Fade to Grey (Book 2): Darkness Ascending

by Brian Stewart

  Michelle, Walter and Sam scooted outside, stopping only to mime a “door locking” gesture to Amy, who nodded in acknowledgement.

  Walter fired up the Mule at the same time he keyed his radio. “Mule calling driveway gate, do you copy?”

  A momentary space of dead air came through before Mike replied. “This is driveway gate, I hear you.” His transmission, although clear in pitch and tone, was broken up with multiple gaps.

  “His batteries are almost gone,” Michelle noted.

  Walter nodded his head toward Michelle as he spoke into the radio. “Mike, we need to borrow your muscle to help us deliver supper, we’ll pick you up in about thirty seconds.”

  A short blip came across the radio in reply.

  Michelle sent a curious, raised eyebrow look at Walter, but said nothing as the little four wheel drive vehicle accelerated toward the gate. This time it was Sam that hopped off and unlatched the chain, allowing them to pass through before shutting it again. Mike was standing just ahead of them, and managed to hop onto the coasting Mule with three seconds to spare before Walter stomped on the gas.

  Chapter 7

  With a soft click, the door latched behind Doc and Callie, leaving Eric momentarily alone with Max. The wound on his ankle had been cleaned, sutured, and bandaged before being rewrapped with sterile gauze and several layers of athletic tape. Doc had argued ineffectively for a loose covering that would necessitate Eric staying off of his feet as much as possible for a week or more, but he had refused. In the end, a concession had been reached with Eric agreeing to have his ankle checked and rebandaged at least once a day—more so if it became infected or otherwise compromised.

  The wrapping job Callie had done was amazingly more flexible, and yet more supportive than his own duct tape handiwork. Perhaps it was the anesthetic skewing his perception, but aside from the stiffness caused by the compression, his ankle felt good enough to walk—even jog on—without pain. He made a mental note to watch her more closely the next time it was done. Another knock on the door brought him back to the present.

  He stretched his hand over to Max’s collar, gripping the thick, fluorescent orange nylon webbing before he answered. “Come on in.”

  With a clang and several thumps, the door was jolted open by Bernice, her arms laden with several foil covered plates, bowls and bottles. A largish, loosely woven chartreuse knitting bag was slung over one of her shoulders—its contents bulging the weave into semi-transparency.

  “I figured you’d be hungry.”

  “Starving . . . let me give you a hand,” Eric said as he stepped forward, grabbing some of the miraculously balanced plates. The aroma of fried eggs, herbs, and steamed vegetables surrounded Bernice as she shifted some of the containers into his hands.

  “Sit . . . eat. There’s no tellin’ when you’re gonna have another chance with the way things have been, and you’re already looking too skinny.”

  The flopping and gurgling in his stomach jumped at the opportunity to remind him of the last time he had eaten, and he wasted no time tearing into the meal. One large bowl was filled with what looked like scraps, scrapings, and miscellaneous leftovers mixed with rice and oatmeal.

  Eric picked up the bowl and smiled at Bernice. “And you brought Max breakfast.” He had the heavy ceramic casserole dish halfway towards Max’s drooling face before Bernice cut him off.

  “Are you saying that my mother’s special friendship stew recipe is dog food?”

  Eric froze—the large bowl now barely a foot from Max. A rapid fire shift of his eyes traveled between Bernice, Max, and the casserole dish . . . and then back to Max as he slowly pulled the large bowl away. Both of Max’s eyebrows shot up in disbelief, and then dropped to narrow, calculating slits as if to say, “Yeah, I’m writing this one down. Remember this the next time you need me, pal.”

  Eric sheepishly grimaced at Max, and then set the bowl on the folding chair. In just the past hour it had served as a resting place, examination table, and surgery center . . . and now it was transformed into a severely overcrowded buffet line. Using the oversized spoon that was already in his hand, he dipped out an overflowing gob of Bernice’s mother’s friendship stew. It was lukewarm, sticky to the point of being almost tacky, and rather bland taste-wise. Also included with the first mouthful was a narrow grisly rind of . . . something. Bacon, maybe? He couldn’t tell for sure.

