by Dan Padavona
Now, at the fiery end of day, Joshua crept out of the concealment of the copse and into the meadow, his black hair matted shell-like to his skull. Knee-high grass caressed his pant legs. The wind fell silent, pulled earthward with the setting sun. Beyond the meadow, the land fell away to a rocky slope upon which only a scattering of weeds could gain a foothold. The slope dropped down to an unmarked road which, if followed eastward, led back toward the familiar web of well-traveled interstates that the world once took comfort in. He descended the hill sideways, taking care not to catch a boot heel within a rocky crevice. Joshua Geldon feared no man, but he was not impervious to a broken ankle or a fractured skull.
At the base of the slope, he hopped over a gurgling drainage creek and walked eastward. The final embers of daylight still burned on the western horizon, but the light was blocked by the towering trees that grew out of the hillside. The tree-lined roadway dimmed into a darkened tunnel. As he walked eastward along the shoulder-less route, his boots clocked hollowly on the crumbling blacktop. Five minutes down the road, he swerved right. Leaping back over the creek, he found his black Ford Explorer, tucked away between speckled alders and hundred-year-old oaks. The dual chirps of the SUV unlocking seemed piercingly loud in the wilderness. Under the deep blue of twilight, Joshua drove home.
Night thickened over the suburban cul-de-sac on the outskirts of Minneapolis. Joshua crossed the front lawn toward his house, eying the paint-chipped two-story neighboring house where the teenage girl with the multiple piercings and her drug-addicted mother had resided until a few hours ago. The world is cleaner now without my neighbors in it.
Inside his house, he gathered a change of clothes. From the safe within his bedroom closet, he removed a handgun, though such earthly weapons felt impotent in his hand. In the hands of certain men, such weapons could be deadly. He knew such a man, and before the sun rose, Joshua would find him.
The neon glow of the bedside digital clock alerted him that the power still functioned. By tomorrow, the electrical grid would fail and the cul-de-sac would become a graveyard. He left his wallet on the dresser. No more need existed for identification, credit cards, and money.
Before he exited through the front door for the final time, he removed the dagger from its sheathe. Curling his fingers over the hilt, he studied the way the blade shined in the darkness, as though moonlight lay captured within the weapon. He had purchased the dagger from a Lubbock, Texas, weapons shop run by a heathen stoner with no concept of the blade’s true worth. The fool had demanded $850 for the dagger. There had been a smug look on the stoner’s face, as though he believed he was getting one over on Joshua. But Joshua wouldn’t have blinked if the man had set the price at $8500. He would have opened his check book and written whatever price the idiot asked, for there was no monetary value that could be placed on the talisman. If the man had declared the weapon not for sale, well, he would have found out just how dangerous Joshua Geldon was.
He had felt the dagger’s presence as far north as Denver, and again while driving the Explorer south in Albuquerque, west of which a dust storm had turned the sky to burnt titian. By the time he reached Amarillo, there had been an ancient scent on the southern wind, like decaying parchment paper. He had followed that scent toward Lubbock, traversing great squares of farm-to-market roads as pumpjacks rose and fell on the horizon like dinosaurs.
Now in the pale moonlight that shone into his front entryway, he sheathed the dagger and clipped it to his belt.
When he turned the ignition key, the Explorer engine’s roar, made louder by the modern world’s requiem, scattered birds out of trees. He left his neighborhood of twenty years behind, zigzagging across suburban blocks, swerving around the occasional vehicle left for dead at intersections. Approximately 300 miles of fuel remained in the tank. That would get him to Omaha. At that point, he would search for a gas station with power. Eventually there would be no powered pumps remaining, and until someone figured out how to fire up the grid again, he would have only his feet to carry him.
