Nightfall

by John Inman

  At that moment a loud crash startled him so that he leaped right out of the chair, boner and all.

  Spinning around, seeking the source of the sound with wide frightened eyes, he spotted a smear of dirt on the living room window that hadn’t been there before. He stepped toward it and, with shaking fingers, touched the pane. Was it his imagination, or was the glass still vibrating?

  He pressed his forehead to the window and tried to look down at the ground outside, but it was too dark to see anything.

  Still barefoot and wearing his pajamas, Ned opened his front door and peeked outside. Taking a deep breath to calm himself, he stepped out onto his tiny front landing. Unable to see anything from where he stood, he descended the single step and walked onto the lawn so he could tiptoe toward his besmeared window. The night air was freezing. He hissed in surprise when his bare feet hit the cold, dewy grass.

  Leaning over the short hedge that lined the front of the building, he peered down into the shadows below his window and saw a turtledove lying in the dirt. The dove’s feathers were ruffled, its neck twisted into an impossible angle. It had flown into the glass, confused by the strange murkiness, maybe, drawn to the light inside. When it struck the window, it must have broken its neck. The dove was dead.

  Ned emitted a quiet groan. Poor bird. He lifted his gaze to the sky and saw… nothing. Peering at the heavens was like staring at the ceiling of a pitch-black room. What stars were there, or at least had always been there, were lost behind the haze-filled darkness. The rising moon, no doubt paler than usual but still visible, he hoped, was hidden by the office building on the adjacent lot. He gazed along the front of his own building, first left, then right. As usual, at this late hour, his was the only apartment window lit.

  Yet even through the blinding darkness, Ned could hear the birds overhead, endlessly circling somewhere up there in the lightless night where his eyes couldn’t descry them. He could make out the muted roar of thousands of beating wings and the cries of an endless eddy of lost creatures, crying out in frustration, excitement, or anger—whatever the hell it was.

  Ned shivered. As much from fear as from the cold. His feet were starting to feel like ice. After a final pitying glance at the poor dead dove, he hurried through the wet grass toward his front door. Before he reached it, another crash made him jump. A second bird had flown into his window! It tumbled to the ground, wings flapping, squawking up a storm. This collision was louder than the first. The bird was bigger. It sounded like a seagull. It was a wonder it hadn’t broken the glass!

  Ned leaned over the hedge again and spotted the white bird flopping around on the bare dirt between the hedge and the foundation of the building. Suddenly, as if shot from a cannon, the bird catapulted itself into the air, barely missing Ned’s head. It soared off into the dark with a furious cry. By the time it was gone, Ned’s heart was pounding like a tom-tom, and he was clutching his chest like he was about to faint. Christ, it had really given him a scare! Well, at least the seagull wasn’t hurt. Not too badly at any rate.

  Ned stood in the freezing air, wondering what would happen next. But there was only the continuous screeching and muffled wingbeats of the birds wheeling overhead. And the cold. He gave himself a shake and rushed back inside before something else did happen. Once through his front door, the first thing he did was turn out his living room lamps so no more birds would be drawn to the light. He quickly closed his door behind him to block out the cold. Then he flicked the dead bolt to lock out the night.

  He squinted through the darkness to the clock on the bookshelf. It was almost time to leave. Humming a tuneless melody to calm his frazzled nerves, he began pulling on his clothes in the dark, snatching them off the bed where he’d laid them out earlier. Grabbing an extra coat for Joe (he remembered!), he then rushed back through the front door and diligently locked up behind himself. Still a little rattled and on unsteady legs, he took off at a brisk clip for the park.

  Boy, the air was really cold now. And the darkness was as deep as Ned had ever seen it. It swallowed everything. Thank God for streetlights, although even they seemed to shimmer weakly over his head, barely offering any light at all. There wouldn’t be any streetlights in the park, though. It was a good thing he had the trails memorized. A crease furrowed his forehead when he thought of feeling his way through the trees in the dark, but he dredged up thoughts of Joe again, and that gave him the courage to swallow his fear and keep going. In his eagerness to see Joe, he walked faster.

