Seize the Night

by Christopher Golden

  He had to be imagining it. Deep down inside, he knew this to be true. There couldn’t be a car. It was a mirage. A hallucination. Just like the trees.

  But what if it wasn’t?

  The hum of the engine and tires grew ever closer. He limped quickly to the overpass and gazed out at the highway below. There, on the horizon, he saw headlights. It was real! Carter had no idea how the driver had managed to navigate around the assorted wreckage choking the highways, but at that moment, he didn’t care. His pulse hammered in his throat as the car drew nearer. Human beings! One, at the very least. His excitement gave way to panic. What if they were . . . bad? Carter had seen enough postapocalyptic movies and read enough dystopian fiction that visions of leather-clad punk-rock marauders filled his head. But, no. Given just how much of humanity had died off, the driver and any possible occupants couldn’t be bad. He couldn’t justify this assurance with any sound logic, but that didn’t stop him from clinging to the emotion. They had to be decent, and surely they’d be grateful to see him, as well.

  “Hello,” Carter shouted from the overpass. “Up here!”

  He realized they’d never see him from atop the overpass. While the car wasn’t speeding, it was nighttime, and the driver was probably focused on the road ahead, alert for any wreckage or obstructions in the dark. He hurried down the embankment, heading toward the road. The occupant of the car must be driving with the window down, he decided, because now he could smell them. The scent was faint but undeniable. A woman, unless he was mistaken. Although he couldn’t be sure, he suspected she was alone.

  He slid down the hillside and dashed out into the roadway. Headlights speared him. Carter raised his arms over his head and waved them enthusiastically.

  “Hello,” he called. “Stop the car! Please stop.”

  Tires squealed as the driver locked the brakes. He smelled rubber burning and caught a glimpse of the frightened woman’s face through the windshield as the car swerved to one side and spun out of control. Then, as if in slow motion, the car flipped over and slid on its roof. Metal shrieked, and so did the driver. Sparks danced in the darkness like fireflies. There was a deafening crash as the upside-down vehicle slammed into the concrete support beneath the overpass and then folded in on itself like aluminum foil.

  Carter’s heart beat once. Twice.

  The driver had stopped screaming.

  “No!” He ran toward the car, broken glass crunching beneath his feet. The stench of burned rubber and scorched metal was thick in the air, but even thicker was the smell of blood. The odor simultaneously filled him with excitement and dread, and Carter hated himself for feeling both.

  He reached the wreck, got down on his hands and knees, and peered inside. Remarkably, the driver was conscious. She was pretty, African-American, and in her mid-to-late twenties. Carter couldn’t determine much else about her because she was covered in blood. The smell of it seemed to assail him, and he reeled back, weeping.

  “Didn’t . . .” Blood trickled from her mouth as she spoke. “You . . . surprised me.”

  “I’m sorry,” he choked. “I’m so sorry. Are you okay?”

  It was a stupid question, he knew. Judging by the lacerations on her body and the position of several limbs, the young woman was anything but okay. But after all that time spent talking to inanimate objects and himself, Carter was having trouble focusing on how to talk to another person. He took a deep breath, smelled the blood, and tried again, shivering as he did.

  “My name is Carter. What’s yours?”

  “A . . . Ashley. Are you . . . really alive?”

  He nodded, unable to form enough words to lie.

  “It’s . . . nice to . . . meet you, Carter. I . . . thought I was . . .”

  “Alone,” Carter finished for her, and smiled.

  She returned the gesture and tried to nod. When she did, her expression changed to one of anguish.

  Carter’s choked laughter changed to a sob. “Don’t try to move. Just stay still. You’re going to be okay.”

  “I’m cold,” she whispered. “Will you . . . stay with me?”

  It was Carter’s turn to nod. “Of course I will. I wouldn’t leave you for anything. It’s just . . . I just . . . I thought I’d never talk to anyone ever again.”

  “Me too.” More blood trickled from Ashley’s mouth.

  “I thought you were like the trees.”

  Ashley frowned in confusion. “W-what?”

  “Never mind. It’s not important.”

