The Fall

by Michael McBride

  “What’s the worst that could happen if we go back out?” she asked, her voice small, dry.

  “We die.”

  “Oh,” she said, falling momentarily silent. They could almost hear the condensation draining down the walls. “And what’s the worst that could happen if we stay in here?”

  “We could still die, but it would almost be more like falling asleep. I’ve heard it’s one of the least painful ways to die.”

  Silence.

  “Do you want to die?” she whispered.

  “No,” he said quickly.

  “Well…we know what will eventually happen if we stay in here, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then I guess we have no choice but to take our chances out there.”

  “You’ve got a point.”

  Silence descended again, interrupted only by the sloughing of wet blankets.

  “I think I might be able to open the door without breaking the seal,” he said, “but if there’s any radiation out there at all, it would come right through.”

  “And the door would hold it out?”

  “Probably not.”

  “The walls?”

  “If we were really lucky.”

  “Then let’s just do it.”

  “Are you sure?”

  She was quiet a moment.

  “I’m so tired, Mare. I don’t want to go to sleep in here and not wake up.”

  “Okay,” he said, summoning his strength and tossing off his blanket. It hit the wall with a slap and slopped to the carpeted floor. Sweat drained down his shoulders when he stood, pooling against his lower back, soaking into his waistband. He felt his way along the wall until he reached the crumpled edges of the plastic tarp, then moved his hands inward until he felt the doorknob through the forgiving divider. Carefully, he gripped just the edges of the knob and turned. If he didn’t try to twist too fast, he’d be able to open the door without breaking the seal. With a click, the door popped open into the living room.

  As soon as it fell away from him, Mare could hear it…a loud humming, like a million pagers set to vibrate. Mosquitoes immediately hammered the plastic skin separating them from the outside world.

  “Jesus!” Mare gasped, stumbling backward.

  The entire surface of the plastic was alive with little black bodies.

  “Help me hold them out!” he shouted, slapping the plastic to toss the bodies off long enough to clear his line of sight. The room beyond was thick with them. He stepped on the plastic bunched on the floor, pinning it there, hopefully hard enough to keep them from crawling under. He pressed his shoulder and hip against the sloppy seam on the right side of the doorway. Reaching up, he held the tarp tightly over the horizontal trim.

  Missy stepped up and did the same, shrieking every time the plastic between them bowed inward with the amassed weight of the insects.

  “What’s happening?” she screamed, but Mare couldn’t hear her over the humming.

  They both felt as though their flesh was crawling with mosquitoes.

  And as quickly as they had descended upon them, the mosquitoes vanished, rising as one from the tarp. They funneled back out the open front door like a cloud of pepper, sucked out on some unseen current. The humming faded quickly until there was nothing left of it at all.

  “Are they gone?” Mare whispered, finally allowing himself to breathe.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

  “Neither have I.”

  “What do you think would cause them to swarm like that?”

  Missy just shook her head, swiping at the beading sweat that felt like miniature legs creeping all over her.

  Condensation balled on the inside of the tarp, draining in rivulets toward their feet, distorting the room beyond. Time passed slowly as they listened intently for any sign of the humming returning, until finally neither could stand the heat or the tension any longer.

  “What do you think?” Mare asked.

  “I’ve got to get out of here.”

  “Then on three, we rip down the plastic. I’ll shut the front door. You just run.”

  “Where?”

  “Bathroom?”

  “What about you?”

  “I’ll be right behind you. The hell if I’m going to mess around any longer than I have to!”

  “On three?”

  “Yeah,” Mare said, sweat dropping from his lips. “One…two…three!”

  Both jerked at the plastic, tearing it free from the staples. Mare bounded over the crumpled tarp and grabbed the front doorknob. He felt the wind from Missy’s passage behind him.

  “Wait,” he whispered, still holding the door ajar.

  Missy stopped dead in her tracks and whirled.

  Mare just stood in the doorway, framed against the roiling black sky. Lightning as blue as topaz flared furiously against the ebon clouds racing in from their right. The forks of electricity appeared sentient, striking first the roof of one house, then tearing free to stab the next.

  There were no mosquitoes swarming in the streets as he had expected.

  None at all.

  Mr. Walton was sprawled face down on his porch across the street, legs dangling onto the walk. His cane was on the lawn, his poodle sprawled out at the end of her red leash halfway to the Jernigans’ house to the left. Its curly white hair tousled on the rising wind.

  There was a car idling on the Petersons’ lawn down the street, their mailbox uprooted in a pile of splinters on the curb. One of the wooden columns supporting the overhang was broken in half over the car’s bumper, the awkwardly leaning structure threatening to fall atop the old Mustang where it canted with its left front tire up on the porch. Smoke wafted along the breeze from the coughing engine.

  “What’s going on out there?” Missy whispered.

