Dwellers of the Night: The Church of 89 Steps

By Anthony Barnhart

The second installment of the Dwellers of the Night Trilogy begins at a survivor’s colony on the eastern side of the city. The Man discovers he isn’t as alone as he thought: there are more survivors than just him and Mark. He and Mark settle into life in the survivor’s colony, but The Man knows it’s simply a matter of time before the survivors’ complacency is shown up for what it really is. He concocts a wild idea: a last-ditch effort, a journey to Alaska, where the disease’s effects will have had less of an impact, and where he can live a somewhat normal life. The others at the colony uncover his plans and several members wish to join him. As he wrestles with the idea of setting out with companions rather than by himself, a psychotic turncoat within their ranks spells death for them all.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jan 12, 2015
• ISBN: 9781312828728

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Dwellers of the Night: The Church of 89 Steps

Copyright Page

Copyright © 2014 by Anthony Barnhart

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN: 978-1-312-82872-8

First Printing, 2014

To request permissions, please direct queries to:

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Title

Dwellers

of the

night

Book Two

The Church of 89 Steps

being the second part of a

post-apocalyptic trilogy by

Anthony Barnhart

Dedication Page

this trilogy is dedicated

to my amazing little sister

Amanda D. Barnhart

Saints & Sinners

The Man woke in a blanket of darkness, and he was cold. He lie in his boxers on a bare mattress with hard springs. His head pounded as if a spiked mallet had been embedded in his skull. He propped himself up, let out a gasp, the pain excruciating, and he fell back spread-eagled onto the mattress. His breath came ragged, his heart sluggish, and he looked around the room drenched in merging and melting shadows.

The walls were made of stone, covered in a thick layer of grime.

The dresser mirror, caked in dust, was shattered.

On the corner desk, a candle dressed in cobwebs had been knocked over.

A rat scurried across the floor and into a hole in the wall’s crumbling mortar.

He managed to sit on the edge of the bed, breathing steady to try and alleviate the headache. He swung his bare feet out over the edge of the bed and onto the icy stone floor. He began to stand when lightning pain cut through his stomach; he dropped back down with a gasp, placed his hands on his abdomen. In the darkness he could see a bruised spot, and the stitches hurt to the touch.

He gritted his teeth and managed to stand, saw his clothes folded and in a pile on a broken chair. He put on his pants and shoes, doing everything in slow motion to minimize the pain.

He held up his shirt, saw a tear in the front, remnants of blood stains.

He closed his eyes, tried to remember what happened, to remember anything, but the last thing he could recall was being imprisoned in that construction truck, the dark-walkers clambering over the hood and attacking the windows. He remembered smoking a cigarette, thinking of Kira; and there had been a dark-walker on the hood that had the same iron cross necklace she had worn…

But after that, all was fog.

He found the wooden door and went through into a dark hallway.

Grime laced the bare stone walls.

The candle mounts were empty, strewn with cobwebs.

He ran his hand against the wall as he walked, heard something crackling beneath his feet. Faint light came from a boarded-up window. He used a chair to pull himself up, and he pulled back the wooden boards, the nails coming easily from the crumbling mortar. Light pierced the hallway, and he turned to see against the far wall a skeleton covered in moss. The light crawling down the hallway illuminated skeletons thrown here-and-there, most covered in that furry moss and raggedy clothes.

He dropped down from the chair and made his way to another door.

He turned the knob, swung it open, stepped into the next room—and a rough hand grabbed him by the shoulder. He swung around, face-to-face with a grisly, lumberjack of a man with rotted yellow teeth half-masked in shadow.

The Man wrenched away, staggering back into the hallway.

His feet connected with a femur, and he fell backwards onto a skeleton.

He let out a grunt and rolled onto his side.

Searing pain flashed through his stomach.

He curled in on himself, clutching at his gut.

Blood seeped through the broken stitches.

The man with the rotted teeth knelt beside him. Be kind with it, now.

The Man looked up at him, eyes livid.

