Fading Light: An Anthology of the Monstrous: Tim Marquitz (43 page)

Seconds later an old blue Beemer shot past them, boxes crowding out
the rear window and a lone teddy bear stuffed between them.

The road crested a rise and started on down a long incline. Alan
could still see the Beemer’s tail lights several hundred yards
ahead.

“We should call your mother,” Jane said. “Let her
know we’re coming.”

The tail lights winked out.

“I said—”

The squeal of brakes cut her off. The wheel tried to twist out of
Alan’s hands, but he kept his foot on the brake pedal. Jane
screamed. The kids screamed. Alan couldn’t tell if he were
screaming too.

They ground to a halt on the gritty margins of the road.

“Jesus fuck!” Jane spat and pulled the seatbelt from her
neck. Benny could listen all he liked.

“Are you kids alright?” she asked, turning in her seat. A
raw red line ran below her throat.

“Alan! What the hell—” And then she saw it too.

The road ahead vanished into a black lake. The headlights made no
impression of its surface. The slow swell rose and fell, and waves of
pitch washed the asphalt five yards in front of them.

Dawn found them, Alan at the wheel of the car, parked by the roadside
on the ridge they had followed the Beemer over, Jane in the passenger
seat, her head back against the rest, a line of dried saliva flaking
at the corner of her mouth. The kids had cuddled together on the back
seat.

At the first gray hints of morning the black lake had begun to
retreat. Alan watched it draw in like a slow breath. By the time the
sun’s rim rose burning over the eastern hills, the retreating
lake had revealed the Beemer. All four doors stood open. More cars
emerged, two, three, a dozen. Half of them formed a single twisted
wreck.

The sun cleared the horizon, fanning a skein of red clouds out before
it. The lake had sunk to a narrow band, a river running through the
valley, overwriting whatever river might truly run there. Alan
couldn’t tell how deep the blackness stood, but it overtopped
any bridge that might have been down there to span the water.

He turned the volume knob on the radio, just a fraction. Beneath the
faint pulsing howl, a voice, fainter still. He could make out the
words ‘Emergency Broadcast’ and something about looters
to be shot on sight.

The car door made a loud click as he opened it, but the kids didn’t
move. Jane lolled her head to one side and went on sleeping. Alan
eased himself out onto the shoulder. He stretched, never taking his
eyes from the dark river a quarter mile down the slope. A long piss
into the bushes at the roadside and then he set off down the
shoulder, his work shoes slipping on the gravel, sending stones into
the dry ditch to his left.

The morning chill raised goose bumps on Alan’s arms. He rubbed
them through the thin cloth of his shirt. He could smell the rot, the
basement stink, rising from the valley. No part of him wanted to walk
this road, but he had to see. And more, he had to prove to himself
that he could. His hesitation at the house, when he thought Ben might
be down there in the basement, had sown a seed, and the shame had
grown all night, until with the coming of the dawn it outweighed his
fear.

The Volvo had laid down two thick lines of rubber leading to the
point where Alan finally brought it to a halt. Five yards on and he
came to where the lake had reached. The high-tide mark.

The road surface became more gray. It looked scoured, and potholes
showed further along. The scrub to either side appeared dead, the
leaves ash gray or black. In the ditch, bramble coiled like dark
razor wire. Alan kept away from the ditch, walking on the road now.
The hardtop crumbled under his shoes as though it were rotten snow.

He slowed as he drew nearer to the Beemer. It had been old, but this
car looked as though it had spent ten years at the dump. Blue? He
thought it had been blue. As he got closer he began to spot small
patches of paint amongst the bubbled rust. The boxes had fallen from
the rear window. The teddy still lay there, eyeless, gray stuffing
drawn from its stomach.

One foot in front of the other. He needed to pee again. The silence
felt fathoms deep, pressing on him from all sides. Another step.

The car lay empty, the insides torn, rusted springs jutting from
perished seat covers. Alan looked toward the black river. Canal might
be a better word. It gave no hint at currents or flow. All the cars
would be empty. He knew where the people were.

Walking back to Jane and the kids, with his back to the valley, Alan
could imagine it an ordinary day. The sun felt warm on his neck.
Birds sang.

