Nightfall

  Chapter Two

  It was dim in the kitchen with the blinds drawn, so Joey quietly lit an oil lamp and put it on the table between them. The light cast dusky shadows across his face and made him look like a mummified corpse. Mike thrust the hideous image out of his mind

  “So, are you going to explain now?” Joey asked.

  “I’m not sure where to start,” Mike said.

  “Well, the beginning is always a good place,” Joey pointed out.

  “Well. . . I think I might’ve accidentally activated the tachometer,” Mike said.

  “I didn’t think it worked,” Joey said.

  “I didn’t think so either, but can you think of any other explanation for all this? You see the way the street cuts off like somebody sliced it with a knife, don’t you? It goes on like that all the way around town, it even cuts right through buildings and houses sometimes, in certain places. It makes a perfect ring just a hair bigger than a mile and a half wide. Everything inside the circle is exactly the way it always was, but outside that there’s nothing but trees. I followed it all the way around before I came home,” Mike said.

  “Okay, I admit that’s suggestive, but it doesn’t prove anything,” Joey said.

  “No, but there’s more. My lab is at the exact center of the circle, and I know I accidentally discharged the capacitor this afternoon at the exact same time the power died. And besides that the tachometer itself disappeared. What other conclusion could you draw from all that?” Mike said bleakly.

  Joey digested that thought.

  “I don’t know, Mikey. I can see how maybe you might have accidentally switched it on when you discharged the capacitor. But I never heard of the tachometer covering such a big area as this,” he said.

  “Me neither, and I can’t imagine any time in the future when there wouldn’t be anything but trees, either. This is more like a million years ago,” Mike said.

  “But it can’t be. The tachometer doesn’t work backwards,” Joey pointed out.

  “Not that we know of, anyway,” Mike said.

  “No, it’s scientifically impossible; you know that as well as I do. We’ve got to be somewhere in the future, if that’s what actually happened,” Joey insisted.

  “Okay, so maybe we skipped ahead ten million years and there are no human beings left on the whole planet,” Mike said.

  “Don’t get so far ahead of yourself, Mikey. We can’t know what year it is unless we go out there past the ring and find some kind of hard evidence. Which I’m sure we will, sooner or later. It’s not like we won’t have time,” Joey said wryly.

  “Yeah, you’re definitely right about that,” Mike admitted. If there were anything certain about the entire situation, it was the brutal fact that there was no going back. Once you skipped ahead with the tachometer, you were stuck there forever. Time was the one thing they had no shortage of.

  “In the meantime, all we can do is deal with what we see. I’m guessing that’s why you bought all those supplies?” Joey asked.

  “Yeah. It’s all stuff we could either use or trade later on, if we had to. Things could get nasty around here in a hurry if people start running out of food and water,” Mike agreed.

  “So what are the six gallons of Clorox for? Any special reason?” Joey asked.

  “Yeah there is. We can use it to sanitize water to make it safe to drink. It won’t taste too good, but it’ll get the job done,” Mike explained.

  “All right, I guess I can understand that. But what about the ten bottles of cinnamon and the fifty pounds of sugar? Planning on baking a really big cake?” Joey asked.

  “No, those are for keeping food safe, and like I said maybe for trading later on when everybody else runs out, which they will sooner or later,” Mike said.

  “And the .22 shells? I assume those are for hunting?” Joey asked.

  “Yeah, mostly. But also just in case we need to defend ourselves,” Mike said darkly.

  “I really don’t think anybody will come after us with torches and dogs, Mikey,” Joey said. He was trying to lighten the mood, which Mike appreciated, but he didn’t agree with his assessment of the danger level.

  “They might. Things are hectic right now and maybe nobody’s had a chance to think it through very much, but they will. They’ll notice that this little slice of town that’s left is a perfect circle, and it’ll cross somebody’s mind to see where the center is. And once they do that, it won’t be long before somebody puts two and two together and figures out one of the astronomy students was doing experimental research down there in the gym. I don’t know if Dr. Bevels is still in town or not, but he wasn’t the only one who knew about it. People will talk, and then they might just start to wonder if maybe Mike McGrath was on to something with his silly little tachyon machine, after all. Then what do you think they’ll do?” Mike asked.

  “They’ll come looking for you, to see if you know anything,” Joey guessed.

  “Bingo. And then what will I tell them?” Mike asked.

  “The truth, maybe? You didn’t mean any harm. Nobody ever thought you were doing anything dangerous,” Joey pointed out, and Mike gave him a withering look.

