Page 47 of Them

The Metro tunnels held few other interests, but he kept his pace slow and steady all the same, feeling the native rodents’ eyes upon his back. Every ten minutes or so, he’d come upon another boarding platform only for the track to narrow into a tunnel soon after. All the dark-dwellers, rats and roaches and raccoons, hid from his presence the moment it was felt.

A few trains rested on the tracks, but none appeared to have been attacked. The man fantasized of them running on autopilot for months past the end, even though he knew they required human operators. The cobwebbed cars looked as if they’d just up and stopped at some point, got tired of rolling the routes with not so much as a single passenger. Called it quits. There were no signs of survivors in the cabs. No more tent-men. Only a few discarded suitcases and endless trails of rodent droppings. He briefly stopped to fill up a Ziploc baggie with some of the feces. Just in case he needed to conceal his scent when he emerged from the underground.

With little stimulation in the featureless tunnels, the man’s mind wandered. He wondered if he’d made the right call sneaking down here into the subway system. There was no risk to it, so long as the critters stayed away, but there was something undeniably horrible about the endless shadows. The tunnel, widening to accommodate another track, now appeared to be without walls. Only the floor sat below him and only the ceiling floated above. Two flat planes of endless gray sandwiching him in between, forever.

But forever wasn’t long. The man soon found his flashlight beam shooting past the ceiling again, illuminating yet another vast station platform. He spotted a sign fixed on the egg-carton wall, facing the passenger walkway. FEDERAL TRIANGLE.

He hoisted himself up onto the pedestrian walkway and looked around for anything resembling an arrow or a map. He needed to rest for a little while, preferably somewhere comfortable.

Up the motionless escalators he went, a part of him wishing he was back in New York. Back in a place and time where he could find a cozy restaurant booth to curl up and die in. Anything but the dark, lifeless tubes of the Metro.

He found no shops or restaurants within the subterranean tunnels, but he did find a Washington, DC, Department of Transportation break room. Alas, the couch was moldier than the last loaf of bread he’d come across, and the room reeked of fungus. He searched for a bench, but all of them had some sort of sleep-preventative measure installed. A bar across the middle. Curved ever so slightly so that his back ached after five minutes lying down. Metal chairs and stools with no room to stretch out on any longer than it took for the next train to arrive. The man remembered similar things from home, engineering as cruel as it was clever just to keep folks down on their luck from catching the most literal of breaks.

With hours more of waking sun and wandering Scorpions, and no other safe place to turn in, the man slumped down against a wall. The night’s adrenaline had faded, and sleep barreled toward him. He reached for his backpack, for the bottle of melatonin, but only managed to finger the zipper before he fell asleep.

Though he would not remember when he awoke, the man dreamed of his childhood night-light, the Casper the Friendly Ghost bulb flickering to a staggering brightness, as claws caressed the frames of his open closet door. Forks of jagged lightning illuminated his bedroom windows as furious thunder howled and the hungry horrors groped for the boy beneath the blankets.

Then he awoke, his back aching and mind empty.

When the man finally emerged from the subway, he was startled to discover he was forced to shield his eyes from the meager light provided by the crescent moon. It was ten o’clock at night. The rain had subsided, the sky crystalline with stars. Royal buildings rose and curved all around him, their facades drained and leaking. He made sure that he was on Twelfth Street—he was—and headed north for Pennsylvania Avenue. The LED flashlight guided his way once more, for he was too deep into the city to draw their ire. At least, he hoped so.

To his right, tattered nylon flags fluttered, the fraying strips reaching for him like wanting fingers of the past. Vacant apartments, most with their blinds drawn, glared at him with unblinking eyes. Down Pennsylvania Avenue, at least an entire block had been reduced to a pile of rubble. The man imagined a troop of the devils performing the demolition ritual on a twelve-story apartment—moving in synchronized fervor, linked by their rage—and shuddered.

The few open parks he passed were blanketed with the remnants of camping and military equipment. There were National Guard camps with toppled tables and empty beds. Guns and ammunition rendered inoperable by the elements. A few civilian tents remained. The man assumed they’d belonged to refugees from New England or New York, the ones who thought Washington’s streets would be safest of all. He wondered if their deaths had been any more dignified than the subterranean tent-man’s. More painful, probably.

