Twelve O'Clock Tales

by Felice Picano

  As they worked, the first pair of figures edged a canister-like object out of one vehicle and onto the ground. Although Bay was concentrating on the object and the figures, he could see inside the vehicles now, and they were artificially lighted, half-pink, half-yellow, blinking on and off.

  The canister must have been extremely heavy or very fragile, as the figures carrying it moved very slowly, in exaggeratedly mechanical, yet dainty steps. At length, they got the canister into the center of the cleared circle and sank it slowly into the cement material. Another shower from the spray tool covered the canister completely so it was no longer visible.

  The four figures then retreated to beyond the edge of the circle and one of them pulled a little hand-sized cartridge out of a deep pocket in his form-fitting suit. He adjusted one or two buttons on the little panel, and the trod-down grass began springing up again in the clearing, so quickly and so completely that even from his bird’s-eye perch Bay could scarcely make out the exact location of the platform and sunken canister.

  The entire operation had taken perhaps eight minutes. All of it had been completely hidden from any possible view by the ridge of rock from the top of which Bay watched them. Even had there been a traffic jam on the road to see it, no one would have. And where the canister had been sunk, it now looked like nothing at all happened.

  That was when Bay began to feel a tingling along the back of his neck. He’d had that feeling once or twice before in his life. Once when he was being followed down the dark, deserted street of a Midwestern city by a stranger who kept falling out of view whenever Bay turned to check up on him; another time when he had heard prowling, heavy steps outside a tent he had pitched in the Green River Mountains of Utah. Both times before it had meant danger, and now he knew it meant that whatever was in that canister was about to go off, and go off big. Without stopping to ask why or how, Bay knew something momentous had been sunk in that meadow. He had to get away fast! Now!

  He almost stumbled running down the ridge onto the roadway when he remembered he had taken off his backpack and left it on the rock. Leave it! he thought. Go! he thought. Then: No! I have to have it! I have to get away fast! In a car! That thing’s going to go off any minute now. I need a car to get away from it. The backpack will get me a ride.

  He was tying on the pack when he reached the road again. No cars, and those two which had been here had vanished totally. He started to walk as fast as he could, following the direction he’d begun in before.

  Why this way? This is where the vehicles had come from. They might have laid a whole chain of these things. They might be laying down more at this moment, behind him. He had to go north. North.

  There had to be a northern crossover ahead. He must get to it. But first he needed a lift. Still no cars. Damn. He felt a little calmer now as he strode along the road, knowing he at least had a direction now, a way out. The thin hot trickle was still burning a network into the back of his neck and his shoulders, and he was beginning to feel a sharp little pain in his side from his exertion. He was sure the first was adrenaline rising, and the extrasensory fear of whatever was going to happen.

  If it was, just supposing it was what he thought it was, what could its radius be? Two miles? Five? What had been the radius of the last test? Five miles, no? Or was that only the radius of total destruction? And if so, what was the radius of the firestorms? Another five or ten miles?

  He turned to look behind him. No cars. As he turned back, one coming toward him passed by—but it sped on as it neared him and he scarcely had the chance to flag it down anyway, he was so intent on walking hard and getting away, straining to keep up a fast pace, yet stay in control, to keep himself from simply running ahead blindly, breaking away totally. No. He had to stay in control. To let go meant to invite the end. Survival lay only in holding on. Holding on.

  And still the burning of his nerve ends. It seemed stronger the further he got away from the canister. Still no cars.

  Then there was one coming up behind him. Dark and sleek. Bay almost fell as he stumbled to a stop and thrust his arm dangerously out over the edge of the road.

  The driver saw him and made a great show of screeching to a halt, braking so fiercely that half the car was under Bay’s outstretched hand when it came to a full stop. One of those little German coupes that looked like metal race cars he’d played with as a child.

  He ducked down to open the passenger side door.

  “Haven’t asked you yet!” a voice said.

  Bay removed his hand from the door handle. Oh, God, no! Not a joker! Not now!

  “Sorry!” he said. “C’n I have a lift?”