  Traffic had died down. After all, it would soon be one in the morning. If it hadn’t been for the shrieking birds, circling somewhere in the gloom above his head, the night would have been as still as death.

  And with that uneasy thought of mortality, Ned wondered about the poor dead bird that had crashed into his living room window. Did it have young ones sitting in a nest somewhere, starving, waiting in vain for food that would never come? He hoped not. The thought bothered him, so he shot a heartfelt prayer skyward to a God he wasn’t sure he believed in, pleading for it not to be so.

  After that short, fleeting prayer, Ned turned his thoughts back to Joe. Desperate to see him now and already tired of being alone in this damned darkness, he left the openness of the park’s great sloping lawn and stepped onto the first pitch-black trail leading down through the canyon.

  Total darkness swallowed him up in a heartbeat. Hurrying dead center along the pathway to avoid the menacing shadows that reached out for him on either side, hiding God knows what, Ned hugged the extra jacket to his chest, as much to keep himself warm as to keep it safe for Joe.

  It was only then, once he left the streetlights and the scattered ricocheting headlights of passing automobiles far behind, that Ned realized the moon had completely disappeared. It had to be up there somewhere, but not even a vestige of its glow could be seen. The red fog enveloping the planet had swallowed it completely, leaving those parts of the city that were bereft of artificial light, such as this spot he was now on, steeped in cheerless, impenetrable shadow. Standing only yards into the trail, tucked under the overhanging pines, Ned held his hand up to his face, flexed his fingers, and saw… zilch. Always before, he could navigate by the light of moon and stars, or by the distant glitter of the city skyline, but with them gone, he was blind. It was like being rudderless and lost on a vast, wallowing sea of black.

  A shiver shot up his spine, and for the first time Ned wondered why he hadn’t brought a flashlight. Jesus, he could be so stupid sometimes. Should he go back and get it? No. What if Joe got off work even a few minutes early and rushed down the trail to meet him, only to find Ned wasn’t there waiting for him?

  That thought brought courage and determination to Ned. Although the shadows were relentless and terrifying, he straightened his shoulders and plodded on. He moved deeper into the trees, placing every footstep carefully on the invisible path. The park’s trails were so familiar he somehow knew where he was by the bumps in the ground beneath his feet and the tilt of the hillsides he traveled across. Even the passing scents of honeysuckle and loam were like a road map for Ned. He thought back to all those many nights he had passed this way bathed in moonlight. Concentrating on not letting himself get lost now that the moonlight was gone helped control his fear of the dark. He was able to tamp it down into a place deep inside himself where he could keep it at bay, at least for a while. With that fear out of the way, he could concentrate on more important things—like a smiling Joe Chase waiting for him somewhere up ahead.

  For the first time since he’d left the apartment, Ned managed his own feeble smile. The darkness still frightened him, of course. But the promise of Joe made the fright bearable. Joe was worth a little fear. Joe was worth whatever it took.

  Sucking in a quiet breath of determination, Ned plodded on. Like a whisper, he passed over the lightless, rutted path, moving deeper and deeper into the trees. Into the darkness. Here, the air was tainted with the stench of at least one pissed-off skunk. Ned hoped to God he wouldn’t ru
n into it.

  As he drew farther into the shadows, mixed in with the screaming of the ever-circling birds, he began to hear the cries of other beasts. Furious wailings, maniacal screams, and howls. Barks, yowls, yips. Horror movie stuff. They sent goose bumps skittering along the back of Ned’s neck.

  What frightened him even more was the knowledge that the sounds came from the zoo! What was happening there? Why were the animals making all that racket? What in the world had angered them so?

  Suddenly scared more for Joe than for himself, Ned increased his pace along the invisible path. He hurried, his hands splayed out in front of him in case a low-hanging branch should suddenly reach down to whack him in the face. The eerie, mind-numbing darkness no longer frightened him.

  It was Joe he feared for now. Only Joe.

