Shadow Walker - Part Five

The sun rose without an appearance by an army of banshees, but the neighbors were reluctant to leave. Virgil didn’t make any efforts to move them along either. He knew his neighbors would end up returning at dusk, and he had more important things to worry about than clearing out his house during the daylight hours. He felt that he owed them for giving him the chance to sleep.

The only drawback that he could see with their staying over was the ridiculously long lines for all three of the bathrooms in the house. It occurred to him that the few neighbors who had left were probably wanting to avoid the lines. As he stood behind a row of men waiting for the bathroom connected to the master bedroom, he briefly considered stepping outside to relieve himself. He shot the idea down after thinking what his backyard would smell like if all the other men decided to follow his lead.

When he finally got in and out of the bathroom, he went downstairs to the living room and turned on the TV to catch the news, raising the volume before he moved to the kitchen to look for Lucy. Even before he found her, it was obvious that many of the women had been up and working while he’d still been sleeping.

She and several of the other wives were trying to serve cold breakfasts from a row of cereal boxes that he knew hadn’t been in his cabinets. Beside the cereal stockpile were a row of coffee machines, and on the far counter, a group of girls watched over a bank of toasters. He went to the refrigerator and smiled to himself when he found it crammed full of milk and juice bottles.

In the living room, the local news began, and he walked to the door of the kitchen to hear the TV over the chattering of the women and children. “Our top story this morning looks at the rising number of bodies across the nation, who some people claim are the victims of either shadow wraiths or banshees. Police and the FBI are denying these claims, and have suggested that people are suffering from a form of mass hysteria.”

“Idiots!” Tony shouted.

“The White House has yet to issue a comment on the situation, but President Greenfield is expected to hold a press conference on the matter this afternoon.”

“Sure, right after he finishes golf,” someone in the living room declared to a chorus of chuckles and agreements.

“I’ll bet ten bucks on him saying the problem is a new right-wing conspiracy to discredit him,” Tony said.

Someone in the hallway laughed. “Sure, but this should do wonders for his polls.”

Virgil leaned against the door as he listened to his neighbors trying to joke with each other. They were afraid, and they had no idea what the future held for them. In the face of a building disaster, they all desperately clung to every last vestige of normalcy that they could find.

He smiled at the thought and decided to help as much as he could. “Hey, wait! I voted for that guy!”

Tony said, “Then you voted for an idiot.”

“—are now estimating that at least 260 people are dead in San Antonio alone, but they admit that some deaths may have not been reported yet.” The reporter’s words cut through the banter like a razor, and everyone fell silent as they looked around.

Virgil found Tony staring at him, and his expression said everything though Tony couldn’t speak. The numbers on TV didn’t include the five new victims from their block.

The reporter continued, saying, “While police still will not speculate on the nature of these deaths, federal investigators are suggesting that San Antonio was the first city where the phenomena was reported in large numbers.”

Virgil tuned out the rest of the news. The reporter didn’t have any useful information to offer, and most of the show was filled by flapping heads who repeatedly advised being alert.

He considered the fast gestation time and the constant feeding habits of the banshee. In his head, he began to imagine a map, and he put points on the map for a set of imaginary victims outside of his neighborhood. Four or five homes were hit in the first night. Perhaps two resulted in offspring. The following night, another two were born, and the number of gestating victims multiplied.

How many had already been born before the banshee first arrived to Crescent Avenue? How many more had moved out and expanded their hunting territory in the past week? He didn’t have answers to either question, and knowing wouldn’t explain how to fight against the lethal shadows.

It occurred to Virgil that no one had called the police yet. He looked at the phone on his end-table and shook his head. There was no point. The cops wouldn’t do anything except harass him over what he’d done to Judith, and he doubted they would find any new clues if they weren’t willing to believe the truth.

When the news broadcast began an interview with yet another expert on chemical attacks, Virgil gave up on the TV and made his way to the front door to step outside.

He looked up the street at Alberto’s house before his eyes drifted back the other way to John’s house. It made more sense to him first to look for the reason why Rory had been different, and he started walking across his yard to head down the block. He heard footsteps behind him and turned to smirk at Tony. “What are you, my sha—?”

“That will be crossing a potential boundary into a black joke,” Tony warned.

Virgil gawked at him with an expression of disbelief before he chuckled and started walking again. “I don’t know why you would make a big deal out of it. I mean, some of my neighbors are black, and I like them just fine.”

