Darkness Falling

by Peter Crowther

  A painfully thin woman wearing a surgical gown was flattened against his side window, her arms spread across the glass as they felt for a means of ingress. Johnny watched her, just for a few seconds, and tried to get some inkling of what was going through her head. The woman seemed impervious to his interest, moving her head side to side, pressing it against the glass, while her mouth moved in that now familiar mantra and the dark glasses forbade any sense of purpose or thought.

  He glanced back and saw Sally Davis now standing like a latter-day Annie Oakley, Angel Wurst secured beneath Sally's left arm (and Angel's constant doll companion similarly safe and protected beneath hers) while Sally brandished her gun and fired intermittently into the throng of muttering people. Sally's backwards glance at him said it all: they couldn't go on for too much longer like this. Ammunition would run out and then they'd all be caught like rabbits in a trap. They either had to get the bus moving – a little difficult without the keys – or it was getting close to time they needed to consider taking to the streets on foot.

  He looked back at the bus dashboard and yet again at the visor. Looking to the side, he saw there was another visor over the right-hand side window. He reached over and pulled it down: nothing. He lifted a clipboard from the dashboard top and looked through the papers underneath: nada. He looked in the little recessed shelf, pulled out a creased and water-damaged paperback novel written by Fannie Flagg and checked underneath: zilch.

  "I think we could use some help over here," Melanie called out.

  Johnny retrieved his gun from the dash and, as he moved around on his chair, his finger touched what felt like a small taped corner underneath the seat. Without daring to look, he pushed his hand farther under the seat and followed the wedge of tape. It could be that it was just a piece of tape holding something together or possibly even a throwback to when the seat was newly installed into the bus. But then again, it could be something else. His fingers continued to explore and then…

  He slid from the seat, placing the gun beside him on the floor, and reached under. In the center of a crossroads of old brown tape was the little lump of metal he'd felt: a pair of keys in a lighthouse fob.

  "Hey," Johnny shouted, holding the keys aloft. "I think–"

  The girl tumbled from the front window right next to him, her gloves already removed. "Jerry," she whispered to him, almost pleading, "it's–"

  Johnny fell back and reached for his gun as he lifted his other arm to block those hands.

  "–me… Geoff," the girl finished.

  "Johnny!" Melanie's voice was shrill somewhere over to Johnny's right but he couldn't respond and dare not turn away.

  Angel Wurst screamed. "Shoot her! With the gun," she added helpfully.

  "Can't shoot her," Sally said. "I'd hit–" Damn! She'd forgotten the boy's name. She slipped the gun into her pocket just as a bare chested black youth, his upper arms and neck a mass of cuts and smeared blood, leapt from the smashed front window and started for her. Sally pulled Angel Wurst behind her and reached for her gun but Melanie had already turned in the boy's direction. She held the gun out in front of her and pulled the trigger. The first shot went wild – she had no idea where but was pleased there was no endless ricocheting, no cartoony bdoing! bdoing! as the bullet bounced around the bus interior – but the second hit the boy in his cheek (she would replay the scene in a mixture of fascination and horror as blood and pieces of tooth peppered the back and hair of the girl now virtually straddling Johnny) and toppled him against the dashboard and onto the floor, where he continued to thrash his arms, already managing to pull one glove free and reaching for Johnny.

  Johnny pulled his knees up and managed to continue blocking the girl's snatching hands as he scrabbled on the floor for the gun.

  Just briefly, he felt the black youth's fingers brush against his wrist and he received a jolt of searing pain that seemed to surge right up his left arm, through his shoulder, up the side of his face only to pool in his head, somewhere behind his eyes. He screamed out, but at the same time, he felt the gun's handle.

  Sally moved quickly across the bus, pushed Angel Wurst into a seat as Johnny placed the gun somewhere in the region of the girl's head and fired. The girl lifted entirely up from him for a few seconds and then slumped back on him, her hair against his mouth. Sally stepped across and leaned over, holding her own gun against the black boy's neck right at the base of his skull. The shot jarred her shoulder and she staggered backwards but the boy now lay still, not even the slightest twitch of those outstretched fingers.

  The susurrant muttering from the figures on the bus steps allowed little time for self-congratulation and Johnny took no time in sitting upright and letting off a shot into the stomach of an old man trying to negotiate his way over the prone figures of the girl and the black boy. "Jerry," the man muttered as he figured out he could step actually onto the bodies, "it's–" And then he fell backwards.

  "Time to go time," Johnny said.

  "What about–" Sally Davis began.

  "We'll pick them up," Johnny said. He turned the ignition and the bus shuddered, coughed a couple times and then, with a loud whine, went quiet.

  A young Hispanic woman wearing a postal clerk's uniform swung her leg through the smashed front window and lodged the foot between the dash and the ticket dispenser. "Jerry," she began.

  "Fuck. Off." Melanie swung her gun by the barrel, the handle grip catching the bridge of the woman's nose and smashing the dark glasses.

