Dwellers of the Night: The Complete Collection Read Online Free PDF Page B

slumped over in their seats, or riddled with masks of pain and contorted in awful positions, bodies lying on the floor. Blood everywhere. He unconsciously moves backwards. His feet trip over the body of the flight attendant. The last thing he remembers is the world spinning as he falls, and a searing pain courses through the back of his head.

    Anthony Barnhart
    Dwellers of the Night
    25
    V

    When he awakes, he remembers nothing. The back of his head throbs. He wonders what has happened, but all he can see in the darkness of his mind are disturbing images of death and mayhem, snapshots of a world shot to hell. He is sure it is a dream, and that he is lying beside Kira in their twolevel house… But when he opens his eyes and rolls onto his side, he is greeted with the body of the copilot, encrusted with drying blood.
    The pilot’s stomach churns, his throat muscles contract, and he vomits all over the carpet, its sweet stench a pleasant escape from the scent of death and decay.

    His mouth tastes of bile. He wants a drink of water, but nothing can force him to leave the only sanitarium he can find. He refuses to look outside the cockpit. He closes the door to the rest of the plane. He sits down in his pilot’s chair, muttering to himself, trying to console his burdened mind. He can still hear the screams of the passengers and Richard’s incessant babbling. He flips through the frequencies for the United States, but all of them are silent. He tries to raise someone—anyone!—but no one answers. He realizes, with a pall of terror, that he is utterly alone. He sits quietly in the chair.
    And then he begins to cry.
    It is 10:02 PM.

    He walks down the aisles, desperate to find someone who had not met such a grisly fate, someone who could share with him in his fear and sorrow. But no such persons are found. 1st-class, 2nd-class, 3rd-class… Everyone is dead. Mortifying scenes greet him, images that will forever be tattooed into the back of his mind:

    The woman with the bleeding infant had crushed the child’s head between her two hands; the infant’s feeble bones had snapped and popped, protruding from its skin; its eyes hung lifeless on either side of its blood-stained nose.

    A little boy had choked his little sister and then died on top of her. Bruise marks covered the little girl’s neck, and her bloodied eyes had gone lifeless in a state of absolute terror. She looked to be about seven years old.

    An older man had banged his head against his seat’s window, over and over again, until the front of his skull had imploded inwards, stained with brain matter. He had died in a contorted mangle of maniacal delight.

    A young man had shoved his head in the toilet at the back of the plane, and then he had pulled the lever. The force of the flush had ripped the hair from his scalp, leaving hundreds of bloody pinpricks. He had died and slumped down, head flopped against the sink.

    The man stands at the back of the plane, head hanging low.
    A single word dances over his lips: “Kira. Kira. Kira.”
    He whimpers like a baby.

    Anthony Barnhart
    Dwellers of the Night
    26
    His eyes hurt from crying. How much time has passed? He doesn’t know. He looks at the digital clock on the dashboard: 10:23 PM. They will be reaching the New England coast soon. He tries to raise someone— any one—over the radio frequencies, but all he gets is either silence or white noise.

    The first pinpricks of light appear on the horizon. They are nearing Boston. He frantically tries to call for help. Why the hell isn’t anyone there?
    A nonchalant sideways glance alerts him. Blinking lights in the sky. He leans forward, staring. Another plane. Coming straight for him. The equipment begins to wail. He looks down: an Airbus 310. The wail of the emergency audio is frighteningly loud. He wishes for the silence again. He returns his eyes to the windows. The blinking lights are growing closer. The display on the dashboard gives him the frequency of the