Nightfall

by John Inman

  Shown up close in the flashlight’s beam, Ned realized he had to alter his assessment of the kid a bit. He looked older than ten. Maybe twelve or so but small for his age. He had fiery red hair and more freckles than any kid should be burdened with. As if that wasn’t bad enough, he also had a birthmark, a port-wine stain as big as a silver dollar that spilled down his right cheek. In spite of all that, he was a handsome boy, and at the moment, an angry one. His blue eyes were spitting fire, and he had a tiny splatter of blood on his chin from being struck by a ricocheting shard of concrete or glass. The boy ignored it, so it apparently didn’t hurt. Or maybe he was just too mad to let a little thing like pain bother him. His hate-filled eyes swung from Ned to Joe, then back again.

  “What’s your name?” Ned demanded once more. He was still rubbing his elbow where the little brat had banged him with a rock.

  “My name’s PJ. What’s it to you?” He haughtily ignored the litany of other questions Ned had asked. Instead he took the offensive. Really offensive, Ned immediately decided, once the kid began to talk. “What are you guys, perverts?” he growled. “Like little kids, do you? This is kidnapping. I’m a minor. I’ve got rights!”

  Ned wasn’t impressed. “Your rights have been temporarily suspended. Where are your folks? Why are you out here all by yourself?”

  Oddly, something in Ned’s words must have struck a nerve. The boy’s blue eyes filled with tears. He craned his head to peer around the doorway. The kid’s gaze landed on the massive building standing at the corner of Sixth Avenue and Broadway, right behind where the police cars were parked. The structure was the Shepperton Hotel. Ned had never been inside it. The Shepperton Hotel was a little too expensive for his bank account. Actually it was a little too expensive for most people’s bank accounts. At least that’s what he’d heard.

  Ornately gothic, the twenty-story building stood stately and proud, with gargoyles peering over the rooftop. It was so big it filled up an entire city block. At the moment, Ned thought it looked lucky to be standing at all. Tall structures at either side of it—one a department store and the other a bank—had been gutted by fire and reduced to sooty black shells. The damage was visible as the hovering helicopter’s spotlight shot across the gutted buildings now and then in their sweep of the city streets below. Ned suddenly understood this was the source of the acrid stench that still hung in the air. The infernos that raged through the buildings at either side of the Shepperton must have been the red glow he and Joe had witnessed on the horizon the last couple of days. Back when they thought all of downtown was on fire.

  “Holy cow! What a mess,” Joe sputtered, peering over Ned’s shoulder and eyeing the destruction.

  “Exactly,” PJ snarled, trying yet again to squirm out of Ned’s clutches. “And my dad’s business is there. I need to get to it!”

  “Answer my question,” Ned insisted, still persistent but a little gentler. He switched on the flashlight again and pointed it down at the ground between them so they could see each other without drawing attention from the street. “What are you doing out here all by yourself?”

  The boy huffed in annoyance. A hostile stare too old for the face settled on Ned. “I’m trying to get to him! Don’t you understand? You’re holding me up. You’ll be in big trouble when my dad finds out you attacked me.”

  Ned frowned. “You were the one throwing rocks at us, remember?”

  PJ looked momentarily uncomfortable, staring down at his hands before he finally lifted his eyes back up to Ned and Joe. “Okay, fine. I sneaked away from my sitter. I’m too old for a sitter anyway. Dad said he’d be right back but that was two days ago, and I haven’t seen him since. I can’t even call him ’cause the phones don’t work.” Again the tears rose in his eyes. “I have to check and make sure he’s okay.”

  It was Joe’s turn to frown. “Your sitter’s probably freaking out wondering where you are.”

  PJ didn’t look impressed. “Yeah, well, she was freaking out anyway because of the dark. A little more freaking out won’t hurt her.”

  “Tough guy,” Ned snarled.

  The boy ignored him, making another halfhearted attempt to escape. Both Joe and Ned pushed him back into the recesses of the vestibule, once again impatiently shielding the kid’s body with theirs from any stray bullets that might come swooping in.

  “Your dad has a shop in the Shepperton?” Joe asked.