Entering the highway, he found I-35 less of a mess than anticipated. A broken train of vehicles lined the right shoulder for as far as he could see, as though the drivers had simultaneously felt themselves drifting asleep and pulled over. A few vehicles were abandoned in the driving lanes, providing dangerous obstacles that he needed to stay alert to. Joshua pressed the accelerator, and the Explorer kicked up to 70 mph. He could have driven 100 mph if he so desired. No law enforcement existed anymore, and even if it had, the law could no longer protect the world from him. But he kept to a reasonable speed, desiring to conserve precious fuel without taking unnecessary risks.
As he crossed out of Minnesota, suburban sprawl lined two miles of highway. Looking down upon the deserted, cookie cutter neighborhood homes, he wondered what lurked within those houses. Deep shadows spilled out from where the homes blocked the moonlight, and he spotted movement, as though something was slinking through the darkness. Steering with his left hand, his right hand dropped to the dagger, and it pulsed with needy warmth beneath its leather cover.
Then he sensed a fragment of his destiny floating like flotsam in the liquid night, and he left the highway.
Joshua found the man he sought in eastern Nebraska. He was a drifter named Derek Stevens, stalking through darkness along the shoulder of a two lane highway outside of Tekamah in the final hours of night. Stevens, who carved out a reputation within the underworld as a contract killer, prided himself in his ability to kill repeatedly without being detected by his target or the law. Stevens was a silent killer, like an epidemic cropping up in isolated corners of the country, only to reappear elsewhere before the medical community could get a handle on the initial outbreak.
For over twenty years, Joshua’s dreams had urged him to locate Stevens, though he knew the killer by another name—a name Stevens would likely need to be reminded of. In the Nebraska night, Joshua finally found him.
Even with his acute night vision, Joshua wouldn’t have seen the man had he not felt his presence, like the tension in the air one feels when approaching an electric fence. The Explorer, now down to a quarter tank, slowed and ran alongside the dark traveler. The vehicle came to a stop several yards beyond the man, brake lights flaring like fiery eyes. The passenger door opened.
For a moment, the man stopped in his tracks, a chill trickling down his spine. But there was something that pulled him toward the vehicle. Approaching the Explorer on cat’s paws, he stared into the black interior. Within the shadows sat a man that Stevens thought he knew, though he could not discern the man’s face.
He climbed into the cab and threw a backpack containing freeze dried foods and two handguns onto the floor. Strapping in, he spared a glance for the tall, thin man whose head was just inches from the SUV’s roof. The driver’s face, basked in electronic reds from the dashboard lights, turned to him.
Stevens extended his hand warily across the cab, as though he were reaching to snatch a bone away from a rabid dog. He began to speak his name when Joshua clasped his hand.
“Severin,” Joshua said, recognition in his eyes.
The man, who moments earlier had been Derek Stevens, froze at the name Joshua had given him. A strange recollection drifted in the back of his mind. He shook his head, not in denial but as if he were clearing away cobwebs. Severin’s long, black hair, as straight as silk, fell back from his face. Emerald eyes glowed cat-like. “My name…”
“Yes,” Joshua said. “Do you remember?”
Severin thought he remembered, but the truth seemed to be submerged in a river of blackness. There had been a dream…yes, a dream when he was a teenager. A dream in which he had been given a purpose. But what was it? He recognized the driver of the Explorer. Severin had seen this man’s face before in his dream. But that had been half a lifetime ago.
“My name is Joshua Geldon. You know me, don’t you?”
“Yes. I think I remember.”
“You have done good work in your life, S
everin. But there is harder work ahead. Righteous work. Are you ready?”
Mosquitoes whirred around the beams, as the headlamps cut through the darkness like cloned swords. Halfway up the road, the beams perished against the asphalt, consumed by the night.
“I’m ready,” Severin said.
The Explorer lurched into the unknown, and Severin left Derek Stevens behind forever.
CHAPTER FOUR
Blake
I am my father’s son.
Blake Connelly awoke on the living room couch at 8:59 PM, the salty taste of tears on his lips. His head felt cloudy, his thoughts slowed as though slogging through molasses. On the coffee table was one bottle of Jack Daniels and a bottle of Russian vodka. But I hadn’t had anything to drink. Had I?
