Hot breath beat against the back of Jerry’s neck. He spun around and shoved the barrel of his 12 gauge into a hardened stomach. Luke raised his arms in the air and squeezed his eyes shut. When he breathed out, flecks of spit flew from his lips.
Jerry turned back to the room, which was almost cleared except for two stragglers that wouldn’t go down without a fight. He blew the head off one and hit the other in the leg, giving Ralph enough time to swing his crowbar and hit it in the temple. Jerry turned back to face Luke, who lowered his arms slowly and took quick shallow breaths. He snorted at the pathetic, sniveling man in front of him and shook his head. “Coward,” Jerry grumbled as he moved out of the way so the others could vacate the apartment.
The white walls were painted red with the blood of the dead. Luke stared off into the room long after the others had moved on to stand in front of Ralph’s mother-in-law’s apartment door, the last one to be checked.
He wasn’t a coward. He was protecting himself, preserving himself, so he could see his family again. That’s what a good man would do. A good man would be there for his family, like Liam was. All at once, Luke realized he had to get to his ex-wife and daughter before it was too late. He closed the door to 614 and joined the others. He kept his distance and averted his eyes in case Jerry tried to shame him again for tapping into his basic human instincts of survival.
Ralph tried to swallow as he stared at Marianne Dunbar’s door, but it felt like there was a rock wedged in his throat. “Let’s get this over with.” He meant to say it as normally as possible, but it came out in a raspy whisper.
There was no doubt in his mind what he would find behind that door. Marianne was dead. He was sure of it. There was no way she could have survived everything, especially with what he just saw in the apartment diagonal to hers.
Jerry cleared his throat loudly and shifted on his feet.
Ralph was pulled from his vision of Marianne as a rotting, walking corpse and, instead, thought about the last time he’d seen her alive.
XVI.
“What is that old man doing now?” Ralph Sherman asked as he rolled over in bed.
“I don’t know, but he’s going to wake up the baby if he doesn’t shut up,” Sally answered with pique and discontent.
She’d been up half the night with Lilly because of the partying college boys downstairs and now she was up at the crack of dawn because some old geezer couldn’t wait a few hours to nail something to his door. Right on cue, she heard the baby cry out for attention and a bottle. Sally rolled her eyes, not at the needs of her child but at the man who woke her up.
Ralph stayed in bed. He rolled over to face away from Sally.
“Oh, no,” she said as she poked him in the back. “If I have to get up with the baby, then you have to go downstairs and check on my mother.”
“Why do I have to check on her? She’s
your
mother,” he said into his pillow.
“Fine, but then you have to get the baby, change her diaper, and feed her, but just a fair warning, her morning diaper is usually a poopy one so have fun with that.”
“OK, all right, I’ll go check on your mom,” Ralph huffed as he threw the covers off.
Sally was pleased. If she’d have had to go downstairs she would have felt compelled to change out of her warm, cozy pajamas and do something with the matted, long mess of red and blonde hair that sat in a bun on top of her head.
Ralph pulled on the pair of green plaid pajama pants he found on the floor and gave a dramatic sigh of exasperation. He looked over at Sally, who stared back at him. His eyes begged for her to do all the work while he went back to sleep.
“No,” was all she said as she pointed towards the door. When she saw his fallen face she softened and picked up the babbling baby in the crib next to their bed. “I’ll make some biscuits and gravy when you get back!’ she called after him.
Ralph scuffed up his dishwater blond hair and shuffled in his camoflauge house slippers down the flight of stairs and over to Marianne’s door. He passed by Jerry Middleton, who nodded in his direction. As irritated as Ralph was with Jerry for waking him up, he didn’t give him a piece of his mind about it. Something about Jerry reminded Ralph of his dad back in California. It made him not want to say anything to him at all.
He hadn’t seen his dad since the big fight right before he left for Navy boot camp after high school. He thought about going back home when his four years were up to try to make things right again, but he met Sally through a group of sailors on another ship and after six months together they were married and she was pregnant.
Before they even became a family, Ralph felt closer to Sally than he ever had with his own and knew how important it was for her to go back to Indiana to help her mother after her dad died. It made no sense to deny his wife time spent with her own family just because he didn’t care to see his. So after they were discharged from the Navy, Ralph and a seven months pregnant Sally drove from Norfolk, Virginia to Chesterton, Indiana, and that’s what brought Ralph to Sally’s mother’s doorstep at least once a day to make sure she was still alive and breathing.
Ralph knocked and waited for Marianne to hobble over to the door and answer it. He heard her approach as the rubber soles of her slipper-covered feet scraped at the fake wood linoleum. Her hands pressed on the door as she straightened her slightly hunched back to look through the peep hole. Even though Ralph couldn’t see any of this as it happened, he knew it was Marianne’s routine before she opened for anyone, per her daughter’s request. One time Marianne hadn’t adhered to the rules and got a long lecture from Sally on why it was important to not open the door for strangers at her age.—a phrase Marianne hated.
“Hello, Ralph,” Marianne said and then turned back into her apartment to leave him in the hallway. “Sally send you?”
“Of course. She wanted to make sure Jerry wasn’t beating you to death with his hammer.”
Marianne snorted and then went to the kitchen to make tea in the new Keurig machine Sally got for her. It was the first time Ralph laid eyes on it and he immediately wondered how much it had cost him, and also why he was making his coffee in an ancient Mr. Coffee machine while Marianne got a brand new one that she couldn’t figure out how to use. He walked over and helped her put the K-cup into the holder and shut it.