  “Do you think that will matter, when people start going hungry and getting sick? They won’t want to hear excuses when that happens. They’ll want answers, and they’ll want all this to be undone, and if they can’t have that, then they’ll want vengeance. You of all people should know how folks think in a disaster,” Mike said, and that was unquestionably true. Joey was a psychology major, and a pretty sharp one, too.

  “Nothing to say to that?” Mike asked pointedly, when the other boy didn’t answer.

  “No. . . I guess you’re right,” Joey admitted, and then they were both silent for a few seconds after that.

  “I don’t guess you remembered to get any batteries for the radio, did you? We might hear something on the university station, at least,” Joey finally asked.

  “No, I forgot,” Mike admitted, feeling supremely stupid. He’d been tied up in a million knots, of course, but that was no excuse.

  “Well, it’s too late to do anything about it now. We’ll get some in the morning, if they’re still selling them, that is. How did you get all that stuff, anyway? It must have cost a fortune,” Joey said.

  “I used what I had in the bank,” Mike admitted, and Joey raised an eyebrow.

  “All of it?” he asked.

  “Yeah. . . I wasn’t sure if I could even get access to it after today, so I figured I better grab it while I could. Besides that, I figure it probably won’t be worth the paper it’s printed on within a couple days or so. I wanted to get what we needed to maybe save our necks while I still had the chance,” Mike said.

  “I don’t know, Mikey. It’ll be hard to get by even in a little place like this without some form of money to simplify trade. You might end up feeling kind of silly if everybody goes right on using the same old cash as always and then you’re broke except for fifty pounds of sugar and a case of lard,” Joey said.

  “If that’s the worst problem I have to deal with then I’ll be happy to eat sugar and lard for the next six months. Besides, if that’s the way it plays out then we can always sell the stuff, probably for a lot more than I paid for it. I’d be glad to waste all the money in the bank, if I knew it would undo all this,” Mike said sadly.

  “It’s okay, buddy. You didn’t know. Nobody can blame you for this,” Joey said, and Mike laughed a little.

  “Oh, there are all different kinds of ways of being to blame, you know. I didn’t mean to isn’t much of a defense,” Mike said.

  “Well. . . Let’s not worry about that right now, okay? There’s nothing you can do about it at this point, anyway,” Joey said.

  “No, I guess not,” Mike admitted.

  “The only thing that matters right now is what we’ll do tonight and tomorrow. Everything else can wait,” Joey said, and Mike realized the comment was se
nsible. With an effort, he pulled himself out of his momentary funk and refocused on the present.

  “Well, we have enough food to last us for a month or so if we’re careful with it. I still have a little bit of cash, if it’s worth anything. There’s enough clean water in the water heater to do for drinking for a while, and we have plenty of bullets for the .22 if it comes to that. The Jeep has almost a full tank of gas, even though we don’t really need to go anywhere for a while. I think it’d be best if we stayed put and kept all the doors and windows locked for now. We have oil for the lamps and wood for the fireplace; I’m not sure what else we need at this point,” Mike said. Joey nodded all the while, and finally smiled.

  “See, there you go. We’re all set,” he agreed.

  “Are you not worried at all about what’s going to happen or the fact that we’re stuck in this weird place for the rest of our lives or anything like that?” Mike asked.

  “What good would it do to worry about it?” Joey pointed out reasonably.

  “I just don’t see how you can be so calm about everything,” Mike said.

  “Mikey, there are really only two kinds of problems in the world. There’s the kind you can do something about, and then there’s the kind you can’t do anything about. If you can do something about it, then quit worrying and go do it. If you can’t do anything, then worrying won’t help you in that case either. Worry is nothing but fear, and fear is nothing but lack of faith. We can’t do a thing about being stuck here and nobody knows what the future will bring. We’ve done everything a reasonable person could do at this point, so I’m not going to worry, and you shouldn’t either,” Joey said.

  “I guess so,” Mike finally agreed. He sometimes envied Joey for his untroubled tranquility. He’d never found it that easy, himself.

  They spent a quiet evening, Joey reading by candlelight and Mike pretending to do likewise, even though he was too preoccupied to pay much attention. They both went to bed early, and Mike was asleep almost as soon as his head touched the pillow.

  He woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of an explosion, followed by gunfire and a blood-curdling scream. It must have been far away because the sound was faint, but it was piercing nevertheless.

  He jumped out of bed and grabbed his jeans from the floor, quickly slipping them on before he ran outside into the hall. Joey was already there.

  “What was that?” he hissed in the darkness.

