by Brian Keene
We turned our attention to the commotion. Dez dodged cars in the middle of the intersection. His raggedy, tattered clothes whirled around him like a cape, making him look like a scarecrow. He smiled and nodded and made apologetic gestures, and received obscene finger gestures in return.
“That’s the homeless guy, right?” Tom asked.
“Yeah,” someone else answered. “Goddamn weirdo.”
“He’s schizophrenic,” a woman said. “The poor man deserves our pity.”
“He ain’t schizophrenic,” said an overweight man who stank of cigars. “He’s batshit fucking crazy.”
“I feel sorry for him,” the woman insisted. “He lives in the abandoned utility shed across from the Lutheran church. He won’t let anybody help him. We’ve tried to take him food before, but he refuses it.”
The fat man rolled his eyes. “Like I said, lady, he’s fucking nuts. He don’t want to eat? Fuck him, I say.”
We watched Dez negotiate traffic. He reminded me of that Frogger video game. I breathed a little sigh of relief when he reached the curb. I’d seen him around many times but never up close like this. His age was hard to determine, but he was younger than I’d expected. I guessed that he was somewhere in his thirties. His thick beard was untidy but clean, and his hair, while uncombed, seemed clean as well. In fact, with the exception of his clothes, which looked like they could stand up by themselves, Dez seemed to be in pretty good shape. There was a bulge in the pocket of his trench coat—the unmistakable outline of a pint of booze. He smiled as he passed by us, walking slowly, as if exhausted.
“I did it,” he said to us, still grinning. “I didn’t think I’d finish in time, but I did. I kept it out. We’ll be okay, as long as nobody erases them.”
Our group smiled and nodded, shifting uneasily. Nobody was sure how to respond. Some of us glanced away. Others stared at each other. One person laughed.
“It can’t come in,” Dez told us. “You just have to know the words. It’s a good thing I had them in one of my books, or else it would have gobbled us all up like jelly beans. Little human jelly beans. What flavor are you?”
Tom cleared his throat. The others remained silent.
I spoke slowly, as if speaking to a child. “What are you talking about, man?”
“The darkness. Somebody said its real name and invited it into our world. I knew it was coming, so I wrote the words and stopped it. I don’t know how to make it go away, though. I don’t know how to close the door.”
Dez wandered on up the street and disappeared around the corner. Our group started to break up then. Confronted with too much weirdness, we were back to being strangers again. If this was the apocalypse, then we each had our own personal version to attend to.
Plus we were all out of hot coffee.
Tom clapped me on the shoulder. “Nice meeting you, Robbie.”
“Yeah, man. You too. I hope your kids are okay.”
“Me too. I…”
He trailed off, unable to finish the sentence. His throat bobbed, and his eyes glistened.
“Keep in touch,” I offered. “Let me know if I can do anything to help.”
“Thanks. I appreciate that. And I will. See you.”
“Yeah, man. See you around.”
I went back inside our building. It was very quiet, and the stairwell seemed spookier than before. I took a deep breath. My stomach grumbled, and I thought about getting something to eat—end of the world or not.
I saw Tom Salvo twice after that. The first time, it was only briefly. The second time I saw him again, he was dead.
CHAPTER FOUR
On my way back up the stairs, I decided to check and see if Russ was home. Sure, he should have left for work already, but there was a chance he’d decided not to after seeing what was going on outside. If so, maybe he could offer an explanation for what was happening. Some small part of me still held out hope that this was just some sort of freak eclipse. My stomach rumbled again, but I figured it could wait a little bit longer.
I passed our door and went up one more flight of steps. Russ’s apartment was quiet. I rapped on the door and waited. There was no answer and no movement from inside, so I knocked again. When there was still no answer, I went back downstairs.
Christy was still huddled on the couch with her feet curled up under her. When I came in, she looked up at me and I could tell she’d been crying.
“Did you find out anything?”
