The Nightworld

by Jack Blaine

  A peek out the living-room window reveals no sign of life on the street.

  Tank nuzzles my hand. Suddenly I feel as though every muscle in my body is drained of energy. I’m so bone tired I could drop right there on the living-room carpet. I just want to curl up and sleep, and wake up tomorrow with everything different. I have to get my stuff first, though, from the car.

  Tank doesn’t want me to go, and he whines when I open the front door.

  “No, you wait here.” I shake my finger at him and he backs up, a worried look on his face. “I’ll come right back.”

  In the Subaru I grab my backpack and start to lock up the car when I remember the box. Optimus Prime, the gizmo, the device. Holy crap—the device. I bet this is what those guys meant when they said that back at the house. Dad said it was important. I grab it from the folds of the sleeping bag in the duffel and shove it into my backpack. Then I lock the car, shutting the door quietly. Standing in the driveway of Charlie’s house, looking around his neighborhood, which is exactly like my neighborhood, really, everything seems so normal. It’s dark because it’s supposed to be, at whatever time in the middle of the night it is now. The streetlights are lighting the neighborhood and everybody is snuggled in bed. Like Charlie should be, like I should be. Like Dad should be.

  I lock the front door of the house. Maybe this can be a safe haven for a while. My house sure as hell isn’t anymore. I keep hearing the crackling noise from the radios of the men who killed my dad, and it makes me shudder. I wonder who those guys were. Government? Some rogue agency? Could they somehow trace me to here? I’m too wiped to think straight.

  Tank follows me up the stairs to Charlie’s room, so close his chin gets nicked a couple of times by my heel. Charlie’s door doesn’t have a lock, and I’m not sure what good it would do if it did, but I shut it anyway. Drop the backpack, kick off my shoes, and fall onto the bottom bunk with all my clothes still on, too tired to care. Tank starts to lie down on his mega bed, but he has second thoughts and jumps onto the bottom bunk with me. I don’t tell him to get down. I throw an arm around him and listen to his heartbeat, for the few seconds I manage to stay awake.

  Chapter 10

  I think it’s morning. I can’t tell. The window in Charlie’s room frames a dark sky, but I remember that doesn’t mean anything anymore. I hear Tank whining softly and sit up. He’s sitting at the door, wagging his tail and looking back at me with an I-have-to-pee look.

  “Okay, boy. Just give me a minute.” I rub my eyes and try to stretch the kinks out of my shoulders. Tank leads me eagerly downstairs to the sliding door. Out in the backyard, he pees and then runs away, growling. I can’t make out what the problem is, so I go check it out. The bag of dog food has been dragged away from the back gate to the end of the yard—looks like a raccoon had a great meal. About half the bag is left, so I grab it and head for the house. Tank keeps furiously growling and sniffing the grass until he realizes I’m about to shut him out in the yard, and then he hightails it for the door.

  My stomach is growling. I check the fridge and find eggs and bacon. Fifteen minutes and a half a cube of melted butter later, I’m ready to feast. Tank lies at my feet, eyeing my plate. Still no signal on my phone, so I switch on the television to see what they’re saying today.

  Every channel is news.

  I settle on one that seems to be doing national coverage and listen to the report, this time from a woman with a dark blue suit and a serious expression.

  “. . . president says that the curfew will be enforced until further notice. The National Guard is being deployed in some areas of the country now, in order to control the looting and violence that seem to be increasing. Please remain in your homes if at all possible. If you need to venture out for food or medical supplies, be certain to do so during approved hours. Check your local stations for curfew hours, emergency procedures, availability of supplies, and other information. And as always, we urge you to remain calm. The situation is under control.”

  The picture switches to a local news anchor. He’s just as quickly replaced by a montage of footage showing scenes from the city. A building, fully engulfed in flames, blazes bright against the dark sky; a guy in a hoodie running and throwing a brick into the plate-glass window of a bank; a shot of the freeway out of town, completely gridlocked with cars full of people trying to get away. Back to the news anchor, who looks almost panicked himself.