  “I don’t know. It sounded like machine guns,” Mike began, and then he was cut off by another explosion, louder than the first one. He crept quickly to the window at the end of the hall to part the curtains and see what he could see, but cautiously so as not to show any movement.

  It was almost pitch dark outside, with all the street lights off. The only illumination came from starlight, faint and far. And yet, even that was enough for him to glimpse darker shadows here and there, moving between the buildings. They looked like soldiers carrying assault rifles, but he couldn’t have said for sure.

  Then the night was lit up suddenly by the orange glare of a bomb blast somewhere downtown, and for a second he glimpsed the soldiers perfectly. Somewhere in the distance, he heard more screams.

  His mouth grew dry and his heart was pounding as he pulled the curtains shut and turned back to Joey.

  “Did we lock all the doors and windows today? All of them?” he asked urgently.

  “Yeah, I think so. What did you see?” Joey asked, whispering as if someone might overhear them.

  “Bombs, and a bunch of soldiers roaming around everywhere,” Mike said, also whispering.

  “Friendly or not?” Joey asked.

  “I’d tend to say not, if they’re the ones blowing things up. But I don’t know for sure, and I don’t want to find out the hard way, either,” Mike said.

  “We’d better go check the locks one more time, then, just in case. I’d feel a lot better if we did,” Joey said.

  “Yeah, me too,” Mike agreed, and they quickly did so. Only when they’d double checked the last one in the house did Mike relax even a tiny bit.

  “Do you think it’s safe to stay here?” Joey asked. They were standing in the kitchen by the arch that led into the living room, and the sound of bombs and gunfire hadn’t let up for a second.

  “Where else would we go?” Mike asked.

  “Well, I don’t know. We could take the Jeep and go hide out in the woods, if we had to,” Joey said.

  Mike considered it, and then shook his head.

  “I think we’re better off if we sit tight for now. If we head down to the basement then we ought to have pretty good shelter,” Mike said, nodding his head vaguely in that direction.

  That was right before someone kicked the front door in.

  There was no order to freeze, no attempt by the intruders to identify themselves, nothing like that; only a flurry of bullets that barely missed Mike and Joey and left holes in the living room wall big enough to put a fist through.

  Mike was no fool; he ran for the Jeep as fast as his feet could take him, ducking low and hoping the soldiers wouldn’t realize what he was doing in the pitch darkness of the house. Apparently they didn’t, because he made it to the garage without getting a hole in his head. Joey was right behind him, and half a second after he reached the driver’s seat he had the engine started. There was more gunfire from inside the house, and he hit the gas without even switching on the headlights. The Jeep shot out into the driveway, and Mike fought the wheel to make a hard right turn across the yard and down the hill onto Third Street. He knocked down the picket fence beside the curb and heard more bullets whizzing far above his head before they finally hit the edge of the pavement and slipped into the deeper darkness of the trees.

  “What happened back there?” Joey yelled.

  “Shut up! We’ll figure it out later!” Mike said.

  He switched on the fog lights to give him just enough illumination to see his way between the huge trunks, if he paid close attention. But it was nerve-wracking, especially when he didn’t know if a posse of homicidal maniacs were hot on their trail or not. He didn’t dare turn on his bright lights for fear of giving away their position, even though it slowed them down.

  But eventually the adrenaline rush began to wear off, and several hours later he found himself creeping through a thicker-than-usual patch of trees maybe three or four miles south of town. There’d been several times already when he’d had to stop and back up to avoid obstacles even the Jeep couldn’t get past, and every delay made him want to chew his fingernails down to the elbow. Finally they came to a wide creek that looked like it might take some serious maneuvering to get across, and Joey spoke up.

  “Don’t you think we’re far enough from town to be safe by now? We sure wouldn’t want to get stuck in that mess,” he pointed out.

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Mike agreed reluctantly, and parked the Jeep under a big heavy-limbed magnolia tree that he hoped might keep it hidden from prying eyes. It was the best concealment they could hope to find on such short notice. Then they kicked the seats back and tried to sleep, but the distant sound of sporadic explosions and gunfire still coming from town made that awfully hard to do.

  “Why would they be shooting machine guns at people?” Mike finally asked aloud. He didn’t really expect Joey to know the answer; he was more or less talking to himself. But the whole thing was so senseless and inexplicable, his mind wouldn’t leave it alone.

  “I don’t know, but there’s nothing we can find out till morning. Let it alone and go to sleep, Mikey,” Joey muttered.

  That was easier said than done, and for a long time Mike lay wakeful in his seat. But eventually, sheer exhaustion closed his eyes for a few hours.