by Dan Dillard
I felt as if I was watching a strange segment on television, warmed by the heat pump with the low glow from the tree giving everything a soft edge. Frost on my window framed the world in safety, a barrier between us. Ice on the tree branches sparkled when the sun peeked through the storm. By all accounts it was a beautiful image, except for that one disturbing factor.
I watched him continue, shuffling feet in dress shoes, slacks and a button down shirt under a V-neck sweater. Definitely not a hunter. He was more like a professor who was on his way to work at the local college. His hair was combed, yet hanging heavy with ice that had been falling from the sky. He was someone who wouldn’t have alarmed me in any other situation. I was concerned for him.
Something else about him set my stomach rolling. Not just the fact he was outside in such horrible conditions. Maybe it was that he didn’t look from side to side, or put his hands in his pocket or even check his watch. He stared at the sky and walked.
Drugs? Not a likely candidate. Maybe dementia… or sleepwalking. Maybe he was just crazy. Whatever his issue, it was entertaining in the haze of cold meds, from the warmth of my living room.
The sound of ‘Jingle Bells’ rolled softly from the speakers on my desktop mp3 player and the wind died for a moment. The shuffling professor was directly in front of the house and then I could clearly see the ice frozen across his face. It was caked around his mouth, and coated his goatee. Unreal. Time slowed as if I was witnessing a horrific accident. Sounds muffled as my brain unleashed whatever chemical allows a person to deal with tragedy. I opened the door to call to him, to offer help, to tell him to get the hell inside. “Hey!” I shouted.
He didn’t move and didn’t look at me. I called to him again. Then, in my periphery, I saw movement, and I took my eyes off of the professor, if that’s what he was. There was another one. Fifty, maybe seventy-five yards away, there was another man in mechanics clothes. He wore blue coveralls and walked in the same fashion, watching the sky.
In my head, I rationalized there was a car accident. Maybe a bus out on the highway, just beyond the trees to the east. They’d wandered away in a daze and were looking for help. But that explanation didn’t feel right and my stomach rolled again.
The professor was twenty five feet away. Ice coated his hair in a shiny cocoon and his hands looked as if he was wearing glass gloves. The snow picked up and large flakes again fell heavy on the world. “Buddy, do you need help?” I shouted to no response.
I yelled to the mechanic, but he stared at the sky. I closed the door and phoned the police to report the men, unsure of what to say so I just told them the truth as I knew it. “There’s a man wandering outside my house. He may be injured…no, he’s definitely injured. I mean he looks frozen. I don’t think he’s any kind of threat. I can bring him in out of the cold, but I don’t know the extent of his…”
The operator interrupted, didn’t even give me time to mention the mechanic. “Sir, lock your doors and turn on your television, radio…something.”
“I just wanted to report the injured man. He’s walking right…”
The dispatcher on the phone cut me off again, “Sir. Do as I say. Lock your doors and windows. Find a news channel and pay attention.” Then she hung up.
I flipped on the television and checked my front door and my back door. Locked. My windows were sealed tight for the winter. I walked back to my window with the remote in hand. Two had become fifteen, no—eighteen. Twenty five. They were coming from every direction. Just then, I recognized a face or two.
Charlotte, the elderly woman on the corner joined them, staring into the air. She wore a robe which flapped open to reveal sagging skin in a bra and panties. Snow caked around the bottom as the garment dragged along. Her feet were bare. Her expression blank. Next to her was Ray, from down the street. They both fell in line in the odd parade. A few minutes later, I saw someone running. It was Justin. He was about fifteen, Ray’s son. He ran after his father, who walked with the rest.
The news caught my ear.
“We have no leads on why this pilgrimage is taking place. It could be some disease epidemic, some kind of chemical or biological warfare. We urge you to stay indoors. Please…stay…in…doors.”
The words were something you heard in bad science fiction. There was a joke there, a punch line on its way.