  “My dad is the Shepperton. He owns the hotel. That’s my name too. PJ Shepperton. The Third.”

  Ned bit back a laugh. “And how do you think your dad is going to feel about you running around in the middle of a gunfight chucking rocks, PJ Shepperton the Third?”

  “He’d want me with him. I know he would!” PJ narrowed his eyes as if assessing the two men in front of him, seeking a weakness, maybe, seeking a way out of the predicament he was in. “Look. Dad came downtown when the fires started. He was afraid his hotel might burn down.” A spark of desperation lit the boy’s eyes. “You have to let me go! I need to find out why he hasn’t come home. I need to find out if he’s okay.”

  Ned studied the fear in the boy’s eyes, then turned to Joe. They shared a glance before Ned directed his gaze at the hotel down the street. “The hotel looks safe enough. Maybe your dad is trapped inside because of all the fighting.”

  Joe still watched the boy. “Where’s your mom?” he asked. “Is she sitting at home wondering where you are too?”

  PJ tensed. The wine-stain birthmark on his cheek flared red with anger. “I don’t have a mom. I never did. She died a long time ago. All right? Can I go now?”

  “No,” Ned said. “You’re not going anywhere. Stop asking.”

  The boy sprang up, fighting to reach the sidewalk before they could stop him. Joe grabbed his ankle, Ned grabbed his arm. Pretty soon even PJ knew he was outmuscled.

  Furious, he cried, “You can’t hold me like this!”

  “No,” Ned said, suddenly seeing the only solution to the problem and hoping Joe would be willing to see it too. “We can’t. But what we can do is try to get you safely to your dad.”

  He turned to Joe. “Can’t we?”

  JOE SAW the pleading in Ned’s eyes. He saw the stubbornness there too. There was no mistaking it. He shifted his gaze to the boy hunched in the corner between them. The kid was already planning his next getaway attempt. Joe could tell by the way the little monster’s eyeballs were skipping around looking for an opening.

  He tightened his grip on the boy’s ankle, just in case.

  At the moment, there were no bullets targeting the building they were cowering against, so Joe leaned around the doorway and peeked up the street. He couldn’t see much since the city was still cloaked in darkness, but he could see where the police were by the flashing lights on their squad cars, and he thought he could tell where the looters were by the sound of their gunshots when they fired back at the cops. The helicopter had left. He could no longer hear its thumping rotors or see its lights anywhere.

  While Joe couldn’t see around the corner on Broadway where the cops were aiming their bullets, he knew what was there. Looters must have targeted the department store that sat directly across the street from the Shepperton. Joe could imagine how the scene must look. With the beams from countless flashlights ricocheting in every direction as the thieves hauled armloads of crap out of the store, then took off running up the street away from the cops to avoid their gunfire. The people shooting back at the cops were probably there to defend the looters. Joe wondered how the bad guys could have gotten so organized when all he had seen before were random, senseless acts of violence perpetrated on innocent people by a bunch of armed morons.

  Joe’s anger flared. He glanced back at Ned, still cowering in the doorway, then focused his attention on the boy still held captive between them.

  Letting PJ go wasn’t an option. A stray bullet would find him before he got halfway down the block. Ordering him back home wasn’t an option either, since the kid would promise anything to
get away from them, and then he would head straight for the hotel anyway.

  Joe’s eyes found Ned’s.

  “I guess there’s no other way,” he said.

  “No,” Ned answered, clearly relieved that Joe understood. “There isn’t.”

  Joe was aware of a protective fire in Ned’s gaze as he stared at the boy. He turned his own eyes to the boy. He forced his voice to take a gentler tone.

  “If we try to deliver you to your dad,” Joe said, “will you do exactly what we tell you to do along the way?”

  PJ blinked in surprise, then let his gaze trail back and forth between the two men in front of him.

  “Yes,” he said simply. “I promise.” Then he spit on his fingers and crossed his heart.