  Carter studied the wreckage. He could free her easily enough. A fire-and-rescue team’s Jaws of Life had nothing on him, but if he did, she’d probably die within seconds. Mashed and mangled as she was, the twisted steel pressed so tightly against her was the only thing still keeping Ashley alive. Despite that, she probably only had minutes.

  Carter began to cry.

  “I’m sorry,” he moaned. “I didn’t mean to . . .”

  “It’s okay,” Ashley reassured him. “Tell me . . . about yourself. Talk to me . . . until . . .”

  So he did. As tears ran down his perpetually young cheeks, Carter spoke through muffled sobs. He shook with emotion while she trembled with shock. He held her hand, and it was soft and warm. They talked for a while, and then her hand turned cold, and she was gone.

  Carter was still weeping as he began to feed.

  SEPARATOR

  RIO YOUERS

  The loss was evident even ten months after the storm. Palla’s streets were cramped and stifling, thronged with restructure, with people, traffic, and noise. A note of emptiness remained, however. It resonated in the cracked walls and boarded-up windows. In the sorrowful movement of trees. Mostly, it occupied the expressions of those who called Palla home. They mustered hope in tiny increments, but the light had been drawn from their eyes. The storm had taken something from them all.

  More than three thousand confirmed fatalities across the region. Damage in excess of two billion US dollars. News footage showed Alayna moving into the Leyte Gulf, gathering strength—a Category 5 super typhoon by the time it made landfall on Samar Island. Wind speeds reached 180 miles per hour. Buildings were dismantled, blown away like handfuls of straw. Trees were uprooted, vehicles flipped. There was no safe harbor. No shelter. Aftermath footage showed miles of devastation beneath a mocking blue sky. Survivors stood amid the ruin, outnumbered by the dead. Images of loss and faithlessness. Mass graves and temporary morgues. An endless, apocalyptic landscape. World news showed the desperation, the lack of food and water, the rescue centers set up by NGOs. American networks focused on the droves of corpses; the weeping, orphaned children; and the relief efforts of the US military.

  For most, it was hell on earth. For others—the looters, scaremongers, hate groups, and businessmen—it was an opportunity.

  The music was part techno, part rock—a frenzied, metallic barrage. The walls trembled and the lights stuttered, as if the entire room were a rapidly blinking eye. The club was called Snakebite. A concrete-and-steel structure raised out of the ruins. An effort to shove Palla back on its feet, or at least its knees. Dancers pirouetted on tables or twisted their lithe bodies around poles, disrobing for pesos. Shooter girls dressed as nurses sold “antidotes” in three-ounce hypos. A huge reptile cage had been built into one wall, where the clientele took selfies with a king cobra—frantic in the cacophony, spreading its hood, banging its head against the glass.

  David Payne downed his lambanog in a single, head-swirling hit. Slammed his glass on the bar. Clutched the underside of his stool. He closed his eyes as the club revolved, feeling as if he had been thrown into some rolling barrel of sound. Equilibrium returned, though not completely. He swayed, flipped open his wallet, enticed one of the dancers with a five-hundred-peso note. She stepped toward him on knifepoint heels. Beautiful skin, green contact lenses, a shimmering blue wig. She threw one leg over him, ground her hips into his.

  “What can I get for this?” David tucked the note into her satin thong. She grin
ned and rolled her tongue over his lips. It felt warm, full, and sweet. He shook another note from his wallet and raised his eyebrows. The dancer unclipped her bandeau and it fell between them. She grabbed a bottle of lambanog from the bar, splashed it over her small breasts, and invited David to drink. He did, tasting alcohol and coconut and a dry perfume. He pulled her left nipple into his mouth, chewing lightly, feeling it swell against his tongue. She slipped from his lap, trailing long fingernails gently across his cheek, snatching the five-hundred-peso note from his hand and tucking it with the other.

  “Thank you, Mr. America.”

  “I’m Canadian.”

