The older couple were seated around an empty fireplace. Whether they all imagined a raging fire at its centre was unknown. Jess had, before he heard Dustin’s scream. He pictured three thick logs in the opening; one on its back and two balanced against each other like the rooftop of a house. He could almost picture Toni in a chair too.
They were out of wood.
“We have to go,” Jess said. “Now. It’s no longer safe here.”
“Why?” George said.
The old man didn’t seem surprised when Jess told them what happened.
“They’re in that twilight zone, between realms. Not quite children but not yet old enough to be men. They’re fighting for their own right to be individuals. It was a long time ago, but I remember it well. It takes some of us longer to grow out of.”
He too, looked unfamiliar in the low light levels. The wounds on the old man’s face had become so hard and angular that he looked like a rock creature come to life by magic. His mouth was like clay. His voice issued forth like smoke, barely heard and threatening to vanish at any given moment.
Jess listened for the kids. Their indistinct voices could be heard up above. He wouldn’t spend more than a few moments not watching the various entry points. He had clearly lost his focus; becoming too secure in this place. He had known the food wouldn’t last but hadn’t quite expected to have to hone up to the fact quite so soon. They were out of wood and the power was fading, and things were crawling right out of the water. Things that shouldn’t be able to survive down there.
“I see one of those monsters whisk their way down the river every single day. They’re all tip-toe-ing around the bank of the river and eventually one of them falls in trying to find a way across. I guess I hoped that they’d vanish all on their own. We will run out of food eventually, or one of those things will actually make it to our doorstep. So I guess what it comes down to is whether we wait until that moment comes on its own, or do we act in advance, knowing that we will have to leave soon anyway?”
George did not move from his spot. His eyes did not venture from their holding upon the non-existent glow of the fireplace and his voice sounded like his throat was burning.
“Let me tell you a little about me,” he said, coughing a little. “I was a firefighter for 27 years. Most nights we sat around playing cards and responding to false alarms. You show up at a building and find out that someone had cooked their toast for too long and the alarm wouldn’t stop going off. That was a frequent happening in the job, but every once in a while, we got caught in a real bad fire; the kind where people got taken away in hearses, or if we were lucky, ambulances.
“There was always one thing nearly impossible to reproduce when it came to the training and recruiting of new firefighters. You could never adequately determine how one would react in a life-and-death situation. Ask someone to drag an 80-pound sack of rice up a flight of stairs with a simulated house fire going on around him and he might do spectacularly well. Put him in the middle of a real fire and he may very well freeze – not sure whether the ceiling before him is going to cascade down upon his head or if the room in front of him is completely engulfed in a giant fireball. You’ll always get trainees who pass with flying colours in the testing environment and then completely freeze up when the real thing hits.
“So ultimately, we came to understand that hesitation may be a great habit to employ in other situations, but it simply didn’t work in firefighting, which is basically a life-and-death situation where differences between the two outcomes had to be acted on in split seconds. Those are situations where every second counts, and hesitation costs lives; it doesn’t save them.
“One thing that I learned from that line of work is that you prepare as much as you can, but there is no preparing for everything. You’re better off making an instant decision, trusting your gut and going with it. You may be wrong, but at least no one died from an inability to make a decision.”
He coughed some more, clearly winded by the exertion.
Jess stopped to think a moment. There was no sound coming from where the kids were. It was the lack of sound that every parent prayed for at the end of the day, and it was the one thing that kept them up in the middle of the night.
“I think we’re sitting ducks here,” he said at last.
There was no expression on the faces of George and Patricia.
“We were all tired, and we needed a place to stay,” Jess said. “This seemed a safe spot and it has kept us safe for a few days but we’ve all seen the growing horde on the other side of the river. And our food will run out eventually. We could probably manage another week here, but it doesn’t change the fact that we will have to leave eventually. Two days ago I would have said that we should ride it out for as long as we can but now I’m not so sure.
“I sat there for an hour this morning watching the banks at the other side. I don’t know if those things are alive and I can’t figure out how they know we’re here and why they’re so eager to get across to us. If I didn’t know better I’d say they can smell us. It’s like they’re hungry and we’re a bunch of steaks sitting on the grill. The kids call them zombies and I’m not sure they’re wrong.”
Patricia perked up at last. She sat up in her seat as though she were trying to keep quiet a secret that was boarded up under the planks of the floor – now threatening to tear the entire foundation apart via unearthed reverberations.
