Page 31 of Them

The specter gave no sign of acknowledgment as the man approached. He tried to avoid contact as he drew closer, but his shoulder grazed the shadow, and though the flaps of skin and hair that hung down from its shattered skull possessed no color, the man felt a spear of cold, wet death.

Once he reached the window, he pushed himself up onto his tiptoes and peered outside. He felt a sweeping sense of relief. There was nothing there waiting for him. Only the front yard and the quiet neighborhood street a dozen feet beyond the glass. There was nothing—

Two bodies slammed down onto the road, as if they’d fallen from the gates of heaven. One of them large. The other small.

They lay there crumpled and unmoving. Both resembling the figure behind him. Ghosts. Shades.

On some level, deep inside, the man knew this was a nightmare. The shadowy corpses in the street were not real. He knew he should be waking up very soon. The nightmare should have ended at the moment that their bodies hit the pavement. Like overripe watermelons tossed from the roof of a skyscraper. Then he would’ve jolted awake in bed, bathed in a frigid sweat as he cursed himself for forgetting, refusing his own history.

He should have saved them.

He should have woken up. And he should have known.

But he didn’t.

If he hadn’t taken the shortcut or gotten caught. Hadn’t killed the young Scorpion eager for its first hunt. Hadn’t escaped and left the blame to strangers.

But he had.

Yes, all his fault.

The man slept alongside his demons until the sun finally set on the dreaming street. People that could’ve been allies or friends instead watched on as ghosts; he was still alone. He deserved to be. He was apparently incapable of anything else.

When his true body finally did stir, it was not with a sudden shot of adrenaline, but with a blink. A single shutter-flash of his eyes, and he was back in bed. Another blink, and he was once again looking outside at the street. At his mistakes.

He blinked once more, and he was back under the blanket, head on the pillow. There was no half-headed ghoul at the foot of the mattress, and when he crawled out of bed and crept to the darkening window, the shrouded corpses were gone.

Yet when the man shut his eyes, he could see them still.

He began pacing around the basement, willing himself to stay awake, taking a mental inventory. His head still ached, but the intensity had thankfully lessened. For a time, he focused on sorting through a tower of stacked canned goods in soft candlelight. He eyed the pistol on the end table and the shotgun leaning against the nearby wall, but quickly turned away from them.

He was tempted to start walking again, anything to put this basement behind him, but the sun had only just set. Some of them could still be lurking. The smartest thing would be to stay and rest, but…

But.

Don’t deserve rest. Don’t deserve much at all.

Not only did he get two innocent people killed—he tried to forget about them. To abandon his guilt like an unwanted kitten. Cast it aside like all the other difficult sensations his heart once pounded with. Christ, what’s left of me? Got the soul of Theseus. He thought it would be easy to fall back into his human ways. Like riding a bike.

His stomach churned. It wasn’t easy, whatever it was that he was trying to do. Swallow his grief. Shoulder his burden. Face his fears. All were half correct and none fully so. He could forgive himself for his mistakes, but not for forgetting them. Even if it was the concussion or some inscrutable trauma response that had masked his memory of the two people from the farmhouse, it was inexcusable. There was nobody left to hold him to account. It was his own responsibility, but there was nothing left to do but mourn and simmer in the death.

The man’s head raced with questions, the answers to which had died with the strangers. Were they nomads, like him? What was their favorite canned food? Could they have known what year it was? Did they do anything fun to pass the hours between waking and dusk? When di—

Behind him on the bed, the radio roared to life. He’d forgotten to turn it off.

Rockin’ Ray repeated the same words as before: “This is Roanoke Radio on 93.1, bringing you the hopeful hits of humanity. We’ve got ’em all, folks. Stay safe and stay human, all you newly nocturnal. And, remember, we’ve got enough juice to keep you listenin’ from sunset to sunrise for the next decade. So, if you’re out there wanderin’, if anyone’s out there, stay tuned, stay groovin’, and stay lovin’. This is Rockin’ Roanoke Ray signing off. See you on the other side, listener.”

He was about to turn down the volume as Rockin’ Ray’s voice gave way to the careful, measured plucking of a guitar, and the man recognized the song at once. “Stairway to Heaven,” a Zeppelin classic. He couldn’t help but smirk; only during an ad-free apocalypse could an unabridged eight-minute tune make it on the radio.

As the voice of Robert Plant wondered and wandered through the radio speakers, the man thought about what had become of Rockin’ Ray. Could he still be alive? Was there any chance? He didn’t think so. Why record the message then? Why not ask for help? Wherever that radio station was located and however it was still running didn’t matter. Irrelevant. Whether it was Scorpions or suicide, it doesn’t matter. They win either way. They always win.

It wasn’t long before his bare feet began tapping on the floor. His shoulders began to sway. His lips parted and he began to mouth the lyrics as his head rocked back and forth with the drummer’s pounding rhythm—John Bonham, it’s John Bonham, remember his name—and his fingers suddenly wrenched the volume dial up a full half rotation. Why the hell not? The sun was down. The monsters were sleeping. And if they weren’t? Then let them come. Fuck it. Let them come while I’m dumb and happy and alive.

He sang along with Zeppelin. He cried out for a hero with Bonnie Tyler, sat on John Fogerty’s back porch, and listened to Buck Owens. The man in the basement walked along the watchtower with Jimi Hendrix, then did the same with Bob Dylan, as if the playlist was a tempered product of fate. Rockin’ Ray hadn’t thrown a bunch of random songs on repeat; no sirree, he’d curated them. Just for him. Just for the man in the basement bedroom.

Was Rockin’ Ray dead? Who knew, and it didn’t matter. Ray had done something spectacular amid this crumbling wasteland. He’d created something worth experiencing. Something worth remembering. Something… beautiful.

At a quarter past midnight, the man ventured into the backyard. In his right hand, he carried a shovel from the garage. His other hand clutched the radio by its foldout handle.