I drove through the street-level chaos to Chuck’s, the houses in the neighborhoods aging in progression as I approached the heart of town. I caught movement near a house on the left, with its peeling white paint and broken windowpane stuffed with a yellowing pillow. Inside the detached garage that leaned dangerously off center, a half-dozen men huddled around a black garbage bag, stuffing handfuls of cash inside. After one of them turned and sized me up, my eyes returned to the road as though I snapped out of a daydream and my foot pressed harder on the gas, pushing deeper into the neighborhood.
Chuck’s Comic Box appeared at the far corner, a small white building with a flat roof once used as a butcher shop before I was born and then reopened a generation later as a comic book shop. Colorful cutouts of superheroes in action poses stared out to the street from the front windows, a heavy wooden door separating two large panes of glass that served as the sliver of storefront among a block of houses, one of which Chuck owned, next door.
I spotted bright red smears of blood on the windows and second thoughts appeared like whispers from a suspicious neighbor. I looked along the street for any sign of Chuck, both near the shop and his home, and saw Chuck’s truck nosing up to the crosswalk on the side street, kept there after buying his new one. Both vehicles were present and I deduced Chuck must be, too. I silently cheered my grip on sound logic.
I parked the van in front of Chuck’s house and stalked along the sidewalk, reaching the corner of the building between his house and the store, and peeked through the nearest window. Beneath the red glow of the EXIT sign above the back door, tables that recently held white boxes of comics had toppled over, their contents spilled and fanning out on the carpet like decks of cards across a blackjack table. Towards the back of the room, near the register and back door, I caught sight of a small body on the floor in a bloody heap. A body that wasn’t moving was almost a gift, sad as it was otherwise.
I turned back for another look at the neighborhood and jumped at a shadow in my periphery, but saw nothing but a downspout loosened by rusty nails. The Aggrodol hallucinations were already beginning, much faster than the weeks it took to activate when I’d started the program. The phantom visions looked like thick black smoke, but with sharp edges that rippled like a lake shore at night. Yet when I turned my eye and brought it to the forefront, it moved to the new edges of my adjusted sight. The last thing I needed was to have eyes I couldn’t believe, but there I was, hallucinating like my dad when he was in the hospital with the DTs, right before he died.
I wrapped my fingers around the cold metal door handle and pushed the door open as quietly as possible. The edges of the heavy wooden door resisted the frame and I felt a puff of air on my face from the pressure shift. The brass bell hanging above the door jingled in old-timey fashion and I stopped for a breath, not expecting the noise to wedge itself into the tenuous peace blanketing the neighborhood. The revenants swarmed toward the sound of any loud noise as though they took every disturbance personally, unaware they were often the cause.
Once inside, I focused my attention on the body lying in the back of the room. The store didn’t offer much in the way of hiding spots, but that didn’t mean the place was devoid of danger. Someone or something other than that dead person caused this mess. On top of that, phantom shadows were dancing at the edges of my sight, darker than the gloomy corners of the room, growing like wisps of smoke. I kept shaking my head, hoping they would go away but they remained every bit a part of reality as the dead child on the floor.
I crept closer. It was a child wearing a dress, the top of her head missing. It was Chuck’s daughter, Allison. From her gray skin, she must have turned into a revenant like Pink Tracksuit at the AA meeting and then was shot in the head. Shot by Chuck? Where was Chuck?
I checked the room for clues like a gumshoe on retainer. “Hello?” My voice deadened against the comic-covered walls. “Chuck? Sam?” I scoffed. Why did I yell for Sam? There was no indication he’d even made it yet. Might as well yell out for my brother Sticks, too. Where the hell was he? For the first time in years, none of us knew where the others were.
Waiting until silence rang in my ears, I moved to the basement door at the back of the sales floor—just beyond Allison—already opened a crack and not safe at all for barging through. Yet nothing stirred as a result of my movements, so I swung open the door, revealing stairs descending into the darkness below. I’d never been to the basement before and had no idea what I could expect; all I knew was that Chuck (and sometimes Sam) had been working on an emergency shelter that could sleep six.
I blindly reached a hand along the wood paneling and flipped a wall switch. White light from bare bulbs illuminated the wood stairs downward. There was no way to descend so I just continued down the stairs on alert, not concerning myself with whether I could be heard. Anything after the noise I was making would have revealed itself much earlier.
At the foot of the stairs, I found Chuck, sitting against a blood-smeared wall, a shotgun resting on his lap. His hands were bloody, as though gnawed on, but his skin was still red from the sunburn he’d gotten while fishing, not gray like the dead…or undead. Like that hypothetical gumshoe, I deduced a grim story about what could have happened: On the way to the security of the basement shelter, Allison had turned into a revenant after being attacked, probably close to the store…perhaps on their way from their home next door. Chuck, forced to fight for his life, became so distraught—and possibly knowing he’d turn into a revenant himself—ultimately decided not to use the bunker he’d built for us after all.
I took the shotgun from his lap and moved deeper into the basement with a little more courage, reaching a smaller door beyond a humming fridge, then an entrance to a smaller stock room surrounded by wood and burlap sandbags. The flimsy plywood door was unlocked and about as secure as a shower curtain. They must not have added the final touches to the shelter, which was some kind of security.
