"Well I don't feel like Bruce Willis right now. Or Schwarzenegger. Truth told, I feel more like Woody Allen." He turned back to face the station. "Nope, it's the station. Has to be."
"OK: why? Why the station?"
Geoff clapped his hands together in frustration. "God, I just don't know – the roof? Something in the concrete, maybe?"
"Like what?"
"Johnny-"
"I'm not being difficult – at least not deliberately – I'm just trying to eliminate the things that don't make any sense."
"None of it makes any sense."
"Agreed. But special concrete makes less sense than most things."
"Yeah, OK. So not the concrete."
"What about us? I mean, us ourselves?"
Geoff shook his head. "If it were just me and Rick then maybe that would work, our being brothers. But you and Mel, too… it doesn't work."
"Hey, what about something to do with the station itself?"
"I don't follow you."
Johnny blew smoke up into the air as he jumped from the rail. "The station… broadcasting!"
Geoff's eyes narrowed as he considered it.
"Sound wa– no, not sound waves – radio waves," Johnny continued. "Maybe there's something about radio waves that protected us. I mean, we pump a lot out from here, right?"
Geoff waggled his head from side to side, not really having an answer. This is the time, he thought, we suddenly need for one of us to have majored in some-damned-thing-or-other, to suddenly spout up with an answer for everything, just like they used to do in the comic books and those cheesy old black-and-white movies they kept showing on the SciFi channel, the ones starring Richard Carlson or Marshall Thompson.
He looked across at Johnny, the thirty-something dyslexic Lothario with the Springsteen wardrobe and the in-your-face deejay patter. Then he thought of his kid brother, twenty-eightgoing-on-fifty, still unable to drive a car almost half a year after an accident that just wasn't his fault, and Melanie, beautiful Melanie, a siren in military-style baggy dungarees whose body sang him to sleep most nights when it was she – the high school dropout with the background of parental abuse – who most needed the attention.
And himself, The Proprietor of KMRT – K Mart, as the guys in town delighted in calling it – the failed advertising executive who couldn't stand the rat race, staring the big four-oh down the throat and not liking the smell that came out of there – a smell like flowers that had passed their prime, old perfume gone still and bad. Atomic Knights they were not. If the future of the planet – of mankind itself, maybe – were their responsibility then maybe it was time to send the audience home. The game was as good as finished even before it had gotten started.
"Hello… Planet Earth to Geoff… come in, Geoff…"
He shook his head and gave a weak smile. "Sorry. Drifting."
"Uh huh. Drifting where, oh great one?"
He reached over and lifted Johnny's pack of Marlboro from the concrete standing by his feet. "Just drifting." He shook a cigarette out and Johnny tossed across a matchbook, most of whose matches were twisted out and bent over, their heads blackened like dead soldiers. He pulled a match free, struck it, held it to the cigarette and inhaled. It tasted good… tasted normal.
He looked up at the sky through the blue-gray of the swirling smoke and said, "There's one thing we haven't said anything about."
"Yeah?"
"What happens tonight? What happens if they – or it, whatever it was – what happens if it comes back to finish the job?"
Johnny looked around again. Geoff thought it must be because of Melanie: Johnny didn't want to say anything that might cause her concern. Geoff liked that. It raised Johnny in his esteem and he made a mental note to have a word with Rick to get off his case, not ride him so much. They all needed each other's support if they were going to get through this, whatever "this" was.
"… already given that some thought," Johnny was saying. "Right at the start, when Mel and me figured out for ourselves that the world had suddenly gone AWOL and we were left holding the hill against the enemy, I wondered if… if this thing has been an intentional thing by–" he waved his hands in the air, "–by whatever, then maybe they know we're here. Maybe they know they screwed up with the people up on the hill in that wacky-looking building with all the antennae sticking out of the top." He frowned and lowered his voice. "And maybe they're going to come back for us… tonight."
"So you're suggesting?"
"We get the hell out. Now!" He slapped the rail with his hand and the ring on his finger made a dull chime.
"That's fine if–" He tapped his index finger. "One, they know they screwed up and, two, they know where they can get us. But it's a bad idea if they just send the light again, same way they did this morning, and we're suddenly out there, somewhere, away from whatever it was that protected us."
Johnny was nodding. "Hadn't thought it through that way. Maybe they won't come back: maybe it was just a random thing, something that happens once in every zillion years or so, something natural." He said the word "natural" as though it was something unpleasant.
"Maybe."
"But you don't think so."
"No, I don't think so. I never heard of anything natural that could remove folks from out of their beds and out of their cars, just like that." He snapped his fingers. "Except maybe in The X Files."
"So they're coming back."
Geoff nodded, took a final pull on the butt and flicked it onto the path.
"So, which one is it to be? Move off or stay put here?"