“Oh, thank you, dear,” she said with a wrinkled smile. Her thin, silver, curled hair stuck up in all directions. She pushed her wire-rimmed glasses up on her button nose as she tried to work the machine again to make Ralph a cup of tea as well.
It amazed Ralph that he could show her how to use something so simple and not two seconds later, she’d forgotten how to use it again. He put the second cup in and closed the lid before he pressed the painfully large start button. One, two, three.
“I don’t want any tea, though,” Ralph said. Marianne glared at him with dull, tiny eyes. “Maybe Jerry would like a cup.” Ralph smiled at her and waggled his eyebrows.
“You stop that,” she said as she swatted at him. She carefully walked over to her round, bistro table for two and sat down.
“I see the way he looks at you,” Ralph teased as he continued to stand by the counter.
Marianne looked down at her cup and Ralph saw the slightest hint of blush on her liver-spotted cheeks. Suddenly, the vision of his mother-in-law and Jerry together in a sagging, wrinkled tangle popped into his mind and caused him to shudder. He averted his eyes to the floor and ran a hand through his short hair.
“Well, I better get back upstairs. The baby’s awake and Sally promised me breakfast,” he said and shot straight for the door.
“OK, dear!”
Jerry was still in the hallway making a raucous. His eye caught Ralph’s at the last second. He smiled, but Ralph turned away and jogged up the stairs to his apartment, taking two steps at a time.
“I think your mom and Jerry are having an affair,” Ralph said once he was inside. He heaved heavy breaths.
“It’s not an affair if both their spouses are dead,” Sally laughed. She was in the kitchen stirring the gravy while the biscuits baked warm and golden in the oven. The smell of sausage wafted up Ralph’s nostrils and perked him up again.
“Well they’re doing something hideous and unnatural, then,” he spat as he filled a mug with dark roast from his shitty coffee maker.
XVII.
With one push of the crowbar, Marianne Dunbar’s door swung open. The apartment was sunny and light, hot like the air outside. Ralph Sherman stepped into his mother-in-law’s apartment with his toes first and then lowered his foot slowly and quietly as he made his way further in. It only took three steps to make it past the entryway and into the living room.
A long, gauzy curtain billowed up and out. Everyone snapped their heads, raised their weapons, and waited for something hideous to pop out from behind it. Another breeze blew and pushed the curtain into the room again to do its ghostly dance. The patio door was open.
Without hesitation, Ralph ran over and threw the curtain behind him. He stopped on the other side, the curtain stuck to his back like a leech. His breath was caught in his lungs. He thought he had prepared himself for the worst, but what he saw out on the patio was more horrible than he could have imagined.
Liam craned his neck and saw, lying on the concrete, bare, liver-spotted legs and one foamy sandal on an unmoving foot. He lowered himself back down and looked over his shoulder to the others behind him. He shook his head as his eyes softened, his brow pulled together.
Luke rubbed the sides of his head with both hands and spun around, as if he’d been expecting to go in there and find the old woman knitting happily on the sofa. He tried to contain himself, but the sounds of soft weeping escaped his lips.
Zack slowly lowered his sword to let it hang at his side as the tip grazed the fluffy, light carpet.
Jerry stared in silence with his free hand shoved in his pocket, his shotgun rested on his shoulder.
Ralph’s upper body shook as he lowered himself down to one knee and lightly touched Marianne’s arm. He said her name, but she didn’t move. He knew she wouldn’t. The back of her head had been blown away, nothing left but tender, red meat and brains that spilled out onto the hot surface. An overturned watering can lay next to her.
XVIII.
Back at the apartment, Christine sat at the window seat. She read a book she forgot she owned as she soaked in the sun’s warm rays through the glass. The only locked deadbolt clicked and the front door opened. She kept her eyes on the yellowed page until she was finished with the sentence she was reading.
“How’d it go?” she asked with the casualty she might have used when asking “how was work”.
Liam had stopped off at Zack’s apartment before he returned home to wash away the blood that streaked his face and hands, though there was no removing of the thick, dark blood that splattered his shirt and pants.
When Christine looked up from her book and saw his clothes, she spray up and made her way to him with wide eyes.
“Oh my God. What happened?” she asked frantically. The tears were already welling in her big, blue eyes. “Are you OK? Are you hurt?” Her bottom lip trembled.
Liam nodded his head and leaned his bow and quiver up against the coat closet. “I’m all right.” His voice was drawn out and exhausted. He blinked and forced a meager smile for Christine’s sake.
She exhaled and smiled back, oblivious to the pain just beneath the surface of his sparkling eyes. “Well, let me wash those clothes. I’ll see if I can save them.”
Her choice of words made Liam’s eyes sting profusely. His throat clenched shut. He hadn’t been able to save anyone that day. He peeled off his shirt, dropped his pants, and handed them over to his fiancée. As their hands met, his eyes looked past the side of Christine’s head, unable to focus on her. He was afraid that if she looked him in the eyes she might be able to see what he’d done, see all the people he murdered and the bodies that had fallen under his arrows.
“Excuse me. I’m just going to wash up,” he said softly.
Liam shut himself in the bathroom and rested his hands on the counter. Each breath he took was a stab to his lungs, quick and sharp. His vision blurred as he looked up at the mirror. A wave of heat rose through him and burned his face. His cheeks matched the color of his ginger hair. He couldn’t keep it inside any longer.
His shoulders shook while he sobbed, as quietly as he could, over the sink. The tears dripped from his chin and fell onto the porcelain before they slid down the deep, dark abyss of the drain.
When emerged from the bathroom, Christine was rearranging the pillows on the couch—picking them up, fluffing them, and then setting them back down just so. She looked up at him with a smile that said she hadn’t heard a thing.