The Gates of Byzantium

CHAPTER 4 JOSH

He remembered that night vividly. How could he forget? It was the night the world as he knew it died. Oh sure, the planet kept turning and the sun kept rising in the east and setting in the west, and the oceans certainly kept lapping (or whatever it was that oceans did), but everything else was irrevocably changed.

It was Thursday, which meant Date Night for his parents. He was left home alone — because it would be Family Night if he went along, and that defeated the purpose of Date Night — which was fine with him. He didn’t feel the need to see his parents canoodling or exchanging baby talk over a meal…and in public. No, thanks.

It didn’t happen right away.

At first there was the news about police actions from the Dallas-Fort Worth area. As soon as night fell, the news seemed to just shut down, and Josh resorted to following reports on the Internet, which was blowing up with rumors of crazy stuff happening around the world. Twitter, Facebook, and guys uploading videos onto YouTube. The word “impossible” kept coming up over and over again.

Josh remembered sitting in his room, staring slack-jawed and taking it all in. It was almost like watching a movie, because things like that didn’t happen in his small town of Ridley, Texas. And if it didn’t happen outside his window, then it didn’t feel real.

Then it got real, real fast when he heard police sirens start up around town. It wasn’t like Ridley had a big police department. They had a sheriff and five deputies, and even that was overkill. So it was a rarity to hear police sirens, especially one that didn’t seem to ever end.

But it still didn’t feel real until he heard the loud pounding on the front door. He ran down, expecting to see his parents, but instead there was Gaby, all five-seven and long blonde hair of her, screaming, makeup smeared and bawling her eyes out, and yet somehow still managing to look like the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. She stood in his doorway and the rush of information came between spurts of crying and hysterics. Her parents were dead — or dying — and something, some creature, was in her house.

That was when Josh saw it.

This thing, all black pruned skin, hairless, racing across the street toward his house. The street lights were still on then, and the sight of the bloodsucker made Josh freeze in place. It was such an anomaly, like one of those bad B-movies he sometimes caught late at night suddenly come to life.

Gaby must have seen the look on his face, because she turned and saw the bloodsucker. She rushed inside the house, almost pushing him out of the way. “Close the door, Josh! Close the door!” she screamed at him.

Josh didn’t close the door. He couldn’t move. He was frozen and he couldn’t take his eyes off the bloodsucker as it bounded across the street toward him. Gaby was the one who grabbed him by the arm and dragged him away, then snatched the door and slammed it shut and pushed the deadbolt in place.

Almost right away, the creature crashed into the door and they felt the wall shaking against the impact. It was then Josh snapped out of it, just in time to hear the living room window shattering.

Josh saw Gaby’s face, even more terrified than his own. Then something must have kicked in and he knew what he had to do. He grabbed Gaby’s hand, stunning her for a moment, and led her toward the back of the house.

She might have asked him where they were going, but he couldn’t hear anything at the moment. His ears were pounding and his heart was rampaging against his chest. He thought he might have heard glass breaking behind them. He wasn’t sure. But he was sure of where to go, and that was the basement. He saw the door coming up and pushed at it and it opened, because his dad never locked it.

“Go down the stairs!” he shouted, and turned and slammed the door shut behind them and locked it.

The basement door was solid steel, and the basement was built with reinforced concrete. It was his father’s idea, his old man’s emergency plan in case of a tornado. God knew there were plenty of those things around the area whenever it got too warm. The basement was built to withstand a tornado, so it stood to reason it could withstand one ugly, skinny thing, couldn’t it?

Josh took an involuntary step back as something crashed into the door on the other side, but the steel door didn’t move at all. It held solidly, the way it was supposed to. Almost just as quickly, the thing seemed to give up, as if it just knew it wasn’t getting into the basement in a million years. Josh heard quick, rabid footsteps racing away.

Josh turned, numbed, and looked down the stairs at Gaby, standing at the bottom looking back up at him, arms clutched around her chest. Their faces were illuminated by soft, yellow-tinted lightbulbs that had come on automatically, activated by motion sensors as soon as they had entered the basement.