“I keep overhearing the kids talk about how it’s like we’re in the middle of a movie too. I guess there are all kinds of these zombie movies out there about how dead bodies will come back to life because of a chemical spill or a comet that comes too close to the earth.”
The old man was fidgeting with his hands, although seemingly unaware that he was doing it. They were in constant movement in his lap, fingers prying at other fingers like twin animals picking and pruning at each other.
“We’ve all seen it,” he said. “They want us for something, and it doesn’t seem like they want to sing us show tunes.”
“We could really use one more night’s rest,” Patricia said. George coughed again.
“Fine,” Jess said. “But first thing in the morning we’re leaving. And I mean early.”
They had found a few wine bottles in a back closet. Cheap red table wine, likely for the sole purpose of cooking, opened by force of a screwdriver.
“I guess we better make the best of our last night here,” George said.
“Now that’s the best plan I’ve heard in this entire bloody trip,” Jess said. “That might be the perfect antidote to insomnia while we’re at it.”
They all three nodded in agreement and proceeded to drink their way through the two bottles. They had paper cups in lieu of glasses.
“You guys are really lucky,” Jess said, realizing after he had spoken how awkward and random the statement had been.
“What do you mean?” Patricia said.
She had recoiled a bit, pushing back from the table in a way that made her look so small. Toni never looked so small, no matter the situation.
“I just mean you guys clearly care for each other and you’re together. Not many people are so lucky, I suspect.”
Patricia and George looked at each other. George coughed a little, trying to angle it into his shirt. Patricia leaned forward again and grabbed the stem of her glass between two fingers.
“It’s been a long road to get to this point,” she said. “And we’re at the age where we count all our blessings. We’re thankful for every breath, every hug and kiss. You’ll understand eventually.”
“The love of my life is locked up in the back of the van,” Jess said. He began to lose control of his lips that shook as if he was freezing. “And I’m thinking more and more that it’s not even her. That’s it’s just some shell of her, her body and nothing more.”
“Oh dear,” she went on. “That’s my point exactly. Who has the perfect life as laid out in the those awful romance movies we all watch? Sometimes things don’t work out and you soldier on as best you can, finding beauty and laughter in places you never knew existed.”
She looked over at George, who just nodded in agreement.
“We met six years ago after George got a divorce and my husband died,” she said.
“Horrible, awful experiences,” George added.
“Yet here we are,” Patricia said.
“Make the best of your situation,” George said, and held out his glass of wine in an offer of acknowledgement.
Patricia followed suit and Jess sat there, feeling like he had been hit by a truck. He raised his glass and tapped it against theirs.
“We live in a really fucked up world, don’t we?” he said.
George laughed and dropped his palm on Patricia’s knee, rubbing it a moment like it was a crystal ball.
George and Patricia eventually decided they could stay up no more and went off to a room near the back of the lighthouse where there were two beds, one of which was occupied by their slumbering grandchildren.
Jess could hear the woman talking to her husband as they shuffled off. His gruff voice was extremely hard to mask or turn into a whisper. Jess watched as the couple leaned on each other on their way to bed. The old man fought to keep back the coughing fits and looked extremely weak.
“Are you okay dear? You don’t look like you’re feeling all that well.”
“Nothing that a little sleep won’t fix,” he said in response.
There was still half a bottle of wine sitting on the table.
“Guess it’s just you and me,” Jess said softly. “And this room ain’t big enough for the both of us.”
He pushed the glass aside and brought the bottle to his lips.
He felt warm and numb in the company of the old couple. With the last of the wine gone he started to feel free. Free from the worry that always clouded his head. In the past he worried about having enough money to get by, or whether Toni was going to take the kids and move to the maritimes, which she spoke about wanting to do on occasion.
Now, with the world such a mess he had to worry about whether he and his boys were going to become lunch for one of those monsters out there. There’s always something, he thought – but the one thing that could guarantee to make it all go away was good old alcohol.
Jess opened the door to the lighthouse and walked outside. He could feel a cold wind blowing against the exposed skin of his neck but it didn’t really bother him. He stood at the edge of the water. It looked like a big pool of black ink.
There was a miniscule amount of wine in the bottle and Jess held it aloft so that the last drips could fall upon his tongue. He then kissed the belly of the bottle and heaved it out into the middle of the dark river. The bottle made an audible splash and Hoover, standing back near the lighthouse, came forward at barked at the intrusive sound in the water.
