The Darkening

by Paul Antony Jones

  Birdy took a deep breath and sprinted the remainder of the distance toward the deepest shadow within the gully, her feet splashing through the half-inch of water collected on its surface. She silently chastised herself for acting like the idiot she knew she was as she squeezed closely against the chain-link fence and set it rattling. She dropped a knee to the ground, her nerves so jangled she didn't feel the cold water seeping into her already-soaked jeans. A second later, once the cop-car lights had swept past, she began to pick her way along the path, using the shadows as best she could. The light from the cop cars—she could see now that there were at least three of them—turned the gully intermittently dark then filled parts of it with swirling colored light, causing her to squint uncomfortably as her night vision tried to accommodate the rapid switch between dark and bright.

  Halfway along the gully, Birdy saw there were more vehicles parked in the street; an ambulance, and what looked like some kind of a tank but without the big gun, the word SWAT emblazoned along its side and on its open rear doors. There was no sign of anybody, but she was crouched so close to the ground she couldn't see over the three-foot-high red brick wall that ran parallel to the road, partially blocking her view of the street.

  In the next patch of darkness, Birdy scooted herself across to the opposite side of the gully, this time lacing her fingers into the wire of the fence to make sure it did not give away her presence. She could hear the low rhythmic thrum of the vehicles' engines still running. She edged closer still.

  A sudden squawk from a police radio, the voice coming from it panicked and incomprehensible, scared her so badly she almost ran. Then the voice was gone, abruptly cut off. Now only the sound of the constant rain, a continuous white-noise hiss, was left. That and her ragged breathing. Birdy forced her lungs to perform the way she needed them to; slowly, rhythmically, pushing back against her body's fight-or-flight instinct with deep, controlled breaths of the wet air.

  Staying low, Birdy edged along the final fifty feet or so of the gully until she reached the point where the security fence met the low red brick wall. An LAPD black and white was parked on the road directly across the gap of the gully's exit to the street. It blocked her view of the area beyond it, but also gave her cover from anyone who might be on the other side. The cop car's driver's door was wide open, rain thumping against the leather seat. The dim glow of the car's electronics and dome light illuminated a wet patch of the path running alongside the curb.

  Birdy peeked around the corner post of the fence. A second black and white was positioned thirty feet ahead. Both its doors were open too. On the opposite side of the road, in the space between the two police cruisers, was a SWAT van. She looked to her right and saw an ambulance, and a third black and white in the middle of the road. The ambulance's windshield was riddled with bullet holes, and it looked like it had reversed into a streetlight. A thin wisp of steam rose from beneath its hood.

  There was no sign of anyone alive on the street. No bodies either.

  The gunfire had been so loud, so ferocious, that there was no way someone had not been hurt. And where were the cops? They should be all over this area. There should be helicopters, maybe even the National Guard, Birdy thought. If people had been hit, there should be bodies, or talking, or something. Anything but this deserted, silent scene laid out around her. The rain could have washed away any blood she supposed, but where were the people?

  Birdy stood up. She waited, using the meager cover the metal fence pole gave her, standing as still as a statue, barely breathing. She allowed her eyes to slowly scan her surroundings, looking for any clues to where the cops might be. In the middle of the road, just beyond the open passenger door of the second police cruiser, a large flashlight lay in a puddle of water, its beam pointing across the street and under the SWAT vehicle. A police officer's cap lay a few feet beyond that, upside-down, slowly collecting water. Now that she was standing, Birdy could see that the roof of the police cruiser parked at the curb in front of her looked like it was dented, and there were bullet holes in it too.

  Birdy made a quick dash to the driver's side door, huddling into the V where the open door met the car's front quarter-panel. The inside of the vehicle smelled of sweat, stale coffee and... something Birdy could not quite identify. She peered through the door's window, up the path running alongside the brick wall in front of the apartments on the left side of the street. The car's radio hissed and crackled with occasional static, like steam escaping from a vent.