“No,” I said, and sat down beside her. The couch springs squeaked. “No one knows what the hell is going on. Everybody has theories, and some of them are pretty wild—aliens, the Rapture, shit like that—but nobody knows for sure what’s happened.”
“What did you see?”
I shrugged. “The same thing we can see from the window. Darkness. The only difference is that there’s more of it outside. You ever watch Superman cartoons when you were a kid?”
“Yeah.”
“Remember Kandor?”
“The giant ape with Superman’s powers?”
“No, that wasn’t Kandor. I can’t remember what his name was.”
“Gigantor?”
“No, that wasn’t it. Doesn’t matter anyway. Whatever his name was, that ape was a lame-ass villain. Kandor was that miniature city in a bottle that Superman kept in his Fortress of Solitude.”
Christy nodded. “Oh, yeah. I remember that now.”
“Well, that’s how it felt outside. Like Walden’s been stuck inside a bottle and somebody turned the lights out on us.”
She rubbed her arms and shivered. “It’s chilly in here.”
“Yeah, it is. I could use some coffee. Some guy down on the street gave me a cup, but I could use more. I wish the power was on.”
“We have that little jar of instant that my mom brought over before we got the coffee maker, but I don’t know how we’d heat the water.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “Maybe a little later. Bad as I need it, I hate drinking cold coffee.”
Christy got up and pulled on a pair of sweatpants. When she returned to the living room, she draped a blanket over her shoulders and sat back down again. She fired up the bong, and we smoked for a while. Then I told her about everything I’d learned, the people I’d met, and Dez’s bizarre behavior. While we talked, the noise out on the street increased, as more people woke up and discovered what was going on.
“Did any of the other people say what they were going to do?”
“A few,” I said. “Some of them were talking about leaving, trying to get to one of the other towns and see if they had power or knew what was going on. Some of the others were just going to stay put. I think that’s what we should do, too. Just sit tight and wait.”
“Wait for what?”
“I don’t know. For the utilities to come back on, at least. I mean, we don’t really know anything at this point, right? We don’t know if it’s safe to leave or not.”
“We should go to my mom’s place. Maybe her power is still on. Maybe the news is saying something.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea, hon. I know you’re worried about her, but she’d want you to stay safe, and I think we have a better chance of keeping you that way if we stay here.”
“You really think something terrible has happened?”
“Maybe. I thought it was an eclipse, but they don’t normally last this long. I’m not saying it was something bad for sure, but let’s say it was indeed some kind of terrorist attack or natural disaster. Maybe the darkness is some kind of chemical cloud or something, or a volcanic plume. If we go into it, we could get sick.”
“Do you think that’s what happened? Al Qaeda? The Sons of the Constitution? They haven’t done anything since they killed all those people on that reality show. Oh God, what if it’s them?”
“I just said that I wasn’t saying that for sure, Christy. But whatever it is, we have to assume it’s dangerous. All the utilities are gone, and people are scared. That leads to panic, and if p
eople are freaking the fuck out, the last place we want to be is on the road. So let’s just chill out and wait to see what happens. Help might show up. And if not, in a few hours, we’ll figure out what to do next. Okay?”
“Okay.” She pouted.
I headed into the kitchen and decided to make us both something to eat. I didn’t want to open the refrigerator door and let the cold air out, because there was no telling how long the power would be out and I didn’t want our food to go bad, so I settled on some dried fruit and a box of Cheerios from the cupboard. I mixed them together into cereal bowls for each of us and carried them back into the living room.
“We’ll have to eat them without milk,” I said. “Sorry.”
“That’s okay.”
Christy’s dejected tone was gone. It felt good to see her smile again. It was a little victory, but an important one for me. In truth, I was starting to get a little scared. As males, we’re sort of genetically programmed to protect our significant others. When we don’t succeed, it’s a terrible feeling. You feel helpless and not worthy of their love, even if they don’t feel that way about you themselves. I wanted Christy to be safe, but I didn’t know what I was protecting her from or how to do it. I think it was the not knowing that was the worst. If I’d just known what was going on and what we were dealing with, then I could have handled it. I could have done whatever I needed to for us. But not knowing, there wasn’t really any way to prepare. All I could do was try to keep Christy happy and content. Just keep her mind off things and hope that the situation would soon pass.