Using the dim light behind me, I searched for another wall switch and glimpsed a white string hanging from a bare bulb on the ceiling like a strand of spider web. I pulled it and the light revealed original canning shelves lining the walls, brimming with cans and jars of food and other supplies…much more than I could carry. A treasure trove, under current circumstances. From what I could tell, no one else had been in the basement other than Chuck. Six cots with metal frames stood folded neatly against the wall next to rolls of sleeping bags, still unused in their clear plastic covers. Folding chairs surrounded a round table that held a green camping lamp, decks of cards, dice, and board games. Boxes of other supplies filled most of the open space, waiting to be organized and stored. As a result, there was little room to move about, but spending a lot of time in there would eventually get on my nerves, anyway…it would be like living in a closet crowded with everything one needs in life, which I guess it was.
I rifled through a box and found books on foraging and first aid, field guides for plants and mushrooms, animal tracks, wilderness cookbooks, and military survival manuals, much of it useless knowledge in an urban environment, with a new enemy. Still, I was glad to find them and planned to take the books with me. Any data on how to survive was nearly as important as the biological means to do so.
A muffled scream from outside snapped me back to reality. How long had I been down here? Given the worsening hallucinations, was I even sure I’d heard anything at all?
But soon more commotion: high-pitched screaming…kids or women, activity escalating too close to the shop. I didn’t want to attract attention to myself by making noise, but if the shelter was going to serve its proper use, I’d need to reinforce the flimsy door. Without a solid door, Chuck had merely set up a doomsday pantry and I lacked the time to finish the job, now that the neighborhood had violently come back to life, in battle. I needed to prepare to defend myself.
***
I sorted through the shelter’s supplies but found nothing I could use to barricade the door in any kind of secure manner. Chuck wouldn’t have starved or needed matches, but didn’t make it far enough to put the lid on his cache. But I knew I was expecting too much. No one could think of everything, even someone as organized as Chuck. After all, an orderly system is essential to tame a room full of comic books and he’d hate to see it now.
My search of the basement deepened for anything large enough for a barricade and the brown refrigerator caught my eye, humming along as it had for years…maybe even a generation or two. The fridge was empty other than unfilled ice trays and a piece of wedding cake in the freezer, frostbitten to look more like a glacier than cake. At least an empty fridge would be easier to move across the cracked, uneven concrete basement floor, seemingly installed as an afterthought over a dirt floor. And that’s probably what had happened.
I gripped the sides of the fridge as though going in for a hug and pulled back with a quick jerk, testing its weight. It lurched easier than expected; the force swinging the freezer door open to collide with my forehead like a sobering slap. I paused, rubbing my skull, before dragging the fridge backward across the room, towards the shelter’s vulnerable entry. I stopped just shy of the opening and measured the space with my eye. The fridge would almost cover the gap completely, leaving a crack on one side where I could peer out to the basement stairs. Even if the fridge wasn’t much of a deterrent, a casual observer might fall for the illusion of the fridge standing in front of a solid wall…at least enough to provide a delay.
Happy with that stroke of good news, I tried to back the fridge into position, but it stopped short. Stuck on something.
More screams from outside…this time louder and closer…the attacks growing the ranks of the undead as victims fell and then turned to murderers…a vicious cycle, indeed. Then gunfire popping so close, I kept looking at the dirty basement windows, expecting a revenant to crash through the glass just like the first one at the AA meeting.
I remembered Chuck’s shotgun and scanned the shelves for boxes of ammo. I found a stack of small ammo boxes and filled a couple of pockets with loose shells before returning to the shelter entrance to stand guard. Shaking with fear, I was still willing to fight for my life, which came as a pleasant surprise. Normally, I’d be making moves to shorten it, but here I was, girding my loins for battle.
Then I heard a great crash coming from upstairs, as though one of the two large front windows had been smashed. Subsequent thuds on the sales floor above meant the conflict outside had moved into the tight confines of the store. Thus ended any opportunity I had for me to leave and it became time to fortify my position.
After I set the shotgun on the table, I returned my attention to the stuck fridge. I found its power cord taut—caught on a bottom corner—still plugged into the wall. I scoffed at the absurdity of it all as the fighting raged above, but at least the ruckus masked the sounds of my effort as I continued to wrestle the machine into position.
Suddenly, two bodies tumbled down basement stairs that barely held up under their wheeling fury. Giving up on keeping the fridge on even ground, I stopped the adjustments and froze where I hid, watching a snarling revenant mounting a mortally wounded man in faded jeans, tearing through his clothes like plastic wrap off a plate of leftovers. Nearby, Chuck’s shotgun mocked me from the table where I’d placed it so carefully, now out of reach. I knew if I moved to get it, the fridge would roll towards the floor drain and expose my future as that maniac’s next scratching post, so while I still had a chance, I gave an ultimate tug and the appliance freed itself from the outlet, spinning around until the cord popped from its socket like a snapped bungee.
Now facing the rear of the fridge, I gripped the metal grille attached above the coils and pulled its frame nearly flush with the shelter entrance. Holding on tight, I shielded myself between the basement and my mortal vessel, settling into a sitting position that wasn’t comfortable.
A bloody scene unfolded before me through the crack between the fridge and the door frame. One of my sweaty hands lost its grip and the grille resonated with a metallic prang. The carnage on the basement stairs paused, the revenant staring at the fridge as though it was advanced technology, sufficiently indistinguishable from magic, as the saying goes.
My heartbeat pounded in my ears, muffling the fading screams of the victim as life left his body and movement ceased at the moment of surrender. Then suddenly, right before my untrustworthy eyes, the man I watched die stirred on the staircase as though shocked by bolts of lightning. This new beast, coagulating blood oozing through its slashed chest, released a howl that pierced my brain like a bullet, a new war cry for a new battlefield.
I held my breath. Now there were two of them on the basement stairs, inspecting my hiding spot with dead, curious eyes. Dead, yet still very much alive.
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