest of them staring at me, expressionless.
“Sorry,” I said, wiping sweat from my brow with my forearm. “I don’t do so well in groups.” I fired the next shot, and the next.
The people-things began trying to push their way into the room, but they had to climb over the bodies of their comrades, and they stumbled. I took them out, one by one, sending smatterings of blood all over the shadowed hallway walls. As Sarah cried from fright, I advanced on them, trying to force my way out of the room. I stepped over their dead bodies as I approached the final two.
My gun clicked its empty barrel, and I effortlessly holstered it, grabbing the neck of the woman in front of me and twisting it until I heard a sickening crack. I tossed her body to the ground as I kicked the final man backward, sending him into the closet doors in the hall, knocking them off their sliding tracks on the floor. While he was disoriented, I quickly reloaded my P228 and fired one quick shot into his forehead, a streak of blood smearing down the faux-wood door as he slumped to the carpet.
I marched into the entrance foyer toward the front door, getting ready to slam it shut when I saw a mob of thirty people charging up the driveway toward me, having no doubt heard the telepathic cries of their fellow “community members.” I panicked only briefly before slamming the door and solidly bolting it, pushing the nearby hutch in front of it as they began pounding and rattling the doorknob, unable to bust through the makeshift barricade.
I ran to the back French doors through which I had entered the house, knowing that those wouldn’t hold them back for long, since the majority of the surface area was made up of tiny windowpanes. They would easily break through, but at least this would buy me a short while to think. I bolted the door and headed back into Annie’s bedroom.
Once inside, I promptly shut the door and locked it, pulling the bed away from the wall and resting it up against the only entrance into the room. I took a deep breath and sighed, hearing the banging of the angry mob outside the house. Then I remembered:
The window.
Although it was high off the ground, one could feasibly reach it if given a boost. I quickly pushed a bookcase in front of it to make any entry attempts more difficult.
Finally, I turned my attention toward Sarah, who was slumped in the folding chair, pale, sweaty, and panting. I lifted her into my arms, kicking the seat away and lowering her comfortably to the carpet. I snatched the pillow from the bed and placed it delicately under her head, brushing strands of hair from her face.
I looked down into her eyes and smiled, my brain coming up with no words sufficient for the moment. Eventually, I said, “So, I quit drinking today.”
She smiled but didn’t respond.
My eyes gravitated toward the wound in her side, blood soaking through her shirt. “When were you bitten?”
She inhaled with a wheeze and responded, “Earlier today. I was downtown when the chaos started, and someone bit me. I pushed him away, got in my car, and raced home. I tried to bandage it, but it started stinging around the edges, and it wouldn’t stop.” Her face contorted with pain as she tried to hold back her emotions.
It was tearing me apart inside to see her like this, lying on the ground, bleeding, looking at me. It reminded me of Annie.
She coughed deeply, in a way that sounded terribly unhealthy. “My doorbell rang an hour ago, and it was Sherry from next door. So I let her in and…” Sobs wracked her body now, but she didn’t need to finish her sentence. I understood.
I held her hand in mine and squeezed. “I’m here now. You’re not alone.”
She took a deep breath to clear her body of the sobbing and said, “Nick…”
She had that tone. The tone that said she was about to talk about something serious. “We don’t need to do this, Sarah.”
She clutched my hand more tightly. “For once, Nick… you’re going to listen to what I have to say.”
My cheeks flushed, because she was right. I often walked away during our arguments, but that wasn’t why I didn’t want her to continue now. I knew that what she was about to say would provide closure, and that meant she was expecting this to be a goodbye.
She took a breath and spoke, her voice weak and trembling. “I never blamed you.”
Immediately, my dry eyes watered with torturous pain.
“I didn’t ask you to leave because I didn’t love you anymore.”
“Sarah—.”
“Let me finish,” she interrupted and then coughed deeply. “It wasn’t because I didn’t love you. It was because every time I looked at you, I saw her green eyes. And it was so painful to be reminded that she was gone every time I saw you.”
A tear escaped from my eye and landed on her cheek, and I softly wiped it away as silence suffocated me.
Finally, she smiled and said, “Those green eyes are the only good thing she got from you.”
I laughed through my tears, a welcome emotional shift in tone. I wiped my face, feeling weightless for the first time in a while. I sat on the floor, leaning against the wall, my hand in hers. And we simply existed together for those few quiet moments, ignoring the madness outside.
Eventually, I leaned forward and brushed a strand of hair behind her ear. “I still don’t have any idea what’s going on out there. What are these people?”
Her docile eyes flickered with fear. “You have to leave, Nick.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“Get out of town while there’s still time!”
My brow furrowed as I clutched her trembling hand, hoping to calm her from her growing state of agitation. “What are you talking about? Who are they?”
