Darkness Falling

by Peter Crowther

  I won't let them hurt you, mommy, a strong voice in Sally's head assured her. She frowned. She didn't recall hearing the voice before. Sally looked back at the creased piece of paper and straightened it out.

  "Should we drop down onto the street?"

  Virgil shook his head. He liked Melanie. He wanted to spend an hour or so with her, just him and the girl, some rope maybe and a nice thick roll of brown ducting tape. "It's hell down there, down on the street," he said. "Cars everywhere. Why'd you think they went to all that trouble to make things fly?"

  Melanie nodded.

  "It's cos everything's all smashed up with hardly a clear road anyplace."

  "There was back in Jesman's Bend?"

  "Excuse me? Where the hell's that?"

  "Back home," Melanie said, her voice wistful. She glanced out of the window at what looked like some kind of sports arena.

  "Coors Field," Virgil said as he swung the wheel around to avoid hitting a bent metal post, its lamp ending still sputtering sparks. "Home of the Colorado Rockies." He turned to Melanie. "It's a ball team."

  "I gathered," she said.

  "Hell, we'd be sitting ducks, one of them saw us," Johnny said as he returned to the back seat. "Down on the road, I mean," he added.

  "That's where the dark glasses should come in useful," Virgil said.

  Rick turned to Johnny and frowned. "You OK?"

  "Sure I'm OK." He patted his chest. "I just took a couple of painkillers. Damn leg feels like someone chopped it off and stuck it back on again with superglue."

  Rick nodded.

  "What could they do?"

  "It wouldn't be good, I don't think," Sally Davis said. She pointed up ahead. "There's the market. We've come too far."

  "Jesus H. Fucking Christ, lady–" Virgil began but Sally punched him in the shoulder.

  "Mind your mouth, young man," she said. "You can do any better, then you do the map reading and let someone else fly the bus."

  There was silence then for a few seconds before Virgil's face cracked into a big smile and then a burst of laughter.

  Sally laughed as well.

  "Tell me again where we're going," Johnny said.

  "We were in the mall and a phone was ringing."

  "This is you and the girl, right?"

  Ronnie nodded. He looked up at Melanie, still watching out of the window, and saw little Angel Wurst leaning against her, Samantha the doll underneath her head.

  "First time it rang, we missed it. Could have been anywhere." He flicked the hammer-guard on his holster. "Then we tracked the phone but missed the call." Ronnie smiled and, raising a finger, affected a eureka pose. "But we found out whose desk the phone was ringing at and then I found the personnel files."

  "How'd you know which person sat at that desk?"

  "World's Best Mom."

  "Excuse me?"

  "She was the world's best mom." He shrugged. "I'm guessing she's not anymore, though."

  Johnny nodded. "No, not anymore."

  Nobody said anything for a minute or two and then Ronnie said, "You know, I been thinking. You know how after 9/11 we had all those handwritten notes from folks who'd lost their loved ones all pasted up in New York asking if anyone had seen them?"

  Rick nodded. Nobody else said anything.

  "Well, I was thinking how this time, with–" He shrugged and jiggled his head side to side. "–with millions and maybe even billions of people gone… there are no notes."

  "I think I found 'em," Virgil Banders said as he cruised the bus around a grove of trees and a traffic signal.

  They had just crossed an intersection fed by two three-laners and two singles. Down the left-hand single there had been activity. A lot of activity – even Ronnie had noticed that from the corner of his eye while he was facing forward.

  "Go past, go past," Rick snapped.

  Virgil hit the gas pedal and lurched forward, swaying slightly. "It's hell keeping this damn thing in the air at the same time as I'm trying to make sure we go forward."

  Sally Davis patted the boy's shoulder. "You're doing fine," she said. Her girls agreed enthusiastically.

  "OK," Rick said, "bring it down."

  Without answering, Virgil wrestled with the controls and slowed the bus, the back end swinging out, hitting a window and scoring a deep groove in the brickwork. He pushed forward on what he now considered to be the joystick and brought the bus to a bumpy landing alongside a small park and a parade of stores, most of which had corrugated metal shutters pulled down on the windows. He pulled on the brake and turned around, the bus letting out a loud hissss as though relieved.

  Ronnie had his face against the side window trying to see if the collision had done any real damage.

  Virgil said, "You want me to turn it off?"

  Rick thought on that, and looked at Ronnie who, satisfied that they were still functioning in one piece, was facing forwards again.

  "Make more noise starting it up again if we have to move fast," Ronnie ventured.

  Rick nodded. He turned to Virgil. "Leave it idling."

  Angel Wurst's head shuffled around against the bus window and her voice said, "Mommy?" softly.

  Melanie's heart ached for the girl and she leaned across and, placing her face right next to Angel's ear, she whispered, "Mommy isn't here right now, sweetie."

  Without turning around, Angel said, "No, she isn't. She's dead."

