Blind Panic

by Graham Masterton

  The Electra Glide missed them by inches, and crashed onto the highway and bounced. Tyler ended up facedown on the blacktop with Tina on top of him. He lay there for a moment, completely still, as he had been taught to do after a stunt accident. If any bones were broken, trying to move would only make the injury worse.

  After a few moments, Tina climbed off him. He twisted himself around and looked up at her. She had a large red bruise on her left cheek, but otherwise she didn’t appear to be hurt.

  “Are you okay?” he asked her.

  “No,” she said. “I knew this was a bad idea.”

  He climbed to his feet. His artificial kneecap had hit the road at an awkward angle, and he grunted with pain.

  “How about you?” she asked him. “You haven’t broken your leg, have you?”

  “No, no. I’m great.”

  He limped over to the Electra Glide and heaved it upright. It didn’t look damaged, but when he pushed the starter button, there was no whump from the starter dampers, only an irritable clicking. He tried again, and again, but the engine refused to turn over.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Tina. “Can you fix it?”

  “Could be almost anything. Fuses, connections. Maybe the ECM has been damaged.”

  “So what do we do now?”

  “Find ourselves some alternative means of transportion, I guess.”

  Tina touched the bruise on her face “I hope the bone isn’t broken.”

  Tyler came up to her and said, “Here,” and gently felt it with his fingertips. “No, you’re okay,” he told her. “It’s just a contusion.”

  “Oh, wonderful. It’s a good thing I’m not appearing on TV tonight.”

  Tyler tried to start the Electra Glide again, but it still wouldn’t fire up. He climbed out of the saddle and said, “Guess we’d better start walking. So long, old girl. I’ll come back and rescue you, if I get the chance.”

  They had walked only about a hundred yards, however, when they heard the distant bellowing of a truck. It was approaching from the south, from behind the chaos of burning vehicles beneath the overpass.

  They stopped and listened. The truck came nearer and nearer, and then stopped. They could see it intermittently through the drifting smoke, a big red tractor with shiny chrome bumpers.

  “Come on,” said Tyler. “It won’t be any use to us. It’ll have to turn back.”

  “Yes, same as we should have done.”

  “Okay. You’re right. I admit it. We nearly made it, though, didn’t we?”

  “Oh, sure. We’re still having to hoof it, though, aren’t we?”

  The truck slowly started to back up, but it didn’t turn around. Instead, it reversed for more than a quarter of a mile, and then stopped. Twin blasts of dirty brown exhaust blew out of its smokestacks, and they heard its engine revving.

  “I don’t believe this,” said Tyler. “I hope he’s not trying to do what I think he’s trying to do.”

  But the driver released the truck’s brakes, and it came blaring along the highway toward the bridge, faster and faster, until it was traveling at nearly sixty miles an hour. It collided with the wreckage with a bang like a bomb going off. Three burned-out cars came exploding out from under the bridge, and the truck followed them. Immediately, the driver slowed down, and with a long, drawn-out screech of protesting metal, it pushed the wrecks onto the median strip, and then stopped.

  Tyler walked over to it, and Tina followed him. In the passenger seat he could see an elderly black woman with a bright red scarf on her head, holding a small baby. The driver’s door opened and a young black woman jumped down, wearing tight black jeans and a tight black sweater. She came around the front of the truck and said, “Hi, there. Hope that didn’t shake you up too much.”

  “Are you okay?” Tyler asked her. “That was one hell of a stunt.”

  The woman inspected the Titan’s bumpers. One of them was dented, and the paintwork over the nearside wheel arch was scratched, but otherwise the truck was undamaged.

  “Six hundred horsepower,” the woman said. “Take a whole lot more than a few wrecked cars to stop this rig.”

  All the same, she turned around and looked at the wrecks and said, “Not that I wanted to do that. All those poor souls. It makes you weep, don’t it? It really makes you weep.”

  The cars that she had pushed aside with her truck were so badly burned that they were all the same dead gray color, and their windows were blackened with smoke, so that their incinerated occupants were hidden from sight.

  “You guys on foot?” the woman asked them.

