Darkness Falling

by Peter Crowther

  Nobody thought to apologize to Angel Wurst for the ribald language.

  Sally tried to hold the gun steady but couldn't shake from her mind the image of her sad-faced husband Gerry sliding his lips around the barrel of the shotgun and–

  Johnny's hand crept forward, finger-walking towards the gun grip teasingly just out of reach under the front seat, Johnny's breath coming in short bursts as he strained that little extra. He heard Melanie shout "Fucking shoot it, for Chrissakes!" behind him and heard a dull doooiiing! sound followed in rapid succession by two more and then the tinkling of breaking glass.

  Just as Johnny felt his middle finger touch the gun butt, he heard the sound of running feet. Then another shot, this time Melanie following it up with "I think you got him!" And then the letterman's hand wrapped itself around Johnny's wrist and a tsunami of black pain washed through him with such ferocity he withdrew his hand from the gun (but, alas, not from the letterman's firm grasp) and sprang immediately to a semi-crouch, smacking his forehead and temple on the metal bar underneath the seat. The sound of his own voice – a wail of pain and misery – merged with a profound silence that was more a susurration, a myriad of paper-folders playing origami with a million sheets and turning them into dragons and birds and faces whose mouths opened and closed by the pulling of a small torn slip at the rear.

  Johnny's perspective changed. He seemed to be looking at the seat in front of him as well as at the letterman alongside him, though the letterman seemed to sway almost drunkenly from side to side, together with the bus doorway. On one of these swings, he heard another gunshot – followed by two more metallic reverberations – and then from somewhere behind him the little girl's doll leapt into the fray, dashing itself against the letterman's nose and eyes.

  Melanie said, "His eye."

  Angel Wurst screamed.

  The guy on the steps had let go of Johnny's arm. Johnny could see him sprawled half on the road and half on the sidewalk. But it was a strange image because it was lacking in perspective. Just a flat photo rendition of a dead man (Johnny was sure the man was dead) coupled, inside his head, with the floor of the bus. And then something moved into view – a knee and a shaking hand resting on it, and all the while, he could still see the dead man out on the street.

  "We have to get it back in–"

  "Shh," Sally Davis whispered.

  Johnny started to lift his hand. He glanced to the left: the guy at the front of the bus was moving backward again (but he could still see his knee).

  "Johnny…"

  He glanced to the right: Angel Wurst stood watching him, her face a mask of horror, a broken doll cradled in her arms (and still he could see his knee).

  Sally Davis placed a hand on his shoulder at exactly the same moment that the old guy out front ran into the bus again. The glass was now smeared in blood. Johnny started and looked down as the woman's hand reached toward him. As he followed the hand he saw her fingers curl out very gently toward his face – he could see it very clearly, the hand approaching him like a slow-motion snake. The only problem was that, while he kept on looking at that oh-so-slow snake-hand, he could also see his own knee and the floor. And that was when, as Melanie said his name yet again, and Sally Davis kept telling him it was going to be OK – catching a hold of his wrist as he lifted his hand to his face and pulling it back down – he started to hum.

  Melanie got calmly to her feet and fired off several shots at someone trying to clamber over the body on the sidewalk and get to the bus steps.

  Just as calmly, she ejected the magazine (now where the hell did she learn to do that? Johnny wondered), slipped a new one into the grip, and then she heard a familiar voice.

  (50)

  When Rick burst into the house he swung the gun out in front of him and fired, first three shots in fairly rapid succession and then another couple. The first went wild – he had no idea where. The second hit an old man in the back of his head and sent him face forward onto the staircase he was pulling himself up, hands clasping the banister. A young girl, sweet-looking thing with raven dark hair and a tooth-brace, turned and looked at Rick quizzically, head on one side and her hands outstretched.

  For a second, Rick studied the girl's face. There was something about her that he recognized but it was something–

  Hey, asshole, whyn't you come back and finish the job… think there's a couple bones here still seem to be in one piece…

  –of course! The girl. The one on the road, way back. When he had been travelling up I-90, in that old DeSoto, with the Bighorn Mountains up there in the distance. And he'd reached for the stick of gum, Juicy Fruit chewing gum, and they had appeared, right in front of him – hell, man – what could he do? He'd stepped on the brakes – hah! Stepped on them? He just about stood upright on the fucking things and put his head through the roof of the goddam car, but it was no use. He'd hit the boy, the boy folding over the DeSoto's hood, and the girl had gone down under the wheels – Ba-dump, Ba-dump – Goodnight, sweetheart! – quizzical smile, freckles and all.

  But this wasn't her, nossir. This wasn't any girl at all. This was a vegetable from space or someplace else – some wired-up and freaked-out fucker wearing a teeth-brace and a bunch of freckles like a Halloween mask.

  That was what it had been, he now realized. The freckles.

  Rick shot into the girl's midriff and she staggered backwards, hands moving to her stomach before she keeled right over. But she didn't lay still; she jiggled, like a windup toy that had been knocked over, her heels banging repeatedly into the rucked-up carpet beneath her while the red stain widened under her back, spreading all over the polished floorboards.

