Instant Darkness

by Mark J Russell

  “I’d rather you stay here and get the perimeter secure. Supplies can wait.” From the corner of his eye, Abram noticed that Nick’s jaw was tight, and he kept his eyes on the ground. He doesn’t want to meet my eyes, Abram thought. What happened?

  “We’re back before breakfast,” Gary said. “We’ve got all day to work on the fence.”

  “Nick’s been up all night,” Abram said. “He needs some sleep before we put him to work again.”

  “But that would be the case anyway. It has nothing to do with our supply run. That’s just what happens when you have night watch.”

  Abram clenched his jaw. Gary always had a comeback. He was always right. He would never capitulate. Abram took a deep breath. “All the same, I want the fence done before you go out again. You left the farm unguarded.”

  “Are we pouring the cement today? Securing the fenceposts?”

  “Yes, but we have to let the concrete harden before we can hang the chain link. And I really want everyone present on the farm until the fence is up.”

  “We can come to a compromise,” Gary said. “Come on, Nick, let’s put this stuff away and you can help me plan the next supply run.”

  Nick’s face went ghost white, and Abram thought he was going to be sick.

  “Let the man get some sleep, Gary,” Abram said. “You always push too hard.”

  “People need pushing,” Gary said. He walked away to the storage room on the far side of the barn and Nick followed.

  Abram stood and watched them go before turning back to the barn to see why Shelly hadn’t come out yet. He found her with the baby goats, one in her lap and another with its front hooves on her shoulders, trying to eat her hair.

  Shelly grinned up at him. “They’re so funny,” she said, feeding a handful of hay to the kid in her lap, and as if to emphasize her point, one of the others did a funny little stiff-legged hop in a circle and made her laugh. Then she peered at him. “What’s wrong, Abram?”

  “I’m not sure. Gary took Nick on a supply run, which I had asked him not to go on, and from Nick’s face, I’d say something went very wrong.” Abram pursed his lips. “Neither of them are talking, so it had to be bad.”

  Shelly lifted the kid out of her lap and got up, staring hard at him. “I’ve told you time and time again that I don’t trust Gary, don’t feel safe around him.” Her jaw flexed with anger. “Now you have a concrete example of him going against your wishes. You told him not to go out for supplies, and he did it anyway. Who knows what he did…Get rid of him, Abram.”

  “I can’t turn my back on the man, Shell. We’ve been friends for years.”

  “It’s misguided loyalty, and it’s going to get us killed.”

  “That’s ridiculous. You’ve taken your distrust for the man too far.” He turned his back on her and walked out into the sunlight.

  “I haven’t, you know,” she said from just behind him. “Gary is the opposite of everything you stand for. And he’s undermining your authority and digging the foundation out from under our lives. We will be pariahs in the community for harboring him. You wait and see.”

  “Gary knows how to stay alive during this regression. I don’t agree with him on everything, but I think his instincts will save us in the long run. If you want, I could talk to him about consulting me before going on another supply run, but I won’t send him away.”

  “Supply run? Is that what we’re calling looting now, Abram?” She crossed her arms. “Is this what we’ve come to? Someone loots us, so then we turn around and loot someone else. We planned this place so that we’d be self-supporting. We were to grow our own food, and trade peacefully with our neighbors—not raid other people’s supplies.” She started off, down the drive toward the house, and Abram followed her.

  “Don’t speak to him, Shelly,” Abram said urgently. “I’ll take care of it.”

  “Oh, don’t worry, I won’t. He’s dangerous.”

  “Dangerous?”

  “I wish I could get you to see that. He’s a threat to all of us.”

  “That is an overreaction,” Abram said, taking a few quick steps to catch up to her. “I would never—”

  “I’m done talking about this, Abram.” She turned and put her hand up. “You find out what happened on that ‘supply run’ and decide if you can tolerate whatever brutal act he perpetrated on the people he stole from.” She picked up her pace and moved down the hill toward the house, leaving him on the path.