  Angel Wurst screamed and pointed at a side window, the glass of which bellied out in a single sheet, flopping out of its housing. "Look out!"

  A small child (Johnny could not discern the gender) of around four or maybe five years old was being held up to the gap by an old woman wearing hair rollers and some kind of face mask. "Jerry," the two of them were intent on explaining, "it's me… Geoff."

  The woman pushed the child through the gap and allowed the figure's small legs to piston themselves against her ample bosom as it reached in for a handhold.

  Johnny gunned the engine again and this time it caught. He revved and pulled back on the elevation lever, the bus listing side to side as it lifted from the street.

  "Jerry," the woman with the face mask seemed to plead.

  "It's me," said the small child of indeterminate gender.

  Angel Wurst stepped unsteadily forward and, just for a second, it seemed as though the girl and the child now clinging to the bus exterior locked eyes in a kind of mind-meld. "This is your stop, I think," Samantha the doll squawked as, with Angel's help, it swung itself into the child's face.

  "Geoff!" the child yelped as its fingers scrabbled and finally lost purchase. The face, as expressionless as ever, dropped from view as Johnny started to turn the bus around.

  "How we doing?" he shouted.

  "Better," Melanie said. She leaned forward just in time to see the child crash onto the sidewalk and lay motionless. The group of people surrounding him (or her – she still had no idea as to the child's gender) lifted their heads as one and watched the bus as it banked to the left in a small circle and headed back to the side street behind them. As they lifted higher, she watched the mouths, all of them moving in perfect unison. "Jerry," Melanie whispered, "it's me… Geoff."

  And then the mouth of the street loomed ahead of them.

  As they turned the corner, they could see immediately that there were throngs of people down there, most of them walking in that stilted fashion pioneered in all the bad horror movies featuring zombies and ghouls.

  Johnny leaned on the bus's horn. "Lock and load," he shouted.

  "Have you always wanted to say that?"

  Johnny turned briefly and nodded to Melanie. There was just the vaguest hint of a smile when he said "Always."

  (52)

  Ronnie was standing with his back against the wainscoting and fall pipes of the house when Rick, Virgil and two young boys spilled out onto the front yard.

  The weathered fence that went around
the coarse grass edges of the yard was now littered with bodies, either slumped over the actual fence itself or propped up against it as though they were taking a break from chores. One or two of them, however, did not seem to be enjoying a comfortable repose – one old woman of some considerable size, the back of her head a hairless and skinless affair that appeared to have been bludgeoned out of any resemblance to a head shape and then covered in crude oil, was lying with her head pinioned onto one of the pointed wooden slats, most of the slat inside her mouth and the point, presumably, having pierced and shattered the roof. The bend of the woman's body, lying like a banana, with her enormous pantaloons and suspenders exposed for all the world to see beneath the rumpled dress and a pair of dark glasses still fixed in place on her face, owed more to a Robert Crumb sketch than to any version of everyday society.

  No sooner had Virgil and Rick made it down onto the grass with their charges huddled tightly to them than two women, arms outstretched before them, staggered drunkenly onto the porch, initially jamming themselves into the door jamb. If things had not been quite so frantic – not to mention, with all the ordnance flying around, dangerous – then the sight might well have been funny. Virgil pushed one of the boys – the smaller one – behind him and kept him tight against Rick's legs before spraying shot into the two women. One buckled forward and toppled over the wooden rail and the second one glided (and that was the only way to describe it) backwards until she crashed against the window, shattering the glass before she slid to the porch, her legs splayed out before her.

  "That's Miss Chizzick."

  "You know her?"

  Wayne nodded. "She teaches us math."

  For a second, the three of them just let that information sink in as they watched the woman's blood spread out across her blouse.

  "She ain't gonna be teaching you no more math," Virgil said. As he watched, he almost succumbed to the desire to leap across to her and tape the woman's mouth and nostrils. It was just three or four steps and that would be it; he would–

  "You never liked math," Junior said, turning to his brother.

  Wayne nodded. "I never liked math," he agreed.

  Rick turned around and looked down the street. "Hey, is it my imagination or is it starting to get lighter?"

  Ronnie swung his rifle into an old man's face, watching the glasses skitter across the blacktop. The old man hit the ground sideways, reaching out a gloved hand for Ronnie's leg. Ronnie shouldered the rifle and fired into the man's head, twice.

  "You got him the first time," Virgil shouted.

  Ronnie nodded. "I got him the second time, too."

  When it came, the horn sounded like the angels of Heaven announcing their presence. The bus came around the corner of the street, glancing a piece of boarding across the Pentecostal Church and sending two wires down onto the road where they sputtered a couple times and then lay still.

  At the same time, coming from the opposite direction – somewhere across town, Junior thought absently – a pickup headed towards them, two headlights circling independently of each other, a bulked up shape behind the steering wheel.

  "I was just about to say the cavalry is here but looks like we may have more injuns, too," Rick said.