  Melanie started to say something else but the girl cut her off, still staring out of the window.

  "My daddy's dead, too."

  "Angel, don't–"

  "They're all dead," she said. And even at six years old, there was such a weathered finality to the girl's words that Melanie just didn't feel up to taking her to task on them. As if reading Melanie's thoughts, Angel Wurst turned around and looked up into the woman's eyes, saw the tears. "Every single one of them," she added with a slow but deliberate nod.

  Standing in the aisle, his bad leg propped up on one of the seats, Johnny pointed at the rear window. "Hey, look!"

  A fire engine was hammering along the road they were on, about thirty or maybe forty feet off the ground. There was no siren.

  Ronnie backed away from the window and got to his feet, pulling the .38 from his holster. This is it, he thought. I'm going to get killed in a blazing gun showdown on the deserted streets of Denver by a crazy bunch of–

  Of wacked-out aliens? Volunteer firefighters?

  –brainwashed people who can make my eyeballs pop out if I let 'em get a hold on me.

  Then he thought, glasses, and wildly ran his hand up to feel if they were there. They were. He dropped his arm and tried to look calm.

  At the intersection, the engine turned left, taking a whole mess of overhead lines and cables down on the way, one cable bouncing and spitting on the ground like a rattler that had just had its tail bitten off. A tall pole that had buckled when the engine caught the wires leaned further over across the intersection. At first, Ronnie thought it was going to drop all the way but it didn't; it just hung there at a forty-five degree angle to the blacktop.

  Johnny said, "Hey, you see that?"

  Ronnie didn't move or say anything.

  "The ladder was already extended and there were two guys lying on it."

  "And I don't think they're attending a fire," Ronnie said.

  "What did you see down there?" Rick asked Virgil.

  Virgil Banders shrugged. "It was so fast, man," he said, and just for a second, Ronnie thought he was watching some burned out veteran high on sauce and weed explaining why he'd aced some old dear crossing in front of his Camaro. It was so fast, man!

  "I saw," Sally said.

  "I did, too," Angel Wurst said. "There are two boys in there."

  Everyone went quiet. Following her last outburst, the girl had seemed to go off to sleep or, at best, be staring out of the window on the opposite side of the road to the one that led down the street the fire engine just went down.

  "You were dreaming, h
oney," Melanie said.

  Ronnie moved along the bus and slid into the seat in front of Melanie and the girl. When he was sure the girl wasn't watching him, Ronnie shook his head very gently at Melanie.

  "Angel is a very clever girl," Ronnie said. He reached out a hand and smoothed the girl's hair out of her eyes.

  Without looking away from Angel, Melanie said, "Angel's worried her mommy and daddy are de–"

  Angel nodded. "They are," she said. "They all are. I told you." She looked outside. "They're making it all dark."

  Johnny looked over at Rick, shaking his head.

  "Who's making it dark, sweetie? Not your mommy and daddy?" Rick asked. He crouched down in the aisle, a pump-action shotgun on his knee, and gave the girl a big smile.

  Angel shook her head and lifted her doll onto the seat-back rail in front of her. "The people," she said. "The bad people."

  "Is she OK?" Johnny asked.

  The girl sees things, mommy, one of Sally's own girls whispered to her. I think she sees us.

  And right on cue, Angel turned her head in Sally's direction. For a second, Sally thought she was going to say something but then a man's face came up against the outside of the bus window on the driver's side.

  (44)

  Junior backed away from the door and reached an arm out for his brother.

  "It'll be OK," he whispered.

  "I wish… I wish mom and dad were here," Wayne said between racking sobs.

  There was a crash from the door and Junior pulled Wayne even tighter to his chest.

  Hey, who'th that knocking at the door? lisped Garcia the right-on goateed Gopher in Junior's Head-TV.

  "It's the bogeyman," Junior whispered.

  Behind them, glass shattered.

  Above them, something clattered on the roof and slid over their heads towards the section overhanging the front of the house, and the Talberts' bedroom window.

  And to cap it all, now the door handle was turning. He was a fast learner, the thing that wasn't Dick Yovingham.

  (45)

  Virgil was turned around in his seat, looking down the bus, but Angel saw the man's face and screamed. Virgil spun around and hoisted the revolver from the dashboard.

  "Don't use the gun," Rick hissed. "There could be others."

  "Move slowly," Johnny said. He suddenly remembered Gram Kramer and Jennifer Bacquirez back at the station, and how slow they moved.

  Melanie pushed Angel away from her and made her crouch down in the footwell. Then she pulled out her gun, flipped the safety the way that Rick had showed her, and rested it on her lap. She felt surprisingly calm.

  Rick moved up to the front of the bus alongside Virgil. "Sit down," Rick whispered. "But do it slowly."

  "I can't believe we're doing this," Virgil whispered between clenched teeth as he slid into the bus's driving seat once more.