  Bernice still stood there—elbows out, loosely closed fists resting at her waistline—as he chewed the mysterious rubbery substance.

  “You like?” she asked with a tight lipped semi-frown.

  “Mmmm . . .s’ good,” Eric mumbled out as he shoveled another large spoonful of stew into his mouth, trying not to look at the other plates covered with sunny-side-up eggs, sausage patties, hash browns, and homemade whole wheat toast. Cold toast by the time he got to it. Always cold toast. That tiny seed of memory was rapidly watered, fertilized and harvested as a full blown remembrance of one of Uncle Andy’s often voiced thoughts on how the universe worked.

  They had been at the Big Buffalo diner in Jamestown—Eric and Michelle’s hometown. Eric was maybe twelve or thirteen at the time. He and Michelle had ridden their bikes down to a creek early that morning to try their luck on some local, overfished population of trout. Patchy blue skies had rapidly turned to leaden gray, and the morning’s cool breeze degenerated into a whipping, shifting frenzy. In other words, it was Eric’s idea of a perfect day for fishing. Not so much for Michelle though. Both of them had been spared from the event when Uncle Andy had surprised them with a triple blast of his horn. They had ended up tossing their bikes in the back of his pickup just as the first heavy drops splattered on the windshield. A trip to the diner followed. It was there that he first heard his uncle’s conspiracy theory about toast.

  “I’ll have the ‘old timers’ special, eggs over medium, black coffee and a danish,” his uncle had ordered from the gum chewing, weary eyed waitress.

  “Sausage or bacon?”

  “Sausage.”

  “Regular or turkey sausage?” she replied on autopilot.

  “Real sausage isn’t made from something that has feathers.”

  A quiet moment passed as the tired lady robotically processed, and then rejected Andy’s response as one not preprogrammed and listed as acceptable.

  “Sorry hun’ . . . what was that? Did you want a regular or turkey sausage.”

  Uncle Andy smiled over top of his menu at us. “Regular.”

  A swift scribble in the rat-eared order pad preceded the last question. “White or whole wheat?”

  “Whole wheat. Cold please.”

  “’Scuse?” The waitress peered over the top of her half-size, bottoms only reading glasses.

  “Whole wheat toast please, and make sure it’s cold.”

  The gum smacking briefly shifted into overdrive, and then immediately froze, like a cottontail rabbit suddenly aware of the red fox peering through the weeds ahead.

  “Cold?”

  “Have you ever delivered a warm piece of toast?”

  “Couple’ hundred times every day, I suppose.”

  “No,” Uncle Andy replied, “you haven’t. Nobody has. It’s impossible.”

  Eric remembered exchanging a fleeting look with Michelle, who was seated next to him in the booth. He remembered her smile, and her barely suppressed giggle as his uncle proceeded with the joust.

  Lowering the order pad slightly, the waitress bobbed her nose toward Andy and asked, “What do you mean, ‘impossible’?”

  “Well, do you know what the ‘R’ value is for a one quarter inch thick slice of bread?”

  “Huh?”

  “I didn’t think so,” Andy replied quickly, “and neither do I, but I know it’s low. As a matter of fact, leastwise from my experience, toast seems to have one of the lowest insulating values of any organic substance. And just to complicate things, it’s filled with tiny holes to let whatever heat it had one time dreamed of holding, escape.”

&n
bsp; Michelle’s foot had kicked mine under the table to make sure I was paying attention to the unfolding spectacle.

  The waitress’s blank faced stare was frozen in place as my uncle continued.

  “You can hover over top of any toaster in the world, and FEEL the heat radiating upwards. And yet, as soon as the ‘sproing’ happens and the toast shoots topside,” Uncle Andy lifted a hand quickly and held it there—fingers up—like an old fashion karate chop, “the toast begins its graduate thesis on the self-induction of personal cryogenic properties.”

