Nightwalk

by D. Nathan Hilliard

  “What was that?” I frowned at the diminishing glow

  “That, Mr. Garrett,” our escort turned and motioned us forward again, “was what I believe is colloquially known as ‘a dud.’ The mechanism was slightly too advanced for these conditions. I suggest we move onward while they ponder their error.”

  A dud? What the hell kind of dud made an explosion like that? And who were “they”?

  But I didn’t get much of a chance to mull it over because in the next couple of seconds Casey shouted and pointed ahead.

  “Mark! Mark, are you seeing this?!”

  I saw it.

  As we approached the crest of the bridge, the beginnings of a flashing red and blue glow became visible at the asphalt horizon. They were the color of police lights…of civilization…of salvation…and it was a pretty safe bet they were parked at the bottom of the other side of the overpass.

  “We made it!” she yelled, and took off running ahead. “Mark! We made it! Let’s see if it’s anybody I know!”

  Oh shit.

  “Casey!” I hollered after her. This was a big overpass, and a lot of distance remained between us and the still invisible lights.

  “Fear not, Mr. Garrett,” the man in white chuckled. “The girl is still under my protection. It’s obvious you went to a great deal of trouble to get her this far, so I shall honor that and keep her safe. But I’m afraid she is about to be in for a painful lesson in reality.”

  “Painful lesson?” I watched the running girl with trepidation. “What kind of painful lesson?”

  “One she’s truly not ready to absorb. But since you seem serious about assuming some form of fatherhood in regards to this youngster, I shall pass it on to you for her benefit when you think she’s ready to hear it. ”

  “Yeah?” I watched Casey’s figure slow to stop and stand staring at the crest of the bridge. “What is it?”

  He smiled thinly at her still silhouette ahead of us. I sensed something cruel in that smile, and really itched to part ways with this guy as soon as possible. Politely, of course.

  “The lesson,” he intoned, “is simply this…reality may or may not be what you think it is, but it is never concerned with what you think it should be. I have seen the inability to understand that distinction destroy more fools, especially young ones, than you can possibly imagine.”

  “Right,” I muttered, still looking at Casey.

  Something was wrong.

  She just stood there, not waving, or yelling, or doing anything at all. Her arms had fallen limp to her sides, and I swear it looked like she stopped breathing. Even as I watched, the lantern slipped from her fingers to land upright on the pavement below.

  “Casey?”

  I started forward, now truly alarmed at her behavior. This was not the posture of someone on the verge of rescue.

  “Casey? What is it? What’s the ma…”

  I came to a halt beside her, stunned into silence by the scene before me.

  We must have come to the edge of the event, because the police cars still had power. The houses around them were still dark, but this didn’t surprise me. You can’t knock out part of a power grid without affecting the areas around it. Yet the cars themselves worked, and they were lined up across the road at the bottom of the bridge, with a fire truck providing much of the barricade’s length in the middle.

  But it was the bodies littering the bridge between us and those cars that drew our horrified gaze.

  They were all shapes and sizes…male, female, young and old…and most dressed in whatever they wore as nightclothes. They lay scattered like broken toys along the entire length. Their blood ran down the bridge from beneath their bodies, stretching toward the distant line of flashing lights.

  The overpass hadn’t been an escape route after all. It had been a killing field.

  And this time the monsters were our own.

  “WHY!?”

  Casey’s shriek startled me out of my shock induced trance.

  “WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS!?” she screamed at the distant cars. “YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO DO THINGS LIKE THIS!”

  “Casey…” I laid a hand on her shoulder to draw her back, painfully aware of our exposed position.

  “THEY NEEDED YOU AND YOU KILLED THEM! WHY!?”

  “Casey, shhh…” I briefly debated pulling her back from the scene.

  “WHY, GODDAMMIT!?”

  “Casey!”

  “Be at ease, Mr. Garrett,” I heard the man in white say as he approached from behind us. “They can neither see nor hear her.”

  Which came as some small relief, although things were far from alright. Casey had expected that line of policemen to be sanctuary. She thought she had finally reached the people she could count on…and then they went and pulled this.

  Mark,” she turned to me, shaking her head in agonized negation, “This can’t be right. I know those guys! Why would they do this?”

  I looked to our escort, and with a shrug he pulled a small glass sphere from the pocket of his coat. Tiny bits of lightning crackled in the crystal orb. He nodded for us to follow, then waved his hand over the sphere as we set out down the bridge.

  For the rest of the walk, we listened to a voice identifying itself as being from Homeland Security declare a state of emergency and order local police to set up a perimeter at coordinates provided for them. They were told a biological weapon had been deployed by unknown forces, causing hallucinations, insanity, and then later death.

  As we threaded our way through our dead neighbors, we listened to the voice state that the victims were wildly contagious, and then ordered the police to shoot to kill before allowing them anywhere near. They were gravely informed that until the army arrived, they were all that stood between a horrific plague, and six million people. They absolutely could not afford to fail.

  And of course these people came over the bridge in their nightclothes, screaming of monsters.

