by Brian Keene
“Hey, everybody. Listen up! If you could gather around for a moment. This here is Robbie Higgins. He lives on this block, and he’s got something you ought to all hear.”
I felt my ears burn and my cheeks flush. I’ve never been one for public speaking. When I was in high school, my girlfriend made me try out for the school play our junior year. I got a part in this thing called Scapino. I don’t remember much of the plot—something about a bunch of Italians and two young lovers whose families didn’t want them to be together. I played the part of a waiter. I didn’t have any lines or anything like that. All I had to do was walk around in the background and bring food to the other actors while they delivered their lines. But even though I didn’t have to speak, I was still scared shitless each time I walked out on stage. I felt the same way now. The people in the crowd were all staring at me. My stomach fluttered and cramped. Suddenly, I had to take a massive shit. I clenched by ass cheeks together and took a deep breath.
Russ gave me his hand and helped me up onto the car. The hood buckled under my weight. For a second, I thought we were both going to fall off. But we didn’t. A few people laughed. Then the crowd fell silent again. I felt their eyes on me, and was afraid to look up.
“Make it good,” Russ whispered. “And for the record, I still think you’re fucking crazy and this plan sucks. But I’ve got your back.”
“Thanks,” I muttered as he hopped down.
I stared at the crowd. They stared back at me, their faces illuminated by flashlights and lanterns and chemical glow-sticks. In addition to T and his boys and Cranston and Russ, we had about two dozen other people. Men and women. Young people and old folks. Black, white, and brown. White-collar and blue-collar. If someone had asked me to describe the people of Walden, I would have taken a picture of the crowd and just showed them that instead. But despite their differences, they all had one thing in common. I saw it on their faces as I studied them.
Fear. They were all fucking scared.
And I knew how they felt because I was scared, too.
“Thanks. I appreciate you all giving me a moment of your time. I’m not a speech maker or anything. I was a pizza delivery guy until a few days ago. In fact, I think I recognize a few of your faces. Probably delivered to your house once or twice. Hope you tipped me.”
I’d expected laughter, but nobody responded. They just kept staring at me. I gave a nervous little chuckle. Russ made a winding motion with his finger, urging me to go on. I took another deep breath and continued.
“We, uh…we know that something’s happened, but we don’t know what, exactly.”
“That’s a fucking understatement,” a man in the rear said. “Tell us something we don’t know.”
The crowd laughed. A guy in the front pulled out a pack of cigarettes. Before he could light one, someone else snatched the pack from his hand and fled through the crowd, vanishing into the darkness. The man shouted in anger, but he didn’t give chase. Instead, he just stood there sulking, his shoulders hunched, his brow furrowed. The crowd murmured among themselves, and I tried to get their attention.
“Yeah,” I agreed, “it is an understatement. And that’s our fucking problem. It wouldn’t be an understatement if we had more information. We’re all scared. People are dying. There’s nobody in charge.”
An overweight woman with shockingly red hair raised her hand. “I thought Chief Peters was in charge?”
“He’s dead,” someone else yelled.
“Bad people are roaming about,” I continued, trying to regain their attention. “We all saw what just happened to this man’s cigarettes. Chief Peters tried to do something, but for those of you who didn’t hear about it, he had a heart attack. Apparently, all the other volunteer firemen either gave up or left or…well, we don’t know what happened, do we?”
A few of them nodded. I started to feel a little more comfortable. My guts were no longer churning, and I’d stopped sweating. Slowly I let myself relax.
“We don’t know shit,” a man yelled.
