“Has anything happened during the night?” I asked Victor.
“Morning’s come,” he said flatly. “I suppose that’s as good as we can hope for.”
Lauren came up behind me, looped an arm around my chest. I could smell her all over me. It made me feel good.
“Do you think this is the end of the world?” she asked. “I mean, really. The real fucking end of the world.”
I didn’t have an answer for her. If Victor did, he didn’t speak it. The three of us just stood there in absolute silence.
Then I thought I heard piano keys. I looked across the bar and swore I saw the ghost of the old upright piano on the bandstand, right where Scott was sleeping. Goddamn it, I could see it with such clarity it made the surrounding barroom pale in comparison. I clung to that image, refusing to let it go, wanting to keep it for all time. But like everything else, it eventually faded, and I was overcome by the sadness I felt in watching it go. It was a piano. A fucking piano.
“Look,” said Victor.
I turned back around and, at first, I couldn’t see what he was seeing. “What?” I said. “Tell me. What?”
“The bugs. Look at ’em.”
I looked. There were still about a half dozen stuck to the window. I looked at the one closest to me, its green, banana-shaped body plastered against the glass, its six legs like tiny conjoined bones. It stared in through the glass, and there were its eyes: those two quivering pools of liquid mercury behind transparent screens that stared straight at me, at least for a second. Then, as the sunlight crept slowly up Main Street, I watched as the insect’s body began to blacken and crisp, and to flake away in the soft breeze of early morning. It withered in the sunlight before my eyes. I thought of grapes turning into raisins and vampires imploding into dust. The things on the window crisped and broke apart as the sunlight hit them. One by one, their dry husks dropped to the sidewalk where they shriveled like scabs and turned to a grayish powder.
“I don’t believe it,” Lauren said.
But it was happening: we watched it happen.
A bug fluttered up out of the nest of frizzy hair from the dead woman in the street. It hovered momentarily in the air before it burst into flames and dropped back down to the cobblestones where it smoldered and cast black streamers of smoke into the air. Across the street, the bugs that had been clinging to the buildings had similarly disintegrated into piles of sooty gray dust. Only their wings did not disintegrate; they were merely caught by the wind and ushered up into the air over the low buildings and toward the horizon like a thousand flower petals.
“Jesus,” Derrick said, suddenly awake and standing behind me. “Will you look at that?”
The dead bodies in the street looked like horrid mannequins. I quickly turned away.
On the bandstand, Scott came awake. He swiped one hand across his eyes and smacked his lips.
“They’re gone,” Lauren said, waking up the rest of the bar’s patrons. “The sunlight killed them!”
There was a force as the rest of the patrons rushed toward the window to look out. Even Charles Bowman had a half smile cocked on his face.
“Holy shit,” Scott said as he looked out the window at Main Street.
“I don’t believe it,” I said.
“So what was it?” Lauren said. “Some kind of test? Or maybe a warning?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know what it was. Maybe we’re not supposed to know.”
“Then how will we learn?”
“Learn what?” I said.
Just then, the power went out. The lights blinked off and there came the silence of electrical lines in the walls going instantly dead. In fact, the silence was more profound than the darkness.
“Oh,” Tori said in a tiny voice.
“Shhhh,” said Kathy Bowman. She had her head cocked at that weird angle again, listening for sounds the rest of us could not hear.
“What?” said Charles. “What is it this time?”
“I hear something.”
Frustrated, he barked at her, “What?”
“A…a banging…”
Some of us looked around. Mostly at each other.
“No,” said Scott. His face was dead serious. “I hear it, too.”
We all went quiet and listened. I held my breath. There was nothing at first…but then we all heard it at the exact same time—an undeniable thump coming from somewhere toward the back of the bar.
“What the fuck was that?” said Jake.
“Quiet,” Kathy said. “Listen…”
It came again: thump. And then again: thump.
“It’s coming from my office,” Scott said.
And just as he said it, I saw Scott’s office door shudder in its frame as another thump struck it from the other side. And then…ever so slightly…the doorknob began to turn…
“Look,” Victor said. I swung around to face him, and saw him pointing out at Main Street. “Oh, Jesus Christ, look!”
We looked.
Out in the street, the dead began to rise.
About The Author
Ronald Malfi is the award-winning author of the novels Floating Staircase, The Ascent, Snow, Passenger, and several others. Most recognized for his haunting, literary style and memorable characters, Malfi’s dark fiction has gained acceptance among readers of all genres. He currently lives along the Chesapeake Bay where he is at work on his next book.
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Ronald Malfi, After the Fade
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