Keepers (17 page)

Later we had a couple of loaded pies at Tammy’s Pizza and played every song on the jukebox while Mr. Weis regaled us with endless anecdotes from his glory days. Only once, at the end of the evening as we were driving home, did I give that package another thought. I knew damn well that Beth hadn’t had it with her when we left that morning, so the only place she could have gotten it was at the Keepers facility. In the cold-storage area. But who’d given it to her, and why—and more to the point, why had she agreed to mail it?

Mabel and I checked Mr. Weis back in. He hugged us before we left his room. The day had meant so much to him, it was so wonderful of us to take him along, did we think maybe we could do it again sometime soon? A movie and pizza again? He’d surely love that. I thought he was going to start crying. It was so out of character it seemed downright mawkish; as a result, I almost lost it myself, but Mabel—ever the graceful professional—assured him that we’d enjoyed his company, as well, and that, yes, we’d all do it again very soon. That seemed to please Mr. Weis—who gave me permission to call him Whitey. I knew what that meant and hugged him once more before we left.

Most of the truly significant moments of your life don’t come with a blare of trumpet and roll of tympani. Half the time you’re not even aware of their importance until well after they’ve tipped their hat to you on their way into the past. God knows most of the benchmark events of my life have only gained meaning through later reflection—
why didn’t I realize this at the time
?—but that day was different. As we went into the house that evening, Beth squeezing my hand with a hard, damp strength that told me she wanted to make love until we couldn’t move, I took a breath and filled myself with the night: the blackness above deep and comforting and nearly total, excepting a few distant stars that winked past the cold silver coin of the moon like children who’d succeeded in fooling “It” during a game of hide-and-seek, and I knew—with as much maturity and wisdom as I had within reach then, I
knew
—that something profound and irreversible had happened, that there would come a time decades from now when I would look back on this day, this night, this moment of her hand in mine as a smoky hint of autumn lingered under the summer nightbreeze, and I would be able to say with unbreakable certainty:
This was it
,
right here
.
You can see it on my face
.
This time
,
this breath
,
this moment
. It didn’t matter that I had no idea
what
exactly had happened or why it was so important, but sometimes you get a feeling in your core that is so clear and strong it can’t be anything but the truth in its most potent and undistilled form. Call it an epiphany if you want to be melodramatic, but I knew that this summer dimming into autumn as all summers must would be the last for me as I was
right now
; my youth was turning to look at me over its shoulder and smile farewell. Hope you enjoyed the ride, friend. It’s been a real kick, but you’re on your own now. Don’t make love with your socks on, never cross against the light, and don’t take any wooden nickels.

Right here. This moment.

This touch, this promise, this breath.

The last good night of my life.

A Real Barn-Burner

“
I need to ask you a question
...”

The first shot hit one of the Pedestrians in the center of his chest, opening a fist-sized hole that blew him back into the mist and almost knocked me on my ass, but I managed to stay upright, plowing another shot into the next Pedestrian, and with this second shot I realized that I couldn’t hear anything. It wasn’t that the first shot had deafened me or that the makeshift earplugs were working wonders; it was that all sound had been sucked from the world—all I could hear was my own breathing echoing from within; everything without was a silent movie.

The first Pedestrian stumbled out of the mist, frantically patting at the smoking hole made by the shell as it tore through his clothing and into his flesh. He wasn’t bleeding at all. Neither was the second one. Oh, they were moving kind of slow like Uncle Joe at the Junction, were obviously dazed and in pain, but they weren’t even close to dead. It was absurd that they should still be alive and moving, and to emphasize this point I shot each of them a second time. It slowed them down even more, but that was about it.

I backed into the house and kicked the door closed, locking it. The loud echo of the deadbolt slamming into place was reassuring. In here, there was still sound. I could hear them coming. It was only outside that they could steal the noise. So I’d take them on in here.

Finally grew a pair, did you, pal? Better late than never, I suppose.