I pointed at him. “Exactly! That’s what I’m trying to say. We don’t know what happened to the rest of our firemen, and we should. We should know a lot more than we do—about a lot of things. Everybody is running around taking care of their families or themselves, and that’s cool—I’ve done the same thing. In the last couple of days, I’ve done some shit that I’m not proud of. I bet some of you have, too. It’s okay. That’s to be expected. Survival instinct, right? When the shit hits the fan, we do whatever we need to do to survive. But how long can we live like that? How long before there’s nothing left to loot? How long before our cupboards are empty, and we start stealing from one another? Truth is, if you check out some of the buildings around us, it looks like somebody has been breaking into houses already. That’s not good. I don’t know how many of you have tried to leave town, but it looks like we can’t. We’re trapped here together, and we need to figure things out and start working together before things get worse. Someone needs to step up and be in charge.”
A Puerto Rican woman in the front said, “And that person is you?”
“No, I don’t mean me. Shit, I wouldn’t know the first thing about being in charge. But I do know that we’ve got to start thinking. We’ve got to learn more about our situation. All we know for sure right now is that it’s dark all the time and that anyone who went out into the darkness hasn’t come back, and that nobody is coming to help us.”
“Help will come,” the woman said. “We just have to be patient. Help always comes.”
“You tripping.” T chuckled. “Ain’t nobody coming to motherfucking save us. If there were, they’d have been here by now. Know what I’m saying? It’s just like when that hurricane fucked up New Orleans. They had to help themselves and shit.”
The crowd started to mumble among themselves again. As I’d spoken, more passersby had joined us. There were now maybe sixty people in the crowd, with more listening through their open windows in the houses and apartments nearby. I glanced up and saw that Christy was eavesdropping as well. She held the flashlight under her face so that I could see her expression. I gave her a short wave. She smiled at me, and I smiled back.
“Maybe,” I said, trying to get the crowd’s attention once more, “and maybe not. Personally, I’d love to see the National Guard come rolling into town. But that hasn’t happened yet, and we have to prepare for the possibility that it might not happen ever. There’s been no contact with the rest of the world that I know of. Does anyone know differently? Have any of you heard from anyone who was outside of Walden when the darkness came?”
They shook their heads or remained silent, their expressions sullen.
“So there you go,” I said. “I know you folks don’t want to hear this, but we might be the only ones left.”
“We are,” called a quavering but loud voice. “We are all that’s left. Everyone else is gone. All the people. All God’s creatures, big and small, in the Earth and above it. All gone.”
Heads turned, craning to see the doomsayer. I did the same. The sea of people slowly parted. Dez, the homeless guy, stood at the rear of the crowd, slightly removed from everyone else, with one foot propped up on a fire hydrant. It was hard to make him out in the shadows, but right away I knew it was him. His voice and strange way of speaking were instantly recognizable.
“I stopped it,” he said, “but everything else is gone. Now it’s just waiting for us. He Who Shall Not Be Named. Once it eats us, it can move on to the next world.”
“Yo,” T shouted, “what kind of drugs you on, brother, and how can I score some?”
A few people laughed, but most seemed annoyed. I couldn’t tell if they were bothered more by Dez’s ramblings or T’s taunts. I pressed on, trying to keep their attention.
“Thank you,” I said, nodding at Dez. “That’s one theory, and that’s my point. We have theories, but not many facts. We know that it’s dark.”
“It’s not just dark,” Dez said. “It is
the dark.”
I wondered how to respond to that, but people had started to ignore him again, and the crowd closed ranks. I quickly lost sight of him. I glanced at Russ, who just shrugged and shook his head.
A short, bookish-looking man raised his hand. “That…man might be right. I think I know what he’s trying to say. There’s something in the darkness. I tried to leave yesterday, after I heard about the people who’d been killed. There was something…waiting for me, so I turned around and came back.”
“What was waiting for you?” Cranston asked.
He turned red. “I’d rather not say.”
Cranston shrugged. “Bummer, man.”
“We experienced something, too,” Russ said, raising his voice. “Out on Route 711, at the town limits. Me, Robbie, and his girlfriend, Christy. We went out there when it first happened. We didn’t know what else to do so we took a drive to see for ourselves. I know it sounds crazy, but when we got to the edge of the darkness, we each saw something different. It was our loved ones—people we’ve known, long dead.”