  Joe and Ned and PJ shared a glance. For the first time it was almost friendly. While Joe wasn’t exactly reassured about what they were about to do, he did feel a little better knowing everybody was on the same page. At least the kid wouldn’t be fighting them every step of the way. There was that much to be thankful for. He also knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Ned was right—getting the kid to his father was the only responsible thing to do.

  He turned back to the street and surveyed the situation. Reaching the cops would be impossible. Getting between the cops and the gunmen guarding the looters would be suicidal.

  “To get to the hotel, we’ll have to go around to the other side of this block,” he said, eyeing Ned. “We’ll backtrack and get behind the looters and come up on it from the rear.” He turned to the boy. “Can we get inside the hotel if we get you there? Your dad must have the place locked up.”

  PJ pulled a key from beneath his coat. It was hooked to a silver chain around his neck. “This is the key to a security door in the back. Dad gave it to me in case I ever got locked out when he was working and none of the kitchen guys were around to let me in. He didn’t like me going through the lobby.”

  Ned offered up a sarcastic snort. “He probably wouldn’t like you joining a gunfight with a bag of rocks either.”

  For the first time, the kid smiled. “Yeah, my dad’s got a million rules that don’t make a lick of sense.”

  WITH GUNSHOTS blasting back and forth on Broadway and bullets zinging everywhere, Ned and PJ hustled back the way they’d come and ducked around the corner. They slipped onto C Street, which ran parallel to Broadway. Here, along trolley tracks that bisected the street, the pavement was puddled with sooty water from the fires, and the stench of wet ashes lay heavy on the air. Fire hoses snaked all over the place, as if the firefighters had simply abandoned them after the fires were extinguished. As it was in Balboa Park, the sodden bodies of birds were scattered about, creating a further nuisance. Ned could feel them squishing underfoot. The street was slippery and a constant hazard to move through in the dark. They trod slowly, trying not to make any noise or stumble over the obstacles in their path.

  As it had been for days, the darkness was so thick it made no difference if Ned’s eyes were open or closed. He couldn’t see a thing either way. Just as he had always trailed along behind Joe, holding on so they wouldn’t become separated, now Ned held on to PJ, who was shielded between the two of them. It was PJ who held on to Joe now, and it was like the kid was physically incapable of keeping his mouth shut. No matter how many times Joe shushed him, he jabbered on like a magpie.

  “My dad’ll prob’ly give you guys a reward. We’re rich, you know. He’s got other hotels too.”

  “Be quiet!” Joe hissed.

  “Sure,” PJ hissed back. Then he rattled on as if he hadn’t been interrupted at all. “I go to a private Catholic school. Geez, the nuns are a pain in the patootie. Pain in the patootie. I learned that phrase when one of the nuns said that’s what I was.”

  “Gee, I wonder why,” Ned muttered.

  Deadpan, PJ said, “Don’t know. She didn’t say.”

  “Quiet!” Joe hissed again.

  PJ didn’t lower his voice at all. He was also making a racket by rattling his bag of rocks like they were worry beads. “Dad’s having an affair with the babysitter, but I’m not supposed to know it. She thinks she’ll get rich marrying him, but Dad’s been through a string of babysitters, and he hasn’t married one yet. I’ll prob’ly have a sitter when I’m thirty, just so Dad can keep on porking them.”

  Ned bit back a laugh. “You know more than you should.”

  “Yeah,” PJ replied. “I’m too smart for my own good. The nun told me that too.”

  At long last, he lowered his voice and whispered back to Ned. “You looked at my birthmark, but you didn’t say anything. Adults always say something. How come you didn’t?”

  The answer was at the tip of Ned’s tongue before he could even consider what he was about to say. And when the words came, they came freely, without hesitation or fear of hurt. Somehow he knew instinctively that the boy would understand.

  “We all have scars we carry around.” He fought the urge to lift his fingers to his hair and show PJ what he meant, but it was too dark for the kid to see anything, so he didn’t. “Sooner or later, someone will come along and let you see you aren’t really scarred after all. It happened to me, PJ. It’ll happen to you. Plus, I kind of like your birthmark. It’s cool. Like you’re a superhero or something.”