  “Sure.” The passenger side lock snapped open.

  Bay got in, closed the door, was encased in the pervasive odor of leather and new car. The man faced ahead. Nothing but profile. Why wasn’t he starting the car?

  “Where you headed?”

  “North!” he said with a determination that surprised him.

  “This way’s west.”

  “There’s a crossover a few miles up. I’ll get off there,” Bay said, thinking, Let’s go!

  “No need to. I’m going north there myself.”

  A joker. Great. Finally, he threw it into gear. Bay was still doing up his seat belt shoulder straps when the car took off.

  At least the backpack was loose. He swung it onto the floor and sat back watching the rounded V-shaped hood lap up the dark macadam.

  “Nice car,” he said.

  “It’s all right.”

  Thank God he’s not in the mood for company, Bay thought. Imagine having a conversation about the weather now. It might just slow him down. Drive faster!

  “You seemed to be in a bit of hurry there,” the driver said nonchalantly: “As though you were running from someone.”

  Did he know? Could he know? Could he be connected up with those pairs of vehicles? Could he be their scout? Or not, rather their cleanup man. Here to get rid of any possible witnesses?

  Bay said nothing.

  “Of course,” the driver went on, “there seemed to be no one and nothing to run away from where I picked you up. Right? Just a coupla nothing farms in the distance.” He laughed and Bay looked at him. His own age. Good-looking in a city-slick way, like his car. Heavy, straight, almost blue-black hair. Sultry eyelids over dark eyes. Tanned. Spoiled-looking. But otherwise all right. Like a hundred others.

  “Nothing farms and a coupla cows, eh?” He laughed again.

  Even if the driver didn’t know about the canister, he still might be off. Christ! Just what I need now!

  Before Bay knew it, they’d reached the crossing and the driver flicked the wheel left and spun across the other lane right onto the crossroad. “No!” Bay shouted. “That’s wrong! We’re going south.” He almost jumped out of his seat.

  “What?” the driver said, and cupped one hand to his ear, as if he were hard of hearing. Bay began frantically repeating and explaining that they were going the wrong way. But the car was already in the middle of a U-turn, then across the road again.

  “You seem a mite nervous, friend,” the driver said, with a little smile.

  “Maybe.”

  “A smidgen stressed, I’d say.”

  “A smidgen.”

  “Doubtless on account of those nothing farms and coupla cows.” He laughed.

  Bay all but collapsed back into the bucket seat. But he felt little relief. This guy was a jerk and a joker, and who knew, maybe he was insane too. And the burning fear from the knowledge that Bay was still within range of the canister was getting worse now, pricking every nerve of his skin.

  How the hell had he gotten into such a situation anyway?

  How had he? He was trying to recall and coming up blank. Well, no, not entirely blank. He knew he was hitching east. He remembered that yesterday he’d caught a ride out of Albany and into Kingston, New York. There he recalled he’d eaten a hamburger and malt shake at a roadside Friendly’s, had ridden with a car through the Berksh
ire Mountains, and had been dropped off in small town called South Egremont. He’d been picked up there by a truck driver, literate guy who talked about the fact that Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne and all kinds of nineteenth-century writers had lived in the area, if not regularly then part-time, during the summer. Bay had ridden along with the guy, who was looking for an ear to listen to his chatter, and he’d finally allowed himself to be dropped off not far from where he’d spent the night. And before yesterday? Well, that wasn’t quite so clear to him. He’d traveled, he believed. Hitchhiked through mountains, plains, around cities, past deserts, all of it blurred and kind of vague now, unimportant, not all that detailed.

  Bay was feeling certain that whatever was inside the canister would go off soon. Why and who had set it were no longer real questions. He knew that being there and witnessing it being sunk into the ground had somehow forged a link to it, a connection, and that might be why he carried the knowledge of it within him, as though both it and now he were a time bomb, literally running out of time.

  “How far do you think we are?” Bay asked, trying to sound casual.

  “From where?”