“I saw that, too,” the redheaded woman volunteered. “My cat, Binkley. He was run over by a car three years ago. When I saw him yesterday, he looked just like he had before he died. He still had his collar with the little silver bell and everything.”
“Well, I didn’t see anything like that,” the short man said. “What I saw was something that I’m scared of.”
“What was it?” Cranston asked again.
“Yeah,” T shouted. “What you see out there, dog?”
“I told you that I didn’t want to talk about it!”
Cranston waved him off with one hand. “Then don’t keep bringing it up, man. You’re just freaking everyone else out, and there’s too much of that already.”
“Calm down,” I said. “Everybody just calm down a minute. This is a part of it, too—what’s happening right now; all this goddamned arguing. I don’t know about the rest of you, but we’ve noticed some…unusual changes in behavior. Shit seems to piss us off quicker than normal. Stupid, little things. Am I right?”
Many in the crowd nodded in agreement.
“I don’t know if help is on the way or not,” I admitted, “but if this keeps up, there might not be any of us left to rescue if help does arrive. Something is playing with our emotions—ramping them up. Making them stronger, until we can no longer control them. We need to take charge—take control of what’s happening to us. We need to do it now. And the first step in doing that is to learn more about our situation.”
“So what do you propose, Mr. Higgins?” a man asked.
“Well, I’ve been thinking about it. We know two things about the darkness. First, everyone who’s gone into it hasn’t come back. Second, it shows us things. But we don’t know that those things can actually hurt us. So far, unless I’m mistaken, all they’ve done is appear and talk to us. And in some cases, it scared us. Anybody experience something different from that?”
They shook their heads. I pointed at the short man who’d refused to talk about his encounter.
“Did whatever it was you saw try to hurt you?”
He took a deep breath. “No. I think it was just trying to scare me.”
“And you didn’t actually go into the darkness, right?”
He shook his head. “I stayed on the edge. I went up the hill there behind the senior high school. See, somebody slashed all my car tires the first night. I don’t know why. Why are people doing any of the things they’ve been doing? Maybe it’s like you said. Maybe something is playing with our emotions and making us do bad things. Anyway, I figured I’d walk out of town. Get some air. Try to gain some perspective about what to do next. I made it to the top of the hill behind the school. I stopped to catch my breath. There was a…symbol of some kind, scratched into the grass and dirt. A picture, though I really didn’t understand what it was supposed to be. It was outlined with salt. I know it was salt be cause I ended up tasting a little of it, just to see what it was. But that’s all I know. I was so preoccupied with the symbol that I didn’t go any further.”
“See?” Dez called. “I told you all!”
“Okay,” I said, ignoring him. “So there’s some kind of…barrier, for lack of a better term. We saw a picture like the one you described, but it was out on Route 711. The darkness stopped at the edge of it. I think we can assume that whatever it is in the darkness, it can’t hurt us if we don’t cross the barrier. It can fuck with us, but so far, it hasn’t touched us. But we don’t know what happened to everyone who left. So here’s my plan. We get a bunch of us—the more people, the better—and we go out to the edge of the darkness, that spot where it becomes something more than shadow. We tie ourselves together really well, and then we make a human chain and—”
“Screw that,” a man said. “I want no part of this nonsense.”
He began walking away. A few more people followed him.
“Wait,” I shouted. “Listen!”
“Hear him out,” Russ hollered. “This affects you, too. All of you.”
Grumbling and shaking their heads, more people turned away.
“Yo.” T hopped up on the hood of the car with me, speaking quietly so that no one else would hear. “We ain’t no punks, but we ain’t stupid either. Ain’t you ever seen The Mist?”
“Yeah,” I admitted. “That’s kind of where I got the idea from.”
“Well, if you saw that movie, then you know damn well how it turned out for those people. Ain’t no way me and my boys are going out into that shit. Know what I’m saying?”
“I’ll pay you a bottle of vodka, a bottle of gin, and two buds.”
