Darkness Falling

by Peter Crowther

  "Where's that?" she asked.

  "Where's what, honey?"

  She pointed over at the last remnants of the setting sun, a wide maroon bruise shot through with pink-tinged clouds.

  "You go all the way over there and you'd be in California. After that, you'd be in the Pacific Ocean."

  "No," the girl said. Her tone suggested she had dropped the additional word "dummy" right at the last second. "I mean is it north or south or east or west."

  "That's the west," he said. "That's the side the sun sets on." He swerved the Chevy suddenly to avoid a Toyota Camry that was up on its side.

  Angel nodded. "Doesn't the sun ever set on the other side? The east?"

  Virgil laughed.

  "The way things are right now, girly," he said, "seems to me anything is possible." He laughed some more but stopped when he looked across and saw Ronnie's stony expression. He looked away out of the window.

  They had talked about what had happened, each of them running through possible scenarios, while Angel Wurst listened. Ronnie had considered trying to change the subject on several occasions, but what was the point? They had all lost people – Angel, her parents; Ronnie, Martha; and the boy, Virgil Banders, his mother. There was something about Virgil that Ronnie did not entirely cotton onto – he felt that Angel was a little unsure, too: and what was that stuff about the dead body that the girl had gone on about? The body – a woman's body – that was unable to breathe?

  But the really big question was what had happened.

  Virgil had suggested a few comic book ideas and one or two possibilities that Ronnie thought he recognized from TV shows, notably The Twilight Zone and that one where they took control of your television set. But nothing they could think of between them came even close to making any sense at all, though Ronnie suspected that, in terms of the explanation being measured on a Richter scale of pure "sense", they were not in Kansas anymore.

  "Nope." Ronnie couldn't keep the smile out of his voice. He looked at Angel in the mirror. "The sun always rises in the east – the first people to see it being New Yorkers – and it sets over in the west, watched all the way down by Californians. Boring, isn't it?"

  The girl nodded enthusiastically.

  When Ronnie turned to face the road, he could see the wounded plane taking up most of the Mall parking lot. Another half-mile or so and he could see the partially destroyed Borders building, the huge glass frontage slipped down around the plane's nose like a too-big tiara.

  "Here we are," he said, "home sweet home."

  They parked the car up around the plane's tail and got out, hoisting bags and tools onto the walkway that ran along where, on a busy day, the hoods and trunks of the cars would be. Today, this evening, the row was empty. They swung open the doors and stepped out into the gloaming, each of them in his or her own way feeling as though they were stepping down onto the alien dust of another planet.

  With Samantha the doll tucked firmly under her arm, Angel walked across to the end of the chute and looked up. "How we gonna get up there?" she asked.

  Ronnie paused, with the chainsaw strap around his shoulder, and looked up the chute. She had a good point. It was a good twenty or thirty feet up to the hatchway – if the plane hadn't lost its wheels then it would have been more.

  He looked around at the spreading pile of stuff by the car and tried to figure out what would be best: for him to go up first, thereby leaving Angel on the empty parking lot, or for the girl to go up – assuming she could, of course: hell, assuming he could, of-fucking-course! – and into the plane, with whatever it was that she might find in there.

  Ronnie didn't doubt for a minute that everything would be OK up there just as it would be OK down here in the parking lot, but there was something about either scenario that just didn't sit well with him.

  He walked up to the end of the chute and shouted up. "Hey, you OK up there?"

  For a few seconds, Ronnie thought the worst. And then Karl's voice came, clearing his throat, saying, "Yeah, still here." And then, "You took your time."

  "Time goes nowhere when you're having fun," he shouted back, and then he turned to Angel and made a comical face. Angel put a hand up to her mouth to shield a snigger. Ronnie was pleased to see that the girl's earlier concerns seemed to have gone away.

  "OK, just hang tight – we're coming up . . . but it might take us a little while to figure it out. But hey, I almost forgot . . . we brought some help."

  "The fire brigade?"

  "Not quite. But it's a start. Say hi to Virgil."

  Virgil shouted "Hey," at the same time as Karl's weak attempt at a welcome, and everyone laughed some more. They could have been out on a picnic instead of being the last people in the world – or, at least, in their little part of it.

  "We'll get you out of there, no problemo," Virgil shouted. "Your man Ronnie here looks to have brought every damn tool in the shopping mall."

  "No worries," Karl shouted. "Take your time. I'm not going anyplace… save the bathroom, and the sooner I make that call, the better."

  Ronnie turned to Angel and crouched down in front of her. "You think you can get up that chute?"

  She looked up at it, frowned and then nodded. It was an emphatic nod.

  "You think maybe you can carry some rope?"

  "Where's the rope?" she said, delivering the question in a weary no-nonsense kind of way that suggested she did this kind of thing every day of her life.

  Ronnie pointed to a coil on the ground beside the Chevy. "You can put it around your shoulder – maybe even over your head?"

  "And what do I do with it when I get up there?"