I looked out the window. They were scattering around the house, readying to come at me from all sides. I might not be able to kill them, but I could hurt them, of that much at least I was certain. They weren’t going to get her, not my girl, absolutely not.

I ran into the kitchen and grabbed a large saucepan, threw onto the stove, and filled it with a quart of cooking oil before igniting the burner and turning the flame up to high. Then back into the junk portion of the bathroom cabinet for a screwdriver and the large can of lighter fluid and a second lighter. In the linen closet I yanked out one of the wooden shelves and scattered towels and dish rags and the other shelves over the floor, dousing them in lighter fluid as I made a trail through the downstairs.

Some of the Pedestrians were scrabbling up the trellis on the side of the house, heading for the roof, while another threw his weight against the back door over and over. I grabbed the antique oil lamp from the end table and ran to the top of the stairs, emptying the oil on the carpeting all the way, then throwing the whole thing against the far wall where it exploded onto my bedroom door with a loud, satisfying crash of glass and tin. One match, that’s all it would take. One match and the whole house would be swallowed by fire within minutes.

“Go away!” I screamed. “Leave us alone, goddammit!”

Back down the stairs and in to the kitchen where the oil was bubbling up over the side of the pan and the Pedestrian on the back porch was about to break the door off its hinges. I grabbed the handle of the pan in the same instant that the back door splintered inward with the crack of wood and the shattering of glass. The Pedestrian was halfway through when I threw the scalding contents of the pan at his head. It sizzled as it splattered over his exposed skin, creating dozens of bubbles of boiling flesh. He grabbed at his face and body with wild hands, opening his mouth to scream but of course he didn’t scream because he
couldn’t
scream, when there are that many of them they cut out their vocal cords, and as he thrashed and flailed about I leveled the shotgun and emptied a round into his chest but still he didn’t go down and I thought that was a bit rude, so I reached into my pocket for a lighter, realized I’d soon need it elsewhere, so pulled a kitchen match from the shelf over the stove, lit it, and tossed it at him.

He burst into flames, his arms pinwheeling as he stumbled back and fell down the stairs into the yard. As soon as he hit the ground he began to roll but the fire was out of control now, snapping and spitting and sizzling (though you couldn’t hear it out there, out there the mist swallowed the sound, but I’d heard the deep hungry belch of the flames when he’d gone up inside and it had made me smile), then he was on his feet once more, spinning around, arms raised, scattering smoky bits of charred material and meat in all directions as others gathered around him, pointing, nodding but not helping, and it was only then I realized that the burning figure was swaying side to side in perfect rhythm along with the other Pedestrians, doing the Wave, mocking me—

—distracting me.

An upstairs windows shattered. Then another. Feet ran heavily across the roof. Something came through a window in the living room. The dog howled under the porch.

I fired another shot directly into the dancing flame, then turned just as another Pedestrian leapt at me from behind, slamming us against the stove where the ignited burner still roared. I smashed the side of his head with the barrel of the shotgun but I might as well have been bitch-slapping a medicine ball for all the effect it had. He grabbed my head and began twisting my face into the open flame. The dog’s howl rose in pitch and volume, becoming a shriek of fury; I knew it wouldn’t be long before they figured out she was in the crawlspace and went after her, and I was not was not, repeat
was not,
going to let that happen, I’d known all my life that this day would arrive, that someday they’d come for me, I’d planned out my actions long ago, so if she and I were going down I was going to make damn sure I took as many of them with us as possible; but now the flames licked at my nose, I breathed them, felt the hairs inside my nostrils curl and singe and fill me with smoke and the smell of my own burned flesh, so I pushed up against his body with all I had and brought my knee up into his crotch and that seemed to surprise him because for just a second his grip on me loosened, but just a second was all I needed to snake my free hand down to my side, yank the screwdriver from my belt, and bury it all the way to the handle through one of his goggle lenses. He snapped up, his back bowing, hands grabbing at the thing jammed where his eye used to be as I lifted the shotgun and shoved the barrel against his face and fired. Bone and tissue blossomed outward, hitting the walls, sliding moistly toward the floor, making wet trails on the way down.

