Moonbane

by Al Sarrantonio

  But then the world came back to me.

  I had survived. That fact alone I found remarkable—that I had made it through a second night trapped in my own cellar. I had even slept a little, toward morning. Most of the night had been filled with the howling and wild thrashings of my son as he sought to break free and obey the command of the Moon above. At one point, he had almost succeeded, but I had managed to tighten his bonds. I looked over at him now; he was rolled into a fetal position. I could hear his shallow breathing. The scattered food that I had left for him had not been touched; milk still pooled along the wall where he had thrown it.

  Sunlight streamed through the windows.

  I went upstairs. The television was blind now. “Dennis the Menace” had been replaced by static and meaningless lines. Two of the three radio stations were dead; only the soft rock station continued to reel off Melissa Manchester records and Pepsi commercials. I went to the spot where I had thought I heard something the day before, but there was only the sound of Marconian silence.

  I left the radio on and went to the kitchen to eat. I filled a bowl with cereal. I was pouring the last of the souring milk onto it when the empty loud static of the radio was replaced by a sudden startling voice.

  “Stand by,” the voice said.

  I froze with the first spoon of breakfast halfway to my mouth.

  The sound of that voice, after two days of silence, galvanized me. But the tone of the voice—it sounded like a professionally calm voice, the kind that state troopers have, but driven to the edge—kept me frozen to the spot. I was afraid that perhaps the following announcement wouldn’t come, that the request to “stand by” was all there would be.

  I forgot the cereal and went back to the living room. I stared at the radio as if it was a god. By the clock, five minutes went by. I was beginning to convince myself I had heard the voice in my head when the tone of the static changed, and the voice came back.

  “Baines and Proctor,” the voice said, “Baines and Proctor. Apply at once for work.”

  The radio went back to static. I stood staring at it, waiting for more. There was nothing.

  I had heard from the outside world, and there had been nothing there for me. A voice fighting calm, two names. And then nothing.

  I waited, but the radio stayed silent. I finished my breakfast, then wandered around the house. I heard the thing in the cellar grunting against its bonds.

  I went into my study, which, I discovered, the beast had passed by. It seemed like another world, one I no longer recognized. Dark green walls, the way I had painted them four years ago when we moved in. Emily had said that that was the way a man’s study should look. Dark colors did that. There was a word processor on a table. There were books in all four corners, on the floor, bulging out of the bookshelves. I had built the bookshelves myself—white pine stained dark mahogany. Thin poetry volumes, four of them mine, occupied a special place above the desk. Theodore Roethke. Robert Frost. My first volume, Solitude. Shelley, Keats, the monolith Milton. Poetry seemed like it was from another world. From the Moon. I knew I had a poem I had been working on in a notebook that occupied center stage on my desk, but at that moment I couldn’t even remember the title. It had, as I recalled, something to do with spring (the opposite of the winter season we were just entering; I often dwelled on that which was not before me, relishing it in memory), something about “the death of roses bloomed.” I could remember nothing more of it.

  I believe that art is something pursued in tranquility. A hunted or starving man will have little thought of composition; give the same man a full stomach and safe haven (even if it be Tolstoy’s prison cell) and he will, if so inclined, turn to art. Thoughts of survival have a way of pushing all others aside.

  I wondered if I would ever write again.

  I left my study, sadly, and found myself at the door to my son’s room.

  As I entered Richie’s bedroom, a pang of hurt and loss overcame me. His models, which had been displayed neatly along one side of his desk—two race cars, a spaceship—were smashed to the floor now. Only a Frankenstein monster, as if in mockery, had been left intact. His schoolbooks, which had been stacked, closed tight against Christmas vacation, were scattered around the room. The covers had been pulled from his bed; normally, they would have been turned down, something Emily did every night…

  I heard a sound in the hallway.

  Startled, I turned to see my son staring at me.

