Darkness Falling

by Peter Crowther

  Geoff didn't answer right away. Then he said, "Yes, it could have been that." He lowered the glasses. "How'd you fancy a hike?"

  "What, down the forest road to the truck?"

  "It's the only thing I can think of." Geoff looked around and saw that Melanie and Johnny had moved across to the far side of the roof, overlooking the valley edge, away from the road. He turned back to his brother and said, "I just want us to be sure about what's happening before we let everyone know we're still here." He shrugged. "I know maybe I'm being paranoid, but that thing with the phone. I mean, how come nobody said anything? You know as well as I do that someone had picked the receiver up… but they didn't speak." He watched his wife leaning over the roof, saw Johnny hold onto her waist and lean over alongside her. "Then they put the receiver back. There was somebody there… I know there was. But they didn't speak. Or–" He stopped and looked down at the binoculars cradled in his lap. "Or maybe they couldn't speak."

  "How do you mean? Like they were being held captive or something?"

  "Or something."

  Rick let out a low whistle that was more air than note.

  "And now, maybe Jerry is back at his truck. Right now. Maybe he's down there, crawling about on the floor of his cab trying to figure out what's wrong with it. And then again, maybe it's not Jerry."

  "Hey, maybe there's nobody there at all."

  Geoff nodded, tapping the binocular side with the ring on his middle finger. "Yeah, that too. But the way I figure it is we don't want to start driving around drawing attention to ourselves until we know what's going on, or until we've at least got a reasonable idea and we've verified that things are almost back to the way they were before the first light hit."

  "OK. We walk down to Jerry's truck and see what's happening."

  Geoff slapped Rick's knee and made to get up.

  "But Geoff," Rick said. "What if… what if, you know, things aren't the way they were… or the way they should be? What then?"

  The faint and far-off sound of an engine turning over prevented Geoff from having to respond. Melanie and Johnny ran across, each of them whooping with joy at the sudden return to familiarity, but Geoff snapped for them to keep quiet and get down out of sight.

  "Hey, what's the matter, man?" Johnny whined. He pulled himself against the wall next to Geoff while Melanie, frowning, put her arm around her husband's shoulder. "Jerry's trying to get his truck started." He shrugged. "So what's the big deal?"

  "Yeah, we can go down into town and find out what happened to everybody," Rick added.

  Geoff was still looking through the binoculars when the engine fired into life. When he spoke it was a mutter. "You know, I'd've bet a dollar to a dime he'd never get that thing started."

  "So what's so bad about that?" Johnny asked, peering over the wall as he watched the distant road leading down into Jesman's Bend. The sound of the truck driving off was now unmistakable.

  "And there's something else."

  "What?"

  Geoff handed the glasses over to Johnny. "Here, take a look."

  Johnny raised the glasses and scanned the road until he caught sight of the old truck moving down the road, disappearing for a few seconds each time a clump of trees came between it and the station. Johnny grunted.

  "What is it?" Melanie said.

  "Hey." Rick's voice was little more than a throaty whisper. "He doesn't have his lights on."

  "Well, first off he gets the truck started," Geoff said quietly to Melanie, "which is pretty good going considering the thing was on fire when we last saw it. And then he drives without his lights on."

  Johnny tutted. "So? Maybe they were damaged in the crash." He handed the glasses back to Geoff.

  Geoff nodded. "Yeah, maybe so. I guess it's surprising that there's any life left at all in the engine. But if there is life there, then I'd've thought there'd be enough for the lights. But there's another thing."

  Johnny sighed. "What?"

  "How fast do you reckon he's going?" He cut across Johnny's and Rick's groans. "I mean, approximately."

  Rick's face grimaced. "Thirty, thirty five?"

  Geoff nodded. "At least. And we all know what that road's like, yeah? It bends and turns and winds like piece of dropped string."

  "What are you saying, honey?"

  "What I'm saying is that Jerry's driving that truck like a stock car racer." He looked through the glasses again and then put them down, turning around and slumping with his back against the wall. "He's out of sight now, heading into the last stretch before town."

  They all slumped back alongside Geoff, like condemned men facing a firing squad. Melanie was the first one to break the silence.

  "Maybe it doesn't mean anything, Geoff. Could be a lot of reasons."

  The truth, however, was that she couldn't think of one. Geoff was right: the road down through the trees into Jesman's Bend was treacherous and, even if his lights were not working and he was still determined to get into town, Jerry Borgesson would have driven a lot slower. Over the years, many experienced locals had fallen foul of misjudging the tight bends on the Forest Road – and that was often in daylight or with their lights on. Jerry driving the truck away at a fast speed in total darkness didn't make a lot of sense at all. And they all knew it, deep down, where it really mattered.

  "So what do we do now?"

