A Named Storm
We agreed: it had to be a drifter, an outsider. That much was clear. Our town wasn’t small, but it wasn’t big enough to hold, to hide, an appetite such as this. We knew this to be true. We knew this because we knew everyone.
Of course, the first person we would have suspected—the only person—was her brother. But he had long since left and taken his foulness with him. He was too big, too still, too watchful. There was a meanness, or a potential for meanness that amounted to the same thing, and if you call that potential, that brokenness, a gift of birth or a product of hard-won experience, it was—by the time he was ten—understood that no one, under any circumstances, should be alone with Jeremiah.
Round here we know problems. And we don’t have a problem with problems—few know the limits of power better—but we resent secrecy.Concealment. Treat us like adults and tell us what you’re doing about it. So when staff at the school openly discussed the Jeremiah Protocols in bars and diners, we appreciated that. Dan’s then-wife, for example, was one of the support team paid simply to be near, keeping an eye out, and probably just as much paid to talk about it afterward, to reassure parents and pet owners alike. But then, after her customary one-too-many, she described Jeremiah as having “a thing about skin.” This made its way round the town fast as a whorehouse cold sore, coupled with the chilling fact of her refusal, or inability, to elaborate. Larry was there, said she tried, that her “mouth flopped open like a fish,” that the truth of Jeremiah “lay beyond the limits of language.” (Dan said: “That’s her response to most things.”)
It was at this point we began to have a problem with the problem.
Someone, usually Henry, would cut the fevered atmosphere with a gentle reminder that the child (as Jeremiah still was at this point) hadn’t actually done anything.
“That we know of,” was the inevitable rejoinder, or: “Yet!”
“You want your kid alone in a room with him?”
“Hell, go yourself—but watch out: he’s gota thing about skin!”
Jeremiah grew, and the range and intensity of his ability to unsettle grew too, cycling, circling endlessly on that raggedy bike of his—the purr of the misaligned wheel and ker-unk of the gear-change like the bell around a cat’s neck that gives the birds a chance—watching, watching, until he turned sixteen and vanished.
The town counted its chihuahuas and its children. The cops, it is known, poked a few rivers and ravines, not looking for him. Then we accepted the blessing for what it was.
We hoped his sister could now flourish, somewhat. God knows, or rather, we knew, even if some boy (or girl, this isn’t a small town) had taken a liking to her meekness, the way she flinched if you scratched your ear, her indoor whiteness bright as an unearthed grub, even if he (or she; no, they) had found something to cherish, there’s no way they would have struck up sweet talk on the way to school, not with Jeremiah a ker-unk away.
But now she was out of that cold shadow and, with time, maybe, free too of that hoarder’s hovel where she kept their father, within the strictest sense of the term, alive.
Three years proved otherwise, and three months after he passed, she was found pinned by her limbs with large stones in a small inlet of the tidal river, where she had been sliced at with some ragged, rusty implement for the hours it took the water to rise and fill her lungs.
The circus arrived. Freaks and lookie-loos, journalists from the mainstream and – to put it delicately – unaffiliated media. Podcasters. Now, like any independent thinkers, we’ve got issues with the MSM, but we gotta say, nothing quite like that half-assed, no-account swarm to make you stand up and salute The New York Times. One of them described us as “uniquely like every other goddamn town in America,” and we’ll give him that – let it never be said that we cannot admit craft when we hear it – but the rest didn’t even have the grace to be wrong with style.
No one takes pride in their work anymore.
We took issue with characterizations of the citizenry in this “reporting,” Carl – the dubious deputy, the clown prince of crime-fighting – most of all, as unsuited to the law as you could imagine. In fact, being a cop was second to his T-shirt business, which you probably already know about. Sold them all over the country. Now, we couldn’t defend all of them – “Can’t spell rabies without rabbi” was wrong morally and grammatically – but what was it the man said? We defend to the death his right to sell it. Anyway, Carl was in here day-drinking with some of us, getting riled up: “Way they’re telling it, there’s hogs loose in the town square. One of them run for mayor, came third.” We were getting into it – is that a bettermayor? – when, sure as grace, a podcaster walks right in.