  "Jeez, Louise, we gotta tell you everything, girly?" Virgil asked.

  "I'm not 'girly'," Angel snapped back at him. "I'm Angel."

  Virgil held up his shoulders, palms outstretched. "Hey, go easy on me, OK?" When he looked around at Ronnie to share the joke, there was something in the way Virgil smiled that didn't sit well with Ronnie. It was a crooked kind of smirk, a laughing-upyour-sleeve thing that made Ronnie uneasy.

  "What?" Virgil shrugged the question over at Ronnie, tipping his head back and thrusting out his chin. "Just having a bit of fun, is all," Virgil said, shaking his head and turning to the girl, hunkering down so that he was on her level.

  Ronnie explained in minute detail and then shouted to tell Karl that the girl was coming up.

  It took barely three minutes before Angel came sliding down the chute, chuckling uncontrollably, having reached only around the third-of-the-way mark. Ronnie held onto his frustration and laughed with her. Virgil smiled and watched, turning to Ronnie as the girl reached the ground.

  "Looks like fun," Virgil said.

  "It's slippy," Angel said.

  "You think you can try again?" Ronnie asked.

  Angel Wurst nodded with a profound certainty.

  "You having a good time down there?"

  "We're getting there," Ronnie shouted back. He turned to Angel. "OK, second time."

  "My mommy always says the second time's the charm," the girl said.

  "No, that's third time," Ronnie said.

  "My mommy always says it's the second time," she said, with a steely determination.

  And, this time anyway, it was.

  Angel managed to hook the rope around the bulkhead struts of the plane's nose, one of them buckled inwards and resting on Karl's seat. Also resting on the seat, they discovered when the trio gathered around the trapped map-reader after ascending the rope in a haphazard clamber, was a pair of six-inch-square wooden planks – flooring planks, Virgil said (rather obviously, Ronnie thought: he'd pretty much made up his mind not to like the boy though he couldn't think whatever for – and, if he were completely honest about it, he felt a little guilty because of it).

  "We can saw through the planking," Virgil Banders said, wafting a hand in front of his face not entirely subtly (the stocky map-reader having clearly soiled himself), "but we still won't get the seat free."

&nbs
p; Nobody said anything at that for what seemed like several minutes, Karl's upturned but side-on face checking the faces of his cohorts in an attempt to read what they might offer as an alternative solution. Guess we'll just have to leave him where he is, then, Karl fancied he heard the boy say, but it was just the little girl, Angel, talking to her doll.

  Karl wasn't comfortable with Virgil though he couldn't explain why.

  The boy seemed pleasant enough, if a little circumspect and possibly even secretive, but then he was of that age. And, with a decidedly disenchanted son of his own, Karl knew all too well about young men of a certain age. So he made allowances. Most important of all, of course, was that he get free from this trap, and the boy – Virgil Banders – seemed to know what was required and, best of all, how to achieve it. Virgil Banders, Karl thought as the others set about the task before them, such a remarkable name: a name destined for greatness, even, or perhaps for what passed for it in these troubled times.

  And so it was that within a half-hour of exertion on the part of all concerned, increased discomfort (which, had he been asked beforehand, Karl would have sworn was not possible: he had been in absolute agony for several hours now and his usually flip and savvy banter had disappeared) and a stream of profanities that, at the beginning, everyone had sought to excuse and apologize for, respecting the delicate years of young Angel Wurst and her doll companion, Virgil managed to chainsaw through Karl's leather and heavy-duty plastic seat and right down the full length of his torso, drawing blood – and a considerably voluble yelp – only once. When Virgil and Ronnie pulled the map-reader free, Virgil optimistically (and perhaps recklessly) attempting to provide additional support by jamming a shoulder under the bulkhead strut, it was all Karl could do to keep from weeping right out loud. The past few minutes, maybe ten or fifteen, he had become convinced that he was going to die there, pinned down in his pilot's seat after his first ever land ing, slowly starving to death. With the racking sobs, however, and his newly freed body, came a flood of flatulence (and a slight follow-through, which Karl decided to keep to himself).

  "Phew-eee!" proclaimed Angel Wurst, her nose upturned.

  "Let's get him to the bathroom," Virgil said.

  Karl let out a deep groan when Ronnie took hold of him beneath his armpits, shaking his head anxiously and moaning "nononono, please no," at the top of his voice.

  "We have to move him," Virgil said.

  Ronnie noticed the boy smirking as he glanced down at Karl's trousers, as though looking for evidence of the map-reader's unfortunate bowel explosions, and he immediately wanted to slap him. Instead, he said, "We can't move him yet – you heard him. It could be that he just needs a few minutes to allow his muscles to readjust to their freedom. Or–" Ronnie added, shrugging, and trying to make what he was about to say sound less downbeat than it warranted, "–it could be that there's been some internal damage."

  Damage? What the hell are they talking about here, Virgil thought. Damage was surely a word used for the breakdown of things, not for the destruction of flesh and bone. The very thought of that gave Virgil a pleasing hot flutter around his crotch.

