Page 69 of Them

He awoke at dusk on a folding cot in cavernous darkness. The silence was so complete that even the muffled click of his lighter seemed to echo throughout the room. The dim flame illuminated his quarters, a grand ballroom staged with ransacked blood-donation equipment. Scarlet Xs embroidered everywhere. The old headquarters of the American Red Cross.

He made a small fire at the center of the tile floor and poured some canned beans into a pan borrowed from the staff kitchen. Then he held the beans over the open flame, mouth watering.

When he was finished with breakfast, Tim snuffed out his makeshift cooking pit and gathered his belongings. Just his backpack, really, which seemed bulkier and heavier than usual. He’d buried his own weapons with the fallen. Lane’s pistol was all he had left. Found in the grass by the benches they’d been sitting on while Tim read his friend’s confession.

Outside, there was one last thing to grab, and then he could go.

After passing through Red Cross HQ’s grand foyer, Tim pulled open the door and stepped out into the night. Marble columns flanked him on either side. A half moon grinned down at him, and he grinned back.

On the staircase sat a small solar panel no larger than a laptop. It was wired to a portable CD player, its battery indicator blinking green. The solar charger was from an REI outlet. The Walkman, along with the half-dozen compact discs tucked away in his bag, came from a pawnshop.

He opened his knapsack, which was nearly overflowing with manila folders and plastic CD cases, and stuffed the solar charger inside. Then, before he zipped it shut, he carefully took the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s Electric Ladyland out of its case and slid it into the Walkman, which in turn went into his jacket pocket.

He left the headphones dangling around his neck. There was one more thing he had to do. And then he could go.

Holding the lantern out in front of him, Tim descended the marble staircase and crossed the desolate street. The White House lawn waited just beyond. He hadn’t wanted to sleep too far away.

On either side of the derelict water fountain at the center of the grounds was a door planted in the earth. One door faced north, toward the White House building ruins, while the other gazed toward the Washington Monument and all that lay beyond. Neat, careful letters had been carved into their surfaces. Makeshift headstones.

The one facing north read:

HERE LIES THE NIGHTWALKER

MAY THEY FINALLY

REST IN PEACE

It had taken Tim the better part of the week to bury the Scorpion. What was left of them, anyway. The grenade had torn the alien’s body apart from the inside out, but there were still scattered chunks and fragments left behind. By tying together spare bedsheets from a nearby hotel, Tim had been able to drag the heaviest pieces into the waiting grave. He’d finished filling in the hole just two days earlier. The shotgun and Ron’s pistol were placed there too.

No other Scorpions ever came to help the Nightwalker. Not so much as an undertaker sent for their corpse. Tim wondered if their packmates had even tried to stop them, or if those Scorpions in the farm pond were happy to see the Nightwalker go. He’d never know for sure, but he thought the alien who had hated him so much had been a lonely creature. An outcast. He felt they deserved something now that it was over, if only to somehow atone for humanity bringing its kind here in the first place. For the sheer hubris it took to mold and warp them.

Lane was buried on the other side of the fountain. Tim wanted to do it later the same night he’d died, but even searching for a shovel proved too much for his own battered body. After he’d collapsed and gotten some sleep, Tim spent the entire next night making sure the old man received a proper interment in a grave deep enough for no scavenger to ever disturb.

The doors he used for headstones had been plucked from nearby row houses, and each had to be dragged several blocks. It’d then taken him hours to carve the letters upon them last night. Not just because he wanted to be sure the grooves were deep and tidy, but also because he couldn’t figure out what he wanted to say. What words to etch into the wood.

Looking at Lane’s grave now, Tim felt at peace with the job he’d done.

HERE LIES LANE BUXTON

A GOOD MAN

A BETTER FRIEND

Beside the overturned pile of dirt that marked Lane’s final resting place was a YETI cooler. A cardboard sign wrapped in a clear trash bag, Tim’s feeble attempt at waterproofing, was taped to the ice chest. It read: TAKE ONE, PASS IT ALONG.

Inside, there were twenty manila folders, each one containing a handwritten copy of Lane’s final testament. The scribe work had been a nice way to pass the hours when Tim wasn’t shoveling dirt or scavenging supplies or sleeping. He had already decided that he would hang on to the originals.

Kneeling down, Tim slipped off his backpack, and beneath the stacks of papers and CDs, he reached for a container.

A plastic bottle of cranberry juice. Courtesy of the break room at the Art Museum of the Americas.

He twisted the cap off and poured the expired liquid over the fresh grave.

Tears swelled in his eyes. He didn’t bother wiping them away.

“I’m sorry, Lane. I’m so sorry.”

He knelt there another minute or two, then stood. Pocketed the trash.