  More unnerved by the howls and cries than the blinding dark, he slapped his hands over his ears and plodded on.

  IT HAD been the most bizarre night at work Joe could ever remember.

  On any other night of the year, he was a groundsman. A gardener. That’s all he did. That’s all the powers that be expected of him. He tended the foliage that decorated the zoo grounds: replanting, pruning, fertilizing, keeping the proper moisture levels in San Diego’s desert soil to best nourish each individual species of flora. After all, some of the zoo’s ferns and trees and flowering plants were just as rare and precious as the animals on display. And like the animals, they needed constant care and knowledgeable tending. What Joe did not know about their needs, the botanists who supervised the work did.

  The last few nights, as Joe had mentioned to Ned, the grounds crew had spent their shifts planting young palm trees in and around the gorilla enclosures.

  Tonight they were supposed to begin pruning the foliage and cleaning the dead leaves out of the pools in the Amazon enclosure. They used cherry pickers to reach the pools with their long rakes and shears and cleaning nets because the crocodiles and caimans that inhabited the enclosure were always hungry and not exactly friendly. To a croc, apparently, a gardener was a perfectly acceptable side dish to the usual fare the keepers tossed his way.

  But instead of Joe and his workmates being trucked to the Amazon arena as expected, they found themselves doing work they never imagined would fall to them.

  Joe had known something was wrong as soon as he clocked in. There were animal tenders present in the botanical shed whom the groundskeepers usually never saw. The tenders always worked during the daylight hours, not at night when the zoo was closed. Also present was the director of the San Diego Zoo’s overall operation, Mr. Daily. The head honcho himself. And Joe couldn’t help but notice he looked fairly anxious.

  As if all that wasn’t bizarre enough, the behavior of the animals was even stranger.

  Before Joe entered the zoo grounds, he had heard them. Every beast and bird present seemed to be crying out in frustration. The lions fought in their enclosure, their angry growls a terrifying thing to hear. Elephants trumpeted furiously and rocked their great bodies against the iron fences that penned them in, systematically seeking weaknesses in the structure. The fences groaned and sang their own song of anguish, popping and snapping as rusted rivets twisted in their sockets. By the sound they were making, Joe was amazed the fences were holding at all.

  Gators and crocs in the reptile pools were grumbling and bellowing, twisting and thrashing in the water, fighting each other, tearing at the plants in their enclosures, and furiously slashing their great tails against the moat walls. In the paddock by the moving sidewalks leading up the hill from one of the many canyons that peppered the zoo grounds, antelopes and okapi were stampeding in an endless circle, mimicking the birds in the sky. Their frantic, thunderous hoofbeats raised a thick cloud of dust that blended with the red haze and limited vision even more than it already was.

  Toucans railed in their aviaries, banging their huge beaks against the wire mesh, creating an incredible racket all on their own. Their great mouths agape in fury, hippos in the pond were charging at the underwater Plexiglas wall that separated the beasts from the viewing public, as if attempting to crash their way through. Keepers were already there, trying to turn them with long poles, perplexed that the massive creatures should suddenly be venting their fury on the glass wall when always before they had ignored it completely. A young hippo, born only six months earlier, had already fallen victim to the onslaught, inadvertently crushed to death by its own mother in the turmoil.

  Zoo-wide, in enclosure after enclosure, the animals were flinging themselves at their cage walls or attacking each other in a murderous rage. The big cats were the worst, fighting and clawing. Several young cubs had been accidentally destroyed, and one of the two mature black panthers had fallen victim to the fury. She now lay dead in the cage, her bloodied body being devoured by the creature that killed her, her mate of many years.

  Even the silverback gorilla, who had been so placid and patient the night before when Joe and the grounds crew worked in his enclosure planting the young palms, was running around uprooting the foliage and pounding his chest in threat displays, while the females cowered inside a man-made cave with their young clutched protectively to their breasts.

  Joe couldn’t believe what was happening. The whole zoo was going crazy. Between the cacophonous birds in their cages and the howling creatures penned on the ground, the noise was almost unbearable.