Rotted Teeth nodded to the skeletons scattered down the hallway. "Thank God they’re not alive anymore, or they’d be the ones making you bleed." He smiled, those rotted teeth gleaming in the sunlight from the window, and he delivered a crackling blow across The Man’s forehead.

Rotted Teeth carried him down the hallway and opened a heavy wooden door barred by a padlock. He set him inside and shut the door. The Man lie on the floor, blinking blood from his eyes.

Someone knelt beside him, placed a hand on his shoulder.

The Man looked up, eyes straining in the darkness. You’re just a boy, he murmured, and he passed out.

When The Man woke he was lying on a hard mattress. A shaft of light from a high, small square window illuminated the room.

The boy sat along the stone wall, using his fingertips to write in the dust on the floor. He had shaggy auburn hair, a hawk-like nose.

There was someone else sitting in a chair on the other side of the room. She was curled into a fetal position, her head between her knees, eyes vacant and eerie. She rocked back and forth.

He looked at the boy, who hadn’t noticed him, and remembered Mark.

They’d been separated at the factory. The Man, he’d jumped out a window and landed in the snow, had scaled a fence and cut himself on barbed wire. He remembered climbing into the truck, smoking a cigarette—God, how he wanted a cigarette—and then…

Yes, there had been headlights.

He clenched his eyes shut, trying to remember more, but he hit a brick wall. All became foggy. He kept trying to remember, to cut through the haze, and he fell into a fitful sleep where rumor paraded as memory.

Her screams woke him. He rolled his head to the side of the mattress, saw the door open, two men strutting in.

The girl, she stood in the corner, screaming at them.

The boy sat dejected in the opposite corner.

The men grabbed the girl. She slapped one of them across the face, and he took her by the throat, lifted her against the wall, her feet dangling. She wrapped her hands around his wrists, trying to pull free; her eyes bulged, and she squirmed for breath.

The man spat in her face, the dribble running down the breadth of her nose.

The Man tried to prop himself up, but the pain in his stomach brought him back down. He lie gasping for breath as the men carried the girl, still struggling and hoarse, from the room. They shut the door, locked the padlock, and The Man closed his eyes and the pain carried him away.

When he came to, the boy was pacing about in the small room.

The Man moved his lips. Where… did they take her?

The boy stopped, looked at him on the bed. You’re awake?

Where did they… He coughed, unable to finish.

The boy continued pacing. You don’t want to know.

The man didn’t say anything in response.

The boy looked over: he’d fallen back asleep.

The creaking of the door woke him. The men shoved the girl back into the room. She staggered and fell to the ground. Her limbs shook, and she shuddered with each choking sob.

The boy shimmied over to her, tried to comfort her.

She writhed away, shrieking, "Don’t touch me! Don’t fucking touch me!"

The boy’s eyes fell, and he returned to the corner.

She got to her feet, stumbled to the chair, pulled it away from the corner.

She slid behind it, obscuring herself from the two men in the room.

The Man fell back asleep to the melody of her sobs.

When The Man woke, it was early morning. Sunlight had begun to crawl at a snail’s pace from the east.

The boy sat in the chair, staring into space. The girl, she was gone.

The Man groaned and propped himself up. His body ached, his muscles burned. He swung his legs over the side of the bed, ran a hand through his greasy hair, felt the stubble sprouting along his chin.

The boy stood from the corner. How’s your stomach?

The man put a hand on his gut. It hurts like hell. They stitched it back up?

They want to make sure you’re healthy.

For what?

The boy didn’t answer.

Where’s the girl?

The boy, he didn’t answer.

The door opened a couple hours later, and the girl was shoved inside, stark naked. In the sunlight coming through the small window, The Man got a good look at her.

She was in her late teens, her shoulder-blades knobbed and bony.

She had fallen onto her hands and knees, and knotted hair dangled in clumps before her bloodshot eyes.

Tears coursed down her face, and she hunkered down there on the floor, weeping like a mangled dog.

Blood stained the insides of her upper legs.