  "Anyone in here?" Rick shouted.

  An elderly Puerto Rican man with his flies undone and food stains down the front of a Hawaiian shirt emblazoned with scantily-clad girls appeared around the room corner and stopped, putting his head on one side as though studying Rick. For a few seconds, Rick considered saying something to the man but then he saw a young boy backing away from a young woman wearing hair-curlers and a baby doll nightdress. And gloves. The boy wasn't wearing gloves. Or glasses.

  Rick glanced back at the Open Flies Man in time to see the man remove the glove from his left hand. Rick held his arm straight out, held onto the elbow with his left hand, and pulled the trigger. The gun – and his right arm – bucked, and the shot went wild. Rick had no idea where. He lowered his arm and fired again. The man folded over and staggered backwards, letting go of his glove and finally dropping to a sitting position against the wall, an additional deep redness blossoming amidst the myriad colors of his shirt.

  At the top of the staircase, another boy appeared, this one a little older than the one backing into the kitchen and carrying a plank of wood that, even from where he was standing, Rick could see was dripping with gore.

  "Wayne!" the boy shouted.

  The kid over by the kitchen was crying.

  Virgil Banders appeared at the front door and sideswiped a fat woman wearing what appeared to be a bathrobe and more hair curlers. What the hell, he thought. This a hair curler convention or somethin'? As the woman keeled over to one side, her glasses skittering across the floor, Virgil pumped and fired, and then pumped and fired again.

  The first shot dislodged the left side of the woman's head, scattered her curlers (most of them still with hair attached) and sent her back against the front door, and the second hit her full on her very ample right breast. She was still in the process of sliding down the doorframe as Virgil turned, shouted, "Kid, get down on the floor!", pumped another round, and fired.

  Feet clumped on the boards outside and Rick spun around to see Ronnie backing into the house.

  "What the hell's going–"

  He turned in time to see Virgil's blast take the young woman over by the kitchen on her left side – the shoulder – pushing her forward and spinning her around at the same time so that, just for a few moments, she was facing Virgil.

  Virgil pumped another round.
"Stay down, kid."

  The second shot was low, taking off one of the woman's legs – her left one, same as the shoulder – around the knee. The woman fell over like she was in one of those speeded-up old movies.

  Now the older boy was running down the stairs.

  "You OK?"

  Virgil answered Ronnie without turning around. OK? Hell, he was having a ball. It was like one of those games in the amusement arcades. And now, well, what have we here. Looked like a fireman – leastways he was wearing a fireman's tunic and breeches. But the guy looked like he'd spent the past week or so hammering in garden posts with his face. He was still wearing a pair of glasses but they were embedded into his forehead and right eye socket (the left half of the glasses was missing, the socket behind it black and cavernous – and was that just a hint of movement that Virgil saw in there?).

  Rick shouted to the boy by the kitchen. "Over here, kid. Run! Now!"

  The boy ran. Then, glancing up the stairs, he saw the other boy. "Junior!"

  "Junior," Virgil said, pumping in another round. "Down."

  Junior dropped.

  Rick and Virgil fired at the same time, catching the fireman in the crotch and belly. Virgil pumped once more but his second shot missed. It didn't matter: the man fell backwards flat against the stairs and started to slide. But he was still moving his right arm, the hand fumbling at the glove on his left hand.

  "I got it," Rick said. The shot shortened the man's head by a good couple of inches and sent splinters of wood into the air.

  Ronnie motioned for the young boy to get over to them.

  Rick put an arm around Junior's shoulders and turned around.

  Standing in the center of the room, a tall man wearing a dark jacket, shirt and necktie, stood with his hands clasped and watched them. He made no attempt to move towards them.

  Ronnie saw the guy first and he lifted his gun and held it as steady as he could, pointed at the man's face.

  "Hey," Rick said. "What's going on?"

  The activity around them had stopped.

  Virgil moved so that his back was against Rick's and the older of the two boys. He pumped a round in and waited.

  The smaller boy started to sob. Ronnie rubbed his shoulder and then gave him a little reassuring squeeze. The boy nestled harder into Ronnie's side, his arms around the man's leg.

  "That's Mr Yovingham," Junior whispered.

  Not any more, Ronnie thought.

  As they started to move slowly towards the door, Mr Yovingham said, "Jerry?"

  Rick frowned. He suddenly felt a little sick in his stomach.

  The man took a steady step forward. "Jerry?" he said again.

  "They're all saying it," Virgil Banders whispered.

  "Jerry?" said Mr Yovingham again.

  "Jerry?" inquired the man wearing carpet slippers.

  A young barefoot boy dressed incongruously in a T-shirt and a pair of threadbare sleep-shorts said "Jerry?" as he took a step forward, saying it again – "Jerry?" – his head tipped to one side, one gloved hand pulling at the glove on the other.

  "Who's Jerry?" Ronnie asked, his voice soft, not actually asking it of anyone in particular but rather merely giving sound to the strangeness that surrounded them.

  "Jerry, it's me," the voices chorused, each of them now morphing so that they all sounded pretty much the same – the same timbre, the same inflections, the same curls to the letters and the vowels. "Geoff," they concluded. And then they said it again, a mantra of sorts.

