Magic Time

by Marc Scott Zicree

  “It’s . . . bright out.” He managed to sound surly and whiny at the same time.

  “Bright.” And now she heard her mother in her head: You sure know how to pick ’em. Yup, when the woman’s right, she’s right, even though she’d been dead from cancer, burned to ashes and dumped at sea, lo these eleven years.

  So what now? Colleen plopped down on the sofa, felt the spring pressing her butt through the tear in the leather. She stared at the Rory shape on the lounger opposite, heard the slow rasp as he scratched his arm, over and over. Bitterness filled her. She hoped it was the beginning of some loathsome skin disease, that his worthless hide would bubble and peel away from him like steamed chicken.

  Then she repented, thought again of the man he had been. Or was her memory, as it had so many times, playing her for a fool, imprinting an image of someone she had wanted, needed so hungrily that she had tried to assemble him from defective parts?

  It had been a long day. And, Christ, it was shaping up to be a long night.

  WEST VIRGINIA

  They searched for Sonny and the others for nearly an hour.

  Then they went on.

  It was four in the afternoon by that time, and most of the respirators the men had taken from the walls at the time of the power-out were exhausted. While hunting for Sonny, they gathered every other SCSR they could find, but still they were short two or three apiece for a trek of what could easily extend on into the night, if they could find their goal at all. If it hadn’t been for the batteries going out, for the utter, unexplained failure of every source of power, Hank suspected most of the men would have remained by the downcast rather than undertake the crazy quest through the blackness of the worked-out mains.

  He certainly would have.

  But he knew the way. It was long and complicated, yet it was clear in his mind, over the grinding of the headache, the feverish dry heat in his bones. Like the road from Boone’s Gap down the mountains and on into Pittsburgh that he used to drive a couple times a month to visit his sister Thea and her kids. Turn here, turn there, this gas station, that burger joint on the right.

  He knew it. He felt he had always known.

  “Maybe they just got tired of waiting for us?” Ryan blew out the single flame as the men joined hands again, linking together in the dark. “I mean, Sonny’ll walk away from some guy waiting on him at a Burger King if he thinks they’re taking too long to serve him.”

  “Yeah, but where’s he gonna go?” asked Brackett.

  “And the others wouldn’t have been dumb enough to go with him,” Bartolo pointed out reasonably. “Could—you don’t think something could have—have happened to them, do you?”

  “Happened?” repeated Llewellyn. “What do you mean, happened?”

  “I dunno. Just—well . . .”

  “You mean,” said the engineer, interpreting the note in his voice, “do you think something could have got them?”

  “Well,” said Bartolo, meaning, Yes, that’s what he thought.

  “You mean like those worm things in Rodan?” asked Gordy, as Hank followed the wall of the old main unerringly into the blackness. And with the blitheness of one who knows perfectly well there was nothing down in the mines except themselves, he related the plot of that cinematic epic for the benefit of everyone who hadn’t seen giant rubber maggots devouring unconvincingly shrieking Toho Studio extras on the late night movie.

  It was the headache, thought Hank, as he made his way on ahead. He didn’t know why he thought this, but he knew it was true. All he wanted, now, was to walk away also, to disappear into the cool darkness. To be alone. He knew that was what they’d done.

  That didn’t give him a reason why they hadn’t come back.

  Feeling the wall, Hank took comfort in the rambling monotone. It was as good, he thought, as having someone counting—a way of gauging by sound whether the air was bad without reminding everyone that’s what they were doing. Remembering the way the main ran on for hundreds of feet before the floor began to rise, before the first of the submains branched out into the worked-out areas where they’d collapsed the roofs back in ’89.

  Seeing it in his mind again, the way he’d walked a thousand times.

  Remembering.

  God knew whether the passageways would still be open. Roof falls had a way of spreading. But he knew in his bones they would die, waiting for rescue by the shaft.

  “You okay, Hank?” Ryan asked him, the first time they stopped and lit a quick flare to take their bearings. That was when they reached the first of the old caved-in submains. Hank blinked, flinching from the light, raising his hand against it.

  “Put that out,” he said. “I can remember how it goes better in the dark.” Somehow the memories were clearer, and the light confused him, hurt him.