  “But,” Casey looked from me to our escort, “that’s a lie! Isn’t it? We’re not sick. These people weren’t sick…were they?!”

  The man in white tossed the ball into the air, caught it, then placed it back into his pocket with a crooked half smirk.

  “No, Miss Stafford. They were not sick.”

  Once again, even though we were moving slowly, we somehow covered the distance faster than we should have. We had reached the barricade. Our escort gestured at a space between two of the cars where he obviously intended us to pass through.

  “We have arrived,” he announced, “and the time has come for our parting of ways. It has been a pleasure, but my services may soon be needed elsewhere.”

  “Wait,” I blinked in surprise. “Others?”

  “Yes, Mr. Garrett. I believe I mentioned in our previous encounter I had other errands of mercy to attend to. You are not the only person I encouraged to escape. As it so happens, I had just returned from escorting a young photography enthusiast with a very old camera across the northern overpass when you reached the Crossroads.”

  “So there was another survivor?”

  “Of course,” he laughed. “Perhaps more. Most of the people I selected have met unfortunate ends, but there are yet a few within striking range of reaching my protection. We wouldn’t want to disappoint them, would we Mr. Garrett?”

  “Oh…uh…of course not.”

  Dammit. Something about this guy still made my hair stand on end, but he was the one helping people tonight. And since the forces who normally rendered aid were murdering people instead, I didn’t know if my instincts over who qualified as good and bad guys had gone screwy, or if we had fallen so far down the rabbit hole those terms no longer mattered.

  “Excellent,” he now gave us both a huge, benevolent smile as if we were children who had pleased him. “Then allow me a minute more of your time before I send you on your way. First, please let me see the communication device you carry on your belt.”

  Wondering what he could be up to, I fished the dead cell phone from its clip
and handed it over.

  “Ah yes,” he tapped the face of my smartphone and it immediately lit up, “I have always had an affinity for electrical contrivances.”

  He swiped the screen with his finger, bringing up what appeared to be a live video. My eyes widened and I heard Casey gasp when he turned it back to face us, revealing an image of a harried looking Stella sitting at a restaurant table and scanning her laptop.

  “Mom!?” she blurted out. “Oh my God, Mom! She’s alive!?”

  We had been holding on to that hope all evening. It had been our reason for moving on, even to the point of refusing to concede how unlikely her survival really was. Now hearing the emotion in Casey’s voice told me how far she had resigned herself to her mother’s loss.

  “Yes, Miss Stafford. Exactly as you see her. She currently sits at a diner you should recognize, roughly a mile to the west of here, trying to get the latest news on what transpires here. I cannot guarantee how long she will remain, so I advise that as soon as you leave you make your way to her with all due haste.”

  That was all Casey needed to hear. I could see she ached to leave right then and there. At the same time, I couldn’t help but wonder if that hadn’t been part of the reason our escort provided the demonstration. I had a feeling multiple motivations were as natural to this guy as changing color to a chameleon.

  “Now, as for that last piece of advice I promised,” he handed the phone to Casey and faced me directly. Then he gestured at the corpse strewn bridge and continued, “As I indicated earlier, Mr. Garrett, this was not an attempt to contain a plague. What you see before you is an exercise in containing the truth. You might want to plan accordingly before rushing out and proclaiming yourself a witness to the world. Do you understand?”

  Oh yeah, I understood. It only took one look at the silent forms covering the overpass to understand what the stakes were here. Somebody somewhere was playing for keeps.

  And that somebody desperately needed to pay for this.

  But first I would have to be very, very careful.

  “I understand,” I answered quietly, my gaze still lingering on my murdered neighbors.

  “Then I shall leave you to it.” He clapped me on the back and gestured at the space between the two cars again. “Run straight through and don’t stop until you are well past these people. Take care not to touch anybody, for it would render you visible to them and I think we know what would happen next. Then make haste toward your wife, for time is still not your ally. You shall return to visibility when you reach the diner. Good luck to you both!”

  I took that as our cue to get moving.

  After a gesture from me, Casey checked to make sure the path lay clear, then bolted through the opening and toward the darkness of the street beyond. She had to make one course correction to avoid a couple of paramedics carrying thermos’s but made it to safety. Then it was my turn. I took a slightly roundabout path, taking note of the gaunt faces of the men resting behind their cars. And when I looked in those faces, I realized there were more victims tonight than I had originally understood.

  These men were dying inside.

  They had done something unspeakable because they had been lied to and thought they had no choice. Now they would have to live with it for the rest of their lives. Judging by the haunted look in their eyes, I wondered how long that would be for some of them.

  They were just another group of people I had no answers for. There seemed to be a lot of those tonight.

  I reached Casey, who waited anxiously with lantern in hand. We would still need it for a little bit longer. But now that we were alone, out of the “event” and away from the man in white, I finally started to feel safe. We would be alright.

  We simply needed to hurry.

  “Let’s go find Stella,” I urged. “She’s going to be out of her mind with worry, and I want to reach her before she tries to sneak in here and find us herself.”

  “Right,” she replied, and promptly turned to leave.