“Terrible time for the community, I know,” he said, sweet as you like. Sat right where you are now. Talked about the importance of capturing the true feelings of the affected, being – we swear to God he said this – being the “first draft of history.”
He had an insectoid aspect. Tactical shoulder bag in front of him, all pocketed like a segmented thorax, and twoheadphones: one round his neck, dangling like mandibles, another dwarfing his head like huge compound eyes. Not a thing about him you didn’t want to squish.
“I’ve got something for you, young fella,” Carl said, with maybe five years on him.
“You go right ahead. I’m already recording.”
“I’m sure you are. Well, I guess we just can’t believe that God would let it happen.” Carl paused. Took a deep breath. “I mean, why would He accept a sacrifice for the harvest and then send a plague of podcasters to trample the crops?”
Not everyone was so media averse. A thing like this is a real test of character, and all the people you’d expect failed. Switchback queue for the press conference microphone like a goddamn fairground ride. Worst was the sheriff. “This was a murder,” he said, “of deliberation, of design, of depravity.” He’d seen nothing like it in all his years on the job, he told the cameras, before pausing, pushing his hat back and shaking his head, a little catch in his breath.
We were watching here, and even in the midst of our shock and grief, and all those other emotions a not-too-small town is supposed to feel when it becomes the focus of the nation, there was a moment of grim levity. This was just so rehearsed. Simultaneous, identical chuckles, recognizing brothers, grew into uproarious laughter. Not that it was so funny, as such, but it was very funny that we’d all found it a little funny. We’d had our run-ins with the Sheriff Knee-Toe, and it stung to see the man finally find the audience he’d always imagined. “He said the exact same thing when I called him out after the Finnegan boys sprayed backwards swastikas on the sheds,” said Edward, a janitor at the school. “Little fuckers too stupid to be Nazis properly.” More laughter, until Harvey’s wife, tending bar at the time—she only works evenings—started shouting something about decency. It was fair comment, and we settled down, but she didn’t: broke a couple of glasses, screamed a piece. Harvey nodded her back upstairs shortly after, rolling his eyes as we hid grins behind our beers.
Breaking glasses is nothing new at Harve’s. Funny touch, if you haven’t noticed: those are brooms lined up against the walls, not pool cues. You can break whatever you want as long as you sweep it up and tip good. If our women saw the cleaning we did here compared to home—paying for the privilege, to boot—they’d fairly shit on the floor. We’d have to sweep it up after, too.
Now, it was a tragedy, of course. A girl so young, with a life (of sorts) ahead of her. But what we also knew to be true, and we hated to say it, was that things like this happen to girls like her. Battleship had seen it on TV. “Killing is a full-time job,” he said. “I mean, if you’re not just killing your wife or your neighbor for poking your wife. If you do it ’cause you love it, I mean.” Harvey, dragging his rag down the counter, said, “Find a job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life .. .” We chuckled, but the attention was on Battleship, which was not customary. As quiet as he is big, I don’t think we’d heard a fully formed opinion from him since Christmas five or six years back, when Harvey had some eggnog on the bar. Battleship had never tried it, so he gave it a go, shook his head, and said it wasn’t for him.
If called upon to say what we knew of Battleship, we’d say he was big, and he didn’t like eggnog.
“When you’re a killer, you are on the lookout all the time for people that don’t matter. That won’t be missed. I mean, that’s why it’s always whores or poor girls. Blacks. Cops don’t give a shit then. No one gives a shit.” Henry nodded toward the TV and said, “Looks like someone gives a shit here,” but Battleship just replied, “Leave it a week,” and he was right.
Drifters drift. What more was there for the news to say? The sheriff did what he could; we’ll give him that. The mall had been abandoned a couple of years, so it was the obvious place to look. An army of cops and journalists laid siege to the building, a once-shining structure that quickly proved to have shitty cladding, a leaky atrium, and too few electrical outlets. It lasted long enough to kill Main St, succumbed, and then the owners went bust too.