  “We’ve lost contact with the Team Four mobile crew, but as soon as we can reestablish, we’ll be bringing you the latest. Stay tuned for—”

  The picture cuts out, replaced by static.

  To me, the situation doesn’t seem to be under control.

  Tank pushes his nose against my knee and gives my plate another pointed look. I dump what’s left of my bacon and eggs on top of some of his kibble in a bowl and set it on the floor for him. Four seconds later, it’s gone.

  “You’re gonna have to watch that, my friend. We don’t have an endless supply, I bet.” Tank looks up at me and tilts his head back and forth like he’s trying to figure out if I’m capable of actually communicating or if I’m just making random sounds.

  After I make sure all of the curtains are pulled on all of the windows, I decide to see what we do have, and I start in the kitchen. Mrs. Bradley keeps the place stocked. There’s lots of pasta and cereal and canned stuff in the cupboards. The fridge is full, and when I look more carefully than I did when I grabbed the eggs, I see we can probably last here a long time. I check the downstairs bathroom, but it’s a guest bathroom, so there’s not much but pretty soap. Upstairs, in the family bathroom, there’s a ton of stuff that might come in handy. Aspirin, Band-Aids, some gauze, some peroxide. I check the nightstand next to the Mr. and Mrs. Holzer’s bed, just in case there’s a gun, but no luck there. I guess Mr. Holzer would have taken it, though, if they had one. I find a little metal flashlight in the back and shove it in my pocket.

  Back downstairs, I go for the junk drawer in the kitchen—I know Charlie’s house almost as well as my own, and they have a junk drawer just like we do. It’s filled with odds and ends that are too good to throw out. That’s where we keep our batteries, and it turns out they do too. I find four that fit the flashlight I found upstairs. I find an old pocketknife and a pocket spray can of mace.

  I spend the day switching the television on and off to see if it’s getting any stations. Nothing comes on until after my lunch—a ham-and-cheese sandwich with some rocky road ice cream from the freezer. Then it’s the channel with the SHOULD YOU BE AFRAID OF THE DARK? banner all over the screen. The reporter seems to be relishing the job of announcing all the shitty news. People are outright rioting in the city, and it sounds like it’s pretty much the same all over the country.

  “It’s getting ugly out there, folks.” The guy shakes his head. “I’d stay in tonight if I were you.” He gives a nervous little laugh before the television cuts out again. I switch around, but no other stations come in either. It’s weird how little they’re saying about why it’s dark. They just keep saying the situation’s under control and showing looters smashing things.

  By dinner, Tank and I have thoroughly inspected every inch of the fence line in the backyard because he seems convinced the raccoon will be back for an encore. I’ve tried my phone multiple times with no luck. I doubt they can trace a dead phone, so that’s good. I catch three more bits of television news coverage and check all the locks on the doors and windows twice. I peek out the windows pretty often, and I’ve seen a couple of people walking down the street now, lit by the streetlights. People who don’t look like they know where they’re going.

  I fix us a dinner of Hamburger Helper, and after we eat I wash all the dishes that have been piling up. When I take a shower, Tank stations himself in a guard position on the bathroom rug until I get out. I think he’s worried that I’m going to disappear, like his whole family did. He watches every move I make with worried brown eyes.

  Back downstairs, I get my backpac
k and take it with me to the couch. I flop down and open it up, and out falls the box. Optimus Prime. Hot tears spring to my eyes, and I shove the box back into the backpack. I dig past it and come up with a book. Lord of the Flies. It makes me think of Mrs. Martin—what happened to her? I think she lives in the city. I wonder if she’s safe. Did she manage to get out before it got crazy? Thinking of her makes me think of school, which makes me think of Lara. I hope she’s okay. Did her brother get her out, or is she still in the city? I wish I could call her. I wish I could call anyone, really.

  The television is nothing but static. It’s so quiet, and so dark—even inside the house. I’m afraid to turn on too many lights now, ever since I noticed the people wandering down the street. I figure they’re refugees from the city, and I don’t want to draw too much attention. Right now the only illumination in the living room is a small table lamp next to the couch, and I’ve thrown a bandana over it to make it dim. I don’t think any of the glow can get past the curtains.

