Through The Valley

by Yates, B. D.

  "It's a gang, dumbass," said Poke, and for the first time Emmit got a chance to really look at the trashy little man. He was sickly skinny, almost skinny enough to resemble one of the zombies milling around outside. He had no gouges in his cheek, but he did have a plethora of tattoos that he could only have gotten in prison: a badly drawn marijuana leaf under his right eye, the word TWEAKER in sloppy cursive under his left. Tattooed over his Adam's apple was what looked like a grinning demon's face, but most of the ink hadn't held and instead it resembled a moldy apple. The rest of his scarecrow body was hidden beneath his clothes, but Emmit assumed the rest of him was covered in bad ink as well. He stared back at Emmit with a predatory smile that made him immediately uncomfortable. Emmit looked forward to popping his inflated ego.

  "Actually, it's a virus," he said, somehow keeping a straight face as Poke's morphed into expressions of shock, as if stunned that he, of all people, could ever be wrong. "Before I got here it had killed nearly 200,000 people, and lots of places are..."

  "Damn," Roy said as Emmit trailed off, "That's some heavy shit."

  "God in heaven," Handsome black man said, crossing himself with his fingers and lowering his eyes.

  "A lot of places are what?" Came the voice of a young kid, incredibly young. Emmit didn't bother to look at him; he was lost, deep in the fractures and crevices of his own barren mind. He had been able to recall the COVID-19 outbreak with no effort at all; why the hell was everything else still a blank? His brain now felt more like a big black grab bag of random junk, rather than the wall of locked gears he had envisioned before. If he tried, reaching deep and concentrating with the help of a keyword or two, he could pull random thoughts and memories out of the murk. He was digging deep now, thinking of the virus and how it could possibly have been connected to him. He stared at a single whirl of wood grain on the floor as he thought, tracing the pattern with his eyes. Somehow, the virus was linked to the crime that had apparently landed him here.

  "A lot of places are what, man?" The kid demanded again, clapping his hands briskly.

  "Let him fucking think for a minute, Pup," snarled Roy. "We're not gonna learn anything if you keep running your cocksucker."

  Emmit's chest tightened as a swift and brutal panic attack tore through him like a giant clawed hand. He clenched his eyes tight and panted as he brought his hands to his face and covered it, as if trying to shield himself from the memories that were suddenly pouring into his brain like a firehose spraying acid. It felt like he was being raped by his own mind.

  Images flashed like lightning in a late-night thunderstorm. He saw himself slumped on a sagging and battered couch, wearing nothing but thin boxer shorts. Rain pattered against the window of his living room, which was cracked and crudely taped together with yellowing duct tape. Thunder growled outside, startling him each time it followed a lightning strike and vibrated the apartment building he called home.

  In one hand he saw a mostly drained bottle of Atomic Red, and in his memories he could smell it, could feel it burning his nostrils and throat with powerful cinnamon. Clenched in his other hand, pulled into a shaking fist, was a hand-written letter from his landlord. He could see the sloppy handwriting, the misspellings, the coffee stains on the paper.

  EMMIT—

  YOUR NOT GETTING ANY MORE FAVORS FROM ME. YOU ARE THREE MONTHS LATE ON RENT. I HAVE GIVEN YOU MORE EXTENSHONS THAN ANY OTHER TENNENT AND IT HAS TO STOP. PAY IN FULL BY THE FIRST OF THE MONTH OR I WILL BEGIN EVICTION PRECEEDINGS. CASH ONLY PLEASE.

  —BILL H, SUPER

  Emmit thrashed his head from side to side like a boxer who had just taken a solid punch right on the button.

  "Most places were closed down," he said distantly, "it was too dangerous to leave them open. Movie theaters, tattoo shops, gyms, restaurants. Places where people gather. They closed them down, and because of that, I lost my job. I was behind on rent, way behind, and I was about to lose my apartment too."

  "Ah," Roy said, stroking his beard and nodding knowledgeably. "That explains the bank robbery."

  "A crime, but not a malicious one," said the handsome black man. "You weren’t selling heroin needles to wayward kids, nothing like that."

  "Fuck off," growled Poke, his inked face drawn in with scorn. "I needed money too, Rev."