  Geoff turned to his brother. "Well, we decide – democratically. My view is that two of us walk down into town, while it's dark. That way, maybe we can find out some more." He shrugged and tried a big smile. "Hey, it could be that there's nothing, right? Could be that Jerry was just busting to get into town and his lights weren't working and he thought, fuck it, I'm going anyways, and I'm going as fast as I can. We don't know what these folks have been through, or even where they've been through it, so we maybe have to make a few allowances for strange behavior."

  "But we should still be cautious – is that what you're saying?"

  Geoff nodded and slapped Rick's leg. "We should still be cautious."

  "So, who's it gonna be?" Johnny asked, verbalizing everyone's thoughts. "Who's the lucky twosome?"

  (16)

  Just before the light came back, Angel Wurst screamed.

  Ronnie had cleaned up the map-reader, removing his soiled pants and shorts and washing him down. Karl had been right – it was a mess in there – but they'd laughed about it and had somehow managed to get the job done without Virgil or the girl coming in to see what was going on. By the time they were through, Karl seemed to have recovered some of his flexibility and he attacked with considerable gusto the sandwich that Ronnie had brought for him. But the likelihood of getting Karl down the inflated chute was slight to non-existent. He was in too much pain, with simple movements a huge chore, and that pretty much ruled out Karl jumping from the plane hatch onto a balloon and sliding his way down onto the book-strewn floor below.

  So, the decision was made to make the best of a bad job and stay in the aircraft for the night, tackling the thorny problem of getting Karl onto the ground once daylight had returned.

  Karl went back to the cockpit and sat in the seat only recently occupied by Ronnie – it was arguably the most comfortable seat on the plane, if a little tight around the backside, in that it seemed to enclose Karl's entire torso. He couldn't decide which part of him ached the most, though the shoulder that had taken the brunt of the wooden planking when it came through the windshield was odds-on favorite.

  Ronnie and Angel – and Samantha the doll, of course – took seats close to each other in the business class section; Virgil Banders lifted the armrests on a bank of three seats in the main compartment and stretched out.

  Sleep had drifted over them a little after midnight.

  Angel Wurst had been the first one to succumb to the aftermath of a grueling day, and then Karl, who had forgone the pilot's seat for something more "material" and had soon propped himself up in one of the luxury class seats with his legs stretched out a little awkwardly on one of the p
roduce trolleys that Ronnie had softened for him with blankets and pillows.

  The resulting snoring prompted Ronnie to move back in the plane to sit with Virgil Banders and maybe give the boy a second chance to redeem himself in Ronnie's eyes, but all attempts at conversation amounted to little – if anything at all – with Virgil apparently more interested in playing the tape loops in the plane's entertainment system.

  Ronnie hadn't even realized that he'd fallen asleep.

  He had gone back to check on Angel Wurst first, seeing that she was curled up and cuddling the doll he'd "stolen" for her from the Going Back store in the mall. Then he had checked Karl – so sound and silently asleep now that, just for a few seconds there, Ronnie had thought that the map-reader had died from some internal injuries that they could only guess at. But he'd hunkered down alongside the other man and, his face barely inches from Karl's, had watched and listened until he was satisfied that the man was breathing.

  And that was about it.

  Then the scream.

  Ronnie opened his eyes and saw that he had moved back to the row of seats just three rows behind Angel, who was now standing out in the aisle, her hands to the sides of her face, screaming for all she was worth.

  "Angel, it's OK, it's OK," Ronnie said, getting to his feet and then slipping to one side and clattering into the abandoned trolley – he must have had his legs awkwardly in the seats because his right foot was all pins and needles.

  "Jesus Christ!" Virgil Banders shouted from somewhere behind Ronnie. "What the hell…"

  The girl continued to scream.

  Now that he was fully in the aisle, Ronnie could see Karl the map-reader propped up on his left arm, looking dazedly down at the back of the girl and rubbing his head.

  Ronnie moved towards her, holding out his arms, telling her that everything was going to be OK, dragging his sleeping foot behind him and grimacing each time he put it to the floor.

  Karl shouted something that Ronnie couldn't hear and, almost at the exact same time, Virgil shouted that they needed to get some sleep.

  And then the world went white.

  Ronnie moaned and fell to the floor, his arms lifted to his face. The whiteness was so pure that he feared that it had maybe removed his sight. His eyes now closed, he got to his feet and stumbled forward again towards the still-screaming girl. He dare not open his eyes yet to see if the light had gone again but here in his head it was as bright as ever, the kind of light that you see in animated movies when the cartoon cat sticks its paw into the electric socket and lights up all of its insides like an X ray. Eventually, he connected with the girl, wrapping his arms around her and hugging her close to his chest, patting her back and saying "there now," and "it's OK," time after time.

  And then it was gone again.

  Ronnie could tell that the light had gone without even opening his eyes. He could think again. When the light had been there he had not been able to do anything at all, with every single movement completely automatic.

  "Was that it?"