  I’m not sure what I should do. Do I stay here for a while like I planned? It seemed like a good idea at first, but the wanderers give me the creeps. As long as they keep just wandering and don’t start trying doors, it’s fine, but I wonder how long that can last.

  I’m so tired. I don’t want to think too hard right now. Every time I start to think, I see Dad, with three red blooms spreading across the front of his shirt. I see his eyes cloud over as the life leaves his body. The last thing I did was blame him for this whole mess. The last words I said to him were angry. I don’t want to remember any of it.

  I pick up the book Mrs. Martin gave me and glance at the back. Doesn’t sound too uplifting, but it’s what I’ve got. Maybe it will keep my mind off other things. I stretch out on the couch and Tank lies next to me on the floor, and I start to read about a world with no grown-ups at all.

  Chapter 11

  During the next few days, I stay inside the house, frozen in some sort of strange numbness. There have been gunshots but they’ve been far away. Twice I’ve heard screaming, but when I went to the window to peek out, I couldn’t see any sign of who was doing it. Tank follows me around looking worried, and when I let him out in the backyard to pee, he always stares up at me before he goes through the door, as though he thinks I might not let him back in.

  I bring some sheets and blankets from upstairs and make a bed on the couch. I drag Tank’s bed down too, and earn yet another worried look. I try to barricade off the rooms I’m not using, to limit the number of ways people can break in and get to me and Tank. Maybe it’s paranoid, but after what happened to Dad and what’s going on outside, maybe not. Mr. Holzer doesn’t have many tools, just the usual hammer and some screwdrivers. I check the garage, but there’s no lumber in there—nothing to nail up to the stairway opening.

  It doesn’t feel very safe here.

  Lord of the Flies doesn’t do a great job of taking my mind off the situation. The boys in the book are on an island, shipwrecked and on their own. So far, they’ve set up their own society, and it isn’t one I’d want to be in—they’re fighting each other for power right from the start, and the bad guys seem to be the ones who take over.

  I keep the television on all the time now, even though the light glowing from it makes me nervous. I don’t want it too obvious that anyone is in the house, but I don’t want to miss any information either, and it’s hard to know when the rare broadcast will happen. When it does, now the news is grim. The darkness is showing no signs of letting up. Thankfully, some of the sun’s warmth does penetrate the haze covering it. According to the reports, if it didn’t we would all be dead in a week or so, because the temperature would plummet so far that we would freeze. As it is, it’s about 20 degrees colder than it should be, and they say we’ll lose a degree or two a day because it isn’t warming back up in the daytime from the cooler night temperatures.

  Right now, if things were normal, Charlie and I would probably be out looking for trouble in the neighborhood, roaming around in our cutoff jeans and tank tops, longboards under our arms, pulling stupid shit. We’d be feeling great, knowing that two full months separate us from school, and we have all summer to play.

  As it is, I’m already wearing two pairs of pants and two shirts in the house. So far the heat still works, but the Holzers’ house is heated with oil, and I’m afraid to keep it really comfortable because I don’t know how much is left in their tank. I guess I’m lucky that they do use oil heat, because I saw one news flash about power grids going down. Here, at least so far, the lights and heat work, and water still comes out of the faucets. When that changes I’ll have to think about where to go. I can’t think too much about the future right now—it makes my head hurt. For now, I’m in a familiar place, and that will just have to be good enough.

  On the morning of day seven at the Holzers’, I run out of milk. Normally this wouldn’t be a big deal, but I’ve spent the last week watching snippets of news coverage that include updates on how so many store shelves are now completely empty, and how freeways clogged with abandoned vehicles and fields of crops dying from lack of sunshine are causing supply problems the government isn’t sure how to solve. Mrs. Holzer had two gallons of milk in the fridge. When I finished the first, I didn’t give it much thought. When I upended the second on my bowl of cereal this morning and nothing but a dribble came out, I felt a moment of pure panic.