“I appreciate the thought.” Tony sighed as he looked up at the sky. “The full assault is coming tonight, isn’t it?”

Virgil’s smile fell. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure of it. I don’t know that what I’m doing now will help us out or not, but it is the one question that I don’t have an answer for yet.”

“Just one?” asked Tony, a note of sarcasm mixing with the anxiety in his voice.

“Yeah. I keep wondering why certain victims don’t get peeled. I think it may be that something about them makes them...they taste bad to the banshees.”

“Right, and all of Alberto’s family was considered in bad taste?” Tony asked.

Virgil groaned. “Would you please?”

“Hey, maybe the banshees don’t care for Mexican food.”

“No, wait a minute.” Virgil faked a look of irritation and frowned at Tony. Joking helped to take his mind off of where he was walking. “How is it that I can’t even imply making a black joke, but you’re allowed to make a Mexican joke?”

Tony grinned at him. “Because you’re a honky, and you’re only allowed to joke about homos.”

“Yeah? Then your wife is a dyke,” Virgil quipped.

They continued to tease each other while they began their search of the house. Both men needed the banter to keep from falling apart.

Virgil was telling a particularly raunchy joke about pygmies being cunning runts when he found what he was looking for in the kitchen cabinet. “Oh, here we go,” he said. “Rory Lane. Take two per day...”

“Great, but what was he taking?” Tony asked.

“I’m getting there,” Virgil said. He scowled when he found the drug name. “Venal—Venlafaxine? That doesn’t mean anything to me.”

“We can look it up online,” Tony said. “But if this is the reason why Rory was ripped up, then maybe that’s the difference. Everyone who hasn’t been skinned might be on some kind of medication that makes them taste bad.”

“Which might be useful if being medicated meant not dying,” Virgil noted grimly.

“True.” Tony stared at the floor in thought. “Do you want to see what medications Alberto and his family were taking?”

“Maybe later.” Virgil rattled the bottle of pills. “I want to see what these do first.”

Several minutes later, they both sat in front of Virgil’s computer in his den, but the answer they hoped for was not so direct.

“So, he could have been depressed or maybe he had Tourette’s?” Tony asked.

“It could be either, but Rory was kind of young to be needing pills for chemical depression.” Virgil scratched at his cheek and sighed. “Maybe he’d developed Tourette’s recently. John and Christine hadn’t mentioned it before. I really don’t know what to think here. We don’t have any way to defend ourselves from these things, and all we’re investigating is why certain people died differently.”

Tony’s mouth dropped into a defeated frown. “So what’s the plan?”

Virgil shrugged as he leaned over to turn off his monitor. “Honestly? Go sit with your family, and pray. That’s what I’ll be doing.”

Very few people left the house throughout the day. Some left to clean up or to haul supplies over to help feed everyone lunch. Virgil sat on the couch, watching the flow of traffic in and out of his front door. He was so distracted that it took him the better part of an hour to recognize that someone had reattached the door back onto the hinges for him.

Occasionally, he would glance down at Lucy or Rachel, who rested on either side of him. Edmond, his son, played in a corner with a set of his action figures. He had passed around a few to each of the boys, and they had spent most of the day making muted exploding and shooting sound effects. No one seemed to mind, and it occurred to Virgil how everyone wanted to pretend that it was just another normal day.

But it wasn’t. Even at his most social times, he had never had the entire house full of people. He wasn’t about to ask them to leave either, because there was nowhere for them to go that would guarantee them safety. He grimaced; there was no safety in numbers, either. But there was hope in drawing the community together, even if it was a false hope.

Tony walked down the stairs and clapped his hands. “Folks, the president will be making a statement in five minutes, so you might want to pay attention to the TV.” He walked into the living room and wandered around people to turn on the TV and raise the volume.

For the first few minutes, all that could be heard was the sound of reporters murmuring to each other. A reporter’s voice rose in the background. “We’re being informed that the president has just now arrived, and he will be addressing the press shortly. Phil, you were talking earlier about the possibility of this being some kind of mass panic or a hysteria. I’m not sure how you can say that in the face of more than one thousand deaths nationwide in the span of one week.”

“Well, Roger, the problem is, many of these deaths are being caused by panicked people who then make up stories of a huge black shadow which behaves like a liquid. It’s an utter fantasy to believe such nonsense,” Phil rambled in a condescending tone of voice. “What we’re looking for here isn’t a monster. We need to be looking at ourselves.”