By the time he reached Pennsylvania Avenue’s end, the remnants of the military presence changed. A few smaller blockades paved the way to a larger barricade that cut off the entirety of Fifteenth Street. Instead of medical tents and ration stations, there were sandbags and watchtowers. Stationary guns and barbed wire. Army stars replaced the minutemen logos.

Dull paint coated the masoned walls, slogans of protest and fear too washed-out to properly read. In one window, a homemade sign asked: WHY DID WE TRUST YOU? There were others: JUSTICE FOR NYC! YOU KNOW MORE. RIP JUSTIN MASELLA, 1997–2023. THE USA LEFT MY BROTHER TO DIE ON 11.22.23, and, written in a ground-floor window in sun-faded crayon:

PLEASE KEEP THE MONSTERS AWAY.

He put in a lip of tobacco. Savoring the dopamine.

The unmanned road blockades bore no threat, and he slipped between the chain-link gates with ease. Ahead, he could make out the familiar silhouette of the White House above the treetops.

The streets and lawns surrounding the presidential residence had been converted to a defensive grid. Three layers of thick fencing cordoned off a battle zone. Crow’s nests of metal scaffolding dotted the landscape in rigid intervals. Some had collapsed, but just as many stood firm, creaking in the breeze. Trenches lined the lawns. Each and every window facing the White House resembled a makeshift pillbox.

All that preparation, only for it to be ripped apart like a children’s toy. The tall black gates encircling the overgrown lawn had been enhanced and then toppled. The nearby buildings, as fortified as they were, each bore a quarter-dozen scars running across their facades. The trenches were too old and weedy to tell whether man or monster had dredged them, and every Humvee and helicopter was but a burned and battered husk of its former mechanical genius.

Enough ogling. Enough gloating.

The fence ringing the perimeter of the lawn was partially intact, but there were plenty of trampled segments. The man surveyed the length of bent metal before him, searching for any jagged edges that might rip a chunk from his ankle. His eyes stayed low as his boots trampled the crumpled iron, slipping on the slick surface ever so slightly. He stumbled forward and caught his footing on the dirt—

Two small trenches ran parallel to one another, dense mud choking the weeds. They lined up exactly with the divots in the fence. Two Scorpions? A two-tailed Scorpion?

No. Tire tracks.

The White House swam into view, a pearl-rot palace. There was a wide, shallow fountain at the foot of the rolling lawn; the sight made the man miss Rockin’ Ray even more. Maybe one night he would scrounge up some CDs and a Walkman from a pawnshop and come down here and listen, listen, listen. That would be nice.

Yeah, despite the ghosts, that would be really nice.

The night remained still. Silent. Just the breeze mingling with the trees on the lawn. He glanced over his shoulder. The only thing watching was Washington’s monolith, not yet limp.

He kept his shotgun ready as he approached the high columns, treading through a primitive tangle of weeds and grass. Should he be disarmed, by intimidation or force, his pistol was tucked into the back of his waistband. When he awoke, he’d slipped a pocketknife into his left sock, just in case. The preparations reminded him of his old rituals, the care and caution he took when he still believed there were others. He’d clung to those fears for far too long. He’d abandoned the hope far too quickly.

Something strange was happening. The twin staircases appeared to draw close with unnatural speed. The man was walking at a moderate pace, yet the marble porch seemed to hurtle toward him. It wasn’t moving on its own, for that was impossible, but somehow every step the man took seemed to cover the distance of twenty. Time tripped over itself. His heart raced. Sweat soaked his forehead. It’s a trap, he told himself, wiping a slippery trigger finger on his shirt. It’s bait and I’m the fish. He spit a leafy brown loogie onto the steps and began to climb them. Has to be. I’m the frog and he’s the fish. Why else?

Yet the man walked on anyway. His mind recoiled at the stark logic of it all; this risk wouldn’t help him fulfill his ultimate goal, whatever he eventually decided that was, and might only get him killed. Or worse. His mind screamed at him, protesting every step, but his legs dragged the rest of his body forward. It was his thighs that sprinted for his life, his calves carrying him all these long miles, and his soles that trampled what was left. It was his legs that had fed him and suffered for it; they would not be denied now.