  It finally hits me that I can’t stay here forever. There’s still food, but it won’t last, and the wanderers are getting scary. There are more of them now—it seems like every time I peek out the front window I see one or two people who obviously don’t live on the street. Sometimes there’s a group. Twice now somebody has pounded on the front door. I can’t decide if it’s Tank’s huge bark that has kept anyone from trying to kick down the door, or if they’re just not that desperate yet. Either way, I think it’s time for us to hit the road.

  I’m going to pack up the car and figure out where to head. I’m leaning toward going on to the city. I know that most people have been trying to get out of it, but in a way, that makes it seem more attractive—maybe there will be less chance of running into trouble with most people going the opposite direction from me. And in the back of my mind, I keep thinking of Lara. Maybe she’s still there, up in her penthouse apartment. Everything good, like hope, and warmth, and sunshine, all of it seems to be wrapped up with her, with the last good night of my life. Maybe she needs help. I can see her face in my mind, her soft pink lips and her smile. I can still feel that kiss. Besides, with the car it’s not that long a drive, assuming the roads are open. It can’t hurt to check. If I find her, maybe she and I can head toward . . . somewhere safe.

  I take a shower while Tank does his guard-dog act on the bathroom rug. Then I head downstairs to see if there’s anything more from the Holzers’ I might need to take with me. The Subaru is loaded with the supplies Dad stocked up on, so I doubt I will need to add much in terms of food, but better to be prepared. One thing I know I want to take is the three sets of thermal underwear I found in Charlie’s room—part of his snowboarding ensemble, I guess. They’ll come in handy in these new, chillier temperatures.

  In Mr. Holzer’s office I risk turning on the overhead light, since there’s only one window in the room and it’s facing the backyard. I make sure the curtains are fully closed first and then flip the wall switch. The ceiling light blazes. My eyes are so accustomed to dim lighting now that the bright light makes them blink furiously, and water. Once I’ve adjusted, I go through Mr. Holzer’s desk drawers. There are some more batteries that will fit the flashlight, but that’s all that seems useful. The desk calendar, one of those big ones that people lay flat on their desks, has handwritten notes in some of the date squares. June 7 has Charlie last day—that was the last day of school. June 14 has roses/anniversary. There are no more notes in the days, but there is something scrawled in the margin of the calendar.

  not weather?

  meet Bob Detroit

&n
bsp; underground/geothermal

  I stare at the words for a while, trying to figure them out. In my head I hear Dad saying, “It’s not a cloud.” Charlie’s text—I dig my phone out of my pocket and look at it again.

  We r leaving soon. My stepdad knows some guy and he thinks we’ll b safer in

  Safer in Detroit? I wonder. Who’s the guy? Is it this Bob? And what does underground mean? Was Mr. Holzer involved in some sort of underground movement? Geothermal is some sort of heating method, I think—we learned about it in class. What’s in Detroit? I look at the calendar pages prior to June, but there’s no reference to anything having to do with Detroit, or with anyone named Bob.

  I power on Mr. Holzer’s computer, and the monitor lights up. His desktop wallpaper is a picture of him and Mrs. Bradley and Charlie from when they went to the Grand Canyon last year. Just seeing Charlie’s face makes me feel better for a minute, but it fades quickly. I don’t know where he is, or if I’ll ever see him again. For all I know, Charlie could be dead, one of the many casualties of the violence that’s raging in places out there.

  I’m tempted to log in to Facebook, but I know for sure that’s a way to get traced, so I don’t. I nose around in Mr. Holzer’s computer files, but there doesn’t seem to be anything that relevant. When I look at his email contacts I come up with a Robert Langley, who could be Bob, so I paste his email into Google and I get a hit. Robert Langley, CEO of Geothermal Systems, Detroit, Michigan. It’s some company that installs heating systems in buildings. I start to enter the website into my phone for later, but then I realize I don’t know how long my phone is going to keep working. There’s a little notebook on the desk—one of those free things banks give to their account holders. Its pages are all blank. I find a pen in the drawer and write down the company name and address, along with the guy’s name. I know it’s a long shot, but it’s the only lead I have on Charlie.