Magic Time

by Marc Scott Zicree

  “Some of ’em come out,” Katy repeated and brushed back her snaggly blond hair with the back of her arm. She was a hollow-eyed, too-thin girl who would have been stunningly pretty if she’d either washed or smiled; she’d never even made it as far as Wilma’s classes. Her sister, Annie Flue, joined her, holding her torch aloft.

  “So why didn’t they come down to town?” she asked, puzzled. “Look at ’em, looks like they all sort of scatter every which way.”

  “They got to knowed there was men left back in the mine.”

  Torchlight gleamed on the puddles between the rusted rails as those who’d tried to follow the tracks regathered slowly around the tunnel entrance. Someone touched the cyclone gates that had guarded the tunnel, now thrown wide. The snapped chain lay in the mud.

  “What you make of this?” asked Ulee Grant, kneeling to shine his light more clearly on the mud.

  The prints of workboots, going back in.

  And a mangled empty tuna can.

  Voices sank to a whisper, baffled, then to silence.

  “I guess we’ll find that out,” said Hazel, “when we find ’em.”

  Candy started passing out maps and balls of string. “It’s a real labyrinth,” Hank had told Wilma when he’d first gone to work there in ’67. “They been digging under that mountain since just after the Civil War, and there’s miles of played-out galleries and rooms where the face collapsed back before anybody was born. They took up the tracks in most of ’em, but all they’ve done since is just put a couple of sawbucks in front of ’em, to keep us from taking the wrong way down. It dips real steep just about where Pidgeon Ridge goes up, and there’s whole sections that mostly caved in. God knows what’s in there now.”

  God knows, thought Wilma, looking down at the tracks, then into the darkness.

  “You won’t have to worry about anything till you get down to the last section, where it dips down here.” Candace Leary pointed to her map. Farther back from the pithead, the little gangs sorted themselves out, making sure each group included someone with string, someone with candles, someone carrying a canary or finch or budgie. Someone with water, with SCSRs. Someone with a gun.

  “This is where they tried to put a vent shaft through to the new diggings. The fan engines got took out after the cave-in, so you don’t have to worry about the electricity going on all of a sudden and the fans starting up. After that you’ll have to spread out and search. If somebody did try getting through that way, they’ll have got lost in the dark.”

  “What if those grunter things are down there?” Carl Souza shifted his rifle in his hands. “We can’t shoot ’em in the tunnels. The ricochets’ll kill somebody.”

  “And what if they cut the string that leads us back to the vent?” That was Lynn Fellbarger, who ran the antiques store. “What if there’s another earthquake and a cave-in?”

  “Then stay on top of the ground,” retorted Hazel, picking up a lamp. “This isn’t a Disneyworld ride.”

  Movement in the tunnel—far, far away in the dark. Wilma stepped into the wet concrete circle of its maw, gazing, listening.

  Voices.

  Al Bartolo’s. Gordy Flue’s.

  “They’re there,” she said. She turned. The opening behind her was a circle of golden light. “They’re there, I can hear them!” she called out, and the lights streamed in, glistening on the wet of the walls. “Al!” She raised her voice in a yell. The echoes of it bounded away into the blackness, piercing decades of silence there. “Gordy!”

  “GORDY!” bellowed Annie Flue, who had a voice like the chimes of Big Ben. “GORDY!”

  And blessed, blessed in the distance where the echoes died away, “Son of a bitch, you see it? Lights!”

  “They’re there,” she said again. She was nearly lifted from her feet, carried along as if on a tide, men and women crowding around her, shoving to get to the men. The echoes of their voices drowned any further sounds from the tunnel, but she knew the men could see the lights, would come to them.

  And they did. Pressed against the wall, Wilma sensed more than actually saw the first contact with the missing men, when the surging mass of bodies in the tunnel going down stopped, shoved and milled a little, holding up candles and lights to keep them from being overset. Struggling, hugging, touching: she saw Della desperately hugging Ryan, hugging Lou. “My God, my God.” Annie and Gordy, Shannon and Greg, Gina Bartolo sobbing in Al’s arms.