Certainly he hadn’t. Despite the grogginess of post-sleep haze, he noticed an odd clarity to his thoughts. It was as if everything in the world was amplified—speakers turned up to ten, the land lit by spotlights. For a fleeting moment, he sensed that something was wrong. Very wrong.
Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he glanced at the kitchen microwave’s LED clock. If it was morning, the house shouldn’t have been so dark. It took him several seconds to process that it was evening and that he had fallen asleep on the couch. Which was odd because he never took naps, and he didn’t remember lying down.
He spotted the cardboard box on the floor under the coffee table, and his heart sank.
“Who am I?”
You are Blake Connelly. Your father’s son.
You wanna bet?
This morning he had been Blake Connelly, the ghost of Kimball High School, ten miles north of Syracuse, New York. He wasn’t a bad looking boy—blonde hair, slight build, a decent complexion—but he was invisible.
He’d learned long ago all of the bullshit that the media fed kids about beauty being skin deep was wrong. The most attractive part of a boy to a girl was internal.
Confidence.
Sure, it helped to have a pretty face and fashionable clothes. But a lot of the coolest kids got by just fine with an old pair of faded blue jeans, a hooded sweatshirt, and a little acne. The difference was in the way the popular kids carried themselves. They didn’t give a crap about who looked at them, and ironically, that’s what made everyone pay attention when they walked into a room.
The cool kids kept their heads up and looked you in the eye when they spoke. Not Blake.
He had thought that maybe he was turning the corner with just a month left of high school. Better late than never. Two weeks ago, Kelly Tyler had said, “Hey Blake,” as they passed in the hall, and girls as pretty as Kelly Tyler weren’t supposed to know he existed.
How pathetic am I? I’ll spend all night reliving Kelly Tyler saying hello to me, and she’s already forgotten my name.
And then there had been David Jacoby—the starting point guard for the basketball team, the same David Jacoby who used to slap the lunch tray out of Blake’s hand and laugh as canned peaches and hamburgers hurtled through the air like edible asteroids—who had turned to Blake in study hall last week and asked Blake where he was headed for college.
“Fredonia”, Blake had said, a whole lot confused as to why David was talking to him.
“SUNY. Cool, man. I was looking at Brockport for b-ball, but my folks are dead set on me going to Penn State. You know how it is. Right, man?”
No, man. I don’t have a fucking clue how it is.
Hey, David. How come you want to talk to me all of a sudden? Feeling a little scared about high school coming to an end? This is when they tear down the walls and leave you standing naked in the rain to fend for yourself.
Welcome to the party. I’ve been here for eighteen long years. Your folks are dead set on you going to Penn State, huh? Well, let me tell you about my folks. My Mom? She blew out of town when I was four, saying something about how she was going to go live with Grandma for a while. But when I went to visit grandma, Mom wasn’t there. She moved out West. Decided that the California sun beat the crap out of six months of winter back East and having to raise a kid. But it’s all good, David. I get a Christmas and a birthday card every year. Sometimes there’s even a crisp fifty dollar bill Scotch-taped to the inside of the card. And you know what Mom thinks about me going to Fredonia? Well, I don’t. But if you happen to see her, ask her for me.
“Yeah, David. I know how it is. Gotta please the folks.”
“Always, man.”
This morning, while searching for a box of backup computer parts, he had found the adoption papers in the cardboard box jammed into the corner of the attic.
I’m adopted?
No. I am my father’s son.
But who is my father?
He eyed the two liquor bottles. So that had been the plan? Get drunk and confront Dad when he got home from wherever he went on Saturday nights? Blake put the idea of drinking out of his mind. Drinking was something that the cool kids gathered to do on the weekends. He wasn’t one of them, and he would never be one of them. So why make himself sick because the world threw him a nasty curveball?
He carried the box upstairs, and when he passed Morgan Connelly’s room, he half-considered leaving the box on his father’s work desk. That idea made him feel worse than treacherous, so he brought the box to his own bedroom and shoved it beneath his bed so that he could feel it sleeping under him at night, like the pea under the princess’s mattress.