  Roy held his hands up, and his faithful crew obeyed, falling instantly silent.

  "I think we've given him enough to process for one night," he boomed. As he blinked, Emmit noticed that only one eyelid had been stained black by the touch of one of the creatures. "Everyone turn in. Reverend, you're on watch tonight."

  The handsome black man, the Reverend, only nodded dutifully.

  "We're going Link hunting tomorrow," Roy said, standing and beginning to tug layers of clothing off. "The newcomer and I were attacked by a pretty big swarm, and you know they didn't go far. We can't have a siege on our hands. Get plenty of rest."

  Emmit stared at his damp shoes, the dark material still shining wetly in the firelight. He had a strong feeling in his gut that he wouldn't be sleeping much, if it all, on his first night in the mysterious cabin in the middle of frozen nowhere.

  Chapter 4: Under the Shifting Stars

  Emmit was awake long after the others had fallen asleep. He lay on the hard floor, curled up in what was essentially just a pile of used laundry with his neck muscles already beginning to protest. The other men— the man with the crippled arm, who was nicknamed Muddy, the young kid Roy had called "Pup", the tattooed and exceedingly shady Poke, and Roy himself, were all unconscious and trading snores back and forth. Emmit felt like he was trying to sleep on the dirty floor of a lumber mill.

  How the fuck do these guys sleep? A time warp? Zombies outside? I don't think I'll ever sleep again.

  He abandoned the notion of getting any rest and sat up, yawning despite his alertness. Roy was the chieftain of the small clan, so his place was nearest to the fire, which was still strong enough to heat the room but was beginning to die down to a muted orange specter of a flame. Poke had been in the "time warp" second longest, so he was entitled to the opposite side of the fireplace. Pup and Muddy were crumpled on their piles of clothes as close as they could get without invading anyone's space, leaving Emmit, as the newbie, to freeze by the rickety door. The Reverend had bundled himself up, grabbed one of the large wooden clubs with a pointed rock lashed to the end, and headed quietly outside. There, without once coming back in to warm up, he had stayed.

  Emmit's brain began to buzz and whir once again as he plunged a mental hand into the black bag of his memories and tried to grab whatever he could. The pieces were coming together now; he still found it hard to believe that he had gone into a bank with a gun (he didn't even own a gun, or so he thought) and pointed it at people, innocent people, and tried to steal the money he needed to avoid joining the growing ranks of the homeless. He had been down and out before. He'd spent at least a week sleeping in an ex-coworker's car once, while he was in between jobs. No, there was something more than money, something more severe than being homeless that would have driven him to that desperate measure.

  It'll come.

  Looking around at the humanoid snoring lumps of blankets, he decided he'd rather go outside and try to speak to the Reverend than sit in here alone and confused. Of all the men imprisoned in the cabin, the Reverend somehow seemed to stick out like a polished tooth in an otherwise rotten smile. He didn't have that feel about him, that dirty, criminal feel that the other men had. Emmit knew that he was in no place to pass judgment on anyone for being a criminal, but sometimes, you could just tell about someone. The things they said or the way they said them, the clothes they wore, the tattoos they chose to wear. Sometimes, you could meet someone for the very first time and know immediately that they were trouble. The opposite was true for the Reverend, and, he hoped, for himself as well.

  I could use someone in my corner here.

  Emmit nodded at his own thought, listening to the wood crackling in the fireplace during the br
ief pauses between snores. Talking to the Reverend felt right. Now, more than ever, he needed a friend. Trying to talk to Roy or Poke, Muddy or Pup, that would be like a vegetarian trying to relate to a big game hunter. They didn't feel like his kind of people, even if Roy had saved his life.

  Emmit began to dig through what served as his "bed", pulling out random articles of clothing and pulling them on. He found several stained pairs of sweatpants and pajama pants, and three long sleeved shirts. He forced a grubby sweater on as the last layer of protection against the cold, a dark blue one emblazoned with a giant golden M logo. Then, after a few moments of silent frustration trying to figure out how the handmade doorknob worked, Emmit cracked it just enough to slip his bulky body outside into the stinging night air.