“It’s a goddamn scandal. Christ.” Henry had been part of the search crew that day—we forget his wife is the sheriff’s cousin sometimes. He wasn’t a shot-and-a-beer guy, normally, so when he ordered we nodded to Harve, and he lined them up like silver bells and cockle shells. “This is supposed to be America.”
Now’s as good a time as any to say how Henry differed from the rest of us, other than being related to the sheriff by marriage. He was a good man. You wouldn’t hear otherwise from any of us on our hardest day, let’s get that straight. But there was something about him that was feminine, exploitable. A weakness: for being liked, worse, for liking people. He wanted everyone just to get along, like a mother on Christmas morning, and it was just as needy, just as pathetic, just as impossible. The natural state of things is to not get along, and to not know that—or to know it and suppress it?—why, the rest of us fairly shivered with contempt. For what is the point of men if not to thrive when people are not getting along?
It felt that day like he’d met the real world, and after he left a few of us volunteered that we were glad he finally had. Popped his cherry, as it were.
“I swear, the smell. It was inhuman—no, it was inhumane. The first thing that hit us was what can only be described as the stench of rotting cock. And then we turned around, and there was this broken, ragged bundle with a rotten cock hanging out. Waving it at us. And then it started to scream. They were all out of their minds, most unconscious, apparently boneless: they looked like laundry piles. They… so desperately needed help. It’s just a slow suicide, and not that slow. Festering wounds, infections. Skeletal. Could line ’em up naked and run a shadow puppet show from behind them, swear to God. Felt like I was liberating the camps, except we just fucking left them there.”
“You didn’t find the guy?”
“How? What were we looking for? No one there could hold a pencil, never mind hold a girl down and heave rocks on her.”
“Why were you even there?”
“I told Tony, even if we get the murderer, the rest shouldn’t be ignored. We know they’re up there. Maybe we could help. Arrange water, food, care. Some good could come of it. I don’t know.” He drank again. “So I went. There were a few, living on the higher levels, had it together better than the rest. Said they were going straight, said all they needed was a job. Christ, tried to show me a picture of a kid. Dogs everywhere, no better kept than the people. They shot a couple with the strength to bark. Shot at them at least. We should just bomb the whole building. When you let a building like that stand you’re just giving our shame somewhere to hide.” He looked us in the eye and dared us to disagree: “The honest place for that misery is on the streets. We should trip over it every day. We should walk round it. We should apologize to it and for it. Then we might do something.”
Now, it goes without saying he was wrong about that, but we let it stand. Gave his shame somewhere to hide, too.
That’s when Carl arrived, who we’d thought would be our only first-hand account. He was wearing a T-shirt that read, “We Are The Sons of the Alphas You Couldn’t Cancel.”
“Hoo boy,” he said. “Henry, you tell them about the rotten cock?” He slapped Henry on the back and guffawed. “Gentlemen, I gotta tell you. It was a rich scent. Can’t say it’s fully left my nostrils yet, even after showering. Ate a booger in the car on the way here, had to taste it all over again. But never mind the bouquet, you’re probably thinking: what did it look like? All head—the shaft compressed like an accordion—swollen, bloody, and ringed with a mold of startling yellow. Barely tethered to his body. Could’ve plucked it like a berry.”
Over our audible nausea, Williams said, “Seemed to spend a lot of time checking out cocks, should’ve been catching murderers?”
Williams and Carl weren’t too friendly. Williams is a hospital orderly, and we guess he told too many stories like he’d saved a life, so Carl started calling him Doc. Some bad blood after that, but it wasn’t a contest with much sport to it. A few of us took Carl to one side one night and said, “Can’t you win a little? 12–9 gets the job done as well.”
“You slow down when we’re scraping drink-drivers off the tarmac, Doc. I seen ya. Prolly peek under the sheet when you’re pushing the gurney, too. Everyone wants to look into horror. That’s why you studied medicine for years, if you’re honest. It’s natural. We deny our true selves if we don’t.”