The men in the doorway shouted at her, something about her being a filthy bitch, and they slammed the door.

The Man stripped the bed of its sheet and draped it over her.

She took the edges of the sheet in quivering fingers and pulled the blanket tight around her shivering body.

The Man sat on the bare mattress with its coiled and snapped springs.

The cold wind whipped against the window, howling like coyotes.

The girl had fallen asleep, and The Man had lifted her and put her on the mattress. He then turned to the boy and told him his name. The boy did likewise: Baker. Adrian Baker.

They spoke in whispers, so as not to wake the girl.

"We’re at Saint Catherine’s Monastery. Twenty miles north of Cincinnati. It’s on a ridge overlooking the highway. Interstate 75, I think. I only know because I was awake when they brought me here. These raiders, they’re some of the worst I’ve seen. Fucking deranged. Most raiders, they’re just trying to survive. They won’t fuck with you if you don’t fuck with them. We’ve seen raiders passing by. We always let them know that we’re watching, but that we’re okay with letting them pass. Hell, one time I shared a few beers with a passing group of raiders. But these aren’t the sort you want to make drinking buddies out of. They look for a fight. Absolutely mad. Sadistic, even. They claim to be New Age pagans, or something like that, but really it’s just an excuse to be what they are: anarchists. They know it, too, and they like to mark their territory."

With anarchy symbols? the man asked.

Adrian nodded. I’ve seen what they can do, and you will, too.

He’d already seen it, in a snowy boxcar on the west side of the city.

They want to think they’re something special, the boy said, but they’re just justifying being the animals they are. Think about it: take away all the positive and negative reinforcements that make us who we are in society, and we’re free to do as we please. Free to be whatever we want to be, regardless of whether what we want to be is righteous or something evil. These raiders, they’ve decided to be evil, and they write the Book on it.

You said, earlier, that they want me to be healthy…

He nodded. You have a choice to make. The choice between joining them, or not making it out of here alive.

The Man said something about how he’d rather die than become like them.

Jason said the same thing. And at this moment, he’s being prepared.

Prepared?

Adrian looked to the small square window. Do you ever look at the stars anymore?

The Man said he didn’t.

I think you should. Tonight’s a Full Moon.

*  *  *

Mark woke, the sun shining bright against his closed eyelids. He moaned, wondered if he weren’t dead, and brief flashes of an unknown memory sparked: shouting, bright lights, strong hands grabbing weak limbs. Now he lie under a heavy quilt, his head on a pillow. He tried to lift his head and gasped at the brilliant pain shooting through his neck. He opened his eyes, crust clinging to his eyelids. The sunlight came through a tall stained-glass window, and stone walls composed the small room about the size of a storage closet. Along one of the walls mops and brooms had been propped, and blue utility buckets sat beside the bed. A spider trailed across the ceiling, the hairs on its body speckled with dew reflecting the sunlight.

Footsteps entered the room.

He closed his eyes, his heartbeat freezing in his chest.

A chair was slid across the hard floor.

A shadow draped over him, a wet towel placed on his forehead.

A soothing voice, that of a woman: How’re you feeling? Can you talk?

His lips moved on their own accord. Where…

You’ll be all right, she said. You’re still quite sick. Nearly caught hypothermia. She dabbed the warm towel over his eyebrows. "Thank God your artery hadn’t been cut. You wrapped your shirt around your arm. Do you remember that? Very smart. It helped the clotting. It’ll take a few days for your bone marrow to create enough blood so that you’ll be able to run around. And we went ahead and sutured up your—’’

New movement in the room, a man’s voice, stern. Have you asked him?

The boy tried to lift his head to see but only grunted in pain.

The woman left the towel on his forehead and stood. Please. Not yet.

You need to ask him, the man growled.

They left the room and the boy lie in bed and heard the door shut and their voices. He tried to listen but fell asleep. How long he slept he didn’t know, but when he woke sunlight no longer came through the vaulted stained-glass window. The woman had returned, was caressing the back of his hand. He pulled his hand from her touch.

