After Darkness Fell

by David Berardelli

  As I struggled through these shadows of the past, I sensed Fields nearby. Then I smelled her hair and her perfume, and everything else vanished. She pressed against me, and her touch made me return instantly. Her face drew closer and I could feel tendrils of her hair gently touching my arm. Her breath singed my flesh when she whispered, “Everything will be okay.”

  That ended my nostalgia. Fields had brought me back to the present, where I belonged, and I knew right then that we had to go forward with this.

  The memories would come with us. The only problem with that was that the bad ones came right along with the good.

  Leaving would be much harder this time than when I first arrived and learned that my childhood home next door had been burned to the ground. When we left this time, I’d be bringing along the afternoons I’d spent with Uncle Joe those few short weeks before he’d died. I’d be bringing along the days we’d spent with Reed. That cold afternoon when we’d buried Uncle Joe. That cold afternoon when we’d buried Reed. That horrible episode that started the morning I’d sensed someone wandering around outside.

  Once I finally decided to start moving again, I followed Fields through the kitchen and out of the house. I closed the back door, but didn’t lock or bolt it. I forced myself to turn away and not look back or even take a moment to say good-bye. For us, the future lay in a different place. There was no sense looking back at all the things that had once been a large part of me, the things we’d be leaving behind. I took her hand and we went down the walk, climbed the steps to the gravel drive and ascended the hill. We walked over to the buckeye tree and stood there a few moments, staring at the three graves. I closed my eyes, thought of my mother, my uncle, and Reed, and somehow sensed that they’d be watching over us, no matter where we ended up.

  The van sat outside the garage, packed and ready. We climbed in and buckled up. Just as I reached for the ignition key, I found myself staring at the garage door. Inside, Uncle Joe’s beloved Silverado sat in its stall in the dark, where it would stay, possibly forever. The memories slammed through me again, and I lowered my head.

  Fields touched my arm. “You okay?”

  “I really don’t want to leave the truck.” My voice sounded like it belonged to a child.

  “I know.”

  “I’d love to take it with us.”

  “We can’t.”

  “I know. I still want to.”

  Fields squeezed my arm. “Just let it go, babe.”

  “This is ... really hard for me.”

  “I know. I liked it, too.”

  “That truck ...” A lump formed in my throat. “It ... saved our lives.”

  Fields was silent for several moments. Then she gently stroked my arm. “This van got us out of a few scrapes too, remember?”

  Once again, she was right. The truck had served its purpose. Not only for Uncle Joe, but also for us. I turned to her and put my hand over hers. “Thanks, baby. I needed that.”

  She smiled, leaned over and kissed my cheek. “You’re welcome. Now let’s get out of here before we both change our minds. Harry Shaw’s still waiting for us down near the main road.”

  I fired up the ignition, backed up and turned the van away from the garage. Then, as we crept down the gravel drive, I forced myself to ignore the tall square shape of the two-story house on our left and then the huge gray presence of the barn looming straight ahead.

  An image shot past my vision. I saw myself as a child escaping the barn after Uncle Joe found me playing in the hayloft. I forced the humorous memory away and focused on taking the van down the drive, past the front of the barn. I didn’t start breathing normally until I saw the truck sitting at the bottom of the hill, where Shaw waited for us.

  “Where’s Gresch?” I asked. “He didn’t go on ahead, did he?”

  “He might have. They didn’t tell me what they were doing. It doesn’t matter, does it?”

  Once again, she was right. It didn’t matter. The only thing that did matter was that our lives were being given a new beginning. I knew that something like that didn’t happen very often. When it did, the only sensible thing to do was to look straight ahead.

  “No. It doesn’t matter at all.”

  Shaw pulled onto the deserted road and we followed him up the hill and away from my childhood home—the only place in the world that would continue to hold so many memories of my life.

  ***

  It was a quiet, relaxing trip. Beside me, Fields sat staring at the road ahead. She didn’t say much, but I could tell that, like me, she was excited and a little nervous about starting all over again. She began the trip with her trusty .45 in her lap, but once we got onto I-79 and went a few miles without encountering another soul on the road, she placed it on the floor between her feet.

  A major step, of course, and one that made me wonder once again about our future. I was pleased there was a future, and this in itself told me we were doing the right thing by leaving. Shaw and Gresch had been right—how much longer could Fields and I go on living like two escaped prisoners? How long would it be before I went out to get the truck and one of Simon’s thugs or someone else picked me off as soon as I left the house? Or when I opened the garage door? Or when I pulled out onto the road?

  How long would it be before someone began shooting at the windows while we ate supper? Or while we slept?

  Our only option was to find others just like us and begin living like normal human beings again.

  So what if society was brought down again in the next few decades? So what if the new Powers That Be turned stupid again and let history repeat itself? That was what humans did, wasn’t it? They worked hard to improve the situation and then sat back while someone else came along and destroyed it. Eventually someone else would come along and try to fix things again, but the process would repeat itself, and things would end up destroyed again. Man’s legacy would never change. He would always destroy things when he tried fixing them.

  And who was I to argue?

  “Something funny?” Fields asked. “You’re smiling.”

  “I was just wondering how long it’ll take before the next big one comes along to end this one. If we’ll be around to see it happen.”

  “Kind of cynical, but I see your point.”

  “I should say we’ve earned the right to be cynical, wouldn’t you?”

  “I just hope that if it happens again, we won’t be around to see it. I can’t possibly go through this again.”

  “If it takes another fifty years, we might see it, but I’ll be ninety and you’ll be in your eighties. We probably won’t care about too much about anything by then.”