  The Reverend stood silently scanning the woods, the club slung across his shoulders and supporting his arms. He looked like an eccentric artist's interpretation of Christ crucified, his eyes bright and alert and his jaw set. As Emmit crept up silently beside him, he wasn't startled in the slightest. He spoke without even turning his head.

  "Usually, I'm the only one who volunteers for guard duty," he said quietly, squinting into the shadows. "Can't sleep?"

  "I don't even feel tired," Emmit said, joining him in watching the bleak forest. There was no movement that he could see, and though the wind was as calm as it was cold, it still made a mournful moan as it rattled the branches of the trees together. "Which is crazy to me, given how things have gone lately."

  The Reverend smiled, but it was somehow sad.

  "I don't mind it," he said in his smooth voice. "Never was big on sleeping, such a waste of time. And the Links don't come around here much. Once or twice a month we'll get a few visitors if we've been noisy during the day, but usually they just stagger on by, smiling like they're taking a leisurely stroll through the woods."

  Emmit shuddered, but not from the cold. He kept seeing flashbacks of the woman Roy had nearly decapitated, the corpse’s neck visibly and audibly broken, its head on backwards but its darkened face still grinning up at him like a dead, drunken clown.

  "It's creepy, how they smile like that," Emmit said. "Why are they all so... happy?"

  The club rose and fell as the Reverend shrugged.

  "I imagine it feels pretty good, not having a soul. Your mind wiped like an old hard drive, not feeling the pain of the cold because they're already dead. No conscience. No inhibition. All they care about is letting you know that they know what you've done wrong, and if they can get their hands on you, turning you. Beyond that, they just walk and smile like old folks in the park."

  Turn you?

  Emmit thought of the dark handprint now tattooed on his arm, and the one emblazoned across Roy's face like war paint.

  "They turn you by touch? Do you... get infected? Like from a bite or something?"

  The Reverend chuckled, and the sound of it was warm and friendly. Emmit didn't know the man, had barely spoken a word to him up until now, but he immediately liked him. Somehow, he knew he was different from the other men. They seemed more callous and evil, even if he himself had done something wrong. Sometimes, a criminal act was justified, wasn't it? Was a murder still a hateful act if someone broke into your house and threatened your loved ones and you blew them away with your family shotgun?

  "This isn't Night of the Living Dead, new guy. The Links don't eat people, at least as far as I know. It's like they just want to recruit. They grab on to you and it spreads. Whatever it is, it's like an infection, even though it really isn't one. If you break contact in time, you're alright. You just have a new tattoo like your arm and Roy's face. But if not..." He mimicked a Link, relaxing his eyes and letting a goofy-looking grin stretch across his face. “If you die in one piece, as in… from exposure, it’s like you turn by default. That part is like the movies. If your corpse is intact, you get up and take a stroll.”

  Emmit suddenly felt the urge to peel back the layers of clothing over his arm and look at his skin. His paranoia told him it was spreading now, the sensation of it like a swarm of baby spiders from a burst egg sac, skittering and climbing over each other in a desperate race to cover the rest of him. He knew it was all in his mind. The Reverend was a veteran here and he was brand new to this bad dream, and it probably wouldn't be wise to doubt his words.

  "I'm sorry to keep badgering you with questions, I'm just so... god damn lost," Emmit said, tossing his hands up to the sky. It was brilliant up there in space, if it could be called the same outer space from what he was now thinking of as his reality, as opposed to this reality. The stars and (planets?) were visible tonight, and appeared to be in constant motion; slow, but if you kept your eye on them, they were always moving. The dark sky looked like someone had tossed a handful of sparkling jewels across a dark bedspread, where they tumbled and rolled in slow motion. Emmit watched, unaware that he had stopped speaking and was holding his breath, his mouth agape. He was transfixed as he watched one of the stars begin to swell like an inflating balloon, growing brighter and brighter until the night sky began to brighten like an early dawn. It began to glow a volcanic orange that shifted into a fiery red, like a single stoplight suspended in the void. Then it receded back down, collapsing in on itself before fading completely. Around it, the other stars moved and drifted like bits of moss in a lazy stream.

  "Ah, I do love seeing those," the Reverend said, now using his club as an arm rest. "I can't say for sure, but I'm pretty sure that was a supernova."