They stared at each other in silence, and Josh realized, quite suddenly, that this was the first time he had ever been this close to Gaby for longer than a few minutes. Her family had moved in across the street almost eight years ago, and in all that time, he had always watched her from afar, too shy and too afraid of rejection to approach her. Even when they passed each other in the streets, or in school hallways, they always just exchanged a courteous “hey” and went on their way.

But he stared at her now, into those green eyes. Eighteen-year-old Gaby was the loveliest thing Josh had ever seen, from afar or up close, but it wasn’t love or lust he was feeling at the moment. It was gnawing, growing terror, because he could hear it, too.

Screams, and the sounds of gunshots, from the world outside the basement.

He thought they both knew, at that very instant, staring at each other in horrified silence, that everything had changed forever.

He saw that same look of horror on Gaby’s face now as Josh hurried inside the basement with Matt hanging onto his arms. It was all Josh could do to keep his knees from buckling, because Matt was so much bigger and goddammit, he was really heavy. Josh hadn’t realized how much heavier Matt was until he had to drag the guy back to their hideout.

Gaby had opened the basement door immediately when he had pounded on it, as if she had been waiting for them all this time. When she saw the blood-soaked shirt Josh had wrapped around Matt’s left arm to stanch the bleeding, Josh expected her to start screaming, but instead she reached for Matt to help him stay upright.

Together, they carried Matt down the creaky wooden steps, Matt’s body a limp, useless thing hanging between them. They were both out of breath and sweating in the swelteringly hot basement by the time they got Matt down and carried him over to his bedroll in the corner.

The basement wasn’t particularly big, but it had everything they needed, including no window access and enough comfortable space for all three of them. Portable LED lamps hung from a couple of hooks, with two more on top of boxes in the corners. The LED lights were godsends — surprisingly bright despite weighing almost nothing, powered by lithium batteries that could be recharged every day by putting them outside in the sun.

They laid Matt down on his bedroll and Josh stumbled away, finally able to catch his breath. He wiped at Matt’s blood clinging to his shirt and pants but only ended up making more of a mess.

Gaby kneeled next to Matt, tightening the shirt around Matt’s left arm. She was wearing khaki shorts and a cotton undershirt with a long-sleeved plaid shirt over it, and Matt’s blood had already gotten on them during the short trip from the door. Matt shook violently on the bedroll, like he was suffering through a seizure. He was covered in sweat and had been since they left the grocery store.

“What happened?” Gaby asked. She grabbed a towel from her backpack and dripped water from a bottle onto it, then placed it over Matt’s head.

“One of them bit him,” Josh said.

“Oh my God. How?”

“It was hiding inside a back room. I went in and it attacked me. Matt came in to help, and I guess during the fight it bit him. I don’t know how it happened, it was so fast.”

“Josh, Jesus.” He could hear the disappointment in her voice. “I told you to be careful about that. How many times did I tell you? You never listen to me.”

“I know, but …”

“What was so important in there you had to risk your life and Matt’s?”

“There were canned fruits inside,” he blurted out.

“They’re not worth this, Josh. God, you have to know better!”

“I’m sorry…”

Gaby continued dabbing the wet towel against Matt’s forehead and wiping at the blood clinging to his face. Josh stood quietly behind her. He felt like a little kid again, hoping his parents didn’t notice he was still there and wouldn’t remember how badly he had messed up.

“He’s lost so much blood,” Gaby said softly.

“I didn’t know what to do. I just grabbed a shirt that was on the ground and tied it around his arm.”

“You did good.” She looked back at him and smiled. He knew she was making an effort, and he could feel pity in her eyes. Somehow that stung even more than when she was chastising him a moment ago.

“I’m sorry,” he said again.

“You didn’t mean for him to get hurt.”

“I didn’t…” Though I thought about it. “I didn’t,” he repeated.

“I know.” She picked up another rag and the same bottle of water and held them out to him. “You have blood on you.”

He clumsily took the rag and bottle.