“Henry’s true self had less fun than yours,” said Harvey, subtly steering Carl’s attention away from Williams, whose comeback—undoubtedly devastating—was addressed to the froth of his beer.
“You do seem a little down. Was it the zombies? Christ, they’re not human, Henry. You might as well feel sad for the vending machines because they were kicked open. Harve, get this sensitive soul another shot and a beer, will you?”
Henry waved him off. “Thanks, but no. I’m gonna have April come pick me up.” He got to his feet and headed for the door. “I’m not good company tonight.”
“Suit yourself. More tales for me to tell. It wasn’t all bad, though! It may have been the starvation—it may have been the oxy—but there was a woman there, and she had the biggest, most soulful eyes… I’m not kidding!” Carl shouted over the laughter. “I think I might go back. I think I can save her.”
The local news came on again, and we all threw shot glasses at the TV when the sheriff appeared, which is why Harve erected the fine-mesh cage around it in the first place.
We’re not certain who saw Jeremiah first. After it all happened, any number were likely to say, “Oh yeah, I thought I saw.. .,” and who can declare otherwise? It could have been days or weeks he was out there, standing and watching, before Dan came breathless into the bar and stammered, “H-he’s b-back!”
The mall raid was a month old, for all it did. The sheriff’s morning and evening press conferences dropped sharply, because there are only so many ways a man can say, “I ain’t got shit,” twice a day. Probably good for the soul of a nation to be able to say that something drew our eyes elsewhere—a mass shooting, a major urban derailment or infrastructure failure—but the truth is the streets were swept of journalists as by a cleansing gale, a full three or four days before that business at the synagogue in the Great State of Our Good Friends to the North.
Old Battleship, it appeared he was two for two: no one really gave a shit about that girl, and eggnog is disgusting.
Funny to recall, but when Dan dashed in, we thought he was talking about Henry. We hadn’t seen him since after the mall, and no one went chasing. We should say now that’s not usual. Contrary to the cliché of male relationships, we look after each other, keep in touch, especially the guys whose families won’t apologize. We’ve got a pact. From cranking hog to hogging crank, enough of us have extracurricular activities likely to push the ticker into the red part of the gauge, steam making the bolts come loose, and the thought of being discovered during the quarterly visit, compromised and composting, well, it’s enough to make you eat a vegetable. (Honorable exception for Davis, who sat at the back there. One of those UN Climate Change Reports did for him and red meat, at least, some years ago.) So we look after each other, but Henry, we let him go. He never really fit, even after years of dropping in at least every couple of weeks. Harve said Henry’s father used to drink here, said Henry told him coming in reminded him of his old man. Harve said also Henry’s father was a real piece of shit and Henry hated him, which suggests something of what he felt about the rest of us, probably.
Anyway, we realized Dan wasn’t talking about Henry. He was terrified, shivering like a shaved baby in a February creek.
Now, considering what happened to Dan, sorry won’t mean much, and the man had more in the In column than the Out, but we should have believed him. The story wasn’t believable—big and mean he may have been, but Jeremiah was by now no more than nineteen—but, goddamn it, it turned out true, and we should have believed him.
“He didn’t say a thing. Just kept fucking staring at me.”
“Then how’d you know it was him?” we asked.
“You’re kidding, right? Flesh pretty much crawled off my bones the second I saw him.”
“Shouldn’t be flirting with him, peek of flesh n’all,” Carl said. “You know he’s got a thing about skin…!”
“You all need to listen to me. This isn’t a joke. He’s back.” Dan described a man twice as big as Jeremiah was when he left, thick through, heavily tattooed with piercings all over his face.
“Sounds like you met a scary guy and panicked,” Carl scoffed. “We all know you’re no fan of a fair fight.”
“What do you mean by that?” Dan’s shriek was hardly a rebuttal. “What are you saying?” He went on a while, and we tried to distract him, but he never really settled and put the rest of us on edge all night, apart from Carl.
“What a pussy,” he said, when Dan eventually staggered off. “But what else can you expect from the middleweight high school girls’ boxing champion?”
Next night, Carl felt differently.