  “Okay.” And he heard in Ryan’s voice a note that hadn’t been there before.

  Shock. Shock and fear.

  “Hank . . .”

  “I’m okay.”

  Long silence. Whatever the boy had seen by the brief quick blinding light, Hank knew he didn’t look okay.

  Hank added, “I’m just real tired.”

  “Sure,” agreed Ryan.

  What the fuck had he seen? “Everybody still with us?”

  “I think a giant maggot got Gordy.”

  “Good.”

  “Hey, I saw this movie once where there’s these things in the sewers of New York City . . .”

  They moved on.

  Crosscuts. Old vent shafts. Submains and rooms whose entrances were now simply rubble walls. Hank remembered them with the odd ease of one recalling that a pool hall used to stand where a parking lot was; it was like walking to the old elementary school on Front Street, though he hadn’t done that in over forty years. Clearer and clearer the memories came, the awareness of where walls lay in the dark, the sense of changing air, of shifting smells. Sometimes it seemed to him that he could see the walls, see the passageways they passed.

  And looking back, he was both shocked and not shocked to see the men behind him. Dimly, and with a sense that was not exactly sight. Black with coal dust, running with sweat under their grimy hardhats, their useless headlamps, eyes moving, shifting blankly, hands linked in a chain. Ryan, Greg Grant, Roop, Lou. Llewellyn with a frown between his brows as if he were trying to work out in his head what was going on. Al Bartolo with tears running down his face, fighting not to sob with fright. Hillocher . . .

  Dear God!

  In the darkness Hank wasn’t sure if he was seeing correctly—if this were a dream or a hallucination. But somehow he knew it wasn’t.

  And somehow he understood that, in a way, he was seeing what Ryan had seen in the brief flare of the light.

  Dear God, did he look as bad as Hillocher?

  He realized he himself was slumping that way, slouched forward in a way that should hurt his back but didn’t. In fact it hurt him to stand up straight. Had his hair gone wispy, thinning away like that?

  Did his eyes look like that?

  And across the darkness, for a moment his eyes met those milk-white bulging eyes with mutual recognition, mutual sight.

  He turned his head quickly. No, he thought. No.

  Hallucination, fever, headache.

  But he found his way unerringly in the dark.

  There was a crosscut to the mains that had been made in the seventies, where the seam dipped sharply upward and narrowed to a few feet in height. It was over a thousand feet, and Hank crawled in the lead, groping in the darkness that was no longer quite so dark, and behind him the men crawled, each holding onto the ankle of the man in front. That was almost the worst, with the rock scraping their heads or their butts if they raised up even a little, and the smell of the coal dense and choking around them.

  Voice echoing in the tiny tube, Gordy Flue started to sing.

  You’d have thought it would be something like “Dark as a Dungeon” or “Sixteen Tons.”

  But Gordy Flue took up “Doo Wah Diddy,” a
nd everybody joined in.

  After about three hundred years and a thousand miles and a zillion choruses of “Doo Wah Diddy” the shaft widened out again, and Ryan cautiously lit up his little torch and counted heads. Hillocher was gone.

  “Fuck, he was right behind me!” cried Gordy in distress. He turned back to the gaping throat of the tunnel, wet pony-tail hanging like a dead onion top on his shoulders. “I thought he was hangin’ onto my pant leg!”

  “Even if he let go,” pointed out Lou, “he couldn’t get lost. It ain’t like there’s a lot of places to go. Andy!” he yelled back down the shaft. “Andy, you okay?”

  “He didn’t look good,” said Ryan. “He was bummin’ aspirin all the way before we started crawlin’.”

  “I’ll have a look for him,” said Hank. “You wait here.”

  “I’ll go,” said Ryan. “You sit here and rest.”

  Hank moved instinctively back from the flame of the torch. He could see, in the mirror of the boy’s eyes, what he must look like.

  Ryan crawled all the way back down the shaft, over a thousand feet. The young man was so skinny that Hank, crouched at the top, could always see the glimmer of the light he held out ahead of him. Could see it growing brighter and brighter as he crawled back.