  He stood for a long minute, watching her disappear from sight on the slope. She didn’t understand. As much as Gary had changed for the worse, he was the one person in the world that knew everything there was to know about Abram, and that meant he knew things that Abram didn’t want the world to know. Things he didn’t wish for Shelly or Emma to know. And he was afraid that if he sent Gary away, Gary would retaliate by telling Shelly everything. He didn’t know what Gary had done down in the town, but he really didn’t want to know. He didn’t want to be forced into taking action that could result in the ruin of his marriage.

  “You aren’t making this easy, Gary,” he said to the empty landscape.

  Corey was on his way to breakfast when he heard someone retching in the bathroom. The door was partly open, so he checked to see who it was. His dad was hunched over the toilet, throwing up, or maybe it was more like dry heaving—there didn’t seem to be anything coming up. He stuck his head in the door.

  “Are you okay, Dad?” Corey asked, wondering what he should do to help.

  His dad waved him off. “I’m fine, Corey, just not feeling myself right now.”

  “Can I help?” He found a washcloth and dampened it before handing it over.

  “No, bud, I’ll be better after I’ve had some sleep. I was on watch all night.” His dad mopped his face with the washcloth.

  “But everything is okay?”

  His dad stood up, but his face was still kind of green. “Yeah. Yeah, it is. What are you doing this morning?”

  “Target practice and then we’re going to pour concrete. It’s going to take all of us, I guess. Abram even asked Shelly and Rae to come down.”

  “What does he expect Rae Ann to do?” His dad cupped his hands under the faucet and rinsed his mouth.

  “I think he said she could hold a fence post upright while the cement set. I guess you don’t have to be too strong to do that.”

  “As long as it doesn’t tip and fall over on her.”

  “Those holes are three feet deep; I don’t think a fencepost could fall out of it. More likely, she’ll get bored, and it’ll end up wonky.” Corey positioned his forearm perpendicular to the floor and then tilted it to demonstrate what he meant.

  “I suppose Abram knows what he’s doing,” his dad said. He lowered the toilet lid and sat. His hands were shaking.

  “Shouldn’t you eat something before you go to bed, Dad?” Corey knew people sometimes got shaky when they didn’t have enough to eat.

  “I’m not ready to eat yet, but I will when I wake up. Keep an eye on Rae Ann for me, son, will you? I hate to keep asking Shelly to watch her.”

  “I think Shelly feels like watching Rae is part of her job, Dad. She spends most of her day in the house, and Rae helps her do the chores. She was planting seeds in the garden yesterday.” As well as sweeping and helping to bake cookies in the old gas oven. Shelly had explained that modern stoves had electronic components and wouldn’t work without electricity, but the oven at the farm had a pilot light that could be lit by hand. They were lucky that Abram had thought these things through ahead of time—at least, that’s what Shelly said.

  “That’s nice of her, but Rae Ann is our responsibility, so please go check on her for me, okay?” His dad looked so gray in the face that Corey felt sorry for him.

  “I’ll go now and make sure she’s doing okay. I hope you feel better.”

  “I’ll be fine,” his dad said. “I’ll see you down at the worksite this afternoon.”

  Corey went upstairs and found Rae
Ann sitting on her bed, clutching Louise to her chest. The poor stuffed bear’s head was lolling.

  “Something’s wrong with Daddy,” she said when Corey had closed the door behind him. “He’s sick.”

  “He’s just had a long night,” Corey said. “He’ll be better after he’s had some sleep. Are you coming down to breakfast?”

  “What if he dies, Corey? What if Daddy is so sick, he dies?” Rae’s eyes were wide with worry.

  “He’s fine, Rae, you goof. Dad’s not going to die just because he threw up a couple of times. He probably just ate something that didn’t sit right. You know, like when you ate too much pizza that time.”

  “What did he eat? There’s no pizza.” She had a look of calm curiosity on her face that would have made him laugh if he hadn’t known she was worried sick.

  “I don’t know. But he’s fine.” He held out his hand to her. “Come downstairs to breakfast.”

  She sighed. “If I have to. But it doesn’t seem right to eat without Daddy.”