  Beyond the reach of the car's headlights and flashing light bars was only darkness. Here and there along the pathway, trees stood guard over the street, their upper branches mostly hidden within shadow. Birdy placed a hand on the driver's seat and eased herself up toward the windshield to get a better look, but stopped halfway when her fingers touched something wet and sticky. She almost gagged when she saw she had placed her hand in a pool of half-congealed blood. Birdy screeched with disgust and frantically rubbed the blood into her pants until only a light stain remained on her fingers. She plunged her hand into the steady stream of water running beneath the car, rinsing the remaining blood off.

  "Oh my God! Oh my God!" she hissed, unable to stop the words from tumbling from her lips. It was as if she had lost control of her tongue; the words repeating over and over. She threw her hand up to her mouth, forcing her jaws together to stop the tumble of words from escaping, her lips tasting the faint tang of blood that still remained on her fingers.

  I have to get out of here, right now.

  Whatever had done this to the police was still here, somewhere. She knew it. And even though she could not explain how she knew it, her intuition told her that everyone within the darkened apartment blocks had also succumbed to whatever had chosen this place as its home. She had to alert somebody. Somebody had to come and help her, help whoever there was left.

  When she was finally sure her lips would not betray her, Birdy removed her hand from her face, aware of how badly that hand now shook. She leaned into the cop car's cabin, carefully avoiding the pool of blood, and unhooked the radio's microphone from the dash. Pulling it to her lips, she keyed the microphone.

  "Hello," she whispered. "Can anybody hear me? Please!" When she released the key there was a short, sharp burst of static, followed by silence. She waited for an answer, but none came. She keyed the mic again. "Please, this is an emergency, I need help. Something... something has happened to your policemen. Can anyone hear me?" She checked the front of the radio, but the knobs and readouts made little sense to her. Her fear began to turn into frustration. In all the movies and TV shows she had ever seen, the cop's radios were always bursting with noise and voices. It was like there was no one out there listening...

  The thought forced a cold shaft of fear into Birdy's spine. What if there was no one left to answer? That would explain why her call had gone unanswered, and why no backup had arrived to help the cops that had been in these cars.

  She had to get out of here. Back to her room. Back to where she was safe. She would call the cops from her phone. As she turned to head back toward the gully, something on the blacktop just ahead of the front left tire of the cop car caught her eye. It had been obscured by the car door until now, and she stopped and looked at it for a moment.

  The pistol lay about five feet in front of the car, tiny droplets of rain collecting on its gray metal surface. Birdy stared at it for several seconds, her mind assessing the possible actions available to her. She had never even held a gun, let alone fired one. But how hard could it be? All you had to do was point it where you wanted the bullet to go and pull the trigger, right?

  She continued to stare at the pistol, her breathing gradually increasing as she psyched herself up for what she was about to do. Then with one last look toward the gun, Birdy pushed herself off with her right foot, hoping the tread of her new sneakers would not betray her, and sprinted out into the road, ignoring the voice in her head telling her she was crazy. She slowed long enough to reach down and g
rab the pistol by its barrel—it was a lot heavier than she had imagined it would be—and then she ran. She ran like she had never run before, ducking back into the gully, her eyes fixed on her apartment. She thought about going back up the drainpipe, but the rain was so heavy now she wasn't sure her grip would hold.

  As she sprinted out of the opposite end of the gully, she angled her feet toward the security gate. Entered the security code as fast as her cold fingers would allow, shouldered her way through the gate, and slammed it behind her, then slipped and slid her way across the grass verge that was now nothing but mud. Finally, breathless more from fear than the exertion, she pulled open the door to the lobby and slipped inside. She paused for a second to catch her breath, then jogged toward the stairs.

  Outside, in the branches of a sycamore tree just across the street, a shadow with yellow luminescent eyes watched Birdy as she stood panting in the entryway. The shadow dropped silently to the wet pavement, pulled itself erect, and began to follow her.

