This is a true account. Now, I don’t know if this will ever be read someday, but I’ll try to describe as much as I can with the cadence a dramatic old man can manage. I fought in a war. I saw heads roll—literally—but never in my seventy-three years on this miserable planet had I come face-to-face with such an absurd kind of horror.
I was born in Dallas and moved to the state of Washington when I was still very young. I lived in Seattle through my teens until I was recruited to Vietnam. By choice. My life was empty; I had no dreams, no goals—but I had anger. A lot of anger. My old man wasn’t a nice guy. I thought I’d unload all that rage by shooting at Vietcongs, but instead I found myself curled up, sweating in fear in a hot jungle, watching my friends’ feet get blown off by Vietnamese traps. In the end, we won on the field, obliterated the poor bastards, but Nixon decided we should go home.
After all that shit, I came back to America. I went to therapy, got medicated, woke up hyperventilating and drenched in sweat for a year. My God, what a mess… Seattle didn’t sit right with me anymore. I moved to a suburb in Ellsmont. Ellsmont is… alright—not too small, not too big. My head was still a mess, but life there was peaceful. I worked as a barber for a while until I saved enough money to build myself a cabin in the woods. Yeah, I lost my fear of trees and developed a taste for hunting, which brings us to the present moment.
You know, one thing that irritates me more than a pebble in my boot is a bastard. At seventy-three, the last straw for me was having some goddamn hippie throw a milkshake at me when I went back to Seattle. Nowadays these bastards manage to get on my nerves inside my own home through the internet. I didn’t want to die of a stress-induced heart attack, so I made a decision: I would take a vacation from the digital world.
I went to spend a few days with Gus in my cabin. Gus—short for Augustus—is the most honorable and loyal man I know… and he’s a dog. A Labrador. He’s got this stupid face that sometimes makes me laugh. For about three weeks we lived with nothing but a hunting rifle, a rotary phone for emergencies, a massive stockpile of food, a record player, and a collection of rock ’n’ roll albums. Now, just because I hate hippies doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy listening to Helter Skelter every now and then. Anything from that era is better than the robot voices in today’s music.
It must have been the fourth Friday since I’d been living like a hermit. And I loved Fridays, because those were the days when Mrs. Jackson, my old neighbor from the suburbs, would stop by to bring me homemade sweets.
I heard a knock at the door at the usual time. I answered it.
“Bessie?”
Bessie was Mrs. Jackson’s daughter, a Black woman with wide hips. She had her mother’s round face.
“Mr. McCoy,” she said my last name with a southern accent. The Jacksons and I were the only Texans in Ellsmont.
“Call me Frank, dear.” I smelled the sweets and lifted the dish towel covering the basket in her hands. “Hmm… what do we have here?”
“The usual. Cookies, brownies… and two cinnamon muffins.”
“Two?!” I rubbed my hands together. “Don’t mind if I do! Come on in, Bessie, please. Where’s your mother?”
“Helping my father at the workshop,” she said, setting the basket down on my desk.
“How’s your old man? Did his gout clear up?”
“Not yet, but he’s doing much better. Wow… this is a pretty tidy little place.”
“Well, I’m not the most organized man in the world, but it’s easy to keep things in order when your house only has one room. Want some water?”
“No, Mr. McCoy, thank you. I think I should get going…”
“No, don’t say that. Sit down, no rush.”
Bessie sat on the edge of my bed. I grabbed a brownie from the basket and dropped my backside into my armchair. Took a bite.
“It must be lonely out here,” she said.
“Eh…” I shrugged. “I’m used to it. Besides, I’ve been through much worse in a forest.”
“My dad said you’re a vet.”
“I got to the war pretty late, but I still saw a lot of terrible things. You know… sometimes I thought being in those situations made a man more sensitive… but the world stays the same shit. People like you and your mother are the only reason I didn’t move into a cave instead of this place.”
“You’re really grumpy, aren’t you, Mr. McCoy?”
“Hell yes, I am,” I said, and she laughed. Bessie was sweet—she had a caring look, and her husky voice tickled your ears when she laughed.
“Mr. McCoy…”
“Frank.”
“Frank… I’m sorry to ask, but… have you ever been married?”
Suddenly the brownie lost its sweetness.
“Yes. But… it was far from a fairy tale.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry, Frank. I didn’t mean to pry.”