  “That’s my Harley over there. We had a kind of mishap.”

  Tina pointed to the bruise on her cheek. “Somebody tried to be a little too clever, and we crashed.” She held out her hand. “My name’s Tina, by the way. This is Tyler.”

  “Jasmine. And that’s my aunt Amadi, but I always call her Auntie Ammy.”

  “And the little guy?” asked Tyler.

  “I don’t know what his name is. There was a pileup on the freeway and I rescued him. His mom was killed. I tried to get in touch with children’s services to take care of him, but nobody showed.”

  “It’s Armageddon,” said Tyler. “End of the world as we know it. Where are you headed?”

  “I don’t know. North. We thought it would be safer if we got out of LA, that’s all. We didn’t want to go blind.”

  “We’re trying to get to San Francisco. Well, Memory Valley, near Sausalito. But the same thing’s been happening there, too. My mom and my dad and my sister have lost their sight, and so have a hundred other people. I don’t think anyplace is safe.”

  “Do you have any idea what’s actually happening?” asked Jasmine. “We went to find my brother in Maywood, but then we saw these weird characters with white faces and these bright flashing lights coming out of their eyes, and Auntie Ammy thinks that it’s them that’s making everybody blind, whoever they are. I don’t know. It sounds crazy, don’t it?”

  But Tina shook her head and said, “No, it doesn’t. We’ve seen them, too, Tyler and me, in Hollywood. We actually saw them blinding some kids who were trying to steal stuff from people’s houses.”

  “Do you have any idea who they are? Or what they are?”

  “None at all.”

  “Maybe they’re like aliens or something,” said Jasmine. “You know, like War of the Worlds.”

  “I guess they could be,” said Tyler. “They sure don’t look human, do they?”

  Auntie Ammy put down her window and called, “Little fella’s gettin’ hungry, Jazz!”

  Jasmine said, “Okay.” Then she turned back to Tyler and Tina. “We could give you a ride, if you like. It’s not like we were heading anyplace special.”

  “We’d really appreciate that,” said Tyler. “With this knee, I don’t think I could have made it to the next town, let alone San Francisco.”

  They climbed up into the cab. It was cramped, with the four of them, and the baby, too, but Tina shared the passenger seat with Auntie Ammy and Tyler sat on the floor with his back against the dash. Jasmine started the engine and they drove off northward.

  “What are you calling the little guy?” asked Tina. The baby was staring up at her, fascinated, and playing with the button on the front of her sweater.

  “I didn’t think it was my place to name him,” said Jasmine. “If I can’t find out who he is, though, I guess I’ll have to.”

  “He looks like a Mikey to me,” Tina suggested.

  “Mikey?” said Tyler. “That’s a terrible name. Give the poor little fellow a break, will you?”

  “All right, what would you call him?”

  “Frank.”

  “Frank! That’s even worse!”

  Auntie Ammy said, “If we are to give him a name, we should call him Peter, after Oggún.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Oggún is a Santeria god—what we call an orisha.”

  “So why are we going to call him Peter?”
<
br />   “Because that was Oggún’s secret name. When the slaves from West Africa were first brung to this country, they were forbidden by their masters from worshippin’ their own orishas, so they gave them the names of Catholic saints instead. Oggún was worshipped under the name of Saint Peter. Oggún is ’specially suitable for this poor little fella because Oggún is always there when cars crash, and blood is shed.”

  Tyler said, “I never heard of that before. But Peter, that’s a good name. What do you think, Petey?”

  “Petey” abruptly burst into tears.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Modoc County National Forest, California

  “Would you fasten your seat belt, please?” said Ranger Butowski.

  “I can’t find my buckle,” said Cayley.

  “It’s right there, honey, down by the side of your seat.”

  Cayley groped for it, but she still couldn’t find it.

  “Right there,” said Ranger Butowski, growing impatient.

  “I can’t see it,” Cayley told her. “I can’t see anything. I’m blind.”

  “What?”

  “We’re all blind, all four of us.”

  Ranger Edison turned around in his seat. “What do you mean, you’re blind? Are you kidding me?”

