A couple of years ago, I sold this story to Anthony Giangregorio, for inclusion in one of his “Dead Worlds” books. His ‘first rights’ have expired, and I don’t feel like doing anything else with it, so I’m just going to post it here for anyone who wants to read it. Consider it my gift to you, because you are so, so awesome.
I feel fortunate that I never submitted anything for further inclusion in his anthologies. From what I’ve been reading lately, I think I got off easy.
This is the original, unedited version.
Dying of the Light
“The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?”
— Edgar Allan Poe, “The Premature Burial”
Sundown was Michael’s least favorite time of day. There is a point, a last fading sliver when the light is almost completely gone. When the sun has just crept beyond the horizon and all that is left is a magenta gash across the black. A suicide slit creasing the night as the day bleeds out into nothingness. Only a moment, a few minutes at most, and then darkness swallows the world.
He used to love the night. He’d walk unhindered under the diamond-specked indigo dome of forever. The sounds of the waking of the hidden nocturnal world soothed him. The slowing and eventual cessation of worldly chaos brought him peace.
But then the Dead walked. And everything went to Hell, or Hell came for everything. It didn’t really matter now. There was no method in the madness. Like in some tragically turgid Hollywood splatterfest, the old world ended in a single night of rampaging revenants, clawing, tearing, feasting on the living as their legion swelled. Like a house of cards humanity crumbled, and was cast aside to squabble like beasts over the scraps of the old word. Like the Dead, they cannibalized themselves, their works, and their world.
Of course, Michael was never sure about the fate of the rest of the world, only his little pocket. He assumed that other nations had been affected similarly, or they didn’t care, or have the resources to help his own. Or perhaps he existed now in a quarantine zone that
stretched from horizon to horizon as far as he would ever be able to travel. Whatever the case, there was one singular truth to Michael’s existence: There was nobody to count on but himself.
He sat on the hood of his old weather-beaten, mud-caked jeep and stared out at the night. Ears and eyes alert, but knowing deep down that he was safe. He hadn’t encountered one of the Dead in over six weeks. Hadn’t seen one of the living in twice that. He was parked off the side of the highway on a rise looking out over the desert. The highway stretched out before him, like a raven-black snake winding across the dust.
He raised his hand to his mouth and plucked a hangnail from his index finger with his teeth. His fingernails were gnawed to stubs and often stung from minor infections. When under stress, he picked at his nails. And old habits died hard.
Spitting the fragment out into the dusty ground, he hopped off the hood of the jeep. A metallic ‘thunk’ as the hood, bent under his weight, sprang back to its original shape. He took one more look around, surveying for any sign of movement. Dead, living, either would be something of note.
His world was dead, dust. That was the moment that Michael realized that death and life no longer held meaning for him. He was stretching out that blur between one state and the next. He was simply going through the motions, and was looking forward to the day when it would all finally, irrevocably, end.
He walked around to the driver’s side door, climbed into the car, and drove into the night. No direction, nor purpose pulled him onward. He just drove, speeding along the highway, a spark of humanity fading within him, and hoping against hope that he might find some sign of life. But knowing in his heart, that he was utterly, terribly alone.
* * *
He sped forward, engine eating up the miles like some hungry beast of steel. He cut through the still, hot desert night, leaving only hope and memory in his wake. At first, he had tried to stay put. “Find a safe place, and barricade yourself inside” was among the few instructions anyone had ever received from the emergency services. But soon it was proven a false hope.
The Dead could somehow sense the location of the living. Nobody was certain how. The longer one stayed in one place, no matter how safe, the more Dead would be drawn to them. Eventually, whatever resources the location had initially offered would be exhausted. It was then just a slow death from starvation, dehydration and the madness of the inevitable.
Michael had discovered, however, that ironically, the Dead shunned graveyards, or other places of mass burial. Many times in the past months he had found himself waiting out the night in a mausoleum, or some forgotten tomb. But still, he never stayed anywhere for more than a day or two. No need to tempt fate.
And so he just kept moving. Tonight, like every night, he sped along. Never resting for more than an hour at a time. Winter was still a few months away, and he was considering heading south as it got closer. He was not an experienced camper at all, and did not relish the idea of trying to find shelter in the snow.
He rolled down the jeep’s window and took a breath of the late summer air. Warm, sweet and clean. No hint of smog, exhaust or anything but dry summer dust, and a hint of rotting vegetation from the abandoned fields in the distance.