  •••

  Tyreese decided to give chase to Birdy as soon as she disappeared into the darkness of the gully. He'd yelled for her to come back, but the cacophony of gunfire and the storm smothered his voice. The kid was smart, no doubt, and she was fast, but she was still just a kid, with a child's inability to understand when they were stepping into some serious shit. There'd been no sign of anyone else out on the street, despite the amazing commotion of bullets and screams, and there was no way in hell he was going to leave Birdy to the mercy of... whatever it was out there. He still had no idea exactly what was going on, but his instincts were screaming at him that it was not good. Not good at all.

  So he had strapped on his legs, grabbed his wooden walking cane and headed to the elevator.

  He pressed the call button and waited... and waited. Five minutes and some aggressive finger prodding of the call button, and the elevator indicator still showed the cab to be on the ground floor.

  "Jesus," he said, exasperated. He walked as quickly as he could to the stairwell and pushed open the door. This was exactly what he'd hoped to avoid; he wasn't comfortable with steps, especially not this many.

  All the light fixtures in the stairwell were out, so Tyreese grabbed the lone fire extinguisher from the wall near the entrance and propped the landing door open with it. The light from his floor illuminated about halfway down to the next landing. Better than nothing, he supposed.

  He breathed in and took a tentative step down. He just needed to pay attention and keep his cool and he would be all right, he told himself. Two more steps down and Tyreese misjudged the next step, the heel of his boot caught its lip, and he stumbled forward. If it hadn't been for the walking cane he held he would have surely fallen hard, breaking God knew how many bones. Instead he pushed the end of the wooden cane onto the step below him, which gave him enough time for his right hand to grab for the aluminum handrail that ran along the side of the stairs. The handrail was supposed to run all the way to the bottom floor, but it was missing most of the way down, the result of some hard-up junkie who had stripped it and sold it for his next dose. He wobbled for a second or two, the cane's handle biting into the soft skin between his thumb and first finger as it took most of his weight, then he pushed himself back upright until he found his balance.

  "You have got to be out of your mind," he said aloud, taking in a deep breath to help ease his thundering heart. He allowed himself a second to catch his breath before starting down again.

  One. At. A. Time, he told himself.

  Tyreese froze as the sound of a door opening then creaking shut on squeaky hinges echoed up from the shadows of the stairwell below. Footsteps, rapid and light, followed.

  "Who's down there?" he called out, mustering as much menace into his voice as he could find. His grip on the cane grew tighter.

  The footsteps stopped abruptly. Tyreese edged closer to the guardrail, leaned over, and looked down into the darkness. A blank pale face looked up at him, then suddenly broke into a smile.

  "Tyreese!" Birdy yelled, the relief in her voice taking him completely by surprise.

  In what could only have been a few seconds, the girl had bounded up the remaining stairs to Tyreese, rounded his flight of stairs and all but flung herself at him. Her arms tried but just failed to reach all the way around his waist, her head buried deep into his solar plexus.

  Tyreese wobbled with her impact, his free hand moving to her back to hold her to him, mostly to stop the two of them from falling. He felt a swell of relief that she was okay (and also that he would not have to follow her out into the night), that quickly began to turn to anger that she had forced him into this position. He pried Birdy from him and placed a hand tightly around her upper arm. His meaty hand swallowed her arm entirely.

  "What the hell were you thinking?" he said, loudly. He held Birdy at arm's length until she was almost leaning backward. Her face, covered by a sheen of rainwater, her skin pale in the meager light looked up at him, her joy now turning to fear as she teetered on the edge of a step. If he let go, she would have no chance, he realized through the haze of anger that had overtaken him. She would fall.

  "Tyreese," Birdy bleated, her voice fearful. "You're hurting me." Tears streamed down both her cheeks now.

  Jesus! What was he doing? He felt a sudden burst of shame that he had let his own fear overtake him. He pulled her toward him, releasing her arm then sat down hard on the step two above where her feet were planted.