  “It’s true,” said Charlie. “It happened to us yesterday.”

  “Hey, get serious. You could see us clear enough when we were landing.”

  “We could, yes. But we don’t know how that happened. We all held each other’s hands, and while we were holding hands we could see. But as soon as we let go, we went blind again.”

  “Hard to believe, isn’t it?” said Remo. “I don’t even believe it myself.”

  “You know that people have been going blind all over the country, coast to coast?” Ranger Edison asked them.

  “You mean it’s not just us?”

  “Uh-uh. It’s been a pandemic. Airliners have been crashing ‘cause the pilots have gone blind. People have been stepping into traffic and getting themselves killed, and there’s been literally thousands of auto wrecks. We picked up three other fishermen yesterday afternoon, and some birdwatcher just after sunrise this morning, and they were blind, too.”

  He picked up his radio microphone and clicked it on and off. “Not only that, all communications have gone down. We lost all radio contact with our headquarters in Alturas about a half hour ago, and we can’t raise any of the ranger stations. I don’t know. Myself—I reckon it’s solar flares that’s responsible. Unusual surface activity on the sun.”

  He pressed the LongRanger’s starter button and the rotors began to turn. “Don’t you worry,” he added. “We’ll get you to a doctor soon.”

  The helicopter tilted upward, and Ranger Edison angled it over the river. They were less than fifty feet above the ground, however, when three figures appeared through the smoke from the smoldering Winnebago.

  “Hey, Jim—there’s some more people down there!” said Ranger Butowski. “We should make sure they’re okay!”

  “How many?” Remo shouted, over the noise of the engine.

  “Three! Why, did you see them before?”

  “Guy in a black suit, with a hat, and two funny-looking dudes with white faces and horns on their heads?”

  “That’s right. Jim—why don’t you take us down again, so that we can check they’re not injured?”

  “No!" yelled Remo, and he was almost screaming.

  “What’s the problem?” asked Ranger Edison.

  “It’s them! They’re the ones who made us go blind!”

  “What? What are you talking about?”

  “Just get out of here, man! Quick!”

  But Ranger Edison said, “I’m sorry, son. It’s our duty to take care of anybody in the park who might be in trouble. We have to talk to them, at least—check out they don’t need any assistance.”

  “Don’t!” shouted Mickey. “They could make you go blind, too!”

  “Hey, just calm down, okay?” said Ranger Edison. “This won’t take long.”

  He pulled his cyclic stick and the helicopter made a tight turn over the river, kicking up concentric circles of spray.

  “Please!” begged Cayley. “You have to believe us! How are we going to get out of here if they make you blind, too?”

  But the helicopter was now sinking slowly back down to the parking lot, and Infernal John and his two stilt-legged companions were walking toward it.

  “Are they still there?” asked Remo, anxiously.

  “They’re still there,” said Ranger Edison. “But don’t panic. We’ll just check that they’re okay and then we’ll hightail it right out of here. And if they give us any trouble—I have a Remington Model Seven right under my seat here.”

  “For Christ’s sake, dude! A gun’s no goddamned use! All they have to do is look at you.”

  The helicopter was only ten feet off the ground now. Infernal John raised both his arms, and dazzling blue-white lights started to jump out of the eyes of his two companions.

  “What the Sam Hill—?” said Ranger Edison.

  Ranger Butowski clapped her hands over her face. “I can’t see! Jim, I can’t see!”

  Remo banged his fist on the side of the cabin and yelled, “Go-go-go-go-go! Go!”

  This time Ranger Edison didn’t hesitate. He swung the helicopter around on its axis and simultaneously lifted it almost vertically upward. He carried on climbing until they were almost level with the top of the promontory, and then he turned it northward, following the Pit River. They all clung tightly to their seats, feeling as if they had left their stomachs down in the parking lot.

  “Margot?” said Ranger Edison. “Margot, are you okay? Tell me you’re okay!”

  “I can’t see!” wept Ranger Butowski. “I can’t see anything! Only black!”