  She smiled and whirled away. David slouched against the bar. The club revolved again. Smeared faces, flickering lights, the cobra hammering angrily against the glass. David took a deep breath and held on. Beside him, Crisanto—his business associate—grinned and tipped the rim of his glass.

  “Welcome to the Philippines.”

  Beneath the blue wig, her hair was short enough that—when he ran his fingers through it—he could feel her scalp sweating. She kept her contact lenses in, at his request, and her eyes flashed wildly in the room’s single light. David looked into them as he hooked the backs of her ankles onto his shoulders and eased himself into her, and the assertiveness—the confidence—she had shown at Snakebite momentarily dissipated. She whimpered and arched her back. Her shoulders trembled. Then she curled herself around him. Rolled her hips evenly. Used her body like she had used her tongue at the club. Warm, full, and sweet.

  He pulled out, removed the condom, and came into the shallow of her stomach. Smeared it over her thighs and breasts, watched it dry and harden. She got out of bed, perhaps to shower, perhaps to leave, but he pulled her back and told her to stay. They lay for a while, neither touching nor speaking. Eventually, they slept. David woke a short time later, surprised to find her still there. She slept on her stomach, one arm looped beneath the pillow. Her contact lenses were on the nightstand, thin as fish scales. The sight of her slender body, the dip of her spine, her boyish haircut, got him hard again. He rolled another condom on and woke her. It was rough and quick.

  Morning light broke through a gap in the drapes. David pulled on his jeans and stepped out onto the balcony. The partially rebuilt city stretched below him, the streets quiet now, but the stall owners would soon trundle their wares to the roadside, the stores would open, the trucks and motorcycles and jeepneys would appear. Another day in Palla. Another day with Alayna in the rearview, and that emptiness slowly being filled. To the south, San Pedro and San Pablo Bay shimmered coolly, reflecting a membrane of pink light that fanned across Samar Island. The view from the other side of the hotel—looking north—was less appealing: the buckled outskirts of the city, like cracked shells, and a riot of vegetation, given space and light to flourish in. It consumed debris, plantations, probably bodies. Beyond this, like a giant patchwork stitched into the land, Tent City. Alayna had mustered formidable power in the Leyte Gulf, advancing from storm warning signal number two to number four within hours. Ninety-five percent of the city had evacuated. Most had returned to find everything gone. Tent City was the solution: temporary shelter for the tens of thousands still without homes, waiting for the government to build the bunkhouses they’d promised.

  This was where David came in. More particularly, his employers. New Reality Land Development had purchased—and begun to raze—forty hectares of tropical rain forest to the north of Palla and would construct apartment complexes, hotels, and a number of lucrative attractions. David’s role as consultant was to ensure the project ran smoothly, dealing with regulatory agencies, designers, engineers, outraged locals, eco-warriors. He would iron out the wrinkles as they appeared—something he was good at. The next three years of his life would be spent between Toronto and Palla, expanding both his résumé and his bank account. Indeed, David expected to have his own land development company by the time he turned forty-five.

  Professional and driven, he always got what he wanted.

  Almost always.

  A bead of light winked off his wedding ring, drawing his gaze from the quiet streets below. He wondered what Angie was doing. Twelve hours behind—still yesterday in Toronto—she’d be settling down for dinner, perhaps, or napping on the sofa after a long day at work. I don’t know how long we can keep trying, she’d said before he left. We need to make a decision. Their kiss had been honest and intimate, and for a long moment they’d held each other. Her fractured expression had occupied his mind the entire seventeen-hour flight to Manila.

  David wiped his eyes, looked through the balcony doors to where the dancer slept in his bed. Guilt was like the cobra at Snakebite: flexing, banging its head furiously against the glass, unable to strike.

  The city woke. The pink light on the bay turned gold.

  Crisanto sat on the hood of his car, fresh-eyed and smiling. He wore a light suit. No tie. His shoes were polished, but there was mud on the heels.

  “How’s your head?”

  “Been better,” David replied. His breakfast of apple juice and Advil had set a buzz behind his eyes, but the ache remained, like a stone wrapped in cloth. “Let’s get this done so I can go back to bed.”