  More mobbing, pushing, surging back toward the entrance with Candy yelling, “Let us through! We got ’em; now back out and let us through, for Chrissake!” and someone else from the back of the crowd saying, “We couldn’t have done it without Hank! Hank, fuck, he can see in the dark! You know he can fuckin’ see in the dark? Hank— Hank, come on.”

  And Hank’s voice, “No, no, let me be.”

  “Whoa—whoa, hang onto him!”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Couple of the guys went like this, turned back into the tunnels. . . .”

  And someone else, “What the fuck happened? What the fuck’s going on? Looks like a fuckin’ Greek wedding with all these candles.”

  Even before they reached the end of the tunnel, the wave of joy, of rescue and recovery, had turned to an undertow of fear.

  “Whaddaya mean, the cars ain’t runnin’?”

  “Batteries are all dead down under the ground too.”

  “These things attacked us in the dark.”

  “Smoke? Smoke in the sky? How do you know it’s not bombs? Lynchburg—there’s an airport in Lynchburg; first thing they’re gonna bomb is airports.”

  Wilma smelled it, the rank smell of terror and rage, above the coal and the mud and the sweat. For hours these people had clung to the goal of rescuing the men from the mine; getting back their husbands, their fathers, their sons. Their hearts had told them—though their minds would certainly have conceded differently if consulted—that everything would be all right if only they could do that.

  Now, suddenly, everything was not all right again.

  Not all the men were there. Garbled stories were traded, of horrible things that attacked out of the darkness. “Where’s Andy?” Leah Hillocher kept asking, baffled. “Where’s Andy?” Something was wrong, terribly and terrifyingly wrong, and they were trapped and lost as ever in a world of darkness and fear.

  The noise in the tunnel mounted as voices shouted theories at each other. The men and women who spilled out into the muddy and cut-up ground in front of the tunnel surged back and forth, puzzled and angry, already gathering into cliques even before the last of the men whose rescue had united them emerged into the candlelight.

  And as they emerged, silence fell.

  When the lights struck Hank Culver, slumped and bent and hairless, with his huge bulging milk-white eyes and snaggle-sharp teeth, cringing from the light in the grip of Roop McDonough and Jeff Swann, realization struck the mob like an indrawn breath. Wilma could almost hear the flicker of each individual candle, the crying of a cricket on the hill above the tunnel mouth.

  “My God, what happened to him?”

  Hank’s widowed sister-in-law screamed.

  Someone said, “Fuck, he’s one of them!”

  Carl Souza brought up his rifle, and Wilma sprang at him, though nearly twenty feet separated them: sprang and reached him before the barrel was leveled, and with a quick swat of her hand knocked the gun aside, wrenched it from his grip. Someone else brought up a gun, and she reached him, too, spring-spring-snatch, shocking him by her speed.

  Then she was standing at Hank’s side. “One of them?” she said, furious disbelief in her voice. “One of who? One of the things he just saved them from in the mine?”

  “What if it’s a disease?” Norm Mullein had backed as far away as he could without getting outside the torchlight. “I mean, look at him! What if it’s contagious?”

  “Them things...,” stammered Carl Souza. “Them things that come out of the mine. Them grunty things. . . .”

  And
Hank cringing, turning his face from the terrible revelation of the light.

  “Well, God forbid,” Wilma said in an awful voice, “that anybody should risk themselves by touching their husbands or brothers or sons when they might have a disease. Isn’t that the most terrible thing in the world.” She flung the second rifle—Kyle Dixon’s—into the mud.

  She turned to Hank. “Are you all right? Do you feel all right?”

  He nodded, not speaking, shielding his white unblinking eyes from the sea of candlelight, made as if to retreat into the mine again, but stopped, and behind her in the shaft Wilma heard the rustle of bodies, smelled the acrid pungence of the others, changed and mutated and savage. Waiting for him. Hungry, and robbed of their prey.

  He turned back and looked at the people who were no longer his own. And they looked back, aghast and frightened beyond anything they’d ever known. Norm Mullein put his hands over his mouth and began to laugh, a cracked, shrill, awful sound, tears running down his face.

  Wilma took Hank’s arm and walked forward toward the gates of the pithead, toward the dark town beyond. The candles parted. She and Hank walked through an aisle of silent people, friends and neighbors; through them, and into the night.