  The boy gave a derisive snort, but Ned could tell he was pondering what he’d said as Joe tugged them on down the street, hugging the side of a trolley car now that had been abandoned on the tracks. Somehow, Ned knew Joe was listening to what was being said as well.

  “You got a birthmark too?” PJ asked.

  Quietly, Ned answered, “Sort of.”

  “Look out!” Joe sputtered up ahead, and before Ned could ask what was going on, a gust of wind tore up C Street. It lifted trash and ashes from the rubble at their feet and sent it swirling around their heads, all but blinding them in the process.

  Ned could smell sea brine and dead fish on the wind. Clearly the gusts were tearing across the city all the way up from the bay, a mile or more down the hill in the direction they were going.

  Ned was astonished to feel the air moving around him at all, lifting his hair, brushing his skin. “Wind! Real wind! I thought the wind had died with the sun.”

  “It sort of did,” PJ mumbled, also sounding awestruck. “At least that sort of wind. The air’s warmer too,” PJ added. “You notice?”

  “Yeah,” Ned said. “We notice.”

  “Come on,” Joe ordered. “We have to keep moving. I want to get off this street. We’re too exposed here.”

  Ned knew he was right. The gunshots were closer now. He could hear people screaming and cursing and laughing again. It was as if they didn’t fear the policemen’s guns at all. Whatever insanity had taken over the people in the park, the same madness had clearly taken the downtown looters as well. Human nature sucked, Ned decided on the spot. It simply fucking sucked!

  A blast of light crashed down upon the city from one horizon to the other, illuminating everything in a split-second explosion of white. It was so surprising, Ned and Joe and the boy threw themselves to the ground and scrambled into a tight little ball to fend off whatever might be coming.

  But nothing did. The blast of light was over as quickly as it came. One second they were blinded by the radiance, the next second they were cowering in suffocating blackness all over again.

  “What was that?” Ned gasped.

  “I don’t know,” Joe panted. “But that light was everywhere. Not just in one spot. And not just on us. It spanned the city like a flash of lightning. But where was the thunder?”

  “There wasn’t any,” PJ whispered, his face once again lost in darkness.

  “What does it mean?” Ned asked, reaching out for Joe’s arm, clawing at Joe’s coat sleeve. Colored spots still danced before his eyes. He breathed a sigh of relief when Joe took his hand and gave it a squeeze.

  “I don’t know,” Joe said. “I don’t know what it means.”

  The boy sounded suddenly frighten
ed. “Come on. I want to get to my dad.”

  Ned agreed. “Yes. Let’s keep moving.” He rose to his feet, brushing some of the ashy, muddy muck from the street off his pant legs. Joe and PJ quickly joined him.

  Ned had the flashlight now. He risked a quick beam to pinpoint the corner of the block ahead so they would know in which direction to head. That done, he quickly switched the flashlight off. Crouching low, they took off running again. Ned suspected bullets would be equally nasty no matter who was shooting them, so he hoped to avoid the notice of crazies and cops alike. He figured they’d live longer if they did.

  “Lead on,” Ned whispered to Joe. “Avoid everybody if you can.”

  They chased Joe across the street toward the corner of Broadway and Fifth. As they ran, PJ clutched Joe’s coattail, while the fingers of his other hand clamped on to Ned’s arm like a steel band.

  The next thing Ned knew, they were bunched up together, hugging the building they’d been aiming for. The cold brick wall pressing up against Ned’s cheek reeked of ashes and fifty years of exhaust fumes. He had never felt anything so lovely in his life.

  PEERING AROUND the corner onto Broadway, Joe could see people now. Looters. They were bustling off down the street, some headed right at them, others veering off the other way. They were ducking low, trying to avoid all the bullets zipping through the air from seemingly every direction at once. The looters’ arms were filled with clothes and electronics and other assorted junk that Joe would never have risked his life to acquire. In fact, the whole thing confused him no end. Here they were as a population, all in the same boat, facing extinction maybe, facing the death of the planet. There was no light, no heat, no sun. And certainly no electricity! Why the hell did that one idiot need a new wide-screen TV, stolen or otherwise?