The reporter broke into my thoughts. “Ladies and gentlemen, I have reports coming in that the affected persons may become violent, may use objects as weapons if approached. Stay away, stay inside and stay tuned. We’ll keep you updated as long as we can.”
Violent hordes of walking people? It wasn’t possible. That’s a plotline. A comic book.
I looked back to the front yard, where Justin had reached his father. The greeting was not joyful. The man my kids had ridden to soccer practice and the movies with raised his hand, some thirty feet from my eyes, and struck his boy across the face, knocking him into the snow. Justin stood back up and grabbed his father by the arm, then the waist. Ray peeled him off and threw him down, kicking him. One booted heel to the forehead and Justin stopped moving.
There was no expression on Ray’s face, only hollow indifference as he looked back to the heavens. Others behind stepped on Justin’s body. The group of twenty-five or thirty had become a hundred and Justin disappeared, mashed into the snow and shrouded by dozens of shuffling feet.
I needed to talk to my ex-wife. Check on my children. I picked the phone up and dialed, but it was cut off. An emergency message.
“Due to higher than average call volume, all lines are currently busy. Please try again later,” it said. I tried the house phone with the same result. The voice was so polite and so gentle telling me my only sources of communication were unavailable, but if only I was patient, things would be back to normal in no time. Normal was something of a myth at that point. I felt normal slipping away like a ball cap in a stiff breeze. Outside the one hundred walking were two hundred. They spilled from the side streets, and from between the houses, crossing my yard to join the masses.
I checked my messages, my email. No internet connection. Nothing. Surely she would have contacted me if something was this wrong. The school would’ve sent an email to the parents about the situation. I panicked. But the school was also a storm shelter. Certainly they had all of the children in the gym with the doors bolted down. Maybe they’d tried to call me and had the same issue.
I tried the phone again. No good. Back to the window.
Outside, two hundred had become a thick mass of bodies. Too many to estimate. All of them migrated slowly down my street from south to north, leaving a trail of slush in their wake. Justin’s remains had been trampled, tripped over, and ignored.
The news report continued. “We have no reports, only speculation at this point about them. These unnaturals are moving in a general northeast direction, coming together and building larger and larger groups. These aerial photographs show the pattern, highlighted here.”
There was the sound bite: The Unnaturals. It was what they would be called from that point on. Not diseased. Not crazy. Not monsters. Definitely not people. These were not friends or relatives wandering out there. In just two words, they’d become a gripping headline. Just in case the strange event passed and the ratings still mattered tomorrow or next week.
They didn’t move by choice as far as I could tell. They appeared to be called by a source I couldn’t hear. As if controlled by a single mind. As I watched out my window, they simply passed by, paying me no attention and only incorporating anyone who got in the way as either part of the herd, or something to be overcome.
Another aerial view played on my television. A town, maybe mine, maybe anyplace, was littered with wandering souls. Then another town with another mass of unnaturals. In every direction, fingers of the people fanned out, becoming sparser as they grew distant from the center. More pictures flashed of other towns and other cities, all the same. Each image reminded me of a squid, a mass at the
head and long tentacles of stragglers at the rear. The television recapped, unnaturals, walking, northeast. Then the gunfire sounded.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Then again. Two sets of three shots fired. I rushed to the window. There was a car, an older model sedan with the passenger window rolled down. The barrel of a shotgun hung out, but the face behind it was shrouded in darkness. I saw a hand stuffing rounds into the chamber and then the barrel rolled over, resting on the door.
Boom! Boom!
Muzzle blasts flashed, and smoke coughed out. Bodies fell from the crowd. Some struggled back to upright and continued the walk, others didn’t. A few of the unnaturals approached the car, reaching their arms toward the open window. The rear tires spun in attempt to gain traction spitting slush and snow. Then the rubber caught hold and the car lurched forward into the mass of bodies, sending several to the ground, even under the car. It continued to roll forward, crushing the unfortunate beneath, twisting and ripping them apart as the powered rear tires made contact with once human skin. Perhaps those killed were the lucky ones.