  “He doesn’t want you to go hungry. And you have to keep your strength up for work today.” He took her hand and pulled her up off the bed. “I’m hungry, anyway,” he said, hoping that would get her hungry too, and then as if on cue, his stomach growled. “See?”

  “Okay.” She let herself be towed into the hall and down the stairs to the kitchen.

  Emma was already there, eating scrambled eggs, toast, and bacon. Corey and Rae Ann said good morning to Emma and Shelly, and then plopped down across from her and waited to be served. The plates, when Shelly brought them, were laden with food.

  “Wow,” Corey said, shoveling eggs in his mouth. “This is awesome.”

  With Louise resting in her lap, Rae Ann crunched on her bacon and smiled for the first time that morning. Emma was ripping pieces from her toast with her teeth, holding it with one hand and doodling in a notebook with the other.

  “Is that your sketchbook?” Corey asked her. “I didn’t know you brought it with you.”

  “Of course, I did,” Emma said. “I can’t go anywhere without my drawing pad. I have to draw now because we all have to help with the fenceposts today.”

  “And don’t forget to go to the firing range and shoot a hundred rounds before you go to the back of the property,” Emma’s mom, Shelly, said.

  “Is Dad okay with that? I thought he wanted us right after breakfast.”

  “It will take some time for them to mix the concrete, so it should be okay.”

  “I hope so.”

  “I’ll keep Rae with me. I’ll take her with me when I’m ready to go, so you two just do your target practice and then head straight back.”

  “We have to clean our guns first, Mom.”

  “Yes, yes, I didn’t mean you weren’t to clean your weapons. Just don’t dawdle.”

  “Corey isn’t allowed to be alone with Emma,” Rae Ann chimed in. “I should go with them.” She’d finished with her bacon and started on the eggs.

  “Rae, honey, the firing range isn’t a safe place for you to be,” Shelly said. “Emma and Corey can be alone for a few minutes. I trust them to do their target practice and then go straight to the worksite. It’s not like they’ve ever been much for making trouble.” She plunged a stack of plates into the sink full of soapy water.

  “But Mr. Patterson said—” Rae Ann began.

  “Doesn’t matter what my brother-in-law said,” Maggie said, coming into the kitchen. “Everyone knows my sister is in charge.” She grabbed a plate from the stack on the counter and served herself from the food on the stove. “Are we all ready for fencepost sinking day?”

  “Morning, Maggie,” Shelly said, smiling.

  “Morning,” Maggie said through a mouthful of food.

  “But we’re putting the fenceposts up,” Rae Ann said. “Not putting them in water.”

  “We’re sinking them in their holes,” Corey said, coming up for air. “We’re putting the bottom third of the fencepost in a hole, and that’s called sinking it. Right?” Corey looked to Maggie for confirmation.

  “That’s right,” Maggie said, smearing jam on her toast. “Do you know what your job is going to be, Rae?”

  “Keeping them straight?” Rae Ann asked.

  “You are going to hold the level that tells us when the posts are straight up and down. It’s an essential job. I hope you can manage it.”

  Corey had to bite his lip to keep from grinning. He’d seen the tiny, six-inch level that Rae Ann would have to hold. She would have no problems.

  “I can,” Rae Ann said. “I can focus good, and I can hold still for a long time for my age. My teacher told Daddy that.”

  “Good,” Maggie said. “Then I want you on my team. I only like workers with excellent concentration.” She took a gulp of coffee, and Corey could see she was hiding a smile. She liked Rae Ann and wanted her to feel important.

  “You two should finish up and get down to the range,” Shelly said. “You don’t want to miss any of the fun.”

  Corey caught Emma’s eye. What that really meant was that they needed to be there before things got started so they’d be available when they were wanted. He drank down the last of his orange juice and carried his plate and glass to the sink.

  “Would you like me to wash my dishes?” he asked Shelly.

  “Thank you for offering, Corey, but I really think you should get going.” She took the dishes from him and placed them in the sink. “Go on, now.”