“It’s not the people that matter.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s what’s in them!”
“In them?” I thought back to when I escaped the police station and was in my truck. I remembered the group pounding on my window, and I’d sworn that something dark flickered past the whites of their eyes.
“Through the bites!” she blurted, growing hysterical, moisture blurring her vision.
“Slow down,” I placed a hand on her forehead, feeling searing heat radiating from her despite her cold sweats.
Her eyes grew more frightened by the second. “They’re going to take everything we have.”
Her fever was quickly worsening, and that concerned me more than the insane babbling. “You’re burning up,” I said more to myself than to her.
She coughed so deeply I thought her lungs might have popped. She gasped for air and shivered. “Promise me something.”
“Anything,” I nodded.
“Promise me you won’t let me become one of those things.”
I was shocked into silence, not sure how I could promise her such a thing when she had been bitten. “I don’t know what you mean.”
She placed a soft hand on my cheek and smiled we
akly. “Yes, you do. When the time comes, you have to do it.”
And then I knew. She wanted me to kill her.
The singed nerves of my emotions seared my body, and I didn’t have the strength to hold back my tears any longer. “Sarah, I—.”
“Promise me,” she insisted.
And honestly, I knew I would want her to do the same. I fought back the rising sobs and managed to say, “I promise.”
She smiled again, a clear sense of relief washing over her. “Thank you.” She took a slow, deep breath and exhaled as her eyes fluttered closed.
They never reopened.
When I didn’t see her chest rise and fall, I knew she was gone. I heard glass shatter as the mob broke through the back doors, which meant they would soon be pounding on the door to this room.
I didn’t care. I sat on the floor, Sarah’s hand clutched in mine, and I reveled in her presence. Another part of me had just died in this house, and I wondered briefly if I should allow the rest of me to go as well.
No. Killing myself would be the coward’s way out, and Nick Barren was no coward.
I looked at my beautiful ex-wife lying peacefully on the floor in front of me, a slight smile on her lips. I wondered how long it would be before she… awakened. She was with Annie now. Anything that would rise from this body would not actually be Sarah. I took a deep breath and removed my gun from its holster.
I had a promise to keep.
Barren
V
Fists of fury pummeled Annie’s bolted bedroom door, unable to make the lock falter or move the bed I had placed against it. But the empty creatures yearning for my companionship were of little concern to me at the moment.
I pride myself on being a man of my word. I’ve made many promises to Sarah, and I’ve kept all of them. Her final request was not one that I intended to break. With my luck, she would awaken as one of those things and remember everything, following me to the ends of the earth, haunting my waking dreams, constantly asking, “Why did you break your promise, Nick Barren?”
She was currently at peace, and it would be cruel to allow anything to pull her out of that slumber. And she had made it my job to make sure she didn’t stand back up after closing her eyes.
I wanted the shot to be as clean as possible yet effective. Putting a bullet in her forehead would be no good. I don’t think I would be able to make it through the rest of my life – no matter how long that may be – having her mangled face be the final image of her that floated in my head.
Through the heart.
That would be the only way to do this right. Her heart was already broken anyway. I reached over and grabbed a soft pillow from the small yellow bed. As the night carried on, I felt less and less connected to this town. Soon, I would be free to go wherever I wanted. To start over. To be a new Nick Barren, washed clean of his tragic past.
I placed the pillow over Sarah’s chest, pushing the barrel of my gun down onto it in the area where I figured her silent heart would be. Any other time, this deed would have me shaking in fits, trembling from fear and heartache, but somehow, this feat was a sobering one, clearly outlining my next course of action and my immediate future.
I had so far failed to protect two people in my life, but I knew there must be something greater ahead, someone else I would be able to save – that I was meant to save. Annie and Sarah were necessary losses to push me toward the man I was supposed to be.
I pulled the trigger, and the gun recoiled slightly, causing Sarah’s limp body to twitch.
The blast silenced the people outside in the hallway. I paid little attention to them, though. My ears were ringing, and my heart was pounding. I holstered the gun and collapsed onto the floor facing her. I had barely been awake for a handful of hours, but I felt as though I hadn’t slept in days. I’m convinced that emotion is a tangible muscle buried somewhere deep within the body, because the level of exhaustion I felt left my body weak and aching.
I stared at her unmoving profile, watching, waiting to see some kind of movement that would indicate I had failed to preserve her sleep of death. A twitch of a finger. A flick of an eyelid.
But nothing happened. Fatigue overtook me as I spent long minutes looking at her. Before I could stop myself, my tired eyes fluttered closed, and I slept.
* * *
I jolted up from the floor in a wild panic, my heart pounding, my eyes alert, and my hands shaking. I expected to see daylight peeking around the bookshelf that I had pressed against the window, finding that Sarah’s body was no longer lying on the yellow carpet next to me.