Michael slung his arm out the window, catching air in his hand and ‘flying’ like he had when he was a child. Glancing down, he noticed the fuel gauge was about half full. He had a plastic tank in the back for storing gas, and it was empty. He’d acquired it, a sleeping bag, camp stove and a few other items when he raided a surplus store last month. He was constantly on the lookout for a source of fuel. Usually it was not hard to find a vehicle abandoned by its former owner. He was becoming quite adept at siphoning gas from these relics. The jeep was the fourth vehicle he’d had in as many months, as it was often easier to take an ‘upgrade’ off the street than try to keep up a dying vehicle. He did not relish losing the jeep, however. It was solid, reliable, and worth keeping if he could.
As he powered over a rise, he saw a large, low black shape against the side of the highway far in the distance, silhouetted against the dark horizon. This far out in the middle of nowhere, chances were it was a service station, or all-night diner, or even a combination of the two. Someplace that truckers used to stop in late at night, back in the days when there were things that people needed to take from one side of the country to the other.
As he got closer, he saw that the shape was indeed a gas station. The large orange “’76” ball glowed dimly like a fading Halloween pumpkin atop the roof of the place. Dying lights around the perimeter showed what looked like could be a pickup truck in the parking lot. That there was power at all was surprising to Michael. He thought about it and decided that the place must have had some sort of solar energy cells to power emergency lights.
But the lights were on. Perhaps the place had food, refrigeration. It was worth a try.
His foot slammed down on the gas pedal, and he raced faster into the valley. If he were going to go in, he’d have to make it fast. You never stopped in one place too long.
* * *
Michael eased his foot off the accelerator by degrees. As the jeep slowed incrementally, he was alert, wary for any sign of the Dead. Anything at all and he’d crush the pedal underfoot and rocket past.
But the place seemed abandoned, empty. It was a low, single-story squat convenience store/gas station. Built in a slightly mock western theme, appropriate to it’s desert surroundings. Nothing was visible through the plate glass windows except the siren call of racks of packaged food and minor supplies. His stomach groaned in anticipation. He could not clearly recall the last time he had eaten anything other than the stale granola bars he carried in his small knapsack. He still had three of them left, and was hoarding them for when things became truly dire. From the look of this place, however, he’d be able to restock, and then some.
Cranking the steering wheel to the right, he glided into the smooth, flat parking lot and pulled the jeep to a juddering halt. He waited, seconds at first and then maybe minutes, or a half an hour. Watching, scanning.
Nothing.
Neither sight nor sound of movement nor life. Just the whisperdark night and the moon, full and fat staring down at him from the abyss. He opened the door and stepped out of the jeep. Gravel crunched underfoot as he took half a dozen steps toward the store. He stopped and stretched, tendons and joints popping and cracking as he torqued the tiredness and stress from his knotted frame.
He stood for a few minutes longer. If any of the Dead were nearby, they’d have been on him by now. The outside of the shop must be clear, and a quick jog around the perimeter confirmed this. But the last few months of Michael’s life had taught him one truth: “Better to be careful than dead.”
He approached the front doors to the store, kicking gravel from underfoot as he approached. He was ready to turn and run to the jeep at a moment’s notice. He placed one hand on the bar across the glass door and pressed. The door hesitated, and then with a metallic squeal, opened. Cold sweat oozed from his skin at the shriek in the middle of the still night, but he stepped into the dimly-lit store nonetheless. Here and there, lights
were still on, but fading. Most of them had long burned out. The rest glowed a stale, faint yellow.
Michael surveyed the room slowly. Glass-faced cabinets, held a myriad of sodas, juices, waters and beers, like coffins of refreshment. Rack after rack of cellophane-wrapped snack foods, candy bars, pres-to-logs, batteries and a display of motor oil. Everything one might have needed in a trip across America in the old days. He reached out to a pegboard and removed a cellophane package of roasted peanuts. Tearing the bag open, he shook a few into his hand, and then popped them into his mouth. There was a tinge of staleness, but were better than nothing. He kept moving, always keeping an eye on the door, ready to make a hasty retreat.
As he neared the rear of the store, he smelled something sickly sweet. The familiar stink of rotting flesh. He approached the store room, the door closed tight. His leaned forward, turning his head to listen for any sound beyond the portal.
And then from behind him, “Don’t… fucking… move…” a woman’s voice hissed, low, strong and gravelly.
Michael stiffened instantly, caught off-guard. His hands went out from his body, a gesture he hoped would show that he was not a threat. “I don’t want to hurt anyone,” Michael rasped out. He suddenly realized that those were probably the first words he’d spoken to any other person in months.
“Turn around,” the voice commanded.
Michael shifted on one foot and started to turn in a slow circle. “Slowly,” he was told. “And keep your hands where I can see them.”