Gaby went back to stroking Matt’s head. She had that deep, worried look on her face that always made her appear older than her eighteen years. “He’s really burning up, Josh. I don’t know what to do. The towel isn’t helping…”

He walked over to his corner and sat down on his bedroll, feeling heavy and tired and thankful to finally be off his feet. Josh wiped at the blood on his neck and cheek with the wet rag, then realized he had blood in his hair, too. It was while he was pulling at the sticky clumps of hair that Josh realized what he had done.

“I shouldn’t have brought him back here,” he said softly, not even realizing he had said it out loud.

“What?” Gaby said, looking over at him. “What did you say, Josh?”

“I made a mistake, Gaby. I shouldn’t have brought Matt back here.”

“Of course you should have. He’s Matt. He’s one of us.”

“Look at him, Gaby,” Josh said, trying to make her see. Didn’t she understand? “He’s already infected. The blood… That’s how it works. They bite you, get their blood into your system somehow. That’s how they turn people. It usually happens faster, but the bloodsucker at the store, it looked weak, maybe that’s why it’s taking so long for Matt to…turn.”

“You don’t know that,” Gaby said.

“You know I’m right, Gaby,” he insisted.

She shook her head. “No, Josh.”

“Gaby…”

“No!”

She looked back at Matt, as if afraid she had woken him up. She hadn’t. Josh didn’t think anything could wake Matt up now.

Gaby went back to dabbing Matt’s forehead with the wet towel, as if she expected him to wake up at any moment and prove Josh wrong.

But he didn’t. He didn’t…

Pros and cons: What were they?

Pros: He liked Matt. Gaby liked Matt. Matt was their friend. Is their friend.

Cons: Matt was bitten. He was probably infected. That was how it worked. Josh had seen it up close, more than once. When they bit you, they turned you. Wasn’t that how it worked? Though he didn’t understand why it was taking Matt so long to turn. Did it usually take this long?

Conclusion: Uncertain, because Matt hadn’t turned yet. He was still Matt. Mostly. Maybe Josh was wrong after all? Shouldn’t Matt have turned by now if he was infected? Could he risk it, though? Could he risk Gaby’s life on a hunch? What if he was wrong about everything? But what if he was right about everything?

Matt hadn’t gotten better since Josh had brought him back to the basement an hour ago. If anything, he looked worse, and even Gaby, sitting by his side, seemed to realize that. She continued wetting the towel and wiping the sweat off Matt’s forehead and face, but Josh knew it was pointless. There wasn’t a whole lot they could to do help poor Matt now. The bloodsucker’s tainted blood was inside him, coursing through his veins this very moment.

But why hasn’t Matt turned yet?

Gaby finally looked over at Josh, and he was struck by how tired she looked. “Why didn’t you guys take the truck?”

The question surprised him, and it took him a moment to understand it. “We didn’t think we would be going out that far. By the time we were a block away…”

She nodded. “Did you get anything from the store?”

“No. I was about to, but …”

“This happened.”

“Yeah.” Josh paused. “Matt was throwing a bunch of stuff into his backpack, but I forgot it at the store when we ran out. I can go back for it. It’s probably still there.”

“No. Not today. Maybe tomorrow, once Matt’s feeling better.”

“Yeah, once Matt gets better,” Josh said, not believing a single word of it.

Neither one of them said anything for a while, and the basement felt as if it were squeezing Josh. He started to perspire and wiped at a bead of sweat on his forehead.

“But just in case,” Gaby said.

“In case of what?”

She didn’t answer him. Instead, she got up and walked over to where they had stacked a half-dozen brown moving boxes filled with supplies. Whenever they found a new place to hide out, they always transferred their supplies from Matt’s pickup truck, which they had been using since Ridley. It was better than leaving the food outside, where anyone could just take it. And besides, it saved them the trouble of going back and forth, especially since they usually spent a lot of time in one spot anyway.

Gaby rifled through a backpack on top of the boxes. He recognized it as another one of Matt’s backpacks. She took something out. When she turned around, he was surprised to see her holding a gun — a silver chrome revolver.

“Is that yours?” he asked.

“It’s Matt’s,” Gaby said. “I think it’s his dad’s. He showed it to me once. I don’t think he’s ever actually used it.”

