Stalkers

The town is deserted except for a murder of crows gathered on the roof edge of the building across the street. It was a Chase Bank three months ago, before the first attack. Now it’s an empty shell with broken windows like hollow sockets. The crows caw and turn their heads to watch me, waiting for scraps of meat. If I’m not back to the motel by sundown, I will be their meat in the morning. I think they know and that’s why they watch me.

I hold out my hand out to the sun. It’s about four fingers from the horizon, about an hour until dark. I don’t plan to be out that long. I’m only in town, in front of the shattered glass door of Garden Books, for one thing: a black, 5x8 inch notebook with an elastic closure and ribbon bookmark. It won’t have the birthday wishes in scratchy handwriting on the inside cover. But if I never look at that page maybe it won’t matter.

One of the crows caws a few times and flies away. A dry, cool wind whispers Autumn through my hair, sending it tickling across my face. It wafts over the smells of wildflowers and hay that don’t quite cover a faint stench of decay. Gone is the smell of car exhaust and frying food and people living close to one another. Now, towns smell like death and burning.

The shadows reach into the bookstore like talons. My own shadow, long and distorted, moves along the floor as I duck under the push bar of the door and into the store. The tempered glass of the door is scattered in pebbles across the linoleum inside and I can’t avoid crunching it underfoot, but I move off it quickly. Another two crows fly off, cawing. I move past the bestseller of the week display, the books, like the glass, are scattered across the floor.

The journals are at the back of the store, next to the checkout counter. I move past the ends of rows toward the back. The last row on left is Science Fiction/Fantasy, and I stop to look down it. My best friend, Hanna, was an avid Science Fiction reader. She would drag me into bookstores whenever she saw one, and down the science fiction aisle. The small, brown aisle looks like the bookshelf she had in her bedroom. She had stayed over the Saturday after my eighteenth birthday, the night of the first attack. We made a bowl of popcorn with Mom’s 1970s air popper and watched Titanic, my choice, on my small television VCR combo. A knot forms in my throat and I move past the aisle. Those memories are tainted now. Blood coated popcorn kernels look like seeds ready for a macabre garden. I shove the thought away before it can overwhelm me.

There are two black, 5x8 inch notebooks with an elastic closure and ribbon bookmark propped on a bookshelf among a small selection of journals. I snatch them both from the shelf and shove them into the backpack. The original had been a gift from my dad for my birthday. On the inside the cover he had written, in his small, scratchy handwriting, To Monkey Butt – Happy eighteenth. It’s not a car, but it can take you further if you let it. Hippy Birdy to Ewe. Love you, Dad. It was the only thing I grabbed when I fled the house. It was the only I had left of my family. A few days ago, it fell out of a worn hole in my backpack as I was escaping a burning building during a supply run. I didn’t know it was gone until I went to write in it that night. The loss hurt more than my burns.

As I turn to hurry back, I hear something out of place, and freeze. It’s not the crows, it’s muttering or whispering. It sounds like it’s coming from outside, somewhere in the street. It sounds human. In a panic, I vault over the register counter. I clear the counter, barely disturbing the dust. Landing, my left ankle twists under me and lightening pain engulfs my brain. I faceplant hard onto the gritty linoleum. Screaming silently, I curl into a ball.

Stupid, stupid, I curse myself.

“Stay,” a low, male voice says, followed by a grunt of effort and the snapping and crunching of safety glass.

I stop writhing to focus on listening and breathing quietly. The man makes no effort to be stealthy, even after crossing the safety glass. His footsteps are solid and steady. I uncurl, doing my best to ignore my screaming ankle. Slowly, I pull the crowbar from the loops of my cargo pants. It creates a whisper of fabric and I grimace.

“Well shit,” he mutters into the darkening store. “Herbal Apothecary Encyclopedia,” he read the title aloud. “That’s a mouthful,” he murmurs. He talks like his jaw and lips don’t work well and his tongue compensates. The pages rustle as he flips through the book. “And useful,” he adds. He continues to walk the aisle, heavy foot falls moving further away then closer again.

The shadow talons have lengthened, their tips brushing the back wall. Too much time is passing. Panic pumps adrenaline through my limbs and it takes considerable effort not to bolt.