He turned, inch by inch, arms outstretched. Slowly he was able to see his captor. She was standing with her back to a wall, near the cash register booth. She must have been hiding behind it the whole time he was in the store. Michael cursed himself for a mistake that could very well cost him his life. She was pretty once, Michael decided. Her dark hair was long and tied in a ponytail. Her worn jeans and clingy white t-shirt had definitely seen better days. In one hand, and braced by the other, she held an enormous pistol. The steel cannon seemed oddly out of place held by such slender arms, but in her eyes flared the anger of Hellfire.
“What do you want here?” she spat. Her eyes were darting between Michael and the door.
Must have seen me coming a mile away, Michael thought. “I… I thought maybe there’d be people here.”
“Well, you were right then, weren’t you?” She stepped away from the wall, gun trained on Michael and circled around tho the front of the store. She looked out of the glass doors to his jeep. “Are you alone?”
He considered bluffing, but realized it would do him no good at all. “Yes,” he replied. “Good.”
“Look,” he stammered “I really don’t want any trouble.”
She glanced back at him. “Bit late for that, don’t you think?”
“I just thought someone in here might need help… or if there wasn’t anyone, this would be a good place to rest for a night or two.”
She lowered the gun a few degrees, and looked at him like she’d just discovered some new species of insect. Not sure if she should let it go, or crush it under her boot. After a minute, she said to him, “You can stay the night.”
“Thanks.”
“There’s plenty of food,” she said slowly. “The refrigeration is out so lots of it’s going to go bad before I can eat all of it, so help yourself. The drinks are warm, but better than nothing.”
“Do you mind?” he said, gesturing at her gun. She relaxed her stance, and he walked slowly over to a stack of cases of beer. Michael tore into one of the paper cartons and removed a can. He popped it open, a ‘snap-hiss’ and white foam oozed from the lid. He guzzled the brew, not stopping until the can was drained. “Good,” he muttered. “I haven’t tasted beer in forever.” He reached into the case and pulled out another one, then grabbed another for the girl.
She laughed as he handed it to her, sheepishly. “How long you been on the road?” she asked.
He popped open the second can and guzzled it down as fast as the first. “Months… really not sure to be honest.”
“Yeah, me either.” She pulled a packet of jerky from a pegboard display. Tearing it open with her teeth, she offered the open bag to Michael. He took a couple of strips of the dried meat, nodded his thanks, and began to chew methodically.
“Again, thanks” he said as he swallowed the meat, washing it down with the rest of a third beer. “You been here long?”
“No. Only a couple of weeks.” She offered him another beer as she ate some of the jerky. “I’d been running, moving, just like you probably. I found this place and decided to hole up for a while.”
“Good plan,” he muttered. It had been months since he’d last had anything alcoholic to drink, and the beers were going right to his head. He steadied himself with one hand and sat down on the cold linoleum floor.
“You okay?” the woman said, as she strode over to him.
“Yeah, fine… just too much beer too fast. Feeling a little woozy,” Michael stammered as she stepped around behind him.
“Good.”
As he placed another strip of meat in his mouth, she brought the butt of her gun down hard on the back of his skull. Spikes of light flashed in his eyes and Michael felt his head go numb as he slipped into darkness.
* * * * *
Michael woke in a cold sweat. He felt slightly nauseated, skin clammy. Weak and disoriented he slowly opened his eyes and dimly saw acoustic tiling overhead. He was vaguely aware of his surroundings. He thought he was probably in the storeroom he had noticed from inside the store. The light fixtures were long dead. Only pale blue moonlight pouring in from a small window up toward the ceiling offered any light at all.
He was lying on his back, staring up at the rotten acoustic tiling on the ceiling. Still a bit wobbly, he began to notice an insistent pulsing pressure on his calf. He propped himself up on one elbow and shrieked. One of the Dead had his leg in it’s death grip. Rotting, squamous hands grasped Michael’s leg, as the thing gnawed away. Hollow, vacant eyes stared off into space as the wretched thing drooled and slavered at Michael’s calf.
Michael’s leg was numb. There was no feeling of pain at all. He thought that he must have lost a lot of blood, or that the Dead Thing’s venom was already doing it’s work. Again, he screamed, and shoved at the thing’s face. Moldy, rotten skin sloughed off against his palm as he pushed the ghoul away. It fell, weakly, landing on its back, mouth still making grotesque suckling noises.
Michael grabbed for his leg, hoping to staunch the flow of blood. But his questing, panicked fingers found no wound. Amazed, he got to his feet and stared down at the pathetic wretch. The Dead Thing’s head turned blindly from side to side. It opened its mouth as if to speak, and Michael saw no teeth. Pus-blistered gums, and fragmentary specks of jawbone, but the horrid thing’s teeth had long since fallen out.