Geoff leaned back and breathed out a final cloud of smoke. "You're putting me in charge?" he asked, tapping himself in the chest incredulously.
"Seems to me like you're the best we've got."
"Well, that convinces me what a sorry state we're in."
"And it's amen to that, oh Great One."
They both forced a smile at that and turned to watch the sun, lost in their own thoughts as, silently and slowly, it made its way across to the far horizon. They couldn't see it doing it, of course. But they knew that it was.
• • • •
It was almost 8pm, the sun so low in the western sky that only the burnt orange memory of it remained over the wooded hills surrounding distant Carlisle, when Geoff and Rick were finally satisfied they had secured the station for the night.
In the hours since Geoff's conversation with Johnny, the four of them had been busy. Geoff had assumed the mantle of Chief of Operations, a role that had seemed to meet with everyone's approval. He had sent Johnny and Rick back into Jesman's Bend to get provisions while he and Melanie went around the station shoring up shutters and doorways and windows. Then they cleared the garage space of all the junk they had collected over the months, making room for the Dodge.
They watched in silence, each of them lost in their own thoughts, as the overhead door closed on its electronic pulley, stuttering the way it always did around the halfway mark, when Geoff had to slap the remote with his hand before pressing the wide button again. It caught with the one slap – it usually took more when they were raising the door, which is why they had abandoned the garage as a store for the Dodge in the first place – but when it did start again, there seemed an element of finality to it and Geoff looked down at the remote with the steady confidence that he would never use it again, as though he would never open that door again. He looked across at Melanie and forced a smile when he saw her watching him, frowning. He waved the remote. "I love these things, you know."
"So I see. What is it they say about little things pleasing little minds?"
He leaned over, kissed the side of her face and gave her a knowing wink. "There's a couple bigger things I get a lot of fun out of, too." He brushed his hand lightly against Melanie's breasts and gave a lascivious grin.
Melanie shook her head in mock disgust and pushed him away. "God, you are such a sleazebag, you know that?"
Geoff smiled as the descending door removed the la
st glimmer of the Dodge and the door clanked to a stop. "There, that should do it," he said.
He turned to Melanie to hand her the remote for a second but she was pulling weeds from the side of the concrete apron. Geoff hadn't the heart to disturb her, lost as she was in the simple act of tending and tidying. He bent down and laid the remote on the ground and went across to check the door. It was secure. It rattled in its runners, but it was secure. Geoff reckoned that anyone with the capability of doing what they'd done would probably be able to beat down a few doors but he had kept that to himself. The chances were, anyway, that everyone else recognized that same fact but they, too, had kept it quiet. The activity had kept them all busy.
"All done?" Melanie asked.
Geoff turned and nodded, smiling at the tufts of weed in his wife's clenched hand. "How about you?"
Melanie frowned and then saw Geoff looking at her hand. She let out a high-pitched giggle and tossed the weeds across at him, Geoff ducking and dodging back around her to the door. Melanie chased him and, when the station door was satisfactorily locked and bolted, she fell into his arms.
In that embrace they were lost and they were safe, a million miles away from the strangeness of the deserted town and the abandoned trucks and cars, a thousand light years away from marauding lights in the night sky.
"I love you, honey," Geoff said, his voice little more than a whisper.
Melanie nodded, blinking her eyes once. A wave of profound sadness washed over her and, just for a second, she felt that they would never leave this place, and that this was the final embrace she would share with her husband.
"Hey," Geoff said, tapping Melanie's nose with his finger. "Lose those bad thoughts."
"How'd you know–"
"It's my job," he said.
Melanie rose onto the tips of her toes and found Geoff's mouth with her own, flicking her tongue across into his tongue, closing her eyes in the throes of the immense and indescribable pleasure of their touching, and of his smell.
Johnny and Rick had got back a little before five, quiet and even solemn. Geoff hadn't asked them about town – there was no reason to do so: he'd seen it for himself. Instead, while Melanie set to work making fresh coffee and plates of sandwiches, Geoff had watched the two men unloading bags of canned goods and bread into the station's large galley kitchen, filling cupboards and stacking things until the assembled produce coupled with the seemingly impervious security had made them all feel a little easier. Even gung ho.
As the afternoon had trembled over into early evening – and the shadows lengthened and lengthened until, the light fading fast, they faded into watery gray stains and then disappeared completely – Geoff had Rick and Johnny take it in half-hour turns to sit on the roof with Geoff's old binoculars, keeping a watch for any sign of movement on the road leading down into town.
With the lessening light had come the lowering temperature and, a little after 7.30, Geoff watched Rick finish securing the shutters on most of the windows. It was the final job that needed to be done. Geoff had said that it was probably best that they kept lighting to a minimum, and even then only as absolutely necessary. Rick stepped back, lost for a moment in the results of his work, and then suddenly remembered that when they went in they would be in the dark. He turned and gave a half-hearted smile.