  "I'm sorry. I'm... I... I just...," he stuttered, unable to put into words his shame. He watched her rub the part of her arm where he had grabbed her. "I saw the firefight. Saw you out there heading to—" His eyes fell to the waistband of her pants. Now it was his turn to sound shocked. "Is that a pistol?" he hissed, his eyes trying to focus through the gloom on what he was sure was the butt of a Glock sticking out of the waistband of Birdy's pants.

  Birdy dropped down one more step and pulled out the pistol, her hand around the grip, her finger caressing the trigger guard as she held it in front of Tyreese. "I found it on the street," she said, turning it sideways as she continued to examine it. "It was just laying next to one of the cop cars, like it'd been dropped." Her finger moved over the trigger. "Hey!" she yelled as Tyreese snatched the weapon from her. "That's mine."

  Tyreese pulled back the slide—there was a round in the chamber—and dropped the magazine. It was half-full. He slid the pistol into his own waistband. "You could have been killed," he said quietly.

  "I'm not stupid. I know not to pull the trigger."

  "I'm not talking about the gun! I'm talking about out there." He pointed his chin outside. "Something's going down. I don't know what it is, but you ain't stupid. You know there's no way what happened tonight wouldn't have brought a massive goddamn response from the cops. Jesus! There's not even a news crew out there. And you decide to go crawling around in the dark?" He waited a few seconds for his words to sink in. "You could have been killed," he repeated quietly.

  Birdy's eyes dropped to the steps. "I... I know. It's just—Ummmph!" Her words became an unintelligible muffle as Tyreese's paw of a hand suddenly covered her mouth.

  "Shhhhh!" he whispered.

  From below, the sound of the ground floor door creaking slowly open again reached them in the semi-darkness.

  Birdy's eyes grew wide.

  "Did you see anyone else out there?" Tyreese whispered, his hand still clasped over her mouth.

  Birdy’s eyes got even wider. She shook her head no. If she hadn’t seen anyone out there, then whoever had just entered the stairwell hadn’t wanted to be seen.

  They both heard the sound of bare feet slapping against concrete steps. Tyreese strained to see through the darkness, but the light from the top landing only went a short way into the shadows.

  "Who's down there?" Tyreese's voice boomed. He released Birdy's mouth and struggled to his feet.

  A few seconds passed without another sound, then without warning, from the edge of the darkness one landi
ng down, a woman's voice, soft yet somehow disturbing to Tyreese, echoed up the staircase, "Baby, it's Momma Are you there?"

  Birdy gasped and pulled herself free of Tyreese's grip. "Momma?"

  The disembodied voice took on a tone of relief. "Annabelle, baby. I've been looking for you everywhere. I can't see you. Come down here to your momma"

  Birdy took two steps into the darkness before Tyreese's heavy hand grabbed her by the shoulder and pulled her back, his fingers digging into her flesh.

  "Stop!" he hissed.

  "Let go of me. Let go," Birdy yelled, struggling to free herself from his grip. "Mom, help!"

  "Baby, what's wrong? Who's that with you?"

  Now Tyreese's voice sounded like thunder as it echoed around the stairwell, "Why don't you come up here, where we can see you in the light."

  A drawn-out hiss rose from the darkness below. Tyreese imagined it sounded exactly how a rattlesnake would if he'd kicked it out from under a rock. When the woman's voice returned, it had taken on a keening, almost simpering tone. "Baby, I'm hurt. Come here to me, please. I need you."

  Birdy struggled harder, but Tyreese's grip was vice-like. She turned to face the man who held her. "Let me go!" she screamed, spittle flying as tears of both frustration and relief rolled down her cheeks. "That's my mom."

  Instead of releasing her, Tyreese took an unsteady step back up the stair, pulling the still-struggling Birdy with him.

  "Let go of me! Let me go!" she screamed.