  "Now who the fuck is Geoff?" Virgil said.

  Rick lifted his gun and pointed it at the young boy's head. He was pleased and maybe a little surprised to see that his hand was not shaking. "Geoff was my brother," he said. And then he pulled the trigger.

  (51)

  "Jerry?" Sally Davis said, addressing the fat Puerto Rican woman struggling her bulk onto the bus steps. "Are. You. Trying. To. Communicate. With. Me?" she asked, spreading out the words slowly. "Trying. To. Talk. To. Me?" she added, thinking that maybe "communicate" was a bit of a mouthful for your standard interstellar traveler – and possibly even your Monkey's Paw-type shade come to visit with a one-time loved one.

  The fat woman rolled her head to one side, causing a large fold to appear on the left, and just for a few moments it seemed to Sally as though the woman was about to answer her.

  Melanie was aware of someone shouting at her but the voice was distant, dim and hazy. She paid it no heed, treated it like a distant sound of no import, a car door way off in the distance or the muted mutter of a radio carried on the wind from a far-off open window.

  "Mel," Johnny shouted.

  Though she couldn't be sure because of the woman's dark glasses, Melanie could have sworn that the woman shifted her whole attention to her, now pulling off one of her gloves and seeming to lower her voice a little, making it more personal, softer, more gentle.

  Somewhere off behind her, in that other world that was a bus interior – a flying bus's interior, no less – there was some crashing and banging, then a couple of gunshots and a few curses ("fucker", "motherfucker" and "cocksucker" figured heavily), and Melanie lowered her gun and started to reach out.

  "I wouldn't do that, honey," the woman next to her told Melanie.

  But Melanie didn't mind. Melanie didn't care.

  "It's me," the fat Puerto Rican woman had explained to Melanie as she hoisted herself onto the bottom step. "Geoff," she had said.

  Melanie saw that the woman had exposed her left hand and she was reaching out. Sally Davis made to knock the outstretched hand out of the way but Melanie pushed her back and returned her attention to the proffered hand – the woman intoning that mantra of hers: "Jerry, it's me… Geoff."

  Sally Davis regained her position and started to grapple with Melanie. Then a voice behind her said, "Melanie, get out of the way," saying the words very calmly.

  But Melanie didn't register this new intrusion. She wanted more than anything to sit down with this fat Puerto Rican woman and talk to her. She wanted – wanted more than anything in the world, she now realized – to sit and listen to that voice, that voice that in no way sounded like a fat Puerto Rican woman.

  "Jerry, it's me… Geoff," the woman said.

  "Jerry, it's me… Geoff," chorused an old man wearing nothing but a voluminous beer belly and a pair of boxer shorts with a distinctly yellowed fly, and from the bottoms of which a spindly pair of wattled legs protruded.

  A small boy elbowed his way into view. "Jerry, it's–"

  "Get the fuck–" Johnny said, his voice still calm. He thrust the gun between Sally's and Melanie's heads and fired. The boy flew backwards in a mist of darkness that Sally barely registered as blood.

  Melanie started, as though waking from a dream, and put her hands over her ears, the right one still holding her gun.

  "Sorry, Melvin," Johnny said. He rose to his full height and kicked out at a man wearing an ill-fitting dressing gown, his hair a wild birds' nest. "Jerry," the man was insisting as he tried to regain his footing, "it's me–" Sally's bullet took him in the face and the man caromed backwards.

  "We have to get away from here," the squawky voice of Samantha the doll said. The words were matter-of-factly delivered but neither Johnny nor Sally Davis said anything. Johnny looked around at the toy's blank face, its heavily lashed eyes seeming to blink as Angel Wurst shifted her position.

  "Wait a second," he said.

  Johnny looked around back at the driver's seat. A pair of gloved hands was grappling with the window rim just a few inches from the steering wheel while, on the other side of the bus, a black girl wearing long earrings and an askew hairpiece, had actually made it to the point where she was almost fully into the bus. "Jerry," she was mouthing, the words lost in the sound of turmoil and gunshots – Melanie and Sally Davis had now assumed the roles of Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie, Johnny noted – "It's me… Geoff." The girl's arms were cut ragged, a long piece of flesh hanging from her left like loose meat. Just for a second
, when Johnny moved back towards the seat, the girl seemed to pause. He lifted the gun – the smell of burning and, Johnny assumed, gunpowder was everywhere – and smiled at her. The girl didn't return the smile but instead pumped her out-of-sight legs and feet more frantically as she struggled for better purchase. The shot took her in the right shoulder and she spun around, the dark glasses flying from her head onto the street. Seconds later, the girl dropped out of sight and Johnny slid back into the driver's seat.

  Amidst the grunts and the constant assurances to Jerry – coming from all directions – that it was, indeed, Geoff, Johnny started checking around the driving seat. He pulled down the visor but there was nothing there except a dog-eared photograph of two young black boys secured in the PVC strip, maybe seven years old the one of them and nine or ten the other. Jerry pushed the visor back up.