“What are you going to do with it?”

Gaby walked over and held the gun out to him. Josh stared at it like it was some third arm Gaby wanted him to have.

“Why me?” he asked.

“You’re the guy,” she said, as if that answered everything.

He stared at her for a moment, then back at the gun. Then over at Matt.

I’m the guy…

Josh took it. The gun felt big, unwieldy, and cold, and he didn’t think he could wrap his fingers around the handle, but when he tried, he found that he could. Josh looked down at the steel object and couldn’t shake the very alien feel of it against his skin.

“There’s a safety,” Gaby said. “My dad showed me. He had a gun for home protection, and when he bought it, he had us all gather in the living room and showed it to us. He wanted us to know what it was, how to hold it if we had to — if he wasn’t home and someone broke in — and things like that. Here.” She took the gun back and showed him a switch near the trigger. She flicked it with her thumb. “It’s the safety, see? And the red button? If you switch it there, that means the gun is ready to fire.”

She offered the gun back and looked at him, as if to say, “Here’s your second chance to turn it down.”

Josh hesitated. It was always Matt who led the group and made the major decisions. Matt was bigger, stronger, and older. It was Matt who went into the rooms first when it was too dark, or took risks that freaked Josh out. It was always Matt…

But Matt couldn’t do any of those things now, and Gaby was giving him Matt’s gun.

He understood what she was doing. She was trusting him. The very idea horrified him, and at the same time made him swell with pride.

I’m the guy…

Josh took the gun for the second time.

“It’s loaded,” she said, “so be careful with it.”

“Do I have to pull this back?” he asked, his thumb on the hammer. It was heavy, and he had to exert a lot of strength just to pull it back even a little.

“No,” she said, “but it makes shooting easier.” She looked at him closely for a moment. “Maybe I should keep it…”

“No,” Josh said quickly. “It’s a gun. Guns are simple things, that’s what makes them so deadly. Anyone can use them.”

She didn’t look entirely convinced, but nodded anyway.

Josh sat back down and placed the gun on the floor next to him. “Matt will probably be fine,” he said.

“Yeah, probably,” she said, and smiled back at him.

He could tell she was lying, too.

Around three in the afternoon, it seemed like Matt was getting better. Or at least, he stopped shaking, and for a moment Josh was afraid he had died. But no, he wasn’t dead. Matt had simply gone to sleep. His face, already pale for the last few hours, now turned an almost opaque shade of white. The only movement was the steady rise and fall of his chest.

Gaby felt Matt’s forehead. “It’s so much hotter than before. He’s really burning up.”

“What does that mean?” Josh asked.

“I don’t know, Josh. But it’s probably not good.”

“But look at him,” Josh said. He stood up and walked over to stand beside Gaby. “He just looks asleep.”

“He shouldn’t be this hot, though. This isn’t just a fever.”

“Maybe we should—” Josh started, but stopped himself. He looked down and saw he was holding the gun in his right hand.

When did I pick the gun up?

“What is it?” Gaby asked. Then she saw the gun. “Josh…”

He looked over at Matt, and he could feel Gaby watching him closely.

“Not yet, Josh,” Gaby said.

“When?” he asked, not even sure he wanted to know the answer.

“I don’t know, but not yet. He’s still…Matt.”

“But he won’t be for long. Look at him. You said it yourself. He’s not getting better, he’s getting worse.”

“I’m not a doctor, Josh. I could be wrong. I probably am wrong.”

But he didn’t buy it. She wasn’t committed to the answer. She wanted to believe. So did he. But he had eyes, and it was hard to believe when his eyes told him something completely different.

“Gaby,” he said, “you should step back.”

“Why?”

Because I’m the guy, he thought, but said, “Just in case.”

She seemed to think about it, then got up and began moving away from Matt.

She had gotten three steps before Josh shot Matt in the head.

He expected the gun to buck a little harder. There was a kick — a big kick — but not big enough to knock his aim completely off. Maybe he had actually expected it and was able to absorb it. Or maybe he felt so numbed by what he was about to do that when the kick happened, he hardly felt it.