“Hey, knock that off!” Jess said and waved the dog away with his hand.
Moans could be heard in the distance and Jess could see dozens of forms on the other side waddling against each other like a throng of people waiting to get into a stadium.
“Why are you standing there!” Jess yelled into the darkness. “Afraid of a little water? Can’t you swim?”
The dog barked again, perked up by Jess’s animated behaviour.
“Alright, calm down you.”
Jess located Hoover’s leash and walked around to the other side of the island and tied him up to a metal pipe.
“Sorry buddy, but it I don’t do this one of us is going to wake everyone up.”
Soon, Jess was yawning.
He had managed to crawl up the stairs, until he was on the small landing leading up to the upper room. The sky almost seemed clear that night and the a small light in the blackness that Jess thought might be the full moon shone down on his children like an illusion of a blanket. He had to push aside the thought that they were all fooling themselves. The entire possibility of hope was beginning to feel like an illusion.
He left the dog outside. It had shelter available under several large awnings at different sides of the lighthouse and would provide good warning of any trouble, he thought.
Though sleep eluded Jess, it was not for a lack of trying. He leaned with his back up against the wall of the stairwell, watching as his two boys slumbered. He had no idea what time it was when he woke but there was a noise that came from below on the ground floor. Something had been knocked over and he was sure he heard the dog barking. He pulled himself from the confines of a light blanket and remembered that it was even darker down below without the windows and the moon to guide them in the dark.
But then the single series of sounds – innocent on its own – was followed by further bangs, like people stumbling around in the dark, continuing to collide with various objects. It was almost like there was a drunk down there who didn’t know when to stop.
All Jess had was a lighter and a flashlight the size of a pencil in his pocket. Neither were decent weapons of any kind. The boys had awakened now, also hearing the disconcerting sounds coming from below.
Jess got to his feet and slowly moved halfway down the stairs. He motioned for the boys to stay where they were. He couldn’t believe that one of the creatures had made their way across the river again. He was hoping that the old man had simply found himself another bottle of wine somewhere.
Jess pointed the flashlight down the stairs before him. He went down slowly and his mind raced to try and come up with different options to explain the source of the noises. Perhaps one of the young kids had waked, requiring the use of a bathroom and was unfamiliar with the area downstairs in the dark.
The sounds halted as he descended and the flashlight projected a small beam of light; very focused in one direction only. He felt his way with his other hand along the wall of the stairwell. Finding the bottom, peeked out around the corner. He could see little and took a step out.
Everything was in disarray. Several plates or pottery cups were broken in pieces on the floor. A wooden chair was upturned and one of the original paintings hanging from the wall had been knocked such that it now hung on an angle. But the main door to the outer area was closed. The dog was barking incessantly. The windows all appeared to be intact – nothing broken. Then one of the shadows seemed to move – an upright form that seemed to have as much trouble adjusting to the darkness as the rest of them.
He fixated the light, and saw that the old man was standing before him with his head arced to the side as though he were listening for something – perhaps the origin of the very sound that had so unnerved them all.
Behind the old man, he spotted the forms of the grandchildren, splayed awkwardly against the sofa. The old man’s face slowly turned to Jess’s spot at the base of the stairs. All humanity was gone from his face. The boils had multiplied to such an extent that he seemed unable to open his eyes anymore. Bubbles of rotten flesh extended from everything but his open mouth.
He had to stifle the urge to scream. He had never seen anything so hideous before. The thing that was once the old man now seemed to leap forward but his movements were slow, like a starving and blind peasant trying to catch a meal that his very survival depended on.
It tripped over the end of a chair. His movements were slow, but he had enough time to reach the stairs once Jess went upstairs to get the boys. There was no other way out. Jess grabbed a metal box and hurled it down the stairs at the thing as it climbed up. In searching for something else around the lighthouse, he inadvertently tripped a lever that illuminated and started rotating the beacon above them. It was brilliant and blinded them all for a brief moment until it slowly turned away from them.
He found a broom, the wooden kind with long strands at the end for sweeping. Jess whacked the old man in the head and shoulders a few times but it didn’t seem to bother it.
It continued to slowly climb up the stairs and a starving moan emanated from its open mouth.
Jess snapped the broom in half over his thigh, which made for two new pointed and slivered ends. The creature came closer and Jess aimed for its mouth with force, but drove the stake deep into its neck. It slowly fell backwards and rolled down the stairs.