  He was crouched slightly, his front paws turned in front of him like a dog standing on its hind legs. His body looked lean and powerful, despite its lack of food. The eyes burned with yellow intensity. There was a near grin on his long, wide mouth.

  “Richie?” I said, tentatively.

  The lean, bony body tensed, and then he leapt at me. I was standing by my son’s desk chair, and I swung it around in front to block his way. He batted the chair aside.

  I moved toward the doorway. He stood breathing shallowly by his desk.

  “Richie, please,” I said.

  He attacked again.

  I swept the contents from the table next to the door in his path and ran. He howled in frustration, leaping from the room and loping after me.

  I went to the kitchen, moving behind the kitchen table. He stopped on the other side, panting, regarding me with nothing short of hatred.

  “Richie, can’t you hear me?” I pleaded. “My God, there must be part of you left in there.”

  He growled like a rabid dog and pushed the kitchen table into me, pinning me against the wall behind.

  He threw his head back and howled, then gave a sudden jump and was on the kitchen table on all fours, moving toward me, his jaws opening and closing like a vise.

  He jumped and I threw myself under the table, crawling desperately to the far side. The cellar door was open, and I threw myself onto the steps. I tried to push the door closed but he was right behind me and yanked it open. I jumped down the steps, grabbing at one of the pieces I had used to bar the door. At the bottom of the stairs I ran to my workshop and slammed the door shut behind me.

  He hit the door with his body, forcing it partway open, but I was able to keep him out.

  In a growing rage, he threw himself at the door again and again, but I was able to hold him off.

  I refuted all of my earlier complaints about the door, thanking God that this sturdy one was here instead of at the top of the stairs.

  He tried for five minutes to get in at me, but I felt his growing weakness, and, finally, he retreated.

  I took the opportunity to bang the two-by-four I had brought down with me across the door, and to pull my heavy workbench up against it, and then I settled down to wait.

  CHAPTER 7

  The Flight

  Night fell. The sky outside the windows purpled, then blackened to starlight.

  And then the Moon rose.

  The thing that had been my son let out a heart-stopping howl as the edge of the Moon lifted up over the lip of Earth.

  I watched its pale, evil light fill the world outside my tiny, wire-covered window. It was a horrifyingly beautiful sight. There is beauty in horrible things, in their evil perfection.

  Outside the window, I heard other screaming cries, a chorus of prayer to the white-cratered god pulling into Earth’s sky. I thanked the resourcefulness of whoever had built this workshop, providing me with the miniature fortress I now inhabited.

  My gratitude proved short-lived. There came a wild howling cry from the other side of the door, and my son threw himself against it, splitting the upper half of the wood. I cried out, “No!” and put my back into the workbench, holding it across the entrance. The thing on the other side clawed and beat at the door, reducing it to splinters.

  He stood in the doorway, and I saw what the Moon had done to him. His body had swelled; the muscles in his arms had thickened and hardened; the skin around his eyes had shrunk back to reveal the ferocious, almond orbs of his yellow eyes. The claws on his hands had length
ened and sharpened, one claw at the tip of his finger that had been severed missing.

  I moved to the back of the room, where the bench had been. At the cold wall my hand brushed a smooth wooden handle. I clutched at it, expecting to find a dowel or discarded furniture leg, but instead came up with a small ax.

  The head was dulled, but I clutched it like it was Excalibur itself.

  My son was screaming in blind rage, tearing at the workbench. If he didn’t kill me I would try to disable him.

  He thrust his way into the room and I lunged at him, hitting him in the shoulder. It was a glancing blow, the dull ax head sliding aside, but it was enough to bring him up short, and I lifted and brought the ax down again. I felt the blade go into his shoulder this time. He wailed in agony and drew back.

  Blood poured from the wound. He turned his head, his mouth gouging wildly at the open slash. His face had lost all traces of intelligence or cunning; his eyes rolled up into their sockets, showing milky yellow. He keened, a sound like the whistling of a high-tension wire.