  Virgil's voice came from just behind Ronnie's head.

  "Was that the light?"

  It was just about the dumbest question that Ronnie had ever heard but, at the same time, it was completely understandable.

  "That was the light," Ronnie said. Angel Wurst had quieted down and was hugging Ronnie as tightly as she could. He thought he knew why: the light had taken her parents and now she was scared it was going to take these other people as well. But then he remembered the girl had started screaming even before the light came. He pulled her away from him and held her at arms' length.

  "Angel?"

  She sniveled and opened her eyes very slowly.

  "Angel, why were you screaming?"

  "The… the light," she said.

  Virgil Banders appeared at Ronnie's right shoulder. He knew now that the light they had just experienced was the same one that he had seen in his dream, back at Suze Neihardt's house.

  "What was it?" Virgil asked, addressing the question to the girl.

  "I don't know," she sobbed. "Why should I know?"

  "Angel, why did you start screaming before the light came?"

  The girl looked up at Ronnie and rubbed the sleeve of her sweater across her face. She took a deep sigh and then glanced first at Virgil and then back at Ronnie. "I already told you."

  "What did she tell you?" Virgil asked.

  Karl half-crawled out of his seat and landed in the aisle in a heap. Pulling himself to his feet, his arm pressed tightly against his stomach as though he had been gut shot, he said, "What's going on? Lot of noise."

  "It was the light again," Ronnie said, his voice flat. What the hell was going to happen now? He almost dreaded stepping out of the plane to find out.

  "I sometimes see things before they happen," the girl told Virgil Banders. Ronnie thought it spoke volumes about just how distressed she was that she was prepared to exchange dialogue – if not exactly pleasantries – with the young man who had so recently joined their party.

  "You mean like… a clairvoyant?"

  The girl glowered at him. "My name is Angel Wurst, not Claire Voyant!"

  "How come I missed it?" Karl asked. "I was awake."

  "You must have dropped off," Ronnie said.

  "No, a clairvoyant is someone who sees things that–" Virgil was about to say things that aren't there, and then he remembered how the girl had acted earlier about the car. He smiled and looked down at her. She was a pretty kid, no question. It was almost a shame that he was going to have to do what he was going to have to do. But, shit, he was going to have to do it, and that was all there was to it. "Who sees things that other folks can't see," he finished. And he reached out to tousle the girl's hair. Angel flinched and Virgil looked around at the others. They didn't appear to have noticed.

  "How you feeling?"

  "Shit," Karl said and then he groaned and looked over at Angel. "Sorry Angel."

  "That's OK," she said, hugging her doll tightly and edging backwards away from Virgil Banders.

  "Her dad says it all the time," Ronnie offered, deliberately choosing the present tense to give Angel a feeling of things being OK and of maybe having a chance at carrying on the same way sometime. But Ronnie didn't feel things were OK at all. And he didn't think for one second they would ever go back to the way they used to be. He couldn't explain why he felt like that, but he felt that things were actually a whole lot worse than they had been before.

  "What time is it, anyway?" the map-man asked as he accepted Angel's hand of support.

  "Well, by my very smart new watch, it's just after two."

  Karl staggered back towards the cockpit with Angel still holding his hand. "Hey," he shouted, "I thought I just saw a light."

  Ronnie and Virgil followed them and soon they were all standing in the glass-strewn cockpit craning their heads forward to look out of the ruined windshield and up, through the debris of Borders bookstore and out into the night beyond.

  There wasn't anything to be seen, though Ronnie was pleased that the sky looked altogether normal. There were stars everywhere.

  "Maybe it was a shooting star," Angel ventured.

  "Mmm." Karl did not sound convinced.

  "Nothing there now," said Virgil.

  There wasn't. The sky was empty – apart from the stars – with no signs or even suggestions of movement.

  "I say we try get some sleep – some decent sleep – and maybe we'll feel more up to investigating in the morning," Ronnie said. He reached out and turned around Karl and Angel and ushered them back down the plane. Virgil stayed in the cockpit.

  "Jeez, you landed this thing?" Virgil called after them.

  Karl, groaning, was in too much discomfort to respond.

  "Well, we're here," Ronnie said.

  Virgil ran his hand over the banks of dials and switches and levers. "You deserve a medal, man," he said at last.

  Karl slumped back into one of the business class seats and breathed a sigh of
relief. "Christ, I feel like I've been beaten within an inch of my life."

  "Probably more like a centimeter."

  "Just as well we didn't go metric."

  Angel sat in one of the other seats and looked out of the window. "That's a lot of books," she said. "You think we're going to be in trouble when everyone gets back?"

  Ronnie got to his feet and laid a tiny airplane blanket around the map-reader. "With any luck, we'll be long gone by then."

  "Hey, guys," Virgil called. "I think Map-man may be right. I could have sworn I just saw a light out there."