Starry, Starry Night
JOHN RINGO
“Granma?” Sarah said, running into the cluttered living room. “Ronnie says Old Man Klunder isn’t real! Tell him he’s real! Tell him, Gran!”
Virginia Hanning removed her glasses and set down her sewing as the children charged into the room.
“Is not!” one of the boys shouted. “Old Man Klunder’s a made-up story! My big brother says so!”
“Inside voice, young man!” Virginia snapped. “So, your brother says Old Man Klunder isn’t real, does he? Did he live through the Fall, young man?”
“No, ma’am,” Ronnie said.
Given that Ronnie was about the age she had been that terrible year and Old Man Klunder had been…well, amazingly, not that much older than she was now, there was no way his brother lived through the Fall. So few were left who had. All the giants—the Wolves, the Reavers, the Irregulars—gone like the snows of a Minnesota winter.
How the years and memories passed.
“Did he live through that terrible fall and winter when the world was covered in the zombies?” Virginia asked. She didn’t recognize him. He must be new to Sewanee. So many new faces, it was hard to keep up. “Did he watch Old Man Klunder ride out into the night? Did he help him with the radio? Is he one of the Voices of the Fall? I think not.”
“Tell him, Granma!” Sarah said. “Tell him the story!”
“Please tell it!” the children begged.
“Very well,” Virginia said. “If you insist. It was long ago and far away, when the world was covered in the monster when Old Man Klunder saved us all. His true name was Bjorn Klunder and Bjorn Klunder was a giant of a man, with shoulders wide as two axe handles…”
* * *
Bjorn Klorno Klunder, five feet five inches tall and down to one hundred and twenty pounds with shoulders that had never, on his best day, been even one axe handle wide, took a measured bite of beans then followed it with a measured bite of hominy. He considered, as he often had since the lights went out, that it was good he’d learned hunger when he was a younger man.
One half can of beans and one half can of hominy had been his daily ration since the infected nearly caught him on the last trip to the Meijers. That was until his stash was a quarter gone. Then it was one quarter can of beans and one quarter can of hominy. The only reason he had any stash at all was from some friends who still worked at the Green Giant plant and Lars at the Walmart being a soft touch when he had to lay him off. He’d filled his tub with water before the lights and water went out. And he’d drunk of it slow, one meager cup a day. Waste went out the window, no flushing for him.
It had been two months, he’d marked off each day on the Red Dragon Chinese Restaurant calendar, since the lights went out and despite it getting colder the infected were still roaming outside. He’d see some from the window of his one-room apartment whenever he checked. It was the second-floor apartment that had saved him when others had fallen. With only the one window, facing the rear and too high for the zombies to climb…he’d stayed quiet and they’d never even rattled the doorknob. All he had to do was stay alive ’til the snows. He could go look for food and water when the snow fell.…
* * *
The blizzard was thick and fast, a mass of orange white in the reflected candle light. It was very nearly his last candle as well but he cherished the view. The howl of the wind was an old and comforting friend to Bjorn and the cold that filled the apartment was nothing he had not faced many a winter before. He huddled back under the covers of aluminum foil, gathering as much of the meager candle heat as he could. As soon as the storm cleared, he would start…
* * *
“He came in the night, after the first of the storms…”
* * *
The storm had blown a pile of snow against the wall of the ground floor apartment. Bjorn ignored the frozen bodies on the floor as he emptied out the cupboard. He’d eaten his fill in the first apartment he’d scavenged. After so many months of starvation he’d nearly puked he’d eaten so fast. Even half frozen the can of black beans and rice had tasted too good to stop.
There was plenty of food in the apartment. The family had stocked up.
Whether it was one of them had turned or the broken windows and door told the story didn’t matter. They weren’t alive to eat it.
As he walked out the smashed sliding-glass door he looked back at the nearest frozen corpse.
“Thank you,” he muttered, heading out into the night. “An you go home to God, now.”
* * *
A Coleman heater, a bigger apartment, a thick sleeping bag that was a now-unneeded luxury. Coleman stove, piles of food, booze and jewelry. He’d even gotten a generator tinkered to life but the roar of it had caused him to shut it down almost immediately. Too likely to draw the zombies, don’cha know.
If it had only been before the Plague, he’d think he’d died and gone to heaven. This was better than he’d lived most all his life.
The howl of the storm outside, not a single speaking person to be found and the continued lack of electricity told him it was anything but.
“Mutter always told me I’d go to hell,” Bjorn said. “Guess she was right, right?”
* * *
Bjorn rattled the handle of the door but it wouldn’t budge. Most of the apartments and homes had been broken into by the infected. He didn’t generally bother if an apartment was too hard to get into. Plenty more to scavenge.