  “I don’t know, say from Boston? Or say how about from where you picked me up?”

  “About hundred and fifty from Boston. Sixteen and a half from where I picked you up,” he tapped a dial sunk into the leather plush of the dashboard, “according to Mr. Odometer here.”

  “Is that all?” Bay asked.

  “What do you mean?” The driver sounded slightly offended. “That’s pretty good.”

  “For going sixty-five miles per hour,” Bay agreed. “I thought this car went a lot faster.”

  “I’m in no hurry,” the driver said.

  “Speedometer reads, what is it? One forty? Or are those just numbers painted on?”

  “It’ll do one forty. These roads are lousy. You want me to rip up the underside, just so you can have a joy-ride?” Already the speedometer had tilted up to 70 mph.

  “Car like this was probably built to cruise at a hundred or more,” Bay said, very wise-guy. Speedometer now read 75.

  “I sometime cruise it around a hundred. On good roads.” The speedometer was nearing 80 now.

  “German, right?” Bay said. “Tested on the autobahn?”

  “That’s right.” Closer to 85 now.

  “Which has no top speed, am I correct?” Bay asked.

  “It’s a perfect road, that autobahn.” He was close to 88 now.

  “I was told that these high-performance vehicles, if you don’t really open them up every once in a while, their oil lines clog up.”

  90 now. “Is that right?”

  “That’s what I heard,” Bay said. The car was pushing 95 now and the car seemed to be slipping along the road. It was taking the dips so fast it was getting Bay a little queasy. The landscape began shooting by, trees going flick, flick, flick, so fast they began to bunch and blur as they reached 95. Alongside ran a stream that seemed to appear and vanish, reappear and snap and curl along past, like kids shaking a dark rope along the ground, playing snake.

  Up to 100 miles per hour now.

  Bay’s nerves were on fire. He could hardly keep still in his seat for the twitching. Soon. Soon. Any minute now. He had to brace himself. prepare himself. Looking at the odometer he saw that they’d managed another ten miles, up to what, twenty-seven, maybe thirty by now, but would that be far enough? He’d have to get out of the car when it happened. Throw himself out clear. That would be suicide at this speed. Better get the guy to stop and find cover. Where? Cover where?

  There! The stream, down in the water. The water would protect him, keep him from being badly burned. But how?

  “Stop!” Bay shouted, and grabbed at the wheel. “Stop. I get off here.”

  “What the hell?” The car sped on as they wrestled for control.

  “Stop! Stop! You’ve got to stop!”

  “Get your hands off the wheel.” He’d already slowed down to 70.

  “Okay, but you’ve got to stop here. Now!”

  “You’re nuts. There’s nothing here.”

  “Stop now! Here!” Bay tried opening the door.

  “Sit down. You’ll be killed!”

  The car braked and swerved to a halt, twanging and spinning around two-thirds of a circle.

  Before it was even fully stopped, Bay felt an agony all over his body. He threw his door open, flung himself out, and ran to the side of the road and thrust a hand into the water. Only a few feet deep, then brackish mud. But it would have to do.

  Behind him he heard the driver muttering to close the damn car.

  Bay grabbed up two hollow reeds and broke them off at both edges. He put one end into his mouth and breathed. Then he slid, back first, into the stream, face sideways, hearing the car rev up and take off as he got underwater and felt the sludge against the bare parts of his legs and neck, trying to stay calm as he immersed himself and slowly began to turn over sideways, to get his face as far away from the air as possible while keeping the air coming in.

  The tubes worked; even bent like this, they let him breathe. He opened his eyes, but the stream was totally muddied now and he closed them instantly to not get any silt into his eyes. The agony was gone. He felt totally calm. Very calm. This was the right thing to do. Yes, exactly right. How did he think of it? Was it instinct? Some life-preserving instinct?

