(Threnody 013).

(This is a 500-word-a-day novel project.)

They were still outside, the nightmares that rushed through the cold streets, slithering and crawling and snapping as they rooted through windblown garbage and shoved their investigating snouts inside cars and open doors. She saw them as she crawled between rooms – some were like insects, some like dogs, some gelatinous and some like shambling skeletons. They paid one another little mind unless there was food, and then they were riotous; the town was filled with the war of scraps being stolen and stolen back, the animals charging through fences and tearing across rooftops, leaving nothing but destruction in their wake. There was another human howl that went on for a long, awful minute before it ended; Jesse wondered how many people were still here trying to survive. She wondered if anyone would hear her when she was eaten.

Basement, she thought deliriously, finding the door and descending stairs behind it. She was prepared to simply roll down them, letting gravity deliver her, when a triumphant howl exploded up through the stairwell and a jaundiced monster lurched into view, eyes pulsating with glossy cataracts and rotten skin splitting open with pus. It slapped at the steps with flesh-colored flippers as it climbed, its jaw split in two and snapping like scissor blades – but as crested the steps and lunged at her it jammed in the doorway at the shoulders. Jesse backed up against the wall as it reached through and slashed at her with ragged nails, its bellows deafening.

*

Ryan stepped back, admiring his handiwork; there was only one window in the basement and he had managed to cover it with plywood scraps found next to a workbench.

I think it’ll hold, he said to the women who were seated on blankets piled in front of the washer and dryer, their faces underlit by the dying flashlight between them. Maddy gave him a look and returned to dressing the second woman’s wounds.

What’s your name, honey? she asked, ripping found towels into bandages; the woman stared vacantly straight ahead.

She all right? Ryan stepped down off the folding chair, picking splinters out of his palm.

Can’t tell. Maddy sat back against the dryer. She’s pretty beat up. I’m not a doctor.

Ryan exited the flashlight’s weak globe of light, walking the perimeter of the basement filled with towers of mildewed boxes. Bicycle rims and roller blades hung from the overhead beams; a perforated plastic bag held artificial Christmas tree limbs, leaning against a painted green post they would never grow from again. There was a weight bench in the corner – he took a seat, lying back and lifting the barbell from the stands. There were single twenty-five pound disks affixed to either side and he did several reps easily, staring up into the dark rafters above. They’d been lost for weeks, as best as he could estimate the passage of time, and the things they had seen would probably drive them crazy down the road, if they weren’t there already.