There were no screams, no looks of horror, and none stopped to help any of the fallen.
I looked away, hearing the revving engine spin the car’s tires, then screeching and a loud crash. At a glance, the car appeared to be inside my neighbor’s living room across the road. The driver wasn’t moving. The people, the unnaturals, didn’t follow.
There were more news reports on television, more images, each more grisly than the last. Larger groups in larger cities, their numbers undulating in the helicopter footage, moving northeast at their slow, lumbering pace. It looked like one giant beast drawing smaller creatures into it. Fish on the edge of a massive school. It was easy to trace where they’d been, but where were they going?
The power flickered. My generator kicked on. I worried the noise in my garage would attract them and rushed to the window, but they kept to their paths. They had one focus and only those who got in the way were harmed. The television signal blurred, flashed and the screen went black. I could plug it into a generator circuit and try it later, when things calmed down. When things got back to normal, when the phone lines were again open.
I sat in the light of my Christmas tree and turned the music back on my mp3 player. Rudolph and Frosty and Joy to the World. Love and Cheer. Fa la la la la. Hallelujah. Thank God for batteries.
Outside they marched on, trudging into the wind, staring at the sky. I sat a vigil at my window, waiting for it to end. All day long, they moved. Thousands passed by, some of them dragging, crawling as if headed for their very salvation. Bare, bloodied feet and frozen limbs, many dropped to their crushing deaths and I watched. It no longer bothered me.
As the sun went down, I saw where they were going. I understood and there were moments where I wanted to join. Looking to the northeast, I saw a brilliant star that glowed in the sky. It was almost blinding. Four long points flared from its center and it danced as I blinked, moistening my eyes.
*****
I’ve watched that star all night and I feel its eerie pull myself. I want to go to it, to go with them. If I open that door, I no doubt will, unable to control myself. I am scared. I’ve never been a man of faith, but I understood now.
Souls are being called home.
The end is upon us.
When my generator runs out of fuel and the cold becomes too much, I might join them. Maybe they’re moving on to another place, a new normal. Until then, I’ll keep this journal.
December 21, 2012.
WHAT FRESH HELL
The creaking noise from below him sounded miles away. Grant rocked from side to side, testing his nerve, testing the strength of the chair, looking for that point of no return. The rope around his throat itched, like tiny insects crawling on him, scratching at his skin.
The room smelled of old wood and dust and things forgotten. He hadn’t chosen the attic as his place to leave the world, it had just occurred to him as he was gathering the Christmas decorations and taking them, box by box, down the rickety pull-down ladder. He liked that smell. It reminded him of being a boy and helping his parents pull down their own decorations and the treasures he always found while he investigated the trunks and boxes that lived above the rest of the house.
At forty years of age, he was surprised to find the same smell in his own attic. A nice home that was brand new only twelve years ago and smelled like nothing but fresh paint and carpet glue had begun to emit that same aroma he remembered from his youth, but youth was so far away. Everything seemed so far away. As he stood on that old chair frame, the one that used to have the woven wicker bottom, he felt as if he was balancing on the tip-top of a skyscraper, looking down at his life and it was all soaked in blood. His hands, displayed in front of him, palms up, were covered in blood. It was drying on his button-down shirt and grey slacks, the clothes he’d worn to work that day, and it had spattered on his $250.00 shoes.
He felt like crying, but tears wouldn’t come. Emotion had never been his strong suit, in fact, he couldn’t remember crying since he’d been a child. There was no sorrow, no empathy or sympathy in his life, only his normal even-keeled self with occasional bouts of rage. One thing he did remember feeling that was like emotion, but not emotion was the sensation of being exhausted. He was always exhausted. He worked out, ran every other morning, swam in the warmer months to keep in shape and to anyone else, he appeared to be in shape, but he was always tired of being, tired of satisfying his occasional urges, tired of covering his tracks.