His eyes widened. “Four buds—fat ones—and you got yourself a deal.”
I paused, considering how little weed Christy had left in her bag.
“Deal. But you’ve got to help me. Everyone is leaving.”
“I’m on it.” He turned around and faced the crowd, cupping his hands around his mouth. “Yo! Listen up, motherfuckers. This Robbie dude sounds like he be tripping, but he’s right. And ya’ll know it, too. That’s why you’re walking away. ’Cause you’re scared. Well, we can’t be scared no more. We need to be on top of this shit. Know what I’m saying? We all balls deep in this together. If we’re all tied together with ropes and shit, ain’t nothing gonna happen to us. This ain’t the movies. If something does happen, we just pull each other out real quick like. My man here is right. For real. Know what I’m saying? We don’t know what’s in that darkness, but we know what the fuck is gonna happen if we just keep doing the same old same old. Motherfuckers be tripping, and it’s getting worse every damn night. How long before they knock on your door, looking to gank your shit and cut your throat in the process? You feel me?”
“Gank?” Cranston asked, confused.
“He means steal,” Russ explained. “At least, I think that’s what it means.”
“Straight up,” T said. “Me and my crew ain’t afraid of no darkness. We’ll go.”
“The hell we will,” Mario said. “Who sa—”
T shot him a look, and Mario quickly turned his attention back to his video game.
“We’re going,” T told the crowd, “and if the rest of you give a fuck about our hood, you’ll help too. Know what I’m saying?”
A murmur of assent rose, mingling with the grumblings from those opposed to the plan. But nobody was walking away anymore. I turned to T and stuck out my hand.
“Thanks.”
His grip was firm. “Word. Now you ain’t gonna stiff me, are you?”
“A deal’s a deal,” I promised. “I’ll hook you up. A bottle of vodka, a bottle of gin, and four fat buds. Count on it.”
“So you want us to risk our lives?” a man shouted. “Is that what you’re saying?”
“If we’re all tied together,” I said, “and something starts to happen, we can pull each other out before anyone is harmed. The strange stuff only happens in the darkness. As long as some of us stay on the ot
her side of the barrier, we should be fine.”
The crowd argued among themselves for a while. Eventually we had about two dozen volunteers. The others voiced their support but had excuses for not accompanying us—children or pets depending on them and shit like that. I could understand those reasons, but I was still disappointed. Only a few people outright refused, which surprised me. I honestly hadn’t figured they would. All the negativity that had been in the air, infecting us all, seemed to have temporarily evaporated while I was talking. Now it was back—apparently with a quickness. One man told me that I was an idiot and deserved whatever happened to me out there. I told him to fuck off, and then Russ and Cranston jumped between us before I beat the shit out of him.
I asked for rope, and a few people said they had some at home. I sent them to get it. Another guy told me he had a pair of battery-powered walkie-talkies, and I asked him to retrieve those, as well. It was something I hadn’t thought of, but now that he’d mentioned them, I agreed they would come in handy.
After everyone had their assignment, we agreed to meet back on the street corner in fifteen minutes. During that time, I went upstairs and got T’s payment. Christy kept our stash in a Ziploc baggie inside an empty Partagas cigar box. We were almost out of weed, and when I pulled the four buds out of the bag, all that remained were a few smaller buds and lots of stems and seeds. I dropped the four buds into another plastic baggie. Christy blew up and shouted at me when she saw what I was doing, but I promised her that I’d get some more.
“Where, Robbie? You said yourself last night that we don’t know when we’ll be able to get more.”
“I’ll find some. I promise. It’s Walden, honey. Lots of people smoke marijuana. Hell, I bet Cranston has some he can share with us. But we’ll worry about that later. Right now, I’ve got other things to think about.”
“Well, maybe you should think about me for once!”
I don’t know if it was the darkness or just my true feelings, but I’d had it with her.
“Why bother?” I asked. “All you ever do is think about yourself. You don’t need me to do it for you.”