“No, no. I... like telling those stories, you know? I don’t know why… but I don’t mind talking.”
She leaned forward on the bed, fingers intertwined, ready to hear my miserable story.
“Shortly after I came back from Nam, I met a waitress in Seattle. Lorraine. She was thin as a pen and had hair red as fire. Well… she dyed it. I could spot Lorraine from miles away with that hair blowing in the wind. She was lovely.”
I suddenly found myself staring at a fixed point on the wooden floor, my mouth full. Gus dropped his jowls onto the ground and snorted.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” she said.
“What? Oh no, she didn’t die. Truth is, I have no idea where she is. She… she left me.”
“Oh my God, Frank, I’m so sorry.”
“Ah, don’t be. She wasn’t wrong for disappearing. Lorraine and I… we were going to have a baby. We had just found out about the pregnancy. We were driving to Newcastle to tell her parents the news… and then I lost control and hit another car. And she… lost… the baby.”
“Oh my God, Frank, that’s horrible!”
“Yeah… after that she started treating me like… nothing. Like a bag of wind. It was better to pretend I didn’t exist than show she blamed me. And she blamed me… I knew she blamed me.”
I wasn’t chewing the brownie anymore. Bessie opened her mouth but couldn’t find words.
“Ah, shit, I’m sorry, Bessie. I get chatty sometimes.”
“No, Frank, you just needed to talk. You should come into town more often—it’s been so long since you’ve been out here alone. That’s not good for you, you know? Especially at your age, it’s dangerous.”
“Bessie, sweetheart, I’ve never been healthier. This is my place. I’m exactly where I want to be.”
I took another bite of the brownie as I lied.
...
The next morning I got ready to head out hunting with Gus. The chubby bastard looked at me with that dopey face, wagged his tail, and smiled with his tongue hanging out. Whenever I took the rifle off the wall, the big boy knew there’d be fresh meat in his bowl that very night.
“So? You want meat, huh? You hungry son of a bitch.” I cursed at Gus, but I loved him. We teased each other all the time, and Gus liked to tease me. How many times had I spotted a rabbit and yelled “Get it, Gus!” while the idiot just sniffed flowers or played with butterflies. Or simply lounged there, tongue out, balls on the grass.
I cleaned my glasses, put on my brown waxed-canvas jacket, and adjusted my short-brim hat. Like my father, I liked wearing the same clothes every day, and I had four more almost identical brown jackets in the closet. Some things aren’t learned—they’re passed down genetically. But I’m not my old man. I do my best to be a different kind of man. As much as I feel like I am him, I try to know that I’m not.
“How do I look, Gus? I like to look handsome when I hunt.”
Gus ignored me and scratched at the door, whining to go out. So we went. Gus tore down the steps spinning like a hurricane and burned off his energy running between the pines.
“Hey! Hey, Gus! You’re gonna scare the animals!” As if my yelling would calm them down.
We headed deeper into the forest. I kept my eyes sharp for any distant sound. It was a cold, silent morning. The dim light of sunrise was just about to fade. I worried no rabbit would come out of its burrow at that hour. I’d been eating canned peaches for too long and was starving for meat, but too lazy to go to the town market. I took the chance to play primitive man and find food in nature.
The worst part about being a big-city kid is that sometimes my stomach growled for a Whopper. This was one of those moments. Well, if my prey was nice and fat, I could even try making a huge sandwich out of—
“Rabbit…” I whispered when I spotted one—plump, juicy, chewing grass. Gus behaved and stayed by my side. I positioned myself behind a thick bush and aimed my rifle, loaded with small-game ammo.
Bang!
Great day. Gus and I put an end to our vegetarian diet and ate well that afternoon. I talked to Gus while I smeared myself with rabbit skewer, sitting in a chair on the porch.
“You’ve never killed a rabbit, have you, Gus?”
He chewed with his mouth open.
“Well, I’ll never force you to do it. You know, Gus, the first time I killed a rabbit, I was eight years old. My father took me hunting. In the end, we didn’t even eat the animal. I cried when we got home. Then my father killed more rabbits… and more… and more rabbits. Until… I didn’t cry anymore.”
I tore off another piece of meat with my teeth and chewed.
“Is your rabbit good, Gus?”
...