He woke that morning to coffee brewing and found toast and an already segmented orange waiting for him on the kitchen table. He found his still-attractive wife wearing short, silky boxer shorts and a tank-top that clung to her like a hug. Cindy was smiling, glad to see him, and she kissed him on the corner of his mouth. She talked about their upcoming vacation, something that was planned and paid for and tropical and family-friendly and wonderful.
Before Grant walked out the garage door to start up his $40,000 car—one of two—and make the twenty minute commute to work, he was hugged three times by three children, all sleepy and yawning. They loved him and said so.
At the office, coworkers smiled and seemed genuinely glad to see him and he smiled back and responded to their kindness with simulated kindness of his own. He attended meetings with them and ate lunch with them and answered their phone calls and emails and at the end of the day, he drove home.
He sat in the garage with the door open and the engine running and thought about his older brother and his younger sister. He wondered if their lives ran as smoothly as his and if they were perhaps somewhere thinking about him. He wondered if they felt things the way he did. He wondered if they had done things like he had done. He wondered if they too, were exhausted. He looked at his wife’s car, an SUV that he’d paid for with cash. It all made him tired.
Grant thought about closing the garage door and cracking the window so he could suck in the pungent exhaust. He felt like he was going to fall asleep, and then he blinked and was sure he had done just that, if only for a few seconds.
A shadow came across the rear window of his car, and then there were two thuds on its trunk lid. He shut off the engine. It was Roger, the balding man from the ranch-style home next door. He was smiling and leaning down to peek into the passenger-side window of Grant’s car and he was mumbling.
Grant shut off the engine and opened the door. He grabbed his suit jacket and slung it over his shoulder before grabbing his briefcase. He hated the briefcase and didn’t need it. It felt like a dinosaur in his hand, but Cindy bought it for him and so he carried it, full of supplies he never used and the iPad he was never without.
“Hey, neighbor. I saw you pull in and wanted to come over and see if you and the family were busy Saturday after Christmas. We’re having a little New Year’s gathering and would love for you all to be there,” Roger said. His goofy grin was accompanied by an offered hand.
“Can’t this time, Roger. That’
s the day we leave for Mazatlán. A week in the sun and sand with tequila and beer and all the Gold Coast shrimp one family of five can eat. Maybe some jet skis or horseback riding on the beach.” Grant shook his hand and found a partial smile that seemed to suit the situation.
“That’s right,” Roger said. “I forgot all about it. Well, say, I’d love to hear about your trip, so maybe we’ll get the families together after you all get back. It’s not Mexico, but it’s not bad either.” He giggled at his own wit.
“Sounds great,” Grand said. Then he paused and added, “Tell you what, Roger, why don’t you come on in for a second. There’s something I’d like to get your opinion on.”
Roger’s grin turned to something more like suspicion, a raised eyebrow smirk with just a hint of mischief. “Sure thing, pal,” he said.
As Roger stepped around the front of the car, Grant pushed the button to close the door, and as it shut, he swung his briefcase, knocking Roger to the ground. The second blow made Roger’s eyes twitch, one rolling back in his head and vibrating in a most unpleasant way while the other stared up at Grant, seeing nothing. The third blow cracked open the briefcase and papers and pens flew in several different directions. His tablet spun out and hit the concrete floor, its face shattering on impact. The fourth blow left a bloody crease where Roger’s left eye was and folded his face in on itself, resembling an ill-fitting Halloween mask. Odd, Grant thought, here at Christmas time. Seven or eight blows later and Roger’s face looked more like creamy watermelon puddled in a broken egg shell.
Then the door was open and Cindy was staring at him, her mouth open and trying to speak, to scream, to make any sound at all. She looked like a fish, gasping in the open air. It was an ugly expression Grant had never seen and he hated it. With a few quick moves, he removed her expression. He removed all of her expressions.