  I advanced on him with the ax, turning the head to the flat side. I meant to break one of his legs or arms if I could, and thereby incapacitate him to the point where I could truss him up again.

  He suddenly left off his blood sucking and turned all of his attention back to me.

  Time hung suspended; his eyes rolled back down to bright yellow and then he rushed me.

  The next moment will live in my memory forever.

  I froze; he leaped, as graceful as any ballet dancer; there was a beauty in the way his claws were poised at a precise angle before him to rip my throat and chest out.

  I stood unable to move, as hypnotized and resigned as any weaker dog that bares his throat to his victorious enemy.

  And then he saved me.

  I saw his eyes clear from madness to humanity. It lasted a mere second.” But in that instant he pulled his claws back and turned his mouth aside. I still do not know if he uttered my name, in a guttural wrench of pain, or not. I think he did. But then he slammed into me, knocking me down with the force of his body.

  I do know that he said one word, “Go,” as he threw himself away from me, howling in new madness, and then he disappeared through the doorway. I heard him on the stairs, and then he was running through the house, and in another moment his cries were mingled with those of the others of his kind in the Moon’s night.

  I lay unmoving for the next five minutes. Though I owned my own life, I felt drained of life. I felt a madman in a nightmare. I believe I lost my mind for a while. The terror of the last few days, the lack of sleep and proper food, the magnitude of my siege, all these combined to bring the animal in my own nature before the man. I recall pacing the length of the cellar, brandishing my tiny weapon and daring any wolf to come near; I remember falling into a slumber at one point, only to visit a world of horrible dreams no better than reality. When I awoke, my madness had only grown. I remember standing at one point with my back against the cold of the cellar wall, the ax blade turned to my own throat, my eyes turned with unreasoning hate to the cold knife-light of the Moon. Why live in a world of madness? I reasoned. Why live in a world that had taken my wife and transformed my son into a monstrous, perverted caricature of all that is considered human? I would remove myself from this nightmare from which I could never wake.

  The blade of the ax touched my neck; I recall that distinctly. But I did not draw the blade. Instead I slid down the wall and sat hunched against its cold concrete, crying like a child. I prayed that one of the beasts would wander in and find me then, and accomplish for me what I could not accomplish for myself. With weeping irony, I thought of one of my own lines of poetry: Oh, man, art thou not God in image and deed?

  Gods indeed, who could not even ensure their own destruction when preferable to living hell.

  Weeping, I again pressed the ax blade to my throat. My eyes wandered to the wire-screened window of the workshop and saw night retreating, day approaching. The howls had stopped—even in madness I had survived the night. No matter, I vowed; tonight would bring another Moon, and for all I knew I was the only man left on an Earth of wolves. I would show them who was God; one deep swipe across my neck—

  And then, as if in miracle, the radio upstairs in the living room crackled into life with a single word:

  “Attention.”

  I went upstairs and listened.

  CHAPTER 8

  The Voice

  By the time I had stumbled to the top of the stairs I was myself again. But the radio was filled with silent static.

  I stared at it in disbelief; for a moment madness descended upon me again. I had imagined the voice, I thought. I took the stereo receiver in my two hands, lifted it from its shelf, and prepared to dash it to the floor.

  Then the voice returned, startling me, from out of the speakers to either side of me.

  “Stand by.”

  I gently put the radio down and stood back.

  The voice was relieved by static; almost immediately, another voice emerged from the speakers.

  He sounded cocksure and tentative at the same time, with the kind of “aw, shucks” persona Gary Cooper often played in the movies—the war hero suddenly pushed in front of a microphone and, consequently, millions of people.

  “I don’t really know how to begin,” he said; this was followed by a pause and what sounded like a small hiccup. He resumed, “But here it is. Truth is, we don’t know what’s left. But we do know what’s gone. The President’s dead; so’s the Vice President, Speaker of the House and most of Congress. Most local governments are gone, too, which means the big cities are nothing but chaos. We got all this from Washington, before the last transmitters went there.