“Come, now!” Jess yelled at his children.
They went down and Jess had to lift both of them over the now stilled form of the old man.
“Don’t look at anything,” Jess said. “Just move for the door and wait outside.”
The creature reached out one last time, grabbing Jess’s pants and caused him to lose his footing.
They smashed against a cabinet that had several lit candles sitting on it. The entire thing tipped and rolled away. Sparks of flame caught on blankets and old wool throws piled up in the corner of the room.
The man’s hands clawed at his face and the room was suddenly bathed in growing light as the fire climbed vertically as if there was an unknown upwards draught in the room. The old man’s outstretched hands continued to claw at him and Jess had to swat them away, only to find that they were covered in blood or some other substance that was sticky and dark.
They were tangled around the floor – his hands wildly flailing out in an offence that didn’t seem very thoughtful. Jess kept trying to push him back enough to get away but the old guy was big and heavy and did his best to get on top of him, despite having a foot-long stake protruding from his bloodied neck. The old man’s hands came down upon his shoulders and the full weight of him came down next, forcing Jess to the ground. They twisted and rolled together, coming to a stop against one of the sofas in the room. Jess kicked his legs as strongly as he could and pushed the old man a foot or two backwards, which provided enough time and space to let him get to his feet. The room was beginning to fill with dark black smoke and he took another step backwards, finding his way blocked by the furniture. He turned and sought something that would serve as a weapon. That was when he saw the details of the two young grandchildren on the sofa.
They had been ripped apart like animals, glistening red portions of meat torn from the beige skin that should have held their insides together. Their faces both looked upwards, perhaps in plea to a God that did not seem to hear.
Michael had pulled something from his jacket pocket– Jess thought it looked like a knife, and he swung it down at the old man with much force. Whatever thin utensil it was that he had picked up was then plunged deep into the old man’s eye socket. He did not scream like one would expect a man to do, but he did let out a kind of audible expulsion of air, like he was surprised by what had happened.
Still, the threat did not end and the thing, a stake in his neck and a knife in his eye, and it still took another step forward.
Jess punched him in the face as hard as he could, driving the knife in even further.
The old man toppled slowly, as Jess imagined the Leaning Tower of Pisa might do one day, surprising all with its slowness.
Dustin was waiting about midway between the front door and the shoreline. Jess ran out, rounding up both of them by the hands, dragging them to the back of the house where the small boat sat upside down on the lawn. He single-handedly right-sided it and pulled it over to the lip of the river and told his sons to get in. He took one of the oars and pushed the boat into the water with his free hand.
He had to wade to his knees in the water in order to free the boat. The dog started barking again.
“Dad!” was all Dustin said.
Damn
, he thought. He quickly tied the rope around a post nearby and ran over to Hoover and untied him. He climbed in the boat and made sure his sons were okay. They turned and Hoover waited on the shore, hesitant about the water.
“Come!” Dustin cried.
The dog did a little circle, as if surveying his options and then ran and leaped into the craft.
The boat immediately followed its own course as it moved away from shore, taken forcefully in the direction of the river’s currents.
The three of them snuck glances back at the lighthouse as they drifted downstream. Its beacon rotated, sending a powerful beam out into the otherwise dark sky.
“We have to go back to get mom,” Dustin said.
Jess looked over at the shore. The zombies were starting to turn and follow them down the river.
“Your mother is one of them, Dustin! She’s dead, or sick, I don’t know, but she wants to hurt us all. Kill us, just like them!”
Dustin started crying.
“You said we would try to save her,” Michael said. “You said you didn’t know what we could do, but that we’d try.”
The boat bobbed quickly, back and forth, atop the river’s dark currents.
“Fine,” Jess finally said. “But we have to go far enough downstream that they can’t track us. We’ll double back and find a way to the van.”
He waited another 15 minutes in the boat before looking for a way to pull it ashore.
They had drifted down the river for a kilometre. Possibly two. The current was strong but the water was not always deep and there were many rocky bottoms along the way that threatened to rip up the bottom of the boat. They passed by a small group of houses, and saw some cars parked not far away. But three times they saw such a sight and considered pulling their craft up to shore when a zombie would appear; something new, unknown and appetizing having caught its attention.
It wasn’t until he knelt in the muddy shore, gathering water in his cupped hands to drink that he noticed his face was almost entirely covered in red blood from the thing that had tried to kill him.