  Two slow, deliberate, open-mouthed smacks of gum accompanied the ‘deer in headlights’ look on the server’s face.

  “There could be a plate ready and waiting six inches away from the toaster, and yet, by the time that brown, crispy slice of bread travels that short arc from the four hundred degree inferno to the plate,” the karate chop hand snapped down and sideways, “it will have cooled to a maximum of room temperature minus ten degrees.”

  I had elbowed Michelle at that point, both to smother her laughter while also trying to keep mine in check, but the waitress—apparently oblivious to the two teenagers seated in front of her—ignored us.

  “So . . . . . . do you . . . . . . . . . want . . . . . . . . .toast?”

  Karate hand now parallel to the table’s surface, Uncle Andy lowered it at a snail’s pace—each millimeter of descent punctuated with more proof. “Why, I dare say that even if you managed to somehow place a slice of warm toast in front of me, the toast gremlins would then kick into overtime and prevent me from enjoying a single bite while it retained even the least bit of heat. My phone would ring, the fire alarm would go off, or your coworker over there with the pink flowery apron would a trip over a puck of turkey sausage and dump her pitcher of ice water on my plate.” The hand now rested on the table.

  Gum chewing resumed slowly, like the restarting of a big band era song playing on an ancient, weary phonograph that was too weak to spin at anything above one quarter speed.

  Backing away at first, the waitress kept her bewildered stare locked on Uncle Andy, breaking it only when her backside bumped in to a customer seated at the diner’s bar, spilling half of the cup of coffee he had been lifting at the time. With a mumbled “’Scuse me,” she had turned and walked into the kitchen.

  Fifteen minutes later, a different waitress delivered our food. Uncle Andy’s toast, riding on its own plate and accompanied by several tiny, sealed paper cups filled with rock hard, almost frozen butter, was cold.

  The second mouthful, similar to the first with the exception that it contained several of the unidentified, chewy fragments finally went down. He was lowering the spoon for its third helping of the gruel when Bernice choked back a snorting laugh.

  “Eric, stop eating the dog food.”

  Spoon frozen in mid flight, he could see the amusement of his predicament plastered on Bernice’s face.

  “It ain’t going to hurt you, boy. It’s just a mix of leftovers from breakfast and lunch, with a few other scraps thrown in for good measure,” she pointed at one of the folding chairs that was leaning against the wall, “you mind if I sit for a second?”

  “Not at all.” Eric stood, taking the casserole dish to the far corner of the room as he called Max.

  Golden, expressive eyes regarded him with suspicion. “Fool me once, shame on you . . . fool me twice, shame on me,” they seemed to convey.

  “Max, c’mere buddy.” After another hesitation, Max’s huge black paws thumped heavily onto the hardwood floor, and he padded over. Eric leaned down and scruff’d Max’s neck as he slid the weighty bowl into the corner with a whispered, “Watch out for the squigglies.”

  Returning to the bed, he picked up the plate of eggs and used the gruel spoon to slide two of them onto a piece of toast. Cold toast.

  Halfway into his second bite, Bernice, in a sudden, almost friendly voice said, “I nearly forgot.”

  Eric froze—folded bread sandwich just about to touch his lips—and waited. Reaching into the pocket of her quilted apron, Bernice pulled out a small bottle of Louisiana hot sauce.

  “You remembered?” Eric beamed.

  “Of course.”

  He took the bottle from her extended hand and liberally, over liberally, smothered his food as Bernice began to speak.

  “Eric, first things first. I’m awful sorry about Andy. I don’t really know what happened up at the cabin, I don’t think anybody does yet . . . ‘cept for you and Michelle, but I want you to know that I’m praying for him.”

  He nodded his head, swallowed a chunk of the spicy egg sandwich, and reached for a napkin as he replied, “Thank you, that’s the best thing for him right now.”