“What the fuck did you tell him?” he roared, coming through the door.
“W-what?” Dan was still a little off. He’d got there earlier than usual, hit it harder than usual, too. But when he clocked Carl he got a sly look on him. “Who could you mean?”
“You know who. Jeremiah. Standing in my front yard not two hours ago. Why did he come to me? What did you say?”
“Huh. Sounds like you just met a scary guy.”
We had a job holding Carl back.
“You doubted!” Dan was gleeful. “You’re not doubting now!”
And in the end, maybe it was that doubt that started it. Maybe we wouldn’t’ve given names otherwise.
Once Carl calmed, his natural inclination for oratory kicked in. This is the nature of a tale told at the bar. There’s a force to it, a momentum undeniable. The things you hear a guy admit to tell the story right—Carl more’n anyone. We used to think that man would come back from the dead if there was someone to hear a joke or two.
Guess now we know for sure he wouldn’t.
“Not the biggest man I ever seen, but the densest. Like he traps light—a fucking bleakness about him. Not a goddamn thing matters. Face like a locksmith’s back wall. If I’d a scrapyard magnet I coulda fucked him right up. And the tattoos! You’d treat the door on a shitter with more respect, like checking there’s ink in the pen.”
“What did he say, Carl?” we asked.
“Nothing. Just stood on my yard like a burning cross. Waved my service weapon a bit once it started getting eerie, but it’s fucking light out and I can’t just be firing off—”
“Again.”
“Dan, I swear to God—”
“You say nothing matters to him, but you’re wrong. He’s back about the girl. I got home last night and he was there again. This time he touched me, pinned my face in those giant mitts and just stared. I knew he wanted a name, so fuck you, Carl—I gave him yours. Thought you’d just shoot him anyway; we could cut to the chase.”
The bar was silent. Harve said, “Ho-ly shit, Dan.”
“You’re all brave here, aren’t you? Big men, backed up. I’m telling you now, when it comes down to it, you’ll give names too.”
“How about I go find him,” said Carl, “tell him about those little girls you smacked around?”
“You won’t need to find him. But while we’re digging up the past, make sure you tell him about—”
We all intervened then. Seemed right. God knows we didn’t need a laundry list of every sin played out right there, but containment was a little shaky. A few of us got caught in the crossfire, as it were—may Carl forgive us the indelicate phrasing—had our good names traduced. Finally wound itself up on a light note, with Williams shouting, “I’m not saying it didn’t happen, I’m saying the way you said it is a lie!” which just beat all for Jesuitical equivocation and made enough guys laugh that chairs got righted, and brooms sheepishly pushed around.
It moved pretty quickly from that point, and though those of us left have done our best to work out the sequence, it’s naturally pretty speculative.
Jeremiah probably started with Dan because he had an odd spate of hitting girls years back, no more than a half dozen or so. “Takes a village not to raise a whore” was how he explained it. Said they were acting lustfully, likely to corrupt the morals of the town’s young men. Jeggings were a big deal to him. Had some on his side too, for a bit, at least ’til by common agreement it was considered to be happening a touch on the regular. Nothing really to it though, and he was getting divorced at the time, so stands to reason he wasn’t at his best.
If we take Dan at his word, he sent Jeremiah to Carl out of spite and hope, but if you were casting back for hurting women, Carl had some stuff. We didn’t talk about it, but he moved here seven or eight years back after an incident where his wife was shot and killed while he defended the property. Home invaders were never found, some ballistics didn’t line up: a few other details as well. No tire tracks. Goddamn podcast about that too, but it got looked into properly, and nothing was ever charged. Let him keep his badge for God’s sake, so there really was nothing to it. But if you’re Dan, that’s enough to drop a dime, especially if Jeremiah’s holding your head like a baseball.