  "Don't show any emotion," Rick said. "They don't seem to do emotion."

  "Pisses them off," Johnny added, recalling the chaos at the radio station.

  Virgil placed his hands on the steering wheel and faced forward, hardly moving a muscle.

  Outside, the man moved his head to one side and just stared. They had no idea which one of them the man was watching because his glasses were so dark. But his head wasn't moving.

  "Hi there," Melanie said loudly as she stood alongside Virgil Banders.

  The man outside looked like some kind of truck driver, blue overalls, chin stubble, wispy hair and a receding hairline – just a Regular Joe like millions of others. The only thing was he was wearing a pair of what looked like thick asbestos gloves and a nifty pair of RayBan style dark glasses. The man straightened his head and shifted his attention to Melanie.

  Melanie removed her glasses – at which the man outside made no reaction – lifted her .38, took a two-handed stance and aimed the gun right in front of Virgil's face at the man.

  "Jesus Christ!" Virgil managed to get out before the gun went off and the side window flared into a mosaic of cracks.

  Melanie fell backwards into the seats on the right hand side, still holding the gun, and loosed another shot into the bus's roof.

  "Fuck!" Rick said. He hoisted the pump-action and pressed the button to open the door. The door swished open and he jumped down the three steps onto the road, shifting a load into the chamber as he started around the front of the bus.

  The man had already removed one glove and was busy pulling up on the fingers of the second when Rick came face to face with him, pushed the barrels of the pump-action into his chest, edging the guy backwards, and pulled the triggers. The sound was deafening and Rick suddenly wished that he'd used a knife. They had picked up a dozen or so nice-looking Swiss sheaths at the store but hadn't gotten around to handing them out. Too late now. The man virtually flew backwards, landed flat on the sidewalk and skidded for a few yards before coming to rest with his head bent over on the kickboards of Paula's Patisserie. Rick did a double take on the name, half expecting the stores on either side to be a boucherie and a boulangerie. When he looked back at the ground he saw a wide stain leading from where the man had landed to where he now lay.

  Rick pumped another load into the chambers and held the shotgun ready. They had made themselves known now: there was little to do but move into the street. The only question was whether to take the bus.

  (46)

  It was either a car backfiring or some kind of explosion – maybe even a gunshot. But whatever it was, it had a profound effect on the siege of the Talbert house. Two more followed.

  Junior had pulled his kid brother close to him and was in the process of turning to the window for some other means of escape (he figured the door, when it opened, was going to be a little too busy to allow any additional personnel to pass through, even two small boys). And now he saw that the top of a ladder had smashed into his parents' window, scattering glass, wood frame and even bricks across Junior's mom's dressing table, the one with all the little glass animals that Junior and Wayne had bought for her (with help from their father) to mark special occasions such as Mothers' Day and her birthday. There was something particularly depressing – in a world that was fast becoming Depressopolis – about seeing all the dust and broken glass, and the deep gouges in the table itself. Mahogany, Junior seemed to recall his father saying on one occasion long ago, before a bright light changed the world forever. Mahogany – it was now just one of so many seemingly magical words that had once been possessed of great magic but which had now been shorn of their power.

  There was clumping on the stairs, this time moving away, so that was something. But there was still the window to contend with and Junior now saw that more than a simple wood and metal ladder had invaded his parents' bedroom. As he backed away, a pair of gloved hands appeared amidst the swirling dust. The top of a head came soon after it.

  "I know him, I know him!" Wayne shouted excitedly. "It's Mr– " What the hell was the guy's name? Worked in the drugstore around the corner, where Wayne and Richie Baynham filched comic books while eight year old Jerry Bockheimer – who, at almost five and a half feet, was something of a specialty in the neighborhood (he's a goddam freak, Lucy Myers protested) – sneaked a look into the girly magazines sitting on the top shelf that only he could reach.

  "He isn't wearing any glasses," Junior whispered. That was significant, wasn't it? Not wearing any glasses? Even though it was X o'goddam clock and nobody with even half a brain should be wearing dark glasses – not unless they were maybe Tom Cruise and particularly when they just pushed a fire engine ladder through the second story window of a building where there wasn't even a fire.

  The man held out a pair of gloved hands, waving them a little like he was searching for them, his face all screwed up, eyes clamped tight shut.

  "Hey, Ju!"

  Junior clamped his hand around his brother's mouth and gave him a shhh! "Don't let him know where we are," he whispered in Wayne's ear.

  Wayne shook his head and started to pull back, his face av
erted from the man.

  Junior felt like maybe giving Wayne a swift clip around the ear, the way their father did–

  Hey, big guy, maybe we'd better make that used to do…

  –whenever he stepped out of line.

  Wayne was whimpering now. He turned around and writhed his mouth free of Junior's hand. "There's something on the floor!" he shouted.