  After ten, warm already, a closeness to the air that felt, to David, like the air in a crowded streetcar. They trickled north, bunched in traffic. Aromas of ginger, pandan, and fish flowed through the vents. As did the sounds: horns and hawkers blaring, vehicles rumbling, original Pinoy music thumping from various speakers and radios. The traffic thinned as they headed out of the city, passing through neighborhoods where restoration work had barely begun. There were roofless buildings, drifts of debris, notice boards littered with photographs of missing loved ones. Fewer people lined the streets and nobody sold anything. David saw an elderly lady sitting beside a pile of rubble that, presumably, used to be her home. Nearby, a pack of lank dogs nosed for scraps.

  “You know,” Crisanto said, “I can take you to someone who’ll cure that hangover in seconds.”

  “A witch doctor?”

  “Something like that,” Crisanto said. “Albularyo . . . a healer.”

  “I’ll pass; I don’t believe in any of that shit.” David plucked Advil from the inside pocket of his jacket. Popped three into his mouth and swallowed them dry. “I’ll stick to my tried and tested pharmaceuticals.”

  “North American witchcraft.”

  “We call it science.”

  Out of Palla. To the west, gulfs of open land where coconut and rice plantations once prospered. To the east, Tent City, reaching for miles, like a great white flag of surrender. The conditions were third-world, with children dressed in rags and thin fires burning. NGO vehicles twined between shelters, distributing aid.

  David looked away, first at the road ahead, then at his hands. He spun his wedding band and thought again of Angie, who’d be settling into their downy bed, encased in pillows, perhaps with a book or the TV remote.

  I want this, he’d said to her. I’m not giving up.

  His head throbbed. He pulled a clipboard from between the center console and the passenger seat, flipped pages.

  “Tell me about the woman.”

  “Dalisay Magana.” Crisanto steered around a carabao laden with firewood. “Fifty-seven years old. So the paperwork says. What’s the English word for a woman who doesn’t marry?”

  “Spinster.”

  “Yes, a spinster. She’s lived in the forest all her life. Speaks no English, only Waray.”

  “That’s fine,” David said. “You can translate.”

  Crisanto nodded. His gaze flicked from the road to the sky. He set both hands on the wheel and exhaled slowly.

  “Why the change of heart?”

  “She thought she was going to be rehoused elsewhere in the forest.” Crisanto’s eyes flickered with uncertainty, and David detected the slightest tremor to his voice. “She refuses to live in a hotel, even temporarily. She says the trees give her protection.”

&n
bsp; “They won’t protect her from a bulldozer,” David said with a dry smile. He looked at the document he’d flipped to, ran his finger along her signature. “A signed contract trumps a change of heart.”

  The asphalt gave way to a dirt road that snaked into the rain forest. Grit rattled off the chassis and doors, and now the perfumes coming through the vents were damp and green. Within a mile they came to the build zone, marked by security fencing, a billboard displaying the New Reality logo, and another depicting the architects’ vision for the site: a sprawl of modern buildings, with a grinning Caucasian family in the foreground. Crisanto parked beside the field office—a gleaming site trailer—where they signed in and donned their high-visibility vests and hard hats.

  “We walk from here,” Crisanto said.

  They moved west through the forest, away from the mechanical shriek of the harvesters. David saw their powerful yellow bodies through the trees, thinning and stripping, with forwarders collecting the trunks, like death carts gathering corpses. If there was any wildlife in this part of the forest, David neither saw nor heard it. As they moved farther from the machinery, though, the air came to life with fat bugs that tapped at his skin and buzzed. Farther still, he saw cockatoos bristling between branches, and long-tailed macaques, some foraging, others playing.

  “We’re nearly there,” Crisanto said.

  David saw the shack moments later. An assemblage of odd boards nailed together. A warped, sloping roof. There were several glassless windows screened with dirty fabric—perhaps to keep the critters out, David thought, although they’d have no problem squeezing through the gaps in the boards. Clothes were hung to dry outside, stiff and stained, and there was a basin of dirty water in which insects had drowned belly-up.