  Abruptly, he twitched all over, as though he were having a brief epileptic spasm, from every nerve and muscle, from every cell of his body. Even facing mostly down, and with his eyes closed, his sight was flooded with a whiteness, a light that surpassed any white he’d ever known or thought to know, a white that explored depths and subtleties of sheer white light he’d never suspected even existed, a white that grabbed at every inch of him, illuminated his entire body from without. It seemed to grow in intensity, to throb, and as it did, the sludge around him seemed to grow tepid, then warm, then hot. And still the white blared on, even whiter if possible, brain-hurting white, a thousand brass instruments all playing white. He could feel the water and sludge receding from around his head and hands. Then the reeds in his mouth were hot, useless, since he couldn’t breathe anymore, and he spat them out, dropped them and turned over, directly onto his face, finding an empty space there and filling his lungs from dark, quickly drying pockets of dank around him, while the universe continued to go white, white, white, seemingly forever.

  A giant pulse slung along the land, seemingly lifting his body inches even within the mud. He held on for dear life. Then it was gone, after having flung itself right through his insides.

  The white became yellow, then orange, then red, then dark red, then a deep, flickering magenta.

  But the twitching was over, and the pain, and the fear. The hair on the back of his head no longer felt on fire. The sludge around his face had begun to boil and bubble, but now it subsided. When he was able to lift his head a few inches and use his hands to pry open his crusted-over eyes, he could see the stream bed around him was dried to aridity, desert dried, and like that dried and crusted all over his face and hands.

  Cautiously he rolled over onto his back. Cautiously he tried to breathe. The air was oven-warm. Acrid, with the smell of burning. Breathable. He took a few more breaths. They hurt his nasal cavities and his throat. He swallowed once or twice and it was better. The air was cooling rapidly. That was better. He tried to sit up, had to use his hands to help himself. He flicked the crusted dirt off his hands and picked the dried crust off his face.

  The sky around him was pink. Pink and purple and orange, but mostly pink, a deep roseate, Valentine’s Day pink. Everything lining the stream bed was black. He knelt and then managed to stand. The land around him was totally blackened. Road and meadow all the same color, the only difference being that the road was partly melted, buckled in places. In the distance, across flat charred fields, he could see a grove of pine trees burning like a huge torch. The air was still warm. But the worst was over.
r />   Shakily, he reached his feet, checking for breaks, fractures, bruises, and finding none, he stood up on his feet. His knees felt weak. Instantly, he began to retch, and then vomited chunks of his apple into the thick cracked bed of what had once been a stream. He immediately felt lighter and stronger, wiped his mouth, stood up straight. He lumbered out of the stream bed, afraid to touch anything, and stumbled forward along the half-melted, disfigured road.

  Everywhere were fires. Showers of ashes descended all around him like rain. God knew from what. But he was all right. He had gotten through it.

  He walked on, just looking. Then, around a bend in the road, through trunks of trees in flames, he made out the dull metal shine of a car. It was stopped dead in the middle of the road, as if its driver had just stopped a minute to take a leak on the side of the road and would be back any second.

  As he got nearer, Bay saw there was no glass.

  Even closer, most of the outside of the car—sheet metal, bumpers, fenders, roof—seemed intact, but as though heated and simultaneously pounded by a hundred thousand tiny hammers. Then he saw that it was the same car that had picked him up before, and he made out the back of the man’s head, erect, sunk into the backrest.

  And if weren’t for the millions of gently trembling shards of glass splinters covering his head like a delicate lace helmet, and the red trickles that stained their edges, the driver would have looked as if he were alive—merely staring ahead, a little surprised.

  Even the seats and floor and dashboard were rimed with glass shards. But the dashboard dials were still lighted, and the motor was still idling in neutral. The driver must have been suddenly blinded by the light, and by reflex stopped the car. Then the blast and the glass hit him, and who knew, but probably the fire too that had dappled the sheet metal, seared the leather inside the car, and his flesh and skin too, until they were all the same mottled half-brown, half-bright-pink color.

  Bay opened the car driver’s door, swept a drift of glass shards off the metal with his foot, then gently pulled at the corpse from behind, until the body fell over onto the road. The smell of burnt flesh was stronger. Sweetly awful like a charred loin of pork.