  Fields laughed. “We’ll make a good team. You can ask me what’s going on and if I’m still capable of understanding it, I’ll tell you what I think.”

  “Sounds like a plan to me, but something tells me I won’t even want to know at that point in my life.”

  She sat back. “Why worry about it? Whatever happens will happen—with or without our help.”

  I went silent and stayed that way for a few minutes. My thoughts began spinning again.

  “What’s on your mind now?” she asked.

  “Just thinking.”

  “About what?”

  “We didn’t have a very easy time living on my grandparents’ farm, did we?”

  “No. We didn’t. But it was home, and we made the best of it.”

  “And you were there.”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “We were constantly looking over our shoulders, listening and expecting the worst, but for some reason, it just didn’t seem that bad. I think it was because you were there with me.”

  She placed her hand on my thigh. She smiled at me, and I could see a glint of tears forming in her eyes.

  I placed my hand over hers. “I just wish Reed could be here with us. I would’ve loved to see his reaction to all this.”

  “He’d be happy for us.”

  The image made me grin, and I felt
tears of my own gathering in my eyes. “He really would.”

  “I’ll never stop trying to guess who his friend was,” she said.

  Once again my vision of him came back, and I found myself wondering if it had actually been him, or if I’d just been dreaming. “He seemed very happy the last time I saw him.”

  “He probably was. From what you told me, he’s been watching out for both of us all along. We were his friends. We shared his last days with him. It’ll stay that way until we actually do see him again.”

  “I’m almost positive he was with me when I started looking for you.”

  “Since you survived, I’d say he probably helped more than both of us will ever know.”

  She was right. Whenever I thought of what happened that night, I knew I hadn’t been alone. I realized now that I hadn’t been alone from the time I left the house.

  She patted my thigh and settled back in her seat. A few minutes later she said, “I’ve always hated moving, you know.”

  “So do I, but this different.”

  “It’s like moving to another world.”

  “That’s one way of looking at it.”

  “Aren’t you intimidated?”

  “I’m looking at it as a kind of second chance.”

  “I just hope we all take life a little more seriously this time around.”

  “We will or we won’t. There isn’t any other option.”

  At around four o’clock, we climbed a hill. When we reached the top and I saw the magnificent sight, my foot slammed down onto the brake pedal.

  A cluster of giant wind turbines spun madly at the top of the hill just a few miles in the distance. There must have been thirty or forty of them in a long line. The sight took my breath away.

  “I never expected to see anything like that again.”

  Fields turned to me. “Is your heart racing, too?”

  “It’s about to take off.”

  She took my hand. “I know this sounds stupid, but I’m ... well, I’m scared.”

  “Me, too, but even so, my foot wants to press down on the gas.”

  “Maybe it’s your subconscious trying to take over, since you’re obviously not capable of doing it right now.”

  I thought it could be Reed trying to help me make the decision again.

  Reed? Is that you?

  Do it, came the quick reply. Do it for your mom and your uncle. Do it for Fields. Most of all, do it for yourself.

  Was it Reed’s voice? Or was it just my gut telling me what I wanted to hear?

  Did it matter?

  Actually, only one thing mattered. I knew then that I had to stop questioning everything and just get moving again.

  Just as I let my foot lower onto the gas pedal, I glanced in the rearview and saw a familiar truck pulling up behind our van. It was Gresch, but he wasn’t alone. An old man with gray hair and a thick gray beard sat beside him, grinning and waving.

  It was Walter.

  “Who’s that with Vaughn?” Fields asked, squinting at her side mirror.

  “That’s Walter.” More tears filled my eyes.

  “The old man you told us about? The one who helped you? Gave you his son’s car?”

  “That’s him. I really glad Vaughn went back and picked him up. He deserves this, too. Besides, he wanted to meet you.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. He said you sound a lot like his wife.”

  “What did you tell him about me?”

  “Just the truth.”

  “Think he’ll forgive you for letting those kids destroy the car?”

  The beaming grin on Walter’s face told me the answer to her question.

  “I think he already has.” I wiped my eyes. A wave of warm relief shimmered through me, and all doubts and fears scurried away in an instant.

  As we went down the next hill, I realized that even though death and destruction had once covered our world in heavy darkness, all that was about to change. As long as there were some of us still left with the desire to start living again, together we’d be strong enough to stand tall and lift the shroud.

  Fields put her hand over mine and we both knew right then that the darkness had indeed lifted, and that daylight had finally returned.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  David Berardelli was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and grew up in Gibsonia, an agricultural and mining area north of the city. Formerly a jazz musician, he studied music at Duquesne University before being drafted into the U.S. Army. There, he served as a member of the 80th Army Band at Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah, Georgia, and performed in the Third Army Soldier Show at Fort McPherson in Atlanta. He also served as a bugler at nearly two hundred military funerals between 1970 and 1971. He has also been a caricaturist, a nightclub musician, and a data-processing associate.

  He lives on a thirty-acre horse ranch in southern Mississippi with his wife Linda and their horses and dogs, along with a variety of birds, squirrels, raccoons, coyotes, foxes, and deer.

  After Darkness Fell is the sequel to his apocalyptic novel And Darkness Fell. Berardelli’s other published novels include The Apprentice, Wagon Driver, Demon Chaser, Demon Chaser II, The Funny Detective, Just a Simple Errand, Stepping Out of My Grave, Escape Clause, Fatal Innocence, Colors, Working for a Mob Boss, and Demon Chaser III.