There was a lot of blood. Or something that looked like blood. It was thick and clumpy, and it was splashed across the bedroll and the concrete floor around Matt’s head and on the wall behind him. There were thick gobs of it everywhere.

Gaby turned back around and looked at what was left of Matt. She didn’t say a word.

I’m the guy…

“What should we do with the body?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe we should put it outside.”

“I guess.”

“It’s still light outside. We could take him farther away—”

Josh suddenly lost his voice when Matt sat up on the bedroll. Gaby let out a loud, bloodcurdling noise and stumbled backward, her hands clamping over her mouth.

Josh didn’t know what was happening, but found himself backpedaling with her.

Matt was dead. He had to be dead. But then dead people didn’t sit up and stare back at you. And Matt had done exactly that. Was doing exactly that. Which should have been impossible, because Matt didn’t have a brain anymore. Josh knew this because he was the one who had splattered Matt’s brains all over the bedroll and wall and floor.

So how was he still moving?

Like the bloodsucker at the store…

Josh lifted the gun, and that was when Matt seemed to notice him for the first time. Except Matt’s eyes had changed. They were black now. Like a bloodsucker’s. His skin had started to harden, and strands of his hair fell free as he sat up.

Then he heard Gaby’s voice behind him, filling the basement, shouting, “Shoot him! Shoot him, Josh!”

Josh shot Matt again.

This time he actually felt the gun kicking, and it was all he could do to hold on to the revolver with both hands.

He shot again.

Both bullets hit Matt in the chest. Except Matt didn’t go down, didn’t even seem to feel the gunshots. Both bullets had gone clean through Matt and embedded in the wall behind him, leaving two small holes in his shirt.

Matt was almost on his feet when Josh shot him again, and again, and again.

He kept squeezing the trigger until all he heard was the click-click of the hammer striking down on empty chambers.

“Run!” Josh screamed.

Gaby turned and raced to the stairs. Josh ran after her, and he was halfway to the stairs when he saw Matt’s backpack on the crates in the corner. Josh stopped at the last second and ran over and grabbed the backpack.

He heard Gaby, from the top of the stairs, shouting after him, “Josh, come on! What are you doing?”

“I’m coming!” he shouted back.

Josh ran back to the stairs and took the first step, then the second, then a third — and risked a glance over his shoulder. Matt had stood up and was looking at him, and as he tilted his head — in some kind of curious pose — something solid but also wet dropped out of the hole in the back of his head and plopped to the floor behind him.

“Josh!” Gaby’s voice, pulling him back to the present.

Josh turned and ran, taking the next few steps two at a time until he was at the top of the stairs, where Gaby was waiting for him. Her eyes met his and for a split second he recalled that first night in his basement.

He slipped through the door and grabbed it and slammed it shut. There were no locks on this side of the basement door, but that didn’t matter. It was still afternoon, and there was sunlight outside. He could feel the heat in the air. He fled through the living room after Gaby, kicking aside a chair and knocking free a vase along the way but not giving a damn.

They burst out into the sunlight, racing down the porch, and stopped only when he could feel the harsh rays against his face. Gaby lowered herself into a crouch next to him, gasping for breath. Josh looked back through the open front door. He could see easily through the house, down the hallway, with the basement at the very end.

The basement door opened a fraction, and a dark, blackened hand with prune skin peeked out from the other side, feeling along the frame. Josh waited, but no one (no thing) came out. Instead, the door closed again, softly, and there was only silence.

He looked down at the gun in his hand. He didn’t know how he had held on to it the entire time. But it was empty now, and the gun felt lighter. He looked at Matt’s backpack in his left hand and wondered if there were more bullets inside, or if he had risked his life for nothing.

Please, God, let there be more bullets inside.

They stood silently next to each other and stared back at the house, down the hallway, at the closed basement door on the other side. For some reason, Josh expected the door to open again, for Matt to come bursting out and scream that it was just a joke, that he had planned the whole thing as a gag.

They waited for something to happen, and nothing did.

Finally, Josh said, “We should go. We need to find another place before nightfall.”

“Just leave?” Gaby said. Sweat dripped from her face.