We went out hunting again the next day. We got another rabbit. The day after that, a fox—but it was injured, and I figured it was infected, so we didn’t eat it. When I first moved out here I used to run into moose and deer, but now it seems the animals have learned that this perimeter is dangerous, that they shouldn’t mess with Frank McCoy. Nobody messes with Frank McCoy. Nothing and no one.
When Friday came around, I could take it easy at home and wait for Bessie or her mother to show up at my door with homemade sweets. I had my ass sunk into my armchair while I teased Gus, who tried to bite my bare foot to the sound of Raspberries spinning on the record player.
But the afternoon went by, and neither Bessie nor Mrs. Jackson showed up. I kept waiting: I sat on the porch, listened to more records, read a few chapters of a book… nothing.
By six in the evening, night was about to fall, and that’s when I was sure none of the Jacksons would be coming to my cabin only to head back to Ellsmont in the pitch-black forest. I thought about calling, but it wasn’t their obligation to bring me sweets, it was pure kindness, rare these days. I decided to ignore it. It was just one Friday without brownies.
The week passed, and I had to go back to eating the canned food in the pantry. I didn’t find a single animal in the forest. At night the forest is noisy in a peaceful way. All the sounds blend together, forming a harmony that, when it reaches your ears, has the same impact as silence.
But the nights started getting peaceful. Too peaceful. And when I tuned my ears to listen for crickets, frogs, and cicadas, I heard nothing. Absolutely nothing. Not even wind rustling the trees.
In the mornings, the birds stopped singing. At first I chalked it up to some natural phenomenon. I figured all the animals were migrating east, or worse—that they were fleeing some catastrophe. A violent tornado, maybe? In western Washington? My mind ran wild: I feared tsunamis, earthquakes, storms… but none of that came. What awaited me, in truth, was something far worse. Definitely a catastrophe, but one that knew its own capacity for destruction very well.
None of the things I expected ever came, not even Bessie. I spent another Friday without sweets. Another week without meat.
I thought: I’m not going to call, I’ll seem even grumpier than I already am. I didn’t call.
Another week without meat and without sweets went by…
“Shit,” I thought. I finally called the Jacksons’ house. No answer. I tried Bessie’s phone, Marge’s, Roy’s… no answer. I tried calling Mike Malone from the gas station, Harold—also a veteran, owner of the Woodpecker bar—Ronald Bueller from Bueller Tools…
No one answered.
I looked at Gus, and Gus looked at me. Then I looked at the pantry: the food was running out.
“Shit,” I thought. I’m going to have to take the car.
I left water and a full bowl of kibble for Gus, since I still had plenty. Taking Gus into town had always been stressful. It was supposed to be a quick trip: see what was going on, do some shopping… I wasn’t in the mood to deal with bastards, especially Ronald Bueller. I put on the same jacket, the same hat, and headed for the car.
I drove a 1989 Jeep Cherokee. A great car—I bought it from Harold. The drive from my cabin to Ellsmont took forty to fifty minutes. It was a cloudy day, the sky threatening rain, droplets forming on the windows. I remember the cold. I was wearing three layers of clothing, not knowing I’d be sweating liters a few hours later.
I didn’t see a single car on the road. Something about that monotony churned my stomach. I kept convincing myself it had to be some long weekend, that everyone was home, but my body understood the silence as a threat.
I passed the town’s entrance sign, drove past the Plaza Hotel, and saw all the windows gray and dark.
When I turned onto the main street and saw cars parked along the road, I let out a sigh of relief and realized how sweaty my forehead was. “Frank, you goddamn idiot,” I thought. The absence of people walking on the sidewalks still caused a discomfort deep in my awareness, but I chose to ignore it.
I parked in front of Dugg’s Grocery, where I usually bought my supplies. I opened the door, the shopkeeper’s bell made a pleasant sound, but it didn’t catch anyone’s attention—mostly because Dugg’s Grocery was empty. There was no one in the store, but the shelves were fully stocked and the floor was extremely clean, polished… and white. The whole place was more organized than usual and much whiter. I figured they’d painted it while I was out of town.
But hey, it was late, business hours—only a retired old man would show up at a little market at that time. I put everything I needed into the cart and headed for the checkout.
And what a surprise: the cashier wasn’t the usual kid. It was a skinny middle-aged man with brown hair and very, very light blue eyes behind thick glasses, which made him look perpetually startled.