I’m sorry, she said. "I didn’t mean to—’’

It’s okay, he said, coughing. His throat, it burned.

Here. She brought forward a glass. You’ll need to tip your head up.

I can’t.

If you want to drink, you will.

He lifted his head, flinching in pain.

She tipped the glass, and distilled water ran down his parched throat, across his bruised chin.

Don’t drink too much, she said.

He didn’t listen: he kept drinking, and drinking. She cautioned him again, and then he wrenched to the side and heaved. Water spewed all over the white bed-sheets. He lie back down, his limbs trembling. His face flushed red, both in embarrassment and exertion.

It’s fine, the woman said. I’ll clean it up.

The man with the stern voice entered the room. What’d he say?

Not yet, she said again.

The man cursed and left.

Mark closed his eyes. What does he want to know?

Nothing to worry about, Sweetie. Just get some sleep.

He woke again, didn’t know he’d fallen asleep. The cramped room was bathed in impermeable darkness, and in the distance he could hear the dark-walkers, their cries distant and borderline surreal. A white light splashed into the room through the window; at first he heard only the dark-walkers, but then he heard his heartbeat echoing between the confined stone walls. The white light vanished, the room dark again, and then there was a new sound: voices, somewhat muffled, carrying into the room through its heavy wooden door. They were many and collaborative, men and women, and some even sounded like children. He heard footsteps coming towards the room, and the voices went quiet. Those approaching stopped outside the door. He moved his head to the side—slowly, so as not to awaken the pain—and saw orange-yellow light trickling underneath the door.

It’s already been two days, the gravely-voiced man said. We can’t wait longer.

"He’s just sick," the woman said.

"And that’s why we need to find out. I don’t want him here if—’’

He lost a lot of blood. He’s getting better. His body temperature’s returning to normal.

"Damn it, Nancy, that’s how it happens. It fluctuates. You know this."

Minor hypothermia. That’s all he has. I’m a nurse, I know what I’m doing.

"Just because he looks like your son doesn’t mean—’’

"You little fucker. Don’t talk to me like that."

A moment of quiet, then the man again: "Nancy, we need to ask."

And we will. But not right now.

How much longer? The boy detected earnest in his voice. "We have children here, Nancy. Children."

I’ll ask tomorrow.

Okay. The man, he seemed calmer now. Do you have the shots?

I do.

Two doses. I want to make sure.

I know. I’ve done the procedure before.

The footsteps dwindled and the muted light from underneath the door was gone.

He was awake the next morning and propped up in bed. It took much effort, but he was able to gather his bearings.

On one of the shelves beside his head was a box filled with strings of beads.

One string dangled from the container’s lip, and along its loop hung a titanium cross.

The door opened, the woman entering. The boy got his first look at her: short, skinny, but not emaciated. Well-fed. Hershey-brown eyes, gray curls behind the ears.

He smiled weakly and greeted her.

Her weathered face lit up, and she moved to the bed and sat in the chair beside it, greedily took Mark’s hand.

You’re feeling better, then? she said.

Yeah. Not great, but better. I have more strength.

I can get you some solid food. She stood and left without a word, leaving the door open.

Through the door a towering man with leathery hands and an upside-down crescent scowl entered. He stood in the corner, eyeing the boy as if he were some exotic animal from a primitive jungle animal, or a pygmy. The stare felt mind-numbing, but Mark refused to look away. He attempted to say Hello, but the man left the room.

The compassionate woman returned with a bowl of steaming soup. She handed it to the boy, and he sipped it in bed, using a metal spoon to lift the soup to his mouth. Chicken and egg noodles in a mushroom broth. He finished the soup, handed her the bowl.

She nodded to his arm. Does it hurt?

He looked down, saw stitches running across his arm. No.

Sandra, she was a nurse during Vietnam. She’s better at stitches than me.

I’ll be sure to thank her.

A shadow draped the doorframe. The woman’s face went ashen.

I wasn’t bitten, Mark said.

She looked at him. Excuse me?