  “Truth is, I don’t know if anybody’s listening to this or not. I’m betting somebody is. I can’t believe we’re the only organized bunch still getting anything out over the air, but we’ve been sweeping the bands for two days and there’s nothing but a few amateurs left out there. And they’re dropping off one by one, as power goes down or the wolves get ‘em. Seems the fur-faces like to bust up any equipment they can get their hands on. We followed a few shortwave guys in Europe and one from Japan, but they’re quiet now, too. From what we gathered, things are the same all over.”

  Again he paused to make that strange hiccup; I could hear him whispering to someone off-mike and then he came back on.

  “So here’s where things stand. Far as we know, we’re the only game in town out here. Reason for that, if anybody wants something to lift their spirits, is something that Washington classified as a national security matter—but heck, since Washington doesn’t really exist no more I guess that don’t mean slap. Even so, good American that I am, I ain’t gonna tell you what it is except to say we got a few tricks up our sleeves out here in the desert.

  “So the welcome wagon is here. Anybody without fur on his ass who can find Kramer Air Force Base is welcome, and especially, and this is important, so listen up, we need Proctor and Baines, who are out there somewhere, real bad. Anybody comes across ‘em, bring em on in.” He gave a short chuckle and that weird, short hawking sound. “Damn it, Wyatt and Doc, get on in here, we need you to finish these friggin’furballs off and get us straightened out again. Heck, I only got enough chewing tobacco left for another week”—again the hawking sound, a spit of tobacco juice, I now realized—“and you know how mean-tempered I get when I ain’t got my chaw.”

  The mike went silent, and I thought the message had ended when the voice erupted again; I heard whispering, then: “They say I forgot to tell you who I am. Don’t see that it makes a difference, except if it’ll get me my chaw, but, heck, this is Lieutenant Jimmy Rogers, United States Air Force.”

  This time the radio went out and stayed out; I could hear the release of frequency as their transmitter was turned off, giving the air back to static.

  I sat stunned. I hadn’t even noticed that I had sunk into a chair as the broadcast had gone on, so immersed had I been
in it. Now the chair held me, mesmerized.

  Jimmy Rogers! As if his name didn’t mean anything. The worst they had ever called him was the Chuck Yeager of the eighties, test pilot, space shuttle pilot, the only genuine American hero that everybody agreed on.

  Here was Jimmy Rogers, giving me back hope, telling me that he and his boys out at Kramer Air Force Base, a mere 150 miles to the west, were not only holding the wolves off but had a way to beat them!

  That was good enough for me.

  More than good—it was the only game in town.

  CHAPTER 9

  Silence

  I ate breakfast and then packed. There were cans of food and a canteen of water; whatever dried goods—crackers, the remains of the bag of dried fruit, a partial loaf of moldering bread, a couple of boxes of single-serving cereal, corn flakes and raisin bran (Can’t forget your fiber! I thought with grim humor). Whatever food I could pack into my son’s scout backpack, which was larger than my own hiking pack, I put in. I could discard anything I didn’t need (no littering laws anymore), and the rest, water and food and anything else I might need, I would have to scavenge there.

  Then I collected weapons. I took my army knife, a flashlight, and the ax. I checked the shotgun in the living room, but the barrel had been wrenched out of line. I also took waterproof matches, a screwdriver, and a pair of pliers.

  I decided not to bring a sleeping bag, reasoning that any house along the way would serve the purpose. If things were as bad as Jimmy Rogers claimed, I would have little trouble finding empty beds in empty houses.

  At nine o’clock exactly, I pulled open the front door.

  It felt immensely strange to perform this simple task. This house had been my prison and fortress—my womb—for two days, and agoraphobia assaulted me. It was safe here, my instinct told me; this is where I had survived. The fact that I had very little chance of continuing to do so meant nothing. My foot froze, not carrying out my commands to step outside.