I could have handled the truth, Dad. Were you ever going to tell me?
Downstairs, he pulled the cord on the drapes, and the outside world opened to him like the beginning to a Broadway musical. Lamplights stretched away down Helen Street, some flickering. Only two homes displayed illuminated windows, and it occurred to Blake that in both cases, the people who lived there were away for the week. Mr. Brady was on travel for work. The Andersons were on vacation. Their lights were set to come on and off automatically, giving the illusion of activity to dissuade would-be burglars. All of the other houses were as dark as a midnight sky, despite the majority of their driveways holding a vehicle.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” Blake said, and in the silence that formed around the absence of car motors and other modern world distractions, his voice boomed.
His stomach growling, he shoved a bag of popcorn into the microwave. Two minutes later, the corn started popping like distant machine gun fire, and the downstairs was redolent of a movie theater lobby. When the sound was reduced to one pop every few seconds, he removed the bag, and carefully pulled the top open, following the friendly warning advice on the side of the bag. Curious, he took the bag with him and stepped out the front door, wondering where everyone on Helen Street had disappeared to.
The night felt warm. Variegated blues of departed twilight drizzled into the western horizon. Distant wind chimes sang to a transient breeze, the only sounds in the May night. Though it was past dark, he expected to see a few neighbors out for a stroll on such a pleasant evening. Mr. Jamison usually walked his pug around this time. There was a deafening silence in the neighborhood—the drone of cars moving along I-81, the excited yells of kids playing hide-and-go-seek in the backyards, the slamming of car doors: all absent.
Where the pathway to his door and the neighborhood sidewalk formed a T, he turned right and started walking. He passed houses with dark, blank windows that watched him like vacant eyes. When he reached the midway point of Helen Street, the higher-trafficked Northern Drive came into view, but no one seemed to be out and about on Northern Drive, either. Above and beyond stretched I-81, but no headlights moved along the interstate.
Maybe there has been an accident, and the road is closed.
Yeah, and maybe the entire neighborhood abandoned their cars and walked two miles up an embankment to take pictures of the wreckage. Guess again.
Leaves rustled in the breeze, like devils whispering. Darkness pooled at the edge of street lighting, creeping closer and closer.
Something moved through the shadows across the street.
Momentarily, Blake thought he saw a robed figure pass between neighboring houses. He blinked, and the figure was gone.
Suddenly feeling exposed in the hushed darkness, he turned and ran back to his house, throwing the bolt on the door behind him.
Blake awoke after midnight with a cold chill around his heart. The living room was submerged in gloom. He rarely experienced nightmares, yet he had dreamed of fingernails scratching on the window, as though a vampire was hungrily watching him through the glass, trying to get inside.
“Dad?”
No answer. The old-fashioned ticker clock on the wall kept beat with the night.
He reached for the drapes and stopped. He had a vision of throwing open the drapes and seeing the pallid face of the vampire staring back at him. Two thin lines of blood on its cheeks. Eyes burning like twin candles.
You’re acting like a foolish child. Open the drapes.
Blake licked his lips. Heart racing, he pulled the cord, and the drapes flew open to reveal the pit of night. No vampires. No boogeyman. No car in the driveway. Sighing, he checked his phone for a message from his father and found none waiting. Frustrated, he dialed his father’s number and was met with utter silence. No ring, no voice mail message.
This is a lousy time for the network to go down.
Wondering if there was a citywide emergency, Blake flicked on the television. The local ABC affiliate displayed color bars and emitted a shrill test tone. A few more channels broadcasted the same bars and tone, but most had a blank, blue screen that the HD television displayed whenever there was no signal to be found.
Night, as black as pitch, pressed against the back windows. He shuddered.
Looking through the adjoining dining room toward the windows to the backyard, he shivered. Something terrible had happened tonight. Something that knocked out mobile phone service, cable television, shut down the interstate, and caused his neighbors to go into hiding. He was alone.