“A-Alan?” Jane woke up as he climbed back into the Volvo.

“Hey, Baby.” He gave her those moments of innocence.

She looked around the car, confused, then memory hardened on her
face. “God Alan, what should we do?”

“This stuff is all over everywhere,” he said. “It’s
on the coast, it’s back at home, it’s in this valley.
It’s gonna be at Mom’s too. We can’t get past the
river, and I don’t know where we’d go to if we could.”

“We can’t get across?” Jane asked.

“Not unless you’ve got some kind of magic boat.”
Fear made his voice harsh. “What the hell is going to float on
that? It’s just darkness.”

Jane peered into the valley, registering the black river for the
first time. She swiveled in the car seat to look at the children. A
tear rolled down her cheek.

Ben sat up, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “Hope floats.”

Alan was used to Ben’s sleep talk. He seldom woke up without
the tail-end of some dream or other spilling from him. This one
sounded like one of Jim Sanders’ little gems. “Hey,
kiddo.” He forced a smile for the boy.

“It might not be so bad though,” Alan said. “Look,
the dark has sunk back. It was half way to us last night. Now it’s
way down there.”

“You think it’s going away?”

“I think it might, and I think we’re worse off here than
we were at home,” Alan said.

“We should go back?” He could see she liked the idea.

“Maybe. Back to town in any case.” Alan could still hear
that chuckle from the Sanders’ basement. “Maybe not back
to the house yet.”

The roads which last night had been home only to the emergency
services and a scattering of terrified families, were now jammed with
every vehicle imaginable. They made the three miles to Ashton in six
hours. At Ashton the gridlock became total.

“We’ve got to walk,” Alan told them.

“Walk?” Usually Jane liked to walk but today she had the
expression of a woman asked to swim the Atlantic.

“We walk, or we stay here until it gets dark,” Alan said.
He had the same reluctance to leave the safety of their metal box,
but the safety was a lie. He remembered the Beemer and those open
doors. He didn’t want that.

“But it’s twenty miles home,” Jane said.

“We can do it, Mom,” Sarah spoke from the back of the
car, her first words since they left the house.

“I can walk it,” Ben chimed in.

“We’ll walk into Ashton,” Alan said. “Can’t
be more than two miles. We’ll find a place for the night.”

The traffic queues ran right through downtown Ashton. Alan carried
Ben on sore shoulders. His throat burned with thirst and car fumes.
They passed three fights, frustration boiling over into tire irons
and baseball bats. Once they heard shots way behind them.

An old woman, gray hair in a bun, leaned out of her beat-up truck.
“Mister, hey Mister, you know what’s going on up there?”
She reminded Alan of Marge.

“I don’t know.” He thought of Jim down in his black
cellar. “I’m sorry.”

A quarter mile on and the road dipped into an underpass. Alan led
them off the first exit before the tunnel mouth.

“Holiday Inn!” Jane pointed along the street to their
left.

Alan shook his head. “There.”

“That’s an office block!”

“It’s taller.”

Jane didn’t object when he broke the glass doors with a chunk
of paving slab. She did step in when Ben cheered and tried to wrestle
up one of the paper stands to join in the destruction.

They went up three flights of stairs and found a corner office with a
view of the street.

Ben and Sarah installed themselves in the most comfortable of the
swivel chairs and began to spin.

“Now what?” Jane asked.

“We wait and hope the army comes or something.” Alan had
no idea. What do you do when the world goes mad? Stopping to think
too much would definitely be a bad move.

Alan watched the streets. For the most part they were empty. A few
groups of people passed, six or eight strong. It seemed like no one
wanted to be alone. A police car with a megaphone attachment sped by.
He couldn’t hear the message through the double glazing. In the
distance, as the evening gloom began to gather, he saw a column of
black smoke and the lick of fire above a roof.

By five the street below lay in deep shadow.

“There’s somebody outside.” Jane tugged Alan’s
sleeve.

He heard a door slam. A sudden panic rose from his guts. The kids
watched him with big eyes. He crept to the door and peered out. A man
and woman were walking along the corridor, both laden with hold-alls
and heavy coats.