The stores were pointless. He’d checked most of the convenience stores in the area and they had all been pillaged before the snows from the looks of it. He hadn’t even seen evidence of other people. At least thinking people. There were tracks of zombies, though. Fortunately, they only seemed to come out in the daytime. Too cold at night.
He started away then stopped at a tapping sound. He always kept an eye an ear out for the zombies. They went somewhere in the darkness and it wouldn’t do, not’all, to run into some. He’d picked up a revolver gun in case but it wasn’t much if there was zombies. And he’d never shot it, nor any, gun in years.
He looked about then back to the apartment. There was a white face at the window in the moonlight. It just looked at him, not even moving. He wasn’t sure if it was a ghost or a person.
Then a hand raised, again, and tap-tap-tapped on the window.
Bjorn walked slowly to the window. He’d been sure he was the last man left in the whole world. Now there was a human face looking at him and tapping of a window.
Would the zombies do that?
“Are you real, lady?” he asked the face in the window. “Or am I dreamin’?”
“Are you?” the woman replied.
“Yes,” Bjorn caroled, trying not to cry. “I’m real. I’m real. You’re real, by golly! And I’m real! YOU’RE REAL!”
“Do you have any food?” the girl asked.
“Do I ever, ma’am,” Bjorn said.
* * *
“A giant man, made of courage and wisdom…”
* * *
“I wish we had a flush toilet,” Charles said, grumpily.
“An you be makin’ one and we’ll have it,” Bjorn said, stirring the soup. “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.”
Bjorn wasn’t sure he liked it more nor less with company. Slowly he’d found survivors since the first lady, Victoria. But they were all city folk, scared of the night and the stars and especially the zombies. He was still the only one that went out of a night.
It wasn’t zombies that were his main concern these days but the dogs who were reverted to mostly wolf. He’d had to fire some shots the night before last when a pack had come around when he was scavenging. They’d started on eating the frozen corpses and they had the taste of man in their mouths, now.
“I’m not sure that water is safe,” Charles opined.
“We’re boiling it,” Victoria pointed out.
“Even then!” Charles said. “Nuclear power plants have probably melted down! The radiation would get into everything. Look at all the people who died from Chernobyl! And that was just one nuke! There are hundreds in the United States alone! And you can’t smell or taste radiation! We don’t have any way to know!”
“An you be finding a better water than melted snow we’ll all be obliged,” Bjorn said, trying to control his temper. Temper never did a man good. “I’ll be obliged if I don’t have to find the fuel to melt it an all.”
“I’d like to hear if there are others,” little Virginia said. He’d found the girl in a house with her parents dead and…not quite right at first. Having to sit vigil on your dead parents and try to figure out how to survive for months on your own could make one not quite right. But she seemed to be doing better as long as no one got so much as a sniffle. “If there’s anyone else who survived.”
“I’m sure there are plenty,” Victoria replied, smiling. “The government is working on this right now, I’m sure of it.”
“We need a radio,” Charles said. “Bjorn, pick up a radio tonight. You’ll need to find one of those hand-crank ones.”
“Oh, I’ll be doin’ that, you betcha,” Bjorn said, calmly. “You bet I’ll get right on that.”
“Charles, quit telling Bjorn what to do,” Victoria snapped. “It’s not as if you’re helping!”
“I’m not…good at finding my way around in the dark,” Charles muttered.
“Do we have to fight?” Virginia said, curling into a ball.
“I’ll be finding one if I can,” Bjorn said, smiling at the girl. “For Virginia. Don’t know where they’d be one short of the Mall or the Walmart. But I’ll get one, you bet.”
* * *
“He would go out into the worst of the blizzards to rescue the helpless and bring us succor…”
* * *
“Gotcha by gum,” Bjorn muttered, reading the sign above the emergency radios by squinting in the dim light. Batteries ran out fast in the cold and too much light drew the dogs or the zombies so he was using a meager LED penlight. But he’d found Virginia’s radio.
Most of the place was stripped of emergency gear and food. Plenty of everything totally useless in a disaster, just not much of use in one. But there were a few of the radios left. He wandered through the aisles, kicking the debris on Lars’ floor wondering what else he should take back. It couldn’t be much with him carrying it on his old back.
He’d walked most of the night, pushing through the snows, to get to the Walmart by the Mall of America and he’d seen not a soul on the entire long trek. He was that worn out as well. It would have been quite a walk with the ways plowed. With snow piled up on 35 and 494 it had been a fair walk. He’d say it was good for the heart but he’d had to stop from time to time for that reason if none other.
He found a big pack in Sporting Goods then stopped in thought. They always stocked early for winter in Minnesota and, amazingly, they’d put up the Christmas decorations before everything came apart. He wondered if it had been Peggy who’d worked on them but Peggy was probably a goner so did it matter?