"Done?"
Rick nodded and looked around. It had all the appearances of a final look, a last glance before they slipped the black bag over his head and then the noose. "I used to love this time of the evening at this time of year," Rick said. There was a softness to the words and to Rick's voice that Geoff hadn't heard before. Or, at least, he didn't recall hearing them. Rick sighed. "But now, with all the noises gone, and us–" He waved a hand at the gathering gloom and nodded to the station. "–scurrying around in there in total darkness like moles, it's like…" He searched for the words. "It's like I'm standing in a painting, or in one of those hologram setups on the Star Trek shows. Like the dinosaurs in the Jurassic Park movies – everything seems to be there but when you get up close to it, it's not the same." He looked around at his brother and pulled a face. "Am I making any sense here or just blowing wind?"
"Yes, you're making a lot of sense."
The countryside seemed to be sitting out there, waiting – but waiting for what? That was the question. There was no sound, no light and no energy anywhere in the world. Geoff imagined flying up into space, right from where he was standing, and soaring over the towns and the cities, over the plains and the forests, over the multi-lane highways and the towering skyscrapers, all of them empty, silent and deserted.
"You coming in?" Johnny's voice broke the stillness.
"Yeah, we're all done out here. See anything?"
"Uh uh. Quiet as the grave."
Geoff would have preferred a different analogy but he took the point.
"Isn't this about the place in the story where you're supposed to say 'It's quiet… too quiet!'?"
"Yeah," Rick said, ever the movie buff, "like the old Foreign Legion movies or the Indian uprisings, where a handful of guys are stuck in the fort with a bunch of their dead comrades propped up on the battlements, hoping to fend off one final attack before the cavalry arrive."
"Think they'll get here, Geoff?" Johnny shouted down from the roof. "The cavalry, I mean."
Geoff didn't think so. He didn't think there was anyone to help them repel this enemy, whatever it was and wherever it had come from. But he wasn't about to tell them that. The secret of good leadership is to preserve optimism, even in the face of insurmountable odds. But "It'll turn out," was as much as he could manage, and even that stuck in his throat like a fishbone.
"Yeah," Johnny said, and he moved back on the roof and sat down against the door. Out of sight of Geoff and Rick.
"You really think that? That it'll be OK?"
With a final look around outside, his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his denims, Geoff silently bid the world goodnight. Then he said, "Yes, I really think that."
He turned around and stepped into the station.
Rick followed him and Geoff locked the door, dropping the two security deadbolts into place. The sound was like a cell door and the darkness that engulfed them was like a waiting grave.
All that was then left to do was check the windows and then join the others.
"I was wondering," Rick said as they made their way up to the studio, having satisfied themselves that the building was as secure as they were likely to be able to make it. He was carrying a small pencil flashlight that cast a shuddering circle of white on the floor in front of them.
Geoff said, "What about?"
"How long will the food last? I mean, you know, if everyone has gone and we're the last people–" He stopped himself saying "alive" and just left it at that.
Geoff held open the door to the main corridor. "We won't be the last people. Something will–"
"But if we are, how long will the food last?"
Geoff led the way to the studio, trailing a hand along the wall for guidance. "Indefinitely. The canned stuff, years certainly."
At the door to the sound booth, Rick stopped and pulled on his brother's arm. "And if there are no animals? Nothing to kill and eat?"
Geoff punched him lightly in the shoulder. "Then we'll become vegetarian. Learn to grow things. Vegetables." He opened the door and Melanie looked up from the console. Johnny was in the studio shielded by the soundproof glass, bent over a box of CDs with a candle glimmering beside him and the pinpoint glow of the system lights above his head.
"All secure, Number One?" she asked, shielding her eyes from the flashlight's beam.
Geoff saluted. "Aye, aye, Captain."
Johnny stood up and waved a CD case, suddenly surprised to see Geoff and Rick in the sound booth with Melanie. He leaned over the desk and dislodged a stack of CD cases, then flicked the mic on the desk. "Shit, can't see a damned thing in here," he announced. "Anyway, I found it." He glanced an apology to Geoff. "I was g
etting lonely out there – and it's so quiet. I thought we could liven things up with a little music." He sniggered.
Melanie smiled. "Found what?"
Johnny waved for her to wait and fumbled the CD into the console deck, turning the control dial. He pressed a button and then stood back, the broad grin on his face illuminated by the candle's glow.
The strains of the Carpenters' Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft filled the booth. Melanie laughed up at Geoff and Rick. She laughed even louder, clapping her hands, when Geoff pointed for her to look in the studio: Johnny was standing, legs and arms outstretched – the candle in his right hand – swaying side to side to the music.
Rick thrust his hands into his pants pockets. "So what do we do now?"
"Now," Geoff said, "we wait."
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