When Dan and Carl went missing, we presumed they’d both felt compelled to take a short break in a different place. Seemed reasonable. We were creeped out, and Jeremiah had only been described to us. But they weren’t even opening messages, and when Larry went, we started to worry immediately because he had nowhere to hide and no way to get there. He scraped up a first beer from his own wallet every night and spent the rest of it looking thirsty and grateful. Then we remembered we’d forgotten about the flashing, which was what the court called bad luck. Everyone knew he had bladder problems, and while a few little girls seeing him seems pretty bad, that’s out of context. The man pissed a little ten times a day, a few of those times in alleys and wasteland; sometimes, in desperation, somewhere else. You run the numbers, it’s a damn miracle that there were only twelve or fourteen times he got seen by little girls. We felt for him, truly: any man who ever urinated al fresco—one of life’s great pleasures—could’ve been laid low similarly. But when he vanished, we reckon Jeremiah wasn’t taking return-to-senders, and Carl had to offer up someone new. Maybe he thought Larry didn’t have much in the way of things to live for, but we guess Larry wouldn’t have agreed.
Davis at the back went next, but he was a four-square rapist, straight down the line. Mexican gals. He’d drink too much and talk about it, and all you could really say was “uh-huh” and hope he quietened down. Trinkets, he called them. Fair enough, Larry nudged him under elautobús. And Edward went to the whorehouse outta town with Davis sometimes, which we thought was a strange choice, but he said he was supporting local entrepreneurs and buying American, which was a funny bit if you knew why. Anyway, guess they saw some shit together.
Five. In as many days. Wasn’t formal at that point—nothing on the news for the sheriff to tip his hat and sigh about—just whispers in the bar and on our phones, before discretion deleted the group threads wholesale. (Rumor has it you got the timing right, you caught a regatta of hard drives making their way toward the sea.) Weren’t no rules to follow, no half-your-age-minus-seven to guide you right. Wasn’t a matter of guilt, it was a matter of suspicion: Jeremiah’s. So most of us, we just kept to peak times and stayed in the light. No good for reason for it, but we all kinda felt that being around our women was the safest we could be, where we had them. Meanwhile, the weather, miserable and wet, saturated the ground and built to a named storm—Henry, as it happens—which brought with it definite flooding, probable power outages, possible risk to life.
We were tired of our families, so we thought we’d come home. Waiting out a storm at Harve’s is usually as much fun as you can have in the dark. He gets those hurricane lanterns up around the place—mostly electric, of course, but a couple of old-timers—gives it a festive atmosphere. Damn near romantic. We’re Old Town, here, set up the hill a bit, away from those disastrous new developments on the floodplain, which nevertheless became the commercial heart, at least for a while. We’d watch the waters stream past toward those nicer establishments and their fruitless, faithless sandbags. “It’s God’s will, gentlemen,” Harve would say. “He’s an Old Town God, and he defends his chosen,” and we’d get a little raucous and rival the storm outside. Wanted to be a preacher, once, old Harve, but you’d never know outside meteorological extremes.
The atmosphere was different this time. The building felt less impervious. The power had gone early, and suddenly we weren’t too sure about those lanterns either, known mainly for falling and breaking in the hay and burning the stable down. Larry’s stool glowed with his absence.
From the gloom, Williams said a tree practically blocked the end of his road, but he managed to edge around. Said when he looked back it seemed the trunk had been sawed some—thought it might have been a trap. No one said anything, for doubt was in short supply after Dan had taken more than his share, but we had a pang then for what Carl would’ve said to the idea that the great vehicle of vengeance Jeremiah was out there sawing trees like Wile E. Coyote. Ref would’ve called the game early.
We’d just about settled. It was well into the night, and there was a fair crowd—a dozen or so. The lanterns had regained their charm. We were talking around the problem—indirect references were part of the new Jeremiah Protocols, along with the weapons we all kept near—but Battleship said with certainty: “Ain’t nothing out tonight.”
“Fuckin’ trees trying to get in and get dry,” said Harvey.
Things were getting jovial when we heard a crashing fist on the door, over and over.
No one did anything, other than check their weapons, and the heavy pounding started again.
Battleship stood. “No evidence to suggest he’s a man who knocks.” We tried to dissuade him, but he said something about someone maybe needing help. Said it coulda been any of us.