  Hillocher wasn’t in the shaft. Hank felt no surprise. “What happened to him?” Ryan kept asking, “What happened?” It was as if Hank knew something in his marrow that the others didn’t know and couldn’t know.

  “Put that out,” he said. And he led them on, into darkness.

  Chapter Eleven

  NEW YORK

  As the sun set and the royal blue of evening muted into black, Cal finally opened the blinds. Now the two of them sat on the couch he had repositioned by the window, gazing out at the night.

  No rock music blared, no salsa. None of Bill Lundy’s show tunes filtered up from beneath, nor was there the echoing, omnipresent cackle of sitcoms. Below, not a soul was on the street, and cars stood where they had stopped, untended and still. Opposite and all around, voices wafted through open windows flickering with candlelight or glowing with the steadier flame of a Coleman lantern. Intimate, intent, companionable.

  Beyond, the familiar outline of skyscrapers stood against the stars, flat as cut-out posterboard. There were few lights in their soaring heights, and small wonder. Here on Eighty-first, the brownstones were all five stories or less. It would take a hardy soul to climb those darkened stairwells to the twentieth floor, or the fortieth.

  “Maybe God just got bored, wanted a change,” Tina mused, sipping lukewarm lemonade. Her fever seemed to have eased a bit, after her rest. She stretched a leg with easy, unconscious grace, working the ache out, her foot in a straight line with ankle, knee, thigh. “I mean, why should TVs work? Why should anything?”

  She turned to Cal, curling the leg back under her. “Think you’re out of a job?” Finally, finally, she lifted the sandwich beside her and took a bite.

  Cal shrugged. “Mr. Stern was pretty shaken up. Maybe it’ll slip his mind.”

  Leave, and you’re terminated. Stern had been unequivocal, and the words had felt like a cleansing rain. But no need to get into that now.

  “If you go to work tomorrow . . . Hey, what if there’s no school tomorrow? What if there’s no school ever?”

  Cal smiled. “Don’t count on it.”

  Tina pretended a pout, and then the dark thought came. “They wouldn’t close the SAB? I mean, there’d be no reason to.”

  Cal felt the tightness in his stomach. If his premonitions were even half right, then when the School of the American Ballet might again hang out its shingle—

  “Well, I dunno. But you’d have to take a day or two off anyway. You’re a sick little cookie.”

  “No. I’m fine.” She was adamant, almost angry. “I can’t miss practice. I’d never catch up.”

  Concerned, Cal brushed her bangs aside to put a hand to her forehead. Her hair was sweat-soaked, her fever flaring with her upset.

  She tried to wriggle free of his hand. “Leave off, Cal.”

  “Let’s decide this dispassionately, okay?” He stood, took a few quick steps toward the bathroom. “How ’bout, if it’s still working, we let Mr. Thermometer—”

  The crash of glass outside stopped him. He turned to see Tina rise and step to the window. Cal covered the distance in a few strides, eased her out of the line of sight. “Stay back.”

  Shouts echoed from the street, the words indecipherable. Cal had to peer sharply down to locate the source in the sullen dark.

  “Oh, man,” he said, dismayed. Tina was edging laterally, trying to see, but he kept her back from the window.

  “What is it? What?”

  “Patel’s.” The market’s windows were broken, the shattered glass glinting on the pavement. He could make them out now, eight or ten men and women, pulling at the bars on the windows and doors, struggling to pry them open. He thought of the snowstorm that had socked in the city last winter, this island where every saleable item had to be shipped in, how hoarding had flared like wildfire, the shelves stripped clean of milk and bread and Pampers.

  And this was no snowstorm.

  Past the market, dim shapes flitted along the darkness of Broadway, barely seen except where one or two bore makeshift torches.

  Cal glanced over at Tina, her face pale and scared. “It’s okay,” he said. “They’ll be gone soon.”

  A staccato sound echoed up that Cal didn’t recognize at first. Then it clicked in: hooves, horse’s hooves. A raspy voice boomed, “Back off, all of you!”

  This time, Cal let Tina join him at the window. Even from a distance, Cal could see that the cop was a big man, a slab of meat made even more imposing by the added height of the horse. The looters stopped like figures in a strobe, watching him. He gave the reins a shake. The horse cantered forward, closing the distance as the cop drew out his nightstick.