“Hello there!” The man spotted Alan almost at once. He
looked to be about fifty, balding and running to fat.

“Hi.” Alan stepped out from behind the door. He realized
he had a stapler in one hand, clutched like a gun.

“Fred.” The man held out his hand. “This is my wife
Lucy.”

Alan took the hand, still nervous. Lucy smiled at him. She looked
younger, though not young enough for her red lipstick and blonde
bleach.

“We saw the front door had been ‘opened’ and
thought we’d stop over,” Fred said.

“For the night.” Lucy looked over her shoulder at the
stairwell.

“Sure. Join us.” Alan straightened. He’d been
hunched for action. “Come on in.”

The Robins, Fred and Lucy, came well equipped. They settled in a
corner and started to brew coffee on a small camping stove. They had
food too. A good thing, because the kids were hungry.

“So what the hell is going on?” Alan sat back in an
office chair, a hot coffee in one hand, a cookie that he really
didn’t want in the other.

“It’s the end of days.” Fred nodded as if agreeing
with himself. “Better hope you’re straight with Jesus,
Alan.”

Lucy looked up from her bowl. “Hell is rising.” She gave
the rehydrated stew a nervous poke.

“You might be right . . .” A day ago Alan would have the
couple down as crazies.

“No ‘might’ about it, Alan.” Fred slapped his
leg. “That out there is the second flood.”

“It’s dark out.” Sarah stood by the window,
watching.

“At least the lights are holding,” Fred said.

Ben paled at that and hugged closer to Jane. Alan could cheerfully
have throttled the older man. He stared up at the fluorescents. Don’t
shoot the messenger. The lights were holding.

The Robbins snuggled down into four seasons sleeping bags at around
nine. Like two blue slugs on the red and orange of the carpet. Fred
had three heavy duty flashlights laid out beside him. Jane slept with
the kids under two coats they had brought up from the car.

Alan sat and tried not to think. He watched the clock. He listened to
the
tick
,
tick
,
tick
beneath the slow breathing
and Fred’s muffled snore. It’s the end of days. Better
hope you’re straight with Jesus. Hope floats. A dark tide.

His head jerked up. Had he slept? He tried to make sense of the
clock. What woke him?

Alan leaned forward in his chair and hugged himself with cold arms.

In a quick pulse a black circle appeared on the carpet, grew to an
oval two feet across, and then shrank to nothing.

For a moment sleep held him.

Another touch of darkness, across the room.

A convulsion ran through his legs, jerking him back into the chair,
nearly toppling it. He leapt up. Two strides took him to Jane and he
hauled both children from her, lifting them by their collars.

“Get up! Now! It’s here!”

And as he shouted the orange on red of the carpet turned black. The
dark sea rose through the floor as if it weren’t there.

“Get up!” A scream holding only fear.

Alan ran, holding his children under his arms. Fred and Lucy writhed,
trapped in their sleeping bags. The darkness lapped around them, an
inch deep. Through his shoes it felt like maggots crawling.

At the door Alan spared a glance back. Jane staggered after him. She
stepped over Lucy. Alan caught a glimpse of the woman as she reached
an arm out of her bag. The darkness stained one side of her face. A
blood-red eye stared from that side, without iris or white.

“Jesus!” Better be straight with Jesus. “Oh God!”

Alan ran for the stairwell, almost dropping Sarah after two strides.

He barged through the door to the stairs. A small voice at the back
of his mind gave thanks to whoever had chosen to let it swing both
ways.

It took two flights of stairs to make him draw breath, and when he
did his legs turned to jelly. He collapsed on the seventh floor
landing, gasping. Jane fell beside him. For several minutes they said
nothing, all four holding tight whilst Alan recovered from the climb.

From the narrow window that ran the outer length of the stairwell,
the town appeared as a scattering of islands. The tallest buildings
stood alone in an ocean of night. To the west the ground sloped
upward towards the expensive side of Ashton, homes in James Hill sold
for a million or more, and they remained untouched.

A faint howling reached them, echoing up the stairwell. A thin
retching howl and the sound of breaking glass.

“Oh God.” Jane moaned and held the children close.