  Chapter Fifteen

  NEW YORK

  The trash cans along Fifth were all burning, not for warmth but for light. Cal was thankful; it was easier to spot the line of weary, rumpled people that stretched from Fifty-seventh down past Fifty-fifth and terminated at the familiar cart. Wrapped in a localized fog of steam, it looked dreamy, unreal. The cotton candy and chocolate bars and salted pretzels were all gone, but the propane tank was still firing, and the rich smell of cooking juices wafted out.

  “Here we are, matuskha. Sorry, we’re out of mustard.” Doc handed a frank to a birdlike old woman, who nodded thanks and withdrew. He must have been feeding people for hours; where had he gotten the supplies?

  “Making a killing, Doc,” Cal said, stepping up to him.

  The Russian’s eyes brightened at the sight of him. “They’re killing me,” he grinned ruefully, continuing to assemble and dispense hot dogs as he spoke. “It’s free, everything free. To each their need. That was written above the blackboard in every classroom in my school. Sounds good, neh?”

  Cal’s face darkened. “To their need . . .” Tina.

  Doc’s quick-moving hands slowed, paused. “What, my friend? What is it?”

  Cal told him, at least the relevant part. The older man hesitated only the slightest bit, then selected someone standing nearby, a carrot-topped teen with an earnest, open face. Quickly, he showed the boy how to keep the tank going, cook the meat, dole it out. He turned back to Cal.

  “Show her to me.” By his tone Doc might have been at a clinic somewhere with a hundred thousand dollars worth of hospital backing him up: confident and gentle. All will be well. The two of them hurried from the cart, past the burning cylinders of trash, their smoke spiraling into the empty black sky.

  The faded, cracked tile before the entrance read N.B.C. “National Biscuit Company,” Doc explained, his voice so casual he might have been giving them a tour. “Or so they tell me.”

  Cal knew it was an old doctor’s trick to keep him and Colleen calm, and he appreciated the effort. Since they had reached the Guard encampment, Cal had let Doc take the lead, had been relieved, in fact, not to have to make decisions for a time. Tina, wandering in her fever dreams, had been only dimly aware of Doc’s probing. “Best you come with me,” he’d said afterward. “Now, at once.” Neither Cal nor Colleen had asked questions. They had merely trusted.

  This deserted block of square brick buildings would normally have been choked with trucks and workmen at this time, with dawn drawing near. Doc led them around the side of the building to a padlocked metal door, withdrew a key from about his neck. Colleen held aloft the Coleman lantern she had scored (“Don’t ask”).

  “In here.” Doc swung the door wide. Cal lifted Tina from the shopping cart and carried her in. Doc followed, Colleen bringing up the rear, throwing a last, keen glance at the walkway behind them.

  Tina lolled in Cal’s arms, a bundle of sticks, and he felt hollow, lifeless. Images collided in on him: Tina beaming in a pirouette, vibrant in a grand jete, rushing to pointe class early to steal a glance at the New York City Ballet rehearsing, brimming with life and surety and purpose.

  She was his world, his whole world.

  The windowless cubicle had been a storeroom once. Now it housed a mattress, a microwave, a radio. “You live here?” Colleen asked incredulously.

  “As little as possible.” Doc slid the bolt. “Put her there, please,” he instructed Cal, nodding toward the bed.

  Cal placed Tina gently on the mattress. She mumbled a soft protest, then was still. Doc produced a medical bag from under the microwave, bent over her. Colleen stood behind with the lantern.

  “Is she allergic to any medication?” Doc asked Cal, not taking his eyes off the girl, examining her with gentle, deft hands.

  “Not that I know of.”

  Doc nodded. He withdrew a syringe from his bag, filled it from a small bottle and administered an injection.

  “Penicillin. Don’t tell anyone I have it.” He handed Colleen the used syringe. “Rinse the needle in alcohol. We may need it again.” She hesitated, revulsion plain on her face. “There’s some in the bathroom,” he prompted firmly, brooking no argument. She withdrew, taking the lantern with her, casting them into shadow.

  “In Ukraine,” Doc told Cal, “we don’t count on supplies.” At the bathroom doorway Colleen set the lantern down, so as not to leave them entirely in the dark, then went into the other room. Doc closed his bag, gazed into the face of the unconscious child.