But it didn’t pass.
We were crunching away on our breakfast when somebody knocked on the door. The rapping sound was very loud, and we both jumped a little. I spilled a few Cheerios on the couch.
“Stay here,” I told her, and set my bowl on the coffee table.
Christy frowned. Her eyebrows knitted together the way they did when she was scared or nervous. I paused, reached out with my finger and brushed a piece of cereal from the corner of her mouth. That made her smile.
The knock came again as I crossed the room. It was more insistent this time. I heard a muffled voice calling my name. Whoever it was, they sounded excited. I peeked through the peephole and saw Russ’s magnified face staring back at me. I opened the door.
His face was red. “Oh, thank Christ you’re home. You guys been outside yet?”
“Yeah, I went out earlier.” I opened the door the rest of the way. “Come on in, man.”
“Thanks.”
Russ looked like something the cat had mauled, eaten, spit up, eaten again, crapped out, and then dragged in. His thinning hair was sticking up in wild, greasy corkscrews, and his eyes were bleary and blood-shot. Salt-and-pepper stubble covered his cheeks. His jeans were dirty, and there was a big yellow mustard stain on his white T-shirt. His shoes were untied. Worst of all was the smell coming out his pores—stale sweat and alcohol. Even though I tried to hide it, he must have noticed my reaction because he apologized right away.
“Sorry. I tied one on last night and overslept. I know I probably look like shit. Woke up with one hell of a hangover. How’s your plumbing? I wanted to take a shower, but mine’s not working.”
“Nothing is working,” I said. “All the utilities are out.”
“Shit. I figured that might be it. Was hoping maybe I was wrong, though. I noticed the phone was out when I tried to call off work. And then…well, I guess you looked outside too, right?”
“Yeah.” I nodded. “We saw it. Christy’s pretty freaked out. To be honest, I’m getting that way myself. At first I thought maybe it was an eclipse or something. Now I don’t know what the hell is going on.”
“It’s not an eclipse,” Russ confirmed, “or any other astronomical event that I can think of. There are a few things that would account for something like this, but I’d know if they were supposed to be occurring—and they’re not. So unless the sun suddenly burned out…” Smiling, he shrugged. “Well, if that happened, we wouldn’t be standing here talking about it, would we? My point is, we have to look somewhere other than the sky for the answer.”
“We can’t see the sky anyway.”
“No, I guess we can’t.”
“Well,” I said, “have a seat. I’d offer you some coffee, but all we have is that instant crap. There’s cereal if you want some.”
“That’s okay. What I need is some hair of the dog.”
I grinned. “What were you drinking last night?”
“Cheap tequila.”
“We’ve got that, too. And a little bit of bud.”
“Budweiser?”
“No, weed.”
Russ nodded. “Maybe in a bit.”
He joined Christy and me in the living room, and we filled him in on what we’d learned. Russ asked if we had any aspirin, and Christy gave him two. He swallowed them dry, grimacing as they slid down his throat. After a while, we tried the radio again, but there were still no broadcasts. The commotion down on the street had lessened somewhat, as people either returned to their homes or got the hell out of Dodge. The candles on the coffee table sputtered as the flames reached the bottoms of the wicks, and I replaced them with fresh ones.
“If this goes on too long,” Christy said, “we’ll run out of candles.”
“If this goes on too long,” Russ replied, “we’re going to run out of a lot of things. You guys use your toilets yet?”
I tried not to chuckle. “Why?”
“Conserve water. Unless they get the pipes working, that might be all you got.”
“I think that’s a little far-fetched,” I said. “Whatever this is, it’s not going to go on that long. If it’s really bad, sure, it might be a few days. But even then, there’s plenty of bottled water at the stores.”
