Gregory Norris - Down with the Fallen - A Post-Apocalyptic Horror Anthology

Looking away from her broken reflection, she scanned the group. The man on her right was an insurance salesman named Tom Ofstad who used to love driving around town in his “vintage car,” a rust-orange Ford Pinto. The woman on her left was Elaine Fischer, a substitute teacher who routinely had a group of foster kittens in her home. She was a dedicated member of the Beth El Synagogue before it was torched, its holy bones turned into barrack reinforcements, the concrete foundation a place of extremist battle. In front of her stood Rick Stephens, a sandy-haired mechanic who always had a bright handkerchief sticking out of his coveralls. Charlotte used to see him at his auto body shop during her morning walks, bent over the open hood of a car, his handkerchief blowing in the breeze behind him like a jellyfish floating undersea. Today he was wearing his new uniform, a black jumpsuit with gold lettering on the chest. A member of the True Cross Mechanical Team, his required outfit bore the words:

Deus Lo Volt

God Wills It.

He had also lost a parent, his father, in the First Battle, when the Agents had come and bled the community of threats. Tom had once fought against them, and now was one of them, indentured to fix the killing machinery that filled the streets. The faint tributary of a scar ran down his cheek, a reminder of the world before, when it was worth fighting for.

Near him was Kaitlin Spencer, a rail-thin, tall brunette who wore the same cardigan every day, and was trained as a dental hygienist. She used to love watching the kids in the dental office choose a little toy from the bucket after their visits. Now, she attended to men returning from battle, their mouths black and broken. The librarian, Addy Penford, was shaking near the Gorgeous Man, wracked with tears and fear. Despite her position in the circle, Charlotte couldn’t help but feel most awful for the kids in town who were going to lose their librarian, even if the reading material was regulated. Standing near the door was Jason Foster, a shithead known for his nightly performances starring whiskey and a bad temper. Tall, with dark curly hair and green eyes women write poetry about, he was a reckless beauty. Once at their local dive, Charlotte had watched him knock back eleven drinks in a row, then go outside and howl at the moon, hands curled into C’s, his breath heavy in the cold air. The militia didn’t outlaw alcohol (with the sickle, winemaker, and the wrath and all), but they were known to inflict serious punishment for public intoxication.

“Now, you all know the rules,” said the Gorgeous Man, once the knives were handed out. Tucking his (handle first) under his arm, he scanned each group member, forcing eye contact with each as he spoke. “No leaving the mobile home. No helping one another, and no hiding the whole time. This is an exercise in action . And no slasher show off scenes, okay? This isn’t some bullshit, low budget, torture porn movie.”

Charlotte wet her lips. Her throat suddenly felt like a tunnel, the vehicle of her breath rushing toward a shrinking pinprick of light. Tom turned his knife in his hand, his eyes glassy like a doll’s. Elaine’s hands shook, the blade catching the light from the barred windows and filling the room like a disco ball. The Gorgeous Man cocked his right hip out and raised his arm, sticking his thumb out like a hitchhiker. “We get in, we gut out.” He roared with laughter, bending forward so the blade of his knife caught the light, a beacon in the yellow room. The group shifted uncomfortably, looking at one another. Elaine had tears streaming down her face. Charlotte guessed she would die first.

Straightening up, he tapped his watch. “We’ve got one hour. Scatter off, beauties!” he shouted, running toward the hallway.

For a moment, Charlotte considered breaking out the kitchen window behind the yellowed shade. But then she remembered the guards, and the lines of them on each end of the property. They had stretched down the road for miles, twitching on Adderall and clicking the safety on and off their guns, with all the time in the world.

Snap. Click. Snap. Click.

There had once been rows of lilac trees on that road, lavender and kind. They reminded Charlotte of her childhood farm, where the lilacs filled the air with their sweet scent next to mulberry trees that dotted the lane. Back before those colors were outlawed, and the flowers were torn out of the ground, left to die in pale clumps. Before the world went mad.

She squeezed the handle of her knife, and ran toward the east end of the mobile home.

Barely ten minutes into the hour, Charlotte watched with horror as her prediction came true: Elaine was hacked to death. She had run around the corner of the kitchen counter, hysterical, her knife pointed toward the floor. An easy target. From her hiding place behind the refrigerator— fuck the rules— Charlotte could see the sweat standing out on Elaine’s face, beading and cascading like a river churning over her skin. Charlotte bit her lower lip to control her breathing, crouching behind the counter, her spine creaking like a tree in the wind. Out of nowhere, Tom ran around the corner of the kitchen and face first into Elaine, bawling as he plunged his knife over and over into her torso, the way you might puncture a sweet potato before microwaving it.

Charlotte could barely control the screaming in her own skull. No, no, no, no, no.

Elaine’s shrieks drowned into gurgles. Her eyes bugged outward, looking as though they would rip from her skull and fling themselves into orbit. Even as she slumped forward over the knife, Tom kept howling, kept stabbing. The knife slid easily in and out of Elaine’s body, like a spoon through a stick of butter. Once the dam of her body was broken, her blood ran like streams down Tom’s arms, rushing toward his elbows and coagulating into wide smears as her torso was shredded.

Charlotte squeezed her eyes shut. One down.

Pieces of Elaine dotted the kitchen floor as Charlotte ran for the bathroom. She slammed the door, turned the lock, and backed away quickly. You did not want to spend too much time against walls or doors here. Brittle cedar would change to the consistency of cotton candy when a knife was slammed through.

Charlotte could almost visualize the knife handle through the door as Tom tapped on it a few seconds later.

Tap, tap, tap.

“Please,” he whispered, his voice sliding down the door like a deflating balloon. “You’ve got to let me in.”

Charlotte didn’t move. Her arms felt separate from the rest of her body, one hand gripped against the sink, the other wrapped around her knife.

The taps stopped. Silence.

The crash that followed bent the door just slightly. In the tiny bathroom, it sounded the way a doomed jet would upon impact with the ground, changing from solid to liquid and screaming with the impact of bodies, smoke, and fuel.

Tom threw his weight into the frame, bellowing as he landed blow after blow. “ Let me in! I know you’re in there, Fucking let me in! ”

Charlotte leaned against the sink, feeling the cold press of ceramic in the small of her back. The door cracked and splintered, the hinges moaning. “You fucking bitch , I know you’re—”

His voice stopped, with a hollow sound a stone makes after being dropped down a well. Shivering with adrenaline, she crawled under the sink, pressing her hands against her face. Over the pumping of blood in her ears, there was a sound like a shovel piercing dry earth. It reminded Charlotte of her mother in their garden, during summer days where the loudest sounds were the thwack of her hand shovel near the tomato plants, and the wind dancing in the trees. Closing her eyes under the cave of the sink, she half expected to hear the evening cicadas as they vibrated like tuning forks against the trees, camouflaged so well that it seemed the branches had voices.