  As Johnny settled the bus down a few yards away from the besieged house, Ronnie said, "Something's wrong." He reloaded his gun and held it at arm's length.

  As one, the people on the street turned around and started walking towards the parked vehicles. Meanwhile, the pickup continued towards them, its engine sounding strained. The pickup slowed, banked to the left, did a 270 degree turn and settled on the other side of the street facing towards the ruined house.

  The sound that Wayne made was not quite a word, but it was more than a grunt. Infinitely more, as it was to turn out. The driver kept the engine running and stepped out onto the pavement.

  Junior said, "Gramps?" and made to move forward but Virgil caught a hold of his shirt and held him back.

  A little way down the street, Johnny stepped down from the bus, closely followed by Melanie and then Angel Wurst and Sally Davis, Angel holding tight onto Samantha the doll and all three of them watching the people.

  "They've stopped," Sally Davis whispered. The voices chorused excitedly in her head, and Sally was forced to issue a stern rebuke that sounded like a radiator letting off steam.

  "Hey, dad, we thought you were dead," the thing that looked like August Talbert announced as he stepped from the running board of the pickup. "What the hell you doing down he–?" The last word was cut off, making it sound like "hit". What the hell you doing down hit? It didn't make any sense.

  "That isn't Gramps," Wayne whispered.

  "No," his brother said. "It's dad."

  "That's your dad?" Virgil reckoned this guy was clocking up into his eighties so he must have some very choice lead in his pencil if he was able to father a couple of scrotes like these two when he was well into his seventies.

  "The sun's definitely coming up," Ronnie said.

  "You OK over there?" Johnny shouted.

  Rick waved them to stay back.

  The people standing in the street turned in the direction of Johnny's voice, their faces impassive. "Hey, dad," they said, their voices in almost perfect harmony. "We thought you were dead. What the hell you doing down he–?"

  There were high voices and low voices, old voices that shuddered a little and voices that sounded full of youth. There were voices with the unmistakable patois of the African American communities, the vibrant trill of the Puerto Rican and Mexican areas, and maybe even a few Asian, Chinese and Japanese. Rick could hear them all, could discern the inflections and the intonations. But, somehow, the words lacked any real substance. They were like parrot-speak, words picked up by being overheard without any understanding of their meaning.

  "Boys, stay put," Ronnie said.

  "But that's my dad's voi–" Junior Talbert began until he was interrupted.

  "Hey, dad," their father said as he turned around from them.

  "We thought–" continued an overweight little girl in pajamas festooned with images of cats and dogs playing and leaping around.

  "–you were dead," chorused an elderly man in a checkered work shirt, the arms rolled up to reveal white sleeves beneath.

  "What the hell–" added a woman in a brassiere and a slip as she retook her place on the pickup.

  "–you doing down he–" a swarthy-looking old man finished as he sat down on the pickup's passenger seat.

  "Why are they doing that?" Melanie asked, directing the question to nobody in particular, just letting the early morning and any gods listening know that she didn't understand. "Why are they saying that? Saying it over and over?"

  Angel Wurst hugged Samantha tight. "The man said it," she offered.

  "What man, honey?" Sally Davis looked around but could only see the people turning away from the rest of her party – the boy called Virgil (who, it had to be said, made her skin crawl a little), and the man who Melanie had brought with her, and the man from the plane. And the two boys, new additions.

  Angel nodded at the boys. "Their daddy," she said. "Their daddy said those words to the old man."

  Melanie crouched down and pulled Angel gently towards her, one hand on each of the girl's shoulders. "Where's their daddy now, honey? Do you know that?"

  "What's she talking–"

  Melanie shot a glare at Johnny. "You can see things can't you, honey?"

  Angel Wurst nodded. She turned Samantha the doll's head around so that its shiny eyes were looking right at Melanie. "Things that have happened already," the doll said in that squawky voice. "Sometimes things that haven't happened yet."

  "Where's the boy's father now, sweetie?" Sally asked.

  "Oh," Angel said, matter-of-factly, "he's dead."

  Melanie couldn't help doing it – didn't even know she was doing it until it was all over – but she just had to do it. There was something in the back of her head that flicked over, like a binary swit
ch, and she shook the little girl so hard that the doll fell out onto the pavement.

  "Mel, take it easy."

  "How do you know that?"

  Sally Davis placed a hand on Melanie's shoulder and squeezed.

  Angel Wurst's bottom lip started to quiver and a tear appeared on each of the girl's lower eyelids.

  "How do you know, honey?" It was Sally who asked this time, her voice softer.

  "My mummy and daddy are dead, too," she said.

  "Shit!" Johnny turned around and shifted another round into the rifle. "Who are these bastards?" he said as he started to walk the couple hundred or so yards to where the others were standing, standing watching the townsfolk walk back to an old Toyota, a pickup, a fire engine and who the hell knew what else those damn contraptions were – or had been once upon a time, in a galaxy a fucking long ways away from where they were now.