“We can’t stay here. We need to find somewhere else before nightfall.”

They heard the sound of a vehicle braking loudly behind them, and they both spun around. Three men were climbing out of a Jeep parked twenty yards away, dust still swirling around the vehicle.

One of the men had a full head of white hair. The other two men walked closely behind the first, both wearing military-style clothes over plain white T-shirts and combat boots. They were both armed with assault rifles that looked ugly and dangerous.

It had been such a long time since he had seen other people besides the three of them that for a moment Josh was paralyzed with indecision. By the time warning bells went off in his head, the men were already ten yards away and getting closer. Josh was also suddenly very cognizant that he had no more bullets left in Matt’s gun.

“Don’t shoot,” the man with white hair said, grinning at them and lifting both hands in mock surrender.

“What do you want?” Josh said.

“Right to business, huh?” He looked away from Josh and over at Gaby. “My name’s Folger. You have a name, miss?”

Gaby didn’t answer. Josh could feel her body tensing up into a ball of nervous energy next to him.

Josh didn’t realize when exactly he made up his mind, but suddenly he was standing protectively in front of Gaby and pointing Matt’s silver chrome revolver at Folger’s face, even cocking back the hammer for effect. “Stay back,” he said, trying to inject as much menace as he could muster into his voice.

The two men behind Folger raised their assault rifles and aimed them at Josh, but for some reason Josh wasn’t afraid. He didn’t know why, maybe it was stupidity, or maybe it was even courage. He could sense Gaby behind him, trembling slightly, and he realized all of a sudden that he would do anything — do everything—to keep her safe.

I’m the guy…

He expected to see fear in Folger’s eyes, but there wasn’t any. Instead, Folger seemed almost amused by the situation. “Are you sure you have any bullets left in that thing, young fella?” Folger asked.

Josh felt his heart miss a beat.

“I heard you firing it a number of times before we pulled up,” Folger continued. “How did you think we knew you were here in the first place? Sound travels these days, you know. Heard that first gunshot from a few streets down. From my count, you fired at least five times. Is my math right, Del?”

One of the men behind Folger, a big man with a bald head and almost no neck, grunted out, “Five sounds about right.”

“What about you, Betts?” Folger asked.

The third man said, “Five, maybe six. I don’t think the kid has any bullets left. I think he’s just playing hero.”

Betts towered over the other two like a scarecrow. He sported a big, ugly scar that ran from the corner of his right eye all the way down to his jawline. Josh found himself wondering how anyone had managed to get high enough to put that scar on Betts’s face.

“You think so?” Folger said. “You just playing hero, young man?”

“Take one step and you’ll find out,” Josh said.

“Oh, that’s dangerous talk,” Del said.

“Kid’s dangerous,” Betts chimed in, though he said it without any trace of humor.

Josh’s eyes darted to his left and right. There was nowhere to go. There was the house behind them, but Matt was in there. The good news was, Matt was in the basement, which still left the rest of the house. If he and Gaby could make it back inside, he could open the backpack and grab more bullets. If there were more bullets to be grabbed. He wasn’t even sure about that.

It was a plan. It wasn’t a great plan, but it was a plan. He only knew he couldn’t let these men get their hands on Gaby. He saw the way all three of them were looking at her, and he didn’t like it one bit.

“Five bullets,” Folger was saying. “At least. The way you were firing it, over and over again, my guess is you didn’t have time to reload before the two of you bolted out of that house. So, I’m willing to bet you either have one bullet left in that gun, or none.”

“You don’t want to find out,” Josh said.

“I think I do,” Del said.

“No, you don’t—”

But he never got the chance to finish before Del walked forward and snatched the gun out of his hand with such swiftness for a man of his size that it stunned Josh. He was still trying to come to terms with what had happened when Folger drew his gun and stepped forward and hit him across the face.

Josh felt a massive stabbing pain, like someone had thrown ten tons of rocks on his head, and he was aware of falling. Then darkness.

From somewhere in the blackness, the sound of screaming cut through.

It wasn’t him screaming, though, it was Gaby…

No, no, I’m the guy… I’m the guy…