  She knew I exaggerated, but I think she had long passed the point of taking chances.

  So had I.

  But right before I fell in beside her, I turned for one last look at the scene behind me. I don’t know why. Maybe I did it to give a farewell nod to the man in white. I was relieved to be away from him, but my rational side cautioned I might be unfairly leaping to conclusions about an entity who had been nothing but helpful.

  My rational side was in for an education.

  The man in white still stood on the other side of the barricade, plainly visible across the hood of a police car. But he had changed. He had grown, and instead of the Victorian suit and top hat, he wore full ancient Egyptian regalia. He now cut a towering figure, resplendent in white robes and golden headdress, that seemed to absolutely dominate the area around him.

  But the transformation went far beyond his size and clothes.

  He had changed as well.

  Where his face had been, the headdress now surrounded a darkness blacker than all the gulfs between the stars. I swear I could feel the chill of those spaces all the way from the barricade. And the one feature visible in that awful blackness was a great fang-packed mouth that grinned out at the universe with ravenous malice.

  Right.

  I tore my gaze away from the monstrosity with a suppressed shudder. Then, acting like nothing was amiss, I laid my arm over Casey’s shoulders as we started on our last mile to safety.

  I figured she had seen enough for one night.

  ###

  We caught Stella in the parking lot, on the way out to her car.

  She probably thought she had come under attack by rabid hobos.

  I had forgotten how bruised and battered we both were. Not to mention, filthy. Combine that with the fact Casey had burst into tears and started running at the sight of her, with me limping along behind like a mad zombie henchman, and it’s truly a marvel she only screamed once.

  Then it was all we could do to get her into the car and heading west while Casey tried to bawl uncontrollably and explain things to her at the same time. I’m sure it all made perfect sense. Meanwhile, I had appropriated Stella’s smartphone and frantically used it to update my webpage to say what a wonderful time my daughter and I had while tagging along with my wife on her business trip to Dallas.

  Nope, no witnesses here.

  Casey would raise bloody hell about it later, but this was one veto of the truth I would stand by. At least for now.

  For tonight, I would simply revel in the feeling of knowing my family was safe…

  …and give thanks that none of us had been looking in the rear view mirror when the sky lit up behind us about ten minutes later.

  Epilogue

  On July 3, at 5:30 AM, a tactical nuclear device detonated in a suburb of north Houston.

  Reports indicate the attack had been the work of a splinter group of Al Qaida dedicated to avenging the death of Osama bin Laden. Homeland Security disclosed that a combination of Federal and local police intercepted the terrorists on their way to downtown Houston, and then chased them into the neighborhood of Coventry Woods. At that point the terrorists used some form of chemical or biological weapon to thwart their arrest and buy themselves time to set up and trigger their bomb.

  As nukes go, it was a tiny one…measured in mere kilotons…but the death toll was still horrific. Only the fact the neighborhoods in the area were so low density kept the immediate death toll between eight and ten thousand people. Those numbers included the brave local law enforcement officers who had set up a perimeter to try and contain the outbreak from the previous weapon.

  Those reports are all lies.

  Now I sit before my computer, with my finger hovering over a button, trying to decide whether I would be damning myself more by continuing to let the lies stand, or by setting the truth free.

  Casey thinks I should tell the truth and consequences be damned. I suppose I can’t blame her. She lost her home, her friends, and most of all, Ed in t
hat disaster. She also had a sincerely held belief in what she thought a force for good shaken. She is deeply angry, both at the loss of life and the way her friends on the local police and fire department were used and discarded. She wants justice.

  But the problem is, I’m pretty sure she isn’t the only one who wants the truth set free.

  I keep coming back to the second chance at life the man in white gave me. Why? Because I’m an established writer, a storyteller, and I come with a sizeable fanbase who would at least listen to me? He mentioned helping a young photography enthusiast who escaped before us, and three days after the event the first stories running counter to the official version surfaced…and they came with pictures.

  Unfortunately for him, in an age where photographs are routinely altered on a home computer, they were easily discounted as fakes and a certain young man discovered that during a national crisis you could be arrested for “alarming the public with false narratives.” I’m sure he was quite surprised, although an older and wiser writer could have warned him of the possibility.

  I had gone a different direction.

  Many of us writers are very good at research, and I had wasted no time. I knew where this whole thing started. Ground zero had been at the home of a Dr. Chandra who taught at Rice University.

  His name vanished within hours of my finding it on the university website, but I had acquired the leads I needed and the sudden scrubbing only told me I needed to move fast. Fortunately, the people erasing Chandra didn’t know they were in a race with somebody already hot on their trail. But now that I knew they were out there, I adapted accordingly. Instead of continuing with more searches for documents that could vanish any second, I changed tactics and hunted down several of Chandra’s graduate students.

  I got the most pieces of the puzzle from them. A rough biography. His departure to work for JPL over a year ago. His theories of trans-dimensional dynamics. His latest diagnosis of cancer. And from one young lady who I suspect he had a very close working relationship with, I obtained a large collection of his papers, including an essay imagining a “dimensional elevator” one could ride to search for the gods themselves.