“Yeah, but it isn’t,” we replied.
Unbolted, the door flew open, and the wind rushed in, warm and wet. Beyond Battleship, a massive shape loomed in the doorway, and if it needed help, we damn near helped it to all the bullets it could catch.
“For fuck’s sake, let me in!” Henry snatched his hood down. A massive waterproof ranger coat and boots had added at least half a foot, but even when he got the coat off, shaken though he was, we all realized he was a bigger man than we’d given him credit for. He tended to mind his beer and his business at the corner of the bar, not hunched exactly but withdrawn. That night we got the full measure of him.
He’d seen it all. Cell service was down, and he couldn’t get to the station or home. Now, this seems impossible, but we checked after, and it was right. You see, outta nowhere that named storm became a different beast, exceeding all expectations. Between downed trees and power lines, flooding, and that goddamn landslip, which took a week to clear, once Henry left the mall he was purely funneled, directed, right into Harve’s. It was that, or sit in his car, waiting for a branch to come through the windshield. So he came here, and he told us. God’s will, indeed.
Turns out he’d been quietly delivering supplies to the zombies every few days. Said it was the only thing that helped him sleep. First time he went, it was two in the morning, three nights after the raid.
“Garbage,” he laughed bitterly. “That first package was shit from around my house that I could get at without waking April or the kids. I didn’t go far—just squeezed in, threw the bags, sprinted back to the car. Scared the shit out of myself but slept ’til afternoon.”
The care packages got better—the internet helped—and he delivered them during the day. Food and hygiene products mainly, clothing from the thrift store by the bundle, socks and underwear bought new, waterproof bags, pet food. He got to know some zombies by name. It was odd he was talking about this—we asked, to be fair, because he started off all halted and uncertain—but he was building up to it.
Because he wasn’t a permanent solution and shouldn’t pretend to be, Henry hadn’t been to the mallfor a couple of weeks. With the storm, though, namesake n’all, he reckoned he should be a temporary solution a while longer—but it was hard to explain leaving the house, considering the conditions. His wife knowing what he’d been doing wouldn’t’ve made her any keener on the idea. In the end, he just left, quietly, with a note on the table, and when he got there it was night-dark, not just storm-dark, and the mall was silent. There was always noise previously: dogs, fighting couples, psychotic episodes. Something made him decide not to call out, and eventually he heard muffled thuds, which, careful, he crept toward through the stomped and scattered remnants of camps he’d come to know well.
Of course, rumors about Jeremiah had reached Henry, but he didn’t think them credible. Or rather, he could absolutely imagine Jeremiah returning, but not as some angel of death. Now he understood he was wrong.
Jeremiah was everything he’d heard: shirtless, gore-glistening, lit by lamps and torches clearly taken from zombies who’d realized their lives were hard enough and beat what our forefathers would call a hasty retreat. These lamps were placed indifferently around the food court, obscuring as much as they revealed, revealing more than Henry would’ve liked.
Jeremiah had a selection of “implements,” as Henry put it, bladed and pointed, and was bashing them with a brick. Best Henry could decipher, he was trying to give them a ragged, tearing aspect and was making sure they didn’t cut too clean. He was doing this from behind the goddamn donut stall counter, and if you just imagined him wearing that little paper hat, you’re not alone.
This process was so appalling, so fascinating, that at first Henry didn’t even notice Carl, Dan, Larry, Davis, and Edward, bound over food court tables, hands and feet duct-taped to the frame at the base, bodies contorted and convex, bellies exposed, vulnerable. Their faces were purple, blood-filled from hanging upside down but also from the beatings, eyes near-fused with swelling and the wounds which trickled to fill them. Their mouths were stuffed with rags, though Carl, Dan, and Larry were also quite clearly dead.
Implements now optimal by whatever foul design, Jeremiah approached the other two, who fairly vibrated with terror. Henry said he stuck some wretched spike in Edward like a candle in a cake. Said it went in smooth enough but didn’t come out the same way. When Henry flinched—let no man judge him for it—he managed to not-quite knock over an advertising board, which silently slumped onto him, musty and fragile. He was set far enough back from the light that he could’ve maybe sneaked out the way he’d come. The whole thing could’ve been different, but it wasn’t, because now he was trapped.