But darkness still controlled the night, and Sarah remained motionless from death. I took a deep breath to calm myself before realizing that I heard no frenzied sounds coming from the hallway. I listened intently, my eyes closed. Unless the human husks stood still on the other side of the door, biding their time until I emerged from the room, the creatures were gone.
I quietly pulled Annie’s bed away from the door and released the lock, placing my ear against the thin faux-wood. Slowly, I placed my fingers around the doorknob, reaching for my gun with the other hand. I looked over at Sarah’s body one last time. If she had been napping, I would have whispered, “I love you.” But since she had fallen farther past mere sleep, I thought the words instead.
I turned the knob and opened the door, illuminating the blue-carpeted hallway beyond.
No one stood awaiting my emergence. I crept through the silent and empty house, all the way back to the burgundy family room where I’d entered earlier. There was no one here other than myself.
I stood on the threshold between the sickening kitchen of memories and the comfortable family room, taking in the sights of my former home. There was no longer any love to be had here, so I knew what needed to be done.
I turned into the dining room and headed through the doorway that led to the wooden steps toward the basement. I flipped on the light and was surprised to see the copious spider webs filling crevices, connecting the stair railing with one of the steps and nearly blocking my path at the base of the staircase.
It saddened me to think Sarah never came down here anymore. Even though it was an unfinished basement with a concrete floor, we used to bring Annie down to play, giving her the freedom of running the length of the house without the hindrance of walls.
I brushed some webs away and traveled through the dark basement, looking for one item in particular:
The red gas can.
* * *
I marched down the driveway as the cool breeze dried the sweat on my face. Although I never looked back, I knew that behind me the house was ablaze, bright orange tongues of flame licking the twinkling stars, firelight illuminating the night sky for miles around. I heard the tormented cries of the spirits trapped within the walls, as if the house were in its death throes, begging to be saved.
Memories faded, and years of love burned away. I got into my truck, tossing my red ball cap into the passenger’s seat, wiping my forehead on my arm. I took a deep breath, attempting to let the past go, and I started the engine, knowing that in a matter of minutes, an army of emotionless carcasses would dash toward me. And considering I was pretty sure they were done giving me my own choice to join them, they would likely not stand back in favor of diplomacy.
I sped away from my crumbling past, knowing I likely would never step foot on this street again. I fled down once-familiar roads, weaving through useless stoplights, swerving around abandoned cars. Alcohol withdrawal was, again, messing with my mind, clouding it with images of an undead Sarah, a little girl with charred and melting flesh, and a decrepit world overrun with lifeless bodies.
Like before when I fled down these roads, the trees looked odd. They sparkled with a soft sheen from my headlights’ illumination, and it was then that I knew I needed a drink. I pounded my fist on the steering wheel at the thought of sipping a shot of whiskey. I didn’t need it, but I definitely wanted it. And it would certainly make these strange glitter-tree visions go
away.
My truck skidded to a halt in the gravel parking lot in front of Gravediggers, its wooden façade giving the impression of a lonely shack in the woods. And maybe that’s exactly what it was, but it felt like my home away from home.
The titular neon sign on the roof was not illuminated, and the place looked abandoned. I glanced around at the surrounding trees, unable to shake the idea that something was wrong, that the balance of nature had been upset. The night was devoid of the familiar resonance of cricket chirps, which made me shiver.
I knew that Deb and her partner were having relationship troubles, and for the past few weeks, she had been sleeping on a cot back in the kitchen. I was hoping that she was still here – and still the same old “mama” that had to cut off my whiskey supply every morning after work.
The darkness surrounded me, and I felt vulnerable standing outside in the middle of the woods with no one else around to hear me scream. I stood at the door, listening for sounds of movement inside. The blinds were drawn over the windows, and there was no way to see in. At least a minute passed before I finally raised my hand to knock on the wooden door.
A moment before my knuckles rapped to announce my presence, I felt something hard being pressed against the back of my head, and a man’s voice said, “Don’t you move a muscle.”
Well, as Sarah had pointed out, I’m not a great listener, so when I spun around to see who was threatening me, I only caught a glimpse of a black braided pony tail before something cracked against my skull, my vision went dark, and I passed out.
* * *
Through the blackness of my closed eyelids, my head throbbed with nauseating pain. My eyes fluttered open carefully, expecting a blast of fluorescent light that would almost certainly induce vomiting. However, only a faint orange glow illuminated the room.
I was lying down on something soft. I pulled up on my wrists and legs to fight against my bonds when I realized there were none, so I slowly sat up, rubbing the back of my scalp tenderly. My eyes squinted around to identify my location, and I recognized it immediately: the kitchen in Gravediggers. A small kerosene lamp warmed the room on a nearby table.