Page 23 of Them

The man stared at the brush for a long time before heading north again, head and legs aching, passing several eligible houses on his way. Still too close to the waterfall for his liking. The metallic menaces were everywhere, as far as he knew, but their nests weren’t. They had territory. Patrolled their own ground. The farther he traveled from that particular hive, the better.

Walking on the road made his head hurt. The asphalt impacts, however minor, were jarring. It made him want to close his eyes. He often avoided tall grass for fear of ticks, but the man took the hen as a good omen. She was hungry. Chickens ate ticks. Must not be many around here. So he veered off onto the shoulder.

The grass felt good beneath his boots. Soft. Spongy.

A mile later, the man passed a green billboard with a faded red heart that read WELCOME TO VIRGINIA: VIRGINIA IS FOR LOVERS! A few miles farther, and the rural sprawl gave way to a more suburban setting, where he came upon a scattering of small, isolated neighborhoods. The old homes were large, as were their weed-choked lawns, and the man guessed that a proper town or city was drawing near. A highway, even.

He walked past the first several residential turnoffs before crossing the street and taking a left on a winding road marked POPLAR AVENUE by a faded blue street sign on the corner. The metal pole was badly rusted along its base, and the man was surprised to see it still standing. Not for much longer, he thought with a touch of pity.

In the first house on Poplar, a sprawling brick rancher, he found nothing of use except for three twelve-ounce bottles of water. In the second house, he discovered a half-full tin of wintergreen chewing tobacco. He gave it a sniff and then shoved it into the back pocket of the jeans that did not belong to him.

When the man reached the third home, his nose began to twitch, and it wasn’t just the tobacco. The scent was dull and vague, but there, just the same. It was layered beneath everything else, the same way that rocks and fossils bury one another. That coppery sweetness slithered into his nose as he journeyed deeper into the two-story, that familiar smell distorted by time. What is it?

He found the answer sitting in a nest of cobwebs on a den table, beneath a cracked mirror. It was a sandwich. Its meat and condiments had decayed into a single sloppy, gray mass. The man thought he saw the rotten heap pulsate for a moment, like a beating heart. His legs froze. Maybe it wasn’t a sandwich at all. What if it was something to do with them? An egg? No, not that, but another life-form from wherever they’d come? And that last question sparked another one inside the man’s head, one he had given up on answering a long time ago: How did they get here, anyway?

He leaned closer to the den table.

It was definitely a sandwich, partially eaten and crawling with maggots. Vague outlines of bite marks decorated the moldy crust. Thin slices of pepperoni and pickles were still identifiable amid the gunk. But that’s not right. Cliché dictates that you don’t waste food in the wasteland. Cliché says this sandwich should’ve been eaten.

Unless it was the last supper.

The man reached out to the mirror hanging above the den table and traced his fingertips along its surface. Dull and cracked like a spiderweb. There was dried blood in the sharp crystalline canyons.

The man understood, for he hated the mirror too.

He backed out of the den, never taking his eyes off the sandwich, as if expecting the mass of mayonnaise and maggots to quit playing possum and launch an attack at any moment. When it didn’t, he searched the rest of the house and quickly ascertained that someone was definitely living there. Not before. Not when people walked as they pleased. No. Right now. Or recently, at least. His heart began to thump in his chest.

The windows had been boarded up. Entire sections, what were once bedrooms and a living room, had been replaced by stockpiles of food and water. Most of the furniture on the lower floor was missing, but there were footprints on the dusty floorboards. Someone wearing boots. Bigger than his. Spills and stains. Signs of life.

And the stench. Not just that sandwich.

Upstairs, the floors and walls were covered with soundproofing tile, the kind you’d normally see in a music studio. The bed was unmade but clean. He rubbed the blanket between his fingers. It’d been washed within the past several months, possibly even sooner. The man had an eye for knowing which things had gone untouched since the end, but this house wasn’t one of them.

The bedside table held nothing but a Bible and a stack of antique dirty magazines, and the rest of the second level proved equally fruitless. The man was about to head back downstairs when a hallway closet caught his eye. He carefully eased it open.

A pair of tattered coats that were even more worn than his own and a bunch of empty hangers. The upper shelf appeared empty, but he reached up anyway and searched the dusty shadows with his fingers. They curled around something small and cylindrical.

A shotgun shell. Red. Twelve gauge.

That stench.

The man pocketed the ammunition and went downstairs in search of a basement. Failing to find one, he went outside and circled around back. There was a sturdy cellar door. As he approached, his shoe kicked something hard on the ground—cla-clink!

It was a discarded lock and chain.

The man studied the heavy metal lock for a quiet beat, opened his nose to the rot in the air, and closed off his feeling heart. Then he opened the cellar door and descended.

A few minutes later, the man returned with a Browning shotgun and a dirty rag. He knelt, produced a bottle of water from his knapsack, poured it onto the cloth, and wiped dried chunks of flesh and blood off the double barrels.

So as to not dirty his newly cleaned weapon, the man held it over his head as he began to vomit profusely onto the weedy lawn. Bodies left indoors were always the worst.

He purposely left the cellar door ajar. If the Scorpions visited here, the smell of the corpse below would mask his own scent. Give him time to think. And run.

The man left the nightmarish cellar behind him, crossing the backyard toward another nearby street lined with houses. On the corner, there was another rancher. He headed that way, hoping it would have a basement bedroom or den. Where the light couldn’t reach him.

The back door was locked, but after a quick search, he discovered the key beneath a potted plant on the windowsill. He opened the door and shuffled inside, then locked and chained it behind him.

He stood there and listened with his back pressed against the door. Waiting for something chasing him from outside. Someone coming for him from inside. Anything. But there was only the heavy silence of the still night, and the rapid thump thump thump from within his chest. He was safe.