But they’d started to put out winter gear as well. Including cross-country skis.
He hadn’t used skis since…he remembered goin’ with a girl when he’d been in school. The girl, what was her name? had skied. She’d wanted to go and he’d spent most of time falling flat on his bum. What was her name? So long ago…
* * *
“Night after starry night he went out into the cold and snow…”
* * *
Bjorn puttered up Morgan Avenue on the Ski-Doo towards what everyone called “New House.” There were too many, now, to fit in the apartment. After some considerable debate they’d moved to a solid house that had been evacuated before everything came apart, what people on the radio were calling “The Fall.” Didn’t make much sense of a name to Bjorn. Fall happened every year. Needed a bigger name in his opinion.
The house had a good solid basement, though, and after making sure it was sound-proof enough he’d pulled in a big generator on the sled. So, they had lights again, night and day. It also had a ham radio no one knew how to run with a big tower in the back. For some reason everyone expected him to figure it all out. When he had the time from also being the only one who’d so much as leave the confines of the house. The “big debate” had mostly been over going two blocks, could you believe it, to a better home.
He was a bit angry, though, to see someone hadn’t covered all the windows. If you showed light, even in the cold and night, you could still get zomb—
* * *
“He once battled fifty zombies in the street, battled them all night until the dawn ’til he was knee-deep in the monsters and none of them could so much as touch him for all his bravery…”
* * *
The emaciated infected stumbled through the knee-deep snow towards the unlit snowmobile, drawn by the sound. Sound meant people and people meant food. That was about as far as zombie logic ran.
It was the first zombie Bjorn had faced down but he’d considered, often, what to do. Much noise meant more zombies. He might even be attracting them with using the Ski-Doo and all but he was getting a bit old to keep trudging or skiing out every night to feed the Colony.
Keeping his right hand on the throttle he picked up the Mackintosh axe in his left and swung as he passed the stumbling infected.
It hadn’t been but a kid, maybe a teenager, and that covered in frostbite. Barely a finger and no toes, it was putting the thing down an mercy as much as anything.
Bjorn puked into the snow, then continued up to the house. He’d have to have The Talk again about showing light…
* * *
“Hullo?” Bjorn said into the microphone. “You fellas still here? You hearin’ us?”
“Hey, who’s this, over?” the voice on the radio replied.
Bjorn had finally figured out he had the power supply hooked up wrong from the generator.
“Bjorn Klunder I am,” Bjorn replied. “An some others…”
* * *
“…got into Powderhorn on my sled and picked up some supplies from the Meijers yesterday. Any closer to downtown and the zombies are still crawlin’. Lots of them, by golly. How in tarnation are they survivin’? It’s been a little cold, don’cha know…”
* * *
“Until one night…”
* * *
It was nearly spring but one of those late winter nights when the cold was so hard the trees cracked.
Bjorn was taking a shortcut across Grass Lake when it hit. Most people “know” that heart attacks are painful. Most myocardial infarctions are. In that case the heart strains, like any muscle, and they are intensely painful. However, in the case of congestive heart failure, the heart simply…stops. The person with that heart never even realizes they’ve just died.
The Ski-Doo slid to a halt in the middle of the shallow lake and continued to idle as Bjorn slumped forward.
His arms slid into the forward foot rests and against the hot engine. Even in the intense cold his polyester jacket started to smolder and melt. The heat from the engine slowly burned through the polyester down to his flesh and bones and his forearms essentially melted into the engine.
The engine continued to idle for nearly a day until a combination of poor quality siphoned gas and low fuel pressure caused it to die with a splutter.
In the middle of the lake, far from other sources of protein, the dogs never found him.
Nor did the Colony.
* * *
“When we were ready to stand on our own two feet, when we were ready to take up the burden, he disappeared into the starry starry night.…”
* * *
The spring was slow to come in Minnesota that year but come it did as always. The ice of the lake slowly melted and well before most of it broke up the weight of the Ski-Doo caused a crack to form, then a break, and the snowmobile slid into the depths.
Glued to his trusty steed, Bjorn Klorno Klunder sank with it until it settled into the muck on the bottom.…
* * *
“When the blizzard blasts the walls of your home and you hear the sound of a Ski-Doo in the distance, always know that Old Man Klunder watches over us still…And that’s the end of it. So, yes, Ronnie, Old Man Klunder is real.”
“So he’s really real?” Ronnie said, wonderingly.
“And he still watches over us all,” Virginia said, definitely. “Just as Shewolf and Seawolf and General Walker protect us, still. They’ll never leave our side as long as we remember them in our hearts.”