They didn’t bite me. I know what happens when you get bit. I’ve seen it.

The gruff man entered the room. You’ve seen it?

He nodded Yes.

Then tell me what happens.

It looks like malaria at first. But then it becomes something else.

The man cocked an eyebrow. Malaria?

The nurse lifted a quizzical finger, deep in thought. Malaria? Yes. She looked at the man. The symptoms of the sickness, they’re similar to malaria, but different in other ways, especially after the initial onset. He’s right.

A little girl I knew, Mark said. She was bitten. She became really sick.

And she died? the man said.

Yes. No. I mean, she became one of them. A dark-walker.

A dark-walker.

That’s what we call them, because they only come out at night.

Did you see her become one of them yourself? the man asked.

The boy remembered the boxcar.

The blood on the walls, that awful stench.

Her prepubescent teeth arranged in a pentagram.

The anarchy symbols spray-painted on the walls.

Yeah, he said. I saw it.

How’d you get that gash? the man demanded, pointing to his arm.

You rescued me from the factory?

Yes. Well, not me. But some friends of mine did.

Then they should’ve seen the saw.

I don’t know anything about a saw. I wasn’t there.

I was in the furnace. I knew I wasn’t going to get out. I knew the cold, it’d kill me. I took Health in high school. I know what hypothermia does to you. So I tried to kill myself, tried to cut an artery. I guess I failed.

You’re okay now, the woman said. You have nothing to worry about.

The boy looked back to the man, but he was gone.

Mark woke the next morning to the muffled voices of children singing. He recognized the lyrics: Amazing Grace and He Paid It All. Minutes later the door opened and the nurse entered. Her face glowed to see him sitting upright in the bed.

They’re singing hymns? he said.

She looked behind her to the open door. Of course. It’s Sunday.

Oh. That makes sense, I guess.

She sat down in the chair. You’re feeling better?

Better than yesterday.

Better enough to walk around?

With crutches, sure.

You don’t sound confident.

That’s because I’m not.

Your strength will return. You lost a lot of blood.

Define ‘a lot.’

A few pints? You were shivering and passed out in the furnace when our men found you.

You guys were watching us.

Watching you?

Yeah. That’s how you knew we were in the factory. His eyes glazed over. It seems pretty nice to be here in this church, but you guys don’t exactly sing hymns on the outside.

How’d you know we’re in a church?

I’ve heard of this place before. That it was a refugee camp, or something.

That’s true. Something along those lines.

But your guys, they tried to flush us out of our home. They sent a rocket-propelled grenade right into our front door, blew a hole in our house. Let the dark-walkers come right in. Is that how you operate? Behind these walls, you wear a mask of hospitality, while outside you raid peoples’ homes in the night and rape little girls who’ve been bitten?

The woman sat there quiet for a moment, her face white; then color returned, and she breathed a little easier. "That wasn’t us, but I know who you’re talking about. Our men, they were coming back from across the river, heard gunshots coming from the factory. They found the truck with its doors opened, and they explored the factory to see what happened. Brave souls, those men. Or stupid. The lines between the two, they’re blurred. They’re lucky none of them were crouching in the shadows, waiting to pounce. They found three bodies in that furnace. It looked like you knifed them, from what I heard. But I guess that was a saw you used? Heroic, nonetheless. Heroic, and resourceful."

It didn’t feel too heroic. I was just trying to survive.

Aren’t we all? No one lives anymore. We just survive.

The nurse returned that afternoon with more soup and a single strawberry for dessert. Mark examined the fruit as if it were an exotic specimen before savoring each bite.