It got to its knees and crawled towards Michael. He watched the pitiable ghoul shuffle forward, hands searching, head scanning blindly left, right, left, trying to sense the direction of its thwarted meal. The rubbery skin of the thing split and smeared against the room’s floor as it searched in vain for Michael, who was standing mere inches away.
Michael looked down at the ghoulish figure, and for an instant felt pity for the thing. It had once been human. Been someone’s son, someone’s friend, maybe someone’s husband or father. He wondered who this thing had been in life. It must have been dead for months to be in such a state of decay. Possibly since the beginning of the Rise. The ghoul posed no threat to Michael, nor anyone else.
But then Michael felt the fires of rage begin to burn inside him. The Dead had taken his life, his family. They had destroyed his world and left it a barren, empty husk. Dead, yet still staggering on. Just like them. Just like him.
The living corpse inched towards him, jaws working the air in a slow, up and down, up and down. As if chewing at some ethereal cord which would lead it to its prey.
Michael took a few steps back before he was flat against the wall. He stared at the pathetic creature, and his rage burned volcanic. To his right, a rusty, dirt-encrusted shovel was propped against the wall. As the Dead Thing inched closer, Michael grabbed the wooden handle, smooth from years of use by work-calloused, living hands.
The thing reached forward, a blackened, oozing claw grasping the air in front of Michael’s leg. With grim determination, Michael slammed the shovel down. Point first, he felt the blade part muscle and sinew. Felt it shear and crack through brittle bone and with a metallic crunch, it impacted with the floor. The ghoul’s hand spasmed. Cut off at the elbow from the source, it fell limp.
Michael raised the shovel again and drove it into the monster’s torso. A heady stink as fluid and effluvia poured from the ruptured body. Mike remembered his coworkers, torn apart by the Dead as he raced to his car to escape.
He smashed the flat of the shovel blade against the side of the thing’s head, sending it reeling onto its back. He remembered his children; their school surrounded by wailing sirens, police firing into the playground at the diminutive ghouls rushing at them, tiny murderous teeth gnashing expectantly for living flesh.
Blow after blow rained down on the Dead Thing. With every jarring impact he recalled someone he had lost, some vestige of humanity flayed from his raw, bleeding soul.
He remembered his wife, her smile, her perfume, the way the sunset reflected off her hair. And with a scream of primal rage, he brought the blade down, one final time, axe-like severing the ghoul’s head from it’s pulpy shoulders.
Panting, gasping in the foetid air, Michael dropped the shovel to the floor. It clattered wetly in the mess which was once the ghoulish creature. He relaxed anger-stiff hands as he watched the things head, twitching on the ground as its jaw still opened and closed;
hungry still. Michael turned, grabbed onto the plastic industrial shelving to his side, slid to his knees and threw up.
Moments later, still shaking, he got to his knees and crossed the room to the door. He tried the knob and was unsurprised to find it locked. He stepped back and with hate born of fury, smashed his shoulder against the door, splintering the frame and sending it flying open.
The woman was there. Sprawled out on the floor, an empty bottle of Jim Beam by her head, and the sour smell of whiskey in the air told Michael that she was out cold. Michael knew her type. He’d seen people like her before. The Dead Thing must have been special to her once. Her husband, son, family or close friend of some sort. When it changed, she couldn’t bear to let it go. So now she kept it fed. He almost felt pity for her. Drinking herself into a stupor was the only way she could face the fact that she was feeding the last surviving members of her species to the Dead. Almost, but not quite.
Michael grabbed a large cardboard box from the storeroom and filled it with food, bottled water, batteries, anything he thought he might need later. He rushed from the store, pressing his back against the glass doors to open them to the night.
The night air was still warm, tinged with the chill of early morning coming. A slight breeze brought the smell of death to his nostrils. Instincts kicking in, he scanned in all directions. They were out there. He could just barely see the silhouetted shapes of at least a dozen of the Dead shambling towards him in the distance.
Never good to stay in one place too long, Michael thought as he pressed back further on the glass doors. He felt the pop that told him the door was locked wide open. He looked back at the girl on the floor. Survival of the fittest, he thought and then sprinted for the jeep. He made two more quick trips for supplies and the jeep was full. He even managed to refill the plastic jug with gasoline by quickly siphoning the truck nearby.
As the Dead reached the other side of the highway, Michael leapt into the jeep’s cab. He gunned the engine and raced off into the night. Past the pack of slack-jawed, shuffling Dead Things, and to another day of freedom.
Behind him, the night sky blossomed slowly to purple, then red. It kept getting brighter as the sun rose. The last ember of a dying fire.
