When Susan Donnel pulled into the driveway of her house on Tessler Avenue, she was in a state of high panic. She’d downed a Darvocet at lunch and washed it down with two Bacardi and Cokes. The world was unraveling. So much was happening in so many different places that she refused to even listen to the radio anymore.
Doom.
Gloom.
Horror.
And this time it wasn’t just in Afghanistan or the Left Bank. It was here. It was everywhere. Even Greenlawn, her oasis, had lost its collective mind. As she drove through town, she saw devastation. Burning houses. Trash in the streets. Dogs running in packs. People running wild and naked in the streets.
And when she pulled in the driveway, hoping Ray was home and wondering why he wasn’t answering his cell, she had to sit behind the wheel for five minutes. It took that long to pry her fingers off it. They were white-knuckled claws. Her stomach was upset. Her head was aching. She was shaking, every muscle drawn taut.
She stepped out into the driveway.
Into the absolute silence of Tessler Avenue. Not so much as a passing car. A kid on a bike. The hum of a lawnmower. Nothing. Oh, Jesus, that silence was worse than just about anything. Holding back a cry, she ran into the house.
“Ray!” she called. “Ray!”
Dammit, it was his day off. His car was at the curb. He had to be here, he just had to be. The house was neat. There were the remains of a sandwich on the table. Ray’s lunch. She dashed from room to room in a frantic, sweaty panic. They would get out of town. They would pack up what they needed and get up to the cabin on Indian Creek, wait for this… madness to blow over. For God help her, it had to, it just had to.
He wasn’t in the house.
Dammit!
She ran outside, looked in the backyard, saw the door to the garage was open. Of course. Of course. The garage. His private haven. Probably practicing his OCD, arranging his gardening tools or numbering his screws.
“Ray! Ray! Goddammit, Ray, why aren’t you-”
A dank clamminess spread over flesh, her head spun, cold sweat ran down her face in rivers. She went down to her knees, a scream breaking loose in her throat. “No, no, no, no, no, Jesus God, no…”
Ray was hanging on the wall.
He was hanging by a hook there amongst the shovels, rakes, and hoes. Her husband. Her lover. Her rock. Hanging there. His eyes were wide and staring, the crown of his head ruptured, cleaved open in a grisly, jagged rent. Fingers of scarlet blood had run down his face, accentuating his chalk-white pallor.
Screaming, crying, her mind gone to sauce, Susan crawled out of the garage on all fours. She found her feet, staggered a bit, went down in the grass, vomiting. A voice in her head kept saying that such things as this could not be. They’d gotten up together this morning. Ray had made her breakfast. They’d laughed together. They’d showered together. He kissed her goodbye at the door and now…and now…
Susan ran.
Marge, she thought, Marge.
She ran next door, diving right over Ray’s carefully sculpted hedges and landing face-first in a flowerbed. She scrambled through the yard. The Shermer’s. Marge Shermer was practically like a mother to her. Her husband, Bill, was cranky, but he would know what to do. He was a crusty old war vet that always seemed to know what to do. He would know. Susan saw his pick-up truck in the driveway. The windshield was shattered.
Oh, no.
She went to the door, didn’t bother knocking. Inside, there was wreckage. Paintings had been yanked off the walls. The TV set was tipped over. Potted plants scattered from one end of the living room to the other. She trampled across black potting soil, not daring to call out. Something inside her, long dormant, was aware now. It sensed danger. No sense alerting anyone or any thing to her location.
She slipped into the kitchen, flattened herself up against the refrigerator.
The same, dear God, it was the same. Cupboards had been emptied, the contents of drawers scattered over the floor: knives, spoons, forks. Canisters of flour and sugar had been spilled about. There were bloody handprints on the countertops. The walls looked like they’d been gouged with knives.
There was a stink of raw urine in the air.
Somebody had gone insane in here and then pissed with glee.
Susan went down to the floor, grabbed a knife.
Tears ran from her eyes, drool filled her mouth. There was a wild tic at the corner of one eye. Shadows jumped in her brain. She was hearing a creaking sound. It was coming from the backyard. Tensing, Susan crept over the floor, leaving footprints in the flour. She eased herself up the counter so she could peer through the kitchen window out into the yard.
Careful, don’t give yourself away.
She saw the bushes back there, the potting shed. She craned her neck. There was the clothesline. A gentle breeze made sheets flap. But that creaking. That continual creaking. It reminded her of She craned her neck. Her body was prickly with sweat, her blouse stuck to her back. She saw…she saw Marge. Marge was hanging from the oak tree back there. Susan saw it, wanted to scream, to cry out, to do many things, but by that point something had shut down in her.
So she just looked.
Marge, poor old arthritic Marge, was strung up from that oak like a lynched desperado in an old western. She was naked, her body bloated and purple and broken. Her face was a swollen contusion. She was only recognizable by her fine silver, moon-spun hair. It looked like she had been beaten to death. With bats. With boards. With hammers. It was hard to know. Her limbs were shattered, bent at unnatural angles.
Susan didn’t bother looking for Bill.
Not running now, but moving with a quick, stealthy burst of speed like a hunted animal. She went to the Lychek’s next door. They were a bunch of Bible-thumping Jehovah’s Witnesses who were always leaving pamphlets and leaflets in everyone’s mailboxes: SIGNS OF THE SECOND COMING or JESUS IS HERE NOW ON EARTH or YOU CAN BE GOD’S FRIEND! Nobody liked the Lychek’s. They didn’t believe in things like Christmas or Halloween. Pagan holidays, they said. The neighborhood kids always pranked them on Halloween. Oh, the awful things they did.
But Susan didn’t care what they believed or what they didn’t believe. For she could not be sure at that moment, as the world lost solidity and focus for her, just exactly what she believed in herself anymore.
She didn’t bother knocking.
She stepped right in, brandishing her knife, waiting for attack that never came. She could smell blood, shit, piss, worse things. The living room was trashed. Bound volumes of The Watchtower, Awake!, and Our Kingdom Ministry had been yanked from bookshelves, pages torn out in a wild rage. They lay everywhere like fallen autumn leaves along with dozens of pamphlets preaching against progressive ideas like evolution and the separation of church and state. Then someone had defecated all over them. And by the amount of shit heaped and smeared on those pages, probably quite a few people. Susan immediately had a lunatic scenario in her head where a bunch of crazies came in here, torn up the books, and then, dropping their drawers, squatted down and happily shit together.
It was ridiculous.
But she feared it wasn’t far from the truth.
Apparently they’d been using the pages as toilet paper, too, which was probably the most constructive use any of it had ever been put to, she decided.
Thump, thump, thump.
Susan went down in a crouch. The knife trembled in her hand. That thumping. What was this now? It was coming from a doorway at the far side of the room, possibly a dining room. She thought of running. Her animal sense demanded it. But being that she was still more or less a reasoning being, she was curious.
Tensed, ready for battle, she stepped across the room, very aware that she was stepping through human shit. The smell was overpowering, sickening. She noticed that there were bare human footprints in the waste, that filthy prints led away into the room she was now creeping up on.
She got to the doorway.