  “Jesus,” said Remo. “Didn’t I tell you to get out of there?”

  “Just keep it shut, son,” snapped Ranger Edison.

  “Oh God,” said Ranger Butowski. “What am I going to do?”

  “Stay calm, okay?” Ranger Edison told her. “Soon as we get to Alturas, I’ll find you an eye doctor. These kids managed to see us momentarily, didn’t they? That means you haven’t lost your sight for good.”

  But Ranger Butowski continued to sob as they flew northward, with their shadow leaping and jumping ahead of them over the hills. Mickey and the rest of them stayed quiet. They were all bruised and exhausted, and there was nothing they could say that would make Ranger Butowski feel any better.

  After they had been flying for about five minutes, Ranger Edison said, “Who were those guys? And what were those flashing lights? Were they lasers?”

  Mickey said, “The guy in the black suit told us his name was Infernal John. He’s an Indian.”

  “An Indian? So who were the other two guys?”

  “We don’t know. The guy in the black suit told us their names. Tuddy-something and Tubby-something. But they weren’t real people.”

  “What do you mean, they weren’t real people?”

  “They just weren’t. It was like they were made out of wood.”

  “I see,” said Ranger Edison. He glanced back at Mickey over his shoulder. “Sure they were.”

  He didn’t ask Mickey any more questions. He tried his radio. “State Park Ranger Edison, calling Alturas HQ! State Park Ranger Edison, calling Alturas HQ, come back!”

  He waited, but there was no reply, only a loud, persistent hiss. Ranger Butowski was whining now, the sound coming from the back of her throat, like an injured puppy. “I won’t be able to see my sister’s kids anymore. I won’t be able to work, or drive, or watch TV, or anything.”

  “Hold on, Margot. We’ll be there in another ten minutes.”

  They kept on flying in silence. It was obvious that Ranger Edison wasn’t interested in discussing Indians in black suits or wooden people with white faces and antlers. Either he thought they were lying, delusional, or else he simply refused to think about it.<
br />
  “Alturas Municipal Airport dead ahead,” he said, at last.

  But just as he began to angle the LongRanger toward the airport, he said, almost inaudibly, “No!” and the helicopter lurched and bumped and spun around, the sound of the engine rising and falling with a screech like a band saw cutting through trees. Cayley and Ranger Butowski both screamed, and the boys shouted out, too.

  “What’s happening?” Cayley squealed. “What’s happening?“

  The helicopter spun around a second time, but then it steadied, and the engine’s sound returned to normal. Ranger Edison said, “It’s okay. It’s okay! Don’t panic! We’re going to be fine!” but he was babbling, and he sounded close to hysteria.

  “What’s happening, dude?” Remo shouted. “What the hell’s wrong?”

  “It’s okay! I’ve gone blind, too, but I think I can get us down!”

  “What? You’ve gone blind, too? Jesus!”

  “We’re all going to die!” wailed Cayley. “We’re going to crash and we’re all going to die!”

  Ranger Edison said, “Listen, listen! Alturas airport was right up ahead of us, less than two miles. I can fly forward for a couple of minutes and then take us down. If I take it real slow, we should be okay.”

  “But we were spinning around and around in circles," Charlie protested. “How do you know we’re still flying in the same direction?”

  “I’m pretty sure we went all the way through three hundred sixty degrees. So we should be heading roughly the same way.”

  “How sure is ‘pretty sure’?” Charlie asked him, his voice so high that he sounded almost like a girl. “How roughly is ‘roughly’?”

  “I don’t know. Pretty sure, that’s all. And pretty roughly, too.”

  They flew unsteadily forward, with the helicopter dipping and waltzing as Ranger Edison tried to keep it headed in a straight line. Ranger Butowski counted out loud to a hundred, and then she said, “That’s it—two minutes! We should be over the airport now!”

  Ranger Edison adjusted his collective lever until the helicopter was hovering, and then, very gradually, he took it down. Cayley said, “Dear God, please don’t let us die. Dear God, please don’t let us die. Especially don’t let us get burned to death. Whatever happens, please don’t let us get burned to death.”