“Bullshit!” James shouted, pacing in a short circle by the window. He shook a clenched fist at the TV, unable to restrain himself any longer. “If he’s right, then I skinned three grown men in—”

“James,” Tony said and nodded towards a group of frightened children.

The old man sighed in frustration as he dropped his fist and returned to pacing in a circle. “Yeah, you’re right.”

Phil continued to ramble. “In fact, I think what we’ll see in the wake of these mass riots is a number of confessions from people who normally wouldn’t be so brutal if not for their panicked—”

“You’ll have to hold that thought,” Roger said, cutting him off. “The president has just arrived in the press room, and he’s approaching the podium now.”

President Damien Greenfield nodded to several reporters before he coughed lightly. His expression seemed fittingly grim as he said, “My fellow Americans, it falls to me to be the bearer of bad news. Over the last few days, the country has been gripped by what seems like a mass hysteria at first glance. Many are claiming that these attacks are the work of monsters, but in the last two days, I’ve been working closely with several departments of law enforcement to get a better feel for the situation. What we’ve found is that the attacks are the result of certain people being exposed to a chemical agent. This agent will cause the person to see hallucinations of moving shadows, and acting in a state of fear, they will kill many people around them.

“We do not yet have a way to isolate how people are being contaminated, but this is not a case of mass hysteria, nor is this the invasion of our world by monsters made of shadows. This is a terrorist attack against our nation using a form of psychological warfare.

“Law enforcement departments will continue to search for information on the nature of this chemical attack, but for now, I’m urging everyone to stay at home. Because it is not possible to track how long it takes from the point of contamination to the point of seeing hallucinations, our intelligence staff believes it will be safer if employers do not open for business or dismiss employees who attempt to comply with federal instructions.

“I’ll be taking no questions at this time—”

“Turn it off,” someone groaned.

Virgil looked around for the remote, but he stopped when the TV clicked off. He said, “Well, it looks like the president’s fantasy is a variation on mass hysteria. We’re all drugged and killing each other.”

He looked around, realizing that everyone had fallen silent to watch him. He got up from the couch and took a breath. “Folks, I don’t know how it is that I got elected, but I don’t have any positive news here. You can choose to believe in the fantasy that those monsters aren’t coming tonight, but I know they will, and they will be here in large numbers. I’ve spent the last few days trying to find a way for us to defend ourselves, and nothing is working.

“I can’t promise you anything, but I’m not giving up hope just yet. Before I try coming up with any other plans, I need to know where you stand. So by show of hands, who thinks that this is a chemical attack?” No one moved. “Who thinks these are banshee attacks?” Every hand went up, even among the children.

Virgil nodded and smirked at Tony. “I suppose if I’ve been elected president for the united neighbors of Crescent Avenue, I’ll need a vice president in case the worst happens to me tonight.”

“Do we have a plan?” Tony asked.

“Yeah, we do. We’re going to the store to pick up some proper kerosene lanterns, and we’re going to make daylight in this house tonight.” Virgil looked around at his neighbors. “I thought candles would be enough light, but you have to fill a room to the point of making a fire hazard for it to work. We can light the whole place with only a few lanterns, and those creatures won’t have a way to sneak in around them.”

“Okay, I can see that, but how long do you think this can go on?” Tony asked.

“We need more time to find a weapon against the banshees before we can go on the offensive. For now, I’m only hoping to buy us that time.”

Planning began for the trips, and it was late in the afternoon when Virgil was finally able to sneak to his room to try to sleep for a little while. He’d only laid down for a minute when he heard the door open, and he smiled at his family.

“You missed breakfast and lunch,” Lucy said as she handed him a plate of fried chicken drumsticks and fries.

“I missed more than that,” Virgil said and waved for his kids to come sit on the bed. “I didn’t really intend to become the neighborhood leader, but it seems like I’ve lost the time that I should be spending with you.”

“Dad?” Edmond asked.

“Yeah?”

“We’re going to die tonight, aren’t we?”

Virgil swallowed a mouthful of chicken and stared uncomfortably at his son. He debated lying for a long time before he nodded. “Barring a miracle, yeah, I think so.”

His son nodded, his lips pulling into a pout. “I...”

Virgil set his plate aside and went to pull his son into his arms. “It’s okay to be scared.”

“I just don’t want to die with...well, there’s something I’ve been hiding from you.”

Virgil nodded. “You can tell me anything.”

Edmond also nodded before looking up at him with an apologetic expression. “I peed in the swimming pool.”

Virgil blinked with genuine surprise before he began laughing.