  “I don’t know…”

  Mare stepped out through the front door, his flesh prickling. The air was electric, yet there was no movement along the street, save for the leaves blowing on the gusting wind and the rustling of the barren branches overhead. The sound of thunder grew louder, now almost like a background drum roll. It was the first time he truly recognized the stillness. Until that point, he’d never really noticed how everything around him was in a constant state of motion: cats scampering past; dogs barking and running the fence lines; joggers on the sidewalks; cars driving by; a neighbor digging in her garden; children screaming playfully from some back yard. There was now nothing but the wind to ripple the grass and chase litter down the gutters.

  He strode down the walk to the street.

  “Where are you going?” Missy called after him, unable to bring herself to cross the threshold.

  He looked back over his shoulder, but couldn’t find the voice to answer. His stomach was flopping over and there was a tingling sensation in his lower abdomen. Something was definitely wrong—the feeling was insistent—but he couldn’t rationalize it. There had been the mosquitoes…and now there was nothing but the ugly black storm.

  Feet scuffing the asphalt, Mare crossed to the other side of the street and hopped up onto the curb. He walked directly to where Mr. Walton was still sprawled across his stoop.

  “Mr. Walton?” he asked, kneeling and tapping the old man on the shoulder.

  The man’s white hair flagged on the breeze, alternately exposing the blackened skin beneath.

  “Are you—?” Mare started, rolling the man onto his back.

  He threw himself in reverse.

  “Oh my God!” he gasped, clapping his hand over his mouth and turning away. He could still see the old man’s face clearly in his mind no matter how hard he tried to force it out. Mr. Walton’s cheeks and gizzard were swollen, his eyes sunken. His bulbous tongue forced his chipped teeth open from lips that looked like stomped worms. Every inch of his skin was mottled a rich blue and black, and the smell that billowed out from beneath him…Mare had never smelled anything even close to that repulsive.

&n
bsp; He raised his head and looked down the street.

  Everything was still.

  There was no movement.

  No life.

  “Help!” he screamed, shoving himself to his feet and staggering into the middle of the road. “Anyone!”

  His legs finally gave out, dropping him to his knees on the asphalt.

  “Please,” he whispered beneath the rising thunder.

  Missy sprinted out from the house and knelt at his side, throwing her arms tightly around him and burying her face in his neck.

  IV

  Barstow, California

  EVELYN SAT ON THE FLOOR IN THE MIDDLE OF HER CHILDHOOD BEDROOM. The whole day felt like a dream, as though any minute she would awaken and find the world normal again. After watching the mushroom cloud rise above Los Angeles in the distance, her body had tried to shut down, or maybe she’d simply hoped that it would. The smell of the burning pheasants was still fresh when the wave of destruction, riddled with the foul aromas of scorched rubber and vaporized humanity, washed across the desert from the west. It was a tangible thing, like an oil coating her flesh and seeping into her follicles.

  She needed to occupy her mind. If she could only switch her focus to something else—anything else—then at least she’d be fine for the moment, and right now, the moment was all she had. Who in the world knew if there was even anything left to return to in San Diego? Granted, it was well down the coast from Los Angeles, but she knew nothing about radiation and fallout. And she could only imagine the poor sea creatures. What effect would an atomic detonation have on them?

  She turned to the aquarium in the middle of the floor, allowing herself to be momentarily hypnotized by the swaying of the kelp at the whim of the manmade current. When she’d planted the hundreds of long leaves growing vertically from the spongy substrate, they’d been little more than sprouts. All it took was a clipping of roots from an adult plant buried in the foam and the right pH and nitrate levels, and they started to grow nearly overnight. Now, the largest leaves were close to a foot long and packed in there so tightly that within a week there wouldn’t even be room left between them for the current to pass. Who knew what could happen in a week? Yesterday, the world had been normal, or as normal as things could be. For all she knew, tomorrow could bring the end of the world.

  Evelyn pushed herself to her feet and went to the closet, opening the door wide. Sliding the clothes on hangers to the side, she revealed an enormous aquarium standing on its side at the back. It was only one hundred twenty gallons, which would be enormous in her room, but she was used to working with tanks ten times that size at school. At least she’d had the foresight to bring it along. If the kelp started growing together and tangling, it was only a matter of time until it died anyway. At least now she’d have a couple of months of room for growth in the tank.

  She tried not to think about the fact that she’d probably still be here.

  At least switching out the tanks would keep her mind busy. She didn’t want to wonder if the Hollywood sign was burning against the hillside or if Beverly Hills was now one enormous pile of rubble. The thought of the Sunset Strip reduced to smoldering coals would surely bring back the tears she had only recently forced down.

  She was going to have to mix up some more saltwater. That would take a little time. She’d need to mix the synthetic sea salt with water at precisely seventy-two degrees. She’d need to gauge the salinity with her hydrometer to ensure that it was exactly 1.22 and then she’d need to balance the pH. It would take some time, but it wasn’t as though she was going to be able to sleep that night. She was just happy that her father was able to use the painkillers for just that purpose.

  There was a tapping at the window.

  At first it had blended with the ticking of her clock on the nightstand, but the sound was irregular and now growing louder.

  Evelyn dragged the tank into the middle of the room and balanced it against the side of the bed before walking over to the window. She threw back the light blue sashes her mother had made and gasped.