  And now Ronnie was addressing the girl – Virgil liked the look of her, but she clearly didn't seem to have gone a bundle on him – telling her to go back into the main area of the plane and sit down.

  "Hey, we staying here?" Virgil said, unable to keep the whine from his voice.

  "We can't move him," Ronnie said.

  Virgil seemed to consider that and weigh up the implications. Whatever his findings were, he decided to keep them to himself – wisely, Ronnie thought. Virgil shrugged and said, "Ho-kay," doing it in a kind of sing-song I don't give a shit voice, and, thrusting his hands into his pants pockets, he edged past Ronnie into the plane's main cabin.

  Ronnie didn't say anything – what could he say, for Chrissakes? – as Virgil went past him, but he saw the unmistakable bulge of an erection in the boy's trousers. He wondered just what it was that had so excited him. He shouted in for Angel to come sit up front next to the flight cabin where he could keep an eye on her. If Virgil thought anything about that then he certainly didn't show it – at least, Ronnie thought as he watched the boy make his way down the aisle, not from the back.

  When Virgil and the girl had gotten themselves ensconced, Ronnie leaned over Karl and patted his shoulder. "OK, flyboy," he said, "it's party time."

  "Huh?"

  "I'm gonna wipe you down, put you into some clean pants."

  Karl started to protest but Ronnie shhh'ed him.

  "You want to bring the girl back in here? And Gilligan?"

  Even feeling as wretched as he did, Karl could not hold back a snort at that one. He knew he'd recognized the boy from somewhere but he just hadn't been able to place him.

  "It'll make you feel a whole lot better, believe me."

  "I believe you," Karl said, stretching his head to look along the aisle. When he was satisfied that they were not likely to be interrupted, he added, "But I'll tell you, it's gonna be messy in there."

  Ronnie patted the other man's shoulder. "You can be the son I never had."

  (15)

  The night was cool and the sky was clear. It was 2.37, and it was refreshingly lighter and less claustrophobic than the darkened station.

  Geoff went out onto the roof first, turning off the flashlight beam while they were in the corridor and even then squeezing through the outer door so as to avoid any suggestion of movement should anyone be watching the side of the station. He wasn't taking any chances. When Rick asked why, Geoff simply shrugged. Melanie followed with Rick.

  Keeping his back to the outside wall, Rick edged his way to where the small wall started and then crouched down. On all fours, he scurried crab-like along the wall's side until he was in the center, overlooking the valley and the beginning of the forest road. There, immediately beneath the station, the road crept to the right as though it was going straight down the side of Honeydew Mountain and then hit a fork: the right hand tine of the fork carried on towards I-90 while the left snaked around to travel the full length of the exposed saddle and ran down into the woods that led on into Jesman's Bend.

  Once he was in place, Rick shifted into a sitting position and lifted his head so that he could see over the wall.

  It was Melanie who broke the silence. "See anything?"

  Without turning around, Rick shook his head. "Don't know what I'm looking for," he said. "But there's nothing unusual."

  The outer door squeaked open behind them and Johnny emerged onto the roof. He held out a pair of binoculars to Geoff. "Try these," he said. "They've got infrared."

  Geoff took them and duck-waddled across to his brother.

  "Why'd you buy those?" Melanie asked in a trembling voice. She was feeling a chill in her bones that had nothing to do with the temperature and everything to do with the clandestine nature of being on the roof, speaking in whispers with the lights out.

  "Dunno," Johnny said. "Seemed like a good idea at the time, I guess."

  Melanie nodded, apparently satisfied with the answer, and watched Rick lift the glasses to his eyes.

  Johnny suddenly craned his head back. "Hey, you hear that?"

  Geoff hissed for him to keep quiet.

  "What?" Melanie whispered.

  "Listen."

  They listened.

  "I don't hear anything except the crickets," Melanie said at last, unable to keep the trace of exasperation out of her voice.

  "Kee rect," Johnny said. "The crickets. They're back."

  "Oh ye–"

  "What's that?" Geoff whispered loudly, pointing across the valley where, just for a second or two, a light had shone out of the blackness.

  Rick moved the glasses over to the left of where he had been looking. "Where?" he said. "What was it?"

  Geoff shifted to the other side of his brother and rested his chin on the wall. "I don't know… but it was something. A light of some kind."

  "Like a flashlight?"
>
  "Let me have the glasses." Rick handed them over and hunkered down. "It was around about…" Keeping his elbows on the wall so as to steady himself, and keeping his head, neck and hands in perfect unison, Geoff slowly moved his sweep of vision along the forest road to where the trees grew dense. "…round about where we saw Jerry Borgesson's truck."

  "So what kind of light was it?"

  "Does it matter?" Geoff said.

  "What I mean is," Rick said, lowering his voice so that Melanie and Johnny couldn't hear him, "could it have been the cab's interior light?"