Henry couldn’t say how long he was there, long enough to see and hear cycles of Jeremiah’s technique, if that’s not too grand a word, which was this: he’d slice and stab them, he’d cut and chop them, and then unplug their mouths and they’d scream the names of men in the town and beyond, account for their violences and their violations.
“They talked about a network,” Henry said, and he lost us a little, there. He became hard to follow, especially considering all the noise outside. Didn’t look any of us in the eye. He was beyond himself. He’d shot out across a dark sea.
“Men would say anything, under those conditions,” Battleship said.
“Sure. Of course.”
There was a different blade that Henry noticed, bright and clean like a tear in the world. Shimmering, he said. That one, kept separate from the others, scared him most. But instead, Jeremiah flipped those giant, heavy, man-laden food court tables over and kicked the pinned, frantic men in their heads with his giant boots like a toddler in a puddle—Edward first, Davis watching—until there was nothing but paste. Then he left, taking nothing with him.
Henry waited a long time to emerge from the advertising board.
“God’s will, Henry,” Harvey said, when no one else stepped up to fill the silence. “Just rejoice that He defends His chosen. There was nothing you could do.”
“No, there was something,” Battleship said. “And you did it: keep fucking still and keep fucking quiet. You were right to be thinking about your family.”
We all chimed in here: reminded Henry of his family, of his obligations. No sense dying over this.
“No one wants you to die over this, Henry,” we said, and realized it was as good as day outside, and we hadn’t heard the wind in a while.
In the way of things, Storm Henry left behind God’s bright, clean light to see the extent of His judgment. Man Henry flagged down a passing fire engine, and things played out as you’d imagine. Hear the cops had a clear forty-five minutes to themselves before a podcaster arrived.
They found that shimmering blade, a symbol of something.
They’re demolishing the mall. Jeremiah was never seen again, and, God willing, won’t be. Bearing in mind it was a goddamn drifter to begin with, hopefully he considers his work done, if that was ever how he thought of it. Henry, we forgot to say, didn’t think it was.
“There was no rage in it,” he said that night. “No retribution.”
“Not sure we can agree, there, Henry,” we said.
“He was dispassionate, detached, even at the end. When I saw him—when I had to believe he was real—it was terrifying, but I also thought: Good. Someone loved that girl. Someone mourned her. But that’s not what this was about. He never said a thing. No Who did it? or This is for her. Never asked a question. They just started talking. We presumed why he was here—and maybe it was an excuse he was looking for—but he didn’t give a shit about Mary. Just like everyone else.”
You know what happened to Henry, of course. A damn shame. Just a tragedy. Fire trucks were all over the county, but even if they’d been near, I doubt it would have made a difference, given the fierceness of it. The whole family. Henry gave his initial statement, we know, but he was fairly exhausted, so they took it easy with the questions and sent him home with some deputies outside to keep him safe. Shift change hit, and the second detail was held up by everything else going on. Doc Williams’s nephew was in the first car and said they were exhausted too, didn’t think a little gap would matter. Marshals said, on balance of evidence, it was accidental, though no one can say for definite.
We speculate, because that’s what we do around here, that it coulda been Jeremiah, and not just because Henry was a witness. Some of us—just a few—always thought there was a touch of the doth protest too much about Henry’s do-gooding, question what it was hiding. Maybe the food court trial turned something up to make Jeremiah sit in judgment. But while it coulda been Jeremiah, stands to reason it coulda not been Jeremiah, and then you got to concede it could have been anyone. Hell, may even have been some truth to what Henry heard, all that network stuff, and being witness to that grand, foul roll call of sins was his undoing.
Or it was the battery on his electric bike.
Damn shame. Two beautiful daughters too.
About the Author
Pete Ward is a charity worker from Birmingham, England. He has been published in Bristol Noir and Thin Veil Press, and is on Bluesky at @phenryward.bsky.social