  Ordinarily at night, the animals were left to enjoy the seclusion of darkness, just one more way the zoo had found to afford them a stress-free existence—as stress free as a life of captivity can be, at least. But tonight the floodlights were lit, illuminating the zoo’s entire hundred-acre compound and every single creature residing inside it. Still, the red haze that had fallen over the city had weakened the effect of the floodlights considerably. What should have been a blazing, shadowless blanket of white light, exposing the enclosures and the beasts within in sharp relief, was reduced to a murky, vermilion pall, which if anything appeared to infuriate the animals even more than the brightest lights.

  Because of all this wanton destruction perpetrated by the animals themselves, and since the animal tenders couldn’t be expected to work twenty-four-hour shifts, the grounds crew had been called in to help stem the fury. They hoped to do this by simply feeding the creatures. It was really no more complicated than that. Yet it was still a massive chore. The grounds crew’s usual agenda of tending the 700,000 exotic plants on the zoo grounds was for this one night put on hold while they fed extra rations to the 3,500 animals, representing 650 species and subspecies, held captive on the premises. All in the hope of stopping them from killing each other, or for the creatures held in solitary confinement, to prevent them from beating themselves to death on their cage walls.

  A few of the usual tenders were there as well, voluntarily pulling a double shift. They looked exhausted and worried sick about the animals in their charge. Joe knew the zoo’s high muckety-mucks must be desperate, or they would never have allowed a bunch of gardeners to tend the very expensive beasts in their care.

  Joe stood staring into a hand wagon filled with large chunks of bone and gristle. Horse meat, he figured, although he wasn’t sure. It seemed he had drawn the big cats to feed. He wasn’t too thrilled about it either, thinking he’d have been far happier feeding the fucking ducks. Hard to get mauled to death by a duck. He was especially concerned since the big cats had worked themselves into such a savage frenzy, roaring and charging the fences, attacking each other in that strange murderous madness that had been brought about by the red haze. Joe couldn’t imagine why it would infuriate them so, but it clearly did.

  Happily, the task of feeding the rampaging carnivores was not assigned to Joe alone. The head keeper of the cats, a zoologist with a master’s degree and about two decades’ worth of experience tending these beautiful but extremely dangerous creatures, was there to walk Joe through it and make sure Joe didn’t inadvertently feed himself to the cats as well. Or so his new boss had told him with
a wink. Joe’s response had been a sardonic “Har, har.” But he wasn’t smiling when he said it.

  Most of Joe’s night shift was spent standing around nervously waiting while the experts coaxed and coerced the big cats into their secondary enclosures so the extra rations could be introduced to their primary cages. The San Diego Zoo boasted dozens of the great predators. Lions, tigers, black panthers, jaguars, snow and clouded leopards, pumas, lynx, ocelots, bobcats. The list was endless. And on this night, each and every one of the beasts had worked itself into a lethal, raging fury.

  Once the enclosures were cleared, the keepers turned to Joe and a couple of his cronies from the grounds crew for the grunt work. With shovels, pitchforks, and bare hands, they transferred the huge cuts of meat from the hand wagon into the cages. While they worked, the big cats leered at them through the wire mesh of their temporary holding cells, eyes wild with anger, great fangs exposed, claws working. Time and again they flung themselves at the wire trying to get at the workers. Their aggressive displays were so heart-stoppingly insane, even the seasoned animal handlers were unnerved. His shift had barely begun before Joe knew he would never look at these creatures the same way again. In fact, he was pretty sure they would scare the crap out of him for the rest of his frigging life. He also developed an immediate appreciation for the plants in his care. At least the plants didn’t try to eat him.

  The zoologist supervising the work looked extremely relieved when Joe and his cohorts finally finished feeding the four Bengal tigers in his care. He backed away from their vast enclosure, sweating bullets, watching in amazement as the four creatures fought and slashed at each other, trying to claim their fair share of the meat.

  “This is fucking nuts,” Joe heard the man mumble as he turned away, shaking his head in disbelief.