  He waited while Emma cleared her plate and kissed her mother on the cheek, then they walked together down the path to the firearms shed.

  “You know,” Emma said when they were away from the house, “I heard gunshots at first light this morning. Do you think it had anything to do with what Gary and your dad were doing? I heard Dad say they came back just after dawn.”

  “My dad was in the bathroom throwing up this morning,” Corey said. “He said he was under the weather, but I’ve never seen him look like that. I think he’s hiding something.”

  “You know Gary and guns. I wonder if something happened in town. Why would they go before daylight? They had to be doing something wrong. I think they were stealing supplies.”

  “My dad wouldn’t steal. It can’t be that.”

  “Not even if Gary told him he’d make my dad kick you guys out if he didn’t? I bet he would, if it meant keeping you and Rae safe.” Emma opened the door to the shed.

  “I guess you could be right,” Corey said, opening the gun cabinet and taking out two pistols while Emma pulled open the drawer that held the magazines and started setting them on the bench. He grabbed a box of bullets from another drawer, and they began loading the magazines. They loaded six each, and Corey shoved the gun in the back of his waistband so he could carry them out to the range. He set them on the hay bales at the far side of the firing range and went to move his target back. His aim was improving, and his goal was to match Emma’s distances by the end of the week.

  He returned to the hay bale and loaded a magazine into the handgun. He aimed, both eyes open using his dominant eye, held his breath, and eased the trigger back. The bullet hit the target, but it wasn’t anywhere close to the center. He glanced over at Emma, who was on the other side of the range, popping off shots one after the other and consistently hitting the center ring of her target. He groaned inwardly and aimed again.

  This bullet struck closer to the inner ring, and he kept it up, shooting round after round until the magazine was empty. Emma was replacing her target when Corey finally emptied his magazine, but there was still plenty of paper left in his. He discharged another magazine before he bothered to replace it. His aim improved from the first shot to the one hundredth, and he was feeling pleased with himself when he joined Emma in the shed.

  “I’m getting better,” he said, putting the empty magazines back in the drawer. “My last twenty-five shots were all within a half inch of the center if they didn’t hit it.”

  “Good for you,” she said, pushing a patc
h soaked in cleaning fluid through the barrel. “You’ve got the focus to be a good marksman. But do you have the focus to find out what your dad and Gary were doing in town this morning?”

  “Do you really think you could hear shots from town all the way up here? It’s miles away.”

  “Sound echoes up the valley. I can hear the train, so why not gunshots?”

  “I don’t know. It just seems too far away.”

  “We can do an experiment sometime. I’ll go into town and bang on a drum at dawn, and you can tell me if you hear it or not.” She giggled. “That would be kind of odd, wouldn’t it? To get woken to the sound of a drum on the green. I’d probably end up in the stir.”

  “You mean the rubber room, Em. The stir is prison.”

  “Neither one is where I want to end up.” Emma finished cleaning her pistol and began reassembling it. “Are you going to find out what happened, or not?”

  Corey hurried to catch up with his cleaning. “He won’t tell me. So how do I find out? I’ll keep my ears open, though. Maybe Gary will tell Abram. I know they like to talk down here in Gary’s cabin so no one else will hear them.”

  “Don’t let them catch you eavesdropping, Corey. You’d be in so much trouble.”

  “I don’t intend to. But I’m going to try.”

  They locked the now clean handguns in the cabinet and left the shed, turning to walk to the back of the property. There was the beginning of a path from the shooting range to the fence because it was traveled every day now. Corey and his dad both had to shoot and then work on the back wall every day. Not today, though—today his dad was asleep.

  They had reached the perimeter fence and were walking the path that was cut along the inside. There were roots and stones, but it was much easier than trying to make their way through the woods.

  “Tomorrow we should go the other way,” Emma said. “Through the corn and hay fields and along the fence next to the creek.”

  “Wouldn’t that take longer?” Corey asked. “That’s a lot of acreage to cover.”

  “Yeah, but we’ll be working closer to the other side by tomorrow, don’t you think? Or maybe we won’t get that far.”