  Emmit nodded slowly, gazing up, silently wishing to see another one. He had always been a science nerd and knew what a supernova was, but who the hell ever got to look up and watch one? They took an exceedingly long time to occur, if he remembered his astronomy correctly. It was like when you were walking outside at night and caught the majestic sight of a meteor entering the atmosphere, one of the rare larger ones that trailed sparks and pieces like a failed firework. It was special somehow; almost as if it had traveled across the universe just to let you watch it die.

  "I can't wrap my head around any of this," Emmit said, "But this part of it I think I could get used to."

  The Reverend nodded, sighing, his lungs making a sound of relative peace that Emmit longed for.

  "Looking up there reminds me of my office back in the church," the Reverend said, tearing his eyes away from the sky with visible effort to resume his watch. "No matter how much I cleaned it, it was always dusty in there. When the sun would shine in through the stained glass behind my desk, I could always see thousands of dust bits swirling around in it. They were like... magic dust or something. I guess it's weird to appreciate dust, but when you think of it, that's all we really are."

  The Rev grinned, wrinkling his nose as he savored the memory.

  "Even the Earth," Emmit said, bringing his stinging hands to his mouth and blowing damp, warm breath into them. "If you look at it from far enough out in space, our whole planet is just a speck of dust. Which means we're just specks of dust on a speck of dust. Armies killing each other for a piece of it. It just makes you feel insignificant, in the big picture."

  The Reverend cocked his head as he nodded, frowning as if silently indicating that he had never thought of such things before. Emmit wasn't surprised. Religious people never needed to think scientific thoughts. Anything they didn't understand or wouldn't understand was God.

  "Do you think we're still even on Earth?" Emmit questioned, his eyes wide behind his glasses. He felt like a child firing an endless string of questions at his father, who demonstrated superhuman patience.

  "I don't know your views, New Guy," The Reverend said, his voice taking on a stern tone Emmit imagined he had probably used with his congregation, "but if you want to know mine— I think we're all dead, and we're in the valley."

  "The valley?"

  "Of the shadow of death, yes," he said. His face was statuesque, as deadly serious as a plaster death mask. Even in the darkness, the lines in the flesh of his face seemed to deepen and he looked incredibly
old. "Maybe we're in purgatory, so we can struggle for a while. Maybe we're in Hell. Pick whichever one you like, friend. But I think this is the afterlife. This is where bad people go when the lights go out for good."

  Emmit felt his lower intestine suddenly grow hot and loose, and his guts felt the same way they did when a roller coaster went over a particularly steep drop. Emmit himself had never been deeply religious; he supposed he was an agnostic, but he didn't feel strongly either way. Quite simply, he didn't care. He always had more pressing things to worry about than what would happen after he was dead. And to a sane and healthy mind, death was always far into the future, when you got old and drifted away in your sleep. No car accident victim ever left the house expecting to die.

  "What makes you think we're all dead?" He asked timidly, not really wanting the dreaded answer but somehow needing to know. Anything seemed possible under a clear night sky where a supernova could run its course in the same amount of time it took to microwave a frozen dinner.

  The Reverend sighed again, narrowing his eyes and watching something in the woods. Emmit could hear movement, the hushed sound of cloth against wood and the brittle clicks and snaps of dead branches being disturbed, but it sounded far away.

  "I don't have anything concrete," The Reverend continued, satisfied that no danger was headed their way for the time being. "Roy wouldn't like me telling you too much, he keeps a tight leash on everyone."

  "You don't have to—"

  "No," the Reverend said, waving his hand to silence Emmit. "You're not going anywhere any time soon, you deserve to know. For all I know, Roy could be right. It could be some sort of time warp or tear or something, Bermuda Triangle type stuff. But all of us are criminals. We led dangerous lives. Roy..."

  He dropped his voice to a whisper.

  "Roy was a hitman. He killed people for money. Maybe a job went wrong? Poke was a drug dealer and a drug user, hence the nickname. Overdose? Turf war? You robbed a bank. Maybe you had a run in with a S.W.A.T. team? Me personally, the last thing I can remember is that I was driving…”