The woman watched him, and her eyes swelled with tears. Your eyes, they look like my son’s did. He was around your age. Andrew Webster. An English scholar, or at least he wanted to be. He went to Harvard, and he read dictionaries and thesauruses for fun. I don’t know how the plague didn’t get me, but it got him. My husband was away on vacation. Golfing in Florida. I’m sure he’s gone. I held onto hope for so long, but I knew the statistics. Only a handful of people for every several thousand survive. My son, he wasn’t one of them. I didn’t know anything was wrong that morning. The silence, it unnerved me. We lived beside a highway, you could always hear the traffic. You got used to it, you know, so that when the cars and semis stopped running, the silence was louder than the engines. I found Andrew upstairs in his room. He was lying there in his bed, in his boxers. And he had a tube of modeling cement in his hand, had squeezed it into his throat. I felt his throat, felt for a purse, and it just felt… solid. The cement, it’d hardened inside. This disease, it made people go crazy before it took them. But before he squeezed the cement down his throat, he’d opened one of his favorite dictionaries, and with a bright felt tip marker he’d circled a word near the back…

She broke down, her head falling into her hands as she wept.

Mark just sat there in bed, watching her.

She cooled herself off, fanning her eyes with dainty fingertips. I’m sorry.

It’s okay, he said, his voice catching. Really: it’s okay.

It’s just… Somehow, he knew. Somehow, he knew what would happen.

How’d he know? the boy said.

She bit her bottom lip, looked up at him. "The word he circled, it was—’’

The gruff man appeared in the door. Nancy.

She turned to him, wiped her eyes. What?

Almira needs you. He looked at the boy and left.

She stood from her chair. I’m sorry. I have to go.

It’s okay, Mark said, and the nurse left the room.

*  *  *

The Man sat along the far wall, staring at his hands in the wan light coming through the window. The door opened and two men entered. The Man looked up; these men, they were new.

The girl, in the bed, grabbed the spoiled sheets and pulled them tight against her. The men ignored her, went straight to the Man. One of them grabbed his arm; the Man wrenched away and launched to his feet.

One prepared to strike but he raised his hands in surrender.

The men exchanged glances, and the one who had grabbed him by the arm delivered a stunning blow into his face.

The Man hobbled back into the wall, jaw throbbing.

They took him by the arms and dragged him from the room, slamming and locking the door shut behind them.

They carried him down the stone corridor. The Man heard laughter, and conversation. A thick, heavy atmosphere, wreathed in darkness, became palpable as they neared the source of the noises. The hallway opened into a large room: it’d been a sanctuary Once-Upon-A-Time, but the pews had been torn from the floor and stacked against the vaulted windows. Men and women huddled together in the center of the room, giving him wary glances as he was taken to the back of the sanctuary. A makeshift iron cage had been wedged into the corner. It reminded the Man of those shark cages they’d lower into the Caribbean every other Sunday on The Discovery Channel. They put him inside and threw the latch. One of the men twirled the key on his finger, dropped it into his coat pocket, and they left him to join the crowd.

The Man counted fifteen or sixteen people.

Most were around thirty, maybe forty years old.

A door beside the altar opened, and a man dressed in a priest’s outfit stepped out. He silenced the room, and they gave him their undivided attention. This is the first Full Moon of February. The Snow Moon, as the Almanac tells us. Tonight we’ll seal our covenant again. This is a new world, Friends, and protection is a gift to those who embrace the shifting powers. There’s been a coup, and we must join the winning side! This is a time of celebration and joy, not of mourning! A new age has dawned, and we are its pioneers! Let’s laugh and drink and share one another!

Select men began handing out drinks and white pills. The worshippers—what else could The Man assume them to be?—drank the wine and took the acid. They began taking off their clothes, rubbing against one another.

The Man looked away, repulsed, retreating deeper into the cage.

They sounded like wild animals in heat.

A woman approached the cage. Her eyes swam with ecstasy, and her words came broken. She fell against the cage, begging the Man to kiss her. He shook his head No. She raised her skirt, rubbed herself against the bars. He looked back down at his hands as she groaned against the cage, and he remembered Kira. Candlelit dinners with glasses of wine; cuddling beside the fireplace in the infamous Winter of 2010. The woman with the upraised skirt screamed for his attention, but he refused to look up from his hands. She cursed and spat, and she left him alone.

The ceremony continued long into the night, and the Man had begun nodding off, his stomach beginning to give him pain, when the High Priest—whose white priestly