  “Do you know what it is?” asked Cal.

  “It’s like a lot of things. But there are some symptoms I don’t know. The skin. Translucent . . . strange.” He drew Cal from the bed, lifted a beaker off the floor. Brown liquid sloshed in it. “You want some Chock Full o’Nuts?”

  Cal shook his head, which made it throb. Now that he was letting down, all the bruised and abused parts of him were screaming their outrage.

  “Come, Calvin,” Doc coaxed. “In former Soviet, when there is only waiting, men drink. I never acquired taste for vodka, so . . .” Cal shrugged, relenting. “Good.” Doc lit a can of Sterno, set the beaker on a rack atop it.

  He looked back toward the bed. “At the cart, I heard people talking. There seem to be lots like this.”

  The horrific corridors at Roosevelt reared up, all the listless, frail ones and the others with their strange agitation and gray skin. “Radiation, you think?”

  Doc looked thoughtful. “Not like any I’ve seen.”

  Cal’s eyes met his. There was something unsettling about the weighted manner in which the man had said the words.

  “I was in Kiev,” said Doc, after so long a silence Cal thought he wasn’t going to continue, “when Chernobyl came. They summoned me to treat the”—he struggled for the word—“bystanders.”

  Doc turned away, stared into the darkness. His voice was a whisper, barren. “They died by thousands, melting like ice in fire. We placed them in soldered zinc coffins, buried them in concrete.” His eyes returned to Tina. “You know, I thought, No more doctoring. Good. No more playing Santa Claus with my big empty bag.”

  “I’m sorry.” Sorry. The word sounded to Cal like he was offering a Band-Aid to a gut-shot man.

  Doc brushed away the apology. “How could you know? Real doctors don’t bury themselves with their patients.”

  Cal reached out, grasped the Russian’s shoulder. Doc flinched—when was the last time anyone touched him?—then relaxed, his melancholy gray eyes full of gratitude.

  They stood a moment in the silence, then a soft sound of sliding metal drew Cal’s attention. He turned just in time to see the front door ease shut.

  Cal caught up with Colleen as she reached the street. “Late for a train?” he asked gently.

/>   Colleen looked away. She had left the lantern behind, but the sky was growing lighter, and he could see the tentativeness in her eyes, the remnants of old wounds.

  “I’ve always known when to exit stage left,” she said. “You got yourself pretty well set. Russkie there seems a good guy. Me, I’d just be in the way.”

  He stepped closer, caught the strawberry shampoo scent lingering in her hair, the tang of sweat and grease. Through the long night he knew he’d have fallen to despair if she hadn’t kept him going, pushed him to action. In the way? Jesus Christ. Struggling to say what he really meant, all he could come up with was, “I think you’d get an argument there.”

  He gazed at her clear, watchful eyes, set in that strong face with its high cheekbones and broad forehead, and was aware of the lean, efficient body under her T-shirt and overalls, the tool belt low on her hips. Standing near her, emotion flared in him, powerful and primal, so sudden it surprised him.

  She sensed it; he saw the slight shift in her stance, heard the quickening of breath. This was a turning point, he thought, a moment where what he said would either send her away or draw her near, and he very much wanted her near. They had spoken little since he arrived with Doc, and that had all been to the task at hand. He had said nothing of his run-in with Misfits or of the gun, of his dawning suspicion as to what was happening.

  And as he reflected on it, he knew that all he had to bind her to him was the truth.

  “There’s some things I need to tell you,” he began.

  “Yes?” She tilted her head, and there was challenge in it, and shyness.

  He opened his mouth to speak, but there was a clattering from another block that sounded like a tin can, bouncing off a car door. He tensed and saw his own wariness mirrored in her eyes.

  “We’re exposed here,” he said and drew her into shadows.

  WEST VIRGINIA

  “I don’t understand what happened.” Hank sank onto the bed Wilma had prepared for him in her downstairs guest room. It was the first time, she realized, that he’d been in any room of the house but the kitchen and, occasionally, the living room. Since her return from college she’d kept him at a distance, sensing his resentment, not able to explain her longings and her fears.