I stood in front of the man and pushed my cart toward him. It felt like it took me years to reach the register, and with that same slowness his blue eyes widened as he saw me approaching. When I finally reached the counter, he was pale, completely terrified. I cleared my throat and wished him a good afternoon to calm him down. He stayed silent and immediately shrank back, scanning the items with admirable speed and a funny upright posture, almost robotic.
The man looked at the total on the screen and his lips trembled.
“Cash or card?”
“Card.”
“What’s your Gauss ID?”
I frowned.
“Uh… Gauss... ID?”
“Your Gauss ID, please.”
The man adjusted his posture (if it was even possible to straighten it more) and his expression suddenly went neutral. My forehead started sweating again.
“I don’t… I don’t have this Gauss ID.”
“Alright,” he said, averting his eyes and waiting for me to swipe my card. I hurried and got the hell out of that store as fast as I could.
Back in the Jeep, I was dying to return to the cabin and knew Gus must be missing me. But my curiosity got the better of me. I wanted to know what the hell was going on in Ellsmont. I should’ve asked the skinny cashier, but I didn’t want to set foot in that strange store again. Shit… Ronald Bueller would call me a sissy if he saw me now.
So I eased onto the gas, like you do on a Sunday drive. I decided to act like a town retiree and take a stroll around. I passed the gas station, but from the outside I could see Mike wasn’t there—he’d been replaced by an obese woman. Must be hiring.
The Woodpecker Bar was closed, which was expected since it was still early, but Bueller Tools was locked up too.
I went to the bakery where Mike’s granddaughter worked. There weren’t even any attendants—just an unfamiliar girl at the register. Practically all the open stores were empty, with only the cashiers present, yet there were still cars parked along the streets.
So I decided: I’d wait until the end of the workday and see if everyone went home—leave it to a retired old man to find the strangest pastimes. I lay in wait until six… no one left.
I considered that the town square might be crowded, but of course it wasn’t. There didn’t seem to be a single living soul in Ellsmont; no horns, no school buses, no dogs barking. The silence was absolute.
As I walked through the square, a familiar and deeply uncomfortable feeling washed over me. I remembered the nightmares I used to have as a child, where I’d wake up alone at home and fear that a long-fingered man would emerge from the shadows at any moment.
Remembering that, I decided it was enough. I got up and chose to walk back to the car.
But there was a man there.
I swallowed hard and kept walking. The streetlights in the square suddenly flickered on—it was already getting dark. On the other side of the fountain at the center of the square, a woman appeared. Great, now the workday was over and people were starting to show up. I smiled at her and nodded, but she didn’t respond. Her eyes followed me as if I were an unwanted insect.
The lights in the windows of the buildings turned on one by one, and I noticed more people arriving. More, and more, and more people…
I was so distracted by the relief of seeing movement that I only noticed halfway through the square that all of them were staring directly at me. Every single one of them wore the same neutral expression, identical to the cashier’s at Dugg’s Grocery.
I also noticed they had all started following me.
The man standing in front of my car didn’t look happy at all. Other people surrounded him, as if my car were a treasure to be protected and I were about to steal it.
I stopped short. But no one else did.
I started walking again, only faster. The crowd sped up. Faster… and the crowd sped up.
The men around the car began moving toward me.
I changed direction, turned left, quickened my pace even more, on the verge of breaking into a run.
Everyone accelerated.
“My knees will never forgive me for this,” I thought, and I ran.
A woman growled like an animal and lunged at me, and then it hit me: I was being chased. I ran screaming through the streets, fleeing from dozens of people who turned into a hundred, absorbing other civilians from the sidewalks like satellites, swelling the mass. I shouted:
“SOMEBODY HELP ME!!! HELP!!!”
My knees ached, my pancreas begged me to stop, but deep in my chest I knew something far worse awaited me if I so much as tripped on the asphalt.
Near the gas station, that same obese woman who’d replaced Mike charged at me. There was no trace of fury in her eyes. Her face was cold, empty of any emotion.
“SOMEBODY! HELP!”
More people appeared. The crowd reached an immeasurable size, and I kept running. The adrenaline kept me going. It was just like Nam again.
I turned a corner. I felt my arm get yanked. A young man grabbed my wrist with a strength that I swear could have shattered my bones if he squeezed any harder.