His body crumpled onto the table, shuddered, kicked, then lay still.

So they
could
be killed.

Good to know.

I heard footsteps upstairs pounding toward the landing. I jumped over the Pedestrian’s body and ran through the house, lighter at the ready. I looked up the stairway and saw the first shadow bleed across the wall as they neared the top. I struck a flame and tossed the lighter upward. As soon as it hit the carpet a bright blue-orange line of flame vomited in both directions; it fizzled out before getting down to the living room—I hadn’t spread the fluid as well as I’d thought—but it chewed its way up the stairs and around the corner so fast I knew they didn’t stand a chance. I rammed closed the door, locked it, and spun around just in time to see a smoking, charred tower of meat come at me with outstretched arms. I lifted the shotgun, but he was on top of me before I could get off a shot. He weighed as much as an elephant, and when we hit the floor every breath I’d ever taken since I’d been born blew out of my lungs and I went numb. He grabbed at my throat with deep-fried hands and squeezed, pushing up and down to increase the pressure. I felt the world slipping away, felt my body handing in its formal resignation, my legs kicking in uncontrollable spasms as I wet myself, but then he pulled up again and one of my legs jerked back, its knee bending, and I saw the handle of the dagger jutting out from the sheath strapped to the ankle. Take me, it cried out. I’m right here, so take me, fer chrissakes. I knew that I should but my arm wasn’t cooperating—at least, that’s what I thought, but then I heard the echo of Whitey’s voice in my head saying
keepers gotta keep the kept kept
,
know what I’m saying
and I remembered the way he’d looked the last time I saw him and some beast composed of equal parts anger and sadness snarled to life in my chest. The next thing I knew there was my arm shooting out and my hand grabbing the handle and then the dagger was free; I looked into the scorched ruins of the Pedestrian’s still-smoking face and I did what I was taught to do with a roast when you had a knife—I carved. First a cheek, then the lump that had once been his nose, the charred meat searing my skin as it fell off in blackened, dripping chunks, but I kept at it, burying the dagger to its hilt and then swiping sideways before pulling it out and hacking away until his grip loosened and he fell to the side, shuddering. I shoved the gristle-covered dagger into my belt, staggered to my feet, and disintegrated the rest of his head with a single shot.

Across the room, another window exploded in a shower of glass and wood. A Pedestrian was throwing rocks through all the downstairs windows in order to let in the mist. The mist swallowed sound. The mist obscured perspective. The mist had terrible faces in it, animal and human, and they wanted to talk to me, make me listen, make me understand that it had to be this way and I really had no choice in the matter, it was an ancient thing when you got right down to it, a way for nature to make perpetual use of its organic systems, hadn’t I figured that out yet?

I stepped over the broiled mass on the floor and made my way into the kitchen, grabbing the step-stool and putting it to good use. Then I started back toward the guest bedroom. Underneath the house, the dog’s shrieks of fury had become so loud and primal and frenzied they sounded like the screams of a waking dragon. I knew there was a chance she might come after me once I was down there but I had to risk it. She’d come here for a reason; even if she wasn’t completely aware of it, I was.

A flash of movement as one of the Pedestrians darted across the hall. I lifted the shotgun and pulled the trigger; there was only an impotent
click
!

So be it.

I used the dagger to cut away the duct tape and let the shotgun drop to the floor, then removed the pistol from the back of my pants and clicked off the safety before transferring it to my ruined hand and using the remaining duct tape to hold it in place.

Then I just stood there.

I could hear them coming through the back door, through the shattered windows, pounding their way through weak spots in the roof. Two loud thumps from behind the door to the upstairs let me know that at least one of them had made it through the flames and was heading down.

Still, I just stood there.

I wanted them to see that I was still on my feet, that I was still fighting, that I was not going to go gentle into that empty, lonely, miserable, and not-so-good fucking night. They weren’t going to win, and before I died I wanted to make sure they knew it.