“Well, best get back,” he finally says, his voice raised to reach the back of the store. “The locals aren’t far behind.” He waits for a moment.

I hold my breath.

He sighs, and mutters something incoherent under his breath before he stomps back to the door and crunches through the glass.

I wait until the store is quiet again, then cautiously peek over the counter. The store is empty. One of the crows caws and glides down to the street and picks at something there. As I watch, the sun dips below the Chase Bank, engulfing the bookstore in shadow. I shiver. My ankle throbs, no longer shooting pain but a dull, deep ache. There is no way I can make it back to the motel before sunset, not with a twisted ankle.

“Shit,” I whisper, my voice shaking.

The crow squawks and flies away. The others follow in a scattered flock. I grit my teeth and use the counter to stand. The ruddy shadows of twilight settle in, casting the store in amber light. I need a place to hide for the night. In the back, against far wall are the bathrooms and a door labeled Employees Only. My guess is that it’s the break room. I hobble over to the back wall as quick as my ankle will allow.

As I near the back wall, the faint smell of decay grows stronger. There is a smear of dried blood, black in the shadows, on the linoleum coming from the Employees Only door.

I balance on my right leg, penlight in one hand and crowbar in the other, and pull open the Women’s bathroom door. It is black like a void inside and the decay creeps into my nostrils. I gag but keep the saltines and sardines I had for lunch.

The beam of the penlight illuminates the windowless, single toilet bathroom in narrow slices. The mirror above the sink is shattered and the shards are scattered in the sink and on the corpse slumped against the wall and floor. I swallow hard and quickly swing the penlight beam across the bathroom. On the other side, beside the toilet is a square, brown leather duffle bag. It has sturdy leather handles and a wide, bronze zipper. Making a snap decision, I dash into the gapping maw of darkness and make a grab for the duffle bag handle. The door swings shut, closing me in with the corpse. It takes three tries to get ahold of the handle of the duffle bag, bile rising with each passing second. When I finally get a grip, I lunge from the inky, putrid bathroom into the dusky, gloomy shop, and gasp in cleaner air. The shadows of twilight are quickly fading to the ink of night.

I sling the duffle bag over my shoulder, shoving it on top of the sagging backpack, and limp over to the door labeled Men, only a few feet away. With my hand on the doorknob, I glance over my shoulder at the front of the store. The day has lost the ruddy glow of twilight and I can barely make out the busted window in the gloom.

Somewhere in town a Stalker howls. They are hunting.

I yank the door open and, without checking, dart into the unknown darkness and turn the deadbolt lock. I stand motionless in the oppressive obscurity. Then, as the blind white panic recedes, I swing the tiny beam of the penlight around the inky blackness. No corpse and no Stalker. The mirror above the sink is intact. I knock my crowbar against it. The surface fractures into a spiderweb of cracks and a few pieces fall into the sink. Stella, a woman I survived with for a while, told me Stalkers can travel from mirror to mirror as long as the mirror has an intact piece large enough for them to crawl through. I don’t know if it’s true, but I’m not taking chances.

After a long while of listening to the silence for a response to the breaking mirror, I lower myself to the cold, hard, tiled floor with the help of the handicap bar next to the toilet. I set the crowbar across my lap and swing the duffle bag to rest on the floor before me. I unzip it and shine the light inside.

Resting on an assortment of canned goods are six bundles of bills. A stack of $100s and five stacks of $20s. Even three months after the fall of society, seeing that much cash in one place still sets off a giddy glitter bomb in my brain. I could have bought a nice crossbow and a sub-zero sleeping bag and a mountain bike that fit me with a little pull trailer. The glitter dissipates back into reality. I wouldn’t have bought those things. I would have probably spent the money on a new laptop and a down payment toward a little electric car or put some of it toward college. Nothing useful now.

Now the bag that holds the money and the canned food it sits on are worth more than the paper it is printed on.

A Night Stalker howls again. Nearer than the one before, sounding close enough to be in the bookstore. I click off the penlight and slip it into my pocket and reach for my crowbar. After a second, I reach for my backpack and the notebooks inside.

In complete darkness, crowbar in my right hand and the notebooks pressed to my chest with my left arm, I sit and wait. I only have to make it to sunrise.