  A writhing layer of insects covered every inch of the glass.

  She staggered backward, bumping into the enormous glass aquarium.

  There was a humming sound behind her.

  She whirled quickly to see the first couple of mosquitoes crawl from beneath her bedroom door. They flew directly at her.

  Evelyn swatted at them, holding them momentarily at bay, but more still took flight into the room from that thin crack between the wood and carpet. They were even starting to funnel through the small gaps in the heating vent on the wall.

  Spinning, she looked back at the window. There were so many that they blocked whatever weak light may have been out there. A few of the most ambitious creatures had managed to press themselves flat and squeeze around the seals.

  “Daddy!” she screamed, swiping madly at the air. It felt like they were crawling all over her.

  Before she even registered the thought, Evelyn grabbed the aquarium and ducked, closing herself beneath it against the floor. It was tight against her shoulders and pressed uncomfortably against her back, but at least it was heavy enough to seat itself firmly into the carpet. Eyes closed, she waited, the glass vibrating with the humming along with her fillings.

  Her skin positively crawled with what felt like a million tiny legs, but she only felt one stick and slapped it reflexively, smashing the carcass on her forearm in front of her face. Blood smeared from the carcass as she brushed it off, but she’d killed it before it could have even begun to inject its anticoagulatory spew. The blood must have belonged to someone else.

  Her eyes snapped open at the thought.

  “Daddy,” she whispered.

  The glass surrounding her was covered with a moving sheath of mosquitoes, like grains of dirt had she been buried underground. With a scream, she clawed at the lip of the tank to ensure it was lodged firmly against the floor.

  Her breath condensed against the glass, widening quickly in arcs as she began to hyperventilate.

  She couldn’t even bring herself to blink watching all of the tiny pokers tapping at the glass, trying to skewer her from without.

  And then they were gone.

  Like a cloud passing before the sun, they were everywhere, darkening the world around her, and then disappearing as though they’d never been.

  All she could hear were her rasping breaths, her eyes darting from one side to the next. There was nothing out there. Not a single mosquito buzzed anywhere as far as she could see. The glass no longer vibrated and the only sound she could hear was the gentle purring of the filters on the kelp tank.

  Chest heaving, she placed her trembling hands on the carpet and pushed upward, lifting the tank from the ground. The flood of cool air felt divine against her sweaty skin, and she didn’t realize until then just how quickly she’d burned through what little air had been under the glass with her. It was an awkward process getting out from under the aquarium, but she finally toppled it onto its side and rose against the protests from her back.

  The window was cracked where all of the mosquitoes had been trying to get in, but there weren’t any tapping against the glass now. She spun to face the door, but there was nothing trying to crawl through the crack beneath.

  What in the name of God could have caused those mosquitoes to swarm like that? Granted, her expertise was in aquatic species, but there were very few animals of any kind that ever congregated in such large numbers. It was completely unnatural.

  Grabbing the doorknob, she tugged the door inward and was out in the hall before she even heard it bang into the wall. She nearly sprinted the short distance down the hallway, shouldering her father’s door inward and dashing into—

  “Daddy?” she whispered.

  The sheets lay so still. Surely that would have awakened him.

  She slowed her pace, watching the sheet on his chest for the subtle rise and fall of his breathing as she had grown so accustomed to doing, but she couldn’t see even
the slightest hint of motion.

  The blanket was tugged all the way over his head.

  Often, the narcotics made him sleep so soundly that she feared he was dead, so as she always did, she slunk around to the side of the bed and gently peeled the covers back away from his face.

  “Dear God!” she gasped, quickly turning and slapping her hands over her mouth. The tears were already pouring down her cheeks.

  All she could see, even as she raced down the hallway to the phone to call for help, was his black face, swollen and gorged, mottled with a deep blue. And his eyes… They were wide open, the lids sucked all the way back behind his eyeballs, which appeared precariously close to spilling out.

  “Help me!” she screamed into the phone.

  Only silence responded.

  The line was dead.

  V

  Eugene, Oregon

  THE POWER SNAPPED OFF, THE ROOM NOW STROBING IN THE LINGERING electric blue residue of the light from the bug zapper frying insects outside the shattered window.

  Now only the flash of lightning marred the darkness.

  “We have to get out of here!” Jill screamed.

  “Calm down!” Rick barked, grabbing her by the forearms and bringing her face to his. Anger flared in his eyes. “Panicking won’t do a damned thing!”

  “You don’t understand!” she wailed, wrenching her arms free. “We’re all going to die if we don’t get out of here right now!”

  The banging on the roof was nearly deafening as now much smaller hailstones flew through the broken windows and bounded around the room.

  “We can’t go out there!” April shrieked.

  “We don’t have a choice!”

  “We’re better off in here!” Darren shouted over the din. “Look at the cars!”

  Tina whirled to the window. Hail bounced from hoods and roofs, but not before creating dents the size of quarters. Shattered glass was everywhere and headlights flashed as car alarms blared, though inaudible beneath the weather’s barrage.