Free Dwellers of the Night: The Complete Collection by Anthony Barnhart Page B

blinding pain. And the dog… That bloody dog. He goes out into the street. Two houses down, a man is lying on his face, half-naked. Blood smears his cheeks, having run down from his ears. The front door to the house is wide open. He must have run outside when the plague hit. A husky dog stands in the street, beside the body, hair onedge. It clamps its mouth around the corpse’s arm and tugs. The man suddenly remembers a lecture in one of his psychology classes. The professor had told them, “They say dogs are man’s best friends. But if you die in your house, and your dog can’t escape and cannot find anything to eat, your dog will eat you.” He had then asked, rhetorically, “Are we humans any different? Remember the Donner Party, when starving pioneers ate those who had died of hypothermia? Or those soccer players whose plane crashed in the Himalayas? They had to eat the flesh of their dead to stay alive. Desperation will drive us to break the perceived and engrained bonds of morality no matter the costs.” He thinks about eating Kira. No. You can’t think about that . He moves toward the dog, waving his arms blindly. “Get! Skat!”
    The dog stares at him, growls.
    Anthony Barnhart
    Dwellers of the Night
    43
    He bends over, picks up a rock along the curb. He throws it at the dog. It misses. “Get!”
    The dog releases the corpse’s arm, barks.
    He picks up another rock, pauses, throws it through the air.
    It hits the dog in the shoulder. It barks and turns, running down the street, tail between its legs. The man walks over to the body, looks down. “Ben Aldridge.” His neighbor. Sometimes they played poker. Not much lately, though. Ben had gotten a job at a factory and worked almost all night shifts. Not last night, though. He had been at home when the nightmare began.

    He stands on the back porch. The oaks leaves are turning different colors. It’s changing early this year . He holds a bottle of Bud Light. He doesn’t like the stuff. Kira drank it. This is her last bottle. He’ll need more alcohol. It’s the only thing that numbs the pain. The bottle is in one hand, a cigarette in another. He smokes an entire pack. His stomach grumbles. He knows he should eat, but he has no real appetite, despite his cringing stomach. He knows that if he eats, he’ll just puke it back up again. He stubs the cigarette against the brick of the house, gives one last look at the lifeless city, and returns inside.

    Now he sits in the chair in the corner of the bedroom, elbows on his knees, head resting in his hands. The headache isn’t so bad. His heart feels heavy and his nerves drained. Empty eyes stare at the figure lying on the bed. He doesn’t smell the scent of rot, the stench of decay, that overbearing aroma of a body going through the stages of decomposition. He thinks nothing of it. He is thankful she isn’t rotting. He wants her to remain in the bed, frozen in place, always a spectacle of beauty. But he knows that will not be the case. Eventually she will rot. Eventually. The word hangs in the air like a stiletto. Eventually. But not yet. Not yet . He has to bury her. He’ll take her to the graveyard—no. He’ll bury her behind the house. He won’t disturb anymore bodies. He won’t let her break down like the others: he knows the city will become a cesspool of bacteria and germs as the bodies decompose. In the homes, on the streets, in wrecked cars. The city will become a city of sun-bleached bones, to which threadbare raiment shall cling. And when the snow falls, the rib cages will reach through the snow banks, crawling out into the sunlight. But not Kira. No, not Kira. She will decompose, but she will do so in honor. In the earth. Where she should be. He needs to find a shovel.

    He stands beside Ben Aldridge’s body. The dog has gone and not come back. He looks over to the open front door. He’s been inside Ben’s home. He knows where the door to the garage is located. Ben has shovels. But he can’t