  Then as if a switch had been thrown, the looters surged up over the cop. Shouting and cursing, they grabbed at him, tore away his nightstick, snatched at the reins. Panicked, the horse reared with a scream, dumping the beefy man off. He hit the ground, with a thud that Cal felt in his bones.

  Maddened, the horse was kicking, spinning. The looters ducked and collided to avoid it, gave it a wide berth as it reeled and then ran off into the night. The cop struggled to get to his feet, slipping on wet pavement. A sharp cry—Cal couldn’t tell if it was the cop or one of the others—and they were on him again.

  “Stay here.” Cal was headed for the door.

  “No, Cal, don’t.” Tina grabbed for his sleeve. “I mean it.”

  “It’s okay. I’m just gonna . . .”

  “Gonna what?”

  She echoed his own thoughts; he didn’t know, either. He rushed to the kitchen. In the darkness, he peered at the drainer, caught the dull glint of metal. Reaching out, his hand closed on the cool plastic handle.

  Tina’s eyes went wide as he emerged with the big Ginsu knife in his hand. A few quick strides and he was at the door, unlatching the chain, snicking back the deadbolt. “Lock it behind me.”

  He shot her a last, quick look. “I’d call 911 if I could,” he said, an apology, and was out the door.

  Cal took the three flights full out, two and three stairs at a time, grasping the wood banister as he swung around on the narrow descent, breathing hard.

  His palm hit the door onto the street, sent it flying, and he leaped the final few steps onto the pavement. The hot smell of garbage, a chaos of voices, the sound of blows.

  They were thirty, forty yards off on the corner, and at this distance, all he could make out was a dark mass of struggling bodies clumped together. For a mad moment, he had a sense that he was looking, not at a group of people, but an impossible, inhuman beast, flailing legs and arms, howling its rage through gashes of mouth.

  Then the illusion was gone, and Cal could see the big cop on his feet, a wounded bull ringed by wild dogs. They were hanging on his ar
ms, his neck, pulling at him, pummeling him as he wheeled about, trying to drag him down. Booty from Patel’s littered the sidewalk around their feet: useless batteries, packages of cereal, burst cartons of milk. The cop was trying to drag his gun clear of the holster, but other hands interfered, grabbing and clutching.

  He shoved them off, yanked the pistol clear in a wide arc. But one of his attackers smashed a big hair spray can into the cop’s face. He roared, and the gun went flying end over end toward Cal. The automatic bounced once, twice on the asphalt and lay still, twenty feet away.

  Bellowing curses, the cop battered at his attackers, keeping them busy, their attention on him and not the weapon. Only one came after the gun, a rangy teen in black jeans and a Misfits T-shirt with a grinning death’s head on it. He saw Cal’s knife, skidded to a stop, still poised to leap.

  Cal raised the knife. Get back. The youth feinted left, Cal swung the knife, and then the blade tilted at an odd angle, fell free of the handle and clattered to the pavement. Shit.

  Misfits straightened. “You buy that from TV?”

  Cal felt sick. “Yeah.”

  “They all crooks, man.”

  Incongruously, Cal noticed that Misfits’ hair was patchy, with bald spots showing, cut to look like a radiation victim. Why would anyone want that?

  They stood eyeing each other a moment and then, both with the same thought, dived for the gun. Stomachs and chests skidded along the rough asphalt. Cal landed closer, his outstretched hand inches from the blue-black metal, while Misfits’ fingers clawed at an impossible ten-foot gap. Not a chance!

  Cal reached as Misfits’ black-makeup-rimmed eyes bloomed desperation, went glassy—and the gun slid from beneath Cal’s fingertips and jumped into Misfits’ hand!

  Still on his belly, Cal looked at the gun in cold astonishment. Misfits, too, was peering at it amazed, an expression that melted quickly to pure, nasty joy.

  Scrabbling to his feet, he locked his spooky raccoon gaze on Cal and ever so slowly pulled back the bolt.

  I’m dead. Cal knew in the time it would take him to stand or roll out of the way, he would be shot.