  Noting Eric’s pause, Bernice pointed a wind-tanned, work-hardened finger towards his plate. “You keep eating, I just want to say a few more things.”

  The last vestiges of slurps and licks sounded from the corner, and Max shook his muscular frame like he had just come out of the water after a long swim. There was no jingle of tags—Eric had always kept them riveted to the orange collar for silence. The huge, yellow-gold eyes of his best, and only, four legged friend regarded him with calm forgiveness after the earlier slight.

  Another impulsive glance at the former location of his wristwatch brought with it another frown. “I need to take him out,” Eric said, quickly scanning the room for Max’s leash, “he’s been in here way too long. I’m surprised he’s not crossing his legs.”

  “Michelle took him out before lunch, and then again about 3:00 PM.”

  “Wait . . . what? Do you mean he let Michelle put a leash on him and take him outside?”

  “Twice, and although it was mostly ‘straight out, do your business, straight back,’ he didn’t seem to give her any problem. Mostly.”

  “Mostly?”

  “Well, he did growl at Wally who was leanin’ in your truck trying to find some clothes for you.”

  “Growl?”

  Bernice chuckled, “It was probably more like ‘snarling and snapping’ than a growl, but Wally managed to get inside and shut the door before he lost anything more than a few years of his life from the fright. It took Michelle about twenty minutes of tugging and pulling before she was finally able to get your critter away from your truck. We almost thought we were going to have to wake you up to come and get him.”

  “Sorry,” Eric mumbled, still partially stunned at Bernice’s revelation regarding Max and Michelle.

  “How is your leg?”

  “Doc thinks I should stay off of it for awhile. That’s not going to happen.” Another ravenous snap at the egg sandwich and it was finished. He assembled and doctored up the second one as Bernice cleared her throat in preparation for whatever she was going to say next. He could sense her hesitation.

  “What is it?” Eric paused, hot sauce bottle in his hand, “Bernice?”

  “Eric, I’m worried.” It was said with a heavy exhalation . . . a vulnerability. In the twenty plus years he had known Bernice, it was the first time that he could recall hearing a tremor in her voice.

  He went to say something, but she raised a hand and cut him off. “Let me get this out. I don’t know what’s going on in this world right now, but I’ve got two daughters and three grandchildren, that as far as I know, I might never see again. My husband’s best friend is lying on a bed and may never wake up. My sister-in-law is missing . . . probably dead. Or worse.”

  Eric set the sandwich down and focused his attention on Bernice. Lines of stress creased her face as she continued.

  “You’re hurt. Doc’s granddaughter is shot. That state trooper fellow has a face that looks like a punching bag, and I’ve got about thirty people down at the store or floating around here who are just as lost and confused as I am.”

  Bernice looked down at the floor, interlaced her fingers prayer-like and closed her eyes. “Eric, I’m worried about Walter. I couldn’t stand to lose him. You know that even as much as I rail and rant and badger at him nonstop, it’s on
ly because I love the old fool. The problem is that he thinks, and usually acts, like he’s still a young man, and he ain’t. There’s been a lot of cockamamie ideas floating around, and most of them somehow involve my husband and a few others charging back to the campground on some damned rescue mission. Now I know, just from what’s happened here, that none of us are really safe, but I guess what I’m asking,” she looked up and met Eric’s eyes, “is that . . .”

  She stopped, and then looked down and away, trying to conceal the gathering moisture in the corners of her eyes.

  Eric stood and walked over. “Bernice, I don’t know what’s happening . . . here . . . at the campground . . . or on the whole world in general. To be honest I’m worried too. One of the main reasons I’m worried is because I feel like we’re all in the dark. Now I think we can probably alleviate, or at least address some of our concerns once we put our stories together. It’s kind of like everyone is holding a piece of the puzzle, we just need to put them on the same table. Maybe then we’ll have a better overall picture of what’s going on.”