Christy made a gagging noise. “I’m not drinking out of the toilet. That’s gross.”
Before Russ could respond, the fire siren croaked to life. I say croaked because it’s old and slow, and it has to build itself up before you can really hear it. At first, all you hear is this choppy, staccato grumble. Then it turns into a low whine before it finally starts to wail. Our volunteer fire department always needs money, and they hold a lot of fundraisers, but so far, they hadn’t invested those funds into a new siren. At least we had a fire department, though. We didn’t have an ambulance corps or a police force and contracted out to other towns for both. Even if we’d had our own police department, I don’t guess it would have mattered. Not now, with everything that’s happened. If we’d had cops running around, people would have just started dying sooner.
The siren built to its crescendo and didn’t stop. The shrill, bleating wail drowned out the noise from the street. All three of us rushed to the window and looked toward the firehouse, but we couldn’t see the building. It was too dark. The people on the sidewalks were gazing in that direction, too. There weren’t many cars left on the street, but the ones that were pulled over to the curb as a fire truck cruised slowly by. Its lights rotated, throwing red and blue flashes against the buildings. The interior light was on inside the cab. I caught a glimpse of the driver. He seemed haggard and scared. A man sat perched on top of the truck, holding a battery-powered bullhorn to his mouth.
“WE ARE UNDER A STATE OF EMERGENCY. PLEASE REMAIN CALM. THE SITUATION IS FLUID BUT UNDER CONTROL. AGAIN, WE ASK THAT YOU PLEASE REMAIN CALM. ALL RESIDENTS OF WALDEN ARE ASKED TO ASSEMBLE AT THE FIREHOUSE IN HALF AN HOUR. REFRESHMENTS WILL BE PROVIDED.”
That last part seemed bizarre and comedic, and I chuckled. If you wanted people to turn out for your event, even during the end of the world, then you had to make sure that refreshments were provided. I wondered if they’d be holding a raffle as well.
The people on the street watched the fire truck roll by. Some of them shouted questions at the man with the bullhorn, but he simply repeated the message. Then the truck made a left turn, and the siren sounded again.
Christy, Russ, and I sat back down again. Christy clutched my ha
nd hard enough to make my fingers grate together. We listened to the siren until it faded.
“You heard what he said, Robbie,” Christy whispered. “A state of emergency.”
“Yeah.” I nodded. “I guess we should head for the firehouse and see what’s going on.”
Russ stood. “Before we do, if you don’t mind and you’re still offering, I’ll take a shot of that tequila.”
I glanced at Christy and then back at Russ.
“Hell,” I said, shrugging, “maybe we should all do a shot.”
I poured three shots, and we downed them in silence, not offering a phony “cheers” because there was nothing to be cheery about. I grimaced as the tequila hit the back of my throat. It sat in my stomach like acidic sludge. I burped, cringing at the aftertaste. Russ helped himself to a second shot.
“Thanks,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
“No problem, dude.”
While I put the shot glasses in the sink, Christy reached for the bong. Her hands were shaking as she fired it up.
So were mine.
CHAPTER FIVE
Russ grabbed a flashlight from his apartment, and Christy and I both had ours as well. We walked down the stairs and out into the dark street, and things seemed even weirder than before. It was midmorning, and the sun certainly should have been up. Instead, the sky seemed darker than ever. It made me wonder whether this was how those people in Alaska felt. You know, the ones who live where it’s nighttime for a month out of the year? If it was anything like this, then it must have sucked balls.
Cranston shuffled out of his apartment, blinking like a sleepy lizard, and joined us. It turned out that he’d heard the siren, too. The noise had woken him. Cranston was our downstairs neighbor. He was in his early sixties—an ex-hippie and lifelong champion of liberal ideals. He played guitar and practiced transcendental meditation. He was a decent neighbor. Didn’t bother us. Was always friendly. His guitar strumming got to be a little too much sometimes, but Christy and I didn’t mind. When it annoyed us, we just turned the stereo or the television up a little louder and drowned out the noise.