I jerked my arm, but the kid simply wouldn’t let go. I looked back: the crowd was closing in. I kept pulling… he didn’t release me.
So I let him rip my jacket off and kept running. More people were already running toward me from the end of the street ahead. I turned left and headed for an apartment complex.
The mass dispersed and cut through a playground. I didn’t stop running—I couldn’t stop. I ran toward one of the buildings in the complex. I slammed my shoulder into the door with all my strength and managed to get it open. Immediately, I took the stairs.
I heard glass shattering and dozens of frantic footsteps echoing through the stairwell. I tried to open the door on one of the floors, but I couldn’t. I was in pure panic. I climbed the steps until I couldn’t take it anymore and burst through the rooftop door.
I ran from one side to the other, not knowing where to go. I felt vomit rising up my esophagus. I no longer heard the stairwell. I heard only a single step…
A fat man grabbed me, shoved me, and slammed me to the ground. His thick fingers wrapped around my throat. That was my first confrontation with Him. The first time I could look into His eyes. They were clouded, pupils dilated. The man didn’t blink, didn’t show strength. His face twitched like a spasm for a few seconds.
He was big… but his arms were slack, and it was clear He had never strangled anyone before. I locked my foot beside his and shoved him to the right with my leg. He toppled over. Now I was on top of the fat bastard. I got up and staggered away, toward the rooftop ledge—a terrible move.
He came at me again, full speed. He tried to strangle me once more, but I planted the palm of my hand on his nose, and now we were wrestling like two children. He kept pushing forward… and I let him.
I managed to pivot and used every bit of adrenaline I had to shove him against the ledge. And I did. The man plunged down into the crowd on the asphalt below, which now looked like a sea of people. When the body hit the ground and burst in blood, the sea rippled like a wave and a roar of hundreds of voices echoed.
I had just killed for the first time in fifty-two years. But fear didn’t allow me to feel the weight of it.
I ran to the other side of the building, where a fire escape went down. Below me, there were more people, and I hoped they wouldn’t see me up there, though I knew some of them did.
It was a five-story building. I climbed down to the third floor. Shaking and sweating, I held onto the railing and swung my leg over the edge of the platform. My plan was to stretch over to the fire escape of the neighboring building, which wasn’t too far.
And with a jump that cost my knees dearly, I grabbed onto the next platform. I clutched the bar and landed hard on the metal with my ass. The pain was staggering. I bit my hand to keep from making a sound and let a tear slip out.
I filled my lungs and, with what little strength I had left, pulled the fire escape up from the platform so none of those zombies could climb it. In the same motion, I climbed through the apartment window, locked it, and closed the curtains.
I sat on the floor, trembling, far from relieved, but now able to rest. I caught my breath and groaned in pain. Everything hurt: my knees, my pancreas, my neck, and especially my hips. My heart was racing, and I knew that wasn’t a good sign. I started to think I’d broken something, that I was having tachycardia and would collapse at any moment, but I tried to shake those thoughts away—things were already bad enough.
I scanned the surroundings, fearing I’d find another pursuer inside. What I found instead was a three-room apartment that was utterly filthy and trashed. I mean, the place looked like a total dump. The carpet was brown with grime, and there were empty beer bottles, piles of wrappers and food scraps, and two syringes on the coffee table. There was no doubt it was a crack house. And the smell… God, what a mess.
The pain slowly eased, and with it the ringing in my ears. Reason began to return to my mind, and I started seeing things clearly again. It was extremely difficult to stay sane and avoid slipping back into panic.
Then I heard a sound. But it wasn’t footsteps, it wasn’t shattering windows or slamming doors… it was crying. A baby crying.
I stood up, pale with terror. My muscles begged me to rest, but I had to see what it was… I needed to see.
I’d left the rifle in the car. Old idiot. What if it was one of those things trying to lure me in so it could strangle me? My mind went straight to Gus. I’d left Gus alone. If I died there, Gus would starve without me.
I took a deep breath, tried to calm myself. I was sweating like a horse. The crying… the crying wouldn’t stop.
I crossed the bedroom door. The room was chaos, no different from the living room. There was a crib in the corner. I walked toward it with slow steps…
I was standing right in front of it, in front of the crying. I leaned my head forward to see who was crying so much.
It really was a baby, of course. To my luck and my curse, it was a baby.
“Aw, shit…”